by Ben Galley
Just as Nilith thought they had escaped without repercussion, she spotted a gatehouse. A few shouts at the gate tried to stall them, but at the sight of the stone-barge behind them, the guards were idle about cocking their triggerbows. It seemed stone and timely deliveries were more important than tolls, and the gates were cranked open without further complaint. Ghyrab’s barge slid out into the dark, slow river.
The only thing that chased them was the insistent hammering, which gradually faded over a stretch of several miles. The quieter it became, the more the river recovered its flow, fed by springs, or so Ghyrab said. He had finally gone back to steering instead of paddling, and by the look of his slumped posture, the old bargeman was grateful for it.
Nilith cleared her throat. ‘This Consortium. Who the fuck are they?’
‘Traders. Businessmen. Though not like your tors and tals. They only care for silver,’ growled Ghyrab. ‘Own a whole bunch of trade routes and quarries across the deserts. Jumped-up bastards, is what they is.’
Nilith looked to Farazar. The ghost had taken up his usual brooding spot in the corner of the prow. He liked to sit hunched, his back turned, like a spurned gargoyle.
‘You see now what hiding in your Sanctuary has done to the empire, dear husband? A Consortium. Problems, they said. A Nyxwater shortage. Murders. Soldiers on the streets.’
‘I have done nothing. If this is anyone’s fault, it is yours.’
‘I kept that city from tearing itself apart for five years while you played drunken exile in the south! It is our daughter. Funny how I never had to use your army when I was the one delivering your decrees. She’s scheming, just like you taught her. She’s most likely trying to pry open the Sanctuary door as we speak.’
Farazar had been silently bubbling for some time, and she had just removed the lid. His anger turned on her. ‘And whose fault is that, wife? I told you leaving her unattended was a colossal stroke of idiocy on your part! Clearly I was right!’
Nilith crackled her knuckles. She had dearly hoped that sending Bezel to look for her was the summation of Sisine’s interference. Bezel knew nothing more of her plans. Nilith had also hoped leaving her house-ghost Etane behind would have curbed some of her daughter’s scheming. Now it appeared she was playing empress in her absence. Her hopes were dashed like a vase against a boulder.
‘As if you care a damn for anything but your throne,’ she hissed, moving closer to him. ‘You hadn’t even mentioned her name until the falcon turned up. I doubt she’s even crossed your mind, even though it’s your fault she is as devious as she is! If you remember, Farazar, I wasn’t trusted to raise her. And just like your father, you raised a royal monster. Your own successor.’
Farazar stood up, fists raised and shaking. ‘That is why you should have curbed your greed and stayed there to watch her, to maintain control as you’re supposed to! Now she’s making decrees as if I was already dead. That’s bold, wife. Against the Code. Treasonous! Only you could have taught her that. I see that now. I’ll be surprised if there is an Araxes left to drag me back to!’
From her pocket, Nilith took the copper arrowhead she had dug out of Anoish and made a fist around it. It was large enough for its charm to work on the ghost. She pushed him, making his hands fly out to the bulwark. ‘As I’m supposed to? Is that what you think my life amounts to? Collecting notes from a door? Reading them for a surly court? Doing your job? No more, Farazar. I grew tired of not being the dutiful and silent wife you expected long ago. You married the wrong woman for that. I am stronger than you know.’
‘Your duty, Nilith, was to bear a child for this family and do what I tell you! You managed the first; why is the second so interminably difficult for you?’
Another shove. More flailing.
‘I could only be ignored and despised for so long. Only read so many scrolls. Only deliver so many idiotic decrees. And each morning, I would wake up to see the streets awash with fresh blood. No more, I say!’
Farazar’s foot dipped into the water. He did not like that one bit.
‘Away from me, Krass peasant!’
Nilith heard the thump of a falcon as Bezel landed somewhere behind her, felt Ghyrab’s wide eyes on her back.
‘What did I miss?’ whispered the bird, but nobody answered him.
Nilith had no fear of water now. Though it rushed beneath them, she leaned over Farazar, their noses almost touching. She felt his cold spreading across her cheeks. ‘Haven’t you realised yet, you ignorant fuck? It’s that arrogance that brought my knife to your neck in the first place; this pride and skewed sense of entitlement you Arctians are born with. I slit the throat of the empire because you do not deserve to rule it. Not you. Not Sisine. None of you do. Not over life and especially not over death. You think yourself better than those stone-mongers? Those masters of hell? Twiddling moustaches while men die around you? You are the same wretched, soulless breed, and you’ll realise it by the time I’m done.’
‘I knew it! I knew my murder was some grand lesson! You are nothing but a venomous, shrewish, greedy—’
Nilith was not finished. She jutted out her neck, boring into Farazar’s eyes. ‘You are nothing but the wine-blotched leftovers of a feckless king. You are weak. Deluded. Your only claim to the throne is you murdered your father. You and your kind are the reason the Reaches are rotting, and if I don’t do something about it, there’ll be nothing left of it.’
Shove.
Splash.
It was no more complicated than that. So rewarding was the ease of it, and the ferocity with which he thrashed against the water, that it brought a wide smile to her face. Her anger faded away as she watched him trail in their wake, bound to the decomposing corpse that was firmly lashed to the deck.
Bezel cocked his head and began to chuckle, a crackling sound like leaves crushed under a shoe.
Ghyrab cleared his throat. ‘Erm… ain’t he still the emperor?’
‘No dead emperor or empress has ever sat on Araxes’ throne,’ said the falcon. ‘At least not for more than five minutes. Some family member always binds them or casts their bodies into the Nyx coinless and sharpish-like. But until his body’s bound or given up, Farazar’s still technically emperor.’
Nilith drew herself up. ‘And I am still the empress by right of marriage if not by half-coins. And we know who rules a marriage, now, don’t we, gentlemen?
The bargeman nodded sagely, eyes distant and occupied with some old memory. ‘The wife.’
‘Well done, sir.’ Nilith beamed at the bargeman. Bezel just laughed his strange laugh, tiny tongue poking from his beak.
‘And on that note, I have some brooding of my own to do,’ she said. ‘Does the river start to flow faster, Ghyrab?’
‘Aye.’ It was all he gave her, but it was enough.
Although she addressed the bird, she looked at Anoish. The horse was fast asleep, ribcage rising and falling in slow succession. ‘Bezel?’
The falcon knew her mind. ‘Five hundred miles, maybe more. Give it a clear day and get out of this canyon. You’ll see the city gleam.’
Ghyrab coughed, and it thankfully covered her own hitch of breath. She had expected the river route to be faster than this, with fewer interruptions. It was no horse. She counted the days. Just over two weeks. That was all she had left in her hourglass before Farazar was lost to the void. And all the while, her daughter was plotting away in the Cloudpiercer, following precisely in her father’s footsteps. She thanked the dead gods that Sisine – and the rest of the Arc for that matter – still believed the emperor was locked up tight in his Sanctuary. It was a mercy while it lasted. At least Farazar had done something right during his reign: he had built a solid vault.
‘Do you still want your answers, falcon?’
Bezel waggled his head back and forth. ‘Fine.’
Nilith couldn’t help but flinch as he launched himself at her, alighting on the railing next to her hand.
‘You first, Empress.’
Nilith
turned back to watch Farazar still floundering a dozen feet behind them. She guessed the decades-old fear of drowning was a hard one to shake. ‘It took me two years to realise he’d left. He stopped using the words “I want” in his decrees. Tiny difference, but I knew something had changed. I spent another three years proving it and tracking him down. I read every scroll in the Cloudpiercer’s libraries, followed rumours, scoured maps, and toured the streets. Finally, I found a trace. He had tried his best to hide his escape south, had the guards who escorted him out of the Piercer slain and buried in the dunes. Disguise, different name, the lot. Clever for him, really. Misdirection, the Krass conjurers call it, but not clever enough to fool me. He switched wagons many times going south. Used questionable sellswords, too. I found a diary reporting a man of Farazar’s description south of the Steps of Oshirim. A drunk, he called him, boasting about the greatest escape in all the ages. Means nothing until you match up the dates with his decrees changing. A month or two in between, perhaps. Spies in Belish found a lord living on the outskirts of the city. A lord with a healthy obsession for wine, concubines and lavish parties. I had to go see it myself, and lo and behold, at the far end of a dining table, I saw him. I had come to kill him, but I almost took my knife out and gutted him right there and then. I climbed back into his mansion that very night and cut his throat while his cock was still in a duke’s daughter.’ Nilith found herself breathing hard. ‘That enough of an answer for you?’
Bezel shrugged his wings. ‘A fine fucking story. For a person who prides himself on his ability to find elusive bastards, I’m impressed.’
‘Then name your price. Your turn, bird.’
He took a moment to stare up at the star-spattered sky. ‘Death.’
‘Whose?’
‘My own,’ said Bezel with a sigh. It was not a sad sound, but a tired one. His golden eyes turned back to her. ‘Apparently, the Nyxites bound me a little too well. What thirst and hunger the body gives me, my soul gives it the inability to die. Trust me, I’ve tried. I am tired of life. Tired of immortality. Tired of this body, and yet I can’t escape. Old age can’t kill me. I’m two hundred years old. Blades don’t work. Not even copper. Poison only makes me sick. Flew into more walls than I can count. Froze for two weeks atop a mountain. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried to die, and every time this fucking body heals. Slowly, painfully, but every time. It refuses to die unless somebody destroys my half-coin: the silver bell. And I’ve always been too useful, too much of a prize, to let go. I thought Sisine had forgotten me, that I had freedom, but now I know she will never give me up, and I will never be free. That’s why I came to you. I was hoping a woman who traipses several thousand miles across a desert to kill her husband then drags his dead body back just so she can teach him a lesson would either be mad or desperate enough to accept my offer.’
‘Maybe I’m both,’ she whispered.
‘Once you accomplish whatever it is you’re fighting to accomplish, I want you to take my fucking bell from your daughter and melt it. Throw me into the void. Finish what the Nyxites started.’
Nilith took a moment to think. Murder, however merciful, should never be taken lightly.
‘What would you do if I said no?’
The falcon shrugged. ‘I had considered killing her.’
The underlying ferocity of his tone took her aback. ‘You’d do that?’
‘I’ve done it before,’ he said, pointing a curved talon at his neck. ‘It’s all about the throat.’
Nilith winced. ‘I meant my daughter, Bezel. I had hoped to save her, when all of… this was done.’
‘What’s your answer?’
The bird was smart, and Nilith bowed her head in agreement. ‘Fine. Help me get to the Grand Nyxwell and I’ll give you anything you want. Your death. Your freedom. No killing required.’
Bezel whistled. ‘Deal,’ he said, and they spoke no more on the subject. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m fucking starving. The downside of a living body, right? I’m going to gut a mouse. Want one?’
‘I’ll pass.’
‘Suit yourself.’
With that, Bezel took flight once more, and being left alone was all the excuse Nilith needed to tumble into the hole that was a fine old brooding session. Meaningless internal rambling, helpful and yet paradoxically aggravating. Like being tortured by a feather.
At least she had Farazar’s cursing and splashing to entertain her.
Chapter 7
A Hero
As the first to master binding and author the Tenets, the Nyxites were swift to proclaim themselves the sole guardians of the Nyx. And so they have remained. The Nyxites were mere sages before, pagan masters of funeral ceremonies, simply there to make sure the boatman received his copper and the gods got their souls. And yet, almost ten centuries later, they are still the only ones allowed to harvest, hoard or sell Nyxwater, even outside the Arc. They no longer usher the dead to the afterlife, but imprison them here instead.
From an anonymous scroll sent to Chamberlain Rebene in 987
They say misery likes company, but what they don’t say is how much curiosity likes company. Especially strange company. It loves it. Adores it.
I had become aware that my opinion of Pointy was based on how useful he was. At that moment, he was as good for research as any library, and as fine for tales as any beer-sodden bard. Every question that popped onto my tongue, the sword had an answer for. At the very least, he offered some anecdotal tangent I could follow. For the first time, my head was pressed to the door not in boredom, but so I could hear the blade more clearly.
Pointy was waxing lyrical. ‘And that’s when the mighty Horush pulled the sun closer to scorch his enemies. As the burning soldiers ran for the sea to douse the flames, his undead army caught them on the shore. Sesh was defeated before the sun broke its bonds. In punishment for altering the flow of the Nyx, slaying the boatman, and giving humanity the secret of binding the dead, Horush imprisoned Sesh for the rest of time.’
‘And I thought the dead gods of the east were strange.’
‘Strange is the only fruit that grows in the desert, so the poets say. In any case, some say that Sesh was the protagonist of that story, as the world now revolves around his gift of binding. In some ways, Sesh won. The gods’ power faded and so we threw them aside, forgot them. Even Sesh. Or for the most part. There are some who worship him for his deeds. Guess who?’
‘Those Cult people. Cult of Sesh.’
‘You’re getting good at this.’
I shrugged, despite the wardrobe’s darkness. ‘I’ve a thirst for information, when it’s the useful sort.’ My head was full of old combinations, names of important figures, and a comprehensive list of Taymar brothels. Epic tales of treasure were for adventurers and the fanciful to listen to, not I. No, I preferred solid tips over stolen maps. Such stories had a habit of floating in one ear and straight out the other, like a breeze through a fence. That was until now.
‘You still haven’t told me why you’re asking all these questions about binding. In fact, I feel like I’ve been talking for two days straight.’ In truth, he had. I had barely said a word.
‘Why, you ask?’ It was a good question, one with many answers. Was it because I had a thirst to know more, like any soul who uncovers a new skill? Was it for the purposes of escape, or revenge? Could I have branded it as a thirst for justice? Or lie and say it was for the honour of those old, dead gods? I could have bleated any of those answers at the sword, but in the end they would have all pointed towards one path: getting my half-coin and getting as far away from this maniacal land as ghostly possible.
Every reason is a little story we tell ourselves to dress up our desires. We offer reasons to explain or excuse ourselves, to fit in. We do it every day. But these stories are dangerous. Cyclical and devious. We tell them over and over so many times we start to believe they’re true, when instead all along it is all just justification to hide what drives us: to have what we desire.
I told him what I wanted. ‘Because I don’t want this.’
‘This?’
‘This! This wardrobe. This indenturement. This… half-life!’ I yelled. ‘I want my freedom, and I’ll do anything to get it. If understanding the dead gods, the Cult, or haunting helps me, then so be it.’
Pointy took a pause. ‘Well, you might be able to do something about the wardrobe and indenturement. Being dead—’
‘I’ve made my peace with that.’ I hadn’t, but I’d heard positive reinforcement worked wonders. I had almost forgotten the beat of my heart until I felt Busk’s in my chest. Since then, I had thirsted to feel that again.
‘It took me a long time to grow used to this form. That’s all the dead have: time.’
‘No offence, sword, but I’ve got hands, feet, and something gods-given I intend to use.’
‘Gods-given?’
I pursed my lips. I had told him of my vocation, how I had come to Araxes, and how Busk had claimed me. I hadn’t yet told him of my ‘visitors,’ as I’d taken to calling them. I was certain it would have sounded like madness, even to a deadbound soulblade. All the reason I’d given him for my haunting was the age-old excuse of, ‘It was an accident.’
‘It’s an old Krass phrase.’ It wasn’t. ‘It means a kind of magic.’ It didn’t.
The sword hummed, sounding like the fading drone of a bell. ‘Never heard that one before.’
I decided to distract him with the bait of a story. ‘So, if Sesh was so glorious and beneficial to us mortals, why don’t more worship him? Why’s the Cult not more accepted in a city of the dead?’
‘Because most believe Sesh died, just like the other gods. There are some who still follow the old ways, but they are like single grains of sand on a beach compared to the rest of the Arc and the Reaches.’
‘Making half-coins the only religion.’