by Tom Lloyd
She fought him but could do nothing against the man’s strength and with perfunctory jerks he yanked one finger then the next straight. Each movement sparked another shriek from Lastani, but afterwards the pain dampened and her wits returned. Her vision cleared a fraction to see Atieno and Mistress Ishienne staring down at her bleeding, pinched but no longer dislocated fingers.
‘He’s on fire!’ Bokrel yelled, prompting Atieno to turn with a snarl on his face.
‘Cut the hand!’ he bellowed, rising. ‘Get him away or he’ll die!’
An orange corona lit the inscribed canopy above and haloed the Fountain. Lastani couldn’t see Castiere from where she lay, but she knew how the fire mage would be looking if he was trapped as she had been – surrounded by the unchecked ferocity of his magic.
There was a grunt and a wet crunch. The light vanished and she heard a weight fall to the ground, but not the screams of a man whose limb had just been severed.
‘Castiere!’ Ishienne yelled, running past the open face of the fountain towards her pupil, but never reaching him.
A flash of pale grey light darted out towards her, as fast as a striking snake, and snatched the woman up like she was a toy. Lastani screamed in terror, Ishienne’s cry cut off in the same instant it began. Impaled on blades of shining mist, she hung helpless – her mouth open in a silent scream – as an indistinct nightmare hauled itself out of the darkness inside the Fountain.
Long, slender limbs unfolded, two, six, eight – the ghostly creature seemed all limbs and no body, just a knot where the joints met, but it moved with fearsome purpose and speed.
A great detonation crashed against Lastani’s ears. She reeled, eyes watering and barely registering the taste of ice magic in the air. Atieno had fired his mage-pistol, but though the horror flinched there was no damage Lastani could see.
Wailing in terror, the two mercenaries backed away. Bokrel had his gun out, wavering uncertainly in the apparition’s direction, but when he fired the white trail went high and out into the night beyond. Ybryl hadn’t even got her gun out, the woman just quivered and wailed quietly as the horror turned their way. It dropped Ishienne and she fell limp, a dead thing on the floor. That was enough to make the mercenaries turn tail, but before they could get a step or two it slashed forward and tore furrows down their backs.
The mercenaries fell, their cries cut short as the horror stabbed forward to dispatch them with perfunctory savagery. Lastani was paralysed with fear as she watched them die, unable to run while she had the chance. When it turned towards them she still couldn’t move, a leaden chill filling her body.
Atieno growled a curse and pulled something from his waist – small, just the size of a hazelnut. Lastani barely saw anything of the dark object as Atieno hurled it towards the ghostly spider-thing. The small shape landed at its feet. The ground seemed to shudder and twist, the horror somehow tangled as Atieno dragged Lastani upright and started hauling her away.
‘Come on!’ he roared in her ear, slapping her face to jerk her back to her senses. Lastani gasped at the impact, her head rocking back, but then some trace of her strength returned and she found her feet again.
‘Move!’ Atieno roared again, leaning heavily on his staff with one hand and the other gripping Lastani’s arm so tight it hurt. His bad leg dragged heavily underneath him, but still Lastani would have fallen behind without his hold on her.
Together they fled as fast as they could, not daring to look behind in case the creature was right there. Only at the edge of the Deep Market where they were surrounded by dark empty silence did they pause and check behind. There was nothing there – all was still and silent. No screams of the dying, no darting movements of whatever had attacked them.
‘Ishienne,’ Lastani gasped. ‘Castiere?’
‘They’re dead,’ Atieno said gruffly, ‘and we’re not out of danger yet.’
‘What? How do you know?’
‘I don’t,’ he snapped. ‘But I ain’t a man to gamble on his own safety. I don’t know what we just unleashed, but I for one won’t hang around to see how far the danger goes.’
‘But … what do I …?’
His face softened. ‘Come, girl, we need to keep moving.’
‘Where?’
‘Your teacher’s house. Your home. You need to pack your belongings.’
Lastani stared up at him with incomprehension. ‘But …’
‘Come on,’ he urged, pulling her along with him as they headed for the coiling ramp that led up to the inhabited part of the city. ‘Folk will have heard the gunshots, they’ll fetch the watch.’
‘I should stay.’
‘Not a good idea. At best they’ll find some brutally murdered people, at worst … Well, you don’t want to be anywhere near the fallout and I need to get paid.’
She gaped at him. ‘Paid?’
‘Aye.’ His face hardened again. ‘My fee. I ain’t so rich I can afford to go without that. I did as your mistress asked and I need to pay for food somehow. Compassion doesn’t help there. And you – you don’t want to be at her house when some angry watchmen come looking for answers. Asking why some monstrous ghost just got set loose in the city. Take what you can without it looking like you’ve killed and robbed her.’
They started up the slope, Atieno’s face taut with apprehension. Lastani followed without willing it, her body just obeying even if her mind couldn’t comprehend his instructions.
‘What then?’
‘That is anyone’s guess.’ He paused and frowned at her for a moment before seeming to make up his mind. ‘Come with me if you want, lie low a few days and let the worst pass. After that …’ He shrugged and started walking again, labouring up the slope until they were at the top and he could peer suspiciously around. There was no one in sight so he waved Lastani onward and pressed on to the cover of the nearest side street.
‘After that, let’s just hope what we did doesn’t come back to haunt us.’
Chapter 2
Wrapped in the snug embrace of his blankets, tucked into the corner of his bed with his back pressed against the wall, Lynx fought the wakefulness stealing over him. The bed shuddered faintly underneath as the stamp of boots on a bare wooden floor reverberated through the building. He winced as a fist pounded on the door just a few yards from his head and a voice roared out to echo through the building.
‘Company muster!’
Lynx growled and rolled his generous frame over. Distantly he heard a creak as another of the room’s occupants did the same, but the pounding didn’t stop. The stamp of boots grew heavier and the voice took on the unmistakably gleeful tone of their commander, Anatin.
‘Up, you bastards! I told you not to drink so much, reckon some of you lot have a bloody problem with the sauce!’
Anatin started hitting doors along the corridor with his one remaining hand so hard the walls shook. Lynx heard one crash open under his efforts and that only increased the man’s mirth.
‘Morning sunshi—Wisps and shadows, Reft, put him down! Shit, that’s more o’ Deern than most gun-addled veterans could stand to see this early. Clothes, you bastards – put some on! There are women and children hereabouts!’
Blearily, Lynx scratched his belly and sat up. In the bed opposite another man emerged from his blankets – Safir, the Knight of Snow.
‘Do you think it counts as mutiny,’ Safir wondered idly, ‘if we shoot Anatin for being maliciously cheerful?’
The easterner stretched, his lean body hidden by a long shapeless robe that the more foolish members of the company said looked like a girl’s smock.
Lynx rubbed the sleep from his face and nodded. ‘I’ll back you up. We’ll call it the morning coup. Folk will be singing your praises for years to come.’
In the corridor, Anatin continued, no doubt well aware half his company were idly considering murder of one fashion or another. Another door was battered open as he yelled out his good mornings.
‘Speaking o’ women and children, ge
t yourselves – shitting gods, Sitain! What’re you doing to the poor girl? That can’t be hygienic!’
From elsewhere there was laughter, thin and mocking, that told Lynx the rat-faced wretch Deern, naked or not, was enjoying the embarrassment of others.
‘Sitain?’ Lynx asked muzzily.
He recoiled as a face hoved unexpectedly into view from the bunk above. ‘Oh yes!’ Llaith grinned. ‘Some merchant’s clerk with blue eyes, pretty little thing. I could stand to be hearing that through the wall, let me tell you.’
‘Gods, man, don’t sneak up on me like that,’ Lynx groaned.
‘Sneak up on you?’ Llaith cackled, plague-scarred cheeks crinkling in his mirth. ‘We’ve shared this room for bloody weeks now, where did you think I was going to appear from?’
‘First time I saw Lynx,’ Safir said with a sniff of disdain, ‘I knew he’d be an ungrateful wretch. We go out of our way to save that ample backside of his at the Skyriver Festival – risked our lives in the face of mad killers no less – and does he show any appreciation?’
‘Mad killers?’ Lynx shook his head. ‘Bunch of costumed goat-fuckers more like. And you didn’t save me for long, did you? About one minute in total, half of which was taken up by Llaith trying to get his sword-stick to work properly. Toil did most of the work.’
He rubbed his arm absent-mindedly, the livid red of a newly forming scar. The Skyriver Festival was meant to be a night of wild abandon in Su Dregir as the city descended into one extended, hugely drunken, costumed ball. With his usual talent for attracting trouble magnified by Toil’s own, Lynx hadn’t had quite as much fun that night. The bruises had mostly faded, the sliced flesh mostly knitted, but it was another scar on the surface of a soul that was now just a patchwork of repairs.
‘Aye, she did.’ Llaith gave him a sly smile. ‘Question is, did you get to thank her properly? It’s only polite you know. I could pass on a message if you needed some help?’
Lynx shoved the man’s face away. ‘Rein it in, you filthy old man. You want to thank her for doing what you couldn’t, the risk’s all yours.’
‘He doesn’t even give us our due recognition,’ Llaith sighed dramatically, swinging his bare feet over the edge of the bed and dropping down to the ground. ‘Filthy foreigners, eh, Safir?’
‘Bastards,’ agreed Safir, pulling his not-a-smock off to reveal a smooth, lean nut-brown figure in complete contrast to Llaith’s puckered white flesh. ‘Coming over here, killing our torture-loving assassins …’
Even after a hard night of drinking, the former nobleman looked neat and composed, his dark beard never less than perfectly trimmed. With characteristic grace Safir slipped into his cotton leggings and kilt almost in one deft movement, while Llaith scratched his backside distinctly too close to Lynx’s face for comfort and bent over to work out which boot was which.
‘One hour!’ yelled Anatin as a parting message, sounding like he’d finally tired of his game and was halfway back downstairs. ‘Muster in one hour! Breakfast, shit, shine and shave – anyone not ready gets left behind after Reft’s had his way with ’em and if you’d just seen what I have, you’d all be fucking running by now!’
Lynx jumped to it. One to the gut – assuming Anatin was joking about what he’d just walked in on between Reft and Deern – was standard punishment for being late to muster. Given the pale, hairless Reft appeared more ice-giant than soldier, he could punch a man into next week’s hangover. Still, it was more the suggestion of breakfast that got Lynx going. Pain might have been an old friend of his, but breakfast would always be a delicious new friend.
‘Aye, boy, you go get the coffee brewing,’ Llaith said approvingly as Lynx hauled his clothes on. ‘Bat yer eyelids at that cook’s maid and have the grub waiting for us.’ He eased open the window shutter and a thin shaft of sunlight spilled across the room. ‘Looks like a fine morning. We’ll be on the morning tide I reckon.’
Lynx nodded. After a quiet winter in Su Dregir under retainer, Anatin’s Mercenary Deck had orders to move out again. Their employer hadn’t changed, the Archelect’s agent, Toil, having apparently adopted the company as her own. But other than knowing she’d hired a ship, they had no idea where she would be taking them next.
Sure it’ll be a fun surprise, Lynx thought bleakly, Toil’s full of those.
He finished dressing and left his small pile of belongings on his bed. It still felt strange to do so, but the Cards had occupied this whole inn all winter and there wouldn’t be strangers wandering around the place. The few speculative thieves had been enthusiastically thrown out on their ears and word had got around – the words in question being ‘second storey’.
The inn remained chilly in the morning despite the late winter sun, so he pulled his jacket on. He realised distantly that he’d finally grown used to the sight of the playing card badge stitched on the breast – the Stranger of Tempest, a hooded figure with a staff in one hand, a burning torch in the other. While half the company weren’t averse to a little light theft, it made him a bad prospect to steal from. Perhaps more importantly, he shared a room with Safir, the Knight of Snow. The senior officers of the Cards took a grave opinion of theft unless they were the ones doing it.
Out in the corridor, Lynx nodded to a few faces there. Deern lounged on the bed in a room almost opposite his, the worst thief of the lot in Lynx’s opinion. Half-naked and smirking, the man looked wiry and scarred – far smaller than Lynx, but a killer to the bone who wore the Jester of Blood on his jacket.
‘Morning, fat boy,’ Deern called. ‘That’s gotta be a kick in the fork, eh?’
‘What is?’ Lynx said wearily.
He had no time for Deern, but they were both quick-tempered and it was too early for a fight. On top of that, Lynx caught a glimpse of deathly white flesh behind Deern before Reft pulled on a shirt. Any fight broken up by that huge man stayed broken up and people tangling with Deern tended to come off worse.
Deern nodded to another doorway down the corridor. ‘Your girl there, gettin’ more action than you.’
Lynx shrugged as Sitain appeared at the doorway, hair rumpled and scowl deeper than usual. ‘I ain’t his fucking girl,’ Sitain snapped, ‘so shut your mouth, Deern.’
‘Watch your tongue, girly.’
‘Get burned, you don’t outrank me, remember?’ As though to make the point Sitain slung her jacket over her shoulder, the Jester of Sun just about visible. She wasn’t an experienced soldier at all, just a half-Hanese young woman who’d fallen in with a bad crowd, but she was a night mage and that meant she had a skill none of the others could match.
And technically, Lynx reflected, she’d have the best chance of putting Reft down in a fight. Might wet herself if I suggested it o’ course, but that’s life for you.
‘Just ’cos Anatin’s got a weird sense of humour and you’ve cuddled up to some murdering convict, that don’t make you a real soldier, Sitain. Keep that mouth in check till you’ve seen a real fight. Running away from bugs underground don’t count.’
‘I’ve seen proper soldiers, Deern,’ Lynx broke in, ‘and you ain’t one. You’re the sort who leaves the field with every dead man’s purse, but never got around to firing a shot.’
‘Try me, fat boy.’
Before Lynx could reply a head poked around the corner of the end room. Payl, Knight of Sun and Anatin’s second in command.
‘Enough of that crap, the three of you. Make like Reft and keep quiet until I’ve had some coffee or someone’s getting their papers before we leave. I ain’t going to be cooped up on a boat with you lot bitching again, hear me?’
The woman didn’t bother waiting to see the reaction to her words, just stepped back into her room to allow her young lover, Fashail, to leave. The youth was another untested recruit and still faintly blushed as though he had been caught sneaking out of her room in the middle of the night, but they were old news and no one else cared.
Lynx turned his back on Deern and went to Sitain’s room. He clapped a c
omradely hand on her shoulder as he peered round the door and was unsurprised to have it shaken immediately off.
‘Get your nose out,’ she said, but without the venom of a few moments earlier. ‘Don’t pretend you’re not rushing to be first in the breakfast queue.’
Lynx ignored her and smiled broadly at the other women in the room – the company seer, white-haired Estal; the more beautiful of the two scouts, Kas; and a woman he didn’t recognise. A few years older than Sitain, she was indeed pretty, with deep blue eyes, but not apparently intimidated by the harsh company of mercenaries.
‘Morning, miss. I’m Lynx.’
‘That much I guessed,’ she replied, a challenging tilt to her nose.
Lynx forced himself to grin only wider. ‘Heard I was the most beautiful man in the company, eh? Sitain is prone to singing my praises of a morning.’
Just as obvious as the tattoo on his cheek was the fact he was from So Han and therefore unpopular across half the continent, but Sitain was half Hanese too. If the woman had a problem with his homeland of bastards she’d likely not be in Sitain’s bed.
‘I think I said the most something, anyway,’ Sitain replied, prodding his belly.
‘Insatiable in my appetites?’
‘Yeah, let’s go with that.’
By then Kas had finished getting ready and she drifted forward, jacket draped over one brown shoulder and fixing Lynx with a dazzling smile.
‘Come on, Lynx, don’t make me blush by getting her to repeat all the things I said about you. You know what us women are like when we get together, it’s just talking about boys all night long.’
‘Now if I believed that, I’d be sorely disappointed in these two young things.’
‘Oh the stories I could tell there …’ She winked. ‘Now leave these two to their goodbyes and take a girl to breakfast before Llaith starts asking for details, okay?’
Without waiting for a reply Kas took Lynx’s arm and swept the helpless man on down the corridor. In their wake came Estal, scowling as usual at her friend’s cheerfulness in the morning as she tied her hair back and scratched the large scar at her hairline.