The Iron Dirge

by Sam Sykes

  I fished it out of my satchel, slammed it into the Cacophony’s chamber, aimed.

  Fired.

  A chorus of surprise and gunfire rang out. From the Cacophony’s grinning maw, a spray of silver shards, each one no bigger than a knucklebone, erupted. The bandits slowed, held weapons and shield up defensively as the spray of shards streaked from the barrel, screamed through the sky, found their flesh, and…

  Promptly bounced off, clattering harmlessly to the ground.

  The outlaws paused, looked confused. And even though I pointedly didn’t scream “what the fuck was that supposed to be?” to my gun, I was thinking it.

  And, as if he knew, the shards started to hum.

  And to split.

  From their tiny, jagged shapes, thin layers of metal peeled away and began to flap furiously like wings. And, like wings, they carried the shards into the air. Tiny, little insects with metal wings.

  And very, very sharp stingers.

  Quick as lightning, one of them shrieked out and embedded itself into necks, wrists, ankles, chests—any ounce of bare skin, the little glistening devils alighted upon and stung with jagged, metal teeth. The bandits screamed through the sound of jingling metal and droning silver wings, struggling to pull the beasts free and finding bloody holes in their wake.

  I had always been reluctant to use Shardswarm. Not because I hated the guy who had created it for me—but he was an asshole—but because it had sounded preposterous. Metal bugs? Bees? And they come to life? Granted, my standards as a woman who wields a magic gun were a little lax, but still.

  So that’s what it looked like. Huh. Pretty neat.

  The bandits’ charge had slowed.

  But it hadn’t halted.

  “Fuck,” I muttered as I turned to run. “Fuck, shit, ass, piss.”

  A new curse accompanied every staggering step I took, my leg shrieking as I limped toward Paarl’s Hollow. I ran out of breath after forty paces and I ran out of curses after forty-one. My lungs seared with belabored breath, my body swam from the beating I’d taken, and if my mind hadn’t gone numb from pain, I’d have surely lost it from the agony lancing my thigh as I limped toward the gates of Paarl’s Hollow.

  Too far, I told myself, gasping for breath. It’s too fucking far. I’m never going to—

  A hand on my shoulder. Someone whirled me around to face a blade. I narrowly darted a desperate stab, seized the bandit’s collar and wrist, and gave as strong a shove as I could manage. He tottered back a clumsy few paces, caught his breath, raised sword to painted face.

  No anger in the grimace of his mouth. Nor in the tears streaming down his eyes, smearing his makeup. Nor even in the blade as he held it, trembling.

  Do this long enough and you get pretty good at telling the killers. You can hear it in their voice, see it in the set of their feet, smell it on their breath. This bandit—this kid—wasn’t a killer. This kid barely knew how to hold a sword.

  What the fuck was he doing here?

  He let out a cry. Charged. Stumbled. Fell face-first in the dirt, clutching his chest and gasping for breath.

  Wish I could say it’d been my amazing ass that did that to him. But I saw the crossbow bolt lying nearby, its head blunted and wrapped in thick cloth. What the fuck was the point of a bolt that couldn’t skewer some—

  Another hand on my shoulder. I whirled, ready to stab this one, too. And once I saw that it was Irvic, the urge only vaguely diminished. But if revenge was on his mind, he was looking the wrong direction. His eyes, and his finger, were pointed toward the horizon.

  And the darkness rising upon it.

  Trees groaned, great redwoods older than some cities uprooted and pushed aside as a great shape stirred beneath the trees. The crest of a beast’s back, pockmarked and weathered like the side of a mountain, rose above the tree line. The few stubborn animals who hadn’t fled did so, shrieking noises of feral panic, as creation shuddered and a great head the size of a city loomed up on a long neck.

  The Compass Beast.

  Holy shit, that’s what one looked like.

  I saw only glimpses of it. The creature was too huge, too impossible to look at in its entirety. I saw a great, crested back rising like a land formation. I saw a scaled snout, decorated with rock formations and trees it didn’t bother to remove. I saw an ocean of a beard, thick-as-trees hairs scintillating with mosses and vines and plants that had grown in it. And in its eyes I saw… I saw…

  Everything.

  Emptiness, darker and deeper than the first rent gouged into the earth. Skies black with clouds that had never stopped raining for a hundred years. I don’t know how to explain what I saw in that face. Or I didn’t, anyway, when I saw the colossal muscles of its shoulders bunch as one great foot came up.

  And came down.

  Bodies falling. Trees collapsing. A wave of dust bursting out from between the trees like blood through fingers.

  I was aware that these things were happening, but I couldn’t hear them. The Compass Beast’s foot came down with the sound of thunder. The trees swayed and the rocks tumbled from their mountains. And even the strongest body went crashing to the ground, unsteadied.

  I looked for my footing, couldn’t find anything but Irvic. And so, as much as I hated to, I clung to him as he helped me up, draped my arm over his shoulder, and started running.

  “What the fuck?” I managed to groan between lances of pain.

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” he whispered. “The Beast needs you alive.”

  Well, that certainly wasn’t an un-alarming thing to say. But if it comes to a choice between crazy and murderous…

  Crossbow bolts sped past us. That anguished roar rose up again as the bandits resumed their rush. And in less than ten breaths, I could hear them closing in. They were quick. Too fucking quick. Too fucking quick and too fucking hungry.

  In hindsight, I probably should have wondered what would make a common bandit clan so desperate for blood that they wouldn’t just run screaming at the sound of a Compass Beast. But at the time, I was half-shitting myself from pain and concerned about how I was to become part of two greasy stains painted across the road.

  Three, I noted as I glanced up. Three greasy stains.

  Sweat stung my eyes and I was half-delirious with pain, but as I squinted down the road to the gates of Paarl’s Hollow, I could have sworn I saw a young woman. Tall, skinny, wrapped in peasant’s clothes with dark hair in a workwoman-like bun, the only thing that wasn’t unremarkable was the crossbow she wielded.

  That thing was fucking huge.

  I was shocked to see her lift something so huge, but not as shocked as I was to see the missile she’d loaded into it. It looked kind of like an arrow but instead of a head, there was a… what was that? Some kind of bottle? Filled with some kind of… sludge? Slime? Liquor?

  I would have thought more about it, but as I said, I was out of my mind with pain. And if I’m being honest, being shot dead by a liquor bottle was always kind of how I expected to go out. Don’t ask.

  The woman held her aim as we ran toward her. She didn’t move as we drew closer. She didn’t even flinch as the bandits’ thunder made the skirts around her feet tremble. She stood, perfectly still, until we got close enough that I could see the long scar across her face.

  And then… she fired.

  The arrow streaked from her crossbow, sailing toward us. I didn’t have time to blink, let alone brace myself, but it didn’t matter. The missile streaked between Irvic’s head and mine, striking something behind us with the shatter of glass and the sound of muffled rage.

  The thunder beneath us stopped. I glanced over my shoulder and saw a tangled morass of glistening black and roiling vines. Tendrils flailed and squirmed within a tar-like substance, coiling around passing bandit limbs and jerking them to the ground. They tightened and squeezed, wrenching blades from hands and muffling cries beneath strangling coils.

  That looked unpleasant. Made me glad she’d missed.

 
; “HEY!”

  Or… had she?

  A hand appeared on my shoulder. The young woman was up beside me, shaking me.

  “Are you fucking stupid? That shit won’t last long!” she screamed. “Come the fuck on!”

  Rude.

  But she had just saved me from being dismembered, so I guess that was fine.

  She slung my other arm over her shoulder, joined Irvic in hauling me down the road. The muffled anguish of the Children of the Dead followed us.

  “The hell was that?” I groaned to her. “That you shot?”

  “Creeping Midnight,” she replied as we crossed the threshold of the town gates. “One of my own design. You’re the Cacophony, right? Sal the Cacophony?”

  “I am.” They gently leaned me against the town’s wall as a small squad of weary-looking peacekeepers rushed forward to close and bar the gates. “And you are?”

  “Virian,” she replied. “Paarl’s Hollow is my home. And we need your help.”

  “Virian,” I repeated. “A pleasure to meet you.” I glanced around, sniffed, took in a deep, sour breath. “So, do you think anyone would mind if I puked and passed out here or…”

  I didn’t hear her, but I think she said “yes.”

  So it looked like we were all going to have a bad day.

  THREE

  Paarl’s Hollow

  The day before he died, Rodaya Lowhill unlocked the door to his basement.

  He hadn’t done so in a long time, I was told. Hell, ever since Virian, no one even knew it was there. He had moved a bookshelf in front of the door, kept the key in a hidden spot, never spoke of either it or what it was meant to unlock. And over time, people simply forgot about that door and all the time he used to spend behind it.

  But he had been Rogo the Dervish back then. Now, he was Rodaya Lowhill. Rodaya Lowhill was a father, a bookseller, a simple man living in a simple town where no one was supposed to ever find him.

  And Rodaya Lowhill, it turned out, was shit at moving bookshelves.

  I wasn’t there to see it, but I like to think that sweat beaded on his pate and his normally unbothered expression was twisted into a grimace of exertion as he struggled to shove the bookshelf out of the way. It was Virian’s fault, he tried telling himself—all those books on chemistry he couldn’t resist buying her when she asked. But he knew that was a lie the instant he thought it.

  Virian wasn’t who had made him weaker.

  With time and with effort and with more than a few furtive glances over his shoulder, the bookshelf eventually groaned aside and revealed the door. And he stood there, staring at it. It was a simple door, a simple lock, nothing worth the deep stare he gave it—he hadn’t wanted to celebrate this door with pomp and fancy locks, he had wanted to forget it.

  Maybe he had. Maybe that’s why his fingers trembled as he brought the key up and opened it.

  The basement let out a weary sigh, a long-held breath of dust and regret exhaled from its staircase. He used to love that smell. I knew, because all of us had, at one point: the smell of our deeds, of a time when we didn’t need to make excuses for ourselves, of a time when we never sought to be more than killers. But now, the reek of it was sour to him, like it was to all of us, a memory of pain and ignorance, back when the strong took what they wanted and we were stupid enough to convince ourselves that’s the way it ought to have been.

  The trip down was no easier than moving the bookshelf had been. His breath came slowly, deliberately, his steps carefully placed. And between the sounds of creaking steps, he cursed himself for his stupidity.

  Why had he wasted so much of his magic on that bandit? Why had he used his magic at all? There was a time when he could have handled a dim-witted lackey like that with just a sword. Hell, there was a time when people like that wouldn’t have even had the stones to look him in the eye. Maybe it was cowardice that made him do it. Maybe he feared how out of practice he was.

  Or maybe he just didn’t want to lose everything.

  When he reached the bottom of the stairs, it took him longer than it should have for him to find the lamp. He couldn’t remember where he’d left it. He couldn’t remember how it used to be, flicking it on and pausing to watch the room light up and taking in item by item, each with a smile.

  And when the lamplight slowly filled the room… he found he didn’t recognize it anymore.

  There was a mannequin in the corner, wearing the uniform. His uniform. The delicate folds of violet cloth were tattered and gnawed on by whatever bugs had found their way down here. The breastplate, pauldron, and leg braces he had worn were tarnished—there was a time when he never went a day without polishing them. And the mask…

  The Imperial mask. The cast of cold, silvered metal made into an expressionless face. He’d worn it, once, along with the rest of his fellow soldiers. In the Imperium, the mask was his authority, the rank he had earned to deliver the Empress’s truth without pity or mercy. Now, it looked hollow-eyed, empty, fearsome.

  He told himself he’d put it away for Virian’s sake, that she’d have been frightened of it—a lie, of course; the girl had once punched a draft bird three times her size in the beak for snapping at her. The truth was that now, he no longer recognized it. He no longer wanted to look at it.

  He no longer wanted to remember who he had been before he was Rodaya.

  And so he did what he always did whenever he was reminded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small pouch and emptied it into his hand. A few scraps of cotton and coarse cloth. All that remained of the stuffed bird she had clutched the night he had found her, a tiny child in the ruins of what had once been a village called Lowhill.

  She never let go of it for the first year. Not even to let him fix it. And when she had grown up enough that she no longer needed it… he found he still did. So he kept the last scraps close to him. To remember about that night, that stuffed bird, that girl.

  To remember why he was down here.

  He looked through the other memories rotting on the shelves—the scrolls of honor he had been given, the manual of ethical warfare he had saved, the jar of sand that reminded him of his home—until he found a long, slender bundle of cloth and twine hidden behind a collection of mementos. Had this really been where he left it? Just shoved back here?

  His fingers hesitated at the twine knot. Trembling for no reason. He wasn’t afraid, he knew. All the same, he found he couldn’t continue until he took a deep, steady breath and pulled the twine loose. The cloth fell and he stared at the burden hidden beneath it.

  The sword stared back.

  He slid it from his sheath, its slender blade still sharp, its grip still oiled and taken care of, the Imperial sigil on its cross guard still immaculate and all of it the color of jet black. He couldn’t remember how many people he’d killed to be awarded this blade, how many of the Empress’s enemies had to be slain before he was given it. Nor could he remember its weight in his hand, the feel of it as he cut it through air.

  That made sense, though. This wasn’t Rodaya Lowhill’s blade. This wasn’t even Rogo the Dervish’s blade. This was the blade of another man whose name he could scarcely recall.

  Back then, they had called him Rogonoroth yun Shouth. And they had loved him.

  They had loved him when he had discovered his powers and been conscripted into the Imperial Legion. They had loved him when he marched from battle to battle, war to war, in the Empress’s name. They had loved him when he had cut through Revolutionaries, Haveners, outlaws, deserters, upstarts—anyone who had ever uttered so much as an unkind word against the Imperium.

  He wasn’t sure when he had stopped loving himself. But it had been before that night.

  That night when he had last held this blade, that night when he had last gone by that name, that night… when he had betrayed the wrong person.

  Rogo turned his face away from the blade, shut his eyes tightly as he slid it back into its sheath. Perhaps he was strong enough now to look at the weapon again. B
ut he would never be strong enough to remember that betrayal, that night.

  Or so I liked to think.

  I liked to think it stuck with him. I liked to think that he wasn’t able to just drop it and walk away. I liked to think that there are some things that you can’t hide in your basement.

  Because there was no world I could think of where a man like him could do the things he’d done and walk away from it, unscathed. No world that didn’t deserve to be burned down to its last blade of grass.

  I liked to think that.

  But there’s one thing I know for certain.

  When Rogo tucked the blade into his belt and turned to leave, he caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror. The mirror that he had used to admire himself in his uniform on rare nights when he missed his old life. He glanced over it, looked to the long crack that split the mirror down the middle. He thumbed it idly, drew back a red cut.

  He’d never bothered to fix it. He always meant to, but somehow…

  He stared at the tiny cut for a long moment. It throbbed. Like his other injury.

  He looked back to the mirror. For reasons he didn’t know, he quietly unbuttoned his shirt. He stared at himself: older, softer than he had once been, but the muscle of his body hadn’t gone away. And neither had his Barter.

  A wound, you’d call it to look at it. A web of dark cracks that wended across his side like tendrils. The flesh they touched had become pale and bloodless, the black cracks making him look brittle. Fragile. He knew he shouldn’t have, but he lightly touched the wound.

  There was the sound of glass cracking. He drew back bloodied fingers. A shard of his skin, brittle and broken, came away in his hands. He stared back at the mirror and saw the pale, weakened sinew beneath the jagged rent where his skin had once been.

  It’s not their magic that gives Mirrormages their power. Not completely, anyway. The Lady Merchant gives them a great power, the ability to shape light into echoes of themselves. Some of the Imperium’s greatest stories are of legions composed from a single mage’s power.

  Few stories talk about the price they pay.