by Jay Lake
I shouted over my shoulder at Septio, who trailed me by a dozen paces. “Death is always personal. How can you worship that bloodthirsty god and not understand that?”
He trotted to catch me. Presumably I seemed safer now. “People come to us already in pain. They ask to die, or be taken up.”
“While these men were merely minding their business.” I snorted. “I can see your point.”
The Eirigene Pass was about fifty furlongs ahead of us, across the next valley. Except for the last of the fumes rising from before it, the morning was clear enough to see the alabaster ruins of the Temple of Air. A great dome had collapsed with the fire, and bodies were scattered down the stairs before it.
Then a dozen men on horseback pounded from behind the rocks immediately below. They shouted at us to lie flat or be slain.
The bandits were angry about the fate of their fellows. Not quite angry enough to kill us out of hand, but we took some good, solid kicks. When they began to strip off my robes and saw the blacks I wore beneath, a great discussion ensued.
Clearly they’d been set to search for me.
They were angry all over again when I would not sit astride one of the horses. Then they laughed at me once they understood why.
I wound up with my boots stripped off, making the ride slung over someone’s saddlebags, which smelled of old cheese and moldering cloth. By craning my neck, I could see Septio. He seemed dazed as he swayed upright behind another bandit. The worst insult, in its own small way, was that our two faithless nags had come seeking the company of other horses, and now were being led riderless behind the column.
Our band took a trail that went downward through a ravine, rather than across to the ruins of the Temple of Air as I’d expected. That meant we would be joining the upper reaches of the Barley Road.
The ride was long and painful. I had not imagined I would be wishing so soon for my old saddle, but I did. Eventually, we passed through a series of camps, at first quite ragged and sparse, then in time more kempt and crowded together.
I heard thunder, too. A lightning storm seemed strange, given that my upside-down view of the sky showed clear blue troubled only by wisps of smoke.
The horse sidestepped to a halt. Rough hands dumped me over. I narrowly avoided striking my head on the ground. A redheaded man pulled me to my feet amid another echoing carronade of thunder as someone else led the panicked horses away.
Lightning sizzled down out of the clear sky to strike the ground about a hundred yards before me. It struck again and again, always in a circle that ringed a large tent of furs. After a moment, I recognized them as skins from the Dancing Mistress’ people. My gut churned at that, and I found sympathy for Septio’s reaction to my mercies of the blade.
It was a fence. A wall of electrick fire and deafening sound from the heavens. The cleared space extended around the circle in all directions, as Choybalsan’s followers kept their distance.
“A god indeed,” I said.
“Very good, for a priest,” my fire-haired bandit growled. His Petraean was accented, but as a hillman’s speech rather than a foreigner’s.
“It takes no talent to see a miracle like this.” No faith, either. This was godhood for the unbelieving. And a very expensive sort of magic. No wonder the Lily Goddess had been worried. Could a titanic come into the world again? Or were all divine births so explosive?
“In you go.” I was pushed toward the lightning ring. Between my crossbow wound, the worn muscles, and the long ride, I could barely keep my feet. Septio staggered up beside me.
“Hey.” I gave him a sidelong glance.
His eyes were unfocused. Blood trickled from his mouth.
I tried again. “What happened to you?”
Septio’s lips moved, but he just popped a few carmine bubbles.
By the breaking of the Wheel, something was very wrong.
“Come on,” I said. “To the tent. Either he’ll kill us, or he’ll let us off our feet.”
My poor friend grunted, but he followed.
I did not even try to avoid the lightning. To what end? It belonged to Choybalsan; he could lift it or not as he pleased. Approaching the ring was a very strange thing even so. My mouth began to taste of metal. The hairs of my skin stood stiff. My head felt dull, while the air had a strange, empty, ringing quality.
We stumbled through the line, our strides so shortened by the ropes binding our ankles that we were almost hopping. Neither of us was struck down, though the thunder robbed me of my hearing. The tent was perched in the center of the circle, round with no ridge to speak of and a roof like a cap.
I pushed through the flap. Septio came so close behind me, he nearly knocked us both down.
A large black rock stood at the center of the space within, flanked by two poles. The rock appeared bubbled and burned—a fallen star. I’d never seen one, but one of Mistress Danae’s books had contained a lengthy disquisition on the stones of heaven and how the gods must live in an iron house.
The walls were hung with horse blankets and a few ripped tapestries looted from some manor house. Likewise the floor of blankets and carpets with rushes strewn over them. A low backless seat was set before the stone.
We were alone in the house of the king who would be god. Or possibly the god who would be king.
Goddess, I prayed. I do not ask You to deliver me, for that is my test. Nor for courage, as that is my test as well. Lend me what strength and wisdom You have to give. Tears welled in my eyes. Spare a measure of grace and mercy for Septio, if his god has not already cared for him.
Federo stepped around me and looked me over carefully. For one strange moment, I imagined a rescue had come. Then I realized he was not wearing a suit, nor a decent set of robes, but the leather trews and thick felt vest of the bandits who rode in Choybalsan’s train. Unlike them, he was unarmed.
He also appeared far less strained than he had back at the Textile Bourse.
I sagged in the face of such betrayal.
Then he took my chin in his hands and tipped my face up for inspection. That old, old insult brought me back to myself.
I snarled: “So you stand midwife at the birth of godhood?”
“Do not presume, Green,” Federo said softly.
“Then where is he?”
Federo sat on the chair with his back to the skystone and spread his arms. “Choybalsan, the bandit chieftain.”
Bound hand and foot, they had still left me the good, hard bones of my head. I hopped toward him with an angry roar and tried to butt him in the face. His moment of poise spoiled, Federo leapt up and tripped me. I fell forehead first into his plain little throne and smacked myself so hard I saw lightning all over again.
He bellowed incoherently as I rolled onto my back. My vision was doubled, but that was still enough to see Septio lurching toward Federo. The traitor sidestepped the priest, who staggered slowly around the altar, circling the tent and crying. Blood ran freely from his mouth now.
Federo began to laugh.
Enraged, I managed to bend nearly double, then lash a kick that took Federo off his feet. Bound and stunned, I had no follow-through. If my head had been more clear, I would have cursed every god ever born. Instead, I lay gasping while Septio waddled up to Federo and tried to lean over him.
The bandit-king held up a knife as my boy lover toppled. The point took Septio in the belly. A killing wound, but painful and slow. In the worst cases, the wounded might live for days while their belly dissolved into burning stench.
Federo pushed Septio away, then climbed to his feet. He took up a corner of carpet to wipe the blood and bile off his blade, his arm, and his vest. Septio began to retch.
“He is nothing.” Federo leaned close. “Not like you. I shall let you watch him die.” He stroked my hair. “Don’t go far. I’ll be back soon. You have kept something I need very badly, dear Emerald.”
I watched him walk out of the tent. My head still reeling, I began to plot the most elaborate of deaths,
slow agony that would give even Blackblood’s priests pause. When my head had finally cleared enough for me to move, I crawled across the rugs to Septio.
He lay with his eyes closed. I could see he still breathed. The wound reeked of bile and shit. Which made sense. Federo’s knife hand had angled down from the entry. That would mean a quicker death, at least.
“Septio,” I whispered.
He did not stir.
“Septio.”
Another slow, ragged breath.
“Septio!”
Still nothing.
I wriggled close and kissed the blood from his lips. He moaned a bit at that, but did not wake.
Pain might be his sacrament, but a gut wound was still a nasty death at the best of times. If he bled out quickly, he could die a little easier.
I raised my wrists behind my back, until my elbows stuck out. Throwing my shoulders back and forth, I tried to see how much clearance I could get on one side. My joints burned, but an errand of mercy needed doing.
Slowly I moved past him until my elbow was level with his ear. I raised it again and rocked myself hard to my right, trying to catch his head in the triangle formed by my bound arm and the side of my body.
It took me three attempts, sweating and crying, but finally I had Septio’s head clutched close. I squeezed and rolled hard to my left. Not hard enough, for he cried out.
Once more.
“I am so sorry,” I whispered, and thrashed with such strength that I broke his neck. Then I could not free myself. I lay there with his body clutched close and wept a long while.
Later I realized I could no longer hear thunder outside. The tent, quite dim when I had first entered, was now dark. My elbow was still caught around Septio’s head. The smells of his death had long since eroded my senses. My body was so stiff and numb that I doubted I’d be able to move at all should Federo bother to free me.
Grief and betrayal warred in my head, so I fought them with the skirmishes of logic.
If Federo were a traitor, why send for me at all? He would have been safer with me forgotten across an ocean’s distance. I could play no role in the affairs of the Stone Coast from Kalimpura.
If the Dancing Mistress knew Federo was a traitor, heir to the old Duke’s magic, why did she not tell me at the first? Perhaps she had come across the sea despite him, to bring me back in hopes of finding some chink in his armor. I did not know whose wishes had prevailed, but I also did not think she had lied to me. Certainly she had not told all, but omission was not the same as deception.
We wouldn’t have spent so much time casting about Copper Downs on our arrival if the Dancing Mistress had known with certainty where the rot was. In point of fact, I had asked that we not go straight to the Interim Council.
Finding who had played whom false was a skein not easily unraveled.
I worried instead at the reasons anyone would have had to come find me. That I had no love for Copper Downs would have been obvious to all who knew the truth of my life. No one could expect me to set myself at risk for the city. They could not have known, after all, that the Goddess would command me as She did.
Or that I would obey.
That made me laugh, and laughter made me cry. The grief slipped back in unawares and broke down the armies of my logic for a while. The one small comfort it brought was that the spasms of my arms slipped me free of Septio’s head.
I would have kissed him again then, but my body would not move for all the money in King Pythos’ vaults of legend. I had no sensation in my arms, and my legs were like blocks of wood shot through with ants. A corpse could hardly have felt much less.
On my other side, it was easy to lie and cry awhile longer. In time, I tired of that. My tears helped neither Septio, who was beyond them, nor myself.
Everything came back to what I had been told. Some piece of the Duke’s magic was still missing. That I might be in possession of it seemed to be an idea fixed in the minds of both the Dancing Mistress and Federo. I was not magical. Not at all.
Unless it was similar to those splinters of grace scattered from the divine. Along with the balance of grace and evil that made up my soul, did I now carry a measure of the Duke’s essence as well? How could that be? The magic belonged to the pardines.
Federo had wrapped himself in their skin and gone hunting in their countries. That chilled me all over again. Looking for the missing portion that would seal him to godhood?
All thoughts circled back to Federo and the Dancing Mistress. They were the two partners in the original conspiracy that shattered the intent of the Factor’s training and set me on this path. A conspiracy to take the stolen magic from a once-human Duke and disperse it.
Surely the power could have settled in me. It had long since been grasped by a human hand, whatever the meaning and cost to the Dancing Mistress’ people.
My imaginings chased themselves long into the deepest darkness. I did not realize I had slept until thunder woke me.
Federo had returned. The Dancing Mistress followed close behind him, bound hand and foot with silver chains and walking with her head bowed low.
The traitor lit small braziers all around the edge of the tent. He called men to come and take Septio away, along with some of the carpets. That business put a sour look upon Federo’s face. He released our bonds, then ignored the Dancing Mistress and me completely while he set to cooking a small meal for himself, with tea and wine.
I did not know what he was about.
Neither did he, I realized in time.
Some small measure of hope stole into my drained courage with that thought. Whatever Federo’s plan, it had either failed or he did not trust the outcome. Otherwise he would have stood over me gloating once more.
The whole while the Dancing Mistress chafed my wrists and ankles to try to bring them back to life. We took the measure of one another with silent looks. A deep, wounded sadness filled her, so that I wanted to fold her into my arms until it seeped away.
I did not know for certain what she saw in me, but there was plenty. Love denied, betrayal of my own, death on death on death.
Our eyes held a long time; then I made my mouth give her the words “I love you.” Did I truly mean them? Even now, I cannot say. Back then, I thought I was going to die quite soon, and did not want to walk alone into the darkness.
She made a small kiss to the air. We both sighed. Then she set to kneading my arms, while I set to worrying more about Federo.
Eventually, he finished his meal and stood with an elaborated, false casualness. He perched upon his chair like a moody boy.
Whatever had taken hold within him over the years had slain the cheerful fop I’d once known. The old Federo was as dead as poor Septio. For all its raw power, the thunder rolling outside was the cheapest of stage tricks at the ragged end of a festival street. He had little left to threaten me with, having already taken my life. The actual dying would come soon enough.
I found I did not care so much what his game might be.
“Well,” Federo finally said.
The Dancing Mistress hugged my shoulders where I lay in her lap. There was no illusion of safety, but I was comforted nonetheless.
There seemed no point in answering him. The Dancing Mistress remained silent as well, except for her ragged breathing. Much too loud for one of her kind.
He leaned forward. “You would never have me,” he muttered. His eyes were tearful. “And I could never have had you.”
The latter was presumably addressed to me. I smiled as sweetly as I was able to.
“You, girl, carry something I need. You, woman, hold the power to take it from her.” His expression made my stomach lurch. “I shall tear it from both of you.” He reached to one side, his back against the sky iron, and grabbed a long spear of the sort used by cavalrymen. It had been propped against one of the poles of the tent. The end was leaf-bladed.
Federo worked the spear around in his hand until the haft was mostly over his shoulder and the point directe
d at us. “A shred of the Duke still abides within you.” He slid the spear closer until the tip rested against my calf. “We shall find a way to let him out.”
He pushed slightly and tugged it sideways. The blade ripped open the leg of my trousers, leaving a deep cut in the skin beneath.
Sucking air between my teeth, I tried to fight a queasy rebellion within.
“I will cut them off you if you do not remove them,” Federo said in a lazy voice.
It was nearly worth the trouble to let him slice away at me—I might die quicker—but I found I could not let go of life so readily. My fingers were still wooden as I loosened my pants and tried to draw them off.
Bending my legs to slip free burned as if I had been stung by a nest of hornets. I gave up the effort, gasping.
“You do not have to do this,” the Dancing Mistress said quietly to me.
“Oh, she does!” roared Federo. A round of thunder rolled harsh outside. I realized it had been calm before, but not now.
Thunder, lightning . . . was he a storm god? I stared at one of the braziers and tried to frame my death prayer.
Braziers. I felt a cold shiver. Fire. I looked up at the Dancing Mistress. Yes, I mouthed. Then: I have a plan.
She seemed to understand my intention. That was sufficient. She helped me out of my pants—I swallowed a scream—before she went to work on my shirt.
“See, you know what I need.” Federo’s spear point settled against my back as the Dancing Mistress rolled me across her lap to free my arms.
The ant-bite pain was now everywhere. Which was good, I tried to tell myself. That meant I could feel all of my body. Nothing had gone dead from the ill-use.
What I felt was enough to make me wish some of it had. If Blackblood had been my patron god, he would have been drunk on sacrifice.
Soon enough, I was flat on my back on the floor, barely able to move. Well, I’d been there before. Never with an armed man leaning close, his face twisting with clotted emotion. “Keep that blessed point away from me,” I growled.
