One by one, the Golden King questioned his brethren. With every answer he received, he only laughed, until the echoes around Hark made him sick to his stomach. He and Spear had not moved an inch, and dared not turn from the exultation of the Hollowed.
The Golden King held up a fist as dense and sharp as coral. “Her power is ours. The Sea Mother lives on in us, and so does her strength.” Hark could feel the Golden King warping the air in the room, increasing the pressure around them all in his corrupt joy. “Cloudbreaker! Pummel ships with hurricane winds. Father Flame! Strike coastlines alight with your lightning. Mother of Knives, corrode fisherman’s steel with salt. Fisher Knight, encircle boats with sharks and squids.” One by one, the Golden King commanded his brethren, smiling, as across the Wild World ships drowned, coasts were ravaged, cities were hammered by lightning, metal rusted away, and children were swept out to the deep.
The Golden King purred, satisfied, a lion among sheep. “Teach the Wild World that we are coming back.”
Hark heard a rattling sound. Turning his head just so, he glimpsed Spear. She stood at attention, her ankles pressed together, her arms behind her back. Her eyes bored ahead with a focus Hark envied. But when he looked closer, he could see that she shook, ever so slightly, her knives and daggers trembling with her. Hark saw the tightness in her jaw, the muscles in her neck bulging, her eyes only just wider than normal, and he realized: she was afraid.
Finally, he thought. Something I understand.
“Chef. Attend.” The Golden King’s voice was a hook in Hark’s lip, dragging him back to attention. “Do not for a moment think you may shirk focus simply because our contract is almost at an end.”
Hark bowed slightly from the waist. “Of course, my lord.”
“Delivered unto us have you eight Great Beasts of the Wild World. Through our veins flow their strength over its seas, its mountains, its creatures, its skies . . . ours to will, and to shape, and to crush.”
Hark couldn’t help but recount them, the Beasts he’d watched die, the dishes he’d made, had been happy to make. No other chef in all the Wild World had done what he had done. I melted the Sunsword into a soup. I sliced open the heart of the Iron Hound and boiled it for a pudding. I cracked the ribs of the Mountain Worm and garnished them with flowers. I baked the head of the Firestag and broke its antlers over my knee. I grilled the Sea Mother’s hide. Hark felt proud, and wondered for a brief moment what else sat within him just then, the ghost of an emotion that did not wish to speak its name but whose shape he knew and feared. He stuffed it down inside, deep and away. Now was no time for introspection.
“Our contract is almost fulfilled, hunter. Our contract is almost up, chef. There is no doubt in your minds as to who we seek to eat for the very last, is there?” The Golden King’s voice curdled hearts as it did milk, and Hark struggled to swallow the bile in his throat.
“The Messenger, my lord. The Great Beast of Death.”
The Hollowed sat and nodded, smiling at each other like small children, eager to have dessert. “Once we have consumed death, then no longer will death have the chance to consume us. Not again. With our immortality secured, we shall release you both.” The Golden King’s eyes narrowed, as though finally finding prey. “Though how long you survive in this world we make, that will be a mystery.”
Thank the dead Beasts for Spear, who filled the silence with a question. “The Messenger, then. Where does it speak now?”
The Golden King gestured to his siblings.
Cloudbreaker’s halo caught the candlelight, and when she glanced toward the sky, her brow shone like a broken mirror. Her empty eye sockets glazed over with golden light, letting the power of the Sunsword hawk fill her. After a moment she spoke. “South and south again, across Lament’s Rush and Once Mighty Drazbaadinmar, south, even further, pushing through the breast of Haddikstant and across the Iron Plains! The Messenger followed the scent of war horns and rattling sabers, drinking the carnage of clashing spears and skins. Now the Beast resides in the heart of the Ruined Lights, supping on the souls of the haunted wood.”
Cloudbreaker’s beatific smile did nothing to offset the sharpness of her teeth. “You’ll find the Beast there, bloated on the blood and smoke of the Plains. I await your concoction, chef.” Cloudbreaker snapped her jaws playfully.
The Golden King raised a hand. “Bring us death’s head on a platter and you will both know riches and sweet reward, to be enjoyed in the beautiful moments before our return. Come back with anything less and you’ll both know damnation. Are we clear?”
Spear jerked her head up, a sneer slicing her face. “I know how threats work. We’ll get it done, and then you’ll leave us alone.” Spear grabbed Hark’s arm and pulled him back with her, both of them tumbling out of the psychic space.
Hark broke his arm free of Spear’s grip. “They’ve killed people for less, Spear!”
Spear glowered at him, unblinking. She spat on the floor and got to her feet. “And I’ve killed people for less than that. They don’t scare me,” she said, as though she wasn’t just trembling before them. She started to walk toward the supply pantry, which doubled as her armory. “C’mon. Let’s do this, then.”
Hark grabbed a handkerchief from the counter and wiped away Spear’s spittle before getting to his feet and following.
Thanks to reality-bending Persuasion Workers, the pantry was almost fifty feet deep, and on each wall, their tools; Hark had the right wall for his utensils and Spear had the left for her weapons. Already she was running her fingers across the steel that waited, tracing the edge of a sword, testing the heft of a flail. Hark stood at the other wall, his neuroses making his fingers itch. He always got antsy whenever Spear picked her weapons; it reminded him of the old days, when he’d smack wrists and crack knuckles, expecting perfection of the young charges in his restaurant as they learned to sharpen knives, learned which blade worked for which cut. That he didn’t know anything of her tools made him anxious.
After a few moments Spear turned to face him, already done. She had her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised; with the sheer amount of weapons she’d strapped to her body, she resembled nothing less than a steel porcupine.
“Are you really going to need all of those?” Hark asked, regretting it immediately. She glowered, and he was reminded of just how little he knew of her. Neither of them were very friendly people, and whatever polite inquiry he made into her past she tamped down like a stray spark, as though a friendly question could make her catch fire. Though if he were honest with himself, if she bothered to ask him anything, he’d probably do the same.
“I was thinking of bringing nothing, but then I remembered I’m hunting the Great Beast of Death, which has been around since the inception of the concept of the Wild World, so I reconsidered.”
Hark scowled, running a hand across his stubbly scalp; shaving his dreadlocks cut down on how much gray he saw each day. “Fine, be a bitch. What do I care? After you murder this thing and I cook it into art, we’ll be rid of each other.”
At this point she’d normally shove past him, go to the rune in the foyer, and be gone, leaving him to prepare the recipe and side dishes until she returned with the Beast in tow. Instead she stood there and would not look away from his eyes, ringed as they were with wrinkles and creases. “What are you looking at?” he said, his heart turning stony and cold at the attention of such a hard-bitten woman.
She scowled, picking her nose and then moving the same finger behind her ear. “I’m looking.”