Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  ‘You don’t have to be alone,’ he said. But he was wrong.

  I pushed the parcel across the table towards him. Indecision warred on Tnota’s face, and then he put a hand over mine.

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘How will I know if you manage it? The plan you’ve given up all these years for?’

  ‘You’ll know,’ I said, turning my hand and pressing his fingers down around the diamonds. ‘Either we’ll all end up drudge, or I’ll succeed. Those are the only two options left.’

  10

  Dawn came. Not a good dawn, not an especially important one, just the rising of the sun against Clada’s blue shimmer. Down in the street I could hear labourers heading out to look for work as the night people crept on back to their slums.

  ‘These are everywhere,’ Tnota said, pushing a piece of paper into my hand. Giralt gave me a more congenial nod than usual. Tnota had clearly shared what I’d told him. I felt glad that his anger towards me had cooled, but it would only take Tnota to refuse to rekindle the flame.

  The likeness of my face was pretty well drawn, though I think they’d made me more handsome and younger than I deserved. The ink was smeared – they’d yanked this off the press fast to get them up around the districts. The poster read, Galharrow, the goblin man! Dangerous! Reward offered for information. Do not approach!

  It had been hastily put together, the type hadn’t been properly aligned well on the blocks, but the message was clear enough. It seemed a lot of trouble to go to on the chance I might have some information about Dantry’s whereabouts. At the bottom of the paper a single line read By order of the Office of Urban Security.

  ‘I have a stronger chin,’ I said, handing the paper back to Tnota. Tnota mimicked the sour grimace my portrait was giving and I couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ he said. ‘If the city’s plastered with these, some gang is going to pick you up even if Urban Security don’t.’

  I agreed with him, and gave Tnota and Giralt directions to a store down on Slack Row and wrote a list of things I needed on the back of the poster. Matchlock balls, a small sack of powder or, better, premade charges if they had them. Two new knives, a soldier’s shovel, two good leather bags. A few other odds and ends, some because they were comforts and some because I needed them.

  When they had gone I stood before the mirror and wondered how old that picture must have been. The artwork might have been years old. They’d got my eyes right, only they’d shaded them dark rather than lit from within. My skin had a hard, oily sheen to it now, like I’d been varnished, threads of black and green running through the veins. The change that had come upon me was something nobody had experienced before, six years spent absorbing the broken energy of the damned lands. I’d never exactly melted hearts, but it would take a twisted witch to find anything appealing about me now.

  My beard was midway down my chest, my hair was long and brittle. Grey had overtaken any pretence at colour, and the pebbled, cracked skin lay across my wrinkles and raven’s feet. I didn’t like what I saw. Nobody wants to age, but I looked a lot older than I felt. I set about removing as much hair and beard as I could. Partway through I wondered whether I was trying to make myself resemble that portrait again, but halfway through the cutting is too late to stop.

  Once I was painted up like a two-mark actor again it was time to run my second errand. I donned my goggles, tipped the hood up over my goblin face. The day was overcast, and rain was threatening. Nobody would question a hurrying traveller without good cause. As I reached for the door handle another coughing fit struck me, left me doubled over. The hand I pressed over my mouth came away streaked with what looked like black syrup, my throat howled as if flayed by vomiting out acid-soaked gravel. I sat back on the bed, spat out more of the shit, waited for it to pass. Whenever I left the Misery, my body started to reject it. In the past it had meant recovery. Now, I’d gone too deep. Pushed too far. I needed to get back into the Misery before being out of it killed me.

  The morning traffic was dying into the miasma of the working day, but somebody had left the phos tubes on, wasting power as they cast the length of the street into dry white light. I kept my eyes away from them. The chance of being noticed was less likely than a freak hurricane blowing in to sweep us all away, but you can’t be too careful.

  ‘Surely there’s time for a drink?’ I heard Nenn whisper, but she wasn’t even there. Spirit of Mercy, I really was imagining things. I reminded myself that I’d been isolated for a long, long time. Now that I was around people again, maybe it would shake some of the ghosts out of my head. That was probably it. I definitely wasn’t losing my mind.

  Scaffolds stood across the damage done to the distant citadel, engineers at work trying to repair the phos tubes that shone their message of COURAGE across the city, trying to reset order against a background of chaos. It was right that they did so. Hope is never broken whilst there is a chance to rebuild.

  I made it over to a narrow-fronted shop in Wicks which sold spinning wheels without anyone trying to arrest or stab me. I squinted through the cloudy windows, saw that the shop seemed quiet, and ducked under the low doorway.

  A young woman glanced up as I entered. She had a babe in a crib beside her as she worked at a spindle, expertly turning a heap of dyed fleece into thread. She looked up at me as though I were some kind of apparition, which given my painted face and absurdly yellow eyes, I may well have seemed. Her eyes dropped down to the hilt poking out from my belt.

  ‘You don’t look the type to be looking for a wheel,’ she said.

  ‘In all honesty, I’m not much of a spinner,’ I admitted. Rows of shelves along the narrow room held a number of wheels of different woods, different constructions. Clever things: wheels, pedals, needles.

  ‘What are you looking for?’

  ‘The woman who owns this shop. Glauda. She around?’

  ‘She was my aunt,’ the woman said. The wheel slowed. ‘She died last winter. A fever. This is my shop now.’

  Bugger.

  ‘My condolences for your loss,’ I said, inclining my head.

  ‘You knew my aunt?’

  ‘We had a business arrangement,’ I said. The young woman frowned. Maybe she figured I was there to give her trouble. If she’d inherited the shop, she’d inherited any debts it carried with it. ‘Glauda used to receive messages for me. I’m not in these parts much and she would keep my letters until I could collect them. You know anything about that?’

  ‘Oh. I see. You’re the captain.’ She looked nervous, but then, I had an unnerving look about me.

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘There was a letter for you. It was some months ago, I’m afraid. With all the clutter of the takeover from my aunt’s business I can’t quite remember what I did with it. I can dig it out for you, though.’

  My heart gave a little surge. I hadn’t heard from Dantry for a long time. We’d agreed not to communicate unless there was something worth saying. If he’d finally sent me something, then he had to have made a breakthrough.

  ‘I’d be obliged. The courier paid you when he delivered it, I take it?’

  ‘He did. Would you mind watching the shop for a moment? I’ll go and find it.’

  She rose and lifted the child from the crib and disappeared through the back curtain. The shop didn’t seem to care whether I was minding it, didn’t seem to notice much about what I was doing at all. I spun a wheel or two, idly, enjoying the fine craftsmanship that let them rotate so cleanly. She must have buried it beneath a stack of paperwork or stuffed it in some secure, forgotten box, she was taking so long.

  Glauda had been a decent woman, but she’d been old and her passing didn’t surprise me. She’d been an inconspicuous, stable fixture in Valengrad through whom Dantry could send me messages without going through the usual channels. A prudent arrangement, given the trouble he’d been caus
ing.

  It occurred to me later than it should have that you don’t need to take a baby with you to find a letter. I pushed through the curtain but there was nobody in the kitchen and the back door hung open. I ran up the stairs but the whole fucking house was empty.

  I’d chosen Glauda because she knew how to mind her own business. Her niece evidently did not.

  I went out the back way. Whoever she’d run to, they’d be coming by road. An alley filled with broken old pieces of wood and lazy snails led through into another that stank of damp. I kicked off a wall and hopped over a six-foot fence, which protested loudly and nearly gave way beneath my weight. I came away with a glove full of splinters and a protest from my back as it mourned my lost youth. There were enough alleys and back turns that I was more confident that I’d soon be lost than I was that anyone would be able to follow me.

  Damn it. Dantry had sent something, and it was long gone.

  Glancing back over your shoulder’s a good habit whether you’re in the Misery, or on supposedly safe ground. When I looked back, I wished that I hadn’t.

  A wispy rope of phos wormed down the alley towards me like an eel, hissing and sparking with golden-blue power. It was time to run.

  I bolted away from the snaking energy, straight into a dead end. I looked back to see the trail of light rounding the corner and swore. I’d never seen phos do this before but I doubted that touching it would be healthy. A weak latch gave in to a good kick and I passed through a backyard into another maze of alleys. A heap of broken old floorboards made a ramp up and over a fence and I cleared it to find myself on a street I didn’t recognise. A few startled folk flinched as I splashed down in a calf-deep puddle.

  Everything seemed calm here, for the few seconds before the fence that I’d jumped detonated outwards into the road with a bang and the worming power flowed out, a long rope that fizzed and glittered. Nothing that I could fight. I ran on. The phos wasn’t fast but it was relentless, following where I went, questing and seeking. People shrieked and cleared out of its way as a dog barked and snapped at it from a safe distance.

  At the corner of Ditch Avenue, a wave of stars flickered across my vision and my head swam. I felt the Misery, out beyond the walls, calling to me. Calling me back? Pain shot down through my legs, my arms, and I staggered against the wall of a tobacconist’s, knocking potted plants from the window ledge. Ignore the pain, ignore the screaming, stiffening muscle. I tried to run on and got three paces before all the strength left me and I went down again.

  Shimmering colour and blinking lights tilted the world. The Misery’s sky-song crashed in my ears as nausea rocked me. The old spear wound, dealt to my leg by a drudge during the Siege of Valengrad, caught hold of the shooting pain and wrapped around it. Scarred magic called to scarred blood and bone.

  I couldn’t outrun the light, not now. I told myself to ignore the pain, that it was just in my mind. Pain only lives in the mind, and sometimes the fight pushes it all out of you and you don’t realise you’re cut and bleeding until it’s over, but this wasn’t one of those times. I looked back and the power was nearly upon me. Years ago I’d tackled Darling magic head-on and it hadn’t killed me. The Misery steeped within me had rejected and deflected the killing spells. I didn’t know whether it would work against this crackling serpent, but I didn’t have much else to try. I summoned the Misery-taint within me, felt for the toxic pollution flowing through my veins, ingrained into my essence over years of consuming the worst that the Misery could offer. A thousand vile meals, burning Misery-flesh forced down my throat with all the nightmares and fevers that brought, and I felt for it now as I faced the burning sorcery.

  Better to face it as it came at me. Down the street, beyond the phos-eel, stood two figures, so obviously out of place that they could only be playing a major part in my imminent demise.

  The smaller of the pair was female, nearly as wide as she was tall, and mostly concealed beneath a long blue cloak. Her hair held as much silver as ash-blond. The hands that protruded from beneath her cloak were gloved, but the glow that emanated from them suggested she was the one sending the light after me. A Spinner is a deadly opponent, but it was the giant beside her that drew my attention.

  I am a big man. Six and a half feet tall, and I’d worked hard to put mass on that height. The black-robed thing that stood alongside the Spinner would have left me in the shade. He was eight feet tall or damn close, and there’s no man that grows that size naturally. The Spinner could have sat a twin atop her shoulders and looked him in the eye. He had a big, bald head and his face bore ritual scarring across his ice-white cheekbones and jaw, but he appeared entirely unarmed. Weaponry probably didn’t matter too much to him. At that size, he was a weapon.

  The Spinner folded her arms across her chest with a look of satisfaction. The giant’s red eyes were disinterested. The light swam through the air towards me and I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Walk with me, Ezabeth,’ I hissed as it struck.

  Sparks showered outwards, away from me, as if the light were a blade and I the grindstone. I felt a coarse vibration within my body, and the light ground to a halt. It began to coil, bunching up on itself as the Spinner focused harder on me and then with a crash of breaking glass, the phos tubes along the road detonated, razor shards showering down on screaming passersby. The light-worm disappeared in a clap of sheet lightning which washed over me like a warm wind. Down the street the Spinner staggered and fell to her knees, her face a show of consternation. There were questions in her eyes. I didn’t feel much inclined to answer them, not unless steel was the answer she was looking for.

  I drew my sword, and that prompted the giant to advance on me. His eyes had a reddish cast to them, but there was an uncaring lack of humanity in them that unsettled me more. Skin as smooth and white as marble, he didn’t look any more human than I did, but no matter how big he’d grown, if he took a sword through the chest then all that impressive size wouldn’t mean a thing. Sometimes big just means an easier target.

  I took a chance and struck in at him, thrusting high for the face, but my leg buckled and dropped my step short, leaving my lunge well out of distance. The giant’s hand snapped forwards and caught my blade, dragging it aside almost contemptuously. I tried to twist it, but his grip was solid and the blade didn’t flinch. I released it and carried on forwards on my screaming leg, delivering a massive right fist to his solar plexus. The giant didn’t flinch as he flung my sword away into the gutter with a clang, and struck out with an open hand. My head snapped around, but I rolled with it. Not my first fistfight. I launched upwards, my fist connecting with the giant’s jaw, but that was a mistake. It was like punching stone. The impact sent a spear of pain down my arm even as I felt my finger bones crack. One last try, and I swung my left fist at a lower, easier target. This time he caught my fist. You can’t catch a fist, especially not one with all my weight behind it. The giant didn’t know that, so did it all the same, his huge hand wrapping around mine and buckling the blow. He twisted my arm, locked the joint out, and then his other hand cut down on my exposed forearm.

  The hard pain of breaking bone roared within me. Before I could recover, his other fist came around to smash into my chest, launching me across the road. I landed badly, felt something nasty crunch in my hip. The giant moved in to stand above me, as unconcerned by my attempts to rise as he had been by my attacks. He placed a foot on my chest and forced me down into the puddle. No emotion. Nothing on his face save maybe an idle curiosity. I thanked my ribs for all the times they had kept my chest intact before and forgave them for their impending failure. But he didn’t strike. Instead he stared down at me with eyes as red as blood. There was no expression in his oversized face, no battle joy, no exultation in the victory. He just kept me pinned there, and waited.

  The Spinner joined us, a cluster of young men in red coats behind her.

  ‘How did you do that?’ she demanded.

/>   ‘Easy,’ I said, though the foot on my chest made speaking difficult. ‘After he hit me, gravity did most of it.’ I spat blood where my teeth had cut the inside of my cheek. It was streaked with black.

  It took her a moment to get the joke.

  ‘How did you nullify the containment spell?’ she demanded.

  It wasn’t a science that I could explain, and I wouldn’t have told her if I could. A face I recognised came to peer down at me. Casso.

  ‘Well done, Spinner Kanalina. You flushed him, just as you said you would.’

  ‘I said I would capture him,’ the Spinner said angrily. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘All’s well that ends well,’ my old jackdaw said cheerfully. ‘Get him up, boys. Time for him to go see the boss. You should have come easy, Captain. I hate to see it come to this, but I did warn you.’

  ‘Fuck you, you jumped-up little shit,’ I spat at him. Childish, maybe, but the anger helped to drive back the pain in my hand, my arm, my hip, my leg. All of me seemed fucking cracked and torn. Casso stared down at me, his cold face unreadable.

  ‘You taught me to make sure that prisoners come quietly,’ he said. ‘Do you remember?’

  He kicked me in the hip, and whatever had been cracked decided it was time to break altogether. I only half caught the shriek, the first half escaping before I controlled it and turned it into a full-body shuddering. Walking was now out of the question, one leg useless and the opposite hip having decided to spend some time apart. It didn’t really matter to Casso, because his men were happy to drag me, and my pained moans didn’t matter to them either.

  11

  They tossed my broken body into a cell beneath the citadel. Dungeons conjure images of darkness, walls slick with growths of slime and the weeping of broken prisoners. This one was clean, neat, dry, and somehow worse. Half of the cell was partitioned behind a series of iron bars. The walls were painted starkly white, and an overly intense phos tube highlighted the stains that wouldn’t scrub clean in a pale, lifeless light.