by Ben Galley
I knew better than to dally. Beyond the containers and tools and the lonely lamp, a rock-hewn arch led me deeper into a dark tunnel reinforced with stout props and beams. The going had a distinct downward slope to it. Already I felt as if I were a hundred feet underground. There were no lamps lit here. My skin lit the walls an eerie glow, and the unknown beyond my light made me wary.
The tunnel had an exit like a black maw, yawning wide. I stood at its edge to find a wooden ramp reaching down into the darkness. The walls were sheer and disappeared beyond the reach of my light. I felt a thickness to the air, as if it had been stripped of its quality. It was warm and muggy against my cold. Things dripped in the darkness and the echoes betrayed the size of the place. It felt like I stood in a cavern.
I shuddered as I imagined the infinity of the walls and the press of dead bodies and shouting voices that would appear at any moment.
With a wordless grumbling, I set foot to the ramp. I made it a dozen paces before footsteps and lamplight tumbled down the tunnel. I collapsed into a crouch so rapidly that it would have torn the crotch of any trews asunder. Fortunately, I was not wearing any. Unfortunately, however, I had no hiding place; I could only tuck myself under the railing of the ramp, clench my soft teeth and—
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing?’
The copper gloves grabbed me tightly, making me yelp. Colonel Kalid stood over me and promptly delivered several smart blows to my nose. I splayed on the floor, eyes crossed. The sting of the metal rang through my head, as if I was the clapper of a great bell.
‘You again, Jerub!’ I recognised Vex’s braying voice.
‘A troublemaker, to be sure.’ Master Yamak was there, too.
‘I’ll have words with the widow.’ The looming shadow above me was poised to strike again. My glow carved out the colonel’s stern features and made pinpricks of his irate eyes.
More boots sounded on the stone. The rough hands hauled me up to my feet and I received another blow to the gut for my troubles. I was taken back to the room of barrels and Kalid left me against one. The three stepped away to discuss me like a piece of meat.
‘Reckon he saw anything?’
‘Too dark.’
‘Did you see anything, Jerub?’ Kalid shoved me. The knuckles of his gloves sizzled against my vapours.
‘Nothing!’ Just the outline of a crane-like contraption, reaching into the dark. Unimportant.
‘What’s to be done?’ Vex sounded eager.
‘The sarcophagus.’
‘I concur.’
‘Only thing for it.’
‘Whassat?’ I croaked.
I received no answer, and instead was thrown towards the stairs, where guards waited with copper-thread rope to bind me. They dragged me face down, shins dragging, while Kalid and the others marched behind. I could have sworn Vex was rubbing his hands with glee.
At the south side of the tower, a cellar had been dug into the foundations. After two sets of winding stairs, there were storerooms where the walls were lined with all sorts of crates and bric-a-brac. I was shown to one with little ceremony. I waited in the darkness until the lamps were lit. All I could make out was a great lump sitting in the centre of the room under a tarpaulin.
In Krass and Skol, where indenturement had yet to consume society, those who had died in turmoil were tossed into the Nyx unbound. Those who died naturally got a coin in the mouth and had Nyxwater poured over their graves, or were buried by its banks, just as my parents were. We did it just like the ancient tribes did, before the Nyx became capable of binding, before the Tenets were written and ghosts were forced to arise from their slain bodies. In the east, we used shallow pits or boxes known as coffins.
Kalid dragged the tarpaulin away, and as it turned out, the sarcophagus was one of these coffins. It was a relic rather than a replica, if the merchant in me was right. It was made of plain yellow sandstone, once polished but now chipped and rough. Atop it, the image of a deity I didn’t recognise had been scratched into the stone: some posing skeleton with an elongated jackal or anteater’s head. Half the detail had been lost to time.
The size of the sarcophagus instantly concerned me. It was clearly from an age when men and women were of shorter stature. I had thought the punishment silly, at first. A stupid game, like locking a scampish little brother in a chest. But the more I stared at its dimensions, the more I began to fidget, and curse this jackal god. I recognised none of the Arctian glyphs that might have told me his name.
As the stone lid was raised by straps and pulleys bolted into the ceiling, those around me delighted in watching my expression fall. The lid was thicker than I’d thought, chiselled with a lip that dovetailed with the body and made the inside shallow. Exorbitantly shallow.
Despite my struggles, I was pushed into the sarcophagus and made to lie face up, arms bound across my chest. I could feel the cold of the stone against my own chilly vapours, and that unsettled me more. I thrashed, but the colonel’s copper gloves held me down.
Kalid waved his hand to the men on the ropes. ‘Down it goes!’
‘How long?’ I asked. The lid descended in tiny increments, pulleys squeaking.
Vex leaned over me to smile. I stared into his dark sockets. ‘Few days ought to straighten out a fuckwit like you. Maybe a week.’
Even though the lid had barely touched the coffin, I could already feel its weight on me. I began to thrash.
‘I was lost! I didn’t mean—’
Doooooom. The coffin shook as the lid fell shut, sealing me in the dark.
I must have wriggled for an hour, perhaps more, as I tried to push the lid with my knees and forehead. My shoulders were already pressed to the stone, my head and heels too. I could have licked the stone in front of my face without stretching. My belly brushed it constantly. I felt suffocated, squashed, blind and paralysed all at once. It was torture of a variety I had never endured: feeling as though I was dying all over again and yet remaining impervious. This was a new circle of hell.
When at long last my panic began to subside, when I began to give in to the helplessness, I became aware of the silence. My scratching and thrashing had distracted me from the fact the stone permitted no sound nor light.
Any silence longs to be filled, and a lonely mind is wont to fill it with thoughts and made-up whispers, as if the nothingness is too unbearable. It’s how dreams are made before sleep claims you, but I had no sleep to save me. Instead I lay there for untold hours, unable to stop my own internal rambling. It was far from meditation. Perhaps it was the closeness of the stone, or some spell of that accursed sarcophagus, but my thoughts were of the dark and damning kind. I realised then that this was not a torture of the body, but of the soul.
Instead of knives, I cut myself with old memories. They were dredged up and shown to me like a fisherman displaying bursting nets. Instead of poisons, I made myself sick with all my bad choices. Over and over again, around and around. I was trapped in a prison again, one of my own making. One of pure thought and imagination chalked onto the blackboard darkness, as half-formed and as vaporous as myself.
I am a boy again, picking at mushrooms under an oak as a storm crackles above. Behind, leaves are running down mountainsides, chased by the dry wind. A voice calls me.
I am a young man, fingers racing against an hourglass and the tininess of cogs, the fickleness of springs.
I am at the bank of the Nyx, standing over a pair of rune-scratched slabs dusted with sand. My fists are clenched, as numb as the two headstones that bewitch my eyes.
I am struggling to breathe through a straw pillow as a hand throttles me from behind. Another pins my arms. I am sobbing but he doesn’t stop.
I am running, lockpicks grasped in my hand, chasing the flailing straps of a wagon while dogs bay behind me. A hand reaches forth to clasp me by the wrist, and I am free.
A woman is walking away from me, satchel slung over her shoulder, a horse trotting by her side, shod hooves crunching on the day-old
snow and ice.
Bars trap me, and despite my insistence of innocence, many voices are laughing. They laugh and they laugh, fingers pointing and spittle flying from rotten teeth.
A bearded old master knuckles his brow as the picks in my hand break time and time again in the lock.
I am a young man again, kicking at a hay bale with the kind of angst only teenage years can bring.
Somewhere nearby, I hear a braying cackle. My fists are as numb as headstones.
And around I went.
Chapter 13
Favours Owed
The origins of the Cloud Court are founded in loneliness and fear. In 473, Prince Jural, Empress Basilis’ murderous son, came to the throne too early and too violently. The first succession by murder in thirty years turned the noses of the nobility, mostly through jealousy. To favour them, Jural built his own court of sycophants. In the end, he allowed them to get too powerful, to run districts, to get too close, and it led him to the same fate as his mother: an asp in the bedsheets. The new Talin royal line began with his death, as did the Cloud Court.
From ‘A Reach History’ by Gaervin Jubb
‘May your reign be long and prosperous, my emperor, powerful of strength and mind, lord of all the sun touches. May both the living and the dead remember your name throughout all ages to come.’
Sisine waited for the two knocks to come, but nothing stirred besides the flames of the lamps above. She bent a knee to the marble again, her silks rustling.
‘May your reign be long and prosperous, my emperor, powerful of strength and mind, lord of all the sun touches. May both the living and the dead remember your name throughout all ages to come.’
The wait was torturous.
‘May your reign—’
The hatch slid open with a clang, and the scroll was pushed through.
Sisine reached out to take it, but held herself back. She leaned closer. ‘Father?’
The scroll shook as if the hand that held it was unnerved.
‘Will you not even speak to me? Your own daughter?’
Only a muffled cough answered her.
‘You’re a coward!’ she hissed, but before she could go further, the hatch shut with a clang.
Sisine snatched the scroll up and strangled it, wishing it was the emperor’s neck. Hands shaking with anger, she got to her feet and ripped open the scroll to see his decrees. The ink was so fresh she smudged half a sentence with her thumb. Her lips moved silently as she read.
Sisine looked back to the Sanctuary door in all its glinting complexity, and the great diamond that glowed at its centre. How many times had she stared at it? Wondered at its thickness, its keyholes and mechanisms? What manner of man was left behind it, possibly staring back at her? Almost five years had passed and not once had he left it, preferring to stay alone and untrusting. The Sanctuary had been his insurance, and yet it appeared it would now be his downfall. That was the only explanation for the nonsense scrawled on the papyrus.
The emperor has finally lost his mind.
There, in the golden glow of the door’s metal, the empress-in-waiting smiled.
‘Guards! The door!’
There was no idle nattering in the Cloud Court that day, no heckling. Just the intense stares of the impatient. Their eyes rested not on her, but on the scroll, like stray dogs watching a butcher’s bloody hands at work, waiting for a juicy morsel to drop. She knew it wasn’t the Nyxwater that gripped their attention today. Today it was something more sinister.
Sisine took her place between the pillars, bowed to the empty throne and cleared her throat, a habit she had grown accustomed to. Normally it brought a begrudging, bickering quiet, but this morning it was unnecessary. She could have heard hair grow in the silence.
The empress-in-waiting looked again at the words. Her tongue traced the edges of her teeth as she drew out the silence, making them wait.
‘The emperor’s decrees are as follows!’ she said at last. ‘His first order: the expansion of the Outsprawls must continue to the east another three miles.’
The collective moan was deafening. Clenched fists filled the air. Shouts rained down.
‘What of the murders?’
‘Has no word of them reached the emperor?’
‘Secondly!’ she yelled over them, wanting her father’s drivel to be heard. She’d soon grown tired of shielding him, playing his lackey as her mother had. ‘Secondly, the royal falcons are to be restocked, ready for the late hunting season!’
This time, not a serek was left sitting. Some even began to leave, filtering away to the doors that led them out and down to the Piercer’s mighty lifts.
The scroll met the floor with a loud crack. It skittered over the marble, bringing the entire court to a standstill.
‘The emperor could not care less about this city!’ she yelled. A curious murmuring washed over her, just as she’d hoped. ‘The emperor has lost his mind!’
A few backsides began to touch seats again.
‘That is what you are all thinking, correct? Whispering between yourselves? Well, Sereks, when I read these words, I wonder the same as you. I wonder why he will not listen to his daughter’s pleas. To the pleas of his sereks or his city. And then I remember why!’
Boon, as predicted, was the first to speak. He was still standing, arms folded across his golden chains. ‘Please do elaborate, Highness.’
Sisine sighed for effect. This speech had been long rehearsed in the polished silver of her mirrors.
‘It is simple! The emperor’s mind is clearly occupied with matters further afield. I believe it is not disinterest, or madness, but trust. He leaves it to us, his family and advisors, to handle the preservation of this great city while His Imperial Majesty deals with the expansion of this empire’s borders. Why else would the empress feel comfortable leaving so suddenly if we were not capable of speaking for the emperor when he cannot speak himself? After all, we would not want our emperor to be embarrassed, would we, sereks of the court?’
A resounding, ‘NO!’ echoed through the great hall. They understood her just fine. They could sense the power was shifting, and they were fools enough to think it flowed in their direction. Sisine fought the urge to grin. She was set on playing the reluctant yet dutiful champion.
‘Then let the Cloud Court speak its mind as it was meant to! Tell me your districts’ wishes and I will see that the emperor’s will is executed forthwith. Serek Boon, no doubt you have something to suggest?’ She chose to give him first pick. It earned a smile from the intolerable shade.
‘These recent disappearances concern us most, Highness. There have been four altogether, two in the past week. The tors and tals are becoming skittish, and I may say the same for the court if the disappearances continue. Order must be maintained in this city.’
Sisine could have laughed. There was no order in Araxes and they all knew it. What Boon meant was control. Four nobles dead, their half-coins gone, but still no official claims. Only whispers and rumours. It seemed a newcomer had entered the game, and they were intent on ignoring the rules, what few and laughable rules there were between the nobles.
‘What say the rest of you?’ She opened the floor and was immediately pelted by hearsay.
‘Tal Urma’s guards said she went in her sleep and has been bound by some distant cousin. He’ll now be managing the estate.’
‘How convenient, I say!’
‘They are saying that Merlec simply “tripped”, if you believe that. His house-shades have already disappeared! His tower is empty!’
‘It stinks of criminal activity.’
‘Uppity soulstealers, I would say.’
‘But is it several, or one?’
Sisine raised her hands. ‘I shall have the Chamber of the Code and Chamberlain Rebene’s scrutinisers look into these deaths immediately. Under order of the emperor.’
A young serek spoke up, another of the few free shades that sat on the court. Her long flowing hair moved as if she were underwater.
‘And what of the Nyx?’
The empress-in-waiting shook her head. ‘The Nyxite prices were raised as promised. You need not worry about this so-called drought, Serek Hamael.’
Apparently, they did. The Cloud Court bent her ear for another hour, each of them eager to have their voices and needs heard. It was worth the verbal torture. Sisine placated them with promises here and assurances there. When they finally grew bored of bleating and whingeing, she bade them a good day and watched them file from the chamber with their cocky smiles and satisfied rumblings. All except Serek Boon, who strode down the lofty marble steps and made his way towards Sisine, hands clasped behind his back and a serious expression on his mottled face. No guards stood with him. None but the royal family or the Royal Guard were allowed to set foot on the floor of the court.
A phalanx of them moved to make a fence of spears between her and Boon. They were shades, all of them, bound to her father. Sisine felt their cold draught wafting over her feet.
Boon bowed low. ‘Your Highness.’
‘The court has adjourned, Serek, and you greatly overstep your boundaries.’ She could have had him skewered right there and nobody could have disputed it.
‘If I may.’ Boon held up a finger and Sisine noticed several sereks lingered on the balcony, looking on with blank stares. When his eyes came back to her, they were full of blue sparkle. ‘You play a very good game, I must say.’
Sisine raised her chin. ‘You accuse me of playing games with this court, Serek?’
Boon chuckled, keeping his voice low. ‘This is a room made for games. Why else are we here? We do nothing but argue over decrees we have little say over, and yet we play out tradition because it means – let’s be honest, Empress-in-Waiting – we get to look important. You and I. The sereks. That is the luxury of the rich, is it not? It is all a great farcical game, but it continues because it works. The emperor’s Sanctuary has kept a truce between us. You know that as well I do, and yet today you shook that truce. A bold move, if you ask me.’
