by Ben Galley
The Chasing Graves Trilogy
Ben Galley
Copyright
“This book is a work of fiction, but some works of fiction contain perhaps more truth than first intended, and therein lies the magic.”
– Anonymous
Copyright © Ben Galley 2019. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used, edited, transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), or reproduced in any manner without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews or articles. It may not be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s permission. Permission can be obtained through www.bengalley.com.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Map Design by Ben Galley
Cover Art by Chris Cold & Felix Ortiz
Cover Design by Shawn King
Other Books by Ben Galley
The Emaneska Series
The Written
Pale Kings
Dead Stars – Part One
Dead Stars – Part Two
The Written Graphic Novel
The Scalussen Chronicles
Coming 2019 / 2020
The Scarlet Star Trilogy
Bloodrush
Bloodmoon
Bloodfeud
Standalones
The Heart of Stone
Short Stories
Shards
No Fairytale
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books by Ben Galley
Maps
Chasing Graves
Dedication
Tenets of the Bound Dead
Prelude
1. Arrivals & Departures
2. Rituals
3. Crowd Mentality
4. Oases
5. The Soulmarket
6. Her Time
7. The Widow’s Tower
8. Vested Interests
9. A Glimmer
10. The Beldam
11. Doors
12. Motivation
13. Favours Owed
14. Strays
15. Ghouls
16. A Test
17. Lot In Life
18. Invitations
19. Jealousy
20. Any Port in a Sandstorm
21. Hypothetically Speaking
22. Old Friends
23. New Friends
Grim Solace
Tenets of the Bound Dead
1. Same Old Beginnings
2. A Fresh Hell
3. Weighed & Measured
4. Old Gods & New Tricks
5. Murder Most Lucrative
6. Murder Most Foul
7. A Hero
8. A Villain
9. Troublesome Seas
10. Old Wounds & Broken Bonds
11. A Haunting
12. “Our Worst”
13. Shifting Sands
14. Here be Monsters
15. Damned Fates
16. Reparations
17. Cellars
18. Magistrate Ghoor
19. A Debt
20. A Chamberlain’s Day
21. Spooks & Zealots
22. Everybody’s Got Dead
23. Trespasser’s Folly
Breaking Chaos
Tenets of the Bound Dead
1. The Slatherghast
2. The Outsprawls
3. Decisions
4. A Widow’s Whims
5. A Day For Betrayal
6. A Poor Welcome
7. The Half-Coin
8. Vengeance is a Virtue
9. The Hunted
10. Time’s Lance
11. A Fool Doesn’t Prepare
12. The Vengeance
13. A Darker Shade
14. The Last Heist
15. Problems
16. Contempt of Court
17. The Sanctuary
18. Old Enemies, New Friends
19. Shelter
20. Threads
21. The Grand Nyxwell
22. Only Business
23. From Beyond the Grave
24. A Night of a Thousand Knives
25. A Spark
26. The Battle Of Araxes
27. A Second Dawn
Extras
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Suggested Listening
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For Rachel.
Tenets of the bound dead
They must die in turmoil.
They must be bound with copper half-coin and water of the Nyx.
They must be bound within forty days.
They shall be bound to whomever holds their coin.
They are slaved to their master’s bidding.
They must bring their masters no harm.
They shall not express opinions nor own property.
They shall never know freedom unless it is gifted to them.
Prelude
The last droplets of water trembled on the lip of the flask, beads of dirty glass refusing to let go. She shook them, and one met her parched tongue. The other fell between her boots, striking the blistered sand with a hiss. She clenched a fist, buckling the tin flask.
The day was an oven, determined to roast her.
With an exasperated growl, she stared down at the dead things. One was considerably larger than the other: a horse with one leg bent at an unnatural angle. Splinters of bone poked through its piebald hair. Its chestnut eyes were bulged and clouded in the desert heat.
The other corpse was smaller, man-sized, and wrapped in leather sacking. It had been trussed in thick rope, the tail of which was tied in several knots about her waist.
Both had begun to stink.
The woman scanned the horizon once again, blurred as it was by heat. It was no different than the last time she looked. The golden dunes rolled out an endless and featureless carpet beneath a sky of overpowering blue: an upside-down ocean, beckoning to be dived into yet unreachable, and in that way cruel and taunting.
The sun was high overhead, beating down on her cotton shirt and the white leather hood which prevented the rays from baking her brain. Ash-rubbed leather trews, black gloves and boots saw to the rest of her.
When she could wait beside the corpses no more, she forced herself upright. Somehow it felt hotter further away from the sand. Not a breath of wind stirred. The rope came taut as she thrust herself onwards on foot. There were many miles yet to conquer. Far too many.
‘Your funeral.’
The words came malformed, untested. He had broken his silence at last. She didn’t deign to look at him, but she could tell by the cold waft of air that he was close. She wouldn’t have admitted it aloud, but she longed for him to come closer, to escape the scorch for just a moment.
‘I said it’s your—’
‘I heard what you said, you old goat. Go back to your brooding.’
Walking in the desert was not a joyful roaming, as one might enjoy on the high-roads of great Araxes. In the Long Sands, it became more a test of endurance. Every step was a parry in a duel between the ferocious desert and her determination. She had plenty of that. She leashed her mind to her task. As she trudged, the woman held onto a lump hiding beneath her coarse shirt: a coin dangling on a metal chain.
Hollow threats were spouted behind her. ‘They�
��ll find your body right next to mine. Bloated in the sun. All trace of that legendary beauty burned away.’
Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.
He chuckled; a wet, gnarled sound. His voice was still forming. She jerked the body, rope sharp against her cracked hands.
‘They’ll drag your corpse away like a piece of week-old beetle meat. Just as you have the temerity to treat mine.’
The woman whirled. ‘SILENCE!’ On instinct, she reached to grab his throat. Her fingers found only cold mist between their grip.
He stepped back, his blue throat untouched save for the jagged and broken scar where her knife had ended his life. It glowed a brighter blue than the rest of his swirling vapours, almost white at its edges.
‘Forgetting something?’ He smiled; a hateful little smile that in life had found its way to his face far too frequently. She’d hoped it had died with his body, but alas, no luck.
‘Are you?’ She patted the copper dagger hanging at her hip.
He shook a finger, baring teeth. ‘You might have slain me once, but you wouldn’t dare kill me twice.’
She tugged at the dagger’s hilt. The copper blade flashed in the sunlight. ‘Why don’t you keep talking, and we’ll see exactly what I dare, hmm?’
There came no smart reply, no spiteful, hate-filled remarks. The ghost slunk back to trailing his body, scowling as it slid without ceremony across the wind-rippled dunes.
The woman yanked her hood up to shade her face. ‘See? You were always more enjoyable when you kept your mouth shut.’
Chapter 1
Arrivals & Departures
Whomsoever holds the greatest number of shades shall rule this kingdom.
Decree of Emperor Phaera of The Arc, 916 years ago
When a welcome to a city comes in the form of being chased through its streets by a bloodthirsty mob, you might assume you’ve done something wrong. Perhaps you’re a murderer. A heretic. Maybe you’re plagued, or owe silver to men who don’t know the meaning of scruples.
I was no murderer. I was a thief, of course, but not a taker of lives. Religion had died in my country long ago just as it had in this one. I carried no disease, and my accounts were in scant but decent order. There could be only one reason I was somebody’s quarry that night, I decided, between frantic looks over my shoulder, breath slobbering out over my lapels like a hound’s. I had simply set foot on the wrong dock at the wrong time of night in a city where laws are laughed at and crime is king.
Innocence doesn’t lend any more speed to legs than guilt.
Two hours earlier
‘Come on, come on, come on…’
Burglaries are tense activities, made up of many heart-racing, sweat-inducing and lip-pursing stages. From the picking of the front gate to the dashing back through it, arms bulging with swag, it takes years of practice to not crumble under the pressure. It’s what separates the dabblers from the daring, the lost causes from the true locksmiths.
I happened to belong to the latter camp.
‘Hnnnnng!’
And yet, even the most seasoned locksmith can have a bad day. Sometimes the stress gets to a man, tightening him in areas where he doesn’t want to be tightened. Then he thinks of the sand running through the hourglass, and he tenses all the more.
‘Fucking come on!’ I strained again.
Me. The best locksmith and thief in all the Reaches, clamming up like a freshpick. My only solace was that it wasn’t my prized fingers that were failing me, just my unwilling arsehole. Tension is never useful when you need to take a shit in some imbecile’s lockbox.
‘Damn it!’ I readjusted myself to see if a higher angle would help, and strained again.
I was rewarded with a precursory fart. I hunkered down and felt my bowels give way. I heard the splatter against the papyrus below, shook myself free, and used the nearby velvet cloth to wipe myself before shimmying up my trews.
Sparing a moment to assess my leavings before I slammed the lockbox shut, I couldn’t help but wince. The documents were official business of some kind, judging from their wilted gold trims and grand swirls. They had all been thoroughly and gruesomely defaced. Possibly a bit extreme, I thought, but in my defence, the ship’s cook had been producing a lot of salt-meat stews in recent days. Besides, the old hag who owned the chest had treated me like some Skol peasant for the entire voyage. It was her own fault for not having anything of worth to steal.
I shrugged as I fastened my belt. It would be a good surprise when she arrived at her destination; hopefully some sort of public family proceedings.
With two of my slender picks and a series of sharp movements, I relocked the box. I broke the rest of my tools into their respective pieces and slid them into the hidden pockets in the hem of my coat. I spared one to jimmy the door to lock when closed. That way I wouldn’t have to bumble about in the corridor like a novice.
The door produced a pleasant click behind me and I adopted a nonchalant amble. I could have split my face with a grin when I saw my victim’s fur-trimmed boots and velvet coat descending the stairs. I paused at their foot, my joy condensed into a polite smile. She snorted at me as always, and tilted her head away as if I reeked of farm work. Her lanky, leather-bound guard followed a step behind, giving me his usual blank but discouraging stare.
‘Madam.’ I met her grey-blue Skol eyes. Her lip wrinkled.
‘You again. Lurking as always, I see.’ She made her distaste clear with a swish of her coat, striking me in the chest. The guard pushed me back, and I found myself immensely pleased I’d finally found some lockpicking to do whilst aboard, even if it had taken three long weeks. I flicked the collars of my coat upright with a crack, and ascended to the top deck with a spring in my step.
The air had grown dastardly hot since passing through the Scatter Isles, and I went to the bulwark to replace the sweat on my forehead with cooler sea-spray. Whilst I lounged over the rail of the ship, listening to the seagulls mewing overhead and the waves slapping against the bow, I stared at the city that occupied half the horizon: my long-awaited destination. The City of Countless Souls.
Over the great stretch of seawater, Araxes had the look of a vast colony of sea urchins left to dry in the desert heat. To say the city was humongous was a dire understatement. Smoke-bound dockyards and piers stretched along the coastline for miles upon miles. Behind the sprawling warehouses, spires and pyramids reached up high, myriad and needle-pointed, all save for one bulging tower, poised like a column holding up the sky. Streaks of orange cloud stretched across its summit. Even from the sea I had to crane my neck to take it in.
The Cloudpiercer must have been half a mile thick at the base, and more than twice that high. The long tale of its construction was told by the bands of colour in its stone. Decade upon decade reached into the sky, tapering to a sharp point that shone like a diamond. At its very tip lived the emperor of the Arc, hidden away in an armoured Sanctuary – a smart decision when you rule an empire where everybody wants to kill you.
Word had it that if the Cloudpiercer ever fell, the heavens would fall with it. I’d scoffed at that when I first heard it, over a pint in some tavern, and I scoffed at it now. The tower was gigantic, true, but the Arctians were famed for having egos as bloated as their coin-purses, and I had no intention of feeding either on my first visit to Araxes.
The sun balanced on the ship’s railing, and that meant we were running late. As I had strongly suspected since the moment I’d stepped aboard this cursed vessel, the captain had turned out to be a liar. I’d paid him an extra pair of silvers to set us in port during the daylight, as had many other passengers, no doubt. And yet, despite his repeated assurances, it appeared we would be landing past dusk. I should have paid him two pairs, or taken another ship west. One with a better name than The Pickled Kipper.
I cast a glance at the captain. He hadn’t moved many degrees from horizontal for most of the day. He sprawled beside his wheel, yawning and flicking the rope tied about his big toe that held the
spokes in place. I was not a violent man, and infinitely patient – in my line of work, patience pays – but at that moment I found myself aching to throw the fat fuck overboard. There was a reason Araxes had another name: the City of Countless Doors. In a city where you can kill a man, claim his ghost and everything he owns, or sell him for a profit, murder tends to flourish. Araxes’ streets were dangerous after dark, patrolled not by lawmen or soldiers, but gangs and what the Arctians affectionately called soulstealers. It wasn’t that they had no laws; just that with a city so huge, it was impossible to enforce them. I felt the sweat drip from my finger tip. For years, I had avoided working in the Arc, given their thirst for murder and their cutthroat politics. As the saying goes in the underworld of the Reaches: an Arctian would rather pay with steel than silver.
As the sun dipped into the Troublesome Sea, the sky to my left bruised to purple. The mouth of the port began to sparkle with ships’ lights, and then the city followed suit with myriad oil-lamps. By the time the ship nosed into the busy waters, the adobe and sandstone of the buildings glowed almost as brightly as it had in the daylight. I wondered, somewhat aghast, at the number of whales that must have been speared each year to feed the city’s thirst for oil. We had crossed wakes with a pair of whalers not three days out from Krass, and I scowled now as I had at them.
I paced impatiently between the masts as a boatful of armoured port guards came aboard from a skiff to conduct their checks of the passengers. Their questions were standard. My answers, as always, were lies. In my line of work it pays never to tell the same lie twice, even to a stranger. I’d always had a wonderful knack with fiction. In another life, perhaps I would have told my lies on papyrus, and sold scrolls by the thousand. But that was some other Caltro Basalt, and I was currently concerned with keeping this Caltro incognito.
The only truth I told them was my last name, and that my business lay within the Cloudpiercer. They snorted in disbelief until I showed them the papyrus summons that had appeared on my doorstep almost two months ago. I had almost tripped over the damn thing in my hungover exit from my pitiful excuse for lodgings. The document held only a smattering of words, written in green ink: