A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Grandfather, as a counterpoint, had been decidedly and consistently unimpressed, sniffing his nose at all the myriad ways people had concocted of doing things completely wrong, and remarking that seals from every sea could bark the same but that hardly made them learned. The Horned Wolves may have lost their way, but these Outlanders had never found it in the first place. Sullen kept his staunch disagreement about the quality of the Crimson Empire to himself, whether Grandfather was pooh-poohing a damp, musty coaching inn off the Katheli road or the whole damn Serpent’s Circle; leave it to Grandfather to find fault with one of the last remaining relics of the Age of Wonders, an entire shimmering city that slowly rotated atop its artificial island floating in the middle of Lake Jucifuge.

  Maybe it was just a sign that Sullen was getting jaded, or that without Grandfather around to push back against he wasn’t as obligated to see the flowers growing from the cowpat, but Thao failed to impress the way the rest of the Imperial cities had. The squat wood and stone buildings were certainly modern enough, and the miniature castles that cropped up from time to time to tower over their one-story neighbors had an interesting, almost organic design that Sullen could appreciate, but, being real here, the whole place was kind of a midden heap. Literally. Even taking into account that the blizzard had only broken a few days before and the ensuing warm spell was making everything melt, the place was filthy. Not that a Flintland lad like Sullen would turn his nose up at a bit of dirt or dung on the streets, but in Thao the streets themselves seemed to be paved in manure, even the rooftops he could make out through the melting snow covered not in tiles or shingles but in brown muck. Thao did have a lot more trees lining its streets than other cities; pity they all looked dead.

  Just when Sullen had thought the place couldn’t get any more depressing, or dirty, Diggelby directed them down a street that followed the sinuous course of an ugly ten-foot-tall embankment of packed earth. They turned again, through a short tunnel in the side of the mound, and emerged into an open-air bazaar. Sullen got his hopes up that he might be able to replace the sun-knives he’d lost during the encounter with the opossum devils—he’d found his torn-off bandolier afterward, lying on the field near his spear, but only one of the knives—but after browsing around for a while it became obvious all the souk had to offer was a lot of junk and a late lunch. Purna and Keun-ju acquired steaming cones of chestnuts, Sullen borrowed a coin to buy the worst berbere snails he’d ever tasted, and Digs got impatient; whatever he was hungry for couldn’t be acquired at honest markets. As they ate he hurried them along another serpentine road through a posh neighborhood where the stately homes had all number of terraced roofs to pile with dirt and, unlike the poorer citizens, actual heaps of refuse. They passed along and under several more of the high earthen walls and finally went over the top of one, climbing a sturdy wooden ramp that Princess obligingly clip-clopped across while Sullen paused at the top to overlook Thao.

  It sprawled as far as he could see from this slight prominence, as expansive a city as any he’d seen. It might’ve been an impressive metropolis, but all the raised, chaotically branching rivers of dirt made it look as though enormous moles had burrowed through the region in ages past and the people who had settled here had just decided to build around them. Sullen was thankful that they had visited Thao just after a cold snap, as this place must be riper than good lye-fish once the weather warmed up. Diggelby sidled up to him at the rail, while Purna and Keun-ju tried to coax Princess to come down the other side of the overpass—the pony was apparently of a mind to stay at the top, and until she descended the slope, neither could Sullen or the pasha.

  “Sorry we’re not here in the spring,” said Diggelby, following Sullen’s gaze over the dirty city.

  “I’m not,” said Sullen, but remembering how Ji-hyeon accused him of not being able to take a joke any better than he could give one, added, “If I wanted that kind of stink in my life I’d just pitch my tent outside the Cobalt latrines.”

  From the look Diggelby was giving him, Sullen had better concentrate on appreciating jokes before he started making any of his own. Then the little man must have got it, because his eyes went wide, and he said, “Oh! Ohhhhh.”

  “Yeah, well…” said Sullen, giving the stubborn pony a gentle push to get her moving down the ramp. She didn’t budge, probably not liking how steep the descent looked from up here.

  “You’ve never heard of Thao? The Garden of the Star?” said Diggelby, but unlike most of the times when he asked about Sullen’s body of knowledge it didn’t sound mean-spirited or rhetorical.

  “Actually, yeah,” said Sullen, but he was unable to place the song, which hardly ever happened… and then he had it. It wasn’t from a song at all, but one of Father Turisa’s hymns to the Fallen Mother. “I thought that was on the Sunken Kingdom, though? Like Old Black’s Meadhall, but for Chainites.”

  “They only decided that at the Council of Horisont, oh, twenty years ago, I guess,” said Diggelby. “And my uncle says they only did it to punish Thao for supporting Indsorith’s rule after she usurped Zosia, instead of siding with the Chain. I think to myself, Diggelby, twenty years is an awfully long time, but it really isn’t, you know? For reality to be so shifted, I mean, that even clear out on the Noreast Arm people already believe things a flock of cardinals decided in my lifetime—we think history’s this hard, intractable thing, but it’s actually as stretchy as we want it to be. I wonder what people will believe in another twenty years, or even less. Things we thought were eternal can be forgotten so fast…”

  “Diggelby,” Sullen said after the pasha trailed off, “maybe if I was a bughead I would’ve understood some of that, but I ain’t so I didn’t.”

  “Oh!” Diggelby shook his head, as if just remembering he’d been holding incomprehensible court. “I only meant Thao used to be called the Garden of the Star, and had been for hundreds of years, but then the Burnished Chain decided that was wrong, that nothing so grand could be built from the hands of sinners, and so they made it official—Thao might have some gardens and be part of the Star, absolutely, but the Garden of the Star grows now and forever on Jex Toth, and only when the Sunken Kingdom rose up from the waves to welcome home the faithful would we know the true glories of the Fallen Mother’s bounty, etcet, etcet. My uncle was there when it all happened, though he was only a clerk then, or he would’ve voted against it—a good man, Uncle Obedear, though prone to the loquacious, if I may put it as gently as possible.”

  “The Garden of the Star,” Sullen repeated, looking back out at the snow-scabbed veins of earth snaking through the filthy city, at the dung-packed streets and garbage-piled roofs and naked branches of the stunted trees. “What happened to this place, to make it become so barren? Just the will of the Burnished Chain?”

  “Something far older and stronger,” said Diggelby. “Winter. Like I say, we should come back in the spring or summer—it’s like being a child again, running through Papa’s tulip beds with the flowers waving in the wind all around you, only without the firm talking-to afterward. Every avenue’s an arbor or an orchard, and they call these raised beds we’re on the Rainbow Rivers for all the bright blossoms flowing down them. Oh, how I love a Thaoan bug hunt under a chubby summer moon, quaffing flagons of hibiscus beer and dandelion wine and perambulating through the fragrant streets, getting elbow deep in the verge in hunt of new and unusual creepy-crawlies until the pollen is thick as wig powder on your jacket…”

  Diggelby sighed, leaning on the rail, and Sullen sighed, too, looking out at a city as drab as the Temple of the Black Vigil in Emeritus, but one whose brilliance would be reborn when the seasons turned. He wondered if the Forsaken Empire would ever find its color again, if one day the tomb of the Faceless Mistress would be festooned with all the hues of the mortal world… He hoped so, and in the meantime silently apologized to the grimy city of Thao for jumping to conclusions about its nature. “You said it’s hundreds of years old, this place—so it’s from the Age of Wonders, lik
e the Serpent’s Circle?”

  “No,” said Diggelby, smiling so faintly his makeup barely creased around his shiny black lips. “Thao’s old, but not so old as that. This miracle wasn’t built by witch queens or bound devils, just simple mortals with two things that seem in short supply these days: beautiful dreams, and the patience to see them through.”

  “Huh,” said Sullen, and was about to say something stupid about how maybe after they found Uncle Craven they could stop back through on their way home to the Cobalt camp, but then he remembered that Ji-hyeon would definitely have moved the Company by then, and besides, while there was no telling when that would even be, Old Watchers willing it wouldn’t take clear till spring to find the missing bastard. So Sullen didn’t say anything, and then Diggelby told Keun-ju and Purna to knock it off, he knew how to get Princess moving, and, sure enough, after squeezing past the pony on the boardwalk he led her down the ramp by enticing her with whatever he kept in his flask. Only once she was down did the pasha let her have a dram, the beast sticking her tongue out for a taste of the dark, oily liquid. It was the queerest thing he’d seen all day, a man sharing a round with a pony… but they hadn’t met Diggelby’s so-called Procuress yet.

  Then again, if she was an acquaintance of a puffball like the pasha, how bad could she be?

  “Fucking fuck fuck… fuck you! You fucking fucker! And anyone who stays can get fucked, too!”

  This grand finale to Sullen’s temper tantrum was said in Crimson, and was thus the only part of the diatribe Purna understood. Having so eloquently made his point, the wildborn barbarian stormed out, slamming the door to the shop so hard a small bird skull fell off one of the curio-cluttered shelves that lined the wall nearest the Procuress. The woman caught it in a black-nailed hand without even looking, which was so fleet Purna exchanged approving nods with Keun-ju. The Immaculate lad was all right, especially compared to the unhinged ox who had just embarrassed them for no reason at all, and who might have just ditched them altogether, it sounded like? Purna certainly wasn’t going to walk out now that her curiosity was good and raised, even if the smoky candles that crowded every available surface were burning her eyes.

  “I am soooooo sorrrrrrrrry, Vex Ferlune,” Digs said, even his unflappable self caught off guard by Sullen’s freaking out before introductions had even been completed. That he addressed their host as Vex instead of Lady or Mistress did not put Purna any more at ease, either, since she’d only ever heard that ancient honorific applied to witch queens in songs about the Age of Wonders. Maybe Sullen had the right idea in cutting out… “I swear, he’s never done that before, I sweaaaaaaar. Would it help if I mentioned I have no idea what he was even saying? Obviously it didn’t sound nice, and I caught the last of it, but—”

  “Do not concern yourself, Pasha,” said the Procuress, displaying the freakishly sharp canines that seemed to have so incensed Sullen. Her eyes went to Purna, no, to the hood she wore pushed back on her shoulders. “He and I have a history far older than either of us, even if we have never met. Isn’t that so, Tapai Purna?”

  “Apparently?” Purna wasn’t sure what the hell this pale, spooky woman with her long dark hair and black pointy fingernails and way-too-perfectly-tailored black velvet gown-robe-thing was talking about, but she would bet her bottom biscuit that the woman’s eyeteeth had become that sharp not by nature but with a file. Purna had spent a lot of time surreptitiously staring at Choi’s mouth, and figured she had become something of an expert on dangerous-looking wildborn teeth; these chompers looked too sharp to have grown in like that. “I barely speak Normal Sullen, and don’t know a lick of Mad Sullen, so… oh.”

  Now that she thought about it, Sullen must’ve been ranting in Flintlander, some of the clicking sounds he’d made an awful lot like the insults Maroto had reluctantly agreed to teach her—he’d told her any Noreaster tribe worth talking to would know a little Immaculate, but it never hurt to be conversant in cusses. The clans on the Frozen Savannahs would apparently insult you to your face if they thought they could get away with it, and if they thought they could get away with it they’d probably think they could get away with a lot more. There was only one tribe who didn’t much use the same Flintland burns as the rest, and since they weren’t going to open their mouths to you unless it was to take a bite, there was no point in worrying about picking up the insults of the Gate-worshipping crazies who called themselves—

  Then it all came together. Black, sharp fingernails. Yellow, sharp canines. Far, far lighter skin than any other Flintlander she’d ever met, even Ji-hyeon’s missing-and-almost-definitely-Gate-gobbled bodyguard Sasamaso—this woman was as fair as Digs’s foundation. And there, poking out of the side of the Procuress’s waves of black hair, an ear cropped on the side and notched on the top.

  “You’re a Jackal Person,” breathed Purna, taking a step back through the chaotic shop, afraid in a way she hadn’t been even when she’d ridden straight at a rampaging colossus back at the Second Battle of the Lark’s Tongue. The stories Maroto had told her about these savages made her think a devil queen would make more civilized company…

  “I’m no more a Jackal than you are a Horned Wolf,” said Ferlune the Procuress, exposing her black-robed back to Purna as she returned the fallen bird skull to its place on the shelf. An act of deference, that, or a challenge? “The difference is that I once ran on all fours with my pack, but I think you’ve always preferred to stand tall on your own two legs. If you’d ever been a real Horned Wolf, even one adopted by the tribe, you would have left with your friend.”

  That was something of a relief, maybe? This Procuress was witchy as all get-out, sure, but in a sexy kind of way—sharp fingernails notwithstanding—and Purna really, really, really wanted to believe Diggelby’s friend wasn’t an active member of a tribe so deranged even clans like the Horned Wolves and the Troll Lions who never saw eye to eye on anything could agree they were out of control. Really.

  “He’s not really our friend, anyway,” said Keun-ju, who apparently knew a thing or twenty about sucking up. “Our relationship is… complicated, but rest assured he speaks only for himself. To second the pasha, please accept our apologies on Sullen’s behalf.”

  “And to second my own words, Master Keun-ju, do not concern yourself further with the matter,” said Ferlune, turning her tawny eyes back to Diggelby as she spoke. “I assume this isn’t just the usual for you, then, Pasha?”

  “No,” said Digs, waaaaaay too quickly, and beneath his cake of creamy makeup Purna caught a glimpse of a rose so rare no merchant nor grower in all of Thao had ever before witnessed its bloom. Now what in all the Arms of the Star and the devils that dwelled there could make Pasha Diggelby blush? “I mean, yes, that too, of course, but today I also seek to put your powers of procuring to the ultimate test.”

  “Do tell,” said the woman, ducking through the purple batik curtains that cordoned off the back half of the one-room building. “And speak up.”

  “Normally this is the part where we’d tell her, and then she’d come out with whatever we asked for,” Digs hissed to his pals. “I have no idea what’s going to happen this time.”

  “Would be nice if she just brought out Maroto,” muttered Keun-ju, but it didn’t sound like he was holding out a lot of hope. He wandered over to a stack of dusty luggage piled against several rolled-up rugs and began rooting through them. From the way Digs talked about the Procuress, Purna had expected her shop to be something like an upscale mercantile crossed with a posh stinghouse, but this cluttered, ill-lit dump actually reminded her of nothing so much as a junk shop, or the storeroom of one. Well, she was living proof that shabby surroundings didn’t mean there weren’t treasures aplenty—or something.

  “We seek Maroto, known by many names and deeds, a friend of ours, and uncle to Sullen,” announced Purna, though Digs didn’t look happy that she’d asked instead of him, and Keun-ju glanced over, not looking happy that she’d implied he was chums with their quarry. As if the starry-e
yed boy was worthy enough to win the Mighty Maroto’s respect. When no answer came from the dark interior beyond the curtain and Digs began making incomprehensible hand gestures, Purna struggled to think of what else to add—they’d all agreed that not mentioning Hoartrap’s tools was the surest way of testing both the prowess of the Procuress and the efficacy of the compass. After all, if the Touch’s methods provided the same intelligence sight unseen as those of the Procuress, they knew where to find Maroto. And if they pointed them in different directions, well, fucksticks. Clearing her throat, Purna expounded a little, though if this Jackal Lady was as adept at devilish tricks as Digs had promised she shouldn’t have had to so much as voice her need for the woman to provide. “Maroto’s gone missing, and we are unsure where to seek him—we don’t expect you to magically yank him out of a chamberpot or whatever, but if you could point us in the right direction we’d be in your debt.”

  “That’s more like,” said the Procuress, emerging back through the curtains with a tray entirely woven of black-stemmed snow roses, their white petals drifting to her bare white feet. Steam rose from a statue or artifact nestled among the thorns. “And you were in my debt from the moment you walked in that door. I am disappointed that your ultimate test was nothing of the sort, Pasha, but hardly surprised. I’ll bring you what you need to find your friend, but first there are certain customs worth preserving.”

  As the Procuress maneuvered out from around the counter in the back of the shop, Purna saw the curious steaming object was nothing more than a cast-iron teapot in the shape of a seabeast, and circling it on the tray of flowers were five black porcelain cups, a plain bronze snuffbox, and a small dish containing a pair of Immaculate sesame buns. Digs and Purna gave the Procuress space as she maneuvered past them into the center of the candlelit room, which was the only open area among the shelves and unstable-looking stacks, and then she slowly lowered the service to the bare planks of the floor. It was neither drafty nor damp in the windowless shop despite the lack of hearth, and hungrily eyeing the Jackal’s haunch through her sheer robe as the woman set down her tray, Purna removed her hooded cloak and magnanimously spread it on the floor for them to share. The ploy didn’t work, Ferlune moving to the far side of the service to pour their tea, but before Purna could feel too disappointed her devilish tongue positively burst out of her mouth of its own accord, hungrily licking her lips. She would’ve been ashamed at the reflex, but its cause moved her so deeply and unexpectedly that she didn’t initially notice she’d drooled all over her own sweater. That tea… Ferlune smiled as she raised the cup but not her eyes to Purna, and she had to wonder if the woman had kept her gaze low to spare her guest the embarrassment of suddenly finding tears rolling down her cheeks.