He Who Breaks the Earth (The Gods-Touched Duology)
He Who Breaks the Earth: Chapter 16

Anwei watched Noa dive into the water after Lia’s and Knox’s boat, several people in the crowd clapping as if it were part of a street show. Captain Loren stumbled to a confused stop, then pushed one of the sailors in after, shouting at him to bring Noa back. Breath like a knife in her throat, Anwei grabbed Altahn’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“She isn’t on the boat. She was supposed to jump onto the boat!” Altahn started toward the water after Noa, but then Noa’s head popped up on the surface, and she started swimming toward the ship. Lia sent sailors scrambling for a rope, and by the time Anwei’s boots hit Loren’s deck, Noa had been pulled on board the other ship. Altahn grudgingly picking up his trunk, Gilesh and Bane following with the rest of their things.

Loren pushed his way back through the crowd (some of whom were cheering for Noa, others shouting for the sailor to swim faster) toward them, his eyes bulging when he saw Anwei untying his mooring lines. “Hey!” he yelled, making a ridiculous leap across just as the wind filled the sail. He hit the side of the boat, grabbing hold of the rail with ropy arms, then clawing the rest of the way onto the deck. “Don’t you know whose ship this is? Anton Russo will destroy anyone who so much as touches—

Bane and Gilesh threw down the trunks to draw their swords, pointing them toward the little captain

“You’re going to blow up a Devoted and three Roosters?” Anwei asked calmly. “Or did you want our help getting Noa Russo back from that ship before the Butcher figures out who she is and gets to her first?”

Altahn froze where he was sneaking down the ramp that led to the hold. “The Butcher?” he mouthed. Anwei ignored him. Names were more frightening than the people attached to them, oftentimes. Ellis was no butcher, but the name had served him well over the years.

“The Butcher…?” Loren echoed, pushing Gilesh off. He stood slowly, staring past her to the boat. “Half the harbor knew that ship was marked. He’s here? In person?”

“You think I came here for you and your little boat?” Anwei gestured for Bane to make the ship go faster, though she wasn’t sure if that were possible. “We’re here to stop the salpowder war from clogging up the Felac. Are you going to fight us the whole way there? Just think what Russo will say when he gets the order for all his boats to be searched for illegal salpowder stores.”

“You know what the Butcher can do, don’t you?” Loren rasped. “He’s sunk four boats in the last year with those salpowder arrows of his and marked five others. He doesn’t bother fighting anymore; he just takes what he wants.”

“You and the others in Russo’s fleet have been quite effective in avoiding him. There are two Devoted planted on the marked ship.” Anwei turned to look at him. “Why do you think we chose your boat to bring the rest of us?”

Loren glanced toward the harbor’s edge, the marked ship ahead putting distance between them. His hands clenched and unclenched as if weighing the prospect of danger with the silver rounds he could get from Russo for taking out the Butcher. When he finally turned back to Anwei, his eyes were shrewd. “These trunks you’ve brought are some kind of plan?”

She glanced at the trunks, nothing but herbs, Noa’s clothes, Calsta-knew-what in Altahn’s things, and a cursed shapeshifter sword in them. “We’re prepared.”

“And you’ll let me take Noa back to her father safely once the Butcher is sucking narmaiden skeepoo?”

“Please. Take her back to the people who love her. Calsta is merciful even to merchants like Anton Russo.” Anwei couldn’t help the way her mouth twisted over those words. She turned to stare into the water ahead, looking for Ellis’s ship beyond the harbor. He’d promised to make the fight flashy enough to draw out the harbor wardens and had agreed that the caroms and Noa were worth losing a new ship for the fleet he was building.

He did pout for a full five minutes over missing out on the governor’s copper bathtub.

Of course, Anwei’s real plan would leave him with nothing.

Anwei meant to steal Loren’s boat while the rest of the harbor was fixated on the fake pirate fight happening out in the harbor. Wardens wouldn’t have time for complaints or descriptions from Loren until they were long gone. Anwei had agreed to keep Loren on the boat just long enough to watch Noa dramatically die in the pirate battle. That way he could carry word to her father that his daughter was dead. Then no one would be looking for Noa in Forge, Elantia, on pirate ships, in theaters, or anywhere else but among the eels and narmaidens deep in Kingsol’s bay.

The boat veered sideways, almost knocking Anwei into the water. Getting Noa away from Ellis was going to be easy, what with Knox and Lia there to fend him off. But getting Altahn’s other carom, well… Anwei hadn’t quite come up with a plan for that yet. She had great confidence that between the four of them, they’d find an opportunity and take it.

Anwei tried very hard to hold back her grin when the boat lurched again and Loren began shouting at Gilesh and Bane to tie things off and move things and turn the rudder, suddenly quite content to be running with a Rooster crew.

People were so easy.

The Devoted steered out of the little channel hidden on the banks of the Felac onto the main river, the current pulling them downstream. Mateo’s fists clenched hard in his lap, the Warlord observing him like a bird would a worm. The tense triangle the Warlord and her two Devoted had made around him after isolating him from his father suddenly made sense. A shapeshifter. She thought he was a shapeshifter?

She was right, of course. But how, when Tual Montanne was right there, could she have been suspicious of the sickly, harmless artist?

Clearing his throat, Mateo kept his voice absolutely measured when he met the Warlord’s gaze. “You’re convinced I’m a shapeshifter?” He looked around with wonder. “Isn’t it your job to know for sure? Your influence and control in the Commonwealth are entirely based on the idea that you can tell the difference between gods-touched and everyone else. I’ve been around your lot long enough to know you can see the nameless god’s touch on dirt witches.” The slur burned like a mouthful of acid. “If I had even a whiff of him about me, you’d have stabbed me years ago. So what exactly are you trying to accuse me of?”

The Warlord sighed, her dark brown eyes flicking back and forth as she watched the trees pass behind him. Moments ago she’d been worried he’d steal her soul, now it seemed she was confident enough that Mateo didn’t even merit her direct attention. “There’s been something amiss in the Commonwealth for quite some time now. Something new that we can’t see. We didn’t make the connection to you until we found Lia’s family… murdered in their home.”

Mateo swallowed, the next incredulous sentence to build his case flaking away to ash on his tongue. Murdered in their home? He didn’t want to know what had happened to Lia’s family, didn’t want to know why a woman responsible for so many deaths could pause over whatever she’d found—

“The whole compound was burned to the ground with the valas and his wife inside it.” Her eyes flicked over him—she was watching him for a reaction. “Their uncharming young daughter, as you describe her, is still unaccounted for. That same day, less than an hour after you and Lia were sighted at the excavation, the tomb caved in. Trees sprouted from the sea cliffs clear to Chaol’s bridge. Lia has since disappeared. Two other Devoted from my party tasked with investigating the site were lost.” Her voice rose with each event. “And Ewan Hardcastle was found just outside the compound with a hole in his chest.”

Trying to ignore the sickness unfolding in his lungs, Mateo couldn’t help but grab hold of the rail, his knees wobbling. He’d known his father had done something to Lia’s family, but burning her house with her parents still inside? Why?

You don’t want to kill until you do.

“I am very sorry to hear that. I didn’t know the Seystone family well, but…” Swallowing hard, Mateo rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, grasping for something. Anything. This was his life, his father’s life. They were right on the cusp of being able to sink back into the shadows, to retreat from the risks they’d been taking to heal Mateo. He couldn’t give any quarter to the Warlord’s belief, even if she wasn’t all the way wrong. So he did what he always did when he accidentally glimpsed the dark underside to one of his father’s plans.

It was him or the Devoted. His father or the Warlord.

It didn’t have to be that way. But they’d made the world impossible for the Montannes to exist in peacefully, and sometimes there were no other choices.

He said it to himself twice. Three times. Then again before he could find any more words for the Warlord. “It seems like the evidence points toward your spiriter torching her own house in a bid to escape from you. I’m nothing more than a student of archeology. An artist.” He shrugged, smoothing down his lapels. “I mean, I know I look very debonair—I can see why you might think me qualified to help you untangle this mess. Unfortunately, I don’t think my understanding is deep enough to comment on this… internal matter? Frankly, I thought that was the point of Devoted—you give up sweets and pretty clothes so that Calsta will give you the ability to solve problems like your spiriter for the rest of us.”

“Lia Seystone is an exemplary Devoted. The behavior I have described would have been impossible, unless…”

Mateo licked his lips once. “Unless what?”

“We’ve seen evidence of… memory problems across the channel from here. People forgetting parts of who they are. Acting oddly.” Her hand darted out to grab his wrist, and she cocked her head at him, the very picture of an old woman questioning her grandson, if only she weren’t trying to break his arm. “And the plants in Chaol—weren’t the Beildans all crying shapeshifter when every person in the town directly across the water from here got eaten by trees?”

An echo sounded inside him. Trees. Eaten by trees. A terrible hum filled Mateo’s mind, Willow squeaking with dismay. If such a terrible thing had happened so near his home, how could he not have known? But the echo wouldn’t go away, the taste of it like metal and herbs and sharp sap, waiting for him to remember.

I don’t know what she’s talking about, he whispered to himself. I don’t know. I don’t want to know.

“We never found even a hint of Basist magic,” the Warlord continued over his thoughts, “But according to reports, those trees erupted out of the ground the same year your father appears to have purchased this estate—the same year you appeared in his household.” Her fingers tightened on his arm, though not so tight as Willow’s claws. “The history of this estate is riddled with mysterious deaths, stories of people drawn from Kingsol by some inexplicable force toward the lake only to drown in underwater caves. There’s a giant snake guarding this place like no animal should. And all of that was buried so deep in the records that somehow no Devoted had ever heard of it. Scholars were set to guard against any mention of these records from leaving their library, though none of them could remember why or who had told them to hide something so mundane as property records in the protected stacks. I went to the library to get directions to this place, and I’ve never seen such a flurry of confused, panicked messages being sent, pathetic misdirection, and even outright lying from the First Scholar herself. She tried to deny the records existed while they were in her hands.”

“You think I magicked a bunch of scholars into hiding my father’s property records? Why not burn them if they’re so incriminating? Why not burn the whole library?” Mateo’s voice cracked over the darkness rising inside him. Something from his past fighting for purchase in his memories, more monstrous than the random appearances of root and herb names.

“…. It wasn’t until Lia’s disappearance and erratic behavior and the deaths of her family members”—the Warlord was still talking, her fingers on his arm like a vise—“that I drew the connection between your presence and minds being altered in your general vicinity. Sickness just like yours trailing along after you across the Commonwealth. Even your father couldn’t explain completely where you’d come from, only that he loves you so much that he gave up whatever he was before you appeared to search for an answer to your disease—don’t try to deny it. I know his help treating wasting sickness is nothing more than an experiment meant ultimately to save you.” Her teeth were bared in a terrible smile. “None of it makes sense, Mateo. The world around you doesn’t make sense.”

Her breath caught over the words, and for the first time, Mateo saw her fear. Drawing him away from his father, from the town, from everyone—this was an act of desperation. His heart began to pound, the sword point so casually resting on the floorboards etched into his mind.

Just think of what you want. The thought burned through him, his father’s voice like a weapon. Mateo’s stomach lurched as Willow seemed to grow inside him. What was it Willow had done before when Aria had been standing there healthy and hale one moment, near dead the next? He envisioned the Warlord shriveling away, leaving nothing but a pile of ash inside that ridiculous armor. He thought about how much more energy he’d have by taking from a Warlord rather than a little girl.

He thought about Lia and how much she hated this woman.

A sword isn’t enough to destroy you and me, Willow whispered. But taking the Warlord’s magic won’t stop the other two from trying to kill us. Mateo could smell the rot inside him, the death. It wasn’t a warning so much as an invitation. He wouldn’t have to stop with the Warlord. He could suck the life from every Devoted on this boat to stop them from stabbing anything ever again.

Willow could see it. She ached for this fight. To take the energy swirling just out of reach—but then she lurched inside him, clearly frustrated. It’s too much right now, Mateo. We need the rest of me. We can’t fight them all. Not without the sword.

The words rang like a frozen bell, sending tendrils of ice through Mateo. The sword.

The ghost was right to caution him, but he didn’t see how having the sword would help. Not even Tual Montanne could face down a host of Devoted head-on, sword or no.

That was why they planned. Why they schemed and hid. Fighting the Warlord would only make things worse. But in that moment he wanted to destroy the Devoted more than he’d ever wanted anything.

Why hadn’t they attacked? Just as Mateo refocused on the Warlord’s face, a frightened sort of satisfaction bloomed in her expression. She wrenched him closer, their faces inches apart.

“You haven’t swollen yourself up into a lizard or a wolf. You haven’t drained me dry or made the trees reach out to strangle us. Which means I was right.”

“That makes you right?” Mateo laughed. There was nothing else he could do.

“We haven’t had fully realized shapeshifters in the Commonwealth for generations. Centuries. We don’t know what they’re capable of.” She let go of him, pushing him back into his chair. “And I don’t think you do either. You can’t control your power”

“This is ridiculous.” Mateo kept laughing, burying his face in his hands. “You say we have a shapeshifter on the loose? And you choose me? You think I ensnared my own father into fixing my illness, did something odd and unexplainable to Beilda for no reason, hid records about my house that have no bearing on anything important, then seduced your lost spiriter whom I’ve never met and—”

“I didn’t say seduced.” The Warlord stood and went to the railing, squinting down the curve of the river ahead. “Lia has oaths to keep and… better taste, I’d hope.”

Mateo flushed, heat rising in his cheeks. “All right. Let’s say I broke her mind then, tricked her into going on a rampage through the city, killing Devoted and auroshes left and right, we destroyed the tomb together right in front of you, and then I abandoned her somewhere between here and Chaol and led you straight back to my lair here at the lake. What would any of that accomplish?”

“It got you the sword, of course. You are fixated on those shapeshifter weapons. They call to you. You even whispered it just now, something about a sword.” The Warlord rounded on him, and Mateo couldn’t help but flinch back, his hands coming up in defense before he could think clearly. He glanced over his fingertips, grateful to see that whatever using his power to open the channel had done to his hands, the effects were gone. “You need that sword to heal yourself, but instead Tual’s going to use it to destroy the last crumbs of wasting sickness in our ranks.”

Wasting sickness. Tual. One death every generation—had his father blamed Beryl’s death on the curse? How much longer had he survived there in the old house, praying to a god who hated him to let him make amends, before he’d given up on forgiveness and burned everything to the ground? Mateo’s mouth went dry, thinking of flame. Of Lia’s fancy fountain and foyer blackened with soot, of her mother’s body a pile of ash on the bed.

Of Aria lying still in the glass passageway, her face so, so white.

No. Mateo’s eyes pinched shut as he replaced the fuzzy memory of Aria falling with the one where she opened her eyes again, then insulted him. Aria was going to be just fine. He hadn’t killed her.

But still, the image of his father knuckle-deep in black clay, bones splayed around him tried to flood through the cracks in Mateo’s mind. He thrust it away. His father had done what he had to.

He’d always done what he’d had to. To keep himself alive. To keep Mateo alive. To protect Mateo from having to do the hard things.

It wasn’t Mateo’s fault Willow lived inside him. It wasn’t his fault his family had tried to kill him or that Tual Montanne had stepped in to save him, resulting in whatever had happened back on Beilda. Mateo’s head began to ache again, the empty space sharp inside him where his childhood should have been.

He was on a path that only went forward. Survival wasn’t something you could pray for, hoping some god would listen. Survival was something you had to take.

His father knew it. Lia knew it. When something came at her, she fought with whatever she could lay hands on. Pencils. A skirt. A satchel. A razor. An auroshe, ready to bite.

He knew who had killed Ewan Hardcastle.

Mateo wasn’t evil. He wanted to live, just the way Lia did. That was what made him most human of all, wasn’t it?

But what could he do?

Willow cackled inside him, the sound ringing deep. I like you. There’s not one part of you that’s true.

The Warlord flinched when Mateo looked up at her. He spread his hands wide and gave her the best smirk he had in his arsenal. Angry smiling. Mad, and mad about having to smile. “If this is truly what you think is going on, then why don’t you kill me now? That’s why you brought me out here, isn’t it?” He stood, gesturing to the water, the forest, the world wide open and waiting to swallow him. “If your theory holds true, my father will forget I existed, and everything will go back to normal. Here.” He pulled the drawing satchel off his shoulder and offered it to her. “I’ll even let you keep my charcoals as a trophy to show the governors just how dangerous a threat you’ve extinguished.”

The Warlord’s smile split wider. Then she started to laugh, pressing back into the chair and hugging her arms around her, the sword like a pin stuck into a cushion, only the cushion was her. “Mateo Montanne, you can’t goad me into bringing your power forward. You’ve demonstrated what happens when people try to get rid of you. Who was it who first tried to snuff you out when they realized what you were? Your parents? You suffocated them to death inside a tree.”

Suffocate. Inside trees? Mateo’s eyes burned.

“You talk just like the scholars whose memories you stole. You still have a sunburn from working in the tomb complex that you then caved in before I could enter, still have the stink of spoiled oaths you took from my spiriter. You left a whole city suffering from plague and stole bits of my Devoted, letting us and the peace in this great country waste away.” She laughed again. “You ought to thank Cath and Berrum for coming—risking themselves to test how dangerous you are.” She turned to look at the girl with the braid and the flowery sword. “This has been instructive. I don’t think he can act unless he’s triggered somehow. Why else invite violence now?”

The Devoted gave a sharp nod, not looking away from the river ahead as she paddled.

Turning back to Mateo, the Warlord heaved a great sigh. “We’ll isolate you until we learn how to dispose of you safely. Who knows, maybe we can learn how to help you before that becomes necessary, Mateo.”

Mateo squeezed his eyes shut. He reached out with his energy, feeling the stones on shore whisk by, the tree roots, the dirt, living creatures flicking back and forth beneath the boat, their heartbeats like little gears ticking away that he couldn’t remember feeling before. He couldn’t run. If he managed to get away, where would he go? Back to his father? That would only make things worse.

To Lia, then. It had to be to Lia. Only she’d come to him with a sword.

“You were sick. The caprenum sword is part of it.” The Warlord gave a decisive nod. “We’ll go to Kingsol for supplies as planned—there’s an apothecarist there who has done some very interesting exchanges with your father—”

An unnameable trill worse than discomfort stung in Mateo’s chest. His father never made him go into apothecaries when he went for herbs. He vaguely remembered going in a blue-painted door once—not what had happened, only that he’d run out quick enough and hidden under the carriage seat shaking while Tual tried to calm him.

“—he’ll be helpful in restraining you until we can bring Tual over to our side,” the Warlord was saying. “I don’t think we can bring in the others of our company safely until we’ve incapacitated you completely, of course.”

“Lovely.” Mateo pushed off the feeling of dread and made a show of slumping back in his chair, propping his feet up on the bench in front of him. Wanting to laugh because she had it both so right and so wrong. “I’ll be sure to lock myself in one of the monastery cells while you and my father brew poison to kill me. Oh,” he snapped, pointing to the Warlord. “Buy some blueberries for Hilaria, would you? She’d probably kill me before you can if we don’t come back with some. That woman takes her muffins very seriously.”

The Warlord closed her eyes, putting her face to the wind so it ruffled her curls. “I always have enjoyed spoiled little children. They cry the hardest when they realize everything they love has been taken away from them. Tual is reasonable. He’ll see this. I know he will.” She settled back into her seat. “With his help, I’ll rid the south of your blasphemy and reestablish the need to support Devoted in one go.”

“A scapegoat to prove your relevance?” Mateo crossed his arms moodily, his mind racing. He could just jump out of the boat. Those ticking gears beneath him were those glowing eely-fish things that ate people. No Devoted would come after him if it meant losing body parts. If they thought he was already dead.

Mateo reached for Willow. You’re sure I can’t die?

You would have a long time ago if not for me.

She wasn’t saying that he’d still have fingers and toes at the end of it, of course. Mateo looked at his long artist fingers, then to the water rushing past the boat. It was the only choice. And if he went to Lia…

She’d come with a sword.

But he knew her.

He did.

She’d listen.

Knox survived worse than Lia Seystone. Just think what we can do when we’re all together, Willow whispered. Only there was something in her voice. A secret, something so terrible she couldn’t help but think it.

The ghost gave a pathetic little mewl, as if their link went both ways and he could look inside her for a split second the way she always watched him. Which was when Mateo remembered his sister.

With Lia.

Anwei was the reason he was in this mess. She was the one who had whisked Lia away at the tomb. She’d been the one to bring down the walls with her roots and trees.

The darkness in his mind flashed again, the sounds of wood cracking, swelling, roots twisting, breaking—

Mateo’s eyes burst open, the thoughts gone as fast as they’d come. His palms were sweaty, as if he’d been holding the sword. Find it, Willow cried. Please. Before she finds us.

He wiped his hands against his coat and stood, looking down the river for a likely spot to jump. They were one bend in the river away from the ocean, the gaps between the trees sparkling with open water.

“Look out!” Berrum cried out from the back of the boat. A bloom of red Mateo didn’t quite understand bled up into the sky over the treetops. Fire?

Suddenly everything was too quiet: the river, the forest, the oars in the water. Then the boat jerked to one side, sending Mateo careening back into his chair as the boat rounded the last bend and the ocean’s horizon opened before them.

There was a boat out in the bay—no, two boats, fire flinging through the air and water pitching as if it had turned to salpowder.

A deep boom shattered Mateo’s ears, reverberating in his chest. He ducked down behind his chair, his flimsy, paper-thin aurasight reach floundering out to touch the battle

Something inside him jolted as his aurasight touched the nearer boat. Mateo peered around the chair to find a little figure on the prow, ethereal and fluttering with copper. Wreathed in an aura of violence and gold—Calsta’s gold.

Mateo’s gulped down air to shout a warning, but it was already too late. The two Devoted rowing had picked up speed, the Warlord at the prow staring out at the flaming ship with eagerness, her sword drawn.

It would be moments before they got within normal aurasight range, and then the Warlord and her lackeys would see Lia there, plain as the sun in the sky. They would take her.

And that would be the end. The world the Warlord described—the one where Mateo didn’t deserve to live—would be all that was left.

And so Mateo did something.

He flipped the boat.

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