SMOKE AND BLADES

by D Elias Jenkins

  Gaunt turned and gently cheered glasses with her. He squeezed her shoulder and smiled.

  “Well then you had better find some allies. A lady needs protection. There are some strange men about at these parties.”

  “There certainly are.”

  Izzy leaned in and kissed Gaunt softly on the lips. Gaunt winced as the previous night’s wounds stung but he relished the moment.

  “We can’t leave quite yet. It’ll look suspicious.”

  Izzy looked about the ballroom then smiled up at her husband.

  “How would like to kill some time, Mr. Gaunt?”

  “I thought we might have a dance?”

  Izzy ran a finger down his formal military uniform.

  “You know, you cut the figure of the dashing spy rather well.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Right up until the point where you start dancing. You’re terrible, sweetheart.”

  Gaunt hung his head.

  “That’s cold.”

  Izzy moved in closer, pressing the warmth of her body against Gaunt’s starched uniform.

  “Tell you what. If you pass on every one of your characteristics to the little one, I’ll provide the musicality.”

  Gaunt put his arms around her and they began to dance in small simple steps.

  “That’s fair.”

  As the band played on, more guests began to take to the floor. Izzy relaxed a little in Gaunt’s arms. They danced slowly as if they had not a care in the world. She whispered softly in his ear.

  “I’m scared John. I’ve never felt scared on a mission before. Not like this.”

  “Never been parents before.”

  “Did we do the right thing? Keeping it?”

  “A little late for that chat, twinkle toes.”

  “I’m serious.”

  Gaunt broke away a few inches and looked down at her. His soldier’s face softened for a moment as he saw the genuine concern in her eyes. He stroked a stray curl from her brow.

  “Izzy we’ve spent years going up against threats to Free Reign that most people don’t even know exist. I’ve been shot four times. You were poisoned in Trakeska for Spark’s sake. We can handle starting a family.”

  “Then why do I feel so nervous? I want to be a good mother to your child, John.”

  This time Gaunt smiled fully.

  “You know what I love about you?”

  “What?”

  “Tonight we are going to steal a precursor artefact that according to our bosses might be the most dangerous thing in the world, and yet the only thing you’re nervous about is being a good mother.”

  “Don’t laugh.”

  “It’s cute.”

  Izzy blushed and dug her head into Gaunt’s shoulder. He crushed her luxuriant curls against his cheek and breathed in the scent of her hair. Her smell always made him feel comfortable and excited at the same time.

  One last mission then we’re out.

  As the music played, guests spun around them like clockwork dolls, displaying firm knowledge of the latest dance out of Free Reign’s jitterhalls. John and Izzy held one another close, lost in a private rhythm. Gaunt focused on his feet, still trying to impress her after all their years together.

  When the band stopped playing, the bell rang above the balcony.

  The assembled broke away from their spinning couplings and picked up a full glass of Krispennwine for the inevitable toast.

  Gaunt and Izzy nodded across to Sir Skallen. The ambassador peered at them curiously and then smiled back. The low murmur of chatter continued as diplomats from a plethora of regions filtered out into the night along the walkway.

  At the far end, Lord Brevin of Zalenberg stood at a small podium. He looked jittery and ruddier than ever bathed in the light from his pyramid. As the crowd quietened down Brevvit coughed and offered them a raised glass.

  “Thank you for joining me outside on this fresh evening. We’re a hardy lot here and relish the chill wind. However I’m aware that some of you from warmer climes may suffer from a more delicate disposition than myself. So we will be serving some pepper sausage soup in the reception hall afterwards…if you would all be patient with me for a few minutes while I prattle on…”

  A low ripple of polite laughter.

  Gaunt and Izzy held one another in the cold air. He slid his hand down over his wife’s belly. She was barely showing and the specially made dress she wore expertly concealed the bump, but Gaunt felt his hand warm from the life within her. As she leaned back against him, he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

  “I told Brolynn we were done.”

  Izzy’s eyes widened and she craned her neck around to see if he was kidding.

  “When?”

  “Before we left. I told him I’d take the teaching position at Northgate Academy.”

  Izzy wormed her way around until she stood in Gaunt’s arms facing him.

  “John Gaunt, there is no way you will be happy lecturing fresh young recruits on tradecraft.”

  Gaunt placed a warming hand on her pale cheek.

  “We’ve done more than anyone could have asked of us Izabella. Free Reign won’t crumble without us. It’s someone else’s turn. I thought we might take a sabbatical first, take the little one and go travelling.”

  Izzy smiled up at him and shivered a little. He hugged her closer.

  “Ooh. Where to?”

  “Nice places.”

  “Nice places? We have most certainly never been there.”

  Gaunt leaned in to kiss her and froze. Izzy looked at him expectantly and then realized he was looking past her. Over her shoulder.

  “John?”

  Gaunt narrowed his eyes. “What is that?”

  Izzy turned and followed his gaze. Lord Brevvit was in full flow, his wine lubricated speech gaining all the polite diplomatic approval it deserved. Gaunt was looking past him, into the sky above the city. A dark shape was silhouetted against the moon, swooping down towards the aristocrat. Gaunt began to walk forward, jostling disgruntled guests from his path and straining his eyes up into the night.

  He looked around him at where they all stood, and then at Brevvit’s position at the end of the walkway.

  Gaunt felt ice in his belly as the shape suddenly became familiar. He whispered under his breath.

  “Fallen.”

  Gaunt drew his pistol and started throwing people out of the way, pushing them back in towards the balcony.

  13

  The air elemental pushed the lift platform up from below. Its vague intermittent cloudy face billowed up around the edges.

  Inspector Maeve Scurlock stood on the marble disc and watched the panoramic view of Free Reign spread out before her. The wind whistled about her, blowing her long coat up around her waist. She breathed in the cool fresh air as she rose higher. Most people would close the safety rail around them but Maeve enjoyed the precarious sense that a sudden gust might blow her from her perch.

  There were stairs inside most, but not all, of the high pale towers of Candlehill. Only acolytes and monks ever used them and even they did it as a form of absolution or atonement. No sane person would climb a mile of winding marble staircase just to be sent back down again on some fool errand by a capricious mage. Maeve had once investigated the death of a young monk who had literally walked himself to death trudging up and down the steps of one tower because he could not get a pernickety sorcerer’s lunch order correct.

  The vast metropolis spread out below her.

  Its skyline was a confusing tangled mass of layers and architecture. A thousand year ago, Old Reign had been the centre of an empire spanning centuries that had brought shared language and culture to half the western world.

  Pilgrims and knowledge seekers came from all across the ancient world for the natural magic that flowed up from deep in the earth. The inherent energy in the sorcerous pools that bubbled and reeked beneath the foundations was the primordial soup that birthed the first fundamental manifestations. The m
agi learned to add ingredients and manipulate the magic pools to become masters of the first true elementals.

  Fire, water and air elementals powered the first mills, blacksmith’s forges, the bath houses and drinking fountains of Old Reign. The magi built shells and contraptions to best accommodate and harness the abilities of their fundamental manifestations. Soon the sorcerers became more akin to engineers, using their unlimited source of energy to power more and more extravagant designs and follies. The power and technology this gave Old Reign enabled it to have the most expansive empire the world had ever seen, that lasted nearly seven hundred years. Like all empires, it overreached and eventually fell from glory.

  From the ruins of the old empire, a new civilization slowly arose. Rules were established around the use of magic and its purpose in society. The city became a bastion of learning, exploration and invention. As wars raged across the lands, the Earth elementals were used to build the highest most impenetrable walls the world had ever seen. There in relative isolation the city slowly began to flourish again. Refugees and wanderers from across the globe were drawn there to find a new life within its high walls. The modern city of Free Reign was built on the bones of the old city.

  The water of the sorcery pools had been filtered up from deep beneath the city and into a graceful network of mage-hardened transparent pipes called streamlines that extended into every district. The sorcerous fluid brought perpetual warmth to the city as well as pale phosphorescence in yellows, blues and reds that made Free Reign glow in the night.

  When the rains came each February the entire city was clouded in a haze of steam as the cold water sizzled off the streamlines.

  Maeve felt the disc smoothly come to a halt near the top of the tower. The wind was cold and a few Kingswans flew gracefully in the sky around the pinnacle. Pale drifts of neon colour trailed from their tail feathers, absorbed from the latent sorcery of the high streamlines.

  Maeve stepped from the disc and onto the Bonebridge that led to the next tower. The beautiful span was a single meticulously carved dragon spine a mile from the ground. For many, crossing the bridge would have been a test of faith but Maeve enjoyed seeing the city from this height. It gave her a sense of perspective sometimes difficult when she moved amongst the throng down below.

  Guarding the door at the far end stood two hulking Quartz Golems as immobile as statues, which in a sense, they were. The door swung open and Maeve stepped into the tower. The fizzy static of sorcery hit her skin as soon as she stepped inside.

  “Come in Inspector. Make yourself at home.”

  Maeve walked forward into the warm light of a study. Bookshelves lined every inch of the walls, over thirty feet high. She stood amazed in a vertical tunnel of paperbacks and old leather volumes. Brass steps and walkways led up to the higher levels and ladders on coasters and rails reached up to the very top. As her eyes drifted upwards, they fell on the glass dome at the pinnacle of the tower. Asymmetrical stained glass panels were interspersed with clear ones, allowing beams of light to filter down at odd angles. A fine shimmer of dust motes floated in each column of sunlight that dappled the tiled floor. The intermittent shadows of gliding Kingswans flitted across the elegant domed window. There were several large lacquered tables placed about the room covered in books, notes and maps. A few intricate clockwork ornaments ticked and whirred on one table, next to a slowly spinning globe pinned with tiny flags and notes in various places of interest.

  Maeve smiled at the man that stood behind the largest desk. He was tall and austere. Iron grey hair was swept back and eyeglasses sat on his high bridged nose. In his expensive woolen suit and purple smoking jacket he looked more captain of industry than scholarly mage.

  “If you saw my home, you’d know this was a far cry from it. But thank you.”

  The man gave her a wolfish grin and poured himself a drink from a bulbous decanter.

  “May I offer you some plum brandy? I usually have a little snifter before lunch. Do you think that’s a little decadent?”

  Maeve wandered slowly in the round room taking in book titles as she went. She was practiced at dealing with authority but still always felt a twinge of nerves in her dealings with the magi. They tended to be hugely intelligent, massively skilled in sorcery but eccentric and sometimes capricious. Interaction with them could feel like a chess match.

  “I think alcohol and sorcery sounds like a dangerous mix. Didn’t our ancestors nearly level the whole city just shredding slips all over the place willy-nilly, high on Spark knows what?”

  The mage took a slow sip and stared at her over the rim of the glass.

  “Oh I do some of my best work after two drinks. And my most interesting after three. Join me?”

  Maeve raised an eyebrow at the decanter and then nodded with a smile.

  “A small one. Wouldn’t want to fall off the lift on the way back down.”

  “You wouldn’t be the first. I’m Michael Crawl. Inspector Maeve Scurlock isn’t it?”

  Maeve extended her hand and they shook. Crawl’s hand felt dry and his grip was strong.

  “It is. No we haven’t met. But I did see you give a lecture at All Souls College when I was at university.”

  “Ah I hope I didn’t disappoint.”

  Maeve took the balloon glass from the mage and raised it to her nose. The spicy layers of a good vintage swirled around her olfactory system. It took her back to her graduation ceremony from the academy and how unceremoniously she had gotten drunk on just such liquor.

  “Not at all it was fascinating. You spoke about the possibility of shredding Slips to other dimensions folded within our own. That for an instant between travelling to two points the mage is held within a honeycomb dimension containing infinite possible destinations. I wrote a paper on it. Got a B I recall.”

  Crawl took another sip and then put his glass on the table. All the while he offered her a mocking smile.

  “Respectable B. Yes I called that God’s Waiting Room Theory. A hallway with endless doors. Never proven it though. The conscious mind can’t register much when slipping through.”

  Maeve heard the Kingswans call in the sky above the tower. She swilled the brandy in her glass as the pleasant memories of her days at All Souls College flitted through her mind.

  “It’ll be there somewhere. Most cases I work on it’s my unconscious piecing the puzzle together in the background. It only presents me with the answers when it’s good and ready.”

  Crawl started folding a map on his desk. His sharp blue eyes flicked up to meet hers and the smile returned.

  “Well I hope too many people haven’t died waiting for your mind to come up with the goods.”

  Maeve took a deep quiet breath and felt the brandy calm her. She clenched and unclenched her jaw then spoke in as official a tone as she could muster.

  “The reason I’m here is that I wanted to ask your advice. On a sorcery issue.”

  “I’m at your service Inspector.”

  “What can you tell me about Wraiths?”

  “Avoid them.”

  “If that’s not an option? If I’m actively seeking one.”

  Crawl stopped smiling and regarded her with critical eyes. His casual demeanor lifted a little and Maeve felt him suddenly begin to take her more seriously. His interest was piqued.

  “Wraith’s are very rare. Certainly not to be approached lightly. Are you suggesting there’s one roaming somewhere in Free Reign?”

  Maeve nodded.

  “I think so. But it’s not alone.”

  “It’s bound to a person.”

  Maeve raised her brows.

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  Crawl stepped around and sat on the edge of the desk. His mouth worked and his fingers tapped the wood.

  “It’s my profession. As we spoke about, shredding a slip and passing something physical through it is no mean feat. When it comes to ghosts, the mind can sometimes enter the spirit realm, bring back information. But bringing anything physic
al back from there is extremely challenging.”

  “Like users of Opaque? Their mind travels but the body remains.”

  Crawl arched a brow at her as if mildly impressed by her knowledge.

  “Yes, the drug only allows consciousness over and even then only in a dream state. What you’re talking about would require a very powerful physical anchor. A physical point that would allow the Wraith to Slip and remain. But more than that it would require an obscene amount of emotional energy.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  Crawl waved a hand in the air.

  “Oh I’ve heard of a few Mist-Priests in the Far East experimenting with it with some degree of success. The hardest thing would be to find a volunteer.”

  “How so?”

  “The living individual is what gives the Wraith a physical tether to the world. The Wraith is what keeps the host alive spiritually. It’s a symbiotic relationship.”

  “Doesn’t his own soul keep him alive?”

  Crawl fixed her eye as if the answer was obvious.

  “That’s just it. He doesn’t have one.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “There’s no room for two such entities in one vessel. The man you are seeking has removed his soul and I assume stored it elsewhere, to allow this entity to reside within him. It nourishes and heals him. But at such a cost.”

  Maeve took in this new revelation. She had investigated all manner of exotic crimes over the years in most districts of the city. Yet Free Reign could always jump up and surprise her.

  “Why would someone do that to themselves?”

  “The emotions required for the ritual would be deep and intense. And I would suggest, very dark. This Wraith will have been a person intimately bound to him in life. That they would both warp and corrupt themselves to such a degree is disconcerting. It suggests singular and dangerous purpose.”

  “Such as?”

  “My guess? Revenge.”

  “So what am I really dealing with?”

  Crawl threw his hands wide and laughed openly. He shook his head at Maeve’s predicament.

  “Well. You have a spirit of pure supernatural vengeance and a soulless man who is willing to become an aberration to get his revenge. To capture someone who is that single minded will take someone willing to tread in some very dark corners indeed.”