Hearts of Chaos Read online

  “I make my own fate, thank you,” Corbette snarled. “Blaming destiny is just a pretty way of laying blame at someone else’s feet.”

  “Like mine?”

  Corbette studied his father’s face. The shadows carved deep furrows in the tan skin, tracing his eyes and mouth not in lines of laughter, but of grief. Was this the real Halian? The laughter just a mask for the pain? His father would have to be one hell of an actor. “And Mother’s death? You still think the gods to blame for her death?”

  Halian threw his glass into the fire. The liquid ignited, shooting a ripple of sparks up to the smoke hole. He stood in one smooth movement. “You don’t know anything about love.”

  “You didn’t even mourn her!”

  “I grieved for your mother every day of my miserable life. But I had you kids. I had people who depended on me—”

  “You gave up our land to the soul-suckers!”

  “Land! Land, boy, is nothing but dirt and history. Not even a weed will grow in earth untouched by love. I’m not going to argue with you about the past. What’s done is done. Move on. Leave the past to the dead. The present is for the living.”

  Anger rushed through Corbette’s veins. He rose too, feet planted. The smoky air of the lodge filled his lungs like the water of the river. He was drowning again. “Well, you failed.”

  Halian took a deep breath. It sounded like the wind rattling through the mountain pass. He argued with a man long dead. There was little but smoke and shadows.

  “Forget it.” Corbette reached his hand out to Lucia. “Let’s go. The Enkidu is putting miles between us as we waste time here.”

  “No.” Lucia settled back against the bolster. Despite the tension simmering in the air, the heat of the fire warmed the blanket around her shoulders. She was simply too tired to get up again. “If you two are going to keep snapping at each other, I’m long overdue for a nap. Please wake me when it’s over. I’m not going back in the mud just so you don’t have to talk to him.” She felt cozy and safe for the first time in what seemed like ages. Outside the little house might be a bleak winter of mud, but inside the light flickered off the shiny wood posts and glittered on the beads and shells of the totem masks. She clutched the hot mug between her fingers and let it warm the damp from her soul.

  “The lady has a point.” Corbette’s father sat, his cheeks spotted with color. “Your mother would have—”

  “Don’t bring her into this,” Corbette said.

  “Sit, Emory.” Halian pulled out his flask. He unscrewed the cap, but paused with the steel at the edge of his lips. Slowly, he lowered it and poured the rest into the fire. The flames jumped. “I’m sorry.”

  Corbette froze like a bit of mountain granite.

  “Yeah, you heard me right.” Halian took a deep sigh. “Enkidu, eh? Sit down and tell me the whole story. I’ve got sins to atone for, and I’m done nursing my pain alone in this Lady-forsaken lodge.”

  Corbette lowered himself to the floor. He ran a hand over his face. She’d never seen him make such an unconscious, human gesture. Everything about the Raven Lord had always been meticulous and planned. Halian was nothing like she’d expected. Charming where Corbette was intimidating. Smiles where Corbette was stern eyebrows and severe lines. Halian was a rogue and a rambler, the trickster Raven to Corbette’s chief. It was like the twin halves of the Raven totem had split to make two very different, very intriguing men.

  “When you died,” Corbette told his father, “Norgard burned Seattle to the ground. Then he came after the rest of us.”

  “Alice?”

  “She fled with her Drekar lover when she found out you died. She escaped the bloodshed.”

  “The others?”

  “They scattered. You left no structure, no clear path for a new leader to take your place. We had no protocols for war. No emergency plans to care for the wounded and vulnerable. It was every Kivati for himself, easy for Norgard to pick off.”

  “The totem chiefs—”

  “Were loyal to their own kind only. The Wolves ran to Canada. The Cougars retreated to the peninsula and the mountains. Only the Thunderbirds came together to protect those totems not strong enough to fight. Will and I fell back to Queen Anne. We held it, but we lost the lands to the north and south.” Corbette’s gaze dropped to the ground. His hands curled and uncurled. There was a restless energy about him. The firelight etched his face in sorrow, each line a tick of a life he’d been forced to take, a life taken from him.

  Lucia had never heard the full story of the Great Seattle Fire and the beginning of the Drekar–Kivati war told with such raw despair. Kivati easily lived a few centuries to old age, but they died just as easily as humans did to a Drekar sniper or bomb. She tried to count the number of Kivati she knew who had witnessed the disaster of the fire. She knew Corbette had saved the Kivati, but she’d never given much thought to the pain he’d gone through. Things started to click in place like gears once oiled. Corbette’s fastidiousness, his perfectionism, his dedication to the Kivati. The brief haunted look he’d get every once in a while that would confuse her. So much began to make sense. The Raven Lord, intimidating, untouchable, seemed to shift off like a mask being removed. And though the man left behind was just as dominant, just as powerful, he was even more intriguing than before.

  “When the smoke cleared, Norgard started building his city not a Thunderbolt’s strike to the north. He dismissed us—scattered, leaderless, and terror-stricken.”

  “He didn’t know you very well,” Halian said.

  “I was fourteen.”

  “Even at fourteen, anyone with half a brain could see you’d make one hell of a foe. I did.” Halian smiled ruefully. “Hell, you scared me, and I had to live with you.”

  Corbette’s jaw tightened.

  “But you brought them back, didn’t you?” Halian asked.

  “Will and I found those scattered and convinced them to return with the promise of safety. I’ve held that hill for a century. Kept that promise. Held the Drekar off and slowly won back some of our lost territory. Built up wealth and resources and political connections. Leadership”—Corbette looked straight at his father—“that’s worth a damn.”

  “Ah, boy. Sharp a tongue as ever. But at what price? You never had compassion. Did everything the opposite of me, huh? Right all my wrongs? But where’d it lead you?” Halian waved a hand around him to the dim lodge and the softly shining masks. “The Land of the Dead, same as me. At least I’ve some memories to keep me warm on these endless cold nights. You don’t look like you’ve found a single bit of softness in the long years since I last saw you. Still just as arrogant. Still angry as a young bull.”

  Whatever warmth Corbette had held when he’d looked at Lucia washed out of his face. She hadn’t realized it had been there until it was gone, but the blackness that suffused his irises almost mirrored the dead man across the fire. Her heart broke for him, for the boy he’d been. The man he’d become had trained himself to feel nothing. He stood. “And what memories would those be? Drinking the night and day away? Playing cards while the human settlers slowly encroached on the Sacred Territories? You know what I see when I look at you?”

  Lucia stood too. Both men startled, as if they’d forgotten she was there. She wished she had some gum to pop. Diffusing tensions had always been her gift, even if it meant drawing ire her way. A distraction usually worked wonders. She stretched up her arms and gave a big sigh. “All right. I feel better after that little rest. Halian, thanks for the hospitality. My feet feel good as new.” The Lady preserve her if she lied through her teeth.

  Halian rose too, the anger vanished, the charm back on full force. “Forgive me, gentle lady. We’ve been acting like a couple of young buffalos. Please, sit. Share more tea with me. Tell me the rest of the story from your own lovely lips.”

  She could feel Corbette vibrating at her elbow. She was sure that if he could still touch the Aether he’d be feathered by now, soaring free. There was nothing like the ai
r beneath one’s wings to find a way out from beneath the rain shadow. But landlocked, he could do nothing but hold the pain inside him. As much as she liked Halian, the barb in his tongue when he spoke to Corbette made her angry. Though she’d joked Corbette needed to get off his high horse, she never wanted to see that shame in his eyes. She could see him freeze up as every word from Halian’s lips tightened the tourniquet around his emotions.

  She suddenly saw the real Corbette. He had always been handsome, wise, and strong. Now she saw his complexity, vulnerability, and passion—something infinitely more devastating than the perfect ruler she’d come to respect. He was a man she could fall hard for.

  Dangerous. She didn’t know what to do with this revelation. “Okay, but let’s make it quick. The clay man is getting ahead of us.” She sat again and pulled the blanket around her shoulders. Stiffly, Corbette sat next to her. He put his hand on her knee again. Did he think she’d tell Halian all his secrets? She didn’t know half of them. “As I understand it, during the Great Fire one of your Spirit Seekers sacrificed himself to save the Gate between worlds. He bought the Kivati time.” She looked to Corbette for confirmation, and he nodded.

  “Cheveyo,” he said. “Norgard had a long wait until he attempted another break of the Gate.”

  “Good man, Cheveyo,” Halian said.

  “Norgard started plotting again after a century. He had found a piece of the Tablet of Destiny on one of his travels and was waiting for the right moment to use it. Last April, at the winter equinox and the Babylonian New Year, he found a descendant of Cheveyo whose blood he planned to use in the opening ceremony.” Lucia was proud her voice didn’t shake as she said the words “blood” and “ceremony.” Gods, it could have been Kayla or her sister or any other woman Norgard might have picked off the street to sacrifice. But it had been her, and it hadn’t been Norgard who held the knife.

  Corbette watched Halian reach out and take Lucia’s hand. “You don’t have to tell me the details. I can see by your face the words that are coming.”

  “In the end, it was one of our own that betrayed us,” Corbette said, the words ripped from his chest. But if Lucia had to share her shame, he couldn’t hold his own truth back. A Kivati, under his watch.

  Halian raised an eyebrow. “Not a Drekar? Why’re you still so hostile then?”

  “Norgard set it up, but a Fox took the Tablet and followed through with his plan.” Corbette’s hand tightened on Lucia’s knee.

  “Todd Rudrick,” she whispered, face white.

  “The Gate between the Land of the Living and the Land of the Dead fell, releasing the demigod Kingu and an army of souls, destroying civilization as we knew it,” Corbette said.

  “Ah. I felt that. The Aether changed suddenly. Wondered what it was,” Halian said. “This land hasn’t been the same since. It’s dying.”

  Lucia’s head came up. “Dying? But it’s the—”

  “Land of the Dead?” Halian laughed lightly. “‘There is no Death, only a Change of Worlds.’ This was once a place of serenity where the dead could find peace. Now it ain’t nothing but a sea of desolation.”

  “It makes sense,” Lucia said, “the wrongness I’ve felt since we arrived. It’s more than a living soul being in the wrong world, more than my feeling wrong for being parted from my totem. The trapped bird souls and cry of the wind over the mud plains haven’t been the welcome I had expected from the Land of the Dead. It’s supposed to be . . . calm. How can the Lady let it be? Why doesn’t She fix it?”

  “Now there’s a question, isn’t it? Maybe She wills it to be so. Maybe She can’t. We all have our place in the Great Web. Our job to do. Our strand to play out.”

  “If you’re going to tell me again that it’s not our place to question the gods’ will, I’ll laugh in your face.” Corbette grit his teeth. “That’s exactly why I make my own fate. I’ve protected the Kivati to the best of my ability, and I will continue to do so with my last breath. I will never sit back and wait for the gods to decide to step in and save us while we suffer and die.”

  “Like your mother?”

  Corbette gave a sharp nod. He didn’t want to talk about her. She’d been sincere where Halian was charming. Quiet, like Corbette, but warm. He remembered so little about her, but her voice like a nightingale still haunted his dreams.

  “How did she die?” Lucia asked.

  “Fever,” Halian said. “But I suppose you’ve got fancy modern medicines that might have saved her, eh?”

  “Probably,” Lucia said.

  Halian sat back, a smile on his face. “And why close our borders to the sins of the modern world, if that means casting out the miracles too? Emory, I’d have done anything to save her. Anything. I loved your mother, and her death almost broke me. The world was a-changin’. The West was opening up, flooding with frontiersmen and ranchers. The forests falling beneath the Scandinavians’ axes to feed the hunger for shingles and ships. Our ways weren’t going to keep in the new century. Adapt or perish, son. That’s always been the rule. The animals know it. The ghosts know it, for if they don’t adapt and move on, they turn wraith.”

  “But at what cost?” Corbette said. “You wouldn’t recognize the land anymore. Whole forests paved over to feed the humans’ material greed. The rivers awash with toxins. The salmon endangered, some extinct.”

  “I’d do it all again if it meant having modern medicine that could save Liluya.”

  Corbette looked away. What was one woman’s life at the price of so many? Was it worth the destruction of the earth or the long slaughter of the Kivati? Was it worth losing their sacred honor? What was the good of saving the whole, if one single life was deemed replaceable? But they spoke of his mother, not any faceless person. He couldn’t untangle his emotions from what must be done for the good of the whole. And besides, she had passed through the Gate long ago. There was no use arguing over it. He glanced at Lucia, her delicate features in the flickering light, her white hair a constant reminder of his failure to save her. If it came down to her or his people, what choice would he make?

  “We should go,” he said.

  She turned to him, and her smile was his undoing. He couldn’t be impartial where she was concerned. “Let me finish the story. I’ll be quick. The Gate closed, but Kingu remained in the Land of the Living. We defeated him, not knowing that the Heart of Tiamat, the Babylonian Goddess of Chaos, still remained. She found a body and the Tablet of Destiny, and rose. She means to birth a third pantheon, resurrect Babylon, and conquer both worlds. She’s created an Enkidu, a clay man, to fetch the Scepter of the Goddess of Death. We need to stop him.”

  “So that’s what he was,” Halian said.

  Corbette straightened. “You’ve seen the clay man?”

  “You just missed him.”

  “Damn it. We need to move.” Corbette rose. “Why didn’t you start with that? He’s pulling ahead while we sit here gabbing.”

  “So you’re bound for the palace,” Halian said. “Where the Queen resides. I can show you part of the way.”

  Corbette hesitated. Old habits died hard; he didn’t want to be in debt to his father.

  “Let me help you. I’ve made mistakes in the past, Emory. I won’t deny it. Let me do this last thing for you.”

  His father looked so hopeful, Corbette felt his defenses weaken. “Yes.”

  Halian’s shoulders eased. “Let me give you a gift, Lady Lucia. Choose a mask from my wall.”

  “That one,” Lucia said. She pointed to the smallest mask, a palm-sized carving of a Hummingbird. Shells dotted the cedar face and thick lines of black and red outlined its half-circle eyes. It was painted green. “It won’t take much room. I can put it in my pocket.”

  “Wise choice.” Halian took the mask from the wall and handed it to her, along with her now-dry cloak. Exchanging the cloak for the blanket, she slipped the delicate mask into her pocket and joined Corbette at the door.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Corbette said.


  Chapter Nine

  Two months had passed since Tiamat seized the high ground of Kivati Hall and conquered the neighboring territories. Some Drekar had joined her; others had been captured and forced to choose. Kai stood before the Drekar’s dragon-bone, jewel-encrusted throne, which Tiamat had installed in the main hall of the Kivati. It was a sacrilege. A dragon throne in Kivati Hall. A Babylonian goddess desecrating his land and his people.

  But he had to pretend, to save himself, to save the Kivati, to draw Tiamat’s attention away from those trying to escape, and to deflect her temper from killing more innocents. She had no care for life. None at all. So he pasted on his bad-boy smirk and played hard to get, cocky and arrogant, which seemed to work for every female, human and goddess alike. To his great disgust, his dick didn’t have a problem pretending to want her gorgeous, lying Drekar tongue and her lush, serpentine body and her warm, inviting, parted thighs. The Lady cut off his head and raised it on a pike.

  “Thunderbird,” Tiamat purred. “Don’t look so sullen.” She crooked her finger at him.

  He went, hating himself for it. The horizontal battle was not how he imagined dying for his people, but it was only a matter of time before his body gave out and she turned on him.

  Tiamat pouted, and he brushed his hand across her breast like he knew she liked. She’d had the hall redecorated in red, resembling the finest temples of Ishtar, silk and pillows scattered across the floors, the stiff-backed chairs replaced with velvet chaises and thick bearskin rugs. Ishtar’s sacred courtesans filled the room with music—harp and violin and cello—and danced for her, a seductive twirl and shimmy of their hips, but he knew in the real Temple of Ishtar there was laughter. This court, lush and hedonistic, was a shadow of the real thing. He might have enjoyed the slap in the face to Corbette’s austerity, but fear wove its way through the Maiden’s melody.