by Ed McDonald
‘I’ve met you, Ryhalt. How can you ever imagine that I wouldn’t understand?’
15
‘I don’t want things to end this way,’ Tnota said. He packed the last of the things he’d brought from Fortunetown into a satchel and put it neatly on the table. It wasn’t even full. We imagine that in our old age there’ll be a big house stuffed with the sentimental litter of our lives, the relics of a well-lived life, but even those don’t have so much value, and even when your body is old you don’t feel any different than you did when you were young. Wiser, maybe. More cautious, perhaps. But no different where it counts.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘But it’s right.’
‘Do you remember what I said to you, the day we met?’ he asked.
‘You said, “Oi, you, heavy fucker, that’s my beer.”’
‘I did,’ Tnota grinned. ‘And then I promised I’d never guide you a step wrong in the Misery. And I never did.’
‘You never did,’ I agreed. ‘The best navigator in the states. I couldn’t have asked for a better man to ride beside me, Tnota. We did some good for people, and you always rose to the task.’
‘I’ll ride with you some of the way.’ He produced a bottle from under his jacket. ‘One last drink for the road?’
‘I can’t,’ I said. Awkward. We’d done our share of drinking together over the years, and I needed a clear head today. ‘I’ve never been good at saying good-bye. Don’t delay it any longer than we have to.’
We embraced. One last time. Tnota had been a fixture in my life for so long. A steady, stable voice of caution and wisdom no matter what mad risks Nenn wanted to take, and no matter what I tried to persuade him to do. But I couldn’t hold on to that mooring post now the storm had blown in. The ships that cling to the dock are the ones that get wrecked and I chose to rise alone on the waves or fall beneath them. I had grown used to my solitude. Ezabeth gone, Nenn gone, and now I cut away the last of them. A final cut to thicken the scar.
‘You’ll make it,’ he said quietly. ‘You never let me down either.’
Valiya had readied horses for us, and I mounted up and followed her out into dark and silent streets. I looked back only once, and saw Tnota and Giralt together, watching us ride away. Tnota raised his arm and waved, and I nodded back to him.
I hoped that Tnota and Giralt would find some quiet cottage somewhere where the air was clean and the beer was good. I hoped they would live another thirty years together, their love would grow, and that as the days passed the Misery, the Range, the kidnaps and the Darlings and the cracked and howling sky all passed with them until they seemed little more than a bad dream, seldom remembered.
‘Are you alright?’ Valiya asked.
‘Let’s get going,’ I said.
‘Need a light, mister?’ a glimjack yawned a couple of streets on. A kid no more than ten held an unlit lantern, ready to guide late-night travellers for a handful of copper. A dangerous vocation, and those kids were as likely to lead you down an alley full of thugs as they were safely to your door. I threw him a half-mark but turned him down all the same. We knew the way. This had been my city, once.
The mercenaries were meeting us at the Duskland Gate with the supplies that Valiya had arranged. We left Valengrad through the tunnel I’d taken in, back when Saravor controlled the city and Davandein had been approaching with her army. Mostly we travelled in silence.
We passed by Narheim, Crowfoot’s old mansion. It had collapsed in on itself when Crowfall struck, burying the vault that lay beneath it. Nobody had tried to scavenge the stone, though the marble gleamed rich and pale under a blue moon. Narheim had always felt wrong, and I doubted anybody had been sad to see it go.
‘We need to take a detour on the way,’ I said.
About a half mile on from Narheim a stone marker read Lennisgrad: 150 miles. I couldn’t speak to the accuracy of that, but ten paces from the marker a nondescript track led away into scrubland. Dawn was lightening the horizon. The trail forked down towards some poor farmsteads, but we followed the higher track into woodland instead.
‘Paying somebody a visit?’
‘No. Retrieving something,’ I said.
A great dead tree stood alongside the trail. From there I looked for the stump of an ancient oak, and from there to a wide, flat stone. I tipped it over, exposing a disorderly regiment of things that crawled and wormed their way through the dark. I flicked them away with my boot, knelt down in the damp earth, and began to dig.
‘If this turns out to be a bottle of Whitelande brandy then I won’t be impressed,’ Valiya said. An attempt at levity in the cold.
I shifted earth, shovelling with my hands. Part of me feared that my buried treasure would be gone, but there was no reason anyone would come out here, no reason that anyone would dig up the ground. My fingers scraped a hard, flat surface and not long after I had the lid of the box clear. I hadn’t locked it; if anyone had found it, they’d be curious enough to smash the lid open. Inside were a few oddments, precious things I’d stashed before beginning my exile in the Misery. As I opened the box I found a smile. I picked up a miniature painting, held it up to the half-light.
The artist had captured us well. Nenn, Tnota, and I standing side by side, expressionless. Nenn had commissioned it when she felt her newfound position pulling her away from us, and she’d refused to wear her uniform that day. In some ways the mercenary life had been foisted upon her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been well suited to it. Tnota had tried to dress up for the picture, but he couldn’t pull off the finery.
I hadn’t come for the memories. I’d left some money – I tossed it to Valiya without opening the purse and rummaged around until I found what I needed. Wrapped in a red velvet rag, a pocket watch. I held it up to the rising light and read the inscription across the back:
Better than you deserve! Gleck.
‘We came here for sentiment? Because this could have waited until Amaira was safe,’ Valiya said, eyeing the timepiece. It had been a gift, a long, long time ago. I couldn’t help but regret what I had to do next.
‘Not sentiment,’ I said. ‘You have your communicator. I have mine.’
I brought the pocket watch down against the flat rock, smashing it completely. I bashed it again a couple of times, made sure it was well and truly ruined. Couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret.
‘Why did you do that?’
‘Breaking it sends a message to Maldon. Dantry too, assuming they’re still together. Tells them to come find me.’
‘You think it’s time to bring them back?’
‘We don’t have much choice. It’s coming to a head now, whether Dantry’s research has taught him what he needs to know or not.’
‘The triple eclipse,’ Valiya said. ‘That’s what you mean?’
‘That’s what I mean,’ I said.
I left everything else in the box and buried it again, hid it beneath the stone. Probably wouldn’t come back for it, but you never knew. I left the miniature painting behind. One day it would be the only thing that still connected Nenn, Tnota, and me, and its survival seemed important.
The next village we came to was Nejska, where they were well used to dishevelled soldiers passing through. Farm labourers were heading out to the fields with scythes, sickles, and baskets across their shoulders. It was harvest time, then: seasons had meant little to me in the Misery where everything is red, and dust, and inconstant. The labourers were few. Nejska made her living from passing merchants, free companies, soldiers, performers, and anyone else trailing to or from Valengrad. Every other building was an inn, with gaudy bright phos lighting forming elaborate shapes around their trade signs even in the day.
‘While you’re gone I’ll learn more about the man who attacked you in Fortunetown,’ Valiya told me. ‘I’ll speak with Klaunus. He might be able to help.’
‘Klaunus is no help
to anyone these days. Not even himself, even if he is Blackwing. His spirit’s broken,’ I said. ‘The kindest thing anyone could do for him is put a bullet in his head.’
Valiya’s lips tightened. ‘There are too many forces at work against you, Ryhalt. Josaf’s and Linette’s deaths tell me you’re all at risk. Klaunus may find that bullet if we don’t work down to the bottom of this.’
‘Someone set that bastard against me at Fortunetown, that’s for sure,’ I agreed. ‘Klaunus can look after himself. He’s holed up tight in his tower, but look out for him, if you can. He’s not always been a good man, but we’re low on allies. I’d rather not lose any more.’
‘The citadel isn’t going to forget you that quickly,’ she said. ‘After you find Amaira, it won’t be safe for you to come back. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Nowhere is ever safe,’ I said. I looked over at her, but she stared ahead with those blank, silver eyes. ‘I will find her,’ I said. ‘I’ll bring her home. You know I will.’
‘I love that girl,’ she said. ‘Don’t fail her. Don’t fail me.’
Country miles passed beneath us. As the hooves clopped through stunted wheat and flatlands of tufted grass I regretted each one.
Torsk was a nothing kind of place. I didn’t know anybody that lived there, and they probably had no interest in knowing us. They were timber cutters mostly, although the woodland they harvested made for poor lumber. We didn’t enter the village, cutting across a field instead and into the trees along an overgrown path. The thump of axes and the grating of saws sounded distantly. We rode nearly a half hour into the woodland, crossing deer trails as we followed a stream. The trail steepened as we entered the hills, then dipped down into a valley.
Valiya’s hired, subtle men were waiting for us, cold and damp with morning dew. They had the look of professionals, already kitted out in light armour and leather, matchlocks stacked in pyramids beside campfires. The supplies that I needed, thick bundles of heavy winter furs, were stowed tight and roped to pack animals. Tents had already been collapsed. Beyond the mercenaries, flanked by rising walls of rock on three sides, lay the Duskland Gate. We went to speak with Sang, who’d led the twenty men out here the day before. She was chatting with the mercenary commander, a heavy man with small eyes and a confident posture.
‘Can’t say I understand what we’re doing out here,’ he said. ‘You look like you’ve dipped the Misery once too often.’ He didn’t seem perturbed by my appearance. He’d seen stranger, if he’d been soldiering long on the Range.
‘You all need to follow whatever Galharrow says, exactly as he tells you to do it,’ Valiya told him. ‘The fee is already with your banking house.’
‘The usual payment for any losses suffered?’ he asked. Valiya nodded curtly.
‘We’ll be ready to go in an hour. Just need to get the last of the kit stowed on the beasts.’
I left Sang and the commander to make their final preparations and walked with Valiya to the wide, circular stone below the walls of rock. I could feel the change in the air. Colder. The grass whispered, but there was no wind in the shelter of the hillside.
The Duskland Gate. I’d hoped never to set foot on it again. I’d used it only once before, long ago, before I was Blackwing and the memory had never left me, though I’d tried to drink it away. It was efficient, but only a madman would take this road if the need wasn’t desperate. Amaira was trapped. Crowfoot was depleted. My need was desperate enough.
Four humps of earth, each taller than me, were covered with grass and arrayed around a broad stone platform that no plant would approach, flat and smooth except for the carved design that spiralled from the outer edge to the centre in a continuous whirl. I knelt down and traced the tiny pictures that formed the spiral.
‘Birds,’ Valiya said wearily. ‘I’m so sick of birds.’ I nodded. ‘What are the mounds?’
‘Graves, I think,’ I said. ‘Old graves.’
‘Graves above ground?’
‘I guess so.’
‘So you make the payment and then just … stand here? That sounds easy enough.’ She drew back her sleeve and started to calculate how it worked. I took her by the arm, covering the numbers and diagrams that had started to flow together.
‘It won’t be easy. It will be awful. Worse than the white cells. Worse than the Misery. There are some things you don’t need to know.’
Valiya was thirsty for the knowledge. I felt a tingling beneath my palm, the magic that inhabited her body itching against the Misery’s touch. The taint in me repelled other magic. It did not want to share. Reluctantly Valiya nodded. Alcohol had always been my addiction, but hers was knowledge.
‘Be careful, Ryhalt,’ she said. ‘Bring her back.’
She reached out and laid a hand over the top of mine. I was tired, and the Misery was burning a path through my body, and I didn’t want to face the Duskland Gate. That gentle touch dragged at imagined conversations, things that I’d played through my mind a thousand times. I swallowed them down. It makes no sense to tell a woman that you love her and regret your choices when you’re still crushed beneath the weight of obligation to another.
‘I’ll bring her back,’ I promised.
There was a disturbance in the camp. The mercenaries stared towards the tree line where a bright light had appeared, small but intense, moving fast. And then I saw it: a snaking rope of phos, sparking blue and gold as it swam through the air.
‘They’ve found us.’
The light was making a line straight for me. It crossed the hundred yards of meadow at pace, blasted aside a trio of stacked matchlocks as it hissed and writhed along the valley.
‘It’s Kanalina,’ Valiya said.
Beyond the rope of light, horsemen cantered out of the trees, a dozen of them in the uniforms of Urban Security men with the Spinner at their head. But running alongside them, black-robed and ice-white-skinned, the giant who’d battered me into pieces kept easy pace.
The phos rope arced towards me, but I’d met this magic once before and I knew it wasn’t the threat that it seemed. I raised a hand, felt for the Misery-taint inside me, and pushed out towards it. It was a powerful working, and Kanalina was strong as a Spinner to craft it to find me, but it was nothing compared to the magic that linked me to the whole damn Misery. The light squealed, flexed back on itself with a snap, and disappeared in a sheet-lightning flash. Kanalina fell from her saddle.
‘Form up,’ I shouted, but the mercenaries were already moving, grabbing their weapons. They didn’t know these men, even if they recognised their uniforms, but it was First that commanded their attention. He didn’t slow his pace: he charged directly at them.
A mercenary lowered a bayonet in First’s direction, but the massive warrior tore the matchlock from her hands and backhanded her away. She flew through the air to break against a boulder. The mercenaries were hardened warriors and the bonds between fighters grow tight. They drew steel and rushed towards the threat. First wasn’t slowed, and his fist smashed a man from his feet, breastplate crumpled. He checked a sabre blow with his forearm, which bit into the milky flesh but drew no blood, grabbed the assailant, and tore his head from his shoulders as easily as if he were wringing a bird’s neck. Blood splashed over his face and a long tongue snaked out to taste it.
The Marble Guard.
‘Shit,’ I swore. First sent another two men flying with a sweep of his huge arm. Matchlocks cracked but he didn’t slow, looming through the smoke like a creature of legend. Which I guess he was.
The mercenaries were screaming and swinging their swords, fighting and dying and doing little to slow First’s approach, but another figure had broken free of the trees. A small man, dark-haired and hunched low over his horse’s neck. He charged straight towards us. I drew the pistol from my belt, pointed it at him, and thumbed back the hammer, but he passed First who had been tackled by three men with
poleaxes, and came right at us. He leapt down from the saddle without slowing, and I knew him.
He was a Blackwing captain.
‘Silpur?’
‘Time to go,’ he said. Five foot five, slim and hard-faced, he had an ageless quality about him. Despite the urgency of our situation he had a quiet voice, like the lapping of waves on a shore. He was bronze skinned, with eyes greener than spring, and dressed black as a mole. His age was hard to judge, but his appearance said early twenties. He had looked that way for the last thirty years.
‘Onto the stone.’
‘Help me take that thing down,’ I said.
‘Time to go,’ he said again in his quiet voice. ‘First too strong. Better to run.’
I would have argued, but the mercenaries were getting thinned out fast, and the cavalry behind them had started to approach too. They came on nervously, not wanting to get caught up in the fighting, and they didn’t need to. I could already see that First was going to win. One of the mercenaries ditched his axe and tried to run but the giant tackled him to the ground. Big fists rose up and then slammed down. Bloodlust was getting the better of the huge creature, and First swung his teeth down into his victim’s exposed neck.
‘Ryhalt, you have to go,’ Valiya said, inhuman eyes stricken.
Staying here was no option. And with First on a rampage, I couldn’t leave her behind.
I ran for the nearest pack mule, dragged it over onto the platform. It heaved back on the reins, sensing the wrongness of the place, but we needed it. Silpur brought his horse with us. For all his urgency he looked unconcerned.
‘You’ve done this before?’ I asked.
‘Lots of times.’
‘I have to stay,’ Valiya said, ‘I can reason with them …’
I took her around the waist and dragged her with me. She feared the stone, rightly. She’d done her research on the Duskland Gate, and knew what awaited us.
‘Put me down!’ she protested.
