The God Eaters

  Perfect. Kieran didn't watch the rest. In that first moment of noise and sudden movement, when all eyes automatically jerked to the disturbance, Kieran's hands went to work. One to the coffee urn, one into the back of his collar where the opium was hidden in a ball of rag. Open the urn, shake out the rag; close the urn, hide the rag. The whole operation took two seconds, tops.

  He drew off a tiny splash of coffee into his cup, to keep anyone from remembering a suspiciously clean cup after the fact. He turned around just in time to see a bloody-nosed Ash floor Sona with a beautiful right backfist to the jaw.

  The guards hadn't moved; a glance showed one slapping the other on the arm, waggling fingers in the universal sign for 'pay up.' Kieran grinned, lengthening his stride to cut off a handful of inmates who looked as if they'd decided to play too.

  "That's enough, Ashes," he said.

  Ash turned to him, wiping blood from his face, eyes shining. "How was that, Teach?"

  "You won. That's all that ever counts. Now go eat your damn supper." He shoved his tray at Ash.

  To Sona, he held out a hand. "Not dead yet, I hope?"

  "Unfortunately." Sona ignored the offered hand. He used the edge of the table to haul himself upright, rubbing his jaw. "You put him up to that?"

  "Wasn't me who stepped on his glasses. Give people something to prove, they prove it." With that, Kieran went to join Ash.

  "Did you see that?" Ash greeted him with a huge smile. A smile on Ash's face after the past few morose weeks seemed like a lucky omen. "I kicked his ass!"

  "Good work. Keep your head, now. This is where it might get sticky."

  Ash leaned in close. "You think they saw you?"

  "No. But watch my back anyway."

  "I see them. They're just standing there."

  "One of them bet on you, you know."

  "I wonder how much he won? Not that it'll do him any..." The redhead's joy at winning the fight crashed into the fact that people were going to die because of it. Kieran felt sorry for the softhearted little twit. If there'd been a way they could do this without killing, Kieran would have done it that way, for Ash's sake.

  "Yeah, okay. Let's just hope they're all in a coffee mood tonight." And that the coffee's bitterness hides the taste. And that I put in enough, and it dissolves fast enough, and they don't start dropping until they're at their posts, because if they get replaced right away this was all for nothing.

  He had to wrestle with himself not to stare at the coffee urn. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched it the whole period. No inmates went back for a second cup -- they seldom did, the stuff tasted like turpentine and they had no reason to stay awake. Halfway through supper, a cook opened the urn and poured in a fresh pot, and didn't seem to see anything amiss. Kieran imagined the swirl of boiling coffee stirring the dissolving drug, melting it into a potent soup of sleeping death.

  "God," Ash said, "I'm so nervous."

  "You're doing fine. Just remember to be a sulky bitch like you've been the past few weeks."

  "Asshole." Ash made the insult sound affectionate.

  "Eat. You don't want to do this on an empty stomach."

  "I'm too nervous. I'll puke."

  "No you won't, because I'll kick your ass if you do."

  They both managed to force their food down. The bell rang, and they were let into the yard.

  Kieran imagined he could taste the heaviness of the impending storm, but that was wishful thinking. Through the side of the fence that faced west, he could barely make out that the mountains looked a shade smoother, a hair closer than usual.

  "Are you sure --" Ash began.

  "Yes. Quit talking about it."

  "Sorry."

  "Now we're going to practice like we always do."

  "I'll screw up."

  "So?" But he didn't need Ash acting weird, missing moves he'd had by heart yesterday. "We'll do kicks. Yours suck, so nobody'll be surprised if you do it wrong."

  "Oh, thanks."

  "Don't mention it. Floating stance. Bend your knees more, weight over your back leg. Good.

  Snap kicks, right here. And try not to break my hand, I'm going to need it."

  He'd been right: Ash's kicks were awful, and no one noticed that it was because he was nervous.

  "You kick like a constipated priest," Kieran said after a while.

  "Well," Ash huffed between awkward efforts to reach Kieran's head-high hand, "you smell like one and the southeast tower's empty have a look."

  Mentally congratulating Ash's even tone, which no one would hear even if they heard it, he circled under the guise of making Ash pivot. The kid was right; there was no one up there. The swivel gun was unattended, pointing at the sky. The other tower was still manned, and the guard there didn't seem alarmed. Those guards shouldn't have eaten yet -- could they be already shortstaffed? Better than he could possibly have hoped. He just knew something was going to go wrong to compensate.

  Time passed. Kieran got tired, didn't have much strength to spare after getting zapped by the Director, so he stopped the lesson. There was nothing to do then but wait.

  "Is it just me," he heard someone nearby comment, "or is it starting to get dark?"

  "We shoulda been inside by now," was the puzzled answer.

  There were no clocks, but the sun had fallen behind the cloud bank over the mountains, which at best guess made it nearly an hour later than they usually went in. Kieran imagined the confusion that must be occurring inside, as the prison administrators tried to compensate for the droves of guards that must be falling ill right about now. It rankled that this part of his plan's success or failure was invisible to him.

  A careful study of the guard schedules had led him to decide that those who ate their supper after the inmates were a combination of two shifts. Both the afternoon people going off duty and the night people coming on would have a chance to sample his special recipe. Depending on how many came down sick, there might be almost no one in the towers or on the gates outside, because when missing half their staff their best option would be to put what guards they had as close to the prisoners as possible. Where Kieran could get at them. He hoped.

  When the prisoners were finally let back inside, their escort wore white uniforms instead of tan.

  Kieran silently rejoiced. His brew must have been both potent and popular; they were so understaffed they'd had to pull people out of Testing just to get the inmates out of the yard.

  They filed back into their cells. The White Watch men stood warily to their unaccustomed duty while a lone, nervous, tan-shirted guard went about hauling the levers that closed the cells.

  Kieran smirked at the Watchmen as he passed them. They couldn't use their magic inside the wards any more than he could. They were just men, in here, and they could smell a predator. One shifted his rifle to cover Kieran; the other stupidly stared at the business with the levers. Kieran hoped no one took advantage of this slackness to start a riot, because killing these idiots now wouldn't get anyone out of the cell block. But the only advantage the prisoners took was to talk and laugh while they were locked up, though they were supposed to be silent until the doors were closed. Only Kieran and Ash didn't have anything to say. They avoided each other's faces until, with a familiar clank and grind, the bars closed them in once more.

  It was torture to wait until all the guards had gone down to the end of the tier, out of earshot.

  When he was sure it was safe, Kieran wedged his foot in the bars and hopped up to see how his clever little mechanism had worked.

  It hadn't.

  "What's wrong?" Ash backed away from the look on Kieran's face. "What is it? Oh, hell. I told you the lock bar was too heavy. It bent, didn't it?"

  "Shut up." Kieran sat heavily on his bunk and put his head in his hands. "Shit. Shit. Well, there goes everything."

  With his face in his palms, he couldn't see Ash's expression, and he didn't want to. He didn't want to see his misery mirrored there. He didn't look up even when the bed sagg
ed under Ash's weight and a hand landed on his shoulder.

  "Look, Kieran..." Ash's voice was careful. Humoring him, or afraid of him. Like everyone else.

  How could he have ever mistaken that for respect? "We'll think of something. Maybe the sickness dodge will work after all, what with everyone going down --"

  "They'll know what it is by then. We have to wait for the storm, remember? If they can see us they'll gun us down, you know that." Kieran jerked his shoulder, trying to dislodge Ash's hand, but failed. "We're fucked. I fucked us. Quit trying to be nice about it."

  "I'm not. Okay? Kieran, look at me. At least we're taking a bunch of them down with us, right?"

  "Now you sound like me. Stop it."

  "Kieran."

  "I said stop!" Kieran forgot about not looking, but the expression he found on Ash's face was not the one he'd feared. Far from being miserable, Ash was burning bright again. The pale blue eyes were all the way alive, at this worst of times to lose detachment Ash was completely present.

  "Don't you care?" Kieran snapped.

  "I don't believe it's over. Something will come up. We'll think of something. We're smart, we're smarter than they are."

  With a shaky breath he regretted letting Ash hear, Kieran reached down behind the bed. He pulled a sliver of sharpened spoon metal from its hiding place inside the mattress and showed it briefly before palming it. "I'll send you off whenever you're ready, then do myself. I can do it so it won't hurt. I just want to hear that storm first."

  Ash looked startled. He shook his head.

  "Think about it, Ashes. When my 'supplier' talks, when it all comes out... they don't waste pain, around here. They'll probably make me kill you, then keep me alive to study how I did it. If I'm going to kill you, I don't want to have to live with it more than thirty seconds." He stopped, shocked at himself. Ash didn't speak for a long moment, biting his lip and searching Kieran's eyes. Then he nodded.

  "Not until I tell you," Ash said. "I want to know for sure there's no hope first. Promise."

  "I promise. Not until you tell me to."

  There was nothing to say after that. They watched each other's faces. Kieran found himself oddly detached, caught by the complexities of iridescence in Ash's eyes, lulled into a kind of peace.

  The lights went off. They sat together in the dark, not speaking or moving. Kieran heard the guards on the stairs, meaning they were walking both sides, just three guards for the whole place, but it didn't matter anymore. He thought of how they'd been planning to do it; sliding open their door under cover of the storm's noise, slipping out to catch the guards unawares, opening the cells and in the safety of a mob swarming through the mess hall into the yard, over the fence, capturing the towers, opening the gate, escaping into the wild dark while the rain erased their tracks...

  It wasn't going to happen.

  I'm going to die in this place, he thought. But I gave myself up for dead months ago. All this has been borrowed time. Is there anything I regret?

  "Ashes," he whispered.

  Ash's hand tightened on his shoulder briefly.

  "Ashes, I read your diary. The other part of the book -- I've been reading it for weeks."

  There was no reaction. Ash continued to watch him without expression.

  "So I know how you think you feel about me. And, um, I think I want to apologize or something.

  For not being who you think I am. I know I have a pretty face, it confuses people into thinking I'm pretty inside. I'm not. I'm all rotten in there. And I'm sorry for that."

  Slowly, Ash's hand slid from his shoulder. "What is this, a deathbed confession? I'm not giving up yet."

  "Don't tell me you're not mad."

  "Livid. Mortified." He just sounded tired. "Kieran, I think I get why you can't believe I might be right about you. But I'm right. You're not nice, I know, you're a killer. But your mind, your soul, is beautiful. Like a storm is beautiful, like the desert is."

  Kieran gave a short sigh. "I can't believe we're having this conversation. I know, I started it," he added to forestall protest. After all, it was something like a deathbed confession, even if Ash chose to believe they might still somehow escape. "I'm grateful, I guess. That you see something in me. But you don't understand, Ashes, I'm dead inside. Cold. Cold like a dead thing."

  "I could warm you."

  Anger sparked. "You think it's always cheap for me? You think I'm cheap? Say something nice and get it for free?" He had to take a calming breath to keep his voice to a whisper. "We're going to die tonight, I'm trying to be honest. Not that it'll keep me out of Hell. I just want to be honest right now, okay?"

  "Okay. I'm sorry. You know I didn't mean it like that." Though the light was dim, he could see the shine in Ash's eyes, the tremble of his lower lip as words were discarded before they formed.

  Eventually Ash went on, "I wish I had my Talent right now. Then I'd know if you wanted me to believe you or not." He breathed a faint laugh. "It's a relief to have it out in the open. But it seems so much smaller, when it's not a secret. Hello, yes, I'm an invert too, and I want you desperately, I might be in love with you, is that all right? It seems... stupid."

  "It's not stupid. I'm just sorry I can't deserve it more, is all."

  "I won't waste time arguing whether you deserve it. I just want to see you smile and mean it, once. What do you want right now?"

  "I want to leave," Kieran said. He heard sullenness in the words, the useless petulance, and perspective opened for him. He'd known it forever: nothing matters when you're going to die anyway. Why were they bothering to talk at all?

  He reached, despite everything surprised that Ash didn't flinch, and brushed a tendril of dirty hair away from Ash's lips, which moved under his fingertips as Ash turned to chase the touch, eyes flicking closed. A hitch in Ash's breath caught Kieran in the chest like a bullet. He swallowed hard, heart suddenly hammering. He bent and covered Ash's mouth with his own.

  Something strange ran between them in that kiss, some current of new energy. Contact shocked him; with its immediacy, with how incredibly good it felt to be touched, close, wanted. It hurt, it was delicious, it made him weak, he needed it more than breath.

  He pushed Ash down on the bunk, one hand knotted in the soft curls at the back of Ash's neck and the other sliding down his hip. Ash's arms were around his waist, clinging desperately. As his weight bore down, pinning Ash to the mattress, Ash groaned into his mouth and shuddered all over, squirming, aroused beyond bearing and ignorant of what to do about it. Kieran released Ash from the kiss and moved to graze teeth along Ash's jaw and neck, making him gasp.

  At first, the thunder was buried under the pounding of his heart; the taste of the skin of Ash's throat interested him more. When he noticed the hiss of rain, it seemed only fitting, a background for the storm in his blood. His fingers were trying the drawstring of Ash's trousers, making the muscles of Ash's stomach jump in interesting ways. Nothing else seemed remotely interesting, compared to that. It was the hail that got his attention. It sounded like gunshots.

  Half reluctant, half irrationally relieved, he pulled away by stages until he could look at Ash's face. He wasn't sure what he was going to say, if he even meant to talk at all, but the option of speech was lost in a shock of breaking glass.

  There were shouts, reminding him that they were not alone, that he had been about to undress Ash in full view of anyone who happened to walk past; more crashes sounded, and time returned in the clatter of debris striking the cell block floor. Lightning showed faces pressed against bars, eyes turned up, mouths round and black, rain and bigger things frozen in midair. The next flash was longer; he saw a jagged clump of ice the size of his fist hit the floor and blow like a grenade.

  And behind all that noise, he sensed a different kind of sound. It reached him through the soles of his feet. The whole mountain hummed with it.

  He took Ash by the arms and pulled him off the bed. Ash came trustingly, though he kept looking back at the spectacle of breakage
in the middle of the cell block. They crouched in the back corner, against the wall. Kieran was grinning so hard it made his face hurt. "Come on," he growled through his teeth. "Come on, rip it down."

  "What is it?" Ash shouted over the rising wind. Deep inside as they were, it was blowing into their cell and it was hot -- night in the desert and the wind was hot, and smelled burnt and wet at once. Rather than try to answer over its howling, Kieran wrapped Ash in his arms and pulled him down. Ash seemed to get the idea, tried to make himself small.

  The wind's noise took on rhythm. It was a harmonic throb now, thrumming in his bones. It sounded like a race between the nine fastest trains in Hell, as heard from inside an oil drum the size of a cathedral. It reached inside Kieran, that sound, and shook him, more alien than the stars and at the same time just like coming home. Tornado. A big one, a huge one. What a wonderful way to die! Things were flying around -- paper, clothing, broken glass -- the air was cloudy with dust and mist, mud pounded to a vapor. Kieran bent over Ash's head, not trusting the northerner to protect his own eyes and lungs. He squeezed his own eyes shut against the abrasive air, snatched a handful of his hair over his mouth, wishing he'd thought to grab a blanket to cover them. It was too late now. Even in the back of the cell, the wind was buffeting them painfully.