by Stephen Hunt
‘Cut the ties behind my back so I may use my hands properly.’
‘Is this the face of a fool?’
‘One lives in hope.’
Alexamir jumped to his feet and drew a long sword from the scabbard on his back and held it out before him, glinting in the high clear sunlight. ‘This is what I cut with. Have you ever seen the like of it before?’
Cassandra had to admit, she hadn’t. The cobalt metal of the slightly curved sabre seemed to shimmer the same shade as the nomad’s skin, and the shining blade was etched in a script she did not recognize. Its hilt looked like a ridged white spine-bone.
‘I was riding among the hilltops when a snake leapt at Astultan. He reared to crush it. I was thrown off and fell not into the grass but through the roof of a burial mound. This sword was there, as bright and new as the day it came from the forge. The bones of the warrior below must have been eight foot tall – a giant from the ancient times.’
‘It’s an interesting blade.’
‘Interesting? It shakes in my hand when my anger grows, almost humming. I think the soul of the warrior it was buried with lies in the blade, and shakes with envy when it sees how well I fight. Yes, it is envious of the glorious life that stretches out before Alexamir, the lord of thieves.’ He slid it back into his scabbard and winked at Cassandra. ‘If there is a luckier woman than you in Pellas, I would not care to throw dice against her, for she would sweep the stakes on every game.’
‘I have been trained as a thief too,’ said Cassandra, laying her back against the hard surface. She raised her legs and wrapped them around the nomad’s ribs, caressing him as his weight slid down towards the granite. ‘From almost the moment I could first walk.’
‘I thought as much. The skyguard of the mountain people are soft and do not imprison people lightly, preferring banishment. What can you steal from me, my little golden fox, apart from my heart?’
‘Your weight and your strength,’ said Cassandra, twisting and converting his momentum, throwing the descending brute’s weight against the boulder to her side. His skull cracked against the stone and he tumbled down to the rock moaning but still conscious. ‘There was a reason my previous captors kept my feet chained, Alexamir.’ She stood up and lashed out with her boot, catching the nomad in the side of his cheek with a crunching sound. Now he was rendered properly unconscious. ‘Four gask guards with broken ribs, you overfed blueberry.’
Cassandra heard pebbles dislodged behind her and ducked just as a blade so curved it was almost a scythe cut through where she had been standing. Nurai, the cursed witch rider.
‘Why my dreams led me to you, wide eyes, I will never know,’ growled the woman, circling Cassandra. She knew what Nurai saw. A soft foreign noblewoman with her hands still bound behind her back, a quarter of the weight of the muscled nomad.
‘Well, a Vandian is surely your people’s best hope of improving your bloodline,’ said Cassandra. ‘But on balance, I think you can keep that one for yourself. Did you come sneaking here to watch us? To see what a Vandian woman has to offer that you do not?’
‘I’ll leave Alexamir your entrails for a belt!’ Nurai lashed out at Cassandra, but the Vandian had already stepped to the side and brought her boot down on the woman’s knee, shattering the bone. Nurai crumpled to the mountaintop, yelling in fury.
‘You’re about four times stronger than a Vandian,’ said Cassandra. ‘But you strike at the same speed as my people. And whatever blue piss-water you’re pumping for blood, your bones are no harder than mine. Let’s make this a fair fight, shall we … you can tie my legs together and I’ll hop around you.’
Nurai roared at being so mocked. She came in faster than she should with only one working knee, her knife curving in low for a proper gutting, bellybutton to throat. Someone had at least taught the nomad how to do that correctly. But only if the blade connected. Cassandra threw herself down, sliding across the frost-driven rock, kicking Nurai’s boots out from under her and rolling back to her feet in time to add a leg behind her spine and speed the witch rider’s impact with the ground. Nurai’s knife slid away towards the unconscious raider, but Cassandra stamped down and broke most of the fingers in the nomad woman’s right hand to be certain.
‘You’ll be mixing potions with your left hand for a while, witch.’
Nurai was trying to struggle to her feet when Cassandra heard screams from the direction of the camp. It sounded like Dolki and her friends panicking. The thought that the other Nijumeti were claiming their wives before they reached the steppes vanished as an aircraft burst out of the slopes, roaring into the sky above, its wing guns smoking. Not much of a fighter aircraft at all. A small triangular flying wing with a single rear-mounted propeller, a combustion engine burping corn oil as it weaved through the air. She caught a glimpse of one of the horses bolting away, terrified, the nomads leaping and fleeing, shards of rock erupting into the air under a fusillade. There was an explosion behind Cassandra, but it was no bomb launched from the aircraft. Green smoke drifted with the stench of a child’s stink bomb bought from market. As the wind from the heights shredded the mist she realized there was no sign of Nurai or Alexamir. Cassandra grunted. Smoke cover. Not much of a witch, either. But Dolki had been proved right about the nomads’ capacity for pain. A Vandian would have been laid up for months with that shattered kneecap, absolutely unable to scamper away carrying a monstrous brute like Alexamir across her back.
‘Well, that was a thankfully brief engagement.’
The witch rider’s knife had been scooped up too, so Cassandra wouldn’t be using that to free her hands. She sprinted back towards the camp. If I can get to the remaining horse … She turned the boulder. The camp was devoid of nomads apart from a couple of bleeding corpses left across the hard ground, and while a horse was still tied up, there were others inside the camp. Sheplar Lesh, Kerge, men in Rodalian aviator’s uniforms and the old postal courier from the caravan halt, Dolki in his arms crying. He had lost a yak but regained a princess, it seemed – his daughter. Cassandra felt a sad stab of regret that she would never have a similar reunion with her father. Not until she slept with her ancestors, at any rate. A couple of flying wings had touched down on the flat ground ahead while two more circled in the sky above. Cassandra tried to back away but Sheplar came sprinting over the second he saw her, a pistol clutched in his hand.
‘Tracking men over granite is never easy,’ said Cassandra, grudgingly. ‘Those savages underestimated me and I have made the same error with you.’
‘Easier from the air. Hunting border reivers is bread and water to the skyguard of Rodal,’ said Sheplar.
Cassandra scowled at Sheplar Lesh, a grudging newfound respect for the Rodalian clown. ‘And you came after me.’
‘You are under my protection as well as in my custody,’ said Sheplar. ‘My honour would never permit me otherwise.’
‘I would have allowed the nomads to carry me away and make my presence here the clans’ problem.’
‘Then there stands the difference between your people and mine.’
‘You are a fool, Sheplar Lesh,’ said Cassandra. ‘But a brave one. I must give you that.’
‘Not so big a fool as the Nijumeti,’ said Sheplar, holding up a pair of manacles. He tossed them across to her and gestured at them with his pistol. ‘Lock them around your ankles. I would hate to have you run away and slip down a ravine.’
She sighed and did as he had ordered. ‘You owe me a husband, I think.’
‘And you owe me a life, bumo.’
‘I’ll relinquish your debt if you relinquish mine.’
Sheplar grinned with weary resignation and indicated the two empty cockpits of the nearest plane. ‘And how then could you afford to pay me to fly you to Hadra-Hareer?’
So, my trade stays the same. For the moment. Maybe she would have been better off being carried away to the steppes by the nomads after all.
Carter watched the streets in resignation as his taxi cab rattled over the
cobbles. The police were out in force, chasing down looters and protesters, and his carriage had already been forced to divert four times on the journey to the sea fort as barricades rose up across the streets, furniture being thrown out of windows, crates dragged out of shop fronts, mobs of angry workers reacting to the news that the king had dissolved the national assembly. It wasn’t just mill workers raising barricades against the king. The wealthier areas had barricades of their own, citizen militia composed of shop workers and house servants; armed civilians chasing away looters and opportunists in search of plunder, the flag of Weyland fluttering over overturned wagons as they bellowed support at passing police and threatened to lynch any rebels that strayed into their territory. Civil war, then. So easily started.
Royal guardsmen swarmed across Arcadia’s lanes too, bluecoats dragging angry yelling labour combination men out of cheap apartments and shackling them in ankle chains to the back of army wagons. Luckily for Carter, he travelled in a civilian vehicle and the troopers left him unaccosted, their attentions focused on rounding up everyone listed as enemies of the king from their known addresses. Carter shared his cab with Assemblyman Sparrow and two other Gaiaist Party politicians, their chatter about the implications of this situation arcane compared to the chaos on the streets. How the prefects would need to be removed from each territory and the assemblymen rule alone; which assistant assemblymen would need to take over to replace loyal northerners arrested up on the hill. Which prefectures would declare for the prince and which for the king? Their gassing continued, apparently oblivious to paving stones being ripped up from the road around them, piled up by citizens to be used as crude ammunition between the rival forces vying for power. The ride passed a timeless haze. As they reached the sea fort, Carter saw the soldiers loyal to Field Marshal Houldridge arrayed in long lines, boarding civilian ships down in the harbour. Men, horses, artillery, all being loaded along the quayside. In the distance, he could just hear the dim rattle of small-arms fire, the barricades’ rise being opposed, grey lines of smoke drifting up from the proud city.
Carter stepped out of the carriage and he and Assemblyman Sparrow found Prince Owen in the sea fort’s courtyard with Anna Kurtain, supervising the embarkation.
Owen nodded gravely towards them. ‘Is it as bad as we thought, Assemblyman?’
‘I fear it is, Your Majesty,’ said Sparrow. ‘Marcus didn’t even allow the vote to go ahead before giving credence to our worst fears. His troops dissolved the assembly by force. Half the party are heading towards the usurper’s cells and awaiting his “mercy”, now.’
‘I sent a warning to you on the hill as soon as we heard the southern armies had disobeyed the field marshal’s orders to stay in barracks. They’re advancing on Arcadia and seizing all the bridges along the Boles River.’
‘I’m afraid I never received your note,’ said Sparrow. ‘Marcus’s soldiers invading the council served as warning enough of the usurper’s intentions. He planned this devilry well in advance, that much is certain. Marcus’s troopers are scouring the streets, arresting our people house by house. It’s a damned premeditated coup is what it is.’
Prince Owen sighed. He indicated the vessels at harbour. ‘My uncle has his plans. We have ours.’
‘What are you doing escaping by sea? Why aren’t you making a stand?’ demanded Carter, looking at the vessels below. ‘This fortress controls the harbour. Thick walls guarded by heavy cannons. If you control access to the ocean, you control the city.’
‘In the days before the skyguard, perhaps,’ said Prince Owen. ‘But now? This isn’t a tenable position anymore, however thick our bulwarks.’
‘Arcadia isn’t just the capital, anymore, Northhaven,’ said Anna. ‘Arcadia is the enemy capital.’
‘We have to fall back north,’ said Owen. ‘The saints know, I don’t want to. But if we fight now, here, we’ll lose before we’ve even started. This is the heartland of the usurper’s support. We intend to declare a Provisional Army of the Northern Prefectures and establish a new national assembly at Midsburg. We’ll organize ourselves there and push back to the capital eventually.’
‘I don’t have that long! Damn your eyes, my father’s in Marcus’s hands.’
‘It is true,’ said Sparrow. ‘Prefect Colbert appeared in the assembly to name Father Carnehan kin to Black Barnaby and a few darker things besides. In the end, it was as though the father wanted to be arrested … to give himself up.’
‘Barnaby the pirate?’ said Owen, shocked. ‘You cannot mean the pirate raider?’
‘My father’s the man who brought the slaves back from Vandia,’ protested Carter. ‘The same man who saved you, Anna, all of us. Half of what was said by the prefect was lies.’ It must be. It has to be.
‘The prefect also accused you of being in cahoots with slavers in the Burn,’ said the assemblymen. ‘Colbert claimed your father was behind the skel attacks and that he took his own life when Marcus courageously uncovered the conspiracy, before driving you and your brothers across the ocean.’
‘I must have missed that part of my life,’ said the prince.
‘I reckon we were too busy starving in the mines to notice,’ said Anna. ‘Marcus has surely spent some of his Vandian silver on a brass neck. Your uncle’s pissing on the nation’s back and telling us it’s raining.’
‘We live in strange days,’ said Sparrow. ‘When monarchs become tyrants and pastors become pirates.’
‘Well, I guess we’re all rebels now,’ said Anna. ‘Not much choice in the matter.’
‘I wanted the crown by law, not by war,’ said Owen, sounding anguished.
‘Any blood is on the usurper’s hands,’ said Anna. ‘No different from when we were dying for Marcus’s damned gold in the sky mines.’
‘Forgive me, Carter. Perhaps I should have listened to your father’s advice,’ said Owen, his voice wracked with regret. ‘Had a blade slipped into my uncle’s spine before he learned we’d returned alive. I could have let that sin rest on my head alone, not involved the rest of the country.’
‘There are no words that rest more bitterly on the tongue than “I might have”, Your Majesty,’ interjected Sparrow. ‘We are where we are. Your uncle seizes power in the south and raises steel against the nation. If we are to cast the usurper off your rightful throne, it will be a long, hard pounding between here and seeing the devil unseated.’
Carter’s hands tightened on the handles of his father’s pistols. Their weight felt strange and uncomfortable around his waist. They’re not all I’ll take with me to remember him by. ‘The past is gone. But today? How can I leave Willow here, married against her will to that bastard Viscount Wallingbeck? I won’t just abandon my father. What kind of man would I be?’
‘The kind who’s still alive to fight for your family’s freedom,’ said Owen. ‘If you stay, you’ll face nothing but southern regiments loyal to Marcus for a thousand miles in every direction. Your father’s probably locked up tight as a tick in the palace dungeons and heavily guarded by my uncle’s forces. The best fate you’ll meet hiding in the capital is to be swept up from your lodgings and chained inside an aristocrat’s arms mill or conscripted to fight for the south. The worst is someone will recognize you and turn you in for the price on your head and you’ll end up in Marcus’s hands.’
‘Listen to the prince,’ urged the assemblyman. ‘Your name’s sure to be on the arrest lists the guardsmen are scouring the capital with. A man’s got to use his wits to fight as well as his heart.’
‘If I can’t free my father, maybe I can rescue Willow. We could board a plane north and follow you.’
‘You won’t be flying anywhere until the skyguard’s engineers flush their planes’ engines. The teamsters’ union are presently busy spoiling every fuel drum in the capital’s airfields with tar,’ said Owen. ‘I can’t risk the skyguard attacking our fleet as we sail back up the coast. They’re my uncle’s creation. Don’t expect safe passage from any airfield in this half of the nation.�
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‘My father came for us,’ said Carter, trying to keep his voice level. ‘Against all the odds, he crossed half the world, stood against an entire empire. Everyone at home said he was insane, a dead man seeking suicide on an impossible journey. But he still came for us in Vandia …’
‘Son,’ said Sparrow, ‘if half the things Jacob Carnehan stands accused of are true, he had a unique talent for raiding and an enemy that wasn’t expecting him at the far end of his travels. Your pa chose to surrender in the assembly so you could escape. Don’t let his sacrifice be in vain. Your father made his choice, and as for your lady, Arcadia is going to be a long way from the frontline. Think things through. If you grab her, what then? Your lady travels with you and has to survive a string of bloody battlefields up north, dodging cannonballs, bayonets and strafing runs by the skyguard? She’s a good deal safer down here in some aristocrat’s warm mansion than she would be back in Northhaven alongside a man whose cards have been marked by the usurper.’
‘Live to fight,’ said Prince Owen, almost pleading with the pastor’s son. ‘Sometimes, it takes far more courage to retreat than advance. You saved my life once, Carter Carnehan, and I have to believe it was for this task. The seeds of despotism have been planted at our door and we must stamp them down. I have as little choice in the matter as when we were slaves struggling to survive in the sky mines. Sail with me to Midsburg and we’ll fight, I promise you that. For your father, for Willow, for a free assembly and for everyone in the land. There’ll be fighting enough until you’re sick of it. That I can promise you – perhaps it’s all I have to promise you.’
Carter’s skull felt as heavy as lead as he slowly nodded his agreement. He tried to tell himself that he was a rebel, not a coward. But however much sense it made to fight another day, he was still running away. So much fear, so many worries blistering away inside his heart. Only today, none of his dread was for himself.
Cassandra gazed through the narrow window at the high white-topped mountains beyond, pale and shining in the bright moonlight. It was too narrow to lean out of and see the other buildings clinging to the mountain side in the Rodalian town. Too narrow to feel the wind on her cheeks, but she knew it still blew here, angrily hissing and shushing beyond Talatala’s thick stone walls. If the near gale serving as her constant companion wasn’t annoying enough, there was the persistent clacking of prayer wheels mounted on the town’s exterior, turning, turning, turning like the sails of a windmill. Even closing and locking her wooden shutters couldn’t dampen the relentless background noise. Cassandra was locked in a cell-like room, simple and spare, intended for skyguard staff. A bamboo cot with a stuffed mattress and a black walnut wood table with a small stool, the monastic room’s cold stone tiles warmed only by a square woollen rug with a blood-red amulet pattern which wouldn’t have looked out of place as a nomad’s saddle. A single door, always locked; with a basic and somewhat rickety cupboard to its side. And a single arrow slit of a window, no glass of course, opening on to her soaringly cold view. There was a pair of iron oil lamps mounted on the wall, their flicker and burnt grain stink giving her a slow but unremitting headache. Cassandra was loath to turn them off, though. Something about this place left her with a nagging unease. It was as though the previous occupants of this harsh, rocky outpost of Rodal still lingered in the stone, standing sentry over her. She would wake up sometimes, shivering, convinced that someone was watching her. Perhaps a guard had opened the door to the room and checked she was still securely imprisoned inside. But they were never present when she opened her eyes, neither closing the door nor locking the latch outside. How long have I been here now? A week? Waiting for permission to be dispatched to Rodal’s capital; ferried there with as little respect as a sack of grain. The gask, who still insisted on tutoring Cassandra in uselessly abstract arithmetic, had told her she was to remain in Talatala for one more night before departing at daylight’s first gleaming. Another flight. I hope I won’t be sick this time. Cassandra had gained an unexpected respect for the talents of the Rodalian skyguard pilots on her journey to the town. Flying through insanely strong winds that would have grounded most modern imperial craft, risking their necks – and hers – in a fierce aerial dance across the canyons and peaks. Cassandra was fairly sure she could pilot one of the triangle-winged aircraft if it came to it. Rodal’s pilots talked a good talk about how they could only fly by communing with the spirits of the wind, but she was fairly sure it was just sharp flying instincts supplemented by the barbarians’ false local religion. Their planes were basic enough to embarrass even the humblest imperial trainer. Wood and fabric rather than an armoured metal fuselage; a rear-mounted propeller and engine which stank like a kitchen range from the organic ether poured into it. Although Cassandra had to admit, she had never before seen an airfield like the one the skyguard squadron plunged into. Hangars driven into the peaks with long tunnels for runways to land and launch, then a maze of turns and twists to deprive the winds of their terrific hold, the bulk of the field’s facilities carved into the mountain’s heart. Like the town itself, what you saw clinging to the slopes’ surface was just the silver plating on a cheap goblet. Cassandra had caught glimpses of Talatala on the way to her current chamber, carefully memorizing the route in case she could slip her captors. She’d seen buildings which scarcely differed from the brick and wood constructions of Weyland, except they clung to rock walls of vast hollowed-out spaces inside the mountain, carts, yaks, horses and people crowding the enclosed stone streets, cold light from shuttered openings in the slopes entering like spears of illumination through a forest. Cassandra passed temples, shops, homes and bazaars; the smell from the food sellers overwhelming the cloying sweetness of incense candles and reminding her just how poor her rations had been during her captivity among the nomad raiders. She looked hungrily at dumplings bobbing in rich beef and potato stew, sizzling yak strips and golden-coloured fried flatbreads stuffed with spiced meats. Flickering lamps and warm air from inside the tiered buildings lent the place a surprisingly homely feel – well-insulated from the mountain winds beating down beyond their half-buried town. The subterranean spaces were intertwined with corridors, buildings and chambers constructed on the mountain slope itself – which were chillier and exposed to the whipping gales. Much like the mountain people’s nature, the Rodalians kept the greater part of themselves hidden and out of sight. Certainly, she’d find it easier to wring blood out of a stone than get any useful information from Sheplar Lesh. But Cassandra was canny enough to know that her captor still intended to imprison her inside the Rodalian capital. And everything she learnt of this country made her realize how hard it would be for Vandia’s agents to winkle her out of the stronghold she would end up trapped within. Bad enough if the imperium’s local sell-swords tried to assault a provincial town like this tonight. Talatala could give the Castle of Snakes and her mother’s formidable defences a run for their money. How much stronger was Rodal’s capital? They have to come for me again. They found me in the gask forests: they can find me here, surely? And next time, I’ll try not to cut them down before I hear them out.
