“There’s probably more of the hide somewhere around here,” she said, at the head of the steps. “Someone’s curtains, or shoved in a trunk. Maybe we can buy some.” The invincible dragon’s scales had been the only scabbard lining to last more than a month.
The crowd parted as she strode over to the stranger’s table, but she felt this time it wasn’t her name and reputation, but some other influence gently nudging them out of her path. She saw the old man’s lips curl into a slight smile. His eyes glinted within his hood.
“Well met, proud Celestaine, Champion of Forinth.” His voice was warm and avuncular. “Will you not join me, and perhaps learn something to your advantage?”
She glanced around the taproom in case it was an ambush, rather than what she suspected. She’d have preferred the ambush, probably. For a room full of war veterans, walking wounded and those who’d been forced to make hard choices, everyone seemed to be intent on innocent amusement. She sat.
“A strange chance brings the Slayer of Slayers across my path this night,” the old man started, and she jabbed a finger at his face, almost poking him in the twinkling eye.
“Enough,” she told him. “You think I don’t recognise you?”
For a moment his look of wounded bafflement was so good she almost fell for it. Maybe this was just some mysterious old man hanging out in an inn, waiting for a questing hero to come by. But she looked past the unfamiliar face and saw something buried behind that grandfatherly gaze that she knew. She thought she’d lost him, but she just wasn’t that lucky.
“Come clean,” she warned him, “or I spill the beans right here and now.”
“All right, all right.” The face didn’t change, but the way he held it did, and all that warm beardy cheer just evaporated, leaving something entirely more shifty and furtive. Which was still an expression ill-suited to the face of a demigod.
“Deffo,” she told him, “what precisely is going to get you to leave me alone?”
A thousand years ago, so the songs and stories told, the gods sent into the world their immortal messengers and servants, to guide and protect the fledgling mortal races and teach them the gods’ ways. Guardians, they were called, and in those early days they travelled from place to place, facing off against the primordial monsters that had grown in the earth, banishing giants, teaching and living up to their name. They were never many, and most grew to love and value the fragile races placed in their care. And if there were not quite enough to go round, well, who would guess that certain untended races might go astray later? And if one of them was less than delighted at an eternity of service to lesser beings, that also went unremarked, even by their more compliant peers.
Most of them gravitated to one or other of the emergent cults that would eventually become temples and priesthoods, taking second-hand veneration where they could. Those shrines and churches that the Kinslayer had left standing still celebrated their great deeds with statues and friezes and songs. They spoke of such as Wall and Wanderer, Fury and Diviner, Lightbearer and the Undefeated.
Celestaine stared across the table at the Undefeated, or at least the mild old man’s face he wore, and reminded herself that he had kept the truth of his name by running as fast as his semidivine legs would carry him and lifting not one finger to help the free folk in the war. He had not believed the Kinslayer could be beaten, and had gone to find a hole to hide in. The Kinslayer had earned his name by killing other Guardians, and several of Deffo’s kin had met their end, whether gloriously or ignominiously, during the war; the Undefeated had not intended to be one of them. Which made his position rather awkward, now the Kinslayer was dead and they were singing songs about the winners.
“Look,” said the Guardian, cringing a little when she fixed him with her gaze. “I’m just saying, think about it. I’ve got power, still. Don’t look at me like that. Just because I… doesn’t mean the gods didn’t send me, in the start.”
“They’ve said you’re back in their good books, have they?” Celestaine asked with arched eyebrow. Because, barring very recent developments, the gods were talking to precisely nobody. The Kinslayer had severed Them from Their adherents at the start of the war, and neither priest nor Guardian had felt Their touch since.
“I don’t need the gods,” the Undefeated hissed, hunching close. “You’re right, they’re gone, probably not coming back. Probably they lost interest in all of this long before the war, right? But you, Celest—” He stopped at her sharp gesture. “Celestaine, then.”
“You know who gets to call me Celest? Other Slayers, two Yorughan and the Wanderer, if he ever comes back. Not you.”
“Yes, yes.” He waved down her objections, eyes swivelling about as he tried mug an air of intimacy between them. “Just a word, Celestaine. Just a kind word is all I need. From you, it’ll count. You killed the Kinslayer.”
“With help, not from you.”
“But who knows, eh?” His ingratiating grin made her shudder. “Just drop a word to that minstrel over there. Tell him the Undefeated had your back. Tell him I held the door, gave you secrets, killed some Vathesk or an Umberwyrm so you could get to where you needed. It doesn’t have to be anything big, just say I helped.”
“But that would be a lie.”
“They wouldn’t know.”
“You know who helped? The Wanderer helped. Of all of you bastards, he actually helped where help was needed. He didn’t go off half-arsed and get people killed, he didn’t just turtle somewhere the war never reached, he didn’t turn himself into a weasel and hide in a rabbit-hole.”
“It was,” he hissed through gritted teeth, “a badger. And where’s your precious Wanderer now, eh? You think you don’t need us Guardians? Who else have you got?”
She cut him off. “Right, listen. I am going to restore the Aethani. Give them their wings back. Can you do that for me, Deffo?”
The Undefeated stared at her.
“Or do you know how I could do it?” she prompted.
“That’s… impossible… The sheer power.” He shook his head. “Why are you even bothering? They’re a dead people, a lost cause. You need to rebuild.” His face lit up with the sort of craftiness a seven-year-old indulges when they have a plan to get more sweets. “Go to the Forinthi council. They’re still looking for scions of the Royal line, aren’t they? I could tell them you’re the heir. I’m a Guardian. I’ll say the gods revealed it to me before the war. After all, they’re not going to say any different now, are they? You can be Queen, and you can say that I…”
She stood, abruptly glad Heno had her sword. “Just leave me alone. You won’t get your validation from me.” She could feel his desperate, cringing gaze on her back all the way up the steps to rejoin Amkulyah.
Chapter Three
SO SHE MADE do without divine assistance. At the end of the day there was only one Guardian she would trust as far as she could throw him and, like the Undefeated had said, he had gone.
Magic was what she needed, but magic of an order of magnitude beyond anything even the strongest wizards could throw around. Magic from the early days, when the gods were closer to the world, when the Guardians were stronger, when the world was wilder. Back then, back when even the Kinslayer had a different name and a very different reputation, there had been things of power in abundance, according to the stories. The world had been made in a whirl of fierce magic and the gods had been many, tugging in different directions, or so Celestaine imagined. Not all their strength had gone where it was supposed to. The early world had been a place of chimaeras and prodigies. There had been great monsters as cunning as men and gifted with elemental powers: phoenixes and salamanders, basilisks and thunder dragons, cattle of gold and serpents of gems. Life in those days had been hard for poor mortals: hence the need for the Guardians. And some of those fabulous monsters had been slain and some had diminished or been replaced by their lesser spawn, but now and again one found a tooth, a claw, a preserved eye in which the flames still glittered. One found gems
cut by elder craftsmen who were more than mortal, cloth woven from the wind and the sea, swords that could cut through anything…
Her sword had only one power. It wouldn’t be healing wounds or mending wings any time soon. The war had turned up a scattering of these artefacts though, either employed against the Kinslayer or uncovered by him, for he had always been greedy for more power. A century ago he had drunk the blood of one of his brothers, earning his new name and revealing his true nature. The other Guardians had driven him into the earth then, howling for vengeance but unable to destroy him. When he had resurfaced a decade ago to start the war, he had seized every relic and scrap of power he could find, and with it he had challenged and broken all the armies of the free folk and killed a half-dozen other Guardians as well.
And we killed him. The memory was not one of triumph so much as chaos and panic. They had seized their moment knowing it would only be a moment. Lathenry and Spinaros and the rest, everyone just bundling in and unleashing magic, arrows, blades. Thanks to Heno and Nedlam, they had come to the Kinslayer while he was resting, engrossed in the battle outside his fortress’s walls.
She remembered his hand thrusting out to tear Lathenry’s heart from his chest, peeling the old man’s armour back like orange rind. And she had cut it off, that hand. The blade that cut through anything had not slowed for the Kinslayer’s wrist. That was when she had realised he could be beaten. Semi-divine, engorged on power, and yet his hand was twitching on the ground like a dying spider.
And I should have gone straight to his vaults and robbed the place blind for relics. But she hadn’t been thinking, back then. The Kinslayer’s fortress had been comprehensively sacked by a hundred hands, both free folk and the more independent of his former minions. Everything had gone everywhere, and she had no idea where to start or even what to look for. She had given Amkulyah hope, but she didn’t actually know how to restore his people; she just wanted desperately to do it, to make the world better one wrong at a time.
She had left Heno, Nedlam and the Aethani prince in the Skull Cap, desperately hoping that her writ would stop anyone doing anything to them, and that Heno would stop Nedlam doing anything to anyone else. The sense of sands rushing in the hourglass was strong on her as she pushed her way through the covered market, as though she would find a miracle for sale for copper scits on some Oerni trader’s table.
There were a lot of Oerni there, almost as tall as a Yorughan though not as broad. Oerni lived in enclaves throughout all the kingdoms of the free folk, another race the Kinslayer had delighted in enslaving. He valued only their brute strength, caring not at all for their craftsmanship or their long histories. Ralas the bard had known a dozen Oerni family sagas, each one meticulously crafted, passed down perfectly from generation to generation. Hundreds of such stories had been lost, when the Kinslayer had worked whole families to death.
But, scattered as they were, the Kinslayer never dealt a deathblow to the Oerni culture. They had always been ready to up sticks and go elsewhere when the mood took them, and they were self-sufficient and tough. And they fought: no warriors by nature, but they had been engineers and smiths for the armies of the free, and in the worst pinch they had held the line with sheer force and heavy armour. And now the war was done, they were the quickest to get back on their feet, as evidenced by two out of every three traders at this market, towering head and shoulders over Celestaine.
Much of what was being sold there was nothing special, or wouldn’t have been before the war. Right now there was a lack of decent pots and pans, furniture, tools, and most especially food, after too many harvests had rotted or burned. All around Celestaine people were rebuilding their lives, and the Oerni were helping. Yes, they were charging copper scits and silver pollys, but the prices were far lower than she’d expected. All around her the big-hearted big folk were industriously working at their lathes and anvils and looms to make the world better for everyone.
Celestaine searched her heart and found that she was jealous. I would rather be a mason or a carpenter than a warrior now. What good are my skills, and what use has the world for them? She had killed the Kinslayer, but the world would be rebuilt by others. But maybe, just maybe, I can save the Aethani.
She pressed on past the bustle of mundane tradesmen, looking for stranger goods. Towards the far end of the market there were fewer Oerni, and a more diverse rabble of suspicious-looking characters took their place. She saw several Cheriveni from across the border, always opportunistic, selling books and scribes’ services, potions, unguents and magical trinkets—the sort of thing that might stop working a day after you bought it, unlike a chair or a hammer. There was a Tzarkoman working as a tattoo artist, imbuing the ink with blessings as she needled them into an Oerni’s mottled skin. Celestaine pushed on, looking left and right and keeping a hand near her purse just in case. Above and beyond the Cheriveni toys and minor enchantments, she had a sense of greater power. Travel with wizards enough, fight enough Heart Takers and death cultists, and you got to know the sniff of it. Surely nothing that would turn the world upside down—not here, not sold openly—but she was after information, and the trade knew the trade.
The place she found was shrouded with hangings and tapestries, arranged to make an irregular, rambling tent under the cloth ceiling of the covered market. Makeshift tables held tottering piles of all manner of junk, some of which was presumably of value to someone. She ducked inside, ready for an attack; clamouring warnings from a part of her mind she hadn’t been able to turn off since the war. Perhaps she’d smelled something of the enemy, because the first living thing that met her gaze was Grennish, a skinny little long-limbed thing that would have looked frail next to Amkulyah. It was propped on a high stool, a set of Cheriveni lenses perched on its forehead, caught midway through examining a partially dissected brass head she recognised as belonging to the famed—and, when it came to the war, mostly useless—mechanical army of Duke Timoran. Some minion of the Kinslayer had plainly taken an axe to the head, but the Grennishman was apparently not giving up hope. Of all the Kinslayer’s slaves the Grennish had taken to free life most readily. They were small enough not to be threatening, they had a lot of useful skills and they’d been bred to think and solve problems, meaning they’d always been less under the enemy’s thumb than the rest. This one had plainly not escaped the sharp end of the fighting, though, with one leg ending in a brass-capped stump. When it looked at her, she saw six eyes in columns up its forehead, blinking lazily out of sync with each other. The Grennish varied a lot.
“Chief’s round the back,” it told her, somehow making the simple utterance sound like an insalubrious invitation. Its tusks had been filed to stubs.
She shrugged. “You have anything for healing?”
One of its main eyes, magnified behind the lenses, drooped shut and then sprang open. “Paper cuts, broken hearts, bad dreams, lost limbs…?”
“Lost limbs.” She didn’t want to know what a Grennishman thought a broken heart meant.
It sucked its breath in between its teeth in such a Cheriveni ‘you’ll-be-lucky-more’n-my-job’s-worth’ way that she laughed, and it grinned back at her, all those sharp little fish teeth. “Not here, lady. Thing like that comes in, gone in a blink. Collectors always about this town like corpse-flies, every time something comes in from the west.” Meaning from the Kinslayer’s lands. Of course this had all been Kinslayer lands not that long ago, but the west was where the enemy had amassed his forces and his treasure.
“I’ll pay for some names. People who buy, preferably who don’t just sell on, but I’ll take what I can.”
The Grennishman rolled an eye like a greenish marble towards the back of the tent, obviously hoping this was a bonus it wouldn’t have to share with its ‘chief.’ “Yesyes, but let’s see some coin, shall we? Fast learner, me.” She’d heard some of the Grennish were amassing small fortunes as smugglers for years during the war, undercutting their dark master and selling weapons and magic and even people t
o the free folk. They’d picked up a money economy quickly.
She showed it a single gold sun. “One solly for your best lead.” And if that doesn’t work out, I can get more leads when I’m there.
“Lovely, lovely.” It hunched forwards, brass head forgotten. “You know Cinquetann Riverport?”
She did: just across the Cherivell border. Not so very far.
“Our best buyer. Doctor Catt. Takes in all sorts so long as it’s got some blood left in it.” Meaning, she hoped, magical power. “His men come through every few days and pay good gold. On the road of the Gracious One Hospice, or what’s left of it.”
She flipped the coin and the Grennishman snapped the solly out of the air with unnerving speed.
“You didn’t hear from me, right? Don’t want to upset our best customer.”
“Your honour’s safe.” She ducked out of the tent, wondering if that was something Grennishmen cared about or understood.
After the cloaked gloom of the tent, the rest of the market seemed too loud, too bustling, full of people who were looking far more than they were buying because money was scarce now. Scarce, except for this Doctor Catt and his fellow vultures, anyway. And I’m not exactly starving. She still had a little of the clan coffers to fall back on, if the others left under the Fiddlehead banner hadn’t spent it. But her clan had been rich in name and poor in actual money since before the war. The Kinslayer wasn’t responsible for everything.
Godsdamned Cherivell, though. Better get ready to be looked down on. Better get ready for everything in triplicate. The Forinthi and the Cheriveni had never got on, to the extent that the war had been four years in before they had managed to bury their collective hatchets. And the thing about burying things was that you could always dig them up again, if you remembered where you’d put them.
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