I didn’t have much left, with the serious magics I had been hurling. And it would be hours before I would feel confident in performing much more of the Art without danger of passing out. Gammond had to be in even more dire straits than I. If it were possible to approach her alone, I had no doubt I would mop the floor with her. Unfortunately, she wasn’t alone. She was undoubtedly surrounded by troops from the People’s Committee, and quite possibly in the thick of the fighting. I wouldn’t be sneaking up on her.
That was quite all right. I had no desire to get close to her. And with a little luck, I wouldn’t have to pull more than the merest whisper from my well to do her in. Her, and the bulk of the two armies that were engaged in hacking each other to pieces.
The Telemarch had seeded the city with deadly magical traps. Likely they were meant for Amra; she’d said she had triggered two of them. But too, I think they were a product of his paranoia and madness. Some were set in logical terrain; all the gates had one, for instance, as well as the major wharfs. Others were located in areas of dubious usefulness. I doubted, for example, that there was much call for the trap he’d set in just one crypt in the small cemetery that sat on the border between the Girdle and the upper slope claimed by the gentry.
I made my way towards the sounds of battle, growing more confident with every step that I’d be able to accomplish what I intended. When I arrived at the small, stepped, nearly vertical public square that was part of the unofficial demarcation between Girdle and gentry territories, I smiled.
The bulk of When’s forces were in the square, fighting on two fronts—down slope, assaulting the barricades that bisected the square, and up slope, fending off Gammond’s counterattack. Which meant that the bulk of Gammond’s forces were also in the square.
The square was the location of one of the Telemarch’s traps.
I called up my magesight and scanned the chaos for Gammond. I caught signs of her workings all around—she’d done a very convincing job of making her forces appear to be double their actual numbers, for one—but at first I couldn’t find the woman herself. Then she cast something, I don’t know what, and the flare of her magics to my magesight picked her out.
She was on the very edge of the square, guarded by four men in half-plate. She looked exhausted, her iron gray hair mussed and a red smear of blood on one side of her face. She did not look as if she was having a very good day.
Her day was about to get much, much worse.
I retreated back up the mount to what I thought was a safe distance. I still had a goodly slice of view of the square, and the carnage being committed there, though I could no longer see Gammond from my new position. You can’t have everything.
I tapped into the Telemarch’s trap, and sprung it.
At first it seemed that nothing was happening. Certainly the combatants didn’t suddenly leave off trying to kill each other. But the chalky-white quarried stone that the square was paved with had loosened, slowly becoming the consistency of thick mud. Everyone in the square was ankle-deep within a few seconds.
Then, between one heartbeat and the next, the stone went back to being stone, trapping the living and the dead, the dying and their killers. Everyone except those atop the barricades, where the fighting was at its most desperate and vicious.
A noise of confusion started up. Some shouted out in alarm. And then the next part of the Telemarch’s trap swung into action.
There was an enormous roar, and a sun suddenly sprang into being in the square, incinerating everything and everyone within its confines. I’d thought myself far enough away. I hadn’t been prepared for just how much power the Telemarch had invested in the working. I was thrown back by the blast, hurled perhaps half a dozen feet. I hit the cobbles and curled into a ball, covering my face and letting the blast roll me even further up the slope. Trying to fight it would have been futile.
When I came to rest, I just lay there a moment. Nothing seemed broken, though I’d lost a bit of skin to the street, and my face felt as if I’d got a sudden sunburn.
I got up and went to look at what I’d done.
The square no longer existed. It had been scoured down to the bedrock of the mount, which itself was smoking. Every building that had bordered the square was a burning ruin, as were many of the buildings beyond them in all directions. It was total devastation.
I’d had a notion to go looking for Gammond’s corpse. With mages, it pays to be sure they’re truly dead. Once I saw the effects of Aither’s magic, I gave up the idea. Hundreds had been in the square. There was nothing left of any of them.
“All I wanted was to be left alone,” I said to the devastation.
I turned around and started the climb back up to the Citadel. Behind me, screams had started up. I don’t know whose, perhaps residents, perhaps supporters of one side or the other who’d come to watch from what they’d believed were secure locations. It didn’t really matter.
Hundreds were destined to die in that square, on that afternoon, no matter what. I’d just made sure that neither side won that particular battle.
I didn’t give a damn who won the war.
Amra: Interlude One
When I opened my eyes there was a little girl squatting next to me. She had long, rich brown hair in tight, natural curls, skin the color of old, old oak, and stars in place of the pupils of her eyes. She wore the rags and scraps any street rat might. She was squatting on her haunches, forearms resting loosely on her knobby knees. Her expression didn’t change when I started looking back; intent, but not insanely so.
I turned bleary eyes on my surroundings. Still the same room. The Telemarch’s corpse was right where I’d left it, looking dead as ever, but not noticeably decomposed. Which could mean it hadn’t been all that long since my lights were put out. Or it could mean in this place, things didn’t rot. Hard to say. I looked back at the girl.
“Hello. I’m Amra. Who’re you?” My voice came out as a croak.
She just kept staring at me.
“Fine, then. Be that way.” I struggled up to a sitting position, and she scooted back away from me a bit. Not like she was scared; more like she just didn’t want to be touched, even accidentally. Fine by me. I felt stiff as all hells, and my mouth had a taste I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I decided to blame that on the Knife, and not my habit of sleeping with my mouth open. My mind skittered away from thoughts of the Knife. I wasn’t ready to mull over that particular violation just yet.
“Right then. I suppose standing is the next thing on the list, since I don’t see me getting a glass of wine any time soon.” I was talking to myself, but the girl’s presence was a convenient excuse not to feel as though I was the crazy street lady who talked to herself.
I made it to a standing position. Looked around again. Same room, plus girl. Same corpse. Same open door, same void and rift beyond.
“Next chore, house cleaning,” I told the girl. I pulled Aither’s corpse up to a sitting position—no rigor—then let him slump forward like a sitting drunk passing out on the pavement. Then I got behind him and booted him out the door. I closed the door quickly, not bothering to watch his corpse float off. I didn’t like staring out into nothing, and I didn’t like having my back to the girl. Call me paranoid, but people mysteriously appearing literally in the middle of nowhere without explanation made me suspicious, no matter how cute they were. Especially how cute they were. I turned back to her. She hadn’t moved, except to follow my every move with her Athagos-like eyes.
“’That’s the house cleaning done,” I said to her. “What’s next on the list? Oh, right. Waiting for you to say something.”
“Did you notice that there’s no light, but you can still see?” she asked, voice pleasant and high and absolutely normal.
“Huh. What do you know?”
“Many things.”
“That was rhetorical on my part. What I really meant was ‘‘I don’t really care, because at this point nothing whatsoever could surprise me.’’”
“’You’d be surprised,” she said with a small, not particularly nice smile.
“Oh, a witty retort. We’re making progress.” At which point she went silent again. Of course.
Time passed. Or technically, I suppose, didn’t pass, me being outside time and space. But it certainly felt like it passed. Being in this place put me in danger of turning philosophical. I shuddered at the thought.
Being stared at by the little girl was starting to get old.
“Well, thanks for coming over. Sorry I didn’t have any refreshments to offer. Next time maybe send a note first. Let me get the door for you.” I opened the door.
The kid didn’t take the hint.
“She is also trapped in a pocket reality,” she said, “divorced from the rest of existence. Of course, on Her part, it was deliberate and intentional.”
“Who exactly are you talking about?” I asked her.
“She Who Casts Eight Shadows.”
“And how would you know that?”
“I’m one of the Shadows that she casts, of course.” She smiled. “Surprise!”
I sighed. “No, no really.” Bitter and disappointed, and hating whatever fate had led me to this place, this situation. But I was not surprised, no.
I scraped my fingers through my hair. “Which one are you?”
“Kalara.”
“Are there any more lurking about?”
“Abanon. But she won’t be making an appearance.”
“Oh, ’why’s that?”
“Because you cowed her.”
“Eh?”
“You crushed the Blade that Whispers Hate. Your will overbore hers in a rather thorough fashion.”
“Still not following you.”
“’She’s afraid of you.”
“Ah. Why didn’t you say so? And what about you?”
“What about me?”
“’You’re not scared, obviously.”
“I don’t feel fear. Or much else.”
“Because?”
“Because that would interfere with my purpose.”
I sighed. “Look ’I’m not going to keep handing you conversational cues. It gets tiresome.”
“You fought The Knife that Parts the Night to a stalemate. Well done, and I congratulate you. But it’s only a temporary situation. This balanced opposition you’ve engineered, it cannot last.”
“Look outside, Kalara. You see any route back to the world?”
“I don’t have to look outside to see it, Amra Thetys. I’m looking right at it.”
“It’ll be a neat trick, you getting back. Especially without the Knife. It’s your body, more or less, isn’t it? Without that, you’re powerless. So even if you did escape, you couldn’t do a damned thing.” I was guessing, but it felt right.
“I need a vessel, true. Which is why I left the Knife when it became obvious you were going to send it into the void.” She leaned forward a bit, and her face became serious. “The Knife may be gone, Amra, but I am still here. And as long as you live, I will remain here. I have not failed. I’ve simply had to retrench, as it were.”
I took Holgren’s pistol out of my pocket. It was useless, of course. I had no powder, I had no ball. Reloading couldn’t be all that hard to figure out. I should have asked him for all the bells and whistles. Ah, hindsight.
I threw it at Kalara, mostly just to see how she would react.
It passed right through her, hit the wall, and clattered to the floor. She hadn’t even flinched.
“If you want to do me harm, Amra, I’m afraid you’ll have to root me out of your own soul. Down there beneath all the broken glass Aither mentioned. And of course whatever you do to me, you do to yourself.”
Kerf’s louse-ridden beard.
#
The Knife didn’t go away. I decided three things about it. First, I wasn’t going to be talking to it anymore. Second, I wasn’t going to call it the Knife, or Kalara, or any damned thing else except Chuckles, even in my thoughts. And third, I was definitely not going to think of it as a little girl. It was an entity, not a person. It was an it, and a mass-murdering it to boot.
That took all of five minutes or so to conclude. Or what felt like five minutes, anyway. Who knew if it was an age or no time at all?
I looked around my small world. It hadn’t gotten any more interesting. Aither hadn’t even installed a secret compartment in his throne. It being the only thing in the room other than me, I checked.
I sat down on it, careful not to lean back into the blood spatter, and sighed.
Eternity was looking pretty tedious. I really, really wanted some wine.
“You could just make some,” Chuckles said to me. It couldn’t read my thoughts before, but that had changed, apparently, when it stowed away in my soul. I wasn’t happy about that. But then, I wasn’t happy about much of anything at that moment.
But was it right? The rift was still down there beneath my feet. Limitless possibility, just waiting for my will to tap it. That gave me the itch of an idea that I shoved away before it could form.
“What was that, Amra?” It stood and took a few steps toward me. I bit my thumb at it and turned my thoughts back to wine.
Holgren told me when he performed extemporaneous magic, he had to envision the magic he wanted to perform as precisely as he possibly could. The greater the detail, the greater the chance of success. Which at the time had made me wonder about just what kind of imagination he had, to be able to turn people into blood fog.
So I followed his advice. I imagined holding a cup of the wine that I was, sadly, most familiar with–Tambor’s. Sour, vinegary, resinous, with overtones of dirt and the mouth-feel of despair. Watery-red, reflecting light as though each bowl came with a drop of oil on top. The earthenware cup’s lumpy, rounded bottom in my hand–Tambor was happy if it spilled, it meant you were about to buy another–
I called up the barest breath of power from the rift, and there it was, in my hand.
I took a sip.
“Gah, just as ghastly as the real thing,” I said out loud. If I ever got back to Lucernis, I could set up shop across from Tambor and absolutely ruin him. He had to pay something for his stock, little though it might be. My cost would be nil.
But of course, I would never be going back to Lucernis. I couldn’t.
“Of course you can,” Chuckles said. “I can show you how.”
I reversed my first decision.
“Listen carefully, Chuckles. I’m not going to make a habit of talking to or acknowledging you, but you need to understand something. I will never, ever allow you back into the World. You’re a fucking monster, and I’ve got a grudge against you that beggars belief. You’re a tick who’s attached itself to my soul, so until I figure out a way to scrape you off and stomp on you, neither one of us is going anywhere. Are we clear?”
It just smiled.
I finished the wine. Yes, it is possible to feel both reluctant and desirous at the same time. Just so you know.
I tossed the cup to the floor, both out of anger over the situation and in curiosity as to what would happen to this thing I’d made from magic. It broke into convincingly real pieces, with convincingly real sounds.
“And now I know. Better check again to make sure.”
I summoned up another cup of wine. You know, in the spirit of inquiry. And getting drunk.
And drunk I got, while an abomination in the shape of a child watched with disinterested, endlessly patient starlight eyes.
PART II: LUCERNIS
Eighteen
Words can hardly express how happy I was to see Lucernis’s low skyline slowly reveal itself off the starboard bow in the early morning light—the squat, clumsy needle of the Dragonfly Tower, the bulbous Dome of Sighs. The age-stained walls of the Arsenal, marking the southern limit of the harbor. Lucernis was no paradise, certainly; there was as much obscene poverty as there was obscene wealth, and bad things happened to good people as a matter of course. But the largest city in
the west had a soul all its own, and its vastness afforded anonymity that, in many respects which were important to me, equaled freedom. I had first arrived in Lucernis as an exile. I’d soon discovered that my exile was a blessing in disguise.
But most importantly, it wasn’t gods-damned Bellarius. That city had brought out the worst in me. Also, the weather had been pure misery.
Keel hobbled up to the rail next to me and took his first long look at the Jewel of the West. Greytooth had been able to save both Keel and Chalk, though he had been unable to heal their wounds completely. I didn’t pretend to understand what his Philosophy could and couldn’t do, and had no reason to believe he would withhold a portion of healing unnecessarily.
“So that’s Lucernis?” asked Keel.
“It is.”
“It’s kinda flat,” was all he came up with.
“You’ll appreciate not having to limp up and down a mountain to get anywhere. In fact, you won’t have to walk much at all. We have these things called carriages.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“You sit in them, and a horse pulls it. Anywhere you want to go. You’ll love it.”
He rolled his eyes. “I think I liked you better when you were in a bad mood all the time.”
I liked me better away from Bellarius, not being forced to do terrible things as a matter of course. Not having ruthlessness be my default mental state. But I kept it light.
“Not getting homesick, are you?”
“No. I know as well as anybody how awful Bellarius is. I thought once the Syndic was brought down, things would get better. Somehow they got even worse. Amra warned me about being optimistic. I guess she was right.”
“You don’t want to go believing everything Amra says. If she was half as cynical as she makes out, there wouldn’t be a Bellarius anymore. Though I have to admit, the thought of a world without Bellarius has its merits.”
He glanced up at me. “As fucked as Bellarius is, it’s still all I know. That city there? I don’t know anything about it. Nothing.”
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