He held up the lantern so it fell fully on Kyrioc. “We have both changed.” He gestured toward the covered bundle. “The giant your people carried down the hill at Vu-Dolmont is right there. How many backs did you need to bear that load? Now look at it.”
Kyrioc glanced at Fay, who scrambled forward and yanked the cloth away.
It was the smallest glitterkind he had ever seen, not even three feet from heel to crown. And it was down here, far from daylight and growing green things.
The bureaucrat’s face turned ashen. Kyrioc’s stomach felt like lead. He had to get Riliska away from this thing.
“My cousin…” Shulipik said. “We had to convince Harl that it would be cheaper to pay us than to steal the giant from us, but my cousin took the point before Harl saw reason.” He sighed. “I cured my tumor. I became rich. But still, I have regrets. So many regrets. The gods are evil, you know.”
The sudden change startled Kyrioc. “What?”
“A millennium ago, humankind sided with the godkind and spellkind against the Ancient Kings of the Walking Towers, but we were wrong. They could have wiped us out. I’m not sure why they didn’t. Still, the Salashi people have done a pretty good job making sure the gods can’t return before the Ancient Kings do.”
“Shulipik, what the fuck are you talking about?”
He looked at Kyrioc as though he was waking from a dream. “I’m warning you that war— No, something worse than war is coming. The fight between the godkind and the Ancient Kings threw down mountains and shattered continents. Armies fell like wheat before the scythe. I know. I shared the glitterkinds’ visions. Soon, it will begin again. I’m warning you that things are going to get worse, especially for someone like her.”
He swung his polearm toward Riliska, the point inches from her throat. She gasped.
Kyrioc couldn’t tell if it was a threat or not, but he couldn’t take the risk. He crouched, his hand falling onto a knife in a dead constable’s belt, then leaped.
Despite his armor, Shulipik was quick, but he wasn’t as quick as Kyrioc. Before he could even step back, the constable’s knife sank deep into his eye. The blade did not slide in as easily as it should have. Shulipik’s grotesque translucent flesh was dense, even in his eye socket and brain.
His mailed fist struck Kyrioc’s ribs with strength no dead man should have had in him. Kyrioc fell into a stack of practice swords. He rolled onto his back, clutching at the cracked bones in his side.
“I suppose you think you owed me that,” Shulipik said. He pulled the knife out of his head—the blade did not have a drop of blood on it—and dropped it through the hole. “But I wish you hadn’t. I’m sorry, little noble, for leaving you behind. I thought you died.”
“I did.”
Shulipik shrugged and swung his ghostkind blade in a short, downward chop onto the tiny glitterkind child, then snatched something from the ground. A finger. It was the smallest finger from the glitterkind’s tiny hand.
The glitterkind child opened its eyes and mouth. A wordless bellow of pain and fear echoed out it. Kyrioc knew that cry all too well. He’d heard one exactly like it on his first day on Vu-Dolmont.
He forced himself to stand, although unsteadily. “Put it back.”
A wry smile crossed Shulipik’s face, as though he was a boy who’d been caught acting naughty. He popped the finger into his mouth and stepped back.
He vanished through the hole in the floor.
“What do we do?” Fay called, panicking. By his expression, Kyrioc could tell he understood the danger. “What do we do?”
Just as he was about to answer, Kyrioc saw a leather packet on the floor. Before he could even completely remember why he recognized it, he cut the knot.
Inside was the glitterkind ear. He laid it on the glitterkind’s shoulder.
When it touched the creature’s skin, the bellowing cry faltered and its eyes fluttered. Kyrioc dared to hope it would be enough to send it back to sleep, but its eyes opened again, and the bellow returned. It was quieter but still slowly building.
“We need more,” Kyrioc said, searching the floor.
Fay did the same. “There is no more. There is no more!”
“Yes, there is,” came a small voice from behind.
Kyrioc spun toward Riliska. An ullroct was coming. He needed to get her way from here.
“Where?” Fay called.
* * *
Once again, Fay was following a criminal’s lead, but what choice did he have? The child was fast and knew the way. Fay sprinted hard, the glitterkind cry echoing in his skull. The Broken Man followed too, but he was too injured to run. Did this little beetle understand the danger? How could she?
He wasn’t sure he understood, either. Ullrocts were supposed to be giants who stole or protected naughty children, depending on the tale. As a boy in Suloh’s Tower, he’d seen wood prints of them, but it had never occurred to him that they were real.
This was his chance to see one, apparently. And if he did, it would destroy him.
As they turned a corner, a constable spotted them. “Sir!” she called. “Where are your bodyguards?”
It hadn’t occurred to him that he could run into stray heavies with bared knives and nothing to lose. He didn’t know what to do about that, so he did nothing. The constable ran after him. “What’s that noise?”
The girl led them to a filthy storeroom that smelled of blood and rotting flesh. A flayed woman lay on the floor. As Fay’s gorge rose up, he heard the constable behind him dry-heave.
The girl, Riliska, kept her gaze averted. “This way! See?”
She pointed to a shelf on the wall. The constable grabbed a lantern and brought it closer. Fay had never seen so much glass in one place in his life. They were jars the size of his fist, each stoppered with cork and wax and filled with a cloudy liquid. Lying on the bottom of the nearest like a gigantic gory tadpole was a single human eye.
“By the fallen gods,” the constable said.
Fay took the lantern while she went away to be sick.
“I know,” Riliska said. “I had to look at them for a really long time. But do you see it, floating at the top of the water?”
Fay leaned closer. A fleck of something white, no larger than a grain a rice, floated at the rim of the glass.
“Constable!”
Fay loaded jars into her arms. When she had as much as she could carry, he loaded the Broken Man, then himself. It would have been faster to bring the glitterkind here, but no one dared touch it in its current state.
A sound like a vat of cold water hitting a red-hot anvil sounded, and a wave of cold swept over them. They had to hurry.
“Lead the way.”
She did, and opened the gym door for them. “Hurry!”
A terrible white light that obliterated shadow shone from a slender column of blue-white that blasted upward from the glitterkind child’s abdomen. It had already burned through the ceiling.
A light like that could shine on the whole city.
Fay squinted against that terrible brilliance and knelt beside the creature’s head. Where the light struck the glitterkind, a spray of rainbow colors reflected as if from a thousand tiny prisms. Fay found it beautiful beyond words. He drew his knife—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that—and began to pry open the jars.
The constable knelt beside him, jars spilling from her arms like apples. By the fallen gods, he hadn’t realized she was so young. They were still opening jars when Kyrioc caught up to them.
“What’s happening here, please?” the constable asked.
Kyrioc answered. “It’s summoning an ullroct to protect it. The ullroct will kill every living thing it can find, and no weapon forged by humankind can harm it.”
Fay stuck his finger into one of the open jars to draw out the sliver of ghostkind flesh, but it was as elusive as a shard of eggshell. And as disgusting as the contents of the jar looked, touching it was worse. The liquid was thick and sticky like mucus.
He finally trapped the piece of flesh against the rim of the glass and slid it free. Unlike the ear, which had been soft like firm dough, this felt spongy, and he had to smear it onto the glitterkind’s forehead to get it off his finger.
The bit of flesh was quickly absorbed into the creature’s body like a stone sinking into mud, but it had no effect on the column of light or the ear-shattering cry of fear and distress.
This wasn’t going to work.
“Pry the rest of these lids off,” he said, “then get the girl and these two out of here. Make sure Onderishta gets a good look at them both. And be respectful. The one in black saved my life, and the northerner gave us Harl. Quickly.”
He peered into another jar, trying to spot the piece of glitterkind within. He was forced to turn his back to the creature just to squint inside.
The little girl approached with a jar of her own and dribbled it onto the glitterkind’s face. The drops stuck like water on a waxed cloth. Fay shielded his eyes and saw the viscous part of the liquid absorbed into the creature’s flesh. What appeared to be clean water drained off.
He immediately stopped fishing for the cut flesh. If he poured some of this slime into its open mouth, would it swallow or drown?
Fuck it. Its eyes were open. Maybe that meant it could take a drink.
He poured a dollop of thick liquid into the glitterkind’s open mouth. He expected, if nothing else, that it would interrupt that awful bellow of distress, but the noise didn’t change. Magic, not breath, made that sound. He poured the rest in.
There was still a human eyeball in the bottom. It was probably impolite to feed it to the creature, but it was coated with the stuff. He laid it onto the glitterkind’s shoulder and watched the slime slowly flow into the body.
The column seemed to grow brighter. It had become thick several feet above them, as though something was forming inside that light.
The ironshirt finished opening the last of the jars. “Go!”
She had to yell. “I should stay to help!”
Fay shook his head. Help what? He’d already failed. “Get them out!”
She and Kyrioc lifted the northerner and went. Fay didn’t watch. He poured another jar into the glitterkind’s open mouth.
It occurred to him that he was going to die here. He wondered if he’d get a good look at the ullroct, and if it would resemble those wood prints. They had given him nightmares.
The glitterkind’s mouth was full, so he started dribbling the liquid onto its skin.
His family would mourn, then move on. The work he might have done would fall to someone else. All his memories and experience would vanish. It seemed like such a stupid waste.
But he didn’t run. He’d chosen to stay and give his life for a city he loved but that didn’t love him back, because that was what was needed. No one could have been more surprised than him.
The liquid in the glitterkind’s mouth had turned to water. He tilted its head to let it flow out, then righted it again. No more time for niceties. He emptied two jars into the creature’s open mouth, holding back only the eyes, which he laid across its chest like a necklace of bloody trophies.
He hoped the ironshirt survived to tell Onderishta what he’d done, so she could explain to his family. Would they think he was a hero? He didn’t feel like one.
He dumped clean water from the glitterkind’s mouth three more times before he filled it with the last of his jars. The strange cry never lessened or lost its note of fear and pain, and while the column had stopped growing thicker, it had not shrunk, either. Fay set the empty jars upside down on the crook of the creature’s arms and legs so it could absorb every drop.
After that, he had nothing else.
He closed his eyes against the column of light. Little noble, the armored man had said. Shulipik. Kyrionik. Vu-Dolmont. By the fallen gods, there was a story there. He hoped Onderishta could work it all out.
He held its tiny hand. It looked like a child, but he knew it had once been three times his size. A giant. Then it had come to Koh-Salash, and like so many others, it had been slowly whittled down to this.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was drowned out by the creature’s distress call. He couldn’t even hear himself. He placed his hand, still slimy from the jar, onto the glitterkind’s forehead. The viscous liquid slid down his hand into the tiny figure.
Suddenly, the noise and light ceased, leaving only echoes and blinding afterimages. Fay opened his eyes to darkness and silence. It had stopped. Everything had stopped.
For a moment, he thought the ullroct had come. He rubbed his eyes, trying to clear the spots from them so he could see the monster of legend before it killed him.
Nothing happened. His eyes slowly adjusted. The jars were empty. Clear water puddled on the planks. Dawn light was visible through the hole in the floor.
Through the hole in the ceiling, he saw the spot where the column of light struck the edge of Suloh’s pelvic bone. The rest of the god’s bones glowed, as always, like orange gemstone, but in that spot, it had been gouged and blackened.
“I hope no one blames me for that.”
Fay began to laugh so hard, he had lie back until the fit passed. He laughed to relieve stress. He laughed because he had survived against all odds. He laughed because no one would believe this story.
Snatching up the blanket Shulipik had used to cover the glitterkind, he wrapped it loosely, letting eyeballs and jars hit the floorboards. He lifted it and hurried out of the building.
The dead lay where they’d fallen. The living were gone. The captain had moved his people and prisoners out of harm’s way. Good.
Dawn warmed him as he crossed the makeshift plankway back to the plaza. He was tempted to open the blanket. It was common knowledge that glitterkind thrived on sunlight. Still, he didn’t dare. A person could get knifed for walking the streets with a bulging purse. With this…
This treasure felt as light as a feather.
Someone would be coming. That magical shitshow must have looked like the end of the world to the High Watch. Even now, a few looky-loos loitered at the edges of the plaza: a pair of crooked-back old women, a great big wrestler type with a green scarf on his head, a chubby young girl holding a basket of steamed buns. Fay couldn’t help but wonder what they thought of a man fleeing the scene with a child-sized bundle in his arms.
He had to get to the south tower, lock himself in an upper room, and send for a pair of medical bureaucrats. Maybe they’d let him explain himself without collaring him first. He even had enough copper sails to hire a cart.
He hurried toward Low Market. The next few days were going to be interesting.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Onderishta wouldn’t believe it until she saw it.
“This way,” Mirishiya called needlessly. They rounded a corner into the usual bustle of Low Market traffic: shoppers, delivery boys, private guards, and hawking merchants. The jostling. The noise. The smells. The midmorning sun was high enough that the shadows of the decks above crept eastward toward them.
She bulled through until she reached a wall of mournful ironshirts out of the east tower. They were blocking an alley between a cloth-and-dye place and a shop that sold cheap clay cups. At her approach, one of the constables called into the alley.
The captain of the east tower rushed to her. “We will find who did this.”
“Let me through. I have to see.”
He ushered her through the line. Onderishta waved for Mirishiya to keep back, then noticed the girl had tears on her cheeks. Onderishta’s were still dry.
The alley ran north and south, and there were decks above. No light from Suloh’s bones or the ever-moving sun touched this place. The ironshirts had set up four lanterns amidst the trash.
In the center, well lit from all sides, was the body of Fay Nog Fay. He lay on his stomach, his left hand resting by his hip, his right stretched above his head. That position could only mean one thing—his killer had dragged his dea
d body into the alley by his hand.
The back of Fay’s skull had been bashed in.
Hulmanis defe-Firos, Onderishta’s own boss, pushed through the wall of ironshirts and hurried toward her. For ten years, the man hadn’t left his office in Gray Flames for anything but a home-cooked meal, but he was here now. She was so grateful that she almost told him so.
“Selsarim Lost,” Hulmanis muttered, “he was wearing his grays.”
Which meant it should have been obvious that he was a bureaucrat, which meant the local assholes should have let him pass because they should have known he was off-fucking-limits. “His purse is still tucked into his belt,” Onderishta said.
Hulmanis might have been highborn, but he’d spent years doing actual investigative work. He knew what that meant. Rubbing the stubble on his chin, he sighed. “I’m going to be running this investigation—”
“Sir, you haven’t actually investigated anything in more than a decade.” It was a risky thing to say to a superior of noble blood, but at the moment, Onderishta did not care.
“Which is why I want you by my side. Not as a second, sent to run down preliminary bullshit and keep the constables on task. I want you with me every moment, seeing what I see, hearing what I hear. Any thoughts, you tell me and me alone. Onderishta, you’re the best investigator the city has, but I can open doors that you cannot.”
She knelt beside Fay’s body. There was the curve of his shoulder. There was the upturned palm of his hand, smeared with dirt. There was the curve of his calf, which ached when he climbed too many stairs. There was the mass of matted hair and bloody gore where his self used to live. By the fallen gods, the world was diminished without him.
No, she could not run the investigation, because she would burn down the whole city to find his killer. “Thank you, sir.”
One of the ironshirts broke from the others and approached, making an effort to catch Onderishta’s attention. She was young and pretty in a plain, muscular way. She reminded Onderishta of her wife when they’d first met, all those years ago, before the accident. A new wave of sadness came over her.
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