by Ben Galley
‘Release her!’ came the widow’s shrill order, and I heard the great cogs above us begin to turn with ponderous clanks. I realised then what the machinery in the roof had been for. It was pointless, but I tried to hold a breath anyway.
‘Charge, you fucking hounds!’ Temsa bellowed at his soldiers, spit plastering his face as he followed their charge over the bricks they’d battered out of the way. This was not how he had predicted this night turning out, but he was determined to right it. An empress-in-waiting was watching.
Temsa’s cane stabbed at the rubble. His leg ached, prickling his hips and back with needles, but he pressed on, turning the pain into anger. He thought of Horix’s white-haired head and its scowling face, dangling from his bloody grip. Perhaps he’d fashion it into a tankard, something to remind guests of the price of trying to beat him.
Horix’s gardens were paltry, and the soldiers found just a patch of earth between them and a stout but small door. No brave and foolish guards stood ready in defence. They were alone against the tower.
‘Bring up the ram!’ Temsa ordered. He stood by the walls, wary of the shadows between the scattered palms and shrubs to his left. Danib stood nearby, glowing white through the gaping rent in his breastplate. One arm hung limper than the other. His huge sword dragged in the mist-wreathed dust.
Something grumbled in the earth beneath them. Temsa felt it running through his talons. Ani seemed to feel it too. She looked to him, and they shared a blank look.
A puff of dust raced across the ground, splitting the garden with a dark line. Sand fell away, as if pouring down a giant hourglass. The ground was edging apart in two halves, creating a rectangular pit. Several soldiers lost their footing to the gap, crying out as the space opened beneath their feet. They clawed at the sand as they slipped.
‘Back! Back!’ Ani roared at the others.
The men were slow, heavy with confusion. As the gap yawned wider, showing a black void beneath the earth, half a dozen lost their grip and tumbled inwards with piteous cries. They were short-lived, and Temsa’s confusion grew. He whirled around to stare at the royal entourage, waiting back in the courtyard. He could see the ice in Sisine’s eyes even from a distance, as damning as a falling icicle.
‘Horix! What is this farce?’ Temsa cried. ‘Triggermen! Fire into that pit!’
A few bodies came forward, bows waggling at the darkness. But the shifting ground made their feet skittish. Arrows sailed high and wide. A few of Horix’s soldiers had appeared on balconies, and were taking pot-shots at them with short bows. Soldiers were soon scattering for cover.
There came a resounding bang as the pit found its boundaries, taking up practically all of the dusty space between the garden walls.
Temsa heard the cries rise from below, cut off suddenly. Then it appeared. An arc of red and gold cloth, swollen and puffed, rose up above the dust without a sound. One of his men was clinging to it, whimpering as he slowly slid from its curves and landed with a bang somewhere far below.
The patchwork cloth bulged into a huge, misshapen balloon, rising further and further until it forced Temsa’s head back, making his neck crunch. Clinging to the balloon’s underside was the bottom half of a small wooden ship, clinker-built and complete with keel and rudder. Silence fell across the garden as the soldiers gawped at the bizarre contraption.
No sooner had it come into view did Temsa see a porthole, and the triggerbow poking from it. He spared not a shout, throwing himself behind Danib as the bolt was loosed. Stone chips sprayed as it met the wall behind him.
Another flurry of bolts followed, peppering his men. More bodies tumbled into the pit, their wails now prolonged and each ending in a crash.
‘Do something, Temsa!’ shrieked Sisine, now standing beside them, mouth agape in horror at the sight of the machine effortlessly plying the air, defying the gods themselves. Palm frond and feather oars made the craft spin as it climbed into the mist.
Temsa cursed as a bolt clanged off his talons. He shoved Danib in the back. ‘You heard her. Fucking do something!’ he cursed.
With a grunt, Danib hefted his sword. Holding it over his shoulder, he took a step, stretched backwards, and then threw the blade like an axe. Torchlight ran along its steel, making it seem almost liquid. Mist spiralled in the weapon’s path. A panicked shout came from behind one of the portholes, only to be silenced as the sword struck the ship’s hull, just below where the wood met canvas. With an almighty crack, it was buried up to the hilt.
Temsa watched Horix’s craft list to the right and veer madly around the pillar of a building. Over the strangled sounds of pain and confusion, he heard a faint reptilian hiss coming from the craft, and the cries of, “Leak!” behind the silver wood hull.
Before the craft was swallowed by the haze, Temsa saw a flash of blue standing at a dark doorway in its side. A figure stood by him: shorter, more crooked, cowl thrown back and face frozen in a victorious smile. He could see it clearly in the cold glow of the shade at her side. Even at that distance, Temsa could tell that smile was not for him. Though Caltro’s gaze bored into him, Horix’s did not. Her gaze ran past him, reserved for the empress-in-waiting who stood shaking with rage nearby.
As resoundingly as a door shutting, the flying contraption vanished into the night. The awkward silence soured quickly. Temsa looked to Sisine. Her face was flushed with blood. With a bark of an order, Sisine and her entourage about-faced and made for the broken gates. She had no words for Temsa but a strangled, ‘Tomorrow.’
Temsa watched her leave, analysing her sour expression. As a man who prided himself on reducing people to blubbering, bleeding wrecks, he liked to think he could recognise fear when he saw it. He witnessed it then, in the empress-in-waiting’s face.
Sisine looked as though she had seen a ghost.
Sisine was a hurricane of gold and turquoise. The soldiers struggled to keep up with her, wincing at the vehemence of her cursing. As she snatched her silk train from the blood-soaked stones, Sisine glared at the street beyond, where gawkers had gathered, and chancers already tugged at the fresh bodies in the hope of claiming a soul. Some saw her and prostrated themselves in the damp sand. Others were too occupied with trying to raise their social status.
Before the soldiers guided her back to her armoured carriage, Sisine spied a glimpse of red standing amongst the crowd. She saw one of the Cult sisters standing in the same alleyway she had lurked in, watching, waiting. The sister had a group of cloaked and armoured shades at her back; Sisine could see their muted glow painting the mist blue. There were living standing with them, too, wearing proctors’ and scrutinisers’ garb. Chamber and Cult, standing side by side, and both against her. They wore confused expressions upon seeing all the royal tabards lying blood-stained and punctured, and the empress-in-waiting wading through a street full of corpses.
Sisine locked eyes with the dead sister. Unlike the others around her, the shade’s face was unreadable. Sisine clenched her jaw, raised her chin to the appropriate royal height, and gave her a silent promise of another death.
As she walked, her golden sandal slipped upon something that looked suspiciously like stray entrails, and her ankle betrayed her. She flopped sideways, but was saved from falling by a cold grip on her arm. Etane righted her, and she immediately swatted him away, cutting a white mark across his cheek with her ring.
Sisine snarled, the pain in her ankle lending her viciousness. ‘How dare you touch me, shade?’ Sisine looked around as she tried not to hobble, daring her soldiers to look at her. Through their golden shields, she saw some bow their heads in muted chuckles.
‘Back to the Piercer!’ Sisine barked, her mind bursting with flying contraptions and old faces.
Chapter 9
The Hunted
Soulblades were a short-lived intersection between Nyxite binding magic and blacksmithing. Interminably difficult to accomplish, and vexingly inconsistent, the practice of binding souls into weapons of war was a step too far for deadbinding. Mad
ness seemed to follow most blades like a stench. Very few were worth their silver, or the risks of keeping one, and so they were shunned, and fell from fashion, forgotten to all but collectors of antiques and master swordsmen.
From ‘The General’s Handbook’, a Chamber of Military Might publication
‘I tell you, I recognise this woman,’ Pointy said again.
‘So you keep saying,’ I muttered from one side of my mouth. ‘Saying it over and over doesn’t make it any more useful to our situation.’
Our situation was poor, that was for certain. There was a frantic racket above me as soldiers tried to mend the holes and keep the fabric from sputtering open. An “envelope”, I’d heard them call it. With its red paint, I imagined it more of a ruptured heart, pissing away lifeblood over the city.
I leaned forwards, peeking at the city below us through the dark doorway. The mist was merciful; it kept our real height above the ground a mystery, obscuring much of the streets. The occasional black rooftop rushed beneath. They were getting more common now, and not just towers threatening to scrape us from the sky. I felt the craft veer at an order, and saw the spiky tower of a pyramid sail past the hull.
Horix’s screeching could be heard over all the sounds of panic. ‘Height, curse it! We need height! Turn her around!’
Respect and formality had the tendency to dwindle under situations of pressure. This was no different. The men working the levers and wheels in the craft’s nose yelled back at her.
‘We’re trying!’
‘We need more of the gas!’
I wondered if I too should be afraid, but I knew unless I fell into a copper mangle, height posed no threat to me, or any ghost aboard. They still rowed the air as if it should have, though. I heard the whoosh, whoosh of their palm and feather oars, making the craft lurch up and down, or yaw to the side. More than one living soul aboard had decorated the boards with vomit during our short flight.
I was just impressed they’d managed to keep the Vengeance in the air so long. An hour, I guessed; maybe more, since Danib had speared us like a floeshark. I was just happy to be ignored, and wonder how long this strange journey would last.
That didn’t stop me watching the widow like an eagle watches a nest of rabbits. I couldn’t see my coin but I could almost feel its presence, tugging at me. Perhaps that was just my lust for it, but in any case, I had found myself creeping from my spot, only to squat down again as the soldiers rushed about. Nobody stood guard. I looked out of the doorway again, and contemplated falling.
‘Now?’ Pointy asked, sensing my thoughts.
‘Higher, damn it!’ Horix yelled. ‘And turn around! The Piercer is behind us!’
There it was. The depth of Horix’s madness. Or genius. I had yet to decide. I realised her ambition, at least. It seemed Temsa and Sisine weren’t the only one with the emperor’s Sanctuary in their sights. Horix had simply decided on taking a far, far different route to the throne. Part of me was impressed. The other parts were shocked.
Once more, my numb backside left my seat. Sliding the sword through the belt of the smock, I shuffled forwards, looking anywhere but the widow to belie my intentions. Her cowl was turned away from me, fixed on the window in the inverted bow. I looked too, and saw the early morning spread before me: just a blurry canvas of dark mists and shapes below, speckled with yellow and blue. Spires poked through the mist like needles through a blanket of wool. Dawn was still some time away, but its light had begun to rise and paint the night with pipe-smoke grey.
The stocky tower of a storage house loomed ahead, and all eyes had turned upon it. Shouts drowned out my uneven stumbling and unbidden yelp as the Vengeance lurched again. A clang sounded as one of the spars struck a minaret.
‘More height!’ Horix yelled.
‘It won’t climb, Tal!’ replied one of the men at the controls.
I crept forwards until I hovered behind the widow, craning my neck to see hers, and my coin on her breast. My thief’s hands already twitched with anticipation, fingers gracing thumbs.
There. My half-coin. I saw the tantalising glint of copper dangling from a chain. Horix yelled another order as I reached, too clumsy in my eagerness. I had never been a good pickpocket. The craft swung to the left and my hand thwacked her cowl. I cursed myself as she turned, lightning fast for her age, so much so that I thought her neck might snap there and then, and save me the trouble.
But no. I was met with eyes like two flint daggers, and a resounding backhand from the new colonel. I was sent spinning to the floor, my cheek shivering with white fire. Horix was already standing over me when I raised my head. I saw my coin then, free of her hand, and a desperate rage took me. I ripped Pointy from my belt, slicing it in two in the process, and swung for the widow’s neck. It was the most murderous action I had ever taken, and I even had time to gawp in surprise as I watched the obsidian blade cut through the air.
Air was all the blade touched. Reverberations ran though my hand as Omshin kicked the flat of the blade, just above the hilt, and sent Pointy clattering from my grasp. Another kick came to my face, and knocked my skull back against the wood.
‘Treachery from all sides,’ Horix was muttering, picking her way over me, ensuring her skirts came nowhere near my cold blue skin. She bent to pick up Pointy between two fingers and held him over me. I wondered how she had the time for such torture while her precious Vengeance looked to be moments from crashing. As it turned out, she didn’t. The widow was simply reading the hieroglyphs along the soulblade.
‘I know this sword,’ she told me, reading the faint glyphs in the obsidian. ‘Absia. I have seen this blade before. It was my grandfather’s sword.’
‘I was bloody right!’ Pointy whispered, strangely elated for his precarious position. ‘Wait, that means she is—’
‘An ugly thing then, and an ugly thing now. How you came by it is none of my concern. What does worry me is that you think it is yours.’ She paused to chuckle, like gravel being sifted. Her eyes fell upon my smudged white feather. ‘Even if you were free.’
With a toss so casual I thought she was playing a trick, Horix threw Pointy from the Vengeance’s doorway. I watched the sword pirouette into the night, the face on his pommel as aghast as the look on mine.
‘No!’ I would have thrown myself over too had Omshin and another soldier not hauled me back into the corner.
‘Caltro!’ I heard Pointy’s cry fade as he disappeared into the mist and the endless city below. I desperately looked to the spires, trying to remember where he fell.
‘No!’
‘There,’ said the widow, wiping her hands. ‘The matter is solved. If you’ll excuse me…’
‘You fucking bitch!’ I cared little for my freedom in that moment, wanting only to see her punished for her cruelty. Horix ignored my cursing, which only served to infuriate me further. Instead, she turned back to the men battling the cogs and levers and took a breath to bellow.
‘Dead gods damn it! Land her!’
‘You said more height!’ they chorused.
‘Land her, I said! If she won’t fly, slow it down and put her there!’
Between the steel-clad arms and fluttering cobalt glow, I couldn’t see what she pointed to, but I hoped it was sharp and deadly. Like a spear factory, or a warehouse of stalagmites. Anything to teach the widow a lesson, to see her sneering face dashed open. I wondered at the fury running through my vapours.
Each of us wears a veil. It is one of decorum and civilisation, and we drape it over the animal skin we wore for millennia before towers and cobbles. Even in a city such as Araxes, such veils are worn by all. Some veils are thicker, taking something drastic to tear or wrench them away. A knife against a lover’s throat, perhaps. Others only need a little fraying to show the beast beneath. Sometimes all it takes is the sun going down.
I had thought my veil long since in tatters, but now I knew I had been wearing its shreds for some time. My lips drew back to show my teeth, and my chest heaved without
breath. I looked down at where my fists clenched against armour, and saw my glow had turned a darker shade.
Though others around me bit their lips and undoubtedly clenched their arseholes, I kept my eyes open every moment of that descent, watching the Vengeance falling to the earth, praying death on all those around me. I would pluck my half-coin from amongst the corpses.
As it turned out, the art of conversation had died in Araxes during Nilith’s absence. Even being hauled along like meat in Krona’s caravan, there had been taunts and jibes. Talk of some sort, at least.
This scrutiniser offered as much chat as a plaster wall.
Nilith understood the need for silence. During their night of creeping she had heard far too many shouts and screams floating through the mist. It was a fine night for soulstealing, it seemed, and the denizens of the sprawls were well aware of it.
As usual, only ghosts, idiots, and their little group dared to ply the murky darkness. Though, to be fair, their group could have fallen into the idiot category. They certainly looked like a plump target for soulstealers, or thieves of any kind, for that matter. Farazar had been draped over Anoish, next to his body, gagged and bound. Bezel hid within the covers, keeping watch on him. Nilith and Heles walked out front, boots testing the sand quietly as they listened for trouble.
Hours they had travelled this way: silent and wary. Straight lines were foreign to them. They frequently took detours to avoid noises or bright patches of light. More than once they’d had to duck into an alley or side street to let some poor unfortunate sprint past, a pack of stealers on their heels. They even avoided ghosts; Heles knew they often worked as trackers for soulstealing gangs. Those had been the last words she had uttered, just after freeing them from Jobey and the Consortium, of whom there had been no sign since.
