by Ben Galley
‘You must continue picking locks for the time being.’
The flattery was welcome, but it changed little about my indignation. ‘Then what about my half-coin?’ I spluttered. ‘What if she melts my—’
‘Widow Horix is a curious player indeed. Cunning. Sharp.’ Liria swapped a look with her sister, like parents rolling their eyes over a misbehaving child. ‘For some reason, she holds you in high regard, but like all the rest on our list, she will be removed from the board. Your half-coin will be reclaimed, Caltro. Fear not.’
It was poor comfort. I had plenty to fear.
Yaridin hummed to me. I could feel her hand in the small of my back, guiding me towards the door. I wanted to shrug away, but Danib’s hand was also on me. It felt like an anvil had alighted on my shoulder. My back was turned on the dusty games and velvet card tables. I wasn’t sure if I’d lost or won tonight. Currently, it felt as though I had been robbed. And I was the thief.
‘You’re just going to send me back?’
‘You should leave the game to other players for now, Caltro. When the time is right, we will come for you. With our help, you shall have your freedom,’ whispered the sisters in unison. ‘Be patient.’
I was growing tired of being patient. I wanted to call them both a pair of useless cunts, but I held my tongue tightly and allowed Danib to grab my arms and steer me into the night. Not that I could have stopped him.
‘Stay useful, Caltro Basalt,’ the sisters chorused, before the door slammed behind me.
Once again I was marched through the streets, though this time with a head full of words and half-promises. As I trod the sandy flagstones, I pondered the offer of freedom and kinship the Cult had extended. Although the offer had come from the mouths of Araxes’ grandest schemers and I was still undecided on how genuine it was, to know I was not alone was somewhat warming to my cold soul. The weight I carried had lifted somewhat, as though I had shrugged off leaden boots.
Once I’d spied the point of the Rusty Slab above a rooftop, I decided to break the silence. I turned to the scarred monolith by my side, my tone cheerily conversational. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t like it if I told Temsa about this? About your friends in red?’ I asked.
Danib’s fist struck me in the nose, sending me ricocheting from a wall. Blue and white lights swam before my eyes until I was thrown into the cool of a stone corridor.
‘I guess not, then.’ My voice was somewhat muffled by my hands, and yet behind them, I smiled. Leverage, however small, was always a gift for those with the necessary lack of scruples to use it. Whether I trusted the sisters’ words or not, they had inspired me. Not in the way they’d have liked, I wagered, but I was grateful for their mistake. They had shown me that the Cult’s promises, the gods’ begging, Horix’s writ of freedom, and Temsa’s offer were all worth less than horseshit. I saw now that the price of their freedom made me nothing but a pawn. I refused to be a pawn any longer. I was done being patient, done doubting myself. I had power. Value. I had spent enough time in Araxes awash, floating about on the scant mercy and loose promises of others. I could feel that changing now. I would play the great game of Araxes, and I would win my coin. Gods, cults, widows and soulstealers be damned.
At last, my tide was turning. I was coming ashore.
Chapter 22
Everybody’s Got Dead
Law creates crime. Crime creates law. Like shadow and lamplight, one cannot exist without the other to define it.
From ‘A Reach History’ by Gaervin Jubb
Noises were plenty in the fight-pits. The pulsating cheering of the onlookers, stacked like the layers of a tall cake, reaching up to the skylight far above. The cackle of winners. The cursing of losers. The wet smack of sweaty palms and beer-soaked gums. The tinkle of silver flicking from hand, to purse, to bucket, to ever grubbier hand. The harsh spatter of the occasional patron pissing against the plain sandstone wall.
But for all the various sounds, there was one kind that held Scrutiniser Heles’ ears: the noises coming from the pits. The straining. The grunting. The dying.
Spread in a triangle under the dusty shaft of orange light were three holes. Each was the depth of three men and about twenty wide. Their walls were sheer and plain, hewn earth. Antelope and bull horns had been drilled into their higher reaches, pointing downwards like teeth, as if the pits were the throats of some colossal dunewyrm. At their edges the crowds stood, leaning as far as their daring – and the railings – would allow. It wasn’t uncommon at the fight-pits for an overly zealous soul to fall in and become part of the fight.
Hooded and dressed in smart silks, Heles was squeezed against the railing, watching the fight from the front row. It was a long way down to the sandy floor, strewn with palm fronds and blood spatter. This was where the noises emanated from, where the unlucky, the criminal, and the insane tried to survive whatever games the pit-masters had thought up. Tonight it was gangs of naked shades against one living. The shades got a rock each. The man or woman got as much armour as they could stagger about in and a copper spoon.
The man in Heles’ fight-pit – a skinny pickpocket, from what the announcer had bawled – had already succumbed, and was currently having his face smashed in. The crowd around the black iron railings were going wild. A miniature fight broke out nearby between two women; somebody had clearly taken offence to losing. Musclebound shades moved in to break it up. They were perhaps the only half-lives in the crowds. Torturing the dead was a sport reserved for the living.
Judging by the squeals and shouts, it sounded as if the living in the other two pits had also fallen to raging blue vapour. The cheers and bawls of outrage drowned out the sounds of rock finding skull. More shades emerged from hatches to drag the bodies away. The announcer appeared upon his lofty pedestal so quickly there was barely a pause between the loser’s last breath and his first.
It wasn’t his shining baldness, nor the ponytail sticking from the side of his head, nor his heavily painted face that made Heles hate him. No, it was the fact he was draped in a suit of yellow canary feathers.
‘Well, fight fans!’ he bellowed through a cone of cheetah hide. ‘Get ready to place your bets, for now we give our survivors one last chance to win their freedom!’
The grimy hall began to throb with the stamping of feet. Heles looked down at the remaining shades in her pit: four of them, all pale Scatterfolk shades, probably prisoners of war shipped in for cheap sale and back-alley soulmarkets. The saying was that being sold to the pits was better than being sold to the desert mines like Kal Duat; shades survived at least a week longer in the pits.
‘Last shades standing get their coins! Double or nothing for losers. Extra silver in it for streaks! A’here we go!’
With the snap of a hatch door, a cage was pushed out across the sand and palms. The hungry snarling was immediately drowned out by the hubbub of fierce gambling. Bet-takers struggled to keep up, screeching terms as silver rained down on them. Heles ignored the riot, watching the cage and the shades cowering from it. They hugged the earthen walls.
It was an enormous ram, pitch-black of fleece and apparently enormously short in temperament. Three pairs of wild milky eyes studded a face that was bared to the bone. Horns curled like gnarled tree branches. They had also been dipped in molten copper, and wreathed in spiked rings. Sparks flew as the ram hurled itself at the cage’s bars. As it half-baaed, half-roared, Heles saw the multitude of fangs crammed into its mouth. The hooves that raked the floor of the cage were claw-like, like the talons of a bear. No peaceful grazer, this ram.
The announcer waved a palm frond across the mouth of the pit. ‘All bets are now… FINAL!’
Heles had to brace herself as the press swung from the betting tables back to the railings. She winced as an extremely rotund woman leaned close and bellowed, ‘Go oooon, sheep!’ in her ear.
‘Will we see freedom here tonight, fight fans?’ came the announcer’s call.
A resounding thunder-roll of laughter shook the
hall. Chants of, ‘Baphmet! Baphmet! Baphmet!’ filled the air. In the pit, Heles saw one of the shades crumple to her knees and close her eyes.
‘It’s up to you!’ yelled the announcer, waving a hand and grinning at the naked, quivering shades. Chains hauled at the cage’s door, cranking it open. ‘Well, then! LET’S! RELEASE! THE BEAST!’
With a bellow that momentarily conquered the noise of the fight-pits, the ram burst forth from its cage. Scrutiniser Heles watched one shade torn limb from limb in a cloud of sapphire smoke before she decided that was enough. Elbowing herself clear, she turned away from the fight, if this slaughter could be called such a thing.
She was seething with anger when she reached the wooden plank they called a bar. A slam of a fist brought her a clay pot of beer, and she choked it down to keep from screaming.
A hand alighted on her forearm. Heles almost twisted it off before its owner yelped a familiar name.
‘It’s Jym!’
‘Fucking dead gods, Proctor. I almost broke your arm.’
It took a moment for him to squeeze the pain from his hand. He blinked at her, watery-eyed and puffing. The skin under his tattoos was flushed. ‘You’re telling me! Ahhhh.’
‘I told you not to sneak up on me,’ she hissed. ‘Progress report?’
‘Farassi doesn’t seem to be here. I think it was a false rumour. And if you don’t mind me saying, why ain’t we investigating Temsa? It’s strange the Chamberlain wants us to follow Farassi, especially after our report…’
Heles surveyed the balconies one last time. ‘It is strange, isn’t it? You’re correct for once. You’re learning, Proctor Jym.’ She saw him swell even out of her peripheral vision. It should have brought some warmth to her heart, to see a young proctor so proud of doing such a grimy, thankless job. Instead, it made her snarl.
‘What’s wrong, Scrutiniser?’ Jym asked.
She briefly contemplated dismissing him with a wave and a curse, but he needed to hear the truth. ‘A pointless fucking night is what’s wrong, Proctor. You might be new, but you better get used to failure. You’ll see a lot of it in this job. Job. Hah. More of a curse. Because just when you see a glimmer of success, progress of any kind, somebody above shits on you. Like you don’t already have enough mess to deal with while you’re down here, in gutters like these.’
Jym’s silence was cold and awkward. At last he found some words. ‘I thought you never failed.’
‘I don’t. This is out of my hands,’ Heles snapped, slamming a fist on the bar. Another beer quickly appeared after a shifty look from the barkeep. The scrutiniser narrowed her eyes. ‘Temsa gets to keep on rampaging, going unpunished, and we get to stand by and watch. How fucking rewarding. He must have powerful friends to get Rebene on his side. And that’s all it takes to ignore the Code. Power. What use are laws if they don’t apply to everyone, Proctor? What is the point?’
Even in the face of her heresy, Jym’s optimism refused to be crushed. It was deeply infuriating. ‘It’s much easier to fail when there’s somebody else to blame, ain’t it? Like me leaving the locks open the night the soulstealers tried our family’s door. I blamed them. It’s easier, for a time, but it doesn’t last.’
Despite the fact he was right, Heles shook her head resolutely. ‘Stick to the Code, Proctor. You’re a shit philosopher. And I told you, everybody’s got dead. I know all about blame, like lighting fires in cellars only to see two families burn alive. How’s that for you, Jym? I’m not angry because I think I failed, or because of blame. I’m fucking angry because others have failed me. There’s an infinite difference, and that is why you will stay here. Stick around in this shit-hole and make sure Farassi isn’t just late.’
The proctor licked his lips. ‘And if he does appear?’
‘Do what you’re supposed to do. Fucking scrutinise.’ Heles thrust her hands into the pockets of her cloak and stood straight, like a watchman over a stormy sea. Jym retreated slowly, as though wondering whether he should press her for more, but he wisely refrained. The proctor melted into the crowds and left her be.
Escaping from the stuffy air, Heles returned to the streets. An hour she spent standing in a doorway, several down from the musclebound shades guarding the fight-pits, until the sun moved overhead to scorch her face. She let it, for a time, before striding west for the rim of the Core Districts.
Heles had calculated. She’d measured. She’d weighed. It was what she had done for a decade and it was what made her feet move now, despite all the risks and orders that stood against her. Fine, she couldn’t go after Temsa, but Rebene had said nothing about his conspirators. Conspirators like the Widow Horix.
With cloak-tails swishing behind her, and a stride that paused for no bumbling pedestrian, Heles weaved through the crowds like an eel through a forest of kelp.
The walk from the outer district was long, and sunset was falling by the time the scrutiniser found herself in fancier surroundings. She hovered by a cart full of steaming pastries, and decided to quiet her growling stomach. Eating was such an inconvenience; she wished there was a magic draught she could quaff and never have to eat again. The streets would be better for it.
There she waited, until the half-eaten pastry in her hand grew cold, and the stall-owner started to give her leering looks. She gave him a withering glance and chose another spot to linger, one that sold spring water instead. The salt and spice of the – frankly foul – pastry had given her a thirst.
Horix’s tower began to sparkle as the lamps were lit. It seemed the widow was being scant with her whale-oil; barely a dozen windows glowed across the entire tower.
‘Lying low, are we, Horix?’
Something beneath Heles’ feet trembled for a moment. She looked around for any dropped barrels or passing carts, but the street was still. Busy with people and shades, yes, but no more than usual.
Heles crouched to lay a hand on the stone, but felt nothing but sand, clinging to the grease on her hands.
When the darkness had reached an appropriate level for her duties, Heles stepped out into the thin flow of people and edged her way past Horix’s tower. Two laps, she did, before spying a garden through a narrow alley. A wall blocked the way, spiked and tall, but she could still see the fronds of palms and the open space of a courtyard. She’d contemplated the front door, showing Horix’s men her Chamber seal, but that usually just meant long waits, lies, and heavily abridged tours of dark and overly legal buildings. Back doors were always better.
Heles ducked into the small gap and crept along it. Brick and sheer adobe brushed against her fingertips. When she reached the wall, she found no door or hinges, just sandstone and crumbling mortar. Her fingers could touch the top at a jump, but there was nothing to grasp but spikes and chiselled stone.
Pressing her feet against one wall of the alley, and her back to the other, Heles tensed herself and began to climb, shuffle by shuffle, step by step. When she’d shimmied above the spikes, she saw a sparse garden hemmed in by walls and the flanks of the tower. Two guards and a shade stood watch at a door a good stone’s throw from the last of the plant rows. The foliage below Heles was far out of the reach of their lamplight.
It was her last moment to think, and she used it sparingly. The Chamber believed in evidence over suspicion, but evidence was hard to find when nobles hid behind their locked doors and lofty games. Evidence had to be rooted out, hunted down, and a scrutiniser couldn’t do that by standing on street corners.
‘Fuck it.’
Heles’ hands found the edges of the wall, and she yanked herself towards them, falling down into a bush below. Fortunately for her, it was the fruity sort, not the thorny. Even so, she felt the cold of something squashed bleeding into her thigh. She stayed put, watching for moving shadows, but none came.
The plant rows gave her darkness, and from it she watched the guards to measure their movements. They were turning out to be pretty stationary until a shout called them inside, and the heavy door was locked with what sounded like
six bolts. The widow was playing cautious, too.
Even though the twin lamps stayed burning, this side of the tower lacked windows – for security, of course. Heles grew bold enough to creep beyond the foliage and onto the dry scrub separating her and the building. She could have marched more than a score of steps and not reached the sandstone. By the door, she noticed a pole stuck in the ground, with a thin rope coiled about it. It looked like something fit for a hound.
Heles’ foot knocked something solid and metallic. She looked down at a divot in the dust and saw what looked to be the head of a bolt. Heles, painfully conscious that she was visible in the lamplight, bent down to pick it up.
The thing didn’t budge. Clearing the sand, she got a good grip, but all it gave her was a squeak. Scraping with her nails, Heles dug deeper until she found its base. A seam of cold iron met her fingers, and…
‘Wood,’ she muttered as she watched some of the sand grains fidgeting.
Heles knelt, pressing her ear to the ground. She heard a low rumbling, something akin to chiselling or hammering. It was constant, yet ever changing. At one point she swore she even heard a shout.
Heles’ mind was already scrambling over possibilities like a recruit over an assault course, desperate to survive until the end: the solution. She felt stuck at the base of a ten-foot wall.
There. She heard it: a shout. More like an order, yelled by a foreman. ‘What in the Reach—’
Six sharp bangs sounded as bolts were dragged back. A man swollen with muscle and two lesser creatures burst into the garden with purpose in their eyes.
Heles drew herself to her full height and reached for the seal in her pocket. ‘Scrutiniser Heles of the Chamber of the C—’
The big man’s fist came swinging. Heles threw up an arm to fend it off, but his fist kept coming, clobbering her in the shoulder.
‘I’m here on official business!’ she yelled, before knuckles caught her under her chin and sent her spread-eagled to the sand.
As boots began to pummel her ribs and chest, she swore she heard the familiar crash of something landing in a bush. ‘No!’ she cried out.