A Blade of Black Steel

by Alex Marshall

  Best tried not to smile at her cleverness, and gave silent thanks to her son for the inspiration; Boldstrut or Skinflint or one of Sullen’s other idols had thwarted a witch by keeping her talking about herself until dawn, when the sun’s light transformed her into a swarm of mosquitoes that were promptly eaten by an owlbat.

  “I will sing you a song, Best of the Horned Wolves, but not of my days,” said the witch, which just went to show that Sullen’s stories were nonsense, just like his mother had always said. “I will sing you the song of the black blood of the earth which flows beneath our feet, and how I came to hold my vigil at this place. I have been awaiting your coming for some time.”

  Best’s fist tightened on the skewer she rammed through the last hare, and hesitated before laying it above the coals. It wasn’t just the witch’s ominous words, but the unmistakable sensation that she was being watched by something yet more dangerous than any sorcerer, a ferocious presence that waited beyond the edge of her vision. Now that she had entered the bubble of firelight, everything beyond it was obscured to her. “Before you begin, Nemi of the Bitter Sighs, I demand to know if you mean me harm, or if whatever watches us from the darkness is in thrall to your will.”

  “From what I learned, I expected a warrior of the Horned Wolf Clan to show more respect to her host,” said Nemi, but as Best stood back to her full height the witch gave a petulant sigh, as if Best had spoiled her fun. “I will grant your demands, Best, though I hope in the future you will do me the courtesy of simply asking. I mean you no harm, and while I cannot claim complete authority over the watcher from the darkness, I assure you she poses no danger save to those who would bring me violence. If that is enough to allay your fears, I will begin the song I have long waited to sing you.”

  “I have no fear of you nor your familiar,” said Best, which was true enough—fear was for prey, and what Best felt was the wariness of a horned wolf approaching a potential trap. “But what of my absent companion? Will he arrive unmolested?”

  “I have no interest in any but you,” said Nemi, which did little to assuage Best’s unease. “Unless your companion also seeks the same quarry as you and I?”

  Best considered this, but did not ask any of the obvious questions—she had already said too much, especially when this witch seemed willing to talk without prompting. “I think you are right—the time has come for you to sing your song.”

  “Only if you’re sure you’re ready,” said the girl, smiling wolfishly at Best before tottering back around the fire. “Nothing I could offer my gracious guest before we begin? Some spice for your rabbit, or fresh water? Something stronger to drink, or smoke?”

  “No,” said Best, not much liking what she’d already tasted of the witch’s hospitality. As the feeble girl lowered herself back to the ground with a groan, Best returned to her squat, turning the skunky hares and keeping the hilt of her sun-knife within easy reach. After all that preamble, though, Nemi took her time relighting her pipe with a long blade of grass, sipping it slowly until the pufferfish-round-and-knobby bowl was putting off nearly as much smoke as the campfire.

  “Three seasons past, your clanfolk made their camp but a hundred paces from where we now sit,” said Nemi at last. “A boy and an old man. Kin of yours.”

  Best nodded before it occurred to her that this last may have been a question, the firelight flashing off Nemi’s teeth and glasses confirming the girl welcomed the answer.

  “It was here that they met the most dire sorcerer who ever walked the Star,” said Nemi, and when Best did not rise to this bait the girl continued. “It was an accident, but not entirely, just as our meeting here is an accident, though not entirely. We are their shadow, speeding along at their heels… or perhaps the echo of their screams, after the sorcerer put his work upon them, opening their eyes to the devils that consumed them.”

  Best did not like the sound of that one bit—obviously Sullen and Ruthless deserved judgment, along with her brother Craven, but the tenderness of witches and devils was not a Horned Wolf’s notion of justice. Slipping her leather cooking pad onto the cooler end of one of the skewers, Best removed it from the fire, making a show of blowing on the crispy meat. If Nemi thought Best was distracted by a meal, the witch might make her move… and when she did she would find the skewer was made of good iron.

  “This sorcerer is called many titles, but most mortals know him as Hoartrap the Touch, or the Witch of the Purple Hill, or of Meshugg,” said Nemi, eyeing Best over her pipe, but if she sought some sign of revelation she was disappointed, for the names meant nothing to Best. “He is a danger to every living thing on the Star, and other worlds besides. And while he was hunting for another prey, he found them instead.”

  “And what then?” said Best, telling herself the deep ache in her chest came from the possibility that another party had deprived her of the honor of carrying out the sentence of clan and Chain herself. “He set devils on them?”

  “The devils were already there, as they are already here,” said Nemi, and though Best hated to give the witch what she wanted she couldn’t stop herself from looking all around. “Hoartrap merely showed them what waits beyond the horizon of mortal sight. They recovered, you will be glad to hear, and before they did Hoartrap fled. And after going their separate ways for countless miles, they found one another again, on the far end of the Crimson Empire. Last I was able to scry, they were camped together, on better terms, one assumes, than they were when they shared a fire much like this one.”

  Her father and son, willingly conspiring with a sorcerer? It was even worse than Best had feared. She devoured the first stringy hare, watching Nemi smoke in silence, and when the carcass was stripped of meat and no more words had come forth, Best snapped. “Well?”

  “Well?”

  “Well what else? Where do you come from and what do you want? Why build your hut in this place, and why wait for me? What are my kinfolk to you? And what must I pay for you to tell me where to find them?” As soon as the last word left her mouth Best chided herself for not only losing her patience but bringing the subject of a price into the discussion; you didn’t have to listen to more than a couple of Sullen’s songs to be reminded of the fact that the spirits of wild rivers often manifested themselves as mysterious women or talking wolves who were eager to help the unwary in any way you could imagine, but the cost for their aid was always the same: the death of a family member. Then again, thought Best, if this Nemi actually was such a devil in disguise and not merely a witch it would find itself in a unique situation, for what Best desired most was that very price, which all others feared to pay. Still, she wanted to know where she stood, whether it was with a mortal or a monster, so she added, “And tell me true, are you a spirit or devil or merely a sorceress?”

  “So many questions!” The witch wagged her pipe at Best. “We will have much time to discuss it all in the coming nights and days, but for now we are united by a common quest, you and I, just as your family is bound to Hoartrap. We are their shadows, as I said.”

  “I am bound to none save my clan,” said Best. “And were I to align myself with an Outlander, it would not be a witch who speaks in riddles.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Nemi, “but the Horned Wolf Clan must have a very different definition of riddles than is usually agreed upon. I have spoken as plainly as I am capable of in your tongue, and will endeavor to speak plainer still: you seek two of your kinfolk, and I am in a position to help you find them. I do not ask any price for my services beyond your company. When we do reach them, they are yours to do with as you please. It is their companion I hunt.”

  “Why not seek him yourself, then?” demanded Best, the gamey taste of the hare lingering in her dry mouth. “If you know where to find him, why involve me in your schemes?”

  “Because the Touch is far too dangerous and difficult for me to direct my attentions on more than I already have,” said Nemi, and now there was a hint of something more to her girly voice, something deep and
dark and full of a rage that Best could not mistake for anything else. “The last time I met him was almost my undoing, and I will give him no hint that I survived to seek vengeance. If I dare persist in focusing my sorceries to find him, he will surely smell the trace of my wiles long before I arrive, and be waiting. But if I direct myself not at the Touch but the company he keeps, we both may get what we are after, and he will be oblivious to my coming until it is too late. Do I make myself understood, Best of the Horned Wolf Clan?”

  “You do,” said Best, preparing to seize the sun-knife and hurl it into the witch when this played out the way she expected. “And I refuse. I am not fool enough to involve myself in the quarrels of sorcerers. You and I part ways in the morn, and you shall never approach me again. Do I make myself understood, Nemi of the Bitter Sighs?”

  The night seemed to deepen with Best’s challenge, the darkness thickening around their sphere of firelight, and the Horned Wolf felt all her hairs stand up—she had never been in such danger in her life, somehow she knew this, and decided to preemptively throw her sun-knife at—

  “Alas, you do,” said the witch, sounding disheartened rather than enraged at being rebuffed, and just like that the pressure seemed to lift, the menace passed. “I know what it means to have your hand forced by another, and I shall not repeat the very crimes I have suffered. Believe me, though, that if you do not help me reach Hoartrap in time the entire Star will be thrust into darkness eternal, and the endless night that comes will be the hunting ground of devils and worse things still. Have you not noticed the world undergoes a sudden change, that something powerful prods and tugs at the Star? I do not demand your help, Best, I beg it—together we have a chance to halt this slide into the First Dark before it is too late.”

  Best snorted at the insane claim, ready to rebuke the witch’s foul prophecy in the hardest terms… but she could not dismiss the very event that had sent her on this quest. Some grave transformation had indeed beset the Savannahs, but what if it didn’t stop there? What if every land felt similar upheaval, what if snow fell in the fabled deserts of the south and the west even as a supernatural thaw warmed the Noreast Arm? And worst of all, what of this witch’s claim that Best’s son and father were both in league with the sorcerer behind the catastrophes? No Horned Wolf in memory would ally herself with a sorcerer, true, but had not her ancestors deigned to work with the very devils on occasion, when doing so allowed them to combat greater foes?

  And there, at the very tail end of it all, was something more—what if her devil-eyed, angel-hearted son wasn’t actually to blame for what befell their homeland? What if this Hoartrap the Touch was the true source, and Sullen was innocent of any wrongdoing beyond his shaming of the clan? If this were true she wouldn’t have to do anything but put Sullen out of his misery, instead of administering harsher punishments… and while mercy was a sin, Best could not help but wish that when the time came the circumstances would allow her to give the boy a quick death.

  “We can wait until dawn for you to decide,” said Nemi quietly. “But I wouldn’t have waited for you to come if I didn’t believe you were my best hope. Trust that I am not so desperate for sport that I would set up shop in the wilds, wasting the last nights of my wretched life in hopes that I could dupe a Flintlander into some petty plot. Sleep on it, and counsel with your companion. For now I must rest—I have gone without for days, lest I miss your passage.”

  Best didn’t reply, but nodded shortly as the frail young witch hauled herself back to her boots and climbed the stairs to her tiny house. Looking back from the doorway, she said, “Whatever your decision, I shall abide by it. And as long as you share my fire you will enjoy my protection. Whatever you may see this night, you will save your life if you trust in my word and keep your weapons sheathed.”

  With this final ominous proclamation, Nemi of the Bitter Sighs disappeared inside the shack, bolting the door behind her. Best considered the three remaining hares on the fire with little appetite, waiting for Brother Rýt to finally arrive and turning the proposition this way and that. It went without saying that Best could not trust a witch… but could she afford not to, lest the girl spoke true? What if this Nemi were a closer cousin to the intimidating but righteous poison oracle than to the black-hearted warlocks warned of in the Chain Canticles? If only the Fallen Mother would give Best a sign one way or the other, and if the Fallen Mother was busy, one of Best’s other ancestors could certainly provide…

  The wiregrass crackled behind her, and she straightened up so that the already overly smug Brother Rýt would not catch her at prayer. Then her hackles flew up and her hand darted to the hilt of her sun-knife. From the heavy plodding sounds she knew whatever moved through the grass at her hind was far bigger than the monk, and walked on four legs instead of two. As her hand tightened on her weapon, a deep growl came from so close she almost spun into the beast, but caught herself, strong enough to remain still despite every instinct telling her to attack. Remembering Nemi’s final warning before retiring, Best kept the blades of her sun-knife sheathed in the dark earth even as the white shadow reared up beside her… and then passed her by, moving around the fire and stretching its prodigious length on the ground in front of the witch’s hut, guarding the door with intent as obvious as any protective hound.

  When Best could finally breathe again, she soaked up the miracle through eyes blurred by both awestruck tears and the smoky fire between her and the horned wolf. She had not met such a creature since she had earned her name as a girl of twelve thaws, and unlike the lanky, underfed creature she had stalked and killed on the steep green slope of a remote fjord, this horned wolf was massive, sleek of coat and bright of eye, with five twisted horns as long as her arms… and unlike any such beast she had ever heard of outside of Sullen’s most outrageous songs, it seemed almost tame, regarding her with bored disdain rather than rapacious appetite. This was what she had sensed watching her from the night, the guardian Nemi of the Bitter Sighs had spoken of.

  Well. Best did not flatter herself for the cleverest member of the clan, but certain omens were too clear for even a simple warrior to mistake. For the first time since the Age of Wonders, a Horned Wolf would hunt beside her namesake.

  When Brother Rýt finally wheezed his way into the dim rays of the firelight, Best was almost asleep, and was jolted back into consciousness by his frantic whimpers at the sight of the snoring monster. By the time she was on her feet the portly monk was running faster than she’d thought him capable of moving, and when she finally caught him and wrestled him to the ground he seemed on the verge of complete panic. Her annoyed assurances that the horned wolf had been sent by the Fallen Mother to guide them didn’t convince him to return to the camp… but her suggestion that if he went off on his own he might meet less benign members of the breed did the trick. In light of his stark terror at being led back to the monster-guarded camp, she decided to wait until the morning to inform him that Diadem would have to wait until after they had saved the world.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Not in a hundred years,” said Kang-ho, returning his unsampled bowl of kaldi to the Cobalt command table as though he suspected his favorite daughter might poison him. Former favorite, anyway. “That stunt you pulled with the devil queen hurt you more than it hurt the Thaoans, and I know you’re too smart to make the same mistake twice. It’s over, Ji-hyeon, and the sooner you admit that the sooner we can go home.”

  “The sooner she surrenders the sooner you can go to your new home in Linkensterne, I think you mean,” said Fennec from his seat beside Ji-hyeon. “Or let me guess, you’ve already straightened out the whole mess with Empress Ryuki, and Ji-hyeon just needs to visit Othean to light some incense at Prince Byeong-gu’s tomb?”

  “As it so happens, Fennec, I did indeed send a full and accurate account to Her Elegance as soon as I heard about the bounty, but have yet to receive a reply,” said Kang-ho, betraying no sign that Fennec’s full-scale defection to his daughter’s allegia
nces perturbed him in the slightest. It made Ji-hyeon wonder if they were still colluding, if this was just another ploy in their long-game strategy… or maybe they were just so used to double-crossing one another that her second father had counted on this as a foregone conclusion. “And I should add that I went through the swiftest channels known to mortals to get my message delivered with all due haste, so the… misunderstanding should be resolved in no time at all.”

  “And the message said what, exactly?” Ji-hyeon’s bowl was empty so she reached across the table to take Kang-ho’s kaldi before it cooled. “I have my murderous daughter ready to deliver to your justice, and only need to dupe her into trusting me again so that I may—”

  “You’re out of order,” said Kang-ho furiously, hopping to his feet. The self-righteous gesture would have been more effective if Ji-hyeon hadn’t called the same bluff twice already during this morning meet; they both knew he wasn’t going back to the Thaoans until she’d either given him what he wanted or sent him packing in no uncertain terms. “You hurt me, child, you truly do. I wrote to the empress to explain that you were framed for the murder of her son, because that is what you told me, and I still have faith that you speak the truth to your parent. A trust that does not seem to be returned, and that is what frightens me, for without my protection Colonel Waits would have already launched a second offensive and splattered you and your rogues all over the snow. You owe me your very life, and those of your entire company, and still you persist in this disrespect!”

  “Kang-ho, when I’ve disrespected you you’ll devil well know it,” said Ji-hyeon, putting down the bowl she’d been sipping while he carried on. “You come in here, into my camp, into my tent, to tell me that the terms I offered are insulting to the Thaoans and all the rest? Fine. You claim there was some merry mix-up between Waits, her officers, and the commanding clerics, and that’s why the whole fucking regiment came charging down at us, to, ahem, relocate their camp closer to better facilitate negotiations? Okay, sure, fine again. And even as I’m trying to swallow that totally plausible explanation, you can’t help but add that it was your pointing out to Waits that our armies were clashing that got her to call off the advance, not, you know, because we raised the fucking devil—fine fine fine, whatever, because now I’m just nodding at any stupid stories you throw at me, aren’t I? I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, Dad, I am really, really trying. But please don’t insult my intelligence with this bullshit about me owing you my life, because we both know that the only reason Colonel Waits hasn’t marched in here for another swing is because she knows I can just call up another devil queen if I get nervous, so she’s waiting for reinforcements or an order from Diadem that she can’t ignore. If she actually thought she could take me she wouldn’t send you to beg for my surrender, would she?”