Chapter Seventeen #4
whole bloodline, far as I’m concerned.”
He took
a deep breath. “Z. The deal’s off.”
She
blinked down at him. “What?”
“Listen—”
“You
mean the deal ‘tween you and me?”
“Yes.”
She
frowned. “Shut the fuck up, squire.”
“Neither
of us are going to get the treasure,” Isaac said, firmly. “The only way we were
ever hauling it out of here was through the help of the Diet, and, clearly,
they’re not going to let us have it. They’re going to send assassins after me.
I’m going to be a fugitive for the rest of my life. You will be, too, if you
stay here with me.”
She
glanced back at the shattered machinery, whiskers twitching.
“You
should leave,” he said. “Go somewhere else, before it’s too late. Things are
going to get very dangerous.”
“Still being
hunted, aren’t I?” Zaria blew out a tired breath. “Where am I supposed to go?
Nowhere to hide out in them dunes. It’s a death sentence up there as much as
here.”
She
tilted her axe at him.
“What
are you doing, actually? You understand this mission was a fraud, don’t you?
You got no obligations to it.” She glared at his father. “It was wrong, what
happened to you.”
The
skull slithered back, the central mass deflating towards the floor.
“I
know,” Isaac said. “This is my decision. I’m not leaving. I’m going to make
sure no one ever claims what’s in this tomb. I’ll make sure this skeleton never
walks again. And . . . I’ll kill my uncle, if it comes to it.” He glanced at
the mass of bones behind him. “I have no idea what I’ll do after that, but I
can’t let the indecision stop me from doing what’s right.”
She
tried to laugh, but it was hollow, breathless. Her ears were twitching.
“You
should leave,” he said. “You already have a target on your back. There’s no
reason to paint another.”
“Does
that mean you don’t want to be my squire no more?”
“I
never was.”
“Oh,
aye? What’s next? Gonna tell me rain ain’t wet? That flowers ain’t pretty, and
mead ain’t sweet? I’d rather shave myself bald.”
“Zaria—”
“You
and I,” she said, jovially. “Squire and knight, fire and fur, robes and steel.
Ain’t been a better pairing since cocks and cunts.”
“By the
gods,” Isaac said, “you are just exhausting.”
She
managed to laugh this time.
“Let me
be clear,” he said. “I have not enjoyed your presence. I have been subjected
to it.” He began to mimic the rough tilt of her voice. “‘Oh, squire, tell me of
your childhood. Squire, fetch my rations. Squire, heal my wounds. Squire!
Squire! Squire!’”
She
slapped the pommel of her axe to the floor, grinning wide.
“Look,”
Isaac said. “I—” He stopped, meeting her gaze. “I’m very glad I met you, and
not just because I would’ve died, otherwise. It was, without a doubt, the best
thing that’s ever happened to me.” He paused. “But I. . . .”
She
watched him, silent.
“I want
you to stay,” he said. “I would very much like your help. But I won’t ask you
to. Leaving is your best choice.”
She
looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes roamed above
his shoulder, over the ruins of the extraction chamber, coasting her vision up
and across the wings of the colossal pelvis. She looked forward again, watching
the squirming wall of corpses that was his father. Finally, she looked at the
open bronze doors.
Her axe
glinted in the light.
“Squire,”
Zaria said. “Can I be honest with you?”
“You
can call me a different name, first.”
“You’ve
always reminded me of my little brother. We called him Lem. Little Lem.”
Isaac
looked down at his tattered robes. He had lost a considerable amount of weight
since the start of his journey. “In a good way?”
She
quirked a smile. “He was a feisty little cunt.”
Isaac
cleared his throat.
“Not my
real brother, mind. Just another urchin my father let in off the street. He was
human—like you. Had dartin’ little eyes. Must’ve been sick as a babe ‘cause
half his face was yellow and sunken, like a dropped apple. He never spoke a
word, and none of us were sure if he even could. Since he wouldn’t give a name,
he was Lemon, or Lem, on account of his face. He didn’t like it much.”
She scratched
her chin, gazing into the floor.
“I was
the oldest, which meant I was in charge of keeping all the young beasts fed and
clothed and not pinched by the guard. I’d make rounds, roaming around the usual
haunts. Out them all, Lem was the hardest to find. You would not see a hair of
him if he didn’t want you to. Sometimes, I’d catch him hiding out in the
rafters above the shop, and he’d hardly look different than the rats.
“Anyway,
with Lem, you know, it was like feeding a stray dog. He’d look at you real
mean-like, nab it from your hands, and scamper back off to the shadows. Always
acted like I was about to slit his throat, like he’d got no earthly idea what
to make of kindness.”
She
looked at Isaac. He felt an urge to glance away.
“Still,
rain or shine, I’d track that little shite down and give him some bread. I’d
often have to haul him over to a sawbones to fix some scrapes from a fight.
Once, I had to pin him and shave his head for the lice, and I’ve never had such
a vicious struggle from another creature. Nothing would ever change with him.
Neither of us were droppin’ our stubbornness toward each other, and I never
once got a word of thanks. But, hey, he stayed alive. That’s what counts.
“Except,
one day, no different than the others, I’m walking through a back alley, and I
see Lem waitin’ for me. This was my own secret route, so I knew right away he
must’ve followed me. The second I lay eyes on him, he rushes forward, thrusts
something in my hand, hugs me tight ‘round the waist, and disappears down the
alley. Fast as a blink.
“I open
my hand, and there was this little flower sitting inside. It was glowing. Real
pretty. Some magic plant, probably from a garden in the mage district. Not
something he’d come by on accident.”
She
opened her hand, staring into the palm.
“Lem
was never quite normal, after that, but I’d catch him playing games with the
other kids, and he also finally went to chippin’ in
for all the taxes, and, god above, that little cunt could earn coin better than
the rest of us. He even started comin’ out with me, on the rounds to check the
other kids. Once he trusted my intention, he was as bold as you like. He still
never talked, but I kept chattin’ with him, all the same.”
She
snorted.
“Oh, he
hated me teasing him. Course, that just meant I
had to keep doing it. Every once in a moon, I’d get him to smile.”
She
looked his way for a moment. Her eyes were far away.
“When
you live a life like I do, you make a lot of excuses for it. It’s the way of
the world. It’s self-defense. You got no choice. And that’s all true, but it
never helped me sleep at night. I’d get to thinking about—well, what was I
doing being alive? What kind of value was I adding to the world? If I was to
die, then and there, could anyone really say it was such a bad thing?”
Her
fingers tapped against the haft of her weapon.
“I
dunno,” Zaria said. “I lost that flower, when my father sold me away. Still,
when I had it, I’d look at it some nights, watching it glow, seein’ the way it never rotted, and I’d get this feeling in
my chest, this sorta certainty that, if someone got in my face and called me a
thief and asked what good I’d ever done for anybody, I could just point right
at that flower. I could say there was this human boy named Lem, and he’d been
kicked around all his life, and I was the first person who’d ever made him happy.”
She
glanced at his father. The bones had all rested still, like a mass grave hung
up on a wall.
“Still
don’t know what I want to do with my life, now that I’m not a pirate. But,
after thinkin’ on it a while, I do know one thing. I want that feeling back
again. I want to have something that I can point to and be proud of. I want
some proof my life actually made a good difference in the world.”
Isaac
waited for a moment. “So . . . ?”
“So,”
Zaria said, hefting her axe, “let’s get going already. Your uncle’s gaining a
lead on us.”
Something
odd happened to him. He felt his face teem with a blush, which travelled down
to his chest and stomach, oscillating between a burning heat and numbing
shiver. His knees began to feel weak, and his heart pounded in his chest. It
was the first time in his life he had ever felt this way. The longer he watched
her, the worse the feeling grew.
Outwardly,
he nodded, doing his best to clamp down on his smile. He turned back to the
mound of bones. “Father?”
The
skull stalk reared back, as if surprised. Many arms pointed to the open bronze
doors.
“I’m
not leaving,” Isaac said.
The
skull bent down close to him, enough that he could see the cracks in its empty
orbitals, the subtle calcification of the frontal plate. “Isaac.”
“I’m
not leaving.”
His
mind was still a chaos of emotion. There was betrayal, there was fear, there
were aching wounds and seeded doubts. He knew he would never lose the feelings
entirely. They were the kind that would follow him for the rest of his life.
But, now, he felt ready to face those emotions, the same way he had faced every
single threat that had crossed his path. He glanced back at Zaria, and her
response was a single nod. He knew, in his heart, he needed to see nothing
else.
He was
ready.
“We’re
going to stop him,” Isaac said.
The jaw
of the skull lowered, as if it would try to speak. After a moment, it closed
its skinless mouth, giving only a single nod.
“Right,”
he said. “It won’t be easy. Berith is a necromancer, and he’s specialized in
parasitics. I’ve counted at least two dozen thralls still under his command. If
we can—”
“Hold
on,” Zaria said. “Need to clear something.”
The
hyena stepped toward the mound of bodies. She reached out a hand, cupped it to
Isaac’s chest, and pushed him backwards. She did not start speaking until she
was standing squarely between him and his father.
“Listen
here, you sack of shite.”
The
ocean of bones flinched.
“Your
son may be trusting you,” she said, “but I’m keepin’ my eye open. If I smell
any hint of treachery, if you so much as part a single hair on his head, then
I’ll be sucking the marrow from your bones. Do we understand each other?”
The
skull nodded very fast. Below it, several arms held their palms to the ceiling,
as if being robbed at knifepoint.
“Good.
That being said. . . .” She cleared her throat. “I, uh—I’m sorry for fucking
your son. In front of you, I mean.”
“Zaria!”
“What?
He’s been watching us since we got here. He’s seen everything we’ve done. Might
need to clear our union with your sire, don’t you think?”
On the
floor, the bones quickly tumbled into words.
I DID
NOT WATCH SEX
“Isaac.”
“He
didn’t watch,” he explained.
“Didn’t
you?” Zaria asked.
NO
The
skull curled up into the air, the vertebral stalk bending like a reed. Isaac
could’ve sworn the bones looked offended.
I
FOLLOWED
I
LISTENED
WHEN HE
LICKED I LEFT
“Oh,
gods,” Isaac said, blushing terribly.
“Isaac?”
“I’m
not reading that!”
“Come
on,” Zaria said, snickering.
“No!”
On the
walls, several arms rose up to the skull, covering the eye sockets with a palm
and shoving spindly fingers into the cavity of the ears. The skull vigorously
shook its head.
PRIVACY
I
PROMISE
“Mighty
kind of you,” Zaria said. “So, you approve of all this, then?”
The
skull stalk reared back, like the rising of a wyrm. It nodded deeply.
“That’s
a yes?”
A graveyard
worth of arms squirmed out of the central mass. They held themselves straight,
closed their bony fingers into a fist, and raised a forest of thumbs.
PROUD
OF YOU SON
Isaac
thought he might die of embarrassment.
“Well,”
Zaria said, grinning wide, “best permission to fuck I’ve ever seen. Think he’ll
give some bone thralls as a dowry?”
“Ivtarr,
gods above, strike me down, please.”
She
slapped him on the back. “Three merry band of men, we are. On our way, then.
World-ending cunts to kill and all that. Come on, you—” She paused, looking at
his father. “Hold on. Never got your name, actually.”
The
skull looked to Isaac.
“Caine,”
Isaac said. “His name is Caine.”
Zaria
bowed. “Pleased to make your acquaintance. Fine son you got here.”
Caine
gave a firm nod. Somewhere below the earth, in the device that trapped his
soul, he imagined his father was smiling.
With a
turn of his heel, Isaac began to march through the extraction chamber, heading
toward the sound of screams and rumbling. To his left, there was a zoanthrope
pirate who had taken him hostage not three days prior. To his right, there
crawled a legion of bone that clattered and hissed like an army of death.
He felt
like nothing could stop him.