Bad Faith Read online

  And then … then …

  Afrit knew she had grown up a sheltered child. She had been born after much of the chaos of the Tamathian civil war had already finished racking Tamar. Her hometown was far to the east of those troubles anyway, close to the tranquil port of Tammsod. Her parents had enjoyed a certain degree of affluence. They had doted upon their only daughter. They had placed her in exclusive schools. They had assured fine references sent her to the finest university, and they had made sure that Tamar was a calm and stable city once more before doing so.

  In short, she had grown up without truly seeing any violence.

  Lette and Balur had changed much of that for her. And while she would not consider herself particularly well educated on the subject of dismembering one’s fellow man, Afrit knew that she knew enough to tell that the mercenaries were uncommonly skilled. Most people, she had come to realize, actually possessed little more than a rudimentary understanding of their weapons. In most fights it was speed, heft, and ferocity that determined the outcome, rather than finesse. Finesse could beat all three, but like many worthwhile things, it was difficult to attain.

  Willett Fallows did not possess finesse. He didn’t possess much of the other three either. Ferocity came to him in occasional bursts, Afrit knew, and perhaps that had helped him stay alive so far. Honestly, though, most days she really wasn’t entirely sure how Will was alive.

  And then … then …

  Ten men. No, fifteen. Perhaps more. It was hard to tell as the mass of them thrust down the street like some extruding finger from Gratt’s army, come to pluck out their eyes. Afrit and the others were already fighting off ten or more. This would likely be the end of them.

  And then … then Will. He seemed to erupt out of the center of their group. He seemed to flow past her. As if he was no longer entirely human, no longer entirely solid. She blinked, and he was among the oncoming soldiers—big men, burly men, men with wrists as thick as her thighs—and Afrit wasn’t even sure he had a blade, but something went snicker-snack.

  And then …

  One man flew across the street, intersected with a bisected building. His back snapped, and he folded in half, heels hitting the back of his head. Then, before the body slumped to the ground, Will was dancing through three archways of blood spraying up from three men’s throats, moving toward two more soldiers, and then there was a blur, and somehow their bodies were tangled together, limbs woven back and forth in defiance of their joints, their bones.

  And then …

  Five left. Then four. Then two. Limbs and pieces of limbs skittering and whirling. The last two men turning to run. But Will was on them. He seemed to touch them only lightly, but gods, there was so much blood.

  Five more men came down the street. Five more men died.

  Will straightened. Purple eyes and white teeth showing through a mask of blood. He looked back at them. They were all looking at him.

  “Well.” Balur spoke first. “Holy fuck.”

  “How?” Lette asked. And there was a look on her face … Hunger perhaps.

  Will looked down at his hands. Bits of meat clung to them. “I …,” he said. “The power. The Deep Ones …”

  And that shook Afrit out of it. That relit the fuse of anger in her. “You said it was spent!” She hurled the accusation as hard and deadly as one of Lette’s blades. “You said it was gone, and you could not end this!”

  “No, no.” Will held up his gore-covered hands as she advanced, and there was enough blood on them that it gave her pause. “I didn’t say it was all spent. Just … too much. I can’t do it again, what I did. But there is some left.”

  “And you waste it on …?” Afrit was so apoplectic that she couldn’t get the words out.

  “Saving our lives?” Cois finished for her.

  And gods piss on her, it was hard to argue with that.

  “Help!” A shout from above them put the final nail in Afrit’s argument. They all looked up.

  The building Will had somehow hurled one of his … victims? assailants? … into was missing most of one wall. Floors and rooms and lives lay exposed. On one of the upper stories, a family clustered near the edge looking down.

  “Help us!” It was the father shouting down.

  If it weren’t so tragic, Afrit might have laughed. Them? Them save anyone? What did that man see when he looked down at them?

  Strength, she supposed. And in this apocalyptic moment that was probably enough.

  Then the arguments started, about who was to catch them, and why they had to catch them. And then the argument morphed and it was about who could catch the most. And it was all so predictable and tragic and stupid in this—probably the least predictable moment of her life.

  And she wanted to scream and to rage, but she was too busy wiping blood from children’s eyes and tying makeshift bandages and uttering words of encouragement that had an utter lack of sincerity to them.

  Then they were moving again, trying to judge the balance point between furtive and fast. Sometimes they made mistakes. Sometimes their efforts mattered for naught. The city was rife with people losing their minds and making sure others lost their limbs.

  They all played a part in their defense. Even the children picked up stones and hurled them in imitation of Lette. The adults had staves of wood, or just jagged rocks to lend their punches force. Lette and Balur performed their usual murderous duet.

  But it was Will who stood out. Will who moved among the oncoming forces of madness like a needle through cloth, weaving complex, deadly patterns, stitching bodies together in lines of ragged red.

  More families came out of hiding. More still. They were no longer a furtive band. They were a crowd, almost a stampede. They had momentum. They crashed into other groups and either left them slain or absorbed them. And yet again, against all odds, against expectations, Afrit saw that Willett Fallows was the engine driving them all.

  And then, finally, panting, a moment of respite. Balur and Lette stalked forward, scouting a corner. Will was standing at the head of the waiting crowd, bouncing on the balls of his feet. And this was her moment. This was when she would demand answers and finally get them.

  But three steps in, someone caught her arm, spun her around. She almost put her fists up before she realized it was Cois.

  “Let me go,” she snapped. “This has to end. He has to focus on getting the power back. On being able put everything back.”

  Cois shook hir head. “Aren’t you the smart one?” zhe said. “You know this already.”

  Afrit squinted at the former god. What was zhe talking about? Too much was happening too fast.

  “Worship,” Cois hissed in exasperation. “You had our power once. It all has the same source. It all lives in the blood. It all depends on worship. You know this. Without worship he is nothing. With it …” Zhe trailed off, staring at Will.

  Will Fallows. A fool. A blood-soaked, reality-destroying monster. And to the people who were flocking to them now, a hero. Even though he was the one who had put them in this position. Gods … if the world was ever to be set to rights, people had to worship him.

  “Gods,” Afrit muttered. “Avarra is so fucked.”

  21

  The Only One Who Could Ever Reach Me

  Will had someone’s throat in his hand. He could feel it, wet and warm and slippery. He could see its former owner staring at it with the same shock Will felt. Though perhaps the former owner edged Will out when it came to horror. Then the throat’s owner collapsed, and Will moved on.

  He threw the throat into the eyes of the man coming up on his left. He twisted his body slightly to the right, pushed with his left foot, brought his right out and up. He placed his heel hard into the crotch of another man—even as a sword swept through the space where he’d just been—and pushed off into a third attacker, extending his arms as he went. His thumbs found the man’s eyes, and he gouged them out even as he used his weight to somersault over the screaming man, bringing his feet down on a f
ourth man’s skull and bringing his eyeless victim crashing down onto the ground with a spine-crunching crack. Will landed an instant later, didn’t stop moving, rolled, applied pressure, snapped the eyeless man’s neck. He came up onto his knees whipping the rag-doll-limp body out like a club. He heard the next man’s knees snap sideways, heard the scream as he collapsed.

  He didn’t know how he knew to do it. His body was receiving signals for some new sensory organ. Something with greater situational awareness, something glimpsing a moment into the future, something that knew far better than he did what to do with the information. He was only half in control of his body. He provided the intent, and then this new … this other thing ensured that his body did what was necessary.

  His muscles too were far stronger than they had ever been. His joints were far more flexible. There was a powerful rubberiness to his body that had never been there before.

  And there should, perhaps, be some terror with that, some existential horror at what he had become or was becoming. Except it was so gods-cursedly useful. What he was doing … it was amazing. It was incredible. It was the sort of thing he had fantasized about as a child, back when he first dreamt of fighting dragons.

  But he could also feel it fleeing him. Every overpowered punch he threw, each impossible contortion of his body—it cost him something. Something he didn’t know how to replace. The well of power within him was being depleted. And neither food nor drink could replenish it. A return to the Deep Ones perhaps, but he had closed that avenue of escape. There was no way back.

  Gods, this … all of this … It was his fault. He had been rash and foolish and full of overconfidence. He had … he had …

  He had unraveled the Hallows. An entire plane of existence. He had unwritten it from reality. And he didn’t know how to put it back. He couldn’t do it even if he did know how. He wasn’t powerful enough anymore. And now, as he drove his fist through some poor unsuspecting psychopath’s nose and into crunching layers of cranium, he was growing weaker still.

  People were following him. A crowd. As if he were some great leader. And he had been down this path before, and ten thousand people in Kondorra had died.

  And somewhere, in among the carnage and the horror and the shame and the thrill, was a small voice still whispering: Barph isn’t dead yet. Getting here was just the first part of the journey. It’s the heavens next.

  He didn’t want it to be there. He didn’t want to have to listen to that voice. But also, he knew it was part of him. Part of him far more fundamentally than this power he had grafted into his gut. His desire for revenge was unquenched.

  Would I sacrifice Avarra too? Do I want to save it or avenge it?

  He had meant to sound sarcastic inside the confines of his own skull. To chastise himself. But he honestly didn’t know the answer.

  Another wave of attackers struck them. Will didn’t know if they were the former dead or the inhabitants of this city trying to defend themselves. There wasn’t really the time to sit down and talk it all through. There was just time to cock a fist and unleash.

  Bones snapped. Skin burst. Blood explored the hazy aesthetic limits of fluid dynamics. More people flocked to Will. More people looking for protection.

  Protection from what he’d done.

  It was a head fuck he really could have lived without. Instead it was easier to lose himself in the combat, easier to shed his own power than to accept it. To splash it about the walls in monochrome rainbows of scarlet, crimson, and ruby.

  As powerful as he was now, he could not be everywhere. The people seeking his protection still died. The crowd was too big for him to fend off every attack. They were herded, pushed, buffeted. And Will didn’t know this city at all, had never been here. He didn’t know which way was out.

  They came to a cathedral in a square. The cathedral seemed to have suffered from some subsidence. The roof sloped down and almost met the floor. The walls sank into the ground. Some part of his mind thought this looked familiar. This was some landmark he should know. But there was no time to think. People were coming at them from all sides of the square. Will didn’t know if everyone was an enemy, but bloodshed was all around him.

  He fought. He pushed. He punched. He grew weaker. He was driven back. Too many, from too many sides. He leapt up, found himself on the cathedral’s roof. He kicked and scraped and clawed. Bodies flew away from him. He pursued. He ran up the sloping tiles toward the cathedral’s vast dome. He was bleeding now, the flesh of his arm in ribbons. The pain felt distant. He felt as if he wasn’t bleeding as much as he should be. He felt weaker. Weaker still.

  Somehow he was at the crest of the cathedral’s dome. People were swarming up on all sides. He was covered in blood. He was a crimson man picked out by the sun. He was kicking, beating, thrashing, pummeling, stabbing, gouging, hurting, ripping, biting. He was a beast. There was only one action sliding into another. One transgression transforming into yet another distinct horror. There was no time for contemplation or regret now. And yes, there was freedom in that.

  And then somehow it was over. He was gasping, hanging on to a massive stone depiction of grapes. The sides of the dome were soaked with red. He was soaked with red. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and he could see the whole city spread out around him.

  The cathedral was on top of a hill, and most of the city sloped away to their south. He could see the anatomy of it laid bare, as in a textbook. The veins and arteries of its streets. The thick musculature of its docks and workshops. The throbbing heart of its merchant district.

  He could see too the vast wound he had inflicted upon it. The crater that had ruptured and scarred it forever. It was off on the southern edge of the city, tearing through the slums, eating into the more respectable housing at its fringes. He could see the smoke and cracks of lightning from the portal at its core. And he could see figures too. More and more and more of them. There was a flow to them. They rippled out from the portal, flowed around the edge of the crater, and then spilled into the city streets.

  More and more and more of them.

  It wasn’t ending.

  This was a beginning.

  He had to get out of here. He had to get everybody out of here. He stared around. And of course, of course they had taken the longest possible way through the city. But from this blood-slick vantage, he could see a way out of here.

  He couldn’t see an easy way down from the dome without falling, and he knew he was weak now, almost completely out of whatever power fueled him, but he gathered the last scraps of it and he jumped the forty feet down to the crowds around him.

  He landed with a blast of dust, and an agonizing crack of kneecap against cobbles. But the bone held. He stood up wincing.

  People were staring at him. Everyone was staring at him. He blinked stupidly at them.

  “That way,” he said, pointing, then coughed on the dust he’d kicked up. “The way out is that way.”

  There was a moment of hesitation, of more staring. And then everyone turned, and everyone went that way. Will stumbled along with them. He was exhausted, utterly spent.

  Someone wrapped an arm around him, helped support his weight. He looked over. He was surprised to see it was Lette. She caught his eye, then looked away, shook her head.

  “Holy shit,” she said.

  “What?” was about all he could manage.

  “What?” She took her arm away. He wished she hadn’t. She stared at him. “Are you seriously asking me what?”

  “I’m seriously telling you I think I’m about to collapse.” He glanced down at his injured arm. It wasn’t as bad as he thought it had been. Just a few narrow scrapes, nothing worse than he’d have suffered from falling into a bramble bush.

  Lette wrapped her arm around his ribs once more. He tried to not sag against her too much.

  “Are you,” she said, “seriously asking me what after you just killed most of a small army single-handedly on top of the Barphetic Cathedral? I mean, I have seen some
impressive shit in my time. But that … that …” She shook her head, whistled. “Holy shit, Will Fallows.”

  A small army? It had seemed like that at the time, but he had assumed it had just seemed like that.

  And still he felt powerless.

  “Did I …” Finding words and breath was difficult. “Did I save anyone, at least?”

  “Well …” Lette’s hesitation didn’t sound genuine. “Probably only everybody that small army was trying to kill.”

  “Oh.” Will nodded. “Well, that’s good then.” They hobbled on through the city. No one seemed to be attacking them right now. That was nice. After a while he said, “I know I’ve heard of the Barphetic Cathedral …”

  Lette sighed. “Is there any aspect of a basic education that you did receive? The Barphetic Cathedral is probably Barph’s most famous holy site outside of Vinland. Massive landmark in Fount, city in southern Batarra. The country where we both used to live together. Nothing? Not ringing any bells?”

  Will considered. “It sounds sort of familiar.”

  “Well, you just soaked it in enough blood to drown a village, so … you know, maybe now you’ll remember its existence.”

  “Possibly.”

  Lette gave an exasperated sigh. She didn’t let him fall on his arse, though.

  Night fell, but the refugees managed to push on and put a line of hills between themselves and Fount. Then, by some mutual unspoken agreement, they all collapsed into the rough Batarran grass. The moon shone above them, owls hooted. For a moment there was peace. And then several thousand people collectively realized they had fled so fast, they hadn’t thought to bring any supplies with them.

  “This could have gone better,” Will muttered to Lette, who was still beside him.

  “I’m going to have that engraved on my tombstone.”

  “How are we going to feed everybody?”

  “Why’s that on us?”

  Will pushed himself into a sitting position. “Because we just opened a portal to the Hallows in the middle of their city, and the dead are crawling out of it, and they’re batshit insane.”