Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  At length a man whose hands were ink-black from fingertips to elbows noticed me and walked over with a concerned look on his narrow, common face.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  ‘Looking for Pieter Dytwin,’ I said.

  ‘That’s me,’ he said. He didn’t like the breadth of my shoulders or the cutlass at my belt, but when he saw the Blackwing insignia on my shoulder, he nearly shat himself. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m Captain Galharrow, here on Prince Herono’s business,’ I said. ‘There was a woman came to see you not long ago. Cream, likely wore a modesty veil and gloves. Lady Tanza.’

  Mention of the prince made him nervous; mention of Tanza made him shrivel. I’d put him on the defensive, and I evidently wasn’t a customer. The tightening of his expression became a look close to panic, and I knew I’d come to the right place.

  ‘I don’t think I know anyone of that name,’ he managed.

  ‘That’s odd,’ I said. Sighed, dramatic as a pantomime player. ‘Seems that someone must have sneaked in and started putting these out from your press then.’ I held up the pamphlet that bore his name, but Pieter had already recognised it. There was a fearful glimmer in his eyes. He knew exactly what he’d printed, and he knew just where it was likely to land him. The apprentices behind him had sensed something was wrong.

  ‘No need to make a scene. You aren’t under arrest. And neither are they. Not yet.’

  Pieter seemed to welcome my gentleness, grasped it as though it were a sign of things to come.

  ‘Please, step into my office.’

  The door closed behind us, shutting out the concerned looks from the apprentices. Pieter pressed his fingertips to his eyes, shook his head with a shiver.

  ‘I want her grace to know that I was never a willing party to this,’ he said. ‘I know how wrong those pamphlets were. But how was I to refuse a relation of the prince? A count’s sister? She assured me that she had the prince’s authority.’

  ‘So you ran the pamphlet?’

  Pieter nodded, twisting his cap between his hands. He was a narrow man, forties, well worn by the arduous work at the press but his ink-black hands trembled in a manner unworthy of his age.

  ‘Of course. She paid up front. That’s rare, you know, very rare. Most customers, they want to see the finished products. Ink smears, paper gets jammed, sometimes the type is too faint. You know. But she paid them all up front.’

  ‘How many copies did you run?’ I kept my voice low, level. It’s important to judge a man when you want to know what he knows. Threats and violence will motivate the reluctant, but Pieter was all too willing to spill. Sweat rolled snail tracks down his face. Prince Herono was a kindlier soul than some of her peers but even she would string him up for this – especially if it were true. Nobody with a capacity to bear insults wins a princedom. Pieter was terrified that what he said now would bury him neck deep in the midden. I couldn’t tell him that it wouldn’t.

  ‘We’d run two hundred copies when I came to my senses and refused to publish any more without a letter of instruction from the citadel. I know, sir, I know that it was wrong. I see that now. I should never have trusted a woman who wouldn’t show her face.’

  He had a point there. Maybe I was no smarter than he was, though just then, I still felt it.

  ‘What happened to the copies?’

  ‘Destroyed,’ he said. ‘I threw them on the fire. I didn’t think any still existed. May I ask … where you got that?’

  I felt he might risk making a grab for it, try to shred the evidence of his slip-up. So I folded the pamphlet, tucked it into my pocket. Always best to hold something back for insurance.

  ‘You know what this pamphlet claims?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Tell me what you printed.’

  Pieter cringed, but he obeyed.

  ‘It says that the phos that is spun in the mills isn’t used to power Nall’s Engine. It says that the princes are abusing the mill Talents and subverting the phos supply for their own ends. It calls them corrupt war profiteers.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Of course, I never believed it! I put my trust in Nall, in the Order and in the princes. Of course I do. I pay my taxes, a good citizen.’

  I let him babble his innocence a while longer. I made no move to accept or argue the case. I wasn’t here for him; he was careless, but no traitor that I could see. And he’d helped Ezabeth which, ridiculous as it was, earned him some kind of merit in my eyes.

  ‘Does she know that you destroyed the copies?’

  ‘Yes. When the boy came to collect them, I said I’d never printed them. They were already on the fire. It was a waste of very good paper. I had to pay them—’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘A boy servant. Not hers. He had a jacket showing the emblem of the Order of Aetherial Engineers. Please, captain, you see? She even had a friend in the Order. I thought it strange at the time, that it seemed to go against the Order’s work but I’m just a simple printer …’

  I had what I needed. He couldn’t give me a name, but it was going to be easy enough from there. I told the hapless printer that he should pay a fine of two thousand marks. It was a small price to pay to escape Prince Herono’s retribution, and he ran to fetch it like an eager child. Business must have been good because he had the money in his strongbox, and in exchange I let him burn the pamphlet on his fire. Two thousand marks to char a bit of paper. I told him that I’d deliver the money to the prince on his behalf, for which he thanked me. He shouldn’t have, since I intended to use it to pay Saravor off, but he couldn’t have known that.

  The Order of Aetherial Engineers are the scholars, machinists and ironworkers with the near-holy duty of maintaining Nall’s Engine. Though the great weapon had been contrived and laid down by the Nameless, its daily oiling and polishing had been left to a small army of underlings. There was prestige in being accepted into the Order, and the Lennisgrad university regularly sent its brightest and best to swell the Order’s green-robed ranks. Physicists, Spinners, mathematicians, the inquisitive of all disciplines sought positions of authority in order to gain access to the secret writings Nall had left behind with instructions about the running of his contraption. Mostly, they were a bunch of arrogant pricks.

  I went to the citadel for the information I needed. Prince Herono might have supplied it, but I didn’t want to let her know what her kinswoman had been up to, or with whom, just yet. I’d seen no proof that Ezabeth’s pamphlets were right, and maybe it was just gut-driven intuition but if Ezabeth was on to something then it wasn’t just her business, it was Blackwing’s too. I still found it hard to imagine Herono as a simple profiteer. She’d more money than scars, and she didn’t lack for those. If we didn’t see things the same way it was because the drudge had torn an eye from her face, not because she was hungry for coin. Herono had come through for me when she located the Bride but something about that just hadn’t sat right. Count Digada had been careful – very careful – but she’d uncovered his cult in a matter of days. That Bride had gone unnoticed for years to have grown so large. Maybe I just didn’t like the idea that she was more capable than I was. The unease lingered. For now, whatever I was being paid, I’d deal with Ezabeth myself.

  First I had to ensure that Ezabeth was safe and after that I could try to dissuade her from her course of self-destruction. If she’d managed to get those leaflets into circulation then her rank wouldn’t have protected her. Venzer would see her actions as treachery, propaganda working against morale and with the situation up at Three-Six, we needed all the good spirits we could dredge up. This was well beyond the provocation he needed to order an execution.

  One helpful thing about the uptight, self-aggrandising Order was that when they gained the honour of being enrolled, they got their names written into a great big book of pompo
usly embellished letters. It took me fifteen minutes to find a name that matched the initials ‘O.L.’, and a cross reference with another of the citadel’s records gave me his address ten minutes later. Eleven and I was out the door and crossing the city.

  The Order paid its money-movers well, if Otto Lindrick’s house was anything to go by. Not as luxurious as Maldon’s had been but lying in a distinctly better part of town, I didn’t bother clanging the bell at the low surrounding wall and hopped over it instead. Darkness had fallen but phos light glowed within. Five heavy thumps on the door led to movement inside and a momentary face peeking between curtains. I thumped on the door again for good measure.

  A boy answered, at that awkward child-man age where nobody’s quite sure where he stands. A cruel swarm of angry white-headed pimples blistered his cheeks and forehead and by the bleeders I could see he’d been picking at them.

  ‘Your master here?’

  ‘No, sir, he’s at his work,’ the boy said.

  ‘You his kid or his boy?’

  ‘His apprentice, sir.’

  ‘Think he’ll mind if I beat some truth out of you?’

  ‘Sir?’ He looked as though he wanted to try to slam the heavy oak door but I was already too far in to stop, and his fourteen or so years had lent him only bony stringiness. I pushed past, caught sight of the pudgy man peering around a door frame. He tried to bolt, but he was middle-aged and composed of dough and butter. I went after him, caught him as he tried to draw back the bolt across the door and threw him against the wall. He flailed his pudgy hands at me, and I drove a fist into his soft gut.

  The apprentice cried out as his master fell breathless to the floor. He seized a poker from the fireplace, then looked between my cutlass and his improvised weapon. Not much of a match. The black iron rod clanged as he let it drop.

  Lindrick was struggling to get a breath. I hauled him up and threw him into a chair. He was fat but short, something like the shape of an apple. I had a general disdain for those that squandered the bodies they’d been given on gluttony. That was going to make this easier.

  ‘Kid, sit down,’ I said, then when he didn’t move, ‘sit down or I’ll fucking make you.’ He sat.

  Lindrick managed to drag in a breath as I removed my gloves. Standard issue combat gloves, the bands of iron over the knuckles might do more damage than I wanted just yet.

  ‘Feeling guilty?’ I asked. Otto looked mortally afraid. I suppose that was fair. I pushed his face back, took a look at him. Spectacles, clean-shaven, remnants of pale brown hair sporadically decorating his scalp. I shook my head. ‘Let’s start with the basics,’ I said. ‘I’m Blackwing Captain Ryhalt Galharrow. I’m here to beat the living shit out of you until you tell me what I need to know. Let’s start with the big question. Where is Ezabeth Tanza?’

  ‘I don’t know who that is,’ Lindrick said.

  I struck backhanded with the ball of my fist. I’d broken knuckles in fist fights before, and wasn’t going to risk cracking one against Lindrick’s thick skull. The force of the blow was almost enough to knock him from the chair, weak as he was.

  ‘Leave him alone!’ the kid shouted. ‘I’ll get the alderman!’

  ‘Go ahead. I’m here on a prince’s authority so go and get all the fucking aldermen you want. Maybe we can all go and see Pieter Dytwin at his printing press.’

  The kid shut up.

  I asked questions, and Lindrick lied to me. Claimed he didn’t know Ezabeth, claimed he didn’t know anything about Pieter Dytwin and his printing press. Claimed he was innocent. His face was bleeding from cuts above and below the eyes, and one of them began to swell over. I’d cracked his teeth and bloodied his ear. Part of me, a weak part, began to wonder if I’d got it wrong. Could he have been telling the truth? I steeled myself against doubt. In a torturer’s mind there can be no room for confusion. Trust that the information is there.

  I grabbed Otto by the throat. His eyes bulged fearfully as I lifted him, blubber, bloodied clothes and all, from his chair.

  ‘Running out of time, Otto,’ I growled. Squeezed. ‘If you won’t tell me what you’ve done to her then there are men in Prince Herono’s employ who’ll make this look like a whore’s massage.’ I tightened my grip. ‘Hot irons. The rack. Knives. Go easy on yourself and tell me what I want to know.’

  ‘He’ll tell you!’ the boy suddenly blurted. ‘Stop hurting him!’

  I dumped Otto back into the chair.

  ‘You want to tell me, kid?’ I asked.

  Lindrick shook his head, but the kid was ready to spill. He would have, had the front door not opened as Ezabeth Tanza let herself in.

  I was, admittedly, taken aback.

  ‘Captain Galharrow?’ she said questioningly, and then, seeing Lindrick, she let out a little cry and rushed over to him. ‘What happened? Who did this to you?’

  Things got pretty awkward after that. The kid, whose name turned out to be Destran, spilled the story straight away, and Ezabeth wasn’t pleased. She threw furious looks at me as she tended Lindrick’s purpling face.

  ‘I’d started to think your reputation as a cut-throat was misplaced but I see my optimism was misplaced. You’ve fallen far from what you once promised to be, captain.’

  I scowled right back. It was a low blow. Probably didn’t hurt as much as Otto’s face did, though.

  ‘Few of us live up to the promise of our youth,’ I said. I suggested we talk in private but Ezabeth wouldn’t leave Lindrick and insisted on mopping at his face with a wet cloth. I ignored her attempts to send me away. ‘Let me lay this out straight for you,’ I said. ‘Come and see Prince Herono right now. She’s not happy that her kinswoman has vanished.’

  ‘Tell her I’m fine. I have too much work to do.’

  ‘Like spreading sedition and treachery?’

  Ezabeth’s chin jutted proudly through her veil.

  ‘Spreading the truth.’

  ‘You don’t have proof,’ I said. ‘You have theories. That’s all. You have ideas and lines on paper. Neither will keep you from the scaffold. I indulged you at Maldon’s place, but this has to end. You’re going to get yourself locked up, at best. But probably just dead.’

  Ezabeth and Otto shared a knowing look.

  ‘At this point, that may not matter a great deal.’

  ‘What do you know about the Engine, captain?’

  We were in the cool of Otto’s parlour. The boy had brought coffee. I hadn’t touched it. I didn’t sit.

  ‘I know what everyone knows. It’s a weapon. If the drudge come into its range, a lever gets thrown. The projectors spin. The drudge burn. We cheer.’

  ‘Do you know anything of the way in which it operates?’

  ‘It runs on phos. That’s all anyone knows. The Engine is vast, and the Order of Aetherial Engineers care for those parts that lie above ground. The projectors, the power conduits, the miles of cabling between the Range stations. But the heart of the Engine is beneath the citadel and nobody has been in there since Nall sealed it. The Order maintains a permanent guard unit, but they’re largely ceremonial. Nall protected the heart with his own wards, impenetrable to the likes of us.’

  ‘Not even the Order knows how the heart operates,’ Ezabeth said. ‘At least, nobody did. Not until Gleck Maldon found this.’ She produced a broad sheet of crumpled, yellow paper and rolled it out onto a table. It was covered with thousands of thin, connected blue lines with numbers and calculations written tight within the intersections. The whole reminded me of a thousand-faceted jewel. Tidy lines of minute script ran around the edges, but the language didn’t use any letters that I knew. One corner of the diagram had been circled in red ink, dark and new, stark against the faded lines and yellowed paper. The edges were singed: I’d swiped it from Maldon’s desk as we fled the burning library.

  ‘This is supposed to mean something to me?’

&n
bsp; ‘This is Nall’s original schematic for the heart of the Engine.’

  A bold claim. It certainly looked old enough, and some of the Nameless had written things down. The Lady of Waves had published a mountain of self-praising sonnets and verses in her own honour and I’d read a military treatise by Cold, but he’d managed to get himself surrounded and destroyed in battle and he’d been wrong about most things. He just didn’t understand people enough to grasp strategy. If Ezabeth was right, the schematic for the Engine would have value beyond price. Princes would have knifed their grandmothers for it – or for a great deal less.

  ‘How in the hells would he have got his hands on that?’

  ‘That’s one of the things I want to ask him. But this language?’ She indicated the unreadable characters around the edges of the page. ‘It’s Tet. Nobody has spoken it for a thousand years. It only exists on old statues in the northern mountains, on artefacts in museums. I can’t read it, but the numbers – the schematic, those I do understand. This is Songlope’s Matrix. These intersections represent mirrors and prisms. Refractors. These lines? They’re the focused and refocused phos as it travels. As the power meets itself, it magnifies and intensifies. It turns one hundred batteries’ power into a thousand.’

  ‘I may not be the most educated man in the room,’ I said, ‘but I did study at university. Isn’t there a law that says that can’t happen?’

  ‘There is, and it’s true for most matrices of this type. But this isn’t an ordinary light matrix. Do you know who Songlope was?’

  I was reaching back into my history lessons now. Lady Tanza was giving my brain the kind of workout it hadn’t suffered in years.

  ‘He was Nameless. The Deep Kings took him down just before Nall used the Engine against them. Destroying Songlope was the victory that allowed them to assault the Range.’

  I took a small and unjust amount of pleasure from answering her questions.

  ‘Quite. Songlope was also the father of all of our understanding of phos technology. Most of modern mathematics and science as well. Being hundreds of years old allows a lot of time for study. Songlope left behind a paradox that has never been solved. When phos is discharged, there is a backlash of power. You will recall the fate of the unfortunate Commander Jerrick at Station Twelve? I had to focus the backlash of the light discharge into something and he was the nearest and most stable expendable thing I could find. Similarly, the light canisters carried by Spinners detonate outwards as a result of a high expenditure of light. The phos-light network vents its discharge as heat, into the communal ovens and so on.’