A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  “We’re not begging,” snapped Kang-ho, and then, remembering his role as worried father, he resumed his seat and lowered his voice. “I am begging, yes, because I’m your dad and I’ll say anything if it gets you to see reason, but Waits is firmly of the opinion that if anyone ought to be groveling it’s you. You’re trapped, Ji-hyeon, cut off, and while I understand why you have to put on a brave front and threaten to call up another monster, we both know that wouldn’t work any better the second time than the first… and that’s assuming Hoartrap can pull off the same trick twice, which isn’t exactly his specialty, in case you haven’t noticed. Where is he, by the way? I hope he didn’t overexert himself with that vulgar display of power last week. I can’t imagine what sort of toll trafficking with such powers puts on the mortal frame.”

  “I’ll give the Touch your regards,” said Ji-hyeon. “I’m sure he’ll be sorry to have missed you, but perhaps he’ll pop over to say hello one of these evenings.”

  “Yes, well, that might not be wise, given the company I’m keeping,” said Kang-ho, and she noticed with satisfaction her father’s eyes were flitting to the dark corners of the tent. Hoartrap only had to sneak up on you the once before you made a habit of checking all the closets and under the bed. “Colonel Waits is a remarkably reasonable person, but you’ve put her in quite the bind—first with the criminal suggestion that she join your rebellion against the Empire, and then with your invocation of a devil straight from the First Dark. How can a woman of honor work with you when in less than twenty-four hours you committed capital sins against both Crown and Chain? I’m telling you, it’s only a matter of time before Diadem gets off its duff and delivers the only order they could possibly give, after what you did to the Fifteenth Regiment, and Myura, and Geminides, and every other Imperial city and province you trashed along the way.”

  “Except she didn’t do anything to the Fifteenth, as we all know,” said Fennec. “Or did you forget to deliver Colonel Hjortt’s letter to your new boss?”

  “Oh, she read it all right,” said Kang-ho. “But until such a time as Hjortt is sufficiently recovered to appear before Colonel Waits in person there are certain questions as to its authenticity.”

  “I would have thought Colonel Hjortt’s colorful turn of phrase when it came to the lack of punctuality of the Thaoan regiment and their colonel might have been sufficient to prove its authorship,” said Ji-hyeon, taking a nice big hit from her saam pipe to remind her father that he wasn’t allowed to puff his acrid tubāq in her tent. Holding in the hit, she added, “And she’s welcome to come here and meet with him herself, or you could—ach!”

  It was hard to imagine her father looking any more put out than he already did, but as Ji-hyeon coughed, sending the musky smoke straight in his face, she thought she may have finally nudged him that extra bit.

  “Yes, well, considering my relationship to you, I think Colonel Waits has some grounds for not trusting me as much as she used to,” said Kang-ho, waving away the pungent cloud she had enveloped him with. “I’m not sure she’d believe me even if I met Hjortt myself.”

  “I wonder whatever you did to make her question your loyalty,” said Ji-hyeon, already feeling better as the heat shivered out through her lungs.

  “Arriving to find my supposedly willing and able mercenary army refusing to march on Linkensterne may have played a hand,” said Kang-ho. “And if that wasn’t enough, discovering the entire fucking Fifteenth Regiment missing and a brand-new Gate in its place certainly didn’t help. And then there’s the niggling matter that when she quite reasonably tried to move her regiment a tiny bit closer to your camp to speed along the negotiation process, my darling daughter loosed a devil queen the likes of which hasn’t been glimpsed by mortal eyes since the Age of Wonders. So unless you do the smart thing and trust me on this we all just sit here waiting on Diadem to order Colonel Waits to stop stalling and eradicate the lot of you.”

  “We might not have to wait that long,” said Ji-hyeon, trying not to smile. “Our countryfolk might send down an assassin squad from the Isles well before that happens.”

  “It’s not funny, Ji-hyeon! And it frankly terrifies me that you’re putting more stock in the counsel of Fennec than you are in me.”

  “Terrified is good,” said Ji-hyeon. “Shows you’ve actually been listening to me for a change.”

  “It’s as if you do the opposite of everything I say just to spite me,” said Kang-ho sadly. “I warned you about trusting Zosia, but you didn’t listen, and we see where that got you—oh yes, the prisoners you handed over to the Thaoans during our first parley had quite the song to sing. The ones who survived your little Gate-side tiff, that is. I’m just glad you lived long enough to learn that she can’t be trusted, and pray that you come to similar enlightenments about the rest—they didn’t call us Villains because we were the good guys!”

  “No, they called you that because the Empire had all the printing presses before we got started, and anyone who stood up to Kaldruut was a baddie,” said a voice from the entrance to the tent. Before Kang-ho had recovered from his surprise, Zosia stepped fully into the command tent, confirming his worst fears. Almost two weeks had passed since their brawl at the Gate, and Ji-hyeon was pleased to see the older woman still looked rough as a sherpa’s old shoes. She wore a fading necklace of bruised skin around her throat and some matching blotches on her face that made her look remarkably like a mouthy old maniac who had been worked over by a much younger and more talented opponent. As with Ji-hyeon, some of Zosia’s injuries had been accrued during the brief but brutal Second Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, but also as with Ji-hyeon, the worst of them had been delivered the day before, not from a devil queen or her brood but at the hands of another mortal woman.

  “So this is it,” said Kang-ho, slowly standing for the last time. It must have taken some real work to look away from Zosia, but he directed his heaviest pout at his daughter. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did take after your other father.”

  “Chin up, Kang-ho!” said Zosia cheerily, strutting over and throwing an arm around his shoulder. “Hells, your daughter and me are living proof that it’s best to let bygones be bygones, especially when there’s fresh trouble blowing in. So you tried to get Singh to kill me back at the start of this adventure. It happens. I’m a bigger woman than to let a little thing like that get me down. Now what say I escort you out of camp, so we can catch up a bit?”

  “Ji-hyeon, please—” Kang-ho squeaked desperately as Zosia began guiding him out of the tent.

  “Give my regards to Colonel Waits,” said Ji-hyeon, blowing her dad a kiss. “And see you back here at this time tomorrow, barring any unforeseen developments.”

  As soon as they left the command tent, Kang-ho began spluttering weak excuses (“I had no choice!”) and appeals to her vanity (“Of course I knew you’d see through it, just had to go through the motions”), but Zosia shushed him as she led him through the snowbound camp. More weather had come in the day after the Thaoans’ aborted attack, and the white stuff had come down slow but steady for well over a week. While the blizzard had finally passed in the night, it remained to be seen if the Cobalt Company’s spirits could ever be healed. Even with the noon sun high above and not a cloud in the sky, every tent was still glassy with snow and ice that refused to melt. There had been some cave-ins where canvas had yielded to the seemingly eternal onslaught, but few fatalities, especially given the circumstances, and the duration of the storm had discouraged even the most committed deserters.

  Zosia knew that firsthand: when she’d woken up in a sawbones’s tent the day after being hurled headfirst into the devil queen’s arm, she had been more than ready to chase down Sullen and give him a harsh lesson about not throwing your betters at monsters. Yet while he and his crew only had a few hours’ head start, the snow had already covered their tracks. Besides, the whole point of their departure during the start of a blizzard was to better sneak past the surrounding Thaoans, and
knowing Zosia’s luck the weather would break just when she wandered into a sentry squad. So instead of going after Sullen for a little satisfaction, or ditching the Cobalts for good the way she’d daydreamed before her run-ins with murderous prison guards and slightly more sympathetic opossum devils, she’d hobbled over to Ji-hyeon’s tent to make nice.

  Well, nice was an overstatement, but at least the girl turned out to be every bit as soft as Zosia had hoped. Between Singh’s vouching for her character and Zosia’s intentionally enigmatic proclamation that something very big and very bad had befallen Diadem and its sovereign, something that only Zosia was in a position to immediately investigate further, she’d been pretty confident Ji-hyeon would cut her some slack for her minor rebellion. Zosia knew just what to give the brat, and in what order: a little contrition (“Look, obviously I fucked it all up, and I’m sorry”), a lot of flattery (“Nice hook, by the way—I think you cracked my jaw”), and some bullshit excuses that certainly wouldn’t have washed with Zosia if their roles had been reversed (“I hadn’t slept in days, mixed bad bugs with strong drink, and completely lost control—will never happen again”). She didn’t even have to whip out the damaged Carnelian Crown to make her point, and so she decided to keep that secret in reserve lest she had need to further lean on Ji-hyeon for a little more leeway—and besides, what if the general tried to insist Zosia hand it over right then and there? No, better to be able to keep it up her sleeve, and then present Ji-hyeon with it at an opportune moment, such as when she was in need of proving her worth to the immature general: why do you keep me around? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because I’m the only person who can give you the Carnelian Crown… like so!

  Yet in the end it seemed what had actually won the girl over wasn’t any of Zosia’s apologies or praises, nor her explanations or promises to embark on a top secret mission of the utmost urgency. No, what had allowed the girl to so graciously forgive her treacherous captain was Zosia’s selfless rescue of Ji-hyeon during their takedown of the devil queen. It took her a moment to even realize what the kid was talking about, but then it clicked, and Zosia resolved to let Sullen slide on his poor choice of missiles in light of how Ji-hyeon had interpreted the event. Slaying monsters that Zosia knew with absolute certainty were evil incarnate had been the most fun she’d had since before the Fifteenth Cavalry came to Kypck, and it was all the more satisfying to learn that the encounter had also eased her back into Ji-hyeon’s good graces.

  The general was a little savvier than Zosia had been counting on, however, and it wasn’t until she’d sworn on the newly returned Choplicker’s freedom not to ever come at Ji-hyeon again that the girl agreed to move forward. If Zosia ever did need to break that particular oath, Ji-hyeon might be in for a nasty surprise, since the recent fiasco with Choplicker just went to show that the subject of the devil’s liberty might not be resolved with something as easy as carelessly spoken words. Claim any reward that harms no mortal, she had told him, and instead of choosing to slip free of his unseen fetters he had traveled across the Star in a single night, all to bring her Indsorith’s broken crown. What did that mean, exactly? Did he want Zosia to be queen again? Did he just want to inform her that something had happened to Indsorith? Or did he maybe want her to melt it down and retool it into a fancy-ass collar for his mangy neck? It was all very weird, was what it was, and made Zosia less certain than ever of where she stood with the devil she’d bound so long ago, what all he was capable of, and why exactly he still served her, despite being offered ways out of her service three times over now. Sure, maybe foolishly telling him to take any prize he wished hadn’t fulfilled whatever arcane code bound devils are forced to follow in order to earn their freedom, but surely her original wish of decades past to keep her and Leib safe from harm should have been easy pickings for any devil, to say nothing of her request to save Purna on the battlefield, a wish so easy to grant that Diggelby’s devil had jumped on it as soon as Choplicker refused. So… why?

  “So… why aren’t I swallowing my teeth already?” said Kang-ho, reminding Zosia that she still hadn’t spoken a word as they neared the edge of the icy camp, he leading his horse by the reins and Choplicker bobbing along merrily at her side. The luster was returning to the devil’s coat in equal pace to the fading of Zosia’s bruises. “I can’t imagine it’s going to be so easy as our just agreeing that I owe you one?”

  “Oh you know me, I’m always easy with my friends—we’ll call it square, no questions asked, if you help me with a play I’m working on,” murmured Zosia in the corsair’s cant he had taught her near thirty years past, when they’d first met on the deck of the Usban privateer Cadaveria. Kang-ho looked all around but they’d passed the last of the camp followers’ wagons and stood in melting slush with not a soul in sight save the sentries off in the distance, and far beyond, the red Thaoan camp spread along the rim of the valley.

  “You know I’d do anything short of slitting my own throat to make things right between us,” replied Kang-ho in the same patois when he’d allayed his worry of being overheard. “I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t make it up to you, my horrible, horrible mistake—you don’t know what it’s like, when you have kids, you’d do anything to keep them safe.”

  “Blech.” Zosia jabbed a finger at her open mouth, because there were few things worse than old friends lecturing her about how she’d missed out by not spurting a rugrat or four out of her cunt. In all their years together the only time she’d let Hoartrap directly put his work on her was when she’d taken him up on his standing offer to permanently render his friends sterile and pox-proof—only she and Maroto had gone through with it, since Kang-ho and Singh always wanted kids, and Fennec said he’d take his chances rather than allowing the Touch to apply his namesake to that particular part of his anatomy. Seeing how well Kang-ho got on with his daughter just reaffirmed Zosia’s commitment to a childless life. “Funny you should mention kids, Kang-ho, because Singh and I have been talking about yours, and…”

  She lowered her voice even more for the proposal, whispering in his ear an offer that must have been as tantalizing to the dyed-in-the-wool schemer as a wriggling nightcrawler dangled in front of a half-starved trout. His eyes widened the slightest bit, and his lips betrayed a familiar twitch that desperately wanted to break into a grin. He whispered, “I’ll send her an owlbat as soon as I’m back at camp—what time should Waits request her for a midfield parley?”

  “Singh’s dragoons can be ready whenever you need them, and even if she brings her full retinue of bodyguards they’ll be no match for the Raniputri riders,” said Zosia, her heart sinking a little, sentimental organ that it was.

  “Let’s say dawn, then,” Kang-ho decided, no doubt thinking in the misty morning he’d stand a better chance of stealing off with whatever loyal Immaculate crew he’d brought along, cutting the Thaoans out of the ransom altogether. He gave Zosia’s shoulder a light pinch, then mounted his horse with respectable ease for a man as aged as she was. Then again, he hadn’t been roughed up by a devil queen, or worse, his daughter. Looking down at Zosia, he gave her the old Cobalt salute and said, “It’s good to be working with you again, Zosia, instead of against.”

  Then he was off through the sparkling frozen sea, his horse kicking up a spray of white dust as it carried him toward the Thaoan camp that encircled the Cobalts like a bloodstained noose round a scrawny blue throat. Watching him go, Zosia let out a heavy sigh, but Choplicker barked his approval of the treachery. The devil had a point: after the way Kang-ho had screwed Zosia, it was nice to know the man was at least consistent in his willingness to betray those he professed to love the most. Turning back to camp, Zosia set off on her other errand… the one Ji-hyeon didn’t know about.

  CHAPTER

  10

  When Sullen had first come to the Crimson Empire, each new city had overwhelmed him with its majesty. From the countless glittering spires of Yennek to the humbly carved yet brightly painted blue doors that graced every home in Pur
son, each locale had brought fresh wonders to his wide eyes, thrilling them with their unique characters. As a boy he’d always pictured the Crimson Empire as a rolling expanse not unlike the Frozen Savannahs, but with fire poppies coating the land instead of tundra, and with each of its famous settlements more or less the same as his village. Discovering just how vast the Empire was, and how each province or city-state differed from her neighbor, Sullen found himself confronted each day with a fresh marvel, be it of custom or clothing, agriculture or architecture. He could scarcely believe the salt miners they met outside Geminides bowed before the same queen as the gorgon herders of Meshugg, let alone shared the same tongue.