Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  ‘Seems an awful coincidence that someone’s come looking for Blackwing now,’ I said. Only the commander at Station Two-Three knew who I was, and she might have reported it to the citadel, used a communicator to tap across a message. I got up from my chair, put on my sword belt. The heavy velvet curtains were drawn, the shutters beyond them closed. I didn’t think they could have seen the weak light through them.

  Bang-bang-bang, another series of blows against the door. We stood in silence, waiting. I stood by the door, listening. Someone tried it, found that it was locked. Tried it again. I motioned to Amaira.

  ‘Kill the light.’

  Amaira had a wide-eyed look, mouth pursed. I put a hand on her shoulder to try reassure her that everything was fine, but I was worried. She clutched the back of my coat, as though by being attached to me I could keep her safe.

  ‘I need you to stay here,’ I said. ‘Stay here and don’t do anything silly. Can you do that for me?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Yes, Captain-Sir.’

  I opened my desk drawer and drew out a fighting knife, a long, flaring blade with a curve to it that could put a smile on even the dourest of faces. Then I slipped out into the darkened corridor, moved to a dark room which overlooked the street. I nudged the curtain back the smallest of fractions and looked down. There were four of them, I guessed two men and two women by their sizes and shapes. Cloaked and hooded against the rain as they were, I couldn’t make out anything else. They could have been people come asking for help, or they could have been something altogether more sinister. One hammered on the door for a last time, then they turned and walked away down the road.

  I returned to Amaira.

  ‘Who was it?’ she asked.

  ‘Nobody,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think you should stay here anymore. I’m going to take you over to Valiya’s place. You can stay with her.’

  ‘But we’re the good guys,’ Amaira said. She swallowed, trying to shift some of the fear from her throat. ‘They’re meant to be running away from us.’

  ‘I know. And believe me – they will.’

  33

  I waited another three hours before we left by the servants’ entrance, crossing town during a downpour. The streets were quiet, folk driven inside by the rain, which suited our purposes.

  Valiya lived in a terraced house, its neat, quiet exterior entirely in keeping with what I expected. I knocked on the door a few times.

  ‘Who is it?’ she asked through the wood.

  ‘It’s me, Miss Valiya,’ Amaira said, as I’d instructed her to. I didn’t think Valiya would recognise my voice. I sounded like something that had died and been left to soak in the canal before it was reanimated.

  She took a step back when she saw me, but she knew me at once. Her expression hurt, though I’d tried to armour myself against it, and it was nothing so strong as horror or revulsion but was shock at the least. My heart sank just a little, because whatever I’d told Amaira, in another life, if I were another man, then Valiya was better than most men deserved. She’d never have thought me handsome – she had eyes – but at least I’d looked ordinary before. No longer.

  ‘It can’t be you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Hello, Valiya.’

  She ushered us in out of the rain.

  There was disgusting tea to drink, and I drank it, though it was easily the worst thing I’d drunk since I’d left the Misery. Valiya had a lot more questions for me than Amaira had and I answered them as best I could. Amaira sat with her arms around her knees in a chair near the fire, trying to understand the events that she’d been caught up in. I’d have sent her off to sleep, but she’d only have crept back to listen at the door, and having been dead for so long, I felt I owed it to her to let her stay.

  ‘Nenn can’t be trusted,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if she realises that she’s under Saravor’s power, or how much of what’s left is her and how much is him. Witness Thierro is his as well. I’m certain of it. How many others among the Bright Order? I don’t know.’

  Valiya’s face spoke more of her sorrow for me than words would allow.

  ‘The Bright Order consolidated their power quickly once you were gone,’ she said. Her face was still tear-tracked. Some people are not ashamed to cry, and I think that ultimately, they’re probably the stronger ones because of it. She hadn’t asked about the scars I’d acquired, or how I survived the Misery. She understood that I would tell her if I could.

  ‘After the Grandspire was completed they forced the mills to relocate all of their Talents there,’ she said. ‘I know you don’t believe the Bright Lady’s coming, Ryhalt. But every day the visions of her have grown more and more frequent – and always reaching toward the Misery. Is it connected?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I don’t think it’s Saravor’s doing.’ I frowned. ‘What does Dantry say?’

  ‘Not much. He tried, but he’s too sick to work. Mostly he just sleeps.’

  ‘Does Colonel Koska have enough authority to surrender the city when the grand prince arrives with his army?’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter if he did. The city’s packed with fanatics. They’ve been flooding in from the Range stations, from the inner states, and they’re armed. It’s not just religion that the Bright Order are promising them. It’s freedom from the rule of the princes, and a better world without them. They’ll fight for it.’

  I mulled it over, barely noticing the dismal flavour of the tea.

  ‘They’ll be slaughtered,’ I said.

  Valiya nodded. The fire crackled and popped in the darkness and I looked around. If things had been different, maybe this would have been my second chance. Could have been the family that I didn’t deserve. All those years spent neck deep in a bottle and now, with the city going to chaos and my body turned copper and poisoned, I realised that what I’d needed hadn’t been so very far away after all. This could have been our living room. A more welcoming place than my own house, a cold, dismal tomb, seldom visited.

  We talked into the night. Amaira fell asleep in her chair and Valiya covered her with a blanket.

  ‘You haven’t asked,’ I said eventually, because I felt it like a cold sea between us. ‘About how I survived. About what I did.’ I gestured toward my face.

  ‘I am sure you did whatever you had to do,’ she said. ‘You always do.’

  I slept in a guest bed. and in the morning, I ate eggs and bread with Valiya and Amaira as though we were that strange family I’d imagined us. Valiya gave me a cup of small beer, which was past its best and she can’t ever have drunk from the barrel, but it was still beer and I didn’t want to offend her. Strange, the things we do even when the world is falling all around us.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. ‘I have to try to talk some sense into Davandein. I don’t want either of you to go back to the office. It might not be safe there anymore.’

  ‘Please don’t go. Not again,’ Amaira said.

  ‘How can we fight this monster if even Blackwing is forced to run?’ Valiya asked.

  ‘You can’t fight him, and he probably has more people under his command than we realised. Saravor will need access to the phos that’s captured by the Grandspire when the solar flare happens. He’ll need to be at the epicentre of that power. But he needs to empower the Eye with the deaths of the soldiers, of the Bright Order. They don’t realise it, but he’s engineering a slaughter for his own benefit. If we can prevent that, his plans will fail. No new Deep King, no new Nameless. However strong he is now – however strong I made him – he’s still no match for Crowfoot. Hold out until the Nameless have finished saving the world and they can crush him. End of the game.’

  ‘Be careful,’ Valiya said.

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ Amaira said. ‘Please don’t go.’ She clung around my waist, and my chest ached. I knelt in front of her.

  ‘I’ll be
back,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  ‘Yes, Captain-Sir!’ she said, snapped me a salute, then turned and fled into the house so that I wouldn’t see her tears.

  ‘Look after her,’ I said. ‘We have to save this world for someone. Might as well be her.’ Valiya nodded.

  ‘Like she was my own,’ she said. As I turned to go she reached out and her fingers brushed against my arm. I turned back to her, and her face said everything that should have been and never would be. Even now, fucked and poisoned with copper and Misery foulness. In another life, where we weren’t damaged. It passed between us, the final bell-toll in a service that had served nobody well.

  I turned back toward the battle that awaited me. It was easier to face. As I walked down the street I glanced back once, saw her watching me from the doorway as I walked away. Her hair was loose, stirring lightly in the breeze, half her face hidden in a sweep of red.

  I got out of Valengrad as easily as I’d got in, a quick dab of palm-grease the colour of gold and no questions asked. You can always trust the men on gate duty to be the least capable, the least trustworthy. It’s how they end up working a door in the first place.

  As I rode out from beneath Valengrad’s dark walls, I looked at the stream of people still flowing toward the city. Travellers come a long way, their wagons laden with a life’s accumulations, and on every head a marigold hood. They carried their weapons openly, nervous glances cast back over their shoulders, wary of the wolf at their heels. They’d set out for some kind of land of the free, a city where the shackles of tyranny and princely oppression had been cast aside. Now they found themselves running from the harriers and outriders who had appeared at their backs, requisitioning food wagons and coaxing the better-looking pilgrims to make a few marks on their way. Their disappointment would only deepen when they found that their sanctuary was no better than any other city, and worse than most.

  Davandein’s army was three days march away. I reached them as dusk was falling. I seemed to be the only person travelling in that direction.

  The army was not concerned about being attacked. I reached them just after they’d made camp, the cook fires struggling against the drizzle. The tents were arrayed in good order, standard military positioning, but there was no defensive earthwork around the perimeter. I rode into the camp unchallenged – they had nothing to fear from a lone, beaten-up man on a weathered horse. I knew what to look for in soldiers. The Bright Order were enthusiastic but untrained. In contrast Davandein hadn’t put her faith in optimism. Her men were mercenaries, hard-bitten companies from the west. Few men in the camp spoke my language. Iscalian swordsmen, Hyspian matchlock gunners, Angolese bowmen, even Fracan heavy infantry. Missing teeth and scarred hands, they had the look of men and women who’d spent their lives fighting someone else’s battles, hard-earned marks on their bodies and nothing to show for it in their purses. Dangerous people. The High Witnesses’ believers had fervour and flarelocks, but I wouldn’t bet a stolen grinny on them against these hardened killers. If this came to a battle, Saravor would have his souls.

  I picked my way through the camp, drawing looks despite my hood. These weren’t Misery grunts, and whilst the cracks in the sky could still be seen in the distance, they didn’t know the Misery and they didn’t know magic. Maybe they’d seen a few carnival Spinners casting light illusions or some hedge sorcerer change the colour of his eyes, but I must have looked a strange sight to those that spared more than a glance my way.

  Toward the centre of the camp I saw men in citadel uniforms; soldiers who’d fled the city with the former marshal. Some of them I recognised, but I kept my hat low, unsure where I stood with them now. There were real enemies out there that needed fighting. The optimistic pilgrims, the kids dreaming of freedom, the old sluggers only wanting to get paid – they were all puppets dancing to someone else’s tune.

  Finally, someone stopped me. I had my seal, got a pair of vets to send it on ahead, then waited.

  ‘You got the shakes pretty bad,’ one of the soldiers I waited with said.

  ‘Never worse,’ I agreed. I tried to clench my fists to make it less obvious, but not with a great deal of success.

  ‘Follow me,’ one of the returners said, gesturing toward the command pavilion. It was a big old thing, more suited to a summer fair than a military camp, panelled with cloth of gold and summer-sky blue.

  We like to imagine that whenever we meet someone who commands a military force they will be bent over a table of old maps, game pieces arrayed to display varying forces. The reality is that maps are usually about as accurate as a piss in the dark, and the cream have better things to spend their time doing. A pair of musicians, beautiful girls, played harps while Davandein, Grand Prince Vercanti and some privileged members of the nobility reclined on uncomfortable-looking travel chairs. A pair of young men, naked to the waist, put on a sword show. They had slender rapiers in their hands, blunt blades with heavy corks pressed over what I hoped were rounded points. It wasn’t clear whether the main attraction was the impressive swordsmanship that they displayed or the sight of their lean, well-muscled torsos, the kind of physique that commanded even the straightest man’s attention. A pair of Battle Spinners, bodyguards, stood at the two main tent flaps, canisters at their belts.

  Davandein was waiting for me, back straight as a mast, arms crossed. She was dressed in black and purple, frilled here and there with thin, elegant lines of white lace. She looked as glamorous as ever, styled in a fashion that was yet to reach Valengrad. She had lost weight, and where she had been beautiful she was now stark, bitter and hard. It somehow seemed a more fitting look for a Range Marshal, but the dark gleam of her eyes told me that she was not happy to see me.

  ‘You’ve got balls of stone, showing your face here,’ she said. I was glad that her arms were crossed. I didn’t want them anywhere near the hilt of the elaborate sword at her side. ‘You look like something that crawled out of the Misery.’

  ‘Not inaccurate,’ I said.

  ‘Well, well, look who it is. The face has taken a weathering, but it’s still you behind that colour,’ the grand prince of the republic added. He was a well-aged man, skin like old, well-treated wood, clean-shaven, slim, greying hair bound back in a tail like a much younger man. His garb was no less ostentatious. I’d met him long ago when I swam in such milky circles as this. He’d only been a count’s son back then and his rise had been as meteoric as my fall. He said, ‘The last time I saw you, you had Mancono’s blood all over your face.’

  ‘I had a wash,’ I said. ‘Your grace. Marshal. We need to talk.’

  ‘Galharrow,’ Davandein spat my name, ‘the last time I saw you, you were defending the traitors of the Bright Order. Tell me why I shouldn’t have you thrown in a pit.’

  ‘I understand your anger, Marshal,’ I said. ‘But I’m as loyal to the Range as I’ve ever been.’

  ‘I don’t have time for you,’ Davandein said, and I knew that she remembered the truth, she was just too proud to admit her mistakes. ‘My rightful, elected position as Range Marshal has been usurped by the Bright Order traitors. If you sought to assist me in retaking my citadel, you’re several weeks late.’

  ‘I had pressing business in the Misery,’ I said. ‘Stopping the sky-fires.’ I held up my hand. Blunt and halfway up her own arse Davandein might be, but she knew that kind of trembling couldn’t be faked. Or the fact that I looked like forge-heated shit.

  Davandein softened, just enough for me to see that her fury hadn’t entirely consumed her reason. She uncrossed her arms, twisted a ring on her finger as she looked over the changes that had been wrought on me.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

  I suspect that between the fresh scars on my face, the oily taint to my skin and the fact that my eyes were glowing fucking amber that I was most seriously not all right, but I grunted something about being well enough. Never let them see you bleed.
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br />   The fencers chose that moment to engage in another intricate display of skill. I’d thought they were going at it for real before, but I saw now that they were in fact moving through well-rehearsed plays. No real fight goes that smoothly.

  ‘A skilful exhibition, eh?’ the grand prince said, evidently enjoying the entertainment himself. ‘A shame to miss it. Let us wait a little until the lads have finished their display. I recall you were considered fair with a rapier.’

  ‘What I have to say won’t wait, your grace,’ I said.

  ‘Message from the High Witness, your grace,’ a page announced, and a woman wearing prince’s livery entered. She was carrying a heavy box in both arms.

  ‘This was delivered by a group of the Bright Order,’ she said. ‘They said that it should be opened only by the grand prince himself.’

  ‘Open it outside,’ Davandein said immediately. ‘Away from the tent. There’s no knowing what trickery that traitor might be playing at. It may well explode.’

  The messenger went a little green, but she bowed and struggled out again with the box.

  ‘Your grace. Marshal. I have vital information I can’t share in front of these court grubbers.’ That earned me a few nasty stares, but I wasn’t trying to make friends. The insult got the grand prince’s attention.

  ‘I’ve paid a great deal for this performance, Captain,’ Vercanti said, indicating the fencers. One of them took that moment to disengage with a dramatic flourish and roll over the top of his opponent’s weapon. His partner caught the blow, and they thumped up against one another, sweaty chest to sweaty chest, lips close enough for kissing. They stayed there while the courtiers applauded. ‘Whatever you have to say, it will wait a few more rounds.’

  I was about to protest, but the courier came back in with her box. She cleared away dishes of fish paste, flat bread and skewered meats with a sweep of her arm and deposited it, unclasped a couple of hinges and a side fell down to reveal a great hog’s head, pink and shaggy with white hair. Dead, obviously, but I had an uneasy feeling that it was going to do more talking than the usual pig’s head.