Cold Iron

by Miles Cameron

  He threw caution to the winds and climbed. The ladder was a pole with cross rungs lashed on with cord; it was old, and rickety, and the rungs squeaked. He went up as softly as he could.

  ‘Let us in, Carun!’ spat Juwad.

  ‘What happened?’ asked a deeper voice.

  ‘We failed to kill the Thief,’ Juwad said. ‘Now what?’

  The door closed, and Aranthur heard no more. But he marked the house; it wasn’t hard, because even by moonlight, it was clearly the most run-down house in a decent neighbourhood. The door posts were marked with broken crosses, an ancient sign among the aristocratic families.

  Aranthur climbed back down his rickety fire ladder. He reached the bottom without mishap, and then something moved and there was a hand over his mouth.

  He awoke in mud and darkness. He was icy cold, his bones ached, and he had dirt in his mouth. Nothing made sense to him, including the pain in his head …

  ‘Awake,’ a voice said in Armean.

  Hollow footsteps above him, and someone with power, casting.

  ‘Hello,’ said a cheerful voice above him. A candle-lantern appeared hung on a rope, dangling through a trapdoor.

  He said nothing.

  ‘Hello,’ said the cheerful voice. ‘Tell us what we want to know and everything will be easy. Are you Aranthur Timos?’

  ‘Let me kick the shit out of him,’ said another voice, in Armean.

  ‘Later,’ said Cheerful Voice. ‘Are you Aranthur Timos?’ He paused. ‘Is he unconscious?’ in Armean.

  ‘He is awake,’ said a woman. She was obviously a caster. She sounded afraid.

  ‘Are you sure? You’re such a useless bitch, I’m never sure of anything you say.’

  Cheerful Voice said something else, as if he’d turned his head away from the trapdoor. The sound wasn’t enough for Aranthur to hear.

  He was wondering about sound, and alertness.

  They were going to torture him. That was obvious.

  ‘Let me burn his skin,’ said the other voice. ‘As they burn us with their gunpowder.’

  ‘This has merit,’ said Cheerful Voice. ‘I ask again: are you Aranthur Timos?’ The voice spoke in Liote. ‘Only good will come of your answering.’

  ‘Of course he’s Timos,’ said the would-be torturer. ‘Who else would he be?’

  ‘There were two of them, all evening,’ said Cheerful Voice. ‘And I do not want to summon the Servant and be wrong. Do you? Woman? Can you determine his identity?’

  ‘With study and time to cast,’ she said.

  ‘Always time. Always more time. A woman’s way. I need a solution now.’

  ‘Cut his prick. I hear it makes a man talk very quickly.’ That was Juwad. ‘He’s the one who cut my hand.’ A pause. ‘I think.’

  Aranthur felt he was going to vomit. The compendium of fears was enormous. His cheek was lying in cold mud and he lacked the will to raise his head.

  The trapdoor opened.

  A young man dropped through, and cursed as his expensively booted feet hit the mud.

  ‘No blasphemy. Blasphemy is for the weak,’ said Cheerful Voice.

  One of the boots kicked Aranthur in the head.

  Aranthur came to a sort of consciousness of his surroundings very gradually: the commonality of multiple fractal wakenings; the reality of pain; the feeling that the very air he was breathing was fear. He felt fear first, and then pain, and then he gradually became aware of his surroundings – a big room, the walls painted with old, simple geometric frescos. The work had been precise; the diamonds of magenta that ran all along the wall were neat and orderly. They only became misshapen towards the floorboards, where the plaster bulged from some hasty repair a hundred years before. Outside a window it was dark, but the window only had a dozen intact panes, and the rest of the openings were covered in small squares of pasteboard, discoloured by rain, or stuffed with rags.

  There was a taste in his mouth – no, in his head. There was a colour in his head.

  That wasn’t right either. But there was something – a smell or taste or sound at the very edge of his awareness …

  A compulsion.

  As soon as he thought it, he knew it. It was very similar in structure to Iralia’s compulsion, but anchored, as it was, on fear and pain and his captors, he had little trouble shedding it. He was cautious, in fact, about the way he broke it; they had a woman who was a magiker. He had felt her, heard her.

  ‘So,’ said an educated Liote voice. ‘Who is he?’

  ‘We think he’s Aranthur Timos, syr. But we cannot be sure. He will not talk. Lys put a compulsion on him; he should want to speak now.’ The speaker was Cheerful Voice.

  ‘Give me his purse,’ said Educated Voice. ‘Ah. A writ permitting the bearer, Aranthur Timos, student of the Academy in Megara, to bear a sword in public. Were you, perhaps, all too drunk to search his purse? Or was it more fun to beat him?’

  Silence.

  ‘And your caster is so foolish that she imagines that a beaten man will accept a compulsion from his tormenters? Where is she?’

  ‘Lys doesn’t like to watch,’ Cheerful Voice said.

  ‘That speaks well for her, don’t you think?’ Educated Voice said. ‘Fetch her.’

  There was the brush of a shoulder pushing through a blanket. Aranthur couldn’t turn his head; something very painful had happened in his right shoulder. He was tied to a chair. The ropes that bound him were pulled very tight and a good deal of the circulation to his hands was cut off.

  A man came into his peripheral vision. He pulled up a chair, reversed it, and sat comfortably with his arms on the chair back.

  ‘Aranthur Timos,’ he said. ‘What a lot of trouble you have caused.’

  Aranthur was looking at the husband from Kallinikos’ duel. He knew him immediately.

  ‘It is a pity how badly they have beaten you.’

  The man had a blond beard and very pale blond hair, but somehow he carried Darkness in him, or so it appeared to Aranthur’s sight. His eyes were almost black.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d convert?’ The man smiled. ‘We don’t have many converts in the City, yet, and you are, at least, intelligent. Some of my allies are the merest riff-raff, I must confess.’

  Through the parched desert of his mouth, Aranthur managed to croak, ‘Convert?’

  Darkblond Man steepled his fingers. ‘I am a Servant of the Disciples. All of us serve the Master.’ He nodded. ‘No doubt your so-called friends have told you nothing about us, or spread their lies about our purpose. But we seek nothing less than the salvation of the world. Magik, as we know it, is being destroyed. The winds of magik are seeping away, wasted by little people and little ideas. We would save what is left and use it for the benefit of everyone.’

  Aranthur croaked.

  ‘Oh, the magik is very definitely leaving us. Ask anyone. Ask your precious Emperor why the Aeronaut in the top of the palace never flies any more. Men used to fly. Ask the so-called scholars of the Academy where their great works of occulta are – they fritter their powers on healing and fire-making.’ He shrugged. ‘But you are peasant born, an Arnaut. Remarkable, for such a mongrel – and I am a realist. I am all too aware that Lys, no matter how blue her blood, is a weak vessel, and you, my robust farm animal, have much better access to power. But we have room for you, Timos. My ancestors believed that war and the life of arms can ennoble. The Disciples now teach that the only true nobility is in the access and exercise of power. Can you work without a talisman, Timos?’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘No,’ he managed.

  He was lying, because he had an idea. And because he’d seldom hated anyone at first sight, but hate was working for him just then.

  ‘Ah, what a disappointment,’ Darkblond Man said. ‘Then I don’t really need you after all, do I? Which is as well, I think. Juwad is almost sexually excited to beat you – depressing, really. And I, of course, view you as an abettor of my wife’s fall from grace. Did you ever meet my wife?’

/>   ‘Yes,’ Aranthur said.

  Darkblond Man stopped talking. ‘You did?’ Almost instantly, his face changed; his calm shattered. He stood. ‘Did you fuck her too, Arnaut pig?’

  His stick, which Aranthur hadn’t seen, snapped out like a sword cut and hit Aranthur in the temple.

  He didn’t quite go all the way out. The pain was remarkable.

  ‘Answer me,’ the voice hissed.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you wanted to!’

  Aranthur was struggling to breathe. He began to explore his own body, ignoring the man with the stick. His legs were tightly bound but bound to the chair; his arms, crossed behind him and tied, were also bound to the chair, and the pain in his shoulder was from the bindings.

  It was quite clear they were going to kill him.

  Desperate moments call for desperate measures.

  He had a great deal of trouble making a plan. Nothing came at first; just a broken wagon wheel of thoughts that raced round and round and then changed like the wheel of the heavens on a starry night.

  ‘Where is the jewel?’ Darkblond Man asked. His calm was back; it was as if he’d never lashed out with his tongue and his stick.

  Aranthur was running through his own mind, looking for phrases in Safiri.

  He was wondering about rescue. The odds, it seemed to him, were very low. So that left death.

  In a way, the choices were clear, and like all the other choices he had made lately, once he got to a certain point, it was as if something made the decision for him.

  Dead, he could reveal nothing. Dead, he could not be abused.

  And the whole plan came to him like the unrolling of a large carpet – first nothing, but then, suddenly, everything. Because they would not expect him to plan his own death.

  ‘Where is the jewel?’ Dark Man came close, so close his breath was hot on Aranthur’s face. ‘Did you kill Syr Xenias? You had his clothes. His case. You knew that peasant at the inn. Speak to me, Syr Timos, and perhaps there will be mercy.’

  Aranthur was still calculating. Another part of him was running down long corridors, searching for words.

  ‘Who do you work for?’ Dark Man asked.

  Cheerful Voice said, ‘There’s another writ in his purse. As a fideles.’

  Dark Man struck him, almost casually. ‘An imperial officer? An Arnaut imperial officer? That’s beyond belief.’

  He was behind Aranthur, and his stick struck Aranthur’s bound hands. The pain was remarkable, lancing up from his broken thumb through his wrist and arm.

  ‘You imagine yourself a swordsman,’ said Dark Man. ‘A little like a fat girl trying to dance, isn’t it? A peasant trying to play with power. You are really the epicentre of what is wrong with the world, Syr Timos. You are the child of Tirase’s revolution, and we need to put you back to your plough so that the rest of us can have a society.’

  The stick struck again – no warning. Fire fountained across Aranthur’s nerves.

  ‘No swords for you. Breaking your hands is almost a kindness.’ Dark Man leant close. ‘Where are my jewels?’

  Aranthur was whimpering. Tears were flowing down his face, and snot from his nose. He couldn’t stop himself.

  ‘Yes, yes, weep all you like, but tell me where my jewels are.’ The voice was calm, almost friendly. ‘Yes, it is sad, when you realise that all your dreams are gone. You will not live to see middle age – the diminution of every faculty, the decay of your living body, the death of your world, the promotion of your inferiors, the destruction of trust, the treason of your wife.’

  The next blow was savage – a blow to the left shoulder.

  Aranthur lost the world.

  He came back to find that he was soaked to the skin in cold water, his left shoulder broken, his hands savaged, and his head and gut a tissue of ache that was somehow internal. He had fouled himself; he was sitting in a mess of his own fear.

  ‘Ah, Syr Timos. You are back. Juwad is no longer interested in savaging you. I think he and I had different views on savagery. Mine are more professional and less amusing.’

  Aranthur couldn’t see very well, but he saw that Juwad was standing by the wall, trying to avert his eyes.

  ‘Where were we? Oh, yes. The middle age, that I am sparing you. Come, syr. Tell me where my jewels are, and for whom you work. And then I will let you go. Perhaps Juwad will have the grace to run you through. I doubt Lys has the stomach or the power to kill you with sorcery. Myrtis could just shoot you with a puffer, I suppose.’

  Dark Man was back on the chair in front of Aranthur.

  ‘You stink like the farmyard animal you are. Where are my jewels?’

  Aranthur concentrated everything he had, his entire will, on Safiri verb forms. Nouns.

  The words of his incantation, calligraphed across the page in magnificent, flourishing letters. Soon, if he was to do it, he would have to …

  Have to what?

  There was really only pain. He could not fully remember what he wanted to do.

  ‘Jew-els,’ said Dark Man in a sing-song voice. His stick, which was ebony, rubbed gently against Aranthur’s jaw, like a malevolent caress. ‘Jewels. More cold water.’

  A bucket was up-ended over Aranthur.

  He had a moment of clarity.

  ‘This is taking too long,’ Dark Man complained. ‘I am going to work him. I’m sorry, Syr Timos, but I must break your will.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t even really need the jewels any more. I have more – they will do just as well. But I would like those as well. And you cost us months. And you interfered with my duel. And because of you I was detained. Detained! An Uthmanos detained by the Watch!’

  A casual flick; an explosion of pain.

  ‘Perhaps I am too personal. Give me the jewels, swineherd. With them all I can restore the Master’s confidence in our Disciple. Dull-witted as he is, we need him to succeed. And you have somehow interfered twice. Twice the …’ He paused. ‘What was that sound?’

  Aranthur had not heard anything. It was a struggle to breathe.

  He had it. The calligraphy. It was clear in his head. Letters of fire.

  He sat in his own excrement and had a moment of pride.

  Somewhere below them there was a loud snap and a choked scream – a woman’s voice. Even Aranthur, in his tormented state, felt the flash of power.

  He felt the power of a vast compulsion, and he knew the author.

  Dark Man moved to the door, went out into the corridor, and called back, ‘Kill him. Now. Behead him, Juwad. So he cannot be soul-searched. Now.’

  Aranthur focused his will. The terrible, beautiful thing was that, instead of being difficult, it was easy, as if his current state was closer to the winds of magik than his normal state.

  He took the wind and wrote, in Safiri, his will upon reality.

  The letters burnt much higher than he remembered …

  Juwad drew his sword. He did it even as Aranthur’s working became the law of nature, and the sword was, in Aranthur’s sight, some logical extension of his working, even as his body flooded with power.

  He pushed to his feet. There was very little pain and Juwad was drawing his sword very slowly. The legs of the chair, and the chair back, gave under the power of his muscles, and he understood why Sasan had said that he felt like a god. The transformation was incredible; he was no longer a smelly, befouled ruin of a human being, but a demigod lit from within by the secret fire of immortality.

  Juwad’s face was white. His sword was in line, and Aranthur walked onto the point, taking it in his gut because that eliminated it as a threat, and walking down the blade so that the icy thing grated on his ribcage and spine in a way that seemed beautiful and terrible, but Aranthur knew with clarity that the window was about to burst open and that he was clearing the way. With his body. Juwad’s grip on the sword failed even as Aranthur slammed his swollen forehead into Juwad’s nose, even as his knee slammed into Juwad’s groin, again and again, almost too fast to follow.

&nbs
p; The young aristocrat, his face caved in from the impact, collapsed to the floor, leaving his sword all the way through Aranthur. Aranthur turned. There was a darkness at the edge of his vision, and already his strength was ebbing, but he was still faster then thought. He leapt at Cheerful Voice as the man entered the room – caught the hand holding the puffer unerringly.

  Broke the man’s hand against the door frame with casual ease.

  The whole rotten frame of the window burst in.

  Aranthur began to slump to the floor.

  In his dream, it was Tiy Drako, a long puffer in one hand, a small sword in the other. He raised the puffer and shot Cheerful Voice – one careful shot, delivered with the deliberation of a champion athlete – and then Drako was looking down into his face and it didn’t seem to be a dream.

  And there, with but not with them, was Dark Man.

  ‘Stay with me, Timos,’ Drako said. ‘Darkness Rising! What have they done …?’

  Past him, Aranthur saw a flash of light, an almost incredible, blinding flash. Yet, in his current state, or the shreds of that state, the flash was more like a beacon. In it Aranthur thought he saw the Lightbringer, Kurvenos, brushing back a wall of darkness at a superhuman speed and showering Dark Man with darts of saar, and Dark Man struggling and then vanishing …

  All in half of a beat of a terrified man’s heart. Or so it seemed to Aranthur.

  ‘Stay with me,’ Drako said. ‘Oh, Sun and Light, save this one.’

  Aranthur was seeing Drako from very far away, but it meant everything to him that this man had come for him. It made no sense to him, though, that he drifted away – that he could see himself lying in a pool of blood and worse, so that his own blood dripped through the rotting floorboards, and he could follow it into a lower room where two armed men in plain steel armour had the woman, Lys. He could see her terror, could feel the eagerness of one of the soldiers to hurt her.

  In another room and an aristocratic Byzas man he’d never seen was begging, begging …

  ‘None of that,’ Kurvenos said, so clear that words came to Aranthur even in the very midst of a rising tide of death. ‘I will not condone a single act of malevolence.’