by Ben Galley
‘Yes. And thanks to you, Boran Temsa and the empress-in-waiting, the element of surprise has been shattered.’ There was thick contempt in her voice, and it wasn’t all for Temsa. She seemed to harbour a deep hatred for the royals, and I wondered why. ‘All of you forced my hand. Years of planning ruined’
I chuckled quietly, confident in my position as her key weapon. ‘You’re just like all the rest. You want to claim the emperor’s half-coins. Put a throne beneath your arse.’
Horix turned on me, fixing me with a look so sour my vapours quivered. I thought she would strike me again, but her hand remained clenched by her side. ‘I am far from all the rest. Far and above. Tell me, thief, is it stealing if something is rightfully yours?’
‘You and everybody else in that accursed city think the throne is yours for the taking. Your laws have bred a misplaced sense of entitlement. You, Widow, are no different. Fuck it, even I could lay claim to it if I had the time and inclination.’
Horix dangled my half-coin with her far hand, too distant to snatch. ‘You? Ha! Not when you are my property, Caltro,’ she reminded me. ‘And as my property, you are still mine to do with as I please.’
I wagged a blue finger. ‘But not to snuff out like a candle. Not if you want to reach the inside of Emperor Farazar’s Sanctuary. And seeing as your soldiers are dwindling, and you tossed away a soulblade that could have cut at least to the mechanism – yes, that’s right. Lost now, though, isn’t he? – I appear to be your only hope.’ I paused, watching her craggy face bunch and crinkle over and over with all different shades of anger. ‘Face it. Your grand plan now rests on a broken machine and a dead man. Unless you think you can walk me into the Cloudpiercer with your handful of men, you’re treading on thin ice.’
Horix cocked her head at me and I realised the Krass phrase had no bearing in the desert.
‘Treading on quicksand…?’ I tried.
‘You Krassmen and your disgusting tongue. Yes, I want into that Sanctuary. And while you are still useful to me, Caltro Basalt, no, I will not snuff you. You are going to open up that vault for me.’
I looked around, watching a soldier gathering broken panels of wood. ‘You’re forgetting one huge problem, Mistress. Your machine is in pieces.’
‘Nothing changes. We repair, we return to the sky, and we teach Temsa, the Cult, and Sisine Talin Renala a lesson.’
I caught the growl underpinning that name, and wondered what it was the empress-in-waiting had done to the widow to deserve such anger. She hadn’t uttered Temsa’s or the Cult’s name in the same way, and to me, they were the villains of my tale. I wondered what I had missed.
‘We teach them all a lesson,’ the widow hissed, bitter as a winter’s edge.
‘What did the royals do to you that distresses you so much?’ I asked. What makes you so withered and curled around your spite like a tree root around a stone?
Horix stiffened beneath her shawl like a crow flicking rain from its feathers. ‘What did they do to me, Caltro? They took everything from me. A great debt is owed to me, and I intend to reclaim it. What better way to do that than exercising the right of law set in thousand-year-old stone, condoning Farazar’s murder should I succeed in its execution?’
‘Vengeance.’
‘Precisely.’
It saddened me that I saw the logic in it; a cold and ruthless dagger, good for nothing but murder. I heard the guard to my right grunt with something I took to be pride. ‘What a dim allegiance you Arctians owe to each other. Murderers, the lot of you. The only difference is you’ve legalised it. Made a mockery of decency and order.’
Horix laughed at me then. ‘And the Krass are so different? Give it a decade or two, Caltro Basalt, and your king will be locked in his own vault, sitting on his own mountain of half-coins.’
I held my tongue, not trusting myself to speak. It pained me to think she could be right.
‘There is no denying progress, Caltro. The dead are here to stay. Who do you think built that?’ She waved her hand across the whole gargantuan stretch of city. I couldn’t even see Araxes’ boundaries, no matter how much I squinted. Like a weak star, the more I looked for them, the fainter they became.
‘More ambitious minds than the one who now sits on its throne, that is for certain,’ Horix continued, voice like boots on gravel. ‘Grander, wiser minds than that pustulent coward who calls himself emperor. He is nothing but a selfish child, hoarding his toys.’
Her withered hand poked from her sleeve and grasped at the giant building in the distance, the pillar for the sky. For a moment, as she pretended to crush it with her fingers, I glimpsed behind that veil of spite. I saw the simplicity of a woman who had been deeply wronged and was fighting to make it right, just as I fought for my freedom. I longed to know how or why she had been slighted, but in any case it had turned Horix into the widow who now stood crookedly atop a dune: her face aglow with dawn, eyes narrowed, driven solely by vengeance. For a moment, it gave Horix a humanity I had previously been blind to, and made sense of her cruelty.
It was but a brief moment, and she snatched back her hand, realising I was watching.
‘Farazar will see the error of his ways soon enough,’ she assured me.
‘And then what?’ I asked.
Horix cocked her head, as if her plans ended with the slaying of the emperor, and she had never thought past the lesson she ached to teach. Her bitterness had blinkered her. ‘I will rule this empire as it’s meant to be ruled, of course. With an iron fist, not through a steel door. Rodents like Temsa and the Cult of Sesh will find themselves wishing they had never darkened my doorstep.’
I did a short and circuitous tour of the dune’s edges, considering fishing for answers, maybe to distract myself from my uncomfortable mood. Something was bothering me about the widow’s words, and the amount of venom in them. The guard shuffled with me, making sure I didn’t run. Horix didn’t seem to care.
‘What has the Cult ever done to you?’ I asked.
The widow’s shoulders arched, vulturelike, and that grasping hand came to claw for me. ‘They sought to break the very walls of society. Take the throne down altogether. They are a sisterhood of vipers, stuck in old ways of worshipping old gods of darkness. Deluded fucks and dangerous fools, Caltro Basalt. That is what they are.’
I arched my back to avoid her nails. I saw the copper in their chipped varnish. ‘Fair point. Well made,’ came my rapid reply. Horix turned from me, clearly done with our conversation, her patience worn thin.
‘And what happens after, if I break the Sanctuary for you? Now that my writ means nothing?’ I called after her. I hoped to snatch my half-coin before it got that far, but I needed to hear it. ‘Will you honour our bargain and free me?’
‘Break the Sanctuary, and our bargain will be honoured,’ Horix said over her shoulder.
As she walked away, I realised I had one last question, and a challenging one at that. Not for the widow, but for me. ‘And what if I can’t?’
The widow whirled, hands on skinny hips, face puckered into a glower. ‘Can’t what?’ she snapped, as if it was a question so pointless and rare it confused her.
‘Not once have you thought to ask me whether I’m capable of opening the emperor’s Sanctuary.’
‘This? From the so-called best locksmith in the Reaches?’
I held my hands wide. ‘Do you not remember our conversations, Widow? Of my failing the earl and his son? I may be the best, but there are some locks in the world even I can’t break.’
‘Then I will take my chances,’ came the taut reply, and I believed her. I knew I wasn’t important enough to halt her plans completely. Where a lock cannot be broken through skill, brute force can usually win it over. Horix’s purchase of me at the soulmarket had been a fortunate happenstance for her, no matter how much importance she or I tried to daub on it.
I tried to hide my wince, but she saw it, and leered.
‘And that is why you will test me no further, shade. You’r
e fortunate I’ve tolerated your questions so far. I advise you not to keep trying, unless you wish to learn the true depths of death.’
‘Fine. I’m done. But I won’t forget your promise of freedom, Widow. That still stands.’
Horix chuckled as she walked away, feet leaving gouges in the silvery sand. Her guards clamoured around her like hens to a coop as they escorted her back to the downed Vengeance. I stayed atop the dune, alone but for my thoughts.
I tried to tease apart what little I knew of Araxes’ web of lies and found myself only more tangled. Whys and what-ifs plague a soul throughout life and in death. It is human to mourn the past, and to curse the way time slips through our fingers like sand, impossible to catch or reclaim. But there comes a moment – in my experience, usually in old age, the gutters, or in last, painful minutes– where a soul must let go and surrender to time’s nature. I had heard a scholar once call it “time’s arrow”. Judging by how it seemed to me since Kech’s knife, I’d have called it time’s dirty great big lance.
Trying to relax my churning mind, I gathered up what I knew for certain. I was in one piece. The half-coin was still around the widow’s wattled neck. Pointy was lost to the Sprawls. But primarily, I knew I was the linchpin of several plots, all of which centred around Emperor Farazar’s Sanctuary and the throne it led to. No surprise, really. Power was always the brightest diamond in the pile. Some believe it was money, or men in armour, or land, but all of those were tools to breed power. Not the other way around.
In the many jobs I’d taken on for others, their prize was almost always a means to more power. The thrill and challenge had been enough for me. Again, the immutable past taunted me, and in that moment, I asked myself whether I had aimed too low in life.
Thrusting the useless question away from me, I asked myself what else I knew. Clearly, I didn’t trust Horix with my half-coin any more than I trusted Temsa, or Sisine, or any of the living I’d met in the accursed city. Trust was a long-lost concept. Liars and cheats surrounded me, and I was a thief. That was a life and world I was supposed to be used to. In truth, only the gods and a pair of enlightened sisters had offered me attention that didn’t involve putting a bag over my head or forcing me to clean silverware.
That much was clear. But what don’t I know? That was often the more dangerous of the two questions a person had to ask themselves from time to time.
I turned back to the Cloudpiercer. Its lofty height was now catching the first light of day. The summit glowed a liquid gold as the sun touched it, and I saw the shining glass at its peak. I watched, eyes half closed, as the dawn ascended its sheer flanks. I pondered the Sanctuary hidden within it: the locks, the mechanism, the strength of its bolts, the ingeniousness of its creators. Stories and rumours of its impregnability roamed far and wide through the underbelly of the Reaches, even as far as my remote part of Krass. I felt trepidation and intrigue in equal measure.
Farazar’s Sanctuary was said to be the finest vault ever built by human hands. Unbeatable. Uncrackable. Uncircumventable, and a whole armada of other un-words that were bound to put the sweat on any thief’s brow. Until now, the Sanctuary had stayed in a part of my brain reserved for things not even worth trying, such as wooing the Krass king’s daughter, moving a wagon with my mind, or wrestling a fenrir with one arm tied behind my back. There was an apt word for such things, and that was “impossible”. And now I was being asked to do the impossible.
I put my teeth against my lips, tasting nothing but cold and wondering what lock I’d broken that had got the attention of such people as an empress-in-waiting. I had never known such faith in me in life. What rumours of my work had crossed the sea, and how had they grown so swollen with distance and telling? It was irksome that only in death had I become the greatest locksmith in the Far Reaches. I considered whether I should hold out on claiming my coin; if it was worth trying my ghostly hands at the Sanctuary…
With a tut that belied the depth of my disappointment, I dismissed that nonsense. My opportunities to claim my coin were best taken now, while I could. I would stick to my promise to myself and the dead gods. My freedom came first.
‘CALTRO! Heel!’
I wished dearly that I could have spat in the sand.
As I turned, I gave the city one last glower, and saw a faint glow on the edge of the Outsprawls. I was jealous of that ghost, whoever she or he may have been. For they were not me, and they had not the weight of the world on their shoulders, like the old myths. With a snort, I left them to it.
Chapter 11
A Fool Doesn’t Prepare
Talliers hold a sacred position in the banking institutions of Araxes. They are trained in arithmetic, record-keeping, and weights and measures for no less than seven years. Like Nyxites, or monks of the west, talliers are utterly devoted to the crafts, often spending their entire careers with just one bank.
From ‘The City of Countless Souls – A Keen-Eyed Guide’
The heat from the smoking sand made Liria want to cough, as if she had a throat once more. In all her centuries, she had never gotten used to it. Its crimson flashes stained her bare hands a deep purple. From the corner of her eye, she watched the dark grit rise and fall, building itself into brief yet broken and disfigured statues. One moment, the glare of a jackal. Another, a hunched man, missing limbs. The next attempt, a forked tail.
‘Perfect is the enemy of done, dear sister,’ Liria said, louder this time over the hiss and rumble of the forge. ‘Had we not forced the Widow Horix’s hand tonight, we would have been clueless.’
‘And we do not like… cluelessness.’ The voice was like a blade being dragged down the strings of an arghul, each vowel the shifting of dunes.
‘No, Lord,’ chorused the sisters.
Yaridin spoke up, less confident than Liria. ‘I apologise. My sister is right. Better we know and have time to adjust our plans.’
Red veins ran through the dark pile of churning sand, puffing more acrid smoke. ‘Adjust away. Adjust. Adjust,’ replied the voice.
‘We know where she is. A brother in the outermost southern Sprawls has spotted them,’ said Yaridin.
‘We will strike tonight, and rescue our brother Caltro. See he is delivered to the right hands,’ added Liria.
Again, the dark pile of sand glowed crimson, hotter this time. Angrier.
‘We draw closssse…’ The sibilance was drawn out as the sand in the forge settled down, turning in circles as though something burrowed into the hot stone beneath it. No more shapes rose. The smoke began to settle in thick black dust, coating the edges of the stone altar. The coals beneath the slab cooled to a dim russet glow.
Liria pulled her eyes away from it and turned to her sister, who was glowing brighter now the light had diminished. Yaridin yanked up her hood and led the way out of the room.
The corridor beyond its low ceilings and tiles of polished stone was cooler, airier. They followed it up a set of intricately zigzagging stairs that hugged huge square pillars, touching the doorsteps of one room for just a moment before jutting up to the next. Always up, tracing the edges of great vaults and caverns. Shade-glow bruised them blue and purple. Red cloaks flowed like blood in living hearts, swelling in open chambers. Myriad feet made hardly any noise on the white stones.
On a level far above the forge’s room they found a particularly swollen chamber of hewn rock, packed with blue and red forms. There were raised voices deeper into the press.
‘Move aside,’ spoke Yaridin, and the crowd of shades – and a large number of still-living brothers and sisters – parted eagerly.
‘Away, all those with less than five decades under their feet,’ Liria ordered, and almost all of the room departed with muted whispering. There remained half a dozen shades, standing stoically at a channel cut into the far side of the chamber. Its walls had been plastered and painted. Black, for the most part, but with crimson stars echoing the map of the heavens above.
Liria and Yaridin approached, gauging the looks of the
other shades. Two living members of the church stood to the side, hooded heads bowed but hands firmly grasping the edges of stained barrels.
‘The matter, fellow brothers and sisters?’
One of the living spoke, one of their own Nyxites for their private stream of Nyxwater. ‘It has turned to a trickle, Enlightened Sister. Sesh’s Vein is failing us.’
Another spoke up in a squirrelly voice. The pins beneath his white feather told them he was a scholar. ‘For the first time in centuries.’
Liria went to rest her hands on the edge of the sandstone channel. Above it, on the wall, five stars had been painted. Four hung lower, simple dots, while the fifth that sat higher in the black sky was drawn in great flourishes of red. It held her eye for a moment before she looked down.
The channel ran across the back wall, from one side of the room to the other. Its sandstone had been smoothed but not eaten by the years the Nyx had flowed over it. The dark stain the waters had left on the channel was the evidence of its waning. Halfway down the channel, the sandstone turned ashen, then a dark grey, and at its base, a rivulet of inky water no thicker than a decent rope.
‘But it still flows, yes?’ she asked the small crowd.
One of the Nyxites spoke up. ‘Yes… Sister, but—’
‘And how many hekats have you stored in the cellars below us? Or the warehouses above? Or across the city?’
The two Nyxites looked at each other, lips quivering as they silently spoke numbers. A conversation of shrugging followed before one of them turned back and said. ‘Tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, Sister.’
Liria waved her arm, dismissing the two men to continue their work. ‘Then keep gathering.’
‘Keep storing,’ said Yaridin. ‘And the rest of you should know better than to gawk and gossip. You especially, scholar. Do not let talk of this spread.’
The shade in question smiled at her. ‘The time is near, Sisters,’ he said, before hustling down a set of stairs.