A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “Oh,” said Maroto, because that just went to prove that it didn’t matter if you were a barbarian from the Frozen Savannahs or a baroness from sunny Azgaroth, you couldn’t escape your connection to your family, couldn’t suppress the part of you that demanded closure even when you and they couldn’t be more different. Besides being intent on killing each other as horribly as possible, that was another thing all peoples of the Star seemed to share, another unavoidable wart of the human condition, and … and … “Sorry, did you say your kinfolk was named Colonel Hjortt? Sharp-eyed older gent, been with the Fifteenth out of Azgaroth since back when Kaldruut was king?”

  “That is he,” said the featureless lace scarecrow, turning her clock up to study Maroto’s features. “Or was, to be more precise, since he was not among the few prisoners the Cobalts left behind when they abandoned their camp, and to hear the reports precious few survived the initial engagement to begin with. You did know him, then?”

  “Well, let me level with you, Baroness … Hjortt?”

  “Lupitera is fine, Maroto.”

  “All right, then, Baroness Lupitera—”

  “No, just Lupitera. We are both veterans with our better days behind us, Maroto, no need to squander even a moment more of those few we have left with meaningless honorifics.” There was an archness to her voice that Maroto found comforting, and not just that, a realness you would never hear from a Chainite or a career politician. “You knew my brother-in-law, then, from some older campaign? You and he have been on opposite sides since the time you first swung a mace, I suppose.”

  “I expect we have … or were, I guess,” said Maroto. Remembering the fury in the old man’s eyes as he lay bleeding and broken in the sparse grass of the Imperial camp in the Kutumbans, Maroto relived the shame of that night all over again, because he still could not reconcile the colonel’s vaguely familiar face with his name and rank. “So he knew me from the old days, yeah, but I honestly can’t say I recall him. But more relevant … more recently … well, shit, I don’t know if your brother-in-law ever made it to the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue.”

  She didn’t speak, the sun reflecting off the dials on her coffin-clock, and Maroto closed his eyes to do the one thing he’d had a lot of practice with in his storied careers as a rogue and a rascal, a prostitute and a performer, a captain and klutz—he gave her the bad news:

  “I was leading a Cobalt scouting party through the mountains and we got stuck between a pack of horned wolves and an Imperial encampment. We didn’t have much choice so we booked it down through camp, trying to throw the monsters off our scent, and … look, I’m not telling you this ’cause I expect you to be any more lenient with me if you don’t think it was by design. I’m just telling you how it went down.”

  “I’ll be able to tell if you fib,” said the old woman. “Pray continue.”

  “Not much else to it,” said Maroto. “We tried to sneak through undetected but that Colonel Hjortt, he recognized us. Recognized me. Had us captured. Dead to rights. But then those horned wolves we’d riled up burst onto the scene and started attacking, indiscriminate like, and your brother-in-law … well, he took down one of them, and it took my whole team to lay out the other, but it wasn’t without cost. No it was not. I had a look at him afterward, and we exchanged a few words. He remembered me, like I said, but I couldn’t place him. I promised I would, the next time I saw him, but rough as he looked I didn’t expect any future reunions were taking place in this world.”

  “I see …” said Lupitera. “I would like to think he fell fighting monsters instead of his neighbors. And if he died before the Lark’s Tongue, that would explain all those uncharacteristic breaks with protocol … I couldn’t believe he would ever turn the Burnished Chain loose like that, but this, this makes sense … Thank you, Maroto.”

  “I’d say anytime, but I don’t expect we’ll have many more opportunities,” said Maroto, seeing that the cardinals clustered around the tables looked to be about done with all this Azgarothian sunshine. Cardinal Diamond was energetically engaging his new friends, gesturing from the naked spikes at the edge of the terrace to the huddle of prisoners, a few other members of the Holy See already recumbent in daybeds, pulling their big silly hats forward to shield their eyes.

  “I understand the circumstance of your meeting was different from the scenario I initially suggested, but do you think he was happy?”

  “Huh?” Maroto had assumed she was done with him after he’d told all there was to tell, but that was another thing about the elderly—always ready to keep jawing, so long as there was an ear to latch onto. Well, Maroto was old, too, and one last chin-wag beat being impaled by a substantial margin. “The colonel, happy? Well, no. He seemed about as unhappy a man as I’ve ever seen, but in his defense he was probably so smashed up inside that his parts had stopped working … well, that and he really seemed offended I didn’t recognize him. That really put the sand in his shorts.”

  “Nobody cares to be forgotten,” said Lupitera, and as simple as the words were, and the truth behind them, her regal delivery cut right to Maroto’s marrow. He actually had gooseflesh, and not just from the sudden nip in the air as another gust came over the parapet, whistling through the spikes. “But anonymity has its advantages over infamy, as my aunt and her foul cohort hath discovered to gravest peril.”

  “Sorry, your aunt is …” Maroto blinked as Cardinal Diamond swooned, dropping his goblet to the mosaic tiles, but two Azgarothian officers caught him, easing him down onto one of the few unoccupied daybeds.

  “Nobody cares to be forgotten,” repeated the old woman with even more oomph, “but anonymity has its advantages over infamy, as my aunt and her foul cohort hath discovered to gravest peril.”

  “The grave is only perilous to those whose querulous lives are naught but a frantic scamper away from its embrace,” said Maroto. He enunciated every fucking syllable so the Chainite guards all the way in the nosebleeds could hear him perfectly as their Azgarothian counterparts ambushed them. The scuffle was brief but loud.

  “Wha …?” asked Bang, the broken gag falling off completely as she, Niki-hyun, and Dong-won all gawked at the double-cross.

  “The Avenger’s Dramedy, Act III, line what-the-fuck-ever?” said Maroto, the long-forgotten words having been drawn from his lips like a devil from the First Dark.

  “Well, I’ve never seen it before, but I am officially a fan,” said Bang as the last armored Chainite was driven to the ground and stuck through the helm with a pike.

  “Nobody has,” said Maroto, his heart doing that thing hearts do when they’re so flooded with joy they sort of break, but in a nice way. Looking down at the lace-veiled baroness, he said, “The author knew there was only one actor alive who could play Antonio, but he ran away on opening night, and they never saw each other again.”

  “Sweetheart, this play is a modern classic,” said Carla, the aristocratic bearing of the proud baroness dropped along with an octave or two. Maroto wondered if she was still wearing her clown drag under that mourning veil. “You think I don’t know how to fill a gaping role? Please. Your stage fright was the best thing that ever happened to that production. I kept expecting to see you in the stalls at one of the revivals, but that just proves I’m a better friend than you are.”

  “Never any fucking doubt of that,” said Maroto, trying to give her a hug but reaching the end of his chain. “Carla, I—”

  “Lupitera,” she said. “Carla and I don’t see much of one another these days, save when the moon is full, the manbane blooms, and the greasepaint is laced. The Baroness Lupitera Rossilini Hjortt. The First, the Last, the One, the Only.”

  “Right,” gulped Maroto. “Hjortt. So, uh, small world, and really, really sorry about your brother.”

  “In-law, and don’t be,” said Lupitera, but her brassy voice scratched a little on the end there. Calling over to the servants clearing the tables and the guards clearing the bodies, she said, “Keys, please! We don’t do chains i
n Azgaroth, burnished or otherwise.”

  “You … you just jumped the Holy See,” said Bang. It was the first time since being brought into the company of the hyper-religious navy that she had sounded remotely reverential. “Their whole fleet and thousands of crew right outside your gate, and you just jumped their asses.”

  “And I’m just getting started,” said Lupitera, shooing away the unhappy-looking Azgarothian officer who’d brought her a key ring.

  “Everyone here on board with your coup?” Dong-won asked Lupitera as the woman in red parade dress went back to helping carry off the prone cardinals. “Or maybe some of them enlisted Crimson soldiers got the fidgets about going so hard at the Chain, and to help a Cobalt to boot?”

  “For a man who’s yet to get out of irons you ask a lot of questions,” said Lupitera, turning the key in his lock.

  “Sorry,” said Dong-won as she stooped over to get the ones off his ankles. “And thanks.”

  “That’s more like it,” said Lupitera as she moved on to Niki-hyun. “And to answer your questions, young man, ever since word came down that Queen Indsorith fell and Jex Toth rose we’ve learned to stop worrying about what color flag is getting waved, so long as the hand that holds it looks human. So if some of the supporting cast are looking peaked it’s because this morning was the fun part, and now comes the danger.”

  “For us danger is the fun part,” said Bang, which was exactly the boneheaded sort of catchphrase Purna would’ve come up with. “I’m Captain Bang, and my sloop the Empress Thief is one of the vessels you’ve liberated from the Chain’s criminal seizure. Can I have some of that food and drink? Or other food and drink, if that stuff’s poisoned?”

  “We’ll put something in your belly soon enough,” said Lupitera, giving Maroto a pinch on the wrist as she unlocked him. “Just making sure you’re real. And who are your other rude friends?”

  “Niki-hyun, ma’am,” said Niki-hyun. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “And I’m Dong-won, quartermaster of the Empress Thief,” said he, stretching that sort of delicious stretch you can only really get when you’ve been chained up for days and days.

  “You are just convinced if you keep telling me the name of your boat I won’t steal it—it’s cute,” said Lupitera, unlocking Bang’s wrists; the pirate shook her feet and the ankle manacles fell right off, no key required. Maybe she would’ve had a chance of escaping over the edge of the terrace after all …

  “I tell you what, it is good to see you again,” Maroto told the lace blur. “Such as it is.”

  “Keep up with the sweet talk and you’ll be back in my good graces sometime never,” said Lupitera, tossing the key ring over her shoulder and marching off. Maroto smiled to hear the familiar clicking of cha-cha heels under her commodious mourning gown. “Let’s get something to drink, I’m dying under all this chiffon.”

  “So wait, you used to perform with Maroto back when he was an actor?” said Niki-hyun as they walked toward the stairs at the edge of the ramparts. “He hadn’t yet told us his real name, back then, but when we was first stranded together he sang some wild songs about the playing company he used to run with.”

  “Except he must have had someone else in mind,” said Dong-won, always looking out for Maroto’s best interests. “’Cause you’re obviously good people, and the only Carla he ever talked about was a loudmouthed shipwreck with a centipede habit the size of Usba who once bit off someone’s ear for talking during her performance.”

  “You did tell your friends about me!” Lupitera finally gave Maroto the warm hug he’d been jonesing for but hadn’t wanted to press. “All is forgiven!”

  “Where do the fucking years go, girl?” Maroto asked as they squeezed each other on the top of a wall of human skulls.

  “Blppppppt,” said Lupitera, blowing a raspberry that made her veil dance a moist tango. “Same place everything goes. The shitter. But we can make up for lost time on the boat.”

  “The boat?” asked Dong-won.

  “The Empress Thief?” suggested Bang.

  “Any boat, what do I care?” said Lupitera. “We’re all going to the same place.”

  “The shitter?” asked Niki-hyun.

  “You tell me, I ain’t ever been to Othean,” said Lupitera with a shrug. “But it can’t be a plum holiday spot, what with the armies of monsters overrunning it, and that watered-down rotgut they call soju.”

  “Wait wait wait,” said Maroto, swaying on top of the stairs, the sun too damn bright. “That can’t be right. Othean? Capital of the Immaculate Isles? The place we just got turned away from because they didn’t have a monster problem and didn’t need one, neither?”

  “That’s the spot,” said Lupitera. “You think you’re surprised? Forget it. I just arrived in Darnielle Bay to get away from Cockspar for a while, because have you tried living in the place you’re supposed to govern? It sucks. Anyway, I blow into town, I’m meeting with the Darnielle Bay Senate, and in come two letters.

  “One comes by gull, and it’s from the Holy See—they’re sailing down here fast, and they’ve captured one of the Cobalt officers who killed ten thousand Azgarothian soldiers to summon Jex Toth. The other letter comes from Othean, via scary fucking devil bird. It says the first wave of monsters has already broken on their shore, laying waste to the countryside and besieging the capital. Unless they get help the Isles are toasted turnips and the rest of the Star is next. So we heads of Azgarothian state think it over, propose some plans, put it to a vote, and that’s how we ended up with The Avenger’s Dramedy for Act I, and something completely fucking ad-libbed for whatever comes next. And you know my feelings on improv.”

  Nobody said anything, the only sound the whipping of a Crimson pennant in the sea breeze.

  “And you’re going because …” Maroto tried to put the pieces together according to all the usual rules of Star politics, but he knew at a glance that would never get them where they needed to be, so he tried following her off the script. “You’re going because whatever your province’s history with the Immaculate Isles, when it’s mortals against the First Dark you know you’ve got to step up and help your kind.”

  “Fuck our kind sideways,” said Lupitera, hands on her hips. “We’re going because we don’t have much choice but to stop this thing before it gets to us—here in Azgaroth we’re all godless savages, remember? No life everlasting for me and mine. The Star’s all we’ve got. And since we’re all going to die and be dead forever, it’s better to go down screaming in the face of whatever wants to deny us the nasty little lives we’ve worked for. What’s the alternative? Pretend what’s happening to our neighbors won’t happen here until it’s too late?”

  “Damn,” said Bang when not even the snapping flag at the top of a spike chimed in to break the silence. “You’re going to sail your fleet, and the Chain’s, right back up to Othean? To fight against hell monsters, all on the principle of the thing?”

  “Well, mostly,” said Lupitera, sashaying back down the long stairs to the quays. “The empress is also throwing in governorship of Linkensterne to the first party who sends substantial aid, but if that’s such a cherry deal how come she keeps trying to give it away?”

  CHAPTER

  9

  Sullen had sung of a glorious war to save the Star, and Best had wanted to believe the boy so badly she had gone along with his schemes, even when they meant conspiring with a sorcerer and summoning a devil. And now she had paid the ultimate price, for instead of being transported to the battlefield of legend she had sunk down into hell. Which hell it was exactly she could not guess, being less proficient in theology than some, but she wondered if it might be the Hell of the Coward Dead. How one as stalwart as she might have been banished to such a shameful eternity she did not know, but as they journeyed far into the trackless jungle the only denizens they met were foul demon apes who screamed her brother’s Outlander name at them in challenge, before being fought back into the trees from whence they flung their excrement at the
interlopers. Where else but the Hell of the Coward Dead would Maroto be the battle cry of shit-throwing monsters?

  Rather than being disheartened by their lonely exile to this disgustingly hot hell and its equally disgusting inhabitants, Purna took heart in meeting the creatures, saying it proved Craven had come this way. Which did not preclude them both being correct, for if he had died, there was but one place her brother should have gone. True, Best did not feel dead—if anything she felt hale as ever, her cracked ribs and lesser injuries all miraculously healed during her journey through the First Dark—but then she did not know what being dead actually felt like, and maybe in death all mortal pains faded away … and when she caught herself thinking such Sullen-ish thoughts she quickly tried to brush them away, as though they were the inquisitive spider crabs that infested the sea cliffs.

  The small party initially stayed close to where Hoartrap had been carried off, thinking he might escape the flying monster and return. After another day and a night it was agreed that waiting could not help their cause, and that they should explore the coast in hopes of finding Tothan settlements to spy on or operations to sabotage. As with all decisions the matter was decided with a vote, and as with all votes, Keun-ju and Purna sided with one another, but unlike other decisions this one Best agreed with—better to hunt for worthy prey than to wait for a witch.

  So far the hunt primarily consisted of keeping the other two alive, as they were nearly helpless in the bush. They were not, however, without their abilities in combat, as proven when the ape-things had come swinging down on them. Keun-ju fought fiercer with one arm and half a sword than some she had met with twice his blessings, and Best could tell Purna would be a strong knife-fighter even if she hadn’t had the devil dog distracting her enemies with its shrill yaps. If only there had actually been a demonic army to pit their skills against they should have comported themselves well, and whenever the impossible odds overwhelmed them slipped down to Old Black’s Meadhall, secure in their righteous hereafter—if this land truly was Jex Toth then it should be right beneath their feet. The only thing for it was to keep hunting and pray the Fallen Mother granted Best a foe great enough to cancel out the sins she had accrued in coming to this Deceiver-loved jungle.