The Empire of Ashes (The Draconis Memoria)

by Anthony Ryan

  “Keep playing,” Lizanne told Makario, keen for the distraction. “Please.”

  Makario gave a gracious bow and raised the flute to his lips. Soon the lilting interlude from Illemont’s supposedly lost “Ode to Despair” was drifting across the warship’s pale wake.

  “Have you finished it then?” she asked when the flute fell silent. “Your reconstruction of the great lost work?”

  “I doubt if it can ever be finished. All I can do is record my guess-work and perhaps in time more talented souls will take it further.” He fell silent, face uncharacteristically sombre as he gazed at the following ships.

  “Wishing you’d stayed behind?” Lizanne asked.

  Makario gave a short laugh and shook his head. “We both know I had little choice. The Electress would have settled accounts with me sooner or later. It’s not in her nature to forgive a betrayal. Besides, I always had a yen to see the rest of the world, even if it is about to catch fire.”

  “You never told me how you ended up in Scorazin. Your presence there seemed so incongruous.”

  “I was a thief.” He shrugged. “Thieves go to prison.”

  “Not to Scorazin. Not unless they’ve somehow offended the Emperor.”

  Makario looked at the flute in his hands, slim fingers playing over the keys. “My obsession, as you call it, has always been more of an addiction, and an addict will go to extremes to sate his need. That old student of Illemont I told you about lit a fire in me, a fire that could only be quenched by seeking out everything I could find that the great man had written or touched in his lifetime. Sadly, amassing such a collection requires a great deal of money and my parents had selfishly conspired to ensure I was born poor. My talent brought money in time, and a modicum of fame in certain circles, but it was never enough to quench the fire.

  “It was small things at first, an item of jewellery from a box left carelessly open the evening I had been contracted to play for the amusement of the lady of the house. Then there was a pocket-watch taken from the drawer of a viscount who had probably forgotten how many he owned. Many of the more valuable trinkets were not so easily plucked of course, but my access to the homes of the nobility enabled a first hand reconnaissance before a stealthy night-time intrusion.

  “It transpired I had a facility for climbing; musicians tend to have strong hands and I have always been fairly spry. I found a delightfully awful old reprobate in one of Corvus’s seedier quarters who was more than willing to teach me the finer points of lock picking, as long as I kept him well supplied with ale and opium.

  “Thanks to my new-found skills I soon had sufficient funds for a fine and growing collection of Illemontaria, and a decent fortune to go with it. I also had a name for my larcenous alter ego, the Moonlighter they called me. Corvus society was publicly alarmed and secretly delighted by his exploits. Ladies harboured entirely misplaced fears of being ravished in their own beds and servants were denied their meagre sleep ration to keep armed watch on the great houses lest the Moonlighter come calling. There was a lot of theatre to this, of course. Half the valuables that went missing during this period were never stolen by me, if they were stolen at all. And any family who did fall foul of the Moonlighter’s attentions found their cachet suddenly enhanced, invitations to grand occasions and exclusive dinners would follow. Everyone wanted to hear more about the Moonlighter. There was even a series of vulgar periodicals about him which I fervently hope the Cadre have since seized and burned. The prose was dire and the illustrations terrible, but even the nobility bought them.

  “The wealthy are a strange breed, dear Krista. Like children in many ways with their pettiness and susceptibility to flattery, and there are few creatures in this world more susceptible than a once-handsome man of privilege. Burgrave Erbukan wasn’t a bad man, not really. Just bitter about getting old and fat, and he was far too trusting of the many artistic young men he invited to his home, a home which happened to contain one of the largest collections of original sheet music in the world. He was happy to show it to me, encouraged by an enthusiasm I, for once, didn’t need to fake. The collection had been inherited from his late wife, a woman in whose company he spent as little time as possible. It was clear the old dullard had no notion of what he had. Original handwritten sheets penned by some of the greatest composers who ever lived, and there amongst it all, not even properly catalogued, no less than four previously undiscovered pages from Illemont’s ‘Ode to Despair.’ I had to have them and, once the Moonlighter paid a visit to the Burgrave’s mansion the following night, for one precious week I did.”

  “You should have waited,” Lizanne said, voicing the critique of an experienced burglar. “Your visit was too fresh in his memory, it was inevitable that he would connect you to the theft.”

  Makario voiced a faint laugh. “It was just too tempting, you see. Like dangling a full bottle of best brandy before the eyes of a hopeless drunk. But it was a wonderful week alone with those pages, almost like being in the presence of Illemont’s ghost. I barely rose from the pianola, so lost was I in the music. I’m not claiming it was worth all those years in Scorazin, but it was worth a great deal nonetheless.”

  “The Burgrave was well connected, I assume?”

  “No, but his wife had a smidgen of Imperial blood and some of the other pages I stole had been gifted to her by the Emperor himself. The Moonlighter had offended the Divinity and could no longer be tolerated, however entertaining his skulduggery might be. The Burgrave received a visit from the Cadre, who didn’t take long to piece it all together. I suppose I should be grateful they didn’t amputate my fingers before throwing me into the great smokey pit. But then, I would never have met you, dear Krista, and I feel my life would be much poorer for the omission.”

  “Lizanne,” she corrected. “As I’ve told you many times. My real name is Lizanne.”

  “Oh,” he said with a wistful smile, raising the flute to his lips once more, “you’ll always be Krista to me. It was her who set me free, after all.”

  * * *

  • • •

  She was woken by the ship’s siren sometime around dawn. The signal, two short blasts followed by two long, wasn’t one she had heard often and it took a moment to place it: “vessel in distress sighted.” She dressed quickly and checked that the vials in her Spider were fully loaded with product before strapping it to her wrist. She made her way to the bridge where the duty officer had his glass trained on something about thirty degrees to port. Through the bridge window she could see an ensign haranguing a squad of sailors on the lower deck as they manoeuvred a launch over the side.

  “What is it?” she asked the duty officer, who obligingly handed over his spy-glass. She had no need of Green to make out the target, a bulbous shape silhouetted against the red morning sky, bobbing as it made an irregular but inexorable descent towards the waves. Realisation dawned instantly. This could be only one thing, a thing she had seen the designs for a few months before, and there were very few people capable of constructing it in so short a time.

  “Distance?” she asked the duty officer.

  “Just over a mile,” he replied.

  Lizanne kept the spy-glass to her eye for a moment longer, tracking from the aerostat to the sea then back again as she gauged how long it would be before the craft completed its descent. It was too far, she knew. The launch wouldn’t get there in time.

  “Keep the ship at dead slow,” she told the duty officer, handing back the spy-glass and making for the door. “Steer thirty degrees to port. On my authority if the captain has any questions,” she added before stepping outside.

  Lizanne moved to the walkway in front of the bridge, depressing a button on the Spider to inject a full vial of Green. She took a second to steady herself as the product flooded her system before vaulting over the walkway railing and making her way down the cruiser’s upper works via a series of spectacular leaps before landing next to
the boat party. They had succeeded in getting the boat over the side and lowered so that it bobbed on the swell. The wind was up this morning and the sea choppy, adding yet another level of difficulty to her task.

  “You.” Lizanne pointed to the ensign in charge. “Take the tiller. You and you.” Her finger jabbed at the two burliest sailors in the party. “Get in. The rest of you stand away.”

  She leapt over the side and landed in the middle of the boat where she immediately sat and hefted a pair of oars into the rowlocks. “Hurry up!” she ordered, seeing her three chosen crewmates staring down at her. The ensign reacted first, barking a command at the two sailors who had them following him down the netting on the Profitable’s hull.

  “Don’t bother,” Lizanne told the two sailors as they began hauling the oars into place. “You’ll just upset my rhythm. Ready?” she asked, turning to the ensign who had obediently taken position at the tiller. He gave a tense nod and Lizanne raised the oars. “Hold tight,” she said, and began to row.

  CHAPTER 6

  Clay

  “You have maps?” Kriz’s expression was guarded as she asked the question, and she avoided the hard, inquisitive gaze Hilemore afforded her before moving to where his pack lay in the corner of the captain’s cabin.

  “The southern ice-shelf and the Chokes,” he said, extracting a rolled-up sheet of waxed parchment and laying it out on the desk. “The only one I was likely to need once we disembarked the Superior.”

  Clay watched Kriz survey the map then shake her head. “No. I need a map of . . .” She paused and he knew she had been about to voice a name from her own era. “Arradsia,” she finished, a slight roll to her eyes giving an indication as to what she thought of the continent’s modern-day title.

  The captain’s jaws bunched a little in evident impatience but he said nothing as he opened a desk drawer. “Captain Bledthorne may have been a poor pirate,” Hilemore said, extracting a sheaf of papers, “but he was a decent enough seaman to recognise the value of charts. I suspect he stole most of them. The condition is surprisingly good, something to do with the sterility of the atmosphere I assume.”

  “Freezing temperatures kill most of the corrupting agents in the air,” Kriz said, her attention fixed on the charts as she sorted through them. “Here,” she said, pointing to a small map that Clay recognised as a rendition of south-eastern Arradsia. Although he had little notion of what Kriz intended, he was unsurprised when her finger alighted on a familiar landmark.

  “Krystaline Lake,” he said.

  “My people called it ‘The Divine Mirror.’” A sad smile of recollection played over Kriz’s lips. “On calm nights the surface would reflect the stars almost perfectly. It was a place of pilgrimage during the summer months where the Devos would gather to give thanks to the Benefactors.”

  Hilemore let out a soft grunt, clearly irritated by what must sound to him like gibberish. “And the importance of this place today?” he enquired.

  “There’s something there.” Kriz’s hand went to the small crystal she wore on a chain around her neck, the one with which Zembi had tried to kill her. So far she hadn’t revealed its significance to Clay beyond a single word: memory. “Something important.”

  “Miss,” Hilemore said in a tone of controlled anger, “as previously stated I have no more tolerance for vagary or obfuscation. Speak plainly and tell me exactly what is at Krystaline Lake and why it is so important.”

  Kriz looked at Clay, clearly seeking support, but his own desire for answers was at least a match for the captain’s. “I don’t see any more reason for secrets,” he told her.

  “The knowledge I hold is dangerous,” she said, eyes switching between Clay and Hilemore. “Dangerous to you, your whole civilisation . . .”

  “We have a more pressing danger to deal with,” Hilemore cut in. “As Mr. Torcreek has told you.”

  “The White.” She nodded, closing her eyes, face downcast. “I know, and you are right to fear it. We never dreamed it would be capable of so much . . . hatred.”

  “Then you probably shouldn’t have bred the thing,” Clay said. “But since you did I’d say it’s up to you to put it right.” He tapped a finger to the map. “Let’s start here. There’s an old legend about a marvellous flying treasure ship that came to rest at the bottom of Krystaline Lake. I’m guessing your item of importance has something to do with that.”

  “I assume so, but it wasn’t a ship.” She opened her eyes and Clay noticed her knuckles were now pale on the crystal shard. “It was an aerostat, like the one we used to escape the enclave below. It was stolen by my brother when he made his own escape thousands of years ago.”

  “Your brother?” Clay asked. “You mean one of the other Blood-blessed kids.”

  “Hezkhi.” She nodded. “He grew up to be our best pilot, and probably the most impetuous soul amongst us. I don’t know all of it, not yet.”

  Clay’s hand traced along the chain around his own neck in unconscious mimicry of Kriz, pausing on the vials beneath his shirt. One contained heart-blood, scavenged from the corpse of a slain Black beneath the ice. The other held a small, congealed amount of blood from the diseased White that Kriz had reduced to ash with her bomb-throwing gun. Could save a whole lot of trouble, he thought. One sip could show us the way. He discounted the notion almost instantly, remembering the intense disorientation of his first experience in harnessing the power it held. It seemed to him that a human mind simply wasn’t attuned to perceiving the future and feared for his sanity should he try it again. Added to that was the deep sense of uncertainty it engendered. Once, he would have assumed such a gift would banish all doubts, provide answers to all problems. Instead it only raised endless questions.

  Letting his hand slip from the vials, Clay nodded at the shard in her fist. “I guess that’s got the whole story, huh?”

  “Zembi’s memories,” she said, opening her hand to show them the dagger-like length of crystal. “But I’ll need what’s on the aerostat to access them. Hezkhi escaped the enclave, and whatever killed the others and made Zembi into that . . . thing. That’s what he told me as he lay dying. Hezkhi flew away and he took something with him.” Her fingers traced over the irregular elongated arrow-head form of Krystaline Lake. “There’s another crystal there . . . a black crystal. And if anything can defeat the White, it’s that.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Jack towed them clear of the bergs a day later. Clay could feel the drake’s burgeoning exhaustion as he dragged the Dreadfire out into the Whirls, the broad stretch of water that formed a minor sea between the Chokes and what had been the solid ice-wall of the Shelf.

  Let it go, he told the Blue, standing on the prow as had become his custom over the past few days. He sent an image of a slackened cable along with the thought and Jack immediately opened his jaws. He rolled as the hawser slipped from his mouth, Clay sensing his joy at the release. He could also feel Jack’s hunger, something that had grown to alarming proportions as the voyage through the ice wore on.

  Go, Clay told him, sending images of whales and walruses he had found in Old Jack’s memories. Hunt. Come back when you’re strong.

  Jack lingered on the surface for a moment, his eyes bobbing above the surface. Clay could sense his reluctance to be separated from their connection. Distance don’t matter, Clay assured him, uncertain whether the beast could understand the concept. I’ll hear you however far you go.

  Twin columns of smoke issued from Jack’s nostrils as he grunted in apparent assent before disappearing from view. Clay followed him for a while, sharing the sensations of the hunt as the Blue dived deep, his incredibly sharp ears tuned for any betraying echo that might lead him to prey. Within seconds he had it, a series of faint splashes and muted barks that told of a seal pack several miles east. Clay withdrew his thoughts as Jack sped off in pursuit.

  “We seem to have lost our engine, M
r. Torcreek.”

  Clay turned to find Hilemore and his hulking second in command standing close by. The captain’s demeanour towards him had become less suspiciously judgemental during the voyage, but the Islander’s expression told of an unalloyed mistrust. Such an attitude should have made Clay wary of the man, he was even taller and broader across the shoulders than Cralmoor, another dangerous Islander of Clay’s previous acquaintance. However, he took comfort from the sense that Steelfine was incapable of doing anything unless ordered by his captain.

  “He’s hungry,” Clay replied. “He’ll be back soon enough.”

  “Whilst we drift on the current in the meantime,” Steelfine pointed out.

  “Got an anchor, haven’t you?”

  Clay moved away, ignoring the Islander’s ominous scowl as he descended the steps to the hold. He found Loriabeth at Sigoral’s side, a spot she had rarely strayed from since coming aboard. Clay was relieved to find the Corvantine awake, though his face appeared worryingly gaunt as he drank the thin broth Loriabeth had concocted from the ship’s rapidly dwindling stores.

  “Good to have you back, Lieutenant,” Clay told him, surprised by his own sincerity. The man was a Corvantine Imperial Officer of somewhat duplicitous nature, and therefore technically an enemy. However, Clay knew he and his cousin would most likely have died beneath the ice but for Sigoral’s skill with a carbine. Also, he was a Blood-blessed and therefore too valuable a companion for the trials ahead to allow any lingering resentment.