by Chris Moss
“Where does he stay?” whispered Harpalus, trying to keep his voice from trembling.
Boran looked around and whispered, “Nob Hill.”
The Regal Estates. This is the one I’m after.
“Good luck finding him, though,” said Boran. “He’ll be long gone, or cozying by the fire with the League of Nobles.”
Harpalus shrugged. “Then perhaps you’ll detain him if he passes through your territory again. My master would be most appreciative of your civic-mindedness.”
Boran grinned and pocketed the purse. “I’m sure he would, little sneak. I’m sure he would.” The tattooed figure got up and left the table, giving one of the tavern wenches a playful smack on the rump as he went.
Harpalus wondered how he could get invited to the homes of the nobles, squeezing his eyes shut and trying not to remember events a decade past.
11
When the brain has been removed, soft organs can be removed through an abdominal incision. Heed well that the cadaver must brine in natron for no less than threescore days and nights, whereupon the nails on fingers and toes can be cleanly removed.
~from ‘Treatise on embalming; methods and philosophy,’ by Scriptor Braeton,
dated 529th year of the Empire~
“Where is this place?” Kestel eyed the open cave, the moist air inside cool, despite the morning sun streaming in from above.
“Right underneath the cliffs,” said Arbalis. Around them, small birds flitted in and out of the opening to the sky, filling the air with chirps. Tiny heads poked out from holes in the stone, being fed by the adult birds. Below them, a large tunnel led down a flight of stairs into the black rock.
“It feels…odd,” said Kestel.
“This is the Crypts,” said Arbalis. “The final resting place for clerics of the Citadel, from the lowest novice to the highest Prelate.”
“What about the Silver Prioress? The former ones, I mean.” Kestel peered down into the darkness.
“The Priors and Prioresses are laid to rest in the Citadel, in a private crypt beneath the basilica.”
Walking down the stairs, Kestel couldn’t believe how dry the air was. The warmer atmosphere also held a subtle gingery smell that wafted up from below.
“Does Harpalus control these tunnels, too?” Kestel wondered aloud.
“Don’t ever say his name.” Arbalis looked ready to strangle him. “Not until we’re away from the island, even if you think no-one could be listening. Always call him the Magpie.”
“Well, does he?” repeated Kestel. He hated how small the old soldier made him feel—like an inept child.
“I don’t know,” said the old soldier, ignoring Kestel’s discomfort. “There’d be nothing of value here for a person in his position. But you can never tell with that one.”
The stairs opened up into a high-roofed cavern, lit with oil lamps. The flickering light sent shadows scurrying over rocks. A smooth path, cut through the center, curved down into other chambers but was blocked by a tall Caelbor cleric. Dressed in a brown robe and wearing a long-eared, woolen skull cap, the figure bore a long staff from which swung a flickering lamp.
“I am Brother Byrgen, keeper of the Crypts.” The monk’s words carried little intonation. “Have you come to seek the service of the dead?”
Kestel scratched his head but, nudged by Arbalis, he spoke up. “Umm… yes?”
The cleric gave a jerky nod, as if a puppeteer's string held his head. “Righto. Come on then. Are you joining us, Commander?”
The old soldier shook his head. “No. This place makes my skin crawl.”
“Really? I find it quite calming.”
Kestel descended with the cleric down the winding paths, passing through a series of museum-like caverns. The first rooms were true crypts—stone sarcophagi carved from the very rock of the cave. Deeper down, the crypts became more ornate, adding metal, jewels, and windows of glass or crystal.
“And on your left is the final resting place of Isomort, Saint of the Abandoned.” The monk rambled, tottering ahead of Kestel. “He spent his life building sanctuaries for orphaned children on the continent.”
“How did he die?” Kestel peered at the leathery brown skull beneath a window of polished crystal.
The old man spun around, his lantern flailing. “He didn’t clean his teeth. Got an abscess in his jaw and died of blood poisoning.”
Kestel gave Byrgen a disbelieving look.
“What?” The old cleric sounded defensive. “It happens to the best of us. Remember, brush with a piece of willow and a cup of water after every meal.”
Whoa, this man is unhinged.
“Down the passageway to our right are the boiling vats and the furnace, although I doubt you’d have the stomach for that.” Brother Byrgen cackled, ducking under a low roof tipped with stalactites. “But I s’pose someone has to pick the bones clean.”
“How do you know which ones are Saints?”
“Oh, well mostly that’s decided by the old Prioress, angels bless ’er. It’s sorted out before I get to them, anyway. Right, here we are.”
Kestel looked around. The oblong chamber had pathways winding down multiple tiers. Set into the walls and on every flat space rested reliquaries. Everywhere Kestel looked, he saw bones, nails, teeth—even locks of hair set into ornate displays. The room even had two whole cadavers, fully dressed and propped up like tailor’s dummies. In between the grotesque displays, stood buckets filled with dried coral and sponges.
“For the moisture in the air,” said Brother Byrgen, catching Kestel’s quizzical look. “Now young man, heed well my words. A reliquary is a most sacred object, granted only to the leaders of the Exsilium. They represent the holiness and spirit of the New Citadel.” The old cleric scratched his head. “I’m buggered if I know why they’re letting you have one. Anyway, hurry up and choose, I’ve got someone on the boil.”
Kestel fought down his distaste and gazed across the rows of reliquaries. Forgotten corpses were a daily occurrence living on the streets of the Old Capital, but this was death enshrined, death on parade—a bizarre display that mocked the briefness of his life.
Moving about the room, Kestel shivered, his senses shifting to whom these pieces belonged to. It overlaid the morbid exhibits with new meaning. Kestel walked through the silent crowd. Though ghostly, they weren’t sinister, but serene. He touched a few reliquaries at random. Images and scraps of knowledge flickered through his head, slipping away when he tried to focus on them. There didn’t seem to be any piece in particular that drew him, until a thin, whiny voice spoke in his mind.
Oi, you! You’re late.
12
It was in this year that a most foul tragedy struck the New Citadel. An assassin, sent by the Golden Queen, penetrated the Silver Prioress’s quarters and struck her down using a knife poisoned with Philoctete’s Venom. While the Prioress survived, she largely withdrew from public life, emboldening the League of Nobles.
~from ‘Annals of the Exile’ by Scriptor Cornelious, entry for year 90 AE~
Sitting in his office, Harpalus looked down at the docks and watched the crowds scurrying below. Though the Spymaster’s warehouse was located in the inconspicuous back streets, a well-to-do shipping merchant needed a dock-front address to impress his clients. It also gave him an excellent view of which ships entered and left the harbor.
Hunching his shoulders and leaning forward, Harpalus marked a set of amber-skinned men wearing furs. They alighted from a ship from the continent and made their way toward the city.
Baavghir. Those people disgusted him. Forever making excuses, real or imagined, to save them from choosing a side. Exsilium soldiers protect their lands, and yet they complain about trade relations and the Canidae Artificers.
The familiar sound of a mahogany cane made him pause. Harpalus turned from the window to see Sister Julia, a quiet look of triumph in her old eyes.
“Testing my defenses, Sister?” said Harpalus, his cold tone far from welcoming.
“Which one of my agents did you get the information from?”
The old woman snorted, shuffling over to a leather seat and making herself comfortable. The Spymaster remembered the sound—it had always preceded a stern rebuke.
“I simply wandered in through the servant’s entrance,” she said. “No one notices a harmless old lady.”
The fact only angered Harpalus more. “I do not need you to point out weaknesses in my house security.”
“Pye, I’m not—”
“Never use that name. I left Pye behind a long time ago.”
Julia sighed. “Let it go, Harpalus. I’m no longer your Spymistress.”
Harpalus’s face tightened, but he sat back and bowed his head. “You’re right—I’m being paranoid, but the pieces are moving. Whatever the League of Nobles is planning, they intend to go all the way. And now it seems Lady Maal has sent another of her servants to test us.”
The old cleric unrolled a leather document case. “Well, I’ve had some luck tracking down the Ichthyophagi. The oldest references are just old sailors’ accounts, such as Rumen’s Songs of the Sea, which mentions “Sea Sirens” luring sailors down to a watery grave through temptations of the flesh.”
“Sounds more like another good reason for staying away from the harbor side prostitutes,” said Harpalus.
“Oh, stop trying to be clever. The later references are a little more descriptive. Brother Corvin’s Caelbor Tales makes several mentions of ‘spirits of the deep’ who could be wooed to grant good fortune by throwing gifts into saltwater springs, or certain places along the coast.”
“But did anyone actually see one?”
“Corvin relates a tale of a Caelbor woodsman who, after losing his wife to the plague, wandered the lands in grief until he contacted a mysterious being from the ocean by making an offering of fish.”
“Fish-eaters...” Harpalus bobbed his head in thought. “Or, in the old tongue—”
“Ichthyophagi,” said Julia, finishing his thought for him. “The woodsman didn’t get the answer he was looking for, but the knowledge the creature imparted became known far and wide—so far, in fact, that the Emperor Seraphis even commissioned three Ichthyophagi Shrines—two along the Outer Coast and a third in the Old Capital itself.”
“I don’t recall anything like that in relation to Seraphis’s reign.”
The old woman smiled. “That’s because only one was ever finished. Seraphis spent most of his time off with the fairies, chasing down mythical beasts or following his supposed divine visions in search of lost treasure. Eventually, the populace became so fed up with his expeditions that a group of nobles had him assassinated and set up Seraphis’s brother, Salvius, as the new ruler.”
“That I do remember. The first thing Salvius did was put their heads on pikes for killing his brother.”
“Ah, but what you wouldn’t know is that, according to the Imperial account books, the first shrine was completed, at great expense, and then written off as another of Seraphis’s follies. But some of the peasants and freemen still visited the shrine, leaving their offerings in the hope that the Ichthyophagi would return.”
Harpalus’s eyes glittered, a slow smile creeping across his face. “And you know where it is, don’t you?”
“Eldeway,” Sister Julia said in triumph.
“That worm-eaten hole? It’s been levelled and rebuilt at least twice since the outbreak of the war.”
“And several more times before that. But the shrine is a series of pressurized metal pipes, each more than a foot thick, constructed and sunk by the finest Canidae Artificers. The records say these pipes extend farther down into the ocean floor than the foundations of the port itself, therefore, the shrine should still be there.”
Harpalus drummed his fingers on his desk, processing the new information. “So, one mystery solved, but the real question is why we’re looking up old legends in the first place. If Sister Amelia knew she was in danger, or knew she was close to some kind of League of Nobles conspiracy, why was she so concerned with folk-tales?”
“It must be part of why Maal is helping the League. A price, do you think, or a reward?”
“It makes no sense as a price. The scabies have controlled most of the areas around Eldeway since last spring. Surely they’d have stumbled across the shrine by now.”
“Perhaps they haven’t. The knowledge could be a reward, a tidbit for Maal’s Immortals to chase, in exchange for something.”
Harpalus shook his head in frustration. “This line of thought is getting us nowhere. Let’s start again. A scabie spy has been spotted in the Old Docks. He appears to be working with the League of Nobles. His work involves something that threatens the Citadel. Therefore, the Sacred Realm and the League of Nobles must have come to some type of arrangement.”
“Likely help in overthrowing the Citadel in exchange for the disputed areas of the continent. Both groups would gain valuable land. Could we obtain the information from one of Rowan’s rivals among the Caelbor?”
“You mean Lady Mantis? The Baroness wouldn’t take the risk unless she knows it’ll profit her. Whatever their agreement, the scabie agent is the key. But, so far, he’s completely eluded me. I wouldn’t have even known he was here had Sister Amelia not gotten too close.”
“You’re at a dead end.”
“I know how to do my job,” said Harpalus, his tone a warning.
“You need someone who can predict his movements.” Sister Julia’s voice held a slight tremor, but she pushed on. “Someone who has been in his position—someone who—”
“I know who you’re referring to.” A small thrill of fear attacked Harpalus, something he hadn’t experienced in years. He quashed the sensation before it showed on his face. “Is this wisdom, or are you just trying to make up for your past failures?”
“Both.” The old cleric’s glare locked on him. “But my pride is not the issue. How about yours?”
Harpalus turned and looked out over the ocean. The sun had passed behind growing clouds, a storm brewing out to sea. “That trail is more than ten years cold. A meager start to our pursuit.”
“It’s the best we’ve got.”
Harpalus sighed, weighing his options once again and realizing the old woman was correct. “Agreed—but I’ll bring him in. He might still remember you.”
13
Do not mourn! I tell you solemnly, those who depart this prison of existence are only stpping into a greater world. Who knows what secrets they could bring back if we could only listen?
~from ‘Sermons of Saint Rene,’ undated~
Kestel spun—cat-quick—and peered into the shadows. “Who said that?”
Down here, genius.
On the ledge next to him sat a piece of skull, just an eyebrow ridge, cheek, and some upper teeth. Lined with silver on the inside, the skull had a leather cord looped through where the ear and eyebrow would have been. He picked the object up with caution.
About time.
“But you’re just a skull!” said Kestel.
I’ve been sick. Incidentally, the skull said in a conversational tone, speaking out loud to someone who’s technically dead isn’t a good idea.
Kestel looked up at Brother Byrgen, who ambled over to give him a companionable pat on the shoulder.
“That’s alright. Sometimes I talk to them, too.”
Don’t listen to this guy, he’s crazy. Do you know what he likes to do when he thinks no one’s around?
“Shut up!” said Kestel. The cleric gave him a hurt look. “No, not you.”
In the privacy of his mind, a voice laughed.
“Alright,” said Kestel aloud. “Brother Byrgen, whose skull is this?”
The old cleric angled the lamp closer to the macabre object. “This is the skull of Creven, Saint of the Last Desperate Hope. A most—ahem—peculiar choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s not really a Saint. Creven wasn’t even a cleric. It’s something of a running joke a
mongst the novices.”
Something of a joke? said the petulant voice in Kestel’s head. If I still had legs, I’d kick your cassocked arse!
Kestel didn’t think the remains sounded much like a Saint, either. “So, how did he become a Saint?”
I won it in a bet.
“Oh, it’s a complicated tale,” said Brother Byrgen, oblivious to the skull’s commentary. “But suffice to say, Prior Sergio declared Creven a Saint after the execution—Creven’s, obviously, not the Prior’s.”
“He was a common criminal?”
I was innocent.
Kestel focused on the old man and tried to block out the irritating voice. “What did he do?”
The cleric grinned. “He was caught trying to steal the Silver Prior’s jewels.”
You pocket one or two little trinkets and suddenly you’re a thief. Come on boy, get me out of here.
I already have enough old bones telling me what to do, thought Kestel in the privacy of his own head.
But only I have the answers, Herald.
Kestel froze at being called Herald. He turned to the pale monk. “I’ll take it.” Without waiting for a reply, Kestel turned and walked back into the dark.
Behind him Brother Byrgen snorted. “Bah. The living.”
Without a backward glance, Kestel walked up the winding path to the surface, leaving behind the old cleric in the dim circle of his lamp’s light and the silence of the dead. At the top of the cliffs, he looked around for Arbalis but didn’t see him. The sun was high in the sky. The old soldier must have left for the Citadel.
Kestel walked to the cliff edge and dangled the reliquary over the chasm. “Tell me what you know, skull, or it’s a long way down.”
In his mind he heard Creven cackled. Don’t you get it? I’m dead. You can’t threaten me—the worst has already happened.
