The Gods of Men

by Barbara Kloss

  A few seconds later, Jos followed.

  They’d gone a few paces when he asked, “What is that song you keep humming?”

  She suddenly realized she’d been humming and stopped herself. “Just… something I made up.” Which was true, even if those melodic creations were unintentional.

  A beat. “What did Ventus want with you, anyway?” he asked.

  She glanced at him over her shoulder. She couldn’t tell if he genuinely didn’t know the truth, or if he was indirectly trying to trap her into confirming what he already suspected.

  “How’d you know where to find me if you don’t already know the answer to that?” she asked sharply.

  Jos looked steadily back. “I watched Ventus’s guards dump you in the back of a wagon in the middle of the night. I could be wrong”—he arched a brow, his tone dry—“but I didn’t think they’d be too eager to tell me why.”

  Sable’s eyes narrowed. “So you followed me.”

  “Unintentionally,” he said, still holding her gaze. “I was out for a walk when your windchimes started ringing. Despite the lack of wind. So I investigated. It seems to have worked in your favor.”

  “My favor, or yours?”

  He cocked his head to the side, studying her. “Are you always this suspicious?”

  “Yes.” She looked back to the trees and kept walking.

  Jos followed a second later. “So?” he said behind her. “What did you do to get yourself kidnapped by that creature?”

  “It’s not really your business.”

  “Neither was saving your life.”

  Sable smacked a branch. Snow fell, dusting her arm. “Tell me where you learned to fight, and I’ll tell you.”

  “It doesn’t work that way, healer.”

  “It does if you want my answer, Provincial.”

  Jos was quiet for so long, she assumed he’d given up.

  “I was three,” he said suddenly.

  Sable glanced back at him, surprised by his answer and that he’d answered. “Three? When you started training with a sword?”

  “Yes.” The word came out strained at the edges.

  She regarded him. “Either your parents are exceedingly ambitious, or they didn’t love you very much.”

  His eyes brightened. “Both.”

  Sable couldn’t tell if he was teasing or serious.

  “I’ve had many instructors over the years,” Jos continued, looking to the trees as the wind stirred his hair. “The rest, I learned on my own. My parents were fortunate I developed a certain… aptitude for it.”

  “Aptitude?” She laughed. “You killed half a dozen men, two Silent, and Ventus. That’s not—”

  “Your turn,” he said, cutting her off. He’d allowed her a small peek into his life, and he’d firmly shut the door.

  “All right,” she said, stepping over a fallen branch. “I stole from the butcher, and I was caught.”

  It was the story she’d decided on, the one with just enough truth to keep him from digging deeper, but the bloated pause that followed suggested she wouldn’t get away so easily.

  “Ventus kidnapped you. In the middle of the night. For stealing meat.” Jos laid down each word like a tile, each exaggerated pause a gaping hole in the floor.

  “Bones, actually.”

  “Couldn’t you just pay for them?”

  “Huh. Why didn’t I think of that?” she remarked dryly.

  Jos’s eyes narrowed, his interest piqued. “The butcher wouldn’t sell to you, would he?”

  Sable clapped twice, slow and deliberate. “Bravo, Provincial.”

  “But why risk it?” he asked. “You had your needs met. The necessities, at least. You certainly didn’t need the crowns,” he said with sarcasm, alluding to the offer he’d made that she’d refused.

  She should’ve left it alone right there, but she couldn’t. “Some things are worth more than crowns.”

  “Then you can’t count high enough.”

  She stopped and glared back at him. He flashed his teeth. She walked on.

  “Ah, I see,” he said with revelation. “You stole for someone else, didn’t you?”

  Sable pressed her lips together and walked faster. Jos increased his pace only slightly, but his long legs carried him farther. Closer to her.

  “That makes more sense,” he continued, answering himself. He wasn’t really asking her, anyway. He was thinking out loud, chasing a trail. Grasping at details and gathering prints. “It probably felt good to get back at the butcher, but you don’t strike me as the sort to risk your life for petty vindication. But… if another life was in jeopardy… someone you cared about—”

  “That’s enough,” Sable said firmly.

  But he didn’t stop. “That’s why you refused to leave this rutting hells hole, despite the small fortune I offered you. Because there’s someone you don’t want to leave behind. It can’t be the old healer. The butcher would’ve helped her. So was it a lover? Was he the one in the wagon with—”

  Sable whirled on him in a twist of fury, and he startled to a stop. “I said, that’s—”

  Her words were cut off by a snarl, and a figure slunk out from behind the trunk of a large pine.

  It was a… young man, or what was left of him. It crouched upon all fours, its gangly shape rocking back and forth in the snow as if it couldn’t hold still. As if it were dying to release the insanity wound up inside. Snow and ice caked its bloodied frame, its light hair fell in frozen chunks, and its clothing hung in tatters. Translucent skin stretched over sharp bones, and dark bruises pillowed its wild eyes—one blue and one a startling shade of yellow—but the most unsettling of all was the blackness. It stained half of its pale face like spilled ink, slowly wrapping it in a cocoon of darkness. A cocoon—Sable knew—it would emerge from as a shade.

  A changling. It was what happened when shade poison went untreated.

  Its teeth bared in a crimson snarl, and blood stained its mouth and chin—a bold splash of color amidst the gray. It had eaten recently.

  Sable opened her mouth to warn Jos, when he said, “Gerald…?”

  Sable froze. She looked from the changling to Jos, who’d lowered his sword.

  By the wards.

  This changling had been one of his men.

  The changling cocked its head to the side. It was an animal movement, sensing with its ears rather than its mind, and then it sniffed the air like a dog.

  “Gods, what’s happened to you?” Jos took a step toward him, confused and bewildered.

  “Jos, wait,” Sable said sharply, her attention fixed on the changling. “Remember how I warned you about shade poison? Well, this is why. If their poison infects you, you become one of them.”

  The changling rocked back and forth, and yellow eye narrowed as a deep snarl rolled through its body.

  Despite Sable’s warning, Jos started forward.

  Sable grabbed his sleeve and pulled him back. “Don’t,” she said. “Your friend is gone. You have to kill it.”

  “Like hells…” Jos jerked his arm free and pushed on.

  “Jos… stop! Listen to me!”

  Jos did not stop, and the changling pounced in a snarl of arms and teeth.

  Jos dodged out of the way, whirled around, and whacked the changling over the head with the flat of his sword. The changling staggered in the snow, snarling and furious.

  “Gerald, godsdamnit! Stop this!” Jos demanded.

  “He can’t, Jos! He’s gone!”

  The changling whirled and attacked again, faster than before. Jos shoved it off, but barely, impeded by fidelity to his friend.

  “You have to kill it!” Sable yelled.

  The changling flung Jos back with a strength no normal man possessed. Jos flew through the air and landed in the snow, flat on his back. His sword landed near Sable’s feet.

  “Gerald… fight it, godsdamnit,” Jos growled. All covered in snow, he staggered to his feet as the changling approached him. “You’re stronger than t
his!”

  “He can’t fight it!” Sable yelled. “The only way to save him is to kill him!”

  The changling snarled and pounced. Jos wasn’t fast enough, and the creature landed directly on top of him.

  Sable snatched Jos’s sword from the snow, bolted forward, and plunged it into the changling’s back, directly behind its heart. The changling jerked, whimpered, and sagged on top of Jos. It hadn’t converted fully; steel proved effective. Or whatever Jos’s sword was made of. It was black like nightglass, but without the stars.

  Jos rolled the changling off of him, climbed to his feet, and glanced down at his man, bleeding and dead in the snow. His gaze shot to Sable, and she took an involuntary step back.

  Looking into his eyes, Sable realized he hadn’t truly believed his men were gone until this moment—until he’d seen what Gerald had become. His faith in his mens’ abilities had been a light holding the darkness at bay. That light was gone, and the dangerous edge Sable had caught glimpse of before now consumed him. He was fire, uncontained.

  “That was my man you just killed,” he said through his teeth.

  “He was already gone, Jos,” she snapped. “If I hadn’t done it, you would’ve ended up just like him.”

  In a motion too quick, Jos grabbed her collar and jerked her up as if she weighed nothing. Her collar dug into her neck, and she dropped his sword, clasping his wrists to pull them away, but his grip was unshakeable.

  “How dare you.” He shook her hard. He was a storm, violent and raging, and Sable was trapped inside of it. “His life was mine, and you—a common, rutting thief—thought it was your right to take it. His life was worth ten thousand of yours, you godsdamned Scablicker.”

  She glared straight back. “Finally, some honesty. I wish I would’ve known that before I dragged you out of the Kjürda.”

  The blue in his eyes shifted, deepened and swirled. Jos and Sable glared at each other, breaths mixed in a hot cloud of fury. The moment teetered on a knife’s edge. Jos’s jaw clenched, unclenched, his instinct demanding retribution. If he acted on that instinct, Sable wouldn’t be able to stop him, but she’d make sure his perfect face bore the scars of it for the rest of his life.

  And then—abruptly, surprisingly—he let go.

  Sable dropped in the snow.

  Jos stepped around her, picked up a fallen pine cone, and chucked it into the woods with a yell. The pine cone whizzed through the trees, collided with a trunk, and exploded. For a moment, Jos stood there with impossible stillness, a permanent fixture in the forest, and then he dropped to his knees beside his friend, curled his hands into fists upon his knees, and bowed his head in a posture of defeat.

  Sable was too angry to feel pity. She was trudging away from him when a sharp intake of air made her glance back. Jos lifted the edge of his tunic, and there, carved into his side, were three bright red lines.

  Sable cursed.

  Jos’s gaze met hers and narrowed, and he looked back at his friend, letting his tunic slide back in place.

  “He got you, didn’t he?” she asked, striding toward him. She shouldn’t care. It served him right.

  He climbed to his feet, and Sable reached for his tunic, but he blocked her with his arm. She slapped his wrist. He looked more surprised than angry, and she grabbed his tunic anyway. The cuts were deep and rimmed black—a blackness that was already seeping into the surrounding skin.

  “We need to hurry,” she said, dropping his tunic. “Someone in Craven will have an antidote.”

  “There’s a cure?” he asked darkly, his expression even darker.

  “Only for the initial infection,” she cut back. “Once it spreads to your heart, there’s nothing I can do.”

  A muscle feathered in his neck. “How long will that take?”

  “An hour.” Probably less.

  He looked like he might argue, then swallowed as if forcing down a particularly large lump of pain.

  She could leave him. She owed him nothing. She’d already saved his life in the river—they were square, as far as she was concerned. She looked ahead, in the direction of Craven. If she hurried, she might make it before nightfall, but if Jos changed before she reached the wards…

  Jos sucked a breath through his teeth. His hand curled into a fist, and he pressed it to a tree for support. Shade poison worked fast, and Jos was no exception.

  Sable cursed beneath her breath. “Lean on me.”

  “Give me a minute.”

  “We don’t have a minute.”

  His jaw clenched, and his features strained. He dropped his fist from the tree, took a step, and his knee gave out. He cursed in a strange accent, but Sable caught him as he fell, his verbal slip forgotten. His weight almost pulled her down, but she wrapped one arm around him and managed to hold them both upright. She took note of the sword at his waist. If they didn’t reach Craven in time, she’d have to kill him.

  Together, they hobbled along the stream’s bank. It wasn’t long before his steps tumbled and his breathing panted. The exertion quickened his pulse, spreading the poison faster, but they couldn’t slow. Night was too close.

  Jos slipped against her, and she cursed, adjusting her grip, and then through the woods, riding the back of a breeze, she heard a voice.

  “I…mar…i.”

  Maker’s Mercy, not now…

  It was the voice from before, the horror that’d followed her to Skanden’s walls.

  Sable held tight to Jos, but he didn’t react to the voice. The back of her neck tickled with premonition and fear, and she urged Jos forward. He fought to keep pace; his breathing rasped and his boots dragged. All of a sudden, Jos stopped, anchoring Sable in place. His face turned sharply away and his nostrils flared.

  “What’s that smell?” he asked.

  A few seconds later, she smelled it too—the rot, the stench of decay. It was the same putrid scent as before, but there were no wards protecting them now.

  “Come on,” she demanded, dragging him onward.

  “Something’s following us.”

  It was both statement and question.

  “It’s nothing we can fight,” she said, urging him faster. “Not without wards.”

  He didn’t say more. Sable thought he probably couldn’t, even if he wanted to, and then suddenly, he tensed against her. “It’s here.”

  A shadow fell over the forest. The air turned ice cold, and an unnatural stillness descended over everything.

  And Sable was afraid.

  “I need you to run, Jos,” she said.

  He didn’t need prompting.

  She let go of his waist and grabbed his hand, half expecting him to pull away.

  He didn’t. He gripped her hand tight, and together they sprinted. They splashed through water, bounding over rocks and fallen branches, their joined hands giving them balance. All around them, the shadows whispered. Jos squeezed her hand hard. He’d heard those. The whispers persisted, fading in and out, reaching for them.

  Jos slipped and Sable jerked him up. She tripped over a branch, and he pulled her forward. The darkness swelled all around them, closing in like a slow-moving tide. It lapped at their heels, but they didn’t slow, didn’t stop. Sable’s lungs burned with cold and exhaustion, but adrenaline pushed her harder. She had no idea how Jos managed their pace.

  “You… cannot… hide from me.”

  The voice cut through the whispers, clear and distinct. It was pain personified, a song of cruelty and wickedness. It curled and caressed, seeping into Sable’s mind like poison, and the shadows became too dark to see. Jos squeezed her hand, but his sweat made it difficult to grip, and Sable realized that, in their frantic desperation, they’d lost the stream.

  She spun around, and her boot caught. Her hand slipped from Jos’s. The world spun as she fell, sliding and tumbling, round and round and round until—finally—she landed facedown in snow.

  She planted her hands in the cold and pushed herself up, but Jos was nowhere to be seen. The world smeared in
to silhouettes, outlined by soft white, like shadows in reverse.

  She felt it before she saw it.

  Inky darkness coiled at the edge of her vision, oozing over the blanket of white as if the night itself were bleeding across the snow. Instinctively, she stepped back. Her boot sank in the snow.

  “What do you want?” she demanded. Her voice showed little of the terror pounding inside of her.

  The darkness leaked closer, spreading wide, stretching in a slow arc around her.

  “Your soul, little sulaziér.”

  It spoke slowly, certainly, stretching outside of time. As if it had always existed, as if it would always exist.

  Sulaziér.

  First Ventus. Now… this.

  “You’ve got the wrong person,” she hissed, taking another step back. “I don’t know what that is.”

  The darkness pressed closer. A tide of whispers rose and fell, and Sable felt cold.

  So.

  Cold.

  It bit through her clothes, sinking teeth into her bones.

  “It…” The darkness rolled up before her, coalescing into a pillar of smoke. Two points of white light blinked open, like eyes. “… is you.”

  It came at her in a rush, colder than the waters of the Kjürda, and poured into her mouth as she screamed.

  16

  Rasmin patted the map in his pocket, though he did not need it. He knew this forest well, for he’d once spent his days wandering beneath its ancient boughs in quiet reflection, as did so many others. Those days were but a memory now, this forest abandoned to their ghosts and the romantic fancies of storytellers.

  He inhaled deeply.

  The Blackwood had a distinct smell, one he’d know with his eyes closed. The balsam, the moss, the ripe earth. The dampness that clung to the edge of rot, held at bay by the cold, for the air was a prisoner here, bound between walls of earth and pine.

  It had not always been so, but like any abandoned thing, time slowly buried it, made it dark and turned it wild.

  Rasmin reached out and pressed his hand to a tree. The trees had once been his friends—a silent audience for his prayers. He didn’t think they’d hear him now.

  He’d made himself their enemy.