By the time we reached the hanging stone, the moon had risen and the stars were a milky spray across the heavens. The end of the Hardscrabble lay spread out below us; to the south, a silver ribbon of the Grenthvar trickling away from the Smokeys, winding among copses of gambel and birch. It was peaceful here on this high vantage at night. An owl hooted softly, and the high-pitched cries of coyotes and other creatures of the Hardscrabble were distant and faint.
The engineers unslung their daemonlight lanterns and spent the next two hours scratching and chiselling at the flat rock face with awls. ‘Gods! Thank Ia this is soapstone – we’d be well and truly fucked if it was granite,’ Sapientia muttered as they remained hunched over the stone, while the goat bleated merrily into night air and I built a charcoal fire. When the engineers had finished etching the warding into the rock face, they produced a small ingot of silver and melted it and then, wearing thick gloves, used a ceramic ladle with a fine mouth to outline the warding with the thinnest ribbon of silver possible. The smell of the charcoal and the burning silver made my nose itch, but they finished that task in good time and then went over it once more to make sure none of the warding was flawed or missing.
Finally, Samantha and Sapientia beckoned Gynth to bring Beleth inside the warding and lay him down. Samantha plucked the rag from Beleth’s mouth. He spluttered and coughed and then went still.
‘Mister Beleth,’ Samantha said, ‘it has come to this.’
Beleth made no response, but in the daemonlight his expression seemed venomous.
‘Please exit the warding, sir,’ Samantha said.
He made no move. ‘Thank you, but I’m perfectly content here, Sam,’ he said.
‘I am afraid I must insist,’ she responded. ‘You know why.’
He began to laugh. It was a mellow sound, as if we were back in the stateroom of the Cornelian having whiskeys instead of out, naked beneath the stars. They were indifferent to his plight. We were not.
‘Bring the goat, then,’ Sapientia said to me. I led the creature inside the warding and left it, wondering how it would stay there, but something in Beleth or the intaglio of silver itself seemed to hold it in sway.
Sapientia looked expectantly to Samantha. ‘And the precium? Will you let it? Or shall I?’
‘It should be me. He was my master, once.’ Sam drew a dagger and cut her palm, wincing. She let the blood pool there and then approached the goat and dripped it across its back. Moving to the focus of the ward, she placed her bloody palm in the centre of the stone and left it there to transfer the blood as she spoke slowly, under her breath.
Whatever incantation she might’ve spoken, I could not hear. Finally, she pressed her bloody hand to Beleth’s navel – the tattooed ward – and stepped from the circle.
An ebony mist began seeping up, out of Beleth, out of the rock itself. As it rose, the goat bleated more frantically, desperate. Beleth writhed, his back bowed away from the hanging stone. He screamed, shouting in tongues unknown to me. I had expected great thunderous screeches and screams from the infernal realms – but no. He sounded like a man. In pain.
The dark mist filled the space, faster than I would’ve thought, and in a moment, it coalesced around the goat and disappeared.
‘Well, that’s that,’ Samantha said. ‘Can you hear me, Beleth?’
Beleth did not move, except for the rising and falling of his chest. His face was hidden in the cradle of his arms. His stump was bleeding again. What I thought were coughs wracked his body, soft chuffing sounds. Not coughs.
Sobs. The man wept.
‘Can you hear me, Beleth?’ Samantha said.
A voice, miserable and utterly lost, said, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you remember what you’ve done? Even with that thing inside you?’ Samantha asked.
He did not respond for a long while. His mouth opened, lips cracked and sore. A bit of blood flecked his lips. ‘Yes. Everything.’
‘What did you tell the Medierans? What have you shown the Medierans?’ she said.
There was a long silence. Beleth sat upright. The desolation in his features was plain. Here was a man coming to grips with his own horrors.
‘Kill me,’ he said. ‘Please. I can’t— I can’t—’
‘It will all be over for you eventually, Beleth. But we need answers first,’ Samantha said, her voice stern.
‘They had one engineer, a summoner with talent. Verdammen. I showed him …’
Samantha clenched and unclenched her hands. The muscles in her jaw worked as if she chewed a piece of gristle – and maybe she did, in a way. ‘What did you show him?’
‘Everything,’ Beleth sobbed. ‘The city killing. The soldiers. He knows it all.’
‘Ia-damn you to perdition,’ Samantha whispered, standing over him.
Tears poured from Beleth’s face. ‘I’m sorry. It wasn’t me, it was the daemon inside me. So long, it’s been there for so long—’
She slapped him. It was a simple thing, the movement many mothers have made to children. A cuff. But the sound of it was bright in the night air. ‘How can we destroy the daemon hand without releasing the Crimson Man contained there? Will this work?’ She gestured to the circle and the goat. The goat, which had taken on a very evil and bellicose demeanour.
‘No,’ Beleth said. ‘No. You need a human. Or a vaettir or dvergar. You can lock it away, throw it to the bottom of the ocean, or—’ He stopped, his eyes going wide.
‘What?’ Samantha said. ‘What? Damn you!’
‘You can take it to Terra Umbra,’ he said. His voice was a ruin now. Between the sobbing and the long captivity, his vocal cords were torn and raw, making his voice rasp. ‘The universe is worn thin, and it’s the rift there – Emrys’ Folly – that allows all the daemons through. If you took it into the breach—’ He stopped again. His eyes searched the sky for something only he could see.
‘What?’
‘The power released would close it. Maybe. No one can know for sure,’ Beleth said.
‘Might it open it wider?’ Sapientia asked.
‘Doubtful. But possibly. The daemon bound in that hand is godlike in aspect. Godlike in power. And it being here is an imbalance that wants to be corrected. So bringing it to the breach … we just can’t know. But I think it will close it. And closing the breach will end the world as we know it.’
‘What did you promise him to come over with so little precium?’ Samantha asked.
Beleth stilled. ‘Everything.’
‘Everything?’ Samantha said, incredulous. ‘Be more specific.’
‘This world and everything in it,’ he said.
‘Except you,’ Samantha responded.
Beleth said nothing.
‘And the Emryal Rift will end it? Will stop Hellfire?’
‘I believe so,’ Beleth said.
‘No more Hellfire,’ I said. ‘Holy shit.’
‘The daemons trapped here will still be trapped here,’ he said. His strength was fading. The daemonic goat – still held captive by the warding – gave a tremendous bleat that sounded like a man screaming. ‘There’ll be no new boats. No new ammunition.’ He was still for a while. ‘It will be a better world, though. No cities would die. No one would have daemons infesting themselv—’
‘You did that to yourself. You went searching for power and found it. And it rode you hard. And now it’s the end of your story.’ She walked to the goat and cut its throat. Blood gouted from the beast’s neck, all over the silver wardwork. Something dark in the body of the animal shivered and then dissipated, as if the creature’s flesh were a curtain. ‘This is the last time I’ll ever see you,’ Samantha said, and packed up her engineer’s equipment. ‘And for that I’m glad. The commander, Fisk, has sentenced you to die. It is wartime. There is no need for a trial, and you admit your deeds.’ She looked at me. ‘But I have not the stomach for it. Can I leave this to you?’
‘Yes,’ I said, though I did not want the task. It’s a hard world, and it makes monsters of u
s all.
Samantha left the circle. Gynth retrieved the body of the once daemon-gripped goat, and Sapientia followed them away, back to the camp. I was left with Beleth, who had collapsed on the flat stone.
It was quiet for a long while, with only the sobs of the desolate man and the hooting of an owl to break the silence.
‘Come out,’ I called to the trees behind us. ‘Come out, Winfried.’
She emerged from the trees and approached, stopping where the rock outcrop began to tower above the land below. It was early morning now, the sky lightening in the east, beyond the rim of gun-blue mountains.
‘Here he is,’ I said. ‘And I’ll not stop you from your vengeance.’
I stepped away from Beleth and she came near. In her hand was a steel longknife.
‘You killed my brother-mate,’ she said.
Beleth stopped crying. He sat up. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I did.’
She slowly brought the knife forward and placed it on the base of his throat above his collarbone. He lifted his head. Tears streamed from his eyes. Spittle and blood flecked his mouth.
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘So very sorry.’
They remained like that for a long while, Beleth on his knees, Winfried with her knife at his throat. Maybe, if he’d not been naked underneath the sky. Maybe, if he’d not wept. Maybe, if he’d not been so willing to go to death, she would’ve wet her blade. But she did not.
She dropped it on the stone and it clattered away, over the lip of hanging rock, to fall below. Without looking at me, she turned and began the long walk back to the Breadbasket and Neruda.
‘And that leaves just you and me, now, Mister Beleth,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Let us wait a while, shall we. The sunrise here is something to see,’ I said. I took off my jacket and draped it over his shoulders. I rolled a cigarette, lit it, and placed it in his mouth. I rolled one for myself. His remaining hand was clumsy and dumb. His body slack.
We sat there, smoking, watching the sun’s light colouring the land below us, first in blues and greys, then in tawny yellows and ochres. The lit face of the earth opened before us like a flower.
I stood. Withdrew my silver knife. It smoked in my hand. The pain was just.
‘You’ve shown me that knife before,’ Beleth said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have.’ I moved to stand behind him. ‘Watch the sky, Mister Beleth. See light moving across the land?’
‘Linneus,’ he said. ‘My name was Linneus.’
‘Linneus,’ I said, and drove the knife through his neck, into his skull.
Back at camp, I went to talk with Fisk. He was just washing his face in an ablution bowl when I entered his tent.
‘Long night?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.
‘Yep,’ I said. ‘And a bloody one.’
‘Beleth?’
‘Had a daemon riding him. For years. All the godsawful shit he did, the whole time there was a daemon on his back.’
Fisk shrugged. ‘Never liked the man. But I’ve had a daemon riding around in me, if you recall. Around my neck. He could’ve done something.’ He wiped his face with a towel. ‘I fought. I could’ve killed myself. No, something in that man liked it and not all of his deeds were the daemon’s will.’ He looked at me. ‘And Winfried? Surely, she sniffed out the proceedings.’
‘Aye, and followed us. At the end, I gave him to her. She had not the heart to do it,’ I said. ‘He was a pitiful sight indeed. There was remorse there.’
‘And you?’
‘I didn’t have the heart, either. But I did it anyway,’ I said. ‘And we had no dogs to drag his body through the streets, as Rume likes to do to traitors, so I just tossed him from the hanging stone below. He’ll be naught but bones in a fortnight.’
‘Or sooner. So, that’s one thing less to worry about.’
‘There’s a couple of new things to worry over,’ I said, and filled him in on what Beleth had told us regarding the Medieran engineer, Verdammen.
‘Ia-dammit,’ Fisk said, through his teeth. ‘Ia-damn that man. Thrown from the hanging stone was too good for him.’ He sat at his command table and withdrew a machine-rolled cigarette from a pack lying there. He handed the smoke to me and took one for himself. ‘The benefits of command, eh, Shoe?’ he said, lighting mine from a match.
‘Seems like there are very few benefits there,’ I said. ‘You seem like you’ve slept as much as I have.’
‘Which is not at all,’ Fisk said. ‘I am … distressed. I dream of Livia when I sleep and when I wake. The anxiety of not knowing her fate gnaws at me. I drink wine and whiskey to dull the anxiety but it just makes it worse when I wake.’
‘I wish there was something I could do for you there, pard. But Livia is a force unto herself and you will be reunited, I am sure of it,’ I said.
‘I can only hope you’re right,’ he said.
‘Speaking of reunions,’ I began. ‘My scouts have not returned, and they’ve been too long gone.’
‘Your scouts?’ he said. ‘Lina.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I thought I might take Gynth and Catch Hands and outride west. See if I can pick up the scouts’ trail and suss out what the Medierans are up to, all at once.’
‘What do you need?’ he asked, shifting into his tone of command. It was a question of resources. It was strange, now, talking to my old partner. All of the camaraderie and familiarity remained as it ever was; here was my grizzled partner, inscrutable in some ways, an open book in others. Quick to anger, deadly to his enemies, loyal to a fault to his friends. My partner. But now he was more than that. The vagaries of this monstrous world had shuffled the deck, and the hand he was dealt was one he would not have chosen for himself if he could have. But it was a good hand. And he, despite his nature, his history, his demeanour – he was suited to lead. Not because of some innate Ruman nature, but because, possibly, of his lack of it. He was a noble who had never had anything given or easy.
‘A pony for Catch Hands, and extras for the scouts should I find them,’ I said. ‘Hellfire for Catch Hands as well. Food enough for ten days. Three to cross to the Big Rill, another two to get to the nearest town, and three to get back.’
‘That’s only eight days, Shoe,’ Fisk said.
‘Two extra for good measure,’ I said.
‘You’ll have it,’ he said and scribbled a note on a blank sheet of parchment, dropped wax from a signet candle upon it, and pressed his eagle into it. ‘Talk to the provisioner. Ride safe and fast, my friend.’
I left by noon, Catch Hands bobbing along beside me on the most docile mount the stableman could find. Gynth bounded forward and circled us. In the past, that would’ve made me nervous, being paced by a vaettir, but now it was reassuring.
On occasion Gynth bounded up, smiling. Once, he said, ‘How comes my little gynth?’
‘Don’t call me that,’ Catch Hands said. ‘Why do you have to talk like that?’
‘It’s your word,’ Gynth said. ‘I did not make it up. My tongue is—’ He said something unintelligible.
‘It’s your name. I don’t like being called “little”,’ Catch Hands said. ‘I’m told I’m tall for a dvergar.’
Gynth sniffed. ‘You’re small to me,’ he said.
‘Don’t get your britches in a breech,’ I said. ‘Everyone’s small to Gynth.’
‘This is true,’ he said, and leapt away. In moments he had disappeared on the horizon, vaulting over gulleys and bramblewrack, like a child hopping over puddles and cracks in stone.
‘Bring back supper,’ I called after him.
Hardscrabble. I inhaled the dusty scent of it.
And it felt like coming home.
PART TWO
We study war so that our children might study industry. Our children will study industry so that their offspring might study art and music. Thus the world moves toward enlightenment. But, now, we must be generals.
– Neruda
TWENTY
&nbs
p; I Stood There, Dumbly, Watching Our Death Come
YSMAY HAD CUT his wrists to the quick. Slumped against the wall, he’d bled out, facing the door, leaving his cabin a stinking, sticky mess. From bulwark to bulkhead to berth door, the floor was puddled and sticky with blood.
I did not enter, for I did not wish to stand amidst the blood, and I was arrested by his ghastly pale face floating up in my vision like some unseemly spirit from a dark pool.
Standing there for many minutes, taking in the terrible end of the last crew member of the Typhon, I realised one thing: I had caused this. There was nothing I could do to brush this aside, push this away. I was the catalyst. I was the spark.
‘Ia-damn,’ Carnelia said, looking in after me.
‘Get Tenebrae,’ I said. She called out for him. ‘Get him, don’t yell at him. He may be above deck.’
She left and returned in moments with Tenebrae in tow.
He inhaled sharply. ‘Gods, who would have thought there was that amount of blood in such a slender man.’
‘He was despondent,’ Carnelia said. She sniffed. ‘We’re all lost, at some point. But you don’t withdraw just because things aren’t going your way. If anything, taking your own life should have some meaning.’
I shook my head. ‘The human heart doesn’t work like that. There are cracked vessels, broken people. Those who are hurt or moribund. Or even ill, in their mind. And they cannot help their despondency,’ I said. ‘And I think Ysmay was one of these people. He was possessed of a natural proclivity toward darkness, as if he was born to it.’
‘He showed me how to sluice water away in rooms. There’s a valve around here, somewhere,’ Tenebrae said, kicking off his boots, shucking socks, and entering the berth. He walked over to the engineer’s corpse as a man walking on a rocky beach – arms upraised, stepping gingerly. He tugged at Ysmay’s shoulder, tilting the body forward. ‘Of course, the valve is behind him. We’ll need water.’
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