“Well, he is immortal,” Isa said. “People like that have a tendency toward, you know, not dying.”
This upended everything. He hadn’t won. He’d failed.
“I need to find a way to make the Infinity Blade function,” Siris explained. “It . . .” He stopped. Telling her that the God King had planned to make it work by killing Siris didn’t seem particularly wise. In fact, telling her anything didn’t seem particularly wise.
But he was alone, ignorant, and running low on options. Isa seemed to know it, for she was watching him with a sly smile.
Siris took a deep breath. “You said you know how to get everywhere. So . . .”
“‘Making the Infinity Blade work’ isn’t a place, whiskers.”
“I need to find someone to help me. Maybe someone to take the sword off my hands. Can you find the Worker of Secrets?”
Isa froze, and he felt a sliver of satisfaction-through the anxiety-at having finally said something that surprised her. “The Worker of Secrets is a myth,” she said. “Pure fabrication. Nobody fights back against the Deathless. Nobody.”
“I did. You seem to have been intending to, in some way.”
Isa didn’t respond.
“The Worker made the Infinity Blade,” Siris said, though he had gotten that information from Kuuth. Could he trust anything that troll had told him?
The God King told him to answer my questions. Why?
“Yes, it’s said the blade is the Worker’s creation,” Isa replied, which shocked him. She did know about it. Or was she playing along?
Terrors, he thought. What am I doing? I can’t handle this. All I know how to do is kill people. It appeared he couldn’t even do that properly.
“The Worker of Secrets,” Isa said thoughtfully. “Ancient enemy of the Deathless, trapped in a prison where time does not pass-his punishment for making a forbidden weapon.”
“What do you know, Isa?” he said, pointing at her. “What do you really know about all of this?”
“Not as much as it seems,” she said lightly. “And certainly not where the Worker is imprisoned, if he even exists.”
“You said you can take me anywhere.”
“Anyplace not mythical, whiskers,” she said skeptically, folding her arms. “I think the Worker is probably a rumor spread among the Deathless to cover up the true origins of the Infinity Blade.”
“Well, we have to go somewhere,” Siris said, looking back at the castle. It seemed hollow and empty. A throne without a king. “Let’s get moving, for now. I’ll . . . I’ll think about what to do.”
Isa shrugged, then started down the path. He followed, hoping he didn’t look as uncertain as he felt.
I’m a child, Siris thought. A child playing at games only the adults understand.
He trudged along the road, his armor heavy in his pack. Isa, it turned out, had a horse-a luxury that nobody in Drem’s Maw had been able to afford. She clomped along the road behind him, humming a tune softly to herself, wearing a narrow hat with a wide brim to keep off the sun.
He’d always wanted to ride a horse. What would it be like? He shook his head, trying to force his thoughts away from that path. The world was crumbling. What did horses matter?
And yet, a piece of him still struggled to discover itself. He wanted to live, to thrive. He wanted to know things, be things, experience things. He’d always denied himself the slightest bit of pleasure, worried that if he tasted the life of a real person, he’d develop a hunger for it.
He’d been right. He’d tasted it now. He was ruined.
And he was happy for it.
Perhaps Isa would help him achieve that; perhaps not. It seemed terribly convenient that she would arrive, decide not to kill him, and now offer to take him wherever he wanted to go. There had been no discussion of price. Probably because they both knew her leading him was merely an excuse for her to stay near the Infinity Blade, and perhaps get a chance to snatch it.
I should ditch her, he thought. Go on alone.
Go where?
Into hiding? He could make his way into the mountains, alone, live off the land . . . only, he had never learned how to do something like that. Beyond that, what good would it do to hide with the Infinity Blade? Potentially the only weapon humankind had for fighting back against the Deathless?
I need to find people who are fighting back. Give the sword to them.
The Worker of Secrets, if he existed, would be a place to start. If not him, then some other rebellious group. Surely something like that existed.
“You realize that this looks odd,” Isa noted.
He looked up at her, frowning.
“Me riding,” she explained, “and you walking like that. It looks unusual. I assume you want to be . . . what is the word in your language? Inconspicuous?”
Was she going to invite him to ride with her? The prospect of being that close to her made him wary, and he glanced at the knives on her belt. He also found himself intrigued by the prospect of being that close to her, however, and he tried to quash the emotion.
She tried to kill you, he reminded himself. And will probably try again.
Still, it would be nice to try riding a horse.
“Yes, this is not very inconspicuous,” she said, looking at him appraisingly, “not with a weapon like that. You could be my guard, but anyone we pass is going to wonder why a woman in simple leathers can afford a guard. I don’t look like a merchant-and there are no wares besides-but I’m certainly not going to pass as one of the Devoted or the Favored.”
“I don’t suppose you have a fancy dress tucked away in your saddlebags?” Siris asked.
She raised an eyebrow at him, looking highly amused.
“I guess not,” he said.
“Assuming you want to travel incognizant,” she said, “we need to do something about the sword.”
“Wait, incognizant?”
“Wrong word? In . . . I swear there was one.”
“Incognito?”
“Yes, that’s it. What a stupid language. Anyway, if you want to travel incognito, we need to do something about that sword.” She made a great show of thinking it over, then sighed loudly. “Guess you’ll just have to let me tie the sword to the saddle up here, where I can cover it with a blanket.”
“You really think I’m that stupid?”
She just chuckled, reaching into her saddlebags. “Merely trying to measure your stupidity, whiskers. You soldier types get knocked upside the head frequently. Who knows how forgetful you might become?” She pulled something out and tossed it to him. A cloak, nicer than the one he’d used to pack up his armor. “Tie that on, let it drape over your left side. Maybe it will hide the weapon well enough to turn aside questioning eyes.”
He lifted up the cloak, looking at it carefully, wary of some kind of trap.
“I sewed deathfang spiders into the collar,” she said dryly.
“Just being cautious,” Siris said, throwing on the cloak, letting it fall as she’d described. It did an acceptable job of hiding the sword. “Thanks.”
They walked a little farther along the dusty trail. It wasn’t really a road. In another part of the countryside, it would have become overgrown long ago. Here, where the weather was hot and the terrain was stony, there wasn’t enough life to overgrow anything.
Siris trudged along beside the horse, his armor feeling like bricks on his back, trails of sweat making their way leisurely down the sides of his cheeks.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Isa asked.
“Beautiful?”
“The rock formations,” she said, nodding to the side. The ground there fell away into a series of gullies, then rose sharply in a ripple that exposed lines of strata shaded red, yellow, brown, orange. “I’ve always loved this part of the island.”