Chapter Sixteen #2
you not follow my instructions? Did you disobey me again?”
“No!
No, no, sorry, no! I don’t—” He knew stammering would only make it worse. He
gathered himself, his chest light and fluttery. “I don’t understand. Why are
you asking? I did what you specified, I followed all the instructions, I was
very diligent. I made it through the Charnel, th-through
the eastern cliffs, the dunes. Wasn’t that the purpose? Didn’t you want me
here?”
Berith
breathed, his nostrils flaring.
A
presence came to his shoulder. Zaria stood with her poleaxe held out towards
the thralls, glaring up at Berith with a curled lip.
“Zaria,”
he said, quietly. “Please don’t—”
“Shut
up.”
“Z.”
She
began to bare her teeth.
His
uncle turned his attention to the hyena, as if only noticing her now. “Who are
you?”
“The
cunt who figured you out.”
Berith
grimaced, twisting the necrotic scars. “Who is this, Isaac?”
“Oi,
cockwipe,” Zaria said. “You’ll talk to me, instead.”
“Z!”
Isaac hissed.
“Where’s
your guts, squire? Ain’t this what you wanted?”
Berith
made a noise in his throat. “A pirate, then. I should’ve expected
as much, from one of the savage races. You people pollute these sands
more than the Diet. I suppose, as well, this explains why a crew of them were
blowing up the necropolis.” He turned to his nephew. “Have you made an alliance
with this brigand, this—this—” He waved a robed arm. “This wastrel? This common
thug? Is this what you do without my supervision?”
Isaac’s
gaze stumbled around the room, roaming from his uncle to the thralls to the
squamous grates of the floor. “I—I had to. She saved my life, in the Charnel.
I’m sorry if she lacks in manners, but I assure you she was—I mean, she has
been very . . . understanding to me, of my faults.
She’s very nice. Perhaps I was too acquiescent—”
“Isaac,”
Zaria said. “Don’t say you’re sorry. You’re not fuckin’ sorry.”
“I have
to explain—”
“You
don’t gotta explain shit.” She jabbed her polearm. “He does.”
The
layers of bone on Berith’s chest began to twist and writhe, forming the crooked
paw of a necrotic sigil. “You will address me with respect, pirate.”
“Don’t
got any for you.”
“You’ll
find that a grievous mistake.”
Zaria
spat on the floor.
Around
them, the thralls were spreading into a fan, their palms laced with ice and
fire. The light of their sigils reflected on the machinery above.
“To answer
your query,” Zaria said. “Your nephew, here, did follow your instruction. He
went marching straight through the sand, and he charred off a whole hide o’
wyrms on the way into death, as well as a skimmer of throatcuts.
He did everything you wanted, except for perishing of thirst. I had to save him
from that.”
There
was a silence.
“Oh,
sure,” Zaria continued. “Don’t trip over yourself, thankin’
me for it.”
Something
compelled Isaac to raise his gaze. When he did, he saw a mixture of expressions
in his uncle’s face.
Lingering
surprise.
Confusion.
Apprehension.
Fear.
His
uncle was afraid of him. He had the face of someone caught in the middle of a
crime. Berith, the Bone Hunter, a college instructor, a man who had pioneered
the reacclimation of undead thralls, the man who had scoured the Diet of rogue
necrotics, was watching his own nephew like violence had become inevitable.
Isaac
felt a knife piercing through his heart.
“Say it
aloud, then,” Zaria said. “You tried to kill your kin. You told him to walk
through a pit of dragons, and, for good measure, you gave him bad direction to
water, all to make his final days a long, miserable crawl. I’ve seen it done to
folk, out here. A marooned pirate begs for the sword. The waste will eat you
alive.”
Berith
did not reply.
The
silence dragged and rolled.
Zaria
peeled her lip. “You may have whipped him into thinking better of you, but I
had you pegged from the start, you gutless coward.”
Berith
clenched his fists. His blue eyes glowed. Below him, in ranks and files, his
thralls raised their arms. Thirty spears of ice and fire aimed themselves at
Zaria. Above, more of the glass coffins shattered, entire starfields of bone
flitting through the air until they were posed motionlessly above him, held in
wait like bolts in a crossbow.
“I am
talking to my nephew,” Berith said, “not some filthy, delusional marauder who
thinks she has any right to lecture me on morality. Speak another word, and it
will be your last.”
Isaac
stepped in front of Zaria, shielding her with his body.
Berith’s
eyes continued to glow. “Get out of the way, Isaac.”
He did
not move.
“Get
out of the way!”
He
remained in place. His heart was pounding, his palms were slick with sweat, and
he could already feel the memory of the cane burning across his back.
Berith
sneered. “Why are you defending this cutthroat? She’s a murderer! A common
thief!”
Isaac
did not answer. He knew his voice would crack. It always did, whenever he spoke
in defiance. A weak reply was worse than none. Most of all, he did not want
Zaria to see it happen.
“What
have you been doing behind my back, Isaac? Is this another one of your little
rebellions? Another asinine fantasy?”
His
hands were shaking. After all he had done, they still shook.
He was
still weak.
He
thought he had changed.
“Let me
guess,” Berith said. “She ambushed you, out in the dunes. Never mind how some
illiterate beastwoman managed to get the better of you, but she did, and she
stuck a knife in your neck, and she made you spill the Diet’s secrets. You told
her what you were doing, and I imagine she stabbed half her friends to death,
on the spot, just for the chance to steal the treasure. Am I right?”
“No,”
Isaac said. “There was not—it was my fault—”
“I’m
right, aren’t I?”
“No!”
“You
betrayed your mission! You let these pirates plunder the tomb!”
“No.
No! That’s not—”
“How
many Diet safehouses are in danger because of you, Isaac? Did you betray the
trust of the nine kingdoms just to save your own neck?” The bald necromancer
snorted in disbelief. “You had my letter. You stupid boy, they would’ve just
taken you hostage. They would have sold you for ransom. You could’ve kept your
mouth shut!”
“That’s
not how it happened!” Isaac shouted. “She—she saved my life! I would’ve been
dead without her! She’s—” He turned his head, just
enough to glimpse her from the corner of his vision. It was enough to steady
his voice. “She’s helping me. I trust her.”
“Oh,
truly?” Berith said. “Have you grown fond of her? Is that it? Forgiven her for
sticking a knife to your throat?” His laugh was angry and hollow. “You were
always like this. Always fawning over every visitor I brought to the tower.
Practically begging all your instructors for attention, like some sniveling
dog. It was embarrassing.” The bones above his head shook in the air.
“Of course you’ve grown attached to the first mongrel that showed you the
slightest kindness. I suppose you’re just too weak to help yourself.”
For a
moment, Isaac was so overcome with fear and guilt and rage that he stood
quietly, surrounded by the machinery of death, completely unable to offer a
retort. The old instincts were worming through his
thoughts, the ones that always forced him to nod and agree and admit every
accusation, because it would always end the lecture faster.
Zaria
nudged him from behind.
His
heart quickened.
His
fists clenched into balls.
“Is it
true?” Isaac asked, stepping forward. It was taking all of his strength not to
lose his voice in fear. “Did you trick me into walking through a nest of
wyrms?”
Berith’s
glowing eyes pierced into him.
Slowly,
making the movements deliberate and obvious, Isaac adopted the first mnemonic
position for a fireball.
“Watch
your hands, boy.”
He did
not drop his stance.
His
uncle’s eyes never left his face. “Yes. It’s true. I knew your knowledge of
geography was lacking. That was by design. You were supposed to die in the
desert. You were never meant to make it this far.”
He
wanted his next reply to be loud, angry. He wanted his voice to boom in
defiance. Instead, it was almost a whisper. “Why?”
Berith
stayed silent, the red stripes of the standard billowing behind him.
Isaac
adopted the second mnemonic position. Flames began to trickle from his palms,
exceeding the weakened fire of every thrall before him.
“Why?”
he shouted.
“I
could not bear to see your corpse,” Berith said.
Isaac
almost lost his stance.
“I
could’ve done it a number of ways,” his uncle continued. “I could have
sabotaged the wax symbol on the letter, tricking the shibboleth into
immolation. I could have poisoned your food. I could have weakened your ropes,
filled your vials with explosive reagents. My preferred method, if I had one,
would have been to sabotage the sigils on your scrolls, causing the catalyst to
backfire. I had many options.”
Isaac
felt suddenly, inexplicably, like he was living a nightmare, like he had never
woken from his sleep in the bathhouse, and now he was trapped in a false
reality, one that was cruel, endless, and singularly malevolent.
“But I
couldn’t. . . .”
Berith
clenched his fists. The bones in the air shook above his head, like leaves on a
tree.
“But I
knew I wouldn’t be able to look at your body, when I entered the tomb. It hurt
me to think of you, to think of my duty, to imagine you twisted, crumpled,
riddled with maggots, consumed by necrotic decay. Every time I pictured it, the
image would—” His breath came through gritted teeth. “It would hurt me. It kept
hurting me. It nearly broke my resolve.”
Zaria
placed a hand on Isaac’s shoulder.
“So,” the
Bone Hunter said, “I arranged your death to occur somewhere else, out of sight.
I hoped the wyrms would swallow you whole. I hoped the dunes would cover your
remains. I hoped that I would never have to see your body, because, truthfully,
what I was doing was already the worst regret of my life, and ignorance