From the second floor landing Zok could see three wooden doors, all closed. Behind one his keen hearing picked up the sound of someone—a boy, perhaps—crying.
Pathetic, Zok thought as he heard his companions rush up behind him. Zok gestured toward the door with his swordhilt and prepared to kick it in.
But Mylovic grabbed his shoulder. “Wait! Wait, Zok! Something is wrong here! All is not as it seems. I…I smell something.” Zok tore away from the priest’s grip and gave him an irritated look, but he stopped cold at the fear in Mylovic’s eyes. The priest squinted hard at the door and sniffed the air, his nose twitching as if in imitation of Hai Hai’s.
“Demon-flame,” Mylovic said at last. “The stuff of the Hells. I can’t say what it means, Zok, but if your wife’s memento is mixed up in this somehow, you have to tread carefully here.”
Mylovic was a shirker who lived in smoke-and-powder land half the time, but he was also a true friend, and he knew more of unearthly matters than Zok ever would. Zok had come to trust his judgment.
“What do we do, then?” Hai Hai asked impatiently. “We can’t stand here all day.”
“Can you do a scrying on that door?” Zok asked.
“I can try. But I’m swiftly running out of favors with the gods here, my friend,” Mylovic said, a rare note of annoyance entering his voice. “After this little adventure is over you owe me at least a month in a good city inn, snorting as much three-leaf and drinking as much mushroom tea as I can hold.”
Somehow Zok managed to smile. “It’s a deal.”
Mylovic knelt before the door and gestured for Zok to do the same. Hai Hai stood guard, her ears twitching nervously, but it seemed no more Hireguards were coming.
Mylovic said some words in a lilting chant, then placed a hand on Zok’s neck. And suddenly it was as if a large hole had appeared in the wood before him.
Through the hole-that-was-not-a-hole Zok saw the mousy-haired serving boy standing before a mirrored wash basin. The whelp held Fraja’s earring out before him. And the wash basin was full of green flames.
“I’ve waited so long for you to return!” the boy said to the flames, sobbing his words out. “But he’s after me! The one you told me to take the earring from! He’s downstairs! He’ll kill me—you’ve got to help me!”
Zok’s heart almost stopped when he saw the warty, mud-colored face in the flames that the boy spoke to.
It was the toad-headed demon who had killed Fraja.
“THAT DOES NOT MATTER!” the demon rasped and grunted. “PLACE THE EARRING IN THE BASIN!”
Mylovic whispered in awe. “Toad-headed. You’ve spoken of this before. That is the demon that killed your wife? The one you’ve been seeking all these years?”
“Aye.” Zok could barely restrain himself from barging through the door, but he would not endanger Fraja’s soul with rashness.
Mylovic’s voice shivered as he spoke. “It’s a thing from the third hell, Zok. The Hell of the Beasts. If this is the creature that killed your wife, it probably wants the earring as a victim-trophy. With it, the demon can punish her soul the way it did her body.”
Zok tore his gaze from the scene before him and looked at Mylovic. The priest’s expression was uncharacteristically grim. “Forget what I said about caution,” Mylovic said. “The third hell isn’t a pretty place, Zok. Not even as hells go. The tortures there…The risk is worth it. You’ve got to stop this. Now.”
Zok didn’t need to be told twice. The door splintered and its hinges screamed as he barreled through it.
Zok shrugged off the splinters digging into his flesh, drew Menace, and strode toward the boy. The boy dropped Fraja’s earring into the basin then fell back in fear. He cowered and quaked like a lamb. Then he fainted.
Zok snorted in disgust. He saw little enough shame in thievery. At least it required bravery of a sort. But this chicken-hearted timidity…Yes, Zok thought, boys these days were whimpering shadows of what he’d been in his youth, and southerners were worst of all.
But that didn’t matter now.
He was about to cut the little demon-thralled coward down when a voice cried out “Zok, wait! Wait!” and he felt the blood freeze in his veins. The voice wasn’t the toad demon’s dark, grunting rasp.
It was Fraja’s voice.
Zok stopped in his tracks. The demon’s face was gone. It was Fraja’s face—more lovely than the face on the Emerald Empress tile—in the flames now.
“Fraja?” he heard himself ask. “What…What trickery is this?”
“No trickery, Zok. Or, at least, the trickery is at an end now that you’re here before me.”
“Where is the demon that holds your soul, my love?” Zok asked. “I’ll cut him down, whatever Hell he may abide in! I’ll—”
“That demon finished with me years ago, Zok. He feasted upon my bones and left to find other victims. My soiled soul meant little enough to him. This—all of this—has been my doing.”
“Your doing?” Zok asked, glancing at his companions, who kept a polite, silent distance. “I don’t understand.”
“Sorgo is my nephew, my only blood-link to this world, and thus the only living thing that I could visit—though only for flashes at a time, and only wearing the gruesome shape of my death. You and he are the unfinished business that binds me here.”
“Your…Your nephew?” Zok asked, feeling half-witted as a thousand emotions warred within him.
“Aye. The only child of my sister Kroja, who died a few scant years after his birth. You remember my sister, Zok? The one we ran into at that inn near the Green Cross all those years ago?”
Zok lowered his eyes in shame at the memory of what he’d done with Fraja’s sister one afternoon when Fraja had been away from the inn. His own foolish words from that day filled his head now. She reminded me so of you, Fraja! She worked her wiles on me! I’m only a man!
“I do,” was all he said.
“Well, I would hope so. You certainly left her something to remember you by after we parted ways with her. It only takes one tumble to make a child, Zok.”
It took Zok a long moment to understand what his wife’s words meant. He felt his mouth fall open as their meaning dawned on him.
“Yes, Zok. Sorgo is your son. I sent him to steal my earring from you to bring you here, where I first appeared to him. Such visitations have their requirements. All of the elements—salt water and silver mirror, a boy of my blood, and a thing touched a thousand thousand times by one who loved me—are here now, and I can finally speak to you directly.
“When I saw how Sorgo saw me, I thought to haunt him at first—to drive him mad with fear. Half-death makes one vengeful, and he was a reminder of your unfaithfulness. I cursed my sister, but she was dead already. But when I tried to frighten the boy, I saw that he was only intrigued. That he’d been left to such a dead, dull life that a demon’s visitations were the most wondrous thing that could happen to him. And as the months and years rolled on I came to love Sorgo. He is my nephew, after all. And, despite his timidity, I see you in his eyes. But I could do naught but visit him once a month for a few minutes. And never in my own shape. But even those few minutes felt like a cool wind to one in the blazing realm of the half-dead.”
“I don’t understand,” Zok said “I am…was your husband. Every day I think of you. I’ve touched this earring till the engravings have been rubbed away. Why did you never grant me a visitation? Even had it been to call me to task, I would have welcomed it.”
“I had no power to, my love. The weakest nudge in a corner of your mind when you touched that earring was the utmost my efforts could produce. The seven gods of death care about blood. Love and human contracts mean nothing to them.”
“But…”
Fraja cut him off with the same look of pitying contempt for his intelligence that she’d given him so often when she lived. “It’s hard to explain, Zok. And I haven’t much time.”
If Fraja could not give him explanations, then Zok wouldn’t worry her further
by asking for them. He only needed to hear one thing now. He swallowed before he spoke again.
“Do you miss me?” he asked.
“More than anything, my love.” Fraja’s voice was warm, and it brought tears to Zok’s eyes. “More than you can know. You think you long for me, but you don’t know what it is to miss someone the way I miss you. Your arms. Your smell. Your dick.”
In spite of everything, Zok felt himself smile through his tears.
Fraja’s voice grew brisk again. “But I didn’t bring you here to tell you that. I brought you here to tell you that Sorgo is yours, and that you must care for him, Zok. For my sake, if nothing else. You two are the last connections I have to the world of flesh and earth. The shattered halves of the ring that I would wear before I go to meet the Maker of All Gods. I need to know that your fates have been forged together, or I’ll never know peace.”
“But…But I know nothing of fathering,” Zok said.
“Then you must learn, my love.”
Zok glanced behind him. Hai Hai and Mylovic had withdrawn from the room and stood guard on either side of the shattered door. Sorgo moaned and began to stir.
Zok looked back to Fraja’s phantasmal face and nodded once.
“It will be as you say, beloved.”
Fraja smiled. “I will always love you, Zok. And this will not be our last meeting. Someday we will wed again in the Heavenly Hall of Hunters. Until then, keep my earring. And think of me now and then.”
Fraja’s face vanished, and Zok saw only his own reflection in the mirror.
Zok stood once again in the cellar of the Hireguard hall, a silent Sorgo beside him. Hai Hai took tally of the riches around them, while Mylovic read and reread a small ledger they’d found hidden in a cunningly concealed lockbox.
“Well!” the priest said finally. “This is interesting.” He fell silent for another few moments as he read over the ledger yet again. “Very interesting,” he continued. “So this is what that mercenary meant when he said we must have been sent by the Empress. This is why none of the Hireguard have come back here to harry us.”
“Stop being so gods-damned mysterious, priest,” Hai Hai said. “What is it?”
“It would appear, dear Hai Hai, that this particular chapter of the Hireguard has been skimming a good amount from the Empress’s taxes and tariffs over a good number of years. A very good amount. Quite bold. No doubt this is the source of these surprising stores of wealth.”
“You’re sure about this?” Hai Hai asked.
Mylovic sighed a longsuffering sigh. “You know I’m the only member of our merry little death-dealing troupe who can read more than his name. I swear, if I didn’t fear the five gods of lies, I’d earn myself a few moments of peace by telling you this book was a ward-warning that all rabbitmen hearing these words must keep their whiskered mouths shut for a year, or die by lightning-fire. Lucky for you, I’m an honest man.”
“So we’ve done the Amethyst Empress a favor by killing these fools,” Hai Hai said. “Still, I doubt the Legion will see it that way. They’ll still want our heads for what we’ve done here.”
Mylovic rubbed a hand through his red hair and frowned thoughtfully. “Perhaps not. There might in fact be a way for us to walk away from this. If we move some bodies around, a few confusion and disguise invocations should be enough to convince any investigators that the thief-smasher went berserk before collapsing from its own corrupted magic. And a few well-placed hints would let the Legion find this ledger, which would do much to make them less interested in avenging these men. Of course,” a smile crept across Mylovic’s sleepy features, “a few alterations in the ledger would also allow us to garnish a nice bit of what we’ve found here, and make our trouble worthwhile.”
Hai Hai’s whiskers twitched appreciatively, and she gave the priest a rare smile. Zok couldn’t help but smile himself. Sorgo still wore a haunted look, but Zok thought he saw a smile starting to form.
The violet light began to grow dappled with orange. Zok was surprised to find that he’d never noticed how beautiful the southern sunrise could be. He stood at the edge of town, the boy Sorgo beside him, Mylovic and Hai Hai before him astride road-ponies.
Zok would not be going with his friends. He had a duty here.
Shattered halves of a ring, Fraja had said. Zok wasn’t a man of words, but he had always admired the way his wife could talk about one thing in order to speak truth about another thing. Fraja might say that the path he walked with Hai Hai and Mylovic was paved with sword-blades. Sorgo wasn’t the sort who could live such a life beside him—not like Fraja with her quick wits and her dagger. And if Sorgo could not live on the warrior’s road, Zok would learn to live a different way.
Hai Hai twitched her nose once, and her ears jerked in different directions. “You’re sure about this, Zok? We have a good thing going here, the three of us.”
“A good thing,” Zok agreed.
Hai Hai’s ears stiffened. “But you’re sure this is what you want?”
“No,” Zok said. “Not sure it’s what I want. Sure it’s what I need to do.”
Mylovic smiled beatifically from atop his pony, a wad of poppy-chomp already working in his jaw, despite the early hour. “I usually have little reason to call on the four gods of the family, Zok. But I’ll do so at the next temple, and beg their blessings upon you.”
Zok smiled his thanks and patted the priest’s skinny leg.
Hai Hai nodded once to him. Then his two companions rode off and began bickering about something Zok couldn’t make out.
Zok watched them go until they turned a bend in the road and were lost from sight.
Beside him, Sorgo breathed wheezily. Zok turned to the boy.
To his son.
“So,” Zok said. “First, you tell me about this town of yours. Then we’ll figure out where we go from here.”
About the Author
In addition to his short fiction, Saladin Ahmed has published nonfiction in Fantasy Magazine, Salon, The Escapist, and Tor.com. His first novel, Throne of the Crescent Moon, which Kirkus Reviews called “An arresting, sumptuous and thoroughly satisfying debut,” was recently published to wide acclaim. Saladin lives near Detroit with his wife and twin children.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends