by Jon Hollins
Or alternatively, Will thought, I’ve been right about all this from the start.
“Off the wagon!” screamed one of the guards.
Will hesitated for at least half of half a second, a look of bewilderment on his face. The guard lunged at him with the pike. Will flinched, as the guards must have known he would, and the guard smashed him in the temple with the flat of his blade. Will tumbled arse over elbow off the front of the wagon and down into the mud of the encampment. The impact echoed hollowly through his skull.
He picked himself up, staggering slightly. Lette was on the floor, looking remarkably at ease given the amount of weaponry being thrust in their direction. Cyrill was on his knees, bent forward with his nose in the dirt and his hands covering his head.
“Up against the wall!” shrieked another guard, and Will received another smack on the back of the head, sending him stumbling toward the stockade wall. “Know your place!” the guard went on. “The key to truth is order! The key to happiness is acceptance! Accept your place in the dirt beneath my heels!”
Will felt his fist ball up, even as spots danced in front of his eyes. Then he felt a grip on his arm, pulling him back. He jerked his arm away but the grip was firm.
“Stop being a fucking idiot,” Lette hissed, closer to his ear than he expected. “We’re not here to start a fight.”
“Move the wagon!” barked another of the guards, and two men jumped up into the seat of the cart.
“Hey!” Will snapped. “That’s our—” Then he cut off. That’s our place where we hide our giant lizard man friend didn’t sound like the right thing to say at that moment.
The butt of a pike hit him in the stomach before he had time to think of a better way to end the sentence.
“All property belongs to Theerax!” yelled a guard with zealot fervor. “You belong to Theerax. All will be distributed as he sees fit. All will be distributed according to the great design. Your will is nothing. Your wishes are nothing. You will submit and you will be grateful!” The pike butt made a second—and unnecessary, in Will’s humble opinion—trip into Will’s appendix.
“All hail Theerax!” yelled the guards.
“We are the thermals beneath his winds!” rang out Cyrill’s reedy voice. He received a pike butt in the face for his troubles. He dropped to all fours, mouth streaming blood.
“Shut up, maggot,” snapped a guard.
Will thought that was probably enough independent observation for Cyrill now. They could probably get onto the bit where they escaped and told the Batarran High Council what a bunch of shits these people were. Except Cyrill was picking himself up, and nodding fervently to the guard.
If there was one good argument for the current pantheon, Will thought, it was that they didn’t inspire this sort of lunacy.
“All right,” said another of the guards, “take the woman.”
“What?” said Will. It felt like he was saying that a lot.
Apparently one of the guards thought so too. He stepped in close to Will, his face inches away. “Are you not getting the fucking message, worm?” he yelled, his spit flecking Will’s face. “You don’t matter anymore. All the rules you have been taught are important, they mean nothing here. This is Theerax’s world. This is the world as the dragons envision it. Free from all the shit the gods forced upon us. All their false hierarchies and hypocrisies. All their corruption and bullshit. This is life in its pure fucking form. And you are nothing. You are less than nothing. You are property. You belong to me. And I belong to Theerax. And he belongs to the dragon kin. And they belong to the great design. And you are so fucking small and petty it makes me taste bile in the back of my throat. If I killed you here, now, no one would care. It would be meaningless. So I fucking dare you, I challenge you, to ask me, ‘What?’ one more hexed time.”
Some part of Will, really, really wanted to say, “What?” But Lette was looking at him, even as two guards led her roughly away. And her eyes echoed her sentiment of a moment before. Don’t be an idiot. So for once in his life, Will wasn’t. And he held his tongue. And he waited to see if this dragon that pretended to divinity would treat him any better than the current gods usually did.
The guards pushed them away from the wall and started them marching through the maze of white tents.
“Still happy you joined in with this cult?” he hissed at Cyrill, who was still bleeding openly from his split lip. “You see what sort of fucking monsters you’ve thrown your lot in with?”
Cyrill managed a quivering shrug. “All I’ve observed,” he huffed, “is a little boyish enthusiasm.”
Will half-lunged at Cyrill, lost his footing, and ended up knee-deep in mud and filth. In the moments before a guard hit him again, he looked to the heavens.
“I am trying to defend you bastards,” he muttered.
They didn’t appear to be listening.
12
A Tamathian Roast
Quirk came around to the sound of voices approaching. She heard metal shoes scuffing against stone steps.
Where was she?
Stone walls. Bars. Mold on the walls. Dirty straw on the floor. No windows. And she was tied to a chair. And the chair was buried in a barrel of water.
I’ve been here before.
Because this was how you kept a fire mage from harming people. This was how you imprisoned them either for their own good or for yours. This was exactly how she had spent most of her first five years in Tamathia after being rescued from the demigod Hethren.
She would never forget the feeling of smother rags either. Honestly, she could have lived without the reminder. They were wrapped tightly about her submerged hands now. But they bound more than mere flesh. She could feel the intrusion of them, worming into some ineffable part of her, binding her magic. Her thoughts felt sluggish and awkward.
Gods. Quirk didn’t know if Ferra had orchestrated everything or if she had just played into his hands entirely of her own volition. But she had killed those Diffinites in broad daylight. Not just killed them. She had burned them. Quite deliberately. She had reached into herself, pulled out fire, and hate, and rage, and done everything she had sworn she would never do again.
And yes, circumstances had conspired against her. And yes, she was in fear for her life. And yes, some cackling cruel part of herself that she could never fully silence was insisting that the little fuckers had deserved it, and she was only truly alive when the world burned to a crisp before her. But she was better than that. That was the whole foundation of her life. That she could be better. That there was a good person inside her that could be salvaged.
She looked around the sad, familiar cell. She deserved to be here. She had done this to herself.
She was pulled back to reality, by the owners of the voices and the footsteps coming into view at the base of a set of spiral stairs that led down into the dungeon that held her. Her cell was at the end of a short corridor, and if she twisted her head she could see other sets of bars marking the entrances to other cells. Whether they were occupied or not she could not tell.
One man, dressed as a guard, held two torches. He set them in sconces in the wall. The other—a jailer—carried a sack. She saw him reach into it, pull out a dry hunk of bread. He chucked it between the bars of one doorway.
“Eat,” he said. His was a thickset man, the sort who seemed to have been made from parts twice the size as the ones used to build Quirk. Fat fingers and thick lips, with a curiously aquiline nose in the middle of his broad, blunt face.
The jailer then turned to her, and as he approached, he seemed to sink down to a deeper level of revulsion. Without taking his eyes off her, he reached into his sack, pulled out a crust of bread, and threw it between the bars of her cell door. It landed on the floor six feet in front of her barrel, skidding through dirt, rank water, and rat shit.
“Eat,” he said in the same gruff growl.
Quirk just stared at the filthy crust of bread from the confines of her barrel.
The
jailer turned to his companion and barked a short laugh. The guard grinned, but it was a nervous look.
“She can’t hurt anyone, you pussy.” The sneering jailer dropped his sack on the floor and fiddled with a ring of keys on his belt. While he set about the lock to Quirk’s door, the guard drew his sword. His eyes were slowly going wider and wider.
Quirk tried to smile at him. “It’s okay—” she started.
“Shut the fuck up,” snapped the jailer. “You start casting any spells and I’ll hold your head under that water until you stop kicking. Then I’ll piss in it.”
After a moment’s consideration, Quirk kept her mouth shut. She did not think this man would be open to reasoned debate.
“There you go,” said the jailer. He turned to the guard, who was still clutching his sword. “I’ve got a way with women, I do.”
He opened the door to the cell, and the pair stepped in. The jailer, bent, picked up her scrap of bread from the ground. He reached out to give it to her, then hesitated. Then he bent again and, with one finger, collected the dirt between two of the prison’s flagstones. He smeared the black filth over the surface of Quirk’s bread. “Talking shit about our lord Diffinax,” he said. “As if some cunt-eater like you had any right to have his name even in your mouth.” He spat into Quirk’s barrel. Then he held the bread out to her. “Eat,” he said.
She shook her head. She didn’t know how long she’d been down here, how long she’d been unconscious, but her stomach was crying out for food. And yet the sight of that filthy bread … No.
“Eat it, or I will force it down your throat.” The guard spoke quite slowly and deliberately.
Trying not to show any of the disgust she felt, Quirk opened her mouth.
“Bite my fingers,” the guard told her, “and I’ll break every bone that still leaves you alive.”
He crammed bread into her mouth. His companion watched with sick fascination. She waited to chew until his hand was away. Her stomach roiled.
The jailer gave her a mirthless smile. “Good girl,” he said, and patted her head. He turned to his companion. “You can train them good,” he said, “if you know how to talk to them.”
Gods, she would like to see him burn. She closed her eyes. No, she told herself. No you would not. Not even him. You must not. You are not that person.
The jailer tossed the remaining scrap of bread into the barrel with her. It began to sink. “Eat up,” he said, smiling, as he turned his back.
“Quirk!” A voice hissed through the dungeon. “Quirk, that’s you, isn’t it?”
The jailer and his friend were gone. Quirk felt nauseous and stupid. She lolled against the edge of her barrel.
And then she recognized the voice. And how … Was this some sort of divine torture? Had she gone about trying to defend the gods all wrong, and this was their petty revenge?
“Quirk, please!”
Afrit. It was Afrit’s voice in the darkness. Afrit her constant shadow at the university. Maybe Quirk was losing her mind.
But she had seen the jailer toss bread into that other cell …
“Afrit?” she whispered back, incredulous.
“Oh thank the gods.” The relief in Afrit’s voice was palpable. “Oh Knole, thank you. Thank you.” Relief edged toward hysteria.
“What are you doing here?” Quirk whispered. Was she still spying for Ferra? Did they think giving her a friend in this hellhole would trick her into confessing some great secret?
“Looking for a way out.” Afrit did not sound as if she was doing very well in her cell. “But you’re here. Oh, thank Knole.”
“I don’t know what you think I can do …” said Quirk, still hedging, still searching for Afrit’s angle.
“You can burn your way out,” said Afrit. The woman sounded almost delirious. “You were god touched. I thought … I mean you could just melt your bars. Couldn’t you? You could melt that … that … fucking …” And there was a world of spite and hate in that word, that made Quirk’s suspicion waver. That was not hurt that someone could fake. “That jailer. You could kill him. You could just …” There was an indecipherable noise from Afrit’s cell, some choked emotion.
“No,” said Quirk, still against her better judgment. “They have smother rags on me.” She shook her head, even though Afrit couldn’t see it. “And I don’t do that. Not anymore. That’s not who I am.”
“But you could get the rags off. Cut them. Something. There’s got to be some rough surface in your cell. Even if it takes a day or two.” Afrit either wasn’t listening or didn’t want to listen.
“It doesn’t matter,” Quirk said, speaking slowly and loudly. It was important both that Afrit hear this, and that she say it. “If they took these rags off, I would wait, patient as a lamb. I am not going to burn anyone or anything ever again.”
She pictured the lake. The still surface. And even despite everything, it felt calm.
“What? What the fuck?” She had apparently finally gotten through to Afrit.
“That is not who I am.” Quirk was pleased with the steadiness of her voice.
“Then … Then …” Afrit was breathing hard. “Why do you even fight? Why do you write those pamphlets? Why do you try to inspire people to fight if you won’t fucking do it?”
Quirk drew a breath. So Afrit had known about the pamphlets. But before she could decide whether to accuse Afrit or defend herself, Afrit was barreling on.
“You have to fight! It’s hypocrisy! It’s worse. It’s cowardice. And I know, I know, I know you are not a coward. You went to Kondorra. You faced down dragons. You were there. You’re my … my … Fuck!” There was an edge of hysteria in Afrit’s voice now.
“Calm down,” Quirk hissed. She didn’t want to bring the guards back. Anything but that.
“You have to get us out of here!” Afrit snapped.
“I can’t.” Quirk aimed for matter-of-fact over helpless.
“You won’t.” There was bitterness in Afrit’s voice. “Because … Because …” But there was a precipice of anger that Afrit seemed unwilling to plunge over. She heard the woman drawing deep breaths.
And why was Afrit here?
“You have to escape,” said Afrit, sounding a hair calmer now, if no less urgent. “You above all people. You’re the voice of the resistance. You give shape to everyone who stands against Diffinax. Without you, everything is going to fall apart.”
And that brought Quirk up short. Because of all the things she had expected to hear, that was not one.
“What?” she said, trying to process Afrit’s angle. Did she aim to flatter her?
“Your pamphlets,” Quirk said. “We have meetings. We read them. We talk about them. We disseminate them. They give us structure. They inspire us. They keep the fight alive. They are necessary, Quirk. You have to get out. You have to keep on writing.”
“What?” Quirk repeated again, feeling stupid. It had to be the smother rags. She was misunderstanding something basic. “Who is we?”
“The resistance,” said Afrit. She sounded almost as confused as Quirk. “Those of us who stand with you against Diffinax.”
“Who?” Quirk repeated.
“You didn’t know?” Afrit sounded winded by the news. “You didn’t … Oh gods, that explains … Oh … Oh, I thought. Oh gods …”
“What?” Quirk tried to parse the emotion she was hearing. Was it … humiliation?
“I’m … Oh gods.” Afrit let out a little mirthless laugh. “I’m your fan, Quirk. You’re my academic hero. You have been ever since I was sixteen and one of my teachers read our class your paper on the breeding habitats of wendigos. That you brought all of that to life. That someone could know so much about something, and render it … I don’t know. It’s stupid. But you were why I applied to the Tamathian University. You were why I stayed on to teach.”
“But …” Quirk felt blindsided. She had written that paper more than fifteen years ago. “You teach practical politics,” was all she could manage.
“It’s not …” Afrit managed a laugh that actually sounded halfway genuine. “It wasn’t your subject. It was … Gods this is embarrassing. It was you. Your drive. Your personality. Your past. Everything you’d overcome. Everything you’d become. The way you approached your subject. Your teeth bared, you know. Some of that … fuck, you must hate the word … but something of the savagery of your upbringing in the way you just took down a subject. Just broke other people’s arguments apart. I wanted to be that sort of academic. After you came back from Kondorra … I’ve been petitioning the Chancellor for a chance to go to the Fanlorn Empire, to observe their bureaucracy in action.” Another laugh. “No chance of that happening now.”
“You’re my … fan?” Quirk was still back at the beginning of the story. She was trying to put years of history back in context.
“I thought you knew,” Afrit said helplessly. “I don’t know … I thought somehow that made it okay to pester you. And then when word of Diffinax arrived. And you were so adamant about what his true goals were. And, of course, I’d read everything you’d written about dragons, and been to all of your lectures. So it made complete sense to me. And I just assumed that you’d know that I must agree with you. And when I saw the pamphlets, I just … Gods, I’m such an idiot. You’d left a pile on the table in the library where I always sit. And, of course, I recognized your style right away. I knew it had to be you. I mean, this was back before everybody knew—”
“Everybody knew?” So much of Quirk’s world was falling down. So many assumptions collapsing.
“Of course.” Afrit sounded almost amused. “You’re Quirkelle Bal Tehrin. You’re the most famous thaumatobiologist in all Avarra. You were raised by a demigod barbarian, and were present in Kondorra when the dragon syndicate was brought down. You dine nightly with the Emperor. You’re kind of a big deal. Someone like you doesn’t just start publishing screeds against the dragon whose cult is sweeping the nation, and have it go unnoticed.”
