"He ain't here—and all the rest of us are."
"Keep it to yourself? Let's not ruin the mood until we have to."
Gurles eyed her, then nodded and moved off. Over the next hour, the ranks swelled until sixty people were standing in the grass in front of the wall.
"It lifts my heart to see so many of you here." Gaits' voice rang from the top of the wall. Every head swiveled toward his silhouette. "That means you've survived the single worst set of troubles the Order of the Alley has ever faced. Others, though, have given their lives so we'd still be here." There was just enough moonlight to see him lower his head. "Kerreven is dead."
People shouted. Grabbed for each other. Questions and curses fired from all sides.
"He was killed yesterday," Gaits yelled over the hubbub. "Murdered by an assassin sent by the Little Knives. The assassin's dead. So is Cane Dreggs, the Knives' leader. Very soon, we'll send the rest of his crew to join him in hell." This drew gruff cheers. Gaits waited them out. "The Order of the Alley existed before Kerreven. And it will continue to exist after him. Tonight, we summon the Midnight Coronation to determine who will lead us against the Knives and into the nights beyond."
He walked along the top of the crumbling wall, heading closer to its middle. "In the days before days, humans knew nothing of fire. When night fell, we lived in darkness, shutting our doors tight against the wolves and the snakes. Taim wanted to keep us this way, but Arawn, who controlled the fire of the north star, defied him. With his brother Carvahal, he hatched a plan to bring the fire down to us mortals.
"But Carvahal betrayed him. He locked Arawn behind a starry wall and took the fire for himself, ensuring the glory would always be his. It was the greatest theft of all time."
White fire sprung from his hand. Raxa knew the effect was from a spitwand, a tool people of their kind used to incite confusion, panic, or misdirection. Even so, her eyes told her it was magic. With the flame already fading, Gaits pointed it at the top of the wall beneath his feet. Orange fire blossomed from a bundle of kindling laid there.
"In times of peace, the Midnight Coronation is a contest to see if anyone can match Carvahal's feat. Challengers have a week to pull off a heist. Those who bring in the best hauls become the nominees for the crown. But we are at war. There's no time for a contest. Tonight, we vote."
He dropped from the wall, landing in a low crouch and rolling into the grass. Up on the wall, another figure emerged. Even before he stepped into the light, Raxa could tell by the silhouette of his upthrust hair that it was Venk, Kerreven's head enforcer. She was glad to see he was still alive.
"As written by our founder, Witta the Shadow, here's how this goes down." Venk had a thick Sharps accent and always sounded as disappointed as if he'd just caught you urinating on your own shoes. "Process is simple. It's got to be, if you fools hope to follow it. First comes the Listing of the Few. You think somebody would make a good leader? You call out their name. And no, smart guy, there's no nominating yourself. Next comes the Declarations of Worth. If your nominee accepts the offer, then you get the honor of standing up and telling us why you think they'd make such a fine chief. When all the speeches are done, we vote to decide the Midnight Coronation of the Grand High Chief of Street and Knife. You got me?"
He was answered by a number of nods and ayes.
"Supreme," Venk said. "Then I hereby begin the Listing of the Few—and if one of you shit-for-brains nominates Stapp, may the gods have mercy on your soul."
Most of the crowd laughed hard, with the notable exception of Stapp and a couple of his friends. But Stapp was the type to wear a cape even in the height of summer and to brag that he could swipe the glasses off a man's face even though it was well known he didn't meet quota half his months. He deserved whatever came his way.
The members of the Order fell into a lull, eyeing each other like gamblers at a table. Raxa did the same. Until that moment, the idea of replacing Kerreven had been just that: an idea. With minutes, it would be fact. One way or another, their future would never be the same.
She called out, "Blackeyed Gaits."
Cheers bounced from several corners of the clearing. Gaits grinned at her and winked. "Fine selection."
Her nomination broke the dam. Someone hollered out for Anya, the Esteemed Countess of Logistics and Material Acquisitions. Mind like an architect. Good choice. One of Stapp's friends offered up his name and was met with a chorus of groans. Someone volunteered Ackley only to be informed that Ackley had died in the streets several days ago.
A silence washed over the clearing, broken by the nomination of Farnan, the Order's oldest member at 71. Raxa wasn't sure if the nomination was for his experience, or a token nod toward his seniority. After that came suggestions for Kenna, Darvid, and Johan, each of whom was popular, competent in the street, and relatively young. And, to Raxa's mind, completely unexceptional.
The clearing grew quiet again. Venk watched from atop the wall, face lit by the unsteady flicker of the fire.
"Last call," he said. "You jokers remember that whoever you choose tonight, you're living with that choice for what could be the rest of your career. Haven't heard the name you want? Belt it out now—or keep your gob shut when some other bastard wins."
"Raxa Dosse," Gurles' voice boomed forth. "The Ghostmaker."
Raxa almost replied. But he wasn't looking to talk to her. He was nominating her. A few people looked surprised. A few others clapped.
Venk took a final look around. "Then I declare these nominations closed. Do any of you so named wish to decline the burden of leadership you've been volunteered for?"
Raxa scowled, ready to decline. There was no point getting in a fight you couldn't win. Ten feet away, Gurles caught the look on her face. He set his jaw and shook his head. Raxa couldn't help smiling.
Venk chuckled from the wall. "Then there's no wriggling out of it now, you poor sods. Onto the Declarations of Worth! First to nominate is first to speak. Raxa, speaking for Blackeyed Gaits."
Raxa tipped back her chin to the stars. "If any of you need to be told why Gaits is the best and only replacement for Kerreven, then we're in far worse shape than I thought." This drew more laughs than she'd expected. "It's too bad he can't speak for himself. Gaits was born to speak. He could talk the gold out from under a dragon. He could talk the scales off a fish or the claws off a lion. You know what a leader needs most? Diplomacy. The chops to talk down a war before it begins."
She paused to think, but the words were already there. "But this goes way past talk. Gaits has been Kerreven's right hand for years. He knows this city from bay to forest. He knows every one of us. Our strengths. Our weaknesses. How to use the former and protect the latter. He'll get us past this war. And once he does, he'll make us all rich beyond our dreams."
She stepped back. Applause and whoops sprung from the audience.
On the wall, Venk nodded. "Next! Olac, speaking for Anya the Web-Weaver."
Olac took a swig from a leather flask. "Sure, yes, Gaits is a fine choice. If you think a silver tongue is all it takes to make a decent chief. But half of us here could talk the robes off a Council priest. So what makes Gaits so special? Not much, says I. Not in that department. You want experience, though? That's Anya."
He rattled off her list of qualifications. This took so long the crowd started to murmur. Olac flashed a grin. "See? She's done so much you can't stand to listen to it all. You want a chief? A real chief? The kind you trust your life to? Then the last thing you want is a guy whose words are so sweet you could eat them on toast. You won't know that guy's lying until it's far too late. What you want is somebody who's been there. Done that. If Anya walked away tonight and started a new business tomorrow, she'd own half the city by next summer. Guess what? Once the fighting's done, we're going to need to rebuild. I want the guy who can do that in her sleep."
Olac's nomination hadn't drawn much of a response. His speech, though—that got cheers. Maybe more than Raxa's.
Stapp's f
riend got three sentences in before the boos came out. People listened respectfully to the case for Farnan, but the applause at the end didn't go any further than "polite." The Declaration for Kenna was surprisingly strong, but couldn't match Gaits or Anya. Raxa forgot the speeches for Darvid and Johan before they were over.
"So we reach the end," Venk said. "Gurles, want to speak your piece so we can all get drunk?"
In the moonlit clearing, Gurles stood perfectly still, eyes making a slow sweep of the crowds. If he wanted to, he could bark like a mastiff. But when he began to speak, his voice was as quiet and precise as an archer drawing a bead on an elk.
"Lot of talk about the future." Gurles stared into the fire burning on the wall. "About what these people will do for you after the fighting's over. You're gambling with tomorrow's wages. You talk like war is a storm. Like all you have to do to get through it is close the shutters, lock the doors, and wait for the sun to come back out.
"War ain't a storm. It's war. If you don't have the guts, the cunning, and the know-how to swing a sword, then you get planted in the dirt. Don't think so? You think we'll win because we're the good guys?" Gurles spat at his feet. "I'd much rather be the bad man. That's who's going to win the fight against the Knives and Crows. If we choose the leader we want for the future, none of us will make it out of the now."
He fell silent. The fire snapped. Venk shifted his feet on the rock wall, then cleared his throat. "You done, Gurles?"
"I want you to close your eyes," Gurles said, pausing a moment to let them do so. "Picture yourself walking down a dark alley. There's footsteps behind you. You pick up your pace, but the steps keep coming. You reach for your knife, but it ain't there. Ahead, the alley stops cold. There's no way out. You turn around to meet your pursuit. Who's the last person you want to see coming for you, knife gleaming in their hand? Whose face is staring back at you from the darkness?
"That's who's going to save our miserable lives."
He crossed his arms. This time, there were no whoops or applause. Just a sea of somber faces.
"Right then," Venk said. "Now we vote."
This turned out to be much more sophisticated than ayes and nays. During all the nominating and speechifying, Venk's team had been busy. Atop the wall, he held up seven clay pots. Each was marked with the name of one of the candidates—and an accompanying symbol for the illiterate, which was most of the crowd. The pots were lowered to the other side of the wall.
"Each of you gets three stones," Venk said, as his men passed out three small black rocks marked with a dab of white paint. "That's three votes. Each of which has to go to a different person. My men will be watching. You try to cheat—put more than one stone in a pot, or try to cast more than three—and you'll get walled up just like Carvahal did to Arawn. You got me?"
One at a time, they filed through a gap in the wall. Rocks clinked from the voting chamber. It seemed to take forever until Raxa's turn. Inside the chamber beyond, Venk and two others watched as she allotted her stones. One to Gaits. One to Anya. And one to herself.
As soon as the last vote was cast, Venk and his men brought the clay pots outside. Standing back from the pots, Venk made a display of stripping down to his smallclothes, then turned in a circle, arms upraised to show he had no vote-stones hidden on his person.
Starting with Gaits, he dumped out the pot and counted the votes. Gaits totaled 41 stones. Next, Anya came out at 38. Farnan and Kenna tied at 13. None of Stapp, Darvid, or Johan cleared ten.
Last, he sorted Raxa's pile. A handful of her stones were still waiting to be counted when he tallied her 42nd vote.
"Raxa Dosse," Venk commanded. "Climb the wall and take your throne."
20
Dante dropped the boot he'd been about to put on. Speaking in Gaskan, he said, "I never thought I'd say this, Nak. But it's so good to hear your voice."
Through the loon, Nak chuckled. The sound was as clear as if they were in the room together. "I will do my best to take that as a compliment. As for Olivander, I'm not sure whether he'll be happy to hear you're alive, or furious that you've been out of contact for so long."
"That wasn't entirely my fault. On my way to the Plagued Islands, our other loon broke. Apparently there's a limit to how far they can be separated from each other."
"Well, that explains the lack of communication. Now what about the fact you've been missing for months? The norren who delivered this loon said you were in Bressel. I thought you were going to the Plagued Islands!"
"We did. Didn't you get my letters? I sent one to you and Olivander."
"We haven't heard a thing since you left."
Dante cursed. "In less than an hour, these loons will run out of nether. If they're not shut down before then, the connection will break permanently."
"I'm aware of how loons work," Nak sniffed.
"Then you'll understand when I tell you I don't have time to explain everything that's happened right now. Is Olivander near?"
"Oh, I'm sure he's around here somewhere. Shall I have him contact you once I've found him?"
"Shut down the loon until then. When you find him, stay with him. I need to speak to you both."
"Then I look forward to resuming our conversation!"
The loon went dead. Dante bugged his eyes at Blays. "The loon made it to Narashtovik!"
"Oh good," Blays said. "I was starting to fear you'd gotten so desperate for answers you'd started talking to the gods."
The Keeper tilted her head. "How can you speak to someone in Narashtovik when you're standing in an inn at Dog's Paw?"
"Er." Dante racked his brain. Speaking to Blays, he'd thoughtlessly switched back to Mallish; if he'd stuck to Gaskan, the others would have remained ignorant. Though he'd figured out how to make them on his own, the loons were a norren invention. Even if he'd felt comfortable sharing their existence with the Colleners—which he wasn't, given how often Collen wound up invaded, captured, and tortured by the Mallish—he didn't feel it was his secret to share. "I can't think of a good lie, so here's the truth. It's a secret I've sworn not to reveal."
Cord touched her chin. "This sounds like a mighty weapon."
"That's why I can never allow it to be discovered by anyone else. Like Gask—or Mallon. I need you to swear you'll never mention it."
"I've never liked oaths," Cord said. "They hold you down like chains. Or a bad husband. But for one who fights for a land that isn't his, I'll make that vow."
The Keeper considered her gnarled hands. "This is something I would like very much to know. But keeping secrets is my job. I swear to preserve this one as well."
Satisfied, Dante paced about the room, doing his best to sort through and prioritize the vast amount of information he needed to convey to and extract from Nak. His ear tingled.
"I'm here," Dante said. "Olivander?"
"He's right beside me," Nak said. "And he says he's very relieved to hear you're alive."
"Then I'll apologize in advance for the fresh distress I'm about to cause him. But we've got limited time to talk today. I'm going to dive into what I need from you, and then I'll explain why."
"This ought to be interesting."
"We're currently in a battle with beings known as the Andrac. Star-Eaters. To the best of our knowledge, they're netherdemons." He described them, along with their encounters with the creatures and everything they'd learned to date. "I need you to search the archives, Nak. Find me everything you can that mentions the Andrac. And don't limit your search to Narashtovik. Dispatch someone to the oracle at Houkkalli immediately. They've kept records of events the rest of the world forgot centuries ago."
"I shall do so this very day. In the meantime, Olivander has a question. It's a pretty good one, in my opinion. Why do you feel compelled to do battle with demons?"
Dante sighed. "I'll give you more details when we're less pressed for time. For now, here's the abridged version. Blays and I made it to the Plagued Islands. There, I met my father—but he was an impostor who d
ragged us into a civil war. Turns out that their war was being driven by the Mallish, who lusted for the island's sea snails."
"I'm sorry," Nak said, "but did you say 'sea snails'?"
"They're called shaden. They're repositories of nether that allow you to use much more than you could normally summon. A Mallish priest named Gladdic was gathering as many of them as he could get his hands on. Well, we put a stop to that. After that, though—"
"Hold on a minute. That sounds like a tale and a half. You can't skip right past it with 'we put a stop to it.'"
"Nak, I promise I'll give you the full account later. Right now, all you need to know is that we came back to Mallon to destroy the shaden and kill Gladdic. This, in turn, took us to the Collen Basin. We got rid of the shaden, but eliminating Gladdic has proven gods damn difficult. He's the one who's summoning the Andrac."
"Well, that does sound troublesome. Ah! Olivander has another question. He'd like to know if you're deliberately provoking the greatest power in our corner of the world into declaring war on us?"
"We're doing everything we can to avoid that," Dante said. "But before we get into that, there's something else I need to tell you first. You know how there's a netherworld?"
"The place where Blays goes when he deploys his unique skill."
"Well, there's an etherworld, too. And it's the afterlife."
Nak made a thoughtful noise. "How did you formulate this theory?"
"Because I've been there."
"You…died? I'm sorry, Dante. I don't care how long it takes, I refuse to conclude this conversation before I've heard that story."
"Lyle's balls, I'm talking to you, aren't I? I didn't die. In the islands, they have a flower that puts you into a sleep so deep you can reach the other side."
"What a silly mistake, assuming that only dead people could reach the land beyond the living. I should have assumed you used a magical flower."
Dante squeezed his temples. "My understanding is based on a combination of what the Kandeans told me and what I saw for myself. First off, as far as I can tell, the entire afterlife is made of ether. There are three layers to it, each of which reflects a different ideal. The first layer, the Dream, is what we believe is ideal for ourselves. That doesn't mean it's paradise. Along with our wishes, it invokes our worries and fears. Everything that's at your core becomes your life there. But you're alone. There may be other people there, but they're not real. They're figments of your own mind to keep you trapped in the Dream. Some people get stuck there, playing out the same dreams and nightmares over and over. But if you break loose, you enter the Mists.
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