Empress of the Fall

by David Hair

  Then the sun vanished behind Emtori Heights – true sunset was still an hour away, but the temperature plummeted. The streets emptied of even the few people they’d seen.

  Ril turned to Basia. ‘We’re magi, Basia: let’s stop messing around.’ He selected a deserted-looking house, unlocked the front door with a spell and they slipped inside. It had been plundered and abandoned, with shattered crockery covering the hall and kitchen floors, but they passed through into a back alley that was inside the quarantine zone. Silent shapes passed the end of the path and they pressed back into the doorway, then crept to the mouth of the alley.

  The Surrid streets were sullen and silent, devoid even of scavenging animals. They instinctively hid from anyone they saw, but the Reekers just shambled by, lost in their own misery. Ril recalled his one and only brush with riverreek, in his early twenties: a week or two of listlessness, a streaming nose and a headache that was like a herd of horses stampeding through his skull. What these people had looked much worse.

  This is the capital – so who’s helping these people? Where are all the healers?

  They reached another alley and followed it deeper into the maze of houses, trying to avoid the piles of garbage and dead animals – rats and cats and dogs mostly – lying rotting in the streets; oddly, none of the scavenging gulls that infested the docks were eating them. The drains were clogged and filled with vile, scum-encrusted water and the stink of raw sewage was everywhere.

  Then Basia hissed, and they shrank against the walls: someone was standing at the far end of the alley and they were upright, not shuffling. Ril almost called out, but Basia shook her head firmly and whoever it was moved on with purposeful tread.

  Who was that? One of the healers we’ve sent in to help people? An official?

  Whoever it was had gone by the time they reached the head of the alley. In the next street, they had to constantly press into doorways to avoid more and more of the shuffling Reekers, and each time it was harder to press on. Their confidence, even their courage, was being eroded second by second.

  At the next turn, Ril found himself passing an open window. Despite Basia’s cautionary look, he couldn’t help peering inside. There was a woman, bare-chested, trying to suckle the child she was cradling – then he realised the infant’s face was grey and lifeless and he couldn’t stop his shocked gasp. The mother looked up, bloody eyes weeping, and he jerked his head from the sight and scampered to the next turning. He looked back to see her at the window, peering out into the night, but he couldn’t say if she could see him.

  Basia admonished, and he didn’t disagree.

  They finally found themselves at the back of Saint Chalfon’s and poked their heads round the wall – then jerked themselves back into cover.

  ‘Holy Hel,’ Basia breathed in Ril’s ear. ‘Did they see us?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He listened hard, then pointed backwards and they retreated quickly, just before boots sounded where they’d been seconds before.

  he sent silently.

  Basia threw him a worried look. They crept back another turn so they could talk properly.

  ‘Why would they be lined up outside that particular church?’ Ril wondered. ‘I think we should call Setallius.’

  ‘Are you sure? Calling across a large body of water like the Aerflus takes some energy – what if they sense us?’

  ‘What if they do?’ Ril replied. ‘They’re just Reekers.’ But even he didn’t believe that. ‘Let’s go back into the alley, find some cover and try.’

  The gnostic call did make the aether shimmer, but Basia reached the spymaster almost instantly and kept the link brief. Ril strained his senses—

  —and heard the tramp of boots echoing along the alley.

  He spotted a doorway, tried the handle and it opened. He yanked Basia through, then pinned her against the wall, finger to her lips, as he eased the door closed again. For a long minute they stared into each other’s eyes . . . and he was in that collapsed well again, in 909, and they were going to die. His heart was pounding against hers and he was shaking and so was she because she felt it too. They held each other breathlessly as booted feet shuffled past – and someone sniffed around the door.

  Then the patrol of Reekers – or whatever they really were – was gone and they sagged into each other.

  And Basia kissed him, briefly but hard, so hard she almost bit him, then pulled away. It wasn’t unpleasant, just unexpected. He blinked, startled. ‘Huh?’

  ‘Just saying thanks,’ she said, but her cheeks went pink.

  His heart didn’t stop pounding. ‘Sure, no problem. Sister. Did you reach Setallius?’

  She nodded and pushed him away, as if he’d been the one getting too close. He floundered, went to speak, then almost jumped out of his skin as they heard someone move somewhere deeper in the house.

  They were in someone’s front room – a craftsman’s, perhaps, by the look. He signed to Basia to remain where she was, then began to creep towards the door. It led to a kitchen, and beyond that, another doorway revealed stairs going upwards.

  Someone was silhouetted in the doorway.

  He lit a mage-light in his hands, revealing a red-eyed, pallid woman with a bleeding, streaming nose. Streaks of brown stained her front. She stank of sweat and vomit and her eyes were full of misery. She opened her mouth to scream and he shut her down with mesmeric-gnosis.

  She succumbed easily, and he pulled a name from her mind. ‘Adith! Look at me, Adith, look at me. It’s going to be all right.’

  He sensed Basia behind him. As she closed the kitchen door, he gently led the woman to a seat by the stove and sat her down. By then she was calm enough that she could speak. ‘Where’s Nalf?’ she whimpered.

  Her husband, Ril read. ‘We’ll find him. What’s happened here?’ He used mesmerism to send her into a state of trance, then drew out the tale.

  ‘Nalf, he’s a tool-maker,’ she said, in a drowsy voice. ‘He caught the riverreek first: we hoped it was just a cold, but then it set in and I caught it too. At night we couldn’t sleep because it felt like we were choking on our own snot and we couldn’t keep food down. Then healer-magi from the Church came and brought us here, to the quarantine. They gave us hot drinks and used spells to clear our breathing passages for a time, and we began to feel we’d live. A prelate from the Church visited the Surrid docks, promising more healers, more help. There were more than four thousand people in here.’

  Ril looked at Basia. ‘Does Setallius know there’s so many?’

  Basia shook her head. ‘What was the name of the prelate?’ she asked Adith.

  ‘Rodrigo, the Estellan,’ the young woman replied. ‘I kissed the hem of his robe and he blessed me. Just a few more days, he said, to be sure we were clear of contagion.’

  Ril bit his lip and met Basia’s eyes, both hanging on the woman’s tale.

  ‘The night after the Grand Tourney, everything changed,’ Adith said. ‘Nalf and I, we went to Saint Jul’s Square to get food, and a man stumbled in – I saw him, up close. He looked diseased, and he was babbling, half-mad with the riverreek – but he looked cunning too. Some people laughed, and a guard tried telling him to quieten down.’

  She shook her head, still disbelieving. ‘Then the Reeker bit the guard, on the arm.’ Her voice dropped to a shocked whisper. ‘We all thought the bitten man was dying, because he was shouting as if he’d been poisoned. Then more like the madman charged into the square from all sides and everyone panicked, running this way and that, and these madmen started biting people too, more and more of us. I was shoved over and found myself next to that poor guard and I saw him go still – and then he sat up, and his face was as mad and cunning as that Reeker. He sat up and slashed the throat of a man trying to help him, then . . . Oh Dear Kore . . .’

 
; Adith reached blindly towards Ril, who stepped away – he wouldn’t have touched her for all the gold in Pallas – but Adith barely noticed. ‘He looked straight at me, and I swear, he was going to kill me, then Nalf yanked me away, and we ran for our lives.’

  ‘Where did you go?’ Basia asked softly.

  ‘We tried to escape quarantine, but the Kirkegarde on the perimeters refused to let us out, and they were changed – not raving, not mad like the Reeker, but silent and cold and they all spoke in exactly the same way, not like Emtori men, not even like Pallacians. They built those barricades to keep us in! Some people tried to get out and they shot them with crossbows and stabbed them with spears.

  ‘We couldn’t escape, so we’ve been hiding ever since. And every night, more Reekers go by, breaking into houses, looking for those who are free of their condition. We ran out of food two days ago and Nalf went looking for more . . . and he hasn’t come back.’ She hunched into herself, pulled her knees to her chest and began to rock back and forth, side to side, keening.

  Basia touched the side of her head and sent her to sleep as Ril slumped to one knee, utterly stunned. ‘How can this be happening here? How can we not know?’ He cast his mind back to the most recent meeting of the Imperial Council. ‘The Church has been running all the quarantine areas. Wurther’s Secretary, Chaplain Ennis, told the Imperial Council that the danger was passing.’

  ‘Kirkegarde soldiers, all infected,’ Basia said, her voice incredulous. ‘Holy Kore, if this condition spreads, the whole city is under threat – we’ve got to stop this!’

  Ril swallowed. ‘How far away is Setallius?’

  Basia’s eyes sparked with pale light, scrying. ‘Ten minutes.’ She whispered something into the air, a brief flurry of words. ‘I told him to look for us on the rooftop. Come on.’

  Ril carried Adith to a bedroom and locked her in, then slipped the key under the door. They climbed into the attic and found the hatch to the roof; in a place where summers turned upper floors into furnaces the rooftop terraces were a necessity. They clambered out onto the tiles and huddled together – but not too close; that kiss was still replaying in Ril’s mind, the shock of it like a sudden candle-flame in gloom.

  Basia was clearly still thinking about it too, because she said softly, ‘Why was there never an us, Ril? In all those years?’

  He didn’t look at her. ‘I don’t know,’ he lied.

  ‘Was it the legs?’ she probed.

  ‘No, nothing like that.’ He brushed back his hair, fiddled with his gauntlets, did anything but meet her eyes. Because I could never have left you, was the truth. Because you matter too much, and I’ve always had to have an escape route out of a relationship, even with Jenet. But you and I, our souls got tangled together in that well in 909. And now there’s Lyra, and the only way out is probably a coffin.

  Perhaps she understood that, because she just leaned in and hugged him, then straightened and pointed to a windskiff skimming the roofs towards them; in a few seconds more, the spymaster was throwing them a mooring rope, which Ril wrapped around a gable spire, while Mort Singolo hauled in the sails. Once the craft was secured – there was enough Air-gnosis stored in the keel to keep the craft aloft for many days – they all made their way back down to the ground floor, where Basia brought Setallius up to date while Singolo checked the perimeter.

  ‘So there were ranks of them, outside Saint Chalfon’s?’ Setallius asked. He looked at Ril. ‘The very place you came here to visit.’

  ‘There were dozens, maybe hundreds,’ Basia confirmed.

  ‘Was anyone speaking to them, giving orders, marshalling them?’

  ‘No,’ Ril put in, ‘they don’t even speak to each other.’

  The spymaster frowned. ‘Perhaps they don’t need to. Let’s go and have a look.’

  They all turned as Mort Singolo strode back into the room. ‘No one seems to have heard or seen us,’ the axeman reported. ‘I heard movement in the distance – a lot of tramping feet – but that’s died down.’

  ‘What about Adith?’ Basia asked.

  ‘She’s probably safest where she is,’ Ril said, and Setallius nodded in agreement.

  Ril guided them back to the church, Setallius ghosting along behind, Singolo following with Basia some distance behind. They could hear the movement of feet, strangely rhythmic, as if they were all following the beat of an unheard drum, but before they reached the square a booming sound echoed about them, followed by a metallic rattle.

  Then there was silence.

  They reached the end of the street and peered into the square, but the entire plaza, which an hour earlier had been filled with Reekers, was eerily empty. All that remained were a few scraps of refuse.

  ‘Where has everyone gone?’ Ril whispered.

  Faraway, the bells of the city chimed the hour, like a signal that something – something bad – had just begun.

  *

  The Bastion, Pallas

  It begins, Ostevan Comfateri thought exultantly. He stared into the eyes of the old man facing him: Brother Junius had served six Royal Confessors with uncomplaining diligence. The ichor had settled into his veins, his eyes had bled those little tears that for some reason always came at the end of the struggle for possession, and now Abraxas gazed back at Ostevan from the old man’s rheumy eyes.

  The daemon looked around curiously: on the desk lay a stack of papiermâché masks, all of them of Jest, as well as the true mask accepted by Ostevan in Janune. There were also two mirrors, a jug of water, a candle, a lump of rock and a pile of feathers: the sort of things the ignorant thought magi used in ‘casting spells’.

  ‘What is that trash for?’ Junius – or rather, Abraxas – asked.

  ‘Obfuscation,’ Ostevan replied. ‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.’ He put his finger to his lips, willing the daemon’s awareness to depart, leaving just the potential for power. Master Naxius is truly a genius, he acknowledged silently. He would love to know how the old madman had managed to persuade – or force – Abraxas into this arrangement. He’s effectively reduced a master-daemon to a source of power and information and a conduit for communication.

  ‘Prepare,’ he told Junius.

  A mage’s powers were derived from tapping into the ‘soul’ – the energies created and sustained by their bodies – but not all magi could detach the soul – the spiratus – from the body at will. The Gnostic Study of spiritualism was concerned with the art. A travelling spiratus could even possess another, just as a daemon did, but even a normal human had enough innate defences that such possession was very difficult, and impossible to sustain for long.

  But Junius was now Ostevan’s absolute slave and he had no such defences. An uninitiated watcher would have seen two men staring at each other – until Junius stood and Ostevan slumped in his chair, his eyes emptying.

  A mage would have seen Ostevan’s soul step into Junius’ body and assume complete control.

  Then Ostevan-inside-Junius rose. He stared at his own body, which had fallen into a catatonic state – it wasn’t a comfortable sensation, especially as his next act was to cut his own body’s throat, not deep enough to kill, just enough to make a mess. Then he conjured a Chain-rune to bind the gnosis of the abandoned body and conceal it from scrying. This is just a contingency, he told himself – he had no desire to not return to that precious vessel.

  Then he lit the candle, charred the feathers, tipped water over the body, crushed the rock and sprinkled the shards, cracked both mirrors, smiling at the thought of what an experienced mage would make of such acts. Obfuscation, he thought with a smile, placing all the Jest masks into a bag.

  Outside the sun was falling behind Emtori Heights. He took the stairs into the bowels of the chapel, striding with an energy and purpose that the real Junius has long since forgotten. The night was young, and there was much to achieve before he took the grand prelate’s throne.

  Emtori, Pallas

  Ril indicated Saint Chalfon’s church. �
��I presume they’re inside?’

  Dirklan Setallius nodded in agreement as Mort and Basia joined them. They stared across the darkened plaza, waiting for signs of movement, but none came. The one stained-glass window facing the street – a giant rosette high on the walls above the twin doors – remained dark. ‘We need a closer look,’ Setallius decided.

  The moonless sky was heavy with stars. Everything remained silent as they stole across the space to the church doors and pressed their eyes and ears to the cracks. Ril heard the measured tread of boots walking away from them, and a smell seeped through to their nostrils.

  ‘Lamp-oil,’ Setallius said, sniffing. They kept listening again, but all was silent now. The spymaster stroked the door lock and Ril sensed him reaching out, feeling out the shape of the locks and barricades, engaging kinesis – then he withdrew. ‘There are wards . . . strong wards,’ he reported. ‘If I try to break them, whoever set them will know.’ He looked around, then said, ‘Let’s try the other side.’

  They crept around the building, finding all the alleys equally silent and forbidding, and emerged behind a small cemetery, the only open space amidst the press of buildings. All was silent, but Ril wondered how many there were like Adith here, cowering in fear of the disease within the sickness.

  They bite people . . . The world’s gone mad.

  There was a small door at the back of Saint Chalfon’s, but it was also locked. Ril looked up at the church spire where Basia had cast her scrying spell – was it just three weeks ago? ‘We could get in through the slats in the bell-tower. I could fly up and prise them open, then—’

  ‘I’ve a better idea,’ Singolo interrupted, and as the axeman splayed his fingers, the nearest stone grave-slab peeled like cloth from the earth, revealing a narrow set of stairs leading down into the earth. The smell of damp rot rose to greet them. ‘Mage-family crypt,’ he grunted.

  In Pallas, with land so valuable, only the magi were permitted to inter their families inside the city walls; the middle classes buried their dead in public cemeteries outside, while the poor were simply cremated. Magi were descended of the Blessed Three Hundred, so their memorials were sacred sites.