by Ben Galley
‘And what will you do?’
‘I will crush him, Colonel. Even if Caltro wasn’t one of the best locksmiths in the Reaches, nobody steals from me.’ Horix stepped away. ‘If Busk wants a shade, we will deliver him a shade. We’ll call it a gift to dust our hands of the matter. He’ll believe I have my restitutions for Caltro and think it settled.’ She made a cat’s arsehole of her grey lips. ‘Have you found me a good enough spook?’
Kalid smiled. ‘Aye, Madam. I have. Comes highly recommended.’
‘Good. Never cease to please me, Colonel. For your sake.’ She left him alone on the patterns of marble, and swept up the stairs to her rooms. The stubborn woman always liked to walk, despite her clockwork lifts.
The colonel shook his head. Not at her, but at Tor Busk. Nobody had ever got the best of Widow Horix, not in all the years he’d served her, and that was before she had something to protect besides her own pride.
Kalid glanced at the door at the end of the atrium, locked and chained in the daylight. Now she had a reason to fight even fiercer.
Chapter 8
A Villain
Before the discovery of binding, every dead body was sent to the Nyx or buried with a coin in their mouth. Now, only those who die in peace do that, as we cannot bind them. According to the Tenets, those who die in turmoil are the dutiful ones. They are the ones who dedicate their half-lives to bettering the Arc.
From a work-scroll found in most Araxes schools
If there was one word Boran Temsa detested above all others, it was ‘problem’. It was fouler than any curse. More damning than any accusation. Disembowelment with a spoon was almost preferable to hearing it.
So it was that the look he levelled on Tooth was a razor-sharp and damning one.
‘What do you mean, “problem”?’
‘The vault ith an old dethign, Both…’
‘It’s Tor now. Tor Temsa.’
Tooth was too busy scratching her head to notice her error. ‘I never tackled anythin’ like it. Jutht cogth an’ thpring-work like I ain’t ever theen. No keyth, jutht a dothen bloody combinathonth.’
‘And so?’
‘I…’ Her lip went white as her tooth pulled at it. ‘I can’t open it, Both.’
Temsa stamped his claws.
‘TOR!’
Tooth withered away, shrinking back to the sturdy iron vault that had defeated her. Temsa took a look for himself. The circular door had the look of an enormous drain cover, crisscrossed with thick iron bars and bolts. At its centre was a fine seam, and spaced along it were swollen boxes with half a dozen bronze cogs sticking out from each one. He poked the locks with his cane, kicked the metal with his foot, but, unsurprisingly, nothing happened. When the clanging died away, he bowed his head.
‘Danib,’ he said to the figure standing nearby.
With speed belying his monstrous size, the shade surged forwards, seized Tooth, and lifted her from the floor. Her throat was clamped between his bicep and forearm. The locksmith gargled as she clawed at his armour.
‘You dare tell me you can’t do your job?’ Temsa yelled.
‘Give me another day!’ she wheezed. ‘Maybe two!’
‘Days? I’d baulk at giving you hours! It has already been several days. Every moment we linger here arouses more suspicion. An empty tower tells no tales, Tooth. The corpses downstairs? They will! Their shades will begin to rise soon, and they may have families. Friends. No doubt their absence has raised questions already! Soon enough, enquirers will start appearing in the courtyard. And where will I be? Still standing here, watching you tinker away at a door, instead of counting my new half-coins! What does that make me, Tooth?’
Either she was conserving air or as clueless as a hog. In any case, she had no answer.
‘Guilty! Guilty is what that makes me! So guilty the Chamber won’t have to wait months to process our cases. They’ll have us boiling in oil by next week. Now, I don’t know about you,’ he said, pausing to address the circle of men who stood around the vault room, ‘but I’m not too keen on that idea!’
Grunts of agreement followed his words. Tooth had stopped clawing now, falling limp instead.
‘Give me an hour,’ she croaked. ‘Pleath, Tor.’
Temsa signalled for the shade to drop her. ‘One hour. Not one grain of sand more.’
Tooth knelt before the vault’s door, shaky fingers reaching for her tools. Temsa shrugged. An hour he could afford. It gave him time to offer Tal Kheyu one last chance. He bent a finger at Danib, and the shade followed him to the corridor.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ Temsa could feel the measure of his gaze without turning. ‘It’s about time we got a better locksmith.’
Danib huffed between his steps.
‘I don’t care if she’s nice to you. She’s holding us back, and I won’t have it. And speaking of things that are holding us back…’
He threw the palm-wood door wide open to find his makeshift torture chamber just as he’d left it. Fenec was still in the corner, looking a shade whiter than before. His shoes were splattered with his own vomit.
Tal Kheyu-Nebra lay on the table, her face impassive. So blank, in fact, that for a moment Temsa thought she had finally given up and died. Then her glassy eyes shifted to look at him, and he cracked a smile.
‘How are we feeling, Tal? Ready to sign my sigil’s documents yet?’ he asked.
Her voice was like gravel on a tin roof. ‘I won’t be party to soulstealing and forgery.’
‘Oh, but you’re wrong, Kheyu. Very wrong. You see, I haven’t even started yet.’ It was a lie. Temsa had started, finished, then started again. The old leather bag still refused to speak. His eyes roamed over the wounds he had already given her; the rough bandages where things had been removed.
Twenty-five years he’d been carving obedience into people, and not once had he failed to glean the truth, even when it had been just a hobby. Now it was an art form, and Kheyu was in danger of breaking his winning streak. A part of him felt like a child, refused a sweet treat at a bazaar.
‘You think dying will be a victory? Take it from a soulstealer, Tal. It won’t be.’
‘Yes, it will,’ Kheyu wheezed. ‘As long as you don’t get what you want.’
What irritated him was that she was right. Short of bringing in stonemasons to hack the vault door from its fixings, without her combinations or signature on Fenec’s scrolls, her half-coins, whether in the banks or her vault, would be lost to him. He could only claim whatever treasures lay about her tower. They amounted to an inordinate number of decorative candlesticks and a range of tapestries so ugly Temsa wouldn’t have used them as rags for his arsehole.
His quick mind sorted through his options. Taking such a hoard of coins by force without a signature or record would create a glaring inconsistency, even for a bank he was blackmailing. Fenec was already at his wits’ end keeping his father’s questions answered. Temsa could get by with a pinch of forgery at the soulmarkets. With a bank, he trod a dangerous line, even with a princess as a benefactor. Sisine could control the Chamber only so much. Then there were the rumours. Trial by public was always much swifter than the Chamber’s justice.
Kheyu’s seal had already been cut from her finger. That was half the problem. Should Temsa fake her signature to claim the estate, well… that was still an option, but all tors and tals were required to register their autographs with the banks several times a year to avoid forgery. Temsa would be taking a very dangerous guess. Should the Chamber start sniffing, the incongruity would sink him. This needed to be done properly or not at all.
Temsa moved to his case of sharp things and took his time choosing. He could hear Fenec groaning in the corner. Danib took his usual stand at the tal’s shoulders, ready to hold her down.
‘I’m still waiting for your worst, Tor Temsa,’ Kheyu goaded him.
He showed it to her. Unabashedly and without hesitation.
His hand found the handle of a sickle blade. With a hiss,
he plunged it into her wrinkled stomach and wrenched it towards him, baring her bloody insides to the lamplight. To her credit, Kheyu did not scream. The leathery wench just bared her teeth and groaned deep in her throat.
Temsa stepped back, knife in hand, and let the shock and blood loss take her. As blood dripped on the floor like a finger tapping a drum skin, he shared a look with Danib, who seemed mildly surprised.
‘Why? Because she was a stubborn old fuck, that’s why. She would not have given us anything. Better to put her out of her misery—’ Temsa halted, hearing them as well: the uncharacteristic words spilling out of him without the thoughts to back it up. Did he somehow respect the tal’s fortitude? Was he going soft? Temsa dismissed the foolish thoughts. ‘Better to punish her for it, and not waste any more of my time!’
Temsa watched the blood pooling around his talons. ‘Burn it,’ he said. ‘Set a fire in her bedroom. Make it look like her addled mind set the place ablaze. Put a few of the guards around as if they died in the fire, then take her and the rest so I can bind them. Cut their tongues. I’ll be damned if I don’t get some shades out of this. And speaking of…’
Danib pointed downstairs, indicating the gathered shades on the level below.
‘Deal with them. Copper blades. Can’t afford to raise suspicion by selling them. If I can’t get their coins, they’re not rightfully bound to me. I can’t bank or Weigh them.’ Temsa pondered as he wiped the knife. As he moved to replace it in its designated hollow in his case, he paused, and kept hold of it instead. ‘Set a fire near the vault too. Put some furniture against the door. The half-coins will melt, and there’ll be fewer tongues for wagging.’
Danib just shrugged. Temsa suspected if Ani were there, she’d have something to say about the matter. She never liked to see a shade go to waste. It made sense: the more shades Temsa took, the bigger her coin-purse. That was all Ani cared about. Though she had the tongue to complain about them, she didn’t have the mind for these sorts of games. That was why Temsa had left her in charge of the Slab for the night.
‘See it done, old friend!’ he ordered. ‘Ah, Fenec! Forgot you were there, man. You are relieved.’
The sigil immediately ran from the room. Temsa stamped after him, leaving Danib to manhandle the old body from the table.
Tooth was still scrabbling at the vault’s cogs. Tears had drawn clean lines down her mucky cheeks. She couldn’t seem to shake the tremor from her hands. She was concentrating so hard, she only heard Temsa once he was right behind her. The sickle knife hooked around her throat, and she froze.
‘I thtill have half an hour,’ she whimpered, fighting not to gulp in case she cut herself.
He spoke quietly in her ear. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
The silence was long and painful. In the end, she managed to stutter a word. ‘And?’
‘You’re done. I have need of you no more.’ Temsa paused to let her whimper. ‘However, you’ve been party to certain criminal acts, privy to important information. In short, you know too much, Tooth, and I can’t have that.’
Tooth began to shake so violently she came close to slicing her own throat.
‘Stick out your tongue, Tooth.’
‘No.’
‘Would you rather the alternative?’
It took her a few quivering moments, but in the end she made the right decision. With his heavily-ringed fingers, Temsa grasped her slimy tongue, pulled it hard, and showed it the blade. Tooth collapsed to the floor, hands clamped over her lips, streams of blood running down her forearms. Temsa looked up at the grim and impassive faces of his thugs.
‘I suggest you make yourselves scarce, before you find yourselves on the wrong side of a fire.’
They needed no encouragement to file from the room, and did so in relative silence. Temsa was left alone with the locksmith, who was now ripping strips from her sleeves to bandage her tongue.
‘That means you too, Tooth,’ said Temsa, nudging her with his golden foot. ‘Don’t you dare forget this mercy.’
Tooth garbled something as she scrabbled for the stairs, leaving a trail of blood behind her. Temsa imagined it was a ‘thank you.’
As he listened to the sound of clomping boots receding, he ground his teeth. Twice now, mercy had interfered. Temsa cursed himself, blaming tiredness. His nights had been sleepless since stepping foot into this infernal tower, and the days had culminated in his first failure. Problems. They hounded him tonight. Now he had another: he was short one locksmith.
‘Danib!’ he bellowed.
The shade came lumbering out of the corridor, the old woman’s body folded over one steel forearm.
‘I want you to find out whether Tor Busk has had any luck finding me a locksmith.’ Danib started towards the door, and Temsa knuckled his temples. ‘After the fire, of course. Priorities, old friend.’
The look Danib shot him was as damning as any one of Ani’s doubts, and Temsa did not like it.
‘Don’t you give me that. I have my priorities straight.’
Danib had no reply. He stood as motionless as a statue, the only movement the natural crawl of his vapours between the plates of his armour.
Temsa sighed, unable to avoid the stare. ‘I am simply… vexed, for fuck’s sake! I thought our empress-in-waiting would provide some easier cats to skin than this one. Than her.’ He motioned towards the dead Kheyu-Nebra. Her eyes were still wide and reproachful. ‘You know how I despise failure.’
The shade broke his mimicry of a statue and nodded.
Temsa scratched at his beard. ‘I think I’ll go see her. I think an explanation is due if we are to keep the princess on our good side.’
Danib dropped the body with a crunch.
‘No, old friend. Alone. You are rather noticeable, and I wish to be discreet. You concentrate on finding that stuck-up fence of mine. Tell Busk that Tor Temsa wants to see him. That’ll put a hot poker up his arsehole.’
Temsa felt the shade’s eyes follow him all the way to the door. The weight of their judgement pressed down on him. He put a bit more stamp in his stride, making his foot spark on the worn stone.
‘Burn it well, Danib. Burn it fucking well.’
He snorted bitterly on the stairwell when he saw Kheyu’s shades gathered in droves in the atrium, hemmed in by soldiers with copper spears. They all watched him with wide eyes and silence.
‘Doubt be damned!’ Temsa yelled at them, and screams rose to the vaulted ceiling as his soldiers went to work, hacking and slashing until blue mist covered the marble.
He would show his doubters their error in time, if they had the stomach to follow him. If they didn’t… well. Temsa looked down at the blood streaking his fingers, testament to the kind of judgement he passed.
Temsa walked with a clanging purposefulness. Alone, save for his black-clad guards trailing a few paces behind, he could enjoy the dying of the day.
The living had a scurry in their steps, unnoticeable to the untrained eye, and to one who didn’t know how dangerous evening in the City of Countless Souls can be. The dead shared no such fear, wearing their black feathers beneath dull eyes; fixed on carrying, or working, or fetching, or whatever menial task they had been laboured with. Temsa’s gaze bored into the few who dared to lounge on their masters’ time, clicking his fingers to goad them back into work. His smart clothes spoke for him, and they sprang back into action.
As Temsa stalked through the congestion of King Neper’s Bazaar, he watched the stalls dissolve around him, packed away in time with the sinking of the sun. It already lingered between the jagged spines of the western districts. The great towers and pyramids were carving up the city with their vast shadows. The Cloudpiercer cast a penumbra so wide and long that several districts to the east must have already thought it was nighttime. Temsa walked along the blurry edges of its shadow, enjoying the escape from the heat that emanated from the sand and stone around him.
When the blue above had faded to a dusty pink, he reached the base of the mighty Clou
dpiercer. He craned his old neck to gauge the reach of its spire, as he always did. Its top was beyond view, lost to haze and sheer distance. Instead, Temsa looked to the high-roads that spread out from the tower’s sides like branches reaching out into a forest of towers. There must have been a dozen on this side of the Piercer alone. Carriages clattered high above as they entered the tower under soaring, skull-carved arches.
The desire to build had burned within the human breast since the first rock was piled atop another. It was an addiction, an all-consuming impulse. It was why Araxes spread for a hundred miles east, west and south, and why here, at its core, the Cloudpiercer challenged the sky. Creation meant domination: bending the rock and earth to one’s whims in the effort to create something more. Temsa thought it prudent to respect those who had the same vision of conquest as he had.
His soldiers held back to loiter by the grand entrance as Temsa stepped between the queues and marble columns into the cool of the Piercer’s vast atrium, one of four that quartered its vast pyramidal base. Sandstone pillars – some as tall as a noble’s tower – held up a domed marble roof that was as white as bleached papyrus. Balconies clung to the stone and spiralled upwards in a mesmerising pattern. They were the shape of a halved seashell, and each had whale-oil lanterns hanging from their balustrades.
A dull roar of voices filled the atrium. It seemed everybody wanted to get into the tower, but hardly anybody was allowed. Security was at its utmost. Core Guards lined every available space of wall. Cullis gates hung in banks over the archways. Ballistae and triggerbows sat in mounts on every other balcony. Soldiers ringed the podiums where the Piercer’s clerks wore tall pointy hats and sat in marble chairs.
The clerks were responsible for hearing pleas for entry to the tower’s levels. The Piercer held many ministries and official centres, but it was also home to a very large number of sereks and richer nobles, those who could afford space in the tower. As such, there was always plenty of business to be done here. It was a mile-high bazaar for the richest of the rich.
