They found Choplicker in the Office of Answers, laid out on a gurney like a sacrifice on a pagan altar. It had taken them some time to navigate all the way up here from the dungeons, but at least the disguise Boris had given Zosia was cutting the mustard. That, and Castle Diadem wasn’t quite the tightly guarded fortress it had been in Zosia’s day, or her successor’s—the few times they did encounter actual uniformed guards who asked where they were off to, Boris blathered right past them. The pair who minded the entrance to the Office of Answers hadn’t even done more than glance at his papers, and the interior of the complex was deserted this late at night. Boris used his coalstick to light a pair of interrogation lamps, hanging one up to illuminate Zosia’s devil as he took the other to check the adjoining torture chambers and make sure they were really alone.
“Chop,” she murmured, standing over his stiff, lean form. The dog was as she’d left him in the Upper Chainhouse, when she’d turned from her fallen devil and charged the fuckers who had betrayed them. Must be his devilish blood that kept him so perfectly preserved, and running a hand through his bristly fur and feeling the coldness there her chest locked up, just as it had when Efrain Hjortt had tossed Leib’s head in her lap. When she could trust herself to speak again she said, “They got you about as good as they got me, huh?”
“All clear,” said Boris, splashing through the rusty puddle that had formed over a clogged drain in the volcanic glass floor; for all his talk of the new way being better than the old, this room cluttered with witch thrones, iron maidens, and lesser-known implements had seen recent use. He had found a large gunnysack and tossed it onto the rusted table beside Choplicker, reluctant to approach the devil even in death. “Don’t mean to be indelicate, but stuff him in there and let’s get a move on. Those guards I drugged will be stirring, if they haven’t already, and once the alarm sounds getting you out of here won’t be so easy.”
Zosia nodded, so tired from hiking all the way up here that she didn’t even know how she could carry him back out. Just thinking straight was near impossible, everything seeming like a lucid bug dream … but she would get through this. She would. She had to heal before she could figure out her next move, and she had to escape before she could heal.
“Your oath,” Boris reminded her as she opened the sack to shove in his remains.
“My oath?” Zosia looked up.
“Just like we agreed in the cell,” said Boris. “Before we go, swear it on your devil. You’ll leave Diadem tonight and never return, nor seek vengeance nor violence on anyone here, nor cause mischief as you leave.”
“Oh, right, sure,” said Zosia, drowsily weaving her fingers through Choplicker’s cold coat. “I swear to leave Diadem, not return, no vengeance, no violence, no mischief.”
“No, say it like I said it,” insisted Boris. “Like a real oath, so I know I can trust you. On pain of your devil’s freedom, you’ll leave Diadem tonight and never return, nor seek vengeance nor violence on anyone here, nor cause mischief as you leave.”
“This is getting fucking ridiculous,” said Zosia, her head aching and her fingers tightening to a fist in his fur. “You want me to swear on the freedom of my dead fucking devil? Fine, whatever. On pain of Choplicker’s freedom, I’ll … I’ll …”
Boris started to mouth the words he thought she’d forgotten, but that was not the problem. No, it fucking was not. Relaxing her fist, she looked down at her devil, really looked at him. She let her hands roam where they would, not sure what she was seeking out, but her hackles good and raised as she leaned close, inspecting his body. It felt like there was a ravenous monster stalking through her brain fog, circling her, and if she couldn’t make it out in time it would end her.
“Zosia, we have to go,” said Boris, talking down to her like she was a difficult child. “Now. Didn’t it seem a little too easy to get in here? Those guards at the door are probably checking out my story right fucking now, and when they find out it was bullshit they’ll come in here and nab us both. So do as you promised and swear the oath, or I’ll leave you here to be recaptured.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” said Zosia, her heart quickening as she straightened up, tore off the itchy fake beard, and caught him in her furious gaze. She had no clue what was going on, not yet, but she was sure of one thing. “You’ve been lying to me, Boris.”
“You’re on your own,” said Boris, backing away to the door, but Zosia snatched a long knife off a nearby tray, held it up by the blade.
“Come here, tell the truth, live. That order.” Zosia cocked her arm back, holding in a gasp as the bolt wound in her shoulder split open from the sudden movement. Keeping the knife held up for more than another few moments would take all she had; throwing it would be impossible. Grimacing though her pain, she said, “Take another step, or tell another lie, and this knife goes into you.”
He froze, considering it, and if she’d actually been able to make good on her promise she would have thrown it into his fucking leg for not immediately capitulating. As if he read this bloody intention in her eyes his shoulders slumped and he hung his head, coming back between the vacant gurneys and chairs. She dropped the knife on the table next to the sack, noticing that it already had dog fur stuck to its tacky blade. Nothing made any sense yet, but she felt a stirring at the back of her mind, like a great bulk of scaled coils twisting over one another, loosening a living knot.
“I told you true,” Boris said, still sounding like he thought he could talk himself clear of whatever evil fucking mess this was. “Everything I said about there being too much killing and vengeance already, and you not deserving what the People’s Pack did to you, I believe that to my bones. I swear it on Sister Portolés’s soul. I want you to go free. I’m trying to help you, Zosia, and keep you from hurting other people who might yet do some good in this world!”
“Those two things don’t always go together, Boris, but I played nice this time, didn’t I?” said Zosia. “Gave you my word to go away and never come back? Why the lawyer routine, having me say all the proper words in the proper order, and doing so in the name of the freedom of a devil that’s already dead?”
“Those were the conditions,” said Boris, slumping down into an iron chair with straps instead of cushions. “I couldn’t have got you out on my own, Zosia, much as I’d like. I had help. But the terms were I had to get you to swear on your devil, just to make sure this didn’t come back to bite nobody. I staked my life that you’d agree to it, so my neck is as good as—”
“Who helped you, Boris, and more importantly, why?” Always the whys were what eluded Zosia … “Why would anyone help me, when it’d be safest for all parties just to have me killed? And why did they tell you to take me here and have me swear on Choplicker?”
“Look, tell you what …” said Boris, fiddling with one of the restraints on the arm of his chair. He reminded her of a worm that’d already been threaded onto the hook three times over but still couldn’t help itself from trying to wriggle free. “I’ll tell you everything, Zosia, but only after you swear the oath. That way everyone wins, nobody gets hurt, and you get all your questions answered.”
“That’s your pitch?” Zosia looked around for the most intimidating instrument she could find, and settled for a saw. She tried to brandish it at him but it was too heavy for her weak arm and she dropped it back down with a clatter. As she did she noticed more fur embedded in its teeth, her dog’s fur, but there wasn’t a scratch on him … She settled for picking the knife back up and pointing it at Boris. “You don’t get to set the terms here. Spill, or I’ll spill something else.”
“All right,” he said, rising back to his feet. “But pack him up and I’ll tell you on the way out. I wasn’t lying about time being short, neither. If we’re caught it won’t matter who I know or what you do, ’cause we’ll all end up back here together, and—”
“No,” said Zosia. “We’re not leaving this room until I’ve heard everything there is to hear. Every word out of your lips from here until I’m done with you is something I want to hear, and the first time you disappoint me I stick you with this. Now tell me: who’s helping me escape, and why, and how come they care so much about me swearing an oath of peace on a dead devil?”
“Ain’t it obvious?” said Boris, looking uneasily at Choplicker. “They’re not so sure he’s really dead. They’ve tried making sure, I gather, from acid to fire to pitching him into Diadem Gate, but he keeps coming back.”
“Not dead?” Zosia’s heart was in her throat as she stared at the very, very dead dog in front of her. “What do you mean, he keeps coming back?”
“Like that,” said Boris, nodding at the carcass. “Anytime someone doesn’t have their eye on the body it goes missing, but always turns up in the same place. Down in your cell with you. They take it away and it just happens again, even happened after they threw it in the Gate. Even fucking eerier than if it rose from the dead, having the corpse vanish near daily only to turn up in your cell. Everyone’s nervous about it and nobody knows what it means—they thought killing your devil would be the end of the business, but apparently it’s not so easy to get rid of this one.”
“Oh, Chop,” she said softly, petting him but feeling none of the normal disquiet she had before at stroking something she had only ever touched in life and finding it dead. Unexpectedly choked up, she said, “Even harder to get shy of you than I thought.”
Then it hit her.
“They want me swearing an oath on him in case he somehow recovers. They don’t give a damn if my wrinkled old ass tries to make a big scene, they’re worried about what happens if he wakes up.” Seeing Boris glumly nod his assent, she said, “So who is the they here, huh? Let me guess—Eluveitie and the rest of your crew? She decided getting on my bad side was a mistake and is trying to protect herself on the sly?”
“Eluveitie and most of the People’s Pack want you executed for your crimes,” said Boris. “It’s the surviving Chainites that want to get you out of the city in exchange for your oath—the wildborn clergy were the ones who reached out to me. But they assumed if they propositioned you directly instead of working through me you wouldn’t trust them.”
“Back to working with the Chainites, eh, Boris?” Zosia couldn’t believe this shit. “They’re right, I wouldn’t have trusted them if they’d asked directly, and I trust them even less now that I know they orchestrated this stupid fucking plot! Why would the Chain want to help me?”
“I orchestrated this brilliant plot, just to be clear; they just provided me with certain resources,” said Boris, certainly proud as a Chainite of his convoluted machinations. “And while I told the truth about my motives in wanting to free you it’s possible theirs are a bit more realist than idealist, as you’d have it. They’re worried if you die that might finally wake up your devil, to bad result for everyone who crossed you in life. So they want you out of here, taking it with you, and with the bond of your oath that you’ll never come back down on them.”
“All this fuss over one little jackal-dog,” said Zosia, shaking her head at her sidekick who was more intimidating in death than she was in life. “And if I die he wakes up, huh?”
“That’s obviously only a concern to some, otherwise the rest wouldn’t be so keen to flay you,” said Boris. “Guess nobody knows what to make of your monster for sure. Sounds like they’ve caught devils this way before but never had one hang on like he has, and it’s making everybody nervous.”
“Caught devils what way?” asked Zosia, because that right there was the most important question of the age—finding your way out of a trap was damn near impossible if you didn’t know how you’d wandered into it. “What did they do to him? One minute he was fine and the next like this.”
“That I couldn’t tell you, on my honor as a citizen of Diadem I got no notion of how—”
“Shut up,” she said, wondering if it could be that easy? Those guards down in the cell, stiff and vacant but still alive, victims of their own appetite for an illicit puff of something tasty … And what Domingo Hjortt had described happening to his regiment at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, going crazy after being anointed with Chainite oil … Devils were all appetite, it was what defined the fiends, and if poison was the favorite trick of the church, perhaps they had fed him something? Sharper than any thought she’d had in memory, the image came to her of Choplicker snapping up some tainted morsel that caught in his craw. “Boris, spread his jaws for me.”
“Do what now?” Boris looked about to mount some protest, and Zosia was ready to shut his ass down, when the double doors on the far side of the chamber rattled. There was no lock on any of the doors in the Office of Answers, for the state had insisted it had nothing to hide, but the doors opened inward to the hall and whoever was on the other side had tried to shove them open instead. “Fuck, I—”
As Boris was telling Zosia he’d told her so the doors yanked inward, a dozen orange-clad guards charging into the chamber with crossbows and polearms in hand. Boris flipped a gurney to put between himself and the guards as he made a break for the hallway leading to the adjoining rooms. Lots of shouting and crossbows twanging, her least favorite sound in all the Star these days, but Zosia didn’t see if Boris made it because she was too busy wriggling her one good arm into her devil’s cold, sharp mouth. Down his cold, rough throat.
Once upon a time in Kypck, a birthing cow had gotten her calf turned the wrong way around and she had watched Leib reach right inside the animal to correct the problem. This was just like that, she told herself. Except … not.
His teeth drew blood from her forearm as she reached deeper into his tight esophagus, his stiff tongue making it an even tighter fit, but then some congealed slime broke free to ease her passage, and her elbow reached his muzzle. Yet there was nothing down here, her questing fingertips finding only the inside of an animal carcass—she’d had this thought of finding something like a poisoned bit of apple caught in the throat of a fairysong princess, the image leaping so clearly to her mind it had felt like divine inspiration … or infernal, as the ballad may be.
“Take her alive!”
Glancing over from her grisly search she saw half the guards gathered around a body on the floor just in front of the hallway to the next room. The other five or six thugs were cautiously approaching her, polearms down and crossbows up.
“Stop … stop that shit!” one of them barked.
Zosia didn’t stop, gagging as she felt Choplicker’s jaw unhinge to accommodate her bicep. There was nothing in his gullet but she followed her desperate hunch all the way down into his stomach, thinking of all the treasures he had swallowed over the years, carrying them around in his gut and then disgorging them for his mistress no worse for the wear. He’d once coughed up a live songbird in the kitchen, which Leib had said was a nice gesture even if the tiny creature was too terrified to chirp and flew straight out the window once Zosia had wiped off its slobbery wings. Now her stretching fingertips pressed down into fermented viscera, everything soft and cold and—
Two of the guards set down their crossbows and came for her then, their nervous compatriots close enough to spear her throat or shoot her through the eye if need be. As they lunged at her Zosia’s fingernails scratched something small but solid and distinct that lurked inside her devil’s belly. She clutched at it, and then the guards tackled her. Still stuck in the devil, her shoulder twisted out of its socket as they took her to the ground, the gurney toppling over as Zosia screamed at the top of her lungs, her fucking arm on fucking fire, the heat of the hurt so bright it fried her brain.
By the time the conflagration of pain had cooled enough for her to think straight again she was up on one of their shoulders, being carried from the Office of Answers. Lifting her head, she saw that Boris was still alive, but probably not for long. He was crawling on his stomach, quarrels rising from his back and leg, the guards standing over him taking turns raking him with their polearms. Steeling herself, she tried to twist around and snap the neck of the guard carrying her, but only succeeded in nearly blacking out again from the exertion—her right shoulder was bleeding from the arrow wound she had reopened and her left was dislocated. As she stared down at her useless arms dangling beneath her, she noticed with detached fascination that her numb left hand was still clenched in a fist, and she tried flexing it, just to see if she still had control even though she’d lost all feeling. Her fingers opened, and a small hunk of something pliable fell from her hand—she couldn’t see what.
She sensed it before she heard it, the heartbreaking keen initially so high as to be inaudible. The guards must have felt it, too, because the one carrying Zosia stopped and those who were tormenting Boris looked over toward the upended gurney in the back of the room, and through the pain Zosia followed their gaze even as the howl broke loose into the realm of mortals. There had been nothing there a moment ago but here he was, head thrown back, stretching his lungs for the first time in too long as he sat on the edge of the filthy puddle. As his howl trailed off and he lowered his muzzle Zosia saw he was grinning at her. She grinned back.
Then one of the guards said or did something, and that hungry grin was everywhere at once, a black river of mouths exploding out of her devil. The man holding Zosia dropped her but Choplicker caught her from the air in his teeth, cradling her there in his world-devouring muzzle. Through the dizzying maelstrom of molten flesh and needle-sharp fur she watched the guards be eaten alive, some consumed in staccato snaps of slavering jaws and others wolfed down whole. They continued to scream even when she couldn’t see them anymore, the shrieks echoing out of his countless throats, and then a tongue as warm and wide as a blanket curled around Zosia’s limp body and she joined them in the First Dark as Choplicker swallowed her alive.
It didn’t hurt. She had assumed it would. But it didn’t.