Unbinding (34 page)

What do gods want?

Worship.

Nowadays you heard a lot more about the love of God than the fear of God, but that hadn’t always been true. Love was one approach to worship, but fear worked, too. Dyffaya wanted—needed—people to worship him, and fear was faster and easier to evoke than love. He’d arranged Stockman’s arrest because she made a great symbol. Unit agents had one hell of a lot of authority. They’d been given it right after the Turning, when everyone was scared shitless, and Congress had gone overboard. Rumor said that a single Unit agent could call in the Army if necessary. As far as Kai knew none of them ever had, so maybe that wasn’t true, but everyone knew they had tremendous authority. Plus everyone knew that Unit agents were Gifted. They knew how to use magic in a world where, up until the Turning, some people had decided magic didn’t exist.

Stockman stood for everything the government was doing or could do to oppose Dyffaya. And depending on which story you believed, he’d either corrupted her or he’d swept her out of his way. Either way, he’d proved his power.

What she needed to do was serve Dyffaya up with a big, public defeat. Maybe the way to do that was to stop him from using his followers for . . . well, whatever he had in mind. She might not know what that was, but he’d needed them out of jail for it, hadn’t he? Which meant she needed to get them back in jail, which meant she’d damn well better Find them.

Kai took a slow, careful breath. Another . . . This time she slid into trance easily. Moments later, she’d imprinted the charm with the pattern. It didn’t light up. That would be too easy. They’d have to get within three miles for it to start cueing her which direction to take. But it was warm, which meant it was active.

When she left the restroom, José was leaning against the wall. Grinning.

She looked at him, eyebrows raised. “What?”

“I’ll let him tell you,” he said, straightening.

Ackleford wasn’t grinning. For once he wasn’t scowling, either. He looked . . . horrified.

“What is it?”

“That bastard. He’s batshit nuts, you know that?”

“Dyffaya?”

He gave her a disgusted look. “Ruben Brooks. The man’s insane. I don’t know how the hell he talked me into it.”

“Talked you into what?”

“He had this feeling. A strong feeling, he said. If Dyffaya wants his Unit agent where she can’t act, then it’s real important for Brooks to have another Unit agent in place who can.”

“That makes sense. In fact, I was just thinking a lot the same thing.”

He glowered at her and shoved to his feet.

“The special agent is having trouble saying it out loud,” José said. “I’ll help. Brooks just made Ackleford a Unit Twelve agent.”

“Temporarily,” Ackleford said, looking like the world had come to an end. “It’s just temporary. Goddamn it. I
hate
this magic shit.”

B
OREDOM
is a prisoner’s biggest enemy. Boredom added to the profound loss of control from imprisonment can lead to lethargy and depression. Or it can propel someone in the opposite direction—to action for action’s sake, anything to break the monotony, however pointless or rash.

Nathan knew this. He was patient by nature, and he’d been on long hunts before. This one had only lasted twenty-five days, according to his personal time. It would either be over soon, or it would last a very long time.

That’s why he was running.

He’d explored everything within ten miles of their clearing in the days spent waiting for Benedict to heal. He wasn’t doing anything so productive now. He’d run for miles and was heading back now, following a dry creek bed with high banks through the black pillars of the trees, running for the sake of motion. Running because he couldn’t be still. Pointless, maybe, but not rash. He hadn’t been driven to that, though he might have been, had his isolation continued. Being able to sign with Cullen had made a huge difference.

Until today. Today, when Dyffaya had popped in right after “breakfast”—one of the two meals that appeared every day—his mood manic, his comments teasing and elliptical. Nathan gathered the god had something big planned for Earth very soon. Some kind of chaos event, yes—Dyffaya said more guests would be arriving soon—but bigger somehow. Grander. Something that mattered greatly to the god, that moved him closer to some dearly held goal. And Nathan couldn’t do a damn thing about it.

But it was tomorrow, not today, that had driven him away from their camp. Tomorrow, when he and Benedict would fight again . . . for the last time.

The problem with running away was that you still had to return. Nathan was on his way back now, uneased and uncertain. He saw three possible outcomes to tomorrow’s battle. His own death. Benedict’s. Or Dyffaya’s.

This time he had to get close. Dyffaya had been damnably careful, but they had to make him forget care this time. Nathan had to get close enough to use Claw—

Something leaped down from the top of the bank right ahead of him. His hand flashed—but he stayed the impulse in time, leaving Claw sheathed in its pocket of elsewhere. “Do you know how close you came to decapitation?” he demanded.

“Edgy, are we?” Cullen Seabourne said. The sorcerer was completely recovered from his near-starvation, though still a few pounds under his original weight. He held a rock in one hand. It was the size of two fists and fairly round. Nathan had found it on one of his explorations of the area.

Nathan took a slow breath, calming himself. “One of us is.”

“Getting yourself pumped up to kill Benedict, or practicing running away?” Cullen said that with a fine sneer—while his hand flashed through another message:
Dyf fucking magic not working.

Spelling everything did make for short, sometimes odd messages. Nathan understood this one well enough, though. “I don’t want to hurt him. You know that.” While he spoke he signed,
more magic sick?

Two bad
,
Cullen signed back.
Three more sick.
“Yeah, right. I just imagined that was your blade that went through his lung.”

“Did you come out just to give me a hard time?”
Mary?
he signed.

“I was bored. Don’t be so bloody sensitive.” Cullen signed a quick
no
and tossed the rock at him. “You up for a game?”

Nathan caught it. “I suppose.”
He tossed it back, then signed,
Dyf planning big event. More guests soon.
He was slower than Cullen; it took a while to get all that spelled. While he did, Cullen tossed the rock from hand to hand, offering ludicrous bets on the outcome of their upcoming game. Giving a reason for the pause.

“You can go first.” Cullen tossed the rock back.

Nathan caught it. “Let’s go, then.”

They headed down the creek bed toward the clearing, exchanging a comment now and then, but not signing. Too hard to watch each other one’s hands when they were walking.

For the past two weeks, over Nathan’s and Benedict’s objections, Cullen had been sneaking off to watch Dyffaya play with his beguiled “guests.” He’d gotten it into his head that the god was spending too much of his time at sex, that it had to be a cover for or a means to something else. He’d been convinced that the god lacked the Sight and wouldn’t spot him.

He’d been right. It remained a crazy, dangerous thing to do, but he’d been right. The god hadn’t spotted Cullen, and Cullen had clearly Seen that Dyffaya was performing some kind of body magic during sex.

Sex magic had been around for thousands of years, but for pretty basic stuff—as a way to generate, share, or occasionally steal power. It could be combined with other types of magic, but this was the first Nathan had heard of using it in conjunction with body magic. According to Cullen, Dyffaya was using copulation to make complex and delicate changes in his sexual partners’ bodies. Subsequent spying had convinced Cullen that Dyffaya was trying to keep his beguiled guests from succumbing to magic sickness. He’d tried to explain why he thought this, but the subject was too technical and complicated to be conveyed well through short, spelled-out conversations.

If that was the god’s goal, he was failing. One of the beguiled people had already died; seven of the others had been showing symptoms. Now Cullen said two of them were in bad shape and three more were sick . . . which meant all of them had magic sickness.

All but the last one to arrive, that is. That woman had showed up the night Nathan learned who Dyffaya’s ally was. The god had to grab people in pairs, and she’d been the unfortunate extra person snatched so Dyffaya could bring his confederate here for a little sex and planning.

Dyffaya didn’t allow them to speak with their audience between fights, and this woman was slotted to be part of the audience, whether she liked it or not. But Cullen had seen her on his spying trips. She was a tall woman in her mid-fifties, with short brown hair. He’d overheard her telling one of the others her name. Mary. Mary Boyd.

The interesting thing about Mary was that Dyffaya hadn’t beguiled her. Cullen thought, based on overheard conversations, that he hadn’t fucked her, either. Maybe she was the control. While the god experimented on the others, he could observe her and see if she sickened faster or slower.

Or maybe he just wasn’t sexually interested in her. Who could say?

When they reached the clearing, Benedict was running through a series of exercises. He spared them a quick glance, but didn’t speak. Even if he only addressed Cullen it might be construed as communicating with Nathan, and they were scrupulous about appearing to observe the restriction. Appearances matter when you’re trying to deceive a god.

Cullen and Nathan went to the far end of the clearing, where their makeshift pins waited. The pins were eight lengths of wood jammed in the ground. On one of his exploration trips, Nathan had found a long, narrow limb from one of the black trees. Breaking it into pieces had been difficult, but they’d managed.

“You can go first,” Cullen said, confirming what Nathan had suspected when he caught the rock. Cullen had more to say and wanted his hands free. They often used the game to disguise a signed conversation.

Their version bore little resemblance to real lawn bowling. They had to throw, not roll, the “ball.” It was almost impossible to knock down more than one pin at a time, so the idea was to knock one down with each throw; you kept throwing as long as you knocked down a pin. Miss, and it was the other guy’s turn. You got a point for knocking down all eight pins on the same turn, and game was six points. Since the rock was only fairly round, pitching it accurately was tricky, and it took a solid hit to knock a pin all the way down. A game could last for hours, if they wanted it to.

Cullen moved down near the pins. One of their rules was that the person who wasn’t pitching retrieved the rock. This placed him where the other could easily watch him signing. Nathan made a show of warming up his arm.

Dyf caught me last night,
Cullen signed.

Nathan scowled at the rock in his hand. Shifted his grip slightly. Cullen was here, alive and not missing any limbs, so some of the worst consequences of being caught hadn’t occurred. Nathan swung the heavy rock back and threw.

One pin down. He made the sign for a question.

Cullen sauntered over to retrieve the rock.
Dyf laugh. Funny I watch won’t do.

Not hurt?
Nathan signed.

Hurt no damage,
Cullen signed on his way to Nathan.

One type of body magic caused excruciating pain without damaging the body. Nathan didn’t let himself grimace or otherwise show his sympathy.
Dyf touch to hurt?

Cullen nodded.

All elves possessed some body magic and some ability to use illusion, but the two Gifts did not arrive in equal balance. Some were innately better at illusion, others at body magic. Before he became a god, Dyffaya had been an adept. Like most adepts, he’d been able to use both Gifts very well—but he’d been a true master at illusion, not body magic.

The question on their minds had been whether Dyffaya needed to touch people to use body magic. Some adepts didn’t, and Dyffaya didn’t even have a normal body. Yet he seemed to need to use his version of a body when performing body magic, didn’t he? Sex was a deep way of touching another body.

Now Cullen said that the god had touched him to cause pain. It wasn’t proof that he had to touch, but . . .
How you spotted?

Mary wandering saw me.

Mary Boyd had wandered away from the site where Dyffaya kept his guests?
Mary okay?

Punish Mary hurt no damage.

Touch Mary to hurt?

Yes.
Cullen handed the rock over to Nathan. “Lucky pitch.” And signed rapidly,
Dyf no Sight. Touch to hurt. We try it yes?

Nathan’s heart beat a little faster. What Cullen had proposed was risky, very risky, but . . .
tomorrow yes,
he signed back.

“See if you can get lucky again,” Cullen said. His voice was bland, his movements normal, and his eyes gleamed with wild amusement. “You’re going to need it.”

That was likely true, in a perverse way. Nathan had just agreed to let Cullen stop his heart in the middle of tomorrow’s fight . . . if he could. That’s where their wishing turned perverse. The spell only worked for Cullen half the time. With luck, this would be one of the times it did.