by Col Buchanan
‘Redeem themselves from what?’
‘What does anyone wish to atone for?’ said Creed. ‘Things they can no longer live with.’
‘Seems a strange way to make things right. They don’t heal people, or feed the hungry?’
‘Coraxa has those too,’ grumbled Creed, and his big hands clenched the painted edge of the roof’s parapet. ‘These are the fighting kind, though. The kind we would normally need most of all.’
‘Normally?’
The Lord Protector was unhappy about something. Coya could see his jaw muscles bunching hard. Down on the dock the formation of figures had spoken with the Guards, and they were marching now, several hundred of them, the foremost ones already leading the way into the street directly below the restaurant.
‘Redeemers live to give up their lives in the good fight,’ said Creed, raising his voice above the crash of their boots and their throaty shouts. ‘They’re naturally drawn to lost causes.’
In the cobbled street below, citizens were darting out of the way as the formation stamped along it. Coya glimpsed spears and staffs and all manner of armours, though mostly the men and women seemed clad only in goatskins and other furs, their hair sprouting wild and long. Some even seemed entirely naked, painted blue or black from head to toe, oblivious to the cold.
Creed inclined his head so the corner of his eye glinted just behind the sheen of his hair. He glanced momentarily at his lieutenant, then spoke to Shard. ‘They come here now because they are under the mistaken impression that Bar-Khos is doomed.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Diplomat
From a distance it looked like any ordinary shipping crate of wood: a stout box four feet long in each dimension, squatting on the back of a moving wagon.
Closer though, it was clear the box was made from fire-hardened tiq, strong as steel, and reinforced with multiple bands of iron. Small holes had been drilled along its top as though to allow for ventilation. On one side, a small bolted hatch was home to an even smaller bolted hatch only large enough to slip through a skin of water, or morsels of food.
Whatever creature lurked inside the box remained silent as the wagon trundled its way into a cobbled yard, overshadowed by one of the city’s looming seawalls where gulls were flecks of white shrieking in the updraughts. With a shout, the driver drew the wagon mules to a stop before a large brick building that stretched all the way back to a canal of briny seawater, marking the southernmost limits of the city in the district of All Fools.
Four Specials in their dark leathers climbed down from the back of the wagon. Two drew their blades. Two more hefted long poles with loops on their ends. A fifth figure in civilian clothing clambered down from the front seat, cloaked and sporting a thick beard.
Before them, the building of the inkworks was so large that only one ruined half of it was occupied by the wreck of the small imperial skyship poking from its collapsed roof. Shutters hung aslant and broken over the many remaining high windows. At one of its front entrances, a loading bay was open to the tangles of daylight inside, and a motley group of guards stepped out to greet the new arrivals and their dangerous cargo. The guards carried spears and a few loaded crossbows. Without delay they surrounded the wagon while the Specials fanned out around its rear.
An expectant hush fell across the scene, broken only by the hobnailed footfalls of the bearded fellow approaching the crate. A jagged knife appeared in his hand. The man threw the bolts and tugged open the larger hatch then stepped back quickly, wrinkling his nose at the hot stench wafting from its black interior.
‘Out!’ he snapped at the reeking animal squatting in the fetid darkness within, prompting it to shift around in its chains, with a dirty five-fingered hand warding off the sudden intrusion of light.
Between the fingers, a glint of a blue eye took the measure of the man.
‘Easy,’ advised the fellow. ‘No sudden moves now. These men would like nothing better than to poke you with their steel if you give them the chance to.’
Shackles rattled – the prisoner slowly sliding forwards out of the box. A pair of grimy naked feet emerged, the skin of the ankles rubbed raw by steel cuffs. Then came legs, bushy genitals, a torso, and finally the bruised blood-caked face of a young man.
His expression was guarded as he lowered his feet to the ground as if he was lowering them into steaming water. Tears streamed from the young man’s eyes at the sting of daylight, yet still he craned his neck to look up at the cloud-dappled sky, the first sky he had seen in an endless time.
But then the loops were dropped around his neck and the poles yanked to tighten them, and the prisoner winced, brought back to earth.
‘Welcome to your new home, Diplomat,’ spat the bearded man from a safe distance of six feet.
Yoked in place there, the prisoner’s icy eyes took in the half-ruined building, then stared once more at the circle of men standing warily around him, shifting their feet uneasily.
‘Yah!’ he barked with a sudden jerk of his chains, and grinned at their involuntary flinches.
*
‘Ah,’ declared a figure stepping out to meet him, stooped over a walking cane like an old man, for all that he looked barely older than Ché. ‘You made it then. Can you walk?’
Behind him the wagon and its men clattered away. Someone draped a cloak over Ché’s naked form and he grasped it gratefully about his body, ignoring the cold bites of the shackles against his chilblained skin.
It was so long since he had been able to stand fully without banging his head on the ceiling of his cell – that tiny pitch-black cell where Khosian Intelligence had been holding him for all this time; an airless black hole in which he thought he would lose his mind. Gasping from cold and exertion, he stood there swaying as he eyed the bent form before him, seeing the man’s head bandaged under a cap from which sprouted locks of blond hair, framing lively eyes that danced through their own shadows of pain.
‘Coya Zeziké,’ Ché said in surprise with his rasping file of a voice.
‘You recognize me! I must say that is a little unnerving, coming from a Mannian Diplomat.’
If only he knew of the numerous files held on him in imperial Q’os, this famous Delegate of the League and descendant of their philosopher-prophet. Ché had seen the man’s sketched likeness in the books of the Section back in the Empire’s capital, marked as one of their Most Desirable targets in all the Midèrēs.
Yet where was Marsh, his bodyguard, the seemingly invincible lifelong protector of Zeziké, the man with eyes in the back of his head, marked as an Extreme Hazard in the books, due to all the Diplomats he’d slain in defence of his charge?
‘Your bodyguard, Marsh,’ Ché said, showing off now. ‘I don’t see him.’
Coya pursed his lips and lowered his head, saying nothing.
Dead then. Not so invincible after all.
A feral grin spread across the Diplomat’s lips.
‘Diplomat Ché,’ clipped Coya in return, straightening himself while a breeze cleared the hair from his pinched expression. ‘Caught in Juno’s Ferry after the evacuation of Tume, though you claim to have deserted your own side. You also claim to be willing to help the democras in return for your release. Well, you’ve been released into my charge. Now, do I have your word you will cause no harm here, nor try to escape?’
His word? What kind of naive fool was he dealing with here?
‘Remove these chains first. Then we can talk.’
‘For now, I think, we’ll keep them on you. If you will talk, you must do so with their burden.’
The Diplomat lifted his chin to the wind and took in the large building he stood before and the nearby seawall looming over the scene.
‘What is it you want of me?’
‘For now, information only.’
‘Concerning what? I already told them everything I know.’
‘Hardly everything. You are an enemy assassin, working for the Section in Q’os, who has disclosed only what he has needed to disclose under du
ress. I would like to know more than what you have already given to Khosian Intelligence.’
It was true Ché had held some information back, even as his captors had tormented him for more. But his reason had nothing to do with any lingering sense of loyalty to the Empire, and everything to do with self-preservation. Ché had feared they would execute him the moment they thought he was of no further use.
‘If I do, you can guarantee my life?’
‘Of course. And in return, you will give your word that you will not try to escape from here.’
Ché took in the armed guards around him in their sweeping cloaks, and their companions watching from the flat rooftop above with longrifles in hand, and more guards stationed at the front gate of the property.
‘You have my word then.’
‘Good,’ said Coya, as though that was all it took to satisfy him. He turned towards the building’s entrance, taking an awkward step with his cane. ‘Come, it’s cold out here. There are some friends of yours waiting inside.’
‘Cripple, I have no friends.’
Coya winced, then glanced over his shoulder.
‘Well, I can certainly see why.’
*
According to the sign above the front entrance, the building was some kind of inkworks.
It was the size of a firing range within: a large, high-ceilinged space of stone columns rich with dust and daylight. Around the vast space echoed the footfalls and voices of men training over on the far side, where the building lay partially in ruins, and was filled almost entirely by the hulking body of the imperial skyship that had crashed through the floor above and the ground floor they stood upon, so that the nose of the skyship was buried in the ground, surrounded by rubble and the remains of stone pans stained a dark blue.
Tracks of inky footprints spiralled across the floor, leading Ché’s gaze to the figures practising with their weapons. One by one they stopped what they were doing, and turned to stare at him through the dusky light.
Ché tensed where he stood in his manacles and leg irons, suddenly spotting the familiar faces amongst the men on the far side. Without noticing, he began to scratch at one of the scaly rashes on his arm in sudden, guilty nervousness.
Rōshun. People he had once called his own.
Wild was there amongst them, and young Florés and Aléas, and Fanazda too with his dark sleeked hair and wicked eyes, playing with a dagger in his hand and glaring at Ché as coolly as all the others.
Ché cast a weary sigh, turning to Coya Zeziké in accusation. But the fool only smiled and shrugged a shoulder, as though it was nothing at all.
‘When I read your debriefing I was surprised to find you were once a Rōshun apprentice, before you became a Diplomat.’
‘Sure, as an imperial infiltrator, brainwashed into thinking I was someone else.’
‘Yes, I read that too. It’s hard to believe your people are capable of such things.’
‘Look, you’re not listening to me. I betrayed these people, you understand? I betrayed the location of their order to my handlers and they were nearly wiped out because of it. They must have an inkling of that, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, they know, all right. But they say that you saved their Seer on the night of the attack. And Ash, too, claimed to have been saved by you here in Khos. They are willing to let you live if it means you can help us with information. Their leader, Wild, has assured me of your safety.’
‘Wild? Wild will be the first one in line. What am I doing here, man?’
‘Hush, Diplomat. I told you why you are here. A little cooperation on your part, and you might even earn your freedom.’
A gust of wind blew through the entrance and the dusty air of the space. It tugged on the sheets of silk that covered many of the missing sections of the walls, no doubt cut from the gas envelope of the wrecked skyship itself. The silk sheets were stretched thin enough that they bled with daylight, against which the Rōshun were gathered as dark silhouettes, skilled assassins every one of them, even the very youngest.
Perhaps it was only fitting to have it end at the hands of the Rōshun. At least there was a symmetry to that, a sense of form.
They’ll knife me in my sleep, Ché thought with grim certainty. And even as the thought occurred to him Fanazda met his gaze, and the dark thin man slowly drew a finger across his throat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dreamer
All Fools, they called this southernmost district of Bar-Khos. A sprawl of streets and alleyways choking the throat of the Lansway, notorious for a decade now as being the closest district to the siege front.
Along its southern limits, All Fools was bordered by a brackish canal that cut across the laq-wide bridge of land from coast to coast. The canal separated the city from the walls of the Shield beyond – and beyond them what remained of the Imperial Fourth Army, chipping away at the city defences for ten long years. Enemy shells were known to occasionally make it as far as the district. As a result, people only lived there if they absolutely had to. Indeed, much damage had been wreaked there during the sky raids of the recently defeated imperial offensive. All across the district stood burnt-out ruins as testament to the infernos that had raged through the streets.
Yet now, like a shift in magnetic polarity, the siege front had entirely reversed itself, with the enemy offensive shifting to the north. Ironically, All Fools had become one of the safest districts in the city. From here most of a city and a good high wall stood in the way of the Imperial Expeditionary Force’s big guns.
The Dreamer Shard was reminding herself of this crucial fact as she lounged on a mattress, listening to the faint rumbles of war emanating from the opposite end of the city.
Shard was safe here on the dusty upper floor of the half-ruined inkworks, this expansive brick building located right next to the canal. Safe enough to relax for a single morning, to take her mind off all that concerned her and all that still needed doing.
If only Blame would stop acting like a lunatic long enough to climb into her bed.
Dressed in a thin silk slip, Shard was propped against a bundle of pillows with a heavy quilt covering her body, trying to stay warm in the chilly air despite the fire burning fitfully in a brazier, pulled as close to the bed as she dared. Flames gnawed on logs the thickness of her arms, crackling with heat and light. Beyond the dancing circle of firelight lay the ruined upper floor of the building, cast into darkness by the many canvas tarps covering the windows; a darkened expanse of broken stone and empty shelving, echoing with the sound of a single pair of running feet coming closer.
Out of the gloom swept a naked figure, huffing and puffing as he jogged past her bed and the inviting heat of the brazier. The young man wore only a scarf around his neck and a cap on his head, and a pair of thin sandals that slap-slapped against the stone as he went by.
‘You’ll catch your death like that,’ she called after her rook assistant. ‘Why don’t you put your coat on, at least!’
Blame’s sprightly voice bounded back to her through the shadows.
‘Because you told me not to, remember?’
‘I meant so you could get back into bed with me. Not suffer from exposure and die.’
‘I’m fine, as long as I keep running.’
They’d been up all night again working in the Black Dream, that otherworldly medium of the farcrys; both trying to break through the imperial communications blockade covering the city. Lethal work. Blame had almost died when he’d become snared in an enemy feedback trap. Then Shard had nearly been fried in an ambush. With dawn rising and still no progress made, they had dropped out of the Black Dream with their tensions too high to contemplate sleeping, and so instead had decided to wind down in their own particular fashion.
Blame had been smoking those laced hazii sticks he liked, good strong hazii weed infused with rush oil. Relaxing yet energizing at the same time, the perfect combination for a young rook caught in the middle of a war.
Off he went, skirting the edges o
f the rubble that filled much of what remained of the floor, Just looking at his naked backside vanishing into the darkness made her shiver, and Shard pulled the quilt tighter about her neck, wishing she had the strength to fashion a glyph in her mind so she could cast some warmth into herself, like she had during much of her recent journey through the Windrush forest with Coya.
Shard had never been much good with the cold. Not even in Sheaf where she had been born and raised, a port city on the southern continent blessed with a mellow climate; not even with the second-skin that was her glimmersuit covering her entire body. The draughty inkworks was hardly helping either, with its broken windows lining the walls covered only by canvas sheets, and the great gaping hole in its roof blocked by more of the same. Though in her corner here, wrapped up well with the brazier’s heat reflecting off the two walls, she should have been comfortable enough.
‘We should take more time in our lives to run like this,’ huffed the dim form of Blame, all energy and inspiration this morning, as though he was conscious that this could be his last day alive. ‘We forget when we grow up how exhilarating it is, just to run free.’
‘Sure,’ Shard drawled on her back, taking a draw from a hazii stick she had rolled herself. ‘We should run everywhere, everywhere we go, just because it’s so much more fun than walking.’
‘That’s what I’m saying!’
Eyes narrowed, Shard tracked the faint form of her lover along the edge of the room, following him to a huge shape that occupied the far half of the building; a shape that towered high above him, bedraggled with ropes and netting and shreds of torn silk. It was the small imperial Bird-of-War that had crashed into the building, shot down some time during the previous sky raids, spearing at an angle through the roof and both storeys.
Once more Blame stared up at the ruined hulk as he panted past, too shocking a sight to ignore even on his sixth time around. He darted close to the ragged edge where the floor had fallen away, then headed back her way.
The inkworks had hardly been her first choice of quarters in the city. In fact she hadn’t chosen this place at all. Coya had been responsible for finding them this space in which to live and do their work in relative safety from the enemy, doubling up with the team of Rōshun operating from downstairs. She could still hear some of them down there, buoyant after their return from another night mission against the enemy forces to the north. Drinking and letting their hair down, those who had any to let down.