Bad Faith

by Jon Hollins

“You …,” she managed. “You … you what?”

  “I know,” he said. He turned fully to her. His face was simple and open. It was almost a child’s face. “I know so much these days, Quirk. I see so many things that were hidden to me before. It’s all clear. It’s all under control. So I have obscured the dragons behind an illusion. They have told me they’re going to kill Barph and save my people. But I know that truly they’re planning on killing both Barph and my people. And then, when I’m powerless, they’re going to kill me.”

  Quirk felt her mouth open and shut of its own accord. She had burned with this knowledge. Afrit was down there dying. And he knew? He fucking knew? And he didn’t care?

  Will still had that small smile toying around his lips.

  “The thing is,” he said, “I’m not going to give them the time to do it.”

  “What?” she managed.

  Will’s grin grew fractionally wider. “You see, Quirk,” he said, “I’m going to betray the dragons first.”

  All she could do was stare.

  Will closed his eyes. And she saw pain then. And impossible strain. An effort that she didn’t think it was within her grasp to understand.

  And then suddenly, flapping urgently toward Barph, the dragons of Avarra appeared in the air. They were not there, and then they were. Exposed and startled, staring about, wings fluttering as Barph’s wicked eye fell upon them. As his grin grew wider.

  But then, in that same moment of unexpected revelation, something else. The army at his feet … Will’s army, in midpanic and midrout—before Quirk’s very eyes, they vanished. They were gone. No longer there to be crushed by Barph.

  Gone.

  Saved.

  And Quirk stared down at a miracle.

  57

  Seeing Is Believing

  Balur looked up from Essoa’s shadowed streets. He saw the battle laid out like a theater performance. An epic, bloody tableau that transfixed every man, woman, and child in the city. Just the way Will had planned it.

  A prick he may be, Balur thought, but Will does have a surprisingly sophisticated sense of drama.

  Balur had spent the morning trying to make his way through this tangled death trap of a city, trying to set himself and Cois on a path for the city’s harbor and a boat bound for as far away as they could get. Some island in the Spatters perhaps. Somewhere they could be ignored for a long, long time.

  He was being thwarted, though, by every idiot jackass in this idiot jackass city standing in his way. And now he had taken a wrong turn, and he was in a market square, and pretty much the only way out was going to be by treading on people and feeling their rib cages explode beneath his weight.

  Normally he wouldn’t hesitate. This crowd was on edge, and a good rib stomping in a crowded square was just the sort of thing that would set it off. And then it would be rioting and chaos and a bloodbath, which he would normally really enjoy. But today he had Cois. And Cois’s small slender fingers were tight on his arm. And zhe … Well, zhe would enjoy some riots, he was being sure, but today was not a good day for hir and riots.

  And so he paused, and he looked back, and he saw, and, well … Well, it was quite a show.

  Barph towered over them all, as tall as the hills, and—as insensitive to human emotion as he was—even Balur could feel the mixture of fear and awe and adoration that ran through the crowd. And even he, as much as he had spent the night rinsing his hands of concern for Lette, felt a shiver run down his spine as he thought of the madness on the battlefield right now. Even he felt his fists tightening as he watch Barph’s feet come up, the soles stained red with the blood of the masses.

  And seeing the slaughter written in Barph’s red footprints, Balur knew that Lette and Will had bet wrong. Barph would win this fight. He would win it easily. This was the slaughter of hope. This was the death of dreams.

  Victory would take a miracle.

  And then …

  Balur understood. At a certain level, he was aware of exactly what Will had done. He knew about his former friend’s powers of illusion.

  But …

  An army vanished. A second one revealed. All the dragons of Avarra flocking toward Barph. Red of tooth and claw. Lungs full of fire.

  And he saw the momentary confusion and disarray in the dragons’ line before they resumed their flight toward Barph. And he knew that this had not been discussed. That something was amiss.

  But …

  A sophisticated sense of pissing drama.

  “He saved them!” someone shouted. “All those people. Willett Fallows saved them!”

  That is being, Balur thought, an odd use of Will’s full name.

  “A miracle!” someone else shouted. “Will Fallows performed a miracle!”

  And the crowd hesitated. As their god stared around, his bewilderment written massively above them. Barph’s confusion was utterly apparent. It was not, even Balur was forced to admit, being very divine.

  “A miracle!” came the cry again. And Balur turned to see the person shouting.

  And …

  Gods. It was deception and trickery and absolute bullshit that took his breath away.

  He recognized the woman shouting about miracles in the crowd. He had broken bread with her. He had diced with her. She was Will’s woman. She was one of his followers.

  “A miracle!” the woman shouted again. “Will Fallows saved them all with a miracle!”

  Essoa worshipped Barph. Its people believed in him. They were a vast source of power for him. And Will … Will—who protested so hard that he was a simple farmer—would always be a thief at heart. No matter how divine he became, he would always be a con man.

  Essoa wasn’t the sacrifice. The dragons were. This city’s inhabitants weren’t meant to be slaughtered cattle. They were meant to be converts. A fake miracle, with fake men and women to proselytize in the crowd.

  Will was going to steal Essoa from Barph.

  58

  Tricked Out

  Barph felt it. He felt the faith of a city flicker. He felt doubt, like poison, enter its heart. He felt himself grow weaker.

  And the worst of it was that he, just like them, was left staring. Was left wondering what had just happened. There had been an army at his feet. He had been merrily mashing them like a barrelful of grapes. He had been laughing and happy.

  And then Will … Will had tricked him. Somehow. And he wasn’t sure how. He still couldn’t see it. And now his city doubted him. A piece of Avarra had slipped between his fingers and lay in Will’s grasping hands.

  And then, before he could work out how to seize it back, the dragons attacked. Because he had hesitated. He had reeled. He had been given a chance to prepare himself for this, and he had missed it.

  Flame raked over him. Claws slashed at him. And he felt the two competing realities. The one where his skin was as thick and impenetrable as iron. The other where he was scalded and lacerated, where his blood burst forth in fountains.

  He wrestled for control. He wrestled to be master of reality instead of mastered by it. He reached out. He called down lightning in a storm. He cared nothing for accuracy. He cared nothing for collateral damage. He cared nothing for the lightning striking and scouring his own skin. He needed to establish who he was, what he could do.

  He needed these dragons to die.

  He saw dragons rupture and burst before him, lightning crackling through their bodies—more than they could contain, pieces of them raining down on the ground below. He caught another of the lizards in one of his massive hands. He squeezed and felt blood and bone ooze between his fingers. He raked his hand through the air, swatted beasts to the ground like so many insects, felt the sprays of earth their broken bodies kicked up.

  But he also felt their fire, their claws, their teeth. He felt himself cut and ruptured and despoiled in a thousand places. For every dragon he killed, ten more seemed to wound him. He howled in rage and pain. And as he did so he could feel himself growing weaker. The people caring for hi
m less and less.

  This was that fucking vineyard all over again. This was worse than that vineyard. That had been a private embarrassment and a private pain. This struggle was writ large and displayed for all the world to see.

  He felt talons scrape across his face, felt the blood running down into his eyes. He felt fire crackle over the skin of his chest, felt his beard burning.

  He felt afraid.

  He lashed out again, again, again. This had to end. This had to stop. He was a fucking deity. The deity. He had beaten Lawl. He had beaten all the gods. He had tricked all the world. It was his now. He would re-create it. He would set it free. He would be liberation, and glory, and he would be loved in a way that Lawl never had been. Never could be.

  He was god, and this could not be.

  And yet it was. And with every passing second he felt his grip on the world grow looser.

  Another dragon died on the end of his fist. Another one exploded under the force of the thunderbolt he flung at it. Another dragon was crushed beneath his foot. Another died. Another.

  But he was reeling. He was staggering. He was doubling over in pain. He was weeping and screaming.

  Death to these things. Death to them all. He forced his will out. A black spreading cloud of choking, harrowing death. Acidic air that burned the dragons’ lungs, that seared the flame from their throats.

  And finally, tattered, choking, on all fours, he was left alone. There was silence. He was on fire. Blood fell from him like rain. He felt hollowed out, violated by doubt.

  But the dragons … He wiped blood from his eyes. Two, three perhaps. Falling back. Running for the hills.

  Now Will would come. He knew it. Now his enemy would try his hand. With the city at his back vacillating over where its loyalties lay. With him at his weakest.

  And fucking Will Fallows actually stood a chance. He would hide. He would use his little magics to slip unseen like a knife between Barph’s ribs.

  He howled his rage. He roared his hatred. Somewhere on this fucking blood-soaked plain, Will Fallows was there. Mocking him. Thinking he had outsmarted him. Thinking he could kill a god.

  “Nothing!” he roared. “You’re nothing! Not you! Not Lawl! Not any of your companions! You are nothing to me!”

  And he called the storm of lightning bolts down once more. With the last of his strength. He would burn this whole fucking plain. He would burn Will Fallows. He would scorch him from the earth.

  There would be no victories here. No simple narratives to be spun before eager-eyed children. There would be only his legacy. Only chaos.

  59

  The Eternal Fate of Smug Bastards

  Quirk had watched as Will’s face changed and as Barph had stared around in confusion. She had watched as the dragons recovered from their initial surprise and swept toward him. She had watched as fire and blood filled the sky.

  Will had been smiling. His face had looked fit to burst from the strain of it.

  “Essoa,” he had said, almost grunting the words, “they’re starting to believe.”

  “Believe what?” She hadn’t been entirely certain she’d wanted to know the answer.

  “That their god will fall.” Beads of sweat stood out on Will’s forehead. “That I’ll win.”

  And that had been good. Quirk had known that was good. But at that moment it hadn’t felt quite as good as it should have.

  A dragon had plunged out of the sky, crashed into the plain. The slope Will’s army had just occupied.

  “Where are they?” she had asked. “Your followers?” But really she had meant, “Where’s Afrit?”

  “Still there,” he’d said. His eyes had looked on the verge of bursting from their sockets. “I’ve just hidden them. I can’t move that many people.”

  Still there …

  “So where that dragon just fell …,” she’d said. “There were people …?”

  Will had shaken his head. “I have enough.”

  “Enough …,” she repeated. The word hung there between them.

  “To win,” Will had clarified. “I have Essoa now.”

  And gods. All those people. All those who had followed him since he emerged from the Hallows into Avarra. Who had followed him on the strength of the lie that it was Barph who had ravaged Avarra. All of them nothing more than grist in the mill of Will’s revenge.

  “You … you …” The enormity of her outrage had stuck in her craw for a moment. “Afrit is down there! You … fucking … arsehole! You—”

  But then the lightning storm had begun and cut her off. Bolt after bolt raining down among the dragons. The earth scorched black. Lizard bodies crashing down like battering rams. The earth rising in bomb-blast sprays. A fog of acrid black smoke exuding from Barph’s body that seemed to choke the life from everything it touched. Then the hillside running red with blood.

  They were still there. All those people. All those lives. Afrit’s life. In the middle of the madness and the slaughter. They were there and—unseen—they were dying.

  “We have to do something.” She was desperate. She reached out, seized Will’s arm. She jerked back. His skin seemed to sting her, crackling with energy that left a taste like bile in the back of her throat.

  “Soon,” Will whispered.

  There were seven dragons left in the sky. Then six. Barph fell to his knees, to all fours. Blood seemed to be dripping from every part of his body. His beard was on fire, smoke rising above his head. It began to rain.

  “Yes,” Will breathed. “Now.”

  The last three dragons were flapping away. Three. Gods. She remembered Natan. She remembered the teeming skies. She remembered racing across the ocean back to Avarra at the head of an army.

  Three. All that was left of the dragons of Avarra. The creatures she had dedicated her life to studying—for all that that life was left behind in the ashes of a broken world. And even with the mountain of grief already heaped upon her shoulders, she couldn’t help but mourn them. She couldn’t help but feel horror at her own culpability. She had brought them here. She had embroiled them in this extinction.

  Will cracked his knuckles. Barph was looking up, and Quirk was struck by the pathos in his ragged, stained features, by the horror and the loss. She was struck by how vindictive Will looked in this moment.

  This moment. Gods. This was everything and nothing they had fought for.

  But maybe … maybe Afrit was still alive. Not everyone had been lost. She was sure of it. Will had saved some of them. Perhaps even most. Perhaps the odds were not so stacked against her. Maybe …

  And then Barph stretched out a ragged and bloody hand, palm outstretched, fingers spread, as if to ward off Will’s coming. And then the whole hillside seemed to quake. The very earth vibrated beneath Quirk’s feet.

  Lightning. Lighting as dense as rain. A storm like a roiling beast, like a crawling, scribbling finger of death swiping over the plain.

  And the dragons were dead. And Barph was on his knees. But the slaughter had not ended.

  Quirk didn’t know what Barph was trying to do. What he thought he was achieving. But …

  Afrit. Afrit and all those people. All of Will’s army. All of his faithful. All the people he had only hidden, not moved. And Afrit.

  They were still there.

  The ground boiled. Lightning was everywhere. They must be dying by the hundreds.

  Quirk turned to scream at Will. To assault him somehow with her horror and rage. And she would break through somehow. She would make him feel this.

  She saw Will’s face change once more. She saw the grin of overpowering joy become a rictus, become stricken, become gaunt. She saw the sweat on his forehead stand out more and more even as his cheeks began to sink in.

  “No,” he said. “No!”

  And he did feel this. There was something left in him, perhaps. Some sort of compassion. Or perhaps it was just the selfish grab for power.

  “No!” he shouted again, and started a step forward, but then stoppe
d.

  “He’s killing them!” Quirk grabbed him again, heedless of the sting of his skin. “He’s killing Afrit! You have to save them!”

  “But—” Will looked down at his hands. “I … I need them to save them …”

  “You fucking … You have Essoa! You said you have Essoa!”

  “I …” Will looked utterly devastated. “They … Barph’s not … They don’t …”

  Oh gods, she wanted to … to tear into him somehow. To tear out his heart and expose it to all the pain he had caused. But she didn’t have words. And she didn’t have time. Down on that hill, Afrit didn’t have time. She didn’t know what she could do, but she had to do something.

  She left Will standing there with his horror-filled eyes. She left him standing motionless. She left him and took off, tearing down the hill, heading pell-mell forward, desperate to save the people there, somehow, any way she could.

  Her footsteps faltered. She couldn’t even see the woman she was trying to save.

  And then, with a feeling like a soap bubble bursting over her whole body, she seemed to step through the edge of the illusion, and she saw.

  Oh gods. Oh gods. She saw.

  Terror. Terror writ large. Terror no longer a word or an idea. Terror come alive. Terror grown limbs and eyes, and mouths with which to scream. Terror become a crowd. A crowd become a wound.

  The dead were everywhere. She could see them scattered below her by the thousands. She saw their faces lit by the lightning bolts that added to their numbers. She saw people dying and dying and dying, their bodies bloody and raw, laid out exposed.

  She saw two women holding hands, scrambling up the hillside. Lightning reached down, evaporated one, sent the other flying through the air like a catapult stone, fire jetting from her mouth, her eyes. She saw men clawing over each other. She saw a mass of bodies transform from something scrambling and urgently alive into something quivering and dead in a single white flash.

  And what could she do? What could she do?

  “Afrit!” she screamed. She couldn’t even hear her own words. “Afrit!” It was an exercise beyond the pointless.