A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  His three Immaculate friends might disagree on that call, but that was piratical gratitude for you: no sense of perspective. The organic kingdom of Jex Toth didn’t get any less sinister—or disgusting—the more time you spent there, but being guests in a sprawling living nightmare beat being prisoners in a mundane cell. Came a time when you didn’t even notice all the rancid smells anymore, and as for the food … well, the food almost seemed like food after a while. Almost.

  Dong-won and Niki-hyun seemed determined to starve to death rather than ingest the slimes and jellies excreted from the walls of their new home, but Bang took after Maroto and made the most of their sticky accommodations. They both claimed to have eaten worse, but since Maroto was lying on that count he figured Bang must be, too. The water also had a taste, pallor, and viscosity they all found disagreeable, to put it mildly, but even the picky Immaculates were too parched to turn their noses up at the burbling flesh fountains.

  The three pirates had been turned over to Maroto shortly after their capture, the ancient priests not taking more than a cursory interest in the new arrivals. They were too busy plotting against the whole of humanity to pay much attention to a few specimens of that doomed race, releasing them to Maroto’s custody.

  As for the man himself, he was frequently called to the towering throne room of the Vex Assembly to assist in their strategizing … and to his shame, he helped them as much as he was able. He brought the long-gone Tothans up to speed on modern Star politics, told them everything he knew about the sundry governments and their militaries, drew up regional maps and palace blueprints from memory right down to the secret passages and ambush spots he and the Cobalts had exploited a quarter century past. A nobler prisoner of war might have tried to lead these enemies of mortalkind astray, feeding them false information in hope of weakening their campaign, but not Maroto. Only a fool would try to deceive a council who could peek into your brain at a moment’s notice, and of all the four-letter appellations that folk had applied to Maroto, that particular F-word wasn’t even in the top five.

  The first time the roach-clad priest had stuck his ghost-hand into Maroto’s skull and rummaged around, he had tried to control what the wizened warlock found there, and in the moment had assumed his deception had worked. And who knew, maybe it had, but even if Maroto could mislead the deathless priests he couldn’t hide anything from the ancient devils that dwelled within them. His first day down here in hell he swore he’d kill himself before he would reveal a single thought or emotion regarding the people he cared about back on the Star, because whether Purna and Digs or Sullen and Da or Din and Hassan were still alive he didn’t want these monsters even knowing they existed … but the first time the Vex Assembly pressed him on his past he betrayed his friends and family, giving every detail right down to the skunky smell of his dad’s breath. He gave the monsters all they asked for, and frequently more, volunteering any and all intelligence he suspected they might find useful, running his mouth like a strung-out bard trying to talk his way back into a pawned lute. He sold out the Crimson Empire and every Arm of the Star besides, anything and everything to make himself appear valuable to the withered and decidedly insane council of undying priests who called the shots on this living island, and whatever fell spirits possessed them.

  For a little while there it seemed like it might last, too, that he might have indeed bought himself and his friends a stay of execution here in Jex Toth. Neither Bang nor Niki-hyun seemed to judge Maroto for collaborating with their captors, and while Dong-won hadn’t said a single word since arriving, that might not have anything to do with resentment and everything to do with the perpetual state of wide-eyed shock they all learned to live in. You never really got used to a place like this, but then why would you want to? Better to focus on the immediate tasks, on getting through one horrified minute to the next until you earned a few precious hours of uneasy sleep.

  So in a way the endless labor was a blessing, as it gave them something specific to fix their minds on until it almost seemed mundane. Since their human fingers were far more slender and nimble than the clawed gauntlets of the silent black-armored soldiers who swarmed the place, the four refugees were put to work assisting in the birthing ponds of the living war machines, and the subterranean docks where the leviathans were housed until they reached maturity. The indentured mortals removed corrosive placenta from the hard-to-reach places in the seabeast larvae’s optic clusters, difficult work that required swimming out into the lagoons and treading water beside the enormous newborns as they picked out the acidic goo.

  While this was the worst of their jobs, it was far from their only duty. Dong-won was strong enough that he also picked up shifts installing plates of chitin armor into the sprawling flanks of the adults, while Bang, Niki-hyun, and Maroto were relegated to bug-hunting the vents of the juveniles—a nasty job, which involved reaching into the frigate-sized monsters’ gills and rooting out the spiny, salamander-like parasites that thrived in the warm waters of the flooded caverns where the seabeasts were stabled.

  Maroto had just dislodged a particularly big and bitey specimen and tossed the sludge puppy into his woven-bone basket when three members of the Vex Assembly appeared at the end of the veiny causeway, motioning for him to approach. An ominous, um, omen, their calling on him here instead of summoning him when his work was done. Still, he didn’t get really worried until he started walking their way and they gave further gesture that he should bring along Bang and Niki-hyun, both of whom were working on the upper gills of the leviathan. It was the first time the Tothan bosses had expressly wanted Maroto’s crew to attend one of their summits, and in the absence of an order to the contrary the pirates had been more than happy to sit out all of Maroto’s meetings.

  “What do they want, Useless?” Bang asked after he’d tapped the two women to join him and they all began dragging their feet down the soft dock to greet the trio of Tothans.

  “They probably just stopped by to, you know, compliment us on all the hard work,” said Maroto, trying to sound nonchalant despite how hard his heart was beating. A minor miracle the old muscle hadn’t given out on him entirely, fierce as he’d been working it since falling in with this evil army of monsters from beyond space and time.

  “Shit,” said Niki-hyun glumly. “You’d fed us any other song I might have believed it, but we all know that ain’t the case. I don’t think you and hard work have ever been acquainted.”

  “Oh, he works hard enough, but only after hours,” said Bang, giving Maroto what he dearly hoped wasn’t to be his last hard smack on the arse. “You say they got in your head, Useless, and you got in theirs, so that implies a certain degree of familiarity. You got the feeling they’re here to do us harm?”

  “They can try,” said Niki-hyun, flexing her fists. “One of them tries touching me or my brains I’m going to scramble theirs.”

  Bold words for a woman who’d been near-catatonic with fear when Maroto had come to release her, Bang, and Dong-won from their holding pit upon first being captured, but then even after the life of broad experience Maroto had lived prior to his arrival on Jex Toth he supposed these unorthodox environs had initially thrown him for a loop, too. That she had adjusted enough to their surroundings to talk a little shit boded well for her mental recuperation … just so long as she didn’t talk too much shit, or to the wrong people. As they approached the enormous fat man, the woman with spiders in her hair, and a third figure Maroto hadn’t met before, he dearly hoped the two Immaculates would let him do the talking, or more accurately, groveling.

  “Helllllllo!” trilled the morbidly obese priest, the wrinkles of age and the wattles of fat collaborating to make him resemble a golem made from a mountain of greasy griddlecakes. One that had been left unattended at a picnic, given the colonies of giant white ants that dwelt in his folds and swarmed over his bulk like a living toga. As Maroto and his equally hangdog companions reached the waiting Tothans on the soggy causeway of the underdock beneath the flickeri
ng meat canopy overhead, the bloated old priest said, “Helllllo, and farewelllll!”

  That did not bode well.

  “You have served us sweetly!” shrieked the spider crone, looking exceptionally fucking sinister in her heaving gown of crowded cobwebs. “But now the time has come to reward your obedience!”

  Like all the Vex Assembly, Spidertresses’s vocal cords still hadn’t recuperated from their long epoch in the abyss when the undying council had communicated solely in their wordless ways. Maroto was almost positive Jex Toth had been missing for only—only!—five centuries, but the Vex Assembly casually alluded to the many dusty millennia of their exile and who was he to argue with deranged monsters? However long they had gone without speaking, now that they were back in the world of ear-bearing mortals the lot of them overcompensated for their raw voices by screaming every damn thing. “We shall set you freeeee!”

  “You said you’d kill me last,” said Maroto, ignoring the raised eyebrows of Bang and Niki-hyun at this admission of the exact terms he had struck with the Vex Assembly. He may have neglected to volunteer all the particulars of his negotiations, sure, but what did they expect? “That was the deal!”

  “Yessssss?” said Bloato, a troop of ants marching into his nostril as he beetled his hairless eyes at Maroto. “That is why you shallllll depart! With the Chainite fleeeeet!”

  “Yesss! Spread the gospel!” yowled the spider-wrapped woman, and both she and the fat priest began shuddering with the horrible laughter that accompanied most of Maroto’s interactions with the demented Vex Assembly. Their companion wasn’t laughing, however, and taking a closer look at the cockroach-enveloped woman he was taken aback by the smoothness of her skin, at the blackness of her hair beneath the mound of insects that took the shape of a conical hat—she definitely hadn’t been present at any of the meetings he had attended, with the council who looked every day of their supposed thousands of years. This new recruit was gritting her teeth so hard his own jaw winced in sympathy, and he saw that her swarming suit had parted on her stomach so that her right hand could dig its pointed fingernails into her milk-white flesh, bright red blood welling out as he watched in disgust … and worse still, she gave a lusty moan as she wriggled her digits in deeper, pupils that shifted from brown to black and back again rolling in their orbits.

  “Chainite fleet?” asked Bang, and the horror Maroto felt at watching this girl clawing her own belly open paled to that of his fearless captain courting the notice of these ancient freaks. “You saying the Burnished Chain sent boats up to Jex Toth?”

  At the invocation of the church’s name the roach-cloaked girl’s fluctuating eyes latched onto Bang, gurgling growls bubbling out of her throat as she viciously tore at her stomach. A fungal reek began rolling off her in waves, the particular sort of stink that Maroto suspected was a byproduct of the Vex Assembly projecting their thoughts to one another, and the other two cadaverous captains also turned their attention to Bang.

  “Your underlings will not address the Vex Assembly again!” screamed Spidertresses.

  “Or they shall be confiscated!” yowled Bloato.

  “They won’t! They won’t!” shouted Maroto. It was a habit these monsters invoked in him, bellowing out every word. “But that’s what you’re telling us, the Chain has some ships up here, yeah? And we can … we can just get on them and sail away? Like, soon?”

  “Now!” Roach-girl wormed her entire hand under the skin of her stomach as she screamed, and whatever else she said was unintelligible even by Tothan standards, a rattle of grotesque exultations that made Maroto’s hackles rise along with his gorge.

  “Imm-ed-iat-ely!” howled the fat man. “Tell the Star what you witnessed here!”

  “Tell the Star who is coming!” howled the spider-haired woman.

  The girl just howled, then yanked her fingers out of her guts and shoved them all into her mouth, sucking noisily at their wetness. That was bad. Watching the gory wound on her stomach heal up like the skin on a soup re-forming after a chunk of meat fell back into the pot was almost worse. But not quite.

  “I’ll just grab my other lackey off the beast he’s tuning up and we’re out of here, just point the way to the Chainites,” said Maroto, still mostly expecting this to end in a double-cross. This was just standard smug villain cat-and-mouse shit, wasn’t it? When the big bads showed up unannounced and started talking about giving you your reward and setting you free you had to expect the ground to open underneath your feet, and never the more so than when said ground already had plenty of teeth to gobble you up with.

  “Your third underling has completed work on your transport to the outer harbor!” The priest shook his chins toward the adult leviathan that filled the lower lagoon, and Maroto nodded knowingly. This was it, then, as brutal a method of execution as he could imagine—fed to one of the very monsters he and his crew had helped the Tothans ready for war against the Star. About what he deserved.

  “Safe roads guide you to her breast!” screamed Roach-girl, her red-smeared mouth twisting into an ugly grin as she daubed a bloody inverted cross onto her forehead. Her eyes went black again and she dropped to all fours, scampering away with inhuman swiftness.

  The spider-haired woman dashed after her, a fresh stench fouling the air in her wake, and the fat man turned to follow as well when his own eyes flooded with inky darkness, and he turned back to Maroto and the Immaculates with a hungry leer. His voice as cool and honeyed as the sting of an icebee, he said, “Her Grace had intended to accompany you to the harbor to see her flock off, but clearly her ascension to divinity is preoccupying her at the moment. The transition can be trying for the mortal mind.”

  “Um, Her Grace?” said Maroto, the wheels turning slowly, but turning nonetheless. “You saying that girl’s the Black Pope?”

  Made some kind of sense, Pope Y’Homa being here, if there was a Chainite fleet parked outside …

  “What she was before means nothing to us,” said the thing inside the priest. “What she has become is what you might have been, Devilskinner, had you played a smarter strategy—the first sacrifice of the Star, and the last chalice to be filled. The final member of the Vex Assembly.”

  “Yeah, well, more fool me, huh?” gulped Maroto, not wanting to keep staring into those warm black eyes but unable to break their gaze. He was sure it saw right through his bluster, into his pounding chicken heart … and it offered a genial smile that was all the more humiliating for how genuine it felt.

  “We are not like your kind, mortal—this is no trick or trap. You are free to flee … for now.”

  “Thank you for your mercy,” Maroto heard himself saying, bowing before the ancient man who housed something far more primeval in his corpulent flesh. He felt a feeble flare of resentment as he did, realizing they were only letting him go because they believed he couldn’t possibly pose even a minor threat to their campaign, but that flash dampened as he bowed lower; it was the death throes of his suffocating pride, was all, and he’d keep the pillow over its face until it went still. “I’m your boy, like I said, and wouldn’t dream of going against your—”

  “Come on,” hissed Bang, grabbing Maroto’s elbow and pulling him forward. He looked up to see that the fat priest hadn’t even stuck around to witness Maroto’s kowtowing, instead turning his back on the mortals and waddling away up the causeway after his fellows. “Good work polishing his toenails, Useful, you definitely bought us a chance out of here.”

  “Aye, very convincing performance,” said Niki-hyun as they booked it down the flesh docks to where the titanic squid-dragon-thing was moored, a thousand busy figures sanding down the bony plates that covered a hundred yards of heaving flank. Once they grew to maturity and their armor was installed, the seabeasts swam down into the flooded caves beneath them, and wherever they emerged it wasn’t any place Maroto had ever seen.

  “Sorry in advance if hitching a ride with this thing is anywhere near as bad as I expect it to be,” said Maroto, his stomach turning
over as he saw a pair of Tothans unhinge one of the smaller sheets of jagged chitin, opening a glistening portal in the leviathan’s side.

  “Tell you one thing right now,” said Niki-hyun as they wove through the throng of armored Tothans crowding the quay. “I’m not drawing a straw for who has to explain to Dong-won why we’re crawling inside this thing—that’s on you two.”

  “Since we’re leaving Jex Toth that also means old Useful here is relinquishing his proxy command of our crew, so I’d say you’re back to drawing any straws I tell you to, Niki-hyun,” said Bang, giving a Tothan she bumped into a friendly wave. It didn’t wave back.

  “With all due respect, Captain,” said Niki-hyun as they caught sight of Dong-won polishing a dripping arch of bone, “we haven’t left yet.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  A warm wind blew through the cypress wood, the muggy gasp of a dying world. Even walking as slowly as Best did, each step was agony, her cracked ribs a long way from well, but she refused to ride inside Nemi’s wagon or take more of her medicine. That would only prove to her son that she was a hypocrite, and besides, the Witch of the Bitter Sighs had betrayed her, and never again would Best trust a sorcerer, nor accept her aid.

  She could feel the rest of the motley party keeping track of her at all times, like a herd of wary oryx watching the distant movements of a wolf. Well they might be anxious to see her walking free with her horned helm and spear, her great-grandmother’s sun-knife in its sheath on her hip. The only reason any of these Chainless heathens still drew breath was the oath she had offered her son in exchange for her freedom, a pledge he had insisted she swear on the Fallen Mother to put aside their differences until the Star could be defended from this alleged invasion of devils.