by Ed McDonald
‘I loved you too,’ Nenn said. ‘You’re my best fucking friend. Tell Tnota he’s a prick.’
She let me go and, crippled as I was, I smacked down against the glass floor.
Nenn raised the dagger high, then swung it down with a scream of utmost pain, worsening as she ripped the blade sideways across her guts. She was still screaming as she forced her hand inside, and dragged out a cluster of entrails. They were stinking and rotten, and she cast them aside, her face bathed brighter and brighter as the Grandspire’s weapon primed to unleash its power. I let out a cry of my own as she cast her guts aside, dragged free her sword and with an effort that must have hurt more than all the pain I’d ever known combined: she charged.
‘Saravor, you fucking cunt!’ she screamed. Lost in his victory, Saravor barely glanced up before she was upon him.
Too late.
She swung, a stroke of pure wrath, the stroke of her life. Somewhere in the hells a dozen bells tolled at once, a clamouring of souls, a salvo of devastation, and Saravor’s outstretched arm flew away at the wrist. He had only a moment to realise what had happened. And then the weapon fired.
A brilliant lance of violet fire blazed into the night, a thunder, a roaring scream of colossal power which swallowed Saravor, and for a few moments he bore the brunt of its fury, a rippling shadow caught in the torrent of blazing brightness. His scream was wild as he tried to push against the rush of power, to reach the fallen Eye, still clasped in the hand that had been cut from him. He burned in the light; four seconds, five, then will alone could no longer hold him there and the beam carried him from the roof of the Grandspire and out into the night, propelled through the air. Gone.
The power died, its intensity dissipating to nothing. Slowly, the brightness faded from my eyes.
Silence.
I could see Nenn. She lay facedown, but she was looking at me. I thought that she was dead, but then she blinked, and then she smiled. I smiled back, and she closed her eyes. And then she was dead.
My best friend’s spirit left the world. It already felt empty without her.
Alone now. Alone with my death. Saravor had been stopped, but there must be thousands of dead below. The Range was safe. There was that, at least. I’d done my part. Crowfoot couldn’t be disappointed, in the end. He’d keep to his end of the deal, and the two lives I’d traded for my own would go on, wherever they were. For all that the deal had cost me, lying here bleeding out on the roof of the Grandspire. I knew that I’d have done it all again. At least the last moments would be peaceful. Or not.
‘You really fucked this up,’ the raven croaked.
‘Got here in the end,’ I said. Speaking was hard.
‘Crowfoot will need a new captain,’ it said. ‘I suppose you could have done worse.’
‘We do what we can,’ I said, and looked up at the sky.
Quick, small steps. Feet on tiles. My sight had dimmed. Hard to make thoughts come clearly. Lost too much blood. Too close to the veil. Maybe the steps were Death, the Long End, finally come to guide me away. I heard a voice, only it didn’t sound like death. Sounded like begging. Sounded like tears. Ridiculously, it sounded like Amaira, and those cold little fingers on my face, trying to roll me over and failing, those felt like Amaira’s too. I heard more begging. Then sobbing. Not what a man wants to hear as he slips away into the black.
I tried to smile at her as a cold little hand pressed against the wound, as though it could hold back the damage within. Would rather she hadn’t seen this, but I loved her and, selfishly, I was glad she was there.
And then the carrion bird began to whisper to her.
Things got hazy. Vision blurred. Sound got distant. The girl and the raven talked in low voices. Talk of promises. Talk of debts. Talk of a life taking a turn that it shouldn’t.
Then there was nothing.
40
I wasn’t dead.
That came as a surprise.
Dawn had risen. The solar flare was done, the sky as ordinary as it gets on the Range. Brighter than usual for this time of year maybe, a certain spring freshness carried in from the west. The sky was clear, cloudless, blue in one direction, red and broken in the other. I was still atop the Grandspire, a cold wind blowing in, but someone had wrapped me in a cloak. I looked for Nenn, and saw that someone had carefully covered her, too. My chest hurt enough that I didn’t want to breathe for fear it might shatter and spill out what was left of me.
There was no pain. Not in my gut where I knew I was slain, or my arm, my chest, only some stiffness in the old leg wound. I closed my eyes, almost wishing I had slipped away without waking again. Touched my stomach.
Nothing.
No wound, no blood, not even a scar.
It was impossible. My memories had grown hazy toward the end of the night, but I was pretty sure that Nenn had put a sword through me. I checked my back, realizing I could feel my legs again, and there was nothing there either.
I was alone. Saravor’s severed hand was gone. Shavada’s Eye was gone too. There was a lot of blood on the flagstones. My blood, I supposed.
The city seemed quiet. No guns, no shouts. Davandein’s and Vercanti’s banners fluttered over the citadel again. It seemed they’d won the day, and got the city under control in the end.
My legs worked when I tried them. Didn’t make sense, but not much did. I crossed to Nenn, but I didn’t need to pull back the covering to see her face. She’d given me her last smile, and she was with her handsome officer now, or at least, I hoped that she was. I put her sword through my belt, then gathered her up in my arms. I had little strength, but nothing could have made me leave her behind. It was slow going. I couldn’t say why I was alive when she wasn’t, when she was the more deserving of life, but it was my duty to do right by her now. I carried her through the mess of murdered Talents, across the devastated plaza, its stones torn apart and littered with pieces of Saravor’s fixed men. Nobody had come forward to clear that mess up.
The message on the citadel read: STAY IN YOUR HOMES.
I got Nenn’s body back to Maldon’s refuge, where I laid her out on the table. Maldon and Dantry offered their condolences, but those never help much, and they don’t stop you from hurting.
‘You did it,’ Dantry said, with something that could once have been a smile.
‘We managed it,’ I said. I placed a hand on Maldon’s shoulder. ‘You got your redemption, I suppose. Now you can say you saved the city, as well as trying to destroy it.’
‘I’m sorry, Ryhalt,’ Maldon said. He sounded like he meant it. ‘Nenn was one of the good ones.’
‘The best,’ I said. ‘She was the best of us.’
We stood in an awkward silence.
‘She should have a state funeral,’ Dantry said. ‘As a hero of the Range.’
‘No,’ I sighed. ‘We’ll give her a pyre out in the yard. She’d have hated a big funeral and they’d only say a load of shit about her that wasn’t true. We’ll drink and chew blacksap and talk about how she punched those arrogant fuckers in the face when they deserved it.’
‘Fucking hell,’ Maldon said. ‘I’m going to go find some brandy. Dantry, come with me. I can’t reach the high shelves.’
‘Find Tnota at the citadel,’ I said. ‘He should be here too.’
They left me alone with the body. I stood by Nenn, feeling that I ought to do something, say something, but she was just dead, and there wasn’t. She’d have thought me an idiot, so I went and rooted through a store cupboard and found an axe. The yard out the back would do as well as any other patch of dirt.
Amaira was out there, sitting on the picket fence, legs swinging.
‘I’m glad you’re alive,’ she said, only she sounded like she’d already known that I was. Sounded older, too. But then, we were all older, and the battle across the city had probably rushed a lot of kids past their childh
oods during the night.
‘I have to cut some wood,’ I said.
‘For Major Nenn,’ she said. ‘I’ll help.’
We split wood for a while, me doing most of the axe work, Amaira stacking the pieces. The pyre had to be big. Big enough for a hero. I stripped off my shirt, broke down the fence and hacked it to kindling.
‘Your eyes are still amber,’ she said. ‘And you’re still copper.’
‘I guess it won’t shift for a while,’ I said. If it ever did. I swung the axe again.
‘But the other injuries. They’re all better.’
‘They are.’ I stopped, planted the spade in the earth. ‘You were there,’ I said eventually. ‘I heard you.’
Amaira shrugged.
‘We all got to be somewhere, Ryhalt.’
‘Not Captain-Sir anymore?’
‘We all have to grow up sometime. I’m fourteen years old. Can’t act like a kid forever.’
I buried the axe in a piece of wood. It was easier to focus on that.
‘What deal did you make?’ I asked eventually, knowing it was private, that I shouldn’t ask.
‘A lot like yours, probably,’ she said.
‘Show me?’
Amaira drew back her sleeve. Across her inner forearm was a stark black-and-white tattoo, like a painting. A hooded, one-winged raven. I stood and looked at it for a while, traced it with my finger. Then I hugged her. I could have said I wished she hadn’t, that my life wasn’t worth the debt, that she had no idea what she had done. Instead my heart tore just a little further.
‘What happened to the Eye?’
‘I took it to the heart of the Engine and interred it there,’ she said. ‘For safekeeping. Until the Nameless come to reclaim it.’
‘You got in?’
‘The Raven told me the rhyme. The heart is black, the heart is cold …’
‘I know it.’ Amaira nodded with a brief, sad smile. It seemed that the raven had told her a lot when she made her bargain. It had fulfilled its task, I supposed. I was angry with Crowfoot, or the raven, which was the same, for taking Amaira. But Crowfoot didn’t give a shit if I was angry with him, and in the end the raven had saved my life, so it was better to let it go. I went inside.
‘You’ll miss her. Nenn, I mean,’ Valiya said. The room was dark. She hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on when the light had faded, and stood by a window too dirty to see out of. The table was neatly stacked with papers, lists of people. Friends, enemies, suppliers, debtors. She’d been rebuilding, even now. The last, half-written name on the list was my own. It was even darker outside, a single flickering neon sign casting her in electric blue. There was nothing to see out there anyway.
The city had returned to silence and timidity. It slept, whilst we did not.
‘Every day I’m alive. And all of the ones when I’m dead,’ I said. Valiya looked down into her glass and considered whatever lay in its depths. There was seldom anything good down there. She passed a pen slowly from hand to hand.
‘And your Bright Lady, too,’ she said. ‘Do you think that she’s gone for good?’
There was bite in the words.
‘For now, at least,’ I said.
‘Blackwing as we knew it is gone,’ Valiya said. ‘Blackwing was you, and it was me. Everything we built is ashes and charcoal. Everything we worked for. Everything that we had. Everything we could have had.’
The pressure in the room grew heavier. I took a few steps in but my proximity to her was a hard thing, rough-edged and nothing she’d want to hold on to. A little silence is a dangerous thing, and in quantity it becomes a poison cloud. I could smell her, that sweet jasmine perfume, always too good for its environment. Always a little too refined for this city, for these people. And for me.
‘I can’t stay,’ I said. I looked down at the sparks of darkness beneath the copper of my skin. But there was more to it than that.
She nodded. I’d never needed to tell Valiya anything. She always knew it before I did.
‘I understand,’ she said. ‘I didn’t. For a long time. Tnota tried to explain it to me, but I didn’t really grasp it. Not fully. The hold she has over you.’
Valiya turned to face me. Calm. She’d cried, but the tears were all spent and only the echoes of their passing remaining in the redness of her eyes, the flush of her cheeks. She pushed her hair back out of her eyes and tied it away. No overhanging fringe to hide behind. It was not a night to keep secrets.
‘I owe her,’ I said. It was all I could say. We all owed her. More than they would ever know.
‘I know,’ Valiya said. ‘And won’t ask you to turn aside from your obligation. I know what she did. I know who she was. And I can’t compete with a dead woman. Not with a memory. In these ashes we inhabit, somebody needs to rebuild. Somebody needs to show the Davandeins and the Vercantis how to lead. I will work hard, and I will light a path. I will lead Valengrad from behind the curtain. There’s a life there, to be claimed.’ She lifted her coat from the chair. Looked up at me, fading like autumn. Rising like spring. ‘But I’ll not wait for you.’
Her coat flowed over and around her shoulders, a shadow swallowing her. She looked as beautiful as she ever had, and I wished I could have shared it all with her. I was in pain and burned-out, exhausted, and I wanted to tell her every dream I’d denied myself, tell her she deserved so much more than I could give her, and that if I could, I would have broken myself on every rock in my path to deserve her. But there was never time to spare in her world, certainly not for broken men and their regrets, and the drive and efficiency of her life was one of the things that had let me fall in love with her. By leaving me, she’d find and take the life she wanted and deserved. It was cruel to only be able to admit that now.
Besides, there was no point. She knew it all anyway.
‘Look after Amaira,’ I said.
‘No,’ Valiya said. She held a sad smile in place on her face, but Amaira’s name was the straw that nearly brought her concrete mask down. ‘Crowfoot has taken her from me too. She’s your responsibility, Ryhalt. Yours to teach, to train. Don’t let her down.’
She crossed the room. I should have done something. Begged her to stay, told her that I was sorry. Told her that I needed her.
The door closed, and she was gone.
When night came around we raised Nenn onto her last resting place. I put her sword in her hand, as she would have wanted, and a bottle of Whitelande brandy in the other. I let Tnota start the fire. It wasn’t symbolic, I was just tired. Then we drank, and drank some more, and we poured brandy onto the flames and smashed the bottles just as she’d have done.
The sky was vocal tonight, and it serenaded Nenn’s soul off to wherever it was going. If it was going anywhere at all.
‘What now?’ Maldon asked when the fire had burned low, and Dantry and Amaira had gone to bed.
‘I made a promise to a lady,’ I said. ‘A hard one.’ I looked down at the ragged words I’d cut into my arm. ‘But I think I know how to keep it. It’s not going to be easy.’
‘Never is,’ he said. ‘Where do we have to go?’
‘You don’t have to go anywhere,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you and Dantry tomorrow.’
‘Not the girl?’
‘She’d only try to stop me.’
Maldon chuckled and we clinked our glasses together, and drank a final toast to a dead woman who’d been worth more than all the rest of us put together.
I walked through the city in the small hours. The fires were out, and people had defied the citadel’s order to remain indoors and were removing the boards from windows or weeping as they embraced the neighbours they’d feared for. They would rebuild, and life would go on, but I felt distant, as though I was no longer one of them. I went to the city wall and leaned against the crenellations, looking east over the Misery. The cracks in the sky g
lowed a fierce white-bronze, jagged tears through the moonless night and a guard approached me.
‘You shouldn’t be up here.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I should be out there.’
I felt her in my bones. Flowing through me, indivisible.
Come back to me, the Misery whispered. Come back. I’m waiting.
Also by Ed McDonald from Gollancz
The Raven’s Mark:
Blackwing
Ravencry
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Gollancz
an imprint of the Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House, 50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
Copyright © Ed McDonald, 2018
The moral right of Ed McDonald to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (eBook) 978 1 473 22208 3
www.edmcdonaldwriting.com
www.gollancz.co.uk