One Man

by Harry Connolly

  Not every humankind had a soul, but Killer of Devils had a substantial one. Kyrioc drank it down along with his life force and felt his strength renewed.

  Killer of Devils’s weapon clanged against the stone floor, then he fell sideways against the edge of the pool. Kyrioc held on. He wasn’t sure he could break that grip even if he’d wanted to.

  Because he was killing, but he was not wasting the man’s life. He was feasting again. There was a deep, vicious pleasure in taking everything a person has, even their memories of their mother.

  Kyrioc brimmed with that pleasure. He was drunk with savage joy. By the fallen gods, Kyrioc hadn’t felt this good since he returned to Koh-Salash.

  Why had he denied himself? His exhaustion was gone. He could feel his mind focusing and his wounds closing. All the northerner’s memories were his. He knew the man’s secret name, and his wife’s, too.

  He ached to shout it out. It wasn’t enough to defeat an enemy. Kyrioc wanted to shame them, smash all they once had, and hound them into the next world. He wanted to destroy them in every way possible.

  Then it happened. He felt Morlin’s touch once more.

  The god of death was not truly dead—none of them were—and when Kyrioc used Morlin’s gift to drink life, the god’s death dream intruded onto his thoughts.

  It was a dream of desolation. Blasted landscapes. Dying suns. Caustic oceans. A world without life of any kind, where the only souls left to take would be the other godkind themselves, until starvation reduced Morlin to dust.

  Oblivion to the world and to the self.

  …the death of a single child is like the end of the world.

  Kyrioc immediately let go of Killer of Devils. The flood of stolen life stopped. The visions stopped. The healing of his wounds stopped. All that remained was feral delight at the power he’d taken, and the furious ache to drain the last dregs of the Katr’s life.

  Instead, Kyrioc moved away.

  Selsarim Lost, what had he done? He’d sworn to accept death before using Morlin’s gift again, especially here in the city. If he became Morlin’s instrument among so many innocent lives…

  Kyrioc staggered to his feet. He was still hurting, still exhausted, though he was no longer deliriously close to death. The urge to take the northerner’s hand and drain the last of his life away was almost unbearable. Part of him was sure he could never really resist it. And once he started to feed again, the transformation…

  He’d tried to leave his godkind gift on Vu-Dolmont. He’d tried. But he’d called on it again, just as he knew he would. He didn’t have the strength to resist, so why bother?

  He held up his hands. They glowed slightly.

  Savage triumph turned to hopelessness. He had broken his vow to reject Morlin’s gift. He had failed to protect his friend. What had he truly accomplished?

  Riliska was dead.

  This city. Those without conscience acted with impunity. The rest were helpless to respond. The only ones who slept safely were the rich, secure behind their walls. Nations all along the Timmer and Semprestian Seas thought Koh-Salash was doomed, and they were right, but not because of the vengeance of the gods. The Salashi people were doomed because of who they were and what they allowed to happen here.

  They were doomed because a tiny child could be murdered and no one cared but him. The death of one child…

  Kyrioc should have been angry, but he didn’t have the heart anymore. He was sick of Koh-Salash and the vicious way people lived here. He wanted the city gone. Swept away. If the children of this city weren’t safe, there should be no city.

  Then he realized that if anyone could rid the world of this doomed, blasphemous place, it was him. He bore the gift of Morlin, the god of death. If he began killing downcity—taking only those who truly deserved it, devouring them instead of wasting their deaths—he would first transform into the Telmein Griavus again, then manifest the Crown of Night. Morlin’s avatar would once again walk among humankind.

  The Salashi would have to abandon their homeland once again, only this time, they would not be driven out by a ghostkind army. They’d be driven out by the godkind.

  If the death of a single child was like the end of the world, let the world end.

  He picked up the Childfall Staff, shrank it down, and slid it into his belt. The weapon was no longer necessary, but it was too powerful to cast aside. The northerner was practically a corpse already, but there was no point in wasting what he had left—

  Footsteps echoed from the other side of the door. Kyrioc left the northerner where he lay. Why bother to take a tiny, final sip when new corpses brimming with life were close?

  The door opened just as Kyrioc reached it. Six heavies stood on the other side. Kyrioc caught hold of the wrists of the two in front. Glowing flesh shone through the ripped, bloody sleeves of his funeral clothes, and his new victims cried out in terror.

  Their life flowed into him, although their souls were thin, like drops of rancid oil atop a water jug. He took their fears, their triumphs, and their sadistic pleasures. And because he wanted them—because he chose to use his power not from the bleary desperation at the edge of death but from a genuine desire to kill—he emptied them quickly, the way a hungry owl gulped down a rat.

  His body shone like a bonfire through white-tinted glass. One of the heavies swung his hatchet, but Kyrioc caught his wrist as easily as an adult would wrench a treat from a toddler.

  Another man tried to run, but Kyrioc grabbed his greasy braid and yanked him back, catching hold of his throat.

  Their lives and souls flowed into him. He realized he was laughing. As the two heavies sank to the floor, nerveless, Kyrioc’s body glowed like a beacon. The two remaining thugs cried out and fell back, then sprinted down the hall and, at the first intersection, ran in different directions.

  As the second pair of heavies fell to the floor, dead, Kyrioc’s glow winked out. He raised his hands. They were darkness. Void. His flesh had become inky nothingness. He drew all light into himself.

  Strength flowed through him. He felt faster than ever. Had he been injured before? Exhausted? That had been another life, when he was still humankind. The power was his to keep, until he released it or he let it fade. He would do neither.

  He would become the Telmein Griavus, the avatar of the god of death, once more, and it would happen soon. He hadn’t even taken five full lives. The transformation was happening more quickly than ever.

  How many more did he need to make the Crown of Night spark to existence? One? A hundred? He didn’t know, but it would happen. Today.

  And once his crown was in place, his transformation would be complete. He would continue the work he had been remade for.

  You don’t exactly look like a respectable person.

  No.

  He put that memory away. He didn’t deserve it, and it didn’t matter. He had surrendered to his gift. His old life was done.

  He heard shouting and running feet. Kyrioc floated down the hall, the soles of his boots a quarter-inch off the ground.

  * * *

  The building had become eerily quiet. Tin had heard screams earlier, and she’d hoped someone was killing that asshole pawnbroker, but there were too many, with too many different voices.

  When Tin and her heavy approached the gym, they found a half-dozen heavies there. They stood outside the door, lightly but insistently rapping on it.

  “What the fuck is all this?”

  They spun as though expecting an attack, then bowed their heads. “Boss, the guy in there barred the door!”

  “What are you trying to do? Escape?”

  “Boss,” a tall man in the back of the group said, “this guy… Even his weapon is magic.”

  “I saw him out on the platform,” Tin said. “Bleeding. If he bleeds, he can be killed.”

  “Your northman thought so too.”

  Shit. Had that fucking pawnbroker taken out Killer of Devils? Really?

  “So, don’t fight him. Hide
in a doorway or something and knife him when he passes.” They didn’t seem enthusiastic. “What the fuck do you think you’re going to do next? Work for another boss? Don’t you fucking believe it. Fuck this up and you’ll be lucky to be wading through piss at a tannery. We are gangland heavies. When we see something we want, we take it. Someone punches us, we knife them. If you can’t do that, you might as well be scrubbing shitstains in a laundry like a petal. Now go knife this fucker in the back. And remember, he can disguise himself!”

  They went. Not enthusiastically, but they went. The heavy she’d brought with her almost went with them.

  If Tin believed a word she’d said, she should have gone too. Next time.

  She banged on the door. “Open this right fucking now. I’m the one paying your—”

  The bolt slid back. Tin opened the door, then helped the heavy pull the cart into the room. Just a few hours before, this cart had been loaded with buns. Now it strained and creaked under the weight of a dozen little strong boxes filled with Harl’s—no, fuck that, her—coin. “Shut that,” she said. Her heavy bolted the door. “Unload.”

  The little gym hadn’t changed. The thick coil of rope sat beside the hole in the floor. A few practice weapons leaned against the wall, and in the darkest corner stood the man in armor.

  The glitterkind child lay at his feet. Tin touched the leather packet tucked into her belt. She’d remembered to grab the ear but had completely forgotten the child it came from.

  “Lot of commotion out there.” His voice was clear and lovely, like a minstrel’s.

  “Join in any time,” Tin said.

  He did not pick up the ghostkind weapon leaning against the wall. “I’m here for the glitterkind.”

  Tin pulled the end of the rope out of the coil. The iron hook tied there seemed sturdy enough. “Well, wrap it in a sling or something. We’re getting out.”

  “No.”

  Tin looked up, startled.

  The man had picked up his weapon.

  Until she’d met Killer, Tin had never seen a ghostkind blade. Now there were two under her own roof. And while she was sure her bodyguard could cut this fool into pieces, he wasn’t here. All she had were her hammer and an underling in a dirty shirt, neither of which could stand against that alien steel.

  “Fuck that,” she said. “It’s mine. I’m taking it.”

  “Harl may have called me a caretaker, but this ward is mine. If you think you can take it…” The armored man stepped forward, his black braids obscuring his shadowed face, and snatched the leather packet from Tin’s belt. He threw it in the corner beside the glitterkind. “… try.”

  In that moment, Tin knew she was finished. All her ambition and careful planning had put her at the top of the slope, and being on top sucked. This city had taken her parents, her brother, and now her fucking pride.

  Wooden. Her little brother was dead, and so were her ambitions. She’d misread the situation and fucked everything up. Maybe she should have felt more than disappointment that her plans had come to shit—he was her brother, after all—but she didn’t.

  Istliani, child of Maliakis, Wooden had been born. Maybe Tin would reclaim her family name, too, when she fled.

  Because this city was going to kill her if she stayed.

  “Get this fucking cart hooked on,” she told her heavy. Together, they lowered the empty cart through the hole until the rope went slack. Then Tin climbed on. “When I get below, I’ll unhook the cart and twirl the rope. That’s your signal to lower the first strongbox. You follow the last one.”

  With a wary glance at the armored man, the heavy nodded. Tin started down the rope, wondering if one of these assholes planned to cut it and drop her through the darkness to her death.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Turning a corner, Kyrioc heard the slow, careful exhalations of frightened people trying to control their breath. More heavies lay in wait in the doorway ahead.

  His cloak of shadows came easily. The two magics had little to do with each other, but his cloaks responded to power. He moved forward slowly, enjoying the thrill of stalking his victims.

  The cloud of darkness preceded him through the doorway. When his would-be assassins recognized it, they fled. Kyrioc seized the nearest by the back of his neck.

  The flood of the man’s blood-drenched memories ran through him. They tasted sweet, but even sweeter were the last moments of his life. This was a cold-blooded killer. His soul may have been a tiny, shriveled thing, but his horror was delicious.

  Kyrioc’s cloak of shadows expanded. The Crown of Night was almost ready to manifest. He only needed more lives.

  The other heavy sprinted into a darkened hall. A predator’s grim satisfaction made Kyrioc’s skin tingle. He had been ashamed of this feeling on Vu-Dolmont, but Koh-Salash was not a place for mercy.

  Riliska was—

  Just the thought of her spurred a memory from one of his victims—Riliska was strapped to a table, tears streaming down her cheeks. Kyrioc wasn’t sure whose memory it was, but it filled him with rage.

  He’d tried to be a better man. He’d tried to live the way humankind lived, and what had it gotten him?

  The heavy fled down a flight of stairs into the servants’ area. She was a good runner, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  Kyrioc was through with being a person. He was going to feed his gift until his transformation was complete, then he’d try living as a monster.

  * * *

  Tin hated the stink. The river was supposed to wash all this out to sea, but it didn’t work and no one cared.

  The chamber pot stink got in her hair, up her nostrils, inside her clothes. She could imagine it touching her eyes and filling her mouth and lungs. Flies buzzed everywhere, and hordes of rats swim-scurried through the filth. It was revolting.

  The platform at the bottom of the rope was twenty feet by twenty feet and stood on stilts about three feet above the wet, black muck. She would have bet anything that it had once stood much higher. There was no rail, but there was a gangway to a drawbridge, which dropped from her side. From there, it was a straight shot to Low Market.

  Little light from Suloh’s bones reached this place. She could barely see the deck’s edges. Darkness hid this place and there was no way to get to it without wading through raw sewage. Someone’d have to be pretty fucking motivated for that.

  When she was ready to get out, she only needed to lower the drawbridge. She’d hire or steal a carriage and lie low in an empty house she knew about in Shadetree. Then goodbye to Koh-Salash, the heavies, cosh, and the eye. And dying in a glorious fight. Hello, mansion in the Free Cities.

  With this much money, she could die of old age on a bed of silken pillows. Why not?

  The second strongbox appeared. Tin unhooked it, then twirled the rope three times. The hook retreated into the darkness above. That peddler up there had better speed it up. When dawn came, she was leaving no matter what she had to leave behind.

  A boom of wood striking wood sounded in the darkness, and Tin knew what it was immediately. Someone had dropped the drawbridge—her drawbridge—which they could only have done from her side.

  She drew her hammer.

  So much for that Free Cities mansion.

  So much for those silken pillows.

  Tin moved down the gangway toward the sound. Who was she kidding, anyway? She’d been born a street rat in Wild Dismal, and all this ambition had made her forget that she was a thief and killer. She was born to fight.

  Hard-soled footsteps approached, and Tin knew it was the cosh before they emerged from the gloom. There were six, all breathing hard as though they’d run a long way. The shortest, a woman with a long scar on the side of her nose, was covered in filth.

  She must have been pretty fucking motivated.

  “My cousin was on that plankway,” she said.

  Tin remembered her own brother’s screams. “So?”

  The cosh drew their truncheons.

  The moment had fina
lly come. She could have fought the broker or the glitterkind caretaker, but she’d passed those deaths up. But fighting alone against six constables? This was the death she’d long hoped for. The only thing that could have made it better was an audience.

  Tin would just have to kill enough of them to make it a story worth telling.

  “I know your cousin,” Tin lied. “I saw him shit himself when he fell.”

  The constables broke formation to rush at her.

  Tin was fast, her hammer already in its downward stroke, aiming for the skull of the nearest cosh. One tried to grab her wrist, but she powered through.

  Something struck the side of her face. Dazed, she didn’t see where her blow fell. Armored bodies slammed into her and pinned her to the deck. A knee dropped onto her arm and the hammer was ripped from her grasp. Tin couldn’t see anything but the steel breastplate pressing against the side of her face.

  Now she just had to wait for them to beat her to death. One swing. That’s all she could get. Shit. She should have—

  “That asshole broke my arm!”

  No. No no no no no. Had her stroke missed? Because if Tin missed with her only attack, she was going to die here all alone without taking anyone with her.

  She writhed and kicked, struggling to break free. In response, one kicked the side of her head. Bright lights exploded inside Tin’s head, and she fell into darkness, thinking she would never wake again.

  She was wrong. When consciousness returned, she found herself collared and bound. Her jaw was broken, too. She couldn’t even curse at the ironshirts. Not that they were paying attention to her.

  “It all goes to the captain,” someone said.

  “But—”

  “I’ve never held out before and I’m not about to start. He’ll decide how much coin is for Gray Flames, the grieving families, and our finder’s share. I ain’t stiffing the rest of our tower just because we got lucky.”