“Good a place as any.”
Triste leaned against the railing, groaned, then slid down until she was half sitting, half slumped. She vomited noisily onto the platform, over and over, long after her stomach was empty. The Flea and Sigrid took up opposite positions, one a dozen steps above the landing, one below. What foe they expected to fight, Kaden had no idea. Neither soldier had asked why they were here inside the Spear or what they had come to do. Their presence should have been a comfort; without them, il Tornja would have won the fight already. And yet, there was something terrible about warriors willing to kill in the total absence of question or explanation. What they felt about the trail of corpses they’d left littered across the city, Kaden couldn’t say. Maybe nothing at all. Maybe that was part of what it was to be Kettral. Maybe, like the Shin, they trained the feeling out of you.
“What now?” Valyn asked.
Kaden glanced at his brother, then looked over at Triste. She had stopped throwing up, mopped the vomit from her chin, then closed her eyes and nodded.
“The obviate,” Kaden said slowly, trying to frame a truth larger than the human world with a few words. “It is almost time to free … what we carry inside us.”
The Flea didn’t turn. Neither did Sigrid. Just soldiers doing a soldier’s work. Suddenly, Kaden envied them that simplicity. Kill. Run. Guard. Already they’d faced down dangers by the thousands, and yet those were human dangers-swords, arrows, fire, threats such as men and women were built to face. They might die in a fight, but no one would ask them to grind out their own lives.
“This tower,” Kaden went on after a pause, “is a link. A bridge. Between this world and another.”
“Whatever that means,” Valyn growled.
“I don’t understand it any more than you. The only thing I know is that this is the only place from which the gods can ascend.”
Valyn looked like he was going to object, question the notion further. Then he just shook his head. “Great. We’re here. We’ll get you to the top. What happens then?”
Triste let out a small noise. It might have been a whimper or a twisted little laugh.
Kaden put a hand on her shoulder, but turned inward, to the mind locked inside the depths of his own mind.
We are close, he said to the god. It is time. Explain the obviate. Tell me how I can set you free.
For a long time, he thought Meshkent would not respond. Hundreds of feet below, flame chewed eagerly through tons of flesh and wood, roaring as it feasted. Each breath was ash and hot iron. Kaden’s legs quaked beneath him. Triste’s sweat-drenched skin was molten beneath his touch.
Tell me, Kaden said, or you will die here.
Inside, silence. The world beyond, fire. Then, at last, the god spoke.
Submit, and I will burn these foes to ash.
Kaden shook his head grimly, released Triste, then stepped to the edge of the railing.
Explain the obviate, or I will end you myself.
Meshkent’s snarl was a notched blade twisted in the brain.
You would pit yourself against your god?
Kaden gazed down into the conflagration. I trained at the feet of an older god than you.
I will flay you with a blade of screams.
Kaden shook his head. You cannot flay what is not there.
Then, with a motion of thought, he brought the honed blade of his own emptiness to bear against the god’s throat, a promise, a threat. I carried you this far. Do not test me further.
Meshkent, the Lord of all Pain, shuddered, raged, and then went slack. His voice, when he finally gave up the truth of the obviate, echoed in Kaden’s mind like a child’s voice lost in a vast cavern.
“What happens when we get to the top?” Valyn demanded at last. “The gods just … float away?”
“Not quite,” Kaden said quietly, the truth heavy and simple inside him.
“What does that mean?”
“There is a ceremony to perform. Words to speak.” Kaden paused, forced himself to meet his brother’s eyes as he said the rest. “And then we have to die.”
For a moment, no one spoke. Valyn’s face twisted with something that might have been rage or confusion. As though something human were trying to tear itself free of the bestial fury in which he had fought his way across the city. For a fraction of a second, there was confusion there, confusion and grief and anger. Then it was all gone, the emotion wiped away like so much blood-something messy, unnecessary once it had been spilled.
“What’s the other way?” Valyn asked.
Kaden shook his head. He hadn’t explained this part back in Kegellen’s manse. There had been no reason, and he could find no words. “There is no other way. Humanity depends on Ciena and Meshkent. No one will be safe until they are free, and they can’t be free while we are still alive.”
“How in Hull’s name did the bastard get inside you?” Valyn growled.
“I told you already. I let him in.”
“So let him out.”
“This is the only way.”
“Well, we’ll find another way,” Valyn growled. “We’re safe here. We’ve got time. We-”
He broke off mid-sentence, cocked his head to the side, then closed his eyes as though listening to something. Kaden watched his jaw tighten. Valyn half raised one of the axes, as though he were about to attack Kaden himself.
“No,” he said, dragging the word out in a long, quiet growl. Then again, “No.”
“What is it?” Kaden asked, though he could already see the bleak contours of the answer.
Valyn’s eyes opened. His face was blank, awful.
“They’re above us.”
Triste stumbled to her feet. “Who is?”
“Ran il Tornja.”
“Alone?” the Flea asked. He didn’t look down, didn’t raise his blades, didn’t move at all. It was as though he were getting ready, wringing out every last moment of rest, savoring a final stillness, preparing for whatever had to come next.
“No,” Valyn replied grimly. “There are at least fifty men with him.”
“How do you know?” Kaden demanded.
“I can smell him. Them.”
Fear surged like a fire inside Kaden. He wrapped it in a fist, crushed it out. There was no time for fear. He leaned out over the railing of the stairs, craned his neck to look up.
“We’re maybe three hundred feet from the top.”
Valyn nodded. “They’re coming down.”
“Can you hold them?”
The Flea shook his head. “Not for long. They have the high ground.”
“And a leach,” Valyn said.
Sigrid’s head snapped around at that. Valyn nodded.
“He almost knocked Gwenna’s bird out of the air. I thought he was down in the streets somewhere. I was wrong.”
Sigrid bared her teeth, made a vicious sound somewhere deep in her throat, and abandoned her post below them, climbing the stairs until she stood shoulder to shoulder with the Flea. Her blacks were a spray-spatter of gore: blood, and brain, and chips of bone. Sweat-streaked char smudged her face. She closed her eyes, put a hand on the Flea’s shoulder, and then, as Kaden stared, the grime lifted away from her clothes, her face, her arms, rising clear of her, then sliding aside, hanging in the air a moment like a shadow, then collapsing, blown away on the hot wind. The woman was immaculate, radiant, as though she’d just stepped from a day in the baths. Even her hair fell in graceful waves around her face. Her eyes, however, might have been chips of ice.
The Flea looked over at her, then chuckled. “You always did say you wanted to die looking good. Well, I’ll tell you, Sig, you’re stunning.”
Triste ignored the woman. She was pacing around the narrow landing like a trapped animal. “We’ll do it here,” she said finally. “We’ll do it here.” She turned to the Kettral. “If you keep them back, we’ll do it here. The obviate.” Then she faced Kaden. “You know how, don’t you. He told you.”