47

The explosion of wind was a fiery current, sucking in snow from the Hall's open door. Ethos could hear movement behind him —chairs scraping, shipmen running— but he dared not turn to look. Kacha was blinding, every bit as stunning as when she'd found him in the sanctuary. She'd been younger then, and her hands had dwarfed his, but it wasn't her hands or her age that had charmed him. It was her. Her bones and her spirit. Her Being. He hadn't had a chance to speak with her about how they'd met, not really, not now that he could remember her face. His chest ached, like he'd taken a hit.

But then the wind began to calm. The snow began to settle. Keenly aware of what would follow, Ethos quickly felt for the nebule, only to realize his pockets were empty. He had to have dropped it the night before. There wasn't time to search.

Alma dimmed to a steady smolder, her breath a cloud of blistering steam. "So the original's dead," she mourned. "Shame. We'd wanted to watch the light leave his eyes." As if to illustrate her point, her mesmerizing gaze leapt to Ethos. "Hello again, Hans."

It was a challenge for him to switch gears. He couldn't quite grasp the permanence of what had just happened, especially with Kacha still standing in front of him. The emotions he'd experienced on the night that Eadric had attacked her, the loss and rage— they returned at a crawl.

"Are you angry?" Alma asked, playacting their last exchange. "Is it unfair? Is the creator asking too much of her creation?"

It hurt to swallow. "You picked her on purpose."

She pretended to pout and sauntered near, then let out a laugh when he backed away. "So skittish," she leered. "It's just like you. Do you remember the night after Enwyn died?"

"I'm not him."

"It was the night we fell in love with you."

Not Kacha's words, he told himself. Kacha was gone. But she was smiling at him in that way of hers, as if they shared a happy secret, and he didn't recoil from her touch.

Her hand against his cheek was warm. It didn't burn. "Good boy," she said, still smiling somewhat wryly, fondly. "Won't you help us across this river?"

"You're not Kacha."

"Not quite," she said. "But we can tell you what your eyes were like when we clashed in the creek behind our home. And we can tell you the name of the song we sang as you drifted to sleep underneath our roof." Her smile grew. Had his expression changed? "Our forsaken fool," she said. "We can even tell you what we were thinking."

A mere whisper, Ethos asked, "What were you thinking?"

"We were thinking, 'This boy will surely destroy us all,' " she answered. "And we were thinking we wouldn't mind one bit. We were thinking we might even like it a little."

Baroona was speaking to him. He knew why. But Alma's igneous gaze was inviting, too hard to tear away from. He heard himself ask, "How could you stand to look at me?"

The laughter left her expression. "We can't," she said. "We still can't. Choosing that child over us, when we loved you so much. Hans the Pretender. Hans the Betrayer."

Eadric's rage took over. He took a few steps back. "Anyone capable of murdering a child deserves to die the way that you did," he spat. "It's you who did this to us. It's you who's forcing us to repeat the same pathetic cycle of violence." 

Her beautiful eyes went round. "Oh?"

"And I'm not sorry." He couldn't stop, couldn't control it. "I won't apologize. I wouldn't even if I thought it would change anything. I'd rather have my eyes out." 

"You remember. The night after Enwyn died."

"Enwyn was an irreverent swine. She would have turned the Greentides against me."

Alma began a measured approach. "Your fortitude has always impressed."

His heels backed into something— an overturned bench. He blindly tried to step around it, feeling with his hands. He pushed down the rage. He shook his head right. "Stop it," he hissed. "Stop whatever you're doing. Stay back."

"You shouldn't play with your food, Hans."

Ethos fended her off as she reached him, tripping himself in the process. He landed hard on the overturned bench, upsetting day-old bruises, and Alma followed him part of the way, a hand on his wrist, his fist in her hair. A supple laugh spilled out of her throat.

And then light— pale blue, dazzling light. Ethos couldn't see a thing. He registered a rush of heat, brief, dangerous, close to his face. Una was between them when his vision cleared, arms out to either side as if to make a shield of herself. Baroona joined her, blade drawn.

"Abomination," he heard Alma purr. "We won't bring you back twice."

Una pointed at the entrance. "Go," she commanded. "You're outnumbered. It's over."

Alma was low to the ground some twenty paces away. The doors to the Hall slammed shut behind her, filling her hair with a cold gust of air. "Wrong," she hissed, like an angry old cat. "We'd kill you if letting you live wasn't worse."

Ethos numbly stared from the floor. A voice in his ear made him jump. "Get up," it instructed. "I need you to lure her away from here."

Peter. Ethos hardly had time to glance before he was being forced to his feet. The grip on his arm was tighter than it needed to be. Alyce was near on his other side, expression torn between wonder and horror. He'd scared her, he realized. He'd scared both of them.

"I'll open a gate for you," Peter continued. "Do whatever you need to do and I'll pick you up when Alyce has you in the clear. Don't die."

Ethos wanted to see his face. "You took the nebule."

"Aye, I took it. You'll get it back when I'm convinced you're not Eadric."

Simply remaining upright was taking some effort, so Ethos didn't argue. "You sure take advantage well," he muttered. "Which direction am I running in?"

"Best go straight. Scoop her up like."

"Okay, do it."

And he did— no hesitation. Peter was good about stuff like that. Ethos heard the coin catch the air, and at once he quickly launched himself after it. He considered, however briefly, abandoning the plan entirely and catching the coin en route to its mark, but doing so would risk everyone in the Hall. So he didn't. He collided with Alma at full speed.

The gate splintered open just as he crashed into her. Together they spilled into the clouded daylight beyond, legs encountering dark shallows, feet mired by reeds. Alma was thrashing, partway submerged, blindly clawing at his face while he struggled in kind to keep her under. Freezing pond water hissed against her skin. His hands blistered and popped around her neck.

Ethos couldn't maintain his hold on her. He staggered, bare feet sliding through ages of muck. Her ragged gasps for air filled his ears.

Peter had dropped him into the camp where they'd slept off the Farwell incident. It had seen some snow since their visit, but the rest was unchanged. The black remnants of a long-dead fire stared at him from the shore. He took it in, collapsed on a rock, hands raw and trembling and useless.

"Kill me," Alma said, panting. "You're supposed to be able to kill me."

Ethos didn't answer. He turned on the rock to see her.

She was close, hair fanned out on the murky water. She had a wild look to her eyes, as if she were nearing the end of her rope. "Have I not shed enough blood yet?" she asked. "Have I not suffered? Or do I have to tear out my heart and hold it before me?" She approached him and stopped. Her expression fell to pieces. "Kill me!" she cried. "Please!"

"I'm unwell," he replied, unexpectedly hoarse. "You'd notice if you'd just calm down and look at me with more than your eyes."

His answer seemed to catch her off-guard. But the longer she stared, head tilted, birdlike, the more her confusion bled away. "It's not permanent," she knew. "A foreign compound of some sort."

"You'll just respawn if I kill you now. There's no point to it."

Her gaze fell and paused on his hands. After some deliberating, she sighed and clumsily waded for shore. "Come," she said. "We'll fix you up."

Ethos didn't want to be anywhere near her. Together they were too unpredictable, like two reacting chemicals. But as she grunted and limped and cursed her old bones, he found himself obeying. "I'm not Eadric," he felt a need to insist. "I'm not evil like he was."

"Fool," she grumbled, beneath her breath. "Good and evil are concepts that humans decide. Those concepts don't apply to us." She sat in the snow and sighed again. "Let's have your hands."

Ethos joined her, inadvertently catching her eyes. She was studying him, golden kilns stewing too brightly, too widely. He couldn't tell what she was thinking.

She said, "You don't know what you are."

"I know what I'm not."

"It's a source of unease for you." She positioned her palms over his, nearly touching. "And you're wrong," she added. "We made you in his image. You knew of Enwyn and what you'd done."

"I'm not wrong," he grunted. "You just have an annoying effect on me."

She smiled a little. "You sound just like you're supposed to."

Ethos watched her work for a while, put off by her disguise as Kacha. He'd been surprised by her outburst. "You feel guilty about killing your kid," he eventually said. "You must."

Alma held his eyes again, expression unreadable. When she finally answered, she sounded like a different person. "Time heals nothing," she replied. "I wasn't supposed to have a child, but I did. And I had to decide who was more important. Time dirtied and festered the wound."

"Then you understand why Eadric killed you."

"You didn't kill me. You broke me."

Ethos frowned at that. "Broke you how?"

Her hands abruptly closed on his. Painful. Hot. Fingers worming. Fingers constricting. "To die," she said. "To die, only to crash headlong into someone's soul, and to feel their fear, their horror, their grief. To devour it all. To feel it with them. To be both victim and monster. To change." Her eyes moved over his face. "All I felt was the rage. I did terrible, beautiful things."

Ethos was wisely silent. There was no arguing her nature.

The smile crept back to her lips. "My hatred for you is a lot like love," she told him. "I hate you enough to keep you alive, to mend your wounds again and again. It's a raw, formless thing, produced by the ages. I live if only to watch you suffer, and I'll die if only to die along with you."

"Eadric's gone," Ethos repeated, firmly. "I'm not him. He's dead."

She feigned a pout, like he'd said something cute. But then, as she always did, she reached out and cupped his cheek. Her smile spread as she asked, "Won't you help me across this river?"

He stared. "You're asking me to help you pass over."

"I can't do it alone. I need you."

"The elk always dies."

She rose to her knees and took his entire face in her hands. It was Kacha's smile, Kacha's hands, but the light in her eyes was entirely Alma, breathing just behind the glass. The leviathan. More creature than woman, more energy than entity. She was the swarm of flies in his ears, keeping him from a restful sleep. Those eyes of hers would be the last thing he saw.

" 'Won't you help me across this river?' "

Two instincts warred within him. One he knew well, the will to live, but a fiercer one needed their story played out, needed it seen to as nature intended. She'd buried it somewhere deep at his core where it could propagate unnoticed; it was there in his veins, sabotaging him. 

Ethos let his head sink. Her bony arms encircled his shoulders, fingers absently teasing his hair. "A week," he conceded. "That's all I need. Meet me in the Rift."

Her skin warmed, like he'd pleased her. "None of your tricks."

"None of my tricks," he promised. "I just need to see something through."

"Fool. There's no cure in Mount Savage."

He took a breath. "Yeah."

"Then why go?"

"To kill Syan Battlefrost."

She sat on her heels with a throaty chuckle, putting them back at eye level. She smirked and wiped something off of his face. "Make it slow," she whispered. "Make it hurt."

He smirked back, hollowly. "If that's what you want."

"Good boy." Quickly, lightly, she kissed him and stood. "We'll enjoy dying with you, Hans," she decided. "We'll find you in the next world, too."

His lips stung. They stayed that way long after she'd gone, after she'd leapt up into the sky and vanished over the hilly midlands. The lingering heat in the palms of his hands was a reminder of what she'd threatened to do— mend him over and over again.

"Told you so, didn't I," Eadric would say, lounged in the snow beside him. "You can't reason with crazy. But it's not too late to change your mind."

"Change my mind about what?"

"My plan. Obviously."

"I can't do that."

"Then you'll die. We both will."

Ethos glanced over at him. "I'm not a bad person."

"You're not an exceedingly good one, either. I'd know." Eadric met his eyes and scowled. "Don't you dare cry," he said. "I don't need to see my face like that."

"I still can't believe you had a soul."

Eadric's resulting laughter tapered into a sigh. After a lengthy moment, he said, "I'll haunt you if you hurt Syan more than you have to."

Ethos snorted. "You're already haunting me."

"Then I'll haunt you more. You'll never get anything done." Farther along the grassy shoreline, the nebule's distinctive gate reappeared. The surrounding air looked brittle from a distance. "We need to get the nebule back," Eadric mused, watching on as Peter climbed out. "That imbecile can't be allowed the advantage. It's bad news."

"Agreed. He'll misuse the power."

"No, he'll abuse the power. There's a difference."

He was right, of course. He usually was. Even when he was wrong. "Listen, I can't have a repeat of what happened earlier," Ethos said. "Don't jump up my throat whenever you like."

Eadric grunted. "It's not like I planned it. She provoked me."

"Just try. You're making me look unreliable."

"No, Ethos. I'm making you look untrustworthy." Eadric's gaze slid back to Ethos. With an impish grin, he leered, "There's a difference."

Peter was drawing near, so the conversation ended itself. He slowed over Ethos, nebule in hand, clouded dayshine filling his hair. "Talking to yourself," he noted. "That's new."

Ethos squinted up at him, crossly. "You didn't have to let us out right into the pond."

"It was an accident." Peter squatted, elbows on his knees. "You okay?"

"Yeah. It won't be the last we see of her."

"That's not what I meant."

"I know what you meant, Peter." An unexpected sneeze caught Ethos off guard. He shuddered and hugged himself for warmth. "What's the situation in Flint?" 

"I had to reassure everyone that you weren't Redbeard's reincarnation."

"How'd it go over?"

"Not that well, if I'm honest."

"Is Tritan still willing to contribute half of his forces?"

"It's not his to give." Eyes low, Peter turned the coin in his hands. "I've formalized ownership of Flint," he said. "Tanis and Tritan will assist me in Wulfstead. Anouk and my mother will protect the city in our absence." He glanced and caught Ethos quietly watching the nebule. "That fight with Tritan was never going to happen," he added. "You had to know that. I even warned you against it."

"It would've saved us from starting a potential war with your mother."

"I'll deal with my mother. She's not an issue." Peter looked back at his hands. He was strangely calm, unsettlingly so. "I'm more concerned about the way you were talking to Alma," he said. "It makes me think you were lying about what happened in Oldden."

"I was confused."

"You told me he was contained." 

"I called it cohabitation. And I was just as surprised as you were."

Daylight winked off the rotating nebule. Purposefully, Peter met his eyes. "Tell the truth."

Ethos stared. There was an unfamiliar restlessness in Peter's expression, hidden there beneath his convictions. He didn't want the truth, Ethos realized. But he didn't want a lie. 

Peter frowned at him. "Staring at me isn't an answer."

"What do you get out of me being compromised?"

"Nothing. You think it's easy coming up with excuses for you? It's not."

"I didn't assimilate with him. It was a one-time slip. That's it." Ethos shivered and hugged himself tighter. "True assimilation wasn't even possible at the time," he muttered. "Alma took off for the same reason. She has no use for me until I'm functioning properly again."

"She wants you to assimilate with her?"

"Sort of. Going through with it will kill the both of us, so really all she wants is death." Ethos held out his hand for the nebule. "She's just determined to take me down with her."

Peter looked at the hand, then at him. "You want it?"

"Obviously. It's mine, give it back."

"I took it as payment for carrying you to bed last night."

"Nobody asked you to carry me anywhere. You're a common crook who tucks people in."

Peter smirked. "No offense, but you're not winning any awards for dependability," he teased. "The nebule stays with me until you've earned back some trust."

Ethos swiped it out of his hand. Knowing that Peter would retaliate —which he did, of course, with an oath of surprise— Ethos quickly rolled to his feet and chose a direction at random, sprinting as fast as his legs would allow to put some distance between them. 

He flung the coin at the ground ahead when he couldn't go any farther, and he leapt just as it pinwheeled open. He landed on the floor of Kacha's hut, sliding through blankets and clutter and dirt, turning as he did to call the nebule back to his hand.

Peter was there to seize his wrist, caught at the waist in the partially closed gate, eyes wild. Ethos shoved at him without thinking, as if to stuff him back in the midlands. "Get off!" Ethos spat, deflecting his free hand. "Get off of me!"

The edges of the gate constricted, aurally struggling to close. Peter made a strangled sound through his teeth, part of it pain, part of it rage. He'd soon enough be split into two. Hair thrown in his face, he snarled, "Let me in, you pinworm!"

"Fuck you! Let go!"

Impact, deafening. Spice jars rattled. 

Peter was free in the following moment. He landed hard and unmoving.

Ethos squirmed out from under him, winded from the exchange. He first checked on Peter, and then scanned the floor for the inexcusably tiny nebule, tossing Kacha's slurry of blankets, kicking up the smell of her. But the coin was nowhere in sight, and soon he was swearing under his breath, shaking out fabric and throwing it down.

Peter stirred as Ethos was rolling him over. His opening eyes were gently confused. "What are you doing?" he mumbled. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"I feel like I took a blow to the gut."

Ethos held him still and said, "Let me see."

Peter pulled his shirt up, wincing. It was there; flush with his belly, beside his naval— the crafty nebule: a disc of raised, unbroken skin. He asked, "Is that what I think it is?"

"It's not deep," Ethos answered, and he glanced around the hut. "We can cut it out."

Peter must have been dazed, because he didn't argue. He touched his belly, head bent. "It doesn't hurt when I push on it," he mused. "The skin's all hard like a tough old scar."

Ethos tried to catch his eyes. "Do you have a knife?"

 crack!

The nebule flung them across the island. Instant relocation, accompanied by a truly horrible plunging sensation. It was the outskirts of Nahga from the look of it, as gray and quiet as Ethos remembered. A fine mist of rain had dampened the weathered roadway; it clung to them like a second skin.

Stunned, Peter whispered, "Did I just— "

"Stop touching it," Ethos hissed, batting Peter's hand away. "You could drop us into the Throat if you're not careful. Give me your knife and I'll cut it out of you."

Peter suddenly glared at him. "You were going to strand me in the midlands," he spat. "I'd have to be a complete idiot to let you anywhere near this thing." Reminded, he abruptly seized Ethos by the front of his shirt. "I should be pissed at you."

Ethos immediately pried him off. "Stop grabbing at me."

"How long were planning to leave me there, brother? Would you have come back?" Peter stopped him from standing and demanded, "Do you give a shit about anybody but yourself?"

Fed up, Ethos twisted his arm and followed through, a knee in his spine to keep him down. "Shut up and listen," he instructed, low-voiced. "I am not your brother. I'm nobody's brother. I'm sick and tired of being the sole person responsible for satisfying your constant pathetic need for conflict, which is such an obvious cry for attention that I sometimes wish you'd walk off a cliff. Now I don't know what gave you the impression that it was okay to steal from me, but you can start your three-part apology by lying still while I cut this stupid thing out of you."

Mud had peppered Peter's face. He snarled, "That's Eadric talking."

"Kacha is gone." Hearing it aloud, Ethos calmed a little. He took a breath and tightened his grip when it felt like Peter might try to resist. "Kacha's gone," he repeated. "I'm trying really hard to keep it together, so do me a favor and cut me some slack. I'm in no mood to be microanalyzed."

Peter must have been feeling around for the hard mound of skin where the nebule was buried. A well-timed jump flung them back to the spicery, and it was all Peter needed to tear himself free.

The table. The chairs. Maybe five sacks of grains. The fight quickly upended the room. Ethos would later blame his exhaustion for Peter's eventual triumph. 

Though triumph didn't quite describe it. Bent at the waist, hands on his knees, Peter spent most of his victory trying to breathe. "I'm sorry," he said. "I liked Kacha, too. It sucks."

Ethos was slow-moving, trying to rise. "Fuck you, Peter."

"Come on, man— don't get up."

"Stop acting like you're in charge of me."

He'd clearly struck a nerve of some kind. The rebuttal earned him a kick in the side, hard enough to knock him over. Peter watched him cough for a couple of seconds before limping to the door. "I can't talk to you when you're like this," he said. "I'll be back when you've settled down."

Wheezing, Ethos spat on the ground. "Wait."

But Peter had gone and thrown the latch. Only its echo answered.