by Ben Galley
Again, Temsa roved the chamber, his mind working over ploys, tricks and last stands. He didn’t like the sound of the latter. He forced a wide smile, tapped his cane on the floor, and tried to ignore that his world – so gleaming with promise only moments ago – was crumbling around him.
‘Well, then. We shall be going, and leave you to your duplicitous ways. It’s been a pleasure working with you,’ Temsa said. But even as he turned, the doors to the dark chamber shut with a bang, sealing them inside. Temsa had conducted enough tortures and executions to know what that meant.
Head hung low, he took his time turning back to face the shades on the dais. A dozen emotions clamoured for his attention. Among them was hatred towards these half-lives who had conspired against him. Used him, even. There was a numbing disbelief. A frustration in his own failings, that his dreams were now dust in his head. And embarrassment, as the hot and accusatory eyes of his sellswords turned on him. Half of the soldiers were either white as marble or flushed red.
And then there was Ani.
He met her furious gaze for a brief moment. He had never seen so many types of hatred crammed into one pair of eyes. He had seen that look on her face many times before, but never aimed at him. It sent his stomach plummeting into guts that were already far too loose for comfort.
Taking a breath, forcing a wide and genial smile, Temsa looked up to the Enlightened Sisters and put his faith and future in the hands of the only thing he had ever truly trusted. Coin. ‘Surely we can come to some sort of arrangement—’
The scream that followed was so inhuman, Temsa thought a savage beast had broken into the chamber. It had come from behind him, and he was in the middle of turning around when he realised what had made it.
The axe bit straight to his spine and kept going. It struck with such force and speed there was almost no pain. His throat was unnaturally cold, and all too abruptly he was falling. The world spun several times before he found himself rolling, mouth agape and leaking blood, eyes bulging. He saw Ani with a dripping axe, heaving with rage. He saw his own body, lying sprawled and spurting blood from the stump that had been his neck a few short moments ago.
He was left with the cold, glare of Ani’s dark eyes. It wasn’t the reflection of his murder in them that escorted him to death, but her emotionless stare.
Ani watched the blood pooling around her black boots. Temsa’s head lay in his own crotch, staring up at her with shock in his eyes. There had been a moment where she still felt him looking back at her, while his mouth gasped like a fresh fish on a monger’s stall. Those eyes stared through her now. To another world.
Movement. With a snarl, she twitched her stray locks aside and stared at Danib. His sword was now in his hands, but between the eye-holes in his visor, she saw a look blanker than she had ever seen. There was a pause, and then the blade rested again.
Ani didn’t want to admit how glad she was about that.
She thumbed the warm blood sliding over her knuckles. She was barely tired, but still breathless. She couldn’t quite remember swinging the axe, but she remembered the snap that had drove her to it. She could not have endured another word from that lying, scheming, putrid mouth. A mouth from which she had never known a kind thing to fall. And even in his last moments, Temsa had put it to work, wheedling a way to save his skin.
‘My, my,’ said one of the sisters. Ani didn’t care which one. Caltro Basalt was staring at her with a mixture of shock and happiness. She rested her wet axe on the marble and raised her chin.
‘That’s saved you a job, I imagine,’ Ani said.
‘We have clearly misjudged you, Miss Jexebel. We thought you had little aspiration for anything except severing heads,’ said the sister.
‘Which you do expertly, it must be said,’ said the other.
Ani snorted. ‘I think you’ve judged me well enough. I have no aspirations for any of this. Temsa paid me well enough to fight for him, but in the end, not well enough to die for him. I’d rather leave you all to it and walk out of this tower with clean hands.’
The sisters took a step forwards, almost as one body. Caltro poked his head over their shoulders. Both ghosts wore a smile.
‘And no interests in the Church, Miss Jexebel? Your axe could have plenty more work.’
Ani shook her head, sure as she had ever been, and fighting the urge to spit on their robes. Of all times, now was the time for restraint. ‘A tavern is what Temsa should have stuck with, and I think that’ll do just fine for me. I want a quiet life, if that’s such a thing in this fucking city. I want no part of this. And you can keep your smart-mouthed locksmith for all I care.’
The pause was heavily pregnant. Ani raised her axe to hold it below its double blade, blood still dripping from its notched edges. ‘Well, have we a deal? Or does my axe need to do some more work?’
At the foot of the dais, Danib tensed.
Her heart beat like a battle drum as she turned the copper edge of the axe towards them. Her eyes crept to Danib again, hoping he wouldn’t move any further. She had always wondered about fighting the big monster, old Ironjaw, and how many pieces they would have to carve from each other to find a winner. Perhaps it was finally time to find out.
It felt like a week passed before Liria waved her hand. The squeak of the opening doors set Ani’s boots moving, slowly, as she cautiously watched the shades in the alcoves. She tried to hold back the sigh of relief that threatened to burst from her.
Temsa’s soldiers moved with her, sweating more profusely now even though their freedom had been granted. A few jogged, not trusting the Cult to keep their word. As it turned out, Ani was the last to leave, and with one last nod, she closed the doors with a bang, shutting all of Temsa’s idiocy and trouble behind her. For good.
Ani Jexebel wiped her hands on her sleeve and, with a satisfied sigh, sheathed her bloody axe.
‘And now?’ I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from Temsa’s headless corpse. The severed neck was still pumping blood, but it was a gurgle now, instead of the fountain it had sprayed earlier. I couldn’t quite see his face, but the sight of it detached from his neck was pleasant enough. Enough for a gruesome scene, at least.
The rabid wolf was dead. All of his spite, his cruelty and his foul ambition had been paid for with the swing of an axe. The only taint to the satisfaction was that I hadn’t been the one to swing it. It was an off sort of justice, like seeing a tree fall on a thief as he flees.
‘He will be bound and presented,’ Liria said softly, her eyes also fixed on Temsa.
‘A present for the princess,’ said Serek Boon, clapping a soft blue hand on my shoulder. ‘So you’re the one everyone has been talking about, eh? Those in the know, that is. You’re going to make us proud.’
I immediately didn’t like this fellow, with his gaudy chains, sheer silk, and permanent air of smugness and entitlement. It was a trait I found in most politicians: they made it so very easy for me to hate them. The glowing hound sitting at his heels, however, was infinitely more interesting. A phantom, I’d heard the sisters call it.
‘When do we go to the Piercer?’ I asked the sisters, ignoring the serek.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Yaridin, already guiding me off the dais. ‘As for you, Caltro, tonight you rest. A final gift of the evening. We will show you to quarters, and you are free to read, to explore the Cathedral, or simply to rest, and think.’
‘You spoil me,’ I said. I gave one last look to Temsa’s head as I trod the shadows between the columns. I could see his face now, staring up at a long-gone Ani Jexebel. It wasn’t hatred in his eyes, for once, but fear, surprise, and disbelief. Perhaps even a hint of sorrow.
I wondered how being a half-life would sit with the twisted old soulstealer. In the morning, I would find out. I rubbed my cold hands together as I walked from the chamber.
Chapter 15
Problems
I tell you again, there is something being built beneath some of the major avenues! Look at the facts, damn you!
I have reports of subsidence from a tavern and a jeweller on the Avenue of Oshirim. Others have complained of noises, or of shades moving carts of earth in the middle of the night. Why won’t you investigate this matter? I demand answers!
An excerpt from letters repeatedly sent to the Chamber of the Grand Builder in 994
The armoured shutters suffocated every room in the royal levels. They covered the peak of the Cloudpiercer in sheets of copper and iron. Arrow slits were the only way sunlight penetrated the gloom they cast. Shafts of yellow light speared the pinstripe metal and marble floors at sharp angles. Dust motes danced on the precious breezes they let in.
Royal Guard and shade soldiers in full armour stood at every doorway, every stairwell, every junction, and even in the more precious or private of rooms. They were armed to the teeth, with short spears, swords and hatchets. Shade triggermen in scale mail stood in silent formations along balconies, or waited behind covered peepholes. Not a single eye amongst them left the sky.
The Sanctuary had ranks of guards standing before it, clogging up the grand corridor like a cork in a wineskin. A rather fearsome cork at that, bristling with hooked lances and spiked shields. The empress’s chambers, although empty, had a similar treatment. The guards around Sisine’s chambers accounted for a good quarter of the fighters occupying the top floors of the Piercer.
There was a fetid silence about the royal chambers. They were unnaturally empty, with most of the house-shades sent to lower, less important levels. The Cloud Court remained vacant of its sereks, and those that lived in the Cloudpiercer had retreated to other towers, or those of allies. The air behind the building’s armour was taut as well as stuffy. An uncomfortable silence hung between the soldiers and guards. Every cough and shuffle reverberated around the pristine marble corridors. It brought about a sense of dread, not confident readiness.
Sisine sensed it. Curse it though she might, anxiety stuck in her mind like a splinter.
The sand fell begrudgingly through the hourglasses spread about Sisine’s chambers. Waiting for the hours to pass was a depressing pastime. Watching an hourglass closely enough made moments feel like they were being dragged through molasses.
Sitting still had never been one of Sisine’s virtues, ever since running through these marble corridors as a child with minders and nurses scurrying behind her. She was trying it now, and finding it altogether tiresome. Her chambers had been roamed and paced to death, and as General Hasheti had strongly suggested that she not roam the balconies, one of her sitting rooms would have to suffice.
Sisine had chosen one with the shelves full of scrolls. An old hiding place before her tutors had begun to drag her from games and into adulthood. She had never liked the smell of the place, and it had only increased with the years. She didn’t like it now, but it was distracting enough. Sisine drank in the musty smell with relish.
Some of the scrolls looked familiar. Their labels or cases had certain colours, or strange glyphs, that tickled her memory. Sensing another distraction, Sisine pushed herself from the opulent couch and went to the nearest shelf. She wrinkled her nose at the dust, and let her fingers walk over the familiar scrolls, remembering their titles.
Emperor Phaera’s Legacy.
Ruling Houses of Araxes Years 566-760.
Notable Successions & Assassinations.
Proverbs on Ruling a Half-Dead Kingdom.
The Tenets of the Bound Dead.
Whether there were answers to her mood – perhaps even her problems – in these scrolls and parchments, she didn’t care. Sisine hadn’t the inclination to waste her time looking. She had been schooled in this literature a long time ago. Whatever was in her mind now was a product of the tutors and their droning. These were the scrolls of a child. A juvenile. She was above such things. She was an empress-in-waiting.
And wait she had.
Patiently so, ever since she had learnt her place in the order of Araxes at the tender age of six. Where else is one supposed to ascend to in life when they are born only a handful of murders from the top?
She reached for a parchment off the shelf. The Tenets of the Bound Dead. A simple, decorated page listing the Tenets in fancy, ancient glyphs. Sisine squinted, reading them silently. They were such simple words to define a kingdom as vast as the Arc. Perhaps the whole of the Far Reaches, in time. Certainly during her time. Perhaps then she could call herself an empress, instead of a princess.
Sisine lifted her head to the high shelves, and wondered how many scrolls would be written of her conquests; how many princesses would grow learning her name, and how she had beaten a new age into the Arc.
This time, she reached for a scroll: a fat, heavy thing encrusted in dust and ink-stains. Its title read Ruling Houses of Araxes Years 761-877. Jerking the handle, Sisine saw the mess of names scrawled across it in the usual tentacle-like fashion scholars used to show the ever-shifting and interconnected families that had ruled the Arc. Few reigns lasted more than a smattering of years. Nine was the longest she saw in her brief reading. Here and there, families were cut off completely with no heirs, replaced by an entirely new house. The scrawl introducing each house and the circumstances of its ascendance did not interest her. Only the names.
She remembered none. Not a single name. Sisine recalled no statues or busts of these people. Barely even a silken tapestry featuring them. It was shameful, really, that none had left a mark on Araxes even as little as a hundred years ago. It made her angry that they had merely been concerned with staying alive, rather than having the guts to seize more. Even her father conducted his wars from the safety of his Sanctuary. Sisine curled her lip contemptuously.
Before she let the scroll snap shut, she spotted a familiar name. Another Sisine, thirty-second of that royal name. Dead one hundred and fifty years now, before the Talin and Renala houses reclaimed the throne through butchery. They ended up killing each other over it. The thirty-third Sisine – and a Talin Renala, too – was just a thumb’s length away and born twenty years later. She not lasted past her second birthday.
With a sneer, she threw the scroll back on the shelf and turned to face Etane as he drifted into the room. The noise of his armour had given him away.
He looked resplendent in a silver suit of plate and fine mail, polished to a gleam. The crest of the emperor was chiselled into his breastplate, alongside a dark feather symbol. A helmet hung ready at his belt, alongside a curved knife. His mighty sword Pereceph balanced on his shoulder. It had a fresh glow to it.
The same couldn’t be said of Etane himself. The old shade looked as glum and bothered as Sisine felt. The distractions of the scrolls and her future faded, and doubt came crawling back in their place. She cursed him for it.
‘News?’
‘None, Your Wonderfulness.’
‘Nothing about Widow Horix?’
‘No.’
‘No word from Temsa of the attack on Boon?
‘Not a peep.’
Sisine clicked her knuckles against her palm. ‘Then why the fuck are you here?’
‘Checking you weren’t tearing your hair out, Your Magnificence.’
Sisine folded her arms behind her back, bracelets jangling, and approached him. ‘Tell me, Etane, how long have you been a shade?’
‘You know how long—’
‘Remind me.’
Etane sighed. He was not fond of the subject. He even moved his hand up to the white scar on the right of his head, where a Renala mace had punctured it long ago.
‘One hundred and twenty-six years, Princess.’
‘And of that time, how long have you spent serving the royal houses?’
‘One hundred and twenty-six years. Passed down from ruler to ruler. You know this.’
Sisine smiled. ‘And in all that time, somehow, despite constant rebukes from however many royals, you still think it fit to speak with such cheek. You are a house-shade, Etane, not a court jester. There is a good reason my great-grandfather banned their kind.’
Etane
bowed his head, whether seeking patience or forgiveness, she didn’t know. ‘Your mother never minded,’ he said at last.
Sisine wanted to strike him, but that seemed to do little in the way of curbing his tongue. ‘Don’t mention my mother to me! The woman has abandoned us, and if she ever returns from Krass or wherever she has run to, she will find a very different Araxes greeting her.’
‘No word from your falcon, then?’
‘In all honesty, Etane, I’ve given up caring. She gave up her chance at the throne, and now I’ll teach her the lesson of turning her back on me. Her and father. She’s just lucky she escaped my knife.’ Sisine patted her hip, where hung a blade encrusted in silver flowers.
‘Maybe that’s why she left in the first place,’ mumbled Etane as he looked around at the shelves.
‘Then she is a coward as well as a fool. I have greater problems to deal with. Such as your recalcitrant, oafish ways,’ snarled Sisine. ‘I have half a mind to throw your coin into the Nyx when I sit upon the throne, and be done with you.’
Etane met her gaze, and held it firmly. ‘Then be done with it, and I’ll have my freedom at last. It’s been a long hundred and twenty-six years, Princess, and if I’m being honest now, I think I’ve earned it. So by all means, be done with me. And when the next schemer comes to claim you, the same way you are aiming for your father, I hope you regret not having me there at your side.’ He drummed his gauntlets along Pereceph’s blade.
‘You dally with treason, shade.’
‘Says the princess plotting to kill her emperor.’
Sisine was about to give him a stern lecture on the validity of forced abdication in Arctian royalty when a noise of armour came crashing through the chambers. All discussion was thrown aside. Etane placed himself between the princess and the doorway, his sword balanced across his arm and ready to stab.
