A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  “Assuming they haven’t turned up yet?” said Diggelby hopefully.

  “They haven’t, and no you may not,” said the general, already turning back to her cabinet. “Your request is denied, so please stay out from underfoot until you’re called upon.”

  “Please?” Purna said it in the syrupy voice her uncle had made her practice until her throat felt like she’d been gargling glass dust, the tone reserved for the most intractable of traders. “You won’t even miss us, fast as we’ll find them!”

  “She’s got a point about not being missed,” Hoartrap proclaimed, but that Sullen barbarian was giving Purna a look that he probably thought was hard but just made him seem cowish and confused.

  The general gave Purna and Digs a scowl that made up for Sullen’s lack of ferocity, and then some. “Do you have any idea where Maroto’s gotten himself? No? Then piss the fuck off until I have a real use for you.”

  “I know where Maroto’s gone,” said Digs, crossing his arms petulantly. About time the pasha’s pride responded to the general’s slight! “I mean, it’s so obvious, isn’t it?”

  Good one, Digs! Of course, stalling for time is dandy, but it helps to have an end goal, or at least an exit strategy. As soon as the general demanded that Digs elucidate on the obvious, Purna knew both their tails were good and kippered: “Where is he, fop?”

  “He’s headed back to Diadem,” said Digs smugly. “I mean, wouldn’t you?”

  “Explain yourself!” the general shouted, enraged by Diggelby’s admittedly vexing cadence.

  “Well, I mean, because of his oath to the queen?” Oh no. Oh no no no no, Diggelby, that fucking nincompoop, he wouldn’t spill the beans, not after Purna had made him, Din, and Hassan all promise to keep it under their hats before letting them in on Maroto’s big secret… “After he spent the whole fight breaking his back trying not to hit any of the Imperials, I’m sure he’s realized it’s just not a sustainable lifestyle. So he must be on his way to the capital to see if old Indsorith will release him from his oath—it’s the same reason we’ve come here, isn’t it? To see if you’ll release us from the pledge we made to stick with the Company and all that rot? We noble personages take our oaths dreadfully seriously, and unless we’re released then—”

  “Hoartrap, see that a hundred swords are sent after her immediately,” said the general, though her eyes were nailed firm onto Digs’s dumb ass. “Make sure they’re young recruits, no old salts who might support her over me if it comes to that. And tell them to hang back until I arrive. As for you two, carry on as we discussed, and play nice.”

  “We… what now?” asked Purna as Hoartrap bounded away with his ever-distressing ease.

  “Not you, them,” said the general, confounding the matter further by still keeping her gaze on Digs, and by extension Purna. As Sullen and the Immaculate lad took their cue and hustled off in the other direction, the general advanced on the handsome and talented but decidedly unlucky Ugrakari girl and her blabbermouth friend. Now Purna knew why the general hadn’t batted an eyelash at the sight of her newly canine tongue—with a smile that big and mean, Ji-hyeon must have something of the wolf in her as well. “As for you two, I have an errand of the utmost urgency, just as soon as you tell me more about this oath Maroto swore to the Crimson Queen.”

  “There’s Zosia!” said Digs, and they broke into a trot to reach her before she entered the still-smoky battlefield. The silver fox in question was marching away from the stockade, a long line of manacled prisoners dragging their feet behind her. “How long do we have to stall her for?”

  “I don’t know, Diggelby, after that display back there I just assumed you had all the answers,” said Purna, painfully nipping her tongue in the process. Jogging and talking was something that she’d have to get used to, with this great big lolling cut of roast beef hanging out of her mouth.

  “I said I was sorry,” huffed Digs. “I just assumed she already knew. You said he told you and Choi about it, and she’s in thick with the general, so obviously—”

  “So obviously you thought everyone was as free with their tongues as you are,” said Purna, though he did raise an intriguing point—it was nice to know Choi could keep a secret, even from her beloved general. Not that Purna had seen the wildborn since before the battle; for all she knew she might be just as lost as… well, it didn’t bear thinking on. With Maroto missing and Hassan and Din’s prospects even dimmer, she had too many lumps in her throat as it was, and too big of a tongue to easily swallow them.

  “You don’t think she’ll really do it?” said Digs. “If we can’t delay Zosia until the general shows up, I mean, she can’t possibly hold us responsible for what happens.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” said Purna as they stumbled their way over the uprooted palisades at the edge of camp. “I certainly don’t intend to find out. Besides, if we keep Zosia busy like the general ordered she won’t very well be able to refuse our request, will she? Just you wait and see, we’ll be relieved of duty by the afternoon.”

  “One way or the other, I wager you’re correct,” said Digs as they finally caught up to the gloomy caravan. To Purna it seemed like the few dozen Cobalt soldiers who flanked the procession of prisoners were all gawping at her as she slowed to a walk beside Cold Cobalt (who really ought to be called Hot Cobalt, fit as she looked).

  “Top of the morning to you, Captain Zosia,” Purna called, and shivered with relief when the older woman didn’t flinch upon seeing the mutant who accosted her.

  “And to you two as well,” said Zosia, not slackening her stride but seeming amiable enough to company that Purna fell in beside her. The older woman was as radiant and cheerful as the morning was cold and gloomy, the snow serving as confetti for her personal parade. “Glad to see your recovery’s been so speedy, Tapai Purna. Any ill effects from your diabolical salvation?”

  “Just the urge to plant my nose in appealing asses,” Purna said lightly, wondering if a little flirting might slow Zosia’s pace.

  “So nothing new, in other words,” said Digs, looking back at the dour chain of captives. “Taking the Imperials on a constitutional, Captain?”

  “Something like that,” said Zosia. “I’m taking them on a sightseeing expedition to the new Gate.”

  “We’d heard about that,” said Purna, dragging her feet but then picking up her heels again when Zosia kept moving at the same brisk clip. “Just opened up out there, huh?”

  “Like something out of a bad bug dream,” said Digs with a shudder.

  “One mortal’s nightmare is another’s fantasy,” said Zosia, with eerie intensity. Between her fierce expression and wild, silvery hair she looked like a witch who would break into a cackle at the drop of a silly-looking hat.

  “Yes, well, be that as it may…” said Digs, but couldn’t come up with anything more to add. Zosia had him good and spooked, no doubt about it.

  “Before we go any further, Captain Zosia, I wonder if I might chew your ear a bit?” Purna tried not to let her anxiety show, even though they’d reached the edge of the stale cloud that lingered over the Lark’s Tongue valley. This plume had already seemed ill-omened enough before Purna had been informed that a Gate had opened up beneath it. She remembered how abruptly the fighting had broken off the day before, several demented Imperial soldiers sucked into the earth before her very eyes… Except they hadn’t gone into the earth, had they? No, they’d gone someplace far, far worse, into the First Dark itself according to Ugrakari lore, and to date neither Hassan nor Din had emerged from this doleful fume. And while he’d obviously not been pulled into the Gate when it had opened, Maroto hadn’t come out of the smoke, either. It was the baddest business this side of Diadem, no doubt about it.

  “You were saying?” said Zosia, and Purna shook her head, as though that were all it would take to dispel the looming fogbank.

  “I was, wasn’t I?” Purna said, hoping her grotesque tongue wasn’t spoiling her winning smile. “But let’s take a breather so
we can talk properly without a mouthful of poison gas, shall we?”

  “It’s not poisonous, and you can either talk while I walk or you can wait for me to finish my business,” said Zosia, stepping into the miasma. Lazy tendrils of musty smoke caressed her throat and limbs as though they had a life of their own, and smiling over her shoulder at Purna, Cold Cobalt looked as though she welcomed the attention. “Come on, girl, it’s not every day you get to see something like this.”

  The captain had a point. Shrugging at the reluctant Digs, Purna followed Zosia into the cloud, the clanking of chains following them through the mist as though the Azgarothian prisoners who wore them were already ghosts. Considering this woman had by all accounts cheated death and devils, slain kings and gods, how the deuce had Ji-hyeon reasonably expected a couple of Maroto’s Moochers to stall her? Really, now.

  CHAPTER

  7

  After the absolute worst day of Domingo Hjortt’s entire life concluded with a visit from his old nemesis Cobalt Zosia, he lay awake all night, staring at the shadows on the ceiling of the tent until the lantern she’d left him had burned out, and then he stared some more. His sister-in-law, Lupitera, had given her nephew an Usban shadow box and puppets for one of his early birthdays, but Domingo had not stuck around to condone the frivolous gift with his presence. He wondered if Efrain had noticed his father’s absence, if his delight in a new toy had been undercut by Domingo’s disapproval. He hoped not. He hoped Efrain had laughed and laughed, never taking his stern father too seriously. Oh, how he hoped that was true… but he also hoped the Fifteenth had somehow survived the engagement, had overcome the Chainite witchcraft, that this was all a dream and Captain Shea would wake him and they could get on with plotting the downfall of the Cobalt Company. Why not call hope what it was, a daydream that would never come true, the last refuge of the failure?

  Shea. What was her first name? Had he forgotten, or had he never even asked? Most of the captains had failed to make much of an impression one way or the other, but Shea had showed genuine potential, there at the end. He’d pushed her, because good colonels must be as parents to their officers, strict and vigilant and always ready to offer correction, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t warmed to her company, damn it. Before Zosia had left the tent she had offered her broken adversary anything, but other than having the chains removed from his wrists and ankles all he had asked her to bring him was Captain Shea, if she was among the Fifteenth’s few survivors. She had not returned, and now, with the dull blue dawn seeping in around the edges of the tent, Domingo had to accept that his most promising officer must be as dead as his only child. It had always been too late for Efrain, even before the boy got himself killed in Kypck, but Shea might have been something, someday, if only she’d had a different colonel, one who held fast to the principles they both shared instead of making compromises, a commanding officer who fought with nobility instead of stooping to Chainite trickery… yes, Domingo had received exactly what he’d deserved, but poor, unpolished Shea certainly hadn’t, nor had the thousands of other Azgarothians he had killed with his spite-blinded actions.

  That was the worst of it, then: the truth. It wasn’t his broken arm or broken leg or cracked ribs that kept him awake, nor was it the fresh slash on his face that the Cobalt surgeon had stitched with deliberate slowness. It wasn’t even the aching hatred that pulsed through him at seeing his archenemy Cold Zosia, alive and hale and, cruelest of all, looking down at him with pity. The worst was knowing that while she had indeed murdered his son she hadn’t harmed a single soldier in the Fifteenth—their trusted colonel was solely responsible for their unnatural end. Pope Y’Homa had set the Burnished Chain’s plot into motion, true, and the duly departed Brother Wan had helped give it that final push, but even nervous young Shea had known that a good commander takes responsibility for her failings, lest order fray into chaos through the caustic application of excuses and explanations, and there were no two ways about it: Colonel Domingo Hjortt, Baron of Cockspar, had poisoned his entire regiment, forcing them to be sacrifices in an obscene ritual. And all in the name of avenging a son he’d never cared for, a reckless lad who by all accounts deserved the death he’d received at the hands of Cold Cobalt.

  A general must survey the whole field before beginning to form an opinion, and now that he’d had a gander it was small wonder that Domingo couldn’t find rest. It would be a miracle if he ever slept again. But such hyperbole was better suited for the boards of a playhouse than a lumpy bed and, quite without his noticing, the thrum of the waking camp transformed into a lullaby that rocked Domingo off to a dreamless slumber, the sort from which he never wished to awake—

  “Colonel Hjortt!”

  Like any veteran startled awake by the invocation of his rank and name, Domingo tried to snap upright with a smart salute. It was difficult to say which parts of him hurt worse, the ones that had obeyed his instinctive movements or those that were physically incapable. Eyes watering through the pain, Domingo craned his neck up and let the rest of his aching body relax—he was a prisoner of war in a rebel camp, and there was nobody here whose authority he respected enough to salute anyway. In the dimness of the tent he squinted up at the girl who had hailed him, then noticed the figure behind her and slumped back on his pillow. He guessed the girl must be the Immaculate general whom Zosia had confirmed was leading the Cobalts, and Domingo was positive that the horned woman behind the girl was the same witchborn scout who had helped Maroto summon the monstrous wolves into the Fifteenth’s camp back in the mountains.

  “At your service, ladies,” said Domingo, closing his eyes and savoring the fleeting numbness of waking that must soon give way to sharp pain once more. “Do I suppose correctly that you’re the general our mutual friend spoke of? Ji-hwan?”

  “I am General Ji-hyeon Bong,” said the girl, “and may I inquire after the identity of this mutual friend? Might she be the same captain who removed your manacles?”

  “I was attempting to be clever,” said Domingo, opening his eyes and staring up at this teenage punk his Fifteenth could have crushed into pulp without any help whatsoever from the Ninth out of Myura, to say fuck-all of the Chain. He could only tell her once about how he’d dispatched her fiancé up by the border and then sent the prince’s head to the Empress of the Isles, and so decided to delay that pleasure a little longer; it didn’t do to get off on the wrong foot with one’s captors, as Prince Byeong-gu could have attested, if only Domingo hadn’t decapitated him. “Blue Zosia is no friend of mine, but yes, she is the first of your army to treat with me.”

  “Treat with you, did she?” asked the girl, and as his eyes adjusted Domingo was delighted to see one of hers was dark and swollen, and her left hand was swaddled in rags. His troopers must have pushed all the way into the enemy command before… before the Chain’s deviltry betrayed them. “What terms did she offer you, Colonel, and did you accept them?”

  “Again, my clumsy stabs at humor go wide of the mark. Forgive me, General Ji-hyeon, but I have always been a sober and direct sort of man, and while I’ve recently come to appreciate the comedic appeal of the absurd, I appear to be doing a piss-poor job of it. I was not being literal when I said a mutual friend told me of your personage and that Zosia came to treat with me, I should have said my hated fucking enemy came to rub my nose in the fact that I allowed my soldiers to become burnt offerings for the Chain’s black magic. Sorry, sorry, there I go again—by black magic I of course refer to the alleged return of the Sunken Kingdom, and the materialization of a Gate upon our innocent battlefield. Pray forgive a weary soldier his crude speech.”

  He had only just met her, but Domingo already knew this sprat well enough to recognize the fury boiling up her throat to inflame her cheeks. The witchborn beside her must have seen it, too, but didn’t speak or intervene, letting the general come to it in her own time. After a long breath, the color began to fade from the girl’s face, and in a dangerously level tone she said, “When did Captain Zosia tel
l you all of that, exactly?”

  “Last night sometime, I couldn’t say when,” said Domingo, relishing the second flush of wrath clouding the general’s face—she must be greener than an underripe avocado! Never one to leave a hilt just sitting there when it could be given a good twist, he added, “I’m sure you can find out the approximate time from the guards who were minding my tent last night; surely whoever admitted her without your consent would recall the hour of her visit.”

  The general’s nostrils were flaring like a bull’s, and she seemed on the cusp of a genuine tantrum when the witchborn leaned over and whispered something in her ear, keeping her devilish red eyes on Domingo the whole time. One of the anathema’s black horns was broken off midway, and he wondered if that had happened during one of her engagements with the Fifteenth. He certainly hoped so. Whatever the creature had said to her mistress had calmed her, or at least reminded her that there was something more pressing to attend to. Closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, General Ji-hyeon asked him a ridiculous question, the exact sort of thing to get a cheeky bastard’s lip split before yesterday’s events had thrown what was once an absolute fact into absolute doubt:

  “Colonel Hjortt, do you value the lives of your soldiers?”

  “Yes,” said Domingo without hesitation, because he knew that if he considered it for more than a moment he might never be able to answer honestly. “Of course.”

  “And that’s why you sacrificed most of them? Because you’re a born-again Chainite who thinks that real lives and the real world are less important than the promise of what comes after?”

  “I was tricked,” Domingo growled. “I made the mistake of trusting the Chain, yes, but if I’d known what they were actually planning I would’ve skinned them all alive before letting them hurt a single flag-bearer or drummer girl. They said they had a weapon, a weapon that would help us… and because I believed them, most of my people are dead, aren’t they? Or worse. And all because I… because I let my hatred get the better of me.”