by Matthew Ward
“Yes . . . and, well . . . We’ve got a problem. At the gate.”
Branghall’s gatehouse possessed a modest rampart, just large enough to accommodate Kurkas, Brask and a crossbow-armed sentry. A dozen soldiers waited behind the closed gate, weapons readied, the rubicund proctor at their head clinging to a sun-staff as if it were his sole means of support.
Kurkas wolfed down a final mouthful of bread, savouring the salted butter, and tossed the rest over the rampart. It flared briefly as it passed through the enchantment, then fell away into an unnatural darkness that went far beyond the gloom of overcast skies and into the cold embrace of night.
Scores gathered in that darkness. A mass of young and old, their raiment spanned from rough farmer’s garb to the black and gold silks of serenes and everything in between. Motionless, they stared unblinkingly at the gate as if willing it to open.
“I’ll call out the guard,” said Brask. “They’ll disperse before steel.”
Kurkas shook his head. “I wouldn’t be so sure. How many soldiers do you have in Branghall?”
“Twenty, plus three proctors and a kraikon.”
He let his gaze drift across the crowd. No, not a crowd. Crowds made noise. And their manner. The unity of posture and expression. The darkness hid their eyes just as it hid their numbers. Only close to the wall, where sunlight bled out from within, were they more than shapes. But Kurkas already knew what he’d see. Glittering black, just like Halvor’s. Hundreds upon hundreds of glittering black eyes.
“It’s not enough,” he said softly. “The gate stays closed.”
Brask glared at him. “And if the archimandrite tries to get through?”
Kurkas spat on the rampart. “I guess we’ll find out how much Lumestra really loves him.”
Her gaze grew every bit as frosty as the air wafting in over the crest of the wall. “Captain Kurkas. I don’t care for your manner.”
“My manner’s the least of your bloody problems. Reckon this is bloody normal, do you?”
Brask bristled. “It’s a consequence of the enchantment.”
“Really? Winter’s night out there and a summer evening in here? No. Something’s badly bloody amiss. Given the state of that lot, I’ll wager it’s not us who’ve the problem. I’ve seen more spark in a priest’s conscience.”
Brask’s expression flickered between pride and outrage. Neither concealed the worry bubbling beneath. “So what do you suggest, captain? Well?”
Kurkas offered a lopsided shrug. “We go back inside. No sense worrying until we know what we’re worrying about, and we’ll think better away from those dead-eyed stares.”
Brask scowled but nodded. “I suppose you’re right. I’ll post more men, and . . .”
“Blessed Lumestra,” muttered the sentry.
Kurkas stared into the rain. At the far end of the drive, where the silent mass faded into the sea of downcast grey, the press of bodies drifted apart to form a clear channel.
Newcomers emerged out of the murk. An old woman, walking with a cane. Elda Savka. A Tressian soldier, his king’s blue uniform bloodied and torn and his face blackened with bruises, came behind. His feet barely touched the ground, his toes scraping the cobblestones. That he moved at all was down to his two minders. A greying man and a young woman, they dragged the soldier along by his shoulders.
“Bring me the serathi!”
Kurkas recognised the voice, though it wasn’t Elda’s. Halvor had addressed him in something akin to those hollow, commanding tones even as she’d sought to kill him. Or maybe it hadn’t been her at all, but something acting through her. Kurkas, never the most religious of men, felt his fingers twitching in the sign of the sun.
“Bring me the serathi, or I’ll tear him apart!”
Brask stared unblinkingly at the captive. “Kasnor,” she muttered. “It’s Sergeant Kasnor. From the archimandrite’s personal guard.”
“Then I don’t reckon his eminence will be joining us, do you?” Kurkas replied.
“Raven’s Eyes, what do you mean?”
Kurkas didn’t bother to reply. “Mother Savka? You’ve been misinformed. No serathi here. Maybe go back into town and check with the archimandrite?”
“Arzro Makrov dines with the Raven even as we speak.”
Lucky old Makrov, thought Kurkas glumly. Getting to the feast before the crowds. “Then you’ll have to take me at my word.”
“Do you think I’m blind? I see the sun shining within.”
Kurkas tapped his fingers on stone. At least things were drawing together to make a mad kind of sense. Not that he cared for the picture taking shape. No. He didn’t care for it at all.
“I’m more interested in why it’s so dark out there.”
“Your queen has returned. We are all to be one in the Dark.”
A name drifted through Kurkas’ thoughts. He pushed it away. If he didn’t think it, didn’t say it, then this wasn’t really happening, was it? Icy water rushed through his veins.
“If you want to be a queen, turn east and keep walking,” he hollered. “No royalty in the Tressian Republic.”
“You think I care for your paupers’ council? I am Malatriant. This land belongs to me. You all belong to me.”
Malatriant. The name he’d tried so hard not to think, now spoken plain. No putting that jack back in the box, not now.
“Should have gone north when I had the chance,” he muttered.
“She’s mad,” murmured Brask.
“Is she, though?” asked Kurkas. “I’d as soon not take chances.”
“What does she want? There are no serathi here.”
“There’s one. Anastacia.”
“But . . . she’s a demon.”
“I don’t think her majesty cares.”
Kasnor’s escorts forced back his arms. The rain beyond the walls didn’t do nearly enough to dampen the dry, rotten cracks of breaking bone – nor the ragged scream. Kasnor hung limp between them.
Elda planted her walking stick between her feet. “He’ll beg to die before I’m done. When he’s all used up, I’ll find another. And another.”
“Stop!” shouted Brask. “I’ll have her brought. Just leave him be!”
She turned for the stairs. Kurkas grabbed her arm. “There’ll be no trade.”
“As you wish.”
Elda gestured. Still staring ahead, the dead-eyed woman slipped a dagger into Kasnor’s armpit and wrenched the blade about. He howled.
Kurkas gestured at the sentry. “Shoot him.”
“Sir?”
Kurkas snatched the crossbow from his grasp, propped it on the rampart and fired. The shot was everything he’d come to expect from his post-Zanya aim. The bolt whistled past Kasnor and struck his captor in the shoulder. The woman staggered, each person in the crowd shuddering as if they too had been struck.
The woman stared disinterestedly at her blood mingling with the rain and twisted the dagger anew.
Kurkas snarled and thrust the crossbow back at its owner. “If you don’t put Kasnor out of his misery, I’ll toss you over the wall and find someone who will.”
The sentry’s throat bobbed. Then he reloaded the crossbow, his silence stark contrast to the small, whimpering screams rising up through the rain. After what seemed for ever, he levelled the crossbow and sent a quarrel whispering away. By luck or design, it found Kasnor’s heart.
Kurkas sighed and patted the sentry on the shoulder. “Good lad. Now, if she tries this again, you keep shooting until your pouch is empty, you understand me?”
The sentry’s eyes pinched shut, but he nodded. “Sir.”
Fighting to contain his nausea, Kurkas turned his back on Elda and her thralls.
Brask had gone.
Swearing under his breath, Kurkas lurched after her as fast as his wounded leg allowed. She waited at the base of the spiral stairs, eyes blazing hot as the sun.
“What did you do?” she hissed.
“Delivered a speck of kindness,” he replied. “Mi
ght be we’ll need the same before this is done.”
“Why should I care if she takes the prisoner? Kasnor was one of ours. One of mine.”
Kurkas supposed he should have applauded her loyalty, but his patience had all but dissolved in a corrosive mix of anger and terror. He grabbed Brask’s shoulder and shoved her against the stairway wall.
“Because that’s what she wants, you useless dreg. If Katya bloody Trelan crawled her way out of the mists and demanded you give her back her home and the Southshires alongside, you’d not bloody well do it, would you? So why now?”
Brask’s face paled, her resistance draining with it. “Because that’s the Tyrant Queen!”
“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t,” Kurkas said. “But we’re soldiers, and she’s the enemy. Raven’s Eyes, but she’s the enemy, walked straight out of bloody legend to make our lives a bloody misery. That means whatever she wants, she can’t have. You understand me?”
Brask nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Sir. That was a start. Some of what he’d said had sunk in. Kurkas was glad of that, because at that moment all he wanted to do was curl up in a ball and drag the world over his head.
“Double the guard on the gate. No one comes in, and sure as Queen’s . . . sure as sin no one goes out, you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. And then what?”
“Then I want to talk to Anastacia Psanneque.”
Fifty-Two
Anastacia stood in a web of silver at the head of the great hall, the white and gold of her porcelain skin gleaming in the sunlight. Or what Kurkas had been told was Anastacia. The tatter-clothed doll bore little resemblance to the woman who’d greeted him to Branghall what seemed a lifetime ago. Another sign that the world he thought he’d known was but a shell for another lurking beneath.
A silver collar sat snug about the doll’s neck, the bar-taut chains at its compass-points anchored by eyebolts in the walls. So too were her wrists bound, with the attendant chains let into the flagstones. Taken alongside the heavy shawl and ripped black velvet dress, she looked every bit the lumendoll trussed and readied for the Midsommer fires.
[[Visitors. How nice.]] At last, Kurkas found familiarity. Whatever constraints the shackles placed on Anastacia’s body, they did nothing to still her tongue. Despite the hollow sing-song of the voice, there was no mistaking the barbs beneath. [[But where’s the archimandrite? Do I bore him already?]]
“Set her free,” Kurkas said.
Brask blanched. “Sir, the archimandrite gave strict . . .”
“Do I seem in the mood for defiance? I said set her free!”
Brask recoiled and glanced at the overweight proctor lurking in the doorway. “Solas?”
Solas gave every sign of being unhappy, but he slunk towards the web, a key clasped in his pudgy hand. Eyes never meeting Anastacia’s smoky stare, he unlatched the collar, then set about the shackles on her hands.
[[You remember when you set me here, proctor? You remember what I said I’d do when the chains were gone?]]
The key slipped from Solas’ hands and chimed on stone. Anastacia’s laughter echoed about the hall as he fell to his knees to reclaim it.
Kurkas cleared his throat. “Please don’t damage him. Might yet be that we need him.”
Anastacia regarded the proctor as a serpent might regard something small and furry. [[I find my needs and desires an increasingly poor fit to those of ephemerals.]]
The last chain clattered free. Quick as a whip, Anastacia plucked Solas off his feet and slammed him against a wall.
“Solas!” Brask started forward, useless sword already half-drawn.
The proctor scrabbled at Anastacia’s fingers. “Please . . .”
[[So many diligent hours hoping to cause me pain. My turn now.]]
Solas fainted dead away. Anastacia uttered a sharp sigh and let him drop.
[[Boring.]] Her smoky gaze settled on Brask. [[What about you?]]
Brask shuddered to a halt.
Enough, Kurkas decided, was enough. “That’ll do.”
Anastacia bore down on him. Kurkas held his ground, though not without effort. The veneer of a glib-tongued society lady was as tattered as her dress, giving full view to the timeless spirit beneath. She wasn’t his to tame, but she could perhaps be reasoned with.
“There’s something at the gate claiming to be Malatriant.” Even now, speaking the name sent a shiver along Kurkas’ spine. “She’s got the townsfolk twitching like a puppet theatre, and she wants you. Don’t make me regret not agreeing the trade.”
Anastacia faltered mid-stride. [[Then it’s true . . . I felt the Dark pressing in. I thought it sorrow, clouding my mind.]]
“Why does Malatriant want you?”
[[Why else? She’s of darkness, as I am of light.]]
“That’s not as useful an answer as you think.” But it explained why the sun still shone over Branghall.
[[Don’t presume to know my thoughts.]] Shoulders slumped. The fight went out of Anastacia’s voice. She gave a dry, bitter laugh. [[She hates me for what I am. It seems my prison is now my refuge.]]
“And if we hand you over? She’ll leave us be?” asked Brask.
[[Am I to be expected to know the whims of every ephemeral? She’s your Tyrant Queen. You tell me.]]
“Tell you what,” said Kurkas. “Let’s ask her.”
Like much of Branghall, the makeshift cell had seen better days. Sunlight streamed through a crack in the western wall, casting umber shards through dusty air. Revekah Halvor – or at least whatever wore the form of Revekah Halvor – sat hunched in the corner, as far from the light as her chains allowed. Bony fingers traced eye-maddening whorls in decades-old dust.
“Vladama. Come to visit your dear friend?”
Kurkas curled his lip. Strange to hear the voice that was and wasn’t Halvor’s. Oh, it still held her sardonic tones, but underneath? Hollow and distant, like whatever emotion lay beyond despair. Stranger still to hear it speak his given name. It felt unearned – a violation. “You’re not my friend.”
She looked up. Dark eyes glittered. Jagged lines crawled outward across cheek and brow, mimicking the veins beneath, or perhaps the roots of something growing strong in its nest of flesh and bone. “Such hatred!”
“Am I misremembering the part where you tried to stick me in the guts?”
“And impertinent. Don’t you know who I am?”
“I know what you want me to believe.”
Icy waters rushed beneath the glib rejoinder, beneath his frail mask of unconcern. Malatriant. The Tyrant Queen. Crawling beneath the skin of a woman who might just have been his friend.
“Time was, I’d have had you flayed for your discourtesy.”
“I bet.”
“Revekah’s still here.” Lips parted in a sly smile. “Would you like to talk to her?”
“I want you to let her go.”
“Then you aren’t truly her friend.”
“So you could let her go?”
Halvor returned to tracing in the dust. “All her life, she longed to be part of something greater. That’s what you all yearn for. To return to the Dark. To be one in the Dark. No fear. No strife. Just peace. The same peace that has always been my gift.”
“What do you want?”
“To see my legacy restored.”
Kurkas shuddered, a hundred tales of cruelty vying for his thoughts. The Tyrant Queen sought a legacy? She had one already. Its bleak shadow warped history centuries on.
“Doesn’t sound like anything I’ll much enjoy.”
“You will. Once you come to the Dark.”
Shadows shifted. Anastacia drew into the light. [[This is a waste of time.]]
“I want Halvor freed.”
“And I told you that she is already free.”
For a heartbeat, Kurkas allowed himself to believe that she spoke the truth. But only for a heartbeat. “I wasn’t talking to you. Can you do it?”
[[Yes.]]
Anastacia strode
across the cellar. Shadows retreated, the shards of sunlight flowing across the cellar like molten gold.
“Leave her be!” Panic crept into Halvor’s dark eyes. She scrambled backwards on heels and hands, only to be trapped between Anastacia and the whitewashed wall.
Anastacia embraced her. The cellar blazed like fire, the stink of dust seared away by summer days. Kurkas twisted away, hand shielding his eye. An afterimage lingered, of outspread wings dark against fire. Then the light faded, and there was only an old woman, clutched tight in a doll’s porcelain arms.
Halvor’s eyes flickered open, the black supplanted by hazel and bloodshot white. The spidery lines ebbed from cheek and brow but didn’t fade entirely. She blinked and pushed unsteadily away.
“Kurkas? I’m sorry. I couldn’t stop her . . .”
“Doesn’t matter.” How he wished that were true. But if Anastacia could drive Malatriant out of one, maybe she could do the same for others. How that was to be managed with a whole town, he wasn’t sure. But something was always better than nothing. “You’re free now.”
Downcast eyes narrowed. Her chest fluttered. “No. She’s still with me. I can . . . hear her thoughts – burrowing like worms beneath my own.”
So much for hope . . . Kurkas glared at Anastacia. “You said you could free her.”
[[And I have. But to all things there are limits.]] Fingers glinked against a white-and-gold cheek. [[Mine run a lot closer than they once did. I can hold the Dark back for a time, but that’s all. She and Malatriant are bound too tight.]]
He stared at Halvor, gnawed by loss he couldn’t explain. “How long?”
[[A few hours.]]
“But you can get her free again?”
[[Perhaps. I took Malatriant by surprise this time.]]
Meaning that next time would be harder. “How does this even happen? Raven’s Eyes, but you see strange sights growing up in Dregmeet, but this? This takes the whole of the weasel, guts and all.”
Chains rattling, Halvor set her shoulder to the wall. “She said her ash was in our blood.”
“Our blood?” said Kurkas.
“The town’s. The whole damn valley’s. I can . . . feel them. The others. The cold.” She shivered. “She is us, and we are her.”