by Matthew Ward
She nodded tersely, a daylight halo spreading across her shoulders.
With a groan of strained metal and a crackle of light, the kraikons started forward.
Thirty-Four
The warehouse’s emptiness did little to settle Altiris’ jangling nerves. The roar of battle was too close. Near enough to separate individual screams from the cacophony, each one a mark of a life ended. They drove him on through the darkened, empty loading bays and storerooms, each step swifter than the last. Kurkas and Constans ran to keep pace, the steward brisk and professional as he checked each doorway, the boy moving always with a flourish to an audience only he could see.
“Nothing doing down here,” said Kurkas, as they came to the stairs. “We going up?”
Altiris took the steps two at time, the timber creaking under his weight. The musky scent of silted water – never absent from the harbour – grew stronger.
Constans scowled. “Zarn’s a cheapskate. Roof’s rotten through.”
They reached the mezzanine landing, the web of pulleys and walkways stretching into the shadows of evening. To the right, the door to the outside gantry-walk. To the left, the manager’s office. A trail of smeared, slime-laden water stretched between, broken tendrils of black weed twitching and writhing in the uncertain light of a lone lantern.
Altiris crossed to the office door. “It’s not the roof.”
Constans paled. “Queen’s Ashes… What is that?”
“That woman we saw with Lord Akadra? We cross her path, don’t look into her eyes.”
Kurkas scowled. “A fine time to mention that.”
Altiris grimaced. “We’re not here to fight.”
“Might not be our choice.” Kurkas drew his sword. “Still, we’re here now.”
The door handle turned smoothly. A last, deep breath to reinforce faltering nerve, and Altiris stepped into the office.
No lanterns burned within. The dull, angry glow of the setting sun cast long and brooding shadows. A desk sat between door and window, the huddled silhouette of a man slumped in the chair. A pool of weed-strewn water glimmered beneath.
“Alika?” The wheezing, bubbling voice was barely recognisable as belonging to the man from the gantry. His head bobbed up and down. “Is that you? I can’t see anything any longer.”
“Who’s Alika?” murmured Altiris.
“His wife. Dead for decades.” Rounding the desk, Kurkas opened his mouth to address Lord Akadra. Whatever words he’d meant to speak faded away, his jaw suddenly slack and his eye bulging.
Instinct screaming at him to do otherwise, Altiris made the mistake of looking down at what was left of Lord Akadra.
Beneath the smeared and cracked face powder, Lord Akadra’s skin was mottled and swollen. Glassy, milky eyes twitched in red-rimmed sockets. Raw, peeling lips cracked an imbecile smile. Everywhere the skin pulsed and shifted as black, fibrous tendrils writhed beneath. Others showed through lesions above the water-stained cravat, and beneath the sodden cuffs of his jackets.
Altiris pressed a hand to his mouth to block the stench. Constans retched and doubled over.
“Alika?” moaned Lord Akadra, the smile fading. “Where are you?”
“I guess he didn’t look like this before?” asked Altiris.
Kurkas grimaced. “Lord Akadra? It’s Captain Kurkas.”
“Kurkas?” A burbling cough drooled water across the desk. “Still filling Viktor’s head with fool notions, I suppose?”
“Yeah. Hangs on my every word, he does.”
The mottled brow creased. “You were always so…” Fists clenched, he rocked gently back and forth. “Always so…”
Before, Altiris had entertained the possibility that Lord Akadra was the mysterious Merrow. But even discounting the decaying state of the thing wheezing at the desk, it shared nothing with the urbane, upright stranger who’d sought his help. “Don’t reckon we can negotiate with that.”
“It is a shame,” said Kasvin. “There’s never much holding them together when the river gives them back. Memories. Regrets. Bound together by slivers of Dark.”
Altiris spun around, sword out. Constans took a long step into shadow.
“Your work?” Kurkas’ eye didn’t leave Lord Akadra. “He weren’t a good man. Not even close, but he didn’t deserve this.”
“Lord Trelan wants peace,” said Altiris, careful not to meet her eyes. “Help him stop the fighting before it’s too late.”
“But I want this,” said Kasvin. “The people are awake. They’ve forsaken fear! It’s made them strong enough to claim their freedom and avenge those they’ve lost to privation and cruelty. What care I for the desires of those who remain sleeping?”
Whispers of song danced louder, insistent. Blue-green eyes swirled. Altiris heard his sword strike the floor before he realised he’d let it fall. Constans stumbled, a rapturous smile plastered across normally cynical features. Kurkas sank to his knees.
Altiris pinched his eyes shut as his own legs buckled, and sought the flash of daylight that had saved him a week before. It rose in answer to need, golden rays unfurling first into a phoenix, then to a likeness of Sidara, her hand outstretched. Fighting to breathe – even to think – Altiris reached out and found something cold beneath his palm. Opening his eyes a crack, he glimpsed his fingers curled about his sword.
The song grew insistent, Kasvin’s frustration felt more than heard.
“She can’t protect you,” she hissed. She glided nearer and planted a naked foot on the sword’s blade. The vision of Sidara faded, smothered by blue-green. “She’s just an echo.”
The last spark of daylight flickered out. Cold fingers brushed Altiris’ cheek.
“Open your eyes.” Kasvin breathed. “Adore me. Dance with me in the Black River.”
“That ain’t fair,” said Kurkas. “Everyone knows he can’t swim.”
A wet ripping sound vanished beneath a shrill scream. The whispering song vanished. Altiris opened his eyes as Kasvin toppled backwards, Kurkas’ sword buried between her ribs and black blood welling up over the blade.
“Lassie, were you ever barking up the wrong tree,” said Kurkas.
“What…?” Blinking away blue-green after-images, Altiris stumbled upright. “How did…?”
“Adoration, she said.” Kurkas shrugged. “Fire needs fuel. Thought it’d be better to play along.”
Women and desire were poles apart in Kurkas’ world. At least, unless they were offering free brandy or the favours of the shield wall. Kasvin could have scratched at him all day, and her claws would never have found purchase.
Altiris glanced at Constans, now propped groggily on one knee. “You all right?”
The boy stared at the motionless Kasvin. “I’m… not sure.”
Outside, the sounds of battle shifted, the screech of abused timber contesting scream and cheer. Running to the window, Altiris saw crowds streaming in retreat from the Harrowmoon Street gate. Bronze glinted in the setting sun.
“They’ve brought up kraikons.” Long shadows promised more to come. “What do we do?”
Kurkas swore softly. “We take this sorry pair down there. Show both sides what they’re fighting for, and hope it shakes sense loose.”
Altiris glanced at Lord Akadra, still rocking back and forth in his chair. “That’ll work?”
“You got a better idea?”
“I do.” Lurching to her feet, Kasvin locked both hands about the sword, slid it free and cast it aside. Black blood gushed across the floor. Where it fell, feathery tendrils sprouted, swaying like windblown corn. Her dress rippled and writhed.
Skirts unravelled into a mass of thick black weed. It framed rippling, pallid flesh and blue-green eyes gone the colour of midnight – Kasvin bounded by an ever-shifting cage of lashing, serpentine fronds that was both an extension of herself and something wholly other.
Kurkas roared and vanished beneath the writhing mass. Tendrils ripped the sword from Altiris’ grasp, then wended about his arms and leg
s. At Kasvin’s gesture, they hurled him against the window. Glass cracked beneath his cheek. The stench of the river clogged his throat.
“Hey!” Constans started towards Kasvin. Moving with deceptive sluggishness, Lord Akadra rose from his chair and snared the boy in a sodden, twitching bear hug.
Kasvin surged towards the window. Eyes rimmed with black blood bored into Altiris’, beguiling no longer, but murderous. Merciless.
“The river will carry you all away,” she hissed.
Fronds coiled about his throat.
The barricade that had defied the Drazina shattered to matchwood beneath the kraikon charge. Men and women screamed, crushed beneath falling timbers or the remorseless advance of animated bronze. A handful of protesters held their ground, only to be bowled over by pouncing simarka.
Most fled.
Hawkin watched from the tannery rooftop west of the Harrowmoon Street gate. No saving the revolt now. Less a retreat, and more a rout, driven toward the pontoon bridge by the constructs’ onset and vengeful Drazina massing behind. How many were merrowkin? How many were bystanders, roused to revolt by demagogue’s decree? How many would die?
Not her problem.
She started thinking otherwise, she’d end up like Apara Rann, who could’ve been an elder cousin of the Crowmarket… maybe a crowmother. She’d thrown it all away, and for what? For conscience? For the approval of those who’d ground them all into the filth? Kasvin had been right. You couldn’t make amends to the dead.
Turning her back on the Merrow’s dying dreams, Hawkin ghosted across the tiles to the tannery’s southwest corner. Finding handhold at drainpipe and rough mortar was second nature. Soon she stood in the alleyway. Free of Kasvin’s nonsense, if not her shadow.
From there, slipped latch and a flurry of skeleton keys gained entrance to a draper’s storehouse. She kept below the level of the windows, warned to keep a low profile by boots and shouts in the adjoining street – the glimpse of Drazina uniforms beyond the glass. A game played many times at the Crowmarket’s behest.
Another thwarted lock, another alley. A hundred yards and she’d be at a sewer access – as good as home free as could be managed. One eye on the alleyway’s streetward end, she slipped the other way.
The dull thud of a punch – a pained grunt – sent Hawkin scrambling for the cover of an unevenly bricked-up archway. A dozen paces ahead, blocking the turning that led to salvation, a Drazina threw another punch. Her victim sprawled across the alley, ending in the unsympathetic arms of another knight, who held him fast.
Drazina. Called themselves lawkeepers, but they weren’t really. Not like…
Not like Vona.
“Think you can run?” crowed the first Drazina, fist bunched. “After all your lot have done today?”
Her gauntleted fist snapped the young man’s head about.
Hawkin recognised him. Rass Maridov. Ioan Maridov’s boy. Little more than a child, for all his gangling frame. He’d been at her wedding a lifetime ago. The elder Maridov had been one of Vona’s constables, and one of her closest friends. He’d died during the Crowmarket’s rising and the streets had claimed Rass, as they had so many. Only there’d no longer been a Crowmarket to feed him, had there? Only the Merrow. Hawkin had seen him around, at Seacaller’s and other meeting places, always taking care not to be seen in return.
She glanced away as another punch landed. A broken tooth skittered into the gutter.
Not her problem.
Even if Rass had given her a flower as she’d walked to the aisle, smiling with that mix of earnestness and embarrassment boys so often did at the prospect of a touching deed. Even if how the Drazina were fixing, he’d end in the soil, not a cell.
He’d made his choices, and there were other ways into the sewers.
Hawkin retraced her steps. She closed her ears to another lingering moan. She didn’t owe Rass anything. Didn’t owe anyone anything. Raven’s Eyes, but even Vona wanted her dead, if Kasvin spoke true.
Vona would have hated the Drazina. Would have hated this.
Not her problem.
It was therefore very much to Hawkin’s surprise when she reversed course a second time. Boots skidded on treacherous cobbles as she picked up speed.
Lost in her cruel business, the first Drazina didn’t look up until she was within two paces. A cry of surprise gurgled away as the dagger’s kiss opened her throat.
Hawkin reeled as the body fell, breath ragged and the second Drazina’s cry of alarm ringing in her ears. Released, Rass collapsed to the filthy cobbles. Hawkin sprang over him, one hand slamming the Drazina’s sword-arm against brick. The other cut his throat as cleanly as it had the first’s.
Inexplicable tears welled up as she let the body fall.
“I’m not doing this again,” Hawkin muttered. “I’m not. I’m not.”
“Hawkin?” Rass stared at her from beneath a swollen brow. “’s that you?”
She twisted away. “Get out of here.”
Without backward glance and shaking at every step, she made for the sewers.
Gasping for breath, Altiris tore at his bindings. Fingers found no purchase on the fleshy, musculous weed. Murky splotches danced before his eyes.
Far below the creaking window, the leading edge of the rout reached the T-shaped pontoon bridge. Hastily lashed sections bucked and shuddered, the wind-chased harbour waters rushing across swollen timbers. A woman slipped and plunged beneath the waves, lost from sight. Other folk surged along the spine of the T in hopes of bypassing Drazina clustered at the docks’ southern reaches and coming safe to the eastern and western quaysides.
And behind, remorseless in their advance, came the kraikons – a dozen now in sight, forging straight for a bridge crowded with hundreds of struggling souls.
A bridge that couldn’t possibly take their weight.
A chill gripped Altiris’ heart. One separate from heaving lungs and blood roaring in his ears. “They’re all going to die,” he gasped. “The first kraikon that reaches the bridge will drag them all into the harbour.”
Fronds convulsed, smearing him across the window. Altered perspective revealed the shattered remnant of the Harrowmoon Street gate. The golden daylight halo as Sidara advanced amid a knot of Drazina.
Kasvin stared blankly down at the harbour. “Good.”
“Good?” Constans thrashed in Lord Akadra’s grip. “What happened to freedom, you crazy—”
Akadra clamped a rotting hand over the lad’s mouth.
“Look at it!” snapped Kasvin. “They won’t forget this! The city will see – the Republic will see – and the next uprising will be larger still.”
“Maybe,” gasped Altiris. “But those who followed you here will be dead. You don’t… want that.”
Kasvin snarled. Fronds slammed Altiris to the floorboards. “Don’t presume to know my desires!”
He tried not to look at the undulating mass of tendrils where he’d last seen Kurkas. “You wanted… to help people.” The words came harder now, the breath behind rare and painful. “You asked… if I were on the right side. Maybe I… wasn’t. Are you?”
The first slackness crept into the weeds.
Altiris tore his hand free, fingers closing on something half-glimpsed with failing eyes. Strength returned at the feel of the sword beneath his hand. Fronds severed beneath steel with a wet, squealing hiss. Kasvin shied, weed thrashing protectively.
“You think that toy can kill me?” she shrieked.
Not after Kurkas had run her through to so little effect. Silver might have done it, or fleenroot or one of the other traditional remedies for demons and divine. But not steel.
Altiris dragged a strand of severed weed from his throat, weary beyond words. “Sidara doesn’t realise what’s happening. But she’ll listen to me.” He forced himself to meet Kasvin’s stare. “You want to prove you’re better than Lord Droshna? That you give one single damn about these people? Now’s your chance.”
Kasvin surged forward
on a carpet of weed, fingers hooked to claws. Halfway, she shuddered to a halt. Shrinking inward, she fell to her knees, fronds winding in until the dress was again just a dress – albeit one gaping and torn. Released, a spluttering Kurkas clambered to an elbow. Only Constans remained a prisoner, trapped in Lord Akadra’s grasp.
“Go,” breathed Kasvin.
Altiris hesitated, wary at her sudden change of heart.
“Get out of here!” gasped Kurkas. “Move your bloody feet!”
Altiris fled the office and took the stairs two at a time, footing guessed at more than found. His missed it entirely at the first landing, his shoulder slamming painfully into the wall. Riding the momentum, he scrambled on.
On the dockside, the tumult of voices was deafening. To the west, kraikons loomed above the labyrinth of crates. Across the harbour, the pontoon bridges swarmed with struggling men and women, the slow trampled by the swift. Already, Altiris saw bodies floating with the wave tops and bobbing against merchantmen’s keels. And still the kraikons marched on.
Straining for breath, a stitch stabbing at his side, Altiris ran on towards daylight.
A meaty hand closed about his collar. Another twisted the sword from his grip.
“Where d’you think you’re going?” growled the Drazina. Altiris’ ribs creaked as the other flung him against a crate. “I’ve got a runner!”
“I’m Lieutenant Czaron of the Stonecrest hearthguard,” Altiris gasped. “I have to get to Lady Reveque!”
“You have to shut up,” snarled the Drazina. “Or do I make you?”
Altiris told himself that it’d have been different had he been in uniform. He didn’t believe it. “Listen to me, I—”
A gut punch left him on his knees, sucking for breath.
A man with a knight-captain’s star approached. “Do we have a problem?”
“No problem,” the Drazina replied. “Just a dregrat, selling a line.”
Altiris fought the howling, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach and made to stand.
“Lady Reveque… I must—”
A kick rattled his jaw and drove him to his knees. To the west, the kraikons marched on, the pier’s timbers sagging beneath their weight.
