by Ben Galley
Other wagons were beginning to arrive. I stared at the ghosts filing out onto the sand. I wondered if the living who herded them were also soulstealers, and as cruel as Temsa and his crew. It shocked me to think the hundred or so dead that stood around the edges of the square could have all been murdered. Surely there had to be honest soultraders here, profiting off genuine accidents and illness. The Tenets’ definition of “turmoil” was amazingly broad. I’d heard that in the Arc, it was considered fortunate to die at your allotted time at a ripe old age.
Boss Temsa stood nearby, deep in conversation with the white-cloak officials. He was bartering for something, though their hushed whispers were too rapid for my dulled ears. By the time they reached an agreement, the first threads of a crowd had begun to gather around the rope.
It soon became apparent what Temsa had been bargaining for: any position other than first in the schedule. The prospective buyers were sparse, and, like the day, barely warmed up. He looked confident as the first line of wares were marched onto the platform, closely watched by armed men. The ghosts were naked, just as I was. My eyes roved over their wounds, helplessly measuring myself against them. It was a sour blotch on my character, hoping somebody had suffered a worse death than me just to ease my vanity, but I was desperate for an upside to my situation.
One of the cloaked officials opened the soultrading proceedings in a shrill voice, greeting the market in Arctian first before permanently switching to Commontongue. Between every sentence his head bobbed up and down to check his scroll.
‘Boss Ubecht’s lot. Comprised of nine souls. Mostly fresh to medium-bound. Some skilled workers. Others good for hard labour. Do we have any interest?’
The bids came slowly and intermittently. Hands crept up cautiously. It took several minutes for a skinny pair of ghosts to fetch fifty-five, which made Temsa titter to his bulging bodyguard. Jexebel barely smiled.
Next came a sorrier-looking bunch than before. One ghost was particularly agitated, straining at his ropes and gurning at the crowd. If he hadn’t been dead, I’d have guessed he was heavily constipated. Instead, he looked crippled by fear.
A woman in a fine leopard-fur coat came forward and waved the announcer away. Her eyes were smoky with ash and orange paint, and her lips were painted gold. Countless bangles clung to her skinny, tattooed wrists. She toured the ropes, teasing out the curls in her dark hair as she proclaimed her wares.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, tals and tors, citizens of this fine city! I present to you some of Araxes’ finest souls. Here we have a cook, trained in the Scatter Isles. A seamstress. A nurse. Even a tailor! Why wait to bid on lesser souls, when you can have one of mine instead? Barani guarantees every worker as a genuine death in accordance with the emperor’s Code and Tenets. Never have I engaged in soulstealing, unlike some others here, and never shall I!’
The agitated ghost burst out screeching, unable to control himself any more. ‘Help me! Somebody please help me! She—’
A copper gauntlet smacked the ghost onto the floor and into silence. When he was dragged up by the guards, he was hunched, sullen, and cross-eyed.
‘Genuine death, she says!’ barked Temsa, stamping his foot with a clang that made me jump. A smattering of laughter spread through the crowd.
The woman, Barani, was not deterred. She raised her hands with a flourish. ‘Do I have any bids for my first shade here? Starting at thirty! Can you give me thirty?’
Her volume and patter had attracted some more buyers. The soulmarket’s crowd was beginning to grow in number and in willingness. A low rumble of conversation sprang up.
‘Forty from Widow Horix! Thank you. And forty-five from you, Tal Rashin. Fifty to Master Wafah.’
Temsa was busy grousing behind me. ‘Fifty silver for that desiccated corpse? We should get into poisoning, m’dear. Apparently that’s what these rich pricks want.’
Miss Jexebel growled an affirmation, idly thumbing the axe blade at her waist.
I felt a tickle at my elbow and found Kech standing next to me. ‘I hope they put you in the fucking sewers and make you clean shit for a hundred years.’
Before I could retort, Temsa poked us both with his cane.
‘Shut it, morons,’ he hissed, and Kech sidled away.
With every bid, with every ghost that was hauled from the platform and shown their new master, my trepidation grew. Which of these rich folk would be mine? Would they believe me when I told my story? Would they even listen? Questions sputtered in my mind like water from a choked hose.
A shove dragged me from my thoughts, and before I knew it, I was climbing the handful of steps to the platform. The crowd looked different from up there, even just a few feet from the dust. As a locksmith, I was not one for attracting attention, never mind being the centre of it. The multitude of eyes felt scratchy, like spiders’ legs crawling over my nakedness. And I abhor spiders.
Instead, I turned my gaze to the Cloudpiercer, ever-present above the rooftops. I wondered about that alternate life where I had made my appointment in its reaches instead of being murdered. You don’t get to be the best locksmith in the Far Reaches without a bit of discipline. In twenty years I had only failed one job, and that was still a gaping wound in my pride. Yet here I was again, letting down a second employer, thanks to Temsa.
I tried to grind my teeth but they felt like a sea-sponge. I wondered at my mystery employer, and what they would have wanted from me. Etane. No doubt they were already in contact with my rivals. That damned Evalon Everass wench.
Temsa was already deep into his introductions, swaggering across the stage, blue coattails swishing.
‘…so as you see, ladies and gentlemen, I peddle no torn and bedraggled souls this morning. Only clean-killed shades. Simply honest, hard-working shades that will do your house, shop, or factory proud. Ask anybody about Boss Boran Temsa, and they will tell you I deal in nothing but honesty and quality, as I have done for years. Let the bids begin!’
I felt the eyes searching every inch of my nakedness, examining me, measuring me. The pressure built inside my chest, and I understood then why the other ghost had been so distressed. The words spilled without thought behind them. Rather than for such noble ideals as revenge or justice, I blurted out of desperation, ‘I was murdered! Bound against my will!’
‘Ha!’ Temsa chuckled, unbothered. ‘We have a joker!’ He motioned to Ani and something sharp poked me in the back. It felt like a hot poker, and it sealed my lips shut. The buyers shrugged and tittered to themselves. There must have been a hundred of them now, all richly dressed and sparkly-eyed with the idea of owning more souls.
Temsa continued. ‘For Amin here, a skilled and trusted cook, do I have thirty?’
And so the bidding went, cascading down the line towards me at the end. It gave me some satisfaction to see Kech go for cheap, which I attributed to the fact his face looked like the arse end of a pumpkin. I held my chin high until Temsa called my new name. I even tried to smile, despite the emotions bubbling up somewhere in my vapours. If I was to be sold, I would be sold right. A noble master might be useful to my cause.
‘And finally, we have Jerub, a Krassman who should not be dismissed despite his uncharacteristic outburst. He’s a shy soul. A proficient manservant of fifteen years before death, and one year of his life already spent in servitude. One previous master since death, and in my expert soultrader’s opinion he would make quite the excellent house-shade. Do we have thirty?’
I scanned the crowd. Not a body moved.
Temsa forced a grin. ‘Twenty-five?’
One man called out from the back. ‘Pretty cut up, Temsa!’
Irritatingly, Temsa played the man well. ‘An unfortunate accident involving an angry butcher, I’m afraid. The easterners are barbarians compared to our civilised Arctian ways!’
‘I’ll give you twenty,’ spoke an old woman, shrouded in frills of black.
‘Do I have twenty-five?’
The calls rolled in, hesitant and mute
d.
‘Twenty-two!’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘Twenty-four!’ hollered a pale, noble-looking man wearing a conical hat and metallic silks. Cut copper medals adorned his breast. Despite the rest of him being rotund, his face was narrower than an axehead and he wore a pompous scratch of a moustache on his lip.
‘Thank you, Tor Busk! Twenty-five?’
The woman in black raised a hand. I scrutinised her wrinkled, brown arms, trying to scour the face beneath her satin cowl.
‘Twenty-five for you, Widow Horix. Do I have thirty?’
Busk’s hat wobbled. ‘Twenty-seven!’
Horix raised that winter’s branch of an arm again. ‘Twenty-eight.’
‘Will any of you match twenty-eight?’ Temsa cast about the circle, arms wide, cane searching for movement. Silence reigned. Stillness fell. He was wise enough to recognise a lost cause when one slapped him in the face.
‘And sold! To Widow Horix!’
Strong hands muscled me offstage, under the rope, and towards a cloaked and bearded man holding a scroll. The other sold ghosts gathered around me. Kech was there, glowering as always. He’d been sold to the buyer named Tor Busk. The balloon of a man hovered nearby, eager to check over his new property. His moustache twitched as if he were on the cusp of sneezing.
Temsa came to ink his signature in three callous swirls and punched his basic seal into the papyrus with a stained ring. As a bidding of farewell, he offered each of us a smug look before clanking away to his wagons. I don’t remember the particulars of what I silently vowed to him in that moment, but I know it involved plenty of torture and grief.
I was harassed into a line with the two other ghosts purchased by the woman Horix. I had only spied a limb of her during the proceedings, but she came to meet us now, and I gazed upon my new master.
The widow walked slowly yet purposefully, a rising tide of black cloth and frills. No flowing rainbow silks for this woman, no metal trimmings around her neck; just a cowl and a puffy gown. Her hands were clasped inside her sleeves like an ancient monk. They showed themselves only once to drop a fat leather bag of coins into a cloaked man’s open hand. She didn’t offer a single look of acknowledgement, even while scratching her signature and seal on his scroll, or snatching up our three half-coins from the man’s palm. Her stare was reserved for us: her acquisitions. The two white orbs hovering in the shade of her hood switched between us and our wounds.
To the left of me stood a young, skinny lad, whose eyes were bulging out of their sockets. I wasn’t sure if it was due to fear or the enormous section missing from the back of his skull. To my right was a woman with dark patches around her throat, and black veins climbing her cheeks like tendrils of ivy. Throat-rot.
‘Stand up straight!’ snapped Horix when she came close enough. We did our best, but she tutted all the same. Personally speaking, spending the morning being herded and sold like cattle didn’t put one in the most acquiescent of moods.
‘I see Temsa’s given you no training.’
‘No, ma’am,’ said the croaky woman to my right.
‘Ma’am? Such foreign tones. I am a tal. A noble of this city. What are you? Too pale to be Krass. Scatter Isles?’
‘Skol, Tal.’
‘Looks like you’ll be needing some training, then. House-shade, was it? Or was that gold-footed swindler spouting falsehoods again?’
‘Nanny, ma’am.’
‘Close enough! Name?’
I saw her birth-name sputter on her lips and die. ‘Lu… Bela, ma’am.’
Horix waved her aside and turned her attention to me. I looked down into her cowl, seeing a web of wrinkles across a brown face. I found the white orbs to have slate-coloured centres. She eyed my waistline, then the copper half-moons in her hand. She had my half-coin right there; the lock and chain that bound me to this world. I longed to snatch it and run.
‘Jerub, if I’m correct?’ she said, reading the glyph Temsa’s binders had scratched into my coin. ‘I forget what Temsa touted you as, but I can tell it wasn’t a labourer.’
‘Close. A bear tamer,’ I replied in a flat tone.
She nodded, then slowly removed a long, spatula-like implement from her sleeve. It glittered in the morning sun, like her ruby-painted fingernails. Some of the nearby soulmarket officials hummed in a low tone, nudging each other.
Before I could dodge, the tool swished through the air and slapped me square across the face. The pain was intense, spreading across my skin like hot poison through veins.
Horix patted her palm with the implement, watching me wince. ‘Let’s try again, shall we?’
It took a while to get my jaw to work. ‘Temsa said a manservant. Though in truth I worked with doors,’ I added, hoping for a higher station.
The widow cocked her head. ‘Guarding them or breaking them down?’
The spatula was good at eliciting pain, but not truth. This wasn’t my first interrogation. ‘Neither. I designed and built them. I was a vaultsmith.’ A good lie dances close to the truth.
The widow cast a look back at Temsa, climbing aboard his wagon with Ani Jexebel in tow. ‘That man,’ she tutted.
I grasped for my opportunity. The words had been poised on my lips since I’d been shown the stage. Besides, I thought it best to be upfront. Why endure any more servitude than I had to? ‘He’s not just a liar, Tal Horix. He’s a murderer. A soulstealer. He had men catch and kill me. I came here on honest business. I was on my way to meet my employer when I was accosted!’
Once more, the wicked tool was raised, but she didn’t use it. Instead, the widow fixed me with a stare. There was no more kindness to be found in those wrinkles than on a windswept mountainside. I tried my best not to flinch as I urged her with my eyes.
The spark of hope was coldly squashed as she turned away, looking instead to the bug-eyed brat beside me. I hung my head.
‘And you, boy. Mamun, was it?’
The boy worked his lips as if he was new to speaking. ‘Mhm.’
‘Fresher than the rest, are you? You look Arctian.’
‘Mhmfl.’
‘I see. Horse boy?’
‘Grhmr.’
The widow took a step back to survey us once more and after a nod, we apparently passed her test. She motioned to somebody in the crowd and a bookcase of a man came wading toward us. His arms couldn’t have touched his ribs even under duress. Dressed all in mail and black leather, he would have made an imposing character without the pirate’s beard bursting from his cheeks, the raft of medals on his bulging chest, and the set of knives strapped to his thigh. He was the sort of man who made me want to suck in my belly, stand a little straighter and jut out my jaw, all in a vain effort to limit the damage to my masculinity. I knew it was a base reaction, instinctual, but until our animal nature is completely bred or educated out of us, it will always have first say.
‘This man is Colonel Horat Kalid. Retired from the emperor’s armies. He commands my guard, my house, and therefore you. Bow.’
I offered a shallow bow.
The colonel looked us over with a curl of the lip. He was almost as tall as Jexebel. ‘The standard of stock is slipping,’ he said in a voice that had the timbre of rocks colliding.
The widow tutted. ‘They’ll do, for what we need.’
‘Suppose.’
She swatted at him with the spatula, but he didn’t move. The touch of copper had no effect on living skin, never mind solid muscle and mail. ‘Load them up, Colonel. Show them to Yamak and Vex. They’ll get them settled.’
Rattling our half-coins in her hand, she walked away, unaccompanied and undeterred by the crowd. She spared only one glance and that was for me. It was cold and blank. I wanted to shout after her, make her turn again. Even if it resulted in another painful slap, at least I would know I had been heard and understood.
The colonel bound us with more stiff, itchy rope, and led us to a flat cart where we were told to sit in silence. I spent the jolting journey wit
h my face skywards, watching the spires pass by and wondering how many ghosts it took to afford such lofty heights. I wondered if the widow would have such grand apartments, perhaps with a fine view. Anything to lighten the load of eternal indenturement.
I attempted to approach the problem the best way I knew how. A locksmith works on the principle of one set path. Although a lock has many tumblers, cogs, springs and traps, every lock has but one solution. The trick to being a good locksmith – nay, the best locksmith in all the Reaches – was honing in on that solution. If indenturement was my locked door, and justice and freedom lay behind it, then all I had to do was pick the lock. Currently, I felt like a freshpick, staring down a keyhole and sweating at the number and weight of the tumblers in front of me.
This city was even more fickle and uncaring than any rumours I had heard. Any hope that my new master would be concerned by a stolen soul had been crushed. Freedom and vengeance now seemed to be slipping further away. What had I expected of a nobility that revolved around tight lips and blind eyes? For all I knew, Horix could have had a share in Temsa’s business. Why would she care about my murder, if that was the case?
‘Fuck all, is what,’ I said. I did not shout it, but I needed to hear it aloud to vent my frustration. The other ghosts stared at me, confused. They had a point, and it was illustrated by Kalid’s fist slamming on the edge of the cart.
‘Quiet back there!’
If this city was so dismissive of its living, extinguishing a recalcitrant ghost would be little more than a minor inconvenience. Twenty-eight silvers lost, and that would be the sum of me.
If I was to have my freedom, I needed to be quiet and clever, like any thief worth his salt. And patient. That gave me an ounce of solace. Say one thing for locksmiths: we’re patient bastards.
I rested my cold head against the juddering wood, and waited.
Chapter 6
Her Time
Strangebinding came on the heels of the phantom and deadbinding fashions, and required a slow immersion, with plenty of blind solitary confinement for a number of days until the subject was calm and had come to comfort in the host body. Domesticated animals were always preferred over wild, as the soul tended to blend somewhat with the body’s natural tendencies. Hounds, felines, larger birds. No example of a fish strangebond ever survived. Compared to the deadbound, such as soulblades, madness was mightily decreased, and yet it was still spurned by the greater population.