by Ben Galley
The shade shrugged, then shook his head, and Temsa took that to mean the usual no, or, “whatever”. It was the best he ever got out of the dumb shade, but at least it was consistent. All Danib cared about was the simple matter of bloodshed. Unlike Ani. Who would have thought the big, battle-scarred Scatterwoman lacked backbone when it mattered?
‘Just as I thought. You should learn to be more like Danib here, m’dear,’ Temsa ordered. ‘As for Caltro and Horix, I have eyes looking all over the main city. Danib wounded her machine. She can’t hide for long now that the mists have faded. Now, if you’re finished complaining…?’
Silence answered him, and Temsa turned back to the window with a sigh.
Emperor Temsa. It had a ring like a lunch bell on a summer’s day. Where he had grown up in Belish, before a man had taken his leg, he had heard such a tolling from the riverbanks, and raced through meadows with the cackling of fellow children in his ears. Those were fine days. Fairy tale days. But all fairy tales hid an inner darkness, no matter how sparkly the prince, how determined the princess. There was always a witch. A wolf. A dragon. Temsa’s had been a butcher. A man who made a job of removing limbs from those who hadn’t the coin to save them. Boran Temsa had avoided debtors’ prison, and the Nyx, but he’d paid all the same. And he’d paid more. In sweat, silver, and blood. Not his own, mind, but hired blood, from hired swords. Up and up and up he’d climbed, building businesses from the sand until a whole district was his. Now tordom. Shortly a serek. Perhaps even an emperor. And why not? It was owed to him. Just like every other Arctian. He had taken what was his. Dared to take steps no others had yet taken. Why shouldn’t the throne be his, dead gods curse it?
Emperor Temsa. ‘Emperor fucking Temsa,’ he whispered under his breath to a distorted cityscape.
A familiar face greeted him at the gates of his tower: Etane, standing in gold armour and with a mask of mail pushed up onto his forehead. His inordinately large sword was strapped to his back.
‘What?’ Temsa greeted him coldly as he stepped from his carriage. His soldiers swarmed around him, but he waved most of them away. ‘Hasn’t the princess forgiven me yet?’
‘For which failure?’ Etane asked, smiling in a sickly way. ‘For failing to stop Horix escaping? For losing her locksmith? Or for consorting with the Cult?’
Temsa was the picture of shocked innocence. ‘I did no such things.’
‘I will convey your rebuttal to Her Majesty.’
‘You do that,’ said Temsa, brushing past him on his way into his courtyard. To his dismay, Etane followed his entourage in. Danib did a poor job of keeping the shade separated from Temsa; he practically strolled alongside Etane, staring down at his sword.
‘Did you have any other purpose here, besides loitering?’ Temsa challenged him.
‘Yes, indeed,’ Etane replied, coming closer. Even Ani didn’t bother to keep him out of reach, and Temsa had to keep Etane’s distance with his cane.
‘The empress-in-waiting wishes you to eliminate Serek Boon, as requested. And she gives not a fuck for whatever dealings you have in place with the Enlightened Fuckwits. She wishes you to know that you had better not fail a third time, or she’ll cut you to pieces herself and throw them from the Cloud Court as morsels for the crows.’
Temsa tapped his claws. He was almost impressed. He had also never seen Ani’s eyebrows lifted so high. ‘Her words?’
Etane nodded. ‘Her words.’
Stomping his cane, Temsa sighed dramatically. ‘Fortunately for her, I am loyal to the throne and our good empress-in-waiting. Rest assured, shade. Preparations to put good Serek Boon to death for good are already underway.’
‘Are they, now?’ The shade looked far from convinced.
Temsa jabbed his cane at his second in command. ‘Ani? M’dear?’
‘Underway,’ she growled, eyes hazed and firmly fixed on the skyline.
Temsa had barely let his sellswords sleep, never mind getting them ready for an assault. He could push them, though. He had enough men. That was one thing he’d learnt in all his years of letting others bleed for him. Most things can be accomplished if enough meat or vapour is thrust at it.
‘How soon might Her Majesty expect the task done?’
‘We will be paying Boon a visit imminently,’ said Temsa. ‘Tonight, in fact.’
Etane clapped his hands together, making barely a sound. ‘Good news. It’ll go some way to improving the empress-in-waiting’s foul mood, I’m sure.’
Temsa performed a shallow yet elaborate bow. ‘How glad I am to hear it.’
Etane turned, his eyes lingering on Danib as he spoke. ‘I highly recommend you don’t fail her again, Tor. It could spell the end of this business relationship,’ he warned. With that, he strode away, pulling a white silk hood over his head to keep himself from the hot sun.
Temsa clanked his way towards the grand doorway, letting a clearly fuming Ani stomp alongside him.
‘Tonight, Tor? Tonight?’ she grumbled. ‘We can’t—’
‘We have the men. Some of them have no doubt had a nap at their posts by now. Give them a good wash, a feed, new blades, and they’ll be ready to do some sharp-work in no time.’ Temsa tried to ignore the poorly-concealed groan from his soldiers.
‘We have no time to waste!’ he barked at them. ‘No time at all!’
‘You—’
Temsa whirled on her, heat prickling his cheeks. ‘What, Ani? What is it now?’
The woman stared back at him, matching his glare for intensity. An awkward silence passed as scores of soldiers looked on, waiting, watching. Danib even stretched for his sword at one point, just before Ani relented with a great clearing of her throat.
‘Inside, you reeking bastards. Have a fucking wash.’
Temsa smirked as he passed beneath the arch of the doorway. ‘Better, m’dear. Much better.’
The look Ani chased him with could have speared him alive, but he was too busy muttering the word ‘emperor’ over and over to care.
Chapter 12
The Vengeance
Announcing the annual centipede races, covering twenty miles of Duneplain and Outsprawl city street! Organised by Tor Finel, a keen enthusiast of all things furred, feathered, or shelled, the race will grant the winner fifty shades! Price of entry = one shade. Apply within.
From a tattered poster found in Far District
My morning had been spent mostly staring at the sorry attempts of the shades to patch up the ship from bits that had been strewn about in the crash. It was an amusing entertainment, of sorts, and it passed the time easily enough. All I had to worry about was shifting about at regular intervals so I could stay in the shadow of the great, sagging envelope.
Envelope. The word peppered the shades’ jumbled shouts. It didn’t sound like a bloated, patchwork bag for whatever gas or smoke lifted it. Envelope sounded like something that had horns and bounded across the desert, but I wasn’t going to argue. The crew seemed as tense as me, wondering where their half-coins were, whether Temsa had yet claimed them, and whether they still owed any allegiance to the widow.
After days apart from my coin, I sensed a strange pull towards her, it had to be said. I think it was only clearer when I tried to rail against it, like a reminder of the binding spell’s leash. Why somebody would want to worship a god that invented binding a soul like this was beyond me.
Somewhere around noon, when the shadows were at their shortest, a call come from a lookout on the dune above us. I swear the thing had shifted somehow without me noticing, and I had done enough mindless sitting and staring that morning than most people do in a month. The ripple in its peak had changed and seemed further away from me, as if these dunes were waves stuck in slower time than us, breaking on the shores of the city. I had never seen the like of them, yet already my fascination with the vast reaches of sand and grit was wearing thin.
Horix came striding out from inside the ship, where she had been sitting all morning, bawling the occasional order at
a hopeless lackey. Her soldiers had fanned out into a rough circle, with half of them roasting in the sun for hours on end. I had tried the sun, hoping it would stir some warmth into my cold vapours, but it had just reminded me of being staked down in the widow’s garden, and I decided the shade was best.
‘What is it?’ she hissed at her new captain. A call was sent up and the lookout came sliding down the dune-face. Even with weight behind him, the sand still tired him, and he came running up breathless.
‘Shapes moving between the outlying buildings, sir. Tal.’
‘People, soldier?’
‘Lots, Tal Horix. In groups, moving from spot to spot as if looking for something. Shades, mostly. Some living with them, too.’
Horix jabbed a finger into the man’s chest. ‘Red robes?’
‘Well…’ The soldier thought for a moment. ‘Mostly grey with some red underneath.’
‘Cult,’ said Horix, spitting the word out like a melon seed. ‘They want their piece of the Vengeance. Omshin! Get your soldiers ready. I want this ship defended. Shades! Have you fixed my ship yet?’
I let the shouts and hollering wash over me, as I wondered what the Cult would want with Horix and her machine, and how she fit into the Enlightened Sisters’ plans. She likely didn’t fit at all, and that was probably why they were so keen to hunt her down. I wondered how much of their plans Horix and her flying machine had jeopardised. And me, for that matter, and my escape from Temsa. Since my chat with the sisters, I had attacked one of their own and run from them twice. Part of me wondered if this was them coming to fetch me, as they had promised, or coming to end me.
Stay useful, Caltro Basalt.
It was shady – pardoning the pun – how the Cult had arrived in the Outsprawls so quickly. They either truly had a great reach, or ran like rats through tunnels. I couldn’t help but admit I was intrigued by what these cultists were up to.
A score of Omshin’s soldiers, copper- and silver-plated, spread out in a semicircle and slowly proceeded up the dune while the rest formed a tight ring around the Vengeance. I tucked myself behind their shields and watched between their heads.
I don’t know how long I watched, but no matter how much I stared, no arrows swarmed the sky, no bodies came rolling down the dunes. It was one of those moments you can feel hovering like a buzzard, waiting to strike. Yet it never came. The soldiers began to spread out and hunker down to peer over the lip of sand.
Hushed whispers floated down on the breezes. Omshin had turned and was nodding deeply at the widow, confirming the lookout’s warning. She saw him, and I could hear her foul muttering. Using the butt of his spear, Omshin scratched a glyph in the slope of the dune. It looked like twenty. Or thirty. The higher Arctian numbers got, the more they confused me.
The rough word for “cult” followed, and Horix’s mind was made up.
‘Don’t let them get anywhere near the Vengeance!’ the widow yelled across the bowl of sand she had claimed as her own. ‘Kill on sight. No quarter for these shades, nor the living dolts that have fallen in with them!’
A clap of thunder sounded, making me jump before I realised it was the soldiers, thudding their gauntlets or spears against their shields in unison.
‘And you shades! Get back to work!’
‘Yes, Tal!’ came the not so enthusiastic response from the dead. Even so, the hammering and shovelling rose to a new level of fervour. I turned back to the dune and watched the soldiers digging into the sand. Triggerbows and short, recurved bows were run up to them. The sandy peak soon bristled with bolts and arrows, waiting to be nocked.
And that was it. Nothing happened for several hours. I began those hours tense – as any person would be when they found themselves on the cusp of battle – but I ended them slumped in the envelope’s shadow, rolling my eyes and trying to hold sand grains in my hands.
I poked my finger into the hot sand by my elbow, eliciting a hiss and reminding me it was almost time to move. I felt like one of the sabre-cats the Krass lords liked to keep lounging by their fires. Wherever it was cosiest, the tufted cats would sprawl. I favoured the cool instead, shifting where the breezes blew and the shade kept the sand at a respectable temperature. Beyond the shadow, I could have roasted ham and eggs on the sand.
The soldiers had tried to evade the sun as much as possible, but where the formations had to be maintained, the men and women had baked in their armour. Shields were held like umbrellas, holes dug in the sand, but still quite a few collapsed, and had to be swapped with soldiers from the ship. The Arctians were not immune to the sun, no more than I was immune to striding across a Krass ice-steppe naked with my bollocks swinging free.
Whatever the banging and tinkering was achieving, it wasn’t making the widow happy. Hours had bought the workers only more anger from their mistress. I had no idea how close they were to fixing the Vengeance, but until the flying beast was sitting upright and straining at its tethers, Horix kept striding back and forth, screeching orders. I wondered if it would take another night, and if that was what the Cult bided their time for.
They were clearly out there. Omshin and his dune-dwellers had spotted them shifting about all day, sometimes striking far out east and west, as if to double back and surround them, or sometimes hammering some contraptions of their own together in ramshackle huts. There were more of them now, too. The captain didn’t know where they were coming from but they trickled in one by one in irregular intervals. Frequent enough to be worrying.
Despite the Cult’s charm and charity, nobody likes to be surrounded. As the sun began to lose some of its bright edge and slip to the west, I found myself up and wandering the formations of guards. I peered at the surrounding dunes, watching for a blur of red or blue in these accursed heat-waves. I was not a fan of them. If the air itself did not want to touch the sand, then why should I be forced to do it?
I pitied anyone that had need to walk across the whole fucking desert.
Evening came to wash the sky of its colours, and still the Cult had not reared their heads. My lookout duties had gone from idle wandering to intense staring into the greying desert. The sun had not long since disappeared below the jagged, distant reaches of the desert and Sprawls. When I found a moment, I looked upwards to watch the heavens fade from red to black.
The silence had become interminable. Torches had been lit, and their crackling was the only conversation. The shades were busy sewing patches from the inside of the huge balloon. Needles and glue made far less noise than hammers and nails, but I would have taken them back. Silence was too blank a canvas. Every desert noise was stark and strange, raising my hackles even though I was sure I had fewer worries than those around me.
Horix had ensconced herself in the prow, nestled into the controls, brooding and peering out through the doorway with a fierce glare. Her eyes glinted under her hood, and whenever I passed by on my circuits, I watched them follow me, like a haunted painting.
As night won over the sunset, Omshin called for more torches and spread his soldiers in a wide ring around the hollow between the dunes. Still nothing challenged them. I crouched, feeling useless and increasingly perturbed with every moment that dragged on. The Cult certainly knew how to make a person wait.
In my prickly brand of boredom, I took to climbing the western dune. I found it even harder than the soldiers made it look. My lack of weight only made the sand slip more, and it took me some time to wade up to the top. I was greeted by several furrowed brows on my arrival. One grizzled old soldier was mid-sip on a hip flask. The other was a woman, seemingly annoyed at how I’d spent so long reaching them.
‘Slow night, huh?’ I said, using whatever time they gave me to look out into the desert. I wanted to spy a gleam of blue. A puff of sand. Anything to give this lingering threat a face. The human mind was cursed with the idea that knowing what was coming for you somehow made it less fearsome. I felt the morbid urge, same as all, but I despised the logic. Just because I can see that the beast charging at me is a
twelve-foot, slavering bear doesn’t change the fact my face is about to be gnawed off. In fact, if that had been my death, I’d rather not know a fucking thing, and take my own blade to my throat instead. That wasn’t cowardice. That was just good sense.
The soldiers knew their orders and had no words for me. They followed my gaze instead, and the three of us watched the desert in awkward silence. In my peripheries, I could see others watching us, uneasy that I wandered free. Half a dozen more wisecracks limped through my head before I decided that I didn’t care any more, and began to slide back down the slope.
A dune must have been the only hill that could tire a person going down it. There was a strange weakness in my legs, and the difficulty of keeping my feet free from the cloying sand. Even on the flatter climes it shifted with every step.
The wind said my name. It was so spoken so softly I could have dismissed it as my imagination. Caltro, it whispered, a breath that stirred my vapours into curls.
I stared out past the Vengeance and the weaving channel the dunes made. A low ripple of sand made a fine wall for the soldiers. There was a gap between two of them, no doubt on purpose to tempt the attackers in. I strolled towards it, and as I walked I heard the hiss of the envelope filling up, and of whatever alchemy the shades were brewing inside it. I had asked the workers all sorts of questions earlier in the day, but got few answers. I had seen powder in sacks being carted about, full of something like crushed crystal. Whatever magic it was, the rumpled balloon had begun to bloat again, and rise, tilting the craft slightly further upright.
My feet took me to the gap, where I was no doubt watched carefully for a few moments before the soldiers’ eyes turned outward again. It was the cusp of twilight; the colour had been sapped from the day and eyes were still struggling to adjust. No moon shone tonight, just one lonesome star on the horizon.
I stared over the slight ridge, where a small, shadowy gully had collected wheels of dry, knotted bramble around a beetle carcass. They scraped against each other with every breath of wind. I hadn’t heard my name again, neither in the breeze nor the skeletal rasping of what passed for plants in this desert. I came to the conclusion that my boredom was concocting intrigue for me.