The Nightshade God, page 21
“Not weak,” Lore corrected, grabbing his jaw, making him look at her. “Too good.”
But that wasn’t right. If Lore was a dark and harsh thing, so was he, down in the bedrock of himself. Even if he’d tried so hard to scrub those stones clean.
She faded away, slowly. He stood there as it happened, until she was gone, until the circle of his arms was empty.
Gabe closed his eye.
The scent of burning dough woke him—Val was probably trying to help with breakfast again. She’d taken it upon herself to be useful since they moved in a week or so ago.
Gabe forced himself out of bed, performed the barest hint of ablutions at the basin in the corner, picking up the straight razor meant for his face and turning in the spotted mirror to try shaving his head instead. He’d never kept it as short as Malcolm, shaven straight to the scalp, but it was probably all he could manage at the moment.
His fingers lingered on his hair, where Lore had run her hands through it in his not-dream. He put the razor down.
Downstairs, a cheery girl from the market was delivering milk and eggs to Mrs. Cavendish, the landlady. The delivery girl’s name was Lucie, and before they’d moved in, she apparently only came by once a week. Ever since she saw Gabe, she’d been here every other day.
She sat on the edge of the table, eating a scone Mrs. Cavendish had provided—one that wasn’t burnt, so probably not the responsibility of Val. “Oh, don’t worry, I don’t have more deliveries today!”
“Then we’d love for you to stay, dear,” Mrs. Cavendish said.
Mari, seated at the table with coffee, looked at Gabe and hid a smirk behind her mug when she saw his grimace. He took a seat as far from Lucie as he could.
Oblivious, Lucie leaned conspiratorially close, nominally looking to Mari before turning back to Gabe so they were both included. “Did you hear about what happened?”
Gabe picked up a scone. “No.”
Lucie seemed thrilled to be the one to impart the news. “The Sainted King in Auverraine is claiming to be Apollius reborn.”
It wasn’t news to Gabe, obviously, but he didn’t have to feign his surprise. His pulse kicked in his wrists, and his breath hitched.
“Well, I never.” Mrs. Cavendish shook her head at the oven. “It seems something dramatic is always happening in Auverraine.”
“Quite a claim.” Mari’s smirk had fled the scene, her face grave. “Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, everyone is talking about it.” Lucie waved a hand. “I heard it from Matilda, who heard it from Grace, who learned it from her husband, who guards at the Rotunda in the evenings for a little extra pay. Between that and a new Arceneaux sister, it seems things are interesting in Dellaire.” She grinned at Gabe. “Makes you glad to be here instead, right? I’m glad you are, anyway. Dangerous down there.”
He was not one to be flirted with often—he didn’t have the demeanor for it, and the Presque Mort tattoos on his palms put off anyone who might be brave enough to look beyond his glower—but Gabe knew Lucie was flirting with him.
She was very pretty. Logically, he knew that. Green eyes and bright-red hair the color of poppies, an easy smile. But he was spoken for. Spoken for twice over.
“Interesting,” Mari said, when it became clear that Gabe wasn’t going to give the verbal reaction Lucie wanted. She managed a wry smile. “It was always clear that the King thought highly of himself, but claiming to be a god is taking it to another level entirely.”
Lucie laughed, sliding off the table. “Well, they say he’s as handsome as a god, so I guess it went to his head. I’ve only seen portraits, myself. They’re certainly godlike, though I think some artistic liberties were taken.”
“No,” Gabe murmured. “He really looks like that.”
“Then that Queen of his he sent to the Isles must truly rue the day she killed his mistress,” Lucie said, headed toward the door with her basket swinging on her arm. “A crime of passion, I know, but if I was marrying a King who looked like that, I would turn a blind eye to someone on the side.”
Gabe swallowed down the harsh retort that rose to his tongue. It tasted bitter.
With a wave, Lucie was gone. He and Mari both waited until the sound of her footsteps had faded away and Mrs. Cavendish had bustled into the other room.
Then: “Fuck,” Mari said, forehead in her hands, elbows braced on the table.
“Quite,” Gabe replied.
Gabe left the house with his scone half eaten. The walls were starting feel like prison bars, and nervous energy kept building in his body, desperately needing an outlet. He gathered his cloak and walked out into the mist, planning to wander around the city until the exertion made him feel slightly less like screaming.
The citizens of Farramark walked fast, the weather not lending itself to lingering. But today there was a person standing in the pre-rain, wearing a hooded cloak, leaning up against the wall of the neighboring house, and smoking a cigarette. Gabe didn’t think anything of it.
At least, not until the person pushed off the wall and started walking.
They stayed yards behind Gabe, ambling along the street. Entirely possible it was nothing.
But at this point, Gabe didn’t count on that.
He took a side street at random, trying to look nonchalant. Moments later, the person with the cigarette was behind him. Another side street, headed left again; the person took that turn, too.
So he was being followed. Wonderful.
His plans for a long walk to pass the time soured. Gabe headed for the fighting barns. If Eoin was having him followed, maybe it was to protect his investment. Make sure Gabe didn’t do anything that could compromise his safety, at least not before Eoin had seen him flick a flame in and out of existence at least a thousand more times.
All the way to the barn, the person followed, staying a few feet behind, never approaching any closer. When they were on the right street, the whoops of the crowd and crash of fists faint but audible, the person stopped next to another wall and lit another cigarette, within view of the door.
Gabe marched into the barn. He stayed at the back of the crowd, too far away from the ring to see anything. A crunch as a fist met a nose. Cheers and boos as a winner was called.
He stayed by the door and watched his follower smoke.
A minute. Two. Five. They flicked the ash to the ground, and then started up the street, apparently satisfied that Gabe was occupied.
When they were almost out of sight, Gabe slipped out into the mist. Turnaround was fair play.
The follower walked much faster now that they didn’t have to worry about tipping Gabe off. It was obvious within two turns that they were headed to the Rotunda.
Gabe hung back, watching them approach the building and continue around the side, to the same entrance where they’d attended their first meeting of the Brotherhood. He walked slowly, keeping close to the sides of buildings, as they produced a key, unlocked the door, and slipped inside.
With a burst of near-silent speed, Gabe ran to the door, shoving his fingers into the gap before it closed all the way. He gently pushed it back open just enough to slip inside, then twisted the handle so it didn’t make a sound as it closed.
The staircase was dark, but there was a dim glow down at the bottom. Someone was here.
He didn’t press his luck by heading down the stairs. Gabe stood as close to the wall as he could manage, made his breath quiet.
“I’m honored you chose me, Eoin, don’t get me wrong.” That must be the man who’d followed him. “But I must say, it seems Finn would be the obvious choice, since his entire line of work is subterfuge.”
The man sounded nervous. Whatever Eoin was doing down there, it wasn’t something the delegates of the Brotherhood apparently wanted to take part in.
Rich men, comfortable men, who didn’t like changes to those comforts. Even the ones who were fascinated by god-power didn’t want to think of it as more than an academic exercise.
“I have my reasons.” Eoin’s voice, slightly strained. A clang of metal, something dropping to the floor. He hissed. “Damn, that’s hard to hold on to.”
“Seems an odd place to keep such a valuable thing.”
“You say odd, I say safe.”
“I suppose that’s true,” the other voice muttered. “Especially once you solder the door shut.”
Eoin huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Did you bring it?”
A ruffle of cloak fabric. Then a hiss. The smell of fire burned in Gabe’s nose.
“A handy thing,” Eoin said.
“My farrier uses it.” The Brother’s voice was strained, as if he was holding something heavy. “Helps direct heat. Apparently, they’re used all over what used to be Myrosh.”
Whatever Eoin was doing with the tool the Brother brought was quick work. The hiss shut off, and the burnt smell abated. “Excellent. That should stay secure until I’m ready to open it again.”
“How exactly do you plan to do that?”
A grin in Eoin’s tone, all teeth. “It shouldn’t be a problem.” A rustle of fabric. “This one, though, stays with me.”
They mounted the stairs, boots on stone. The wall next to the staircase extended a few feet in either direction before hitting another; Gabe pressed himself into the far corner, where the dark was deepest, and pulled his hood over his head. He was fairly certain Eoin wouldn’t harm him, even if he was found out, but he didn’t want to test the theory.
The shadows were deep enough to give cover, and when Eoin and the unnamed Brother opened the door, the dim light from outside only served to deepen them. Eoin wore a pair of thick leather gloves, and he grimaced as he peeled them off, shaking his hands. “We’ll have to come up with a solution for that. The tongs worked to get it off the statue, but we can’t rely on them forever.”
“At least the dagger doesn’t give you trouble.”
“Silver linings. Though Mount-mined metal used to be all over the continent; they couldn’t charge such exorbitant prices for it if no one could touch it.”
The other Brother cast an uneasy glance behind him. Gabe held his breath and pressed hard into the corner.
They left without seeing him.
Gabe counted to two hundred, slow, giving them time to get away. Then he crept down the stairs.
At first, he couldn’t tell what was different. The same packed dirt floor, same false Fount, same stone walls.
Well. Almost the same.
In the corner, there was now a metal door. Or it would be a door if it hadn’t been melted shut at the edges. The copper bubbled, still hot from the fire Eoin had used, better than any lock.
Clearly, he’d hidden something here. And Gabe had a good idea of what.
He could melt the door off, take the Fount piece, and put the door back. No one would be the wiser.
His hands were already raised to channel fire when he heard footsteps at the top of the stairs.
Fuck.
There was no time to dart back to his dark corner, and the room was lit with sconces, all open with nowhere to hide. Desperation clawed at his gut, nowhere to go, cornered like a mouse with a damn cat—
Use it.
It wasn’t a suggestion so much as a command.
And Gabe followed it, because he had no choice. One moment, he was solid and corporeal. The next, he was fire.
Not quite fire. The potential of it, every atom of heat in the atmosphere. It tore him apart, flung him out into composite pieces. If he’d still had a mouth, he would scream at the pain of it, the wrongness.
Because those spaces of himself were wide enough for something else to inhabit.
Every movement was an instinct rather than something thought through. Gabe traveled through the air, out the door, over the streets of Farramark, an invisible and unheard war. Hestraon was strong; Gabe grappled with Him, trying to hold on to the bits of himself with more desperation than he’d ever tried to do anything. He understood Malcolm’s fear now, understood what it felt like to have yourself obliterated while something else tried to gather the scraps and turn them to another will.
We want the same things. Hestraon in his mind, Hestraon fighting forward. I can do them better than you. Let Me.
But he couldn’t, he couldn’t.
Fine. The god relented. You’ll come around.
Gabe came back together like a thunderclap, the atmosphere rending to give him space where there’d been none before. It took him a moment to realize he was in the foyer of the boardinghouse, slumped just inside the door. It took him another moment to realize Malcolm was staring at him, mouth agape, a cup of tea dangerously close to dropping from his hand.
“What in every hell happened to you?” he asked. Though the panic in his eyes and the wariness in his voice said he knew. Said he was waiting to see if he was still himself, or Hestraon.
“It’s me,” Gabe said. “And I think I know where Eoin is keeping the Fount piece.”
He shared the news quickly: the Brother who’d followed him from the library, the odd door in the wall beneath the Rotunda soldered closed.
Malcolm was already rushing to find Val and Mari before Gabe finished speaking. “We have to go check our ship.”
“What makes you think that?”
“If Eoin is having you followed to make sure you don’t go anywhere he doesn’t want you to, do you really think he’d leave an open means of escape?”
Ten minutes, and they all were running to the dock.
Val was the first to realize something was wrong. She stopped, breath heaving, brows knit. “This is where we left it, right?”
Farramark harbor wasn’t as extensive as the one in Dellaire. Only a handful of docks, and the one where they’d left the ship was decidedly empty.
Rage burned in Gabe’s chest, in his palms. He turned to the low wooden fence dividing the harbor from the dunes and landed a punch square on one of the supports.
The whole thing went up in flames.
Footnotes
1 Collective we only appears in first editions of the Tracts, later changed to singular I.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LORE
Do not let yourself be lulled: The first calm is the eye of a storm, not its ending.
—From Sailing Lessons by George Merrou, Auverrani naval captain, 465 AGF
It took Dani longer than either of them would have liked to find a boat. They probably should have expected it—it wasn’t like there was much need for sailing vessels in the Harbor—but after a day of compulsory gardening once Sersha found them, they were even more on edge with each other than before.
When Lore was finished and caked in dirt, she went to Raihan, fiddling with his silver instruments, carefully fielding questions about her days in the Citadel. Despite the fact that they’d each tried to steal from the other and that she’d threatened his life, they were companionable. Raihan knew what it was like to live on the run. Lore knew what it was like to be desperate for answers that wouldn’t come. They weren’t friends, but a friendship could grow, given time.
So she felt incredibly stupid for not thinking of taking Raihan’s boat before Dani did.
On their second night in the Harbor, Lore crept into the hut after moonrise, hoping that maybe the other woman wasn’t there. No such luck—she was pacing back and forth over the rough floor, and when she looked up, there was fire in her eyes. “So when were you going to tell me you’d gotten cozy with the Ferryman?”
“When I decided it was your business. So, never.”
“You idiot,” Dani hissed. “You let me spend a day looking for a damn boat when you could just convince him to let us take his?”
Her mouth opened for a poison retort, then closed again. It wasn’t really a bad idea.
“You didn’t think of that?” Dani tilted her head with a sneer. “It’s really a wonder you survived in the Citadel for so long.”
“He won’t give it to us,” Lore said. “He needs it for rescuing escapees.” Part of the reason it hadn’t occurred to her was because she knew Raihan would say no. They’d spoken of the work he did, how important it was to him to provide a way out of the Isles to those who wanted one.
“He does that maybe once every two months,” Dani said, crossing her arms. “The rest of the time, it’s just sitting there. Tell him we need it. To save the world, or some shit.”
Which was why Lore was here again on their second morning in the Harbor, hoping Raihan would lend them his boat.
She didn’t finesse the question. She just asked it outright, standing on his threshold with all his silver instruments pointing at her. “What would it take for you to let me borrow your boat?”
He looked up from his notebook, where he’d been scribbling in the margins of the page with his tracing of the Fount piece. Slowly, he closed it. “To get to the Fount?”
“No, to host a party.” She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Raihan, to get to the Fount.”
His mouth twisted to the side. “That would be less borrowing and more taking indefinitely.”
Lore shifted on her feet. The rest of the thought hung unspoken—if she took the boat, it meant no more ferrying prisoners from the Isles. “This is bigger than that,” she said, as if he’d spoken it aloud. “This is…” She made a hoarse noise, not a laugh, and echoed Dani. “This is saving the world.”
Raihan just looked at her, mouth still pursed, trying to fit something into language. “Is that what you think repairing the Fount will do? Save the world?”
She gave him a withering look. “I think it’d be a start.”
“And what if I think the world is beyond saving?”
“Don’t tell me you’re a nihilist, too. I can only take one.”
“Not a nihilist,” Raihan said. “But I am of the opinion that the world can only be as good as the people in it.”
Lore slumped into the chair by his piles of books. “The world is fucking doomed, then.”
“Now you sound like the nihilist.” Raihan poked at one of the sliver instruments, sending it spinning before it settled on Lore again. “Taking away a material good—a means for people to escape the mines—for something that might eventually be good, someday, seems like boarding up a well because you’re hoping for rain.”
