Oathkeeper (38 page)

When stripping and dipping did not grant improvement, some Armored had learned to live with their disabilities, and others, both among the Armored and the Armorless, had chosen to die and strengthen the army with what remained of their souls.

“Vander, there are other things we can try.” As if reading his thoughts, Glinfolgo gave Vander's knee a reassuring pat. “When Eyes of Vengeance gets here we can see if proximity restores your link. If it does, then we'll do a simple strip and dip and—”

“And if it doesn't?” Vander grabbed the Dwarf's shoulder.

“That would be up to you,” Glinfolgo said softly. “Now be still and let me make sure I haven't missed any fragments.”

*

“Caz,” Wylant growled at the advancing Bone Finder, “Vax is fine. He doesn't want to be awakened yet, and as much as I would rather Vax be flesh and blood, I owe it to him to let the choice be his. Don't make me hurt you any more than I already have.”

“We come for the bones,” the warsuit, Silencer, intoned.

“I will protect you,” the unfinished warsuit said softly, the front of its unsettling amber alloy folding outward as if to encase her.

“You back off, too,” Wylant snapped. “I'm not sure what to think about you yet and when I need help, I'll ask.”

“Of course, Vax's Mother.” The warsuit turned on its heel, its metal snapping shut as it walked from the center of the room to stand next to the forge. Looking at the anvil gave Wylant all the battle plan she needed and the terrain to help make it work.

“Vax, by Kholster, out of Wylant.” Silencer walked slowly toward Wylant, reaching behind its back, long bone-steel knives dropping into the warsuit's waiting gauntlet. “Must be awakened. Caz has sworn an oath to see it done.”

“He can see it done when I'm dead, according to Vax,” Wylant growled. “And not before.”

“As you please.” Silencer sped into a run even as Vax morphed into the familiar utilitarian sword Wylant preferred, though its mottled-blue blade was now inset with fuller renditions of his father's scars along the center.

Silencer's skull-like helm lowered into a charge, its flashing crystalline eyes locked on her, immovable, impenetrable, inescapable—or so they seemed. Wylant readied herself to receive the attack, wondering what kind of conversation was going on behind those eyes. Was Silencer trying to reason with his maker, or had the armor already surrendered wholly to this wrong-headed endeavor?

Long knives clashed with sword in a flurry of strikes, rapid but controlled. Too controlled. Wylant prepared to make one final appeal and then . . . didn't. It was all too much. Too much recalled history. Too many emotions. Too much control and lack thereof. Wylant wanted to think her reaction was considered, measured. . . .

It was not.

Going on the offensive, she pressed the attack, forcing Silencer to parry Vax, fighting defensively, to block without time for strong counters or time for any reasonable follow-through. There were many ways to fight an Armored Aern, but the most reliable hinged on waiting for a kill shot. All other injuries were merely feints in service of that single strike to decapitate or lance through the eye and into the brain.

Caz's movements were more powerful inside Silencer, but he lost a fraction of his speed, and Wylant's feet and blade were more fleet than those of most of the One Hundred, much less the rest of the army.

Thrust. Feint. Slash. Thrust.

Even the warsuits had weak points . . . fewer at the joints and more at the helm, but Wylant struck for the back of the knee, the crook of the elbow, strike after strike landing on target as she maneuvered them to the anvil. Refusing to look or even think about where she needed Caz, slowly letting him gain some appearance of momentum, as if she were tiring steadily, which she was, but not as rapidly as she led her opponent to believe.

“I'm sorry,” Silencer said as it moved in for the kill.

Vax
, Wylant thought.
This is it. You know the maneuver?

Yes, Mother
, the weapon sent back,
but do you want him truly dead or just disabled so that a strip and dip will work?

Unless we have to, we will never kill Aern
, Wylant thought.
Agreed?

Agreed, Mother.

Sparks spat from the tile when Wylant's foot shot through Caz's guard, sending his warsuit leaning backward. As expected, he latched onto the bone metal floor to maintain his balance, much as he held the knives to his back, shifting his right hand back to steady himself.

Rolling not past but up and over Silencer, Wylant brought her heel down hard onto Caz's left hand and the long knife clutched in it. Vax went long and thin, hanging in a loop from a handle in her uninjured hand and from the gauntlet containing her other.

At a width so thin and tenuous as to be rendered nigh invisible to the naked eye, Vax caught Silencer under the chin of its helm. Though, like most warsuits, Silencer was completely sealed when worn in battle, Vax worked himself into a minuscule seam.

Pulling with both hands, Wylant delivered an additional boot to Silencer's back, thrusting herself away from him even as she brought her hands together. Vax merged the handle with the gauntlet protecting his mother's hand, letting it encompass the other hand too, to increase the strength with a combined grip.

Caz swung his free blade up toward the thin cord, grunting in confusion when it stuck fast, refusing to cut.

“Using bone-steel against an Aern,” Wylant forced between gritted teeth. There was only so much even Vax could do to keep her injured wrist protected—all the jarring blows had left it aching, pulsing in time with her heartbeat.

“You are not Aern,” Silencer intoned.

“No, I am merely Aiannai . . . but my—” Wylant found the trail of elemental air, felt the way it warped near the remaining Port Gate at Fort Sunder, the tug and twist of aetheric echoes from the Life Forge's destruction. Inhaling the magic deeply after she spoke the next word, “—son—” letting its elemental essence rewind itself in her lungs, recognizing its proper shape within . . . loosing it on a final word, “—is!” She hurled herself backward with the resulting vortex of air.

There was no sound as Vax pulled tight then cut, weight vanishing, unspent momentum slamming Wylant backward, the wall forcing even the mundane breath from her lungs. Writhing, snakelike, Vax thickened and drew in, further reinforcing the gauntlet protecting her injured wrist.

Silencer's helm and the head within dropped free, rolling off of the elongated anvil to land at Wylant's boots, orange blood pooling at her heels.

I didn't kill them, Mother
, Vax whispered in her mind, his thoughts unsure.
Though I still can, if you . . .

“No.” Wylant dragged herself up, back twinging from the impact with the wall. “We had to stop them. We had to defend ourselves against them, but we're still allies.”

Wylant stripped the decapitated head out of the helm even as the wobbling remainder of the warsuit crashed to the floor. Two Bone Finders rushed into the room, and Wylant tossed them Caz's head.

“You come for the bones,” she growled. “I know. Take them, but Vax stays with me . . . and by the way, here's a new warsuit. It's ours. Tell those two, once you've put them back together, that we could have ended them but chose not to do it. If they come for Vax again before he is willing to be awakened, I might not be so lenient.”

Crystalline crimson eyes flickered in the helms of both Bone Finders' warsuits, communing, she assumed, first with each other, then with Zhan.

“Understood, kholster Wylant.” The one on the right reached down to lift Silencer by the arms while the other Bone Finder reunited head and helm. “The Ossuarian thanks you for your mercy.”

“It helped that Silencer didn't continue the fight once Caz was down.”

“Both Caz and Silencer saw reason at that point.”

Once they had gone, Wylant addressed the unfinished warsuit.

“Well?” she asked it.

“Well, kholster Wylant?” The warsuit approached her, head at a quizzical angle.

“That bought us the better part of a day.” She sat down on the anvil, spared a brief bit of curiosity at the blazing heat of the forge. Was it this hot all of the time? She pushed the thought aside, rubbed a gloved hand across her forehead. “They won't be back until they've done a strip and dip for Caz to ensure he'll be fine. Who knows what will happen after that.”

I'm sure we've made our point, Mother
, Vax sent.

“I hope you're right.” Wylant closed her eyes, resisting the urge to unleash a torrent of rapidly barked questions. She settled on one. “Does your warsuit have a name, Vax?”

Our warsuit
, Vax thought,
for as long as we both live. And yes, she does.

A pleasure to make your acquaintance,
the armor spoke in her mind.
I am Clemency. I look forward to protecting you. You will, I fear, only be truly Armored when you are inside me. If it is amenable to you, I would like you to don me so that I might better speed your recovery.

“Oh, Kholster,” Wylant sighed, “what the hells have you gotten us into?”

Mother?
Vax asked.

“Yes?”

None of that was what Father wanted you to find out.

Wylant took a deep breath and, biting back a caustic reply to her son's teasing, stepped toward the waiting warsuit, not surprised when Clemency split at the breastplate, seams appearing, then growing increasingly pronounced until they split apart and folded outward. Instead of the sound of cracking bones made by Harvester, who opened in a similar manner, Clemency had a soft scrape of metal on metal.

Wylant paused for another deep breath, looking at the velvet lining inside the armor and knowing Vax had put it there for her comfort and not his own. Once he was awakened and was one with his warsuit, he would be one of the Armored, a true Aern. The warsuit waited, split open to receive her, looking both vulnerable and threatening despite the contradiction in terms . . . and then, before Vax had time to tease her again, she stepped forward and let Clemency enfold her.

*

“Kholster,” Torgrimm said, standing next to the god of death as he smiled unseen by mortals at his wife, son, and the warsuit they now shared, “if that doesn't count as cheating, I do not know how a deity could come closer without—”

“No rules were broken,” Kholster laughed. “You asked Nomi to give me the talk and she did. I also spoke with Aldo, Two-Headed Kilke, and Shidarva. Or one of me did.”

“Kilke?” Torgrimm scoffed. “Kholster, if I had known you would take advice from that destructive—”

“Two-Headed Kilke is not the god trying to undo the web of destiny.” Kholster stepped free of Harvester, facing Torgrimm in the same clothes Kholster had favored in life: jeans, a belt of corded bone-steel chain, matching chain shirt, and hobnailed boots. The only thing different was the warpick. Reaper was more jagged than Grudge and slimmer than Hunger, a refined warpick made by a death god with a lot of experience.

“What?” Torgrimm's jaw gaped open. “You've been there? You've seen the web? If not him, then which god? Who?”

“It's not a god at all.” Kholster favored Torgrimm with one of those uniquely wolfish smiles for which he was well known. “He merely wanted you to think he was.”

CHAPTER 27

THE BLOODY THRONE

Rivvek's nostrils flared at the stench of blood. Many of the dead lay in pools of water, charred and sizzling. Some still hung in the air, while others lay battered and broken with signs their deaths had been more personal.

At the open balcony overlooking the port, Hollis, the Sea Lord, stood wreathed in an undulating mass of seawater. Blood kissed the air in drifting droplets suspended by virtue of the hydromantic might of the warm-eyed Eldrennai. Hollis had cast aside his formal robes early on in the battle, revealing a coat of plates and seafaring garb beneath. His navy waistcoat, complete with ivory buttons, covered a long-sleeved sea-green shirt with ruffled sleeves. A dark-olive sash hung at his waist, more for decoration (Rivvek assumed) than anything else. Hollis's laced leather pants tucked into matching boots with ivory-trimmed straps, wide sculpted cuffs, and bone-steel buckles. Hollis breathed a heavy sigh and rubbed his eyes.

One wouldn't have known it to look at him, but Hollis was a veteran of the Demon Wars and the Zaur conflicts before. Rivvek had been worried that the ancient Eldrennai, one of the few who could recall a time before Villok had united the elemantic bloodlines, would be hard to convince, but Hollis had been the one to approach Rivvek.

“You know there is a way the Aern might spare some of us,” Hollis had said. Rivvek had smiled and let Hollis explain it all before agreeing to
go along with
the idea Sargus and Rivvek had been hatching for the last thirteen years.

Hollis and his guard had struck hard and fast, freezing unsuspecting nobility who either lacked family young enough to be accepted as Aiannai or whom Rivvek had already decided the Aern would find unacceptable.

Even though they had gridded it off ahead of time, establishing who would attack whom and when and how, Rivvek had worried something would go awry at the last moment. Several things had, but nothing Sargus or the Aern couldn't handle. As the Sea Lord struck so, too, had Lady Flame and Lady Air, Zerris and Klerris by name. The two were twins (minor nobles by birth, but great in elemental ability) who had married into their respective clans in exchange for rulership.

Both still wore their elegantly embroidered robes as they whirled in concentric circles at opposite orbits. Their targets burned, were deafened, suffocated, were struck by lightning . . . or some combination of all of the above. Rivvek felt chilled. He hated to see the deaths, necessary though they had been, of so many loyal subjects. And this would not be the end of them. Not by half.