Hearts of Chaos Read online

  Using the pointed end of the bone blade, she carved a rune into her left palm. A stream of crimson flowed down her wrist. The pain was a distant hum; she was too focused on calling the Aether to fill her rune to notice it. As she finished the last line, Aether rushed her. Her palm became a beacon. She focused the Aether and then directed it in a killing beam toward the clay man. The stream hit him like a fire hose and shot him ten feet back against the far wall. He screamed as the Aether pinned him.

  “Tiamat took your life in exchange for your service,” Lucia said. “She made you immortal, but you are locked in unending slavery.” She held her bloody palm higher. Red dripped from her elbow. “I offer this sacrifice, blood of the Drekar and Kivati, to undo the evil that was done to you. Your soul is free to move on.”

  The red drained from the Enkidu’s skin, leaving a corpse behind. She lowered the stream of Aether, and the body collapsed to the floor. A sparkling cloud of soul light rose from it and was washed away by the river of Aether flowing about the room.

  Tiamat shrieked. One moment she was ordering the lashing of an overseer who’d failed to deliver his section of hanging gardens on time, the next she dropped her head back and screamed. The sound broke a nearby window. Kai thought his eardrums would be next.

  “That bitch!” Tiamat roared. She fell against a giant pillar of stone, slamming her growing belly into it.

  “Careful of the baby!” Kai said.

  She pushed him away. “Stop hovering like a damn mother hen. I’ve birthed two pantheons—ahhhgg.” Her face drained of color, and she clutched her midsection. “Make it stop!”

  “You weren’t in this body before,” Kai said. He slung his arm under her shoulders and helped her up. “You need to lie down.” Traitor, he could hear his dead brother’s voice in his head now. It would be a mercy to all of them if she died in childbirth. He’d tried to think of the child as a monster, but it was still his. He’d started this charade to save his people, but now he stayed just to watch over one small life. A life that shouldn’t be loosed on the world. Tiamat’s spawn.

  It was still half his.

  He helped Tiamat past the prostrate overseer, a Drekar named Grettir who’d certainly deserved the punishment she’d been about to give him—not for his project lateness, but for working his slaves to death. Kai forced himself to pass the helpless humans, hate in their eyes as Tiamat leaned on him.

  “The Drekar blood should heal,” she whimpered. “Why does it hurt so?”

  “You are strong, but even a queen must rest.”

  “She killed my Enkidu. I will flay the skin from her bones!”

  “Stress will make it worse—”

  “We will retaliate!” Tiamat pushed off him and tried to stand. She punched her fist in the air and a blast of blue fire shot heavenward. “No more mercy to Her Kivati children. The chosen ones should always be mine. This is what I get for weakness—betrayal. It will stop now.” Her anger singed the air.

  Kai held his breath. He was Kivati. Would he be the first to die? But she’d said “we,” and he knew with a sinking feeling that even the Goddess of Chaos had forgotten his true loyalties.

  The blue fire shot across the long brick road in the direction of Kivati Hall, and he read death in her eyes.

  She was too distracted to notice him sending a message to the crow hiding in a nearby tree. The crow lifted into the air and took off through the new gardens in the direction of the ruined city. Whatever Kivati it came across would stand a chance. They had to get out before Tiamat found them.

  But—brief mercy—Tiamat collapsed again, hand across her belly. He would buy his people as much time as he could before she made it back to the hall. Hopefully it would be enough.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Queen of Death rose from the throne of bones. She was petite, shorter than Lucia, and her ebony hair touched the backs of her knees. Moving gracefully as a shadow, she descended the steps to face Lucia and took her hands. Surprisingly, her skin was warm. “There, there, child,” the Queen crooned. “You have come too far to lose your faith now.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  The Queen smiled. “Would you care to watch?”

  “Is that what you do? Sit here in your hall and spy on the Living World but do nothing to help?”

  “Ah, that. That is the great curse of free will. Would you care to live in a world where the gods made all the decisions? What would be the point of living, if there were no actions or reactions, no joys or sorrows that were yours and yours alone? No, sweet Crane, that would be no kind of life. So here I sit, and watch, and suffer along with them. To know the future, but have no say in it. To be able to do nothing but watch my children from their first baby steps to their last suffering breaths and finally welcome them home at the end of their all-too-brief journeys. Sit with me, dear one, and watch the webs unfurl.”

  Lucia followed her tug back to the throne and sat at her feet. The Queen swept her hand to the side and webs of Aether descended all around them, caging them in, glistening with dewy lives. Her vision adjusted to the chaotic jumble of images, and she gasped. It was the whole world laid out in threads of light, humans and supernaturals, animals and plants. The world had survived far better than she had feared. Everywhere creatures of the earth were pulling hope out of the rubble and fashioning a new way of life in the altered landscape. Joining forces with former enemies. Building cities out of the bones of the old.

  “If Tiamat wins, she won’t stop at Seattle,” Lucia said.

  “No,” the Queen said. “My sister is not one to stop until she beats down the Gates between worlds.”

  “You’re in danger here. Doesn’t that make you want to fight back?”

  “And what then? Should I stop when one goddess falls, or must I stay vigilant while every demigod and power-mad creature picks up arms against me? They would be right to fear me, and they would fight first for survival, and then because they know no other life. But fighting isn’t the only way. Violence will never be strong enough to hold together the threads of the universe. Violence is a brittle thing, easily made, quickly broken whenever enough brave souls rise up together to oppose it. There are bigger divides between the hearts of man than there are between the Lands of the Living and the Dead. Hate and violence can’t bring them together.”

  “Only love,” Lucia murmured.

  “Yes. Love is the web that connects us all, god and mortal alike.”

  “Who does Tiamat love?”

  The Queen smiled. “Now you’re asking the right questions.”

  “Show me Tiamat, please.”

  The Queen waved her hand and the webs surrounding them zoomed to the Pacific Northwest, then the Puget Sound, then the stretch of land encompassing Seattle, Lake Washington, and the Eastside suburbs. The picture narrowed in on the former suburb of Redmond. Smoke rose from a sea of tan houses even as the skies let down a torrent of rain. Drekar flew overhead blowing streams of fire across a forest of army-issued tents. Men, women, and children ran through streets clogged with debris. The storm had flooded the roads knee-high with rapidly moving water.

  Lucia clutched the arm of the Throne. “Who are they?” “The survivors from Tiamat’s initial takeover.”

  “We must help them!”

  The Queen shook her head. Her eyes were sorrowful, but she only moved the picture to find a beautiful woman with jet-black hair and the violent joy of true bloodlust. Flashes of lightning illuminated her crazed expression. Tiamat’s hands were red to the shoulder, her face splattered with her victims’ blood. She swung a rusted scythe through the fleeing refugees and laughed as they fell. Behind her stood Kai, hair plastered across his forehead from the rain, eyes full of abject horror. He made no move to stop the carnage.

  The thin, high wail of a baby sounded over the screams. Tiamat paused, scythe raised. Slowly, she turned toward the noise and waded through the bloody waters to find the child on an overturned VW bug that was half buried in the hillside. A woman’
s body lay in the mud next to the car’s tires. Retrieving the baby in her blood-soaked hands, Tiamat raised the babe to her breast. Her croon could be heard over the storm and the cries of the refugees.

  Lucia stood. “Please, let me help them. Someone needs to warn Corbette!”

  “Watch, little Crane, as darkness covers your world.”

  The burst of Aether pushed Corbette out through the Palace roof and tumbled him through a hole in the very top of the sky. He spilled out into the Living World in the black of night. No matter how hard he tried to fly back to that precise rip in the Aether, he couldn’t find the way. He’d got everything he’d ever thought he wanted: the Scepter, the key to saving his race and assurance his name would go down in history as a great king.

  The gods were laughing somewhere in the sky. All he wanted was Lucia, and she was as untouchable to him as a snowflake captured in his palm.

  The night was tropical. This time of year in the Pacific Northwest should be wet and damp. There wasn’t a cloud to be seen. Had Tiamat done this? Or was this weather the work of one of his own under duress, or a traitor who’d followed Chaos to more favorable shores? Flying over Lake Washington, he gave the city a wide berth. How he wanted to see Tiamat’s damage himself. How he needed to storm into Kivati Hall and take back control, but maybe his time in the other world had changed him. He was not indestructible, he was not all-powerful, and he’d left the most important part of himself back with the dead.

  By the Lady, he would go back for her. His talons tightened around the Scepter. With a deep croak from his Raven throat, he closed his eyes, hovering, and listened to the night. So quiet. So peaceful, he might never believe the slave pits he’d seen in the Spider’s webs. The soft flow of Aether directed his thoughts, and he followed it, smooth eddies curled across the sky away from the dark city. Before his journey, he might have tried storming Kivati Hall alone. Now he knew better.

  The Aether stream brought him across Lake Washington deep into the tentacles of abandoned sprawl that made their way up the mountain foothills in the Issaquah Alps. He wouldn’t give the area a second glance, but the Aether spurred him onward, and then he saw the first crow and knew his people hid somewhere in the empty tan-washed landscape. The crows guided him the rest of the way, up into the wild parts of Mount Si. He Changed beneath Haystack Rock, pulled clothes from the Aether, and found himself at the center of a ring of blades, arrows, and shotguns.

  “You picked a bad place to land, friend.” The decidedly unfriendly voice came out of the dark woods.

  Corbette didn’t move to defend himself. “Peace.”

  “You’re no friend to Drekar.”

  “I’m no friend to Tiamat.” He held up the Scepter. “I’m here to talk to Asgard. I need his help.”

  The hush had the peculiar taste of sorrow.

  “You’re too late.” Another voice in the dark, this one he recognized. Grace Mercer pushed aside one of the swords aimed in his direction and entered the clearing. “It’s okay, Vern,” she told the swordsman. “The day Corbette joins Tiamat’s Court is the day the Frost Giants descend from Jotenheim.”

  “Miss Mercer.”

  “It’s Asgard now.” She’d aged since he’d last seen her. He’d never had much dealing with the shadow walker, but he’d seen the thick file his people had collected on her, especially after she’d started teaching Lucia how to fight. Her blue-black hair was drawn back in tight braids, and her eyes—old before her time—were creased at the edges with sleepless worry. She wore a light gray tunic and black leather pants tucked into boots. A red sash tied at her waist held the sheath of her dagger. A swirling mist of Aether drew through the runes carved along the blade.

  “What happened to your husband?”

  “Two days ago Tiamat attacked our camp. It was a massacre. Leif gave himself up to buy us time.”

  “But she wouldn’t hurt her kin.”

  Grace looked away. “She’s scheduled a public execution for the third day of Nisannu.”

  “Not till spring? The vernal equinox is—”

  “In five days. You’ve been gone a long time.” Grace turned and led the way into the woods. Her soldiers dropped into line behind him, but more than a few kept a sharp grip on their weapons. He followed her along the path that cut close to the side of the mountain. To the left, the ground dropped away in a fast slide to certain death. The pointed tops of evergreen trees speared up from the forest floor.

  Nisannu—the Babylonian New Year festival around the beginning of April. Five months after he’d left. Strange how time across the worlds didn’t match up. To him, it felt like he’d been gone a week, except his body and mind were morphed. His perception of the world skewed to a different star. Maybe it wasn’t so strange to believe that time had passed. He’d changed a lifetime’s worth. The air of this world was heavier. His body moved more slowly, and as he picked his way across the steep bank, he gave thanks that the Lady had restored his totem at least. If he fell, he could save himself with the Aether. It came when he called, curling around his fingers like an old friend. Once, he would have thought the return of his powers would be all he needed to be complete. He pulled his hand from the lulling tendrils. A fickle friend. Too little, too late. He couldn’t beat Tiamat with his own Aether power, but as the strands slid through the point of the Scepter’s spindle, he knew someone who could.

  Grace let him through a hidden entrance to a cave. He had to duck to squeeze through the opening, and the damp of the inner walls slicked unpleasantly on his hands and chest. Inside, the cave opened up into a series of narrow tunnels. It was an old mine shaft with the iron bones of a pulley system and dangerous holes that dropped hundreds of feet into inky black. Here in the outer cave, he saw stockpiles of weapons and civilians in training. Men, women, and children huddled in the glow of the biodiesel lamps with the blank eyes of shock etched on their faces.

  “We had five thousand,” Grace said. “Survivors, escapees. We had water and shelter and food. Our location was betrayed. This is all that’s left.” She swept her hand across the refugees and warriors who were loading baskets of supplies into a pulley system and lowering them into the black abyss. Farther down, humans climbed into a rickety coal car and descended below. Five men strained against the ropes as the human cargo slowly lowered down.

  “How many do you have?” he asked.

  “We’ve split up. It was a bad idea to have such a big camp—hard to hide so many people—but Tiamat wasn’t interested in us at first. She had plenty of manpower and subjects to build her new Babylon in Seattle. We didn’t plan on growing so big, but there were too many refugees too quickly. We got careless when she left us alone. We didn’t have many other options. All our energy was focused on getting fresh food, water, and shelter. On getting thousands of starving, scared people through the winter.” Her tone was sharp enough to cut.

  He held up his hands. “I’m not judging.”

  She held her face in her hands and took a long breath. “I blame myself.”

  “Who betrayed you?” He would find the man and deliver him to Grace. She had the right to serve the killing blow. It was only justice.

  “Kai—”

  “Kai?” He would kill the Thunderbird himself.

  “No, no. Kai told me she knew. I don’t know who told her, but I didn’t move fast enough. I was too worried about his other info.”

  “Has Kai turned traitor?”

  “Let’s talk somewhere private.” Grace motioned for him to follow her back to a makeshift room where old beams had been nailed together to block off the section from the outer cave. A few battle-worn men who were there when they entered picked up their maps and left with a deferential nod. She collapsed into a chair. The wood squeaked beneath her weight. She was too thin. He could tell their supplies wouldn’t carry them much farther. He settled across from her on a crate. The table held more maps of the city and countryside. Kivati Hall had been marked in red, with the surrounding area colored in. The line had be
en redrawn a number of times. Tiamat’s territory was expanding.

  “Kai got stuck on the inside when she came,” Grace said. “A lot of people did. If it weren’t for Kai, a lot of your people would have never made it out. Some turned, of course—”

  Corbette growled.

  “—but a lot more made it to us than we had hoped. He’s in deep, don’t get me wrong. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

  “Tiamat is pregnant.”

  The tense line of her mouth confirmed it. “It’s what’s kept Kai alive all this time. She wanted to combine bloodlines to make a stronger third pantheon. Once she has her new army, she’s going after the gods who wronged her.”

  “And you know he isn’t on her side?”

  “She took a liking to him. It’s the only way he’s been able to play her this long to get people out and information to us.”

  “Fatherhood can change a man.”

  Grace studied him. “I’d have thought you’d be livid over the prospect of your precious Kivati blood being joined with that of the soul-eaters.”

  “I was . . . wrong. I should have lent your husband and his Drekar army my aid, judged him by his actions instead of those of his brother.” Corbette forced himself to unclench his fists. This was harder than he thought. “I’m sorry.”

  Grace sat back. “Does this sudden change of heart have anything to do with a pair of bright blue eyes?”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I suspected there was something else going on with Lucia. I taught her to fight. Her bruises and scars heal just a mite too fast.” The Raven shot into his eyes, and Grace threw up her hands. “Whoa, there. I didn’t harm your girl. I taught her to defend herself. A few bruises were more than worth it. You wouldn’t want me to give her the confidence without any real skill, would you?”