A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “Hey, buddy,” she croaked, sitting up the rest of the way. “I scratch your back, you scratch mine, huh?”

  He woofed, stepping over her splayed legs and then plopping down across them. She scritched behind his ears with one hand while petting him all the way down his back with the other, a technique of Leib’s he had called playing the ’Licker sitar. Her husband had trusted the devil more than she ever had, the affable man happy to pretend the monster was just a dog. She had never been comfortable about it, but she shouldn’t have begrudged the devil her husband’s kindness. Leib had pretended she wasn’t a monster, too. Then she realized what she was doing and her hands stopped moving.

  “Yeah, I would say we are well past even,” she said as she checked in with her body, marveling at how good she felt—the rest of her felt as fine and strong as her arms, and more than just her flesh, the frustrating fog that had clung to her skull having finally lifted. “How something as fucking strong as you got nabbed by me, I’ll never know. But then if the Chain tricked you, too, you can’t be that smart, huh?”

  He playfully snapped at her, and she rubbed his head. She must be in shock.

  “How’d they get you, anyway?” she wondered out loud, and he gave her a meaningful stare, and then looked at a crumbly white mess on the floor just beside them. It was whatever she’d pulled from his stomach and then dropped while the guard carried her away. It looked almost like a hunk of cake. Leaning over and prodding at the small lump with her finger she confirmed it was cake, or bread or something, and at its center was a shard of polished bone etched with tiny runes. Choplicker growled at it and Zosia shook her head; this was a metaphor for the whole shitty church, it was, an innocuous bit of scripture, easily swallowed. She tucked it into the pipe pouch on her belt. Never knew when a devil-paralyzing bone might come in handy.

  “Zosia.” The weak voice called from just over a swell in the ruined floor. “Cold Zosia, you fucker, you’ve murdered me.”

  Picking herself up off the warped ground, she saw that Boris lay on his back, half absorbed by the obsidian beneath him, a leg and a hand disappearing into the floor. His sweaty face was drained near as white as Choplicker’s teeth as the devil came over and snuffled at the trapped man, smacking his jowls. He must like the heretic, since he was the only other person left in the altered Office of Answers.

  “Shit, Boris, I’m sorry,” said Zosia, kneeling over him. She gave a little tug on the wrist that disappeared into the floor but there was no give at all and he hissed through his teeth. Surveying the dismal situation she saw that one of the bolts he’d taken to the back had punched clean through his side and was leaking thick gore. “Fuck. I … I don’t know what I can do.”

  “You gave me your word,” he said, his teeth as red as his wounds. “You didn’t swear it on your devil but you gave me your word. You did. And the Cobalt Queen’s a woman of honor. Ain’t she?”

  “I hate to break it to you, Boris, but I was never half as righteous as they said I was,” she told him, because lying to the dying was too low even for her. “You kept me drugged in a cell and plied me with lies, so I’d say I wasn’t in any condition to make an informed oath.”

  “Never drugged you,” said Boris, looking her in the eye. “Never, Yer Majesty. You started slipping all on your own, soon as your devil went down. Honest. And as for lies … I told my share, yeah. But to an end. To an end. To try and save people.”

  “I know, Boris,” she said, and because she could see in his face he was close to losing his hold she took his free hand in hers. “You’re a good man.”

  “The fuck I am!” Bloody spittle struck her face as he pulled his hand free. “No such thing as good.”

  “But that’d mean there’s no such thing as evil, and we both know that’s not true,” she said, wanting to put him at ease as he passed over but apparently just winding him up more. “You tried to do good, Boris, and that’s more than most offer the world.”

  “No such thing … as evil,” said Boris, his dilated pupils scanning all over the room. “That would be a … comfort. I lied to you.”

  “I know, Boris, but it’s all right, I know now, and—”

  “No, you don’t,” he said, licking his lips and closing his eyes. “Indsorith. She wasn’t dead yet. Earlier, when I said she was. A white little lie, considering, but still. Needed to just get you out, didn’t want you trying to stop them.”

  “What?” Fast as she tasted relief it curdled on her tongue. “What’re you saying, they’re executing her tonight?”

  “They probably already have,” he said. “And she deserves it … Not like you … But I couldn’t … I couldn’t go down in the Dark … with the lie of it …”

  “Where?” He was falling fast, and while Zosia tried not to jostle him too much she still jostled him a bit. “Where, Boris, where?”

  “Where do they always dump the monsters … and the parts they cut off?” he said, cracking his eyes and a bloody smile. “The Gate.”

  “Thank you,” said Zosia, meaning it like she hadn’t in a long time. “And I’m sorry to leave you like this, Boris, but I’ve got to try to save the living, and you told me yourself you’re already dead. Want me to make it official?”

  “Fuck no!”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “Safe havens guide me to her breast, then,” said Boris, weakly making the sign of the Chain to ward off Choplicker as he came in for a lick. “And you … they’ll catch you. Both of you. They did it once, they’ll do it again. They’re ready. People’s Pack got their own devils, I hear, and an army of the people keyed up to kill some queens.”

  “Sure they do,” said Zosia, as she got back to her feet and looked around for whatever weapons hadn’t been incorporated into the floor. “But I’ve got a devil, too, and where’s the fun in having one if you never get to use it?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Their second attempt at locating Gate Square went far better than the first, the rain finally stopping and then a group of armed, hooded figures giving them very thorough directions. These strangers happened to be headed that way themselves and offered to escort the out-of-towners, but Nemi explained she had a bit of a limp and would only slow them down. The helpful citizens bid them farewell and went on their way, which seemed to pleasantly surprise Diggelby and Nemi—perhaps Sullen had missed some nuance of the Crimson exchange.

  Dark as the city had been, sputtering rushlights now danced through windows and doorways and down the street, more and more hooded folk leaving their houses and all moving in the same direction. There was a strange atmosphere to the thickening throng, at times reverential and at others carnivalesque, certain figures with large wicker masks playing pitch pipes and drums. They spilled out into a wide boulevard, where the river of hoods and bobbing lights flowed in the direction they were supposed to turn to reach Diadem’s Gate. Directing Sullen and Diggelby over to an ornamental arch in the side of an arcade, Nemi kept her voice low as she expressed her doubts over their ability to slip into the Gate unnoticed on such a night as this.

  “Does seem a popular destination,” observed Diggelby, rubbernecking the crowd. “Some sort of harvest festival, I imagine.”

  “A harvest festival?” asked Nemi incredulously. “At the end of winter, in the middle of the night?”

  “Apparently,” said Diggelby, pointing at passersby. “Notice all the sickles and flails? Not much practical call for those in a modern city, but country gods have a long memory for how homage ought to be paid. And that drumming and piping is to warn the devils out of the fields, give the blighters notice that cold iron will soon be reaping.”

  “You know the weirdest stuff,” said Sullen.

  “I know how to party, and fluently, anywhere you care to get down.” Diggelby flagged down a figure carrying a bushel of rushlights under one arm. “Hullo hullo, how are you this fine evening?”

  “Three?” said a sweaty face under a woolen cowl. “Three for three penny.”
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br />   “Better make it nine,” said Diggelby, rubbing thumb and forefinger at Nemi. “We’re meeting friends.”

  “Uh-huh,” said the seller, counting out nine of the fat-dipped reeds.

  “Hopefully we can find them before we embarrass ourselves,” Diggelby went on. “We’re visiting from the sticks, and back home on the farm we ring in the harvest a mite different. Be a chum and give us the basics of your fancy metropolitan festival, so nobody mistakes us for yokels?”

  “Uh?” The seller took the coins Nemi offered and handed over the rushlights. “Well, them’s that want take they candle and carry it afore the queen. Then go home.”

  “Afore the queen!” said Diggelby. “And this virtuous maid chosen by the old ways to be queen of the harvest, where might we find this blessed creature?”

  “Uh?” The seller seemed perplexed. “Front of the Gate? And’s not no blessed maid, it’s the queen.”

  “Quite so, quite so,” agreed Diggelby.

  The seller turned to reenter the scrum, but paused and said, “It’s a danger, not wearing hood nor mask.”

  “Why is that?” asked Nemi, apparently more in line with Sullen’s thinking about all this business. Unlike Diggelby, he wasn’t so cavalier about jumping headfirst into other people’s parties.

  “People’s Pack’s watchin’,” said the seller, pulling their own hood lower over their face at the mention of Diadem’s council. “Till light of day any can pay they respect and say farewell to the queen. Call it the am-nasty. But after … you don’t want any knowin’ your face as one what came afore the queen. Wear a hood.”

  Then the seller turned back against the flow, moving upstream to peddle their rushlights as the interlopers considered these parting words.

  “Well, that’s sinister,” said Sullen.

  “Not really,” said Diggelby. “It’s just the nature of these folk traditions; they’re all for show. You have to take it seriously, of course, to offer your belief as payment for the harvest, but these things aren’t literal. Would that the Chain put a little more stock in actual faith and a lot less in actual black magic we’d all be happier, hmmm?”

  “Diggelby, do you not recall that merchant we met on the road yesterday morning?” asked Nemi, taking a rushlight for herself and passing him the rest.

  “Ardeth Karnov,” said Diggelby in a simply terrible impression of the man’s Usban accent. “Who could forget such a memorable … sorry, who were we talking about?”

  “The merchant who told us he’d heard the People’s Pack put Queen Indsorith on trial and intended to execute her for crimes against her citizens,” said Nemi.

  “No no,” said Diggelby, “I remembered who Karnov was, I was just being silly because you said … ohhhhhhh.”

  “Well, Indsorith is bad, right?” said Sullen, the dull echo of drums carrying down the crumbling urban ravines to lodge right in his sore stomach. “I mean, Ji-hyeon was trying to take her down the whole time, so she’s got to be a villain.”

  “I always thought our general had a rather elementary understanding of Imperial politics if she thought Indsorith was personally responsible for very much,” said Diggelby, but he sounded like he’d lost all his enthusiasm for gatecrashing in either sense of the term. “Crimson Queen or Black Pope or People’s Pack, they all just end up as symbols for whatever we want, don’t they? We lose sight of who they actually are, behind the masks.”

  There were all quiet for a moment, and Sullen cleared his throat. “Diggelby, how high are you right now?”

  “Not nearly high enough,” said the pasha, popping his lace collar and pulling his tricorn hat down low over his paisley eye makeup. “But yes, all right, fairly bloody loaded. This is going to be great.”

  “This?” asked Nemi. “What do you mean, this? Tonight’s ritual sacrifice of the queen is obviously a onetime event, so we will find a place to stay and wait for tomorrow night to go through the Gate. There’s no flipping way I’m trying to take us tonight, the conditions would not allow me to concentrate.”

  “Diggelby thinks he’s going to pitch our case to the People’s Pack in the middle of their execution of the old queen,” said Sullen, those fucking flutes making his heart pound, and when his heart pounded his guts fucking tried to dance back out of the hole in his stomach. The thought of a queen standing over a Gate conjured the image of the Faceless Mistress so fast and so hard Sullen practically saw her peer around the block, and closed his eyes to make sure she didn’t actually materialize. When he’d first arrived in Diadem and noticed all the recent fire damage he had been fool enough to hope that maybe Zosia had already tried and failed to fulfill the dread vision he’d glimpsed in Emeritus, but then Nemi had explained to him just what exactly a volcano was, and how this city was supposedly built right on top of one, and that was the end of Sullen’s fair-weather fantasies. Somewhere far beneath his boots an ocean of fire bubbled and crashed, and gritting his teeth, he concentrated on the cool shaft of the spear in his hand.

  “If we interrupt their ceremony and they take offense we may find ourselves unable to use the Gate to reach Othean tomorrow,” said Nemi, leaning on her feathered staff as she straightened the damp cover on her cockatrice’s cage. “Or something yet worse might happen.”

  “But if we don’t try we’ll never know if Diadem would have helped turn the tide against the midnight armies of the First Dark,” said Diggelby, and now he was playing hard to Sullen’s sensibilities; midnight armies of the First Dark was fleet as fuck, no doubt. “I’ll take charge and you two lurk about inconspicuously. That way if things go buns up you can both slip away and go to Othean tomorrow.”

  “And if they take you, Diggelby, what am I supposed to tell Purna?” asked Sullen, trying to make himself believe that tonight’s worst-case scenario was just their reuniting with their friends sans the pasha.

  “Oh tosh, I’m nobility—even if they capture me I’m worth more as a ransom than as a rug.”

  “I am not certain a council of revolting peasants will take good care of a nobleman,” said Nemi, fiddling with the ironbound egg canisters on her belt.

  “You heard her!” crowed Diggelby. “She was the one who called them revolting, not me!”

  Mistaking Nemi and Sullen’s silent reproach for a failure to appreciate his wit, he began to explain it when Sullen silenced him with a great big hug, badly though it pained him. If this well-intentioned ninny was willing to charge straight into a confrontation with the most powerful people in Diadem, then he would damn sure have his friend to back him up. And they’d do it without anyone getting hurt, Sullen would see to that.

  Or so he hoped, looking up at the bundled head of his spear. He’d wrapped the blade in so many layers of pelts and straps that he couldn’t have stuck someone with it even if he wanted to. As they stepped back into the flow of the crowd, he repeated his vow to himself to unsheathe it only when they faced a monstrous foe. He was done with shedding human blood, the boy in the bar the final victim of his savage past. He would find a better way, no matter what, and never again be forced into violence against his fellow mortals.

  Why oh why oh why did Sullen ever let himself hope anything?

  CHAPTER

  15

  So maybe coming to Jex Toth hadn’t been the greatest idea. After all, just before they had lost the magic post for good it had implied the missing Maroto wasn’t actually here, and then Hoartrap had informed them the Tothan attack on Othean was definitely under way just before he was gobbled up by a giant flying gross-out, leaving them stranded and directionless. In spite of all that Purna had held out hope, cheering herself up with fantasies of being reunited with Nemi in the not-too-distant future … at least initially, but these became tougher and tougher to sustain as their hours lost in the jungle stretched into days and then weeks. Still, she told herself, Hoartrap had bounced back from plenty of seemingly terminal shit before, so maybe he’d turn up again when they least expected it, talk a little trash, snap his fat fingers, and whisk t
hem back to the Star, easy sleazy. In the meantime they could at least try to stick with the plan—even if a rescue mission for Maroto was no longer necessary, this far behind enemy lines they could certainly try to sabotage the Tothan war effort from the inside.

  Now that they’d put that particular theory into practice, however, Purna was beginning to think the whole thing was a wash. Who knew that if you dropped one measly flying monster and took its surviving rider captive you’d bring the whole blooming place down on your pretty head?

  They’d found the old woman lying in the soft sand of the riverbank, her spindly body dripping with smashed bugs. Something must have broken inside her, and broken bad, because despite the alertness of her black eyes she didn’t seem able to sit up or use her legs at all. The other rider hadn’t even been that lucky, gory smears of foul-smelling meat and crushed beetle shell strewn through the upper branches of a nearby banyan tree all that was left of it. Yet despite the gravity of her injuries the woman didn’t cry out when they moved her, didn’t make any noise at all—which impressed Purna and Best as much as it unnerved Keun-ju. Prince, for his part, clearly didn’t like the woman one bit, keeping his angry little ass between Purna and the prisoner at all times. Given her condition they expected her to die any moment, but if anything she seemed to improve with each passing day, silently watching them with a grimace that bordered on a grin.

  They were lugging the haggard old woman around because they were still Cobalts, weren’t they, and Cobalts didn’t execute prisoners … but the last time Purna had let a prisoner go it had been a Myuran scout she and Maroto and the gang had captured, and that bit of charity had led to their being captured themselves, soundly beaten, and locked in a closet. A thing like that will make a girl wary of the practice, and besides, you never knew when a captive could come in handy—especially an officer. This old dame must be someone important, to still be on patrol at her age.