Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  ‘A feeble insult,’ the grand prince said. ‘I would have sent its genitals.’

  The pig’s eyes opened, slowly, steadily, as though it were awakening from a deep and timeless sleep. No more pretence. No more slithering through dark tunnels. Saravor was ready to step into the light. I hadn’t time to avoid his gaze.

  Let him see. The courtiers scrambled back, but I stood my ground. There comes a time when you grit your teeth and say ‘enough,’ and my hatred was hot. I’d hidden, I’d run and I’d burned beneath the Misery sun because of that monster, but I was still standing. I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to know that for everything he’d done, for all his bloody scheming, he still couldn’t put me down.

  A courtier choked on her wine and sprayed it into a man’s wig. The Battle Spinners were the only ones that took a step toward it. The fencers, sensing that their audience’s attention had been stolen, ceased their well-rehearsed display.

  ‘What demonic power is this?’ the grand prince declared. ‘Who is this High Witness that he can animate the head of a pig?’

  ‘Greetings, Grand Prince Vercanti,’ the pig’s head hissed. Corpse odour filled the space, though the pig’s head was fresh. ‘And Marshal Davandein. Though marshal no longer, I think.’

  ‘You speak for the High Witness?’ Davandein demanded.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t the High Witness. It’s the creature that rules him.’

  ‘Galharrow! And I believed you lost to the Misery. Looking somewhat the worse for wear.’

  ‘So everyone keeps saying.’

  If either Vercanti or Davandein were horrified by the prospect of conversing with a pig’s head, they both had the political skill to hide it, though several of their hangers-on looked ready to bolt. One of the Spinners had a web of light rotating around one of her hands, ready for trouble.

  ‘You have refused all of our messages and demands,’ Davandein said simply. ‘But I see you wish to talk now. The hound comes to heel when the master draws near, after all.’

  ‘Is that what you think?’ the pig’s head hissed. It sounded amused.

  ‘The terms of your surrender have not changed, whatever porcine display you seek to divert us with,’ Davandein said, trying to rally her cronies with levity. ‘You will open the city gates. Your followers will lay down their arms in Muster Square and return to their homes. The Witnesses will surrender themselves, along with Colonel Koska, Major Nenn and the other traitors of rank. The guilty shall be spared execution, should they follow these directives.’

  ‘He’s not going to surrender,’ I said.

  ‘You’re right there,’ the hog’s head hissed. ‘Not when there is no threat to me from your pathetic force. But I do speak for the city. I come only to tell you to spare yourselves. Back away and surrender the city to me.’

  ‘Your forces are untrained farmers and fools,’ Davandein’s voice cracked like a whip. ‘We have the finest mercenary brigades from across the states. Forty thousand veterans. When the assault begins, we will retake the city in less than an hour.’

  ‘You have the advantage in men.’ Saravor’s pig breathed and the nose wiggled a little. ‘I have the advantage of walls. But I also command the Grandspire, a weapon of such potency that after the solar flare strikes, I will erase all trace of you from the earth.’

  ‘He’s goading you,’ I said. ‘Back off. He wants you to attack.’ But Davandein wasn’t listening to me.

  ‘We shall have crushed you before that happens,’ she snapped. But she looked concerned. She had to know the flare was a matter of days away. ‘Know this, High Witness. If you do not surrender the city to us, all of our mercy shall be replaced with ire. I will put every one of your damn yellow-hooded bastards to the sword. And you? We’ll see how much weight your threats hold when you’re dangling from the Heckle Gate. I have no fear of your Grandspire.’

  A dead pig cannot laugh, but this one did a good impression.

  ‘You should fear it. I have arranged a demonstration at one-tenth the destructive force that it will soon be capable of.’

  ‘Do your worst, hog,’ Grand Prince Vercanti said easily. ‘Whatever hand you might think that you have to play …’

  But the pig was laughing. Davandein and I shared an uneasy look which Vercanti didn’t understand. He hadn’t been on the Range when Nall’s Engine had scoured the Misery of the drudge threat. He didn’t understand the destructive use light could be put to as we did. The pig’s laughter rose and rose, snorting and mocking until the snout was juddering and the hog’s head twitched around on the table.

  The walls of the tent, thick cloth of gold and blue, grew lighter, brighter.

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ I said.

  Some idiot threw back the tent flap and looked out.

  There was a new sun in the sky, an orb of blazing fire, but it was far larger than the sun and it was very clearly moving.

  ‘Get down!’ I managed, before the fireball struck.

  34

  Had Saravor been aiming for the command tent, my story would have ended there. It wasn’t luck: he could have torched us from the earth if he’d wanted to. But that wasn’t his intention. When I’d dug my way from beneath the scorching tent fabric the air was clogged with smoke, swirling embers, and the stench of a world aflame. I emerged into a scene from one of the hells.

  Fire. Burning tents, burning animals, burning people. The weapon that had been built to fight the drudge had been put to new purpose, and whatever company of mercenaries had been pitched down by a stand of old oak trees were now as blackened and charred as the crackling branches. The smoke rolled in blinding clouds, and the screaming – spirits, the screaming. Fire is a terrible weapon. At Adrogorsk I dumped hot oil on the drudge and even then, in the teeth of desperate battle, part of me had regretted it.

  I had no good way to estimate it, but I guessed that a thousand men, maybe two, had just burned. I could taste them on the air. Across what had formerly been their camp, a barrel of powder must have caught as a secondary explosion lashed out, casting wooden shards into the air. By comparison to what we had just witnessed, the detonation was little more than a puff of smoke and light. It was nothing. The blast was only just audible over the cries.

  Saravor had just snuffed out a thousand lives, but he had no intention to stop the army. He was trying to provoke them into an attack. He wanted slaughter in Valengrad’s streets. He needed souls, death magic to empower the Eye, but first he had to draw them in closer. Faster. To ensure they attacked before the flare was done.

  Davandein picked herself out from beneath the tent. Like me she was sheened in sweat and soot. Her teeth were locked together, her fury hotter than the Grandspire’s blast.

  ‘You have to pull back,’ I rasped. ‘You can’t fight this. If you attack, you’re playing right into his hands.’

  ‘Never,’ Davandein snarled. ‘I’ll have that bastard’s head. I’ll flay Thierro’s skin from his face and turn it into fucking bed curtains. That fucking traitor!’

  Burning embers floated around us like fireflies, lazy on the wind as the rest of the prince’s command council picked themselves out of the tent. The blast had thrown down most of the tents for a good half-mile radius.

  ‘You have to listen to me,’ I said, as a dozen burning sheets of paper blew past me on the wind. ‘This insanity can be stopped. But not through force. An attack on the city is exactly what Saravor wants.’

  The name meant nothing to her.

  ‘Have they got into your head too, Galharrow?’ she said hotly. ‘Sent you to persuade me to withdraw, show me a taste of power and then tell me it’s better to run? You begged me for peace the night the Witnesses slaughtered my men. Well, not this time, Galharrow. You think my resolve will waver in the face of casualties? The Grandspire was primed for one blast, and I know the city doesn’t have the phos reserves to strike us again before we retak
e it.’

  ‘If you attack the city, you’re playing into his hands,’ I said. ‘It’s what he fucking wants. You think that he couldn’t have killed you here? That he missed you? He wants you to attack.’ Her pride was overpowering her reason. One day, that epitaph would be carved across her tombstone.

  ‘I will not give up the Range to someone capable of turning their weapons on our own people,’ she said hotly. Perhaps the smoke had brought tears to her eyes, perhaps it was the awful knowledge of her own failure, or maybe just the cacophony of screaming coming from the hundred-yard-wide crater. The irony of her statement was not lost on me. ‘If you’re not with me, get out of my way,’ she said.

  I tried. I told her everything I knew, I argued every way I could think of. But ultimately, when it comes to argument, facts don’t matter. The truth doesn’t matter. People will believe what they want to believe because it works in the artificial reality that they have created for themselves. Davandein believed that she was highly competent, and entitled to rule by blood. She could not envisage defeat and Grand Prince Vercanti was fashioned from the same clay. I didn’t want to surrender the city to Saravor – leaving him in control of the Engine did not bear thinking about – but she was playing right into his hands. He needed a slaughter, and she was going to give him one.

  Spirits know, I tried, but she was stubborn, and there was no time. With every moment that ticked by, disaster threatened. Saravor knew that I was alive, and that I would take any chance to stop him. He would try to eliminate me, and that meant stripping away my resources. His men would hit the office, maybe my house. Maybe Valiya and Amaira.

  I threw myself into the saddle.

  ‘I was wondering when you’d show up,’ I said. The horse sped along the road, snorting and blowing and I had to let her slow.

  The raven alighted clumsily on my fist in an exhausted flurry of singed feathers. It looked in bad shape as it regarded me with a bright black eye.

  ‘What happened to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Too close to the Iron Sun when it activated,’ the raven said. It sounded embarrassed and in pain. ‘Well done for not getting eaten. How did you manage that?’

  ‘Gillings lost their appetite,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Wanted to see the fire,’ the raven said. It plucked at a singed wing feather and tore it free. ‘Looks bad.’

  ‘It’s bad.’

  Couldn’t afford to let the horse rest for long. My people were in danger, because of me. I couldn’t have them on my conscience. It was already stacked full.

  ‘Fly on ahead,’ I said. ‘Warn the others. Tell them to go to ground.’

  The raven grudgingly agreed and set off, only to return to me a mile farther on, wobbling in its flight. I didn’t have to ask why it had come back. It wasn’t in its nature to complain, but the Iron Sun’s blast had hurt it badly.

  The roads were empty, other travellers having wisely found a bed for the night. All three moons were in a tight cluster, red and blue and gold, so bright that the heath was light as day. They caught the light of a sun spitting fire on the other side of the world and sent it back over me.

  The city gate was closed, as I’d known it would be. Searchlights had been brought over to the west-facing wall. They should have been on the eastern side, gazing over the Misery. For the first time in my lifetime the barrels of cannon poked over the western wall. The wall here was a formality, only built because cities had walls and when Valengrad had risen eighty years back, the builders had felt it would be incomplete if not fully encircled. It was lower than the eastern wall, fewer towers, but it still had crenellations and judging by the lantern light up there the Bright Order were manning it through the night in case of an attack. Farmers and fishermen playing at war. They wouldn’t stand a chance against Davandein’s mercenaries, fuelled up on anger, fear, and a need for revenge. Nobody could have listened to those screams and not be moved toward retribution.

  I’d take Saravor’s patchwork head and see how much laughing he could do with his tongue ripped out.

  Above the city, the Iron Sun glowed red with residual heat, hot against the Misery sky. The Talents within would be hard at work replenishing the phos batteries. The citadel’s message was one of poorly spelled hope: REJOCE IN THE NEW ORDER, vivid and neon across the world.

  I released the horse before taking the tunnel entrance. She would be a worn-out prize for whoever found her. The raven stayed with me, perched on my shoulder as I plodded through the darkness.

  ‘How are you going to stop him?’ it croaked at me.

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ I said.

  ‘You think you can kill a sorcerer that powerful? He has Shavada’s Eye, and the Witnesses are no slouches. Not to mention the ten thousand men between you and him. And whatever else he is, Saravor’s not stupid. He’ll be defended – you’ll never get to him, it would take an army – and even if you did, you don’t know how to beat him.’

  ‘I’m going to kill him,’ I said steadily. ‘Now shut up, or fuck off.’

  ‘And your friend the major?’ the bird croaked in the darkness. ‘She’s under his power too.’

  ‘I’m hoping that when I kill him, all that goes with him,’ I said. ‘Him and his fucking devil-children.’

  Nenn was a millstone tied around my throat. Maybe killing Saravor would break his hold on her, or maybe it would undo all his past magics as well. When I’d employed his services I’d never imagined that a bond would remain between him and his patients. Perhaps there hadn’t been one, until I gave him Shavada’s magic. It made me sick: I had given Saravor the power to accomplish all of this.

  ‘Do you think she’ll appear?’ the raven croaked.

  ‘Nenn? I’m just going to avoid her until it’s done,’ I said.

  ‘Wasn’t talking about her.’

  ‘You want to know if I believe that the woman I love is going to burst forth from the light and be a god for the Bright Order, and wipe out all the badness in the world?’

  ‘Yes,’ the raven said, irritatingly close to my ear. ‘That.’

  ‘Then no. I don’t think that,’ I said. ‘But if it is her, she’ll try to stop Saravor.’

  ‘Good,’ the raven croaked. ‘The master wouldn’t like it if there were more Nameless. Nall is the only one he can even tolerate.’

  ‘Any idea how he’s doing keeping the sea-demon sleeping?’

  ‘How would I know?’ the bird said. ‘I’m just a simulacrum designed for a purpose. I can’t hear his thoughts.’ It made a coughing sound and went back to niggling at its damaged feathers.

  I left the tunnel, tossed a coin to the skeevy-looking youth who loitered in the upstairs room and we ignored everything else about one another. In a way it was comforting to know that even with an army bearing down on the city, with manic zealots up on the wall and a ghostly prophecy about to erupt over their heads, there were still those who would casually endanger their city for money. Some things never changed. When I’d dealt with Saravor, forced the Bright Order to surrender and persuaded Vercanti to appoint a Range Marshal who was less widely despised, I’d need to return here to shut the tunnel down and throw them all in prison.

  I moved fast. Tick, tick, tick.

  My city had become a foreign place, dark and alien. A troop of soldiers were gathered in a market square, a sergeant drilling them on how to reload their weapons without getting themselves blown up. Holy spirits-damned weapons. The troops looked nervous around their own firearms, and I couldn’t blame them.

  I walked faster.

  I passed the theatre, which despite everything, seemed lit up enough to be running a play. I passed by the communal ovens where teams of bakers shoveled trays of domed bread in with a frantic urgency. I passed Doomsayers shouting their nonsense on every sixth corner, proclaiming that there were mere hours left until the Bright Lady returned. They pointed to
the brightness of the moons in the sky, as though an astronomical irregularity was a message meant for us.

  I was running now.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  ‘No.’

  I was too late.

  The office door had been smashed in, and there were signs that someone had tried to start a fire. At least it had been closed up, and I’d got Amaira out in time. I drew my sword, felt better for having it in my hand, and then ran to the darkened doorway. The moonlight barely brightened the interior, but I moved quickly, quietly, checking what they’d done. The small armoury that I’d kept in the cellar had been looted, empty racks where pistols, swords and matchlocks should have stood in ordered rows. They’d ripped through my bookshelves, the torn remnants of expensive legal texts scattered across the floor of my office. The locked desk drawers had all been forced. Looking for what? And then I knew. I suddenly, horribly knew what they’d been seeking, and I knew that they would have found it, even though I’d never seen the book myself.

  Methodical, meticulous, Valiya had kept a record of each employee. She’d have written down their name, their age, their Blackwing role. What they did for us. Where they lived.

  I was out on the street and running before I could draw breath to swear.

  We spend our lives worrying about the future, paranoid about the things that may come to pass and upset the delicately balanced structures of our lives. We fear the failure of the harvest, or that our tryst will be discovered, or that our child will be born without eyes or missing a limb. All of that worrying, all the energy we pour into unnerving ourselves, the truth is that it comes to nothing, and it never sees off the real troubles. They erupt, sudden and unexpected, but so obvious, to blindside us and take our worlds, spin them around and leave them different, changed.

  I slowed as I reached Valiya’s house. I was sweat-slicked, panting, my heart clenched in my chest, and I was too late. It had already happened. A ghostly hand gripped my heart and crushed down with cold, stony fingers. I couldn’t breathe.