Page 29

FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE.

Skedi had offered to keep vigil beside Kissen so that Inara could sleep. Despite her grumblings, the veiga had been too tired to protest too hard. Her breathing sounded painful.

She had been right. By going to Satuan, Lessa had been trying to find a god powerful enough to challenge Hseth. Fire with fire.

But Inara didn’t need to go to find them. She could call them to her.

She pulled a piece of cloth out of her pocket and unwrapped it carefully. She could not see anything in the dark, but as the cloth finished unfolding, she could discern the faintest glow around a long, dark hair.

Aan.

She had taken the piece of hair back from Kissen, and washed it of the godkiller’s blood. It had been enough to summon Aan’s power to show the invasion of Talicia, but with Inara’s strength, perhaps it would be enough to hear her speak.

Aan, she spoke in her mind, curled on her little cot. Great goddess of the river.

The hair in her hand cooled, she felt it like a wire in her palm, then it frosted over.

Ah, child, she heard the god’s gentle voice. Only you could call me from so far without a shrine.

So quickly she had come. Inara gripped the hair, her heart pounding with excitement.

Kissen passed on your message, said Inara. The king marches.

Even now, I fear it is too late, my unraveller. The Talicians break shrines wherever they go, and replace them with their god’s bell. Middren’s forces are outnumbered, and already far behind the play.

Inara swallowed. It was one thing to hear it supposed, another to hear it from a god. Aan was an ancient god, and powerful. Water, Hseth’s opposite. Surely …

We need the gods, Aan, said Inara. We need you. She imagined her surrounded by water, black hair spilling out across the depths, her round and supple body soft as snow-covered hills. Aan had one of Inara’s hairs too, surely she would be willing to help.

Aan chuckled bitterly, her voice like the sound of bubbles rising through meltwater.

I know, my dear, but the king will not summon us.

Will not build our shrines, will not bend his pride.

And it would take the combined strength of every puny god left in Middren to make even a dent on Hseth’s flame.

Even then, without a great offering, it would not be enough.

No god wishes to die fighting beyond their strength.

Inara’s heart sank. She had thought she was so clever, so powerful. She thought she could come to her mother, answers in hand.

I am sorry, halfling, said Aan. Only one god has the potential now to gain enough power to fight her.

Inara swallowed. Who? Me? She had barely been able to hold Satuan.

You? The amusement in Aan’s voice was humiliating.

Yusef?

No, child.

Fire with fire. Hestra. The king. Inara clenched her fist, her heart hammering. No, not the king. That cruel, burning bastard was as bad as Hseth. He is not a god.

Not yet. Aan’s voice was fading, Inara’s will not enough to hold her so far away from her shrine. Not yet.

The hair turned warm again, the ice melting into Inara’s palm. It retained its shine of the goddess, but the voice was gone.

Inara threw herself back on her sweaty sheets, nursing wounded pride and fierce anger. ‘He is not a god,’ she whispered. ‘He can’t be.’

But Hestra was.

She would not be defeated. She slipped out of her own cabin onto the darkened deck, the only light a lantern that hung from the aft above the helm.

The breath of the salted air was warm, as if from the lungs of an ancient god, and all around, the sky and sea were a cavern of darkness.

It felt as if the ship was a lone thing in the world, and all the rest was night. She shivered.

At least the crew didn’t seem to mind. Because it was cooler and fresher than belowdecks, most slept on deck as they moved further south, ready to take up their posts should they be attacked or hit a sudden squall.

Inara glanced up past the lantern to the ship’s wheel. The helm for the night was holding it in place with a stick, a scarf over his left eye to keep his night vision keen. She recognised Glib: a quiet fellow who talked about sweets from all the different lands he had been.

‘Evening little captain,’ he said.

‘Just going to the latrines,’ said Inara quickly.

‘Your bowels are your business, kid.’ His uncovered eye slid back up to the horizon. ‘And we call ’em “heads”.’

Inara stole a peek at the shrine to Yusef, but after speaking with her mother she wasn’t sure how to feel about the great god. And did not want to try calling where anyone could see her.

She went down the ladders to belowdecks, listening carefully and hearing just the snuffling of sleep, farts, or some nasty grunting, as well as the mournful bleating of the animals further below.

She put her hands over her ears and crept through the hammocks and pallets, creeping around the colours till she found the ladder to the storage, brig and galley, then followed it down.

She never came down here. Graemar kept a tight kitchen and disliked anyone nosing at his work.

The door slid open to tidy counters, and the scent of oats, pickles, salted and smoked fish, as well as the sweet warmth of the oven’s raked-over coals.

The smell of manure was stronger, too, though the animals were another deck down.

Inara was glad Kissen had not brought Legs.

She could not have imagined him trapped in the stinking dark below the waves.

No one was sleeping in the galley, not even Graemar. Too hot outside of the winter season. No colours of dreaming shone in the dark.

It was strange to be sneaking around without Skedi. He could be so reliable when he wanted to be, but he would not approve of this, and she didn’t want to frighten him.

She felt her way towards the oven door. It had two handles on a board of fitted wood, its inner edge was covered with a blackened and hammered sheet of metal.

She heaved it out, and pushed it to the side.

The faintest of embers greeted her, carefully buried in a grave of ash so the heat would be preserved but the sparks kept dormant.

She had read more than one little tale as a child of a galley cook annoying a divinity who burned their ship to dust.

There were no gods here that Inara could see, but there were symbols carved inside the oven. Superstitious folk hoping for the luck of gods, creating little shrines, the tiniest thread that connected them to the god themselves.

Should she? Hestra was her enemy. They had fought each other already.

But Kissen had nearly died. Elo was fighting a war that even Aan thought they would lose, and they still weren’t in Irisia. She could not be so useless, she could swallow her pride, just a little.

She clambered up to kneel in the oven’s mouth and picked up one of the cooler bits of charcoal to make her own drawing inside its walls. Two lines down, one line across. A hearth.

Inara uncovered a glowing ember from the ashen pile. Hestra would take more enticing than Aan, so she pulled a hair from her head, and fed it to the flame. It curled and fizzled with a twist of acrid smoke; a paltry offering, but it was something.

Hestra, she called with her will, her intent, her need.

She wouldn’t come, Inara was almost sure of it. But she was also sure the god could not resist the lure of a new half-shrine.

Hestra, please.

The oven’s scent changed to pine sap and burning straw. Inara’s skin prickled.

You dare to summon me?

Hestra’s voice was like the sizzle of steam off hot coals, her greeting less pleasant than Aan’s.

But she had still come. What had brought her?

Gods did not appear with every offering.

Hestra could have felt the slight tug of her prayer and ignored it.

There was something, too, in her voice. Something tender, something vulnerable.

We spoke with Satuan, the smith god, said Inara.

Did that grumbling piece of rot have anything useful to say?

He tried to kill us, said Inara.

A small laugh echoed around the oven, smoke roiling out from the coals. Good.

Inara had a vision of Hestra sending an inferno smashing into the sides of the galley. Bursts of flour, hipgin, sailcloth, rope, and blackfire, and the ship would be shattered from the inside out. No one would survive. Inara held her breath until the laughter stopped. Eventually, it did.

What do you want from me? said Hestra, when Inara gave her nothing else to gloat over. I am small and old, watching shrine after shrine, home after home, disappear into nothing. Hseth’s fires burn even me. Do you know what gods are like without worship, girl? Do you know what it is like to fall?

I do, said Inara. I have seen them. Shadows of nothing. Dangerous nothing. Some power, no will, clinging to life till someone ends them.

Hestra fell silent, perhaps detecting the threat in Inara’s tone.

Hestra, you can be more than that. Inara breathed out. She loathed the king with every part of her being. He had taken so much from her and regretted none of it. But her mother had chosen him, Elo had chosen him; Kissen had saved him.

Was she going to be a monster, or a fighter?

Her faith can break too, Hestra, said Inara. This is what Satuan told us. To break their faith. And Aan said we need a god to defeat her … you—

For a moment, the fire sparked upwards, and Inara saw Hestra in the flames. A twig-like being, built from branches, but she looked different. She had flesh like a film, floating over her bones, her hair had curled slightly. And her eyes … her eyes were paler than they had been.

I am not a candle to be held to Hseth, she said.

You are a meddler, a thing that doesn’t belong.

Do not try and entice me with your offerings.

Hseth has a thousand deaths to give her strength, I have stolen wishes from a half-dead king.

Only death can match Hseth’s strength. She smiled, white bones and sparks for teeth.

Perhaps yours would do. Would you offer me that?

Inara swallowed, and the smile dropped.

See? You want to die as little as I do. At least I have accepted my fate.

Grey smoke blew out of her mouth in a sigh, her hair curling in orange embers. It is a shame, but the king is one battle away from defeat. Even if he wins this, then it will be the next and the next and the next until all has gone to ruin.

This was useless. The gods had nothing for her but riddles and bitterness. Inara had to cover up the embers or the smoke would wake the crew.

Inara clenched her fists. We will beat her. You can watch.

The god laughed, diminishing into a flicker of sparks, a flame, an ember. But she gave one last whisper as she departed. Despite it all, you are not the best liar, beast.