A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Domingo’s hands balled into fists, and he tried to tell the sadistic monster to shut its mouth, to stop making him relive the worst day of his life with the witchery of his words, but his throat was too tight to make a squeak. He didn’t even realize until Hoartrap tenderly dabbed his cheek with the edge of his yellow sleeve that he’d begun to weep.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Domingo. It wasn’t your fault.” Hoartrap’s melodious voice was actually somewhat soothing. “They tempted you with lies, bound you with promises. They turned you into their devil, Domingo, enslaved you to carry out their whims… but you’re free now. You’re free, and while you can’t change the past or undo the crimes they made you commit, you can show them what happens when they piss off the wrong old man, eh? You can prove that the will of mortals is harder than any steel, more dangerous than any devil. You can take the vengeance that is your due, Domingo, because you are more than what they tried to make you.”

  Domingo nodded, sniffed, and nodded again, looking down at the dirty blanket that only minutes before he thought was going to be his shroud. Then he remembered who was cheering him up, and shook off the last of his pathetic self-pity as Hoartrap continued; the fiend knew how to fill an awkward silence.

  “The pope and her Holy See and the rest of those turds must think they’ve won the day, now that they brought back Jex Toth. They think the end of the Age of Mortals is a foregone conclusion, as if we didn’t have any say in the matter at all. And I’m glad they think that, really I am, because it’s going to make our victory that much sweeter when we utterly, utterly destroy them. Together we’re not just going to snap a few links off the Burnished Chain, we’re going to smelt the whole damn thing, then pour the molten mess down the drain. Sound like fun?”

  “Fun’s not the word I’d use, necessarily, but of course something needs to be done,” said Domingo carefully, finding the witch’s friendly attention no more charming than his hostility would have been. After Indsorith took the Carnelian Crown, the presence of Hoartrap in her inner sanctum went a long way toward discouraging Domingo from having any part of her court until after the Touch had quit it. Domingo didn’t believe in the Fallen Mother or the Deceiver or any of that other fairybook nonsense, but these days he was a staunch believer in witchcraft, for he had seen it with his own eyes…

  “You’re quite right, of course,” said Hoartrap. “Though I’d love to just stay here and talk for hours, I’d better bring our defanged hostage to Ji-hyeon, along with this troubling news of yet another regiment closing in and the peace agreement naught but a ruse. She’ll be so disappointed.”

  “Sooner you tell her the better, I imagine.”

  “You’re right—but don’t worry, I’ll pay you another call as soon as I have a little free time.”

  “Wonderful,” croaked Domingo.

  “It’s straight out of a romance, isn’t it?” said Hoartrap, batting his lashless eyes at Domingo. “Two former foes drawn together by fate, discovering how much they have in common, how closely their passions run? Except instead of a love so great it could set the Star on fire, ours is a shared hatred for those black-frocked cultists who would murder the world to save its souls. There’s really nothing more dangerous than a true believer with absolute power, is there? Even if it costs every life in this army, yours and mine included, it’s a pittance to pay if we can prevent the Black Pope from carrying out any more of her insane rituals—better the Crimson Empire burn to ashes than become the dominion of the Burnished Chain. Don’t you agree?”

  He did. And of all the myriad horrors Domingo had experienced of late, finding himself simpatico with Hoartrap the Touch ranked up there as one of the worst.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Outside another bright, sunny afternoon continued its slow assault on the polar landscape at the foot of the Lark’s Tongue, but inside the command tent it was as gloomy as a crypt. Ji-hyeon sat alone at the table, having dismissed everyone after Hoartrap’s dismal news so that she could try to process this recent turn. That Colonel Hjortt was apparently completely genuine in his support of the Cobalts was a welcome surprise, even if it was only born of a pathological hatred of the Burnished Chain. But one old man hardly made much of a difference when weighed against yet another hostile regiment marching against them, and with the surrounding Thaoan army already overmatching the Cobalts. Ji-hyeon considered burning a little saam, but instead decided on the documents she had signed just that morning with Colonel Waits. The rolled-up vellum crackled and gave off oily black smoke but refused to burst into satisfying flames as she held it over the candle. Sitting by herself in the quiet tent, watching her hopes of leading the Cobalt Company to safety burn away, Ji-hyeon felt as sick and anxious as she had when Fennec had led her into the Gate at Othean.

  There was still hope, her council said. With Colonel Waits captured, the Thaoans would be even more reluctant to make a second charge at the Cobalt camp. Ji-hyeon could wait until the regiment from Meshugg arrived and then offer their colonel similar terms, and maybe this time the Crimson command would accept them. Not the invitation to work together against the Burnished Chain, of course—she saw now how naïve it was to even think they would accept such a proposal—but maybe the Thaoans and Meshuggans would let the Cobalt Company safely pass through their lines in exchange for the release of Colonels Waits, Wheatley, and Hjortt, and the rest of the Imperial hostages.

  Maybe, but not likely, not very likely at all—unlike the secular province of Thao, Meshugg had always sided with the Chain during times of unrest, and the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue had proven how willing the Chainites were to sacrifice their own soldiers in the service of their apocalyptic prophecies. All of Ji-hyeon’s captains were in agreement that if they tried to break through the Thaoan cordon now, either by force or through the peaceable release of their colonel, the encroaching Meshuggans would simply catch them on the run. Before, when it was just the Azgarothian regiment bearing down on them, the thought of standing proud against a Crimson army despite their superior numbers had carried a certain valiant charm; now, not so much.

  Devils below, but Ji-hyeon was an idiot, and while she was glad she had sent both Sullen and Keun-ju away so that they would be spared whatever hell she had called down on the Cobalts with her sloppy command, part of her wished she had kept at least one of them with her, so that she wouldn’t be so alone. Now that he had been removed from her life for a second time, all Ji-hyeon wanted was for Keun-ju to be back by her side, so they could try to work through what had gone wrong, instead of her trying to fix their problems by sending him away. She still loved him in spite of what he had done, in spite of her feelings for Sullen, but even after he’d rescued her from the brood of the devil queen she’d given him the cold treatment, and now she would probably never see him again to prove how warm she still burned. Would the Imperials execute her themselves, or send her back to Othean as a diplomatic gesture?

  Ji-hyeon hissed as a vein of embers in the roll of vellum reached her finger, and she dropped the burning treaty onto the map-draped table. Feeling even stupider than ever, she plucked up the blackening scroll by one unburned corner and dropped it on the cold hard ground, stomping it to char and ash under her heel. Even after it was safely out, smoke rose from the center of the table, the map evidently more flammable than the vellum. A hole had burned through the center of it, just where the Gate had been added with a smudge of charcoal, and now a glowing ring expanded outwards across the map. Ji-hyeon was about to slap out the cinders before they reached the nearest figurines, but her hand paused, and then she slumped back in her seat, letting the pulsing red borders spread out across the Lark’s Tongue valley, wider and wider like the smile slowly spreading across her face.

  It was madness, plain and simple, but then the world had gone mad, too, so what choice did she have but to evolve to suit it? Better to die leading a charge so bold it made the old gods sit up and take notice than to be manacled by the Burnished Chain. If she couldn’t see K
eun-ju or Sullen or her family again in life, she would give them something spectacular to remember her by, a legend even more audacious than that of Cold Cobalt.

  Rising from the table with its smoldering map, Ji-hyeon whistled for Fellwing, and when the devil landed on her three-fingered hand the Cobalt general stepped out of her tent to make one last turn around her camp. They had to begin preparations immediately if they were to be ready for another predawn march, and first she had to retrieve her new equipment from the smith.

  Zosia was in the middle of archery practice with Boris when she noticed the first few tremors: lone heralds tearing ass between the tents both on horse and on foot. Horns summoning petty officers to their captains. A woman repeatedly shouting “fuck” at the top of her lungs as she stalked along the back of the archery range. Choplicker’s especially good mood.

  She told Boris to keep at it with his crossbow since he needed all the training he could get, and set off toward the command tent. Normally she’d unstring her bow after practice, but given the hubbub decided to wait just a little longer on that. The activity level only increased as she moved through camp, units coming together in every clearing amid the tents, and by the time she reached her destination there could be no misreading the signs: the Cobalt Company was preparing for another imminent engagement.

  The general must not have waited for her to get started, but that wasn’t surprising—even though she’d been quick enough to formally forgive Zosia’s betrayal after what had gone down with the devil queen, Ji-hyeon was still keeping her at arm’s length. A pity, that; Zosia would have thought her indisputably selfless offer to infiltrate Diadem in advance of the Cobalts would have gotten her back into the girl’s good graces, but the kid must be smartening up. At least the bodyguards admitted her to the command tent, which was a step up from Ji-hyeon’s recent tendency to keep Zosia waiting on the mat for a few minutes before inviting her in.

  “—understand your concern, of course I do, but with my help it will be perfectly safe,” Hoartrap was cheerfully telling the rest of the council, but Singh, Fennec, and even Choi looked upset, only Ji-hyeon nodding her approval. Not a good sign. Noticing Zosia’s arrival, the jacked-up sorcerer said, “Why, ask Zosia if you don’t believe me—she’s cautious as a twice-trapped wolf back in the wild, and she’s willing to put her faith in me.”

  “I’ll put plenty of things in you, Hoartrap, if the price is right, but my faith ain’t one of ’em,” said Zosia, noticing the stink of burnt parchment, the blackened tabletop, and, grimmest of all, the lack of fresh kaldi. “What’s the haps?”

  “Captain Zosia,” said Ji-hyeon, “are you still willing to carry out the mission we discussed?”

  “I’ve just been waiting on your order, General,” said Zosia, though not an hour went by that she didn’t reconsider the proposal. “Got my inside man practicing at the range as we speak, and me and Chop are ready to go at the drop of a visor.”

  One of the terms of Zosia’s return to command was that her devil had to stay outside the command tent at all times, but from beyond the canvas walls she heard Choplicker bark his agreement. Not surprisingly, the devil didn’t seem to share her reservations about the plan.

  “Then it’s time,” said Ji-hyeon, and Zosia didn’t like how pleased the general was to give the order. “Hoartrap will escort you down the valley and through the Gate, and once he’s seen you safely through to Diadem he will return for the rest of us.”

  “He’ll… what?” asked Zosia, though from the unhappy expressions of the other captains she thought she was putting together the answer all by herself.

  “There’s been a slight change of plans,” said Ji-hyeon, looking a little manic around the sunken eyes and trembling lips. “Instead of marching on Samoth while you ride ahead to incite a rebellion, you use the Gate to travel to Diadem immediately, and the Cobalt Company will follow you through as early as tomorrow.”

  It was so quiet in the tent that Zosia could hear Ji-hyeon’s devil snoring in the rafters, and after considering it for but a moment, she said, “Yeah, that’s a solid plan. Thought of the same thing myself, back when your dad was telling me how you escaped the Isles.”

  “Of course you did,” sneered Ji-hyeon, not doing such a great job of keeping up appearances now that the Cobalts had been painted into such an ugly red corner. “You think of everything first, don’t you?”

  “Well, maybe not everything,” said Zosia. “Like, I can’t see why you still want me to go through first, if you’re just going to lead the Cobalts through tomorrow. It made sense before, to have me rally the rabble and find a way to open the city gates for your army, but now you’ll already be past the defenses, and there’s no way I can put an effective revolution together in less than a day.”

  “That’s your objection?” cried Fennec.

  “Shut up,” Ji-hyeon told him and, turning back to Zosia, said, “You claimed Portolés’s accomplice had ties to an existing organization, did you not? A day should be more than enough time to alert them to our coming, and more importantly, enable them to prepare a diversion. Hoartrap tells me the Diadem Gate is in a courtyard in the center of the city, and we will be able to reach our target much quicker if the municipal troops are drawn to another part of town. If you have them rioting an hour before dawn in some remote quarter, it will clear our path to Castle Diadem.”

  “Huh,” said Zosia, frankly a little impressed. “That’s true, General, but—”

  “But nothing!” Ji-hyeon slammed her fist on the table and pointed at Zosia. “You have your orders, Captain Zosia, now carry them out!”

  Zosia didn’t budge other than to cross her arms. She was willing to do the unspeakable in the name of thwarting the Burnished Chain, to travel through a devil-loved Gate, but she wasn’t about to be treated like a heel-dragging hump. Perhaps sensing she’d taken the wrong tone with this particular captain, Ji-hyeon’s fury fled so fast Zosia wondered if it had been sincere in the first place.

  “Please, Zosia, we need you to do this, and every moment we spend belaboring the particulars is a moment that could be spent preparing for the attack. By this time tomorrow we can have taken the capital and won the war.”

  “That’s not how it works, General,” said Singh, the old-fashioned chevaleresse who normally waited to be called upon by her employer unable to remain silent any longer. “Assume for the moment everything goes as you propose. Zosia completes her mission, day breaks, and you lead your army into the new Gate and emerge in Diadem with no complications. You march through the city and take Castle Diadem. You even catch Pope Y’Homa alive. What then?”

  “Then we rule,” said Ji-hyeon, as though it were as simple as that. “That’s how you did it when you became queen, isn’t it, Zosia? Only you didn’t even have your army inside the walls, did you?”

  “And supposing it doesn’t go as planned?” said Fennec, making a point of removing his gloves to flex his grey-furred claws. “Suppose your soldiers are in no condition to fight after passing through the Gate?”

  “They will be,” said Hoartrap, but though he sounded as confident as ever he still looked more dead than alive from his slipshod summoning of the devil queen. “I will personally open the corridor between here and Diadem, and I know my business far better than you, Fennec my boy. It’s true that repeated passage through the Gates can have certain… side effects, if precautions aren’t taken, but that’s what you keep me around for—to take precautions, to keep you safe, in this world and any others.”

  “Like whatever precautions you took before summoning the archdevil that almost killed all of us, yourself included?” said Fennec, which was an excellent point even if Zosia didn’t remember seeing her Usban friend anywhere near the opossum queen during the desperate battle. “Those kinds of precautions?”

  “Apples and apple trees,” said Hoartrap dismissively.

  “Not an expression,” said Ji-hyeon.

  “Look, we’ve been over all this. I had never attempted that ri
tual before, and I made a whoopsie. It happens. I told you I had discovered a method for calling forth a great devil, I just didn’t know how great. The sheer power of that entity—”

  “You also insisted you could control it,” said Ji-hyeon. “That was rather the idea, wasn’t it, you summon something you can direct against our enemies?”

  “Sometimes you have to do something the wrong way to learn how to do it the right way,” said Hoartrap with a shrug, but Zosia could tell he was getting annoyed, as though he were the victim here and not all the poor Cobalts and Imperials who had been either mashed beneath the devil’s claws or literally transformed into monsters. “And I did tell you to keep your soldiers back, didn’t I? But did you listen? No you did not.”

  “I didn’t have a lot of choice, since you also told me your ritual might not work at all.” Ji-hyeon did not sound very pleased to be dragged into Hoartrap’s blame game. “And I initially ordered most of the company to hold back, but when the Thaoans charged us and you were still just having a naked make-out session with an opossum, I did what I had to do. Don’t think for a fucking second you can pin this on me!”

  “Even if I would have tried, which I wouldn’t, the second is now passed,” said Hoartrap, “which allows us to return to the actual topic at hand. If you just walk into a Gate willy-nilly, of course something awful will happen. Of course of course of course. But that’s not what I’m suggesting, and I can’t stress how much experience I have with using the First Dark as a shortcut around the Star. I’ve done it myself hundreds of times, and taken others safely through on dozens of occasions. At least. I don’t even need Gates to get around anymore, it’s that easy for me.”