by Ben Galley
‘I… every day is market day, Mistress.’
Horix sucked a morsel of camel meat from between her teeth, plucked it free and flicked it over the balcony’s edge. ‘Precisely,’ she said.
The downpour had calmed to a drizzle: a light, musical pattering on helmets, pauldrons and umbrellas. The calming of the foul weather had stirred some more life back into the streets of Araxes. Half-lives were out in their droves once more, smocks of all colours spattered with fresh mud. There seemed a hurry in their step, as if there was lost time to be made up for. They hauled sacks and bundles, carted scrolls by the dozen under their arms, or jogged between what few stalls and shops had stayed open on that rainy day.
A few minor nobles clung to the dryer edges of the streets, huddled with their guards or acquaintances. They stared out from under awnings and pulled faces at the granite sky. Beetles and spiders strode through the mucky streets with ease, their riders sitting high in saddles and dry under wide pyramidal umbrellas of cotton or woven and waxed palm fronds. Brawny centipedes carrying packs and barrels gleefully churned up the mud, naturally fond of the wet. Their human drivers were far from charmed by the antics of the insects. Their voices were dulled by the rainfall and sloshing of feet through mud, but Horix could hear their cursing and the cracking of whips.
The more Horix’s gaze roamed the streets and avenues, the more she sensed the dangerous edge to the city’s mood. A threatening atmosphere was commonplace, as ever-present in Araxes as the droves of dead, the smoke from the dockland chimneys, or the dust from the Duneplains. Today it had been honed to a razor. She saw it in the gangs of house-guards standing in every doorway, the empty high-roads, and the extra boards nailed across every window.
Beneath her umbrella of gold filigree and black satin, Widow Horix marched through the mud with haste and without care. The widow held a faint fondness for the rain. It reminded her of time spent in the far, far north, where no buildings scraped the sky, where the dead stayed in the Nyx, and where the deserts were of ice, not sand. Her travels there had been brief, but she had found a kindred spirit in the harsh mercilessness of the northern wastes. Where the desert sun was brash and forceful, cold seeped. Cold crept. It wasn’t like Horix to reminisce, but her only pastime in the last few days had been waiting, and that tended to turn a mind backwards to days gone by.
Behind her, two chamber-shades scrabbled to keep up with Horix while holding her black frills aloft. Around them, Kalid and twenty of his men formed a diamond of gold armour, shields and short spears. The colonel marched at its head, using his sword to move aside any dawdling half-lives or living. The few nobles that crossed their path gave them a wide berth, using the whole stretch of the wide streets in their efforts to stay safe and separate. Suspicion was rifer than ever with all the gossip surrounding Serek Finel. The house-guards would glare at each other, spears would waggle, but that was all. Horix almost wished for some action, even if only to alleviate her boredom.
The soulmarket plaza looked like a dinner plate hastily scraped of its contents. It was so empty, Horix initially thought the market was closed for the day, but the gold rope ringing the platform at the centre signified otherwise. The sandy stone around it was awash with ochre mud. The edges of the plaza glowed blue where groups of shades stood about in shackles. Several sorry-looking soultraders huddled under covered wagons. Their wares were scant today. Normally there were two or three times the number of shades. None of the merchants had opened their stalls bar one: a grumpy-looking tea vendor in a driftwood chair. Horix was curious whether it was the rain or the Nyxwater shortage that had resulted in such a poor offering.
A handful of buyers and nobles stood about, each an isolated island with a reef of guards. They all seemed to be waiting on a man who had clearly made an error in choosing a cream cotton suit for his day’s wear. Not only was it bespattered with mud, but it clashed with his thinning lemon-yellow hair, which had been plastered across his brown scalp like too little butter over too much toast. He was busy pacing back and forth between the traders, arguing in hushed tones about something that was apparently highly inconvenient to him and his business. Upon seeing Horix and her entourage emerge onto the plaza and join his threadbare crowd, the official tugged at his wet locks in frustration.
‘Fine!’ Horix heard him say, spraying rainwater as he spoke. He gestured to the soultraders, and with a complete lack of alacrity, they handed him their scrolls and began to stir their shades into action with copper rods and switches. The official stamped up the stairs to his wooden platform, shooing away a flock of scabious pigeons.
As the nobles began to gather before the stage, Horix’s guards formed two concentric rings about her. Kalid stood close, sword-tip resting in the mud. Over the shields of his men, he eyed the other nobles and the seals on their house-guards’ shields. ‘Dire pickings, Mistress,’ he growled.
‘That may be, but I care little, Colonel. Time is wasting. We need workers.’
The guards parted so Horix could watch the first batch of shades take to the platform. They were indeed a sorry-looking lot. They were the quality of shade one might find in a desert mine, or the dockyards, or a Sprawl beetle farm. Out of the ten now slouched or shivering on the platform, one was missing an arm from the shoulder; another’s face had been partially ripped off, leaving nothing but skull beneath; and another still had taken a knee to avoid trying to stand on a smashed foot.
‘A fine morning to you all, and to you all a fine morning!’ began the balding official, raising his fistfuls of scrolls to the dark skies in welcome. He was trying to keep a warm smile on his face. It was already cracking at the edges, like old papyrus.
Not a word came from the gathered nobles and buyers, maybe half a dozen at the most. One young man with an umbrella of peacock feathers left almost immediately, his guards sloshing around him. Undeterred, at least outwardly, the official bowed low and gestured to the half-lives on the stage. The soultrader standing behind his wares, a pale northerner, looked interminably bored.
With an officious clearing of his throat, the official started the proceedings.
‘Might I present Boss Ubecht’s lot. Ten souls. Mostly fresh shades…’ He paused briefly to glance at Boss Ubecht. ‘…good condition and genuine kills as per the Code. Two skilled workers. Others good for garden or warehouse labour.’
‘Lies!’ proclaimed one buyer, barely waiting for the official’s words to leave his mouth. He wore a wide-brimmed hat to keep the rain away. ‘These are scrapings!’
Undeterred, the official forced his smile wider. ‘We will start with twenty silvers—’
Ubecht stamped his boot.
‘Thirty silvers.’ The official corrected himself. ‘Thirty silvers for the first shade. Answers to the name Jeena, a young chamber-shade. Ten years of experience.’
Again, the buyer scoffed. ‘Outrageous!’
‘Now, Master Feen. Due to the current shortage of Nyxwater, we unfortunately… er… have had to, erm—’
The buyer was undeterred by the man’s stammering. ‘I wouldn’t give you ten silvers for one of these damaged souls, never mind thirty!’
‘Fuck off!’ Ubecht growled. ‘What do you expect? You’re lucky I ain’t charging forty!’
The official attempted a casual laugh. ‘So then, do I have thirty?’ He looked to the remaining buyers with desperate hope glowing in his eyes, as if he were a condemned man about to be hanged and longed for mercy.
The official’s determined smile was on the verge of collapse when Horix spoke up.
‘One hundred fifty for the whole lot,’ she called, drawing a glance from Kalid.
Despite the muttering and sniggers from the tiny crowd, Ubecht shrugged, threw a leather pouch to the official, and clomped down the platform stairs.
‘Sold, to Widow Horix!’
Beneath her cowl, Horix met the stares of the other buyers. Some were perplexed, she could see that, while others clearly considered her an old fool of a woman, buying worthle
ss half-lives.
The next batch of shades came lumbering through the mud and up the steps of the stage, poked and prodded by men in blue masks and a seal Horix could not have cared less for. They were a finer group, but only slightly. A few clean kills, others butchered in restrained ways. Horix saw a few of the other buyers cupping hands around their mouths, whispering to confidants.
A young girl in a waterfall of blue silks, barely out of childhood, swaggered across the platform, tapping a copper cane in an annoying rhythm. Glyphs adorned her face like rampant freckles.
‘Our next lot comes from Boss Helios, comprised of twenty-six souls—’
‘Five hundred.’
The official’s mouth gaped like a cod out of water. ‘P…pardon, Tal Horix?’
‘Five hundred,’ said the widow. ‘For all of them.’
‘I…’
Boss Helios banged her cane against the wood with a resounding thud. ‘Fine with me!’ she cheered, striding promptly from the stage.
The stares had become scowls. Horix felt Kalid bend down, closer to her. ‘The basements are crowded as they are, Mis—’
‘I told you I am done being patient, Colonel,’ Horix replied, waggling a finger. ‘Poldrew will find a use for them.’
The official slicked his hair over his scalp and blew rain as he checked the next listing on his scroll. Fifteen shades, bound in copper shackles, lined up awkwardly. These were an ugly-looking bunch, also, missing eyes, noses and other important pieces. They looked like old stock from the fight-pits. A hunched old man, his silver hair in braids, stood guard, along with a series of identical blond men, the only difference between them their age.
‘Boss Rapeen and Sons present their next l—’
‘Two hundred!’ Horix yelled. The other buyers threw up their hands in displeasure.
‘How dare you be so greedy, Tal?’ one of them shouted, some puffed-up man with a wig of arrow-straight black hair.
‘Leave some for us!’ called another.
They both received the full force of Horix’s withering gaze.
‘Four hundred,’ croaked old Boss Rapeen.
Horix shook her head. ‘Two hundred fifty.’
‘Mistress, the coffers.’
Horix turned on Kalid, lips puckered disapprovingly. ‘And what will they matter when I get my vengeance? Do not get skittish now, Colonel, not when we are so close,’ she hissed.
Rapeen gave his final offer. ‘Three hundred even!’
Horix nodded.
‘Erm…’ The official paused for a moment while he thought, dripping with rainwater. ‘Sold?’
Rapeen and his sons were already herding their shades back to the mud.
The official checked his scroll and grimaced. He looked behind him to make sure, and when he turned around, he wore a practiced smile, one as hollow as a dead tree. ‘And I believe we have come to the end of our lots for now. Please do return tomorrow!’ And with that, the man shuffled away with much speed, seeking refuge in the crowd of traders and glowing shades.
‘This is outrageous!’ yelled the wig. ‘I came from two districts over to find soultraders with Nyxwater.’
‘I advise you to keep searching, then,’ Horix called out. She could see the man desperately trying to place her seal of hanging corpses, and where she ranked in society. Horix imagined the amount of silver she’d just spent would give him a clue, but the guessing clearly infuriated him; she didn’t see him stamp his foot, but she heard it, and his smattering of house-guards came sloppily to attention. Between the grilles in their gold helms, Horix could see they were befuddled as to why their tor was taking on this woman’s glittering phalanx of ex-soldiers. The Nyx shortage was evidently causing more desperation than usual in Araxes.
Kalid’s men didn’t even need an order. They collapsed their circle into a tight bunch, spear-points pointing outwards like a sea urchin, its black centre the smug widow under her umbrella.
‘You can’t just buy them all!’ argued the wig, clearly flustered.
‘Can I not? Show to me in the Code or soulmarket rules where it says I cannot, and I will happily rescind my offers. If not, I bid you a good day.’
The man spluttered, but produced no argument she had an interest in, and Horix left him standing there, strangling the empty air with his painted nails.
After half an hour of scratching signatures, stamping seals on papyrus, and handing over bags of silver coins, a long train of shades was escorted from the market square by six of Kalid’s soldiers.
Horix remained behind, finding the cold, wet air too refreshing to retreat to her tower just yet. Watching her new wares disappear around a corner, she spun her umbrella, spraying drips in a spiral. Kalid stood behind her, and she gazed up at him from beneath her cowl. The wet had caused the plume on his helmet to droop. Rainwater gave his golden armour a beaded texture. His usual stoic face had harder edges, and his gaze were lost in the streets. She prodded his breastplate with a fingernail.
‘You doubt me, Colonel?’
Kalid shook his head emphatically. ‘Never, Mistress. Not in twenty years. I would not dare.’
‘Then speak your mind. Something troubles you.’
‘We have visitors, Mistress,’ he replied, drawing his sword with a flash of silver and a scraping whine.
Horix followed his gaze and observed two great, armour-bound hulks sloshing through the mud towards them. Her teeth crunched as she tensed her jaw.
Danib and Ani Jexebel.
A wall of shields was built in moments, making buyers and traders alike turn around to see what the commotion was. Spears were thrust out, their long steel points shedding raindrops. Kalid stood tall, holding his curved Arctian blade flat and in front of the widow as a barrier.
‘Easy, now,’ he muttered to his men.
Danib and Jexebel’s weapons remained at their sides or strapped across their shoulders. All they carried with them was a small mahogany box, edged with brass.
‘That’s close enough,’ warned Kalid, and the two brutes came to a halt a dozen paces away.
‘As you wish,’ sighed Jexebel in a resigned tone. Her pale face was even more impassive than Kalid’s. Her leather-and-mail armour was soaked through, and she looked as though she had been a victim of a speeding carriage and a muddy puddle, but Horix got the impression that wasn’t the sole root of her mood. The shade behind her shoulder was impossible to read, given the ghastly steel helmet that covered his face. Blue vapours curled out of its gaps like hot breath.
‘My master Tor Temsa wishes to give you a gift,’ said Jexebel.
‘I only want one thing from him,’ Horix snapped.
Jexebel extended the box anyway. One of Horix’s guards stepped forwards, edging slowly through the muck until he grabbed the box. Danib twitched and the man came scurrying back in haste. Horix could see Kalid tense as the shade chuckled.
Behind the shield wall, the box was put in the mud, and carefully opened with the point of a spear.
The pink velvet innards of the box held nothing apart from some shards of copper. Horix looked closer, and pieced them together enough to make out the glyph for “Crale”.
Horix’s head snapped up, eyes switching rapidly between Jexebel and Danib. ‘Temsa’s point?’
‘He wishes to let you know that he is willing to compensate you handsomely for Caltro Basalt’s coin.’ Jexebel said. Jexebel made it look like saying those words was as arduous as pushing a horse up stairs.
Horix was trembling with anger. Her hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife under her silks and squeezed it so hard she almost drew blood. The cheek of it. The audacity. She was so insulted her lips stayed pursed, white as clay and speechless.
Jexebel continued. ‘He wants it, and will have it. Whether it’s the hard way or the easy way. His words.’
Without any ceremony or etiquette whatsoever, Jexebel turned and left, her shoulder clanking against Danib’s as she clomped away. The steel-clad brute did not move, instead fixing his w
hite eyes on Colonel Kalid for a long and uncomfortable moment. Horix watched the two of them – shade and man – measure each other silently. The leather of Kalid’s gauntlets squeaked as he tightened his grip around his sword handle.
Just as the tension became unbearable, it was shattered. Not with the drawing of a sword and a thunderclap of steel, as Horix had half-expected, but with an unimpressed grunt. Danib swivelled on his heel and trailed after Jexebel, his vapours leaving a sapphire trail behind him. Mud and sand sprayed from his heavy steps.
Colonel Kalid only relaxed his stance when Danib had vanished from view, turning into the busier thoroughfare adjoining the market.
‘The time may come, Colonel, when you will have to fight that monster,’ Horix growled.
Kalid’s tone gave no emotion away. ‘Aye, Mistress. I suspected it might.’
Horix kicked the wooden box shut. ‘Temsa becomes intolerable! Who does that soulstealer think he is?’
‘What will you do, Mistress?’
‘Destroy him, is what I will do, Colonel! He wishes to play games with me? I will—’
‘Tal!’ came an irate shout from behind her. It was the tor in the wig, striding towards her with a finger raised in the air and plenty of rehearsed words on his tongue. His house-guards struggled to keep up with his eager pace. A few of the other buyers huddled behind him. ‘I am not satisfied!’
Horix’s house-guards bristled, but she left them behind, walking out to meet the tor with her umbrella in one hand, the other hand open and empty.
‘Mistress!’ Kalid called after her.
‘I demand you sell me some of your shades!’ ordered the wig.
There must have been ten paces between them now. She closed them quickly. He had yet to realise his mistake, blinded by his indignity. All he saw was a rich but frail old woman.
They always do.
‘It is outrageous for you to… I say, stop there—!’
In a blink, the blade lurched from her silk folds and plunged under the tor’s ribs. It was so fast, his house-guards didn’t quite register it had happened. The widow withdrew the knife, and stabbed again. And again, driving the blade into his stomach repeatedly. The wig coughed blood, eyes watering with disbelief. It took a yell from one of the onlooking soultraders to make the house-guards and other buyers realise, and by this time, Kalid and his guards had already formed up around their mistress and her victim. All present looked on aghast as Horix kept stabbing, working her way up to his throat. When the dagger became too slippery and escaped her fingers, she upended her umbrella and drove its point deep into the bloody mess of the man’s stomach. She pressed down on it with all her weight, and the tor’s eyes bulged. He croaked and spluttered, but could not manage any words.
