A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “I have to stay with him,” said Keun-ju, stumbling back over from the wagon in a daze. “I promised Ji-hyeon we’d come back together. I promised her.”

  “And I promised her we would strike a blow at the heart of Jex Toth and recover the missing Maroto,” said Hoartrap, his fluty voice hitting some rather strained notes. “Nemi, tell Keun-ju he can’t do anything to help Sullen.”

  “That is true—I’ve stanched his bleeding for now, but until I am able to explore his wound I won’t know if even I can save him.” Giving Purna a meaningful look over the frame of her pince-nez, she said, “But whoever is coming, they are coming with us now. Where is Brother Rýt?”

  “Speak of the bedeviled,” said Digs, and as he did a blur came out of the darkness, Best running full-out despite her wounds. She held Sullen’s spear in both hands, the blind monk clinging to her back. She didn’t even stop to address them, taking him straight to the open vardo, the gang who had carried Sullen parting to let her through. She deposited the shaky-legged Chainite on the top stair and, after a brief word and nod, handed him the black spear. The distant lights down the street looked even more ominous now; if the Eyvindian regiment hadn’t guessed in which direction their quarry had fled before, Best must have straightened them out on the matter.

  “Well then, it is time,” said Nemi.

  “Past time,” said Hoartrap. “I’m going back to the church to make the necessary alterations. Assuming I can count on the two of you to put the future of the fucking world ahead of your own raging libidos?”

  “That is not what this is about!” said Keun-ju.

  “Speak for yourself,” said Purna, giving Nemi a wink … and through the adrenaline and saam, the booze and tubq, she found herself faced with the crystal clear reality that as soon as she’d found a cute girl she was so into that even eggplay was hot, she was about to lose her. But if the Star fell she’d lose her anyway, so better to fight for a long future instead of trying to make the most of a short one. “Shit. All right, Hoartrap, we’ll be there.”

  “We will?” Keun-ju looked as pale as Myrkur’s coat, Best coming over to join their huddle.

  “Yeah, we will,” said Purna, hoping she came off braver than she sounded. “Nemi and Digs will take care of him, Keun-ju, and we’ll all meet up in Othean—after we’ve done our part to help the Cobalt Company and the Isles and the rest of the Star defeat the monsters of Jex Toth. This thing’s got to get done, man, and I’ll feel better if you’re with us.”

  She knew it was a good pep talk but felt a tinge of guilt at her selfish motivations for wanting him along; raising devils and invading the Sunken Kingdom was bad enough, but doing it with just Hoartrap and Best would be too lame for words. From his unhappy face she saw she’d got him, and she told Hoartrap, “A little privacy? You get your devils in a row at the church and we’ll be there as soon as we say our goodbyes.”

  “Make it snappy,” he said, and as he flounced off Purna noticed Nemi had been right: unless he deigned to address his former apprentice for some specific reason the big warlock pretended Nemi didn’t even exist. He did eye Diggelby, though, and said, “I’ll be seeing you soon, Pasha.”

  “Not if I see you first,” Digs said brightly, and as soon as the hulking Touch disappeared into the darkness he added, “I really, really, really hope I always see him first. Horrible man.”

  “Well, I guess this is it,” said Purna, trying not to let herself get choked up. Mad as she’d been at Diggelby’s refusal to come to Jex Toth if it meant binding devils, now it was all she could do not to bawl. They’d had each other’s backs from the beginning of this damn ballad. “Keep it classy, Pasha.”

  “I’d tell you the same, but I know the word isn’t in your wardrobe,” said Digs, but then little streams began carving gullies in his corpsepaint and he threw his arms around her. In her ear he sniffled, “Safe roads guide you to her breast, Tapai.”

  “Here’s hoping,” said Purna, looking over his shoulder at Nemi. “Both of them, with any luck.”

  “That’s not the usual Prayer of Exodus, but it’ll do in a pinch,” said Digs, breaking off the embrace and waving Keun-ju in for more of the same. “You go cop a quick feel while you can, girl, and give Maroto a stern word for me when you find the bounder. Running off to Jex Toth and not inviting us along!”

  “You can tell him yourself, in Othean,” said Purna, trying to believe that a happy reunion on a safe Isle was in their future, Maroto’s Moochers back together at last. Well, those who were still among the living. Then she hurried over to Nemi, who was just finishing up with Best.

  “—And if my son lives, tell him I did not believe I could be more disappointed in his behavior, until I saw him cut down by a child.” Best didn’t turn as Purna approached, but said, “I shall leave you to your displays, now, and await our departure at the church. Good hunting, Nemi of the Bitter Sighs.”

  “Good hunting, Best of the Horned Wolf Clan,” said Nemi with a curtsy, and then the dour barbarian stalked off into the night after Hoartrap. “And good hunting to you, Purna.”

  “Thanks, Nemi, though I feel like I’m about to go the wrong way from the game I want to bag …” Purna looked at the witch’s pointy boots and savored that weightless buzz Nemi conjured in her heart.

  “If you think I am the prey here you haven’t been paying attention,” said Nemi, the taller girl putting her arms around Purna and looking down into her moonlit face. “We’ve tarried too long and don’t have time for both words and a proper kiss goodbye, so which would you prefer?”

  Purna grinned, and gave her the obvious answer … and was still giving it, fairly floating into her partner’s face, when Keun-ju returned from the vardo, having checked in on Sullen a final time. Breaking the kiss, Nemi said, “Until Othean, Purna.”

  “Until Othean, Nemi,” said Purna, and then Keun-ju put his arm around Purna as they watched Nemi climb into the vardo and shut the door behind her. From the riding board Digs gave a wave and a whistle, and then Myrkur took off down the road, pulling their friends toward Diadem. They watched them go, then slowly started in the direction of the church … when the five strangers who had helped Sullen into the vardo hailed them, still standing in the shadows at the edge of the wooded track.

  “Pray join us for a drink,” said their leader, “the tavern may be gone but we have the most crucial component in our jugs.”

  “Sorry, friends, running late as it is and—” Purna’s sincerely regretful explanation died on her lips as the big, rough characters fanned out in front of them on the lonesome road. “Shit.”

  “Our wine isn’t great, I’ll admit, but it’s not so bad as that,” said the man, sloshing his bottle at them as he stepped closer, his teeth shining like Myrkur’s horns in the light of the rising moon. “No need to make a rough night any rougher, Purna. We’re taking that smug face of yours all the way back to Harapok, that is not up for negotiation—the question is how we acquire it.”

  “You know these people?” asked Keun-ju, leaning his hand on the pommel of his broken sword. He still carried both pieces in the scabbard, but it was as impotent a gesture as Purna resting her fingers on the grip of her unloaded pistol. Which she was also doing, because duh.

  “I know their type,” snarled Purna; the one fucking time saam didn’t make her paranoid, this shit happened! “Bounty hunters. Sent by my family. I tried warning you back on the tavern porch something like this might happen.”

  “The reward’s bigger if we bring you back alive,” said the man, moonlight playing on the drawn blades of two of his cohort, and the gun barrels of the others. “But since I’m guessing that doesn’t work for you, we can do this one of two ways.”

  “Which one of them involves us going our separate ways with no harm done to either party?” asked Keun-ju, the kid having either a better sense of humor than Purna gave him credit for or a very naïve understanding of what was about to go down.

  “The preferable one,” said the bounty hunter, tak
ing a small box out of his long Raniputri frock coat and then setting it and the jug on the ground. “By the time we take your head clear back to Ugrakar it’ll be rotten past recognition. Which is why we’ll take a death mask as soon as we murder you, to present along with your remains.” Pointing two fingers at Purna he said, “Bang. You’re dead.”

  Nobody said anything here in the outskirts, but back in the center of Black Moth the lights were growing brighter and the noise was getting louder.

  “All right,” said Purna, thinking she had the angles of this and actually daring to get her hopes up. “That’s a good pitch, but forgive me if it sounds a little too good. Why stick your head out to protect mine?”

  “Because I have a heart of gold and hate to shed needless blood,” said the man.

  “And because you’re going to give us every coin in your purse,” added the bigger of the two women, her ringmail shimmering like scales as she rested her sword on her shoulder.

  “I thought that went without saying, Saor, but I suppose it can’t hurt to spell these things out,” said their leader.

  “Not that I am complaining,” said Keun-ju, “but would it not be safer for you if the head you collect on isn’t still attached to its owner? Surely it is perilous to secure payment when the object of your hunt still walks the Star, living proof of your perfidy.”

  “Usually, yes,” said the man, backing up from the jug and the box he’d left in the street and sticking his thumb at the dog-eared wildborn with a harquebus trained on Purna. “But Orange Pazu here heard enough for me to be convinced there’s a better way for all of us to get out of this thing. Seeing as you’re apparently on an errand to summon some devils and go to the Sunken fucking Kingdom I don’t think I need to worry about you coming back to Harapok anytime soon … and if you mix up the fastmud in that box and make us a death mask we won’t have to worry about Hoartrap the Touch being sore on us for greasing his apprentice.”

  Purna thought about it, but didn’t have to for long—her vengeance-minded aunt and uncle thinking she’d died could only be good for her health. Going for the box and the jug, she said, “Make sure you tell them I cursed their names to my last breath.”

  “You can’t seriously trust them!” said Keun-ju as Purna squatted down and opened the box, rehydrating the pat of colorless mud with a few splashes from the jug. “What if it’s poisoned!”

  “That would make a lot more sense than just shooting us, wouldn’t it?” said Purna, but just the same it took all the nerve she had to actually commit and apply the mud mask. Seeing as there was a pair of reeds in the box for her to stick in her nose and breathe through, though, she figured she wasn’t the first bounty to be offered this deal. They probably turned a pretty dinar, collecting once from the victim in exchange for a new lease on life, and a second time from their employer.

  Sitting in the road, she plastered it on as the leader instructed, and while she couldn’t speak under the warming mud she could hear Keun-ju discussing the unusual weather with the bounty hunters … and the distant shouts from Black Moth growing louder, the scent of smoke creeping up the reeds in her nose. She hoped the fire hadn’t spread from the tavern; seemed like bad form to burn down a town without meaning to, the sort of activity better suited for villains than heroes. But then again, look at who she’d studied under.

  The fastmud set, well, fast, and with some help from the Raniputri man it peeled off intact. He carefully set the death mask back in the box and stowed it in his voluminous coat. Keun-ju reluctantly passed over his purse, though there seemed to be more crumbs than coins in it, and after exchanging assurances that if either party saw the other again blood must surely flow and all that, they parted. Watching the bounty hunters back away into the dark trees on the edge of the road, she gave them a wave, and the Raniputri leader waved back, and then they were gone.

  “That might just be the luckiest damn break I’ve ever caught,” Purna remarked as they headed down the road and then turned up the path through the brambles to the church. “I’d say it almost seemed too easy, except I don’t believe there’s any such thing.”

  “I suspect they must be expressing a similar sentiment,” said Keun-ju. “But then they have no way of knowing you didn’t bother loading your cannon before going to the pub.”

  “Or that your scabbard is as empty as your head! I might’ve run out of time to clean and prime my sidekick this afternoon, but at least I had the sense to buy powder and shot when I had the chance.”

  “Even snapped in twain my four-tiger is a finer weapon than anything the Black Moth mercantile had to offer.”

  “Snob.”

  “Fair. Slobby fraud.”

  “Fair,” Purna sighed. “I guess we should thank our natures—if we’d both had weapons at the ready we might’ve jumped into an avoidable fight, instead of talking things through. There’s a lesson there. The whole affair could’ve gone a lot worse.”

  “Not for me it couldn’t have,” said Keun-ju. “I am out of the last of my currency and I’m still burdened with your company.”

  “We won’t need money where we’re going,” said Purna, too tired and heartsick from the unexpected awfulness of the night for the prospect of summoning devils and traveling through the First Dark to hold much sway over her anymore. “And hey, if you didn’t like the steel they had for sale you should have gotten your sword glued back together while we were in town. Then you could’ve cut down all those scalp speculators by yourself instead of relying on my consummate negotiator skills.”

  “You cannot glue a sword back together.”

  “Forge it back together, then. Reforge it. Whatever.”

  “That is not how it works,” said Keun-ju. “My four-tiger is as broken as my heart, and one could no more bring the shards back together than Nemi could put my arm back on.”

  “I try to be a patron of the arts, Keun-ju, I really do, but enough with the poetry,” said Purna as they came up to the glowing door of the church. “I know you don’t know your ass from your elbow, but confusing your heart with your sword with your arm, well, no wonder you sound so sour. Sullen’s going to be okay. He’s with Nemi, and if she saved him once she can do it again.”

  “You think so?” Keun-ju stopped and looked back the way they had come, gazing out over the thorns and the tombstones, at the angry flare of Black Moth. The town was going up just like that Eyvindian officer’s head.

  “I think we’d both rather be riding with our friends in that vardo so we could know for sure, but wishes are for those with devils to spare,” said Purna. “So let’s raise a little hell so we can raise a lot of harm on whatever it is out there in the darkness that’s standing between us and a happy reunion on Othean.”

  And turning their backs on the firelit night, the two unlikely friends stepped through the hollow doorway of the ruined church on the overgrown hill. They never came out again.

  CHAPTER

  20

  Domingo couldn’t believe this was really working. When the administrators had come to interrogate him about the approaching Imperial navy he’d told them he would only speak to Empress Ryuki, but he hadn’t counted on them actually granting him an audience, at least not right away. She was the most powerful person in the Immaculate Isles, perhaps the most powerful person alive, given the state of the Crimson Empire. And as soon as these servants were done helping Domingo shave and bathe he would be meeting her in the flesh … and bringing along her assassin. Hopefully Choi would strike as soon as they arrived, saving Domingo the awkwardness of admitting he didn’t actually have the foggiest about this mysterious fleet of Crimson ships flying Chainite black sails.

  Once he was out of the baths and his chin was as smooth as his rump the silent servants assisted him into a clean suit of Immaculate clothing. Not too long ago the slight would have been unforgivable and he would have refused, sending word that the empress could either return his Crimson uniform or meet with him in the nude, but why stand on ceremony when he couldn’t eve
n stand on his own two legs? What a bitter boon the First Dark had granted him, healing his wounds in the span of time it took to roll into one Gate and out the other but fusing his broken hip in such a way he doubted he would ever walk again.

  The sober attendants helped thread his stiff left leg into loose trousers, then fitted him in a tunic-like jacket and overcoat, all of the garments as white as those of his helpers. He had to hand it to these Immaculates, they knew a thing or two about sending a message without saying a word—as a foreign colonel making demands to meet the empress he was shown the utmost respect, but in order to be granted an audience he had to come before her dressed as a loyal subject. All in white, Othean still in mourning for the murdered Prince Byeong-gu.

  They did not return his cavalry saber as he was helped back into his rattan wheelchair, which brought a minor lump to his throat. When Hoartrap had unexpectedly returned Domingo’s cherished weapon just before opening the Lark’s Tongue Gate he had taken comfort in the fantasy that he would die with his blade in hand, which was all any Azgarothian officer could hope for. Now these Immaculates denied him that final fleeting honor, though they allowed him to take along something far more dangerous. Choi pushed his chair, looking just as freshly scrubbed and pressed as Domingo, even her wide-brimmed mesh hat white as porcelain, and her face no less rigid. They had never talked strategy, Choi refusing to speak of how she might strike at the empress even in the privacy of their rooms, and they certainly couldn’t discuss it now that servants surrounded them.

  Rolling through the labyrinth of paneled corridors and screened terraces, Domingo tried to make peace with the life that had led him to this place. There was precious little chance he would be spared if Choi actually attacked the empress, regardless of her success. Yet as resigned to an imminent and even ignoble death as he had become ever since Brother Wan’s deception was revealed during the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue, Domingo found himself digging his freshly pared fingernails into the armrests of his wheelchair, his heart in his throat. Maybe it was not knowing how or even if Choi intended to carry out her mission at this juncture that made him so apprehensive—what veteran doesn’t get jumpy entering a hostile zone without knowing the orders of his armed escort? Or maybe it was just that as Choi pushed him out across a vast stone courtyard and through a path in the field of emerald-armored soldiers who stood at perfect attention, Domingo felt less like an active agent in this plot for vengeance and glory and more like a helpless sacrifice.