Glancing back up, he watched the girl make a dismissive, shooing motion at him. What had he done so wrong to irritate the girl? Though they had not known each other well back at the school, neither had there been animosity between them.
His face reddened as he found himself obeying her silent command. He backed toward the door. Her eyes followed him. Across the hall, matters of the realm were quickly settled, and Lord Jessup stood, signaling the gathering at an end.
Happy to be freed from his obligations here, Brant edged out the door and back into the High Wing of the castillion. He closed the way and muffled the low cacophony of the voices inside. He suspected it would be another full bell before the gathering would truly disband. It was seldom that a god-realm had the privilege of Tashijan’s second-highest-ranking personage in attendance.
Alone, Brant turned to the empty hall.
Before he could take a step, his skin prickled. He tensed, going dead still. As out in the forest, he sensed something near, unseen, hunting him. He even heard a growl inside his head, an echo of the Fell wolf’s hungry warning.
What could-?
Brant’s chest suddenly burst with a searing fire. A silent cry burned from his lips as he fell to his knees. One hand ripped at the hooks and strings of his shirt, tearing to his woolens, fighting for the source of the flame. He yanked on the twisted leather thong around his neck, tugging free what hung from it. It was the only piece of home he had carried out from the misty jungles of Saysh Mal.
The black stone fell free, glassy and iridescent.
Brant knew it was the source of the fire. The stone had burned like this once before. It was one of the reasons why he still kept it near.
He stretched the talisman as far from his body as the corded braid around his neck would allow. The stone appeared no different than before, drilled through the middle and threaded with the leather cord.
With his other hand, he hauled his woolens lower, expecting to see a ruin of blistered and charred flesh. But the skin of his chest was smooth and unblemished.
Still on his knees, holding the stone aloft, Brant lowered his palm to the floor, leaning his weight. He blinked away tears, breathing heavily.
It was over. He knew if he touched the stone it would be cold again.
As he pondered the mystery, a creature flickered into existence before him-almost nose to nose with him on the floor. It sniffed at the outstretched stone, setting the talisman to wobbling on its braid.
Brant froze.
The daemon stood knee-high, flowing in molten bronze, half wolf, half lion, spiked at collar and hackle, black jeweled eyes lit by inner fires, maw lapping with flame, fangs forging and melting in a continuing eruption of savage barbs.
Its eyes stared into his for a half breath; then it pulled back-and vanished.
Released from the spell, Brant jerked like a snapped bowstring, falling on his rear and scuttling away like a crab on hot sand. But the beast was gone. He searched around. Nothing. Shaking, he forced himself to settle his center. Muffled laughter and conversation arose from the room behind him.
As he sat, he sensed a vague lessening of pressure inside his skull, something receding. Then in a moment, nothing.
Slowly he gained his feet, only now noting how his left fist clutched the black stone. It had indeed gone cold. He opened his palm and stared down. Had the stone somehow conjured the daemon and again banished it?
As he began to tuck the stone away, the door creaked open behind him. His free hand went for his knife.
But it was a familiar figure, a page cloaked in black.
Before Dart could say a word, a call reached them both, arising from Kathryn ser Vail. The Tashijan party was departing.
Dart glanced over her shoulder, back into the room. She retreated toward the castellan, but not before her blue eyes latched upon him again. She bowed her head as if they had just agreed to something.
A secret between them.
Then she also vanished, closing the door with a snap.
Brant remembered the word she had whispered with such urgency when first caught creeping into the High Wing.
As if she had been searching for something.
Pupp…
And the strange shooing motion at him a moment ago.
Had she been warding him away-or someone else?
Brant stared at the stone in his palm. Two stones had led him to this moment. One had been pressed into his palm by Lord Jessup’s Oracle, selecting him to serve in the god’s household. But before that, another god had gifted him with another stone, the one that hung around his neck.
Was this one also a call to serve?
He pictured the fiery figure on the jungle path, crumbling in flames and rolling the stone to his toes. What did a rogue god of the hinterland need from a lone boy out of Saysh Mal?
Brant tucked the cursed stone away.
To root out that answer would take a great hunter.
But at long last, Brant had finally found his first trail marker.
He pictured the girl’s blue eyes and mumbled a name to the empty hall, full of promise as much as curiosity. “Pupp.”
A REGENT IN BLOOD
Cloaked in black, Tylar Ser Noche waited on the docks. The stars shone and the greater moon had set. It was the darkest point of the night, when both moons were gone and the sun remained only a rumor. It was also the coldest part of the night. Ice crusted the edges of the sludge canal and made the planks of the ironwood dock treacherous underfoot.
His party had been waiting for a full turn of a bell. All were buried in woolens, furred boots, and heavy cloaks. Their breath steamed the air.
“Perhaps he won’t come,” Delia whispered through a scarf about her mouth. She stood close, a head shorter and a decade younger, wrapped in an oiled black cloak lined with fox fur, its hood fringed in snowy ermine, a perfect complement to her pale skin and exacting contrast to her shadow-dark hair. The only color about her rose from the shine of her eyes, a warm hazel, green-tinged in the torchlight. “Or perhaps the letter was a forgery, one meant to lure us where there are few witnesses.”
“It was no forgery,” Tylar assured her.
The missive had arrived a fortnight ago, urging secrecy. It had been coded properly and signed with the proper sigil.
Ancient Littick for thief.
Tylar had first seen the same sigil branded on the letter-writer’s buttock. Plus a few telltale drops, richly crimson, had stained the white parchment. Not blood. Wine. Testament enough to the verity of the letter’s author.
“Rogger was never one to mind the precise ringing of a bell,” Tylar said, urging patience with a slim smile.
“Let’s hope he was precise enough about the turning of the day, then,” Sergeant Kyllan said, stamping his boots to warm his toes. The master of Chrismferry’s garrison did not like this moonless rendezvous. He scratched the tortured scar across his left cheek, scowling slightly. Kyllan had refused to allow Tylar to cross the city alone, especially in the middle of the night. There were still many who wanted Tylar dead.
And the numbers were growing daily as this endless winter stretched on. Rumbles and rumors spread through alehouses and wenchworks of a curse upon his regency. Though Tylar had slain the daemon that had attempted to usurp the god-realm of Chrismferry, the city’s gratitude was as short-lived as a bloom after the first frost. And as winter’s hardships grew, it seemed even the change of seasons had become the responsibility of the city’s new regent, a mantle Tylar wore with ill comfort.
For Tylar’s security, Kyllan had ordered ten of the garrison’s pikemen to accompany him on this dark journey across the city. But Tylar suspected it was an unnecessary escort. He had more than enough protection from the party’s one other member.
Wyr-mistress Eylan stood at the foot of the docks, dressed in deerskins and fur, a sword in hand, a half ax at her waist. Her cloak had a hood, but she did not bother pulling it up, seemingly impervious to the frigid breeze that swept up the crumb
ling canal from the distant Tigre River. Her skin glowed with a flushed ruddiness, a shade darker than her tanned leathers. Her black hair trailed to mid-back in a thick braid, decorated with three raven feathers.
She seemed to note his attention, glancing over to him, appraising him coldly, then looking away again.
Bound by an oath, Eylan seldom strayed far from Tylar’s side, not so much in concern for his safety as to protect a debt sworn to her lord. A year ago, Tylar had promised his seed in trade for his life and the lives of his companions, a humour of significant Grace that Wyr-lord Bennifren intended for the forges of his Black Alchemists. Tylar was determined to avoid paying that debt for as long as possible, preferably forever.
’Til then, he had gained, in Eylan, a second shadow.
Tylar returned his attention to the stagnant canal.
Nearby, a small single-sailed trawler, long abandoned, lay stripped and on its side, half-beached, hull burst, locked in ice. Tylar was surprised to find it here. The long winter had taxed the city of Chrismferry, especially the underfolk too poor for the rising cost of coal and wood. Scavenging had become commonplace. The planking of the old trawler would heat a hearth for a good turn of the moon. Yet here it remained, untouched.
Of course, here was the heart of the Blight, one of several sections of the great city long gone to seed, as abandoned and broken as the old trawler. Chrismferry spread across both sides of the Tigre River. Founded four millennia ago, it was the oldest and greatest of all the cities of the Nine Lands of Myrillia. It would take a man on a horse two days to cross from one end of the city to the other. The world was the city, the city was the world. Such was said about the first city of Myrillia.
But if true, what did the Blight signify?
The city seemed to be decaying from the inside. The borders continued to extend along the Tigre River and out into the surrounding plains, but in the past centuries, sections of the inner city had fallen into ruin. Canals filled with silt, houses fell under the rotted weight of their roofs, cobbled streets were stripped of stones, leaving only muddy, pitted tracks that daunted all manner of wheel. Soon the only inhabitants of the Blight were those seeking to lose themselves, but even these low dwellers seldom stayed long. Easier prospects could be found at the edges of the city.
Why did Rogger insist on returning to the city under such strange circumstances? The former thief had left Chrismferry a year ago under the guise of a pilgrim, to discern what he could of the state of the Nine Lands and to seek any thread or crumb about the Cabal. Since Tylar had freed the city, nothing more had been learned about the faction of naethryn-the daemonic undergods of Myrillia-who sought to kindle a new War of the Gods. Nothing until Rogger’s cryptic letter had arrived by raven. What had the thief learned that required such a dark place to meet?
The answer was not long in coming.
From the depths of the canal, a tall black fin split the waters and rose, steaming, into the frigid air. The bulk of the underwater vessel splintered ice as it surfaced, one of Tangle Reef’s undersea crafts. It appeared like a small wooden whale, fueled by the blood of Fyla, the god of the watery Reef.
A hatch behind the wood fin pushed open and was thrown back by an arm scarred by branded sigils. The owner of those brands climbed out next and balanced on the wet back of the vessel. Tylar stepped forward, recognizing his old friend. But it seemed Rogger’s time abroad had wrought ill changes in him. His scraggled red-gray beard framed a face gone gaunt. Bony cheekbones poked from beneath green eyes, his lips were cracked and split, and his skin shone with a yellowish tinge. Tylar prayed this last was just the reflected sheen of the flickering torchlight.
Rogger shivered and huffed into the night. “Curse me black, it’s cold enough to freeze my arse cheeks together.”
Tylar lifted an arm in welcome.
But Rogger ignored him and bent back to the open hatch and called below. “Oy, careful with that, you overgrown dogfish.”
Another figure, scowling sourly, half-climbed up through the hatch and hauled up a roughspun satchel. He passed it to Rogger, who swung it over a shoulder.
“Much obliged, Kreel,” the thief said.
At the hatch, Tylar recognized the leader of Fyla’s elite Hunters. There was no mistaking his fishbelly pallor, his smooth skin, and the throat lined by gill flaps. Like all the denizens of Tangle Reef, Kreel had been forged in his mother’s womb by an alchemy of Graces. Kreel’s presence concerned Tylar. What was so important that the god Fyla would send her personal bodyguard to deliver Rogger safely here?
Kreel’s gaze settled on Tylar. The man’s eyes, usually stoic and cold, flashed with a mix of worry and relief, as if glad to be rid of Rogger…and whatever burden his presence entailed.
Without even a nod, Kreel dropped away and hauled the hatch closed after him. Rogger barely had time to leap to the dock before the watercraft sank under him. The tall fin slipped back beneath the dark waters.
On the dock, Rogger joined them, looking rangier than ever. He bowed deeply toward Delia and took her hand, kissing it with exaggerated pomp. “Ah, to allow my unworthy lips to grace the knuckles of the regent’s Hand of blood.”
Delia shook her head as he rose, but she still hugged him warmly. “I missed you,” she said in his ear.
“Truly?” He feigned shock. “And I thought I had experienced all manner of miracles during my pilgrimage. But this is indeed the most wondrous of all.”
Tylar gripped him next, by the hand, then in a full embrace. Tylar was surprised by how glad he was to have the man at his side again. It was as if a missing limb, long gone, had returned. But Tylar also noted how wasted of frame his friend had become; the embrace was like hugging a stack of bones. Concerned, Tylar broke the contact.
Rogger quietly shook his head, silencing the question on Tylar’s lips.
Tylar read something behind the usual amused warmth, something dark with dread.
“We need a place to speak in private,” Rogger said, shedding his easy banter and glancing warily around him.
“We are far from the castillion,” Tylar said. “It will take us the better part of a bell to return.”
“I’d as soon unload what I must now.” Rogger nodded toward an old shipwright’s shop turned crow loft, windowless, with windblown refuse for a door.
Rogger strode off down the dock toward it, drawing Tylar after him. He kicked his way inside, scattering a few nesting rats. Tylar collected a torch from one of the pikemen and waved Kyllan and Eylan to stand guard.
Delia made to follow them, but Rogger held up a hand. “Only Tylar for now,” he said apologetically.
Frowning, Tylar climbed into the dilapidated shop after the thief. Rogger marched them past the front entry room, through a narrow hall, and into the wright’s workspace. It was empty and stripped, except for the broken-keeled frame of some abandoned project. Wings flapped up in the open rafters. The hay roof had long rotted away, leaving only the old ribbed joists. Between the beams, a few stars glinted down at them.
Tylar propped his torch between two boards. “What’s this all about, Rogger? Why all the secrecy?”
Rogger turned and shrugged off his satchel. Judging by the sag in the cloth, only one object weighted down the bag. Rogger hefted it in his palm and deftly fingered the satchel’s knot. Once it was undone, he shook the satchel, shedding the cloth and revealing the content within.
Tylar caught the whiff of black bile.
Rogger noted the crinkle of his nose. “Needed to shield it with bloodnuller shite,” the former thief said, confirming Tylar’s thought.
All the various humours of a god bore special Graces, but black bile, the excremental humour of a god, nullified any blessing. Why such a ward here? Tylar also noted how Rogger was careful never to allow what he bore to touch his bare skin.
“What is the meaning of this?” Tylar finally asked, brows pinched as he examined the strange talisman, the yellowed skull of some beast.
Empty bony sockets st
ared back at him.
The skull was missing its lower jaw and most of its teeth-except for two prominent fangs, glinting silver. It looked like some beast, except that the brow rose too high.
Tylar’s lips settled into a sneer of distaste.
This was no animal’s skull.
Tylar met Rogger’s eyes over the crown of the skull. “Is it an ilk-beast?” he asked.
Though the Battle of Myrrwood was a year old, city patrols still rooted out the occasional ilk-beast. The poor creatures had once been men, but had been forged by Black Graces into daemons.
“Aye,” Rogger said, “you are right to recognize the taint of Dark Graces, of a form twisted and corrupted.”
Tylar read the unspoken behind Rogger’s words. “But what?”
Rogger bent down to the ground and gathered a pinch of windblown dirt from the floor. Rising with a stifled groan, he sifted the dirt over the crown of the skull. Where the particles touched bone, tiny spats of fire erupted. Rogger lifted the skull and blew upon it, dusting off the dirt and thus dousing the flames.
Tylar’s eyes widened at the demonstration. The very soil of this land burned the bone. The implication iced through Tylar’s veins. Chrismferry was a settled land, imbued with the blood of the god Chrism. And like all other god-realms, its soil was a bane against the trespass of all other gods.
“It was no man that was corrupted here,” Tylar mumbled, watching the last of the flames waft away.
Rogger nodded, confirming his worst fear. “It’s the skull of a god .”
Tylar fed a broken chair leg to the crackling fire that now burned in the center of the shipwright’s workshop. Rogger had returned the skull to his satchel and carried it over his shoulder, keeping it from touching the ground. Even though the skull was coated in black bile, they dared not let it come in contact with the land here.
To the side, Delia warmed her fingers over the fire’s flames. At Tylar’s bidding, she had joined them in the shop. The three gathered around the fire. The others kept guard out in the streets.
Delia stared at Rogger’s shouldered satchel. “The skull must have come from one of the rogue gods out in the hinterlands,” she said.
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