The Archon's Assassin

by D. P. Prior

  “Maybe not much longer,” Bird said.

  “Eh?” Nameless had no idea what he was—

  “Aristodeus promised you a way to be free of the helm.”

  “You know him?” Shadrak asked.

  Bird shrugged, and kept his beady eyes on Nameless.

  Nameless had seen eyes like those before, deep in the bowels of Gehenna. Stone eyes. Dark. Shifty. “But only if the power the axe has over me can be broken,” he said.

  Bird nodded slowly. “There may be a way, but you will need Shadrak’s help. You will need a plane ship.”

  “How’d you know about that?” Shadrak pointed a pistol at Bird, but Nameless held up a hand.

  “You work for Aristodeus?”

  Bird let out a low laugh. “I do not.”

  “Then what’s your role in all this? What do you want?”

  Bird’s neck pivoted to an unnatural degree as he looked behind at Shadrak. “I know who you are, Shadrak the Unseen. I know where you come from.”

  “Bollocks,” Shadrak said, but his face was tight, and his pistol was shaking. If he’d had color to his face, Nameless reckoned it would’ve drained away.

  “Give it time,” Bird said. “Give me time, and you will remember. It is necessary that you do.”

  “Why?” Shadrak said. “What’s so shogging necessary that’s gonna stop me putting a bullet through your skull?”

  “You are compelled against your will, are you not?” Bird said. He switched his gaze back to Nameless. “And the same could be said of you. Be patient with me. Tolerate my presence, and see if I can’t help you both.”

  “You mean trust a homunculus?” Nameless said. Because he was sure that’s what they were dealing with: the spawn of the Demiurgos. Small, shifty, and utterly dishonest. Thing was, you could say the same about Shadrak, and yet there was something about the assassin, something Nameless was drawn to. He wasn’t all bad. Couldn’t be.

  “We are not all the same,” Bird said. He climbed slowly to his feet, joints cracking like dry twigs. When he shuffled over to stand in front of Shadrak, his great age became suddenly apparent. Whatever magic allowed him to change shape must have been hiding his true appearance, until now. His face had deeper wrinkles than a walnut, and hair clung to his scalp and chin in thready white wisps. “We are not.”

  Shadrak held his gaze for a long moment, then dropped his chin and holstered his gun.

  “I keep thinking I know you,” he said.

  “You do,” Bird said, resting a hand on his shoulder. “And you will. You are returning to the plane ship?”

  Shadrak nodded.

  “Good. You must take it and Nameless to the Perfect Peak. Do as Aristodeus bids, at least for now.”

  Shadrak tensed and closed his eyes. Beads of sweat pearled along his forehead, and his lips moved silently.

  Bird gripped his arm and said, “Your master disagrees. Ask him for time. What he demands of you is too much.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Nameless asked. “What master?”

  The feathers on Bird’s cloak shuddered, and he whirled away from Shadrak. “Psycher!” He pointed at a neighboring rooftop, where a dark figure crouched. Its face was devoid of features, and as they watched, it thrust out a long, taloned finger.

  Bird threw open his cloak, and hornets swarmed forth in a dark cloud. At the same time, Shadrak clutched his head and fell back against the scarolite of the air-raft.

  “Go!” Shadrak screamed. “Go!” Blood was seeping from his nose and ears.

  Magwitch just stared at him, paused mid-chew of a truffle.

  But Nameless had seen enough. “Do it, laddie,” he said. “Now!”

  The air-raft lifted straight into the air, and as its leash pulled taut, Nameless cut it free with his axe.

  The psycher let out a piercing howl, and almost immediately, three more appeared on neighboring rooftops. Down below, shouts went up from the soldiers, and a team of archers hurried into position.

  Bird waved his arms like one of the shadow puppeteers in Arx Gravis who used to tell stories with intricate movements of their hands whilst backlit by a brazier. The hornet cloud followed his directions and split into four snaking strands, each of which darted toward a psycher.

  Arrows pinged off the base of the air-raft. One skimmed the edge and clattered harmlessly to the deck. Magwitch veered them away to one side, and the air-raft lurched.

  Nameless clung on for dear life, but Shadrak fell overboard. Bird snagged hold of his cloak, and Nameless caught Bird’s wrist and anchored him.

  Magwitch righted the air-raft as they sped higher above the city. The psychers were completely obscured by clouds of stinging insects, and the archers dropped out of range.

  Shadrak flipped himself back onto the air-raft and wiped the blood from his nose.

  “It’s stopped,” he said, tapping his temples. He gave Bird a hard look. “Thanks.”

  Nameless rolled into sitting position as they passed over the immensity of New Jerusalem’s Cyclopean Walls and out into the open. “You’re welcome, laddie. You both are.”

  No one was listening. Shadrak and Bird had their eyes locked on each other, and neither seemed about to give. Looked to Nameless like the assassin saw something in those inky depths; saw something and remembered. But when Shadrak broke off and took a position behind Magwitch to gaze out at the way ahead, Nameless reckoned he could have imagined it.

  He turned back to gauge Bird’s reaction, but there was no one there.

  A caw sounded from behind, and a raven beat its wings furiously for a moment, then spread them wide and soared in the wake of the air-raft.

  RENDEZVOUS

  “Must be getting old,” Shadrak said.

  “Nothing this gym thingy of mine can’t put right,” Nameless said. He sounded distracted by the tiers of dust suspended in midair above the rocky ground.

  “Not me,” Shadrak said. “The plane ship.”

  An outline in dirt stretched away interminably, as if it coated an unseen mesa. Through where the walls of the plane ship must have been, there was nothing but darkening sky and patches of rugged earth picked out in the silvery light of Raphoe, the largest of Aethir’s three moons. Here and there, puddles of blackness pocked the ground’s surface. Shadrak knew them for boreworm tunnels. If Albert were to be believed, it was best to stay as far from them as possible.

  Nameless poked a layer of dust with his finger. He recoiled and then tried again, this time rapping with his knuckles and earning a resonant clang in response.

  “That’s one way of hiding it, I suppose. The dust is a dead giveaway, though.”

  “Normally cleans itself, inside and out,” Shadrak said. “It’s what I meant. She’s getting old.”

  Nameless followed a dust shelf for a dozen yards or so. “How big is it?”

  “Shog knows. Very. Most of it’s underground.”

  Nameless brushed a patch clean and plonked himself down on thin air. “So, this is how you got here from Earth.”

  Shadrak nodded. “When it was under Sarum, the plane ship went on for miles. Big as a town. Maybe bigger. Part in the world, part out. Hurts my head just thinking about it.”

  Nameless angled the great helm skyward, and tracked the distant speck of Magwitch’s air-raft as it sped back toward New Jerusalem. “Can’t say I care for it, myself, all this magic.”

  “Ancient tech,” Shadrak said. “Gandaw’s stuff.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” Nameless said. “Not natural. Like the Perfect Peak and all that junk Aristodeus keeps in working order. No good will come of it, if you ask me.”

  “Yet you’re alive because of it.”

  “The feeding tubes?” Nameless snorted and hung his head.

  Shadrak guessed the conversation was at an end.

  He ran his hand across an invisible wall till he found the bump of a control panel. Once he tapped it, the buttons blinked into existence, and he entered the code.

  “Coming?” h
e said, as a rectangle of blue light rose up from the ground.

  Nameless didn’t even look up. “Think I’ll wait here.”

  “But the Perfect Peak…” Shadrak said. “You said you needed feeding.”

  Nameless let out a long, world-weary sigh. “What’s the point? I’m starting to wonder. Wonder if there’s any way back.”

  Shadrak was about to ask, “From what?”, but he already knew the answer. From the massacre at Arx Gravis. From the slaughter of the dwarves. What could he say about that? What could anyone? Truth was, if you took that much blood, there wasn’t any coming back. If you were a Nousian, like Shader, that meant an eternity in the Abyss for your sins; and if you were anything like Shadrak, it meant giving up the world of the normals and steeping yourself deeper and deeper in what you’d become.

  “You gotta face facts, Nameless,” he said. Before he could add, “You shogged up, so now you gotta accept you’re a shogger, same as me,” a cloud of dust on the New Jerusalem road drew his eye.

  “What?” Nameless said.

  Shadrak guessed him to mean, “What facts?”, but he took the opportunity to evade the question. Thing was, he’d already said too much. It was all very well being practical and the like, but past experience had taught him it was better to shut the shog up and let people work things out for themselves. And besides, it wasn’t like Nameless had killed all the dwarfs, was it? Way he saw it, there were still enough of them left for Arx Gravis to go on being called a city.

  “Albert,” he said, standing and visoring his eyes against Raphoe’s glare.

  The two smaller moons were inching into the sky behind her. Out here, in the wilds, they had the feel of predators stalking their larger prey. Raphoe was already at her zenith, peering like a gigantic head above the horizon. A featureless face. A face as lucent as the Archon’s. When she sank back down, as she would in the next few hours, Ennoi and Charos would remain there, two hungry eyes.

  He stood in the entranceway and watched the carriage approach. The driver offered him a two-fingered wave, and Shadrak nodded in return. Joag Berfik was his name; a brainless lump of muscle Albert used as a getaway driver. Never paid to forget a face.

  Ekyls kicked open the carriage door and jumped down. He landed in a crouch, hands curled about his hatchet. Nothing on but deer-hide britches that were more holes than fabric. Anyone else would’ve cut their feet to shreds on the rocky ground, but Ekyls had soles like cured leather. They stank like a week-old carcass, too.

  Albert rolled out next and patted the savage on the shoulder, as if to tell him it was all right to relax now.

  Ekyls stood and folded his arms across his chest. He inclined his head at Shadrak then fixed a poisonous glare on Nameless.

  “How the devil did you get here before us?” Albert said. “And please tell me you’ve not drunk that cognac I gave you. I’m parched, and all the excitement’s gone to my nerves.”

  Drunk it? He had to be kidding. Nothing that came by way of Albert was going to pass Shadrak’s lips. Not ever.

  “Touch it, and I’ll cut your hands off,” he said. It was the expected response.

  “Charming,” Albert said. “Last time I give you anything. Chances of a trip back to Gallia to get some for myself are about as high as Joag’s intellect.”

  “Eh?” Joag said, leaning forward from the driver’s seat.

  “We’re taking the plane ship,” Shadrak said, gesturing with his thumb for the carriage to move off.

  Albert raised an eyebrow. “Anywhere nice?”

  “Not really, but it ain’t like we can go back. Least not for some time.”

  “Queenie’s,” Albert said with a long drawn-out sigh. “Four years of work wasted.”

  “Tell me about it.” Shadrak gave a sharp look at Joag. “Well, go on. What you waiting for? Shog off.”

  “To the city?” Joag said.

  “Like I shogging care. Just go.”

  Joag snapped the reins, and the carriage lurched back toward the road.

  Albert watched it go, as if caught between choices. Finally, he glanced at the brooding dwarf then back at Shadrak.

  “So, what’s he want? Thought he’d moved to Brink.”

  “Money,” Shadrak said. “Well, he did. Now he’ll probably just sit there till the suns come up and cook him.”

  “His choice,” Albert said.

  Ekyls nodded. Veins stood out on his neck, and his muscles were bunched and ready for a fight, as if he saw Nameless as a threat. He’d been the same way with Big Jake when they’d first met. The attitude hadn’t lasted long, though. Thing about Ekyls, he was like an untamed dog. Beat him with a big stick, and he’d be your best friend. How Albert had him so docile, though, was another thing altogether. He wasn’t exactly the stick-wielding kind.

  “You two go inside,” Shadrak said. “I’ll deal with Nameless.”

  Albert held out a hand, and Ekyls took it. The savage’s eyes were wide as plates, and they flicked about like a child’s who was afraid of the dark as they passed through the rent in the air into the metallic corridor beyond.

  “Oh, and Albert,” Shadrak said with a nod to Ekyls. “Give him a room, but no blood, got it. And definitely no shite. Plane ship ain’t cleaning herself like she once did.” The thought occurred to him everything had worked fine until Albert had started using it. If he found out that scut had done something to screw it up, he’d cut his shogging throat.

  A shadow flitted across the face of Raphoe. Shadrak followed its wheeling descent, then lost sight of it as it entered the pall of darkness settling about Nameless. Didn’t take no genius to know what it was, and it came as no surprise when Bird appeared beside the dwarf, draped in his cloak of feathers.

  “He gets this way from time to time,” Shadrak said. He’d seen enough of Nameless’s moods over the past few years. Each time they ran into each other, there were periods of good humor, singing, and bawdy, but always one step behind were the bouts of depression, what Nameless called his “black dog” days.

  Bird ran his eyes over Shadrak, like he was assessing him. It made Shadrak feel uneasy, guilty, even though he’d done nothing. Nothing to Nameless, that was. But Bird didn’t know that, did he? Didn’t know the thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Least not since leaving the city. He wanted to say something, put the freak in his place, but how could he with Nameless so near? Last thing he wanted was to give the game away. What if he had no choice? What if he had to do the Archon’s dirty work for him? When the time came—if it came—it’d be a damned sight easier if the dwarf never suspected, never even saw it coming.

  Bird chewed on his lip then nodded to himself before looking past Shadrak into the plane ship. He let on no sense of being overawed by Gandaw’s technology. If anything, he seemed casually familiar with it.

  “We should take him inside,” Bird said.

  Shadrak bit down on the retort that Bird should sling his hook. Instead, they both helped Nameless to stand. The dwarf cradled his axe like a child might a comfort blanket, and, with Bird on one side, Shadrak on the other, shuffled through the entrance.

  It took an age getting him along the never-ending corridors and into the cubicle that took them to the main level.

  Shadrak found Nameless a cabin and left him there with Bird keeping watch, then he took the route to the supply room the Archon had shown him shortly after their first meeting.

  Thought occurred to him he was being a stupid shogger. What was his problem? If he moved now, did what the Archon wanted, he’d be free once more. But would it be that easy? Nameless might be out of it at the moment, but Bird… Shadrak had already seen what the homunculus could do, up on the rooftop against the psychers. He was an unknown, a random element. That’s why you had to be patient, know exactly what you were up against before you acted. If you acted. If you even wanted to.

  Coming to a T-junction, he consulted the numerals on the lintels and turned right. All those years in Sarum, and he’d been sitting on a goldmine without
having a clue.

  He paused outside a door that would have been invisible to most. With practice, he’d developed the knack of spotting the hairlines of rectangles throughout the plane ship. He ran his fingers lightly down the side of the door, and a panel popped open. A quick tap of numbers, and the door slid into the wall with a hiss.

  Concealed amber lights flickered on and settled into a soft glow. A whirring started up, followed by a loud rushing of air filling the circular chamber. One after another, clear glass plinths rose from the floor and settled at different heights. Well, it wasn’t glass. It was stronger and more pliant, with the texture of drowned flesh.

  The air was still thin as Shadrak entered and broke the surface tension of a plinth, his hand disappearing up to the elbow. He’d seen a farmer do something similar to a cow once. It was a memory he could have done without. The plinth itself remained transparent, the shimmering amber wall clearly visible beyond, and yet Shadrak could no longer see his arm.

  He felt the coarseness of cloth, scrunched a section and pulled it free. There was a plopping sound as his hand came out clutching a black shoulder bag.

  That was new. New and useless. Bullets would have been better, or a new weapon. Besides the pistols, the plinths had given up the long-gun—rifle, the Archon had called it—that had taken out so many targets from a distance. That’s how he should’ve killed Mal Vatès. Would have done, if he’d been given the chance.

  He tossed the bag on the floor and moved to another plinth. This time, he touched something hard and round.

  Using both hands, he scooped out three spheres of darkened glass. Placing them gently on the floor, he reached back inside and felt around until he had twenty of the things, some black, some bottle-green, and others purple.

  His first thought was, what the shog was he going to do with so many of them?—smoke bombs, bangers, sleep globes—but then he clapped eyes on the bag he’d discarded. He picked it up and dropped a globe into it; then another. Odd thing was, there was no clink. He shook the bag, but it was empty. More warily now, he placed another globe inside. This time, with his fingers still on the globe, he felt it touch against the others. When he withdrew his hand, though, the bag was still empty. He gave it a shake. No sound, besides the ruffle of fabric. He upended it, but nothing fell out. When he opened it wide and peered inside, he saw only blackness, the emptiness of the Void. Yet, when he put his hand back inside, he could feel the globes.