Bad Faith Read online

  Will squinted at Balur. Because … Well, first, Balur had just said that to him?

  But pointing that out probably wouldn’t help anything. So he dealt with the second absurdity. “I don’t think they’re meaningless.” Of course he didn’t. It was a ridiculous accusation.

  “Then being careful with their lives will be easy,” said Cois. And zhe was looking at him in a way Will didn’t fully understand. Something knowing in hir look.

  He shook it off. “Of course.” He tried to sound irritated, not chastened. He wasn’t sure if Cois bought it.

  They walked together for a while. The dragons still circling in the air. A few scouted ahead. Then suddenly Yorrax swooped down, landed heavily beside them.

  “There is something ahead,” the dragon said without preamble.

  “The temple?” asked Will.

  “No,” said Yorrax. There was no apology in the dragon’s voice. “Something else where the temple should be.”

  “What thing?” Will was tempted to beat the word something out of the dragon’s vocabulary.

  Yorrax didn’t blink or look away. “Perhaps a vineyard.”

  “Perhaps?” Will balled his fists.

  “Perhaps you wish to fly and look for yourself.”

  “Perhaps you no longer deserve to fly.”

  Yorrax started to growl.

  “Every life,” he heard Cois whisper. At a volume only he and zhe could hear.

  And perhaps tearing the limbs off a creature for a lack of specificity in its messages might not set the right tone.

  “Thank you,” he managed between gritted teeth.

  Another foothill, and they saw the structure perched in a shallow valley. And there were indeed neat rows of vines covering the sun-soaked slope. A villa accompanied them, and several barns.

  “That is not being a temple,” said Balur.

  “We should raze it to the ground.” Netarrax landed this time. The massive black dragon made the ground quake as he walked alongside them.

  “We don’t know why it’s important,” Cois said. “Or why a tortured man was jabbering about it.”

  “We do not need to know,” Netarrax growled. “We raze it. It ceases to be. It ceases to be an asset to our enemy. We weaken him.”

  Will considered this, and there was some temptation to the thought. The razing of his enemy.

  He looked back at the host trailing after him. They had traveled most of the day. They were tired and slow. And despite himself, he wanted to prove to Cois that he cared, that he could be magnanimous.

  “A small force,” he said. “Twenty of us. To investigate. No dragons.”

  Netarrax growled.

  “Do you wish to dispute this with me?”

  For a moment their eyes locked. Then Netarrax looked away. “As you say.”

  “As I say.”

  Will resisted the urge to hold Lette’s hands as they walked up the dusty road to the vineyard. There were those here who did not know their history, who might interpret it as weakness.

  They’d be right, of course.

  And still, as they got closer, as the warmth of the sun grew, as the sound of the grape leaves rustling reached them … there was something of this place that reminded him of his long-abandoned home in Kondorra, and of the farmstead he and Lette had briefly owned together in Batarra. How much of this would have been avoided if she had stayed with him there? Would they be happy? Would their lives be simple and sweet?

  But Lette had hated farming. His dream had been her nightmare. And now he was here, with power in his fists and an army at his back.

  Two dark-skinned men hurried out of one of the barns. They wore linen aprons stained purple. One had salt-and-pepper hair and a beard streaked with gray. The other was younger and had no beard but bore the same nose and eyes. Father and son, Will would guess.

  “Can we be helping you?” It was the father who spoke. He had a broad, helpful smile and open hands, but his voice shook slightly at the end.

  “What is this place?” Will flexed a little magical might to increase the volume of his voice, to deepen its tone.

  “Show-off,” Lette muttered, but he could tell she was smiling.

  “Just a simple vineyard, sir.” The man had opened his hands. “Though we make a good wine, even if I do say so myself. Enough people have told me that I think it’s all right to repeat—”

  “What is this place?” Will thundered the words now. Made the hills ring with them.

  The two men dropped to their knees.

  “Please,” said the father. “We’ve done nothing to offend nobody. We’re good people here.”

  “My mother is in there.” The son pointed back at the villa. “My sisters. Have some mercy in your heart.”

  And Will didn’t want to destroy this place. He truly didn’t. “Then tell me,” he said, “what this place is.”

  “We just make wine,” the father pleaded. “That’s all.”

  Will walked toward them, made the weight of his presence lie heavy in the air. “So you worship Barph,” he said. And he could not keep the hatred out of his voice.

  “No more than the next winemaker, sir.” There was desperation in the man’s voice. “I mourned the other gods when they went, I swear, sir.”

  And there was truth in this man. Will could sense it, as if it were a tangible thing, a scent pervading the air. So why was he here?

  He looked around, trying to think. The clean white walls of the villa. Its terra-cotta roof tiles. The neat rows of vines.

  Neat rows. Ordered.

  “This place is untouched,” he said to himself. Then he looked to Lette. “This place is clean, tidy. It’s ordered.” He looked back to the winemaker. “Barph let nothing like this stand,” he said. “He forced chaos everywhere. Except here. Here stands clean and clear.” He rounded on the two vintners. “Why?” he demanded. “The wine,” the son gabbled. “It’s the wine.”

  And still Will sensed truth, but he could find no sense. “What about the wine?” He tried not to shout. He didn’t try very hard, though.

  “He likes it, sir,” said the man. “That’s it. That’s all. I said to you, I told you, we make good wine. Our grapes grow well. We know our craft. It’s good wine. And Barph … He … he likes it, sir.”

  “Barph likes it?” Will had been doing his very best not to sound bewildered. It didn’t sit well with who he was anymore, but … what in the Hallows was this man talking about?

  “Yes, sir.” The father nodded. “He leaves us alone. He lets us make it the way we always have. Doesn’t want to mess with the process.”

  Will glanced back at the others. Lette shrugged. Cois looked nonplussed, albeit slightly relieved that no sharp knives had been produced yet. Balur was looking mostly at Cois’s arse now that it seemed there would be no bloodshed.

  And then Will found it, the incongruity. He turned back to the two men. “And how,” he asked, “do you know this? How do two lowly vintners know the mind of a god?”

  He set his feet for the fight.

  The two men exchanged a look. The father looked back at Will, and his face was as open as a book. “He told me, sir.”

  “He …?” was all Will could manage.

  “He likes our wine, sir,” said the son. “He comes for it himself, personal-like. He manifests and takes it back to the heavens with him.”

  “He … he manifests here?” Will looked about as if expecting to see Barph standing in the wings at this very moment.

  And then a voice behind Will said, “Yes. Yes I do.”

  38

  A Break from Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

  Long ago, Barph had found there was boredom in omniscience. When, millennia ago, he had first become a god, and humanity was new upon the face of the world, there had been a voyeuristic thrill to peering into someone’s life, their thoughts. And yet, over time, everything became a little predictable. The same lives lived out over and over again. The parts merely scrambled into new combina
tions.

  And yet Barph found that he took distinct pleasure in the predictability of Will’s expressions. Shock first, as he spun around. Then slowly mounting horror. And … Wait for it … Yes, here it came. The rage.

  And then the thought slowly transformed into action.

  To be fair, Will’s blow came far harder and faster than Barph had expected. But that was pleasant too. A surprise. Wasn’t that the very spice of life, in the end: the unexpected, serendipitous, unanticipated stick in the spokes?

  He stepped back, and Will’s fist swung past his chin, the wind of the blow ruffling his beard. It was closer than he had expected, but his dodge probably just looked more impressive for that.

  And then came the follow-up. Will was nothing if not persistent. He didn’t even give the surprise a chance to set in. He used his momentum to come round with his foot. And Will had certainly learned some moves since Barph had last seen him.

  Barph caught Will’s foot. And another surprise was the strength behind the blow. It didn’t hurt, but it sent his feet skidding back across the ground.

  Barph readjusted the density of his manifested form and heaved Will away, sending him spinning. And now the others were starting to react. Balur charging headfirst at him, Lette’s blades arcing through the air. Men and women he didn’t know on a first-name basis waving swords and hatchets at him.

  All so very predictable.

  He batted Lette’s blades out of the air, sent them in carving arcs, slicing through arms and legs, dropping some people before they even got their rage appropriately on. Then he put a hand out, placed it in Balur’s face, sent him plowing into the dirt.

  Then Will was back. The boy had landed on his feet, was whipping through moves that were, quite frankly, alien to Barph. A flurry of feet and fists. And yet Barph anticipated and found no problem following each one, batting it away. New and unexpected was not the same as threatening.

  He started to laugh. And the rage on Will’s face just made him laugh harder.

  “Oh, little puppy,” he said, as Will panted and heaved. “Oh, with your snapping and snarling. You are so fierce. You are so brave.” He backhanded Will across the face, sent him reeling—and yet the boy still kept his feet. Then Balur was back up, so Barph kicked him in the crotch so hard he flew across the courtyard and into Lette.

  “All of you fighting so very hard, and for what? For my attention? To have some meaning? Some purpose? To prove how important your lives are?” And he laughed harder at the looks on their faces as he picked arrows out of the air. He threw them all back at the archer, made a pincushion of him.

  “There is no meaning, little puppies,” he said, batting a few more of Will’s blows away. “For I am meaning. And I am meaningless. I reject it. And you rail, and you shout, and you clench your tiny fists, and …” He smiled. “You achieve nothing. There is nothing to be achieved.”

  He slid a solid gut punch under Will’s guards, lifted the boy off his feet, sent him flying across the courtyard, watched him crash into the villa wall. Stone chips flew. Barph hoped he hadn’t done too much damage. He liked this vineyard.

  “All you do,” he said. “Everything you achieve.” He kicked someone in the head, heard their neck snap. “Is going to add up to nothing. It will simply prove my point.”

  He knew Will was listening. Lying in the dirt and listening to him. And oh, rubbing Will’s face in it—his ridiculous, earnest face—was just so much fun.

  And then a very familiar voice said, “You always were a sanctimonious prick, Barph.”

  He turned through the chaos, brushed aside another attack, and saw, kneeling beside Balur, his mother, his lover, Cois.

  Zhe shook hir head at him. “I know you like to pretend to be the rebel, the iconoclast, to talk about ripping Lawl down from his high table. But all you ever really want to do is pontificate yourself. You just could never stand that Lawl’s voice was louder than yours.”

  “Oh,” Barph crooned. “Oh, Cois. Oh, Mother sweetest. Who did you fuck to get back to this plane of existence?”

  Someone came at him with a sword. He disarmed them. Literally. At the shoulder.

  “Your petty jealousies and insecurities.” Cois tutted. “Even now you cannot help but be a victim to them.”

  Barph smiled again. Oh, how he smiled. He had missed this. This backbiting. The snip and spit. And part of him was tempted to take Cois the way he used to do after their arguments and resolve things with the thrust of a blunter sword.

  “It was Will, wasn’t it, Mother?” he said. “He warms your …” But then he saw the truth of it. Hir hand on the lizard man’s shoulder. And he had known he should pay more attention to Will’s antics. They contained hidden hilarities that had escaped him until now. “Balur? Mother!” He knew how zhe hated the gendered noun. “You always did like a bit of rough trade.”

  For a moment he thought zhe wasn’t going to respond. And his smile faltered, because for all that he wanted the gods to know that they lived beneath his bootheel—that they lived at his mercy, that their plans would always be fruitless wastes of time—he wasn’t sure he wanted them broken. He wanted them to struggle. He wanted plans to spoil.

  How many of Cois’s plans had he ruined over the millennia? How many indiscretions had he ensured hir husband, Toil, “accidentally” discovered? How many of hir auguries had been misinterpreted? Because of him. All because of him.

  And for all that Will was up on his feet, snarling and tearing at Barph, he was not quite the opponent that Cois was. He wasn’t family.

  Barph beat Will away, eyes on Cois. Zhe opened hir mouth and he grinned again, ready to spar with hir.

  “You poor broken thing, Barph,” zhe said. “You sad little child.” Zhe dropped hir eyes, stared at the ground and the bleeding lizard man at her feet. “I should never have let Lawl do it to you,” zhe said, quietly and just for him. “I should have stepped in and protected you. I am so sorry.”

  “You …” He tried to find the words. Because what was this? Was it … was it fucking sympathy?

  “Condescending bitch!” he yelled at hir. Because how dare zhe? Mother, lover, foil. That was what zhe had been. That was what they had all been, in one way or another. That was what he missed. That was what he wanted.

  “Whore!” he screamed. But words were not enough. Not even at a volume that blew hir back across the courtyard and cracked tiles. He grew and he grew and he grew. He towered over them. His feet crushed grapes. And fuck them. Fuck his need for wine. This was important. This needed to be understood.

  “I am your god!” he bellowed. “I am your everything! That is how it is now!”

  And somehow Will was still up, was still hurling himself at Barph’s ankle like some ferocious hamster. And would he not go down? Would he not fucking listen? Barph kicked him, sent him flying.

  “You are nothing!” he howled again. “There is only me. I stand alone now! Alone!”

  And he looked down from his great height. And he saw Cois lying sprawled on hir back in dirt and blood intermingled, and zhe looked up, and zhe met his eye, and zhe nodded, and said, “Yes. Yes you are.”

  39

  Thunderstruck

  Quirk had dedicated most of her adult life to the study of dragons. There had, of course, been dalliances with other mega- thaumatofauna. She had spent a semester at university obsessing over the breeding cycles of Chatarran wyverns. She’d spent six months working on a paper about the social structures of Atrian giant tribes. But every time she had come back to dragons. Their legends. Their history. Their influence on human social structures. The contents of their hordes and the hidden ratios within their treasures. And then beyond simply studying dragons—actually fighting them. Interacting with their social structures. Battling their political machinations. And now here she was working alongside them—integrated, in a way, into their social fabric.

  But never had any of her reading or research indicated to any reasonable extent exactly how much gods-hexed moaning there
was going to be.

  “We should have gone to the vineyard,” Pettrax grumbled.

  “We should have burned it to the ground,” Rothinamax whined.

  “We wait on a human.” Netarrax’s voice was full of disdain. “We are no better than we were.”

  “We are working,” Quirk said as loudly as she could, “together. Cooperation is not the same as capitulation.”

  “Cooperation is not being ordered about by creature of weak flesh.” Pettrax loomed over her.

  It was a challenge, Quirk knew. An attempt to assert dominance. Because it always was. Because every time the dragons talked to her, it was an attempt to find weakness. It was transparent, and ever so slightly pathetic for its repetition.

  It was also bowel-looseningly terrifying.

  “If you want a say,” Quirk growled, imitating aggression in direct defiance of every impulse in her body, “come up with something worth listening to.” She let smoke waft out with her words.

  Pettrax snorted fire, but it shot over her head. Then the dragon looked away.

  “We wait,” Quirk shouted to the assembled horde of dragons, “because it is the smart play. We wait because information is valuable. And only after we have retrieved it can you dumb bastards go do the one thing you’re good for.”

  And gods piss on it, that was not a message that would foster the cooperative mind-set she was angling toward. The problem was that when dragons were involved, cooperation seemed to involve one party getting its way and the other party becoming an appetizer. Quirk knew which side of the equation she wanted to be on.

  Finally she risked looking away from the dragons, toward the hills that blocked the vineyard from her sight. And at the exact moment she did so, the massive figure of Barph suddenly lurched up into the sky and towered over everything.

  Because … because gods piss on it. Because there were no reasons anymore. There was just the mockery of all she strove for. Every gods-hexed time.

  “Okay,” she said, turning back to the dragons. “That you can probably rain death and destruction on.”

  But they hadn’t really waited for her cue. They were boiling up into the air. Downdrafts battered her and forced her to her knees. Dust and dirt were a storm around her. Then the dragons were aloft, screaming, bellowing, roaring, shooting flame, and racing toward their enemy.