by Ben Galley
‘State your business!’ he yelled, making the soldier skid he stopped so hard.
‘A message for the empress-in-waiting, sir.’ The man waggled a fine piece of parchment, littered with scrawl.
‘From whom?’ Etane asked, snatching it away.
‘From Serek Boon.’
Sisine’s hand stopped in mid-air as she reached for the message. Then she snatched it, half ripping it, and eagerly devoured every word. Then again, disbelieving it.
‘OUT!’ she screeched, sending the soldier sprinting.
Etane waited until the papyrus was a crumpled ball in her hands. ‘Temsa?’ he asked.
‘He has failed me,’ she said, in a voice so strangled by anger – and, though she wouldn’t admit it, worry – that it came out as a whisper. ‘Failed!’
‘What does Boon want?’
‘To hold court!’ she shrieked. ‘He tells me the sereks will be gathering come midday. Tells me! He goes on to say ambassadors of the Church would like to attend, as they have news. Not in two decades have they been allowed inside the Piercer, and this dead bastard thinks he can change the rules!’ Her anger became a shrill cry, and she ripped the papyrus ball to shreds. ‘That eagle-legged fuck Temsa has ruined me! How could he fail me now?’
Etane thumbed his wrinkled chin, waiting for the tantrum to end. ‘Weren’t you going to kill Temsa anyway? Show the city you’d caught the big bad wolf?’
‘That’s the point now, isn’t it, you idiot shade? Now Boon can play hero all he wants. Why else summon the Cloud Court? He has stolen my plan.’
Etane had the sort of look that was normally followed by the words, ‘I told you so.’ Sisine cut him off before he had a chance to speak.
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
She needed to pace. Then she needed to throw something across the room. Preferably at Etane.
A sealed Sanctuary. Horix stealing the locksmith. The confounded flying machine. Sisine’s problems had already mounted tenfold. Now that Temsa was possibly dead and with Boon lording it over her, those problems had begun to tower over her. Sisine bared her teeth.
‘Fine! We forbid the rest of the sereks to enter the Piercer! Special circumstances. Kill Boon there and then. I’ll do it myself!’ she spat.
‘Boon will suspect that. He’ll refuse.’
‘Then we send a messenger to Temsa’s tavern. Perhaps he escaped.’
‘Fine. I’ll send a runner.’
‘We ignore Boon!’
‘He’ll just gather them elsewhere, and he’ll say you’re losing it. Denounce you.’
‘We have the word of the emperor behind us, curse it! The Piercer is in danger!’
‘So you’ll hide like your father?’
Sisine lashed out at him then, hurling a scroll into his face. Etane leaned casually to the side and let it smash against the shelves behind him.
‘No!’ she yelled. ‘I refuse.’
‘Then you know what you need to do. Unless Farazar comes out of that Sanctuary to stop this, it’s your blood against Boon’s weight.’
Sisine scowled at the shade, stepping closer once more so she could stare at the vapours of his face, and the vicious scar across his bald skull. They barely stirred. He kept his usual blank expression, one many decades practised. ‘You once belonged to the Cult, Etane. I have never forgotten that. Nor will I. You would not be serving their interests over mine, would you?’
The shade actually managed to look offended, though his tone was dry. ‘No, Princess. I would not be. Not in the slightest. My best interests have always been for this family. Whoever rules it. Last time I checked, that is not the Cult.’
‘Hmph,’ was all Sisine had to say on the matter. Trust was not earned or built in Araxes, never mind the royal reaches of the Cloudpiercer; trust was stamped out. Trust was a weakness. Something for betrayal to work with, an open door for a thief. Confidence in oneself, coin, and power; that was what was earned and built.
Sisine shook herself, trying to forget her anxiety, and waved Etane ahead. ‘Go. Prepare the guards and the Court. I want every serek checked! Every weapon confiscated. As much as a thick thread or a sharp ring, and you throw it out the nearest window. My house, my rules!’ she said, breathing hard. ‘And fetch Rebene, so he may answer for his uselessness.’
‘As you wish, Your Worshipfulness.’
Another scroll chased him from the room.
The moth-eaten curtain twitched as Nilith lifted its corner. Little had changed. Another phalanx of soldiers was tramping past. Its officers’ voices were harsh against the hush of the streets. A handful of ghosts scurried before them, arms full of boxes and bundles. Two beggars baked in the sun that poured down between the towers, their cracked lips muttering secrets with their eyes closed.
The soldiers’ heavy footsteps receded, and calm was restored. Though that was the wrong word. Calm implied peace, and there was nothing peaceful in this district. Just the marching of soldiers and a teeth-grinding, finger-tapping tension in the air. It was as if the sky had grown heavier, the air thicker. Nilith’s heart hadn’t stopped beating a quick-march though she’d done nothing but lie sprawled in an old shop since dawn.
She let the curtain fall, and rubbed the dust from her nose. ‘Never seen this many soldiers on the streets.’
‘W—what?’ Heles croaked. She had been half-asleep in a pile of discarded cloaks.
‘The soldiers. That’s the third patrol I’ve seen this morning. Something’s happened.’
There was a rustle as Heles changed position. ‘Scrutinisers? Proctors?’
‘None so far.’
‘Any more red-robed ones? Cult?’
‘No, and don’t remind me of them. These are the emperor’s soldiers. And what they’re doing this far out I have no idea.’
‘What?’ A glowing head poked out from behind a mess of papyrus packaging in the far corner.
‘You even think of attracting attention, Farazar…’ Nilith didn’t have any threat to back it up, but she waggled her finger anyway. After all this time on the road, she’d run out of threats to throw at him.
He mimed something foul. After almost two days of insults, both muttered and vocal, it seemed he had either accepted Nilith’s plan or was biding his time. Nilith assumed the latter, just to be sure. She had already lost him once. Twice – especially here in the city – was not an option.
She took a deep breath through her nose, and immediately regretted it. The body in the other corner still reeked in the enclosed space. The old tailor’s shop in which they were hiding had been abandoned some time ago; maybe left behind when profits moved elsewhere. They were still a day away from the Core Districts, and even though the buildings were growing steadily taller, there was a grime and tarnish here that would not have been tolerated in the inner districts.
On the walls of the streets, graffiti jostled with soot and dubious stains. Hiding behind the newer stone pillars and between alleys, older buildings of wood and adobe hid. These too looked half-ruined, as if they were still in the Sprawls, as if this had been a small hamlet once, a neighbour to a growing city. But Araxes had swallowed it up, crushed it, and moved on. It made Nilith sad, but somehow all the more determined. The city had not just one plague, but many, and they were all rooted in the profits of death.
The silence grew into something uncomfortable, and again Nilith lifted the edge of the curtain. The window had been smashed a long time ago, but jagged shards still clung to the sill. She checked on Anoish, tethered in the shadow of the building. He was still there, arse in the sand and eyes closed. The city had not finished spooking him, but somehow he knew the importance of what Nilith was doing, and persevered like the rest of them.
One of the beggars had keeled over, and the other was looking at him hungrily. Keeping his hands down by his side, he began to scrape a length of wood on the wall, sharpening it to a point. Nilith shook her head. Peering right let her glimpse Araxes’ core; the tall crown of spires and pyramids that dwar
fed the rest of the city, all gathered around the mighty Piercer. Little smoke and dust obscured the sky today, and the blue between the buildings and cobwebs of high-roads was purer than she remembered it.
Nilith gazed up at the Cloudpiercer, shading her eyes from the sun’s glare and feeling a crunch in her neck as she took in its height. She hadn’t looked at it for some time, instead focusing on the ground and the tiresome job of keeping her feet moving across it. It was then she saw something glinting at the Piercer’s peak. Metal.
She turned to Heles. One eye stared back at her. The scrutiniser was taking her role of protector very seriously. Nilith beckoned and slowly, with much grunting, Heles extricated herself from the mouldy cloaks.
‘What is it?’ she murmured.
‘Look at the Piercer.’
Heles took a moment to squint. ‘Armour.’
‘Something’s wrong.’ Nilith squirmed in the dust, teeth clenched. ‘Deeply wrong.’
‘The empress-in-waiting? Has she cracked the Sanctuary?’
‘I don’t know.’
While Heles kept watch, Nilith moved past her and laid a hand on the bundle beneath the window. There was a weak squawk, and Bezel reared his head from his nest of patchwork cloth. He blinked blearily.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Like shit left out in the sun,’ said the falcon.
‘Your wound?’
Bezel clacked his beak. ‘It’s fine.’
‘Let me look at it.’
Gingerly, Nilith reached past his razor beak and helped him extend and lift his wing. The dappled feathers of his underside, usually the colour of milk, were dark with dried blood. The wound in his side was now bereft of arrowhead, but still looked wet, but there was no pus. The only rot Nilith could smell was from Farazar’s stinking body.
‘Fucking sight, isn’t it?’ said Bezel.
‘Not the healthiest thing I’ve ever seen,’ Nilith said, grimacing. ‘But you’ll live.’
‘Of course I’ll live.’
Nilith templed her fingers, vapour against skin. ‘Take it you don’t feel like flying around?’
‘Oh, sure. I’ll just do it one-winged.’ The falcon narrowed his dark eyes.
‘Something’s happening in the Core Districts,’ she said.
Bezel lifted his head. ‘What?’
Nilith kept her voice to a whisper, lest Farazar start yammering again. ‘No idea. Soldiers keep coming and going. Armour’s on the Piercer.’
Bezel did not look that bothered. ‘I’m sure I’ll find out soon,’ he said with a groan.
‘How so?’
He fixed her with a serious look. ‘She’ll summon me soon enough. You know that. Especially if she cracks the Sanctuary. Your ruse will be up, and there’ll be no lies I can tell her to convince her otherwise.’
Nilith had thought of it many times. When she was either creeping through the streets at night or holing up in tailor shops, what else was there to do but worry? And she had a great many of those stored up. ‘How does the summoning work? What can we do?’ she asked.
‘Nothing. The bell is rung a certain amount of times. Clever fucking Nyxites messed with the bond between a coin and a shade, worked the spell so it could drag a shade to it. Strangebound by name. Strangebound by fucking nature.’
‘I’m sorry you’ve had to have her as a master.’
‘I will say one thing: she kept me busy, when she remembered me. I did something of use for a change, instead of lurking on windowsills like a molester. Or having to deal with seagulls. Those birds are all shitting mad. And not to be crass, Majesty, but I miss… y’know.’ He bowed his head towards his breast. ‘Nobody’s ever clasped their hands for the cock of a falcon. Ox, horse maybe. Shit, on most days you can’t even see it.’
Perhaps it was that jester’s glint in his eye, but Nilith didn’t try very hard to stifle her laughter. ‘Let us hope she forgets you again, at least for a while.’
‘And if not?’
‘If she summons you before this is done, I want you to give her a message for me. I may not get the chance.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Tell her I’m sorry, but she will understand once I am done.’
Bezel was incredulous. ‘Really? Sorry for what, exactly? Fuck all?’
Nilith sighed. ‘On this arsehole of a journey, I’ve come to realise that Sisine isn’t my daughter. Flesh and blood, perhaps, but she is a daughter of Araxes. Of the Talin Renala house, not mine or my father’s name. I could have stood against it, fought as hard as I’m fighting now, but I didn’t. I am sorry for failing her. My punishment was losing her, and her heart turning cold against me. I don’t expect that to change after this is all done, but at least she will know the truth, not just Farazar’s lies. Tell her that.’
Bezel clacked his beak. ‘Are you doing all this for her?’
‘No. I do this for everyone.’
In the corner, the ghost piped up. ‘You do this for yourself. Selfish cu—’
Nilith had let her whisper creep in volume. ‘You shut your face, Farazar. You are the reason Sisine is like she is.’
The ghost sneered. ‘Nature over nurture, wife dearest, and in that you’re half to blame. Face it, Nilith, you’ve spent so long clinging to the old Krass princess that you did not notice you became an Arctian empress. Look at the lengths to which you’ve gone to get what you want. Not unlike any other tor or tal or serek or daughter in Araxes.’
Nilith turned back to Bezel, ignoring the emperor’s snide words, even though they sounded far too true for her liking. ‘Will you tell Sisine that?’
Bezel narrowed his eyes. ‘And what of our bargain?’
‘I will give you your death, Bezel, as promised.’
‘Then yes, I will tell her.’ The falcon clacked his beak. ‘But know that I will not suffer any torture from her, if it comes to that. I owe her no allegiance.’
‘Thank you.’ Nilith bowed her head, understanding, but not able to ignore the motherly role of a protector. She got to her feet. ‘We need to get moving.’
‘Now?’ Heles whispered.
‘There clearly isn’t any time to waste.’ She looked down at Bezel. ‘With whatever’s going on, we shouldn’t linger.’
Farazar hadn’t given up. ‘What’s going on?’
Nilith reached for the sword she had left in the corner – the one that had dropped from the sky – and swung it at him. Part of her wasn’t entirely concerned where she aimed. Part of her wanted to cut him in half, and be done with it. Go back to Krass and the white-capped mountains. It was all she had wanted, in truth, and she ached for that day to come.
Fortunately for the ghost, and for her, it slashed through the papyrus packaging and scratched a white line across his belly, but nothing more. He howled all the same, and she had to jab him again to keep him quiet. ‘Careful,’ said a voice in her head, just a whisper, but Nilith knew it wasn’t her conscience. She looked down at the sword, balancing its blade on her finger. She wiped some of the mist from is mottled blade with her thumb.
‘You really think the middle of the day is the best time for smuggling him through the city?’ Heles remarked over Farazar’s groaning. Before, she would have looked uncomfortable, still trying to shrug off her loyalty to the crown and Code. But she had heard Farazar’s mouth, and Nilith’s plans, and she had chosen her side.
Nilith looked around at the collection of rags and torn clothing around them, then up at the wall, where more rotted on spindles. Even the curtains were looking attractive.
‘We gag him. Bind him. Bundle him up. Bury him beneath a load of fabric and strap him to Anoish. We’re already in rags. We’ll look like travelling traders and a trusty steed,’ Nilith said. She paused, going over the words she had spewed out without much thought. She nodded. They didn’t sound half bad.
Heles shrugged. ‘It might even cover up some of the smell.’
The emperor was already up and examining the new groove in his vapours, still glo
wing white. He looked up as the two women advanced on him, mouldy cloaks held like shields.
‘How dare you!’
A short while later, two humble traders plied the streets with a horse, heading north into the city’s gleaming core. Shuffling and heads bowed, their eyes were sharp, looking up and down the quiet streets at every junction. Their wares were piled atop their steed, looking mouldy, bleached or ragged. In some cases, all three.
Had anyone looked closely, they might have seen the shape of a sword beneath one of the women’s cloaks. Looking closer, they might have seen some of the piled cloths jiggle every now and again between the horse’s trotting. And if they had cocked an ear to the bundles, they might just have heard a muffled stream of cursing coming from somewhere within.
Chapter 16
Contempt of Court
Upon trying to track down the smiths who worked on Emperor Farazar’s Sanctuary, you will swiftly discover not a trace of them has been recorded since the Sanctuary was completed. Farazar most likely had them destroyed once they were done, shade and all. The vaultsmiths, the engineers, even the damn shades that carried the bricks. All disappeared.
From a notebook written by Empress Nilith, found in 1001
It was all too similar. Disturbingly so.
I had expected more from the Cult. Some gold trim, perhaps. Marble rather than bare, cold rock smeared in dirt. Even a few more candles would have been nice. In the end, their halls of binding were no different from Temsa’s sordid basements. It put a deeper chill in my vapours, and even the feeling of my half-coin under my grey robe did nothing to assuage my feeling of unease. The only reason I didn’t look away was my desire to watch the binding. I had never seen the accursed process this empire revolved around.
I stood upon a bench behind a wall of scarlet cultists. They formed a line around a well of brick and wood in the floor. Judging by the inky tidemarks on its sides, it looked shallow to me. The pipes that hung over its far edge dripped rather than flowed.