Moon's Artifice

by Tom Lloyd

  ‘I, ah, I thank you, Lord Shield.’

  ‘And what do you suggest now ? Both demon and God have a claim on that artefact you have hidden away beneath you.’

  Narin blinked at the Ascendant God in confusion. He knew Shield wasn’t really asking his opinion, but surely the Gods had the advantage of any fight ? With the whole Order of Knight looking down on them ? Or was Shield actually trying to work out his next move – how to win the artefact without calling on his brethren, at least one of whom had to be stronger than he.

  ‘I don’t know, my Lord,’ Narin admitted, trying to give himself time to think. ‘Does it really come down to claims ?’

  ‘You sit between us, our prize hidden beneath you – would you prefer us to fight ?’

  ‘No, Lord,’ he said hurriedly, all too easily imagining how long he’d survive stuck in the middle of such a battle. Narin couldn’t help but check the object at his feet and felt a touch of relief as he saw it safely nestled there.

  ‘But there is no law here,’ he continued hesitantly. ‘No right or wrong that can be enforced. One of you will take it or the other will – my choice doesn’t figure. Either you strike a bargain or you fight, what else is there ?’

  He glanced over at Enchei and noticed the former Astaren was keeping well out of the conversation. Trying to keep away from Shield’s notice, or does he just have more to lose ?

  Without warning, the light from Lord Shield’s starlit arm intensified, prompting a ripple of infolding movement from the demon. There was a groan from the stilled circle of water as darts of light rushed down from the stars above and impacted deep into the water around them, while a dozen spinning funnels of mist sprang up.

  Narin fought the urge to cringe, realising they were preparing to fight, but found himself shoved to one side as Kesh grabbed at the quiver beneath Enchei’s seat.

  ‘Enough of this !’ the woman growled over a building rush of water and wind all around. ‘There you go, there’s your prize !’

  She grabbed the contents of the quiver and hurled it up into the sky with all her strength. The air seemed to shudder then freeze above them as both entities reached out towards it. The wrapped object reached its zenith and stopped – turning slowly, as though time had slowed for it.

  ‘Look at what you’re willing to fight for,’ Kesh yelled, standing up and turning from one immortal to the other.

  The object continued its gradual spin and at last a corner of the cloth fell away, slipping down and pulling the rest of it away from the pair of wooden clubs bound together with twine.

  ‘Still want your war in heaven ?’ Kesh roared defiantly. ‘Which of you wants it most ? Ready to kill for it ?’

  The light around them dimmed, the air quietened.

  ‘The artefact is still on the island ?’ Lord Shield demanded. ‘It is not on your boat, that I can sense. There is … there is a second cloth.’ The Ascendant God stepped closer, anger brimming from his every word. ‘What have you done with it ?’

  ‘Put it out of your reach,’ Kesh replied, her own anger matching the awful majesty of an enraged God.

  In his mind, Narin pictured a small, limp body – barely breathing on the stairs of her home. He saw the aching ball of loss Kesh had been carrying for all these days, the fear and pain she had shared with her mother only this morning, intensified by her need to walk away again and see this through.

  Now she seemed to unveil it like starlight and wore her loss as armour against the majesty and terror of their presence. In the face of that, Narin’s own confusion and alarm seemed to fade. Kesh faced both the God and the demon down, unafraid of their wrath and uncaring of their claims.

  ‘The artefact has linked thousands of minds – human minds that no demon has a right to. Enough minds for the goshe to almost create a God of their own. Power like that I think no God needs, so I deny you both.’

  ‘Where does it lie ?’ the demon intoned – less obviously enraged, but the threads of light composing it continued to surge and twist. ‘What can be hidden from land and sky ?’

  Kesh took a composing breath. ‘Enough, I reckon. I’ve been on boats my whole life, but suddenly all those stupid superstitions and tales you hear sailors tell don’t seem so fanciful. You want to know where it is ? It’s in the deep – sunk without a trace and far from your grasping hands.’

  ‘You serve them ?’ Lord Shield roared.

  ‘No, my life’s my own,’ Kesh said with a shake of the head. ‘Each of you had a pawn here ; someone you’d got your hooks into and hoped would do your dirty work. But neither of you has a claim on me and no bloody demon of the deep sea does either.’

  The young woman sounded weary to Narin now, disappointed at a world more imperfect than she’d expected. Still there was no fear in her face, not even as she paused and took a long breath. It was time enough for Narin to reflect on what they were doing, but unlike him Kesh remained fearless.

  The moments stretched out to the thump of his heartbeat, loud in Narin’s ears, and only when the tense hush was almost unbearable to him did Kesh speak again.

  ‘Until a few days past I’d never have believed there was such a thing as a Kraken God – or any of the other dozen daft stories that get whispered by your watch-mate or a drunk old-timer. If the priests ignored whatever sailors whispered it had to be a lie, right ? But now I see each of you here and I’m wondering if there’s not something to the stories.’

  ‘You trust in the dwellers in the deep ?’ Shield growled. ‘Child, you cannot know how foolish you are. Powerful they may be, they are no Gods and they bear no love for mortal life.’

  ‘Trust ’em ? Oh I don’t trust ’em – but the stories are few and far between. If I can’t trust a demon or a God with the souls of all these goshe, mebbe best the artefact ends up somewhere neither will dare fetch it.

  ‘Your dwellers might be monsters, but all that matters to me is that they don’t give a damn about us either. It’s not that they just don’t care, they’re not interested either – not in Gods or demons, mortals or anything in between. They’ve got their realm in the blackest deeps and rarely leave them ; that’s something the stories all agree on.’

  She paused and took a long breath, taking a moment to look one then the other in the face before she spoke again.

  ‘You know what I realise now ? I’ve been to temple all my life, prayed for health and a better world – for the soul of my da and all the other sailors who don’t come back. But what’s that done for me ? What’s prayer done for anyone ? Do you really care ? Do you even know our names and ever intercede ? I doubt it.’

  ‘Your frustrated prayers are at the heart of this ?’ Shield asked with contempt.

  ‘No. I don’t mind that you don’t answer prayers – just that you pretend to care for those who worship you, for those who might devote their whole lives to your name.’

  There was a tear on her cheek now, her voice wavering for just a moment. ‘What’s at the heart of this ? A little girl who deserved better. Her name was Emari and she was my sister. She was caught up in all this and was killed as an afterthought, disposed of quietly and none of you Gods or demons cared.’

  She shook her head, bowed under the weight of grief. ‘None of you even knew her name and so I’m done with the lot of you.’

  The silence and stillness around them became a palpable cold on Narin’s skin. He fought the urge to look up, to see more arrows of light fall from Shield’s constellation. The wrath of Gods fell from the heavens, that much he remembered from temple scripture. It was all too easy to imagine the darts that had crashed down become searing flashes of fury, but nothing came.

  The demon Apkai did not speak further, but the threads of light that composed it slowed, its form gently unravelling and fading into the dark. In moments it was a mere impression in the air then nothing and the water around them began to move once more. Narin found himself letting out a breath he hadn’t even realised he’d been holding in, and all eyes turned to Lord Shi
eld.

  ‘You play a dangerous game, mortal.’

  ‘It’s no game,’ Kesh said with sadness in her voice. ‘I wouldn’t expect a God to understand that.’

  ‘I have not entirely forgotten mortal life. I remember grief still, I remember loss.’

  Lord Shield looked up at his stars above for a moment before returning his attention to Kesh.

  ‘You are right that we cannot know the names of all those lost, but we are Gods still. Perhaps it is easy to forget that. For all those who died at the hands of the goshe, for all those who had their souls and minds stolen – your sister’s name shall be written in the lesser stars on the last night of my ascendancy for ever more. That I offer, to honour their memories – a memorial in the night sky to the innocent.’

  With that the God turned and walked away across the quickening sea, the light receding with every step until he vanished entirely and they were all alone. The boat rocked gently with the movement of the tide, the slap of water against its side the only sound above the thump of Narin’s heart.

  Kesh lowered her head for a long moment, the pain still raw in her heart. And then it was conquered and she looked up with a familiar glare at the men staring aghast at her.

  ‘Well ? What are you all waiting for ? Get rowing.’

  ‘Aye, captain,’ Enchei laughed, pulling hard on his oar. ‘When even Gods submit to honest words, man can only obey.’

  Also By Tom Lloyd from Gollancz:

  The Stormcaller

  The Twilight Herald

  The Grave Thief

  The Ragged Man

  The Dusk Watchman

  The God Tattoo

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © Tom Lloyd-Williams 2013

  All rights reserved.

  The right of Tom Lloyd-Williams to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  This eBook first published in 2013 by Gollancz.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 13119 4

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.tomlloyd.co.uk

  www.orionbooks.co.uk