by Alexis Hall
The hall had gone, for want of a less obvious term, deathly still. Some of the guests were weeping softly and there came the occasional stifled shriek. Then the necromancer spoke a word of command and every spectre in the room descended upon my companion with a terrible keening. Chaos broke loose as members in good standing of the Ubiquitous Companies fled for the exits, overturning chairs and scattering immodestly expensive tableware as they did so. Miss Viola, I noted, caught her fiancée quickly by the hand and led her swiftly but calmly towards the least occupied part of the room with the air of one who had decided upon an optimally efficient escape route well ahead of its being required.
This did, at least, obviate the necessity of my continuing in the persona of an Eyan wool merchant, but I was not certain of the means by which I could be of most assistance to Ms. Haas. Moving against the flow of the crowd, it took me some moments to reach Mr. Donne and, even when I had, I was not wholly willing to strike the man down without warning. In my time beyond the Unending Gate I had, on occasion, been required to resort to ambush in order to preserve my life and the lives of my fellows, but this was not some fathomless agent of the Empress of Nothing. He was a man whose name I knew, and who had asked me for coffee not half an hour before.
I raised my cane, which the earlier twinges in my rib cage had inspired me to bring along, in a threatening attitude.
“Sir,” I said, “cease this at once.”
Mr. Donne twisted partially around, his expression fading from imperiousness to mild discomfort. “Oh, it’s you. Um, look. I really do have to do this. It’s forbidden for outsiders to interfere with the business of the order. And, anyway, I’m not entirely sure I can stop it.”
The spot where my companion had been was still a maelstrom of ectoplasmic fury. “What do you mean you can’t stop it? What kind of necromancer are you?”
“I’ll thank you not to question my professionalism. If you’d bothered reading my card”—he sounded a little hurt—“you’d know that I’m a sin eater. I work primarily with spiritual burdens and I’m afraid the lady is, in a very real sense, doing this to herself.”
“That,” I retorted, “is abhorrent.”
He looked bemused and adjusted his glasses. “Really? I always found it had a pleasing equipoise. It’s so much better when things add up. And hitting me with that cane won’t change anything.”
“Nonetheless, I feel I would be justified in striking you very soundly indeed.”
“I have the laws of this city on my side and you”—Mr. Donne pulled himself to his full height, which was not, in honesty, all that high—“are a very rude man.”
At this, the storm of spirits collapsed inwards, revealing Ms. Haas, her clothing torn open and a symbol that I recognised as the same marking that bound the poltergeist within our hatstand carved bloodily into her chest.
“Boys, boys, boys.” She sighed. “If you’ve finished flirting, I have to show this little bean counter what real witchcraft looks like.”
Mr. Donne was staring agape at my companion’s décolletage, although I’m certain his interest was academic rather than inappropriate. “What have you done?”
“You know very well what I’ve done. I’ve trapped a hundred and forty-seven angry ghosts in my heart.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, my dear. I just really like to win.” She gave a twisted smile and a chill wind swept through the hall, slamming the doors and windows firmly closed. Then came a rasp of tortured metal and the incongruously jaunty jangling of glass as one of the chandeliers tore itself free from the ceiling and hurtled towards Mr. Donne with malicious precision.
While I was not best pleased with the gentleman, I wished for neither of us to be crushed. So, catching the necromancer about the waist, I pulled him aside and threw us both to the ground, covering him on pure instinct with my body.
He gazed up at me, his eyes very wide. “I, um. Gosh.”
“Mr. Wyndham,” drawled my companion, advancing on us as the shattered remains of the light fitting rose once more into the air and arranged themselves into a deadly array of sharp points, “we must really have a conversation about your rescuing my mortal enemies.”
A piece of twisted iron shot past me and embedded itself in the floor inches from Mr. Donne’s head. “Ms. Haas, I am concerned that you have not fully considered the consequences of your actions.”
“On the contrary. I have considered them in depth. I simply don’t care.”
I strongly suspected that Ms. Haas’s behaviour at this juncture was at least partly caused by the malign influence of the hundred or so wrathful spirits currently inhabiting her body. Although, in truth, it was not so very out of character for her. Rising, I helped Mr. Donne to his feet and placed myself between him and my companion. “I’m afraid I cannot be party to the murder of a”—I paused—“more or less innocent person.”
“He started it.” Ms. Haas crossed her arms in a manner I personally thought rather huffy.
“I think actually,” said Mr. Donne, peeking over my shoulder, “you started it when you disanimated my revenant.”
“No, you started it when you reanimated the body of Klaus Lafayette.”
Mr. Donne was standing a little closer than he, perhaps, needed to, but I put this down to his nervousness. “That was in accordance with a lawful contract and also we’ve never met.”
“Neither of those are my problem. Now kindly step out from behind my housemate so I can kill you.”
Before Mr. Donne could either comply with her request or assert his intention not to do so the doors of the hall burst open and the room was flooded with grey-uniformed Myrmidons.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Myrmidons
For the benefit of those readers who are not familiar with the idiosyncratic system of legal enforcement in the great city of Khelathra-Ven, I should perhaps clarify who, precisely, had just interrupted the altercation between Ms. Haas and the necromancer. The Myrmidons owe their origins to a time shortly after the unification of the cities of Khel, Athra, and Ven. The early years of independence proved tumultuous as the cities’ various power blocks and interest groups vied for authority and influence. An especially vexed question in those days was that of the legitimate application of force. It would plainly not do for every guild, temple, aristocratic house, and popular movement to maintain its own private army and for those armies jointly and severally to act with the full weight of the state behind them.
Thus, it was determined that when violence became necessary within the boundaries of Khelathra-Ven it would be carried out by mercenaries whose loyalty was specifically to the Council of Interested Parties—that ill-defined, not to say anarchic convocation of lawmakers, luminaries, and lunatics who have governed the city for a hundred and fifty years—rather than to any one of the institutions represented upon it. Organisations and individuals were, of course, still permitted to keep their own guards (and any attempt to impose restrictions on the Eternal Lords of Ven was likely to have been nominal at best), but should there arise any circumstance in which it was necessary that a person be held against their will or, as sometimes happened in the early days, cut down in the street or burned alive in their home, that duty would fall to the Myrmidons. The institution has evolved since, being now concerned far more with detection and prevention of crime and far less with the bloody murder of dissidents. But the name, and some of the military trappings, remained.
One such trapping was the routine equipment of Myrmidon officers with some form of armament. Several of the persons who now moved to encircle us drew pistols, a fact which caused Mr. Donne and myself to raise our hands in a conciliatory manner; a gesture that Ms. Haas did not, apparently, feel compelled to mirror. Although the experience of being held at gunpoint by agents of law enforcement was a novel one to me it was not so startling as to distract my attention entirely from the Myrmidons’ leader.
Her co
louring was unusual for Khelathra-Ven (insofar as anything could be unusual in that cosmopolitan city), since she was fair haired and possessed piercing blue eyes, but what most struck me was that she was dressed in the garb of the witch hunters of Ey. This sight was shocking to me for two reasons. Firstly, because ours is a small and insular country, both literally and metaphorically, and we seldom travel far from our homeland unless driven from it. Secondly, and more pertinently, because the Faithful Society of Witch Hunters does not admit ladies.
“I am Augur Extraordinary Joy-in-Sorrow Standfast,” she announced, “and you are all under arrest for making an affray by means of sorcery. Any of you do anything that even looks like witchcraft, everyone gets shot in the head.”
It was an uncompromising strategy but, to the best of my understanding, exactly the one pursued by witch hunters in my own country. Since magic, by its nature, is heterogeneous there is no single, reliable countermeasure that can be taken against it other than the sudden, and sometimes preemptive, termination of the sorcerer. I hoped that at least one, and ideally both, of my co-arrestees would refrain from escalating the situation.
Ms. Haas bowed theatrically and in a manner which appeared calculated to draw attention to the occult markings carved into her chest. “My dear Standfast, I’m so glad you could make it. You’re about to witness something wildly illegal and quite apocalyptic.”
“I will give you one opportunity to rescind that threat and then I will order my men to open fire.”
Though my experience at that point was limited, I thought it unlikely that Ms. Haas would rescind anything. Resigning myself to enduring a hail of gunfire, I scanned my immediate surroundings for cover. The chandelier would provide some protection, though little concealment, and I was within a short dive of an overturned table, to which I might be able to drag whichever of the others proved most tractable.
“Madam”—Mr. Donne stepped forward with surprising confidence—“you shall give no such order. I am a representative of the Ossuary Bank and you have neither cause nor authority to employ force against me.”
To the best of my knowledge, the gentleman had the right of the situation. Being located on an island in the strait, the Ossuary Bank was not strictly part of the city and enjoyed, therefore, an element of independence from its laws. This technicality, however, did not seem to move the Augur Extraordinary.
“If your employers have a problem, they may register a complaint at New Arcadia Yard. Right now, all I see is a coven of witches calling up cursed spirits against innocent citizens.”
I had no doubt that this was indeed how she saw it. In Ey we had learned the hard way that magic, if left unchecked, could subvert and strangle and corrupt anything it touched. We had responded by burning it from our lands with sacred fire, and it appeared that Augur Extraordinary Standfast was keen to do the same to Khelathra-Ven.
“You see?” said Ms. Haas with an air of self-satisfaction that I felt the situation far from warranted. “What we have here is a dreary little jobsworth with delusions of fanaticism. She will never be reasonable. Therefore, our only logical course of action is to kill her and all of her soldiers.”
Any hope I had entertained that Mr. Donne or I might be able to de-escalate the situation evaporated. The second explicit death threat proved beyond the tolerance of Augur Extraordinary Standfast, who, at once, ordered her officers to fire. Having time to pull only one of my companions to safety and reasoning that Ms. Haas would not thank me for interfering with her confrontation, I pushed Mr. Donne to the floor for the second time that evening and we sheltered ourselves behind the overturned table I had previously identified. Mr. Donne was holding my hand rather tightly, but I attributed this to the anxieties inherent in our circumstances.
The air was filled with the crackling of gunshots and the screams of angry spirits. Not wishing to expose myself to either hazard, I looked out from my hiding place only cautiously. The Myrmidons, including their leader, were being violently assailed by ghostly figures, a contingency that rendered their aim somewhat inaccurate although I still saw fresh blood staining the silk at Ms. Haas’s shoulder and ribs.
Beside me, Mr. Donne shut his eyes and began murmuring verses I couldn’t follow in the language of ancient Khel. A few moments later, the apparitions vanished and a chill I had stopped noticing faded from the air.
Ms. Haas whirled upon our makeshift barricade. “I was using those, you presumptuous little corpse-prodder.”
At which point Augur Extraordinary Standfast, having recovered her composure far more rapidly than her fellows, stalked forward and pressed her pistol to my companion’s temple. “Shaharazad Haas, you are under arrest for making an affray by means of sorcery, for assaulting officers of the Myrmidons by means of sorcery, and for resisting arrest by means of sorcery.”
“Oh, just shoot me and get it over with,” sighed Ms. Haas. “I’ve had a long day.”
“I would dearly like to, but the law ties my hands and the Creator commands us to obey the law no matter how misguided.” The Augur Extraordinary snapped her fingers in the direction of her followers. “Put them in irons. All of them.”
Two of the less incapacitated Myrmidons seized us and hauled us out from behind our somewhat bullet-scarred table.
“I must protest,” protested Mr. Donne.
Augur Extraordinary Standfast’s attention did not waver from my companion. “Noted.”
“I . . . that . . . this is outrageous.”
It was certainly rather troubling. But, given the Augur Extraordinary’s demeanour, I considered resistance a wholly futile endeavour. Besides which, while I found it no small embarrassment to be arrested, I remained secure in the knowledge that the law was on my side and that my innocence would doubtless become apparent sooner rather than later. As for Mr. Donne, despite his moral culpability in the proceedings, he was entirely correct in his assertion that the Myrmidons had no authority over him except that which they exacted at gunpoint. Only Ms. Haas, I feared, found herself in real legal jeopardy, a state of affairs which appeared to cause her no concern whatsoever. Indeed, for a woman with a pistol at her head, who was bleeding from multiple lacerations, and who had until recently been possessed by more than a hundred furious ghosts, she evinced a quite startling air of boredom.
“You could at least let that one go,” she remarked, waving a languid hand in my general direction. “He’s clearly neither threat nor use to anybody.”
This was a little hurtful, but I chose to assume my companion’s intentions were, in context, benevolent.
It did nothing, however, to placate the Augur Extraordinary. “Silence, witch. Bring them.”
One of the burlier officers produced a set of manacles and was about to fasten them about my wrists when he was checked by the sudden entrance of a newcomer—a tall and, if you will forgive the indiscretion, rather handsome gentleman, with an intent, solemn look that, I confess, inspired in me an unexpected sense of fellowship. From the shade of his skin and eyes, and, for that matter, the fact that his left hand was a remarkable contraption of metal and gemstones, I assumed him to hail from the city of the Steel Magi far to the south, beyond El’avarah and the boundaries of the old caliphate. This assumption proved incorrect on deeper acquaintance, but my editor informs me that I am diminishing the tension of this interlude by such digression.
His expression, as he beheld the scene before him, was not encouraging. “If this is even half as bad as it seems, every single one of us is in for a world of vexation.”
Neither I nor any other member of the assembly could have been surprised that Ms. Haas was the first to respond. “Second Augur Lawson,” she purred. “And to think, until now, you’ve done such a fine job of enriching this evening by your absence.”
“Can it, Haas. I don’t even know what’s happening here, but I know it’s definitely your fault.”
The Augur Extraordinary seemed no mo
re inclined to lower her weapon than she had before the arrival of the stranger. “Stand down, Lawson. These three are all implicated in offences under the Sorcery Act, First Year, First Council. You have no jurisdiction here.”
“And neither do you. That man”—he pointed at Mr. Donne with a mechanical finger—“is clearly wearing the sigil of the Ossuary Bank. If you arrest him, it’ll cause an almighty—”
And here, the gentleman addressed as Second Augur Lawson employed a colourful meteorological metaphor suggesting a wide-ranging and indiscriminate unpleasantness.
Augur Extraordinary Standfast at last took her eyes off Ms. Haas, but only to glare at Lawson. “That is a matter to be resolved between the necromancers and the Office of Augurs Extraordinary.”
“I think you’ll find,” piped up Mr. Donne, “that particular matter was resolved a century ago. The Charter of Sepulchres grants the bank exclusive licence both to practise necromancy and to punish its misuse. I’m not very good at being threatening, but as an accountant, I can assure you that thoughtlessly provoking a conflict with my employers will prove extremely costly for the Myrmidons.”
Second Augur Lawson made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “I was just coming off duty. I bought a pie from Cordwangle’s Superior Pie Emporium and was really looking forward to eating it. I really do not need any of this right now.” He turned to the somewhat bemused-looking officers. “Clear off, the lot of you. Augur Extraordinary Standfast is out of bounds and anybody who backs her up will be up on disciplinaries faster than you can say ‘Sorry we interrupted your dinner, Second Augur Lawson.’”
I could not help but note that the Augur Extraordinary waited until the uniformed Myrmidons had departed, which they did with great alacrity and a palpable sense of relief, before rounding upon her colleague. “You will regret this, Lawson.”
“Already do. Now let these people go.”
Ms. Haas, who had watched the altercation with obvious pleasure, chose this moment to interject. “You heard the man. Put your little pistol back in your trousers and go back to flogging yourself and crying or however else you spend your evenings.”