Redemption's Blade

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  REDEMPTION’S BLADE

  AFTER THE WAR BOOK 1

  Adrian Tchaikovsky

  A decade ago the terrible demigod, the Kinslayer, returned from his long exile in darkness, leading an army of monsters and laying waste everything in his path.

  The nations of the world rallied, formed hasty alliances, fought back the tide.

  A small band of heroes, guided by the enigmatic Wanderer, broke into the Kinslayer’s palace and killed him.

  But what happens when the fighting’s done?

  When the old rivalries are remembered, when those who are hungry and broken turn to their neighbours in need?

  After the War is a story of consequences.

  Published 2018 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-151-0

  Copyright © 2018 Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Cover art by Tomasz Jedruszek

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Chapter One

  THE BATTLE OF Bladno was supposed to be a turning point in the war. The army of the Grand Alliance had fully mustered, meaning that the neighbouring kingdoms of Cherivell and Forinth had finally stopped fighting each other and united against the Kinslayer, together with a handful of expatriates and a penal legion from Tzarkand. The Kinslayer, for his part, had finally grown the dragon Vermarod the Invincible to full size and was cackling with glee, ready to unleash the beast. Bladno—formerly a prosperous town, but now known just as a battlefield—had been seen by everyone as the make-or-break of the war.

  Which same war had then rumbled on for another six years.

  From the Kinslayer’s perspective, the Grand Alliance lost decisively and the armies of Cherivell and Forinth had effectively been stripped of any ability to stop him swanning over the borders as easily as he pleased. From the free world’s perspective, Vermarod the Invincible was spectacularly dispatched by Celestaine, the Champion of Forinth, and the Dark One had sunk so much of his power into the enormous dragon that even he was forced to sit back and take stock. For the next three months neither side had known what to do; there had been so little fighting it had almost felt like peace.

  Celestaine remembered. Everyone had been trying to go for the eyes, as the absurd reptile had blundered through the battlefield, trampling soldiers of both sides by the hundred. Vermarod had been bred to relish human flesh, armed with acid spit and withering breath, but once the battle got underway the beast had spooked and floundered about, bringing ruin to just about everyone. “The eyes, the eyes!” the generals had shouted, and countless archers had met their end under the corrosive spray of the frantic monster’s wheezing as they tried for a shot. Then Celestaine had clambered up a leg—for reasons of His own the Kinslayer had built the thing low, like a lizard—and run up until she stood on the plateau of its head. There, she had driven her sword to the quillons into its skull and ended the miserable monster’s rampage. But then, one benefit of a Guardian giving you a sword that cuts through anything is that it will actually cut through anything, dragonbone included.

  She had told herself, I remember, all the way down the road back to Bladno, but when she got within sight of the place, she didn’t need to remember it after all, because Vermarod was still there. The bones of the Kinslayer’s great war-beast dominated the landscape, its spine curved in a great half-circle, its ribs arching into the sky like curved towers. There was no hide left on it, which was a shame for personal reasons, but someone no doubt still had some as a souvenir. After all, the stuff was impossible to sew, flame-proof and immune to decay, so what would anyone have done with all of it, exactly?

  For there were people at Bladno. There were quite a lot of people, in fact. All the final armies of the free world had come this way, when the tide of battle turned and the Kinslayer met them for one final fight at the gates of Nydarrow, his greatest fortress. Most of the survivors had come back this way and got no further. Many had no homes to return to, nor purpose, now their task was done. Celestaine knew the baggage trains that armies accumulated, and the new community at Bladno looked like the baggage train of the gods themselves, a thousand tents, a hundred slanting shacks built up against the bones, a handful of real buildings already emerging from the human wreckage. She saw a smithy and the great covered square of an Oerni-style market, while a well-known taverner with pretensions of grandeur had set up in Vermarod’s skull and festooned it with flags and banners. Celestaine felt an unwanted stab of pity for the fallen beast. At least it looks like he’s having a good time at last.

  “Did you see the thing when it was alive?” she asked the companions who loomed at her shoulders.

  Nedlam hadn’t and didn’t seem interested. Heno tugged on the silver of his beard. “Not this one. I saw some of the smaller ones bred.” The deep rumble of his voice buzzed under Celestaine’s chestbone and she twitched her shoulders. “Your man is here, this pity-creature of yours?”

  “Don’t call him that,” she snapped at him immediately, and heard his impatient hiss of breath. Heno wasn’t good at empathy. It was something she was trying desperately to teach him, something she was hoping he could actually learn. She had made quite a bet with the world on that score. “But here, yes. There’s a community of his people nearby, on the Forinth side of the border. This is the biggest landmark for miles around. Everyone can find their way to Bladno these days, and once you’re in Bladno, everyone can find their way to the Skull Cup.”

  Nedlam, who hadn’t heard the name of the place before, found it hilarious, but then it was probably pitched at about her level. Celestaine signed and slowed her horse, putting a little pressure on the reins until the animal consented to turn a little to let her look at her friends.

  Friends? Do I call them that in open conversation? What, then? Don’t know. People I can’t in all conscience get rid of?

  Celestaine was, according to the bards, a ‘silver beauty’: skin like milk, blue eyes, hair so pale as to be white. The bards, most of them, had never actually seen her out of her armour, despite several offers from the more incautious rhymers. But yes, she was fair and pale, though her hair had been hacked short to go under her helm, and was now growing out into an uneven mullet and getting in her eyes. Her face was long and, when not animated by any particular emotion, tended to settle into an expression of narrow-eyed disdain that some men took as a challenge. Though in her experience only the most tiresome of them, which was a shame. She was tall, though: long-limbed and broad-shouldered, and there was a lot of the war left in the way she held herself or sat on a horse. On the road, a quite large band of brigands had erupted out of the undergrowth around her and her companions and then immediately thought better of it and gone peaceably about their business. One of them had even muttered an apology. But perhaps that hadn’t been her; probably it had been the others.

  They had shrouded up, this close to Bladno. Once they’d started getting the expected looks from the other traffic on the road, both of them had put on their cloaks and hoisted up their scarves until only their small hostile-looking eyes could be seen in a little strip of blue-grey skin between nose and brow. It was
not a disguise. There really was no disguising what they were.

  “You’re doing it again,” Nedlam pointed out, tapping her own head through the hood. “Thinking. Always leads to ruin.”

  “Someone’s got to,” Celestaine pointed out. “Look, we’d better get off the road and make a plan.”

  “Plans, plans, plans.” Nedlam shrugged. “You want fire? I’ll go get trees.”

  “Wood,” Celestaine corrected. “We’ll camp out of sight until it’s getting dark, then I’ll go in and test the waters. Bladno’s going to be crawling with veterans. Who knows how they’ll take to a couple of Y… you.”

  Nedlam ambled off to break branches. Celestaine winced when Heno’s sardonic voice put in, “‘Yoggs.’”

  “I said ‘you.’”

  He chuckled darkly. “Celest, of all the monsters in creation, you don’t need to tell me about the power of old habits.”

  THEY WOULD NOT stay still for long, she knew. Best to get in and out before Nedlam got bored and came looking for her. And aren’t they supposed to be good at doing what they’re told? But she was generalising, of course. She always fought it; she always did it. Everyone did. And probably doing what they were told had never been Nedlam or Heno’s strong points, even back in the day.

  The road into Bladno—or at least into the splayed architecture of Vermarod the Invincible—was quiet by the time she took it. People didn’t travel at night so much these days, not with all the memories of what the dark could bring. She passed through a gate under the arch of the dragon’s pelvis, half-buried in the dirt. A couple of leather-jerkined malcontents watched her pass, and possibly they were employed for that purpose by someone who claimed authority over the camp-town, or maybe they were just freelance starers. From there, her increasingly ill-tempered horse trod the winding path up towards the Skull Cup, surrounded by the sounds and smells of humanity and its allies doing their best to put the war behind them. Her ears told her of at least a dozen impromptu drinking dens, as many brothels in raucous, full-throated business, and at least one murder over a suspiciously lucky hand of cards. That last made her tug on the reins, hearing the shouting and the screaming. That old tyrant, Duty, twitched in her, but she told herself, You can’t save everyone. And anyone gambling in Bladno, let alone cheating, probably knew what they were getting into ahead of time. No innocents on a battlefield, remember? And no innocents walk off one afterwards.

  The great skull of Vermarod wasn’t really big enough to fit a whole tavern in, but the enterprising proprietor had dug down under the jaw so that the bony edifice made a roof over a half-subterranean taproom, and cellars dug deeper still. The sight made her wince, because the man she’d come to meet would have bad memories of enclosed spaces, and she hadn’t thought that through. What if he bolts? What if he takes it as an insult? The Aethani had been proud once, so everyone said. Proud, before the Kinslayer had humbled them. And this one probably proudest of all.

  But she’d sent the message. She could hardly reach back through time to change the details. Why don’t we take tea on a rooftop somewhere nice instead. Nice and airy, remind you of everything you’ve lost.

  “Sir, will you be stabling your horse now, sir?” A boy was abruptly beside her and she twitched, fighting reflexes flaring up and being pushed back down before she could kick him in his conveniently-placed head. She gave him a narrow look, because stableboys and young horse thieves looked remarkably similar in a bad light, and both could be found lurking near stables. In the end, though, she was just so sick of being on edge about everyone.

  “Feed him, groom him.” She gave the boy a coin, which almost slipped through his fingers as he stared at her.

  “What?”

  “Forgive me, Great Lady.” He actually dropped to his knees. “I didn’t know you.”

  “I don’t want you to know me.” She swatted at him when he tried to return the coin. “Look, just deal with the horse, please.”

  “You’re Celestaine the Fair,” he choked out.

  “I’m Celestaine the what?” she practically spat, because that was a new one.

  “I saw you when you rode out,” he breathed reverently.

  “You couldn’t have been with the army.”

  “I was with the baggage train!” He looked utterly distraught that she doubted him. “You killed the Kinslayer!”

  “I… helped. There were a lot of us.” The Slayers. Because ‘Kinslayer-slayers’ just sounds stupid. “Some of us didn’t come back. Remember them, not me.” But his eyes were wide as an owl’s and she knew she didn’t have the words to talk him out of whatever glorious picture he had in his head. “Just… do the horse, sort him out, would you? Do it for me, hey?”

  The way he nodded, she wouldn’t have been surprised to come back and find her horse painted gold or something. And I thought bringing the other two would kick up a fuss. She would have killed for a decently sinister cowl right then, but her cloak was that uniquely Forinthi garment worn over one shoulder and then about the waist like a sash, dyed a dark burgundy that vaguely approximated her family colours. It didn’t have a hood because her kin preferred wide-brimmed hats when it rained, an accessory she had unaccountably mislaid. Steeling herself, she ducked under the denuded sockets of Vermarod’s jaw and stepped down into the Skull Cup.

  A minstrel struck up just as she stood in the doorway and, though all everyone sung these days was rousing songs about won battles and defeated enemies, this was a song of home, an old Forinthi ballad. Come away, come away, love of my eyes. It struck her motionless, a shard of the past suddenly jammed into her from ambush. She remembered Ralas singing it, years ago during the war when everyone had wanted very much to be reminded of hearth and home. Ralas had known everyone’s home songs, all the half-secret, half-forgotten childhood songs that gave you strength and brought on the kind of tears that healed you. He could charm the birds out of the trees and the autumn leaves back into them, could Ralas. She’d never known a singer like him.

  Dead, dead these three years now. The thought clutched at her heart and her throat. Dead in some torture chamber, after the Kinslayer heard some lampoon of his and promised to make him really sing.

  Then the minstrel spotted her, standing there like her own ghost, and the old Forinthi ballad died a death and he was straight into ‘The Blade of Castle Mourn,’ which was at the top of a fair-sized list of Songs that mention me that I don’t like and everyone was turning to look at her.

  She wanted to go, then, but she’d told Amkulyah to meet her here, without really thinking it through, and so she was bound by the tyrant Duty once again. She strode in, trying not to scowl too much or knock her sword against people, because the scabbard was decidedly worn now and she didn’t want to accidentally dismember one of the patrons.

  That thought, and the follow-on that maybe she could rescabbard the damned thing while she was here, got her to beneath the bone dome that was Vermarod’s brain case without drowning under the offered drinks and congratulations from all sides, and by then she’d spotted her man. The Skull Cup was crowded, but he was sitting at a balcony table with a lot of clear space around him. The sight of him turned her stomach. She’d thought he’d be bundled up like Nedlam and Heno—though not for the same reasons. Instead, he wore his injuries like banners. His eyes, huge and round, always the dominating feature of any Aethani face, were fixed on her.

  She strode up the rickety stairs and made sure she kept her eyes on him, no matter how painful the sight. This was the point. This was a wrong she could try to right. This was Celestaine helping rather than filling her boots or drinking herself into oblivion like every other great war hero seemed to be doing.

  There were other winged people in the north, she’d heard, casting shadows over the ice, but wings meant the Aethani to most people. Their kingdom was west of Forinth, where the land started creasing into mountains. She’d been there once when she was young, some scheme of her mother’s that hadn’t come off. She remembered lots of trees, and t
he dwellings of the Aethani built above them, impossible for any foreigner to even reach without a ladder. She remembered the locals flurrying back and forth or soaring overhead, effortless and elegant. The sight had stayed with her all through childhood. The Kinslayer’s assault on Aethan, his lightning-fast destruction of their towns and temples, had lit a fire in her, sent her to argue with the clan chiefs and the Queen’s Council to get Forinth in arms and fighting.

  Aethan wasn’t green any more, they said, but that was nothing to what the Kinslayer had done to its people.

  There were many things the Kinslayer had done that were simply cruel for the sake of being cruel. He had taken joy in torture, of both the body—with whips and blades and hot irons—and the mind. He had revelled in the egregious exercise of his powers. People still talked about Hathel Vale, that might yet burn forever, unconsumed but leaping with flames. There had been a clan of Draedyn—wood spirits— bound to those trees, and if you went near Hathel you could hear them screaming as they ran mad with a pain that would never end. There were the Vathesk, too—the great crab monsters the Kinslayer had conjured from some otherworld to be his suicidal shock troops. Scores of the creatures were left over from the war, big and sad and without any malice in them now their chains had been broken. Except there was nothing in this world they could eat, and nobody who could repatriate them, and so they starved, day to day, and yet never died.

  So many wrongs, so little time. And of them all, Celestaine had looked at the Aethani of childhood memory and said, That is where the true spite is. That is something I will fix.

  When humans depicted Aethani in books and tapestries they tended to show them with great feathered wings like birds, because flying meant birds for most people. Amkulyah was a very pointed lesson on why the Aethani weren’t like birds. Sitting, watching her, he seemed hunched, his narrow manlike shoulders in the shadow of the two other pairs of limbs that folded behind them, and all the heavy musculature that powered them. She remembered the translucent vanes of skin that stretched between those four wing-limbs from her long-ago visit—unfurled, they’d have touched the walls at either end of the Skull Cup without difficulty, bright with patterns of clan, ancestry and personal history. But there was no danger of Amkulyah throwing those wings wide to upset people’s drinks. The limbs were still there, like ragged insect-legs jutting from his back, still bedded in that slowly atrophying muscle. They ended in gnarled stubs where the last long joints had been hacked away, and the delicate vanes themselves had been carved close to the bone. They twitched, those crooked stumps, trembling and reaching as though clutching for the sky that had been taken from them.