Balger frowned through his beard. “You’ve brought me quite the trophy from your pilgrimage.”
Rogger shrugged. “I knew it would take such compensation to buy back my freedom.”
Tylar stared at the thief, aghast. Had he been betrayed? Surely this was some ruse on Rogger’s part.
Balger folded his arms across his ample chest, fingers entwined on his belly. “Well done indeed. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen such strangeness with my own eyes. A human godling. When you sent that message to expect you in the Middens, I thought it a foolish trick.”
“No trick. I’ve learned better than that.” Rogger rubbed one of the branded tattoos from his interrupted pilgrimage. “It took a bit of time and pain. The overheated tubes of the Fin stung like a salted whip. I needed most of a morning, while the others slept, to tattoo that new message into my flesh.”
Rogger pulled up a sleeve of his starched shirt, fingering a crude, blackened and blistered scrawl on the underside of his arm. “Firebalm is not healing my wounds as quickly as it does your prisoner.” He eyed Tylar as if he were some dried-and-pinned specimen in an alchemist’s lab and shook his sleeve back over his betrayal.
Despite the dawning horror, Tylar had to acknowledge the thief’s cleverness. Of course Balger would know any words burned upon Rogger’s flesh. The god had cursed him with the pilgrimage, requiring the sigils of each realm’s house to be branded into his flesh. A pilgrim’s progress was overseen by the very god who placed the curse, to ensure the pilgrim continued his journey. Rogger had used that blessed link to carve a message upon his own flesh, to deliver word to Balger, knowing the god would sense every brand pressed into him.
Tylar stared at Rogger. Had this been his plan all along? To buy his freedom? Tylar stared hard at the thief. “What have you done with Delia?”
“Safe,” Rogger answered. “It was only a sandbag that tipped the crossbow’s arrow. Meant to stun. As I warned in my message. The same as struck you in the back of the head. No broken bones.” He eyed the bindings. “We can’t have you loosing that daemon of yours.”
Tylar’s head ached. “Where is she? What have you done-?”
“She’s being well treated by the bevy of ladies in Lord Balger’s private wenchworks. Scrubbed, combed, and sweetened. It’s not every night the Hand of one god will lose her maidenhead to another god. She’ll be entertaining Lord Balger this very evening.”
“You bastard…” He struggled in his bonds, but only managed to choke himself against a leather strap securing his neck. He could barely move a finger.
During this discussion, Balger slowly circled Tylar, studying him, rubbing his upper lip with a finger. “No one knows he is here?” the god asked.
“No, milord.”
“He would make for an excellent source of Grace, an ever-flowing font of riches. A golden cow to be milked daily.”
“Milord, what of the call from Tashijan? Is he not to be delivered to them? The reward for his capture-both in gold and goodwill-would surely be substantial.”
A wave dismissed his words. “Such payment would come but once. A living godling would be a treasure without end.”
“But there is also the danger. A chance mishandling, a lowered guard, and it would take but the snap of a finger or toe to unleash the dred ghawl inside him.”
Balger’s eyes both narrowed and brightened. “I would see this daemon, fathom its aspect. Surely there is profit to be found in such a creature.”
“Be wary. I believe, as does the handmaiden who accompanied us, that this dred ghawl somehow maintains this font of Grace. For its own preservation in a man’s form. A cocoon of Grace inside a cage of bone.”
Through his anger, words echoed in Tylar’s head: I am naethryn.
Balger leaned closer. “I’ll have my alchemists study his body from crown to toe, from mouth to arse.” The god reached across Tylar’s bare chest. He splayed his hand above the blackened print atop Tylar’s heart, hovering, matching his fingers to Meeryn’s.
Tylar smelled the fire flaming from the god’s pores.
It was said that a god’s aspect reflected his or her character. Gods of loam were as patient as a budding seed, as solid as rock and hard-packed soil, while gods of the air were aloof and farseeing, ethereal in mind and grace. Gods of water, like Meeryn and Fyla, varied the most, fickle in temperament and spirits, as changeable as water itself: solid ice, flowing water, misty vapor. Then there were the fire gods, who were as quick to anger as a lick of flame, as volatile as a woodland blaze, as passionate as the heated embrace of lovers. They were the best and the worst of all the gods.
And Lord Balger smoldered among the worst of them.
He lowered his hand to Tylar’s chest. Tylar remembered the burning touch of the god’s finger a moment ago, the sear of flesh. The smoke of Tylar’s charred skin still tinged the air.
Balger pressed his hand down atop Meeryn’s palm print.
Tylar winced but found no burn.
Instead, it was Balger who gasped. The god’s fingers vanished into the black print as if Tylar’s flesh were mere shadow. He probed farther, wrist deep, into Tylar’s chest.
Rogger moved closer. The thief, like Tylar, had examined Meeryn’s palm print. The print had been no more than a tattoo on his flesh.
“I think you should be wary, milord,” Rogger intoned.
Balger’s brow pinched. “What is this strangeness here?”
His gaze found Tylar’s. He opened his mouth to question further, but then suddenly the god jerked like a fish on a line. A cry burst from the Balger’s lips, spittle flying, landing like molten wax on Tylar’s skin.
Balger fell backward and yanked his hand from the shadowy pit in Tylar’s being. Only his hand did not reappear. The stump of his wrist sprayed blood in a fountain of fire, pumping with the beat of the god’s panicked heart.
Balger roared, a noise that threatened to bring the roof down atop them. Alarm spread among the guards beyond the cell door.
Tylar writhed in his bonds. His skin burned from the splashes of blood. A crimson pool of fiery humour poured down his breastbone and vanished into the inky blackness over his heart, as if down a stone well. He felt the Grace flowing into him as warm as mulled ale. The daemon inside swelled, pressing against his rib cage, threatening to shatter through.
There was no doubt what had bitten off the god’s hand.
The dred ghawl.
Balger roared back to his feet. He cradled his severed wrist as guards swooped into the room like a flock of black crows, capes billowing, swords ready.
Balger crossed back to Tylar, destruction in his eyes.
Rogger attempted to step in the god’s path, but Balger shoved the thief aside.
The god leaned over Tylar, baring his mutilation. Already the blood had stopped flowing as the wounded wrist healed with a speed of a god. The hand, too, would grow back in the thickness of time. But for now, Balger’s entire bearing flamed with fury. His skin smoked with Grace, his eyes flashed with fire, his breath seared with the winds of a pyre.
A bellow of rage formed words. “You think to kill me, Godslayer!”
Balger drew a dagger and wiped its blade across his anger-damp brow. Steel, blessed now by the god’s fiery sweat, turned as ruddy as a branding iron. Balger touched the tip of the knife to his seeping wound, gracing it with his own blood. The god’s eyes narrowed as he cast a specific blessing. The blade went white-hot, more flame than substance.
“A bale dagger,” Balger said, holding up his handiwork.
Tylar struggled in his bonds, sensing his doom.
“Milord! No!” Rogger struggled to elbow through two guards.
Balger raised the dagger high, then plunged it into Tylar’s belly.
Searing pain shattered outward.
Balger dragged the knife up from groin to rib cage, gutting him.
Tylar cried out, but agony throttled him, turning wail into gurgle. His body arched off the rack, on shoulders and heels, writhing as the room went black. His innards blazed with molten fire.