Chapter 77

Well, Tristan mused as he stood by the balcony’s edge and watched the colossal corpse-god climb up the side of the Collegium, his day had already been shot anyway.

At some point ‘worse’ became a relative term. Mind you, that monstrosity down there wasn’t the only god he’d have to look out for. Oduromai King had come back after the Hated One made his entrance, inevitable as flies on shit, and promptly soaked up the worship from the locals. Majordomo Timon had been moved to kneel and beg a blessing, even, which was disturbing coming from such a severe man.

Tristan knew he shouldn’t complain too much, since Oduromai popping up was the better part of why the loyalists had not immediately run when the dead god rose, but that god irked him. While he was quite fond of sailors since they drank too much and that made them easy to rob, he was rather less than taken with heroes – which mostly meant someone going around doing a popular form of violence – and as a rule even less an admirer of kings.

That made one strike in Oduromai’s favor and two against, suiting his natural instinct not to believe anything coming out of a god’s mouth. And he did not trust that thing even a fucking little bit.

“Now is the time,” Oduromai King announced. “You must reach Cleon Eirenos.”

Another cannonball hit the barricade, shattering an expensive writing desk, but Tristan had grown used enough to the bombardment not to flinch.

Asphodel’s patron was addressing a war council on the ragged end of things, having turned to the blackcloaks after stiffening the morale of his pawns with a few words. They made for a motley bunch: Song belonged there, standing pristinely uniformed despite her rising body count, and Angharad in her blood-spattered dress made some sense as well. The noblewoman was the one who knew Lord Cleon. Even Maryam, tottering on her feet as she was, could be justified as the only signifier at hand.

But that someone had seen it fit to bring him in was a sign of desperate times indeed.

Tupoc should have been in his place, but the Izcalli was instead currently… bolstering the ranks. He’d kicked and harangued the lictors and nobles who gave in to despair despite Oduromai’s words, mustering them to prepare a defense of the barricades defending either side of the stairs heading down to the once-garden. To his honor, the heavy-handed method did seem to be working more than not. He’d only had to execute one noble shouting about surrender.

How many lost, terrified souls had the Leopard Society man herded into fights they could not win? More than a few, Tristan would wager.

Given the situation, the rest of the blackcloaks had run back into the palace to fetch cannons. Izel had made the solid argument that the pieces currently used to hold the hallways against the cult might be best put to use against the Hated One instead and Lieutenant Phos had been too deep in shock to argue. Not that any of them had the authority to order such a redeployment, but in times of madness wearing a black cloak tended to get people listening to you.

“So you keep saying,” Maryam said. “But you have yet to explain why.”

Hooks popped out of her shoulder to nod in stern agreement. His eyes lingered on her, he couldn’t help it. The most unsettling thing about the soul-ghost was how very alive she seemed. She breathed and blinked and just now, as she caught him looking at her hair and wondering how it worked that it was catching light and casting shadow, she even threw a wink his way. He wiggled his eyebrows back.

He would, at some point, need to sit down with Maryam and ask her what in the Manes had actually happened tonight.

Angharad cleared her throat and launched into an explanation on Oduromai’s behalf that he only half-listened to – apparently Eirenos was a fault line in the mixing of the Hated One and the Odyssean – as Hooks slid back into Maryam only to slide out of her side and lean in towards him. He leaned in also, the two of them in their own aside.

“We don’t think it’s a bright idea to take that one to his word,” Hooks whispered.

We, was it? Another detail to file away.

“I never trust anyone who habitually wears white,” he told her. “A man who can afford to pay for that much laundry is doing something heinous.”

The ghost snorted. How did that work, without air or throat or throat chords? Fascinating. Would she be offended if he asked to touch her cheek?

“If we stick the Odyssean with the harpoon it’ll do more than tickle,” she said. “I don’t suppose you have any idea how to get it in him?”

His brow rose. She came to him for battle tactics? She might as well go to Tredegar for advice about lying.

“Stick it point up, oil the floor and hope the god trips onto it.”

Hooks looked distinctly unimpressed with him, such a deeply Khaimov face he could not help but grin. All right, he could buy the sister thing some. He wasn’t sold, but the coin pouch was out.

“We’ll probably have to line up men and charge him,” he then tacked on. “None of the cannons here are large enough to shoot it out even if we could somehow do that without blowing ourselves up.”

Maryam’s sister pouted. She’d been banking on using the cannons, he guessed.

“How sure are you of that?”

Yeah, she’d definitely had an idea along those lines.

“As a trained artilleryman, I can confidently state this,” he replied, puffing out his chest.

“You are, at best, a trained artilleryman’s lackey,” she replied.

“Attendant,” he bargained.

“Drudge,” Hooks offered.

“I’ll take drudge,” he mused. “I did end up doing a lot of scrubbing.”

He suspected that the byplay might have gone on for longer, had Maryam not elbowed him in the side. He turned a wounded look on her, but she discreetly gestured at Song – who looked about one more word away from messily murdering him. Ah. He muttered thanks to his dear and faithful friend under his breath.

“Neither shot nor steel will slay the Newborn,” Oduromai told them. “Not as he now is. First my gift must be brought to Cleon Eirenos.”

Oh, a god giving a gift. Good, because that always ended well.

Tristan spared a look for where Angharad’s once-host was supposedly holed up. With most of the garden gone the way of the world – downwards, sharply – the wild expanse of flowers and trees had been pared down to a dozen lines of crumbling earth and plants atop the long metal skeleton that had once held in place the glass of the Collegium. Small paths surrounded by the void, slapped away at by the wind.

To the left of the balcony was the lantern pavilion, slender arches under wooden grid covered in greenery. Only a single artillery piece peeked out of cover, a nasty organ gun aimed at the hanging path. There were only a few men left there, though, for the coup had gone on the offensive. The traitor lictors and their retinue allies, bold men all, had set out along the hanging paths on either side of the pavilion and were making their way towards the balcony in single file lines. Some fools were even dragging a small cannon along, a fat-bellied bombard.

Tristan considered how a man might get to that pavilion and the answers was that they couldn’t: you would have to run down a straight strip of earth into a waiting organ gun, while the advancing soldiers on either side could turn muskets on you at will. And there were still a few soldiers with the nobles in that pavilion, who would be waiting with powder and steel for anyone fool enough to make it past the organ gun to… what, offer Cleon Eirenos a handshake? Madness.

Worse yet for their prospects of making it through the night, to the right of the balcony where two thirds of some musical hall remained standing – the back having collapsed along with most the roof – from the windows peeked out half a dozen cannons that were being aimed at their balcony even now. Soldiers streamed out of the music hall in lines as well, and they’d be approaching under cover of their cannons. It was only a matter of time until this position was stormed.

As far as Tristan was concerned the only sane thing to do was retreat into the palace, bait the Hated One into narrow halls and try to stick the damn god with the harpoon. Even if they couldn’t kill it, wounding it badly enough might force it to retreat. Which in turn would let them retreat, and pass this whole mess on to those qualified to quell it. That was the hope, anyway. Oduromai seemed to be trying to sell them on the notion that it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

It would, sadly, be too fucking convenient for the god to be lying.

“-suicide,” Song flatly said. “It is a shooting gallery funneled straight into a waiting gun. No one could attempt that and live, it is not a matter of skill.”

Ah, finally sense appeared. Tristan had been hoping that pompous god would finally earn a standard Ren tirade, he intended to sit back and enjoy when she gathered a little steam and properly ripped into him.

“He can make it,” the god said, gesturing… Tristan’s way?

The thief looked behind him, finding only wall, then turned a skeptical look on the entity. Could a god go senile? Surely not, else Fortuna would have by now. Mind you, if she already had that would explain at lot. More importantly, Oduromai was pointing in his direction but not at him exactly. Could the god not see him properly?

“You might have him confused with Angharad,” Maryam said, then a beat passed and she reluctantly added, “or Tupoc.”

Tredegar, he saw, looked rather flattered by the implicit endorsement of her capacity to walk into certain death and achieving some modicum of objective in the process.

“He alone of you can make it to the lynchpin,” Oduromai said.

Gesturing more at Tristan’s left than at him as he did. This was getting rather ridiculous, and in multiple ways.

“And why would that be?” Tristan bluntly asked.

“Because you are a high priest,” the god said.

The god’s gaze had finally moved directly on him. Huh. He moved half a step to the side and the god’s burning blue gaze did not so much a twitch. A heartbeat later the words registered and Tristan shot Oduromai an incredulous look. As far as games went, he’d grant this one it wasn’t an angle anyone had tried to work on him before.

Because it was a bad, stupid angle.

“Come now,” Tristan smiled pleasantly. “There’s no call get insulting – I work to rob people, I’ll have you know. I don’t just put on robes and pass a collections plate, there’s skill involved.”

He sneered. As if he’d ever run so low on troubles he’d thought to get religion involved.

“You are your Lady’s celebrant,” Oduromai said, “and her shrine. Folly, though there is power in it.”

Fortuna was standing by him instantly, arms folded as she scowled at the other god. Who saw her fine, but the way his gaze shifted. She still wore her Asphodelian garb, though the amount of jewelry dripping off her had near doubled and was now quite ostentatious.

“Look, I know it’s bad form to put so many eggs in the same basket but I wasn’t exactly swimming in options when I found him,” Fortuna said, sounding defensive. “And it’s worked out fine!”

“My thanks for the stirring defense,” Tristan drily said.

Then he blinked at the realization that she hadn’t denied any of it.

“Wait, you mean he’s right?”

Fortuna cleared her throat, looking away.

“It may have slipped my mind to mention a few details about the nature of our bond,” she vaguely replied.

Slipped her mind. The damn weasel.

“A priest is one thing,” Tristan said jabbing a finger at her, “and I’ll swallow being the high priest of this saddest of faiths by virtue of default-”

“Hey,” Fortuna protested. “As my leading celebrant, if my rites are meager it is arguably your-”

“But a shrine?” he pushed through. “How does that even work?”

“The inside of your head is rather roomy,” she replied without batting an eye. “Lots of empty space.”

“I ought to charge you rent,” he savagely replied.

The goddess shot him an incredulous look.

“What do you think our contract is?”

“Please, I pay for every use,” he challenged. “I ought to get a discount on the luck, at the very least, maybe even-”

He was interrupted by Song clearing her throat. He turned to her with a frown, and she gestured at the rest of those present. His captain looked, he found with dawning horror, faintly embarrassed of him. And the others were standing there staring at him with expressions that ranged from glee to disbelief. Wait, not just him: Fortuna as well.

“Oh, Manes,” he croaked. “Fortuna, did you manifest so everyone would hear?”

“It would have been rude to do otherwise,” she self-righteously replied.

“I didn’t even know you could do that,” he hissed.

“Neither did I,” she replied, sounding altogether too pleased with herself.

“It must be you,” Oduromai repeated.

The god’s voice was cold water poured on everything else.

“Look, I understand apparently I’m some sort of priest,” Tristan said, hands raised. “But you have me all wrong. I’m not some Orthodoxy bootlick who got in good with a god and got a trick out of it. I cannot draw on her at all.”

He then paused, turning a wary look on Fortuna. Who cleared her throat and then whistled, a veritable buffet of half-hearted nonanswer.

“You already do,” Oduromai said. “Lady Luck’s officiant, drawing in fortune and misfortune. How many times has disaster come to find you, have miracles knocked at your door? You are a snare for odds.”

It just figured, Tristan grimly thought, that even Fortuna’s blessings would involve misfortune tanning his hide. He jutted a thumb at the proposed cause of action, a narrow causeway over the void promising a hundred different demises, and he scowled.

“Luck won’t get me through that,” he said. “My contract’s not some sort of… invincible instrument, it’s a pretty decent parlor trick. I am absolutely going to get shot and killed if I run down that line.”

“It’s true,” Maryam contributed. “I’ve seen it at work and it only can only get him out of danger by putting him in danger.”

“It must be you,” Oduromai King insisted, ignoring her outright.

Bad idea, that. She’d already shown she was willing to kill one god tonight, why would the old boy assume she’d stop at a second? It really was quite lovely how you could rely on Maryam Khaimov to hatchet someone’s kneecap no matter who it belonged to.

“I think I know what he means,” Fortuna said.

He squinted at her.

“It’s the same reason he’s not really seeing me, isn’t it?””

The patron god of Asphodel stirred angrily.

“I see you, priest,” he spat. “It is what I see that confuses the eye.”

“It’s because you’re my shrine, I think,” Fortuna said. “Gods too young or lost will think you’re inanimate.”

“Are you saying your squatting in my soul serves as camouflage?” he asked, somewhat warming to the notion.

“Which might save him from the Newborn’s attentions,” Song’s voice coldly cut in, “but will do nothing to prevent his being shot. Desist in this notion, Oduromai King.”

“We could do it,” Fortuna whispered in his ear.

“If I listened every time you say that,” Tristan replied just as quietly, “I would have a kingdom’s worth of debts.”

“I told you,” she burst out. “You don’t use our contract as much as you used to. You don’t use it like you could.”

He frowned at her.

“Tristan?”

Angharad’s voice. He turned to find her gaze wondering. She could not see Fortuna anymore, he thought, or hear her. In this particular case, thank the gods. He’d seen where she was looking and the last thing the Lady of Long Odds needed was encouragement to dress more showily. A look at the others confirmed it was the same for all but Song.

“Excuse us a moment,” he said, already walking away. “I must convene with… higher powers.”

It felt absurd to walk away to get privacy with an invisible entity, but needs must. They had no time to waste, not with the Hated One already halfway up the Collegium’s brass skeleton.

“What do you mean, ‘use it like I could’?” he asked.

“You always need to control everything,” Fortuna said. “That’s now what it’s meant for.”

“It’s what it’s good for,” he frowned. “Measured gambles when the situation calls for it.”

Turning one possible death into another he was more capable of dealing with.

“That’s not what I am,” she hissed. “I can’t – it’s not my nature, Tristan. I cannot help you if you do not lean towards me, no matter how closely we are bound.”

His eyes narrowed.

“But you could,” he slowly said. “If I took on long odds. Because it would be more of you, and you could…”

“Give you more,” Fortuna said. “You can take more, you’re my celebrant.”

“That sounds a lot like becoming a Saint,” he told her.

“Only if we go all the way,” she said. “We won’t.”

His fists clenched as he weighed up the Thirteenth’s chances. They could still retreat into the palace, try to make a stand there, but Oduromai had said it would be pointless. That god had an angle, but then Tristan had a goddess of his own.

“Do you think the harpoon can kill him?” he asked. “How he is right now, I mean.”

He did not need to say who. Fortuna shook her head.

“He’s made of death,” she said. “He’s… you can’t drown water. His shape is too strong, you need to break it first.”

And Oduromai had promised that Cleon Eirenos was the key to that. Fuck. He made himself look at it cold, without fear holding the reins. They couldn’t escape the palace even if they retreated into it: the rebels held the lifts and the prison layer was scattered all over the city, no longer something they could traverse. On the other hand, with the Collegium being shattered and the rampant god seen by the entire city the fighting at Fort Archelean should have stopped. It’d be madness for the magnates to keep trying to storm those walls with a death-clad god on the loose.

If Song’s command could survive the hour, then the lictors down there would turn towards the palace and sweep out the rebels now that they could afford to take men away from their walls. But they had to last that hour first, and they wouldn’t if the Hated One got their hands on them. Which meant they either had to hide long enough – unlikely – or kill him.

And to kill him Tristan must do this foolish, foolish thing the patron god of Asphodel had demanded of him.

“Fuck,” he said, aloud this time.

“That’s the spirit,” Fortuna cheered.

They walked back to the others, to find Oduromai most gratifyingly being on the receiving end of the Song Ren treatment.

“-he could get there, then how would he come back alive after?” she sharply said. “You are asking him to die.”

“I will whisk him away, once he has delivered my words,” Oduromai said.

“Then why not deliver them yourself?” Song challenged.

“’Because he can’t,” Tristan said.

That got their attention.

“Can you, Honored Elder?” he drawled. “You make it sound like a favor you’d get me out, but it wouldn’t be. See, I can’t help but notice you came late to this party. And that you’re being light on giving us anything but orders.”

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The god only looked at him.

“This palace is still a dead zone for aether,” Tristan told the others. “Only some small part of him is here, it’s why he can’t do much. He’d have the power to whisk me away this one time, because I would be feeding him that power by doing something as stupidly heroic as charging towards an enemy position all on my own.”

“Reach the end of the road,” Oduromai said, “and leap. I will return you to the embrace of your friends.”

Gods, Tristan thought in disdain. They all claimed to be the most powerful and important thing to ever exist, until they actually needed to do something with that supposed power.

“You’re considering this,” Song said, staring at him.

She sounded appalled. Wisely so.

“I had a talk with my goddess,” Tristan said. “It’s… less foolish than you might think.”

A pause.

“But still rather foolish.”

“You don’t have to do this,” she seriously said.

“I think it’s the only way we won’t end up eaten by a hungry god in the next quarter hour,” Tristan honestly said. “Which is somewhat improving my tolerance for foolishness.”

Oduromai, indifferent to their conversation, approached.

“I will give you my words to carry, thief,” he said, and… reached inside his own throat?

Manes, Tristan thought with disgust as the god did something down there and ripped out what looked like a small white marble. He offered it to Tristan, who reluctantly took it. He’d half expected it to be warm, but it was cool as air and almost as light.

“I just need to get this to Cleon Eirenos?” he asked.

The god silently nodded. Tristan fixed the face in his mind from the one time he’d met the man. Young, athletic, ambitions of a mustache. He should be able to recognize Cleon Eirenos, if he got that far.

“That was not all his words,” Song noted. “He kept a sentence’s worth back.”

The entity looked rather irritated, which warmed the cockles of Tristan’s heart. He pocketed the marble, then straightened his cloak.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose I’ll be off then.”

Face unreadable, he offered Song his arm to clasp.

“I don’t think so,” Maryam said, and almost bowled him over with a hug.

He sagged in her embrace, wrapping an arm around her back, and when he saw Song had frozen he sighed and nodded. Hesitantly, she stepped in and leaned close while only some of their body touched – until Maryam dragged her in. Angharad was hovering behind them, visibly unsure, until he gestured for her to come as well. Most courteously, she avoided contact save for patting his shoulder.

“It is a brave thing you’re doing,” Angharad quietly said.

“Don’t turn the knife,” he pleaded.

That got a smile out of her, strangely enough.

“The path narrows.”

Oduromai’s words were not quite a warning, but it did end this whole episode. Save for Maryam, who turned to glare at the god.

“If you don’t whisk him back when he’s done,” she began.

Her sister slid out of her shoulder, teeth bared.

“We know things,” Hooks said. “And will teach you them.”

“Nor will they stand alone,” Angharad calmly added. “You will be held to your word.”

“Fully,” Song Ren agreed. “Even if takes twenty years and a Muster to dig you out.”

“Enough of that,” Tristan croaked, embarrassed.

His pistol he slipped to Maryam, and his knife as well. They would be more danger than help for what was to come. He patted her, pressed a kiss against her temple and hastened down the stairs before the embarrassment could catch up. The grounds immediately around the palace had solid metal beneath them so a thin slice of garden remained, on which a handful lictors steadying their barricade were busying themselves. They hardly spared him a glance until he walked past their works.

One of them hailed him but he ignored the man, continuing to the edge of the hanging grounds. Turning to head at the foot of the balcony, where a line of earth barely half a street wide continued all the way to the distant pavilion. Tristan rolled his shoulder, limbered his feet and rather wished he hadn’t gotten beaten with a stick earlier.

“All right,” he forced out. “How do we do this?”

Fortuna leaned forward, chin on his shoulder, golden curls brushing against his neck.

“Pray,” she said. “To me.”

“What for?” he asked.

“That’s for you to choose,” Fortuna said, and she was gone.

The thief breathed in and let it out as the last of the false warmth from her touch faded. Watched the path ahead of him, the many deaths waiting there. A prayer, huh. He’d always thought of priesthood as an office, a racket – decent folk could do it, but most were in it for the pay and the clout. It had not occurred to him there could be something intimate about it, the relationship between you and your god. Something genuine instead of… transactional.

So Tristan cast aside all thought of the grand phrases he had heard in the halls of the Orthodoxy, of the prayers bedecked in gold and incense. He spoke, instead, to his oldest and dearest companion.

“O Lady of Longs Odds,” Tristan Abrascal prayed in a whisper. “I am a fool on a fool’s errand, so smile down on this night’s work. Bless either my game or my grave, for there is no middle ground.”

He heard her laugh then, that beautiful golden sound, and could have sworn a kiss was pressed into his hair.

“Go,” the Lady of Long Odds whispered into his ear.

And Tristan went.

The first step felt like a leap, boots on the remains of a flowerbed. A straight line ahead of him, into the belly of the beast. The jaws of death on both sides, waiting to close. Tristan ran, ran into doom’s embrace. They didn’t see him at first. Ten feet he went before the soldiers noticed him running, and it took longer for them to think him serious. At twenty feet one finally raised his musket to take the shot and the very act was like a twitch against his neck.