In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  Joros didn’t always agree with the Parents, but he thought the Father’s actions there had been justified. Joros could barely manage living with irritating people for a normal life-span; he couldn’t imagine what an eternity would be like. Honestly, it showed a good deal of patience from Patharro that he’d allowed mankind immortality for even a short time.

  He stalked forward and pushed Avorra aside, stood glaring down at the mage. “Give me that,” he said sternly, holding out his hand for the stupid horse.

  Anddyr’s hands tightened around the horse’s soft body, and something drifted into his wide-pupiled eyes that Joros hadn’t seen before. A hardness, a sharpness, something that did not want to bend. “It’s mine,” Anddyr said, and the words came out almost a snarl. There was a crackling in the air, as brittle as the mage’s eyes.

  Joros’s heart took a pause in its measured thumping. It had proved easy enough to put the mage in charge of his own drugging—he’d stare at a time-candle for hours as his mind melted like wax, counting down the marks until he could patch his sanity back together with black paste. He never took the skura too early, and certainly never too late, but there was a madness in his eyes that Joros was not used to seeing. “Anddyr,” he said, gentle and careful, “when was the last time you took your skura?”

  The mage moaned, eyes screwing shut, hands wringing at the stuffed horse. The stone beneath Joros’s feet shuddered.

  “We told him not to,” a small voice said, soft but triumphant, and Joros rounded on the young twins, the young fools. They stared back at him with mismatched expressions on identical faces, the girl smug, the boy sad and resolute. Avorra went on, “He listens better to us.”

  There was something very close to fear rising in Joros, surging along with Anddyr’s strident muttering, more frantic with each crackling moment. He nearly flew to the cupboard where they kept the skura, neat lines of little earthenware jars, seeds and roots and careful poisons mixed with his blood. He grabbed at one, knocked over others in his haste, scrabbled at the lid until it came away with the earthy stench of rot.

  The very air seemed to fight him, thick and suffocating, as he stepped back toward the mage. Anddyr writhed on the ground now, eyes locked on the ceiling in blind horror, the stuffed horse clutched to his chest. The damned twins stood still and silent, watching, the girl with contempt, the boy with curiosity. The air around them was visible, a crackling haze that lifted their hair in strands like live things.

  His heart raced, but Joros’s legs hardly seemed to move, like walking through chest-high water. “Fire!” Anddyr screamed at the ceiling, and then a laugh tore through him, a horrible rending sound. “Fire, all fire, fire at the end.” The air around the mage was hot enough to burn, made the skin over Joros’s face feel stretched too tight. The jar of skura grew hot between his fingers, hot as a burning ember, and as he lurched toward the mage, some instinct of self-preservation made him give up his hold on the jar.

  It fell, by some lucky fluke, directly onto the mage’s face. That startled him into silence, long enough for the skura to drip down into his mouth, and soon a different kind of convulsing took the mage. The fire fell from the air, and the stone floor settled once more, and a choked sound emerged from Joros. Relief, perhaps.

  It lasted only long enough for the fire to settle into Joros, and he turned once more to the twins. The anger was wild in him, reckless at the near escape of whatever horrors an uncontrolled mage could bring crashing down. “Never again,” he snarled at them, and he reached down to tear the idiotic stuffed horse from Anddyr’s slack fingers. The mage lay slack and useless, wallowing in the stupor the skura brought on. Joros shook the horse at the twins and said, “You will not speak with him again. Do you hear me?” He twisted the horse, the lumps of its body shifting under his hands, fabric stretching.

  “It’s mine,” a voice behind him said, and that put pause to the raging anger. Usually it took Anddyr’s shattered wits a good while to knit themselves back together, to make him almost human again, but his voice was firm, if not loud. It put a twisting chill in Joros’s stomach.

  “You begin to understand.” The boy-twin stood facing Joros, face utterly calm and utterly unchildlike. His eyes had gone distant, staring at something far beyond seeing. “He is ours,” Etarro said, his voice strangely inflectionless. “You will keep him for a time, but he will always be ours. You will keep him from us at your own peril.”

  Silence hung in the air after the boy’s words, heavy as a fist, until his distant eyes finally blinked and returned, features smoothing once more into those of a wide-eyed child.

  “We’ll try not to bother you anymore, cappo,” he said, voice soft as usual. He turned and walked from the room, and Avorra hurried to follow him. There was a strange look on her face, something between fear and wonder and anger.

  The silence stayed after they’d left. Even Anddyr, who usually muttered incessantly to himself, sat quietly in the after-throes of his skura. “It’s mine,” he finally said again, and Joros turned silently to offer the stuffed horse by one leg. The mage took it; intelligence had returned to his eyes but the madness was not entirely gone. Dirrakara said the drug would twist his mind over time, make the skura madness his reality, with the black paste offering the only relief from delusions. She’d also warned him, quietly, that the mage might not have a particularly long life. Anddyr had his uses, but Joros found himself praying earnestly that she was right.

  Finally Joros went to sit in his chair near the hearth, flickering with bluish flame. It was a conceit of the preachers, a powder that changed the fire’s color and little more; blue made for a softer light, and anyone found burning red flames inside the mountain would be severely punished. Still, the blue flame was as unnatural as those blasted twins. Years ago, when he’d brought their mother safely up the heights of Raturo, he’d been sure the children growing inside her would be his key and his crown. He’d grown less sure of it every passing year.

  There was a stack of letters near his chair, and he shuffled distractedly through them until he saw the mark of one of his agents in Mercetta. The man had proved to be slightly unhinged over the years, but there was no arguing that he was a good seeker, and he’d had the most interesting news of late. Joros had taken over the shadowseekers five years ago; it had been easy enough to do, once he’d been elevated to the Ventallo. His old mentor, Chevo, had been none too pleased with being replaced, but the old fool hadn’t been able to do anything about it—when a Ventallo spoke, all others knelt. Since then, Joros’s days had been filled with reports and letters and a shelf of carefully organized seekstones. Tedious things, usually, but entirely worthwhile.

  Joros skimmed the report and smiled to himself. Twins. For long years, Verteira’s children had been the only viable option; but there was change in the air. Just because a thing had been so for a time did not mean it would always be so.

  There were more reports; his seekers were scattered throughout Fiatera, but they were nothing if not faithful about sending in their reports. Reading through page after page of possible sightings and disappointments and drownings at least took his mind off Etarro and Avorra, gave his anger the chance to settle. Anddyr’s muttering was a constant backdrop—almost comforting, strange as that seemed. Joros snorted, and growled at the mage to be silent.

  It took some hours to read through all the reports and pen the necessary replies, the longest going to the seeker in Mercetta with that most interesting news. Anddyr sealed each letter, fumbling with the wax, his fingers growing clumsier with each moment. That was the trouble with having an assistant who saw things that weren’t really there. The mage would grow convinced that Joros’s seal was a spider trying to eat his fingers, the wax a piece of the sky that had fallen, and he usually ended up throwing one or both into a dark corner and had to be sent hunting after them. Finally Joros gave up on the correspondence and rose to his feet with a stretch. “Come, Anddyr,” he called tiredly, and the mage’s head swung around. “We still have
our work to do.”

  Dirrakara often complained that Joros kept himself too busy; with his duties as Octeiro, heading the shadowseekers, and his newest project, he had little time to spare. That was well enough—he wasn’t a man prone to indolence. He wasn’t a man who wasted his time.

  The Ventallo chamber was empty, as it usually was, or if any of the others were around, they were closed up in their private chambers. It was for the best; he’d rather none of them knew yet about his newest project. There were getting to be so many mages skulking through Raturo, their wits addled by Dirrakara’s drug, that it wouldn’t surprise Joros if one of his brothers or sisters shared his realization, but Joros was determined to have a head start, if nothing else.

  Anddyr knelt down before the stone box, a creature of habit, though he forgot his purpose somewhere between standing and kneeling. A tired sort of disgust roiled in Joros’s stomach, mixed with contempt; he had no patience for weak wills, but the mage had proved himself too useful to discard, and too dangerous to antagonize. He showed flashes of intelligence between his mutterings and his ravings, but they were rare; he’d settled easily into thralldom, and so Joros wasn’t inclined to think he’d had much will to begin with. Still, he tried to be friendly to the mage—or as friendly as he was capable of being. “Do you even think of fighting anymore?” Joros asked, not bothering to hide his distaste, but genuinely curious.

  The mage blinked, mouth dropping slowly open. His eyes drifted sideways, flicked back, drifted away again. His lips formed the shapes of syllables, but no sound came out.

  Joros’s fingers curled tightly; he was wasting time, and there was none to waste. “Answer me,” he growled, and without thinking he kicked at the mage. His foot connected lightly with the mage’s shoulder, and for a small moment of terror as he remembered what Anddyr was capable of, Joros wondered if this was how his miserable life would end.

  But the mage merely whimpered as his eyes snapped back to Joros, flashing with fear. “No,” he blurted. “No. I don’t think about fighting.” He flinched, though Joros hadn’t moved.

  No. Not someone worthy of any respect, or of any fear. “Go, Anddyr,” Joros said, hiding his deep relief as the mage sluggishly pressed his hands to the bier. “Find him.” Anddyr’s eyes drifted shut, and his fingers twitched against the stone, and Joros very quickly grew bored.

  They had been at this for almost two months, and Joros was becoming impatient for results. He hadn’t been so foolish as to think it would be easy, but he had expected it to be quicker. In one of his more lucid moments, Anddyr had tried to explain how his magic worked, how it was much more complex than simply “like calling to like,” but Joros didn’t care how it worked. He cared only about the answers it could bring him.

  He stood for a moment, watching, his hand resting lightly on the stone box. He still wasn’t convinced it was going to work, but belief, he had discovered, was not always such a straightforward thing. Belief could be learned.

  Joros went to his door, 18 carved deep into the wood. There was another ledger book inside the room, identical to the ones he’d scribbled in as Ventiro and Nodeiro, though this one was filled with line after line of initiates’ names. Whenever a new aspiring preacher stumbled into the darkness from the cold of Raturo’s peak, the watchers stationed there would jot down names and answers to a few questions and bring these to Joros, who each night faithfully recorded them in his ledger. He’d once asked Dirrakara if any of the Ventallo did aught besides keep records; she’d laughed and smiled, but kept her lips closed.

  It wasn’t what he’d imagined power to be. And he’d imagined power often, as a younger man, the third son of a fifth son living in squalor on the outskirts of the capital. He’d been a boy, once, who’d dreamed of being a king until his brother had sneered and told him merchants couldn’t be kings. Even the so-called merchant kings of Mercetta had little power over things of any import. There was little chance for a humble man to rise to greatness.

  But there was another place, where men were not judged by their birth but by what they made of themselves. And Joros had known he could make himself a great man. He could make himself a king.

  He didn’t think kings spent so much time filling lines.

  A gasp startled Joros, his pen skittering across the page in a blotchy line that obscured half the names he’d just entered. He scowled down at the page, his fingers tightening dangerously around the pen, until he heard the sound again.

  Anddyr was on his back next to the stone box, eyes wide in his pale face, hands scrabbling at his throat as he gasped in shallow breaths. Joros grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, demanding, “What is it? Did you find something?”

  “I . . .” Anddyr pressed one hand to the floor as a brace and the other against his chest; Joros wasn’t sure if he was short of breath or too addled to speak. “I . . . I felt something.”

  There was a beat of silence as the words registered, and then triumph surged through Joros. “Felt what?”

  “I . . . I don’t know. It felt like . . .” He reached a hand out toward the bier but stopped short, fingers curling like he’d touched something faintly slimy. “. . . like what’s in there.”

  Joros almost laughed. His hands tightened on Anddyr’s shoulders, a moment of shared victory. “Where is it? Can you take us there?”

  Anddyr flinched, trying to twist away like a worm, and Joros tightened his fingers further as the joy began to slip away. “I only felt it,” Anddyr murmured. “It . . . it scared me. Surprised me. I couldn’t . . .” He whimpered and tried to twist away again.

  “Go back!” Joros threw the mage against the bier, drawing a yelp as Anddyr’s face scraped against the stone. Joros’s hands were like claws as he pressed Anddyr’s palms to the bier, and he heard the sniveling mage begin to cry. “Find it again.” Anddyr wailed and struggled for a moment, and then his mind fled away in the manner of his searching. With an effort, Joros released the man, making sure his stickish body remained draped over the stone box. He paced restlessly, hands clutching air at his sides, glaring often at Anddyr’s unmoving back.

  Finally Anddyr twitched, shifted, slid down to the floor. Joros rounded on him, grabbing him by the neck and shoving him against the bier again. The mage didn’t seem to notice; he was grinning wildly, and he crowed, “The North! It’s in the North!”

  Joros’s hand didn’t loosen from around the mage’s throat. “The North?” he repeated slowly, softly—and then with more incredulity: “The North? Do you have any fecking clue how big the North is?” With Anddyr held immobile between his hand and the stone box, Joros’s fist connected solidly with the side of the mage’s head. He let the mage fall to the floor, and when he didn’t answer with a spout of flame, Joros aimed a kick at his stomach. The mage curled into a ball, but that didn’t stop Joros’s booted feet or balled fists. Joros vented his anger on the useless fool, spitting curses, until his breath came short and his hands ached. Anddyr lay whimpering and muttering, always muttering, and showed no signs of being any kind of danger to Joros.

  “Get up,” Joros snarled, all his disgust returned thrice over, “and find me something useful.”

  Slowly Anddyr drew himself up to his knees and pressed his shaking hands against the stone. The fingers of one hand were bent unnaturally, and his nose was swollen, leaking a steady stream of blood. The mage was wise enough not to utter a sound of complaint, and sent his magic out once more.

  Joros stood panting, his limbs slowly relaxing, bloody-knuckled hands uncurling. The feeling of triumph gradually returned to stretch his lips into a smile. He was getting closer.

  CHAPTER 12

  They slept in an alley just off the West Market, behind a quiet baker’s shop . . . or at least Aro slept. Rora couldn’t get her eyes to close, couldn’t pull them off the bright dagger, the blue jewel that looked like it was full of its own light. The knife was exactly as long as her forearm, from fingertips to elbow, like a smith had measured it just for her.

 
; By the time the sun poked its fingers into the alley, Rora had scrubbed away every last spot of Nadaro’s blood off the knife, using the edge of her shirt and then scraping with her thumbnail, once the blood got dried on. It was bright and shiny and beautiful, glowing in the sunlight, and it made her glow, too.

  Aro didn’t ask what’d happened. Must’ve been something in her face that told him he didn’t want to know. He just rubbed a hand under his runny nose and asked, “What’re we gonna do now?”

  Rora’d been thinking about that, too, through the night. She had a few things she’d filched from Nadaro’s house, enough to sell for them to live on for a while, but that came with its own set of problems. They couldn’t stay topside, not unless she found them somewhere safe. That meant buying a room somewhere, which would keep them safe and cozy for a little while until she ran out of things to sell, or holing up somewhere secret, which was free enough but it meant dodging guards and biggers and anyone else who’d chase them back down to the Canals. Maybe they looked it now, and Kala’d argued it half a hundred times, but Rora knew in her heart that they didn’t belong topside. They were Scum, clear and simple. Sure, they could probably pass off as topsiders for a while, but in the end, they’d wind up right back in the Canals, and worse off for having sold all their stolen valuables. So it was better to skip to the end, and find some advantage to it.

  “We’re going back down,” she said decisively. Aro’s face fell, but he didn’t argue. It seemed like he’d learned his lesson about not listening to her. That was good. It’d make everything easier. She stood up and brushed the dirt from her clothes, rubbed some dirt in Aro’s stubby hair to make it lighter, and then held on to the long knife for a bit, thinking. She wasn’t about to leave it behind, but she couldn’t really walk around just carrying it. Finally she ripped off some cloth from a stolen cloak that was too long for her or Aro anyway, and wrapped it around and around the blade. It wasn’t near as good as a proper sheath, but it would keep the sharp edges away. She tied her belt off below the knife’s hilt, stuffed the knife down the inside of her pants, hanging alongside her right leg, and looped the belt around her hips. It’d have to do.