Discarded Gods: A Bastard Cadre Story Read online

  Mattatan said, “It’s forged from tintia. The pintaran wants something, if it comes at you after you leave, use this. It won’t come after you again.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tintia blades were rare and one of the only things known to work against pintarans. Ethan knew Mattatan had kept the transaction just between them for a reason, so he didn’t comment further. He reached out to cover the blade with his hand and take it, but Mattatan caught his wrist and pressed the flat of the blade against the back of Ethan’s hand.

  Ethan tensed, but he let Mattatan finish. With his test complete, the bondsan sheathed the blade and let Ethan take it.

  So it’s not just a gift for old times sake, Ethan thought. Remembering Fahlim asking him about Maria, he said, “They should have done that earlier instead of asking their fucking questions.”

  Mattatan shrugged and kept his eyes on the desert. “It’s a bad idea to let the enemy get their hands on the weapons you plan to use against them.”

  “You just tested me with it,” Ethan said, more irritated at the idea something could pass itself off as him than he was with Mattatan.

  “Protocol, nothing more.”

  “So you knew I’m me. How?” Ethan asked, trying to shake his irritation.

  “You reminded me about the whiskey.”

  Ethan grunted. “You’re getting sneakier, Mattatan.” He stopped short of telling the bondsan he was keeping bad company, after all, it wasn’t like Mattatan had a choice about the company he kept. That choice had been taken from him and the rest of his cadre on the day they were born.

  The murmured conversations behind them faded, and Ethan turned to see the gathered councillors looking quietly up at the staircase that ascended to Lord Obdurin’s private rooms.

  Two dimin stood at the bottom of the stairs. Ethan recognized one of them as Havoc, but he’d never seen the other one before. It was just as massive as Havoc and the two dimin Ethan had seen earlier, but this one was new, Ethan was certain of it. That meant it was less than ten months old. Ethan’s mind shied away from the fact that the dimin came into the world almost fully formed and their mothers, Rhysin’s maidens, were never seen again after their one night with the God.

  Ethan strolled across the room toward his old seat at the council table. As more of the staircase came into view, he saw Lord Obdurin standing about halfway between the audience chamber and his private rooms above. Sunder and Thwart stood behind him.

  Ethan thought, Shit. It’s a four dimin day. Things must be serious.

  The few standing people took their seats.

  Obdurin said, “Ethan, could you pass this around, please?” The old man flipped a coin from his hand with his thumb, and it spun through the air to Ethan.

  Ethan caught the coin and examined it. He hadn’t seen many coins in his lifetime, but this one was twice the size of any other coin he’d ever held. He didn’t recognize the language or the symbols embossed on it. It was gold, but with a red sheen similar to the tintia blade Mattatan had given him.

  Ethan understood instantly and held out the coin to the first person he reached at the table. “Councillor Delti,” Ethan said the woman’s name, and after a moment the silver-haired woman accepted the coin, turned it over in her hands and passed it to her neighbor.

  Ethan took his old seat as the coin made its way silently around the table.

  When it reached Ethan, he passed it to Fahlim who said, “Let’s see if I turn to dust.”

  The immortal clasped the coin and handed it straight to the person sitting next to him. When the coin reached the last person at the table, Lord Obdurin descended the rest of the stairs. The dimin followed him to his chair.

  “The pintaran is still here,” Obdurin said.

  The murmurs started back up, and Obdurin spoke over them. “That coin has traces of tintia running through it. If the pintaran were among us, it wouldn’t have been able to touch the coin, so we know it’s not one of us.”

  “What if it disguised itself as the coin?” Fahlim asked.

  “It didn’t,” Obdurin said.

  Fahlim’s mischievous smile twitched as though he would go on, but he bowed his head instead.

  “Thank you,” Obdurin said sardonically. “As ridiculous as it sounds, your question has merit, and I took precautions to make sure it couldn’t do as you suggest.”

  “What does it want?” Councillor Delti asked.

  “What do any of our enemies want?” Obdurin asked.

  The woman sighed and nodded.

  “We don’t know its motivations. We don’t know if it’s acting alone, or if it’s working for somebody.”

  Somebody at the table said, “Valan.”

  Somebody else said, “Amir.”

  “We don’t know, and it’s dangerous to assume,” Obdurin said.

  “Who did it murder?” a gravelly voice asked from the entrance into the chamber.

  High Priest Solquist walked confidently toward the council table.

  Several people gasped in shock as the high priest advanced. Ethan guessed everybody at the table had attended Solquist’s funeral the day before. He reached under the table for his laser-cutter, but Fahlim placed a restraining hand on Ethan’s wrist. Ethan glanced sharply at the immortal, but Fahlim watched the high priest with a pleasant, unconcerned expression on his face. He squeezed Ethan’s wrist with a strength Ethan didn’t know the immortal possessed.

  “It’s shocking, I know, but don’t panic,” Obdurin said, standing up from his seat and raising his voice to get everybody’s attention.

  Ethan understood instantly. Obdurin had a talent for duality and could often craft phrases that said different things to different members of his audience.

  The pintaran, posing as High Priest Solquist, accepted the words as a response to his question and a call for order at the disturbing news. The councillors gathered at the table, took those same words as reassurance and a plea not to reveal the real reason for their shock.

  “It murdered Farid,” Obdurin continued. “The pintaran posed as a member of Mattatan’s cadre and murdered Farid in his chambers.”

  Ethan’s eyes instinctively went to Mattatan where he stood at the edge of the room, and he noticed the first-sworn and his entire cadre looked calm. Gordon and Pollard appeared similarly unconcerned.

  Next to Ethan, Fahlim whispered, “Patience.”

  “Do we know why?” Solquist asked.

  Obdurin shrugged.

  “What was Farid working on?” Solquist asked.

  Obdurin studied the old man standing before the council table. He held the tintia coin in his right hand and ran his thumb over it.

  To Ethan, the high priest looked just as he remembered him. His robes were pulled over his sturdy frame, his white beard was squared and his eyes hard and penetrating.

  “He was finding a safe place for a member of the cadre,” Fahlim said.

  “Did he find one?” Solquist asked.

  Obdurin nodded. “It left this.” He threw the tintia coin to the high priest.

  Solquist watched the coin arc toward him, then suddenly, as he realized what it was, he dropped to his knees and let it fly past him. Gordon’s cadre, stalk thin old men, advanced on the high priest, drawing their swords as they closed the distance to him.

  Solquist swore loudly, then vanished. His robes fell into a pile on the floor. The old bondsan stopped, but then a tiny green bird darted from the pile of clothes and flew in a straight line to the exit. Bondsan posted there tried to stop it, but it avoided them easily and was gone. Gordon’s cadre pursued the bird out of the audience chamber.

  “Seal the room,” Obdurin said.

  A member of Pollard’s cadre tapped a command into a wall panel, and blast-shields descended from the ceiling blocking the exits. The windows around the room turned black, and lights in the ceiling came on.

  “Burn those robes,” Fahlim said.

  When everybody looked at him, he asked, “Better to be safe, don’t you think
?”

  One of the men at the table said, “We saw the pintaran fly out of the room as a bird, Fahlim.”

  “Councillor Taub, you would make a lousy magician.” The man protested, but Fahlim continued, “Misdirection. It wouldn’t be difficult to contain a bird and then release it to make us believe we saw the pintaran leave. All we saw was a bird fly out of the room. We know pintarans can take any form. It could just as easily be those robes as the bird we saw fly away.”

  “You have a devious mind, Fahlim,” Obdurin said.

  “Thank you.” Fahlim bowed his head modestly, taking Obdurin’s comment as a compliment.

  Unwilling to accept Fahlim’s explanation, Councillor Taub asked, “And was coming here as High Priest Solquist misdirection?”

  Councillor Delti said, “No. That just means we were wrong about Solquist’s murder. The pintaran didn’t murder him. If it had, it never would have taken his form to come here. It didn’t know he is dead.”

  One of Mattatan’s bondsan set fire to the robes on the floor. A few of the people sitting at the table sighed with relief when the flames took and the robes burned.

  “At least we know what it wants now,” Ethan said.

  Everybody in the room turned to look at him. He said, “It’s here for the cadre.”

  12

  Ethan saw Rattan standing outside the door from the other end of the corridor. Distracted as he was, he mistook him for Mattatan and wondered what had happened to cause the bondsan to travel from Lord Obdurin’s audience chamber to the room where Taro slept.

  The bondsan turned to face Ethan as he approached, and Ethan realized who it was. He regarded Rattan. He was identical to Mattatan in every way, and Ethan briefly marveled that he could tell Mattatan and his male bondsan apart.

  “He’s sleeping,” Rattan said. “Nobody has been in or out of the room.”

  Ethan nodded his thanks and opened the door.

  It’s the attitude, He decided.

  Mattatan and his cadre might look the same, and for all Ethan knew, they might even think the same, but slight differences in attitude and experience reflected through the way they wore their features. There was a look in Mattatan’s eyes when he regarded Ethan that spoke of their shared history and friendship that was absent when Ethan interacted individually with Rattan or the other members of the cadre.

  He remembered the eleven, identical little girls in the nursery, Shard’s cadre, and he wondered if that would be true for them when they were older. Fahlim had said they were impossible to tell apart and no matter what Ethan thought of the immortal he knew he was perceptive.

  That led his thoughts to the cadre he’d just agreed to help protect. He hadn’t paid a lot of attention to the babies in the nursery, but he’d noted they were as unlike each other as people could be at that age. At least one of them had skin as dark as Ethan’s, while an other was as pale as Fahlim, and a third had the traces of a descendant’s scales.

  What is Obdurin planning to do with them? Ethan wondered.

  He’d always believed a cadre’s strength came from their similarities and shared upbringing.

  Will they even be a cadre if they’re raised apart?

  The room where Taro slept was dark with curtains drawn and fluttering in the breeze that came through an open window.

  The bed where Taro slept was luxurious with a heavy wooden headboard carved with prancing figures that Ethan half remembered from the fairy tales of his own childhood. The pillows were fat and covered in satin that matched the sheets. Ethan couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept. If he had to guess he’d be willing to bet it had been thirty years.

  He’d slept as a child, of course, but never in a bed as indulgent as the one Taro enjoyed now.

  The curtains fluttered again and drew Ethan’s eyes. There was a small bedside table where Taro had left his small pack. The laser-cutter Ethan had taken from Sloan and given to Taro was next to the pack.

  He said he lost it, Ethan thought.

  He’d asked Mattatan if he guarded Taro’s room for any other reason than keeping the boy safe. Mattatan had avoided the question.

  The curtains fluttered in the breeze again, and Ethan reached into his pocket. He found the tintia knife Mattatan had given him. He sat down on the edge of the bed, close to the boy’s exposed hand where it rested on top of the sheets.

  You’re too distrusting, he told himself. He’d driven Nea away because of it and he’d almost left Taro in Eliz.

  With his hand still in his pocket, squeezing the knife, he looked at the boy.

  Taro opened his eyes and looked back at him. He shuddered instinctively at finding himself in an unfamiliar place.

  “It’s okay,” Ethan said and saw recognition come into the boy’s expression.

  Abyss, why do people miss sleep?

  Ethan didn’t understand the nostalgia some people expressed for the childish need. Coming back to consciousness, unprepared for whatever might be waiting for him, was not something he ever wanted to experience again.

  Taro stretched, yawning with his arms and hands reaching above his head.

  “I thought you lost it,” Ethan said and pointed at the laser-cutter.

  Through his yawn, Taro said, “Me too. It was in my bag. I guess I just didn’t see it.”

  Ethan let go of the knife in his pocket and stood up. “We have to go.”

  Taro threw back the sheets, shouldered his pack, and asked, “Where?”

  13

  They found Fahlim and Mattatan talking quietly outside the nursery where Ethan had seen the cadre earlier that day. A second bondsan, a woman, stood a short distance from them.

  “Ah, Ethan,” Fahlim started when he saw him, but the nursery door opened behind him and he stopped.

  A tall woman with a shoulder holster carrying a laser-cutter and with a katana sheathed at her left hip came through the door. She carried one of the babies from the nursery in the crook of one arm and held the straps of a carryall in her other hand.

  She saw Ethan and frowned. “Did you tell him?” she asked Fahlim.

  “I was about to,” Fahlim said.

  Fahlim looked like he was going to say more, but the woman’s gaze swung from the immortal to Ethan. She said, “You’re not needed. I understand you came a long way. I’m sorry for the inconvenience.”

  “It wasn’t that far,” Ethan said.

  The woman nodded. There was a distinct lack of humor in her expression and tone when she said, “Either way, I’m sorry for any inconvenience.”

  She hefted the bag she carried and started to walk away. “Shall we?” she asked Mattatan and Fahlim over her shoulder.

  Fahlim followed her a few paces, but Mattatan stayed exactly where he was. Behind the tattoos, Ethan couldn’t tell if the bondsan was trying to control a smile or a frown.

  “What’s happening?” Ethan asked.

  “Just some last minute details to work out,” Fahlim said.

  The woman stopped and rounded on the immortal. “There is nothing to work out. He’s not coming with us, that’s all there is.”

  “Marin, please,” Fahlim raised his hands imploringly. “Lord Obdurin has—”

  “Lord Obdurin has asked me to raise and train this child. He has given me full authority in how that shall be achieved.”

  Impressed by her tenacity, Ethan glanced at Mattatan who raised his eyebrows at Ethan. Ethan decided it was a smile the bondsan had been hiding.

  “You will have full authority after you’ve left Peak City,” Fahlim said.

  The woman stopped and took a deep breath. “It hardly seems fair to relocate Mr. Godkin and his companion only to tell them they aren’t needed when we get where we’re going.”

  “Mr. Godkin?” Ethan asked, unable to keep the offense he felt out of his tone.

  Marin looked between Ethan and Fahlim. She let out an irritated sigh. “I’m sorry. We don’t know each other.”

  “That’s right we don’t,” Ethan said, seeing where
she was going and not wanting to make it any easier for her. He’d reluctantly agreed to watch her and the child, but with the agreement made he didn’t intend to break it, even if, on first impressions, he didn’t think she needed his help.

  She glanced angrily at Fahlim, and Ethan guessed she’d charged the immortal with dismissing Ethan so that she wouldn’t have to. Even though she obviously had a problem with Ethan, he was impressed she could unflinchingly command Fahlim to do anything.

  “I’ve made a tactical decision,” Marin told Ethan. “It will be easier for me to raise him on my own than with an entourage. When I meet people, I’ll tell them we’re mother and son. If you’re with us, what story would we tell people?”

  Amused and offended at the same time, Ethan said, “People sometimes stick together out there. No stories necessary.”

  She looked at Ethan for long seconds. He could see she had an inner strength and resolve that would take her far. She probably wasn’t used to not getting her way.

  “Lord Obdurin talks about you sometimes. He thinks highly of you,” Marin paused as though considering her next words. “But you abandoned him when he needed you the most.”

  Ethan turned to Fahlim and demanded, “What did you tell her?”

  “Not I,” Fahlim said.

  Marin continued, ”Obdurin told me. He didn’t say it so plainly, but I’m not stupid, and I don’t need a chaperone who’ll get cold feet and leave when things get difficult.”

  “Cold feet,” Ethan grunted. “Obdurin was on his knees and about to be executed. He commanded me not to interfere. I couldn’t bear to watch him die, so I walked away.” He glanced sideways, not intending to look at Fahlim who had also been present but had stayed, but he saw the immortal looking at him. “Perhaps if I’d stayed to watch him die, I could have continued to serve him when it didn’t happen, but at first I was too angry with him to come back.”