Crowfall

by Ed McDonald

  ‘But the theory is sound? It can be done, if we have enough power?’

  ‘Providing that Taran was right, then yes. The theory has always been sound.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘So imagine that we had a hundred Nall’s Engines. All their backlashes going back on each other. Would that work?’

  ‘It might,’ Dantry said. ‘But there’s not enough power to do that in all the states.’

  My smile cracked the heavy paint on my face.

  ‘Not yet.’

  22

  Nenn and Marshal Venzer had never met when they were alive, but they sat opposite each other playing, somehow, two entirely different games that bled into one. Nenn was playing tiles, which she’d not been especially good at, but she had been excellent at cheating, so she’d won more often than not anyway. Marshal Venzer was playing a game called Stop, which was only popular amongst the cream, in part because it took three years to learn the most basic rules, and the rulebook was only sold at Lennisgrad University. As far as I could tell, Venzer had successfully stacked his stones around the centre of the board, while Nenn had at least three tiles resting on her knee beneath the table so it was anyone’s guess who was going to win. Nenn was drunk, but Venzer had a noose around his neck so that seemed pretty even too.

  ‘Ryhalt. Ryhalt!’

  I blinked back and Valiya had my attention again. We were back at her place. Dantry and Maldon were moving their bags up to another of the guest rooms. With me and Amaira taking up the better ones, space was tight and they were going to have to share.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Are you even paying attention? Check the list. It’s everything that I think we’ll need.’

  Valiya had regained her composure. She’d thrown herself back into her work as a distraction from the meaningless confusion crawling over her arms. She scratched at them without looking as she pointed at items on the list.

  ‘There’s too much on here,’ I said. ‘I don’t need all that stuff. Why would I need three tents?’

  ‘It’s not just for you,’ she said. ‘You get one. I’ll share with Amaira. Dantry and Maldon can share too, they’ve been rooming together long enough.’

  ‘I’m not sharing with Nenn,’ I said. Valiya’s mouth made a hard, tight line.

  ‘You won’t have to,’ she said gently. ‘Nenn doesn’t need a tent.’

  ‘You can be the one to tell her that,’ I said with a laugh, and then I shook my head. Something was confusing me. The Misery’s draw was growing stronger all the time. I let its presence brush against my mind, but I drew back at the briefest of touches. No point wallowing in it when I couldn’t be out there.

  ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘I don’t need three. Just two. I’ll take Maldon and Dantry, but the rest of you are staying here, where it’s safe.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Valiya said. ‘Don’t be absurd. This is the most important expedition of our lifetimes. Of course we’re going.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You and Amaira have never been out in the Misery. You don’t know what you’re saying. And I want you both here, away from whatever happens.’

  ‘We should be there,’ she said firmly.

  Nenn cackled and placed two of her tiles on top of Venzer’s carefully arrayed stones. They wobbled and fell off. Venzer nodded as though it were a thoughtful, well-played move. His turn was going to take up to thirty minutes. Nenn mimed pouring herself another drink, then sat there not-drinking from the invisible cup in her hand.

  ‘Do you know the story of Captain Narada?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ Valiya said.

  ‘You wouldn’t,’ I agreed. ‘Narada was a Blackwing captain, ninety years ago. Crowfoot gave her the responsibility of deploying the Heart of the Void against the drudge. Nobody knows what happened, and do you know why? Because the weapon was at the epicentre. The Misery was created and everyone within the killing zone burned up, or got twisted into whatever they became. I don’t know what kind of weapon Crowfoot thinks that he can make out of the fiend’s heart, but I have a horrible suspicion that it’s not going to be entirely dissimilar. It worked once for him, didn’t it?’

  Valiya stared at me.

  ‘You believe he’d unleash that again?’ she asked.

  ‘You know he would,’ I said. ‘Any of the Nameless would. These are desperate times. They’ll employ whatever measures they can to ensure they survive.’

  ‘But you’re still going.’ She made it a statement.

  ‘I’ve been preparing for this for six years,’ I said, holding my hand up. The black-veined skin across my knuckles had taken on a rough, pebbled texture. Like a lizard, I thought. I wanted to laugh.

  ‘You’re not well, Ryhalt,’ Valiya said. ‘You need us. Your friends. Whatever happens, we’re going to drive the Deep Kings back again, as we have before.’

  ‘It’s just a cough,’ I said. I felt unusually light of heart, which should probably have told me that something wasn’t quite right. I didn’t feel sick. I felt hungry, and I felt like it was time to get out into the Misery again. I missed my Always House. Those lumps of mutton would be boiling away in the stew and I could dig out that cigarillo from between the floorboards and sit on the porch.

  ‘How much liquorice does one person need?’ Valiya asked.

  ‘We have to get there within eleven days or we’ll get hit by the rain,’ I said. ‘Three roots per day would do most people.’ I refused to acknowledge that they were coming. I could argue the point, but neither Valiya nor Amaira had ever been very good at doing what they were told. Short of tying them up, there wasn’t any way I could stop them. I was suddenly glad that I’d sent Tnota away before he had to make this choice. I’d never have stopped him. Nenn either. I glanced over to where she rocked back on her chair, dancing to a tune that only she could hear to try to distract Venzer from her attempts to slide a tile into a better, illegal, position.

  I knew she wasn’t real. It was just nice to pretend sometimes.

  ‘There’s been an attack on the citadel,’ Valiya said, waking me. ‘They want us right away.’

  ‘An attack? By whom?’

  ‘I don’t know. We need to get over there now.’

  We had our shit together in thirty seconds and were out the door. Two hours before dawn. The phos tubes were mostly dormant and the city was as close to dark as it ever got. We accompanied the citadel sergeant who’d been sent to get us.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Less than an hour ago,’ the sergeant said. ‘Armed men tried to fight their way in. They were stopped.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s a prisoner. He’ll only speak to you.’

  We went in by the main gate. With half the citadel demolished, security was much weaker. I saw flawlessly white-skinned Guardians posted at important doors, standing immobile, red eyes watching. Soldiers were out in force, matchlocks on their shoulders and the whole place was lit up like midday.

  Davandein met us, with Captain North at her side. I wasn’t thrilled to see him.

  ‘What’s the short of it?’

  ‘Ten men tried to break in through the damaged wing,’ she said. ‘Nine armsmen, one sorcerer. We think they were trying to reach the containment chamber where the artefact is being kept.’

  ‘Cultists?’

  ‘That’s what you’re here to tell us.’

  The bodies had been laid out in the courtyard. Heavily armoured men in full harness, packing guns, grenadoes, and keen-edged swords. They were dressed for war, and had brought it against the citadel. I looked down at the first man. His breastplate had been staved in. I could see the maker’s stamp near the armour’s rim, and knew from experience that that steel could have taken my best swing with a sledgehammer and come away only mildly dented. The second man’s head had been removed entirely. The third was missing both of his arms.

>   ‘They didn’t fare so well.’

  ‘The Guardians brought them to heel in a corridor,’ Davandein said. ‘First took down the sorcerer. We have him alive in the grey cells. For now, at least. He’s badly injured.’

  ‘These men aren’t going to do much talking,’ Valiya said. ‘Have you asked the prisoner anything yet?’

  ‘He’ll only talk to you,’ Davandein said. ‘Kanalina has him bound in a light-field. He won’t be able to hurt you. But time is short. We can’t risk getting close enough to tend him, and First got overly enthused and did some damage that isn’t going to heal. We’re on a clock.’

  ‘You notice that these marble things seem to get “overly enthused” whenever there’s violence to be done?’ I asked.

  ‘They’re living weapons like nothing in my arsenal,’ Davandein said. ‘They’re very efficient.’ I grunted at that.

  ‘The difference between the other weapons in your arsenal and these creatures is that you’re in control of the rest of your arsenal,’ I said. ‘Don’t overestimate how much you can rely on these things to do what you want. I’ve learned better than to trust gifts sent by the Nameless.’

  ‘Shallowgrave sent them to serve,’ she said.

  ‘I hope you’re right. Take us to the prisoner.’

  ‘He’s not a pretty sight,’ North said. ‘But I don’t think that he was that pretty before First took a chunk out of him. He’s a freak, and a dangerous one.’

  ‘What class of sorcerer is he?’ Valiya asked.

  ‘We don’t know. He had some killing spells at his disposal and dropped a dozen men before First took him out. Magic bounced off him like it was nothing. Those Marble Guardians are really something, neh?’

  I ignored North because I didn’t like him. I was not built to forgive and forget. It wasn’t just that he’d tried to kill me up at Fortunetown. He’d mistreated Tnota and Giralt too, and even working for the Nameless there are some lines that should never be crossed. For everything that Crowfoot, and to some extent Nall, had put me through over the years, I’d never had to use innocent civilians as bait. When you start hurting your own side, the purpose of having sides at all grows dim. The Lady of Waves was seldom heard from, her mind drifting in slumber through the oceans, but she had just as great a capacity for cruelty as the rest of the Nameless.

  We headed down towards the cells. Davandein stopped at the top of the stairs. She didn’t want to get close to a sorcerer.

  ‘Don’t take any risks, Galharrow,’ she said. ‘I need you when we march out. We all need you. You’re too valuable to lose. If you smell anything that you don’t like, I want you out of there.’

  Her concern was infinitely touching.

  ‘You can fuck off as well,’ I said to North.

  ‘I should hear the interrogation too, neh?’ he said.

  ‘You’ll fuck right off back up the stairs,’ I said. ‘I don’t trust you, North. I don’t like anything about you, and if I’m going to pry information from a sorcerer I sure as shit don’t want you at my back.’

  North’s usual relaxed countenance wavered, and his mouth set in a hard line, but he stopped following me.

  ‘I want you to stay back too,’ I said to Valiya. ‘I can do this alone.’

  ‘I’d rather be there,’ she said.

  ‘And I’d rather you were safe. If I have to worry about you in there with him, then I can’t do my job. I’m better alone.’ I put a hand on her arm and the magic in her skin tingled faintly against my palm. Nearly gone. She was tense, muscles rigid. But my appeal to getting the job done worked, and she relented.

  Spinner Kanalina and First were waiting for me at the entrance to a cell. First had a big white finger in his mouth, worrying away at something lodged between his teeth. His skin was clean, but his black robe was dark and sticky. Kanalina had a heavy canister harness across her shoulders, and light smoked from her skin. She was maintaining her working, a slow, steady expulsion of phos. It would only last until her canisters ran out. The prisoner was on a clock. The Range Officer’s Manual was quite explicit that no enemy sorcerer could be contained without continuous binding. The recommendation was to interrogate and then put them down. Judging by the string of black gristle that First pulled from his teeth, that was likely to be sooner rather than later. He watched me with emotionless, scarlet eyes.

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’ I asked at the door.

  ‘Not much,’ Kanalina said. ‘He’s wrapped up in a phos-matrix. Nothing should get through it. He’s an odd one alright. Whatever I asked him, he demanded to speak to you. And I asked him hard.’

  ‘I bet you did,’ I said. I didn’t like Kanalina. And definitely not First. I bore pretty strong grudges against people that had tried to hurt me.

  I opened the door and stepped inside, quickly closing it behind me.

  ‘Well, well,’ the misshapen lump of charred and twisted flesh hissed from beyond the light-matrix. ‘I didn’t expect you to get here before my body expires. But you always do like to surprise me.’ The mocking tone died away into a bubbling, coughing sound. A double helix of bright gold energy rotated slowly around him, a cage of light.

  I don’t know what I had expected. Some sort of Darling, maybe, or a sorcerer turned to the Cult of the Deep. I had not expected Saravor in person.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you back so soon,’ I said.

  Six years ago, Saravor had nearly unmade Shavada’s Eye in his bid to unleash the power of ten thousand souls and ascend to the power of the Nameless. He’d failed. Nenn had cut his hand away, and the Grandspire had blasted him from the roof in fury of light. No ordinary body could have withstood that power, not even for a moment, but Saravor’s body was anything but normal. He had been freakish before that day, and the light had not left him unscathed.

  He sat slumped up against the corner, and although he was naked, the concept did not seem to have the same meaning that it would to the rest of us. Much of him was blackened and charred, his skin hardened like boiled leather. The stiff plates of burned skin were riven with cracks, through which gleaming, wet, red fluid peeked out. One of his eyes was missing altogether, and the socket it should have inhabited was warped and filled with a fleshy growth. The hand that Nenn had cut from him was still missing, the end raggedly cauterised. A great chunk of flesh had been torn from Saravor’s neck and shoulder. Teeth marks sat raggedly in the skin, meat and white bone exposed. First had been hungry.

  The grey children were missing. When I’d last seen him, some of them had been fused into his body, but they were gone now. Instead he was a living wound, all of him burned and misshapen, but his left foot had just two toes. They were unscathed by the fire, and not his original toes – however original any of his parts had been – but there was an unhealthy greenish tinge where they joined the blackened flesh. He’d tried to rebuild himself, probably many times over the years. And he had failed. Some damage is simply too great to heal.

  Saravor coughed and black-tinged blood ran from his lips.

  ‘I am dying, Galharrow,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I have lost track of the years. How many lives I have lived. What do you think lies for us beyond this life? The welcoming arms of a mothering spirit? It would be a pleasant fantasy to maintain, would it not? That it doesn’t all end when the flesh gives out.’

  I sat down on a stool. He was a dangerous thing, but bound in light and slowly drowning in his own sluggish blood, he wasn’t a threat.

  ‘What did you hope to achieve?’ I asked.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘I told you, at the top of the world: the grey children will not allow Crowfoot to unleash his weapon. He must be stopped before he can destroy everything.’

  ‘Are you them?’ I asked. ‘Are they you?’

  ‘The lines have been blurred for a long time,’ Saravor said. His one eye was
unfocused, the life slowly draining from it. ‘I was a man once. Not this patchwork mess I’ve become. A real man, with a body of his own and a life. But the body fades. They showed me how to grow, to change. To endure. They were merciful, in their way. But they abandoned me in the end. We are not so different, you and I.’

  Saravor reached up to probe the wound, and did not like what he found. The pain would have been unbearable for an ordinary man. His collarbone peeked out at me through the rent flesh.

  ‘We’re nothing like each other,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t kid yourself, Galharrow,’ he said. ‘We’ve both been tools, have we not? Do you really believe that the world is better off in Crowfoot’s hands than in those of the grey children?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Because he put his faith in me. And the children put their faith in you. When you get to the very top, maybe they’re all the same. But it’s the methods that matter.’

  ‘Methods, not results?’ Saravor croaked. ‘Always so fucking sure of yourself. What happens if your mad plan succeeds? A second Heart of the Void in the Misery won’t just tear the sky there. The cracks will widen, spread, flow all the way across the world. Strike a castle wall with one cannonade and the stones crack and crumble. Another volley and it all comes down. Who is the hero then, Galharrow?’

  He chuckled at that and blood ran down his chest.

  ‘The Deep Kings have to be stopped,’ I said. ‘You know what they’re capable of. King Acradius took part of The Sleeper’s power and bound the others beneath him. They love nothing, not even each other.’

  ‘Betrayal?’ Saravor chuckled. It seemed to cost him. ‘You don’t understand, do you, Galharrow? Where is Nall, now? What happened to him? The triple eclipse comes, but do you really think that with so much power on the table, your master is the only one with designs to use it? Cooperating nicely now, aren’t they, the Nameless. Shallowgrave wakes his greatest warriors from a millennium of sleep, the Lady of Waves has risen to take command directly. Crowfall sent his own to get the heart. The sky knows the depth of their treachery, Galharrow. You should ask it sometime.’