by Ben Galley
‘I bid you a good day, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Take care of my fortune.’
Ani and Danib swept in behind him like hulking wings as Temsa left with a brisker limp than usual. His soldiers formed a rough oval, knocking a few benches and barrows over as they did so.
Temsa walked in silence, letting his pace do the talking. Ani was as mute as Danib. The soldiers were silent too, just wafting their stench across him. That was enough reason for a swift pace, even if he didn’t have things to do.
His new armoured carriage, pilfered from Horix’s tower, waited where he’d left it on the edge of the plaza. The horses bucked in their harnesses, eager to move. Temsa knew that feeling.
With a hop and a clang, he was inside and ensconced in the velvet seats, individually curved for each passenger. The carriage fit six, but with Ani and Danib filling the space, it already felt far too full. Temsa put an elbow to his knee and propped his head to stare out of the window: two thick plates of glass, warped with age. It twisted the city into odd shapes as they jolted away; coloured it a dull green against the sun-baked ochre and gleaming blue sky.
‘You heard what he said in there,’ Temsa said when he was ready.
Ani had already been staring at him. Now her eyebrows raised. ‘I know that look. You’ve got an idea in you. Somethin’ tells me it’s not a good one.’
‘You, m’dear, are sorely mistaken.’ Temsa paused to swallow the anger. It would sour the moment. ‘Emperor Temsa. It has a fine ring to it, don’t you think? A fine ring indeed. The first of a new royal line.’
Danib bowed his head. Ani cupped a hand behind her ear.
‘What?’
‘The first of a new royal line.’
‘I knew it wouldn’t be a good ‘un,’ Ani whispered. She spared a moment to press her fists against her forehead. ‘Are you… Have you… Have you fucking lost it, Boss?’
Temsa levelled his cane at her. ‘I have told you time and time again—’
Ani had the nerve the interrupt him. ‘Tor Temsa, Serek Temsa. Now Emperor Temsa? It sounds like madness, Boss. More than greed. You used to plan and scheme and bide your time, but now you’re rushin’ in like a headless shade. Finel’s was a disaster. You’ve fuckin’ lost Caltro. The widow is somewhere with an ungodly flying machine, and yet you’re pretending as if nothing has happened! As if we’re not stuck between the claws of the Cult and royal fangs. Or as if last night wasn’t a failure. It’s not like you at all, and I say that as your loyal guard of almost ten years! You pay me to worry about your safety, so I’m fucking worrying.’
Temsa fought the spit and vigour behind his teeth. He had plenty of it to give; for Ani’s cheek, her insolence, her doubt. Her never-ending doubt. Not for the first time, the thought of firing her, or something more permanent, crossed Temsa’s mind. He swallowed once more.
‘Miss Jexebel, I must remind you of your position, and suggest that you hold your fucking tongue when it comes to who makes the plans. You wish for me to plateau? Now that I have come so far? Fine. I will find a bodyguard who wants to gaze down at Araxes from the Cloudpiercer. Someone who wants to be grand general, or whatever. Or even serek. You can go back to scratching a living in some tavern, dreamless and average.’
Ani somehow looked offended. ‘Is that what you think this is about?’
‘That is what this has always been about! What it is all about, Ani. What greater heist is there in this city other than the throne, hmm? Tell me that, and I will never step under the Piercer’s arches again in my life. And while we’re on the subject of pretending nothing has happened, I could hold you accountable for fucking up the entire attack on Horix, but I’ve done you the favour of ignoring it. I could easily punish you instead.’
Ani’s words were strikes of flint on steel. ‘For what?’
Temsa leaned closer to her. ‘Did you not think to check if the widow still had Caltro? No, you didn’t, embarrassing me in front of the Cult and the empress-in-waiting.’
He didn’t know whether it was her lack of vocabulary, lack of confidence, or that she was too full of raging words to dare speak, but Ani held her tongue, and looked away to the other window. He saw how white her knuckles had turned, gripping the handle of her axe.
‘And you, Danib?’ Temsa turned to the hulking shade, challenging him. ‘Want to complain about the way I do things?’
The shade shrugged, then shook his head, and Temsa took that to mean the usual no, or, “whatever”. It was the best he ever got out of the dumb shade, but at least it was consistent. All Danib cared about was the simple matter of bloodshed. Unlike Ani. Who would have thought the big, battle-scarred Scatterwoman lacked backbone when it mattered?
‘Just as I thought. You should learn to be more like Danib here, m’dear,’ Temsa ordered. ‘As for Caltro and Horix, I have eyes looking all over the main city. Danib wounded her machine. She can’t hide for long now that the mists have faded. Now, if you’re finished complaining…?’
Silence answered him, and Temsa turned back to the window with a sigh.
Emperor Temsa. It had a ring like a lunch bell on a summer’s day. Where he had grown up in Belish, before a man had taken his leg, he had heard such a tolling from the riverbanks, and raced through meadows with the cackling of fellow children in his ears. Those were fine days. Fairy tale days. But all fairy tales hid an inner darkness, no matter how sparkly the prince, how determined the princess. There was always a witch. A wolf. A dragon. Temsa’s had been a butcher. A man who made a job of removing limbs from those who hadn’t the coin to save them. Boran Temsa had avoided debtors’ prison, and the Nyx, but he’d paid all the same. And he’d paid more. In sweat, silver, and blood. Not his own, mind, but hired blood, from hired swords. Up and up and up he’d climbed, building businesses from the sand until a whole district was his. Now tordom. Shortly a serek. Perhaps even an emperor. And why not? It was owed to him. Just like every other Arctian. He had taken what was his. Dared to take steps no others had yet taken. Why shouldn’t the throne be his, dead gods curse it?
Emperor Temsa. ‘Emperor fucking Temsa,’ he whispered under his breath to a distorted cityscape.
A familiar face greeted him at the gates of his tower: Etane, standing in gold armour and with a mask of mail pushed up onto his forehead. His inordinately large sword was strapped to his back.
‘What?’ Temsa greeted him coldly as he stepped from his carriage. His soldiers swarmed around him, but he waved most of them away. ‘Hasn’t the princess forgiven me yet?’
‘For which failure?’ Etane asked, smiling in a sickly way. ‘For failing to stop Horix escaping? For losing her locksmith? Or for consorting with the Cult?’
Temsa was the picture of shocked innocence. ‘I did no such things.’
‘I will convey your rebuttal to Her Majesty.’
‘You do that,’ said Temsa, brushing past him on his way into his courtyard. To his dismay, Etane followed his entourage in. Danib did a poor job of keeping the shade separated from Temsa; he practically strolled alongside Etane, staring down at his sword.
‘Did you have any other purpose here, besides loitering?’ Temsa challenged him.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Etane replied, coming closer. Even Ani didn’t bother to keep him out of reach, and Temsa had to keep Etane’s distance with his cane.
‘The empress-in-waiting wishes you to eliminate Serek Boon, as requested. And she gives not a fuck for whatever dealings you have in place with the Enlightened Fuckwits. She wishes you to know that you had better not fail a third time, or she’ll cut you to pieces herself and throw them from the Cloud Court as morsels for the crows.’
Temsa tapped his claws. He was almost impressed. He had also never seen Ani’s eyebrows lifted so high. ‘Her words?’
Etane nodded. ‘Her words.’
Stomping his cane, Temsa sighed dramatically. ‘Fortunately for her, I am loyal to the throne and our good empress-in-waiting. Rest assured, shade. Preparations to put good Serek Boon to death for good
are already underway.’
‘Are they, now?’ The shade looked far from convinced.
Temsa jabbed his cane at his second in command. ‘Ani? M’dear?’
‘Underway,’ she growled, eyes hazed and firmly fixed on the skyline.
Temsa had barely let his sellswords sleep, never mind getting them ready for an assault. He could push them, though. He had enough men. That was one thing he’d learnt in all his years of letting others bleed for him. Most things can be accomplished if enough meat or vapour is thrust at it.
‘How soon might Her Majesty expect the task done?’
‘We will be paying Boon a visit imminently,’ said Temsa. ‘Tonight, in fact.’
Etane clapped his hands together, making barely a sound. ‘Good news. It’ll go some way to improving the empress-in-waiting’s foul mood, I’m sure.’
Temsa performed a shallow yet elaborate bow. ‘How glad I am to hear it.’
Etane turned, his eyes lingering on Danib as he spoke. ‘I highly recommend you don’t fail her again, Tor. It could spell the end of this business relationship,’ he warned. With that, he strode away, pulling a white silk hood over his head to keep himself from the hot sun.
Temsa clanked his way towards the grand doorway, letting a clearly fuming Ani stomp alongside him.
‘Tonight, Tor? Tonight?’ she grumbled. ‘We can’t—’
‘We have the men. Some of them have no doubt had a nap at their posts by now. Give them a good wash, a feed, new blades, and they’ll be ready to do some sharp-work in no time.’ Temsa tried to ignore the poorly-concealed groan from his soldiers.
‘We have no time to waste!’ he barked at them. ‘No time at all!’
‘You—’
Temsa whirled on her, heat prickling his cheeks. ‘What, Ani? What is it now?’
The woman stared back at him, matching his glare for intensity. An awkward silence passed as scores of soldiers looked on, waiting, watching. Danib even stretched for his sword at one point, just before Ani relented with a great clearing of her throat.
‘Inside, you reeking bastards. Have a fucking wash.’
Temsa smirked as he passed beneath the arch of the doorway. ‘Better, m’dear. Much better.’
The look Ani chased him with could have speared him alive, but he was too busy muttering the word ‘emperor’ over and over to care.
Chapter 12
The Vengeance
Announcing the annual centipede races, covering twenty miles of Duneplain and Outsprawl city street! Organised by Tor Finel, a keen enthusiast of all things furred, feathered, or shelled, the race will grant the winner fifty shades! Price of entry = one shade. Apply within.
From a tattered poster found in Far District
My morning had been spent mostly staring at the sorry attempts of the shades to patch up the ship from bits that had been strewn about in the crash. It was an amusing entertainment, of sorts, and it passed the time easily enough. All I had to worry about was shifting about at regular intervals so I could stay in the shadow of the great, sagging envelope.
Envelope. The word peppered the shades’ jumbled shouts. It didn’t sound like a bloated, patchwork bag for whatever gas or smoke lifted it. Envelope sounded like something that had horns and bounded across the desert, but I wasn’t going to argue. The crew seemed as tense as me, wondering where their half-coins were, whether Temsa had yet claimed them, and whether they still owed any allegiance to the widow.
After days apart from my coin, I sensed a strange pull towards her, it had to be said. I think it was only clearer when I tried to rail against it, like a reminder of the binding spell’s leash. Why somebody would want to worship a god that invented binding a soul like this was beyond me.
Somewhere around noon, when the shadows were at their shortest, a call come from a lookout on the dune above us. I swear the thing had shifted somehow without me noticing, and I had done enough mindless sitting and staring that morning than most people do in a month. The ripple in its peak had changed and seemed further away from me, as if these dunes were waves stuck in slower time than us, breaking on the shores of the city. I had never seen the like of them, yet already my fascination with the vast reaches of sand and grit was wearing thin.
Horix came striding out from inside the ship, where she had been sitting all morning, bawling the occasional order at a hopeless lackey. Her soldiers had fanned out into a rough circle, with half of them roasting in the sun for hours on end. I had tried the sun, hoping it would stir some warmth into my cold vapours, but it had just reminded me of being staked down in the widow’s garden, and I decided the shade was best.
‘What is it?’ she hissed at her new captain. A call was sent up and the lookout came sliding down the dune-face. Even with weight behind him, the sand still tired him, and he came running up breathless.
‘Shapes moving between the outlying buildings, sir. Tal.’
‘People, soldier?’
‘Lots, Tal Horix. In groups, moving from spot to spot as if looking for something. Shades, mostly. Some living with them, too.’
Horix jabbed a finger into the man’s chest. ‘Red robes?’
‘Well…’ The soldier thought for a moment. ‘Mostly grey with some red underneath.’
‘Cult,’ said Horix, spitting the word out like a melon seed. ‘They want their piece of the Vengeance. Omshin! Get your soldiers ready. I want this ship defended. Shades! Have you fixed my ship yet?’
I let the shouts and hollering wash over me, as I wondered what the Cult would want with Horix and her machine, and how she fit into the Enlightened Sisters’ plans. She likely didn’t fit at all, and that was probably why they were so keen to hunt her down. I wondered how much of their plans Horix and her flying machine had jeopardised. And me, for that matter, and my escape from Temsa. Since my chat with the sisters, I had attacked one of their own and run from them twice. Part of me wondered if this was them coming to fetch me, as they had promised, or coming to end me.
Stay useful, Caltro Basalt.
It was shady – pardoning the pun – how the Cult had arrived in the Outsprawls so quickly. They either truly had a great reach, or ran like rats through tunnels. I couldn’t help but admit I was intrigued by what these cultists were up to.
A score of Omshin’s soldiers, copper- and silver-plated, spread out in a semicircle and slowly proceeded up the dune while the rest formed a tight ring around the Vengeance. I tucked myself behind their shields and watched between their heads.
I don’t know how long I watched, but no matter how much I stared, no arrows swarmed the sky, no bodies came rolling down the dunes. It was one of those moments you can feel hovering like a buzzard, waiting to strike. Yet it never came. The soldiers began to spread out and hunker down to peer over the lip of sand.
Hushed whispers floated down on the breezes. Omshin had turned and was nodding deeply at the widow, confirming the lookout’s warning. She saw him, and I could hear her foul muttering. Using the butt of his spear, Omshin scratched a glyph in the slope of the dune. It looked like twenty. Or thirty. The higher Arctian numbers got, the more they confused me.
The rough word for “cult” followed, and Horix’s mind was made up.
‘Don’t let them get anywhere near the Vengeance!’ the widow yelled across the bowl of sand she had claimed as her own. ‘Kill on sight. No quarter for these shades, nor the living dolts that have fallen in with them!’
A clap of thunder sounded, making me jump before I realised it was the soldiers, thudding their gauntlets or spears against their shields in unison.
‘And you shades! Get back to work!’
‘Yes, Tal!’ came the not so enthusiastic response from the dead. Even so, the hammering and shovelling rose to a new level of fervour. I turned back to the dune and watched the soldiers digging into the sand. Triggerbows and short, recurved bows were run up to them. The sandy peak soon bristled with bolts and arrows, waiting to be nocked.
And that was it. Nothing happened
for several hours. I began those hours tense – as any person would be when they found themselves on the cusp of battle – but I ended them slumped in the envelope’s shadow, rolling my eyes and trying to hold sand grains in my hands.
I poked my finger into the hot sand by my elbow, eliciting a hiss and reminding me it was almost time to move. I felt like one of the sabre-cats the Krass lords liked to keep lounging by their fires. Wherever it was cosiest, the tufted cats would sprawl. I favoured the cool instead, shifting where the breezes blew and the shade kept the sand at a respectable temperature. Beyond the shadow, I could have roasted ham and eggs on the sand.
The soldiers had tried to evade the sun as much as possible, but where the formations had to be maintained, the men and women had baked in their armour. Shields were held like umbrellas, holes dug in the sand, but still quite a few collapsed, and had to be swapped with soldiers from the ship. The Arctians were not immune to the sun, no more than I was immune to striding across a Krass ice-steppe naked with my bollocks swinging free.
Whatever the banging and tinkering was achieving, it wasn’t making the widow happy. Hours had bought the workers only more anger from their mistress. I had no idea how close they were to fixing the Vengeance, but until the flying beast was sitting upright and straining at its tethers, Horix kept striding back and forth, screeching orders. I wondered if it would take another night, and if that was what the Cult bided their time for.
They were clearly out there. Omshin and his dune-dwellers had spotted them shifting about all day, sometimes striking far out east and west, as if to double back and surround them, or sometimes hammering some contraptions of their own together in ramshackle huts. There were more of them now, too. The captain didn’t know where they were coming from but they trickled in one by one in irregular intervals. Frequent enough to be worrying.
Despite the Cult’s charm and charity, nobody likes to be surrounded. As the sun began to lose some of its bright edge and slip to the west, I found myself up and wandering the formations of guards. I peered at the surrounding dunes, watching for a blur of red or blue in these accursed heat-waves. I was not a fan of them. If the air itself did not want to touch the sand, then why should I be forced to do it?