by Ed McDonald
Young Destran appeared at the door, glancing out nervously, his face an eruption of angry pimples. Being young is hard. Our bodies seem to reject us even as they mould us into what we will one day become. He looked over the odd assortment of scarred, masked, bloody people on the doorstep and nervously beckoned us inside.
‘Dear lady!’ Lindrick said, appearing in a flurry of chubby fingers. ‘When I heard the news I feared the worst! Oh, dear spirits above, thanks be, thanks be!’ He seized her in an embrace and wet her shoulder with fat little tears. Otto was wearing courtly finery, a heavily embroidered, over-frilled shirt that would have been in fashion fifty years ago, his balding crown hidden beneath a maroon cap. He didn’t give Nenn or me much of a glance.
‘I need paper,’ Ezabeth said, cutting aside pleasantries. ‘Ink. Compasses, a rule, lunar cycling charts. He left it all written there for me, but I need to write it down before it leaves my mind.’
‘Of course,’ Otto said, ushering us inside, though he couldn’t have known what she was referring to. ‘But first you must tell me what happened at the Maud. The city is in chaos. A crier ran by shouting that there was some sort of battle there.’
‘They will fill you in,’ Ezabeth said. She dismissed the most troubling invasion of Valengrad in a century as though it were idle gossip. Nothing mattered to her more than her calculations. ‘Ink and paper. Now.’
Otto took us into his office, the same one in which I’d put the marks on his face. I actually felt bad about it. Couldn’t be easy for the engineer to have me back in his house. Dantry awaited us there, his face full of concern, but Ezabeth barely acknowledged him with a nod and a joyless smile as she swept about gathering what she needed before sitting down to work at the desk. Dantry looked hurt, but unsurprised. He watched her scribbling with weary, pained resignation.
‘How was Tnota when you left him?’ I asked. Steeled myself.
‘Alive. Not in a good way,’ Dantry said. ‘I found a surgeon willing to take him against my word for future payment.’
I nodded. Didn’t have the words to express how I felt. If there was one thing Valengrad’s surgeons knew well, it was amputation. Tnota was in good hands. He’d live, or he’d die. I felt him as a hanging weight suspended in my chest. Not Tnota, spirits of mercy. Please.
Dantry looked shaken as his sister silenced him and sent us to another room. The apprentice led us to a reception room with fancy padded chairs and too many cushions. Decadence and wealth, quite contrary to the shabby exterior. Everything inside Otto’s house seemed new, like it was seldom used, just on show for guests. The decanters on the drinks trolley were all full, the glasses in ordered rows.
‘We can speak plain? Any household staff around?’ I asked.
‘It’s just myself and Destran here,’ Otto said. ‘Tea? Coffee?’ He was perfectly civil. The engineer tried to smile, but winced as his facial muscles met with the swelling my fists had dealt him. He settled for a look of smug superiority. It’s not a lot of men of his height who can give a man of my height that kind of look. Maybe he figured he was acting the bigger man.
‘Got anything stronger?’ I asked.
‘You smell like you’ve taken enough liquor today already,’ he chastised. ‘There’s work to be done.’
‘Seems a pissy kind of revenge to deny a man a drink.’ I could see the brandy in the decanters, waiting for me to taste it. A mellow golden glow danced on the table as sunlight filtered through the bottles. Otto gave me a pitying look.
‘I bear you no ill will, Captain Galharrow. The truth is, I don’t blame you for this.’ He indicated the mess I’d made of his face, blackberry bruising and split skin that hadn’t yet healed. I avoided meeting the open-mouthed stare Dantry was giving me. ‘You were following your orders, like a good soldier. Like an obedient hound.’
‘Yeah. I don’t like you much either.’
We all sat down and Destran brought coffee. According to Dantry it was an excellent, smooth blend, but to me all coffee tastes the same. It tastes like not-booze, which means it might as well be mud from a ditch. I told the story of our escape from the Maud, and it tasted worse than the coffee.
‘A Darling in Valengrad. I never thought to hear such a thing,’ Otto moaned.
‘Well, you heard it now.’ I ran a hand over my eyes. ‘Lot of people died today. Lot of wives will be weeping before nightfall. Maybe some more kids end up in the orphanage.’
‘A regrettable price, paid so that truth may find the light,’ Otto said. Not a trace of emotion, like he was tallying his accounts, ticking off the profits and losses.
I looked them over, this odd pairing. Otto short, fat, as unreadable as he seemed changeable, his apprentice a gangly youth all limbs and bad skin. Destran withered uncomfortably beneath my gaze, gave that shrug that only teenagers can give, uncomfortable in his own skin. Life’s no easier for the young than it is for old men like me. Destran couldn’t be older than fourteen but Otto’s age was harder to judge. His eyes didn’t seem right to me, too bright, too young, too knowing, too old. Takes a strange man to sit sipping coffee with a cut-throat who once beat him senseless without the hate clouding his face. Never met a man could drop a grudge that easily, could weigh the lead and find the insult lighter than the benefits. I didn’t sense any lust for revenge in Otto, like he was blank to it. It was like he didn’t give two shits for what I’d done to him.
‘You’re taking one hell of a risk letting us in,’ I said. I wanted to get a rise out of him, any display of emotion that wasn’t that calm smugness. I didn’t get it.
‘I may not look like much of a hero to you, but Ezabeth needs her answers. We all need her answers. I put her in contact with Gleck Maldon knowing nothing of her, save for the papers she had published regarding the optimisation of phos technology.’ He sighed. ‘If not for me, none of you would be mixed up in any of this.’
I looked down at Crowfoot’s ink on my arm. Wherever that Nameless bastard was, off running around in foreign lands when he should have been here, helping us, he seemed to think Ezabeth valuable. Invaluable. I still couldn’t see it. There were a hundred thousand drudge warriors crossing the Misery, fortifying, building as they went. The Deep Kings were coming like they’d lost their fear of our weapons and Crowfoot had put all his stock in one veiled girl.
‘Herono is family,’ Dantry muttered. ‘I just can’t believe that she’d do anything to harm us. She hired Captain Galharrow to help my sister. To help us. We need to go to her.’
It was the sad, world-weary look that Otto directed towards Dantry that made me certain he wasn’t just some rural accountant, out of his depth in a world of princes and knives. He was tough as year-old jerky. Range tough. A man who could take a beating and not hold a grudge because it didn’t help his agenda. The kind of man it’s usually best to grack first and wonder about later.
‘Count Tanza. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, although I am sorry that we have not met under better circumstances than these. I have heard great things of your mathematical talents.’
‘I have heard good things about you also, Master Engineer,’ Dantry said. Otto’s well-mannered calmness was catching. The engineer had judged how best to handle the proud young count. Smart fucking man. Too fucking smart.
‘Your great aunt may be family, but ask yourself why your kinswoman did not use her influence to free your sister,’ Otto said.
‘What could she possibly have against my sister?’ Dantry asked.
‘You ask the wrong questions, my dear count.’
‘Main question is, what do they want?’ I said. ‘What do you want?’
‘What do any of us want? Safety for the city states. Safety for my wife, my children back in the west. I want the Range to stand for another thousand years, or at least until the Deep Kings turn upon one another and destroy themselves. What else?’
‘Ezabeth thinks she has somethin
g new to work with. But she still needs to access the heart,’ I said.
‘Nobody can enter the Engine’s heart,’ Otto said. ‘Nall ensured as much. There’s a mechanism that not even the Order can open, a series of panels that must be pressed in some unknown order. Those that tried and failed are buried out beyond the walls. What was left of them, at least. He made well sure no tampering enemy could meddle with the Engine’s heart. Whatever he worked in there is not for mortal eyes.’
‘But Nall is gone,’ I said. Otto nodded.
‘And since Nall departed – or died, or whatever became of him – men like Gleck Maldon have begun to ask questions, to dig up the old equations. While Nall held the secrets none questioned them, but with him gone, curiosity grew. Maldon wanted Nall’s knowledge. And nothing is more dangerous than knowledge, isn’t that so, Destran?’
‘Yes, master. Knowledge is power,’ the apprentice said.
‘They silenced Gleck Maldon. Now they want to do the same to Ezabeth.’
I needed a drink. There was a clammy sweat on my skin, the kind that comes out when I’ve not opened the bottle in a while. I crossed to Otto’s supply and poured myself a glass. It was piss poor stuff. It should have been beneath a man like him to drink that swill. Good enough for me, though.
‘If they only wanted Ezabeth silenced, it could have been done easier,’ I said. ‘They could have put her on trial for sedition and treason using Pieter Dytwin’s testimony. She was vulnerable in the Maud, easy to get to. They tried to kill Dantry, twice. But they were keeping her alive. Why?’
‘An individual can be slain. An idea is less easy to put down,’ Otto said. ‘By declaring Ezabeth mad, they not only stopped her wagging tongue, they invalidated her findings. They did the same to poor Gleck, though I rather suspect he had actually started to lose control of his faculties by the time they committed him.’
‘But if she dies, her blasphemy dies with her,’ I said.
Lindrick shook his head.
‘Ideas do not succumb to the knife so easily. Imagine that Ezabeth dies in mysterious circumstances. Imagine the scandal, the attention that it would draw to her work. Dantry would have to be summoned back from the Misery, would have orchestrated an inquest. Maybe he finds enough evidence for a trial. He might have had every one of the Maud’s staff racked to get to the truth.’
‘I wouldn’t,’ Dantry said, and I believed him. Soft.
‘But they couldn’t know that,’ Lindrick said, patting the count sympathetically on the shoulder like he was a sad dog denied a bone. ‘All that attention, when attention was the last thing they want. While Ezabeth lives as a mad woman, she is a lunatic pursuing horse feathers on the wind. If she were to perish, her research passes to the next Spinner smart enough to look into it.’
‘So it had to be quiet,’ I said.
‘It had to be legal,’ Otto corrected me. ‘Which seemed to be working well for them until they realised that the matter hadn’t gone to rest in the Maud. You had the right of it, the law backed Dantry’s request to take care of Ezabeth. And so they tried to kill Dantry, first in the Misery, then by goading him into a duel with Heinrich Adenauer – who for all his foppish appearance is a devil with a rapier. And finally when their plans had failed them, they tried to shoot him in a squalid tavern.’
‘The Bell’s not that squalid,’ Nenn snapped.
‘It’s not just Prince Herono trying to keep Ezabeth silent,’ I said heavily. ‘It’s not just Marshal Venzer. It’s Prince Herono, it’s Marshal Venzer and it’s Prince Adenauer together. It’s the spirits damned Order. It’s probably every high-ranking fucker in Valengrad.’
I sagged back into the depth of the armchair, pressing my fingers up against my eyes. Politics. I hated this shit. I’d hated it back when I had a fancy name, back when I first met Ezabeth and we’d run through the meadows together. I’d hated it when I took my first commission and the other officers sneered at one another as they sought to befriend me or mock me, and I’d hated it when my wife wrote to me with snippets of gossip she thought would be to my advantage. I’d hated it when I was a general, I hated it when Torolo Mancono had died for it, and even though I’d lost my name, my command, my wife, here I was, swirling around in the shit pot with everyone else. Politicians – only the Nameless can fuck things up worse.
I needed to speak to Crowfoot. I hated what he was, and I hated what he did to me, but I needed him. It had been a long time since I’d actually wanted to speak to that feathered bastard.
Lindrick was looking at me.
‘Tell me, captain. If it were down to you, would you let her continue? When the drudge come, and they are coming, would you attempt to activate Nall’s Engine even if it meant the wheels fly off the cart? Would you risk the destruction of Dortmark? Maybe the destruction of the entire world?’
It was best that I didn’t answer that.
‘The Deep Kings already suspect,’ I said. ‘And they’re coming. Right now. They’re bringing their legions and they’re going to roll over us in a wave of blades and fire. So Ezabeth better have some theory to try, because we don’t have time.’
24
Nothing to do. Ezabeth worked away, scribbling down whatever hidden wisdom she’d gleaned from Maldon’s shitty smearings. Nenn moved between the windows, peeking out between the shutters as if expecting a troop of soldiers to march down and arrest us. The road remained quiet, peaceful. I took a bath, washed the sweat and blood away. The house had water heaters driven by phos, Otto’s own design. I wondered how Tnota was faring, whether he was still even alive. If it was bad news then I didn’t want to know the answer, not yet.
As the evening drew on Destran served up vegetable soup and bread. Seated around a table like the strangest of families, at first there was an attempt at light conversation, and then it all got quiet as each retreated into their own thoughts. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t my responsibility, wasn’t under my control. I’d done what was right, and I’d kept Ezabeth alive and free. That had to be something. That had to be enough.
There would be a price on my head by now. Everything was changed.
Night drew in and Lindrick needed to go to the mill. He would be missed if he didn’t show up. I promised that I’d keep Ezabeth safe, and he headed off to work. He might have given us the hospitality of his home, but there was something about him that I didn’t like. Maybe just that the marks on his face left me feeling guilty. It didn’t matter what he’d told us, I still didn’t trust him. Trusting clever people is always inadvisable. There were only four people in all the world that I could trust, three of them were in the house with me and the other was either flirting with the surgeon or riding with his Big Dog in the sky. It was a coin flip which.
I stood on the landing beside a second-storey window, looking out across Gathers. A city district flush with new money, quiet in the late hours. Smoke from a hundred hundred fires rose over the tall roofs, carrying the prayers of the city’s hungry with it. For every stately mansion the likes of Lindrick enjoyed, a thousand suffering souls would go to bed hungry tonight. Valengrad wasn’t a good place. Wasn’t even worth saving. I didn’t have to save it. Didn’t have any way to save it even if I wanted to. Nobody did.
‘What are you thinking?’ Nenn asked as she came to stand beside me. For all that she didn’t like Ezabeth, she spoke soft enough not to wake her in the next room. I doubt a fifty-gun salute could have roused her anyway. Dantry had brought her tea and found her snoring on the desk, ink blackening her fingers.
‘I’m thinking we’re in well over our heads and we need the Nameless to sort this out for us,’ I said. ‘If there’s a Darling roaming Valengrad then things are worse than we’d feared. That it braved the Range the first time was bad enough. Twice, though?’ I shook my head.
‘But if it knows that Nall’s Engine is fucked, then what does it want with your short-arse bit of cream?’ Nenn said. I
don’t know why the quickness of Nenn’s mind could still surprise me, but it always did.
‘That’s a fair question.’
‘You really think Venzer is part of this?’
‘I’m not sure. That’s the next move. Got to find out whether the Iron Goat’s involved or whether he’s been as used as the rest of us. We’re puppets, Nenn. All of us. Someone’s pulling everybody’s strings, and it doesn’t matter if it’s wizards or princes doing it, sooner or later they get tired and cut us loose.’
‘You got that voice again, captain.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘Like you think you should be in charge of the whole world, and you’re pissed that you aren’t.’
She grinned at me. I let the bleakness slip away for long enough to return it. Nenn had a packet of thin cigars and we smoked them one by one as we watched the shadows lengthen and the sky begin to shed its brightness. We were facing west, the cracked blood-and-bruises sky hidden from sight. That was good. Sometimes you just want to see something natural, something true.
‘We need another Heart of the Void,’ I said. ‘Nall’s Engine was never the answer. Just a bandage on a wound that won’t close. Now the blood’s starting to run again and if Crowfoot doesn’t have an answer then we’re all gracked and gone.’
‘We can get out, captain,’ Nenn said. ‘We aren’t tied here. Could go west. Find a ship at Ostermark, see what’s over the sea. Maybe we settle down, get us a farm. Or maybe just go kill people some other place, where they don’t have Deep Kings and Darlings and Brides. You think they got Kings and Nameless over the sea?’
‘I expect they got their own problems,’ I said. ‘If it comes to making a stand, you’ll go?’
‘You won’t?’
I didn’t know the answer to that. The full strength of our little Range was less than forty thousand men. The Dhoja could field many times that, but the numbers wouldn’t matter if the Deep Kings came at us in person. The kid stamping on ants doesn’t count how many there are in the nest before he goes to work with his boot.
