by K. Eason
“That accidents happen. That half-trained conjurors engaged in illegal activities might make mistakes. I know about backlash.”
“There wouldn’t be backlash here. Not in Illharek.” Comprehension spilled across Belaery’s face like ink. “But an idiot could botch a conjuring. The Toer daughter was fairly untalented.”
“So, she could have caused a catastrophic fire.”
Valiss’s eyes were wider now. Furious. She made sloppy, angry sounds, sent fresh blood running over her chin. Muddy syllables, impossible to make out—but the cadence and level of outrage suggested you wouldn’t dare and you can’t do this.
“Of course I can,” Dekklis told her. “You’re a heretic and a traitor. Your whole family is.”
More howling.
Belaery sidled close. Turned her face away from Valiss and murmured, “Burn the place. First Legate. Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“The consorts, First Legate. You said we should lock them in.”
“And so you should. You saw Suo’Tik Brek’s behavior. Assume they’ve all been compromised.”
Belaery frowned. “You’re saying destroy House Toer.”
“Well. The matron isn’t here, is she? So, technically, House Toer will survive.”
Rurik came back then, scrape and slither as he dragged Brek by his boots. He heaved the corpse across the highborn sisters. Valiss gurgled new outrage. Wriggled against the manacles.
“Istel, hold her.”
“Yes, First Legate.” He jerked her up by the manacles. Kicked her onto her knees and braced a foot on her legs.
Rurik figured it out then. Surged a step forward and stopped like he’d hit a wall. Wide eyes rolled over Dekklis and past her, toward Valiss. Toward Istel. His mouth clipped shut.
Belaery said nothing. Folded her hands and stood back as if waiting for someone to serve tea. Istel wore no expression at all—wholly himself, perhaps, for the first time since entering Toer.
There were ways to kill highborn found guilty of treason. Cast them into the Jukainnen’s Gap, a chasm so deep their bones could not be retrieved. No blood spilled: that was the law now, after the Purge. The civilized law meant to recast five hundred years of bloodfeud custom.
There was the law, and then there was serving Illharek. Had been a time those things were the same. Not anymore.
Valiss tipped her chin up, defiant even from her knees. She spat blood and hate at Dekklis. It hit close enough to splatter the toes of her boots. Another stain for the collection.
Dekklis nodded. Smiled faintly. Flexed her right hand and drew the short legion blade. This was her scout’s sword, carried from Cardik. Dull black Illhari steel, sharpened and oiled and oh, so well used. Two steps and she stuck her blade through Toer Valiss’s chest. Leaned down as the other woman sagged and got busy dying. Put her mouth next to Valiss’s ear.
“If you have a tongue in the ghost roads, you tell Tal’Shik we’re coming.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Of all the ghosts Veiko had encountered, Still Waters was the saddest.
He had come here the first time hanging off Snow like a wet cloak, fever-wasted and wounded. He remembered slashes of violent color and blinding bonfires studding the walls. Spice and perfume crawling down his throat, resting on his tongue. Remembered the buzz of the place, a hive full of voices blurred and intolerably loud. Remembered a grim stagger down this very corridor, his eyes fixed on the tiles, counting the seams between them. Cursing the place for its brightness, its strangeness, its vivid intrusion.
Now the sconces were empty, the corridor dark. The only smells were dust and rain and the faint reek of the pools. Snow’s witchfire sank into the cracks in the tiles, lingered over the ruined frescoes. They passed the kitchen, with its cold hearth and bare floor. Still Waters’ back corridor had been a wall of heavy doors once, each with its own metal lock. Expensive rooms, thick-walled for privacy, each with its own stone bath. He touched a naked doorframe. The hinges showed signs of violence. Rain swept into the room through the crack in the shutter, rattled onto the tile like hail.
But no broken glass. No splinters and slivers of wood. And:
“There are no bodies,” he said. “Where are they?”
“You’re the noidghe, yeah? The dead are your job.” Snow trailed her fingers along a ruined fresco. “Someone’s cleaned the place up. Makes you wonder who. And when.”
She looked at him, and he saw the hope in her eyes: because the ghost—Teslin, Ehkla, whoever she had been—had said Aneki had something to say to her. Snow wanted him to
lie
tell her that it was possible Aneki had survived. That she was here now.
But Aneki would have met them at the gate. She wouldn’t hide in the shadows. Not if she lived.
The angry dead, however, might well hide from the living. And there was something here. Logi stood in the middle of the corridor. Ears up, tail stiff. Slowly, the fur on his back rose. And then Veiko heard what he did: a faint scratch and scrape, what might be boots on flagstone. What was not, most definitely, just rats.
“Snow,” Veiko said.
She’d heard it. Gathered the witchfire between her palms, grew it wide and tossed it up so that it spread across the narrow ceiling. Its light chased up the corridor, blasting dark out of all the corners.
Catching, just barely, the trailing hem of a skirt as its wearer skipped around the corner.
Veiko hummed under his breath, barely enough air in his throat for a note. A vibration that traveled from throat all through him, into his bones, out to his skin. A spirit would feel it and withdraw. The angry dead would not. They were driven by malice, revenge, no love for the living. No fear of a noidghe’s songs, either. But, having bodies, they were vulnerable to physical wounds.
Veiko slipped the axe free. Put out a hand to Snow, to signal caution and stay behind me. Felt the brush of her hip as she passed him, long determined strides with no caution at all in them.
“Aneki!” she called. “That you?”
“Snowdenaelikk. So, it is you.” That was Aneki’s voice. Smoky and torn on the edges, but not a ghost’s whispers.
Veiko reached his partner’s side then. Raised the axe and held it in front of them both.
“Veiko. Peace, yeah? It’s just me.”
Aneki held up empty hands. She favored her Alviri heritage, fair-skinned, fair hair bleached almost white. Only her eyes showed her Dvergir half, dark and huge, swallowing the witchfire’s glow. Her orange silk skirt showed signs of hard wear, tattered hems and one dark stain across it, and her blouse was missing a part of one sleeve. The scar around her throat from the bondie collar looked like old blood, a dark smear around pale skin.
Snow was breathing hard, like she’d run all the way from the gate. “Aneki.”
Aneki smiled, bright and brittle. “Welcome, yeah? Both of you.”
A second figure moved in the corridor’s dimness. Alviri, uncollared and showing citizen’s ink on her bare neck. Wild hair, wilder eyes, blankets slung around her like a cloak. Long knives naked in her fists. Boots visible below the blanket’s hem, laced tight. And a face Veiko recognized. Aneki told him once she’d picked Fridis out for her coloring, copper hair and spruce-blue eyes and skin just dusted with freckles. Sweet-faced, Aneki said, if a man didn’t look close.
Veiko had thought then that any man who found Fridis sweet-faced was not looking at her face at all. He remembered a hard-eyed woman with round breasts and hair to her hips. Recognized only the eyes now, and they had grown even harder. She had shrunk gaunt as Snowdenaelikk, her hair hacked ragged at her chin.
“Fridis,” he said. She flinched, just a little, as he said her name. Stared at him, as if she’d never seen him before.
“It’s Snowdenaelikk and Veiko, that’s all, and the damn dog,” Aneki said. “It’s all right, Fridis.”
“Long time since that was true,” Fridis said. Her voice came out jagged.
Aneki looked at her. Something passed
between them that ended in Fridis’s jaw squaring tight. “See to dinner, will you? —She’s a good girl,” said Aneki as Fridis stalked away. “But it’s been hard. I didn’t think I’d see you again, Snow. The hell did you come back here?”
Snow put a hand on Veiko’s axe arm. Not quite put it down, but a definite wait. “The hell didn’t you leave?”
“Told you. This is my place. No army’s going to chase me out.”
“Place looks…” Audible pause, as Snow sifted for words. “…better than I’d expected.”
“Hah. Well. We cleaned it up. No point in living here in filth, yeah? The Taliri were thorough when they came through. I don’t know what they thought they’d find.”
“Sure you do.” Snow’s voice was a gentle blank. “They were looking for me. For Veiko.”
“Hm. Maybe. But if they wanted you, I’d’ve reckoned they’d ask, and they didn’t. Tore all the doors open, smashed some things.” She pointed down the hall, toward the public bath chamber. “My screens are gone. All the way from the Ruslands, and now they’re smashed to kindling. Fucking Taliri. At least we got a few nights’ cooking out of them. The screens, not the men. Don’t look at me like that.”
Aneki took the turn toward the central chamber, where clients could meet and mingle with the staff before moving into the baths or up to a room. The damage here was worse. Mosaics smashed, the massive statues rendered headless. That made them lovelier, in Veiko’s estimation; he had never liked the smooth blank faces. But Snowdenaelikk stopped at the base of the woman. Put a careful hand on the statue’s thigh.
“What did they do to you?”
“Fuck and damn, Snow. What do you think?” Aneki made a noise in her throat. “What raiders always do. But it was mostly just bruises. A split lip for Fridis, but only because she hit back.”
Snow might’ve been a statue herself, for all the motion in her face. The witchfire settled onto the peaks of nose and cheekbones and chin. Left the valleys dark. Left her eyes two pools of flat nothing.
“Here’s a funny thing.” Aneki’s voice said it wasn’t. “When the Taliri came through the first time, there was one door they left alone. Yours, yeah? I reckoned you must’ve done something, made it so they couldn’t see it. So we moved in once they left. Should’ve had you ward the whole place like that.”
Snow looked like she’d swallowed a live frog. “Would’ve cost you customers.”
“Huh. Well. We got new priorities now. We want people to avoid us.” Aneki laughed. She ducked through a side passage, to the private apartments, and waved a hand at the stairs. “Don’t wait for me, yeah? Go on ahead. Fridis has dinner waiting.”
Had been a time Veiko dreaded those stairs, when his leg was half-healed and every step hurt like fire. He had wondered then if it was Aneki’s idea to lease them rooms on the second floor, where Veiko must walk the length of the residents’ private hall anytime he wished to leave. Ancestors knew, his discomfort and embarrassment had amused them, with his stubborn refusal to look into open doors no matter what sounds he might hear.
It was only later he’d realized that Snowdenaelikk had chosen their flat, and it had been both kindness and wisdom. Its windows faced away from the main street, opened across the courtyard, where a man unused to cities might find what quiet he could and catch clean air off the mountain. Where a svartjagr might come and go easily and unseen. Where a noidghe might practice his skills in privacy, with no one having excuse to pass his door. And where a conjuror might weave her witchery, so that no one would find any reason to notice that last doorway at the end of a dark hall.
That hallway now seemed very long, its shadows very deep. Snow’s witchfire blazed like a candle, drawing his gaze to it. Hiding what lay beyond in the dark.
Aneki had said she and Fridis had moved into the old flat. And Aneki had said see to dinner. There should be an open door, and a wedge of light, and perhaps the smells of supper. Not a long row of dark doors.
His skin tingled. Shivered all the way to his bones, like his hummed song come back to him. A warning, that was all.
“Snow,” he said, his own warning. He stopped and turned. Logi crowded into his knees. Grunted a dog’s puzzlement. Beyond Logi, Aneki’s silhouette sulked at the edge of the witchfire. She had come only a little way up the stairs. Raised both hands again, palms out.
“Veiko,” she said. “Easy. It’s only me.”
He had never seen, with his own eyes, the destruction wrought by angry dead. But he had heard stories. Houses crushed. Bodies hanging by their own guts from the trees.
“Where is Fridis?” he asked.
Aneki shook her head. “Veiko. You know me.”
“She’s up ahead,” said Snow, hard-voiced. “Hiding in one of the rooms. Thinks I can’t hear her moving in there, but I can. —Come on out, yeah?”
Veiko heard a soft footscuff that might be Fridis doing as she was told. He did not turn to look, trusting Snow at his back.
“They are angry dead,” he said.
Snow caught her breath. “Reckoned that. I don’t smell any dinner up here. Don’t see any lights. Didn’t see any from outside, either. —And then there’s you, Aneki, hiding in the dark. Is this some kind of ambush?”
“Snow. Listen.” Aneki dared another stair. Never looked away from Veiko’s face. “We’re no danger to you.”
“Yeah? Then tell your girl to come out where I can see her.”
“Fridis,” said Aneki. She sounded tired.
“Told you this was a bad idea,” said Fridis. “Told you Veiko’d figure it out.”
The hallway boards creaked in a place Veiko remembered. Oh, ancestors, Fridis was between them and their flat, with Aneki on the stairs. The skin on his neck prickled.
Metal sang as Snow pulled her seax free. Logi growled.
“Right. Thank you, Fridis. Now you can turn right around and go back inside. That’s right. Hands where I see them. I’ll wager I’m faster than you, if it comes to a fight.”
Aneki tried again. “Snow, please. Just listen.”
“Never thought I’d see you alive again,” Snow said. “Guess I haven’t. You stay there.” Snow’s free hand came back and found a fistful of Veiko’s sleeve. “Stay close, yeah?”
They moved together, shuffle-steps, along the hallway. Past the wounded doors, splintered and gaping on what had once been people’s homes. The witchfire poked into those darknesses, passed over the ruins. Passed over Fridis where she stood in the wreckage of what had been her own rooms. She stood, arms out straight, palms empty. Veiko thought he saw the gleam of teeth, smile or snarl.
“Veiko,” she said. “You’re in no danger from us, yeah? Just listen.”
A noidghe knew better.
They had reached the end of the hall now. Their own door was still closed; Aneki had told truth about that. There were scores in the wood, long gashes that said someone had tried to cut through. Scorch marks, too, greasy black in the witchlight, that said the door had fought back.
Aneki came the rest of the way up the stairs. Her hands hung limp at her sides. “I told you, Snow,” she called past Veiko. “Your wards held.”
“That’s how I knew you were full of toadshit, yeah? When you said you moved in. They work against the living, Aneki. If you were still breathing, you’d know that.”
“If we wanted you dead, Snow, we’d’ve been waiting inside. You know that.”
“So you say.” Snow got the door open. And then they were both inside, and Logi with them, and she slammed the door again. Dropped the bar in place. Leaned her back against the door and put her hands on her thighs. Her fingers clenched and flexed like claws. “Bel taught me another set of wards. Old conjuring, yeah? Pre-Purge. Should work against them.”
“There is no need. It will not take long to deal with them.” The corridor outside was narrow. They would not be able to flank him. “Keep Logi in here.”
“The fuck are you going? There’s a bar on the door, yeah? They’re not getting in before
I get the wards drawn.”
“They are angry dead,” he said, baffled. The sky is blue. Water is wet. “Their heads must come off.”
She came around in front of him, got between him and the door. Pushed her hand flat on his chest. “They’re my friends. Aneki’s right, yeah? If she and Fridis wanted us dead, we would both be swallowing black river water right now.”
The angry dead had no reason in them. That was common wisdom. That same wisdom said strike the head from the body, turn the face to the earth, and burn both together. A wise man would settle this now, safe and easy. A wise man would push past his partner and go look for the bodies and have done.
But a noidghe’s wisdom was a different sort. A noidghe spoke to spirits. A noidghe did not fear the dead, angry or otherwise.
Tell that to his hands, cold and slick and knotted. Tell that to his heart, beating fast and hard in his throat. Tell that to the man he had been last winter, who had never wanted to be noidghe, for whom common wisdom had not done any good. Tell that to his partner, who could and should be noidghe, and would not, as long as she let her fear guide her.
Take that lesson, then. Learn from it. Snowdenaelikk’s fear was not his obstacle. His own was. A man could be forgiven for fearing the angry dead. Common wisdom was right about that. But killing Aneki would not undo his fear. Killing Aneki and Fridis would not make him other than noidghe, return him to man and hunter and common wisdom’s comfort.
And they had not tried to hurt him. Or Snow. That must mean something. Snow was not afraid of them. That could be foolishness, but it might be another kind of wisdom, too.
“Veiko.”
Snow still had her hand on him. His heart was likely leaving bruises on her palm. He set the axe down. Looked down into her face. Midnight eyes so deep, a man expected to see stars.
“Draw your wards.” Then Veiko turned his back and crossed the room to his old place at the hearth. The straw pallet had not been changed since the spring and their leaving. He spread his damp cloak across it. Sat down, and got back up again fast when the straw squeaked and shifted. He let Logi amuse himself with the displaced mice. Watched as Snow traced a pattern of fresh marks along the lintel, down each side of the frame, across the door itself. Then she stalked the room’s perimeter three times, dragging her fingers along the crease of ceiling and wall, and wall and floor. The third time, she touched nothing, but a line of white fire flared up after her.
