CHAPTER

32

Hoartrap continued to feast on the demoniac Zosia had vanquished, a fittingly nasty last meal for a truly nasty man. Purna and Keun-ju offered to back Zosia up but she didn’t want any distractions, so they went to check on their unconscious Flintlander friend while Cold Cobalt marched alone to face down a cabal of deathless monsters. Well, not quite alone. Choplicker splashed beside her through the bubbling filth of the disintegrating grotto, toward the golden beacon of the Gate where ten black shadows completed their ritual. It was eerily silent, save for all the dripping. Clearing her throat, Zosia made her second and final appeal to the Vex Assembly.

“Listen up, oh devils of Jex Toth, and listen good, because I’m only giving you one chance to save yourselves!” The threat sounded so flimsy, here in this bizarre realm, and not a one of the swarm-hooded figures turned from their silent ceremony to heed her. This was why they hadn’t listened the first time, because she still couldn’t believe she was going to do it herself. Taking a deep breath, she looked to Choplicker for strength despite how little she wanted to lean on him. Maybe she should have lingered in his heaven, however hollow it felt … Taking a deep breath, she bellowed, “I’ve killed one of your number already, and I’m not afraid to cull the rest! I command you to cease your ritual, to cease your war! Immediately! If you do, I offer you peace, here on the Star. If you refuse, you will be banished back to the First Dark. Immediately! Maybe you’ll find another way back or maybe this time you won’t, but I promise you’re going to find out in about five seconds. Look upon me! Look upon my devil! The choice is yours!”

They ignored her. This was it, then. For the Star, maybe. For Diadem, definitely. And for her, most of all. She looked down at where her devil waded in the slime beside her and gave the order before he had to start swimming.

“All right, Chop, you heard the crickets. I hereby grant your freedom in exchange—”

“Your kind has never known peace. You do not desire it. You breed hate and you feed on fear, a cannibal race dedicated to its own extinction.”

The prodigious ant-riddled priest had again stepped away from the edge of the Gate, his formerly screechy voice now smooth as butter fresh out of the churn, his bloodshot eyes gone as black as the bottom of a caved-in mine.

“That’s putting an awfully fine point on it,” said Zosia, though the sentiment was one she herself had shared on occasion, especially when she was a teenager. “I’ll allow that peace is hard to hold on to, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And I know you’re just trying to stall me long enough to finish your ritual, so you’ve got to the count of five to take part in the great experiment. One.”

“Othean is lost, and your world with it.” It smiled sympathetically as it splashed toward her. “For the second time you mortals have made our sacrifices for us. First with the blood of your kind, to bring us home. Now with the offering of our kind, to bring home She Who Comes. The Gate of Gates yawns and the Black Goddess gazes out upon her tribute. She shall rise to quench your sun, to burn your moon, to—”

“Don’t know what that means, don’t give a fuck,” said Zosia, sloshing forward to meet this fat piece of shit that was nowhere near as scary as the dog now paddling beside her. “Two. And three, while we’re at it—when I hit five, Chop, if their ritual isn’t aborted you’ve got your freedom in exchange for sacrificing Diadem, so long as it banishes Jex Toth and all these devils back to the First Dark.”

“Your threats ring as hollow as your heart, Cold Zosia.” As she stepped so close she could see the ants marching into one nostril and out the other, the thing inside the priest murmured, “I scent the stink of hope upon you. You have vanquished Sherdenn, and I am duly impressed … but contrary to your desire it brings me no pleasure to lose my master.”

“Fuck pleasure,” said Zosia. “If that was your master I iced let’s talk about opportunity. You’re now the only member of the Vex Assembly who never has to worry about losing your power, your immortality. I gave you true freedom, and all I’m asking in exchange is for you to pull rank with your goon squad and call off this clusterfuck. I’ve been in a summoning circle a time or two myself, big boy, and I know you all have to work together to pull it off, right? And with the one who summoned you out of the song for good you can choose to opt out without repercussions, right?”

“You understand nothing of our kind. My resolve is not weakened for having lost my master, and our order is not weakened for having lost a brother. You cannot begin to comprehend what it means, that we now hold open the Gate of Gates, and through it She Who Comes—”

“Don’t know, don’t give a fuck,” Zosia singsonged. “This is your last chance, stupid. Shut this Gate of Gates, call off your armies. Now. This isn’t a conversation. Either you do as I fucking tell you and we see if mortals and devils can coexist, or you and the rest of your Assembly go back to the First Dark to blabber around your sewing circle about how sweet it would’ve been to taste the fruits of your harvest, to daydream about what’s happening up here. Maybe the demented fanatic you’re trapped inside wants an evil goddess to reap all life from the Star, but I’m thinking you educated devils are smarter than that. I’m thinking you realize that working with me gets you a world teeming with mortal passions and pains, instead of banishment back beyond the Gates. Your master’s dead and gone, and that means you’ve got nobody to answer to but yourself—so put your apocalypse back in the bottle and let it cellar for another age or two, or you’re going back in the basement yourself. That’s four, and if the next word out of your host isn’t surrender I’m damning us all—look in my heart and see if I’m still bluffing.”

It didn’t speak, but she could feel an itchy tingling at her temples like the gentle cousin of the first Tothan’s intruding fingers, felt a pressure behind her eyes like a mounting migraine. Then it smiled big enough to eat the world, and Choplicker snarled, and Zosia was tired of this bullshit, anyway.

“Five.”

So much for diplomacy. Zosia’s last thought as Choplicker unfurled beside her was that she wished she had done this from the outset, so that she could have watched Diadem burn from the top of her throne room. That was hindsight for you.

As the eye of the First Dark opened upon the world of mortals and everyone up on the wall lost their damn shit, Sullen really, really wished he hadn’t talked Zosia out of sacrificing Diadem. It was just like Ma, Fa, and everyone else he’d ever met had always said—he was too damn soft, too damn sweet, the human equivalent of one of those gooey cinnamon breads Diggelby had turned him on to at that breakfast bar back in Thao, what seemed like a lifetime ago. Now he was grappling his girlfriend on the battlements to prevent her from leaping down to greet whatever god of gods or devil of devils was looking out upon them … Served him right for listening to the Faceless Mistress, who was probably laughing her spooky ass off right about now. Don’t get mixed up with other people’s gods—that was just basic shit, man.

So here at the saga’s end it turned out he’d been in a farce from the very beginning. Sullen Soggybrains, who went ahead and listened to a foreign devil queen even when the greatest heroes of his age all told him it was a bad idea, that they knew of an easy way to thwart the First Dark. Hard to think of this dreary, drawn-out quest as anything other than a fable against folly, now that the final chorus was chiming in. What had he expected, really, when every time the action started he was either entirely absent or quick to have his lamp knocked dark? How had he ever thought himself the champion of an epic song when he was fainting dead away as soon as the fights started, when the mightiest foes he’d faced hadn’t been monsters or gods but his own damn mom and a ten-year-old boy? And now he was fixing to lose a wrestling match against his girlfriend, who he knew for a fact didn’t even know the rudimentary moves …

Then Ji-hyeon went still, which Sullen would have taken as a good sign except his whole body locked up, too, what he saw out of the corner of his eye shutting down his ability to even breathe. Whatever was on the other side of that epic Gate hadn’t just been watching them, and now it wasn’t just on the other side … It gave off the most brilliant golden-white light as it poured up into the sky, a living moon, and as he stared it blossomed outward, a crown of wavering tendrils to cover the world, blotting out the light of sun and stars, a new heaven for the mortals that survived its coming. The warm red tears peeled up off Sullen’s cheeks, falling into the sky, up to the hungry god that had come among them …

Zosia swung her hammer even as she loosed Choplicker, eager to break this stupid fucker’s fat face. Or try to, anyway. With a devil in him he’d obviously be hard to catch … but then Zosia had caught devils before. Not that she expected the sainted steel to do any more permanent damage to him than it had done to his spidery friend, especially without Choplicker around to back her up, but since she had just condemned herself to exile in the First Dark right along with her enemies it was important to get hell off on the right foot.

They must already be on their way, the light from the Gate going out and the warm slurry of liquefied fat and melting meat turning gelid around her calves. As the head of her hammer came down on the smug face of the priest, she felt no fury or heartbreak, only disgust that all beings were as stupid and cruel as she. Then her target was five feet out of range, his devil propelling him backward so fast her eye hadn’t been able to track his dodge. Zosia was in for a very long eternity … or a very short one, depending on what exactly the Vex Assembly decided to do to her.

Choplicker whined unhappily beside her, and she saw he hadn’t actually gone anywhere, hadn’t done anything … except from his hangdog expression maybe he had, though it brought him no pleasure.

“Your time is nothing to She Who Comes; we grant you this reprieve,” said the thing inside the pudgy priest, offering an unexpectedly petulant shrug. The other nine turned away from their positions around and above the darkened Gate, gathering in around Zosia and her devil. “A truce is struck.”

“You were bluffing, too …” Zosia said, marveling that her plan had actually fucking worked. If these monsters hadn’t abandoned their ritual at the last possible moment a hundred thousand innocent people would have burned because of her … but if she hadn’t been able to pull that trigger then the whole bloody Star would’ve died, Diadem included. “It’s really over? Your black goddess didn’t arrive to ruin the Star? Your armies are backing off?”

“Our legions are in retreat,” said the ancient devil of Jex Toth. “Had She Who Comes fully crossed the Gate of Gates you would harbor no doubts, mortal queen—her very coming would have shredded your reality.”

That sounded okay, sure, but Zosia was never one to let the scent of good news distract her from the vague taste of something rotten. “What’s this ‘fully crossed the Gate’ mean, exactly? Be specific.”

“Do not fret, O bravest monkey, your realm is safe for now,” it said with a smile. “She began to rise, yes, but we resealed the Gate of Gates before she could complete her ascension. What little that passed through was forced to conform to this world, just as your world would have been forced to conform to her. As I say, you are safe. For now. Yet there is a condition to our truce—”

“You don’t get Hoartrap, that’s not up for discussion,” said Zosia, knowing what the Vex Assembly must want but refusing to give up her gross boy now that she knew what he was really made of. “You wanted to talk terms and make deals, you shouldn’t have forced my fucking hand.”

“We will come to our own arrangements with the Betrayer of Jex Toth, but that is none of your concern.” It might have been her imagination but that snowmead-sweet voice sounded peevish. “Our condition is, as you say, not up for discussion, for you have forced our hand as much as we have forced yours. It is this: you shall be our advocate. With the Star and its keepers. You are bound to us now, as we are to you, and any peace shall only be as strong and as long as you make it. You will look to our best interests, ensure our needs are met, and see that Jex Toth prospers. You will swear it on your devil’s freedom, and swear it now.”

“I will, will I?” Zosia wasn’t about to make herself beholden to a pack of devils … except she already was, wasn’t she? This was the very reason she had fled her throne in the first place, because winning a war proved so much easier than keeping a peace … but this time she wouldn’t run. This time she would do everything she could, no matter how frustrating or impossible it seemed to keep the Star from catching flame, no matter the toll it took on her. “All right, it’s a deal … but only on the further condition that this is indeed the end of the war, the end of your efforts to sacrifice this world to some outer god. You must harm no mortals, save in self-defense, and, though I don’t know if he counts anymore, you have to let Hoartrap go, too. Whatever arrangements you make with him end with the Touch and me leaving Jex Toth together.”

This last especially sat poorly with some of the bug-infested old fuckers, those whose eyes were clear shrieking in High Immaculate at her and each other and those with black-filled sockets seeming to communicate even more with just their baleful stares and intricately repulsive odors. In her brief tenure as Crimson Queen she had come to think of bureaucracy as the definition of hell on earth, and that seemed to be borne out down here. Even with a council of devils beholden to one another there seemed to be precious little unity.

“Agreeeeed!” screamed the slimy husk of a crone after an interminable debate, her robe of snails clicking as she waded through the icy gel thickening around their thighs. “Your terrrrrrms! Swear themmmmm!”

“As your spiritual counsel, I strongly suggest you put everything into writing.” Hoartrap burped, moseying up with a bloody foot held idly in one hand. He was still desiccated from whatever they’d done to him, but his stomach looked as pregnant as the spider-clad priestess had after eating Choplicker alive. “And let me look over it first.”

“That might not be a bad idea …” mused Zosia. “Just so I can have official documentation to take before the people of the Star. You devils may think you know your way around an ironbound contract, but you’ve never had to treat with merchant guild lawyers.”

“Mundane as fuuuuck,” called Purna from where she and Keun-ju were splashing ichor onto the passed-out Flintlander’s face in an effort to revive her.

“Mundanity is preferable to mendacity,” said Keun-ju. “And if you need a scribe for any contracts, I am ambidextrous. Or I was, I should say …”

“We shall draft the pledge at once,” said an especially tall and horrifically gaunt woman clothed in baroque wasps’ nests. “You are forewarned. We have grown wiser at reading the human heart and all its deceptions, and we shall be on guard against it. We shall not be misled again, and if you seek to obscure the full truth or lead us false as Maroto did, your devil and your life will be forfeit.”

Choplicker sighed heavily, no doubt disappointed that despite all the excitement he wasn’t going to get to incinerate a city after all. Not today, anyway. Giving him a consolatory scritch for being such a plausible threat, Zosia said, “So you’ve met Maroto, huh? Guess we’ve got even more to talk about than I thought, but I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been wrong about him before, too. You’ve got to understand he’s not a bad guy, just … complicated, like the rest of us.”

“We do not wish to understand Maroto any more than we already doooo!” The fat man’s eyes had gone back to being as white as his ants, his voice screeching and his expression as bitter as an unhappy ex-lover.

“Yeah, well, as much as I hear that we’re all going to have to try to understand each other a lot more in the days to come,” said Zosia, but she wasn’t meeting the wild eyes of the lucid priests or the black ones of those whose devils had risen to the forefront. Instead, she was looking down at Choplicker.