Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  Even though it was just a name, it sent a shiver down my back.

  ‘You tweaking my tail?’ I asked. He shook his head, face blackly serious.

  Along the Range there were maybe a couple of hundred lesser sorcerers, not counting the indentured Talents at work in the mills. Somehow they were all running headlong into my life. The Lady of Waves never left her island citadel on Pyre, and since Cold and Songlope were dead and Shallowgrave and Nall had vanished years ago, she and Crowfoot were the last of the Nameless. And here I was, only separated from the stranger of the two by a wall and some oak.

  ‘Here’s something I’ve always wondered,’ the Spinner mused. ‘Why do they call them Nameless when they got names?’

  ‘You think those are their real names?’ I asked. ‘You think that someone called their kid Crowfoot when he was born? Or Shallowgrave? They don’t have names. Those are just things we call them.’

  ‘Everyone has a name,’ the Spinner grouched, but I’d won the point. Made me feel slightly better. I looked down at the tattoo on my arm, the raven nestled amongst all the ordinary inks. The skin there was peeling, like it was recovering from sunburn. The raven was nearly his full dark again.

  When the call came for me to enter, I’d been debating making an excuse and legging it back down the over-long stairs. It had only been the Spinner’s snide expression that kept my feet planted.

  The Iron Goat was slouched in a chair twice as wide as he needed. I’d seen him stiff-backed at attention for formal inspections and parades, but on the whole Venzer didn’t stand on ceremony. He’d come up through the ranks in the days when the fighting on the front was at its hottest, when officer training meant a five-week vacation in the college before an inevitable and unpleasant death on the front lines. He’d broken the walls at Viteska, and had escaped Shavada’s clutches when the Deep King led a legion to pursue him halfway across the Misery. But for all that the grand prince had heaped the marshal with the gold and jewels they mined in the colonies out to the west, he was still the muddy-boots and bloody-moods soldier who’d signed up as a private. He might be missing some fingers, half an ear and most of the teeth on the left side of his face, but none of us stay pretty for ever. Some of us don’t even start that way.

  Venzer had a big metal cup in his hand. I guessed that whatever he was drinking it probably wasn’t milk. He looked tired. Worse, exhausted. I wondered whether he’d slept. The wide desk was littered with stacks of papers, log books, ledgers, a plate of untouched food, a paper knife jammed point first into the wood. The clutter lacked Venzer’s usual austere particularity. Despite his maiming and the age that had wrinkled and leathered every scrap of skin, the marshal usually had a fearsome vitality about him. When Venzer strode through an autumn forest, you expected a wind to follow in his wake casting leaves into the air. The same bright intelligence lurked in his eyes but the flesh was drained. I’d seen healthier-looking Talents wired into their seats at the mill.

  Fucking wizards. Bastards will do that to you, I guess.

  ‘Don’t worry. She’s gone,’ the marshal said. His voice was half-slurred, a result of his flapping lips and toothless gums. One story went that a horse had kicked them out, another claimed a Darling’s spell had ricocheted into his face. The Dhoja had tried to take him alive on more than one occasion. They’d even sent Shavada himself, and the Deep Kings don’t often risk themselves in the Misery. Our living legend was a sorry sight that morning despite his oversized, red-brimmed hat. I’d never seen him without that hat. It had become more of a symbol of his position than the medals hanging from his epaulettes.

  ‘Gone?’ I asked. Venzer nodded.

  ‘She never stays long. Hates to leave her island even for a few heartbeats. Count yourself lucky you don’t have to deal with her too, Galharrow. Nothing good ever comes from it.’

  I didn’t say anything, but I nodded. Only a handful of people knew the truth of my relationship with Crowfoot. To the common populace, Blackwing were monster hunters and enforcers, investigators with a special licence to root out corruption and cauterise the wound. Men to be feared, but just men. What else would they believe? I had only trusted a scant handful with the truth. Venzer, Nenn, Tnota and Maldon understood how deep Crowfoot’s claws lay into my flesh. I’d only met four of the other six captains. I could live without meeting the other two.

  Venzer waved me into a chair and pointed towards the half-empty bottle on the table. I thanked him and poured a draught of bright yellow liquid, thick as milk.

  ‘Apricot hard-wine,’ Venzer said. ‘Seventy marks a shot. The Prince of Whitelande sent me two dozen bottles of the stuff. He doesn’t send me the soldiers I need, but he sends me alcohol.’

  ‘Well, at least it’s something.’

  The Range Marshal chuckled, knocked back the spirit. He was at ease with me, as I was with him. We’d known each other a long time.

  ‘I believe that congratulations are in order. Prince Herono informs me that you dealt with a Bride in my absence. I knew there was one somewhere, though I’d not have expected it of Digada. Always seemed such a sensible, bland man.’

  ‘A dead man, now.’

  ‘It’s not a good living, out here, is it?’ Venzer mused. Despite the bad blood and the mistakes that had separated us, he still spoke to me as an equal.

  ‘Never was, probably never will be,’ I acknowledged. The marshal sat more upright in his chair.

  ‘I should have retired years ago,’ he said. ‘I have estates in four principalities, all of them run by my sons. Young men now, I suppose, but I haven’t seen any of them since they were boys. If you lined them up, I wouldn’t know which was which.’

  Maudlin, drunk old men embarrass themselves. I tried to move to business.

  ‘You received my report?’ I asked.

  ‘I read it. I heard all about it at Station Twelve, too. Made a good show of yourself, they tell me.’

  ‘I killed some drudge.’

  ‘Of course you did. These are black times, Galharrow, when Darlings think they can creep into our fortresses and slaughter my men. Black, dark times.’

  ‘Why was the Engine’s operating room chained?’ I said. I couldn’t hold the question back. ‘There were drudge attacking the Range and the Engine had been put beyond use. Why?’

  ‘On my orders,’ Venzer said. ‘And you would find the same at every station along the Range.’

  ‘With all due respect, sir, why in the spirits-damned hells would you order that?’

  Venzer sighed, rubbed at knuckles that had been warped by age.

  ‘You are a rarity, Galharrow. You are a man who chooses to perform the worst of tasks in the Misery. Hunting down deserters, hanging sympathisers. Tearing husbands from weeping wives, cutting the heads from monsters. And you refuse every bit of aid that I offer you. You could be financed properly, you know that. I’ve offered you a salary, staff, an office within the citadel. No more chasing bounties just to keep your head above water.’

  Spirits knew I needed the money. More than I ever had before. But there are promises you make to yourself, vows you place your pride in. Some things are worth the struggle.

  ‘You offer it every time I see you,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and you spit it back in my face every time.’ Venzer pointed a finger at me. ‘And all because you won’t wear a uniform. Did it ever occur to you that Blackwing would better serve the republic without relying on mercenary bounties?’

  ‘I’ve been part of the war machine before,’ I said. ‘We both know how that turned out. Not so well for me, or for Torolo Mancono. Or his wife, or his children. Blackwing gets by.’ We were treading dry old ground, stepping between old footprints. I’d sooner be damned than have to take orders from princes again. ‘What does this have to do with Station Twelve?’

  ‘What did you make of Station Twelve’s commander, Jerrick?’ Venzer asked. ‘A competent
man? Selfless? Hardy?’

  ‘Incompent. A glutton. A fool.’

  ‘Though the Spirit of Mercy bids us speak well of the dead, the best that I can say about him is that he is dead and now I can put someone else in his place,’ Venzer said. ‘Would it surprise you to know that Jerrick bought his position? Of course not. Your father bought you a battalion, after all. The princes send me their bastards and their nieces, their fifth-born simpletons and their least capable cousins. I cannot trust the operation of Nall’s Engine to their twitching fingers. One false activation could be a disaster, I don’t have to tell you that. So I put the Engine beyond their use. They have communicators. In the face of a full assault the Engine is operated from here, from the heart of the Engine. I trust no other to throw the firing lever.’

  It made a significant amount of good sense. That was the thing about Venzer. He made things work, even if he was building with slops and straw.

  ‘That was not Nall’s design,’ I said. Venzer grunted.

  ‘Nall is gone. If he deigns to return then he can put me right. Until then, the Range is mine to defend.’ The Iron Goat may not have liked the Nameless, but he was not intimidated by them. One of the few men in the world that wasn’t. ‘Now, what do you know about this proposition Ezabeth Tanza is putting forward later today at the council meeting?’ Of all the questions I’d expected him to ask, this wasn’t one. He should have wanted to know more about the little bastard Darling. He should have been eager to learn about Ezabeth Tanza’s conflagration and how we’d avoided losing a Range station by the narrowest of margins.

  ‘It’s none of my business,’ I said. Which was true.

  ‘I understand that she came to visit you last night,’ Venzer said.

  ‘You got a tail on her? Why?’

  ‘If I wanted you to ask questions of me, I’d have tossed you this hat when you came in. I ask them, you answer. She came to your apartment?’

  It was rare that Venzer showed me this face. He hadn’t pulled rank on me in years, not since I’d bloodied the nose of a brigadier in a street brawl and he’d had to pull me up for it. I put it down to the bruise-like hollows beneath his eyes and the meeting he’d just endured with the Lady of Waves. Coming face to face with a wizard will make anyone’s head ache, and the Lady wasn’t as easy to bear as Nall. Nall had always been the best of them in my mind, meaning that when he dealt with his enemies the torture only lasted a day or two. Since he’d disappeared, by all accounts the last two Nameless had become worse. Some said they were going mad.

  Venzer’s questions were quick, basic, clean, just the way he ran his army. I felt like some low-grade leaf pusher getting shaken down for information. What did she want? What did she talk about? How long did she stay? Did she mention anything to do with her work? Why did she seek me out?

  I hadn’t walked into the office intending to cover for her. Blackwing I might be, but Venzer was the Range Marshal and he outranked anyone short of a prince, and even they bowed to his superior wisdom where the Range was concerned. Ezabeth threatened that. If I was going to drop in the ditch it needed to be now.

  I gave him nothing.

  ‘She may just be a middle-rate university academic, but she’s still a Spinner, and she’s dangerous,’ Venzer said when he ran out of questions. ‘I fear the light blindness that took Maldon has broken Ezabeth Tanza’s mind too. She’s fomenting unrest, causing trouble, getting the wrong people angry. If she manages to spread her mistaken rumours there’ll be rioting in the streets. A panic. She’s half mad, or maybe all mad, but she’s related to Prince Herono so I can’t just lock her away without good reason. If she comes to you again, for anything, let me know. Will you do that for me, Galharrow?’

  ‘You want information about Darlings in your Range stations, call on me. If it’s pretty girls you want to know about, there’s madams on Silk Street can help you out. I have work to do.’

  Venzer watched me coldly.

  ‘When I first rose to command, Blackwing captains were respected. Well-connected officers aspired to carry the iron seal. Now? You, Silpur, Vasilov – you’re all glorified headsmen.’

  I rose from my seat. I wasn’t dismissed yet, but I hadn’t anything more to say. The Iron Goat waited a few moments before waving me away.

  ‘You’ve fallen a long way,’ he said coldly as I turned the door handle. ‘Do you regret your choices, when you’re between bottles?’

  ‘When you realise the mountain you’ve been climbing is just a heap of shit, the fall doesn’t feel so far.’

  As I pulled at the door a communicator operator burst through. He paid me no heed, gave no salute or care for rank as he rushed to Venzer’s desk and began unwinding a great long strip of communicator paper, marked with dashes, dots and clicks. The clerk was a southerner with the cast of Pyre, but his skin had turned paler than mine, a gleaming sheen of sweat slicking it.

  ‘See? See?’ the operator stammered.

  ‘Yes, yes it’s a message, I can see that,’ Venzer said angrily. ‘A bloody long one. What does it say?’

  ‘It’s from Marshal Wechsel, at Station Three-Six,’ he said. ‘Kings have entered the Misery. Deep Kings, two of them! Shavada and Philon are heading west, with an army.’

  Venzer peered past me to where worried-looking clerks were trying to look into the room. ‘Summon the Command Council at once. I don’t care if they’re sleeping, shitting or fucking their horses, get them here now.’

  11

  Kids these days are jumpier than hell.

  Venzer’s Command Council leaked more than my roof, so I got it all the details from one mouth or another. The drudge had started to occupy the old settlements in their half of the Misery in numbers we hadn’t seen in two decades. They were planning something. Something big. Exaggerated reports counted a hundred thousand warriors, and even more dubious scouts’ reports said they were trying to build a road. Worse, they confirmed that both Philon and Shavada were there in person. It had been a long time since any of the Deep Kings were willing to risk venturing so deep into the Misery.

  For two days, that meant that we had to endure something akin to panic in the streets.

  Everything would be fine. We had the Engine to protect us. The drudge could do what they wanted out there in the sand and play at laying a road, or they could get themselves dissolved by the huge jellyfish thing that lived under the sand in the Misery’s far north and it wouldn’t make a mouse-fart of difference to Dortmark. The land would twist and change and one day they’d lay a stone and find that it met another stone earlier down the road. The Misery was like that. The Deep Kings could posture however they wanted out there, but they’d never step into range of Nall’s Engine. Everything would be fine.

  At least it would be, as long as Nall’s Engine was getting the power it needed.

  I kept myself indoors, wringing Ezabeth’s seditious words through my mind over and over. The streets flowed with streams of wan-faced soldiers and an equal number of clerks, servants, grooms, merchants and doxies, all traipsing north alongside cart after cart of supplies and the barges slowly navigating the clogged canals. I estimated Venzer was sending three-quarters of the strength of Valengrad, both the heavy cavalry divisions, the best of the big free companies and more state troops than I could count. I hadn’t seen mobilisation like this in ten years. The city deflated as the soldiers flowed away, a withered, milkless teat.

  ‘You know, whatever you did to me, it seems I can’t get drunk any more,’ I said when Ezabeth turned up on my doorstep.

  She was cowled in a long black cloak, face veiled, hood up against the night. I’d been expecting another visit, had felt it in the arches of my feet. I let her in. She scanned the room, maybe noting that I’d cleared the empty bottles into a pile and my sheets had been laundered.

  ‘It will fade in time,’ she said without apology. She eyed my armour, breastplate laid out on the table
where I’d been giving it a good scouring alongside my matchlock, dagger and sword. I hated that she wore that veil; it made reading her impossible. Somehow I still felt she was being condescending. The sad truth was, I’d been hoping she’d come by again. I was an idiot. I didn’t even like her. She was like squeezing a zit. It was satisfying to apply pressure, even if I knew I’d look stupid for days to come.

  She stood awkwardly in the middle of my apartment. It didn’t smell so bad since I’d had the washerwomen scrub my sheets and the pile of old clothing had mostly been fed into the fire. Women make you do the strangest things.

  ‘Any reason you’re here? It’s past twelve.’

  ‘I need you to help me break into Gleck Maldon’s house.’

  I blinked at that. She seemed torn about something, but then reached up and unclasped the veil, revealed her face. Her sweetness had me stunned for a moment.

  ‘Gleck’s house belongs to the recipients of his will. His bastards, probably. He might have been a womaniser and half mad, but he wasn’t corrupted. It’s not my business.’ Hard to get my words out right. It didn’t make sense that after twenty years she hadn’t aged a day while I’d aged twice that and more.

  ‘You’re Blackwing,’ she said airily. ‘You can make it your business.’

  ‘Folk who abuse their power don’t tend to hold onto it long. I won’t cast a shadow of suspicion over Gleck’s memory. He’s owed better than that. He might have been crazy, but he was loyal to the core.’ And if I assist you with this line of enquiry then I’ll be as guilty of sedition as you are.

  Ezabeth stiffened her posture, tilted her chin.

  ‘People say you’ll do anything, if the price is right.’

  ‘People are arseholes.’ If my reputation was hitting that point then I’d lost track of popular opinion. I’d always prided myself that my crew kept itself honourable, for all that it was made of lice and pond crud. Yes, we took the pay for savage work, but a man’s got to eat. A sensation like shame demanded that I dismiss it before it rose any further. Even a mercenary has to have standards.