by Darius Hinks
Zhoon climbed the steps, and when he reached the doors he paused to look back. His brothers were right behind him, grinning, crossbows raised.
He shoved the doors open and was met by a wall of darkness. He dropped into a crouch and edged inside, crossbow loaded and ready, as his brothers rushed past him, flooding into the shadows.
Zhoon’s huge, gelatinous eyes quickly adjusted to the gloom and he dived behind one of the columns that lined the nave, scouring the room for signs of the Exiles. There was nobody there – only his brothers, rushing from column to column, pale and ghostlike.
He waved his crossbow, indicating the doors at the far end of the nave, and they all rushed forwards in silence, swinging their weapons from side to side, looking for the guards.
Zhoon hissed a warning as he saw movement at the far end of the temple. Then he realized it was Tok, leading the weazens in from the back of the building.
Tok looked puzzled by the sight of the empty building, but Zhoon nodded to the doors that led to the chapels, and the whole group gathered outside the first one.
Zhoon looked around, checking that everyone was ready, then booted the door open.
They rushed into the room, ready to open fire, then stumbled to a halt, lowering their weapons in surprise. This chapel was empty too. There were just a few empty crates and a table in the centre of the room.
There was something on the table, and Zhoon rushed over to look. It was a piece of paper. Someone had drawn a smiling fox on it.
Zhoon shook his head, confused, then felt a rush of fury.
“Trap!” he howled, trying to shove the others back towards the door.
The explosion hit, and Zhoon cowered, covering his head. But then he realized the sound was far in the distance.
He looked around in confusion, surprised to be alive, then shoved his way back out into the nave. There was light pouring in through the temple’s open doors. He rushed out of the building with everyone else hurrying after him.
There was a column of fire and smoke on the horizon, stretching high up into the clouds. At its base, even from a few miles away, the vast, staring eye of Bethsan Palace was visible as it collapsed in the heat.
“That’s coming from Gamala,” said Tok, standing next to him at the top of the steps.
Zhoon nodded, feeling cold with shock.
“Where your palace is?”
Zhoon nodded.
“And all of your cinnabar and money?”
The strength had gone from Zhoon’s legs and he sat down heavily on the top step, letting his crossbow clang against the stone as his brothers gathered around him, gasping in horror.
Even at such a distance, the explosion made an impressive sight, lighting up the surrounding buildings and sending a low, rolling thunderclap across the city.
“You’re ruined,” said Tok. The creature’s voice was full of disdain.
“Worse than that,” said a voice from the street. Isten strode from the shadows, flanked by dozens of the Exiles. All of them were wearing new black leather hauberks and gripping loaded crossbows. They looked stronger and healthier than Zhoon had ever seen them look before. Their wasted frames and sunken cheeks had vanished, replaced by solid muscle and stern, unyielding stares.
One of the Aroc Brothers grabbed his crossbow, but before he could fire, dozens of bolts thudded into him, punching him backwards through the air and leaving him crumpled against the temple doors.
The Exiles stood in silence, smoke trailing from their crossbows.
Another Aroc Brother reached for his weapon.
Projectiles slammed into him and he fell sideways across the steps. They were not crossbow bolts, but iridescent, shell-like discs.
Zhoon cursed and looked at Tok.
The weazen’s arm was still extended and missing some of its sharpened plates.
The fallen man cried out in agony as the discs expanded in his flesh, ripping his skin open as they grew and multiplied. It only took a few seconds for him to be sliced apart, collapsing on the steps as pieces of meat.
Zhoon aimed his crossbow at Tok.
“Don’t be an idiot,” said Tok. “We’re screwed, but she’s offering us a way out.”
Zhoon looked around. Tok was right. They were all lit up by the light on the front of the temple and had no cover. If he tried to fight it would be a massacre.
Isten stepped into the light with a wry smile on her face, looking at Tok. “The Aroc Brothers aren’t just ruined, they’re hated by every pusher they’ve driven out of business and every brothel they’ve been squeezing. When word gets out that they’ve lost their weapons, their money and all their red, they’ll be hunted down like dogs. It’s going to be a messy end for them.”
Tok looked at Zhoon to see if he would deny any of this, but Zhoon was staring at Isten with a dazed expression on his face.
The Aroc Brothers all began muttering to each other and some of them seemed on the verge of attacking again. Zhoon’s shock started to be replaced by fury. If they were all going to die he would take Isten down first. He turned his crossbow on her.
“Mind you…” said Isten, still smiling as she stepped closer, swinging her crossbow back and forth. “We’ve only burned your weapons. I told my men to remove all of your cinnabar before they lit the fuse.”
“What do you want?” His words were a savage growl.
“You know how it is,” she said. “I’ve got all this stuff to shift and not enough people to sell it. I have enough cinnabar to make all of us rich, if only there was some way we could work together.”
Zhoon sneered. “Together? You mean work for you.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what we call it. If you work with me to shift all this cinnabar, you can make just as much money as you made working for Sayal. More, I imagine. Sayal probably kept all the cream for himself, didn’t he?”
“You hate us. You want us dead.”
Isten’s smile faltered. “Not so much.” She shrugged. “Sayal crossed a line but now he’s gone. And I’m starting to lose my appetite for all this killing.” She looked down the street. “I’ve been thinking about something a friend said. While we keep ourselves busy fighting over drugs, the Elect are free to do whatever they like, laughing at us as we kill each other. It’s like we’re the punchline to a bad joke.”
Zhoon searched for the deceit in her voice, but she sounded oddly genuine.
She waved her crossbow at the mountain of flame in the distance. “I had to wipe out half of the Kardus clan and the Voussans wouldn’t yield until I’d burned every one of their clubs down. So much endless fucking killing. None of us were born here. None of us will ever be accepted here. We’ll always be the outsiders. Maybe we should try being outsiders together?” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m talking rubbish. How about this, though. You’ve lost. I’ve won. But that doesn’t have to stop you getting rich.”
Zhoon shook his head. Of all the outcomes he had expected from tonight, this one had never crossed his mind. It had to be a trick. He looked at the fire in the distance. The palace’s eye had almost vanished. He had always thought it looked like Sayal’s eye, watching him, even after he died. Seeing it burn down actually felt like ridding himself of a vengeful ghost. He stared at his crossbow for a moment, then lowered it and looked back at Isten. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”
Isten raised an eyebrow. “That makes two of us.”
20
Not me, thought Isten, succumbing to the dream. I alone am awake.
The headhunters formed a circle on the roof of the temple, near where Puthnok carved her manifesto into the rafters. It was late, and in the moonlight they looked like cultists performing an arcane rite, surrounded by Athanor’s glittering lights. Sounds of revelry reverberated from the rooms below as Isten lurched across the roof, cursing and laughing as she struggled to keep her balance. The Exiles and their new allies had seized control of every operation in the Botanical Quarter a
nd even extended their reach into the rest of the city. There was no danger anymore, no threat. Nothing left to do but celebrate.
“Is that Lorinc?” slurred Isten. He looked as drunk as she was and wearing an uncharacteristic grin on his face.
As she approached the group, she saw that there were also some of the Aroc Brothers and a weazen sprawled in the eaves, laughing hysterically, tumbling across the slates like leaves in the breeze.
Isten had consumed so much of Alzen’s cinnabar that she couldn’t be sure she wasn’t dreaming the whole scene. The headhunters were jumping up and down and chanting and, as they lurched through the darkness, the shrunken heads in their skin were laughing along with the weazen, bearing their blackened teeth and rolling their eyes behind swollen, stitched-up lids, grotesquely invigorated by their wearers’ excitement.
“Lorinc?” she called.
He turned, grinning, his face flushed. “Isten! Over here!” She had never seen him so happy.
Her legs were feeble with drink and she had to tread carefully as she crossed the roof. Earlier in the evening, Athanor had been blessed with one of its rare showers, leaving everything gleaming and wet and even more hazardous than usual.
Lorinc hauled her into the circle and everyone else bellowed their approval, delighted by the arrival of their triumphant leader.
One of the Aroc Brothers was standing in the middle of the circle, drinking furiously. Isten could not recognize the design on the bottle but it smelled like gin. The drinker was balancing on a beam that stretched over a hole in the roof. Isten had thought she’d made the building secure, but it was so old that more of it kept collapsing. As the man drank, everyone else stamped at the broken beams, causing the hole to shudder and spill dust into the rooms below. Isten could see familiar faces in the crowds down there: Exiles, singing and reeling through the temple, revelling in the peace she had bought them.
The man finished the bottle and leapt clear of the hole to a roar of approval. The drop was over thirty feet. If it had fallen, it would have killed him.
“You’re insane,” muttered Isten.
They hesitated then laughed wildly as she grabbed a bottle and stepped out onto the beam.
The support shifted worryingly beneath her weight. The danger caused her heart to race and, for a moment, her vision became perfectly sharp.
The crowd began chanting and stamping as she drank. The liquor burned delightfully, strong enough to cut through the tar and the cinnabar and give her an exhilarating sense of weightlessness. She didn’t care if the beam broke. She was sure she would simply levitate on the spot, laughing, as the roof fell away from her.
The headhunters howled as she glugged the liquid down, and Lorinc roared along with them.
Isten had almost emptied the bottle when the beam began to give.
The headhunters whooped and took a step backwards.
There were only a few dregs left in the bottle so Isten tipped it back and gulped the last of it down, just as the wood gave way.
She tried to jump out of the hole, but there was nothing to push against. The beam fell away from beneath her foot and she dropped.
Her hands slapped against the ragged edges of the hole, struggling to grip rain-slick tiles.
Hands locked around her wrists and lifted her into the air, free of the rubble that tumbled down onto the distant crowds below.
Lorinc had one of her wrists but she was surprised to see that the other was held by Zhoon.
They hauled her back onto the roof and the three of them rolled into a heap, laughing wildly.
“I didn’t think you cared,” said Isten.
“You’re too useful to die,” said Zhoon when they had managed to stop laughing.
“I was only trying to save the gin,” said Lorinc, with a despairing shake of his head.
She punched him and they started laughing again.
Zhoon climbed unsteadily to his feet, wandering back over to the other Aroc Brothers, but Lorinc and Isten remained where they were, on their backs, looking at the stars.
“You did it,” said Lorinc.
“What?”
“The city’s ours.”
Isten tried to make a joke, but her mouth was unwilling, emitting a confused mumble instead. She massaged her face, trying to rub sense back into her muscles. “Some of the city,” she managed to say.
“Enough of the city,” replied Lorinc, sounding suddenly serious. “You got rid of Sayal and you made us rich. I knew you’d do it.”
As the roof tiles pressed into the back of Isten’s head, she remembered the numbness that was loitering at the back of her skull. It had been weeks since she had gone to the city walls with Alzen, weeks since she felt his alchymia pass through her body, but his mark was still on her arm. Unlike the first time, when she had been so desperate to remove him from her thoughts, this time she had baulked at the idea of wiping his sigil away. He had helped her, just as he said he would, supplying her with endless cinnabar and helping her get the weapons she needed, and she had done as she was asked, selling his drugs right across the slums, so there was no need for them to ever cross paths again. Part of her was relieved, especially after the massacre she had seen in Brauron, but another part of her, a larger part, felt panicked by the idea she would never experience his sorcery again.
“What are you thinking?” asked Lorinc.
Isten felt a rush of guilt. She had spent her whole life trying to escape her mother’s shadow, sampling every high in the hope of finding peace, but she knew this was different. Alzen’s power lifted her out of herself more completely than anything else she had experienced, but the Elect were the enemy. If there had been any doubt about that, it had evaporated when she had seen those bodies on the riverbank. She shook her head and thought of something that wasn’t too much of a lie.
“I was just thinking about Gombus. I haven’t seen him since I brought you all to the temple.”
The humour faded from Lorinc’s eyes. He said nothing but his silence was pointed.
Isten sat up. “Have you heard from him?”
“Puthnok still visits him, but she won’t say much– beyond the fact that he’s ill and disapproves of all this.” He waved at the drunken figures lurching past.
“He disapproves of us being alive or of us being in a position of power?” Isten could not keep the hurt from her voice. “Or does he disapprove of the fact that I’ve managed to win the loyalty of people who previously wanted to kill us?”
Lorinc held up his hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s just what Puthnok told me.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I think she’s probably putting words in the old man’s mouth. I think it’s more likely she doesn’t approve. She’s become obsessed with the idea of ‘fixing’ Athanor. She’s decided you’re never going to get us home to Rukon, so she needs to spread the good word here instead.”
Isten looked past the staggering shapes of the headhunters to the rafters Puthnok had carved. “Spread the good word? Who to?”
“She’s been turning up at festivals and bazaars, harassing people and telling them how much better their life would be without the Elect.”
“And how’s that going down?”
“Who knows? You know what the Athanorians are like – even if they harboured any grudges, I bet they’d never have the balls to show it. They’re probably too terrified of the hiramites to be seen listening to Puthnok.”
The thought of Puthnok’s sad, solemn little face threatened to ruin Isten’s good humour. “She’s so sure I can’t get us home, even though Gombus, who she worships like a god, has always said I will.”
“Do you think you can? I think you’ve proven yourself already, but you know what Gombus and Puthnok want.”
“I fucking want it.” She waved at the drunken figures lurching past. Some of the headhunters were swinging axes at each other, slamming blades into beams just a fraction of an inch from each other’s faces, laughing and snorting
and refusing to flinch. “I don’t want this,” she muttered. “I don’t want to be in this city, Lorinc. I want to go home. I want to topple statues. I want everything Puthnok wants. I want to see Rakus strung from a tree and our people freed. I just don’t know how we’d ever achieve that. Only the Elect steer Athanor. Only they control the conjunctions. However powerful I get, I can’t–”
“Isten!” cried someone.
She turned to see Brast clambering over the roof. Unlike everyone else, he looked more grim and skeletal than ever. As always, Isten felt a mixture of guilt, irritation and affection at the sight of his sneering face.
“What the fuck is all this?” he demanded, staring at the drunken mayhem.
Isten was about to reply, but he waved his hand dismissively. “It doesn’t matter. I need to talk to you.”
Isten tried to sober up, sensing, even through her fug of drugs and wine, that Brast had something important to say. She stood and stretched, taking a deep breath, then looked back at him. His long, greasy hair was hanging down over his face, but his expression was not as ironical as usual. He looked worried.
“There are imperial agents in Athanor,” he said, leaning close and lowering his voice.
“You’re the second person who’s told me that,” she said, remembering her conversation with Colcrow in the Zechen baths, weeks earlier. “How do you know?”
“Because the fuckers jumped me after I dropped you off at the Sisters of Solace. I was in the arboretum near the Valeria Bazaar. I’d seen one of them earlier, before I left Crassus Street, and I knew he was from Rukon, but I’d never seen him before – not at any of your Exiles gatherings or any other time.”
“They jumped you?” she asked. “Trying to do what? Kill you?”
“Not sure. I had a knife to one of their throats and was about to get an answer to that question when the hiramites turned up and we all had to make a run for it.”
“Why didn’t you come and tell me?”
He scowled. “How the fuck would I find you? I never dreamt you’d be back here. Then tonight someone told me Colcrow has ordered all his lackeys to come here because you’ve turned it into a palace.”
