Blood of the Gods Read online

The captain moved, faster than her manacles should have allowed. Only she wasn’t wearing the irons; they lay behind her, piled as though they’d never bound her wrists or feet. A glass dagger shone in her hand, polished enough that it seemed to drink the light of the chamber’s lantern.

  Impossible. Remarin would never have bound a prisoner loosely enough for them to escape, nor missed a weapon, even concealed in clothing, and this woman had been naked.

  He stepped back as she lunged, springing like a coiled snake. Glass streaked, and he felt the lancing pain of cuts across his forearms.

  By reflex his mind reached for the strands, finding an anchor point he’d set some weeks before.

  Dao gave a start, looking up from a ledger he’d held open across the desk between them. His brother’s study. Good. At least he was still on the palace grounds.

  “Tigai?” his brother said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Summon the house guards,” he said, his breath short from the exertion of the shift. “We have a problem.”

  9

  SARINE

  Gendarme Corps Headquarters

  Outside New Sarresant

  Dust blew on a northbound breeze outside the city walls. She’d watched the bulk of the army departing under clouds of the stuff, brown, dusty fog rising where men and horses filled the trade roads in columns eight across. The army was disciplined, and quick. They’d uprooted a small city’s worth of stakes and canvas faster than she could sketch the work, and now she stood, waiting for her adjunct among the High Commander’s staff.

  A company of soldiers wearing the purple armbands of the gendarmes eyed her as they strode past. Military police, the army’s answer to the city watch. Raised eyebrows and muttered words proved enough for one of their number to peel off, returning to where she sat outside a building that had surely been a stableyard, in better times.

  “Are you lost, my lady?” the young soldier asked.

  “I’m waiting for a liaison from the gendarmerie,” she said. “A liaison I was assured would be here half an hour ago.”

  The soldier frowned. “Your pardon, my lady, but this is a military camp. I’ll need you to move along, if you please.”

  She said nothing in reply, weighing between Faith and Zi’s Green to make him go away.

  “Madame, I’m certain you aren’t looking for trouble,” the young man continued. “But unless you comply at once, you will—”

  “Belay that, Corporal,” a woman said from the path behind them. “Or you’ll be the one with more trouble than he’s fit to handle.”

  Sarine turned, and beamed at the sight.

  “Lance-Lieutenant Acherre,” she said, rushing to stow her pack. The other woman waited for her to rise, then met her with a tight embrace, doubtless at odds with military decorum. The young soldier who’d been about to accost her wore a look of bewilderment, but made no move to retreat.

  “The High Commander didn’t tell me it would be you,” Sarine said when they separated.

  Acherre grinned. “It’s Captain, now. As of twenty minutes ago. Gendarme-Captain, after I insisted I be given this assignment.”

  “Sir,” the corporal said. “Forgive me, sir, but she’s out of uniform, and this is a military camp …”

  A sizzling pop sounded in the air, hissing smoke between Acherre and the young man.

  “Bugger off, Corporal, and consider that a direct order.”

  The young man yelped, offering only a last look at Sarine before retreating farther up the path.

  “Lance-Lieu—er, Captain,” Sarine said. “That was Entropy. You could handle only Body and Mind, during the battle, no?”

  “The High Commander finally found a use for my ability to see Need,” Acherre said. “She showed me an Entropy binding through the connection, and suddenly I could see them for myself. Quite a thing. Though I hear you’ve been associating with assassins and criminals, since we fought together.”

  Sarine smiled, in spite of the weight she’d felt since the chapel. She’d been expecting some grizzled sergeant or veteran infantryman when High Commander d’Arrent instructed her to report to the gendarmerie for an attaché who could keep her connected to the army’s high command. Lance-Lieutenant—no, Gendarme-Captain—Acherre was as friendly a face as she could have hoped for, given they’d all but bled together, side by side during the battle against the Gandsmen.

  “Let’s head into the city,” Acherre said, brandishing a sheaf of papers bound by a leather cord. “I have the reports on citizens who’ve seen our nameless assassin, or at least claimed to recognize the man in your sketches. And I do believe I promised you a hard drink, during the fighting.”

  Her throat burned from the rye liquor as Acherre repoured their glasses. A stronger bite than any wine she’d tasted, and quicker to leave her senses wrapped in cotton, though the other woman seemed unfazed. Papers spread between them on a chest-height round table near the back of the tavern they’d chosen, the first they’d come to after entering through the southern gates. The rest of the room was as empty as the army camps had been, most likely for the same cause.

  “So you know the man,” Acherre said, setting a now-full glass on Sarine’s side of the table. “What do you think his aims are? We start there, if we’re to try to piece together what he might do next.”

  “His name is Axerian,” she said. “He’s … ah …”

  What was she to say? That their assassin was a God—and might still be; she wasn’t sure how that sort of thing was reckoned. That he was behind the madness that drove every kaas-mage who touched his Codex to murder, and worse. And she still wasn’t certain why he’d come here at all, or where he’d gone in the months since the battle.

  She took a drink from her glass and told what she knew. The heat from the liquor helped to mask the color in her cheeks, speaking of Gods and grand plots as though they were more than religious allegories or children’s stories. To her credit Acherre listened with gravity well beyond what Sarine felt her words commanded, and by the end she was nodding along, giving full credence to the tale.

  “We know at least that he’s attacked the High Commander,” Acherre said when she’d finished. “Even if the why of it is a mystery. D’Arrent is surrounded by binders while the army marches south, with decoys posing in the council hall. The greatest danger is the use of the … kaas … powers”—she swallowed the unfamiliar word—“to stir the people to the same sort of madness we saw during the battle for the city.”

  Sarine nodded. “If he uses Yellow with any strength, Zi will alert me to his presence.”

  “Good,” Acherre said. “Then we can focus on finding our man here. If he’s marching with the army, Marquand’s people will handle it. We just have to piece this together and find a pattern of where he’s been sighted. All of this is fresh, gathered by the city watch using your sketches in the last two days.”

  Sarine took another drink from her glass. A daunting prospect, given the enormity of finding a single man in a city of almost a million. And he might not even be in the city, no matter what its citizens claimed to the city watch. More than a few commonfolk would lie for the thrill of it, enough to lay a false trail through any quarter where the people were like to mistrust authority, even now. And Zi had gotten no better, still quiet and sluggish, even days after her episode at the Sacre-Lin.

  Acherre laid a hand on her forearm. “It’s all right. Half the watch and as many gendarmes are looking for him. We’re there to take him at the end as much as aid the search. This isn’t our burden alone.”

  She met Acherre’s warmth with a grim expression. Better to have the help than not, but she needed to find Axerian, before Zi got any worse.

  The city sang with the sound of builders as they walked the streets of Southgate. Not two months had passed since the Gand army tore the city apart, and already the roads and buildings were a strange half-breed of fresh construction and reminder of what had been. New paint covered a wood fence beside a barren garden; glass so clear it mi
ght have been air adorned a shop window beside a thoroughfare pocked by artillery shells; men laughed and joked, climbing scaffolds as they laid the framework of a new building overlooking a cemetery.

  Zi had appeared nestled on her shoulders like a shawl, his serpentine head lolling back and forth as she walked. Much as she appreciated Acherre’s company—and all the more so when her attaché could as easily have been some gruff soldier who two months prior had been a ruffian from the Maw—it still felt passing odd to have the notice, and approval, of the city’s ruling class. All her life it had been her, her uncle, and Zi. Acherre, in her blue uniform, with a captain’s knot on her collar and the purple armband fastened around her sleeve, represented the sort of men and women she’d always taken pains to avoid. Though it appeared she’d traded in her old enemies for new ones. Gods, this time. The Nameless himself, in the literal flesh rather than the abstract of her uncle’s sermons. He was alone, for now, while she had the strength of the city watch and the army at her back, though she would never mistake the traitor of Jukaris San for anything other than a red adder coiled around her leg. She’d made that mistake already, and paid in sixteen cycles of stasis, frozen in her prison at—

  The world lurched, and pain lanced through her. She stopped mid-stride, the image of an underground city shimmering into view, superimposed over top of the street. Jukaris San, jewel of the Amaros Empire, though she had no idea where the words, or the memory, had come from in her mind.

  No, Zi thought to her, a blue light flashing to blur the image of the city before it could fully engulf her senses.

  “Sarine?” Acherre asked. “What was that light? Is he nearby?”

  Breath came ragged through her throat. She saw lingering images, of Axerian, of a school built from crumbling marble, of a glass enclosure in the now-familiar chamber of smooth stone.

  No, Zi thought again. It’s too soon.

  “No,” she said. “Not another vision. Zi, please, hang on.”

  “Sarine, are you well?” Acherre asked, still on alert.

  An echo of pain reverberated through her mind, and she urged herself to calm. She was hurting Zi, but the vision seemed to pass, before it could materialize into more than the first few images.

  “We have to go,” she said. “We have to find Axerian, quickly.”

  Acherre stayed still, eyeing her with a questioning look.

  It took a forced march through the pain for Acherre to follow behind. Zi tightened around her shoulders, coiling the loop of his tail around her upper arm while his head quivered against the other.

  “It’s okay, Zi,” she whispered. “We’ll find him. Soon.”

  His scales were ghost white, almost translucent, and he said nothing as she stroked his neck. An odd visual, for her to be patting the air where others couldn’t see him, but the Nameless could take their comforts when Zi was in pain.

  “Gods above,” Acherre said from behind. “Is that your … your kaas?”

  Sarine pivoted mid-stride. “You can see him?”

  Acherre nodded, eyes wide. “He appeared a moment ago.”

  From a glance it was clear Acherre wasn’t alone in seeing him; passersby and builders took notice of her, squints and frowns for the sake of the crystalline serpent coiled along her shoulders. Dread turned over in her stomach. This was wrong. Zi had never appeared to so many; she’d done something to make him lose control, pushed him too far in spite of his warnings.

  “We have to get him to the Maw,” she said. “Back to my uncle’s church. Something is—”

  No.

  “Zi, you’re sick. I know you never wanted me to tell uncle about you, but you need help.”

  No.

  She frowned. Zi had never needed food or medicine or anything of the kind before. He just was. A part of her, like a thought or daydream. But she wasn’t about to push him now. If he said no, she’d find some other way to help.

  Emotions. That was the key. He’d always fed on strong emotions.

  A flicker of gold showed along his scales, glinting in the sun. Fear? It had to be, if he was collecting the dread pooling in her veins.

  “What do you need?” Acherre asked. “The horse doctors perhaps?” She said it with a dubious cast, and rightly so. No other beast was quite like Zi.

  “We need to find strong emotions,” she said. “A bar fight, an execution. Something intense. Follow me. I’ll know when we get close.”

  Acherre fell in step as she increased their pace, striding up the streets of Southgate toward the river. The Market district at the center of the city might do, if its usual denizens were there, haggling and shouting and insulting each other over prices.

  She kept a hand on Zi’s neck to steady him as she unslung her pack from the other shoulder, cradling his body as she lowered him inside. Already too many whispers followed them, pointed fingers and curious looks toward the girl and her crystal serpent. Zi couldn’t have chosen to appear to them; whatever he’d done with the blue light and the visions had caused him to appear, and for his sake she’d keep him hidden in her pack. She left his head and neck poking over her shoulder, with the rest of him tucked alongside her sketches. Enough to stay the whispers, but she kept him pressed against her skin to let him feel her fear, her concern, her love and determination, every emotion more intense for his sake, knowing he needed them now as he never had before.

  A flicker of red colored his scales as they drew near the river, and she shifted course toward the nearest bridge.

  “This way,” she said, and Acherre kept pace as she pressed forward.

  Warmth pulsed from Zi as his scales flushed red. A good sign. Some of the thickest fighting during the battle had been here, on the west side of the river. Chipped bricks and broken glass patched by cheap wood gave truth to the horrors of the battle, but the stalls and merchants were as alive as they’d ever been, divvying up the prizes seized in the months since the founding of the Republic. Gold and jewels, silks and spices, but more important: food. If there was a commotion worth stirring Zi’s scales to crimson, it surely devolved to the price of bread. Thank the Gods if the market found cause for argument today.

  They passed a knot of foot traffic moving away from the central square in a hurried rush, and she turned down a side street that would end at the very heart of the district. Another pack of citizens crowded the street, and she wove through them, trusting Acherre to keep pace. Zi’s pallor had improved, his head lifting on its own as she cradled him against her shoulder. It seemed the worst of it had passed. If he was still visible to others, they were preoccupied enough not to notice or stare, and from the lack of attention they received it seemed Zi had regained control of his faculties. Not that she understood the workings of what he did. But he’d always—

  “Sarine.”

  Acherre’s voice, filled with alarm.

  She didn’t slow her pace, only turned to find Acherre staring ahead as they drove toward the central square.

  It took a moment to see it: The people around the fountains weren’t rushing away on hurried business, or preoccupied with some discomfort they’d sooner avoid. They were running. Panicked.

  Screaming.

  Acherre’s form blurred, the sign of a Body tether as the gendarme-captain surged forward. By the time Sarine found her own strands of Body—and had a Faith tether ready by reflex—Acherre had split into three copies of herself from a Mind binding and reached the end of the street.

  Sarine ran, careful not to jostle Zi, and caught up before Acherre had moved again.

  The market was full of death.

  A dozen men and women lay at all angles, draped over the fountain’s edge. Three times that number were scattered like seeds across the square, each of them charred, leaking green liquid instead of blood.

  Acherre moved, and a heartbeat later Sarine saw the thing that had drawn her attention: a snake, shrouded in mist and haze, rearing up to hiss beside the waist-height stone ringing the fountain pool. An ordinary serpent, but for the black
mist around it, a ghostly shroud that made the creature seem half-transparent, like fogged glass.

  Acherre roared some unintelligible battle cry as she charged the creature, billowing the smoke and flame of Entropy from her gloved hands.

  Lakiri’in granted his blessing to go with Body, and Sarine rounded the serpent’s flanks, keeping clear of Acherre’s gouts of flame. If somehow the creature proved resilient to Acherre’s attack, she could be in position to strike before—

  Acherre’s fire passed through the snake as though it were no more than a shadow, scorching the cobblestone behind it, melting and fusing the street into slag, without touching the serpent’s ghostly scales.

  The snake hissed, and charged.

  It flew toward one of the three copies of Acherre, passing through twisted corpses on the ground as though they, too, were made of light. Acherre’s Entropy sputtered out, replaced by a wall of Shelter at the last moment. The snake flew through it as though the swirling blue haze weren’t there, snapping its jaws through Acherre’s thigh.

  Sarine screamed.

  The copy blinked and faded, collapsing into the real woman, before Acherre shimmered, projecting two new copies. The snake pivoted, knifing its head toward the new trio.

  Lakiri’in’s blessing held as Sarine leapt across the square. Zi granted Red to go with it, and she paired mareh’et with the rest of her gifts as she cleared the space between them, striking where the snake leapt and finding her spirit-claws shearing through air where the creature’s hide should have been, clanging as she struck the stone.

  Another darting attack, and the center copy of Acherre blinked out. But before the images could reset, the serpent struck again, leaping faster than Sarine could have seen without her gifts of speed.

  She called on the Storm Spirits, and discharged lightning into the creature as it struck.

  Streaks of blue energy leapt between her and the snake, wrapping themselves around its body and Acherre’s together as they entwined.

  White light surrounded her, and she slipped away.