Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  I wouldn’t have admitted it. Would have kept it to my chest as close as I could. I didn’t want Ezabeth knowing the deals I’d made with that scrap of evil. I don’t believe in good and evil, but if I had, then Saravor was as close to evil as I’d ever encountered. That I’d done business with him didn’t say a whole lot in my favour.

  ‘Captain paid him to save my life,’ Nenn said. She jerked up her shirt, showed the patch of discoloured brown skin that formed part of her abdomen. Her chin jutted proudly. ‘He saved my life and got himself tangled in more debt than he can pay. Needs twenty thousand marks by tomorrow or Saravor isn’t going to be happy. And that don’t go well for nobody.’

  ‘Enough, Nenn,’ I said. Stupid to feel embarrassed, but there it was. ‘What I owe is my business and nobody else’s. I’ve raised fifteen so far,’ I said. ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to this, but I can pawn my armour to make the first payment. I’ll get at least five thousand. It’s old, but it’s worth at least ten.’ I hoped so, anyway.

  ‘Five thousand?’ Ezabeth said. She rose, left the room. When she returned she had writing equipment. ‘I’ll stand you the money,’ she said. ‘Payment in advance for bringing my brother back here. He left me the family seal; there is a bank named Ostkov and Sons. They will give you the money.’

  ‘That fancy bank with the marbles? They’ll sure as the hells be glad to see us,’ Nenn said.

  They weren’t. They were pissed at having to give me anything, but they gave me the money. I was still afloat.

  Not dead yet.

  16

  I sent Nenn to get Tnota ready. They’d meet me at the Bell after I’d made my visit. The pockets of my coat hung heavy with gold and silver. I could hardly believe that I’d managed to get away with this. Somehow Galharrow was going to manage a rare win. Can’t always be losing.

  The Spills was as vile as ever. Ugly, sore-lipped whores called to me from their windows, sagging teets displayed above their stretch marks. Nasty young lads left their shirts open to display the skinny chests and abdomens that they were so proud of, and the pickpocket children hovered like flies around shit. They saw my weapons as a challenge; if they could rob an armed soldier like me they’d be earning themselves some kind of reputation. The first one that tried it was a girl approaching her teens. I hit her hard enough to send her sprawling in the gutter and the rest stayed well clear after that. I pity the young, but when they try to steal from me they force the hand that clubs them.

  One of Saravor’s grey-skinned little child creatures opened the door as usual. I said I’d wait down in the reception room, took a seat on a worn old sofa the colour of bad olives. The whole place smelled damp, like nobody really lived there. I’d read about sea creatures that in part look like plants, luring in their prey. Wouldn’t have surprised me if Saravor’s whole house was a deception, ready to reach out and swallow me.

  The sorcerer appeared. He looked paler, waxier than he had before, or at least the white bits of him did. Hard to see the whole picture with a patchwork man whose flesh ranges the spectrum. He brought a bottle of vodka down with him, as though we were old friends meeting socially. I accepted a small glass none the less.

  ‘You have money for me?’ he said. He sounded amused.

  ‘You ever doubt it?’ I said. I stacked the coins out onto the table, gold and silver in fat, heavy discs. Saravor ran his eyes over it.

  ‘I did, actually,’ he said. He didn’t sound as disappointed as I thought he would. He ran his triple-jointed fingers along the stacks, counting and assessing the value of the marks. When he was happy he summoned one of his dead-eyed children to scoop it into a large sack. Twenty thousand marks is not a fortune, but a regular soldier would take a year to struggle that together. Many men would have killed many other men for less.

  ‘We’re done for now then,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll have your next instalment after I get back. Else it’s a month, right?’

  ‘Back?’ Saravor frowned. ‘I don’t like the sound of that. Where are you going?’

  ‘Got a job in the Misery,’ I said. ‘Trust me, I don’t like it either.’

  ‘But there are skweams out there,’ Saravor said in mock horror. ‘Dulchers. Even the gillings can be lethal, and that’s not to mention this increased activity from the drudge. The ground might just open up and swallow you whole. I find this … bad for my business.’

  ‘Yeah? Well there’s fuck all you can do about it,’ I said. I knocked back the vodka. Hard-hitting stuff. Awful, awful taste, but at least you knew it was doing the job.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ He was frowning. ‘Ryhalt, I enjoy the control that my influence allows me. I fear that if you were to go traipsing off into the Misery I might never see you again. Where then would that leave me?’

  ‘Not my place to care.’ I got up. ‘You got your first payment. I’ll be good for the second just the same. That’s all I came to say.’

  Saravor rose as well. Seven and a half feet tall, he had to stoop to avoid knocking his hairless head on the ceiling. I hate not being the biggest man in a room.

  ‘I have a proposition for you,’ the sorcerer said.

  ‘Not interested.’

  ‘Maybe you will be. I’m prepared to knock fifteen thousand from your debt.’

  OK. Maybe I was interested. My pride warred against the insanity of entering into further deals with the patchwork man.

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘Oh, Ryhalt, so surly! Such a brooder, aren’t you? It’s really very simple. Allow me to put a little glamour upon you, to know where you are – and most notably, if you’re dead – and I’ll trim your debt. Call it insurance. If you die out there on whatever foolish lost cause you think you’re supporting, then I can pursue reparations from your estate.’ He smiled widely at me, displaying his perfect teeth. More rows of them than a human should have.

  ‘Why all the deals?’ I said. ‘Why the money? You don’t need it. You don’t spend it. What the fuck is it you want, making us dance for you?’

  ‘Money turns the earth, as they say, but you’re right. It’s of little importance to me. I don’t even keep it. But I would have thought that you would understand. You being of Blackwing, after all.’

  ‘You’ll have to spell it out for me.’

  ‘What does anybody truly want in life? There is only one currency worth trading in. Control. Power. The farmers try to tame the earth, bend it to their will. The nobility bend the peasants, and in turn are bent to the will of princes. All bow before the Nameless, and even they wrestle against the Deep Kings. And for what? So that they can tell the peasants how to wall their fields and grow their beans? We all desire to control the world around us. I am little different from your master.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You might be emperor of the Spills, but to him you’re of no more importance than a tick. You’re not Nameless.’

  ‘Not yet.’ His teeth gleamed pearlescent.

  ‘That’s what you want? To be like them?’

  Saravor waved the conversation aside. We were back to business.

  ‘Today all I want is to make a deal.’

  Making deals with sorcerers is bad, but when you’re already twisted up in one, how bad can it hurt? I thought about it some. Made my decision.

  ‘Knock off half the debt,’ I said. ‘Half the debt, and you can track me.’

  ‘Let’s be serious,’ Saravor said with his irritating self-assuredness. We haggled, agreed on twenty thousand marks. A lot of money. I accepted.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘We’re done then.’ I got up to leave.

  ‘A moment.’ Saravor smiled. Before I could stop him, he reached out and put one of his long, nobbled fingers against my chest.

  I remember hitting the wall. I remember the intrusion, as though something dark and terrible were working its way down my throat. Maybe I screamed, but nobody would come running towards the dark s
ounds that escaped Saravor’s lair. It entered me somehow, turning from black to tarnished silver as it took form and residence in my chest. In my mind’s eye I saw it as a dragon, silver and serpentine, curled around my heart. Something cold and clear, slumbering but very much alive.

  When I had recovered sufficiently to stand, my vision clearing, I was alone. The door to the street was open, telling me where to go. I staggered upright, unclear as to what had just happened but sure that I had somehow managed to make things very much worse.

  As a Blackwing captain I had the right to ride out into the Misery whenever the need arose. It was a rule made half pointless because anyone could just head a little north or south and then ride into the Misery anyway, and even more pointless because nobody would ride out there unless they were cracked in the head.

  Only one gate leads directly out of Valengrad and into the Misery. The walls of the city are forty feet of packed stone and gravel, built to withstand the power of guns and sorcery. The single passageway through those walls was tight and narrow, barely big enough for a couple of men to ride abreast. It was meant that way. The walls were there to keep the Dhojarans out, not to process traffic. I fretted beside the gate, looking over the provisions saddled up on the rented horses, checking over my kit as we waited for a message from Ezabeth. She wanted to send a letter to her brother, thought she could get it to us before we departed.

  ‘Looking fine today, captain,’ Nenn said. Like me she was wearing half-plate, good armour where it was vital and mobility where it wasn’t. Holsters on our saddles carried poleaxes, blades, matchlocks, ammunition. I was hoping that we wouldn’t need our arsenal, but it isn’t just the drudge in the Misery that require a dose of steel to keep quiet. Wheedle sulked close by, annoyed that he was missing out on a paying job. More greed than common sense in that one.

  Otto Lindrick and his scrappy apprentice appeared along the road, mounted on a pair of donkeys. I frowned and he scowled back at me, hardly surprising given the yellow and purple mess I’d made of his face. At least I’d not ruined any good looks.

  ‘I am come from the Maud,’ he said. ‘I find it hard to believe, but I am told you are to be trusted.’ He scowled as he produced a leather case from within his robe, but held it close to his body.

  ‘That’s for her brother?’ I asked, held out my hand for it.

  ‘Are you truly on her side, captain? You’ve shown me the colour of your fist before. And you were swinging it for the other side.’

  ‘I don’t fly anyone else’s flag. I just care about getting paid, and today she’s paying me.’

  ‘If it’s any consolation, the captain only beats the tar out of people for the money,’ Nenn said. She spat blacksap in his general direction.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ I snapped. Nenn wasn’t always helpful. She took out her jar of blacksap and pointedly stuffed a fresh wad between her teeth.

  Destran whispered something to his master, casting nervous looks in our direction. He was a shifty-looking kid, more of the Spills about him than Willows. His master conferred quietly with him.

  ‘How can I know that you won’t take this missive straight to Prince Herono?’ Lindrick said.

  ‘Can’t prove it,’ I said. ‘But we’re going to fetch Count Dantry Tanza, and our mutual friend told you to give that to me. I can take the message or not. If you don’t want to give it to us, well delivering it isn’t the main purpose of the mission. You can come with us and deliver it yourself if you want. A week in the Misery would do you good. Might shake that body lean.’

  He thought about it for all of two heartbeats, then passed the letter case to the boy, who had the task of delivering it into my hand. He nudged his heels against his donkey’s flanks the moment it was in my hand, glad to be away. I stored the message safely away in my saddle pack. Lindrick stayed to watch us heading out. I ushered Nenn and Tnota to go ahead of me, turned to the engineer.

  ‘For what it’s worth, sorry about your face,’ I said.

  ‘You apologise, but you’d do it again if it served your purpose.’

  ‘I’m a soldier,’ I said. ‘That’s how it works. Look after the girl, if you can. She’s not as strong as she wants you to think.’

  ‘You do her a disservice. I’ve rarely met a woman of such will,’ Lindrick said.

  ‘I know. But she’d have you believe she can go head to head with princes and Kings. She has her limits, just like any of us.’

  ‘And you, captain? What are your limits?’

  I gave him a mirthless grin.

  ‘Usually from wherever I start to the end of the bar.’ I turned my horse to go.

  ‘Captain? Why are you doing this?’

  ‘Getting paid,’ I said.

  ‘And that’s it? You don’t share her vision. Her belief?’ I gave him a long, appraising look. I’d underestimated him before. The whimpering, the cowering, that had been an act. There was something strong inside Otto Lindrick, something like the steel in Ezabeth Tanza’s spine. Part of me wished that I’d not made him my enemy.

  ‘Look after her,’ I said again, and trotted into the darkness of the tunnel.

  17

  The Misery began less than half a mile from Valengrad’s walls. Hadn’t been so close when they made the city, but it grew, like the corruption was some kind of spreading mould. The horses shied and objected as they sensed the unnatural land we were about to enter. We spoke soft words, fed them sugar until they calmed. They could feel the magic in the air, the essence of distortion. It begins as a sensation on the skin, like the dry stretch when you get sunburned. Everything a little too tight, its placement somehow wrong. Then comes the feeling in the throat, the lungs, like your body doesn’t want to breathe Misery air, and a feeling behind your eyes as though what they’re seeing isn’t quite true. There’s nothing like it in all the world that I’ve known, and for that, I thank whatever spirits might give enough fucks to listen.

  The early going was easy, the land having chosen to lie flat and sandy. No plants, no trees, just red-brown sand and clumps of glistening black rock. The stones dotted the landscape like huge lumps of tar. Best not to touch them. Best not to touch anything in the Misery that you don’t have to. Nenn and Tnota said nothing. They’d both ridden the Misery enough times that this wasn’t anything new to them. Tnota kept his eyes mostly skywards, assessing the positioning of the moons against his astrolabe, keeping us on course for Cold’s Crater. The land began to roll, low hills and dips, and the smog and phos lights of Valengrad disappeared from view. Here and there, when the earth fell low, we saw clusters of stone that had once been the walls of some farmstead or maybe even a townhouse. Impossible to know which. They may have travelled a hundred miles since Crowfoot’s weapon cracked the sky and tore the Misery into existence. Hard to judge, the way the earth could shift.

  ‘Why we doing this, captain? Not exactly Blackwing work is it?’ Nenn asked as we passed what looked like a dried-up river bed. No water flowed there now.

  ‘Seemed important,’ I said.

  ‘The fancy skirt. You tapping that?’ Something in her tone warned me to tread sensitively. I didn’t look at her.

  ‘Wouldn’t be your business if I was, Private Nenn.’

  ‘Risking all our necks for a fuck? Seems to me it would be,’ she said.

  ‘You’re risking your necks because you owe me more favours than you owe me beers, and you’d have to buy out a brewery to pay that tab.’

  ‘Hush,’ Tnota said. Trying to act as peacemaker. ‘This is the Misery. Don’t talk unless you have to. No telling what’s listening.’

  It was good advice. Nenn and I are similar in our inability to heed good advice.

  ‘She’s doing something important. I got orders from the top. Not Herono, the real top. You know what Blackwing really is. You’ve hired out to me long enough to know that when the raven caws, we act. This isn’t something I chose
to do.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  ‘Yes.’ I wasn’t.

  ‘Shit,’ Nenn grunted. ‘It’s been years. Thought you were finished with that bastard bird.’

  I kicked my horse ahead to end the conversation. I looked up at the rifts running through the bloody-bruise-coloured sky. Maybe Nenn was right. Maybe I shouldn’t have involved her at all. An intense white-bronze light glowed through the cracks overhead, like some part of the heavens was shining down on us, but I couldn’t have thought of a place heaven would be less likely to glow for than the Misery. As if to punctuate my thoughts, the sky gave one of its great, wounded cries, a soaring, empty song of pain and despair. My master had demanded I do whatever was required to get her free. Eighty years ago he’d unleashed the Heart of the Void here, what used to be territory belonging to the cities of Adrogorsk and Clear. Nobody knew how many thousands of lives he’d sacrificed to drive back the Deep Kings. Some might think the likes of Prince Herono ruthless, but compared to the Nameless she was nothing but a novice. If Crowfoot told me to cross ten oceans to pick a dying flower, I’d have done it.

  Late in the afternoon, distantly to the north-west, I saw something large in the sky. Too distant to make it out beyond the dark of its wings and the long tail trailing behind it. None of us had seen anything like that out here before. We stayed quiet and hoped that it wouldn’t come in our direction. It flew on north and we lost sight of it.

  Rioque, the red moon, began rising just as the sky was growing dark. It never gets fully dark in the Misery even if all of the moons are sleeping. The stark crack-light never fades away, but Rioque cast a gory shine across the red sands. We found a cluster of the black tar-rocks, smoothed the sands down to make something like a sleeping space and divvied up the watches. I drew first, took my ration of rum and a couple of sticks of liquorice and sat watching the land around us. There’s nothing duller than sentry duty in peaceful lands, but in the Misery some of the night creatures will keep you busy. One of the horses alerted me to the approach of a flat, twelve-legged thing, less than a foot high and half that wide, insect feelers tasting the air ahead of it. The eyes were all too human. It scuttled towards where Tnota slept, so I speared it with the butt end of my poleaxe and tossed it some way from our camp. Never saw anything like it before, probably never would again. Took some care to clean the end of my weapon of the treacle-dark stuff that came out of its broken carapace. Knowing that things like that are scuttling around in the dark doesn’t help sleep come easy. When it was my turn to roll under a blanket I lay awake, listening to the things that lurked in the blood and silver sheen of the night.