Stranger Rituals

by Kali Rose Schmidt

  Scarko said nothing, but tried to breathe through the vice-like pain along her temple.

  “And where, exactly, are you going?” His eyes roamed over her prone body, and she tensed. The pain subsided in her head, but she could not move her hands. “The Order of Saints…interesting.”

  He had seen her cloak beneath her outer coat. But very few knew much of anything about the Order. Even the Missionaries took care to dress differently in their spy games, and no Warskian who breached the perimeter of the Vrakan castle lived to return back to the king.

  The horned man took another step toward her. She tried to fight against the pain in her hands, gritted her teeth, and tried to reach for her knife, but it was like moving her hands through bone-searing flames.

  “Ah, ah, ah. I wouldn’t try to fight it if I were you.” His voice was nearly seductive.

  He was standing above her, then he crouched before her, taking her knife in one swift, possessive gesture. He turned it over, examined the crimson handle.

  “You know, Vraka, you should be careful what manner of dark magic you use here in the forest.” He glanced towards the wolf carcass. “You could’ve drawn out worse than me.”

  She huffed a laugh. “Dark magic?” Her throat was dry with fear and pain, but she managed the words.

  He arched a brow. “Your innate gift, too? Interesting,” he said the word again.

  “What do you know of bone magic?” She spat the words out.

  He flipped the crimson knife again, staring at it with furrowed brows.

  “More than you, I’d wager.” He carefully caught the knife by the blade and surprisingly, he offered it to her, hilt-first.

  The pain disappeared from her palms. She made to snatch the knife with a bloodied hand, but he caught her wrist, keeping the knife just out of her grip. Her breath caught, and she tried to yank away from him, but he held firm. He flipped her hand over, she saw stars and swords etched in ink along his own hands, one still holding her knife. He ran a bare finger along the blood on her palm, and nothing happened. It did not burn him, did not make him so much as flinch. But Vojtech…Vojtech, too, was unaffected by her blood.

  Fear gave way to anger, and she yanked her hand back. This time, he let her.

  He smiled, his blue and silver eyes on his hand as he examined her blood on his finger. “You’re a mess, princess.” But he didn’t wipe the blood away.

  Instead, he smiled coldly. “You’re welcome.” He tossed the knife to her and she caught it, and then he turned, as if to leave. But he glanced back over his shoulder. “The Djavul is a nasty, nasty creature. But when the gods speak, you should probably listen.”

  Before she could think of a retort, he vanished. There one minute, gone the next.

  She whirled around wildly, but there was only the forest, the bodies of the Warskians, the Penza to her north.

  He was truly gone.

  She blinked.

  Had she imagined it? Was this even…real? She remembered going into this forest before with Vojtech, taking syn, the hallucinations that followed.

  But she had not touched the mushrooms.

  Blood pooled in her palm, but she smeared it onto the stiff wolf, then backed away from the creature with fear. Had the dead wolf called to the man? What in the thirteen hells was he? Like Vojtech? But he had never mentioned others like him.

  She spun around again, taking in every inch of the forest. But the man was gone. The Warskian Royals were out of earshot. She was alone again.

  She took deep breaths, in through her nose, out through her mouth. Fear hadn’t quite left her, and she wanted to turn back, to run to Vojtech.

  But she could not return to the Order yet, not until she had completed this bloody, stupid task. He was counting on her. She sighed, approaching the wolf gingerly.

  She mounted him, wiping her blood along his fur. She would not be afraid.

  She rode, even more cautious than before, her knife in hand. She tried to push the man from her mind, tried to focus on Kezda, on the task ahead, not on what he had made of her blood magic, on how he had known.

  She shook her head. Later. She would think of that later.

  For now, she focused on the image of Zephir Crista that Vojtech had given her, from the gods. Focused on Kezda itself: Vojtech had told her that it was a port city full of gamblers, prostitution, and drugs. It was no surprise Zephir Crista fought Vraka there—likely defectives the king sent to the fighting ring for sport. Vojtech had explained, the night before she left, that fighting was a favorite pastime in the city.

  Even as she tried to focus, she could still feel a phantom ache in her head from the horned man’s magic.

  As she moved further north, drawing closer to the Furlan Sea, she could nearly smell the salt of it. She stayed to the east, eagerly dismounting the wolf—bloodied and stiff—at the edge of the forest floor. She mumbled a prayer to Blüd under her breath that the horned man would not come find her again as she left it.

  She picked her way through the towns and cities hidden in the valleys of small hills, closer to the Thenas Mountains than civilization. The Thenas loomed in the distance beyond the forest, just north of the king’s palace. She avoided the populated areas at all costs; they were smaller than Kezda and in small towns, people whispered rumors too readily. It was one of those rumors, based on fact, that had cost her parents their lives. Nearly cost her own life.

  Drudging up and down rolling brown hills, the grass stiff with cold, her legs ached. She adjusted the black leather bag over her shoulder, felt the chill of the Thenas Mountain air even as the peaks faded from view. The polar opposites of Warskia were both cold in their own right during the long winters: a frigid desert, a near-frozen sea.

  The sounds of the city had begun to reach her, and she could see buildings dotting the landscape ahead through the sparse trees of the forest. The forest grew thinner as she walked, her feet aching, hands numb with cold, even back in their blood red gloves. But she wasn’t hungry, she thought wryly, and that was something to be thankful for.

  Hours passed, and then the city of Kezda was sprawling ahead of her, bigger than she had imagined. The Djavul had warned her it could be easy to get lost in it. Hard, he had said, for some people to leave. Even she, who had drunk only of vin and taken syn once, could see the temptation to a less pious person as she grew closer: There seemed to be excitement in every corner of the crime-ridden place. Vojtech had said anything could be had for a price, and any price could be had for anything. She heard the call ahead for brothels and pleasure houses. It was a place that Yezedi would despise, she thought, and that Klaus would be intrigued by. A place that was nothing more to her than a killing field for the damned Zephir Crista.

  There were Warskian soldiers there, too, in their emerald green uniforms beneath their fur-lined coats. She wondered how long it would take for someone to realize the men she and the horned man had killed were missing.

  She walked along the path unfolding into the city freely, one that ran perpendicular through the forest, one that she had avoided until this point. She had little fear here, her knife back at her waistband, flush against her tunic. People on horseback passed by in groups, others on foot hummed to themselves. Families with wide-eyed children surveying the buildings that now came into view, ramshackle and grandeur all squashed together, red brick buildings with polished gates out front next to dilapidated wooden structures that looked as if a great gust of wind might blow them down. There were street vendors here, too, pushing everything from pastries to memorabilia of the false god, including bones said to have come from the god’s son himself. She shuddered as she looked on them; they were likely bones from Vrakan corpses that had been used for fights, slavery, or worse. She could feel the bird skull warm against her chest, telling her the bones were real.

  The streets were packed, and it was easy to get lost in the crowd, even this far from the port, glimmering far beyond. Snow swirled in light clusters throughout the city, but it did not fall heavi
ly enough to stick, and the sun still shone overhead.

  She ducked into a dark shop with lines of shabby clothes and broken toys, her boots sticking to the dirty floors. She handed the old man with glassy eyes a zed coin after she pulled a black fur hat from the stack of them. He didn’t say a word as she left the shop, plopping the ill-fitting hat on her head, now easier to blend in with the people of Kezda.

  She kept north and could see the reflecting coldness of the Furlan Sea ahead, the gentle slope of the road giving her a full, clear view. To her right, a brothel advertised their goods right out front in the freezing cold, men and women stark naked, their masters lifting their arms in the air, twirling them around like pets at a dog show. Scarko averted her gaze; being alone with her own desire was nearly intolerable enough. Seeing it in strangers on the street in the middle of a crowd with children present made her skin crawl.

  She wondered if Zephir Crista visited such places. What did he do when he wasn’t fighting defective Vrakas to the death? She wondered, too, what exactly Vojtech had seen in his vision to make Zephir’s death such a high priority. Her mind unwillingly wandered back to the horned man. He had called the Djavuls nasty, nasty creatures. She shook her head, trying again to clear her mind.

  Carefully, she made her way around the throngs of people, all speaking in different tongues in rapid-fire chatter and soft and slow grunts, dozens of languages from the continent all here at the port city.

  Finally, she could see clearly the ships docked at the port—some great white structures, sails unfurled and caught gusts of sporadic wind, others small brown boats, curved like the split half of a cashew. There was one military ship docked at the port, the biggest of them all with emerald green furled sails, painted with silver snakes that seemed to slither over the city of Kezda like an immobile monster, lurking, but never intervening even in the worst of things.

  The Djavul had said his vision from the gods had shown Zephir Crista by the sea, and so she watched the docking from outside a crowded bakery, saw a few apartment buildings clustered right at the edge of the sea, pristine and white in a way that reminded her of the Order’s exterior. There was a gate there, too, just across the street from where she stood, right by the dock beside a pier covered in a light glaze of snow.

  Her first task, she thought bitterly, was to find a place to stay. Even if, gods willing, she found Zephir quickly, killing him without drawing attention to herself and therefore the Order, could take time. Vojtech had told her fighting in Kezda was like a national sport, contained within the small city. And if Zephir Crista was truly immune to Vrakan gifts, his fights would draw the largest crowds of all, for Kezdans to watch a babswa—a hag, the Warskian name for Vrakas—die at his hands.

  She doubled back the way she had come, moving away from the sea, remembering a sign for an inn that looked inconspicuous enough, shady enough that no one would ask her too many questions.

  Pulling her outer coat tighter around her, she placed a hand on her head to keep her too-small hat from blowing down the street and pushed open the loose wooden door on the inn called the Cove. Darkness, illuminated only by a warm fire to her left, greeted her. The smell of vin seemed to saturate the place, and she wondered if here, away from the Djavul, she might drink enough to get a few hours of sleep after Zephir was put down.

  The floor of the inn was sticky beneath her feet, her boots lifting reluctantly as she made her way to the right through a small doorway, to a woman who had her bare feet propped up on the wooden counter, peering at her over her glasses. The woman’s feet were blackened with dirt, cracked with cold, and she hiccupped. She seemed surprised to see anyone in the inn.

  “How now?” she asked, a standard Warskian greeting, another hiccup escaping her lips. She swung her feet off the counter and stood, unsteady. She was short, stocky, with frizzy blonde hair piled up messily onto her head.

  “I need a room. I don’t know for how long.” Scarko kept her tone clipped, assertive.

  The woman squinted at her and shoved her glasses up on her nose. “Why?”

  Scarko arched a brow, not speaking, standing directly at the counter. Beyond she saw piles of zed coins, gold and thick, the brightest thing in the dingy room, a snake with its long serpent tongue out, staring up at her, imprinted onto the money of Warskia.

  “Why here?” the woman clarified, gesturing around. There was a staircase to Scarko’s left, narrow and steep, just as dark as the welcoming area.

  “I’ll leave.” She made to turn.

  The woman clucked her tongue. “Oh, no, no, no.” Her tone turned sickly sweet. Scarko stilled, turned back. “We’ll get you set up here.” The woman reached into a small wooden box on the desk and proffered a tiny silver key. “Three days’ pay up front.” She smiled, few teeth in her mouth, and placed the key on the counter between them.

  Scarko reached into her bag, grabbed the zed, set it on the counter, and took the key.

  “Last room on the right,” the woman said, gesturing up the stairs. She winked at her, brushing a stray frizzy blonde strand out of her eyes. “Be sure to lock your door. It gets a little loud at night. Feel free to join us if you’d like.”

  Scarko stilled, her breath caught in her throat, but the woman was busy counting her coins, and didn’t notice. Scarko clenched her fingers around the key and started up the narrow stairs of the Cove.

  5

  Two Heads Shorter Than Everyone Else

  The Cove quickly grew loud as the afternoon swept over the port city. Voices bellowed from down below of women shrieking, men laughing, and the sound of coins dropping to the sticky floor, usually followed by a groan. Scarko’s room was tiny, a small bed with rumpled not-quite-white sheets, a desk crammed opposite the bed that only served to make the room smaller, the rest of the space barren. The wooden floors were clean, however, and there was a consolation to the dingy room: a window, which Scarko eased open, letting a cold breeze bring life to the stale keep.

  It looked out onto the streets of Kezda below, dusted in a thin layer of snow, offering no glimpse of the port where the gods believed Zephir Crista would be. It was no matter, Scarko thought, as she would start surveillance during the dead of night. She had learned a thing or two about criminals from the Praeminister, and knew they operated in broad daylight, for the show of it, but worked their dirtiest deeds under the darkness of night, for the thrill of it. From the sounds carrying through the cold streets and into her open window, it seemed Kezda really came alive at night.

  Scarko sat gingerly on the bed, shrugged out of the heavy overcoat, carelessly tossed the hat beside her, and unlaced her boots to let her sore feet breathe, flexed her toes, and took the knife from her waistband. The fire’s heat didn’t reach up to her room, and with the window open, it was just as cold there as it was outside, even as the dying sun streamed in through the curtain-less window. She let it keep her alert, recalling the time Klaus had had to train with his fellow Glassmats and the Vindmats to mimic winter conditions, blasting cold wind and dumping snow on the Missionaries as they clashed sword against sword. The cold, as the Djavul had pointed out, kept one watchful.

  For a strange moment, she thought with a pang of longing of Vojtech, settling in for a sleepless night, perhaps gnawing on bones from the ossuary, stocked full of animal skeletons brought in by Shadows, and human ones from stray Warskian royals.

  “Don’t be stupid, Kadezska,” she scolded herself, throwing the knife in the air to catch it by the hilt. It was a silly feeling, missing someone like the Djavul. Someone who would be alive long after she died, someone who had been alive long before she was even a thought. He might have great plans for her, might have a certain fondness for her, but she was flesh and blood while he was darkness and shadows, immortality she could never compete with. But while she might have disdain for his beloved gods, she still murmured a silent prayer to Blüd that Emil and Alexander kept their heads together and kept Vojtech safe between them. She laughed at herself; a heathen turned into a prayin
g girl for the sake of a horned monster.

  Her laugh crackled through the room like shattered glass, and the eyes of the horned man she had seen in the forest appeared in her mind, startling her. She whipped her head around the room…no one was there.

  Her knife rested in her bare palm, caked with blood and littered with scars. She could move fast with her blüdsvard, but that man…he had rendered himself invisible. Had sunk her to her knees with his mind.

  She shivered, then shook her head, sighed, and tucked her knife back in her waistband, under her grey cloak. There would be time to question Vojtech about the man later. For now, she had a job to do.

  *

  She spent the rest of the dying afternoon walking among the streets of Kezda, observant, cautious, and hungry. There were so many wounds here, so many people dying on these streets that the temptation to drain those broken bodies dry was a strong one. Warskian soldiers in their glimmering emerald uniforms with fur-lined coats walked among those with frozen bare feet, some missing fingers from the cold of the Warskian winter. The King didn’t care for these people, just as he did not care for the Vrakas. It seemed all of Warskia’s sins scrounged together in Kezda. It would be a mercy, she supposed, to drink from them, to end their miserable suffering. Once, in the Palace, she had prayed for someone to end hers.

  No one had answered.

  When night fell, she promised herself, she would find blood.

  She watched the wealthier drift into bakeries and shops with glazed eyes, the smell of fragrant roasted lamb and buttery croissants luring them in. She watched melted butter ooze from a fried potato a man ate as he walked the streets, his attention wholly on his food, worshipping it in a way that Vojtech worshipped his gods. The scents of food had never appealed to her, not like the irony tang of blood. It was a marvel to watch people ingest something other than each other. How strange, she thought with a smile. She thought, too, of Vojtech’s impossibly sharp teeth crunching on bones—big and small—as if they were nothing more than butter. He would suck the marrow before he devoured it whole, leaving all the blood to her. If the people on these streets were to watch them feed, they would see why Olofsson had decried them as monsters.