by Matthew Ward
Kain strode closer, eyes flaring. ‘Keep running your mouth and you’ll see what I’m good for.’
In truth, Mirika had never heard of the Order of Dawn before Magnis had mentioned it minutes earlier, but she knew a sore topic when she heard one. ‘What would your brothers and sisters say to see you now, grubbing around in the darkness like a delver, jumping at the snap of a southerner’s fingers?’
Kain lunged, her gauntleted hand reaching for Mirika’s shoulder. ‘I’m warning you…’
Mirika never discovered the nature of the warning. As Kain came forward, she moved. Not towards the knight, but took a pair of long, loping steps towards the pool. Seizing what little of the timeflow remained in her grasp, she extended her tempo to breaking point, and vaulted the inky waters.
The timeflow ripped free mid-leap, but by then Mirika had all the momentum she needed. She crunched down on the far side of the pool, boots skidding on the impacted ice. A brief, one-handed flail for balance brought that under control, and then she was running. Not for the tunnel mouth – Kain was too close to the exit to take the chance – but for the foot of the stairs.
As she approached, a waif-like figure appeared on the half-landing, a black cube clutched tight in her hands. ‘Mirika?’
* * *
Yelen’s joy at seeing her sister alive quickly yielded to concern. Mirika’s face was pale, save for the fierce bruise already forming above her brow. And the way she held her left hand…
‘What’s happened? Are you alright?’
Mirika took the stairs two at a time. ‘Go! Go!’
Behind her, an armoured figure advanced around the edge of the pool, her expression thunderous and a sword as tall as Yelen ready in her hands.
Yelen turned and made for the upward flight. A fleshy thump sounded behind her, closely followed by Mirika’s muttered curse. Turning, she saw her sister lying sidelong across the stairway, expression taut.
Careful of her own footing, Yelen ran to her sister’s side and hauled her upright.
Mirika hissed in pain. ‘Careful. Wrist’s broken.’
‘What? How?’
She nodded down at the knight, drawing inexorably closer to the foot of the stairs. ‘We had a disagreement. I fell over.’
Yelen took in her livid bruise, seeing it in a new light. ‘How’d she even touch you?’
Mirika winced. ‘I don’t know.’
The knight reached the foot of the stairs. As she did so, she refracted into six identical figures. Yelen recognized the style at once. It was one of Magnis’ favourite tricks – you couldn’t avoid pursuit if you didn’t know which pursuers were real and which were not.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said Mirika. ‘Back up the stairs.’
Yelen glanced up in the direction of the shattered vault. The last thing she wanted was Mirika asking questions about how it had gotten that way. Not that she’d need to ask. A glance would tell her everything. ‘There’s at least one still up there.’
Mirika staggered onto the half-landing, pained expression giving way to a mischievous glint. ‘Then we’ll have to be clever, won’t we?’
Yelen’s heart sank. ‘You know I hate that.’
‘It’ll work. Do you have a better idea?’
‘I’ve one or two,’ breathed the voice. ‘you’ve only to ask.’
For a moment, Yelen was tempted. She longed to touch the timeflow again, if only for a moment, to feel the seconds dancing at her command. Her thoughts drifted to the tattoo on her wrist. What time did it show? Was she down to minutes? Or did only seconds remain? There was no way to tell. No. She couldn’t take the risk. Mirika would only blame herself.
Drawing down a deep breath, Yelen clasped Mirika’s uninjured hand and closed her eyes. Nausea blossomed as their tempos, never entirely synchronous, blurred together. They’d first tried this when children, playing hide and seek for the highest stakes in the gutters of Karamasz. The one sliver of birthright she and Mirika shared, and it made her sick to the stomach every time. But in Karamasz, it’d saved them from a branding for pocket-dipping. It’d save them here, or so she hoped.
Yelen opened her eyes. The nausea faded, just a little.
Mirika’s grey stare met hers, more confident than before. ‘Ready?’
She nodded. ‘Ready.’ With a last glance behind, Yelen followed her sister back up the stairs.
* * *
Mirika forced her weary limbs on. Distance was important. They had to draw Kain further in, or it’d all be for nothing. Yelen kept pace alongside, reliquary tucked inside the crook of her elbow.
They passed Darrick at the third half-landing. The big man was still unconscious. A glass jaw to belie his physique.
Mirika glanced down the stairway. Kain had crossed the first landing. Nearly there. Everything after this was a bonus.
A patch of darkness detached itself from a nearby column. Mirika barely saw it in time, caught the barest glint of steel as it lunged towards Yelen’s back.
‘Yelen!’
Mirika moved without conscious thought. Her shoulder struck Yelen’s, jarring her injured wrist into fresh agony. Yelen yelped and sprawled across the stairs. Mirika had the barest glimpse of a thickly bearded face – the yeti-slayer – then something struck her in the gut. The world turned red.
The next Mirika knew, she lay on the stairs, good hand clasped to her belly. Her fingers were warm, but she shivered all the same. A shadow loomed. Yelen shouted something, a wordless cry – all emotion, no meaning. The shadow bellowed, and tumbled away down the stairs.
Fingers found hers. Squeezed them. A little of the red faded from the world.
Yelen dropped to her knees, blue eyes awash with concern. ‘What did you do?’ She blinked, and glanced briefly away. ‘Let me see.’
Mirika shook her head. ‘It’ll be alright. Help me up.’
‘You’re not alright!’ Anger flared through the tears. ‘He cut you open!’ Yelen’s lips narrowed. When she spoke again, it was in a tone of command. ‘Give me your hand.’
Mirika shook her head, and gasped as the motion awoke the fire in her gut. ‘Help me up.’
With Yelen’s help, Mirika staggered on up. She’d never have made it alone. Her feet dragged like lumps of firewood, her knees buckled every time they were forced to take any weight. Each step took an eternity, lit by the ache from her wrist and raw, sodden pain at her waist. Yelen didn’t say a word. Each time Mirika looked at her face, it was almost that of a stranger, pinched with cold fury, with a glint of… was that red amongst the blue of her irises?
As they reached the next landing, Yelen lowered her to the ground. ‘This is as far as we go.’
Mirika sank to the ground, and stared out across the flagstones. Was it her imagination, or was it growing darker? She couldn’t even see the start of the next run. ‘What! Why?’
Robes swirled. Cavril Magnis strode out of the darkness. The real one, or another doppelgänger?
‘Stay back!’ snapped Yelen. A dagger gleamed in one hand, the onyx reliquary in the other.
Magnis raised a calming hand and squatted down, setting a lantern at his side. He peered at Mirika, face tight. Unreadable. ‘Who did this?’
‘The…’ Mirika swallowed. It helped. ‘The bearded one.’
Magnis nodded. Raising a hand, he beckoned behind him. ‘Serene?’
A woman emerged from the encroaching gloom. Her right eye lay hidden beneath a patch, and her shock of blonde hair was matted with blood. ‘Cavril?’
‘Find Marcan. Explain our rules to him. Again. Give him reason not to forget.’
The woman gave a sharp, aquiline nod, and strode away, careful to keep her distance as she continued down the stairs.
Magnis inched closer. ‘I’m truly sorry. I’d no intention for it to end this way.’ He sighed. ‘You should have taken my offer. If your sister surrenders the reliquary, I’ll see she’s taken care of. You have my word.’
‘Go to hell!’ Yelen brandished the dagger, murde
r in her voice and her eyes.
‘Sshh, little sister. It doesn’t matter.’
Mirika beckoned Magnis closer. He looked genuinely upset, but then Cavril Magnis always looked genuine. That was the problem. Was this even him? There was no way to know for sure. She reached out and cradled his jaw. She caught a flicker of revulsion as her warm, sticky hand touched his cheek. Perhaps it really was him, after all. Maybe he even cared. Just a little.
She coughed, grimacing at the metallic taste. Time, usually her closest ally, was slipping away. The pain had become distant, like it belonged to someone else. That wasn’t a good sign. No choices left. None at all.
‘Guess you won’t be learning anything after all.’ Kain’s voice held no inflection. Not regret. Not triumph. ‘Should’ve listened.’
Mirika gave a small, gurgling laugh. ‘I don’t know. There’s always a lesson.’ She patted Magnis’ cheek. ‘And Cavril? Yelen had it right… Go to hell.’
She raised her hand above her head. Thin fingers clutched hers tight.
The world lurched.
* * *
Yelen swam on a sea of blurring reds and blues. Direction had no meaning. Nor did sound, sight or any other of her senses save one. Even the colours were lies, her mind trying to explain the inexplicable. She clamped her eyes closed, and focused on the Clock of Ages, its sonorous pulse screaming outrage at violation. Only Mirika’s hand was real, and Yelen clutched it tight. All the devils in all the frozen hells couldn’t have broken her grip.
The pulse of the clock slowed. Yelen’s vision cleared. Up and down regained meaning. She felt solid ground beneath her boots, cold air on her face.
Yelen opened her eyes. Mirika grinned back. ‘Told you it’d work.’
Her sister stood facing her on the lowest half-landing, in the very spot where they’d synced their tempos. Her clothes were unbloodied, and she stood tall, eyes that had so lately crowded with pain once more alive with mischief. She still held her wrist awkwardly – the time walk could do nothing for injury sustained before its invocation – but the ragged wound at her waist was gone as if it had never been. Which as far as the world was concerned, was precisely the case.
Yelen squeezed Szarnos’ reliquary tight, and glanced at the uppermost landing. Cavril Magnis stood silhouetted against lantern light. For him and the rest of the Gilded Rose – for the rest of the world – nothing had changed. ‘We’d better go before Magnis works it out.’
A frustrated cry echoed out across the cavern.
Mirika grinned, then winced and cradled her injured arm. ‘I think he just did.’
The sisters ran for the unguarded tunnel, wild laughter ringing in their wake.
CHAPTER TWO
The thin fire pattered and spat, fuelled by a meagre portion of kindling and a handful of alchemist’s powder. Yelen hated the stink of the latter. Thick and brackish, it reminded her only too well of something else. Nonetheless, she drew her thin blankets tight and huddled closer as the wind howled around the shattered stones. Warmth was fleeting in the Broken Strand, and not to be lightly shunned – whatever memories it brought to the surface.
Restless, Yelen crossed to the broken arch of the window, jagged pebbles scattering from her boots. A full moon blazed down, lighting the snow-covered cobbles almost as bright as day. The towering buildings were packed into the tight streets like teeth in a jawbone – broken teeth, for most were missing roofs or walls. A few were little more than teetering piles of shattered stone, manmade structures only in the imagination of the beholder. The quakes had seen to that. The quakes, and whatever wild magic had drowned the city in ice. Only the Temple of Draconostra, capstone on the tomb so lately escaped, had survived fully intact.
Yet nowhere was there a surviving building fewer than five storeys tall. Here and there, they hit seven or eight – twice that of the tallest building in the Karamasz guttermarch. Yelen and Mirika had scraped a squalid living beneath such dwellings after their mother had died, sifting through midden and muck for anything that might have value. Coin. Bones. Teeth. Anything.
Yelen had few fond memories of Karamasz, and most of those had grown suspect with age – a child’s recollection of better times. But the city had been beautiful when the sun shone, she remembered that, the terracotta tiles and whitewashed walls of the wealthier districts glowing as if lit from within. Not like Frostgrave. The frozen city was always sullen, miserable – even on those rare occasions where Solastra’s light broke through the clouds.
She hummed a few bars of a half-remembered lullaby, recalling the tale her mother had woven as the shadows lengthened in their cramped garret. Of the Queen of the Sun, and how she’d cast her unfaithful husband Belsanos from the heavens and banished him to the shadows. Solastra held a grudge still, or so the song told, and refused to bestow her magnificence on Belsanos’ favourite haunts. Perhaps Frostgrave was such a place. Certainly, there was always bitterness on the air – a bitterness that had nothing to do with the cold. Meanness. Spite. As if the old stones longed for nothing more than to rise up and crush the delvers, brigands and adventurers who picked over their icy bones.
The notes died on Yelen’s lips. The chorus. She could never remember how the chorus went, only that it was beautiful and sad at the same time, as if Solastra’s love still tempered her hatred. Nice to know that family was complicated, even for the gods.
The wind howled past the window, the building swaying in its cold embrace. Yelen held her breath as she always did, waiting for the telltale creak of tortured stone that warned of imminent collapse. Mirika had chosen their campsite carefully, passing up four other buildings before settling on the one they now occupied. But you never knew. A bivouac in the Broken Strand was always a gamble. Too high, and you ran the risk of waking broken and bloody amidst the rubble of a fresh ruin. Too low, and you begged to end your days in a troll’s belly. Even five storeys above the ground – even over the howl of the wind – Yelen heard the brutes howling at one another as they fought for territory. She’d take her chances in the ricketiest, most crack-ridden building before she put herself within a troll’s reach. If tales were true, being eaten alive was the very best you could hope for.
The wail’s pitch dropped. The building steadied. Yelen breathed a sigh of relief, knowing it’d be one of many as the night wore on. She glanced over at Mirika, wrapped tight in blankets and pressed up against a wall, the haversack holding the reliquary resting at her feet. Sleeping the sleep of the just, as she always did. Another knack Yelen envied.
Still jittery from her brief contact with the timeflow, Yelen had volunteered to take the first watch. Collapsing buildings and trollish curiosity notwithstanding, there was always the possibility the Gilded Rose had seen through their disguised tracks and would attempt to steal the reliquary. That, or something worse. There was no guarantee of safety once you strayed beyond the lights of the mismatched trading settlements and delver-gang strongholds. There were only probabilities. The Broken Strand had been… not safe, but safe enough… for as long as Yelen had been in the frozen city. But all it took was some fool to crack open the wrong tomb or break the wrong seal, and all bets would be off. Dead wasn’t always dead hereabouts.
Ambling away from the window, Yelen planted herself on a fallen column and basked in the welcome heat of the fire until her skin prickled. She wasn’t anyone to be pointing fingers at fools. Not after what she’d done.
The voice had stayed quiet ever since they left Szarnos’ tomb, but Yelen felt it nevertheless, coiling around her thoughts with renewed confidence. Her fault. She’d given it power by asking for help – first in opening the vault, and again when she crumbled the stairway out from under the brute who’d stabbed Mirika. She hadn’t even meant to call on it the second time, but her sister’s scream… the spray of blood…
Yelen peeled back her left sleeve and peered down at her wrist. The tattoo stared back, its whorled, fibrous strands weaving together into a stylized clock face. There were no hands. Just a series
of spurs around the circumference, the numbers writhing like worms, or tendrils of weed. When the tattoo had first appeared, the face of the clock had been clear. Now it was almost entirely black. Only a sliver of pale skin remained, marking the span between half-past twelve, and the impossible thirteen o’clock.
She pinched her eyes shut, heartbeat racing as she rocked backwards and forwards. So close! No wonder the voice had grown so confident. No. Not the voice. It had a name. There was no point pretending otherwise. It wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Azzanar. Yelen wished she’d never heard it, had never listened to that huckster sage. At the time, she’d have given anything to be like her older sister.
Now, she’d give whatever was left just to be herself again.
‘Yelen?’ Footsteps approached. ‘You alright?’
Hurriedly, Yelen covered her wrist. Things were bad enough without another lecture. Besides, the more Mirika worried, the more they argued. ‘I’m fine. Just cold.’
Fingers squeezed her shoulder. She jumped, cursing the guilty reaction.
‘Tell me,’ Mirika said. ‘I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong.’
Yelen heard concern in her sister’s voice, but something else as well. Not suspicion exactly, but the tone their mother had used whenever she’d thought her daughters weren’t telling the whole truth. Not an accusation, not even a question, just a tacit promise that the matter wouldn’t be dropped until she was satisfied. Yelen hated that tone. But she also knew how to outwit it: feed truth into the lie. Just enough to muddy things.
‘You nearly died tonight,’ she said. ‘All because you were showing off.’
The grip slackened. Fingers danced across Yelen’s shoulders. Mirika eased herself onto the fallen column, careful not to upset her splinted and bandaged wrist. ‘Pffff. I had everything under control.’
Yelen bit her lip as old frustrations boiled to the surface. ‘You know I don’t like it when you lie to me. I’m not a child!’
She broke off, embarrassed as always at letting her emotions get the better of her. Not trusting herself to speak, she settled for staring at her sister – a stare she knew looked too sullen by half, but was at a loss as how to alter it. Part of her didn’t want to.
