4

No Good News

The stew had only just begun simmering when there came a knock at the door.

“I’m coming in,” Yakun’s voice came from the cracked open door. Odessa had a tendency to get a little jumpy at night and after the second time she’d answered the opening door with her knife, Yakun had started announcing himself before he entered. “Oh, that smells wonderful,” he said, as he entered. He took off his faded blue cloak and hung it on a peg beside the door so it hung over her bow. “What are we having, my dear?”

Odessa inwardly grimaced every time he called her that but she tried not to show it. She stoked the fire beneath the simmering pot with a cast iron poker. “Biltong stew,” she said, pushing a half-charred branch in the middle of the coals. The little firewood they had inside was now mostly burned, greedily consumed by the low flames running along glowing red fissures in crumbling charcoal.

“What’re doing out so late?” Poko asked, sprawled out on their cushioned tabletop in front of the fire.

Yakun eased into his high-backed chair facing the fire, relief washing over his wrinkled face. The firelight upon his pale skin cast dark shadows in the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Streaks of white in the gray of his shoulder-length hair and his bushy beard flickered in the firelight. “I left this morning to bolster the wards but, as always, complications abound.” A tattooed hand slightly touched with arthritis absent-mindedly combed knots from his beard. “There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“What complications?” Odessa asked, rising from the fireplace with a noticeable wince.

Yakun reached into a pouch on the belt of his tunic and drew his pipe and a small oilcloth bag of tobacco. “Raff came back.” A pinch of tobacco he packed into the pipe’s bowl with a thumb.

“What did he say?” Odessa asked. Yakun’s crow had been gone for nearly a month, relaying messages to Yakun’s associates out east.

“My friends in Asha-Kalir will not help. Khymanir’s grasp on the city tightened even more. The city prepares for war and they cannot afford to take any risks.” He set the pipe in his lap and tucked his bag of tobacco back in his belt pouch. His eyes met hers. His gaze was soft and kind. “All is not entirely lost. I sent Raff back with a reply. I may be able to convince them yet.”

The news should have hit Odessa in the chest like a punch but she was oddly calm. Numb to the disappointment. Yakun’s friends in Asha-Kalir were the only people he knew that had a chance of removing or neutralizing the godsblood. Khymanir had given a small portion of his free men a rudimentary understanding of his magics so that they may facilitate his work. The magicks of Khymanir and Asha-Kalir were those of flesh and blood and bone. It was the magic of body and soul. If they could not help her there was most likely no mortal alive that could. She understood all of this yet the disappointment was slow to sink in. After a year of being forsaken by all that was holy in the world, she still had some deluded hope that somehow she would be cured. That somehow it would all work out and she could go home.

“Can’t they just tell us how to do the magic then? If they tell you what to do, you can do it, can’t you?”

Yakun snorted softly and shook his head. “They’ve spent their entire lives refining their craft. When it comes to their magic, I may as well be a drooling idiot.” He picked up his pipe and stuck the stem between his teeth. “Hand me a firebrand, would you, my dear?”

Beginning to feel sick, she picked a small, half-burned twig from the edge of the fire and carried it to Yakun. He took it, pinching it between two fingers and cupping it with his hands, and held it above the bowl of his pipe.

A few puffs and the smell of burning tobacco wafted into the air. Odessa took the twig from him as he took the pipe from his lips and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “Finding a cure could take months or even years. And that is if they could devote all of their time to it which I am sure Khymanir would not abide. For now, all we can do is wait and hope that they at least start to think about it.”

“You’re right,” Odessa said, tossing the smoldering twig back into the fire. The stew bubbled inside the cauldron, its scent mingling with the woody, slightly sweet smell of tobacco.

Poko sat up. “Why can’t we just go to them and make them help? Why all the back and forth with birds?”

“Do you know how far Asha-Kalir is from here? How many spans of desert one has to cross to get there? And what kind of gods and monsters call that place home?”

Poko shrugged. “It’s bad all over. It might be a bit of a hike but we can manage it.”

“An old man, a Forsaken girl, and a wingless fairy would not get far. Let me assure you of that.” Smoke rolled from his lips as he spoke. “We probably wouldn’t make it through the Severed Pass.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“Azka must have caravans going back and forth all the time though, right?” Odessa asked, a bit timidly.

Yakun took a long, dragged-out puff from his pipe and let the smoke out in a loose cloud that obscured his face as it wafted to the ceiling in swirling ribbons. “Putting yourself within reach of Azka would not be wise. I can obscure the signal smoke that pours forth from that godsblood in your veins but up close, the scent of it will still linger on your skin. You’re safe at a distance but if Azka or his Chosen, or any blasted god for that matter, gets close enough to catch your scent, they will find you. The grove is the only place where you can be truly safe. For now, that is.”

“I know,” Odessa said, sitting down beside the fire again, watching the flames flicker along the bottom of the cauldron.

Poko frowned but said no more on the subject. Yakun puffed on his pipe, filling the room with redolent tobacco smoke. “How fared your hunt?” he asked Odessa.

“I didn’t see much of anything,” she said. She stirred the stew, her encounter with the creature in the stream caught in her throat like a fish bone. It was the lingering of the urge that stayed her words. How close she had come to putting an arrow through the poor creature’s back. Shame constricted around her throat. She kept stirring, round and round. “I did see one thing.”

Yakun said nothing but she could feel his eyes on her back, waiting expectantly. She swallowed. “It was a goat-man thing. It told me Toth got pulled into the sea. And whatever did it brought tainted air with it and the wind carries it east.”

“A goat-man thing?” Odessa turned to glance at his expression, to see if he believed the creature’s story. He chewed at the stem of his pipe, his gaze distant. “Your father once said some creature from the ocean tore Keshikki from his cliff-side palace and left in its wake clouds of noxious gas. It was I who helped clear his lungs of it. Spores of some kind.” He puffed, the tobacco packed in the bowl glowing orange for a moment. “I wonder…”

“You believe it?” she asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said, eyes still distant in the realm of thought. “But it is interesting.” He was quiet a moment longer, lost in thought.

Odessa licked her lips and swallowed hard, wanting to tell Yakun about her worsening urges but she couldn’t. Yakun had been kind enough to let her and Poko into his home and attempt to rid her of her godsblood but if he knew what wicked thoughts intruded in her mind, there was no guarantee that his kindness would extend far enough to protect her. If Yakun or Poko knew how deep her hunger truly ran, would they continue to stay by her side? A lump formed around the words stuck in her throat.

Yakun was chewing on the stem of his pipe, lost in a labyrinth of thought, when the stew had finished simmering. He did not stir from his distant rumination even when Odessa had lit the oil lamp sitting on the table beside his chair. Only when Odessa was holding a steaming bowl in front of his face did his eyes focus and he returned to the dimly lit room and the pleasant scent of stew.

After a moment’s surprise, he quickly set his pipe on the table and took the wooden bowl in both hands. “Thank you,” he said. “It looks delicious.”

A tired smile touched the corners of Odessa’s lips as she sat cross-legged in front of the fire.

“Are you cooking tomorrow then?” Poko asked, chewing on a small, steaming hunk of potato Odessa had given them.

Yakun’s spoon stopped short before his open mouth. “What?” He looked from Poko to Odessa, who kept her eyes on the bowl in her lap. “Was I supposed to cook tonight?”

“It’s fine,” Odessa said, shaking her head. “I don’t mind cooking.”

“No, it’s not fine,” Yakun said. “I will cook tomorrow. I won’t forget again no matter what complications arise. Even if the gods strike me down right now with lightning and flame, I will still make dinner tomorrow.”

Odessa’s thin smile grew a bit, showing a bit of teeth even. Yakun’s little blasphemies somehow made the gods of this world and the world above seem somehow distant and small. It was comforting in a strange, vague way. Each of his small blasphemies was proof refuting divine omnipotence. To her, it felt like proof that even Talara and the other High Gods could not reach her.

“I really am sorry,” Yakun said before blowing on the stew in his spoon. “You’re already exerting yourself too much and I force you to make dinner. It’s shameful.” He shook his head as if ashamed of himself before he slurped a spoonful of stew. “Oh, that’s good,” he said and then paused, his spoon held midway between mouth and bowl. He licked his lips and let out a breath like he was still smoking his pipe. “It’s got a bit of heat, doesn’t it?”

“It shouldn’t,” Odessa said. Yakun had little tolerance for spice so she had gotten accustomed to using chili peppers sparingly. “I only used a few peppers and they were still pretty green.” She ate a spoonful of the thick, creamy stew. She could taste only salted meat and tomato. “It’s not hot at all.”

“I will never understand how you people can handle that spiciness. I’ll bet you the gods gave humanity those peppers as a punishment. Why else would food hurt so much?” Yakun blustered but he continued to eat nonetheless, occasionally stopping to catch his breath and complain.

After two more of Yakun’s rants about chili peppers, Poko convinced Odessa to give them a sip from her spoon. Odessa had not eaten much of her small portion - nausea had begun to bubble up her esophagus and she had none of the willpower to refuse the fairy’s request.

Poko took the spoon’s neck in a hand to steady the trembling coming from her hand and drank like a man draining a ladle of cold water on a hot day. When they had their fill they released the spoon and tilted their head. Lips smacking, their brows furrowed.

“Old man’s right. It’s got a little heat.” Poko wiped their mouth with the back of their hand. “We’re going to have to get your taster cured too if you think that isn’t spicy.”

“Ah, vindicated at last,” Yakun said, his half-empty bowl sitting in his lap.

“It wasn’t nearly as bad as you made it out to be, though. The way you were talking I expected to be chewing on hot coals or something.”

Odessa took another taste and, now swirling stew in her mouth, detected a hint of heat in the now lukewarm stew but it was subtle. Nothing to complain about at all.

Another spoonful, despite her stomach’s queasy misgivings. She closed her eyes, blocking out Poko and Yakun bickering about the cuisine of fairies and humanity. Saltiness and tomatoes. The faint flavor of meat and potatoes. And a subtle warmth of chili pepper. She frowned. I’m losing my sense of taste.

The godsblood was eating away more of her each day. She would have to feed the hunger. Soon.