The God Opens

“Then let’s get it open,” Tarrow said.

He put the coal against the Godkiller’s sternum. The black fire sank into the hairline seam, and the bone parted around it. The sound came from somewhere deep in the corpse: a long, grinding shift, like a settlement settling onto a bad foundation. Tarrow leaned into the pull of the silver cords. His right arm had gone white to the elbow. He didn’t look at it.

“Hold the edges,” Venn said. “The fire needs a path.”

Pell took the left side of the seam. I set my stone palm against the right. The bone was warm under my fingers, which was rude of it. The Godkiller had been dead for a century. We were not supposed to have to accommodate its comfort.

The seam widened. A sharp crack traveled up the sternum and through the ribs. Beneath it, I heard a child crying behind a closed door.

Tarrow’s left hand stopped on the knife hilt. The coal flared. His right arm jerked toward the opening, and the black fire dragged the silver cords taut enough to cut into his sleeve.

“Tarrow.” I braced my shoulder against the bone. “Stay with us.”

“I’m here.” His teeth showed with the effort of it. “It wants the rest open.”

The sternum pulled apart another inch without his help. From inside came a dry scrape, then the slow turn of a lock. The hunger had found another secret in the corpse and wanted it out.

Venn leaned close to the seam. “Don’t follow it. The body is the door. Keep opening that.”

Tarrow’s left hand left his knife. It reached for the narrow gap between his own ribs and the harness, fingers searching for a clasp. His face had gone slack with concentration. He was trying to get at something under his coat.

I caught his wrist. “What are you doing?”

“Opening it.”

“I can see that.”

He looked at my hand around his wrist. “Let go.”

Pell moved in to help me. Tarrow drove his shoulder into us, still holding the coal to the corpse with his other hand. He had the strength of a man hauling cargo, and the fire lent him more. We slid across the floor. My stone palm tore free of the bone with a strip of gray skin attached.

The split in my hand opened along the letters of Pell’s name. I pressed it to Tarrow’s salt-white forearm. His arm seized beneath my palm. The fire jolted, and its light crawled across the sternum in a branching line.

He stopped fighting us. The crying behind the bone door stopped too.

The quiet left room for his voice. “There was a door in the settlement.”