by Ben Galley
Ani turned, though her feet didn’t skip a step. ‘I warned you about playing a cult and an empress against each other,’ she said in a strained voice. ‘I remember a time when you answered to nobody. Now you’ve got two bosses to keep happy. Guess it’s true what you Arctians say: the higher you climb up the mountain, the more treacherous it becomes.’
‘You stop there!’ Temsa’s screech fell on deaf ears, and before he could barge his way clear of his seat, she had vanished into a stairwell.
An awkward silence came on the tail of his shouts. A few guards cleared their throats while Temsa stared, red-faced and shaking, at the doorway. It took some time before he realised Danib’s gaze rested upon him.
‘Don’t you dare agree with her,’ he warned the shade as he stamped away, sparks flying from his talons. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
Temsa limped his way along the breadth of the table, leaving his guards to blow sighs and shake their heads.
‘What do you mean “leaving”?’
‘She’s leaving! Have a look, Colonel.’ The spyglass had been glued to the soldier’s face for so long it had left a deep red ring around the man’s eye.
Kalid snatched it to see for himself, grunting as he crouched down beside the chimney stack. From the low rooftop, he could see down the street and into Magistrate Ghoor’s old courtyard. Sure enough, as the soldier had said, Sisine’s entourage was filing out of the doorway.
Colonel Kalid tensed. He saw no bloodied weapons through the misted view. No wounds. Temsa’s men even bowed accordingly as the empress-in-waiting departed.
‘Fuck!’ Kalid dashed the spyglass against the edge of the roof, watching the cracked lenses skitter over the whitewashed stone.
Two hours he and his best fighters had waited there, watching. Two hours his soldiers had spent crammed into alleyways and rooms below, poised to wet their blades. The brewing storm had petered out and left a limp wind in its place. That weasel Temsa must have talked himself out of his fate, or struck a deal, perhaps. Kalid felt unsettled. Not just anyone avoided the royal rage so deftly. It was almost – dare he think it – impressive.
Working his teeth around the inside of his lips, the colonel listened to the faint clanking on the air as he watched the glittering procession head back to its armoured carriage.
‘Back to the tower!’ he barked irascibly.
‘But…why?’
‘Ain’t nothing happening here! Silver tongues win over steel today,’ Colonel Kalid shouted as he followed his men down the stairs. His heels punished the steps as he grumbled privately.
The widow was going to be far from pleased.
Chapter 6
A Poor Welcome
Araxes wasn’t always the mighty city it is today. In ancient times it was a scattered collection of towns spread between the Duneplains and the Troublesome Sea. Farmers to fishermen, disparate faras – or lords – fought for control. It was only when Emperor Phaera’s grandfather Narmenes united the lords to fight the Scatter Isle pirates that the Arctian Empire was born. How sad, that it takes an enemy much greater than ourselves to unite us.
From writings of the philosopher Themeth
It was a gloomy day that greeted Nilith when she finally gathered the energy to crack her eyes open. One of those rare squalls off the Troublesome Sea had come to wash the city of its blood. The dark clouds had finished with the Core Districts, and were now moving on to the Outsprawls. Blue sky had been replaced with a slate ceiling, and scattered patches of drizzle were already beginning to turn the sand to silt and mud.
Beyond the gloom and spatter of rain, there were other differences to frown at, and each of them were no cheerier than the approaching downpour. Since their veer into the Sprawls a day or more ago, the adobe huts and squalor had picked themselves up, brushed themselves off, and gathered some semblance of order. The streets and thoroughfares had begun to come alive.
Nilith’s minder – the loathsome Chaser Jobey – had stuck to minor routes, steering clear of markets, and more often than not, covering the slatherghast with a sheet to keep it from prying eyes. The only attention they received was due to the wafting stench of Farazar’s body, which had taken on a fresh reek given the added moisture. Farazar’s ghost had spent half a day berating Jobey for his insolence, coming close to yelling his true name and identity once or twice. He would have done so had Nilith not kicked his bars and caused the slatherghast to gnash at him. Farazar was getting desperate, and that made him more dangerous than ever.
Sleep had been forgotten. Nilith blamed the wet and the freezing cold seeping up her left arm, making her shoulder ache as if she lay in ice. Instead, she busied herself by watching the slow passage of the streets. Nilith had spent so many desert nights longing to be within the city’s boundaries once more. Now she was here, she wanted to drink it all in, despite the dire nature of her situation, despite the city’s foulness.
If there was an air of danger and threat in the centre of Araxes, in the Sprawls it was a thick smog.
Groups of hooded figures lingered in doorways to avoid the rain, some emblazoned with tattoos, others covered head to toe in coats of leather or mail. Clubs and daggers hung from their belts, and even some of the sellswords gave them a wide berth. Smart-dressed fellows loitered under the eaves of smoky taverns and brothels, waiting for drunken fools to collapse into the gutter, or for bodies pushed from the higher windows, their throats already cut. Card dens and snuff houses employed young men and women with bare chests and faces caked with sparkling dust to stand at their doorways, beckoning people into small, dark, and questionable basements beneath the streets. A few whistled to the silk-wrapped Jobey, high on his cart, but the chaser didn’t bat an eyelid.
Where merchants lined the wider streets, thieves went to work. For every two yells of a bargain, there was one of, ‘Stop him!’ or, ‘Cutpurse!’ Mercenary street guards seemed to ply their trades only when it suited them, content to slouch near the taverns or merchants that lined their pockets and watch the detritus pass by from under leather and duck-feather umbrellas.
Half the crowds were travellers, the other half an equal mix between dishevelled living and cheap-looking dead. Most of the shades Nilith saw were horrifically wounded, barely worth a few silvers at a soulmarket. Here and there, bellies were sliced to show glowing entrails. Others lacked jaws or eyes, or showed the viciousness of mutilation. One or two dragged themselves through the wet sand, legless, their deliveries strapped to their backs. Nilith caught Farazar staring at them too, and hoped he realised how kind her knife had been. It made her think of her own fate, lingering beneath the rags wrapped around her left forearm, and she had to look away. She refused to acknowledge the slatherghast’s poison.
Nilith had thought she knew the depths of the city’s depravity, but on seeing these streets, and what the Tenets and Code had driven their denizens to, she realised now that depravity was fathomless. Not for the first time in the last few days, she wondered why she had even started this quest in the first place. The benefits – the cause – were being drowned by the cost of struggle and loss.
That stoked a deep and righteous outrage in her, one that caused her to briefly consider ramming Farazar’s head against the bars a dozen times, as fruitless a task as that would have been. Instead, she held the anger within her, nurtured it, and tried to turn it into something useful. Something to stoke her spirits and reassure her this path had not become a fruitless one.
A brief commotion broke out as a bald man came tearing from the mouth of an alley, rolling a fat barrel alongside him, one with black-stained staves. Spit streaming from his mouth, eyes wild, he narrowly dodged a beetle bearing a sack of wool before careening down an opposite alleyway. Before Nilith could wonder what was going on, a small mob of men and women appeared, hot on the man’s tail and clamouring at the top of their voices. Several passersby joined their chase. Not for civic duty, of course, for this was Araxes. No, Nilith wagered the barrel was full of Nyxwater.
&nbs
p; ‘There really is a shortage, isn’t there?’ she asked the chaser.
Jobey said little except to order them to be silent. He had grown tired of their conspiratorial whispering. They had planned nothing, but muttered small talk in an effort to distract the man. Anoish had done his part, even unknowingly. There were many things in a city capable of spooking a desert horse. The swarms of the dead, giant centipedes and scarabs, the clanging of a blacksmith, the frequent screams. More than once, Jobey had to halt the wagon to calm him. Fortunately for Anoish, the horse’s stout legs and frame were worth the hassle, and Jobey’s triggerbow stayed on his seat.
Bezel had shown his face twice so far, and each appearance had been overwhelmingly comforting. Once hovering over the face of the moon the night before, and again that very morning, perched and shrieking on a washing line, scaring away parrots and pigeons. If Jobey had noticed, Nilith hadn’t seen it in his face. She wagered Bezel wasn’t the only falcon in the mighty city of Araxes. Just the one with the foulest mouth.
Nilith looked around for the bird, but instead found the avid eyes of a cluster of young, skinny lads, a spectrum of ages from snot-nosed to sprouting his first chin hairs. Beneath their rags, they had the pale skin of Ede cave-folk, but had blistered in the Arctian heat so many times they looked pox-scarred. They clustered so tightly together in a dark culvert of stone that they looked like the face of an albino spider, many eyes blinking independently. Seeing Jobey’s cream silks and gold chains, the boys emerged into the street and began to trail after the wagon, gaunt legs shifting quickly. Nilith watched them weave like hungry cats through the handcarts and travellers.
Before they could come closer, a sharp whistle from above stopped them dead. Back to the culvert they went, heads down, shoulders hunched. Nilith looked up to a balcony three stories above the street, where an obese woman, pale as milk and swaddled in blankets, sat with a spyglass balanced over one arm.
‘What is it about you, Chaser Jobey, that keeps you from being robbed like every other poor bastard wearing gold and silks in the Sprawls?’
It took Jobey a moment to take the bait, but any chance to bray about his accomplishments and his Consortium was too juicy a worm to pass up. With a thumb, he raised one of the chains about his neck and showed Nilith a glyph carved in gold.
‘Promises. Favours. Call them what you like, the Consortium have many connections in the Outsprawls.’
‘Is that so?’ Nilith mused. ‘You make it sound as if the Consortium are like the Nyxites or the Chamber of the Code.’
‘To many, they are. The royals think the city ends at the edge of the central districts. Out in the Sprawls, the Chamber and their scrutinisers might as well be a myth. The Consortium, however, are well known to those who matter, and it pays not to get on their bad side. Therefore, this glyph affords me some respect and safer travels,’ he said, turning over his shoulder to face Nilith. ‘Only fools or the uninitiated dare to attack an agent of the Consortium.’
‘In all honesty, I’m surprised the Consortium would care so much for a lowly errand boy like you. If I was a waylayer or soulstealer, I personally wouldn’t hesitate to drive a knife through your spine.’
‘As I said: fools,’ Jobey replied. ‘Though it does not surprise me. You seem educated, noble, and yet you are clearly no more moralistic than any of the other people in these streets.’
‘What are you implying?’
‘That you’re a murderer,’ Jobey said, nodding to the silent and brooding Farazar. ‘No? Is that not correct? I am not often interested in the details of those I chase and catch, but you, madam, have piqued my curiosity. What is he to you? Your half-life? How did you come by him?’
‘None of your business, is how,’ Nilith answered. ‘He got what he deserved. Like any that insist on standing in my way.’
Jobey snorted. He was about to speak when another panicked whinny came from behind the wagon, distracting him. Nilith quickly flicked Farazar’s arm, and he flinched away, looking disgusted at her touch. Help me, she mouthed.
‘Blasted horse!’ Jobey yelled. He pulled his own steeds to a halt and jumped down to the mud. Though Nilith’s heart beat hurriedly, the bow stayed put on the seat once more. Jobey blew rainwater from his lips as he stalked past, eying his prisoners warily.
‘We need to get out of here soon. This Consortium of Jobey’s could be right around the corner,’ Nilith whispered.
Farazar pretended she hadn’t spoken, lifting his chin aloofly.
‘You can’t fool me, husband. I know you want out of this cage as much as I do. For different reasons, perhaps, but the same prick stands in our way. Let’s work together. Just like in Abatwe.’ She nodded towards the chaser, still trying to manhandle Anoish into calm. ‘Farazar—’
‘No!’ the ghost snapped angrily, turning further away from her. ‘I refuse to help you any longer. You started this. You can finish it.’
‘I see you found some testicles in the dunes, husband.’ Nilith dug her nails into the deck of the wagon in frustration, accidentally prising free a thick splinter. She clasped it in her palm, turning her back to the slatherghast. Somehow, she knew it was watching. Always watching. She shuffled to the side so the creature wouldn’t see her grasping the lock of the cage. The splinter was stout, and she heard the click of tumblers as she waggled it about in the keyhole.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Farazar muttered.
No, Nilith realised, she was not. The lock was a bulky cube of wrought iron, and she felt all sorts of teeth in its keyhole. ‘Know any good locksmiths?’
‘Ugh,’ he sighed.
Without looking, Nilith couldn’t see what the splinter was doing, if anything. Farazar watched her efforts avidly, growing more contemptuous by the moment. Anoish couldn’t have known what they were up to, but he helped nonetheless, making a great fuss over the clatter of a nearby stonemasons. A few nearby street guards looked on, unamused by the racket.
‘Easy, horse!’ cried Jobey, wrapping Anoish’s halter around his forearm to wrangle the animal.
Nilith swore as the splinter snapped and the sharp wood bit into her fingertip. ‘This is hopeless.’
Farazar snickered. ‘All that struggle. All those days and weeks spent traipsing the desert. And for what? To end up in some cage, doomed to work in some mine for eternity. I’m glad I will be there to see your face when you finally realise you’ve failed. And judging by that arm, I don’t have long to wait.’
Nilith clenched her jaw, refusing to let him goad her. Her resolve already hung by a thread. Her eyes betrayed her, however, sneaking down to the ragged end of her tunic. The faint glow shone from rips in its rain-dark fabric, like a hooded lantern. The light reached all the way up to her elbow. Nilith shivered as if a cold hand had just run across her chest. She heard a wet slither, and out of her peripheries, she saw the slatherghast licking its fangs. She gave the creature the finger.
‘And what of you, Farazar?’ she asked. ‘What will be your eternity, hmm? Working the same mine, no doubt. I fail, you fail, or have you forgotten?
‘Gah!’ Reminded that their fates were firmly entwined, the ghost lost his nerve. He tried to spit at her, still forgetful of his half-life limitations. ‘I wouldn’t even be in this cage if you had just left me in peace!’
Nilith’s outrage got the better of her. ‘There it is again! The famous Talin Renala self-obsession. You’ve never given a fuck about this city or its inhabitants, and even now, when it’s staring you right in that ugly face of yours, you’re still as blind as a newborn to it. Just look around! Look at what your negligence has given rise to. A Nyxwater shortage. Businessmen like the Consortium. Who knows how many souls they’ve dragged off like this for spurious debts? How many other such empires grow unchecked under your nose? Give that some thought for once, instead of your own vapours. This is all your fault, and when I’m out of this cage, I’ll show you what it means to have a ruler, instead of just a monarch,’ she seethed. ‘Something the Krass learnt long ago.’
Farazar’s eyes were glowing white slits. ‘Ah, yes! The grand, righteous lesson that you crossed half the Reaches to teach me. How could I possibly forget? Well, I’m still waiting, wife, and yet no revelation has come.’
Nilith smiled with no trace of humour. ‘The lesson is not over yet.’ She clenched her jaw. That threat felt emptier than she would have liked.
‘You’re pathetic, wife!’ he scoffed loudly, forgetting himself.
‘I agree,’ said Jobey’s voice, hoarse and unexpectedly close by. The chaser had slipped back to the wagon and was now standing beside the bars, thumb and finger on his chin. ‘All this whispering and bickering is quite pathetic. Husband and wife? Hmm.’ He cocked his head. ‘A surprise. I do not see the attraction between you two.’
At Nilith and Farazar’s withering expressions, Jobey tugged at his collar. ‘Not too far now, lady and shade.’
Nilith was following the chaser with her most acidic scowl when she noticed the bundle of soaking rags behind him, sitting in the gutter. It took a moment of staring to realise it was a person. It was hard to tell with all the rubbish strewn about the makeshift gutters. The shape was slumped up against the bricks of a dilapidated building, legs and arms hidden under dirty cloths. Two blackened eyes peered through a gap in the wrappings, blinking between the drips falling from the broken tiles above. They were fixed on Nilith and the ghost chained next to her with an avidity that was unusual for a beggar. Though that could have been explained by the glowing set of fangs hovering behind Nilith, grinning wide, the beggar’s eyes held intrigue, not fear or the cross-eyed gaze of a drunkard.
As Chaser Jobey retook his seat and the wagon jolted onwards, the eyes followed Nilith, sticking to her until they rounded the next corner. Nilith eyed each crooked building as though it might be their final destination. She looked back, but could no longer see the beggar.
Farazar gripped the bars, letting his vapours turn white where they touched the metal. ‘You’re a liar,’ he hissed at her. ‘I know this whole quest of yours has just been to claim my half-coins and the throne. I will hear you say it before they put you out of your misery.’
