Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  Cavric hadn’t left.

  “Found… the bird…” He came to a slow, wheezing halt, gesturing at Congeniality. “Couldn’t find you… or Liette. Boar gone… followed the bird. Didn’t know what happened.” He stared at the great gash in my side. “Fuck me. What did happen?”

  I looked at him. I smiled.

  And I pitched forward, collapsing on top of him.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE REDWAY

  I know what you’re thinking.

  “Gosh, she really ought to wear armor or something, given the rate at which she gets injured.”

  To which I have two answers.

  The first being: Fuck you, I look fabulous.

  The second, though?

  You might notice a running theme among the people trying to kill me. Crazed Revolutionaries with high-powered weapons, men turned into gigantic monsters by a mad god, mages who can make you see ghosts, and creatures who can take magical bullets to the face and not even flinch.

  A full suit of plate is of no use against things that can shoot through it, tear it off, or crush you inside it like a tin of potted meat.

  You occasionally get some rich fucker who thinks he’s going to play Vagrant Hunter, decking himself out in fancy armor that some shady huckster swears is anti-magic. If he’s lucky, he gets shot, stabbed, or eaten before he finds out the hard way that no armor can save you from a mage. If he isn’t, he gets to die in his nice metal suit before someone pries it off him and sells it for scrap.

  Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if a big fuck-off sheet of metal between me and whatever’s trying to kill me would be useful. Especially if it could have prevented the situation I found myself in.

  “You ought to wear armor or something,” Cavric said as he daubed the wound at my side with a whiskey-soaked rag. “Or at least a nicer shirt.”

  “Everyone’s got a fucking opinion,” I muttered, wincing at the pain.

  “Not everyone’s got a bloody hole in them, though.” I could feel the frown carve itself on Cavric’s face as he stared at my wound. “This looks really bad, Sal. I don’t even know that much medicine.”

  “How much do you know?”

  “Only field medic stuff I was taught in the academy.”

  “Does any of it involve talking?”

  He blinked. “Uh… no?”

  “Then get on with it.”

  My back was turned to him as I lay on my side, but I could hear everything he was doing. I heard his weary sigh, I heard him running a needle over the campfire to sterilize it, I heard him thread it, I heard his hand lay on my side to steady me…

  And then I heard my cry of pain as he started to sew my wound shut.

  “Hold. Still,” he hissed.

  “Stop. Being. Shit at this,” I snarled back. I took in a deep breath, bit the pain back. “Fuck. Keep my mind off this.”

  “How?”

  “Tell me something.”

  “Like about me?” Pleasant surprise played in his voice. “Well, I guess I’d start with my mother. We didn’t get the name Proud until she proved her valor by cutting open—”

  “No, not about that.” I paused. “But hold on to that story, because I do want to hear it.” I winced. “Tell me what you found in Vigil.”

  “I already did.”

  “Tell me again now that I’m not about to die from blood loss.”

  “Oh.” His voice steadied, along with his hands, as he continued the sutures. “There was no evidence of anything the Revolution might have left behind. The Imperials…” He hesitated, swallowing anger. “Red Cloud… didn’t leave anything behind. Anything not broken was ash. But I found a campsite with some supplies. Probably belonged to whoever you found in the mines.”

  I had told him a bit about what had happened, but not everything. I told him about Galta and Taltho, but not what they had told me. I told him enough about the Scrath, but only enough to keep him focused on stopping another one from coming out. I told him about Liette…

  “Sal,” he said, “we should go back for her.”

  And apparently too fucking much.

  “She left of her own volition,” I muttered.

  “And she took the fucking Boar,” he said. “Only a Revolutionary should be able to pilot it.”

  Yeah, she’s clever like that, I resisted telling him. No point in upsetting him.

  “At least she’ll be safe in the Husks in that thing,” he said, “but that’s Revolutionary property. We should go back. We should—”

  “We should finish what we started,” I replied. “We go looking for her, we miss our chance to stop Vraki and save his hostages.”

  “Right…” His voice was solemn. “But why did she leave in the first place? And how are we going to do this without a Boar to—”

  “Tell me what else you found.”

  He sighed. “The supplies were all marked. With that sigil.”

  He gestured to the satchel that lay nearby—the satchel that held the dwindling medical supplies he was currently using on me. Emblazoned upon it was a brand, the kind that freeholds slap on their shit in case they get stolen by outlaws or Vagrants less nice than me. But this brand was special.

  This brand glowed.

  In the dark of the night, a sigil of a lantern glowed in red and white. The faintest of magics kept it alight in the dark. To look at it, you might have called it a frivolous use of a limited power. But me?

  I called it a lead.

  That was the sigil of Lastlight, the Scar’s most renowned freehold. Renowned for its proximity to the Husks, its fabulous wealth, and the fact that it was fucking hard as hell to steal from it. For Galta and Taltho to have them, they must have come through that freehold.

  And maybe they left something behind.

  It was a desperate hope, I’ll admit, but they don’t come in any other variety out here. And I had nothing else. No Liette, no Iron Boar, and no fucking time left to sit here bleeding out.

  “Okay.” Cavric pulled the needle free and did some quick knotwork. But I could hear the wince in his voice. “I did the best I could.”

  I looked down at my flank. There hadn’t been enough thread in the satchel, and what there was strained to hold the skin together. The gashes weren’t closed, but they at least wouldn’t rip any wider, unless I moved suddenly. Or slowly. Or blinked.

  If I had the time, I could lie still and hope for the best.

  But I didn’t have the time and hope isn’t a thing you count on in the Scar. I needed real treatment. And since there weren’t any wrights way the fuck out here, that meant finding real medical supplies. Wherever I was going to find them, it wasn’t going to be on my ass.

  I got to my feet unsteadily—half out of pain, half out of consideration for the flimsy sutures. Cavric steadied me as I walked to a rock where my clothes lay. I had shredded my only spare shirt into makeshift bandages that I carefully wrapped around my midriff. They were already stained by drops of red by the time I tied them off.

  I pulled on my other shirt and frowned at it. Stained with blood from Galta’s thorn and riddled with tears from my escape from the mines, it only barely hid the bandaged wound in my side, leaving an expanse of scarred flesh bare.

  But, as the saying goes, people about to die from massive blood loss can’t be choosers.

  “All right,” I said, trying to ignore the pain I felt from just talking. “I need to go look around. Keep the fire warm while I’m gone, all right?”

  “Okay,” Cavric said uneasily. “But are you sure that’s—”

  “I wasn’t talking to you.”

  He glanced over his shoulder. Congeniality looked up from her spot, curled across the fire. She looked at him with those big eyes and her beak craned open. For a very brief moment, my pain-addled brain thought she was about to say something.

  Right up until she made a gagging sound and vomited up a ball of hair and bones from her digested rabbit, anyway.

  “Don’t worry.” I patted Cavric’s shou
lder as he cringed in disgust. “That means she likes you.”

  I turned to leave. He grabbed my hand.

  “Be careful, okay?” he asked. “We can’t lose more than we already have.”

  I wasn’t used to looks like the one he gave me—looks full of earnest concern—from people I liked, let alone from people I had kidnapped at gunpoint. I didn’t deserve that concern. Didn’t deserve even this shit job he had done on my wound.

  But I had them both. And now I had to do what good I could with them.

  I owed him that much.

  I patted his arm, nodded, and trudged up a steep slope.

  I had made camp in the shadow of a hill, a great slab of dirt and stones that punched through the rocky scrublands that bordered the Husks. It wouldn’t do much to conceal me from any predators roaming the wilds, but it would at least keep me safe from prying human eyes.

  And where I was, those were a bigger concern.

  I got to the top of the hill. Far off in the east, the Yental River coiled sharply inland, carving its way through the earth. But closer, to my west, a different kind of river stretched out.

  They hadn’t called it the Redway to begin with. Originally, the long and winding road that skirted the Husks had been called the Emperor’s Walk—no one knew why, since no Emperor had ever set foot in the Scar, let alone walked it. It had started as an important road system between Imperium outposts. So important that the Revolution had thrown thousands of soldiers to their deaths in an attempt to wrest it from Imperium control.

  Years passed. Corpses piled up. Wars turned beautiful lands into the Husks. The road earned a more fitting name.

  Nowadays, the Redway’s main use was a thoroughfare for traders between freeholds. Merchants ran caravans through it, profiting off the raiders and adventurers who emerged from the Husks with Imperium and Revolutionary relics. Bandit gangs squatted on the sidelines, looking for easy marks.

  I watched it crawl across the land and disappear into the hills. Wide enough for ten men to walk abreast. Endlessly long. And so, so empty.

  I crouched down, rested my arms on my knees, and began to think.

  I didn’t like it.

  Not that I consider myself an idiot, of course. I’m just more used to immediate gratification. I prefer gunfire, glasses of whiskey, and pleasurable company. Things that move from moment to moment, bullet to bullet, hand to hand.

  When I’m moving, it’s all instinct and no thinking, my scars telling me how to act and the Cacophony telling me who needs to die. When I’m thinking, my mind gets to wandering down a long road that leads to dark places.

  I don’t know why I came back, why I was still alive, if that light I saw was even real or just some vision that entered me as the blood left me. But I was here and Vraki was still so far away. He had known where I was, which meant he knew where I’d be looking for him, which meant where I was looking was precisely where he wouldn’t be. Even if he had been to Lastlight, where could he be now? He was too far ahead. Which meant that I wouldn’t find him before he summoned his new Scrath, before he used his sacrifices, before everyone died and he won and I lost and I’d be left alone with all the corpses of the people I couldn’t save and…

  See what I mean?

  I shut my eyes tight, gritted my teeth. Pain surged through my side. I focused on it, pain to pain, heartbeat to heartbeat, that steady rhythm of agony that pulled me off that long road and reminded me that I couldn’t save anyone if I was dead.

  The nearest freehold was miles away at a hard ride. Congeniality could make it, but I couldn’t. Not with these stitches.

  This close to the Husks, an herb worth any medicinal use would be near impossible to find. Traveling wasn’t an option. Sitting still wasn’t an option. I needed a plan, the most brilliant, determined, luckiest plan I had ever come up with.

  Or, failing that, the stupidest.

  My eyes were drawn down the road at the sight of orange lights dancing in the darkness. I squinted, tracking them as they swayed back and forth with a steady rhythm.

  Lanterns.

  And between their light and the moon, I could make out the immense shapes being hauled down the road.

  Massive carts, wooden sides reinforced with iron and roofs topped with banners, came rumbling down the path. Three of them, at least, each hauled by a pair of great, hoofed rothacs. Horned beasts of burden, each one twice as big as a bird and six times as heavy, they lowed in complaint as they pulled their wheeled burdens down the Redway. And in response, they received only the crack of a whip and a bellowed curse.

  Guards. Men and women—at least a dozen that I could count—rode alongside the carts atop birds, carrying lanterns on long poles. I could see a few autobows from here, and I’d wager they had more firepower I couldn’t see. But that wasn’t what caught my attention.

  That was reserved for the banners.

  They hung limp in the breezeless night, each one hanging from the top of a cart, proudly displaying a sigil. A glowing sigil.

  “Lastlight,” I whispered.

  I don’t believe in gods, so I don’t believe in divine providence. I do, however, believe in luck. Regardless of whatever else the appearance of this caravan heralded, wagons bound for Lastlight would be brimming with supplies. And they would be exceedingly valuable supplies, as no bandit, soldier, or Vagrant was dumb enough to fuck with Lastlight, the only freehold to have ever repelled both Imperium and Revolutionary assaults.

  Which made what I was about to do particularly insane.

  But, I told myself as I eased up and headed back down the hill, there wasn’t much choice. Lastlight didn’t get rich by giving things away for free. And I didn’t have anything to barter with outside of the trash in Congeniality’s saddlebags.

  I wasn’t going to make it to Lastlight without what was in those carts. And I wasn’t going to get it from a dozen armed guards without something to persuade them. Which meant what I was about to do next either had to be incredibly brilliant or incredibly stupid.

  You can go ahead and guess which one it turned out to be.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THE REDWAY

  If you’re ever not sure who’s in charge, look for the biggest hat.

  That’s not a hard-and-fast rule or anything, but it’s usually a good guess. And, as the Lastlight caravan came rumbling up the Redway, it proved true.

  The carts themselves were stolid, imposing iron. The rothacs that pulled them were beasts of matted black fur with jagged, singular horns. The guards that flanked them were men and women coated by dust, grime, and resentment.

  But the woman who led them?

  She was an angel from a very expensive heaven.

  Pale and slender as a vase, she sat imperiously upon the seat of the lead cart. Her dress was bright crimson silk lined with pristine white fur. Her skin was flawless, as if the dust of the road just couldn’t afford to touch it, and not a strand of hair could be seen from beneath the immense red hat she wore, replete with a white feather so big it looked like it came from a bird long extinct. A red jewel in an iron crown, she surveyed the road ahead of her, disinterest battling contempt in her gaze.

  And when she saw a single dirty woman with scars on her face, tattoos on her arms, and a gun in her hands, contempt finally won out.

  She didn’t bother to tell me to move. Likely, she reasoned I would either get out of the way or her rothacs would run me over. She wasn’t wrong. The ungulates were two tons of muscle topped with jagged horns. A sensible woman would have gotten out of the way.

  Sal the Cacophony, however, did not move for anyone.

  I didn’t bother looking at the rothacs. I didn’t waste a single glance for the guards who readied their weapons and looked down the road, curious, at this lone woman in a spare, shabby cloak and hood blocking their way. My eyes were on the woman in red.

  She was the one who’d give me what I wanted.

  Cavric had thought this plan was crazy and I had told him only half of it. But
it wasn’t like we had many other options. An earnest fight would be over quickly. My only chance at getting what I needed out of this was through guile.

  And a shitload of luck.

  Her face was painted in icy contempt as her carts came rolling toward me. But that melted away, replaced by burning fury, as the rothacs let out a guttural lowing sound and came to a shuddering halt. The whole caravan backed up as, one by one, the rothacs stopped, letting out distressed bellows.

  “What is this?”

  Yet even through that, I could hear the sharp edge of her voice. She turned to the young man driving the lead cart, a handsome kid with a shaggy mop of blond hair and a dirty coat, and sneered so hard I thought her face would dislocate.

  “We do not have time for this,” she spat. “Get them moving!”

  “I can’t!” the kid protested, impotently cracking the reins in demonstration. “They won’t move!”

  “They’re well trained,” I said.

  I didn’t raise my voice or make threats. That sort of thing was for bandits or your average Vagrants.

  Sal the Cacophony simply spoke. And anyone who didn’t want to die listened. That’s what I needed them to believe.

  “Obviously not,” the woman replied, her voice struggling to regain its icy composure. “As they seem to have decided to stop doing their job.”

  “Oh, I disagree.” My grin was as crooked as my scars. “What else would you call a beast that knows it’s rude to pass by without introducing yourself but well trained?”

  I met the woman’s eyes. To look at her, I thought her a rich girl playing at hard labor, some baron’s heiress reluctantly fulfilling her duties for a fat, absent father.

  But to have her look at me, I knew that wasn’t the case. Hers was a flint-eyed scowl used to looking over every inch of a weapon to find an impurity, a scrutinizing glare that had counted every coin she had ever wrung from a purse, thin and sharp as a scalpel used to cutting open flesh to find a weakness.

  I’d seen the same stare in every murderer, mercenary, and merchant who knew their business a little too well. This woman had earned every piece of finery she wore and would be all too happy to turn all her painstakingly selected hired thugs on me to protect them.