The Iron Ghost

by Jen Williams

  ‘Well, the room in that draughty inn looks a lot better now,’ she said, eyeing a goat hungrily. ‘Do you think they’ll feed us before they give us to their mountain?’

  Sebastian sighed.

  ‘Wydrin . . .’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ snapped Frith. They had untied his hands at least, but the Edenier had retreated inside him, as if it were afraid of the terrible cold the prince had summoned. ‘We need to come up with some sort of plan before sunrise.’

  ‘I suspect that if we can talk to the prince again, we may be able to come to an agreement of some kind,’ said Sebastian. He sat down on the rocky ground with a grunt. ‘He seemed more reasonable than his father.’

  ‘More reasonable?’ Frith shook his head in disbelief. ‘This prince of yours almost froze me to death, and knocked you out of the sky.’

  ‘Frith is right,’ said Wydrin, turning away from the bones. ‘As unlikely as that sounds. We need to come out of here fighting. Is there anything we can use as a weapon? If we can take the initial flurry of guards, we’re actually quite close to the wall. The princeling can burn our way back out again . . .’

  Sebastian was frowning.

  ‘Take them all, without our weapons? We’re deep in enemy territory, Wyd, and they are hardly short of reinforcements. No, our best chance will be diplomacy.’

  They argued over their meagre options for hours, not coming any closer to a decision. Eventually, Frith came to realise that it was just a way to pass the time, a way to distract themselves from the inevitable, grisly end that faced them at sun-up. The thought only made him feel worse. Sebastian leaned back against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest and went to sleep. Frith went and sat with Wydrin.

  ‘This is an unfortunate ending to your last adventure,’ she said, reaching for the flask on her belt that was no longer there. She swore under her breath.

  ‘You could say that.’ He cleared his throat, uncertain of what to say next. Outside the night sky was clear, and they could see stars like diamonds, almost unnervingly bright in this cold air. ‘It has certainly been interesting, though. I mean, all of this. Since the Citadel.’

  ‘Any regrets?’ Wydrin caught the look on his face and smiled lopsidedly. ‘Apart from the obvious.’

  ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘So much of my life has been about death and vengeance. Or at least, it’s felt that way. The last year or so wasn’t about that, and that was good.’

  Silence pooled between them, filled with the mournful wailing of the wind over the jagged walls, and Sebastian’s relaxed breathing. It was freezing in the enclosure, but they were sitting close enough that Frith could feel the small amount of warmth coming from Wydrin. He realised, with sudden clarity, that it would make him very happy to take her hand at that moment. He also knew, with the same painful clarity, that he could not do it.

  At some point in the small hours of the night he fell asleep. He awoke with his head on Wydrin’s shoulder, his back agonisingly stiff. Someone was whispering at them urgently, and Wydrin jumped to her feet, letting Frith slump awkwardly to the ground.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded.

  Frith blinked the sleep from his eyes to see Prince Dallen standing in their enclosure. It was still dark, and he could no longer see any guards stationed outside. Sebastian was already on his feet.

  ‘Please, keep your voice down. You must come with me,’ said the prince, his voice hushed. ‘You must be quick, and you must come now. I cannot answer your questions yet.’

  ‘Why should we trust you?’ asked Frith. ‘You weren’t so keen on us escaping before. I still have the frostbite to prove it.’

  The prince turned to him, frustration evident on his mottled face.

  ‘If I had let you burn down the long hall, as you so clearly wanted to do, my father would have had you executed then and there. I needed you moved somewhere that I could get to without being observed. And now we must move – there’s always a chance one of the guards will mention my sudden visit to the wrong person, and we’ll all be for it.’

  ‘I say we take the chance,’ said Sebastian. ‘It beats staying here with the goats.’

  ‘Here.’ Prince Dallen turned back to a large sack at his feet, and began pulling out thickly furred cloaks, patched here and there with grey leather. They all had deep hoods. ‘Put these on. It’s still dark enough out there, and with your faces hidden I should be able to get you out of the Shambles Gate without alerting any suspicion. Come on.’

  They dressed quickly, and Dallen led them away from the enclosure, moving swiftly towards the towering wall of ice. Three shadowy figures joined them as they walked, and Frith recognised one of them as Olborn, Dallen’s second in command. It was difficult to make out her face in the poor light, but her stance was tense.

  The Shambles Gate was an iron door set directly into the ice. Prince Dallen spoke briefly to the two guards stationed there, and they were waved through without a word.

  ‘It seems our prince often makes nightly visits beyond the wall,’ muttered Wydrin. ‘I’ll bet his father doesn’t know about that.’

  Beyond the iron door was a long corridor carved directly into the ice. The walls were sheer and pale blue, the cold radiating off them like a fever. Once they reached the far end, another set of guards opened the far door onto a sweeping black and white world of snow and jagged mountains.

  17

  Siano pulled the pieces of sacking away from the head – despite her attempts to be as clean as possible, they were all soaked through – and with a wet cloth began to clean away some of the blood from the face. It had gathered in the crevices at the corners of the man’s mouth, in the weathered pockets of lines by his eyes. Some had plugged the nose, and this she brusquely wiped away, grimacing slightly. When she was satisfied that she could see clearly enough to work, she put the head back down on the sawdust, removed her best knife from her belt, and looked again at the instructions.

  The pattern was intricate, but not impossible to follow. She cut quickly and with a steady hand, and now that the man had been dead for some time the blood was thick, settling in his cuts like black jam. When she was done she propped the head up on a wooden box and cut her own finger. With this drop of her own blood she smeared a rough shape onto the forehead – it looked a little like a letter B – and shuffled back to kneel before it.

  The effect was immediate.

  ‘You have done well, Siano.’ The voice was the same as it had been in the House of Patience: old, self-satisfied. ‘You are talented indeed.’

  Siano inclined her head.

  ‘My lord, I trust the job has been done to your satisfaction?’

  ‘Oh yes, although we are far from done yet, my child. That doesn’t concern you, does it? You haven’t lost your taste for this sort of work?’

  Siano shook her head, then remembered that she didn’t know if the owner of the voice could see her or not.

  ‘It doesn’t concern me, Lord. I was made for this.’

  ‘Yes, yes. You are indeed one of my creatures. Good. Now, we have a few more steps to complete before I can welcome my friend back to the world. Technically, this last part should involve patricide.’

  Siano blinked. Deep inside, something very small was calling out a warning, but she pushed it to one side easily enough. She hadn’t listened to that voice in years.

  ‘My father is dead, my lord. He passed away some years ago.’

  ‘No matter,’ said the voice, cheerily enough. ‘This is my game, and I make the rules. Blood isn’t the only chain that binds you.’

  Father Tallow became aware of two things at once. First, that he was terribly, painfully cold. It was a cold that sat on his chest and squeezed at his heart. And second, that he wasn’t alone in his bedchamber.

  ‘Who’s there?’ He didn’t like how his voice sounded. It was the voice of a frightened old man. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘Is there someone here?’

  ‘It is only me, Father
.’ The old lamp on his bedside table flared into life, revealing a tall, slim figure by his bed. The girl’s face looked longer, more serious, and she held herself differently. The girl has become a woman, thought Father Tallow. Has she really been gone so long?

  ‘You are back already?’ Tallow tried to raise himself from the pillow but found he was too weak to do so. I must have been in a very deep sleep, he thought.

  Siano nodded. ‘I don’t think I’ll come back again, though,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time for me to make my own way in the world, Father. I wanted to wake you up before you went, to tell you that, and because, well, I thought you would want to be awake. At the end.’

  Father Tallow tried to move again, his head swimming. He was thinking of all the locks on his windows, the traps by the door, the plates in the floor that triggered alarms all over the building. There were the men who patrolled the corridor beyond his bedchamber. What had happened to them? It wasn’t hard to guess.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question to ask a child of the House of Patience. It was always the same answer: because the client willed it. Because the client paid for it.

  ‘It will be soon now, Father.’ Siano came forward and touched his bare arm, and for the first time Father Tallow saw the glass tube there, filled with his own blood. How long had it been there, siphoning away his life? Quite a while, if he were judging by his own weakened state. Siano would have numbed his arm first, possibly with some ice or, more likely, with a particular type of unguent the pupils were taught to make in their very first year. Father Tallow allowed himself to feel proud, just for a moment.

  ‘Good, that is good.’ In the end, wasn’t it better to go this way? Rather than coughing his last into a bloody hanky, too weak and old to be of any use to anyone, he would die by the hand of his most talented pupil – a final demonstration of Father Tallow’s life’s work. He tried to focus on this thought, but still he was afraid. Siano’s face in the lamplight – so solemn, so absent – was not a reassuring sight.

  ‘Your heart is beating quicker, Father.’ Siano bent to examine the tube. ‘Your blood is rushing to leave you. You are not afraid, are you?’

  Father Tallow shivered. Did it have to be so cold? The cold was the worst of it.

  ‘Please, Siano.’ His voice was little more than a whisper now. The room was growing darker all the time. ‘Pull the blankets over me. I am so cold. I don’t want to die feeling this cold.’

  Siano did not move.

  ‘There is no point. And I did not think you would be afraid.’

  Father Tallow opened his mouth to ask again, to plead, but there was nothing left to push the words out. The light faded, and his last sight was of Siano’s face, her eyes watchful and empty.

  When it was done, Siano removed the old man’s head, carving the sigils faster this time, barely thinking about it. She’d always had a good memory. As she worked, she imagined what her brothers and sisters would think when they found Tallow decapitated in his own bed, the silk sheets and thick carpet soaked in blood. She hoped it would put the wind up them.

  ‘Yes, good, very good.’ The voice came through even clearer this time, almost as though she could hear it in her head. ‘This was very fine indeed. He was afraid of you at the end, did you know that? I can still taste it in the room. A very fine type of suffering.’

  ‘I did it well,’ said Siano. ‘He was afraid, but he was also proud.’

  The voice chuckled. ‘I’m sure that was of great comfort to him as he bled all over his own bedcovers.’

  Siano shifted. The room stank of blood now, a thick mineral smell like copper pennies. Surely someone else in the House of Patience would smell it soon, and she would have to be gone before then.

  ‘What is our next move, my lord?’

  ‘Oh, you must come and find me next, Siano. Come and find me in Skaldshollow. We’re going to have such fun.’

  18

  Nuava walked down the corridor hurriedly, one hand on her pocket. Tamlyn had given her the knife, muttering something about it being the right tool for the job, but she hadn’t met Nuava’s eyes, and had turned away when she asked more questions. Now the knife was a weight in her pocket, and it was heavier than she’d been expecting, in more ways than one.

  ‘He is already dead,’ she told herself again. She kept her eyes forward, concentrating on getting this task done without delay. ‘It won’t matter to him either way.’

  Nuava nodded to the guard on the door. ‘I am here on the Prophet’s business.’

  His eyes widened slightly at that. And he doesn’t even know about the knife, she thought.

  Inside the cell the body of the Narhl prisoner slumped on a narrow straw bed, a lifeless sack. A sack of bones, she thought grimly. Her brother was standing over him, scratching words onto a length of parchment. He looked up and saw her, his brow creasing in immediate worry.

  ‘Nuava? What are you doing here?’ He shifted slightly so that he blocked her view of the body, although she’d already seen the various burn marks streaked like sooty trails across the man’s grey and white flesh. ‘This isn’t something you want to see.’

  She lifted her chin, holding her face still and composed.

  ‘Tamlyn sent me. I have a task to perform for her.’ She stepped neatly around him, peering down at the body. ‘Did he die from – what we did to him?’

  Bors sighed and put the parchment on a small blood-stained table.

  ‘No. I think it was the heat, in the end. I keep telling them, it’s too warm down here, with all the lamps.’ He looked away from her, his lips pursed. ‘The Narhl can’t cope with it, not when they’re already injured.’

  Nuava bent down and pressed her fingers to the man’s arm. This one had been a lone rider, scouting around the edges of Skaldshollow on the back of a wyvern. One of the war-werkens had been lucky with a shot from a catapult, and they’d brought him back to the Hollow before he’d regained consciousness. His skin was smooth, and still quite warm. She blinked. Of course, a healthy Narhl would be cold, she told herself.

  ‘What are you doing down here, Nuava?’ Bors came over to her. ‘I need to make an inventory, a report to the werken council. Everything Tamlyn needs to know will be in that.’

  Nuava straightened up. ‘Tamlyn wishes me to remove his fingers. His finger bones. I’m to bring them, cleaned, to the Prophet.’

  There was a moment’s silence. She didn’t quite dare look at her brother’s face.

  ‘You’re doing what?’

  She cleared her throat. ‘You heard me, Bors. Just leave me alone, all right? I can do this.’

  ‘What could the Prophet possibly need those for?’

  ‘It is all part of the training.’ She reached into her pocket and drew out the knife. ‘What does it matter, anyway? It’s just his fingers, and he’s dead now.’

  Bors laid a hand on her arm. He looked bewildered. ‘How can this be part of the training, Nuava? How can this have anything to do with crafting the Edeian?’

  ‘And you know about that, do you?’ she snapped, shaking his hand off. ‘You are not her pupil, as much as you would like to be.’ He frowned at that, and looked down at his feet for a moment; a classic sign that her brother was struggling to control his temper. ‘Bors, these are the ways of the Edeian. They are not for everyone, and it is not my place to question our aunt. She is Mistress Crafter.’

  ‘You know this is wrong.’ He made her meet his eyes. His broad face was tense, his eyes pleading. ‘No one hates the Narhl more than I. They’ve terrorised us, taken the Heart-Stone, killed our people. Our mother and father, Nuava. But desecrating their corpses? We call them savages, worse than animals, but what are we if we carve their bodies into pieces? Nuava, the Prophet –’ he lowered his voice, glancing uneasily at the door – ‘I’m not sure we should be following everything she says. We don’t even know where she came from.’

  ‘Shall I tell her you said that?’ Nuava immediately regretted the words; such a thi
ng was an open threat, and to her own brother. But she had a task to do, and his discomfort was less painful than Tamlyn’s fury should she fail. ‘I’m sure people have asked before where the Prophet came from, and why we should listen to her. Do you know where they are now, Bors?’

  For a long moment he said nothing. Nuava found herself wanting to look at the corpse again, anything to avoid the pain in her brother’s eyes. This is my path, she told herself. If I must walk it alone, then that is what I will do.

  ‘Tamlyn is no longer in control,’ he said. ‘You know that, I know that. We are trusting our lives, and the lives of all the people of Skaldshollow to . . . to that thing that calls itself the Prophet.’

  Nuava drew in a sharp breath. Instinctively, she glanced at the door to see if the guard was still there but he had gone.

  ‘Bors, you can’t—’

  ‘It hurts me to say it, but our aunt has lost her way. This –’ he gestured to the dead Narhl – ‘has nothing to do with crafting the Edeian, and everything to do with whatever sick game the Prophet is playing. You are too clever, Nuava, not to know this. Don’t be so proud that you ignore it.’

  She opened her mouth, not at all certain what she was going to say, but without another word he walked past her into the corridor and was gone, leaving her alone with the dead man.

  Nuava looked down at the knife. She’d been gripping it so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

  ‘It is a simple enough task,’ she told herself. Her voice sounded very small to her own ears. ‘Once I have done this, Tamlyn will know I am serious about being a crafter. And it’s not like he’ll be using them again.’

  She stood for a moment, taking a number of deep, steadying breaths, and then she bent to the task.

  After wrapping the severed fingers in a piece of cloth, she took them to the small home she shared with Bors, and shut herself in the kitchen. Luckily, he wasn’t home, and she set about stripping the flesh with one of her own paring knives. While she did this she pictured the werken she would someday build: tall and mighty, greater than anything Tamlyn had created. Next she boiled up some water in their small black cauldron and threw the fingers in. While they tossed in the heated water she washed her hands repeatedly, wearing their small block of soap down to a nub.