NYREE RAN TO THE FLAP of Errol’s tent on the riverbank and stopped, breathing hard. She overheard two voices from within.
“—but the abbot is dead,” one of them said. That was Errol. “Are you not gone, too?”
“I am not exactly what you think,” said the other. “It’s a relief Lugius is gone, actually, for he despised me. I will only have to look five minutes to find another banhus. I just find someone who’s miserable, as the abbot was. I dig out his spirit and replace it with me. I will need those iron spikes—”
“If you are not a fylgia, what are you, Utlag?” said Errol. “Some sort of parasite?”
“A freak. I am one of one.”
“I am in the presence of a double walker,” said Errol.
“Doppelganger, jawohl!” said Utlag. “That’s one name they’ve given me, outside the wall. More ancient? Ka. Move to the north? Vardoger. Sooner or later, everyone tries to name the thing. A man and his double.”
“What do you call yourself?” said Errol.
The other paused. “I am a lack.”
“I see,” said Errol. “Well, you managed to wound my mother, Margaret Thebes. There’s more than one way to inhabit someone’s banhus.”
“That was different. I thought it was possible—”
“You thought it was possible someone could love you?”
“Be careful, runner. What you think you know is not even half of what’s needed. I was rare.”
“Which explains your search for the rossignol or the bonnacon, in a city of bone houses,” said Errol.
“We all long for something.”
“I don’t.”
“What a fool. You above all. You want to be the one hero. You, who sacrifices the men closest to you.”
“Sacrifices?” said Errol, leaning back into his bedding. “What have I sacrificed? I don’t feed the weak to the strong.”
“Not even your brothers?”
“My brothers are better off today than they were yesterday.”
“Ah. So no one has told you.” Outside the tent Nyree cringed. “They were my sons. Their lives depended upon my life, and I came undone, as you arrogantly chose. It’s not so easy to rebuild them. Suffice to say, you are a worthy adversary, but as a friend, you are truly dangerous.”
Errol felt a convulsion slipping into his muscles. “Tell me again. Did you ever even once get what you were trying for, using the iron spikes?”
“You know I didn’t.”
“Not a griffin? Bonnacon? Caladrius, winged horse, yale, manticore, rossignol. Not a wyrm?”
“Nothing. I fed the refuse to the rest of the—”
“The beast that attacked us in the vault was a wyrm!”
“We couldn’t even get a ram with one horn in the middle of its head—” Utlag stopped. “What did you say?”
“It was a dragon. The regnat’s beast.”
Utlag faltered. “I knew it. No. Yes. False! You weren’t there!”
“Oh, I was definitely there. It came after the abbot like a fiend from hel’s own furnace.”
“It was a gharial. People with no experience often—or maybe it was a crested newt. For sure. Was it the size of my hand?”
“It was as big as the vault. Scales. Venom. Speed. Smelled like a bonfire. Screamed like a hundred men burning in its innards. Spat flames. The regnat was trapped in his own blaze.”
“How did you escape the vault?”
“Irfelaf,” said Errol. “I shielded myself beneath the last regnat of this city.”
Utlag’s neck pulsed. “I must see go and see what’s left of it,” he said, rising again to his feet. “There must be more of them. I can begin again. Tear open some banhus and start over.”
Errol gasped now, overcome by the seizure. “You will find no banhus in this city to inhabit. We are strong now.”
“That is a pretty sentiment. But I can always find some miserable, jealous wretch.” Utlag turned again to go and stopped, for he saw me coming toward him.
I felt danger but Utlag shifted his gaze, for directly behind me came Marek and Dagmar with Dagmar’s fleet of wolves, then the apothecarist and the tufuga, and finally Jamila. The foundling was wearing Errol’s coat over a black tunic and leggings, her night-black hair let out of its braid. She reached up to put her hand on the muzzle of the stag, who limped next to her.
Eikthyrnir’s antlers were gone, and his fur was caked with blood where his left ear was gone as well. His head pulled up hard with every step but he moved with purpose.
Utlag’s eyes shifted to a huge black creature behind the stag, a beast so large it looked like a turret of an iron tower. Its hoofs were feathered with hock fur; it carried its beautiful head at the girl’s neck, watching her face, its broad wings drawn back against its sides. Behind the winged horse came a slew of kelps from the street.
“Outnumbered,” Utlag whispered, and was gone.