The house was so much smaller than Joros remembered it.
He’d been young when he’d left his home and family, but a man by any count—old enough to work, old enough to marry, old enough to kill. He’d left and seen enough of the world to begin to understand the shape of power and influence, to understand how a man could move through the world and twist it to fit his designs.
Perhaps that was what made the house seem so small. When he’d lived in it, he’d been little more than a seed, watered by anger and resentment but with no room to sprout. The house had been confinement in more ways than one.
Joros walked the halls of the place he’d lived decades ago, and his feet still remembered the careful steps to avoid the creaking floorboards. Though all the belongings and personal touches were gone, dusty furniture remained. Beds crowded together where he and his brothers had slept piled like puppies to make space for all his father’s wares. The desk in the study where his father had conducted his tedious business of ledgers and letters, and his mother had screeched at him for tracking in dirt, you useless foolish boy. The countless rooms full of now-empty shelves that had always been piled high with whatever next thing his father had been so sure would remake the family’s fortune. The space in the dusty attic where a small body could wriggle through and sit sealed away from the rest of the house, and watch the stars through a peeling section of the roof. He half expected to see memories of the people, too, but those ghosts lay silent.
He’d checked the sad little mausoleum that housed ashes from seven generations of his good, Parents-fearing ancestors, all the way back to the forebear who’d made his fortune brokering sales for fishermen who’d never realized they were being robbed blind. The man had made more than enough to pay for an extravagant house, and an ash-casket too heavy to lift so he could be housed in eternal glory. But he’d left little else for his descendants. The casket stood dull and rust-spotted at the center of the mausoleum that was crumbling around it, as untended as the house. Still, Joros found new names faithfully carved into the wall among the list of interred: his father and mother both, all three sisters, and two brothers. There was no one to bet against save himself, but Joros would have wagered all the coin in his purse that the family’s lingering debts had forced the other two brothers to flee or to prison.
He didn’t wonder where they’d gone. He didn’t care. If any of the pack had asked, he would have told them so, in no uncertain terms.
He’d claimed a room for himself—kicked out the fists who’d been living in it while he’d been trudging across half the world to try to save their skins. This was still his house, his. He hadn’t wanted the room he’d shared with his brothers, nor his parents’ comparatively large room, nor even his father’s office. Just a simple room, fairly small, so unimportant he couldn’t even remember what furniture had filled it so long ago—a room that held no shadows or ghosts. It served its purpose well enough, with a rickety bed taken from a knife who Sharra had ordered to give it up, a wooden chair that smelled faintly of rot, a desk that was too small—a desk whose worn surface felt familiar beneath his restless palms. He’d found the desk squirreled away in one of the other rooms, and a foolish whim had made him drag that one old shadow into his new haven.
Sitting at the desk, he could reach his hand beneath it and his questing fingers eventually found the rough-carved letters chicken-scratched into the underside. A boy had lain on his back under the desk, a dagger held clumsily in both hands, squinting up through the falling wood splinters as he carefully carved the letters of his name. That had been a boy who’d thought all the world was his for the taking, that he could hold power like a dagger and carve his mark on the world.
He tugged open one of the desk’s drawers and stared down at the stone it held. He’d thought, almost daily, about picking it up, even just pressing a fingertip against its smooth surface. Thought of letting the old magic flow through him, to see out of another’s eyes, to let it give him direction. But this seekstone, linked to Etarro, would make him see, now, through the eyes of the god who had stolen the boy’s body, and Joros was not at all sure a mortal could survive seeing through a god’s eyes.
But perhaps he could. Perhaps it would be no different from looking through any seekstone, and he could learn the Twins’ whereabouts and the shape of their plans. Perhaps it was worth the risk.
The stupid, foolhardy, power-hungry boy he’d once been would have done it.
Joros pushed the drawer shut. It had been decades since he’d been that boy, and he’d learned since that power wasn’t something that could be wrested and held like a dagger. Power was more like water in a desert, and if the years had taught Joros anything, it was how to make a waterskin, and that a smart man wouldn’t brave the desert without as much water as he could carry.
Joros prowled through the shadow-touched hallways of his youth, feeling like the walls got a little tighter each time he passed between them, and he was grateful to find Sharra Dogshead watching her fists drill out in the courtyard. Despite the oppressive night, the air outside, at least, didn’t smell of rotting memories.
Someone had brought out a chair for the Dogshead to sit on; with whatever damage had been done to her leg aeons past, she started wobbling if she stood for too long, and it didn’t do for a leader to remind her people of that any more often than necessary. Better to seem lax or lazy than weak.
Joros skirted around the fighting fists and went to stand at Sharra’s side, his hands clasped behind his back, not at all minding the height difference. He stood in silence, waiting, and as he’d known she would, the Dogshead spoke first. “My people tell me you’ve been making the rounds.”
Joros shrugged. “You said you wouldn’t commit them. It might surprise you how many of them are willing to commit themselves for hope and justice.”
“Justice?” She raised a hand, palm flat, and tipped it sideways as though dropping something useless. “They already fought a losing war for me. They should be a lot less eager for another one, but they’re young.” She turned an eye up to him, needing to twist her neck awkwardly for even that. Gods, being tall was a blessing. “Too young.”
“Some would say that giving your life in service of the gods is the surest path to eternal exaltation.” A good vocabulary was almost as great a blessing as his height around these people; he never tired of the flicker of consternation when he used a word that was beyond them.
“Would you?”
“I would say it is.”
The Dogshead snorted, and looked back at her fists.
A dark shape detached itself from a wall and stalked over: Tare, Sharra’s second. He was genuinely surprised he’d gotten in more than a handful of words to the Dogshead before her rabid dog had shown up. Tare took up her post at Sharra’s other shoulder, but Joros didn’t spare her a glance as he asked, “Isn’t there a cellar you should be haunting?”
He felt her anger burst toward him like the first breath of winter, and he allowed one corner of his mouth—the one she couldn’t see—to turn upward. Ever since Rora’s health had improved, Tare had made a habit of playing escort to the fists who tended to the captives, bringing food and cleaning filth. When he’d asked, the fists had told him with broad smiles that Tare spent her time threatening to cut more pieces off Rora. The fists seemed to think it a good show of strength on Tare’s part.
“Don’t you have a world to save?” Tare returned, mockery heavy in her voice.
Joros shifted his jaw until it popped. He had indeed been making the rounds, telling anyone who would listen how their dear departed pack mates had martyred themselves so valiantly, and how the Twins could still be defeated. Their eyes always shone with fervor after he was done talking—but Tare had been making her rounds, too. Preaching caution and safety and security, whispering aggrieved reminders of all the members of the pack who had died under Joros’s supervision. Oh, she was always careful not to imply that it had been his fault—she was happy enough to rest that blame on Rora’s shoulders, as he’d intended—but the fact still stood that members of the pack had been given into Joros’s keeping, and he had not been able to keep them safe and alive.
He’d hoped, by now, that he could muster up at least some support—a handful of the thickheaded fists, or a few of the quick knives, kindled by faith and fear and the promise of glory. He wouldn’t need more than a few to start; once he had enough to strike out into the world, more would come, falling into line like herded sheep. Once it had begun, it wouldn’t stop.
It was simply the beginning of it that was proving to be difficult.
Joros shook himself, aimed a flat and meaningless smile in Tare’s direction. “Patience is a virtue of the Parents, isn’t it?”
Tare snorted. “Who’s failure belong to?”
“The weak.”
Someone streaked across the torchlit courtyard and threw themselves at the torch, dousing the light and plunging them all into darkness. The fists immediately ceased their sparring, and Tare’s response died in a puff of air, so that it was completely silent when the light-killer hissed, “Danger on the road.”
It sent them all into a quiet, organized commotion. The Dogshead stood up so suddenly that her chair toppled backward, and with her unsteady leg she almost toppled with it. Joros, close as he was, was likely the only one who saw Tare steady her leader. The fists broke apart in all directions, moving soundlessly to apparently preordained locations. Dimly, Joros made out bodies climbing up the crumbling walls. When he looked back, Tare had vanished, and the Dogshead was limping toward the house.
Joros stood alone in the courtyard, impressed at the efficiency of it all and looking forward to the day when he could turn that efficiency to his own use.
There was a small gardener’s shed set against the wall behind the house. The shed had been decrepit when Joros was a child, and he was amazed it still stood now. He was more amazed it held his weight as he climbed up the makeshift ladder someone had leaned against its side. There were a few others perched atop the shed, their heads poking over the edge of the wall, and two children at the edge of the roof, ready to jump down and relay messages as needed. Joros joined the adults at the wall, stepping carefully across the roof until he could rest hands and chin against crumbling stone.
Starlight showed him a familiar face, a young knife named Harin who seemed to hate silences and would fill them with her chatter. She’d proved to be an excellent source of information, the cost of which was occasional inane prattling until he could redirect the flow of her word-stream. Harin was perfectly silent now, though, simply pointing over the wall to the west.
Over the fields, a little blue orb bobbed and its light showed a group of five walking beneath it. Though it was hard to tell with the night and the shadows and the orb’s hue, Joros would wager his soul—what little of it there was left—that those five were wearing black robes.
With the distance, he couldn’t be certain—but with his knowledge of wasted decades, Joros was sure that one of them would have robes that were actually blue, a muttering and dangerous mage; and at least one of them would be wearing black-dyed leather armor beneath the robes, for Valrik didn’t trust his people’s safety to the mages alone.
They were some distance away, and not skewing toward the estate—assuming they maintained their pace and direction, they’d pass right by the walled house without ever seeing it. No trouble, no danger, no damage done.
Joros had the strange impulse to stand up to his full height, to bash his sword against the stone wall and scream until his throat tore, to draw the danger in and bring it crashing down and show Sharra that it could be fought and destroyed.
He quelled the urge, but it was a near thing.
“Do you think we could take them?” he asked Harin, soft as possible.
Harin gave a little snort. “Not a chance. They have a witch.”
“We have a witch, too.”
The woman turned to looked at Joros with something like shock, or perhaps wonder. When she turned her gaze back over the fields, Joros could see the calculations behind her eyes. He could see opportunity opening its arms to him.
“If you had to fight them,” he asked, because for all her talking she was shrewd enough, “how would you do it?”
And she told him, and the others watching from the wall listened with held breaths and shining eyes. The group of Fallen had moved out of sight by the time she finished outlining her plan—all entirely hypothetical, of course—but everyone on the roof wore feral grins. Harin, with her quick words and loose tongue, would likely talk to the rest of the pack within hours. If the Fallen showed themselves within sight of the estate again, he doubted the pack would simply watch from the walls.
If Sharra wouldn’t give him the help he needed, Joros would have to make his own help.
Joros returned to the room he’d claimed, sat at the too-small desk and stared at the dangerous stone it held. Not yet, he thought, closing the drawer. He knew Harin’s plan would spread through the estate faster than a plague, and by the time it reached the Dogshead, her people would be straining against the protective chains she’d wrapped around them. They wouldn’t let themselves be stopped or swayed from the plan—their plan, thought up by one of their own, and carefully and completely free from outside influence. Not yet, he thought, staring out the foggy window at the star-dotted night, and his lips curled in a smirk that might almost have been a smile, but soon.