by James Stone
‘I’m not done with her…!’ Magmaya stuttered, feeling the words spill from her throat.
‘Oh, you’re one of those girls?’ He just laughed, and a moment later, they’d disappeared into the shadow of the sex house.
Magmaya’s legs buckled again, and then there was silence as if it had never happened, save for the stench of alcohol that had clung to the man’s neck.
She held herself, tight, and looked back across the other stalls, mapping out the path back to Spider in her mind. Just down one street, she told herself, one right and one left. It’ll take barely a moment to get back.
But a moment later, she was inside the sex house, and the vile miasma of sweat and perfume began choking her.
Pink walls rushed her by, and a thousand naked bodies on red velvet reached out to her, begging her to join for a few measly coppers. But they all disappeared behind as she forced herself on through clouds of scented incense and over heaps of twisted limbs.
Stray hands clawed at her backside, and greasy fingers slipped through her hair, but Magmaya just hurried on through the maze of ecstasy and giggles, her head pounding. She could barely make out a thing in the low, red light; even the bundles of flesh and stained fur recliners seemed distant, let alone her own satchel as she clawed through it, waiting for the cold to scrape against her fingers.
At last, she found the carving knife and carried on through the kaleidoscope as it encased her, through tendrils and skin. Despite the urgency pounding in her chest, she wanted to crawl up in the corner and cover her ears. Maybe then she could finally be forgotten.
But then, she heard a scream from the corridor beyond and carried on.
She followed the squeals through another chain of corridors and linen until a row of doors confronted her. Magmaya traced the sounds to the one in the centre and pressed her ear against the wood; there was a racket of pleas and grunts, and so she readied the knife and pushed through the door.
Malla was pinned down against the chair in the room’s centre. Her tights and undergarments had been torn off and scattered about the floor. But there were others in the room too, standing around and tugging at the bare breasts of some other girl.
Come with me, please, she wished she could’ve screamed. But before she could open her mouth, the man holding Malla began to tear down his breeches and press himself forward, fast, so Magmaya moved faster.
Next thing she knew, he was beneath her, and the room had come alive. The sell-maidens were screaming, and the others had sprung up. But it was too late. She raised the knife into the air and beat it down, again and again, until the back of the man’s skull was a bloody pulp. He hadn’t even found time to scream.
The other men threw themselves at her while Malla disappeared, but she screamed even louder than the harlots had and held the knife up to the light.
‘You think that’ll scare me, girl?’ one of them barked. ‘I’ve fought with rapier. You ever heard of Fleetfront?’
The man behind yelled something incomprehensible and lurched at her.
Her hair caught her eye as she rose. He swung again, cumbersome.
Magmaya threw herself aside, as she had done with Vargul all those years ago and put her knife in his throat. He spluttered and fell back, clawing at his neck, but lost himself in the clatter of the falling chair.
She turned to the other one and watched his chest rise and fall, holding the sell-maiden between two talons.
He dropped the girl and fled.
‘Malla!’ she must have shouted a thousand times before the hour passed. Magmaya’s arm was red and swollen—she hadn’t noticed the man behind had managed to hit her. The gash was warm when she held it, but at least the fire reminded her she was alive.
She plucked up the strength to call again to a hundred stalls that weren’t listening, ‘Malla! Malla. Malla…’
Was that even her name? Magmaya wanted to cry. The other man was still out there—if she found him—if he found her…!
Magmaya washed the blood off her carving knife at the rotting fountain. She could still make out shrieks from the sex houses, but this time they were fearful as the sell-maidens began stumbling upon the corpses she’d left for them.
The idea of killing the man hadn’t even formed in her head; it just seemed to have happened. She had taken more lives over the last few months than she could’ve ever imagined when Siedous had first given her that wooden sword—it made her sick to the stomach. But now, she had killed someone from the south! She didn’t even know who they were—perhaps sons of a high lord who would seek revenge, or knights or brawlers. Maybe elsewhere they were good men. But it didn’t matter, watching them writhe had ignited some rush in her like a forbidden baptism.
She couldn’t protect Malla for the rest of her life, though; she was a sell-maiden after all—something like this was bound to have happened before and bound to happen again.
Siedous would have known what to do. But he wasn’t here, and neither was anyone else who could help her. Perhaps Spider would have to do. But after all that had happened, the Divinicus would probably be at her throat, and Spider wasn’t going to prove capable against them. For now, though, she would just walk and breath and shiver.
At last, daylight surrendered itself to the cold lips of the moon, and she began to make her way back. She had little else to pawn (but her clothes) and nothing more to do than scour the world for oceans everyone swore were haunted. She hadn’t dared to ask anyone any more about them—not even the more reasonable natives; they had claimed even a glimpse of its shimmer was a curse. But the more Magmaya became deprived, the more want she felt.
The south wasn’t meant to be a market of the superstitious, nor an empire of liars and thieves and rapers but instead, green grass between her toes, a yellow sun lashing against her back and a new moon above the sea at night. She had sworn to herself that one day she would sail back to Rache, tell him of the fine wines and lush grasslands and humming seas—how her journey had been forged by a goddess and blessed by starlight and how he would walk again—walk back south with her.
But only the dim roar of a crowd surrounded her now—crusting pipes and shattered glass, hailing saints plastered with posters offering ransoms. Dying thickets of moss enveloped her toes from the red earth, but that wasn’t the grass she wanted beneath her feet. Even the sea began to tease her as it crashed against Magmaya’s ears, promising nothing but a haunted façade.
The dying of the light couldn’t have come sooner, though as the day finally caught up with her. The corpses that had been left to the birds had rotted to nothing but lank bone, threaded together with lengthy red sinews. It couldn’t be long until Magmaya’s victims were to be strung up too.
It was awfully humid, and nausea began to visit her again. It’s time to leave and forget the girl pleading in your mind’s eye, she told herself and made her way back.
Magmaya hated to return empty handed, and if Spider was awake at this hour, it would only mean he would be disgruntled too. She sighed and raked her fist against the heavy iron door; once, twice, three times, until she became impatient and slipped in the key which she had watched the old man hide in the glass of a nearby lamppost. She turned it in the lock and watched the bulwark twitch and click under her fumbling until, at last, she wriggled inside.
Rusted spikes jutted from the furnaces like broken ranks of soldiers; all manner of spear tips and jagged blades stared her down from the flames. The fires of the workshop burnt in Magmaya’s pupils as she looked around, forming spiels in her mind of how she would tell Spider of her shortcomings. She didn’t quite expect him to lash out at her, but there were some chances she couldn’t bear to take.
The purring of the flame broke the silence as Magmaya strode across the room, looking for evidence; for some sort of notice or anything at all to suggest where that damned blacksmith might have gone.
And then she saw him, wilting with a grimace against the back of the door, skin pale and fing
ers bloated. He was unspeaking and unmoving as he hovered about a head above the floor, for that was where he’d been nailed to the doorframe.
Magmaya didn’t feel sick, but instead, a sense of infuriation skulked over her. She patrolled the chamber again, past her door, as a knot stiffened within her and grappled for her skin.
She’d done this! She had brought the wrath of Highport down upon him!
It wasn’t until there was a clattering from her own quarters that a crimson heat flamed in her forehead and ears. She froze and looked to her door.
His killer was in her quarters.
She turned away and took a step forward, feeling the floor rasp beneath her tread; there was a malign fusing of wood and iron aching away beneath her. Magmaya stopped again and looked back to her door. No sound.
She let the seconds flow past her like a hailstorm before she took another step. The furnace’s crackle thundered against her with each gone moment as if she was about to be eaten by the fires. One wrong step and she’d never forget it.
Move now or die.
Magmaya flung herself across the room and around the worktops. The fire began glistening in her eyes and eating away at her tears, and she felt herself fall into its embrace, closer, closer.
No, it’s not time yet, she told herself, there’s still life left in me.
She stole a piece of trailing leather from a workbench and ran her hand through the flames, producing a red-hot poker the length of her arm. She still had her carving knife, but that wouldn’t do if her enemy was armed with anything longer than their finger.
Despite the fear of it all, she couldn’t help but be enamoured as the newly born blade wavered and glowed between her broken fingertips. It was gold and orange and blue all at once with the hiss of gods long-dead. If she’d known any better, she’d have thought it was an art piece.
Magmaya turned and felt the heat beat down against her back; the burning poker was still pressed against her palm. She threw herself against the door of her quarters and forced herself in.
The man wasn’t the survivor from before—that was all she comprehended before he lunged at her.
A splatter of blood sullied her clothes, and steel slashed across her collarbone. But that was before she ran the brand forward and thrust its quivering tip through the man’s chest.
It was over in a moment, but the smoking of the blade seemed to last a lifetime.
She dropped it as its fervour began to dwindle and toppled to the ground in time to watch the man die. He’d curled up like a babe as the red blade fell between them with one last sigh.
Magmaya cradled her palm, blistered and pink. The leather hadn’t been enough! She released the scarred, putrid thing and heaved her head back against the wall, but her heart didn’t stop racing until the man’s stopped beating.
There would surely be more coming for her, though. The man that had fled from the sex house had only alerted the cavalry!
Her fighting arm was burning like all hells, and she would undoubtedly be outnumbered. Impatience was driving Magmaya into a crazed spin, and the room was shaking, moving, stirring. She could feel the cold floors embracing her and see the corpse staring back.
And then there was a pounding against the metal of the door. They were at the walls!
Several more knocks followed, closer to the entrance than before and Magmaya froze, her mind screaming at her to run, run back north. But instead, she lay still, unflinching until the pounding grew again. Why would the attackers be taunting her so? If she had to die, why couldn’t it be with all the grace of a danseur and the chivalry of a knight? Instead, she found herself weeping, holding herself as her cheeks flushed red.
‘Spider,’ a voice called amid another tempest of thumping.
Magmaya stood from her cradle. Surely, they would know Spider was dead? Why did they have to insult her?
‘Spider!’ the voice roared again with all the subtly of a prophet, and then silence ate away at the room. That was before whoever stood on the other side forced their way through the door.
Before she could think, the charred poker was hot in her palm again, and the distance closed between herself and the intruder. If she was to die fighting some fiend, then so be it—it was what she deserved after all she had done.
She opened the door to Spider’s home and yellow light spilt in, haloing the three angels in the glow of the burning furnace. There was a rush of cloth and silver before a prickly cold washed through her like nothing she’d felt since Orianne.
Magmaya dropped her blade in subservience and collapsed before them. And then something warm rushed through her, and she couldn’t help but look to them with the eyes of the child that persisted inside her.
‘Oh,’ one of the Divinicus said softly, ‘Magmaya Vorr. They did say you looked like your father.’
Fifteen
The dress was silk and silver; it was a sparkling memory of a better time like an ocean under the light of morning stars. It was too beautiful, from the clear jewels that shimmered across the bodice, to the thousands of perfect stitches articulated by the most gifted of artisans to make its boundless waves.
Magmaya had never quite seen anything like it, let alone wear, and yet, after she discovered it fit her to the inch, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Even after she had bathed amid the flowing red wax of dying candles and the stench of powdered incense, it hurt to wear. She looked back to the fish-headed men, scampering crustaceans and humming dragonflies as they stood sentinel over the baths, cast in stone; they were all for herself: the warm water, the soaps and salts and fetishes that Fabius had promised so long ago. It was only a shame she had to kill to get them.
Her eyes still ached with the rush of the strange powder she’d felt compelled to inhale, but it had taken the ache away from her chest and hands. A handmaiden had told her it was sometimes known as Eliadur or The Dew of the Honey, and she began to feel the way she had all those millennia ago when blood had frequented her face.
For once, though, there was no dirt beneath her fingernails; the salts had made her skin soft and numb; she had been made warm with steam and raised with the choking smoke. The dress was kissing her as she stood in it, but its soft lips whispered to her, Just stay in the bath a little while longer.
She was tempted to trust the voice; the baths were beautiful, from the strange plants that crowded every corner with their porcelain vases, to the flock of luminescent fish that swam eagerly about a tank in the wall, glowing yellow as they did. But by far the best aspect of the spa was the balcony. Unlike the boardroom in Ranvirus, it didn’t lead her to a snowy hell but instead a light summer breeze as she gripped the white curtains, hard.
And at last, the ocean was glowing before her, caressing stone beaches at the foot of the rocky hill below. Magmaya could see the marble of the palace disappear into the golden sand, which in turn stretched out until it met the shore. The sky was alive with the stench of salty sea air and the brawn of tumbling waves. The view absorbed her, and the humidity lashed against her face. It was smelling like summer sex again.
Mere hours before, she had been trapped in a complex of blood and rot—now she was in a castle of angels! She couldn’t remember the journey out of Highport, but when she’d awoken again, she had opened her eyes to ranks of opal statuettes and cherry perfumes.
According to the handmaidens, there hadn’t been a man or woman at the bay that had stopped talking about her. Rumours were circulating that the north had declared themselves against the south and Spider’s death was but the beginning of the war to come.
Surely the Divinicus wouldn’t force her back, would they? There was certainly no way home. Perhaps the dress was her last rite before they finished with her and that’s why it hurt so much to wear.
A figure lingered in the archway, and for a moment, Magmaya supposed it was one of the strange sculptures that didn’t quite resemble a person at all. But this one moved. She was draped
in lilac, but she wasn’t wearing a headdress like a bird’s cage which the other handmaidens seemed to have insisted on doing.
‘My lady.’ The woman bowed, her accent thick. ‘Have you bathed well?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said to the handmaiden. ‘I’m glad to be out of there. Highport, I mean.’
‘That’s good, my lady,’ she replied. ‘Are you hungry? Thirsty at all?’
‘No,’ she murmured.
The handmaiden nodded. ‘After you are finished here, the Lord Commander wants to speak with you.’
‘Oh.’ Magmaya smiled, but then gestured to her hair. It had been soaking wet only a minute ago, but the warm sea winds had left it lank and salty. ‘If you give me a moment.’
‘No, please, my lady.’ The handmaiden ambled towards her. ‘Let me.’
‘There really is no ne—’
‘Please, let me.’
The girl ran her fingers through Magmaya’s hair, combing away the black knots with such intricacy, she couldn’t feel it untangle. She dried it with a small, grey towel, and her hands tugged back her curls with such a sweet caress, it made her scalp prickle. Then, the girl stretched her hair back and knotted it sharply before moving to dress it with all manner of hoary ribbons and pearly bows.
At last, the servant stepped away and stood before her with a satisfied smile, and Magmaya’s eyes turned wide as she glimpsed herself in the shimmer of the windows. She half laughed. ‘Thank you—I—it’s more than I deserve.’
‘I am glad you like it.’ The handmaiden beamed. ‘You see, I was a girl of the Summerlands, and it was said that if a girl couldn’t use her fingers well, then she was no girl.’ She shrugged.
‘I see.’ It was all Magmaya could do not to laugh.
‘There’s lots of talk about you, my lady.’ The girl frowned. ‘They say you’re from far away. Kythera?’ She looked at Magmaya’s dress.
‘Farther,’ she replied. ‘I lived in the north.’
‘Goodness,’ the girl said timidly. ‘You’ve made quite a trip. From Lumiar?’
