by K. Eason
Veiko began to murmur, and then to chant. A regular cadence of beats, with a tuneless keening draped over them. There were words, but none she knew. She felt the power creep across her skin like a nest of spiders. Like conjuring, except the Wild did not push back in protest. Like godmagic, except Veiko was too smart for that.
And then it was over, the last note of the song hanging on the air like morning fog. Logi whined and pressed against her leg. His heart thumped through his ribs. His fur was standing up in spikes.
She could sympathize. Swallowed against her own heart’s urge to come out her throat and reminded herself to ask Veiko later what in hell he’d just done. For now: she rearranged her face into oh, I knew he could do that cool.
Not that anyone was looking at her. Kellehn’s face had gone slack and still, eyes wide and pinned on Veiko. He put his palms together and bowed over them.
“Noidghe,” he said, and sounded like Ari did, when he spoke to the God.
Veiko ignored him. Swung a blind hand sideways, until he found Snow’s arm, and held on.
“It is all right.” His color had improved, which meant that he’d gone from grey to chalk. “They will not come any closer.”
“Good.” She turned to Kellehn. “What happened here? More than a toadfucking army.”
“I told you, Illhari. The dragon.”
Turn around and go home, that’s what she should do. Stupid to come here. She’d killed Ehkla, but Ehkla had been asking for it. Cut me open, do it this way. Ehkla had never got all the way to dragon. Never merged with Tal’Shik.
This successor to Ehkla had, evidently, and leveled Cardik in doing so. Snow imagined that dragon coming at Illharek, burning through Illharek’s fields, blasting the manors to ash. The whole city would starve. The survivors would creep away through the Below, riding barges along the rivers. Retreating south, to jam Riku’s little walls. And Riku, like Cardik, sat Above. Easy target, for a dragon. For armies.
Until and unless the legions did emerge. Then it might be Illhari godsworn against their Taliri counterparts. Ask who would win that. Ask if Tal’Shik really cared.
Snow aimed a bleak stare at the walls, at the ruins. At Kellehn. “So, where is this dragon? You want me to kill her, yeah? I’ll need to see her for that.”
“We drove her out.”
“Toadshit. Anything did this wouldn’t leave unless she was damn good and ready. She could be up there now.” Snow stabbed a finger at the slabs of jagged stone that jutted up behind Cardik. “Waiting for you to come back. Waiting for us.”
“She is not. But there is something you need to see.” He pointed across the river and Market Bridge, where the Warren and the Alviri quarter brooded in the mountain’s shadow. “Up there. I will go with you. The rest will stay outside. It is not safe for Taliri.”
She barked a laugh. “Or anyone else, yeah? Never was.”
* * *
Cardik’s interior looked no better than its exterior. Cracked stones in the streets nearest the gate, where fire had breached the defenses. Ash underfoot, mixed with mud, black and grey and thick. There were bones here, picked white and clean. Metal eaten by rust. Armor rotting where it had fallen. And the smell, dear Laughing God. A woman got used to people-stench, living in cities. A chirurgeon got used to death and blood. Cardik was pocked with hot springs, and you got used to the faint yellow rot-smell tainting everything. And after a spring spent in Illharek’s Suburba, among tanners and fishermen, living between the Abattoir and docks, well, Snow thought she’d gotten used to whatever foul smells there were.
But this wasn’t animals, and the stink here went deeper than throat and lungs. She felt it under her skin. Behind her eyes. In her bones and in her belly.
“Wasn’t this bad outside,” she whispered. “The smell. It’s getting worse, the higher we go.”
“And the dead grow more restless.” Veiko felt like stone beside her, not flesh, all his muscles bunched and solid. Softly, so that Kellehn would not hear: “They have so much to say.”
Snow had only been through these districts a handful of times in all her years living in Cardik. The wealth ran uphill on this side of the S’Ranna, from the merchants’ district near the gates up to the garrison and the governor’s house. The pattern was mirrored in the Warren: tanners and craftspeople nearest the bridge and the river, places the highborn might want to visit. Newer buildings, raised since the Purge. But the old city, across the river, was mostly the original Alviri construction. The oldest slums huddled against the sharp rise of the mountainside. A natural wall, all jagged rock and rubble, against which the Illhari legions had pinned the Alviri. Ask how much blood had run down the river.
Or don’t, yeah. Might get an answer.
Snow was no noidghe. Didn’t want to do what Veiko did, bargaining with spirits. Ripping his spirit out of his body to send it wandering. She’d been to that other place, that spirit world, and damn near drowned in the black river. No thank you, never again.
But she’d struck her own bargains. Tangled herself up in debts and obligations. And all the godswearing, all those deals, hadn’t done what she’d most wanted. She still heard whispers, sometimes, and saw shapes in the shadows. Illharek’s Suburba had its own history of unhappy dead. Collared bondies, free servants, murdered citizens. A cohort of those dead were the God’s own, from all the years that framed the Purge. Dead, yeah, but not gone. She saw them, sometimes. No predicting when or how
if you were noidghe, you would have that skill
she might encounter them. Godmagic was no defense. Nor was conjuring. What was—not looking. Not listening. Walking past trouble, instead of turning to meet it. Like now, here, in Cardik: marching past a staved-in doorway, where a child stood and sobbed. Past the big round well in a crossroads, where a man screamed for help, please, someone.
A woman could think she’d gone mad, yeah, except no one else’s heads turned. Not Kellehn’s. Not even Logi’s ears twitched. Take that as proof of her imaginings.
She caught Veiko’s eyes on her. “You see them.”
“Yeah.”
Another man might’ve reminded her that he knew tricks to drive them back, tricks he could teach her if only she’d ask. Another man might say, It’s your own stubborn choice, to refuse my teaching, and let her suffer. But from Veiko, only a hand on her elbow, as if she’d stumbled. “It was worse outside.”
“Not for me.”
“This was your home.” He put himself between her and a woman in armor, tattered and reaching. “Your spirit remembers. And the dead may remember you, as well.”
“Didn’t need to hear that.”
“You did.”
“You told me once I should talk to ghosts. See what they want.”
“I told you to talk to Tsabrak.” Another glance, down and sideways. “I am not sure that was wise advice.”
She laughed, breathless. “Hell. What’s your advice here?”
“Say nothing. Stay close. My song will keep them back.”
The first time they’d come there together, he had been leaning on her. Limping, wounded, draped across her like an ill-tempered cloak. Ask if he remembered that. Ask if he didn’t see the symmetry this time, when he let go of her elbow and she pressed against him like a nervous dog.
Kellehn seemed to have some destination in mind. Did not pause, did not turn right or left. Led them up steadily toward the Hill, through the plaza that looked so much like Illharek’s, where the wealthy and privileged might meet and talk and run everyone else’s lives. Past the governor’s house, blackened stone and cracked tile. He stopped, finally, at the garrison, whose gate was twisted steel and smashed stone.
“Here,” said Kellehn. He gestured. “Inside.”
Snowdenaelikk had been at Davni village. Had seen the ruins, and the corpses there. Cardik was the same so far, except for the sheer number of dead. But the garrison’s courtyard, no, she had never seen anything like that. Please, Laughing God, she never did again.
It w
as a forest. Poles thrust into the gaps between flagstones, poles propped and roped and rigged to stay upright. And on those poles, bodies. The sun had no respect, no shame. Blasted every stain, every scrap, into obscene detail.
She followed Veiko into the courtyard. The dead were like fish in a net, straining and seething in what few shadows the courtyard allowed. They gathered in the doorways and the windows, where the shutters hung broken. Whispered and hissed like water in a hot pan.
She tried not to look at the ghosts. Stared instead at what the sun showed her. Corpses in armor, maybe two dozen, give or take. Every one of them legion, every one Dvergiri. Flesh that had begun black and turned even blacker. Eyes sunken in sockets and skin hanging in tatters and—
“Fuck and damn. They’re still rotting. Where are the crows? Or the flies?” It must be a ritual of some kind, some godmagic. Some obscene reason for it, in Tal’Shik’s reckoning.
Veiko frowned. Shook his head slowly. “Where are the dead?” He pointed his chin at the poles. “These dead. The ones from the poles. I see no ghost here who wears legion armor. They are all civilians.” He stumbled over the Dvergiri word.
“The soldiers were a gift,” Kellehn said. “To the dragon. For her, and only her.”
The bodies and the poles fit with Tal’Shik’s patterns, with everything Snow had seen even in the Archives. Pain and death in exchange for power of some kind. But a gift, unless Kellen was misusing the word, meant something else.
“So what, the Taliri didn’t want anything in exchange for this toadshit? They just killed a bunch of Dvergiri soldiers as some kind of grand gesture?”
Kellehn shrugged. Veiko did not answer. His eyes drifted across—fuck and damn if she knew what. Empty air. The ghost roads. Memory.
Snow slid her hand to his wrist. Tugged, once and hard, to get his eyes back on her. “Veiko.”
Faintly, “I hear.”
“She can’t keep the soldiers, can she? The bodies, sure. But not the souls.” By every rule she knew. “They’d have to agree to that. Bargain with her.”
“The gifts would take the manner of their dying into the spirit world. Carry that pain with them. Tal’Shik would use that power, certainly. But what happened after, to the spirits…” Veiko’s skin pebbled under Snow’s fingers. A shudder ran through him. He looked at her with naked eyes. “They would have no defense against her. They are not noidghe.”
“Kenjak survived.”
“His hate was great enough. His rage.”
“So what, she ate them?”
“Yes. Their power fed hers.” He took a deep breath, one and two. She watched the tremors sink back into steady bone and muscle. Watched a tall man grow taller, straighter. He looked down at her. “I will ask the dead what happened. Perhaps they witnessed this killing.”
“What, now?”
“Better now than after sunset.” His lips flattened into a grim, tiny smile. “I do not wish to be here when the shadows grow long.”
She looked into that forest of poles and corpses. Looked past them, to the garrison building. There would be bones in there. Skeletons whose spirits Tal’Shik had not eaten, who might talk to a noidghe.
“You’re all right now? Not going to slip?”
“No.” He looked at her soberly. “But I cannot read the glyphs on the poles. They may tell us how the bargains work.”
Not quite asking her help, because he would not want to obligate her.
“Right.”
She let him go. Held her hands at her sides, held her tongue, as he walked toward the main garrison building. Heard him start singing again, as he walked, a rhythm that made the pulse throb behind her eyes. She squeezed them closed. And when she opened them again, Veiko was not alone. A dead woman walked beside him, grey and brown. Her hair hung in braids like Veiko’s and not: more of them, in a different pattern coming off her scalp. She wore a knife at her belt, a bow on her back. A hunter, and not young when she’d died, but not old, either, straight-backed and slim. Too far to see her eyes, yeah, but Snow could feel the stare that woman gave her. Could see the nod that went with it, greeting and I know who you are together.
Snow nodded back. Felt like a damn idiot, trading courtesies with a ghost, but that was Veiko’s ancestor. And there, beside Veiko, another shadow. A dog this time. Grey version of Logi, taller and broader. Grim Helgi, with his ice-colored eyes. He did not look back at her. Helgi-dead had eyes for Veiko only, which was the same as Helgi-living.
Veiko would be all right. Both his guides with him, he’d be fine on his errands in this haunted place.
So will you. No ghosts out here in the sun, yeah? Even you can see that.
She’d almost rather ghosts than this festering forest. No rats. No flies. It wasn’t healthy.
“Stay,” she told Logi. He sank onto his haunches and put his ears back and grinned at her. She patted his head. Grinned back.
“Good boy.”
No need to warn Briel off. She would not come into this place, no, and never mind how the svartjagr were scavengers. Briel did not like the stench rising up. Sent
clean wind
and
wide sky
until Snow pushed her out. Usually, she liked the quiet. But this felt like shutting herself into an abattoir, when any sane woman would throw the doors wide.
The first time she’d seen prayers to Tal’Shik had been where K’Hess Kenjak had died. There had been blood-filled gouges in that pole, much like these. The second time had been across Market Bridge and in the Warren, when she’d offered Ehkla’s body and soul to Tal’Shik. Then there had been glyphs on the walls, written in blood, that had writhed violet as the godmagic took shape. Pulsed and throbbed like living things.
There was no life in the marks on the wood. No power left. Snow let her hand hover over them. These glyphs were a closer match to K’Hess Kenjak’s pole than Ehkla’s walls; no surprise. No one was making an avatar here. Sacrifice, yeah, she knew that symbol. There were a handful she didn’t recognize at all. Snow committed those shapes to memory. She’d show Belaery later. See what they could find in the Archives. See if there were some record of a ritual like this from before the Purge—
Kellehn’s silhouette intruded into the edge of her vision, a little behind her, dark and solid on the sun-blasted courtyard. Damn soft-footed toadfucker.
“Is it true, what he says? That you can see the dead too?”
“I’m no noidghe.”
“But you have seen the black river. He said that you had.”
“I’ve swallowed it, yeah? Yes, I’ve seen it.”
“And you came back,” wonderingly.
“Because Veiko came and got me. Because a ghost owed me a favor and paid it back.”
“Noidghe,” he said, in the same reverent tone. And then, more sharply: “And yet you became godsworn. Feh. Only a fool looks for a knife and ignores the sword in his hand.”
Her partner could say fool to her. But not this
toadbelly
Talir who had asked for her by name. Snow settled back on her heels. Let her awareness sink and stretch. This was a city. Broken, yes, but there were walls. Hands had made this. Alviri, Dvergiri, did not matter whose. What did matter: this place was not Wild.
She had never been much of a conjuror. And now. Well. Snow looked down at her hands. Her strong left hand’s little finger had never healed straight. Crooked, achy. Uncertain. And though she could not see the scar on her right forearm through the sleeve, she could feel its tweak and pull when she twisted her wrist just so.
Thank Tsabrak for that first crippling, thank a Talir godsworn for the second, and rot them both. Some conjuring needed no handwork at all.
She reached through the sunlight, and past it, toward the shadows collecting in the building’s creases. Drew them out like thread, spun them wide and thick as ropes, dragged them across the courtyard. They inked and slicked and flowed across the bloodstained stones. Collected around her feet until she might have been a dragon
herself for the size of the shadow beneath her.
“A Dvergiri trick,” said Kellehn, dusty-voiced.
“That’s what Ehkla said, too. This isn’t.” The witchfire erupted between her fingers, squirted and spilled onto the stones. Spread across the shadow like it was oil and burned it away. Flickered there, blue and cold and bright, even in sunlight. “You didn’t ask me here to play noidghe for you. You’ve got Veiko for that.”
“We did not ask you here to conjure, either.”
“No? How do you think I killed Ehkla? I called fire out of the walls, yeah?”
He stared down at her, face gone tight and pinched as a miser’s purse. And then, without answering, he turned and left her alone with her witchfire and the godmagic glyphs.
And the ghosts. Dear Laughing God.
The clouds picked that moment to devour the sun. Cast the world into grey and spat a wet wind across the courtyard, stirring stench and dust together. In the absence of sun, the ghosts in the garrison grew braver. Drifted away from the walls and out of the doorways, fog and smoke and nightmare.
Conjuror, one whispered, and then it was a chorus. Conjuror, conjuror, punctuated with half-blood and Dvergir.
She heard her name, suddenly. Snowdenaelikk. And louder, if a ghost’s voice could achieve real volume. Like the echo of a shout across a marketplace.
Snowdenaelikk!
Snowdenaelikk, a third time, and Snow’s head turned as if pulled by a string. It was Teslin there, eyes almost at a level because Teslin was—had been—taller than most Dvergir women. She was still wearing her scout’s kit, bow and sword and knives, the leather cuirass gashed and dark where the Talir blade had gone in. She hadn’t died in this courtyard: had died last winter, in the forest.
The ghost grimaced, which in Teslin’s life had sometimes passed for a smile. Aneki said you’d come back. You and the skraeling both.
Snow looked around for Veiko. There he was, still engaged with his ancestor. She took a step in that direction. Hesitated. Don’t answer, he’d said, but this was no stranger-ghost, and the name she invoked had been—
