Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  Thierro and his troops had formed a ring around the figure but they kept their distance. I panted up to stand among them. In fairness, I wasn’t the only one short of breath or soaked in sweat. It was a hell of a climb.

  ‘What now, sir?’ one of them asked. A man with a flarelock. His weapon was cranked and ready to fire and I thought for a moment that he was speaking to me, but then I saw that their eyes were all on Thierro. The governor took a step out, ahead of his men. He seemed composed. Unafraid, but tense as a stalking cat.

  ‘You there. Do you hear me?’ he called. ‘Can you speak?’

  ‘Easy,’ I growled quietly. ‘I need that man alive.’

  Fate is a capricious comedian. She’d given me back the only lead I had to both Levan Ost’s killers and Shavada’s Eye, and then perched him on the edge of a thousand foot drop. A man in his position might be inclined to take the less painful way out rather than face the white cells and interrogation again, but if Nacomo had noticed our presence, then he didn’t show it. His shoulders trembled slightly. His toes brushed the edge of the platform. A strong enough wind would send him hurtling down to the plaza below.

  ‘He do anything since you arrived?’ I asked. I was all too aware of the perspiration dripping from my jaw. Thierro by contrast had only broken a mild sweat. Bastard.

  ‘No,’ Thierro said. ‘He’s just standing there.’

  ‘What caused the damage?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, eyes narrowing. ‘Whatever it is, it’s slowing us down. Men, present arms.’

  The security men awkwardly arrayed their weapons to point toward the man’s back.

  ‘He took my face,’ Nacomo said. He kept his back to us. ‘He took my face. I didn’t want him to. I didn’t want to give him my face.’

  ‘Nacomo,’ I called. ‘Nacomo, listen to me.’ Thierro glanced my way, surprised, but refixed his attention on the man on his rooftop.

  ‘You know him?’ he asked.

  ‘Leave him to me,’ I said. There was blood streaked down Nacomo’s white gown. Probably some of it belonged to Valiya and my jackdaws. I found my teeth were clenched hard together.

  ‘I never meant to do wrong,’ Nacomo said. His words were faint, the wind tearing at them. ‘Didn’t want to get mixed up in anything untoward. I’m not a bad man.’

  ‘Step away from the edge,’ I called, ‘step away, and lay down any weapons you’re carrying. You’re still under arrest.’ He didn’t respond. ‘You know who I am, don’t you, Nacomo? Turn around. Slowly.’

  ‘I know you, Captain Galharrow. You’re the footsteps of death to men like me. They said I was too old to play Leyonar. Too old! How the stage betrays us all, in the end. I wanted a fresh start. To go back to Lennisgrad having taught my critics a lesson. Vanity. What a thing to die for. A face. My useless face.’

  ‘What is he wittering on about?’ Thierro muttered, but he made no move forward. I shrugged. Nacomo sounded like he was on the verge of doing something stupid, and he was standing on the edge of a drop that would definitely allow him to do it. He knew that I’d hang him, once I broke the information out of him. I just wondered why he’d choose this instead of the rope. Someone was going to have to go over there and retrieve him, and I didn’t trust any of the men around me to do it. I drew a pistol, cocked the hammer and took a step forward. Needed to keep him talking. Keep his mind from jumping. If I lost him to the drop, I’d never learn who he’d been working for, or where the Eye had gone after it left his house.

  ‘What was wrong with your face?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Nacomo said. ‘I realise that now. It was just my face. But they mocked me. They called me an old hack in the news sheets. I had to do something! … there was a young man. I said I’d like to look like him. I didn’t realise what that … creature would do to him and when I learned what happened I didn’t want to wear that face anymore. But what could I do? And when I failed him … he took it back.’

  He’d looked wrong when we arrested him. Too young to be the man we were after. I should have seen it. I should have realised. ‘Who took it back? Who did this to you?’

  But I already knew. There was only one damn sorcerer that shifted flesh from man to man.

  No. It couldn’t be. I had to be wrong. I told myself, I had to be wrong.

  Nacomo began to laugh, a maddened, pain-filled choke that shuddered his shoulders.

  ‘But I’ll have the last laugh,’ he said. ‘None of you shall have me. Not him, not you, none of you bastards get to hurt me any more. I’ll exit the stage like Leyonar, bringing the tower down around me.’

  For all that he was babbling, the hairs on my neck leaped to attention. He’d lost it, but we were standing on a huge piece of glass and that early boom above us echoed in my thoughts. Nacomo began to laugh again, and behind his cackling, a fizzing sound began, a sustained cat’s hiss. It crackled and splintered, an unnatural noise, but it suddenly clicked in my head. I suddenly understood the detonations we’d heard below.

  I raised both pistols, squinted hard and fired. One of them misfired, the flint failing to spark but the second roared. I hit Nacomo in the shoulder, not where I’d aimed but you get what you get with a pistol at range. My guns were custom-made, bigger and heavier than most, more powder and bigger ammunition. Monster killers. The impact spun Nacomo on his heel, and as his damaged arm flailed, he let go of something, something wet and ragged, landing wetly on the platform. A mask. No. A face.

  They’d been right to call him a monster. Flesh as red as rare steak gleamed wetly around staring eyes. Black, putrid rot had liquefied what should have been his cheeks, while thick dark scabs crusted across his brows and jaw. Deep cuts framed the damage he’d done as it had been cut away, a mane of crusting, congealed black wetness. His eyes had no lids, his teeth were stark white behind skinless lips. His eyes, bloodshot, pained, boggled madly as he laughed. Maybe the pain had broken his mind. Bloody fluid spat from the raw muscle as his jaw worked in mad laugher.

  The ruin of his face was a distraction and it took me a moment to see the grenadoe in his hand, a long stretch of fuse blazing as it ate toward a grapefruit-sized ball of dark iron. It held blasting powder, high explosive. As I took it in I saw the second and third bombs hanging from his belt. When one went off, those others would follow.

  Nacomo laughed through blackened lips as the sparks raced along the fuse, raised one hand to the sky in contemplation, a final theatrical gesture.

  ‘I’m no traitor, I never was. But look what he did to me!’ He held up the grenadoe like a royal orb of office. ‘That monster thinks to rule me. Me, the great Marollo Nacomo! But I’ve undone what he did to me and I’ll exit the stage my own man. I am no puppet – I am an artist. Those talentless critics wanted to see a true Leyonar? Well here I stand. Observe me now! I’ll bring this tower down; one final encore for the greatest actor of the age!’

  ‘Fire! Fire!’ Thierro roared. Matchlocks and flarelocks discharged, a couple hitting him but most of the shots flying wide. Nacomo rocked, but he didn’t fall. Thierro made a strangled noise. He had a ball of burning light around his hand but was unwilling to throw it; any light spinning he threw at Nacomo could detonate the grenadoe and damage the glass platform, and if that collapsed, then we all went with it. Nacomo raised the iron ball over his head.

  I threw myself flat. I am not a natural hero. But Bastian, adherent of the Bright Lady, former clockmaker’s apprentice, decided to take the single bravest action of his life. He dropped his weapon and ran at the faceless figure. He collided bodily with his target, both men hurtling over the low wall and out into the sky where they hung together in midair for the briefest of moments. And then they were gone.

  Seconds passed, and when it came the blast seemed farther away than I’d expected. Still loud, but a hollow thump rather than a deafening crack.

  ‘Bright Lady! He saved us!’ Elta gasped.

&nbs
p; ‘Lady’s breath,’ another muttered.

  Governor Thierro had done as I had and got the hell out of the way. His fine white coat was smeared with grey cement dust, and it was in his eyebrows, his hair.

  ‘Bastian saved us,’ Elta said. She wiped tears from her eyes. ‘A true hero! He travelled all this way, just to … Spirits. Lady!’

  Brave young Bastian had knocked our quarry right out into the open air. They’d detonated together a few storeys above ground. Peering down, there didn’t seem to be much left of either of them, but for a liberal red circle on the pale grey slabs, a thousand feet below.

  Thierro went to Elta and bound her close with one dusty arm.

  ‘He was a hero,’ he said softly. ‘The High Witness will know his name. He will be remembered.’

  The morons around him nodded and muttered their agreement. Belief in the Bright Lady was comforting to them. In fairness, it was a time for comfort.

  I limped over to the scrap of skin that Nacomo had discarded. Must have taken a hell of a lot to make a man cut away his own face.

  Marollo Nacomo had escaped me, for a much worse fate.

  10

  ‘What a fuckup,’ I said as I rejoined Tnota outside. The rain had slowed to a fine mist and the air was heavy with moisture. My hands were shaking. The realization I’d made on the rooftop hummed within me. I tried to tell myself that I was wrong. I didn’t want to be right. I wore the bravest face that I could.

  ‘Big Dog says men shouldn’t fly,’ he said. ‘What made him go pop?’

  ‘Grenadoes,’ I said. ‘Wanted to go out in a blaze of theatrical glory. Fucking actors.’ I shivered. ‘Tell you one thing though. We can stop looking for Marollo Nacomo.’

  ‘Couldn’t see much of him before,’ Tnota said. He rubbed at his forehead. ‘Guess I can see quite a lot of him now.’

  No arguing there. A fine red spray had decorated a broad swathe of the street. Spectators were slimy with it.

  Thierro’s foremen were already herding the workers back inside or scurrying up the scaffolding like apes. Not a moment, or a grinny, to lose. I watched Thierro as he oversaw it all. The faceless man had shaken him and he looked pale, but wore his discomfort stoically.

  My mind was racing from possibility to possibility. Denying what was right in front of me. There had to be another explanation.

  My gaze drifted to the silver-barrelled flarelocks carried by the yellow-hooded security men. Devlen Maille had been carrying one the night he murdered Levan Ost. Holy weapons, these men told me. Could Maille have been Bright Order? Could be, but I was grasping for leads. It didn’t mean much even if he had been: there were thousands of them in the city, pilgrims from all across the city-states. The exploded hero, Bastian, had willingly given his life for the Grandspire. His belief had been ferocious, and I didn’t think he had the wit to deceive me, whereas Devlen Maille hadn’t seemed the type to believe in justice and a new world order. He’d struck me as a piece of shit who’d worked for himself and nobody else. It’s why I’d shot him the first time.

  I tried to imagine Thierro ordering his men to take out Levan Ost. Tried to imagine him consorting with Darlings, exerting pressure on Marollo Nacomo to destroy the very spire he was building. It didn’t add up. Thierro was a real believer – nobody invested so much without a degree of fanaticism, and his loyalties were laid at the Bright Lady’s feet. Nacomo had been sent to locate a navigator, to consort with traitors, then to hide Shavada’s Eye. And then, after his escape, someone had cut the skin from his rotting face. Sure as the hells he hadn’t done it to himself. What had he said? I didn’t want to wear that face anymore … when I failed him, … then he took it back.

  The inescapable conclusion clanged hollow bell-tolls inside my skull. My mind insisted that I was wrong, that it couldn’t be him. But I knew what kind of bargain Nacomo had struck.

  And I knew how Devlen Maille had come back from the dead.

  The acceptance hammered home with a surge of fear strong enough that a bit of piss came out.

  I got hold of myself. Shook my head to clear the fear and push those dark feelings to some recess.

  ‘You all right, boss?’ Tnota asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. I left him there, hurried away into the city. Nacomo was no use to me. I had to find a corpse.

  The paupers’ cemetery lay on the edge of the city, even their bodies were shunned for their lack of finances. I rode there on Falcon, a good horse for getting somewhere in a hurry. He was a natural biter with hooves the size of dinner plates, and people got out of his way fast. A foul taste simmered in my mouth all the way. It had been there ever since my dip in the canal. The edges of my fingernails had retained a bruised, purplish cast too. The black water had not done me any good.

  The cemetery warden admitted me through the iron railing fence without argument. What did it matter to her whether someone looked at bodies so unvalued that they ended up in communal pits? She took me down into a cold, underground chamber, a good old-fashioned oil lamp lighting the way. The smog was heavy inside; it had flowed down through the ventilation grills, as if the cold, dark house of the dead wasn’t grim enough without it. It didn’t bother me. The dead were nothing to me.

  The warden checked her ledger, then led me along rows of arched alcoves. The morgue had probably been a cellar before it housed the dead – Valengrad was always in need of new cemeteries. The bodies of the unburied lay on rickety old tables, some dressed in the clothes they’d died in, others washed and dressed in whatever their family could afford to give over to the dirt. They’d stay there until someone paid for a plot or until they decomposed enough that they could be tipped down the drain. The warden stopped at an alcove where six bodies were piled on a table that threatened to collapse beneath their weight.

  ‘What exactly do you want with him?’ she asked.

  ‘Got to check that he’s actually dead, for one,’ I said. She snorted.

  ‘They’re all dead down here.’

  ‘You’d hope so.’

  ‘Well, you can stay down here as long as you want. Not like it’s going to bother these folks none. But don’t do anything unsavoury, neh? The boss comes by sometimes and he might stop down here. So. Nothing weird.’

  ‘Sure. Nothing weird.’

  The six corpses were stacked in a pyramid. It had been almost two weeks since I killed Devlen Maille for the second time and these cadavers smelled appropriately vile, death transforming them to unpleasant colours. Their skin was slippery and loose and detached from the muscles beneath as I shoved the bodies around, pushing them onto the floor to get to Maille at the bottom. Teeth dropped free from open mouths, clattering across the floor like dried peas. One of them released a great wet fart sound, but that wasn’t abnormal with bodies this old. Even so, I was glad I’d not eaten anything.

  My heart was pounding like a drum. This would prove it. I had to be sure.

  Maille’s body was in better shape than the others. For a two-week-old stiff, he looked a lot better than I’d expected. The lamplight was poor, and I couldn’t tell whether his colouring was really as yellow as it seemed. What was left of him was a mess. His jacket was tattered and burned, pieces of the exploded phos tank still jutting from his flesh.

  I had only recognised Devlen Maille because of the oversized mole on his face. I had just met a man whose face had been cut away. Why would anyone cut a man’s face off?

  What if they wanted to stick it onto someone else?

  I turned the cadaver’s head, and there it was. The match was very good, the skin tones almost an exact pairing. But the meld was not quite perfect. A face can only stretch so far and, along the faintest of lines, the natural angling of his stubble changed. I’d been right, damn it. I had killed Devlen Maille. The man whose flarelock had detonated had just been wearing his face.

  The bell clanged in my head a final time. Cert
ainty.

  ‘Saravor,’ I said into the fogged darkness. I’d wanted to be wrong, but the last hope of doubt that I’d clung to shattered like glass.

  There were plenty of reasons a man might want to change his face. Marollo Nacomo had changed his because he craved youth. The killer who’d worn Devlen Maille’s face had been a professional, whoever he’d been. Maybe he’d wanted to wipe out his own past, erase his misdeeds from history with the slash of a scalpel. Maille had just been a cheap source of body parts, rotting away in a pauper’s cemetery.

  There was something to be said for being able to call upon experienced killers who couldn’t be identified.

  It all carried the mark of Saravor’s work. He was back, and doing business in my city, only now he wasn’t just fixing up those that came to him. He was using them to do his dirty work in some greater scheme. He’d changed Not-Devlen-Maille’s face in exchange for a hit on Levan Ost, because he was consorting with Darlings and Ost was the loose end that could link them all together. And after Maldon had sensed that Nacomo had been storing Shavada’s Eye in his basement, that meant that Saravor had it.

  Deep Kings aside, it could not have fallen into worse hands.

  I left the bodies where they lay on the floor and went up the stairs fast. I felt bad about that, but it was going to be a messy job getting them back on the table.

  Saravor terrified me. He’d always scared me, even back when I’d paid for his services. Admitting that wasn’t a sign of weakness, any more than it’s weak to be afraid of a tidal wave. He was powerful, he was sadistic, and he was brilliant. When he’d fought Maldon, their magic bouncing around inside my skull, I’d done the unthinkable: I’d let him take the sliver of Shavada’s power from Maldon. Just the tiniest thread of essence from a Deep King, but I’d given it to him and his grey children all the same.

  A lot of power in that thread.

  My hands were shaking as I led Falcon from the cemetery. I needed to think, and that meant that I needed to drink. I hit a bar and slugged brandy and growled until the bar was done and spilled us all out onto the street. It was the middle of the night, and the smog hadn’t lifted so I walked back through banks of heavy grey cloud until I reached a crossroads.