Bad Faith Read online

  There has to be a mistake.

  He concentrated harder. He would find something. He would crush it. He would make the world perfect. And still he could detect nothing.

  And he realized: the chaos was … perfect. Unfettered, untainted, and absolute. It was what he had aimed for.

  He had won.

  No …

  But yes. Yes. He had won. He had achieved his goals. All the world. All Avarra. Perfect chaos.

  He had won.

  He stared at Avarra. At his world. Dominated and subservient. Willing to do whatever he asked.

  He had won.

  Shouldn’t it feel like more than this? Shouldn’t there be some beautiful upswelling of emotion in his chest? Shouldn’t he be whooping for joy?

  Shouldn’t this feel like victory?

  Slowly, trying not to hesitate—though for whose benefit he still wasn’t sure—he turned his back on Avarra and stumbled away.

  17

  What Passes for Victory These Days

  Lette was dragging Will to safety. She wasn’t sure how. The only thing she was certain of right now was that she had been incapable of getting any closer to the Deep Ones. She hadn’t been able to follow Will. And yet here he was in her arms. Being saved. By her.

  She had been aware of his approaching the Deep One. Although how she had known, she also couldn’t say. She had closed her eyes. She had put her fingers in her ears. She had tried to avoid vomiting. She had shouted something. But she had been completely aware of his movements. She knew he had produced a knife. That he had cut the Deep One’s flesh. That he … he …

  Her mind balked at the next. Glossed over events it did not care to relive. And then … then she was here. Then she had Will in her arms, was dragging him bodily back into the tunnel. He was semiconscious, mumbling and moaning. Afrit was crowding in behind her, babbling words that didn’t make sense, that didn’t gel together into sentences. Just words.

  She thought perhaps she was doing the same.

  “What? What? What?” Balur’s confusion was a steady bass rhythm, located deeper in the tunnel, echoing around her. She just kept backing farther and farther into the darkness, pulling on Will. He groaned. Or maybe she did.

  The journey back up the hole was a sweating, grunting nightmare. Time felt as if it were still slipping back and forth. At some points the dull disk of blue light above her head seemed so close it seemed she would grasp it with her next handhold. Then it was barely a pinprick. Will was deadweight, and Afrit was no help. Balur tried to reach around her, but he mostly impeded her progress. They were all out of sync with each other.

  And then finally it was over. Finally they were lying gasping in the thin light of the tunnel above. Lette was flat on her back. She held Will’s hand in her own. It felt cold and clammy. And if the bastard had gone and died after everything she’d just done for him … then she’d … she’d …

  She found the energy to roll over. To sit up. To slap Will across the face. His head rolled to one side, absorbing the blow without flinching.

  She got him with the full backhand.

  “Ow,” he said. “What in the Hallows is wrong with you?”

  Then he opened his eyes, and she was so relieved she laughed out loud. And she bent down. And her hair was hanging all around them, making a curtain of privacy around their faces. And she was looking into the brown depths of his eyes. And he was looking back into hers. And she was losing herself. And then … then …

  Then she saw something move.

  Something rippled beneath the surface of his skin, and where it moved, his skin seemed to change … No, not just seemed. A discoloration spread below the surface, a rash of purple stains the color of spoiled plums that roiled and heaved over his face. And gods, it was in his eyes. She could see the irises changing color. His cheeks taking on a lilac hue. And he was still smiling at her. Even some of his teeth were fucking purple.

  “What?” he said, finally picking up on the horror that was spreading through her just as this—gods, what was it?—was spreading over his face.

  “Your … your fucking …” She pointed at his face, at his chest, where she could see the … the … rash? She could see it spreading. She leapt off him. What if it was contagious? What if she had it?

  Will was looking down at his chest.

  “Piss on it,” he breathed.

  “What in the gods’ names is that?” Afrit was beside them now, wiping vomit from her chin but still staring.

  Will was silent, just touching the skin.

  “That doesn’t look right.” Afrit shook her head. “Oh gods.”

  Will looked up at them. It seemed to have stopped now—whatever it had been. The rash was still there, staining his skin with dull purple blotches. It was still on his teeth, in his eyes. When he opened his mouth to speak, she could see it on his tongue.

  “I think it’s fine,” he said.

  “Fine?” Afrit and Lette shrieked the word in near-perfect unison.

  “I feel fine,” he said. His calm was enough to make Lette want to put her fist through his marred face.

  “You’re fucking purple,” she reminded him.

  “I’m not all purple.”

  “You’re more purple,” Afrit said, the strain audible, “than I think most people would consider normal.”

  “So he is being purple,” said Balur. “Who is giving a shit. He is being alive. He has been getting what he came here for. Aesthetics is seeming like a stupid concern.”

  “Thank you, Balur.” Will smiled.

  “Especially,” Balur went on, “when we are not knowing where in the Hallows Cois is being.” And now Lette heard the urgency behind Balur’s feigned frustration. The … Wait … Could Balur be panicked? How deep beneath his skin had Cois gotten?

  It was not unknown for Balur to have a long-term relationship. There had been a whore in Leche that he had seen on and off for over a year. He had owned a pet iguana that Lette had held suspicions about for almost two. But Balur had never been anything but cavalier about his romantic partners. He enjoyed being tangled in sheets far more than he enjoyed emotional entanglement. But now, as he strode back and forth, this felt like more than just concern for where his next fuck was coming from.

  “Well,” she said, “we’re in a narrow gorge. There’s not many directions zhe could have gone …”

  Balur did not seem to appreciate her attempt at levity. “I should not have been leaving hir …”

  “I can feel hir.”

  Lette, who had been moving toward Balur, stopped and turned. Balur stopped and turned. So did Afrit.

  Will had his head cocked to one side. “All of them,” he said. “All the gods. They’re close.” He nodded to himself.

  “How?” Lette asked, and was impressed by how calm she kept her tongue. “How do you feel them, Will?”

  He blinked a few times, and were his pupils larger than usual? Were the irises larger?

  Then he straightened and started walking fast and with purpose. “This way,” he called as he pushed past them, back in the direction of the gorge’s mouth. “They’re all this way.”

  Lette felt a scream trying to rise up in her.

  “Is zhe safe?” Balur called after Will, but Will just kept pushing forward.

  There wasn’t much to do except hurry after him. Well, hurry after him and worry that he had done something irrevocable and awful to himself, that the purple stain went much deeper than his skin, that it was saturating his mind and thoughts, this foreign other, this deep old thing that should have been left long buried.

  And then Afrit went and made it worse. She opened her mouth.

  “Look up,” she said.

  “No,” Lette said. Her shoulders felt like two iron bars already. She couldn’t fit more tension in her life.

  “We walked down this gorge for what, two days after the sky disappeared?”

  “Do I look like a sundial to you?”

  “I can see the sky,” Afrit said. “We�
�ve been walking for less than an hour and I can see the sky.”

  Lette considered. Why should she look up? What if Afrit was right? What would that prove? That everything down here was deeply and profoundly messed up? That the Deep Ones were pure evil? That the man she … cared for had taken some vile uncleanness into himself? That Cois’s warnings had been true? That Will was on a journey to becoming something other than what he was? That happiness was the grossest of lies?

  She looked up.

  Oh gods. The sky was there, a sharp splinter of light.

  “The others are close,” Will called back to them. He sounded like a child excited to be taken on a trip by his parents. He touched his temple. “It’s stronger now.”

  Should she stop this? Was it possible to cut the uncleanness out of Will … or was that just another way to describe caving in his skull? She didn’t want to do that. She wanted to get back to Avarra.

  She wanted to get out of this gods-hexed chasm. To get to somewhere where she could think.

  She walked and tried to ignore the geography slipping past her, moving faster than her feet could explain. And it got easier as the light seeped down, stronger and cleaner every moment, and the blue fungus fled from sight. The rock around them took on brown hues, became something warmer, familiar, reassuring. The ground rose steeply beneath them, far steeper surely than any descent they’d navigated, but they were getting out of here, they were getting closer to the Hallows, as if the earth were eager to reject them.

  “Almost there,” Will said. He was squinting, though whether in pain at some psychic pressure or just because of the exertion of their climb, Lette wasn’t sure.

  And then the mouth of the gorge came into view, and the broad wheat-filled plains of the Killing Plains.

  And an army.

  And Gratt standing at its head.

  And held clear off the ground, with Gratt’s fist around hir throat, was Cois.

  18

  Dependency Problems

  Will kept on smiling. It was easy to smile. Just twist the muscles on your face, pull up your lips, and look, he was happy. Nothing was wrong. No mistakes had been made. Everything was fine.

  Even this. Even Gratt.

  The vast general of the underworld strode toward him with a grin as broad and fake as Will’s own.

  “Reunited,” he boomed. “Become one once more.” His cheer oozed threat. Will could sense every muscle in Lette’s body tightening. He knew without looking that she was holding two knives. Balur was loosening his arms, working his shoulders. Afrit was just cursing.

  And he … What did he feel?

  There was something inside him. Something foreign curled about his guts and his mind. And that should have been terrifying. That should have scared the shit out of him. He was half fucking purple, for crying out loud. But all he could feel was calm. Even watching the tears roll down Cois’s face, all he felt was an odd sense of detachment.

  “It is time,” said Gratt, savagery sneaking past his tusks and entering his words, “for you to fulfill your end of our bargain. For you to bring me victory.”

  Members of his army were circling them, were aiming bows at Lette and Balur and Afrit. The cage holding the other gods had been pulled up a few yards behind Gratt.

  “Victory,” Will said. He felt the word in his mouth. And the thing inside him felt it too. Felt the intent of it, and how Will’s idea of what that word meant was so very different from Gratt’s.

  “Yes,” Will agreed. “It’s time for something like that.”

  For just a moment Gratt’s smile faltered. Then he shook his head slightly. “You should not have succeeded,” he said, almost to himself. “It is too much.” He turned to his men. “End this,” he said.

  And the arrows flew.

  And still Will did not feel fear.

  He watched the arrows flying toward them. It was not so far for them to have to travel. Ten yards, perhaps, nothing more. But to reach him they had to travel half the distance, and then half that distance, and then half again. He had, he knew somehow, all the time in the world to sort things out.

  When he had taken Cois’s power into him, it had been about will. It had been about having the strength to want something enough. It had been about bending reality to see things his way. It had been an act of coercion. Even now, when he wanted to be invisible, to be seen as something other, it was still that way.

  This … this was different. This was far more violent.

  When he focused, he could feel the whole world around him. He felt every stalk of wheat, every grain of dirt. He felt the cells flaking off his own skin. He could feel Gratt’s army and its intent and its actions. He could feel the physics of the arrows moving toward him. The tension in Gratt’s fingers as they held Cois’s throat. And he felt Lawl, and Lawl’s hand in its design. And he felt how everything had been put together, and how the pieces of this place fit together. The Killing Plains were the way they were because it was the only way they could be. And Lette and Gratt and Lawl … All of them here, all of their feelings were the feelings they had to be feeling. Because that was how the planes of reality intersected and existed. Those were their rules. Geography intersecting with psychology, interlocking with the spiritual, the physical, the thermodynamics of the air. All the separate hidden pieces of the world laid bare to him. The perfect wholeness of everything.

  He felt all of it.

  And while everything here and now was the way it had to be, he could change it. If he moved this piece of reality this way, then everything else would move with it. It had to. Everything was linked. And all he had to do was push.

  So he pushed.

  His gut spasmed. His eyes swam. His mouth filled with bile. His knees buckled. The whole world fell away around him. And inside him, in his chest and his arms and his head—oh gods, his head—he felt something flex. Something that was not him, that was becoming him, invading him. He felt jolts of pain burning into his skull. He felt himself convulsing. And then …

  Then the arrows that had been coming to kill him and his friends were not there. They were unmade and tumbling. And Gratt’s hand was opening, and Cois was falling to the ground. And the archers too, were unmade, were unraveled from reality as Will pulled on those threads too. He could do it all. He could do anything. Everything was his to play with. And yes, yes, he could feel the exit from this place, the great gate that had barred a return to Avarra for all eternity but would no more. And he opened the door.

  He turned to Lette. And he smiled. Because he had to smile. Because when he pushed reality this way, it pulled at the corners of his mouth, and he smiled.

  But then he felt the horror in Lawl’s mind. And he didn’t understand it. But that in turn didn’t make sense because he understood everything. And so he pushed unthinking into Lawl’s mind, through the onion layers of pride and petty jealousies. And then Will reached the horror—exposed and bare—and he examined it, and then … then he understood. Then he felt that same horror grip him. Because now he truly understood. He understood that while he had seen everything, he had not seen EVERYTHING.

  He had seen this world. The Hallows. He had seen how everything in them was connected. How moving one piece moved another within them. But he had not looked beyond them. He had not seen how when he moved one piece, he affected not just it, not just the Killing Plains, not just the Hallows. He affected everything. EVERYTHING.

  He saw how Lawl had written the flight path of the arrows into reality. How gravity, wind resistance, torque, potential energy, and acceleration all intersected. How Lawl had built other things upon these concepts. How he had built a world teeter-totter upon idea after idea after idea.

  He saw how he had just pulled one idea out from the stack, and how everything else was poised to fall.

  19

  There’s No Place Like Home

  Lette was about to die. She saw Will misstep. She saw Gratt make his decision, and she reached for her knife, but it wasn’t enough. Not with a whol
e army in front of her. Not with the fractional delay that came with the thought of what Balur would do when Gratt twitched and crushed Cois’s throat.

  The archers loosed their arrows, and she was dead.

  And then … she wasn’t.

  Then there were no arrows. There were no archers. Their bodies spiraled out of existence, an unraveling mass of skin and gut that evaporated into the air. Gratt’s hand spasmed open, and Cois dropped to the ground.

  And then Will turned to them. To her. And he was smiling, but it was not his smile. It was too big, and too broad, and showed far too many teeth. And his eyes … what was wrong with his eyes?

  And then Lawl screamed.

  She knew it was the king of the gods straightaway. Something about the timbre of the sound was unmistakable. And so she looked directly at him, because the idea of Lawl—king of the gods, lord of law, judge of all the world, narcissistic jackass, and preening lover of his own machismo—screaming was surely absurd. But there Lawl was, trapped in his cage, clutching the bars, his eyes full of horror. Staring and screaming.

  Then the wind started.

  She looked away from Lawl, looked about, looked up, as if there were a sky to correspond to this weather change. But there was just rock, blank and unassuming. So she looked to Will, because … gods … Will had just evaporated twelve archers. Will had just … Holy shit. He had unmade them. Will had. Her farmer.

  And now there was horror in his eyes too.

  “What did you do?” she tried to say, but the wind was howling now. The sudden rage of it was astounding. Her clothes flapped, her hair was yanked from side to side, a sharp tug against the back of her head. She staggered a step. Balur was leaning into the wind. And still the wind grew.

  Then the ground began to shake. A tremble. Then a quake. More and more. And it felt almost as if the world were making fun of her, because honestly, how was she meant to stay on her feet now?

  Then she didn’t. She fell, throwing her hands wide for support, for safety.

  They didn’t strike the ground.