CHAPTER 8
The morning after his father’s death, Terevant takes a carriage to the city of Old Haith.
Old Haith, greatest of the cities of the north where the grey towers rise from the mists to vanish into the sky. Old Haith, whose dictates shape the world. Old Haith, where death is bound by law.
Old Haith, the disconcertingly empty. As Terevant’s carriage clatters through the streets, he doesn’t see more than a handful of living souls. Oh, the dead are here in great numbers–soldiers walking the newly fortified walls, engineers entrenching cannons and defensive spell-wards, Bureau clerks and functionaries working tirelessly to manage the sprawling Empire–but there are fewer living than even the last time he was here. Only a fraction of the living in each generation attain the higher castes and become undying, but the balance between living and undead tipped in the days of Terevant’s great-grandfather. In a few generations, he imagines, there’ll only be a single living soul in this vast grey city, the mortal bearer of the eternal Crown.
His first destination offers a premonition of that fate. The vast estates of the Erevesics lie to the west, but in the heart of the city each of the great Houses maintains a fortress. The Houses farm the land and feed the armies; the Bureau manages and monitors, and the Crown commands. His carriage draws to a stop outside the tower of the Erevesics.
The Vigilant guards salute him as he passes, but do not speak. He walks down long silent corridors, passing by silent monuments. The memorials speak of ancient victories; he doesn’t know if they stopped adding new plaques and monuments because the armies stopped winning, or because memorials don’t matter when the survivors are still extant to bear witness, even centuries later. In Haith, you’re nobody until you’re dead.
He’s unsure which of the family’s lieutenants are here today. He recalls visiting the tower when he was a young boy, when his father wore the sword, a memory of Lys laughing as her father swept her up in a bear hug. Then, there were almost as many living lieutenants as undead ones–but times have changed and the war has taken its toll. If Terevant’s brother Olthic were not ambassador to Guerdon, then he’d be here, at the head of the long table. Ordering the dead, commanding the disposition of the family’s forces, and all the lieutenants would whisper to one another, asking if they could recall another general so fine in all their long service. Voices like the rustling of dead leaves.
He enters the council chamber. A dozen skulls turn to look at him. Commander Rabendath. Iorial, his fractured skull laced with veins of gold. Kreyia, still blackened by Lyrixian dragon fire. Lyssada’s father Bryal, his bones with the sheen of relative youth.
They can all sense the sword he carries. Terevant’s tempted to take it out–as a member of the bloodline, he could draw on the blade’s magic, bolster his strength and courage and presence, but he dismisses the idea. These dead are veterans of the House; they’ve fought alongside the bearer of the sword for centuries, they know it better than he does. It would be absurd. He’ll just have to be himself.
“My father died last night,” he tells them.
A message arrived ahead of you, my lord, says Rabendath. Will he be joining us?
“He died Supplicant,” says Terevant, trying to keep any quaver from his voice. Rejected by the sword, his father could not die Enshrined as he wanted. Instead, Terevant watched through the night as the dying man fought to hold onto his soul, struggled to bind his spirit to his old bones. Dying Vigilant, though, is hard for the old. It takes concentration and discipline to lash the soul to the body, and his father kept mumbling about Olthic, about old battles, about the shipwreck. He never mentioned Terevant as he died, at least not that Terevant heard, but there was a long time between when the old man’s mumbling became inaudible and when the necromancer gently teased his father’s soul out of the body and into a jar.
Terevant feels like a jar, thinking about it. Hollow, empty, a little fragile. In other lands, dying in bed, old and rich, with one of your children holding your hand would be a fine way to go. In Haith, though…
There is no shame in that. The sepulchral voices of the Vigilant seem to come from deep underground, and Terevant can’t detect pity or sincerity or anything else in that grinding groan.
Will Ambassador Olthic return to Haith immediately? asks Kreyia, a little too eagerly.
“I don’t know,” admits Terevant. “I’ve been asked to bring the family sword to him.” The dead shift, uncomfortable in their iron chairs. They read the reports from Eskalind, too. Any of them could probably carry the sword to Guerdon. Any of them, instead of the unreliable second son.
He dislikes feeling hollow. He wants to be on his way already, to fill himself with purpose. He resents being second-guessed by the dead, no matter how loyal or courageous they’ve proved themelves.
It would be more fitting, says Bryal, for the Commander to carry the blade, at the head of an honour guard.
“The Crown commands me to go to Guerdon,” says Terevant, “quietly.”
The Crown, says Kreyia, does not command the Sword Erevesic. She’s right–the Crown is the greatest of the phylacteries, but its power is not absolute. The Crown, they say, rests atop one head, but also three pillars–the functionaries of the Bureau and the Houses of the Enshrined.
“My brother is now the Erevesic. The sword is his.”
His place is here, with us, says Iorial. Or ours with him. I pray you, lord, remind him of this.
He will understand, says Rabendath, when he claims the sword. His dead voice makes him sound like a judge handing down a sentence to a condemned prisoner.
As Terevant leaves, Bryal follows him out. Please, he says, give my regards to my daughter. It’s been too long since she returned home.
It’s only when he’s back in the carriage, on the way to the train station, that Terevant considers how odd it is that Lys should travel all the way back to Old Haith and not call on her father.
The sentry at the train station salutes Terevant as he passes. He returns the gesture awkwardly. After months out of uniform, he grew used to the subtle, scornful looks the soldiers gave to civilians of military age. He even welcomed the censure, after the retreat from Eskalind. Unconsciously, his hand brushes against the shiny new insignia on his collar, marking him as part of the embassy staff.
A cloud of sooty smoke floods the station platform as the engine gets up its head of steam. It’s an old steam train, pressed back into service on passenger routes. The new trains use more powerful alchemical engines imported from Guerdon, but they need those trains to bring bodies and souls down from the hinterlands to the western front and the sea ports. This route–south to Guerdon–has been secured following a rare victory in the Godswar, and Terevant spots only a handful of uniformed troops among the passengers. There’s no lightless mort-carriages for the Vigilant, no train-mounted artillery pieces. Why, it could almost be a sight from a generation ago, a train full of tourists and merchants, if it were not for the snipers atop the guard’s car and the heavy barricades welded over the windows that block out most of the light, leaving only a narrow firing slit of illumination. He clambers on board, wrestling his kitbag through the narrow entrance. A few alchemical lanterns dangling from the roof of the corridor shed pools of flickering, sickly light, enough for Terevant to find his way to their compartment.
The sword hidden in his bag catches on every corner, as if unwilling to leave Old Haith. Terevant considers reaching into the bag and touching the hilt; maybe his ancestors really are having second thoughts about the trip south. Instead, he hastily shoves the kitbag into the luggage netting above his seat and tries to ignore the rustling whisper of the voices in the steel.
He settles into his seat and looks for something to read. Lyssada sent him a report on the garrison at the embassy, but it’s a long ride south and he’ll save that joy for later in the trip. Instead he fetches a battered copy of the season’s fashionable book–The Bone Shield, something wonderfully patriotic about a Vigilant soldier and the
necromancers who love her–and tries to find his place in that, but his attention keeps sliding off the page. He stares at the empty seat across from him, imagining his brother’s outsize presence crammed into it. Olthic would have to fold up that armrest, and his knees would be jammed uncomfortably up against Terevant’s. His booming voice, commanding, echoing through the train. People would recognise Olthic without seeing him, whisper to one another about how lucky they were to share a train with such a celebrated hero. Soldier, diplomat, victor–Olthic was not larger than life. No, his life swelled up to match his frame.
Especially after Eskalind. While Terevant was getting his men killed in a futile charge on the temple of the Lion Queen, Olthic was capturing the Ishmeric flagship in the harbour. While Terevant was testifying to the committee of inquiry, Olthic was being made the new ambassador to Guerdon. Just some of those little ironies that makes life worth throwing under a train.
They’ll write novels about Olthic one day. Maybe they already have. A suitably inspiring topic for propaganda, with the respectability and devotion to duty that the Crown likes. The Bone Shield is a little too intimate to be ideal, a little too hot-blooded. These days, Haith prefers its heroes to be made from marble and polished bone. That doesn’t quite fit Olthic, but he could play the part with conviction, of that Terevant has no doubt. Some judicious editing, some ghost-written humility.
Just as the train is about to depart, the door to the compartment opens. Terevant looks up, hoping for Lyssada’s face, but it’s Berrick, the assistant who accompanied her to the Erevesic estate. A pair of men flank him, in plainclothes but Terevant can tell they’re Bureau secret police. He wonders who Berrick is, to warrant such protection.
“May I?” Berrick gestures towards the seat facing Terevant, and sits down without waiting for a nod.
One of the secret policemen–the living one–hands Terevant a leather folder, sealed with a spell-ward. “Lady Erevesic has gone ahead. She will meet you later on the journey. Deliver this folder to the embassy, and don’t let it, or him”–he glances at Berrick, who shrugs gamely–“out of your sight.”
“With my life and death,” answers Terevant, suppressing a smile. It seems absurd, like children play-acting at being soldiers and taking it all deathly seriously. Guerdon’s as far from the front lines as you can get. He can guess already that the embassy guards he’s being sent to command will be mostly fuck-ups, or rich idiots who’ve bribed someone to be sent far from danger. Maybe, if he’s lucky, there’ll be a few competent ones who do all the work.
He hopes he falls into the third category, but he could make an argument for either of the first two.
The two policemen vanish, and moments later there’s a whistle and the train departs. Grey light shines through the viewing slit as they pass out of the station’s canopy, flashing staccato shadows as they pass by towers and buildings along the railway. Berrick stands so that he can look out of the little slit as they pull out of Old Haith.
“I’ve never seen the city!” he marvels.
Old Haith is certainly one of the world’s great metropolises–or, rather, in its case, necropolises. Still, Terevant’s surprised at Berrick’s wonderment. He takes the measure of his travelling companion, trying to fit the pieces of Berrick together. His hands aren’t callused, suggesting he’s not a labourer or a soldier. His accent is hard to place. No caste marks on his clothing, no periapt scars. He’s in Lyssada’s service, officially, and Lyssada works for the Bureau. Is he a spy? A defector? What’s Berrick’s purpose in all this?
The sealed folder on the seat next to Terevant mocks him. He snatches it up and stuffs it into his luggage overhead, next to the Erevisic sword. He can let his ancestors worry about it.
“What’s that?” gasps Berrick, pointing to a huge windowless pyramid.
“The Bureau.” He must be a foreigner if he doesn’t even know that.
Terevant knows that building. Remembers sitting outside it, weeping. Lyssada had surprised them all by quitting the service of House Erevesic and taking the Bureau exams. His father had been furious. Olthic silent, working his anger out with sword and shield. And Terevant–he’d run after Lys, followed her to Haith. Taken the entrance exams for the Bureau, too. A scandalous act, for a scion of a House to try to join the anonymous ranks of spies and bureaucrats.
It was even more scandalous for him to fail. The Bureau rejected him. And he’d fled rather than return home, taken ship and sailed to the most distant province of the Empire he could afford.
The city vanishes, swallowed by the darkness of a tunnel.
“I have,” says Berrick, conspiratorially, “a bottle of rather good wine in my luggage. More than one, in fact.”
“I think I’m technically your bodyguard,” says Terevant, “at least until Lys shows up. I just got my commission back, and I’d rather like to keep it a little longer. So, no drinking on duty.”
“Oh, we’re not meeting her until the border, and I am a man who needs to get through the very last of his wine cellar before this train gets to the border. So, let us toast the Erevesic!”
Father or Olthic? wonders Terevant, but he drinks deep either way.
Eight hours later, Terevant is the only one still awake in the compartment. Across from him, Berrick snores, his head lolling against the shoulder of one of the Guerdon girls they’d met while leading the charge into the second-class carriages. Outside, in the corridor, he hears a drunken soldier belting out a familiar marching song. A spilled bottle of wine soaks into the floorboards of the carriage. Disgraceful behaviour, reflects Terevant. Unbecoming of an officer. He imagines the eyeless glare of Commander Rabendath, or Bryal, grumbling about him in the voices of the dead.
And with all his ancestors watching, too. He reaches up and makes sure that the Erevesic sword is still safe in his kitbag. Even through the thick canvas he can feel the energy of the blade, the magic coursing around it, looking for nerves and veins and bones to infuse.
The girl on the seat next to him mutters something when he moves his arm, then falls back to sleep, lulled by the rocking of the train as it rattles south through the night. It’s cold. Terevant reaches up to pull down a jacket from his bag and drapes it over… Shara? Shana? What was her name? They’d found her and her friend a few carriages down. Wealthy sisters from Guerdon, on a trip with their chaperone, taking advantage of the recent reopening of the rail line between the two nations. It had been easy to spirit them away with the promise of wine and merriment. Their chaperone, a bearded, middle-aged man, had fallen asleep with his nose in a newspaper, the paper trailing in the remains of the dinner on the table, newsprint soaking up brown sauce. Allowing Shara?–Shana? (was one sister Shana and the other Shara, daughters of a family sorely lacking in imagination?)–to sneak out and run laughing up the corridor with Terevant.
Her mouth, when he’d kissed her, tasted of summer.
He tugs part of the long jacket over himself. Curling his arm around Shana–definitely Shana, he’d compared her eyes to those of a lioness roaming the savannah–she turns and nuzzles into his neck. He imagines for an instant that it’s Lys instead, as he begins to drift off. Distantly, he knows that he should give some thought to getting the girls back before their chaperone notices his charges have been out cavorting with strange men (very strange men, he thinks dreamily, still wondering who Berrick is), but he’s drunk and warm and, he realises, happier now that he’s been a very long time. He’ll be with Lys and Olthic again. After death, just like before.
Ten years have gone by, ten strange and hard years, but, despite that, they’re still the same people. Or so he tells himself.
Outside, dull grey light as the night begins to give away to morning.
The sword above his head nudges at his mind; some atavistic family bond makes him dream of ancestors whose names he cannot, offhand, recall.
Better than his usual dreams, of Eskalind and the war.
CHAPTER 9
Seven days after X84 arrived in Guerdon,
the spy who calls himself Alic walks out of Jaleh’s house and makes his way through the winding streets of the Wash.
He leaves Emlin behind. Tells the boy to act normally, live his cover. If Alic doesn’t return, he’s not to panic; instead, he should go to Dredger and ask for shelter there. Dredger owes Sanhada Baradhin a favour, after all. The boy’s eyes are full of defiance–he wants to come with the spy, to be part of the shadow world–but he obeys. He doesn’t use any of the hidden ways to leave the house unseen that he’s discovered–the attic window, the back door by the kitchen, the old coal chute in the cellar that opens onto the alleyway at the back of the house. Ways he brought to the spy shyly, as offerings.
Alic ambles down the street, whistling. A smile for everyone. Alic’s a friendly sort.
He stops in a clothes’ merchant, buys a coat and a hat, cleans his face when he passes a drinking trough. Alic the poor labourer who lives in Jaleh’s halfway house vanishes, replaced by a man who might be Sanhada Baradhin the merchant. The new coat and hat draw the eye away from Alic’s stained trousers; his gait changes, fatigue dropping away. He hurries; time is money, business is business. San’s always hustling.
Ahead is the looming loaf-shaped mound of Castle Hill, the great rock on which Guerdon was founded. Atop that massive lump of stone, he can see the towers of the parliament building. Stairs zigzag down the cliff, and a brightly lit road runs from the foot of the steps down to Venture Square and the edge of the New City. Looking over his right shoulder, the spy can see two of the other great power centres of the city–the glimmering cathedrals up on Holyhill, seat of the blessed Patros, head of the Church of the Keepers; and the thicket of cranes and scaffolds and smokestacks that marks what remains of the Alchemists’ Quarter, destroyed during the Crisis. Glancing behind him to check that no one is following, he catches sight of the New City rising impossibly from the harbour.
As he pushes on through the crowds, the spy is struck by the notion that the city’s buildings and monuments are far more permanent and real than the people who live there. Everyone else around him is fleeting; a rush of water or a tongue of flame or a breath of air, but the stone remains. The city is immortal as gods are immortal; the city needs its citizens like gods need worshippers, to feed on their prayers and the stuff of their souls.
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