by Matthew Ward
A chunk of her right wing crumbled away under Altiris’ hand. Stomach lurching and scabbard tapping at his leg, he scrabbled for fresh grip. A gloved hand grabbed his, arresting his descent. His other at last found purchase. Heart pounding, Altiris glanced up. Hawkin lay flat upon the broad ledge he’d sought to reach, arm at full stretch and teeth gleaming white in the moonlight.
“Thought you’d be better at this, my bonny.”
Flushed with chagrin, Altiris planted his booted toe in an alcove and hauled his way up. Seemingly unencumbered by prybar, covered lantern and scabbarded daggers, Hawkin pivoted to give him space on the ledge, and let her legs dangle out over the six-storey drop.
Altiris sank beside her, every inch of his body within the ledge’s outline, and his back flush against stonework. He glanced up, taking in the boarded window and the dark, motionless hands of the ancient clockface. He closed his eyes as the world reeled.
Twenty years lived, and nary a flicker of vertigo. Until tonight.
“I prefer staying close to the streets,” he replied evenly.
She snorted. “Slip past a palace bursting with Drazina? Least the fall’ll be quick.”
Altiris scowled, the logic unassailable. Still, he was glad of the windless night, and the maze of scaffolding still in place from the window repairs. Better not to think about the alternatives.
“You good to keep going?” asked Hawkin.
He nodded, taken aback, his companion more like the woman who’d played at steward for the Reveques than the one who stole and murdered for the Merrow.
“After you,” he said.
For reasons Altiris couldn’t quite determine, the scaffolding’s platforms ceased a full storey below the window they’d been erected to repair, even though the poles continued to the full extent. Nonetheless, Hawkin scrambled effortlessly up the last section of wall, ponytailed chestnut curls bobbing against the darkness and fingers moving instinctively from handhold to handhold until she stood on the ledge beside the boarded window. This time, Altiris joined her without unwanted excitement. Not that his pacing heart quite agreed with that appraisal.
Still, there was a beauty to seeing the city thus. The firefly rivers of its street lanterns, and the smoke spiralling away towards the moon. “I see why the Lord Protector chose quarters up here.”
“His sort always like to look down on people. Even while they’re raising them up.” Hawkin stared north across the city, her tone reluctant, hesitant. “Do you think it’s possible to atone for the past?”
“Zarn doesn’t seem to care. Not really.”
“I’m talking about me.”
There was an odd vulnerability to her now – sharp contrast to the ice-edged woman who’d re-entered his life with the dying year. “You’re asking the wrong person.”
“Vona’s spirit wants vengeance. Kasvin told me that sooner or later, someone’s going to see she gets it.”
Was Hawkin looking for the house they’d shared? That would have been near the palace. Nascent sympathy bled away. He’d not known Captain Darrow well, but she’d saved his life. “You blame her for wanting that?”
“I’d no choice.”
“Plenty don’t. They choose different anyway. I chose different.”
She sneered. “Yes, you’re a proper little hallowed sunbeam, aren’t you?”
Sympathy now well and truly at its dregs, Altiris bared his wrist and the slave’s rose-brand they shared. “I started out with nothing you didn’t. You know that.”
She turned away, lips tight and bloodless. “I just want to wipe the slate clean. Start again.”
He sighed. Hawkin didn’t want to make amends, but to escape consequence. Understandable, and somehow disappointing. “Maybe Zarn’s right. Maybe you can’t make up for the past. You can only do better in the future.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Sometimes it isn’t about what’s fair. It’s about what’s right.” Altiris fell silent, no longer certain if he was talking about Hawkin or himself. Lord Trelan. Sidara. He’d broken their trust, though in different ways, but couldn’t for the life of him see how he could have done otherwise. “Perhaps none of this will change things for you, but it can’t hurt.”
She glared, again all hard edges and certainty. “You don’t need to talk me around, my bonny. I said I’d do it, and I will. My word still means something.”
Turning her back on the city, she unslung the prybar.
Calenne looked up from her book at the first scrape of metal on wood. At the fourth, she closed the pages carefully and set it aside. Torn between curiosity and concern, she rose, passing from the glow of candlelight to the gloom beyond.
A muffled grunt. A screech of unhappy timber. Muffled voices beyond the window. Housebreakers? Here? What should she do? What could she do? The fear of discovery, of being seen – the same fear that had held Calenne back from escaping the previous day – returned with a vengeance. More than that, there was no telling how the intruders would react.
If only Viktor had left her a weapon, but there were only the books, the broken mannequins and the paraphernalia of his mystical studies. Nothing with which to defend herself. Barely anywhere to hide among the sparse furnishings.
Something heavy struck the lowermost of the inner boards. Nails loosened by Calenne’s own efforts slipped free at once, provoking a cascade of timber as those supported above fell away with a rumbling crash.
Echoes rushing around her, Calenne froze, awash in bitterness. Tzila had to have heard that. Her escape plan was as tattered as the window…assuming she lived through what was to come. She’d no idea how durable her porcelain body truly was, and harboured no desire to find out.
A head poked beneath the boards. A sharp-eyed woman, only a few years older than Calenne had been at her death, in worn, vagabond’s garb.
“There’s no one here,” she hissed into the night. “Just a dressmaker’s mannequin.”
Had she been able, Calenne might have smiled. There was a third path between confrontation and flight. With the intruder’s attention still on her conspirator beyond the window, she let her hands drop a fraction further, becoming even more the image of the woman’s mistaken glance.
Ducking beneath the remaining boards, the woman clambered over the windowsill. A younger, red-haired man followed her inside.
Altiris narrowed his eyes, willing them to adapt to the gloom. There was no light save from a lone candle burning on what had once been an expensive, veneered side table. The chamber had the feel of one untrodden for some time. The air had an attic’s dry, stale odour, lacking the small smells and tastes of something occupied, or frequented.
“So much for the stealth of vranakin,” he muttered.
“They were already loose, all right?” Gruff tone didn’t conceal Hawkin’s embarrassment. “How was I to know?”
Altiris crossed to the table. Picking up each of the small, leather-bound books in turn, he held their spine up to the light. Nothing useful. A series of romances held accorded classics by a certain kind of matriarch. Just racy enough, but not unseemly. “Make this quick. Someone may have heard.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, my bonny.”
Hawkin unfurled her lantern’s shield and roused it to life. The dull orange of firestone gave shape to several more wax-crusted candelabra and tables – one broken and canted over – and a pile of large, weighty books stacked beside a small chest. Fresh shadows gathered around the dressmaker’s mannequin and above the cold, dust-laden chandelier. Altiris shuddered away a prickle between his shoulder blades.
“I don’t like this.”
Hawkin snorted. “Where’s that Trelan courage now?”
Regretting ever having told her of Josiri’s decision, he threw her a sour look and drew closer to the mannequin, which felt every bit as much out of place as the burning candle. Pristine, in a room thick with dust. The cream, panelled gown – chased with embroidered blue flowers and golden silk – was as perfect as the rib
bon-laced wig and long-sleeved gloves. All were of more expensive make than Sidara ever wore. Only Anastacia favoured such garb, a habit that had survived transposition from clay to flesh. Had the mannequin’s features been finer, there might have been a kinship between them. As it was, Altiris saw nothing but old regrets gone screaming past the threshold of fondness and into something pitiable.
“We’ll not find anything.” He sighed, unable to meet the mannequin’s black, empty gaze any longer. “All this room hides is a broken heart.”
Hawkin looked up, her lantern set aside and her fingers dancing yellowed pages. “Say again?”
“I think this is supposed to be Lord Trelan’s sister, Calenne. She and Viktor…” He paused. How quickly sorrow humanised a man. “She and Lord Droshna were betrothed. The Dark took her, and he’d no choice but to kill her.”
“Northwealders and their perversions. You’re wrong, though, my bonny.” She tapped the book and nodded at those that remained. “The Undawning Deep. Testament of Ways. Vitsimar? One of these’d set me up for life, with the right buyer. Be a bold man who left them on show, mind, even with the provosts gone.”
Altiris nodded, uncertain whether to be glad or dismayed at finding the proof they’d sought. The false Calenne made it easier to recall the charismatic, companionable Viktor Droshna of Midwintertide rather than the brooding Lord Protector.
Hawkin knelt before the chest. “And what do we have here?” Hands dipping to her belt, she set lockpicks to work. “Might as well look. We’ve come all this way.”
Altiris nodded, his eye drawn to a pale gleam just beyond the reach of Hawkin’s lantern. Claiming the candlestick from the lacquered table, he edged further into darkness. The gleam became a porcelain hand, smooth and perfect. In the battered box beneath, he glimpsed other pieces: fragments of scalp and brow, the gentle curve of an arm, a section of torso made jagged by a break.
A torso? A dressmaker’s doll needed only a padded cage. Face and hands were understandable enough, for they gave the seemliness of fashionable pallor, but to craft the whole thing from clay as these components had been…?
He spun about, eyes on the maybe-Calenne once more and his thoughts mired in one other detail about Anastacia he’d forgotten until that moment. That the Lord Protector had been the one to seal her in clay in the first place. “Hawkin…?”
Double doors crashed back on their hinges. Tzila stood framed against the lights of the stairway, the long silk bases and cloak lending her the silhouette of a drowned bride. Death in a doorway.
Altiris’ stomach plunged seven storeys to street level. Drazina were one thing – the woman who’d demolished Kurkas and almost killed Anastacia was something else.
He stepped closer, a hand twitching at waist level, urging Hawkin towards the window. “Tzila… I’ll come quietly. This doesn’t have to be a fight.”
She slid her swords free of their sheaths, turned them a double circle about her wrists and ran into the room.
If you find yourself on the other end of those swords for real, run away as fast as you can.
Kurkas’ words ringing in his ears, Altiris drew his sword and ran to meet her.
His first parry was a thing of wild desperation, but it checked Tzila’s right-hand sword a hand’s breadth from his brow. Fear-heightened senses glimpsed a sliver of lantern-lit steel as her left stabbed forward. He twisted, the rip of cloth warning how close to death he’d come, and barely checked a second, vicious slash from her right.
Altiris stumbled back. His left hand closed about a freestanding candelabra. A convulsive jerk sent it toppling into Tzila’s path. Bases whirling, she turned on her heel and it clattered past, crusted wax shattering across the floor. The spin became a lunge, and again Altiris stumbled away. A kick set him crashing into the boxes of broken mannequins.
With a cry, Hawkin landed on Tzila’s back, ankles hooked about her hips, a forearm about her shoulder and a stiletto dagger in hand. Even as the Drazina bucked, attempting to throw her clear, Hawkin stabbed down through the gap between sallet helm and gorget.
Steel scraped against a second, hidden layer of armour. Hawkin’s cry of dismay rose to a shrill of pain as Tzila dropped her left-hand sword and dragged her clear by the hair. Candles scattered as Hawkin thudded across a table and crashed into a wall. Her stiletto skittered away, bent point gleaming in the lantern light. Altiris forgotten, Tzila bore down. Her remaining sword whirled to a reversed hold, both hands about the grips.
Lungs stinging with clay dust, Altiris stumbled upright. No way he could beat Tzila. Join blades with her again, and he’d be dead in seconds. Even the thought turned his knees to jelly. Might even be that Tzila was destined to be the agent of vengeance come to settle Vona Darrow’s score. Destiny ran strange paths. But fight or flee, it was still his choice – just like it always was – and that made it no choice at all.
“For the Phoenix!”
He roared the battle cry, drawing strength from the motto that had been his father’s before it had been his own. A promise of life. A promise of hope. It scattered fear to the shadows until only purpose remained, and Tzila…
Tzila, her sword halfway to Hawkin’s prone body, froze.
As Altiris hacked down, she turned, blank-eyed sallet gazing straight at him. Darting inside the sword’s arc, Tzila grabbed him by the throat. Slowing not a step, she strode on.
Altiris’ spine struck brick. The sword jarred from his hand. Gasping for breath that wouldn’t come, he cuffed uselessly at Tzila’s wrist. The strike of a boot numbed his knee as he made to stamp on her foot. Her own sword falling to her side, Tzila tilted her head and gazed incuriously back.
Black splotches gathering behind his eyes, Altiris stared past her shoulder.
The mannequin was gone.
Calenne reached the threshold of her prison, the brightly lit stairs beckoning her to freedom. It wouldn’t be that easy – she was starting to realise that nothing in her new life could ever be so – but it was better than chancing the window, better than remaining to await Viktor’s return.
As she made to cross into the light, a choked splutter brought her to a halt.
She glanced back across her shoulder to where Tzila had the lad pinned against the wall, his struggles fading. The lad the other intruder had called a Trelan. Who’d called upon the Phoenix. She’d been the Phoenix, if only for a day. For all she’d claimed the mantle reluctantly, it had been her choice. Because not doing so would have proved her the selfish, callow child so many others had thought her.
She’d been freer that day than all those that had come before.
But the lad was an intruder and the woman with him plainly a thief. What punishment Tzila doled out was deserved – in principle, if not degree.
Raised voices sounded below. A moment’s hesitation and her escape would be cut. Might already be cut. She wasn’t the Phoenix any longer. That woman was dead.
Who was she now?
Tzila’s head jerked back, grappled from behind by a pair of gloved forearms. Altiris fell to his knees, the hand gone from his throat. Bleary eyes caught a flurry of limbs, some garbed in armour and midnight blue, others in cream and blue silk.
The mannequin, dress torn and wig askew, had Tzila in a headlock, one elbow crooked about her throat. [[Go! Get out of here!]]
The singsong voice settled it. She was like Anastacia had been, or almost so.
Shadow and light swimming about him, Altiris staggered upright. Tzila twisted free of the mannequin’s grip. Dislodged, the sallet helm clanged across the floor.
A blank face of smooth porcelain stood revealed, one that lacked even the small refinements present in the mannequin’s features. Dark vapour blazed from empty eyes beneath the brow. Mismatched twins – triplets, if you threw Anastacia’s old self into the mix.
With a soul-wrenching, hollow howl, Tzila lashed out. The mannequin shied away, arm upraised in defence. Slivers of silk rained down, the tearing sound lost beneath the scrape of steel on polish
ed clay. The mannequin’s back struck the windowsill, and then she was gone.
[[Calenne!]] At once, a change swept over Tzila, confidence habitually worn vanishing from form and posture. She ran to the window, sword abandoned and hand reaching through the ruined frame. [[No!]]
Even beneath its beautiful, horrific singsong, Altiris heard the throaty accent of the south.
A window board shattered across Tzila’s unfinished head, hurling her sideways.
“No, yourself,” gasped Hawkin, dropping the board’s remains. Breathing hard, she turned to Altiris, her eye black and her swollen right wrist cradled against her chest. “Time to leave, my bonny.”
Chased along by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Altiris stumbled to the window and leaned out into the night. No sign of the mannequin – of Calenne – on the scaffold. If she’d plunged to the square…
“Move!” snapped Hawkin.
He glanced back into the room. To the heretical texts that would have provided all the proof they’d ever have needed. To the chest, and whatever it held. All of it beyond Tzila. She’d have been on them already had she not stopped to restore her helm and the illusion of humanity. To stay was to die, and they had learned something, even if they couldn’t prove it, and didn’t understand what it meant.
Urged on by Hawkin’s shove, Altiris crawled out into the night.
Jeradas, 10th Day of Dawntithe
You may always trust to pride to steer you ill.
from the Saga of Hadar Saran
Forty-Six
Cardivan Tirane didn’t resemble a man who could have been Emperor. Few would have looked the part sealed up in the deepest of the palace’s dungeons, flickering torchlight lengthening the shadows on craggy, unshaven features. The previous night’s meal, untouched, spoke to lacking appetite or dearth of trust. A man like Cardivan would always suspect poison, for he’d no compunction about using it himself.
He barely reacted when the Immortal snapped shackles about his wrists, ensuring he remained close companion to the wall. Only when the Immortal withdrew, and Melanna ducked beneath the swollen lintel, did his eyes twitch. A brief probing, and they resumed a blank stare towards the barred window and its pre-dawn glow.