by K. Eason
The grief hit fast and hard, like a javelin, punched from gut to spine and pinned her breathless. She doubled over the ledge. Wished, not for the first time, that she knew Veiko’s tricks to summon the dead.
And heard, distinctly, the clink of crockery behind her.
She dragged her face to neutral. Turned and saw Belaery taking charge of the tea. So there had been a bang, then. The motherless door.
“Did I tell you to come in?”
“No. But I heard the kettle. Thought I better check why no one had seen to it. Now I know.”
Dekklis leaned against the ledge. Borrowed the stone’s steadiness. “I was thinking.”
“Toadshit. You haven’t slept since Rurik died, have you?”
“A little bit.”
“Not enough.”
“There isn’t time.”
“Make some. Even bribes won’t work if the proposed dictator falls asleep during the vote.”
“I did not bribe anyone.”
“Mm. No criticism, yeah? It’s politics. Bribes are traditional.” Belaery frowned at the short row of cups on the table. “There are bondies, you know. Or new recruits. I’m told they wash dishes. At the least, I think they’d bring the First Legate a clean cup if she asked.”
“Do you have a reason to be here?”
Belaery snorted. Poured tea into the biggest mug and brought it over. “You’re welcome. Surly creature.”
Dekklis dipped her face into the steam. “What’d you put in there?”
Belaery’s brows arched. “I didn’t poison you.”
“Not what I asked.”
“Just drink it. You want to stay upright, you swallow. Troopers use it all the time.”
“Worse than Snow, you know that? Bossy.” But Dekklis did as she was told. One sip, two, rolled around in her mouth. Honey, mostly, thick and distracting, coating something sharp and herbal. Rasi. Hell and damn. That was technically illegal. It was also, as Bel said, common practice. The cartels—her new allies, hell and damn—lived on the trade.
Belaery snorted. “Save your insults, Szanys Dekklis, and your compliments. I bring good news.”
“The Taliri have all gone back east? All the godsworn have turned into kittens?”
“I believe,” said Belaery, “that I may know who Tal’Shik is. Or what.”
A god. A powerful spirit. A motherless toadshit, in Dek’s estimation, and soon to be—whatever passed for dead to something that wasn’t technically alive. She said none of those things. The tea was working. Her wits were coming back, one swallow at a time.
“Go on.”
“I got lucky. I was curious about the tunnel from Cardik, so I went looking for records.” Bel clicked her tongue against her teeth. “The project was originally financed by a joint venture of two Houses right after Cardik fell to the Republic. This was long before the Purge, mind you. This was when we were still at war with the Alviri—”
“And we were all worshipping Tal’Shik.”
“Yes. Anyway, these Houses: both were avid expansionists, both traded heavily in horses and northern exports. One of the Houses, S’Hikk, died in the civil violence leading up to the Purge. All the sisters and girl children were killed in one of those old-style bloodfeuds with a rival House. The surviving sons were twins, and both contracted to the same daughter of T’Hess. They died, along with that daughter and everyone else, when T’Hess fell during the Purge itself.”
“But a boy survived. Some half-blood get of the brothers on a bondie woman.”
“You’ve heard far too many tavern tales. Drink your tea and listen. I cross-referenced S’Hikk and T’Hess, looking for those very connections—allies, offspring—that you suspected. What I found was a footnote in the Annals about the origins of this.” She tugged her robe off her shoulder, baring the Illhari citizenship’s glyph. “The highborn Houses always used family sigils. You married into a family, or you were adopted, you got the House mark. But this practice, this tattooing of every Illhari citizen with this particular sigil, didn’t start until the Dvergiri as a people started worshipping Tal’Shik. T’Hess and S’Hikk came up with the idea, and the design, and they proposed it to the Senate. But that’s not the interesting part—”
“Oh, good. There is an interesting part. I was worried.”
“Dekklis, listen.” Belaery’s eyes widened, indignant. “Did you ever think about why it’s this shape? Why the symbol for Illharek looks like this?”
Dekklis put the cup down, mouth gone sour, and it wasn’t the rasi’s fault. “No.”
“Look.” Belaery shoved a pile of scrolls aside, cleared a patch of desk. She dipped the tip of her finger into the inkwell and began to trace out a familiar, forbidden glyph on the wood.
“Stop that!” Dekklis caught her wrist. “I know what Tal’Shik’s symbol looks like. You don’t need to draw it. You shouldn’t, anyway. There’s power in making the mark.”
“Snowdenaelikk told you that, didn’t she?” Belaery smiled tightly. “She’s right. But look. Please? Let me go, First Legate. Trust me.”
Dek considered how many disasters had started with those two words, and whether she was about to start another one. But then—Tal’Shik’s symbol had been drawn a thousand times already, hadn’t it, without Tal’Shik actually showing up. It was
superstition
to be so afraid of a motherless symbol.
She let go of Bel’s wrist. “Go on.”
“Thank you.” Belaery finished drawing the glyph, almost and not quite. There was a gap at the place where it should’ve joined, the width of Bel’s fingertip. “I listened to Snow too,” Bel murmured. “Don’t need to finish it to make my point. Now watch. If you rub out this part and replace it like so...” She blotted the ink with the cuff of her robe and redrew it, with an extra loop and symmetrical, right-angled extensions on each side and—
Dekklis blinked. “That’s the symbol for Illharek.”
“Yes. And the part I added, the part that makes it Illharek’s mark—that’s a glyph that means, essentially, bound by blood. It was used in formal adoptions. Which means that citizen’s ink—that all Illhari have, Dek—marks us as belonging to Tal’Shik. She’s our collective foremother and we’re her, her descendents. Illharek is her House.”
There were questions to ask—how and the hell does that even mean, which would lead to another Academy lecture, lead to more references to obscure authors and texts that ten people in the whole Republic could read. Dekklis wished, for the last time, for Snowdenaelikk, who would answer, without prompting, the most important concern.
“Does this knowledge help us to defeat her?”
“Well,” Bel began.
Then came a sudden rattling of wings at the window, sudden slam of ice and brick behind Dek’s eyes. Briel landed on the ledge with a hiss and a scraping of claws. Squawked when she saw Belaery and hissed again.
“Damn that animal.” Belaery glared at Briel. “I could ward the room—”
“Quiet,” said Dekklis as the svartjagr’s sending crashed through her skull. A jangle of image and sound and impression, Snowdenaelikk and Veiko and swirling cold.
The chamber door slammed open, carried by fog and icy wind. Veiko caught the backswing on a forearm, half a step ahead of Snowdenaelikk and Logi. The hall behind them was—oh, hell. There was no hall. Only the ghost roads, fog and mist and memory seizing in Dek’s gut. No need to ask how they’d got here, why the guards and Optio Pyatta had let them through the garrison gate at all.
“Dek,” Snow said. “Bel.” She walked past them both and collected Briel from the ledge. Looked like hell, didn’t she. Greasy hair and a smell that reminded Dekklis of a hundred field maneuvers. Sweat. Cooking. Dust. Jenja and dog. Snow probably didn’t even notice. A nose got used to its body.
Veiko looked even worse. On his fair northern skin, the dirt showed. Collected in the creases like fine lines. But no blood on their clothing. That was something.
Dekklis edged upwind. “The hell?
”
“Happened? Or are we doing here?” Snow rubbed Briel’s chin. Looked across at Veiko, who had come just far enough into the room that the door had swung shut. He had his head cocked toward it, a hand on his axe.
“Someone comes.”
“Of course someone comes. Let me tell them not to kill you, yeah?” Dekklis pushed the mug into Belaery’s hands and shouldered past her. Moved more carefully past Veiko. You forgot how tall he was. Forgot the size of that motherless dog, too.
She opened the door, dismissed the startled guard, closed it again. Simple enough. Turned back to a roomful to a prickly silence and bared teeth. Belaery’s whole being tilted toward Veiko, eyes bright as a child’s.
“This is the skr—Veiko Nyrikki. The noidghe,” as if the word tasted sweet, and she had to suck all the flavor from it.
Snow grimaced. “My partner, yeah.”
Veiko stared down at her. “And you are a tower witch.”
“A tower wi—” Belaery blinked. Arrowed a glance at Snow. “What tales have you been telling?”
“I haven’t. Veiko doesn’t approve of conjurors.”
Dekklis knotted off a smirk. Watched Belaery reckon the size of Veiko, the nearness. The axe and the big red-furred dog. The power he wielded that could open a passage from Cardik to the First Legate’s office in the Illhari garrison easy as Belaery might light a candle.
“Well. I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Fuck and damn, Bel, spare the effort. Spirits are his allies. We’re thieves, yeah? We conjurors. We steal power from spirits, we kill them, they hate us. That makes us worse than heretics to him. You’re lucky all he’s calling you is witch. —And good morning, First Legate, Senator Szanys. Which do you prefer?”
“Don’t use my titles. They sound like insults, coming from you. Do I want to know how you found me in all of Illharek?”
“Briel, of course.” Snowdenaelikk wandered over to the firedog. Peered into the teapot and frowned and poked a long finger into it. “Rasi? Dek. You surprise me.”
That was disapproval from Snowdenaelikk. Dekklis waved that irony aside, focused on: “What happened in Cardik? Avatar get away from you? Or did you manage to kill her?”
“No. She’s left Cardik as of last night. We guess she’s coming south, finally. We killed some of her people, which was really Kellehn and his Taliri. Well. We didn’t kill them. The angry dead did. They were playing both sides, yeah? The Taliri, not the dead. So, that’s good news. The bad news is that the avatar’s coming this way, and that she’s collecting her army, which Kellehn said is scattered all through the forests. That might take some time. Rurik was right. There’s infighting. But they’ll unite behind the dragon.”
Dekklis looked at Veiko. “Well. That’s convenient. Belaery was just telling me how we’re going to kill Tal’Shik.”
“No. I wasn’t—Snow, listen.” And Bel explained again what she’d told Dekklis, only with more polysyllables and dead scholars’ names and no drawn demonstrations. Something about blood, and binding, and adopted foremothers and the transfer of—oh, hell. Dekklis sipped her tea and watched Snow.
Who listened, lips flat, eyes flatter, while Belaery talked. Who glanced once at the desk top and the glyph. Whose hand crept up to rub at her shoulder, where she’d have her own citizen’s mark. Her fingers clenched there, hard enough that black knuckles turned grey.
But when Belaery finished, Snow said only, “Toadshit.” And as Belaery sucked in a breath to start arguing, “You’re talking pre-Purge, pre-Reform highborn godsworn, yeah? Except Illharek was all Dvergiri then, except for the bondies. They wouldn’t’ve wanted, or allowed, or even thought about anyone who wasn’t Dvergiri, or imagined all the half-bloods we’ve got now, or the toadbellies who’ve taken the mark. I reckon that original ritual didn’t include men, or at least those who weren’t highborn, because the Laughing God’s never had trouble gathering up his own. So, Tal’Shik doesn’t get all the Illhari, Bel. She doesn’t even get all the Dvergiri.”
Belaery stiffened. Tried to stare down her nose at Snow, which failed utterly against Snow’s greater height. “I am reporting what I found in the Annals.”
“That’s fine. I’m telling you the Annals are wrong. There’s a river full of Dvergiri dead, which I have seen, who clearly did not join Tal’Shik after death. K’Hess Kenjak, for instance. He didn’t go to her. Highborn and male, seems to prove my point.”
“Or he’s an exception—”
Foremothers rot them both. Like wet cats in a bag. “Argue obscure academic toadshit on your own time. What I need—”
Snow rounded on her and grinned. “Is a way to kill Tal’Shik. I have an idea, but I need adepts. And we need Tal’Shik’s godsworn alive,” she added, looking at Dekklis. “I presume you know where they all live?”
“We do, as it happens. Istel’s very resourceful.” Suddenly, there were angry fingers in Dek’s chest, her belly, stirring and clenching. “Of course, I expect that from an avatar of the Laughing God.”
“Yeah.” Snow had the grace to look sorry. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“I bet you couldn’t. Listen, Snow. No. Shut up. You need to hear how things stand in Illharek. House Toer tried to kill me. And K’Hess Rurik’s dead.”
Snow blinked. “Oh hell. I’m sorry.”
Dekklis slapped the sympathy aside. “That tunnel from Cardik, we found it. We got caught between a Taliri raid and a bunch of bondies and a motherless godsworn. She was a very junior third daughter’s third daughter from Vesh. She’s very dead, but we still have a recognizable body. We’ve sat on that news, but we’re going to use it. Tomorrow, in the Senate. Unveil the corpse, make the accusations. Senator K’Hess will propose naming a dictator. K’Hari will second that.”
“You.” Snow stared. “They’re going to name you.”
“Yes. And then I’m going to take your advice. We’re hunting the godsworn down. The arrest orders went out just before you arrived. After the vote, we’ll move on them. In the Tiers, on the Senate floor itself.”
Snow traded stares with Veiko. “Dek. This is a bad idea.”
“Hell. It’s your idea.”
“No. I wanted murder in the dark. Now it’s too late for that. There’s an avatar coming, yeah? It’s godsworn and god and dragon. If we want to kill the last part, we need to take out the first two, and what you just said, Bel, about the tattoos, makes me think my idea will work. But we need Tal’Shik’s Illhari godsworn.”
Dekklis held up her hand. “So, wait. Am I hearing this? There’s a dragon coming, so you want me to what, ignore the godsworn in the Senate? Or embrace their toadshit? Or use it? No. Shut it, Snow, and listen to me. Illharek will live or die on its conjurors and its legions. No godsworn. Not now, not ever again.”
Dead silence when she finished. Even the firedog left off snapping its coals.
Then Snow began to clap. Slow, like drumbeats, between words. “Oh, well said, First Legate. Very brave. Very fucking stupid. Let me explain avatar to you, yeah? It’s part of Tal’Shik. A piece of her. But if Bel’s right, that ritual means Tal’Shik’s part of Illharek. That’s an advantage for our godsworn. We know more. We’re better at it, even if we’re out of practice. So, our godsworn fight Taliri godsworn, and then we”—Snow flicked a look at Belaery—“conjurors can kill Tal’Shik the way conjurors always kill spirits. And then we mop up the godsworn after.”
“I said no.” Dekklis slammed her fist on the desk. “No more deals with Tal’Shik. No more tolerance for her godsworn. Final word on it, Snow. You find another way.”
“Rot you, Dek, there is no other—”
“Snow.” Veiko laid a hand on her shoulder. “Stop. Listen. Adept. Dekklis.” He jumped his eyes between them. “There is a way. I am noidghe. I can kill Tal’Shik, in the ghost roads.”
“No.” Snow’s voice was brittle. “You are one man and she will kill you and we fucking discussed this. You fight the dragon on this side, with your axe and with the legions, and yo
u leave the spirit part to the adepts.”
“As you have told me,” he said gently, “killing is simple. Put the sharp edge into the soft parts. The soldiers can do that if I can draw Tal’Shik’s attention from the avatar.”
Snow rounded on him. “By being the bait? She’ll kill you.”
“Or I kill her.”
“It’s the same fucking end! You’re gone, and—” She turned away, walked away, until the firedog stopped her.
That was proof of miracles in itself: Snow rendered speechless. But foremothers, that was not all. The drag of Veiko’s gaze on her, the way her whole body bent toward him, for all she’d turned her back.
That was a new development. Something had happened up north besides avatars and angry dead.
The anger bled out of Dekklis. “We’ve got the God, too. Istel and his godsworn and—you. Whatever you are. His right hand.”
“Oh, so some godsworn are all right to fight for Illharek, then?” Snow’s lip curled. “Well, don’t rely on the God. No way he’ll run at Tal’Shik, Szanys. He never has. She’d kill him, and he knows it, and he’s not good at self-sacrifice.”
“So, we coordinate the attack, ghost roads and here. Veiko on that side, the best of the Sixth on this one.”
“Won’t matter. Tell you. The bestiary doesn’t do justice to dragons. The legion will scatter like sheep, without Veiko’s help. You send him into the ghost roads, this ends one fucking way for all of us.”
Dekklis heard the defeat in Snow’s voice. Added this new grief to the ones she already carried, the ones named Rurik and Cardik and Barkett and Teslin, and held fast to the last of her truths. Honor. Oaths. No sacrifice too great for Illharek.
Tell yourself that, highborn.
But she didn’t say all right, we’ll spare the godsworn. Let that moment pass and turn to ashes in her mouth, while Veiko watched Snow, and Belaery watched Veiko, and Briel hissed at everyone.
Snow lifted her chin. Her gaze. Stabbed at Veiko with both. “You’re not the only noidghe.”
