by Ben Galley
Wild-eyed and drawn with weariness, she had the cut of an easterner. I saw her skin was darker than an Arctian’s. Her hair was raven black, and though I imagined it had spent much of its time combed and curled, it was matted around her ears and thick with sand and mud. The emerald of her eyes was caught by my glow, and I saw a quickness and cleverness to them. They never seemed to stay still. And oh, how they watched me. I was never out of her sight; her back never turned, and the sword in her hand – my sword – was always pointed in my direction. During my time as a ghost, I had grown used to my nakedness, but now, under those piercing eyes, I felt the need to cover myself whenever I got the chance.
Pointy was strangely silent, as if owing something to this new master of his. ‘Come with us,’ had been his only words to me, silent and in my mind. I had seen a familiar twitch in this woman’s eyes, as he had no doubt reassured her I was worth taking along. She seemed shocked to hear a voice in her head, but she had not questioned it. Not yet.
My answers took some time in coming. For another hour or two we wound north towards the Core Districts. The eastern sky was beginning to blush a powder blue. Buildings lost to the darkness of the night started to find their edges again. Much to my delight, the soldiers’ horns had fallen silent for some time. Patrols had thinned to the point of vanishing. The lateness of the hour can defeat even the most determined of hunters.
Irritatingly, the woman took it as a sign to press on, not stop and hole up. I wondered what it was that drew her to the core, but if she feared attention, she was going the wrong way. Her logic was all wrong. When we bunched up at the edge of a wide thoroughfare fringed with palms, I took the opportunity to tell her.
‘We should find some place to hide.’
‘We press on,’ the woman growled at me.
‘They’ll start searching again come dawn.’
There are some people in this world who can shrink a person with a simple look or tone. This woman levelled both at me, and despite all my posturing, I felt like a scrawny child.
‘Look, I don’t know who you are, or why you felt the need to interfere tonight, but you’re lucky this talking sword – I can’t believe I just said that – this talking sword knows you or I would have lopped your head off with it already. Understand you are not in charge here. You haven’t the faintest clue what’s even going on. I suggest you keep your inane suggestions to yourself or fuck off somewhere else.’
I grimaced, and consoled myself with the fact she was likely angry over losing her friend.
‘Nilith…’ said the sword.
‘Shut up. Both of you.’
I watched Nilith stare across the street for a moment before bowing her head with a frustrated sigh. ‘Move,’ she ordered.
With the horse clip-clopping noisily over the flagstones, we dashed across the thoroughfare and into the next side street. We stumbled onto a pocket of penury in an otherwise soaring district. The houses here were low and poorly built, mudbrick plastered to look like granite. They leaned over drunkenly, making the going even more claustrophobic.
‘Trust her, Caltro,’ Pointy whispered to me. ‘She knows what she’s doing.’
‘As do I,’ I muttered, hoping the sword could hear me. Treachery, was what it was. He had fallen into the lap of some madwoman and forgotten me. He hadn’t seen what I had seen.
Soon enough, the dusky blues in the east began to burn orange, and the fires of dawn were stoked. With a curse, Nilith held up a fist. I almost walked straight into it. I had been too busy admiring an ugly old spire hanging above us, its sides spiked with wooden poles. Half of its plaster had fallen away over the years, leaving it piebald and sorrowful.
‘Fine. We hide for now,’ Nilith muttered, her words slurred with weariness. I had noticed her pace starting to fail.
I nodded. ‘What a great idea. Where?’
‘I don’t know about you, ghost, but I could use a bed.’ She pointed to where the lights of a building still burned. ‘Looks like a tavern to me, wouldn’t you say?’
The glyphs on the rickety sign said The Tal’s Castle, though it was anything but. Sandwiched between two lofty lumps of granite was an establishment that looked as though it had been stitched together, not built. From cartwheels to crates, discarded bricks to sailcloth, the face of the building was a hodgepodge of materials. None of it bore any symmetry. All of it was disconcerting to look at. They’d managed to get three floors out of the detritus, and a handful of slanted windows showed a bit of lamp or ghost-light. There were bars, but no shutters.
No matter what the weather, or holiday, or catastrophic event, you can always trust in a tavern’s doors staying open. I had the sudden urge to taste the sourness of beer on my tongue.
A sleepy-eyed stable boy lay slumped atop a barrel beneath the rickety sign. The lad nearly fell off his barrel as we approached. Nilith had sheathed Pointy, but any stranger in the depth of night is a worrisome sight to wake to, especially in Araxes. He blinked owlishly in my glow.
‘W—what?’
‘A bed,’ Nilith said, fighting a yawn. ‘In the stables with the horse. I don’t leave my… wares.’
The boy scratched his nose. ‘We got cots.’
‘Good, and I don’t want to be disturbed.’ She tapped the blade with a fingernail. The boy nodded emphatically.
‘S’a reputable place, miss,’ said the boy, sniffing as he took the horse’s reins. He seemed undecided whether the stench was Nilith or the big bundle on the beast’s back. ‘Got a bath too, if you need.’
Nilith rubbed her eyes and waited for the grubby child to fetch a key and open the stable doors, which were apparently made of driftwood and palm frond. Inside, the stables were dark, lit only by one fluttering lamp at the far end. I helped light the way as we followed the boy past half a dozen pens. Most were empty. I counted two horses, silver and black-maned, and one enormous centipede. It was curled up in a tight, spiralling ball the size of a tent. Its plates of burgundy armour rippled and rattled in its dreams.
‘A silver a night for stable and bed. Food’s extra. So’s drink,’ said the boy through a yawn. I smacked my lips habitually. Well, as best as a ghost can.
He opened a door that squeaked like a strangled mouse. Nilith took out her sword and leaned it against the driftwood walls of our allotted pen. There was straw on the floorboards, and nosebags of water and feed. The horse, a stocky desert beast, immediately moved to investigate them.
I had never been one for horses. It had absolutely nothing to do with lacking the legs to easily mount one. Nor was it to do with somehow finding my arse in a muddy puddle after every attempt to. They were creatures of burden, and anything that suffered the whims of most humans was likely to snap at one point. With a horse, that snap is likely to lead to a similar snap of the neck.
The stable boy returned with the cot: a simple wooden frame with canvas stretched between its corners. Nilith seized it immediately and positioned it at the entrance to the pen. A barricade, with me and her horse behind it.
The boy hovered around until Nilith dug out one silver coin and one copper, and pressed them both into the boy’s hand. ‘Supper, if there is any left. And beer.’
I caught a different edge to her accent. ‘You’re Krass,’ I said, once the boy had retreated inside.
‘As are you. Me? I used to be. Feel more Arctian now than anything else.’
Nilith still held Pointy in a claw of a hand. The other was held tightly to her chest, as if injured. She spun the sword on its point, drilling a hole into the board.
‘I don’t care if this sword vouches for you. It could be slaved to you. Some sort of sorcery. Or plain mad for all I know.’
‘You wouldn’t be far off…’
‘What is it? Deadbound?’
‘I am indeed.’
‘You keep quiet,’ Nilith ordered Pointy. She looked up at me. ‘We do this the old way, then. The Krass way.’
That was a sense I could grasp onto. I sighed, my tension lessened. ‘T
he traditional way.’
‘Questions and truthful answers until friend or foe has been decided.’
Pointy butted in. ‘I must say, I could probably tell the tale—’
‘Shut up, sword,’ said Nilith and I, together. We swapped uneasy looks.
‘You first,’ she said. ‘I want to hear it in your words. We’ll see what the sword has to say in a moment.’
That was easy. ‘What the bloody fuck was that creature you sliced up?’
Nilith crossed her arms, still favouring her left. ‘A slatherghast, if you must know. A foul thing from somewhere far away. It and its master had been hunting me.’
I opened my mouth to speak, and closed it as Nilith glared. Tradition dictated she speak first, being the one to suggest it.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Caltro Basalt of Taymar.’ I crossed my arms to match her. ‘Who are you?’
‘Empress Nilith Rikehar Renala, daughter of Krass King Konin, Lady of Saraka.’
I looked to the pommel of the sword, and found a serious look on Pointy’s face.
‘Ahhhh.’ It was the only sound I could think of making. I performed an awkward dance as I tried to decide between bowing and standing taller. ‘Well… then, Empress Nilith. Milady. Your question.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘A long answer, but the short version is I came for work, was murdered, and through a long series of tedious events, I am here. Why do you have my sword?’
‘Your sword?’
‘That counts as a question, and therefore avoiding an answer.’
Pointy was slammed into the floor. ‘Hmph,’ he grumbled.
We paused our mutual interrogation while the boy returned with a clay bowl of stew the colour of sharkskin, and a foaming earthenware tankard of beer. I tried to lick my lips as I watched the empress reach for it, slopping some foam onto her cloth-wrapped hand. I imagined it to be my hand, feeling the cold beer against skin filled with rushing blood…
‘Don’t you dare.’ Pointy must have seen my envy, and stopped me from pouncing. The empress was soon facing me again, bowl in her lap to cool, beer by her boot, sword still twirling in her fingers.
‘It fell from the sky a few nights ago. Skewered a soulstealer’s lad as he was about to call his friends. Well-timed. Lucky,’ she said, idly spinning Pointy around on his tip. I wonder if he ever got nauseous. ‘He was useful, so I brought him with us. It was impossibly sharp. You don’t just throw away something like that, now, do you?’
‘Is that another question?’
The glare I received was nothing short of murderous. This empress seemed to teeter on a blade sharper even than Pointy. I made a point not to push her. Yet, at least.
‘No, you don’t,’ I answered her. ‘Though I was made to. And in answer to your previous question, I dropped the sword while I was being ghostnapped by a certain Tal Horix. You may know her as Hirana Talin Renala the Somethingth. Oh yes, she’s the one who smashed into the Cloudpiercer yesterday.’
The sword stopped spinning. Nilith was frozen apart from her lips. ‘The flying machine,’ she whispered. ‘You have my attention, ghost. Hirana, you say?’
‘Yes, I did, but it’s my turn,’ I said. The blade was slammed into the floorboard. A full third of it punctured the wood. Maybe I should have showed some respect. Though not my empress, she was the daughter of King Konin. My king. But everybody was equal when they were brandishing a sword at you.
I waved a finger at the bundle of rags on the horse’s back. ‘Speaking of long-lost royals, I imagine there’s an emperor under those rags?’
Nilith almost spilled the stew as she rose up from the cot, sword flashing in the lantern-light. It found a resting place a few inches from my torn throat. ‘You can imagine if you want.’
‘Truthful answers,’ I reminded her, my hands hovering by my ears. I can be a stickler for rules at the worst of times.
She snarled. ‘Yes. There is. And if you’re here to take him, then I’ve already made my decision on whether you’re friend or foe.’
‘Majesty. Caltro—’
‘Shut up!’ she snapped at the sword, waggling Pointy so much I had to lean backwards. ‘How do you know that, Caltro Basalt? What’s your part in this? Why were you running? And how is it you stole a woman’s body?’
‘I believe that’s four questions…’ I swallowed my words, finding less sarcastic ones. The time for tradition was over. ‘All right. Because I’m the one your delightful daughter hired to break into the emperor’s Sanctuary. Only I was delayed on the way. Murdered by a man called Boran Temsa. A man who, working with Sisine and the Cult of Sesh behind each other’s’ backs, managed to turn this city into a battlefield in just a few weeks, until he recently met his end at the sharp end of an axe. In the meantime, I have been stolen, traded back and forth between nobles and villains, locked up, beaten, and foolishly put my faith in a tal who turned out to be the mother of the nest of vipers you call royals. A viper with a flying machine and a burning desire to see your family pay for banishing her. She crashed into the tower and forced me to open the Sanctuary. After they realised Farazar was missing, a battle broke out. I tried to take my coin from Hirana, and we fell from the Cloudpiercer. So I ran. I don’t know why, with my half-coin behind me.’
I would have been breathless, but all I felt was colder lips and strained eyes. Recanting my tale made it seem all the more woeful. Pointless.
Nilith pressed a thumb to her temple as though her head was spinning. ‘The Cult… flying machines… and Hirana, back from the dead?’
I winced.
‘And the stealing bodies thing?’
There was no use trying to hide it. ‘I can inhabit bodies if I feel like it. Beasts, even. Haunt them. I was using the woman as a distraction from a patrol I ran into, shortly before colliding with you. A gift of the dead gods, supposedly, but so far all it’s got me into is more trouble. The Cult of Sesh were keen to wrap me into their grand game of changing Araxes because of it. Now it seems the gods…’ I faltered, holding back that section of my story for now. It always sounded like madness aloud. ‘The gods wasted their time with me.’
Nilith lowered Pointy until he was hanging by her side. With a grunt, she moved past me and took the horse by the chin to bid him to lie down. With his reins free, he whinnied and started to munch the hay while Nilith took apart the pack. Layers and layers of cloth slid free, revealing a stained bundle that looked suspiciously body-sized, and a naked, wriggling ghost, busy pulling a rag from his mouth. He got up, eyes wild and hand clenched to his breast. He was puffed up with rabid anger, looking between me and Nilith as if choosing which of us to curse first. There was a doughy paunch on him, and he was a hair taller than me. I looked at the ragged gash at his throat, and he saw mine. We traded a brief glance that was something other than anger. Empathy, perhaps. In a moment, it was lost, and rage swooped in to fill the vacuum.
Emperor Farazar pointed a handless stump at me. ‘You… You eastern filth! You’re a fucking liar! No man can break into my Sanctuary!’
‘I’m no man, Emperor of the Arc. I’m a ghost,’ I replied haughtily. This man was definitely no royal to me. ‘And the best locksmith in the Reaches.’
‘And my mother! How dare you insinuate she defied my banishment! And a flying machine? She didn’t have the guts to do anything about my father, never mind have the wits to build a flying machine! If you believe this liar, wife, you have finally snapped!’
I looked to Nilith. ‘Is he always like this?’
‘You have no idea,’ the empress replied with a roll of her eyes. ‘Days, Mr Basalt. Weeks, I’ve endured it.’
‘Look at what you’ve done to my city, Nilith. Madness! A battlefield! And now the Cult?’
‘So you took that bit on board…’ I piped up.
Nilith ignored him, keeping her gaze on me. ‘When did my daughter hire you?’
‘Months ago. I arrived here a few weeks back, maybe a month. I was killed my fir
st night here.’
‘And how long had the tal been in the city, building her machine, Mr Basalt?’
‘Years. A decade, perhaps.’
Nilith laughed. ‘And you blame me, Farazar? Did you hear that? If I hadn’t acted, Sisine would have. Or your mother. What do they all have in common? You.’
With the point of the sword, Nilith steered the emperor into the corner and made him sit down. With nothing but driftwood and stone behind him, he had nowhere to run. She came back with more questions for me.
‘My daughter knows about me, and what I’ve done?’
‘Her ghost, Etane, told her, shortly after they found the Sanctuary empty. Or should I say your ghost.’
‘Lies,’ came a bitter hiss from the corner.
‘And what of Etane?’
‘I don’t know. The last I saw of him, he was fighting a brute of a ghost called Danib. It didn’t look like it was going well.’
‘Ironjaw. I remember him from Milizan’s last days,’ Nilith whispered. I saw the concern in the wrinkles of her brow.
With a sigh, Nilith took me out into the stable, near to the sleeping centipede. ‘And the Cult? How are they involved? I’ve seen their preachers and their patrols of armoured shades. What has happened while I’ve been gone? How have they resurfaced?’
I was torn. They had handed me over as if I was still bound, even though my half-coin had been around my neck. And yet they had welcomed me in, given me the gifts of justice. I was honest. ‘They want to fix the city. Provide charity and aid. Freedom for shades. They orchestrated Temsa’s rise and fall to get close to Sisine, and now they say they want to put Sisine on the throne, to start a new era. They brought me to the Cloudpiercer after taking me from Hor—Hirana, intent on me opening the Sanctuary for your daughter. They say all the right words, but…’
‘What?’
I faltered. ‘I…’
‘Tell her about the gods,’ Pointy whispered.
I shook my head. ‘Just a sense.’
‘I know what you mean.’ Nilith blew a sigh, running a mitten of rags through her knotted hair. ‘I can’t believe that old bag Hirana is still alive. And here in Araxes all along.’