by Alec Hutson
The woman offered a brittle smile and said nothing.
Nel saw Vhelan’s fingers brush Tarris’s sleeve and give a small tug.
“Challenge,” said the old gambler.
Menosh’s eyes widened slightly. “A challenge? You are in an interesting position to be going on the offensive. But I accept the –”
“Wait.”
Everyone in the crowded little room turned their gaze to the woman, who had leaned forward when she spoke.
Menosh did not turn to look at her this time; instead, he glanced sharply at his servant and nodded.
The slight man moved closer to Tarris, and in an eyeblink his dagger was pressed against the old gambler’s neck. A drop of blood blossomed and slid down his throat, carving a twisting channel. Tarris moaned.
“Yes?” Menosh said, tapping one of the cards in his run.
“It’s the boy.”
“Truly?” Menosh made a quick gesture, and in a flicker of movement too fast for Nel to see clearly, the slight man moved his dagger from Tarris’s neck to Vhelan’s. Nel shrieked in fear, but no one in the room paid her any attention.
“Can he control it?”
The blindfolded woman shook her head. “No. Completely untrained. But the taint is strong in him.”
“Taint?” Tarris whispered, and rubbed at his neck with a shaking hand, leaving a bloody smear.
“Sorcery,” the woman said. “The boy is using his gift to influence the game.”
Nel’s chest tightened. Sorcery. Impossible. Sorcerers made deals with demons for their dark powers, and were hunted in every land. But a few days ago she had made Vhelan laugh so hard he had nearly choked on his eel pie! He could not be a sorcerer!
“Should I kill the boy?” The man’s voice was calm, emptied of any emotion. He could have been asking if Menosh wanted him to pare an apple.
Menosh stroked the few wispy hairs on his chin. Nel couldn’t breathe as she watched the old man decide whether Vhelan would live or die.
“The boy is no sorcerer,” Tarris babbled, panic edging his voice. “That’s impossible, he’s just good at –”
His words trailed away as the woman slipped off her blindfold and opened her eyes.
“Gods,” the old gambler whispered.
She had no pupils. No eyes, even. Just shining pockets of golden light, radiant in the dimness.
A tingling warmth flooded Nel. She had heard the stories, of course, about the paladins of Ama with their burning eyes, who hunted down sorcerers. But they were always men, and heroically strong, swords of gleaming white metal at their sides. Not women who needed help to walk!
She closed her eyes, and the unnatural light vanished, darkness rushing back into the room.
“Kill the old man,” Menosh said into the shocked silence that followed.
Before Tarris could even flinch the servant drew the dagger with startling quickness across the old gambler’s throat. From her vantage Nel did not see the wound open up, but she saw what happened next: Tarris’s hands scrabbled at his neck as blood spurted from between his fingers. He made a ragged, broken sound and toppled from his chair, writhing on the floor. His panicked eyes found hers and she could see pleading there, as if she could do something to help… but Nel could only look down, horrified. She sobbed quietly, her fists clenched tight, trying to think only of the sharp pain her nails made in her palms. But it was impossible, and as if to taunt her, a dark pool of blood entered her sight, creeping across the floorboards toward her slippers.
What could she do? Would they kill Vhelan as well?
Nel jerked her gaze back to the table when she heard one of the swordsmen gasp. Vhelan had turned his body, and Nel could see the tears streaking his face. He shook as he stared down at Tarris’s body.
Something was happening. The air around his hands shimmered and twisted, almost as if they suddenly were surrounded by a haze of drifting dreamsmoke. But there were no dreamsmoke lamps in the room this night, only a few dirty lanterns hanging from the ceiling, and the strange mist had certainly not issued forth from those. All the swordsmen, Menosh, and even his deadly servant were frozen, watching in mute astonishment as the shadows coiled around Vhelan, pulses of light flickering deep within the gathering darkness.
Only the woman appeared unaffected by this gathering power. She stood, gesturing toward Vhelan. Instantly his eyes rolled up into their sockets, and he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, the unnatural smoke dissipating.
When his head struck the floor, Nel screamed and ran for the common room. No one tried to stop her; no one even glanced at her as she dashed around the wooden screen. She glimpsed Merik’s surprised face as the bar flashed past, and then she was bounding up the stairs, three at a time, the fear pounding in her heart urging her on.
Her mother. She had to go to her. She could do something to save Vhelan and stop that man from murdering him like how he had just murdered Tarris… he had cut his throat like he was a trussed pig hanging in an abattoir…
The black blood, reaching across the floor toward her, coming closer.
Mother could reason with them… Mother could –
She burst through the door to her room. “Mama!” she screamed, then gave a little moan when she saw Baern ri Vhalus was already there, just starting to unbuckle his belt.
“Marinel!” her mother cried, rising from where she lay on the bed and rushing toward her.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement, and then there was a flash of light and she was on the floor, her head ringing.
“Whelp!” snarled the scarred bravo. “How dare you come running in here?”
“Do not touch her!” Nel’s mother shrieked. There was a flurry of commotion. Cheek pressed against the floor, Nel felt the reverberation of rapid footsteps, and then gentle fingers lightly touched the side of her face.
The fingers disappeared, her mother’s hand clutching at her shirt as she was pulled away. Nel rolled onto her back, trying to focus her blurred vision on what was happening.
Baern loomed over her, his hands holding her mother’s raised wrists. There was fear in her mother’s face, but also a wild anger Nel had never seen before. She struggled briefly against Baern’s grip, but she could not escape; he sneered when she stopped trying to free her hands. Then she spat in his face.
Nel scrambled to her feet in the frozen moment that followed. Baern gaped at her mother, his eyes widening in such surprise that it was like she had breathed dragonfire. He released one of her wrists and struck her hard. She collapsed, her head cracking against the wooden edge of the bed.
“Filthy whore,” Baern yelled at her. “You spit –” He made a little sound then, almost like a hiccup. His eyes fluttered, and he gave his head a small shake, as if trying to keep himself from falling asleep. His hands went to his stomach, where a dagger’s hilt had suddenly appeared.
Nel’s dagger.
She couldn’t remember stabbing him. But she must have, because there he was, gasping like a fish out of water as he fumbled weakly with the hilt. He pulled it out, and the hilt slipped from his bloody fingers, falling to the floor with a clatter. Swaying, he stood over the dagger, staring at it stupidly, not even seeing her. Then he stumbled for the door. Both his hands were pressed to his belly, but they did little to staunch the blood gushing from the wound. Slowly, as if in a trance, Nel bent and picked up the dagger, slipping it back beneath her tunic.
Then she remembered. “Mama!” Nel cried, rushing over to the bed. She shook her mother’s arm, glancing over her shoulder just as Baern vanished into the hallway, leaving bloody handprints on the wall as he struggled to keep himself upright. “We have to run, we have to get out now!”
Nel pulled hard, trying to bring her mother to her feet, but she was still limp. Her head fell backward. Her eyes were open. She was staring at Nel, but she wasn’t seeing her, and her neck was bent oddly…
“Mama!” Nel screamed, gathering her mother up in an embrace. “Mama, wake up!” She b
uried her face in her silky hair, breathing deep the smell, willing her mother to say something, to move, to breathe…
This isn’t happening. This can’t be happening.
Some place far away people were yelling. The sounds seeped into Nel’s thoughts as she rocked her mother, sobbing.
Strong hands roughly grabbed her and lifted her like she was a ragdoll. She writhed in the man’s arms, reaching out for her mother, who was slumped against the side of the bed like she was just resting, like she had just fallen asleep for a moment…
Nel wailed as she was carried out of the room, but she was too drained to struggle much. She smelled cured leather and the bitter tang of vanick nut on the man’s breath, and when she twisted she saw a tarnished hilt swaying at his side. One of the swordsmen.
They were going down the stairs, following a trail of blood. The sight of it mesmerized her, and she could not look away. It ended at the bottom of the steps in a dark pool, and in the middle of this was Baern, pale and still, curled around the wound in his stomach.
His eyes were as dull and glassy as her mother’s.
Nel was thrown to the floor, her cheek exploding with pain again. She didn’t care. Someone clutched a fistful of her hair and dragged her to her knees. Cold metal pressed against her throat. Through her tears she saw Menosh standing over his son’s body, his face slack, like he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. The swordsmen stood awkwardly behind him, their faces ashen, hands on the hilts of their swords. One of them held Vhelan upright; his neck lolled to one side, but his eyes were half open, and his legs moved weakly, as if he were trying to stand by himself but didn’t quite have the strength.
“My boy,” Menosh whispered, not looking away from his son’s body. “You killed my boy.” He crouched down, laying his hand tenderly on Baern’s cheek. “Cut her. Cut her head off.”
Nel squeezed her eyes shut, knowing what would come next. The bite of steel, pain, and then the darkness’s warm embrace.
A whistling noise.
A crunching, wet sound.
The hand holding her hair vanished, and she fell forward.
Swordsmen scrabbled for their weapons; Menosh recoiled, his eyes bulging; Vhelan sagged to the floor as he was released. Movement everywhere, but so slow.
A man’s body collapsed beside her, hitting the ground like a dropped sack of grain. It was the slight man, the terrifying servant; she recognized his clothes, even though his head was now a bloody ruin. The knife he had held to her neck skittered across the floor.
“Run, little one.”
Nel twisted around. Cook loomed over her, brandishing his truncheon. The apron he usually kept so spotless was spattered with dark stains. He glanced down, his eyes finding hers. Nel didn’t see anger or fear in his face. He looked sad, she thought numbly.
“Run.”
He pushed her then, but not hard. Almost gently.
The swordsmen surged forward. She came to her feet, and staggered toward Vhelan, one of the warriors nearly sending her tumbling as he rushed at Cook.
Nel grabbed Vhelan’s arm; he looked at her with glazed eyes.
She slapped him. Vhelan blinked and shook his head, his gaze sharpening. Nel pulled on him and he came to his feet. Together they ran.
Behind her she heard Cook bellow. She looked back when she reached the kitchens, just as steel flashed in the lamplight.
Sobbing, Nel turned and ran for the door.
A scream behind her, then silence.
They burst into the alley, sending cats scurrying back to the shadows. Vhelan began stumbling toward the Street of Silk, but Nel seized his arm and yanked him in the other direction.Toward the Warrens.
They had barely gone a dozen paces before she heard the door smash open behind them.
“There! Get the little bastards!”
Vhelan stumbled and nearly fell, and Nel hauled him back to his feet.
“If they catch us, they’ll kill us!” she shouted at him between gasping breaths as they dodged around a pile of shattered masonry.
Boots pounded stone behind them. Coming closer.
The alley twisted and turned, entrances to more shadowy passages flashing past, gaping like mouths preparing to scream. This was farther than Nel had ever dared go before; there were no lanterns here like the nightwatchmen lit on the Street of Silk, no shopfronts or glazed-glass windows. Just an endless twisting labyrinth of gray brick.
They burst from the alley into a large circular space. Many twisting roads and alleys converged here from every direction, like the spokes on a wheel. Maybe once this had been a market square, as debris was scattered everywhere: staved-in barrels, shards of wood, and what looked like the remnants of merchant stalls.
Nel took a few faltering steps into the space, glancing between the exits. They all looked the same. Which way to go? The footsteps behind them were pounding louder, almost as loud as her heart.
No time. “This way!” she cried, choosing at random and dragging Vhelan toward one of the alleys.
Her foot caught on a loose tile and she fell, pulling Vhelan down with her. Sharp pain blossomed in her ankle, and she cried out as she felt something pop.
Nel rolled onto her back just as two of Menosh’s guards came charging out of the alley and into the open space, both brandishing swords smeared with blood. They grinned when they caught sight of Nel and Vhelan sprawled out on the flagstones.
One sheathed his sword and sauntered closer. It was the warrior who had carried her from her bedroom and her mother, Nel realized, and she felt a surge of hate.
“Oh, you two are –” A stone smashed him in the nose, and the guard stumbled back screaming and clutching his face. More stones followed the first, pelting the warrior as he waved helplessly at the air.
Nel glanced around wildly. Small shapes were emerging from behind the detritus, dozens it seemed like, children with rocks in their hands or fitted into crude slings. A tiny boy no bigger than Bone whipped a cloth above his head, and then a stone flew with unerring precision to smack into the head of the guard whose nose was already a bloody mess, sending him to the ground.
The other swordsman gaped at his unmoving companion, then shrieked as a rock struck his shoulder. With a curse he turned and ran back into the alley, followed by a volley of missiles.
The children rushed forward as soon as he was gone, swarming over the fallen guard. Nel thought they would pry open his mouth to get to his teeth first, but they looked to be cutting away the pouches dangling from his belt with little knives, crowing in triumph at what they’d found. One of the children slipped the man’s sword from its sheath, struggling to lift it up, and then was buried under a crush of other small bodies trying to seize this treasure.
Nel watched all this numbly. The pain in her ankle was fierce, she knew, but it seemed to be pulsing far away, almost in someone else’s leg.
A ragged boy loomed over her. His face was smudged with dirt and his eyes hard, but he held out his hand for her to take.
“We gotta go,” he said, and Nel saw that a black-haired girl was helping Vhelan find his feet. “More gonna come, yeah?”
Nel ignored the boy’s outstretched hand and gingerly stood. The boy gave her half of a wry grin and turned away, gesturing for her to follow.
Wincing with pain, Nel hobbled after him. Vhelan came up beside her and slipped his arm under her shoulder, taking some of the weight off her leg. She turned to him; his eyes were empty, hollowed by the horrors of what happened.
No, not completely empty. There was something else there, as well.
Nel’s hand found his. She clutched it tightly, and together they entered the Warrens.
THERE IS A TOWER of glass rising from the seam of the world, where heaven joins earth. It perches atop the highest peak of a nameless mountain range, lashed by frozen winds, a spike of purest light when the sun shines. At night it also glows, but softer, with its own spectral radiance, like a creature from the ocean’s depths. Within, behind a rosewood d
oor, a princess sleeps eternally, dreamlessly, guarded by clanking automatons of black iron. She waits for a savior, for one who would be king. Harpers sing her sad tale, and young men take up swords and quest. Someday these men will settle to till the earth or shape metal, wed and raise children. They will be content, but at times their eyes will stray to the star-spattered darkness, and they will wonder what might have been.
The once-baker’s boy pauses outside the rosewood door. He has ascended the great spiraling staircase for days now; he looks down and sees, far below, the tiny shattered hulks of the tower’s guardians. They had rolled toward him when he first entered, hissing steam and gnashing metal teeth, but his sword, Bright, had passed through them as if they were flesh and blood, spilling gouts of oil that had slid along the glass floor and stained his boots black.
Inside, he knows, the princess sleeps, awaiting a hero’s kiss. When their lips brush together her eyes will flutter open and see his face – a good face, not beautiful, perhaps, but strong, creased by the cares of his journey and chafed by the winds that batter the tower. She will smile like the dawn breaking, and proclaim him king, and together they will travel to the castle that has lain empty since her father died so many centuries ago.
His heart beats quick as he raises his hand and lays it against the door. The hand, too, has been scarred by his long quest; his smallest finger ends just above the knuckle. It was given freely for passage across the Skirling Plains, a blood-price for protection against the winds that churn and scour endlessly. The gray priest took it with one quick twist of his quartz dagger. The once-baker’s boy remembers the fierce pain, but he also remembers the sound the roiling elementals made as they bellowed in frustration above him, and he is glad for making that bargain.
He opens the door. He sees the silver casket and the sleeping princess, veiled by a silken canopy, but before him, in the middle of the room, a creature of glass shards uncoils, shimmering in the sunlight pouring through the walls. The once-baker’s boy draws Bright, which flashes with its own brilliance as it leaves its golden sheathe, and meets the creature as it lunges toward him. They dance: the creature’s arms, long slabs of jagged glass, flicker and stab, but the once-baker’s boy deflects its thrusts, slicing off fragments that spin away to tinkle against the floor. Within the creature’s body, etched in every glass shard, he sees a tiny reflection of himself – and yes, the creature’s movements seem familiar, as graceful as his own.
