GHOSTS IN THE GLASS Read online

  “I brought the tea.”

  “You want to badger me over tea, is that it?”

  Steam leaked from the kettle’s uneven lid, bathing Mi’et’s hand in a searing moisture, but it was Kaitar’s words that stung more. He wanted to grab the Shyiine by the hair and slam him to the ground, wanted to scream in his face to stop running from the truth. Kaitar would listen then—he would remember who he was.

  Gritting his teeth, Mi’et said, “Are you going to talk to me, or play with your mule all night?”

  “Depends.” Kaitar planted a rough kiss on Molly’s sensitive muzzle and smirked as the velvety skin twitched. She swished her tail, nudging him in the hopes he’d continue his attention.

  Kaitar pushed her nose away. “Later, Molly girl. I know you get jealous, but Mi’et’s got to coerce me with tea so he can talk about how there’s some mystical bullshit road we have to find.”

  “Stop fucking around and come talk to me. You’re acting like a coward. You never acted like a coward in the pits. Why now? Where’s the viper that used to scream he’d kill the entire Sulari regime if only they’d come down and fight him fairly? Did he get smashed under someone’s boot, or did he just get lazy?”

  Above, the cell lights continued to hum, merciless as a swarm of locust. Without speaking, Kaitar pushed the stall door closed. When he stepped from the shadowy corner, one hand drifted to the hilt of a dagger.

  A sneer tugged Mi’et’s lips, alleviating some of his guilt—the guilt he was a worse coward than Kaitar could ever be. “Look at you. One little poke and you’re rattling your tail at me. You’re still a weapon. You want to cut my throat right now. Have you been keeping in practice? Your father would be disappointed if you’d gotten slow.”

  “My father is dead. And I was always faster than you, Mi’et. I still am. I’ve kept in better shape than you, unless lifting boxes at the warehouse or cooking stew made you a better fighter, somehow.”

  “You’re faster, maybe, but not stronger. Are you going to fight me?”

  The scout arched his brows. “Is that what you want? To be a weapon again? To die right here, in this old barn?”

  Yvres, I have no bones to offer but my own. I said that, didn’t I? Before the threk bit me and made me a ruin.

  Mi’et swallowed that sharp, sudden unease. “No.” He set the teakettle down. “But I want to know why you’re running and hiding. I want to know why you don’t believe me about the Sand Belt.”

  Snorting his contempt, Kaitar held his arms wide. “Look at me. I’m a scout, Mi’et. I’ve been out here for two decades, marking water sources, setting up beacons, helping caravaneers find trails, and sending reports to Orin about bandit movement. Does any of that sound like something a Shyiine warrior would do?”

  “You’re more than that. You were the champion. The Besh. You’re a—”

  “Heh. Bullshit.” Kaitar’s hands slapped against his duster as he dropped his arms. “What about you? Don’t tell me you spent all that time scrubbing pots and dreaming of the glory of the old days. It wasn’t glory the Sulari had for us; it was shit and lies and death.”

  “Have some tea if you’re too afraid of the truth. We’ll talk about what supplies we can barter for with Steig.”

  “No, I’m tired of the fucking tea! If you need it for your arm, drink it, but every time I fill my mouth with that piss, all I can think of is being down in the Poem.” Kaitar slumped against the barn’s center beam. “Steig’s right. We’ll die out there. Why don’t you listen? I know what I’m talking about.”

  “You don’t understand. You have a future with the Shyiine, even if you won’t listen yet. You’re more than just a scout or a pit slave, Kaitar. But I? I am only a broken weapon.”

  “Broken?” The scout peered at him quizzically. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”

  “All those years, you could have died. Given up. Done it without guilt because no one would have realized what you are, or thought of you as anything but another slave to be buried. Except me.”

  Kaitar’s expression went flat. “What are you saying, exactly?”

  Mi’et squatted next to the kettle, listening to the quiet drone of the lights while the chickens clucked and the mule stamped in her stall. The old dance of pain lanced his shoulders, traveling all the way to the ghosts of his long-absent fingers. Without thinking, he picked up the tea pot, held the spout to his lips, and drank. Hot tea scaled his throat, but he relished the pain.

  “Going to get blisters drinking it that way,” Kaitar said, a nervous tremble in his voice. “Didn’t you bring the cups from our pack?”

  “No.” Mi’et lowered the kettle. “I don’t care about blisters. Kaitar, there is a road, one humans can’t hear. But we can hear it. You can find it, and we can go home.”

  The scout slid down the beam until he sat on the ground, legs sprawled out, shoulders slouched. Tired. Shaking his head. “There’s no road, Mi’et. Those are only old stories slaves made to keep their spirits up. There’s nothing out there but sand and wind and Shyiine who want nothing to do with us. Stop believing all that cryptic horseshit.”

  “You’re one to speak of being cryptic. You, with your threk and your secrets.”

  “Secrets?” A flush crept up Kaitar’s coppery cheeks. “You want to know what I’m hiding? Son of a bitch, you want to know so bad, I’ll tell you.” His hands shook against his lap. “I hear Madev talking in my fucking head sometimes. And I dream about your sister, too. How she died. You never did ask me about that.”

  Mi’et blanched; it felt as though the tea in his stomach had turned to ice. “Don’t. If you want to get back at me, cut me open with a yatreg. Not this.”

  “Everyone else in Dogton was always badgering, making up stories, but you? Never a fucking word about what happened to Mariyah.”

  “Don’t speak of her!”

  “No. You’re going to hear it, and maybe then you’ll know why I don’t like to remember anything from the old days. You were the only person who ever had a right to know, anyway.” Kaitar took a deep breath. “She starved, Mi’et. She gave up when she realized you weren’t coming. Said you must have died from those threk bites after Gah’leen sold her.” He showed his teeth in a snarl. “But you weren’t dead, and no one came for us after the Sulari fell, and she died. And after she was gone, Madev just opened the cell while I was lying there, waiting for it to end. Laughed at me. Went back upstairs.”

  “Stop! She’ll hear. If you—”

  “She hears everything I think and say! You want me to go die in the Belt with you? You’re going tell me why you never came for Mariyah. I’ve kept her ghost for twenty years. I can’t anymore.” Kaitar crawled forward on his hands and knees, his eyes burning with an intensity that made Mi’et tremble inwardly.

  “Stop!” He caught the collar of the scout’s duster and gave him a shake. The kettle tipped, spilling hot tea onto his thighs. “Don’t speak her name again!”

  Kaitar tore himself away; his face had lost its flush and went pale. “And me. You never came for me, either. But I was there, too. So were they. . . the babies. The threk’s babies, Mi’et. I let them out. Hoped they would just eat me. They were starving, too. But you know what they did? They followed me.” He waved his hand. “Didn’t even stop to look at Maryiah—”

  Mi’et drew his left fist for a punch, snarling a final warning, hating the scout almost as much as he hated himself.

  “—as I led them right up the stairs, and into his parlor—”

  He slammed his fist into Kaitar’s jaw. Kaitar grunted and crumpled to the ground, blood smeared across his lips. He shook his head dazedly, then propped himself on an elbow before speaking in a hoarse whisper.

  “Madev was laughing at me for being such a fool. He knew I was going to kill him, but he won anyway. Laughed all the way until he. . . until they started tearing him apart. And I was there with them, ripping. What do you say to that?”

  Shame, dark and frightening as twilight, filled
Mi’et. He grabbed Kaitar’s shoulders so hard the scout winced. “You had to. You had to kill him for what he did.”

  “I did.” Kaitar’s expression twisted, laced with the triumph of revenge and unfathomable grief. “For what he did to your sister and your mother. . . and you, too. But what excuse do you have? Where were you when that happened? In Dogton, scrubbing pots?”

  Mi’et released his grip, watching the tea stain spreading on his fatigues as he struggled to cling to the mundane reality of scalded thighs. His head ached in a way no amount of threk venom could ever hope to touch.

  “What excu—”

  “I tried!” He spat the words. “But I couldn’t. I got lost. You, of all people, should understand getting lost. You came crawling to Dogton. How long were you lost out there after you left the manse?”

  Kaitar tongued an incisor that had been knocked loose. Then, he spoke so quietly Mi’et almost couldn’t hear the words. “Three weeks. You know that.”

  “And are you so arrogant to think it was much different for me? My mother told me stories, but she didn’t teach me to read a map or navigate by stars any more than your father taught you those things.”

  “And why didn’t you ever tell me that?” Kaitar asked, wiping the red smear from his fingertips onto the ground.

  “When did I have the chance? The other Enforcers were always there, listening. Did you want them hearing all of this? Any time you were in from the field, you stayed away from the barracks—to avoid me. Don’t lie about it, I am not as stupid as you think.”

  “I’ve never thought you were stupid.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “I’m not lying about that, and fuck you for thinking I would.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, anyway. But if we go back to Dogton, Evrik Niles will put a rope around our necks. The other Enforcers won’t be able to stop him. The other humans there wouldn’t care enough to try, and they might even be happy about it. We have to go to the Belt.”

  For several minutes, the scout merely stared at his bloodied fingers. When he did look up, Mi’et met that bleak stare, and it struck him how tired Kaitar looked—how forlorn. Not unlike the first time he’d seen the scout; beneath all the scars and rancor, Kaitar Besh was still that scared boy from the stables.

  Mi’et dumped out the last bit of tea, washing away the blood staining the sand. “My mother wasn’t a liar, you know that. There is a road, and a resistance, Kaitar. Our people. I can’t find them alone. Help me, so we can go home.”

  Kaitar leaned back on his haunches, hair dragging along the sand and leaving long spirals in its wake. When he spoke, defeat laced each word. “We’ll go then. We’ll die out there, but we’ll go. I’ll help you find this road if I can.” He paused, and when he opened his mouth again, he spat the broken incisor onto the sand. “Heh. Here’s your bone offering.”

  Mi’et regarded the sharp tooth glistening under the cell lights. When he reached to touch it, warm blood spread over his fingers. He glanced up, angry, wanting to apologize, wanting to tell his old rival—his closest friend—they might look back on this moment one day and laugh.

  Kaitar had already gone.

  Shallow Grave

  Zres coughed. The air coming from his lungs tasted as though he’d eaten a whole pack of lit cigarettes, and his throat convulsed. Something soft brushed his cheek, making it itch. That tickle—worse than the dull pounding radiating from his left temple and spreading across his skull—made his fingers twitch with the urge to scratch. But when he tried, his hands would not move past his waist.

  Must have got tangled in my whip. Fell asleep. Hope the threk didn’t get into the fields.

  The itch along his face became maddening. When Zres tried to move his hands again, his feet slid, too, and his wrists burned with a sharp, sudden pain.

  I can’t move. I’m threk-bit!

  He opened his eyes to see a bright, blue sky rolling by. Temples throbbing, chest raw with a deep ache, Zres tried to shield his eyes from the intense light. When he turned his head, he saw what had been blowing against his cheek—hair, ash-gray and curly, the loose strands tracing a short line to a singed canvas tarp. The corner of that tarp whipped back and forth with predictable monotony. Behind the ragged material, a milky-pale eye fixed on him. The blistered skin around it reeked like rotten meat left too long in the sun.

  The scream in his throat came out as a sputtering choke, threatening to strangle him back into oblivion. The sky stopped moving and the wind died to a whispery breeze. Moad’s corpse slid forward and bumped against his shoulder coyly. His bladder gave way as the scream finally broke from his throat. Zres thrashed, succeeded in rolling to his back, and kicked so hard the chain binding him slapped against his thighs.

  A voice spoke. “Ah. You’re awake.”

  He pressed against the back of the rover, far away from the body of Phineas Moad as he could. If he had to see that eye staring at him, so merry in death, he’d go crazy and never stop screaming. The stink of piss and burnt flesh brought a rush of bile from his stomach. He buried his face into his shirt collar and squeezed his eyes shut.

  Just a dream. Just a bad dream! Gonna lay here and it’ll go away and—

  “You are in quite a state,” the voice went on, closer now. “Here. Stop struggling, Zerestus. You’ve wet yourself. I suppose that’s to be expected. You’ve been unconscious for over a day.”

  Reeth.

  It came back to him in vivid, fire-lit horror then. Murdering Moad. Choking him, squeezing the life right out of the solid form. Being crazy with elation. And his mother, soaked in whiskey and going up like a firebox. Screaming.

  Zres sobbed, “Mama.”

  Reeth’s shadow fell over him, and even with his eyes closed, Zres could sense how cold and empty it was.

  “Here, Zerestus. I’ll need your help in a moment, but you need water and a chance to get your bearings first.”

  Fingers wrapped into his hair, jerking his head up. A canteen pushed against his lips, and the water within smelling so pure and fresh, it cut through the stink. He drank, unable to stop himself from taking great sucks of the liquid. It poured down his raw throat and splashed into his empty belly, soothing and cool.

  “There. Slow now, you don’t want to make yourself sick,” Reeth said, pulling the canteen away.

  Zres’s head bobbed, striking the bed wall in the exact spot the revolver had hit. Pain radiated all through his skull. He groaned.

  “You’ve made things exceedingly difficult for me,” Reeth said smoothly.

  The handcuffs biting deep into his wrists. Slowly, Zres opened his eyes and caught a glimpse of the Soulmaker. Beneath the glaring sun, Reeth’s scalp shone through his thinning, mouse-brown hair.

  “I don’t suppose you can ride all the way to the Citadel like that,” Reeth observed. “It will take at least two weeks to get there, if the weather cooperates.”

  “I. . . I don’t want to go on trial at the Citadel. I’m guilty. Just shoot me here and be done with it. I killed—” Zres bit his lip, unable to speak of what he’d done.

  Reeth’s quiet smile chilled him to the bone. “I’m not going to shoot you. You’ve put quite a glitch in things, yes, but less so than the Syndicate and Evrik Niles have. These things are to be expected from time to time, after all. But you’re still useful to the Citadel, flawed or no.”

  Only the phrase not going to shoot you made any sense in his clogged mind. The rest had been pure gibberish, all of it as frightening as being laid out next to the murdered corpse of Phineas Moad. “I. . . I killed a Harper.”

  “I know. I listened while you did it and pretended ignorance.”

  Grit stung Zres’s eyes, but he could not make himself break from Reeth’s steady gaze. “You—”

  “Heard it all? Yes. I assumed you’d kill Moad, or injure him gravely. That wasn’t the preferable outcome, but it was the only feasible one. You wouldn’t come and speak with me when I requested it before, and so it had to be this path,
didn’t it?” The Soulmaker reached into his front pocket and produced a small, brass key. “Are you feeling calm and steady, now?”

  “Steady?” Hysteria laced each word. “Calm? Moad’s drilling a hole into my back with that eye and my Mama. . . she’s . . . what the hell is going on? What kind of a Harper are you?”

  Reeth held the key between thumb and forefinger so it caught the sunlight. “I’m not a deacon like Phineas Moad was. My job is not to spread the word of Mary to the masses in hopes of bringing them some semblance of comfort out here.” He made a sweeping motion with his other arm. “Death is all around us, Zerestus. More importantly, Toros is all around us and—in some cases—in us, which is why we need hunters to purse such corruption. I am one such hunter.”

  “I don’t know what any of that means! Why aren’t I being executed? Why aren’t you taking me for trial?”

  “Keep still and be quiet. You’ll understand more in time.” Reeth leaned over him, fitting the key into the handcuffs. Zres tried to squirm away from the Soulmaker’s touch, and not even the feel of Phineas Moad at his back could lessen his fear of the man standing before him.

  I already killed one Harper, I can kill another.

  When the key clicked against the lock and the cuffs slid off, Zres swung both arms, yelling wordlessly, aiming for Reeth’s face. He put his full weight behind the blow, and the impact jolted him to the shoulder, twisting his battle cry to a pathetic yelp. But the backhanded strike had not connected with the Soulmaker’s jaw, or his chest, or even his arm; it had missed the mark entirely.

  Reeth’s fingers tightened on Zres’s forearm like an iron band, squeezing until the bones ground together. The black-clad hands flexed.

  “That was not called for.”

  Zres twisted, flopping like a fish caught on a line. “Let me go! You’re breakin’ my wrist!”

  Reeth backhanded him, catching him hard along the jaw, making his head bounce against the backseat. Zres tasted blood at his lips, and he found himself staring at the blue heavens. This time, strange, ragged edges—