A War in Crimson Embers

by Alex Marshall

  “Spoken like a true hero,” said Hoartrap, but he didn’t sound much relieved just yet. “It’s not your life we need, though. One of the few in the house that gets a pass. But I know the guilt will be all the greater for living, and that’s a burden we all must bear, even as we take heart in knowing they would have died anyway, and worse, along with the rest of the Star.”

  “Wait, what—ow!” Zosia began, but then Choplicker nosed at the quarrel in her chest, dislodging it with a painful pop.

  “He wants you to sacrifice this city,” said Sullen, looming over them with a terrified expression on his dopey face.

  “Nobody likes an eavesdropper,” said Hoartrap, scowling at the boy as Zosia stanched the already-slowing flow of blood from her wound.

  “Oh, they’re sending Uncle Obedear back over to talk!” called the fop.

  “Keep ’em busy,” said Zosia and Hoartrap in unison.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Sullen shivered as he spoke. “You two are going to loose the fire that ends Diadem. A burnt offering.”

  “And what would you know about it?” asked Hoartrap, and now his eyes lit up with excitement. “Sullen, my boy, I always knew you were more clever than you looked, so go on and tell me, what exactly have you seen or heard, and from who?”

  “Wait, are you saying the kid is right?” asked Zosia. “You want me to … to sacrifice all of Diadem?”

  “No, I don’t want you to,” said Hoartrap, “the Star needs you to. A great sacrifice summoned Jex Toth, and only a greater sacrifice can banish them again before it’s too late. And here we have the only means to such a sacrifice.”

  At this solemn pronouncement Choplicker did the last thing Zosia would have ever expected—the devil began licking Hoartrap’s bloody hand, and when the kneeling Touch recoiled the fiend rolled over on his back, wiggling around like an excited puppy.

  “I … I don’t even know what you’re asking,” said Zosia, her devil’s display making her heart pound so hard it hurt worse than her breast, and sinking all the while. “To murder a city … how could we?”

  “Not we,” said Hoartrap, tentatively reaching down and giving Choplicker a belly scratch. “Him.”

  “Him?” Zosia nodded at her devil, who immediately rolled over and … and … and started fucking begging, his eyes big and bright and hungry.

  “Nah,” said Sullen.

  “Hush,” said the Touch. “If there is anything in the mortal realm that can awaken the sleeping volcano beneath Diadem, it is your devil. He can provide the sacrifice we need to send Jex Toth back to hell.”

  “That true?” she asked the friendly-faced mutt, and he barked a happy bark. “I just give the word, and you blow up the whole city?”

  Choplicker held her gaze, canine lips pulling back over canine teeth, and with deliberate slowness he shook his head in a movement that wasn’t the slightest bit canine. He had creeped her out plenty over the years, but never like this, and she felt Indsorith shudder against her, too.

  “Devils need their freedom to work their greatest wiles,” murmured Hoartrap. “All of their tenure to mortal masters is but the slow burning of their fuse, and the granting of a single wish the realization of their power. When they are set loose, in that brief moment free of bondage in this world and before they are drawn back into the First Dark, that is when they are capable of true miracles.”

  “Everyone knows how devils work, but Choplicker, he won’t …” Zosia trailed off, remembering how eager he had been to help interrogate Hoartrap, when she had told him that if the warlock didn’t volunteer his secrets the devil could force them out of him … in exchange for his freedom. Unlike when she had offered him his liberty to keep her and Leib safe, or when she had done the same to try to save Purna on the battlefield, Choplicker had made his approval of the offer known in a series of enthusiastic barks, and then had seemed ready to make good on it before Hoartrap came clean on his own. A horrible, ugly, and entirely plausible scenario unfolded in Zosia’s mind, and since he seemed in a talkative mood, she looked at her devil and said, “Did I just not wish for something big enough for you? Is that really it? You were willing to stay on as long as it took for me to present something worthy of your regard, you stubborn son of a bitch?”

  Choplicker threw back his head and howled, long and mournfully, and then as if that weren’t answer enough, abruptly dropped his head back down and smiled all the wider at her.

  “And now, Chop?” she asked, mouth dry as she stared at this alien monster she had risked her life to save but hours before. “If … If I offer you your freedom, could you do it? Could you wake the volcano beneath Diadem, and offer the sacrifice Hoartrap needs to banish Jex Toth?”

  Worse than the head shake from before was this slow and stately nod, the devil’s eyes black as Zosia’s damned soul as they negotiated the terms of his release.

  “Yeah, I bet you’d fuckin’ like that,” Zosia breathed, fury overtaking her horror at the monster’s betrayal … and then ebbing as she looked at him and realized she didn’t have the slightest fucking idea what she was dealing with here. The other five devils she’d helped her Villains summon during that fateful ritual in Emeritus were nothing compared to him, she’d always known that. She’d been the one to call him up out of the First Dark, not the other way around, and after a lifetime of trafficking with devils she was crying foul because he hadn’t played fair? That was like toying with an asp and then complaining when it bit you. And now, at long last, she had the means not only to divest herself of the force of pure evil she’d been carrying around for almost half her life, but to do some good in the bargain. To save the fucking world … and at expense, sure, but given the state of Diadem’s hospitality of late she could think of worse places to make the ultimate sacrifice.

  “Zosia,” whispered Indsorith, and looking back down at her she saw the goodhearted woman who had almost died at the hands of this toxic city on two separate occasions shaking her head. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t,” agreed Sullen, and he sounded on the verge of tears. “She warned me you’d do this. Sent me to stop you. And I could have. But I didn’t, ’cause it didn’t seem right, doing you for something you hadn’t done, ’cause I was scared of what might happen if I didn’t. But you do this now, and that’s what you’re doing—killing people what might not deserve it, ’cause you’re scared of finding another way. A better one.”

  “There is no better way, only a worse one, where Diadem still dies, just a slower, more painful death, and the rest of the Star dies with it,” said Hoartrap, looking closely at the Flintlander. “Who warned you of all this, Sullen?”

  “These folk ain’t any worse than us, probably,” he said, still beseeching Zosia. “You cut them down to save your friend, same as I would’ve, but don’t you think they’d do the same for one of theirs? We’re all just mortals, aren’t we, lost and afraid and fighting for our friends, and how’s it fair to take one life to save another, and—”

  “Sullen! You are cracking up!” Hoartrap sounded like he had a few fissures himself. “Now focus, focus—who warned you about all this? We’re your friends, and we’re relying on you to be honest with us.”

  The boy wrestled with it for a moment, then looked Zosia in the eye. “The Faceless Mistress. In Emeritus, in the Temple of the Black Vigil.”

  “No shit?” Zosia hadn’t thought about that broke-ass deity in decades. And after all this time she was still trying to stir the turd and send acolytes after Zosia? Unless … she looked at Hoartrap. “Do you think that’s why she came at us so hard? Because even back in the day she knew I’d come to this place, make this choice?”

  “Any and all philosophical discussions on destiny versus free will can wait,” said Hoartrap, looking over to where the fop was talking to a cardinal, of all people. As if sensing her gaze on one of their leaders the militia tightened their ring, and Zosia wondered how long it would be until they just charged in and tried to plow the gaggle of agitators into the Gate. “Bes
ides, our little Emeritus expedition might have rubbed her raw for all sorts of reasons. If she really was a god of those people, she can’t have taken kindly to our pilfering their relics.”

  “You took stuff?” Sullen looked aghast.

  “Why does a lonely god of an empty land care if I burn Diadem, anyway?” Zosia was thinking out loud. “She obviously thinks it’s a bad play, so does that mean she’s seen yet further into the future, and knows what happens after I detonate this place?”

  “Probably!” said Hoartrap. “Call her a devil queen or a goddess or an unclean spirit, it amounts to the same—she is sentient, concentrated evil, straight from the First Dark. Of course she wants to stop you from sacrificing this city, when it’s the one thing that can save our world from an invasion by her devilish kind!”

  “She, uh …” Sullen’s brows creased. “She didn’t seem that bad when I met her.”

  “She is a god of devils!” shouted Hoartrap. “Nothing less!”

  “Might wanna keep it down,” said Zosia, noticing that the fop and the cardinal were both staring at them. Now that day had good and broken she could see it was the same cleric whose speech had impressed her during that first summit of the People’s Pack, the older gent seeming downright reasonable … but then he and the rest of his reformed church couldn’t be too different from the old Chain, considering they’d taken part in the betrayal of the two queens.

  “In Junius we believed the Faceless Mistress devoured the people of Emeritus,” said Indsorith, taking all this talk of the end of days in stride. “And we were taught that Jex Toth met the same fate—two lands who put their faith in gods, only to be betrayed, for there are no gods … only hungry devils that priests freed with the false faith that they could control them.”

  Choplicker chuffed at this and tried to wedge his face under Zosia’s arm where it went around Indsorith’s shoulders, no doubt looking to snack on what must be a very rare treat indeed in his mistress’s heart, but she warned him off with a glare. She wasn’t of a mood to pretend he was just an animal right now, and probably never could again. But the damage was done, Indsorith squirming away from Zosia and rising shakily to her feet to get out of range of the dog’s breath. Seeing the bloody black sword Hoartrap had discarded, Indsorith somehow summoned a smile and retrieved it as the Touch pressed the urgency of the thing.

  “Every moment we dawdle people are dying, our friends are dying, and the odds stretch longer, thinner, close to snapping once and for all. Jex Toth is launching its final push as we speak, and we must banish them back from whence they came before their psychic armies can fulfill their dread prophecy.”

  “Psychic armies?” That really didn’t sound good. “Dread prophecy?”

  “They can read our thoughts, Zosia,” said Hoartrap. “Even their warbeasts are able to reach into our minds—one such monster snatched me up and it was almost my end. Fortunately for the Star my willpower was too strong and I turned the tables on it, but it left me so close to death it’s taken weeks to regain my strength. Even now I’m still so damnably frail …” The Touch did look about as ragged as Zosia could remember seeing him, his once-bright tattoos now faded beneath swaths of bruises and discolored scabs. Noticing her notice, he said, “These demons are the most powerful foes we’ve ever faced, Zosia. They exchange thoughts like we exchange words, they have inhuman soldiers beyond count, and they have a Gate, maybe several of them … and unless we eradicate the source they will keep pumping out monsters until all mortalkind is their sacrifice!”

  “Monsters and sacrifices,” sighed Zosia. “Always with the monsters and sacrifices. What are they like, these psychic armies of Jex Toth? Are they anything like us at all? Are they, you know, smart?”

  “If anything they’re smarter than we are,” said Hoartrap. “Seeing as they’re on the cusp of dominating our world and our one mortal champion with the means to stop them just sits here, doing nothing!”

  “Well, that went rather smashingly,” said the fop, rubbing his hands together as he came back over to join them. The man looked substantially harder than the last time Zosia had seen him, his armored caftan checked with fresh stitches and fresher bloody slashes.

  “Yeah?” asked Sullen, looking hopefully at Zosia like big news was coming. “They’re going to listen to us? And send an army to help fight the monsters … if nothing happens to them first?”

  Ah, so that was what the kids were doing here, trying to rally Diadem to the greater cause. You only saw that kind of optimism in the young or the stupid. Then again, hard as it would be to give the order to sacrifice a city that had recently turned against her, could she really go through with it if they joined in the fight against Jex Toth? Or would that make it easier—if they pledged to support the war effort in any way they could, that was almost permission …

  “Oh no,” said the fop, vigorously shaking his head. “No no no, not at all. Unkie had a rather dim prospect of the rest of the People’s Pack agreeing to anything of the sort, at least right away. It’s all dreadfully democratic. The bit that went smashingly was he agreed to put me up in his estate, though I gather he’s sharing it with a hundred wildborn clerics since everything went tits up, private-ownership-wise. The pasha is his own plus-one, though, so I’m sure they’ll find ample room to—”

  “You’re staying?” Sullen didn’t sound like he could believe it, but that just proved how naïve he was—the rich kids only played adventure until they were reminded of how cushy the good life was. “Diggelby, you can’t!”

  “I have to,” he said sadly. “If I just vanish with the rest of you there’s no chance these people will come around, is there? But they deserve a chance to see the light, same as anyone, and I’m just the cheeky shepherd to bring them into the fold. After all, I personally witnessed the false Chainites sacrificing the Imperial regiment to summon Jex Toth, and I’ve been an ambassador between the two wizards who warned us of the danger the Star faces, and I’m in deathly need of a hot bath and a new wardrobe. So it’s settled, I’m afraid.”

  “Pasha Diggelby,” said Zosia, “even if I didn’t have other reasons for telling you that staying in Diadem was a seriously bad idea, you wouldn’t be able to change anything here. You can’t trust those people, and you definitely can’t get them to do what you want.”

  “She’s right,” said Indsorith, giving her sword a test swing. “Take it from us.”

  “Well, I certainly won’t be winning anyone over with that attitude,” said Diggelby. “But I have to try, because if I don’t nobody else will. I imagine it will help if I don’t approach it as telling them to do what I want, but to do what they know in their heart is right … And I’ll stand a watch here by the Gate until whenever Nemi turns up to use it, and then have her pop around to the People’s Pack to corroborate my story first. Now that we’ve got an in with the local elite, who knows, we might be needing you to open another bridge between the Gates, Hoartrap, to take the Diademians to Little Heaven just like the Cobalts!”

  “That’s where Ji-hyeon and the Cobalts ended up instead of following me here?” asked Zosia.

  “To defend the Immaculate Isles from the invading monsters of Jex Toth,” said Hoartrap. “But even working together the Cobalt Company and the Immaculate navy weren’t able to stop them. They couldn’t even slow the tide. Othean is falling, and we are out of time. This is the only way, Zosia, the only way.”

  “You are right about being out of time,” said Diggelby. “Unkie says if I make good on my promise to have you all out of here in the next few minutes without anyone else being hurt, he and I will both be credited with ending this conflict. But if I don’t get you all to leave, at once, the rest of the People’s Pack will send the troops back in to herd you all into the Gate. Seems they’re calling this an escape attempt, though what—”

  “It’s time, then,” said Zosia, saying it but not getting up, still leaning against the foot of the stake where Indsorith had been chained and looking around at the motley crew she
had found herself with here, at the edge of a Gate, at the end of her last song, charged with executing a hundred thousand so that millions might live. The fop’s makeup had smeared all over his face, making him look like a drowned mime, and blithely popping open a snuff box, he took a pinch of bug dust. Sullen looked down at her with a grimace so pained you’d think his guts were falling out, leaning on his black spear, his raggedy skirt and tunic showing only a few more stitched-up repairs than his naked arms and calves. Hoartrap scowled up into the sky, where the sun was actually burning through the clouds of the Black Cascades for a change. The grotesque warlock idly scratched his wounded arm, which was dripping slow and steady onto the bloody ground. Indsorith glared at the ring of guards that shielded the People’s Pack from her gaze, wearing only one of their orange tabards, funerary jewelry, and her black sword. And right there beside Zosia, if only for one final adventure, the dog so dirty no flea would touch him; Choplicker proved his name yet again as he eagerly awaited the command of his mistress.

  “All right,” said Zosia, picking herself up with a groan at the aching in her arms, the swelling in her knees and knuckles, the stinging in her left tit. A momentary panic gripped her, but patting her belt pouch she felt the intact outline of her new pipe—had to be a good omen that it hadn’t been lost or broken in the fight, didn’t it? As if she’d ever believed in omens. With a weary sigh she retrieved the hammer that might be crafted from sainted steel but was playing hell with her arthritis.

  “All right?” asked Indsorith, all eyes on Cold Zosia as she stretched on the edge of Diadem Gate.

  “No, not really, but I’m as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s save the Star, stay alive, and get a fucking drink. That order.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  Ji-hyeon had heard it said that nothing provoked prayer like being on the bad end of a battle, but in her unfortunately frequent experience curses always seemed closer to her lips. She stood with her witchy sister on the steps of the Temple of Pentacles, surveying the field as the Gate shimmered shut behind them. The last of the Cobalts had crossed over from the other side, but that just meant the Tothans would have to work harder to earn their inevitable victory. For one thing many of Ji-hyeon’s soldiers weren’t quite human, wildborn from realms beyond the First Dark who had signed on for glory or coin or just the opportunity to see a world beyond their ken, and while they had fought like unbound devils during her campaign through the outer worlds, here on the fields of Othean they seemed to be struggling—the air was too thin, her captains told her, trying to wage war here akin to doing so at the top of a mountain. They were doing their best, though, and it was a poor general who blamed her troops.