The Body That Answered

Tarrow slid another handspan across the marrow grit.

Pell caught his coat. The fabric stretched, then tore at the shoulder seam. His right arm kept pulling, rigid and red-lit beneath the sleeve, while his left hand clawed furrows in the floor.

“Get him away from the corpse,” I said.

“Doing my best.” Pell braced a boot against Tarrow’s hip. The Factor was still in her other hand, knife at his throat. “You could try having a smaller corpse.”

The Godkiller’s jaw clicked again. Its mouth opened another finger’s width.

I tried to close my stone hand around the fragment embedded in my palm. Two fingers refused. The crack had reached the wrist, and each movement sent a fine, dry pain up my arm. I had no intention of testing how much more of the hand I could lose. The hand was presently holding the First Deity’s name. It had become a specialized piece of equipment.

“Venn,” I said. “What is it doing?”

He stood close to the ribs, eyes on Tarrow’s arm. “Don’t say the name again.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

“The mouth moved when he spoke it.” Venn’s salted fingers flexed against his chest. “Then the fire moved.”

“That’s what we saw.”

“No. Look at the sternum.”

I looked.

A narrow seam had appeared between the Godkiller’s ribs. Not the old fracture Tarrow had opened in the memory. This was flesh, or something that had once been flesh, shifting under its coat of fossilized marrow. The bone edges pressed apart with a slow, grinding effort. The corpse was not breathing. It did not need to. Something in it was obeying.

The Factor watched the opening with the stillness of a man seeing a lock turn.

“Your client knew this would happen,” I said.

“I was not told to wake the body.”

“That wasn’t what I asked.”

His silence was expensive. I could hear the price in it.

Tarrow’s heel struck a rib. The first fire flared through his sleeve, brighter at the shoulder than it had been a moment ago. His body jerked toward the opening.

Pell let go of the Factor long enough to throw her weight across Tarrow’s back. The knife stayed at the Factor’s throat; she had pinned him against the rib cage with her hip. Useful, if not comfortable.

“Tarrow,” I said. “Look at me.”

He turned his head. His face had gone gray around the mouth. “I am.”