Shuthmili’s face twisted, but she unsheathed Csorwe’s sword and slashed through the bindings on her wrists before turning the hilt toward Csorwe.
Csorwe flew toward the revenant. He dived after her, snapping his jaw, so close that she could hear the leaky gasp of shrunken lungs reinflating.
Even in the frantic first moments of the fight, it was good to have the sword back in her grip: an extension of her hand, the tool for which she had been made. Csorwe swooped past the man, light as air, drawing him away from Shuthmili.
He snapped at Csorwe, almost lugubrious. She feinted away, leaping to one side to strike at the nape of his neck, but getting her sword back must have made her overconfident. She underestimated his reach. The dead man swiped at her with a colossal hand, flinging her wide across the ground. She hit the frozen earth with a grunt of pain, not far from Shuthmili. Back on her feet at once, she flung herself bodily at the man again, swift as an arc of lightning. Oh, yes. This was what she had missed. This made the world so simple.
Her enemy had been toying with her before. Now he struck in earnest, moving with oily alacrity, grabbing her arm and sinking his teeth into her shoulder. She registered the pain as she registered the stench: something unpleasant to deal with later. Now she was close enough to take her chance. She drove her blade up into his rib cage, and felt dry flesh and sinew yield. It was like stabbing an armchair. He gasped and tipped forward, clutching at the air, and she stepped out of the way, withdrawing her sword. The huge body fell and subsided.
Shuthmili faced her across it, backed up against a monolith. She looked from the blade to the dead man and back to Csorwe.
“What if I ask you really nicely to give back the sword,” said Shuthmili.
Csorwe wiped the blade on her trouser leg, leaving an unsightly smear of ichorous resin.
“I don’t think so,” said Csorwe. She turned the shattered body of the giant with her foot. In true death, without anything else to give him form and weight, he was very light—no more than a bundle of driftwood. The tarnished coronet had fallen off during the fight, and was lying among the pebbles, shedding enamelled petals.
“I suppose you solve all your problems by impaling them,” said Shuthmili, still flat against the rock, watching Csorwe like she was about to explode.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” said Csorwe, slightly winded from the fight. Her shoulder was beginning to ache where she had been bitten. That wasn’t going to be good. “I told you. We didn’t lie to you. I’m Sethennai’s agent.” She stretched her left arm and winced. If they had time, she would stop and deal with it, but it wasn’t bleeding too badly, and she didn’t want to stay here.
Shuthmili didn’t look completely convinced; Csorwe wasn’t sure whether to put this down to Qarsazhi paranoia or Churchly sanctimony or a healthy dose of inborn suspicion.
“I know you’re panicking,” said Csorwe. “You don’t need to trust me. That’s fine. You just need to follow me.”
After a moment, Shuthmili nodded. They went on, leaving the defunct revenant behind.
“Did someone raise that thing?” said Csorwe, her thoughts leaping to Oranna, and to the possibility that the Reliquary might still be in reach.
“I don’t think so. I couldn’t feel any magic on it,” said Shuthmili. “I think it must have been … natural. If that’s the right word for it.”
Csorwe peered out across the field of boulders. They were worn down and broken by the elements, but there was something artificial about the way they were placed, in rows and columns, for miles, receding into the mist.
“This is a graveyard, isn’t it,” said Csorwe.
She expected to get something like This whole world is a graveyard, but Shuthmili just nodded.
The mist drew in, like a white curtain closing. They kept moving. The crunch of their footsteps on the grit echoed among the boulders, keeping Csorwe on her guard. Revenants tended to move in packs, and it was worrying that the first one had got so close before she’d noticed it.
There was another crack of breaking stone. Csorwe grabbed Shuthmili’s arm to stop her.
She narrowed her eyes, peering out at the mist, hoping she was wrong. Nothing at first. Just the ranks of gravestones, miles of them, baffling the eye. Graves enough for a whole city.
She blinked and looked again. Something was moving, out in the distance, like worms coming out after rain. Two or three figures, crawling up out of the mist. More, out of sight, as far as Csorwe knew.
“Shuthmili,” she said, in a low voice, trying not to frighten her. “We need to keep moving, just as slow as we’re going now. This place is waking up.”
Shuthmili stared, swallowed, then nodded. “Yes. That would make sense,” she said, which was nice, because things had stopped making sense to Csorwe at least eight hours ago. “The Sleeper was keeping this world from declining. Now that it’s awake … all that energy has been unleashed and things are going to decline very fast indeed.”
She broke off and stared out into the mist, her eyes glazing. It would be a hell of a lot easier to do this without dead weight, but Csorwe was damned if she was going to leave Shuthmili to die now, after everything she had done to get her this far.
“All right,” said Csorwe. “Don’t panic. If we run—if we have to start running—they’re going to start chasing us. Once we run we can’t stop.” Talking Shuthmili through it made it much easier to deal with her own impulse to bolt.
Shuthmili nodded, but looked as if she was just picking her moment to bolt as hard as she could.
Csorwe bit her lip. She wasn’t used to dealing with anyone else’s fear. She hurried Shuthmili on down the slope toward another clearing in the gravestones. She could see the figures rising in the mist, at the very edges of her vision. Dozens of them by now.
“You’ve done so well,” she said, trying to be soothing. “We’re nearly out.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” said Shuthmili, clearly on the brink of panic.
“All right,” she said. “Point taken.” Csorwe herself had never had much patience with anyone telling her everything was going to be fine. The revenants were still stiff and jerky, recovering slowly from centuries of sleep. That would change as soon as they had something to chase.
“Why don’t you tell me about something nice?” said Csorwe, trying another tack.
“Something nice?” said Shuthmili. Disbelieving scorn was an improvement on terror, at least.
“Yeah,” said Csorwe, who would rather have fought another corpse than try to make small talk. “I don’t know. What do you … like?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” hissed Shuthmili. “I like not being stalked by the walking dead. I like wearing clean clothes and getting a good night’s sleep. I don’t think you’re in a position to supply any of those things.”
“You know, it was a lot easier to deal with you when you were unconscious,” said Csorwe, although anger was also better than terror, and after years of working with Tal she was entirely used to it.
“Yes, that’s what I’m told,” said Shuthmili. “I’m fine. I’m not going to run away. You don’t have to jolly me along. I don’t need distracting.”
Out in the graveyard, the dead were rising fast. More of them than Csorwe could count, now, in every direction. Csorwe’s skin prickled, and every instinct, natural or ingrained, prickled with it. There must be thousands of them. The urge to run was almost irresistible.
“Are you sure?” said Csorwe. “I quite like a distraction, myself.”
“What do you think is nice, then,” said Shuthmili, though she sounded a little warmer.
“Breakfast,” said Csorwe, hopelessly aware that this made her sound like a yokel. “It sets you up for the day. Wouldn’t mind getting a chance to clean my sword, either. Your turn?”
“I wish you hadn’t mentioned breakfast,” said Shuthmili, though she finally sounded less tense. “I can’t think when I last had a proper meal—”
Csorwe scan
ned the horizon as they walked. At last, at the bottom of the hill, beyond the edge of the graveyard, she saw the wandering line of the boundary wall, and the ridge, and the silhouette of Prosperity.
Out in the graveyard, something broke into a run. It was like the fall of ice that starts the avalanche. The dead began pouring down toward them.
“Shit,” said Csorwe, grabbing Shuthmili’s arm. “Let’s move.”
She broke into a sprint, and the dead pursued them.
Even running, the crowd of revenants did not move fast. On her own, Csorwe could have outpaced them, but after a few minutes Shuthmili was wheezing. She was going to collapse if she kept going.
Csorwe rarely worked with other people, unless you counted Tal, which she didn’t. She wasn’t used to matching her pace to anyone else’s. She and Tal operated on the principle that if you fell behind, you were left to rot.
Still. Shuthmili was not Tal, and Csorwe was not prepared to let her die. If she could draw the revenants off for a second, Shuthmili would have a moment’s rest, and Csorwe would catch up to her afterward. Never mind that would take Csorwe directly into the path of the revenants, perhaps close enough for them to reach her.
Some of the fear and failure that had weighed on her since the Monument melted away. She had lost enough, but she could still do this much.
“Catch your breath,” she called. She darted away from Shuthmili at a sharp angle, waving her sword and yelling. “Hey! Hey! Come and get me, you leathery fucks!”
Glancing back she saw the dead, a shambling train flowing down the hillside toward them, like water settling into a groove. One or two of the nearest broke away from the line and started following Csorwe instead. Once they were properly drawn off, she doubled back and started running in the other direction. A little way ahead, Shuthmili stumbled on, taking great gulps of air.
They weren’t far from the wall. There was a narrow gap where the tremors had shaken it apart, making a kind of tilted doorway. Csorwe caught up to Shuthmili and seized her arm. They were getting to the wall if Csorwe had to drag her there.
All around them the ground shifted as the graveyard gave up more of its dead, as hands came up from the earth like reaching roots.
Shuthmili was still trying to run, like someone in a dream whose legs stop working. Csorwe slowed her own pace to keep level with her. The dead were close enough now that she could see the cobwebbed gratings of their ribs, the horror of their crumpled skulls and shattered jawbones.
The smell of funeral oils. Myrrh and camphor and balsam, bone and ash and dust.
The closest revenant grabbed at the hem of Shuthmili’s surcoat and she screamed, a breathless sound, like an animal caught in a trap. Csorwe kicked through its bony wrist, scattering metacarpals, and shoved Shuthmili through the gap in the wall. She grabbed the revenant by the neck and smashed its skull against the wall, again and again, until it stopped struggling.
“Run,” she yelled to Shuthmili, and took up her place in the doorway. They were coming down the hill in a thick crowd. Csorwe didn’t try to calculate how many she could take before she fell. She knew an undefeatable enemy when she saw one. Perhaps this was just as well. She had failed. She saw, with clarity, that she would rather die fighting than admit to Sethennai that she had failed him.
“I can’t,” said Shuthmili, crumpling on the bare earth, just a few yards ahead. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”
Csorwe turned back to face the dead. They kept coming, all fleshless limbs and faceless heads. Csorwe stabbed and cut and thrust and stabbed, holding her ground as far as she could. She heard herself screaming somewhere in the distance. The world closed in. Only this doorway was real: this three-foot gap, and the hemisphere beyond. Shuthmili and the ship, Talasseres, the Reliquary, and everything else beyond the wall faded into shadow.
This was it. This was the end. This was the door in the hillside and the darkness beyond.
She fought on as long as she could. They surrounded her, now. They were grabbing at her limbs, her clothes, tearing at her hair. It didn’t hurt too badly and perhaps never would.
“STOP.”
Shuthmili’s voice was cracking under strain, so distorted that Csorwe barely recognised it.
The dead heard her. They froze, their hands locking uselessly in bony half-cuffs around Csorwe’s limbs. With a final effort, Csorwe broke out of their grip and stumbled back, kicking the revenants’ legs out from under them.
“STOP NOW. LEAVE.”
Shuthmili was swaying on her feet, still only a few feet away. Her eyes were vacant, her mouth hanging half open, her hands limp at her sides. She looked like a revenant herself. The voice that came out of her was not her own.
“STOP. SLEEP. END. REST.”
The closest revenants began to disintegrate, shredding themselves to splinters. Farther up the hill, they were still coming in crowds, but as they got close to Csorwe and the wall, they started to trip over the ones who had stopped, forming a drift of tangled bones.
Csorwe backed away, slowly at first. Then she threw Shuthmili over her good shoulder, and with the last of her strength, she ran on up the hill toward the ridge.
* * *
Perhaps Shuthmili was right. Perhaps the gods did care what happened to them. Perhaps they had worse ways in mind for Csorwe to die, on some bad day in the future. She cleared the ridge, and Prosperity was there, undamaged, whole, and skyworthy.
Csorwe dropped Shuthmili over the side and leapt after her. By now the dead had trampled past the blocked doorway. They lapped up against the sides of the mazeship, a sea of hands and mouths.
The Qarsazhi had rigged the ship for a speedy departure. Csorwe beat away grasping hands to sever the mooring-ropes, and kicked the alchemical engine to life. Prosperity’s canopies filled and she began to rise.
From above, the dead looked like an immense swarm of rats, flowing over the landscape, away from the sinking ship that was the fallen monument. Csorwe checked the ship’s instruments. A dial with a face of smoked green glass indicated the direction of the Gate. Csorwe did her best to point the cutter in that direction, her hands trembling on the controls.
The wheel was slippery with blood. Csorwe’s first thought was that the ship must have been wounded. Her left arm and the front of her coat were stained dark. When she moved, a fresh stream trickled down her sleeve. She couldn’t feel her left shoulder at all, as though the whole joint had been bitten away.
She began peeling off her coat, and then thought better of it, sinking back into the pilot’s chair.
It must have been the first revenant, the big man. The others hadn’t managed much more than scratches.
She sat there for some time, leaking blood. Her mind worked terribly slowly, each thought swinging into place as though lowered from a crane. If she kept losing blood she was going to pass out. If she passed out, there was nobody to steer the ship. She alternated from one thought to another, as her hands slipped one by one from the controls and she slid from the chair to the deck.
Her vision blurred. Everything was cold and vague, like sinking through clouds. From a great distance she felt someone dragging her body away.
Nobody to steer the ship! she thought, and tried to struggle away from them, but her limbs wouldn’t obey.
She felt a deep, stabbing ache in her shoulder, then a spreading heat that mingled with the pain and smoothed it away. It was good, in fact, like coming back to a warm bed on a cold night. It spread through her body, faintly tingling.
Either death was more pleasant than advertised, or something else was happening to her. With a great effort she opened her eyes.
She was lying on her back on the floor of the cabin. Shuthmili was kneeling over her, pinning her bare shoulder with both hands. Her face was a wide-eyed mask, the pupils dilated into black wells. Csorwe twisted, trying to look at her shoulder, and felt another wrench of pain. She cried out loud.
“Stay still,” said Shuthmili. She obeyed, and once again the pain ebbed away.
“What are you doing?” said Csorwe. She regretted asking. Shuthmili didn’t answer, and whenever her concentration broke, the pain returned. The pain itself wasn’t so bad, but it came with the awful wrong feeling of something cut and ruptured inside her.
Shuthmili’s white robes were bloody to the elbow. As the minutes passed, she seemed to return to herself. The vacancy in her eyes was replaced with a clear, chilly focus. She prodded at Csorwe’s injured shoulder as if it was a joint of meat. Sometimes this hurt. Csorwe bit down on her sleeve, trying not to cry out.
At last Shuthmili sat back on her heels, and swiped back a lock of hair, leaving a streak of blood on her forehead. The pain seeped back in, but it was old pain somehow, the ache of a long-healed wound. Csorwe twisted to look at her shoulder. There was a silvery crescent of tooth marks there, already scarred over.
Shuthmili wavered, blinked, then threw up a gout of tar-black ichor, courteously managing to avoid getting it on Csorwe. The substance smoked where it hit the boards, eating away a jagged hole in the polished wood.
Shuthmili wiped her mouth. “Sorry,” she said.
“Er,” said Csorwe.
“You would have lost the arm,” said Shuthmili. “Very corrupt.” Her lips were blue and her eyes bloodshot, but she looked pleased with herself.
“What happened?” said Csorwe. “What—who’s steering the ship?”
“Nobody,” said Shuthmili. “I landed her.” She leant over Csorwe again and buttoned up her coat over the ruined shirt underneath. “I’m not supposed to know how,” she said. “But it’s not very complicated if you pay attention.”
“I’ve seen what you can do,” said Csorwe, crawling to one of the benches and hauling herself upright. “Doesn’t seem like stopping you learning to fly a ship is going to help much.”
Shuthmili shrugged. “If you had someone on your hands who could do what I can do, you might want to keep them on the ground.”
“Are you all right?” said Csorwe.
The black ichor had all but dispersed now, leaving an oily scar etched on the floor of the cabin, among smears of Csorwe’s blood.
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