by Rob May
‘Oh, come on, Raelo!’ one of the other players—a thin black man, dressed in white—complained. ‘You can’t ask anyone else for help, let alone her!’
The pile of ivory chips they were fighting over was large, and Senator Raelo was facing a small bet from a woman opposite him. She had ringlets of beautiful black hair, and flashing green eyes that stared down her opponent without giving anything away.
The final player was the owner of the loud voice: a large, bearded man who laughed uproariously at the black man’s complaint. ‘Let her help him!’ he roared in a thick eastern accent. ‘Poor old Raelo has had the luck of your gods tonight, and they had no luck at all, ho ho ho!’
Kal smiled and put a hand on Raelo’s shoulder. ‘You have a great hand! Bet everything!’
Raelo looked uncertain. ‘Everything? Are you sure?’
‘Trust me,’ Kal said, and addressed the other players: ‘Senator Witchwood made such a small bet because she's too afraid to call a big one. Senator Grey doesn't want me to help you because he's hoping you'll just play it safe and call, and Senator Greatbear couldn't care less if I help you or not because he was planning on folding anyway.’ She gave the big hairy man a grin. ‘Like he always does!’
Raelo shrugged and pushed all of his chips forward. Senator Grey folded his hand as predicted, as did Witchwood. Ganzief Greatbear stroked his mighty beard for a few moments, then started to count out his chips ready to call the bet.
Raelo looked worried, but then Ganzief winked at Kal and threw his cards away. ‘I am joking! You are a little bitch, Dragon Killer!’ he said good-naturedly. ‘Ha ha ha!’
‘What did you have?’ the green-eyed woman asked Raelo.
Raelo tossed his cards into the discard pile without showing them. He seemed to be shaking in relief at his win.
‘He had me.’ Kal said. ‘Let me go and grab some chips and I’ll come straight back and join in!’
Kal weaved through the Pit to the cashier cages along the edges of the building. As she passed the bar, someone called her name. She stopped and hopped up onto a bar stool to join Zeb Zing, the owner and manager of the Snake Pit, who was sat drinking beer from a bottle while keeping watch over the gaming floor.
‘Kal, darling, are you tormenting my regulars?’
‘I’m doing my best!’ Kal said, accepting the bottle that was offered to her.
Zeb Zing was a tall woman whose broad, flat features marked her out as someone from the distant Winter Steppe. She was dressed in black-and-red leather and silk. Other than the guards stationed around the walls, she was the only person in the Pit who was armed: a curved scimitar hung from her hip.
How have you been, Kal?’ she asked. ‘I can’t believe you left me here and spent a year in Balibu! Look at you; you almost have a tan.’
‘I had to come back,’ Kal laughed. ‘They banned me from the Croc eventually—’
Kal suddenly flinched as a frighteningly-loud bang sounded from the centre of the pit. Seconds later a series of explosive reports fired and echoed from all around the balconies, and a thick cloud of smoke filled the air and began to sink down and smother the tables. As soon as they regained their presence of mind, Kal and Zeb jumped down from their stools and dived behind the bar.
A clear voice rang out, silencing the startled crowds: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated! We have you surrounded. Anyone who runs will be killed at the door. But I assure you that everyone who cooperates will make it back safely to their beds tonight … minus a few coins and valuables, regrettably!’
Kal and Zeb sat side-by-side with their backs to the bar. Zeb was toying nervously with a large key that hung around her neck on a chain. The key to the vault.
‘I hope you’re insured,’ Kal tried to joke. A lot of her money was in that vault; she used the Snake Pit as a bank, and in return Zeb’s name guaranteed her a line of credit in gaming houses around the world.
‘I have protection, damn it!’ Zeb fumed. ‘These idiots must be crazy to think they can get away with robbing this place.’
Kal gritted her teeth. Amaranthium’s crime lords would no doubt hunt down the robbers as a warning to others to stay away from the Snake Pit, but for Kal and Zeb it would be a long hard fight if they wanted to be fully recompensed for their losses. Kal got to her feet and, crouching low, scuttled to the edge of the bar.
‘Where are you going?’ Zeb hissed. ‘Kal, don’t try to be a hero … Kal … Kal!’
I.iv
The King of Thieves
A strange greenish fog had descended into the Snake Pit, not only reducing visibility but also having a seemingly soporific effect on the men and women sitting at the card tables. Peeping out from around the end of the bar, Kal could see them swaying and drooping in their seats. She pressed her lips together and breathed slowly through her nose to try and filter the poison. What had happened to the guards? They were nowhere to be seen.
There were figures moving around in the fog: masked and hooded thieves carrying sacks, into which they dropped jewellery and coins grabbed from their unresisting victims. Kal figured she should take her cue from the intruders; she reached up to the bar and grabbed a dishcloth. The nearest liquid to hand was a bottle of gin, so she soaked the cloth in the flowery spirit, then wrapped it around her mouth and nose.
The ringleader was still talking, his voice carrying through the green fog from somewhere over near the centre of the Pit. It was a strong, clear voice—authoritative, but with mocking undertones: ‘That’s it, just hand it all over! You couldn't have wanted that money so bad anyway if you all came here to gamble it away.’
The men moving back and forth across Kal’s line of sight had unusual weapons slung across their shoulders: thick-bored firearms with a flared muzzle. They must have been the cause of the explosions that had announced the robbers’ arrival. Kal had seen one of these weapons once before; its name was unforgettable: blunderbuss.
How best to tackle a roomful of armed opponents? Take down the leader, of course! At the first opportunity, Kal rolled out from behind the bar, crossed the floor and ducked underneath the nearest table. The card-players lolling in their chairs—a group of young nobles who had been especially rowdy earlier—took no notice of her. The next table was no more than five feet away; Kal made a move for it, and so table-by-table she made her way to the centre of the Pit.
Her target had his back to her. He was standing on a table, a sword in one hand and a handful of silver chains and pendants in the other. Like his gang, he was hooded and masked and wrapped-up in a cloak. Kal’s hands went to her waist, her thumbs pressing against two studs on either side of her belt. She drew out her concealed weapons: two thin, flexible blades that were stowed between the belt’s layers of leather. Then she moved silently out from under the table, straightened up and, using a chair as a step, mounted the table right behind her target.
She raised her blades to the back of his neck …
… and froze in surprise as two eyes flicked open in the back of the man’s hood. His arms bent at an unnatural angle and grabbed Kal by the wrists, twisting violently until she dropped her blades. Next thing she knew, the manacles she had mistaken for stolen booty had secured her, and she was pushed firmly down to her knees.
The man tore off his hood, and Kal found herself looking at the lips and chin of a face that was half-hidden beneath a black mask. He was facing me the whole time, with his cloak and hood on backwards! The man’s chin was strong, the lips full. They split into a grin that revealed a set of perfect white teeth.
‘Dragon Killer!’ he exclaimed gleefully.
‘Who are you?’ Kal gasped.
‘Someone smarter than you, Kal Moonheart,’ he replied.
Kal tried to stay calm. The man seemed playful, but she sensed that he was extremely dangerous. ‘Well,’ she muttered, ‘it’s nice to know that there is actually someone that smart.’
The robber laughed. He shouted out across the Pit: ‘Zeb Zing, get over here now! If you do
n’t hand over the key to the vault in the next minute, then your little friend here is going to spend the rest of her life dealing cards … with only one hand!’
He stared down at Kal as they waited. ‘Look at all these fools,’ he said, indicating the hundreds of zombified people all around. ‘The brightest and richest people in the world, wasting their time playing games when they should be ruling and planning for the future. This city has been missing its king for, what—five hundred years? It’s time for someone to step in who can make a difference!’
He reached down and tore away Kal’s only piece of personal decoration: a thin silver choker adorned with a black onyx stone.
‘That person is me,’ he said. ‘I am the ruler of the night, the champion of the voiceless and the powerless, the enemy of the corrupt and iniquitous … I am the King of Thieves!’
* * *
Five hours later, as dawn filtered through the high windows, Captain Silas Dogwood of the Senate Guard entered the Snake Pit for the first time in his life. Accompanied by a troop of his own soldiers, as well as several members of the Night Watch, he marched past the gaming tables and headed down to the vault.
Kal heard the clattering of the soldiers’ armour before the heavy vault door swung open. Dogwood stood in the entrance and stared at Kal and Zeb, as if seeing two women chained up was the most incredible thing he had ever laid eyes on.
‘Well, well, well!’ he said. ‘I’m starting to see why people seem to like this place so much.’
‘Just get us loose, Dogwood,’ Kal said. She had known this insufferable bully for years, long before he had risen to the position of captain. Following the tragic death of the previous captain in Balibu last year, the Senate Guard was now under the command of Senator Felix Firehand, and Dogwood had been quickly promoted. The new captain was short and overweight, but his blue surcoat was spotless and his boots were polished.
Dogwood took one look at the chains, then sent one of the Watch off to find a blacksmith. While they waited, Zeb tried to explain what had happened. As she talked, Dogwood poked around the empty vault, only half-listening to her story. Kal and Zeb were chained with their backs to a pillar in the centre of the underground chamber, and had been forced to watch as the robbers hauled away all the gold. Zeb’s own guards and were still conspicuous by their absence.
‘Some witnesses say they saw your staff pulling on cloaks and masks before the attack,’ Dogwood told Zeb.
She stared him down with fierce dark eyes. ‘Never,’ she said simply. Kal knew that Zeb’s business and security depended on an unbreakable bond of trust between her and her employees.
‘This is the biggest and strangest robbery that I've seen for years,’ Dogwood mused, pacing around the column that held Kal and Zeb. ‘As Captain of the Senate Guard it is my duty to help—’
‘I can give you a description of—’ Kal began.
Dogwood held up a meaty hand right in front of Kal’s face. ‘It is my duty to help,’ he repeated, ‘all the senators whose money vanished from your vault tonight. The Snake Pit is closed until further notice, and I'm leaving a squad of my men here on permanent guard. Their first task will be to make an inventory of all assets, so don’t attempt to remove anything from the building.’
Kal couldn’t see the fury in Zeb’s eyes, but she felt the chains pull tight and shake as the owner of the Snake Pit fought against her constraints. The Captain of the Senate Guard just stood and watched with a leering grin on his fat face.
* * *
Finally set free, Kal stumbled home through the balmy dawn. There was no breeze to dry the sweat; she couldn’t decide what she needed more—a bath or her bed. Her rooms were nearer than the bath house, so bed it would be. Kal lived in the attic of a large residential block on the corner of Satos Square—an old textiles factory that had been converted into living quarters. Market traders were usually setting up in the square at this time, but this morning a giant stage was being constructed ready for a concert to celebrate Midsummer. Just don't wake me up too early in the afternoon, Kal thought to herself.
She flung open all her windows before getting under a thin cotton sheet. Lying awake, unable to switch off her thoughts, Kal reflected on the day. The so-called King of Thieves had taken everything from her; not only had she lost her money, but with the Snake Pit closed, she had also lost the opportunity to quickly recoup her losses. And she had lost the merchants’ documents that she had spent all day chasing around the city after.
What would Ben think when he got to hear about all this? Not since they had first entered the city together, six years ago, had she been in such a pickle. Thinking of Ben, though, she started to relax. There was no problem that Senator Benedict Godsword couldn’t solve by throwing money at. Things would turn out alright in the end, she hoped, even if it meant relying on Ben to tide her over.
Kal fell asleep finally, and in her dreams she travelled back to when she and Ben, both of them penniless and tired after two months’ traveling through the Wild, first caught sight of the white walls of Amaranthium …
* * *
And in the corner of Kal’s bedroom, a black shadow hung, its shining red eyes staring at the outline of her body beneath the sheets. Its wings were folded and its long claws were still … for now. But on Midsummer Night its time would come, and a monster would stalk the city for the first time in half a millennium.
I.v
Arrival
I wouldn’t say that Ben was a father figure—he was only twelve years older than me, after all. And he wasn’t exactly that experienced in the ways of the world, either. Everything he knew, he had read in a book. ‘A traveller should avoid the east bank of the Cold Flow,’ he declared, quoting a popular (but fifty-year-old) guidebook, Walking the Wild. ‘There are raptors that hunt around the edges of the Great Lakes.’
Well, it turned out that they might have been less of a problem than the trolls that hunted around the west bank.
We spent almost a week hiding up a tree at one point. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ben had said afterwards. ‘When we get to Amaranthium, we’ll be safe. There are no monsters there. It’s been centuries since the walls have been breached.’
No monsters. Just five million people, packed into fifty square miles of urban sprawl, all trying to get along and get ahead. At least in the Wild there are places to run and hide.
We travelled south through tangled forests and rocky moorland. There were no roads in the Wild, and very few settlements. Like our old home, Refuge, a village needed to be hidden or well-defended, and self-sufficient. It took a certain kind of people to make a life for themselves out here—the kind who accepted that one day their village might be wiped off the map by trolls, goblins, freakwolves … or worse.
In a wooded valley we found a community who had built their huts in the trees above a river. They hardly needed to ever leave their homes, since they could just drop a fishing line down through their floorboards. We received a cautious welcome, but Ben soon won the villagers over. He paid for their hospitality with tales and songs—stories of the gods and their exciting exploits. He was a gifted storyteller, and held everyone in state of enraptured attention, even me who had heard his stories a million times before. I had no doubt he would be able to resume his schoolteaching career once we reached the city.
After the stories, the village priest led us all in a prayer to the forest god, Mena, asking her to safeguard our passage to the city. ‘That’s something else they don’t do in Amaranthium,’ Ben told me as we sat by the fire supping large tankards of honeyed mead. ‘People don’t pray to the gods anymore. They’ve been gone from the world for a thousand years; everyone has given up hope of them ever coming back. If people do visit the temples, it’s to beg the Dragon not to ever show up again.’
‘Let’s just hope that our being there doesn’t encourage him to pay a visit, then,’ I joked.
Ben laughed. ‘I’ll feel safe just so long as you’re by my side, Kal,’ he said. ‘Now, have you had all yo
u can manage of your pint?’
I drained my tankard just to spite him.
* * *
The forests of mountain pine and ash gave way to sweet-smelling cypress and holly oak as we made our way south. The weather improved too; we only every got mild summers in the mountains, but the southern sun was hot, even under the trees. And then one morning, I picked up a new and different smell. Ben seemed amused, but wouldn’t tell me what it was; he insisted that I climb a tree and have a look for myself. I was an expert tree-climber, having spent my youth searching and sketching birds’ nests in the forests around Refuge, so pretty soon I was in the upper branches of the tallest tree on the highest ground … and what a view!
At first, my brain couldn't process what I was seeing. The land ahead was divided into fields of green and blue. It wasn’t until I noticed that the blue land was flat all the way to the horizon, that I realised: I was seeing the sea for the very first time! I screamed in triumph and looked down to see Ben grinning back up at me from the lower boughs.
‘What else can you see?’ he asked.
‘A city!’ I replied. ‘A great white city on a hill, with a massive domed building at the top.’
‘That’s the Basilica,’ Ben said, ‘where they remember the gods, all twenty-four of them. The hill is Arcus Hill. And somewhere under there is the tomb of Arcus and Banos, waiting for us to discover it!’
Ben’s story was that he was descended, not only from Amaranthium’s long-lost line of kings and queens, but also from the god Banos himself. Did I believe him because he was such a gifted storyteller, or was it because part of me desperately wanted to believe that there were untold riches buried in a long-forgotten tomb?