The City of Night Neverending

by Steven Lochran

  Joss squeezed the rubber grip of his brake handle, off and on and off again, unable to bring himself to look at either Drake or Hero. ‘So – this is it, then.’ Loath to betray just how nervous he felt, he cleared his throat and hunkered back on his seat.

  ‘Well … better get started,’ he said. ‘I hope the training isn’t too tough. With any luck, I’ll see you both again. Soon.’

  A thought leapt uninvited into Joss’s mind. No, not a thought. A doubt. This would be the first time since his days in the Orphan House – or ever, really – that he would be truly, totally, hopelessly, on his own. What chance did he have of finding this Salt – a total stranger – in such an unfamiliar landscape, let alone winning him to his side? More importantly, what chance did he have of finding, and then overcoming, an army of marauding pyrates that had disappeared somewhere into the blue?

  Joss felt himself tremble, ever so slightly. He hoped neither Drake nor Hero spotted it. The last thing he needed now was their pity. His palm was stiff from where Sur Verity had crossed it with her sword as part of their binding ceremony, all the way back in Tower Town, but still he wrapped it around the accelerator and revved the engine. The sooner he was on his way again, the better his chances would be of keeping himself from completely falling apart. Before he could get going, however, Drake gestured for him to stop.

  ‘Joss – wait …’ Drake’s green eyes were glistening much as they had back at his family homestead. ‘I can’t take my grandfather’s spear and my father’s praise about being a brave man and then send you off into the unknown all by yourself,’ he said. ‘What would that make me?’

  ‘The owner of a priceless heirloom that could easily fetch a small fortune,’ Hero said, staring so intently at the Icefire spear that at first she didn’t notice Drake and Joss staring at her with disbelief. ‘Oh,’ she said, when she saw their expressions. ‘But now’s probably not the time for that.’

  Drake turned back to Joss. ‘What I’m saying is – I’m with you. We’ll find Salt together. And then we’ll save Edgar. Together.’

  Joss felt his trembling subside. ‘You mean it?’ he asked, shifting on his seat.

  ‘I swear it,’ Drake said.

  Beside him, Hero grunted and shook her head. ‘You two are going to be the death of me.’

  The faint smile on Joss’s face grew brighter. ‘Can I take it by that grumpy little observation that you’re coming too?’

  Hero kicked a pile of snow off her boot. ‘Well, I’m not exactly going to let you both ride off without me, am I? That would be the surest way to never see either of you alive again.’

  ‘But what about our training?’ asked Joss, still having trouble accepting their offer of help. ‘You’d be risking everything we’ve worked for.’

  ‘We’d be risking a lot more than that,’ Drake soberly pointed out. ‘Though with a little luck we can make it back before anybody notices we’re gone. Besides which, it’s not like it’s the first time we’ve put our training at risk.’

  ‘And who’d want to break with tradition now?’ Hero agreed.

  Joss wanted to hug them both, wanted to thank them, wanted to leave them behind to keep them from making a grave mistake. He settled for something in between.

  ‘Then let’s ride.’

  With engines roaring they set off again across the tundra, leaving the Starlight Fields banner blowing in the wind behind them. And Joss felt a surge of renewed hope. Together they would find Edgar. Together they would rescue him, as well as all the other hostages. Together, they’d be unstoppable.

  The submersible slammed to a stop, knocking around the hostages and throwing Edgar from his seat. He landed with a gasp of pain, his knees smacking on the riveted steel flooring. He had little time to recover. The hatch beside him screeched open, and through it flooded a whole regiment of armed guards.

  ‘Move!’ the largest of them ordered, droplets of water tracing the contours of his spiked helmet, and like a herd of startled hadrosaurs the hostages were driven from the vessel. They were shoved and cudgelled and threatened at knifepoint down a narrow gangplank onto a rickety pier, where the rest of the fleet was moored.

  Gangs of pyrates mustered the remaining hostages, and once everyone was unloaded they were marched along the creaking planks towards the main wharf at the end of the pier. As dark as it had been in the submersible’s hull, it was somehow even darker here. Having trouble adjusting to the dim light, Edgar searched the sky only to see craggy rocks overhead.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked in a whisper.

  Lilia, shuffling along beside him, surveyed their surroundings. ‘A cavern, from the looks of it. Though beyond that I have no idea.’

  ‘Quiet!’ shouted one of the guards.

  Edgar and Lilia obeyed, falling quickly into silence. But as the group filed onto the main wharf, one of their fellow hostages proved far less submissive.

  ‘You can’t do this!’ he shouted from further up the line at the pyrate pushing at him. ‘We’re people – good people! You can’t just –’

  Whatever the man intended to say next, he was swiftly silenced when the pyrate smashed him in the mouth with his sword handle. A cry of shock and fear surged through the crowd as the man fell to his knees, clutching his bloodied face. Edgar watched helplessly with the other hostages as the guards pushed in and grabbed the man, dragging him away down the wharf.

  But the man wouldn’t be taken away quite so easily, shoving away his captors and moving to run. For one dazzling moment, Edgar thought he might actually have a chance at getting free. Then a bolt of lightning scorched the air and tore a hole straight through the man’s chest. With a gasp, he dropped to the ground a second time. This time he didn’t get back up.

  ‘Gentlefolk! Your attention please!’

  In silent horror, Edgar and the others looked to see a man standing at the far end of the wharf, halfway up a set of stone steps that had been carved into the cavern wall. He had a smoking bolt gun in his fist, which he now tucked into the holster strapped to his leg. His frockcoat was ripped and frayed, embroidered with dozens of staring eyes, and the grin he wore could only just be seen through his great red beard.

  ‘Welcome all, to the city of night neverending!’ he barked at them. ‘From now until your dying day, this is your home. And if that thought scares you, if it fills you with dread that you’ll be here forever, then take heart!’

  The bearded man’s grin darkened into something far more sinister. Something demonic.

  ‘It won’t be long at all.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A FIGURE NEITHER ANIMAL NOR MAN

  THE road grew ever more treacherous, strewn with stones and frozen over with patches of ice that made for even harder riding. Joss was just beginning to despair of ever finding the place they were looking for when finally they came to the narwhal skull that Drake had spoken of, and the tiny track that led from it.

  Turning onto the track, they soon approached a squat but sprawling barge anchored in the middle of an icy river, its hull frosted white. A stovepipe chimney stuck out from under a tarp in the middle of the barge’s deck, from which a thin trail of smoke curled into the sky.

  ‘He’s home!’ Drake said, guiding his skimmer towards the small wooden ramp that led from the barge onto the snowy riverbank. Joss and Hero dismounted alongside him, their bones cracking and joints popping.

  ‘Muuck!’ Joss moaned as he stretched his arms, his legs, his back and shoulders. ‘Give me a raptor and a well-worn saddle over that contraption any day.’

  ‘Remind me to give Callie an extra helping of sardines when I see her next,’ Hero added with a grunt.

  Drake was too busy to listen to their complaints. With his skimmer still whirring down, he tramped through the snow to the barge’s ramp.

  ‘Salt! Salt, are you there? It’s me – Ganymede!’ he called out.

  No noise came from within the barge. No movement. All that stirred was the smoke from the chimney.

  �
�Doesn’t seem like anyone’s about,’ Joss said, just as the water beside the barge erupted, and from its frozen depths there burst a figure that was neither animal nor man. It leapt up onto the riverbank as fluid as the stream itself.

  Turned away from them as it was, all Joss could see was a broad back and a pair of powerful arms that ended in clawed flippers. Instead of legs it had a long tail, its flesh covered in a sleek sable fur, while tangled locks of algae-brown hair hung between its shoulders.

  ‘Salt …?’ Drake asked uncertainly, and the creature flinched. It turned its head towards them, though only slightly, giving Joss the barest impression of its large dark eyes and wiry whiskers. And then it flexed its muscles, and the fur that covered it from snout to tail began to recede into its skin, revealing a mass of tattoos that resembled the runes that Qorza had inscribed across the Behemoth’s decks.

  Steam poured off its flesh as tendons snapped and bones reset themselves. The tail that had been draped in the water split in two and formed legs, while what had been flippers now became hands. Reaching out, the figure took hold of a rough-spun brown robe that hung from the barge’s anchor chain and threw it around himself. His modesty covered, the man turned fully.

  ‘Ganymede. It’s been too long. And I see you’ve brought company with you.’ His words were flavoured with an accent Joss didn’t recognise.

  ‘I have, and I’m sorry to intrude, Salt. But this isn’t a social visit. We need your help.’

  ‘That may be, but first I require introductions. Preferably over a warm mug and a cosy fire. Care to join me?’

  Turning on his heel, Salt strode up the ramp and into the barge without waiting for them. As the prentices followed, Joss took the opportunity to ask Drake a hushed question.

  ‘Remind me – how do you know this …?’ He hesitated in calling Salt a man. He surely wasn’t a mortal. But then who was to say when magic was involved?

  ‘Friend of mine?’ Drake finished for him, while Hero tilted her head to listen along with Joss. ‘He’s exactly that. A good friend made during a long and often lonely time at Starlight Fields. Lord Oric hired him once, when we had a fieldserv run off with the paymaster’s coffers. Sur Fabian and I were tasked with accompanying him and he must have saved our lives about a dozen times during the course of that misadventure. I only had the one occasion to repay the favour. But if you can’t call someone a friend after that, chances are you’ll never have any friends to name.’ Drake stepped through the hatch into Salt’s barge.

  Following him, Joss waited for his eyes to adjust to the shift in light. When they did, he saw the nets that hung from the curved ceiling like giant spider’s webs, holding pots, pans and enamel plates, as well as countless bottles and jars. The floor was covered in fur rugs, the likes of which would have no doubt warranted an angry growl from Pietro, while a cast-iron stove kept the space warm. Thin blades of light cut into the room through the shuttered windows, painting everything in glowing stripes.

  Joss’s memory was cast back to the Barbed Forest and the hut in which he and the others had sheltered while on the Way. He remembered Bittersweet, the healer who had tended to Drake’s wounds, and the story she had told of all the races of fae who had fled when the mortals had come to dominate the land.

  She had spoken of the spriggans, her own ancestors, as well as the other tribes of fae: the sylphs of the air, and the selkies of the water. Looking around at Salt’s abode and all its trappings – the driftwood furniture, the blades carved from bone, the bottles of fermented kelp and fish hearts and heavy water – Joss knew immediately from which tribe Salt hailed. Of course, the fact that he’d also seen him shapeshift only a moment ago helped to dispel any doubts.

  Even now, in the soft light that radiated from the stove’s searing belly, Salt still had a wild look about him. His hair was a tangle of silvery grey and dull ochre waves, braided with seashells and small dark feathers. His eyes – black and bulging when Joss and his brethren had first arrived – had withdrawn into his face to become distant points of light at the bottom of two deep wells. And he was staring at them all with cold curiosity.

  ‘Drinking chocolate?’ he said as he placed a full kettle on top of the stove.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ Drake replied. ‘Salt, may I introduce my Bladebound brethren: this is Hero of Blade’s Edge Acres, and Josiah Sarif of Round Shield Ranch.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Joss said.

  ‘Likewise,’ Hero added.

  But Salt had little interest in exchanging niceties. ‘Brethren, eh? So you’ve completed the Way and you’re off on your training. Congratulations, Ganymede. I know that’s long been an ambition of yours.’ Though Salt’s words were nothing but courteous, his tone carried with it a note of judgement. If Drake picked up on it, he didn’t seem to care.

  ‘You’re right. It has been. Though we’ve recently suffered a loss that threatens to overshadow all that.’

  ‘Oh? Do tell.’

  Drake went on to explain all that had occurred in Crescent Cove. He didn’t mention Edgar by name, simply referring to him as ‘Joss’s fellow prentice from Round Shield Ranch who was to serve as our steward’. The impersonal description struck an off-note to Joss’s ear, but he kept himself from saying anything. Drake was clearly choosing his words carefully.

  By the time the kettle boiled, the story had been told in full. As Salt went about filling each of their mugs and handing them around, he kept his reaction closely guarded.

  ‘That’s quite a tale, and I’m sorry to hear it. But why is it that you’ve come to me?’

  ‘You’re the best tracker I know, Salt.’

  ‘I’m the only tracker you know.’

  ‘Even so, if anyone can find those hostages, it’s you.’

  ‘It’s been a long time since we last saw each other, Ganymede. You should know, I don’t do that kind of work any more.’

  ‘You don’t?’ Drake asked, clearly surprised. ‘But … why?’

  Salt turned his gaze to the window and the cold, unforgiving landscape that howled outside. ‘Not everyone who comes to my door does so with noble intentions. If anything, they come looking for an animal to hunt their prey. And I am not a beast to be unleashed. Not for you. Not for anyone.’

  Salt punctuated his refusal with a long, slurping sip from his cup, and Joss felt himself flaring with an intensity that would have put the aurora itself to shame. When Captain Gyver had refused them, it was Qorza who’d intervened on their behalf. Now here they were in the middle of a frozen wasteland, with nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to for help, and they were being denied for a second and seemingly final time. There was no way Joss was simply going to accept Salt’s words without a fight.

  ‘What a load of muck!’ he cursed.

  ‘Joss!’ Drake said, but Joss wouldn’t hear it.

  ‘We came looking for an ally, not a beast. Because I remember what it’s like to be prey to beasts.’ He ignored Drake’s and Hero’s shared looks of confusion. ‘When we were on the Way, Ganymede was nearly killed. And we would all have likely died right along with him if not for the intervention of a kindly stranger. Her name was Bittersweet. She saved his life and gave us food and shelter until we were ready to travel again. She said it was her people’s way to offer help where it was needed. And yet, when innocent lives hang in the balance, you would flatly refuse us?’

  Any hint of light had drained from Salt’s eyes. He stared darkly at Joss as he replied, ‘Your understanding of fae culture is confused at best. Ignorant at worst. This Bittersweet – she was spriggan, yes? I am selkie. Selkies do not rush to make lackeys of themselves for mortal gain. We are not so easily swayed. Certainly not by packs of callow pups seeking to goad us for their own purposes.’

  Drake looked dismayed. ‘Salt, please …’ he began, but Salt was unmoved.

  Joss spoke again, his voice softer this time. ‘I’m sorry. I spoke without thinking,’ he said, winning back Salt’s guarded attention. ‘But the longer we
travel, the more desperate our search becomes. And we’ve travelled very far to ask you for your help.’

  Salt’s lips twisted as if he’d just tasted something tart, but not altogether unpleasant. ‘Ganymede – you call this boy here a friend of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s like you, Salt,’ Drake replied. ‘He’s my brother.’ While Joss flushed red, Salt lowered his face in deliberation, the shadows knitting together to cast his features in darkness. When he turned back towards the lamplight, the shine of it caught his eyes.

  ‘Do you have anything that belonged to the missing lad?’ he asked.

  Joss felt Drake’s elbow in his side, prompting him to respond. ‘Only this,’ he said, pulling out the glove he’d saved from the streets of Crescent Cove.

  ‘That will serve. Though if we’re to do anything with it, we best move quickly.’ Salt rose from where he was sitting and threw open a rosewood chest that was as long as a coffin. Contained within was an array of arcane objects, even more unusual than Qorza’s collection.

  ‘So, you’ll help us find our steward?’ asked Drake.

  ‘I can’t promise that, my brother,’ Salt told him. ‘But I will guide you.’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  A PRIMAL VOICE

  BENEATH the wide and watchful eye of the full moon, upon the frozen fields that surrounded the river, Salt had performed his spell. He started by taking a driftwood staff and carving a circle between himself and the three prentices. He’d then asked Joss for Edgar’s glove. Joss had watched with mounting disbelief as Salt whispered incantations over the glove before tossing it in the air, where it swam around of its own accord like a stitched and leathery fish. Joss found it difficult to accept that what he was seeing was not some elaborate trick, and it was made all the more surreal by the nonchalance with which Salt had performed the feat.

  ‘We search for Edgar of the Greyson lineage, taken against his will by those who would do him harm,’ he’d intoned, staring up into the burning rainbow of the aurora. ‘We beseech those listening that they might whisper in Mother Mab’s ear, seek her divine insight, impart unto us her wisdom. Bestow upon me sight and sense. Show me where he can be found!’