Blackwing: The Raven's Mark Book One

by Ed McDonald

  No credit, but an enterprising man can make money other ways. We swung over to the Mews, found a half-decent pawn shop and took a loan on a quarter of the value of two of Dantry’s rings. The kid was practically rigid with indignation that he’d be offered such a paltry sum, but it was enough to get us washed, trimmed and to outfit Dantry in last season’s best fashion. He kissed his teeth as he looked at the embroidery running in lines down the sleeves. I reminded him that we had pressing business, and he nodded sombrely. By then I’d realised that getting Ezabeth out wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d thought. Whoever had sent Stannard to end Dantry had also taken precautions against his return.

  Stannard was not acting alone. I’d considered whether he could be marked, turned by the pleasures of a Bride or the promises of the Cult of the Deep, but he was too small a fish. Maybe his hand held the knife but it didn’t provide the will that drove it. That left Prince Herono as our most likely enemy but that made even less sense. She despised the drudge. They’d captured her, subjected her to torture, torn out her eye. She’d led me to a Bride. She had nothing to gain by striking against either the Range or her own kin. But the only other person that could have done this, that could have sent Stannard out into the Misery, was the marshal. We’d had our differences but I loved that old man. I couldn’t believe it of either of them. I rubbed my fingers into my eyes wishing that my problems were the simple kind that could be solved with a nice volley of cannon fire.The fat matron who ran the Maud sat at the desk as though she were waiting for us. Didn’t look surprised when we walked in. She was wearing her Holy Sister’s coif and was flanked by seven orderlies, all young men with hard eyes. They didn’t usually carry clubs, but today they did. Every step of the way we seemed to be behind.

  ‘Good day to you, revered Sister,’ Dantry said politely. ‘I’m here to see my sister. Ezabeth Tanza. I should like to be admitted to her chambers at once.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, my lord,’ the matron said.

  ‘Do you know who I am, Holy Sister?’ Dantry asked. His eyes had narrowed, his voice turned to creamy coldness.

  ‘I do, Count Tanza. But your sister is most unwell. We’ve had to move her to the cells on the lower levels, the better to keep her safe from herself.’

  ‘You put her downstairs?’ I asked, spoke hard. The cudgel men flinched, but they stood with their arms folded, trying to look menacing. They didn’t do a good job of it.

  ‘When she became seriously unwell, she became deranged. Babbled, chewed the bed hangings, tried to perform her light magic on the orderlies. She is most unwell sir, and for her safety and that of our other patients we had no choice but to lock her below.’

  ‘I will see her at once,’ Dantry said. He looked aghast. He was swallowing it like a fish on a line, while I didn’t believe a fucking word of it.

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord, but after the loss of the last Spinner who was here, we have instructions that she is to have no visitors but for our excellent team of physicians. It is a matter of security. Spinner Maldon’s breakout caused so much damage that our instructions relating to any Spinners we admit now come from the citadel.’

  ‘From the marshal?’ I snapped.

  ‘From the Office of Urban Security,’ the sister said. ‘But yes, they ultimately report to the marshal.’

  ‘And yet she wasn’t in the dark cells when I came here a week ago.’

  ‘Her condition deteriorated very quickly,’ the vast woman said. She sounded regretful but I wasn’t buying it. I could smell a lie clear as I could smell the stink of the Misery’s sands leaking from our pores. My hands were starting to shake, and I gripped my belt to steady them.

  ‘This is an outrage!’ Dantry was beginning to shout, but I took him by the arm and led him out. No point in having arguments that can’t be won. A lot of people don’t realise that. They shout and protest so they can claim they gave it their best shot. You don’t have armed men waiting if you aren’t expecting to quarrel, and I was practically growling as we stepped back outside.

  I took a minute to cool off. I could have knocked the orderlies aside, let them feel my frustration, kicked Ezabeth’s cell door down like some fairytale prince. But to what end? Becoming fugitives wasn’t going to get us access to the Engine’s heart. Official channels had to be exhausted before I could allow myself to get creative. For as long as was possible, I had to play by their rules.

  ‘Only one place left to go,’ I said. ‘The citadel. Going to have to go straight for the throat.’

  ‘And if it’s the citadel that’s working against us?’ Dantry suggested. ‘They might just … lock us in a cellar. Or shoot us!’

  ‘Then we die now rather than die later. If the Iron Goat’s selling us down the river then none of this matters anyway.’ Surprise, surprise, a lot of administrative nonsense clogged our path to the marshal. I didn’t have the rank to demand an immediate audience with him, and Dantry wasn’t commissioned so he didn’t have it either. Cream in the blood counted for a lot in society, but when it came to the marshal it didn’t mean shit. Princes bowed to Range Marshal Venzer. They knew who they owed their ongoing survival to. I made it very clear that we would, however, have to see somebody from the Office of Urban Security. I gave my best psychotic murder-lust grin, showed a lot of teeth. It’s the kind of look that gets people wanting to please you, or at least to get away from you. A clerk scuttled off to see who could be found.

  ‘This already feels like a dead end,’ Dantry said as we sat waiting in a pleasantly furnished reception room. Cheap tapestries and old cigar smoke decorated the walls. One of the light tubes was on the blink, buzzing with an irritating whine and flicker. ‘I wish Ezabeth were here,’ he went on. ‘I mean, I know that’s the point, but really, she’d know what to do. Much more decisive than I am. Good in a crisis.’

  ‘That so?’ I said. He smiled weakly. I could see how much the shakes were taking out of him. His hands trembled against the arms of the plush chair.

  We waited an hour, then went to complain that Dantry wasn’t being taken seriously. Complained again forty minutes after that. I had the feeling that, somewhere else, people were sitting in a room arguing about what to do with us. The clock on the wall had ticked around to five when a clerk came in to let us know that Heinrich Adenauer, a senior member of the Office of Urban Security, was coming to see us.

  ‘Prince’s get?’

  ‘Adenauer’s natural born son, I think,’ Dantry said, brightening. ‘I’ve not had the pleasure of meeting him. He will be able to assist us, I’m sure.’

  ‘You think that just because someone’s got cream in their veins that they’re automatically going to help you?’ I said. I cocked an eyebrow at him.

  ‘Regardless of what Ezabeth may be accused of, we are both descended from old bloodlines,’ Dantry said. ‘Good families, you know. There is a code of honour amongst the nobility. While we might vie with one another for business and jostle for position, it is understood that on a personal level we must assist one another.’

  ‘So that you all live a charmed fucking life, that it?’

  ‘I don’t like your tone, captain,’ Dantry said. ‘You show me no respect. I am of the old blood, and titled.’ He stopped short of telling me that I should be using his title. His pride might be feeling poked but even he could see that he needed me.

  Heinrich Adenauer was announced by a clerk. He had a wiry build, devoid of excess flesh. A man who considered putting mere food in his mouth an affront to the refinement of his palate. I figured he wasn’t much younger than Dantry, and he was fully decked out in the most fashionable of absurd courtly attire. His codpiece was hugely exaggerated, the cap on his head lined with precious stones and the fabric of his doublet screamed cost if not taste. The only part of his dress that seemed suited to going outside was his rapier, simple steel, the cup hilt heavily scratched from use. Intense little eyes, and curtai
ns of black hair framed a ratty expression. I’d known a lot of likeable, ugly men, just as many that were handsome shitbags. Heinrich Adenauer would never be the latter and I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be the former either. He brought a couple of noble types in similarly ostentatious dress with him, her in a red silk dress with long boots, the current style, him in a more reserved brown leather waistcoat. I knew their type; professional hangers-on, parasites, the mistletoe of the courtly world.

  ‘Count Tanza. My apologies that you have had to wait,’ Heinrich said in a voice that dripped with insincerity. I could already tell this would not go well, that before the conversation was done I’d be struggling to remember a reason not to lay him out.

  Dantry went straight to it, credit to the man. He made his case with sincerity and a clear, calm voice. Made it plain that he had the legal right to nurse his sister himself.

  ‘What’s more, I must think of the cost to the citadel,’ he said. Go for the purse. Usually a smart way of negotiating. ‘Taking my sister back to our estate, I feel, would be the best course of action for all. It is clear that life on the Range has not suited her.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ Heinrich said in a tone that suggested impudence, ‘would that it were so simple. I’m afraid the risk is too great to allow such a thing. I understand your position, really I do.’ Every word he said dripped with mockery, talking down to the count as though he were a child. Dantry outranked him, but you wouldn’t have known it. ‘Times are hard,’ Heinrich continued. ‘I am aware that you have had some trouble with the banks, and I feel for you. Really, I do. But for now, the Lady Tanza will be better off locked where she cannot … present herself … so brazenly. Best for all of us, don’t you think?’

  ‘No, sir, I most sincerely do not,’ Dantry said. His voice had gone very cold. ‘It is an affront to my honour. To the honour of our house, to have her imprisoned like a common thief. Has there even been a trial?’

  ‘My dear sir, there is no need for a trial! The woman is quite clearly as moonstruck as a …’ Heinrich’s elegance failed as he sought an analogy. He wasn’t quite sneering, wasn’t quite holding it back. He wanted to offend Dantry but was afraid to do so outright. He coughed into his hand, pasted on a lazy, lopsided smile. ‘Well, you know what I mean. She’s perfectly mad.’

  Dantry didn’t see it. He’d turned red as sunset.

  ‘Sir, you walk a fine line,’ Dantry said.

  ‘Speak to someone who isn’t an arsehole,’ I suggested.

  ‘You will watch your tongue!’ Heinrich spat at me. Real indignation flared in his eyes that time. ‘I could have you flogged.’ A prince’s bastard carries a lot of clout but he didn’t understand who I was. I’d been introduced as Dantry’s manservant, not as Blackwing. For now I was content to allow that misconception to continue. The two hangers-on twittered their encouragement, smirking at the notion of seeing a man they didn’t know flogged. The tide flowed favourably for them and they enjoyed its eddies and currents. I ignored them.

  ‘You should watch yours, sir!’ Dantry countered. ‘By the spirits of mercy, you shame your father with this behaviour. I come here to request your simple assistance in extracting a noble lady from a bleak and cruel torment, to allow her to be nursed as her rank demands. As a gentleman, honour obliges you to assist me.’

  Heinrich Adenauer looked at Dantry for longer than was comfortable without speaking. Eventually he reached inside his coat, removed a gold-plated pocket watch and checked the time. Slowly he breathed across the surface, buffed it upon his jacket and returned it to his pocket. The hangers-on were watching him carefully but Adenauer’s bastard turned his attention to the polish of his fingernails.

  ‘I did not wish to say this, Count Tanza, but, alas, I feel I have no option. Your sister offered herself to each and every member of the Maud’s staff, thrusting her naked womanly parts at them and insisting that they take turns fucking her. She would bend over, presenting her naked backside—’

  Part of me wished I’d failed to stop him. I would have valued the resounding crack as Dantry’s open palm belted Heinrich Adenauer across the face. But I’d seen it coming, and I caught Dantry’s wrist before he could strike the blow. Heinrich Adenauer’s eyes narrowed to slits. He almost looked disappointed.

  Guards arrived to escort us out. The meeting was over.

  ‘He baited you into trying that,’ I said as we stood outside, smoking cigars. Dantry sucked on his in rapid, greedy draws, smoking to get his heart back under control.

  ‘I should not have lost control,’ he said, ashamed. ‘But his rudeness was intolerable. The dishonour of such a slur … That insolent little whip! I’ll put a foot of steel through his throat and send him to the hells.’

  ‘Much as I might enjoy watching you duel, that won’t get your sister out of the Maud.’

  Dantry stamped up and down the street muttering furious assertions of intent and thrusting at the air. I let him blow it all out of his system. I was glad that I’d stopped him. I’d duelled a man once, and winning hadn’t made anything better. Dantry wiped his ridiculous hair away from his eyes and came back to me. Slumping down on a step, he asked, ‘You don’t think that there’s any chance? I mean, that she, well, that she … ?’

  ‘I’ll slap you if you swallow any of that bullshit. He was goading you. Wanted you to hit him. Even brought witnesses to make sure it was recorded, although your hand-print on his face would have done the job. Spirits of ire, they really don’t want your sister out of there.’

  ‘But who?’ Dantry said. He looked ill. The after-effects of the Misery and fear for his sister were starting to break him down. ‘Everything she and I have done, we’ve done it for the Alliance. For the greater good. We’re trying to protect Dortmark, don’t they see that?’

  I knocked ash from the end of my cigar. My hand had a really bad shake to it now. Needed to find a new bag of liquorice. A new bag, a new life somewhere maybe. But not while Ezabeth languished in that grim place.

  ‘It’s what Ezabeth’s got figured out. They don’t want it known.’

  They might not want her out, but Crowfoot sure does, I thought. He’d sent me to save Ezabeth at Station Twelve and now wanted me to fish her out of the hole she’d dug for herself. He must want her to complete her work, wherever it led. I wanted her out of there too. She wasn’t a creature of the dark. Made me angry just to imagine her sitting alone in the blackness. It would be enough to drive a sane woman mad, given enough time.

  21

  The ale tasted flat but the mood was flatter. I sat across a forgotten tile board from Tnota, Nenn and a grey-faced count, looking into my ale and saying nothing. What was there left to say? The air hummed with the bitter regret of white-leaf smoke and the odour of abandoned ambitions. I raised my eyes from my cup, looked around the detritus drinking in the Bell. Couldn’t help but feel that we were just numbered amongst them now. I’d always considered myself a cut above; I was a captain, a man of standing, and maybe I’d never managed to get as much cream out of my blood as I’d thought. The clientele were soldiers, and they were ex-soldiers, mercenaries and vagabonds. Most of them were unemployable or they’d have been off at Station Three-Six getting ready to repel the biggest invasion force we’d seen since Nall’s Engine sprang up. They were the leaf addicts, the sick, the lame, the cowards and those simply too stupid to hold a pike in line.

  Like them, I’d failed.

  ‘Do you think Stannard will have made it back to Valengrad by now?’ Nenn asked. Tnota scratched his arse, gave his finger a sniff.

  ‘We had a lead. But maybe – if his navigator was half decent.’

  ‘What happens when he does?’

  It was a good question. Couldn’t help but feel I’d have Herono’s men battering against my door in the morning, some kind of trumped-up charges levelled against me. I’d picked a side and it was losing. If I had made an enemy of a prince then my history
with Venzer wouldn’t protect me, and that was if Venzer was on my side at all. That thought rose and died quickly. I refused to consider the possibility that he was working against me. I’d followed that old man’s lead for twenty years.

  The raven on my arm was blank and dry, scabbed and cracked. I stared at it, willing the bird to break free, to tell me what to do. ‘Get her out’ hadn’t been the clearest of instructions, but if Crowfoot hadn’t meant it seriously he wouldn’t have wasted any of his power to send me the message. He was going to need it all if the Deep Kings made it to the Range.

  ‘Seems to me I’m fucked either way.’

  ‘Tomorrow I shall try again to have her freed,’ Dantry said. His spirits were lower than mud. Couldn’t blame him. We’d been blocked and fucked over at every turn, always a step behind. Our enemy had managed to second-guess the plays we’d make, had always been a move ahead.

  ‘Won’t make any fucking difference, kid,’ I said. ‘Seemed to me they’d have been glad to have your sister off their hands. We played on the legality of her imprisonment, her status as your sister. But that’s not it. And if they thought Ezabeth was a traitor she’d be swinging from Heckle Gate by now. So why isn’t she?’

  ‘It’s not that easy to curdle the cream,’ Nenn said. She shot Dantry a glance that meant she either wanted to kill him or fuck him, or maybe both.

  ‘Count Digada would disagree, but what’s left of him isn’t doing any talking,’ I said. ‘Someone high up has gone to a lot of trouble to silence her without ending her. But why the fuck would they do that?’

  We settled back into an uncomfortable silence. The drinking wasn’t helping my maudlin, but a fish will swim if you throw it back into the water. I thought of Ezabeth pouring her light into me, burning the drunkenness out of me. I was going to an awful lot of effort over a woman I could no longer claim to know. I don’t know what that said about me other than that maybe I’d been lonely a long time and somehow in encountering a spectre from my youth I’d felt a kinship. Didn’t seem to matter that she was a half-crazy bitch, we grasp any branch in a flood.