by Col Buchanan
It was here, along the Cinnamon, where the eager fighting force came across their first Khosian town. The guides told them it was called Spiré, and the Imperials did not have to ask them why. It was a hilltown, situated on a high abutment of rock that protruded into the flatlands of the Cinnamon valley. A snaking wall surrounded it, rising and falling over the elevated crown on which its whitewashed buildings stood; the multiple spires of pale granite that stabbed upwards like petrified spears.
By evening, the gates of the town lay breached by cannon shots, and imperial infantry flooded through them into the winding streets within. The overwhelmed defenders fought on, soldiers of the town’s Principari in the main, though with a scattering of civilians amongst them, throwing rocks from rooftops or holding out behind barricades blocking the streets. The majority of the populace had already fled westwards, harried by imperial skirmishers.
For a while a Khosian skyship ventured above the violence of the sack. It even tried to land amongst the turrets of the citadel to evacuate the defenders, but the three heavy imperial skyships were quick to chase it from the scene.
In the pale twilight, Ché dismounted from his zel outside Sasheen’s command tent, where she sat slouched on a field chair next to Archgeneral Sparus. Around them lounged members of her entourage, eating fruit pillaged from the orchards that covered the valley to the south-east of the town. Their faces glowed as the flames of the town shot high into the darkening skies.
An empty field chair sat next to Sasheen. As Ché approached, he saw that the head of Lucian rested upon it; a grotesque, almost comical sight in the present setting.
Sashseen smiled as she saw him approach. ‘See anything of interest on your ride?’
Ché had gone riding around the foot of the rock that Spiré burned upon, to free himself for a little while of their company. He’d ridden all the way up the winding route that led to the town’s gates, and to the imperial infantry loitering around them, but had stopped at the heaps of bodies stacked just inside the broken gates, and the stink of death in the air, and the still audible shouts and screams from within.
He’d decided to turn back, and had passed Romano on his way down. The young general and his coterie had been on their way to enjoy the town themselves.
‘They’ve secured the granaries, I think,’ he told the Matriarch. ‘The wagons are coming out now.’
Beside her, Sparus gave a satisfied nod of his head. Extra grain could only be a boon to a general leading an army of this size.
‘Have a seat,’ Sasheen told him. ‘You look weary.’ She turned to one of her aides, and the man hurried to vacate his chair.
Reluctantly, Ché settled himself into it, wanting only to return to his tent and his books. The heat of the burning town was palpable even from here. Sool and the three Monbarri inquisitors were amongst the entourage, as were the twins, Guan and Swan, though neither looked at him. Guan stood staring at Spiré with his mouth working a silent wordbinding. He held a devotional grip in his fist, a ball of spikes which he squeezed as hard as he could. Behind him sat his sister Swan, stroking a brown-haired puppy in her lap.
No wine this evening, he noticed. The mood was a sombre one for once, as though the sight of the torched town had suddenly entranced them all.
A croak suddenly sounded from a nearby chair. It was Lucian, his forehead pinched from the pain he was in, or the anguish.
‘Where. Are. We?’ he belched slowly, his glassy eyes bright with the reflection of the fires.
‘I told you,’ Sasheen snapped as though to a child. ‘We’re in Khos. And over there, on the hill, that is Spire.’
‘Not. Lagos. Then.’
Sasheen chuckled, and it was an ugly sound in Ché’s ears just then. ‘Lagos is gone, Lucian. You made certain of that, you recall?’
The man rasped something unintelligible, and Ché looked away.
A rider was approaching, leading a second zel behind him bearing something long and wrapped in canvas. As he grew nearer, Ché saw that it was Alarum, his lean face shadowed by the beginnings of a beard. The spymaster greeted them with an upraised hand as he drew to a halt.
‘You’ve been busy,’ he said with a glance at the town. His face was bruised on one side, and his lip scabbed over where it had been split.
‘So have you, by the looks of it,’ Sparus observed. ‘You delivered the terms, then?’
Alarum nodded, then gently eased himself from the saddle. He steadied himself as his legs took his weight.
‘To Creed himself?’
‘Of course. And, yes. His answer was hardly a surprising one.’
Sasheen remained slouched in her chair. ‘He did that to you?’
‘No. That was Halahan of the Greyjackets. I baited them as much as I dared. Their moods became . . .’ he waved a hand for right the word, ‘. . . transparent.’
‘And?’ demanded Sparus.
‘A drink first. It’s been a long and tiring ride and I haven’t stopped in hours.’
‘Later. Tell me now.’
Alarum raised his eyebrows, then leaned an arm wearily across the saddle. ‘Creed is confident. Don’t ask me why, for his army is as small as we’ve been hearing it to be. I’d say he’s actually looking forward to meeting us in the field.’
Sparus was listening to every word with fierce attention. ‘His health?’
‘He looked trim. Fighting fit.’
‘What about my gift,’ interjected Sasheen. ‘How did he take it?’
The spymaster smiled, though it was more of a flinch. ‘Oh they took it well. First they beat me a little, then they lectured me on all our wrongs. Creed gave me this as his response.’ Alarum stepped to the pack zel as though his legs were sticks, and unhitched the long burden tied to its flanks.
He unrolled the object on the grass before them, and Ché peered at the thing as everyone else did.
It was a charta, the famed spear of the Mercian chartassa.
For a moment no one said a thing. Sasheen and Sparus simply blinked down at it.
A dry cough sounded next to them. It was Lucian, and he continued to make the sound until it resembled something like laughter.
‘I had a time getting it back here,’ said Alarum. ‘Those things aren’t made for carrying on zelback.’
Sparus paid him no heed. He looked away from the charta, as though it was distasteful to him. Lucian continued his strange laughter until Sasheen rounded on her ex-lover, her face flushing red, and kicked the chair he rested upon so that the head rolled a few feet across the grass. It came to a stop with the eyes blinking up at the sky, a single brown leaf stuck to his cheek.
‘Put him back where he belongs,’ she commanded to no one in particular.
Ché took the opportunity to climb to his feet. He stepped over the charta and stopped next to the head, where he grabbed a handful of hair and picked it up. It was heavier than he had been expecting. He carried it into the tent, through the hangings over the entrance and into the shadowy interior.
He made his way to the back of the space where the jar of Royal Milk stood in its alcove. Gently, he rested the head on the pedestal as he unscrewed the lid of the jar.
Ché raised the head so their eyes could meet. Lucian’s eyes looked faintly yellow.
‘How are you?’ Ché asked him.
The man focused on his face. ‘Tired,’ he said. ‘Can’t. Sleep.’
‘Perhaps you are asleep. Perhaps this all just a nightmare.’
The man blinked as though coming halfway to his senses. ‘End. My. Shame.’
Ché sighed, and frowned, but didn’t move.
‘Beg. You,’ croaked Lucian.
Ché reached a hand out and plucked the leaf from the man’s cheek. The flesh was cold to the touch. With care he settled the head into the jar of Royal Milk. The man’s eyes watched him as they slipped beneath the surface.
He stood there for a moment, observing a few bubbles rising to the surface. Slowly, with great relish, he licked the ends of his
fingers, and stood humming with the sudden rush of it, the vitality suddenly burning through him.
Ché turned and left the jar sitting there, deep in shadow.
Ash sat alone in the night, gazing out over the tents of the baggage train and the encampment of the imperial army at the ruins of Spiré still burning.
The men of the army were loud tonight, intoxicated by the action of the day and the plunder they had gained from the sack. Already, they were trading their goods with the prostitutes and merchants of the baggage train; slaves too, which were being led in silent lines to the slave traders and their caged wagons.
Ash pondered at the defiance of the town. It had seemed senseless to him, for they’d clearly stood no chance at all against the cannon of the imperial army. Yet still, the small contingent of soldiers in the town had manned the walls and fought on as long as they had stood.
Perhaps they’d simply hoped to slow the advance of the invaders for a day or two. Perhaps with their deaths they bought time for others: for the townsfolk fleeing to the west; for the Khosian army already rumoured to be marching hard to meet them.
The towns of the People’s Revolution had done the same once, some of them at least. They had tried to hold off the advancing overlord forces while the Revolutionary Army mustered for the final battle in the Sea of Wind and Grasses. In the end, though, their sacrifices, their long war of resistance, had been in vain.
‘In vain,’ Ash grumbled aloud, shaking his gourd at the gutted settlement.
He gnashed his teeth drunkenly and sat back, trembling. Close by, the black night waters of a stream rushed along their rocky course. The Sisters of Loss and Longing were full tonight. They hung fat with blood above the burning town. A bad omen, he thought.
Ash held a deep admiration for what they had achieved here in the Free Ports. They had far surpassed anything that the people of Honshu had even dreamed of attaining. Yet part of him had always known that sooner or later this day would come to them. He was too aware of how fragile freedom truly was; a lonely flame cupped in the hands of a child, in a world where darkness preyed upon the light.
A throb filled his head, and he gripped it with a snarl. The pains had returned to him today with the sacking of the town, and with them the tremors in his hand. Before he’d retired to this grassy bank next to the stream, Ash had paid a small fortune in coin to buy a flask of Cheem Fire, intent on keeping himself warm and dulling his aches.
He took another long drink of it, and watched the stars above the lesser constellations of campfires in the valley. The Eye of Ninshi shone hard and red within its hood, unblinking.
He thought of Nico, on a night like this one, high in the foothills of Cheem. He thought of them getting drunk together around a fire.
Ash drank some more.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Silent Valley
Ché had risen early that morning, and he huddled in his tent while he lathered some his mother’s chamomile ointment over the rashes on his arms. He hadn’t slept well – too many things on his mind – and with a stiff neck he gazed out through the open tent flap, desiring the meagre daylight of dawn and the view over the snow-blanketed valley.
There was no hurry. In this weather, it would take the army and camp followers an eternity to ready themselves for the march. Outside, the bitter wind tore at the canvas tents of the encampment. Leaves and debris tumbled through the air. The zels were jittery, jostling together in their corrals as they tried to find a place in the warm and sheltered hearts of their small herds. A few people padded through the snow to the latrines, holding hats or hoods over their heads.
Through the open flap, he saw Swan and Guan stamp past. Guan glanced at him without expression, cool now. Swan, though, looked in and offered a brief smile.
Ché placed the jar of ointment on his bed and rolled down his sleeves. He sat there pondering for a few moments.
He checked the knife in its scabbard around his ankle then rose and stepped outside. He spotted the twins entering one of the corrals. Their tent wasn’t far from his own. When he reached it, he swept inside.
He looked about the orderly space, then pounced for the backpacks perched against the two cots. In the first pack, he found civilian clothing tightly bound in twine, a copy of the Scripture of Lies heavily annotated, and a journal with drawings and observations of Khos. He drew back when he found the small wooden poisoner’s kit at the bottom of it, a kit identical to his own.
Ché glanced back to make sure he was still alone. Quickly, he rifled through the other pack. His hands drew out a canvas bag and within it a small vial. He took it out and held it up to the daylight. A thick, golden liquid was within. He pulled out the stopper, took a tentative sniff.
Ché clasped the vial in his fist and hurried outside.
They were still at the corral when he went to confront them, rubbing down the backs of their zels with handfuls of grass. Guan muttered something to his sister when he saw Ché approaching. She smirked, then made herself serious again.
‘I know what you are,’ Ché snapped, tossing the vial into Guan’s hand. The man glanced down at it, then looked across at his sister.
With a laugh she grabbed a fistful of her zel’s mane and leapt onto its bare back. A moment later, Guan was doing the same.
‘Come for a ride with us,’ she said down to Ché, and before he could reply she kicked the animal’s flanks and took off, clearing the fence of the corral in a leap, her brother just behind her.
Ché growled deep in his throat. He grabbed the mane of the nearest zel and jumped onto its back, then spurred it forwards so that it jumped the corral fence with a double clip of its hooves. He gave chase as the twins raced out through the palisade and the Acolyte camp around it, clods of snow flying from their mounts’ hooves like birds scattering in their wake.
The land was good for riding beyond the camp, though the wind was strong enough to smear tears across his cheeks. Half blinded and head low, he kicked for greater speed, surging after them as they entered a small wood. His hood fell back to expose his head. He ducked down further as he wove between the gnarled trunks of trees and felt the scratch of leaves and twigs against his face. Ahead, the twins leapt a spring and turned and followed along its bank. Ché veered left to cut them off. He forced his zel over the water too and tucked in close behind them, racing at full gallop.
His thighs were burning by the time he came alongside Swan. She lashed at him with a broken branch, laughing again as he fended her off with his hand.
And then from his left came Guan, veering towards him with a branch in his hand ready to strike at his head. Ché ducked and felt the breath of it cross the stubble on his scalp.
He pulled hard on the zel’s mane until it reared to a halt. It skittered a few steps and then settled, the steam shooting from its nostrils. There he sat unmoving, while slowly the twins circled back towards his position, moving in separate orbits so as to remain on either side of him.
Ché simply looked from one to the other, and waited.
At last they came together and stopped before him. In the uneasy silence, the zels dropped their muzzles to the ground and began to pull at the long grasses that poked through the snow.
‘Wildwood juice,’ he said with a nod to Guan. ‘For subduing the reflexes of a pulsegland.’
His words brought only amusement to their expressions. ‘Come, now,’ replied Swan on behalf of her brother. ‘You thought you were the only Diplomat on this whole campaign?’
‘That’s what I was led to believe,’ he told her sourly. ‘Does the Matriarch know of this?’
‘Of course she knows,’ drawled Guan.
‘And what are your orders?’
Silence; the wind buffeting his ears.
‘We’re here as backup, nothing more,’ offered Guan, and Swan shot her brother a dark look.
Ché leaned back on the zel, looking at each of them in turn. He tried to breath calmly, to clear his mind.
They don’t ask me
my own orders.
‘You know what I have been tasked to do,’ he realized aloud.
Guan opened his mouth to speak, but Swan kicked her zel forwards so that it butted her brother’s to one side.
‘You sound troubled by your work, Ché,’ Swan said. ‘Does it keep you up at night, tossing and fretting?’
He studied the woman, saw how her usually pretty features were gone now in this windy place, replaced by a bitter scowl of contempt.
‘We follow our orders,’ she pressed. ‘It would be to your advantage if you did the same.’
‘What? You doubt I’ll go through with it if it’s required of me, is that it?’
‘You hardly sound certain of yourself. What do you think, Guan?’
The brother, chewing on something, said, ‘Perhaps it’s his devotion that is lacking. Perhaps his heart is no longer in it.’
‘I’ve proved my loyalty,’ Ché responded hotly, regretting the words even as he spoke them.
‘Oh, please,’ said Swan. ‘As though the Section ever relied upon loyalty. You should know as well as anyone what happens when a Diplomat strays from their mission. Your mother is a Sentiate, is she not? Well, a whore is the easiest person of all to make disappear.’
Ché blinked, the only outward sign of a sudden rage clamouring to be released from him. The heat of his anger revived him, focused him.
He leaned towards her, his eyes thinned to slits.
‘If you come for me,’ he said plainly, ‘I will mark you out first for the carving.’
And he turned his zel away and kicked it into a trot, eager to be away from them.
That morning, the dawn sun rose over a plain of bleached emptiness, across which others were emerging from beneath their snow-mounded shelters, like an army of the dead rising from the frozen ground.
Ash could see his own breath in the air before it was whipped away in the wind. He huddled against the cold bite of the gusts and thought, damned early for snow.
