Chapter 17 Liar
Liar
All the godlings whose faces I had come to know over the past two days were clustered against the back wall of the reservoir. They were as far away from the Vizeking as they could get. Elke hovered at the front of the pack, her little spider-legs over her mouth.
The Vizeking was flanked by lackeys in red robes that matched his. The lackeys made my skin crawl.
Something was wrong with them. Something was wrong with everyone down here, of course, but the Vizeking’s lackeys were somehow more chaotic-looking than even godlings like Mackr or Elke.
Mackr and Elke were half-human, half-spider, in a horrifying but also somehow obvious way.
Their legs went where legs went; their heads went where heads went.
But these godlings with the Vizeking, they had their spider-bits in the wrong places.
And so did the Vizeking, I realized. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d met him, because I hadn’t met anyone but Hades and Elke yet. But the Vizeking’s beard and hair were made up of innumerable spider-legs. His eight ruby eyes blinked with human eyelids on a human face.
The Vizeking was clapping.
“Congratulations,” he drawled. “You did it. This is why you wanted your three days with your little pet, hmm? You were scheming to steal a precious resource from our beloved benefactor?”
“May His name be silence on our lips,” Hades said automatically. “No. We are not stealing. The runoff from the Mountain is neither a gift nor a possession of the Monarch’s. It is up for the taking, so we are taking it.”
“Everything,” enunciated the Vizeking, “is a possession of the Monarch’s.” The Vizeking’s eyes flicked to me in my low-cut violet gown. “Including that.”
The sweat dried on my bare neck and chest.
Hades stepped in front of me, blocking the Vizeking’s gaze.
The Vizeking’s voice hardened. “Enough is enough. This little tantrum of yours has gone too far. Thieving from the Monarch. Killing a person.”
Hades stiffened. I felt sick.
Then someone from the pack of worker-godlings called out, “No.”
We all looked. It was the almost entirely spiderlike godling who’d told me they would need to prepare Mackr’s body for funeral rites.
He was pushing out of the crowd, scuttling over.
I still couldn’t read his face, but something about his movements was uncertain but determined.
“Your Suzerainty” — that had to be the honorific for the Vizeking, just as Hades was Your Lordship — “the person who died was my younger brother, Mackr.”
Brother?
Oh, gods, no.
Meanwhile, in front of me, Hades was shaking his head at the godling as subtly as he could.
The godling went on, “His Lordship and His Lordship’s human, er, companion, they did not kill Mackr.
Far from it. They tried to save Mackr. They both put themselves at great risk in a rescue attempt.
The human, in fact, went first. She is not like us, Your Suzerainty, I won’t deny it, she is odd indeed, but she has done right by us. I do not think —”
The Vizeking rolled his ruby eyes and gestured lightly.
One of the Vizeking’s lackeys grabbed Mackr’s brother by the head and hurled him into the rock wall.
There was a sickening crunch.
Mackr’s brother fell to the ground. His thorax had split open on impact.
Everybody gasped.
Hades immediately backed me into the wall.
“Would anyone else care to present an argument?” the Vizeking asked.
No one said anything.
With satisfaction, the Vizeking turned back to Hades — and to me. He ordered his lackeys, “Take her to the Lake.”
Two of them approached. I was trembling all over, but I set my jaw.
I was prepared to rip their little spider-eyeballs out of their heads if I had to, or die trying.
But before I could move, Hades grabbed both lackeys by their necks and thrust them back.
One of them massaged his throat, gagging.
The other moved in again. Hades punched him hard in the human stomach. The lackey fell to the floor.
“Back off,” Hades said.
This time it was the lackeys’ turn to be still.
Under his robe, the Vizeking’s many legs flared in rage. “How dare you? She belongs to the Monarch! She belongs in the Lake! She is a sacrifice, a tribute, a meal!”
“Not yet she’s not. Right now she belongs to me. I found her. I brought her here. And when the time comes, I will be offering her to the Monarch. Personally.”
I stiffened. Surely I had heard him wrong. He was going to help me build the rest of the pipeline. He was going to free me. He had promised.
He had given me an army. He had kissed me. He had respected me.
Elke. Elke’s face would not be able to hide the truth. I tried to seek her out, but I could hardly see anything, blocked as I was by Hades’s broad body.
Hades was still speaking to the Vizeking. His voice was low and authoritative, as of a royal speaking to a servant. “Besides, we have an agreement, you and I. I keep her until the end of the third day.”
“Mere hours away!”
Hades settled back against the wall. His posture was nonchalant, but he was almost crushing me. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll sacrifice her early — if my father attends the ceremony.”
I was pinned. I could not have been angrier. Or more scared.
I couldn’t believe it, but Hades had used me.
He had made me think he liked me, he had comforted me after Mackr’s death, he had shown me the waterfall, he had fetched me an army, he had pressed his lips against my lips until my whole neck and face and palms were hot, and all of it had been a lie.
He had always been going to feed me to the Monarch.
Just as soon as I did what he wanted with the reservoir.
If I could get my hands free, I would wrap them around his fucking neck.
“Your father is very busy,” said the Vizeking coldly. “As you know. He has no time for petty rituals.”
“Certainly he does not,” said Hades. “On the other hand, this isn’t really a petty ritual, is it?
It’s not like, I don’t know, the blessing of the holiday feast. This is communion with our ancestor.
This is satiating the god’s appetite. This takes place only every twenty-five years.
Twenty-six, now. Could anything be more important, even to the King, than service to the Monarch? ”
Hades had backed the Vizeking into a corner.
The crowd was silent. The lackeys were silent. Mackr’s brother was the most silent of all.
Reluctantly, the Vizeking said, “I see your point. I will… speak with His Majesty.”
“Great.”
“In the meantime, you are to cease building this atrocity.”
“Oh, no, no, no. Like I said, we have another half-day. Unless you can get my father out early. Then we’ll stop. And we’ll go to the Lake.”
The Vizeking quivered with rage. But he said nothing. After a moment, he and his lackeys swept off.
The instant they were gone, Elke shrieked, “Your Lordship, you can’t!”
But Hades had already seized me. He was hauling me away while the godlings goggled.
We passed Mackr’s dead brother. More blood on my hands. But I couldn’t focus on that. I was biting Hades, scratching him. He was dragging me along, undaunted. Back to his bedchamber, where I’d be trapped behind that metal door like money in a vault.
Only…
I couldn’t be sure, especially because I was fully preoccupied with trying to rip Hades’s face off, but I thought maybe we were going the wrong way.
We were rising.
And just as I figured that out, we burst into daylight again. Not out the cliffside this time, but onto the grassy land over the underworld, the land upon which I had stepped a hundred times.
I could see the border to the Lümerlund from here.
The emerald grass was dotted with bloodred edenica herbs, the colors almost intolerable after two and a half days in darkness. The dew glittered. The sun shone. The shadow of the Mountain slashed across the landscape.
After so long without daylight, seeing the sun twice in one day was badly disorienting. I almost wanted to go back underground.
Hades found his footing on the grass and set me down. I was so confused I almost fell. Precious seconds lost, seconds I could have spent running.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Hades said.
“Fuck you,” I spat. I took off like a shot. He grabbed the back of my skirts and yanked me back. I shrieked.
“Sorry,” he said. He let go but caught hold of my wrist instead. “I had to grab either that or your corset strings, and I don’t think you could afford to have those strings tightened any more.”
“Why, because it’d suffocate me? What difference?”
“Because it would only serve to highlight your breasts even further, and if you looked any hotter, I don’t think I could handle it.”
“Oh, fuck off! Looking hot isn’t going to save me from getting eaten and drowned!”
His jaw tightened. “Persephone. Goddess.”
“Don’t goddess me! You think I didn’t hear you talking to the Vizeking?
Two days ago you said that if I built the pipe system, you’d let me go!
You lied to me!” I was so angry. At him, for lying to me — but even more at myself, for believing him when he’d said he wasn’t.
How could I have ever trusted a godling?
“Once again,” Hades said, “I have never lied to you. Not once did I tell you I was going to let you go.”
“You son of a bitch. Yes, you did. You said, What if I told you…”
“That’s right. I asked you a question. I asked, What if I told you I would set you free in exchange for building the reservoir? It was a hypothetical. Not a promise.”
That was semantics. How dare me make me feel like I was the one who’d done something wrong. “You made me believe it.”
“You believed it yourself,” Hades said. “You wanted to. I had nothing to do with it.”
“That’s bullshit. Why’d you bring me up here right now, then, if you’re just going to kill me no matter what?” I could only think of one reason, and that was to give me a chance to escape.
Surely not.