An Affinity for Steel, page 154
And everywhere, in every vision, in every space there was not darkness, were the netherlings. Thousands of them.
It was no portrait.
It was a gate.
“This is it, you know.”
Asper didn’t ask, didn’t even look at him. She could not bear to hear the answer, she could not tear her eyes away from the sight.
“It answers nearly everything about them, the longfaces,” Dreadaeleon continued. “Why no one’s seen them before we found them, why they don’t look like anything we’ve ever seen, why they have all those Gonwa back there.” He clicked his tongue. “And what they’re doing here. They were the first, the expedition.”
The vision in the gate sharpened, intensified, swept across a vast, plant-less field beneath thousands of iron boots, over a sea of long, purple faces gathered in a cluster, up to thousands of blades held in gauntleted hands, thousands of eyes white as milk, thousands of jagged-tooth mouths open in silent, shrieking war cries.
“This,” Dreadaeleon said, “is the army that will follow.”
“Why . . . why didn’t they bring it with them?” Asper asked, breathless.
“Obviously, this . . . gate, however it works, it doesn’t have enough of whatever it needs to let more in. The Gonwa can keep it open, but not enough to let the rest of them out.” He hummed, scratching his chin. “Still doesn’t explain how they got here in the first place, though, without any sacrifices . . . unless, of course, Greenhair was right.”
“Greenhair?”
“Someone else had to have found them,” he continued, ignoring her, “someone else had to have let them in. And in exchange, they . . .” He sighed. “Ah. Demons. Undying. More fuel, obviously, to let the rest of them in. It’s brilliant.”
“It’s . . . horrifying.”
“It’s revolutionary. There are all sorts of theories out there about how the same power that lets us bend light to create illusions could be used to hide entirely different worlds. But they were wrong. The priests had it right all along. Heaven, hell . . . and something else, entirely.” He chuckled. “It’s amazing.”
“It uses people to work.”
For the first time, he looked at her. And even that was just a sidelong, dismissive glance.
“You just don’t understand.”
“Of course I don’t understand,” she snapped. “Not this . . . thing. I don’t care about that. I don’t understand how you can look at it and not think of the Gonwa, of the suffering, like . . . like you’re impressed with it.”
“It’s a gateway. An opening into another world. How can you not be impressed?”
“It’s not just that. The stones, the Gonwa, everything. People are dying and all you can think about is the stones!”
“Because they transfer everything! The physical cost! The toll! All the prices of magic! With it, I can—”
“It’s you! I don’t understand you.”
“Convenient,” Dreadaeleon said with a sneer. “Do you not care about me, either?”
“How the hell would you draw that conclusion?”
“Process of elimination, numbers,” he replied, voice as fevered as his eyes were as he thrust both upon her. “Lenk and Kataria. And for the past few days, you’ve positively fawned over Denaos like . . . like he’s . . .”
Asper held her fist at her side, held her gaze level, held her voice cold and hard. “If you try to guess, I will break your jaw.”
“And what? I don’t get to know? But he does?” He gestured wildly back down the cavern. “I’m the one with the power, I’m the one with the intellect and you’d rather share your secrets with some thuggish, scummy thug?”
“I don’t . . .” Asper stammered for a reply. “I didn’t . . .”
“You did. Because that’s how it works! Lenk and Kataria. You and Denaos. And what does that leave me? With Gariath?”
“It doesn’t work that way.”
“THEN TELL ME HOW IT DOES,” he screamed back. “Tell me how I’m supposed to figure this out when no one tells me anything and I have to figure it out on my own! Tell me what I’m supposed to do to . . . to . . .”
She watched him, spoke softly. “Go on.”
“No.”
“Dread—”
“NO.” He held up a hand, rubbed his eyes with the other. “Forget it. Forget everything. Look . . .” When he looked back, she saw a weariness that he had kept hidden from her, a dullness in the eyes growing worse. “You want to help the Gonwa.”
“So should you.”
“I want to . . . find out about this and keep however many netherlings from coming forth and killing us all, so yeah, similar goals.” He pointed down the cavern. “We can’t free them all. Not without the stones. The netherlings are heading to Jaga, to get more fuel or to kill something or . . . what. We can agree that stopping them from doing . . . this again is a good thing, I assume?”
“Right.”
“Then our best bet is to go there. To find Sheraptus and stop him.”
“Him,” she whispered.
“All of them,” Dreadaeleon said, turning to leave.
They walked out in silence and suddenly, Asper found herself more aware of the boy. Or rather, more aware of what he once was. He seemed diminished, as though more had left him than just air with the last outburst. He walked slower, paused to catch his breath more often.
But every time she would look behind, every time she would open her mouth to say something, he would look at her. The weariness would be replaced with something else, a quiet loathing, and she would say nothing.
The thought never left her, though. And so she didn’t even notice the netherling corpse until she tripped over it.
Don’t remember it being there, she thought. Denaos could have moved it somewhere a little more—
She tripped again. Another corpse stared up at her from the ground, a dagger jammed in her throat.
There definitely hadn’t been two of them.
“Hey.”
She looked up. Denaos definitely hadn’t been clutching a bleeding arm when they left. The rogue snorted, spat out a glob of red onto the floor.
“We should go.”
EIGHTEEN
FOR BLOOD, EVERYTHING
Should’ve punched him.
Gariath looked down at his claws, made fists out of them. Big hands. Strong hands. Probably would have left a good-sized dent if he had swung and meant it.
Yeah, he thought. Probably would have taken . . . what? Eight teeth? Maybe twelve. How many do humans have? Could’ve taken at least half. He snorted, unclenched his fists. Definitely should’ve punched him.
He’d have deserved it, of course, for reasons other than being weak and stupid. Gariath might not have been Shen, Gariath might not have known much about Shen, Gariath might not have even considered himself all that scaly. But the insinuation that the Shen were beasts made him feel something.
Something that didn’t immediately make him want to punch someone.
Though the acknowledgement of that feeling did make him want to punch something, though the urge came far too late.
In the end, though, simply breaking off when neither human was looking and leaving had been the better decision. Not as satisfying as a punch, of course, but there would be no questions, no queer looks, no one wondering what might have been bothering him.
When a creature can kill something twenty times his size, he does not admit to having his feelings hurt.
Not without immediately eviscerating whoever heard such a confession, anyway. Leaving and skulking off into the coral, unnoticed and unquestioned, just seemed a little easier.
Still, he noted, it probably wasn’t too late to go back and break the human’s leg just on principle. Maybe break the pointy-eared human’s leg, too, to make it fair.
He thrust his snout into the air, took a few deep breaths. Salt. Fish. Blood. Quite a bit of blood, actually. But none of it blood that he knew. Nor flesh, nor bone, nor fear, nor hypocrisy. No humans nearby at all.
But something was.
Something not human.
As good as any scent to follow, he reasoned, and if it would get him out of the coral, so much the better. And so he followed it, winding through the jagged coral, between the schools of fish passing amongst the skeletal forest, tearing through the kelp in his way.
The forest opened up around him, coral diminishing, sand vanishing and giving way to stone beneath his feet. A road stretched out behind him. Somewhere, on air that wasn’t there, he caught a vague scent. One that was almost familiar, but far too fleeting. He snorted; scenting anything was difficult here. The air was too thick for odors to pass through.
Not that that mattered.
The road stretched both ways. And what opened up before him was far more interesting.
Netherlings.
Dead ones.
They lined the highway like banners, rising up into the heavens on either side, held only by the tethers about their wrists, swaying with a sense of lurid tranquility violently contradicted by the state of their bodies.
Each one boasted an impressive collection of wounds: arrow holes, gaping cuts, bruises so dark as to stain even their purple flesh, and a collection of skulls flattened, pulverized, and a few that could only be described as artistically tenderized. The expressions they wore in death were unreadable, what with their faces smashed in and all, but none suggested that they had gone without a fight.
Shen work.
Granted, he didn’t know much of the Shen. Not nearly enough to know their handiwork, anyway. But there were few options as to who would go to the trouble of stringing up dead netherlings. Besides, to admit that he didn’t know the Shen would have been to admit that Lenk was at least partially right.
That thought made him sick where corpses could not.
Some were old, desiccated, flesh torn off to expose bone. Some were newer, littered with fresh bruises and scabbing wounds. And some, he noticed as a flash of red and black caught his eye, were even fresher.
Their blood poured not in streams, but in a cloud that blossomed at the top of the tether holding her swaying in the air like a red dandelion. Fish darted in and out of the cloud of red, dark shapes on dark fins, glassy eyes reflecting nothing as they seized pieces of purple meat in their jaws, shook fiercely and swallowed them whole before swimming back for another bite. At least a dozen sharks, heedless of biting iron, flesh, or bone, feasted.
Being made of the kind of meat that probably wouldn’t go down as gently as the dead kind, the sharks had as much interest in Gariath as he had in them. He glanced down the road, toward the distant mountain. If the Shen were anywhere, they would be there. Why else would they bother to string up so many meaty warnings?
But he didn’t take another step forward.
He couldn’t very well with someone following him.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said with a sigh. “I can smell you. I’ve smelled you since I got here. I smelled you back on Teji.”
His eyes swept the horizon, the jagged coral canopies and wafting kelp reaches revealed nothing but thick air and empty sky.
“I don’t know exactly where you are. The air’s too thick to smell that. But you might as well come out.”
He threw out his hands to either side, gesturing to the vast road cutting a smooth stone path through the coral.
“It’s too open for an ambush. You can’t sneak up on me. So just find whatever courage you have and—”
He stopped suddenly. Somehow, having one’s head smashed from behind made talking harder.
He staggered forward, straining not to collapse as his eyes rolled in his sockets and his brains rattled in his skull. He flailed blindly, trying to ward off his attacker, wherever it might have been. His vision still swimming, he found footing enough to whirl about and face his foe.
And his foe, all seven green feet of him, stared back.
Another pointy-eared human, he recognized. A pointy-eared green human. A pointy-eared green human with hands for feet and what appeared to be a cock’s crest for hair.
There had to be a shorter word for it. What had the other pointy-eared human called it? Greenshict? She had carried their scent, too.
This one was taller, tense, ready to spill blood instead of teary emotions. The greenshict’s bones were long, muscles tight beneath green skin, dark eyes positively weeping scorn as he narrowed them upon Gariath.
He liked this one better already.
At least until he looked down to his foe’s hand and saw, clenched in slender fingers, a short, stout piece of wood.
“A stick?” The fury choked his voice like phlegm. “You came to kill me with a stick?”
The shict snarled, baring four sharp teeth. Gariath roared, baring two dozen of his own. The stones quaked beneath his feet, the sky shivered at his howl as he charged.
“I WAS EATEN TODAY AND YOU BROUGHT A STICK?”
He lashed out, claws seeking green flesh and finding nothing as the greenshict took a long, fluid step backward. He flipped the stick effortlessly from one hand to the other, brought it up over his head, brought it down upon Gariath’s.
It cracked against his skull, shook brain against bone. But this was no cowardly blow from behind. This was honest pain. Gariath could bite back honest pain. He grunted, snapped his neck and caught the stick between his horns to tear it from the greenshict’s grasp.
The stick flew in one direction, his fist in the other. It sought, caught, crushed a green face beneath red knuckles in a dark crimson eruption. Bones popped, sinuses erupted, blood spattered. A body flew, crashed, skidded across the stones, leaving a dark smear upon the road.
Therapeutic, Gariath thought, even as the blood sizzled against his flesh. It hurt. But he couldn’t very well let the greenshict know that.
“I AM RHEGA!”
Yelling hurt, too. Possibly because his teeth still rattled in their gums. A trail of blood wept from his brow, spilling into his eye. The greenshict had drawn blood—with a stick.
Impressive, he thought. Also annoying. He snorted; that hurt. Just annoying.
The greenshict did not so much leap as flow from his back to his feet like a liquid. He ebbed, shifting into a stance—hands up, ears perked, waist bent—with such ease as to suggest that he had simply sprung from the womb ready to fight.
Suggestions weren’t enough for Gariath. He needed more tangible things: stone beneath his feet, blood on his hands, horns in the air, and a roar in his maw as he fell to all fours and charged.
And again, the greenshict flowed. He broke like water on a rock, slithering over Gariath, sparing only a touch for the dragonman as he leapt delicately over him and landed behind him. Gariath skidded to a halt, whirled about and found his opponent standing.
And just standing.
He didn’t scramble for his stick. He didn’t move to attack. He just stood there.
“Hit back,” Gariath snarled as he rushed the greenshict once more. “Then I hit you. Then you fall down and I splash around in your entrails.” His claw followed his voice, twice as bloodthirsty. “Don’t you know how this works?”
The greenshict had no respect for Gariath’s instruction or his blows, leaping away, ducking under, stepping away from each blow. He never struck back, never made a noise, never did anything but move.
Slowly, steadily, to the floating corpses.
The next blow came and the greenshict flew instead of flowed. He leapt away and up, hands and feet finding a tether and scrambling up. Hand over foot over foot over hand, he leapt to the fresh netherling corpse and entangled himself amongst its limbs, staring down at Gariath.
Impassively.
Mocking him.
“Good,” he grunted, reaching out and seizing the tether. “Fine.” He jerked down on it. “I’ll come to you.”
Hand over hand, claw over claw, he pulled, drawing his prey and the corpse he perched upon ever closer.
One more hard pull brought him within reach and Gariath seized the opportunity. His claws were hungry and lashed out, seeking green flesh. That green flesh flew again, however, leaping from the corpse. The flesh his claws found was purple and wrapped around a thick jugular.
That promptly exploded in a soft cloud of blood.
Engulfed in the crimson haze, he roared. His mouth filled with a foul coppery taste. His nostrils flared, drank in the stench of stale life. No sign of the greenshict, no scent of the greenshict. Annoying.
But merely annoying.
At least, until the shark.
He saw the teeth only a moment before he felt them as they sank into the flesh of his bicep. He had seen worse: steel, glass, wood. That was small comfort when this particular foe was hungry, persistent. Its slender gray body jerked violently, trying to tear off a stubborn chunk.
Gariath snarled, struck it with a fist, raked at it with a claw. The beast tightened its grip, snarled silently as it shredded skin, growing ever more insistent with each attempt to dislodge it.
It was only when he felt the stick lash out and rap against his skull that he remembered there was a reason for trying to fight off a shark on dry land.
He staggered out of the cloud, his writhing parasite coming with him, his suddenly bold foe right behind him. The corpse went flying into the sky and the rest of the sharks flew for the easy meal. Not his. He would have to get the only shark with principles.
The greenshict leapt, stick lashing out like a fang. It struck against wrist, skull, leg, shoulder, anywhere that wasn’t a flailing claw or a twisting fish. The pain was intense, but it wasn’t as bad as the insult of being beaten with a stick. Gariath fought between the two, dividing his attention between the shark and the shict and failing at fending off either.
A choice had to be made.
And the shark was only acting out of hunger.
When the stick came again, Gariath’s hand shot out to catch it. He found a wrist instead and, with a sharp twist, made it not a wrist. The greenshict’s limb came apart with a satisfying snap, not as satisfying as the shriek that followed.
