The Iron Dirge

by Sam Sykes

  A Mirrormage’s power will… thin them. Every time they come back from their powers, they do so with a little less color and a little more frailty. Tasks they were once strong enough for are more difficult and every effort begets exhaustion. Their flesh starts becoming hard and brittle, cracking off them in shards. Their sinew and muscle follows, cracking and grinding down inside their bodies. Then at some point, they push themselves too hard and just…

  Shatter.

  Like glass.

  The Lady Merchant gives them great power, the Mirrormages. But she asks a great price. She takes your wholeness, hollows you out from the inside. Organ by organ, moment by moment, she drains you and leaves behind something brittle and breakable. And when you die, when she finally comes to claim the rest of you…

  She collects you in pieces.

  Mirrormages begin their lives as people. And end them as fragments.

  Rogo was wise. All the people who had loved him had said so. He used his powers carefully, sparingly, with the intention of dying a perfectly natural death instead of breaking into pieces. But he had been a warrior once. A hero, once. And while he had been careful, he had never turned down an opportunity to use his powers. To kill.

  And this was the result: a bloodless, colorless wound of shards and jagged edges. Bigger than it had been that morning. Even that small effort to rout that bandit had caused the wound to grow.

  How big would it be, he wondered, by tomorrow?

  Would he even be alive to know?

  He buttoned his shirt back up, tucked it back into the waist of his trousers, navigating the feel of the sword at his hip again. He hadn’t earned that blade from wasting time with stupid questions like that. He wouldn’t save Virian with them, either.

  He extinguished the lamp. He walked back up the stairs. He closed the door to the basement for the last time.

  “Mister Lowhill?”

  The old reflexes returned to him with the blade. He whirled instead of turned, tense as he saw Olio there, staring slack-jawed at this door he had never seen and the blade on the hip of the gentlest man in town.

  “Olio,” Rogo replied, forcing a small smile onto his face. “May I ask if it’s complete?”

  “That door… has it always—”

  “Olio.”

  His voice was curt. His eyes were dangerous. And Olio was smart enough to know what not to ask.

  The young man nodded weakly and pointed to the middle of the shop. The crates of books had vanished, long since shipped out. The printing presses, too, had been neatly disassembled, their parts bundled up and ready for transport.

  “It is, Mister Lowhill,” Olio replied. “I took them apart like you asked. Rathaxes is outside with his wagon.”

  “Excellent,” Rogo said. “And he has enough room?”

  “Yes, Mister Lowhill, but—”

  “Good, good.” Rogo held up a finger, reached into his pocket, and produced a small pouch of coins. “Here. Compensate him for his trouble, please. And pay the Amagi sisters to help you load. They were still in town when last observed.”

  “Mister Lowhill, I can’t—”

  “I don’t recall inviting discussion, Olio.”

  “I know, Mister Lowhill, it’s just…” He shook his head. “The presses are yours, sir. Shouldn’t you travel with…” His eyes drifted down to the blade at his employer’s hip. “S-sir?”

  Rogo held his curse back as he tucked his blade beneath his coat—when had he gotten so careless?

  “I will not be joining you. I will follow you when I’m able.” He pointed to the disassembled printing presses. “This, right now, should be your concern.”

  “I’m more concerned about the… the sword, sir. All the swords, if I’m honest. There was a scuffle outside the town gates, now the Vagrant and her outlaws are pressing in. Do… do you have another? Should I be carrying—”

  “No.” Curt. Short. The closest he’d ever come to raising his voice. “No, Olio. You should not have a sword.” Bitterness, the kind he’d fought all his life to keep people like Olio from seeing, painted his face. “No one should.”

  “But sir—”

  “This conversation is over, Olio.” He regretted curtly pushing past the boy, but he needed a message to be sent. He headed toward his shop’s door, pausing only to set another pouch of money on the counter. “Hire as many people as you need to load the presses as promptly as you can. Be gone from here swiftly. Do not be here when I return. Am I understood?”

  Rogo did not wait for a reply. He took the door handle and pulled it open, the bell chiming faintly. But perhaps he was slower, as well as weaker, because he hadn’t even stepped outside when he got the reply he was specifically trying to avoid.

  “No.”

  He paused. Sighed.

  “I mean, I understand what you want, but… I can’t, Mister Lowhill.” Olio’s voice was quavering and weak. “I’ve put almost as much time into this place as you have, sir. If you’re going to abandon it, I… I…”

  He turned. A pair of eyes too big and surprised for the kind of tough talk that was coming out of Olio’s face greeted him. And still, the boy didn’t back down.

  “I deserve to know,” he said, forcing iron into his spine. “Mister Lowhill. Sir. Please.”

  He didn’t, Rogo knew. No one deserved to know that about him. If they did, he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of hiding it in a basement behind a bookshelf. Years of keeping people off his trail, of presenting the image of the perfect neighbor, the quiet businessman, the loving father…

  Was he really going to give it all up for this slack-jawed nul?

  And truth be told, I don’t know why he did. I’ve thought about it, pondered on it, come up with some ideas. Maybe, after so many years, the stress of it was finally too much and he had to let it out. Or maybe he really did think Olio, his loyal assistant, deserved to know that.

  Like I said, I don’t know. No one who was left after that day could tell me enough about him to know for sure.

  But I like to think…

  I like to think that maybe, he didn’t want to die having pretended all that he had done had never happened.

  “Olio…” he began, but his usual terseness slid off his face with the force of his sigh. “For fuck’s sake, boy.” He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. “There was a time in my life where just my name being whispered on the field made Revolutionaries twice as big and thrice as hard as you turn and flee into the night. I am not sure when I stopped doing that.”

  “Mister Lowhill?” Olio asked, furrowing his brow. “I’m not sure I… what field? What Revolutionaries?”

  “Your family, Olio. Were they Imperial?”

  “Revolution, sir. Formerly Revolution. My mother deserted and took my brothers and me with her. Why do you—”

  “Did she tell you of the wars, Olio? Of the Imperial mages who fought your kinsmen? Did she tell you… what we did?”

  “Mister Lowhill, I’m not sure I understand.”

  “That is not my name, Olio. I apologize for lying to you. It was the name of a small village that was destroyed long ago, one whose name I took when I came to this town. Before that, I had another name.”

  He pulled down the collar of his shirt. Across the center of his chest was emblazoned a tattoo: seven hands, palms open, in a whirling circle. Olio fell backward, catching himself only by clinging to the disassembled printing press.

  “You were,” the boy gasped, “a Vagrant?”

  “Rogo the Dervish,” he said. “At the time, I thought it thematically appropriate. And though my time as a Vagrant was brief, the deeds I did…” He shook his head. “They did not sit well with me, Olio. I was that man for a short time. Shorter than I was Rodaya Lowhill. But before either of them, I was someone else.”

  Rogo made a stiff, formal bow in the Imperial style to Olio. The same he had made to the Empress every time she praised him for the people he had killed. The same he had made to the military tribunals that had awarded
him for his violence. The same he had made to the cheering populations that worshiped the blood he spilt in their name.

  “My name was… is Rogonoroth yun Shouth.” He righted himself. “I entered Her Imperial Presence’s service at age eight and remained there for the next twenty years. I killed for her and it was my honor to do so without question. Until the day I had one.” His lip trembled. “How could I… give her son the same honor?”

  I talked to Olio briefly in the aftermath. He seemed a smart kid. Well aware of the history that led to this point.

  The Imperium had grown under the line of the Empress since the first Emperor first channeled magic. And every mage who served under their leadership had done so willingly, fighting for the honor and prosperity of her, her mother, her mother’s father. Until the day she had a son.

  A son who could not use magic.

  Don’t get me wrong, the Imperium had bad emperors before. There was the Drunkard Emperor, the Herbal Empress, and of course, the famous Mad Emperor who was the reason we were in this mess. And while they’d been varying mixes of cruelty, incompetence, and in the Herbal Empress’s case, so relaxed to the point that they’d lost territory, they all had one thing in common that validated their claim to the throne.

  The Lady Merchant loved them each as much as she had loved their forebears.

  But not the Empress’s son.

  Not the Nul Emperor.

  You know what happened next. Hell, Olio did. The Dogsjaw Rebellion happened, the Imperium’s best minds and mages deserting to go Vagrant, and thirty-four of the most prestigious and loyal servants of the Imperium banded together in a failed bid to put a new emperor on the throne.

  Rogo had been number twenty-two.

  “Mister Lowhill…” Olio began, caught himself. “I mean, Mister… uh… yun Mododoru. I’m not sure I—”

  “I know, Olio,” he replied. “And I am sorry. I am sorry that I cannot explain more. Suffice to say that who I was is how I am certain that you and the printing press will escape here safely.” He laid a hand on the hilt of his sword. The same sword he’d used in the Empress’s service. “I will see to it.”

  “Does… does Virian know?”

  “No, and if you dare to—”

  “Mister Lowhill…” Olio, undeterred, replied with an imploring look. “She deserves to know. A lot more than I do.”

  Rogo’s jaw clenched, but he let it out with a long sigh. “My daughter has… not had an easy life, Olio. Please do not add to her troubles. I will…” He shut his eyes. “I will make certain she knows. Somehow. Please. Just take her with you when you leave.”

  “I… okay, Mister Lowhill. If you say so. When I find her, I’ll have her come with us.”

  Rogo’s eyes snapped open. “What do you mean ‘when I find her’?”

  The door shuddered suddenly. A body struck the glass, shoved rudely aside by another body. And another. And another. Until bodies became a tide of people, wagons, birds, all laden with possessions as they broke in a maddened, noisy rush down the street toward the east.

  The East Gate.

  “Olio.”

  Light flashed in his eyes. Rogo the Dervish appeared before Olio. And behind Olio. And at his sides. Four of them stared down at him through the same severe glare.

  “Where is Virian?”

  FOUR

  Paarl’s Hollow

  Okay, so, yes, I agree that helping people out of the goodness of your heart is a very noble thing.

  In theory.

  When I was first starting out, there were always a few tales of selfless do-gooders walking from town to town, ridding them of beasts and bandits and asking for nothing but enough food to get to the next town. Legends were made in those days: Everera the Bold, Dauntless Dantilius, Crunt Kindly.

  There are many fewer legends about Everera’s penchant for starting bar fights, Dantilius’s drug problem(s), or the terrible, terrible thing that happened to Crunt with the butter churn.

  But I digress: there were just enough people who were just good enough that people actually started to think that strangers you meet in the Scar weren’t all that bad.

  And yes, I agree, that the idea of being a wandering hero whose presence is a herald of good times rather than a sign to start running has its allure. Who wouldn’t do it if they survive doing it?

  Like I said, in theory, it sounds great.

  “So, are you… sure you’re Sal the Cacophony?”

  In practice, it’s much less romantic.

  My glower, which had been fixed on the bandage I was trying to secure around my bare leg, drifted slowly toward the young woman leaning on the guard tower’s railings.

  “Do you see these tattoos?” I asked the girl.

  “Yeah,” she replied.

  “These scars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “This gun?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Well, I guess I’m either Sal the Cacophony or someone who isn’t pondering whether it might be more trouble to finish this conversation or just push you off the edge of this tower, aren’t I?” I cinched the bandage tight. “Keep talking, though. Let’s find out which.”

  I shouldn’t have snapped at her, but I couldn’t help it. Fixing wounds put me in a bad mood. And being pantsless put me in a good mood. So I guess between the two of them, “irritable and vaguely threatening” felt like a good compromise.

  “Well, don’t fucking act like it’s my fault you got your ass kicked,” she spat back, in a very rude not-worried-about-me-punching-her-teeth-in manner. “All the stories I heard said Sal the Cacophony was an invincible killer who left towns in ruins.”

  “Well, when you have a story about you that isn’t ‘annoying girl got on dashing, charming Vagrant’s nerves for a few hours,’ maybe we can sit around and talk about how disappointing yours are.” I rolled my shoulder, felt pain—but not pants-shitting pain, which was about as good as I could hope for. “Until then, either give me a drink or give me some peace.” My eyes drifted toward the thick satchel hanging at her hip, the necks of corked bottles peeking out from inside. “You must have something in there.”

  “Uh, not really.” She sifted through the satchel, bottles clinking. “I used my last Creeping Midnight, but I still have Punishment for the Wicked and My Dark Desires.”

  “Those are weird-ass names for drinks, but I’m in a lot of pain right now, so give me the Punishment for the Wicked.”

  “I, uh, can’t. Not without your throat exploding, anyway.”

  I whistled. “It’s an alchemic?”

  She smiled, bashful. “It’s a hobby of mine.”

  I looked over the truly impressive crossbow leaning against the railing of the tower. “Scope, motorized drawstring, specialized string for launching heavier bolts,” I muttered. “Expensive fucking hobby.”

  “Well, if I wanted a fucking toy, I would have asked for it,” she snapped. “My father bought it for me. Everything but the string. That was my work, thank you very fucking much.”

  “Rather vulgar for someone who wants my help, aren’t we?” I pulled myself to my feet—the alchemic bandage did enough to keep me on my feet, but little else. The wound where the bolt had hit still hurt like a ten-year drunk two days sober as I limped to the railing and peered out. “If it’s such a damn masterpiece, why don’t you use it on your friends down there?”

  Virian cast a narrow-eyed scowl out over the plains.

  “They’re not my friends.”

  The Children of the Dead, as I had unfortunately learned, weren’t stupid. When our little disagreement had ended, they hadn’t—as I had hoped—wasted time trying to batter down the doors. Instead, they’d slunk back to the forest and vanished amid the tangle of trees.

  Clever. If we couldn’t see them, we couldn’t count them. I wasn’t the only one to notice.

  The vaunted peacekeepers of Paarl’s Hollow were, if not the stuff of legend, at least the stuff of noteworthiness. A township with its own professional defense fo
rce and a township that had survived as long as this place had were both rarities in the Scar and it was a point of pride for people from the Hollow, it was said.

  It didn’t seem like the peacekeepers had heard, though.

  The weary men and women in nice armor and wearing nice weapons continued their patrols across the low walls of the town, but it was obvious by their faltering stride and their nervous looks that their weapons brought them no comfort. They glanced around nervously as they patrolled, looking for comrades who weren’t there—lost to desertion or the Children’s ambushes. Or maybe just looking for their own way out.

  I couldn’t blame them. The few bodies left alone on the walls wouldn’t keep out a dumb bandit clan, let alone the Children.

  “Huh,” I noted. “There are a bunch of gaps in the wall patrols. Plenty of time for anyone to leap over and start looting. But I don’t see any signs of that in the town.” I scratched my chin. “They’ve been targeting the guards first.”

  “Don’t all bandits do that?” Virian asked.

  “Would you want to deal with a bunch of swords and spears if you could just as easily take the metal and run?” I shook my head. “Bandits will only fight guards if they’re in the way. Normally.” I glanced sidelong at her. “But these aren’t normal bandits, are they?”

  Virian crossed her arms and furrowed her brow. “I’m not going to take that insinuation from a woman with her ass hanging out.”

  “All right, two things.” I put hand on naked hip, held up a pair of fingers. “One, if you know a good way to treat a leg wound while still wearing pants, I’d fucking love to hear. Two, I didn’t say you were one of them. But you know them, don’t you?”

  Her mouth set into a hard frown that told me more than any words might have. I figured as much—you don’t get a scar like hers from a butter-churning accident.

  “I don’t, no,” she replied, softly. “I mean, I don’t know them, but…” She looked out over the plains, pointed toward some hills so far off they looked like bushes. “See those hills over there? That’s where I’m from. A tiny little village called Lowhill. We used to make flour over there to sell to the Hollow.”