“Taking down a god will be time-consuming enough,” Scythe shrugged.
He had expected her to avoid eye contact, but her gaze met his as they spoke. It was like their fight hadn’t happened. She seemed happy again, but it could be an act.
Dagger untied the message, and the bat flew off through the open wall.
“What is it?” Scythe asked.
“A list of three names and a city, Chalcis,” Dagger replied, “and um…”
“What?” She came closer to read the note herself.
“He only wants me to do it,” Dagger confessed, handing her the message.
“Why?” She demanded after reading the clear instructions at the bottom. “Did you tell him anything about the wedding?”
“No,” he said, taken aback. “The wedding job went fine.”
“But did you say anything about our fight?”
“No, why would I? That’s just spiteful,” he accused back.
“That’s the point. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if you said anything out of anger to make him think we couldn’t work together anymore.”
“Why would I do that?” He followed her logic but didn’t appreciate being accused of something so petty. Scythe froze but kept the eye contact. Her hands balled into fists, and her red eyes darkened.
Regret quickly followed the spiteful comment. “I did not say anything against you to Maniodes.” he said to be clear.
“Okay, good.” Scythe looked down at the note again.
Dagger couldn’t tell if she was guilty or embarrassed at accusing him, or sad she couldn’t partake in the assignment, or bothered by his comment. She was damn impossible to read sometimes.
“You could come,” he said, trying to lighten the awkwardness. “I have to be the one to kill them, but there’s nothing here about not letting you in the city.”
“That’s probably one of his unspoken rules, though,” she said. “He clearly wants you to carry this out alone. Besides, someone has to make sure the guests don’t die. You don’t think he knows about them, do you?”
“I don’t think so. He would have confronted us immediately.”
“You’re right; he’d come right for us.”
“It should only be a couple of night once in Chalcis,” Dagger said. “I could ask around as research, actually. Talk to the locals about myths. See if their libraries have anything. The temples might have some hidden knowledge.”
“I could go to Skiachora,” Scythe realized, brightening at the idea. “I could go to his library and sniff around. He might even approve of that. He could keep an eye on me himself.”
“Searching for his downfall right beneath his nose. I like how devious you think.” When it wasn’t directed at him.
Scythe handed the list of names back to him. “You should prepare for the journey. It takes a day and a half to ride there. Unless you know of a dead tree close by as a short cut?”
“I don’t know of any so I’ll ride, at least we’ve got a horse now,” he said, referring to the stallion Scythe had used to kidnap their guests.
“I suppose I should play the dutiful wife and prepare food for your journey?” Her voice had become bland, but he caught a glint of anger.
“There’s no need,” he said.
Chapter 14
After seeing Dagger off on the assignment, Scythe visited their guests. She tried to bury the resentment, but it crawled just under her skin like an insect. There was no reason for Maniodes to keep her on the sidelines. He wanted them to play nice, but keeping her out of the game only frustrated her. At least she could release some of it before she left for Skiachora.
The man and woman were sitting in their own filth, but they were awake this time. The woman moaned in fear as Scythe entered the room. The man was braver.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Scythe let his question hang unanswered while she picked up a hefty iron rod. She set it against the brazier, but the fire had burned out. She left the man yelling after her as she fetched wood from the kitchen. Once she had a steady fire going, the rod cooked under the coals.
“If you want money, it’s back at the house,” the man offered. “We don’t have much but you can take whatever you want.”
“M-my necklace was my grandmother’s. You can have it,” the woman said.
Scythe just laughed. The pendent was just a protective charm stamped on cheap metal hanging on thin twine. The bauble wasn’t worth a damn thing.
Scythe stirred the coals and took up the iron rod. The tip glowed a blazing-hot, pristine white. She took her time, wondering where to place the fiery tool. The woman had dissolved into tears and was babbling again. The man was quiet but couldn’t look away. The woman was missing a good chunk of her arm, and the man only had a few cuts on his chest. There was a new wound on his leg though. Scythe decided it seemed only fair that he should share in the fun. She brought the rod close to the man’s cheek. Its white glow reflected back at her in his green eyes.
“No. Wait, no please. Wait!”
Scythe laid the iron rod lightly against his cheek. The woman and her man screamed as the smell of cooking flesh filled the air. Scythe peeled the iron rod away, watching the man’s melted skin stretch as the rod dulled to a reddish hue. The man was left with a bloody, melted gash stretching from his ear to his mouth. There was even a small hole where Scythe could see the man’s tooth through his flesh.
Scythe saw her father’s face as the man burned.
He breathed hard, fighting the pain, trying not to scream again. With his gasping, a flap of skin moved through the hole in his face like a leaf in the breeze.
Scythe stuck the rod in the fire. Neither the man nor the woman tried to bargain with her. The woman kept crying, and the man even had tears streaking down his face; salt probably didn’t feel good in his new wound. Scythe wanted to carry on, but held herself back. If Nyx came to gather their souls, she and Dagger would be caught. Scythe could almost feel the presence of Nyx in the room. It was as if the goddess of death was standing over her, with her bone, waiting for Scythe to make a mistake.
The bone.
Nyx always carried that as an instrument of her work. Each god had some item sacred to them, the way the Incruentus Ferrum chose a weapon. Scythe was as tied to her weapon as Dagger was to his. She didn’t know if those items could hurt their owners. If her scythe was broken in half, nothing would happen to her physically. On the other hand, the gods guarded their items carefully.
Before Ichorisis was created, there was only Nyx and her bone. She grew lonely. Somehow, she had fashioned a shield and a sword from the nothingness of the universe. From the sword, she had brought forth Phaos, the god who created Ichorisis for the living. Then from the shield, Nyx drew Maniodes, the god who created Skiachora for the dead.
If each god had a sacred object they cherished and guarded, what would happen if the deity was separated from it?
Scythe wanted to tell Dagger the idea but didn’t trust writing anything in a note. Written messages could be intercepted. Scythe left the fire blazing with the rod sticking out of it. Her guests would assume she was coming back soon, and she wanted to mislead them. Torturing the mind was just as important as the body.
Scythe took her weapon to the dead tree in the courtyard. It was once a grand oak, but now it stood bleached white on dry roots. She gripped the staff of her scythe and brought the end of it down on the base of the tree. Where the roots gripped the ground, her weapon acted like a key. A crack appeared in the tree and spread up the trunk, stopping where the branches began to stretch. The crack widened, moving the trunk out of the way and creating an opening wide enough for a person to walk through. The ground beneath the tree hardened into a staircase leading deeper into the earth.
Scythe began her descent into the underworld. She heard the dead wood creak as the opening closed behind her. It was dark, but she wasn’t bothered by it. The earthy scent was pleasant.
After a few long moments a soft grey l
ight illuminated the bottom. The light grew as she approached and stepped into Skiachora. The stairs ended and a crack opened as it had above, only this time through a tree beside The Acheron River. The river’s water appeared to plummet over the cliff into nothing below, but upon closer inspection the water was rising from that nothingness. Scythe exited the tree on the left bank and quickly climbed the stairs to Maniodes’s castle.
As usual, the castle was mostly empty except for a few skeletons standing guard here and there. Others patrolled the corridors, bones rattling under their armor. Scythe wondered what they were patrolling for; no one threatening ever came down here. Except for her now, she supposed.
It took her longer then she would have liked to find the grand library in the maze of cracked corridors. After finally finding the open archway leading into it, she froze. The library took up an entire hollow tower, hundreds of feet tall, its walls lined with books. Scythe was able to see straight to the top. There were walkways at intervals where the other floors should be. The only way to reach the landings above was a narrow spiral staircase that started in the center of the main floor and stretched upward. There were walkways branching from the stairs to the landings; looking at them from the bottom, they resembled a spider web.
She wasn’t alone in the room. There were two others sitting in random chairs, reading by lamplight. Both of them were Ferrum, but she couldn’t remember their names. She made a note to herself to learn them properly. A good queen should know over whom she ruled.
What made Scythe pause was the vastness of the library. She had no idea where to start.
Refusing to be deterred, she started at the beginning. Scythe scanned the titles and covers of the books on the first floor. Many of them were bard’s tales of the time before written history. Something here might help.
One of the other Ferrum looked up as she past him. He did nothing more than get distracted from the tome in his lap. It was basically a warning. If she acted odd, people would take notice and remember details. So she acted casual, like she was just killing time until her husband returned home.
She paused. She had thought of Dagger as her husband without realizing it. She hadn’t shied away from the thought, but the actions.
She hoped his travels were going smoothly.
Scythe spent the next couple of hours browsing through the plethora of information. Finally, she realized the books were in chronological order, but by the date they were written and not the events they depicted. The older texts were housed at the bottom and the newer ones rose to the top.
She looked at the ceiling again, wondering if the ones at the top were part of the present time. If the very top wasn’t present-day knowledge, that meant the future ended at the roof. Scythe looked back down, not liking that concept. She hoped she was wrong.
After several more hours, she hadn’t made much progress. She had seated herself in a comfy purple chair on the second landing. She had a good view of the entrance and the banister that led to her floor. No one could sneak up on her.
She set the book of another bard’s Theogony on the table and rubbed her eyes. She had spent hours in this library and only narrowed her search down to the first three floors. She hadn’t found anything useful yet. She didn’t want to give up and leave empty-handed. Glancing down to the main floor, she noticed one of the others had left.
The dark-skinned man, with a short crop of black hair, who noticed her before was still below. He didn’t have a weapon with him, so Scythe couldn’t guess his name. He must have felt Scythe watching him. He glanced up and met her eye.
Scythe instantly scolded herself for drawing his attention. She smiled kindly at him and picked up her book again, hoping he would dismiss the gesture.
She heard the staircase creak slightly, followed by footsteps rising.
“Excuse me?”
Scythe took a breath to stifle the annoyance and looked up. The man now stood just outside her circle of chairs with his hands clasped behind his back. He was an older man, perhaps in his thirties, and his skin looked like ebony in the fire light.
“You are Scythe, yes?” he asked, gesturing to the weapon leaning over her chair.
“I am, and you are?”
Once the initial annoyance was gone, Scythe was actually grateful for the distraction.
“I’m Axe. May I join you?”
“Of course.”
Axe took the chair next to her own. “I couldn’t help but notice you are looking rather bored after being here for nearly four hours.”
“It’s been four hours?!” she admitted. “No wonder I’m tired, but you’ve been here just as long.”
“I spend most of my free time here. Whole nights go by, and I hardly notice,” Axe chuckled. “Our lord has even granted me rooms close by.”
“How gracious of him,” Scythe said, holding in the toxicity. “I couldn’t help but notice you don’t carry your weapon with you.”
“It’s back in my chamber. I don’t carry it around that often anymore, only when working.”
His eyes darkened. Scythe wondered if he didn’t enjoy the assignments anymore. A good number of the Ferrum grew tired of their now-dead lives, and some outright couldn’t handle it. Those were the ones who chose to die again and go grey. If Axe was so depressed by this lifestyle, why hadn’t he made the same choice? She wanted to ask but knew it would be rude.
“How is Dagger?” he asked. “I realize this is a personal question, but please forgive my curiosity. Usually, newlyweds are inseparable.”
Axe sounded genuinely concerned, like a father wanting to see that his daughter was safe. They’d only spoken for a few moments, and she already knew Axe’s heart was too soft for their line of work.
“Everything is fine,” she replied. “He received a job, and it will take him a couple of days to complete. So, I thought I’d spend some time here.”
“Don’t you usually do jobs together? That village burning the two of you pulled off is practically legendary.”
There was a hint of resentment at mentioning the village, like he didn’t approve.
“Dagger was assigned to this job alone.” She left out the detail that she had actually been banished from it.
“Ah,” Axe replied.
“May I ask you a personal question?”
Axe paused before answering, so she expected him to refuse. “It’s only fair,” he shrugged. “I was a bit direct with mine.”
“You don’t seem to enjoy the work of a Ferrum anymore. Why is that?”
Axe looked down at his hands in his lap, most likely regretting that he’d let her ask a question.
Given a moment, he confessed. “I did enjoy it for a time, until I was sent after a little girl. Twelve years old with blond hair down to her waist. She was a stranger to me, but she reminded me of my daughter. I didn’t want to kill her, but defying a direct order leads to death for us. I wondered if Maniodes knew of my daughter and picked that child as a test. I took her life. I’ve left my axe in my chambers ever since, only using it on new jobs. I don’t even want new jobs; it’s like something in me has changed. I can’t explain it, but it’s like my mentality has gone back to its old self. I’m rather happy about that. So I spend my free time in this library. It’s a nice reprieve.”
“If you don’t like the work, then why not go grey? Many have. There’s no shame in it.”
“I don’t want to die again,” he said, meeting her eye. “If Maniodes were to learn that I don’t want to kill anymore, he would decommission me instantly. Then I would lose out on all of this knowledge, and I would never see my daughter grow. I visit her sometimes in secret. This life may be dark, and I may not like it, but it is a life.”
Chapter 15
Scythe lay in bed watching the light change from indigo to daylight as the sun rose. She had left the library after the awkward conversation with Axe. They tried to have a normal chat after his confession, but it was stilted. As she took her leave, Axe asked her to keep their conversation p
rivate; he didn’t want Maniodes learning about his disinterest in being a Ferrum. Scythe gave her word that she wouldn’t tell a soul.
It seemed only right to promise Axe that he could trust her. She was about to be his queen; he had to trust her. What she didn’t understand was why he didn’t want to kill anymore. Their job was about more than just killing random humans. It kept the remaining humans cautious, which kept them safe—sometimes even from themselves. Humans hardly seemed entirely rational at times, and she had been studying them for a century now.
Her own parents had never been good to her, and now here was a father who just wanted to see his daughter again. She knew that’s how a father should act. Axe was being rational toward his living family, but that shouldn’t have mattered to him now. Axe was dead, and the Incruentus Ferrum should have come first.
Scythe couldn’t understand Axe, but she didn’t have to yet. She’d worry about that once she was queen. What she needed now were allies. Axe was perfect because he practically lived in that library. He could help her, and then she’d decide what to do about his lack of bloodlust. He wasn’t exactly an effective Incruentus Ferrum without it.
She would have to go back to the library tomorrow night. She discovered how the tower was organized, but no other useful clues. She’d start on bard’s tales tomorrow as well. Focusing on one branch of myths might help narrow the search. Bards were always colorful in their words and tended to exaggerate, but each story held a grain of truth. It would be a more entertaining read before moving on to philosophers.
When the sky was an icy blue, Scythe was finally able to doze off with that plan in mind.
As the sun set on his second night of riding to Chalcis, Dagger found the sky stained red. It reminded him of Scythe’s hair, and he took a moment to watch the colors fade from the sky. As the night continued to darken, he saddled the horse and set off for the city. The road was well taken care of on this stretch. It made his horse’s movements much easier, not having to worry about random holes. He’d forgotten how it felt to simply ride a horse. Ever since he’d woken as a Ferrum, he’d traveled using the dead trees they could open as pathways between any two points. It was very fast and convenient, but taking his time was important too. Maniodes had wanted them to be more discreet and think about their actions; what better time to do that than while riding through the night toward a job. It gave him plenty of time to think of a proper strategy in finding the victims.
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