Burning Ashes

by James Bennett

  “Spei est Vindicta,” Ben said. “‘Hope is Vengeance,’ isn’t that right? You might want to explain why I’m still alive. I can’t promise that I’d treat you the same. How many has it been now, anyway, Rulf?” He pretended to count on his fingers, then gave a hollow little chuckle. “Wow. As many as that? Some might say that vengeance is blind.”

  Sir Rulf gave him a pained look.

  “We have all lost much in the course of our grievance,” he said.

  “I lost the woman I loved!” Ben hadn’t meant to shout, but the words flew from him before he could stop them, his roar shaking the walls. Silver answered him, glittering behind his eyes, the manacle forcing him back against the pillows. “You started this,” he growled through the sickening light. “You and your bastard king. You should’ve left me well alone in Mordiford. Left us alone.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut, forbidding tears. He wasn’t about to cry in front of this man, show any sign of weakness, disadvantaged as he was. Nevertheless, Maud danced in his mind’s eye, reaching up to kiss him in a moonlit glade, centuries ago, but not so far from here. Her spluttering face as she choked on poison. Dancing in the flames …

  “It was a long time ago,” Rulf told him. “Over eight hundred years, in fact. The stuff of our storybooks these days, I’m afraid. And I am not my ancestors.”

  “Fuck you. You lot are all the same.” Ben remembered one of those storybooks from an underground car park in London, a faded little classic of revisionist history, designed to taunt him as the latest Fulk peeled scales from his flesh. “Like most fanatics, you think your stories give you an excuse.”

  Lord Rulf pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Mr. Garston, we don’t have time for this,” he said. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that the world has gone to hell. The Lore is over. A wall of thorns surrounds London. A Remnant army has taken the city—and that’s just England. We’ve been watching the news closely—what few channels remain up and running, that is. Tokeloshe run amok in Johannesburg. A sea serpent attacked San Francisco. And bunyips rose from the Murray River and are currently feasting on Adelaide. You’ll forgive me if my concern rests on the present.”

  “Forgive you?” Ben could’ve laughed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t your little conspiracy with the CROWS cause the breach in the Lore in the first place? And for what? A crumbling pile of bricks. For your precious honour, even though anyone with any sense had forgotten the name Fitzwarren centuries ago. For a rusty suit of armour and an old dragon’s head.” Now Ben did laugh, a bitter-sounding bark. “Shit, I’m surprised you haven’t put the Lambton junk in the corner of this room, for added bullshit.”

  Lord Rulf glared, but he couldn’t hold Ben’s gaze. His jaw rippled, swallowing rage, and when he spoke, the words seethed between his teeth.

  “If I told you we’ve made mistakes, would you confess your own? Or are you going to lie there and pretend you’ve upheld your side of the bargain? That in your mad dash to save one woman, you neglected to warn the Guild of the coming peril? And after Cairo, in fact, you ran away, allowing the mnemonic harp to fall into the hands of Mauntgraul, the White Dog? Hundreds died as a result. What was it they used to call you, beast? Sola Ignis, that was it. The Lone Fire, standing guard. But you are just as remiss in your duties as this house. And as such, you will not upbraid me.”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke, quietly boiling inside. Ben wanted to argue, blast his grudge upon the man before him, the constant trial of living under threat for simply existing and the treasures that the Black Knight had helped to steal from him. Maud. Rose. Almost my life … But a deeper part of him, the honest part, could only hear Fulk Fitzwarren sneer in his head, a couple of years back in New York. The words were as undeniable as ever.

  You’re asleep, Red Ben. You’ve been asleep for centuries.

  It only seemed natural to find someone to blame.

  “Von Hart …”

  At the sound of this name, Lord Rulf appeared to get a grip of himself. He spoke quietly, wearily, letting his breath carry away his anger.

  “We are both betrayed, dragon. Remnant and human alike. The envoy offered us a gift and we were stupid enough to take it. He promised us our home, a return to status, to glory. Tell me, what did he promise you?”

  Ben mulled it over for a minute. When it came down to it, and after all the envoy’s riddles and misdirection, there was only one thing he could think of.

  Magic is souring. The Sleep is failing. The Remnants will die.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing but death, anyway.”

  “Then he was honest with you,” Rulf said. “Because death is what’s coming. For all of us.”

  Ben pulled a face. “Whatever gives you that idea?” Rulf tutted at his sarcasm, but Ben went on regardless. “Look, what is this, knight? Why am I here? If you’re gonna hold some fancy trial or other before you kill me, then at least make it quick. I’m a little tired of guessing games.”

  “As I said, you’re not in any danger. I merely wish to parley.”

  “Now? You’re eight hundred years too late.”

  “I’m asking you to trust me. If not now, then when?”

  Ben laughed, a roll of thunder deep in his belly. Then he looked at the man at the foot of the bed and saw that he was serious. Exasperation rode on his shock, sobering him. His eyes narrowed into green slits.

  “Never,” he said, low and fierce. “Is never good for you?”

  “Mr. Garston—”

  “Cut the formalities. I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw you, my lord, which, ironically, is pretty damn far. But you have me at a disadvantage, don’t you?” He lifted his arm, biting back the pain, the manacle glimmering around his wrist. “Is it considered polite to restrain one’s guests? If you want to talk, we’ll talk. But you’re gonna have to release me first.”

  Rulf stared for a moment, uncertain. Then he shook himself and came around to the side of the bed. Keeping a safe distance, Ben noted. A wise distance.

  “My apologies. The lunewrought was simply a practical measure. We couldn’t exactly haul seven tons of dragon a hundred-odd miles across Oxfordshire.”

  Ben gave a grunt. “Fair enough.” Makes sense. But. “Do you mind telling me where you got—?”

  A screech interrupted him, cutting through the sunlight in the room, the dust scattering.

  “Idiota! I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

  Rulf spun on his heel, then took a step back as a figure crept through the doorway, little more than a hunched shadow. The knight couldn’t hide a shudder, which Ben noticed ran through his body from his silvery curls to the toes of his leather shoes. In the space between them, Ben saw the newcomer hobble into the room, leaning on a wooden cane. At first, he couldn’t make out whether the intrusion was a man or a woman. The nondescript robes could belong to anyone, as could the strands of hair that straggled onto those crooked shoulders, as grey as the clothes. A gnarled hand gripped the cane, attached to an arm just as bony, an emaciated body under the rags.

  The other hand, trembling, pointed at him, a finger curled out in blame.

  “Drago,” the figure croaked, soft and harsh, her voice announcing her sex. “Demon. Destroyer. A blight in the eyes of the saints.”

  Ben suppressed the urge to draw back on the bed, pull the duvet over his head. The woman lurched closer, as though her outstretched hand was a lodestone, drawing her to the source of her disgust. Through the curtain of her hair, Ben caught the glint of spectacles and the spark behind them, the feverish light in her eyes. He caught the hint of a hooked nose and palsied flesh, her lips drooping, wet with the spittle of damnation. Recognition didn’t bring him any sense of ease. The last time he’d seen this woman—this creature—he’d been far from here, up in the Alps last winter. She’d stood high in a lectern holding a fragment of the harp, bleating about Lucifer and glory and a holy scourge, overseeing his imminent execution. Well, things hadn’t exactly worked
out for her. The Invisible Church had fallen, reduced to rubble by the White Dog. Up until now, he’d suspected that the woman before him was dead. No. Hoped. Instead, he found her here. Here and singing from the same old song sheet.

  “De Gori,” he said. The Cardinal of the Whispering Chapter. “And they say I turn up like a bad penny.”

  “Lore-breaker,” De Gori said in reply. “Traitor. Ab—”

  “Abomination. Yeah. I heard you the first time.” Ben poured weariness into his voice, covering his alarm. “Haven’t you heard? The Lore is over. You’ve got no authority here.”

  The Cardinal screeched again and lunged towards him. Well, she hobbled as fast as she could for the bed. Before she could reach him, Lord Rulf snapped out an arm, preventing her charge. The knight hadn’t meant to hurt her, Ben was sure, but the woman was no more than a collection of bones and she dropped to her knees on the floor, her cane clattering away from her. De Gori gave a wail, a thin, wet sound, and then covered her face with her hands, her shoulders heaving, her sobs threatening to shake her apart.

  A flicker of pity touched Ben’s heart. Then he remembered Jia, her cuts and bruises as the guards had returned her to her cell up in the mountains. The beaten, hollow look of her …

  Why won’t you let me help you? he’d asked her, but she had turned away.

  He glared through his ghosts up at Rulf, a question in his eyes.

  “The Cardinal came to us a couple of months ago,” the knight said, by way of explanation. “And yes, we realised who she was. Or rather, who she used to be. I’m afraid that Evangelista is the … doyenne no more. The fall of the Chapter … it was hard on her.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Devils,” De Gori muttered on the floor. “Devils with angels’ wings, white as snow.”

  Ben clenched his jaw. “It’s the lunewrought,” he said. “Not that she was compos mentis before. The harp screwed with anyone who touched it.” Including me? he wondered, but didn’t say. “But I have to tell you, Rulf, you aren’t exactly filling me with confidence.”

  “De Gori can’t hurt you now.”

  Ben stared at the woman on the floor and he guessed that it was true. The state of her, as ruined as the monastery on the mountainside, didn’t present an active threat. The brimstone lingered, of course, but the fire had gone out. Like everything else, the Curia Occultus, the Sleep and his love life, the Chapter was over. Ancient history. Wherever he stood now, it was on new ground. Uncharted territory. The normal rules no longer applied.

  Still …

  “Tell that to the brat who jumped me on Snowdon,” he said. “Claimed she was a Black Knight, can you believe it? She knew where to find me too. And now I know how.”

  It was the lunewrought, all right. The Fay metal was all of a piece, wasn’t that what they said? Contact with the stuff had tainted him, stained him with its magic. It had tainted the Cardinal too, of that he had no doubt. If the old woman had brought the remaining manacles to the Last Pavilion, the residual magic able to bind him, then chances were that she knew how to trace him too—or at least to point the “Black Knight” in the right direction, hoping for a last-minute assassination. Her idea of justice. But the girl, Annis, had told him that she’d stolen the manacle and gone after him herself, a foolhardy quest if ever there was one. And Caliburn bore a blade forged from lunewrought, as the damn sword liked to boast. Had Arthur’s awakening helped the girl to find him, strengthening the signal, drawing her to the mountain? It seemed likely …

  Lord Rulf looked at the ceiling. “Annis,” he said. “She hasn’t been the same since her brother drowned last year. She begged the patriarchs to hand the duty to her, the Fitzwarren vendetta. Of course, we refused. Not only was she too young, the collapse of the Lore gave us reason for pause …” And he did pause, looking back at Ben with the same dilemma in his eyes, the same doubt. “In the interests of transparency, I should tell you that this house has yet to reach an agreement over the matter of your slaying.”

  “That’s nice,” Ben said. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on here?”

  Rulf opened his mouth to speak. Before he could do so, footsteps echoed down the corridor outside. In a flurry of cropped hair, red cheeks and baggy leather jacket, the would-be knight in question came bounding through the bedroom door. Annis collected herself, wiping the joy from her face at the sight of Ben, bloody bandages, bruises and all. She frowned at the weeping woman on the floor. Then up at the patriarch.

  A little shyly, she said to Ben, “You’re alive.” Typically, she masked her obvious pleasure with teenage ambivalence.

  He took in the welt across her face, running from her brow, across one eye and the bridge of her nose. It would make quite the scar; Annis wasn’t going to forget the dead king in a hurry.

  When he spoke, it was through a pang of guilt.

  “Just about. I’d feel a lot better if someone would take this damn thing off my wrist.”

  De Gori wailed behind her hands.

  “Lucifer unleashed,” she said. “Inferno. Hellfire. Monsters walking the earth.”

  Annis puffed out her cheeks. She stared at Lord Rulf for a moment, watching him hesitate, then rolled her eyes.

  “Father, do as he says. He saved us, didn’t he? He could’ve just let us all burn.”

  Ben grunted. So that was it. Taking in the man and the girl by the bed, he could see the family resemblance for himself, mostly in their eyes, that icy determination. Some Indian heritage had softened Rulf’s features in his daughter, lending her dark hair and brown skin in place of his pale flesh. Between them, some unspoken challenge hung in the air, a hint of grief, both recent and older, mixed with a quiet resentment. Ben had seen enough of his own to recognise the sense of it. It struck him then that perhaps a son and a brother wasn’t all that these people had lost, the mother absent too, an echo of her in Annis. Ben didn’t like to pry—he of all people respected privacy—but he guessed that this was the issue that Lord Rulf, the patriarch, found hard to refuse. With a shrug, he stepped past De Gori to the bedside, reached in his pocket and retrieved a little key. As Annis looked on and the former Cardinal sobbed and muttered, Rulf bent and unlocked the manacle around Ben’s wrist, sliding the lunewrought into his jacket.

  At once, Ben felt the tingling sensation ebb and fade, the chiming in his head silenced. Warmth crept into his bones, washing away the coldness of his binding. His nerve endings shivered like sun-kissed branches and he could feel his flesh begin to knit anew, his bruises sinking under his skin. He stretched, allowing a thin carapace of scales, red as blood, to slide over his nakedness, forming his mentally conjured suit. Sans symbol. Then he swung out his legs and, a little unsteadily, stood up, not entirely disliking the way that De Gori cringed or the way he towered over Lord Rulf. The latter took a step backwards, the old enmity stifled between them, embers not quite cooled. But then the knight gathered himself and he met Ben’s gaze with the same steely resolve.

  “Ben Garston, consider yourself our honoured guest,” he said. “You have the thanks of House Fitzwarren. And as for myself …” he tipped his head at Annis, forcing the words out, “I owe you a personal debt of gratitude. As I said, I request a truce. A day for us to parley. I ask that you escort me to our hall and speak with the council assembled there. I don’t need to tell you that we’re up against it. I believe it’s time to discuss a new understanding. A new …” again, the hesitation, “pact. And to seek a way in which to answer the present crisis. With your fire and our swords. Together.”

  Ben glared down at the patriarch for a moment. Then he looked at De Gori and at Annis, who was practically hopping from foot to foot in anticipation. Finally, he looked out of the window, at the autumn trees and the sky beyond, offering him something that these people never could. He could’ve laughed. After all his trials, living in the shadows over the years, he stood here among his mortal enemies, the Chapter and House Fitzwarren. Where the Guild of the Broken Lance had suffered his existe
nce, these bodies never had, both calling for his head. How small they looked now. How insignificant. Their schemes, their rules, their power in tatters. Now it was their turn to feel endangered. Alien. Unwanted. Obsolete in a changed world.

  But the realisation only made him sad. Once again, Jia sprang to mind, her eyes reaching for him much like her fingertips, brushing his own before she fell into the gulf, forever lost. She’d reached him with the truth too, and once enlightened, he’d never forget it.

  “The Lore was a lie,” he said, speaking to the ones in the room, but also to himself, letting the air carry the weight of his decision. “And lies are like poison, corroding everything they touch. Seems to me that’s why we’re in this mess. The Lore was just another name for oppression. For hiding the truth of the world. You see, others walk among you. Remnants. Creatures from the Old Lands.” He sighed, wishing that the sunlight outside could reach his heart. “Shit. Even Von Hart realised he’d made a mistake. It’s staring us all in the face. We’d have been better off fighting to the death back then. Instead, we denied our own existence. We’re cowards. All of us.”

  “Or we could’ve made peace, yes,” Lord Rulf said. “My ancestors may have failed to understand that, but that’s what I’m offering you now. A last alliance to—”

  Ben turned to look at him.

  “No,” he said. “No more councils. No more Pacts.” No more sleep. “I’m done with all that. It didn’t work. It won’t work.”

  Rulf swallowed at this, then spoke in measured tones, obviously trying to quell his anger.

  “Then what do you suggest, Mr. Garston? That we simply lay down and die?”

  Ben jabbed a finger at the knight. “You know what? You can do what you like. For better or worse, I’m heading back to London. I can’t leave them. The city … I can’t leave them like that.” He squared his shoulders, testing his muscles, his returning strength. “Besides, I left something behind. I get the feeling I’m going to need it.”

  Only with the blade can I reignite the circles and restore your world. Bring us the sword. Then you will have your answer.