by Sam Sykes
He reached out. A hand proffered in plea, in apology, in anything that would find his daughter. He held it there. The woman stared at it, suspicious. He did not move. The wind shifted. A breeze sang past his ear. There was a soft thunk sound, like a child’s toy ball falling down the stairs.
And the woman fell to the dust.
The crossbow bolt quivered as she did.
“What the fuck did I tell you?”
And then, they came.
“Your metal or your life.”
Flooding out of the forests, steel in hand and paint on their faces, a legion of skulls and ghosts and whites and blacks slithering out of the shadows between the trees, fairy tales and bad dreams come alive.
“And what did you fuckers choose?”
They crashed, this ghostly tide, into the panicked townspeople. Blades flashed. Blood spilled. Those who dropped and ran sometimes got away. Those who held weapons were picked off by crossbow bolts. Those who stayed with their possessions and pleaded for mercy…
“Every time. Every fucking time you choose your money.”
The screams couldn’t drown out her voice.
Dread Niri stood at the mouth of the forest, leaning on her stick, the river of bad dreams swarming out around her. Through one eye, she watched the slaughter, bemusement playing under her war paint.
“You chose it instead of us.”
A bandit burst from the undergrowth, charged through the ranks of the Children, swung his sword high above his head as he rushed for Rathaxes’s wagon.
“You chose it instead of your own blood.”
Rathaxes fell against his wheel, held up a hand in feeble defense. The bandit closed in, shrieking and waving his weapon.
“May it bring you comfort when you arrive at the black table.”
The bandit’s sword fell. Rathaxes screamed. Steel sang out.
Both the bandit and his quarry shared a fleeting moment, both perplexed why Rathaxes wasn’t dead. Rogo answered, stepping in front of his old neighbor, his blade shining and black in his hand.
The bandit grinned, pleased at the promise of future bloodshed. He let out a cry that Rogo didn’t hear. Did something Rogo didn’t see. His eyes were full of purple light. And his ears…
His ears were full of the Lady’s song.
The bandit stiffened suddenly, stared down in confusion at the black sword blade jutting from his chest. He dropped his blade, feebly groped at his back, before someone rudely shoved him off of the sword and let his carcass fall to the earth and stain it.
Rogo the Dervish watched the bandit’s body fall before looking back up.
Rogo the Dervish stood before him, flicking the bandit’s blade from his blade before glancing at Rogo the Dervish expectantly. Along with the seven other Rogos that had just appeared.
They spared a brief nod for each other before turning to face the onslaught of bandits, raising their swords, and getting to their bloody work.
A bowstring snapped. A crossbow bolt shrieked toward Miss Dandeline’s wagon. She shrieked, held her children close. Wind parted, steel sang. The archer, forty feet away, blinked as Rogo the Dervish stepped forward and cleaved the bolt from the sky with his blade. And then she screamed as Rogo the Dervish swept out of the trees to her right and did the same to her.
A chorus of bandits, howling with anguish, descended from the hills, rushing toward the Gonares family. Rogo the Dervish stepped to meet them, beating back their blades with his own, noting each time one of them fell as Rogo the Dervish stalked behind and struck them down, one by one.
Where spears stabbed, Rogo the Dervish was there to cut them and their wielders apart. Where bolts and arrows flew, Rogo the Dervish appeared to strike them from the sky and carve the archers apart. Where swords clashed, where war cries tore from lips, where axes fell, there was Rogo. And Rogo. And Rogo.
The Mirrormage’s art is not well understood. Humans are finite things, not meant to split apart like that. Seeing through more than one person’s eyes, controlling more limbs than just your own—it takes a toll. Some are driven to madness, others simply lose themselves somewhere in the many copies they’ve made and discarded.
Rogo was not like them. The Empress would not have bestowed that black blade, now slick with a dozen different bloods on it, to such an amateur. And yet, at some point during the battle, between the sound of the Lady’s Song in his ears and the screaming of his former neighbors, Rogo looked over the field.
And I wonder, seeing his six tiny copies of whirling black blades lost in the rush of steel and war paint, if he realized how long it had been since he had held a blade.
He had once held off a Revolutionary incursion with only three of himself. Now with six, he could barely hold back a common bandit clan. If this kept up—
“Father!”
“Virian?”
He turned and saw her running toward him. Her clothes were stained with brown and red. Her hair was mussed. That massive fucking crossbow she loved so much was in her hands and her quiver was half empty.
Had she been fighting? He should have never bought that fucking thing for her.
“Father!” she shouted as she approached. “You need to stop fighting! You need to get everyone away from here!”
“Get back to town, Virian,” he said. “The others are fleeing, but—”
“They’re not fleeing! This isn’t a fucking truce!” she screamed. “She was never going to let anyone go!” She seized him by the shoulder, shook him as hard as she could. “You have to get them to go back, father!”
He grimaced. “Impossible. Please, just do as I say.”
“Father, you can’t fight them! The roads, they’re—”
“NOW, VIRIAN!” he roared. “I can handle this. I am not some common peasant. I am—”
“ROGO THE DERVISH!”
… okay, so that’s not exactly how it happened—timing like that doesn’t happen anywhere but in opera.
But someone did shout his name. And he did look up. And at the sight of the angry woman with the magic gun rushing toward him atop a giant, angry bird?
Well, I can’t say for sure, but I like to think, at that moment, some small part of him somewhere inside him knew just how absolutely fucked he was.
Virian screamed my name. Or screamed something, anyway. But I couldn’t hear her.
I wish I could tell you it was because of the thunder of Congeniality’s feet and her squawking anger as she leapt over and through bandits in her mad charge. I wish I could tell you it was the battle raging. But truth was, I barely noticed the battle. Or the people cowering. Or the bodies on the road.
All I could see was Rogo the Dervish, standing on the road before me, astonishment on his face like he never thought I’d find him here.
All I could hear was the sound of blood hammering my ears and my teeth grinding and my muscles tensing as every part of me screamed out for his blood.
And all I could feel was the ache in my scars. The steel in my hand. The shock of the impact running down my arm as I spurred Congeniality forward, took my blade in hand and thrust it six inches into Rogo’s heart.
Blood has a way of making time slow down.
Not like they tell you in the operas. It’s not some dramatic thing when everything stops so you can have a monologue. No. It makes time slow down in the same way that any disaster does: by carving the image into your heart.
Rogo stiffened on my blade, his mouth gaping wide in a scream he’d been holding in for years, his eyes trembling behind his glasses like he still couldn’t believe it was me killing him, the sword in his hand…
The same fucking sword he used against me…
It fell to the ground and lay there in the dust.
Where his blood should have been. And wasn’t.
I take back what I said about time slowing down. It’s not like a disaster, it’s like sex. First comes the intense, exciting parts. Then someone puts something inside someone and then the rest is shit.
I
jerked my blade free from his chest. Rogo fell to the ground. The confusion clawed at his eyes, desperate for an escape. But that diminished, along with everything else, and he slumped to the earth and promptly vanished in a brief burst of light.
Fucking Mirrormages.
“A copy.” I jerked hard at Congeniality’s reins—the madam gets a little irritated when she gets all worked up and there’s no blood. I scowled out over the scene of carnage, picked out no less than five Rogos. This is why you need to catch the fuckers by surprise. “Fucking great. Now I’m going to have to—”
Sorry, I was interrupted because I had to kick Virian in the chest.
Which was preferable to screaming my tits off in pain.
Which I only did because punching people in their recently bandaged crossbow-bolt wounds is apparently something they do out here.
“You little fucking…” I bit back my curses, my screams, and my tears as I rubbed at my wounded leg where she had just punched me. “What the fuck was that for?”
“WE’RE IN A FUCKING AMBUSH!” she shouted from the ground where I had shoved her.
“Oh, are you? I couldn’t tell with all the violence and bloodshed,” I snapped. “Get behind something and keep your fucking head down. I’m here to—”
“To what? To help?” She scrambled to her feet, met my eyes. I wasn’t ready for how much hate they could hold. “No. No, you came here to kill. Like every story fucking says you do.”
I rolled my eyes. This was the other problem with idealists: they choose the worst fucking times to be moral.
“Yes, motherfucker, I’m a killer,” I replied. “I’m a fucking weapon. And at the moment, I’m pointed in the direction of the people who need to die. The man who owns that copy I just killed is dangerous. He’s a monster, a murderer, a—”
“He’s my FATHER.”
My blood ran cold. My eyes couldn’t remember how to blink. For a terrible moment, all the sounds of battle and anguish and bloodshed drained away and left me with a cold silence. In it, her hatred echoed, clear and resonant.
In a perfect world, this wouldn’t have ever happened—I wouldn’t have met her. In a good world, I would have thanked her for her help, left her, and disappeared. In a world with any kind of decency, I wouldn’t have done this to her, wouldn’t have let her think I was a good person, wouldn’t have put that hate in her eyes…
But this was the Scar.
“Your father…”
And the Scar was where good things die.
“Is a monster.”
And bad people walk.
“And I am going to kill him.”
A kinder woman would have lied. A gentler woman would have explained. But I wasn’t those. I was Sal the Cacophony.
And she already knew the stories.
Her hands tightened around her crossbow, trembling. My hand twitched as I bit back the reflex to reach for the Cacophony. The gun seared in his sheath, hot and furious and begging me to draw it on this girl who dared stand against us. He burned. He hurt.
But I wouldn’t draw him.
Not unless she made me.
I held her eyes. I pushed out the screams and the chaos. I sat there atop my bird. I stared down at her. I watched her tremble. I watched her feet shuffle. I watched the hate and the terror and the hurt fight in her eyes. I watched the hurt win.
And only then did I let myself breathe.
Hate would destroy her. Terror would destroy everything around her. But hurt… she could live with hurt. She’d never forgive me. But I could live with that.
What I couldn’t live with is seeing a girl with that scar, those eyes, this many shits to give throwing everything good in her life away for something like this.
“Where are you… hey! You dumb asshole!”
So, it was pretty fucking rude how she ran past me and into the battle.
In fairness, though, I was pretty fucking dumb to go chasing after her.
I kicked Congeniality’s flanks, fought with her as she squawked and struggled to turn around. With another shriek, she went barreling into the fracas with as much grace as a gigantic murderbird could muster.
We tore into the throng of steel and blood. Spears thrust at me, found my blade beating them back. Crossbows sang, found only empty air as we sped through. One particularly bold or stupid bandit rushed toward me, blade in hand, and found only a very large beak clamping on his neck as Congeniality shook him like a chew toy.
She flexed her neck, tossed him deeper into the fracas, and with a squawk, tore off after him.
I’d have stopped her, but it’s adorable when she’s having fun like this.
Together, we leapt into the fray. Whatever hope of a clean fight I might have had was buried under the press of bodies and the spatter of blood. Congeniality shrieked and squawked excitedly, raking at bandits with her talons and crushing limbs in her beak. My sword-arm went numb from beating back blades and slicing through chests, the other arm quickly following as I tried to control Congeniality from snapping as terrified townspeople rushed past.
Some back to town. Some out into the forest. Some scrabbling to collect whatever possessions they could before disappearing into the grasses and trees.
Many didn’t get the chance to run.
As a woman with a spear disappeared under Congeniality’s talons, the carnage thinned out enough for me to take a breath of stale sweat and blood-spattered wood. My muscles ached and my breath ran sharp and ragged in my throat; it felt like I had been in this battle for hours, watching bodies either fall or flee, but the chaos made the crowd seem thicker.
Bodies were pressed protectively against wagons. People fell clutching clocks and baubles, spears jammed through their treasures and into their chests. Terrified townspeople lingered on the edges of the battle, staring desperately for an opportunity to dive back in and collect their trinkets. The metal—the gold, the silver, the tin—lay where it fell, clutched in the hands of those who had refused to give it up even as they died.
Why aren’t they running? I thought. Those stupid fucks, is this what Niri was talking about?
I’d have asked. But there was only one person nearby who I could.
And he was currently trying to kill me.
Heat at my hip, surging through leather and into my flesh. A brass voice hissing into my ear on a voice full of steam.
“Behind you.”
I whirled in the saddle, my sword meeting his in a spray of sparks. Rogo leapt away, shock playing on his face.
“Thought I wouldn’t remember that, Rogo?” I asked, grinning through the blood painting my face. “Thought I wouldn’t remember how you like striking from behind?” I spat onto the ground, wheeled Congeniality around. “I was there when you came up with that, you piece of shit.”
“Salazanca,” he began, “this is not the place for—”
“If this wasn’t the place, you shouldn’t have decided to be here,” I spat back. “Did you think I was going to let it go, Rogo? Did you think I wasn’t going to come looking for you?”
He paused. “Yes. I did. I moved on from that night.”
“The night you took the sky from me? The night you looked me in the eyes, after all the battles and all the blood we spilled together, and raised your sword against me?” I pulled down my collar, bared the scarred flesh twisting down my collarbone. “The night you gave me this? THAT FUCKING NIGHT, ROGO?”
“That night was… not my fault.”
“Well, shit, good to hear. Guess I’ve been upset over nothing this whole time.” I slid the Cacophony out, aimed. “Just for the record, though, the mess I’m about to make out of you is totally my fault and I promise to clean you off the road when I get around to it.”
There’s a moment on a man’s face right before you pull the trigger when everything in him evaporates. You see his face squirming, his eyes twitching, his mouth fumbling for the right apology, the right plea, the right logic to make this all go away. And drop by drop, in the span of a second, th
ey all turn to steam and disappear in the noonday sun and all that’s left is those big, unblinking eyes realizing just how fucked they are.
I’m not saying it’s the greatest feeling in the world. But since today had been shit, I was willing to take it.
I pulled the trigger.
The hammer clicked.
And the sky exploded.
The shell shot out, striking the earth where Rogo had once stood. He himself leapt out of the way, which is a great plan when you’re fighting people without guns that shoot magic.
When you’re fighting Sal the Cacophony, you don’t get to run.
The shell struck the earth, exploded. In a single, hoary breath, the air turned so cold as to drink the sun. On frigid feet, frost erupted across the ground, becoming first a patch of ice, then a spike, and as fast as it took to exhale a cloud of cold, it burst into an icy garden, trees and flowers of freezing blue spikes.
Rogo narrowly avoided being skewered by an azure spear as he darted backward. He glanced at me from behind his glasses.
“Your aim has gotten worse, Salazanca,” he said. “If this is what you’ve come to do, perhaps you should save us both some embarrassment.”
“Who’s embarrassed? I’m not embarrassed.” I drew, aimed, squeezed. “I’m a fucking typhoon.”
The hammer clicked. The shell flew. Rogo leapt. But I wasn’t aiming for him.
The air exploded, shimmering with sound. A hundred angry trumpets fighting to be heard, ten thousand people screaming in unison, the sound of the greatest building in the world crumbling; years later, I still wasn’t sure the best way to describe the sound of Discordance. It’s a noisy, angry, imprecise shell.
But you can’t argue with the results.
The wall of sound erupted across the ice, shattering its many spikes and sending hundreds of jagged, shrieking missiles through the air. On soft, hissing whispers, they fled in a thousand different directions, punching through wood, earth, and skin.
I didn’t hear the sounds of them, the injured and the dying. Those would be for my dreams later. My eyes, my arms, and my gun were for the man exposed by the Cacophony’s carnage. Exposed. And vulnerable.
Clouds of white mist swirled around Rogo, hissing from the jagged icicles decorating the battlefield in red and blue shards. And for a brief moment, as I beheld the silhouette of him, I could see him. The same way I saw him that dark night.
