Deus Necros

“Hmm, what is with that face? You know these two?” the big man asked.

The question slid across the room like a blade laid gently on the tongue. Tull felt his shoulders loosen and tighten in the same breath. If the redheaded boy spoke even a single true name, the entire den would shift from market to battlefield. He did not want to cut the thread so soon. Their lead was thin as spider silk and he could already feel the heat of the palace behind it. Exposing the second prince here would not be a mistake. It would be a confession.

“Know them? No. They stink of poppy,” Redd said. He lifted his cuffed hands and pressed both knuckles to his nose. “Stronger than your usual dirt. Too clean, too cut. It makes the stomach want to empty itself.”

The gang leader’s mouth peeled back in a pleased little grin. “Ah, that is why. A nose like this saves me time. No need for clever tricks. He can smell you for what you peddle.”

“He looks interesting,” Tull said, letting his gaze move in a slow, harmless circle. “I have not seen hair that red.”

“Half human, half something even he does not know,” the leader replied. His voice held the careless pride of a man parading a prize beast. “Good nose. Good instincts. We caught him trying to slip into the desert from the north a few years back. I bought him at the slave market. Best coin I ever spent.”

Tull considered the boy’s stance. Even chained, the weight lived on the balls of his feet. The eyes were caged, but they kept measuring doors and men and knives all the same. “Sell him to me.”

“No,” the leader said without pause. “Too useful. He can smell guards down a hall and blades behind curtains. He is strong enough to throw a table and fast enough to leave a bite in the same second. I do not sell my best tool.”

“Twenty bags,” Tull said.

The leader’s grin faltered. “Not vials. Bags.”

“Yes. Twenty bags of refined poppy as the welcome gift on your first purchase. All for the boy.”

The leader looked at Redd the way a man looks at a stallion and tries to see the next ten years. Greed stepped on the throat of his caution and then tried to pretend it had never been there. “Tempting,” he said, but his eyes were already counting coin and doors and the weight of a new house with thick walls.

“It is more than tempting,” Tull said. “It is enough to walk out of this hole and never return. This room belongs to rats and roaches. You could trade it for windows and an afternoon nap that does not stink of incense and sweat. Unless you like the rats and roaches”

“No one likes rats,” the man muttered. For a heartbeat his gaze softened, as if an old picture had returned. “I always wanted to live like a king. Let me think.”

“Take your time,” Tull said. He kept the smile small. “Although it feels like we have eyes on us.”

“Eyes? This place is tight,” the leader said, making a show of glancing over his men and the lazy bodies on cushions. “Only mine are here.”

“I smell him,” Redd said. His voice lost the lazy curl for the first time. “He is close. He smells of blood. Not fresh. Not old. Layered. Many lives inside one scent.”

A young man stepped out of a fold in the wall where there had been no fold a moment ago. The lamp beside him failed to decide if it wanted him to exist. His face was familiar enough to shift the air. Every conversation stopped without being told to stop.

“Ah,” the newcomer said. “I suppose I have been noticed.”

Tull felt the prince turn his head a fraction. No words followed. They did not need words. Recognition had already moved across the table between them like a filled glass.

“Who is this bastard,” Jelal growled. Steel rasped out of a cracked sheath.

“Everyone,” Redd said. “Run.”

“We cannot do that just yet,” the newcomer answered as he drifted into the light. His clothes were black leather stitched with thin silver threads that caught lamp fire like water. A looped bracelet hung from his left wrist, linked to a weight of iron chain. The chain kissed a jagged black blade in his right hand, more shard of a larger sorrow than a true sword.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jelal snarled.

“Me,” the man said, and smiled with someone else’s teeth. “I am Ludwig Heart.”

The name tried to sit in the room. It did not fit the chair. The prince’s eyes narrowed the smallest degree. Tull felt his fingers loosen on the hilt he had stolen earlier and then close again until the leather bit.

“Like hell you are,” Redd said.

“And what makes you so certain,” the man asked. “Who are you to cast doubt.”

“If you were Ludwig you would remember me,” Redd growled. “We bled on the same battlefield. What did you do to him?”

His body began to swell against iron. Muscle rolled under skin like an animal shifting under cloth. The slave mark on his throat crawled with dull heat and the collar locked his bones like a hand at the base of the skull.

“Boss,” Redd said without taking his eyes off the intruder. “If you do not unlock this we are all dead.”

“What is happening,” the leader snapped. “Speak sense.”

“That thing,” Redd said, voice low and steady now, “is like me. A skinwalker.”

The false Ludwig smiled again. The mouth opened too wide. The cheeks tore without tearing. A jaw of razors nested where human teeth should be. The eyes went a deep yellow that looked wrong on any mammal that walked upright. “A brother,” he breathed. “How unfortunate.”

He vanished. Not a trick of smoke. Not a magician’s cough. He simply stepped into a seam of night and let the night own him.

Tull was already moving. He shoved a lounging guard aside, stole his short sword, and tore it free with a twist. “Give me that.”

“Stop, you…”

The warning broke on the ring of steel. A black shard knifed out of shadow for Tull’s brow. He cut up from the hip and caught it. Sparks cracked and fell like cheap coins.

“You are strong,” said the voice, now near the ceiling and now from under the table. “I do not have time for you.”

He slipped back into the dark and the dark closed like a lid.

“Backs to the walls,” Redd barked. He did not shout for fear. He shouted because he knew. Only two men obeyed. The prince and Tull went flush to the plaster, heels set, chins low.

“What is happening,” Jelal said again, as if the world would answer if he could just find the right volume. The answer came in arms. Shadow flowed down from the beams and coiled itself into many limbs. Each hand held a blade made of nothing. They fell together. Jelal became a red sieve. His legs forgot their work and the carpet took him.

“One down. Many to go,” the skinwalker sang, hidden again.