Bad Faith Read online

  It was half-buried by the wall it had collapsed into. Blood ran down its sides. And it was small, she saw, by a dragon’s standards. Only twenty feet, perhaps, from snout to tail.

  A dragon. A tyrannical, megalomaniac beast. Intelligent, but inhuman also. A creature driven to dominate and kill. A relation somehow of the creatures that had tried to take over Avarra, that had opened the door to Barph and all his ills.

  She reached out a hand toward it.

  It was small, it was young, it was injured. She could kill it. She could and should end it.

  It turned baleful eyes upon her. Fathomless pools of yellow. It opened its jaw. Teeth that went on forever glinted at her. Flame flickered in the back of its throat.

  It could and should end her.

  They stayed there, frozen in that tableau of death.

  “You attacked Barph,” the dragon said. Its voice was a rough rasp, like a body dragged over sharp rocks.

  “So did you,” she said, and each word felt like a lead weight she was heaving up from her lungs.

  “Yes,” agreed the dragon.

  “He has to die,” she said. She couldn’t quite make the words into a question. It was a fact stamped too deeply into her heart.

  “Yes,” the dragon said again.

  Quirk let her arm drop. She sighed. “Fuck it then,” she said, and she lay down to rest.

  7

  In Which Lette Is Full of Shit

  Down in the Hallows, Will had just discovered the mouth of a tunnel decorated with skulls. Given that it led to a place called the Killing Plains, this struck him as gilding the lily a little bit.

  “I just want to check one more time,” Afrit said as they walked beneath the leering arch of bone. “The Killing Plains. We’re all totally on board with that?”

  Will aimed for stoic silence. He missed wildly.

  “I don’t know,” he found himself saying. “Did you negotiate a better deal for our freedom when I wasn’t listening?”

  “I am thinking,” Balur rumbled, “that it is sounding like quite an exciting place. The sort of place where one can really get into one’s hobbies.”

  “It’s good to keep busy,” Cois concurred.

  This, Will thought, is why one day I will call myself a murderer.

  “Look,” he said, “I was under the impression that Lette and Balur were pretty good at this whole killing thing. They talk about it a lot, at least.”

  “We talk?” Lette’s expression suggested Will’s words were unlikely to change the status of their off-again, off-again relationship.

  “And there are five of us, whereas I have to assume psychotic killers generally have trouble binding together in groups. So we’ll outnumber them.”

  “So Lette and I are doing all the work,” Balur concluded. “As is being usual.”

  “Again,” Will said, “what freedom did you negotiate? I’ve done my part.”

  They pushed farther into the darkness of the tunnel. Will tried to keep the pace up. Water dripped around them. Puddles splashed beneath their feet. Everything smelled slightly of copper. Will started to wonder if the puddles weren’t filled with water. He didn’t stop and examine the situation.

  Finally the cloacal darkness receded. The end of the tunnel came into sight. The light beyond was a bright, bold yellow, with hues of orange and red splashed across the sharp stones of the tunnel mouth. Well … the sharp stones and the skulls. The endless, endless procession of skulls.

  “Honestly,” said Balur as they entered the gallery of bald craniums, “I am always finding this sort of thing a bit played out.” He picked up a skull. “If you are going to do it …” He pointed the skull at Lette. “Are you remembering that place … the necromancer’s tower? He was having the whole skull thing going on, but he had also been filling the place with snakes. Now, that I could be appreciating. Making a classic feel new.”

  “We talked about doing the Summer Palace in skulls,” Cois said, as if this were a rational conversation starter.

  “The what now?” Will probably shouldn’t ask, but at this point in life he was pretty much resigned to that feeling.

  “Your religious education was truly shocking,” Lette told him. Which added shades of inadequacy to Will’s emotional palette—creating yet another feeling he was resigned to.

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “The Summer Palace,” Afrit said, because it was an opportunity to be a know-it-all. “The palace of the gods. Their home within the heavens. The home of the font of Lawl’s blood.”

  “It’s not Lawl’s blood,” Cois objected.

  “I am not thinking,” Balur cut in, “that skulls are suiting somewhere called the Summer Palace.”

  “Whose blood is it?” Afrit looked genuinely puzzled.

  “Honestly.” Cois shook hir head. “The bullshit Lawl was spouting. We all have our blood in the font.”

  “Skulls and the name the Summer Palace is an aesthetic dissonance in my opinion,” Balur went on.

  “Yes, love.” Cois patted his arm.

  “All your blood?” Afrit wasn’t willing to let that go.

  “Why does this even matter?” Will wanted to know. “We are a few days away from a way out of here.”

  “It matters because Lawl is a lying, self-aggrandizing bastard.” Cois didn’t seem interested in Will’s priorities.

  “It matters because Lawl’s blood in the font is what establishes him as the de facto ruler of the heavens.” Afrit seemed to be of a different opinion. “It’s the basis of a lot of theology.”

  Cois threw up hir hands. “The font doesn’t do that!”

  “It doesn’t?” Afrit somehow managed to sound just as affronted as Cois.

  “Why do we care?” Will was pretty close behind them.

  “The font is the defense mechanism of the heavens,” Cois said. “That’s all. If your blood isn’t in the font—or if someone whose blood is in the font hasn’t given you permission to be there—the Summer Palace itself attacks you. The very fabric of it. You have to understand, the whole ‘overthrow of the Deep Ones’ thing was pretty recent back then. We were still feeling a bit skittish.”

  “A font of blood too?” Balur shook his head. “You should have been keeping the skull theme and calling it the Winter Palace. That would have made sense. Your scheme is being all over the place.”

  Nobody seemed to have much to add after that.

  Beyond its macabre entrance, the Killing Plains cheered up considerably. Lawl’s ever-present wheat fields were actually in surprisingly good shape. War, it seemed, had decided it honestly didn’t have the balls to come here, and had left them to grow in peace, free of an army’s trampling feet.

  After half a mile or so, Afrit stopped and held up a hand. “Shouldn’t we find some way to get to higher ground?” she asked. She batted at the chest-high stalks of wheat. “I know I’m not the one who knows about fighting, but it feels like anyone could come stalking up to us in this mess. And this is the sort of place where stalking seems like it might be a problem.”

  Lette shook her head dismissively. “In my experience wheat is crap for stalking in. It rustles too much. You can’t get near anyone without them hearing you coming half a mile off. Now, grasslands are perfect, but wheat is just a pain in a hunter’s arse.”

  “You know,” Cois said from behind them, “you sound very confident, but have you ever considered that you could be as full of shit as a midden heap?”

  Cois’s voice sounded unusually strained. Will turned around.

  A massive soldier held a knife to Cois’s delicate throat.

  “Okay,” Lette said. “I’ll concede that. I’m full of shit.”

  8

  This Ain’t Your Father’s Negotiation Tactic

  Balur saw Cois with a knife to hir throat and smiled.

  He was going to get to kill someone.

  “Now then,” said the man with the knife, “you’re a lovely piece of lovely, aren’t you?” His voice was rough, drawn out like
the jagged scar that marred his own neck. He pressed a broad nose against Cois’s pale cheek, inhaled deeply.

  Two more men lifted themselves out of the wheat. Balur’s smile grew, and he moved his hand slowly toward the sword at his waist.

  “Ah-ah!” One of the new men pointed his sword straight at Balur. He was roped thickly with muscle and crosshatched with little white scars. Balur would kill him second, he decided. After the one threatening Cois. His hand kept moving toward the sword hilt.

  “I don’t need this one to be breathing to have fun with her,” said the one holding Cois, looking at Balur.

  A thin line of red started to trickle down from where he pressed the blade against Cois’s neck.

  “Perhaps, lover,” Cois said, and hir eyes were large and round, “I might beg a boon of you. Because I know how much you want to kill these men.” Zhe flinched as a muscle twitched in hir captor’s arm and a second trickle of blood appeared. “But”—zhe swallowed—“perhaps, just this one time, you could wait just a second and see if there’s a way to resolve this in a way that doesn’t end with me dead on the floor?”

  There was no sarcasm in hir voice. Zhe was as genuine and open with him now as zhe was in his arms at night. And for just a moment he hesitated.

  “Lette?” Balur called.

  Lette hesitated. A hesitation wasn’t fantastic. “Perhaps,” she said eventually.

  “Perhaps?” Balur said. “That is being a pretty pathetic answer.”

  “Well, it’s not a great angle.”

  Balur looked at Cois again, standing there, not shaking, just meeting his eye and waiting. And rage was in him, yes, but there was something else there too, something unfamiliar and hollow in the base of his gut.

  “What’s your name?” Will cut into the proceedings. “Let’s get to know each other.”

  Cois’s captor grinned. “I’m Chev,” he said. He looked at the knife. “And this is my friend Pigsticker.”

  Will kept a surprisingly straight face. “Nice to meet you,” he said. “So, Chev, what do you want? Let’s negotiate.”

  Balur’s rage was thundering now, beating and thrashing at this stupid, pointless leash he had put upon it. These men should be being dead already.

  And yet. Still his gut fluttered.

  Fear. It was fear there.

  Not for himself. Not over Lette’s aim.

  For Cois’s life.

  “I want,” said Chev, grinning with his lopsided mouth, “to eat the big ones. To fuck the pretty ones. And to turn you”—he nodded at Will—“into a pair of shoes.”

  “Hmm.” Will sighed. “Okay, well, let’s see where we can bargain to from there.”

  Chev’s tongue snuck out from between his lips and licked Cois’s cheek. “Tasty,” he said.

  Chev had to die. That was a certainty in Balur’s mind. He needed to feel the man’s organs bursting over his fingers. He needed to feel the man’s skin grinding to paste between his molars.

  But … how?

  And then the solution occurred to him. And … oh, may all the gods piss on it.

  “Will?” Balur said. And gods, he was never going to live this down.

  “I’m working on it,” said Will. He was walking toward Chev very slowly, arms open wide, hands empty, fingers splayed.

  Balur spat.

  The sword pointer seemed unsure whom to point his sword at. “Working on what?” he asked. He sounded suspicious.

  “This,” Will said, still slowly pacing toward Chev.

  And then he wasn’t. Then he vanished, and there was just empty air where Will had been.

  Everyone stared. Everyone except Balur. He was rolling his eyes. Will Fallows. Always being with the trickery and bullshit.

  Once he was done with the eye roll, Balur focused on the space behind Chev’s back where Will was reappearing and pressing a blade into Chev’s own throat.

  “Put the knife down,” Will said conversationally.

  The other two men twitched.

  So Balur killed them. When the red mist lifted, he appeared to have made mittens from two men’s innards. Afrit looked mildly unwell.

  Chev pulled the knife away from Cois’s throat. But when zhe turned around, the person zhe was staring at was Will.

  “Oh,” zhe said, “my magic.”

  9

  How to Make Friends and Influence Psychopaths

  Magic. It was in the blood, Will had discovered. Or rather, it was in the bodily fluids. But blood was usually the easiest to lay one’s hands upon.

  Personally, Will had first obtained magical powers after his night of passion with Cois. Or … after his fifteen minutes of awkward, half-hearted romping. He had been meant to act as a repository for them, a place of safekeeping until after the threat of draconic tyranny had been dealt with. But then there had been the whole murder thing, and Barph had slit his throat and drained the magic from him and drunk it for himself.

  Barph had done it to all of them, to Afrit and Lette and Balur. And yet with Will he had been, what? Hasty, perhaps? No matter the specifics of it, the fact was that a drop of blood had remained. Not enough to sustain organs, or keep the beat in Will’s chest. But enough for the magic to cling to. A little piece of the divine.

  It didn’t let Will do much, but it did let him do this. Disappear. Reappear. Cast his appearance elsewhere. A simple illusion. A pickpocket’s, perhaps. But right here and now, it was enough.

  “There’s a big man,” Will said. “Someone in charge down here, isn’t there?”

  “I’m going to fucking wear you,” said Chev.

  Will pressed the knife harder to Chev’s throat. “Three of you,” he said. “Three of you psychopaths. That didn’t just happen. Someone told you to hunt together. Someone you’re scared of—”

  “I ain’t scared of shit,” Chev shouted, though the stain he’d created on his pants when Balur had gone to town on his two friends suggested otherwise.

  “Someone told you to go hunting,” Will said. It had to be that. He was sure of it. For there to be any semblance of social order down here, someone had to be enforcing it. “Who was it?”

  Chev spat.

  “Look,” said Will, “I know you’re into the whole drooling psychotic thing, but it’s either give me a name or go to the Void. Is that decision really that hard?”

  “You ain’t got it in you,” Chev said. “Not in cold blood. I seen your eyes, man.”

  Will thought about that. He thought perhaps he’d surprise Chev. Still, that wouldn’t get him many places.

  “Maybe,” he said. “But my friend Balur definitely has it in him.”

  Chev considered this. “Turuck,” he said finally. “Big man’s name is Turuck.”

  “He’s in charge here?” Will asked.

  Chev gave an ill-advised nod and almost ended the conversation there. Will sighed. Knifepoint conversations were impractical.

  “Okay,” he said, and pulled his knife away from Chev’s throat.

  “Noooo!” The bellow came not from Chev, but from behind Will’s shoulder. He turned to see Balur charging at full speed toward him, a blade in each hand. Before Will could even put a hand up to ward the lizard man off, both blades punctured Chev, smashing through his ribs and tearing through his lungs. With a massive flexing of back and shoulders, Balur tore his arms apart, ripping both swords out of the man’s chest. Chev virtually exploded. Bones and organs and blood flew. His head, neck, shoulders, and arms burst free from his torso and flopped to the ground six feet away.

  “Holy shit, Balur!” Will managed, spraying another man’s blood from his lips as he spoke.

  Balur pointed a dripping sword at Will. “You will not be stealing my kill,” he thundered.

  Will blinked Chev’s blood from his eyes. “I was going,” he said, voice as cold as he could make it, “to have him lead us to Turuck.”

  Balur hesitated. “Oh,” he said. He looked at his swords. “Well …” He wiped one blade on the back of his calf. “Then that was b
eing a stupid idea, and I am glad I made sure I was killing him.” He nodded.

  “My hero!” Cois called from where zhe was bending to work a stone out of hir shoe. Which really wasn’t helping.

  “Why do you even want to find Turuck?” Afrit asked. “Shouldn’t we be avoiding the head psychopath?”

  “Where is being the fun in that?” Balur asked, still licking gore from his snout.

  “This cavern,” Will pointed out, “is as big as all Kondorra. We can wander aimlessly looking for a hidden gorge, and hope none of the other nutjobs in here are good enough to sneak up on us, or we can go find the big man and kill him and scare everyone else into submission. Then they might even tell us where to find the stupid gorge.”

  “Fine,” Balur shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

  “Put it back in your pants already,” Lette told him.

  “Actually,” Will told him, bracing himself slightly, “I think I have to do it.”

  Balur looked at him coldly. “Were we not just having a lengthy discussion about not stealing my kills?”

  Will thought back. “You mean when you just killed Chev.”

  “Was there any other lengthy discussion?”

  Will wasn’t entirely sure how to answer that. He decided to just sidestep the issue and head as directly toward rationality as he could manage. “For us to cow these people,” he said, “we need to demoralize them. You heard Chev. He didn’t think I could kill him. If I kill Turuck, then it will devastate these people.”

  “So …,” Balur said. “Your logic is being that I’m already scary, and therefore … stupid shit you were just saying?”

  “I’m saying,” Will said as patiently as possible, “that as scary as you are now, it’s not enough to stop people from continuing to attack us. We need to surprise them somehow. Make them think twice.”

  “This is a stupid plan,” Balur said.

  “I don’t know.” Lette came to Will’s defense with surprising speed. “I think that logic sort of holds.”

  Balur spat. “Just screw already.” He stomped away.