Chapter 28
Lucian heard Elver get up and run across the room, heard her rattle at the door handle.
He let himself droop forward a little further, giving himself over to the illusion of sleep.
Elver was hissing through the door, calling for someone called Creg to come and unlock it.
There was a version of this plan where Lucian leapt up the moment the door opened and forced his way out.
He didn’t know where they were, but that hardly mattered—his arms and legs weren’t bound and he could run.
Yet he stayed where he was, and when Creg came into the room—Lucian got the impression the man was large from the thump of each booted foot—he didn’t move, letting the man grab his arms and legs and tie them with rope, only lifting his head slowly, blinking sleep out of his eyes.
He needed to get her trust back, and he hadn’t forgotten Tisk’s promise.
There was a chance the fox would return to release him from these bonds.
‘What was in that drink you gave us?’ Elver was asking.
‘Just a bit of grog,’ Creg said in an apologetic tone. ‘What, is he allergic to it or something?’
‘No, but he’s probably never had it before and he drank it like water.’ She cursed in a colourful way that Lucian found quite delightful.
‘Elver?’ He squinted against the light. ‘Where are we?’
‘By the Twelve,’ said Creg. ‘He really is plastered.’
Elver sighed. ‘You can leave us now.’
When Creg had gone, Lucian sat up, looking around. Elver had retreated to the far side of the room, watching him with a sharp expression that caused a worm of worry to burrow in Lucian’s gut. He had the sudden idea he had made a mistake.
‘You’re angry,’ he said. It wasn’t a question.
‘I know what you did to Artair’s people,’ she said. In the gloomy light from the dirty window her eyes were almost silver. ‘ Why? ’ The monster cub was curled tightly on her lap, its face buried in its paws.
‘Can you imagine,’ he said slowly, ‘the pure terror of waking up and not knowing where you are, or who you are? Just sudden, terrifying existence, with no context and no familiarity. No one with a kind word or touch—just a dizzying sense of… dislocation. Of being violently thrown…’ He stopped.
He realized he didn’t quite feel himself, and the room felt like it might spin away if he turned his head too quickly.
Had the monk been drinking ? ‘Here and now, speaking to you, monster girl, I am lucid, or close enough to lucid that it makes no difference, because I have had years to come to terms with what has happened to me.’ A sour laugh forced itself up his throat.
‘No, that is the wrong phrase. There is no coming to terms with something you do not understand, Elver.’
‘So, what?’ snapped Elver. ‘You confused yourself into setting that fire?’
‘I told you before that there were only two things I knew for certain,’ Lucian said, keeping his tone even.
‘That my name was Lucian, and that this,’ he tipped his head to one side, indicating himself as best he could, ‘wasn’t my body.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. There was a third thing I knew, and it was this: that death is power. So I sought it out.’
Elver was quiet. She had leaned back deeper into the shadows, letting the dark claim her.
‘In truth,’ he said, ‘that idiot monk is lucky I only killed his horses.’
‘I thought I knew what monsters were,’ said Elver. ‘That we were misunderstood. But you truly are the thing they are afraid of.’
Lucian grinned around the strange pulse of sorrow that moved through his chest—it was almost a physical pain.
‘We had a deal,’ he reminded her. ‘I’ll behave, and you’ll give me my memories back.’
‘Deal’s off.’
‘You can’t do that.’
‘I can do what I like,’ said Elver.
‘This is…’ Lucian made to stand, but the bindings on his ankles forced him to sit again. He expected to feel the usual fury rising, but instead he only felt tired. ‘This is the closest I’ve ever come to finding out who I am, Elver. How can you take that away from me?’
Something flickered in her eyes at that, but when she spoke, her voice was made of flint.
‘You took Artair’s whole world away from him.’
After that, she wouldn’t speak to him. Outside, the daylight was leached from the sky until only the soft glow of moonlight lit the cramped storage room, filtered through a fine layer of dirt.
He saw Elver glance at the door repeatedly, clearly expecting someone to return at any moment.
When that didn’t happen, she drew her legs up under her, and when the cub came and laid down next to her, she went to sleep.
Or at least, she grew very still and quiet; he couldn’t hear her breathing at all.
‘She is asleep,’ came a soft voice at his shoulder. ‘I imagine if you live in the woods like some grubbing little insect you get used to sleeping in uncomfortable places.’
A figure stepped out of the shadows. Lucian leaned away from it, his skin crawling with unease. The shape was a man with sharp features, a shock of red hair and a neat little beard and moustache. Narrow green eyes twinkled in the dark. He grinned at Lucian, his teeth a little too sharp.
‘You,’ said Lucian.
‘Me,’ agreed Tisk. ‘Are you ready for your freedom, little ghost?’
‘I am,’ he said. And then, ‘Why now?’
‘Because this is the time that will cause the most mirth.’ Tisk pointed at his bindings and they slithered away like snakes, falling onto the floor. Lucian stood, rubbing at his wrists. ‘And will you take your memories before you go?’
‘She doesn’t want me to,’ he said. It felt strange, saying those words aloud, as though he had made himself vulnerable somehow.
‘They are your memories,’ said Tisk. ‘And you’ll need them, where you’re going.’
Lucian hesitated. Standing over the girl, he remembered being in the hot spring, one hand curled around her bare foot; he remembered being in the tent with the caged monsters, how she had sat and spoken patiently to the frightened creature—had given it kind words, the softest touch, when it had needed such things the most.
‘If you’re going to do it, hurry up,’ said Tisk. ‘I only have patience for tricks and tall tales, and this is neither.’
Very gently, Lucian reached out his hand and placed a single finger on the back of her hand. He felt the chill of her skin, and—
He was in a temple lit with red flames. In front of him was the vast golden figure of a lion, its eyes clusters of rubies.
Blood ran from its mouth like a fountain, and Lucian was knelt before it.
This was, he knew, his biggest test so far; he was to ask his god for a boon and use what he was given to work a spell.
It was dangerous, and all eyes were on him, but he was good at this.
He had talents beyond the rest of them, and his only concern was how long he’d had to wait to get to this point.
That he had been forced to wait like the rest of these talentless magpies-in-waiting was an insult, one he intended to pay back one day.
He glanced to the right of the lion and saw her , hair the colour of the blood that ran from their god’s mouth, her cheekbones pressing at her skin like knives.
Mother. The gaze she pinned him with was speculative, sharp, but not necessarily unfriendly.
She sees my power , he thought, filling with pride.
She recognizes that I will be her equal, one day. Maybe sooner than she thinks.
Directly in front of him was a thin glass globe filled with a shifting violet light.
A soul, taken and kept for just this purpose; precious and unimaginably valuable, and his to do with as he wished.
As he picked it up, feeling a faint vibration from the thing inside it, he caught a glimpse of his own face in the glass: black hair, tawny hazel eyes, skin the colour of cream—he spent too long in poorly lit temples.
‘My Lord the Bloody Claw,’ he said aloud. ‘Consume this soul and grant me a boon.’
He smashed the globe on the stones in front of him, and he heard the thin shriek of the soul as the violet light streamed up and into the mouth of the lion. In response, his hands filled with red fire, unimaginable heat and pain and power —
Lucian came back to find himself sprawled on the floor, with Tisk the god of lies standing over him.
‘Well?’ he asked brightly. ‘Was it all you expected and more?’
He got to his feet shakily. He knew who he was.
He knew what he was. Once he had had a connection with one of the gods powerful enough that he had been able to use its power for himself, and now that he was aware of it he could feel it—a thin line of fire deep within his bones, banked down to embers.
To claim the rest of himself he needed to reawaken it, reforge that connection, and to do that he had to get to the nearest temple of the Bloody Claw.
He pointed to the door. ‘Make yourself useful and open that.’