by Tamsyn Muir
Abigail asked: “Who are you?”
And with a sodium flare sparking from Abigail’s fingers, the lid of the coffin swung open so wide that it wrenched itself off and crashed to the floor. One of the ice-fogged glass panels that had withstood all of Lieutenant Dyas’s violence burst into a shower of fragments. Abigail stumbled backward, then regained her footing.
There was nothing inside.
From the passageway just behind Harrow—the corridor that ought to have led to the mortuary—a voice crackled through its haz mask: “Nice try.”
A dry, unassuming click; an enormous blast that rattled around Harrowhark’s ears, and a crunch as the projectile meant for her cracked into the sheet of solid bone she flung upward from behind her feet. The sheet exploded with the impact, sending chips flying through the air and knocking her forward onto that freezing cold floor and its carefully wrought diagram. A familiar spike of pain went through her head, and her temples prickled with blood sweat. Had raising a simple shield really cost her so much? Had her reserves ever truly been so shallow, even in childhood?
She rolled to the side, and someone grabbed her arm and hauled her behind the monument: Ortus. Those assembled had run for what cover they could, mainly to the entranceways of SANITISER—PRESSURE ROOM—PRESERVATION. All except Protesilaus—he had unsheathed his rapier and was the last man standing, his cape a greenish-blue in the light of those blazing candles. He had slung the end of his etched metal chain, tied with a faded green ribbon, over the back of his neck; now the dead cavalier of the Seventh neatly flipped it off one shoulder and whipped the chain into a slow circle next to him, the links making a high-pitched noise as they cut the air.
“Don’t engage!” cried Abigail.
The Sleeper stood opposite, in its own doorway: haz mask gleaming dully in the candlelight, that enormous, wooden-stock gun cradled in its arms, the orange of the safety suit screamingly vivid. The Sleeper was not, in the end, of any great height or breadth, and the voice that had emerged from that mask was not inhuman. In fact, it was a woman’s voice.
“You wizards never learn,” said the Sleeper.
The nose of the gun jerked up with an ear-splitting bang. Protesilaus had already exploded into motion—with a great deal of grace for such a big man, he leapt to the side, and launched the whirring end of his chain out at the orange monster. It looped twice around the barrel and cinched tight. The Sleeper simply threw the gun away, and as Protesilaus tried to shake his chain free, there was another in her hands: this one so much smaller that it took Harrow a moment even to realise it was a gun.
The Sleeper walked forward, firing with each step, the hand gripping the gun supported on her other palm. These shots sounded higher and sharper, like whip cracks. The Seventh cavalier spun his chain in front of him, a blurred wheel in the air, and one of the ceiling lights shattered in a rain of sparks. The Sleeper tossed this gun to the side, broke suddenly into a run, and threw her haz-suited body into a diving handspring, jackknifing feet-first off the ground with a fluid agility that would have made even Camilla Hect erupt in a wild “Okay.” Protesilaus had braced his stance for an attack and had not expected his enemy to move past him; by the time he shifted and started to turn, the Sleeper was on her feet again, and yet another gun was in her hand. She pivoted lightly and shot him in the small of the back.
A pop. A wet spatter emerged from his abdomen. Protesilaus dropped. Next to Harrow, Ortus moaned in terror. The Sleeper turned back toward them, handgun raised, trying to draw a bead, a wisp of smoke trickling from the muzzle. When she found no head or limb sticking out to put a bullet in, she stepped back, pointed the gun at Protesilaus’s prone form, and—without looking—fired two more shots. The body jerked, then was still. Dulcie screamed.
There was silence, except for Dulcinea’s panicked, wheezing breaths, punctuated by a ripping cough. Protesilaus’s body lay heavy and unmoving on the cold metal of the facility floor, somehow still more animated in this death than he had been as the empty puppet of the seventh saint.
“Listen to your leader,” said the Sleeper. “Don’t engage. I’m not here for you, but don’t think you can’t die again. Just give me the girl, and the rest of you are free to go back to whatever hell you came from.”
Abigail said, from somewhere in cover, “You must be joking.”
The orange-suited figure raised the gun and fired it into the ceiling. Ortus cringed at the noise; Harrow dug her fingers into his arm, though what comfort that could provide she did not know.
“Harrowhark,” called out the Sleeper.
The Sleeper said it slowly, as though she had never said it before—Har-row-hark, as though the syllables were strange. That was not the most arresting thing about the monster calling her name. It was the untrammelled contempt with which it was said, as though her name itself were a curse.
The Sleeper said, “You can’t hurt me here. If you give yourself up to me, the ghosts can leave. If not, I end all of you. This is the only bargain. I’m giving you to the count of ten, then the offer expires. Ten.”
Harrowhark said, “Who are you?”
“Doesn’t matter to you. Nine.”
“I don’t negotiate with strangers.”
“Doesn’t matter to me. Eight.”
Septimus broke cover. She stayed low, darting from the doorway where she had hidden herself toward the shelter of a bank of instruments, her shadow huge and jumping in the light of the flickering candles. She was only in the open for a second, but the Sleeper pointed the little black gun as casually as Harrow might point a finger, and fired. Her orange-wrapped arm flexed with the recoil. Dulcie cried out and fell, her leg knocked out from beneath her. Harrow closed her eyes briefly; then she began scrabbling through Ortus’s panniers, winnowing for the best pieces, her fingertips slick with sweat as Ortus breathed through his teeth.
“Seven,” said the Sleeper. “Six. Five—”
“My cue, I think,” said Magnus Quinn.
Harrow had lost track of him entirely when the shooting started, and had assumed he was with Abigail, who seemed from her voice to be somewhere near Dulcinea. Now he emerged from the doorway immediately to the right of the one through which the Sleeper had entered. He flung himself at the Sleeper from behind, before she could turn to meet him, and grabbed her in his arms, locking them tight round her midriff, so her elbows were pinned against her sides.
From the other side of the room, Marta Dyas burst out of her own doorway, bent at the waist. The Sleeper managed to wrench her arm far enough to fire from the hip, but the shot pinged into the metal wall with a bright, hot snap. Dyas fell into a sideways roll—a much less beautiful movement than the Sleeper’s impossible handspring, but one that bore the spare efficiency of long practice—and came up holding the big gun with the wooden stock that the Sleeper had tossed away. She braced it against her shoulder, looking like a drawing of some ancient soldier on a far-off battlefield, her Cohort whites gleaming pale blue in that sea of unearthly candles, and fired.
Dyas flinched back with the recoil, and a hole split open in the Sleeper’s orange suit, high in the middle of the chest. But no mist of blood sprayed forth; the Sleeper twitched in Magnus’s grip, but kept her footing. Dyas fired again, and again, and two more holes appeared, clustered close with the first. Harrow caught a glimpse of black beneath the bright fabric, but nothing wet or red, and the Sleeper was still struggling hard against Magnus’s arm-hold.
Dyas dropped the gun and ran forward instead, hand flashing to the hilt of the dagger she wore at her side. The Sleeper jerked her head back; she was about Magnus’s height, so this had the effect of smashing the back of her skull—whatever skull she had under that shapeless hood—into his face. He grunted but kept his arms locked tight. Dyas had almost closed the gap, dagger drawn and eyes narrowed, when the Sleeper lifted both legs off the ground, drew her knees up to her chest, and slammed her feet out hard.
Her boots struck Dyas in the chest as she came charging in. Magnus, unex
pectedly left holding her whole weight, staggered and fell backward. All three of them went down together. Dyas and the Sleeper came back up again with almost equal speed, Dyas perhaps a fraction faster, the dagger still in her left hand. She slashed diagonally upward; the Sleeper blocked her arm with a bent elbow, then stepped in and kneed her in the gut. Harrow heard her wheeze out a surprised breath. The Sleeper stepped through, grabbed Dyas’s knife-arm in some complicated hold, and twisted. The dagger dropped to the chilly metal tiles with a musical clatter. Magnus was struggling to his feet, his mouth and chin scarlet with blood from his nose, reaching for his own rapier; the Sleeper dropped Dyas in a heap on the floor, flung out one arm, and shot him in the stomach. Harrow hadn’t even seen the gun appear in her hand.
Magnus crumpled; Abigail screamed. Dyas had hauled herself up onto hands and knees, but the Sleeper kicked her hard in the ribs, rolling her onto her back. She pointed the gun down at her face.
“Four,” she said.
The fallen bulk of Protesilaus the Seventh heaved itself abruptly off the ground, crashing bodily into the Sleeper as he rose, knocking her away from Dyas. She swung the gun up, but he was already too close. He smashed his bunched-up chain into the side of her head with enough force to shatter bone. It whipped the Sleeper’s face mask to the side, and she stumbled, the gun slipping from her fingers. Protesilaus loosed the chain and lunged with both arms, and at first Harrow thought he had tried to grab her the same way Magnus had. Then she understood: he had wrapped the chain around her throat from behind, like a garotte, and drawn it tight. Against his muscle, even the Sleeper’s bulky suit looked small. Blood was pouring freely from three dark, ragged holes in his back, running down his thighs and calves and dripping onto the floor.
“I have known one death,” he said hoarsely, “and I swear that I will not know its like again.”
“Smart boy,” rasped the Sleeper, her voice still strangely fuzzy, as if she were speaking through a communicator. “Figuring out the limits, are we? Doesn’t matter. My rules.”
Dyas was back on her feet now and had drawn her rapier, but she was hesitating: it looked as though she was waiting to see whether the Seventh’s garotte would have any more effect than her bullets had. The Sleeper flicked out her arms as though trying to straighten the cuffs of an invisible robe, and a gun appeared in each of her gloved hands. She reached back, tucked the snub-nosed barrel of the left-hand gun against the outside of Protesilaus’s knee, and fired. There was a dull pop; he roared in pain and collapsed to one side as though someone had kicked out a stick he’d been using to lean on. As his chain went slack, Dyas lunged, in a beautifully clean strike at the Sleeper’s heart. Her rapier’s point drove into the haz suit and bounced, juddering to the side as though she’d stabbed a solid iron pillar. The Sleeper knocked the blade clear with her arm and smashed the butt of her other gun into the cavalier’s jaw, dropping her to the floor like a sack of snow leeks dumped from the arms of a tottering Drearburh drone. Then she placed her steel-toed boot on Dyas’s throat.
Harrow seized her moment, stood up, and made a long, underhand throw—
And the Sleeper shot the clump of bone she was forming out of midair. The Sleeper’s arm moved faster than an arm could move; the bullet more accurate, perhaps, than a bullet could be. As the bone burst into powder, no shapes sprang forth. Harrow felt it become inert at the moment of impact, as though the Saint of Duty had touched it and sucked it dry. A chill settled on her heart.
“Three,” said the Sleeper. “This is easy mode. Do you get it? No magic. No tricks. None of your foul bullshit. I’ve been doing this for years. The moment I want it to be over, it’s all over.”
Harrow could hear Dulcinea swearing weakly. At least she was alive. She pressed up against the icy side of the coffin and called out over it, “What happens? What happens if you take me?”
Ortus said urgently, “Lady, no.”
The Sleeper said, “You’ll die. It doesn’t have to hurt. I’m not here to torture anyone.”
“And?”
“I get your body.”
“And?”
“I finish it.”
“Finish what?”
“This isn’t a conversation. Two.”
Harrow peered over the coffin. Magnus and Protesilaus were both sprawled on the tiles in puddles of blood; both were moving, but neither showed any signs of getting up. Dyas was flat on her back, eyes closed as the pressure from the Sleeper’s booted foot increased—she made a tight, choking noise, and when one hand frantically patted around for her sword, the Sleeper stepped from her neck to her hand with a crunch.
“One,” said the Sleeper.
Next to Harrow, hidden behind the coffin, Ortus cleared his throat.
48
HARROW, IF I’D BEEN thinking straight, I would have finished off the Lyctor; she was totally incapacitated, and she’d tried to kill you once already. Instead I took us out into the steaming corridor—the place was filling up with smoke or steam, and the alarms were going off like crazy, and I couldn’t see any sign of wherever Cytherea had gone. I picked a direction, and I set off down another hallway. The one I went down had a trail of dead bees, their skulls staring upward, green goo sprayed in big webs along the hallways—took out one living bee myself, but it was pulling itself down the corridor with a couple of skewer holes in its abdomen already, so I couldn’t really add it to my count. I came to a big dim open room: high ceilings, a huge table pushed to one side and wrapped up in tarps.
There were dead Heralds everywhere. It was a fuckshow of curled-in toes and creepy human hands. The floor was seething with slime and bones. Completely gross and bad. You would’ve loved it.
Past the huge field of revenant space wasps, in the stinking dark, there was a kitchen area with another few dead bees. A green-stained white robe had been discarded at the threshold, and standing on one of the countertops—
I didn’t recognise her at first. The last time I’d seen her, she had been flat on her ass, screaming after an impromptu divorce between her arm and her shoulder. It looked at first like she was wearing some kind of metal glove from the right shoulder down, but the light from the hallway moved over the long, dark-gold skin of the humerus, joint sliding soundlessly as the twin forearm bones moved, the rapier grasped in bony fingers closing over an ugly wad of fat where the palm should have been. Her hair and skin were colourless; that pallid face brightened to see me.
“Harry,” she said. Harrow, she was genuinely delighted to see you. The smile on that thin white face was real. “Harry, you’re—”
I moved closer and totally fucking ruined her day.
“Alive, bitch,” I said.
That expression hardened like it had been dropped in quick-set concrete. In the gloom, her face was a pale floating blotch with shadowed features: I couldn’t imagine the eyes, but I knew they wouldn’t be hers. She had long since ascended to the rank of double douchebag. Ianthe flicked a lock of goo-stained hair over her shoulder, leaned against the kitchen wall, and said: “Oh—you.”
Nonagesimus, I’m sorry. I was averagely good all my life. At least not criminally bad. I did a bunch of shit I’m not proud of—some of it I regret, some of it I don’t. I absolutely regret not kicking Crux down a flight of stairs and watching him go Oof, ow, my bones down each step, which now that I think about it does not help the case I am making here—I wasn’t absolute garbage. Maybe you’d agree.
But when I saw that tall hot glass of skank and heard her diffident Oh, you—like she’d never faked to your fucking face like she couldn’t see a corpse that was obviously there—like she’d never messed you up or messed around with you, like she’d never seen you vulnerable and smacked her pallid mummified lips—like she’d never put her hands on you, never made you want her, and never imagined there’d ever be a reckoning.
There would be a goddamn reckoning. Nonagesimus, I was going to reck her.
I said: “Do you want your ass kicked now, or do you want your ass kicke
d later, or both?”
“Please, let’s address this like gentlewomen,” said Ianthe, without much hope.
“Hell, no! I’m going to pull your whole ass off,” I said. “You want that? You want Harrow to grow you a new bone ass where I pulled off the old one? Let’s dance, Tridentarius.”
“This can’t be happening.”
“She’s not even into you, okay? It’s just the bones. She’s into bones.”
“One of the many aspects I possess that you now tragically lack.”
“Get down here,” I insisted. “Fight me.”
“Perhaps I should have guessed that the moment your footstep cursed this universe again, you would issue me these comedy challenges,” she said wearily. “What was your name again? Goblin? Gonad? Help me out here.”
“Your cavalier knew my name,” I said. “Corona knew my name. You know my name.”
She fell silent.
I said: “Gonad was pretty good. Mildly amusing.”
“Thanks.”
“Goblin wasn’t.”
“I haven’t had a good day. I’m very stressed right now. Give me a break.”
“You have three minutes of me being reasonable, and then I’m going to beat you so badly that you look like a Fourth House flag,” I said, and lowered my sword. “Is it over? Did you do the thing, you know, fight the whatever?”
“The Resurrection Beast?” she said. “No, if you must know. We engaged it for a while. Mercymorn went AWOL—nobody expected that. Then Harrowhark dropped. We had expected that, though I’d hoped … Things got difficult. After Augustine dropped out I was not about to stay down there with a two-person team. That creature is … large. I surfaced. And here I am. And here you are.”
“If you’re talking about the sour-faced donkey’s ass with the net,” I said (“Yes, Mercy,” said Ianthe instantly), “she put a sword through Nonagesimus’s back. Last I saw, she was thrashing around in a puddle.”