Redemption's Blade

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Behold,” Silvermort said, and in the moment of revelation all glee had gone from his voice. He was seriousness incarnate. “They killed the Kinslayer just when I was doing so well out of him, but it’s all right, I’ve… made a new one.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE UNDEFEATED GAVE out a weird kind of whimper, more animal than human, but born entirely of fear. Even as Celestaine turned for him he was backing away, and a moment later he was running, all his promises of aid streaming behind him like tattered flags.

  “Oh, for…” But that was that. There would plainly be no help from that direction.

  Down below, Silvermort was stepping back, and his little cadre of magicians had spread out a little—definitely to keep out of reach of the Kinslayer construct thing they had built as much as to get a good look. Things didn’t look good for Catt and Fisher, and Celestaine didn’t feel that was anybody’s fault except their own. What are they here for, after all? The same thing they were sniffing for in Ilkand. They want the crown, and they’ve been following me to it. It all seemed pitifully obvious, now.

  So, let the monster do them in, and then do the monster in, and Silvermort as well.

  “This is rather untoward, Jocien,” Doctor Catt was saying, one hand plucking at his collar.

  Silvermort snickered, a mean little sound for a man of ambition. “But I can’t save people from the Kinslayer if they know it’s my Kinslayer, doctors. And you’d have worked it out far too quickly... Really, seeing you on my doorstep, I couldn’t credit my own luck.” And he waved the sceptre languorously, like a despot accepting tribute. The Kinslayer thing he’d made lurched into motion, clumsy at first but becoming more sure with each step. The helmed head wobbled and jolted on its neck, tilted over to one side, and its legs seemed slightly different lengths, yet it exuded power nonetheless. A Guardian had died to make it, and curdled divinity shone darkly from every join and suture.

  “Just kill them quickly. They’ve earned that much,” Silvermort said, abruptly tired of his own voice and all the pageantry, and Celestaine felt that familiar combination of guilt and duty that made her do things misguided people called heroic.

  “Heno, do something with the Heart Takers. Kul, shoot things. Ned, come with me.”

  “And me?” demanded Ralas, but to be honest she wasn’t really seeing him as a combat asset. She vaulted the rail and dropped down into the laboratory below, sword clearing her scabbard, and ran for the fake Kinslayer with the thought of just cutting the dead thing in half and having done with it. She heard Silvermort bark with surprise, and guessed she’d have to deal with him after, but he’d be a lot less mouthy with his precious creation in pieces on the floor.

  She had to trust that everyone else was getting on with things behind her, since she still had half the length of the room to cover to get to her target. At the corner of her eye she saw one of the human mages trying to get in her way. Rather than dodge into his reach she went over the next table, kicking a priceless assemblage of glassware onto the floor save for one half-full alembic, which she rescued and threw at his face. Whatever had been bubbling away there set new parameters for the term ‘volatile’ as the luckless man went up like a goose-fat torch, staggering away in a roaring pillar of flame. She didn’t have time to stop and either admire or regret her handiwork, however, because the fake Kinslayer had reached its victims.

  Catt was surrounded by a nimbus of purple energy, and the gaping pincer that lunged for him skittered off it, sending him sideways to rebound from the wall, cracks flowering across his magical barrier. Fisher just ran, ducking away from the creature with his staff raised to protect himself, his other hand pulling up his robes to knee height to give his long legs play. He ended up going directly at Celestaine, saw her and her blade with only a slight widening of the eyes and dropped down onto his back, sliding past her beneath her swing as she lashed at the false Kinslayer’s neck.

  She took its head off neatly, just as she had planned. The backswing of its hand—that damnable man-like hand she had cut from the real Kinslayer in Nydarrow—caught her in the chest, denting her breastplate and flinging her back into the table she’d vaulted, collapsing it in a jagged nest of splinters and digging broken glass into her wherever her armour didn’t cover.

  She waited for the thing to fall over, but it wasn’t even slowed by the loss of its head. It was a magical construct; why would it need something so minor as a head?

  She fought to get clear of the table, breathing with difficulty because her breastplate was pushing into her sternum. A brief glance showed her that everyone else was busy. Towards the back of the room a salvo of white sparks marked Heno and the Yorughan woman, Tarraki, exchanging magic, but who had the upper hand she couldn’t say. Nedlam had killed one of the humans pretty much by landing on him club first, and was now warily approaching the younger Heart Taker, whose hands flashed with fire. Even as Celestaine registered him drawing back to launch something vicious at Ned, an arrow appeared in the Heart Taker’s eye and he was down, quick as that. Then she had other things to worry about: she still couldn’t breathe properly, and the fake Kinslayer was lumbering towards her, pincer raised to turn her into paste.

  She kicked back from the wreckage of the table, intending to separate the pincer from the rest of the thing, but those stolen wings clapped out suddenly, sweeping the walls either side of the thing and whipping forth a blast of air that knocked her from her feet again. She went spinning backwards, fell over the cowering Grennishman and lost her sword, which spun across the floor, hacking the legs from another table. The abused furniture tipped, and a great copper vat toppled and burst against the floor, spilling a wave of something corrosive and reeking that Celestaine skittered back from hurriedly. When she looked up it was into the impassive chest of the ersatz Kinslayer.

  The rest of the room was still locked in furious combat, but right there, between her and her monstrous enemy, there was a moment of calm in which she thought, Should have killed you harder the first time. An arrow drove itself to the fletchings under the thing’s left pauldron, punching into the rubbery dead flesh. Another shattered against the Vathesk carapace of its right arm. It didn’t seem to notice.

  Then Ralas broke in, or at least his voice did. For a moment, Celestaine thought he’d gone mad, because this was no time to bring up an old Forinthi folk song. Still, there was Ralas virtually at the fake Kinslayer’s elbow, head tilted back and eyes closed, just like she remembered. He even had his hands up as though he held his harp still, memory twitching his fingers into the chords of ‘Out of the Mists and over the Sea’:

  “Blow, blow, wind and rain,

  Blow my love home again,

  Empty heart shall be my refrain

  Until I’m with my love again,”

  he sang, and then put in, sotto voce, “There really is some of him in you, isn’t there? He always loved that one. Would have kept me alive for no other reason, maybe.” And then, even as the monstrous form shook itself he was singing again, the whole room falling silent as each combatant in turn caught the melody and looked around to see what on earth was going on.

  Celestaine, who’d heard the song plenty often before, started to shift around the spreading pool of acid towards her fallen sword.

  “If you’ve enjoyed this performance,” Ralas said into the silence after the second chorus, “then perhaps you could finish the job and take this curse from me, because everything hurts, and believe me, I want it over.”

  A sound came from within the thing’s barrel torso, not a word, barely even a grunt, just a sound. If there was any connection to intelligence there, Celestaine couldn’t hear it.

  “No!” Silvermort suddenly broke the spell. “Kill them! Kill them all!” And he raised his sceptre again. “You are an engine of destruction!” he railed at the creature. “You will lead an army to imperil the world, so I can… save it! So I can be the hero!” And he brought the bejewelled rod down across Ralas’s head so hard Celestaine thought
it would shatter.

  The bard went down instantly, and the spell was gone as swift as that, the patchwork monster back on form and trying to kill her.

  So: scratch the power of song. Next stratagem, please. Celestaine ducked under the sweep of the thing’s manlike hand, feeling its thumb snag her cloak briefly; it was far faster than it should be. Abruptly she was right in front of Jocien Silvermort, bringing her sword up awkwardly towards him as she tried to keep her balance. He had a blade in his off-hand, but he obviously remembered her tricks because he didn’t try a parry, merely swayed aside from the obvious stroke. Except that she was perfectly balanced, thank you very much, and twisted the blade’s course so that, firstly, it guarded her from any strike of his, and secondly, it cut his little sceptre clean in two.

  The look on his face was worth it.

  She tried to cut his face in two as well, to complete the set, but he leapt back, froglike, throwing the stump of his magical toy at her in a shower of bleeding magic. He ended up almost with his back against the wall and mostly standing on Doctor Catt, who had taken refuge there already. Catt yelled, his toes well and truly stomped, and whacked Silvermort across the shoulders with his cane. The emerald set into its head flashed with power, and Silvermort was knocked to the far side of the room, a great charred streak scarring the back of his coat.

  Celestaine would have loved to take advantage of that to gut the man, but the false Kinslayer was still going for her rather than rushing to chastise its former master. She had her sword back, but it was getting swifter with each movement, more at home in that lopsided body. She struck three times, trying for its joints and hoping to dismember it, but it evaded the blows with a dismaying nimbleness. Then the pincer came for her again, snapping like a shark. She tried to use that opportunity to cut it off, but settled for scarring the top of it and warding it away. Then she was dancing awkwardly over a body—probably the man Nedlam had landed on—just trying to keep a keen edge between herself and the enemy.

  The Enemy. It really is. The actual enemy of everyone. Silvermort, you idiot. The wisdom of destroying the one thing that could rein the monster in was starting to look questionable. Could she not have cut Jocien’s hand off at the wrist and taken his toy for herself? Apparently not.

  Ralas, slightly the worse for wear, leapt on the monster’s back, clambering up it and shouting his curses down its neck-hole. It ignored him. What it couldn’t ignore quite so readily was Nedlam crashing into it at top speed.

  It stayed on its feet, which was a minor miracle in itself. The force of the impact knocked the Kinslayer back across almost half the room, with Ralas flying from its shoulders like a scarf in a high wind.

  Nedlam stepped back and brought her club up in a blur of iron-bound wood, caving in the bottom of the thing’s breastplate without seeming to hurt it much. It tried to get its pincer about her arm but she ducked under it, arms about its broad waist, and just threw the entire monstrosity across the room with a roar.

  It came down in a colossal crash of metal and shell, and Nedlam and Celestaine were both running to catch it before it righted itself. In that they failed, and Nedlam caught an uppercut from the claw that would have killed Celestaine outright, and which battered her into the nearest wall. Arrows were springing from the armoured form like mushrooms in autumn, but Kul had yet to find anywhere that counted as vital.

  Celestaine squared off, sword out in one hand and the other finally releasing her breastplate strap so she could breathe properly. The fake Kinslayer shook itself, ratting Kul’s arrows like a hedgehog’s quills. Was it slower now? When it raked at her with its manlike hand, she got out from under the blow readily enough, though she reckoned she was slowing now herself. Then Doctor Fisher came up behind it with a determined expression and rammed his staff between its legs just as it tried to lunge for her. The hard wood exploded into shards, but the Kinslayer-thing went over, leaving Fisher with a comically small stub of wood to beat it with. Celestaine didn’t hesitate, but rammed her sword into its body twice and then cut off one of the tines of its pincer as it threatened her, leaving it with a single jagged prong that looked almost as nasty. It was still clambering to its feet, despite the holes she’d punched in it.

  A scattering of white fire danced over it from wherever Heno had got to, but the Kinslayer had never given his minions magic that might threaten his power, and this lifelike replica had inherited the same resistances.

  Going to have to mince this damn thing before it stops, she decided, and then Jocien Silvermort grabbed her from behind, twisting her arms back and locking her sword out of harm’s way.

  “Kill her!” he bellowed in Celestaine’s ear. “Kill the meddling bitch! Kill—ach!”

  His grip was abruptly loose and she squirmed out of it and got behind him, seeing him with an arrow lanced through his arm and into his chest, probably the best safe shot Kul could make in the circumstances. Silvermort shrieked in rage and then the Kinslayer swatted him aside, still desperate to kill Celestaine, whether on Silvermort’s orders or not.

  Doctor Catt was shouting something at her, and she suddenly realised he’d been shouting it for a while, if she’d only had the spare concentration to listen. It was a pitifully obvious thing now he said it.

  Still, easier said than done. Even slowed as it was by the sheer volume of arrows, a good swing at the monster was proving elusive. She backed away from its advance, wary of a floor now completely cluttered with bodies, broken glass and ruined furniture.

  With a roar, with a bloody face and a broken tusk, Nedlam hurled herself on the Kinslayer, wrestling with that mutilated pincer, and Celestaine shouted, “No, the other arm, the other arm!” Ned didn’t question. She took a blow from the pincer to do it, but for a golden second she had the Kinslayer’s left arm under control, keeping the clawing fingers away from her face.

  Celestaine wanted to spend two breaths lining up the blow, but even Nedlam’s strength wasn’t going to hold the beast for that long. She just had to cut, and hope that no part of Ned got on the wrong side of the stroke.

  Despite the furious wrestling with the construct, she got it exactly right. The moment of contact was like deja-vu, because she really had done this before; this same hand, though from a different wrist.

  Instantly the hulking body dropped to its knees and collapsed in a heap, flailing wings and all. The twitching, clawing shape she’d separated from it flew through the air and landed like a spider, threatening them with its long nails: all that was left of the Kinslayer.

  Nedlam took considerable and evident pleasure in stamping on it until there was very little left that looked like a hand, or anything recognisable.

  Celestaine looked around. Heno stood at the back of the room, Kul was still on the balcony.

  “Nobody died,” she said.

  “Speak for yourself.” Ralas was sitting with his back against the wall, watching his own bones knit. “Twice in one gig. Just like the real Kinslayer.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  CELESTAINE TOOK A deep breath, sword still up, waiting for the next enemy. None came, and gingerly she sheathed the blade and removed her breastplate, looking mournfully at the sizeable dent.

  “Two hours with a hammer,” she decided. “At least.”

  A sudden movement nearby had her fumbling for her sword again but it was just Amkulyah dropping down from the balcony where he had prudently spent the fight. He gave her one of his owl-eyed looks before crossing to a broken table and lifting it up. Beneath, cowering with his four hands over his head, was the Grennishman. Again, Kul looked at Celestaine.

  She shrugged. “All yours, like I said.”

  Kul crouched down by the cringing greenish creature. “You’d better go,” he advised. “Go far. Run.”

  The Grennishman looked from him to Celestaine and then bolted from the room.

  “I thought he was a guard in the mines?” Celestaine asked.

  “He was in the mines,” Amkulyah confirmed. “He was kind, someti
mes. When he was down below, hunting magic ore, he would bring food, news. So I remember.”

  “Where’s the other Slacker?” Nedlam asked suddenly.

  “What?” said Heno, somewhat evasively.

  “You were fighting her. That Tarraki.” She eyed him suspiciously. “Don’t see her body anywhere. You just turned her into itty bitty pieces?”

  Heno’s look said eloquently, Since when did you start to notice things? “I beat her,” he said. “She knew I was better.”

  “You let her go?” Celestaine asked. “Heno, they were making a new Kinslayer down here.”

  He shrugged, somewhat defensively. “I knew her. What was I supposed to do?”

  “I…” Abruptly Celestaine had the sense that his knew meant something more than casual acquaintance. An unexpected stab of jealously nearly had her demanding that he hunt Tarraki down and murder her, but she fought it back. “Fine, then. So where’s the damned crown? I mean, if I was making a fake demigod to ride my stalking horse, I’d want some great big artefact of making and unmaking, wouldn’t I? What’s your professional opinion, Doctor Catt? Seeing as you seem to be so goddamn involved with all of this.”

  “I promise you, just passing through,” Catt said, not entirely persuasively. “And yes, for what it’s worth, I concur with your assessment of the crown’s relevance to this endeavour.” He was keeping a wary distance from all of them. Beside him, Fisher was looking dourly at the shattered remnants of his replacement staff.

  Heno, perhaps to take attention from his past liaisons with Tarraki, stalked over and hauled up one of the bodies which, from its startled yelp, was still very much in the land of the living: none other than Jocien Silvermort.