Conservation of Shadows - By Yoon Ha Lee Page 0,18
as accustomed to the rimlands’ behavior as he was.
“There,” she said with evident satisfaction. “What do you think? One’s yours, of course.”
He stared at her stonily.
“It’s not like I can ride two of them at once,” she said, as if she made perfect sense and he was the slow one. “You haven’t run screaming yet. That’s always useful.”
Clearly the world had plans for him other than suicide today. “I was reared by the undead,” Tamim said. His mother, a woman with a brilliant smile and an aristocrat’s long, slender hands, had given him into the care of a company of ghouls, reasoning that it would prepare him to survive in the rimlands and eventually take up her cause. But one by one his caretakers had fallen apart, rotting teeth and decaying eyes, a toe here and a loop of shriveled intestine there.
His mother had died attempting to assassinate the sorcerer when Tamim was a child. The undead did not fall apart immediately upon their creator’s death, but lingered for a span of years proportionate to the creator’s skill. Tamim’s mother, for all her ambitions, had not been a particularly skilled necromancer. He had a dim memory of crying when the last of his caretakers ceased to move, even the mindless, instinctive creeping of a rotted finger toward the hand. It had been the last time he cried.
The girl nodded as though his childhood was unremarkable. Perhaps it was, from a necromancer’s point of view. “Right or left?” she said.
Involuntarily, Tamim looked up at the giants. The one on the left had a long, narrow skull and cracked teeth. Curiously, spurs extended from the back, as though wings had been broken off. The one on the right had a broader visage and no spurs, and its left arm was longer than the right.
“I don’t know your name,” Tamim said. “Why should I take up with a necromancer?” He hadn’t known that any necromancers remained in the rimlands who did not serve the sorcerer. The Pit was death, and the sorcerer controlled the Pit: ergo necromancers served he who ruled death. The rest had fled to the lands beyond the Pit, or died in a hundred small rebellions. The sorcerer was not notable for his sense of mercy.
“I’m Sakera,” she said. “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure. I’ll make you a bargain, O soldier”—her eyes alighted briefly on the gun—“who wishes to die. Help me bring down the sorcerer, and at the journey’s end I will give you the death you desire.”
The gun was an unbalancing weight at his hip. He had lived with such things all his life. “How long a journey?” Then, realizing that he was actually considering it, he added, “I don’t need your help to kill myself.”
“Months,” Sakera said. “But I’ve seen what happens when you miss with a gun. You might live out the rest of your days as a mangled thing with less mind than a ghoul. With a necromancer, death can be certain. It can even be swift.”
“I’m not that incompetent.” He had long years of practice killing.
“No, I imagine not.” Her voice was brisk. “Let’s put it another way, then. There can’t be many necromancers left in the rimlands. If you’re no vulture-friend, I may be your best chance of getting rid of the sorcerer.”
“I don’t trust you,” Tamim said. Tact had never been one of his strengths. Among other things, it was wasted on ghouls.
“You don’t need to trust me,” Sakera said. “You just need to believe me.”
It disappointed him that she wanted to kill the sorcerer. Tamim had no fondness for the man’s reign, but he suspected that Sakera meant to replace the sorcerer. Some traitorously sentimental part of Tamim had expected better from this girl, for all that he had met her only minutes ago.
Sakera made a fist, rotated it, then opened her fingers. The lopsided skeleton knelt before her. She clambered up the bones and sat on one of the kneecaps, legs dangling. “Or I could leave you to die in the giants’ shadow, before I take this one away,” she said. “Your choice. But I hope you come with me. It will be a lonely journey to the sorcerer’s palace otherwise.”
“What is your grievance with him?” Tamim said, on the grounds that he might as well be certain.
“He raised my family as ghouls,” she said. “They’re still not at rest.”
It sounded plausible. Maybe she was a good liar. “You came here for the giants’ skeletons.”