Ungrateful God: Unwilling Souls, #2

By Gregory D. Little

The Artisan Guild is on the run. And it's Ses's fault...

Betrayed by one she trusted, Ses led her father's demonic enemies to his secret headquarters. Now she and the survivors must reach their new home - the forgotten city of Ocypode. But something is already waiting.

What seemed the perfect haven is the perfect nightmare. Ocypode is a city that forgets its nights, and hundreds of poor souls have vanished. Ses must unravel the mystery ... or she'll go missing too. But some in the city know more than they are letting on.

The secret servants of the imprisoned gods have wicked plans for Ocypode, and Ses is forced to tap into dark powers to discover the truth. She has defeated the gods before.

But how far will she have to go to defy them again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory D. Little
• Release date: Mar 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386775461

Gregory D. Little

Gregory D. Little is the author of the Unwilling Souls series, set in a world where technology is powered by the souls of the dead, the gods are locked away in the hollowed-out center of the planet, and what remains of humanity has rebuilt its cities out of the corpses of the great beasts that destroyed them. His short stories can be found in the A GAME OF HORNS, DRAGON WRITERS, UNDERCURRENTS, and ECLECTICALLY SCIENTIFIC anthologies. He writes the kind of stories he likes to read, fantasy and science fiction tales featuring vivid worlds, strong characters, and smart action where nothing is as it seems.

Book preview

1

Unwelcome Guests

Four travelers hurried up the rutted dirt path toward the town of Semianima. Its irregular, bone walls rose ahead of them in the fading daylight, mismatched eye sockets and ribs like teeth seeming to leer out at them in the orange glow of a sunset unobstructed by the flat, sparsely wooded terrain. Every moment those bones remained inanimate, the dread Ses Lucani felt radiating from them grew.

I’m sorry! Hadrian said for the tenth time, barely able to wheeze the words between labored breaths. Knuckles white where they gripped one smooth, wooden handle of the quartet’s two-wheeled cart, Hadrian pulled it along behind him with faltering footsteps. I mixed the days up. The timing of the walls’ awakening changed daily, but the schedule followed a measurable pattern throughout the month. It had been Hadrian’s job to keep track.

He meant the apology for the whole group, of course, but his breath had grown so hoarse only Ses was close enough to hear him. She held the cart’s other handle, and she thought the stitch in her side had developed a stitch. The weight of the nife iron bars stuck through loops on either side of her belt dragged at her. She quashed her irritation at the boy, but had less success tamping down the guilt such thoughts gave rise to.

The boy. Hadrian’s my age. It was impossible not to think of him as younger, though. An honest mistake, Ses said. Again.

Burdened as they were, she and Hadrian had difficulty keeping up with Marcosin and Arantu ahead, two fully grown adults jogging unencumbered. Ses didn’t really think they’d be left behind. On the other hand, they’d get to sleep in an inn and we’d be left to camp outside, out of range of the walls. The thought of another night with no bed, this time with only Hadrian for company, spurred Ses onward, forcing Hadrian to run harder to keep the cart moving straight.

The cart could move quite well on its own, the soul-powered wrightings capable of keeping it upright and rolling so long as someone steered it. But it could not move fast. As the junior members of this cell of the Artisan Guild, it had been Ses and Hadrian’s punishment to pull it along behind them after one of them screwed up, each sharing in each other’s mistakes.

They crossed the gap in the wall marking the town’s threshold just as the bones woke. Dropping her handle and moving to the cart’s rear to push it across a gnarled root, Ses was last of her group to cross the threshold. Just as her worn boots cleared the bare, churned earth surrounding the town, scissoring claws as tall as trees erupted behind her, snapping shut and sealing Semianima from the outside world for the night.

Ses fell to her knees in exhaustion and relief. Her cramping hands shook with exhaustion, and her temples throbbed as she turned to regard the walls closely the first time. The dirt-encrusted bones, shaded from the setting sun on this side of town and glowing softly to no eyes but her own mismatched ones, had just missed snagging the hem of her long, indigo coat.

Heart still racing, Ses stretched out her awareness in her newly acquired reflex. Weary rage emanated from the souls embedded within those massive claws. She could not help but wonder if whatever volition remained in those souls had deliberately tried to cut her in half.

There we are, Arantu said from up ahead. She fought to control her breathing but had an easier time of it than Ses. All anger at Hadrian seemingly forgotten, the older woman’s richly accented voice was collected and bright, like light passing through a lens. No harm done.

Despite Arantu’s measured tone, Hadrian stiffened. He smiled wanly beneath mud-brown eyes and a matching mop of hair as he looked back at Ses. Those eyes bore the mute appeal of another apology.

Standing, Ses smiled back encouragingly, but could not maintain eye contact once Hadrian’s expression returned to its default one of quiet mourning. A sour tide of guilt washed over her. Hadrian was an orphan now, his father a victim of an attack upon Artisan Guild headquarters that had been Ses’s fault. The pain of his loss was always written across his face in unguarded moments.

Come on, Marcosin said, darting quick, penetrating glances from beneath heavy black brows at both Ses and Hadrian. He wasn’t breathing hard at all. We’re safe enough inside the walls, but we need to find beds.

The others started forward.

Hadrian tapped the forward point of the flat, diamond-shaped control wrighting for the cart, commanding it to move forward again at its usual, slothful pace.

Behind Ses, the wall creaked and chuffed as it shuddered to life. Its various, irregular components—a clawed leg here, an upper jaw there—lashed and struck, tearing blindly at the ground outside the town in endless, arrhythmic motion.

The wall was the only defensive system Semianima possessed, and the only one it needed.

The town’s architects had laid out flagstone streets and a motley assortment of buildings haphazardly, bowing to the asymmetric shape the walls required. Growing up in the immense skull city of Crocodilius as she had, Ses still found buildings constructed entirely of wood, stone, or brick odd, though she’d seen plenty such towns and villages on their long journey north from Arach Arbor.

Unlike those other towns, the air of Semianima smelled of stale rot, thanks to the desiccated clumps of flesh still clinging to some of the bones comprising the wall. Ses wondered if that was because no one dared try to pick the bones, remnants of great beast corpses somehow only half-killed, clean.

The flagstone streets emptied rapidly with the waking of the wall. Those few people remaining outdoors stared openly at the newcomers. Too many of those gazes, both the glowing eyes of Blazings and normal eyes of Dims, were hard to read in the dimming light.

Ses had to remind herself that her one Blazing eye was covered by the special, wrighted eyepatch her father had forged for her. Constructed of soul-injected nife iron and padded with felt around the edges, she could see out of the patch, but no one else could see the azure glow of her left eye beneath.

But no matter her precautions, her fear that the world at large would discover her mismatched Dim and Blazing eyes lay upon her always. Having the wrong kind of eyes in the wrong neighborhood or town could cost a person dearly. Ses was something beyond. Anilentis, the god Singscreamer had called her when she’d saved her father’s life. She still had no idea what that word meant, but she knew that to others, the proper word would be abomination.

She didn’t even like her cell knowing about her eyes. Too many people knew already.

Some townspeople did more than stare as they passed. One man, tallest of a trio of shadows looming at an alley corner, spat at Marcosin and Arantu’s feet as they passed. Ses tensed, but the adults either failed to notice or chose to ignore the provocation.

Are we really safer inside the walls?

Hadrian slowed to allow her to catch up, adjusting the wagon’s course as he looked everywhere but at the staring people. He opened his mouth as she fell into step beside him, his back hunched and his eyes averted.

It’s all right, Ses said, forestalling another apology and trying to keep the tension she felt from her voice. She wished he would stop talking so she could keep her focus on the remaining townsfolk around them. Like Arantu said, there was no harm done. I’m fine. Please shut up. Please, please stop being so nice to me. All of this is my fault. The thought was a stone upon her shoulders, bearing her ever downward.

The inn was the largest building in town and lay in the center, gray river stones walling the first floor, rough-hewn wooden beams in the two floors above. It carried no sign Ses could see, but in a town this small, it might simply be called the Inn.

Lanterns or lamps lit half its windows. In the growing gloom, they looked like a mass of irregular eyes and reminded Ses of Springer. She missed her giant spider friend, a thought that began as sadness before flashing to anger.

She gripped at the anger tightly. It always felt better than fear or guilt. If you hadn’t led Murien and his polistraat friends into Father’s headquarters, you’d be with Springer right now. Just like that, the anger crumpled and fled.

All right, Arantu said, pulling up short at the inn’s entrance. She swept her gaze around them in a circle, her expression one of mental calculation before fixing on Ses and Hadrian. You two wait here and watch the cart. Marcosin, you’re with me. She lowered her voice. I have a feeling we may need to intimidate them into renting us beds.

She stuck out her hand, open-palmed, to Ses, who had been placed in charge of the cell’s funds. Ses pulled out the thick roll of foils and peeled off several, handing them over. Arantu nodded thanks then glanced around again, this time looking ill at ease. We’ll try not to be gone long.

Marcosin nodded encouragingly at Ses, eyed Hadrian more skeptically, squared his thickly muscled shoulders, and followed Arantu inside.

Ses watched them go with apprehension. She composed her face into a watchful scowl, thankful for the eyepatch, but before she could turn out to face the street, Hadrian bumped into her from behind, nearly sending her falling.

Cursing under her breath, she turned, already fighting to bite back harsh words, but they died before passing her lips. Three men—Ses thought they were the same as the ones who had spat as they’d passed—stood not three paces away from them, standing in a beam of dying sunlight. Though sporting various sizes and builds, all three men possessed hard-bitten faces and wore identical expressions of eager anger.

Only one of the men was Blazing, Ses noted with interest, his eyes glowing green. Somewhat surprisingly, her mismatched gaze did not reveal any corrupted creature hiding beneath his skin. Not every dangerous person is a demon, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous.

Still, in her experience, the demons, what she called the people sworn to serve the imprisoned gods, were the worst kind of dangerous. She fought down surging memories of an alley in Viperid Mons and the two men, demon servants of the god Painpride, rather, who’d beaten her half to death and stolen all her worldly possessions.

Only with Murien Alaini’s help had Ses recovered those possessions, but his help had been the bait of a trap that had cost many of her father’s people their lives, Hadrian’s father included. Ses’s father had been captured, spirited away in an attempt to free the imprisoned gods, and Ses had nearly died rescuing him. Now the Artisan Guild had to relocate, its main base of operations compromised. All because of Ses.

Memories of Murien hurt even more than the beating in Viperid Mons had.

More Guilders, the man who had spat said, his Blazing emerald eyes flashing in the gloom as if to accentuate his outburst. How many does that make?

All of them, I’d say, said the spitter’s stockier companion from the other side of their little formation. They’re like roaches. Or locusts. On their way to strip Ocypode bare.

Not half so many as that, Ses thought bitterly. Not anymore. And not half so hard to kill, either. She’d seen proof enough of the latter and was responsible for the former.

The second man, wider than Marcosin and just as muscular, continued. We don’t have much of anything in Ocypode, he said. People who try to take what little we’ve got tend to go missing.

Ses’s arms tensed at her sides. Why did Arantu leave us in charge of the cart? She became very aware of the several nife iron bars dragging at her belt.

The third member of the little posse seemed unwilling to speak. Ses stole a glance at him. Younger and leaner than either of his companions, a maelstrom of expressions too muddled to parse passed across his face.

Thing is, said the spitter, not having much means we don’t get much attention, either. Centrality doesn’t pay us much mind.

It’s a fair balance. The second man jumped in. Ses realized both of them were slightly closer now despite she and Hadrian backing into the shadow of the inn’s eave. But having the god-cursed Artisan Guild show up on our doorstep is risking that. Step.

Seems to us, the spitter said, that if you want to bring us all that extra attention, you’d best make sure we’re properly compensated. Step. What’s in that cart will do for starters.

Ses could pull out one or two of her nife iron bars and try to crack one or both men on the head before they could react. She didn’t have to look at Hadrian to know he would cower away from any fight. But the two men’s shoulders were tense, muscles rigid, and tendons standing out like cords. They were expecting an attack.

And their friend lingered behind them, out of sight of either and with a short, hardwood cudgel gripped tight in both hands.

Mother and Father warned me not to do this anymore. Sighing, Ses tried to angle her body so that she would slump over onto the cart. It might be slightly softer than the flagstones.

The bar in the right front loop of her belt held a bar injected with a soul radiating anger, like sickly waves of heat to her senses. Ses thought that meant it must have died in a rage, and she’d learned it was important to match not just her own emotion with that of the soul’s, but also with that of the target.

These men, trying to pick on weary travelers. A blade of anger flashed through the fear, just for a moment, but it was enough.

The link sprang up between Ses and the third man in a flash, and she knew she’d guessed right. She felt her body fall away as though behind a gauzy veil, and then she stared out from the third man’s—Kethic, his name was—eyes.

A rush of thought and emotion bombarded her awareness as she settled into her new vantage. A lingering, guilty appreciation for Arantu’s figure as she’d walked by. A desire to prove his worth and not humiliate himself in front of Tacchus and Bellicis. The overwhelming anger he felt at his own fear, the latter surging fresh within him at this strange new sensation. It was always there, that anger, goading him, eroding the ground he stood on until he teetered on a crumbling precipice.

All sense of difference faded. There was only Kethic, and his sudden realization, as if seeping in from outside himself, that these two oafs were handling the situation all wrong. The Guilders were a plague, yes, but how much better if they wrung them for information instead of just beating them and leaving them for dead? One was just an expression of anger, the other might actually be useful to their plans in Ocypode. Maybe if we bring back something useful enough, Ulthrick will finally let me in on the secret of what happens at night.

Together, Kethic, Tacchus, and Bellicis could step into the shadows shrouding the Guilder pair and spirit them away before their adult friends returned from the inn. The cringing boy was an obvious coward, and the girl had gone so far as to faint, slumping half onto the cart before flopping onto the flagstone street. Kethic knew he had to stop Tacchus and Bellicis before they ruined this opportunity.

Ignoring a small part of himself that screamed this was madness, Kethic stepped up behind Tacchus and rapped him hard behind the ear with his club. The big man folded like linen falling from a drying line, and a guilty thrill shot through Kethic.

Bellicis foolishly turned to gawk at his friend’s collapse, which meant he didn’t see Kethic’s next strike take him in the temple. Bellicis sprawled face-first to the ground. Kethic heard the big man’s nose crunch, saw shadowed blood arc to spatter on the flagstones.

No thrill this time. Instead, dawning horror gripped Kethic just as something impacted him from the side, the weight of a person bearing him to the ground and rapping his own head against the flagstones. The world went fuzzy, and there was a sense of an oppressive yet invisible weight withdrawing from his mind as he crouched there, trying to understand what had just happened and what he’d done.

By the time Kethic’s senses had returned, the streets around him were utterly empty. The frightened boy and fainting girl, along with their cart, were nowhere to be seen. No one remained but for himself and the two men who had been his mentors in the gang before they’d become his victims.

He shook so badly he could barely stand.

2

Demonized

Before Ses could pull Hadrian off of Kethic, she had to remove her will from their would-be assailant. She gave in to the constant pull to return to her body, swaying a little as she stood. Kethic’s disorientation lingered on Ses like an ink stain as she brushed away the nife iron dust from the ruined bar stock, now drained of its soul energy.

She launched herself at Hadrian, managing to hook her arms around his waist. From the inexpert blows he was raining down upon Kethic, and the incoherent sounds of his angry cries, Hadrian was releasing months of frustration in one great surge.

Maybe that was necessary, but this was not the best time for him to find his courage.

Come on, Ses said, grunting with effort at Hadrian’s surprising show of strength. We’ve got to get the cart and get away from here.

Mercifully, Arantu and Marcosin chose that moment to reappear. Her face grim as she scanned the situation, Arantu wordlessly gestured for Sea and Hadrian to bring the cart around the back.

Ten minutes saw them ensconced in the larger of their two rooms in the inn, the cart safely unloaded and stowed, the innkeeper fed a thin story about the attack Ses and Hadrian witnessed in the street outside.

All right, Arantu said, unwrapping from a napkin the warm bread the innkeeper had provided and passing around torn-off hunks. Tell me exactly what happened.

Ses opened her mouth to respond, but Hadrian leaped into the brief silence. They were threatening us. The big men, the two in front. They talked all about the Guild and how we were a plague and how we were ruining everything and then Ses... He trailed off, glancing apologetically at Ses. Ses fainted, probably because of having to run with the cart.

His words tripped all over themselves in his haste to excuse her apparent faint. Then the other one, the one in the back of the group, knocked the two big ones unconscious. One blow each! I think he must have been their leader and they’d overstepped or, or something. So I rushed him. I had to do something! I didn’t like the way he looked at us, and I couldn’t let him hurt Ses or steal the cart. He flushed, snapping his jaw shut in embarrassment.

Ses stuffed the hunk of bread in her mouth, ignoring the heat scalding her tongue. It was either that or choose between laughing and groaning at Hadrian’s misreading of the situation. It’s not his fault. No way he could know. Both Arantu’s and Marcosin’s eyes had turned to her. She spoke as best she could around the wad of bread, which seemed to grow thicker by the word.

It’s like he said. All that running left me feeling lightheaded. That was the best she could do. A blow to her pride though it was, Hadrian had hemmed her in. Trying to claim her little episode was anything other than a faint now would only raise more questions.

The Artisan Guild was full of secrets, layers upon layers of them. Arantu and Marcosin knew as much as any outside Ses’s family, even the truth about how the apparent blood feud between her terrorist father and her business magnate mother was fabricated for appearance’s sake. But only Ses and her parents knew the full extent of the strange abilities she’d developed in the past few months. And even we don’t understand it. More than anything, Ses wanted to talk to her parents after the night’s events, but it would be several days yet before that was possible.

She might as well try to salvage some dignity. I was only out for a few seconds, though. I’m fine.

Arantu did not look convinced.

Marcosin’s face wore an even more dubious expression.

Well, seeing as no one has come forward yet with torches to feed us to the walls, we can hope that everyone assumes some local gang infighting was the worst of it, Arantu said. Still, this makes me wonder what sort of reception we’re going to get when we arrive in Ocypode. What exactly did they say? She pitched the question at Ses.

Ses wracked her brain. The scene had taken on a blurred quality in her mind, though whether that was having viewed it from two vantage points or simple adrenaline, she didn’t know. Something about the Guild threatening to draw too much Centrality attention to Ocypode. That made a kind of sense, as most people thought of Ocypode as a myth. And that outsiders tend to go missing in the city. There had been more, of course, but she couldn’t relate what she’d plucked directly from Kethic’s mind, and she’d forgotten the name he’d thought of.

Arantu furrowed her brow in thought for several more moments. Marcosin, would you go down and see about bringing dinner up here? I’d rather not spend any more time in the common room than necessary. She shook the thick ropes of her black hair around her dark face. I’m obviously not from around here, and these two, she said, gesturing at Ses and Hadrian, were involved in the business outside. You’ll attract the least attention and invite the least confrontation.

All right, Marcosin said in his harsh accent around a half-smile. But this means I get to pick what we eat. Before Arantu could protest, the big man was up and out the door, shutting it firmly behind him.

Arantu sighed. There won’t be anything but grease-soaked meat, not a green thing in sight. She turned her level gaze upon her young charges. I hope you two are pleased with yourselves.

The words carried no real sting, but Hadrian shrank into himself as if berated. Ses, nettled, spoke for both of them. Next time, maybe the smith with the arms like tree trunks should guard the cart.

Arantu raised one eyebrow. When I arrived in Arach Arbor after the polistraat assaulted Guild headquarters, I heard all kinds of stories about Larimaine Dunsinay’s daughter and her single-handed rescue of her father. I guess I assumed you could handle simple guard duty.

I did handle it. But she couldn’t say that. The flush creeping up her neck was as much frustration as embarrassment.

After we eat, straight to bed for all four of us, Arantu said. I want to be out of here the moment the wall quiets down in the morning, just in case any of tonight’s trouble carries over into tomorrow. You two will be in the next room.

The next room turned out to be a closet into which had been wedged a pair of cots. The room was deep but narrow, so the cots had to be arranged head to feet. Early on in the journey, Arantu had split the foursome up by gender when they had separate rooms, but she’d quickly determined there was no risk on that score from the two teenaged members of her cell.

Maybe if your sizes and personalities were flipped, I’d worry more, she’d told Ses once, privately. With that concern put to rest, her notion that senior Guilders should get more privileges became the driving force of divvying up the rare accommodations the cell found on the road north.

After a dinner that was indeed meat-heavy but not particularly tasty for all that, Arantu ordered them all to bed. The larger cot was further in, so Ses squeezed her way in first. In addition to being windowless, the room possessed no lamps, wrighted or otherwise. So, once Hadrian claimed his cot and shut the door behind him, total darkness descended.

Ses tossed for several minutes, trying to determine what kind of wood had been used as stuffing for her pillow, when Hadrian spoke out of the void at her feet.

I tried to be brave, the way I... the way I thought you would, but I just made everything worse.

Sometimes there aren’t perfect answers, Ses said. You did the best you could. He’s going to be sore tomorrow. She’d almost called Hadrian’s victim by name, generalizing it only just in time. Having to explain who Kethic was, and how she’d known it, would not be conducive to a good night’s sleep for either of them.

My father was brave, Hadrian said, his voice breaking at the end. He told me how he did it, once, but I don’t know how to make it work for me.

Please, Ses thought. Don’t. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes as a great guilty cavity yawned open in her chest. She had never met Hadrian’s father before she’d inadvertently helped end his life. That just made it worse, somehow.

I miss him. It came out a rasp, and Ses could think of nothing to say. Blessedly, it seemed Hadrian couldn’t either. Though she heard him murmuring softly to himself for a little while after, he did not speak to her again.

Time to wake up.

Ses did not immediately recognize the voice, only registering it as Hadrian’s after several moments of confusion. The evening came crashing back. Perhaps he’d spent some of the night crying, because his tone of voice had changed.

Making sure her eyepatch was on straight—she didn’t like to flaunt her mismatched eyes, even though her cell knew about them—Ses rose to a sitting position, squinting at the morning light slanting in through the partly open closet door. It seemed too bright in the closet for the little sliver visible through the door.

Then Ses realized that most of the light she saw came not from the door, but from Hadrian. His head, hands and arms, every uncovered bit of him, blazed with golden light to her eyes. Her jaw dropped in shock, and as if timed perfectly with her realization of what she was really seeing, his body transformed as she watched in mounting horror.

The corruption began at his eyes, growing like crystalline facets outward into his face. Except that she could still see his normal face, the face she’d grown to know over the past two months, like a translucent mask stretched over the new truth her gaze proclaimed. Over time, she felt certain that corruption would spread, gradually consuming his whole form. And Ses would be the only one, maybe in the whole world, who could see it.

He smiled at her as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. Somehow, in the night, Hadrian had become a demon.

3

Followed and Fractured

Breakfast the following morning was bread salvaged from their departing meal at the inn and hardened from a day on the road, which was failing rapidly as they moved further west into the wetlands. The four ate in silence.

Ses thought Arantu and Marcosin looked worried, but Hadrian, after a day of furtive glances in Ses’s direction, appeared remarkably placid for someone infested with godly presence.

After they broke camp, Arantu gave a slight jerk of her head to the fractured road behind them, and Marcosin nodded equally slightly before moving off into the thickening trees until he disappeared from view. If not for the brief exchange, Ses would have assumed he’d simply gone off to pee.

What’s that about? she asked, grateful for a distraction from the all-consuming thought of Hadrian’s corruption.

Arantu shot her a warning glance. Someone is following us. They’re good at moving quietly, but I noticed it last night when they got close enough to see where we made camp. They’ve moved off now with the daylight. Marcosin is going to linger behind and see if he can get a look at them. No doubt it’s one of your friends from the village. There was no accusation in Arantu’s voice, but Ses couldn’t help but imagine it there anyway. Still, she was too distracted to worry over it.

Ses said nothing of Hadrian’s transformation to the others. There were layers within layers in the Artisan Guild, and this layer didn’t even know what demons were. Before their departure from Arach Arbor, Ses’s father had explained to her that he’d told Arantu and Marcosin only to be on the lookout for Centrality spies once they arrived at the Guild’s new home of Ocypode. Ses had thought them safe until they arrived at Ocypode. But if Hadrian could somehow be turned overnight, Ses wasn’t certain if she could trust anyone.

She could have pulled Arantu or Marcosin aside that very morning and privately accused Hadrian of being a Centrality agent. But as Hadrian was an orphan whose father had died in a Centrality attack on Guild headquarters, an attack to which Ses’s actions in trusting Murien Alaini had directly led, she could imagine how far such an accusation would get.

Instead, she’d kept close watch on Hadrian since, wracking her brain and memories to try and understand. Since the attack on the Pit that had forced her to abandon her apprenticeship and return to Crocodilius, Ses had seen demons, as she thought of them, everywhere. They were humans that were somehow sworn or enslaved to serve the imprisoned gods. Or rather, each demon served one god in particular, and if one knew their forbidden theology, they could tell who served which god by the color of their Blazing eyes.

At least, that was normally how you could tell. Most Blazings weren’t demons. Their glowing eyes had been inherited from ancestors who had served the gods when they still roamed free. Demons looked different, at least to Ses’s eyes. And as far as she knew, she was the only one who could see them.

But Hadrien’s eyes weren’t Blazing. They hadn’t been before waking the previous morning, and they still weren’t, at least not to outward appearances. He was a Dim. And though it made little sense to Ses, this too was not entirely new. Though most believed only Blazings could not be trusted with respect to anything religious or godly, in her father’s Artisan Guild, Ses had seen her first examples of demons among the Dim.

She saw the logic behind it. In an organization made up entirely of Dims, any Blazing attempting to join would stand out. And the gods would want their spies. She just wished she knew how they did it.

We’re leaving without Marcosin? Hadrian said, causing Ses to jump as he came up behind her.

Yes, she said, replying to Hadrian’s question only after the pause had grown awkward. He’s keeping watch. Arantu thinks we’re being followed. She tried to keep her voice light then forced herself to look at him and smile. It took all her strength not to twist her face up and turn away.

She could still see his human face, but now she could see what lay beneath it as well. The two overlaid one another, each one translucent. The flesh of his secret face stretched taut around his skull, which looked fuzzy around the edges, as though it were dissolving with impossible slowness.

The first signs of further transformation were visible, far less advanced than in other demons she’d seen. Where their faces seethed with corruption around vast swathes of colored crystal erupting from the area of the eyes, the taut skin of Hadrian’s secret face fissured like the mud of a dried out lakebed, tiles of a mosaic, each darkening at the edges.

Had she been wearing her newly forged, wrighted eyebrow stud, a replacement for the one she’d lost on her quest to reach her father, she wouldn’t have been able to see his new face. His true face. But then, she wouldn’t have stood out as much as her wrighted eyepatch made her.

Are you all right? Hadrian said in a knowing tone, as though he could guess the true answer even if she wouldn’t give it. That tone reminded her too much of Murien. You look a little ill. Did you not sleep well? The words were utterly sincere, yet Ses was sure something lurked behind them as well.

Her true sleep since the battle at Saltrepan, when she'd rescued her father temporarily from the god Singscreamer's grasp, was a strange thing, dreamless yet filled with flashes that felt like the echoes of dreams cast at her from too far away. There was something off about it. I think maybe I’m still recovering from Saltrepan.

Hadrian's smile deepened almost to a smirk, but his blink of surprise spoke of the sudden hurt. She meant the mention of Saltrepan as a wall against further questions, but it was also an oblique reference to his father’s fate. Despite Hadrian’s transformation, guilt washed over Ses the instant the words left her mouth.

Almost no one knew what had really happened in the battle, when Ses had somehow tapped into a river of soul energy, draining the spinewalker that carried her captive father dry of its power and bringing it—quite accidentally—crumbling to the ground as a result.

Even Ses didn’t understand fully. Her brief chance at research as the Guild’s former headquarters in Arach Arbor was torn down had yielded nothing about what she could do or what it meant.

She almost apologized, but she couldn’t decide whether Hadrian’s mask-like expression was meant to cover real pain or to fool her into thinking nothing had changed within him. He shrugged sullenly and moved off, sparing her the need. Ses silently rejoiced. She no longer felt comfortable in his presence.

Marcosin caught up with them two hours shy of noon. He’s there, all right. Just one, but he’s bound and determined to follow.

Did he see you? Arantu said.

Hard to say, Marcosin said, shrugging. Difficult for one my size to move quietly, but there are a lot of sounds out among the mangroves. He never turned to look at me that I saw.

Is it one of the ones from the inn? Ses said before realizing the question made no sense. Marcosin hadn’t seen any of them that night.

He read the realization off her face, grinning. Medium-tall, reed-slender. Dark hair, nearly black. Angular face.

Kethic. Kethic is following us. Ses almost blurted the name out-loud again. Instead she said That sounds like the one that attacked his fellows. She was about to add that he was the one Hadrian attacked in defense of her, a way to boost the boy’s confidence, before remembering what had happened to him since.

Well, glad to know it’s just the one, even if he is the unstable one, Arantu said, though she looked concerned, as if wondering where the other two were.

Ses wondered that as well. Is Kethic on the run from his former friends? They’d been quite large. On the other hand, she’d made Kethic hit them pretty hard, a thought that left her queasy and brought back memories of bone shards from a wrecked spinewalker driven through the screaming, thrashing bodies of demon polistraat. Ses blinked her eyes to prevent the tears from forming. Any sense of satisfaction she’d derived from saving her cell in Semianima withered and died.

The sun had dipped low by the time Ocypode’s eyes crept over the horizon, the great crab in sight at last. Dry land had failed them an hour previous. They now walked on a causeway of packed dirt barely above the water’s surface. They had reached the Drowned Lands at last.

Once, before the Immurement War, the continent now known as Calavaria had extended out some distance beyond its present borders. Those places were submerged, broken, and pulled beneath varying depths of ocean water. Still, it could have been worse. The world’s other two continents had been drowned entirely somewhere out beyond the waves. No sign remained of either.

Ses was just happy that her boots were waterproof.

The great crab’s eyes, clouded over in milky gray as if in defiance of the sun’s rays, sat atop thick stalks against the orange sky. The sight of them slid a sliver of awe between Ses’s ribs. Though the smallest of the great beasts and though only its eyes were visible, the crab was obviously immense. Staring right at those eyes, it seemed impossible to Ses that such a place could be forgotten to the point that it existed only as a myth. But unlike the other great beasts, no city had once stood where the crab now did in the days before the Immurement War.

The old cities like Sobeck had fallen to the great beasts called up by the gods. The beasts had been felled themselves in turn, then transformed by human hands into replacements for the very cities they’d destroyed. One and all they'd been gathered up into the singular government of the Centrality. All except Ocypode.

By Larimaine Dunsinay’s reasoning, a city that existed only in myth was the perfect place for the displaced Artisan Guild to regroup. But if Kethic and his companions were any indication, clearly some of Ocypode’s residents felt otherwise.

Pale streaks of sunlight still slanted down upon the quartet when the chore of setting up a camp, thankfully their last of the journey, was completed. Trying to avoid Hadrian, Ses glided a little way away at the first opportunity.

Her choice of a seat was a springy little hummock, a miraculously dry mound that actually poked up higher than their chosen campsite but lacked sufficient space to house them all. Breathing deep of the brackish tang in the air, Ses sat for a time staring out at the sky, missing her spider and smoldering with anger at her parents. And then feeling shame at her anger.

Both her mother and father had flatly refused Springer’s inclusion on this journey. The pony-sized spider, one of Arach Arbor's unofficial police forces, had saved Ses’s life more than once. Without Springer, her father’s rescue would have been impossible, so his