Blood Under Water

by Toby Frost

  “It looks deserted,” Sethis said.

  The rain made it pointless to whisper. “Be careful: they might be hiding. We’ll take the side door.”

  “Servants’ entrance,” Sethis said, and he smiled humourlessly.

  The door was plain wood banded with iron, with a solid, simple lock. Giulia crouched down and slid the picks from the bracer on her right arm. Sethis held the crossbow while she worked the lock. She probed the mechanism, felt the tumblers tense, then tremble, then give against the picks. Giulia took hold of the doorhandle and Sethis raised her bow to cover her.

  This is it. Here I come, into your castle. Hide from me, you little bastard, but I’ll dig you out no matter what. The higher you climb, the further you can fall when I kick you off your own fucking roof. Now you can have a turn at being afraid.

  She opened the door.

  The door creaked as it swung ajar. She looked into a long corridor, streaked with moonlight. Doors branched off to either side. She could smell bread and beef.

  They crept inside. Giulia pointed down the hallway. Sethis nodded and passed her the bow. He looked grim.

  She started down the corridor, legs bent, bow held ready to shoot. She could hear something: not the rain, she realised, but something from above. It sounded like chanting. Giulia stopped to listen.

  Sethis halted beside her. His eyes were on the ceiling and, as they listened, noise filtered down from above: dozens of voices, raised in song.

  ***

  Captain Alberto Tucca was heating a flask of ale on the hearth when the nightly report came in. Fifty feet below the little stone chamber he used as an office, the sea battered at the harbour walls. The bell beside the door jangled, and a voice called, “Clockworker here to report, sir!”

  “Come in.”

  The man outside the door wore standard Customs gear. Tucca knew his insignia but not his face: the red circle on the fellow’s sleeve showed him to be one of the Customs engineers.

  “Let’s hear it,” Tucca said. “And shut the door, for Heaven’s sake. There’s a storm gearing up out there.”

  There were some in the Customs who looked down on the engineers: they were neither sailors nor marines, and almost never left the land. But it was their work that kept the gears wound and the defence towers moving, by processes Tucca didn’t quite comprehend.

  The man closed the door behind him. “All organ guns and mortars are cleaned and loaded, sir. Cannon-turrets one to seven are fine. The leather winding-belt on turret eight has developed cracks, sir. We’ve taken eight off the main camshaft and have brought a team of oxen down to wind the mechanism by hand. We think we’ll be able to replace the belt by noon tomorrow, sir.”

  “Good work,” Tucca replied. “Make sure eight’s harnessed back in as soon as you can.”

  The engineer bowed. “Yes, sir. One more thing, sir.”

  “Yes?”

  “The boys on the main gate asked me to let you know. There’s a man to see you, sir, asking for the captain of the guard. He says it’s urgent.”

  Tucca frowned. It was strange, but probably unimportant. “What’s his name?”

  The clockworker frowned. “That’s the thing, sir. He says he’s Portharion, the wizard.”

  Suddenly, Tucca was alert. “Portharion? Is it him?”

  “I don’t know, sir. I mean, I’ve seen him and he looks like a wizard…”

  Tucca wondered what the hell a wizard was meant to look like. “What does he want?”

  “He says there’s smuggling going on, sir, out in the bay. He says he’s found a whole bunch of smugglers. He wants a patrol sent out right away.”

  Tucca frowned. “What, right now? Where is he?”

  “He’s at the front gate, sir.”

  “And the smugglers?”

  The engineer looked downright embarrassed. “That’s the thing, sir. He says they’re on Sirinara, hiding out in the Tower of Glass.”

  Tucca glanced wistfully at his ale. Chances were, this fellow was a lunatic, or trying to pull some kind of trick. But if he wasn’t – if the real Portharion had come here, and they’d turned him away, there’d be hell to pay… “Take me to him,” Tucca said, and he braced himself for the rain.

  ***

  The ground floor of the tower was deserted. Hugh crossed the hall and climbed a grand set of stairs. As he reached the landing, music started to pulse through the walls: the muffled sound of men singing. He felt as if he was creeping through the innards of the House of Glass, and that the voices were its pumping breath.

  There were two big Inquis men at the end of the corridor, guarding a pair of double doors. Each wore a long, red cloak, hood up, and a steel cuirass polished to a silvery shine. They held long-handled maces across their chests.

  Hugh ducked back out of sight and very carefully drew his sword. He knew the sort: an honour guard, no doubt. They had that familiar expression, dead-eyed and cynical, capable of any crime except disobedience. Veterans, he thought. Proper enemies.

  Behind them, through the double doors, a man’s voice broke into a new tune. Others picked it up, and soon it was a banging, stamping rhythm accompanied by a pack of shouting voices, all belting out the same war-song.

  Hugh flexed his fingers around the sword and listened to the singing getting louder. A lesser man would have found it intimidating: Hugh of Kenton, favoured by God and the knightly code, was ready to fight.

  There were whoops among the singing now. One voice rose up crazily and twisted into a drawn-out howl. Hugh drew his sword and stepped into sight.

  ***

  As the guards stacked the last of the plates in the dumb-waiter in the hall, the delegates leaned back in their chairs and relaxed. Azul sent around a dish of tobacco and a tray of chocolate and sugared oranges. It had been an excellent meal, he reflected: woodcocks in a mustard glaze, followed by water-wyrm steaks, caught out in the bay. The guards refilled the glasses and discreetly retired from the room.

  Halfway down the table, Alicia was smiling at something one of the guests had said. The door opened and Cortaag slipped into the chamber. He stepped close and leaned over.

  “All well?” Azul said.

  “Very well, sir,” Cortaag replied. “The men are enjoying themselves downstairs. Looks like a storm’s coming, though.”

  Azul looked at the wall. He could see the lights of the city very dimly through the green glass, as if someone had set out candles behind it. There was no sign of the storm up here. “Thank you, Cortaag.”

  “Pleasure, sir.” Cortaag stepped outside, closing the doors behind him.

  “That was splendid,” one of the guests said from down the table. He was a huge man, fat and wide-mouthed like an inflated toad. Azul knew that he was now something important in the Montalian school of gunnery, but once he had been a captain of cannon for the Inquisition. His tunic was taut across his stomach, like a sail in a high wind. “You keep a fine table, Azul.”

  “Thank you.” Azul had not eaten much: these days, large meals left him bloated and drowsy. “I’ve always been of the view that life is too short to be eating bad food. Now, then.” He rapped his knuckles on the tabletop. “Gentlemen, your attention, please!”

  They fell silent. Azul looked down the table and saw rows of faces turned to him like a jury waiting to be persuaded.

  He stood up and smiled.

  “This has been a very pleasant meal. It’s good to break bread with so many old friends – and to have the opportunity to make some new ones. However, I have called this meeting for more than the pleasure of your company. I have a business proposition for you.” Azul’s mouth was dry; he took a sip of wine. “Although there is no denying the extensiveness and valour of our efforts, we were never able to cure Alexendom of the disease of heresy.” He licked his lips. “These days, the disease has become an epidemic. The Old Church become
s soft and weak, and the so-called New Church grows in strength. Gloria of Anglia calls herself the ‘queen of the fey’ and makes trading deals with the painted savages of Maidenland. I learn that the king of Bergania has signed a pact between Bergania and the dwarrows, while in the Teutic League any sort of dissent is tolerated so long as the coppers flow. Gentlemen, the world is in a bad state. I don’t think there can be any question about that.”

  “Damn right!” someone called from down the table.

  Another voice said, “What about Pagalia, up the coast? You should see who’s ruling there!”

  “Or Astrago!”

  “Nobody in his right mind could be happy about the state of the world today. Which brings me onto the real question.” Azul had to raise his voice: several glasses of strong wine had made the guests a little too talkative. “The real question is this: what are we going to do about it?”

  Azul gave them a moment to consider it. They looked down the table at him, quiet now that he had got their attention. Only Brother Praxis looked anything other than intrigued. He was as blank as a doll.

  “Well? Suggestions, anyone?”

  Nobody said anything. They waited.

  “I don’t know the exact details of your current employment,” Azul lied, “but I’ll wager that everyone here lives comfortably. Some of us were able to leave our previous employment with our own private funds. Others found work elsewhere, or were fortunate enough to have estates they could use. A few were lucky enough to be helped along by the Hidden Hand, which has very kindly provided our old friends with jobs and loans – and has been, I should add, one of the main conduits through which most of you received your invitations to join me today.”

  Towards the far end of the table, a mousy little man nodded. He was the Hand’s contact man, and his intervention had kept several of the other guests alive during the difficult times after the War of Faith.

  “Our lives are pleasant and comfortable,” Azul said. “One way or another, we live well – far better, our enemies maintain, than we have any right to.”

  There was a little laughter.

  “But for me, it isn’t enough.” He looked from face to face, meeting one pair of eyes after another. “It’s not enough to live in my mansion, surrounded by a high wall to keep the world out of sight. It’s not enough to be able to afford to keep the land outside at bay: not while the world grows more rotten and polluted with every day that passes. I don’t want to fade away comfortably; to die of old age in some great chamber with a painted ceiling. I, for one, am sick of dreaming of past glories. I want new ones. And I know many of you feel the same.”

  He gave them the count of three to think it over, to taste what he was offering.

  “Is there anyone in this room who doesn’t smile when they remember the old times, and wish they could come again? Anyone here whose heart doesn’t stir when he hears the old songs – and whose soul doesn’t flinch at the thought of pagans, heretics and fey having the ear of the lords of our land? Anyone who doesn’t want to see us back where we belong?”

  Azul paused again. Let that soak in, he thought.

  A thin-faced old man leaned forward, raising a fleshless hand. “With respect, sir, that’s all very well.” His voice was loud and crisp. “I don’t deny there’s many who feel that way, myself included. But one has to be realistic, and that means accepting those days have gone. Unless you, Lord Commander, have a plan to make it all come back…?”

  Azul smiled. He took his glasses off, blew across the lenses, and put them back on. “Actually,” he said, “I do.”

  ***

  Hugh stood over the dead guards, breathing hard. Had fighting been this tiring the last time he had been on a quest? He wished he’d had the time to be properly shriven. Before the Battle of the Bone Cliffs, he had received a blessing from preachers of both the Old and New Churches, and from a dryad priestess to be sure. Right now, his good intentions would have to do.

  He reached out and put his hand on the brass door handle. He could smell their food – roast beef – and it made his stomach turn. The singing had reached a climax now, the voices and stamping feet backed by snarls and barks. The door pulsed against his palm with the force of the sound, as if the song was trying to push its way out. It was “Brother Alonzo”, the battle-hymn of the Inquis Impugnans.

  “Brother Alonzo is long gone

  But his spirit marches on!”

  He had intended to stride right in, but there were too many of them. No, this required cunning. Knees aching a little, he bent down and looked through the keyhole.

  The feast was a festival in Hell. Men were sitting around two tables, shouting and singing and drinking and cramming their faces with meat. They had women with them – most were just as drunk as the males, and a couple were half-undressed. Faces glistened with grease, sweat and beer. A man lowered a cup from his mouth – no, not a mouth, a snout. A woman laughed crazily as one of the soldiers dropped off his chair and began to change shape on the floor.

  Kill them, Hugh thought, every last stinking one. Burn their evil off the earth in the name of God and the Land.

  But how? There had to be twenty people in there, at least. Hugh had his sword, two knives and a pair of pistols that he’d taken from the guards at the gatehouse. A frontal attack, even from a knight of Albion, would be suicide. And suicide meant they would kill Elayne.

  The thought made him quick and vicious. He stood up, strode to the fireplace and yanked down the banner hanging there to get himself in the mood. Hugh paused, the cloth rolled up in his hands ready to throw into the fire.

  A delicate vase stood on the mantelpiece. It was one of those weird moving things: eagles soared above a pastoral scene. Hugh lifted it down. The birds flapped their wings; the trees shivered in the breeze. Holding it made him feel queasy. He stuck one hand in and found that it was empty and dry.

  One of the men at the gatehouse had carried a powder-horn. Hugh reloaded his pistols, opened the flask and poured the rest of the powder into the vase. Then he pulled a small, glowing log from the fireplace and wedged it into the neck of the vase.

  He turned the door handle and kicked the door open with his heel.

  For half a second Hugh saw them start to move, faces frozen like a painting of men in mid-battle. Hands raised, mouths open in the torchlight. He hurled the vase into the middle of the room.

  Hugh slammed the door shut, heard the explosion, threw the door open again and marched straight in.

  Shouts and screaming, things breaking, the yelps of something that was no longer a man. Hugh’s sword hissed from the scabbard as he strode to the first table. A man with fangs was scrambling to his feet. Hugh split his shaven head open. Blood sprayed and a woman shrieked like a whistle.

  Fast and accurate, Hugh told himself. Put one down and on to the next.

  “Oh, God!” someone yelled from the centre of the room. “Get him! Get him!”

  It began in earnest. The injured scuttled out the back door, and the healthy grabbed weapons and charged. Hugh saw hands pull down the crossed maces above the fireplace – then an axe sliced the air beside him and he blocked just in time, sidestepped and hacked into the soldier’s neck, sending him crashing into the wall.

  He cut down two more monsters as they tried to flee. Their yelping sang in his ears. Rage burned through his body. Yes, he thought, this is it!

  “Heretic!” a voice yelled from the right, and Hugh looked into a face twisted into nothing but fangs and hating eyes. He blocked the soldier’s sword with his own, drew one of his pistols and shoved it under the man’s chin and blew a cloud of brain and bone into the air.

  Two more charged, one half-transformed: Hugh carved the first monster across the belly, ducked low and took out the second across the knees. He rolled as it fell, came up behind it and put a boot on its back and the sword-tip through its neck. Something struck his t
high, and he felt it sink deep. A soldier bounded in from the right. Hugh sidestepped, feinted and drove his sword under the man’s arm and between his ribs, found he couldn’t pull it free, so he let go and scooped a mace from the ground.

  He looked down, saw a dagger sticking out of his thigh and yanked it out before he could think about it. He lurched into the middle of the room. “Where’s Elayne?” he shouted.

  A gun banged and he flicked around. A man stared at him, horrified, holding a smoking pistol. “Misfire!” Hugh cried joyfully and struck him down.

  A length of chain whacked him across the back and he stumbled, the noise from the rest of the room suddenly as distant as the sea. He saw the boards below him and thought: No, not the floor, stay up, and he turned, lurched into the soldier with the chain, knocked him off balance and cracked his skull with the mace.

  “Scum!” Hugh picked up an axe from a pile of firewood beside the grate. “Where’s Elayne? Where’s my fucking damsel?”

  More rushed him. He carved bodies and limbs, sent men and half-beasts to the ground. A thing that was nearly a wolf thrashed beneath the table, clawing at its back.

  “Any more?” Hugh cried, giddy with fury and triumph. “Who wants to break a lance with me?”

  Something struck him in the shoulder, knocking him sprawling. His boot slipped – his leg folded and he crashed onto a floor slick with blood and ale. A crossbow bolt jutted from his left shoulder. He tried to rise, but suddenly the room was full of shiny boots. A whole mob of them ran at him: he hacked two men across the shins as he struggled to get up, and a knee hit him in the eye. He fell over, twisted to avoid landing on the crossbow bolt, and reached for his second pistol.

  Hands grabbed him, tried to pull him this way and that. A face came into view, a snarling, pimply youth. The boy lifted one of his boots. It filled Hugh’s vision as it swung into his head, and then the lights went out.

  ***

  “So you’re talking about bringing the old days back, then?” one of the delegates asked. His name was Torvald, an ex-mercenary who had made a name for himself by being willing to do anything for his employers. A dirty-worker, Azul thought. An able one at that, but nothing more. “I could live with that.”