by Darius Hinks
Wait! snapped Alzen. There is a limit to how much of myself I can share. I am currently surrounded by the rest of my fraternity. Conserve the power until you need it.
She nodded, still grinning as she sprinted down the avenue of trees, heading for the bend in the road.
As it turned, the road fell down into a valley, trailing up to the Bethsan Palace like a streamer hurled from its gate.
The palace was an incredible sight, suspended hundreds of feet above the ground by an elaborate pedestal of stone fronds with the road snaking up through the centre. The building was like a colossal crucible with a vast, circular structure rising from its centre, a flat disc of architecture, its circumference punctuated by hundreds of star-shaped windows. It looked like a goblet holding an enormous coin. The circular part of the palace seemed to be the main living area, with lights glittering in dozens of the star-shaped windows. At its centre was a huge window, built of thousands of panes of glass. From the side of the valley, where Isten was standing, the palace looked like the eye of a cyclopean titan, peering over a hill, speckled with embers and staring at her through the darkness.
Isten hesitated, wondering how many guards Sayal would have installed in such a colossal building, but then she felt the vigour pulsing through her limbs and realized she didn’t care. She felt godlike. The metalwork responded to her excitement, orbiting her muscles as she jogged down the road into the valley, her gaze locked on the monstrous eye.
“Do you know the layout?” she asked as she ran.
I do. I can direct you to a discreet entrance.
It took another half an hour for Isten to reach the foot of the palace. The road soared up into the darkness, surrounded by the palace’s winding mass of buttresses and pilings. At the base of the house’s “crucible” there was a broad, double staircase, sweeping up to a set of mountainous doors. The doors were open and she could see lights inside – not mandrel-fire, but the shifting glow of real fires, spilling out through leaded windows and splashing across the upper steps.
Ignore the staircase, said Alzen. Go left, round to the side of the house.
Isten nodded, and when she reached the end of the road, she skirted round the walls, stooping low behind the hedges that bordered the gardens.
She heard voices coming from inside the house, echoing out into the dusk, but there were no sentries visible. Sayal had no one to fear, she realized. The Aroc Brothers ruled all the districts around the Saraca. No one would dare challenge them – certainly not here.
Her heart was racing as she reached an archway that led into a different part of the gardens and she saw another staircase, leading up to a smaller door.
“Here?” she asked.
Yes.
Isten dashed up the steps, checking the moonlit gardens as she went, but seeing no one else around.
The door was locked.
She drew back her falcata, about to smash the lock with the sword handle.
No, said Alzen. Too noisy.
Isten looked around for another way in, but the lower half of the palace was curiously devoid of windows. There were a few, but they were too small to crawl through.
Place your hand against the lock, said Alzen, sounding excited again.
She did so, and as her skin touched the cold metal, her shroud of metal coils splashed across the door, rippling over its surface like liquid.
Some of the wires spiralled through the keyhole and Isten was thrilled to find that she could feel the mechanism, as though she had reached through the hole with her fingers, touching the springs and pins. Life on the Blacknells Road had taught her many skills her teachers in Rukon never expected she’d need, and picking a lock was delightfully easy when one could reach inside the mechanism.
The door clicked open and the cords of metal peeled away from the door, wrapping themselves back around Isten. She looked at her hand in wonder, then shook her head, turned the handle and pushed the door open.
She was in a long, rectangular storeroom. There was no illumination, apart from the moonlight she had let in through the open door, so it took a moment for her eyes to rationalize the shapes. What she took at first to be sleeping men, turned out to be sacks of grain and seeds, heaped on the floor beneath shelves holding urns, wheels of cheese and bottles of oil. The room had clearly not been used for a long time. The sacks were covered in dust and the smell of rotting food rushed out to greet her.
“Sayal doesn’t know what to do with a house like this,” she sneered.
Perhaps you could put it to better use? said Alzen.
“What?”
We can talk about it when he’s dead. There’s a servants’ dining room through that door. I doubt that’s in use either. The door at the far end leads to a hallway and then a staircase. The staircase leads up to the main house.
Isten crossed the storeroom and opened the door slightly, peering into the gloom beyond. The dining room was even darker, but she could just about see a low table surrounded by mouldering cushions and cabinets full of dusty crockery. It had the air of a tomb and Isten made no attempt to hide as she entered, confident that no one had eaten in there for months, perhaps even years.
At the far end she found the door and made her way to the bottom of the stairs.
Light was washing down from above, falling in shafts through the spindles of the staircase, and she could hear voices, drunken, slurred, raised in anger.
She gripped her falcata and started creeping slowly up the stairs, conscious that, as the light played over her, she was glittering like a jewellery box.
Remember, said Alzen. Be quick. The rest of his brothers will be arriving any time now.
Isten was not really listening. She was picturing Ozero’s face. Remembering him as he was when she last saw him, his arm around Puthnok, blushing with pride as his sister read the latest drafts of her manifesto. “Not long now,” she whispered.
The stairs led up to a long gallery, with a vast, concave window at the far end. The glass was stained blue at the centre, around a black circle: the eye of the cyclops.
She peered over the top step and counted around a dozen Aroc Brothers. Some were sprawled in chairs, drinking wine or smoking tar pipes, and the rest were standing in a group next to the window, locked in a furious argument. The largest of them was wearing a golden band around his head.
“Sayal,” whispered Isten. “I can see him.”
Get as close as you can before you attack.
Isten nodded. She climbed the last few steps and began walking calmly across the room, passing through the pools of light thrown by tall windows that lined the gallery, her expression serene and amused, a faint smile playing around her lips.
None of the seated guards paid any attention to her, either too inebriated or simply fooled by her nonchalant air.
Isten was only a few feet from Sayal when he broke from his argument and stared at her in shock.
“For Ozero,” she said, speaking clearly and calmly.
Sayal reached for a knife.
Isten levelled her sword at him and gold tore through the air, hitting his head and kicking him backwards.
He smashed through the domed window and fell, pinwheeling into the darkness, surrounded by a blizzard of shattered glass.
A few seconds later, everyone in the gallery heard his body thud onto the courtyard, hundreds of feet below.
The other Aroc Brothers stared at Isten in shock, then grabbed knives and crossbows and leapt to attack.
Isten was laughing as she brought her falcata round in a wide, lazy swipe. Tongues of metal rippled through the air, slicing through the brothers and flaying the skin from their faces.
They fell like coins from a purse, clattering across the floor and gouging channels in the walls.
Isten heard footsteps behind her and whirled around.
The other guards had lurched drunkenly from their seats, their bulbous, fish-like eyes full of dazed horror.
One of them fired his crossbow, but the bolt clanged harmlessly against Isten’s chest and bounced back across the floor.
The others struggled to load their weapons, panicked by the golden vision striding towards them.
Isten slashed the air with her falcata, unleashing another gout of metal.
The gold ripped through her attackers, sending them clanging back across the gallery, but it also lashed across the walls, smashing pictures, enveloping furniture and tearing a forest of spikes from the floor.
She staggered backwards, unbalanced by the ferocity of the power blasting through her, struggling to keep hold of the sword as the room exploded, transformed into a labyrinth of weaving, golden branches. She felt an intoxication more potent than anything she had experienced before. She forgot everything but the heady, glorious thrill of the power.
Finally, the violence was too much and the sword fell from her grip. She fell backwards onto the nest of brittle shapes and the power ceased, snuffed like a flame, leaving her gasping and exultant, half-blinded by the afterimages of the blast.
Isten?
She could hear Alzen in her thoughts, but she was unable, for the moment, to reply, too dazed by what had just happened. The gallery was a smoking beautiful mess of golden twine. She had transformed it, turning it into something wonderful. No, she realized, Alzen had transformed it. She was no more than a vessel for his power. Her euphoria started to fade, until she remembered that she had killed Sayal.
She staggered to her feet and climbed through the convoluted shapes back towards the window. She leant out through the damaged glass and saw Sayal’s broken remains far below, chunks of fractured metal, surrounded by a fast-growing pool of blood.
“For you, Ozero,” she whispered but, in truth, her mind was elsewhere. She was thinking of how it felt to wield such power.
Isten? repeated Alzen.
“Sayal’s dead,” she replied, trying to calm herself, remembering why she was there. “You said once he was gone you would supply me with cinnabar.” She hesitated to repeat his promise, feeling as though she might shatter the dream by speaking it aloud. “You said you would give it to me for free.”
It worked, said Alzen, sounding dazed, not seeming to hear her question. How did it feel? To have that sacred fire in your heart?
She shook her head, looking back at the gilded chaos she had wrought, unable to explain. “The cinnabar,” she demanded. “Will you keep your promise?”
It was hard to tell, but she had the strange impression that Alzen was weeping. Of course, he said. She heard the same wonder in his voice that she was feeling. He was as surprised as her. Tell me where to send the first shipment, he said, sounding a little calmer, and it will be there by this evening. The city is yours, Isten of the Exiles. The city is yours.
14
She fell through the streets, propelled down Athanor’s loops and arches, drunk on victory, lost in the wine-reeking mess. Finally, power. Finally, a way out. It was dizzying. Glorious. And yet, as the city flashed by, a quiet, familiar voice whispered in her ear: You’re falling, Isten. You’re falling.
The Stump punched through the Botanical Quarter, rising like a righteous fist, trailing veins of rock and a skin of crumbling, lichen-clad outbuildings. It was the largest structure on the Blacknells Road and it seemed entirely appropriate that an alehouse should be the terminus of every street in the district. It was even older than the Alembeck Temple, whose warped facade watched it disapprovingly from the far end of the road. Both were sites of worship, but the Stump was the only one that still drew a congregation.
As Isten barged her way down the Blacknells Road, the sun was rising behind the Stump, turning the building into a smouldering silhouette. It looked like the shoulder of a black mountain, caged by the city, but the locals claimed that it had once been a living creature, enveloped during one of Athanor’s earliest conjunctions – the head of a basalt-browed colossus that survived imprisonment for weeks, howling and straining to free its entombed limbs until, finally, the Curious Men filled its heart with cords of iron, silenced its cries and left this cavernous maze of grotto-like chambers.
Isten had her falcata in one hand and a grain sack in the other and she was carrying herself with the proud, triumphant air of a victorious general. She battled through the crowds outside and crossed the bridge that led into the Stump. Supposedly, the bridge was what remained of the giant’s tongue and the entrance at the top was its gaping mouth.
Even at this time of day, the Stump was an explosion of noise. Drinkers crowded every one of its windows, laughing and singing over the sound of erratic drums. The entrance was a single permanently open doorway that led into a huge, barrel-shaped atrium. The atrium reached right up to an opening in the distant roof, and a column of sunlight fell down through the middle of the building, revealing hundreds of ravelled, intestinal stone balconies. The shape of the amphitheatre amplified the sounds of revelry, creating an oceanic roar. In the circular space at the bottom of the atrium was the bar, a jagged lump of limbs and spurs that was supposedly the top vertebra of the fossil’s spine.
Isten still had some of Alzen’s money left, so she bought a wine skin and headed up one of the staircases that spiralled the walls. As she fought through the crowds, she was pleased to see looks of surprise on the faces of people who recognized her. Everyone had thought she was dead, ruined by Sayal, but here she was, swaggering through the Stump with a skin-full of expensive wine. No one challenged her, but some rushed off to spread word of her return and, for once, she was pleased to think she would be the talk of the Blacknells Road.
As she headed away from the atrium, out into the warren of tunnels and lounges, Isten enjoyed sinking back into the Stump’s womblike murk. There were no mandrel-fires in the Stump because the clientele enjoyed the privacy of its shadows, but the tunnels were faintly lit by needles of daylight. The light fell through holes in the walls, reaching down from the roof and creating a network of fine columns, spearing dust motes and rippling across the rough-hewn walls.
Away from the atrium, the noise of the crowds took on a muffled, subterranean quality that combined with the falling lights to give the Stump a beguiling, dreamlike atmosphere. As one grew more drunk, the Stump became less real, and time became increasingly elastic. Drinkers often lost themselves for days, sunk in a fever dream of smoky, shadowy figures and whirling lights. It was not unusual for drinkers to find that the taciturn stranger they were drinking next to was actually a corpse, mouldering quietly in the corner with rats nestling in their chest.
Unlike most of the Stump’s guests, Isten moved with purpose, following a familiar route through the maze, shoving past the lecherous and the belligerent as she made for one of the deepest, largest lounges. She was not ready to face Gombus yet, not after what had happened to Amoria, but some of the other Exiles would be in their usual place, and she could not stop grinning as she considered the news she had for them.
The lounge was crowded with a roaring, heckling mob, all waving scraps of paper and hurling insults at the two figures in the centre of the room. Two blood-drenched men lurched through the crowd, staggering across the beer-slick, uneven floor, landing listless punches on each other.
Isten shouldered her way to the middle of the room and shook her head as she saw that one of the fighters was Lorinc. Lorinc was big, and powerfully built, but his opponent was bigger and clearly about to win. As Isten grimaced, the man landed a flurry of savage blows on Lorinc’s head, sending him flying back into the crowd.
“What are you doing?” she muttered, furious at Lorinc’s stupidity. Isten used to run pit fights in the Stump every week, and Lorinc was often doing the punching, but the fights were all rigged. Without her guidance, the Exiles had a worrying weakness for honesty.
She tried to move round the circle and get closer, but she couldn’t fight through the crush and, as Lorinc tried to rise, his opponent leapt forwards and kicked him, hard, in the face.
; Lorinc’s head jolted back, spraying blood across the delighted crowd.
Lorinc landed heavily and lay still.
Half of the crowd roared, waving their scraps of paper.
As the crowd moved away, Lorinc was left alone on the floor and Isten rushed towards him. She tried to stem the blood rushing from his nose. He was dazed but conscious, groaning as he tried to focus on her.
“Isten?” said someone. She looked up to see Exiles staring at her in shock: Feyer, Korlath and Piros, shaking their heads in disbelief.
This time she met them without shame. She knew she was going to save them. “Let’s talk,” she said, hauling Lorinc to his feet and nodding to a gloomy chamber.
“You’re a fucking disaster,” said Lorinc, avoiding Isten’s gaze as he wiped blood from his face and tried to hold himself as though he wasn’t in agony. It was only a week since the incident in the warehouse and the death of Amoria, but the Exiles were even more wary than when she met them under the Blacknells Road Bridge.
Isten nodded, taking the abuse with good grace and resisting the urge to point out the irony of him saying that as he bled all over the table. She could not quite manage to hold back her smile.
“You think it’s funny?” Lorinc’s brutal features flushed with colour and he gripped the table. Lorinc was a head taller than anyone else in the alcove and his ape-like bulk meant the other four were squeezed uncomfortably around him on the bench. As he leant towards Isten, the table tipped and everyone had to grab their drinks.
“Amoria’s dead. And you come back here with a fucking smirk? I stood up for you, Isten. I told Gombus Amoria’s death wasn’t your fault. That we couldn’t have known the Aroc Brothers would be guarding the warehouse with… with whatever that thing was.”
“It was my fault. And I don’t think it’s funny.”
“You did smile, though,” said Piros. Isten had never seen the ashen-faced teenager without a pipe in his mouth. He was so pale and wasted that he seemed to hang from it, as though the pipe were the only thing holding him off the floor. His eyes were perpetually bloodshot and his hair hung around his face in lank, greasy strands. “Are we funny?”