by Ben Galley
He came closer, pressing me against the wall, fingers at my scarf. His vapours were stronger than mine. ‘That’s Master Vex to you, Jerub. I’ve been thinking that you’ve been having it too easy.’
‘Have I?’ I wouldn’t have called the last few days easy whatsoever. Vex had put me and the rest of the ghosts through rigorous cleaning routines, scouring half the tower into a sheen. I didn’t think it possible for a ghost to get blisters, but I swore I was coming close.
‘Clearly the work I give you is not enough, otherwise you wouldn’t be swaggering around, acting far too full of yourself. I think it’s time to teach you a lesson in humility. Come on. This way.’ He pulled me from my alcove and pushed me down the corridor. Faint starlight and city glow spilled down from the distant windows above, but all I could think of was a stone coffin or a stake in the sun.
As I turned left up the stairs, hopeful for chores upstairs, Vex moved to block my way.
‘You’d be so lucky. The widow has no need of you tonight. I have another job for you instead.’
Play the nice house-ghost. ‘Fine. Whatever you say.’
I trudged down the steps, wondering what in the Reaches he could need from the base of the tower. To pass the time, I thought I’d see if I could bring the man round. Having a nemesis is far too tiring for me. It’s why I became a locksmith, not a warlord. Doors and vaults hold no grudges once they’ve been broken, and don’t put a knife through you while you sleep.
‘You don’t have to hate me, you know. I didn’t ask to be given your job, and now I’m back in the alcoves I’m no threat to you.’
‘On the contrary. You’re a threat to this entire household. I know all about you and your criminal ways.’
I wondered if Horix had shared her knowledge, or if he had concocted his own half-accurate rumours. In any case, I really was no threat. I was no murderer, just a thief, and the only thing worth burgling in this tower was my half-coin. I had already considered that countless times, but not knowing where it was and not having any tools were slightly prohibitive. Horix had kept my makeshift ones.
‘What do you mean?’ I challenged him.
‘Keep walking.’
‘I don’t know what nonsense you’re on about, Vex, but I’m just here to get on with indenturement. No more shenanigans. No more nonsense. Tal Horix has put her faith in me. I would be stupid to spoil that, wouldn’t I?’
The shove sent me skittering down two steps. ‘If she had faith in you, she would have kept you as her chamber-shade. There you go again, thinking far too highly of yourself.’
I held my tongue about my promised freedom.
We descended until we ran out of stairs and entered the grand atrium. Vex pushed me towards the main doors, which were oddly unguarded.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I told you,’ he hissed in my ear. ‘I have a job for you. Another errand, like last time. We need supplies from the bazaar in the next district. And not “we”. Just you.’
‘Alone? It’s past sunset.’
‘No rest for the dead, shade. The City of Countless Souls never sleeps.’
I shrugged him off. ‘No. Tal Horix has forbidden me to leave the tower.’
Vex snorted. ‘Has she, indeed? Get it into your thick head, Jerub. You have no importance here. She doesn’t care a fucking button for you.’
‘Maybe we should go ask her, then,’ I snapped at him. ‘See what she says.’
Vex reached to throttle me. ‘I’ve spent the last two days telling her what a liar and a charlatan you are. You’re no thief. No locksmith. You’re a washed-up failure with a cut throat. She’s seen you for who you are and changed her mind. She will find a replacement for you like that.’ He snapped his fingers in my face.
I bared my teeth, silently cursing him for interfering. He was ruining my progress, changing my fortunes without me. ‘There is none better than me.’
‘See? Yet more lies.’
I clenched my fists as he pushed me outside.
The courtyard blazed with fires in iron cradles. Several house-guards stood swapping tales and guffaws at the entrance, but they had not seen us. Vex thrust an empty basket into my hands and led me to a side door sandwiched between two pillars. It was a heavy thing of barred iron but it had a simple key. Vex jiggled it in the sand-rusted lock and showed me the street beyond.
‘Go.’
I shook my head, holding my basket like a shield. ‘No. I’m not going anywhere except back to my alcove.’
‘You’ll do what I tell you! What Tal Horix tells you!’
‘No. I want to hear it from the widow herself. I refuse to believe you.’
A copper spike appeared in his hand and waved at me menacingly. It looked suspiciously like a kitchen implement.
‘Go.’
It took me a moment to say it, with that spike inches from my face. ‘No.’
Vex slashed at me, and I stepped into the doorway.
‘You want to spend another night in the sarcophagus? Horix has given me full permission to—’
‘Fine!’ The very mention of the stone coffin put a shiver in my vapours, which for a ghost is an extremely unpleasant feeling. Could the widow really be so fickle? I didn’t believe it, or I didn’t want to believe it. ‘What do you want?’
‘Salt. Twenty debens,’ he replied.
I waited, but nothing more came. ‘Anything else?’
‘Rough papyrus. Wire brush. And palm oil.’
‘What a farce,’ I grunted as I stepped into the street. The chill had not left me yet, and I tensed as I walked out into the long shadows of early evening and stared at the bruised sky.
‘Better hurry, Jerub,’ Vex advised, before shutting the gate with a barely stifled snicker.
I yelled into the wood grain, ‘It’s Caltro!’
Vex was clearly trying to fuck with me; get me in trouble, get me lost, or worse. I debated whether to just sit there and wait, or walk around to the guards and say I had been locked out. I still wore the widow’s macabre seal on my breast, beside the black feather. There was also the alluring opportunity of showing Vex up once more.
‘Vindictive bastard,’ I cursed him as I chose to start walking. You can take all the vintage wines and golden drapes and thoroughbred stallions and put them in a flaming boat out to sea. Proving people wrong is the finest luxury in life. It’s the very essence of lockpicking.
Like my last excursion, I would fetch the salt, all twenty bloody debens of it. I would get the sponges and the wire brush. Even the fucking palm oil. I would place the basket at his miserable feet with a smile so triumphant he would turn purple with rage, and then I would tell Horix exactly how much of a snake her prized Vex was.
With a straight back and almost a swagger in my walk, I struck out along a bright and wide avenue that faced the sunset. It was with the same amount of swagger that I walked straight into the black sack swooping over my head.
The stars vanished in a blink.
Something hot and heavy clamped around my neck and waist, then my legs.
I felt the world topple as I was lifted up like a tied boar.
Somewhere beneath me I heard a reed basket splinter beneath booted feet.
In that moment, I had the brief opportunity to wonder why my time in the Arc had so far been nothing but a progression of poor decisions. One after the other, stacked like the cards of a deck.
Just as I was about to start vocally voicing my complaints, a fist or a club struck me in the head. It must have been wrapped in copper, whatever it was. I gasped as sharp fire spread down my back. There came another to make sure, and then I was left to lie limp in my kidnappers’ grasp as they began to run.
‘Fuck it,’ I sighed to myself beneath the sackcloth.
THE END
Tenets of the bound dead
They must die in turmoil.
They must be bound with copper half-coin and water of the Nyx.
They must be bound within forty days.
They shall be bound to whomever holds their coin.
They are slaved to their master’s bidding.
They must bring their masters no harm.
They shall not express opinions nor own property.
They shall never know freedom unless it is gifted to them.
Chapter 1
Same Old Beginnings
The first shade ever to be bound was a man named Asham, stabbed through the heart by a man who, after founding the Nyxites, would later come to establish the Cult of Sesh. Asham survived four hundred years in service before he was rewarded his half-coin and immediately sought freedom in the void.
From ‘A Reach History’ by Gaervin Jubb
Starting the day with a street awash with blood and gore was sure to demolish any good mood. Fortunately for Scrutiniser Heles, it had been five years, maybe more, since her mood could remotely be classed as “good.” The best she hoped for these days was “mildly disgruntled.”
‘This fucking city,’ she muttered, poking a dismembered finger with her black boot. It looked like an uncooked sausage, one that even a street dog couldn’t stomach more than half of.
A retching sound distracted her, coming from a young man with a face that was swiftly turning green. Milky vomit dribbled from his lips, mixing with the pool of ichor at his feet. Some had made its way onto the lapel of his proctor’s livery.
‘First day?’ she asked the lad.
‘Second.’
‘If you don’t stop vomiting by the tenth day, look for another job.’
‘Mhm,’ he said, before another heave saw him flying into the mouth a nearby alleyway.
There was no mirth on Heles’ lips; just the downward slant the years had carved into them. She began to pick her way through the blood-drenched streets, counting the pools and smears where bodies and pieces had been dragged. Where the blood had dried, she spotted the hoofmarks of donkeys and the sand-smeared ruts of carts. Beside a scrap of skin, complete with long blond hair still attached, she spotted a dirtied handkerchief. Heles reached for it, eyeing the grin of red across its soft white fibres.
‘Sloppy job, this,’ she said, hearing tentative footsteps behind her. The young man had recovered, and was busy trying to scratch the stain from his black and silver threads with a threadbare handkerchief. Some vomit had made its way onto the Chamber seal. He scrubbed at it furiously.
‘Desperate,’ Heles added.
‘I wouldn’t know, Scrutiniser.’
Heles examined him. He only wore one neck tattoo, given his rank. His trews were baggy, his collar askew. The greenish hue clung to his cheeks. ‘Now you do. Come then, Proctor…?’
‘Jym.’
‘What a peculiar name. Come then, Proctor Jym. Impress me.’
Jym took a shaky breath as he forced himself to survey the grisly scene, as if the vomit might pounce again. ‘Murder on a mass scale. No bodies, which means soulstealers.’
‘Or made to look like soulstealers.’
The man tapped his teeth. ‘But the ruts of carts?’
‘Good.’
‘Perhaps it went wrong? An alarm was raised, and they had to be quick. Hence the… sloppiness.’ His eyes were fixed on the piece of skin and hair, and would not be torn away.
‘How many taken?’
‘Seven?’
‘Nine. Look at the smears on the walls. The gutters have taken their blood. Who were the victims?’
‘City folk, I’d assume?’
‘Then you’d assume wrongly.’ She held up the kerchief. ‘Scatter Isles cotton.’
‘Scatterfolk traders, then?’
‘Or…’
Jym sighed. Heles looked to the sapphire sky while she waited. Orange tendrils of sand streaked the air where a sandstorm had blown in from the south. The factory smokestacks leaned under its duress. The wind was rising slowly, making ripples in the glassy pools of blood, still only half dry.
‘Or refugees from the wars out in the Isles?’
‘Refugees is right. Thread’s poorly woven, fraying. A trader is more concerned of his or her appearance. And?’ Heles gestured to the lost finger. ‘Callouses. Hard labour. Hardest work a trader does is count silvers, and that isn’t enough for callouses.’
‘I suppose,’ mumbled the proctor.
Heles stood over him, using her height to intimidate him. ‘Who recruited you?’
‘Volunteer, ma’am.’
‘Unusual. Why?’
‘My brother and sister were taken just like this. In Far District.’
‘Outsprawler, then?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘I see.’
Heles swept to the other side of the street, striding carelessly through blood patches and stains. Several onlookers had gathered in the mouth of an alleyway to look at the mess and tut disapprovingly.
‘You gawkers see or hear anything this morning? Or last night?’ she challenged them.
One balding man took offence. ‘Who you calling gawkers? That’s all you lot do. Gawk and rub your chins. Nothing ever comes of it.’
His equally balding wife chimed in. ‘Always getting here after it ’appens, you Scruters.’
Heles shooed them away, not caring for their presence any more. In a city drenched in crime, tongues still refused to wag. It was as infuriating now as it had been when she first pledged herself to the Code twelve years ago.
She was about to turn back to the scene when she caught another flash of red in the alley. Not gore this time, but cloth. A glowing face smiled politely.
Heles approached cautiously. It was at least a year since she had seen the crimson garb of a cultist. ‘You’re taking a risk. I’d wager we’re a street away from the Core Districts.’
‘Then I assume there is no issue me standing here. One street away.’
‘Fine.’
‘Quite the mess,’ the shade sighed.
‘And what would you know about it?’
‘No more than you.’
Heles bared her teeth, like a desert wolf would smile. ‘Don’t your kind excel at gathering information? If so, it’s about time you shared some of it with the Chamber of the Code. Maybe the Cult could do some good for once, instead of lurking in dark alleyways, being unnecessarily mysterious.’
The sister took a moment to adjust her hood. Heles could see the shade’s eyes examining the tattoos on her hands and bare neck, the dark swirls of her office. ‘You are simply jealous we don’t admit your kind. And we prefer Church these days.’
‘I’m happy having a beating heart instead, thank you. Maybe that’s what you lot are in dire need of. Now, if your Church isn’t going to be of any help, you should move along, Sister—’
‘Enlightened Sister, Scrutiniser Heles. Enlightened Sister Liria.’ The shade smiled as she walked away. ‘We’ll see each other again soon.’
Heles thumbed her nostrils and scowled, wondering, not for the first time, why the royals hadn’t completely eradicated the Cult of Sesh. Only once the shade had disappeared did it dawn on Heles that she hadn’t told the sister her name.
‘Scrutiniser Heles!’ came a shout. A man was waving to her from the other side of the street, where thicker crowds had gathered to gawk, like pigeons around a muddied loaf.
Murder was nothing new for a denizen of the City of Countless Souls, but it was a distraction nonetheless. People could always be relied on to stare at tragedy. It made them feel better about themselves; to still be a breathing bag of skin rather than a pool of blood on a dusty flagstone.
‘Well, Jym,’ Heles said, turning back to the proctor. ‘Shame to hear of your family, but everybody’s got their own dead. Bought, butchered or lost to age, we’ve all got them. You’re not special, Jym, and the quicker you learn that, the easier it’ll be for you here.’
Heles swept away from him, buttoning her black robes about her. She was halfway to the waving man when Jym called after her.
‘Who did you lose?’
Heles didn’t break her stride. ‘Every
body.’
The waving man wore the blue sash and dotted face tattoos of a clerk. A lower rank than her, and he bowed to prove it. ‘Chamberlain Rebene has summoned you.’
‘Can’t he see I’m busy?’
The clerk flapped his mouth as he followed Heles’ gesturing hand to the wash of blood. ‘How could he… I… He would like to see you immediately.’
Heles sighed. ‘Where?’
‘In his offices at the Chamber, naturally.’
‘Where else? It would do you dusty fuckers some good to get out onto the streets once in a while, remember what it is you work for.’
The man’s cheeks twitched as he cycled through a range of expressions, each more unsure than the last. ‘So, is that a yes?’
‘He’s my superior, is he not?’
‘Yes, Scrutiniser.’
‘Then lead the way, man. Stop wasting my time.’
‘Yes, Scrutiniser.’
Through the strangled streets they strode; scrutiniser in front, clerk struggling to keep up with her long legs and sweeping gait. Heles remembered when the crowds parted for her black Chamber robes. Now, only her height and practiced scowl moved them aside. And her elbows, for good measure.
The Chamber of the Code was a huge building. Not in height, like the Cloudpiercer, but in width and bulk. A giant pyramid capped with gold stood at its core, with twelve wings peeling off from its square base like the teeth of a cog. Each of those must have stretched ten floors into the sky, studded with windows and arrow slits. History had it the Chamber was once the emperor’s fortress, until the nobles turned to height to prove their worth and status. Now, it was a warren of overlapping corridors and dead ends, of honeycomb rooms and cavern halls full of files and men sneezing at dust.
Heles circled the building until she reached the main entrance. She lost the clerk in the endless queues, full of people clutching scrolls, and shades trying to shield themselves from the sand kicked up by the growing breeze. He no doubt scurried back to his desk, already scorched by his brief outing in the Arctian sun.
Every day, the unfortunates, the slighted and the outraged came to bleat their claims and file their complaints. Every day they formed their cacophonous winding lines, shuffling forwards maybe a dozen yards, maybe two dozen, before sunset shut the Chamber doors. The next day, they came back to queue again, and so on. A few faces she spied had been coming for almost a year now. Such was the backlog of the mighty Chamber of the Code, sole authority on matters of indenturement.
