Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Winter.’

  I didn’t know if Winter was a friend or not, but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to get me from the white cells into the brown. The woman removed the pins that held the manacles in place, tossed them onto the table, and offered me the bag.

  ‘Put these on.’

  My first change of clothes in however long it had been since they’d thrown me into the glare. Citadel blues, a porter’s uniform. I was surprised that they fit me. Not many clothes do.

  ‘You going to turn your back?’ I asked.

  ‘On you? No. Hurry. We don’t have long.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘You can call me Sang,’ she said, and even if it wasn’t her real name, it was as good as I was going to get. She had no weapons on her. ‘Pull the hat down low and hunch. Look small, if you can.’

  Sang led me out of the cell and through an empty guardroom. Somebody should have been at the desk, checking in anybody that wanted access to the cells. I’d checked in enough prisoners down the years, and even though the guard’s absence helped my escape I wondered how lax the citadel must have become to employ men who’d leave that important post unattended. We exited the detention block into a central courtyard. It was night – a concept that had held little meaning in the white cells – and the phos lights were all turned off. A few technicians with handheld phos globes or oil lamps were checking cables and tubes, looking to see why they were dead. The shadows were deep, the points of light blinding, and nobody paid any attention to a mismatched pair in uniform crossing to another door.

  ‘Through here. To the west wing,’ Sang said.

  ‘There’s no way out this way,’ I told her.

  ‘There is now.’

  She’d brought me out of the cell, so I decided that I could trust her again now. There was nothing for anyone to gain by this ruse if they weren’t trying to help me. Winter would have to be trusted.

  Sang led me down a corridor, past a couple of old men with rolls of copper wire over their shoulders, hurrying towards the lightless yard. They didn’t pay me any attention. I thought that we were heading into a barracks, but then I realised: no. No barracks there anymore.

  We stepped out again into the night. Huge piles of rubble framed a wide stretch of uneven ground, the remnants of what had once been part of the citadel. A bitter, almond odour hit me in a wave. The air was warmer here, too warm, and it reminded me of the heat that rose from the Misery’s sand. Arrayed across the ground were tall, ovular pods, ten feet high, their bumpy surfaces gleaming wetly.

  ‘What are those?’

  ‘Shallowgrave sent them,’ Sang said quietly. ‘They’re supposed to help us.’

  ‘That’s what smashed the citadel?’

  She nodded.

  ‘We go around them.’

  There were twenty of them in four rows of five. They were nearly all identical, and though they were silent and immobile I had the unnerving feeling that they were alive. Only one of them, in the centre, was different. It had split open, the flaccid halves lying where they had fallen.

  ‘What was inside it?’

  ‘The thing that broke you,’ she said. ‘Come on. Don’t linger. They’ll know you’re missing soon.’

  If there were supposed to be any guards around, I didn’t see any sign of them. We hurried on past the pods, and as we left them behind, the warmth faded and the night’s cold came in. We were two streets from the citadel when a siren rose behind us, keening my disappearance. We hastened on, not running but upping to a steady pace. Sang struggled to keep up with my stride.

  ‘Not that way,’ she said.

  ‘I need to get to Pikes.’

  ‘No. Follow me. Your friends are safe.’

  We turned down street after street, all of them as familiar to me as the feet that carried me down them. For a moment I thought Sang was taking me to the old Blackwing office, but we went past it and the building was a merchant house now, a neon sign displaying the traders’ names. I felt a pang of regret that it had become just another house of commerce. I didn’t have any special dislike for traders, I just didn’t have any reason to admire them either. We continued into Nook, a reserved, quiet district that boasted no greater claim than that the people who lived there generally just wanted to be left alone. Sang stopped at a nondescript building, unlocked the door, and showed me in.

  ‘The citadel doesn’t know about this place,’ she said. ‘They won’t find you here.’

  Tnota was waiting for me. I met him in a hug.

  ‘Hells, Ryhalt, but it’s good to see you.’

  ‘You too,’ I said. He’d not gone west, then, but the citadel didn’t have him either. ‘Is Giralt safe?’

  ‘He’s here. Sleeping. I didn’t want to wake him until I was sure.’ He looked me over. ‘You’re different,’ he said.

  ‘Different how?’

  ‘You’re still the colour of a bent penny. But spirits, Ryhalt. You look young again. What did you do?’

  A mirror hung in the hallway. I was frowning as I went to it, but he was right. The lines around my eyes had receded. My cheeks had firmed, losing their sag, and the bags beneath my eyes had smoothed out. I barely recognised the man who stared back. The breaks in my nose had straightened, the grey in my hair was down to a few stray threads. But my eyes – the glow was stronger than ever, the obsidian veins beneath the skin more pronounced. I’d asked the Misery-taint to change me, I’d pushed it to the surface and embraced it, and it had.

  ‘Upstairs,’ Sang said. ‘Winter is waiting for you.’

  I broke my gaze from the stranger in the polished glass. Tnota reached a hand out to touch my arm.

  ‘Ryhalt,’ he said quietly. ‘You should know, before you go up there. It’s her. She’s Winter.’

  Something hard lodged in my throat. It had been obvious, really. Nobody else could have found me in the Misery or pulled off such a quiet, bloodless jailbreak. The level of planning it had taken must have been immense. Orders for each set of guards, delivered nearly simultaneously. Filling all but one cell. Sabotaging the phos lights outside. It had been planned to the last inch. I found that I’d closed my eyes, and opened them slowly. It was time, I supposed. I was ready. But regenerated youth or not, I didn’t want to be seen this way.

  I followed Sang up the stairs. She ushered me in, and shut the door behind me.

  It was an office, as I’d known it would be. Bookshelves lined the walls. Neat, orderly rows of straight-backed books. A pair of tidy desks, holding a globe, a microscope, and other instruments of investigation. The lights were dim, phos tubes barely glowing. And amidst it all, a woman I’d told myself I’d never see again.

  ‘Hello, Ryhalt,’ Valiya said. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  She didn’t look so very different from the day she’d walked away, six years ago. The fire in her hair had turned grey. She was thinner, not much left of her now. But the quiet poise, the calmness with which she stood, hands clasped before her, was all Valiya. Six years. We’d gone our separate ways, and it had been for the best. She was still beautiful.

  There was part of me that wanted to tell her how often I’d thought of her. Some schoolboy part of me that remembered every long night that we’d worked together wanted her to know, right there and then. But I couldn’t find the words, or maybe I didn’t have them inside me.

  ‘Valiya,’ I said. ‘Or Winter, is it now?’

  ‘You may call me Valiya,’ she said. Formal. Distant. She gestured that I should sit. ‘Would you like some tea?’

  I almost laughed. Valiya and her damn, undrinkable tea.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘How have you been?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘I am as I am. There’s always more to be done.’

  ‘It took you a while to get to me.’

  ‘The whit
e cells are unreachable,’ she said, sitting at her desk. ‘They were designed that way.’

  Valiya didn’t smile. There was something else about her that was different. I hadn’t noticed it at first, but I was not the only one to have changed. Her eyes had no pupils, and her irises reflected light like a mirror. She no longer looked quite human; Winter described her well. There was no warmth in her face, not even for an old friend.

  ‘But you reached me.’

  ‘It was a close thing. I couldn’t be sure that my agents would be able to shut the power down on time, and forging the orders took forever. But yes.’

  ‘I should have guessed that Nall would choose you. You were always too clever by half. You’re one of his captains, now?’

  ‘His only captain,’ she said.

  ‘Your eyes—’

  ‘Yours too. Is that really what you want to talk about?’

  I settled down in a chair. The air between us was uncomfortable, and there were questions that I wanted to ask her. Did you marry again? Why did you make a deal? But our old closeness was gone. Lost to choice and time and everything else.

  ‘What happened to the others?’

  ‘Nall didn’t lose any captains. I was the only one from the start. He always preferred to do his own work. I know about Josaf and Linette, though. Nobody knows who killed them, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, but you must assume you are a target.’

  ‘Nall’s dying,’ I said.

  Valiya nodded sadly.

  ‘I know. He reached you then, in the Misery?’

  Rain began to fall. The black rain, a light fall that struck too hard against the window, heavier than water ought to be.

  ‘Most of him. He ran into some gillings.’ I didn’t need to tell her the avatar hadn’t returned. She’d known he wouldn’t when she sent him to find me. ‘The Nameless are broken. The Sleeper may not have risen, but they didn’t win the battle. Nall’s Engine is the only defence we have left, and Shallowgrave trying to bring down the citadel doesn’t help. What happened?’

  Valiya frowned.

  ‘It’s hard to say. There was a flash of green and a bang louder than the sky-fires, and then the citadel’s north wing came down. And the eggs were just there.’

  ‘Eggs?’

  ‘Maybe not the right word for them,’ Valiya said. ‘But one of them hatched. You’ve already met the thing that came out. About eight feet tall, milk-white skin, red-eyed and scarred.’

  ‘We’re acquainted,’ I said, feeling uneasy. I’d wondered what the hell that thing had been. ‘Do you know what they are?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Shallowgrave has sent us the Marble Guard.’

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Then I found a smile cracking my face.

  ‘Great. Maybe the Lady of Waves will send us a battalion of mermaids and a kraken too.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Valiya said. My reflection in her mirror-shine eyes and the set of her lips told me she wasn’t joking. Her new name fit her well. Valiya had always been driven by her work, but there was a coldness to her that made me wonder how deeply the woman I knew was buried. Her captaincy had changed more than just her appearance.

  The Marble Guard were a myth that hailed back to the warrior-heroes of the ancient world, long before there were princes and a republic. When men fought with bronze spears and threw rocks at each other, a deposed king had made a deal with a spirit that had been insulted by the usurper. It gave him twenty warriors, born from the heart of its mountain, warriors that could not be defeated in battle, and with them he retook his kingdom. But the Marble Guard had an insatiable appetite for blood, and he found himself alone in his throne room with his inhuman warriors, his people devoured to sate their thirst. They were a parable, a warning to those that sought power at any cost.

  ‘A children’s fable,’ I said.

  ‘Myths tend to have a basis in truth,’ Valiya said. ‘There’s a god in your arm and you’ve stared into the heart of the Misery. Why not this?’

  ‘As long as they’re on our side, I guess it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Whatever our side is, anymore,’ Valiya said. ‘I worked alongside Davandein for a while. Then, after the Crowfall, she pushed me out. She’s afraid, and instead of accepting my help she drew inwards. I still have some influence, good people in the citadel who take my counsel and slip it into her ear, but she struggles to trust the Nameless, or those that serve them anymore.’

  ‘I don’t blame her.’

  ‘I think that’s why Shallowgrave has sent the Marble Guard. He’s trying to reassert control. Only one of them has hatched from its shell. We don’t know if the others will hatch, or when. They named the one that emerged First, and we expect the rest of them to follow eventually.’

  Ancient warriors sent in our time of need. It was a shame the king’s story hadn’t had a happier ending. First had been a terrible adversary, though. They would be useful when the Deep Kings came. They wouldn’t make the difference, not if Acradius held the power of The Sleeper, but we needed all the help we could get.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ I said.

  Valiya didn’t blink.

  ‘Marshal Davandein is planning to launch an expedition to Adrogorsk. She’s building an army a few miles from the Range, but she’s keeping her motives close to her chest. My spies have learned nothing, which means she hasn’t told anybody. But one of the Lady of Waves’ captains paid her a visit, just before she issued the order.’

  ‘Valiya. I know this is important, but can we take a minute to … It’s been six years—’

  ‘I know what you’re planning to do,’ she said, and that shut me up.

  The rain hissed against the window, steady and relentless.

  ‘You know why I have to do it.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I knew even before Nall did. Your determination to save Ezabeth is written into your skin.’

  Her eyes never left mine. I had imagined this moment over and over, while I was out in the Misery. A reunion, a coming together of two people who’d once had something special and untouched between them. I had never envisaged it like this. Whatever softness had stirred inside me at seeing her again after all this time shifted, cogs and wheels clicking into place to begin turning again. The old flicker of warmth I held for her retreated back into its recess, and the world continued to turn.

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Then you won’t get in my way.’

  On Valiya’s desk, a phos-prism suddenly brightened and began to hum. A communicator. Valiya took hold of a strip of paper that protruded from the box beneath it and slowly drew it out as the tapping arm began to stab at the paper. Scrape. Dot-scrape-dot. Dot-scrape. Dot-scrape-scrape-dot.

  ‘Who is it?’ I asked.

  Dot-scrape-scrape-dot. Dot. Scrape-dot-dot. And then nothing. We waited, but no more came. Not much of a message, but my breath had turned cold in my chest as I worked out its meaning. Valiya’s emotionless eyes stared down at the paper.

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked again.

  ‘Amaira,’ she said.

  Blood slowed, cold in my veins. I closed my eyes, my newfound freedom turning to ashes in my mouth.

  The message had been simple. Trapped.

  14

  Valiya led me up a staircase to a fourth-floor room that smelled of cold machinery and phos. The lights around the ceiling hummed into life. In the centre of the room, four fat metal cylinders the size of beer kegs sat below a pedestal, connected by wires and tubes.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘I need to speak with your master. He can tell us where he sent Amaira.’

  ‘You don’t know where she is?’

  ‘Crowfoot sent her on a mission, and she only uses the communicator to tell me that she’s still alive. You don’t tell people the details of your missions, do you?’

&nbs
p; ‘I guess not. But I can’t just pull him out of my arm.’

  ‘You won’t have to. I can bring him to us.’

  That didn’t sound like a good idea. Valiya went to a heavy safe and turned four dials until they clicked. She took out a cloth-wrapped bundle that sat on a bed of ice and brought it to me.

  ‘Attach the wires on the pedestal to this,’ she said and gave it to me, then turned away and drew up her sleeves. The parcel didn’t have much weight to it so I pulled back the covering and felt a stone lodge in my gut. The cloth was wrapped around the carcass of a hooded raven, a ring of white around its shoulders. It only had one wing. I remembered this bird, though it couldn’t be the same one that had followed me around the Misery.

  ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘It came out of Amaira’s arm. It’s the one that sent her away. I kept it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I thought it would be useful. And now it is. Attach it to the nodes.’

  Atop the pedestal, four thick copper wires arched inwards like the dragon-headed prows of old ships. Each ended with a spring-loaded clip. I wasn’t sure about any of this, but Valiya usually knew what she was doing so I spread the cold, delicate wing and attached it to two of the clips. The others took its feet. The maimed bird looked absurd, spread out over the metal plate. This seemed like a terrible idea, but Amaira’s message had pushed me to take a risk. She’d learned fast, and I’d have backed her against the best warrior the drudge could throw into her path, but it didn’t matter. My girl was in danger.

  ‘I don’t see what this can do.’

  ‘Lady Tanza burned Crowfoot’s avatar out of your arm with phos, during the Siege,’ Valiya said. She didn’t meet my eye, tracing her fingers up and down her own forearm. ‘It gave me this idea. I just had to work out how to do it. The canisters beneath the pedestal will channel the phos into the bird. The carcass is still part of Crowfoot, so the phos magic will alert him to what we’re doing.’

  ‘How can you know it will work?’ And not explode or erupt in a spray of defensive power. Messing with Crowfoot’s simulacrums had not proven sensible in the past.