Outlaw: A Dark Fantasy Novel (On the Bones of Gods Book 2)

by K. Eason

  Dekklis’s turn to shrug. She frowned past Maja, at the mosaic on the east wall. Interlocking geometrics, orange and green and rare purple. She’d loved it as a child. Now it made her head ache. “I need her to listen to me. That’s easier if she’s not already annoyed.”

  “Oh, she will be. Mother’s got Senator K’Haina in her office.”

  “Which means . . . ?”

  “Which means.” Maja threaded her hand through Dek’s arm. Guided her past the scattered chairs, toward the ornate doors at the room’s farthest end. “We have time to talk, and there are nicer places to sit than out here. Where are you sleeping?”

  “The garrison.”

  “Of course. My sister, proper soldier. And you probably choked down some grey slime and called it breakfast.”

  “Bread, and it was fresh.”

  “Huh. Well. I’ll have the kitchen find something better than legion baking.” Maja fished a key on a cord out of her robe. Slipped it into the lock and turned.

  “Since when do we lock interior house doors?”

  Maja blew air through her nose. Not quite a snort, no, not her sister. “Mad times, Dekklis. That’s all.”

  “Hell.”

  “Legion language, in this house?” Credible imitation of their mother.

  “Maja.”

  Maja jabbed the key back into the lock. Twisted hard, as if the mechanism offended. “It’s been unsettled, lately. People have gone missing.”

  “People.”

  “Men. Highborn men. It’s been adults so far, and everyone’s gone missing outside their house, but Mother’s worried about the boys.” Maja leaned against the door, arms crossed. “You know how she gets. She won’t let them go out, even with escorts, for fear someone will snatch them.”

  “So why lock the main doors and leave the servant passage unsecured?”

  “It isn’t. See?” Maja pointed down the hallway, toward the little alcove that hid the servant’s door. There had been a curtain there once, hiding an ornate metal gate, more form than function. Now the curtain was gone, and the delicate gate had become a wrought-iron monster.

  Something Maja wasn’t telling her. Mad times, sure. But their mother wasn’t paranoid. Dekklis walked down to the iron gate. Squatted beside it and traced the bolts and hinges. Recent work. The plaster and stone were still raw from the drilling.

  “You have the key to these locks?”

  “All of us do.”

  Where all meant Maja, Jikka, and Disar. And Mother.

  “None of the consorts?”

  “Of course not.” Gust of perfume as Maja crouched beside her. Her hair slithered over her shoulders, ink and shadow, fell into the gap of her robe. “You want a key, Dekklis, I’m sure Mother will get you one.”

  “I don’t want a key.” Dekklis stood up. Wished again for the comforting weight of armor. For Istel. “So the consorts are locked in. That’s what you’re telling me?”

  “For their safety. That’s why K’Haina’s here. Worried about her precious son. Wants Mother to reassure her he’s in good hands. Bah.”

  Dekklis recalled a young man with broad shoulders and loose curls. Big eyes. Gentle manner. Someone Istel would eat for breakfast, right along with his grey legion gruel.

  Someone Maja might, too, judging from the look on her face. “I say, whoever’s doing it, welcome to that one. I’ll take him down to the Suburba myself and lose him in the alleys.”

  “Maja.”

  “Don’t Maja me. You haven’t had to breed with him. Be grateful for it.”

  The hallway was not so long between here and their mother’s office. The doors were not that thick. And Maja’s voice could drill granite when she was angry. Which she was: Maja never had much cared for a second daughter’s duty.

  Mildly, Dek said, “Boy’s got no more choice about being here than you do.” Exactly what Snow would say, hell and damn.

  “What, you’ve turned Reformist now?”

  Reformist sounded like toad-eater on Maja’s lips. Dekklis bristled. “I’m Sixth Cohort. That’s K’Hess Rurik’s command. Lot of men in it.”

  Don’t mention your partner, Szanys. That’s right.

  Some of Maja’s anger leaked out. What filled in behind it was no more appealing. “Really? K’Hess has command of a cohort? What did his mother do to land him that post?”

  Suddenly Dekklis saw Maja as Snow might. All silk and soft skin, all privilege, never spent a night outside the House walls.

  She heard the muted outrage in her voice. The defensiveness. “He’s a good commander.”

  Maja heard it, too. “You bedding him?”

  “Of course not. He’s my superior officer.”

  Maja rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?”

  “More than you think,” Dekklis said tightly.

  Then came an eruption from her mother’s office, voices climbing and competing for volume. Dekklis took a step that direction. The same servant—what had Maja called him? Veli?—emerged from a passage. Flicked a nervous glance at Dekklis, at Maja. Dipped a bow.

  Bang as the doorway opened. A woman swept out, taller than Maja, draped in Senate crimson, her hair coiled around her skull in the traditional style. Senator K’Haina, no introductions needed. You could see where her son got his big eyes, oh yes. See where he got his soft hands.

  Nothing soft in the look K’Haina arrowed at Maja.

  “Second daughter,” she spat.

  Maja bowed, a fraction too late and too shallow. “Senator.” And added, as K’Haina tried to go past, “My sister, Senator. Szanys Dekklis.”

  A flicker in K’Haina’s eyes. The senator paused. Turned a shoulder to Maja and faced Dekklis squarely. “The soldier, isn’t it? The youngest?”

  Dekklis would not bow to this woman. Hell no, and damn what was proper. She snapped out a legion salute. “Yes, Senator. First Scout, Second Legion, Sixth Cohort.”

  “Dekklis,” dry-voiced from the doorway. No smile on their mother’s face. Raised brows. A glitter in her eyes that might be some gentler emotion. Might be irritation, too, that the first words she’d heard from her daughter in almost a decade had been rank and assignment.

  So much for trying not to antagonize her. Should’ve worn her armor. Should’ve brought Istel.

  Told you, Szanys.

  Maja grinned. Said, too loudly, “Mother, look who came all the way from Cardik.”

  “Cardik?” K’Haina’s eyes narrowed. “What brings you—”

  “We shouldn’t bore Senator K’Haina with family chatter. Please, Maja. Show our guest out.” Never a request, with their mother. Whip-crack orders. Should’ve been in the legion, Mother. You’d’ve been a praefecta by thirty.

  Instead, at thirty, Szanys Elia had been a mother of three daughters, pregnant with Dekklis, and junior consul and head of House Szanys both, having survived the fever that her mother and sisters had not. The whole weight of House Szanys’s survival had landed on Elia’s shoulders. The memory of that weight was still stamped into her face. Lines around her mouth, her eyes. The adamant line of her jaw. Delicate woman, Elia. Small. Lovely, in the same way that flights of svartjagr were beautiful, swirling out of the caves at sunset.

  Right before they swooped down and tore you to pieces.

  Senator K’Haina looked like she wanted to protest. Opened her mouth and shut it again.

  Elia bowed. “Thank you for your visit. I will consider your advice. —Second daughter, please.”

  Even Maja wouldn’t argue with Elia. Tight-lipped, “Yes, Mother,” and a serviceable, proper bow. Veli melted out of sight, probably grateful, while the second daughter of House Szanys played servant and showed K’Haina out those double doors.

  “This isn’t a family visit,” Elia murmured, “is it?”

  “No, Mother.”

  “Mm. Well.” Elia looked at her. Interest flickered in those garnet-dark eyes. “Best you come inside and tell me why you’re here.”

  The last time Dekklis h
ad been in her mother’s office, she had been wearing her armor, squeaky-stiff from the quartermaster. Asking forgiveness, not permission, for joining the legion. And not even that, not really. Dekklis hadn’t regretted that decision.

  Her armor had changed over the years. The office hadn’t. Still crisp and neat, stylus and tablet at the edge of the desk, a stack of today’s business in the basket. There were remnants of polite tea on the side table. K’Haina hadn’t touched hers, by the look of it. Elia took her cup up again. Sipped, delicately, and sat on the edge of her desk. She didn’t invite Dekklis to sit in one of the client chairs. Those were padded, cushioned. Comfortable. The chair behind the desk, Elia’s, had been in the House since its founding. Unadorned wood, naked, edges worn smooth. No cushions for Szanys Elia. No softness, ever.

  That her mother was sitting on the corner of the desk implied, if not the intimacy of family, at least informality. Dekklis shifted into parade rest, her knees just a little unlocked, shoulders settled over her hips. The ribs she’d cracked last winter twinged a warning. She was going to ache later.

  Elia set her teacup aside. “Do you want some?”

  “Thank you, no.”

  “Then I suppose you should tell me what you do want. And why you’re here, and.” Elia cocked an eyebrow. “In civilian garments. You identified yourself by rank to Senator K’Haina. I take it, then, you haven’t resigned.”

  “No, mother. And I’m not on leave. I need a favor.”

  “A favor.”

  “I need to address the Senate. Cardik’s under siege. The Senate needs to send troops now.”

  “Wait.” Elia raised a hand. “A siege?”

  “Taliri. An army of Taliri. They didn’t have any siege engines, just numbers.”

  And a dragon, Szanys. You should probably mention that bit.

  Elia’s lips tightened. “Do you have proof?”

  “You mean, did Praefecta Stratka send a formal request? No.” Dekklis didn’t hesitate. Plunged past the lie in one breath. “I’m here on First Spear K’Hess Rurik’s orders. He sent me out—me and my partner—before the siege closed completely.”

  “With no written message.”

  “There wasn’t time, Mother. They were closing the gates. They might still be holding. But they need help. They need the First.”

  “It’s not a trivial thing, Dekklis, to convene the Senate, much less to have you address them.”

  “You think a Taliri army is trivial?”

  “You exaggerate. The Taliri raid in parties. Perhaps an alliance of a couple of tribes.”

  “Hell I exaggerate. I saw—”

  A dragon-avatar rising out of the riot and ruin. An army surrounding Cardik’s walls. K’Hess Kenjak impaled, whole villages burned.

  Maybe some of that showed on her face. Maybe Szanys Elia remembered her youngest daughter wasn’t prone to dramatics. “Start at the beginning,” she said. “Tell me all of it.”

  Dekklis filled her lungs. Held it a heartbeat. Then she told her mother everything: the raids on Alviri villages, the riot in Cardik, the armies at the gates. And—

  “Their leader was a godsworn named Ehkla. A half-blood Talir godsworn to Tal’Shik. It’s a sacrifice, Mother. All of it. Tal’Shik wants revenge on Illharek for the Purge.”

  Elia sat up straighter. “Don’t use that name. That’s heresy.”

  “I know what I saw. For the love of all Illharek. Don’t pick now to be orthodox.”

  “I’m a senator. Orthodoxy is required. How do you know there are godsworn involved?”

  “I saw what they did to K’Hess Kenjak. They killed him the old way. I know it was prayers carved on that pole.” Which she couldn’t know without help. Elia knew that. Dekklis forestalled the inevitable how. “I had someone with me, a conjuror I met in Cardik. She confirmed they were godmarks.”

  “And who is this conjuror?”

  Rurik had taken my friend in the Warren for sufficient identity, but that had been Istel talking then, one man appealing to another in solidarity. Mothers and daughters, highborn, didn’t rely on anything so fragile as trust.

  Dekklis tried anyway. “She’s Suburban. Couldn’t get a posting down here, so she went north.” Snow would kill her for saying that much. That kind of information could be verified, might come with a name if Elia decided to look.

  Which Elia didn’t seem too inclined to do. “Suburban” had made her sit back on the desk again, her face set in classic highborn prejudice.

  “And this second-rate conjuror told you it was Tal’Shik’s marks. How would she know that?”

  Because she’s a heretic. Hell and damn. Snow had said, Don’t you mention me, Szanys. She’d been right in that warning. Dekklis sifted truths, picked what she hoped was the less damning. “She says the Academy keeps archives, from before the Purge.”

  Elia surged upright. Honest anger in her eyes, honest alarm that reports of dragons and burning cities hadn’t inspired. “She said that? To you?”

  Not what Archives? That was telling. Dekklis shrugged. “I didn’t believe her at first. But you seem to know what she means.”

  “I need a name, Dekklis.”

  “No, Mother, you don’t. Because if you have a name, you’ll go after her, and she isn’t the problem. The Taliri army is. Tal’Shik is. For the love of our foremothers, are you listening to me? They’re coming south. We dodged raiders the whole way, groups of them. Godsworn, Mother, I saw one myself.” She held up her hand, palm out. “The godmark, right there. Tal’Shik’s mark.”

  Elia raised her own hands. Warding. Surrender. Maybe just plain shut up. “All right.” Her tone said it wasn’t, not by any stretch. “I will try to summon the Senate, and I will ask that they hear your report. But I won’t mention Tal’Shik. And neither will you. You can tell them about the Taliri. You can tell them about the riots in Cardik, you tell them about the villages. But you leave off the bit about Tal’Shik, you savvy? They won’t believe it. They certainly won’t believe how you know it. Heresy aside, daughter, you’ll sound mad.”

  The senators wouldn’t credit a half-blood heretic conjuror’s information, she meant. Might not credit a First Scout from the Sixth without orders, either. But Elia believed her. That, plain on her face, in the arrangement of lines around mouth and brow. That was her mother thinking, adding facts together. That was her mother coming to a conclusion she didn’t much like.

  “Something’s going on, isn’t it? Mother. Tell me.”

  Elia shook her head. Dek’s mother slipped away, leaving the senator, stiff spined, square jawed. Only a flicker of something in her eyes that might have been—could not have been, not in Elia—fear. “Promise me, Dekklis. You don’t mention Tal’Shik in the Senate. You don’t mention her outside this room.”

  As if she were a child again. As if she hadn’t spent the last fifteen years in armor, and the last ten of those under an open sky. Some things didn’t change, hell and damn, and Snow had been right about that, too.

  So, as if she were a child again: “I promise.”

  Like hell.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  There was a singer out on the Arch. That wasn’t unusual, in and of itself. Minstrels gathered on the Arch at sixth mark like crows on cold carrion. Sounded about like crows, too, most times, croaking and flogging their lyres, trying to wring coins out of passersby. Sometimes a clot of toad-throated singers would plant themselves in the middle of the street, so that you had to pay to make them move.

  But this singer had a pretty voice, high and delicate. Sounded like a boy, too, not a girl. Ten years ago, you wouldn’t’ve heard a gelding singer on the Arch at sixth mark. This one’s presence suggested that they were back in fashion, just like deep-red dyes and blunt-toed slippers. Except blunt-toed slippers hadn’t gone out of fashion with the Purge, and deep-red dyes weren’t one of Tal’Shik’s godsworn legacies.

  The Reforms had stopped just short of banning castration—allowing, as the law said, a mother to preserve her son’s vocal talent.
In practice, it meant that poor women had options besides exposing the infant to the Wild. If the boy had a voice, she could cut him, let him earn coin as a singer. But it was more likely, if the boy survived infancy, that his mother would indenture him to a brothel, or a highborn household. Tsabrak’s mother had chosen that path—had gotten lucky, too, that she’d contracted him to a proconsul. Better money than brothels, if you caught a highborn’s eye.

  Lucky, Snow. Is that what I was?

  The shadow-Tsabrak skulked at the corner of her eye. His voice was clear, close and cold against her ear. She resisted the urge to reach up and brush him aside. Made a fist of that hand instead and studied the crooked small finger. Tsabrak’s last gift to her. It made a focus for her anger, made it easier to shove the rest of her feelings about Tsabrak—a tangled mess, fuck and damn, everything about him was—aside.

  You were lucky. She kept the law, yeah? Released you after your years were up. A brothel might’ve kept you. And then what? I’d’ve walked past a whore in the street, even one as pretty as you.

  The ghost said nothing, so that Snow thought he might’ve given up, please and thank you. And then:

  You’re right.

  Fuck and damn. Even winning an argument with him brought no satisfaction. Just an ache that went deeper than bone and muscle and lodged somewhere in her chest, where it hurt to breathe.

  Snow twisted on her stool. Strained and stretched far enough to threaten her balance. She couldn’t see the singer from here, not without abandoning her table. He sounded like he’d stationed himself farther down the Arch, where it crossed one of the Second Tier crossbridges. Pity. There was a shortage of entertainment here, on the Academy’s end of the Arch. Oh, it might technically count as part of Second Tier. But the Academy was far older than the structures around it, older than the Arch itself. Conjurors had shaped it out of a massive stalactite, threaded its floors and windows with black Illhari steel. The Academy had since spread to the neighboring drips and jabs of rock, so that the whole business looked like a lacework of stone and steel. A monument to Illhari pride, and to conjuror arrogance.