by A. C. Cobble
“I haven’t seen as much of the world as you, brother, but I’ve been to the United Territories,” said Philip. “I’ve seen the people there, and they live good lives. I’ve spoken to their leaders, and not a one of them has protested our rule. There are no rebels in those nations, no one seeking to overthrow us. We treat them fairly, we spare them war, and we give their children a chance at a better, more comfortable life.”
“Of course they don’t protest to you, Philip,” said Oliver. “If they did, it’d be treason, and you’d have their heads cut off. You’re correct. Some in the United Territories have become quite comfortable, but it doesn’t make it right. How many were killed twenty years ago when we campaigned against them? How are those lives going?”
Philip was saved from a response by the baying of the hounds.
“Here we go!” he called and kicked his mount into a run.
Oliver followed behind him, racing down the dirt track, craning his neck, and listening for the bark of the dogs.
Philip cut across an open field, the grass beneath his horse’s hooves still thick with mist, and then he plunged back into the forest, lying low on his horse while branches whipped over his head.
Oliver, more used to the deck of an airship than the back of an animal, held on tight, gritting his teeth and letting his horse follow his brother. The beast, an expensive breed raised for the hunt, knew what it was about and needed little guidance from its rider.
For a quarter hour, they tore through the forest, tracking the braying hounds, and then the barking rose, and Oliver knew the dogs had pinned the fox.
He and Philip burst into a clearing and found the hounds surrounding a young fox, its fur gleaming in the low light. The creature was barring its small, sharp teeth, yipping ferociously and a little bit comically at the larger animals surrounding it.
The dogs kept their distance, some instinct telling them those sharp teeth and little jaws could saw through flesh as easily as a blade.
Beside him, Philip slowed his horse and raised his blunderbuss. He jerked the trigger, a spark striking from the flint of the matchlock, but it did not ignite. “Hells! My powder must have gotten wet in the mist. Take it, Oliver.”
Oliver drew his blunderbuss from beside his leg and stared down the cold, brass barrel.
The fox looked at him, seeming to meet his gaze with its small black eyes. They were set in its silver-furred face like deep pools. The creature was warm and free. No domesticated beast like the dogs or the horses. Oliver could feel its warmth, its fear, and its hope upon seeing him. Life welled through the tiny creature, bursting out and spreading through the mist of the forest. An animal, a spirit?
He shifted the barrel of his blunderbuss to the left and pulled the trigger, blasting a scattering of shot to the side of the fox. The dogs, stunned at the eruption of powder, stood stock still as the fox darted around them and vanished into the heavy fog.
“Spirits, Oliver,” complained Philip, “that was a terrible shot.”
“I’m better with my broadsword,” claimed Oliver, blowing the curling wisp of smoke from his barrel. “To be honest, brother, it’s been years since I’ve done much practice with a firearm.”
“Doesn’t take that much,” chided Philip, shaking his own weapon and scowling at the firing mechanism. “These things will spread shot two or three yards across from his range. If you can get them to fire, that is. Hells, it’s a wonder you didn’t put a single pellet into it. It’s been ages since I’ve seen someone miss so poorly. Have you already been into the ale this morning?”
“It’s a cold day, brother. There’s no shame in fortifying oneself a little before sport,” replied Oliver. “No fox fur gloves for Lucinda after this hunt, I suppose.”
“The hounds can catch the scent again,” said Philip. “We just need to run them out of this clearing and let them get the smell of the powder out of their nostrils. There’s still light in the day to run the fox down.”
Oliver shook his head. “It won’t stop running for hours after that. Let’s go on back, get a glass of wine, and put our feet up in front of the fire.”
Philip stared into the fog and shook out the dead powder from his blunderbuss.
“Isabella is here,” said Oliver. “Perhaps she’ll bring her sister along. Since I’ve begun formally courting Isabella, Aria has grown jealous, and her attire has gotten downright scandalous. You ought to see it, Philip. I’m shocked her father lets her out of sight with so much flesh on display.”
Philip rolled his shoulders, smirking. “Fine. Let’s head back to the palace and see if we can arrange a drink with your ladies before Lucinda finds out I’m back. As you say, it’s wretched weather this morning. Those twins… You’re a lucky man, brother.”
Oliver nodded, wondering if it was true.
The Priestess XVI
She slammed the sheaf of paper down on the table in frustration. Goldthwaite’s translation of the Book of Law, the accumulated wisdom of the Feet of Sehet, was a bunch of mad scribbling for the most part. When it was coherent, an incredible number of the rituals and diagrams related to membership in the order. Glamours for an aspirant to stay interested in the order, bindings to keep initiates from speaking of what they learned, rituals that were purposefully illegal to give members another incentive to keep quiet and never let the authorities know what happened within the chapter house. It was all a self-aggrandizing circle. Tricks for those in power to use sorcery to stay in power so they could continue using sorcery — but to very little purpose.
There were some summonings that could have use, scrying, for example, with a cleaner, easier to perform sequence than what she knew. There were ways to bind minor spirits to perform simple tasks such as spying or carrying a message, parlour tricks for the most part. There was no insight on how Marquess Colston had transformed himself into a giant, flying monstrosity. There was no recipe for building a wolfmalkin and certainly nothing that pertained to contacting and safely communicating with the most powerful spirits of the underworld.
Sighing, she stood and stretched, her lithe body bending to her will, though not as easily as it once had. She needed to practice, to swing her daggers, to move. Instead, she’d spent days buried under books and papers written years before she was born. It was archaic and from a time that was no longer relevant. Who needed a spirit to transfer messages when a glae worm transmission could do it just as easily and without the mess of a blood sacrifice? Who would speed their footsteps when they could simply board the rail or, better yet, an airship? Why bother spending days fashioning a glamour when a little silver across a man’s palm was just as effective?
The world had moved on from the painstakingly archived knowledge in the Book of Law. Spirits forsake it, she wondered if more than a dozen people in Enhover could even read the language. Technology ruled now, technology and a higher form of sorcery that was beyond the ancient scholars.
Northundon, what she’d seen beneath Derbycross, what Yates had summoned in his home, it was a different caliber of strength. The dark trinity, Ca-Mi-He, that was where the real power lay. Lilibet had not written down whatever it was that allowed her to transform into what Sam had witnessed in the Darklands. That knowledge wasn’t to be found in her hidden, windowless lair.
Sam grabbed her daggers and belted them around her waist. She shrugged into her vest and pulled on her boots. Why bother learning lesser summonings when a spirit such as Ca-Mi-He could be contacted? She was wasting her time in study. She’d always acted on instinct. That was what she must do now. She must act. The time for thinking was done.
She walked out of the room and locked it behind her, leaving the chamber in the palace and heading into the city to find Goldthwaite. It was time they summoned the great spirit, regardless of what the Wellesleys had demanded. It was time they got to the bottom of how Lilibet obtained her power, to the bottom of the bargain which had sealed the fate of Northundon.
Sam cautiously climbed the creaking wood-plank stairs to the
fourth floor of the tenement. Goldthwaite had rented a flat there, eschewing more comfortable accommodations closer to the palace. The mistress said it was the type of place she felt comfortable in, though it made Sam cringe just touching the door to walk inside. She didn’t put her hand anywhere near the splintery, suspiciously stained railing that led up the stairs.
Behind loose doors, bound shut with ragged twine, she heard coughs, arguments, the clatter of crockery, and sex. Smells, mostly bad, pervaded the narrow stairwell. It was the type of place no one was like to ask many questions, and that was what Goldthwaite had been looking for. Sam didn’t think the mistress would be in danger from Oliver, but someone had gained from the sacrifice of Northundon. Someone would be prepared to eliminate potential threats. Without the seer, Sam had no hope of contacting Ca-Mi-He and finding out who was behind it all. As was always the case with sorcery, secrecy was their only option.
She reached the top floor of the building and looked down the dark hall. On this floor, the flats were weekly rentals and were largely vacant. Renters would be prostitutes, poppy addicts who’d come into a little bit of silver, and those types. Goldthwaite’s types.
Sam walked down the hall, watching the half-open doorways leading to empty rooms. She paused a dozen paces from the seer’s. It was ajar. Cursing, Sam drew her two kris daggers and listened. She heard nothing except for the sounds of life below.
Moving slowly, rolling her heel to her toe with each step to minimize the sound of her feet on the decrepit floorboards, she stalked to the door. Drawing a deep breath, she reared back and kicked. The door flew open, crashing against the inside wall, sliding wetly across the uneven boards of the floor. She was almost sick.
The scent of blood and offal assailed her. Even in the dim light of a single, curtain-covered window, she could see the floor was slick with blood, dotted with clumps of gristle and flesh. Splatter was strewn like it’d been flung from a paintbrush. A tuft of braided hair was wedged under the doorway where it’d been opened.
There was a mark across the bloody floor where the door had swung and no other marks that Sam saw. No footsteps, nothing to show a person leaving. Clearly, the door hadn’t been opened since whatever had happened. Frowning, Sam came to the discomfiting realization that there was no skin amongst the tattered remains of Goldthwaite. There were twisted, shattered bits of bone, clumps of muscle, organs, and hair, but nothing that resembled an exterior layer of skin.
Uncomfortably, she compared the scene to what she recalled of Lannia’s death. The missing material seemed more akin to the carnage caused by the reaver, she thought, and there was no other body that could have been spirit possessed. Was it an intentional echo of Lannia’s murder, a message? Whatever had happened, Goldthwaite certainly hadn’t done it to herself.
Sam stood there for several minutes, looking into the room and letting her eyes rove over what was left of the seer. Sam’s mind bounced between thoughts of leaving so that she wasn’t caught standing outside the doorway and wondering what the inspectors would think when they came across the scene.
Moncrief and his men would see instantly what she had. There was no doubt it was sorcery.
Sam shook her head, thinking she needed to… do what? The woman was dead, and nothing Sam was going to do would change that. Sam paused, frowning. She supposed she ought to tell Kalbeth that her mother was dead. It would be better for the woman to hear it from a friend instead of stumbling across Goldthwaite’s presence on the other side. That would be an unpleasant discovery, to be sure.
Kalbeth wanted nothing to do with Sam but perhaps a letter. She could do that, she supposed.
She shuddered, wanting to turn away and leave, but sitting in the midst of the floor, in a place clear of the worst of the gore, was a paper envelope. Cream, flecked with red specks, but not covered like the rest of the open surfaces. It must have been left there after the attacker finished.
Grimacing, Sam moved into the room quickly, trying to ignore the sticky sound of her feet walking across the tacky blood. She picked up the envelope and went back into the hallway before opening it. Thick paper, a red wax seal. Fine script in an elegant hand covered a small slip of parchment.
You have made your choice, and you follow a path that few have dared to tread. Incredible wisdom, incredible power, lay at the end of your journey, but there is a cost to those rewards. When you’ve decided you are prepared to pay the cost, when you are willing to commit, come find me.
The envelope, the handwriting, it was the same as she’d found beneath the dead old man in the Coldlands, hidden inside of his reliquary. The same person had left her a message there and here, the same person who thought she was upon the dark path, who evidently thought she would join them.
No longer bothering to hide her footsteps, Sam walked down the hallway. “Come find me,” said the note. They expected she would know who they were, know where to go. Who—
She stopped, halfway down the stairs.
Who knew she was working with Goldthwaite? Who could have raced ahead of them to the Coldlands? The resources, the knowledge, there wasn’t anyone who—
She began walking again, her stomach roiling, her head swirling. Duke wouldn’t believe it. She didn’t want to believe it, but the pieces slid together like a puzzle she did not know she was working. She knew who it was.
The Cartographer XX
He paced along the side of the airship, looking down at the activity three hundred yards below them. Two huge freighters were tied to the wharf, depositing their cargo of rough timber shipped from the Coldlands. It would be milled on site in Northundon, most of it used to rebuild where war and time had damaged the city. The next batch would be dedicated to a massive new warehouse complex and railyard next to the harbor. Eventually, those raw trunks would supply the material for a giant new ship works. The clamor of progress rose from the harbor, audible even from his perch on the airship.
Progress.
He snorted, shaking his head.
Northundon had been a quiet province with a quiet capital to suite it. The commerce in the region rose and fell with the shoals of fish off the shore. It had none of the heavy industry and rapidly changing technology that Southundon or Middlebury relied upon. For the most part, its people had been content with that.
Oliver had spent enough time in the southern cities to understand why. Coming north after time in Southundon used to be like dipping into a cool bath on a hot summer day. Down south, one could not escape the constant chatter of wheels on rail or the rumble as it passed beneath the streets. Soot floated above the city like spring clouds, drifting down and settling on the rooftops, the streets, and the people. The harbor was full of strange and wonderful goods, the markets packed full of shouting vendors, selling items much too expensive for the common folk. The food, brought in from the middle of the country, wasn’t as fresh as elsewhere, but it was plentiful, at least for one of his means.
The entertainment in Southundon had the same frantic, demanding pace as the rest of the city. Each season, the theatre had new shows, the old ones forgotten by the time the curtains rose again. The performances were brash, unpolished, like they might have been had the show had time to mature. The racetrack was surrounded by the ebullient cries of the winners and the wails of the losers. The horse owners and jockeys were constantly pushing for speed no matter the risks. They had to keep the people coming and betting. A quarter league away, the glue factories had little need to search for supply. The sand in the fighting pits was stained red, left there for a week to build the fervor of the drunks who came to watch. The pugilists danced and weaved to the cheers and jeers of those who’d paid to see them bleed. It was a city that knew no pause, that never stopped to assess whether it was on the right path. It was busy, hectic, and loud.
Northundon had been a place where time moved with the natural rhythms of nature, unhurried, patient. The fish would come when they did. The weather would change as it wont. Northundon was no longer the same, though. As i
t had hibernated beneath the haunted shadow of the spectres, Enhover had changed around it. The nation was no longer a budding empire spreading from the mercantile houses and palaces out into the world. It had become a vast, hungry beast. It had sunk claws into most of the known world, and it was viciously pulling what it found there into the gaping, hungry maw of its people. They’d conquered, and now, they wanted to enjoy the spoils of that effort.
Northundon would be part of that now, a gnashing tooth, taking in the felled trees of the Coldlands and turning them into goods to feed the empire and expand it. Northundon’s newly erected mills and ship works would build war ships that the empire may spread its arms wider and haul in more wealth. More wealth, more power, more.
Oliver shuddered, looking down at the work taking place below. Wealth spent so that they could earn more. Everyone struggled, climbing the mountain higher, climbing it to nowhere.
His father’s and Admiral Brach’s plan for the Darklands was reliant on airships. They were necessary to attack the floating capital and deal with the dragons. While Enhover’s airships were engaged in a far-off land, it was necessary to maintain the empire’s presence elsewhere. Their flag must be seen in the Vendatts and at the major cities in the United Territories. Enhover’s flags should flutter above the world’s harbors like mosquitos in the summer.
That was what they’d planned for Northundon. The northern city would become the world’s largest ship works. Fed from the vast stretches of untouched timber in the Coldlands, Northundon would build a fleet with which Enhover could cover the world.
In time, those sea-going vessels would be replaced by airships, if what they believed about the Darklands’ capital was true. From there, they could mine enough levitating stones to float hundreds of airships. They just had to get rid of the people first.
But that was years away. Even after a successful campaign, building airships was a complicated process, and it took time. The ships Northundon created were needed now, but they would be useful for decades. As the airships expanded the empire’s reach, the sea-going freighters would hold it together.
