by K. Eason
Ally
Copyright © Kathryn F. Eason, 2018
Published in eBook and print editions in 2018 by JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
All rights reserved
eISBN: 978-1-625673-57-2
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by J Caleb Designs
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part Two
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part Three
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by K. Eason
To everyone who wanted to know how the story ends
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE
The alley was the ideal place for murder. Narrow and stinking, backing a row of slaughterhouses, and dark even by an underground Illharek’s standards. The witchfire from the main street didn’t reach this far except as smeared shadows. There was already blood pooled between the stones, scummed and skinned. No one would notice a little fresh added to it. And the rats, yeah. Rows of glittering eyes that winked and gleamed when the witchfire’s glow passed across them. They’d make short work of any meat left on the pavement.
Which, if Snowdenaelikk had her way, there would be in short order. There was just a door, scarred and old and solid-looking, between her and the future meat, who also had a name. Yrse, Midtowner, mother of four and respected member of the butcher’s guild. Yrse, who was also godsworn, which made her a heretic and an outlaw in Illharek. She and Snow held that in common.
In the Tiers, Tal’Shik’s godsworn walked around under amnesty. Senator Szanys Dekklis had put out that proposal. No surprise a Senate full of Tal’Shik’s godsworn voted in favor. But Dek’s participation—her instigation—had both surprised and stung.
Not supposed to protect these toadshits, Szanys.
Yrse had friends in the Senate, so maybe she thought the amnesty applied down here in the Suburba, too. Yrse followed Tal’Shik. But there was bloodfeud between Tal’Shik and the Laughing God these days, at least in Suburban streets. Maybe she’d thought the Laughing God’s cartel wouldn’t dare come at her, with friends that high.
Snow had her own friends. The Laughing God, for one. She had Istel at her back. She had Ari, who was edging up on her left side. Who hissed, head cocked at the door: “She knew we were coming.”
Accusing, oh yes, but not her. No, Ari cut his glare at the man on Snow’s right.
Veiko shrugged. His braids slithered across his armor, snagged on the border between leather and steel. The witchfire blued the harsh bones of his face. Found its match in his eyes. “The ghosts say she is here. They did not say she was unprepared for us.”
“Ghosts. Fuck that.” Ari spat again, more slime for the alley’s collection. “You say ghosts talk to you. I say it’s toadshit. Skraeling witchery.” He curled his lip. “We’ve got a damn spy, that’s what, telling tales.”
Snow scraped together all her patience. “Even you know how stupid that sounds, yeah? Yrse isn’t an idiot, Ari. After the mess you made dealing with Rata, I’m surprised we don’t have the fucking legions down here walking patrol.”
Ari scowled. “I got her, didn’t I?”
“Her and half the motherless street. Be damn glad you can’t see ghosts.”
Snowdenaelikk could. Tried not to, took pains to avoid it. But she couldn’t ignore the pair squatting over a congealed puddle, scooping at its contents with permeable fingers. She knew them. Stig and Kjotvi, who’d been godsworn to the Laughing God in life. Who had both died very badly thanks to Yrse’s personal efforts. Veiko had called them out of the black river where the dead go to forget themselves. From the look of Stig and Kjotvi, they’d been soaking a long time.
“Veiko. Can the ghosts say what’s waiting for us behind that door? How many people?”
“They cannot. They say it is warded against them.”
“Of course it is,” from Ari. “Fuck and damn, skraeling, you’re no use—”
“Shut up, Ari.” The voice was Istel’s, soft and level. But that was
Tsabrak
the Laughing God’s razor tone. Those were the Laughing God’s eyes, tiny orange flames instead of Istel’s warm brown. “Veiko is our ally. Show some respect.”
“My apologies.” Ari bowed, hands folded in front of his face. Made Snow want to shake him upright and explain that the Laughing God didn’t rate that kind of deference. Gods were just spirits, powerful and arrogant. He might even believe her.
Ari trusted too much. The God, yeah, but also her. The Laughing God’s Right Hand. Way Ari saw it, she was the person who’d found the God and brought him back. He was happy to let her run the cartel, happy to do what she said about anything.
Except in the matter of Veiko. Oh no. Then it was toadbelly when Ari thought Veiko was out of earshot and skraeling the rest of the time. Enough to make Snow wish for Veiko to lose patience. That would end the sniping. Ari would join the ghosts he didn’t believe in.
“You don’t mean that, Snow,” the God whispered with Istel’s voice. Leaned close to her, the way Istel would, shoulders just touching. “You don’t need that kind of mess.”
“What I need is Istel back,” she snapped. Ignored Ari’s startled glance and Veiko’s knowing frown. “He’s better in a fight than you.”
“As you wish, my Right Hand,” the God said, loud enough to carry. Ari damn near pissed himself, he was so impressed.
But Veiko—fuck and damn. That was suspicion on her partner’s face. Distrust. Cracks in the one person she’d wanted
needed
solid. Veiko didn’t trust the God. Didn’t trust Tsabrak. Didn’t trust the combination, even in Istel’s body.
Damn you, she thought, and the God’s laughter echoed in her skull. Tsabrak’s laughter. But it was Istel’s face next to hers, not Tsabrak’s. And Istel’s eyes, too, on the next blink. Warm and dark and living. Hazy, as Istel blinked back into himself.
“He did it again, yeah?” raspy-quiet, as if they were alone.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck and damn,” wearily and with no force. The God came and went as he pleased in Istel’s skin. Istel wasn’t the sort to complain when that visitor had saved his life, and this was the price for it.
Her bargain. Istel hadn’t ever said idiot to her, or I wish you hadn’t. No, Istel had said thank you and that made it worse.
And now Istel just took a long breath and let it out, and squared shoulders and jaw at once. “Where we at?”
“Working on this fucking door.” Snow ran her hands round the frame. The locks were simple enough. It was traps she worried about. She rummaged through her belt pouch. Found a slim little knife and worked it into the gap between door and frame. Yeah.
There it was. Fucking needle trap, probably poisonous.
Snow wedged the needle out of its socket with the knife. Plucked it carefully out of the doorframe before it could spring out and poke anyone, and balanced it in her gloved palm. The godmark throbbed hot beneath the thin leather. She marked the ache in her left hand, where the littlest finger still wouldn’t bend all the way. Marked the throb in her right arm, where a Talir’s sword had cut halfway to bone back in spring. Marked a dozen littler aches and twinges that said getting old and get more rest and you won’t live long, you keep this up.
Snow pried a second needle out. Ran the tip of her blade through the gap again, one more check on all the edges, and then stashed the knife. Pulled the gloves off, one and the other. Flexed her fingers and laid her palms against the door. The wards shivered up through the wood, wriggled against her skin like hot wires. Godmagic and conjuring were cousins. Worked on the same principles. Knots of power, part skill, part raw talent. Part godfavor, for the former, and Yrse was very well favored. But a ward was only as strong as the skill of its weaver, however much Tal’Shik might love her.
Snow closed her eyes. Saw the power, the lines and sigils patterned across wood and iron, on lintel and frame and hinge. Felt their shape throbbing against skin and brain. Probed their borders. Traced their edges. Mapped the shape of them.
The wards flared up where she tested them, heat and defiance. Yrse was waiting for her. Watching. She pushed power into the wards as Snow touched then, so that they glowed blinding, hot, impossible.
Instinct said let go. Retreat. Snow ground her teeth together. Kept pushing, all along the edges of the wards, while Yrse followed her like a dog on the wrong side of a fence, snarling sparks. One place Yrse came through the wards, a spear of godmagic that made something break in Snow’s nose, made her taste blood in the back of her throat. She grinned. Wards were a barrier. Solid, in theory, no place stronger or weaker. But any place the caster could come out meant someone else could get in.
Snow rubbed the back of her hand across her face. Smeared the first rush of blood across lips and cheek and swallowed the rest. The ghosts crowded behind her, living fog, their chill seeping through clothing and skin and straight into bone. Blood called them. Bought their cooperation. Stig and Kjotvi might’ve come for revenge, yeah, bet they had—but it was fresh blood they wanted.
“Snow,” from Veiko. And from Istel, “You’re bleeding, yeah?”
“Yeah. Tell the ghosts, be patient. There’s more blood on the other side of that door, yeah? I’m not for them.”
She blotted her nose on her sleeve. Sniffed hard and swallowed and grimaced. She knew where the wards were weakest. Now it was a matter of wedging them open, in that one place, to let Stig and Kjotvi through. And for that, well. She was no adept. Not much of a conjuror, and even less of a godsworn.
She closed her eyes. Ground her teeth together and whispered, “Need a little help, Tsabrak.”
I’m here.
The Laughing God flowed around her, cold as any ghost. Flowed through her. Did not quite crawl into her skin, no, but she still shivered. Part of their bargain, that he would not take her body; but he did not mind sharing breath and bone with her.
“Cut it.”
You need my help, half impatience, half amusement. Unless you want to try the runes alone.
“No.”
Then relax. Let me guide you.
Flesh-Tsabrak had said that, years ago. She remembered his hands folding over hers during those first lessons, learning to open locks. Remembered him guiding her fingers, the click and pressure of the picks in the mechanisms. Remembered his breath on her cheek, that smelled of stale jenja. Remembered his warmth.
Do you feel that?
God-Tsabrak had neither scent nor heat. Cool nothing coiled up in her mind, pulled tight over her skin, tingling up her bones. The Laughing God’s guidance, drawing her back to a particular sigil, where Yrse flared hot and struck at her again.
Tsabrak batted the godmagic aside, casual as waving away candle smoke.
Here. She’s missed a stroke. You see? In the top left.
“I see.”
Elaborate binding in this sigil, lines tangled like skraeling knotwork. But the over-under pattern was broken there in the corner. One line unbound by its neighbor, naked and unfinished. An easy mistake to make. A minor one that would still keep the ghosts out.
But not the God’s Right Hand. Snow pushed against the weakness. Yrse pushed back on the other side. Force against force, with the door pinched between them. Snow tasted salt on her lip. Might be sweat. Might be more blood. Might be Yrse was bleeding, too, on her side. Snow leaned the full weight of her will against the flaw.
“Ari,” she croaked.
Ari wasn’t a conjuror. But he’d been godsworn longer than she had and he knew how to channel godmagic. He slipped into the weaving and took the threads. Held them steady and added his strength to hers. Pressure, there, holding Yrse’s focus.
Snow reached—a flesh-hand against the real wood door, a spirit-finger of godmagic—and rubbed the ghost-rune. Smeared it. Stretched it. Broke it.
She snapped back all the way into her skin. Pushed the God out, hard, and pulled a breath into her lungs.
“Veiko.”
She heard him murmur in his language, what he called a song and she called chant. She felt the icy sweep of Stig and Kjotvi at her back as they passed around her, through her. Through the door.
Someone screamed on the other side.
The rest was easy. Steel lock, like a hundred others. She coaxed the metal into alignment. Click. Slide. Thump, as the tumblers realigned.
The door cracked open. Snow gathered up the shadows in the alley. Sent them through the cracks, under the door, around its edges. Traded a look with Veiko, with Istel. And then she ducked through the door, seax drawn and ready.
Snow called up a witchfire and tossed it high. It struck the ceiling and spread like flame on oil. The ghosts huddled over a body on the tiles, hiding its face. Snow stepped partway into Stig, gritting her teeth against the prickle that tingled all the way to bone. Hard to see through a ghost, yeah, but that wasn’t Yrse’s corpse. Too young. Maybe a daughter. There were fresh stains trailing away, slick-shine wet, down the short hallway. Snow shoved the witchfire in their wake, spreading it from bright blue to pale. The hall split into a side passage and an open room, its doors thrown wide in some great hurry. The fresh blood went that way.
She wished for Briel’s svartjagr senses. For Logi’s hunter-nose. Was glad in the same breath that they hadn’t come. Svartjagr and dogs had little defense against plain steel, and none at all against godmagic. Both of those things would be waiting up ahead, or in ambush down the side passage.
She flicked a finger of witchfire at the hall. “Ari, Istel. That way.”
A grunt from Ari. He went without comment, without hesitation. Istel paused long enough to touch her eyes with his. Two flames where the eyes should be, flickering and no help against the dark.
Careful, Snow.
“Just keep trouble off our backs, yeah?” Under her breath, safe from Ari’s ears. Not from Veiko’s. He glanced sidelong. Raised a brow.
She grimaced. “Send them in, yeah?”
Veiko’s chant changed cadence. The ghosts shivered, rose up from the body, and turned. Flowed past her, through her, into the open room. Smell of old blood in there, thick as the darkness. There’d been rooms in the Academy that smelled like this. The surgeries. The dissection laboratories.
Snow drew the witchfire down, pulled it into a ball, and sent it bobbing ahead like a lantern. This was the killing room. The floor sloped away toward the drains at the center, scored by blood-gutters that would trip a woman if she didn’t watch where she walked. Hooks dangled at head height, on chains as thick as her wrist, from a stone ceiling. A forest of bodies hung from those hooks, honest four-legged meat, swaying and creaking from the wooden beams, held by metal bolts to the stone. And from those beams, mor
e bolts, and long bars suspended by a system of pulleys and slender chains whose tails trailed into the room’s edges, where the witchfire couldn’t reach.
Bet more things than goats and sheep had died in here. Unfortunate rivals. Sacrifices to Tal’Shik. Stig and Kjotvi, maybe, before Yrse dumped them into the lake.
Snow crouched, her knees cracking protest, until she could see beneath the carcasses. Toadshit visibility with the witchfire’s glow divided by chains and bodies. Shadows all over the floor, black spots that might or might not have a wounded godsworn hidden in them. Stig and Kjotvi drifted through that hanging forest, blacker than shadows, stopped at a dangling goat and would not stir again, however Veiko’s chant beat against them.
He left off, finally. Squatted beside her and murmured, “I cannot make them move. There is too much blood, and they were a long time in the river.”
“Leave them for now. We’ll get them some fresh blood. See if that helps.”
Veiko nodded. Uncoiled into a hunter’s crouch, his axe trailing like part of his arm. Took two steps past the ghosts, head tilted.
Listening, yeah, to what was too quiet. There was muffled banging from another room, which might be Istel and Ari and whatever defenses they’d found. But in here, the hollow, echoing silence said that the doors on the other side of the killing room were still closed. Snow held her breath. Maybe that was a scraping, like boot soles on tile. Maybe a click, like someone working a door latch.
Snow ripped the witchfire down, blasted it across the floor. And yes, there, on the room’s far edge: a line of winches on the wall, all locked but one. Yrse stood there, her hand on the latch. She grinned. Moved her hand.
Metallic whine and rattle overhead, and then a crack, as the pulley disappeared in a ripple of suddenly slack chain.
Snow threw herself sideways, hit Veiko with the sharp point of her shoulder, and took them both over. A curtain of hooks came down behind her, cracking against the tiles. Not bones, thank you, Laughing God. Not her toadfucking head either, or Veiko’s.
Yrse limped to the next winch, one leg dragging, and battled the lock with both hands. Snow snarled a strand of godmagic out of blank air and whipped it up, toward the nearest hanging chain. It threaded along the steel, too fast for eyes to track. One blink, plain black steel; the next, steel threaded with a living fire that spread faster than any honest flame. It climbed the chains to the bar overhead, wrapped it like vines. Climbed still higher, weaving through the slender chains to the bolts in the wooden beams. There. That beam wouldn’t fall, whatever Yrse did.
