by Ben Galley
‘Give! It! Back!’ I yelled, half in her voice, half in mine. I shoved as hard as I could manage, while plucking the half-coin from her grasp.
It worked, but it worked too well. The half-coin and chain came free of her gnarled fingers, but the haunting spell still gripped me. Hirana’s fiery soul railed against me, battering against me, and my coin fell to the marble as we toppled.
A smash of glass dragged me back into sunlight, and the shards of a broken window rained down on my head. The haunting refused to let go. I was still watching through her eyes, somehow turned around and watching my grey hands grapple madly for purchase on the slick marble. My fingers left bloody smears behind as I began to slip. A screech filled my mouth. Shouts filled my ears, terror my heart, as my feet found nothing beneath them.
Nothing but several thousand feet of air.
Although I was already dead, the fear of heights lay deep in every ground-dwelling soul. In my own panic, I started to pull away from Hirana’s body, trying to get back into the Sanctuary before she tumbled into space. I flexed all my strength, wrenching my blue arm from Hirana’s body. It fell just short of the coin. I strained again, feeling my vapours shudder and pain pound in my head.
My finger grazed the very lip of the copper half-moon. Even in the roar of battle, I heard its gentle chime as I fumbled it across the white, polished stone. I tensed, throwing myself further, but it felt as though somebody had me by the legs. The spell seized me, hurling me back into the widow’s body. Our souls duelled for dominance. Even now, with death waiting below her, she fought me. Her spite stabbed me like needlepoints.
If I cannot win, nobody will. I heard the words echo about Hirana’s skull.
So be it, I told her, and gave her what she wanted.
I poured my will into her fingers, and I plucked them one by one from the lip of stone as if she were playing a harp. Just as she lost her grip, I threw myself into a mad dive for my coin, pushing everything into one act of will. At the same time, so did she. That rage refused to let go, matching my will.
Such is the way of falling that the ground’s attraction doesn’t snatch a person right away. It lets you hover for a moment, just to enjoy the feeling of looking down at the grave you’ll soon occupy. Hirana forewent her moment, as did I. She was too busy still pawing for the glass and the soldiers’ arms now poking frantically into the hot sun. Empty air was all she grabbed. I was too busy watching my half-coin disappear from view.
‘Tal Horix!’ I saw Colonel Omshin screaming, his eyes wide and desperate.
A scream tore from me as the earth pulled at us. I burst from the widow’s chest, or she threw me out. All I knew was the rush of falling. Even though I had little weight, I fell alongside Horix. My vapours were ragged and violent in the wind. Before me, the sandstone sprawl of Araxes loomed, thundering upwards to greet us with its immovable flagstones. I wanted to scream, even though I knew deep within I would be fin—
Copper fingernails lashed my back, scoring white lines of pain across my shoulders.
She was attacking me! Even in her final moments, plummeting to her death, Hirana groped for my throat and scratched at anything else she could grab.
I tumbled, cartwheeling over and over, kicking out at her when I could. Somehow the old bat grabbed my foot, and dug her nails into my calf. I cried out, but the rushing wind stole my voice from me. I grappled with her, and we spun like a barrel in a stream until I was atop her. As the tip of a lesser spire rushed past us, I found the time to curse the Cloudpiercer’s height.
Another peak of a white marble spire flew past, and seeing the blur of windows and balconies flying past intolerably close, Hirana knew the sand in her hourglass was running short. She struggled afresh, scratching my chest and face. She berated me at the top of her lungs, determined to have the final say. Her voice was still faint over the roar of air.
‘Curse you, Caltro Basalt! I will have my vengeance from the grave!’ Hirana cried.
‘That’s if there’s anything left to bind!’ I bellowed. ‘You should have kept your end of the bargain!’
As we rocketed past a high-road, I saw Hirana’s eyes widen, and heard the scream of aggravation rip from her throat. Holding her wrists as her defences crumbled, her emotions rushed through me. Her rage and frustration, but above all, her fear. She was human, after all.
We had cheated the ground long enough. The flagstones met us at terrifying speed. I felt the almighty shock through Hirana’s body before I followed, a hair of a second later. I folded into the widow’s body, half haunting, half pressure. The flagstones shattered, the blood sprayed, and I felt her ribs burst through my chest.
It was over in moments. The spell of falling broke so abruptly my head spun like a top. Shuddering, twitching, I burst from Hirana’s smashed body and stumbled over the stone until I fell in a heap. I heard the screams, the shouts, and saw through my blurred vision the chunks of rubble around the base of a huge tower, and people running.
I had a powerful urge to do the same. I rolled to my back, feeling the warm wet of blood mingling with my naked vapours. My ghostly body could not stop trembling.
Move, Caltro. ‘Move,’ I said aloud.
First the knees, then my hands, and I was up, tottering like a fresh fawn but up nonetheless. I craned my neck up at the Cloudpiercer, and almost fell. Steadying myself, I could see smoke and dust pouring from its peak. Hirana and I were not the only ones to exit the Piercer the quick way. I saw black shapes flying from all sides of the tower. I reached up a hand, as if I could pull my half-coin down, but ended up making a fist instead.
I stared down at the broken Hirana, skull cracked and spilled like a pomegranate thrown against a boulder. One leg was bent entirely the wrong way. Blood seeped from every pore, filling the shattered dent she had made in the flagstones. Her gaze was bloodshot and skewed, but still gazing upwards at the Cloudpiercer, as if longing for it.
‘You should have kept up your end of the bargain,’ I whispered, feeling strangely wretched, as if her dying moments had leaked into my body.
One foot forward, and then the next, and within moments, I was running, leaving Hirana in the dust. I did not know where I was running to, but I ran anyway. If only to test my legs, as Pointy had once told me.
Chapter 18
Old Enemies, New Friends
Hunt ‘em!
Chase ‘em!
Break ‘em!
Bind ‘em!
Archaic and inventive soulstealer chant
The trail of smoke could be seen across Araxes. The black line, stretched by the wind, was drawn east with its origins at the peak of the Cloudpiercer.
Huddled in their borrowed garb, Nilith and Heles had not seen the strange flying machine. They had barely heard its crash, so far above them and so muffled by the huge buildings around them. The streets had come alive with talk of it only moments after. Doors were unlocked. Windows unbarred. Heads poked into the street and craned upwards. Mouths came alive with talk of a machine. Of a coup. Of sorcery.
They had waded through such talk until the boom had emanated from the mighty tower, and smoke began to pour from its top. The whispers had taken on a different tone. A coup! Sorcery!
The streets had emptied once more. Merchant stalls were packed away. Armoured carriages sprinted homeward. Shouts and cries were chased by the clamour of doors shutting and locking, and all too quickly, Araxes fell into a strange, haunting silence.
Before long, Nilith and Heles were practically alone again, and despite the air of fear, they were glad for it. The streets had begun to get busier closer to the Core, scrutinisers and proctors more common. But with the attack on the Piercer, every soldier standing guard had run for the Core Districts. The Cult soldiers they had seen in previous districts seemed absent here. Another blessing.
They were in Yeresh District, a prosperous corner of Araxes where the almost rich had built their modest towers. It sat at the end of the Avenue of Oshirim, before dusty narrow streets became a gr
and flagstone avenue.
The towers cast few shadows in the noonday sun. Nilith baked under the mounds of fabric; their musty smell had refused to burn away in the daylight. She stared up at the buildings with their sweeping balconies and grand decorations, each trying to outdo its neighbour. Half of her had missed the tight and rich press of the Core Districts, as opposed to the wide-open desert. The other half was just glad to be there.
Nilith’s heart beat a fraction faster with every turn they made, every quiet junction they came to. Street names started to sound familiar. Earlier that morning, she had even recognised a bazaar she’d not visited in years, and her heart had drummed almost out of her chest. Mostly with excitement, but worry had soured it the moment smoke started billowing from her tower.
Nilith felt her ruse crumbling, felt the sand running through the hourglass faster and faster. This journey had never seemed more like a race than it did now. She put a hand up to her collar, brushing her neck with cold vapour, and clenched her numb fist instead.
‘Steady, Nilith. You’ll tire yourself,’ said Heles, still insisting on a whisper despite the fact they were alone.
Realising she had been storming ahead, Nilith slowed her pace, and moved to stroke Anoish on the snout. He looked tired. He grumbled deep in his throat, and she patted him.
‘Good horse. Not far now,’ Nilith said, more to reassure herself.
‘We’ll pass not too far from the Chamber of the Code. I could implore Rebene for some trusted scrutinisers—’
Nilith shook her head emphatically. ‘No, Heles. Nobody in this city is to be trusted, not with the emperor’s body unbound and right here.’ She whacked the pile of bundles and a muted curse came from beneath. ‘You think seeing the Cult standing side by side with soldiers and scrutinisers is a sign we can trust the chamberlain? Something has changed in this city since I left. The risk is too great. No, we do this alone and quietly before it’s too late. Am I clear?’
‘Crystal, Majesty.’
Heles nodded, moving ahead like a scout. Her bruises and cuts had mostly healed, but her wrist was still broken, and there was a limp in her right leg. Nilith’s wounds, however…
The empress took advantage of the lack of attention to peel back some of her wrappings. Her good fingers felt the cold almost immediately. Wrinkling her lip, she traced her collarbone until the firmness frayed away into vapour. Nilith clenched her cursed arm beneath the cloth, still feeling nothing but a memory of a muscle. She gritted her teeth until her eyes watered.
‘Getting better?’ asked the falcon on the horse’s back. She had forgotten Bezel was there, he had been so quiet.
Brushing an escapee tear away, she shook her head. ‘Of course it’s not.’
‘That makes two, then,’ he replied with a grunt.
Nilith traded a look with those dark eyes and found them calm. There was no frustration there, or sorrow; just calm.
‘A break!’ she called to Heles, and they found a shady alcove in between two stout buildings. Warehouses, by the look of their ramps and wide doors. Letting Anoish free of his bundles, she dumped Farazar and his body onto the flagstones with a thump and a curse.
‘Damn you, woman. Show me a little decency, if I’m going to be part of your lunatic plot, and go down in history as some patsy. Some piece of property,’ he snapped.
‘I see you’ve had some time to think in there,’ scoffed Nilith. ‘And it’s a little too late to be worrying about the history scrolls now, husband. You should have thought of that years ago.’
Farazar shook a damning finger at her. ‘You will ruin the Talin Renala line with your arrogance! Society itself will be broken. Tors and tals up in arms!’
‘Good, I say,’ spat Heles, leaving phlegm in the dust to make her point. She parted her wrappings and held her face up to the hot sun, eyes closed. ‘About time they changed their ways.’
‘I agree with my friend here. What about this city works, Farazar?’ Nilith raised her arms to the towers around her. As inwardly elated as she was to be back in the city, it only reminded her of why she had left it in the first place, and travelled over a thousand miles south to fetch this wretch of an emperor. ‘Look. These are fortresses, not homes. These are not streets, but gutters. Their inhabitants are not citizens, but prisoners of a society that sees them as expendable. This is no way to live.’
‘The empire will collapse!’ he said in a savage growl. Somehow, after this entire journey, he still hadn’t learned that aggression got him nowhere but pain. He had not listened to a damn word, nor opened his eyes to any of the downtrodden around him. He clung to his noble pride, and Nilith had come to pity him for it.
‘It’s collapsing as we speak, you fool. I’ll be saving the empire.’
Nilith shoved him back down into the cloth pile, and he got the notion of silence.
She helped Bezel down from the horse and laid him in some of the spare cloth. His eyes were now half-closed, but he was a fast healer. The blood on his makeshift bandages was dry.
‘If I were you, I would have cut out that shit-brain’s tongue a long time ago,’ he said.
Nilith smiled. ‘You mind your tongue, bird.’
‘I’m a fucking falcon. I’ll say what I want.’ Bezel sighed to himself. ‘I was wrong about you, though,’ he said. ‘I thought you were just another murderer, hunting for half-coins and glory. No. You’re something new. Proved this old bird wrong, didn’t you?’
‘You’re the first of many, hopefully.’
‘Good luck. You’ll probably need it,’ he whispered. Bezel closed his eyes, settling into sleep.
‘Mm,’ Nilith hummed, thinking of her dream of the beldam. She traced the string and chain around her neck, clutching the copper coin and Fen’s bag of powder against her chest. ‘I think we’ll all need it.’
She patted Bezel’s wing and got to standing, catching Farazar eying the falcon from his pile of clothes, watching him carefully. Nilith frowned.
Anoish took some water from a nearby communal trough. Something nice about the city, for once. It had its beauty and conveniences, Nilith had to admit. But so did any city, and most of them didn’t see murder as a national pastime. She listened to the horse’s slurping as she stared up at the Piercer between a gap in two narrow spires.
Smoke still poured from its tip, a fainter grey now. There were no flames, at least that she could see. She wondered where this supposed flying machine had come from, and which sorceress or sorcerer had a hand in it. Prince Phylar? Surely not. How untimely that would be, for him, at least. He would find the prized Sanctuary as empty as a bad gambler’s pockets.
‘How far to the Grand Nyxwell, do you reckon, Heles? It feels like an age since I was in the city.’
‘As the rook flies, maybe forty, fifty miles? Through the streets, avoiding certain places… sixty.’
Nilith sighed. ‘That sounds like such a small number, considering all the miles behind me, and yet such a huge number at the same time.’
‘It’s the last stretch. That’s always the hardest part, or so they say. I haven’t left the Core in more than a decade.’
Nilith looked at the scrutiniser, who was staring up at the Cloudpiercer with narrowed eyes, as if blaming it for all those years.
‘What made you work for the Chamber?’ she asked.
Heles snorted. ‘The more important question is why did I carry on working for the Chamber?’ she replied, knuckling the tattoos on her jaw and the side of her head. ‘Twelve years, I’ve given Chamberlain Rebene and your so-called emperor. But that being said, it was my father’s job before mine. I was a wayward child, no proper daughter of a scrutiniser. I refused to follow in his footsteps, though he wanted it desperately for me. He used to come home stinking of shit, or covered in blood. One time he came home half-dead and I decided that night, only ten years old, that I didn’t want that life. I took to trying to keep him from working. Hiding his shoes, getting in fights. Ran my mother spare, I did, but his dedication was absolute. He p
unished me black and blue, but he always maintained this idea I would change. That I would come right. I proved him correct, in the end, but not before being so angry with him I started a fire in the cellars beneath our hole of a building. A child’s idea; it was soaked in emotion and utterly without sense. I wanted to show him he was wrong: that I would match his view of me. The fire spread to a bucket of tar-rags, and all too quickly, I couldn’t stop it.’ Heles eyes were glazed with memories. ‘Two houses burnt. Fifteen souls in all died that night. Two families, including mine.’
‘I—’ Nilith began to speak, but Heles shook her head.
‘Don’t do that. I’ve had plenty of time to torture myself with those memories. I know I was scared, stupid. Young. The past is for keeping mistakes in, and that’s what I did. I dodged the soulstealers and orphanages and survived the streets until I was old enough to hold a spear and guard a door. That door was in the Low Docks, and one night I’m chasing some fuckhead thief along the piers, and I run into my father, literally speaking. Stopped my heart nearly dead to see that proud face a-glow and dark from the burns. I wouldn’t have recognised him if he hadn’t said my name. He was bound to some stealer boss in their warehouses.’
‘What did you do?’
‘First thing I did was forget about the thief. Then I went to find the foreman of the warehouse and punched him right in the nose. Dragged him to his boss, stabbed them both in their guts, and then left their bodies in the gutter. Didn’t wait for the scribes and their towers of claims, as I should have, but at least I gave them the justice they deserved. As for my father, him I set free. Put him out of his misery as kind as I could. Not the way of the Code perhaps, but seeing as the rest of the city bends the Code, why shouldn’t I? I took a job at the nearest Chamber office and didn’t look back.’
Nilith shared Heles’ bitterness. Though the details were changed, it was a story she had heard many times before. And like all the others, she tucked it away in her mind. Those stories had been like bricks of a wall to her. Once, they had built a purpose; now, they shored up her reserve.
