The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  They were in a bare grey antechamber with wooden cubbyholes built along one side. Here the prisoners would strip and stash their clothes before heading to the bath beyond. Aren had never been in here when it was empty before, and he felt the thrill of trespassing.

  ‘At the back, he said,’ Cade reminded him, and walked into the bathing chamber. Aren followed warily, half suspecting an ambush.

  The bathing chamber wasn’t large; the smallest pool in the public baths in Shoal Point had been bigger. Tiled walls chilled air that was already cold, and high, narrow windows did little to lighten the gloom. Water dripped from the ceiling, stealthy wet plinks and taps echoing in the hollow space. In the centre was the rectangular bath, empty now. Sluices at either end were used to fill it from the river and drain it again. Many a bathing prisoner had wished they could exit as easily as the water did, but the sluices were covered with iron grilles and far too small to crawl through.

  Cade skirted the pool to the far corner, where brooms and mops and pails leaned untidily. He dug among them and pulled out a hemp sack. Aren checked the back rooms to be satisfied nobody was hiding there, and returned to find Cade pawing through the contents of the sack.

  ‘Looks like he was as good as his word,’ Cade said, holding up a coat. He pulled out a pair of woollen gloves. ‘Gloves! Nine, I didn’t dare to dream of gloves!’

  Here were the clothes Grub had promised, taken from the dead. The shirts and thin coats were a pitiful defence against the cold, but they were more effective when layered. Some were bloodstained and torn, and they reeked of old sweat, urine and something worse: the acrid taint of death, which Ossians called Sarla’s perfume. But none of that was anything to Aren and Cade, who’d endured too much to wrinkle their noses at a few bad smells. They buttoned up coats on top of coats, pulled trousers over trousers excitedly.

  ‘I think I’m warming up,’ said Cade. ‘I’d forgotten how that felt.’

  ‘When we get to Hailfell, you’ll forget what hungry feels like, too.’ Aren was sitting on the floor, levering off his boots. ‘First thing we’ll do is find an inn and buy a dish of meat.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ Cade begged. ‘Delicious, delicious flesh. You know how long it’s been since I ate something that had a heartbeat?’

  ‘Proper bread, made from actual wheat and warm from the oven,’ Aren said. ‘Thick, dark ale. Whole trout as long as your arm, cooked in butter and herbs with golden potatoes.’

  Cade groaned and shovelled imaginary food into his mouth with both hands.

  ‘Wild boar in truffle sauce! Strake eggs and capers! Bacon!’ Aren got his boot off at last and a hiss of pain escaped him, interrupting his culinary fantasies. The socks beneath were worn to a webbing, the skin of his foot raw with blisters, his little toe bruised blue. The smile fell from Cade’s face, and Aren knew he was remembering that night when Aren had brought him a cheese roll and new thick socks for the winter, traded for cheroots he’d taken from a dead man.

  ‘Aren …’ he began.

  ‘Doesn’t feel as bad as it looks,’ Aren lied. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No, I need to say it. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry about … before.’

  Aren waved it away. ‘You were having a bad time.’

  ‘No, that’s …’ He struggled with what to say. Real apologies never came easily, especially among friends. ‘That ain’t an excuse. I shouldn’t have said that stuff. You always had my back, and no one else ever did.’

  ‘We’ve always had each other’s,’ said Aren. ‘And we always will.’

  ‘You could’ve left me behind in the mine. I didn’t deserve what you did.’

  ‘I’ll never leave you behind, Cade,’ said Aren. ‘Never.’

  Cade turned away and made out he had something in his eye. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Well.’ But his voice wobbled and he went no further.

  Aren picked out some new socks and eased them over his toes. ‘You know, if you’re ready, there are blankets in the sack that need knotting into a rope,’ he said casually.

  ‘Aye,’ said Cade. ‘Aye, I’ll get right to it.’ He set to work, glad of the distraction, and neither of them said anything else until they heard the chain clink on the bathhouse door and Grub stormed in.

  ‘What is this?’ he shouted, holding up a small, dirty sack. He tossed it to the ground and its contents tumbled out.

  ‘Those,’ said Aren, getting to his feet, ‘are crows. Nice fresh ones, killed and plucked just last night.’ He felt a flood of relief at the sight. Eifann had honoured his side of the deal.

  ‘Mudslug not say package full of dead crows!’

  ‘I didn’t say it wasn’t,’ Aren pointed out. ‘Why are you angry?’

  ‘Crows are eyes of Urgotha! Bone God! Not supposed to kill crows!’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ said Aren as he came walking over with Cade. ‘Ossians have a similar legend about Sarla. You think they work for both gods, or do some work for one, and some the other?’

  ‘You not take Bone God lightly! Mudslug not worth the ink on Grub’s arse!’ he raged. ‘Why you need dead crows? Better be good reason, or Grub kill you!’

  ‘I’ll show you.’ Aren knelt down and picked up a crow. Eifann had done a rough job of plucking them and feathers still clung to their bloody stippled skin. ‘They don’t stock meat in the cookhouse, since prisoners aren’t allowed any. It’s all kept in the guards’ section. So this is the best we could do.’ He drew out his tin water flask from his pocket with his other hand. ‘Draccen tears. A spoonful of this will knock a grown man out. Much more will kill him.’

  He popped the cap off the flask with his thumb and poured some of the mixture into the crow’s open beak. Then he pinched the beak shut. ‘Now it’s a tasty snack for a skulldog. Cade, could you?’

  He handed it to Cade, who was waiting with a twist of string to tie the crow’s beak closed.

  ‘Dog eat crow, dog fall asleep!’ said Grub, his face clearing as it dawned on him.

  ‘Or it dies,’ said Cade. ‘Whichever is fine.’

  A broad smile split Grub’s tattooed face. ‘Dogs sleep, we creep past, climb up to walkway and sneak over!’ He appeared to have forgotten his earlier reservations about dead crows. ‘You smarter than you look!’

  ‘If that ain’t faint praise, I don’t know what is,’ said Cade wryly.

  Then the sound of slow clapping stilled them all.

  26

  ‘Brothers!’ said Rapha as he walked into the bathing chamber, followed by half a dozen brutes with long knives. ‘Look at you! A merrier band of rogues I’ve not seen in longaday.’ His arms were open wide in a friendly gesture that wasn’t fooling anyone.

  Aren gave Grub an accusing glare. His first thought was that the Skarl had betrayed them.

  ‘Ah, don’t put the blame on him, now,’ said Rapha. ‘You ought to be smarter about who you go askin’ for weapons, highborn. Word gets around. People start to pay attention.’

  His cronies spread out, circling both sides of the bath. Aren felt bitter anger in his gut. One little mistake, when everything had been going so well. Failing now would be too cruel to bear.

  He raised his palms. ‘We don’t want trouble, Rapha. Do you want in? Is that why you’ve come?’

  Rapha let out a low chuckle. ‘Brother, I could leave this prison tonight if I had the mind. Half the guards in Suller’s Bluff take my coin, and the other half know what’ll happen to their families if they cross me.’ He looked at Cade. ‘Didn’t you tell him? This is my kingdom.’

  ‘It’s your kingdom,’ Aren agreed. ‘We just want to leave.’

  ‘Ah, but if things were that simple, what an easy life we’d all have, eh?’ said Rapha, in a tone of insincere regret. ‘But bein’ a king carries certain responsibilities. Keepin’ order, that’s one. So when I hear a man wants to get his hands on some blades, I get to askin’ what for? Might be they’re plannin’ to even a score with another prisoner. Might be they got designs on killin’ a guard or tw
o. Maybe the overseer himself, given the chance.’

  He strolled around the edge of the pool to Grub. The Skarl shrank back against the wall, baring his teeth like a cornered cur, showing no sign of the great warrior he professed to be.

  ‘The key,’ said Rapha.

  Grub handed over the cookhouse key without protest, and Aren’s heart sank further as Rapha pocketed it.

  ‘Gren’s a good man,’ said Rapha. ‘Heart’s in the right place, Krodan or not. What do you think’ll happen to him when they find the cookhouse robbed and his key gone? Who’ll feed his family when he loses his job? Who’ll feed your fellow prisoners? You think the food’s bad now, but that’s ’cause you weren’t here before Gren turned up. The man’s a sorcerer in the kitchen considerin’ what he has to work with. Consequences, brothers. Any of you think of that?’

  Aren hadn’t, and on another day he might have felt a pang of guilt. Under the circumstances, however, Gren’s plight didn’t concern him in the least.

  Rapha walked over to him, tugging his beard absently. ‘When order in the kingdom breaks down, people start to ask if the king knows what he’s doin’. If he’s really up to scratch, so to speak. Maybe he has to pay out a whole pile o’ guilders to make it right. Maybe he has to make promises he don’t want to. And maybe the next king starts to think he’s a soft touch, and gets to sharpenin’ his blade. All ’cause a few little rats bit the hand that feeds them.’

  ‘We didn’t mea—’ Cade began.

  ‘You shut up!’ Rapha snapped, turning from genial to terrifying in an instant. ‘I was there when you needed help, and this is how you repay me?’

  Cade clammed up, shocked into silence, and Rapha turned back to Aren.

  ‘You’re highborn, but you’re Ossian even so,’ he said. ‘You know how it is. You need a permit from your masters just to leave the town where you live. Used to be that way where I came from, too. Peasant wanted to up and move, he had to ask permission from his lord.’

  ‘And you’re the king in here,’ Aren said, keeping his voice steady. Though his heart was hammering, he met the pirate’s gaze steadily. Even more than with Grub, he knew weakness would prove fatal.

  ‘I’m the king,’ Rapha agreed. ‘And you didn’t ask my permission.’

  ‘We didn’t know.’ No chance that excuse would wash, but he tried anyway.

  ‘Too late for that. Might be I’d have given you my blessin’, had you asked, but that time’s past. So this can go two ways. Either my boys take two fingers from each o’ you, make the next fool with an idea think twice before they step outside the chain o’ command.’ He leaned closer and his voice was a low snarl. ‘Or you offer me somethin’ precious enough to salve my hurt feelin’s and let you carry on with this little endeavour o’ yours.’

  There it was. For all his talk, the pirate just wanted his price. Only Aren had nothing to give him.

  When Cade had met him in his den, Rapha had been looking for something that might be of advantage to his contacts on the outside, someone he could leverage or extract a bribe from. But Aren’s father had been disgraced and executed, his lands and goods seized. Aren’s very name was poisoned. He had no money, no possessions and nobody of influence would be unwise enough to associate with him any more.

  Still, he could lie. He could lie, and pretend his father was still alive and rich, and promise Rapha anything under the sun. But it was a desperate gamble, for he wasn’t sure how much Rapha knew; and he couldn’t make himself do it anyway. It would be giving too much of himself away. Even if it meant their escape, he wouldn’t be a craven deceiver.

  His hesitation lasted too long and Rapha stepped back, fleeting disappointment on his face. ‘Shame. It was a good plan. Thought you had potential.’ He motioned at Cade without looking. ‘Him first.’

  ‘No!’ Aren cried. Two of Rapha’s men seized Cade while two others menaced Grub with their knives. He stayed against the wall, disinclined to interfere. Cade struggled and cried out as they pulled the glove from his left hand, forced it open and put the edge of a blade to it. His horrified gaze met Aren’s. Don’t let them do this!

  ‘I have nothing you want!’ Aren protested to Rapha.

  ‘That’s probably true,’ said Rapha, implacable. ‘But there needs to be a price.’

  ‘A king can show mercy!’

  ‘Mercy’s cheap coin if it’s given too freely.’ He thought a moment. ‘But you’ve got a point.’ He looked over at his men. ‘Take the little fingers. That way he can still hold a pickaxe.’ He turned back to Aren. ‘There’s mercy. Seems I’m a soft touch after all.’

  Aren sought desperately for a way to avoid what was coming. Two fingers or all of them, the end would be the same for Cade. His courage hung by a thread. If he didn’t escape tonight, his will would be broken for good. A month, maybe a year, and he’d be dead. Aren didn’t even think of his own fingers, only of his friend’s. If he was maimed, all was lost.

  ‘Think fast, little rabbit,’ Rapha said, with something wicked in his eye. This was a game to him, Aren realised. He just wanted to see if Aren could think his way out of it. He won respect in the eyes of his men either way.

  Rage heated his thoughts. He wanted to spring at Rapha, steal his blade, turn the tables. But such heroics were the stuff of Cade’s fictions.

  To overcome your enemy, you must first understand him.

  Rapha was more than just a pirate. He chose to stay in a Krodan work camp rather than walk free. He’d sailed the seas as a reaver and made a great fortune, but now he hid behind a stockade like some reclusive mastermind, running his schemes in the world outside but never seeing the results. He sometimes worked in the mine just for the exercise – or possibly the risk. He’d given ragweed to Cade, perhaps out of misplaced kindness, perhaps to see him hooked.

  Why was he hiding? Were Baric League assassins really hunting him in revenge for plundering their galleon, as rumour had it? Was he hiding at all, or was there some other reason for his staying here? What did it mean? Who was he?

  In that moment, something happened to Aren. He felt it like a revelation. The scraps of information he’d gathered about Rapha were like swiped brushstrokes on a canvas. By themselves, they signified nothing; but step back, see how they joined, and a picture emerged that was truer than the sum of its parts. Aren saw that picture now, and he saw Rapha, too, and knew him. Cade’s distress gave him the courage to speak.

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll give you, Rapha,’ he said. Something in his tone impressed the pirate, for he held up his hand to halt his cronies just as they were preparing to make the first cut. ‘I’ll give you me. One service, whatever you want, for you to claim any day from this until my last. One task, one deed, one favour, no matter what the cost to myself, no matter how despicable I might find it. If you let us go.’

  A slow sneer of disdain spread across Rapha’s face. ‘Is that all? What worth are you to me?’

  ‘Now? None. But I will be more than this. I can’t say what fortune holds for me, but in ten years I’ll not be a cooper or a cart-driver, I’ll tell you that. And wherever I am, whatever I become, I’ll remember my vow. When you call, I’ll answer. Who can say what worth I’ll prove to you then?’

  Rapha looked amazed. ‘You’d have me give you your freedom on the strength of a promise? You’re saying that, should you end up as more than wolf dung in the forest, you might one day be of use? Forgive me, brother, I vastly underestimated the size of your balls.’

  But Aren was deadly serious. ‘I think you know the value of what I’m offering,’ he said. ‘You trade in favours, you gamble and you look to the future. You’re not planning to stay in this hole. One day, all those friends of yours on the outside will have dealt with whatever keeps you here, and you’ll be back on the seas where your heart is. You don’t want our fingers; what use are they to you? The potential for value is better than the guarantee of none.’

  He could have stopped there, but he didn’t. He was driven on by his own momentum,
intoxicated by how sure of himself he was.

  ‘You know what else? I think you want us to escape. You’re bored cutting deals with Krodan lowlifes when you used to take down galleons. You’re dying for a little chaos. And you’d like to see Krent’s fat face sweating when he explains to his superiors how he’s lost three prisoners. You want to know if we can do it, and deep down, you want to see us try.

  ‘So take the offer, Rapha. Let us go. And I promise you, when the time comes, I’ll be your man.’

  His last words rang from the tiles into silence. They were all staring at him. He felt elated, breathless, a little mad. Then, as the silence dragged on, his certainty began to crumble like a sandcastle before the tide. His face drooped as he realised that maybe, just maybe, he’d been drastically mistaken.

  But Rapha threw back his head and roared with laughter, loud enough that his men cringed for fear the guards would hear. He slapped a beefy hand down on Aren’s shoulder and suddenly he was all smiles. ‘Might be you’ll be worth something after all!’ he said. ‘You’ve got a tongue on you, I’ll give you that. But don’t think this is a debt you can forget once you’re away, brother. Should I want you found, you’ll be found. And you’ll lose more than a couple of fingers if you refuse my call.’

  ‘I know what a promise means,’ Aren said. He’d made three now: one to Cade, one to Eifann and one to Rapha, the latter two given to fulfil the first. Trading away pieces of his future so they might have a future at all.

  There is no victory without sacrifice. He’d said that to Master Fassen once, before he really knew what sacrifice was. Perhaps he still didn’t, not really. But one day he was certain he would.

  Rapha seemed satisfied. ‘Well enough, then. I accept your offer.’ He motioned to the men who were holding Cade and they let him go. He scrambled away, holding his hand protectively to his chest. He was bleeding where the blade had bitten the skin, but no worse than that.

  ‘And the cookhouse key?’ Aren asked.

  ‘Don’t push your luck, brother.’

  ‘We’ll be dead out there without food.’