Ink Black Magic

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

  ***

  In the deepest part of one of the many rivers that threaded through Cluft, a voice was babbling. “All dead, not my fault. No one else cares, why should I? Not my fault, not my fault.”

  Clouds formed within the river as the ordinary water separated from that which had melted down from storm debris. The water clouds swirled, forming face, neck, shoulders.

  “Our world is dead,” hissed the hopeless voice of Quillsmith, his teeth chattering. “Our world is dead, let’s take theirs.”

  It might have sounded far less mad if he was talking to anyone, but the others were elsewhere.

  ***

  Timmy “Da” McHagrty, former Captain of the Dreadnought Blackguards and 17th Emperor of Mocklore, walked amiably along the Great Mocklore Road, heading for his home city of Dreadnought. He was not walking very fast. If there was anything that made you want to slow down and smell the roses, it was being dead.

  The back of his Blackguard uniform, which he had continued to wear in protest after being forced to take the Imperial throne, was scattered with blood-rimmed holes caused by half a dozen over-enthusiastic knife thrusts, thanks to an annoyingly inept murderer.

  The amateurism of it still annoyed him. Why couldn’t he have had a dignified death at the hands of a proper assassin, like so many of the chaps who had been put on the throne during the appropriately named Year of Too Many Emperors?

  A shout made Da McHagrty turn around, and he saw his eldest and youngest sons running towards him. “Sean! You’ve grown, my boy. I was just on my way to visit your Ma.”

  “Great thought,” Sean said cautiously, still trying to catch his breath. “It’s just — I’m not sure it’s a great idea for you to visit in person. You know, with the stab wounds and everything.”

  Da McHagrty was outraged. “What do you expect me to do, boy? Write her a letter?”

  Sean seized on this idea gratefully. “Good plan. Nice long letter. She’ll like that. It’s thoughtful.”

  “Seanicus McHagrty!” bellowed his father. “You’re not too old and I am not too dead to give you a right whack across the ear hole! If I want to see your Ma, I will see her and that’s an end to the matter.”

  “Da usually knows what’s best, Sean,” agreed in Tam.

  Sean exploded. “Considering that I’m the only one in this conversation who hasn’t managed to get himself killed yet, you’d think my opinion might be worth something!”

  Tam’s expression changed, looking beyond his father and brother. “I didn’t think we’d be here long,” he said in a tone of resignation.

  “What?” Sean looked around in alarm. A girl walked slowly towards them, across the field from the Axgaard encampment. She was surrounded by a cloud of coppery hair, and moved so lightly that she seemed to be floating.

  “Ah, well,” said Da McHagrty. “Look after your Ma, Seanicus. Give her my love if you think she’s up to knowing I was here. Use your own judgment.”

  “Wait,” said Sean, suddenly panicky. “You can’t go.”

  The girl with the coppery hair was closer now, close enough to touch Da McHagrty. She did so, her pale hand brushing his shoulder. With a sound like a sigh, he vanished.

  Sean turned on his brother. “You can’t let her do this!”

  “We weren’t supposed to be here anyway, kid,” said Tam. “Call it a happy accident. A short one.” The girl touched his face and he, too, vanished.

  Sean stared resentfully at the girl. She reminded him of Clio, although he couldn’t think why. “Who are you, anyway?”

  The girl smiled sweetly. “I know what I’m looking for now,” was all she said to him.

  ***

  Egg and Singespitter pushed their way through the crowd of dead people and the living. “What are we going to do about them all?” complained Egg.

  “They’re not hurting anyone,” said Singespitter. “Which makes a change, as far as local catastrophes go.”

  Aragon had been pinned to a wall by several knives. The two colourful pirates who were responsible for his predicament now ignored him completely as they greeted Kassa, taking turns to enfold her in bone-breaking bear hugs.

  “Vicious Bigbeard Daggersharp and Black Nell Witchdaughter,” Aragon said in explanation to Egg and Singespitter. He did not seem overly concerned by his current predicament.

  While Kassa’s parents were distracted, Clio darted forward to help free her uncle, pulling out the knives one by one and dropping them on the cobblestones. She kept turning around to scan the crowd. “Sean met his dad and brother. Have you seen your parents among the walking dead, Egg?”

  Egg blinked. “Mine are still alive, actually.”

  “Oh,” said Clio in a small voice. “That’s nice.” She looked out at the crowd again.

  Aragon, free to move at last, placed a hand on her shoulder. “They’re not here,” he told her.

  Rage sparked in her eyes. “You wouldn’t want them here.”

  “Would you?”

  The simple question upset her. She moved away from Aragon and slipped her hand into Egg’s, squeezing it tightly. “Can we get out of here?”

  “Don’t see why not,” said Egg. “Nothing seems to be happening.”

  Sean McHagrty pushed his way through the crowd. “Some babe is making all the dead people vanish!”

  Kassa pulled away from her father’s sixth crushing embrace. “Excellent. That means I don’t have to figure out how to do it myself.”

  Black Nell tugged on Bigbeard’s sleeve. “If our time’s up, I fancy finding someplace high so we can get one last look at the sea before we go.”

  Bigbeard chuckled. “Never used to be such a softy, Nell.”

  “Must be the company I keep,” she said dryly. “See you around, lass,” she said to her daughter.

  Kassa nodded, feeling slightly bereft. “Maybe I’ll visit,” she suggested, thinking of her vision.

  Nell scoffed. “Don’t you dare!”

  “Yo ho ho, Kassa girl!” Bigbeard yelled as his wife dragged him away.

  Kassa looked at Aragon, trying not to smile. “So those were my parents.”

  “I noticed that.”

  “Scared yet?”

  “Always was.”

  A new voice broke in on their flippant conversation. “Hello, brother.”

  Kassa saw Aragon’s face change. The stone-faced man she had first met five years ago was back again, harder and icier than ever. His shoulders tensed and his hand moved to where, in his pre-Chamberlain days, a rapier would have rested on his hip.

  Clio hissed between her teeth and ducked back into an alcove in the wall, dragging Egg with her.

  “Who is it?” he whispered.

  “My dad.”

  ***

  Aragon forgot Kassa, forgot Clio. He gazed at the approaching figure, feeling a haunting ache in the back of his teeth.

  Bleyn Silversword was young. It was obscene that he was so young, but there was no getting around the fact that he had been twenty-one years old when he died. He was whip-thin with long limbs and dark blond hair cut close to his scalp. A small splash of blood over his heart, red on a white shirt, was the only sign that death had left on him. His pale grey eyes burned as intensely as they had when he was alive.

  Until I killed him.

  You killed you own brother? the Chamberlain said in alarm. Why don’t I remember that?

  You know why. Drak erased the bad memories of my past as well as the good. A Chamberlain with memories of another life in another world was inconvenient.

  But I should be able to remember our past now, shouldn’t I? We’ve broken whatever hold Drak ever had on us, and the draklight is long gone.

  If you had my memories, you would be indistinguishable from me.

  What’s so wrong with that? If nothing else, we could stop having these dratted conversations.

  Perhaps, thought Aragon. Perhaps having a version of myself who did not remember my past was too tempting to give up. Drak offered me an Aragon Si
lversword who did not remember Bleyn or Dahla or the mad Emperor I served once upon a time. If forgetting them meant forgetting Kassa and my mother and Clio, I was apparently willing to pay that price.

  But not now?

  No, Aragon decided. It had been nice to be someone else for a while, but he was not going to lose Kassa again. I don’t need you anymore.

  He waited for a moment, but the Chamberlain had gone. The whole exchange had lasted only a few seconds. Aragon smiled bitingly at Bleyn Silversword, glad to be finally rid of the voice in his head. “Most useful thing you’ve ever done, little brother.”

  Bleyn did not understand, of course, so he simply ignored what Aragon had said. He had always been good at that. “Still alive?” he taunted.

  “So far,” said Aragon.

  “Must be nice.” Bleyn prowled towards his brother. “Growing older, having new experiences. I wouldn’t know.”

  A few years ago, that comment would have destroyed Aragon. His carefully built-up hardness would have crumbled. Not now. His head had been messed with by the best of them, and Bleyn was certainly not that. I’d rather live with my past than waste another moment of the present. Good to know. “No one blames me for what I did,” he said aloud, knowing it to be the truth.

  “Is that so?” Bleyn said sharply. “No one at all?”

  “Mother said she would have done it herself if she could see through the tears to aim the knife.”

  Bleyn laughed without humour. “Ouch. That hurts.” He touched his finger to the bloodstain over his heart. “Not as much as this did, but still. Nice to know you haven’t lost the knack.”

  “I gave you a choice,” Aragon hissed. “You had an army of loyalists who thought you were the answer to all their problems. They were willing to die for you. Did you have any idea how well the Emperor was guarded? How many Blackguards had been brought into Dreadnought to protect the city against your rabble? It wouldn’t have been a swift, noble battle, it would have been a war. I offered you the chance to walk away, disband your army, be a father to your daughter. You chose to be a martyr.”

  “What self-respecting revolutionary would have done otherwise?” said Bleyn, sounding pleased with himself.

  It was amazing how easy it had been to feel guilty when Bleyn was dead, and how easy it was now to feel guilt-free when faced with the real thing. How had he forgotten how dangerous Bleyn was, how little he cared about other people?

  “You weren’t even a very good martyr,” said Aragon. “Your loyalists fell apart as soon as your body hit the ground. Not one of them even considered continuing the cause.”

  Bleyn shrugged one shoulder. “You win some, you lose some. Tell the story any way you like, Aragon. Tell yourself you gave me a choice, that stabbing me through the heart prevented a war, that one death saved hundreds more from dying. Can you honestly say that what you did was just?”

  “No,” said Aragon. “I can’t say it. I killed my baby brother. There’s no justice in that.”

  Bleyn smiled. “That’s all I wanted to hear.” Knives littered the ground, where Clio had dropped them. Bleyn moved snake-fast, scooping one up and flicking the blade close to his brother’s throat. Aragon made no move. “Wonder how many men have killed their murderer?” said Bleyn.

  ***

  Egg gathered a handful of magic, holding it in a clenched fist and thinking furiously about how best to put his power to use. He saw Kassa slide two herb daggers from her belt, but she hesitated to use them.

  It was Clio who moved, emerging from the alcove to stumble towards Bleyn and Aragon Silversword. “Father, don’t.”

  Bleyn turned, pressing the blade closer to Aragon’s throat. Slowly, he looked his daughter up and down. “You grew up pretty.”

  “Is that all you have to say to me?” she demanded.

  He shrugged, the gesture making the knife twitch alarmingly. “What else is there? Suppose they raised you to hate me, Mother and him.”

  “No. They just raised me. I learned to hate you all by myself.”

  Bleyn smiled. “Ou-uch. Looks like you inherited the family talent for hurting people.”

  “Don’t kill him. Please don’t.”

  Bleyn looked at Aragon, then back to his daughter. “Think I’m a good man, Clio? Think I’m one of those romantic heroes who does what’s right instead of what’s right for me?”

  “No,” she said softly.

  “Then why do you imagine you can convince me to spare him? What could you possibly say that would make a difference?”

  There was a whisper in the crowd. Out of the corner of his eye, Egg saw Lemissa vanish into a puff of dust that blew away on the breeze. Other dead people were vanishing, one by one. The crowd parted, and the reason for this stepped through, a girl with a coppery cloud of hair lifting in the breeze. As she passed close to another dead person, he also turned to dust.

  Egg recognised her instantly as Dahla the ghost. She was no longer translucent, her body as solid as anyone else’s. She wasn’t crying, either. She moved with a new confidence. When she came level with Kassa, she stood still, her eyes fixed on Bleyn and Aragon.

  Aragon moved, using his wrist to deflect the knife from his throat. He spun Bleyn around, locking his brother’s arms behind him and holding them fast. Bleyn did not struggle, too busy gazing at Dahla.

  Kassa opened her hand and the fallen knife skittered across the cobblestones, joining its companions in a neat pile within the alcove, out of everyone’s way.

  “I looked for you,” Bleyn was saying in a ragged voice. “I searched the Underworld, but you weren’t there. You weren’t anywhere.”

  “I was here,” said Dahla. “I never left. I couldn’t bear to leave my daughter at first, and I stayed too long. I forgot who I was, forgot everything about myself except that I was looking for something.” She turned and gazed at Clio, her eyes lighting up with a lovely smile.

  Clio stared back, shocked. “Mama?”

  “You couldn’t bear to leave her,” Bleyn said resentfully. “What about me? I was waiting for you. You were my wife. Do you still blame me for the fire? It wasn’t my fault.”

  “Nothing ever was, Bleyn,” Dahla said with a sigh. “You always found someone else to blame.”

  “But the fire really wasn’t my fault.”

  “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “Of course it does!”

  A shambling figure walked up to Dahla. “I say, young lady, if you wouldn’t mind…” It was Professor Gootch, looking rather the worse for wear since his recent death. Dahla smiled sweetly and reached out, touching the professor’s face with her bare hand. At her touch, he dissolved into dust.

  Bleyn, nervous now, tried to back away but Aragon still held him fast from behind. “How are you doing that?”

  “I was chosen to restore order between the alive and the dead,” said Dahla.

  “You’re not going to do that to me, are you?” Bleyn demanded.

  “It’s time you returned,” said Dahla. “You don’t belong here.”

  His face changed, the brashness melting away. “Will you come with me this time?”

  Dahla’s face was unmoving, like stone. “You have to find your own way.” Reaching up, she brushed her lips lightly against his. Bleyn Silversword dissolved into dust, leaving Aragon’s arms empty. Dahla and Aragon exchanged a long look before she turned to greet her daughter.

  Clio reached a hand out to her mother. Dahla echoed the gesture, matching Clio’s hand with her own. Their fingers entwined for a moment. Dahla glanced briefly at Egg, smiling. “Found what I was looking for,” she told him.

  “I noticed that,” he replied with a grin.

  “Glad I got to see you all grown up,” Dahla told her daughter.

  “I wish I had known you,” Clio whispered, blinking away tears.

  “Ask your uncle Aragon. I’m sure he remembers a better version that I ever really was.”

  “Do you have to leave now?”

  “I sent all the others bac
k,” said Dahla. “I should do the same for myself. It’s time I got on with whatever happens next.”

  Clio sighed, and squeezed her mother’s hand.

  Without letting go, Dahla turned to Aragon for a moment. He leaned down over her so that she could whisper something in his ear. Then she turned back to Clio and smiled before she herself dissolved into dust.

  Clio collapsed. Egg and Sean both leaped forward, but it was Aragon who caught her, holding his niece tightly as she wept.

  Kassa stepped back from the scene, glaring at Lord Sinistre. “There you are. You caused some real misery with that walking dead spell of yours. How do you feel?”

  Sinistre blew his nose into an over-sized purple handkerchief, and dabbed at his eyes.

  Kassa clapped him on the shoulder. “I told you that you weren’t cut out to be a villain, you soppy old wet lettuce.”

  “Do you think I’m too old to retrain?” he asked, tucking his handkerchief away.

  “No one’s ever too old to try something new.”

  There was a discreet cough. Kassa looked up, and saw her parents climbing down from the nearest roof. “You two? What are you still doing here?”

  “Reckon she missed us,” said Bigbeard. “Sorry about that.”

  Black Nell smacked him. “You were hiding behind the chimney, you goose.”

  Kassa stared at them both in horror. “How are you going to get back? Dahla’s gone.”

  Bigbeard shrugged. “Better be goin’ the long way, I suppose.”

  “We could try and kill each other,” Nell said thoughtfully. “Don’t know if that works so well a second time around.”

  Kassa pulled a long silver chain from around her neck and unclasped it. “Well, if you have to travel the long way, you might as well travel in style.” A small ship-shaped pendant dangled on the end of the chain. Kassa handed it to her mother. “I believe this is yours.”

  “Oh, no,” said Nell, trying to hand it back. “You’re the one who’s alive here. You inherited it.”

  “I don’t need it any more,” said Kassa insisted. “I’m all grown up. I have a real job and everything. Besides, who is more suited to sail a ghost-ship than a pair of dead people?”

  Nell glanced suspiciously at Bigbeard. “She’s being all sweet and generous. Are we absolutely sure that she’s our daughter?”