Bad Faith

by Jon Hollins

  A single word. A guttural howl. The summoning of all the blackest thoughts in her heart, condensed and hawked up and flung at Will like a crossbow bolt.

  But it did not come from her. Someone else was screaming in rage.

  She couldn’t look away from Will, from Quirk’s … from Quirk’s …

  “Murderer,” she whispered the word to herself as Balur tore into her vision. The lizard man was charging, going full force, a sword raised above his low-slung head. The sword came down.

  Will flung himself to the side as the sword carved a trench in the earth he had just been cowering upon. Balur tore it free, swiped viciously at Will. Will kept rolling, barely a pace away from the blade’s gleaming edge.

  “Balur! No!” A not-quite feminine voice. A voice Afrit could almost place. Then Cois chased into Afrit’s vision, grabbed hold of Balur’s arms. Balur shrugged hir off. He barely seemed to have noticed hir at all.

  “DIE!” he bellowed again, hacking at Will. Will skittered back. There was no beauty or finesse to Balur’s movements. This was blunt savagery. This was grief transmuted into blinding hatred.

  And with that realization, it was as if the lizard man had provided an escape route for Afrit’s own grief, her own overwhelming hurt. Rage clenched a fist over her heart.

  Will Fallows would die for this.

  Balur was chasing after Will, bringing his sword down in massive overhead blows over and over and over again. Will was crab-crawling away, eyes wide and staring as he barely outpaced the blade again and again.

  Afrit ran at him, pulled back her foot and kicked one of his arms out from under him. He collapsed back, sprawled. Balur raised his sword, grinned. Will screamed.

  The sword came down. Will rolled. The sword bit into the earth less than a quarter inch from Will’s body. He was still screaming. Afrit was screaming. She hurdled the sword and kicked and kicked and kicked.

  And part of her kept expecting Will to strike back, for him to reach out with some of that massive, divine power he had pulled to himself. Some part of her was waiting to be swatted. And that wouldn’t be so bad, because it would be an end at least. It would stop the pain from overwhelming her rage and leaving her curled up and bawling on the ground.

  But he didn’t. He curled up around her foot and howled, but that was all. And somehow the fact that it was pathetic and craven made it all worse.

  Balur abandoned his sword, took Afrit’s lead. He kicked Will so hard that the former farmer flew through the air, started rolling down the hill, crashing through burned bodies.

  Afrit gave chase. Will was on his feet when she got to him, tottering, clutching his ribs with one hand, trying to fend them off with the other.

  “I’m not …,” he managed between ragged breaths. “I’m not …”

  “You are being responsible!” Balur roared. “Do not be daring to tell me you are not, or that it was being Barph. Do not be daring. Not even once. You were picking this fight. You were calling this a plan. You were the one who caused this. You were the one who killed her.”

  “I’m not that person anymore,” Will said. Tears were still coursing down his face. Whether it was due to pain or sorrow, Afrit couldn’t tell. She didn’t really care.

  There was a lump of steel slag on the ground. Something that had perhaps been a sword once. It was just a twisted mess of metal now. It fit snugly in her fist.

  “I was someone else, when I … when I … Oh gods, Balur. I’m so sorry. But you have to believe me.”

  Afrit threw the lump of slag. It missed his head by inches.

  “Gods!”

  A god. He had pretended to be a god. When all he had ever been was a self-centered fool. And now she would kill him.

  Balur again followed Afrit’s lead, found something on the ground, hurled it at Will. It was someone’s head. It caught Will full in the midriff, knocked him to the ground.

  Then the pursuit was on again. Her hurling objects, Balur trying to get close enough to deliver a killing blow. The lizard man tripped over a corpse, and they came to another impasse. Will stood, breathing hard, hands held out to them, beseeching them.

  “I was mad,” he said. “I was sick. And I couldn’t see it. The power in me … It wouldn’t let me see it. If I could … if I could take it all back …”

  Words. It was all words with him. All bullshit. They bounced off her. The same way something would off his skull as soon as she found a suitable missile.

  “I loved her, Balur! I loved her! I would do anything to save her. I thought that’s what I was trying to do. I was just so fucked in the head that I couldn’t … I didn’t …”

  “You are not being properly fucked in the head,” Balur said. “Not until I am boring the hole in your skull myself.”

  “More death is not going to fix this.” Afrit had almost forgotten Cois’s presence. And hir words meant even less than Will’s. She found another lump of … something … She threw it. Will dodged to the side. Balur was circling around that way, weight held low, tail whipping back and forth in the air above his head.

  “It was the Deep Ones,” he begged. “It was what they put inside of me.”

  “You put it inside of you!” Balur roared, and charged.

  Will flinched back, but not fast enough. Elation and sickness mingled inside Afrit as she watched Balur’s claws close on …

  Nothing.

  An illusion.

  Balur howled in rage.

  “I’m sorry!” Will was standing five paces away, arms still out, still beseeching. “I’m trying to save my life. I swear this is all I have left. Parlor tricks. All the other power has gone. I can see now. I can see everything I’ve done.”

  He started to sob again.

  “You cannot be hiding from me.” Balur picked himself up off the ground. “I will be hunting you to the ends of the world.”

  “Is that what Lette would have even wanted?” Cois was trying to get between Will and Balur. “She loved Will.”

  “He was killing her!” Balur barked at Cois. “That is a betrayal of love. She would be wanting me to be tearing off his head and pissing her revenge into the stump.”

  “She chose him over you.” Cois spoke quietly, but Afrit still winced at the impact of the words.

  But finally, it seemed, she had found a way to halt the unstoppable force that was Balur’s rage.

  “She shouldn’t have,” Will said almost to himself. “She shouldn’t have.” He spoke through tears.

  They seemed to have forgotten her, Afrit thought. Could she get close enough? Could she make him pay for what he had done?

  The sensation of nausea that had passed through her as Balur’s talons had closed on Will’s neck came again. And no, perhaps she could not.

  “What about Quirk?” she said. “What about her?”

  Will snapped around, blinked at her. “Oh gods …” He sank to his knees. “All these fucking people. All their families. All their loved ones. He got to his knees. Not a collapse but a slow, deliberate movement. “Do it, Balur,” he said. “Just fucking do it.”

  “Shut up, you arsehole,” Cois snapped. “Just because I don’t want you dead doesn’t mean you’re off the hook for this.”

  Will wasn’t really listening to hir. He was still blabbering on, caught somewhere between making excuses and trying to pay penance. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I swear, I never did. I couldn’t. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Shut up, Will!” Afrit snapped.

  She didn’t want to kill him, she thought. She didn’t want to listen to him anymore. She wanted to ignore his existence.

  “I wouldn’t have done it this way,” he went on, oblivious to them all. “Not if I was in control. I wouldn’t have tried to fight him head-on. That was … Gods … We can’t take the heavens by force.”

  “She was choosing him,” Balur said, finally seeming to recover from the body blow Cois had dealt him. He spoke in a low rumble, the worlds hard to pick out. “And so perhap
s I cannot be killing him for her. Perhaps she would not be wanting that.”

  “There’s been enough death today.” Cois sounded hollowed out.

  “But I can still be killing him for me.”

  Will was shaking his head, but he didn’t seem to be listening. “We can’t take the heavens by force,” he said again.

  Afrit just felt tired. Felt defeated. She felt as if all the emotion had been punched out of her heart. She had nothing left for this.

  “No, Balur.” Cois raised a restraining hand that had no possible way to restrain Balur.

  “For me,” Balur said.

  “We couldn’t take the heavens by force,” Will said a third time. He sounded as if he was broken. But then he looked up at Balur, and his eyes were bright.

  “But,” he said, “before you kill me, I think I can tell you how to steal them.”

  62

  Loyalties and Lying

  Cois had always believed that Balur killed beautifully. He killed in the way that others created paintings, in the way that others danced and sang. He was an artist of murder. When Balur killed, there was a light to it, something that shone within it.

  Zhe was not, zhe thought, bloodthirsty. It was hard to know exactly. When zhe was a god, hir perspective of such things—zhe recognized now—had been skewed. Zhe was certain zhe had never been as bloodthirsty as Lawl, or Toil, or even Barph, who had used murder as a punch line when it suited him. It wasn’t that zhe was averse to bloodshed, zhe had just never seen much point to it. Zhe had always preferred the fecundity and savage lust of man. To hir, the creation of life was more interesting than the ending of it.

  Balur, though, was different. Balur was a creature of pure purpose. Everything about him was designed to deliver death. All the pleasure he brought hir along the path of his life was almost incidental, almost an accident. And there was something about that that set a fire in hir loins that no physick’s ointment could appease. And when he killed … He was at his most beautiful when he killed.

  And perhaps things would be easier if zhe just let him kill Will. Will was, in the end, responsible for all the deaths spread out around them. And maybe the blame was not totally his, but it was he who had created this situation. It was he who had forced these people and Barph into confrontation. It was his pride. His folly. And yes, there should be punishment. And yes, death was the obvious one.

  But … what then? What would come after Will’s death?

  What would happen to Balur?

  Balur had loved Lette. Cois knew that. Zhe knew it in the way that only someone who had competed for that love could know. Zhe knew it in the way his attention wandered. In the questions he asked. In the small unthinking moments that left hir utterly sidelined. Zhe knew.

  And now Lette was dead. Lette had been killed. And so Lette was poised to climb onto a pedestal. And if Cois allowed that, then Lette would become the very poison that would kill Balur. That would unman him.

  Balur needed continuous motion, continuous purpose. Lette was an ending. Killing Will was an ending. And to stop was to die. It would kill both Balur’s spirit and hir happiness in the lizard man’s arms.

  Balur, zhe saw, needed Will. Will was a cause in human form. He was a cause zhe could never fully believe in. It was a cause to kill hir son, hir former lover. But it was a cause. It was hatred and anger. It was a focus and a destination for Balur beyond the immediacy of Lette’s death. It was an engine that could fuel him.

  And so, no matter how beautiful it would be, no matter how justified his wrath, no matter how much zhe hated Will for what he had done here—for what he had become, for his pathetic, craven excuses—zhe needed Balur to cease and desist from Will’s murder.

  The problem was, Balur wasn’t listening. His grief was too big. It clogged his ears and his sense. And so hir only hope was that Will fought for his life harder than Balur fought to end it.

  And then Will betrayed hir. He knelt and offered his neck to Balur. And zhe could see the rage getting ready to end, the grief getting ready to take over.

  And just as Cois gave up hope, Will finally reached into the depths of his metaphorical arse and yanked out a way for hir to save Balur.

  I can tell you how to steal the heavens.

  Oh, Will pissing Fallows. This was the way he gave hir? Save Balur, but destroy everything else? Of course that was the choice. It always pissing was.

  “I am not wanting to hear shit from you.” Balur growled at Will, and advanced on him with his sword drawn.

  Will seemed to be having second thoughts about his penitent death now that a plan was setting fire to his brain. He scrambled up off his knees and backed away from Balur.

  It could still all be over in a second, though. And then Balur would be undone.

  “How?” Zhe didn’t want to ask it. Zhe didn’t want to know. But zhe had to know if Balur was going to survive this.

  “The font,” Will said. He pointed at Cois, while still backing away from Balur. “You said there was a font of blood in the heavens. You said whoever’s blood is in the font—they control the heavens. The Summer Palace attacks everyone else.”

  And gods, zhe didn’t know what zhe’d been hoping for, but it wasn’t that. What did zhe say? Where did hir loyalties lie?

  Wait. That had been Lawl’s watchword when they first arrived in the Hallows. Wait for as long as it takes. We have long lives and long plans. The humans and all the other mortals are but flickering candles. Wait. Bide our time. Because the moment will come when we can recapture the heavens. If only we are patient. If only we stay loyal to each other and who we truly are.

  Lawl was a prick, to be sure. And Cois liked Balur’s prick, to be sure. But mortality … Waking up and feeling aches in hir muscles for the first time in the millennia of existence. Waking up and not having the world fold to hir whims. Waking up and being cold and alone and afraid. Counting those cold, lonely, frightening days one by one in a slow march where the aches would get worse until zhe was so frail zhe couldn’t even shit hir own pants right … Mortality was far from being hir favorite thing.

  But if Will got the heavens … Well, then, zhe and the other gods would never have a chance to claim them for themselves, zhe was sure. That would be an end to that dream. That would be an embracing of mortality. And regardless of all the questionable people and things Cois had embraced throughout the ages, zhe still did not know if zhe could embrace that.

  “Do not be listening to him,” Balur said, leveling his sword at Will. “He is a liar, full of lies, and I must cut them out of him from balls to brow.”

  But mortality did have Balur.

  All those divine years as the god(dess) of love and to only now have found it hirself. Ah, the bitter, bitter irony.

  “Yes,” zhe said to Will. “There is a font, and it functions that way.”

  “I am wondering”—Balur still pursued Will—“how your bowels will be functioning when my foot is up them.”

  “The font is the key!” Will almost tripped over a tangle of blackened limbs. Balur closed the space between them as he recovered.

  “How?” Afrit asked.

  If Cois still had hir powers, zhe would have made the woman’s nethers rot on her like fruit left too long on the vine. Zhe did not need any more specificity. The slow grind of striving, that was what Balur needed. The distraction of a purpose. Zhe needed Will’s plans purposeful but hopeless.

  “The blood in the font,” Will said. “That’s how Barph actually took the heavens. It wasn’t killing the gods. It was putting his own blood in the font. So if we take his blood out of it, and put our own blood in …”

  And that was very far from vague. That was very far from hopeless. That could actually work.

  Shit.

  “At least,” Balur said, “when you are dead your tongue will stop flapping.”

  And would it be easier to let him kill Will after? Would it be easier to let him topple into the abyss of depression and then try to pull him back out?
/>   Will looked at Balur. “Please. I am truly trying to make these deaths meaningful. To make this cause be anything but lost. And I know I have to die. But please, let me give you this plan before I go.”

  “Your plan killed Lette!” Balur roared. He thrust a finger at Afrit. “It killed Quirk!”

  Cois’s eyes flicked to the Tamarian. And she seemed to crumple around the words. If Balur was trying to ignite a fire, he was failing. In Afrit the grief was taking over. It was consuming her.

  And Balur was so close to being this same useless, racked thing. Cois knew it. With Will dead, this would be him.

  If zhe was silent, this would be him.

  “Yes,” zhe said to Will. “Yes, that could work. The font is the seat of power.” Zhe looked at Balur and Afrit. “Not all power is from worship. It’s … it’s not a system with rules and numbers. It’s not even a system. It’s about symbolism, and hope, and belief. It changes. But the heavens mean something. They’re a seat of power. Possessing them changes hearts and minds. But hearts and minds change it as well. It’s fluid.”

  “We seize the font, we seize the heavens,” Will put in, “we can help define what they mean. We can help put Barph in his gods-hexed place.”

  “I seize your neck,” Balur decided to add, “I squeeze it, and fire your head like a catapult stone into the sky.”

  “But you wouldn’t get to the font,” Cois interrupted. Zhe tried not to sound too eager. But perhaps zhe finally had a way to redirect this. “The Summer Palace will attack anyone who enters it, if their blood is not in the font. Lawl built it that way. The very fabric of the palace rejects people who aren’t meant to be there. Not unless Barph gives you permission to be there. And let’s face it, you and he are not exchanging feast day gifts at the moment.”

  “Another failure,” Balur said. The words were a curse in his mouth. “That is what this plan is being.” He pointed at Will. “That is what his plans are doing. They are failing, and they are killing, and they are murdering. And there must be being a reckoning. A balancing. But now he is to die, he is wishing to embroil us in his schemes. He is trying to perpetuate the death. The ending of things.”