Chapter 20: The Collector of Broken Things

Chapter 20: The Collector of Broken Things "You didn’t answer my question," Torgo said, picking at a strip of lichen stuck to the sleeve of his robe. "You ever notice how people who’ve been hurt walk like they know a secret?" Apollo kept his head down, using the motion of picking their way through the last of the boulder field to avoid the man’s stare. ’Of course he’s noticed. He’s made a career of noticing.’ The magician’s nails were bitten down to the quick, and the lines along his mouth hinted at years spent smiling where it didn’t belong. "I’m not interested in stories about me," Apollo muttered. He had meant the edge in his voice to cut, but it came out blunt, almost tired. Torgo shrugged, unconcerned. "Then let’s trade. Quid pro quo. You tell me why the gods went silent, and I’ll tell you what chews through Watchmen like they’re bread crust." Apollo nearly tripped on a root, caught himself. He’d known Torgo was lying about being "just a traveler" the minute he saw the man’s wrists, scarred not just from burns, but from years of binding with the kind of ritual cord used by magicians who served at temples rather than in back-alley sleight-of-hand. The fact that Torgo wore his old affiliations the way most men wore a hangover, obvious to anyone who cared to look, made Apollo nearly like him. He said nothing. He wasn’t sure if it was stubbornness or self-preservation. Torgo whistled, not quite a tune. "I met a priest in the next town over. Sallow fellow, smelled like lamp oil. He said the gods went quiet after the last moon shadowed its own light. You believe that?" "No," Apollo said, too fast. "The gods never outright vanish. They just get better at hiding." Torgo cackled, the sound bouncing oddly off the bare stones. "If you’re hiding, you’re scared. What’s a god got to be scared of?" Apollo shrugged, unwilling to answer. He wondered if Torgo even knew who he was. He doubted it. Whatever past Apollo wore now, it didn’t show on the surface. At least not to anyone human. Lyra called from up ahead, voice sharp as flint: "We cut cross-country here. There’s a hunting cabin in the scrub, half a mile. Shelter for the night." She didn’t look at Torgo when he passed her by; she acted as if the magician was another bad patch of rain that had simply attached itself to the travelers. The cabin, when they reached it, was more ruin than refuge, half the roof gone, the hearth suffocated in old tallow smoke, but the bones of the place were dry and the stone still held some memory of warmth. Nik scouted through the perimeter, eyes narrowed, while Lyra cleared a space near the fireplace. Thorin, mostly upright now, grunted as they settled him onto a roll of old sacking. Torgo set about making himself useful, hands dancing through the pouches at his waist, pulling flints and dry shavings, a handful of dead bees he tossed in with the kindling. The fire caught easily; the bees snapped and sparkled in the heat. "Best fuel for the cold," he said to no one. Apollo wondered if the man ever stopped speaking, or if his own voice was the only company he’d ever really kept. Nik slumped against the wall, opening and closing his left hand as if testing the ghost of the fight. He didn’t speak for a long while. Lyra busied herself at the door, knife in hand, whittling a point onto a slat of old wood. Torgo leaned close to Apollo, one elbow on his knee. "You’re wasting," he said quietly. "Whatever is in you, it’s running out. Fast." Apollo looked at him, surprised by the absence of mockery in the words. "If you had more, you’d have healed him already," Torgo nodded toward Thorin. "Full, not half. I can feel it when you walk." Apollo blinked. "So? What is it to you?" Torgo shrugged, eyes suddenly flat. "Just that I know what it’s like. To be a cracked vessel." He drew a thumb across the rim of his cup, tracing the chip so it caught the light. Silence. Apollo let the man have his little metaphor. Lyra returned, planting the sharpened wood upright by the hearth. "We’ll take watches," she said. "Nik first, then Torgo. Torgo, if you drift, I’ll gut you before breakfast." Torgo splayed his hands, grinning. "I don’t sleep. Easier to keep watch that way." Apollo stretched out by the fire, feeling every tendon, every ugly pulse under his skin. He looked at Thorin, who had managed to doze, a soft snore vibrating his beard. The wound was better. Not perfect, but better. Apollo allowed himself to feel...not pride, exactly, but a sliver of old satisfaction. He closed his eyes, letting the warmth of the fire lull the heaviness from his chest, and for a breath or two he slept the sleep of someone who hadn’t earned it. — Sometime before dawn, he woke to the smell of burning sugar and the low drone of Torgo’s voice. The magician was talking to himself, or perhaps to the stick, which now glowed faintly at its amber tip. The light threw odd shapes on the walls, snakes and birds and things that didn’t belong in a world built by men. Nik was out cold in the corner, one hand on the hilt of a borrowed dagger. Lyra, ever the sentinel, was upright against the door, eyes open but probably not seeing. Apollo sat up. "What do you want?" he asked, more from fatigue than curiosity. Torgo didn’t turn. "I like to meet those like myself, as near as I ever get to kin." He plucked the air with two fingers. "You know what it’s like? The hunger that comes when you don’t do what you were made for?" Apollo pulled the blanket tighter. "What are you?" Torgo considered. "A collector, in the end. Of broken things. Fragments of power. Aether shards, mostly, but also stories. Sometimes, though, I wonder if they’re not the same." He looked over, iris gone flat and reptilian in the false sunrise of his staff. "Once, I had enough energy to burn a city to the ground with a word. Now it’s all I can do to keep the cold away from my bones." He punctuated this with a laugh, dry as moth wings. Apollo found himself smiling, against his will. "You could be lying." "Of course I could." Torgo winked. "But ’lie’ is just another word for ’story we haven’t agreed on yet.’" The fire guttered, and for a moment the only thing alive in the room was the dog, tail occasionally thumping against Thorin’s side. "You know," Torgo continued, in a voice pitched just for Apollo, "if you wanted to live, you’d have stayed in Marrowgate. Someone wanted you enough to pay a bounty. Not many people get offered a future, even a broken one." "I don’t want to work for killers," Apollo said. Torgo shook his head. "Everyone works for killers, lad. The only choice is whether you bleed for them or outlive them." He reached into a pouch and drew something out, a coin, but not any Apollo had seen. It was the size of a thumbnail, gold hammered thin as a leaf, a sun sigil stamped on one side and a single, staring eye on the other. Torgo tossed it to Apollo, who surprised himself by catching it. "For luck," Torgo said. "Or for memory." Apollo turned the coin over. The sun was familiar, troublingly so, there was something about the shape of the rays, the way the metal bent light. He tucked it away. It felt like an old friend, or maybe a warning. Before he could ask more, he heard the creak of Lyra’s boots and the scrape of her knife on stone. "Time to go," she said. "Road’s worse in the daylight. If Watch or Blackhearts catch us, we’re done." They packed in silence. Even the dog seemed subdued, moving with a reluctance that made Apollo suspect it had been mistreated, maybe even in a past as rough as his own. They left the cabin behind, four and a half bodies moving at different speeds, none of them quite whole, but together, at least for now. At the fork in the road, Torgo stopped. "I’ll take the north path," he said. "There’s work for me in the salt cities, and a peach brandy waiting if I can keep my own skin intact." He turned to Apollo, eyes clear for the first time. "You keep to the high ground, friend. The world gets thinner the higher you go, but the stories get better." Then he was gone, his stick tapping irregular beats against the hardpan until even the echoes faded. Apollo shaded his eyes and watched the sun rise through the haze, yellow and mean as a toothache. ’Better to walk as a broken thing than not at all,’ he thought, and let the path decide his next step. "Which way, Lio?" Nik asked, looking not at the horizon, but back at Apollo. "East," Apollo said. "Always east." They set out, the dawn at their backs, the world waiting to see what they would make of it. He didn’t look back, but he heard, or thought he heard, Torgo’s voice on the wind, telling another story. Not a new one, but his own. And for the first time in a long while, Apollo let himself believe that not every path had to end with someone bleeding in the dark. Some just kept going, into the morning, step by uneven step.