And now, once more, the balance teetered ever further.
“HE IS BUT A PEBBLE THAT WILL CRACK THE TILE SHOULD YOU NOT BRUSH IT ASIDE. A TAINT THAT WILL SPOIL. YET, HE MAY STILL BRING YOU WHAT YOU DESIRE MOST.”
Snow Eyes. “You best not utter that word about Solanine again, brother. Master… Solanine, that is, saw me at the Guilder’s villa with Sn… Ashe.”
“Solanine saw you? You neglected to tell me this.” Elian leaned back into his chair and turned to look at the satyr mask, the wood creaking. He scratched at his scraggly beard, dry flakes snowing about his dark tunic front. “This complicates matters. Who else saw you at Soabin’s? I’d not like to see his missing mask come back to my doorstep.”
“It matters not.” Evander put his feet upon Elian’s desk, which drew a frown from his brother. He left them there. “None would question the word of Solanine. Soabin is but a rotten fish in a barrel of them. You have nothing to fear from Solanine. You or your operations here.”
Elian squinted. “You’re withholding something from me. I know when you are. It is unwise to do so.”
“I’m not one of your pitiful dregs, Elian,” he said angrily. “Nor your bastard son.” Between the pair of them, he was the longer to anger, but once incensed, Evander had the more aggressive streak. By bringing up Elian’s bastard child, he aimed to cut deep. “You may think you own Slag’s End, but we are men of the Imperium now, and our standing is beside another. You best get used to it.”
A chuckle with little warmth escaped Elian. “You think Solanine is going to open those legs to you like that scullery whore and just give you the breadth of Gargantua to use on your whim?” Elian put his fleshy arms upon the desk, his face darkening as he shoved Evander’s boots off. “Don’t you dare bring up Evzen. Where that little fucker has gone, I’ll find him. You know better than most, Evander, what this city does to those who hold dreams. You know firsthand what it’s like to lose those closest to us because the Fallen demands obedience.”
No, brother, a god. He quivered with anger but held it in check. “Then what, pray tell, brother, are we to do with Solanine’s task? Obey and hand over Ashe? One of ours?” You would hand me over if the purse was large enough, but do you dare say it aloud, brother? Just like you did your only child. Knowing that Solanine sent you off before me…
That softened his brother’s storm, if only somewhat. “The girl was never one of ours. Evzen may have had a lover’s crush on her, and she’s helped this imperium of ours grow, no doubt, but she’s unpredictable. We cannot trust one trained of the Scattered Shards.”
“And yet you’re willing to trust the Fallen himself? You contradict yourself. No, brother, you would never just turn her over without assurances. And you’d truly slit your own child’s throat when you find him, won’t you?”
The smile returned on Elian’s flabby face. “And to think I had begun to believe you too far smitten with the girl for you to see what’s staring you directly in the face. O don’t think I don’t know what you desire with her. It’s plain as day. Just as it was with Evzen.” His fat fingers drummed upon the desk. “But as you say, we cannot trust the Fallen. Nor Solanine. The Gutter King has drawn in the gangs to this war, whether we like it or not. Ness was a fool. I’ll not be one to follow in his footsteps. I’d rather not end up food for the worms.”
“Cross the Fallen then, is it?”
“I wouldn’t dream of such a thing,” Elian said with a straight face before bursting into laughter.
Evander sat there unmoving. It was a daft thing, one that would spell doom for his brother. But it mattered not. Only his oath to the Divine did.
XIX
Cadrianna
THE HUMID, PUTRID poison of the Sea of Mist had a strong scent of death. A permanence.
Southwest of Drenth near half a day, Cadrianna traveled the Sea alone. Within the thick haze, a monolithic structure emerged ahead.
As she pressed forward, her mind remained on her daughter.
Blindfolded, as she always was, Lu Har had led her down into the depths of Gargantua, into a place she could never find on her own. A winding way they went, backwards and forwards with no discernible trail she could remember. She had tried for years but couldn’t. It kept her tamed. Kept her hungry.
The moment she had laid eyes on her daughter, bound in the obscurity of a darkened cell with a door that was unbreakable by aetheurgy, Cadrianna cried. Bound by aether to the wall, a crown of daggers stabbed into Brynn’s head, her raven hair fallen about her dirty, young face as blood trickled in streaks. Arms raised apart, crimson at her feet. Chains with heinous bladed links crisscrossing her torso, digging into her skin.
O Nocturne she wanted to hold her child, to take her into her arms and soothe her.
Seeing Brynn had given her strength. She had needed the visual confirmation that what she was doing was worth it. To be reminded that her path was only temporary. The love that bound her to the Fallen was a dark curse, wrapped tightly in the desire for revenge. Void aetheurgy needed hatred to guide it, that was why she allowed herself to love him.
Love borne by hatred.
As she’d left the depths of Brynn’s prison, Cadrianna had her resolve to seek the oracles, gain whatever advantage she could glean from them.
Sweat beaded the rim of her breather as the ground turned hard, and the ruined city of Illigan sprawled before her.
“I HATE THIS PLACE.” Sheathed at her hip, the Strix radiated heat. “REMINDS ME OF THAT TIME WHEN I WAS STILL FLESH.”
“I wish you were flesh, then I’d not have to listen to you all the time.”
“FLESH FEELS MORE THAN STEEL, EVEN YOUR BARBS. YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN MY WINGSPAN. WHAT I WOULDN’T GIVE ANYTHING TO HAVE A BACKSIDE AS FINE AS YOURS.”
“There you go, commenting on my backside again. Sometimes I think you just like to flirt with me.”
“ME FLIRT WITH YOU? YOU’RE NOT MY TYPE.”
“O, I forgot, you only have a thing for the souls of the dying.”
“IF ONLY YOU KNEW THE PAIN I SUFFER FOR IT.”
The ruined city rose out of the mist. Villas of mortar and wood. Multiple stories, many massive. Some were narrow and closely cobbled together. The marshland had claimed Illigan, caressing buildings as if holding them forever in place. Benches of steel and iron, rusted and bent. Windows empty of glass. Balconies collapsed. Gardens turned brown or dead, rotted away to nothing.
Illigan was nothing more than a relic of a time before the Fall.
“THERE WAS THIS ONE TIME,” the Strix started and began to regale her of a time in which it’d been here when Eminence still floated above the land. But she didn’t listen, she’d heard the tale countless times already.
The villas faded back into the Sea as she walked into an open expanse of uneven stones. The bones of animals and man littered the road, skulls and ivory along all the way. Daemons of small stature prowled the empty cityscape, but they were more frightened of her, than she of them. She saw tails as they fled.
“WEAKLINGS THEY ALL ARE.”
