Ravencry

by Ed McDonald

  A siren sounded across the city, calling the men and women to arms. Davandein must have pushed a forced march through the night if her troops were drawing into siege lines now. I listened to that terrible, mechanical wailing, knowing that this was our last reprieve. Davandein was proud, furious and reckless, but she was still a soldier. She’d rest her troops before she began the assault, and the attack would be heralded by an exchange of artillery fire as she sought to bring down the gates, and the city’s artillery sought to blast her cannon apart. It was anybody’s guess which would succeed, but if push came to shove, she’d send in the prince’s Battle Spinners. The flimsy western gates wouldn’t stand up to them for long. Saravor had timed his slaughter to perfection.

  The day was unnaturally bright, the streets filled with a glassy glare as the sunlight grew in intensity. It was better not to look upward. The Talents in the mill would have to wait until the sun dipped low and the moonlight became easier to spin. It was possible to spin during the day, but hard even with their goggles and looms to spin the right light. Spinning white light was never a good idea, it was almost impossible to control, and trying to was the way that most Talents earned their burns. The moons filtered that light into its separate threads, making it possible to draw the power in relative safety.

  The raven pecked to be let in an hour after the siren had been shut off.

  ‘The prince’s army is set up just out of cannon range,’ it told me. ‘They’ve both fired at each other to test the range, but the Bright Order haven’t the means to get any of the big field guns over from the eastern wall so they’re relying on culverins, and Davandein’s bigger guns don’t have the elevation. But there’s a lot of sword sharpening going on. She’s going to throw everything at the walls before long.’

  ‘Saravor has used the threat of the Grandspire to force the attack,’ I muttered. ‘She knows that if she lets him have time to power it up again, her whole army will be walking charcoal. She doesn’t realise he needs that power for his own plans. The Eye can’t draw on the power of dying souls from that far away. He needs them closer – he wouldn’t have waited if he didn’t have to.’

  ‘The solar flare will give him the phos he needs far faster than normal,’ Dantry said. ‘He can have it armed tonight. I worked what calculations I could recall from the Taran Codex, and he’ll need everything the Grandspire holds to destroy the Eye. He can’t afford another blast against Davandein. He needs thousands to die in the city if he’s to draw them into the Eye. She has to do the job for him.’

  ‘But failing that, he has a legion of his fixed men to turn loose on the population.’

  I took a slug of wine. Stared at the wall. Took another swig. Opened my cigar tin and lit it up. An average leaf, but anything was hard to enjoy through the taste of the Misery that I had begun to suspect would never leave my mouth. I sat and smoked, drank, stared in silence until the cigar burned down to a nub.

  ‘That’s your plan? Get drunk and brood?’ the raven cawed eventually.

  ‘I don’t have a better plan yet,’ I said. ‘Maybe one’ll come to me.’

  ‘Damn it, Galharrow,’ the black bird shrieked. It had all of Crowfoot’s old rage in it then, and by the way it flared its black-feathered wings I thought it might fly at me. ‘Given the choice I’d have chosen anyone but you. That’s what I’m fucking here for, to find your spirits-damned replacement. Fucked if I can find anyone who has the fucking balls and grit that a Blackwing captain needs. The master doesn’t make mistakes, but if he could, you’d fucking be it.’

  Had the bird been in range I might have throttled it just to shut it up.

  ‘You know why I took his deal? Crowfoot’s bargain?’ The raven stared at me, eyes like voids. ‘Because I was drunk as hell and I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t care one way or another. He gave me the choice to be bound to him, and to serve, in exchange for two lives that I’ll never know anything of. I had nothing left, so I gave him whatever he could scrape from my barrel. I didn’t take this job because I’m some noble, selfless servant. I took it because I’m a drunk.’

  ‘Oh, fuck off with your self-pity,’ the raven cawed. ‘Find your fucking spine. You lost a woman, then you lost another – well my heart bleeds for you. It’s the way of the world. A whole lot more are going to lose their women and their men if you don’t sort this mess out. Isn’t that what Crowfoot ordered? Look after the Range while he stops the Deep Kings sinking the world? Well get the fuck on with it.’

  The raven gave three very birdlike caws and then flew off out the window.

  I’d like to say its words moved me. But I’d spent weeks walking the endless black sands of the Misery, I’d felt terrible poison flow through my body, and I’d lowered myself into the nightmare. I had pushed through all of that. I’d done more than I’d thought myself capable of. But every man has his breaking point. The baking heat, the pain running through my body, choking on black poison, feeling the Misery work her way through me – I had endured it all, and more. But first Ezabeth, then Nenn, and now Valiya. I was running out of hope. I feared that I would be confronted by Nenn, and she would turn a sword on me, and I hadn’t the heart to put one through her. When the Deep Kings had been bearing down on us, Ezabeth had given me hope, but Saravor held every living thing I loved. Even before I’d given him Shavada’s dark power he’d been a foe far beyond me. Ezabeth, Nenn and Valiya were the foundation upon which I’d built my strength. Even Amaira had held me up. One by one they’d been taken from me. I wanted to fight. I wanted to stare Saravor in his mismatched eyes and see his confidence turn to bowel-loosening terror. But at the end of it all, I was just a tired, poisoned man without options.

  Maldon returned around midday, leading a donkey and cart around to the back of the house. Something heavy enough to make the wagon creak under its weight was stowed in the back.

  ‘That what I think it is?’ I asked, leaning against the back doorframe.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I need a supply of phos for it. I used the last of my canisters blowing away those fools at your house. It’s just so much iron without it. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a phos canister when you’re not a Spinner?’

  ‘Pretty hard,’ I said. ‘How’d you get it onto the cart?’

  ‘Paid some locals. You haven’t asked where I got the cart.’

  ‘I assumed you stole it.’

  ‘The canisters need to be charged if it’s going to work at all,’ Maldon said, changing the subject. ‘Without those it’s worthless.’

  ‘I’m fine here,’ I said, pouring the last of the wine into my mouth. I had a bad drunk on me, the kind that makes stupid men lash out with their fists. ‘But I do have some terrible news. We’ve run out of wine.’

  Maldon turned on me.

  ‘Enough, Ryhalt!’ he snapped. ‘It’s my job to be miserable and self-pitying. Spirits know, I’ve fucking earned it. But not today. Now get out there and get me some fucking canisters!’

  There was enough drunk in me that I wasn’t moved by his outburst. His voice was pre-broken, and his childlike shrieking was, in its way, amusing. Not really amusing. Not really funny. But when you’re drunk, you pretend that things are funny so that you can ignore the humiliation.

  ‘Get them yourself,’ I said.

  Maldon rounded on me.

  ‘You’re really going to give up and fucking cry about how shit your life is while the rest of the world burns?’ he yelled. ‘You think you got poisoned by the Misery, and that’s it, time to give up? You lost your women so you’re not going to play anymore? Well it doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘Who are you to tell me that, when you’ve tried to take the easy way more than once?’ I spat back.

  ‘You want to know what I’ve lost?’ Maldon screeched. ‘I can’t even die. I won’t ever touch a woman again not just because I’m a perpetual child, but because I’ve got no fucking eyes in
my face. You’ve spent four years mourning a woman you lost. I’ll spend eternity in this rat-sized, mutilated body. Yes, I wanted that to end. But it didn’t, and we’re stuck together. You cut words into your arm because you thought they mattered. You had grit then, you cowardly, self-obsessed fucking drunk. Now get out there and get me ten fucking phos canisters! If I could spin the light myself, I’d fucking do it, wouldn’t I? I used to be able to do it like that.’

  And as he snapped his fingers in a fury, something utterly unexpected happened. There was a spark, a tiny, thin little judder of lightning between them. Maldon’s eyeless face stared at his fingers, his mouth hung open. My mouth hung open.

  ‘Did you just generate phos?’ I asked, our argument forgotten.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maldon breathed. He sat down hard snapping his fingers, again and again, but nothing happened.

  We were interrupted by a fluttering of black wings.

  ‘Tell me things have turned,’ I said. ‘Tell me Davandein has withdrawn, and Saravor has turned himself over for hanging.’

  ‘It’s all shit,’ the bird said. ‘And there’s something new. Galharrow, the citadel has a personal message for you.’

  I frowned at the raven, but it had started preening its feathers as though this last were an afterthought. I put on my yellow hood, headed out the front and wandered down the street to get a clear look at the citadel. The bloody neon words were all too clear, alternating between two separate messages:

  GALHARROW: THE COURTHOUSE

  YOU FOR THE CHILD

  36

  It would be wrong to describe it as a trap. A trap implies something unexpected, a surprise attack. They weren’t trying to lure me in with something desirable. It was a bargain. A deal. A choice.

  I stared at those bloody letters as the Misery sky wailed overhead, then that sound was joined by the blast of cannon as the guns on the wall unleashed the first volley. Davandein’s attack must have begun. There was no broadside volley, no steady discharge. The guns cracked sporadically, without order. Inexperienced crews.

  Only two moons had risen, Rioque was full in scarlet and glistening with promise, Clada was rich and soothing, waxing gibbous in blue. The sun lit the sky in lemon and orange away to the west as she closed with the horizon, the skyline burning with intensity, the brightest sunset I’d ever seen. The moons didn’t project their usual light; they blazed with it, the cloudless sky difficult to look at. Even the weather was against me. In the Grandspire, the Talents would be beginning their work, sitting at their looms with scarred fingers, dead-eyed as they spun magic from the light.

  That’s where Saravor would be. When the battle reached its height, when the bloodshed had driven enough souls into Shavada’s Eye, Saravor would go there and turn the power of the Grandspire on the Eye. Then what? When he had what he wanted, would he leave us alone? Claim the city as his own? Or would he flee across the Misery and seek an alliance with the Deep Kings? I supposed, in the end, it wouldn’t matter. The city would be torn apart, the people put to a vengeful sword, and most likely I would be dead.

  I gazed up at the message. Me for Amaira. Was Valiya already dead? I balled my fists and fought down the shaking. For all my clever schemes and preparations, my intelligence network, my reputation, even my connection to the Nameless … in the end I was just a man. And Amaira was just a child. Maybe I couldn’t stop Saravor. Maybe the warring of the greater powers had always been beyond me, but perhaps I could save one more life before I was done. Was it worth it, trading whatever chance might remain to defeat a dark immortal for an ordinary, annoying child? In this decision, I was alone.

  No. Not alone.

  Never alone, not even in my dreams.

  ‘I’ll stand with you,’ she had told me, deep in the Misery. ‘I’ll be your shield, when you need me to be, but the will to fight has to be yours.’

  Maybe it was time to rely on someone else. Trust in something greater than me, which had always been greater than me. I’d held to my sliver of hope in the face of every obstacle. Clutched it hard inside me, regardless of facts and numbers and lies and truths. Because she still reached for me in my dreams. Because the Bright Order had seen her reaching east all the time that I’d been in the Misery, reaching west when I rode out to Davandein. I’d prayed to her in my blackest hour, and all the while, she’d been reaching out to me. Reaching for something. Perhaps she had been nothing more than a hallucination, but if I’d ever believed in anything, it was that Ezabeth would never go down quietly while there was still something to fight for.

  Time to put my faith to the test.

  I would do what any man does when he loves a child. I had failed Valengrad, and I saw no way to change that, but Amaira was of no value to them save as a pawn against me. There was really no choice to make.

  ‘Where are you going?’ the raven cawed at me, ‘don’t be a fool. Don’t be a fool, Galharrow!’ But it stood on a post and watched me walk away without following.

  Davandein’s guns were firing thick and fast as I picked my way through the streets. Thumps and cracks, dark percussion in the fading light. I doubted the city’s light guns could do much to stop Davandein’s mercenary artillerymen.

  The city was under attack, but you wouldn’t have known it from the way people were milling in the streets. Those of fighting age had all been conscripted, a flarelock shoved into their hands, and sent to join the soldiers on the walls, but the old and young were outside, looking up at the sky or chanting prayers to the Bright Lady. They seemed half-oblivious to the impending threat, and only the nervous trembling of a hand or a stammer on the lips betrayed their fear.

  ‘When is she going to appear?’ an old man said. ‘It can’t be long now.’

  ‘The grand prince will be forced to his knees,’ a teenage girl declared, reciting the rebel mantra. ‘When he sees her appear over the city the new order will begin.’

  ‘I saw her! I saw her!’ a woman cried, bursting from her doorway. ‘I turned on the phos tubes and she appeared to me from the light!’

  I veered around them and kept walking.

  Across the city I heard the same thing, time and time again. A man stood on a crate proclaiming that he’d seen the Bright Lady a mere hour ago, that she’d appeared and reached toward him. Her time was at hand, he declared. No one wanted to admit they were afraid, to say that perhaps they should be more preoccupied with the army at their gates, and less with ghosts in the light.

  My faith was stronger than theirs.

  I watched, nonetheless. I thought, heading to the courthouse to trade myself for an orphan child of no great house, no great status, no great skill, that maybe after this I could bear to look Ezabeth in the eye one last time. I’d feared her for so long. Feared how I’d failed her, feared what she’d think of me, what she’d always thought of me. That our brief, candle-flame time together had just been a moment of madness as we stared death in the face.

  ‘Stand with me, Ezabeth,’ I said. ‘I’ve never needed you more.’

  I knew as I walked toward death that my fears were only fears. That the voice in my head saying I’d never been good enough, that she’d only taken solace in me because she was desperate, was the real lie. It would be good to see Ezabeth one last time before I died. Her real face, scarred and unique. A glimpse of that, I thought, would make it all worthwhile.

  A barkeep had dragged a keg of beer out of his alehouse and was giving out free cups as though the coming of the Bright Lady were some kind of carnival event for spectators. I almost took one, but thought better of it. I needed my wits for whatever was to come. They would kill me, I didn’t doubt that. But even if the Bright Order were deluded, even if they were dancing to Saravor’s tune, most of them were just people. They had no reason to keep Amaira once they had me, and looking back, I’d made far worse deals.

  Across the city the sound of small-arms fire joined the largest
crunching of the cannon, the sharp whine of flarelocks, the hollow booms of matchlocks, muffled by the intervening buildings.

  Soldiers lined the road to the courthouse. Dozens of them, formed in ranks to the left and right, standing to attention with their flarelocks shouldered. Waiting for me like an honour guard. They made no move to take hold of me, or to stop me.

  ‘What’s all this?’ I asked one of them.

  ‘You’re to proceed to the courthouse please, my lord,’ he said. He would barely look at me, stared straight ahead, as sweat trickled from beneath his helmet.

  ‘Who ordered you to stand here like idiots when there’s fighting to be done?’

  ‘To the courthouse, my lord,’ he said.

  ‘I’m no lord,’ I said.

  The twin rows of men led all the way to the courthouse steps, and to Thierro at the top. He stared down at me, hard-eyed. A new face, the one that had lurked beneath the mask he’d been wearing all this time. He hated me. Hated me with a fierceness that burned like thrice-spun light, reaching up out of his heart until he practically shook with it. He didn’t just feel the hate: he was the hate. He was dressed in white: white fencing breeches, long white stockings, white shoes with golden buckles. His jacket was white, his shirt gleamed with pearly sequins, and he wore a ruff of finest lace. Sweat had dampened his collar.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Fitting, on this last night, that Crowfoot’s lackey be witness to the birth of a new power.’ Saravor’s words, hissed through Thierro’s lips.

  ‘Is that what this comes down to, Saravor?’ I said. ‘Pride?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Power. The days of the Nameless dwindle. They will be on their knees when they lose their battle against the Deep Kings, and you will be my message to them.’

  He went on into the courthouse.