The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  Aren tried not to be irritated by that. He’d expected at least a little warmth as acknowledgement of his efforts. He could have kept the socks for himself. ‘Put the socks on after lights-out or someone will take them. And eat that roll tonight: you need it.’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that,’ Cade said absently, and went back to staring at the underside of Aren’s bunk.

  His manner was beginning to make Aren concerned. He laid a hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘What is it?’

  Cade snorted. ‘I don’t know, Aren. What could it possibly be?’ he asked sarcastically, waving to indicate their surroundings.

  ‘I know it’s bad right now,’ said Aren, ‘but I’ll look out for you. We just have to hang on.’

  ‘Hang on for what?’

  ‘Till they let us out.’

  Cade turned his head slowly towards Aren, face slack with disbelief. ‘Is that what you think? They’ll let us out?’

  Aren was taken aback by his reaction. ‘Well, yes. Once they realise my father was no traitor. Sora’s father and the governor set him up, you know that as well as I do. Krodan justice is renowned for its rigour and fairness. It’s not like the old, corrupt Ossian courts. The truth will come to light, Cade. I’m sure of it.’

  Cade raised himself up on his elbows. ‘You know Bard, right? The lad who works on the graves? Been here eleven years. You know what he did? Bad-mouthed the Empress when he was drunk. That’s all. Gavan, the quartermaster’s assistant? He was the son of a lord. They put him in here for owning a banned book. Six years now! Jottrey, on our detail, he don’t even know what he did! They just took him away!’ He was hissing with anger now. Aren had never seen him like that before. ‘So let me ask you again: what are we hanging on for?’

  ‘Because …’ Aren fought for an answer. ‘Because it’s not over. Because we’re still alive.’ He grew stern. ‘Don’t give up on me, Cade.’

  Cade’s face tightened with scorn. ‘You still reckon everything’s gonna be alright, don’t you? Still believe in their system. Keep playing the game, keep pretending to be Krodan, and all this’ll come undone.’ He looked Aren square in the eye. ‘It ain’t gonna happen. They’ll never let us out of here. And your da will always be dead.’

  Aren was stunned by the unexpected cruelty of that.

  ‘My da was right about you,’ Cade snarled. ‘You’re a lost cause. They took everything you had and you’re still a gods-damned Krodan-lover.’

  He rolled over, showing his back to Aren, and after that there was nothing more to say.

  13

  I hate him.

  Cade tried on the idea for size, wasn’t sure it sat right. Da always said a bad workman blamed his tools. Take responsibility for yourself, that was what he meant. Aren never asked for his help. No one made him stand in that Krodan soldier’s way.

  But Nine, how he wished he hadn’t.

  It was a bleak morning on the yard, but they were all out in it, bellies rumbling and scalps itchy with lice and grime. A line of guards stood in front of them, swords drawn and eager for trouble. The archers on the walkway that ringed the compound had arrows nocked and ready to pull. On the far side of the yard was a tall wooden post stained with old blood and deep scratches. Deggan was tied there, Deggan with the missing front teeth he’d sold to a dollmaker for gambling money. He was lisping his way through a frantic prayer to Sarla, the Red-Eyed Child, Lady of Worms. Cade reckoned he’d be better served directing his prayers to Ogg, Aspect of Beasts. Maybe Ogg could do something about those two slavering skulldogs straining at their leashes, desperate to get at him.

  Captain Hassan walked up and down before the ranked guards, addressing the prisoners. He was a big man with thick, dark brows and eyes set too close together, making him look simple. His voice was reedy and cut to the nerve, just as shrill as Cade’s had been when he parodied him yesterday. Small wonder he was angry all the time, with a voice like that.

  ‘Rules!’ he cried as he stalked back and forth. ‘We have rules here, and they are very clear! Rules are all that separate you from the animals.’

  His Ossian was good, even if his accent wasn’t. He still made that guttural back-of-the-throat sound which Krodans scattered throughout their speech. Cade had never understood Aren’s love for their language. Ossian sentences glided like birds. The Krodan tongue sounded harsh and ugly to his ears, like being hit with a mailed fist.

  ‘But rules mean nothing if they are not enforced!’ Hassan went on. ‘And this man broke the rules. Bribed a villager to help smuggle him out! Bad luck for him that this villager was a loyal servant of the Empire.’

  A collaborator, then, thought Cade with distaste. They’d sold out a fellow Ossian for fear of being implicated in a crime. Da used to say the Iron Hand sometimes set people up that way, using Ossians to catch out their countryfolk. Tempt them into doing something illegal, then swoop. You never knew who to trust these days. That was how the squareheads liked it.

  He stopped listening as Hassan ranted on. He’d heard it all before. How could Ossians be trusted if they couldn’t follow the rules? If punishment was all they understood, then punishment they’d have. Like he was talking to naughty children. Like he was so damned superior.

  Cade was done with all that.

  I hate him.

  But he didn’t. He couldn’t. Aren had been his friend for years. They’d had their arguments, even brawled a few times, but in the way of boys it was always forgotten in the morning, with no need for apologies. Aren had been as loyal and unfaltering as anyone could wish for. Cade just needed someone else to blame for all this misery, because the alternative was to blame himself.

  What madness had made him stand up to a Krodan soldier like that? What had he hoped to achieve?

  He’d thought on that question a lot in those first terrible days, but he’d arrived at no answer in the end. Perhaps he’d taken leave of his senses. Perhaps he was sick of the Krodans looming over his world, sick of submitting, the way he’d been forced to submit all his life. Or perhaps it was the thought of losing Aren, the one thing in his small-town life that wasn’t mundane, the only other person who dreamed of adventure and excitement beyond Shoal Point.

  Or maybe it was just because Aren was his friend, and Cade stood up for his friends, even if it wasn’t always the brightest thing to do.

  And look where that got you.

  Overseer Krent stood at a safe distance from the dogs, his belly stretching his dark uniform jacket and a bearskin cloak across his shoulders. He looked permanently pleased with himself, a half-smile on his lips like a man well sated after a feast. The face he wore to an execution was the same face he wore when he led prayers to the Primus on Festenday, or when he assembled the prisoners to announce some new triumph in the Empire.

  ‘There is no escape from this camp!’ Hassan was saying. ‘Beyond these walls, you would find cold welcome. The villagers will not help you. The road is constantly patrolled. Mountain and forest surround us, and if our dogs do not kill you, the weather or starvation surely will!’

  He swept out a hand to indicate the skulldogs, as if everybody hadn’t already noticed them. Two burly handlers held them back as they snapped and snarled. The dogs were thickly built, their blunt muzzles packed with fangs. They had short, black fur on their bodies and round their eyes, but white fur on their heads, giving them the skull-like mask they were named for. Krodan skulldogs were manhunters, bred for the kill. It was said they could smell Ossian blood and hungered for it, but Cade doubted that. Ossia and Kroda had been neighbours for centuries and they’d mixed together plenty. Despite the gulf of language and belief, the only real difference between Ossian and Krodan stock was that Ossians tended to darker hair and brown or green eyes, while Krodans tended to blond and blue. Even then, it was hard to tell them apart if you took away the clothes and the language and the mannerisms. Aren was dark-haired but could have passed as Krodan, he knew their ways so well. Cade was blond but as Ossian as they came. The Krodans acted like they
were a separate species, but underneath they were just the same. It was more likely the dogs were trained to attack anyone in prisoners’ clothes.

  Deggan whimpered and prayed louder, barely able to get the words out through his fear. Cade watched without emotion. Who cared if he died? Cade had his own problems. He’d never see his parents again, and he missed his ma something fierce. His friends would have forgotten him already. Once, he’d lamented a life trapped in Shoal Point, damned to his father’s workshop. What he’d give to have that back now.

  Every morning, when he woke, there was a moment of dis­orientation before he remembered where he was. In that moment, he could briefly believe he was back in his bed at home, with the smell of breakfast wafting up from downstairs and the coastal sun shining through the curtains. Then reality would hit him, and he knew the mine awaited, and he wanted to die. Sometimes he thought he could extinguish himself by sheer force of will, but no matter how hard he tried, he just kept on living. There was only this misery of toil, and no end to it.

  ‘Sarla, Lady of Worms, have mercy on me!’

  Deggan pleaded with the Aspects, but not with his captors. He knew better than that. Hassan professed false remorse, telling him he’d brought his fate upon himself. Krent showed genial indifference, as if this were an after-dinner speech and not the prelude to the agonising murder of a human being. Cade wasn’t sure which was worse.

  Here’s Krodan justice. Are you watching, Aren?

  Of course he was. And he probably had some mud-mouthed excuse for the slaughter to come, something about how Ossians needed discipline and examples had to be made. Cade had been able to turn a deaf ear to that talk when they were back home, but he wouldn’t suffer it now. Maybe Aren couldn’t bring himself to blame the squareheads for what happened, but Cade could, for all the good it did him.

  ‘I’ll look out for you,’ Aren had said; but Cade didn’t want looking out for. Didn’t need it. He was tired of Aren’s relentless encouragement, angry at the mulish way he plodded into the future, dragging Cade with him. Every gift he gave Cade was a small atonement, another pebble tossed into the bottomless pit of his guilt. Each one a reminder that they were no longer the inseparable friends who’d run riot through the stone lanes of Shoal Point, who’d fought draccens and ogren, stormed imaginary castles and flirted with the local girls.

  In some vague way that he couldn’t articulate, he sensed he’d become Aren’s redemption. Aren wanted to save him. But there was no getting out of this place, and Cade knew it.

  Deggan’s prayers became screams as Hassan gave the signal and the dogs were released. Cade watched them do their work, but it all seemed like it was happening at some far distance to a stranger, and he didn’t feel a thing.

  14

  After the execution came breakfast. Even after what they’d just seen, none of the prisoners was inclined to turn it down.

  They formed four lines across the yard and filed towards the cookhouse, where tureens of soup and baskets of bread had been laid out on a long table. When either time or food ran out, they’d be off to the mine. The execution had put everything behind schedule and Krodans were fastidious timekeepers, so the prisoners jostled and urged those ahead of them to be quick. When the next bell rang, those who hadn’t been served would go hungry. It always paid to be near the front of the line at breakfast time.

  Aren’s stomach churned, and not only from hunger. He seethed with fury. He’d hardly slept last night, despite the tiredness weighing down his bones. He was too angry. He wanted to lash out but had nowhere to strike, so the rage stayed trapped inside him, heating his thoughts to violence.

  Cade had wounded him. He hadn’t thought a simple insult could ever cut so deep. They’d traded hard words before, but these had poison in them, and they festered. They felt like a betrayal.

  His father was dead, his love for Sora proven false. The last true thing he had was Cade, a friend so stout and brave he’d stood up to the Iron Hand to defend him. It was the kind of selfless loyalty that Aren dreamed of possessing, the kind of sacrifice that made stories. It was the most heroic thing he’d ever seen. He’d hoped to repay Cade somehow, to support him through this terrible time, to be his strength when he needed it. But Cade had thrown it back in his face.

  When Aren reached the front of the queue, he found Tag serving him. Tag gave him a wry smile, a generous helping of soup and one of the bigger pieces of bread. He’d enjoyed his cheroots, then. Perhaps this was his thank-you, or a form of apology for shorting him on the cheese rolls.

  The man behind was hurrying him on, so he took his bowl and bread and scuttled quickly out of the yard. It wasn’t wise to eat breakfast in the open, where bigger men might take it from him, and he had more than his hunger to attend to this morning. The remaining cheroots were still in his ragged coat. There had been no time to hide them last night, and only fools kept their stash in the longhouses, which were searched by guards and light-fingered prisoners alike. Carrying them around was dangerous, for if he was caught with them he’d be beaten hard. That meant he had to put them somewhere safe, and quick.

  He had a likely spot in mind, a hollowed-out space behind a loose brick in the foundations of the workshop. He’d found it by accident several days ago, full of spiders and long abandoned. Whoever made it had probably died. He’d intended to take the cheroots straight there before breakfast, but Deggan’s execution put paid to that.

  The south gate had been opened and several horse-drawn carts were making their way across the bridge and into the camp, accompanied by a few dozen Ossian villagers on foot. There were cleaners and servants and messengers with post, carpenters for repairs and butchers bringing meat, all of them heading for the guards’ section of the camp where the Krodans lived in relative comfort. On their way, they passed the bloody mass of torn flesh that had once been Deggan, still tied to the pole. Those that looked at all couldn’t look upon him for long.

  As he left the yard, Aren spotted Rapha standing near the gate, where the carts were being searched. The pirate didn’t trouble to queue for breakfast; he had other sources and access to better food. Aren watched closely as a cart approached the gates, and a look passed between Rapha and the Krodan guard on duty. The guard gave the cart a cursory once-over and waved it through. The driver, clearly in on the game, rolled by without so much as a glance at the guard or the pirate.

  Rumour had it that Rapha had plenty of coin on the outside from his raiding days, having once captured a galleon sailing under the colours of the Baric League, loaded to the gunwales with enough gold to make a hundred men rich. Enough that his cohorts could grease a few palms, anyway. Enough that he could smuggle in luxuries and put a few guards in his pocket. If a prisoner wanted something that couldn’t be got, Rapha could help. For a price.

  Aren scowled at the thought of the scene he’d just witnessed. It was supposed to be Ossians who were weak-willed by nature, given to corruption, unfit for positions of responsibility. Krodans kept strict records, punished underhand behaviour and employed checks and balances to ensure their officials stayed honest. And yet here were Krodan guards turning a blind eye to a smuggler in return for coin, and barely bothering to hide it. Perhaps their system wasn’t so flawless after all.

  He shied away from that idea. It felt like blasphemy. The actions of a few low men didn’t define an empire. Such thoughts were the work of the Nemesis, enemy of the Primus, bringer of chaos.

  ‘They took everything you had, and you’re still a gods-damned Krodan-lover.’

  He saw Cade’s face again as he said it, hateful in the gloom of his bunk. Krodan-lover. It was an easy insult for an Ossian to throw. Krodan-lover. Yes, he admired them; of course he did. He couldn’t so easily undo his understanding of the world. He’d grown up surrounded by them, speaking their language, learning their lore. Some, like Nanny Alsa and Sora, had been dear to him. They lived in an occupied land; that was the reality. He’d rather deal with that than stay tangled in the past, mooning over forgo
tten ruins and hanging on to old traditions and out-of-date ideas. Ossia was no longer as it had been in their grandparents’ day. The Aspects had waned and order had replaced chaos. He didn’t understand why anyone would reject diligence, discipline and learning just because it came from a foreign source. It was the knee-jerk reaction of the ignorant when threatened with change.

  Cade said the Krodans had killed Randill, and that should be reason enough for Aren to hate them. But he couldn’t swallow that. A Krodan had killed him, yes, but his hand had been forced. After all, Randill had killed several soldiers first.

  Why did you fight back, Father? Why didn’t you just surrender? A judge would have found you innocent. None of this need ever have happened.

  No. And none of it would have if he’d listened to Harald’s warning and stayed away from Sora.

  He shook himself from his reverie. This wasn’t the time. If he was quick, he could stash the cheroots and still manage to eat his breakfast before the bell summoned the prisoners to be shackled and marched to the mine. Holding his bowl of cooling soup in one hand and his bread in the other, he hurried towards the workshop. Tag’s generous portion had almost filled the bowl to the brim and Aren had to concentrate to avoid spilling it. He was so focused on his task that he didn’t see the man step out from behind a longhouse into his path. A thump of colliding bodies, a momentary tangle of limbs, and Aren found himself flat on his back, his bowl overturned and his bread in the mud beside him. The prisoner he’d walked into had barely been rocked by the impact. Aren’s heart sank as he saw who it was.

  ‘Grub been looking for you,’ he said.

  He was squat, broad and ugly, with a wide, squashed nose, a heavy brow and the sly, surly face of a thug. Tattoos crawled all over one side of his face, across his shaven skull, down his throat to his chest. They covered his left arm to the fingertips, and Aren could only guess how much more of him was inked. It was the work of a master, a thorny mesh of foreign hieroglyphs and stylised pictures rendered in exquisite detail, ebbing and flowing across the skin. The only blot was the crescent of pure black arcing from cheek to cheek, across his eyelids and the bridge of his nose. That was clumsy and slapdash, marring the art on the left side of his face, as if added in by another hand without regard for what had been there before.