Chapter 76

First, Song saw to it that they could hold.

Tactically speaking, this was not overly difficult. Though the Odyssean threw host-corpses down the lift shaft regularly, most of them broke their limbs in the fall and thus she only need leave Tupoc and Expendable to put them down. Spears made easy work of the dead things, enough damage severing the threads of blood-red divinity moving the corpses, but she knew better than to think this state of affairs anything other than temporary.

For now the Hated One threw only half-hearted assaults their way, one or two at a time, but the archives upstairs were a cacophonous orgy of destruction. The Hated One was ripping out the seal on his prison and would turn his full attention on them when he finished. She spared a moment of deep dismay at the thought of so many rare books being so callously destroyed, lore perhaps forever lost to the murderous thing’s tantrum. A petty evil compared to the rest of the night’s work, but an evil nonetheless.

A thought to deplore later, she chided herself.

“How long before it gets out?” Song asked.

Maryam Khaimov cocked her head and hummed, pondering her answer. Song’s friend had long straddled the line between pale and sickly, but now she had fallen firmly on the latter side: she looked feverish, her blue eyes rimmed in red by exhaustion and the ailment of Gloam-work. And though Song would yet describe both eyes as blue, the left one had gone cloudy and so light it was nearly gray. Between that and the traces of spew on Maryam’s collar and chest there was no hiding something in her ritual had gone terribly wrong.

And yet she seemed Maryam still, entirely herself, save for the… addition.

“It’s nearly there,” the spirit said, head rising out of the signifier’s shoulder to speak. “I can taste it in the aether – the veins of red became roots and now they are cracking the stone.”

The spirit was not much changed from when she had saved Song from her would-be killers. Still close as a sister in looks to Maryam, but now there was a… vitality to her that had once been absent. Even knowing her intangible, Song would think that flush true and the way she breathed necessary. Perhaps both were. She knew little of the rules regarding such existences. Song cleared her throat.

“Captain Song Ren,” she introduced herself.

The spirit eyed her like she was an idiot.

“We’ve met.”

Maryam sighed.

“She goes by Hooks,” Maryam provided.

“For now,” Hooks added. “Let us dispense with small talk, Ren. The god is about ten…”

“Five,” Maryam cut in.

“Five to ten minutes away from getting out,” Hooks smoothly compromised. “If we were still up there serving as thorn in its thumb it’d take longer, but without us in the way it’s squeezing itself out of the layer like jelly pushed through a hole.”

“Now there’s an image,” Tupoc contributed from a distance.

By common and unspoken accord, all three ignored him.

“Then we plan for five,” Song said. “We’ll need to-”

The door clapped thunderously, something solid smashing into it, and Song had to push down a flinch. It had taken mere minutes for the rebels to get a solid enough bench to begin hammering at the door, which while locked and barred was not meant to resist such pummeling indefinitely. Cressida was pressing down on it from their side, but there was only so much that would accomplish.

A flicker of movement stole another sentence’s start out of her mouth, a steel bar sliding through the gap between the door and the wall.

“Izel,” Tristan said.

“I see it,” the tinker replied.

With admirable ease they moved: the thief caught the bar’s tip between tongs, then the larger Izcalli lined up a hammer blow and smashed the steel back out into the face of whoever side on the other side of the door. Twice now the traitors had tried to pry open the door by breaking the hinges, but the pair had been ready for it.

“We’ll need to prepare for a push through the enemy,” Song finished. “Open the door on our terms then break the encirclement and run towards safer grounds.”

Looking back, she had to wonder if it had been a mistake to retreat into this room. While fleeing down the hall with guns pointed at their back would certainly have cost them casualties, she was not sure that breaking the encirclement and then running down that hallway would do much to keep them down.

Behind them another corpse-host dropped, this one landing on its knees – only to be speared in the head by Expendable, who was promptly heckled by Tupoc for ‘hogging all the deicide’. The Malani quietly protested, but under his hat Song could see him smiling. She turned away.

“When we first met, you used a large Gloam construct,” Song said, addressing Hooks directly. “Could you use it again to open our way?”

A horse-sized Gloam lizard with six legs, which she has called a smok. It was a certainty that the enemy would have guns pointed at the door to prevent the very breakout they were planning, which meant either sacrificing the vanguard or using one that would not succumb to bullets. Maryam and the spirit glanced at each other for a few heartbeats, the latter grimacing before she replied. Speaking without need for words?

“Not anything as large,” Maryam said. “Dog-sized, maybe smaller. And we’re approaching mania, so if you want us to work something heavy we’ll be out of the fight after.”

A pause.

“For a bit, anyway,” Hooks said.

Song slowly nodded, both filing away the ‘we’ for future interrogation and adjusting the dawning plan in her mind. Lictors, even the traitors, might have the discipline to hold fire after the first few shots into the Gloam beast did nothing. The noble troops might not, though, so the gambit seemed worth it. If the construct ate enough lead, they might make it down the hallway without losing half their numbers to a volley.

“All right, is no one going to address that Khaimov has a spirit popping out of her body to talk?” Cressida Barboza called out. “Because it’s happened more than once now, so it clearly wasn’t a fluke.”

“Don’t be such a rube, Barboza,” Tristan chided. “We’re too busy to indulge your provincial sensibilities.”

“You smug Sacromontan fuck,” the other Mask bit back, “I’ll-”

A politely cleared throat.

“I was also wondering about the spirit,” Izel admitted, then sketched a bow at Hooks. “Greetings, I am Izel Coyac.”

“Hooks,” the entity replied with a nod, then slipping further out so she had a thumb to jut it towards Maryam. “I’m her sister.”

“It’s a long story that I have no intention of telling you,” Maryam flatly told the survivors of the Nineteenth. “She’s here, she’s with me. Move on or be moved.”

“Hooks,” Tupoc called out, while impaling a corpse. “The corpses upstairs that were mangled like roots went through them, was that you?”

“With her help,” the… sister acknowledged, nodding at Maryam.

The Izcalli grinned.

“You know, there’s still room in the Fourth Brigade if-”

“Enough of that now,” Song sharply cut in. Fucking vulture. “Tupoc, Expendable, first we’ll rotate you out with Tristan and Izel. We’ll need you to hit the enemy in the wake of the Sign.”

She breathed out, putting the last touches on the plan in her mind’s eye.

“Our best chance is to make a mess of their formation and move quickly enough they can’t muster a firing line while we run,” Song said.

Odds were still good that some of them would be shot in the back, but there was only so much that could be done running down a corridor with little cover and muskets pointed at you. As if to punctuate her worries, the bench was smashed on the door again. Tristan cleared his throat.

“Khaimovs,” he called out. “If we make it to the garden, can you get us back into that layer?”

Maryam sharply nodded.

“It’s getting battered open as we speak,” she said. “We can find a path, the trouble will be whether or not it’s full of…”

She gestured vaguely upstairs. The ruckus was, if anything, getting worse.

“First we will be making an attempt at relieving Angharad,” Song said. “The deeper palace should still be in loyalist hands, given the defenses there, so we will head there first.”

It was where Evander’s quarters were located, as well as the palace armory. If the traitors had seized that then they would not be bothering with a bench: they’d have wheeled out cannons. Even small pieces would smash right through the door here. Not all seemed enthusiastic at her words, but no one cared to argue. The potential naysayers likely figured squabbling was more likely to get them all killed than her plan, which she privately agreed with.

A passable plan immediately executed was always better than the finest plan hatched after several hours.

“Get ready to rotate on my word,” Song called out. “On the count of ten-”

Yet before she could begin counting there was a sound like a wooden wall being torn through upstairs and weapons were turned on the lift shaft even as the ram hit the door again and Cressida grunted with the effort of fighting it down. Only when silhouettes dropped down the shaft this time it was not corpses. Not, that catlike grace heralded much, much worse than that.

“Evening, lads and ladies,” Lord Locke roguishly grinned.

The devil in his short, rotund shell looked in a fine mood. And blood-spattered, which might explain the mood.

“Quite the pickle you are all in,” Lady Keys added, fiddling with her glasses.

No blood on her, but that was not necessarily for the best. The only thing worse than a devil was a hungry devil. There was a beat of silence. Tupoc and Expendable had drawn back, but not out of fear – they were positioning themselves to cover the rest of them long enough for muskets to be brought to bear before the devils struck. Could they win? Maybe, Song assessed, but they’d lose enough swords that breaking encirclement would be impossible.

She must negotiate, if it was at all possible.

“I told you thirteen is the worst luck,” Tristan muttered.

There would be time to strangle him later, Song reminded herself, if any of them lived through this.

“A pleasant evening to you,” Song evenly said. “I must admit your presence here is unexpected. May I inquire as to your intentions?”

“Why, my good rooklings, we have come to rescue you!” Lord Locke announced. “On the behalf of Lady Angharad Tredegar, who bargained for this siege to be lifted.”

“Welcome news,” Song replied, not entirely sure what proportion of those words was a lie.

“See, I told you my charms won her over,” Tupoc whispered to Expendable.

“Vuthakiwe,” the Malani mildly replied.

Song forced down a twitch of the lips. The direct translation of vuthakiwe was ‘Glare-drunk’, but mostly it was used to mean delirious. She made herself take her hands off her weapons, but it was mostly for show: she trusted Angharad, but hardly these devils. What had her friend bargained for their help, anyway? No, it didn’t matter. She would help Angharad put them down, if it came down to it.

“Oh, there is no need for thanks,” Lord Locke said, deftly ignoring there had been none. “It is the sacred duty of our office to act against this sort of cult.”

“Your office,” Tristan echoed, tone rising in question.

An invitation to gloat, which they naturally embraced without thinking twice. Song was not sure whether or not she imagined the appreciative glance from the devils at having offered them such a fine line to pounce on. He was, she mentally conceded, slowly earning his way out of strangulation.

“Why, my dears, we are of His Infernal Majesty’s own Office of Opposition,” Lady Keys said.

“The OoO, if you will,” Lord Locke happily added.

“I will not,” Song replied, in the tone of someone who had just been offended to her very core.

That they were be terrible murderous creatures casually threatening her she could live with, but this? Sometimes lines must be drawn.

“What is the duty of your office, anyhow?” Tupoc curiously asked. “I expect it is not eating children, as I was first taught.”

“We’ve already filled up on appetizers,” Lord Locke assured him.

“Our mandate is most simple indeed, young man,” Lady Keys said. “The Office of Opposition is to meet the enemies of His Infernal Majesty in the field and frustrate their plans. To foil and crimp and stymie-”

“-to thwart and forestall,” Lord Locke enthusiastically said. “To stump and baffle-”

“To bar and impede and, why, even bedevil,” Lady Keys mused. “In a word…”

“We oppose,” Lord Locke finished theatrically, twirling his mustache.

Tupoc, being a damned soul, saw fit to applaud this. Cressida and Tristan, being professionally ordained liars, followed suit after a beat. So did Izel, but that one Song suspected was just being nice about it. Another corpse-host dropped down the lift shaft and Song snapped a shot through his forehead, because she probably wouldn’t be able to get away with shooting anyone else.

“And if I may ask,” Song said, “what does this rescue involve?”

“Lifting the siege on your command,” Lady Keys said. “Though we are overdue a conversation with Phaedros Arkol, I think.”

“He holds command outside?” she asked.

“Indeed,” Lord Locke said. “Our Ecclesiast is most eager to get the thorn out of his god’s foot – a good stomping of his enemies was promised, I expect.”

Song breathed in sharply. Arkol, the Ecclesiast? It made some sense, and she doubted the devils would bother to lie if the man was right outside.

“You are sure Phaedros Arkol is the Ecclesiast?” she pressed.

Lady Keys clicked her tongue.

“Relief was bargained for, not a guessing game,” she said. “Shall you open the door, rooklings, or shall we?”

Song clenched her fists. She had no real leverage here, they all knew. But if Arkol was the Ecclesiast and he was out there, in range of her musket, then… No, the devils wanted him and foiling them might well see them turn on her command. Besides, Angharad must take priority. They could go after the Ecclesiast after reuniting with her, and if the opportunity passed then she could live with it. She was not here under contract and the Watch had a duty to Vesper but that duty did not mean throwing away lives on off-chances.

“Get ready,” she ordered the others. “Tupoc, Expendable, you have the vanguard. All of us will wheel left the moment the fighting begins. Do not stop until we turn the corner and have cover.”

The devils swaggered up to the door, which shook, and Song found Tristan’s eyes. She nodded and he pulled one bar, Izel pulling the other, before unlocking the door and wresting it open. The four lictors that’d been about to hammer a bench into the door charged into the room with startled shouts, the devils smoothly moving around them, and like that the fighting began.

Song ran one man through the belly and Tupoc’s candlesteel spearhead went into another’s skull before they could even drop the bench – Izel smashed one’s skull in through the helmet, rather impressively, and Expendable cleanly cut the last one’s throat out even as the lictor brought up his blade to parry the flicking spear. Shouting had erupted out in the hall and the blackcloaks shared a wary look. Flicking the blood off her jian, Song gave the order.

“Forward.”

After a beat, they charged out. Locke and Keys had not cleaned up the left side before bowling into the thick of the enemy numbers, so Tupoc was grazed with a shot even as he dropped into a roll. Expendable killed a musketman and a heartbeat later Song put a shot through the forehead of the woman next to him. The last was impaled by a jagged line of Gloam erupting from the palm of Maryam’s spirit-sister, which going by his scream was an ugly way to die.

And then, to her utter surprise, the rest of the hall to the left was an empty expanse.

“Run,” Song hissed, already beginning to reload. “Now.”

And run they did. A few shots whizzed past them, but the devils were keeping the enemy busy. Song slowed her stride, allowing the others to pass her, and risked a glance back. What she found there…

Old devils or not, Locke and Key had run into a thicket of readied muskets. They’d been shot and cut at, but all that’d accomplished was ripping up their shells and clothes until they ripped their way out of them – and then they had begun to move like devils no longer hiding what they were. Song only glimpsed red-strewn carapaces and revolting segmented legs as they went through the rebels, laughing and chittering and ripping out pieces of men to gobble up.

There must have been more than thirty men in that hall, moments ago, and now there were barely a third of that. The stone walls looked like they’d been painted with viscera, the hallway someone had dragged a piece of meat through razor blades. Gods, but not even the worst of men deserved such an end.

At the back of the failing formation, half of the men were already fleeing. Song saw the man the devils had named the Ecclesiast there, even in their terror the soldiers going around him. Phaedros Arkol was richly dressed, a blade at his hip, but nothing that deemed him to be the grand officiant of an evil god – save for the utter calm on his face as doom approached.

He raised a hand and Song could see the power flowing into him, the threads the color of graven earth and fresh blood, the white bone and sea-swept coral. She saw how they coalesced into his palm and he closed his fist with a snarl of effort. The corpses strewn across the hall closed on Locke and Keys with deceptive softness, like the opposite of a flower blooming, and in a heartbeat the pair were encased in prison of writhing death that clawed and bit at them.

Could he both hold them and save himself? The question burned at Song and before she could think twice she raised her musket, aimed the shot – only for a hand to come down on her shoulder. She nearly jumped out of her skin, but it was only Maryam. Maryam whose face was touched by fear.

“Song, we need to go, he’s about to-”

There was a great cracking noise, but in that same heartbeat Song realized it was not a sound at all. It did not echo, did not hurt the ear or the air. It was something in the fabric of the Material itself that had shattered, and she felt a swelling in the air that was like the most triumphant of laughs. The private archives shattered, the room crunched like a paper crane in a man’s grip, and the very palace shook around them.

The Hated One was out.

Song ran and did not look back.

—

For a while Angharad was forced to ponder whether it would be impolite to ask the spirit if he was lost, but after the third sudden turn through an empty room she finally understood what was happening. He was not taking random turns.

“You are sneaking us past the patrols,” she said.

Oduromai King, Asphodel’s own patron and the tutelary spirit of sailors and heroes, did not turn. Yet she felt the weight of his attention on her as if it were a physical gaze while they continued making their way through an empty servant dormitory.

“The Newborn cares nothing for the death of his pawns,” the spirit said. “He gains through every death, as his grand celebrant dedicated the night’s madness to his name.”

Worrying, considering that if the Thirteenth had sniffed out the plots correctly there would be battles fought all over Tratheke feeding deaths to the spirit in question.

“Parasite,” Angharad scorned. “Yet I would still know where you lead me, Oduromai King. I must find my comrades, which were last seen in the private archives.”

“They will find you,” the spirit dismissed. “Everything leads to the garden, Angharad Tredegar. That is where the knots of fate pull together.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Angharad turned a skeptical eye on the entity. She was Pereduri, so had been taught better than to put stock in spirits who prattled on about fate. There was no such thing, not outside the fancies of poets: Vesper was a test by the Sleeping God, and a test’s outcome could not be determined in advance. One must be able to stand or fall when meeting challenge.

When spirits spoke of destiny, mostly they meant their latest scheme.

“And what would those knots be, I wonder?” she asked.

The spirit’s attention grew heavier, but she turned an unimpressed look on him. If he was irked at questions, then he should have manifested by one of his faithful. She had no faith to offer anything calling itself a god, had not even before she became apprenticed to a guild whose trade was deicide.

“What is required to unmake the Newborn,” Oduromai said. “A challenge, a bane, a choice.”

They slipped out the back of the dormitory, onto a similarly empty hall. It worried Angharad that she had seen no servants throughout her wanderings. Yet surely not even the cult would have dared to commit such slaughter: perhaps the most hardened reprobates among them might have embraced such butchery, but she could not believe the cult’s rank and file would be willing to bloody their hands so horridly. No, they must have fled to some distant corner and remained holed up away from the fighting. Good, she thought. Best they did not risk themselves until the steel was back in the sheath.

It was the duty of nobles to protect servants, not the other way around.

“Whose choice?” Angharad asked, limping after the spirit’s back.

It had best not be her. She’d had choices enough for the night.

“The boy,” he replied. “Cleon Eirenos.”

Her steps stuttered and she shot him an incredulous look.

“What does Cleon have to do with this?” she asked.

“Everything,” Oduromai said. “He is the linchpin, Angharad Tredegar. The last contractor of the Odyssean twice over: the last deal it struck and the last contractor who has not been bound anew to the Newborn.”

She frowned, remembering how Lady Doukas had mentioned at the ceremony that Cleon had never before made a demand of the spirit they all worshipped.

“Because he’s not truly partaken in a ceremony before,” she slowly said. “He has not bought a death for advantage.”

Or rather, because the death he had finally asked for had yet to be delivered and until it had the bargain would not be complete.

“Is he truly so vital?” Angharad asked.

While she had not been deep in the confidence of the cult, nothing in the way Lord Cleon was treated during that ceremony had led her to believe he was considered an influential member. Or, in truth, all that respected by anyone other than the priests.

“He is important,” Oduromai said, “the way a loose strand in a weave is important. He is an opportunity. That is more than most men will ever be.”

She inclined her head in concession at that.

“Then it is careless of the cult to have so neglected him,” Angharad opined.

“Was he?” the spirit said. “You met a young lord hounded even under his own roof, whose closest confidants whispered in his ear of rites that would save him. Speak not of neglect but of his character.”

Angharad swallowed, for she had never even considered that… Lord Arkol had contacts among the valley nobles, she recalled. And Ambassador Gule was treated by Cleon like a distant but trusted mentor. Suddenly the boldness of Theofania Varochas seemed less the desperation of a young woman whose hand was forced by her family’s demands and more the measured gamble of someone who might have received private assurances. Angharad’s jaw clenched, for though Phaedros Arkol and Lord Gule might have been poisonous friends to Cleon could she truly claim to have been any better?

No. Even if one discounted that she had bedded his own mother under his roof, she could not. Another debt she must settle, if she could, and a first step towards that was ensuring some grasping spirit did not intend to murder him.

“And what is it you want of him, spirit?” she challenged.

“To make a hero’s choice,” Oduromai said.

“A vague answer,” Angharad said. “Kindly elaborate.”

This time the spirit did stop before turning towards her. Those eyes were liquid flame, too blue to be anything born of the world material, but the rest of him grew denser. As if by a trick of the light Oduromai’s bronze armor suddenly seemed… worn. The breastplate bitten at by salt and scratched by blades, the greaves dented and unpolished. Even the white cloth beneath seemed dirty, as if not quite washed, and the crown on his brow had grown thicker. Like it was half a helmet, not merely decoration.

More warrior than king or sailor, in that moment.

“You were given an answer,” Oduromai said. “Take it, for you are owed nothing more.”

“That is true,” Angharad conceded.

She gave the spirit a polite nod.

“My thanks for the aid, however temporary,” she said, then cleanly turned her heels and limped away.

“Enough.”

The word echoed, as if spoken in some great hall instead of a hallway, and Angharad felt weight press on her shoulders as if to force her to her knees. Without a word she turned, drawing her blade, and met the spirit’s furious face with cold disdain.