by Matthew Ward
The fear that had haunted Apara’s waking moments melted away, lost in the trail of bloody feathers. Fear required hope, and hers was spent. Or perhaps fear was a thing of the body, and not the unmoored soul.
Another step. Another rush of feathers. The Raven extended a gloved hand.
Apara reached out.
“You don’t have to go with him.”
Darkness rushed from the adjoining corner. Plaster shrivelled and cracked beneath alabaster flame. The fire subsided, until only light remained. Light, and a woman whose gown shimmered like stars.
“Still meddling, Ashana?” the Raven asked languidly. “That’ll end badly, sooner or later. This little bird was bargained to me.”
Ashana ignored him. Her gaze met Apara’s. “He owns only a piece of you. The rest is his only if you die. I can keep you from the mists, if you’ll let me, but I’ll need something in exchange.”
Apara struggled to make sense of thick and syrupy thoughts. “My soul?”
The Goddess smiled as if at some private joke. “A thief.”
Apara’s heart leapt. A thief. The life she’d loved, before her cousins had stolen it away. A chance to reclaim what she’d squandered. “Don’t let him take me. I’ll steal whatever you want.”
“Oh really, this is pathetic.” The lantern flickered out, and the Raven was gone.
Walls fell away. A wind struck up, swirling befouled feathers beneath night-darkened trees. Apara’s skin prickled as Ashana’s arms closed about her, the embrace soft, welcoming. Then the trees too faded away, until Apara saw nothing but the Goddess’ light.
“What do you want, little bird?”
Desire found voice. “To fly free of mist and shadow. To be the Silver Owl again.”
The Goddess kissed her brow. “Then cling to that as the darkness takes you. Make it truth.”
Then Ashana was gone, and Apara left alone as darkness seeped into her skin, her flesh – into even her thoughts. Through it all, she held the dream of the Silver Owl close, and made it truth.
Constable Kressick’s feet hurt. He knew that made him selfish for caring about such things. So many had it worse. His colleagues from the King’s Gate watch house marched off into the mists, never to return. The folk trapped in Abbeyfields while the fires took hold. First Councillor Reveque, with his family burned alive and his home a smouldering ruin. The poor sods of the army, vying with shadowthorns out in the east. By contrast, patrolling the Abbeyfields grounds was light duty, even with the possibility of vranakin lurking beneath the trees.
Of the house itself, nothing remained save for fire-blackened brick walls, and a pile of charred rubble – fruits of long and arduous labours by the district’s douser brigade.
Maybe the patrol was about respect, as Lieutenant Raldan had suggested, keeping the scavengers off the slimmest of pickings. Maybe it was just the lieutenant sucking up to the Council. All Kressick knew was that his feet hurt, and that shift end was long since over.
A clatter sounded off in the darkness towards the house. Kressick turned. His lantern’s light bathed the scorched rubble. “Hold! Who’s there?”
No reply. Just the grind and scrape of shifting debris. Like footsteps, except there was no sign of anyone to have left them.
“I’m warning you! One chime of this bell, and there’ll be a dozen others here, fit for a fight!”
A lie, as there were only five others on the grounds. One constable, and four Reveque hearthguards – for whatever they were worth. Still, Kressick slipped the bell from his belt and the wool muffler from the clapper. Six was better than none. Especially if it was vranakin come looking for trouble.
Rubble erupted. Brick and timber fragments spilled upwards and outwards, accompanied by a cascade of ash and glinting embers. And beneath the screech and scrape of the building’s wretched corpse, a wordless, hollow cry that set Kressick’s bones itching.
He stumbled back, coughing as ash clogged his lungs. When he righted himself, a silhouette stood knee-deep in the rubble. Lantern light set gold gleaming beneath smeared ash. What few scraps of cloth remained would have left nothing to the imagination, had they anything more than the most abstract of womanly curves to conceal.
As Kressick watched agape, she pulled one leg free of the rubble. Then the other. She stared down at her hands, at golden light guttering fingertip to fingertip. Pale fingers flexed about dark joints. They clattered across a porcelain skull, and brushed away a wig’s stubble. Where they passed, a coiling mane of golden fire flowed into being.
[[Better.]]
Only then did she realise she wasn’t alone. Black eyes burned into Kressick’s, welling with all the anger her beatific, expressionless face concealed.
[[You. Pervert. I want clothes, armour and a sword.]]
She crunched down through rubble, implacable as an avalanche. Kressick forgot his sore feet, and fainted dead away.
Astridas, 9th Day of Wealdrust
When divinities war, there are no victors.
from Eldor Shalamoh’s “Historica”
Fifty-Seven
Altiris nearly died three times since parting company with Kurkas.
The first came when he slipped through the closing gateway between Otherworld and Dregmeet. He emerged into what passed for the ephemeral world on an elder cousin’s tattered heels. Only a headlong dive behind a silt-clogged fountain saved him. Shoulders hunched against mossy stone and breath held close, he waited an age before the cousins and their prisoners drifted away.
The second occasion came as he followed them through the mists. Desperate not to let Sidara and her captors slip from sight, he was blind to the footpad at the alley mouth. A whisper of sound was Altiris’ saviour. That, and instincts honed as a curfew-breaker on Selann. A thrust from his borrowed sword left the vranakin dead in the gutter. The fellow’s tattered mask and hooded cloak did nothing to keep out the mists’ cold, but offered concealment’s false courage.
And as he entered the plaza beneath the Church of Tithes, Altiris Czaron almost died a third time. Not from an elder cousin’s grasp, nor a vranakin blade, but from sheer, stark terror.
From the decaying churchyard to the lopsided eaves of adjoining streets, the plaza was thick with vranakin. A wagon shrouded in black cloth waited at the lychgate, sable ribbons twitching like snakes in the poor breeze. Another waited behind the hearse, its iron cage empty. At the plaza’s heart, beside the rotting angel fountain, two cadaverous forms in gold-chased grey robes waited in an inky ring of kernclaws. The pontiffs. Like enough to the black-eyed man Captain Darrow had slain for Altiris to keep his gaze averted and pray not to be noticed.
The crowd swelled around Altiris, fed by the tributaries of Dregmeet’s alleys. He froze, muscles rigid and throat thick with panic. Dreams of rescue died ashen. Better to run. Better still to have stayed with Kurkas. A boy playing at hero, and for what? Notions of duty? Of friendship? Neither held sway in Dregmeet.
Hawkin strode through the crowd, Constans at her side and head held high. Elder cousins drifted behind, Sidara an unsteady presence in their midst.
“See, the daughter of our esteemed First Councillor Reveque!” shouted one of the pontiffs. “A child of light who brought low Crowfather Athariss. Does she fill you with fear?”
Jeers broke out, edged with mock bird-screeches. Filth flung from gutter and gulley spattered Sidara’s face and clothes. Still she staggered on, eyes ahead and face set, unflinching even when the procession halted before the fountain, and the taller of the pontiffs set knuckle beneath chin to tilt back her head.
“Rejoice, child. For you are to be Athariss’ bride of the grave. To serve him as he serves the Raven, in a place where sunlight has no claim.”
Sidara jerked her head free. “Do as you want with me. You can drag the city down into the mists. It won’t change what you are.” Her tone sharpened, the daughter’s voice become an echo of her mother’s, despite its weariness. “A king in the gutter is no king at all.”
The
pontiff snarled. The back of his withered hand drove Sidara to her knees.
“No!” Breaking free of Hawkin’s grip, Constans stood between his sister and her tormentor. “Leave her alone!”
The crowd’s mirth redoubled.
“Hawkin, control the whelp,” snapped the second pontiff.
Expression taut, she dragged Constans away. The first pontiff’s hand closed around Sidara’s arm. “Come, my Lady Reveque. Your carriage awaits.”
Turning, he dragged her towards the caged wagon. The hearse rumbled off as soon as the iron door slammed. And Altiris, shamed by the composure of the siblings Reveque, found courage beneath his fear. As the crowd flowed to join the cortege, so did he.
Malachi’s bleak dreams parted to bleaker reality. Loss was a distant ache, a rumble felt in the pit of heart and gut; deep, hollow and yet unreal.
So many times in the night, he’d sworn he’d heard Lily’s voice, only to stutter awake with her name on his lips, and the council chamber’s darkness his only companion. She was gone, as Sidara and Constans were gone. He’d failed them, and for what? What was there left to cling to? The Republic besieged. The city swallowed up from within. His friends dead or missing. His honour bartered away. No one to blame but himself. For thinking he was equal to the task.
And Lily. Lily was lost. Their children were lost. His fault. All his fault.
Closing his eyes, he slumped back in the chair and begged for the mercy of sleep.
The faces of all those he’d failed rushed to greet him.
“Malachi?” Footsteps. The click of the door easing closed. “Malachi, are you awake?”
He creaked open his eyes. “Messela?”
“I’d hoped to give you more time, but…” She halted at the end of the table, eyes dark-rimmed. “The vranakin are marching on the Hayadra Grove.”
Bitter laughed welled up. “Trees? You’re worried about a few trees?”
Her lips flickered disgust. Always further to fall. Trapped between anger and shame, Malachi stared at the table as she drew closer. “They’re not ‘just’ trees, Malachi. They’re our connection to the divine. A peace offering from Ashana to Lumestra. A symbol of hope. The city needs hope, now more than ever. We lose that, and it’s over.”
“It’s already over. There’s no one to send.”
She gave an angry shake of the head. “There’s Lancras. There’s what remains of my hearthguard. We put out the call, others will come.”
“A handful against Dregmeet? It’s not enough.” He leapt to his feet, chair crashing back against the floor. “How many more would you have me send to their deaths? How can you even ask?”
The room darkened as if beneath a passing cloud. Ice gathered at the windows.
“I’m not asking,” snapped Messela. “This is what’s going to happen.”
“Then why disturb me? Just leave me alone.”
“Because I thought…” She swallowed. The shadow passed. When she spoke again, anger crackled beneath a veneer of calm. “Because I thought you deserved a chance to redeem your mistakes.”
Malachi froze. She knew. Had he told her? Too much of recent days was lost behind the solace of liquor. Did it even matter what she knew? She was offering a chance to reclaim his pride. To honour the family whose name he alone now bore. Even to avenge them.
And fail, as he had so completely elsewhere?
Turning his back on Messela, he righted the chair and sat down. “Do as you wish. Leave me to my grief.”
“Malachi—”
A fanfare rang out beyond the walls. Frowning, she turned for the door. It opened before she reached it, and Moldrov scurried into the room. The steward glanced hurriedly away from Malachi, his full attention offered to Messela.
“Lady, something’s happening in the plaza.”
If nothing else, the Vordal Tower scaffold offered excellent vantage. It had been a long time since Kurkas had seen the plaza so empty at dawn. Most days, it took a pair of pointy elbows and a bloody-minded attitude to make way without a carriage, but that morning? Between the war without and the war within, the stream of petitioners, merchants, soldiers and hangers-on had thinned almost to nothing. A few hundred folk were scattered beneath the fiery skies, scurrying about as if the end of the world were on their heels… which if Lord Trelan were right, might very well have been the case.
Kurkas still wasn’t sure he believed the stakes, even though they’d been laid down by a goddess. That beyond the city walls, Jack o’ Fellhallow and the Raven had joined the war. The Raven – weakened by the Crowmarket’s grip on the mists – would surely fall, not only dooming the outnumbered Tressian army to slaughter, but the world to the fire and madness of a divine war. The only hope of stopping it lay in breaking the Crowmarket’s grip on Otherworld, and even that wouldn’t be the end.
Kurkas shook his head. Worrying about things he couldn’t change wouldn’t help anyone. The Crowmarket was his business, by blood and duty. Gods and the like? The shadowthorn princessa was welcome to all that.
Five storeys beneath the scaffold platform stood the assembled might of Chapterhouse Lancras, chivvied from lodgings an hour before at Lord Trelan’s insistence, banners raised and trumpets sounded.
They were a sullen bunch, to Kurkas’ eye. That’s what happened when you took your name from the legend of a tragic hero, rather than a celebrated one. The best recruits went to Prydonis, Essamere or Sartorov, holders of noble tradition and storied victory. So the histories told, Lord Lancras had died overseas, fighting a war that couldn’t be won in search of a victory no one needed. He’d lost, and for all their parade ground snap, his successors expected to lose.
And who save a glutton for punishment wore a white surcoat?
Kurkas allowed that his own feelings were colouring the matter. One is a man alone. Two are a beginning. Stirring words, but even with the Knights Lancras and the Stonecrest hearthguard mustered, they barely numbered a hundred. Enough for defiance, but not victory.
Planking creaked as Lord Trelan edged to the scaffold’s extent. Every groan of timber set Kurkas’ nerves jangling. How Lord Trelan managed, he couldn’t conjure. The man’s fear of heights was legend among his own hearthguard. But he understood symbols. To proclaim from the palace balcony was to do so as a member of the Council – a body marred by the failure of recent days. To do so from the Vordal Tower opposite? Especially when half the populace still held you an outcast, for good or for ill? Folk would listen to that.
The last fanfare faded.
“Citizens of Tressia…”
The plaza’s acoustics gathered up Lord Trelan’s words and returned them as echoes. A handful of passersby halted and craned their necks to investigate the commotion. Lord Trelan leaned further out over the varnished handrail and leaned hastily back in response to its creaked protest.
“Some of you know me, or think you do. I am Josiri Trelan, Duke of Eskavord. Southwealder. Wolf’s-head. Upstart. Outcast. Troublemaker. Even traitor. I stand before you as none of those things. Not today. I stand before you as one who loves this city, and this Republic. As a man who has already lost one home, and refuses to lose another.”
So much of that was lies. Kurkas knew for a fact that his master’s love for the Republic wouldn’t have filled a thimble. Never mind the city itself. But try as he might, Kurkas caught no dimming of passion, no tell-tale of a mistruth told. Nor, judging by the crowd slowly gathering beneath the scaffold, could any other.
“The vranakin are taking our city. They’ve claimed our streets. Our friends. Our family. Inch by inch, they’re dragging us down. And we’ve let them! They took advantage of our greed. Our indolence. Our shame that they looked to the needs of the poor where we did not. I won’t have it. Not in my city. Not in my home. Not while men and women fight to repel Hadari in the east. How do we face them on their return?”
He had their attention now, the plaza filling as word spread.
“We already tried!” shouted a man in constabulary blue. Li
eutenant Raldan. “We were slaughtered! Where were you, Lord Trelan? Fled back to the Southshires is what I heard.”
A rumble of agreement swept the crowd.
Lord Trelan gripped the handrail. “I had business in the south, it’s true. It’s done. I’m here now, and I will not let this stand.”
“With what?” Raldan replied. “A hundred knights? The scrapings of the city’s hearthguards? It’s not enough.”
“You’re right, it’s not. But this is a city of thousands in thrall to hundreds. Fifteen years of occupation, and my people never stopped fighting. Look at you! It’s been days, and you’re already beaten. Is Northwealder pride so weak?”
The rumble became a growl, fed by new voices. Whatever else the crowd lacked, pride wasn’t in short supply. But Kurkas didn’t care for the shifting mood. By making it a matter of north against south, Lord Trelan was as likely to raise an army against himself as the vranakin.
He stepped forward and lowered his mouth to Lord Trelan’s ear. “Congratulations, sah. You’ve raised an angry mob in the heart of Tressia. Your mother’d be proud. How does it feel?”
“Strangely satisfying.”
“Won’t stay that way when they lynch us.”
“Have faith, captain.”
On the opposite side of the square, the palace gate creaked open. A double line of Swanholt hearthguard filed out, silver swans bright against black tabards. Lady Messela Akadra strode at their head.
“Hello,” murmured Kurkas. “Something’s happening.”
“Looks so, doesn’t it?”
“Wouldn’t be keeping something from me, would you, sah?”
“Perish the thought.”
The crowd parted as the Akadra hearthguard lined up opposite Lancras. Lady Akadra kept coming, skirting alabaster ranks until she reached the scaffold’s ladder. Soon after, she stood on the platform, one alone who seemed oblivious to its creaking.
