by Ben Galley
The ghost still pushed me before him, but at least he had released my neck. I rubbed away the cold echo of his grip as I idly stared up at the canyon walls of sandstone and window ledges and guttering. The sky was a speckled strip above me, and I followed its path more than the alley’s.
Danib spared as many glances behind him as he did for me and the road ahead. The noise of the tavern and the warehouses had died, but the streets ahead were brightly lit, and offered their own clamour. We switched from darkness to light once again, and I negotiated the busy traffic of shabbily dressed people and masses of ghosts. Between impatient shoves from Danib like a battering ram to my spine, I caught sight of bazaar stalls glowing with candles and blue light. Ghosts stood behind their wares, both free and bound. They offered little in the way of food or drink, but plenty of trinkets, costumes, scrolls and books. Mountains of books.
I supposed when you had immortality to waste, spending it on books wasn’t such a bad idea. I saw the sense in it. Books – at least the good sort – were doors into worlds beyond our miserable own. Perhaps I’d pay this night bazaar a visit when I had my own time to waste. That was, if Danib wasn’t escorting me to a chopping block.
‘Temsa won’t be pleased,’ I warned him, trying to avert any permanent fate he might have planned for me. ‘Whisking his locksmith into the night.’
Another shove was my only reply, and together we took another alleyway. This one wound about the busy areas, taking a curving route to the edge of the city’s core. We walked in stilted and one-sided conversation. I probed him about his previous life, whether his armour chafed, and how heavy his sword was. Every time I got either a grunt or another knock from those ham-like fists.
I was about to ask him what it was like working for a maniac when I felt his fingers around my neck again, and he brought me to a halt.
Blue, knotted knuckles met the wood of a nearby door three times, and Danib stared at me through the holes of his helm while he waited. I avoided those blank white canvases. A man could have drawn any emotion on them. Perhaps that was Danib’s secret to surviving so long in the proximity of men like Temsa. That and being the size of a cottage.
I stared at the door instead, finding it unremarkable save for its crimson colour, freshly painted, its brass bars and the lack of a handle. The building it belonged to was a featureless wall of stone, reaching high into the night—
Crimson.
I flinched in the ghost’s grip, a fraction before the door creaked open to reveal two women clad in red robes. They must have been sisters, for they were practically identical, both of shaven head, hooded, and sharing the same impassive expression as my captor.
I didn’t know whether to smirk or frown. This city was choked with treachery, and yet still I was shocked. ‘My, my, Danib. Fuck me. You’re not Temsa’s at all, are you?’ I asked.
Without a sound, he slammed me against the doorjamb. There was no pain, just a sheer crushing weight as he pressed. I waved my hand, his giant fingers covering my mouth. I waited while Danib bent low to whisper between the sisters. After some time, one of them pointed at me.
‘Brother, please. Release him.’
Danib released me, and I spent a moment with my palms on my knees, wincing the vision back into my eye. A softer, smaller hand alighted on my shoulder, but I shrugged it away.
‘As I die and glow. Caltro Basalt, I presume?’ asked one of the women, bowing shallowly.
I stretched to my full yet modest height and tried to suck in my gut. I even bared my neck wound, seeing as I naked of my usual scarf. That had gone into the Troublesome Sea with Foor. ‘You presume correctly. And I would wager you’re from the Cult of Sesh.’
‘Incorrect. We are from the Church of Sesh,’ the other told me.
I thought for a moment. I felt a tension in my chest that, in a past life, would have been my heart racing. Was I nervous? Naturally, as one was when being marched to shady places with shady people. Curious? Absolutely, seeing as the Cult had come to me, not I to them. As usual, I retreated behind my shield of impudence. ‘Calling a dead goat a live one doesn’t change the fact it’s rotting.’
The two smiled and retreated into the gloom beyond the doorway. ‘Won’t you come in?’
Danib didn’t hear that as a question. He picked me up and hurled me inside. The door slammed behind me as I picked myself up, brushing imaginary dust from my naked arms and thighs. I wished Temsa had dressed me better, rather than gifting me with only a loincloth and a frayed linen waistcoat. My belly couldn’t be covered.
The sisters had already taken a seat behind a circular table with some sort of spinning device at its centre. Holes marked with coloured glyphs pockmarked its wide bowl. I noticed the gilding of silver and gold around the table’s edge and was drawn forwards, as powerless as a magpie. Other tables sat at the edges of the wide, low-ceilinged room. In the thick gloom, I saw a half-finished game of ballast still standing upright, the precariously balanced sticks still waiting to tumble. I knew this type of place, and it seemed fitting for my first meeting with the elusive Cult to be in a card den. A place of lies. A place of taking risks.
‘I am Enlightened Sister Liria,’ said the left one.
‘And I am Enlightened Sister Yaridin,’ said the right. ‘You already know our brother here.’
‘Intimately,’ I replied, hearing the growl close behind me.
‘And who are you, Caltro Basalt?’ Liria asked.
‘Well, it seems you already know—’
‘Where did you come from?’
‘How did you come to be entangled in this mess?’
I traced my hands across the velvet tablecloth, noting the dried blood spatter, and gave the wheel a slight push to make it spin. A musical clinking played briefly. ‘I’m originally from Taymar, in Krass. Ran away to Saraka in my twelfth year. Was orphaned in my thirteenth. Healer parents died of swelterflux in winter on the barren steppes. Got pretty cut up over it. Ran back to Saraka. Studied with a master until I got real good at breaking locks. Then I got even better. Plundered vaults and lockboxes all over the place. Some have called me the best in the Far Reaches. Hence why I came here. Turns out I got the wrong ship. Somebody had paid off the captain or the port guards, and I wound up dead, throat slashed and my blood carpeting an alleyway. Since then, it’s been a barrel of laughs going from the care of one lunatic to the next. Then I discover this strange ability I didn’t ask for, and all of a sudden I’m here, chatting to two ghosts I couldn’t tell apart if you paid me. How about you?’
Liria held up a sphere of what looked to be ruby. She placed it in one of the holes bored in the wheel and gestured for me to push it again. I did so, harder, and the jewel skittered around the bowl along to the metallic melody. As the music and the spinning slowed together, the ruby fell into a hole and stuck there.
‘You win,’ said Liria.
‘Win what?’
Yaridin spoke for her, like a double act. ‘Our kinship, Mr Basalt. And, more importantly, our protection.’
‘What have you heard of the Church?’
Seeing as we were in a place of gambling, I held some cards tight to my chest. I wasn’t about to tell them I’d had visits from the sworn enemies of their god, but I could be honest about the rest. All the rest. ‘A great deal, and none of it good, I’m afraid. From what I’ve heard, the city sees your order as a bunch of self-serving traitors after you tried converting some old emperor. Not only that, but you worship a very old, very dead, and by all rights, very calamitous god of chaos. That rings several alarm bells immediately, but then there’s the fact you can’t enter the Core Districts without being arrested. I know Horix hates you. I imagine the emperor and his daughter hate you. And Temsa has a distaste for anything that glows, so he probably hates you too, despite working with you.’
The sisters traded knowing looks, and Liria smiled. It was not a thing of warmth. ‘A common occurrence in this city. We are very much misunderstood.’
It was not the resp
onse I’d expected to such a deluge of truth. I’d found people were not fond like the truth. I crossed my arms. ‘Misunderstood? I can’t see why, especially when you deal with soulstealers and murderers.’
‘And that is why we thought it was time to introduce ourselves, and show you otherwise.’ Yaridin stood, plucking the ruby. She rolled it around her glowing hands, turning it purple. I watched as the ball wandered around her fingers, defying gravity and sense. ‘For centuries we have worked to help and protect our fellow shades. To do that, we must play the great game of power, just like everyone else in Araxes. The emperor plays. The Widow Horix plays. Tor Temsa plays, albeit a most violent version. Even you play it, Caltro, though you find yourself playing unwillingly. It is the goal of the game that matters most; what each competitor strives for.’
There was nothing unwilling about my desire to be free. ‘But you’re working with Temsa. You’re involved in these murders, same as him. Surely your goals align with his.’
Liria spoke up, still seated and smiling, but her eyes now pools of proud, bright light. ‘Ha! Oh my, no, Caltro. We do not work with Temsa. He works for us. He is but a tool for our motives. He is our wild dog, the rabid wolf Araxes needs to push it to the edge. We chose him, provided him with the excuses he needed to fulfil his desires, and let him loose. We gave him names, like rungs on the ladder to his bloody success. We even found him a princess to protect him. Yes, we pointed them at each other purposefully. And yet do our goals align with his? Scarcely. His sights are set far below ours. Like most players, he seeks to pry the emperor from his Sanctuary and claim his crown and throne. We are using Temsa to achieve something altogether grander.’
Dead gods. The Cult was behind it all. I had thought Temsa the orchestrator of the mayhem in Araxes. The great risk-taker. The man who had conned both a cult and a princess into his pocket. But no. These ghosts – these sisters who looked as though they would struggle to count sixty years between them – were the masterminds.
I glanced at Danib, who was staring resolutely at the ceiling, as if he was pretending not to listen; as if this was too much betrayal for him.
‘And that is?’ I asked with a croak.
‘Peace. Justice. Freedom,’ Liria shot back. ‘For both the living and the dead. For years, the Church of Sesh have stayed on the sidelines, helping what few shades we could while watching Araxes slip further and further into the gutter. Change is desperately needed. Especially for shades like you, who had their lives taken away through murder and greed. Wouldn’t you agree?’
I hushed the traitorous voice inside me, though I had to agree. Finally, somebody in this city with some sense. How strange that it would be the bunch of widely-loathed outcasts.
Yaridin spoke up. ‘We confess, though we trade in information, we have only watched you for so long. You were quite the surprise when Danib told us Temsa had claimed one of the Reaches’ best locksmiths.’
‘The best.’
Yaridin cocked her head. ‘Saying that, we feel confident wagering that you long for your freedom, Caltro?’
‘Sister, it’s all I’ve wanted since the moment I rose from the Nyx. But you can’t help me. Unless you have my half-coin stashed in those threads, you’re no better a chance at freedom than Temsa is. I’ll take my chances with the widow.’
‘You would trust Horix?’ asked Liria.
I spread my hands across the desk, fixing her with a stare. My tone was sharp as flint. ‘She’s a means to an end. As I keep trying to tell everyone, I do what I want, how I want. I always have. I trust in myself. Nobody else.’
That cold smile returned to the ghost’s face, and a clawing hand reached to spin the wheel. ‘And how has that worked out for you so far?’ she challenged me, above the rattling of music.
I had no answer, and so she spoke for me. Her eyes drilled into me all the while, as if picking through my thoughts and memories to furnish her argument.
Liria stood now, and came closer. ‘We know what it is to be indentured, Caltro. We are kin. Brothers and sisters. You think you’re the only one who has fallen foul of a blade, that nobody can understand your pain and loss, and so you have trusted yourself. You’ve thrown yourself at every cage door, but all it has achieved is another master, another mistress. You’ve been beaten, kidnapped, passed about like furniture instead of a human soul. You’ve seen animals treated better than being branded a half-life.’
The complaints were far too familiar for my liking. I had spent my life telling myself that nobody understood me. It had kept me mysterious. Now in death, these sisters seemed to know every inch of me. Liria had stoked some curious fire in me, but I stayed silent and dumb, in case my speaking would shatter the moment of wisdom I felt coming.
It was Yaridin who answered, stepping the other way around the table. ‘Caltro. Do you know why the living hate the dead? Truly?’
‘Because we are less than them?’
‘No, brother. We are more. Think. We shades are immortal. We are impervious to all but copper. We are innumerable. We are in their towers. We run their lives, guard their doors, even fight their wars, and yet they believe themselves our lords and masters through the power of a few laws and a half-coin.’
Yaridin’s voice had become louder and harsher with every word. I felt the sister’s cold wash over me, deeper than a winter’s breath. I saw anger in the whiteness of her eyes, one I recognised very well. I felt my fists clench, my chin rise.
Liria whispered in my ear now. ‘They fear us because they know the fragility of their grand system! Neither the Tenets nor the Code can truly control us. They are rules drawn up by the first kings of the Arc in order to profit from Sesh’s sacrifice. Our Church knows better. We know our true power.’
‘You know something of true power, do you not, Caltro?’ asked Yaridin.
And there, like the red crescent of a new dawn’s sun breaking over the horizon, I felt the purpose of my visit emerging. Once again, I looked over my shoulder at Danib, thinking of how he had killed the guard. I saw it in a different light now. He had not punished the man; he had silenced him. Danib had seen my haunting and covered my tracks for me. And now I was here, within an hour, standing in front of the Cult.
‘I imagine there’s no point lying,’ I told them, laying some of my metaphorical cards down on the table, but not all. ‘So I can haunt. I don’t know how, or why, but apparently I can. Question is, why do you care? You spin a good yarn, Sisters. Best I’ve heard since I’ve arrived in Araxes, to be honest. But I’ve heard a lot of similar conversations during my time here, and they always end up with me doing something for somebody. Normally, it’s picking a lock, and normally, it’s against my will, but I get the idea that’s not your style. Instead, given the hour and the swiftness with which Danib marched me here after our little corridor debacle, I would wager it’s something to do with my ability to haunt. You call me kin, so don’t waste any more of my immortality with further lies. Spit it out, please. What can I do for you, Sisters?’
Both ghosts scrutinised me with narrowed eyes. Liria spoke first, after a lengthy pause. ‘Nothing.’
‘Horseshit.’
‘We merely want to help you, Caltro, as we have helped so many others like you.’
‘Others with gifts.’
That knocked the vapour out of me. ‘What do you mean, “others”? I’m not the only one?’
‘Others with gods-given gifts.’ I flinched as Liria stole the phrase from my memory. ‘It is rare, but not unheard of,’ she said.
If that was true, then Haphor had been right. I was not special, it seemed. Perhaps I was one of a long line of failed experiments the dead gods had sent back to save themselves. I found myself clenching my fists. ‘I don’t fucking believe it…’ I hissed.
‘You will see, soon enough.’
‘But why?’ I snapped. ‘Nobody helps anybody in this city. Not unless it helps them.’
‘And perhaps that is the problem,’ sighed Yaridin.
‘We will
help you gain your freedom and justice, Caltro Basalt. You will see.’
Although I had my doubts about the Cult, numerous and sharp-edged, it was the first time I had been made a promise in Araxes and not wanted to laugh in the face of its deliverer. Somehow, the sisters’ words felt as tangible as the writ of freedom waiting for me in the widow’s tower. They certainly didn’t seem like the world-killers the gods had described. Then again, when had any of my dead visitors been truly honest with me? They certainly hadn’t ever offered me freedom.
Liria extended a hand, a simple and innocuous gesture for all the weight it carried. This was a pact in the forging. A pact with the servants of the god of chaos, no less. The puppet masters behind Araxes’ panic. The true power in the city.
The sisters whispered in turn.
‘Are you with the Church?’
‘Are you with your dead brothers and sisters?’
I realised I had lifted my hand, fingers twitching to straighten. What am I doing? My vapours flowed in spirals across the back of my wrist, agitated. The air grew brittle and polar as I continued to reach out. In the darkness, I saw the eyes of a dead cow, a dead cat, and a dead man. They had extended me no such promises of kinship. Only duty.
Liria and I touched as tangibly as two passing storms. Finger to finger, our blue mists intermingled briefly before I snatched my hand back. ‘I’ll say so when I see my half-coin in my hand.’
Liria smiled that frigid, withered little smile once more. ‘And so you shall. But for now, you must return to Temsa.’
My mouth fell open. Whatever hope had been kindled was crushed. ‘What the fuck? Why? I thought this was my escape?’
Liria tutted. I wondered how with a lack of tongue. I had tried many times, and failed with a useless hiss. ‘Appearances must be maintained,’ she said flatly. ‘You are too useful to Temsa. He sees you as his secret weapon.’
‘We still need Temsa to succeed for the greater good.’
