The Broken Kingdoms (29 page)

No. I no longer cared what happened to me. Let them kill me, as long as they dealt with Madding’s killers, too.

But before I could say the words, Dump suddenly caught his breath and whirled away from me, his image flaring brighter as he summoned his magic. There was a scream in the distance, and then I heard small feet come pelting around a pile of rubbish, scrabbling once as they trotted along what sounded like a loose board.

“Dump!” a young girl cried. “People in the yard! Rexy told ’em to get the hells out and they hit him! He’s bleedin’!”

Abruptly I was jostled as Dump shoved the girl into the little alcove with me and Shiny. “Stay there,” he commanded. “I’ll go take care of ’em.”

I squirmed around the girl. There wasn’t much room for her, but she was small. I pushed at her; she was all lanky bones and ragged clothes. “Lord Dump, be careful! The scrivener I told you about, his magic—”

Dump made a sound of annoyance and vanished.

“Damn it!” I pounded my good fist into Shiny’s unresponsive leg. If Dateh was among the Lights who had come looking for me, or if they had another arrowhead made from demons’ blood…

“Hey,” said the girl, annoyed. “Shove the dead guy, not me.”

Dead, dead, uselessly dead. I couldn’t say he hadn’t warned me, though; this was why he’d wanted me stronger before we attempted the escape. So that I could leave him behind? For a moment, the possibility turned in my thoughts. If the Lights didn’t find him, Shiny would return to life and make his own way in the city, however he’d done it before meeting me. If they did find him… Well, perhaps he would slow them down enough for me to escape.

Even as I thought it, though, I knew I couldn’t do it. As much as I wanted to hate Shiny for his self-absorption and his temper and his miserable personality, he had loved Madding, too. For that alone, he deserved some loyalty.

In the meantime, I needed help. I couldn’t count on Dump returning. I had no way to reach mortal aid. If I could summon another godling to help, or better still…

My first thought was so repellent that I actually had trouble considering it. I forced myself to do so, anyhow, because Shiny had said it himself: there was one god who would want to deal with his children’s killers. Yet I also knew from my people’s history that Lord Nahadoth would not stop there. He might decide to wipe out the Lights by wiping out the entire city of Shadow, or perhaps the whole world. He was already angry, and we were nothing to him—worse than nothing. His betrayers and tormentors. It would probably please him to see us all die.

The Gray Lady, then. She had been mortal and still showed some concern for mortalkind. Yet how could I reach her? I wasn’t a pilgrim, though I had exploited them for years. To pray to a god—to get a god’s attention—one had to thoroughly understand that god’s nature. I didn’t even know the Lady’s real name. The same went for nearly all of the godlings I could think of, including Lady Nemmer. I didn’t know enough about any of them.

Then an idea came to me. I swallowed, my hands suddenly clammy. There was one godling whose nature was simple enough, terrible enough, that any mortal could summon her. Though the Maelstrom knew I didn’t want to.

“Move,” I said to the girl. Muttering, she slipped out, and I crawled one-handed out into the open. The girl started to crawl back in, but I caught her bony leg. “Wait. Is there anything around here like a stick? Something at least this long.” I started to lift both arms, then gasped as the muscles of my bad arm cramped agonizingly. I finally approximated the gesture with my good arm. If I had to flee, I would need some means of finding my way.

The girl said nothing, probably glaring at me for a second or two; then she slipped out. I waited, tense, hearing the sounds of battle in the distance—adult shouts, children’s screams, debris crashing and splintering. Disturbingly close. That the fight had lasted this long with a godling involved meant there were either a lot of Lights, or Dateh had already gotten him.

The girl came back, pressing something into my hand. I felt it and smiled: a broomstick. Broken off and jagged at one end, but otherwise perfect.

Now came the hard part. I knelt and bowed my head, taking a deep breath to settle my thoughts. Then I reached inside myself, trying to find one feeling amid the morass. One singular, driving need. One hunger.

“Lil,” I whispered. “Lady Lil, please hear me.”

Silence. I fixed my thoughts upon her, framed her in my mind: not her appearance, but the feel of her presence, that looming sense of so many things held in precarious containment. The scent of her, spoiling meat and bad breath. The sound of her whirring, unstoppable teeth. What did it feel like to want as she did, constantly? How did it feel to crave something so powerfully that you could taste it?

Perhaps a little like the way I felt, knowing Madding was lost to me forever.

I clenched my hand around the broomstick as my heart flooded with emotion. I planted the jagged end of it in the dirt and fought the urge to weep, to scream. I wanted him back. I wanted his killers dead. I could not have the former—but the latter was within my grasp, if I could only find someone to help me. Justice was so close I could taste it.

“Come to me, Lil!” I cried, no longer caring if any Lights roving the junkyard heard me. “Come, darkness damn you! I have a feast even you should like the taste of!”

And she appeared, crouching in front of me with her gold hair tangled around her shoulders, her madness-flecked eyes sharp and wary.

“Where?” Lil asked. “What feast?”

I smiled fiercely, flashing my own sharp teeth. “In my soul, Lil. Can you taste it?”

She regarded me for a long moment, her expression shifting from dubious to gradual amazement. “Yes,” she said at last. “Oh, yes. Lovely.” Her eyes fluttered shut, and she lifted her head, opening her mouth slightly to taste the air. “Such longing in you, for so many things. Delicious.” She opened her eyes and frowned in puzzlement. “You were not so tasty before. What has happened?”

“Many things, Lady Lil. Terrible things, which is why I called you. Will you help me?”

She smiled. “No one has prayed to me for centuries. Will you do it again, mortal girl?”

She was like a bauble-beetle, scuttling after any shiny thing. “Will you help me, if I do?”

“Hey,” said the girl behind me. “Who’s that?”

Lil’s gaze settled on her, suddenly avid. “I’ll help you,” she said to me, “if you give me something.”

My lip curled, but I fought back disgust. “I’ll give you anything that is mine to give, Lady. But that child is Lord Dump’s.”

Lil sighed. “Never liked him. No one wants his junk, but he doesn’t share.” Sulky, she flicked a fingertip at something I couldn’t see on the ground.

I reached out and gripped her hand, making her focus on me again. “I’ve learned who’s been killing your siblings, Lady Lil. They’re hunting me now, and they may catch me soon.”

She stared at my hand on hers in surprise, then at me. “I don’t care about any of that,” she said.

Damnation! Why did I have to be plagued by crazy godlings? Were the sane ones avoiding me? “There are others who do,” I said. “Nemmer—”

“Oh, I like her.” Lil brightened. “She gives me any bodies her people want to get rid of.”

I forgot what I’d meant to say for a moment, then shook it off. “If you tell her this,” I said, gambling, “I’m sure she’ll give you more bodies.” There would be many dead New Lights by the time this business was done, I hoped.

“Maybe,” she said, suddenly calculating, “but what will you give me to go to her?”

Startled, I tried to think. I had no food on hand, nothing else of value. But I could not escape the feeling that Lil knew what she wanted of me; she just wanted me to say it first.

Humility, then. I had prayed to her, made her my goddess in a way. It was her right to demand an offering. I put my good hand on the ground and bowed my head. “Tell me what you want of me.”

“Your arm,” she said, too quickly. “It’s useless now, worse than useless. It may never heal right. Let me have it.”

Ah, of course. I looked at the arm dangling at my side. There was a swollen, hot-to-the-touch knot in the upper arm that probably meant a bad break, though fortunately it hadn’t come through the skin. I had heard of people dying from such things, their blood poisoned by bits of bone, or infection and fever setting in.

It wasn’t the arm I preferred to use; I was left-handed. And I had already decided that I would not need it for much longer.

I took a deep breath. “I can’t be incapacitated,” I said softly. “I need to… to still be able to run.”

“I can do it so quickly that you’ll feel no pain,” Lil said, leaning forward in her eagerness. I smelled it again, that fetid whiff of breath from her real mouth, not the false one she was using to coax me. Carrion. But she preferred fresh meat. “Burn the end so it won’t bleed. You’ll hardly miss it.”

I opened my mouth to say yes.

“No,” snapped Shiny, startling us both. Leaning on one arm, I nearly fell as I tried to whirl around. I could see him; the magic of his resurrection was still bright.

Dump’s girl yelped and scuttled away from us. “You was dead! What the demonshit is this?”

“Her flesh is hers to bargain with!” Lil said, her fists clenching in thwarted anger. “You have no right to forbid me!”

“I think even you would find her flesh disagreeable, Lil.” I heard wood rattle and dust grit as he climbed out of the alcove. “Or do you mean to kill another of my children, Oree?”

I flinched. My demon blood. I had forgotten. But before I could explain to Lil, another voice spoke that chilled every drop of poison in my veins.

“There you are. I knew your companion would be alive, Lady Oree, but I’m surprised—and pleased—to see you in the same condition.”

Above and behind Lil: one of the tiny, marble-sized portals that Dateh used for spying. I had not noticed it, not with Lil in front of me as a distraction. Too late I realized the sounds of battle in the distance had faded into silence.

Lil turned and stood, cocking her head from one side to the other, birdlike. I scrambled to my feet, leaning heavily on the broomstick for balance against my deadweight arm. To the girl, wherever she was, I hissed, “Run!”

“Now, Lady Oree.” Dateh’s voice was chiding, reasonable, despite the strangeness of it issuing from the tiny hole. “We both know there’s no point in your resisting. I see that you’re injured. Must I risk hurting you further by taking you into my Empty? Or will you come quietly?”

From my left, a startled cry. The girl. She had run—and been caught by the people converging on us from that direction. Many sets of feet, ten or twelve. There were others moving around the other end of the junkyard row. The New Lights had come.

“There’s no need for you to take that child,” I said, trying to keep my voice from shaking. So close! We had almost done it. “Can’t you let her go?”

“She’s a witness, unfortunately. Don’t worry; we take care of children. She won’t be mistreated, so long as she joins us.”

“Dump!” shouted the girl, who was apparently struggling against her captors. “Dump, help!”

Dump did not appear. My heart sank.

“You’re the one!” Lil said, suddenly brightening. “I tasted your ambition weeks ago and warned Oree Shoth to beware of you. I knew if I stayed near her, I might meet you.” She beamed like a proud mother. “I am Lil.”

“Lil.” I gripped the broomstick. “He has powerful magic. He’s already killed several godlings, and”—I fought back a shudder of revulsion, which might’ve been enough to touch off my nausea again—“and eaten them. I don’t want to see you join them.”

Lil looked at me, startled. “What?”

Shiny’s hand gripped my good shoulder; I felt him move in front of me.

“I don’t want you anymore,” Dateh said, cold now. To Shiny. “You’re useless, whatever you are. But I have no qualms about going through you to get to her, so step aside.”

Lil was still staring at me. “What do you mean, eaten them?”

My eyes welled with tears of grief and frustration. “He cuts out their hearts and eats them. He’s been doing that to all the missing ones. Gods know how many by now.”

“Lady Oree,” Dateh said, his voice tight with anger. All at once, the hole doubled in size, tearing the air as it grew. It drifted toward us, a warning. There was no suction—yet.

“You didn’t say they were being eaten. You should have said that in the first place,” Lil said, looking annoyed. Then she turned on Dateh’s hole, and her expression darkened. “It is bad, very bad, for a mortal to eat one of us.”

I felt the suction the instant it began. It was gentler than that night in front of Madding’s, but still enough to stagger me. In front of me, Shiny grunted and set his feet, his power rising, but it dragged him forward, anyway—

Lil shoved both of us roughly aside, stepping in front of the hole.

The suction increased sharply, to full force. Shiny and I had both fallen to the ground; I was sprawled and half sensible, as the fall had jarred both my head and my broken arm. Through a haze, I saw Lil, her legs braced, her gown whipping about her scrawny form, her long yellow hair tangling in the wind. The hole was huge now, nearly as big as her body, yet somehow it had not claimed her.

She lifted her head. I was behind her, but I knew the instant her mouth lengthened, without seeing it.

“Greedy mortal boy.” Lil’s voice was everywhere, echoing, shrill with delight. “Do you really think that will work on me?”

She spread her arms wide, blazing with golden power. I heard the buzz and whir of her teeth, so loud that it made my bones rattle and my spine vibrate, so powerful that even the earth shivered beneath me. The whir rose to a scream as she lunged at the portal—and tried to eat it. Sparks of pure magic shot past us, each one burning where it landed. A concussion of force flattened me even more and shattered the piles of junk around us. I heard wood splintering, debris tumbling, the Lights screaming, and Lil laughing like the insane monster she was.

And then Shiny had my good arm, hauling me up. We ran, him half dragging me because my legs would not work and I kept trying to vomit. Finally he scooped me into his arms and ran, as behind us the junkyard erupted in earthquakes and chaos and flames.