by Ben Galley
Rebene picked at the unravelled message once again, flicking it with a finger to turn its papyrus to face him. He had read the glyphs ten times since it had been delivered, not by Etane, as he would have expected, but by a speechless cultist in a faded rose robe. The shade had left quickly, leaving behind a single scroll.
Nilith is claiming the throne on the morrow.
The chamberlain chuckled to himself loudly. It sounded odd in the emptiness of his vaulted hall. Unpractised. Perhaps it had been too long since anything but worry and anger had come out of his mouth. It was good to laugh again, and what a joke it was. Rebene scanned the glyphs once more, making sure.
Empress Nilith had returned to Araxes, and with none other than Emperor Farazar in tow, dead and glowing and ready to be bound.
As he breathed another sigh, Rebene wished he hadn’t tucked tail and fled the moment the roof had caved in. He wished he could have been there to see the cheated looks on Sisine and old Empress Hirana’s faces when they found the Sanctuary empty as a beggar’s purse. It must have been such a joyous moment, but Rebene had only his imagination to entertain him. Even so, it brought a wide grin to his face. Sisine deserved to be cheated so.
Rebene had always liked the empress. Admired her, even. Though their paths had crossed little, Rebene had always noticed an unnecessary kindness in her. Even though it might only be the bid of a good day, it was foreign enough to Araxes, and always appreciated. But oh, how she had proven herself to be as cunning as any Arctian. It was the last move he would have expected from her, and that was why it was brilliant.
Rebene reached for the scroll, rolling it back and forth across the desk in different directions, furling and unfurling it. Hope was a fickle beast. It had been so long since he’d dared to feel it, he didn’t recognise its touch at first. What a day tomorrow will be.
‘Scribe!’ barked the chamberlain. He listened to the echoes bounce about the room as he waited, stifling a yawn.
‘Useless woman,’ Rebene said to himself, drumming his fingers on his desktop. ‘Scribe! Get in here! It’s late, and I wish to go home.’ To the chamberlain, it felt as though sleep was an old habit, long shrugged off and stamped out. Tiredness already clawed at him.
‘SCRIBE!’
Rebene arose from the cushions and stalked around the expansive breadth of his desk. The throbbing in his head – the one that had at long last begun to die away – resurged.
‘Come tomorrow, I will find myself a new assistant! One that doesn’t fall asleep at their post, or fail me in every way, shape and f—’
Rebene’s tirade sputtered out as one half of the tall oak doors creaked open. In its gap stood his scribe. The chamberlain didn’t think it possible, but the woman’s glazed-over eyes had become even more distant. The scribe seemed to look through Rebene, rather than at him. Useless.
‘Finally! Dead gods, woman. I want you to dispatch a note to all magistrates, scrutinisers and proctors that they are to assemble in the Grand Nyxwell,’ he said, pacing back and forth. ‘The new empress will need our support. Let us show this city the Chamber of the Code isn’t dead yet, and is far from the toothless wolf they believe it to be. And find me Heles, damn it! Boran Temsa is dead and bound; what could she possibly be—Are you listening to me, woman?’
Hands upon hips, Rebene stared at the scribe, trying to find so much as a reflection in her glassy gaze. As he stared, a drip of bright blood pooled in the corner of her mouth, hovered as it swelled, and then dribbled down her chin. Two drips pattered on the flagstones and spread like blossoming roses.
Without so much as a gurgle, the scribe’s glazed eyes rolled up, and she pitched forwards into the chamberlain’s office. A black-clad shade stood behind her, his glow wrapped up in leather and ashen mail. He wore no expression, and all he held in his hand was a curved and bloody knife. Behind him, matching shades stood over corpses of guards and proctors. Rebene could hear screams echoing along the corridors. The chamberlain began to sweat profusely.
‘Guards! Scrutinisers! Anyone!’ called Rebene, retreating as fast as his long robes and flimsy golden sandals would allow. He stumbled once, only to scramble upright and flee for his desk, where a sword lay wedged in a compartment.
‘What is the meaning of this?’ screeched Rebene as he ran, all hope demolished, all humour trampled. He could almost see his bright future catch light at its edges, and begin to burn, blacken, and curl into ash. ‘Who are you? I don’t understand! Temsa is dead!’
As he fled, Rebene looked back at the impassive blue face behind him, not chasing him, just keeping pace. The shade’s knife left a trail of blood-drops. Other half-lives now stood at the door, waiting. Watching.
Chamberlain Rebene reached his desk with ragged breaths. He sprawled across it, half-mounting it in his desperate attempt to escape. He grabbed the scroll in his panic, but no sooner had his sweat-slick fingers grasped its cylinder did he feel the blade puncture his shoulder. Then his ribs. Again and again.
Retching with pain, Rebene slumped across the mahogany of his desk, watching his own blood pool around him, dying his cream silken robes a dark crimson. He could hear it dripping on the stone.
As the lights of his chamber were snuffed, Rebene gasped his last breaths and ran a shaking thumb across the glyphs of the scroll, staining them with blood.
‘To have endangered our family in such a way! Our proud name! This bank! I… I can’t even look at you!’
Russun Fenec bowed his head to his father, cheeks afire. He furiously thumbed the sleeve of his gold and grey silk robes, annoyed at how easily the fabric slipped over itself. He wanted to slip away just as easily, away from his father’s furious face.
The death of Temsa had been a relief to many, Russun imagined, but to none more so than him. The sharp and heavy blade that had dangled over his sons, his wife, and his own head, had been removed. He was not ashamed to say he had wept at the news of the empress’ return, and the capture and binding of Tor Boran Temsa.
However, it seemed even in death, Temsa was intent on cursing Russun. Punishment for trespassing against the Code and his father. Unfair punishment, so Russun thought.
‘I had no choice, Father. I have told you again and again.’
‘You should have spoken to me! The Chamber would have—’
‘Temsa bade me not to speak a word. He would have killed Bilzar and Helin! And Haria! What then?!’
‘How dare you interrupt me!’ Tor Fenec bellowed, spittle flying from his lips. His temper ran so hot, his face had gone beyond crimson and was now a shade of beetroot.
Russun threw up his hands, bursting from the chair to pace around the room, trying to calm himself with walking.
‘Once the empress takes the throne, normality will resume. As will investigations. The Chamber will want to know how Temsa climbed so high. Why we Weighed him. Do you know how many of his half-coins we have stacked in our vaults? How many investments built upon them? Don’t you see, boy? This will ruin us!’
‘Don’t call me boy!’ Russun Fenec snapped. ‘I’m well aware how many bloody coins we have in the vaults. I’m the sigil, after all! I forged the transfers!’
Tor Fenec was unused to hearing his son shout back. He took a controlled breath, pressed his fingertips to the desk, and spread them out, cage-like. He narrowed his sage-coloured eyes at Russun and chewed his lip and moustache for some time until he reached his decision.
‘I will not stand to see Fenec’s Coinery soiled by soulstealing barbarians like Boran Temsa. Or fools like you, putting your peasant wife and bastard children ahead of this proud name. I gave you a tower, a career, hoping you would prove yourself. But I have been proved wrong,’ Fenec growled. In his pause, his face grew blank, impassive. Devoid of any emotion. This was not family any more, but business. Such was the casual savagery of the banking district. Even sons and daughters could become debtors. As the saying went in Oshirim District: copper was thicker than blood.
‘You will take the blame for this tr
avesty. You broke the Code; an errant sigil, blackmailed by a soulstealer. I trust the Chamber will have mercy on you,’ said Fenec, the only hint of emotion a stumble in his voice. He bowed his head. ‘You have no idea what you’ve done to this family.’
Russun ripped the sleeves of his robe. ‘No. If anything, I’ve saved my family. That’s all that matters to me now.’
Leaving his father to swipe a fist at a nearby stack of half-coins and scrolls, Russun kicked his way out of the office door and strode across the mirror-like marble. His reflection was dark with the lack of lanterns. Four sleepy sigils still toiled atop their tall towers, heads bowed, or wiping dribble from their lips at the noise. Four accompanying guards came to attention.
A purple-faced Tor Fenec appeared at his doorway. ‘Don’t you walk away from me, Russun Fenec!’ he screamed, jolting the other sigils violently awake.
Before he reached the grand steps to the ground floor, Russun turned, opened his bare arms wide, and gave his father an ambivalent wave. His face was thunder, but he stayed silent.
‘Don’t you dare—’
A mighty crash cut rudely through Fenec’s shout. Glass and splinters and stone dust filled the lower level as two battering rams breached the doors. Before Russun could take a breath, dozens of shades in russet armour and crimson cloaks flowed through the wreckage. Short swords and short spears in hand, they fell upon the ranks of house-guards struggling to form up. As dozens became a hundred, it took mere moments for the shades to mount the stairs.
With a scream, the sigil was enveloped like a rock in a stormy high tide. As blades pierced him, cut ribbons from him, before he was lost in the silent, murderous crowd, Russun held his father’s gaze. Even then, his father was a coward, backing into his office in jittering increments, half-frozen from shock.
My family is safe… Russun told himself over and over, as the cold, vaporous feet trampled his corpse, and he descended into a world of black water.
Ani Jexebel slammed her palm on the pitted wood of the bar-top, making several nearby patrons jump and then shuffle away, stools squeaking.
Starsson appeared from somewhere behind the bar with a fresh tankard of a beer that was vaguely green, and had a head on it like a snowcap. His pale face was smeared with black grease.
‘This’ll help drown them sorrows, Boss. Aged volcale, from the Bladehorn back home in Skol. Proper northern beer.’
‘S’all fucked, Starsson,’ Ani grumbled, slowly grinding her studded knuckle into the sticky wood. ‘It’s not sorrow. Temsa got what he deserved. Fell from the tower he built with his own hands. You didn’t see how close he came to madness. I did him a favour, in truth.’
‘So you said, Boss.’
Ani looked up at the smudged mirror, and at the smattering of patrons that occupied the Rusty Slab tavern. Two dozen were scattered across the tables, some in clumps, others drinking alone. A single bard with an arghul in a far corner did his best to lighten the mood with scraping ditties and old favourites, but it turned out to be too heavy to lift.
Ani didn’t blame them. Cultists had been seen on the streets throughout the day, proclaiming the return of Empress Nilith and a great gathering at the Grand Nyxwell on the morrow. The city had begun to peer out of its doors and shutters, but the locks were still in place. The great murderer Temsa had been brought to justice, the empress had returned, but the Nyxwater shortage remained. And according to the hushed whispers and beggar-talk, that shortage had dwindled to a complete lack. Riots had been seen roaming the sprawls. A Nyxwell had been destroyed. The City of Countless Souls still tiptoed along a cliff-edge.
Ani felt it constantly, like prickly hairs stuck in her collar. She had barely let go of her axe since leaving Boon’s tower. Even now, the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her beer was strangling the axe handle.
‘S’all fucked,’ she said, swilling the volcale around. Rarely had she been a drinker. A woman like her had too many enemies to dally with drunkenness. ‘And now the Cult have Temsa. And Caltro. And Sisine and that bitch Horix by the looks of it.’ The Cloudpiercer had smoked for almost a day now. Talk of a flying machine had spread like house fires. ‘Something’s got to snap, Starsson,’ she sighed. ‘This Nyx drought…’
The nearby patrons grumbled at her words. A sharp look from Ani sent them shuffling even further, right to a table by the wall.
‘I wish I could swing an axe through Araxes and put it out of its misery like I did the boss. The old boss. Not the tor he pretended to be. The noble he desperately wanted to be,’ Ani said, slamming her hand down again. She cursed Temsa for changing. Scratching a living is better than slaving in death. ‘He was wrong. Our kind can claim all the coins we want; we’ll still never be noble. It’s in the breed and bearing. Like they can smell their own blood. You can pretend all you want, but you become a husk. “Better to be born noble, or not at all.” That’s what I’ve heard them say. That’s the fucking wall they’ve built, and they’ve built it strong and high. No ladder, tunnel, ram or army’s going to break it any time soon.’
Starsson watched her angry eyes flit about, looking for something to break or squish. He too had poured himself a mug of volcale. A lime-green moustache of foam clung to his thin lip. He bared his blackened teeth as he gasped.
‘Ah, that’s the shit. Right there,’ he sighed. ‘And you ain’t wrong. Thousand years and nothing’s changed yet.’
‘“If it works for the rich, then it must work for all,” Temsa once told me, just after he took me on as a sellsword.’
Starsson was staring down into his mug. ‘You miss the north, Boss?’ he asked, raising his green beer.
Ani thought back to the windswept beaches and black, rocky crags of her youth; to fighting fellow children with sticks, and always winning. ‘It was simpler. And stop calling me that. I’m not the boss.’
‘Well, who the fuck else is?’ Starsson said. He was right: almost every surviving sellsword fled Boon and Ghoor’s towers the first moment they could. Ani was left with the old-timers, like Starsson, and a handful of soldiers too lazy to find another job.
The barman was scratching at the octopus tattoo that covered his neck. Some sort of red rash had broken out. He beckoned, drawing her closer. ‘Come ’ere. You’ve got Temsa’s half-coins. Shades. His tavern. Noble or not, boss of nobody, maybe, but Jexebel, you ain’t scratchin’ no fucking living.’
She looked at her green beer, letting its sulphurous whiff tickle her nose. ‘We got Low Docks captains that owe us favours,’ she suggested.
‘What you thinkin’?’
‘I’m thinking we get the fuck out of Araxes while we still can.’
‘North?’
Ani drained her tankard, and with a thump, she put her boots to the boards and got to standing. There was a slight wobble, but she stayed upright, and showed off a rare grin. Starsson matched it with his tar-black teeth.
‘We go to the Scatter Isles. My home. We visit Fenec’s Coinery in the morning, get that sigil Russun to sell all Temsa’s coins. Then we all take what we can carry and board the first ship to Harras.’ Ani sighed, deep and long, patting her axe. It would be hard to lay it down, but then again, it would make a fine ornament to hang above her tavern’s bar. ‘Peace and fucking quiet. At long last.’
Ani had expected Starsson’s grin to widen, and for him to crack his usual woodpecker laugh that could cut through the chatter of even the busiest night. Instead, his face fell. Ani tensed, realising the bard had stopped scraping at his arghul, that all the chatter had died to complete silence.
‘Starsson?’
A whisper of, ‘Fuck,’ was his only reply.
Ani slowly turned, scanning the room. Every one of the drinkers had turned to face them, even the eavesdroppers from before. Half were shades, hooded and cloaked, giving the pipe-smoke haze a bluer tinge. The rest were living. Every one of them held something metal and sharp in their hands, and they stared at Ani with soulless, piercing eyes. She spied the tell-tale red beneath their cloa
ks and rags.
Ani Jexebel’s shoulders sagged, and she looked up at the somehow beer-spattered ceiling in utter exasperation. ‘Of course. It couldn’t be that bloody simple, could it?’
Before any of the cultists could think about leaving their seats, Ani burst into action. She tore the axe from her belt and drove it into the nearest table and chairs. The furniture fell to matchsticks, cascading across the tavern’s hall. While the splinters were still falling, Ani swung again, taking apart another table and the two cultists that were struggling to escape her blade. The first man it caught was cleaved in two. The next lost an arm and collapsed to the floor, screeching as he hosed the stone with his blood.
Ani spun in ever-changing circles, sweeping legs and forming a clearing of destruction about her. Stools and chairs exploded either side of her. The cultists swarmed, but even lucky cuts across her bare arms failed to slow her. If anything, it goaded the blood-crazed beast within her.
Starsson had hauled a triggerbow from under the bar and was busy blasting any cultist that attempted to vault his bar. When his bolts ran out, he smashed a flagon and began to hack and slash at anybody that moved.
No sooner had Ani lopped the head from the bard than more shades flooded into the bar. No disguises masked these shades; they wore their armour and robes openly. Ani welcomed them in, picking up a short sword to swing alongside her axe. The handle was slick with blood, misted with vapour, and its blade was notched like a row of teeth, but she still grinned.
‘Come on, then!’
Starsson was mid-shout when Ani realised why the shades were not charging. With a concussive thwack, the barman reeled backwards, a bolt half buried in his forehead.
More triggerbows appeared, resting calmly in gloves and gauntlets. Ani shook her head, despising them. Bows had always been the tools of assassins and cowards.
‘Where is he? Where is that bastard Danib? Bring out the mute traitor!’ Ani cried, raising her bloody weapons to the roof while corpses moaned about her and blue vapour traced her legs.