Chasm of Fire

by Michael Wallace

  Anderos narrowed his eyes. “Win the war, how?”

  “I can’t reveal that to you, yet. But I have my hands on something that could defeat the Scoti in a matter of days.”

  “A secret plan? You want me to take that to His Grace? What a fool that would make me.”

  “I’m the Master of Whispers. I have access to power that you can only dream about.”

  “Should have brought that out last fall, then, shouldn’t you? If it exists.”

  Naila bristled. “That’s what being stabbed in the back means. I had the power—I didn’t know I’d need it. Believe me, I won’t make that mistake a second time. Will you take the message to your master, or should I find someone else?”

  She expected more argument, but Anderos nodded. “I’ll take it to him. That doesn’t mean he’ll act.”

  “When will he have my message?”

  “There are fast couriers riding to and from the army every day. Long before these sorry new recruits march east, I’ll have His Grace’s answer. Now, are we done here, or is there something else?”

  Naila turned without another word and pushed her way out of the shack and into the night air. Belatedly, she remembered the illusion egg and palmed it just as a pair of Torre guards armed with muskets came trudging past on their patrol through the camp. She stood for a long time after they’d gone, collecting her thoughts, running through the possible artifacts in the temple that might help her.

  Dammit, now what? For all the power of the artifacts under her control, and the others she knew that Thiego was hoarding in the temple, she couldn’t think of anything that would turn the tide against a howling army of Scoti raiders. Unless . . .

  The hidden vault. What was in there, anyway? And how could she gain access to it?

  Chapter Eight

  It hadn’t been very many months since Iliana descended into the dumbre for the first time, only alone. That visit had been Carbón’s way of testing her, by having her pay off the injured nipper from the mine who’d first come across the artifact.

  It hadn’t gone so well. Apart from the failure to convince the boy’s mother to send him out of the city, Iliana’s brother had been murdered that night by cabalists in their plot to put Espejo at the head of the watch. And Iliana had left the lower terraces with a deep-seated fear in her heart. She dreamed of them sometimes, nightmares that had her trying to escape from a life as a washerwoman or even finding herself trapped in a dumbre brothel.

  This time it was morning, and she had the tall, armed Mota to accompany her, along with Thiego, walking through the lower terraces at her side, open in his role as cabalist. Thiego held something in his right hand that released a strange bluish light that streamed from his fist like glowing smoke.

  People on the stairways shrank against the wall when the trio approached, and when they reached a swaying rope bridge, the dumbre coming the other direction backed up to let them cross. Once, a toothless old woman hissed at them from the doorway of her shack, but she retreated in haste when Mota gave her a hard look and put a hand on his sword hilt. The door shook on its hinges as she slammed it, followed by the sound of a chain being drawn and a bar dropping.

  Thiego led them onto a wider walkway that gripped the side of a three-story tenement building. They glimpsed the Wood Road some forty feet below, but not the means to reach it.

  “They know why we’re here,” Mota said. “Word has gone out already. Put your magic to use, cabalist, and let’s start finding them.” He hooked his thumb up at the shack where the toothless woman had hissed at them. “Starting with that place. I’ll wager that old crone is hiding a son or she wouldn’t have insulted us like that.”

  “Wait until we get to the Wood Road,” Iliana said. “I’ve got a better idea than kicking in doors.”

  Mota gave her a skeptical look, but she was Carbón’s chancellor, not Mercado’s. She was in charge of the recruiting expedition, and Mota was only the brute there to enforce it.

  Counterintuitively, Thiego told them to climb back up a staircase before descending again, this being the fastest way to the busiest part of the Wood Road, and soon they were on the wide platform jutting from the hillside that served as the lower terraces’ highway. The road was packed with people coming and going with their burdens, sellers of all manner of food, drink, and supplies, and plenty of cart animals, none of which were cleaned up after by their owners as they crapped and pissed at will. The three from the upper terraces watched their step.

  Avoiding the filth was made easier by the wide berth people gave them. Jeers and curses greeted their backs, but nobody confronted them openly. There was a distinct shortage of men of a certain age among the throngs of people, and whenever Iliana spotted one, he disappeared into the crowd as if swallowed.

  She found a prominent spot, held out her arm for her companions to stop, then had them flank her on either side to create as wide an obstacle as possible.

  “Listen to me!” she cried. “I have an announcement from up top.”

  Traffic was already piling up on the other side at their obstruction, and this brought so much noise that her words were very nearly drowned out, with people shouting and jostling, not knowing or caring what had slowed traffic, only anxious to get through as soon as possible.

  When the crowd pushed too close, Mota drew his pistol, pulled back the hammer, aimed it at the sky, and fired. At the same time, Thiego lifted his fist overhead, and the artifact came to life with a flash of blue smoke. The cracking shot and the magic of the cabalist brought a great outcry.

  “Quiet!” Mota roared.

  Finally, a hush fell over the crowd, and Iliana tried again. She had a strong voice, and made herself heard.

  “I’m carrying coin from the Quinta. The recruitment bonus is ten pennies per man. You probably think that’s a pittance.”

  Grumbles from the crowd confirmed it. She spotted a few young men in the faces surrounding her, but they had the look of wild animals standing near the edge of the forest, ready to bolt for cover.

  She continued. “Your men are going to join the army, one way or another. Quintana is threatened, and if we don’t get the soldiers, the lot of you will be murdered or sold into slavery. That’s the way of the Scoti hordes.”

  “Or maybe the barbarians will give us a better deal,” someone shouted from the crowd. “Maybe they’ll turn us loose on the lot of you and we’ll eat well for once.”

  Iliana felt no need to answer. Any one of them was free to take the next train to Dalph, if that’s what they thought. They could find their way south to the Scot armies, tell the barbarians they wanted to join up, and see what happened. Nobody, so far as she knew, had ever left Quintana to look for the Scoti.

  “Ten black coins if you’re recruited. But if you join now, willingly, there’s a silver escudo on top of it.”

  This was greeted by grumbling, even a few shouted threats, although those doing the threatening were careful to stay anonymous in the crowd. Iliana didn’t know how many would have taken up her offer anyway, but the anger of the mob wasn’t going to help.

  And then, when she was about to despair, a man pushed through the crowd, shoving back when shoved, and threatening someone who grabbed his shoulder. Soon, he was standing in front of the three from up top.

  “The name is Nils. I’m here to volunteer.” He spat on the wood planks at his feet. “When do I get my silver?”

  Nils was a broad-shouldered fellow about thirty or so. He smelled of sour sweat and was in need of a shave and clean clothes, but was otherwise just the sort of recruit they were hoping to get. Mota grabbed the man’s left wrist and turned it over to show a brand of two crossed X’s.

  Mota grunted. “Looks like we got us a coal rat.”

  Nils jerked back his hand. “Done it when I was a boy. That’s why they turned me down for the army before. Otherwise, I’d be with the war lord already.”

  Iliana scowled at this. Coal thieves were the bane of her existence, nibbling away by the poun
d or hundredweight. When she’d come on as chancellor, up to five percent of the coal measured at the breaker found a way of disappearing before it reached Puerto’s barges in Dalph and was officially out of their hands.

  She swallowed her distaste. “They’ll take you now.” She nodded to Thiego. “Mark him on the right side.”

  “I don’t want no more brands!”

  “It’s not permanent,” Thiego said. “It will fade in about three days.”

  The cabalist gripped the light in his fist, and Nils reluctantly held out his right hand. Thiego planted his fist in the man’s hand, and a blue glow spread over the recruit’s entire lower forearm. When the cabalist withdrew the artifact, a light tint remained, as if Nils had dipped his arm into a bucket of blue dye. He turned his arm over with a mixture of wonder and distaste.

  “Now give me my money.”

  Iliana counted out ten black coins. “Your recruiting bonus. You have until morning to report to Captain Plata at the watch. If you don’t show, that mark will make it easy enough to track you down, at which point you’ll be counted a deserter.”

  “Yeah, I figured that out on my own. But what about my bloody silver coin?”

  “You get that up top,” she told him. “Soon as you report for duty, you get your escudo.”

  “I’d better, dammit.” He clenched his forearm and stalked off, scowling.

  “Blue tint means you volunteered,” Iliana said loudly, more for the crowd’s benefit than his. “The yellow ones are those who were forced into the army, and they get nothing but the ten black coins.”

  “That’s one,” Mota said in a low voice when Nils had been reabsorbed into the crowd. “Are we going to need a little speech for each and every one of ’em?”

  “We’d better pick up the pace,” she agreed. “The Scoti can breed them from the cradle faster than this.”

  Fortunately, the anger seemed to have gone out of the mob to see an actual volunteer, and they shortly moved aside to let two more come through. Boys. One of them looked too young—maybe fourteen or so—but he insisted that he was of age, so they marked the pair, paid them, and sent them off.

  Another man approached, and Iliana felt secure enough to move to the side of the Wood Road and let traffic flow again while he was marked and paid his ten black coins.

  After that, a steady stream of men and boys approached over the next hour or so, as word spread throughout the dumbre. At one point there was a line nearly twenty strong, waiting their turn, even though the trio from up top were doing very little vetting, just marking, paying and sending off. Mota did the examination, Thiego marked them, and Iliana paid the coin and noted their names—false or assumed real—in a booklet.

  Mota only turned away three men in total. One was a cripple with a cane, another seemed deaf, and a third tried to come through with his right hand tucked into his pocket. Turned out it had been cut off for a robbery in the Thousand, and he was marked with a brand, as well. No one-handed thieves.

  By the time the volunteers began to slow down, seventeen bells had sounded high above them, and they had more than two hundred and sixty new recruits. She could see some of them working their way up the alleys and rope bridges toward the wall already, bundles thrown over their shoulders.

  “Looks like we’ve got a few men eager for a hot meal and a piece of silver,” Mota said. “Hope that drunkard knows what to do with them all.”

  “You mean Captain Plata?” Iliana said. “He’d better. I left him with enough silver coin to keep the recruits happy.”

  “Looks like we’re about done with the first part,” Thiego said. “Want me to start hunting for the rest?”

  “He’s right,” Mota said. “We’re down to a trickle. By now, the whole dumbre will know we’re here. No reason for those vermin to stay away. But if we can chase up some more recruits—some yellow recruits—we’ll have better luck paying out the silver tomorrow when the others figure out it’s better to volunteer instead of being forced to join.”

  That was a good point, but Iliana thought that they could find a better place to start the search than on the Wood Road. She led them around the inner edge, as the road belted the cliff face, and although people were still watching with wary eyes, the trio no longer attracted the intense attention of earlier.

  Airfishers were baiting their kites and sending them up on a stiff breeze in anticipation of the giant bats that would come winging out of the Rift as night fell. A deep shadow had already fallen on the lower terraces as the overhanging upper terraces blotted out the light. Candles appeared behind wax paper windows.

  Iliana stopped them in front of the Red House. The massive five-story tenement building leaned drunkenly out from the cliff face. Oily smoke trailed into the air from a dozen chimneys. It was where she’d found the injured nipper last year, in a room packed with dumbre. The subsequent winter seemed to have taken its toll, leaving the paint more faded, the supports holding it to the cliff more rotten than ever. The other buildings almost looked like they were leaning away from it in fear that it would collapse, smash through the Wood Road, and carry its occupants into the Rift.

  “Good target,” Mota said. “There must be a hundred people packed in there.”

  “More like five hundred,” she said. “And hundreds more in the surrounding buildings.”

  “And I’ll bet the useless sorts we’re looking for are well on their way to getting drunk already. Won’t be hard to pick ’em out.” Mota walked down the road a few more paces, boots thumping the wood beneath his feet, then slowly worked his way back, all without taking his eyes from the Red House. “Only way in and out are those rope bridges, and all of them dump off right about here. A few of the rats might escape into adjacent buildings, but we’ll dig through that rubbish, too. Cabalist, give us some magic.”

  Thiego rolled the object in his palms, and Iliana caught a glimpse of shifting colors inside. When he stilled it again, the light was yellow. “This is a genuine war artifact,” he said, as if in answer to Iliana’s curious look. “During the fighting at the end of the Third Plenty, the Elders used it to identify enemy soldiers hiding in the forests outside Dalph.”

  “What forest outside Dalph?” she said.

  “The forest that was cut down to keep people from freezing to death after the collapse.”

  Yellow light streamed from his closed hand, twisting and snaking outward like nothing she’d ever seen before, almost like a living thing. He lifted his arm outward, and the light flowed toward the Red House. The building took on a sickly orange glow that only lasted a moment before fading.

  “There you go,” Thiego told Mota. “Go up to the building—the effects will be especially strong for the next twenty minutes or so. You’ll be able to see people right through the walls.”

  Mota had started to check the powder on his pistol—reloaded earlier—but looked up to give the cabalist a suspicious look. “There must be all kinds in there. How does that thing know how to pick out our recruits from the babes and the toothless old ladies?”

  “Oh, it marked them all,” Thiego said with a smile. “I’m counting on you to be able to tell the difference between the women and infants and what we’re looking for.”

  “Fine. You two stay here. I’ll collar them one by one and send them your way. You can take names, threaten them as deserters now that they’ve been recruited, or whatnot.”

  Iliana wanted to protest, worried that Mota would be attacked if he went in alone, but the man seemed to have plenty of confidence, and the dumbre they’d come across so far hadn’t been foolish enough to openly defy an emissary from the upper terraces. And he was right; those who weren’t working at this hour were likely to be drunks and layabouts, and unlikely to give him a fight.

  She stared at Mota’s back as he tromped off. “I hope de Armas knows how to forge steel from scrap metal.”

  “That first man we got seemed to be the best of the lot,” Thiego said with a nod. “We’ll be scraping the dregs before long.�
��

  “How do you know that about the artifact, anyway? That thing you told me about the wars.”

  “There’s a wealth of information about these artifacts in the libraries. Salvatore was mainly concerned about how they worked, and determined to lock most of them away so they couldn’t be used except under the strictest circumstances. Or maybe he couldn’t read the old tongue well enough to figure it out, and didn’t bother to learn. Either way, nobody seems to have cared before now.”

  A better question might have been why Thiego had chosen to share it openly. His candor was certainly not what she’d been expecting. Maybe he’d be open about other things, as well.

  “I’ve been thinking about the writing in the mine. Have you deciphered it yet?”

  A slight hesitation. “I have.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m more convinced than ever that we need to go into the Rift and have a closer look at the artifact. Have you spoken to your master about it?”

  “I have. Have you spoken to yours?”

  “Naila isn’t my master, if that’s who you’re talking about. We’re equals in the Luminoso.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “Point taken.” He gave a wry smile, followed by a shrug. “Yes, we’ve spoken.”

  “What do the words say?”

  “I’m the Guardian of Secrets, Iliana. That doesn’t mean that I’ll keep those secrets under lock and key like my predecessor, but it does mean I need to be prudent. So I won’t be sharing what it said at this time.”

  “It’s Carbón’s mine.”

  “But the writing is a relic of the plenties, which makes it my domain, not his.”

  “So you really won’t tell me?”

  “No.”

  “And here I thought you’d be more reasonable than Salvatore,” she said bitterly. “That you cared more about the city than your precious prerogatives. Apparently, I was wrong.”

  “Salvatore would have lied to you. Naila, too.”

  “Fine, so you’re openly obstinate.”

  “There is something I can tell you, though. I’ve been digging through the old books, now that my knowledge of the old tongue has improved. I came across something that you might find more useful than the writing in the mines, something that might convince you we’re on the same side.”