Dead Man's Steel

by Luke Scull

  The procession of fehd slowed and then stopped. A reverential silence settled over the harbour. A moment later, a fehd who could only be their celebrated general stepped onto the bridge.

  He was taller even than Isaac, pure white hair framing a face so severe it would make Salazar look grandfatherly by comparison. He moved with astonishing grace, every muscle displaying absolute mastery of his form. The way he carried himself spoke of a singular arrogance – or perhaps certainty – that there was nothing this world, no threat or danger he had not already faced and conquered. He wore a black cloak threaded with silver, and as his penetrating gaze swept over the Halfmage, Eremul wanted to shrivel up and die.

  ‘That... is Saverian,’ Isaac said quietly. In contrast to those of his newly arrived commander, the Adjudicator’s eyes did carry a hint of uncertainty – or so it seemed to Eremul.

  Perhaps this time it is I projecting my emotions upon him.

  ‘An impressive figure,’ Eremul muttered, feeling sick.

  ‘Saverian’s legend is second only to that of his brother, Prince Obrahim,’ Isaac explained. ‘He is of the First Blood, ancient even by the standards of my people. For five thousand years he has led us in times of conflict. Saverian drove the dragons from Rhûn when my kin were still finding their place in this world; Saverian defeated the king of the elves in single combat to mark the end of the Twilight War – a duel that lasted three days and three nights. It was he who imprisoned the entity that followed the Pilgrims to these lands. The nameless horror.’

  Eremul stared at Saverian, appalled that such a being could walk among them, in this very city. It seemed that every time he thought he understood the measure of power in the world, some new bastard turned up to ridicule his assumptions.

  A crowd of human onlookers had gathered to witness the arrival of the Second Fleet. Most dared not venture too close – the Halfmage saw furtive faces staring from within the shadows of the backstreets and alleys near the edge of the harbour. One of the faces he thought he recognized; it belonged to an unpleasant fellow who kept eyeballing Eremul with undisguised hatred. The Halfmage was still struggling to remember how he knew the man when further movement on the bridge caught his attention. He stared, confused by the unexpected sight.

  More fehd were disembarking from the ship. Each of these new arrivals escorted another fehd seated on a wheeled chair much like Eremul’s own. The seated fehd were covered head to toe in the most bizarre garb the Halfmage had ever seen – a ludicrously well-padded suit of white fabric, or perhaps leather, which swathed their bodies up to their necks and incorporated thick boots and gloves, as well as a curved glass helmet that entirely covered their heads. Behind the glass, the faces of these seated fehd were incredibly gaunt. They stared blankly with obsidian eyes darker than those of their kin, so black they resembled empty holes in their faces.

  The attire looked far too encumbering to be of much practical use. Upon further observation, however, the Halfmage concluded that this hardly mattered. ‘Are they dead?’ he wondered aloud. The strange fehd might have been breathing under their suits, but it was impossible to tell. They were utterly motionless.

  ‘Not dead,’ Isaac answered. ‘Lost to the Void. All sixty-six of the Pilgrims who survived the voyage that brought us to these lands. Their journey poisoned them all eventually. Neither age nor illness will claim their bodies, but their minds are elsewhere and so they will remain until the end of time. Their sacrifice will never be forgotten. We do not abandon our own.’ Isaac’s obsidian eyes flicked to the small group of homeless orphans watching from a nearby alleyway.

  ‘You wish to teach me a lesson about how fucked-up humanity is? I’ve already received an extensive education in such matters.’

  ‘The measure of a people is found in how it treats those who have sacrificed for its survival. How it heeds those lessons and applies them for the betterment of those who come after. My kind learned those lessons an eternity ago. We call it the Time Before. Since then, no fehd has intentionally harmed another. No fehd will turn away from another when they are in need. We are all one – and together we live and die as one.’

  The Halfmage stared at the orphans. There were fewer of them in the city these days. They were the weakest, the most vulnerable; they had been first to perish when famine had come to Dorminia.

  Those not already dead of the poison introduced into the streets by the White Lady’s agents.

  He had to look away. His eyes settled on his reflection in the harbour, and he stared at his broken body in the water. The dying sun bathed the city in blood as Isaac’s words stabbed through the blanket of despair that engulfed him.

  ‘The day before Dorminia fell to the White Lady, I took my leave of the city’s “liberators”. I wandered these streets, searching desperately for a sign that humanity was not beyond redemption. Do you know what I found? Children starving in the Warrens, innocent of what was about to befall them. While in the Noble Quarter, those most capable of averting the tragedy that followed expressed the sentiment that “at least a brief war might serve to clean up the streets”. You remember what happened to the Warrens when the White Lady’s forces arrived. The devastation wreaked by the trebuchets. The bodies.’

  ‘I remember,’ Eremul said, but his voice sounded strange and this time he wasn’t sure if it was Isaac’s empathetic projection or simply his own dark memories that brought fresh tears to his eyes. ‘I was born with little magic and littler capacity to sway the minds and hearts of my fellow man. I am broken and bitter and I would not piss on most of this city’s human filth if they were on fire. But if I had it within me to change the fates of those children, whatever it took, I would do it. You have to believe me.’

  ‘I do,’ Isaac said quietly. ‘And that is why I will weep for you.’

  Going Nowhere

  ✥

  She was running from the tower, the snip of iron scissors chasing her through the darkness. To either side of her were vast tanks filled with blood. She could hear the thump of tiny bodies within scraping against glass. Revulsion overcame her and she failed to see the turn in the corridor, instead colliding against one of the tanks. She staggered back and stared at the woman within. The naked body floated in the vile liquid, turning slowly, lit by a baleful red radiance emanating from the blood. The woman’s eyes shot open and Sasha ran. Ran out of the tower and back into the rain.

  She was standing on the docks again. The rain poured down, forming a grey shroud over Thelassa’s harbour as the fleet of the dead sailed slowly into port. Thousands of eyes stared from severed heads stacked high with architectural precision. Ship after ship emerged through the mist, all bearing the same grisly cargo. Some of the faces she recognized in spite of them having started to rot: neighbours, occasional colleagues, regular Dorminians like her: people with hopes, dreams and ambitions. Everyone in the city had lost someone they once knew. There were too many for it to be otherwise.

  She stared back at those faces, struck dumb, wondering who or what could have carried out such a ruthless massacre. The putrefying visage of one head in particular seemed to draw her gaze. It was her sister, Ambryl, her blonde hair now lank and shedding out of her desiccated scalp. Flesh sloughed off her sister’s once-pretty face. Suddenly Ambryl’s eyes shot open, and her mouth formed a name—

  ‘Sasha!’

  Her sister’s desperate scream tore her gaze away from her brother’s body. Blood still streamed around the handle of the knife embedded in his throat, but it was the way his eyes bulged out of their sockets that held her in a horrified trance. She made a choking noise, turned to Ambryl, who was reaching for her with a trembling hand. Sasha started towards her sister, desperate to get away, to flee the horror of what was happening around her, but just then her father released an agonized roar and the next thing she knew she was knocked to the floor as he charged the men standing over her dying brother.

  Everything blurred together. Her father’s outraged howls. Her mother’s sobs. Ambryl’s screams,
slowly fading as the coward who had brought these killers into her home dragged her outside.

  Her father staggered away, hands pressed tightly against his stomach. Dark liquid streamed between his fingers. The rebels immediately encircled him like a pack of rabid dogs, beating him down, punches and kicks shattering this proud man who had never bent before anyone. The last thing she glimpsed before she squeezed her eyes shut was his ruined face, crimson tears trickling slowly down his cheeks.

  It seemed to last an eternity but finally the terrible cacophony of violence subsided, leaving only her mother’s muffled crying and the harsh breathing of her father’s killers. One of the rebels spoke, grunting out his words in between gasps. ‘Stubborn old prick. If he’d done what we asked none of this would’ve happened. What about the wife and daughter? They’re Reds too.’ There was something terrifying in his voice. Something hungry.

  ‘The Watch will be here soon. Forget them,’ replied another of the rebels.

  ‘But they’re Reds. Loyal to that bastard up in the Obelisk. What mercy did Salazar ever show his enemies?’

  ‘He’s right,’ said another voice, in a tone that seemed to suggest the opposite. ‘They deserve to be punished too.’

  ‘How old do you reckon they are?’

  ‘The old one? Too old. Her? Old enough.’

  ‘She’s just a girl...’ said the second rebel half-heartedly – but by then it was too late. She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut as a rough hand grabbed hold of her ankles and something inside her seemed to explode—

  *

  Sasha’s eyes shot open. Pain. Her world was filled with pain.

  She elbowed and spat and unleashed a volley of curses that would have made a sailor blush. The hand on her thigh released its grip immediately. A moment later a voice groaned, ‘Ouch! Damn it, Sash, that hurt. What the hell was that for?’

  She blinked the crust of her tortured sleep from her eyes and stared at the wounded expression on the face of Davarus Cole – childhood friend, comrade, and fellow captive atop the Tower of Stars on another bitterly cold night in Thelassa.

  ‘Sorry. Bad dream,’ she said.

  Cole rubbed his forehead where her elbow had left an angry red mark. ‘Which one?’ he asked miserably.

  ‘All of them. I think you knocked my ankle again.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said glumly.

  She reached down, gingerly prodded the splint supporting the fractured bone. She gave him a look of mock anger. ‘Forget that. I don’t remember saying you could grab my arse.’

  Cole’s pale face blanched further. ‘I didn’t mean to. I was fast asleep. Besides, it was you who suggested we keep close for warmth.’

  Sasha immediately regretted waking her companion. Cole looked exhausted. Sleep had been hard to come by for both of them since their imprisonment, but there was a deep weariness in Cole’s grey eyes that she had never seen before. Weariness, and also anger. He’d suffered in the last few months. She just wished he would open up to her. It wasn’t as if they didn’t have all the time in the world to talk, stuck up here on top of this damned tower. She decided to try one more time.

  ‘Are you ill?’ she asked softly. ‘You don’t look right. What happened in the Blight?’

  He sighed and looked away. ‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

  She grabbed a stick and poked irritably at the embers of the small fire they’d managed to build from the possessions the tower’s previous guest had left behind. His naked body was still sprawled in the spot where they’d discovered him, stripped of anything they could use for kindling. The freezing conditions had preserved his flesh and he wasn’t yet showing significant signs of decay. As far as blessings went it was a decidedly minor one, but right now Sasha would take what she could get. ‘Time to stretch our legs again,’ she said. ‘Give me a hand.’

  Cole climbed to his feet and helped her up. Together they walked the tower’s perimeter, Sasha with one arm thrown around his shoulders. The merciless stars glittered cruelly in the night sky above, while a dark bank of cloud on the horizon warned that fresh snow was on the way. ‘This is bullshit,’ Cole said, emptying a mouthful of spit over the side of the tower and watching it fall hundreds of feet to the broken streets below. ‘She could’ve just killed us. Better that than waste away up here like that poor bastard.’ He jerked a thumb towards their cadaverous companion.

  ‘I think the White Lady has bigger things to worry about than us,’ Sasha replied.

  Cole sighed in frustration. ‘I just hope the streets don’t collapse and take this tower with them.’

  Sasha risked a glance over the edge and swallowed the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm her. On the first day of their imprisonment she couldn’t get within ten feet of the edge of the tower without feeling faint. Boredom had since largely superseded her fear. ‘The foundations will have settled by now,’ she said, taking in the view below. ‘It could’ve been a lot worse.’

  Great cracks disfigured the once-perfect marble streets of Thelassa. A colossal spider’s web of fractured stone coiled away from the monstrous pile of rubble at the centre, the shattered remains of the tower the White Lady had hurled at Thanates during their monumental battle. A few sections of street had plunged into the ruins of the ancient city of Sanctuary beneath Thelassa, but it seemed Thelassa’s supports had by and large held firm in the wake of the Magelord’s fury. As Sasha scanned the city, she noticed a strange glimmer above the harbour: a white luminescence that hadn’t been there a few hours ago. ‘What do you figure that is?’ she asked, pointing.

  Cole stared. ‘It looks like some kind of magic. Maybe it’s supposed to protect the city from whatever killed all those people aboard the ships.’

  Sasha crossed her arms and frowned at the shimmering barrier. The Fade. Ambryl and I were sent here to warn the White Lady of their coming. The Halfmage wasn’t mad after all. Every one of the hundreds of men and women who had sailed to the Celestial Isles in search of riches had been slaughtered, their heads stacked in neat piles on the ships and sent back to the City of Towers.

  Cole shook his head. His face was gaunt, his skin astonishingly pale even taking into consideration the biting winter cold. ‘What did you say to the White Lady back in the throne room, anyway?’

  Sasha winced. ‘Just some home truths.’ I slapped her and called her a cunt. The White Lady. The most powerful wizard in the world. She remembered the look of disbelief on Ambryl’s face then and almost smiled, so absurd did it all seem. Then she remembered her sister’s sacrifice and her amusement faded. Ambryl had pushed her away from a falling house and, instead of burying Sasha, the falling stone had claimed her older sister.

  ‘Your cold’s getting worse,’ Cole said. Sasha blinked away the tears threatening her eyes and wiped her weeping nose with the back of a hand.

  She didn’t have a cold. What she had was a nose ruined from too much hashka and whatever other narcotics she could get hold of. She kept her habits hidden from him, which wasn’t hard. Cole was as naïve as a newborn babe when it came to reading other people.

  ‘I still can’t believe that Three-Finger tried to rape you,’ he muttered, as though he had heard her thoughts. ‘I knew he was coarse, but I always thought he had a heart of gold beneath it all. If I ever see that son of a bitch again I’ll kill him.’

  While she shared Cole’s sentiments, the venom in her friend’s voice unsettled Sasha. She’d never seen him so angry before. Vain and boastful and, yes, maybe even faintly endearing in a ridiculous sort of way, but never murderous. She didn’t like this change in him. ‘Sometimes people are exactly what they seem to be,’ she replied. ‘And sometimes they’re actually the opposite.’

  The White Lady. She’s a monster wearing the face of an angel. Or Brodar Kayne. I could have sworn he was a soulless killer until I got to know him better. She frowned. Kayne’s friend Jerek had threatened to kill her, only to turn into her protector on the battlefield outside Dorminia. Though he might still want to kill her. S
ome men were just confusing. Some women, too.

  Ambryl. She had thought her elder sister hated her. Instead she had given her life for Sasha.

  ‘Someone’s coming,’ Cole hissed, interrupting her thoughts before they could whisk her away to a dark place – or a darker place, at any rate. Sasha strained but couldn’t hear a thing. ‘The White Lady’s handmaidens,’ Cole added. ‘The Unborn.’

  *

  Sasha had just opened her mouth to ask how he could be so sure when the steel grate set into the tower’s roof slammed open and two of the handmaidens climbed out. They were followed by four more. The half-dozen Unborn moved to surround Cole, paying Sasha no heed.

  Why would the White Lady send six of her handmaidens to deal with us? One is more than a match for most men.

  ‘The Mistress commands us to bring you to the palace,’ said one of the Unborn, in the emotionless monotone of her kind. She reached into her white robes and withdrew a collar forged of a dark metal.

  ‘For fuck’s sake. Not this shit again,’ Cole growled. He placed a hand on Magebane’s jewelled hilt. ‘We’ll take any reason to leave this damned tower,’ he spat. ‘But not with those collars around our necks.’

  Sasha stared at the object. The collar was connected to a chain of interwoven links and was clearly designed to allow the holder to lead their captive like a dog on a leash. She might have considered them an affront to her dignity, had she any left. Instead she placed a hand on Cole’s arm. ‘Relax. It’s not worth dying over. We will go quietly.’