by Tom Lloyd
Growling, Lynx resisted the urge to kick it in and merely shouted, ‘Five minutes,’ through the door before heading downstairs. In the common room he spent a while sorting through the crowd, trying to work out who was in any condition to come with them. His efforts weren’t helped by the musicians putting renewed effort into their screeching and Lynx was putting serious consideration into shooting one by the time he hauled Kas up off the sofa she was lounging on.
Eyes glazed and mouth fixed in a drug-induced grin, Kas took a while to work out what was going on, but when she focused on Lynx’s face she gave a happy little sigh and wrapped her smooth brown arms around his neck.
‘Come to join in the fun?’ Kas purred, pulling him closer.
As best he could, Lynx turned his head to speak to her without either shouting or ending up with their lips pressed together. He found his hands sliding all too easily around her waist and had to check himself as Kas stretched up.
‘Time to work!’ he called out.
‘Get fucked,’ she replied merrily, nodding back to the sofa where Sitain swayed as she watched them. ‘Come enjoy yourself with us instead.’ Her grip tightened. ‘Or enjoy yourself somewhere else mebbe, if you’ve come to your senses?’
‘Eh?’
‘Toil,’ Kas said, fingernails digging into the back of his neck briefly. ‘That girl’s gonna be the death of you.’
‘Yeah, sooner rather than later too.’
The scowl on his face was enough to pierce the clouds in Kas’s mind and she leaned back a little so she could focus on his face better. There was little doubt she was in no condition to do much exploring underground, but she’d been with the Cards long enough to still have her wits about her while drunk or high.
‘What’s happened?’ she sighed. ‘Fuck’s that madwoman gone and done now?’
Lynx gave a wry smile. ‘Where do I start? Our night’s only just started, you in any state to think straight?’
‘How long have I got?’
‘Well the army putting Jarrazir under siege has only just reached the city, so a little while.’
‘Did you just say fucking siege?’ Kas yelled just as the music hit a lull. More than a few faces turned their way and Lynx realised their embrace was now the focal point of the room.
‘Knights-Charnel!’ he replied loudly.
‘Of shitting course it’s the Charnelers,’ Kas growled. ‘Who else?’ She let go of him and sat back on the wooden back of the sofa.
‘Shit, tonight was looking like all sorts of entertaining up till now.’ Kas cast a mournful glance back at a man just behind her, no more than twenty years old and shirtless to show his lean physique and rings in his nipples.
‘Sitain, how’re you doing?’ Lynx leaned down to look at her and blinked in surprise as she straightened up. ‘Gods, where’d you get that?’
Normally Sitain left her hair to hang loose above her shoulders, but now it was pinned back by a handful of silver clasps. Around her neck was a brass necklace composed of eight chains, interwoven through each other and studded with coloured jewels or glass.
Sitain gave him an owlish look. ‘Like it? I found it in a market today.’
‘You know what that is?’
Lynx found his thoughts completely derailed by the sight of Sitain in that necklace. It was a traditional Hanese style, one given to daughters by their mother during the Festival of Songs. Often they were pieces handed down through the generations or shared within a family, a common sight on any So Han street. To see Sitain wearing one was like a punch to the stomach – her parentage for some reason all the more obvious by that small addition.
‘Course I do, my ma had one. Never got a chance to give me my own.’
‘Shit,’ Lynx muttered, shaking his head as though he could clear out the memories crowding his mind. ‘Yeah, right.’
His own mother was long dead, but when he pictured her it was wearing just such a necklace at the dinner table. The first girl he kissed, around the back of the livery yard while their parents headed to temple, had been wearing one. He tried not to think much about So Han and the life he’d left behind, but now the warmth of memory washed over him. The militaristic society was not ascetic or stale, however humourless their rulers were. He had plenty of good memories buried under the pain, plenty of gentle moments between the arduous training grounds and bombastic speeches at the temple.
‘You okay?’
‘What?’ Lynx blinked. ‘Oh, yeah. I’m fine. Come on, time to work.’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah, get your kit in case we’re not back here any time soon. You too, Kas.’
The lithe scout took a few unsteady steps. Lynx reached out to help her but she slapped his hands away. ‘Get off, I just need to walk this off. I’ll be fine.’
‘Sure?’
‘Get the others,’ she insisted, waving vaguely at the rest of the room.
Lynx took her at her word and did just that, interrupting Reft and Deern as gently as he could before kicking Llaith off a tall woman when he wouldn’t stop doing whatever was making her eyelids flutter alarmingly. Teshen was at a side table playing some sort of forfeit game with knives and tiny vials of clear liquid – apparently intending on a little catching up of the others before doing anything else.
Anatin just giggled malevolently when Lynx tried to rouse him from his chair, prompting the thought that this had all been at his deliberate instigation to spite Toil, while Safir was nowhere to be found, and Payl was swigging from a bottle of something potent-smelling rather than helping.
‘You too?’ Lynx said, glancing at Teshen.
‘Toil don’t need us yet,’ Payl replied. ‘I’ll come when the Cards are needed but fuck her and her scouting group. I’ve got better things to do than find out how safe it is down there.’ Without waiting for him to reply Payl hauled her lover Fashail up out of his seat and off towards their bed with such a look of determination Lynx didn’t try to stop them.
Deciding Payl was at least halfway right Lynx returned to his room to discover the door unbarred and Safir mostly naked inside. He was out of his bunk and trying to light a pair of small cheroots while Estal, the company seer, lay under the blankets of his bed. The white-haired woman smiled up at Lynx, almost purring with contentment, the large jagged scar on her head looking more dramatic in the weak light of the single lamp.
Lynx stared at her for a moment as Safir passed Estal one cheroot and she began to puff away at it.
‘You okay there, Lynx?’ Estal asked through a cloud of smoke.
‘Eh? Oh, yeah.’ Lynx turned himself to the matter at hand and started to unbutton his tunic.
‘Hey, whoa there,’ Estal laughed, ‘I ain’t that sort o’ girl!’
‘Who says it’s for your benefit?’ Safir said with a wink.
‘Is that why you boys are so happy sharing a room together? I should have known Llaith’s flexible morals would rub off on the lad.’
‘No one’s rubbing off on anyone,’ Lynx said firmly before raising an eyebrow at Estal, sprawled back across Safir’s bed. ‘At least, no more’n they have already. I’m just here to change, you two might need to as well.’
At that Estal frowned and glanced at Safir as Lynx started pulling off his boots. She sat up, keeping the blanket draped over her chest while reaching with her free hand towards her jacket. From a large pocket on the jacket’s breast she pulled her diviner’s deck. Her company badge, the Diviner of Stars, was stitched over that pocket, a larger picture than most with more detail than you’d find on a usual playing card.
It portrayed a black woman sitting at a table, cards spread on its surface in front of her. One eye was all black, the other all white. Her right hand was raised, showing a card with the three stars of her suit, her left steadied a war-axe standing upright beside her, while around her neck was a moon-and-Skyriver pendent.
Estal began to shuffle the cards and Lynx found himself slowing as he changed clothes, watching her movements as though she’d
started to hypnotise him. Under her breath he heard her mutter, not quite a mantra nor a song, but something that sounded like an invocation to a god he didn’t know. He’d never seen her do a reading, wasn’t sure if he even believed in any of it, but something about her otherworldly manner commanded him to silence.
Breaking off from her muttering, Estal put one card face down in front of her, then a spread of five in an arc above it, lastly one upturned above those. That was the moon card, Lynx knew, and while its value was only a Five of Tempest, in Estal’s deck every card had a unique image in the centre. This one bore a five-petal flower growing amid a wasteland.
‘Hope dominates,’ Estal muttered, turning the arc cards next, starting with the topmost. ‘Bones, the many-coloured man, the blank die, clockwork heart, hound.’ She reached the bottom one, nearest her, and tapped it twice before turning it: the Princess of Blood.
‘The great lover,’ Estal pronounced, looking askance up at Lynx with a blank, trance-like expression.
‘Him?’ Safir scoffed. ‘A bit well padded for that, isn’t he?’
‘Behave,’ Estal said in a distant tone, more like her usual self but still caught up in the reading.
‘What’s the verdict then?’ Lynx asked, caught between feeling a chill on his neck and an urge to laugh at the superstition.
‘Hope rules the heavens,’ she said hesitantly, ‘but death remains a close companion. The many-coloured man and the die together show the choices and chances that abound, the hound embodies pursuit and seizing, the clockwork heart opposes it with patience.’
Lynx paused and looked over the cards spread out on the blanket. ‘What the buggery’s that all supposed to mean?’
‘Take your chances when they come,’ Estal said before flashing him a smile, ‘just don’t come whining to me if those chances end up getting you killed.’
‘Unless of course you’re just the hound to our Princess of Blood,’ Safir added.
‘Oh thanks. Not even the main attraction at my own reading? Sounds about bloody right.’
Lynx finished changing his clothes without a word, trying not to look at the Princess of Blood card. The picture was of a woman’s head, red hair half-obscuring her face but her piercing eyes both visible through that tattered curtain and her full red lips curved in a smile. Behind her stood two figures, one male and one female, both naked and facing away from her.
‘Coming?’ he said once he was done, his long grey coat draped over one arm and his sword belted on to his waist.
‘For what?’
‘Toil’s offered her services to the Monarch, she’ll need extra hands to scout the labyrinth entrance out.’
‘Didn’t think you’d be so keen to go back underground,’ Safir said, settling down on the bed beside Estal. ‘I’d been joking about the princess’s hound, you know.’
‘I know, and I ain’t. Mebbe there’ll be enough to do above ground now the Charnelers have brought an army to the gates. She’ll need the most skilled Cards as she scouts, though, then the rest ready to follow on a full expedition.’
Safir nodded. There were plenty of decent soldiers in the company of course, they were professional mercenaries after all, but some had skills beyond the usual set. As a classically trained duellist, Safir was one of those – born into a noble family of a warrior culture where the martial arts were taught to all sons and daughters. The giant, Reft, was another, cat-quiet Kas a third; her bow nearly silent compared to mage-guns and five times faster.
‘I’m going nowhere right now,’ Safir said eventually, ‘and frankly I’m not going to be much use for anything upright. She’s scouting out the Fountain entrance?’
‘Just gone back to the palace now to get ready for it.’
‘Give me an hour then and I’ll meet you there with anyone willing to sober up. Before that, whatever trouble she’s got herself into is her own problem, find someone else to help.’
‘Payl’s of the same mind as you,’ Lynx said, nodding towards the bed. ‘Anatin’s out of his gourd of course and I can’t even tell if Reft knew I was there.’
‘You’ll manage,’ Safir declared, lazily reaching an arm over Estal and pulling her close. ‘Shut the door on your way out.’
‘Where are the rest?’ Toil demanded when they joined her in the palace, standing over a large map that covered most of a long table.
‘Balls-deep in a pile o’ alchemist potions.’ Kas grinned, walking in none too steadily herself. ‘Or just balls-deep and pretty unrepentant about it.’
‘On their way to sobering up?’
Lynx grimaced and glanced back at the few who’d come with him. ‘Think the alchemist has packed up and gone home,’ he conceded, ‘but anyone chasing the whores out is gonna get lynched right now. Safir is going to round up volunteers for scouting and meet us at the Fountain. The rest need a few hours. Some are still armed and they’re the ones in the worst state.’
‘What an encouraging state of affairs,’ said a man opposite Toil darkly, a bulky, balding officer of the Bridge Watch. ‘I suppose that so long as you have enough to scout the labyrinth, though, I don’t much care.’
‘I like them already,’ contributed a handsome nobleman. His eyes narrowed as he saw Kas and a glittering smile appeared on his face. ‘Merciful passions of Catrac, are all of your company such radiant beauties?’
Kas beamed. ‘Nope,’ she said, managing an exaggerated sashay up beside him and offering her hand. ‘I’m as good as it gets.’
‘I have no doubt, lady,’ the man murmured, bowing to kiss the back of her stained leather glove. The dozen silver braids that hung in an arc from one shoulder to the other swung forward to almost loop around her hand as he did so, the size making Lynx think they were some sign of rank. ‘I have the honour to be Lesser-Prince Justabel Por, and you are …?’
‘No lady, that’s for bloody sure.’ Kas grinned. ‘I’m Kas – he’s Lynx, the handsome one is Atieno. The white girl who looks like she’s about to be sick is Sitain. There’s a good chance she will be too, so keep those fine boots clear.’
‘I shall remain steadfastly at your side, Lady Kas.’
‘If you’re quite finished, Lesser-Prince Por?’ the soldier in black said gruffly.
‘Nowhere near finished,’ Por murmured in Kas’s ear, ‘but duty calls nonetheless.’
‘Good. Ladies, gentlemen,’ the soldier continued, sounding like he was reserving judgement on both descriptions there. ‘I am Commander Honeth, I will be supervising your efforts and relaying any necessary details to the Monarch.’
‘And I will be joining you,’ Por added, ‘as is my duty and my right as a lesser-prince of the city. Indeed it will be my pleasure, but I think perhaps I should summon more of my household guards if Lady Toil’s company are otherwise indisposed.’
‘I don’t need most of them if the commander here is bringing a regiment of his troops along for the main expedition,’ Toil replied. ‘And anyway, I brought mine because they’re mercenary scum who know how to stay alive at all costs – an instinct that’ll be more useful in the labyrinth than fancy uniforms.’
‘There will be some additions to your scout crew,’ Honeth said firmly. ‘All of whom will be as good as anyone in your company, however fancy their uniforms might be. How many do you intend to take?’
‘First foray? Half a dozen will do – just to go in and take a look. We make sure we can stop the guardian spirit then get an idea of what we’re dealing with. I only need a few mages and a handful of others to look after them.’ She nodded over towards a closed doorway. ‘Mages tend not to be the most athletic lot, even Lastani.’
Seeing Lynx frown, Toil said, ‘She’s off explaining herself to the Monarch right now. Might be she’s got some skills, but she’s an academic and likely to panic if things go nasty. Better there’s someone like you beside her; if it comes to trouble, you can toss her over your shoulder and run.’
‘Is that likely?’
She shrugged. ‘Depends what sort of sur
prises are waiting for us. At least we’ve got a clear run, no competition to dodge.’ Toil paused. ‘That’s right, isn’t it, commander?’
‘Correct, no one else has been given permission to enter the labyrinth and all the entrances we’ve found have been guarded.’
‘Found?’
The man inclined his head. ‘From what we can tell, at least one is lost beneath the city, a second buried under the house that collapsed as it opened. No one has reported a problem with their foundations or a doorway opening up in their cellar, though, and the Monarch’s edict regarding entering remains in force.’
‘Because relic hunters are such a law-abiding bunch?’ Toil sighed. ‘Can you at least confirm Sotorian Bade left the city with the rest of the Charnelers?’
‘The general and her entourage all went straight to the barge she arrived in and it did not stop until they were well clear of the city walls.’
‘But did they all get back on it in the first place? Gods, man, Bade wasn’t in a Charneler uniform! He could’ve slipped away in the confusion.’
‘Confusion caused by your actions,’ Honeth reminded her coldly.
Toil pointed down at the map in front of her. ‘These are all the entrances you know of?’
‘Correct. Each marked with a number, bar the Fountain itself and two others; the doorway that’s been blocked up under the North Keep Armoury and another in the cellar of the temple to Insar. Those bear these markings. The numbers tell us there’s at least one unaccounted for.’
He passed over a piece of paper which Toil frowned at before setting down. ‘Pass me that journal, will you?’
A battered, soft-leather journal bound in twine was handed over and Toil spent a minute flicking through pages. ‘Ah yes.’ She turned it around to show Honeth. ‘Look, it matches one of yours here.’
‘What does it say?’
‘I’m pretty sure it’s a family name – or something like that. Mebbe best described as a coat of arms, I’ve seen it on a few holdings down south.’
‘So what does that mean?’