Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  But the results are hard to argue with.

  With every labored breath, the Havener’s skin bubbled. A bright red line of light appeared at the top of his brow, bisected him down the center. His body rose, but his skin didn’t, flesh sloughing off to pool on the floor like discarded clothing. A towering mass of naked sinew, steam peeling off red flesh and veins alight with a hellish glow stared down at me through a blackened skull for a face.

  The Havener was gone.

  And what was left was a monster I had only heard about in drunken tales.

  “Liette!” I screamed, not taking my eyes from the monster. “RUN!”

  He turned, peering out of deep sockets. Huge. Fleshless. Bristling with throbbing muscle and bits of bone jutting from his sinew. In the face of such horror, Revolutionary, Imperial, and Scarfolk alike had crumpled into a numb, shrieking heap.

  Onerous, however, started shooting.

  The Relic wailed to life. A bolt of light tore through the monstrosity’s shoulder. It snarled—not in pain, but in rage. It leapt. It sailed through the air, over my head, and landed.

  On Onerous.

  The Relic flew from his hands, just as his blood flew from his mouth, as his spine snapped under the creature’s weight, folding him in half. I scrambled to my feet, trying to get away from it as it turned a baleful pair of sockets toward me.

  I backpedaled over corpses and bloodstained dirt. He came lumbering forward, loping on overlong arms like some kind of primate. He reached a hand toward me. My blade flashed, caught two of his oversized fingers. But a Relic’s fire had only just bothered him. A blade didn’t even seem to tickle him, breaking out a tiny pinprick of blood across his hand.

  And he smiled like he had been waiting for that.

  I turned. I bolted. Legs like tree trunks tensed and sent him leaping into the air, his roar echoing. I rushed to get out of the way as he came crashing down, but it didn’t matter. He struck the earth like a boulder, sending the ground quaking and knocking me off my feet and onto my ass. My blade flew from my hand.

  I scrambled to face him, one hand fumbling for a handful of shells in my satchel and hastily jamming two of them into the Cacophony’s chamber. He whirled on me, his mandibular grin lined up with the Cacophony’s sights. What the fuck had I put in the chamber? Hoarfrost? Hellfire? Steel Python? No time to question—all I could do was pull and hope I liked the answer.

  I got it in the explosion of flames as a slug burst across his chest and erupted into a bright, fiery blossom. He howled as Hellfire spread across his skin, gnawing at his sinew and blackening his bone spurs. He became a wailing, writhing pyre, flailing his burning arms and roaring to be heard above the crackling of flames.

  But he wasn’t dying.

  Why the fuck wasn’t he dying?

  I leapt to my feet, took off running, one hand flipping open the Cacophony’s chamber, one hand rummaging around in my pouch. I could see I had slammed Hoarfrost in the chamber, unspent. I pulled out another shell.

  “Hoarfrost?” I screamed at whatever god oversees disorganized ammo pouches. “What the fuck am I going to do with two?”

  No time to wait for a divine reply. I jammed it into the chamber, reached for another.

  Something shot out before I could, crushed the wind from me as it wrapped around my waist. The Cacophony fell from my hand as I was hoisted up into the air. I felt my body crushed between five great fingers, the air squeezed out of my lungs as I was brought before the monstrosity’s hollow eyes. Smoke poured from a smile that spread across a face blackened by flame in a smug, self-satisfied manner. Or a hungry, perverse manner. Or just a lunatic manner.

  The thing had a skull for a face—I couldn’t fucking tell what it was thinking.

  Nor did it matter. He tightened his fingers. I felt bones about to break. I felt a scream die in my throat, no air left to voice it. I felt the blood rush into my ears, deafening me to everything.

  Almost everything.

  I heard the rush of tiny feet, the scrawl of quill and ink. Liette appeared by its ankle, hastily scribbling something onto the brute’s calf. I wanted to scream at her for not running, but again, I was being choked. Instead, I saw her dreadful work take shape.

  Like I said, wrighting flesh is a master’s art. It requires a still canvas and a careful application. If the patient is moving—or, say, choking the life out of someone—as the script is applied, like Liette was doing, things can go awry.

  Like how the brute’s calf muscle exploded in a bright flash of light.

  He screamed, falling to a knee and lashing out with a hand. Liette narrowly darted away from the blow, stumbling and falling to her face. Stupid of her to try that. She wasn’t a fighter. The brute hadn’t let me go and now he raised a great hand to crush her where she lay.

  The crack of gunfire rang out. A bright red dot burst across the monster’s brow. He paused, like he had just been bitten by a mosquito, turned toward his left. Another shot. Another bright red dot. This one much bigger as the bullet took him right in the eye.

  Apparently, the thing could feel pain. Or at least anger so great that it was indistinguishable from pain. He dropped me. I fell to the ground, gasping for air, the blood fighting to return itself to my veins. Darkness crept away from my eyes and I could see my untimely savior, tiny and blue and dark-haired against the monster advancing toward him.

  I knew there was a reason I liked Cavric.

  He stood there, his comrades’ gunpikes assembled in a crude panoply at his feet, not even shaken by the two-ton naked slab of flesh lumbering toward him. He aimed, he fired; another bright red burst slowed the monster. He tossed the spent gunpike aside to join two other empty ones. He picked up another, aimed, fired. He was choosing his shots, firing off carefully, hoping to bring the thing down before he had to make a futile run for it. Here, a kneecap exploded. There, a bullet punched through teeth. With every shot, the beast slowed.

  But didn’t stop.

  I found the Cacophony, felt his warmth calling to me. I plucked him up, pulled the first slug I could find out of my pouch, and slammed it into the final chamber. Discordance. I hoped he liked it as much as I did.

  The monster swung a massive arm just as Cavric leapt out of the way. Not quick enough. The thing’s hand grazed his side. But even a graze was enough to send him rolling across the ground and smashing against a wall. The thing roared, bringing both arms up to crush him into paste.

  The clack of a chamber.

  The click of a trigger.

  The sound of the Cacophony’s shot rang out, louder than any gunpike. The first shell burst across the beast’s back. Hoarfrost spread over his blackened sinew, a virulent disease of blue and white. It shimmered and cracked and bit past the scorched skin and sank into the muscles with freezing fingers.

  The monster turned toward me, his skin cracking and breaking as he did. The spell was doing its job; in another four seconds, he’d be damn near unable to move. And in another two, he’d have crushed my skull.

  I pulled, fired the second shell. Another burst of Hoarfrost spread across him, covering his flesh in a layer of ice. He reached out with a stiffening arm, the sound of ice popping and cracking as he did. His fingers were two inches from my face when they froze solid.

  His body went rigid. His mouth was frozen in gaping, silent fury. His empty eyes darted about madly in a head that wouldn’t move, trying to figure out just what the fuck had happened and how the hell he was going to get out.

  And I sure wasn’t going to give him time for that.

  I aimed the Cacophony straight for his mouth. I shut my eyes tightly. I whispered to no one.

  “Eres va atali.”

  I pulled the trigger, fired Discordance right into his skull.

  Like I said, I don’t buy into religion. And so I didn’t expect anyone to answer when I offered two prayers: that this was going to kill him and that none of the ensuing mess would get in my mouth.

  I still don’t believe in gods.
r />   Because only one of those prayers got answered.

  SEVENTEEN

  STARK’S MUTTER

  Shells and good whiskey were two commodities hard to come by in the Scar. But since I had just squandered three of the former in one day, I figured I could be forgiven a few fingers of the latter, too.

  I tossed the flask back. I took a deep sip of the burning liquid. I swirled it around in my mouth and spat it out onto the ground. I smacked my lips. I blanched.

  No good. I could still taste that fucker’s brains.

  Or what I assumed was brains, anyway. Really, it had all come out in one big mess of thick red chunks. The monster’s body lay nearby, still rigid with frost, steam coiling out of the fragmented red stump where his skull had been. It had been an impressive kill, I had to admit; the Cacophony was almost vibrating in his sheath with lingering excitement.

  But my eyes were on the shriveled-up corpse that lay twenty feet away from him. It might sound cold that, of all the people who died in Stark’s Mutter that day, I should feel bad for the loss of one person, specifically. But if it did, I’d tell you to shut your ears, because what I said next would have made me sound like a real asshole.

  “Should have left you alive.” I wandered over to the corpse, squatted down on my haunches, and stared right into the Sightless Sister’s empty sockets. “I bet you’d be real useful right about now.”

  Her lips were still twisted into a grin; she knew that was a lie as well as I did. What torture I could have done to make her talk would have seemed like a gentle tickle compared to whatever Haven had done to make her into this gnarled thing that lay before me.

  But I would have given it my best shot at least. It was the only lead I had left.

  Haven’s magic was a mystery to everyone but the Seeing God and his followers. No one knew where their magic came from or what it did. So if anyone was going to understand how to effectively use a magic that the Imperium didn’t understand how to use, it would be them.

  And when it came to summoning, the Imperium knew not much.

  Vraki had gotten his hands on one of Haven’s mysterious trinkets that amplified magic, let him do things he shouldn’t be able to.

  And the Haveners had followed its scent to Stark’s Mutter. But how had he gotten it? Years of the Imperium sending its best Maskmages and the Revolution ordering its most cunning spies into Haven had turned up nothing but a shit-ton of corpses impaled on their walls. Vraki was a Prodigy, one of the best, but even he and the rest of the seven didn’t have what it took to pilfer a relic out of Haven.

  But… that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

  It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that the Scar had its share of rogues. But the Scar is a hard place; it chews up the amateurs and shits out the best, most cold-blooded scum to ever skulk in the shadows. Instead of bandits, we have Vagrants. Instead of drug peddlers, we have Freemakers. And instead of thieves…

  We have the Ashmouths.

  Not a coin is lifted from a pocket that they don’t know about. Not a secret is whispered that they don’t listen in on. And not a deal goes down that they don’t get a cut of. They’d been a pain in the sides of the Imperium, the Revolution, and more: saboteurs, assassins, and smugglers who had cost the world’s powers almost as much as their wars had.

  If they hadn’t sold it to Vraki themselves, they knew where he got it. And where all those other names that were with him went—the Sightless Sister had confirmed they’d all been here. But getting ahold of them wasn’t precisely easy. After all, they had managed to operate in the Scar without getting caught by the two greatest militaries in the world for years now.

  But those were just armies.

  I was Sal the Cacophony.

  I had my ways.

  “I think he might be dead.”

  And one of them was busy attending to the other.

  Liette crouched over the limp figure of Cavric, unmoving in the bloodied dust. She had scrawled a few healing sigils over his wounds, but she was apparently unconvinced of their effectiveness.

  “Is he breathing?” I asked.

  She tapped her quill against his temple. “Technically, yes.”

  I squinted. “No one technically breathes. He either is or he isn’t.”

  “One technically breathes in the same way that one technically can drink enough to suddenly be able to fellate oneself,” she replied, rising up and dusting her skirt off. “That is, the process itself is doable and the result is charming if one happens to give a shit.” She pushed her glasses up her nose. “As my particular defecations are considerably more precious than most, I hope you’ll understand that I don’t see much point in sparing them on another Revolutionary lackwit.”

  I rubbed my eyes, my frustration twofold. One because I had asked her not to bring that up again and two because I needed this guy alive.

  “Can you wright him back to life or not?” I asked.

  “Obviously,” she replied. Her eyes drifted to the mess of bone and blood that had been the mutated Havener. “I’d consider it a far more valuable use of my time to study this anomaly, though. This might be the first physical evidence of Haven’s magic left behind.”

  “Yeah, and you’d be evidence of how easily he can turn a woman into a fine paste if it weren’t for me,” I growled. “You’d be dead if it weren’t for me. Third law.” I pointed at Cavric. “Bring him back.”

  “What for? Do you like him?” She surveyed his body suspiciously. “Is he… funny or something?”

  “I’ll make you a deal,” I said. “If he dies, then I’ll drop it and you can go splashing in that thing’s guts. But until then, you keep working.”

  Liette regarded me carefully in that way she did whenever she wanted to accuse me of something. She’d never come out and say it, of course—it wasn’t that she didn’t like men, despite not having much use for them outside a professional setting. It was more that…

  Intellect like hers is a curse. The more you understand of the world, the less of it you trust. She’s always been too aware of how quickly people can die, can break, can leave.

  But intellect doesn’t make it hurt less when they do.

  “My head…”

  A nearby groan spared me that conversation.

  I spared a look for Liette as I made my way over to Cavric, now roused from his momentary brush with death. He got to his hands and knees, groaning. He held his head like he was checking to make sure it was still there. I didn’t blame him; not many take a hit like that and make it out.

  “Easy. Don’t move too quick.”

  I knelt down, helped him off his knees and onto his ass. I propped him against the side of the house he had struck. He looked up at the splintered crater in the wood his body had left and blinked dumbly.

  “Did I do that?”

  “Technically, he did.” I jerked a thumb back toward the headless beast behind us. “But credit where it’s due: you made a lovely dent.” I looked him over. No signs of heavy bleeding. “So… how are you?”

  “Been better,” he grunted. He spat onto the earth and I saw the phlegm was clear—no internal bleeding.

  “Anything broken?”

  He shook his head. “Not that I can feel. Though, admittedly, I’m still figuring out if I can feel. I should have taken a hit like that and been—” He paused as he noticed the sigils scrawled across his hand, then looked up at me with eyes wide with terror. “This is wrighting. Magic.”

  “You’re welcome,” Liette muttered behind me.

  “You took a heavy hit,” I replied, ignoring her addendum. “I know the Revolution frowns on magic, but there was no other way to keep you stable and okay you aren’t even listening, are you.”

  Panic fueled his fingers as he tried to scratch the sigils off his flesh. The Revolution was steeped in distrust of magic—being the downtrodden slaves of mages for ten thousand years will do that—but this was something I didn’t need.

  “Hey, hey.” I seized his wrist
s. “Calm down. It’s not going to kill you.”

  “It could,” Liette offered. “Applied incorrectly, at least.” She adjusted her glasses. “If I was capable of doing anything incorrectly, that might be a concern.”

  “It goes against every line of every book of every teaching the Great General graced us with!” Cavric fought against my grip, feebly. “It’s an abomination! It’s unnatural! It’s—”

  “Keeping you alive,” I finished for him. “Once we’re sure that’s not going to change, you can wipe it off. Your Great General doesn’t have to know.”

  “My soldiers,” he whispered.

  “Huh?” I blinked. “Oh, yeah, them.” I glanced at the dark red patches on the earth and I supposed he was wondering why there weren’t corpses to go with them. “Yeah, no, I don’t think they’ll be talking to anyone, either. I loaded them up on your iron death machine. Figured you’d want to take them back to Lowstaff for a burial.”

  “Cremation,” he corrected. “Burial is land that could be used for industry.” He grunted as he tried to rise, failed, fell back to the earth. “Or so the Great General says.”

  “At the rate you nuls die, I can kind of see his logic.” I sniffed. “Doesn’t your Glorious General teach you how to fight Haveners?”

  “We weren’t expecting to find Haveners,” he replied. “Or anyone, really. This was intended to be a simple extraction mission. We were looking for our spies, Agents Relentless and Vindictive. They were posted here observing some fugitives.”

  Cavric was a rare fellow, no doubt. Not often you meet anyone who’ll just tell you what they were up to, let alone a Revolutionary. Though, I noted he didn’t mention that Relentless had been looking for Vagrants. Or perhaps no one had bothered telling him.

  “You can have another look around if you want,” I replied, shrugging. “But I didn’t find anyone here who wasn’t already dead.”