by K. Eason
Can’t argue that. Teslin’s mouth twisted. The skraeling said you’d need help. Guess you do.
“Help.” Jari had needed help and died anyway. The Sixth still needed it. But there would be runners on their way to the Hill by now, bringing reinforcements. Trained Illhari troops could handle a street mob. They didn’t need her.
Snow, however, did. Motherless half-blood heretic Snowdenaelikk, whose skraeling partner called up Dek’s dead friends for help. Foremothers forgive, but it was good to see Teslin. And where Teslin was—
“Where’d Barkett go? I saw him. Didn’t I?”
Yeah. Teslin jerked her chin upslope. Scouting ahead. The svartjagr’s carrying on about something. Toadfucking godmagic up there, I think.
Godmagic. Ask what flesh and bone could do against godmagic except die. And then ask what dying meant anymore, with Teslin here and Barkett up there and foremothers knew how many more of her dead friends haunting the streets on Veiko’s say-so.
And then ask what would happen if Ehkla won whatever it was Ehkla meant to achieve. Ask how many more dead Veiko would have to call on.
Dekklis looked
through
past Teslin, to where the barricade hulked between the Bridge and the Warren. It wasn’t large. Maybe chest height, and no deeper than the oxcart that made up its bulk. But anyone trying to climb it would leave her back exposed to the Sixth’s crossbows and javelins. And on the other side—bet on a nest of Alviri, armed with contraband weapons.
“We won’t get over that.”
Teslin shook her head. We’ll get past it. Come on, Dek.
Another bolt slammed into the planking. It had, Dekklis saw, a bit of flesh still attached. She waited for the subsequent scream. Couldn’t hear it. Only tunneling quiet, like a wall between her and the battle not fifteen paces away, as the fog thickened around. The rain had stopped, she realized. There was frost on the metal bands of her armor, while the wet wool and linen stiffened and chilled. The smoke and blood smells rinsed away into pervasive nothing.
“Come on.”
Then it was Istel pulling her up again, with a pincer grip on her arm. Dragging her toward the Warren, following Teslin’s broad, translucent back. They pulled her through the barricade as if it were made of fog and cobwebs, as if the Alviri swarming over it were made of mist. Dekklis saw one of them flinch and startle where Teslin walked through him. Briel scythed overhead, solid black shape cutting uphill, keening.
Toward Snow. Toward Ehkla.
Hell.
Snow shook her head. “You want me to what?”
“Kill me. That is why you came, is it not?”
“I came because Tsabrak dragged me.”
Ehkla laughed, one sharp peal before pain hitched her airless. Gasp and wheeze, then sibilant: “He may think so. But you mean to kill me. You’d have come eventually. I know my enemies.”
“Thought we were allies.”
“You never did.” An ordinary woman would’ve shaken her head. Ehkla still had the reflex. Turned her cheek a fingerlength and stopped. Held very still while her eyelids creased closed and her breath hitched and stopped. That was a woman fighting for quiet, for control, for some measure of her dignity.
And she wants you to kill her. That’s convenient.
Laughing God, wasn’t it. There were candles here. Snow could burn through the ropes. And with her hands free, she could pull power out of stone and wood. Shape it, even with that broken finger bone. She might bring down the ceiling. Might send fire up the walls. Blast her way back to Veiko, bring this whole side of the Bridge down in fire and blood.
Felt like the God’s hands on her back, pushing, sounded like his whisper.
Do it. Clear your debt. Save your skraeling.
Her chest constricted. This whole business stank worse than Ehkla’s rotting.
“Doesn’t matter what I think. Tsabrak says we’re allies. So does the God.”
“The God.” There, Ehkla’s old smile, the one like a nightmare. “The God has already betrayed our alliance. Has already betrayed you, too, I think. Those scars on your wrists. Are they new?”
“These? Yeah. My fault. I like to play with fire. Watch.” Chin up, shoulders back, Snow walked to the nearest brace of candles. Stretched her hands wide as she could, lowered them until the flames touched the rope still wrapped around each wrist. Fibers blacked. Curled and smoked and parted.
Then the candles flickered, as if the room had suddenly run out of air. In the absence of tallow and smoke, the rot stench was damn near unbearable.
So Ehkla wasn’t defenseless. Good to know. Still had some command of godmagic, which might or might not be a match for Snow’s second-tier conjuring.
So find out, yeah?
The ropes hadn’t burned through yet. Down to blackened threads, still silk-strong, that would not yield to what physical strength Snow could manage. But she had enough slack to move her palms apart, to cup the air and draw on what spark remained in the nearest wicks. She flexed her fingers—even that one, which made her vision spark—moved the fire here to there. It arced off the wick. Licked out onto the ropes. Crackled and flared and spread and devoured, sparing her skin underneath. Bright flare that chased shadows into the corners, that showed Snow the cracked plaster walls covered in sigils and glyphs that gleamed wet and thick.
Columns of them, lines that made her eyes ache and slide away while fear cramped cold in her belly. More godmagic. Cousin to the prayer on Kenjak’s pole, in the same way that wolves were cousin to dogs.
Fuck and damn.
Snow clenched her fists on her conjuring. Banished the flame back to the candles, except for the sparks that escaped where her broken finger would not quite close. She brushed the fragile corpse of the rope onto the floor. Put her boot on the sparks and ground down. Let her hands drop loose while her wits scrambled like Logi on ice. She knew godmagic when she saw it. That was some kind of ritual, and only one person here could’ve scribed it.
“That toadshit on the walls,” Snow said. “What’s it for?”
“To make an avatar.”
Bind a goddess to a living body, draw Tal’Shik’s power into this world through blood sacrifice. That kind of power had broken the Alviri armies. Would break the Illhari legion, too, if it got loose here.
Snow knew her voice shook. Decided she didn’t care. “I’m no godsworn.”
“You don’t need to be. You need only to kill me.”
“Why me? Whole garrison on the Hill would fight for the privilege to kill you. You wouldn’t even have to tell them why.”
“You’re a chirurgeon. Any fool with an axe can kill. But a sacrifice must be done correctly. Properly. You understand that. I cannot die too quickly.”
“Ritual murder. Yeah. I hear you. So what, I do this and you go after Illharek? Bring down the Republic? Is that what she wants?”
“That matters to you?”
“Not particularly. But I’m in no hurry to replace what we’ve got now with pre-Purge toadshit, either.”
“Tsabrak said—”
“Tsabrak doesn’t speak for me. You want my help, you pay me for it. What’s your offer?”
“Your life.”
“Do better.”
Ehkla’s eyes threw back the candlelight, flame flicker in the gold. “I am not the only daughter of Tal’Shik among my people. There are other godsworn like me.”
“Of course there are. They’re the ones burning out the Alviri, yeah? Probably crowding up to replace you the minute you fall out of favor. Which you won’t, if you get Tal’Shik to crawl into that rotting body with you.”
“My sisters will destroy this city and put every Illhari they find on a pole. Half-bloods, too.”
“And what will they do to you, hm? They’ve got no idea you look like this. They did, you wouldn’t need me to kill you. They’d do it, only they wouldn’t make you an avatar. That’s why you’re doing this toadshit, so they can’t touch you. So again, what the fuck can you offer me?�
�
The smirk faded. “Veiko Nyrikki.”
“He’s yours to give now? I don’t think so.”
“I tell you this as a favor, Snowdenaelikk. He intends to face her, and if he does, he will die. If you hurry, she will come to me instead, and he will live.”
“Veiko did all right last time, yeah? Put out her eye.”
First sign of anger, flare and spit like water in hot oil. “He was lucky.”
“Yeah? Luck must’ve hacked you up, too. He broke whatever godmagic toadshit you did to him, put an axe through you, and now you’re worried. So is Tal’Shik. So is the fucking God, come to that. That’s what scares you, yeah? That Veiko’ll hurt Tal’Shik again. And if your goddess goes down, the God will be on her.”
“And so Veiko will die, to help the God.”
“He won’t care so much, long as he gets Tal’Shik. He’s crazy like that.”
“You care.” That simple, that certain. That smug, her white teeth lined up legion-straight in a grin.
And not wrong, no. Dead shot, like an arrow that goes straight past armor and sticks in the heart. A body might keep moving after that, might keep running, but the end wasn’t in doubt.
The glyphs on the wall seemed to writhe, like living things in pain. Proof that godsworn did not bargain, no, that they prayed, they asked, they sacrificed and hoped for some favor. Or they walked the other way, Purged and denied, and pretended the gods could not touch them. Extreme reactions, from a people who did not like half measures.
The God had told her, Kill Ehkla. It didn’t matter what came after. She hadn’t promised to save the Republic. But she hadn’t promised to build a road so the God could march into Illharek and take over himself, either.
One thing at a time, yeah?
“My life. Veiko’s life. I do this, whatever happens, you don’t follow us. You or your motherless sisters or your motherless goddess. We walk away.”
Ehkla’s face was as blank as fresh plaster. “Tal’Shik will owe you a great debt. I will also owe you.”
Imagine Veiko’s face when he heard that, yeah. Snow swallowed laughter back like slivered glass. Said, raw-voiced:
“All right. Then tell me how you want to die.”
The black river was restless. It churned and frothed along its banks while the dead thrashed beneath its surface like spawning fish. Veiko stood on its bank beside K’Hess Kenjak and looked at the far side, where the forest hunched under a sky smudged to charcoal. Clouds roiled in what should be smooth, flat grey.
It was not a good omen.
Beside him, K’Hess Kenjak shifted his weight, one foot to the other. His armor creaked and sighed like old branches. He did not, Veiko noticed, leave any marks in the river’s mud banks.
“The fighting’s begun, skraeling.”
“Yes.” Veiko’s own feet sank a knuckle’s depth into the bank. He pushed onto his toes and felt the mud pull and shift. Very easy for a man to slip were he to attempt to jump the river. Very easy, even with two good legs. Which he did not have. The pain had followed him onto the glacier this time and grown worse with each step, until it was all he could do to stand steady on both feet.
He supposed that was not a good omen, either.
“Skrae—Veiko.” Intense cold, where Kenjak touched his arm. “Something’s happening. I can feel it.”
“It is Tal’Shik,” Veiko said with more confidence than he felt. It could be the whole realm of spirits turning inside out, for all he knew. Could be a perfectly natural event, that storm over the forest, the madness in the river.
Tell yourself that.
Kenjak swayed away from him. Paced two steps away, turned, and came back. “You should do something. Cross the river. Go to meet her.”
“You are impatient.”
“And you’re afraid.” Kenjak was not. Was angry, as only the dead could manage, lethal and cold as winter.
Veiko shrugged. Did not deny the cramp and twinge in his belly, or the tightness in his throat, or what they meant. The sky over the forest changed again. Purple now in the center, spreading out like a bruise.
Definitely a poor omen.
“Go,” he told Kenjak. “Tal’Shik is my concern.”
“I might help you.”
“No,” he said again, and retreated up the bank to flat, dry ground. Drew his knife from his belt. “You have given me what I asked. You have prepared me for this battle.”
“I showed you what she cut into the pole, skraeling. I taught you those marks. How is that help?”
Patiently, slowly, as much for his own courage as Kenjak’s persuasion, “It is a ritual. A prayer. She will come to me because the sigils say that she must. That is what Snowdenaelikk told me. That is why you had to teach me.” Only, Snow had not known what his errand was when he asked to visit the ghost roads. It had been his guess that a ghost could not summon a spirit as great as Tal’Shik, and so Kenjak was safe enough making the marks. Now it was time to see if he’d learned them correctly. If he’d been right at all.
Kenjak followed him up the bank. “And when she finds you, then what? I’ll tell you, skraeling. She’ll do to you what she did to me.”
“No,” said Veiko. “She will not.”
“Toadshit.”
“K’Hess Kenjak. You have another debt. Go and pay it.”
“Fool,” Kenjak muttered. He spun away from Veiko’s bemused stare and walked away. One, two, and the air split and shimmered. Kenjak stepped into the breach on the third step, and it sealed behind him. A faint swamp stink spread out on the air. Faded as the wind skipped off the glacier and tangled in Veiko’s braids.
Imagine Snow’s lazy-eyed smirk. Idiot, keep him with you.
Do your job, and I will not need him.
He wished for her laughter then, her corrosive humor that he understood only part of the time. Wished for her, narrow and solid, at his back. He was uncomfortably aware of the open sky, the tundra behind him. If he squinted, he could imagine the dark dots of takin moving along the glacier’s far edge.
He had thought to meet Tal’Shik in the forest. There was symmetry in that, facing her where she had first challenged him. There were also trees to put between himself and a wurm’s talons. She could drop on him from the sky here, which meant he would
die, skraeling, isn’t that what I said?
need to be quick on his feet. And he would not be. Ehkla had seen to that.
He had also planned on having trees on which to carve the prayer sigils. There was nothing solid on this side of the river but himself and Helgi and the rock-studded tundra. He thought about kneeling and cutting, and how slowly he might get up again. How much time he would need to pull the axe and fight. How much he did not want to meet Tal’Shik on his knees.
Veiko looked at the knife in his hand.
The power’s in the cutting, not the mark.
Then, feeling foolish, he raised the point to empty air. Thrust it forward and drew it down. The air caught fire in the blade’s wake. Burned a vertical line. Veiko let go the breath he had not known he was holding.
Helgi looked at him and waved a dubious tail. Turned himself once and curled into a knot facing across the river. Eloquent get on with it, then, and a dog settled in for a wait.
Veiko carved another glyph, then two. He was aware of the wind coming out of the forest, evergreen sharpness mixed with something dry and old. There was a blackness growing in the clouds, soft edged and spreading.
Imagine it might be a wurm’s shape. Imagine Ehkla somewhere up in the Warren, cutting her own prayer and calling Tal’Shik. Imagine Snowdenaelikk facing them both and feel sick.
She can care for herself, yeah?
Even Aneki did not believe that anymore. He’d seen that plainly enough when she armed Dekklis and Istel. Seen her despair after, when she watched him mix his own poison.
She wouldn’t want you dead, too.
I will not die. And then he had pushed Aneki gently out the door.
The wind shifted.
Brought the old blood smell of the river now, and an undercurrent of hot metal.
This was not an unexpected visit, either. Veiko paused, the knife curled in his palm, as Helgi uncurled and stiff-stepped toward the river.
The God stepped out of the forest. Walked easily across the mud and left no tracks and did not pause at river’s edge. The water stiffened where he stepped, melted again in his wake. He stopped just on the near bank, some ten strides away. The flames in his sockets flickered madly, as if in strong wind.
“Stop. Veiko Nyrikki. By any debt you think you owe me, I ask that you stop this.”
“I owe you nothing.” He must not think about what had happened to Snow. The God was not his target.
Yet.
Veiko made himself say, “Your bargain is with Snowdenaelikk,” and cut the next sigil in the air. “Seek her out if you wish to change the terms.”
“She’s beyond my reach.”
“That is unfortunate.”
The God edged sideways. Helgi pivoted with him and snarled, and the God did not try to pass. “Listen. That godsworn toadfucker Ehkla already marked you for sacrifice, yeah? You finish that prayer, you finish her work. Tal’Shik will come and snap you up like a flatcake.”
“Perhaps.” Veiko blew out a slow breath. Drew another, just as slowly. “But I need only slow her down.”
“Why? For Snowdenaelikk’s sake? Idiot. She’s already betrayed us both. She made a new deal. Switched sides. She’s doing what Tal’Shik wants now. Bought her own life and left you here to die.”
Veiko’s wrists and arms ached. His leg did—deep, wracking shivers that threatened his balance. He would not do well, facing Tal’Shik like this. She would kill him. He knew that, bone and blood.
Told you to go, didn’t I? Fuck and damn, Veiko.
She had. Snow would not, he thought, blame him if he walked away. She might even expect it.
Veiko studied the pattern of knuckles and skin where he gripped the knife. White, with all the blood squeezed pink to the edges.
“And what do you offer me?”
“I can remove Ehkla’s mark. Break her hold over you.” The God shimmered like the air over a forge. Rippled. Reached, over Helgi’s snarling disapproval. “I offer alliance, skraeling. Protection.”
