“Just you?” Her face screwed up. “Sit down, boy. You and I have a great deal to discuss.”
That wasn’t what Malachiasz wanted at all. “Not like you to want anything to do with me,” he noted, sitting regardless. They never got along, he and the witch. He turned to magic for answers, and she refused to give him any, and he hated her for it. He was volatile and rattled the order of the world, and she hated him for that.
“You bring death with you, no, no, worse than that. Something else.” Her head tilted as she considered. “What have you done?”
He opened his mouth, unsure how to answer, but she waved a hand. Filling a bowl with something from the cauldron, she offered it to him.
“Soup?”
A whimper broke from his chest. He was so hungry. He didn’t have the restraint to not desperately grab the bowl from her hands. She watched him as he ignored the searing heat and drank down the thick stew.
“Ah, I thought so,” she said softly.
The bowl was empty, and still he felt hollow. Ravenous. It clawed at him from the inside. He tasted iron in his mouth, blood and flesh and need.
The bowl clattered to the floor. Malachiasz pulled at his hair and, pressing the heels of his palms to his forehead, let out a long breath through his teeth. This wasn’t what he was, was it?
“Your true nature finally come to light,” Pelageya said. “I did think that you might escape it, beat what you are, but we all succumb to ourselves eventually.”
He curled over his knees, tears spilling past his hands as he shoved his palms against his eyes. “What did you do to me?” It hurt and beside the hurt was the knowledge that nothing he could do would sate the hunger. That the gnawing at the core of him that he had always carefully fed so very slowly to keep it at bay had finally become enough of a beast to ravage him.
“Ah, child … I did nothing.” She picked up the bowl and filled it again, crouching in front of him. “This won’t really help with that, but it will ease the mortal hunger. I feel the touch of that shin bone on you and I can guess what happened there. Not what I expected, I thought she would use it on … someone else, but it takes a lot to die and be alive again, doesn’t it?”
Malachiasz lifted his head slowly. He wiped the back of his shaking hand over his eyes before taking the bowl carefully. “Why does this feel suspiciously like you’re helping me?” he asked, trying to keep from devouring the second bowl as quickly as the first.
Pelageya leaned back, glancing at the relics in his hair. “This wouldn’t be the first time.”
Quiet settled over them as he ate, almost painfully slowly this time. And she was right, it didn’t help, but the tremors eased when the bowl was empty.
“What is this?” he asked.
“You know, sterevyani bolen, you’ve always known. You’ve been keeping it quiet your whole life, feeding it magic and progress and promising that one day you’ll get there. One day things won’t be quite so bad.”
It was what he had always held close. That someday he might know a life that wasn’t pain and disaster and the constant ache of hunger. He closed his eyes briefly, knuckling the bridge of his nose.
“You made it easy for him.” Pelageya’s eyes tracked through Malachiasz as if she wasn’t seeing him. “To grasp the pieces of your soul, the little you had left, and crush them. Little godling, little chaos god, little boy so far from home. Chyrnog didn’t even have to try. You’ve given up. You gave whole pieces to me, after all.”
Malachiasz flinched.
“But does it matter? You want a total freedom from the gods, and yet, what are you?”
“Not a god,” he said, his voice hoarse.
“No and no and no and yes. Yes, my boy. Both and everything and nothing all at once. How much will you consume before you are done? How much will you destroy?”
“I only want peace,” he whispered.
“Do you lie to yourself, too? I’m surprised.”
He had a name, at least, to tie to the god. It was meaningless to him. He vaguely remembered Katya telling Nadya about Chyrnog, but he hadn’t been paying attention. He had been watching the way the forest light played against the pale strands of Nadya’s hair. Gold and honey and snow.
“Are you actually here or am I dying, and this is how I’m continually punished?”
Pelageya laughed. “I’m as real as you.”
“Just making sure.”
“Why are you here?” she asked, finally settling herself in a chair across from him. “You’ve never wanted my help before; I hardly believe you’ll start now.”
He frowned. “I’m here because your hut showed up before me? I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t show itself to people who don’t already want it.”
Did he want it? He wanted help, but not from an antagonistic Kalyazi witch. “I don’t think you’d want to help me, all things considered,” he replied. Chyrnog didn’t exactly seem like the best of news.
“How have you come this far and not yet realized that my will and my desires are my own and not tied to any fanatical sense of place or purpose? You could stand to think a little less about your country and a little more about the fact that thirteen—no—fifteen eyes just opened on your skin at once.”
“It’s rude to point that out,” he said primly.
Pelageya perked up suddenly. “More visitors?” she grumbled. “I need more heads for the fence to keep them away. Can I have yours?”
“No.” Malachiasz tried not to panic. Who else could be here? He realized that he didn’t know where in the forest he even was, and it was likely that they were close enough to a Kalyazi village that the witch got wanderers all the time. Still, he should probably hide.
“Oh, stay where you are,” she said, waving a hand at him. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you together for a long time and now I finally can!”
Malachiasz didn’t like the sound of that at all and he prepared to flee. He almost relaxed when the door opened to the figure of a girl, tall, face weather-worn and exhausted. He couldn’t make out the words that she and the witch exchanged, but she stormed away in a rage. Another figure was shoved inside.
Shit.
“Shit,” Serefin said as he stared at Malachiasz over Pelageya’s shoulder.
Serefin Meleski stood there, tall and pale and looking like he had been dragged through hell and back. His brown hair was messy and too long, his left eye covered with a bandage that wrapped over half his face, the other half raked with painful cuts. A weird jolt struck at the thought that this infuriating idiot prince—king—was his brother. Older brother. He had an older brother.
He had an older brother who stabbed him in the chest and left him to die on a mountain.
Pelageya clapped her hands together with glee, suddenly appearing the same age as them. “Well, won’t this be fun!”
10
SEREFIN MELESKI
Something has gone wrong. The gods speak, sometimes, not like before, something has changed. I’m gathering accounts, trying to place the pieces together but … Something is missing. Something was erased.
—Passage from the personal journals of Innokentiy Tamarkin