by K. Eason
He pressed his lips together and focused on the steady blue. Would not look when he felt fingers dragging at his cloak. When he felt hands on his ankles and legs.
Somewhere, not far, Helgi barked and snarled. Somewhere on the other side of the world, a svartjagr keened and leapt into the storm.
“Snowdenaelikk,” he said. “Say my name.”
He heard the sharp intake of breath. Then, clear and firm, “Veiko Nyrikki.”
The witchfire blazed up. The fingers dropped off him. There was stone underfoot again. Logi’s wet weight against his leg. His partner’s free hand twining through his like warm wire.
It was better on the street. Rain-slick stones, debris and bones smeared indistinct by the rain. Briel, perched on a ruined roofline. Two candle-bright eyes to give her away, that was all, until lightning tore open the sky.
He was glad then for the witchfire’s small brightness. For the sturdiness of conjured walls and Illhari pavement. For a wet dog on his left hip and a partner who did not ask him are you all right or observe that, for all their usefulness, his songs could not save him from everything.
I told you as much, Nyrikki’s son.
“Listen.” Snow touched his sleeve, careful as if he were feathers and glass. “I don’t see Kellehn. Toadfucker’s probably out the damn gates by now. Probably reckons we’re dead.” She peeled a glance sidelong. “Which we damn near did. My fault. I know.”
“The God was more fool than you.”
“Oh, that’s comfort.” A flash bleached her skeletal, stripped to white and bone. “Come on. We should get out of the city.”
“No.” He drew a lungful of wet air. “We should go to Still Waters.”
Her brows came together. Long silence as the sky raged and the rain spat like stones on the remains of the rooftops. “Tell me why you think it’s a good idea to take us both exactly where Teslin-Ehkla wanted.”
“Still Waters was a place of safety, once, for you. For us.” He groped for the words. “Your wards on the gates. Your wards on our rooms. Those may remain.”
White-eyed stare. “My wards? That’s what we’re down to now? My conjuring to keep back the dead? I set those wards against living people, not ghosts. Besides. It’s a long walk.”
“The forest is a long walk too, and I am not certain of our welcome. Kellehn led us here, but I cannot say what he meant to happen.”
“There are cleaner ways to kill us, but yeah, okay, I see your point.”
“Good. Then we go to Still Waters.” He chose a street that seemed to head in the right direction. Started walking. Two steps before she caught him.
“You don’t know where you’re going.”
“That rarely stops you.”
“Listen, I already said I was so—” She got a look at his face then, in the next flash. Shook her head. “Yeah, you’re a clever one. Making your jokes. Going to clever us into a dead end, yeah?” She doubled back a pair of steps and jagged down an alley that looked not a bit different from the one Veiko had picked. “This way.”
CHAPTER NINE
Dekklis had wanted a swift response to Toer’s attempted assassination, no more than two candlemarks before she had Toer’s matron in custody. In Cardik, with the Sixth, that would have happened. Had, when Rurik had got word of the attack at Davni village. He’d had the whole cohort mustered and marching that fast.
But to assemble a small squad in Illharek took far longer. The two First Spears, Neela and Per, had at least been within garrison walls. Praefecta K’Hari Dannike was not; she was down at her leisure at an establishment on the Arch whose reputation was very much like Still Waters. It took time and, one imagined, some effort to drag Dani out of that place. Optio Pyatta’s pinched expression, after her report, inspired Dekklis to sudden kindness. She sent Pyatta away for the afternoon, which left no one standing watch at the door, but if anyone had guts enough to interrupt this meeting—well, best recruit them and invite them inside. Illharek needed that kind of courage.
Dani hadn’t been happy, on arrival, when she saw Velaan’s cooling corpse on the tiles. Had been even less so once she heard the reason and the story.
“Godsworn in the Senate. Heretics. Fuck and damn.”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t suspect.”
“Suspect, sure. Heard stories and rumors my whole life about it. Tales my nurse used to frighten us. Foremothers defend, First Legate. Don’t tell me you didn’t hear the same things.”
“I didn’t.”
Dani shook her head. “Your mother was always a stiff one. No impropriety in her House, is that it? Wonder what she’d think of all this.”
“She would be horrified.” Dekklis wrung out a smile and hung it on her lips. “But she would hate godsworn in her Senate even more.”
“Huh. That she would.” Dani cast herself into the remaining empty chair. “So. What do we do about it?”
It was an odd feeling, to have former commanders looking at her for leadership. Dani’s gaze was steady, as if she did not see any conflict in her former trainee sitting in the First Legate’s place, giving orders that might rip Illharek into pieces. K’Hari wasn’t a powerful House, barely highborn at all, accustomed to following. Only slightly less disturbing to see First Spears Per and Neela looking at her, expectant and untroubled. She could order them into the Jaarvi, tell them go swimming in armor, and they’d do it. That was what the legions did—follow orders.
Yours to command now, Dek. How’s that feel?
She wished for Snowdenaelikk slouching in the corner, taller than everyone except Veiko. Wished for her advice, dispensed in that raw Suburban accent. Snow had practice with heresy. Practice with godsworn. Practice with murder, foremothers help us, which was what Dekklis needed now.
And you sent me away, Dek. Brilliant.
Not-entirely-just-Istel might have some advice in that direction too, but she didn’t dare ask him. Not in front of the soldiers. So, she steepled her fingers and leaned on her elbows and gazed steadily back at Dani.
“We make some arrests. But I don’t want it loud. We go up to Toer in plain leather, armed, and we knock on the door. No attention.”
“No,” said Dani instantly. “I don’t think so.”
So much for K’Hari biddability.
“I agree with the praefecta,” said Per as Neela winced and nodded. “We got to look official, First Legate. We can’t look like ruffians out of the Sixth. —Sorry, First Tribune, I mean no offense.”
“Of course you don’t.” Rurik looked every bit the ruffian Per named him. He’d stripped off the dented breastplate. Had sent a bondie to retrieve his old armor and was halfway into it. Leather laces dangled like the loose strands of his battered queue. “We ruffians out of the Sixth would never take offense, since we are too rustic to recognize insult when we hear it.”
Istel snorted. Shrugged, when Dekklis looked at him.
“First Spear Per is right. Any action you take should look as official and formal as possible.” Belaery sat on the edge of the desk as if it were her own personal throne. “You are Illharek, not just an angry First Legate looking for revenge, and not Szanys Dekklis sneaking around on an errand of bloodfeud.”
“He shouldn’t go at all, if we’re aiming at looking official.” Dani poked her chin at Istel. “You can take your First Tribune in whatever armor he’s wearing, but leave the scout behind.”
“Second Scout Istel comes with us,” Dekklis said. “No, Dannike. That’s my word on it. He’s got experience dealing with godsworn.”
Istel flashed a smile meant to charm and disarm—which it would not have, had it been Istel’s alone. Dekklis saw Tsabrak and the Laughing God oozing out of him.
Praefecta K’Hari grinned back. Per and Neela both relaxed a notch. Witchery, heresy, godmagic. A very dangerous ally they had, wearing Istel’s skin.
Belaery caught Dek’s eye and looked well, then at her. Pure cynical approval.
“The adept comes too,” Dekklis said without breaking eyel
ock. Belaery’s face froze.
Dani shifted in her chair. “First Legate. Is that wise? That’ll worry people if they see it.”
“Let it. If this needs to be visible and official, which you tell me it does, then let’s make sure we send all the necessary messages. Besides, we may need her skills.”
Dani blinked. “That worries me.”
“These are godsworn.” Dekklis pointed at Velaan’s body. “She used godmagic. She threw my First Tribune across the room like a toy, and she would have killed me. For all we know, House Toer’s gone and armed their bondies and everyone inside is godsworn. I don’t give a toad’s left hind foot what anyone thinks. Every person I bring into Toer will walk out again, whatever I have to do, whatever allies I have to use.”
By the time Per and Neela had chosen their soldiers, by the time they were all outfitted in gleaming legion armor, it was the twelfth hour, when a traditional House served its supper. The air in the Tiers was thick with spice and grease and bread, and the streets themselves were largely empty. Only a handful of pedestrians to gawp and stare at two rows of armored soldiers, marching in perfect step, led by a roughly dressed First Tribune. At the First Legate herself, in a gleaming, impractical cuirass, with a northern-clad soldier beside her, and an adept with a tight perfect topknot and silver rings lining her ears.
So, it wasn’t surprising when the bondie who answered Toer’s door could only manage standing and staring and the occasional dry-voiced chirp.
“Do you know who I am?” Dekklis asked, not quite gently.
The man bobbed and cast terrified looks over his shoulder. “I—”
“Move aside for the First Legate,” Rurik snapped.
The bondie bowed. As he did, the collar—gold-chased silver, looked like; Toer was clearly in good financial condition, whatever their official reports—slid toward his chin.
There was a mark underneath it. Not a gall, not a scar—ink, hell and damn. The sepia sigil bondies got upon manumission, when they took on Illhari citizenship. Fresh, too, still shiny and peeling and raw on the edges.
Hell and damn.
Rurik’s breath hitched. Came out hard as stone itself. “Bondie. —You are a bondie, are you not?”
“Sir,” the man said faintly. Faint accent that might be Alvir or Talir, hard to tell, but his skin was fair enough to signal his terror. White to red to white again, as if all the blood in his body had run out.
“Then explain.” Rurik reached for the servant, hooked his collar, and dragged him closer. He pulled the collar down hard enough that the man’s skin dimpled around the metal. “Explain where you got this citizen’s sigil.”
The bondie gurgled. “I—” and lost his language. Babbled something in what must be Taliri, from the cadence. Dek had another reason to wish for Snowdenaelikk, who could understand that chatter. And then came a pair of familiar syllables that Dek did not need Snow to interpret. Taliri or Alviri or polyglot panic—that was a prayer to Tal’Shik, her name sharp and clear. Oh, foremothers.
Rurik jerked on the collar. “Speak Dvergiri.”
Dekklis laid a hand on Rurik’s wrist lest he shake the man to death. Cast a glance at Istel, to see if he’d heard it too. She guessed by the shape of his lips that he had. That he was grimly amused.
“Adept.” She turned toward Belaery.
“My Taliri is patchy, First Legate, but I would translate that as oh great Tal’Shik, protect me. Roughly.” Belaery pitched her voice clear and sharp to travel far beyond the borders of their little group. Shock rippled through the troops. Spread into the street, in a muttering, restless wave, to the handful of spectators. It would be all over the Tier by tomorrow. Probably all the way into Midtown.
Damn Belaery’s performance. Dekklis took the bondie’s hand and flipped it. Clean, pale palm, albeit clammy.
“He’s not godsworn.”
“Men aren’t,” Istel murmured “By Illhari tradition. Though, as we’ve seen, the Taliri have other rules.”
Dekklis matched his tone. “And bondies don’t wear Illhari marks of citizenship under their collars, by tradition. At least, not since the Purge. I think the rules have changed for Illhari, too.”
It was illegal for a bondie to carry arms. But nothing said a man couldn’t wear his collar after manumission, or continue to serve his House. So, Toer wasn’t arming its bondies. No. It was arming its new citizens, members of its household, in perfect accord with the law. That was straight out of the histories. An old practice, when the Houses made war on each other, to teach the bondies to fight in exchange for freedom. Bondies so loyal, they wouldn’t leave service. She hadn’t believed those stories. Still didn’t.
The headache was back, thumping behind her eyes. “First Spear Per. You and—” The troopers all looked alike, young and female and immaculately stuffed into their armor. She swept four up in a gesture. “These four. You will all wait out here, with our new friend, and hold our egress. The rest of you will come with me.”
Toer’s house was laid out much like any other built before the Purge. Half manor, half fortress. There was a second set of double doors, closed, just past the first, on the far side of an antechamber that would, Dek reckoned, just barely hold everyone. A rich little room, all polished marble and elaborate mosaics on the walls and the ceiling. Fine craftsmanship up there, an intricate depiction of some Toer ancestor defeating an Alviri chieftain in single combat.
Meant to impress, oh yes. Meant for murder, too. Those doors on the far side would bar from the inside. And in the ceiling—yes, there. Smaller openings studded among the tiles, big enough for a small crossbow or a stream of hot oil and foremothers knew what else.
Toer should have followed post-Purge custom and bricked over those holes. But those holes might have been unbricked in recent months. Dekklis traded a look with Rurik, who damn sure knew what those holes were for, K’Hess being a House old as Toer or Szanys.
“Someone up there?” she murmured. “Would you wager?”
“I would not.”
“Mm. Me neither. All right. —I see murder holes,” she announced, for the benefit of her Midtowner soldiers. “Adept. Can you tell if there’s anyone up there?”
Belaery pulled a face. “No.”
“Pity. Veiko’s dog would know,” Dekklis said. “So would the svartjagr. Perhaps we need to add to our company.”
“I can tell.” Istel bowed, legion-proper, from his place on the edge of the troops. “First Legate. If you will permit.”
Her skin tightened. Chilled. But hell if she’d turn down help.
“Go.” Let the troops think Istel’s skill came from the being a scout in the Sixth in the wild north.
It took all Dek’s own discipline not to flinch as he eeled between her and Rurik. The gaze he turned on her was Istel’s, dark and honest. The smirk belonged to a stranger.
“A moment, First Legate.”
Istel made a show of looking up at the ceiling. Of squinting and frowning and edging into the room, one oiled glide-step at a time. He clung to the walls like shadow. Stared intently at the hole most directly over the room’s center. Looked at Dekklis, then, and nodded.
Somewhere overhead, a wet thump. Cold crawled over Dek’s skin.
“There’s no one up there, First Legate.”
Anymore. Hell and damn. Dekklis straightened. Nodded briskly and spoke past the heart beating hard in her throat. “All right, Second Scout. You take point.”
CHAPTER TEN
Still Waters was midway down the Street of Silk Curtains, a turn south from Market Bridge. Of all Cardik’s hot springs, the ones here smelled the worst. Snow had told Aneki once she should call the place Stink Waters, not Still Waters, but Snow had made good coin mixing salts and herbs to render the water neutral, if not pleasant. And it was always worse when it rained. Meant you smoked more jenja or burned sweetleaf in the firedog to compete. Or hoped for a breeze to carry the odor north and across Market, toward the tanners, where no one would notice more stench.
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No one would notice anything now.
Eerie quiet down here, despite the rain. There were rats, almost certainly. Cats, maybe. All manner of vermin. But no one peered out the windows. The silk curtains for which the street had been named were gone. No fires, witch or otherwise, to break the grey.
Runnels of filth churned along the streets, washing over Logi’s paws and testing the oiled seams of her boots. Mixed cobble and stone streets, hardpack alleys that turned to mud in bad weather and had a habit of running into the streets. There were bondies whose whole job it was to clean up the alleys after rain or melting snow, brooms and shovels to push the dirt back where it belonged. Now, in their absence, the streets were smeared and buried, with mud drifted up against the doors like thick snow.
Doors were the first thing to go in a riot. Smashed in, cracked open. She hadn’t seen a door intact yet, but here—here, the witchfire showed her doors closed and crossed with ragged boards, rough-nailed into the frames. There was breakage on some of the edges, where the doors splintered out. Most of the Street’s structures had no ground-floor windows. The ones that did looked like the doors. Showed splintering around the edges, too, bristling outward, as if something had burst from the inside.
Dear Laughing God.
“Veiko,” she said. “Look.”
“I see.” Veiko did not turn his head. Eyes level, pointed straight down at the street, as if he feared for his footing. Hard to imagine his face any more grim. “In the north, this is done when one wishes to burn the house down with its inhabitants inside.”
Her shock lasted one heartbeat. Then she considered some of Illharek’s history, before the Purge. The Houses had done similar things to each other then. And now—well. They’d probably resurrect the old practices out of a sense of nostalgia.
“Well, there’s no sign of fires, yeah? This seems like a lot of wasted effort. Why lock people in? Just break the doors down, yeah? Drag people out.”
