Tales of the Emerald Serpent (Ghosts of Taux)

by Scott Taylor

  Shay tried to clear his mind, as he had before, but instead everything seemed to close in around him—faces, voices, and below it all, like the buzzing of insects in the dark, the alien voices of the lost Tolim souls whispering, whispering . . .

  There was no time to wonder what they presaged this time; he had a pretty good idea, and the first moments of the fight did not bode well for him.

  The Razor Duelists were so called because they kept both edges of their blades – rather than just the points – sharpened like razors, unlike some dueling schools. Serata quickly scored draws on both of Shay’s arms through the leather, and a shallow cut on his left cheek that might have put an eye out if Shay hadn’t flinched back at the last moment. But this was not a battle of touches and sand glasses. First Order duels were to the death.

  Strong and aggressive as he was, Shay found himself thrown on the defensive, parrying thrust after thrust and being driven backwards down the room. There was no sound but the scuff of their boots on stone and the sharp chime and hiss of steel against steel. He finally managed to cut Serata on the left forearm, but paid for it with a matching cut to his right cheek. He began to worry that the man was only playing with him. His wounds were not serious, but they were painful, and he could feel the blood running down his face and inside his sleeves. Worse yet, he was growing tired, having expended so much energy in the previous duel.

  With a skillful snap of his wrist, Serata tried to disarm him, catching and twisting Shay’s blade with his own. But Shay managed to hold on, though the effort sent a shock up his arm. Dancing back, he sidestepped, lunged, and cut the other man across the front of the thigh. Serata staggered a little, and Shay could have had him then, but the lessons in honor learned at Xavier’s knee kept him from taking advantage of such a moment of weakness.

  It nearly cost him his life. The older man recovered far more quickly than Shay expected, lunged awkwardly, but still managed to stab Shay deeply just under his left collarbone. Shay bit back a cry of pain as he jumped back and parried, then his mind seemed to divide. One part registered a flash of white somewhere beyond Serata, at the far end of the room, a flash that should have meant something. The other saw the critical, fleeting gap in the other man’s defense. With the voices of the Tolim loud in his ears, he lunged forward and ran Serata – his father – through. For a moment they stood there, joined by steel and a startled gaze, time out of joint, until the spell was broken by a scream.

  “Papa!”

  That flash of white. Esmeralda had returned from the sweet shop too soon, in time to see her father slide free of Shay’s blade and collapse to the cold stone floor. She screamed again as she ran to him and fell to her knees to cradle his head against her white lawn dress. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth to spread a crimson blaze across her breast and thigh.

  Shay stood over them with his stained blade, staring into those fading eyes as the man who would not claim him, the man who would rather die than claim him, lay dying.

  Even so, Serata managed to raise his hand and point an accusing finger at Shay. Blood bubbled over his lips as he wheezed out, “I admit . . . nothing! You are no son of . . . You are not a Serata!” His eyes went vague and his head fell to one side. A little puff of sparks escaped between his lips with his final breath and winked out.

  “By all the Saints!” sobbed Esmeralda. “Papa, please! No!”

  Hector Payson knelt beside Serata and closed his eyes. “Honor is satisfied. Shay Gatewell’s claim to be the son of Esmer Serata is proven by trial of blade.”

  “His son?” Robert had returned as well, and stood facing Shay, blade drawn. “I will never accept that. You’re a liar and a murderer!”

  Shay felt incredibly tired. The voices were gone, replaced by Esmeralda’s heartbroken sobs. “I didn’t come here to fight your father,” he told Robert. “That was his choice.”

  “It’s true,” said the bespectacled Payson. “There can be no vengeance, Robert. Put your blade away.”

  “With my father dead at my feet?” he shouted.

  Shay wiped his blade on his leg and sheathed it. As painful as his wounds were, he felt numb under it all. “I will not fight your family again. I want nothing from you.”

  “Kill him, Robert, kill him!” Esmeralda sobbed.

  Shay thought of how she’d blushed when he’d given her back the shuttlecock, and the way she’d smiled at him.

  Then Bal was there, gripping his hand, pulling him less-than-gently toward the door, down a gauntlet of Razors who’d just watched him kill their Second. They were like the blood-thirsty figures on the Ullamalitzli Stadium walls, ready to carve out his broken heart.

  At some point on the long walk home, Shay sat on a water trough and let Bal tie up the wounds on his arms and sponge some of the blood away from his face.

  “Guess I won’t be needing this.” Bal pulled off his copper badge and tossed it to a child who stood watching them from a wary distance.

  Shay looked around at the broad, straight streets and fine buildings with their glittering windows and smooth, not-haunted walls. “I’m sorry, Bal. We won! We should…”

  His friend shrugged. “It probably would have been boring out here, anyway. And too bright! Too bad about that Esmeralda, though. I wouldn’t have minded getting to know her better.”

  “Don’t!” Shay turned away, eyes stinging.

  “What?”

  “Don’t act like you don’t care that I just threw away your chance in life, as well as my own!”

  Instead of the expected recrimination, Bal placed a hand on Shay’s shoulder, letting his warmth flow into him, as it always had. “Whether or not we wear a silly badge on our chest, we’re still some of the best swordsmen in all Taux. We proved that today, and word will spread.”

  Shay let out a humorless laugh as he wiped his eyes with his fingers. “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”

  They continued on in silence. As they approached the Black Gate, Shay looked up at the giant skull on this side. It winked a great hollow eye at him, as if sharing a fine joke.

  Shay’s twenty-third birthday began much like the last five, waking in the lonely hour before dawn in a cold sweat, wiping the phantasm of remembered blood from his hands on the coarse sheets. Across the room, he could hear Bal’s soft snoring.

  The corn shuck mattress crackled under him as he rose and crossed the bare floorboards to the room’s only window. Shadow upon shadow lay over the Ullamalitzli, with the ball court and the Silk Purse lost somewhere among them.

  This was his world and always would be.

  The usual summons was waiting for him at the Emerald Serpent when he and Bal arrived for an early breakfast. Written in an elegant, feminine hand, it stated the place and time, always the same.

  He watched the carvings all day, but they had nothing to say to him.

  The great city of Taux lay quiet as a spent lover under the silver shades of of the Ghost Moon. Shay knew better than to trust it, though. This was enemy territory. Always had been. Always would be. Especially tonight.

  “Come on, let’s get this over with,” Balthazar called softly as Shay paused, staring across the street at the Razor Duelist Guild House. He shook his head and ghosted away after his friend.

  The pink granite house in Ruby Lane was deserted, the windows boarded up, flower beds run wild. Dead leaves filled the fountains and had drifted up against the iron fence. No one had played Serpent’s Head on the lawn for a long time.

  Tonight a few torches had been set into the ground and by that flickering light they could see the man waiting for them. The irony of being able to enter through the front gate, now that the place was in ruins, was not lost on Shay.

  He’d sworn the day he’d killed their father that he would never fight a Serata again, so they had simply hired duelists to fight in their stead. Usually it was a First Degree Duelist of the Guild, but last year it has been a clever Corsair who’d come the closest of any of them to killing Shay. There were no sandglasses or
dropped handkerchiefs involved, and no rules except kill or be killed before the Sturgeons showed up to stop the illicit fight.

  But dueling was Shay’s life now, and his livelihood ever since the day he’d killed his father. And every year, on the anniversary of that event—this.

  Robert Serata had grown taller, but was still slender as a boy and lacked the steely gravitas of his father. “Well, here he is, our Angel of Death,” he sneered as Shay and Balthazar stepped into the torch light. “That’s what they call you in the slums these days, isn’t it? The killer with the face of an angel, though I’m pleased to see it still bears the little scars my father gave it. And here’s your faithful hound, as always.”

  Balthazar made him a mocking bow.

  “Spare me your pleasantries,” said Shay. “I haven’t had my supper yet. Where is your champion?”

  “Here,” said a familiar voice, and Esmeralda stepped from the shadows, dressed in dueling leathers and a cloak in spite of the day’s lingering heat. A rapier hung at her hip; like Shay’s, it bore no ribbon.

  “I won’t fight you!” he scoffed.

  “You won’t fight a Serata. But I’ve forsworn my family name.”

  “You can’t change whose blood runs in your veins, any more than I can. And besides, what do you know of dueling?”

  With a hollow laugh, she threw back her cloak to show him the silver Razor Duelists’ badge she wore. “I haven’t been just sitting around embroidering since that day.”

  “Why you and not Robert?”

  “Because Robert didn’t inherit Papa’s skill. I did.” She paused. “And you. So Robert will carry on the family name, while I avenge it. He is my second.” She untied her cloak and tossed it to her brother.

  “You can call yourself anything you want, but I’m not fighting you.” With that Shay turned to go, but stopped as he heard the scrape of a blade leaving its sheath.

  “Don’t make me stab you in the back,” she said. “I don’t want that stain on my honor.”

  “Go home, Esmeralda.”

  He started for the gate again when pain lanced through his left shoulder. She’d already leaped back when he whirled around. She stood, left arm raised, in a perfect fighting stance.

  “I don’t want to fight you,” he told her again, grimacing at the pain.

  “Then I will kill you for the coward you are,” she retorted, and it was no empty threat.

  She lunged forward, aiming for his belly. He leaped back and drew his blade; it seemed he had no choice.

  He had no intention of killing her, no matter what her intentions were, but instead played a defensive game, testing her style and skill. Her form was impeccable, but she didn’t have his experience. And she hadn’t spent the past five years fighting the sort of roughs and bravos he had, up and down the Free Coast.

  “Stop playing with me!” she snarled, redoubling her effort to get at him.

  “As you wish.” Lunging and feinting, he drove her back on the trampled grass and into the weeping branches of an overgrown pepper tree. Instead of floundering, she spun under their cover and came out on the offensive.

  “You certainly earned that silver badge,” Shay remarked as they locked blades.

  “The Guild cares only for skill,” she shot back, a little breathless now. “They didn’t care who my father was.”

  “So I thought, once.”

  “You came as an assassin!” She slid under his guard and managed a shallow jab to his chest. He parried, lunged and locked hilts, then thrust her away. She staggered but quickly recovered and rejoined with angry resolve in the set of her jaw.

  “Is that what you think?” asked Shay.

  “I know it! I saw it with my own eyes.”

  A blast of heat struck him in the center of the chest and he fell back a step in surprise; few ordinary Humans could concentrate the elemental essence to that degree. “I came for a name, Esmeralda, nothing more. A name I was entitled to. He challenged me.”

  “You should never have gone there!” she shouted, slashing at him with her blade. “You should never have been, you and your whore sister!”

  Five years ago he might have forgotten his vow and killed her for that, but he wasn’t that green boy anymore. Instead, he dodged her blade and struck her in the face with the knuckle bow of his hilt. Her rapier fell from her hand as she slumped, unconscious, to the ground.

  “Esmeralda!” cried Robert, running to her side. “You son of a whore, Gatewell. You’ve killed her!”

  “She’ll be fine.” Shay sheathed his rapier. “Just a sore head for a few days and a bruise to explain to her friends at the Guild. This was an illegal fight, after all. Come on, Bal. Mama and Shayla will be wondering where we are.”

  Turning his back on his half brother and sister, he walked away through the iron gate.

  “Another year, another supper,” chuckled Bal as they made their way down Ruby Lane. “And if that woman’s determined to be your opponent from now on, you’ll see a good many more.”

  “She was much better than I expected. She’ll get even better with time.”

  “Then you may have to break your oath about spilling Serata blood one day.”

  Shay’s eyes looked black and empty in the moonlight as he shook his head. “Never.”

  They walked down the hill through the dreaming streets of privilege and respectability to the Black Gate. As they approached it, the great skull winked a black, empty eye at Shay.

  Shay winked back.

  Illustration by Jeff Laubenstein

  THE ONE THING YOU CAN NEVER TRUST

  Harry Connolly

  Emil Lacosta did not expect his new prices to please Mama Serene, but he did not expect her to actually swear at him. That is, however, exactly what she did. Being Mama Serene, she did it startlingly well. “I am terribly sorry,” he answered her, carefully keeping his voice mild. “Acquiring the materials I require has become quite difficult and...”

  “Spare me the apologies of a Zimbolay scholar,” she interrupted. “Every learned word makes my purse lighter.” She wrote out a bank note, signed it, and handed it to him. It was for the old price. “Next time, I will pay your new, even more outrageous, fee.”

  Emil nodded and handed the note to Mariella. He turned to the three young consorts sitting on Mama Serene’s ornate couch. “Do you accept this spell without coercion, of your own will?”

  The consorts said “Yes,” in deeply bored tones. One of them added: “because it’s making me rich!” They all laughed at him. He had asked them last time, too, and would ask next time. It didn’t matter if they thought him fussy. He held out a small vial to the first consort and, after she had spit into the golden liquid, allowed her to take it. He did the same for the others.

  They were love potions all. A select few of Mama Serene’s clients paid a high premium to be genuinely, or at least magically, adored, even if it was just for a few days.

  Their business concluded, Emil and Mama Serene nodded politely to each other. Mariella opened the office door and led Emil swiftly and quietly down the side stair and through the lounge. Emil hated coming to the House of the Silk Purse, hated delivering his product in person, hated knowing the consorts would drink the potion when he was not there to watch over them. But the money was good. Very, very good. With luck, he…

  Two men seated in the lobby rose out of their chairs and moved toward him. They seemed to have been waiting for him, and Emil stopped immediately and drew back. Mariella stepped around him, her hand on the ribbon tying down her sword. There was an odd expression on her face.

  “No no!” the taller man said, his empty hands raised. “We mean only to talk.”

  He was near thirty, blue-eyed and deeply tanned. His clothes were satin and leather, and his black hair and long mustache was oiled into curls. He dressed like a dandy, but the amount of sun he’d gotten and the corded muscles in his wrists suggested pirate or merchant, not that there was always much difference.

  His companion wa
s small and slender, and his skin was as black as Emil’s – darker, even, because Emil spent long hours in his basement lab. The tattoos on the man’s face marked him as a dock thug or cutpurse from Zimbolay. Emil felt a pang of homesickness at the sight of him, but of course he had nothing in common with such a person. “If you want to talk to me,” Emil said mildly as he tried to move around them, “come to my shop during shop hours.”

  “That is impossible,” The merchant said. “Please, let me buy you a drink and I will explain why I am so desperate.”

  “Shop hours,” Emil said, moving slowly and carefully around him. “Thank you.”

  “My friend,” the merchant said. His tone was still light, but there was an undercurrent of threat. “I am trying to handle this respectfully.”

  Emil stopped heading toward the door. Mariella had skill with her blade, but she was no Razor and certainly no bodyguard. Besides, she was burdened with his tome. Emil, of course, had no weapon. “I don’t need your respect,” Emil answered.

  “What about my money? Eh? Aha! I see that got your attention.”

  “I already have more clients than I can accommodate.”

  “I will double your price.”

  “You don’t even know what my prices are.”

  “I am desperate,” the merchant said again, although he managed to include a trace of condescension in his voice as he said it. “And you are insulting me.”

  Emil sighed. Mariella and the cut purse had their hands on their blades, but this merchant, whoever he was, had not tied off his own rapier with a ribbon. Since he was clearly not stupid, it meant he was not afraid to be challenged in the street by a Razor. That meant he was very, very good.

  Getting killed was bad for business. Emil turned to Mariella: “You’ll have to complete your errand without me today. I will meet you back at the shop.”

  “As you say, sir.” She left.

  “Let me introduce myself,” the merchant said as he led Emil into a booth near the back wall. The lamplight was dim there. “I am Rene LeCroix, Captain of Broadbelly and Tide Dancer, merchant, trader, shipper, and bearer of tidings good and ill.”