The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  “Yes?” said Croutier. “Enlighten me with your religious drivel.”

  “‘Don’t fuck with the Tyn,’” said Heffi. “And Tyn Charvolay is a very good cook. Do you know how much a good cook costs to hire?”

  Croutier snorted. “You know, I can smell a lie. I am good at that. Ask my men. Most of them bear the whip marks to prove it.”

  “There is no lie. Now stand aside. You want to get to your other ships, fine. Let me do my job or none of us will be going anywhere. I don’t see many sailors among you.”

  Croutier sneered and stepped back. “By all means, go to your little monster. But you will return in five minutes, or I will...” He looked around, and pointed to Second Mariner Suqab. “I will kill him.”

  Heffi looked at Suqab. He nodded back grimly.

  Heffi made to leave.

  “Not so fast, captain. Guando here will go with you,” said Croutier.

  One of Croutier’s men, a killer with ice-blue eyes, a broken nose and stringy, shoulder-length blonde hair opened the door for Heffi.

  “After you, captain,” he said.

  Heffi gave Croutier a final glare and stepped out into the cold.

  “Five minutes!” Croutier called after him.

  The door slammed shut, locking Heffi away from the warmth and the seat of his power. After he descended the steps to the lower deck he glanced up at the windows. Croutier looked down on him through fogged glass.

  Heffi vowed there and then to kill the usurper, come what may.

  THEY WERE OUT in the cool of the Sotherwinter evening for only a minute. It was quite mild, and Heffi found it refreshing after the heat of the wheelhouse. Deep blues of various shades striated the skies, dotted with stars struggling to come out before the sun stole their opportunity. For all the light, it was very late, and he was tired.

  “How did he get here?” Heffi asked Fenden Hul-Skaranaz. His use of the secret Ishmalani tongue provoked an immediate reaction from Guando.

  “Oi! No Ishy talk. Captain’s orders. Speak Maceriyan, or Karsarin if you can’t, but none of that topknotters nonsense.”

  “Tyn magic,” Fenden replied in Karsarin.

  “The One’s holy fundament,” swore Heffi, causing Fenden to make the sign and ask forgiveness from their god for his captain. “Has he said anything?”

  “No Ishy!” spat Guando, and he slammed the butt of his ironlock into the back of Heffi’s leg.

  Heffi rounded on Guando.

  “This is my command, you treat me with respect. It is customary for my people to converse in their own tongue when speaking of sailing.”

  “It is customary for me to gut whichever cunt I don’t like,” said Guando. Faster than Heffi could follow, he had a giant knife with a cruelly curved tip in his hand. “No fucking Ishy, or there’ll be no fucking captain.”

  They went back inside. Heffi used the cover of the squealing door to mutter, “These bastards are no fools.”

  Fenden shrugged glumly.

  First Mariner Volozeranetz was at the door of the physic’s office, which relieved Heffi. Volozeranetz had a good head on him.

  “How is he?” asked Heffi, in pointedly loud Karsarin.

  “Burns all over him,” the first mariner said. “It doesn’t look good.”

  Heffi nodded. “I’ll go in and see him.”

  Guando made to follow. Volozeranetz and Fenden stepped in his way.

  “One visitor at a time. Physic’s orders.”

  Guando looked from one to the other and made a dismissive noise. He couldn’t take them both at once. They all knew it.

  “Fine, I’ll wait here. Remember the clock is ticking.” He made a show of checking his watch.

  “Four minutes,” said Guando.

  Heffi stepped inside.

  The physic’s room was small like most of the chambers on board the Prince Alfra, with a wheel-locked door and solid bulkheads all around. Trassan had designed the ship well, Heffi had always thought that.

  There were four beds within. The physic’s desk was crammed up against one wall. The physic, Mauden, sat in his chair, exhausted. All four beds were occupied with men wounded in the fight for the Prince Alfra. Kolskwin, blinded in the battle against the city’s guardians, moaned quietly in his bunk.

  Tyn Gelven was in a collapsible cot in the middle of the room that Heffi had to edge around.

  Gelven was swathed in bandages already soaked with weeping fluid. Ointment was plastered over the few patches of visible skin.

  “He looks bad,” said Heffi.

  “It is bad,” said Mauden. “He’s got burns all over, from the soles of his feet to his eyelids. Whatever did this to him was no normal fire. I’ve never seen burns like that, or in that pattern.”

  “Magic?”

  “He’s a Tyn. I’d say that’s likely. There’s the question of how he got here.”

  Heffi shot a warning glance at the door. “Careful. He’s been on board all along, do you understand?”

  Mauden nodded his head and lowered his voice.

  “Thaumaturgical trauma is not my speciality, but it fits the picture.”

  “Can you wake him?”

  “Hang on.” Mauden searched through a tray of medical instruments, his hands shaking. Heffi doubted he’d slept since the taking of the ship. He found a syringe, and held it up. “This stuff works on people. It might work on him.”

  Mauden knelt by the Tyn and held up the syringe to the room’s glimmer light. The lamp sat behind a protective cage of thick glass and iron bars bolted to the wall; more of Trassan’s cautious engineering. Mauden squirted a little fluid out to rid the drug of air bubbles, then injected it into Tyn Gelven’s shoulder.

  A moment later, the Tyn’s eyes fluttered open; they flicked back and forth before focussing on Heffi.

  “Captain!” he said, “I have found you.”

  His breathing rattled in his chest.

  “Hold fast there, Tyn Gelven.”

  “No time. I’ve lived a long old while, but it’s over now. My choice, my choice.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “I got burned, walking roads I haven’t walked since before the beginning of your history. I knew it would happen, but I had to come. Trassan is dead, Captain Heffi. He died at the hands of Persin’s servant, an Iron Mage out of the past.”

  “An Iron Mage?” said Heffi. He looked at Mauden. Mauden shrugged.

  “An enemy from the old times.” Gelven breathed laboriously. “But the others, they are still alive. Goodlady Ilona. Bannord, Antoninan, some others. And Persin. He is with them. They have escaped along the coast.”

  “So Persin is alive,” said Heffi.

  “Goodmage Iapetus saved them. Circumstance threw them together. How long their alliance will last, I cannot say. But they are together now. Tyn Rulsy too.”

  “I thought she was on the ship,” said Heffi.

  Gelven wheezed. “If you can, you must save them, but do not return to the city in the ice. The Draathis have come to retake this world. They will kill you all, and if you do not find the others, they will kill them.”

  “The Iron Children?” said Heffi. “The Draathis of the holy book?”

  Gelven nodded painfully. “They are no story. They are real.”

  “Where are Bannord and the others bound?”

  “I had to leave before the decision was made, but I foresee them heading for Sea Drays Bay.”

  “Sea Drays Bay,” said Heffi, “was blocked. Antoninan’s idea, no doubt.”

  Gelven nodded.

  A hammering rang off the door. Gaundo’s shouts came through the iron, muffled.

  “I have to go,” said Heffi. “The ship is overrun with Persin’s men, though they show no loyalty to him. I was given five minutes to speak with you. If I do not return in time, they will kill Suqab.”

  “Five minutes.” Gelven coughed. “More time than remains to me.” He closed his eyes, his speech slowed. “I could have run back to Karsa. I could have gone anywhe
re. I came here. Trassan was among the few men I have known who treated me as more than a danger or a slave. There are good people among your comrades. We Tyn were...” he coughed again. “We were once so much more. To learn humility from a starting point of arrogance is hard, and for some of us it has been impossible. It took me centuries. I thought I would die from hatred, or loss. But I did not. I learned to be less. I long for the times before. But I am glad to have known the little kindness from your people that I did.”

  “You shall have more here; Mauden will tend you. Rest now.”

  Tyn Gelven let out a final breath that stuck in his chest. He was gone.

  Heffi covered the dead Tyn’s face with the sheet.

  He stood. “I have be getting back. Tell no one of what you heard here, Mauden.”

  Mauden blinked red-rimmed eyes at Heffi. “Absolutely. Not a word.”

  Heffi put his hand on the wheel lock and withdrew it sharply. It was vibrating so fast it stung his hand.

  “What by the One?”

  All along the shelves, bottles bounced and rattled. Liquids danced in their jars. Mauden had to lunge for his tray of instruments to stop them falling from his table.

  “What’s happening?” said the physic.

  They both turned to look at the Tyn. The cabin shook. In the corridor, men were shouting.

  The sheet covering Tyn Gelven’s face slipped away. From between his closed eyelids and his half-open mouth, white light burned so brilliantly the two men could not look into it. It grew in intensity. Heffi threw up his arm to protect his sight. Through the dazzling light, Heffi saw something much bigger than the Tyn rise up; a being so tall it had to curl into a ball to fit within the room. The iron of the ship screamed. Heffi’s teeth burred painfully, his eyes rattled in their sockets. The being collapsed into an orb as bright as a miniature sun that darted around the room, smashing whatever it touched. The four injured men were awake and screaming.

  “The Tyn’s ghost!” yelled Heffi. “The iron! It can’t get out! Open the porthole!”

  “What?” yelled Mauden.

  “Open the damned porthole!”

  Mauden was slow to act, and Heffi struggled his way past the dead Tyn and the room’s bouncing contents. His ears were in agony from the noise the orb called out of the iron. His fingers slipped on the brass nuts holding the porthole shut. He was dangerously close to passing out when first one then the other loosened, the bars disengaged from their locking slots. The glass cracked with the stress of the shaking. Heffi flung open the window.

  No sooner was the porthole open than the orb hurtled out of the room and over the ocean, looped around and rushed east to the horizon, where it shot skyward before the curve of the world could hide it. It punched a hole in the heavens and vanished. Green aurorae flashed all over the sky.

  Heffi blinked streaming eyes, and made the sign of the One, touching his topknot, forehead and lips with his knuckles.

  The door groaned inward. Guando fell into the room. His eyes were bleeding, and he waved his gun around at things he could only half see.

  “What the hundred hells is going on in here?” He said, blinking blood from his eyes. He pulled back the hammer of his gun.

  Heffi pointed at Tyn Gelven’s tiny corpse. “The Tyn is dead. His ghost passed on.” He stared at Guando meaningfully. “Now do you believe me when I say they should not be fucked with?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  King of the Gulu Thek

  FOR SEVERAL MILES around the camp, the petrified forest had been felled. The drag marks of stone timber and the tracks of the garau headed toward the Citadel of the Brass God. The modalmen growled and made bubbling complaints about this sacrilege, and Shkarauthir became grim.

  All through that country were signs of recent activity. No patch of sand was free of tracks. The modalmen called their hounds back to them, wary of confrontations between different clan packs.

  Night fell as they approached the valley. The orange of firelight glowed at the foot of the mountain, suggesting a great many campfires. The smell of dung smoke drifted from the valley mouth. Steep hillsides bracketed the fire glow. Behind the valley the mountains were a sheer wall of blackness, blocking out all starlight.

  On their way to the valley they passed other groups of modalmen heading toward the moot. There were differences between these and Shkarauthir’s tribe. Nothing particularly remarkable—variations in stature, markings and colouring. It was the same, he supposed, as the differing skin tones and statures of the men of the Kingdoms, and the differences of the modalmen were not so pronounced.

  Shkarauthir’s tribe hooted and spread their four arms wide and brandished their weapons when they passed certain clans. Other times they simply ignored one another. Not once did they exchange friendly greetings.

  A wide path of sand disturbed by thousands of garau led toward the valley. The ancient road was an insignificant strip of uneven paving down the centre of this trampled swathe.

  They rounded a corner of the land, and the valley was before them. Shkarauthir called a halt. He and his chief advisors conferred hurriedly with each other, pointing at an incomplete palisade of petrified tree trunks guarding the camp valley. Through the gaps between firelight shone, giving the valley the appearance of a hellish gullet fronted by black teeth.

  From the reaction of the modalmen and the piles of shattered stone branches heaped outside, Rel guessed this wall to be new. He stared at a torchlit group of modalmen and harnessed garau hauling freshly dressed stone trunks toward the unfinished far end. They stared back with unfriendly eyes. One bellowed and his clan marks flared, drawing Shkarauthir’s attention to Rel.

  “Do not stare,” rumbled Shkarauthir.

  “That wall is new, isn’t it?” said Rel. “Why is that important?”

  “This felling of the trees is sacrilege,” said Shkarauthir, “and the valley of the moot should be open for all. The wall does not bode well. If it has been permitted, then war is coming, and the decision to fight is as good as made. Now Brauctha’s actions can be explained.”

  “Why? What’s he doing with my people?”

  Shkarauthir did not answer.

  “We not happy, small one,” said Drauthek.

  “Stay in the middle of our group,” Shkarauthir ordered. “You are under my protection. Most of the true men will not harm you because of this, even those of the men-eaters, but there will be those who disagree.”

  “Right,” said Rel. “Let me guess, they’ll eat me on sight.”

  “Only if you are not worthy,” said Shkarauthir.

  “If I am worthy?”

  “The men-eaters do not respect the right of a thing to be the thing it is meant to be. They will change the world to suit them better, as has happened here to the stone forest and the wall. They do not understand that once all the trees are gone, no more will grow. It is the same with your people.”

  “They not care!” grumbled Drauthek.

  “If this has been permitted, then the moot might go against us,” said Shkarauthir. He paused. “You may go, if you wish. I cannot say if I can keep you safe, if the decision is made. The camp may be more dangerous for you than the forest.”

  “And this decision is...?” prompted Rel irritably. He was tired and saddle sore. Not even the prospect of riding into a camp full of man-eating giants put him off his desire for sleep.

  “The decision for change,” said Shkarauthir.

  “I am not leaving. Not now. Not if there is a chance of releasing those people from captivity.”

  “Very well. We go in. Be wary. Do not leave our camp. Do not stare. Do not answer any challenge. Do not stray. Do not wander.”

  Rel shifted in his saddle. “I don’t like being helpless.”

  “Among my people, you are.”

  The group moved off. The road narrowed back to its original paved width to pass through the palisade. There were no gates across the gap. A line of modalmen mounted on garau blocking the entrance would be as effective a
s any gate.

  They entered without challenge. As soon as they were through, the scale of the camp was apparent. The living lights of thousands of modalmen and huge herds of garau shimmered in the dark. They filled the valley side to side. Each clan camp was arranged in a number of interlocking camp circles with fires at their centres. These could have accommodated kin bands, thought Rel, though they could as easily have been regimental groupings. The latter possibility disturbed him; if every one of these creatures were a warrior, the Hundred Kingdoms were in great danger.

  From what he understood, there was going to be some kind of vote or meeting. If those responsible for the raid on the rail gang won, what then? Would Shkarauthir and others like him be honour bound to march alongside the rest? Would there be a fight among them? Would they attack the Kingdoms? The rescue of the few dozen men and women taken from the rail camp seemed inconsequential. He had to get word back to the Glass Fort of the size of the modalman horde.

  The chances of him getting away to do so were nil. All he could do was see how things played out. His hand strayed to the butt of his gun. His sword would be useless here, but if his aim were true, his gun might at least kill one or two of them.

  The valley widened out behind the palisade into a bowl that narrowed again toward the mountain. An empty lakebed occupied the centre. A dry river led out from it before petering out near where Rel rode. The cursed Black Sands went right to the foot of the mountains here. He could see no sign of greenery. There were no prairies like those of Farside to the west.

  Torch flare provided scant illumination. A fug of dung smoke and garau scent thickened the air to the extent that Rel’s eyes were watering soon after they arrived, and he smelled worse things underneath it: blood and shit and offal.

  The Gulu Thek’s area was close to the centre of the gathering, on the hard pan of the dead lake. There were many hundred of Shkarauthir’s kin present already, and they whooped and sang as he rode toward the centre of the group. Rel’s spirits were buoyed to see so many campfires. The Gulu Thek were, so far as he could see, one of the largest groups in the valley.