Enemy (On the Bones of Gods Book 1)

by K. Eason

  “Of course I am. The Warren’s coming apart, you noticed? Her friends behind it.”

  “Alviri behind it,” Istel said patiently. “Homeless, hungry, frightened refugees. That’s the Taliri’s fault.”

  “Armed Alviri.” Killing citizens now, and each other. The second no one really minded. But the first, hell and damn. “I warned her, yeah? What would happen if this didn’t stop. I told her. We’ll have blood in the streets.”

  “And you think Snow wants that?”

  “I don’t know what she wants.”

  Istel scowled. “Trust her, or don’t. But if you don’t, then we turn around now.”

  Sour taste in her mouth, thinking that. “Who’s this we? You don’t meet with her. You go down into the baths and . . . do what, exactly?”

  Flatly: “What you told me to do. Give us excuse to be there. Be seen.”

  “Great hardship, is it?”

  Istel rolled his eyes. Lucky he didn’t pop them out, send them bouncing down the street. Anything but turn his head, anything but look right at her. Typical Istel. She found herself thinking of Veiko’s unblinking stare. Found herself getting angry.

  “Armed Alviri,” she repeated. “You wonder where they’re getting those weapons? I don’t. Her friends.”

  “Smugglers,” he said mildly. “The God’s people, probably. That’s what I told Rurik.”

  “She’s the God’s people. She couldn’t mention they’re selling weapons?”

  “What would you do if she had? Tell Rurik, and then he would what, send a detachment down there to arrest people? How much do you think she’d be worth after that?”

  As much as any corpse in the river. Dekklis ground her teeth together.

  “So we bring her in. Protect her. Get names out of her. Stop this now, and settle the Alviri before the legion does.”

  “Bring her in? Didn’t you promise her otherwise?”

  Dekklis did not appreciate that look from

  a man

  Istel, no, that thin-lipped disapproval just like her mother’s. Didn’t like the tone of her own voice, pitched high and defensive. “Rurik needs something for the praefecta.”

  “Snow can’t be that something. And even if you got the ones selling weapons—even if she gave you names—it won’t solve a damned thing, Dek. This fight has been coming since the Purge.”

  “Oh, has it? When did you become an expert on Illhari history?”

  “I’m not. But I know Cardik. I know the people.”

  A mixed population, he meant. The Illhari had not butchered the Alviri natives when they’d breached the walls. Razed the temples, reduced the streets to piles of brick, yes, but they’d spared the residents. Sold them citizenship if they wanted it and let them stay with their homes and their businesses, such as the war left. The Republic had showed more mercy than the Alviri thegns ever had shown the Dvergiri.

  Tell yourself that, Szanys. How many Alviri you think can afford Illhari ink? And how many stayed, doing shit work, with no ink?

  “You sound like Snow,” Dekklis snapped. “This is why the Alviri are angry, this is why the Illhari are unfair, this is why what the heretics do is justified. You change sides when I wasn’t looking?”

  “You seem to think so. That’s why you tell me to stay in the baths,” so softly she thought she’d imagined it. Wind, surely, a stray voice from a courtyard.

  “What?”

  “You don’t trust me,” quiet as only Istel could be.

  Teach her to push him, wouldn’t it. Teach her to probe and poke and trust he’d never push back. And he wouldn’t have before. She wouldn’t have doubted him before.

  You’re poison, Snowdenaelikk.

  “All right,” she said. “All right.” To what, hell if she knew. Nothing all right in the look he gave her, Istel-calm and Istel-still. “Come up with me this time, then. I’m not saying we’ll do more than talk to her—”

  But he wasn’t looking at her anymore. Chin up, pointed into the wind, narrow-eyed and sniffing like Veiko’s big, wolfish dog. She turned her face the same direction. Smoke wasn’t unusual in a city. But this smoke burned nose and throat.

  “Feh. Smells like the tannery.”

  “No. My mother’s a tanner. That’s something else.” Istel angled out into the crossroads and squinted, while she wondered how it was she’d never known what his mother did, or that he had a mother still living.

  Never asked, did you? Highborn.

  “Fire, Dek.”

  She looked up. No smudge across the blue yet, nothing visible, which meant only the flames weren’t that high. “The Warren?”

  “Or the Bridge.” He rocked onto his toes. “Might be nothing. Maybe someone kicked over a firedog.”

  “Might be riot, too.” Imagine a mob of ragged Alviri with torches. Hell and damn. At least the city was snow-soaked. She cut a look at the sky again. Another storm coming, piling up grey and bruised on the peaks. That would stop fire, too.

  “I can find out. Run up there, meet you here after.” He was looking at her now, waiting permission, exactly like a good

  male

  soldier.

  Yes on her lips, and she clipped it off. “No.”

  She should send him back to Rurik, to warn him there was a fire in the Warren. And then the legion would come, armed and angry. If it were a shop fire, then she’d start slaughter for nothing.

  And if it’s not?

  If it weren’t, then the garrison would notice the smoke and come anyway.

  She could see Still Waters from here, grey wedge with cobalt curtains shivering in the late afternoon. Trust Snow. Trust Istel.

  “Scouts work in pairs, yeah? Come with me,” she said. “Let’s hear what our friend has to say.”

  The streets were steeper and narrower here in the Warren’s top half. The S’Ranna was louder, too, where it tumbled out of the canyon, tearing itself white on the rocks. Too loud for highborn Dvergiri ears, who preferred the other side of the Hill. The Warren was too dry and too high, with no springs beneath it. The public wells were few and far. And it was darker, too, pinched so close to canyon sides. The sunset came earlier here, and the winds were constant. Only a breeze at the moment, but biting damp.

  Laughing God, Snow knew that smell, and the chill that crawled between skin and clothing. Witch-weather, the Alviri called it. It had been a witch-winter, with endless storms rolling east over the mountains, sunlight to snowfall in a handful of heartbeats. It would be a witch-spring, too, no doubt, when all the snow melted. Turn the twig-slender river into a torrent, yeah, wash away half the farms in the valley. And then there’d be witches everywhere, behind every shrub and shadow.

  Witches had been the Alviri’s best excuse, once, to murder Dvergiri. The Ten Thousand had burned, men and women, across the Nine Realms when the last high thegn’s favorite priest decreed it. Tal’Shik had risen from the ashes of that grief and outrage. Her godsworn took the Senate elections, swearing vengeance. The Houses set aside their blood feuds and birthed the Republic. The legion marched out under Illharek’s banner and Tal’Shik’s spirit.

  And they won, against Alviri troops and their Taliri mercenaries. The Nine Realms had fractured into ten, and then a dozen, when the high thegn fell. Tal’Shik kept her promises. The Alviri kept their hatred of witches and precious little else. The Illhari had allowed them to stay in the Republic, oh yes, but only in the places the Illhari did not want.

  The top of the Warren was one of those places, oldest Cardik, that the Illhari had not bothered to renovate. Squat and graceless houses huddled together like toads on a log. Timber walls instead of brick. Thatch instead of tile. Slivered wood and bark on the streets instead of cobbles, which smelled of rot and squished unpleasantly under Snow’s boots. A trio of matted Alviri clumped at the crotch of three streets. Men, all three, with sullen eyes and hidden hands.

  They didn’t challenge Tsabrak. Scowled at her, though, and one of them spat “Half-blood” and phlegm as she passed.
<
br />   “Wonder where he learned to hate half-bloods?” she asked cheerfully. “Wait. Bet I know. Bet he saw one burn his village, murder his wife, eat his children—”

  “Ehkla does not eat children.”

  “Right. Skewers them, then, before a slow roast. Unless she carves them first.”

  Tsabrak eyed her. “You’re worried about a rat’s opinion?”

  “When that rat’s got a knife. You noticed the rats are getting pretty fucking brave lately, yeah? Sad day, Tsabrak, when I don’t know all the thieves in Cardik. Sad day when I have to worry about my back.”

  “You have Briel,” he said dryly. Brushed at the stains on his sleeve. “She’s watching.”

  “You think she’s much good in a fight?” Another jag, another slope. Her chest ached. Her calves did. She frowned. Precious little this far up except Alviri houses and the Finger. It had been Cardik’s shortest bridge, connecting the Hill and the top side of the Warren, before an Illhari ballista ended its career. Now it was just a narrow stone ruin, totally exposed. Beautiful view of the city, too, looking east, if you didn’t mind the climb or the smell of raw sewage. The Alviri had never quite understood the technology of Illhari plumbing, preferring their shit running free in the streets.

  Or clogged in the gutters. She stepped over a particularly noxious puddle and onto the Finger’s base. Followed Tsabrak up onto its curve, chest tight and heart beating too hard and nothing to do with the climb.

  “Whatever you have up here better be good.”

  Tsabrak cut her a strange look, crossbred smirk and scowl. She didn’t like it. Liked it even less paired to a perfectly civil, “How is your skraeling? Veiko, isn’t it?”

  “Huh. What do your spies say?”

  “That he keeps to Still Waters. That he works in the courtyard some afternoons, with his axe. That he limps when he walks. That he keeps a toadfucking dog. I should congratulate you and that Alvir slaver. Her bondies will spread ass or legs for legion coin, but they’ll keep the lips on their face closed tight against mine.”

  “Aneki’s a half-blood, not an Alvir.”

  “Even more reason she should gut soldiers, not fuck them.”

  “Her choice, what she does with her freedom. She bought it.”

  “As I bought mine.” His face convulsed with old anger. “One hundred seventeen silver marks and ten years of my life. A brand out of it.”

  A tiny silver scar burned beside a citizen’s sigil, which meant indentured, contract paid. The law said a male citizen could only sell his service once. But a legal distinction had let Tsabrak’s mother sell her son’s youth to a proconsul who liked pretty boys. The grown Tsabrak still counted the debt unpaid, even past the proconsul’s death.

  Ask how that proconsul had died. Who’d done it.

  Bad fish.

  Damn sure Tsabrak remembered that favor, which bought her the space to argue. “You made your choice, yeah? Aneki made a different one.”

  “Toadfucking coward, she is.” Tsabrak sucked his temper back through his teeth. “And you defend her.”

  “I understand her. I might’ve made that choice if I’d been in her place. I think she might’ve done better than I did.” Dekklis’s words then, falling out of her mouth like stones. “The God doesn’t love women. Got my own brands to prove that, yeah?”

  Tsabrak flinched. Walked a little farther and stopped, four paces from the Finger’s jagged tip. The wind snapped and tore long strands of his hair loose, sent them waving around his head like black flames. He was beautiful enough to rip breath out of her. Was a time she’d have done anything for him.

  “Come here,” he said without looking back. “Want you to see this.”

  And that time was over. “Been on the Finger before, Tsabrak.”

  Now he did look. “You haven’t seen this. Come here.”

  She did, minding her distance. Stopped out of arm’s reach and looked. The city sprawled below them, crawled up again on both sides of the S’Ranna. On the Hill side, where the Illhari had rebuilt, the architecture changed with altitude. The Street of Silk Curtains at the bottom, butting up to the merchants’ houses nearest the east gate, all in plain Illhari stonework. The higher you looked, that plain stone gave way to conjured walls and rooflines, elaborate shapes and figures. Highborn vanity, highborn wealth, which met its zenith in the governor’s villa. Beside it, the plain, practical garrison looked like a river stone among diamonds, almost directly across from them here, and a ballista’s range distant. Below them, more directly down—there was Market Bridge, monument to Illhari engineering and Illhari conjuring.

  A monument with smoke coming off it, coiled up thick and brown all along the Bridge’s length. Too much smoke for meat vendors. Snow blinked.

  Briel.

  The svartjagr circled back. Skimmed over the smoke on the Bridge. Not meat cooking, no. Cloth. Leather. Wood. Oil. Flames, too, big enough that Briel saw them. People massed and clotting in the streets. Screams and pushing and the wet slip of bodies off the edge.

  “Fuck and damn, Tsabrak. What is that?”

  “Revolution,” said Tsabrak, dreamy-quiet.

  “It’ll be slaughter when the legion shows up.”

  “They don’t have to last long. They just have to start it.”

  “They. The refugees. You tell them who they’re dying for? They know it’s Ehkla calling orders? They know it’s Tal’Shik behind her?”

  “No. And they won’t find out. As you say. It will be slaughter when the legion comes. And the ones who pick up the fight after, they’ll only see Illharek.”

  Cold knot in her belly, metallic bitter in the back of her throat. “Are we done? I want to get back across that bridge before your revolution makes it too hot for me to get home.”

  “Time was, the Warren was your home. You mean, you want to get back to your skraeling.” He tipped a glance at her. “What is he to you, this Veiko Nyrikki?”

  No one and nothing dried up on her tongue. Lied enough, hadn’t she? “My partner.”

  “Partner.” Tsabrak tasted the word, rolled it around in his mouth. Spat, finally, over the Finger. “Pretty way to say we fuck, isn’t it?”

  “We don’t, as it happens. You jealous? Because if that’s—”

  “Kill him.”

  “What?”

  His gaze slithered sideways. “You heard me.”

  “Is that you talking, or Ehkla? Because I told you what she wanted with him.”

  “I know what you told me. And now I’m telling you. It doesn’t matter what he can do with spirits. What power he has. Kill him.”

  “The God approves?”

  “My orders, Snow.”

  “No.”

  Gentle headshake. “So. You’re refusing?”

  “I am.”

  He nodded. “She said you would.”

  Then Snow understood, fuck and damn, blind not to see it sooner. Sweat prickled up. Chilled on her skin and sank into bone. “Ehkla’s here, isn’t she? Now. Already. In the city. That’s why your revolution’s happening on the Bridge.”

  Tsabrak showed her a blank face for his answer, as good as a yes.

  “So what, you brought me up here to kill me?”

  “No.” He should have been angry. Wasn’t, dear Laughing God. Hurt, which she’d never expected, and no act. “Was a time you didn’t argue with orders, Snowdenaelikk. Was a time you knew who your friends were.”

  We were never.

  “Check a mirror, yeah? I’m not the one in bed with Tal’Shik. What’s she promising you, Tsabrak? Revenge on the highborn? Bring down Illharek? Converts?”

  Nothing coming off him now but cold, deep as the dark Below. Shadows she couldn’t unravel. “Don’t fight. You won’t get lucky enough to die.”

  He dipped his chin and flicked his gaze past her. She knew what she’d see when she looked. The street gang, no surprises, gathered around the base of the Finger. Half a dozen matches to her sword down there, badly hung off hips and shoulders. Ask if any of t
hem could use the blade for more than graceless hacking. Ask if it would matter, that many to her one.

  Briel felt her panic. Began to circle back, sick wheel and bank that kicked hard in Snow’s guts. Go, she wished Briel, with the memory of Veiko’s witchfire eyes and all the urgency she could manage. Briel wasn’t good for complex messages. Trust Veiko’s natural paranoia. Trust her conjuring on the locks. Trust Dekklis to keep her promise and get him out of Cardik.

  Which Briel didn’t want. Sent back images of ruined Ollu with Tsabrak’s face overlaid, flavored with a courage that tasted too much like Veiko. Snow countered with her own worst imaginings. Briel broken. Veiko pale and dead. She shut Briel out hard, on a final

  just go, yeah?

  and blinked past the white spike of pain. Watched a shape that looked nothing at all like a bird dive into Cardik’s rooflines.

  Tsabrak watched the svartjagr’s convolutions. “Sent her straight back to him, yeah?”

  “He’ll be out the gates by sunset.”

  Tsabrak smiled. “You don’t believe that.”

  Snow glanced at the Finger’s edge. Flexed her fingers. Stone underfoot. Water, wind, and sky. She might bring down the Finger if she tried, by conjuring. Take the decision out of Veiko’s hands.

  And damn him, too. The God would come to collect on his bargain, without her there to pay it.

  Snow tied down her panic. Took a breath, held it, let go. She wasn’t going to fight. Tsabrak wasn’t going to kill her. He was going to take her to Ehkla. And Snow’d made a bargain with the God, hadn’t she, burned and branded into her skin. She needed to settle that first.

  Tsabrak was still watching. Waiting, with that smirk going stiff on the edges. He jabbed his chin at her hips, where the seax hung. “You going to give me that? Or are you going to fight?”

  She draped the sword belt across his palm and let that be her answer.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Dekklis arrived at Still Waters, Istel behind her, in no good humor. Imagination, that was all, that the air seemed thicker. Imagination that she could hear screams and shouts from the Bridge. Call the haze overhead mist on the edge of a spring storm, yeah, except it smelled like Davni’s memory.