He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)

It wasn’t until Anwei caught sight of Kingsol’s wide docks that she headed for Ellis’s hold. Taking Altahn’s salpowder tubes wouldn’t be hard. It was getting away without Ellis noticing that would cause problems, but they had a plan. Altahn looked up from his trunk as she stuck her head in the cabin, Galerey pouting up at Anwei from her little swaddle of scarves inside.

“Just a little longer, all right?” Altahn murmured. “If the pirates see you, they’ll try to cut you open.” She gave a little annoyed chitter of sparks that set one of the scarves burning. Altahn swore, batting it out with his bare palm. He carefully closed the lid and looked up at Anwei. “Ready?”

Noa closed her trunk and started for the door. “Any tips on keeping Ellis’s attention while I’m asking him for a job?”

“Lay it on thick—say something about being the last of six children and there being no money to back up those khonin knots of yours and”—Anwei shrugged—“needing to prove yourself, or something?”

“Crying or no crying?” Noa twisted her hair up into a bun and stabbed it through with her hair stick, ignoring Knox’s perturbed expression from where he was sitting on the bunk. “You know him best.”

“He’s more susceptible to ambition than pity.”

Noa gave a very inappropriate salute and sashayed out the door.

“You’re a terrible influence, Anwei,” Altahn grumbled.

“On Noa?” Anwei shot him a grin. “I didn’t do any of that.”

“Ellis is on the move.” Knox slid off the bed, smoother than water. Anwei did not look at him as he picked up Noa’s trunk, but she could feel him in the room. Feel how close he was and how the way he avoided looking at her wasn’t quite natural. She let him and Altahn leave before she went to kneel before the narrow hold door. She waited to hear Noa’s husky voice and Ellis’s deep laugh coming from the deck before pulling out her lock picks.

Carefully inserting the two picks into the keyhole, Anwei probed until the mechanism clicked, then pulled the door open, frowning at the bowed latch and the splintered frame from Altahn kicking it in. Ellis probably wouldn’t notice the damage unless he helped unload. He wouldn’t notice he was missing anything until the cargo was all accounted for up on the deck. Hopefully. Anwei ghosted between stacked crates shrouded in oilcloth, past the rank supply of salpowder bolted to the ship’s wooden floor, to where she and Altahn had found the heavy metal carom Ellis had shoved between bins.

Grabbing hold of the strap, Anwei swore, laboring to pull it over her shoulder. It weighed as much as a silenbakh and was twice as ungainly, turning her walk into more of a lurch as she headed back toward the door. This is necessary, she told herself as the door came into sight, somehow still too far away. Dragging it out isn’t a waste of time that I will regret. I need Altahn. Altahn needs this stupid tube. Altahn wanted both stupid tubes, but the other one was stashed in Ellis’s cabin. Lifting the one in the hold was trouble enough; she wasn’t going to risk more than she already was, no matter how much it made Altahn’s eye twitch.

Compromise. A word neither she nor Altahn cared for.

When she peeked out of the hold, Knox was down the hall holding their cabin’s door ajar, blocking anyone looking down from the deck. Anwei grimaced the whole walk to the cabin, the carom strap cutting into her shoulder. Knox slipped in after her and helped her lift it into Altahn’s trunk, Galerey sparking angrily at having to move aside to make room.

Anwei pulled the lid shut, trying to control the spike of concern when she noticed her own trunk was already missing from the room with Knox’s cursed sword inside it. Knox must have carried it up while she was lugging the carom out.

So far as she knew, Knox hadn’t even asked after it. Maybe he was finally safe from the awful thing.

And she could use it to do some good. All she needed to kill Tual Montanne was a shapeshifter sword. With Knox’s safe in her trunk, she didn’t need to worry about finding Patenga’s sword before Tual found her.

“Get everything off the boat as fast as you can,” she murmured to Knox as he picked up Altahn’s trunk. He didn’t even groan. The carom by itself probably weighed more than her, and the trunk wasn’t even pulling his arms straight. “I have to meet my contact in Kingsol, but I’ll hire the porter to take our things to the Sower’s Path. That’s where Ellis expects us to be. Oh, and keep an eye out for anyone following—”

“I know, Anwei.”

“Then when you get to the Sower’s Path, I’ll need you to hire a different porter to take our things to the other inn. The Rigors. Ellis shouldn’t be able to track us there if we lie low.”

“We already talked through all of this.” He paused in the doorway, and she tried not to be annoyed when he switched to holding the trunk under one arm. “We’re okay, right? You and me?”

“Of course.” She picked at her sleeves, making the mistake of breathing in deep to check that no one was coming. The air was a mouthful of yellow-green saltwater and seagrass’s glassy blue.

Salt and seagrass smelled like home.

Knox looked down, making Anwei feel itchy and uncalm, as if now every time there was silence, they’d have to revisit her decision to be partners instead of whatever it was Calsta was lobbying for these days. But when he finally looked at her again, all he said was, “You’ve been here in Kingsol before, haven’t you? That’s why you’re upset.”

The question stuck in Anwei’s gullet as she tried to swallow it down. “No, I haven’t been here, exactly.” She took the scarf wrapped around her neck and tied it over her braids with a jaunty knot that stuck out over her ear, then checked that the button at her collar was fastened and that her sleeves were covering her wrists.

“This is the closest port to Beilda.”

“Yes.” She walked out of the room. Knox followed her to the deck, carefully sliding Altahn’s trunk to the pile of luggage they’d brought.

“Kingsol. The city of waiting.” Ellis appeared with a melodramatic opening of arms, taking in the little city perched over the ocean. The docks had moorings enough for hundreds of boats, but Anwei could have counted the sails there on her hands and feet, which seemed odd. Not even one Beildan ferry decorated with blue swirls of paint was in sight, when the whole port should have been thick with them.

Kingsol squatted on the rolling hills past the docks, stocky and chinked into gaps in the stone, the whole of it braced for one of Calsta’s storms. After so many years of Chaol’s sky bridges between cays and towering halls, Kingsol felt too bright, too exposed, as if everyone in the city could see Anwei standing there.

“The city of waiting?” Knox asked. “What are people waiting for?”

“For passage to Beilda. Not so much anymore, of course.” Ellis continued before Anwei could ask—no, she didn’t want to know where all the ferries were. “Waiting to get all their nose growths ungrown, their bloody coughs scoured clean, and breech babies birthed. Just like I’ll be waiting to hear from you, Anwei.” Ellis grinned. “You and Yaru. I know how far your contacts go. I know the things you could make, if you wanted, the things we could sell. Just think what we could do.”

Anwei forced a grin that hung tired on her face. “Sometimes all it takes is a new perspective. I’m sure Yaru will be excited by the prospect.” She cast a look toward Noa, who was haughtily retwisting her hair into a bun, pointedly not looking in Ellis’s direction. Anwei hadn’t really expected Ellis to hire Noa—it would have been inconvenient if Ellis had—but the way she stabbed her hairstick into her bun made Anwei wonder if Ellis had said something to make Noa envision stabbing him. If he’d realized who she was—

“I assumed you aren’t done with her, so I wasn’t going to poach,” Ellis said, following Anwei’s gaze toward Noa. “When you are, let me know. She’d be an interesting addition to my crew.” He winked and strode to the prow, shouting orders to the rowers as the boat rolled toward the dock.

Altahn was supposed to… Anwei’s breath caught at the empty space next to Noa. The Trib wasn’t in position.

Clearing her throat, Anwei casually turned to search the deck for the hard edge of silver that followed Altahn wherever he went only to have Knox brush her arm, jerking his head back toward Ellis’s cabin. A note of panic sang through Anwei’s humors as she turned away from the cabin door, sailors pulling the mooring lines taut. Altahn couldn’t be idiot enough to—

Knox darted forward, lurching into Noa as if it were an accident. The high khonin gave a louder-than-warranted squawk, drawing attention when she turned to take a swipe at his shoulder, actual rancor in her eyes. “Grow some sea legs, you oaf!”

Just as Noa shouted, Altahn slipped out from Ellis’s cabin, a box in his arms. He looked around as if he were being stealthy coming out of the captain’s cabin in broad daylight, then hefted the thing onto their pile of trunks. The three of them had planned it. Without her.

“What in Calsta’s name—” Anwei hissed.

“We’re going to have to run fast,” he whispered back.

“Gods and monsters, Altahn—”

Knox ducked away from Noa, who was still trying to swat at him, and picked up the box. He headed across the plank Ellis’s sailors were steadying against the dock as if he wasn’t carrying Ellis’s prize weapon. Anwei grabbed hold of her own trunk’s handle, and Altahn took the other side, the two of them moving fast to get all their belongings off the boat.

She hurried to the porters massed farther down the dock, and Noa flitted through the bustle after her like a butterfly, too colorful and fluttery to do much other than follow. Flipping a split copper to one of the porters, Anwei described Knox and the number of trunks, then hurried toward the stone archway that served as the entrance to the city.

She reached up to touch her braids through the scarf covering them. There would be other Beildans here. People from home. The thought stuck like a tick, sucking away at her.

“We need to go faster.” Noa’s words came in a breathless wheeze. The dancer linked an arm through Anwei’s and gave her a sharp pull.

Anwei bristled. “Did Ellis—”

“No. Faster, Anwei. Away from the docks.”

Anwei skipped a step to keep pace with Noa as they pressed through the crowd to pass under the arch. The wet ocean breeze picked at her scarf, whipping it across her face. The last time she’d seen these waters, they’d roiled and lashed, bulging and breaking across her bleeding shoulders, the sky a terrible scowl.

Was that you? she thought toward the empty heavens, wondering if Calsta only listened to Knox, or if she grasped at any human thought that bubbled up in her direction. The lightning and thunder, the waves and the water in the bottom of my boat—it all should have killed me. Did I live just because you were saving me for your golden boy?

Calsta did not answer.

I’m safe now. The thought growled out from the depths of her mind. It doesn’t matter what happened before or what any god wanted. I found Knox myself. I found Noa. I’ll find Tual, too, and then all of this will be over.

“Calsta’s teeth!” Noa’s face was pale, all the fun bled dry. She pulled Anwei past the canal that led directly into the markets past the docks, small enough that only skiffs and rowboats could pass. “Which way to your contact?”

“His name’s Paran. I don’t know exactly. I have to ask—” Noa jerked Anwei into an alleyway ripe with the cloying, potato-skin brown scent of rotting vegetables. Anwei extracted her arm and looked around. Had Noa seen something she’d missed? She felt frantically across the bond for Knox after days of trying to pull back—maybe Ellis had already found the carom gone? Reaching for Knox felt like slipping on a warm glove. Knox’s flicker at the back of her head grew brighter, softer, as if he’d felt her reach and was tentatively reaching back.

He was fine. Not agitated or even sweating so far as she could tell. So it couldn’t be Ellis that had Noa panicking. “Would you please tell me what is going on? You were fine five minutes ago.”

“Knox said you’d know your way around here!” Noa sent a flustered look toward the market.

“I tried to come here once from Beilda, back when I was young. I lived just across the strait in a town called Belash Point.” Anwei let Noa pull her into the crowd, past stalls of fish and shrimp, memories of her trip across the water sharp. “But my boat got caught in a storm. It blew me clear to the Elantin port.”

“Which is why you speak like a goddess instead of a commoner,” Noa replied in Elantin. “So we’re lost, Ellis is going to kill Altahn and then kidnap me, and that’s only if Knox doesn’t kill me first. None of which matters because one of my father’s boats is docked right next to the porters.”

Frowning, Anwei felt across the bond again, cringing back when, this time, Knox came flooding toward her like a question. She calmed herself, not wanting him to decide she was in trouble and come running. “Why is Knox on your list?”

“He doesn’t think I’m trustworthy.”

Anwei nodded slowly. That much she knew. “I’m happy to report that Knox doesn’t kill people, so you don’t need to worry.” Not anymore. He’d never wanted to kill people so far as she could tell, but that didn’t matter much when the Warlord had forced Devoted to hunt and kill Basists for five hundred years. It had only been working with Anwei that made Knox realize that Calsta and the Warlord didn’t necessarily see eye to eye on what Devotion was for.

“Knox has shadows all around him, Anwei. Like a belanvian. It’s not as bad as when we were in Chaol, but…” Noa closed her eyes.

“Shadows?” Anwei asked when Noa didn’t continue. “His oaths make it so he can hide sometimes. Does Falan let you see past Devoted defenses?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s… shadows, like some of him isn’t here, and if we get too close, he’ll drag us to wherever the rest of him went.”

Anwei went cold. That was how Knox had described Willow—like she was gnawing on him, that some of him was gone. She took Noa’s arm again, pulling her up to a palifruit stand to ask where to find Paran’s street. With clear directions, Anwei found a path out of the market, lowering her voice so only Noa would hear over the babble of sellers calling about their wares. “Knox is not going to drag us anywhere. Now, what’s this trouble with your father’s boat?”

Noa’s shoulders fell. “His sailors know me.”

Anwei circled a hand, impatient. “And?”

“And they’ll know I’m not supposed to be here and take me back to Chaol. I’ve been trying to go home to Elantia—to my mother, my old nursemaid, my friends from school—for years, Anwei. If they see me, they’ll know.” She dragged a hand down her cheek. “Knox said I should tell you that my father might come after me, but it didn’t seem important at the time, so—”

“Right.” Anwei kept the curse pressed behind her lips. They had to find her contact quickly. Get away from Ellis. And make sure Tual hadn’t put the word out to look for them in Kingsol. She needed to know everything she could get from her contact about Tual, the estate, and where Mateo Montanne liked to go when he was in town, and then they needed to find someplace safe to make their plans.

“It’s going to be all right. We don’t have to go near the docks, and sailors aren’t going to be staying in town. They won’t see you.” Anwei gave Noa a reassuring smile, though the extra complication stung. It would be fine. She would make it fine. Outside the market, Anwei walked faster, Noa skipping to keep up. She couldn’t help the ugly starts of recognition at the familiar shapes of the buildings, the wood covered in moss and stone scored by ocean storms. Bright colors swabbed across anything that could be painted.

It looked just like home.

Which made her wonder: How could Arun live here, a place so very like where they grew up, and not remember?