by K. Eason
Veiko’s skin prickled. Tightened, as if he’d gotten too close to a fire, but he felt no actual heat. A sudden headache bloomed behind his eyes. He closed them. The glacier and silver sky of the ghost roads no longer threatened. Only honest dark on the back of his eyelids and quiet inside his skull.
Snow walked over to the shutters. Traced another set on the shutters and then opened them wide and let the rain spit and blow in her face. Silent the whole time, which worried a man used to chatter.
“Snow,” he tried once, and got barely an eyetwitch acknowledgement.
“Waiting for Briel,” she said. “Then I’ll close them.”
He wanted to say it is not your fault, what happened. Wanted to tell her we could not have stopped what happened here. Instead, he made room on the pallet. And once Briel arrived, in a spray of wet wings and a detailed sending of every miserable moment she’d spent in flight, when Snow closed the shutters and Veiko saw the wards flare hot orange and she turned around—then he said her name a second time, and she came and curled up at his back and pulled her cloak over both of them.
* * *
Veiko opened his eyes to a gut-deep jolt of familiar. Snow poking at the firedog. Logi with his paws on the window. Briel perched on the sill, her wings making a svartjagr-shaped hole in the morning light, turning the brightness to striped silver twilight. Her pleasure in that simple warmth buzzed behind his eyes, a summer breeze pleasant and entirely at odds with the smell it carried.
A living city stank of garbage, of tanners and foodstuff and sewage. Cardik smelled like the corpse it was, and sunlight and heat were not kind to rotting things. Not kind to him, either, or the bed. Unwashed self, clothes dried and stiff and stuck with straw, wet dog. A little jenja under that, Snow’s contribution.
Snowdenaelikk had put a small kettle on the firedog. She measured a pinch of this and that from her pouches. Liquid hissed. A curl of steam came up, a trace of something sour beneath cinnamon and clove. As Snow leaned over the kettle, some of the light sneaked round Briel. Burned her hair white where it touched.
Hair that color would be a mark of beauty among his own people. She’d laugh if he told her that.
He counted the bones under her leather vest. Ribs. Spine. The razor sweep of her collarbones, ending in the little knobbed hilts of her shoulders. Aggressive nose and hostile cheekbones, and a way of looking at a man that made him want to check himself for wounds. The silver master chirurgeon’s ring gleamed in her ear like a treasure in the bottom of a lake.
In his village, she would stand out like a raven among wood grouse. He had let himself imagine her there, before the spring and her oaths to the God. That had been foolishness twice over: to think he could ever go home. To imagine she would go with him if he did. She was Illhari, and godsworn, and he had no home left.
“Missed this kettle,” she said without turning. “Can’t get one like it in Illharek. I looked. It’s a northern design.”
“Then we will take it back with us.”
“Back? Aren’t you an optimist.” She went to the shelves. Poked among the crockery. “Aneki always liked this blue cup. Wish I’d given it to her before we left.” She tipped some of the kettle’s contents into it. The Illhari citizen’s sigil moved like liquid under her skin, over her collarbone. Special ink, he knew that, made in the Academy by a handful of adepts. Soaked in witchery and conjuring, like all things Illhari.
“Veiko.”
He blinked up at her face. She jerked her brows up. Thrust the cup at him—again, must be, though he had not noticed the first offering. He took it with both hands. Ducked his chin and stared at its contents while his skin surged hot as the steam rising out of—whatever it was. He sipped. Gritted teeth and swallowed. Felt the liquid hit his gut and willed it stay there.
Snow took her own careful sip and grimaced. “I know it’s awful. I’m sorry. But I don’t trust the water.”
He grunted. The water was the least of his mistrusts, ranked behind the ghosts seething in the garrison courtyard. Behind the endless, unmoving storm hunched up over the mountains. Behind the surety of Tal’Shik’s avatar, waiting. And the angry dead somewhere in Still Waters.
He tipped his cup toward the window. There were herbs floating in the liquid. “What is this?”
“A little sweetleaf. Hyssop. Rasi, not enough to cause trouble. But it cleans the blood.” Tiny twisted smile, sour as the drink. “And jenja, which tastes really awful. But smoked or swallowed, it’s good proof against poisons. Or, at least, a great help.” She pulled out a stick of jenja. Shook it at him, like a stern finger. “I smoke. You don’t. So, you have to drink it.”
The jenja trembled in her fingers. Snow folded the stick into her hand. Glared at her fist for a heartbeat. Then she put the stick back in her pouch, slowly and precisely.
“Snow.” Suspicion gnawed in his belly, more sour than the drink. “What is it?”
They had no habit of lies with each other. He watched her consider one anyway, for two full breaths. Then, “When someone tries a ward, you feel it. It’s like, oh, a buzzing. Like bees, under your skin. The wards I drew, they’re old magic. Pre-Purge. Supposed to be spirit-proof, yeah? And last night, someone tried them. I thought maybe it was the God trying to get through. Tsabrak all pissed off at me, that’d make sense.”
“You should have waked me.”
“I thought about it. But the wards are my thing. Not much you could do. Besides.” A small smile, unbarbed and fragile. “You were very thoroughly asleep. Oh, don’t look like that. I can handle myself, yeah?”
Veiko laced his fingers hard around his cup. Took another swallow to hide his grimace, and to wash unhelpful words back down.
“So. I got up. I went to the door. And I heard her. Aneki. She was on the other side. She said, ‘I need to talk to you, Snow, open this toadfucking thing.’ Which I did not, obviously.”
Obviously. Because they were both still alive. Because the angry dead had not devoured them while they slept. Veiko stared into his mug, at the murky sludge floating just under the liquid surface. His own face rippled back at him. Not unlike the black river on his first trip to its banks, when he had seen his own death in its depths.
“And what did you say?”
“Nothing. Reckoned you were right, I shouldn’t be talking to them. She kept talking, though. Said she was sorry for scaring us. Said she meant us no harm. Said to be careful if we were going into the Warren. That there’re angry dead who come out when the sun fails.”
“The angry dead don’t like sunlight, that is true.” He gulped down the last of his cup. “But Fridis and Aneki are different. You are right: they could have attacked us, and they did not. So I am…” He squinted over her head. Looked for the words in the dancing dust motes, in the patterns of the plaster on the walls, in the grain of the lintel and door. “…uncertain. What I know says we should destroy them both now, while the sun shines. But I have been wrong before.”
“So have I. Obviously.” Snow smoothed both hands over her topknot. Cradled her skull and stared somewhere between his chest and forever. “While we have daylight, we go up into the Warren, you and me. See if there’s a dragon up there. Do a little scouting, yeah?” She smiled like it hurt. “Then we get out of Cardik before the sun sets. Take our chances out there with Kellehn and the toadshit Taliri. And make room in your pack, yeah? You’re getting the pan. I’m taking that kettle.”
* * *
The wards were pre-Purge, unearthed from one of Belaery’s tomes. Proof, she’d said, that the Academy had been part of the earliest resistance to Tal’Shik. Snow remembered Belaery’s eyes, bright with new knowledge.
Look here, Snow. See this? The word for spirit, not god, in the oldest versions. This ward is proof against all of them. —And, she added, with a small, nasty smile, anything alive, too.
Well, then, Belaery would be happy to know these wards worked on both angry dead and the God. Not a tingle out of him all night, which meant unbroken sleep until Aneki
had tried the wards. Might have to draw them every time she slept somewhere with walls and roof and door.
Snow traced the glyphs of opening. Tried the handle herself. No spark. No buzz like angry hornets under her skin. She pushed the door open.
“Go ahead. It’s safe.”
Veiko grunted, two parts I spit at danger and one part I doubt that. Took the step past her and slipped through the door too quietly for a man that big. He was mostly long bones and rope muscles, no bulk, but he wasn’t light. She’d dragged him around enough to know that. He held the axe loose and ready—for angry dead, Taliri, rabid rats. Logi crowded after him.
Snow pulled the door shut behind them. Whispered the wards back and traced the last glyph in the center of the door. It glowed like blood and fire, liquid and hot and darkly red. Cast a faint glow into the corridor, driving dust and shadows back to the corners.
That’s a new trick, the God whispered. I don’t think I like it.
“Don’t care, yeah?” she snapped under her breath.
Veiko speared a glance back at her. Set his lips in an even grimmer line. He guessed the reason for her whispers. The old God had been a treacherous toadshit, yeah, but the new God was Tsabrak. Ask who Veiko preferred.
And who’s your choice, Snow?
She’d sworn oaths to the Laughing God. That was one answer. And there had been a time she chose Tsabrak, first and always; but that had been before Veiko. Now partner came first.
The empty corridor stretched ahead. The shadows crowded the walls, ran up the plaster like ink. Squares of sunlight reached through the broken frames of the doors. There were bigger, brighter patches at the top of the stairs, where the light shaft was. That was an Alviri invention, meant to light the guts of a house; the Illhari had adopted it when they began living Above, covered the top with glass or horn to keep the weather out. Aneki had covered the shafts with colored glass years before, extravagance and vanity and just damn pretty, yeah? Whole, they’d left little puddles of reds and greens and blues on the stairs, smeared and lovely. Shattered little puddles now, spots of blue and green like gems, spots of bloody red, laced with jagged lead-line shadows from the broken frames. There were damp patches on the steps where the rain had come through the gaps and warped the wood.
Old habit told Snow she should draw the shadows around them, weave and conjure distraction to keep unwanted attention away. But the cold intuition bite in her gut said shadows might be the worst thing she could call up, here and now.
“Damn tidy,” she said. “It’s a wonder more people don’t keep the angry dead as servants.”
Veiko looked back at her from the far side of a sunbeam. Dust hazed his features, reduced him to eyes and pale smudge and metal gleam off the axe blade.
“The angry dead destroy. That’s all they do.” Veiko shook his head hard, so that the braids whipped and slapped his armor. “What I know about them does not match what we see here.”
But he didn’t put the axe away or stop checking corners and shadows. They went past the main bath, where Aneki’s beloved Ruslander screens had been. Out the back door and through the courtyard and into the familiar alley, where the sun sliced a two-stride path down the center. The puddles from last night’s rain sparkled and steamed into the morning heat. Should have reeked, yeah, should have been shit and worse in that water, on a typical morning. Should have been shouting and voices and food smells, and the morning drift off the river should’ve brought the tanner’s quarter with it.
Veiko paused. Raised his chin and sniffed. Listened. A wild thing testing the wind, yeah, and it made her throat hurt to watch him. She remembered the man he had been when he came here, who jumped at loud noises, who stood at the window and stared at the sky. Trying to catch a clean breeze, he’d told her then. Trying to breathe.
He made a face. Slid her a wry, sidelong look. “This place is too quiet.”
“And here I thought you’d say you missed the smell.”
“No.” His mouth hitched and leveled. “But I prefer what was to what is.”
Not the mountain breeze he meant. What lurked on the edges of that breeze, like a feral cat in alley shadows. Death and all its memories. A hint of rot, a lot of dust, the copper taste of blood long dried.
They walked past dead buildings and dead bodies. Bones, mostly. Some tattered cloth. The ghosts were quiet, in daylight. No whispers. Snow kept her eyes out of the shadows, just in case, and was glad that Market Bridge was not far from Still Waters. The Bridge had begun as a simple arch of Alviri masonry, meant to span the S’Ranna and join both halves of the city. Conquering Illhari had conjured it wider, thicker, raised a hip-high lip along the edge, and made it into small copy of the massive Arch in Illharek. Vendors and merchants had lined its width when the city still lived. Built booths and kiosks and whole shops.
The riot had met the Sixth here last winter. There was nothing left of the market now but splinters, bones, bits of armor. A legion sword, snapped in half. The wicked metal ends of crossbow bolts, black and naked and scattered across the stones. The skewer-seller’s firedog was still there, none the worse for its long neglect in the elements. Tipped on its side, all its charcoal long scattered. There was tangled wreckage at the end of the bridge, where someone had tried to build a barricade to the Warren out of handcarts and boards and furniture. Ask if that barricade had been meant to hold riot in or keep it out. Hadn’t worked, regardless. Snow picked her way across the debris. Kept an eye on Logi’s path, too. Didn’t need the dog to spit himself.
Snow looked up to where the river tumbled out of the mountain. You couldn’t see the broken bridge of the Finger from here, pointing over the river, or the slums. Or, thank the God, the charred husk of a building where she’d called Tal’Shik into Ehkla’s dying body. She wondered what that had looked like from down here. Whether anyone had noticed the violet fire rising over the rooflines, or the dragon’s wings taking shape and spreading across the sky like smoke.
No. Probably too busy fighting and dying.
They found no more corpses as they walked. Plenty of debris and ruin, though, and more the higher they climbed. The riots had run downhill from the Warren like a flood. A flood armed with weapons Tsabrak had sold them. That she had sold them. Her fault, some of this. She remembered who’d lived on these streets. She remembered the shops and apartments, the colors of frescoes and shutters. Her old apartment block still stood, more or less intact. Janne’s tavern too, out of which Tsabrak had run cartel business, where she’d first seen the crates of stolen legion weapons hiding among barrels of beer and sacks of dubious flour. Where she’d made her first deal with Alviri refugees who only wanted to protect themselves against theft and rape and the convenient blindness of Illhari law.
Where we started all this, yeah?
The God didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. Tsabrak had been flesh and bone then, and the God had been Tal’Shik’s ally. And she had been—hell. An idiot. Should’ve taken Veiko and gone soon as he could walk. But she’d stayed, and he had, and now Aneki was dead and Cardik was ruins and there was a toadfucking dragon living above the walls somewhere.
And they were walking straight toward it.
They climbed higher, past her old apartment block, past the Finger’s broken arch, where the streets changed from Illhari pavement to hardpack and gravel. The remaining buildings sagged against each other. Weary ancient structures made by hands and effort and poor engineering. The Alviri had been better at war than at architecture. Better at pounding hell out of the Dvergiri with their cavalry and their own clutch of godsworn, until the Dvergiri built the Illhari Republic, and trained the legions, and enforced their own peace on the Above.
So much for that peace. Hell and damn, pieces was more like it. The Warren looked like a stack of children’s blocks after a tantrum. The riot had started here, with no mercy for homes and shops and lives. She could nearly hear the riot’s echoes, smell them, smoke and blood and dying.
She stared up at the mountain,
at the storm snagged on its ridge, at the remnants of blinding blue. She wished for conversation, yeah, but Veiko wasn’t good for starting it. And there were ghosts here, damn sure. Veiko was probably using all his wit and focus to keep them back.
So, Snow was surprised when Veiko said, out of dust and nothing, “The old God laughed more often.”
“What?”
“The old God,” in tones of great patience, “laughed more often.”
“Where did that come from, of a sudden?”
“An observation.”
“An observation. Huh. Maybe we’re due a name change, then. The Grim God. The God Who Smirks. Hell. Let’s call him Tsabrak and have done.”
Feel the witchfire eyes on her, cool and disapproving. “He is neither the Laughing God you remember nor your Tsabrak. He is something else. Something new.”
“He was never my Tsabrak.”
“Mm.”
“What, mm? The fuck does that mean?”
A sigh, very faint. “A name is power, with spirits, because it describes a truth. But your Laughing God is not one person, though he may have been once. Now he is many, and many truths, sharing a name that was no one at all. There is a part of this Laughing God who remembers himself as Tsabrak. But he has also devoured the one who came before, and so that God is in him too, and he has no name.”
“So? What does that mean? Besides this new God doesn’t laugh as much. Which, might I add, is very Tsabrak.”
“But he is not Tsabrak. You are not careful or precise when you name him. And you should be. You risk confusing him. And he should not be confused, not if he expects to defeat Tal’Shik. He must be the Laughing God.”
She was tired of shoulds and musts, yeah, tired of ghosts and angry dead. Tired of gods, any and all.
