by Ben Galley
Yaridin and Liria stood before the Nyxwell like the pillars of a blood-smeared doorway. On the earthen floor in front of them was the body of Boran Temsa, still clad in all his finery. At the sisters’ command, red-robed binders came forward to strip the body. They were swift, practical, and there was little respect for the man. I was glad for it. Let Temsa be treated how he treated countless others. Hundreds. Thousands, even.
After his clothes and jewellery, there came a clang as they put aside his golden foot, its metal still covered with blood. The naked corpse was dragged to the edge of the Nyxwell, and with a casual nod from the sisters, pushed into the black waters.
There was a hiss as the body met the waters. The dark hall went silent as the binders and sisters waited. Half the crowd began to stamp their feet, unbidden by any order or timing, yet still in unison.
The moments stretched. The rest of the cultists joined in until the seconds were deep, echoing beats that filled the caverns and made my vapours tremble.
It was then that a blue hand burst from the oily surface of the Nyxwell. The binders, wearing copper-core gloves, dragged him forth, bringing the ghost of Boran Temsa back from that wailing cavern, his head firmly clenched under one arm.
I was torn whether it would have been better leaving him there, to witness what he had contributed to, or to live as the half-life he had always despised. It was no choice of mine. I was just there to watch a punishment unfold. It delighted me, in all honesty. More so than sending Kech to the void. Kech may have been a murderer, but Temsa had given him the knife. I was just jealous that many here had most likely been wronged by Temsa, and that this ceremony was not only for me. I wanted this moment all to myself. I wanted to stand over him, greeting him to his half-life with a grin.
It was comforting to see him retching and flailing, as I had done. He stared around with glowing white eyes, still dripping with black Nyxwater. There must have been fifty shades and living in that hall, and despite standing behind half of them, those searing eyes found me amongst the crowd. And how they stared. I smiled down at him while Temsa mouthed unformed words and made sounds akin to a drowning goat. Here was my justice. Here was my moment of glory. I raised my half-coin to him, dangling from my clenched fists, and let it catch the sparse light.
He raised his spare hand to point at me, slumping on his side instead. His disembodied head pulled an animalistic face, and even though his voice was not formed yet, through sheer force of will and stubbornness, he yelled at me.
‘YOU!’
All eyes followed Temsa’s pointing hand, landing on me. I crossed my arms.
Temsa’s gaze was broken as the binders dragged him into the shadows, and half the crowd filtered away with him, like spectators following the condemned to the gallows. I was left standing there like a rock at low tide, the sisters my only company.
They both turned to me. ‘Content, Caltro Basalt? Both your murderers have met their ends, and yet you don’t seem pleased.’
Their knack for reading my mind prickled me. ‘Somewhat.’
Liria took a step towards me. ‘We have given you what you wanted.’
‘You have,’ I admitted.
‘Now we have proven ourselves, it is down to you,’ said Yaridin.
‘Steel yourself, Caltro. We will all have justice soon.’
I nodded, feeling weight descend on my shoulders once again, as I had without my half-coin. Somehow, I felt trapped again. Not by binding, but by promises to gods, to the Cult. Once again, I found myself wishing Pointy was by my side. My surrogate conscience. I wondered what he would tell me now.
I was already tumbling down a pit. I decided I might as well keep falling. I pasted a smile upon my face as I looked up, and nodded to the sisters.
‘Lead the way.’
He had some nerve, this Boon. Swaggering this way and that across the high-road as if he had built it with his own hands, which I highly doubted. He walked with the Enlightened Sisters at the head of our column. I could see his jaw yapping, but the wind brought me no words. Liria and Yaridin didn’t appear to be in the most conversational of moods today.
I could at least distract myself from Boon’s pompousness by looking around. It was hard, with the ranks of armoured ghosts around me, but I had never been on a high-road before, and I was determined to make the most of it.
Between the dead soldiers, clad in either red or polished gold, the narrow road was edged with thick stone blocks. They rose and fell like a row of teeth, and between them, I could look down into the streets, or over the multitude of rooftops spread below us. Several other high-roads brushed them, or used them as columns: the rich, literally treading on the heads of the poor to cross the streets.
Below, I saw how empty the thoroughfares were. I remembered being pressed and harried down there. Now, I would have had to first find a crowd, and then jump into it. Nobody besides soldiers or black-clad scrutinisers stood or moved in groups larger than a handful. Everybody hurried, the living most of all, what scant few there were amongst the smattering of ghosts. Any armoured carriages that plied the dusty flagstones moved at full gallop, daring anybody to get in their path.
The towers above us seemed a little closer, but not by much. I was craning my neck to stare at them when I realised our high-road had reached one.
I heard Boon’s call over the clanking of armour and the ruffle of the breeze. ‘Serek Moreph! A pleasure to see you well.’
‘What is all this about, Boon?’ bellowed a rotund man, so surrounded by spears and dark grey armour he looked like a fern. ‘I was happier behind my walls. And you’ve brought an army with you. And the Cult of Sesh, I see.’
‘It is a joyous day, Moreph. You will see shortly.’
With his neck-fat jiggling over his necklaces of gold and silver, Moreph made an effort to see past the guards and cultists. I met his eyes, but he didn’t see me beneath my hood.
‘Fine! But after you, Boon,’ he said.
‘I know the etiquette, Serek.’
The Cult and Boon’s guards moved past the tower and onto the next high-road. Moreph’s guards waited for us to pass before joining the parade to the Piercer. They kept a good distance, however.
The same happened at the next junction. A woman covered in a gown of peacock feathers remarked on the Cult before waving Boon and Moreph forwards to the Piercer.
I had never seen the almighty tower so close before. The crown of Araxes. The spire to end all spires. It boggled the mind, it was so tall. Standing at its feet, staring up at the violently sloping walls, I became convinced it didn’t have a top, and kept going into the heavens. It was true that you could build anything with an endless workforce of the dead, but the Piercer had me wondering if the gods had a hand in its construction.
It was pointless counting the windows or balconies. Far enough up, they became specks that blurred into one. I could see the ages in the building, though. Decades, centuries even, and the ambitions of all the kings and queens that had sat atop it were written into the tower in the colour and fineness of its stone. At its base, where a mighty pyramid gave the Piercer stability, great arches reached up for our high-road. One rose so high it swallowed it, and the thoroughfare disappeared inside. The flagstone courtyards below us would have been thriving on any other day, I imagined. Great statues of rulers and heroes stood in alcoves around its majestic walls, keeping guard. Here and there, where someone of history had fallen out of favour, their head was missing, leaving an alabaster stump.
I would have entered that way, had I made my meeting with Etane and the empress-in-waiting. Had Kech not seen it worth a coin or two to murder me. I was now weeks late, but finally I was entering the Cloudpiercer, and meeting those who had called me here in the first place. After all I’d been through, I didn’t know whether to curse them for summoning me, or my greed for accepting.
My eyes adjusted slowly from the bright sunlight to the gloom of a vast interior. A long hall greeted us, along with phalanxes of Royal Guards, liv
ing and ghost alike. Their spears were lowered, and a steel corridor escorted us inwards. Behind our welcomers were thick square columns painted with glyphs and stick-legged figures acting out events old and forgotten. I tried to read their stories as we walked onwards. Whale-oil lamps hung in clusters where the drawings stopped.
The boots of the soldiers and guards around us became a deafening, rolling thunder. It felt as if we were marching to battle, not a court. Not that I had ever done such a thing, of course. I’m not a complete idiot.
We came to a wide-open circle where other long halls met us, and other sereks and guards waited around a vast column reaching up into a marble and gold dome. Shafts of sunlight fell through great slits high up in the walls.
Each serek looked as pompous as the next. The thief in me eyed their gold and silver baubles: nose rings and earrings, bracelets, necklaces, circlets, tiaras and diadems. Their kaleidoscopic silks and velvets reminded me of birds flaunting their feathers when challenged. My eyes found their guards next, and they were just another display of wealth and pride. The sea of armour sparkled silver, gold, copper and sapphire. Forests of spears belonged to ghost and living alike. Some were dressed with plumes or bristles. Others wore animal heads covered in gold leaf. Mercenaries jostled with army veterans. There were darker skinned folk from the deeper south, and pale ones from my sort of climate. No doubt there were a few Krass sellswords in that crowd of ghost, flesh and metal. My countrymen and women are famed far and wide for our brawn and ability with a blade.
A somewhat familiar ghost stood tall beside an abutment of stone that seemed to grow from the marble floor. A grizzled man with a punctured skull, heavily armoured in silver and steel. There was a dark feather etched into his breastplate. He had a rather large sword laid flat across a stone lectern. Royal guards stood four deep between us and the giant column, spears bristling. It was then I noticed doors set into it. Ghosts stood by to open them.
‘You know the rules, Sereks!’ yelled the ghost at the lectern. ‘Trust me. Today they will be strongly enforced. Ah, Serek Boon.’
‘Yes, Etane?’ said Boon, not bothering to bow.
Etane. Here he was. The empress-in-waiting’s right-hand ghost. The man who had sent the invitation to my doorstep. He lifted his chin, staring down at the red-robed crowd around me with an emotion I couldn’t fathom. In any case, it wasn’t full of trust. Once again, I wasn’t recognised.
‘You dare to ignore the emperor’s decree and bring the Cult of Sesh into this royal house.’
‘I do it in the best interests of the emperor. This is not the Cult you think you remember, Etane. This is a Church. One that has been greatly supportive and charitable in this time of tumult. You should know, after all. Were you not a member yourself, once?’
Etane held up his hand. ‘This isn’t your Cloud Court, Serek. A handful of the Cult may attend, but they carry no weapons, understand?’
‘Etane—’
‘That is final.’
I saw Liria and Yaridin lean closer together, sharing a whisper behind their hoods before they turned and chose their lucky few. I was brought forwards, along with four ghosts escorting another in a grey robe that had been bundled and tied up. The figure was carried past me and onwards through the ranks of soldiers. Danib came too, armoured as always, though not before leaving his greatsword with his fellow cultists. I was glad I hadn’t crossed his path until now. Not up close, anyway. I wondered if he was still sore from me impaling him.
‘As for the rest of you,’ Etane continued. ‘No house-guards. No weapons. No arguments.’
But the sereks did argue, and at length as each approached the soldiers and waiting ghosts. They stood as far apart from each other as possible, trading wary looks in between bickering about etiquette. They were stripped of anything remotely sharp, despite barely allowing the ghosts’ hands to come near them.
After a lengthy process, the doors were pulled aside, and platforms with gold railings were revealed. They were expansive, and had copper-thread ropes at each corner. They sat in tall shafts slightly wider than themselves.
In groups of twenty or thirty, the sereks and their unarmed retinues entered. The concertina doors were shut behind them, but not before I saw the platform lift up. Ropes whispered, and I wondered at how many ghosts must be stationed below or above, working the great contraptions.
It took some time for the lift to reach the top of the tower and descend again. The sisters, Boon, their ghosts and I were shown to one of our own, where Royal Guards promptly followed us in. They stood around us in a square, swords half-drawn and ready, eyes narrow and glowing through their helms. I heard the low growl of Danib, standing behind me. It sounded like it was for me.
Liria and Yaridin stayed silent through the journey, watching the ghosts about them with mild interest. Boon cycled through a variety of pretentious postures and rehearsed words in quiet mutters. I tried to count the levels as we rose up. I lost count around seventy-something. The progress was smooth, if a little slow.
Finally we reached the upper reaches of the Piercer, and I found myself feeling odd. My vapours seemed ever so slightly lighter. Less dense. I was preoccupied with it until the doors were wrenched open again, and we stepped out into a corridor of marble and silver etching. If I’d thought the previous rooms opulent, I was sorely mistaken.
Although darker than I had expected, the peak of the Piercer was practically all marble and precious metals. Any plain sandstone that dared show its face was polished or painted or studded with gems. Peeking down adjoining corridors showed me windows covered with metal sheets, and rows of archers staring patiently through bright slits. Watching for Horix, no doubt. I wondered where the old bag was, and whether she had survived the Cult. The sisters had said nothing on the matter since the day I’d reclaimed my half-coin.
The corridor led us to a mighty hall with a colossal sloping ceiling of glass. Metal slats covered a good portion, but they looked makeshift, and light still flooded in. It made the stone glow yellow and the sereks’ jewels and silks sparkle. They sat high above the great stretch of polished floor in tall-backed chairs, on three tiers backed by stained-glass windows. Four columns interrupted the huge space, holding the roof high above us. The towers of minor nobles could have fitted into that space with room to spare.
The Cloud Court rustled with stilted conversation. A hush fell as our entourage was led to the space between the columns. From there the sereks stared down at us, equal parts curious and fearful. Many pointed at the giant ghost behind me. The last time the Cult were in the Piercer, an emperor had died. No wonder they were all so bloody tense.
I waited with folded arms, not liking the scrutiny but thankful for my hooded robe. I could see myself starting to like this garb, and wondered why I’d always favoured coats instead of cloaks. I huffed, uncomfortable at how easy it was to forget the dead gods’ words, and remember I was here to stop the Cult. I wouldn’t go so far as to use ‘like’ or ‘trust’ in a sentence involving the Cult, but it certainly wasn’t hatred I felt towards them, or fear.
I wondered if this was the moment I was supposed to stop. There were ten of the Cult, however. Only ten, and none looked like the Strange Ranks. There was only me. Surely not even Danib was fit to take on all of them and enact some sort of flood. The Royal Guards still surrounded us. They had multiplied in number and faced us with a ring of sharp spears. I was more prisoner than guest, but that was how Araxes worked.
On the opposite side of the Court from which we had entered, I saw a glittering entourage of royalty and soldiers approaching. Etane was at their head, his sword balanced by his side. Behind him, at the centre of the heavily armed group, dressed in pure white silk and with a crest of swan feathers and gold filigree, came Sisine Talin Renala the Thirty-Seventh. My would-have-been employer.
She was strikingly alluring, with the carved features of a royal line and skin a shade darker than most of Araxes’ citizens. Her face wore a practiced look of disdain. Her lips had
been painted a bold turquoise, and black paint underlined her golden eyes. Though her gaze roamed the tiers of sereks, it kept returning to Boon and the rest of us. Each time, disdain briefly turned to hatred.
With practised manoeuvres, the soldiers fanned out to merge with the Royal Guards, and expanded the circle to a ring around the nearest column. Sisine came to a halt twenty paces away, with soldiers crouched at her feet, spears raised and ready. Etane stood by her side, and rested the point of his sword on the floor. The metal chimed in the silence, emitting a faint grey mist. I was immediately drawn to the blade.
Another man was ushered forwards to stand with them. He wore formal black and grey attire, with official-looking medals pinned to his breast and intricate tattoos spread across his neck and hands. He was sweating profusely from his receded hairline. He stood to one side and waited with clasped hands.
‘Speak,’ said Sisine in a clear yet taut voice. She stared straight at Boon.
The serek stepped ahead of the sisters and bowed deeply. ‘I see your patience is short, Your Majesty.’
‘I do not take kindly to being summoned, Serek Boon. You have called this Court together. I have done you the favour of indulging you. Speak, and tell us all what is so important. I will decide what I do and do not have the patience for.’
Boon turned to his fellow sereks, arms wide and palms open. I saw the dark blue scabs of burning on them, still etched in vapour. ‘I am delighted, first of all, to see you able to gather here once again. These have been dire weeks for Araxes. We have lost many tors and tals to this brutal and unknown threat, but I am even more delighted to tell you that the time of fear is finally over.’
The serek waited for the murmurs to spread and for the suspense to build. I rolled my eyes. Showmen were just that: for show.
‘Our empress-in-waiting and glorious Emperor Farazar, in their wisdom, have allowed the Chamber of the Code to work with the Church of Sesh in order to make our city safer than before. Chamberlain Rebene here…’ said Boon, pointing to the nervous man busy sweating a puddle on the marble.