by Ben Galley
‘I like hassle.’ Jexebel spat for punctuation. ‘He’s smarter than most. Got more balls than any. Look how far he’s come. A bloody tor now. And the more he claims, the bigger my share.’
I flashed her a sidelong look. ‘Taken to tordom quite easily, hasn’t he?’
The furrow in her brow was gone in an instant, but I caught it. And pressed it. ‘He looks very different from the man who lectured me on death my first day as a ghost. And he wants his own tower now, I see?’
The muscular lump of a woman pretended not to hear me.
‘He’s got protection, I’d wager. Someone high up.’ The empress-in-waiting and the Cult. And I highly doubted either knew about the other. Temsa must have been wedged between them.
Jexebel merely grunted.
I paused as I found the next combination, snapping my picks together into a slim file to persuade a disc into skipping a tooth. ‘Promises seem to be slippery things in this city. Doesn’t pay to put your trust in the wrong people.’
Jexebel gave me a dangerous look. I had plucked a nerve, but seeing her gauntlets clench for another blow, I lacked the balls to go further. I’d sparked the tinder. Now to let it smoulder.
Clank. The disc fell into line, and half of the golden plates spread across the face of the door rotated. I had shaken the heavens.
The last disc was a little bastard, tucked away behind the door’s surface so that I could barely see it. I used my file to break apart some of the weaker filigree so I could follow the clockwork back to the number wheels. It took me almost an hour to figure its combinations, and it left me with one solution. I wasn’t usually one for brute force, especially with so much work poured into making a vault so alluring. But I was also a thief, and severely lacking in morals. If I needed to play dirty to win a duel, I’d be knee-deep in mud before you could blink.
‘I could use your axe, Miss Jexebel,’ I said.
‘You can fuck right off—’
‘You can swing it, just right here. How accurate are you with that thing?’
‘I can cut the nose from your face with it.’
‘Perfect. Then cut the nose from the face of this plate, if you please.’
She took one swing for practice, and another for the damage. There was a whoosh and a clank as the axe-head took the corner off the ornate plate in a shower of sparks. In the gap Jexebel had made, I could see the last pieces of the puzzle. I set about rearranging the wheels with my picks, and seeing as I was poised for the killing blow, I celebrated by goading Jexebel some more.
‘See? Temsa might have the balls, but he’s got no brawn. Imagine having both. That would make a person a great tor. Or a great tal…’
I managed to duck the first fist, but the second caught me in the midriff and flattened me against the door. Had I flesh, the stars and moons would have been cutting neat patterns in my ribcage. As Jexebel loomed over me, debating another strike, I raised a finger and placed it on the nearest metal wheel.
‘It’s done,’ I said.
With a flick of my finger, the discs began to whir. The golden heavens performed their rotating dance, and after a great groan – both from me and the vault – the door was released from its locks. I got to my feet, clasping my hands as it swung open, blazing gold and copper. This was not one of Horix’s empty chests. This was a vault bursting with a hoard of half-coins. If only mine had been in there, this moment would have been all the sweeter.
‘Boss! TOR!’ hollered Jexebel, right in my ear. I dropped my tools, and as I bent down, she kicked my knees from beneath me and pinned me to the floor. I felt the soles of her boots sizzling against my vaporous skin.
Tap, clang, tap, clang, came the cane and talons down the hallway. Temsa soon appeared, eyes wide and full of greed as he gazed upon the open vault. ‘Quick work, Caltro Basalt.’
‘You asked me to do a job. I did it,’ I said, somewhat muffled with a face full of marble.
He hobbled past me and into the vault itself. Stacks of half-coins lined tight shelves, bound in papyrus string and inked with number glyphs. He pored over his new coins. ‘Quite the haul.’
I stared at the other trinkets on the mahogany shelves: a gilded helmet, a jewel-studded vase, and a crystal skull whose eyes called to mine. ‘Do I get anything for my troubles?’ I asked.
Temsa sneered at me. ‘I don’t see a white feather on your breast, shade. Do you? Ani, escort this pretender back to the carriage and back to his cell.’
I pounded my fist on the marble. ‘Cell? You said a room—’
Temsa prodded me in the ear with his cane. ‘Next time, talk less, Caltro.’
‘You—’ My hopes were further quashed when Ani Jexebel hauled me upright and sent me staggering out into the hallway.
Pointy had some words for me before I was out of earshot. ‘Whatever you’re up to, don’t leave me with him. You owe me that much…’
I kept my silence until Jexebel shoved me through the Maxir door, where a number of wagons and a few carriages had arrived. More men in false livery stood about, shaking their heads firmly at several enraged nobles. The guests were too busy waving envelopes in their faces to know they had narrowly escaped massacre.
I spied a flash of red in the crowds and saw the glowing, hooded face of a familiar figure: the cultist I’d seen leaving Temsa’s tavern. She seemed to be smiling at me, or Jexebel, I couldn’t tell. In any case, I heard my minder growl over my shoulder, and I was stowed in the nearest wagon.
Two guards joined me, sitting opposite with swords drawn. I crossed my arms in pathetic defiance. Before Jexebel could shut the door, I speared her with a glare.
‘See?’ I said. ‘Promises are slippery in this town.’
The door slammed with a resounding finality, and the carriage lurched into the night.
Chapter 19
A Debt
Beetles. You shipped us four score riding-beetles instead of perfectly good, four-legged horses. Damn things refuse to cross any water: rivers, even a stream, dead gods damn it! I’m surprised you got them on the ships. What am I supposed to do with these creatures, you cretins?
From a scroll sent to the Chamber of Military Might by General Hjebe in 998
It was dawn when Nilith awoke to a soft pecking at her cheek. She felt the light beyond her eyelids but refused to open them.
‘My, my,’ said a small voice near her head. ‘Somebody got shit-faced last night.’
Nilith had to use her fingers to pry her eyelids apart. Even the dim sun was enough to scald the inside of her skull. She felt like ants had crawled into her head and were carving up her brain, piece by piece. It felt like the little bastards were pulling her eyes into their sockets by their nerves.
She had clearly gone mad. There was a bird standing before her. A falcon. Its golden eyes pierced her. And it was talking.
‘Morning, pretty face. Remember me?’
‘What the—? You’re back,’ she managed before retching. Nothing came up. ‘All I remember is a flying donkey.’
‘Don’t know about any flying fucking donkey. What did Her Royalness drink, then, hmm? Or smoke, for that matter?’
Nilith slumped back to the sand, chin on arms. She stared up at the falcon. ‘I don’t feel very royal.’
‘Royally fucked is what you are. Now you know why these nomad types call their wine daemonjuice, don’t you?’
‘Where’s Ghyrab?’ she croaked.
‘The bargeman? Over there, currently downing a whole skin of water.’
Nilith managed to angle herself to see Ghyrab standing by Anoish. He’d woken up a different man. Gone was the crooked back and the scowl he was so fond of wearing. He was shirtless, and for the first time, Nilith saw tribal tattoos curling around his ribs, like ivy around a pillar. He held a waterskin high, half of it missing his mouth and washing the sand from his neck.
He caught her stare and wandered across the sand to drip water over her. Nilith groaned.
‘Morning, Majesty. Falcon.’
‘Old boat person,’ said the bird, dipping his head before pecking at an empty bottle.
‘How are you not… like me?’ Nilith asked.
Ghyrab puffed out his chest. ‘Ain’t the first time I drank daemonjuice. These are desert-folk. I am desert-folk.’
‘And I, clearly, am not.’ Nilith dug up some reserve of strength and staggered to her feet. ‘I have drunk Dolkfang medea, tasted firewine from the northern tribes, even tried the black pirate rum of the Scatter Isles. But never in what precious life I have left will I let that cursed daemonjuice pass my lips again.’
She tottered towards the horse, who took one sniff of her and whinnied. ‘We have to…’ Nilith scratched her head, finding a lump and wondering where it had come from. She remembered dancing. Or at least trying to dance. ‘What were we doing?’
‘Finding Farazar.’
‘Shit!’ The hangover spread its anxiety through her as if her blood had turned to needles. Her poisoned gut growled as it clenched. ‘He could be leagues away by now.’ Nilith scrabbled around the horse, checking her supplies.
Bezel looked up from his idle preening. ‘Oh, I know where he is.’
‘What?’
‘He can’t navigate for shit, even with the city right there. Keeps wandering east and west.’
Nilith looked up, seeing the glint of marble and glass that filled the horizon.
‘He’s a day’s solid ride ahead, nearing the Sprawls, but not moving as fast as you with all his zigzagging. Got some beetle with him. Dead gods know where he found that. Or how he charmed it into suffering him.’
‘I… Thank you, Bezel,’ sighed Nilith. The news didn’t stop her trying to hop up onto Anoish’s back. It took her several awkward attempts, but she managed it eventually. Anoish shook his mane disapprovingly.
‘Ghyrab, there’s no time. Come on.’ Nilith shuffled forwards on the horse’s spine to give him some room, but the bargeman didn’t move. ‘Come on!’
‘I’m stayin’,’ he said flatly.
‘That’s great. Co—What?’ Her neck clicked horridly as she whirled around.
The bargeman wiped the water from his grizzled chin, staring south. ‘Like I said, I’m desert-folk. I can’t remember a time with so much dancin’ and singin’. I’ve been alone for too long.’ His tone was wistful. ‘An’ I ain’t made for horseback, nor chasin’ after dead kings with queens, no offence. This is your battle, not mine.’
Nilith was deeply confused, and somewhat disappointed, until she saw a nearby tent flap waver, and a Windchaser woman with grey hair and curling horns staring at them through the gap. ‘I see. But what about your barge?’
Ghyrab chuckled, baring yellow teeth. ‘Forget the barge. Maybe I’ll ride the Race Ruts instead of the Ashti for a time. Won’t be long until the Consortium own the whole river, rate they’re going. Maybe it’s time to get back to dry land.’
Nilith manoeuvred the horse closer to the man, who held up a hand. She shook it tightly. ‘I would have kept my promise, you know.’
He nodded. ‘And that’s why I came this far with you. Whatever it is you’re fighting for, it seems a good fight, and I wish you well with it. Maybe there’s change in the winds coming for the Arc. Good fortune, Empress,’ he said. For the first time, he bowed deeply, with true reverence.
Nilith lowered her head to him, and after one last look around the Windchaser camp, with its skinny donkeys nibbling at forgotten plates between the blue tents, she spurred Anoish into a gallop.
The desert flew by in their eager chase, but she ignored it all, trying her best to forget the pounding of her head and focusing on keeping her stomach contents where they were. She slurped water from a skin between Anoish’s strides, but that gave little comfort, and as they charged in and out of the last few Race Ruts and back into a patchwork desert of greens and reds, the sun began to bake her.
She was glad Bezel had returned. He flew beside her for a time, racing the horse, then took to the clear blue to keep his eyes on the distant Farazar. Or so Nilith hoped. She trusted the bird’s eyes.
When he swooped back down again, she lent him a perch on her arm. She winced as one of his talons punctured her leather-bound sleeve.
‘Sorry,’ he squawked. ‘That happens.’
‘What did she want?’
‘Who?’
‘My scheming daughter.’ Nilith had never heard a bird growl before, but Bezel managed it.
‘Oh. Her. To know where you are.’
‘And?’
The falcon winked. ‘Your secret is safe, Empress. I muddied your trail. Kept her guessing.’
Nilith took a breath, not wanting to know the answer to her question. ‘What is she up to? Do they still think Farazar is in his Sanctuary? Tell me Araxes isn’t aflame.’
‘Seemed normal to me, if you call a shit-heap of human effluence and withered morals normal. They still think Farazar is safe and sound, or so it looked. Though there has been one fire, now that you mention it. I saw the smouldering wreck of a tower before I left.’
That did not fill Nilith with confidence, and her gut wrenched again. She held up a finger and bent over the side of the horse to vomit.
Bezel tutted. ‘Fuck me.’
‘Shut your beak. I think they poisoned me.’
‘You poisoned yourself.’
‘Mgrph.’
A moment passed as Nilith gathered her thoughts, like herding cats into a basket. ‘Throughout this whole ordeal, I have thought of her. Worried over her. I left her with my duties, hoping they would distract her long enough. Thought I could busy her with the whining of the Cloud Court.’ Nilith winced, feeling dread rear its head. ‘I’ve been away too long—’ Another heave stole her words. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth. ‘Who knows what she is plotting in my absence?’
‘What did you expect?’
‘From her?’ Nilith stared at the city, gleaming like treasure on the horizon. ‘I don’t know. For her to surprise me, maybe. But her hate for Farazar and me runs too deep.’
‘Can’t that Etane shade of yours keep her in check? Isn’t that why you left him behind?’
‘I can only hope he’s reining her in, but few things, if anything, can keep a Talin Renala in check. Especially Sisine. Not since Farazar got his claws in her. He and his parents spoiled her, poisoned her against me. It’s why she’s…’ Nilith grimaced. ‘Like she is.’
‘What? Arctian?’ Bezel clacked his beak, and she watched the wind pester his feathers.
‘I could have done more. Fought harder for her.’
Failure. The word stung her then, as it did whenever she dared to look into the past and wonder what she could have done differently as a mother. The past is a clear window, and yet memory stains it with its own colours. Motherhood had been soiled with gloomy tones.
‘Look, Empress, I’ve seen a lot of that family come and go in my time, and from what I can tell, she was always going to be her father’s daughter, and follow in his bloody footprints. She ain’t no child of yours, and I mean that in a good way. Like you say, the Talin Renalas had their hooks in her the moment the emperor was in you, pardon the bluntness.’
Nilith nodded. She had never felt like Sisine’s true mother. Sisine had come from her womb, true, but tradition had put her in the arms of nurses and maids instead of Nilith’s own, as if an empress was too busy to bother herself with a child. Nilith had tried to tear that tradition down like a moth-eaten tapestry, but Farazar, old Emperor Milizan and his wife Hirana had rallied against her, enforcing Sisine’s heritage. They had even named her without Nilith’s consent. Two years passed had like that, until the drama of the Cult and the murder of Milizan wrenched Sisine from the sunny plains of childhood to the sharp-toothed mountain range of life. Titles. Power. Greed. She had taken to playing with these instead of toys. Farazar had encouraged it, while at the same time becoming increasingly fond of his Sanctuary, leaving Nilith to battle with their ever more aloof daughter.
‘Still with us?�
�� The falcon’s voice made her flinch.
‘Aye,’ Nilith said, slipping back into an older accent.
‘See? Krass through and through,’ he squawked. ‘Which is why I’m surprised at this game you’re playing.’
This was no game. ‘What game?’
Bezel shrugged his wings toward Araxes. ‘Their fucking game. The Arctian game. The claiming the throne for yourself game. Husband sneaks out of his Sanctuary to go fuck southern girls. Fools everyone, including you. You find out, and decide to teach him a thing or two. I get it. Didn’t want to say anything before, but an outsider? Teaching them all a lesson? Beating them with their own dirty rules? All fine by me.’
Nilith narrowed her eyes at the bird. ‘That’s not what this is about.’
His golden orbs matched hers. ‘Oh, no?’
‘No.’
‘Then please, fucking enlighten me.’
They stared at each other, wordless, woman and falcon, each bobbing along to Anoish’s gallop.
‘Don’t tell me you’ve got something,’ he pulled a wry face, looking disgusted, ‘virtuous in mind?’
The past month hadn’t felt very virtuous to Nilith. It felt a lot like pain, and sickness, and fear. The desert had taught her a thing or two about virtue, but it was far from rewarded in the wilds of the Arc. Punished, even, just like the city.
‘We’ll see,’ Nilith grunted. ‘Once this fucking nonsense is dusted off my palms and all of Araxes has heard my words. We’ll see.’
‘Hmm. As the new and sole Arctian empress, I take it?’
‘You judge me, bird? Without knowing what I intend to do?’ Nilith demanded imperiously.
‘Shit. You sound just like Farazar,’ he replied, looking north. ‘Maybe there is a bit of Arctian in you after all. Bit of desert dust in those green Krass eyes?’
‘You better watch your… beak.’
Bezel launched himself from his perch and went back to flapping alongside her. ‘In all my years, I’ve found there’s always a reward hidden in selflessness. Like a charity that gathers alms for the poor yet paints its ceilings with gold.’