A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “Hey now, let’s not get carried away with—” Maroto began, trying to wriggle free, but the original horror reached out again with its ringed hand. Which was better than the dagger but not by much … and in fact might have been substantially worse, as fingertips that felt carved of ice first massaged Maroto’s sweaty brow and then began to press into the flesh. Had the pain been unbearable the experience might have been borne, but the feeling of the fingers gently pushing through skin and then into his skull barely hurt at all … and that made it even more horrible, Maroto writhing from an indescribable sensation the likes of which he had never before experienced, grinding his teeth so hard they felt primed to explode.

  Then the horror of the moment fell away as Maroto was again overwhelmed by visions, but this time they came not from the ring-fingered Tothan but his own violated brainmeat. Didn’t make them any better; hells, they might be worse, ’cause the carnage he saw repeated in his mind’s eye wasn’t some monster’s prophecy but his own personal history—memories of murder and worse, as he helped Cold Zosia win the Crimson Throne. Then came the conjuring of the devils they bound in Emeritus, and for the first time since the torrent of visions washed over him Maroto was able to catch his breath, even as he sensed the Tothan catching his.

  The ancient didn’t fully break from the trance-like state, the interruption too mild for that, but it did give Maroto just enough time to realize the interloper in his brain must not be aware of what was coming next, that he was as much a passenger in this stream of memories as Maroto himself … and if no one was driving this runaway cart, that meant a quick-witted barbarian might grab the reins. He tried it out, thinking as hard as he could of his old theater troupe who had been so big on method acting—and it worked! When they came into sharp relief he focused on the time he and Two-eyed Jacques and Carla had set the playhouse of their rivals on fire. Right enough, the memory presented itself as clear as the night it went down, the air thick with smoke and the stench of burning wigs, the screams of the trapped patrons and the laughter of his friends, and at the edges of his now-aching skull Maroto was sure he could feel a shiver of pleasure from the Tothan peeper.

  You like that, don’t you? Maroto thought to himself, and to his guest. You said you’re looking for proof, yeah? I don’t know if you wanted proof of how helpful I’d be, or proof of why I’d sell out the Star to you freaks, but there’s plenty of both in this rotten old keg. Drink it up!

  And now that he had the hang of things, Maroto did his best to drown the mind-reading old monster under a tidal wave of his baddest behavior. Happy memories of Purna and the crew had no place here, nor did lusty thoughts of Choi or Bang, nor did he share a single reminiscence of his nigh-constant self-pity and hollow pledges of reformation. His many wasted years nursing a bug habit were excised from this version of his past, as were his good deeds, few and far between though they might have been. No, he had a job to do here, and that was convincing this deathless wizard or whatever he was that the Mighty Maroto was an asset to any war against humanity.

  The fall of Khemmis, the fight for Nottap, and the executions he had carried out in Eyvind.

  The taking of Wild Throne, where he had led the suicide squad in charge of leading the Imperials into a Cobalt trap.

  The madness at Windhand, the first time Maroto saw Crimson soldiers go berserk and start attacking each other instead of the enemy, eating alive anyone they could lay hands on, even themselves.

  Finally the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, where history repeated itself, and then his epic wrath and pledges of vengeance against his former friends, first against Zosia and then against Hoartrap. The Tothan really seemed to like that last bit, Maroto reliving his fury, recapturing his willingness to burn the world, if that was what it took to avenge Purna’s preventable death on the battlefield. And with nothing else to offer from his long catalogue of crimes, he tried something new—instead of a memory of past violence, he conjured up a vision of his own, one where he donned a suit of sharp black beetlemail and led the Tothan legions against the people of the Star, using all his experiences to show them how and where to attack each Arm, relishing in the slaughter, the sacrifice, knowing as he did that he, too, would be put to the blade, but only at the end … this was his reward. This was his reward. This was his reward.

  “This is your reward,” the spider-haired woman moaned in his face, Maroto shuddering as the memory-voyeur slipped its ghost hand out of his skull. He somehow knew that flesh and blood fingers hadn’t actually penetrated him, knew he wasn’t dying of a massive head wound … but it sure as fuck felt like it. “The first shall be the last! You shall volunteer your every secret, you shall volunteer your supple flesh, and so shall the first become the last!”

  “Last in line, anyway,” muttered Maroto as the fell creatures helped him to his feet. He should have been disgusted with himself for collaborating with these things, for selling the whole damn Star to buy himself a little time, but all he felt was relief. This was the role he’d always been destined to play, and Maroto was star material from way back. It was time to get evil. “Got some conditions before I’ll pledge myself to the cause, though.”

  “Connnnnnnditions?” the ring-fingered Tothan screamed, turning back to Maroto with wrath writ large and clear on his white face. Some of the others resumed their deranged laughter, the bloated man bleating his incredulity. Even the moaning woman recoiled from him.

  “Yeah,” said Maroto, swaying in place in the oozing clearing of broken meat fans, surrounded by primordial, hostile, and obviously insane Tothan priests. He was about to find out if they were just toying with him or if they were really taking him on board. “I’ve got three underlings on the island. I’ll tell you where they’re hiding and you take them alive, then turn them over to me. That’s my first condition—once I’ve got my squad back together we can talk about what else I need, and what we can offer in exchange.”

  The ancients laughed harder and a few others wandered away from the scene, but Ghosthand, Bloato, and Spidertresses seemed to be discussing it. Now that he’d had one of them reach into his skull on top of showing him all those ugly visions Maroto was getting properly attuned to their way of conversing, projected thoughts brushing past his deaf ear like whispered voices tickling his good one … and tickling his nose in the process. He hadn’t noticed it before, given the overall fustiness of this place, but now that he was tuned-in he was sure that each one of these things gave off their own uniquely fetid funk that seemed to buoy their intentions back and forth. He tried to lean in to the faint sensations and their accompanying odors, wondering if he could somehow learn their nonverbal tongue, when the spider-haired crone snapped her hand in his direction, screamed something he didn’t understand, and fell upon him with all her fury.

  Well, so much for his brilliant plan—it had been worth a try, anyway. As she lashed out with talon-like black fingernails Maroto stepped into her assault instead of away from it, meaning to grab her wrist with one hand and knock her shriveled head off with the other. He’d take down as many of these shriveled-up Tothans as he could before their minions overwhelmed him, because now that his initial horror at their appearance and powers of headfuckery had passed, he wagered their ancient bodies were no match for his mighty mitts. He’d take them apart with his bare fucking hands, one by one until—

  Spidertresses moved so fucking fast Maroto would have felt dizzy even if she hadn’t backhanded him so hard in the temple he went flying, the meat reef that cushioned his landing bursting like giant blisters. He lay in the wet, warm wreckage, too stunned to move, and right around the time he realized he should be doing something she came for him again. He tried to fight her off but felt as helpless as a babe, arms that looked frail as twigs slapping down his defenses. He was too focused on trying to beat her back to even cry out, but she sobbed for him even as she mounted her quarry.

  Pointy fingers closed around his throat, her eyes gleaming in her skeletal rictus, dozens of grey spiders tumbling
from her hair onto his face, into his open, gasping mouth. Even as his world grew bright and fuzzy and desperate from lack of air, his end at hand, he could feel the little blighters biting his lips and tongue and the roof of his mouth, white-hot pinpricks, and he braced himself for one last attempt to save himself, to throw off the sprightly crone who straddled his gut, pinning his elbows beneath her knobby knees …

  But his body wouldn’t listen. It was over.

  Except it wasn’t?

  “They call you Devilskinner,” said a regal voice as the woman stopped choking him. Her hand remained around his throat, but now the grip felt tender instead of cruel, fingertips stroking his bruised skin as he gasped the muggy vapors of this living fen. As everything came back into focus he saw it was still Spidertresses who spoke to him, and his flush of relief at being granted a reprieve turned to ice-cold dread as he saw the changes that had overtaken her, slight though they were. Bloodshot and wild but still human eyes had turned as black as the inside of a crypt. Swift, jerky movements had become slow and deliberate. And most unsettling of all, that voice … the shrill screams of the Tothans had been unpleasant, yes, but this deep, rich timbre was so, so much worse. “You have trafficked with our kind before, mortal. You have not only gazed into the First Dark, you have drawn forth our gifts.”

  Unsure if he should answer this at all, or how, Maroto just gulped. It seemed a suitable response for the occasion, though he ended up swallowing a few spiders. He was so captivated and terrified by the creature atop him that he scarcely noticed.

  “Scheme away, little ape,” it told him, grinning licentiously as the hand at his neck moved up to stroke his deaf ear … and instantly healing that irksome war wound, so that he heard its proclamation in perfect stereo. “Serve or betray, fight or flee, first sacrifice or last in line, it matters not—you are ours, and very, very soon we will welcome you home. Countless eons after this world has gone as quiet as all the others we shall keep you pressed to our breast, your reward as endless as our love … But first we must reap our harvest, and you will bear witness to the end of mortal days upon the Star.”

  “Thank you,” Maroto blubbered, believing every word this devil spoke. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  CHAPTER

  7

  Zosia noticed the change as soon as she stepped up into the street. The frosty air still carried the tang of smoke, but unlike the night of her arrival it was mild enough to merely be the scent of a city, not necessarily a burning one. Choplicker had led her through a secret passage that opened into the rear of an alley several blocks away from the actual face of Castle Diadem, and as she followed her devil out to the main thoroughfare she saw they had been right to use a less obvious exit. At the end of the street a small mob was clustered in front of one of the castle’s many gates, using a team of oxen to try to raise it. If she hadn’t known how many more thick doors barred by stone and sorcery lay between them and the true interior of the castle she might have been concerned for Indsorith, alone in the great sepulcher of her palace, but as carefully as the Black Pope had locked up on her way out, it would take ages for anyone not in possession of a powerful and obliging devil to gain egress. Choplicker turned the other way out of the alley, and Zosia followed him into the city.

  That first night had been far too hectic for her to appreciate being back in Diadem after all these years, but now that the riots had calmed and she was able to stroll along the quiet streets she was struck by how little the place had changed. The towering, close-packed buildings that made canyons out of every avenue looked so dilapidated that only being boxed in by their neighbors kept them from tipping over. Indeed, just about every other block there was a high, accidental arch where a teetering building had listed forward only to have its fall arrested by the structure across the street. Fire had recently gutted many of the rowhouses, and the whole city would have probably burned down if not for the perpetual drizzle of ash-stained rain that even now went to work dyeing Choplicker’s coat the same color as his soul. Assuming he had one.

  The labyrinthine streets were completely empty, but faces peered out from behind shutters, and conversations were carried on far overhead as folk leaned out their windows or lounged on precarious balconies to address their neighbors across the street. Occasionally an insult or challenge would be hurled down at Zosia, and once a bit of masonry that might have brained her if Choplicker hadn’t diverted it with a swish of his tail, but she never caught sight of her presumably juvenile harassers. Only when she saw her wavering reflection in an oily puddle that filled one of the many claustrophobic courtyards did she realize that she might have been inviting more than the inevitable amount of unfriendly attention one attracts when venturing into rough neighborhoods: her dark hooded cloak looked a bit like a novice’s cowl, the scarf she’d pulled over her mouth and nose might’ve been a Chainwitch’s mask, and the large hammer she carried over one shoulder to discourage muggers was engraved with holy iconography. She had been worried someone might recognize her as the former queen, but really now, she looked like a Chainite. So much for low profile.

  Glancing back with one of his lewd smiles, Choplicker turned into an arcade that opened onto the courtyard. The wide gallery was clogged with heaps of broken masonry, rotten timber, and stinking refuse, some of it reaching to the arched ceiling, but there was a narrow path winding through the debris. As soon as she stepped out of the rain into the arcade she heard a sharp whistle from the upper stories of one of the surrounding buildings, and a responding trill came from somewhere ahead, within the gallery. She must be getting close to something good, if instead of simply announcing her arrival the locals were trying to scare her off it.

  She followed Choplicker into the close passage, the smell of a rained-out campfire now replaced with that of the black mold that bloomed throughout the garbage. It reminded her of a catacomb, only less pleasant, and she was glad they didn’t travel deep into the arcade before her devil led her to a secret passage far less effectively concealed than the one they had used to quit the castle. Even if Choplicker hadn’t stopped in front of the too-sturdy grandmother clock set too precisely in a too carefully stacked mountain of rubble, she would have suspected the spot simply based on all the footprints in the grime that led to and from its thick walnut waist. Zosia reached out to test the door but Choplicker warned her off with a bark, and pursing her lips, she made a big show of winding up her hammer to bash the thing in.

  “None of that, now!” cried a voice from behind the heavily oxidized face of the clock.

  “So you’re going to open up, then?” she asked, imagining how demented she might seem to a casual observer. The old lady talks to clocks. “I’m here to see Boris.”

  “Not a Boris in the house,” said the unseen bouncer. “Just a dozen heavily armed bruisers who pay me to see they’re not disturbed while they take their tea. Now piss off or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “Ugggggh, you’re really going to make me say it, aren’t you?” Zosia was talking to herself, but Choplicker answered with a happy snort at her annoyance.

  “Count of three, mum, and if you’re not gone—”

  “Zosia lives,” she said, self-consciously glancing up and down the cramped track. What an embarrassment.

  There was a pause from the clock, and then it said, “Come again?”

  Clearing her throat and pointing a threatening finger at Choplicker, she leaned closer and repeated the phrase Boris had insisted was the universal password used by Diadem’s rebels. “Zosia. Lives.”

  There was an even longer silence, and then the increasingly familiar-sounding voice said, “Still didn’t catch that, I’m afraid. Speak up a bit. Really enunciate.”

  “Zosia lives,” she growled, “but Boris won’t if he keeps jerking me around.”

  “We got to stop meeting like this, Yer Majesty,” said the frostburned little man as the great door of the long-clock popped open and he ushered her inside his burrow with a bow. “Word gets out t
hat your devil fancies the scent of my trail and nobody will invite me to their parties anymore.”

  “And here I thought you couldn’t wait to introduce me to your friends,” said Zosia as Choplicker stuck his nose in Boris’s crotch in the way she knew he absolutely hated.

  “Don’t have much choice in the matter now that you’ve arrived,” said Boris, hands hovering on either side of Choplicker’s face as if he weren’t sure which was more dangerous, to push the devil away or scratch behind his ears. She noticed that while he still wore the ostentatious auburn cloak of dyed gorilla skin and the lemur hair vest she had scared up back at the Lark’s Tongue camp, he didn’t carry the battle-ax she’d insisted he take from Ulver’s smithy. “But looking on the bright side, I do stand to collect on a number of wagers as to whether or not I actually met the Stricken Queen, so let’s get you inside and introduced to those who’s running Diadem now that the Chain’s left and the Crown’s folded.”

  She ducked inside after Choplicker and pulled the door of the clock shut behind her until it clicked. The false trash heap housed a cramped cave, with a small table and a pair of stools lit by a stinking cod lamp—the catch of the day in Desolation Sound was so greasy that wicks were wiggled into the mouths of the fish and used to provide cheap if rancorous light. “Impressive use of space, Boris. It may be smaller than your tent back at the camp but it’s every bit as smelly.”

  “Ho ho,” said Boris, and when Choplicker left off him to go snuffle the fumes from the cod lamp he went to the rear wall and rapped his knuckles on an exposed beam. “My own rooms aren’t so fancy as this foyer, alas. I figured you’d be coming for me soon enough, so put the word out that if a crone and her hound came creeping around to come and let me answer the door. Had my suspicions you weren’t done with me yet.”

  A seam of light appeared in the wall of the cave and a more skillfully hidden door swung inward. Boris ushered her into the open floor of what looked to be a tavern abutting the arcade, where a dozen big bruisers did indeed sit around tables taking their tea. A stout pair of women rose from the bench, and after giving Zosia the hard-eye went back out to take Boris’s place on guard duty in the clock-cave. None of the rest paid them much mind, and after snagging a bottle of rotgut Boris led her through yet another trapdoor in the back of the bar and down through a maze of sunken storerooms and corridors that bore a closer resemblance to mineshafts than to hallways … and every time they passed another guard that damn password got invoked, with Boris bowing to his companion as he said it just to twist the knife.