by Ben Galley
‘And no interests in the Church, Miss Jexebel? Your axe could have plenty more work.’
Ani shook her head, sure as she had ever been, and fighting the urge to spit on their robes. Of all times, now was the time for restraint. ‘A tavern is what Temsa should have stuck with, and I think that’ll do just fine for me. I want a quiet life, if that’s such a thing in this fucking city. I want no part of this. And you can keep your smart-mouthed locksmith for all I care.’
The pause was heavily pregnant. Ani raised her axe to hold it below its double blade, blood still dripping from its notched edges. ‘Well, have we a deal? Or does my axe need to do some more work?’
At the foot of the dais, Danib tensed.
Her heart beat like a battle drum as she turned the copper edge of the axe towards them. Her eyes crept to Danib again, hoping he wouldn’t move any further. She had always wondered about fighting the big monster, old Ironjaw, and how many pieces they would have to carve from each other to find a winner. Perhaps it was finally time to find out.
It felt like a week passed before Liria waved her hand. The squeak of the opening doors set Ani’s boots moving, slowly, as she cautiously watched the shades in the alcoves. She tried to hold back the sigh of relief that threatened to burst from her.
Temsa’s soldiers moved with her, sweating more profusely now even though their freedom had been granted. A few jogged, not trusting the Cult to keep their word. As it turned out, Ani was the last to leave, and with one last nod, she closed the doors with a bang, shutting all of Temsa’s idiocy and trouble behind her. For good.
Ani Jexebel wiped her hands on her sleeve and, with a satisfied sigh, sheathed her bloody axe.
‘And now?’ I asked, unable to tear my eyes away from Temsa’s headless corpse. The severed neck was still pumping blood, but it was a gurgle now, instead of the fountain it had sprayed earlier. I couldn’t quite see his face, but the sight of it detached from his neck was pleasant enough. Enough for a gruesome scene, at least.
The rabid wolf was dead. All of his spite, his cruelty and his foul ambition had been paid for with the swing of an axe. The only taint to the satisfaction was that I hadn’t been the one to swing it. It was an off sort of justice, like seeing a tree fall on a thief as he flees.
‘He will be bound and presented,’ Liria said softly, her eyes also fixed on Temsa.
‘A present for the princess,’ said Serek Boon, clapping a soft blue hand on my shoulder. ‘So you’re the one everyone has been talking about, eh? Those in the know, that is. You’re going to make us proud.’
I immediately didn’t like this fellow, with his gaudy chains, sheer silk, and permanent air of smugness and entitlement. It was a trait I found in most politicians: they made it so very easy for me to hate them. The glowing hound sitting at his heels, however, was infinitely more interesting. A phantom, I’d heard the sisters call it.
‘When do we go to the Piercer?’ I asked the sisters, ignoring the serek.
‘Tomorrow,’ said Yaridin, already guiding me off the dais. ‘As for you, Caltro, tonight you rest. A final gift of the evening. We will show you to quarters, and you are free to read, to explore the Cathedral, or simply to rest, and think.’
‘You spoil me,’ I said. I gave one last look to Temsa’s head as I trod the shadows between the columns. I could see his face now, staring up at a long-gone Ani Jexebel. It wasn’t hatred in his eyes, for once, but fear, surprise, and disbelief. Perhaps even a hint of sorrow.
I wondered how being a half-life would sit with the twisted old soulstealer. In the morning, I would find out. I rubbed my cold hands together as I walked from the chamber.
Chapter 15
Problems
I tell you again, there is something being built beneath some of the major avenues! Look at the facts, damn you! I have reports of subsidence from a tavern and a jeweller on the Avenue of Oshirim. Others have complained of noises, or of shades moving carts of earth in the middle of the night. Why won’t you investigate this matter? I demand answers!
An excerpt from letters repeatedly sent to the Chamber of the Grand Builder in 994
The armoured shutters suffocated every room in the royal levels. They covered the peak of the Cloudpiercer in sheets of copper and iron. Arrow slits were the only way sunlight penetrated the gloom they cast. Shafts of yellow light speared the pinstripe metal and marble floors at sharp angles. Dust motes danced on the precious breezes they let in.
Royal Guard and shade soldiers in full armour stood at every doorway, every stairwell, every junction, and even in the more precious or private of rooms. They were armed to the teeth, with short spears, swords and hatchets. Shade triggermen in scale mail stood in silent formations along balconies, or waited behind covered peepholes. Not a single eye amongst them left the sky.
The Sanctuary had ranks of guards standing before it, clogging up the grand corridor like a cork in a wineskin. A rather fearsome cork at that, bristling with hooked lances and spiked shields. The empress’s chambers, although empty, had a similar treatment. The guards around Sisine’s chambers accounted for a good quarter of the fighters occupying the top floors of the Piercer.
There was a fetid silence about the royal chambers. They were unnaturally empty, with most of the house-shades sent to lower, less important levels. The Cloud Court remained vacant of its sereks, and those that lived in the Cloudpiercer had retreated to other towers, or those of allies. The air behind the building’s armour was taut as well as stuffy. An uncomfortable silence hung between the soldiers and guards. Every cough and shuffle reverberated around the pristine marble corridors. It brought about a sense of dread, not confident readiness.
Sisine sensed it. Curse it though she might, anxiety stuck in her mind like a splinter.
The sand fell begrudgingly through the hourglasses spread about Sisine’s chambers. Waiting for the hours to pass was a depressing pastime. Watching an hourglass closely enough made moments feel like they were being dragged through molasses.
Sitting still had never been one of Sisine’s virtues, ever since running through these marble corridors as a child with minders and nurses scurrying behind her. She was trying it now, and finding it altogether tiresome. Her chambers had been roamed and paced to death, and as General Hasheti had strongly suggested that she not roam the balconies, one of her sitting rooms would have to suffice.
Sisine had chosen one with the shelves full of scrolls. An old hiding place before her tutors had begun to drag her from games and into adulthood. She had never liked the smell of the place, and it had only increased with the years. She didn’t like it now, but it was distracting enough. Sisine drank in the musty smell with relish.
Some of the scrolls looked familiar. Their labels or cases had certain colours, or strange glyphs, that tickled her memory. Sensing another distraction, Sisine pushed herself from the opulent couch and went to the nearest shelf. She wrinkled her nose at the dust, and let her fingers walk over the familiar scrolls, remembering their titles.
Emperor Phaera’s Legacy.
Ruling Houses of Araxes Years 566-760.
Notable Successions & Assassinations.
Proverbs on Ruling a Half-Dead Kingdom.
The Tenets of the Bound Dead.
Whether there were answers to her mood – perhaps even her problems – in these scrolls and parchments, she didn’t care. Sisine hadn’t the inclination to waste her time looking. She had been schooled in this literature a long time ago. Whatever was in her mind now was a product of the tutors and their droning. These were the scrolls of a child. A juvenile. She was above such things. She was an empress-in-waiting.
And wait she had.
Patiently so, ever since she had learnt her place in the order of Araxes at the tender age of six. Where else is one supposed to ascend to in life when they are born only a handful of murders from the top?
She reached for a parchment off the shelf. The Tenets of the Bound Dead. A simple, decorated page listing the Tenets in fan
cy, ancient glyphs. Sisine squinted, reading them silently. They were such simple words to define a kingdom as vast as the Arc. Perhaps the whole of the Far Reaches, in time. Certainly during her time. Perhaps then she could call herself an empress, instead of a princess.
Sisine lifted her head to the high shelves, and wondered how many scrolls would be written of her conquests; how many princesses would grow learning her name, and how she had beaten a new age into the Arc.
This time, she reached for a scroll: a fat, heavy thing encrusted in dust and ink-stains. Its title read Ruling Houses of Araxes Years 761-877. Jerking the handle, Sisine saw the mess of names scrawled across it in the usual tentacle-like fashion scholars used to show the ever-shifting and interconnected families that had ruled the Arc. Few reigns lasted more than a smattering of years. Nine was the longest she saw in her brief reading. Here and there, families were cut off completely with no heirs, replaced by an entirely new house. The scrawl introducing each house and the circumstances of its ascendance did not interest her. Only the names.
She remembered none. Not a single name. Sisine recalled no statues or busts of these people. Barely even a silken tapestry featuring them. It was shameful, really, that none had left a mark on Araxes even as little as a hundred years ago. It made her angry that they had merely been concerned with staying alive, rather than having the guts to seize more. Even her father conducted his wars from the safety of his Sanctuary. Sisine curled her lip contemptuously.
Before she let the scroll snap shut, she spotted a familiar name. Another Sisine, thirty-second of that royal name. Dead one hundred and fifty years now, before the Talin and Renala houses reclaimed the throne through butchery. They ended up killing each other over it. The thirty-third Sisine – and a Talin Renala, too – was just a thumb’s length away and born twenty years later. She not lasted past her second birthday.
With a sneer, she threw the scroll back on the shelf and turned to face Etane as he drifted into the room. The noise of his armour had given him away.
He looked resplendent in a silver suit of plate and fine mail, polished to a gleam. The crest of the emperor was chiselled into his breastplate, alongside a dark feather symbol. A helmet hung ready at his belt, alongside a curved knife. His mighty sword Pereceph balanced on his shoulder. It had a fresh glow to it.
The same couldn’t be said of Etane himself. The old shade looked as glum and bothered as Sisine felt. The distractions of the scrolls and her future faded, and doubt came crawling back in their place. She cursed him for it.
‘News?’
‘None, Your Wonderfulness.’
‘Nothing about Widow Horix?’
‘No.’
‘No word from Temsa of the attack on Boon?
‘Not a peep.’
Sisine clicked her knuckles against her palm. ‘Then why the fuck are you here?’
‘Checking you weren’t tearing your hair out, Your Magnificence.’
Sisine folded her arms behind her back, bracelets jangling, and approached him. ‘Tell me, Etane, how long have you been a shade?’
‘You know how long—’
‘Remind me.’
Etane sighed. He was not fond of the subject. He even moved his hand up to the white scar on the right of his head, where a Renala mace had punctured it long ago.
‘One hundred and twenty-six years, Princess.’
‘And of that time, how long have you spent serving the royal houses?’
‘One hundred and twenty-six years. Passed down from ruler to ruler. You know this.’
Sisine smiled. ‘And in all that time, somehow, despite constant rebukes from however many royals, you still think it fit to speak with such cheek. You are a house-shade, Etane, not a court jester. There is a good reason my great-grandfather banned their kind.’
Etane bowed his head, whether seeking patience or forgiveness, she didn’t know. ‘Your mother never minded,’ he said at last.
Sisine wanted to strike him, but that seemed to do little in the way of curbing his tongue. ‘Don’t mention my mother to me! The woman has abandoned us, and if she ever returns from Krass or wherever she has run to, she will find a very different Araxes greeting her.’
‘No word from your falcon, then?’
‘In all honesty, Etane, I’ve given up caring. She gave up her chance at the throne, and now I’ll teach her the lesson of turning her back on me. Her and father. She’s just lucky she escaped my knife.’ Sisine patted her hip, where hung a blade encrusted in silver flowers.
‘Maybe that’s why she left in the first place,’ mumbled Etane as he looked around at the shelves.
‘Then she is a coward as well as a fool. I have greater problems to deal with. Such as your recalcitrant, oafish ways,’ snarled Sisine. ‘I have half a mind to throw your coin into the Nyx when I sit upon the throne, and be done with you.’
Etane met her gaze, and held it firmly. ‘Then be done with it, and I’ll have my freedom at last. It’s been a long hundred and twenty-six years, Princess, and if I’m being honest now, I think I’ve earned it. So by all means, be done with me. And when the next schemer comes to claim you, the same way you are aiming for your father, I hope you regret not having me there at your side.’ He drummed his gauntlets along Pereceph’s blade.
‘You dally with treason, shade.’
‘Says the princess plotting to kill her emperor.’
Sisine was about to give him a stern lecture on the validity of forced abdication in Arctian royalty when a noise of armour came crashing through the chambers. All discussion was thrown aside. Etane placed himself between the princess and the doorway, his sword balanced across his arm and ready to stab.
‘State your business!’ he yelled, making the soldier skid he stopped so hard.
‘A message for the empress-in-waiting, sir.’ The man waggled a fine piece of parchment, littered with scrawl.
‘From whom?’ Etane asked, snatching it away.
‘From Serek Boon.’
Sisine’s hand stopped in mid-air as she reached for the message. Then she snatched it, half ripping it, and eagerly devoured every word. Then again, disbelieving it.
‘OUT!’ she screeched, sending the soldier sprinting.
Etane waited until the papyrus was a crumpled ball in her hands. ‘Temsa?’ he asked.
‘He has failed me,’ she said, in a voice so strangled by anger – and, though she wouldn’t admit it, worry – that it came out as a whisper. ‘Failed!’
‘What does Boon want?’
‘To hold court!’ she shrieked. ‘He tells me the sereks will be gathering come midday. Tells me! He goes on to say ambassadors of the Church would like to attend, as they have news. Not in two decades have they been allowed inside the Piercer, and this dead bastard thinks he can change the rules!’ Her anger became a shrill cry, and she ripped the papyrus ball to shreds. ‘That eagle-legged fuck Temsa has ruined me! How could he fail me now?’
Etane thumbed his wrinkled chin, waiting for the tantrum to end. ‘Weren’t you going to kill Temsa anyway? Show the city you’d caught the big bad wolf?’
‘That’s the point now, isn’t it, you idiot shade? Now Boon can play hero all he wants. Why else summon the Cloud Court? He has stolen my plan.’
Etane had the sort of look that was normally followed by the words, ‘I told you so.’ Sisine cut him off before he had a chance to speak.
‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
She needed to pace. Then she needed to throw something across the room. Preferably at Etane.
A sealed Sanctuary. Horix stealing the locksmith. The confounded flying machine. Sisine’s problems had already mounted tenfold. Now that Temsa was possibly dead and with Boon lording it over her, those problems had begun to tower over her. Sisine bared her teeth.
‘Fine! We forbid the rest of the sereks to enter the Piercer! Special circumstances. Kill Boon there and then. I’ll do it myself!’ she spat.
‘Boon will suspect that. He’ll refuse.’
‘Fine. I’ll send a runner.’
‘We ignore Boon!’
‘He’ll just gather them elsewhere, and he’ll say you’re losing it. Denounce you.’
‘We have the word of the emperor behind us, curse it! The Piercer is in danger!’
‘So you’ll hide like your father?’
Sisine lashed out at him then, hurling a scroll into his face. Etane leaned casually to the side and let it smash against the shelves behind him.
‘No!’ she yelled. ‘I refuse.’
‘Then you know what you need to do. Unless Farazar comes out of that Sanctuary to stop this, it’s your blood against Boon’s weight.’
Sisine scowled at the shade, stepping closer once more so she could stare at the vapours of his face, and the vicious scar across his bald skull. They barely stirred. He kept his usual blank expression, one many decades practised. ‘You once belonged to the Cult, Etane. I have never forgotten that. Nor will I. You would not be serving their interests over mine, would you?’
The shade actually managed to look offended, though his tone was dry. ‘No, Princess. I would not be. Not in the slightest. My best interests have always been for this family. Whoever rules it. Last time I checked, that is not the Cult.’
‘Hmph,’ was all Sisine had to say on the matter. Trust was not earned or built in Araxes, never mind the royal reaches of the Cloudpiercer; trust was stamped out. Trust was a weakness. Something for betrayal to work with, an open door for a thief. Confidence in oneself, coin, and power; that was what was earned and built.
Sisine shook herself, trying to forget her anxiety, and waved Etane ahead. ‘Go. Prepare the guards and the Court. I want every serek checked! Every weapon confiscated. As much as a thick thread or a sharp ring, and you throw it out the nearest window. My house, my rules!’ she said, breathing hard. ‘And fetch Rebene, so he may answer for his uselessness.’