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

Panic buzzed in Knox’s head like a swarm of bees as he ran from the inn where Altahn had just slapped silver on the bar in exchange for slightly cleaner blankets. Something was happening. Something terrible. Anwei never panicked. Anwei—

Knox stumbled to a stop when the alleyway abruptly ended, forcing him to circle back to find another way. He knew where she was, her presence brighter than any aura, but he didn’t know how to get across this sky-cursed town. There were hardly any water channels, and the alley ways twisted around one another like snakes. Knox jumped a low wall and took off running around the edge of a bustling market, silenbahks groaning at a watering station on the far side so loud they made the cobblestones tremble underfoot. Darting past a table covered in roasted fish and hopping a narrow channel that led to the docks, Knox threaded between trays of cakes, bolts of cloth, fruits, and a pickpocket with an aura just misty enough with malt it made Knox’s stomach heave. Groping for Calsta’s power almost made it worse, the noise of so many people bartering, arguing, sighing, and laughing like an assault. That was nothing compared to the haze of auras, all of them fading into one another and blending, a sea of people that could be hiding the one aura that mattered.

Knox turned down the first road that seemed to be leading in the right direction. Anwei was close. Not hurt, he didn’t think, just fleeing—

A cheery blue-painted door at the end of the street opened, and Anwei came waltzing out, her braids loose and her face a breeze that said nothing of the panic sizzling in his gut. She caught sight of him and glided toward him, Noa bobbing behind her like a cork on a fishing line.

“What’s wrong?” he gasped, meeting her in the center of the street.

“Keep walking, and keep your eyes open. We need to go.”

“Go? What happened? We just barely got to The Rigors—”

“No inn. We can’t stay at the inn. We can’t stay anywhere in town—” Anwei was walking faster and faster, and Noa was not talking, which Knox hadn’t realized was possible.

He took Anwei’s arm and pulled her down a side street, where fewer people would be watching, then across to the back side of the market to stand behind a stall crowded with people eating fried something with too many legs. “What’s going on?”

Anwei turned to Noa, pointing. “We need a boat. We can hide in the river tributaries everyone is so scared of. We’ll watch for his boat—there’s another shipment coming next week. That’s what he said, right? We can still grab Mateo. It just might take a little longer—”

“Back at the tomb…,” Noa faltered, her face graver than Knox had ever seen. “That’s not the first time you’ve made trees grow?”

Waving a hand between them, Knox couldn’t stop the pulses of panic rushing through him. “Tell me what happened!”

“You knew about the massacre.” Noa was talking like Knox wasn’t there, something in her face making him prickle with wariness. “And you just told me you came from Belash Point. It happened when Tual took your brother, didn’t it?”

“We don’t have time to talk about this, Noa. Yes, Tual was there. Yes, I was there. But just now, Tual Montanne was standing ten feet away from me. He must have recognized my aura… but he let Cylus ask what we want with him. It’s like he’s playing with us. Or really does see me as nothing.” Her hands twisted together, more agitated than Knox had ever seen her, the now familiar bloom of anger rubbing like sandpaper across the bond. Some of it was for whatever had happened in the shop, but some of it was… because of Noa? Worry stabbed through her, the same way it did when she talked about Calsta and him.

She was worried Noa would leave.

“Wait.” He waved a hand between Noa and Anwei, but neither of them looked away from the other. “Tual was in that shop with you?”

Noa stared at Anwei a second longer, her brow furrowed. But then she shrugged. “What did Tual buy? I know it was something nasty.”

Anwei seemed to wilt with relief, her hand reaching out to grip Noa’s. She groped for Knox too, holding both of them there, and he couldn’t help the wave of sorrow that washed through him. In Chaol he’d never thought of her as afraid.

“Tual bought enough ulintis paranme to put half the Commonwealth to sleep.” Anwei finally turned to Knox, the strained smile on her face gratitude he’d come so fast. “It’s extremely rare, distilled from these flowers on the southern tip of the archipelago. Beildans use it to put people to sleep during painful healing procedures, but it’s not something most people can get their hands on—every gram of it is kept track of by the school on Beilda. Dried into powder, it can be mixed into all sorts of nasty things.” She swallowed. “Ever heard stories about Sleeping Death?”

Knox nodded, fairy tales about whole cities falling asleep during the shapeshifter wars a warning echo in his head.

“He bought it right there in front of us. Maybe he wanted us to see.”

“So Tual does that creepy… energy sparkle sight, or whatever it’s called? Where he can see people even if they’re not in the same room?”

“Aurasight,” Knox had to grit his teeth very hard not to keep from rolling his eyes.

“Lia says Mateo had aurasight. But not like you.” Anwei looked at Knox. “He could only see gods-touched. Maybe he didn’t know I was there? He’s never met Noa….” She shook her head and started into the market. “It doesn’t change the fact that Paran and Cylus know who I am.”

Noa tried to follow, and Knox took pity on her, shepherding her through the gaps that Anwei found in the crowd. “You think it’s possible Tual walked into that store less than a minute after we did by coincidence” the dancer asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Either Tual saw us and knows we’re here, or Paran and Cylus will tell him. Either way we have to leave.” Anwei pulled at the scarf covering her braids. “He must have been feeding me false leads since the day we first connected.” She stopped. “Could Paran be linked up with Ellis, too? Gods above! My network wasn’t supposed to feed me to the same sky-touched murderer they were helping me find!”

Knox grabbed hold of her hand, lowering his voice when a woman behind a table of dripping fish turned to stare at them. “Let’s have this conversation somewhere less crowded. We have to get Altahn, then we can plan.”

“Even a boat is risky because Ellis will be looking for us too, and out on the river, we’ll be…” Anwei’s eyes widened, and she stopped again, grabbing hold of Noa’s arm. “Your father’s boat—”

Noa’s head gave a wild shake, her khonin knots bobbing. “No, Anwei—”

“Ellis doesn’t attack boats from the Russo fleet. All of them are small enough to go down those little tributaries—” She started walking again as if Noa hadn’t spoken, then turned back to Knox. She didn’t seem to see him, though, looking back in the direction they’d come. “Noa, you know where the inn is?”

“No—?”

“The Rigors. Take a rickshaw. Knox, will you take her?” Anwei pointed to the line of runners at the edge of the market with their little two-wheeled pull wagons. “Tell Altahn to sit tight and… stab anything that comes at you two. I’ll meet you there in an hour.” She pushed past Knox and started back toward the apothecary.

Knox didn’t want to let her go, Anwei’s panic still a sharp acid in his mouth. No matter how much Noa meant to her, he didn’t want to babysit the high khonin if there was real work to be done. He forced himself to turn to the dancer. “Are you all right?”

Noa’s face was pale, her jaw clenched as she stared at Anwei’s back disappearing into the crowd. When she shifted to look at Knox, there was something new in her expression, sharp and curious. “You knew where we were.”

He nodded slowly.

“You and Anwei… after she healed you, it changed something about the two of you.” She swallowed. “Some of your shadows went away. But they’re still all around you. They’re trying to get in, aren’t they?”

Knox’s stomach twisted, wondering what that could mean. Shadows? The only thing that had gone away was Willow.

Her hand shot forward, latching on to his wrist. “I can tell Altahn that Tual found us. That Anwei’s contact here is bad. You help her.” Noa bit her lip. “I’m sorry about letting you down before. I didn’t realize what would happen if I wasn’t where Anwei asked me to be. I didn’t realize how important any of this was until I saw him—Tual…” She shook her head. “I won’t make that mistake again.”

Knox stared down at her, incredulous. “You didn’t know?”

Noa shrugged. “Nothing I’ve ever done has mattered, Knox. So long as I was wearing the right dress and saying the right things, I didn’t matter. But here, all of us matter.”

Knox’s mind ran fast, trying to think of a response that was true. Anwei letting the dancer invade their rooms above Gulya’s apothecary, Noa’s loud laugh and raucous singing, her magpie caws over anything that sparkled, the way she flirted with Altahn—all of it rankled. All of it was an intrusion in the perfect team that Anwei-plus-Knox had been.

At least, that was what he’d thought before. But Noa was here. Anwei wanted her here. And he had to admit, since that first debacle at the governor’s mansion, Noa had never again missed her cues. So he swallowed his pride, his annoyance, and the awful fear strung in hot beads across the bond. “You’re part of the crew. You’re part of Anwei’s plan, so of course you matter. We need you.”

She grinned. “Was that so hard to say?”

“Don’t push it, Noa.” He started to turn but paused. “You have coin for the rickshaw?”

Her brow furrowed. “I don’t have pockets, Knox.”

He pulled out a few copper rounds and flipped them in her direction, then pressed through the crowd after Anwei, trying not to enjoy Noa’s flailing as she tried to catch them.

When he finally found Anwei, she was halfway back to the shop. She didn’t look when he settled in a step behind her, only reaching for him to check their relative distance like any other time they’d been on a job in Chaol. She knew he’d be there.

“Why are you going back?” he murmured.

“If Tual’s got Sleeping Death, then I need to brew an antidote. That means I need some of it to find a counter. Paran has more of it in his upstairs workroom.” She checked behind them, then to both sides before walking into the street. “They decided I’m Yaru, just like Ellis did.” She laughed a little. “Paran didn’t even bother to come down and see my face. Years of work on that cover, and now it’s gone.”

The air seemed to hum around her, her aura thick with threads of deep purple that jerked and swelled around her as she walked. The bond shivered with fear, cold and dark and poisonous as if Anwei was remembering something he couldn’t see. No thoughts from her had come directly across the bond since back in Chaol, but her feelings came through strong. A twitch of movement on the ground caught Knox’s eye, and he had to look twice to be sure.

The grass between cobblestones was growing.

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Anwei. You need to calm down.”

“I’m calm.” She kept walking. “We need to find a way in, a way to distract him—”

“Anwei.” Knox stopped, pressing a hand to each of her shoulders. “None of this is going to work if you’re adding to the city garden as we walk.”

She flinched, looking down to find the grass growing over the toes of her boots.

“We’ve done this a million times. Tual isn’t going to jump out of the shadows and…” He shrugged. He hadn’t actually been awake for whatever Tual had done. “If Tual knows we’re here and this is his approach, he’s underestimating you. Us. We have a good plan. Mateo is his weak spot. And knowing that he’s brewing this Sleeping Death stuff sets us ahead.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. But we’re going to have to hope.” She fell in next to him as they walked, her hand reaching out to touch his arm. It was almost like before. Before, when the world had been Knox, Anwei, and a ridiculously expensive bottle of malt in a Water Cay cellar, or a poorly judged love note under a high khonin pillow, or a set of candlesticks locked under the stairs.

But then Anwei recoiled, her hand jerking away from him, and her body tilted away.

The goddess sighed in his head. You can’t let her pull away. Not now.

Relationships are between two people, Calsta, he shot back. She’s not a broomstick. I can’t pick her up and drag her along after me whether she wants me to or not. If this is all she wants, then it’s enough.

It won’t be enough. Bonds aren’t meant for thieves, Knox.

When they got to the street with the apothecary’s blue door, Anwei darted down an alleyway at the other end of the street, then counted until they came out behind it. There was a door cut into the weathered brick wall that was covered by a locked iron grate. Above it, there was a single glass-paned window. An aura burned in the body of the shop past the door, and another on the other side of the room from the window upstairs. “Do you have your lockpicks?” he asked.

Anwei nodded. “But going in that way would be too noisy.” She looked up at Knox. “Unless Paran isn’t up there anymore?”

“He’s there. Could you pick the grate’s lock from the inside if we need to get out that way?”

“Of course.”

Tipping his chin up, Knox traced the line of the tile roof, catching sight of the false ceiling through the window that blocked off an attic space. Both of them ducked behind the wall when a bird came winging out of the window above.

Knox grabbed Anwei’s hand. “Come on.”

She followed, keeping close behind him as they passed the back doors to the next three shops until they got to a wall, the end of the last shop’s roof dipped down on top of it to let rainwater stream down onto the street. Running at the wall, he jumped up and grabbed hold of the top, and pulled himself up.

Anwei walked up slower, her frown visible from ten feet up. “I was thinking you could pretend to be very, very sick, and I could take you in—”

“And you think Paran wouldn’t notice Yaru trying to steal his expensive poison while you pretend to cry over my dead body?” He offered her a hand. “Come on.”

“You know I hate you, right?”

“I can’t help that you misspent your whole childhood not climbing things.”

She took his hand and let him help her up, then moved to crouch behind the roof’s peak. Knox started down the length of the roof, hopping the first gap between buildings and pretending the flare of Anwei’s feelings wasn’t there at the back of his head. It felt like a rhythm. Like normal. Like any other job. Steal dangerous flower dust. Easy.

He grinned at Anwei’s whispered curse when she followed him across the gap. Anwei had been his best friend for over a year, which was what he’d missed most during their last weeks in Chaol, and missed even more since he’d woken up. He could pretend to be everything that had come before the tomb, before Lia had reappeared, before they’d found the snake-tooth man.

Everything before had been so easy.

Across the ceramic tile roof, one more jump to get to the next building (and another whispered curse from Anwei), and they were above the apothecary, Knox digging at the tile mortar about halfway up to pry one free. Anwei leaned down to sniff at the tile, then took out a bottle from her bag and poured a few drops across the mortar the next tile down, which immediately began to soften and bubble. She corked the bottle, then pulled the tile off. Once a large enough hole was made, Knox cut away the packed straw between rafters beneath.

Anwei hardly waited until he was done before she went in feet first. Knox followed, landing in the dark in a crouch that sent up a cloud of dust. Paran’s aura was now on the first floor with the other bloom of white energy, the apothecarist Anwei had mentioned, he supposed.

“Is that dust from you, Knox?” Anwei prodded from the shadows. “You’re losing your touch.”

He sneezed, causing her to look around the dusty attic in a panic, as if a sneeze was worse than the noise they’d made jumping down. The rafters made a peak overhead, the hole in the roof sending a stark beam of light down to the rough-hewn floor. Wooden crates were set in clusters clear to the edges, as if they’d been categorized and organized for easy access.

Anwei pointed down. What they needed was in the workroom itself. Knox checked all the bare patches of floor until he found the trapdoor that led downward. Paran’s aura was still on the first floor, so he hooked a finger through the pull.

“Wait—” Anwei moved to grab his arm, but Knox had already wrenched it open. A bell sounded.

The auras below went still. Then one took off up the stairs toward them.

“You knew it was rigged?” Knox hissed, letting it drop to run for the larger boxes crowding the far corner of the attic. Anwei beat him to them, lodging herself into the triangle of space between one of the larger crates and the roof and pulling him in after her. He barely fit, every inch of him crammed against wall or box or Anwei’s bony knees. “How do we feel about knocking him out?” he whispered.

“I don’t want him to know anything is wrong.”

“The bell already rang. I guess maybe it could have been a rat or something?” Knox looked up at the light streaming down through the hole in the roof, the aura in the office and climbing higher. “But I think at this point we’d have to pray pretty hard.”

“I’m supposed to pray?” Anwei shifted behind him, her legs twisted up against his back. “I’d rather all the gods burned.”

He contorted sideways trying to look back at her. “Keep your religious persecution down, would you? He’s coming up the ladder now.”

“Does it count as religious persecution when religious people persecute you?”

Knox snorted, covering his mouth and nose when the trapdoor crashed open. Breathing in slow and letting it out even slower, Knox turned to the well of glimmering gold inside him. He drew it in, the feel of sunlight burning merrily through him. He willed the light around him to bend.

Darkness gathered around them like ink. Knox thought about hiding, about not being noticed, about the energy flare that was coming through the trapdoor walking right past them. Anwei squeezed in closer against his back, her heart beating hard enough he could feel it in his own chest.

Rider of Storms. The thought came automatically, deflecting the feel of Anwei against him. Paran walked closer, inspecting box after box until he was standing directly in front of the gap where Knox and Anwei were hiding. Anwei’s breath was on Knox’s neck. Lady of Blue. Sky Painter.

Friends. That’s what they were. A friend wouldn’t notice the spicy scent of herbs on Anwei’s fingertips or the lavender oil she had used to retwist a few of her braids that morning on the boat. And so he didn’t, concentrating on the shadow, on Paran. On the First Smith, Wielder of Winds…

The man stooped lower, peering into the shadows, his eyes not quite focusing on Knox less than a foot below him. After a moment, he swore, turning to check the boxes along the back side of the roof.

Anwei poked Knox in the ribs, and he moved, slowly extracting himself from the hiding place, using another grouping of crates as a shield. Paran moved on to another set of crates across the room, groaning to himself as he looked up at the missing tiles. Rats were a feature in the monologue, which seemed like a good sign.

Slipping past him, Anwei went for the open trapdoor. She was down the ladder in a breath, and Knox followed her, Paran turning just as Knox’s head ducked below, the shadows still clinging to Knox, telling the man nothing was there.

Sliding down the ladder, Knox came out in a roll, almost crashing into a large wire cage fluttering with birds in little sectioned-off rectangles. There was a heavy wooden worktable next to it, half of it covered in oilcloth packages with languages from all across the Commonwealth on the labels. There were two barrels propped up at the end of the table, a desk, a counter covered in dishes and measures, and a scale loaded with little packets next to the barred window.

Anwei was hovering over the scale, shoving little packets into her bag with one hand and shielding her nose with the other, her eyes streaming tears. Papers were strewn across the table, a ledger with markings up and down it catching Knox’s eye. He picked it up when he saw a notation marked with a capital TM. Tual Montanne?

Footsteps thunked toward the ladder from above.

Anwei ran for the stairs, arm still blocking her nose as she took them three at a time, Knox only a step behind around the curve that hid the first floor. She slid to her knees at the bottom in front of the heavy wooden door and wrenched it open, revealing the grate between them and the alley outside. She groped in her bag for her lockpicking tools.

The floor above them creaked.

“Fast would be good.” Knox hummed through the cloudy scent of herbs coming from the workroom on the other side of the doorway. The aura above was coming toward the top of the stairs. For some reason, Paran’s aura was flickering.

Tongue sticking out, Anwei slid one of the picks into the lock, and then a second.

Knox drew in a little more of Calsta’s power, maintaining the bent light around them. Still, Paran was flickering in and out, as if Knox’s aurasight was …

Knox’s chest clenched, his lungs growing tight as the wound in his side pulled. He moaned, pressing a hand to the bandaging because he was cracking into pieces, the edges grating against one another. Willow—

Anwei was there, in his face, checking his pulse, his breath, curse words he didn’t know the meaning of rapping out from her. “Hang on, Knox,” she hissed. “Stay with me.”

His hands began to shake as the gold scorching through his veins began to siphon away. Willow! he thought, but the wall that Anwei made between him and Willow was there, blocking the ghost from speaking. Please, he begged. Don’t do this to me now.

But it was now. Willow couldn’t speak, but she could take.

There was nothing to plug the hole inside him, energy sucking away as if his insides were riddled with leeches. Knox’s lungs wouldn’t inflate, his humors that had been rushing with adrenaline suddenly freezing into a stagnant mire. His knees buckled, sending him lurching into the wall, the ledger he’d accidentally brought from the office clattering to the floor.

All of Calsta’s light bending around him winked out.

The footsteps in the office paused at the noise. Then started toward the stairs fast.

Somehow Anwei was supporting his weight and the grate was open, and Knox was limping into the alleyway. You helped Anwei stop me from dying in the tomb, Calsta, he pled. You promised to help me fix Willow if I kept my oaths. How do I fix it? I can’t fix it if I’m unconscious. Or dead.

The goddess didn’t see fit to answer.

Anwei’s arm snaked around his waist, and they were in the street, people bumping into Knox from all sides. They stopped next to a shop with large clear windows full of flowers despite the sound of footsteps pounding after them. Perhaps Anwei had some concoction to throw at Paran to buy them time.

Knox’s aurasight blinked in and out, Paran closer every time—

Which was when Anwei looked up at him, her hand snaking up into his hair.

“What are you—”

And it was like that night in the governor’s office when he’d been poisoned. Anwei had come toward him, and he’d wanted to kiss her. He’d wanted it so much he’d almost fallen out of a window to get away, protecting his access to Calsta’s energy like it was his soul. But this time Anwei moved slowly, looking up at him like the picture of a girl in love, her hand cupping his cheek.

She stretched up and kissed him.

And Knox forgot about the aura blundering toward them. He forgot he was about to fall over. He forgot about teasing Anwei and how well they worked together when they were finding things, he forgot about Calsta hovering behind him like the warrior goddess she was.

He forgot to think about anything else because Anwei’s lips were moving against his and the bond was sparking like fireworks in his head.

“Hey! You, Beildan!”

Anwei broke away to face the man racing toward them, hand shooting up to cover her mouth, her cheeks pink. Heat climbed up Knox’s neck.

Right. This was fake. It was just like in the governor’s office. An act. Paran hadn’t seen Anwei’s face, so why not pretend?

“You, don’t go any farther!” Paran stopped short of them, looking between Anwei and Knox with slowly dawning doubt.

“Did you… need something?” Anwei wrinkled her nose, smiling a little too big, a hand going to her mouth. She giggled, her arm still locked around Knox’s waist to keep his knees from buckling. Willow had slowed, Knox’s energy leaking in a drip instead of a roar. “Calsta above, this is embarrassing. We didn’t mean to offend—”

Fake. It was all fake. He said it to himself again. Then another time, trying to breathe.

“You were in my shop.” Paran’s face had gone ruddy, though Knox couldn’t see quite straight enough to know if it was with embarrassment or anger. “You were up there, and half my remaining supply is gone! Who told you—”

“I’m… sorry?” Anwei took a hesitant step toward the man, testing Knox’s weight and then letting her hand drop from around his waist when he held himself upright. “My betrothed and I were just…” She looked self-consciously toward the window.

Flowers. They were braided into wreaths. Knox looked away. This was all set up just like everything else Anwei did, so she could pretend to be a real girl with a real betrothed and a real blush across her cheeks who could wilt like a pretty flower when Paran came growling after her. Anwei never had been the bouquet she pretended to be.

Knox knew what she was underneath. Steel.

But at the same time, he could feel her heart fluttering against him, her mind churning, the burn in her cheeks. The flowers, the window, the self-consciousness. All that was fake. But underneath, that blush was real.

The fireworks still sizzling in the back of his mind? Those were real.

Even Paran could see it, looking from her to Knox, then to the window. “Gods and monsters,” he swore. “I apologize. Did you see anyone running down this street?”

“I mean, I wasn’t really paying attention?” Anwei gave him an awkward grin and took Knox’s hand, her fingers settling comfortably between his. Paran apologized again and walked away, and as soon as he’d turned his back, a thread of Anwei’s anger slipped across the bond, bloody and red.

But before Knox could look down at Anwei, Willow was back and battering at his defenses. Knox’s vision went hazy as the energy inside him began to drain. He gritted his teeth, jamming a hand to the pain in his ribs, his knees beginning to shake.

The last thoughts that pulled free as the darkness took him was that slip of anger, like teeth against his lip. Anwei loved him—not all sisterly and slightly violent like Lia, or condescending and annoying like Calsta. She loved him, wanted him, and it was only in that moment that he truly felt the slap that his words that night in Chaol had been for her.

When he’d told her that his Oaths to Calsta made the two of them impossible.

Anwei was drawing away rom their bond, and there was nothing Knox could do to stop her any more than he could stop Willow from drinking in the last dregs of him.

So he let go. Grateful that the last thing he felt, despite it all, was Anwei’s arms catching him.