Bad Faith Read online

  He groaned. “When was this happening? Causes are being for priests and paladins and zealots. Causes are being like giant signs asking for one’s arse to be being kicked from one end of Avarra to the other. To be being kicked by me. So I can be making sure the idiots are not talking about their stupid causes.” He worked his hands, but there was nothing nearby to crush in them. “Fuck!” he spat.

  “They worm their way in, love.” Cois stroked his arm.

  He looked at hir. “It’s not you, is it?” he asked suspiciously.

  “You say the sweetest things.”

  He just stared.

  “No, love. As much as I enjoy flattering myself, I am not your cause.”

  “Good,” he growled. However, this still did not tell him what his cause was. He cast about for the offending item.

  He could see nothing but Will pontificating, and the crowd.

  The crowd …

  Oh gods. Zhe had wanted him to look at the crowd.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “I’m afraid so, love.”

  “Them?” When in the Hallows had that happened?

  “Yes, them.” Cois planted another kiss on his cheek.

  Balur looked at them. The poor. The destitute. The desperate.

  His cause.

  “Fuck,” he said again.

  32

  Fired Up

  Yorrax was ready to spit fire. She was ready to burn these humans to ash.

  Quirk had lied to her.

  Or … Quirk had tricked Yorrax into lying to herself about Quirk. Yorrax had thought she had finally found a human with the heart of a dragon. But instead Quirk had turned out to be a human with the heart of a craven worm. Just as all the dragons of Avarra had the hearts of worms. Because all the true dragons of Avarra were dead.

  All except Yorrax.

  She had almost forgiven Quirk for her betrayals on Natan, for her derisive words and her demeaning attitude. Quirk was only human. Quirk could be weak and stupid from time to time. Yorrax could understand that. She had been angry, but then … then they had ridden at the head of an army. Yorrax had finally assumed her rightful place …

  But then …

  But then Willett gods-hexed Fallows. Might all the heavens pour piss upon him. Might she lick his liver from his fresh corpse.

  Quirk had kowtowed to Will Fallows. Quirk had nodded and bowed and scraped, and … Gods, it galled Yorrax. Quirk had submitted to him.

  Perhaps Yorrax could have forgiven Quirk, if Quirk had not embarrassed her on Natan. If Quirk hadn’t made such a show of beating her. If she had held a civil tongue in her head in the presence of others. If, after all of that, Yorrax had not been so kind and magnanimous as to allow Quirk to ride her back …

  Yorrax snarled, fire escaping in a rush, and the body of the Barphist she was consuming turned to ash. Fuck.

  Yorrax had allowed Quirk to ride upon her back. And then Quirk had submitted to Will Fallows’s wishes.

  Will gods-hexed Fallows. Might he burn in eternal fires. Might she suck the marrow from his bones.

  There was no reeducating Will Fallows. There was no reasoning with him. More and more he became the petty despot. More and more he saw the dragons not as his rightful masters but as simple tools.

  She was going to kill Will Fallows. She was going to show the other dragons that she bent to no human’s will. That she was no tool.

  Unfortunately, she was not the only one to have spotted Will’s growing arrogance.

  “If we were to burn him,” Netarrax said, his head high above Yorrax’s, slurping at a leg that was stuck between two sharp teeth, “then we would lose the other humans.”

  “We do not need the humans,” Pettrax said.

  “He says that we do,” said Netarrax. “For belief. We have to make humans believe in something that isn’t Barph to win.”

  “We can win without humans. Without belief,” said Netarrax.

  This, Yorrax thought, stretched belief. Pettrax was old and rheumy eyed and blunt toothed. And he should be reminded of that fact before he took Yorrax’s opportunity from her.

  “You,” said Yorrax from between the larger pair, “couldn’t beat the human who wipes Will Fallows’s arse.”

  Netarrax did not take this well.

  A massive, taloned foot pinned Yorrax to the ground. She felt her skull grind against the dirty Vinter ground.

  “Do not mistake your place, runt,” Netarrax growled.

  “I ride at the head of the army,” Yorrax spat back at him.

  “Yes,” Netarrax growled. “That way when something strikes you from the air, the rest of us will all be able to laugh together.”

  Yorrax felt bile and hatred rising in her. That this old man should use something as pitiable as his own bulk to defy her destiny.

  “Will Fallows will strike you down,” Yorrax bit back at him. Yorrax knew their fears. Even if poking them wasn’t particularly wise. “And then,” she pressed, “I shall strike him down, and shit on both your corpses.” She bared her fangs, refusing to be cowed.

  Netarrax’s face darkened. He growled, something low and primal, and despite herself Yorrax blanched. And then Netarrax’s growl grew louder, and brighter, and suddenly it was laughter, bold and hawked into her face.

  “Will Fallows shall help us kill Barph,” Netarrax sneered, “and then he shall die.” He looked away from Yorrax and into Pettrax’s eyes, though he didn’t relieve the pressure on Yorrax’s head for a moment. “The lion’s share of the work, though, shall be ours, and the people shall know it. They shall not worship him. They shall worship us. And that is when Fallows shall die. And then we shall ascend, and we shall be dominant. We shall not be his tools, he shall be ours. And in his pride, and his hubris, he shall never see it.” He nodded his massive head, and then slowly brought it down to hover an inch before Yorrax’s own.

  “But long before all of that, runt,” he said, “you shall be dead.”

  Finally he released his foot. Yorrax gasped and flapped away, spitting sparks. Netarrax ignored her.

  But in that moment Yorrax knew she had spoken the truth. It would be she, not they, who killed Will Fallows. It would be she, not they, who ascended to godhood. It would be she, not they, who was worshipped. And it would not be Netarrax and Pettrax, because when that happened, all they would be was corpses covered in her shit. This she swore.

  And so she began to scheme.

  33

  That Moment When Two Is a Crowd

  Afrit was the first one to spot the ambush.

  It had been a while since they’d seen Gratt’s forces. They’d heard rumors of what he’d been up to in Batarra, and about the sacking of Bellenet, but it was hard to know exactly what was true now. Under Barph’s rule, sources of authority were as hard to come by as honest politicians.

  She was walking with Quirk. Because she could. Because for six months she had lived with the conviction that the woman she loved was lost to her forever. Because even if Quirk had made it to the Hallows, the Hallows were near infinite, and the ways to travel to the Void almost as numerous. Reunification had been an impossible dream.

  But it had come true all the same. In an age when she knew precisely how powerless every god was, except the one that was set on killing her, a miracle had happened. She had Quirk back.

  And in such a way too. Quirk had arrived at the head of a dragon army. She had arrived on a dragon’s back. Their great enemy tamed and turned to their cause. The cause that had reunited them.

  And it was the cause that was responsible. Afrit was certain of that. There was a weight and momentum to it. And beyond that there was … Well, righteousness felt like a pretentious word, but she hadn’t gotten to be a professor at the Tamathian University by being afraid of a little pretentiousness. What they were doing was righteous. It held the interests of every sentient species on Avarra at its heart.

  So she walked with Quirk.

  And then she saw the once-dead ambush.

  It hones
tly wasn’t that hard to spot, but Quirk had her eye on the skies and on the dragons that were looping above them. The beasts had a tendency to raid farms for livestock if they went too long without a major battle and corpses to feed upon. Quirk had needed to drive them away from more than one herd of cattle. Farmers had, in her opinion, a hard enough time now that Barphian priests punished herding as forcing unwanted order onto the inherent chaos of animals.

  She and Quirk were at the head of Will’s followers, trying to keep a semblance of pace with the dragons. It was harder than usual since they had entered the fringes of the Vale—the elves’ traditional home. Flora in general seemed to have benefited from Barph’s rules, growing rampant and uncontained. Many of the trails and pathways of the Vale’s forests had been lost, casualties to this unconstrained growth.

  Some Batarrans, it seemed, had seen a potential advantage in this new tangle and taken refuge in the forest. They had, however, apparently forgotten to ask the elves’ permission. She and Quirk were approaching a clearing where arrow-dotted tents were testaments to centuries of race enmity and to a lack of diplomacy on both sides.

  Near the clearing’s edge, Quirk had put a hand on Afrit’s shoulder, made her stop while she “scoped things out,” which was ironic, as Quirk still had her eyes on the dragons. And for just a moment—though now it was far from the first moment—Afrit felt more than a little frustrated. Because as incredible as it was to have a girlfriend who had ridden at the head of an army of dragons in the name of the cause that had reunited you, it would be nice to have one who would take you seriously in that fight.

  Gods, it would be nice to have the one who had ridden at the head of a dragon army once in a while. That woman would be far less of a mother hen surely …

  Afrit had pushed that thought aside. They were reunited. That was enough. Right? Then she had stared disconsolately at the sad little punctured tents.

  Which is when she had seen the fabric move, and the man with a bandanna striped in the colors of Gratt’s army poke his head and his crossbow out from behind one flap.

  “Oh piss,” she said quietly. And then she said far more loudly, “Ambush!”

  Which, Afrit realized almost immediately, was not the best thing to say when the bulk of your friends were still two or three hundred yards behind you in hard scrub and there was an unfriendly man with a crossbow twenty yards away across a clearing.

  Fortunately, the man took longer to realize this than Afrit, which gave Afrit a chance to dive for cover. The crossbow bolt slammed into a fallen tree trunk she had dived behind. It was termite-ridden and incapable of providing exactly the cover Afrit was after, but it at least deflected the bolt so that it glanced away over her hip.

  Then Quirk started yelling, and the fire began.

  The man and his tent and the surrounding ten feet of space disappeared in a ball of flame.

  This, Afrit realized, was probably an even worse idea than yelling, “Ambush!”

  The Vale was not a dead or dying wood, and there had been rain, but even live wood would burn if given enough encouragement, and there were more than a few dry leaves lying on the ground.

  And so Afrit found herself tackling her girlfriend to the ground while other panicked once-dead soldiers shot crossbow bolts at both of them.

  Quirk stared at Afrit in confusion. “What are you—?”

  “Saving us from a forest fire!” Afrit snapped.

  Quirk considered. “Oh,” was the best defense she seemed able to summon.

  The once-dead man had friends, it seemed. They too had successfully identified that the best way to prevent forest fires was to prevent Quirk from starting them. They however, were more predisposed to use pointy metal to express their opinions. More crossbow bolts flew. Quirk rolled, forcing Afrit beneath her. It was, Afrit’s racing mind registered, a maneuver she had been rather hoping to enact in a more intimate setting, but this was the first time Quirk’s deep-set distaste for physical intimacy had allowed them to achieve it.

  “Let me up!” Afrit was still snapping.

  “They’ll shoot you.”

  “They’ll shoot both of us unless I get back to the body of the troops and let them know what’s going on.”

  “You shouted, ‘Ambush!’” Quirk pointed out.

  “The trees muffle things.”

  “I’ll go,” Quirk said.

  “Then you’ll get shot.”

  “So you admit it!”

  A crossbow bolt whirled past their heads.

  Afrit drew a breath. “The dragons listen to you. You are a mage. You are more important to this cause than I am. If I can draw their fire or get help so you survive, that is the most important thing.”

  Quirk’s face could have been made of steel. “I will not let you sacrifice yourself for me.”

  “It’s not for you. It’s for the cause.”

  It was out of Afrit before she really considered it. But from the expression on Quirk’s face, perhaps she should have. But she meant it. And wasn’t honesty part of love?

  Quirk opened her mouth. No words came.

  “Please, love,” Afrit said. “Let me go.”

  Quirk didn’t answer.

  And then there was a roar, and the sounds of branches ripping and men screaming, and the hammer-blow flaps of massive wings, and both Afrit and Quirk were buffeted with billowing wind and leaves. They shielded their eyes and stared. Yorrax was there, having torn a ragged hole in the trees. She had two once-dead soldiers in her claws, another one hanging from her jaws. She spat the corpse out.

  “Puny humans,” she said before opening her wings once more and flying away.

  34

  Dead Man Talking

  Two weeks later, deep in the Vale, Will couldn’t sleep. He hadn’t been able to sleep for three days. He was still figuring out how to close the new eyes.

  There were clusters of them on each of his temples. Small, black glistening things, none bigger than a blueberry. He was sweeping locks of hair down over them. And it wasn’t exactly as if he saw with them. His visual field was the same. But there was … awareness. A new sense of what was happening in the peripheries that was hard to define. A heightened awareness of the smallest movements.

  Lette had been good about them, he knew. She lay with him now in their makeshift cot, her head upon his chest, slowly rising and falling with each breath. It would have been easier for her to scream and run. But she hadn’t. She had stayed. He was a lucky man.

  He could hear others moving about outside, attempting to be quiet and failing. Despite the moonless night, he could pick out individual leaves in the tree canopy above when he peered through the holes in the tent’s roof.

  The strange power that the crowd gave him never left him now. Whenever he spent it, there always seemed to be more left over. He didn’t really think about it as “spending” power anymore. It was just something he could do. Something that he was. That he had become.

  Afrit had asked him about using the power to put the Hallows back. Now that he had recaptured his power it had been nice to be able to say—truthfully—that he had already tried. He wasn’t proud of everything he had done since his return to Avarra, but that at least felt clean. Still, it had not been possible. Not even remotely. The initial rush of power that had come with the Deep Ones’ first invasion of his body was utterly spent. He honestly believed he would be able to overthrow Barph before he could fix the Hallows. And that … that did not feel quite so clean.

  Slowly he extricated himself from beneath Lette and slipped out of the tent, out into the night. Part of him could tell that it was cold, could see his breath on the air, but he willed himself warm. That was new too.

  They had only recruited a handful of elves to their cause since coming to the Vale. It was not that the elves were truly faithful to Barph, just that they were distrustful of “round-ears.” But, despite this, some still came. Because … because he was powerful, he realized. That was the word for it. I am powerful. He turned the phra
se over in his head. Tried to figure out how it fit into his idea of himself.

  It didn’t.

  “Master Willett.” The voice caught him off guard. One of the men posted as a night guard shuffled out of the shadows and then—of all things—took a knee before Will and touched his forehead with one thumb. Two other men looked over, came, and assumed the same position. When had that started?

  “Hello,” he said. He felt awkward but didn’t want to reveal it. “You can … get up.”

  “Thanks to you, Master Willett,” the three men said in unison. They stood, but they stayed there looking at him. There was something vaguely creepy about the whole thing.

  Will looked for escape routes. But simply fleeing from them felt rude.

  “How is it tonight?” He hoped that he didn’t sound as if he was desperately reaching for the nearest topic at hand.

  The men looked at each other. It seemed they were as unprepared for this interaction as he was. Then one broke the silence. “Cold, Master Willett,” he said, clapping his hands. “But quiet. And that’s how we like it. Keep your people safe.”

  “Put the fear of a god in those Barphist bastards, so you have,” said another.

  The third just nodded wordlessly.

  “It’s a good night to have you out with us,” said the first, seeming to gain some confidence.

  “Aye. Thank you,” said the second.

  And the third just nodded.

  “Well …,” said Will, and then stopped himself. Telling these men that he was out here to avoid company was probably not what they wanted to hear.

  I am powerful. I am powerful because of men like these.

  That he was out here to avoid company was not what he needed them to hear.

  “Well, I’m glad,” he said, trying to cover the hesitation. He nodded. Best to get out of here before he screwed everything up. “Keep up the good work.”

  They seemed to glow with pride. And there was a time, maybe just a week ago, when he would have felt that. Would have taken in their high regard for him. But now … now it was drops in the ocean. And honestly, right now their attention was too much.