A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Keun-ju had managed to be both a hero and a martyr at once, then, saving Sullen by knocking the missile out of the way, but at the cost of not only his life but the sword he seemed to value even more. The black-bladed sun-knife in Sullen’s violently shaking hand had as good as killed Keun-ju after all… and now it was about to kill someone else that Sullen loved.

  He howled, then, not like a mortal or even a devil, but like a horned wolf mourning the loss of its mate.

  And as she leaped over Keun-ju’s twitching body, closing the last few steps between them with her spear leveled, Sullen’s stern mother committed her worst sin yet against the loving son who’d tried so hard to understand her: she smiled.

  CHAPTER

  25

  Okay, now that definitely wasn’t an animal,” said Digs, and as Purna fitted her damp cloak into place she saw he’d been getting dressed, too, despite how dismissive he’d been when she’d first said she heard something out there in the woods. Squirming into wet clothes while balancing in a tree was hard work, even a nice big oak with wide, comfortable branches, but not so hard as fighting in their panties if the ruckus made its way over to them… Or if they made their way over to the ruckus, as now seemed unavoidable, because if Sullen hadn’t been the one to issue that furious-yet-forlorn howl Purna would eat Diggelby’s hat. The pasha almost slipped off his bough but caught himself, muttering, “Shitty shitty fuck fuck.”

  “Shitty shitty fuck fuck shitty shitty,” she sing-songed back at him, because while Sullen didn’t sound happy, that he still sounded like anything at all meant he was alive, and that was the best news she’d heard all night. “Time enough for shitting and fucking in Old Black’s Meadhall, Digs, so the sooner we get over there the sooner we’ll get to indulge.”

  “Have fun in your sorry Flintland dive bar of an afterlife, I’ve got a royal-class coach booked for the Garden of the Star, and I don’t mean Thao,” said Digs. He took a small sapphire-studded case she hadn’t seen before out of his vest and, popping it open, revealed not bugs or drugs but a stack of black discs. “Care to take your first communion while you’ve still got time? My paradise’s apparently very much at hand, but I don’t think any of our recent adventures have provided reliable directions to any meadhalls.”

  “That’s really not funny,” said Purna, her heart lurching in her chest as Digs carefully removed one of the wafers and popped it in his mouth. Somehow the possibility that Digs might be sincere chilled her more than Sullen’s howl. “What is that, some kind of concentrated spider spit? A pregame snack?”

  “Look, don’t get uptight about this,” said Digs through a mouthful of blood-dark crumbs. “Obviously the Black Pope’s a total buttdog and obviously I’m not in favor of the direction the Chain’s gone in recent years, but the church does a lot of good, too, or at least it has in the past. Nothing’s all black-and-white, much as Ji-hyeon wants to believe it is.”

  “Mother. Licking. Bastard,” gasped Purna, all the obvious fire bells she’d been rigorously tuning out now clanging in unison. Diggelby’s repeated suggestions they cut out on the Cobalts if they couldn’t find Maroto. All his talk about pride and vanity being virtues. His habitual petitions to not only the Fallen Mother but plenty of saints, too. How could she have missed this? His uncle was a member of the clergy, for crying out loud, why hadn’t it ever seriously occurred to her? “I thought all that Chainite shit you talk was ironic!”

  “There’s nothing more ironic than sincerity,” said Digs, obviously trying to distract her from the real issue by baiting her with nonsense in need of calling out. It wasn’t going to work this time.

  “You… you fucker!” Purna felt more betrayed than she ever had in her life. “The fucking Chain? Fuck you! Even after all they’ve done, murdering innocent people, murdering our friends, you… you… fuck!”

  “I said I don’t support the church, Tapai Purna, what more do you want to hear?” said Digs pissily. “That I renounce the Black Pope and the Holy See? Abso-lutely, to the lamest hell with the lot of them. That I think their persecution of the wildborn is the foulest crime of our age? I do, because it is. That sacrificing countless people to bring back the Sunken Kingdom is a bit overkill? I’ll go one further and say if the cost is kicking one puppy down a flight of stairs then we ought to have let Jex Toth stay underwater.”

  “But… but…” Now Purna was just as confused as she was angry. “But you said you’re a Chainite!”

  “No, you said I was a Chainite,” said Digs, and it sounded like the fight had left him, leaving only the despondency that looked so bad on him. His corpsepaint had smeared and run from their fight with the swamp monsters, and he looked like a weepy mime. “Between you and me, I don’t even know if I believe in the Allmother. But I do believe that no matter how far they’ve fallen everyone and everything can change for the better, that there’s no such thing as a lost cause… not even an easy target like the Burnished Chain. I was born to a Chainite family, raised in a Chainite family, and if the Chain hadn’t proved a supreme disappointment once I grew old enough to think for myself I might have joined the clergy.”

  That was such an insane image that Purna almost burst out laughing. “You? Hair shirts and rosaries and hot-bottomed confessions?”

  “Oh, please,” said Digs. “With my family’s connections I could have done far better in the church than as a pasha’s second son—if you think our parties in the Serpent’s Circle were lavish you should see the fetes the Holy See puts on in Diadem. Orgies of food and flesh, and you want to talk high fashion? Those clotheshorse cardinals make me look like a court jester, and if there’s one thing I know it’s that I kill in the wardrobe department, especially when it comes to shades of black.”

  “So why not join up?” jeered Purna. “It’s not too late to get on the winning team, and what’s a little thing like bringing about the apocalypse if you get to live the good life?”

  “You know why,” said Digs, no longer sounding like he had anything to prove. “But if you really can’t guess, I’ll spell it out for you after we go help our friends. That is, unless you’d rather put off finding out if Sullen and Keun-ju are still alive so you can keep interrogating me about the private life I never shared with even my best friends because I knew that no matter what kind of a person I was and what sorts of actions I took, as soon as you found out I was even mildly religious you’d be a great big bottom about it.”

  Sullen and Keun-ju. Shitty shitty fuck fuck. She’d been so surprised by Digs’s confession she’d got up on a high horse instead of running to their aid and simply taking another one of her friend’s idiosyncrasies for what it was.

  “Shit, you’re right—let’s go,” she said, but he was already out of the tree… and waiting to help her down. He was right. She was a great big bottom. “Damn, Digs, I shouldn’t have freaked on you, especially after you were so great about my dirty little secret.”

  “You’re right,” said Digs as he caught her and almost fell over, not quite as strong as some of their other chums but still making the effort. “You shouldn’t have, but it’s in the past. I forgive you, my child, and may safe havens keep you at your rest.”

  “I didn’t say I was sorry,” said Purna, shaking out her legs now that she was back on solid ground. “But I am. Sorry, Digs.”

  “As a great man once told me,” said Digs, “I know you’re sorry, now apologize.”

  Then they hugged, as only great big bottoms can, and set off to find their friends…

  And only got a few paces out from under the shadow of the live oak before they both saw the young woman standing right there in front of them, the moonlight glittering on the wire frames of her spectacles and all the metal hoops and loops and bars and studs set in her face, flashing off the stone-encrusted bronze crescent at her throat and steel thread embroidered into her blouse, and the scabbard at her side. Purna chirped in alarm and Digs jumped straight into the air. With her funky-looking staff, woven crown of twigs and berries, and sudden ap
pearance in a dark and haunted wood, Purna would have pegged her for a witch even if she’d opened with a different question.

  “Good evening, pilgrims. I wonder if you’d be so good as to tell me where I might find Hoartrap the Touch?” The girl sounded all business, and the hand that wasn’t clenched on the twisted walking stick dropped to the pommel of the sword hanging from a belt bedecked with pouches.

  Hoartrap? Purna looked nervously at Digs, and he looked nervously back at her.

  “Whotrap?” said Digs, the eternal optimist. “I think you have mistaken us for someone else, good lady, for we are, as you said, but humble pilgrims on, um, pilgrimage, and certainly don’t—”

  “I can be patient when I need to be,” snapped the woman, “but now is not one of those times. That you try to protect him tells me all I need to know about you, but I will nevertheless give you one last chance to prove yourselves helpful to my cause. If you refuse me a second time there will not be a third opportunity.”

  It didn’t do to provoke obvious weirdos you met in deep, dark woods, but Purna had no tolerance for this crap, not while her friends were almost definitely in some kind of trouble. And even if she was a witch, Purna could tell she was a cupcake compared to someone like the Procuress Vex Ferlune or old Hoartrap the Grope—this chit was trembling like a nervous squirrel, but fronting so hard it was almost impressive. It was time to shut her down and get on with rescuing Sullen… but now that she’d sized her up Purna had decided she was also kind of cute, too, in the spooky way of girls you only ever seem to meet in the moonlight, so she decided to be generous.

  “Look, we haven’t seen Hoartrap in weeks, and that’s the truth—but the last we knew he was camped out at the foot of the Lark’s Tongue Peak, down on the Witchfinder Plains. If you want to talk more later I’d be happy to burn a bowl with you, after we get on with our business, but I know it’s a long walk south so if you have to get on your way I’ll try to understand.”

  The girl considered this, pursing her pierced lips, and then her eyes settled on Purna’s hood with unabashed excitement. It was a fetching cloak, and Purna was glad its quality had attracted an appreciative stranger’s notice, until she said, “You’re going to come with me. I know someone who’s going to be very interested in asking you where you came by that skin.”

  “Oh, I don’t fucking think so,” said Digs irritably. “We’re not going anywhere with you. Weren’t you listening? She said we have to get on with our business, so why don’t you get on with yours, hmmm? I don’t give a good devil’s damn what you do to or with the Touch, so long as you leave us out of it. And with that, madam, we bid you goodnight!”

  This was not the right tactic to take, apparently, for as Digs moved to step around the girl she stepped to the side, too, a dangerous smile on her lips, and that’s when the moonlight rippled across her features as something large and silent moved behind Purna. Wheeling around and drawing her kukri, she felt all the blood drop out of her face in a cold flush.

  The giant horned wolf looming over her made the ones back in the Kutumbans look like Zosia’s dog, and its baleful eyes were fixed on a certain article of clothing that Purna was now having serious second thoughts about rocking. Behind her, Digs was giving the girl a real piece of his mind, oblivious to what was going on. That the monstrous snout hovering right in front of her face hadn’t bitten her head off yet Purna was counting a minor victory, and a token that maybe she could still get out of this, if she didn’t do anything too Maroto here.

  “Digs,” she called, too anxious to blink, her voice cracking, “on second thought, I think we better go with her. Meet her friend who’s got an interest in horned wolf hides.”

  Purna only prayed she wasn’t looking at said friend already.

  Now that she had reminded her son who he could have been, what he was by birth, Sullen wasn’t proving to be quite as much the disappointment as Best had first feared. They circled each other through the bald cypresses, and while the soft ground was spiked with jagged roots around their trunks, the tall, slender trees were bare of branch most of the way up, giving the warriors plenty of room to maneuver. Every time she closed on him with her spear he backed away, holding up her sun-knife like a poison oracle brandishing a fetish. He couldn’t know that the black steel contained his ancestor, and thus could not miss its target, and so he held back, rightly fearing that if he threw his only weapon and Best dodged he would die on the end of her spear in moments. She feinted to his left, then darted in and slashed the front of his shin with the broad edge of her spear. It sliced through skin and scraped against bone, but he didn’t cry out, nor did he rush in out of anger the way she’d hoped. He just jerked his arm back to throw, making her shuffle backward. Good boy.

  She had worried that when the time came he would make a weak show of it, pleading and making excuses. He did her proud, keeping his mouth shut and his eyes hard. No, not hard, apparently… he was struggling to keep them open as tears began slipping down his cheeks. So much for him doing her proud. Furious at his fear, she came in hard again, jabbing at his knife hand. This time he tried to parry her thrust, probably hoping he could hack the blade off the end of her spear. It was exactly what she’d wanted him to do, and she flicked her wrists, the butt of her spear snapping around to catch him directly in the gash she’d opened in his leg. That made him cry out and stumble back, and then she had him, administering more superficial cuts to both forearms, and then his other shin. She would bleed the cowardice out of him.

  “Stop!” he cried, and Best’s heart broke for good—it was as she’d feared, as she’d known. He was going to make a fool out of himself instead of dying with quiet dignity. “I don’t wanna hurt you, Ma!”

  “Too late,” she told him, though his cheap ploy was having the intended effect, rousing a mute howl of pain from the evil, bestial part of her heart that she had been able to keep silent as long as her son remained so as well. She jabbed again, slicing through the thick white hair on the side of his head and into the scalp beneath. Her chest felt full of furious ants, swarming and biting her with the grief and uncertainty that was the Deceiver’s hallmark, but she overcame temptation yet again, and decided to turn his own favorite weapon against him: words that cut as sharp as any sun-knife. “Did you love that boy, Sullen? The one I killed?”

  This weapon of his provoked a far stronger reaction than any of her spear blows, his sad, frightened face transforming into a lupine snarl, and Best realized she was going to die. Sullen was hurling the sun-knife at her, and from this distance he couldn’t miss even with a mundane weapon. In the last great mystery of her life, Best found herself profoundly relieved… until the sun-knife stuck into the forest floor between her feet. He’d held on too long before releasing it, but not even her son could be so inept as to throw a knife straight into the ground by mistake. He had given up.

  “I love you, Ma,” he panted, blood and sweat running down every limb, dribbling from the side of his head, dribbling off his ear.

  She didn’t hesitate, because if she did her inner sinner would take over, make her cast down her weapon and take her sad, lost son in her arms. Then they would both be condemned to the Hell of the Coward Dead, and she had to believe their fate was greater than that. Even as she planted her feet and thrust her spear straight at her son’s heart, she expected him to slap it to the side, to grab the shaft, or jump out of the way. And Fallen Mother forgive her, she wanted him to.

  Instead he just closed his eyes, set his jaw, and accepted his mother’s gift.

  Sullen didn’t feel a thing. He waited, wondering if this was some final cruelty, his insane mother waiting until he cracked a lid so he’d have to watch her kill him. She didn’t, though, and through the soles of his feet he felt the little tremor as her spear dropped to the ground, the shaft rolling against his toes, and then Sullen let out a sob of relief, opening his eyes and his arms to embrace his mom.

  Instead of his mom, he found Hoartrap. His mom was there, too, but the giant w
arlock had come between them, and tall as Sullen’s mother was, her feet were kicking a meter off the ground as Hoartrap lifted her up by the throat, his crushing fingers keeping her as silent as his approach had been. He turned his head from his captured prey and smiled at Sullen, watching for his reaction, and then slammed the woman into the ground so hard the reverberation almost knocked Sullen off his feet. Sullen tried to speak, to tell Hoartrap to stop, but before he could an enormous slippered foot slammed into his mom’s side, the kick sending her sliding through the scratching underbrush, kicking up a flurry of dead leaves and mud in her wake, until the sharp-kneed trunk of a cypress abruptly ended her skid with a terrible thud.

  “Oh, but I got here just in time,” said Hoartrap with a wink, the large, fading bruises on his face making him look even uglier than usual. “A friend of yours from back home, I presume?”

  “My mom,” whispered Sullen.

  “I might have guessed,” said Hoartrap. “You and that family of yours, Sullen, I swear. It will be most interesting to see what happens when your bloodline mixes with Kang-ho’s; I imagine the progeny will be spirited, to say the least.”

  Maybe it was blood loss or maybe it was everything that had just happened, but it took a moment for Hoartrap’s implication to sink in. When it did, his brain staggered from Ji-hyeon to Keun-ju, and then his feet were staggering, too, carrying him away from Hoartrap to the limp body framed in a patch of moonlight. Keun-ju. Keun-ju Keun-ju Keun-ju.