by Jen Ponce
Arms went around him, strong black arms that he couldn’t fight off without loosening his grip on Gaius, without risking a face full of teeth or fists. He fought Kali as she dragged him upward and pulled him through the barrier, that sizzled and spat but allowed them both through.
“Where’s Devany?” Kali asked. Several other Skriven were there, holding the rope by which she’d rescued him. “Tytan? Where is she?”
He went to his knees, lightheaded, broken hearted. “He killed her.” The sorrow was muted, a symptom of his soulless self and he hated it, hated that he couldn’t even mourn her properly, couldn’t feel the pain of her loss.
Nex didn’t stagger, he didn’t have legs, but he looked as though Gaius had smacked him in the face too. There was only silence all around until Tesseray said, “Well, I guess I’m no longer needed here,” and vanished with a pop of sound.
“I couldn’t even get her body. The fleshcrawlers will consume it. There will be nothing left of her to take to her children.”
He didn’t expect sympathy from any of them. Perhaps Nex. The bloodless football seemed capable of more emotion than a Skriven, but Tytan couldn’t imagine anything could make it better.
Her loss. How had he grown so fond of her? How had he come to love her long before he’d gained his soul? Skriven didn’t know love and yet he had. Skriven didn’t know compassion, and yet he’d found it.
“I will retrieve her. Gazer? Take Tytan to be healed as best he can.”
Tytan felt Kali touch his shoulder, the briefest of touches, before she disappeared into the prison. A splash of water signaled that she’d hit the pool and avoided a confrontation with Gaius. He continued to stare at the ground until Gazer got him to his feet and hooked him home.
The Skriven that attended him stopped the bleeding and dulled the pain, but nothing could be done about his missing arm without the arm itself. He would just have to suffer through its regrowth. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, except that he somehow manage revenge against the man who’d caused the death of the only person he’d ever truly cared about besides his mother. And he’d known Devany longer, hadn’t he?
He paced the rooms of his manse, restless, angry, unable to think of anything but how he could cause Gaius as much pain as possible for as long as possible.
An eternity wouldn’t be punishment enough for what he’d done.
Kali came back bruised, bitten, and bloody.
She had his arm but not Devany.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her eyes shadowed.
Devany had gotten to her too, despite Kali never having had her soul. He saw it there, in the tightness of her jaw and the flare of her nostrils. “Thank you,” he said, a bit hoarsely.
“We will find a way to punish him, Tytan.”
He nodded. “Yes. Yes we will.”
She disappeared, presumably to be healed and Tytan hooked to Vasili’s. The human woman Devany had brought over was busy at the work table, grinding up some herb or another. Vasili was reading to her from a book, and he didn’t look pleased that Tytan had interrupted.
“How do we make an Originator’s eternal life unbearable?” he said without preamble.
Vasili lowered his book and stared. “I beg your pardon? You want to torture an all-powerful being? Ask Devany. I’m sure she could manage it if anyone could.” He gestured with the book at the arm Tytan held. “You want me to reattach that?”
Tytan turned away, unable to speak without emotion screwing with his voice.
“Tytan?”
He crossed to the work table and pointed at the mortar and pestle. “What is it?” He was gratified to hear that his voice sounded only slightly raspy.
The woman answered. “Burnock and trista flower. I heard that you had lost your arm and I learned that this concoction, coupled with some Akashic waters, can help grow a Skriven limb faster than without help.” Her eyes were dark with pity.
He turned his gaze away, his pain making him feel stripped bare. “She’s dead, Vasili. Gaius murdered her while she was attempting to save me.”
Vasili’s book dropped to the floor. His face was one of horror. “Dead?”
“Thus my request.”
Vasili looked like Tytan felt. Another miracle caused by Devany’s presence in their lives. “Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure?”
“He snapped her neck and threw her to the fleshcrawlers. Kali went after her body and found no evidence of it. They’d already consumed her.”
“What will we do? Who will ascend?”
Tytan hadn’t thought of that, hadn’t considered that some Skriven would be in line to fill the position of Originator that Devany left behind.
“Will it be you? I hope it would. You no longer have your soul, do you? I don’t sense it in you.”
“I don’t.” Tytan cleared his throat. “She had it with her when she died.”
“Can you rule as she did? With the … fairness she did?”
“No.” Vasili’s face fell and Tytan said, “I couldn’t possibly match her kindness.” The words felt like a betrayal. He cleared his throat again. “I can try.”
Vasili nodded. “Good. Then Elizabeta and I will work to find a torture that will drive Gaius mad for all eternity.”
“Thank you.” He tossed his arm onto a nearby table and disappeared.
Nex floated around Tytan’s manse, aimless, aching in a chest he no longer had. What would he do now that his friend was gone? What was his purpose? He had never thought of a time without her, hadn’t considered he might have to make his way alone and yet here he was. Certainly, he had found a friendship of sorts with Vasili, but it was more about world destruction and hustling Originators. Nex enjoyed his conversations with the Skriven, but he wasn’t Devany.
He left the manse and floated down streets that weren’t swamp, passing creatures that weren’t fleshcrawlers, and wondered just what he would do from then on. Would he always be the oddity in the Slip?
Maybe he could find a home with the fleshcrawlers under the Reach. They might not reject him the way his own tribe would. He could become a sage for them, he supposed, have a purpose beyond being an outcast.
He would have to find someone to take him there, unless he could find the place himself. Perhaps that was what he’d do. He doubted Tytan was in any mood to help and he and Nex hadn’t always seen eye to eye. The Skriven was obsessed and Nex found him tiresome at times. He also didn’t appreciate being called a bloodless football or flesh bag or any of the other epithets Tytan had come up with to annoy him.
Thinking of the Skriven must have summoned him, for he appeared before Nex looking worse for wear. “Where are you going?”
Nex thought of prevaricating but didn’t have the heart for it. “The Reach to join the fleshcrawlers there.”
Pain flashed through Tytan’s eyes. “I need you to do something with me first.”
“What is that?”
“Plan our revenge against Gaius. I want to make him pay for what he did. Pay in pain. You understand?” He paused. “Do you think the bites she got from your queen could have …” He ran his hand through his hair and turned away, clearly frustrated.
“Perhaps. But they would have to be willing to foster her and I’m not sure they would care enough to take in an outsider.”
“Kali didn’t find her body.”
Nex had considered that Devany’s death might have activated the fleshcrawler venom he had smelled inside her, but it was not likely that the tribe living beneath the Reach would want to use their resources to care for one not their own. The lack of her body boded ill. A full tribe of fleshcrawlers could strip the flesh from the bones of a human in seconds. “I could see if they would take me in. It would take time for them to trust me, but eventually I could find out … what happened to her.” He wasn’t sure how he would react to the one who told him she’d been consumed. Perhaps he would discover that his magic was good for more than telling the future.
“Later. After. Vasili will n
eed your help. I need your help. Please.” His eyes, sometimes red, sometimes brown, always calculating, landed on Nex. “Will you?”
Nex inclined his head. “I will. And then you will take me wherever it is I decide to go.”
“Agreed.”
Nex let Tytan hook him to Vasili’s but took his time before entering the Skriven’s hovel. He wasn’t overcome with emotion, he told himself, he was just preparing his mind for the workings ahead.
That his black eyes were suspiciously wet meant nothing.
He would have to go to Midia and tell her children, tell her lover. He didn’t want to, but he had to. For her. Her time belt would have snapped along with her neck and while they might not be missing her yet, they would.
He wouldn’t be able to get close to Odd Silver, but he could get a message to Kroshtuka and meet with him in person to deliver the news. He would let the hyena tell the children. For all that he knew Devany, he’d never understood that part of her. Her spawn had been a way to manipulate her when all she was to him was his long-lost sister. He’d never gotten to know them or asked about them and found he still didn’t care about them except that they were a part of her, and she was gone.
He ripped off the sleeve over his missing arm and hooked to Banishwinds, scaring several of the witches who saw him approach and knew him for what he was. He hoped they tried something. He would crack them open and drink their souls.
Devany was gone. Her sense of justice was gone with her. Her rules against killing innocents. He could kill them all and there was no one to gainsay him.
He left them be and went into the tavern at the edge of the Wilds, taking a seat at the translucent bar filled with fairies. They made rude gestures as they always did and he ignored them as he usually did, catching the wary eye of the barkeep. “I need to get a message to the Meat Clan. You have any carriers?”
“There’s a Wydling over there, you want a messenger boy.” The guy gestured with his chin and moved away, looking like he had dodged a bullet.
Tytan stalked to a table near the corner where a young man sat huddled over a bowl of soup. “I need your help and I’m willing to pay.”
Except for a widening of his eyes, he didn’t react to Tytan’s presence. “How much?”
Tytan slapped down a good bit of money, enough for the man to buy a house in Banishwinds if he wanted. “I need you to get a message to Kroshtuka in Odd Silver. Half now, half when you deliver him. Understand?”
The young man nodded, reached for the money and paused. “You aren’t going to kill him, are you?”
“I have news about his mate. I don’t plan to kill anyone on Midia right now or in the near future. Now go or I’ll find someone else.”
The Wydling dumped half the money into his palm and left in a hurry, leaving behind his food and drink. Tytan quaffed the beer and downed the soup—it was bland but warmed his belly—and then settled down at the table to wait.
Devany’s Skriven. Kroshtuka entered the tavern with caution, the scent of the room a warning. The man was in shadows, as all Skriven were, as all the soulless were, his energy a shattered mess around him. His hyena urged him to caution, stalking to the forefront of his mind to stare balefully at the enemy.
Not an enemy, Kroshtuka told his hyena, told himself as he crossed the room. The Skriven stood and Kroshtuka knew immediately that something dire had happened. He stopped. Curled his fingers into his palms. “Skriven.”
“Hyena.”
How had the man lost his soul again? And after everything Devany had risked to reunite him with it? “Where is she?”
Tytan looked away.
A patient hunter, Kroshtuka waited, dread filling him like black tar.
“She fell into a trap. A prison. I went in to help her and we spent … spent a long time trying to survive. She kept you in her heart the whole time, understand, Hyena? Her compassion got her …”
Killed.
His hyena wanted to howl. He wanted to howl but he kept it inside, unwilling to show even this weakness to the Skriven. “How?”
“The Originator snapped her neck when she was trying to save me.” He turned slightly and Krosh saw the missing arm. “Her body fell into the fleshcrawler pool. Kali went in after her but couldn’t find her. We, uh, think they,” he blew out a hard, heavy breath, “consumed her.”
Kroshtuka squeezed his eyes shut tight. How could she be dead? He still felt her inside him, held part of her soul inside him. She couldn’t be dead. Couldn’t be gone, without a goodbye, without a word. “How do I know you’re telling me the truth? If you held her captive there, I would never know it.”
“I would not do that to her.”
“You would have.”
“Then. Yes. Not now. But perhaps you will find the truth of it in my next words. I need your help to avenge her.”
“How? An Originator killed her. I doubt one such as I could kill him. Or her.”
“We aren’t going to kill him. We’re going to make sure that he never draws a pain-free breath for the rest of his eternal existence.”
The hyena screamed for blood, to kill the one who had taken his mate. Cold settled over Kroshtuka. “I will. But I have to talk with her children first. Tell them …” He almost broke then, his voice ripped into pieces by his sorrow.
“Go. I will return in three days’ time to pick you up here.” The Skriven vanished. The barkeep yelped but Kroshtuka barely registered the sound.
He made it outside before the tears started falling.
Morgan and Marantha were out for a walk, enjoying the fairy song on the breeze as they wended their way through the neighborhood. Marantha wasn’t sure when she’d been happier. Too long ago to remember properly. She hadn’t thought she’d ever meet anyone again who made her smile, made her laugh. She certainly never thought she’d fall for a witch more powerful than she—much older too.
Okay, he didn’t look any older than she, but she knew his history, knew what he’d had to do to hide his wife and daughter from Ravana. He’d told her all of it and more, stuff that made her mourn for him, stuff that had scared her, stuff that had made her laugh.
There had been days when she’d cursed Devany for all the trouble that she’d brought to her doorstep, but no longer. If Devany hadn’t wandered into her shop that fateful day, if she hadn’t come back for the ring, well, Marantha wasn’t sure where she’d be. Sitting at home wishing she was anywhere but.
“What are you thinking about so hard, young lady?” Morgan asked, squeezing her hand lightly.
“You.”
“Oh? I make you hard, huh?”
She snorted, but warmth crept up her neck and into her cheeks. “I was thinking about your daughter and how grateful I am to her for introducing us.”
“She does have a way of causing chaos wherever she goes, doesn’t she?” He leaned in to peck her on the cheek, his whiskers rough against her skin. “What did you think about that Council meeting yesterday? Do you get the feeling that chythraul Neutria is planning ways to kill and eat us all?”
“Every time she skulks into the chambers. I know she represents an entire race and that at least she can reason because of her time spent in Devany’s brain, but I can’t help but wish she would grow bored of our meetings and stop coming.”
Movement caught her eye. Both she and Morgan had a shield up before the form materialized into Tytan. She and Morgan shared a look, an agreement, and Marantha flicked the barrier away. “What are you doing here?” He looked bad, this Skriven, worse than she’d ever seen him. One of his arms was missing, his eyes those of a wounded man. “What happened?
“I came to tell you that Devany …” He stopped and dropped his gaze.
Marantha stared at him in horror. It was Morgan who managed a, “What?” before he collapsed on the ground. “She can’t be,” she said, the idea of it too horrible to be born, too ridiculous. Not Devany. “That’s not possible,” she said, kneeling to put her arms around Morgan’s sobbing body. “It can’t be
. She can’t—”
“I’m sorry.”
His voice was raw, the speech obviously well-used. Dear goddess, how had it happened? How could she be dead? “What happened?”
He explained in curt sentences.
An Originator. Marantha’s chest tightened and she had to take a couple big breaths to speak again. “What help do you need?”
“I don’t know. Vasili is working on it, as is Nex. The hyena man will join us in three days’ time. He’s gone to tell her children.”
She would never have thought to hear such raw emotion in a Skriven’s voice. “I’m so sorry, Tytan.”
He waved away her solace. “Can you help?”
“I could but I’m not powerful enough.”
Tytan gestured with his chin at Morgan, inquiry in his eyes.
“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him like this.”
The Skriven grunted. Turned away.
“Tytan? What about Arsinua? If Morgan can’t, then Arsinua would be the one to ask. She lived in Devany’s head. Perhaps that’s more important than strength. Knowledge.”
He nodded. “Tell him I’m sorry.” He vanished before she could say anything else to him.
“Oh, dear sweet Morgan, I’m so sorry too.” She held him in the street until the night blossoms began to sing and then she helped him home.
Tangled leaves. Prey scent. Silent stirring. Hidden and ready. Witch prey, stupid, dumb, careless animals. Neutria liked their taste, liked the way their blood sang inside her.
Startled. Witch fled.
Neutria turned and hissed, front legs raised in threat display. Scented power. Knew this scent. Connected to Tytan’s mind, saw Devany die.
Rage.
Hunt. Kill. Revenge.
“Yes. We need you. Will you come?”
Yes, Neutria said. And she followed Tytan into the Slip to hunt.
To kill.
Tytan worked to gather Devany’s friends … and enemies, those he thought could help him make Gaius pay. Neutria, Queen Nephele, Kroshtuka, Nex, Lizzie, Vasili and Kali, Sharps, Esmelda the Theleoni, the skyship captain Zephyrynia and her lover Mal, Devany’s brother Travis. He thought saying that she was dead would become easier, but with every telling of it a knife was driven into his chest, making it hard to breathe.
