Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  Tnota blundered his second move but righted it on the fourth and then he was collecting in the kitty. The soldiers did not look pleased.

  Dantry had been idling at the edge of the game. The woman looked up and seemed to notice him for the first time. There’s a change comes over a woman when she sees something she likes, seen it faked a hundred hundred times by street walkers and tavern girls. Like a little jet of water goes up their arse, straightens them out, makes them all bright and keen. She smiled up at the noble boy. Maybe it was the stupid waves of his yellow hair or maybe she just liked his cheekbones. I could appreciate he was handsome enough to draw a lady’s eye.

  ‘Come join us. Play a game,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t know the rules,’ Dantry admitted. Hardly surprising. Tiles isn’t exactly a nobleman’s pastime.

  ‘I’ll show you,’ she said, then brazenly patted the ground beside her. Dantry seemed to struggle with the concept of sitting on the dirt, but she was young and pretty, and he was a young man, and young and pretty wins that battle near every time.

  ‘You want in, captain?’ Nenn asked. She patted the ground beside her in the same way. I declined her offer.

  ‘You want me to get that stuff stowed away?’ I asked Dantry, nodding to the gear we’d loaded up on a horse. He thanked me and I found my way to Dantry’s quarters. There wasn’t much to them. He’d been lodged in what was probably one of the better rooms in the fort, but it was just four solid walls with a door and a canvas roof. I walked the horse right up to the door and opened it to find Dantry’s serving man, Glost, preparing his master’s travelling garb for the morning. He helped me unload the five brass tripods from the horse and stow the ledgers safely. Poor old Glost clicked and creaked as he laboured.

  ‘You ever think you might want to retire?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m afraid I was a debtor, sir,’ the old boy told me. ‘The old Count Tanza, Dantry’s father, he bought me out of my debts, which were very great. I’ll never earn enough to pay them off completely, but I don’t begrudge him. Got me out of the debtor’s gaol. I’d have died in that place if not for the count.’

  ‘How long have you been with the family?’

  ‘Oh, a good thirty years, sir. My best years, I should say. I know I might look old, sir, but it’s a good life serving the boy. Although these past weeks have been most trying.’ He gave me a cautious glance, was about to speak but then changed his mind. Looked away.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘We’ve met before, sir, though it was a long time ago.’

  ‘We have?’

  ‘Yes, sir. At your parents’ estate. You had a different name then, of course, but I wouldn’t forget you. You were a pleasant boy, we all had great hopes for you and the young mistress.’

  I stiffened. There are things that should be left dead and buried in the past. Marshal Venzer and Prince Herono knew who I had been, but precious few others would recognise that long-ago boy in what I was now. It didn’t matter that Glost remembered me as a kid, but if he knew who I’d been then he probably knew what I’d done, too.

  ‘You tell Dantry?’

  ‘No, sir. I understand sir, that after the affair with Torolo Mancono you have a desire for privacy.’

  ‘Good. Don’t tell him.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  Nenn and Tnota knew that I’d been something else before I was their captain, but we never spoke about the details. They’d both joined up with me after I quit the state army. After the disaster at Adrogorsk I’d promised myself I’d never be beholden to a commander again. They paid for your blood and tears with nothing but more of the same. Not a good trade. It occurred to me that Glost must know why my match with Ezabeth had been called off, that I could finally ask and learn what it was that I’d done wrong. Always told myself it hadn’t been my fault, that she’d liked me well enough. Probably some family political issue, maybe a marriage order had come from a prince. He’d know if Ezabeth had been married. I’d done my best to not find out. She’d never be my wife, but if she’d been anyone else’s I preferred not to know.

  I tried to ask, but couldn’t force the words.

  The small room had a bed, put together out of old cut stone with a couple of blankets on top. Glost began preparing a bedroll for himself on the floor.

  ‘Take the bed,’ I said as I put away the last of Dantry’s equipment. ‘I got a feeling your master isn’t bunking in here tonight.’ Glost gave me a shy smile as he lumped his bedroll on top of Dantry’s blankets.

  ‘Nice to be young, eh?’ he said. Couldn’t disagree there.

  I left him to the meagre comforts of a stone bed and went to take a leak. As I exited the latrine, I caught sight of a familiar face amongst a gang of blue uniforms helping to unload a string of pack mules, freshly arrived. Older men, hard-looking veterans with scars. None of our glory days last for ever, but I guess the Blue Brigrade had wanted more out of their retirement than this. A couple didn’t look to have fared too well on their journey across the Misery, the shakes deep in their hands.

  Stannard was black and azure in half-plate and gun oil. He saw me, narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here, old boy,’ he said. ‘This is a surprise.’

  ‘Didn’t expect to see you out here either,’ I said. ‘Thought you Blue Brigade boys were done with this kind of muck.’

  ‘So did I,’ Stannard said with a grimace. ‘Never wanted to be back out in this shit again. But the strength of Valengrad is up north at Three-Six and the state troops they left behind are too green to trek this deep. You know what we’re delivering?’ He gestured back towards the wagons. ‘Fucking beans. Risking all the shit and poison out here to deliver fucking beans. Seems hard to believe.’

  ‘Seems hard,’ I agreed. Really hard. An awfully big coincidence.

  ‘I suppose they enlisted all the free companies to do the same?’ Stannard asked.

  ‘Guess so,’ I said. Left that vague. This wasn’t good news. I didn’t want it getting back to Herono that I’d headed out here to find Dantry Tanza, but since Stannard and a dozen of Herono’s boys were suddenly on bean delivery duty, I had to wonder whether she already did.

  ‘I heard your girlfriend got sent to the Maud.’

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. Felt a twitch in my finger that said I should let a fist fly. Restrained it. One of the Blue Brigade called over to come back and bloody well help with the beans.

  ‘We’re heading back to Valengrad tomorrow. You should join us. It’s not that I particulary like you, captain, but numbers never hurt in the Misery.’

  ‘I’ll think on it.’ I wouldn’t.

  I felt Stannard watching me as I walked away. Anxiety maggots began squirming through my gut. Too much fucking coincidence for Herono’s boys to be out here, days into the Misery. Nenn read my expression.

  ‘Trouble?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I filled them in.

  ‘You think he could be telling the truth? Just got sent here delivering beans?’

  ‘Seems like a mighty fucking coincidence. Gives my arse the itch. Where’s our count got to?’

  ‘Went off with that woman.’ Nenn yawned.

  ‘You know where?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to leave. Tonight.’

  Tnota shook his head.

  ‘You know I can’t get a nav until sunrise,’ he said. ‘Could end up wandering into the grass, or worse, east. Can’t do it, captain.’

  ‘You think we should sit it out tonight?’

  ‘I’m not even sure there’s a danger,’ he said.

  A good rule of thumb for survival is that if you have to face the fires of hell or running blind in the Misery, you pick the hells. At least that way you know where you are. We’d come in from the west, but that didn’t mean it still was. No matter that I was afraid we were all the way to the
eyeballs in the shit, when your navigator talks you listen. I agreed we’d leave at dawn.

  I slept in the cramped room we’d been allocated, but not easily. When I woke I could see the light from a great bronze crack through the canvas ceiling, right over us like some kind of judgement. The sky was bleeding out long, discordant notes, the Misery’s wake-up call. Nenn passed me a cup of water. It had the dead iron taste of the moisture extractors, like a joke that falls flat, and it suited my mood. I got up, put my armour on. Wasn’t in the mood to fuck around. The sun was just cresting what may or may not have been the east when I went to find Dantry. Didn’t know where he’d spent the night so I went to his room. Knocked on the flimsy door, but there was no response.

  ‘Hey, Glost,’ I said. ‘Wake up. We have to get moving.’

  For a few moments, nothing. Then a squeaky, high-pitched voice.

  ‘Evening, master, care for a good time?’

  I smashed the door to kindling as I charged against it, then staggered to a stop, my mouth agape and the horror a match for anything I’d seen before. Red. Red, everywhere the red. Glost lay where he’d died, mostly just bones now. Two gillings, their bellies hugely distended, sat childlike amidst the carnage, glistening and sticky. The same colour as the blood they’d splashed about the place as they bit, ate, devoured. Glost must have been sleeping. He’d never have known what was happening to him. Both of the gillings looked up at me, one of them chewing a mouthful of shoulder.

  ‘Seventy-three, seventy-two,’ one of them offered.

  ‘Evening, master, care for a good time?’

  I drew my sword. The gillings squealed and tried to scamper to the back of the room but their guts were so over-filled with the old servant’s meat that they could hardly move. I vented my fury, my horror, on them. Glost’s face and head had largely been left alone. He looked peaceful. The anaesthetic in their saliva meant he wouldn’t even have known he was being eaten alive. It was still a fucking terrible way to die.

  I squeezed my eyes very tight, clenched my fists. I wanted to scream, to hurl my anger towards the sky. I fought that urge to stillness, tried to keep everything steady. Stay bright, I told myself. I barely knew the man. Didn’t know shit about him. But he’d known my name, and he’d not deserved to be torn apart like this by little fucking bastard monsters. When I opened my eyes, my breathing was normal again. And I was looking up at a hole that had been carefully cut in the canvas roof.

  No doubt about it. Someone had cut a triangular flap open in the canvas and dropped the gillings through it. No other way they could have got inside. They don’t climb walls and they don’t carry knives to cut heavy fabric. The little bastards had been used as a living weapon against Dantry. Glost had just been caught in the crossfire.

  I ran, but when I found Nenn and Tnota they’d managed to locate Dantry and he was fine, if a little tired. I didn’t fancy explaining to him that a man he’d known all his life had just been eaten to death. Didn’t exactly have any choice. He took it better than I’d expected. Turned white as milk, threw up, didn’t pass out. Cried. We gave him some space, got the gear together quick and quiet, didn’t tell anybody anything, and as soon as Tnota took a navigable reading we rode out the gates.

  I looked back as we rode away, and saw Stannard watching our departure, arms crossed over a broad chest. Framed against the blood red of the dawn sky, I realised I’d seen that stocky figure framed in flame before. He’d been hooded, the library had been clogged with smoke and darkness but a lifetime of sizing up men I wanted to kill had given me an eye for physique. It wasn’t the first time I’d wanted to kill him, but we don’t always get what we want.

  20

  They didn’t follow us and the Misery seemed to respect Dantry’s pain and left us alone. A few uneventful days and we were back in sight of Valengrad’s vast stone walls. The vivid blood-neon letters on the face of the citadel read COURAGE, and we rode towards them in weary silence. For once Dantry had stopped snivelling. The death of his servant had struck him deeper than I’d thought it would. Maybe behind all that nobility and cream he was human after all.

  ‘We must go straight to my sister,’ Dantry said. He tried to sit tall in the saddle, but even that was too much for him.

  ‘Not straight off. Barber, bath, tailor. If we’re going in with the authority of a count, you need to look like a count.’

  Dantry considered my advice, running a hand through the light growth of fuzz on his cheeks.

  ‘You look like shit,’ Nenn put in helpfully. Dantry toyed with the dirt-stained cuff of his shirt and, finally, agreed.

  ‘The bank first, then the bath house,’ he said. ‘I’ll need to access some money, but the banks will allow credit against my holdings, I’m sure. I hate to think of Beth stuck in that place.’

  As we rode in through Valengrad’s single east-facing tunnel, I felt a twinge in my chest, silver and serpentlike as the dragon flexed.

  Welcome home, a leathery voice mouthed into my mind. I felt my attention dragged to one of Saravor’s little grey children, watching from an alleyway. It noted my return before sliding away into the shadows.

  ‘Any sign of drudge activity?’ the lieutenant at the gate asked.

  ‘Didn’t see anything. Any news from the north?’

  ‘Nothing good. Drudge are shuffling closer. The Iron Goat sent half our ordinance to Three-Six yesterday.’

  I thanked him and rode on. The city was a muted place with half its population gone.

  We dropped Dantry’s brass apparatus off at my apartment. I’d already killed off the suggestion that we ride out to Willows and alert Herono to our presence. She’d abandoned the Tanzas’ cause in order to protect her position, and following the events in the Misery I was conflicted. Herono was a hero, short of Venzer there was nobody on the Range with a more distinguished career, but someone had sent Stannard to commit murder, and his was one loyalty I didn’t doubt.

  I’d wrangled it every way that I could in my mind, but it just didn’t make any fucking sense.

  At my apartment I ditched my armour and grabbed a bag of liquorice root. It was hard and dry but I could already feel the Misery shakes coming on. My skin had turned clammy and there was an ache in the roof of my mouth. We sucked the roots, stopped off at a tavern and took a long drink of beer and a hot meal. Summer vegetables in a dull gravy with a hunk of soft bread. It was simple, but after a week of eating dried meat and beans I was famished enough to rip through it in minutes. The beer helped settle us all down. Nothing like a beer to take the edge off.

  I sent Nenn and Tnota off, but accompanied Dantry to the bank. I offered him a clean shirt, but mine were all hopelessly large for his slim frame. I spruced myself up as best I could, but there’s something that the Misery does to you that won’t be covered by a fresh waistcoat and breeches. We’d all be looking like the hells for a week at least. I wore a sword but my nerves were up so I went as far as to sling a buckler on my belt. When I’d taken Ezabeth’s money I’d made her battle my own, and her enemies would find me ready to fight it. With that thought in my mind I loaded a pair of flintlock pistols and secreted them beneath my coat.

  The bank security let us in when Dantry presented his ring, but the credit manager looked distinctly less enthusiastic. I was trying to look the part of servant, since no count would choose to appear without at least one man to hand. The credit manager remembered him but looked entirely too nervous. I have that affect on people sometimes, but I didn’t figure it was me in this case.

  ‘What do you mean, exhausted?’ Dantry said. ‘I have considerable estates around Heirengrad. You can’t possibly decline my credit.’

  ‘I’m most sorry, Count Tanza,’ the man said. ‘I have it here, in writing, from the central office.’ He showed Dantry a piece of paper. I peered over his shoulder to read it. It did indeed state that the Tanza family was to be offered no further credit until a number of u
ndisclosed matters had been resolved. Dantry argued indignantly. The manager could only spread his hands helplessly. ‘I’m sorry, my lord,’ he protested, ‘I can but write to the central office asking whether they have made a mistake, but as you can see here, it is not within my power to extend you credit.’

  ‘Your bank has lost my family’s custom,’ Dantry said fiercely. ‘Fifty years we’ve done business, and now here I am, treated like some common guttersnipe. You should not expect to see any of our coin pass your doors, not in this lifetime. Good day!’

  We stormed out with a suitably aristocratic flounce, walked across the street and tried the next banking house. After two more displayed similar letters, we didn’t try a fourth.

  ‘I cannot understand it. Can things have gone so poorly back at the estate in just a week? It’s not possible.’

  ‘It isn’t possible,’ I said. ‘I borrowed money from your account before I left. Someone has shut you down.’

  ‘But who?’

  ‘There are only three people in Valengrad with the power to exert that much control over the banks. The marshal, Prince Herono and Prince Adenauer. The Order of Aetherial Engineers might also have enough clout. This was a backup plan in case they didn’t get to you in the Misery. But what in the hells do they have to gain? We’re all on the same spirits-damned side and if they want your sister silenced then they could have just had her hanged. They’ve shown they’re willing to kill. It just doesn’t make any sense.’ I considered trying to use Herono’s letter of authority to force money from the bank but there was little chance they’d release money for anything short of an official seal. Unfortunately my own black-iron seal had long ago exhausted any lines of credit with the banking houses.