A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Accepting the cup in shaking hands, Purna took a sip to confirm what her nose already knew—this wasn’t just spiced Ugrakari tea thickened with yak butter; it was utterly indistinguishable from the gingery brew her aunt and uncle used to make. She hadn’t tasted it in so long, and, she realized, had never tasted it at all with her canine tongue. She was experiencing the impossible but impossible-not-to-crave dream of every intelligent tea drinker, to once again taste the greatest beverage known to mortals for the very first time. She choked back a joyful sob as the hot-but-not-too-hot chai passed over her delighted new tongue… and then choked for real, coughing on the tea and getting it all over herself.

  Finally distracted from the uncanny experience, Purna looked up at her friends. Keun-ju’s eyes were locked tight as his lips, a rapturous expression on his bulging face, and glancing at the empty plate on the tray she realized he must have jammed both of the buns in his mouth at the same time. Digs was too fast for her, though, the pasha making a show of rubbing his mustache in a poor attempt to conceal his chewing whatever wee morsel he’d just popped in there, his eyes everywhere but on her or the open, empty snuffbox. Curious though she was, nosiness was no substitute for her family’s tea and, taking another sip, she shuddered. It was official. Purna was marrying this lovely Jackal witch and never, ever leaving this room.

  Keun-ju gulped like a funnel python swallowing conjoined twins, and once the buns were in his belly, spoke in a rightly awed voice. “What debt do we owe you, Vex Ferlune, for this… thoughtful repast, and your aid in locating Captain Maroto?”

  “Nothing you cannot afford, and who knows, before you leave my company you may think of something else you want,” said the Procuress, and while the teacup still felt as warm as home in her hand, there was something about the hungry smile of her host and the coldness of her yellow eyes that made Purna decide that settling down as the bride of a witch might not be such a great idea, after all…

  They had been inside too long. Way, way too long to be shut up in a windowless house on a deserted street in an enemy city with the sun almost down. Princess didn’t like it, either, though she was too polite to voice her reservations. Sullen paced back and forth in front of the post he’d removed her to, way, way down at the end of the block, watching the shop’s only door like a lean wolf camped outside a rabbit warren. A wolf that was half-afraid a snow lion was going to explode out of the hole instead of an easy supper.

  He stopped, stared, and started up again, this time walking back down the row of dark, silent houses that he was beginning to think were all abandoned, and not just the boarded-up ones. It was either stop mucking about and see what was what or start sharing his concerns with Princess, and the others gave him a hard enough time without his picking up a cute habit like talking to their pony. He stopped in front of the mundane stoop, the place so nondescript he had to double-check the dung at his feet for his own tracks. This was definitely it, all right, but it was dead quiet inside. What a great big fucking plop of a day.

  He had spoken in anger, and he had been wrong. He never should have lumped his companions in with that fucking Jackal Person just because they didn’t know any better than to shun her on sight, and he never, ever should have left them alone with one of her kind. He wouldn’t leave Hoartrap alone with a Jackal Person, or even Uncle Craven. Well, maybe Uncle Craven… but no, damn it, some things were too devil-loved dire not to take more seriously. What kind of a Horned Wolf was he, anyway, to bark like that at a Jackal Person and then turn tail instead of throwing down?

  Not a Horned Wolf at all. His people had known that he wasn’t clan material long before he had, and it was truer now than ever, hard as it was for him to remember, sometimes. Not a Horned Wolf, just plain Sullen, an exile of his own making come down from Flintland to look for his family and…

  And that’s when his wits finally caught up with him. If Sullen had been any slower he would’ve clapped himself on the head. There was no such thing as a lone Horned Wolf, but there wasn’t any such thing as a lone Jackal, either. To grow up on the Frozen Savannahs is to know the Jackal People were the most territorial and insular of all the tribes, more than the Horned Wolves, hells, even more than the Troll Lions, and everybody knew those moon-touched fuckers were one long winter away from losing their collective shit once and for all. Sullen had learned the ins and outs of the Jackal People with the intimacy reserved for one’s most hated enemy, ever since that stark morning on the permafrost where his fate had been decided by three blades: the one that took his grandfather’s legs, the one that took his father altogether, and the one that Sullen used to kill his first Jackal.

  And knowing these monsters who took the shape of mortals nearly as well as he knew his own tribe, he could not fucking believe one of them had not only left her tribe and traveled to the Empire, but had set up business in Thao as a… as a… as a shopkeep. He would have been less surprised to see his own damn mom tending the store—what the living shit was happening here? He’d gotten so worked up at the unexpected sight of a Jackal Person that he hadn’t taken the time to ask himself just what she could possibly be doing here, and instead had just acted like an angry beast and then fled into the streets while she implacably took his abuse and let him go.

  She must be an exile, same as him, another traitor to her tribe… or a sensible person who wised up, depending on who you asked. And while it was evident from her lack of anger at his appearance that she’d left the fruitless, inherited hatreds back on the Savannahs, he’d carried his along on his back all the many leagues since he’d left home, spoiling for a fight with a stranger who’d done him no harm at all, and who one of his companions had vouched for, to boot. So much for Horned Wolves being less savage than their enemies. The only question now was whether to knock before he went inside.

  He didn’t have to decide, because the thin cedar door creaked open and Diggelby almost fell backward down the stone stoop. Sullen hurried to help him, the fop carrying the end of a planed, intricately carved log of white tamarind wood. The thing was as long as Diggelby was tall and as wide around as Sullen’s thigh, Purna and Keun-ju holding up the back end of it. As soon as Sullen cupped his hand under the rounded point of the thing, Diggelby danced away from it, shaking out his hands and letting Sullen take the full weight of it—and as soon as he did, Sullen felt a pressure tugging the whole damn log to the left, as though it were alive and trying to get away from him. The sensation surprised him so much he almost dropped it, but then found with a little effort that he could hold the thing steady despite whatever force pulled its tip to one side.

  “What the devils is this?” he asked Diggelby, as Keun-ju and Purna argued over how best to get the log out the door with all their fingers intact while it squirmed in their hands.

  “It’s exactly what we came here for,” said the pasha with obvious relish. “The key to finding your uncle. It’s going to take us right to him!”

  “Yeah?” Sullen looked down at the design carved into the flowing grain of the wood, then averted his eyes with a shiver. Gawping at things he was better off not having seen in the first place was another old habit it was apparently hard to kick. The figurals that ran down the length of the post were unmistakably those of the Jackal People; they would scratch these jagged shapes into the bark of giant baobab nuts and mount them on whalebones to mark the borders of their hunting grounds. Sullen had been reluctant to rely on the arcane devices of a known devil-eater, and so in their wisdom the Old Watchers had done him one worse—could he really trust the wiles of a Jackal shaman any more than those of Hoartrap? Could he afford not to, at this point? “Guess I better go in and apologize, if she’s helping us out.”

  “She made it pretty clear… that wasn’t necessary,” grunted Purna, finally just muscling Keun-ju out of the way and bringing out the rest of the post by herself, Sullen walking backward with its other end as she stepped down to the soft street.

  “But she did say if you wanted her help with anything, to get y
our buns in there and she’d be happy to assist,” said Diggelby.

  “She didn’t put it exactly like that,” said Keun-ju, following Purna out with a rectangular walnut case tucked under one arm. He definitely hadn’t been carrying that when he’d gone inside. “But if you intend to go, I suggest you make haste. Diggelby says most of the bathhouses get busier the later the hour.”

  “You know… Maybe I will.” Sullen figured for a witch who could spontaneously produce a magic post that supposedly knew where to find his missing uncle, procuring a few answers for a confused and conflicted barbarian couldn’t be too tough. “She can help with just about anything, huh?”

  “For a price,” said Purna, and from the dark look the girl gave him Sullen guessed she was talking about something other than coin. That was fine, though, since he’d never fully taken to the Outlander practice of dealing in pieces of metal and rock instead of goods or deeds, and it would be a nice change of pace to engage in some good old-fashioned Flintland bartering with someone who presumably shared some small smidgen of his philosophy. Even if they couldn’t work something out, the least he could do was apologize for bringing old drama into her new life, hear out the woman’s terms, and then make a decision. Sullen dumped the end of the post off on Diggelby, who kept switching it from hand to hand in an attempt to find the best way of carrying the long, heavy log that didn’t involve holding it with both arms. Eventually he followed Purna’s example and hoisted it up onto one shoulder as Keun-ju headed down the road toward Princess, holding his rectangular wooden box in both hands and looking more closely at its brass-clasped surface than he was at where he was walking.

  Sullen stepped into the dark entrance of the shop, the faint scents of buttery tea and candle-smoke from the doorway now overpowered by something else entirely. Flickering light played behind the curtain that divided her shop from the rest of the one-room building, a few rays spilling out from the gap to guide his path through the clutter… and wafting along the path of the candlelight came familiar, tantalizing aromas. Pepper fish soup. Plantain and puffin pottage. Yams frying in seal fat.

  Even after the way he’d treated her, this stranger had not only told Digs she was still willing to help Sullen out, but was cooking them up a proper Flintland feast in the bargain. He took a hesitant step into the dim shop, considering how to phrase his request—he really didn’t want to screw this up.

  After endless doubt and waffling about the role he might play in the plots of the Faceless Mistress and Cold Zosia, here at last he had someone who claimed to be able to provide him anything. For a man who hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep ever since he’d met a dark and angry god and then her mortal enemy, a nudge in the right direction sounded like a prize more precious than any artifact or treasure… assuming the Procuress could deliver. She might be able to produce any sort of item, but could she give him something as enigmatic and ephemeral as a straight answer or two about what a mortal should do in the face of divine orders and moral uncertainty?

  And what would he do with any information she gave him, anyway? Take it as the solution to all his problems, trust that a Jackal shaman knew his fate better than he did himself? Bad enough he was going to use a charm ensorcelled by one of the people who had killed his dad and crippled Grandfather to track down Uncle Craven, did he really need to further involve himself with her deviltry? She might no longer be a real Jackal Person and he definitely was no longer a real Horned Wolf, but hanging right there on the exposed beam above the curtains was an iron jackal mask the likes of which he hadn’t seen since the last time he went to war with a tribe of deranged fucks who worshipped the Flintland Gate as a ravenous god.

  He closed his eyes and huffed the strong smells of his mother’s stewpot, then let them go, the way he had let everything else from his past go, save Uncle Craven. And once he found the coward and settled the score with him one way or another, he’d think no more of the Frozen Savannahs, but turn instead to the future only he could make for himself. No sorcerer nor talisman could steer him truer than he could guide himself, and once he finished up with Craven he would go straight to Cold Zosia and confront her once and for all. You can’t ever really know what you need to do until you’re ready to do it.

  Of course, there’d be no harm in eating with the Jackal, in tasting the sweet yams and crispy plantains, the spicy broth and thick, salty rinds of fat… no harm, but no time, either, for a man with burdens to shoulder and places to take them. He turned away and stepped back down to the dirty street, and, studiously averting his gaze from the silhouette he saw approach the curtain, he closed the door of cedar behind him. But gently.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Ji-hyeon felt naked, strolling through the camp with neither steel nor hair to shield her puffy face. The busted-up helm hung by its canine jaws from the remaining fingers of her left hand, and she casually swung the heavy piece of armor as she walked. The wounded flesh and cracked bones had mostly healed from Fellwing’s ministrations, but the appendage still felt weak enough that such exercises seemed prudent. The last she had seen of her blue locks the owlbat had been making a nest out of them amongst the tops of the tent poles, and with her free hand she scratched the short, ashen shag that remained. It probably looked terrible, but she had sent away the one man she would’ve trusted to give her a decent haircut, if not for much else at present.

  Just the thought of Keun-ju made her queasy, and she looked back over her shoulder at the rolling white hills beyond the camp where he and Sullen had disappeared. She wished she didn’t miss him, wished one part of her didn’t begrudge the other for having banished him so soon after he unexpectedly returned to her. But when Choi had asked her permission to accompany Sullen, Purna, and Diggelby in pursuit of Maroto, it had struck Ji-hyeon as too perfect an opportunity to miss—Keun-ju kept swearing up and down how he’d do anything to atone for betraying them to her first father back on Hwabun, and here was a punishment she could sink her teeth into. She wasn’t about to let him off the hook just because he’d saved her from a swarm of opossum monsters, obviously, and assisting Sullen seemed far more fitting than any test of his loyalty she could have devised around the camp. When Ji-hyeon had explained the situation to Choi and asked her to stay so as not to lose all her best friends and advisors at once, the wildborn had agreed, though when she congratulated Ji-hyeon on her sly tactics it had sounded a little forced. Not that her decision to send Keun-ju in Choi’s stead was born from malice, of course, and she was far more concerned that both men came back alive than she was about their finding the treacherous old Villain, but all that withstanding, she was proud of herself for coming up with such an elegant solution.

  Assuming it worked out, but even if not, she had at least removed the two biggest distractions from her daily running of the Cobalt Company, and maybe by the time they returned she would have sorted out all the tangles in her heart. She kept touching her hair, knowing that Keun-ju would be scandalized by the decision, but thinking Sullen might like it…

  The sartorial choice had been the first thing to set her second father off that morning; even after all their many deceptions and duplicity, he still couldn’t believe she’d cut off all her hair. He hadn’t been there during the First Battle of the Lark’s Tongue to watch her get yanked to the ground by her stupidly long tresses, nor seen a handful of it torn out when it became tangled in the teeth of a mutated monster. She had always cut a cool figure in the full outfit, no doubt, wild blue hair blowing out the back of her devil dog helm, chainmail two-piece shining, but Zosia had been dead right about trading the metal lingerie out for real armor, and it was high time Ji-hyeon did away with the rest of her shallow trappings—long hair on a battlefield was almost as bad as a helmet with narrow visibility.

  “General,” Ulver greeted her as she stepped under the dripping eave of his warm works, the wildborn smith not rising from the stool upon which he balanced his enormous posterior. His lunch was set out on the anvil before him, a ploughman�
�s of dried apricots, brown bread, and a mite-riddled rind of hard orange cheese all softening up in a pan of water. Then his black eyes found the steel helm in her hand and he rose to his full height, the craftsmanship apparently worthy of more respect than the woman who wore it into battle. “Yeah, that ain’t bad a’tall. Why you want to mess up a good piece like that?”

  “I need something more practical,” she said, her heart feeling as heavy as the helm she laid on his crowded table. “Like I told you, in the Immaculate style.”

  “No visor?” Ulver sounded skeptical as he ran a grimy fingernail down the snout of her old helm.

  “You try engaging a skilled opponent with a metal basket over your head,” she told him, poking through the rings and ingots cluttering the table. “How’s the blade coming?”

  “Slowly. Alloy’s made and hammered, but there’s a lot of folding needs doing. And I didn’t use it all—some of the steel I made out of the old man is left over, too, if you want me to put him in the helm.”