Songs of the Dark

by Anthony Ryan

  Gallis opened the front door with a florid bow, stepping aside to allow her entry to a marble floored lobby from which a curving staircase ascended to the first floor. Four people lay on the floor, servants by their dress, each with their hands bound behind their backs and gags securely wedged in their mouths. Gallis’s crew stood behind them, a few already sporting silver candlesticks and sundry other valuables.

  “Where’s your mask?” Gallis asked, casting a wary glance at the servants who stared up at Derla with bright, wet eyes.

  “Won’t be needing one,” she said.

  Gallis muttered a curse and ordered the servants to close their eyes. “Keep ‘em shut tight, y’arse licking fuckers,” he growled. “Else I’ll forget how nice I’m s’posed to be tonight.”

  Derla moved to the foot of the staircase where a body lay sprawled across the lower steps. He was a tall, broad shouldered fellow with a face that might have been handsome but for the fresh scar running from his nose to his chin. Blood leaked from the numerous stab wounds visible through his torn shirt.

  “Too quick for my liking,” Gallis said, coming to her side. “Still, it was rightly satisfying.” He hesitated. “We didn’t get ‘em all. The other two pirates ran for the cellar. Got one as he was climbing up the coal chute, the other’s gone though.”

  “The wife and daughters?” Derla asked.

  “Trussed up in one of the bedrooms, like you said. The merchant’s in his study, up the stairs on the left.”

  “You and the others had better grab what you can and take yourselves off. It’s a fair bet the pirate will bring the Guard, or run off to tell someone who will.”

  “Reckon we’ve got a half hour or so before they show up. I don’t mind waiting.”

  “I mind.” Derla started up the stairs then paused and untied the purse from her belt, tossing it to him. “Payment. Make sure everyone gets their share.”

  He looked at the purse in his hand, heavy with double the coin she had promised. When he looked up at her once more his gaze was dark with understanding. “Ain’t no use nor point to you dyin’ tonight,” he said.

  “I died already.” She turned away and resumed her ascent. “Might as well make it official.”

  * * *

  “You should have been more careful,” Derla told the merchant, setting her heavily stained knife down on his desk. “And more honest in your dealings with Kwo Sha. Had you told him your true purpose I’m sure he would have kept you supplied with suitable victims for years, and you and I would never have crossed paths.”

  She moved away, tracing a gore covered finger over the well stocked bookshelves in his library. Some volumes were clearly for show, the classics every Realm subject of appreciable wealth felt obliged to keep in their home. They were easily distinguished by the uncreased spines and perfect lettering, whilst others showed signs of frequent reading. She paused at one particular tome, a thick book with the title ‘Legends and Myths of the Alpiran Empire’ embossed in faded gold letters on the spine.

  “Ahh,” she said, plucking the book from the shelf. “Lord Al Avern’s much acclaimed first foray into the scholarly realm, I believe. Clearly you’re a man of some taste, sir.”

  She opened the book, leafing through the pages which, she found, had been defaced by numerous notations in a spidery, almost unreadable script. Words were underlined and passages encircled, the margins crammed with dense scribblings which made little sense to Derla, although the words ‘beauty’ and ‘blood’ appeared with the greatest frequency. Keeping hold of the book she moved to sit in the chair positioned opposite the merchant’s desk, turning page after page decorated with feverishly inscribed gibberish. Eventually she paused at the title page to the final chapter; ‘The Paths of Revenna’. Here the scribblings became so intense they obscured much of the text, the jagged hand-wrought letters overlapping and entwining in an indecipherable melange, although she noted that the word ‘DARK’ was now most often repeated.

  “Alpiran legends, Alpiran victims,” she mused, regarding the merchant over the top of the book. “And an obsession with the Dark. What a curiously mad bastard you are.”

  Derla closed the book and tossed it aside, reclining in her seat to stare into the empty eye sockets of the man behind the desk. “Did you talk to her first?” she asked him. “I’m sure you would have found her conversation fascinating. She knew many an old legend from her homeland, though to her they weren’t legends and she’d get awful huffy if I ever suggested otherwise. ‘The histories of the gods are not to be made light of,’ she’d tell me. Livera tended to laugh off most things in life, except any suggestion of insult to her gods even though they’d never been especially kind to her. Father run off after her mother died bringing her brother into the world and him taken by the fever before reaching his tenth year. She never told me the truth of why she left the empire, the story would change. First it was to escape a vicious pimp, then she claimed she made the mistake of marrying a client and stowed away on a ship to the Realm to escape him. Not because he was a bad man, just boring. She could never abide boredom.”

  Derla felt something on her cheeks, a new wetness beyond the sticky spray left by the merchant’s opened veins. “Oh, how embarrassing,” she said, touching a finger to the tears. “You’ll have to forgive me, sir. Surely I am not fit for such fine company.”

  Her gaze slipped from the merchant’s ravaged eyes to his bare chest, punctured by forty eight precisely placed stab wounds. Derla had always been good with numbers and her occupation gave her a reasonable understanding of anatomy, so it hadn’t been too difficult to keep him alive for the last two blows. Given the man’s beastly habits Derla had expected more of him, some measure of malevolent defiance at least, or perhaps an insight into his evidently diseased mind. But he had acted as any other man might upon finding himself tied to a chair to be slowly tormented to death by a vengeful whore. Even after she stabbed out his eyes he lingered for a while, gibbering slurred pleas to spare his family until, finally, his head slumped to his chest and he left the world with a small, almost wistful sigh. Derla’s numbness had lingered throughout it all, her heart maintaining a steady rhythm, untroubled by either enjoyment or pity. Except now it was done there were tears.

  A loud thud echoed from downstairs, quickly followed by two more and the sound of splintering wood. Derla got to her feet, her gaze shifting to the knife lying on the desk. If she had it in hand when the Guard entered the room it would save a lot of tedious rigmarole.

  No, the voice whispered in her mind as she reached for the knife. It was Livera’s voice, as clear and real as if she stood at her shoulder. Derla froze, an icy chill vying with joy in her breast.

  “You’re not here,” Derla groaned in grim realisation. “There are no whispers on the wind. I just wanted to hear your voice once more. You died. I died.”

  No, Livera’s voice told her, rich in the sweet kindness that had killed her. You didn’t.

  Derla found herself withdrawing her hand, letting it fall to her side. She turned as the first Guardsman burst into the room, a bearded sergeant with a drawn sword who drew up in shock at the sight that greeted him.

  “Took you fuckers long enough to get here,” Derla told him, putting her hands on her hips.

  Chapter 6

  The man had to stoop a little in order to enter her cell, being so tall. He was old, the wrinkles on his face and the grey shining in his hair and beard told her that, but he stood with the straight-backed surety of a much younger man and Derla could see an intelligence in his eyes that no amount of years could dim.

  The gaoler’s lamp caught the ermine hem of the old man’s cloak as he stood regarding her in wordless scrutiny for a time. It was the first true light Derla had seen in over a week. She was somewhere deep, she knew that. Also somewhere far from the Vaults into which she had expected to be cast to wait out the days until her hearing before the magistrate and inevitable hanging. Instead a few hours detention at the City Guardhouse had ended with a ba
g being thrown over her head. There had been lots of shoving, a carriage ride, then more shoving as she tripped her way down numerous steps before the bag had been unceremoniously torn away, affording her the brief sight of the cell door slamming closed. Since then all had been darkness save for the brief glimmer of lantern-light once a day when her gaoler pushed bread and water through a slot in the base of the door.

  Derla surmised this was all intended to drive her to madness; leave the vile torturess to scream and wail in the dark for the rest of her days. But she didn’t go mad. She waited, for some small instinct told her there was more to this torment than punishment. And so it proved.

  She sat with her back to the wall and knees drawn up, returning the old man’s scrutiny until he said, “Is this how you greet your king?”

  She saw it then, as he angled his head to reveal a prominent nose and strong jaw. It was a profile she knew well, having been stamped onto every coin she had earned over the past ten years.

  Derla got to her feet and dropped into a deep curtsy, keeping her head lowered until he spoke again, “Alright. Give me that.” She looked up to see him taking the lantern from the gaoler. “Close the door. I’ll knock when you’re needed.”

  The gaoler hesitated, his brutish features hardening as he glanced at Derla. “They say this one’s awful vicious, Highness.…”

  “I’ll knock when you’re needed,” the king said, softly but precisely. The gaoler didn’t so much retreat as vanish, the door slamming shut and leaving a loud echo.

  “Any notion of where you are?” the king asked Derla as the echo faded.

  Derla began to give a subservient head-bob but stopped at the king’s exclamation. “Ach! Enough of that. Speak plainly, woman.”

  “This is not the Vaults,” Derla said, finding she had to swallow to get the words out. Days in the silent dark made speech feel strange in her mouth, her voice sounding far too calm and detached to be real.

  “No, it is not,” the king agreed. “Then where else could it be? The Blackhold perhaps?”

  “Only Deniers and those who pretend to know the Dark end up in the Blackhold. And I am neither. Besides, the carriage that brought me here passed along Mendings Way before crossing the bridge south of Watcher’s Bend.”

  “How could you possibly know that?”

  “The cobbles are smoother the closer you get to the Northern Quarter and that particular bridge has the highest arch in the city.”

  She saw a small flicker of emotion pass across the king’s face, too quick to judge his feelings but she fancied it was either amusement or satisfaction. “Very astute of you. Therefore I consider it will be an easy matter for you to deduce your current whereabouts.”

  Derla had in fact considered then discounted this possibility, the notion being so absurd. Now, it seemed her judgement had been all too accurate. “The palace,” she said. “I’m in the palace.”

  “About thirty feet below the wine stores actually, but close enough.”

  The king came closer, holding out the lantern to fully illuminate Derla’s face, his eyes narrowing in an appraisal that she knew had nothing to do with lust.

  “Do you know how much the man you killed was worth?” he asked.

  “A great deal of money I imagine.”

  “Worth is not always measured in wealth. I do not mean the gold he piled up, or the ships and houses he accrued. I mean his worth to this Realm. In particular, his worth to me.”

  “What worth would a just king find in so perverted and murderous a soul?”

  “None.” The king’s teeth gleamed yellow in the lantern’s glow as he drew back his lips in a smile. “I, however, found a great deal of worth in him. I am frequently unjust in my governance of this Realm, but any injustice is the product of necessity. I didn’t know of the merchant’s peculiar tastes, and had I known he would most likely be dead by my order rather than your hand, but,” the king’s smile had gone now and his face was a mask of intent sincerity, “only after I had ensured someone of equal worth could take his place. You should understand this about your king if our association is to continue.”

  “Continue?” Derla asked. Having presumed herself dead the prospect of deliverance was felt strange, adding an unexpected energy to her pulse and sweat to her hands. She tried to hide it by folding her arms but knew the old man had seen it.

  He smiled again, with a semblance of kindness this time, before moving back, the lantern’s glow shrinking. Derla resisted the lure of the light. She suspected he wouldn’t be impressed if she were to follow him doglike about her cell.

  “You identified and killed the merchant in a matter of hours,” the king said, “despite the efforts he made to obscure his trail. Such an achievement is evidence of a considerable set of skills, not to mention a singularity of purpose. Both traits I can make use of.”

  The lantern shrank into a glowing ball at the far end of her cell, illuminating the door. The king raised a hand to knock, then stopped. Derla couldn’t make out his face now, but knew he had turned his scrutiny upon her once more.

  “Just one other thing,” he said. “Your accomplices.”

  “I have no accomplices,” she replied. “I was called to the merchant’s house to provide my particular brand of services. He tried to strangle me then produced a knife, avowing his intention to have his way with my corpse. I killed him in defence of my own life. Everything that was done was done by my own hand and no other.”

  “Yes. So you told the City Guard. However, the merchant’s servants say otherwise, as do his family. Their testimony indicates your visit was driven by a desire for personal retribution.”

  “Liars, seeking to explain away their own cowardice and shameful complicity in his crimes.”

  “If I am to find a use for your skills, there can be no one to gainsay the story we must weave to explain your release. Without the names of your friends, I may as well just leave you here.”

  Derla’s face was fixed on the king’s hand, the bony fist poised an inch or two from the door. When she spoke, the words scraped over her throat like a blacksmith’s file. “I had no accomplices.”

  A soft sigh in the darkness, then two sharp raps of his fist on the door. “Loyalty,” the king said as the gaoler worked the key in the lock. “Also a useful trait.”

  He raised the lantern and stood aside, gesturing at the open door. “Come along my good woman. There is something I would like to show you.”

  * * *

  “Who was she?”

  The body hung in the gibbet, a slumped tangle of skin and bone wrapped in mildewed rags. The crows were at it, one pecking at the tattered flesh of the corpse’s feet whilst another worried its beak in the dead woman’s vacant eye socket.

  “As mad and wretched soul as you are ever likely to meet,” the king told Derla. “She killed her children, some delusion regarding denier beliefs. Apparently she was fully convinced that once dead they would rise again imbued with all manner of Dark gifts. She managed to hang herself before they could administer justice, but the Fourth Order still felt obliged to string her up in the cage. Appearances sake, I suppose. It is my belief that her passing was in fact a mercy, for herself and the Realm.”

  “And her connection to me?” Derla asked, quickly adding “Highness,” as the king raised an eyebrow. He had led her, accompanied by two palace guards, to the parapet above the north gate where the bodies decayed in their iron cages leaking a thick stench of corruption into the misted morning air. The hour was early, the sun only just beginning to crest the rooftops and there were no eyes to witness their visit save the guards at the gate who were conscientious in averting their gaze.

  “She is you,” the king explained. “Or rather, she is the inheritor of your crime. Having killed her children she then paid a visit to the merchant’s house. Apparently, her ritual required the blood of a rich man.”

  Derla watched the crow withdraw its beak from the eye socket. It angled its head at her for a moment, black eyes flashing whit
e as it blinked, gave a brief squawk and returned to its meal.

  “Inquisitive creature the crow,” the king observed. “Curiosity is the principal trait of all scavengers, coupled with keen eyesight and remarkable patience. Tell me, what does your inquisitive nature tell you at this very moment?”

  “She was a Denier so her crimes lay outside the scope of Crown law,” Derla said. “She would have been judged by the Fourth Order. The details of their judgements are never revealed.”

  “Quite so. As you have no doubt discerned, the Fourth Order and I have our little arrangements. What a clever crow you are.”

  Derla removed her gaze from the feasting scavenger and afforded the king another curtsy. “Thank you, Highness.”

  “It was a trifling issue really. The merchant’s family and servants were another matter.” Derla kept her features impassive as the king’s gaze lingered on her, searching, she assumed, for any sign of concern. “Don’t worry, they’re alive,” he went on. “Although shipping the entire household off to the Northern Reaches wasn’t an inexpensive exercise. The merchant’s wife has been allotted a generous pension, on the understanding that it will disappear the moment she ever again makes mention of her husband’s ugly demise.”

  “Did she know, Highness?” Derla asked. “About his… habits.”

  “I expect so, wives always see more than you want them to.” He grinned a little, reading the dark shade that had crept into Derla’s gaze. “Wishing you’d killed her too now, aren’t you?”

  The crow squawked again, flapping its wings in warning as its companion began to clamber up the cage.

  “My wishes are now for you to ordain, Highness,” Derla said.

  His grin broadened into a laugh and he turned away, beckoning another man forward. He was of trim build and an inch or two shorter than average, his features lean but otherwise bland. His clothes were similarly nondescript, reasonably well tailored but lacking anything that might draw the eye. For Derla, the most significant thing about him was that she had failed to make any note of his presence until now.