The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  “Is this seat taken, sir?”

  Heath spun in surprise, one finger sliding to the trigger of his springblades. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw a portly man with a red mustache that looked like walrus tusks scoot out one of the stools and sidle up next to him.

  “I’m working a job, Loran,” Heath said with a smile, not moving his lips. “What do you want?”

  “Heath,” Loran said smiling.

  “Don’t use my name here,” Heath cautioned.

  Loran slid a folded sheet of parchment to him. “My friends in the tower are looking for someone who’s proving hard to find.”

  Cryptic of course. Loran never said which of the two towers his friends were in, but he doubted they were in the Assembly. Heath unfolded the parchment as he watched the thugs from the corner of his eye. Half of them were Fodders, probably mercenary muscle who had turned to crime after being discharged or deserting the army. They were whispering among themselves.

  “Did you draw this?” Heath asked, looking at the picture. It was a good pencil rendering of an elderly man with milky-white eyes. A cold shudder of recognition coursed through him as he placed the man’s face. Fire, screaming, and a shitload of spiders.

  “Nay,” Loran said. “One of my plainclothes saw him standing outside the place where the Harrowers struck. Asked around, and he’s been seen at the other spots too. No one knows who he is. We’ve exhausted standard channels for this sort of thing.”

  “What do I do if I find him?” Heath discreetly folded the parchment and slipped it into his sleeve. “If he’s involved, he could be the most dangerous man in Creation.”

  Loran shook his head. “I don’t know. Improvise. See if he knows anything. Try to get him to come in, but if you can’t, just take care of him. My friends want the situation handled, and they’re leaving it to your discretion.”

  Heath flashed an ivory smile and sipped more wine. “I need everything you’ve got on this guy plus double my standard advance. Leave it at the drop spot, and I’ll pick it up by sunrise tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to find my business partner. Don’t follow me no matter what you hear outside.”

  Heath grabbed Sword, chugged the last of his wine, and headed for the door. The moment he stepped outside, he heard the scoot of chairs and the sound of boots clomping to the door. In the open night air, he threw his hood back and let the mist of Trident Falls cool his skin. The boardwalk was deserted at this time of night. Anyone with somewhere else to be was there a long time ago.

  “Hey!” one of the Fodders yelled from the door as three more guys poured out. You couldn’t tell Fodders apart, but he didn’t recognize any of the other men. A woman with fiery red hair hung toward the back, her dagger already drawn. It was five on one, with three of them highly trained in the Patrean Army.

  “Can I help you?” Heath asked plainly.

  “That’s a nice sword,” a scar-faced Fodder said. “I bet this little queer can’t even use that thing.”

  The others chuckled. Heath couldn’t help chuckle too. Mainly because the Fodder was unknowingly right about two important facts: Heath was queer, and he couldn’t use Sword. But he couldn’t just hand the thing over. There were rules as to how it worked. He threw it on the ground in front of him. “Try to take it.”

  The scarred Fodder motioned to two of the other thugs, who went to grab Heath on either side.

  Heath stretched out his hands and clicked the trigger for his springblades. The abraveum knives shredded his velvet sleeves and struck each man in the stomach. From each blade a razor-thin filament of liquid silver trailed back to the twin mechanisms mounted on his arms.

  He gave the strings a quick tug, and they retracted, pulling the blades out of his opponents and back into their resting mounts before the men hit the boards. Blood pumped out of their stomachs, through the cracks in the boardwalk, and into the roiling river below. Heath tossed his golden mask aside.

  “It’s Heath!” The redheaded girl screamed. “Cosgrove! Heath fucking killed Cosgrove, the fucking fuck! Fuck!”

  The other two men, one Fodder and another guy with a gnarled beard, drew their weapons and moved around him slowly. They were jumpy. He looked over to the scarred man, whom he guessed was their leader, and met his gaze. Fodders were tough fighters if one lacked the element of surprise. They were strong and quick, and most had been trained to fight from the moment they could walk.

  Heath tumbled to the side, slashing at the bearded man’s legs as he rolled past him. He jumped to his feet and hit the trigger to draw his blades back to their gauntlets. The springblade wound around the man’s ankles as it retracted, digging the filament into his flesh and pulling the blade along its course. The man kicked wildly and toppled over, his leather armor shredded and blood gushing. Heath then shot his other blade into the man’s skull to silence his screaming.

  Heath then shot a springblade toward Mr. Scar, aiming for the space between him and Sword. It thunked into the boardwalk, hitting nothing. Scar didn’t wait for the blade to retract; he jumped for Sword and grabbed it by the hilt.

  Heath backed away as the Fodder chucked off the sheath and let the blade free. It was polished to mirrorlike perfection. The Fodder admired his face in the surface of the blade, lost in it for a second.

  The girl started to run. “What the fuck are you fucking waiting for? Let’s get the fuck—”

  Sword swept through the night air, reflecting moonlight into the mist like a ghostly halo as the scarred Fodder spun it in a wide arc. It looked particularly majestic in the hands of a trained warrior. One almost could hear the tone of the steel, the sound of the finest drops of water being split on its edge, as it made its way through the girl’s neck and came to rest in his remaining compatriot’s heart.

  Sword was ancient and intelligent. You could touch it as long as you didn’t intend to use it as a weapon or steal it. But if you tried either of those things, the Geas took control, permanently consuming the soul of its wielder, until either the host died or he or she was too far separated from the blade (which was also fatal). Sword had been Heath’s partner through ten incarnations, each one distinctly Sword but heavily seasoned with the mannerisms and experience of its current “owner.”

  There were many stories of cursed items that influenced their owners’ behavior. Sword was the opposite—he was an intelligent artifact that was influenced by his wielders.

  “I call that maneuver Heart and Soul,” the scarred Fodder said, admiring his new countenance once in the surface of his blade. “Get it? You do one in the head and the other in their—”

  “I get it.” Heath retracted his blade. “Please tell me giving cute names to your killing blows isn’t your new quirk.”

  “Nah, I don’t think I’m that witty,” Sword said. “We should get out of here before the Invocari decide to investigate a noise disturbance. I’m pretty sure they heard that screaming bitch all the way up in the Overlook.”

  “Was that really necessary?” Heath indicated the head on the boardwalk, the girl’s mouth and eyes frozen wide in a perpetual shriek of horror.

  “She was no saint.” Sword grabbed his scabbard off the ground and shoved his blade inside. “You know how you always said you’d put me in people who deserved it? Well, this asshole’s a part of me now, and the lot of them deserved much worse than a quick death. And he worked for Cordovis, which is several orders of magnitude worse.”

  Heath held his hand over the bodies. “In the name of Ohan, Lord Father and bringer of Illumination, I command your return to the Light Eternal. May you shine forever.” This was called the battle eulogy because the whole rite consisted of exactly twenty-three words, a holy number of life, and it could be said quickly over a mass grave during the heat of combat or a hasty retreat.

  Sword rolled his brown Fodder eyes. “You know doing four seconds of priesty shit doesn’t make up for the fact that three out of these four kills were yours, right? If he existed, your god would be right pissed at you over t
his carnage.”

  Heath turned away. “You didn’t grow up down here. No one will give a shit about poor old Cosgrove, except the eight-eyed piranhas that live in the alchemical waste pools or the shadow urchins who’ll pick their pockets clean when we head out of here. This place made them the way they are. They deserve at least a small measure of humanity.”

  Heath tore off his bloody doublet and tossed it into the river, revealing reinforced black leather armor strapped with hidden throwing knives. He then paused, doubled over, and puked in the river. It came on without warning. Sword’s meaty hand rubbed his back.

  Sword scrunched his brow. “You don’t get sick.”

  Heath wiped his mouth and dismissed Sword’s concern. “It was probably that rancid wine I had at the Oar. Forget about it.”

  “I hate it when you get all serious,” Sword moaned as he followed him.

  “Me too.” Heath sighed. “I do have just the thing to lighten the mood, however.”

  “Oh?” Sword placed his hands on Heath’s. “That’s riiiight…I’m a man now. A big rough-and-tumble Patrean bloke with scars and everything. And nothing gets me more worked up than a good fight. Or a really one-sided fight. Any fight actually…”

  “Let’s keep it professional.” Heath picked up Sword’s bloody hands, raised them off his shoulder, and casually released them to the air behind him. “I meant that I have a job for us that you might find interesting. Do you know anything about Harrowers?”

  Sword froze. His eyes lit up like a little boy unwrapping his first training sword. “Are they back?”

  Heath shook his head. “There’s been a rash of harrowings lately, all in Rivern and sometimes more than one a night. That’s never happened, as far as I know. And what’s more, someone’s been spotted at the scenes of the deaths.”

  “The fuck?” Sword said. “The killings are supposed to be random.”

  Heath unfolded the parchment Loran had given him. “This is who we’re looking for. Recognize him?”

  “The fucking shepherd from Reda,” Sword said.

  “He’s back.”

  FOUR

  Deposed

  JESSA

  THOUGH I AM distant relation to the Empress Iridissa, I’d never imagined being called before the Coral Throne. The circumstances of my birth are ignominious, and all that needs be said is that the man who begat me was a Stormlord of a minor lineage who abandoned my mother and me to squalor.

  The first tremor came when I was ten. I didn’t know what was happening to me—I seized with pain as if my whole body were vibrating. It lasted only a few seconds, but it happened three times during the night. Much, much later I would coincide the event with the traitor Stormlord Renax and his family’s assassination in Rivern.

  There were other fits spread so many years apart that I forgot them entirely until they came upon me. Then on a fateful windy Krackensday in Low Tide, my birth father died in a port a hundred miles from Sargasso. The pain was excruciating beyond anything I’d felt before. But as with all the others, it passed in an instant. To the great surprise of my loving wife, my eyes had turned bright silver.

  She wept with joy as she pressed my head beneath the waters in our little bath, and I calmly breathed the soapy water. My children squealed with delight as I blasted seagulls from the sky with arcs of lightning. I exulted in the rains that once chilled my very bones. By the pure accident of my birth, I had become the newest and last in line for the Coral Throne, an heir to the glory of the Thrycean Dominance.

  —EXCERPT FROM THE DIARY OF STORMLORD MELICOR, NINETY-NINTH IN THE LINE OF SUCCESSION FOR THE CORAL THRONE, BARON OF FANG ISLAND, AND CAPTAIN OF THE WAILING SIREN

  SATRYN PREENED IN the mirror, fixing her long silver hair with scrimshaw-and-onyx hairpins. She could have passed for Jessa’s older sister, a fact she was fond of telling nearly everyone. Jessa had inherited some of her mother’s features but none of her presence. Whereas Satryn’s silver eyes smoldered with intensity, Jessa’s were pensive.

  Jessa stared out the window panes at the Rivern Patrean guards and shadowy Invocari gathered on the lawn below her third-story guest quarters. She counted fifteen Patrean soldiers and two Invocari.

  “They don’t trust us, Mother,” Jessa said nervously.

  Satryn sighed. “If the soldiers are there for our protection, it’s unnecessary. And if they’re there to detain us, it’s an insult. Either way I would pay them no mind.”

  “Should we have brought our own guard from Amhaven?” Jessa worried.

  “Honestly,” Satryn said reaching for her powder, “you could kill those guards with a flick of your wrist.” Like her mother, Jessa had been born with the power to control lightning and water.

  Jessa spun toward her. “I don’t think that will be necessary. Muriel is my cousin. I’m sure she’s just ensuring our safety.”

  “She underestimates us,” Satryn corrected. “Either way.”

  “The countess has been nothing but gracious in receiving us,” Jessa said.

  “Don’t be fooled by our hosts’ hospitality,” Satryn cautioned. “The countess appears generous because she believes we’re weak. This veneer of civility will crack like an eggshell if these negotiations go poorly, and they would gladly see us strung up in the tower so all the toothless city folk could gawp at our moldering, naked corpses. Now fetch me a necklace that accentuates my neckline.”

  “Are you trying to negotiate or seduce her? I’d have thought the countess was a bit old for you.” Jessa rummaged through her mother’s jewelry box for something tasteful.

  Satryn played with the button on her silk blouse, which she wore open to her bosom, beneath her embroidered crimson naval doublet. Like all highborns in the Dominance, she was the nominal admiral of a fleet in the empress’s armada. She wore a pair of long boots made of black eel skin.

  “No, I suspect the countess’s cunt has seen fewer fingers than a rusty bear trap. But my appearance will let you bond with your cousin over your shared passion for feeling morally superior.”

  “Then this would be the last thing I’d wear with that.” Jessa passed her mother a ruby drop-pendant necklace and took an ivory cameo choker for herself. “I’d hate for you to feel like you weren’t the center of attention.”

  Satryn laughed as she draped the necklace and let the long ruby shard rest in her bosom. It brightened and flickered softly as she lightly electrified the filaments in the gold chain, causing the tungsten backing to glow. “Perfect. Let’s remind them what harnessed electricity looks like.”

  Jessa braced herself for another wistful recollection of the wonders in Thrycea. “Limitless energy,” my mother would exclaim. “The city of Thelassus is lit at every hour. The factories and forges run without need for wood or coal. Can you imagine what would be possible here if we could harness that?” Jessa had visited Thrycea once as a child, and it seemed a dreadful place to live for common folk. The Everstorm kept the city in perpetual darkness save for the storm lights and the constant flashes of lightning. Rain poured constantly as shivering work crews fought a constant battle to maintain the buildings against the onslaught of the elements.

  Satryn appraised her daughter, her silver eyes moving from the hem of her dress to the pearl embroidery around her collar and sleeves. Jessa impatiently waited for her mother’s snide remark.

  “It favors you,” Satryn offered. “These Genatrovans like their brides to be virgins for some reason, and you certainly look the part…in a prim, forgettable sort of way.”

  Jessa forced a smile. “Thank you, Mother…I think.”

  “Let’s just get through this,” Satryn said. “The countess has had ample time to find you a suitor. If all goes well, you’re to meet him and let us work out the arrangements. You’ll be married and coronated within the week, and all this foolishness with Duke Rothburn will be over.”

  Duke Rothburn controlled the eastern half of Amhaven and waged a merciless guerilla campaign against her supporters, burning homes and fields.
It was all-out civil war. “And you’ll return to Thelassus, never to trouble me again,” Jessa said. The prospect of a blindly arranged marriage might have bothered her, but nothing could spoil her excitement about finally being free of Satryn.

  Jessa was the rightful queen of Amhaven, but her mother had seized the regency after Jessa’s father had died. Though the law stated the ruler must be male, there were no such limitations on regents. But now Jessa was of an age to marry, and she couldn’t wait.

  Satryn grabbed Jessa’s arm and glared at her. “I have given you everything! Do you think my mother, the empress, picked out my clothes for me? Do you imagine that she dried my tears when my father passed away? Did she run to protect her darling baby daughter from the cruelty and scheming of my sisters? Do you think she even once showed me a single shred of maternal kindness in all the seventeen years I lived in the Sunken Palace? If I ever spoke to her in such a way, do you know what she would have done to me?”

  Jessa shrugged free of her mother’s grip. “Isn’t that why she exiled you and married you off to my father?”

  “You ungrateful little bitch!” Thunder rumbled outside as Satryn struck her across the cheek.

  Jessa laughed in surprise as she wiped blood from her lip. “I don’t care if this suitor is fat and ugly. He could be old and want me to engage in degenerate acts that would make the bards blush. There’s no prospect more loathsome and insufferable than the idea of spending the rest of my life under the dark cloud of misery you travel with. When I am queen, you will not strike me again.”

  “Good.” Satryn nodded calmly. “That’s exactly the kind of focus you’ll need to pull this off. Now shall we meet your Lord Silverbrook?”

  Jessa forced a smile.

  FIVE

  Death Sentence

  MADDOX

  AS OF THIS writing, the youngest to attempt the Seal of Vitae was thirty-eight-year-old Lester Dumand of Bamor College. A prodigy known for his intricate illuminated manuscripts, he had attained seven seals in a short time, made even more impressive by a late start to his study. What led a man, at so young an age, to attempt then mistranscribe the seal is pure speculation.