Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  I kept my eyes flitting between them, even as their eyes flinched away. I slammed my fist against the Boar’s walls, shook the metal.

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I… I do.”

  It wasn’t when she screamed or cursed or spat that Liette’s voice stung me. It’s when it was halting, hesitant—like it was when she spoke then—that I worried. She says it so often that you start not to believe it, but she really is brilliant. Everything she does is deliberate and meticulous and so painstakingly chosen that it hurts.

  So when she couldn’t find words, I knew something was wrong.

  “I believe you had to kill him,” she whispered, “I just… I don’t…”

  She met my gaze for a long, terrible moment. A moment in which I remembered every time I felt her fingers on my scar and every time she pressed her lips to my neck. A moment in which I saw all of those fading away and leaving me only with the long, slow look on her face she wore now.

  “I don’t know if he had to die.”

  I swallowed that look. Swallowed all the anger and pain that came with it. I stood tall, imperious, forced everything I was feeling out of my eyes and into my heart.

  “He did,” I replied. “Vagrants are dangerous. All of us. And out of all of us, none are more dangerous than me.”

  “I know that,” Cavric grumbled.

  “You don’t,” I snapped, whirling on him. “If you did, you’d know what a dumb motherfucker you were being by pretending I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “I know you did.”

  “Then why the fuck are you—”

  “Because shit like this isn’t supposed to happen!”

  His shout shot him to his feet. His eyes weren’t empty anymore. They looked at me, full of fire and anger and the kind of hate I’ve seen in every face I never wanted to see it in. His hands were curled into fists, trembling at his sides. He leaned forward, like he wanted to use them. I wasn’t ashamed to say I took a step back; at that moment, he started looking like a man who knew how to kill.

  “The Revolution was born in the fires of justice!” he shouted at me. “When we left the Imperium, they laughed. They called us nuls, upstarts, animals! We proved them wrong. We had codes; we had laws; we had a better way.” His hands tightened into angry fists. “We don’t kill the Imperials because they deserve to die; we kill them to protect that way. We don’t rape, we don’t torture, and we sure as shit don’t put swords through people begging for their lives!”

  You don’t see fire in someone’s eyes like I saw in Cavric’s that moment. Not anymore, anyway. Fire like that is dangerous; it inspires people, tricks them into throwing their lives away for a lot of dumb, pretty words.

  I didn’t feel bad for pouring water over that.

  “I’m not a Revolutionary,” I said. “But justice is what I brought.”

  “Stabbing a man isn’t justice,” Cavric snarled.

  “The fuck it isn’t,” I snapped back. “If you believe any of the shit you just spewed about your Revolution, then you don’t know what justice is. The whole fucking Scar doesn’t. They’ll turn a murderer loose if he’s got money, send a rapist on his way if he comes from the right family, break a poor man’s hands if they want him to sign a confession and all the while the rich men in the nice coats and shiny badges trade whiskey and cigars and congratulate themselves on the laws they wrote so they’ll never have to face them.”

  It wasn’t until I saw the fear creep back into his face that I felt the anger that had flooded mine. And right there, hot as the blood behind my eyes, the Cacophony was burning at my hip.

  “Because justice isn’t for the victim, is it? It’s not for the girl crying every night or the boy burying his father. It’s for the killer, it’s for the judge, it’s for the shits like you who want to feel like you’re above it all, like forgiving a killer makes up for not being able to protect his victims.” I spat on the floor. “A man kills and you fawn over him and wonder what went wrong. A man dies and you shrug and step over the corpse.”

  “That’s not true,” Cavric said. Or rather, Cavric tried to say. His wasn’t the voice of a sure man; he didn’t mean it wasn’t true—he meant it shouldn’t be true.

  “It is,” I growled. “Justice isn’t warm and comforting like you think it is. It’s cold and it’s quick. And if you knew Kresh—not the little kid crying on the ground, but Kresh the fucking Tempest—if you knew what he’d done, you wouldn’t be pissing me off like this.”

  And then he looked at me. No fire. No emptiness. No softness. He looked at me with eyes that I wasn’t used to being looked at with. And when he spoke, his voice just hurt to hear.

  “What did he do to you?”

  And that’s when I realized why I didn’t like him looking at me. Why I didn’t like Liette looking at me. Why I didn’t want them asking, thinking, knowing why I walked around like there was a knife in my chest.

  And I gave them both the same answer: a cold silence I didn’t know I had in me until I was asked a question like that. It was better than the real answer. We have all these operas that talk about the truth in great, elegant terms: wings that liberate us from lies, light that we shine into darkness. But that’s just opera. That’s not the truth. Truth is clumsy, angry, sputtered through tears and apologies and accusations.

  The real answer was that I didn’t want to answer.

  The real answer was that I didn’t want to remember that dark place, that light, that voice whispering “I’m sorry.”

  The real answer was that I wanted to remember Kresh’s smile not as a white knife looming over me but as an empty mouth in a dead man’s head on the roof of the Weary Mother.

  The real answer was that I didn’t want to say the words that would remind me of just how heavy these scars on me weighed and how much they hurt when the nights got cold.

  “Don’t worry about me,” I said, soft like I meant it. “Don’t worry about what he’s done, what any of them did. Worry about what they’re going to do. Worry about what you saw back in Stark’s Mutter, worry that you’ll see that happen to a hundred more, a thousand more, women, children, and men, if I don’t stop them.”

  Now that… that sounded good. That sounded not clumsy at all. Pure elegance. Lies usually do. The truth is a nasty thing planted in fertile soil and it grows uncontrollably.

  But lies? Lies are crafted. Lies are mined from a dark place, hammered into shape and sharpened to a fine point. Lies are fantastic. People love lies.

  That’s why we love opera so much.

  That’s the thing about lies. You can forge them hard as you can, polish them to a high shine, make them so sharp they could cut rock, but it’s still your hand that throws them. And every time you do, you risk missing.

  And me? I’m a good shot.

  But not that good.

  THIRTY

  THE HUSKS

  Before it was the Imperium, it was the Empire.

  Before they were the Revolution, they were a bunch of servant nuls.

  And before it was the Husks, the blasted hellscape of bombed-out cities, blackened plains, and incinerated townships was one of the most beautiful places in the Scar.

  You know the history, of course. A little over a generation ago, the Mad Emperor became convinced there lay a land beyond the ocean, and just before he was deposed by his daughter, he was proven right when the Empire discovered the Scar and it was decided that the Imperium was a loftier title.

  He sent his nul servitors over to colonize the land. The nuls discovered severium and the Relics. Severium made their weapons and machines. And when the Imperium landed on the shores of the Scar with its mages, it wasn’t a legion of vassals that awaited them. It was the Revolution.

  You’ve heard of all the stories that followed. The battles, the wars, the blood shed over the land.

  But none of them ever talk about how pretty it was.

  Back then, they called it Edania Alcari—or A Blue Promise in old Imperial.

&nb
sp; Among the badlands and shadowy forests of the Scar, it was a pristine heaven. Rolling grasslands across which gigantic beasts and flocks of long-legged birds roamed. Great, rushing rivers that carved blue scars out through the stony mountains. Deep caves that provided endless ore and verdant forests that offered feasts of timber and game.

  The few nuls and Imperials who got to work on that land and raise their cities were blessed, they said.

  Of course, you know what happened next.

  The grasslands got chewed up by Revolutionary tanks and turned to ash by Imperial magic. The beasts were converted to war and the birds were turned to food. Imperial magic froze the rivers to try to starve the Revolutionaries out. The caves and mines were bombed to rubble by Revolutionaries trying to deny Imperials their resources. The forests were scorched to black skeletons, the plains were turned to dust, and the cities they built on them—those wondrous marvels of technology and magic…

  Well, they became the Husks.

  The skeletons of the old world. The corpse of the peace that had existed for those few fleeting moments when the nuls knew their place and the Imperials thought no one could challenge them. The great monument to the war that gave the Scar its name.

  Some look upon the Husks and are struck with awe, a forlorn wonder for what the world had been in that brief moment it knew harmony. Some look upon the Husks and feel an immense sorrow, burdened by an intense despair that mankind’s monuments could be so easily and thoroughly annihilated.

  And me?

  I was in conversation with the metal in my hands.

  Congeniality had returned early the next morning by the time the rain had cleared and the mud was firm enough to drive over. We had spent most of the day plowing ahead, following the Yental until it forked off and then heading farther north into the Husks. Which, as it turned out, was plenty of time to feel intimidation, awe, sorrow, and finally whatever this feeling was that currently coursed through my veins.

  The hours spent rattling around in the Boar had turned every emotion to some nebulous, trembling churn of dread and sorrow that flowed through me. With every trembling breath, they pumped from my throat, into my heart, and down into my hands. And there he fed upon them. The Cacophony’s brass seemed to rattle with a life all its own, taking every drop of that dread and drinking it through a grin that steadily grew broader.

  That was insane, of course. He was just a gun.

  Well, not just a gun, but certainly not capable of life.

  But that was outside the Husks. Inside its whirling storms, “life” did not adhere to its standard definitions.

  I forced myself to look away from the gun—if only to try to ignore the feeling that he was looking back at me—but the Boar offered little reprieve. Congeniality was curled up, weary from her wandering; Cavric was piloting; and Liette…

  Liette was still silent. Still soft. Still not looking at me.

  Not when I looked at her anyway. I could feel her eyes lingering on me when I looked away. I could feel her mouth struggling for words, for questions, for the right thing she could say to fix me.

  And whenever I did, I would just look down at my hands, at my tattoos, at my scars. And I’d wonder which made me angrier—that she thought I needed to be fixed or that, even if I agreed, I had no fucking idea how to do that.

  And every time I did, I felt the gun burn a little brighter, a pulse of warmth coursing through him, once, twice, again. Like the beating of a heart.

  “How far?” I growled to the back of Cavric’s head, to keep the sound out of my ears.

  “The Husks cover three hundred miles. We’ve burned through most of our fuel reserves and have maybe enough to take us another fifty and still be able to return to friendly territory.” He glanced over his shoulder. “So, if you have a destination in mind more specific than ‘north,’ now’s the time.”

  The Ashmouths hadn’t told me exactly where in the Husks that Vraki had gone. But then, they hadn’t needed to. I knew Vraki well enough to know that he was a lot of things: a murderous lunatic and brilliant, as murderous lunatics so often were. But he wasn’t creative.

  Summoning was a rare enough art that its practitioners were a handful, and even those couldn’t summon Scraths. Vraki’s plot required immense amounts of magic, such as the kind that could only be found in a land so scarred by its use that it was positively suffused with it. But toying with that much power was dangerous enough that he’d want to minimize the risks, and to do that, he’d go to a place he felt familiar.

  Among the Husks, with their corpses and charred ruins, there were plenty of places that Vraki would feel right at home. But now that I knew he needed more power than he had, there was only one he would head to.

  Because there was only one he was responsible for.

  I didn’t tell Cavric that. Mostly because I wasn’t planning on Cavric being around for it. Once we got close enough, I was intending on clonking him on the head, disappearing with Congeniality, and letting him wake up and make his way back to wherever he needed to.

  He was a nice guy. But a nice guy in an organization that still had significant reason to try to kill me. Plus he had just been a real good sport about the whole “being kidnapped” thing. He had taken me far enough and I’d be happy to see him leave.

  “At the very least,” he muttered, “tell me where to pull over so I can air this thing out.”

  Whether he left without his eyes being pecked out, though, wasn’t up to me.

  Congeniality, curled up in the corner, craned her neck and loosed an indignant squawk. She probably knew he was talking about her—she had always been clever like that, the little dickens. She had also been eating something particularly foul, too, so maybe Cavric had a point.

  Liette, too, looked up. And again, opened her mouth, and again I felt my scars ache. So I started to move.

  I clambered to my feet and hauled the Boar’s door open. A blast of dust and grit met me as I leaned out, one hand on the door frame, the other pulling my scarf up as a blast of hot wind and grit struck my face.

  Nothing but ash stretched out as far as I could see—plains of scorched earth mingled with stone and trees that had been blasted to powder ages ago. In the distance, great whirlwinds of dust and char choked the sky and blotted out any sign of day. Ash and dust, ash and…

  “Wait,” I whispered.

  There. Silhouetted against the grit painting the sky, I could see the remnants of buildings, hollowed-out skeletons of towers and barracks, gates torn apart and walls split open like fruit smashed on pavement. Even destroyed, though, they stood firm, if not tall, opting to be sundered rather than simply decay into nothingness. The dust storm thick enough to choke out the sky couldn’t obscure its foreboding ruin, nor diminish the marvel of its workmanship. And through the whirling grit, I could see a lonely spire rising, crowned with the tattered remnants of a banner that the winds could not yet tear apart.

  I knew that tower. I knew this fort.

  And, as I felt the Cacophony burn in my hands, I knew I wasn’t the only one.

  “There!” I cried out to be heard over the moan of wind. “Another mile ahead! Pull over there!”

  “What?” Cavric shouted back. “Are you sure?”

  I was. Scions help me, but I was dead sure.

  The Boar’s engines let out a roar, rumbling forward. The silhouette grew bolder as we drew closer. I could see the shattered windows and the smashed smokestacks of forges. I could see towers struggling to stay upright and gates still clinging to their rotted hinges. It stood at the foot of a mountain rising like the crown upon the ruined brow of an old and beaten king.

  Once, this fort had been as proud as that mountain. Once, it had held a thousand soldiers and five thousand happy people: craftsmen and women, wives and husbands, families. Once, it had been the greatest ring on the hand of the Revolution.

  Until the day Vraki the Gate walked through its doors.

  Dust crunched beneath wheels. Engines went from a roar to a gr
owl. The Iron Boar fell silent. In its wake, the wind spoke. Not like how it spoke for Kresh; it didn’t howl or scream or anything like that. It muttered, it moaned, it made the sounds of mothers who buried their children and fathers who woke up nightly and saw empty spaces beside them in bed.

  One of the Husk’s many quirks. And one of the few that wouldn’t kill you.

  I hopped out of the Boar. Something brittle snapped beneath my boot. I didn’t look down; I knew I’d see something looking back at me.

  I heard a louder snap as Congeniality came out behind me. She landed with a troubled squawk and a wary look around, but nothing more. Beasts avoid the Husks for the same reason people should. Still, for a girl who was once neck-deep in a week-old dead man’s guts, it seemed a little unreasonable to me that she’d be this skittish. At least she put on a braver face than…

  “General’s graces!” Cavric poked his head out of the Boar, clinging to the edge of its door. “That’s not natural, is it?” He winced as the wind kicked up and let out a moan. “Why’s it making that sound?”

  I tried to ignore it. “I don’t hear anything.” I was about to say that I could certainly smell him shitting himself, but I figured I’d already threatened to shoot him a bunch of times—why be mean? “Listen, if you don’t want to go…”

  Cavric cut me off with a shake of his head. He looked warily at the earth before leaping down. His boots sank to the ankle in ash and grit. He chased the cringe from his face with a weary smile.

  “Like you said,” he told me, “it’s not about me. It’s about what they’re going to do.”

  Fuck me, he believed it. Every fucking word I gave him. Even after all he’d seen, I hadn’t killed that part of him that still believed people were fundamentally good. Most people who come to the Scar silence that little voice quick. A few unlucky ones live long enough to see it die. And some…

  “The land is wounded.”

  Some never had it to begin with.

  “Constant exposure to magic has altered the landscape.” Liette held up an arm to ward off the blowing dust—though it did nothing to ward off the voices. “Long-term exposure to the Husks tends to result in madness. We shouldn’t linger.” I could feel her eyes on the back of my head. “We shouldn’t be here at all.”