by Ben Galley
A dozen more, maybe a score, trained beyond them, but behind the flurry of activity I couldn’t see much. Only a dark shape twice the height of a man, hunched and knuckles dragging. It was shaped in blocks and sharp angles, but shining blue at its joints. I heard a crunch, a short cheer, and then a mighty sigh. The light swelled, showing me a mighty chiselled breastplate and iron helmet.
I knew Liria was watching me. I saw it in my peripheries. Turning, I saw her smile, and I confessed my sense of marvel with one guilty look.
‘The Strange Ranks,’ she informed me. ‘You are not the only one of power, gifted by some trick of the Nyx – or for the lucky ones, by Sesh.’
I decided to hold my tongue, lest the words of the gods slip out.
‘As well as your attempt at fleeing Temsa’s tavern, Danib told us of your escape at Finel’s zoo. How you managed to haunt all manner of bodies and beasts. I don’t think he has quite forgiven you for the elasmotherm. You’re the only soul who’s ever wounded him and walked away to tell the tale.’
Another reason not to go back to Temsa. ‘The what?’
‘The rather large creature with the horn for a nose. They are called coelo in the old dialects, and are from the far west of the Reaches, past Skol. They would call it the unicorn,’ Liria educated me. ‘The point is, what you see before you is another reason we brought you here. You can see that binding and the old experiments of the Nyxites have left many who are just as unique as you. You are gifted, Caltro. Special. Chosen by Sesh, and we would see you use and expand that gift. That is what these shades are free to do, and why we brought you here. To show you that you are not alone.’
I wondered whether this was for their agenda, or for my own, and I kept silent on that matter. ‘I didn’t think this was possible.’ I thought I was the only one.
Liria smiled. ‘And shades cannot be bound with other souls, no?’ She waved a hand towards the wolf-man standing in the corner. He was now staring at me, eyes black as moonless nights.
‘Or to fade to almost nothing, like the ghosts of ancient times? Or able to haunt, Caltro?’
‘You make a fine point.’ I threw up my hands, noticing more and more of the Ranks were halting to take a look at me. The crimson-clad trainers, too.
‘You’ll find a great deal of what you thought impossible is possible through Sesh, and his Church.’
I stepped closer, wary of the hush gradually falling over the cave. ‘But why?’ I asked, coming to the crux in a small voice. I had heard what I needed to hear. So far, at least. ‘Why do you show me all this? Why trust me, a well-known locksmith, with it? What do you expect in return? I know this city and its greed, and “free” is a word only heard by those sitting atop mountains of half-coins. Something for everything, that’s what I’ve heard it called, and I find it hard to believe that even you, as generous and charitable as you seem to be, want nothing from me.’
Liria’s eyes had been searching my face, drinking in every tiny expression that I couldn’t hide. Yaridin appeared over her shoulder amongst the other shades, watching just as keenly.
Liria stepped closer to me, her voice a whisper. ‘You speak plainly. So shall I. You are not coveted by all without reason, locksmith. We want you to open the Sanctuary for the empress-in-waiting, and stand with us when she places her father into the Nyx with half a coin held tightly in her hand. We know she originally summoned you here.’
‘You want my allegiance.’
‘No, Caltro,’ she said, softer still. ‘We want your help. For you to share in our justice. To be a part of a new era for shades. Death as you’ve never known it. True freedom.’
I looked away in thought, but a cold hand on my chin pulled me back to face her.
‘Aren’t you angry, Caltro? Aren’t you enraged by what you see in the streets above us? How even the free must fight to be heard? We are. We’re angry at the limpness of the Chamber of the Code. At the very nature of life. Do you not feel rage in your mind, whenever a moment of silence can be found? Every day, when we look upon the injustice and crime that even daylight can’t hold back, we feel it. When we see the downtrodden slitting their wrists just to be free of life, no matter how cruel their master will be in death. Or visitors, afraid of stepping onto land past sunset, who have to listen to the howls and screams of soulstealers. Don’t you feel it, as we do? As we all will continue to feel until change comes?’
I knew the anger she spoke of extraordinarily well. It was ubiquitous, just like the Nyx, sprouting and bubbling here, but always just under the surface. Like it or not, Liria’s words had kindled it in me. I felt it in the tautness of my jaw. Justification for my anger flashed through my mind, old moments of cruelty and torture. Of injustice. There was no finer word for it.
I was selfish in my anger. I thought of the greater evil, and how I could feel a greater pain for my fellow dead, but I thought only of me. My shattered dreams. My interrupted life. My trials and tribulations. My gruesome end at the sharp edge of a knife. My fight for my coin had blinded me until now.
Sweeping from the cave, I found the stairs, and then the corridor leading upwards. The good part of being a talented locksmith was that my mind drew maps in an instant, and fine ones at that. I followed my memory with long, determined strides. The cries of, ‘Welcome!’ and, ‘Sesh be praised!’ flowed over me. I clenched my fists harder around my coin. I didn’t know if Liria and Yaridin trailed behind me; I just kept marching.
When I found the round door, I barged it aside and caused the guards to start. They followed me down the corridor, spears waggling in my face, until a shout to leave me be came echoing. The sisters had followed me after all.
I strode to the cell and took a stand a few inches from its bars. The shades had been put back inside, and they huddled together as before.
‘Kech! You fetid fucker. Show your face!’ I let the anger fly.
The shades parted eagerly, slowly revealing a familiar glaring set of eyes between lank tendrils of hair.
‘Back again?’ Kech rasped. ‘Thought up some more big words to say?’
At a polite cough by my side, I looked at the sisters. Liria was holding the triggerbow as before. I snatched it from her, uncaring.
Kech snorted. ‘You couldn’t pull it before, you ain’t—’
Thunk!
The copper bolt found his knee, driving straight through his vapours and lodging there. As he began to seethe from the white light lancing up his leg, I was already reloading.
The second bolt pinned his forearm against the wall. A lucky shot. I had been aiming for his other leg. The guards swung open the door for me, and I marched inwards, standing over the snarling Kech.
‘You fucking bastard!’
I made no reply but the click of the triggerbow tightening.
Thunk!
The third bolt struck him in the groin. It was a cheap shot, and not as much of an insult to a dead man as to a live one, but it got the desired effect. I leaned over him, watching him squint and howl through the pain. I had endured my share of copper. It was time for his.
‘You deserve every moment of this, Kech,’ I found myself saying, as if another had taken control of my tongue. It felt as though I was haunting myself, and far from in control of the reins. ‘To suffer as you made me suffer.’
Another bolt met his shoulder at almost point-blank range.
‘Get it over with!’ he yowled.
I threw the triggerbow aside, making the other shades scatter deeper into the corners of the cell. They watched on with horror, and rightly so.
‘Do you still have that half-coin?’ I turned to Liria, and her hand opened like a blue flower to show me a tarnished half-moon of copper.
‘Even a half-life is too good for you,’ I snarled at Kech, showing him his coin. I found the sister at my side now, holding a pair of sharp cutters.
‘You don’t even deserve to wait in that dark place, and know the pain of others you stole life from. Soulstealer. The void is what you deserve. Nothin
g.’
‘No, please!’
Without a second thought, I snatched up the cutters and took one point from Kech’s half-coin. It was tough work cutting with my weak strength, but the anger drove me on.
The vapours of his feet and hands began to lose their shapes like smoke on a breeze. I cut again, making a quarter of his coin, and he started to pull apart; blue knitting yanked by loose threads.
‘I’m sorry!’ Kech screeched.
It was too late. It took one more cut before he died a second death, and his form collapsed in a puff of blue smoke. Before they faded completely, his vapours turned to black under the white lanterns.
I let the last shard of his coin fall, and listened to it jump over the flagstones with a musical note. The other shades watched me as I exited their cell without a word.
‘Do you feel better?’
I didn’t know what I felt besides faint satisfaction. I had made him whimper, beg, even apologise in the end, and yet there was no great upwelling of relief, or release. I was still dead; colours and sounds were still muted, and the world was still mired with shit. It just had one less soul in it.
‘When? When am I bound for Sisine?’ I asked, distracting myself. There was no guilt, just confusion over who I had been with that bow and those cutters in my hands.
Both sisters smiled warmly. ‘Soon. But for now, we have something else we think you might like to see,’ Yaridin replied.
‘Another gift?’ I raised an eyebrow.
‘Of sorts,’ said Liria. ‘More justice to be served.’
My promise to the dead gods was not forgotten, but for the moment, try to deny it as I might, my suspicions about the Cult had been chipped away.
I held up the cutters, finding my hands trembling with effort. ‘Lead the way.’
Chapter 14
The Last Heist
The wise businessman does not pay for loyalty.
Consortium Canon, Chapter 4
A shambles. That was what it was.
Ani Jexebel had known the mercenary life for over twenty years now, verging on thirty. In the earlier days she had been a bloodstained brawler, scourge of more than a dozen fighting pits. Then some wrinkled old bastard put an axe in one hand and a silver in the other, and a sellsword she had become. Since then, Ani had never known anything but. Coin and constant work had been her only goals. There was pleasure in it, of course: the satisfying snap of a neck, a vault of silver and a closet of sharp and pretty things, but those were extras. Pride in her work had kept her straight and flush. That, and never picking a fight she couldn’t hack her way out of. There had been few of those across the stretch of years, but tonight, as she stared across the shambolic gathering of soldiers, she felt an old and familiar chill across her nape.
Half the soldiers were too busy yawning to put their armour on right. Spears clattered on the flagstones every now and again as clumsy fingers attempted too many things. A good chunk of the soldiers were late, still stumbling out of the door. Two dozen were missing completely. They had left their things and run to find kinder employment, and a boss who wasn’t chasing maniacal dreams.
Suicidal dreams.
Ani watched Temsa stomp about, the occasional spark flying under his claws. He yelled this and that, half encouragement and promises of riches, the other half threats of skinning alive or boiling oil trickled into the ears. Most of it she had trouble hearing over the mutters and clanging.
Ani shook her head and thumbed her axe once more. It was infuriating to have so many years of loyalty slapped aside as if they’d never mattered. To invest so much in a boss, only to watch him become a fool.
‘He’s losing it, Danib. If he ain’t already lost it,’ she muttered.
The big shade standing by her side grunted noncommittally.
‘Don’t give me that. You see it plain as I do. Gone mad on his own success. I’ve seen it before in other bosses. Didn’t take Temsa for the sort. Not at first.’
Danib sighed. That’s more like it.
‘Look at this fucking mess,’ she said, pointing her axehead at the motley crew of soldiers. A hundred, maybe a hundred and a half. A sore number to take on a serek’s tower and guard. ‘We need another day at least, but he won’t listen. His arrogance is going to get us all killed and bound. First bit’s no trouble for you, of course, but who knows who’ll buy you?’ Ani grumbled. ‘What are we to do about it, hmm?’
Danib looked down at her, and she saw blank eyes behind the sharp slits of his visor.
‘Nothing? Well, he’s not my master. Just my employer.’
The shade thunked the tip of his greatsword in the sand.
Ani growled. ‘Fine. You just carry on ignoring it. Trustin’ him. See if you don’t have a different master by sunrise.’
Temsa was limping back towards them, a deep frown on his forehead and a displeased grimace on his mouth. Ani didn’t even dare dwell on his new look. He was wearing a bright yellow suit with a golden sash across him, adorned with the fake medals some tors liked to wear. His eyes had been underlined with black and cobalt paints, as was the fashion of the rich, and she couldn’t see the skin of his fingers for all the gold and silver rings on them.
‘I thought they’d be ready by now, Miss Jexebel,’ he snapped.
Ani cocked a hand behind her ear, and he huffed irritably before repeating himself.
‘As did I,’ she muttered in reply. ‘Half of them ’aven’t slept. Those who did still haven’t had time for supper, or to even clean their armour or blades from last night.’
Temsa came closer. ‘They’re street thugs and sellswords. They wouldn’t know a bath if they drowned in one. Who cares?’
Ani did, but only in the context of saving her own life. ‘A crusty blade or stiff armour or a sleepy mind is no good in a fight,’ she said. ‘But fuck it, right, Tor? Dead bodies don’t need paying.’
She strode away from him, barely resisting the urge to barge him with her elbow, and yelled at her gang of would-be soldiers. ‘FORM UP, YOU MURDEROUS INGRATES!’
A dark and quiet night had fallen over Araxes. The streets were even emptier than in the day. Barely any lamps or torches lit the way for Temsa’s armoured carriage. Weak starlight found its way through the buildings, casting bands of faint shadow across the dust and flagstone. The hoofbeats of the four horses and clattering of the ironclad wheels behind them were the only noises, and they sounded deafening against the quiet of the fearful city.
Silence had been the topic of conversation during the journey deeper into the city’s core. Not a word was said between the three gathered in the carriage. Ani had sharpened her axe with her whetstone, nothing else. Danib had gone into some sort of trance, suspiciously quiet even for a mute. Temsa watched the city as always, counting down the streets until they arrived at Boon’s tower.
The Cult’s notes had been very descriptive with Boon, far more so than any other mark on their list. Temsa had read their spidery glyphs so many times he had them memorised.
Three entrances. The rear is a shade and servant entrance.
Guard change at first morning bell.
Minor stairwell leads to main, guarded and locked at every second floor.
Boon resides on the twenty-first. Half his hoard is stored with him. Beneath his bed.
He saw the tower before they reached it. ‘Phallic’ was the word that came to mind upon viewing it. It was not as tall as some of the sereks’ spires, but it was a strangely shaped thing. Too modern, for Temsa’s tastes; bulbous at the top and sloping to a pyramid base. No roadways or bridges touched its sides. Lanterns shone from every other window down its pink sandstone flanks. Temsa hated the serek more just for building this cock-like monstrosity.
The tor knew little of Boon apart from the fact he was a free shade who sat on the Cloud Court. That was enough cause for affront in itself. Free shades did not deserve such seats of power. Boon was high-ranked amongst sereks – which meant filthy rich – and dead for enough years to think his own t
ower more secure than the banks. Oh, and hated enough by both the royals and the Cult to top both their lists.
Minutes passed, and with a lurch the carriage halted. Temsa was quick to escape its stilted atmosphere. He stood by its thick wheels and gestured for Ani to take charge. If she had complaints, she could see to their fixing.
Temsa waited with his hands folded over his new obsidian cane, golden and amethyst rings tapping on its stone while his underlings got the soldiers into some sort of order. They had stopped two streets away from Boon’s tower. Temsa listened to the absence of noise around them. Just the occasional rattle of a heavy carriage, and none close enough to worry. No night-markets had dared to open with so much warring in the streets. Barely even a blue glow could be seen. And as for soldiers or scrutinisers, well, it looked as though they had been given the night off.
‘See, m’dear? A fine night for a heist,’ Temsa said to Ani as she loped up to him, her axe down by her side. He took a deep breath of city air in through his nostrils. It always smelled less foul in the Core.
‘Hmph,’ Ani replied. ‘Conveniently quiet.’
Temsa chuckled, refusing to share in her dark mood. ‘Nonsense. More like my reputation precedes me.’
‘Hmph.’
‘Onwards, Miss Jexebel. As we discussed.’
‘Aye.’
With a wave, Ani took half the soldiers, Danib the other. They peeled apart at the junction, and crept along either side of the street. Temsa followed behind them in the deepest shadows, cane tapping, leg chiming. He felt that familiar excitement rise up; the one he’d developed a taste for in recent weeks. He ran his hands over his rings and his new silk, and grinned to himself in the darkness.
Serek Boon’s walls were high and topped with curls of copper and glass. The gates on this side of his property relied on stoutness rather than grandeur. They were just taller than a man, but made of thick Krass oak and copper. The two columns of soldiers held back, twenty paces from the gate, sticking to the shadow of the adjoining street.
