Chapter 157: Pay for Your Seat

The blade was a scythe.

I hadn’t picked it. Ten minutes ago it was a cracked surveyor’s rod. Now it was eight feet of black ash with a curved edge the color of a sunset, humming in my hand like it wanted a word with the salt.

*Well,* Aurelix said. *That’s new.*

"Not helping."

*I’m not helping. I’m admiring.*

The salt-hand hauled Mirain another yard. Her heels carved two clean lines in the white. Her hawk was a smear of red-gold sparks circling her head, screaming without a sound.

"Valen." Castor had his mattock up and no idea where to swing it. "Tell me where to hit."

"Nowhere. You already tried." I rolled my shoulders. "Lyra, put your circle under *me.* Not under the salt."

"Under you?!"

"Trust me."

"I really don’t!" But the blue ring slid under my boots anyway. Good girl.

I ran.

Salt crunches when you sprint on it. It sounds like the whole floor is chewing. A dozen smaller hands sprouted off the big one’s knuckles, grabbing for my ankles.

I didn’t swing at the hand.

I swung at the *ground* in front of it, and I swung with fire.

Aurelix’s flame ran down the edge of the scythe in a long amber line. The salt it touched didn’t fall apart. It *melted.* White went clear, clear went hard, and a glittering strip of glass opened across the floor like a frozen river. The small hands slid off it. The big hand, caught in the middle of reaching, locked up at the wrist and cracked like a dropped window.

The grains tried to pour back in. They hit the glass and skated off.

"Huh," I said.

*Salt and phoenix fire,* Aurelix said, very pleased with herself. *You can’t unmake an offering, darling. But you can cook it.*

Mirain’s ankle came loose. She went sprawling backward, and Solene was there before she hit the ground, one fist tangled in her collar, hauling her clear of the glass like a cat with a kitten.

"Let go of me!"

"Not a chance."

"I *wasn’t*—"

"You were." Solene dropped her on her backside. "You were absolutely about to."

Mirain opened her mouth to argue. Nothing came out. She sat there with salt in her hair and her hawk curled on her knee like a wet rag.

I was still a little proud of myself. That’s how I missed it.

"That’s a Sanguis weapon."

Solene hadn’t raised her voice. She was standing very straight, rapier half-drawn, looking at the scythe and not at me.

"It’s a surveyor’s rod," I said.

"It *was.*" She finally looked up. "Seventh-child forms. Staff to scythe in one breath, no seam. There’s a treatise on it in the Citadel library, Valen. Reference section. Back shelf. You shelve that section on Thursdays."

I said nothing. A man can drown in a lot of things. The easy one is a wrong answer.

"The author," Solene said, "is the Governor of Bergis. His name is Valerian."

Castor’s mattock sagged. Behind Solene, Mirain slowly turned her head.

"Lot of Valerians," I tried.

"Not with that scythe."

"Plenty of people copy the forms."

"Nobody’s copied that one. I’ve tried." She almost smiled, and it was the worst thing I’d seen all day. "That’s three on the list, by the way. The cracked rod, the fire, and this."

*She’s very good,* Aurelix said. *You should hire her.*

"Not now," I said.

"Not now," Solene agreed. "But I’m going to ask. And you’re going to answer."

That’s when the first barrel lid blew off.

---

It shot across the hall like a cork and hit a pillar so hard the stone rang. I flinched. Then all of them were going.

*Knock. Knock. Knock.*

Three barrels along the left wall, then six, then the whole row, lids bursting upward in a spray of salt and splinters. Something sat up in every one.

I thought they’d be monsters. I know what to do when a monster stands up.

They were people.

Pale, salt-cured, wrapped in coats that had been Citadel grey once, before the brine got into them. Hair stiff as straw. Eyes shut, or not there at all. Where their faces should have been, there was only smoothness, as if a thumb had rubbed the features off wet clay. They climbed out of the barrels one by one and stood in rows with their hands folded, politely, like guests waiting to be shown to their seats.

"Those are apprentices," Lyra whispered. "That’s an apprentice coat. Three years old, at least. Valen, those are *ours*—"

"Don’t touch them," I said. "Don’t let them touch you."

"Why not?!"

"Because it’s a table." I couldn’t have told you how I knew. "They’re setting a table."

The altar rippled.

Under the black stone, a long table rose into view, like a reflection coming up through a pond. Seven high-backed chairs ran along it. Six held tall, blurry shapes with their hands in their laps. The seventh was empty. A plate sat in front of it, spotless.

The voices came back, all of them at once, soft as a mother calling a child in from the yard.

*Six at the table.*

*The seventh went hungry.*

*Sit. Eat. You’ve been so thin.*

My chest went tight. I hadn’t expected that. I’d expected threats. I’d expected a hungry god to *want* something. I hadn’t expected it to be *kind.*

*It’s reading you,* Aurelix said sharply. *Not hunting you. Valerian, it’s reading you. Don’t let it.*

"I know," I said, through my teeth.

The guests moved.

They didn’t rush. They glided, hands folded, faceless heads tilting like flowers. Castor’s mattock folded one in half like dough, and it kept coming. Solene’s rapier went through a throat and came out dry.

"They’re not *alive!*" she snapped.

"They’re not dead, either!" Lyra shouted back. "That’s an *apprentice,* Solene, I knew her, her name was Marit—"

I swung the scythe. The first guest I cut burned and kept walking, and my stomach dropped. I was hurting people who’d already been hurt for three years.

"Don’t kill them!" I shouted. "Burn the *salt!* Aim for the brine!"

"Which part is the brine?!"

"Everything wet!"

Castor made a sound that was half laugh, half sob, and started swinging low at ankles instead of necks. Glass bloomed under the guests’ feet. They slid, toppled, and lay there, breathing but no longer reaching.

Then the thread net came down.

It was crimson, bright as a fresh cut, spread across the whole left wall in one sweep. It caught a dozen guests at once and snapped them off their feet like fish in a trawl. Mirain stood in the middle of the glass, one hand flung out, her hawk wheeling overhead with its wings blazing. Her hair was a wreck. Her mouth was a thin hard line.

"I’ve got the left!" she said. "You idiots take the right!"

Nobody told her she’d nearly walked into a god’s mouth. She knew. She was holding the net with white knuckles, and it was *good.* The threads didn’t just hold. They tied off, knot after knot, until the guests lay in neat bundles, wrapped and gently helpless.

"That’s the best I’ve ever seen you do," I said. I meant it.

"Shut up," Mirain said. Her voice cracked. "I know."

The last guest dropped. The hall went quiet. Casper sat against his pillar with Pollux holding him up, laughing thinly. Lyra knelt among the bundled apprentices, one hand on a salt-cold wrist.

"Alive," she whispered. "All of them. Valen, they’re *alive.*"

"Good." My arms were shaking. The scythe weighed more than it had any right to. "Then we’re getting them out of here, and then we’re getting *us* out of here, and then I’m going to sleep for a week."

*That sounds lovely,* Aurelix said. *It also won’t happen.*

I looked up.

The table under the altar hadn’t gone anywhere. Six chairs. One empty. And a new figure had joined the others, a woman, tall, hands folded, with a face like polished glass, bending over the seventh seat to set something on the plate.

A loaf.

It was small, round, and golden, with steam still curling off it. It smelled like every good morning of a childhood I’d never had.

The black stone bulged like a hand pushing through a sheet. The loaf rose out of the altar on a tongue of dark water and drifted across the glass toward Mirain. It stopped at the height of her chest.

*For the one who was second,* the voices said, very tenderly. *Take it, and you’ll never be second again.*

"Mirain," I said.

She didn’t look at me.

"Don’t."

Her hawk had gone quiet on her shoulder. Her hand was shaking. In the other hand, almost forgotten, she was holding her little glass vial, and I saw what was in it. The single black drop she’d been carrying since the trial, the one that always pulsed when I walked by, was pulsing now, fast, hard, like a second heartbeat.

She reached out.

For one terrible second I thought she’d take the whole thing in both hands.

Instead she closed her fingers around it, gently, like a bird. She turned it over. Smelled it. Her eyes were very bright.

"Not yet," she said.

Not *no.*

She tucked the loaf inside her coat, against her ribs, and buttoned the coat over it.

The voices went silent. All of them. The table sank under the black stone without a ripple, and the altar sat there like a plain slab of rock, an old, cold, patient thing that had just been told *later.*

I’d never felt so outplayed in either life.

"Mirain," Solene said carefully. "What did you just do?"

"Kept it from eating anybody else," Mirain said, in a voice that was almost normal. "Let’s go."

She walked out. Not fast. Her back was perfectly straight.

I stood there for a long moment, with the scythe still burning in my hand.

*Valerian,* Aurelix said softly. *That wasn’t a refusal.*

"I know."

*She’s going to keep it.*

"I know."

Behind me, Solene finally sheathed her rapier.

"Four," she said quietly.