In the Shadow of the Gods

by Rachel Dunne

  It was everything he’d expected: a dozen quiet travelers mostly sitting apart from each other and nursing mugs or plates of food, a roasting lamb spitted over the hearthfire, a pretty but sour-faced woman bustling about and showing no reaction to suggestive gibes or roaming hands, all watched over by a barman with an honest face and hard eyes. It was the same sort of inn that existed at every dusty crossroads across the realm, straight down to the hard-on-their-luck mercenaries eyeing his merchant’s robes, and a musician glumly plucking at a lute near the fire. Truly, the world hadn’t changed in Joros’s absence from it. Some things simply were that way, as constant and unchanging as the sun in the sky.

  Joros chose a table where he could overhear a few different murmured conversations and keep an eye on the mercenaries, and told the sullen maiden to bring him food and wine. There was no telling how long Anddyr would be out with the horse; the mage could find his own food if he took too long. Joros could only do so much to care for the man.

  There was talk of bandits to the north, of increased killings in Mercetta, of a lake near Fozena mysteriously going dry. The food was good; warm and filling, which was all he had come to expect from roadside taverns. Altogether, it was nothing too enthralling . . . and yet, somehow, Joros didn’t notice the hooded man until he already stood before the table.

  “Cappo Joros.” The man’s voice was a deep rumble, sounding like rocks scraping together inside that hood. “Apostate. You have stolen something that is not yours to take.” There was a faint flash, fire off metal as the tip of a knife poked from the man’s sleeve. “The shadows have come to claim you.”

  Joros would later tell himself that it had been quick thinking that saved his life, but truly, it was the hooded man’s stupidity in giving him a moment’s warning combined with a surge of raw panic that made him throw his goblet of wine. The goblet grazed the hooded man’s shoulder, spilling wine down the side of his robe. It did no lasting damage, but the man was as surprised by it as Joros himself was. In the moment of shared confusion, Joros had time to scramble out of his chair and wrap his fingers around the hilt of his shortsword, and then the hooded man leaped forward.

  Joros backed into another table, scrambled sideways amid the surprised curses of the table’s occupants as a very sharp knife upset their cups. That was enough time for Joros to pull his sword free, and that got the attention of the rest of the inn.

  “Hey now!” the barman called, voice ringing and stern. “I won’t have none of that in here. Take it outside, lads.”

  The hooded man ignored him completely, cat-stepping toward Joros, the tip of his knife drawing patterns in the air like Anddyr’s sigils. Joros stepped with him, his sword’s length keeping the man at bay. Joros would be the first to admit he was a poor fighter; he’d never had the time to properly learn, and anyway he had the luxury of employing others to do his fighting for him. But he could swing a blade well enough when he had to—and with his blasted mage nowhere in sight, it seemed as though he had to.

  “He’s a fecking preacher,” someone spat, and there were disapproving murmurs all around. Frightening words, at first, until Joros remembered he’d traded in his black robes. This would-be assassin hadn’t had the same forethought. For the briefest moment, Joros hoped the crowd would do his work for him—drag down the hooded man and pummel him bloody for the crime of wearing black.

  “Betrayer,” the hooded man growled at Joros, loud enough for all the others to hear, and the rising tide of righteous anger flattened out to encompass both of them. There’d be no help from any of them.

  “How did you find me?” Joros demanded, stalling, hoping Anddyr would amble in any moment.

  The hooded man laughed. “You should know there’s nowhere left to hide in this world.” It was true enough; the shadowseekers were highly trained, thanks in part to Joros himself, able to track down a mark better than a hunting hound. Joros hadn’t even considered he might have been marked.

  “Who sent you, then?” Circling carefully, Joros got a table between himself and the hooded man. “Whatever they told you is a lie. I’m on important business for the Ventallo—for all the Fallen. You’ll regret getting in my way.”

  It didn’t give the hooded man pause. “Betrayer,” he said again. He grabbed the edge of the table between them, gave it a sharp shove so it caught Joros’s thigh, then flipped the whole thing toward him. Cursing, Joros scrabbled backward, though not quickly enough—the table’s edge bit at him again, crashing down onto his foot with the crunch of small bones breaking. He twisted away to avoid the knife that followed the table down, ignored the pain as he tugged his foot from beneath the table, and got the length of his sword between himself and the hooded man again.

  There was no room in Joros’s life for hesitation; that was doubly true on the road. His mage was missing, and there were no friendly faces around. As far as the inn’s patrons were concerned, one less Twin-worshiper was no bad thing, no matter which one of them lost. It made things simple. Joros was going to have to kill the hooded man.

  Joros lunged forward, his sword leading him. It missed the hooded man’s stomach, and Joros had to twist to avoid the swinging knife. He stumbled into a chair, hooked his crushed foot around the rungs, and let the pain leave him in a shout as he kicked the chair toward the hooded man. It hit squarely against one of the man’s legs and Joros brought his sword swinging up and then down with both hands, aiming for the corner where the man’s neck met shoulder beneath that hood. Somehow, the man got his knife up in time, Joros’s sword skittering down the blade and the man’s arm; he at least took some flesh with that deflection, the hooded man bellowing with pain. But Joros was left off balance, his bad foot crumpling beneath the weight, and the hooded man’s pain seemed to lend him strength. His left fist landed against Joros’s ribs and sent him sprawling to the floor of the inn.

  That was how it should have ended: with the hooded man falling onto Joros and plunging the knife into his heart, letting poor Joros’s blood empty onto the inn’s dirty floor. Instead it ended with a flash and searing heat, the hooded man screaming as he fell burning on top of Joros, his knife plunging by some fluke into Joros’s shoulder. The knife wound, combined with the man’s flaming arm pressed against Joros’s neck and the side of his face, were enough to tear a scream from Joros’s throat. Pain could lend him strength, too, it seemed, and he managed to heave the hooded man’s form off. The man was screaming still, writhing, though the flames were flickering out on his red flesh. There was no hood left to him, not that Joros could have recognized the ruin of his face anyway. The flames faded, but the trails they had left did not.

  Breathing heavily, clamping down his pain, Joros yanked the knife from his shoulder and gave it a better home—namely, the burned man’s heart. “Bastard,” Joros muttered.

  The inn was silent, some eyes fixed on the dead man, some on Joros, but most on Anddyr, standing in the doorway with his face painted in horror and shock and disgust as he stared at his own hands. “I didn’t mean to . . . I only wanted to stun him . . .”

  Joros’s vision was swimming, going black at the edges, and it felt like the side of his face was still afire. He’d never had much cause to deal with such injury before, but he knew that unconsciousness would claim him soon; there was one last thing he had to do first. His left hand wouldn’t cooperate—the knife must have nicked something in his shoulder, and his right hand shook so badly it was almost useless, but he methodically emptied all his pockets there on the floor of the inn where he sat bleeding and burned. The only seekstones were his own, all keyed to others, and there was nothing else suspicious he’d carried with him from Raturo . . .

  His shaking hand found the cord around his neck. Over thirteen years, he’d grown so used to the weight of a key against his chest that he never thought of it. Never suspected the keys to the Ventallo’s numbered chambers might be anything besides keys. No matter how he squinted at it, his blurring eyes couldn’t make out anything suspect; but it was a thick ke
y, thick enough it could have been shaped around a seekstone long, long ago.

  It scraped against the burns on his neck, but Joros yanked at the key until the cord snapped. He tossed it, hoped it landed near Anddyr’s feet. “Destroy that,” he croaked, and then he finally let the pain pull him down.

  CHAPTER 20

  Rora watched the bodies come in and felt sick to her stomach. It never failed. She’d been surprised, the first time the dead had been brought back, that Tare hadn’t laughed at her. There was no room in Tare for weakness, but she’d put her hand on Rora’s shoulder and looked at her with serious eyes and not said a word.

  It was like that with all of them. Rora hadn’t learned that until Tare had given her her own little alcove in the knifeden. Tare’d told her it was so she wouldn’t feel so alone, with Aro always holed up with the Dogshead. She’d seen how every one of the knives came back quiet after a contract, not talking, not looking at anyone. She’d seen how no one ever asked any questions. There’d only been one, a new knife come over from the Serpents, who’d bragged about his contract, eyes glowing as he laughed at how the woman had begged for her life and shit herself as he cut her throat. He’d wound up with his own throat cut, not long after. Goat or Tare didn’t even ask who’d done it. The only thing Tare’d ever said about it was “You don’t talk about contracts. Ever.” By then, Rora’d already known that.

  The fists were all quiet, walking in with their arms full of the dead to lay ’em down in front of Garim. The face looked at each of them, the men he’d sent out to die without knowing it. Five and five and five had gone out, and they’d all come back, even though most of ’em were carried back. You didn’t leave a brother behind. Five and four, lying at Garim’s feet with their eyes staring up at the grimy walls. Five and one, kneeling there covered in blood, with their faces hard as stone.

  It was harder to look at death when your own hands were so good at bringing it.

  The whole den was quiet as night, until Garim, with his voice like a rock dropping in water, asked, “What happened?”

  “Blackhands,” one of the fists said. A low growl went through the den. They’d all figured that out by now, but it was something that needed to be said anyway. You had to give a name to a thing, to hate it right. “Caught us topside. Twice as many of ’em, like they knew we’d be there. We got back below, but there were even more waiting. All we could do was run.” And pick up the dead as you ran. “They stopped chasing once we got across the Teeth.”

  “We’ll get revenge for them,” Garim promised as he looked at each of the dead fists again, like he was fixing each of their faces in his mind. His hand made a small motion, and Aro slipped away out of the shadows. He’d report it all to the Dogshead so she could start planning while Garim took care of the pack. “We’ll give them the proper rites, too. Gods know they’ve earned it.”

  A long time ago, when she and Aro’d had a roof over their heads and a real dirt floor to sleep on and a place to feel safe, there’d been a woman named Kala who’d said, “Do you know why they’re called Scum?” She’d always been trying to tell them how bad it was everywhere but topside, like they didn’t already know it. Like she thought they’d choose to go back there. “Whenever someone dies in the Canals, they send the dead bodies floating on the water, and eventually they rot and turn green.” Sometimes Rora wished she could go back and tell Kala all the things she’d been wrong about, but Rora wished a lot of things that weren’t ever going to happen.

  They did what they could for rafts, but it was hard with so many. You could only fit two across at the narrow points, and there wasn’t much spare wood lying around to make the rafts too special. “It’s the doing that counts,” Garim kept saying, and he was right, at least. He tried to make them go rest, the five and one who’d brought the others back, but they just said his words back at him: “It’s the doing that counts.” So they got four others, mostly other fists who’d known the dead, and they fitted some of the pups out with long sticks that took two of ’em to hold, so anyone could see the white hank of cloth tied to the top with a big circle painted on it in blood. Not even the Blackhands would go against the death flag.

  As much of the pack as could went along, though some had to stay back to guard the den. No one would cross the death flag, but the flag wasn’t hanging in the den. Rora thought about staying back, but Tare touched her elbow, flicked her eyes. She saw Aro, saw how he was careful not to look at a hunchbacked woman wearing a deep-hooded cloak and walking with a limp, shuffling along with the rest of the pack. It didn’t surprise her too much, when she thought about it. Of course the Dogshead would want to be there to send her dead off.

  Some of the pups with flags led the way, slipping on stones, leaping across the canals because they were still kids, even with death around. Then it was the fists with ropes over their shoulders, five on each side of the canal, towing the rafts down the center. Everyone else came behind, no order to it except for Tare and Rora and a handful of other knives who kept a careful distance around the disguised Sharra. They’d never talk about it later, but she knew all the knives’d all be thinking the same thing: how it was good to have something to do, instead of just thinking how busy their nights were going to be with killing. It was harder to look forward to revenge when you were the one bringing it.

  All the canals of Mercetta flowed into the Sinkhole. It’d been there as long as anyone could remember, and it was why the Canals’d been abandoned and left for the drifting poor to claim. The water kept pouring in from Lake Baridi, but it always found its way to the Sinkhole, and no one knew where it went from there. All the Scum-made paths ended in jagged stumps where the Sinkhole’d opened up its mouth and swallowed anything in its way, and the roar of the pouring water was louder’n in the Dogshead’s waterfall room.

  Garim was up at the front, and Rora could see his mouth moving. He’d be reciting prayers to the Parents, probably, asking them to hold tight to the souls of their dead, or talking about the good each of them had done. Only the fists at the front, straining to hold the ropes against the pull of the Sinkhole, would be able to hear him, but it was the doing that counted. When he was done talking he stepped back, and the first set of fists let go of their ropes.

  The raft rushed forward and was gone over the edge even before the fists’ arms had dropped back to their sides. Garim watched it go over with a hard face, watched the first two dead disappear. Rora knew there were some faces he’d never forget. The next two fists let go, and the next. Rora couldn’t make out much under Sharra’s hood, but she could see tears on the Dogshead’s cheek. The next raft went, and Tare crossed her arms in front of her waist, her hands resting on the pommels of her two knives. They’d both be helping with the revenge Garim had talked about. Then the last raft, with just the one man, the last of the day’s dead, but Rora knew he wouldn’t be the last by far. Wherever the Sinkhole took the dead Scum, she knew there’d be plenty more to join them before too long.

  They stayed awhile, some crying, some with faces that would’ve put real fear into any Blackhands. But the hand signs rippled up, Sharra to Tare and all the way up to Garim, who talked some more to the fists who could hear him. They turned eventually, the five and five, and the rest of the pack turned with ’em. The death flags swung around crazily as the pups tried to work their way to the new front of the group, to lead the way back home.

  It hadn’t been war before, not yet. But you’d have to be dumb, if you didn’t think it was now.

  Hanging by her fingertips from a windowsill three stories above an alley that smelled like piss and death, battered by a wind that was the very essence of rotting fish, Rora wondered if it was too late to reevaluate her life choices. She knew, though, as she twisted to bring one bare foot—boots left in the alley below, probably being chewed on by rats by now—up onto the sill, that the time for changing her mind had long passed. There was killing to do.

  “There’s a man,” Goat had told her earlier. “He sells meat to the Bla
ckhands. They can live on bread for a while.”

  Rora didn’t know the Dogshead’s plan, no one did except Garim and maybe Tare, but it was a longer game than Rora’d expected. You couldn’t just march into Blackhands territory with fists and knives and hope to win, of course. That wasn’t how Scum fought. “Sneaks and cheats,” Kala’d said, “there’s not a single decent person in the Canals.” Still, Rora’d expected something more than killing a butcher. A butcher who wasn’t even Scum, who wouldn’t even know why he was dying. It didn’t feel like revenge.

  It sometimes felt to Rora—and she usually thought about it most on contract nights, when life and death were balanced like a coin spinning in the air—that there was a string stretching out in front of and behind her, guiding her along through her life on some path she couldn’t see until it was already behind her. It all made so much sense then, everything falling perfectly into place. So very convenient, and she hated things that came out too easy. It usually meant there was a twist down the way, something bad lurking just around the next corner. Sure, maybe she could’ve changed her mind a long time ago, before Nadaro, before Whitedog Pack, before Tare had sent her out on her first contract, but it was too late now, she was too wrapped up in it all. There was nothing to do but let the string tug her forward.

  There came a time, every contract night, without fail, when she thought about turning around, leaving it all behind, taking her life in her own hands. Sticking to the windowsill by sheer stubbornness alone, with one foot dangling in open air as the reeking wind pushed at her, that was when the thought hit her this night. It was easier to swing down than lever the rest of her body up, after all. The coin was still spinning.

  With a practiced move, she pushed off with her one foot and grabbed on to the upper edge of the window frame, bringing her other foot up onto the sill and clinging there like a squirrel. It was lucky she was so small, Tare’d told her so often—it made sneaking that much easier. Gritting her teeth and silently mouthing the same curses she always sent toward Tare on contract nights, Rora let go with one hand and fished around inside her vest till she found her kit and the slim hook inside it. She stuck it between the shutters, found the catch, worked it carefully upward, and then began slowly pulling the far-side shutter open. Must’ve been oiled recently; it didn’t squeak or make any sound. She liked working North and East Quarters, they always kept things nice and maintained, even in the fish-reeking Iceblood District on the shores of Lake Baridi.