by Ben Galley
‘Fine!’ Horix heard him say, spraying rainwater as he spoke. He gestured to the soultraders, and with a complete lack of alacrity, they handed him their scrolls and began to stir their shades into action with copper rods and switches. The official stamped up the stairs to his wooden platform, shooing away a flock of scabious pigeons.
As the nobles began to gather before the stage, Horix’s guards formed two concentric rings about her. Kalid stood close, sword-tip resting in the mud. Over the shields of his men, he eyed the other nobles and the seals on their house-guards’ shields. ‘Dire pickings, Mistress,’ he growled.
‘That may be, but I care little, Colonel. Time is wasting. We need workers.’
The guards parted so Horix could watch the first batch of shades take to the platform. They were indeed a sorry-looking lot. They were the quality of shade one might find in a desert mine, or the dockyards, or a Sprawl beetle farm. Out of the ten now slouched or shivering on the platform, one was missing an arm from the shoulder; another’s face had been partially ripped off, leaving nothing but skull beneath; and another still had taken a knee to avoid trying to stand on a smashed foot.
‘A fine morning to you all, and to you all a fine morning!’ began the balding official, raising his fistfuls of scrolls to the dark skies in welcome. He was trying to keep a warm smile on his face. It was already cracking at the edges, like old papyrus.
Not a word came from the gathered nobles and buyers, maybe half a dozen at the most. One young man with an umbrella of peacock feathers left almost immediately, his guards sloshing around him. Undeterred, at least outwardly, the official bowed low and gestured to the half-lives on the stage. The soultrader standing behind his wares, a pale northerner, looked interminably bored.
With an officious clearing of his throat, the official started the proceedings.
‘Might I present Boss Ubecht’s lot. Ten souls. Mostly fresh shades…’ He paused briefly to glance at Boss Ubecht. ‘…good condition and genuine kills as per the Code. Two skilled workers. Others good for garden or warehouse labour.’
‘Lies!’ proclaimed one buyer, barely waiting for the official’s words to leave his mouth. He wore a wide-brimmed hat to keep the rain away. ‘These are scrapings!’
Undeterred, the official forced his smile wider. ‘We will start with twenty silvers—’
Ubecht stamped his boot.
‘Thirty silvers.’ The official corrected himself. ‘Thirty silvers for the first shade. Answers to the name Jeena, a young chamber-shade. Ten years of experience.’
Again, the buyer scoffed. ‘Outrageous!’
‘Now, Master Feen. Due to the current shortage of Nyxwater, we unfortunately… er… have had to, erm—’
The buyer was undeterred by the man’s stammering. ‘I wouldn’t give you ten silvers for one of these damaged souls, never mind thirty!’
‘Fuck off!’ Ubecht growled. ‘What do you expect? You’re lucky I ain’t charging forty!’
The official attempted a casual laugh. ‘So then, do I have thirty?’ He looked to the remaining buyers with desperate hope glowing in his eyes, as if he were a condemned man about to be hanged and longed for mercy.
The official’s determined smile was on the verge of collapse when Horix spoke up.
‘One hundred fifty for the whole lot,’ she called, drawing a glance from Kalid.
Despite the muttering and sniggers from the tiny crowd, Ubecht shrugged, threw a leather pouch to the official, and clomped down the platform stairs.
‘Sold, to Widow Horix!’
Beneath her cowl, Horix met the stares of the other buyers. Some were perplexed, she could see that, while others clearly considered her an old fool of a woman, buying worthless half-lives.
The next batch of shades came lumbering through the mud and up the steps of the stage, poked and prodded by men in blue masks and a seal Horix could not have cared less for. They were a finer group, but only slightly. A few clean kills, others butchered in restrained ways. Horix saw a few of the other buyers cupping hands around their mouths, whispering to confidants.
A young girl in a waterfall of blue silks, barely out of childhood, swaggered across the platform, tapping a copper cane in an annoying rhythm. Glyphs adorned her face like rampant freckles.
‘Our next lot comes from Boss Helios, comprised of twenty-six souls—’
‘Five hundred.’
The official’s mouth gaped like a cod out of water. ‘P…pardon, Tal Horix?’
‘Five hundred,’ said the widow. ‘For all of them.’
‘I…’
Boss Helios banged her cane against the wood with a resounding thud. ‘Fine with me!’ she cheered, striding promptly from the stage.
The stares had become scowls. Horix felt Kalid bend down, closer to her. ‘The basements are crowded as they are, Mis—’
‘I told you I am done being patient, Colonel,’ Horix replied, waggling a finger. ‘Poldrew will find a use for them.’
The official slicked his hair over his scalp and blew rain as he checked the next listing on his scroll. Fifteen shades, bound in copper shackles, lined up awkwardly. These were an ugly-looking bunch, also, missing eyes, noses and other important pieces. They looked like old stock from the fight-pits. A hunched old man, his silver hair in braids, stood guard, along with a series of identical blond men, the only difference between them their age.
‘Boss Rapeen and Sons present their next l—’
‘Two hundred!’ Horix yelled. The other buyers threw up their hands in displeasure.
‘How dare you be so greedy, Tal?’ one of them shouted, some puffed-up man with a wig of arrow-straight black hair.
‘Leave some for us!’ called another.
They both received the full force of Horix’s withering gaze.
‘Four hundred,’ croaked old Boss Rapeen.
Horix shook her head. ‘Two hundred fifty.’
‘Mistress, the coffers.’
Horix turned on Kalid, lips puckered disapprovingly. ‘And what will they matter when I get my vengeance? Do not get skittish now, Colonel, not when we are so close,’ she hissed.
Rapeen gave his final offer. ‘Three hundred even!’
Horix nodded.
‘Erm…’ The official paused for a moment while he thought, dripping with rainwater. ‘Sold?’
Rapeen and his sons were already herding their shades back to the mud.
The official checked his scroll and grimaced. He looked behind him to make sure, and when he turned around, he wore a practiced smile, one as hollow as a dead tree. ‘And I believe we have come to the end of our lots for now. Please do return tomorrow!’ And with that, the man shuffled away with much speed, seeking refuge in the crowd of traders and glowing shades.
‘This is outrageous!’ yelled the wig. ‘I came from two districts over to find soultraders with Nyxwater.’
‘I advise you to keep searching, then,’ Horix called out. She could see the man desperately trying to place her seal of hanging corpses, and where she ranked in society. Horix imagined the amount of silver she’d just spent would give him a clue, but the guessing clearly infuriated him; she didn’t see him stamp his foot, but she heard it, and his smattering of house-guards came sloppily to attention. Between the grilles in their gold helms, Horix could see they were befuddled as to why their tor was taking on this woman’s glittering phalanx of ex-soldiers. The Nyx shortage was evidently causing more desperation than usual in Araxes.
Kalid’s men didn’t even need an order. They collapsed their circle into a tight bunch, spear-points pointing outwards like a sea urchin, its black centre the smug widow under her umbrella.
‘You can’t just buy them all!’ argued the wig, clearly flustered.
‘Can I not? Show to me in the Code or soulmarket rules where it says I cannot, and I will happily rescind my offers. If not, I bid you a good day.’
The man spluttered, but produced no argument she had an interest in, and Horix left him standing the
re, strangling the empty air with his painted nails.
After half an hour of scratching signatures, stamping seals on papyrus, and handing over bags of silver coins, a long train of shades was escorted from the market square by six of Kalid’s soldiers.
Horix remained behind, finding the cold, wet air too refreshing to retreat to her tower just yet. Watching her new wares disappear around a corner, she spun her umbrella, spraying drips in a spiral. Kalid stood behind her, and she gazed up at him from beneath her cowl. The wet had caused the plume on his helmet to droop. Rainwater gave his golden armour a beaded texture. His usual stoic face had harder edges, and his gaze were lost in the streets. She prodded his breastplate with a fingernail.
‘You doubt me, Colonel?’
Kalid shook his head emphatically. ‘Never, Mistress. Not in twenty years. I would not dare.’
‘Then speak your mind. Something troubles you.’
‘We have visitors, Mistress,’ he replied, drawing his sword with a flash of silver and a scraping whine.
Horix followed his gaze and observed two great, armour-bound hulks sloshing through the mud towards them. Her teeth crunched as she tensed her jaw.
Danib and Ani Jexebel.
A wall of shields was built in moments, making buyers and traders alike turn around to see what the commotion was. Spears were thrust out, their long steel points shedding raindrops. Kalid stood tall, holding his curved Arctian blade flat and in front of the widow as a barrier.
‘Easy, now,’ he muttered to his men.
Danib and Jexebel’s weapons remained at their sides or strapped across their shoulders. All they carried with them was a small mahogany box, edged with brass.
‘That’s close enough,’ warned Kalid, and the two brutes came to a halt a dozen paces away.
‘As you wish,’ sighed Jexebel in a resigned tone. Her pale face was even more impassive than Kalid’s. Her leather-and-mail armour was soaked through, and she looked as though she had been a victim of a speeding carriage and a muddy puddle, but Horix got the impression that wasn’t the sole root of her mood. The shade behind her shoulder was impossible to read, given the ghastly steel helmet that covered his face. Blue vapours curled out of its gaps like hot breath.
‘My master Tor Temsa wishes to give you a gift,’ said Jexebel.
‘I only want one thing from him,’ Horix snapped.
Jexebel extended the box anyway. One of Horix’s guards stepped forwards, edging slowly through the muck until he grabbed the box. Danib twitched and the man came scurrying back in haste. Horix could see Kalid tense as the shade chuckled.
Behind the shield wall, the box was put in the mud, and carefully opened with the point of a spear.
The pink velvet innards of the box held nothing apart from some shards of copper. Horix looked closer, and pieced them together enough to make out the glyph for “Crale”.
Horix’s head snapped up, eyes switching rapidly between Jexebel and Danib. ‘Temsa’s point?’
‘He wishes to let you know that he is willing to compensate you handsomely for Caltro Basalt’s coin.’ Jexebel said. Jexebel made it look like saying those words was as arduous as pushing a horse up stairs.
Horix was trembling with anger. Her hand wrapped around the hilt of the knife under her silks and squeezed it so hard she almost drew blood. The cheek of it. The audacity. She was so insulted her lips stayed pursed, white as clay and speechless.
Jexebel continued. ‘He wants it, and will have it. Whether it’s the hard way or the easy way. His words.’
Without any ceremony or etiquette whatsoever, Jexebel turned and left, her shoulder clanking against Danib’s as she clomped away. The steel-clad brute did not move, instead fixing his white eyes on Colonel Kalid for a long and uncomfortable moment. Horix watched the two of them – shade and man – measure each other silently. The leather of Kalid’s gauntlets squeaked as he tightened his grip around his sword handle.
Just as the tension became unbearable, it was shattered. Not with the drawing of a sword and a thunderclap of steel, as Horix had half-expected, but with an unimpressed grunt. Danib swivelled on his heel and trailed after Jexebel, his vapours leaving a sapphire trail behind him. Mud and sand sprayed from his heavy steps.
Colonel Kalid only relaxed his stance when Danib had vanished from view, turning into the busier thoroughfare adjoining the market.
‘The time may come, Colonel, when you will have to fight that monster,’ Horix growled.
Kalid’s tone gave no emotion away. ‘Aye, Mistress. I suspected it might.’
Horix kicked the wooden box shut. ‘Temsa becomes intolerable! Who does that soulstealer think he is?’
‘What will you do, Mistress?’
‘Destroy him, is what I will do, Colonel! He wishes to play games with me? I will—’
‘Tal!’ came an irate shout from behind her. It was the tor in the wig, striding towards her with a finger raised in the air and plenty of rehearsed words on his tongue. His house-guards struggled to keep up with his eager pace. A few of the other buyers huddled behind him. ‘I am not satisfied!’
Horix’s house-guards bristled, but she left them behind, walking out to meet the tor with her umbrella in one hand, the other hand open and empty.
‘Mistress!’ Kalid called after her.
‘I demand you sell me some of your shades!’ ordered the wig.
There must have been ten paces between them now. She closed them quickly. He had yet to realise his mistake, blinded by his indignity. All he saw was a rich but frail old woman.
They always do.
‘It is outrageous for you to… I say, stop there—!’
In a blink, the blade lurched from her silk folds and plunged under the tor’s ribs. It was so fast, his house-guards didn’t quite register it had happened. The widow withdrew the knife, and stabbed again. And again, driving the blade into his stomach repeatedly. The wig coughed blood, eyes watering with disbelief. It took a yell from one of the onlooking soultraders to make the house-guards and other buyers realise, and by this time, Kalid and his guards had already formed up around their mistress and her victim. All present looked on aghast as Horix kept stabbing, working her way up to his throat. When the dagger became too slippery and escaped her fingers, she upended her umbrella and drove its point deep into the bloody mess of the man’s stomach. She pressed down on it with all her weight, and the tor’s eyes bulged. He croaked and spluttered, but could not manage any words.
‘I told you to keep searching,’ breathed Horix, before the tor fell limp.
With a snarl, the widow stepped away, leaving her filigree and satin umbrella upright in the man’s chest, wobbling slightly. Horix looked around at the onlookers, her wild eyes and a blood-flecked face challenging them to speak. None did. Not the market officials, not the soultraders, not the scattered buyers. Not even the dead tor’s house-guards, who had abruptly found themselves rather unemployed. The only sound was the squelching of feet as normality resumed. Nobody looked down at the bleeding corpse in the mud.
Waving to her house-guards, Horix strode purposefully towards the nearest avenue. Her guards clustered around her, leaving some of the more shameless house-guards to fight over their unbound master.
Horix popped each of her bloody knuckles in slow succession. Kalid waited patiently while she wiped them dry with a silk kerchief.
‘I have one more job for you, Colonel, before you can rest,’ she said, after some time.
There was a metallic thud as his heels came together. ‘Whatever you command, Mistress.’
She said nothing more until their journey took them past a rookery. It consisted of a spindly tower, an angular effigy of a tree made from the detritus of the street: broken crates, discarded scaffolding poles, and twine. Bundles and bundles of twine. A wizened, bespectacled man stood at its base behind a battered table, strings tied to his wrist. The strings led up the tree to the legs of a dozen rooks. A large tarpaulin had been spread over the makeshift branche
s.
‘Sending a scroll, Tal?’ asked the man.
‘Indeed. Fetch me papyrus and reed.’
He did so, and while Horix scratched out a message on the wobbly, pockmarked table, he pulled down a rook from the tree with much flapping and squawking, rolling the string around his wrist like a winch.
Horix pressed the papyrus into Kalid’s hand. ‘Dispatch this scroll for me, Colonel. Then I want you to station yourself and your soldiers near Temsa’s new tower. Magistrate Ghoor’s place. Keep watch there, and wait,’ she ordered, speaking quietly over the raucous rook. The old man seemed too preoccupied to be eavesdropping.
Kalid eyed the glyphs. ‘This is a bold play, Mistress, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Horix placed her hands on her hips. ‘And why not, Kalid? After the debacle at Finel’s, it is a fine time to meddle in Tor Temsa’s business. He has disposed of my spook, after all. If I am correct, he’s already taken on a magistrate. Now a serek. He is overreaching. Most likely hurting from such a messy soulsteal. All the while, he draws more attention to himself,’ she said. ‘As I still have time, I have decided to take new steps, and skewer two birds with one bolt.’ Much to the squawking of the birds above, Horix jabbed a hand at the Cloudpiercer, just a dark column to the west. ‘I will do my civic duty, Colonel, and relay my concerns about a certain Tor Temsa to our good empress-in-waiting. As such, we will pry her out of that grand tower, bring her down into the streets. The gutters. Why not remove her now, and save ourselves the inconvenience later?’
Kalid’s jaw bunched. His voice was low. ‘I hope you don’t mind me being honest, Mistress. I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I wasn’t. That sounds like a risky step. Why don’t you let me gather my best soldiers and go solve this matter with Temsa once and for all instead of playing such games with the royalty?’
‘I thought you would be pleased at the chance to wet your sword, Colonel, as you have been pining to for months. And you should know better when it comes to tactics! Divide and conquer, isn’t that correct? Your worry has got the better of you, Kalid. Your only duty is to get me my locksmith back. That is all.’ Her questioning look got a bow out of him, and he folded the papyrus in half. ‘Let Temsa make the bloodbaths for now, and let me play my games. Besides, you think you can take on that Scatter woman, or Temsa’s huge shade, and win? Let Sisine and Etane and the Royal Guard take care of them. You and your men are worth plenty of silver. Silver I do not want to waste.’ There was a pause as she once again levelled a finger and prodded his breastplate. ‘You especially, Colonel. You have served me well. Now is not the time to break that habit.’
