by Ed McDonald
I couldn’t express what I was feeling, and my face was as wet as hers, so I just held her, softer this time.
‘I made you a promise,’ I said. ‘The seven hells couldn’t stop me.’ Her arms cinched tighter around my neck. For the first time in a long time, something felt right.
‘It was her, wasn’t it?’ Glaun said. His voice sounded strained. A beam of wood had punched right through him when it fell from the gallery above and he was bleeding a lot worse than I was. Blood on his lips. I set Amaira down, then walked across to him and sat on the steps that led up to the judges’ platform.
‘It was,’ I said.
‘Not a trick. Not an illusion,’ he said. He must have been in a lot of pain, but there was a serenity to his expression. I took his hand in mine. He had no strength left in his fingers, but they twitched, an acknowledgment of company, at the end.
‘No illusion,’ I said.
‘She was a woman? A real woman?’
‘She was Ezabeth Tanza, once,’ I said. ‘She saved Valengrad and she paid the price for it. But she’s not a god. She never was. She was better than that.’
‘She was … glorious,’ Glaun managed, before he choked on blood. It bubbled around his mouth. He hadn’t got long left, but he’d really, truly believed in the Bright Lady. Might have been the only one among their hierarchy that had. He was guilty of being a fool, but then, we’re all fools in one way or another.
‘You should have seen her when she was alive,’ I said.
‘We only saw what we wanted to. I wanted it so badly,’ Glaun said. ‘All this time we thought her coming was for us.’ He choked his way through an unpleasant laugh that probably hurt him more than it was worth. ‘But we were wrong. She was coming for you.’
‘She always could surprise me.’
He laughed until he died. That’s the way of death, sometimes.
Valiya picked her way over to us. Shock and fear had taken the strength from her, but she knelt and closed Glaun’s eyes. We shared a look that said too much, and nothing at all. I put a hand on her shoulder and she closed her eyes, content for that moment just to breathe, and stand, and be still.
‘What do we do now, Captain-Sir?’ Amaira asked.
I regarded her, breathed out slowly. I guess she’d earned an answer.
‘Now we kill a Fixer.’
The big guns had all but fallen silent, and instead the constant percussion of matchlock fire warred with the whine of flarelocks. It was no longer restricted to the walls; Davandein’s forces had entered the city and engaged in bloody close-quarter fighting from street to street. Shavada’s Eye would be feeding on every death, every man or woman that fell sending their spirit’s energy flowing toward Saravor, driving him on to victory.
Among the noncombatants, the mood had shifted. They’d not expected the gates to fall so easily. Now they feared for their loved ones.
‘My lad’s barely old enough to hold his gun upright,’ a worried mother said.
‘I was sure she would come,’ a father muttered, his children clutched around his legs. ‘Where is the Bright Lady?’
‘My old girl should have given the fight up years ago,’ her neighbour agreed. They had taken down their hoods, the glory and revelation that they had been anticipating seeming suddenly far away. The nebulous promises of the High Witness were now a distant mirage, while the prospect of men with blades had become an all-too-sharp reality. Many still stood out in the streets, but there was a fire blazing by the western wall, a dark red glower over the city caused by a stray shot, or an exploding flarelock maybe. It seemed unlikely anyone was organised enough to put it out. At this rate Davandein would find herself stepping over corpses piled atop a mountain of ash to reclaim the city.
Valiya had my arm slung over her shoulder and helped me to walk. My body ached in a dozen different places, the burn across my cheek stung, the old wound in my leg bit deep. Some people tried to help us, but I waved them off and we eventually found horses. We rode the rest of the way to Maldon’s hideout.
‘How are you going to stop him?’ Valiya asked.
‘I don’t know, yet,’ I said. ‘If all else fails, I’ll take his head.’
‘Not much of a plan, Captain-Sir,’ Amaira said.
‘When we get to Gleck’s place, you’re going to stay there until this is all over.’
‘I hid before,’ she said. ‘It didn’t help anyone any. It didn’t even help me.’
‘And I thought you looked like shit before,’ Maldon said when he opened the door.
‘Believe me, it could have been worse,’ I said.
‘Got them back, then,’ he said. He gave Amaira a shallow smile. I think he was fond of her too.
‘I hate you,’ Amaira said, and he made a face.
I let them clean the burn on my face with cheap whisky. I couldn’t feel half the fingers of my right hand, where I’d forced them to bridge the gap between worlds, but I could still curl them, so that was something. I drank the rest of the whisky, of which there wasn’t enough. My hands still hadn’t lost their Misery shakes and I spilled a lot of it down my chin.
‘I have no idea how you can take this much punishment,’ Maldon said as he stitched.
‘That’s rich, coming from you.’ I might look like shit, but Maldon looked worse.
A flutter of wings heralded the raven which seemed surprised that I was still alive, though it shouldn’t have been. I knew that fucking thing could find me no matter where I was and would know if I died. It was in its nature to know.
‘Davandein’s troops are in the streets, killing pretty much everything they see,’ the bird cawed. ‘But they’re mercenaries so they’re stopping to loot as they go. The Bright Order have fallen back to barricades along Time Street and Second Street. They’ll be slow to break, but when they do it’s going to be a slaughter.’
‘I guess the Bright Order didn’t prove an effective force after all,’ Valiya said. She’d accepted a talking raven as just another part of the night’s strangeness. Compared to Ezabeth’s appearance, it must have seemed mundane.
‘Useless. Like their weapons,’ it cawed. ‘They killed a bunch of their own with the misfires alone.’ The bird didn’t know the half of it. ‘The best of Colonel Koska’s regulars are fighting a slow retreat but Witness Valentia has gathered a few thousand of her best around the Grandspire. She’ll make a last stand there.’
‘Saravor is at the Grandspire. That’s where he needs to be to open the Eye.’
‘Then we go there, and we kill him,’ Dantry said. He hobbled into the room on his crutch, in terrible shape. He smelled sour and infected.
‘Even if we could get past the troops, Saravor’s no ordinary man.’
‘You don’t have to kill him,’ Amaira said. ‘He’s the head of the dragon, but you only need to clip its wings to bring it down.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘The Talents in the Grandspire,’ Amaira said. ‘The ones Spinning the light. If they can’t spin it, then he won’t get the power he needs.’
We let that drift in silence between us for a moment.
‘You mean … I should kill the Talents in the Grandspire?’
Amaira met my disapproval squarely, holding her ground. The raven cawed its cheery agreement that she was right. I looked to Maldon, to Dantry. Dantry at least gave a hopeless, disappointed shrug, as if to say he felt bad about it. Valiya said nothing. She was in shock, exhausted, but she continued making an inventory of the weapons at our disposal, laying out the little we had and checking edges and ammunition. She’d been through so much, but still she worked, even if she had next to nothing to work with.
‘Even if I had the means – ’
‘We have the means,’ Maldon interrupted.
‘Even if we did,’ I said, ‘it might be too late already. They’ve been spinning the
flare light for hours. He might have enough already.’ I looked to Amaira. ‘And we have to be better than that.’
‘It doesn’t have to be the Talents,’ she said. ‘What about breaking their machines?’
‘The Iron Sun,’ Dantry said. ‘That’s where the power’s stored. Destroy it before Saravor can use it to tear the power from the Eye.’
‘How am I going to do that?’
‘I could rig a phos grenadoe. That might work,’ Maldon said. ‘I used one when they came for me in your cellar. There’s a ton of power flowing into the Iron Sun, it wouldn’t take much to blast it.’
‘You have one?’
‘I could modify a canister in a few minutes,’ he said with a shrug. ‘It’s easy enough.’
‘Good. I brought you a bunch of them. They’re out on the horse. But I’d still have to get past the soldiers.’
Maldon’s face lit up and a broad, cruel smile spread over his face. It reminded me far too much of the time that he’d spent as a Darling. He shook his head, and began to laugh.
Time ticked by. It took an hour to get ready.
People died. Time didn’t care.
Maldon wound a crank, tightening the armour. The old parade suit had sat in my house, dusty and unused for years. I’d never expected to put it on. It was decorative armour, but the best made in all the states. Maldon’s modifications had made it something far, far more. It weighed more than I did, with phos canisters rigged to the lower back. A terrible and impractical idea, really, since they added weight, but he’d done something clever with gears and pistons along the joints that made movement possible. As I flexed my arm, there was a slight hiss, phos assisting the movement.
‘I can’t walk properly,’ I said, testing the range of motion. ‘And I can’t fight either. There’s too much weight.’
‘True,’ Maldon said, as Dantry helped him with the helmet. It was full-faced, the visor leaving only a tiny slit to see through. They began bolting it down onto the chest plate like an old suit of jousting armour. I hated full-faced helmets. The heat, the muffled sounds within the leather-stuffed interior, the restricted view. I had no peripheral vision, couldn’t look left or right without turning my whole torso. ‘But the armour isn’t there to let you get messy up close,’ Maldon said. ‘It’s to keep you alive. The phos circuits I’ve added through the steel project a very slight expulsion field. Try not to knock this lever, it will eject the bolts that hold it together and you’ll find yourself naked, which probably wouldn’t be for the best.’ He gabbled away about things that I didn’t understand. Magnetism and points of percussion and something to do with the backlash paradox.
‘We don’t have much time,’ the hooded raven said, flapping down to perch, annoyingly, on top of my head. I couldn’t turn or shake my head to get rid of it. ‘The weapon on top of the Grandspire will be charged within the hour and Davandein’s forces have just broken the barricade on Time Street.’
‘Are they being held in check?’ I asked. The raven didn’t even hesitate.
‘No.’ It had been a slim hope.
I clanked out to the wagon on which Maldon had brought his work. I wasn’t going to walk all the way to the Grandspire in this rig. Valiya offered me two pistols, then looked at Maldon’s contraption and put them through her own belt instead.
‘Well,’ she said. She put a hand against the steel of the breastplate. ‘Be strong, Ryhalt. It’s down to you now. Try to come back.’
I raised my visor and watched her hurry away into the house.
‘I want to come with you,’ Amaira said. ‘I can help.’
‘Stay here with Valiya. Hide somewhere clever. If I don’t come back – ’
‘You’ll come back,’ she said firmly. ‘You have to come back.’
‘I will. I promise.’
I closed my visor and turned away. Dantry took the driving seat, Maldon was in the back with me, making last-minute changes, tightening bolts and checking the gears that powered the joints. There wasn’t much more to say.
They were right to fear for me, but fear had burned away in Ezabeth’s fire. The Misery had not killed me, Thierro had not killed me, and now it was my turn to bring vengeance of the people down on Saravor. He and his grey children were about to learn why you do not, not with the backing of devils, not with the backing of immortals or Kings or the spirits of hatred themselves, fuck with Blackwing.
The Grandspire loomed above me. At its peak, an ominous glow brightened the purple sky. What I was about to do was only going to aid him. It was going to be close.
Saravor had pulled his most dedicated troops back to the main approach to the Grandspire. The streets around it were narrow, and the soldiers had demolished houses to block them and prevent Davandein from approaching save along the Rain Boulevard. They wore cuirasses of polished steel over their golden jackets, cloth-of-gold hoods up over their pot helms. They were arrayed into ranks, hundreds of the bastards, thousands, but they were all stood facing outward, poleaxes and matchlocks shouldered. No holy weapons here, no prayers on their lips. They were glass-eyed, devoid of emotion, soundless sentinels. Fixed guardians, all directly under Saravor’s control. They were an extension of his being, their stolen lives ready to be thrown away to protect their master, to power his schemes. Witness Valentia prayed before them, apparently oblivious to the lack of chatter, the lack of emotion showing on their ghostly faces. If those were even their faces.
I lumbered down from the cart, my feet striking a heavy, iron clang as my weight fractured the paving stone. I heaved the contraption from the wagon, the phos pistons working, jettisoning tight puffs of smoking light. Maldon’s weapon had a weight I could never have lifted alone. The light power hissed as I took a step forward, clang, another, clang.
‘Good luck, Ryhalt,’ Dantry said.
‘Get out of here.’
‘Remember,’ Maldon shouted back at me as the cart wheeled away. ‘It is going to explode!’
Clang, another step toward the troopers. Clang. Some of them had seen me now. Clang. They were a hundred feet away, spread out in front of the Grandspire in their ordered rows.
The Witness stopped praying, as I drew the attention of her congregation. She turned, saw me, and didn’t know what to make of me. I was clad head to toe in black-and-gold steel, and I doubt she’d ever seen anything like the weapon that hung by straps from my left shoulder. But she could probably guess she wouldn’t like it. On my back I had a steel hopper full of shot, tens of thousands of matchlock balls. The weight of that alone would have been impossible without Maldon’s pistoned armour, and I could still only heave a leg forward once every couple of seconds.
Clang.
‘Lower that … whatever it is,’ the Witness shouted. Her voice sounded dim and muffled.
Clang.
This would be the worst part.
‘Stand down,’ the Witness yelled. And when I paid her no heed: ‘On my mark, destroy him.’
I had one hand on the aiming lever. I moved the other to a crank handle. I turned it, and a phos engine kicked in to assist. It was Maldon’s masterstroke. The technology, he told me, was similar to that Nall had used to rotate the projectors atop his Engine. The eight barrels, aligned and jutting forward, began to spin and phos crackled in short static bursts as the barrels got up to speed.
They said I’d need an army to get to Saravor.
Maldon had turned me into one.
The motor whined, the phos crackled blue and gold around me, sparks of lightning spearing away in jagged blasts. A dozen gunshots flew past me, another dozen pounded into my armour and glanced away.
I roared and squeezed the firing lever.
39
Gleck Maldon, given enough time, money and assistance, would have revolutionised the face of war. He had been bored, he had been full of spite, and so he had put a weapon of such power into my hands that I
knew it should never be allowed again.
A matchlock is a powerful thing. It makes a man a killer at a hundred paces. It cracks with a fearsome sound, requires little skill to use beyond being able to point it in the right direction, but it is limited by the twenty or thirty seconds it takes to get it loaded. Maldon’s crank gun had all of the advantages of a matchlock, and none of the disadvantages.
Thousands of rounds per minute.
Fixed men blew apart as the torrent of lead struck them. Hundreds of balls spewed from the rotating barrels, flying wild and indiscriminate. They chewed through the stone steps that led up to the Grandspire, blasting chunks of stone into the air. They chewed through the armoured bodies of men, knocking them backward or cutting them in half. The staccato rhythm of the weapon’s thunder thrummed through the air, hiding the screams, hiding the tiny pinpricks as the desperate tried to aim their matchlocks and return fire. Their shots smacked into me with the force of hurtling boulders, but the phos-bolstered steel held and I was a wolf among mice. Clang, I strode forward, easier now as the ammunition depleted, thousands of balls spent and still I turned the crank and the gun thumped out, shot after shot after shot after shot. The weight of the armour eased as I spent pound after pound of lead, the phos pistons warmed and working furiously. Clang, clang, clang, I advanced on the Grandspire, firing, firing, an endless torrent of fire and death unleashed from the crank gun’s mouth. I didn’t have to aim, I just turned the barrels in the right direction and watched through my visor as the world there disintegrated into shattered pieces. I reaped the army of fixed men like a farmer scything corn, and with less difficulty.
Some men took cover behind a barricade of uncut stone. They unloaded shots into me, and one of them smacked hard against the helmet. I staggered, noting that the gun had begun to give out a soft whine. I turned the crank gun onto them and their defences disintegrated, and then so too did they. Matchlocks were being fired on me in desperation, shots ringing from my steel. My left arm locked up within the armour, pistons broken, power suddenly failing. I turned the gun on the sharpshooters who’d put it out of action and obliterated them, the rattling of the gun unceasing, uncaring. My leg stiffened, suddenly more weight on it than there had been before and wild, uncontrolled phos began spilling out in discharging arcs. Heat rose from the gun, hotter than midsummer, and sweat drenched me as the armour overheated too. My time was running out.