The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  Do it, he told himself.

  His mouth was dry. He should burn the letter, forget the deal he’d made with Klyssen. He didn’t know how he could live with himself afterwards.

  He closed his eyes, saw the torture chamber again and heard Klyssen’s voice: If you betray me, I will catch you, and I will take the price of your treachery out of your friend’s hide. It was a threat Aren believed absolutely, and it terrified him.

  But hadn’t Aren always protected Cade, even when he didn’t want to be protected? I’ll never leave you behind, he’d said, and he meant it. So he’d take his friend home, keep him safe from the horrors that lurked just out of sight. With Garric gone, Cade would have to give up his childish dream of being a Greycloak. They’d live in his father’s house in comfort, drink ale at the Cross Keys and talk about girls, and all would be as it was, or as close as he could make it. All it would cost was one man’s life. One man he hated, and admired, and whom he’d just tricked into trusting him.

  He was dirt. He was lower than dirt. But he’d smear his soul with all the filth the world had to give if it would keep Cade from Klyssen’s clutches.

  When the coast was clear he slipped out, heart pounding, and walked through the house as nonchalantly as he could. At the top of the stairs he encountered Laria, who was carrying a pile of freshly laundered bedsheets. He tensed as she spotted him, sure that she could see the guilt written on him; but she paid him no mind and he made his way downstairs.

  He could hear Cade’s voice from the parlour, telling Fen a story. Garric was elsewhere. Keel, as far as he knew, was still locked in his room, where he’d retreated without a word of thanks to Aren for saving his life, nor any clue as to content of the letter he’d received.

  He slipped through the house, seeing nobody on the way, and left via a side door. He could hear Orica’s lute faintly, coming from the garden. Harod would be with her. It was a short distance from the side of the house to a row of vine-tangled trellises fixed to the outer wall. Satisfied that nobody was in sight, he climbed the trellis and went over the wall, landing on a patch of common land on the far side.

  The tension in his chest eased a little. He was out. With the looming shadow of the Old Wall behind him, a darker black against the gathering night, he made his way into the streets.

  The lamplighters were out, dim and furtive figures moving through the Uplanes, shrouded in shadow. A cart clattered past, making Aren jump. There was an eerie tint to the last light of day. It was a blood moon night and Tantera held the sky alone, a black, dead eye lined with burning veins.

  Well, Tantera’s watch was a time for ill doings, and fitting for a night like this. Aren screwed up his courage and pressed on, keeping an eye out for anyone he recognised. If he was seen, no excuse would save him.

  A few streets away was a Krodan beer-hall he remembered passing that morning. It was better appointed than most, for this was a rich district. Moneyed Krodans usually drank in their own private parlours, in an endless round of soirees; but beer-halls were men-only, and many Krodans loved the convivial warmth of their traditional watering-holes, rich or not. As in Shoal Point, there were soldiers on the door to keep the peace, in black and white livery and polished armour.

  Aren paused at the corner as the beer-hall came into sight. The chill had seeped deeper into him now he was outside, and the tightness in his chest made it hard to draw a full breath. He felt like he’d been poisoned, but he’d done this to himself.

  Collaborator. Traitor. Turncoat.

  He remembered the men of the Canal District holding him, pulling him up, delivering him to Harte. The watchman had come within hair’s breadth of murdering him and the Ossians had just stood and watched. He’d dreamed of being Krodan most of his life, until he rejected them. He’d only just started to feel proud to be Ossian; but now he knew what that was worth, too.

  His teachers had been right all along. He was born of weak stock. This was no heroic legend, no bard’s tale of victory. The world was more complex than that. Life and death couldn’t be boiled down to a few verses.

  A Krodan boy was making his way along Aren’s side of the street, spinning a rattle in his hand. ‘Hail to the Emperor,’ Aren called.

  The boy came to a stop. ‘Hail to the Emperor,’ he replied warily, making a closed-fist salute across his chest.

  Aren took the letter from his pocket, and three decims with it. ‘I have a very important task for you,’ he said in Krodan. ‘For the Empire. Do you understand?’

  The boy straightened. You could get far with a Krodan by appealing to their sense of duty. ‘What is the task?’ he asked.

  Aren pressed the letter into his hand, along with the coins. ‘Take this letter to those soldiers there. The coins are for your trouble.’

  ‘That’s all?’ the boy sounded confused and disappointed.

  ‘That’s all,’ said Aren. ‘Now go, in the name of the Emperor!’ He shooed the boy away and retreated round the corner, where he waited long enough to see the boy hand the message to the soldiers. By the time the boy turned and pointed to show the soldiers who’d given him the message, he was already out of sight.

  Let it be over, he thought darkly. The blood moon shone down on him as he hurried back towards Mara’s house, and the treachery ahead.

  74

  The barn behind Mara’s house lay in red darkness, lit only by Tantera’s baleful light spilling through the cracks in the boards and an open hatch in the loft. The air, usually dry and powdery with hay husks and mouse droppings, smelled sharp and acrid and somehow threatening.

  Resting at one end of the barn was an elegant cart, bearing the crest of the Master Vintner of Morgenholme. Several barrels of Amberlyne were already upon it. The rest stood on the floor next to other, smaller barrels of plainer design: the Xulan delivery brought from the docks that morning.

  Garric laboured in the gloom, alone, a kerchief tied around his nose and mouth to block out the alien smell which had begun to make him light-headed and dizzy. With great care, he tipped one of the Xulan barrels and poured a viscous liquid into a funnel placed in an upright Amberlyne barrel, in a hidden hole behind the famous crest. The Xulan barrels were only two-thirds the size of the Amberlyne casks, but they were still heavy enough to make his arms tremble. It would have been steadier and safer with two, but sharing his burden wasn’t a luxury he’d permit himself. This task was his alone, as it had ever been.

  Once the secret compartment was full, he gently put his burden on the ground and replaced the bungs. Six done, six to go. Then he had to glue down the Amberlyne crests to complete the illusion before Wilham arrived to collect the cart and its newly prepared cargo. Later, Garric would head to the ghetto with Aren.

  It would be a busy night. A hard night. But things were moving now, things were getting done, and he was full of febrile energy.

  He shook out his aching arms and was about to resume work when he heard movement at the other end of the barn, a soft sound in the poisonous dark. He lifted his head and peered into the gloom.

  ‘Mara?’

  It wasn’t Mara who emerged from the shadows by the door, but Keel. Garric hardly recognised him at first. He’d always walked tall, like he owned all he surveyed. Now he slunk into sight, shoulders slumped.

  ‘I knew you were up to something,’ Keel said. As he came closer, Garric saw his eyes were bloodshot and red. He was drunk, and he’d been crying. ‘Knew it. All those secret trips you were making. You never used to be secretive. Not around me.’

  Garric pulled the kerchief down from his face. ‘What are you doing here, Keel?’

  ‘Came looking for you. Came to talk, eh?’ He sniffed. ‘It reeks in here. Why are you working in the dark?’

  ‘Wouldn’t be wise to have a light,’ said Garric.

  Keel’s eyes skated across the cart and the barrels arranged around Garric’s feet. ‘What’s in the barrels?’

  Garric would rather he’d never have known, but now Keel was here, there was no avoi
ding it. ‘Elarite oil,’ he said.

  Keel frowned, too drunk to grasp it at first.

  ‘Remember what the boys told us, back in Skavengard, about when they were down in the mine? They said they saw fire in the air and heard a thunder loud enough to wake the Aspects from their slumber. I knew then what I had to do. That was when I made my plan.’ He laid a hand on one of the Xulan barrels. ‘These barrels are full of elarite oil. Come near them with a flame, they’ll destroy the barn, and likely half of Mara’s house with it.’

  Keel smoothed his hair back along his skull, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as his balance wavered. Slowly the seriousness of the situation dawned on him. ‘Godspit,’ he breathed. ‘How did you get it?’

  ‘Osman talked about Xulan chimericists who made fire and thunder such as the boys had spoken of. I wondered if our friend Rapapet might know something. Seems Krodan engineers pump it out of elarite mines when they find it, and the Xulans buy it up and send it home to their chimericists, or to the Glass University for whatever they get up to there. They say the Lord Marshal of the Knights Vigilant in Mitterland has started looking into it. They’re planning a new Purge, did you know? The seventh. They want to use chimericist arts to crack open the underground cities and blow the urds from their holes.’

  Keel came closer, staring at the barrels, half awed and half horrified. ‘And what do you mean to do with it?’

  Garric met his gaze flatly. ‘I’m going to kill every high-ranking Krodan in Hammerholt.’

  Keel shook his head, as if trying to dislodge something in his ear that had prevented him from hearing Garric correctly. ‘You’re going to do what?’

  ‘These barrels look like Amberlyne. If anyone tastes them, they’ll find Amberlyne inside. But they’re mostly full of elarite oil. Once they’re delivered to Hammerholt, they’ll be taken to a storeroom – I’m hoping Yarin found out which. When I get inside, I’m going to find them. Sealed, they’re safe enough, I reckon; but break them open, put a torch to them … Fire and thunder like you’ve never seen.’ His eyes glittered in the faint red light. ‘The prince of Kroda will be there, Keel! The heir to the Empire. The whole of the Krodan high command in Ossia will be with him, and who knows how many barons and counts? General Dakken, the man who stole the Ember Blade!’

  ‘Princess Sorrel of Harrow,’ Keel breathed.

  ‘No. I doubt she’ll be at Hammerholt till the day before the wedding, and it will all be over before then. But she doesn’t matter. Ottico is the Emperor’s only son, and the King of Harrow has only daughters. There can be no marriage if Ottico is dead, and Harrow is so bound by its own traditions that only marriage will do.’ Garric’s hand became a fist. ‘The alliance will collapse, the Emperor’s heir lost, the Krodan chain of command in Ossia thrown into chaos.’

  ‘And the Ember Blade?’ Keel asked weakly.

  ‘I’ll not see the Ember Blade in the hands of a Krodan,’ said Garric. ‘I told you that.’

  ‘You told me you were going to steal it.’

  ‘The Ember Blade will be heavily guarded and locked in a vault that only the Master of Keys has access to. I’ll never get near it, much less get it out afterwards. Stealing it was always impossible. I mean to destroy it.’

  Keel leaned against the cart as if all the strength had gone out of him. Learning of Garric’s plan hadn’t filled him with excitement, as it had Mara; instead it seemed to have drained him.

  His voice was quiet. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

  There was something final in that, something which hit Garric in the heart. He’d known it for a long time, but to hear it said aloud, so baldly, drove the truth of it home. Hammerholt was the last place he’d ever see. No more grass, no more trees, no more fireside ales or sunlight. Never again to be touched by a woman, or to laugh, or to hear an Ossian bard tell tales of the old time in his mother tongue.

  ‘It takes a fire to make a fire,’ he said. ‘Someone has to carry the flame.’

  Keel was silent as he digested that. Finally he lowered his head in despair. ‘I always knew you were a callous bastard, Garric, but till now I had no idea of the depths of it. You’re going to start a war, aren’t you? You’re going to start a war and you won’t even be here to see it out.’

  Garric wasn’t sure what he’d expected from his oldest friend, but it wasn’t this. Anger flared in him. He’d just declared that he was willing to give up his life for his country! Didn’t he deserve a little more than bitter disapproval?

  ‘They’re killing us by stealth,’ Garric said. ‘The Krodans are comfortable in occupation, and we’re comfortable being ruled. Bit by bit they’re erasing us, until one day there’ll be no difference between us and them. So we have to hurt them! Really hurt them. We have to show them they can’t take our land without consequences. Let the Emperor know how it feels to lose a loved one, the way so many Ossians have!’

  ‘And then what? They’ll stamp on Ossia in retaliation! They’ll crush us! It’ll be like Brunland all over again!’

  ‘Good!’ cried Garric. ‘They’ll hang people in the street in their frenzy to hunt down subversives! They’ll imprison us in our villages and take away our luxuries! Families will be torn apart! Innocents will die! And then, only then, will Ossia realise it has to get up and fight!’

  He was suddenly furious, thirty years of coiled rage driving the words out of him. ‘We outnumber them ten to one, for Joha’s sake! Just like when the urds had us under the yoke! They’ve divided us with fear and self-interest, setting countryman against countryman until we’re so busy looking out for ourselves that there’s no time to fight the real enemy! We need to show the people that their overlords aren’t invincible, that they can be toppled if we all pull together! Because who’s next after all the Sards are gone? We’re sleepwalking into slavery, and somebody has to wake us up!’

  ‘And that somebody has to be you.’ The sneer in Keel’s voice brought Garric up short. ‘I was there in your darkest days. I walked by your side when no one else would. I know who you are even when you don’t. Lie to the others if you like, but not to me! Don’t keep your secrets from me!’

  ‘And if I had told you? You would have tried to stop me!’

  ‘That’s not the point! We’re supposed to be friends!’

  ‘You wouldn’t have understood. You don’t understand now. I’m not starting a war – we’ve been at war for thirty years. Did you dream that change would come without sacrifice?’

  Keel sagged, and a shadow fell across his face. ‘And so Garric will decide, alone, the fate of uncounted thousands. Perhaps you are chosen of the Aspects. Only with their approval could a man act with such arrogance.’

  ‘You’re drunk,’ said Garric. ‘Spare me your sarcasm.’

  ‘And when the war reaches Wracken Bay? What then?’ Keel drew a letter from his jerkin, holding it loosely between two fingers. ‘Mariella sent me news from home,’ he said.

  Garric’s mood darkened further. Now he knew why Keel had sought him out. Mariella had always been a thorn in his side, ever wanting, needing, demanding. For years she’d been his opponent in the tug-of-war for Keel’s affections, always trying to pull his only true friend away from him. He hadn’t known the details about the Burned Bear, for Keel had locked himself away upon his return, but the letter made it all plain. That was why Keel had gone to the inn. He’d told Mariella how to contact him, the Krodans had got it out of her and they’d been waiting. She was always his weakness.

  ‘Whatever’s in there, it’s a lie,’ he warned. ‘The Krodans wrote it for her. How else would they have known to ambush you there?’

  Keel shook his head and tears gathered in his eyes. ‘This is truth, I know it. Fluke is dead. The Iron Hand killed him when they went to his farm. Looking for you.’

  It was something Garric had half-expected, but hoped never to hear. Fluke was no friend to him – he may well have sold them out, in fact – but it was hard news for Keel all the same.

 
‘He was the one putting food on the table for Mariella and Tad,’ Keel said. ‘The money I gave them will last the winter, perhaps, but then …’ He tailed off. ‘What choice do I have, Garric? I have to support them. It’s what a man should do.’

  Garric fought down a rising tide of irritation. In other times he’d have lent a sympathetic ear, but here? Now? Surrounded by barrels of elarite oil, with Wilham on his way and dark business tonight? Keel had been singing the same song for years, ever since he’d first left Wracken Bay. Garric knew how it pained him, but his constant indecision was galling.

  ‘Jadrell will arrest you the moment you set foot in Wracken Bay,’ Garric told him. ‘The note is a trap. You know it and I know it. But if you would go, Keel, here’s my blessing, for I’m tired of trying to talk you out of it. Take a ship tonight. Be with your family, for the few hours you’ll get before they arrest you and you’re hanged.’

  Keel swayed away from the cart, gazing at him with moist, hurt eyes. ‘Am I worth so little to you, now you can see the end? After all this time, you’d send me away so easily?’

  At that, Garric was overwhelmed with disgust. This puling wreck of a man wasn’t the warrior brother he’d fought beside these many years, against seas and whales and the might of the Krodan Empire. Skavengard had unhinged him; losing his family had broken him. Garric had given up this way once. He’d been as pathetic as Keel was. Perhaps that was why it was so unbearable to witness his best friend’s fall. All he wanted was to cast him away.

  ‘What would you have me say, Keel?’ he cried. ‘Go if you must, stay if you want, but whatever you do, trouble me no more! I have more important things to do than to coddle your feelings.’

  Keel flinched at his words, stung. Garric almost hoped he’d respond with fury, the way he would have, once. He shrank back instead.

  ‘I will stay,’ said Keel. ‘At least until tomorrow night. I’ll come with you to the vintner’s yard and say farewell there. At least allow me that.’