55

They'd parted ways shortly thereafter, a hunter allotted to each party. Ethos hadn't wanted to split up with Anouk, but he understood the need for it, the value of accurate howling detection, avoidance and recon. He'd seen her glance back just once, expression lost to the darkness of Roheim. Baroona's voice had been quiet, but firm.

"They'll be fine. They're fast."

Quiet, but firm. A subtle air of authority. It was comforting to hear him say it again after walking in silence for so long. "I know," Ethos replied. "I trust them."

Baroona glanced. Beneath many layers of mud and soot, an angry abrasion stood out against the smooth plane of his cheek. "Even Sei?"

"Especially Sei." 

"Why?"

"I can always tell what he's thinking."

"That's not trust. Trust is built on faith and companionship."

"Companionship is irrelevant." Ethos squinted down the tunnel. "I'd rather have a reliable enemy than an unpredictable friend," he said. "We trust what we can count on, what's dependable."

Baroona made a sound that might have been a laugh, but he wasn't smiling. He was watching his feet, discernibly bleak. "You're the same as ever," he said. "Amazing."

Drily, Ethos asked, "Because I disagree with you?"

"No, we rarely disagreed."

"Then do something about your disposition."

Another glance. A strange, weary smile. "It's nostalgic, is all," he said. "You've been centuries in the ground. I'm not entirely sure what to do with you."

Ethos stopped him short as the tunnel let up to a steep flight of stairs. "Look, just because I answer to Hans sometimes, it doesn't mean I'm actually him. Is that clear?"

"You do more than answer to Hans."

"It doesn't help that you treat me like him."

"It's challenging to treat you like anything else."

Ethos scoffed at that. "Do you miss him or something?"

"Miss him?" Baroona echoed, derisive. "You and your godless people destroyed everything sacred to us. You applauded yourselves for defiling our deity."

"Well, yeah. A bit. But we were friends."

"You're no friend of mine."

"But we were, before we killed Alma. And for some time after."

Baroona glowered, but neglected to comment. They resumed their climb. "It was for the boy," the huntsman eventually grumbled. "He was sacred, too. We had a duty to protect him from her."

"Sure. Sacred enough to stuff in a granary."

"That was you. You're confused again."

Ethos frowned at himself. "Drat."

Quiet, but firm. "This is happening whether you like it or not," Baroona said. "For what it's worth, you have my sympathy."

"You're so full of shit, Baroona."

Baroona made another sound that could have passed for a laugh. This time he was smiling. "After Grudson, Alma and us— we holed up in your abandoned outpost. All of your stuff was there. Personal effects. Things like that." His eyes suddenly slid sidelong. "You came in the night to steal it back from us," he said. "But I caught you at it. Do you remember?"

"Obviously," Ethos grumbled. "Kacha almost took off my scrotum."

"She was bluffing. She was just trying to give you a scare."

He scowled. "She was exceedingly pushy."

"Do you still care for her?"

"Who?"

"Kacha."

Ethos nearly tripped on the steps. It was like he'd been imagining some other person. "Of course," he answered. "Obviously. It's Kacha."

"Obviously, you say. Do you care more for her than for Syan?"

"Syan?" he laughed. "I've never even met Syan."

"I heard you say that you loved her."

"I was having one of my fits. Ignore it."

Baroona rolled his eyes. "They're not fits, Hans."

"You're officially not allowed to call me that anymore." Ethos mentally scolded himself. "You and Kacha," he ventured, on a different note. "Did you two reconnect before— before she— "

"Yeah," Baroona said. "We did. We talked it out on the flight up to Flint."

"Good. It never sat well with me, being the cause of her exile."

"She never blamed you for that. Neither of us did."

Ethos slowed. There was sediment floating around in the darkness; it glittered and held a light of its own like so many flakes of silver moonshine. He tried to catch one.

"She loved you," Baroona said, a few steps ahead. "More than she'd admit."

The sediment dissolved at the slightest touch. "The air composition is different here," Ethos said, gears grinding and crunching and clicking. "It's the nest. The atmosphere's been modified."

Baroona turned back. His gaze was a heavy one. "Modified how?"

"Minimally. Argon. Nitrogen. Just enough to detect." Ethos met Baroona's eyes. "We're close," he realized. "I know where we are. I've been here before."

"Did you hear what I said about Kacha?"

"Kacha? What about her?"

"She loved you. She loved you a lot."

Don't be afraid to defy the system, to rise above it, to let it be— "So?" Ethos asked. "Kacha's gone. None of that matters." He continued up the narrowing stairs and clapped Baroona's shoulder in passing. "Let's hurry," he said. "The others are probably in position."

Baroona followed at his heels. "How will you kill it?"

"Not my problem. Anouk called dibs."

"That's big of you."

"Far be it from me to hinder her hunt."

"It's not about her. You just don't like getting your hands dirty."

"My hands are plenty dirty. Delegating monster duty isn't enough to reverse that."

Baroona was silent. "I know," he said. "And I know you don't like it. That's all I meant."

Ethos quickened his pace. "Don't pity me, Baroona. It's insulting."

" 'Go be considerate. Go offer to help. A little good is a little good. But bad can change the world for the better.' " Baroona chuckled softly to himself. "Your words," he said. "You took the blame for a lot of things when Alma returned."

It sounded familiar, very much Eadric. "The good it did was his excuse," Ethos said. "He enjoyed what he was. I suspected it then and I know it now."

"Nobody's entirely good or bad. You might be the exception."

Ethos glanced and stopped once more. "Are you saying I'm worse than him?"

Baroona blinked, owlish. "Not at all," he replied. "You've transcended, Hans. I haven't sensed any good or bad from you since the day you reappeared. You're neither."

Sometimes the bad things forget they were good. Sometimes they lose sight of themselves. Ethos could hear Baroona's heartbeat, how steady and resolute it was. "Why join me now?" he asked. "You were loyal to Alma throughout the war, Baroona. Nothing could sway you. Kacha's already gone; I'll assume the same of Ataia. Why join me now when there's no one to fight for?"

Baroona just stared at him. "Didn't you feel the shift?"

"Shift? What shift?"

"The claim. The shift of power." Baroona's eyes were like open holes in the ground. "We knew it was coming," he said. "Even the children. You were getting stronger, brighter. And we could feel Alma slipping away."

Ethos frowned. "I'm making her weaker?"

"Something like that, yes. She created you to overpower her, after all. We think it's an unintended result of that, and why you can force us about as you like." Ethos must have looked confused. Baroona's expression subtly smoothed. "She brought you back," he said. "But she brought you back tono, and she brought you back strong. And now she's abandoned her calling while you've stood by and protected us despite what we did to you in the past. You've been our god for a while now."

He sounded like Peter. "You have a funny way of showing it."

Baroona stopped him from turning away. "You were the one who made it happen," he said. "You, not us. We have no say in who transcends. It's just something we feel— something we know."

Ethos shook him off and continued, less than thrilled by the notion he'd posed. "I didn't feel a shift or a claim," he said. "And if I made something happen, it wasn't on purpose. I don't owe you or yours any kind of allegiance."

"You asked why I joined you, Hans. This is my answer."

"Stop calling me Hans. It wasn't even his name and it's stupid."

"Would you rather I call you Eadric?"

"Just call me Ethos."

"But that's not who you are."

"Ethos was what my mother called me."

"Okay." And for a beautiful moment, it seemed like that would be the end of it. But then Baroona fell into step beside him. "The day you appeared in the sanctuary, Kacha had planned to run off with you," he said. "We would've raised you as our own. Did you know that?"

It was easy, sometimes, to forget how old the tono were. "No, I didn't," Ethos replied, resisting a sideways glance. "Would you have done it if you'd known who I was?"

"I don't know. My opinion of you is complicated."

Ethos snorted. "At least you're honest."

Baroona didn't speak again until they reached the final landing above. "You got what you wanted, Hans," he sighed. "A seat of power among the tono. True integration. You've singlehandedly shed your species and overthrown a beloved celestial. Congratulations."

They spilled out onto a crumbling balcony, half of its grimstone balustrade missing. The hideous cavern lay just beyond, larger in scale than any existing structure in Karna. Far below, the grounds were alive with movement— howlings, tasked with incomprehensible duties, slavering, creaking, illumined by the strange atmosphere. Tunnels let in from all sides, banded around the circular flooring. Midway up the chamber were balconies, thirty or forty more letting in, open mouths and unrolled tongues, holes as dark as Baroona's eyes.

The eggs were fascinating, a myriad of countless red spheres. One was rolling up the wall to their right, slowly and thickly, stringing clear phlegm. Through its transparent skin tissue there were three distinct membranous layers encasing a cloudy, twitching yolk. An unborn howling.

"There," Baroona whispered, pointing elsewhere. "The source."

All Ethos saw at first was pale, ribbed flesh, like the belly of a bloated larva, and his eyes refused to make sense of it. The proportions were wrong. It had no face. And it was massive, inexpressibly so— the size of a small hunting cabin, at least; just a heaving sac of organs and lard. A sound invited him screaming to a vile, greasy, trunk-like appendage, turning out putrid eggs by the batch. 

Eadric had left her there centuries ago. The very same place. Where she'd cried and cursed him and pled for mercy. "I'll be damned," Ethos said, pulse quickening. "For this, if anything."

"Sit down," Baroona suggested. "You have a fearsome look on your face."

But Ethos couldn't tear his eyes away. "Don't tell me to sit."

"Sei won't act until you've calmed. He'll sense your anxiety." Baroona persuaded him to the floor, behind the balustrade. "Relax," he advised. "I know it's hard to look at."

Ethos took a long, measured breath. "It's not quite what I was expecting."

"Just relax," Baroona repeated, with purpose. "We're finally here. I need you sharp."

"Keep telling me to relax, Baroona, I swear— " Regardless of the plummeting temperature, Ethos felt suffocated. He impatiently fussed with his coat one-handed until the neck finally came loose. "I've got to get out of this place," he seethed. "It's like being underwater."

"We'll go after we finish the job."

"Curse the job."

"Stop undressing." Baroona sighed and did the coat up again, shaking his head as if at a child. But he stopped abruptly and asked, "What's this?"

Ethos glanced at the source of the question— a notebook, plucked from his open flap pocket. He took it back from Baroona and grinned, flipping through months of delicate artwork. "Oh, right," he sniggered. "I keep forgetting that I have this."

Baroona studied the pages, inverted. "Impressive."

"Yeah," Ethos agreed, rotating it for him. "Look at this one here."

Kacha, the night they'd met at the river. She was in mid-crow, wielding her great wooden ladle around while squinting and holding a jar to the light. Baroona smiled. "It does her justice," he said, but his smile was quick to fade. "Really."

"I never meant to drag her back into this."

"You certainly took to her more than you did in your past life." 

Ethos didn't bother arguing with him. "Of course I did. She was nice to me."

Baroona quietly flipped through the book, pausing every now and again. The howlings below were gruesome background noise. "This isn't yours," he guessed, eyes rising. "Am I right?"

Ethos smirked crookedly at him. "I'm allowed artistic vision."

"Most of the sketches in here are of you."

"So I'm a narcissist." But Baroona was glaring exhaustedly at him, telling him please to be serious for once. "Okay, fine," Ethos conceded. "I stole it. Report me."

"Who does it belong to?" Baroona asked. "Does it belong to Peter?"

"By definition, it belongs to me. I stole it. It's mine."

He pressed, "Then why did you steal it?"

"That should be obvious. Look at how handsome I am."

Baroona made a hard line of his mouth. He closed the book. "Just be careful."

"Careful?" Ethos sent him a look. "This is Peter we're talking about," he said, which should have been explanation enough. "He's as menacing as a puddle."

"People change. Sutter certainly did." Baroona waited until the smile had gone. "Friendship," he remarked. "Love. Jealousy. Resentment. Hatred. Often one becomes another without us noticing right away. And good friends make the most crippling enemies."

The smile twitched alive. "I have no friends."

"You know what I'm talking about. Enemies forged from the fire of betrayal will hunt you into the next world and back."

"Who writes your dialogue?"

"I know it can happen because it has."

"And what makes you think I'm going to betray him?"

"Perhaps I remember the warning signs." Baroona returned the notebook and watched Ethos sourly put it away. "But betrayal isn't always premeditated," he went on. "It's a forced smile. A bad excuse. A thousand tiny, thoughtless deceits. I've seen it all compile and fester, and turn good men against one another." He gestured Ethos quiet. "Just be careful," he repeated. "Don't make enemies unless you need to. Especially when they started as friends."

Ethos didn't feel like arguing. He knew exactly what to expect from Peter. "You said there was an exit in here," he remembered, and he looked up to search the ceiling. "Where?"

"The west end." Baroona gently turned him, pointing. "See it?"

The ground shuddered, stopping them short, and a flash of light chased off the darkness— viridian blue, from below. Ethos glanced just in time to see the howlings scramble into a forward tunnel. They looked like a swarm of insects, flooding the room with repulsive movement.

Beside him, Baroona asked, "Anouk?"

"Maybe. I couldn't tell."

The viridian light had gone already, retreated from the onslaught. "We should go," Baroona said, a hand on his shoulder. "Can you stand?"

They climbed down from the derelict balcony, each assisting the other as needed. Rocks scattered at their feet, echoing softly in the vastness. "Avoid the unborn, if you can," Ethos said. "Certain reptiles and amphibians can hatch early if they sense predators." 

Baroona chuckled. "I'm not sure we count as the predators in this scenario."

Syan towered over them, expanding and contracting with each monstrous breath. Ethos couldn't identify anything human about her. His feet brought him closer without his permission, fingers skating on rubbery flesh. "Can you sense if she's awake?" he asked. "Can she hear us?"

Baroona circled her, blade drawn. "It's a monster, Hans. They don't think like we do."

Light from his sword filtered through the translucent skin tissue. It was there at the center, scarcely visible— a shadow. "Wait," Ethos said. "Don't move."

"Why?"

"I'm cutting it open."

A long pause. "What do you see?"

"Something's in there. I need to know what it is."

Baroona protested that decision to some end. Ethos resisted the impulse to listen. Before he could think better of it, he cutlassed into the fleshy nightmare. The laceration split open wide, and a runny tide of innards spilled forth, the entrails largely bloodless and squidlike, flopping, twitching, warming his feet. It reeked of old dead things lost at sea.

Baroona backed up as it collapsed, nose justifiably crinkled. "No nervous system," he said. "All it does is reproduce."

Ethos sheathed the blade. He waded into the growing pool, bent at the waist, exploring muck. The stench was unspeakable. The heat was worse. Arteries pumped alive in his hands; they slipped from his grasp like eels in a rock pool, landing heavy and spattering loud.

Baroona sighed. "Get out of there."

"I know what I saw."

"Well, you look ridiculous."

Ethos searched through an unidentifiable pile of viscera, and, as if he'd somehow willed her there, Syan's face emerged in the filth. Her greyish skin felt artificial, but her hair was the same flaxen gold he remembered. He gathered her up as she opened her eyes. Her flinty crosshairs narrowed on him.

Uneasily, he greeted, "Syan."

Her pretty face twisted with rage. She promptly seized his throat and wrung. "You piece of shit!" she snarled. "Calling you coward would do you praise!"

Syan was strong, exceptionally so. It took all he had to break free. Ethos stumbled backward and landed elbow-deep in her excess. "Just let me explain," he said. "Hold— "

He'd never been the subject of such authentic loathing before. He could see it in her eyes, the deep, ugly hatred, curdling there like something alive. She lunged. He caught her wrists and she snapped at the air, pointed teeth clacking together, vicious.

Ethos kicked her away from him, resulting in a howl of fury that ran up and down the cavernous walls. Syan raised herself snakelike up from the ground, no end to her in sight, like the very entrails had claimed her legs. Her furious gaze slid back to Ethos.

His adrenaline spiked. "Look at me carefully," he said. "I'm not him."

"You gutless whelk. You fiend." But as she advanced, her expression clouded. She slowed over him in growing confusion. "It's as if you're really one of them now," she said, voice glazed in the twang of the north. "What have you done?"

"I'm not him," he repeated. "Not really. Not yet."

Syan was suddenly close— too close. She searched his face, eyes intense. "Not him," she echoed, softly suspicious. "You look like him, sound like him."

"Eadric was twice my age when you saw him last." Ethos was cautiously unmoving. He watched her as she tried to remember. "He's dead," he said. "He's gone."

The truth hung in the air. Syan just stared. "Dead?"

"That's right. I was there."

The staring continued for several long, unsettling moments. Gleaming particles of dust caught and dissolved in her eyelashes. "Are you his Ethos, then?"

It felt like a strange question to answer. "No, not exactly."

"Not him. Not really. Not yet. Not exactly." Syan lurched forward again; it was fractional, but he jumped. She couldn't see him clearly in the darkness, he realized. A frown emerged from her confusion and fury. She asked, "How long have I been in here?" 

"Too long," he answered. "We built Oldden out west. It's since been burned to the ground, but we built it on the plot you picked out."

"Are you sure you're not him?"

"I do share his dislike of repetition."

Syan bared her teeth. "Mind your tone."

Baroona hadn't moved from his position on her other side. Hadn't so much as blinked. Ethos felt another spike in adrenaline— this time, from a glance at his face. Those eyes, those holes in the ground, were horribly wide and showing white, filled with wild and raw refusal. 

Ethos must have looked surprised, because Syan noticed and turned to see. She, too, went still and silent. She, too, stared. But then she spoke, and her voice was splintered. "Baroona," she whispered, like a sound too loud might break him to pieces. "You're alive."

Baroona took a step forward and stopped. Maybe he hadn't meant to. "It killed you," he said. "The ire, it killed you. I attended the ceremony."

"You held a ceremony?"

"Hans did. I— I watched the fire from afar."

"It was a pig," Eadric mused, from the darkness. "I knew he'd just keep poking around if he didn't think she was really gone. The men and I ate off the pyre when he left."

Ethos remembered. He'd dragged her out to Roheim the week before, left her there howling at him in a rage. She'd already been unable to walk. 

Baroona and Syan were staring at him. He asked, "What?"

Syan turned back to Baroona. She thrust an overlong finger at Ethos, arm dripping. "That's really not Rick?" she demanded. "How's that even possible?"

But Baroona's glare was fixed on Ethos. It was a dangerous glare. "A pig?" he echoed. "I attended a pig's departure ceremony?"

Hearing him say it out loud was funny, but smiling didn't seem wise just then. "He'd have stopped me," Eadric muttered, about. "He'd have ruined it."

"It was the only way to end it," Ethos insisted, backing up and slipping a little when Baroona's glare went darker still. "I couldn't kill her. I spared you the need to."

"I'd forgiven you," Baroona said. "You'd brought her back, so I told myself I could put it behind me. I told myself we'd both mourned her twice. But this!"

Chilled, Ethos guardedly climbed to his feet. "Forgiven me?"

"This is your fault. All of it is." Baroona began to advance. "Syan broke down and told you about us," he said. "She confessed. And you killed her for it. And then, pathetic infant that you are, you felt remorse and begged Alma to bring her back." 

Ah. That was right. It had been a hard blow. It had hurt, the betrayal, and Eadric hadn't been good at being hurt back then. Admittedly, he'd reacted badly. He met Syan's eyes; they were flinty, alert. "It was an accident," he heard himself say. "I was angry."

"And Alma was rough about it because she knew," Baroona continued. "Because of you. Because you begged her. And you couldn't handle the result. You were disgusted."

Syan's disfigured beauty had killed something in him. But seeing her now… maybe he'd seen too much. Maybe he'd deadened. Or maybe it was the younger part of him, the part that accepted everything as it was. The animal part that didn't mind ugliness. She seemed quite beautiful, watching on.

Baroona bristled at the silence. The blade trembled at his side. "Say something!"

Eadric rarely made friends with anyone that he didn't think he could use, and Baroona had always been useful in that he was even-tempered and highly skilled. Eadric had known early on that having him as an ally would work in his favor eventually— and it had. Many, many times over, it had.

But, like Syan, Eadric saw him now through a different lens, and without his placid temperament, his skills were much too dangerous to be allowed any sort of freedom. 

"You made me think the ire killed her," Baroona snarled. "There was sincerity in your eyes, and despair. And I forgave you. Again."

"Yes, you did," Eadric agreed. "And you saved my life a few times in the war. The world thanks you." He stooped to retrieve his sword. "But I don't need saving anymore, Baroona. Let's say we wrap this up and bury it somewhere."