With one hand, he ripped open the celadon dress. A tug on the chest plate split the torso in half, the once-perfect breasts falling apart and clattering on the ground. There, in the center of the complicated mechanisms within, sat a perfect iron heart untouched by the foul, rusting acid. But it was useless without a body to move, and the damnable witch had said the thing wouldn't last long without a body to inhabit. With a growl, he ripped out the heart and tossed it on the table, where the wires dangled from it like tree roots wrenched out in a storm.
Charmant dug through the pile of automaton parts he'd so recently plundered to build his masterpiece and found nothing but useless chunks. Half a face, a leg, a belled metal skirt filled with cogs. Nothing was complete enough to hold the heart. Nothing had the wires, the capability of connecting with the soul as he'd dreamed.
Except . . . no.
Not that one.
It was finely crafted but inelegantly shaped. It was . . . hideous.
An abomination.
The soul-light was dimmer now, almost spluttering.
He hadn't much time.
He had even less choice.
With a feral growl and a savage yank, he ripped the body from the pile, scattering bolts across his once-spotless laboratory. A few hooks, undone, revealed a flawless chest cavity and a smaller, more primitive mechanical heart still connected to sensitive wires.
The soul-light fizzed like a candle flame about to sputter out. With a fingernail, he unscrewed the cover on the iron heart and slammed the soul-fuzz inside, flipping the door back until it clicked.
For the first minute, he held a hand over the top, praying to the bloodier gods that the damned thing would stick. It was all he'd ever wanted, and he'd held it in his hand. And now he just wanted to be rid of it. The way it stuck to him, clung to him like her harsh words—the thing needed to be captured and kept contained.
His hand trembled as he revealed the cold iron underneath. The soul-light stayed put, did not try to float out. First came a tiny click. Then the tiniest bloom of warmth. Then a glow that shone through the tiny seams. And then the heart was beating, the cogs turning, the fingers twitching experimentally.
And Charmant breathed again and went to enjoy a cabaret girl's soft, pliant, senseless flesh while waiting for Coco's soul to ignite the body of the metal orangutan.
The alchemist was, after all, a practical creature.
He could never have the Coco that obsessed him.
But now he had both her body and a new servant, one who had no choice but to serve him until her metal rusted away, until the long, clever fingers shattered to dust. The metal golem was bound to him with the darkest magic, unable to lift a hand to harm her master. As he climbed off the table and cleaned himself with a handkerchief, he couldn't help smiling, twirling his mustache.
Yes. Perhaps this wasn't the possession that he'd intended, but it was a possession nonetheless.
* * * * *
The next morning, Charmant woke covered in blood. Coco's body lay beside him in his bed, her arms tied to the post as they'd been when he'd drifted into beautiful dreams. But her skin was dead, cold white splashed with red. The daimon dancing girl's throat was slit in a wide, gaping, mocking smile.
Across the room crouched a metal orangutan holding his razor with long, dextrous fingers.
A Good Name
Mark Lawrence
The scars of his name still stung about his neck and shoulders. The sun beat upon him as it had always beaten, as it would continue to beat until the day came at last for the tribe to put his bones in the caves beside those of his ancestors.
* * * * *
The young man held his name tight, unwilling even to move his lips around the shape of it. He had won both manhood and a name in the heat and dust of the ghost plain. Long Toe had led him out a nameless child. He found his own way back, bleeding from the wounds of a thousand thorn pricks. Long Toe had patterned him with the spine of a casca bush. In time the scars would darken and the black-on-brown pattern would let the world know him for a man of the Haccu tribe.
“Firestone, fetch me water.” Broken Bowl rose from his bower as Firestone approached the village, dusty from his long trek.
Broken Bowl watched his cattle from the comfort of his shaded hammock most days. Men would come to buy, leaning on the twisted fence spars, chewing betel until their mouths ran bloody, spitting the juice into the dust. Half a day spent in haggling and they would leave with a cow, two cows, three cows, and Broken Bowl would return to his hammock with more cowrie shells for his wives to braid into his hair.
“I’m a man now. Find a boy to bring you water.” Firestone had known Broken Bowl would test him. Many of the new men still fetched and carried for him as they had when they were boys. Broken Bowl might only have worn his scars five years but he had wealth and he could wrestle a cow to the ground unaided when the time came to bleed one. Besides, his father led the warriors to battle.
“Don’t make me beat you, little man.” Broken Bowl slid from his hammock, and stood, tall, thick with muscle, honour scars reaching in bands from both shoulders nearly to the elbow.
“I’m not making you.” Firestone had carried Broken Bowl’s water and his “little man” for years. He was neither little now, nor ready to carry another gourd from the well. On the ghost plain Long Toe had tested him, broken him nearly, left him dry long enough to see the spirits hiding in the dust, hurt him bad enough to take the sting from pain.
Broken Bowl rolled his head on his thick neck and stretched his arms out to the side, yawning. “End this foolishness, Firestone. The young men bring me water. When you have fought alongside the warriors, when you have Hesha blood on your spear, or a braid of Snake-Stick hair on your wrist, the young men will carry for you too.”
“You’re still a young man, Broken Bowl. I remember when you came back with your scars.” Firestone’s heart beat hard beneath the bone of his breast. His mouth grew dry and the words had to be pushed from it—like ebru forced cover before the hunters. He knew he should bow his head and fetch the water, but his scars stung and his true name trembled behind his lips.
Broken Bowl stamped in the dust, not just ritual anger—the real emotion burned in his bloodshot eyes. Two men of Kosha village turned from the cattle pens to watch. Small children emerged from the shade of the closest huts, larger ones hurrying after. A whistle rang out somewhere back past the long hall.
“Do you remember why they call you Firestone?” Broken Bowl asked. He sucked in a breath and calmed himself.
Firestone said nothing. He knew that Broken Bowl would tell the story again for the gathering crowd.
“Your brother found you bawling your eyes out, clutching a stone from the fire to your chest.” Broken Bowl rubbed his fists against his eyes, mocking those tears. “Your father had to take the stone from you and he cursed as it burned him.”
Firestone felt the eyes of the children on his chest. The scars there had a melted quality to them. One of the Kosha men laughed, a lean fellow with a bone plate through his nose.
“Your name is a lesson, Firestone. About when to put something down and walk away.” Broken Bowl cracked his knuckles. “Put this down. Walk away.”
Firestone carried no weapon, he had a spear in his father’s hut, warped, its point fire-hardened wood. Broken Bowl had a bronze curas at his hip on the leather strap that held his loincloth. The larger man made no move to draw it though. He would beat Firestone bloody but do no murder. Not today. Even now Firestone could fetch the water and escape with nothing more than a slap or two.
“Harrac.” Firestone whispered his true name, curling his lips around the sound. Every prick of that casca spine lanced again through his skin as he spoke his name—all of them at once—a thousand stabs, a liquid pain. He threw himself forward, the lion’s snarl bursting from him.
Perhaps he was faster than he had thought—and he had thought himself fast. Perhaps Broken Bowl hadn’t taken him seriously, or had expected threat
s and stamping. Either way, when Harrac leapt, Broken Bowl reached for him too slow, fumbled his grapple, and the top of Harrac’s forehead smashed into Broken Bowl’s cheek and nose.
They went down together. Broken Bowl hammering into the dust, Harrac on top, pounding the edge of his hand into Broken Bowl’s face. Broken Bowl threw him off—the man’s strength amazed Harrac but didn’t daunt him. In two heartbeats he was back on his foe. Broken Bowl managed to turn onto his side but Harrac threw his weight upon the man’s back as he tried to rise. Harrac drove his elbow into the back of Broken Bowl’s neck, brought his knee up into his ribs, pressed his face into the ground with his other hand. A red fury seized him and he didn’t stop pounding his foe until the men of the village pulled him off.
* * * * *
Harrac sat on the ground, sweat cutting paths through the dust caking his limbs. The crowd about him, an indivisible many, their words just noise beneath the rush of his breathing and the din of his heart. From the corner of his eye he saw five men carry Broken Bowl toward the huts. Later his father came, and Broken Bowl’s father, and Carry Iron in his headman’s cloak of feathers, and Long Toe, Ten Legs, Spiller . . . all the elders.
“I am a man,” Harrac said when he stood before them, with the village watching on. “I have a name. I have a man’s strength.”
“Then why do you not use it as a man?” His own father, three of Harrac’s grown brothers at his shoulders.
“I would not carry water for him,” Harrac said.
“Maybe nobody will have to carry water for my son again.” Red Sky made the sign of sorrow, his hand descending on a wavered path. “There is no disputing your right to fight him. But you fought as though he were our enemy, not a brother.”
“I . . .” Harrac drew in a long breath. “There is only fighting or not fighting. Fight or do not. He didn’t ask me to dance.”
A muted ripple of laughter through the children, but the men exchanged glances. Red Sky turned to look at Harrac’s father. Carry Iron looked too, the blackwood club in his hand.
“You must go to Ibowen, Firestone. Tell the king what you have done. He will send you back to us, or he won’t.”
It made no sense. Why would Harrac’s own father try to steal his victory? Were they jealous? Just three days a man and already he had humbled Broken Bowl. Harrac felt the red tide of anger rising in him again. He set his jaw and looked Carry Iron in the eye. “I will go to the king.”
He turned and started walking, knowing they all watched him, knowing the stories and talk around the fires tonight would be his. Pride and anger bubbled in him, a bitter taste in his mouth. He spat his own blood as he walked, red as betel juice.
A mile on, Harrac stopped by the marula trees, anger, pride, bitterness, gone, as if it had leaked from him, colouring his footprints. He crouched in the shade wondering what madness took him, sore in every limb. He carried no food, no water, he didn’t even know the way to Ibowen. West, past the River Ugwye. Not the best of directions. Lion country too. No place for a man alone.
He sat for the longest time, staring at his hands, the same hands that had beaten Broken Bowl. He remembered the looks shot his way as the men had carried Broken Bowl toward the huts. A mix of disgust and horror, as if he were a rabid dog rather than a warrior. Harrac’s eyes prickled with tears, though he couldn’t say who they might be for.
Three days he’d carried his name before disgracing it. One day recovering, two days walking, and just minutes beneath the eyes of his village. Long Toe had said there were deeper secrets to a man’s name but that the elders did not teach them, only pointed the way across the years—they were learned, or not, as a man carried his name beneath the sun. Long Toe said the secrets lay in the Haccu songs and stories, and in the way men lived, set in full view. Harrac wondered what the king-of-many-tribes would say. If he was sent away he would never know the full truth signified by his true name, earned in pain and suffering.
* * * * *
Ragged Tail, the eldest of Harrac’s three younger brothers, came to him as the sky shaded red in the west. He bought a hard slab of bread-cake, a grass bag of lebo nuts, and a gourd of water.
“Broken Bowl has woken.” Ragged Tail watched his brother with wide eyes as if he were a wild creature off the yellow grass, seen for the first time. “He has broken ribs but Long Toe thinks he will recover.”
“Ribs?” Harrac didn’t even remember hitting him in the side. He drank from the heavy gourd. “You fetched me water, ’Tail.”
“You’re my brother.” He didn’t sound entirely sure.
Harrac put his hand on ’Tail’s shoulder. “Fetch water whoever asks you. Make all men your brother.” He took the gourd, the bag, and the bread-cake, then started to walk.
“You’re not coming back?” ’Tail called after him.
“I’m a man now. I can’t just say sorry. I have to do what Carry Iron told me to do.”
* * * * *
Ibowen lay farther from Harrac’s village than he had ever imagined, and the city itself lay farther beyond his imagination still. First he discovered a road—a trail beaten into the ground by the passage of many feet, marked with stones, rutted with wheels. Then came the houses. It seemed that a thousand villages had gathered together. It started as clusters of huts made from mud and straw, though taller than those of the Haccu, but before long the buildings became mud-brick, hard-angled, longer than the long hall, taller than a man holding his spear above him. Harrac walked through a wholly alien landscape, without grass, without views to the distance, hardly a tree, everything edges and windows, noise, strangers, multitudes, none of them interested in his arrival. They spoke strange languages here, or familiar ones with strange voices.
At length, following the directions of a man who recognised his Haccu scars, Harrac came to the high mud walls of the king’s palace. He circled, tracking around the perimeter, passing dozens of houses that put Carry Iron’s hut to shame. The palace gates stood taller than an elephant, thick timbers bound with an extravagance of iron, gates that would stand against a hundred men.
A multitude camped around the entrance, naked children, men in loincloths, priests with bird-skull necklaces and the ia-lines painted red across their arms and chests, warriors with spears and so many honour scars they almost lacked the skin for more.
Two warriors stood by the gates, splendid in leopard skins, ostrich feathers in their woven hair, iron-tipped spears, curved iron swords at their hips. Strangest of all though, the man standing in conversation with one of the pair, his back to Harrac as he worked his way through the seated crowds.
Where the man wasn’t covered in folds of white linen, he had the palest skin Harrac had ever seen, white as fish meat on his hands, an angry red on his forearms. And his hair—a white mass of it beneath a broad-brimmed hat of woven grass.
Harrac came closer still and realised how huge the man was. Head and shoulders above the guardsmen, but both of those were as tall as any man Harrac knew, and this man stood thick with muscle, far broader across the shoulders than Broken Bowl, a white giant.
The man turned as Harrac approached.
“A boy fresh in off the grassland.” The white man grinned down at Harrac, his teeth showing amid the thickest beard, cut close to his chin. He watched for a reply, then narrowed his pale blue eyes. “Did I say it wrong? You look Haccu to me.”
“I am Haccu.”
“What’s your name, boy?”
Harrac found himself on the point of speaking his true name to a stranger. “Firestone. I’m a man of the tribe.” He turned to the closest of the plumed guards. “My headman sent me to speak with the king.”
The guardsman nodded, unsmiling, toward the crowd. “Wait.”
Harrac looked back. The people seemed settled in for a stay of days or more, food supplies heaped beside them, shelters erected to provide shade. “For how long?”
The guardsman stared ahead as if no longer seeing anyone before him. Harrac felt his name scars sting, his p
ride pricking him even in this strange place of walls and iron. He stood, immobile, held between the angry heat in his blood and the cold fact of his station. Older and more important men than him sat waiting by the roadside—the doors belonged to the king-of-many-tribes. And still he couldn’t walk away.
“Ha! The boy doesn’t like to wait.” The huge foreigner grinned still more broadly. “And who does? Especially in this damned heat!” He reached out to slap Harrac’s shoulder.
Harrac caught the white man’s wrist. He felt ridges of scar tissue beneath his fingers. “I am a man.”
“Of course you are. Firestone wasn’t it?” The man looked surprised, though with his face half covered in beard it was hard to tell. “I’m Snaga ver Olaafson. May I have my arm back?”
Harrac released Snaga’s wrist and the big man made a show of rubbing it. The scars there were ugly—nothing ritual about them—matched on the other wrist.
“Snaga?” Harrac asked. “Why do they call you that?”
“It’s my name.” Again the grin, infectious. Harrac found an unwilling echo of it on his lips.
“Your true name?”
Snaga nodded. “We don’t view it the same where I come from. A man wears his name. None of this hiding it.”
“You are from the north. Across the sea. The lands of Christ, where men are pale.” Harrac felt pleased he had listened to the wisdom of the elders at circle and remembered enough of it to keep him from seeming ignorant before this stranger.
“Ha!” Snaga nodded to the side and led off into the shadow of the wall, raising a hand toward the two guards. “I’m from the utter north. Across two seas. My home is a place of snow and icy winds and our gods are many just as yours. The men of Christendom call us Vikings, axemen, and they fear us.”
“Snow?”
Snaga sat cross-legged and patted the ground for Harrac to join him. “You have to learn to trust me before I tell you about snow. I wouldn’t want you to call me a liar.”
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