by Ben Galley
‘What a charmer you are.’
‘Shut up,’ I said. The barkeep heard me, and before I could explain dumbly that I was talking to my sword, she narrowed her eyes over her shoulder and pointedly told me to go fuck myself.
Guessing two beers was probably my limit, I took a moment to swill the last of my brew down, rather unsatisfactorily. I left the tankard on the bar with a loud clank and made for the door. I almost forgot the skin wrapped around me and stumbled against a table on my way out, much to the grumbling of a hooded and sour-looking man. He flashed me a dangerous look, and I swiftly exited.
The rain had not slowed its onslaught, instead carrying on through the day and into the afternoon. I raised my face to the broody sky as I emerged into the largely empty street. Most citizens had been driven indoors. Only ghosts and drunks were left to walk through the downpour. In my borrowed body, I could feel every pit and patter. To this warm skin, the drops were cold, smelling of salt and desert dust, a homely scent. Steam hovered faintly over the warm ground and churned mud. I drank it all in as deeply as I could before the sword cut through it all.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Decided what you’re going to do yet?’
‘Stop hounding me. You’re no better than a god.’
‘You must be the only soul in the Arc, maybe the Reaches, who would resent being the chosen hero of the gods.’
‘I’m no hero,’ I grumbled. ‘One of them said exactly that. I just died at the right time.’
‘He said it was your stubbornness they needed. That I can believe. You say they’ve been visiting you ever since you died, correct? I’m sure they didn’t choose the second-best locksmith in the Reaches by mere coincidence.’
My answer was a mutter. ‘The best locksmith,’ I told him. ‘At the very least, I’m the best dead locksmith in this shit-smeared world.’
I held my tongue as I walked past a squad of ghosts in red cloth and black mail. They were carrying short swords and round shields, and for a moment they seemed like any other hire-swords patrolling the streets. It was then that I recognised their colours. I stared, brow furrowed, as they jogged around a corner.
Leaving Finel’s zoo, I had been so set on my path. One visit from a god, and I was already questioning myself. Entangling my fingers in my soaking locks, I tugged at my hair, as if I could pull the answers from the garble of conflicting opinions and ideas, all clamouring for attention. My mind had been noisy in life. In death, the voices seemed to have developed a passion for volume.
My strangled grunt made a passerby flinch away, but I didn’t care. I took the nearest alley and curved back in the direction of the city core. I was on its edge now, close.
The Enlightened Sisters had shown me the error of my insular ways, and so I decided to do something I had avoided like the plague in life: ask for advice.
‘What would you do, Pointy? If you were me?’ I asked, feeling cowardly seeking the answer in somebody else. ‘Who would you trust?’
‘Me? Truly?’
‘You.’
The sword took a moment to think. ‘None of them. I would run, if only to test my legs.’ He sighed. ‘And yes, I would probably drink a beer.’
I threw up my hands, about to curse his hypocrisy, but he was not finished.
‘But I would feel wrong,’ he added. ‘Though I can hardly believe it, that was clearly one of the dead gods. Oshirim, no less. And to have him practically beg you…’
That made me raise my chin.
‘Caltro, if their words are true, what would be the point in trusting any of the others? Just for a few more days of so-called freedom? I would do as they ask. I can’t believe you’ve ignored them this long.’
‘I bet I could make those days count,’ I said, but I knew it was a lie even as the words were falling out of my mouth.
‘You kid yourself.’
‘I do. I always have.’ I took a moment against a wooden beam, opening my mouth to taste the run-off from a crimson awning. It tasted sweet to me, earthy. Staring at the soaking cotton, I sighed. Sesh himself, this so-called dark lord of dark lords, had come to look at me. Oshirim had said Sesh had made a mistake in doing so, and perhaps he had. I had seen the evil in those eyes. The hunger. The animal rage. There had been nothing like that in the eyes of Basht, or Haphor.
‘Perhaps this threat of a flood is real,’ I admitted.
‘Do you want to wait to find out?’
I took another gulp and spat into the street. I was determined to fit in as many old and trivial habits as possible before I lost this body. Tiredness was already seeping into me. ‘Why’s there always got to be some great evil? Hmm? That shit should be kept in fairy tales and bedtime fancies. Why can’t people just be happy being fed and alive and fucking their days away? Why is it not enough? Why do people like Temsa and Horix and the Cult need more? Why does some dark lord always want to come and destroy life?’
‘Where do you think those stories come from, Caltro? All the way through history, this has happened. Again and again. Peace and war. Back and forth. In fact, Bemia Timsule, the great second-century playwright who—’
‘Pointy,’ I warned him again, in as low a voice as I could manage.
‘Fine. Timsule said we can’t help it. Humans, that is. We’re all bound to compete with each other so long as the concepts of “more” and “less” exist. Doomed to measure ourselves against one another. Food, silver, half-coins. Wherever there is something we don’t have, we want it, and will do a great many things to get it. Better. More. Comparison is our great downfall, the mother of both envy and pride. Perhaps it’s the same for the gods.’
I had been doing that all my years, only I had compared myself against what I thought I should be. Richer. Thinner. Freer. Better. I realised then the amount of angst that practice had brought me, and it had caused me to run for my entire life. I ran from my parents and their simple calling. I ran across half the Reaches to stay alive. I even ran to Araxes to escape penury in Taymar. I ran from that ship and had not stopped running since, even though I’d died in the process. I’d only wanted my half-coin so I could keep running. And why? My thirst for better and more.
I dwelled on that for a time, listening to the unique music of the rain, ever-changing. Its instruments were the puddles, the awnings, the clay chimney pots. I could lose myself in such moments, but this was not a time for retreat and insulation, which was what I normally would have chosen. This was a time for action. For change.
‘Fuck it all.’ I laughed as I spoke. ‘I swore I’d get my freedom, and that’s what I intend to do. If it means I have to save the rest of the world to do it, so be it. The gods can just count themselves lucky.’
With a flourish, I drew Pointy and raised him to the downpour before slamming him into the ground. I shrugged off my robes, and after a stumble, I was running headlong at the nearest wall: the bluff of some mighty tower above us. Angling down, I began to pry myself from the man’s mind, muscle, and skin. With a wrench, I was free, skidding through the mud on my heels. The man careened forwards, arms at his side, angled at the wall like a billy goat.
There came a thud and the man went limp at the base of the wall, splayed and naked. I had the decency to drag him into an alley and cover him with discarded sackcloth. It may have been wrong to start a virtuous path by robbing a man and leaving him to the rain, but I guessed he would have thanked me, if he knew what I’d decided. Nobody liked a cataclysm. If they did then they were an idiot, and probably deserved to perish anyway.
Tugging Pointy from the mud, I thrust him into my new robes, and strode into the rain with the most purpose than I’d had since dying.
Chapter 4
A Widow’s Whims
Ironjaw, they called him, a warlord of few words and untold bloodshed. Betrayed by his fellow lords of Belish and left for dead, Ironjaw returned to the city with nothing but his armour and his sword. For weeks, he waged war on the Belish lords, drawing out and defeating every hero they chose, or scaling the walls at
night to murder them one by one in their beds. So terrified of Ironjaw were the remaining lords that they raised a mighty army to stand against him. And so they did, on the first day of a new year, Ironjaw with nothing but his armour and a sword. They say that when he finally died, every last lord lay butchered at his feet, and his ghost arose from his body to continue fighting.
Old Southern fable
Widow Horix was bored.
She jousted with a cold slip of camel meat, pushing it around the gold circle of her plate with her knife. She barged aside a radish, sending it bouncing across the onyx tabletop.
All was silent except for the hissing of rain beyond the balcony, and the hum of a pair of hummingbirds dancing around a potted palm. Horix’s chamber-shades hovered nearby at the edges of the dining hall, as silent as the dead should be.
Days had passed since Meleber Crale had reported, and far too many for Horix’s patience. She had spent enough time counting the half-coins in her vaults, or watching the army in the basements hammering and sawing. She had barely eaten. Her nights had been more restless than usual. And all the while, no locksmith.
Horix hooked her fingers under the lip of the plate and hurled it against the nearest wall. The gold-painted porcelain shattered. Radishes and meat scraps flew in all directions. Both the hummingbirds and the chamber-shades made a swift exit, all save one half-life, who crawled around trying to gather scattered vegetables.
‘Out!’ the widow shrieked.
When she was alone, she slammed the butt of her knife against the onyx and fixed her eyes on the doorway at the end of the hall.
Once more, she struck the black stone, making the steel knife ring. The fist that held it trembled with frustration.
Horix was raising her hand for another blow when the thudding of monstrous boots announced Kalid’s arrival at the door. ‘Enter, Colonel!’ Horix barked before his knuckles touched the wood.
‘Intuitive as always, Mistress,’ Kalid said, voice hoarse and deep from dust. He closed the door and strode along the impressive stretch of the onyx dining table.
‘What news from the basement?’ Horix asked. ‘Is our new Master Builder Poldrew on schedule?’
‘Yamak assures me he is. Perhaps even ahead of schedule.’
‘Hmm.’ Her trust in anything Yamak said had died several weeks ago. Horix looked up at her colonel as he came to attention. His forehead was furrowed in a frown. Puffy bags sat under his eyes, as black as his unkempt beard. ‘You look tired, Kalid.’
‘‘pologies, Mistress. I’ve been up all night looking into this ruckus that happened over in Menkare District.’
Widow Horix placed her knife flat and reclined against the arch of her chair. ‘And?’
Kalid reported as though she were a general. It was possible to take a man out of the military, but the military never left the man, staining him a soldier for the rest of time.
‘I took ten of my men and we found nothing but a battlefield. A bloody mess. Seems Serek Finel was fond of keeping beasts, and they were let loose during the fighting. Someone told us the brawl was still raging between survivors in the nearby streets, but we found nothing of it except a few bodies, already being hauled away by beggars to be bound. I’m sorry to say the Cult were there, also, clearing up the mess and taking care of the wounded. They were wearing armour, but Chamber of Code scrutinisers and proctors stood right by them and didn’t bat an eyelid. Some even helped them.’
‘Sisine has gone too far. Where’s Serek Finel?’
‘He’s missing, presumed dead.’
‘Naturally. And who attacked him? Was it Temsa?’
Kalid bowed his head, as if he was personally responsible for the bad news. ‘As per usual, nobody knows. Not a survivor amongst Finel’s guards was worth talking to. The attackers wore no seals at all and only simple black armour. Sellswords and mercenaries, by the looks of them.’
Horix’s long, ruby-painted fingernails drummed on the stone. ‘The man is impetuous, and he grows far too bold. No doubt he has his eyes set on me,’ she said. ‘Any news from that half-life Crale? Or Caltro?’
Kalid’s head stayed bowed. ‘None, Mistress.’
The knife joined the shattered porcelain as Horix flung it angrily. ‘I grow tired of waiting for that spook,’ she snarled. ‘Time is running out.’
It was then that she caught herself, fist raised and teeth bared. Her game was not one of emotion, but of cold, calculating precision. She took a deep breath, placed her palms flat on the onyx, and rose from the chair.
The doorway to the balcony had been left open. White cotton curtains were draped across it. They were still and unmoving in the absence of wind, looking like veils of frost on a windowpane. Horix batted them aside, shattering the illusion, and strode onto the rain-spattered balcony. She stopped a few inches from where the rain fell. There, she could avoid the wet and stare into the soaking streets, watching tiny figures hurry through the downpour. It had lessened throughout the morning, but it was still far wetter than an Arctian was used to. Already she could see the lighter cracks in the low clouds, where the sun was trying to burn through. The wet clay smell of rain churning the streets filled her nostrils.
Horix looked to the Cloudpiercer, pale against the dark skies. Its upper third was lost to the cloud, and she found herself narrowing her eyes at where its lofty peak would have been. The widow had plenty of practice. Many hours she had spent gazing up at the Cloud Court and the emperor’s Sanctuary, grinding her teeth.
‘Colonel!’
Kalid was at her side in moments.
‘Gather your men. I believe it’s market day, isn’t that right?’
‘I… every day is market day, Mistress.’
Horix sucked a morsel of camel meat from between her teeth, plucked it free and flicked it over the balcony’s edge. ‘Precisely,’ she said.
The downpour had calmed to a drizzle: a light, musical pattering on helmets, pauldrons and umbrellas. The calming of the foul weather had stirred some more life back into the streets of Araxes. Half-lives were out in their droves once more, smocks of all colours spattered with fresh mud. There seemed a hurry in their step, as if there was lost time to be made up for. They hauled sacks and bundles, carted scrolls by the dozen under their arms, or jogged between what few stalls and shops had stayed open on that rainy day.
A few minor nobles clung to the dryer edges of the streets, huddled with their guards or acquaintances. They stared out from under awnings and pulled faces at the granite sky. Beetles and spiders strode through the mucky streets with ease, their riders sitting high in saddles and dry under wide pyramidal umbrellas of cotton or woven and waxed palm fronds. Brawny centipedes carrying packs and barrels gleefully churned up the mud, naturally fond of the wet. Their human drivers were far from charmed by the antics of the insects. Their voices were dulled by the rainfall and sloshing of feet through mud, but Horix could hear their cursing and the cracking of whips.
The more Horix’s gaze roamed the streets and avenues, the more she sensed the dangerous edge to the city’s mood. A threatening atmosphere was commonplace, as ever-present in Araxes as the droves of dead, the smoke from the dockland chimneys, or the dust from the Duneplains. Today it had been honed to a razor. She saw it in the gangs of house-guards standing in every doorway, the empty high-roads, and the extra boards nailed across every window.
Beneath her umbrella of gold filigree and black satin, Widow Horix marched through the mud with haste and without care. The widow held a faint fondness for the rain. It reminded her of time spent in the far, far north, where no buildings scraped the sky, where the dead stayed in the Nyx, and where the deserts were of ice, not sand. Her travels there had been brief, but she had found a kindred spirit in the harsh mercilessness of the northern wastes. Where the desert sun was brash and forceful, cold seeped. Cold crept. It wasn’t like Horix to reminisce, but her only pastime in the last few days had been waiting, and that tended to turn a mind backwards to days gone by.
&nb
sp; Behind her, two chamber-shades scrabbled to keep up with Horix while holding her black frills aloft. Around them, Kalid and twenty of his men formed a diamond of gold armour, shields and short spears. The colonel marched at its head, using his sword to move aside any dawdling half-lives or living. The few nobles that crossed their path gave them a wide berth, using the whole stretch of the wide streets in their efforts to stay safe and separate. Suspicion was rifer than ever with all the gossip surrounding Serek Finel. The house-guards would glare at each other, spears would waggle, but that was all. Horix almost wished for some action, even if only to alleviate her boredom.
The soulmarket plaza looked like a dinner plate hastily scraped of its contents. It was so empty, Horix initially thought the market was closed for the day, but the gold rope ringing the platform at the centre signified otherwise. The sandy stone around it was awash with ochre mud. The edges of the plaza glowed blue where groups of shades stood about in shackles. Several sorry-looking soultraders huddled under covered wagons. Their wares were scant today. Normally there were two or three times the number of shades. None of the merchants had opened their stalls bar one: a grumpy-looking tea vendor in a driftwood chair. Horix was curious whether it was the rain or the Nyxwater shortage that had resulted in such a poor offering.
A handful of buyers and nobles stood about, each an isolated island with a reef of guards. They all seemed to be waiting on a man who had clearly made an error in choosing a cream cotton suit for his day’s wear. Not only was it bespattered with mud, but it clashed with his thinning lemon-yellow hair, which had been plastered across his brown scalp like too little butter over too much toast. He was busy pacing back and forth between the traders, arguing in hushed tones about something that was apparently highly inconvenient to him and his business. Upon seeing Horix and her entourage emerge onto the plaza and join his threadbare crowd, the official tugged at his wet locks in frustration.