A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Purna knew her logic was sound, but even still was impressed by how wide Sullen’s feline eye slits grew at the mention of Diadem’s size; poor bumpkin probably didn’t know villages came that big, and he almost looked scared to contemplate it.

  “Even in this weather a side trip to Thao adds no more than a day or two onto what will be an exceptionally long march to Diadem,” said Digs. “The worst that happens is the Procuress isn’t able to help, though I’ve never even heard of such a calamity, and then we’re still no poorer off than we were before.”

  “And we won’t have to worry about running into any grumpy Imperial soldiers in town,” said Purna, “since we know exactly where their local regiment is.”

  “And we’ll be able to enjoy a hot meal, a hot drink, and a hot bath,” said Keun-ju, sounding more excited than he had all week.

  “We have to resupply soon anyway,” Purna pointed out. “Rations are low.”

  “To say nothing of the purebred steeds I shall purchase our party as a token of our close friendship,” said Digs. “We’ll make up any lost time in less than a day, and reach Diadem twice as fast as we would on foot, at a minimum.”

  “Horned Wolves don’t ride,” said Sullen, but he wasn’t looking at them, peering off into the blank haze as if he expected the return of spring at any moment. Then he said nothing, and when Digs began to pipe up with some other enticement Purna silenced him with a sharp motion; rusty as the gears in Sullen’s brainbox were it didn’t do to overload the equipment. Finally, Sullen nodded the slightest nod. “We’ll be much faster if you three have horses. And if I don’t trust your sorceress, Diggelby, we don’t listen to her, even if her counsel matches Hoartrap’s compass. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” all three sensible persons said in unison, and Digs added, “I’m sure this will help us find him, whether he’s actually run off or is camped down somewhere to sit out the crummy weather. Maybe he even went to Thao, same as us, and we’ll find him snoring in some dive tavern just like he was when my cousin Köz and I first hired him on as a guide.”

  “Hmmm,” said Sullen, walking off into the falling snow, the blue woolen cape Ji-hyeon had given him just before they departed comically short on his tall, broad back. “He’s not sitting still, wherever he is. Uncle Craven’s a rabbit, and that’s all they do, rabbits. Run. But wolves run, too.”

  That sort of wisdom was much more typical than the world-without-form line, and Purna, Digs, and even soppy Keun-ju traded raised eyebrows at the profound parables of Sullen Fathead, Moonfruit of the First Water. Then they pulled down hood or scarf, tugged up veil or trousers, and set off into the storm after their de facto leader. Sullen might have significantly more brawn than brains, but he was the one officially in charge of reuniting them with their old chumrade, the Mighty Maroto, Devilskinner of legend and bounder of experience.

  Maroto had better be having the worst time of his life to make up for all the bother they were going through on his account; if not, Purna might just have to kick his ass in one of their so-called fight-pretends. The thought of showing up her old pal and mentor kept her balmy as the snow picked up, and they marched on like the dutiful soldiers they most definitely weren’t.

  CHAPTER

  8

  The sun fled from Best, the Bright Watcher hiding in the wiregrass to the west and pulling down the cloak of her sister Silvereye to cover her trail. Many years ago, when a young Father Turisa and the old poison oracle had first convened in the Honor Circle, they had wrestled on the ground for hours, hissing back and forth as though they were mating frost vipers, and when they had finally separated the oracle announced through split lips that the sun was in fact but an aspect of the Deceiver, and the moon a manifestation of the Fallen Mother… but Best couldn’t stop herself from thinking of them by their ancestral names. It had been easier when only Silvereye was associated with the Allmother, but the new poison oracle had proved more receptive to Father Turisa’s wisdom than her predecessor had been, and so a dozen more ancestors in as many years had revealed themselves to be but different incarnations of the Fallen Mother. This led to much confusion if one didn’t slip into the old titles when discussing a hunt, a song, or most anything at all, up to and including the weather.

  And what weather it was, Best sweating through her thinnest skins despite the looming winter solstice, and it only got warmer the farther south they went. She marched on through the muggy, thickening dark, Brother Rýt trailing a distance behind her. They moved across the Samothan borderlands toward the point where the Bright Watcher had burrowed into the earth—Best’s wicked kinfolk had bewitched the sun to burn up the Frozen Savannahs, and so if they followed the sun they would find her family. Thus spoke the poison oracle, and Father Turisa had not gainsaid the wisdom; Diadem also lay west of Flintland, so all roads pursued the sun.

  As the barleywine-dark fringe of Silvereye’s star-studded cloak slipped around the rim of the world, Best stopped, waiting. This was how she and Brother Rýt had traveled all the way across the Frozen Savannahs and down through the Raptor Wood, she walking and he seeming to limp on both legs, until she got so far ahead that she had to stop or risk the boy losing her trail. He could not hunt any better than he could walk, and did not appear to be much of a warrior, either, and would not have lasted long by himself… which must be why the Fallen Mother had braided their paths together. Leading this daft pup around reminded her a touch of rearing Sullen, back when the boy was four or five.

  As she waited for the monk, she thought back to the Flywalk over the Agharthan Gorge, in particular the picture stone the Horned Wolves had erected on their side of the bridge over the summer. The engraved face of the limestone marker showed the outline of a four-armed monster harried by hunters, corpses splayed beneath the fiend’s feet. That her ignoble brother had long ago disgraced the clan twice over had appalled Best, yes, but it had not stunned her the way Sullen and her father had. The man who had planted Best in her mother and the boy Best had planted in her husband were no longer mere traitors to the clan; their sins had grown so great the two were now bonded together into a single massive anathema, as the monks called those born with the taint of devils.

  It must have been preordained, this taint, for the old poison oracle had attended Sullen’s birth, smearing a mixture of crushed insects, nettle ash, and cockerel blood on the foreheads of both the pacing, nervous mother and the moaning, laboring father. Best scratched the keloid the caustic toxin had marked across her brow, remembering how when Sullen finally emerged from between Keenear’s legs she had thought that she must be dreaming from the oracle’s burning balm. She hadn’t been, alas, but there hadn’t been any other explanation for why their wet, mewling babe would be so obviously cursed.

  From that first day forward, into the months and finally years that followed, Best had tried in vain to understand what she and her husband might have done wrong to invite in this devilish presence. She and Keenear were both model members of the clan, skilled hunters and warriors, respectful of their ancestors, the church, and the Horned Wolf way, and they were hardly the only couple who were both two-spirited (or hijra, as the Chainites called those whose souls the Deceiver had tricked into being born into different bodies than those the Fallen Mother had intended for them).

  It wouldn’t have even occurred to her to consider this last factor, for those most tested by the Deceiver are most worthy of the Allmother’s love, except her father had made quite the racket about how she and Keenear were no more responsible for how their son came out than he and his wife were for Best being born two-spirited. The Old Watchers just watch, he’d said with his usual flair for the profane, they don’t mess around in the wombs of innocent men and women, so take your boy for the blessing he is. When Keenear had demanded to know how a boy afflicted with the devils’ blood could be a blessing, Ruthless had boxed his son-in-law’s ear and told him any child that wasn’t stillborn was a blessing, and a bairn born with the blood of shamans was far better than a pair of an
cestor-betraying Chainite converts like them deserved. After this showdown the new parents had hurried to confess what the old man had said, and Father Turisa was predictably appalled that anyone would compare an anathema to a hijra, listing all the obvious ways it was different. He even went on to imply that maybe Best’s father’s looseness with his tongue was what had invited in the malign spirit that had lodged in the child’s eyes.

  Yet when they brought the matter before the old poison oracle, he had told the both of them as well as the priest that a proven elder like Ruthless was entitled to his own say in his own hut, even if it stemmed from antiquated beliefs held over from less enlightened times. All the same, Best and Keenear would have been within their rights as parents to let Father Turisa remove the devilish corruption from their child, but Best couldn’t bring herself to let the Chainite carry out the painful act of cleansing, knowing what little chance a blind adult had of prospering in the clan, let alone a blind infant.

  Even now she spat at the thought of disfiguring a baby, and then spat again at the thought of what her misplaced mercy for an anathema had cost her and her people. When spitting wasn’t enough to expel the anger and fear and shame at what evil must lurk in the blood of her family, she hoisted the hem of her battle-dress and pissed into the darkness. As she did, she remembered how her exhausted husband had reacted to seeing those round cat eyes looking back at him from the slippery newborn’s face, Keenear reluctant to even let the baby nurse lest the devil-touched thing bite his heavy breasts… and remembering this, Best couldn’t stop herself from also recalling how as soon as she had seen Sullen in his father’s arms she had known their offspring was incapable of harm or malice, imperfect, yes, but a child of the Fallen Mother all the same. After everything that had happened since, Best now wondered if that immediate attachment and trust came not from motherly love but something more insidious, the curse that apparently affected every generation of her family making her want to protect a creature that everyone else saw for the wicked entity that it was. Sullen was not to blame for his condition, for he had been doomed by birth, but Best was certainly accountable, for she could have done something to spare the clan from the anathema her son was destined to grow into. She had been overconfident in her ability to guide him into a life of righteousness, and now all the Savannahs paid the price for her hubris…

  A scent on the warm lowland breeze distracted Best from her grim reveries, and she sniffed the night, turning all her focus to the teasing hint of wood smoke. It passed, leaving her with the dull smells of the grassland, but not before she pinpointed the direction it wafted from. When Brother Rýt tripped up through the grass behind her, she was impatiently whetting her grandmother’s sun-knife.

  “Can we please rest?” Brother Rýt sounded like a child mourning the death of a clanmate. “Please, just for—”

  “There is a fire ahead,” Best told him. “We will see who burns it, and either ask the right to use it or take it for our own. Since we set out this morn I delivered four hares to my gamebag, and that is a meat best cooked. Come, and stay silent.”

  Best needn’t have worried about Rýt betraying their approach, for he again fell so far behind her that she stopped hearing his blundering approach altogether. Silvereye slept but her countless twinkling children lit the way, the heavens cloudy with the celestial litter, until a low star on the horizon crawled down from the edge of the sky and settled on the grasslands. Between the warm nights and their rations of beancake and saltfish, Best had seen no reason to risk kindling a flame since leaving home, and so this fire was the first she had seen in many nights… and where there was fire in the wilderness, there were friends to be made, or, more likely, foes to be fought.

  Now that she had found the beacon she again stopped, but after waiting a shamefully long time for Rýt she was obliged to retrace her steps to see where he had wandered off to. Clear and starlit as the night was, the helpless monk had still gone astray, but she soon found him and forced him to pick up his sluggish pace until he could clearly make out the distant glow of the campfire. Then she told him to walk to it as quick as he could, and set off on her own at a swift trot. He could only make her look weak if they arrived together, which would do neither of them any boons, and this way she could come in as cautious or aggressive as the situation demanded.

  Soon the smell of burning locust wood became as sharp as the stars, and then other distinct notes came into focus: scorched pepper and herbs, and the rich tickle of tubāq. She slowed her pace to a steady walk, for charging up to a campfire sends but one message, and Best was no more a brute than she was a coward. So long as no Jackal People or sorcerers tended this lonely fire, she would give them a chance to do the right thing and let her share their camp. She felt the tall grass rasping at her knees fall away as she came closer, entering a wide ring of short, blackened stalks that crumbled to ash beneath her boots as she closed the rest of the distance. The bare ground felt sticky under her heels, and she quickly crossed the clearing back into the grass, something about the place setting her teeth on edge.

  As starlight gave way to firelight she saw but one figure, hunchbacked and hooded, sitting on the far side of the small blaze. Best stopped on the edge of the light, wondering if this were but a scarecrow erected to lure her in, but then a long-stemmed pipe was raised to the opening of the cowl, and an ember glowed in the bulbous bowl as the solitary fire tender puffed the tubāq. Behind the stranger stood a wooden hut with a small door set partway up its face and three ladder-like steps leading down to the grass. Not a traveler, then, but a hermit who dwelled in this desolate border between Flintland and Samoth, capital province of the Crimson Empire. Best waited, knowing she could be plainly seen, turning the sun-knife in her hand so it caught the fire and flashed her warning. When even this didn’t provoke the evidently ancient stranger into offering either a friendly invitation or a hostile challenge, Best issued the universal Flintland greeting, though this far past the Raptor Wood it might not be understood; had she spoken the Immaculate tongue half so well as her son she should have opened with that, instead.

  “The night is cold, your fire is warm, and I would have friends before me than foes behind.”

  The figure didn’t acknowledge her, blowing out a curling serpent of smoke that slithered into the sky, and Best tightened her hold on the throwing knife, wondering if the stranger showed her disrespect or was simply deaf. Before she could decide, the hooded head raised to survey Best, and two glowing red eyes flashed at her from deep within the cowl. A witch or monster of some kind, obviously, and Best’s arm flew back to launch her sun-knife at the creature when it called out, “The night is cold, my fire is warm, and friends are made as easy as foes.”

  This posed a significant problem, as Best had no desire to treat such an unclean presence to anything save her blessed steel, but there was no crime more heinous than attacking one’s host after receiving the ancestral welcome, especially when she had been the one to request it. Perhaps sensing Best’s reluctance, the figure used a twisted, feather-topped walking stick to climb awkwardly to its feet, as if to show that every slight movement was dearly won. Then it used the long stem of the pipe it held in its other hand to flip back the hood of what Best now saw was a gauzy grey coat.

  As the cowl flopped back Best almost laughed at her own foolishness, for this was no monster with flames for eyes, nor an ancient crippled by age, but a young woman with twin rectangles of polished glass fixed across her nose with copper wire. Despite her unaccented Flintland greeting, the girl was of no tribe Best had ever heard of. Her long, straight hair was mousy by nature and ratty with neglect, her skin lighter than that of most Flintlanders but far darker than any Immaculate’s, with scraps of metal, stone, and bone flashing from the hoops, chains, and studs set in her sneering lips, aquiline nose, thick brows, and sharp ears. More silver and bone girded her throat, necklaces that looked as heavy as shackles drooping around the high collar of the foreign, lace-frilled dress she wore under the hood
ed coat.

  “I am Best of the Horned Wolf Clan,” said she, for she had no fear in her heart for little girls, even ones willing to riddle their faces with such bizarre heraldry or dress in such outlandish attire. “I have a hare to offer for your fire, and not one friend but two, for my companion will join us in time.”

  “Well met, well met,” said the woman, bowing though the movement clearly pained her. “I am Nemi of the Bitter Sighs, a sorcerer of no small skill.”

  Best had no love for any wretch so shameless they would stoop to deviltry, but she had never before met a witch who so openly admitted to her practice. This showed boldness that Best could respect, but it also put her further on guard—a sorcerer might voice the ancient greetings only to betray that trust, and if an attack took place she must be ready to murder the girl with cold steel before she could be bewitched…

  Until such a time, however, Best had meat that would not cook itself. She nodded curtly to this Nemi and squatted by the fire, thrusting the central blade of her sun-knife into the earth beside her. Unslinging her pack, she retrieved the gamebag and iron skewers.

  “Your companion is clanfolk of yours?” asked the witch, leaning on her staff and watching Best dress the hares.

  “No,” said Best, knowing from all the songs Sullen was forever singing to himself about witches and treacherous poison oracles that she must be honest or risk their ire, but she must also be vigilant to reveal as little as possible lest they somehow trap her with her words, or worse, her desires. That was what made sorcerers so dangerous, they sought to duel with your heart or your head instead of your strength or your skill.

  “Is he perhaps one of my kind?”

  Best thought about that one before answering—did she mean an obvious Outlander, or did she mean a witch? Picking her words as carefully as Sullen picked his when repeating a story over and over until he had it memorized, she said, “I do not know what your kind is, Nemi of the Bitter Sighs. Perhaps if you sang me the song of your days I could better answer?”