In the Shadow of the Gods (25 page)

Breathing heavily, clamping down his pain, Joros yanked the knife from his shoulder and gave it a better home—namely, the burned man's heart. “Bastard,” Joros muttered.

The inn was silent, some eyes fixed on the dead man, some on Joros, but most on Anddyr, standing in the doorway with his face painted in horror and shock and disgust as he stared at his own hands. “I didn't mean to . . . I only wanted to stun him . . .”

Joros's vision was swimming, going black at the edges, and
it felt like the side of his face was still afire. He'd never had much cause to deal with such injury before, but he knew that unconsciousness would claim him soon; there was one last thing he had to do first. His left hand wouldn't cooperate—the knife must have nicked something in his shoulder, and his right hand shook so badly it was almost useless, but he methodically emptied all his pockets there on the floor of the inn where he sat bleeding and burned. The only seekstones were his own, all keyed to others, and there was nothing else suspicious he'd carried with him from Raturo . . .

His shaking hand found the cord around his neck. Over thirteen years, he'd grown so used to the weight of a key against his chest that he never thought of it. Never suspected the keys to the Ventallo's numbered chambers might be anything besides keys. No matter how he squinted at it, his blurring eyes couldn't make out anything suspect; but it was a thick key, thick enough it could have been shaped around a seekstone long, long ago.

It scraped against the burns on his neck, but Joros yanked at the key until the cord snapped. He tossed it, hoped it landed near Anddyr's feet. “Destroy that,” he croaked, and then he finally let the pain pull him down.

R
ora watched the bodies come in and felt sick to her stomach. It never failed. She'd been surprised, the first time the dead had been brought back, that Tare hadn't laughed at her. There was no room in Tare for weakness, but she'd put her hand on Rora's shoulder and looked at her with serious eyes and not said a word.

It was like that with all of them. Rora hadn't learned that until Tare had given her her own little alcove in the knifeden. Tare'd told her it was so she wouldn't feel so alone, with Aro always holed up with the Dogshead. She'd seen how every one of the knives came back quiet after a contract, not talking, not looking at anyone. She'd seen how no one ever asked any questions. There'd only been one, a new knife come over from the Serpents, who'd bragged about his contract, eyes glowing as he laughed at how the woman had begged for her life and shit herself as he cut her throat. He'd wound up with his own throat cut, not long after. Goat or Tare didn't even ask who'd done it. The only thing Tare'd ever said about it was
“You don't talk about contracts. Ever.” By then, Rora'd already known that.

The fists were all quiet, walking in with their arms full of the dead to lay 'em down in front of Garim. The face looked at each of them, the men he'd sent out to die without knowing it. Five and five and five had gone out, and they'd all come back, even though most of 'em were carried back. You didn't leave a brother behind. Five and four, lying at Garim's feet with their eyes staring up at the grimy walls. Five and one, kneeling there covered in blood, with their faces hard as stone.

It was harder to look at death when your own hands were so good at bringing it.

The whole den was quiet as night, until Garim, with his voice like a rock dropping in water, asked, “What happened?”

“Blackhands,” one of the fists said. A low growl went through the den. They'd all figured that out by now, but it was something that needed to be said anyway. You had to give a name to a thing, to hate it right. “Caught us topside. Twice as many of 'em, like they knew we'd be there. We got back below, but there were even more waiting. All we could do was run.” And pick up the dead as you ran. “They stopped chasing once we got across the Teeth.”

“We'll get revenge for them,” Garim promised as he looked at each of the dead fists again, like he was fixing each of their faces in his mind. His hand made a small motion, and Aro slipped away out of the shadows. He'd report it all to the Dogshead so she could start planning while Garim took care of the pack. “We'll give them the proper rites, too. Gods know they've earned it.”

A long time ago, when she and Aro'd had a roof over their
heads and a real dirt floor to sleep on and a place to feel safe, there'd been a woman named Kala who'd said, “Do you know why they're called Scum?” She'd always been trying to tell them how bad it was everywhere but topside, like they didn't already know it. Like she thought they'd choose to go back there. “Whenever someone dies in the Canals, they send the dead bodies floating on the water, and eventually they rot and turn green.” Sometimes Rora wished she could go back and tell Kala all the things she'd been wrong about, but Rora wished a lot of things that weren't ever going to happen.

They did what they could for rafts, but it was hard with so many. You could only fit two across at the narrow points, and there wasn't much spare wood lying around to make the rafts too special. “It's the doing that counts,” Garim kept saying, and he was right, at least. He tried to make them go rest, the five and one who'd brought the others back, but they just said his words back at him: “It's the doing that counts.” So they got four others, mostly other fists who'd known the dead, and they fitted some of the pups out with long sticks that took two of 'em to hold, so anyone could see the white hank of cloth tied to the top with a big circle painted on it in blood. Not even the Blackhands would go against the death flag.

As much of the pack as could went along, though some had to stay back to guard the den. No one would cross the death flag, but the flag wasn't hanging in the den. Rora thought about staying back, but Tare touched her elbow, flicked her eyes. She saw Aro, saw how he was careful not to look at a hunchbacked woman wearing a deep-hooded cloak and walking with a limp, shuffling along with the rest of the pack. It didn't surprise her too much, when she thought about
it. Of course the Dogshead would want to be there to send her dead off.

Some of the pups with flags led the way, slipping on stones, leaping across the canals because they were still kids, even with death around. Then it was the fists with ropes over their shoulders, five on each side of the canal, towing the rafts down the center. Everyone else came behind, no order to it except for Tare and Rora and a handful of other knives who kept a careful distance around the disguised Sharra. They'd never talk about it later, but she knew all the knives'd all be thinking the same thing: how it was good to have something to do, instead of just thinking how busy their nights were going to be with killing. It was harder to look forward to revenge when you were the one bringing it.

All the canals of Mercetta flowed into the Sinkhole. It'd been there as long as anyone could remember, and it was why the Canals'd been abandoned and left for the drifting poor to claim. The water kept pouring in from Lake Baridi, but it always found its way to the Sinkhole, and no one knew where it went from there. All the Scum-made paths ended in jagged stumps where the Sinkhole'd opened up its mouth and swallowed anything in its way, and the roar of the pouring water was louder'n in the Dogshead's waterfall room.

Garim was up at the front, and Rora could see his mouth moving. He'd be reciting prayers to the Parents, probably, asking them to hold tight to the souls of their dead, or talking about the good each of them had done. Only the fists at the front, straining to hold the ropes against the pull of the Sinkhole, would be able to hear him, but it was the doing that
counted. When he was done talking he stepped back, and the first set of fists let go of their ropes.

The raft rushed forward and was gone over the edge even before the fists' arms had dropped back to their sides. Garim watched it go over with a hard face, watched the first two dead disappear. Rora knew there were some faces he'd never forget. The next two fists let go, and the next. Rora couldn't make out much under Sharra's hood, but she could see tears on the Dogshead's cheek. The next raft went, and Tare crossed her arms in front of her waist, her hands resting on the pommels of her two knives. They'd both be helping with the revenge Garim had talked about. Then the last raft, with just the one man, the last of the day's dead, but Rora knew he wouldn't be the last by far. Wherever the Sinkhole took the dead Scum, she knew there'd be plenty more to join them before too long.

They stayed awhile, some crying, some with faces that would've put real fear into any Blackhands. But the hand signs rippled up, Sharra to Tare and all the way up to Garim, who talked some more to the fists who could hear him. They turned eventually, the five and five, and the rest of the pack turned with 'em. The death flags swung around crazily as the pups tried to work their way to the new front of the group, to lead the way back home.

It hadn't been war before, not yet. But you'd have to be dumb, if you didn't think it was now.

Hanging by her fingertips from a windowsill three stories above
an alley that smelled like piss and death, battered by a wind that was the very essence of rotting fish, Rora wondered if it
was too late to reevaluate her life choices. She knew, though, as she twisted to bring one bare foot—boots left in the alley below, probably being chewed on by rats by now—up onto the sill, that the time for changing her mind had long passed. There was killing to do.

“There's a man,” Goat had told her earlier. “He sells meat to the Blackhands. They can live on bread for a while.”

Rora didn't know the Dogshead's plan, no one did except Garim and maybe Tare, but it was a longer game than Rora'd expected. You couldn't just march into Blackhands territory with fists and knives and hope to win, of course. That wasn't how Scum fought. “Sneaks and cheats,” Kala'd said, “there's not a single decent person in the Canals.” Still, Rora'd expected something more than killing a butcher. A butcher who wasn't even Scum, who wouldn't even know why he was dying. It didn't feel like revenge.

It sometimes felt to Rora—and she usually thought about it most on contract nights, when life and death were balanced like a coin spinning in the air—that there was a string stretching out in front of and behind her, guiding her along through her life on some path she couldn't see until it was already behind her. It all made so much sense then, everything falling perfectly into place. So very
convenient,
and she hated things that came out too easy. It usually meant there was a twist down the way, something bad lurking just around the next corner. Sure, maybe she could've changed her mind a long time ago, before Nadaro, before Whitedog Pack, before Tare had sent her out on her first contract, but it was too late now, she was too wrapped up in it all. There was nothing to do but let the string tug her forward.

There came a time, every contract night, without fail, when she thought about turning around, leaving it all behind, taking her life in her own hands. Sticking to the windowsill by sheer stubbornness alone, with one foot dangling in open air as the reeking wind pushed at her, that was when the thought hit her this night. It was easier to swing down than lever the rest of her body up, after all. The coin was still spinning.

With a practiced move, she pushed off with her one foot and grabbed on to the upper edge of the window frame, bringing her other foot up onto the sill and clinging there like a squirrel. It was lucky she was so small, Tare'd told her so often—it made sneaking that much easier. Gritting her teeth and silently mouthing the same curses she always sent toward Tare on contract nights, Rora let go with one hand and fished around inside her vest till she found her kit and the slim hook inside it. She stuck it between the shutters, found the catch, worked it carefully upward, and then began slowly pulling the far-side shutter open. Must've been oiled recently; it didn't squeak or make any sound. She liked working North and East Quarters, they always kept things nice and maintained, even in the fish-reeking Iceblood District on the shores of Lake Baridi.

She paused, then, with the shutter half open and the wind trying to push it shut, and listened. For any noise from inside the room, a sleepy question, an angry exclamation, a terrified shout. But it was quiet, safe as could be, so she stuck her legs in through the window and dropped down to the floor.

Buildings in Iceblood always seemed to hold on to the cold wind that blew in off Lake Baridi, and it was colder inside than it'd been even with the wind always blowing on her outside. It was still quiet, though, so she reached up to slowly pull the
shutter closed. That made it dark in the room, but Tare and Goat had taught her patience, making her lie in a pit of snakes—little ones, they didn't have any venom, but they still had big teeth that hurt like a bitch—that'd get angry if she much as breathed wrong. So she stayed crouched low beneath the window, waiting till her eyes adjusted to the dark, and then she crept toward the dim outline of the bed. She pulled her dagger out as she went, the long knife with the blue gem in its hilt. She always felt calmer holding it, felt more like she was in control of everything, even if she had to use her left hand. Her right one, the whole arm, had never seemed to work right since it'd been stomped on.

“Where's your brother, Rora?”

Reflexively she dropped into a low crouch even as she spun around, eyes darting in the darkness. Blackhands, that was her first thought, some kind of ambush, but then her blood went cold when she realized what the voice had called her. Her name, the name no one but Aro knew.

There was a whisper of noise, and across the room in the fireplace, flames grew slowly to life—blue flames that hardly seemed to move, just flicker, an unnatural light. With it she could see a woman standing there, covered and cowled in a black robe, a small smile playing over her face, dancing with the light.

“Who're you?” Rora demanded, flexing her fingers around the hilt of her dagger. Something had gone awful here, but Rora would put up plenty of fight if it came to it.

The woman's smile widened. “I am the shadows,” she said, “and I know your name.”

It hit her like a punch, the words from so long ago that always came back to her on dark nights, in moments of fear,
the words she could never forget no matter how hard she tried.
The darkness knows your name,
Nadaro had said with a knife in his chest,
and it never rests.

“You didn't think we'd forgotten about you, did you, Rora?” The woman asked it like they were talking about the weather. Moving careful slow even though she wanted to run far as she could, Rora moved one foot back toward the window, her best escape. Across the room, the woman stepped with her. “Don't you remember?
‘To the ends of the earth.'
You are marked, Rora. We know your name.”

There was the part she hadn't even told Aro, the part that still gave her nightmares, jerked her awake covering her own mouth to hide the screams:
My brothers and sisters will find you.

“You are ours, Rora.” Another slow step toward the window, mirrored by the other woman. She was in front of the fire now, looking like nothing so much as a featureless shadow standing there, and a whimper crept up out of Rora's throat. “You've always been ours.”

It was cold in the room, so cold, the fire that wasn't a fire not doing any good. Rora wanted to dash to the window, fling herself out through the shutters and drop three stories to the ground, anything to get out, but it was so cold her muscles were stiff, uncooperative. It was all she could do to take another crouched step toward the window. Through chattering teeth, trying and failing to use the tough voice Tare'd taught her, Rora asked, “Who are you? What do you want with me?”