A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “But the needle did line up with the magic post …” said Sullen thoughtfully, wondering if perhaps Hoartrap had been honest with them before but was now changing his song to some skullduggerous end.

  “Because I set the compass to point toward Jex Toth,” said Hoartrap, confirming that no, the devil-eating dick had been playing them all along. “I knew that’s where we would find Maroto, generally speaking, and when dear Purna informed me you were mounting a search party I didn’t want you wandering off in the wrong direction.”

  “You deceived us into going on a snipe hunt,” said Keun-ju angrily.

  “So you had an adventure,” said Hoartrap with a shrug. “At my age you learn that most quests turn out to be a fowl chase of one feather or another, especially when you’re smack in the middle of—”

  “You lied to Purna, which means you lied to us.” Sullen gripped the haft of the spear made from the bones of a man who never would have stood for such nonsense, planting the base of it in the dirt and leaning forward on his log seat. “You told us the compass would take us to Uncle Craven, but all it was doing was pointing us to a land beyond the Star, a place you knew we’d never reach!”

  “A place where your uncle does indeed await us, my dear boy,” said Hoartrap peevishly, wagging the jaundiced stem of his pipe at Sullen. “And before you get too irate over the gift I gave you not being good enough, let me remind you that that compass was the only reason I was able to find you so quickly, and save the both of you from yet another charming member of your family. And this is the thanks I get?”

  Fired up as Sullen had been just now, he cooled off as soon as he glanced back at the similarly deflated Keun-ju and was reminded of how bad that night had been … and of how much worse it would have ended, if Hoartrap had never given them the compass that he’d used to track their movements. “Yeah, well … what about the magic post? You think that was for real or just some more bullshit?”

  “Oh yes,” began Hoartrap, “who could forget the magic post, save—”

  “Up, magic post!” called Pasha Diggelby, looking over from his work cutting burs out of the thick white coat of the horned wolf that lay convalescing in the weeds a short ways off from the fire. When Hoartrap gave Diggelby one of the withering scowls that had become quite in vogue since the pasha had bested the warlock, the younger man explained, “It’s what Purna used to say, when Sullen and Keun-ju knelt down to pick up the log. Up, magic post! Like, to be funny?”

  “I’m laughing on the inside,” said Hoartrap. “As I was saying, who could forget the wonderful magic post … save for you absentminded heroes who forgot it in a devil-haunted pond. I poked about back there but couldn’t turn it up, otherwise we might have had something more reliable than Ilstrix’s tricks to find Maroto. I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting this Procuress you spoke of, but any witch who’s providing spooky services while also keeping herself outside my notice for however long she’s been in business must be talented indeed. She may well have given you a tool that would take you straight to Maroto … if only you hadn’t lost it, leaving us with only the shaky claims of a dropout apprentice.”

  “No matter your impression of her tricks, as you say, Nemi was able to find me from halfway across the Star and take my mom straight to us,” Sullen pointed out.

  “With the help of Myrkur, apparently,” Diggelby added, throwing an arm around the enormous neck of the dozing horned wolf. Hoartrap had apparently put some sort of bad magic on the animal before coming to terms with Nemi, which explained its freshly bald face—a feature that made the mountainous monster even more intimidating. To everyone but Diggelby, that was, the dotty noble now giving its thickly corded neck a serious rubdown. It flicked an ear as big as a tricorn hat at him, as if the protective pasha were a fly rustling its fur. “Between wolf and witch I have no doubt we will soon be reunited with our friend and officer. When we do discover him, though, I pray we all remember the principle I proved the other night—that neither daggers nor the dark arts are so powerful a weapon as diplomacy, what?”

  “With all due respect, gentlemen!” said Keun-ju, the Immaculate expression one that Ji-hyeon had taught Sullen actually meant with no respect whatsoever. “Finding the missing Captain Maroto once we land on Jex Toth is hardly our most pressing concern. What I wish to know is how we can possibly travel such great distances in so little time. Are you proposing we resort to blackest deviltry?”

  “It’s actually as simple as braiding buttercups in our nose hair, holding hands, and having a good old-fashioned Usban sing-along,” said Hoartrap, idly peeling a strip of skin from a blister on his cheek and dropping it into the bowl of his pipe, where it writhed across the hot ash like the snake that had bit him.

  “Really?” Diggelby asked hopefully, but Sullen wasn’t falling for the Touch’s claim—Hoartrap’s nose produced an overabundance of white hairs, yes, but they weren’t nearly long enough to braid. Sullen wished he’d never gotten close enough to the warlock to notice such things, but like his grandfather always said, wishing was what fishes did after they were already hooked.

  “No,” said Hoartrap, smudging the waxy yellow skin around the edge of the wound on his face until it blended out of sight, like the pasha putting on corpsepaint. “Our Immaculate friend once more proves he is as astute as he is cute. Blackest deviltry is, as always, the best and brightest way forward.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” said Sullen, figuring Hoartrap’s complimenting Keun-ju was probably some backhanded business but still too foggy-headed to figure out how. “But what exactly are we talking here? We’re nowhere near a Gate to take one of your shortcuts through the First Dark, but you’ve obviously got other means of covering a lot of ground. You, uh, know how to fly?”

  “Do I know how to fly?” Hoartrap cocked his head at Sullen as though the Flintlander were a walrus that had learned to parrot human speech. “That’s a very personal sort of question, Sullen, and entirely irrelevant to our conversation. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “It is not ridiculous to ask for more details when you embroil us in your plots,” said Keun-ju, using a stick to roll the roasting kudzu roots around in the coals. They actually didn’t make for bad eating … definitely not good eating, right, but not bad.

  “My plots, are they?” said Hoartrap huffily. “I take my orders from General Ji-hyeon Bong, same as the rest of you, I just happen to be the senior officer of this elite squadron. Even if you don’t like the meal our chef has prepared us, it hardly seems fair to take it out on the cupbearer bringing you your plate.”

  “Now that is what I call a dodge,” said Diggelby, giving Myrkur a final scritch and then brushing himself off. He’d been at it for an hour and not even cleared half of the monster’s vast acreage of fur. “We already know we won’t like the taste of your beans, old beast, so go ahead and spill them already. How do we go from the Haunted Forest to the De-sunken Kingdom in but a twinkling?”

  “By summoning enough devils to carry us through the First Dark, and binding them according to the ancient laws to ensure their loyalty,” said Hoartrap, and from the evil smile on his jacked-up face Sullen had a notion the sorcerer relished looking Diggelby in the eye as he delivered that bit of intelligence. “The actual passage ought to be swift enough, though not as easy as if we had Gates to use. What’s going to take up the lion’s share of our time is acquiring the sacrifices we’ll need to make. You said it was a day’s march back to the last town you passed through, yes?”

  Keun-ju sucked through his teeth and Diggelby staggered back dramatically as though the news were a physical blow, or worse, a critique of his wardrobe, but Sullen had braced himself for something like this. The very first time he had met Hoartrap he’d watched the Touch eat an innocent devil alive, and discovered the next morning that the witch had disappeared entirely, leaving only a scorched and oily stain in the grass. That ill-looking blot on the earth had raised Sullen’s hackles just like the Gates did. There was never any dou
bt that Hoartrap could achieve the seemingly impossible, or that the cost of doing so would involve devils.

  Didn’t mean Sullen had to like it, though, and Sullen felt a powerful need to be away from the smug sorcerer with his foul, flowery pipe smoke and his casual talk of rites profane to all peoples. Sullen leaned into his spear and clambered off the fallen log, waving Keun-ju back down when the Immaculate started to rise as well. Now that he was properly mended, Sullen was about done letting his sweet friend help him out—the witchwoman’s eggy cures had set them both up right, but while Sullen’s wounds were fast healing, Keun-ju’s right arm wasn’t ever coming back. “Suppose I better check on Ma again, see if she’ll talk to me yet.”

  “Mind what I told you about running your mouth around rowan trees,” said Hoartrap, and for the life of him Sullen couldn’t figure out if the Touch actually believed all the ghost stories he’d been spinning or if he was just messing with a Flintland bumpkin. There hadn’t been any rowans back in the Frozen Savannahs. But then even Purna seemed a little awed by the big flowering tree she called a Gate-ash, and the Ugrakari was the least superstitious person he’d ever met.

  “If it’s really dangerous, why’d you tell me to chain her up over there?” said Sullen crossly.

  “Who said they were dangerous?” Hoartrap was all innocence. “All I said was they aren’t actually trees, not really. They’re tendrils of the First Dark that wormed their way through cracks in our world, stretching up and up to extinguish our sun, only to be betrayed by the magic of the moon and turned to wood. The devils inside them are trapped, perfectly harmless … but they are always listening, and you don’t want a devil knowing your secrets, not even a bound one. Why do you think I had us move our camp away from that infernal thing?”

  “Is that true?” Sullen felt a raven fly over his grave. This was different from the other songs Hoartrap had sung about rowan trees, but unlike those overtly horrific tales this one somehow felt real to his ear …

  Hoartrap held it together for all of a moment, and then snickered at Sullen’s ignorance. “Of course not, that’s just an old Emeritus mudwives’ tale.” His puffy face turned grave again. “Or is it? Who knows what spirits walk this night, freed by the … the … magic of the moon!”

  The Touch had a really good belly laugh at that, and Sullen offered him an obscene gesture since he didn’t think he could make his face ugly enough to match his mood at being made the fool yet again. “Right, well, I’ll give Ma and the devils of the rowan tree your regards.”

  “I can come, I can help,” said Brother Rýt, reminding Sullen that his life had become exponentially more complicated.

  The pudgy monk sat farther back from the fire, and these were the first words he’d managed since Nemi had marched him over from her wagon and placed him under Sullen’s supervision. The witch had insisted the Samothan boy belonged to Sullen’s mother and was therefore his responsibility. He had been all set to argue the point when he’d recognized the kid from back home, and as Nemi returned to the wheeled house where she had taken Purna for a music lesson Sullen felt a mix of happy excitement and utter dismay at seeing a familiar face. It wasn’t like he’d ever spoken more than two words to the foreign boy, Father Turisa’s novice not exactly going out of his way to hang out with the village anathema, but still, meeting him here and now was as unexpectedly moving as it was just plain unexpected. When it became apparent the missionary was as terror-stricken by Sullen’s awkward but friendly greeting as if he’d been thrown at the mercy of a slavering devil king, Sullen tried to calm Rýt down by telling him he was a free person, right, and could leave without anyone hurting him, no problem.

  But instead of thanking Sullen or even just booking it away from his inadvertent captors, the monk had slumped his shoulders and wept, his glittering amethyst eyes shedding flakes of gemstone instead of tears. It was about that time Sullen realized the kid’s peepers must not just be fancy glass eyes that he’d taken to wearing after leaving the village for some inscrutable purpose of Crimson fashion or Chainite ritual, but something with an even stranger origin … but Sullen knew a thing or two about people looking at you askance on account of your eyes being odd, and had told Rýt he didn’t have to leave if he didn’t want to. That had finally chilled the boy out, but the ensuing campfire talk with Hoartrap must have gotten him all worked up again, and now he seemed desperate for any pretense for a break, just like Sullen.

  That, or maybe he really just wanted to help with Sullen’s mom—they must have come a long way together, Ma and this monk, and that right there was just plain strange. How had his hardarsed mother of all people found the patience to roll out with a nervous novice who was so recently blinded that he could barely walk upright without having somebody’s arm to lean on?

  “Nah, y’all hang back—I’d better go it alone,” said Sullen, not really wanting an audience tagging along lest his mom finally do more than give him the silent stinkeye. “Those roots ready? I oughta take her some food.”

  “If the rabid she-wolf can open her mouth to eat she can use it to beg for clemency,” Keun-ju said with a splash of justifiable venom. “She tried to murder us, she refused to speak when we gave her the opportunity to explain herself, and you’re worried she’s hungry?”

  “Well … nobody’s on their best behavior when an empty tum’s worrying them,” said Sullen, feeling like a total arsehole but unable to stop himself from wanting to look after his mom, even after what she’d done.

  “Do you suppose that’s why she came at us so hard, Sullen, because she skipped lunch?” Keun-ju turned to Rýt and said, “You were with her the whole time she was hunting us, Chainite, did she strike you as particularly peckish?”

  “Um … no?” said the monk, looking even less happy to be addressed than he had when they were all ignoring him.

  “Not as though you would have seen her snacking, though, would you?” said Hoartrap. “Joking, joking!”

  “The only joke here is your manners,” said Diggelby, going over to sit next to the dejected Samothan. “He has a name, you know, and he might be as treasure-eyed as a social-climbing townie but there’s nothing wrong with his ears. Is there, Brother Rýt?”

  “Um … no?”

  “And while we’re on the subject, brother dearest, wherever did you come by those fetching facets?” asked Hoartrap. “Don’t tell me Nemi laid those in your sockets!”

  “Here.” Keun-ju spitted a twisted kudzu root on his poking stick and jutted it at Sullen as Brother Rýt hemmed and hawed under Hoartrap’s unwelcome attention. “Just make sure she doesn’t bite your hand off when you feed her. It’s harder than it looks to get by with just one.”

  That good and got Sullen choked up, and the hot tuber scalded his fingers, but he took the words and the food with the same resigned sigh and turned away into the dark trees to check on his mom. He didn’t know what else to do. As usual.

  Except …

  Except the fuck he didn’t know what to do. Sullen might not be good at what Ji-hyeon called maths but he knew exactly what the score was, he just didn’t like the sum and so he dithered and he fretted until his head was spinning from all the second-and-third-and-fourth-guessing. As usual. The same weak headspace that had cost Keun-ju his arm and almost cost Sullen even more, when his mom burst back into his life with the sole intention of ending it. He’d never so much as harbored an ill thought for her, had loved her so much he’d been willing to give her his own life if it meant he didn’t have to do the harder thing and take hers, and if not for Hoartrap arriving when he did then both Sullen and Keun-ju would probably be dead.

  And for what? The pride of the Horned Wolf Clan? Some even stupider reason, assuming there even was such a thing? He had no fucking idea why she’d come after him, because every time he’d come over to try to get her to talk, she just sneered and spat and stared him down until he left her alone.

  It wasn’t a long walk from the campfire to where his mom was restrained—before the sun had s
et he’d been able to see her sitting there in the bowl of the great rowan, watching him and his friends—but Sullen took his time, trying to get his rising bile under control before he engaged her again. Yet while he used to be able to calm himself down by focusing on all the ways he’d probably make a tense situation worse with his clumsiness, now Sullen’s every thought just inflamed him further. His fist tightened on the spear Grandfather had gone into, the weapon he was using as a crutch … the one Ji-hyeon had commissioned in Sullen’s absence and sent Hoartrap halfway across the Star to deliver to him. She had ordered the Touch to give Sullen this special gift even though it meant being without one of her most powerful captains when she led the Cobalt Company through the Lark’s Tongue Gate, toward what might be the last battle she would ever fight.

  Last night Keun-ju had tearfully told Sullen what he had been too upset to relate before: that while Sullen was knocked the fuck out following his family reunion, Hoartrap had informed everyone that Hwabun had been the first isle to fall to the armies of Jex Toth. Ji-hyeon’s family and Keun-ju’s fellow servants and all of their mutual friends and neighbors were gone. They no longer had a home to fight for, but still Ji-hyeon had answered Empress Ryuki’s call for help in the defense of the Immaculate Isles. Their woman was standing fearless in the face of a devilish host the likes of which Sullen had never believed existed outside the oldest, craziest songs of his people, ready to sacrifice herself for the good of all mortals, and meanwhile Sullen almost threw his life away for … for … for fucking nothing.

  No, for something even worse than nothing, because folk died for nothing every day, and there may not be pride in that but there wasn’t shame, either … But after all he’d been through, how fucked was it that Sullen had been willing to die for the Horned Wolf Clan?