Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  Lately my life seemed to have become a series of encounters with underlings, trying to get through to see someone of importance, but the reception clerk was surprisingly helpful. He buzzed a short-range communicator and after he’d tapped out a message, a bell rang and a man came to collect me.

  ‘Leave your swords at the desk,’ the man said. He was neither as tall nor as broad as me and was even older, but he still had a tough, life-bitten look about him. His scalp was razored smooth but his moustache curled outwards like the horns of a steer. The fingers that took my sword belt and dirk were thick and heavy. I fancied he had the look of a butcher, or a bulldog. He wore a uniform, slashed to show the blue silk lining and bearing the word ‘Stannard’ across the left breast, which I guessed was his name.

  ‘Follow me and don’t touch a thing, there’s a good chap,’ he said, and led me into the mill. It would have been a mistake to take his politeness to mean he’d made a request rather than given an order.

  The main workshop floor was crowded with machinery, but few people. The room itself was bigger than any banqueting hall I’d ever been in, at least two hundred paces long and half as wide. There was no light save for that coming from the moons. Row upon row of phos looms sat beneath chimneys, within which huge focusing lenses directed the moonlight down towards the looms, leaving the entire vast work floor shadowed and half dark.

  ‘Where are all the workers?’ I asked. My voice sounded tinny against the machinery.

  ‘Got eyes, don’t you? Look around,’ Stannard grunted. Walked on.

  Talents, weakly gifted Spinners, worked the looms. They wore heavy, many-lensed goggles, the better to see the colours of light they wanted to draw from the air. Within the looms they plucked at the air as though playing an invisible harp, drawing threads of coloured light towards battery coils on either side. They worked intently, steadily and methodically, separating red from blue, gold from white. It was not a flashy form of magic, and I’d seen it done before, but there was still something faintly enchanting about the glowing threads they drew from nothing. This was the source of power for the light tubes that illuminated Valengrad, the communicators that tapped messages to the Range stations. Even the big communal ovens in Mews had a spark powered by the phos being harvested here. But it wasn’t for the ovens that I’d come.

  We passed between the Talents as unnoticed as ghosts. They were intent on their work, never glancing away from the living phos around their fingers. None of them were older than thirty. The ability usually manifested around the age of twenty and the mill took its toll. A man can only stare into the light for so long before he breaks. Every Talent bore some kind of scarring, usually on the fingers or the palms, though some were more seriously disfigured. The first discovery of their ability, the radiance, was seldom kind. Scars didn’t bother me. I’d seen enough of those in my time.

  Four out of every five looms sat empty. I didn’t like it. Uneasy ghost-fingers crawled along my spine.

  The workroom was nearly silent save for the occasional clank or click as a wheel was turned or a new battery coil plugged in at the loom. Stannard led me between machines and as we passed I ran a finger across the gears. The dust had settled on them a while back, and some had tarpaulins thrown across them. Here, so close to Nall’s Engine’s heart, the workers should have been at their most numerous. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘This is Prince Herono’s office,’ Stannard told me. A similarly aged man stood outside, a broad-bladed cutlass on his belt, a guard. ‘You do anything makes us think you’re a threat, we’ll cut you apart faster than a hog on feast day. You understand? Anything at all. Bad words, bad attitude, bad moves.’

  ‘I’m terrified,’ I said drily. ‘I guess you boys were part of Herono’s Blue Brigade back before she got taken. This your reward for those years of service? Playing doorman?’

  ‘Always an honour to serve the prince,’ Stannard said, narrowing his eyes. He thought he was a tough guy, only I was bigger than him, and he didn’t like it. ‘And wouldn’t be a pain to send you on to the hells neither, so watch your step and your mouth. Got that straight, old boy?’

  ‘Sounds fair,’ I agreed. Truth be told, I was glad she had servants this loyal. Of all the cream in Valengrad, she was the only one with a real sack of guts. I walked into the office of a living legend.

  The walls were dark wood panels behind suits of polished armour. They dwarfed the shrivelled wasp of a woman sitting behind the vast desk. A hard, narrow face with sunken cheeks and the lines of fifty years looked out over a collar of silk and ruffles. Her single eye was bright and fixed on me, the snarled twist of flesh in the second socket seeing nothing. Scars lay across her face like fallen leaves, some deep, some shallow. The drudge had made something of a mess of her but she was smiling when I walked in. Neither the Blackwing name nor my iron seal would intimidate her. My licence enabled me to root out sympathisers and malcontents amongst the general population, but even a Blackwing agent bowed before a prince.

  ‘Your grace,’ I said, bowing low. ‘Thank you for the audience.’

  ‘No need to fawn, Captain Galharrow. We’re both agents of the populace, after all. Will you sit?’

  I took a high-backed chair across the desk from the prince. The desk was a huge thing, a near immovable block of wood cut from some immense tree. Ancestors glared down at me from oil portraits across the walls.

  ‘I have been expecting you,’ she said. She took a canvas bag from a purse and threw it across the desk to land with a hard, coin-filled clink on my side. ‘I am not one for barter and bargains. I think you will find that I have been generous.’

  I’d come here to enquire about her Talents getting turned against us by the Deep Kings. I’d expected denial, outrage, cursing. I sure as the hells hadn’t expected a bribe.

  ‘I like silver as much as the next man,’ I said, ‘but what are you trying to buy here, your grace?’

  ‘Buy? I don’t need to buy anything from you, Galharrow,’ Herono said. She seemed to enjoy twisting my name and her one eye twinkled with amusement. ‘This is payment for the service you performed for my cousin.’

  ‘Your cousin?’

  ‘Second cousin, really. Lady Tanza. She informed me that you returned her safely to us.’

  I hadn’t known that Ezabeth was related to Prince Herono, however distant the relationship. Curious that my parents had never told me that. Maybe they’d wanted to see how we matched without political connections getting in the way.

  ‘Where is she now, your grace?’

  ‘Her brother, Count Dantry, has a small property in town. I had assumed that you would be seeking compensation for bringing her back safely.’

  ‘No, your grace. I’m not here for money—’ I said. But I didn’t pass it back.

  ‘And here I’d heard that there’s no job you won’t take if the money’s good. No, don’t be insulted. Money is the grease that oils the cogs of the world. It’s men like you that keep things turning. Take it anyway, a token of my thanks. Ezabeth is a strange woman, but I am glad that she survived the ordeal. So, if you didn’t come for payment, then what can I do for you?’

  This was going to be difficult.

  ‘I’m here on Blackwing business. I tracked two sympathisers into the Misery. One of them was a Talent, worked at your mill. Name was Lesse. You know her?’

  Herono shook her head.

  ‘It rings no bells with me, but I probably don’t know half the Talents working the looms right now. They transfer in and transfer out.’ She activated her communicator, asked the clerk to send someone through.

  ‘Not a lot of them working tonight,’ I said.

  ‘There is a surplus of phos in storage right now, more than Valengrad needs.’

  ‘Doesn’t the law require all low-grade Spinners to work as mill Talents?’ I didn’t make it an accusation, but Herono’s single eye narrowed. ‘Forgive me,
your grace, but there’s a lot of empty seats out there. I’m no engineer but even I know that Nall’s Engine needs a constant supply of light to keep operational. Seems to me you should have a body at every one of those looms, especially on a night when all three moons are ascending.’

  ‘Captain, not only do I run the largest mill in Valengrad and three others around Heirengrad, I am a chief councillor for the Order of Aetherial Engineers. Nall’s Engine is in part my responsibility. Do not concern yourself with it.’

  ‘Is the marshal aware that most of the mill is dark?’ I pressed.

  ‘You try my patience, captain. I do not tell you how to run men down in the Misery, and neither do I need to be questioned on the running of my mill. Should I explain to you why the moons’ alignment is causing poor refraction tonight? Perhaps if you have time you can undertake an advanced degree in lunarism and we can compare strategies. But until you have my expertise, I do not answer to you. Few still living have given as much to Dortmark as I.’ She placed a fingertip into the empty hollow where her eye used to be. ‘You may trust me when I say that I grasp the full importance of supplying the Engine.’

  I was not deterred.

  ‘I don’t doubt your resolve, your grace. But at Station Twelve they were running at half power and the mill is half empty,’ I said. ‘Why are the stations underpowered if Valengrad has a surplus?’

  Herono frowned.

  ‘Ezabeth said the same and you are right. It does warrant further investigation.’

  A clerk appeared with a ledger.

  ‘Do we employ a Talent here by the name of Lesse?’ Herono asked.

  ‘We did, your grace. She left your employ nearly a year ago. I believe that she was transferred to a mill in Lennisgrad.’ The prince nodded, the clerk disappeared.

  ‘Have many Talents left your employ in the last year?’ I asked.

  ‘As you say, Talents are required by law to work at mills. Nall’s Engine must be fed, and it is voracious. But it’s not easy for any of us, looking at that broken sky every day, hearing the scowls and screams of the Misery. It reminds us that we’re all mortal, that there are things out there and beyond that seek to destroy us. Talents often transfer away, to other mills.’

  ‘Lesse didn’t get far,’ I said. ‘She headed straight into the Misery and whatever information she was taking out there she took to her grave, but what I want to know is how she and her man got recruited. If there’s a Bride in the city I want its head on a spike. If there are silver-tongues in the taverns, I want them hanging from Heckle Gate. And if they’re getting to your Talents then the corruption is spreading unchecked.’

  The air between us had grown black and hard. I wasn’t accusing her of anything, but the inference was clear enough. She took a slow breath, then relaxed.

  ‘I shall make enquiries, captain,’ Herono said. ‘I am as invested as you are in the defence of the Range. I know the price we would all pay if the drudge were to prevail.’

  Her glare dared me to argue. I didn’t. Herono had fought the drudge for a decade, leading her fabled Blue Brigade in cavalry actions deep into the Misery, cutting down enemy patrols and destroying their attempts to erect outposts. Then came a day when the Blue Brigade fell, the men were slaughtered in the ambush and Herono captured. The torture she suffered took her eye and crippled her leg. The story of her escape was told over tavern tables across the states.

  ‘My thanks, your grace. I’ll leave an address with your clerk. If any further information comes your way, I’d like to hear it,’ I said. ‘One other thing,’ I said as I opened the door, ‘Gleck Maldon served with the Blue Brigade for a time, didn’t he?’

  Herono nodded sadly. ‘Gleck Maldon was a good man, and a brilliant Spinner. You and he were close, I understand.’

  ‘Heard anything of him since he broke out of the Maud?’

  ‘I wish that I had. It’s a tragedy when a Spinner loses their mind. Especially one as talented as Gleck, but he always did like to push the boundaries.’

  There was truth in that. I bowed, turned to go.

  ‘Captain? I’ve always wondered. Marshal Venzer would gladly welcome you back as an officer, yet you reject the offer. Why choose this meagre existence, hunting bounties out in the muck?’

  I didn’t look back, but I paused in the doorway. Didn’t have an answer for her.

  ‘Good night, your grace.’

  Stannard accompanied me back across the mill’s work floor.

  ‘If you think of coming here aggravating the prince again, my advice would be to think better of it. She has enough enemies out in the Misery,’ the stocky old veteran said as the receptionist handed back my sword. Not exactly a threat, not exactly anything else either.

  ‘Just a concerned citizen doing his part,’ I said. I gave him a lazy smile, the kind that irritates the hell out of the unimaginative.

  ‘Maybe you don’t want to be so concerned. We veterans get mighty protective when it comes to our prince. You come poking around trying to stir up dirt, you won’t see us coming. Do we have an understanding, old boy?’

  I don’t waste words on idiots. And we didn’t.

  7

  Three hours after dawn I headed out to Willows, a false place full of false people. I visited the barbershop for a pretence at respectability before I crossed the artificial moat surrounding the enclave of Valengrad’s ever-changing stock of nobility. Willows’ boulevards were wide enough for a trio of carriages to pass, well swept and free of wild pigs and stray dogs. A man in smart livery moved down the road with a hand barrow and a spade, scooping up horse manure. Out in Willows even the shit shovellers looked the part.

  Count Tanza’s residence was a monstrosity of unnecessary buttresses and over-tended rose gardens. A fraught-looking butler saw me inside and asked whether he could take my sword. I said he didn’t need to, but he cleared his throat and with a look made it clear that he wasn’t going anywhere until it was in his possession. I wasn’t sure what exactly I thought I was doing, paying a call on a count’s sister, but I figured she owed me. She owed me for keeping her alive, she owed me because Nenn had taken a gut wound protecting her, and she owed me because she’d disappeared without a word twenty years ago and I should have been worth more to her than that. Should have been, but probably wasn’t.

  ‘I asked if she’d see you, but she didn’t seem to hear me.’ The butler looked like he was having a bad day, sweat stains around his collar and beneath his arms. ‘If I’m honest, sir, I don’t think she’s very well. Perhaps you can persuade her to see a physician?’

  I had thought to find her abed, pale and possibly dying, but a night in an actual bed seemed to have done her some good. The dining room would have seated twenty-four people on each side of the table, maybe thirty if they were prepared to bump elbows. The walls sported portraits of broody ancestors in the frill-necked fashions of the past, while the phos lights were mounted in elaborate black iron chandeliers, suspended from the high ceiling. Glass panes were set into the ceiling to allow moonlight to filter down. Ezabeth sat directly beneath one of them, intent on a mess of papers strewn across the table. She wore a long white gown, golden brocade flowers glimmering across its surface, but still wore the same summer-blue hood and veil. Beneath the papers I saw the remains of a large breakfast – bones, rinds and crusts.

  ‘It’s good to see you up and about, lady,’ I said, trying not to sound bitter. ‘When you disappeared I feared for your safety.’

  Ezabeth looked up at me, knuckled at her eye. I saw then that she was maimed, missing the fourth and fifth fingers of that hand. Must have been an old injury. Strange that I’d not noticed it in all the ride to Valengrad. I found it hard to focus on.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose you would have.’

  Her eyes moved back to the papers on the table. I saw that there were lunar charts amongst them, some of them apparently torn from book
s. Mathematical calculations covered the pages, graphs and diagrams. A lot more complex than the little lunarism I’d studied at the university. I waited for her to say something else. Maybe to thank me for saving her life. Maybe to say that since we were no longer in mortal peril perhaps we should talk. She did neither. She seemed to have forgotten me.

  ‘May I offer my thanks? For what you did, back at Station Twelve,’ I found myself saying.

  ‘What I did was idiotic,’ she said without looking up. Her tone was flinty.

  ‘You saved us,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt the commander shares your appreciation,’ she said. She sat back in her chair, brushed her papers aside, sending a few sheets fluttering down to the floor. ‘It’s no use. I can’t do it. I don’t know enough without his papers, and they burned. So what am I to do now? Do you know? Do you?’

  She stared at me intently, big eyes wide, full of passion. For a moment I wondered whether her spinning had driven her out of her mind. I’d never known anyone do anything like she had back at Twelve. Never even heard of it. If it hadn’t driven her crazy then it probably should have.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you don’t,’ she said, attention immediately flitting back to the paperwork. She picked up an astronomical chart and held it up. ‘I don’t either, and I’m an expert. The expert. And I had his papers, and now they’re all ash and I didn’t even understand them when I had them. Where does that leave us?’

  ‘That makes nothing clearer to me,’ I said. I took a seat opposite her. She didn’t seem to notice. She picked up a quill pen, dipped it in ink and began writing messily. Her hand left black ink smears across the page. There was something sad about the frantic urgency she wrote with.

  ‘What papers were burned, lady?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s what they all want to know,’ she said. ‘It’s what the Darling was after. I can’t tell you of course. Can’t tell anybody yet. Don’t want to make a fuss and a panic if I’m wrong. But I’m not wrong.’