A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “What’d I tell you, Yob—Zosia lives, and I’ll be collecting those five krones directly, please and thank you.”

  “Zosia lives, Alaka, and that’s a tael you owe me.”

  “A very fine morning to you, Miss Pnathval, and if I might trouble you for three shiny pieces of six? No no, not a loan, but you see, well … Zosia lives.”

  Not a one of them actually produced payment, even when Zosia begrudgingly acknowledged her identity to the incredulous guards, but Boris didn’t seem to mind much. “What comes around goes around, and once you’re acknowledged by the powers that be they won’t be able to welch. Let them think the con’s long for now; we both know it’s as short as your temper.”

  “You didn’t waste much time using my name to turn a profit,” Zosia observed.

  “I’m not one for waste,” said Boris, popping his thumbs through the drawstring of his orange cloak. “But really, anyone who wanted to call me a liar deserves to be shaken out of a silver or two, after all I been through to bring you here. They’re the ones who coined the phrase, after all, so you’d think they’d be the first ones to believe that … wait for it … Zosia lives!”

  “If you can call this a living,” said Zosia, taking a pull on his bottle of turnipwine as they passed a final guard and entered a dank, circular stone chamber with a well in the center. “How big a cut of your winnings do I get when you finally collect?”

  “Same as whatever percentage of the royal treasury you see fit to grant me, for arranging this meet between Diadem’s past and its future.”

  “See, Boris, you never give me any credit—I’m not just the past, I’m the sort what comes back to haunt you.” Seeing Choplicker’s ears prick up and his tail wag as they came to the edge of the well where a spiral staircase descended into the black rock of the city’s base, Zosia cocked her own ear and heard a hubbub echoing up from below, like a host of devils cavorting in the deep. “What’s down there? A gladiator pit?”

  “Close,” said Boris. “All the different factions who think they ought to run the city come together for a moot.”

  “Ugh,” said Zosia, who would have preferred taking on ten comers in a battle royal to a political squabble. “Adding me to that mix is just going to be tossing peat onto the pyre. I tracked you down to get some answers about what the hell happened here, not raise a bunch more for whoever’s trying to pick up the pieces. Walk me back to the castle and fill me in as we go, and best of luck to whoever wants to try ruling this damn dump. I’m thick, I’ll admit it, but not thick enough to stick my head in the same noose I already slipped.”

  “Not a chance,” said Boris, pointing to the stairs. “You’re going down there, Yer Majesty, so no sense dragging your slippers.”

  “Excuse me?” Zosia had thought she was too burnt out to feel strongly about much of anything, but being ordered about by this punk set her teeth to grinding … and not just with his lip, but also at her own foolishness. The runt had seemed such a minor threat it hadn’t occurred to her to be chary as he led her deeper and deeper into an unknown force’s territory, past dozens of armed guards. Choplicker finally looked his old self again, after his mysterious errand to retrieve the battered Carnelian Crown had left him weaker than she’d ever seen him … but whomever Boris answered to must know who Zosia was, and that she had Choplicker with her, and yet they had still admitted her to their sanctum. There were legends all over the Star about rituals and relics and such that could allegedly counteract a devil’s power, so might they actually have some method of overcoming her unholy protector? Had she just come trotting into a trap of her own volition?

  “You’re my miracle, Queen Zosia,” said Boris with a sneer, and Zosia moved to shove the scheming weasel down the stairs when she was brought up short by Choplicker, of all fucking things—the devil got in her way as he ambled over to sniff an appealing stain on the dirty floor, and while it only slowed her for a moment it was enough for the oblivious Boris to finish his thought. “Or are your words so empty you don’t even remember them as soon as they’ve fallen out your lips?”

  “I … what now?” Zosia had no idea what he was talking about, but he sounded so sure of himself she bit the inside of her cheek and tried to puzzle it out.

  “Back with the Cobalts, that pretty song you sung me?” He looked vulnerable, like it had been a damn fine speech but he needed to hear it again to keep his nerve up. Problem was she’d been so damn tired for so damn long she still couldn’t remember a damn thing. Reading her face, he filled her in. “When you and your devil here came for me in the camp, you looked me in the eye and said you were sorry, and you were ready to listen to me.”

  She had said that? Didn’t sound bloody likely … but then it seemed even less likely he’d invent such a tall tale.

  “You said you were ready to work with us to fix Diadem, to fix the Empire.” There was a pitiful shine of hope about the man, and it looked downright unnatural on his grubby features. “You said we had to work together to get rid of the Burnished Chain first and foremost, right, that you and me would come here to Diadem, and my people and your people would team up to take down the church. ’Cept since the Chainites went ahead and removed themselves from the song we can jump straight to the other things you promised. The ones what involve making things better?”

  By the six devils she’d bound, that did sound familiar, even though she couldn’t picture herself saying it. More than the specific words was the feeling behind them, though, the optimism she must have used to sugarcoat her call to arms—the promise that there would come a day when the foes of the common folk were cast down and the rebuilding could commence. No wonder she couldn’t remember her pep talk; it had been hollow sentiment designed to get a heel-dragging heretic to sign on for a suicide mission. How many years had it been since she had honestly believed there would come a day when the yoke was lifted from the Imperial peasantry? How many decades?

  “If you think the Chain’s gone for good you people are dreaming,” Zosia heard herself say, her tongue apparently toxic on reflex at this point. “Wherever they went I guarantee they’ll be back, or someone worse will take their place. That’s how it works.”

  “Maybe that’s how it worked in your day, Zosia, but your day’s done,” said Boris, looking contemptuously at the former queen of the Crimson Empire. “The city’s ours now, and maybe we’ll hold it for a week or maybe we’ll hold it for a thousand years, but I guarantee you this much—our reign will be better than yours or any crown-wearing fuck-buckler who came before or since. So come down and lend a hand or piss off back to counting the days till you can use Portolés’s hammer to bust heads instead of chains, but if you go you find your own way out. I’ve got work to do.”

  Zosia looked down at her devil, and her devil looked back at her, and she asked herself if the curl of his lips had always struck her as an evil smile because that was all she was expecting to see there.

  “You must have heard some good speeches in your day, Boris,” she said at last, nodding faintly at the stair. Not like she had anything better to do with her day, even if she was completely fucking terrified of meeting the people who had thought her a martyr to their cause when in fact she’d sold them out for a cushy retirement package in the Kutumbans. She deserved a lot worse than anything they could give her, though, and had the consolation that she’d already lost more than they could ever take. “Let’s go, then, before I do something smart like change my mind.”

  Boris grinned as wide as Choplicker and hurried down the stair, nattering on the whole while. “Glad you came when you did; even a day ago things were craaaazy down here. They’d been trying to quiet the riots ’fore we even arrived, if you can believe it, which I scarcely can given the state of the place. Hard to imagine all that fury was just the tail end of it all, and the worst was done a fortnight past. They said—”

  “They being who, anyway, Boris?” she asked as the voices rumbling up the stair swelled to a roar. “Who are these factions squabbling
over control of the city?”

  “Well, my people have their board, right, but then there are the rival thieves’ guilds and other gangs, and the loyal Imperial soldiers who hid out when they saw which way the tide was flowing in the castle, and the holy-minded wildies the Chain left behind, and whatever rebel clergy they saved from the crucifixion forests, and the beggars’ society, and the nobles and merchants who bought off the lynch mobs, and—”

  “I get the idea,” said Zosia, feeling increasingly imprisoned as they descended through the oily light of the cod lamps set in the stairway’s alcoves. She was practically shouting to be heard now over the cacophony from below. “Surprised they’re not just murdering each other.”

  “Well, the day is young!” Boris was shouting now, as he reached the bottom of the stairs and greeted another guard. “Zosia lives!”

  “What is this place!” Zosia asked as they emerged into a huge but crudely carved hall in the obsidian heart of the mountain, the guttering sea of lamps held by thousands of hands casting a low cloud that must not have come close to reaching the distant ceiling, given the acoustics of the place.

  “Supposed to be a ghetto!” said Boris. “King Kaldruut ordered it! Wanted to clear out the tenements! Drive our kind down here! But you stopped it!”

  “Who did?” Zosia’s ears were ringing, and it sounded like he’d said—

  “You did! When you became queen! Remember!”

  It sounded more like an order than a question, and sure enough, it did ring a distant gong way, way back in the recesses of Zosia’s memory. Kaldruut had implemented so many devildamned bad ideas that she’d put a stop to it was tough to keep track of them, really. “Why meet here?! A symbol?!”

  “Only open space big enough for us all!”

  “Oh!” And remembering another of her edicts that had flown in the face of Kaldruut and the rest of the corrupt politicians’ ethos, she said, “I know a better place we can go!”

  “Eh?” Boris looked excited, like he might have an inkling but didn’t dare voice it lest his dream be spoiled.

  “Got the keys to the castle, comrade!” Zosia shouted, and Choplicker barked his confirmation. How Indsorith would react to the unwashed masses crowding into Castle Diadem was a bridge she would cross when she got to it, but she figured the woman would approve. After all, Indsorith was the second-smartest queen to ever rule the Crimson Empire.

  CHAPTER

  8

  The bastard angels had a terrible beauty to them, the grace of the Fallen Mother evident even in the forms twisted by their father’s corruption. Neither the great flying seraphim nor the silent soldiers who rode them had appeared in Y’Homa’s vision on the Day of Becoming, but these black-scaled angels were obviously of similar lineage to the swarming cherubs she had beheld when Diadem Gate became a flickering window to paradise. Yet even if she had glimpsed these beings during the ritual itself or the constant dreams that followed, it scarcely would have made their appearance less stupefying. How could the mortal mind prepare itself for the visage of the divine? Staring in awe at the seraph that delivered her to the beating heart of the Garden of the Star, she’d found herself at a loss as to how she might describe it in words or even thoughts; it simply was, in all its winged, tentacled glory.

  When it had lifted her up from the prow of her ship and carried her through the air she had felt such ecstasy as her heart had never known, gazing down on her new kingdom and marveling at how it was at once familiar yet mysterious. Instead of mundane boats the ancient harbor of Alunah teemed with great barnacle-flanked leviathans that bobbed beside the white stone pylons, black-armored figures swarming the breached titans. Soon the old city fell behind them as Y’Homa’s angelic guardian delivered her inland, and she basked in her certitude as she relived the visions from Diadem Gate … up to a point.

  Instead of taking her directly to the Allmother’s waiting brood of warrior angels who would cleanse the Star of sin, she was flown deep into the verdant mountains, directly into the dripping mouth of a cave. Any uncertainty she felt over this change in prophecy was quickly alleviated as she saw the same ivory-faced, ebon-shelled cherubs from her prophecy scuttling all along the walls of her new sanctum. Y’Homa was then delivered to a bath where unseen spirits divested her of her last mortal trappings, her mitre and scepter left in the pool as they cleansed her impure flesh and anointed her with pungent oils. It was thrilling. Finally she was gifted with gloves of gossamer and a ceremonial yoke from yet another of the Fallen Mother’s angelic children, and proceeded through the glistening tunnels to claim the throne from whence she would rule the Garden of the Star.

  It was a longer walk than she would have anticipated, and the tightness of the coils upon her throat made it difficult to breathe the humid air, but these were mortal concerns, and she pushed them away … or tried to, anyway. She frankly hadn’t expected the houses of the holy to have such a powerful odor about them, or to be made of pulsing meat, so far as that went. She was no stranger to strangeness, being a living miracle herself, but with each step she and her silent escort took into this otherworldly realm Y’Homa felt her unease growing.

  Which was the point, obviously. Obviously. She had been naïve to assume her final test was her arrival at the harbor, before she had even met her first angel. The Fallen Mother presented the Garden as such a nightmarish place to her heir so that Y’Homa could reaffirm her worthiness, striding proud and confident through these grotesque halls. She would not be afraid. She would not. This was her birthright, her destiny, and when she sat upon the Allmother’s throne she would see this place for the paradise it truly was … yes, of course! That was it! How foolish of her, to think any mortal eyes could behold the true majesty of heaven—the sinner sees naught but sin, wherever she turns her gaze, and being still trapped in the world of the flesh, flesh was all she could see. The filth of the Star was a veil occluding her eyes, a mask that must be scrubbed free … but the rituals of cleansing were obviously well under way.

  Let the tests continue! Y’Homa walked straighter, smiling wider as she felt the cherub’s yoke scrape against her mortal neck. She had been born a sinner, like all her kind, but she had been chosen by the Fallen Mother to rise above her kind. She embodied the six sacred virtues, and every day from the time she could speak she had carried out the sixty-six devotions. And now her reward was at hand.

  The Black Pope’s respectfully silent attendants delivered her at last to a vast cathedral. The angel baby who had woven her yoke and gloves flitted down from the roof to embrace Y’Homa’s naked back. She tried to find her breath as she surveyed what lay before her, the cherub wrapping its long legs around her bare breasts and ribs.

  This place was no mere cathedral. Far out across the wondrous garden of shimmering fans there sprawled a glowing lake, and from this lake there rose a palace of bone and muscle. The top of the ziggurat was blurred by distance and the haze of vapors rising from the steaming floor of the majestic chamber, but Y’Homa knew from the Chain Canticles what must await her. It was written that the throne of the Allmother rose from a lake of fire, and lo, another prophecy was fulfilled. The Black Pope had come home.

  Y’Homa only hesitated long enough for the cherub to finish getting comfortable on her back before she descended a stairway growing from the wall of the vast throne room. Eager though she was to assume her seat, she forced herself to keep a slow and stately pace as she followed a meandering path through this, the true Garden of the Star. The play of light from the living votive growths made Y’Homa feel like a happy babe again, delighted by the mobile of angels that hung over her crib.

  Emerging from the forest of luminous flesh, she crossed a bridge of braided sinew that spanned the radiant lake. Huge cherubs scuttled along its spongy shores, and even greater angels churned through the thick yellow waters, but Y’Homa kept her gaze on the ziggurat before her. It rose like an island from the holy lake, and as she stepped from the end of the bridge to the bottom step of the towering edifice a g
lowing wave broke over her bare feet. It did not burn her. It could not burn her.

  Y’Homa climbed the ziggurat, reverently keeping her eyes fixed on her own feet until she at last reached the top. Only when there were no more warm bone steps to climb did she look up from her saffron-stained feet and behold the throne room of the Allmother. And she gasped. Instead of a single throne, a semicircle of them jutted from the top of the ziggurat like the points of a crown.

  Most of them were already occupied.

  Jarring though it was, this was by no means the first discrepancy between Y’Homa’s expectations and the true nature of paradise. A lesser mortal might have felt uncertainty in the face of a ring of ancient figures occupying the sacred space set aside for her, or even fear at their sinister appearance.

  Y’Homa was not a lesser mortal. She was the greatest human being who had ever lived. As she stepped forward to demand answers from this unexpected council, she felt only righteous wrath at her uncle for failing to accurately describe what awaited her upon Jex Toth. Crucifixion had been too good for the false pope.

  She silently counted thirteen thrones, all but one with a wasted occupant sprawled ignobly in the baroque organic seats. It felt like a grotesque parody of the Holy See, these hideous individuals even less appealing than the twelve cardinals who had forever been advising and lying and wheedling for influence.