by Matt Langley
“Because you can travel. And ones who can travel are…useful.”
They stopped by the side of a wide road along which many well-lit horseless carriages travelled. Summer waved at a blue shiny bubble on wheels that appeared to be empty. A red light on top of the vehicle came on and it rolled smoothly to a stop beside them.
A door opened in its bulbous side. “In you go,” Summer encouraged.
“Guild Protectorate Passport Control and Immigration please,” she said seemingly to no one. The door swung closed, sealed with a hiss and they accelerated into the traffic. Barl dug his fingers into the rubbery material of his seat. What he wanted to do was close his eyes and scream but managed to keep the terror at moving so fast against a stream of other fast moving and zigzagging carriages, in check. Barely.
“We let the people on the inside of the Heart keep themselves to themselves, though we do some covert surveillance, looking for Travellers, and when we spot one, we bring them in. You’re the Guild’s two hundredth and sixth recruit from God’s Heart.”
“I don’t understand what any of this means.”
“I know, but I’m enjoying your confusion.”
“I’m glad you find it amusing.”
Summer called the peculiar unmanned cart a Taxi. It moved through the city, oblivious to the other vehicles around it, heading for its destination with a mechanical determination that Barl didn’t understand. How could it work without horses and someone to steer? And yet Summer seemed relaxed, so gradually Barl relaxed his grip on the seat, still uneasy but trusting that the Taxi knew what it was doing, where it was going and how to get there without killing him.
“This city,” Summer explained, “And the seven more like it are inside a ship.”
“We are on water?”
She shook her head, her smile gentle now. “Now, sweet child, remember the shadow? We are flying through the heavens.”
He tried to wrestle the thought into shape, putting words on it that made some sort of sense to him. “So, we are in a heavenship?”
“Close. We are in a spaceship. We call the heavens space.”
“We are flying through space?”
“We are,” Summer paused as Barl’s face creased, but he chose not to throw out more questions. Summer looked for the words to help him understand, but in the end settled for, “Space is just that, space. It’s the blackness on the outside of God’s Heart. It’s where we plucked you from when you fell through the door, and it’s what we’re travelling through now on our way to Geronterix. Once we are there, we’ll hitch a ride on a much smaller ship for the planet hop to Pantonyle and the full Guild Nest. They’ll want to examine you, of course. And assuming you don’t fail the examination, that’s where you’ll undergo your training.”
The words made even less sense than anything else Summer had told him. They were travelling inside a ship that sailed on the heavens, away from a god made world to some other place where he’d be tested?
The Taxi stopped and the door hissed open.
Barl climbed out onto the pavement. They were on the far side of the city, outside a huge stone building that was constructed like a castle, with turrets and battlements that were lit with beams shining up from the lush grounds surrounding the walls. Banners fluttered from poles on spires. Stone lions guarded the entrance over which a huge, but rusty portcullis, was suspended by thick chains.
Summer ushered Barl into the building.
Away from the street, the stone walls turned the warm air cool. Their footsteps echoed through the high-ceilinged entrance. “Those on the outside have a certain view of the way the Guild operates, hence the image. The fortress. It brings in the customers. I think they like the aesthetic. Makes them feel like they’re buying into something ancient.”
Summer paused and waved to a window high up one stone wall.
A human face appeared behind the glass and a hand was raised in return.
One entire section of the wall cracked open and turned back on a silent hinge. Summer let go of Barl’s hand, and he wiped the sweat from the surface of his palm across his tunic.
Light blazed beyond the crack in the wall.
Indistinct figures moved around in a large open courtyard that was somehow lit by sunlight despite being inside. The figures, wearing the same black cowl Summer wore, fought across the courtyard, their swords a blisteringly fast whirl of steel. The clashes chimed out in the music of mortality. The dance of blades was hypnotic. Barl couldn’t look away from the bodies, with their incredibly defined musculature and precision of movement as the fights raged back and forth. Others, he saw, were stripped to the waist and engaged in hand-to-hand combat.
In groups around fountains, smaller, childlike figures sat in ordered semi-circles hanging on every word as they were instructed by adults.
A glass barrier rose as the door swung back fully.
In the gap that created, armoured guards in magnificent ceremonial armour barred the way. The lacquer on the black plates was blindingly shiny in the artificial sunlight.
Summer led Barl towards the guards, taking some papers from inside her robe.
She pushed them into Barl’s trembling hand.
“Welcome to the Protectorate Vellotrax Embassy,” Summer said as she pushed him forward, towards the guards. “Welcome to the Guild of Assassins.”
Chapter 9
Shryke was amused by the girl.
He’d seen her kind a thousand times over on the Chain.
She was earnest and honest, but more naïve than she’d ever want to admit, or more accurately would want to be accused of being.
He hadn’t had lustful thoughts in… how long? There was nothing stirring, emotionally or physically. That wiped the amused look off his face. There was still a huge gap in his memories—between arriving in the Thalladon Climbs and rescuing the girl from the Raiders. Some kind of trickery had been played upon him, and it was unnerving.
Shryke looked away from the girl as she followed him up the rubble-strewn path. Against his better judgment he would take her back to the Fallow Pass where he’s last seen the Congregation and was prepared to set a brutal pace to be done with it so he could move on. The most direct route was by far the riskiest. It was logical to assume that any pursuing Raiders would have parleyed with other groups, so word of the price on their heads would have begun to spread, painting a target on their backs.
Which meant staying off the well-travelled paths.
The Raiders generally moved in packs of five or six, which he was more than able to handle if push came to shove, but a force of fifty or more, like the one they’d run afoul of was an unwelcome development.
The fresh wound on the back of his hand ached, the tendons stiffening beneath the Assassin’s Turban bandage.
He dared not use any Magic to heal it so soon after the last ripple he’d sent out into the Quantum Aether. Sending more signals to the Guild betraying his whereabouts was stupid. He would just have to live with the threat of corporeal dangers; they were considerably less dangerous than the threat posed by the Guild. With their arcane powers they could dispatch a full force through the chain, making him a dead man several times over.
“You haven’t told me anything about yourself,” Galdar said, as they made their way up a rough scree of skittering stones and split granite.
“You haven’t asked,” said Shryke.
“I’m asking now.”
“Perhaps I have nothing to tell you.”
“I don’t believe that for a second. A man with so many enemies has more than one story to tell.”
“Is that from your holy book?”
“If violence is the only thing you understand, then perhaps the only way for me to understand you is through violence. And no, it’s not from my book. That’s pure me.”
Shryke laughed. “Maybe I could grow to like you, Galdar. You are surprising. Who knows, maybe you were worth saving after all.”
It was Galdar’s turn to laugh. “I’m flattered, I
think. So, come on then warrior, tell me about you.”
“Like you said, I’m a warrior.”
Galdar waited.
And waited. “That’s it?”
“What else is there? I fight for what I believe in, and sometimes I fight for things I don’t believe in. I get paid to ease my conscience.”
“You expect to get paid by the Congregation?”
“That is how business works.”
“We have very little gold. And Carlow will tell you to keep me.”
“I see you make friends wherever you go,” Shryke said with a grin.
“I hit him,” she admitted.
“Then I assume he deserved it?”
“No, it was a mistake.”
“Then you learned from it, so it was worth it.”
They walked on companionably.
“Where were you going when you found me?” she asked after a few more minutes of scrambling across the treacherous slopes. More loose stone skittered away down the slopes behind them.
Shryke bypassed the dark hollow in his memories and dredged up a past he could talk about with some reliability as it felt as fresh as yesterday in his mind. He wasn’t ready to admit to himself that his memories had been manipulated and wasn’t about to share that with the girl.
“Forthana. A Prince there in the ninth district has employed a new Mage. I was to go there to protect him.”
“The Prince or the Mage?”
“Both. What can I say, men of power have many enemies; several court Mages who have been killed over the last few years, seemingly unconnected events, granted, but a Mage is such a rare and useful person it is hard not to mark the coincidence. Wars have started in the wake of these murders. There are Links on the far side of the Chain where total war is happening. Someone is stirring things up. Someone seems to have a vested interest in bringing chaos.”
“And you protect these people? For money?”
“Sometimes. Yes.”
Galdar hesitated, drew a breath.
“Are you a good person, Shryke?”
“I am not a bad one,” he said, which he knew wasn’t an answer to the question she’d posed. Shryke knew what the next question was going to be but waited to see if she had the courage to ask it.
She did. “Do you kill for money?”
How best to answer this? “If I’m asked to protect someone, it stands to reason that people can die in the process,” he said.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“I know. What you want to know is if I am an assassin, no? In which case my answer is yes. Sometimes I kill for money. It’s a job like any other.”
“It’s not.”
“I admire your sense of morality, but you are wrong.”
Galdar caught hold of his arm and turned Shryke to face her properly. He looked her in the eye. “You’re a good person. I can feel it. You saved my life.”
“Tell that to the others I killed to keep you alive. Who is to say which one side of that equation is good and which is evil? I don’t have your faith or your book to answer my questions.” There was an edge to his voice, but it wasn’t unkind. Just lost.
“Perhaps if you read it, you might find what you are looking for?”
“Don’t waste your time trying to save my soul.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have one.”
The conversation was over.
Shryke picked up the pace, trying hard to shake off his frustration.
She had a knack for getting under his skin.
He didn’t like it.
He pushed the thoughts of past horrors from his mind even as they rose up in vivid colour, turning his memories to a wasteland. He buried the guilt. It was a familiar routine; wake screaming, hit something, drink. Forget.
It had worked for the last few thousands of years admirably.
What he needed was a drink. That would make it go away.
“Your people. Do they drink?”
“We have wine. For ceremonies. Other than that, no.”
“Pity. Wine will have to do.”
The path through the scree began to level out. Shryke used the opportunity to get his bearings. The uplands hereabouts were mainly scrub and gorse that sprouted between bare black rocks. He scanned the high ridge. In the far distance he saw the Riven Bridge swinging uninvitingly over the ravine. A dark slash of black, a familiar robe, and the clash of blades skittered across his vision, sending Shryke recoiling. He stumbled on the uneven ground and would have fallen but for the fact that Galdar caught his arm. She steadied him and helped him sit.
Shryke closed his eyes and the dead Assassin sat up, the sword coming through the front of her robe wet with her heart’s blood.
Damn the girl and her questions.
He pushed Galdar away, “Leave me alone. I just need...” Shryke’s voice trailed off. He didn’t know what he needed, but he knew he didn’t need this.
The yawning chasm between his memories was affecting him more than he dared admit. He quite literally wasn’t himself.
Galdar sat on a rock beside him, not touching Shryke, but too close.
“I’m a good listener. If there’s something you need to say.”
“I’m not a good talker.”
“You surprise me,” she said, not unkindly. “I can see it in your eyes, you aren’t content. You wear this brave face, and when you’re fighting and killing, I truly believe you are as close to content as your soul has ever known, but in the quiet moments like this you are tormented.”
Shryke half-turned, seeing it in his mind’s eye: the strike, just a single blow. One sweet and harsh blow and her face bursting into blood, neck snapping, her body falling limp to the gorse...
No.
Shryke never even raised his hand, but the possibility was there fever-bright in his mind as he licked his lips and shook his head, trying to banish it. He pushed himself to his feet, looking to the Secondsun to get his bearings. Without a word he began to walk. He didn’t care if the girl followed or not.
Galdar watched him go.
For the first time since he’d saved her, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to follow him, even though he was going where she needed to go.
The rage in his eyes had been fierce and frightening.
It was barely held in check, the anger burning through his self-control.
It was the first sign of weakness she’d seen in him since he’d saved her. In a way it made him seem more human. More vulnerable. But she didn’t like it. Human wasn’t necessarily better. Galdar realised then the truth of what the years and experiences behind those eyes represented: horrors beyond imagining that haunted him.
She’d never be able to save Shryke, not in the way that he had saved her, but perhaps she could help exorcise some of his ghosts?
She owed him at least that much, didn’t she?
So, picking up her water-skin and walking staff, she followed in Shryke’s footsteps, assuming he was leading her to the Fallow Pass.
They saw no sign of Raiders as Secondsun made its way down between the Overchain and the looped horizon.
A chill wind whispered of a harsh coming winter, but tonight at least there was no more rain.
There was no time to stop for rest.
Shryke set a determined pace. He was intent on delivering her to the Congregation and moving on.
Secondsun fell, but the plain was lit well by the two Halfnight Loopmoons that rose in its wake. She felt more exposed in the darkness. Vulnerable. Off towards the lowland pines Galdar heard the cries of two wolves howling to each other. Were they telling each other about the two tasty bodies walking across the plain? Were they calling the pack to close in for the kill?
Muscles burning, throat parched, Galdar jogged on, forcing herself to move faster until she closed the gap to Shryke.
She found herself growing accustomed to his mood swings, and even when he was in this stay-the-hell-away-from-me humour she knew it safer if she k
ept him in touching distance than let him sulk off and leave her trailing in her wake.
Another wolf howl cut across the plain.
This one, she realised, sounded considerably nearer than the last.
Galdar cast a look back over her shoulder, but kept walking, straight into Shryke.
“The wolves?” She said, rather than apologise.
“They’re not interested in us. Look”
They had reached the edge of the plain. Before them, a slope led down, lit garishly in the moonlight. She saw a deep path carved in between two high walled faces of rock. “The Fallow Pass,” said Shryke, meaning they’d reached their destination. “And beyond...”
Galdar strained to see where the Congregation had made camp. She realised what was so fascinating to the wolves: The Congregation had dug a waste pit to put all their rubbish in from their four-day stop. Three hundred people needing to be fed and watered created a lot of waste over those hours. The Congregation always tried to leave a campsite in the condition they had found it. It was something they took pride it. That pit should have contained left over food waste and night soil. Nothing more. Bones would have been set aside in a separate pile for the wildlife to scavenge without disturbing the ground digging into the pits.
But the wolves pawed and clawed at the land, churning up the freshly turned ground.
“What are they doing?” What she meant was surely there were bones aplenty nearby, easier sustenance, so why dig? What she didn’t want to know was the answer to her question, because there was only one reason wolves turn their noses up at easy bones.
“Nothing good,” Shryke said.
Shryke didn’t wait for her, he set off down the slope making a godawful noise and waving his arms, drawing the attention of the animals. She thought for one moment their possessive nature would have them guard whatever it was they’d found against his intrusion, but it was as if they recognised a greater predator in Shryke and ceded their find. The animals scattered, running for the trees as Shryke drew his sword. She reached the edge of the pit.
“Well we have the answer neither of us wanted, girl,” Shryke said grimly.