A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Then another devil-spawned beast slammed into him, taking him to the ground, and it was her turn to do the rescuing; she kicked the teeth out of the monster on top of Keun-ju, and kept kicking until he was able to get back to his feet. Spying her fallen blade half-buried in bodies, she snatched it back up and turned to face the relentless tide of obscene horrors.

  And then it was over. The four-tiger sword she had given Keun-ju winked in the sudden sunlight, and they both looked up to find the open sky above them instead of a furry firmament. The devil queen was on the move again, shambling back toward the Gate as fast as her battered condition would allow, her absurdly long, ruptured tail dragging behind her, and as she fled, her remaining brood followed. The monstrous progeny swarmed up her plodding legs to join their brothers and sisters who already huddled on her back, and as Ji-hyeon and Keun-ju sagged into each other’s arms they watched the devil queen plunge back into the Gate, her mortal-born children riding her into the First Dark.

  CHAPTER

  6

  As far as recent mornings went, this one was shaping up to be worthy of a song… if not a particularly exciting or up-tempo ballad. Sure, they’d spent half the night slinking through the dark, dangerous jungle, constantly peeking through the canopy to see if the milk-white horror from the skies still pursued them, but eventually they’d come out of a bamboo thicket and almost stumbled straight into a tranquil, starlit pool at the base of a gentle waterfall, and the sleep he’d had on the plush moss of its banks was the best Maroto had enjoyed since only the Old Watchers knew when. And what should greet his eyes when he awoke but a hard-edged Immaculate girl every bit as fit as any he’d met, offering him a coconut filled with fresh water. He knew Captain Bang was being so friendly only because she wanted him to take the first sip and see if it made him sick, but the joke was on her; he’d already drunk a gallon of the stuff while he was keeping the first watch, too thirsty to care if it ended up melting him from the inside.

  “Thanks, Cap’n,” he said, draining half the nut and reminding himself with a wince that he wasn’t supposed to be staring at the dark and appealingly puffy nipples that were visible through her damp shirt. “Been in the pool?”

  “I look fool enough to go swimming with my clothes on, Useful?”

  “No, Cap’n,” he replied, because he’d already figured out her game, and was happy enough to play along—kids always thought they knew shit when they didn’t know shit, but it never paid to call them out on it unless the need was dire. “You just look wet, is all.”

  “It’s hot as a phoenix’s cloaca, and some of us have been up and scouting around already.” She wiped the sheen of sweat from her tattooed cheek, and fast as he started imagining how rich and salty it must taste he woke up enough to remember that he’d left his bad old ways back on the Star. He was a new Maroto, a better Maroto, the kind who wasn’t so hornish he started leching on the first woman he met. Even a sweaty green-haired one with fleet inkwork.

  “Yeah, no doubt it’s gonna be a scorcher, but I’m warming to warm weather.” He took another swallow, the water sweetened by the coconut meat. “Coming from the Savannahs the cold was all we knew, but they say back in the day all of Flintland was hot as the south end of Usba, so maybe I’ve got some of the old blood in me.”

  “And you’ve got the old skin to match,” said Bang.

  “Old enough to know better, but too young to care,” said Maroto, though he regretted it as soon as Bang rolled her eyes—why had he thought that sounded clever? To cover his old-man-trying-to-act-hip embarrassment he finished the water and passed her back the coconut. Blinking in the bright morning sunshine, he saw Niki-hyun and Dong-won trying not to stare from across the roughly circular pool, licking their salt water–cracked lips, and he called over, “Water’s fine, if you’re wondering. Drank enough last night that if it was bad I’d be feeling it by now. I hope.”

  The two practically fell into the pool, lying on their bellies and greedily lapping up handfuls, but Bang played it a little cooler, dipping the coconut where a wide, shallow stream broke off from the source.

  “Seeing’s as I took poison taster duty again without even being asked, Cap’n, you mind if I take a few more minutes to compose myself for the day?” It was actually kind of fun to go along with Bang’s obvious need to maintain authority, but he couldn’t resist poking at its edges to see how much he could get away with.

  “A few and no more, Useful,” she told him after she’d guzzled herself breathless. “No lollygagging on this crew.”

  “I heard that, Cap’n, and thank you for your lenience.” Settling back onto his mossy bed, Maroto looked up at the jade leaves and the sapphire sky, listening to the calls of strange birds and the tinkling waterfall. If he only had a bite to eat it would be the perfect morning, and just like that he heard a fish jump in the pool. Nice. He’d borrow Bang’s cutlass to cut down a bunch of the black bamboo that grew against the steep hillside around the foot of the waterfall, and then enlist the others into helping him build a fishing weir at the mouth of the stream. Then they could leisurely wade out and chase some breakfast into the trap—or maybe it would be lunch by the time they caught something worth cooking, it scarcely mattered. He was in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to be, and for a few more precious, sleepy moments he was able to keep all the awful memories comfortably buried way down deep, where they belonged.

  But then he reminded himself how much Purna would like this shipwrecked scene, and all of a sudden the morning didn’t feel so great after all, and besides, who was he kidding? Warm weather never agreed with him anyway. Closing his eyes to the pleasant morning, he fell back into the darkest memories his mind could conjure, and when that didn’t quite make him feel shitty enough, he started in on all the worst-case scenarios that had probably gone down during his absence from the Cobalt camp.

  Choi. That was a good one, the thought of his wildborn friend clamping his throat like a sadistic lover with a bad understanding of hard limits. Why hadn’t he made a play at her, let her know how he felt? Maybe it would’ve been awkward, or maybe they’d have had some fun together. Hells, maybe they could have had something more, now that Maroto had finally come to terms with the fact that his One True And Also Dead Lover was both very much alive and an enormous fucking arsehole. Now it was far too late, and even if she’d lived out the battle he’d probably never see her again in this life…

  But maybe that was for the best. He was nothing but trouble to men, women, and everyone else, and Choi was better off without him. He’d probably misread those intense glances of her ruby eyes anyway, and then he’d have queered their friendship by fishing for something more, just like he always did. Except with Purna, of course; much as he’d thought he’d been mentoring her in the ways of the barbarian, or whatever the fuck it was she hoped to learn from him, he was the one who had actually taken away the valuable lessons. Without ever even seeming to try she’d educated him about appreciating people for who they are instead of what you want them to be, how to flirt with your friends without overdoing it, and basically being a decent person instead of the selfish bastard he’d always been.

  There. Focusing on Purna put him in the appropriate state of mind, and from there he bounced back to Choi again, and then on to Din and Hassan—of all his crew, Diggelby was the only one he knew for sure had come clear of the battle in one piece. Good old Pasha Diggelby. What would the well-intentioned loudmouth do now that he was alone in a camp full of rebels who despised the Imperial noblesse on general principle, with every single one of his true chums dead or gone? He still had Prince, sure, but that cowardly mutt couldn’t protect his master from anything larger than shin-height; without Maroto and the rest to look out for him, the pasha was going to be eaten alive by the brutes and bruisers who had rallied under Ji-hyeon’s banner.

  Oh, and now that he was on a roll Maroto mustn’t overlook the bitter memory of his dad and nephew, whom he’d barely spared a thought for since arriving on this bizarre i
sland or continent or whatever landmass it was that Jex Toth turned out to be. He’d genuinely intended to have a sit-down with them, see if they couldn’t squash the familial beef. There was obviously a whole provincial playhouse’s worth of drama to discuss, and now they never, ever would.

  Well, unless those loony blighters decided to track him down again, and managed to follow his ethereal trail all the way here to a land he hadn’t even thought existed, outside of the songs he’d sung to his nephew when the kid was four or five. Oh, how he’d loved sitting in the hut with Best and her husband, Keenear, and their dad and the little cat-eyed moppet… sure, Maroto had been floating around the rafters thanks to all the icebees he was banging, but nevertheless, nevertheless, they had enjoyed some real nice evenings. Like most bad singers, Maroto secretly loved to belt out a ballad or three, and Sullen had always hung on his every off-key note, staring up at his stoned uncle with his great big feline peepers.

  Maroto had fostered so many plans to help his nephew come up right, noticing how the other kids picked on him for being wildborn and knowing the boy would need a friend to see him through the inevitable bad times. An only child needed someone he could talk to the way you couldn’t talk to a parent or, ancestors knew, your hypercritical, hypocritical, mean-arsed grandfather. Through the lingering grief of believing Zosia had died, the shame at failing to avenge her, and the final humiliation of limping back home to the Savannahs after all those years abroad, that dream of providing Sullen with a strong role model and confidant had burned bright, giving Maroto something almost like a purpose…

  But then had come the battle with the Jackal People, where Maroto made what might just be the biggest fuckup in a life filled with a hundred times as many mistakes as he’d lived years, trying so hard to be a proper Horned Wolf he’d turned his back on his wounded father and seemingly helpless nephew. And now, just when he’d been reunited with those two, triggering all the memories he’d been fiercely suppressing ever since he’d given them up for dead, what did he do? He went and disappeared on them. Again.

  And that was what finally got Maroto to shake off his torpor and get to his bare feet on the spongy moss. Like his arsehole dad always said, if a horned wolf is sleeping after the sun’s up it better be dozing on top of the biggest kill of its life, safe in its lair. It was time to build a fish trap, and over by the waterfall’s slope he saw the three pirates already busily hacking down the bamboo. They looked to be making spears, but with some gentle suggestions he was sure he could guide them into splitting them further to make a far more effective weir instead.

  “Wish you were here,” he told Purna and Choi, Sullen and Diggelby, Din and Hassan, and even his dear old fucking Da. He shook his head as soon as he thought that, though, because if anyone was tenacious enough to survive an epic battle and hound Maroto to the ends of the Star and beyond, it was his kinfolk and his running crew. Wouldn’t surprise him at all if they were already halfway here, but wherever they were, he hoped their day was off to as fine a start as his was. They deserved it more than him, anyway.

  CHAPTER

  7

  I seriously think last night was the absolute rottenest night in the history of the world, and this morning is even worse,” Diggelby said as he hoisted the heavy canvas pack in the lightly falling snow. Due to the thickness of his mittens it took him a while to get the final bag tethered atop the pile of gear already strapped to the back of Princess, the diminutive Kutumban pony their party was reduced to sharing. Their second night out he had bestowed that name on the oblivious animal with all the solemnity and raw emotion of a bereft father elegizing a murdered child. “We better catch up with Maroto but fast, girl, or I am going to have to whip that whelp into shape.”

  “That I would dearly like to see,” Purna said around the clod of funky, partially frozen gorgonzola she was sucking like an intensely salted lozenge. Her thighs were already burning but she kept at her squats, warming herself up after another tooth-rattlingly cold night in their iced-over tent. Long as their marches had been since setting out from the Cobalt camp the week before, prepping one’s drumsticks seemed a capital way to start the day; get the blood up, the lead out, and so on and so forth. Her shoulder still felt like a godguana had kicked it from when she’d been thrown off that poorly trained horse during their fight with the devil queen, but both gams felt as good as gold and twice as hard. She’d been a little worried that she might discover some other devilish aftereffect of the nearly fatal stab wound she’d received, but nope, just a dog’s tongue and a fluffy patch of fur on the back of her thigh, and as far as distinguishing characteristics went she’d take those over a limp any day. Digs was still grumbling a big game about what he ought to tell their new captain, and Purna said, “As soon as they get back you should give him a piece of your mind.”

  “I mean to give him the whole bloody thing, and the back of my hand for good measure!” said Digs, striking a daring pose in his white angora bodysuit and matching babushka, a single pale stripe of the pigment he called “philosopher’s wool” smudged across his cheekbones and over the bridge of his nose like a second, ill-placed mustache. Against the washed-out backdrop of the blizzard-wracked Witchfinder Plains, he looked like some broke-ass lowland yeti with a bad case of face mange. “I don’t believe he’s related to Maroto, I don’t believe it for a moment. I never thought I’d say this about anyone, but he’s even less fun than Choi!”

  “Don’t run down a chum, Digs, we both know if Choi were here we’d be having a grand old time—and even if she didn’t let us build a fire, either, at least she’d be nice to cuddle up with,” said Purna. The cheese nestled in her cheek had finally thawed enough to chew, and she abandoned her calisthenics to bum a warm-up from Diggelby’s flask. Through a mouthful of pungent clods, she said, “I couldn’t believe my luck, when the general told us she’d decided to send along one of her personal retinue. Woof.”

  “You know what I heard?” said Diggelby as he passed the flask in his ridiculously long-haired mitten. “It was supposed to be Choi, that she even volunteered for the mission, but Ji-hyeon asked her to stay and sent the sourpuss instead.”

  “Horsefeathers,” said Purna, sipping the flask and getting a mouthful of gritty sludge. She’d forgotten Diggelby had taken to infusing his breakfast grapefire with kaldi grounds, oats, and powdered mare’s milk, and wondered if he actually liked the grimy consistency and bitter taste first thing in the morning or if this was just his way to curb mooching. That the mealy swill actually tasted remarkably more appealing now that she had a devilish tongue she did not consider an endorsement of the beverage. “Why would Sullen want to come instead of Choi?”

  “Some sort of Immaculate mating ritual, I expect—did you hear what she told them when she sent us all off, about how they’d better both come back alive or she didn’t want to see either of them? It’s a sex thing, has to be.” Digs slipped off a mitten and reached up, fishing around in his powdery headscarf.

  “Or it’s practical,” said Purna, mulling it over and then lighting on the obvious. “Of course it is. Choi’s one of us, a Moocher through and true.”

  “Quite right, quite right,” said Digs, retrieving his golden coalstick and silver smoking case from the folds of his babushka. His exposed hand already shaking, he uncapped the stick and lit two orange-papered cigarillos on the end of it. Passing one to Purna and sucking down a lungful of the other, he spoke while holding in the spicy blend of shade-grown vergin and cypress-cured latakiss tubāqs. “Choi’s an odd duck, but any interesting flock is led by just such a bird.”

  “So if Choi had come along, it would be the three of us giving Maroto the benefit of the doubt, with only Sullen hating on our favorite Villain. By pulling one of ours out of the pack and subbing in her pet, it’s two against two.”

  “You really think Sullen’s got it in for his uncle?” Digs blew a smoke ring that was promptly slapped down by the snow. “I never would have guessed.”

  “Yeah, he’s about as
subtle as a hobnail boot to the snatch,” said Purna, giving Princess a once-over to make sure the pony hadn’t frozen solid beneath her blankets and the pink earmuffs Digs had gifted her.

  “Here’s a thought…” said Diggelby, and from the angry plumes of blue smoke he shot out of his nostrils it didn’t sound like a happy one. “What if he… what if Maroto…”

  “He’s not dead,” said Purna, though repeating it to Digs didn’t sound any more convincing than it did when she repeated it to herself. “Hoartrap insists he’s still alive, and besides, as big a boasting point as icing one of the Five Villains would be, if someone had got him we’d have heard about it.”

  “Unless it was one of his fellow Villains.”

  “Well, you wouldn’t go with me to interrogate the Touch so you’ve just got my unimpeachable word to go on, but I’m telling you, I believe him,” said Purna, shuddering at the memory of that awkward exchange with the convalescing giant. “First time I’ve seen him halfway serious, and he swore on every devil he ever ate that the last time he saw Maroto he was alive and well, and no more than a few paces away from that new Gate. Said our boy tried to swing on him, so he left him to cool his heels, and when Hoartrap went back the next day to look for his trail he couldn’t follow it. He kept hinting at some old boon he owed Maroto, such that he’d never do him in, just like he’d never come at me or Sullen, now that we salvaged his spoiled bacon back at the devil royal.”