A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1)

by Darrell Drake

  Waray latched on to its head, arm buried to the shoulder in the vacant socket. While no one watching could really see what she was up to, they all generally got the hint that she was causing havoc in its skull.

  Ashtadukht looked on as it shuddered, seized up, and toppled like some mighty redwood. Her astonishment was written plain as her slightly parted lips. There weren’t many things that astonished her these days, but Waray’s performance most definitely qualified. She might have continued gaping, dumbstruck, if the guards gathering at the far end of the room didn’t register. She cursed and leaned in close to Tirdad’s ear.

  “If you don’t get your head out of that fantasy I’m going to get it out my damn self. And believe me, cousin, you don’t want that.”

  After travelling with her for years, one came to recognize a singular pitch—a caustic yet level timbre like dark clouds on the horizon—that Ashtadukht used when she was done. Altogether done. It was her flashed crest, her hiss, her bared fangs.

  Tirdad opened his eyes.

  She took that as a sign that he’d prevailed, which gave her leave to promptly slice through the soul sapper’s feeding tubes and, curling her lip at the way it squealed, its scalp, too. The sword sliced through as effortlessly as old linen; the creatures clearly were not meant for battle.

  “Get up,” she bade Tirdad. “We need to get out of here.”

  He extracted the last of the fingers from his throat, gave them a disturbed grimace, and laid his head back. She knelt beside him and took his tunic by the collar. “Cousin. Your fantasy is over. Done. Get that through your head.”

  Having experienced it for herself mere minutes earlier, she was well aware of just how potent the fantasies were. They left a lingering feeling of rightness. Even her rage had been drowned out after her initial outburst.

  She sighed. She still yearned for it to return, due to both the psychological impact it’d had and the chemicals its tubes had secreted to impart the fantasy. Ashtadukht charged herself with getting her friends out of there. They were her responsibility. This is how she’d managed to continue living: by convincing herself she owed it to someone else.

  “Snap out of it,” she barked, pushing the sapper’s corpse off of him and slipping her arms under his to help him sit up. “We don’t have time to loiter about.”

  She glanced nervously over her shoulder. Waray was on her knees before the defeated div, voraciously shovelling grey matter into her mouth.

  Farther out, a cluster of divs was idling apprehensively in and around the entrance. At present, they were all too intimidated to advance. Eventually it would hit them that, sure, the wild half-div had put on quite the harrowing performance, but they numbered a strong two dozen. Enough to suffocate her to death if all else failed.

  “Piss and toenails,” Ashtadukht cursed under her breath. She turned back to Tirdad, who was leering at her with a grin that made her supremely uncomfortable. “Cousin?”

  When he reached out and ran his touch over her hip, her expression instantly hardened. “Cousin. You were under the thrall of the beast I just cut down. Whatever . . . whatever fantasy it was entertaining is gone. No more.”

  Tirdad blinked and slowly retracted his hand. “Right,” he said as the realization sunk in. “Of course.”

  She slid his sword back into its sheath. “Get up.”

  “Right.” He stood rigidly, clearing his throat and doing his utmost not to meet her eyes. “What the hell happened? Why was that thing in my—oh.”

  He swept his scrutiny over the aftermath and stopped on the increasingly confident divs at the opposite end of the throne room. He drew his sword before it could get comfortable. “Trouble.”

  “Take the rear exit,” advised the king, motioning to the only opening on their side of the room. “Usually reserved for royal traffic, but I’m giving you permission. I can show you the way.”

  “Your generosity is appreciated,” said Ashtadukht, thinking that his consent would not have factored into their absconding by way of the nearest exit. “Waray,” she shouted. “Let’s go.”

  The half-div went on with her sloppy munching.

  “Waray!”

  She paused long enough to glare over her shoulder before going back to stuffing her face.

  Ashtadukht sighed and jogged over. The divs were beginning to rally, likely figuring they’d have the advantage while Waray was distracted with her meal.

  “We need to go,” she pressed, taking the half-div by the arm. This provoked a hiss of a yelp, and Waray spun around, abandoning her meal to leap onto Ashtadukht.

  She slammed into the floor, which knocked the wind out of her, and it was all she could do to hold off Waray’s lashing teeth by bracing her forearm against the half-div’s chest as chunks of brain and spittle sprayed her face.

  When her bites caught only air, Waray withdrew enough to cock her elbow and bring it brutally across Ashtadukht’s cheek. Dazed, she brought both arms up in a feeble defense against the throttling Waray now unleashed. The half-div would retract her fist, which afforded Ashtadukht a glimpse of Waray’s glower, grin oddly absent, before throwing another punch. This pattern of selective lucidity went through four cycles before Waray was snatched away. An ear-piercing screech followed, then a hand appeared in front of Ashtadukht’s blurred vision.

  “Hurry, cousin. They are closing in.”

  She took hold of the hand and was jerked to her feet. While they didn’t position themselves beneath her quite as naturally as she would have liked, they were stable enough to run.

  “You šo-wrinkled tablecloth!” Waray cried—almost wailed—from her undignified position as a sack at Tirdad’s side, the toes of her boots skimming a hair above the stone. “I’ll fist an apple up your arse and feed it to a horse! I’ll schedule an early dinner with the šo-wretched Dourboat!”

  Still latched on to his other hand, Ashtadukht clambered to keep up. The angry, emboldened shouts at her back drove her onward, toward the egress where the king was waving them in.

  “I’ll serve you your own eggs!” Waray cried as they disappeared into the corridor.

  Ashtadukht resisted the urge to check to her rear. She was afraid she’d trip in doing so, and it was enough that she had the image of well-whetted spear and axe blades closing in on her. Her focus—what tenuous focus she could muster—worked to keep one foot in front of the other in proper order: the left had a tendency toward wanting to step when only the right had clearance to land. Whenever her sweaty grip on Tirdad’s palm began to falter, it would politely request a fraction of her focus.

  Otherwise, she ran. Around bends and cowering servants, over a recently dispatched guard, through a courtyard: she ran. Her only compass was a blend of her cousin’s tunic and the half-div’s agonized insults.

  When she finally came to a halt, it was with an exhausted stumble. She panted, hands on her knees, and endeavored to regain her bearings. Her face ached terribly, and one eye had begun to swell up such that it’d been rendered almost useless. She could make out a stretch of pillar-lined road that terminated beneath the shape of an edifice that felt imposing even if it didn’t look it, and the burn of the sun that peeked from behind that edifice.

  Waray slumped against the wall of the building they’d exited. She severely favoured one side, clutching it while her free arm hung too limply to be attributed to mere fatigue. Much like herself, her insults were spent. She directed a strained whine at her boots. “Nnnn.”

  “Is anyone injured?” asked Tirdad.

  Ashtadukht let out a dry laugh. “Something like it.”

  He knelt before her and examined her injuries. “Nothing serious,” he said with a frown. “Looks worse than it is.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You are still gorgeous,” he clarified, unusually brazen. “What in the seven climes was that about? She looked ready to end you.”

  Ashtadukht cracked a washed up smile. He was a sweet man with a big heart, even if it set him up for disappointment. “It’s
not her fault. Not entirely. I forgot to heed your warning from our first meeting. Think she had the bloodlust flowing. I grabbed her arm during the tail of it. Looks broken. See to her, would you?”

  He nodded and rushed over. “Waray? You look beat.”

  She canted her head. She whined in the affirmative.

  “What hurts?” he asked, and by the look of things he supposed she would need to start a list.

  “I want,” she smacked her lips, and the faintest grimace threatened to breach her otherwise stoic expression. “I was promised mighty fine eggs.”

  “My guards will not give up so easily,” the king inserted. He’d been fairly complaisant for a king. Not wanting for attention at all. Just standing off to the side while they talked amongst themselves. “If we’ve lost them, it’s only for a time. There’s something I must demand of you.”

  “Demand?” said Ashtadukht. She’d pulled a poultice out of her pack and was gingerly applying it to her swollen eye.

  “I am the king.”

  “Your guards are already after us. You aren’t in much of a position to start making demands. Guards usually come as the threat of refusing a demand.”

  The king chuckled. “Fair enough. A request then. I don’t like it. You’re in bad shape, I know. But you’re probably the only chance I’ll ever have.”

  “Chance of what?” asked Tirdad as he inspected the half-div’s clothing for any rips or other signs of serious wounds. She offered no objection, only stared blankly ahead.

  Ashtadukht came over to help. “Her left shoulder looks off.”

  “Righting my wrong,” the king answered. “Or preventing more of it. The sappers are spread far and wide by now, but if you can kill the broodmother you’ll have cut off the source.”

  Ashtadukht leaned in and began dabbing resin on some of Waray’s deeper cuts. She entertained him, but any undertaking in their condition would have to be met with serious caution. “I’m not exactly sure what a broodmother is, but I don’t imagine it’ll be something we can bury a dagger in and be done with it. You said it yourself: we’re in terrible shape. And your guards have it in for us.”

  “Dislocated her shoulder,” said Tirdad. “Happened to me once when I fell off a horse. I think I can right it, but it will hurt more than it already does.”

  “Do it,” she instructed, exchanging the resin for a capsule from which she took a pinch of opium. She started to administer it, then reconsidered. It wouldn’t do to have the half-div any more away with the fairies than usual. Not at the moment anyway.

  “Can’t move this šo-stubborn arm,” Waray commented.

  “Lie down, and I will try to do something about that,” said Tirdad.

  “It’ll hurt something fierce?”

  “Yes.”

  Waray gave her arm an accusatory glare before sidling further down the wall and falling over like a sack of pistachios, wincing as her ribs objected.

  “These sappers, what do they do exactly?” asked Ashtadukht. “Beyond what we’ve already experienced. You mentioned yawns.”

  The king wrung his hands. “Awful, awful things. They exist under the radar of most, sapping minute pieces of souls—the pieces devoted to Truth—and diverting them to the Lie. They’re harmless individually and when not seen or threatened, but think of thousands upon thousands of those grains being collected over centuries.”

  “I see,” said Ashtadukht, and despite her pithy response, the gravity of the situation was not lost on her. When even the virtuous were being taken advantage of by the Lie, something had to be done. “What would you have us do exactly? More fighting won’t end well.”

  “There may be another way,” the king ventured, directing his attention to the half-div.

  Waray lay on her back, lost in the lackadaisical gait of a passing cloud. Calling her vacant would have been like hammering a cube into a round hole, but it would have been a somewhat rounded cube. She would have liked vacancy in any event, because Tirdad currently had one leg slung over her thighs while he leaned farther and farther away, both hands wrapped around her wrist. She stared.

  Pain reminded her she was alive. Reminded her she shouldn’t be alive. Reminded her she deserved more pain because she shouldn’t be alive. So she had long ago come to welcome it in a masochistic sense of punishment and self-loathing. While this had drastically increased her tolerance for pain, it never changed the nature of it. Pain smarted.

  Pop.

  Her shoulder reseated itself with a shrill but brief bite. She let out a soft, sibilant hiss; the grinding sensation was worse than the pain. She flexed her arm inquisitively. It listened, but didn’t seem too enthusiastic about it.

  “There,” said Tirdad. “How is it?”

  “Less stubborn.”

  “We should leave the rest for later. Who knows when our pursuers will find us.”

  “And that other way?” asked Ashtadukht, who had watched the affair with a growing sense of unease that hit its crescendo when the bone popped into place.

  The king gestured to Waray. “She had a heretofore unknown effect on the sappers. They recoiled from her like a holy fire. I don’t know whether it’s owing to her father having created them or because of something they’re seeing in there, but she terrifies them. I’ve never seen them afraid. Mostly apathetic creatures.”

  “So?”

  “So we give the broodmother a taste of that. She’s immobile. I doubt she can recoil, much less run.”

  “And if it only makes her angry?”

  “She’s always angry. Seems like it at any rate. But I’m certain she hasn’t moved in centuries.”

  Ashtadukht screwed up her face, reconsidering the opium; superficial or not, the gash where Waray had elbowed her really stung. Not to mention the fantasy whose revisited loss and prurience refused to relent. She closed her eyes and gave a quick jerk of her head. Enough.

  “You know,” she began, using her words to realign her train of thought, “for someone so opposed to all of . . . this you’re quite well-versed in its underpinning.”

  “I am a king,” he replied. “If only because she accepts it. And have been for long enough to learn a thing or two.” And in a far less confident inflection, “Broodfather, too.”

  “Broodwhat?” asked Tirdad.

  “You don’t think a bird delivers the beasts for her to give birth to, do you?”

  Tirdad knotted his brow. “Oh. Right.”

  The king shifted his weight impatiently, and a bit uncomfortably. “I don’t enjoy it. If you’re finished interrogating me, there is the matter of my proposition.”

  “That’s up to Waray,” said Ashtadukht, eyeing the despondent half-div. Her mood swings had been especially severe of late. Or they’d always been, and she’d only begun to take notice.

  “Not letting your šo-brooding wife fuck me,” said Waray. She sat up and cocked her head, still trained on one cloud in particular. She’d decided it didn’t have a gait at all: it loped. “Should leave, I think. ‘Guards! Guards!’ someone will be crooning.” She scratched her head and pursed her lips. “Maybe.”

  “Guards are coming?” asked Ashtadukht.

  Waray nodded and got to her feet like, well, someone her age, or a bit younger. “Soon.” She avoided eye contact, hunched to one side and probably itching for a veil for the first time ever. She looked ashamed. “I don’t want to fight them. Not now.”

  Ashtadukht gave her a pat on the back. It occurred to her that even if the half-div had turned the sappers away, they could have dredged up some unwelcome memories in the process. “We’ll discuss this on the move. Show us to the broodmother.”

  The king indicated the edifice across the lane. “Way ahead of you.”

  “Figures.” Ashtadukht nudged Waray onward, who offered no resistance, and the three of them followed the king’s brazen course straight for the structure.

  It struck her as odd that their approach remained unhindered. Even the entrance, a slit in the otherwise uninterrupted carved sto
ne motif, had no sentries.

  “It’s unguarded,” she remarked.

  “Are there traps?” ventured Tirdad.

  “More traps than I’m comfortable knowing about,” said the king. “I’ve tripped my fair share. The trouble with being immortal is being reminded of it. Over and over. Painfully.”

  “Sounds like we’re better off not knowing,” added Ashtadukht, peering into the unlit entrance and having second thoughts. “You’re certain you can safely guide us through?”

  “Sure. Follow my lead closely, though.”

  Ashtadukht blew out a sigh. She once again entertained the thought of turning tail and running; however, her sense of duty would not allow it. And she admitted she had a predilection for seeking out pernicious circumstances. She used to convince herself that the pernicious bit came with the territory, but lately she was beginning to come to terms with the fact that she enjoyed it. Discovery for the sake of discovery would always be grand, but discovery with the thrill of danger alongside seemed all the more fulfilling. Once she’d survived the danger anyway.

  They passed from the lane into the narrow corridor leading into the edifice, which was barely wide enough to stand two abreast. It was illuminated by a faint yellowish glow like moonlight left out to rot.

  “Waray,” Ashtadukht whispered, toying with the cuff of her sleeve as she did. “You do realize the broodmother won’t actually be mating with you, right?”

  “Don’t want it to show me things,” Waray dolorously answered. “Don’t remember the things, but I remember not liking them.”

  “Please, Waray? Just do this for me. You’d be doing me a huge favour and helping so many innocent people.”

  “I don’t care. No such thing.”

  “You really came down hard on me back there, you know. I hit you once; you hit me many times. That isn’t exactly getting even.”

  Waray turned to inspect the wall of the slit they’d been led into and in doing so hide her shame. “Sorry. Everything was pomegranate-red. Like—” She curled her fingers into claws and flexed them around her head. “And it hurt when you snagged me.”