Redemption's Blade

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  There will be another war, unless we make the right decisions now. And right now, who’s in a state to be making those decisions? Everyone’s grieving. Everyone wants revenge, but that just breeds more revenge down the line.

  “You’re thinking ‘What the hell?’” Ralas said. He was huddled too close to the fire—he was always cold, he said, and in constant, nagging pain. She only hoped he didn’t catch fire and end up like something from Hathel Vale.

  “I wasn’t,” she told him. “What do you mean?”

  “About the crown. About this Templar character.”

  “He’s no Templar,” she decided.

  “And yet he wore their colours when he came to make my life more of a misery,” Ralas pointed out. “He went to the Temple in Ilkand, he still had the livery when he was guesting with Silvermort.”

  “Misdirection.”

  “Misdirection is what he’s made of,” Ralas agreed. “He’s like smoke. I can’t get any idea of what he’s after.”

  “Maybe it’s the crown,” Heno suggested thoughtfully. At their curious look, he grimaced. “Big magic like that, it twists the mind sometimes. And the Kinslayer’s big magic more than most. It’s his crown, so maybe it tries to take you over, make you into him. Maybe Silvermort missed out on his big chance, except he wouldn’t have been able to control that Kinslayer with his little stick.”

  “So you think our crown-bearer is…?”

  “Confused,” Heno finished. “Perhaps the crown’s pulling him one way, he’s pulling the other. Crown wants him to go to where the Kinslayer was strongest, takes him as far as Bleakmairn. He doesn’t want that, so he goes where that power’s weak, the Temple. But then it gets one over on him, so he runs to the mines, then on to the heartland.”

  Celestaine shrugged slowly. It made sense, and yet she saw holes in the idea. None of it quite sat right.

  “Do you miss him?” Ralas asked the Yorughan quietly.

  Heno regarded him warily. “No.”

  “Not at all? He was your people’s god, wasn’t he? Or next best thing. He made you strong, that’s what he told you. Remember, I got to hear a lot of it in between singing for him and getting beaten to death. He told you how strong you are, and that the only thing that strength was for was to kill people like me. He let his particular favourites kill me, as a reward. I was the gift that kept on giving. And you loved it, all of you.”

  “Not me,” Heno said defensively.

  “Ralas…?” Celestaine started, but he met her gaze flatly.

  “I just want to know,” he said. “I sat in a cage at the foot of his throne for a long time. I saw the fighting pride of the Yorughan. I saw the joy they took prisoners in with, so they could prove themselves to their god with hot irons and pliers.”

  “Is this about Silvermort? Because that’s on me,” Celestaine told him.

  “It’s not, actually. I don’t really care about Silvermort. Frankly, it’s hard to care about much that’s not right in front of me, these days,” Ralas told her. “But I care about your friends here. I can’t see how it happened.”

  “If we’d been playing a long game to betray you,” Heno said with a nasty smile, “then don’t you think we’ve left it a little late?”

  “I think that none of the fists and feet that broke my bones felt like they belonged to people who were thinking about turning on their master,” Ralas countered.

  Heno drew himself to answer, but it was Nedlam who spoke. “You don’t know.”

  Ralas raised an eyebrow at her and she poked at the fire, raising a little more life from it. The light danced across her face, that big slab of slate-coloured brutality with its newly broken tusk and its bruises.

  “You go in front of the Reckoner,” she said. “You act like he wants, or he kills you. We all see it happen, back below. You think he was patient with us? You think you’re special getting all the beatings? I got beat plenty, back then. I lived, but others, plenty others got killed because they weren’t enough like the Reckoner wanted. And so, when you’re with him, you do the things he wants. And you wonder if everyone’s just doing it to keep him happy, or if they really believe, but you can’t ever ask, because someone tells him or his Slackers or generals what you said, then it’s you getting your skin peeled off, see? And when you’re not where he can see, maybe you’re different. I know lots who were. But like you said, you sat at his feet. You think some scout-captain who comes with good news’s going to say, ‘Oh no, Reckoner, I don’t want to beat that human. That’s a poor way to reward your singing man.’”

  Ralas’s mouth twitched with the faintest ghost of a smile. “And that was you, was it?”

  “Me? I never wanted to be near him. Ended up at Nydarrow only because every general in the army wanted rid of me, but I was too good at breaking things to just kill off. Stayed well out of the way of himself, I can tell you.”

  “And you? Same story?” Ralas asked Heno.

  The Heart Taker gave him a sour look. “I just don’t like being told what to do.”

  After all that talking, Celestaine just wanted to bed down with Heno, tucking into him for warmth as she watched the fire die. Ralas was humming—not a full song, and nothing cheerful, but even on his worst day the sound of him made any camp a better place to be—and she wanted to just lie there and not think about Silvermort or the Kinslayer or any of it. There had been a girl once, a Forinthi girl of the Fiddlehead clan, who had listened to all the old stories and learned how to ride a horse and swing a sword, and gone around the crofters of her family’s land with her parents’ steward and thought herself very grand and superior for it. That girl hadn’t realised how easy her life was, or how hard the lives of others were. Certainly she’d never guessed how hard so many people’s lives were about to get. She wanted to dream of being that girl again, in the land when the most she ever felt guilty for was stealing an apple.

  But Amkulyah was sitting there staring at her. He had a world-class stare, that one. His big round eyes just bored into you. Celestaine sighed and pushed away from Heno, who was asleep in that still silence all Yorughan seemed to manage, legacy of an upbringing crammed in with his fellows like sticks in a bundle, and gods help anyone who snored.

  “Kul?”

  He paused a moment, weighing his words. “What will you do,” he asked at last, “with the crown, when you have it?”

  She frowned. “You know what.”

  “I don’t mean will you abandon us,” he said quickly. “Why would we have these words, if that was what I thought? But let’s say you get it, let’s say it works, you remake my people to give them their wings back, those who want them. The crown isn’t used up, I think. You still have it, this thing of power. So what then? You become King of Ilkand? You go back home and make Forinth a power? You make monsters in some dark room like Silvermort?”

  “None of those things,” Celestaine said, knowing an immediate revulsion at each suggestion. “And I don’t know. If it can be used to help, there will be other people to help. Maybe I’ll find someone better than me, and give it to them.”

  “And will they still be better than you when they have it?” Amkulyah asked. “And is it the sort of thing someone can give away, once it’s theirs?”

  “I don’t have any answers,” she told him frankly, pushing back into Heno’s chest and wishing he’d wake up enough to put an arm around her. “I’d give it to Roherich, if he was alive. I’d give it to the Wanderer, if he hadn’t wandered off.”

  “The Wanderer,” Kul echoed, sounding unenthusiastic.

  “The only Guardian who came through for us. The one who warned us at the start, and was there all through the war, helping us out.”

  “But he’s dead,” Amkulyah said.

  “Nobody saw him die. He got us Slayers into Nydarrow, though he had to leave us at the open gate. He fought in the last battles, keeping the Kinslayer’s armies off our backs. And then he went on. His work was done. He didn’t die.”

  Kul said nothing. Doubt
came off him in waves, but eventually he turned away and huddled down to sleep in an awkward crouch that wouldn’t snag his twitching wing-limbs on the ground.

  Celestaine tried to sleep, thinking how much easier the world would be if the Wanderer was with them. You’re not dead. I don’t believe it. But there was wishing, and then there was the world, as the saying went, and the world remained stubbornly devoid of helpful divinity these days.

  THEY HAD ALREADY exhausted the topic of why Doctor Fisher had freed the Vathesks, which Catt felt was an untowardly generous action towards man-eating crab monsters. Fisher was unrepentant, though. It was good to be free, he said.

  “This is why you need me at your shoulder when it comes to making the hard decisions,” Catt decided. “What if they’d eaten you?”

  “Wouldn’t have you nagging me about it, then,” Fisher told him, reining in their cart. “They’ve camped. You want we should too?”

  “Well I would rather you did it, obviously,” Catt decided, still troubled about the whole Vathesk business.

  “What’ll you do when you get it?” Fisher asked later, after he had made camp and put up the Bounteous Domicile of Hule—which mostly consisted of speaking the command words that manifested a tidy little hut with a modestly appointed interior—lit the fire within and called up phantom servants to set the table.

  Doctor Catt tied a napkin about his neck meticulously, looking at the repast on offer. “I lament, Fishy,” he said, patently not in response to the question, “conjured foodstuffs can be such a treat to the eye, yet are always bland and mealy to the palette. How curious that magic has made such meagre advances in the field of gustation.”

  “You’re welcome to learn to cook,” Fisher pointed out, before shovelling in a slice of what would never quite taste like rare beef.

  Catt waved away the suggestion with the incredulous contempt he plainly thought it deserved. “Anyway, you posed some manner of query.”

  “When you get the crown, what then?” Fisher rephrased. “Not like we’ve had a toy like that in the shop before.”

  “A fair and valid enquiry,” Catt conceded. He sipped his wine and grimaced. “Next adventure, can we bring along some of the August Loom vintages? This is swill. As to the crown, well, I thought it would do rather well beside mother’s portrait. We can shove over the Pearl Nautilus of Fish Summoning and there should be room.”

  Fisher downed a mug of beer without complaint and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Big magic, Catty. You won’t use it? Clear up the competition, choose the next mayor of Cinquetann, maybe even make a few new toys for the collection?”

  “Make them?” Catt asked, aghast. “Honestly, Fishy! Whither our tradecraft? Whither provenance? No, no. And similarly, no to the rest of it. It will be very pleasant to look at, and remember this little escapade and how we acquired it. It will be exceptionally pleasant to know that we own it, we alone of all the world. And do you know, I rather think that constitutes a sterling service to the rest of the world? After all, it’s a nasty little toy of immense potential cobbled together at the whim of a mad demigod. It’s exactly the sort of thing that would exert a malign influence on those who possessed it. Can you imagine if Silvermort had gotten his treacherous hands on it? I shudder to think. And so, in passing into my benevolent and above all supremely inactive keeping, it will be safe from those who would use it, and the world will be safe from it.” He popped a peeled grape into his mouth with great satisfaction. “A safe pair of hands, Fishy. I am indeed the safest hands in creation for nasty little toys, because I don’t really feel like playing with them. I am a collector only. Also, these grapes are almost passable.”

  Fisher looked at him for a long time, gnawing on a chicken bone. “You really mean all that, don’t you?”

  “Crown and grapes, I confirm my opinions on both with equal vehemence. Although if you were to tell me the crown would augment the culinary properties of our roadside accommodation, I might be tempted to use it just for that.” Catt chuckled indulgently. “The Kinslayer wouldn’t approve, I suspect. An added benefit.”

  Fisher shook his head grudgingly. “Don’t change, Catty.”

  “My dear Fishy, I have no intention of doing so.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ENCOUNTERING AN ARMED camp had certainly been within the realms of possibility, crossing into the Unredeemed Lands, but Celestaine hadn’t expected this one. An army of unrepentant Yorughan, perhaps—a dark mirror to what General Thukrah was building up southeast of here at Bleakmairn. She would have taken that in her stride: fought or sneaked or whatever the situation had called for.

  She had not anticipated being, for a second time, the enforced guest of the Ilkand Temple.

  It hadn’t been Templars who had surprised them, first off. As they made the best time they could along the pitted road, a band of horsemen had come up from behind, scouts that had spotted them a mile away and swung in to investigate. The two Yorughan had been the problem, of course, although Celestaine suspected any travellers heading in their direction would have had a few pointed questions to answer. Seeing such an odd fellowship all in one place, however, raised eyebrows, and the cavalry politely requested that the travellers accompany them. There were a score of them, and they looked honed to a sharp edge by the war. Saying no didn’t seem worth the aggravation.

  About half of the riders had been Arvennir from the Order of the Lion’s Tooth, their suspicious expressions contrasting sharply with the happy yellow flower on their surcoats. The rest were a mixture: some Forinthi, some Lantir and one huge Oerni sitting astride an aurochs bull with steel-capped horns. Nobody there was in Temple livery, and Celestaine reckoned she could talk her way out of whatever trouble they were in. There were still soldiers in arms all around the edge of the Unredeemed Lands, keeping an eye on what the Kinslayer’s remaining forces were doing. Some would still be sticking to the letter of their orders, others might have gone the Silvermort way and become more bandits than defenders of the innocent; either way, she would think of something.

  They had reached the camp, and found it considerably more than just a few ranks of tents in a field. There was a palisade wall and a wooden fort inside—something built towards the end of the war that had probably been intended to be temporary, but had then been reinforced and added to until there was a sprawling building there, every part of it covered with stakes and riddled with arrowslits and murder holes. There were plenty of tents and huts within the wall, too, each with some banner or other. She saw three separate Arvennir orders—Lily, Lion’s Tooth and the red butterfly wings of the Monarchs, who were, perversely, engineers. There were a handful of free companies as well, makeshift warrior bands who during the war had taken in anyone who could hold a spear and wanted to stick it into one of the Kinslayer’s minions. Over all of that, though, was one grand tent beneath the shield badge of the Ilkand Temple, and that was where Celestaine and her fellows got taken.

  She hadn’t caught much of the hushed conversation between the Lion’s Tooth officer and the stern-looking woman leading the Templars. Celestaine guessed she must be a Hegumen, a mid-rank warrior-priest in charge of a Temple detachment and the sort of more-righteous-than-thou pain in the backside she remembered without fondness from too many command tent arguments. The one word she made out of their muttered conference was her own name, and the Hegumen had recognised it instantly. Her wide-eyed stare at Celestaine had been unreadable, save that it plainly wasn’t awe at having a bona fide Slayer as a guest.

  After that, the woman had ducked out of the tent, and Celestaine and company had been left to count their toes, as the Cheriveni saying went. They weren’t mistreated or secured, or even disarmed; but nor were they fed or given any hospitality. Every so often the sound of an argument drifted to them. It sounded like the Hegumen had a whole load of people to shout at before she could even think of getting round to mistreating her prisoners.

  Nedlam had some Ora root left over from the Ilkin contraband affair, and sh
e was chewing it philosophically, the least concerned of all of them. Heno was in a foul mood, possibly at the prospect of being burned at the stake.

  “You remember when your lot finally got yourselves organised and pushed back,” he said. “You remember liberating Cherivell and the little kingdoms, finally winning a few battles against our armies?”

  Celestaine nodded.

  “How?” Heno demanded. “Everything we’ve seen together, Celest, everything since Nydarrow, has been humans not getting on with other humans. It’s been humans arguing with Oerni, it’s been… chaos. How did you get anywhere?”

  “Regretting switching sides?” she asked him.

  “Don’t tempt me,” he shot back, and then scowled. “No. I don’t. I just don’t understand how I picked the winning one, given how manifestly disorganised you all are.”

  “There was never a Kinslayer of the surface,” she told him. “We’re different races, different nations, tribes, folk… of course we don’t see eye to eye. But I guess we’ve got a hundred ways of doing things too. And the Kinslayer only had one. It was a good one, but when your enemy only has one way, eventually you learn it, and start to win.”

  Heno looked about the inside of the tent. There were Templars at the entrance, keeping a wary eye on their guests, but probably not within earshot.

  “If you’d failed, Celest,” he said, “if you Slayers hadn’t slain, your armies wouldn’t have kept winning. You were losing momentum even then.”