‘A trade? From you, Painter?’ Its smile is wide. ‘How desperate.’
Skinpainter ignores the barb, ignores Shipwright’s urgent protest behind them.
‘Me. For him.’
Silence for a moment. Kinghammer’s eyes wet and limpid. His whole face seeming to writhe as the Emperor’s spirit moves underneath.
Then laughter, loud and raucous, splitting the echoes of the cavern into howling shards.
‘You.’ Its pitch drops. A cat’s purr, wet and thick with spit. ‘You.’
A shake of Kinghammer’s head. ‘No, Painter. No.’ Its hand waves. ‘If only you’d held onto that last piece of me, you traitorous thing.’ A vicious smile on Kinghammer’s face. ‘The smallest piece of me. Couldn’t trust it to anyone else, could you? Couldn’t tell anyone else.’ Its snarl deepens. ‘Didn’t think anyone else was capable.’
The Emperor begins to walk towards them on Kinghammer’s bloody feet. With every step the dead around him awaken, burrowing like rats in garbage. They see Skinpainter and howl in recognition with a hundred mouths.
As the Emperor’s feet hit the sand, it staggers slightly, and laughs. ‘New legs. A little tired from all the running.’
Skinpainter tries to summon some scrap of power as the Emperor approaches, but they’re spent. The torn gift aches under their ribs, their muscles worn out with a hundred inkings. The stench of the Emperor’s magic fills their mind like a black wall, its voice like wolves feasting, ‘No trade. No deal. I have this body. Soon, I will have all the bodies within this mountain.’ Kinghammer’s mouth splits impossibly wide. ‘I should thank you, Skinpainter. Without all those years in the dark, I would never have been driven to explore just howmuchI can do.’
The Emperor draws closer, until it’s a breath or two from Skinpainter, Kinghammer’s massive, ruined chest moving in ragged sighs. The dead coil behind their master, fat as leeches crying out for blood.
At their back, Skinpainter can hear Shroudweaver andShipwright shouting, can feel slick fingers tug on their arm, even as the Emperor leans in close, so close they can see the muscles working inside its jaw, can see Kinghammer begin to fray as the body is pulled into new shapes by the spirit within.
‘A secret for you, Skinpainter, before you die.’
Its breath is wet against Skinpainter’s cheek, its voice delighted.
‘Kinghammer’s flesh is good. Strong. Perhaps he’s still in here, somewhere, but that won’t last. And even if it did, I have his daughter too. I have them all, thanks to you.’
Skinpainter’s heart sinks, the loss enough to crush them, like the depths of the sea, enough to drown in. But beneath that, a voice, a single thought: this timehasto be different. They reach a shaking hand towards the Emperor, and push outwards with the last echoes of their power, faint geometries fizzing and burning against cold skin.
Kinghammer’s body staggers, and laughs.
As the sparks fade, Skinpainter faces him, steeling the breath within their chest. Their rags float lazily. The air hums. Patterns shift and move, blackening like blood under a bruise. Hiding their treacherous, hammering heart.
‘You are dead. A nothing. A relic,’ they snarl, lashing out with ink that licks across the surface of Kinghammer’s skin. At its touch, his body shudders, and all the dead at his back turn to face Skinpainter as one.
The Emperor replies with a hundred tongues. Smiles with a hundred jaws. The eyes of Skinpainter’s friends look back at them from its broken choir with hunger in their hearts.
‘I. Am. Whole,’ says the thing that was Kinghammer, as its jaw hangs slack and loose. ‘I. Am. Whole. And you …’ It raises a bloody hammer that drips, slow, black clots. ‘You. Have. Lost.’
Skinpainter turns their face to Shroudweaver. ‘Bind it.’ Fury riding their breath.
Shroudweaver’s hands move frantically. Red thread spins and loops. The air burns. ‘Easy for you to say.’
Skinpainter frowns, a rage kindling in them, cold and hard asice. Behind them, the Emperor laughs in lurching rasps, as it picks apart a jawbone tooth by tooth.
They retch and begin backing away, painfully slowly, keeping their body between Shroudweaver and the wreck of Kinghammer, giving him time to work.
They glimpse Shipwright at his back, warding the other dead off with slow, buzzing swings of her fists. For a moment, Skinpainter wishes she would let them all through, so they could watch this stupid arrogant man taste a consequence for once in his life.
An indulgence; Shroudweaver can’t die yet. He owes them answers at least.
Skinpainter edges closer to his dancing hands, their voice low, furious. ‘How did this bastard get loose, Shroud?’
The Emperor laughs thickly inside Kinghammer’s skin, the possessed man’s eyes rolling in his head. Bloodstained lips quirking in a smile. ‘Ask his daughter, inktwister. Wait, no. Askhim.’
It waves a hand expressively, small flecks of red flesh dance along the bone.
