Unleashing Iron: Unwilling Souls, #3

By Gregory D. Little

Ses Lucani has one mission: keep humankind's murderous gods imprisoned. She's about to fail.

The gods have achieved the unthinkable. Inhabiting human avatars from within their prison's walls, they now gather followers and work to break it open from the outside. One of those avatars is Ses's own father.

Just as all seems lost, Ses learns of a recently unearthed artifact so powerful that it can repair the prison and save her father from the possession that is killing him. But in the wrong hands, the artifact could demolish the prison instead of repairing it. And it's already been stolen...

In a desperate race to control the object that will save or end the world, Ses faces a devastating choice as she realizes that no one is immune to the artifact's ancient promise of forgotten power. Not her family. Not her friends.

Not even herself...

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gregory D. Little Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Apr 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393287544

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

A Taste of Freedom

Fresh off killing a dragon and losing an eye, Selestia Lucani collapsed in an unconscious heap. But it was the god Vexvow, not Brea Reati, who caught her.

Despite over a year swinging a hammer as an apprentice smith, Brea tried to brace in anticipation of Ses’s dead weight, but her body was not her own any longer. She had given it over willingly as an avatar to the god her father had secretly worshiped before his arrest. Worshiped still from his prison, for all she knew.

When Ses landed in her outstretched arms, arms Brea had not commanded to be there, she felt only a muffled sensation of tingling at the places of contact. This was what it meant to be the vessel of a god. Vexvow was everywhere within her, an insistent pressure upon every point of her being, as though Brea was breathing deep underwater or was swaddled so tightly in blankets, she was close to suffocating.

I agreed to this, Brea thought to herself, fighting a panic akin to claustrophobia. I did. That she felt she’d had little choice at the time didn’t matter. Now it felt as though she watched from within unending darkness, a space in her mind that was all the god had left her. She had to struggle against her will’s manic desire to fight Vexvow’s all-consuming presence.

Be easy. The voice of her new god came out of the darkness, soothing and feminine and surprisingly youthful.

Veilenya. She doesn’t think of herself as Vexvow. She prefers Veilenya. Brea could not recall if Pieter had told her this or not.

Yes, Veilenya thought to her. You picked up my artifact, remember? The way Pieter instructed.

Another apprentice, Pieter had indeed been the one who had guided Brea into picking up Vexvow—Veilenya’s—artifact, opening a conduit for the god in her prison to press part of her will into Brea’s mind. Now, Brea ruefully recalled how Murien, a second apprentice who had not been what he’d seemed, had been so suspicious of Pieter, claiming he was far too old to be a normal apprentice in the Pit.

Brea hadn’t listened at the time.

You, Brea thought from her depths. And Pieter. He is your servant? Is that why he sought me out? He told me my father worshiped you. Just before he’d urged her to pick up Vexvow’s artifact, this had been. But my father told me it was Winwrath.

Winwrath and I never did get along very well. Veilenya sounded rueful. Your father didn’t wish to see more of his sect—my sect—punished after he was discovered.

Brea’s mind, what little of it remained to her, whirled. The arrest of her father because he was an illegal worshiper of the gods had not gone down easily with her. To find out now that even that had not been the whole truth… And did that make me susceptible?

Yes, child, Veilenya said, though the tone made it sound a distasteful choice of words. And I know he paid dearly for his worship. Right now, however, we have more pressing business to be about. Ses is bleeding quite profusely on us.

It was true. In her collapse, Ses’s right eye, or rather the ruin that had once been her right eye, had spattered blood across the gray leather of Brea’s apprentice robe. A steady flow of red flushed whatever remained behind Ses’s closed lid.

Brea felt Veilenya mentally adding this vile mutilation to the ledger of the man Ulthrick’s many crimes. Ulthrick. A name she knew only through the god’s thoughts or knowledge, fragments of which leaked across this mental connection they shared.

He was my jailer, Veilenya said, conceding the knowledge. He forced me to murder innocents against my will to awaken the great beasts. But that was apparently not enough damnation for him.

As she lowered Ses to the floor of her temple, Veilenya sniffed the air. Unlike touch, Brea’s sense of smell seemed enhanced. A slight acrid bite hung in the air, tickling her nostrils. Veilenya interpreted it in ways she could not. It was, Brea realized, simply a metaphor, a crude translation for something beyond human senses, but though Brea could sense Veilenya needed no help translating its meaning, she also sensed the god consciously blocking this information from her.

Other information she didn’t block. Ses needed immediate care, but Veilenya and Brea couldn’t be the ones to give it to her. They needed to be out of the Pit as soon as possible. Out of the Pit and hunting. There wouldn’t be much time.

Time for what?

We have to kill the other avatars. Veilenya’s thought was grim, and those that followed were no less so. As many as we can. But even before that, we have to ensure that they do not join forces.

What happens if they join forces?

With too many gods allied and gathering followers, the strain on the prison might be enough to break it open. Ashavid is first on our list.

Brea could only try to parse the god’s chaotic thoughts and emotions as Veilenya allowed her focus to broaden, taking in the temple around her. Pieter, stooped, sun-withered, and gray-haired, stood deferentially by the ruins of the pedestal where Veilenya’s godly artifact, the thorned necklace, Vinculum, had sat imprisoned minutes before.

Pieter’s aged frame was only accentuated by the bruises spreading across his face, gifts from Arckit Gnaeus and his acolyte polistraat. The illicit worshipers infesting the polistraat ranks had somehow contrived this posting to the Pit in a successful bid to steal the godly artifacts.

Gnaeus himself, blue-faced and dead, lay a pace from Murien Alaini’s groaning form. The sight of that boy struggling to rise as he clutched his head and throat sent a rush of complex emotions, first to Brea and then across the link to Veilenya.

He lied to you, Veilenya said, suddenly understanding, about what he was. But not to hurt you.

He was doing his job, Brea responded, momentarily as numb as her sensations of touch. He had a mission. I was just part of it.

Perhaps. Veilenya did not sound entirely convinced.

A blood spatter on the opposite side of the ruined pedestal marked where Ulthrick had fled Veilenya’s wrath. He’d suffered a flesh wound to his thigh from his own dirk, the same one that had put out Ses’s eye.

And propped against the wall was the source of so much of the chaos. It took the form of a large, two-handed tool, a cross between a woodsman’s ax and a smith’s cutting chisel. The haft was rigid but jointed, as though assembled from vertebrae. Delere, it was called. The god’s knowledge, not Brea’s. It was the artifact of Veilenya’s father, the god Singscreamer. In the wrong hands, it would grant Singscreamer the same access to a human avatar as Veilenya currently enjoyed over Brea.

Except he would never allow his avatar’s consciousness to remain alive and intact.

Brea wondered if that last had been for her benefit.

We have to move, Veilenya thought, as if to goad herself onward. He is coming. She didn’t have to explain who he was. Her thought was weighty with the import of it. Her father. Her father was coming.

Pieter, Veilenya said with Brea’s husky voice. See to Selestia. And Murien.

At once, Pieter said, bowing.

Ses murmured unconsciously. Veilenya surprised Brea by leaning over the other girl’s prone form, very close to her battered face, and whispering.

Pieter will make sure you are safe. Only you can end this, Selestia, though you will not like how.

He’s like my father? Brea asked of Pieter as Veilenya stood.

Yes, only a far more recent convert.

A series of images passed from god to girl. Pieter had committed a grave crime against Veilenya. The precise nature of the crime was vague to Brea’s probing senses, wrapped as it was in a cocoon of fresh, bright pain. Pieter’s involvement had been unwitting, but whatever his intent, his sworn obedience after the fact had been, and continued to be, his penance.

Very good, Veilenya said. Did you bring a bag? Pieter pulled a burlap sack from beneath his robes and handed it to her. Veilenya smiled Brea’s dazzling smile. Very good indeed. I’ll be back. Maybe I’ll be back. Maybe Brea will just be dead, and I’ll once again be fully imprisoned in the Pit.

These idle musings of the god knifed through Brea like a blade of ice. Maybe I’ll be dead? she thought with alarm.

Instead of answering, Veilenya strode away, plucking up Ulthrick’s discarded stiletto and, far more carefully, Delere, as she left the carnage. The moment her skin touched the haft of the breaker, the pressure squeezing Brea doubled, the frustrated grasping of claws that could find no purchase. The breaker, Delere, was Singscreamer’s artifact, as sure as Vinculum was Veilenya’s. The god could sense a conduit was partially open and tried desperately to force his way into the vessel that held his breaker.

Trouble was, that vessel was Brea, and she was already occupied.

Veilenya walked with purpose from the temple’s central chamber, following a twisting maze built of nife iron walls. The metal, normally slate gray with a faint sheen, gleamed wetly in the light of wrighted sconces set into the temple walls. They looked pitted, those walls, as though the gods had reached out to the latticework of temples surrounding their prison in the Pit and corroded them from within.

As she moved, Veilenya sent Brea’s fingers questing over the breaker’s complex surfaces, looking for the release. Brea could sense the god’s childlike delight at all the sensations she’d been so long denied. Even the stifling kiss of the Pit’s air sent shivers through her, strong enough that even Brea’s muted sense of touch could feel them. To move, to breathe, felt odd for Veilenya. What leaked through to Brea felt like a memory so old she’d forgotten it until this moment.

I did not use human avatars very often, Veilenya thought in curt answer to Brea’s silent curiosity.

At last, her fingers located a tiny depression, seemingly sized perfectly for them. An illusion, but also a clue. Veilenya pressed with both fingers and will, and the breaker fell to pieces, into the jumble of disconnected wrightings it had begun life as. The nife iron pieces fell into her outstretched burlap bag, awaiting reassembly when carrying it around wouldn’t be quite so obvious.

Selestia will wonder what’s become of Delere if we can’t make it back before she wakes. It was Veilenya who had told Ses what the breaker was capable of and revealed that Ses, and Ses alone, was capable of carrying it safely. An oversimplification, the god thought as Brea wryly considered the fact that she was holding it now. But Ses’s soul is uniquely untouchable by my kind.

The hot wind of the Pit smelled like wildflowers and burning metal as she emerged into the orange-hued spaces of its magma sky. The inside of an immense, hollow sphere of magma, the Pit distorted concepts of up and down by having no gravity. Any free-floating structure humans occupied had to generate gravity of its own via wrightings built into the floor.

The temples studded the spherical magma wall encompassing the Pit’s vast emptiness. They were oriented such that they lay flat against the magma directly beneath, to gaze up from any temple was to gaze at the center of the Pit, and the great nife iron Globe that was the gods’ prison.

Above the temples now, however, hung the gefýra. Brea stumbled over the strange word leaking across from Veilenya. It took her a moment to unravel the meaning with context: Hellship. It was some strange, godly word for hellship.

At least twenty-five paces from nose to tail, the ship nevertheless looked squat and bulky. Like an asymmetric teardrop turned on its side, the curve of its hull was bulbous below and flattened above, as though it had a distended belly. The teardrop’s point formed the ship’s prow.

Despite being made of nife iron, the same as any other wrighting, the ship was olive drab in color instead of the usual slate gray. Brea briefly wondered where this one had come from before Veilenya supplied an answer.

Buried beneath the sands near the city of Ocypode. It was one of a pair stolen by a breakaway sect of telostektōn that made their home there at the end of the Immurement War.

Before Brea could ask whether a city she’d only ever heard of as a myth actually existed or delve into what a telostektōn was, Veilenya cut her off.

We’ll need to convince them to give us a ride. Brea could feel the god’s impatience, like an overflowing cup spilling liquid onto the table upon which it rested. Desperate urgency. There was no time to get to the surface through more conventional means. Not if they wanted a chance to preserve the prison for a while longer.

But why would you want to preserve the prison? Brea asked. The initial rebellion of losing her body had subsided. The pressure already felt more normal. She no longer felt the constant urge to gag.

Because you aren’t ready for us, Veilenya responded wistfully. Brea felt her shudder at the mention of the prison, and just for a moment, a terrible awareness poured across their link. Heat and pressure like the burning heart of a volcano, far worse than that which even Vinculum and Delere together could bestow on her.

And we aren’t ready for you, either, Veilenya added.

Only the Pit’s lack of gravity made travel over its vast distances possible without some sort of vehicle. Fortunately, the jump to the gef—hellship, it’s a hellship—wasn’t that far and didn’t require any wrighted assistance.

Grabbing hold of a rung on the side of the ship, Veilenya levered them up to its hatch. It irised open after a brief hesitation, so perhaps the occupants were keeping track of who was climbing aboard their prize.

A teardrop-shaped chamber walled with ridged spirals, the hellship’s bridge, was as strange as its occupants. That word, telostektōn, drifted in from Veilenya’s consciousness again. Pilots. She means hellship pilots.

Brea had always been amused whenever new apprentices caught sight of pilots’ unnatural eyes for the first time. She had teased some of those apprentices, Ses included, mercilessly. The memory made her cringe now. But the truth was that however many times she beheld those eyes, mismatched red-black and silver-blue marbles without iris or pupil, they sent waves of discomfort verging on faintness rippling through her.

The eyes also tended to drown out the pilots’ other unusual features. In any other person, their two-toned hair—in this case, curly and pale at the roots shading to dark toward the tips—would have occasioned comment. Though pilots were an infrequent but consistent sight in the Pit, Brea had never seen two so young before and did not know them.

Who are you? the boy asked, his uncanny eyes fixed upon her. Lach washed in from Veilenya’s thoughts, naming the boy. So, the god knew him at least. The normalcy of the alarm in his voice only made those revolting eyes that much worse. Where are Ses and the others?

Brea Reati, Veilenya lied. Abruptly, Brea was assaulted with a flood of the god’s memories. She had good reason, Brea saw, to conceal her true identity. Beyond a desire to not sound insane, it would not do to announce herself as the god who had kidnapped Esis—the sister of this pair—and helped doom their home city. Selestia asked that you give me a ride. It’s quite urgent.

Why doesn’t she ask us herself? Esis said, the mirror image of her brother in the feminine, but still suffering from the wasting that captivity and malnutrition had visited on her.

She’s needed elsewhere. Matters are delicate at this moment. I don’t have time to argue. My mission is vital. That last was true, at least, judging by Veilenya’s overflowing desperation swamping Brea.

Hold on just a—

There’s no time! Veilenya snapped before mastering herself. Though it was like feeling her body once removed, Brea felt Veilenya trying to arrange her face in an I can’t believe I have to bother with this expression, before abandoning it for another shocking claim Brea could tell was the truth.

Her father is on his way!

The way the twins’ tawny skin paled at this news told Brea that the god had cleared the first obstacle. She means to confront him. Inside her mental holding cell, Brea blinked imaginary eyes in surprise. This was a lie, she was sure of it.

Over his kidnapping of the pilots? Lach’s voice was so rich with hope that Brea could sense Veilenya’s pity.

That and… other things. Then, for Brea’s benefit. Her father is anivector for mine. It means he is serving as a vessel, but an imperfect one.

So, not like me? Brea thought back.

No. You are anidominum, a true avatar. In their case, there is influence but not outright control. Not yet.

I’m sorry, Lach said, but that’s just not good enough. I have no idea who you are, or what’s in that bag you’re carrying.

Look, Veilenya said. Brea could feel her frustration mounting again, unused to having to explain herself. I’m—

Or what’s around your neck right now. Esis’s voice was hushed with accusation, like a blade slipping free of a leather sheath.

Ice flooded Brea. She felt Veilenya rock with it, disoriented, so accustomed to heat and pressure was she. The god looked down, betraying her guilt in a very human fashion, as though the artifact would not be there. Vinculum, her necklace, her chains, dangled from around Brea’s neck in all its looped, barbed glory.

Brea had never heard some of the mental curses that followed.

Pieter should have warned us to hide it, Brea thought.

He lives in his head. Despite the absolution in the words, Brea could feel the god’s spike of pique at her lone aniservus and his limited utility.

Aniservus?

A human believer sworn to serve, Veilenya supplied curtly.

All right, she said, raising her hands in a gesture of being caught dredged from Brea’s subconscious. The truth is, you’ve both met me, in a way. She allowed a trickle of her will to flow in from the prison, but to Brea it felt like having to hold back an impending rockslide with just her body. Despite the lingering numbness of possession, she felt her bones creak.

This time when Veilenya spoke, her voice acquired a resonance of command that vibrated the deck beneath their feet. Quite recently. Prickles of pain lanced Brea’s throat, and she felt Veilenya wince in sympathy.

Esis gasped, her hands falling away from the controls. You! I remember!

Vexvow, Lach said, his voice a growl.

I helped you stop Draconis, Veilenya said, her voice still resonating. Please believe me when I say I’m still helping, and that we don’t have much time. I’m not the only god walking free in an avatar, but I am the only one who is trying to help you.

You kidnapped my sister, Lach said, his voice a sneer. His nostrils flared as his brow drew down into a ridgeline.

I also helped you find her, Veilenya said softly.

You murdered my boyfriend, Esis said, the words coming out as tears as much as sound.

Brea didn’t realize she was softly whimpering at the pressure until still more of Vexvow poured in. The god’s anger took on depth and vastness. When she spoke this time, the gefýra—suddenly Brea could not remember the other word for the vessel—trembled around them.

I was compelled, as much as you were. Brea felt her throat go raw as though she’d been screaming for a solid minute. The numbness seemed to be fading, as though her body were more acclimated to the god’s presence.

It was not pleasantly timed.

A god compelled. Esis’s words were flat with disbelief, though she shrank back at the power in that voice. Her eyes, still hollow with her suffering, burned with deep loathing. That’s difficult to credit. They were far more fervent than her reasonable words, those eyes.

You’re never going to reach this one, Brea thought, as much in desperation as anything. You’ve wronged her too much.

Weren’t you tormenting Selestia not that long ago? Veilenya shot back, her annoyance finding a new target.

That’s hardly the same thing. Despite her defense, the thought was thick with guilt. Guilt and extreme discomfort at what the god was putting her through. Maybe that’s what makes me sensitive to this.

Very well, Veilenya relented.

I’m sorry for what happened to you, Veilenya said instead, in a normal voice, grimacing with her host’s lingering pain. Brea mentally sagged with relief as the extra parts of Veilenya withdrew to the prison. I just want you to understand that it happened to both of us. That is not meant to diminish your suffering, but to show you that I share in it.

Share! Esis’s tone was half-outrage, half-scoff. "You killed my… my…"

I killed the boy you loved. The words struck like nails, and Veilenya did not hold back on the hammer blow. I know I did. I killed one of those you loved most. And they did the same to me. I hate them for it, you understand? It’s a hate of such depth that you, with the limitations of your form and soul, could never truly comprehend.

She went on, seeming to Brea a little surprised when the words shook with emotion. "And their compulsion used that hate, stoked it in me until I could contain it no longer. Then they gave me only one outlet, as though I was a river flowing through the channel they constructed. At the mouth of that river, they placed a task requiring brute force and unimaginable cruelty."

Forcing the solution to a combination to unlock the great beasts. Lach’s face was a riot of conflicting emotions.

Veilenya nodded, and as if the gesture unlocked some pathway of understanding, the expanse of her thoughts was open to Brea. Ulthrick’s plan could never have worked without a god held captive to further compel the part of Ocypode that had still lived. Compulsion begetting compulsion.

Selestia Lucani freed me from my bonds, and for that I shall always owe her a debt. But nothing can free me from that hate. Her grip tightened on the sack that held the pieces of Delere.

Only now their river has overflowed its banks. I rise in flood, and I’m going to turn back on them. I’m going to blot their precious avatars from the world, one at a time, until our prison is crammed full again.

Pilots’ eyes were famously unreadable, but so many emotions were passing over the twins’ faces Brea thought even they must not know how they felt.

The one I loved most was murdered when I would not allow him to be used for evil, Veilenya continued, her anger waxing. "And for my ungratefulness, I was made the slave instead. For this insult, for the waste of so many lives, those who enslaved me and those who stood by and let it happen will pay in pain a thousand-thousand-fold."

Lach wore the face of a person who had made up his mind until Esis put a trembling hand on his shoulder. Maybe we should hear her out.

2

A Family Reunited

Murien awoke to two of everything. Two ruined pedestals where a godly artifact once stood. Two blue-faced corpses of Major Arckit Gnaeus, godly sympathizer and formerly of the polistraat. Two Pieters tearing strips from his polistraat uniform that would no longer be needed.

Two Ses Lucanis lying slack and bloody on the temple floor.

Murien wasn’t certain whether the dizziness or the sight of Ses was the origin of his urge to vomit, but regardless, the fight to hold it in was epic. He struggled to his knees, feeling gingerly at his forehead. Bright pain and wetness greeted his touch and his nausea redoubled.

Gnaeus really worked me over. Murien thought that was what had happened. Breathing hurt too, as though his throat was lined with broken glass.

Right, the choking. He glanced at the man’s corpse, looking as if he’d been strangled himself, and by something pretty nasty given all the puncture wounds.

Murien couldn’t muster up much sympathy. Goddamned traitor. He spat, more blood than anything, on the corpse. Yet despite his disgust, something in him rebelled at the sight of the body. Whether that was a lingering institutional affection for a fellow officer or the sour aftertaste of the realization that someone else had accomplished what Murien himself should have done, he couldn’t say.

He turned to look at Ses again, finally taking in the ruin of her right eye as Pieter gingerly rolled her onto her back, and all other thought fled his head. Iron Hell, what happened to her? He had fleeting memories of another man, another struggle, at the edge of his tunneling vision. He thought the man had looked familiar, someone Murien had seen once before. An eyepatch. There had been an eyepatch.

His gaze lingered on Ses in a kind of daze. It seemed there would be another eyepatch. If she was even still alive.

That thought broke his paralysis and he stumbled to Ses’s side, contemplating knocking Pieter away, though the man was quite gentle in his examination of the wound. Murien caught the rise and fall of Ses’s chest and nearly staggered with relief that the events begun by him had not resulted in her death.

Not yet, anyway.

Ulthrick is the most dangerous sort of believer, the older man said, as if to himself. Convinced he has found enlightenment the others lack when in truth his belief has curdled down to nothing more than a hoarding of grievances.

Despite the symphony of pain his body orchestrated, Murien could feel the chill of Pieter’s words run along his spine and radiate through his limbs.

Any sort of believer is dangerous, Murien said, fixing Pieter with a stare that was probably more unfocused than hard. Any sort of belief strengthens the gods.

And that was what they were facing now. The temples had been breached, their artifacts stolen, and those who wielded them now acted as avatars of the gods, able to influence the world directly.

Pieter regarded him with frank scrutiny that made Murien uncomfortable. Is it the gods you fear, or what they reflect in us? Before Murien could formulate a response to that, something between a scoff and an accusation, Pieter refocused him. Help me, he said. We need to get her to the doctor. If he’s still alive, he added darkly. The echo of Murien’s thoughts spurred him to move faster.

Where’s Brea? Murien asked, crouching to grip Ses under the knees. His thoughts were jumbled. He’d only just remembered she’d been here as well. He felt a flush of shame for not thinking to look for her already.

I’d be lying if I said she was safe, Pieter said, but she is in the best hands I know.

Suspicion flexed in Murien like a frequently used muscle. What does that m—

It means, Pieter said, exasperation threading his voice, that when I made the greatest mistake of my life, I wronged two parties. The one that survived elected to forgive me. She is the one watching over Brea now. Given that the two of them are trying to fix this mess we’ve allowed to happen, I think the likes of you and I should be grateful. Now, are you going to help me or is Miss Lucani going to bleed to death while you ask questions?

The bandage he’d tied around Ses’s head was already soaked through. Ses made no sound as they hastened to lift her, remaining limp in their arms. Murien shivered. He’d have preferred a moan, even a scream. Something besides breath to indicate life.

My fault. This is all my fault.

He kept talking if only to distract himself. What is this mistake you mentioned? Who is the one looking after Brea?

Pieter’s sidelong glance was exasperated, but he answered. I went looking for something. Before Murien could press him, he relented. A great beast. On a small island out in the Endless Sea. A beast that had been killed yet all but lost to history.

But you found something different, Murien prompted. Something you didn’t expect.

No, Pieter said, huffing now with the effort, and yes. I found the beast, and more’s the pity. But it wasn’t dead at all, despite being reduced to bones.

That sounded like something Ses had told Murien mere hours ago, though it seemed a lifetime since he’d caught her stealing a godly artifact from one of the temples, saying she needed it to stop something worse. Something about the great beasts not being dead, but only locked and capable of being revived somehow.

This magnificent creature spoke to me, Pieter continued as they negotiated the maze’s tight corners. It was friendly, desperate for companionship. It spoke of its mistress; certain she was coming to free it. A gentler creature you could not imagine.

They reached the temple’s circular launch platform with the wide, molten emptiness of the Pit surrounding them. The story paused as they tended to the logistics of a coordinated launch using repulsor wrightings, Ses cradled between them. It took some doing, finding pairs of the coin-like wrightings matching those embedded in the soles of their boots but not so far apart they could not support Ses between them.

After a timed countdown, each pressed their heels down, balancing with difficulty. Ses offered no protest as the fierce acceleration launched all three into the empty air that made up most of the Pit. Murien tried not to let Ses’s lack of response fan his worries further. Only when the streaming wind of their acceleration died down did Murien prompt Pieter to continue. He found he needed the distraction.

I suppose this beast tried to argue that all the great beasts were like that? Gentle, misunderstood?

Hardly, Pieter said. It claimed to be the only one with a true mind of its own and it feared what would happen to it if the wrong people found it.

Feared what, specifically?

That it could be made to hate and desire death and destruction like the other beasts. That it could be reawakened, given life but robbed of will. That it could be turned loose, ready to destroy.

Murien was aghast. What sort of people would do that? He very much feared he knew the answer, but Pieter surprised him yet again.

Those with whom I traveled, unfortunately, he said. At Murien’s stricken expression, he sighed. Such expeditions are not cheap, and no reputable source would fund such a mad quest. But I was obsessed. Suffice it to say I led them to their quarry, for they were no mere opportunists, but were hunting for the same thing as I. I was able to stop them, but only at the cost of that noble beast’s life. I felt I owed his mistress a debt, and upon pledging her my service she saw fit to help me escape that place despite the pain I’d caused her. She loved that beast dearly, you see.

And this mistress is… Murien prompted, the slowing air feeling suddenly cold against clammy skin. They’d come around to it again.

Pieter gave him a look, then indicated it was time for them to prepare to land. A part of Murien was relieved, desperate to let it go, to revel in ignorance, to not know something awful, something shattering.

But he couldn’t.

Who, Pieter? he said as they marched Ses, muscles burning, toward the barracks. Who is this mistress, this one who is looking after Brea?

Considering who you are helping now, Pieter said, sounding resigned, and who saved your life a few minutes ago, perhaps you had best begin getting used to the notion that not all the gods are the same.

It was a strange thing, both wanting and dreading an answer and then receiving it and realizing how deeply he’d underestimated its impact. Murien’s knees shook, and he nearly dropped his half of Ses. But he fought back wordlessly, rebuilding his bulwarks with maniacal single-mindedness even as they continued to crumble around him like the walls of a sandcastle at high tide.

The medical wing was an open grave.

Smiths and polistraat both dotted the butcher’s block of a hallway, each the work of the traitor polistraat. Murien’s shoulders burned with the continued effort of cradling Ses, but his eyes burned far more at what they beheld. Everywhere in the corridor, apprentices with numb or stricken faces carried bodies slung between them in much the same way as he and Pieter were carrying Ses. Memory flooded back to Murien. The polistraat had worked with brutal efficiency, killing anyone they believed posed a potential threat. While the apprentices had been spared, the full smiths had not.

But witnessing that kind of carnage, or even just its aftermath, left wounds of its own. Even Murien, who had been here for only a couple of months on an undercover assignment, felt the assault of despair. It was due as much to the looks on those youthful faces as it was to the growing piles of bodies.

Space was running low, and they had begun piling up the bloody forms, ragged wounds gaping as the corpses sagged. There were no moans of the wounded, just soft sobs from some apprentices and the shuffles and thumps as they moved and stacked their limp burdens.

The traitors had shown no compunction in turning on their own innocent reinforcements, those officers that had come later, much to Gnaeus’s obvious displeasure. Murien had worried about them at the time, but this was the final proof that they had not been part of the gods’ wider plan.

He couldn’t bear to look closely at the bodies in polistraat blue to determine which ones had been innocent and which he recognized from Gnaeus’s crew, but for the demons, he held no sympathy. Murien had no difficulty in adopting Ses’s word for them now, these followers of the gods who claimed to uphold the very law that condemned them.

Pieter’s words rang in his head. The man is a demon himself. And what am I, now? Have I gone far enough toward aiding one of these creatures to count among their number? But Pieter looked as white-faced and appalled as any of the other apprentices.

They threaded their way through the obstacle-laden hallway with their increasingly heavy burden, at last finding the examination room and Doctor Adric within. Murien would have expected to find him arms-deep in saving someone’s life, but the man stood fidgeting, gloved and ready, looking lost with no one to practice his arts upon. His shaggy hair, already iron-gray despite his youth, was tied in a tail behind his neck.

At last, he said, a mighty sigh of relief whooshing from his thin frame. Please tell me there is someone I can help.

She’s lost an eye, Murien said, voice cramping around the words, rejecting them. She’d had such striking, mismatched eyes. I got her into this. But she’s alive.

Doctor Adric frowned. Iron hell, is that Ses Lucani? I thought she was expelled months ago.

There’s too much to explain, Murien said after he and Pieter deposited Ses upon the nife iron examination table. His shoulders popped with relief, or more likely some injury he couldn’t feel yet.

It doesn’t matter, Adric said. I’m just grateful there is someone I can help. The near repetition of his own words made them sound like the beginnings of a mantra. His Dim gray eyes lost focus for an instant, looking through Murien with a haunted expression. They’re all dead. Everyone. No injured. Just dead. Who would do this? The last was directed at no one. As he loomed over Ses to examine her, he turned to Pieter. I know you’ve spent some time dealing with dissecting specimens. Can you help me with her? My assistants are all out looking for wounded.

Of course, Pieter said. I promised I would look after the girl.

What? Murien moved to put himself between Ses and both men. He couldn’t manage it for both at once, so he hovered there, indecisive.

Relax, Murien, Adric said. Steady hands are steady hands. Pieter won’t do anything unless I tell him. And I’ve seen your work at the forge. Ses would not thank you for trying to assist in his place. Now, please leave. Thank you for bringing her here, but you’re too agitated to do more than make things worse.

Murien hovered, indignation warring with worry. It’s my fault she’s like this. I can’t—

Go, Murien. She’ll be all right, Adric said kindly. You already saved her by getting her here. Go and see if you can find more wounded. Maybe we’ll get lucky.

Stung, stomach roiling, Murien left. He did not stop in the hall or speak to any of the other apprentices but threaded his way through the maze of the dead until he was back out into the open air of the Pit. There he lost himself staring out and up at the Globe, wondering when it would burst open and release its death upon the world.

Could I have stopped it? If I’d seen it earlier, seen the truth, could I have stopped it? As he watched, he imagined he could see a crack forming along one side of the continent, a long, thin thread of darkness.

The sound of boots and a soft scurry of smaller feet touching down made him spin. The man who had just landed on the barracks platform seized Murien’s attention and left his mouth dry, nearly blinding him to the giant, eight-legged thing that scuttled up in the newcomer’s wake.

Going undercover in the Artisan Guild, Murien had been well-drilled in the descriptions of every known face worn by the terrorist mastermind Larimaine Dunsinay. The man before him looked ill, massively so. But despite this, he wore two of those old descriptions at once, one of which was familiar from the first and only time Murien had seen him in the flesh.

The man’s two disguises were mashed together haphazardly, one occupying a large wedge from his forehead down to his left cheekbone. There a disturbing wound marked the boundary, a fine mesh of metal wire erupting from his skin, the wound caked with blood. The implication, that the grid continued beneath the skin everywhere else, lacing the muscles of Dunsinay’s face, was nearly as nauseating as the wound itself.

Is this how the man wears so many different likenesses?

The shock of what—of whom—Murien was seeing drove everything else from his head. Whether imparted by Ses in angry exasperation or by direct, brutal betrayal, every realization, every fresh understanding, fled Murien’s mind. Only the anger underlying them all remained, and that blazed to life like a dying fire burning a hole to fresh oxygen.

He reached for a weapon he didn’t carry. It didn’t matter. He’d beat the man into submission if he had to. For a bare instant, vertigo washed over him as he recalled that matters were not so cut and dry. That, and the fact that the man’s giant spider companion, all striped in black and white and very familiar to Murien, might not take kindly to such an attempt, but he swept it all aside. Righteous anger felt so much better.

This man has caused so much suffering, whatever his reasons.

Larimaine Dunsinay, Murien said, willing his voice not to shake, I’m placing you under arrest for crimes too numerous to list. He stepped, or rather staggered, forward, determined to restrain this man if he had to fall on him to do it, only to be stopped by the sudden, predatory focus of the spider. Murien stilled, ready to leap, ready to do murder, but Dunsinay’s voice cut off the burgeoning violence.

Stop! he barked. Murien saw a gentle, almost beatific smile. I’ll surrender myself peacefully into your custody, he said, if you’ll show me to my daughter.

Murien fretted over his handiwork. Perhaps he wouldn’t have, had the cell’s occupant been anyone other than who he was. But Murien’s apprentice chamber, hastily rigged with a wrighted lock on the outside, did not seem to him to be a particularly winning combination of prison security for a man like Larimaine Dunsinay. Even with a pair of the Pit’s largest apprentices guarding it.

But after a brief visit to a still-unconscious Ses and a goggling Adric, Larimaine Dunsinay had agreed to a search of his person and the confinement placidly enough. Which only raised Murien’s hackles higher.

To top it all off, he was still uncertain whether he ought to be confining the man at all.

Murien stepped from the barracks out onto the surrounding platform, testing his resolve not to pop back in every five minutes and ensure that his prisoner was still a prisoner from now until… when?

Until Ses wakes. Or until someone else arrives who can take responsibility for this disaster. Beyond arresting a man who might be his secret ally, Murien did not have the first notion of what to do.

In truth, despite his desperation to make up for his betrayal of Ses, he itched to be away from this place. And not just to escape the confusion and indecision of so much hazy, unclear conflict. Now he’d seen the rot in the polistraat. It had been spelled out to him in death and betrayal. He had to find out how deep it went and rally those whom it hadn’t tainted.

If any still existed.

But he couldn’t leave yet. Not with so much of the Pit still in turmoil. He stared up at the Globe where the remaining apprentices swarmed, trying to stamp out the constant godly activity appearing there. Armed with Godbane wrightings, which would inflict debilitating pain on anyone who was illicitly worshipping or had done so recently, they raced to each flickering pulse of light the Globe weakly offered up, attempting to dispense punishment on the world above. But the pulses were many and growing, and the Globe was still too damaged to be reliable as a warning device.

Worst of all was that Murien hadn’t imagined seeing a crack form. The first apprentices to arrive at the Globe had already reported back. That crack had been sealed, but more were likely. For the apprentices, it was a desperate effort, one he would need to join them in shortly. Perhaps feeling the Godbane would convince even the most zealous to abandon worship for a time and the gods would remain weak enough not to break completely free. Still, the early reports were that half the Godbane attempts did not seem to be working.

We’re losing control of the situation.

Light caught Murien’s attention as red luminescence described a bulky shape in the suddenly stirring air between himself and the Globe. Murien felt a swooping inside himself. He had never been so happy to see a hellship returning. Surely this was the one Ses had arrived on hours earlier. It had departed shortly after the catastrophe in the temple.

Whoever this is, surely they have more idea of what is happening than I do.

The lower hatch opened, a sinuous stairway descended to the barracks platform on which Murien stood, and one of the pilots rushed out, a young man. He wore neither mask nor uniform, but a strange robe of shifting blue and silver, black and red. He looked harried, and he raced in the direction of the barracks.

Hurry! came the familiar voice of Brea Reati from within the ship. We are already late, and we haven’t even begun!

Curious, Murien moved toward the ship’s hatch, intent on speaking to Brea, frightened to think of what news she might bring. He fought down a sense of his whole world falling away beneath his feet, of plummeting into darkness.

So intent was he on dispelling this that he collided with the next person to descend from the ship. She bounced off him with a grunt, her distant, haunted expression taking on a stern dislike as she laid eyes on him.

She recognizes me? That made no sense, or it didn’t before he got a good look at her. Because he recognized Cassia Lucani, the famous head of Fulenthe Wrightingworks. Ses’s mother.

She must have heard that Ses is hurt somehow.

The woman was short and lovely, looking more than a bit like Ses in miniature, but her eyes were a Blazing gold. After he noticed the studs piercing her eyebrows, twins of the one Ses had once worn that had been a wrighting, Murien suspected that maybe they weren’t her true eyes after all.

While Ses’s injuries had to be the reason Cassia was here, that made no sense. From what Murien had seen, the woman did not care in the slightest whether Ses lived or died, even turning her aside when she sought shelter at Fulenthe Headquarters some months back. That had been just before he had met Ses.

I’ve got him, he said, unprompted. Larimaine Dunsinay, he said when her expression did not change. He’s locked up in the barracks, guarded by two apprentices. It’s all we can manage just now, he added apologetically, pointing upward at the Globe. He was not sure why he was confiding all this to a woman he’d never met, except that she gave off an undeniable air of authority that he found he craved as a blinded man craved sight.

Cassia Lucani continued to regard him with the deepest possible dislike.

That’s the only useful thing you’ve ever done, Murien Alaini, she said with a strange mixture of surprise and contempt. Before he could recover from someone of her stature insulting him by name, she continued. And of course, you did it for entirely the wrong reasons, but never mind that now. What you describe is not nearly secure enough. And we’re going to have more need for those two apprentices up there. She inclined her head toward the Globe as he had.

I didn’t have time to gather my trusted guard, Cassia continued, muttering the frustrated words as if talking to herself. But we’ll have to get them down here. I hope my caller can get through all this. She gestured with exasperation at the Pit surrounding them. I suppose if it can’t, I know who to ask for help. Where is he? Suddenly all her regard was on Murien again. And where is my daughter?

Keep them apart, Brea said from the hatch. Murien whirled, catching sight of her for the first time since he woke after nearly being strangled. He fingered the bruise at his throat. It throbbed more when he thought about it.

Are you coming down from there? he asked. He both did and didn’t want her to, an uncertainty he could scarcely have imagined even a few days earlier. It was intolerable.

Not until… Selestia’s father is well and truly secure. Besides, I have other matters that need seeing to. Cassia Lucani is entitled to see her daughter and was clever enough to contact this ship and request a ride, but I am out of time.

Cassia stepped in between them, raising onto her tiptoes so she occupied his full view. It was a little flustering, seeing someone so reminiscent of Ses in the full flower of her beauty. Larimaine. Selestia. Where are they?

Third room on the left on the second floor is mine, he said. Then he realized what that sounded like and, flushing, stammered a clarification. That’s where I’ve got him locked up. And Ses is in the hospital wing.

I’ve never been in the building. Cassia Lucani’s patience was unraveling.

Basement, first level, Murien said. It’s basically the whole level, and she’s the only patient who’s still alive. There are a lot of bodies, he warned as she strode off, fiddling with something in her ear.

Brea is glad to see you’re all right, said Brea. Murien shivered and turned back to her. To whomever he was looking at.

Which are you? he asked.

You never learned your temples while you were here, did you?

Annoyed was better than afraid, at least. He knew, of course. He’d known to which temple they’d gone to investigate. The only one that hadn’t been assaulted, whose acolytes had not infiltrated the Pit. He thought of Pieter and amended the previous thought. Her acolyte had infiltrated, but in a different way.

Vexvow.

Brea—or the thing that wore her—nodded. In the crudest sense, yes. But in another sense, not truly. Think of me as Veilenya—but I’d prefer you still refer to me as Brea. The fewer who know, the better.

Veilenya. How is that different?

Only the tiniest fraction of me can occupy her, the less so since I am determined not to do her any damage. Unlike the others of my family and their charges, I’d note.

Murien felt a chill ripple through him and fade. He hadn’t even realized there was a danger to the host. A danger that, if this god was to be believed, was of no concern to the other gods. Why? Why would they agree to it—unless they don’t know?

I don’t understand the difference between Veilenya and Vexvow—

A god is not a metal, Vexvow—or Veilenya—said. Each piece of us is not identical to any other and is not merely a miniature version of the whole. She seemed to think that satisfied his curiosity.

Can I talk to Brea instead of you? He thought