The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

Two men were slumped on the ground ahead of them, one half sitting, half lying, trying to hold his head on, skull cracked through to the bone and the brain matter beneath, the other crouching beside him, trying to help but horribly injured in his chest and arms, bloody and burnt. They turned wild eyes towards the squad as they approached. Marith walked forward and killed them both, a slow sword thrust in the neck to one and a series of violent kicks to the head to the other, spilling grey pulp over the marble floor.

  Tobias came up to join him. ‘You stupid bastard, Marith. They were two of ours.’

  Laughter. He looked down at the bodies. ‘It doesn’t matter now, really, does it? Dead’s dead.’

  They were in the state apartments of the palace now. The walls were lined with silk hangings, the air around them soft as breath. The floors were gold and gemstones, the ceilings carved perfumed wood. Every window shone illuminated as in midday sunlight, brilliant as diamond or with rich colours casting patterns on the walls. They were not lit from within or without. They were lit by themselves. Mage glass. Light glass. There was a piece of it set above the throne in the Great Hall at Malth Elelane, another in the chapel of Amrath, but they were small and clear, precious handspans of colourless glass. The extent of it here made Marith’s eyes hurt to look.

  They’d been through four or five more rooms before they encountered any further resistance. Five guards, swords already bloodied to the hilt, although two were injured. One badly, his face pale and clammy with pain. They came running down the corridor towards them, then pulled to a stop and came into a defensive formation.

  Tobias pulled his men up in turn. There was a body lying on the floor, between them and the group of five. Marith looked at it absently. It was one of theirs, he vaguely recognized the face as someone Emit had talked to. The eyes were open, with an angry look to them.

  The two groups eyed each other warily. Purely on numbers, the Sorlostians had the slight advantage, though the mercenaries were still virtually unharmed. The stand-off was broken when a young man came screaming down the corridor, pursued by two more mercenaries. The youth almost collided with the Sorlostians and suddenly the defenders were surrounded, four in front, two behind. Tobias roared to attack.

  Bloody, struggling confusion. The corridor was narrower just here, decorative columns and big golden candle sconces making the space harder to negotiate. The presence of a dead body in a pool of blood didn’t exactly help: Marith felt his feet slide nastily in the gore as he came forwards. His boots would be completely ruined, soon. Swords wheeled, difficult to fully control in the confined space. He had to pull himself sideways to avoid Rate’s blade as one of the Sorlostians parried it wide. Tobias swore loudly at Rate and knocked the blade safely away.

  ‘Bloody watch yourself, boy,’ Tobias grunted towards Marith. Marith smiled sweetly back. Gods, this was so much fun. He hacked viciously at the nearest opponent, almost catching Rate in the hip when his blade went wide. Tobias grunted again but didn’t move to protect Rate the way he had Marith. Interesting. He wondered what Tobias would do if he just turned and hacked one of their own men down in front of him.

  One of the Sorlostians managed to catch him on the shoulder, his blade grating against Marith’s armour, momentarily unbalancing him. He lashed out but missed and struck the wall, his arm jarring as the blade struck the stone with a screech. The impact sobered him a little, jolted a bit of self-control back into him. He might sometimes think he wanted to die, but he certainly didn’t want to die here, hacked up by hired guards who didn’t even know who they were fighting. ‘Amrath!’ he shouted again and stabbed his adversary in the chest.

  The man crumpled, hanging for a moment impaled on his blade then collapsing at his feet. He was still just about alive, his eyes and mouth moved like a fish, staring up at Marith. It looked like another face: Marith saw the mouth open, the eyes searching him. He stared back in horror, bile rising up in his throat. Fell back against the wall, his sword clattering from his hand. Dying. Dying and dead and gone. All the light running out of him, cracked away to nothing. Empty. That’s all living is, dying. But I was happy once, he thought desperately. Happy. Alive. The room swam around him. He could taste blood and raw alcohol in his mouth, thought he was going to be sick or faint. ‘Marith!’ someone shouted. The eyes gulped and twitched. Dying. Dying. He fell to the floor and smashed his head against the wall. Bright light flashed before his eyes. ‘Marith!’ It sounded like Carin’s voice. Help me, Carin. Help me. Make everything go away. He screamed and screamed and screamed.

  When he opened his eyes again, there was a small pile of corpses on the floor in front of him. The man he’d killed was at the bottom, face half hidden. Alxine was sitting leaning against the wall, his face a bloody mess; Rate was patching him up with a piece of torn cloth. ‘You’re lucky,’ Tobias was saying. ‘Could have had your eye out.’

  Very slowly, Marith got to his feet, leaning heavily against the wall. All three men turned towards him. No, four – they seemed to have gained someone. Not Emit? No, Emit was dead. Hadn’t he killed him somewhere? The other group of mercenaries, the ones who’d come down the corridor towards them. One of those. He blinked at the man, feeling as though he was looking up from under water.

  ‘Back with us, then?’ Tobias said coldly. He handed him a small leather bottle. ‘Drink?’

  Marith took it and drank gratefully. His mouth was dry and parched, with the sharp tang of blood. Hadn’t realized how thirsty he was. Their new companion regarded him warily. ‘Where’s your friend?’ he almost asked.

  ‘You remember Riclin?’ said Tobias. Marith didn’t, but tried to smile at him like he did. The man flashed him a wide grin in return, showing two missing teeth. ‘Dragon killer. Didn’t expect you to faint at the first sight of real blood.’

  ‘He’s had a rough few days,’ said Rate, clapping Marith on the back so hard he almost fell over.

  Tobias passed Marith a small hunk of dried meat and some dried fruit. He chewed cautiously, hungry but nauseous. He’d barely eaten anything in the last few days either, he realized. The food brought some strength back to him.

  ‘Right.’ Tobias looked them over. ‘Now we’ve all got ourselves together again, everyone ready to get on? We’ve still got a bloody job to do.’

  They edged past the pile of bodies and carried on down the corridor. Screams and the clash of swords echoed towards them. And something else: faint, but increasingly obvious, the smell of smoke. The place was burning. An overturned candle, someone knocking over a lamp, wooden carvings and official paperwork and silk-hung walls … Tobias sniffed the air, a worried look on his face.

  The next two rooms they came to were empty. The whole place was strangely empty. Marith’s head felt slightly clearer and he began to think properly about certain things. He’d been born and bred in a royal fortress. Even in the middle of the night, it was quite difficult to go far without encountering a sometimes humiliatingly large number of people wandering around. Yet they’d been here a good while now, thirty armed men spread out across the building with orders to kill on sight, and met nothing like the resistance he would have expected. They should have been having to fight their way forwards at every step now.

  Unless …

  He turned to Tobias. ‘This is a set-up isn’t it? They knew we were coming.’

  Rate froze. ‘What? Knew what? Who knew?’ His face went white. ‘Oh gods and demons and all hells. No. No, Tobias.’

  Silence, then Tobias shook his head. ‘Sorry, lad. Thought you’d probably worked it out by now, to be honest.’

  ‘But … I mean … If it’s a set-up … Oh fuck … I mean …’ Rate started to shake violently, tears coming into his eyes. ‘We’re getting out of here, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’

  Idiot. Naïve, trusting idiot. Thought things would somehow be all right. Thought there was more than pain and killing and dying. We fight and we die, Rate, Marith thought. We fight and we die and that’s the end of it. All there is. Death. Just death. That
’s what life is, Rate. Dying.

  Marith laughed. ‘You still haven’t understood yet, have you? There is no getting out. This really is a suicide mission. No one cares what happens to us, as long as the men we’re aiming for die first. Suits whoever gets here with the defence to cut down as many nasty foreign invaders as possible. Makes them look more heroic that way. That’s the basic idea, isn’t it, Tobias? As long as you and Skie survive, the more casualties the better.’

  ‘Shut the fuck up!’ shouted Rate. ‘Just bloody shut up!’ Stared around, trying to find something to reassure him, panic like claustrophobia. ‘Why the fuck would Skie even be here, if that was true?’

  ‘You think Skie’s here? He’s sitting in his lodgings somewhere, drinking good wine and waiting for you to die.’ Marith gestured at Alxine beside him. ‘You know all this, don’t you, Alxine? Just waiting for death like I am, aren’t you?’

  ‘Shut up.’ Tobias hit him in the face. Marith staggered backwards, licking blood from his lips. ‘Shut up, boy. Disease, you are. No wonder your father put it out you’re dead.’ Turned to Rate. Looked almost sorry about it. Like he cared. ‘It’s partly true, what he says, Rate. You’re clever enough to have worked that out already if you’d really wanted to. Part of the deal – most of the men die here, it makes the eventual outcome look better for the people involved. But not us, okay? We get out. Alxine’s done something like this before, he knows the drill.’ Alxine nodded. ‘The Company’s mostly beaten down ex-soldiers and petty criminals now. You saw them get mashed by the dragon. Not much cop in a fight, not much use for anything really. Except dying in exchange for a bag of gold. We’ll recruit again once we’re back in Immish. Drum up some men, train them up a bit, do a few normal sellsword jobs until somebody needs something a bit more specialized. Always men running from something or someone who’ll be more than happy to kill or be killed for a few marks and some company of an evening to keep their demons at bay, regular hot meals and the odd cask of strong drink.’ A grin. ‘Both of you two lads, for example.’

  There was a howl from Riclin, who’d been trailing along behind them. He flung himself at Tobias, bearing him down to the ground. Alxine contemplated the situation for a brief moment, then stabbed the man in the back of the neck. Riclin’s arms and legs jerked frantically for a few heartbeats. Tobias shoved him off and pulled himself to his feet. His lip was split and he had a gash on his cheek to match Alxine’s. He spat a large gobbet of blood at Marith.

  ‘I take it he didn’t know either, then?’ said Rate savagely. Marith began to laugh uncontrollably at that, a wild, high-pitched laugh, until Tobias hit him again.

  ‘You shut up now or I’ll kill you too, whoever you are and whatever you’re worth. Or I’ll let Rate torture you first.’ Tobias sighed wearily. ‘I’m sorry, Rate. But you couldn’t be allowed to know, could you? “Sign up to the Free Company, two year contract, pay in arrears, we’ll set you up to die badly before you make it through to get the cash”. You’d probably have been another corpse, to be honest with you, except that Geth’s getting old and slow, and Alxine’d be bloody useless as a squad commander. But look, lad. I plan on getting you and Alxine out of here. And yes, it is probably a good idea to take the Lord Prince here with us, much as I’d like to slit his throat and piss on his corpse right now. So you need to do as I say, okay?’

  Rate looked at him for a long moment. Then he nodded slowly. Not much else he could do. Trapped, as much as I am, Marith thought. Where have any of us got to go? They began to walk on down the corridor, treading over Riclin’s corpse.

  The next few hours were a long dark nightmare of fire and blood and smoke. They edged through the palace, killing as they went, the building slowly burning around them, the silk wall hangings going up like kindling, shrieking with flames that ran like liquid across the walls, and they walked into it, covered in blood, cutting down the men they met as they did so until their arms ached.

  They came at last to a great pair of cedar wood doors, inlaid with gold, wider than a man’s outstretched arms. A heap of bodies was piled before them. Some of the bodies were burnt, their skin blackened, their armour soft and sweating, glowing with heat. The room in which they lay was itself on fire, the walls and ceiling burning and covering everything with ash and silk and tiny fragments of gold leaf. But it did not seem to Marith that these men had been burnt by those flames. He thought again of the fire around the head of the statue in the Court of the Broken Knife, flames dancing in a ghostly wind.

  ‘So, we … we go through there, then?’ said Alxine slowly. They all looked at the great doorway. It looked like the doors of a tomb, or the doors to the city of the gods in a children’s tale. There was something behind it that would hurt them.

  The room they were standing in was on fire. There were shouts echoing through the chambers they had come through, men coming nearer. Could be friend, could be foe. If they turned to fight, they’d have their back to the doors. That might be worse.

  ‘Oh, for gods’ fucking sake.’ Tobias gave the doors a push. ‘I thought you were descended from bloody demons, boy. Scared of a man on a gold chair, are you?’

  The doors opened. They stepped through.

  There was indeed a gold chair. A huge gold chair, so vast it would swallow up any man who sat in it. It gaped like an open mouth. And a man was indeed sitting in the chair. A bored-looking man with a sour face. He was dressed all in black with a thin band of yellow silk round his head. He didn’t look remotely dangerous. He looked half-terrified and convinced he was about to die.

  Squad commander Gethen was lying on the floor in front of the throne. At least, it bore a passing resemblance to Gethen. His face was seared across with fire, one half perfectly smooth and untouched, the other charred down to the skull. Eyes and lips burned off. He still seemed to be vaguely alive. There were two other men lying with him. At least, they bore a passing resemblance to men. Mostly to cooked and gnawed bone. The air stank of roast meat.

  Better than steak.

  A troop of ten guards stood around the man on the throne. Their armour was not gold and their swords were not jewelled. They wore black armour that gleamed in the coloured light streaming down from the mage glass windows behind them. They held long black swords, whose blades flickered with blue flames. Their helms covered their faces, so that only their eyes showed, dark and cold.

  Two other men stood by the side of the throne. One was an ageing man with thin, grey hair framing a heavy, jowly face. He wore a long white robe, torn at the hem with a flash of blood down the front. The other was dressed in a simple robe of white cloth, his face ageless and impassive, smooth as obsidian. He was holding a long wooden staff.

  They all looked at each other for a long moment.

  And then the world exploded in flames.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Blue fire licked and crackled around Marith’s face. It tingled, like sea spray cold on the skin. He felt his face warm slightly. A faint smell of singeing from his hair and clothes.

  Rate and Tobias and Alxine were burning. Screaming. He looked at them a moment. Their armour glowed red.

  He took a slow step forward, pushing against air as thick and heavy as water. The heat on his face intensified, uncomfortable, stinging, scalding him. He took another step. His hands shook on the grip of his sword. The air was thick as honey. Like fighting against a strong current. The men behind him screamed and writhed. Burning. Dying. The room stank like a funeral pyre.

  A third step. It was harder to keep upright now than it had ever been in his life. He felt pressure pounding on him, pushing him down, his back and knees buckling. His face was hot with pain. Breaking him. Ruining him. Crushing him like stone. Drowning him. The others were on the floor, thrashing about. They screamed like he had never heard anything scream before. He felt himself falling: with gritted teeth he took another step, half crawling, bent under a weight like the weight of death. Dying isn’t easy, he thought. It’s hard. It’s so very hard. It hurts. He clun
g to his sword blindly, though the hilt was hot in his hands, stung him. Blue flames filled his vision. Everything beyond them flickering shadow-dark. Another step. Another. Another.

  The black-clad guards shifted towards him. The man on the throne cowered back. He took another step, his body howling with pain. Somewhere in the fires he could feel the mage staring at him. Angry. Frightened. Incredulous. Slowly, agonizingly, he raised his head.

  The men behind him were probably dead by now. He was dying. Drowned in fire. Nothing left of him but the grip of his hands on the sword. Another step. Another. The guards were all around him, he could see them as black shapes moving beyond the flames. They held out their swords to him but did not strike him. His eyes filled with tears, the heat of the fire drying them as they poured down his cheeks. Another step.

  He could see the mage through the fire, through the tears, see him even with closed eyes, a blazing light in the shape of a man. Raised his sword, holding it two-handed like the mage held his staff, trying to keep it from falling from his hands.

  ‘I will not burn,’ he whispered through clenched teeth. His voice rasped in his throat. ‘I will not burn. I will not burn.’

  A crash like a clap of thunder, so loud it almost knocked him off his feet. He closed his eyes and clung on to the sword, willing his body not to collapse. I will not burn. I will not burn. I will not burn. Took another step forward, his eyes pressed shut against the pain.

  I will not burn. I will not burn. I will not burn.

  A great roar. Something howling in pain. So loud he could see it, white in the vision of his closed eyes. Pain. Fear.

  The fire and the pressure broke off. Sudden, like a candle snuffed out, from light to dark with nothing in between. The lack of pain was so violent he almost fell forwards, gasping, half stunned. Deaf and blind and witless, conscious only that he still held his sword in his hands.

  I won, he thought dimly.

  The mage was crouched on the floor at Marith’s feet, skin bubbling and smoking, raw red burns opening up across his face and hands. Threw back his head and howled again, and Marith saw fire dancing in the back of the mage’s throat. Flames began to flicker out from behind his eyes. Smoke and fire poured from his mouth and nose. Writhed and thrashed and screamed and spouted fire. Fire bursting out of him. Cracks of fire opening. Jerked and fell and lay still, smoke rising, black and charred through like a lump of burnt wood.