by Marc Turner
“We need to move,” Noon murmured, crossing to the doorway.
Karmel grunted her agreement. The Chameleons couldn’t stay here now. She clambered upright, staggered. Caval’s hand on her shoulder steadied her, and she looked across to nod her thanks.
Then froze.
Her brother was hunched up against a wound in his right side, his arm held tight to his body. Just winded? No, there was blood on his hand and sleeve. Karmel went cold all over. She didn’t understand. She could still make out the chunk of brick and the Augeran crossbow bolt on the ground. How could the missile have hurt Caval if it had hit the wall?
Unless two bolts had been shot.
Seeing her expression, Caval gave a half smile to say he was all right. Putting a brave face on for Karmel’s benefit? She wanted to ask to see his injury, but Noon was already beckoning to them from beside the doorway. Caval motioned the priestess forward.
She hesitated before joining the Erin Elalese.
Noon peered both ways along the alley before ducking back. He made a series of hand gestures. Karmel had no idea what half of them meant, but she garnered enough from the others to understand there were stone-skins nearby. “How many?” she mouthed, but Noon just shrugged. More gestures. He wanted the Chameleons to make a break south—back toward the tavern—while he covered their retreat. She explored his gaze, wondering if he meant to follow them or simply to hold off the enemy for as long as possible. If playing martyr was in his mind, Karmel wasn’t about to argue. Caval’s well-being was all that mattered to her now, and if abandoning Noon to his fate meant improving her brother’s chances, so be it.
She looked across at Caval. He leaned against the wall, glassy-eyed, but he gave a nod to indicate he was ready.
Just then the shadows in the passage concussed. Screams came from the north, and there was a change in air pressure that made Karmel’s ears pop. The handcart that had blocked her way earlier went flying past, along with the body of a stone-skin, limbs flopping. The clamor was fading when more cries sounded, to the south this time. A whoop and a clatter as of someone rolling down a roof, then a thump as they hit the ground.
Silence.
Footsteps approached, and a figure came into view. At first Karmel thought it was another stone-skin, but Noon lowered his crossbow.
Amerel halted in the doorway and made a sweeping gesture. “Shall we?”
* * *
Galantas watched the crew of the blazing Needle ship hurl themselves shrieking over the rail. The flames had spread across most of the vessel, yet the fire burned fiercest on the quarterdeck in a core of purple-white that seared Galantas’s eyes. He covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, wondering whether to order the retreat. The Needle ship might look a safe distance away, but the Fury’s blayfire-soaked deck didn’t need a naked flame to set it alight—the fumes coming off it could be ignited by heat alone. Galantas had seen it happen two years ago in Colgen when a Londellian ship exploded as it entered the harbor. The Londellians had meant to use it in retaliation for Cleo’s killing of—
A light went off in his head.
He turned to Barnick. “Mage, the Needle ship! Drive it toward the stone-skins!”
Barnick’s eyes glittered with understanding. “A fireship,” he breathed.
A fireship would leave the stone-skins with no good answer. Allowing it to ram their vessels clearly wasn’t an option, yet if one of the Augeran mages threw his will against Barnick’s, that would leave his companions short-handed in their struggle with Malek’s sorcerers.
“Do it fast,” Galantas said. “Don’t give them a chance to react.”
Barnick nodded.
A wave of water-magic roared into life beneath the Needle two-master. It rose into the air and rushed forward. The blaze on its quarterdeck left a glowing trail in the night.
Forty lengths away.
Thirty.
From one of the Augeran vessels a shaft of black sorcery shot out. It struck the fireship’s bow, dissolving the figurehead along with a section of the hull. But the craft continued on its way. Galantas smiled. There was no time for the enemy to sink the vessel before it reached them.
A stone-skin mage must have countered Barnick’s power at that moment, for the wave beneath the fireship started to dwindle. The craft sat down on the sea.
Barnick gritted his teeth. “Got a strong one here.”
“So show him you’re stronger.”
The mage grunted.
The fireship halted twenty lengths from the stone-skins. The glare from its flames illuminated the closest enemy vessels, and the warriors at their rails retreated from the heat. The fireship shivered on the water, waves lapping about it as if in a quickening wind.
Then it began to float back toward Galantas’s fleet.
* * *
Amerel led the party at a run along the alley. Her eyes watered from the blayfire fumes. A left turn, then a right, then left again, not knowing where she was going. Her only thought was to put some distance between herself and the harbor. She passed a deserted watchtower that was nothing more than a platform on stilts. On a corner of the next intersection was a gated compound, the yard of which contained the reconstructed skeleton of some monstrous alien creature. Its shadowy eye sockets seemed to follow Amerel as she dashed past and into the alley beyond the crossroads.
Darkness enveloped her, and she staggered to a halt, a stitch in her side. Her companions drew up round her. She cocked her head to listen for pursuit. Nothing could be heard over the rasp of her own breathing, the muted thrum of fighting at the harbor, the buzz of the flies about her—so thickly clustered she had to cover her mouth to keep from swallowing one.
Then a shout came from behind, a stone’s throw away at most. It was answered by another cry to the south. Augerans calling to each other?
Amerel swore.
“Keep moving,” Noon said.
The Guardian nodded. If they went to ground, maybe their hunters would pass them by, but why take the risk? Better to stay in front and wait for the stone-skins to tire of the pursuit. Before the Rubyholters had attacked, the Augerans had been on the point of pulling out of Bezzle. They weren’t going to delay their withdrawal just to hunt Amerel down.
She pushed herself into motion.
The alley curled to the left. Amerel’s footsteps splashed as if she was running through puddles, and it hadn’t even been raining. Blood, she realized. Trampled into the ground were shirts and trousers, together with the washing lines they’d been hanging from. A cinderhound lapped at the ground, its muzzle stained red. It growled as Amerel approached before backing into a doorway.
A short distance ahead, the alley opened out onto a square.
The Guardian’s steps faltered.
Swarms of flies, piles of corpses. The dead were heaped so high they had toppled over in places, spilling bodies into the blood-soaked pathways that lay between them. Some were bloated with gas. None had been relieved of jewelry or other valuables. And not one was wearing armor. The sight reminded Amerel of the carnage in Cenan ten years ago. There, though, the dead had been hacked or hewed or carved open, whereas here most of the Rubyholters had been dispatched with a blade across the throat. Executed. Murdered. But no, what was she thinking? This couldn’t be murder; this was war. Killing wasn’t murder if you stole the victim’s country while you were at it.
A flock of feeding starbeaks took to the air in a whirlwind of feathers. If Amerel’s hunters hadn’t known before where she was, they would now. She had to press on, but that meant passing between those mountains of flesh. If one shifted at the wrong moment it might bury her completely, and wouldn’t that be a novel way to go? Smothered by the dead. Even the Deliverer hadn’t thought of that one. Along the southern end of the square was a crude gallows. A woman was suspended from it. She hadn’t been hanged by the neck. Instead her arms had been bound behind her back, and she’d been lifted into the air by a rope tied to those bonds until her shoulders cracked from the wei
ght of her own body. To either side were wooden crosses on which seven Rubyholters had been crucified. Perhaps Dresk and Galantas were among them, but Amerel wasn’t minded to look too closely.
Then her breath caught.
One of the victims was a boy, maybe fifteen years old. There was no reason to think it was Talet’s son, and every reason to think it wasn’t: the boy looked nothing like the spy, and he had red hair instead of Talet’s brown. But still the thought would not leave Amerel.
Even it if was the spy’s son, though, what should that matter? She wasn’t the one who’d betrayed him to Hex.
“We should move,” Noon said from behind her.
Ignoring him, Amerel walked toward the boy. Blood pounded behind her eyes. The right side of his face was swollen with bruises, and blood trickled from his mouth where he’d bitten his tongue. Flies crawled over his eyes. Amerel wanted to reach out and lower his eyelids, but she resisted the urge. She felt sick. Her hands were clenched into fists. Why was he here? What had he done to deserve this punishment? What could a child do to warrant it?
And yet hadn’t she killed a boy herself tonight—the one who’d been fed to the creature in the harbor? Oh, she couldn’t have known precisely what his fate would be, but she’d known what the stone-skins did to prisoners. This is different, she thought, and perhaps it was. But not in any way that mattered.
Karmel moved alongside her, her expression pained. Her legs were speckled crimson from the blood they’d splashed through in the alley. “He’s alive,” she said. “His chest is moving.”
Amerel did not respond. If he was alive, he wouldn’t be for long.
Karmel drew a knife.
“What are you doing?” Amerel said.
“Cutting him down. We can’t leave him here.”
“Absolutely. Why take just the boy, though?” The Guardian gestured to the people on the other crosses. “Maybe some of these are alive, too. Maybe we should find a cart, take them all with us.”
Karmel scowled. “We can’t leave him here,” she said again.
Amerel turned her anger on the priestess. “What are you going to do, carry him? Maybe you should save your strength for your brother. Odds are you’ll need to carry him before long.”
Caval’s face was plague-pale, and his hands were bloody where they’d been clutching the wound at his side. The Chameleons exchanged a look. Caval pretended he was fine, and Karmel pretended to believe him. When the priestess turned back to the boy, some of the fire had gone from her expression, but she didn’t back down. “We have to do something.”
“What are you going to do?” Amerel said. “Kill him? Have you ever killed a child before?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
I’ll take that as a no. The Guardian’s voice was flat. “Best leave this kind of work to those whose hands are already stained.”
Karmel looked across at her, her expression warring between relief and disgust. Disgust, really? The woman had the nerve to judge Amerel? You let someone unblock your latrine for you, you didn’t turn your nose up at them afterward. You didn’t disdain them for having the iron to do the jobs you couldn’t.
Eventually it was Karmel who looked away.
Amerel stepped up to the boy. No one could have complained if she’d drawn her sword and put an end to him, but she had no intention of killing him in spite of what she’d said. Instead she laid a hand on his forehead. In Kal Giseng she’d experimented on countless Kalanese under the watchful eye of the soulcaster Thorl, testing the limits of her powers on her victims’ minds. She had learned to use her Will to trap people in unending nightmares until they were driven to madness, to crush their will until they took to their beds and rotted away, to extinguish all conscious thought until they became mindless husks, dead to the world around them. It was this latter knowledge she now used on the boy, robbing him of his pain, his despair, his suffering. With a strong adult subject, the process would have taken bells to complete. The child, though, already had one foot in Shroud’s realm.
Hard to believe she’d found a way to help someone with what she’d learned.
She stepped back, her work complete.
“What did you do?” Karmel asked.
The Guardian did not reply. She strode for the alley on the western side of the square.
* * *
Karmel stumbled along the road, Caval’s arm draped about her shoulders. For the last tenth of a bell she’d been helping her brother walk, but the farther they went, the more she found herself supporting him. Now they weaved along the street like two revelers returning from a night on the bottle, and she staggered to a halt, heaving in breaths. Her clothes were soaked with sweat, her legs burning tired, her head pounding from the knock she’d taken in the yard. Amerel was a dozen paces ahead. Karmel called the Guardian’s name, then hauled Caval to a gate across an arch in the wall to her left. When she pushed on the gate, it dragged across the ground with a squeal.
She found herself in a courtyard. There were closed doors ahead and to either side, a malirange tree in each corner. She guided Caval to the floor beside the gate, and he sat down with his back to a wall. His blood was all over Karmel’s clothes where the two of them had been pressed together—so much blood she wondered if there was any left in him. His eyes were closed, his breathing a rattle. The hopelessness of his condition bore down on Karmel more heavily than his weight had a moment ago.
Amerel entered the courtyard and stood to one side, her gaze moving from the priestess to Caval, then back again. They couldn’t stay here, Karmel knew. Thus far Amerel’s spirit-sight had enabled them to evade the stone-skins that they might otherwise have bumped into. It wouldn’t be long, though, before the enemy noticed Caval’s blood trail. In the alley, Noon used water from his flask to wash some of that blood from the flagstones, but it was an empty gesture. After a heartbeat he abandoned the effort and retreated to the courtyard.
Caval coughed.
“Leave him,” Amerel said to Karmel. “He’s slowed us down enough already.”
The priestess stared at her, disbelieving.
Caval gave a dry chuckle. “Don’t mind me,” he said to the Guardian. “Just talk as if I’m not here.”
Amerel’s gaze didn’t leave Karmel’s. “Either he dies here alone, or he dies with the rest of us a street or two away.”
Beside her Noon made to speak, then changed his mind. He frowned and turned to look out through the gate, his shoulders set.
Karmel found her voice at last. “You can’t leave him,” she said, then realized she’d said the same about the crucified boy. Amerel had warned her then that Caval was fading, but the priestess had refused to believe. Even now she wouldn’t give up. “If we keep going, we might find a healer somewhere.”
“And maybe he’ll come floating down in the arms of your guardian angel.”
“The temple of the White Lady—”
“Was razed to the ground. Take a sniff. You can smell what’s left of its priesthood on the air.”
Karmel groped for a response, but none came. She wanted to shout at Amerel that the Guardian owed Caval for saving her when they first met, but that debt had already been repaid at the harbor. Besides, could the priestess really blame Amerel if she walked away? Karmel herself had been ready to abandon Noon not quarter of a bell ago.
She hated Amerel at that moment. But even more she hated that the Guardian was right. There was no way they would make it to the boneyard with Caval. More importantly, there was no way back for her brother from his wound. It was a realization Karmel had been hiding from since he was hit. Hit by a crossbow bolt meant for me.
“If you want to go, go,” she said. “I’m staying.” Then, when the Guardian didn’t move, she added, “But you want the dragon blood, don’t you? That’s the only reason you haven’t abandoned us already.”
Amerel did not deny it. “We can’t let the blood fall into the stone-skins’ hands. You hit three ships tonight. Someone needs to fin
ish the job.”
“Take it, then,” Karmel said. If she’d refused, the Guardian would just have taken it anyway.
Noon rooted through Caval’s pack. He withdrew the flask and stepped back.
Caval stirred. “She’s right,” he said to Karmel. “You should go. I’ll catch up to you at the boneyard.”
Karmel shook her head, numbed.
“You have to go with them.… You have to go on.”
She sensed a double meaning to his words, but she shook her head again. She couldn’t have left him any more than she could have struggled on farther under his weight.
Amerel watched her for a time, her shattered eyes unblinking. Whatever she was feeling—if indeed she felt anything at all—was hidden from view. Karmel wished she had a fraction of the other woman’s control.
Then for a heartbeat the Guardian’s features shifted, and Karmel caught a glimpse of something new. Pity, she might have said if she didn’t know better.
Amerel turned her face away.
A gesture to Noon, then she strode through the gate and into the night.
* * *
As the fireship drew closer, the vessels in Galantas’s fleet retreated. All except the Fury, of course, because while Barnick was engaged in his struggle with the Augeran mage, he couldn’t also summon a wave to carry the devilship away. Galantas scanned the other Rubyholt ships. Sender’s mercy, did their captains really need a signal to know that their help was required?
“Where are those lanterns?” he shouted to Qinta.
At that moment, the sorcerous wave beneath the fireship reared up tall.
And bore the craft back toward the stone-skin line.
Galantas glanced at Barnick. “Seems our mages have finally woken up,” he said.
Barnick nodded. “About time.”
Beyond the islets, Malek’s sorcerers were gaining control of the waters between the fleets. Waves buffeted the four Augeran vessels, driving them toward the rocks. And all the while, the fireship was getting nearer. Higher and higher it rose as each mage in Galantas’s fleet added his will to Barnick’s. The sight sent a tingle through Galantas, for it was a reminder of the power the Islanders would wield if they acted together.