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  Gratt snorted. “Do you know why you still breathe, Lawl?” he asked.

  “Because my advice will keep you breathing,” Lawl barked. “And only—”

  “Because you amuse me,” said Gratt, cutting him off but still affecting a lazy drawl. “Because it makes me laugh that you think you still have power. That you still have influence. That your opinion matters.”

  “You think this is victory, don’t you?” said Lawl. He was on the verge of tearing his beard out. “You think your accomplishments matter.”

  This was so delicious, Barph would lick it up if he could.

  “Your voice,” Gratt said, “is like the chirping of a swallow as the cat creeps up on him.”

  “I have stood where he stands!” Lawl howled. “My blood has filled the font at the heart of the Summer Palace. I have seen what he sees now. I watched a thousand petty conquerors cross this land, and none of them were anything to me. You don’t matter. Nothing you have done threatens him at all.”

  And the undertones of anguish, of despair in those words. Each one was a lazy finger down Barph’s spine, stroking him to the edge of ecstasy.

  “Nothing you say matters,” Gratt replied. “Nothing at all.”

  He didn’t mean it, Barph knew. Gratt stayed up late at night worrying over this. But that just made it all the better.

  “You fucking … mortal!” Lawl raged.

  Gratt shook his head. “Ah. No,” he said. “No, you cannot accuse me of that anymore. Not given your own state. Or should I remind you of Klink?”

  Lawl spat. “Murderous scum.”

  Gratt laughed. “How many lives are on your conscience, old man?”

  But Barph has stopped paying attention. Why had Lawl said murderous?

  Klink was lost to the Void, but that had happened in the destruction of the Hallows, had it not? So many had been. An amusing twist of fate that Klink was denied his fair due. But that was all, wasn’t it?

  Lawl was weeping now. Why was Lawl weeping?

  Barph landed in Gratt’s camp without truly thinking about it. His impact threw Gratt thirty feet through the air. Lawl’s cage didn’t survive, spars of wood and steel spearing through the air and nearby tents. Screams rose.

  Barph ignored it all. He strode toward Gratt. “Where is Klink?” he asked. “Where is my uncle?”

  Gratt stood shakily, stared at him. “To arms!” the misshapen arsehole shouted. “The enemy is here! To arms!”

  Barph could not say he appreciated this. “WHERE,” he thundered, “IS MY UNCLE?”

  Gratt bared his massive teeth. He towered above Barph now. He seemed to think that mattered.

  “He is a memory,” Gratt snarled. “He is dust at my feet. He is lost and gone into the Void at my hand.”

  At my hand.

  Barph tried to contain that phrase. Tried to hold it still and peaceful in his head. But it raged through him. It tore through his insides.

  “You?” he asked. “My uncle? You?”

  “And now you,” Gratt said. His men were running now, holding hastily recovered swords and spears.

  Barph had always intended to rebuff Gratt’s ambition. He had always meant to knock him back on his arse. He had always had it in mind that this game of anarchy had its limits. He would win. He was god, after all. The only god. But this … this …

  It wasn’t that Klink was dead. Klink was, after all, a meaningless god. He was a god of an ambition that served no purpose but to sort humanity into the subjugated and the subjugators through the arbitrary medium of shiny pieces of metal. He was, as Barph had pointed out to him numerous times, the god of greed, no matter what he called it. And when Barph had believed him to be a casualty of circumstance there was a sort of hilarity to it all.

  But this … That Gratt had dared …

  It was the fucking impudence of it all.

  Gratt’s men charged. Barph swept a hand through the air. Each and every charging man fell to the earth in two pieces, neatly bisected at the waist. They gasped and flailed and bled and died.

  Arrows came and hurled spears. Javelins and throwing axes tumbling end over end. Barph brushed them aside, sent them back to their owners with enough force that the impacts could be heard like a drumroll of wet explosions.

  Gratt growled, charged. Barph caught him around the throat. He was a little larger than Gratt now, his body shifting in size so fluidly and quickly that he doubted Gratt was even capable of seeing the transformation. He hoisted Gratt off the ground easily. Size was irrelevant to that, of course. It wasn’t really muscles that Barph was using to hold Gratt aloft. It was belief. But size seemed likely to make an impact on Gratt’s thinking.

  “Lawl,” he said into Gratt’s frothing face, “was right.” He threw the general into the dust. “You think yourself a king. You are a fucking beggar at the table of power. You are a craven crippled child, and I bestow upon you nothing but my piss.”

  Gratt growled, and Barph was on the verge of kicking the general squarely in the head and ending this distraction once and for all when a voice interrupted events.

  “You fucking peasant! You call him a beggar? Better a beggar than you! Better a worm than you!”

  Barph paused, turned. Lawl had recovered from his sprawling pratfall, was standing there, apoplectic with rage. His beard, once so well groomed, was a tattered ruin. “Ah,” Barph said. “Father. Grandfather. So good to see you.”

  “You are the beggar!” Lawl frothed with obscenity, seemed unable to contain himself.

  Gratt took the moment to pick himself up, hurl himself at Barph. Barph caught him by the face, squeezed until the nose was broken, flung him away.

  “Oh, Father,” Barph said. “If that were true, then why are you here? Why are you caged and locked and bound and so very, very, very, very powerless?”

  He reached out and stroked his spitting father’s cheek. Lawl clawed ineffectually at Barph’s skin. He might as well claw at steel.

  “Do you know what power is, Father?” Barph asked Lawl.

  “I know you’re why people preach against inbreeding,” Lawl spat.

  “All your years shouting how you were in charge,” Barph said, “and I don’t think you ever learned at all.” Barph smiled. “Power is letting you live. It’s knowing that I could end you at any moment, and letting you live with that knowledge. That’s power, Father. Now you know. Goodbye. See you soon.”

  And with that he left them all there. The screaming, the dying, the belittled, and the enraged.

  It was good to be god.

  37

  Enhanced Interrogations

  In all honesty, Will had expected the Barphists in Tamar to be better organized.

  Of course he knew organization was anathema to them, but it was so much a part of the stereotype. Afrit and Quirk with their tight-lipped disapproval of everything were so Tamarian sometimes it was laughable. Tamar was … It was a prissy nation. There was no getting around the fact. So surely even Barphists in Tamar would approach things with a sense of urgency.

  And yet it was almost two weeks after they emerged from the Vale until the horizon darkened with a line of the nation’s famous horsemen. Dark-skinned warriors astride white-flanked horses—a scene from Will’s mother’s tales, told by firelight to a wide-eyed child.

  There should have been a sense of wonder to it, Will thought. There was a time when there would have been.

  That time was past.

  The numbers were pretty even for once. Several thousand Barphists all lined up. And they had horses. A tremor ran through Will’s forces as the line of men started to pour down the hillside toward them.

  Will had dragons, though.

  The famous horsemen of Tamar came pelting down the hill in a swirling mass of sweating horse flanks and flashing bridles and whirling manes. Scimitars were hoisted to the skies, whirled like flags on a saint’s day. Ululating cries were launched like spears.

  And then it all disappeared into flame.

  The dragons ca
me in waves, the largest and heaviest plummeting out of the skies first, wings tucked tight, necks outstretched. And then, when it seemed far too late, the wings flared and the long sinuous necks flexed. They pulled out of the dive, skimmed barely seven or eight feet above the surface of the earth. Downdrafts hurled dust and grass into the air. They raced ahead, vertical velocity transmuted into forward momentum. Their massive jaws unhinged. Scales glinted in the stark Tamarian sun. Fire bloomed.

  And then the next wave, and the next, and the next. One after another. Five at a time sowing death like rain.

  Will had seen some of it before. Back in Batarra he had learned exactly how devastating his new allies could be, and it had turned his stomach slightly. But this was the first time they had faced a massed enemy. This was the first time in a long time that the dragons had been able to attack without worrying about the tree cover of the Vale.

  So now, as Will watched his forces realize that they would not be needed, that this attack was aborted before it had begun, all that sickness that had possessed him back in Batarra was nowhere to be seen. Now there was grim satisfaction, even the slim edge of pride. He watched Barph’s worshipers fall. He watched the faith of his own people renewed. He swelled.

  Five minutes, and it was over. Only the screams of men and horses were left to oppose him. Only the smell of roasting meat drifting over the battlefield.

  There was silence. It took him a while to pick up on the feelings of the crowd. Awe touched with horror. And it didn’t feel like that at all to him. And he could understand what they felt only because … How did he understand it? It was knowledge that appeared out of nowhere.

  “We move on!” he shouted. There was little else to do, to be honest. The dragons would eat these dead, then they would catch up. Some were already landing among the dead, bones crunching and blackened meat spilling juices across scale-covered lips.

  “We move on!” he called again. This time they got it, began the slow trudge past the bodies.

  He got perhaps five hundred yards before he heard the shrill cry. “Will! Will, come quickly!”

  He almost used an illusion to duck away. It was almost instinctive now. But there was something about the tone, and the voice made him think he knew this woman running at him, shouting.

  “Will! Come quickly!”

  Afrit. How in the gods’ names had he forgotten her name?

  “Why?” he asked, trying to cover his confusion.

  “She can’t stop them,” was all the answer he got.

  He sighed, considered ignoring her, but she was giving him an excuse to get away from the crowds. And running didn’t really make him tired anymore. Nothing made him tired anymore. And yet somehow he was always tired.

  He caught up with her, not even truly jogging, just allowing his footsteps to devour a little more space than they should have. A subtle folding of reality. Soon Afrit was trying to keep up with him. But he already knew where she was trying to lead him, her intent reflecting in the landscape clear as a beacon. He left her behind.

  Quirk stood at the edge of the battlefield, hands on hips, railing at three dragons. They were big brutes. The travel and hard living of the past month or so had left them lean and muscular. They were not easily cowed anymore. One of them stood, its body between Quirk and the others, its head turned away for all that Quirk’s hands were full of fire.

  “Stop!” Quirk screamed, and Will could hear a raw edge in her voice. The dragons wouldn’t respect that, he knew. He could read their contempt in their postures.

  “What is this?” Will made his voice just loud enough to cut through. Heads flicked around.

  “They’re … they’re …” Quirk’s face was pale to the point of sickness. Spots of color stood out against her naturally dark complexion.

  Then Will was past her, and he saw.

  The dragons had someone on the ground between them. A man. No … what was left of a man. Someone just on the edge of death. Someone who wouldn’t be there much longer.

  As Will walked forward, one of the massive dragons put a claw into a wound already gored in the man’s side. The man convulsed.

  “Where?” A voice came sharply.

  Will realized there was another dragon he couldn’t see, one obscured by the bulk of the others. He pushed around the bulk of the dragon who had his back to Quirk.

  Yorrax leaned over the tortured man. And tortured was indeed the word.

  The man gabbled and spat words. Yorrax leaned close.

  The dragon torturing the man twisted its claw. The man screamed.

  “When?” Yorrax asked.

  “Stop it!” Quirk yelled. Will hadn’t realized she was following him. She pounded his shoulder. “Stop them!”

  “No,” rumbled one of the dragons, looking up from what was left of the man. Will recognized it now as Netarrax, the massive black beast who styled himself head of the dragon forces.

  “We grow impatient of this pathetic war of attrition,” Netarrax growled. “We are dragons. We fight tooth and claw. This man will give us the information we need to find Barph, to tear him from the heavens.”

  “This is inhuman,” said Quirk.

  “Well, they aren’t human,” Will commented. Though he supposed that wasn’t helping.

  The man on the ground made dying noises.

  “Why aren’t you stopping this?” Quirk was staring at him, eyes wide.

  Will wondered about that. He looked at the man. So much meat and bone. Barely any wants and fears left in him now. No belief at all. It reminded him of being a farmer on the days they’d needed to slaughter cattle. Gods, that had been a long time ago.

  He shook his head, tried to clear it. “What’s he told you?” he asked Yorrax.

  “That’s not fucking relevant!” Quirk screamed.

  “A Barphian temple,” said Yorrax. There was red on her teeth. “It’s important. It’s just two days from here.”

  “Why is it important?” Will asked.

  “You are fucking endorsing this, you heartless shit!” Quirk yelled.

  Will nodded. “Take your claw out of its guts,” he said to the offending dragon.

  For a moment their eyes met. His purple. Its yellow. Slitted pupils narrowed. Then with a slick noise the claw slipped out. The man gasped, then the life slipped out of him too.

  No more hopes or fears for him now. Just the peace of the Void.

  Will looked back to Yorrax. “Why is it important?”

  Yorrax shook his head. “He won’t tell us now.”

  “Fuck’s sake.” Quirk was blanching.

  “We should destroy it,” said Netarrax.

  “We should destroy you, you murderous shit,” Quirk muttered.

  Netarrax growled.

  “Yes,” Will said. Both Quirk and Netarrax turned their murderous gazes on him. “The temple,” he clarified. “Obviously.”

  “This is tainted information.” Afrit, it turned out, had decided to join the group. She was pointedly not looking at the corpse. “We can’t use it.”

  Netarrax looked to Yorrax. “You are knowing humans, runt,” he rumbled. “What are they jabbering about?”

  “Weakness,” said Yorrax. And she looked at Quirk with a sneer.

  So, Will thought, that’s gone south.

  And he did understand where Quirk and Afrit were coming from. Or … he thought he did. Or … he remembered what it was like to feel what they were feeling. But in the end the goal was Barph’s death. Or … the freeing of Avarra. Or … revenge. It was one of those. All of those. Maybe they were all the same thing.

  “We have the information now,” he said shortly. He didn’t argue with people anymore. He was done with that. “We’re going to use it.”

  The dragons smirked. Quirk and Afrit both opened their mouths. And Will twisted illusions and disappeared before they got a gods-hexed word out.

  As promised, it took two days to make it to the temple. The skies remained a pale blue above them, the sun rode high. Dragons circ
led on thermals.

  “Is being an odd place for a temple.”

  Will started. For a moment he almost slipped into invisibility. But then he recognized Balur’s voice and tortured semantics, and turned to see the lizard man.

  Cois was with him. Of all the gods, zhe seemed to have taken the loss of power the best. Will wondered why. Perhaps it was to do with Balur. With hir relationship. Will thought of Lette and of what she gave him. Yes, he could see that.

  “A temple,” Balur said again. “I am not thinking it belongs here.”

  Will finally took in the content of Balur’s speech. He looked around the low Tamarian hills. “Why not?” he asked.

  “A temple is being like a basket,” Balur said.

  Will gave Cois a look. “Metaphors now? Really?”

  Zhe grinned.

  “A basket in the center of a community,” Balur plowed on. “The people are bringing their prayers and their coins there. The temple is collecting them.” Balur looked around exaggeratedly. “There are being no people here. No villages. This is being farmland and plains. There is being nothing for the temple to collect.”

  Will shrugged. “We don’t know why it’s important. Maybe it does something different.”

  “That,” said Balur, with more of a sarcastic lean than Will was used to these days, “is sort of being my point.”

  “So,” Will double-checked, “your point is that you don’t know anything? Well, that’s helpful.” He increased his pace.

  “Perhaps,” Cois said to his back, with deliberate slowness, “we are not here to serve your great cause. Perhaps we have our own cause.”

  Will stopped, looked back at them. He forced his displeasure into the air. Made it something tangible. He watched Balur grimace. “There is only one goal,” he said. “There can only be one until Barph is gone.”

  Balur furrowed his brow and spoke despite the force of Will’s irritation tainting the air. “Be being careful with these people,” he said. “Do not be spending them as if they are meaningless.”