Blood and Tempest

by Jon Skovron

  “My ship,” said Vaderton. “Southeast docks, pier forty-two. Let’s move.”

  As they hurried down the street, Jilly craned her head back to look at Vaderton. “Captain? You’re with Red now?”

  He smiled. “I’m wherever Yammy tells me to be.”

  “How is she?” asked Brigga Lin.

  “Wouldn’t say. You know how she can be,” said Vaderton.

  Brigga Lin nodded. “I suppose I understand it better now.”

  They turned down a side street, but Brigga Lin jerked to a stop. “Not this way.”

  “But this is—” began Vaderton.

  “Trust me,” said Brigga Lin.

  Vaderton seemed to recognize the look in her eyes and nodded. “We’ll find another route.”

  They stepped back into the main street and hurried on. That’s when Red caught flickers of black up on the rooftops of the alley they’d just avoided.

  “Vinchen! They’ve spotted us!” he said.

  They ran faster. Out of the corner of his eye, Red could see more black shapes along the rooftops following after them.

  “They must have had an ambush back in that alley,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “I had some … instruction from Yammy,” said Brigga Lin as they ran.

  Red found that both terrifying and astonishing. Most importantly, he realized it might have just saved their lives. One or two Vinchen he could handle. But not all of them ambushing him at once. As he and his friends sprinted down the street, weaving past market stalls, carts, and pedestrians, he kept seeing more black shapes on the rooftops, and they were getting closer.

  He didn’t like open violence in the streets with so many people around, but it looked like there wasn’t much choice. He pulled out one of his revolvers and fired up at the nearest Vinchen. Thankfully, the gaf didn’t slap the bullet out of the air, but he easily dodged behind an outcropping along the roof. Red hoped it might have been luck, but after missing a few more times, he was forced to admit that they were too fast and there was too much cover for him to hit one.

  “We’re not going to reach the ship before they catch us,” he said, shoving through a milling crowd of people who were now starting to panic because of the gunfire. “We need a new plan.”

  “Stop running and kill them all?” suggested Brigga Lin.

  “I like the way you think, my wag, but for me to contribute as much as I possibly can to the death-bringing, I’m going to need an open space so I can get a clear shot at them.”

  “I know a place nearby,” she said. “Follow me.”

  14

  Hope stared down at her new hand. The broken clamp had been replaced by three prongs that curved inward so that their points met in the center. Rotation had been greatly restricted, with most of the wires that were attached to her tendons redirected to control the prongs. Each one could be articulated separately.

  She opened and closed the prongs experimentally. They made a faint, odd clicking sound.

  “I tried to map the mechanism so that it approximated the same muscle groups you would have used to control your original flesh hand,” said Alash as they sat at a large worktable in the room adjacent to the smithy’s forge. Even though there was a wall separating them from the forge, heat emanated through the thick leather curtain that covered the doorway. “It still might take some time for you to adjust, though.”

  “It’s so light,” said Hope, hefting it up and down experimentally.

  “The prongs aren’t solid metal,” said Alash. “Beneath the metal shell, it’s actually whalebone, which is still structurally sound, but significantly lighter.”

  “Metal and bone?” asked Uter, his eyes wide as he leaned across the table to get a closer look. His impulsive enthusiasm had returned. He was no longer shy toward Alash either. Instead he had become awed as he watched Alash sketch designs for the new hand and then make them real with the help of Garett the blacksmith.

  “You won’t be able to stop a bullet with it,” Alash told Hope. “But you could parry a few blows from a sword without any trouble.”

  “You’ve done a magnificent job,” said Hope. “I owe you a great deal. And I promise, we’ll get you back to your research on Walta. Then Uter and I will return to Galemoor.”

  Alash looked surprised. “Why?”

  “What do you mean?” asked Hope uneasily.

  “I may be avoiding Brigga Lin, but that’s because she more or less told me to go away. But you should at least go see her while you’re here. And Jilly, too. When you left … I think it hit them hardest.”

  The sudden sadness in Alash’s eyes was more than Hope could stand to see. Instead she went back to examining her new hand.

  Then it struck her. She had always made a point of not looking away from terrible things. Perhaps it had even been a point of pride that she would witness even the worst that life brought. But here she was, unable to meet Alash’s gaze.

  “I suppose I’ve been hiding from that,” she admitted quietly. “And from them. I just didn’t …” She trailed off. Even after all this time, it was difficult to express in words the awful clash of feelings in her chest. Guilt, remorse, shame, disgust, confusion, embarrassment …

  Alash put his hand on her new one, so that it was in front of her eyes. A hand that had grown strong from labor and brown from the sun. But his voice was gentle. “They don’t care if you’re Dire Bane, champion of the people, or Bleak Hope, outlaw Vinchen, or someone else entirely. They just miss you.”

  Hope forced herself to look back into his eyes this time. He was smiling. And somehow that smile made its way onto her face.

  Garett the blacksmith stuck his head around the leather curtain. His face and bald scalp were red and gleamed with sweat. In many ways, he looked like a typical blacksmith. But he was the most cheerful blacksmith Hope had ever met.

  “Hello, my wag,” he said to Alash. “Someone at the door to see you.”

  “Oh?” said Alash.

  “That pirate friend of yours,” replied Garett.

  Alash glanced over at Hope. “Pirate friend?”

  Garett shrugged. “I remember seeing him before is all. You want me to tell him to piss on his way?”

  Alash shook his head. “No. I’ll go see who it is.” He gave a little forlorn smile. “Who would have thought someday ‘pirate friend’ wouldn’t be specific enough to describe one of my acquaintances.” He turned to Hope. “I’m sure this won’t take long.”

  Alash got up and followed Garett into the smithy.

  “What do you think—” began Uter, but Hope held up her hand to silence him and listened carefully.

  She heard Alash’s voice, sounding both displeased and a little curious. “Oh. Gavish.”

  “Thank God you’re still here, my wag,” came Gavish Gray’s voice, sounding more desperate than Hope had ever heard him.

  “Well, I actually just got back a few days ago,” Alash corrected primly. “But what’s the trouble?”

  “Look, you and I don’t get along, but I need you to set that aside because our lady is in the worst sort of trouble, and nobody will lift a finger to help her!”

  Hope was through the curtain so fast, she must have compressed time without meaning to, because Alash, Gavish, and Garett all jumped when they saw her, as if she’d appeared out of nowhere.

  “Brigga Lin is in danger?” she demanded.

  Relief washed across Gavish’s broad face as he looked at Hope. “Captain? You’re back? Then she might actually survive this mess after all!”

  “Where is she?” Hope’s claw hand clacked opened and closed eagerly. “And who’s after her?”

  Stephan thought that if Vance Post’s Shade District was a maelstrom of decadence and hedonism, then Visionary Square must be its eye. Ringing the outside of the square were the largest and most opulent whorehouses and drug dens in the Shade District, not to mention shops offering oddly vague wares such as “rare animal goods” or “exotic mechanical devices.” But in the squ
are itself, there was a strange sort of tranquility.

  It was an open public space paved with cobblestones, but there were small sections of grass interspersed throughout. In the center was a statue of a man by the unlikely name of Fulton Brash, who had conceived of the legalized vice district over a century ago. If one could say that the people of the Shade District had a creed of sorts, Brash was its originator. Stephan had expected the man to look as depraved as his ideals: corpulent, with large cheeks, beady eyes, and a smile that was more of a leer. But the statue depicted a graceful man, almost delicate in features, with long wavy hair and a wistful, dreamy air about him as his giant stone form lay stretched out on an oversized stone bench. Children scrambled up and down the statue playfully, while people sat on regular benches nearby, drinking, playing stones, or simply talking. There were also a few artists working on standing easels, and off to one side, a fiddle player performing a light, mournful tune. All told, there had to be close to fifty people in the square. And right in the middle of them was the female biomancer.

  The Vinchen had grouped on a nearby rooftop around Grandteacher Racklock to assess the situation. Brigga Lin sat almost casually on a bench. Next to her was someone dressed in the fine clothes of a Stonepeak lord, but he was a much better shot with those revolvers than any noble Stephan had ever seen.

  “Grandteacher, that man with the dark glasses seems unusually skilled,” said Malveu.

  “He’s the one who killed Frache,” Hectory said grimly. “No normal man could do such a thing.”

  The grandteacher nodded. “He’s an assassin trained by the Council of Biomancery. I recently received word from Ammon Set that he has turned on them.”

  “You … knew that when you sent Frache in there?” asked Hectory.

  “Of course,” said Racklock, his eyes still focused on their quarry below.

  Hectory didn’t say anything more, but Stephan could see his friend struggle with the realization that their grandteacher had thrown away the life of one of their brothers so callously.

  “What of the other two?” asked Ravento. “The older man and the girl?”

  “I don’t know anything about them,” said Racklock. “But neither seem much of a threat.”

  “Why do you think they’ve taken a position in the middle of the square?” asked Stephan.

  “Obviously so we can’t attack directly from the rooftops,” said Racklock, starting to show impatience at all the questions. “That way the assassin can get a clear shot, and the female biomancer will be able to see any attackers before they strike. The primary target remains the female biomancer. Since she can cast from afar, you will all have to continue to remain just out of her sight until I dispose of her. Until then, you must contain this square. Make sure none escape.”

  “The old man and the girl as well?” asked Malveu.

  “Everyone,” Racklock snapped. “There’s no telling how she might infect or control these people with her biomancery.”

  “What should we do if innocent bystanders attempt to escape the perimeter?” asked Stephan.

  “Kill them, of course!” growled Racklock.

  “But, Grandteacher!” Hectory’s eyes went wide. “You can’t mean—”

  The Song of Sorrows flashed from its sheath, bringing its unearthly hum as it severed Hectory’s head from his body. The body flopped down on the roof. The head fell over the edge and landed on the cobblestones far below with a sickening squelch. There was a ten-second pause before someone walked past it and screamed.

  Racklock’s hard eyes swept the remaining Vinchen.

  “Any other objections? Or are you ready to complete your mission?”

  Stephan stared at the man he had called grandteacher for the last few years. He stared at the Song of Sorrows, which still dripped with the blood of his warrior brother. No, Hectory had been much more than that to Stephan. And as he continued to stare at his beloved’s blood, and hear the shouts of panic from the innocents down below who had stumbled across his beloved’s head, Stephan felt that deep within him, something profound had been lost, and he didn’t know if he would ever get it back.

  Jilly perched on the edge of the bench next to Red and stared at the Vinchen who had gathered on the rooftop at the border of Visionary Square.

  “Why don’t they just come at us?” she asked.

  “Because they’re not bludgeon,” said Red. “In an open space like this, Brigga Lin and I have the advantage. If we can pick them off before they can get close, the fight’s over. I’ve got twelve bullets loaded and there are only fifteen Vinchen.” He grinned at Brigga Lin, who sat on his other side. “I feel confident in saying you could easily take out the other three.”

  She gave him a cool look. “As well as any you miss.”

  He looked hurt. “Miss? Me?”

  “You did miss several shots on the way here,” pointed out Vaderton, who stood behind them. Of course the old naval officer wouldn’t feel comfortable lounging before a fight.

  “That was while they were under cover, old pot,” Red said airily. “Nothing between them and my bullets now.”

  The Vinchen seemed to be arguing among each other. Then suddenly one of them drew his sword and cut off another one’s head. Jilly watched in amazement as the head fell over the side and landed with a splat on the street below.

  “Did he just …”

  “He certainly did, my wag,” said Red.

  A young woman in a long robe hurried by a moment later and let out a yelp when she saw the head. She glanced fearfully around, but when she didn’t see any sign of imminent danger, she simply hurried on her way. This continued to happen over and over again. Jilly found it fascinating how everyone in the Shade District acted the same way. Old men and little boys, merchants, drug dealers, and whores all reacted with shock when they saw it. But nobody called the imps. Nobody chose to investigate further. Once they ascertained that it posed no direct threat to them, they decided it wasn’t their business and continued on their way.

  “They’re moving,” said Red.

  Jilly tore her eyes away from the head-discovery parade and looked back up at the Vinchen. They were spreading out along the rooftops until they encircled the entire square.

  “They’re not just going to rush us, then?” asked Jilly.

  “Not all clumped together, anyway,” said Vaderton. “It makes more sense for them to come at us from different sides at once because they’re not using firearms and don’t need to worry about crossfire.”

  They all dropped down to ground level.

  “Get ready,” Red said tersely as he got to his feet and drew his revolvers.

  But instead of coming at them, the Vinchen swiftly moved behind the cover of market stalls, alleys, or doorway alcoves.

  “What are they playing at …,” muttered Vaderton.

  Jilly’s eyes scanned the square and saw that one Vinchen was coming toward them. He was short, but broadly shouldered. It was the one who’d chopped off the other’s head. He held a familiar-looking sword in his hand.

  “Look!” she said.

  Red turned and grimaced when he saw him. “Racklock.”

  “Is that the Song of Sorrows?” asked Brigga Lin, her voice suddenly threaded with concern.

  “Looks like it,” Red said grimly.

  “Damn it,” Brigga Lin said. Jilly had never heard her curse before. “I knew we shouldn’t have left that sword behind on Dawn’s Light.”

  “It seemed the right thing to do at the time,” Vaderton said placatingly.

  Brigga Lin only grunted.

  “That going to be a problem for you?” asked Red.

  “The wielder of that sword is immune to all biomancery.”

  “Even yours?”

  “Even mine.”

  “Piss’ell.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Guess it’s up to me to take down the leader,” said Red as he pulled the hammers back on his revolvers. “Don’t worry. I’ll let you have more of the lackeys to
even it out.”

  Then he fired at Racklock.

  But the grandteacher slapped the bullet aside.

  “Oh, right. There’s that …,” murmured Red.

  The gunshot spooked the people in the square. They began to flee as Racklock continued slowly forward, his eyes never leaving Brigga Lin. He struck down anyone unlucky enough to get in his path.

  “Well, he can’t block them all,” said Red. “Right?”

  He fired several shots in succession. Racklock not only blocked them all, but sent the ricocheting bullets into the nearby escaping crowds. Several people cried out or fell to the cobblestones.

  “Vaderton, get Jilly out of here,” said Brigga Lin. “We’ll meet up with you later.”

  Vaderton nodded and grabbed Jilly’s arm.

  “Wait a minute!” she protested, but Vaderton hauled her toward the nearest side street while Brigga Lin and Red prepared to meet Racklock head-on.

  “You think you’re ready to go up against that?” Vaderton demanded as he pulled her along. “Brigga Lin wants you alive, and that’s how I’m going to keep you. Now, come on. Let’s get out of sight so you’re not dividing her attention anymore.”

  He was right. She was more of a hindrance than a help fighting opponents of this caliber. Jilly allowed herself to be yanked toward the alley, cursing herself for being so useless. They were joined by several other panicked bystanders, all looking to get away from the flying bullets and flashing sword.

  Then a young Vinchen warrior appeared out of nowhere to block the alley. His stance was strong, and the grip on his sword was firm. But his eyes were red and puffy, as if he had just been crying.

  “No one leaves,” he said hoarsely.

  The anger and frustration Jilly had just been feeling toward her own helplessness channeled itself toward this stupid Vinchen. She didn’t even pause to consider her actions. She just grabbed her knife and lunged at him.

  The Vinchen neatly parried her thrust with his sword, then grabbed her wrist with his free hand and yanked her off balance. He swept her legs and she was on the floor in a heap, her knife clattering away out of reach.