by Matthew Ward
Ashana’s expression shifted, the regal mask of an eternal goddess slipping to reveal a younger, unsteady soul beneath. But the moment passed, and Ashana was once again as unknowable and ageless as the heavens.
“Ashanael Brigantim! Saran Amhyrador!” The Icansae prince rose to one knee, his sword point-down on the bridge’s timbers. “For Goddess and Emperor!”
“For Goddess and Emperor!”
The cloister boomed with sound and fury as other voices took up the cry. Swords offered salute from balconies. The Huntsman watched unmoving, inscrutable; Elspeth with grey-eyed resentment. And Ashana, the Goddess who sometimes claimed not to be a goddess at all, set a circlet of moonsilver upon the brow of a man delivered from delirium to rule.
Thus Kai Saran – who had knelt a prince – rose an Emperor, and swept a sword swathed in moonfire to the heavens.
And Melanna Saranal, who had longed for this day all her life, wondered why she shivered.
Lunandas, 28th Day of Ashen
The past is not dead.
It slumbers, the custodian of our follies.
A moment’s waking brings all to ruin.
from Eldor Shalamoh’s “Historica”
One
Dawn stumbled across Tressia’s crooked rooftops, Lumestra’s radiance as reluctant as Josiri’s blood. No. Not Lumestra’s. The goddess was gone, dead perhaps even before his birth. The sunlight was her legacy. And in Dregmeet every scrap of light counted.
Tressia had been founded before the Age of Kings, a labyrinth of townhouses, mansions and churches reaching into the sunlit sky, white stone agleam and stained-glass windows rich as gemstone. A place of industry and guilds, where farmers and millworkers jostled beneath bright market canopies, soldiers drilled to perfection on muster fields, and gold-frocked priests preached to the bright carillon of bells. At least, that was so of the wider city. Dregmeet was Tressia’s most ancient quarter – or the oldest not to have been torn down and built upon across passing centuries. Decaying wattle and timber buildings that were the last refuge for those who had nothing.
Even on the district’s fringes as Josiri was that morning, far from where ancient walls held the western sea from sunken streets, mist muffled the sounds of the wider city. The further one descended into Dregmeet’s slums, the deeper one trod another world. Or so nursery rhyme and folk tale insisted.
Stifling a yawn, Josiri brushed a tangle of blond hair from his eyes, and clung deeper to the alley’s shadows. A year ago, he’d lived a life of broken hours, sleep snatched wherever it could be found. Today, rising before dawn had almost destroyed him.
Captain Kurkas scratched beneath his mildewed and curling eyepatch. “Pardon me for asking, sah, but you’re sure about this?”
Josiri stared across the empty street, past the crumbling spire of Seacaller’s Church to the dilapidated manor house. Decades before, Crosswind Hall had served as the portreeve’s home and headquarters. Then, its windows had shone with light, bright heraldic banners of council and family streaming to welcome guests and petitioners. Now, sagging timbers covered broken glass, and the overgrown garden was caged only by the iron railings at the boundary. The roofs were sunken, weatherworn expanses shed of tiles.
“Quite sure, captain,” Josiri replied. “And I’ve told you before. It’s Josiri.”
“Right you are, sah.” The gruff accent remained steadfastly neutral. “Still, I can’t help but wonder if the First Councillor…”
Josiri frowned away his annoyance. “We can’t wait for the Council’s approval. If the Crowmarket move the captives, we might not see them again.”
“Not ’till we find them floating in the Silverway.” Kurkas sighed. “And I suppose it’s too late anyway, what with half the constabulary lurking hereabouts.”
True. Little went unnoticed in Dregmeet. Eyes would be watching.
“Glad to have your support, captain.”
“I just don’t want this turning sour on you, sah.”
Josiri tried to read his mood. A wasted effort. The captain had been too long a soldier, and far too accomplished at misdirecting superiors’ questions.
Kurkas had parted with his right eye and most of his left arm on the battlefield, and what remained never seemed terribly concerned about parting ways with the rest. Or appearance. The eyepatch was the least of it. Nothing crumpled a uniform so swiftly as surrendering it to Kurkas’ care. Even in Dregmeet’s gloom, the Trelan phoenix on his king’s blue tabard should have glittered – gold thread giving shape to white feathers. Instead, it more resembled a guttershrike’s filthy plumage. Taken alongside a shock of black hair that surrendered but reluctantly to the comb, and Kurkas looked more suited to a life in Dregmeet than as captain of a noble’s hearthguard.
But he’d come with the highest possible recommendation. Besides, Anastacia liked him. That placed Kurkas on a very short roster indeed, and brought forgiveness for less esoteric flaws. And without Kurkas, they’d never have known about the vranakin nest at Crosswind Hall. Beneath the crumpled respectability of his hearthguard uniform, he was still a son of Dregmeet, with contacts who’d never consider speaking to a constable, far less a Privy Councillor.
Footsteps heralded a woman’s emergence from the alley’s depths. Like Kurkas, she wore a blue tabard belted tight about her waist, and a captain’s star at her throat. But she was otherwise his opposite; watchful, heavyset and controlled.
“Are we ready, Captain Darrow?” asked Josiri.
She nodded, one hand on her sword’s pommel and the other about the stem of a muffled hand bell. “My lot are in place. Unless you’ve kraikons coming, it won’t get better than this.”
Even one or two of the bronze giants would have made the morning’s work faster and safer, but borrowing kraikons meant approaching the proctors, and approaching the proctors meant gaining the Council’s blessing. And the Council’s blessing took time. Scaring up a score of constables had been hard enough.
And then there was the other problem. Kraikons weren’t reliable in Dregmeet’s mists. As in the Forbidden Places Josiri had trespassed as a boy, and later relied upon as a wolf’s-head outlaw, unhallowed magic brought the foundry’s constructs to a creaking halt.
Josiri shook his head. Too late to worry about that now. “Let’s get to the morning’s business.”
“Yes, my lord. I’ll send word once it’s safe.”
“Thank you, captain, but I’ll be coming with you.”
Her lips twisted in the expected scowl. “I don’t think that’s—”
“These are my people.”
She stiffened. “Mine too.”
Her voice held enough pride and resentment that she probably meant it. That made Vona Darrow something of a rarity, and a nobler soul than her predecessor. But better the blame fell on his shoulders than hers if matters went ill. His past created an expectation of rashness. His rank offered forgiveness for it.
Ever since the Council had passed the Settlement Decree – finally annulling the old laws of indenturement, and freeing thousands of Josiri’s fellow southwealders – there had been disappearances. Freed from their slave’s bridles, too many had simply vanished. Officialdom had never cared much about the fortunes of those who bore the rose-brand upon their wrist, save to ensure that they weren’t taking unearned liberties or passing themselves off as “decent” folk.
Again and again, Josiri had heard the same tale: that the missing had been taken by the Crowmarket, dragged down into Dregmeet. It didn’t take much imagination to determine the rest. A welter of unwholesome trade transacted in the city’s shadows. And beyond the walls? Plenty of unscrupulous merchants who’d spend coin on workers no one might miss. Cheaper to pay the local reeve to look the other way than part with fair wages.
“Then let’s waste no more time arguing,” said Josiri.
Darrow exchanged a brief glance with Kurkas, found little in the way of support, and offered a stiff-armed salute. “Right you are, my lord.”
She slippe
d woollen muffler from clapper. The bell rang out. Others answered through the mist. Constables emerged from alleyways and bore down on the portreeve’s manor, a circle of king’s blue tabards to seal its secrets tight.
Josiri advanced, Kurkas at his side. Darrow pushed on ahead, her long stride eating up the roadway’s mismatched and sunken cobbles. The gate’s sagging hinges yielded to the strike of her boot. The rusted bars crashed back into tangled bushes.
“This is Captain Vona Darrow of the city guard!” She ploughed on down the choked pathway. “Anyone within these walls is bound by law. You’ll come to no harm, unless you want it otherwise.”
“Maybe there’s no one home,” muttered Kurkas.
Josiri tugged the tails of his coat free of a bramble’s snare and peered about. “No. Someone’s here. Too many snagged and trampled branches on the path. Plenty of visitors, but hiding their numbers. Some veteran you are.”
Kurkas sniffed. “’Course I noticed. Wasn’t sure you had, that’s all.”
“Once a wolf’s-head, always a wolf’s-head.”
He’d never thought of those as happier times. And they weren’t, not really. But they’d been simpler.
“Sah!” said Kurkas. “But you’re a councillor now. Stay back and let me take the lumps in your place, if any are in the offing. Matter of professional pride.”
Josiri glanced down at his waistcoat, shirt and trews. Practical enough in the morning chill, but they wouldn’t turn a blade. Not like the leathers and chain Kurkas wore beneath his tabard. “Yes, captain.”
The manor erupted. A knot of men and women in patchwork garb and the ragged cloth masks that were a vranakin’s only uniform burst from the front door and ran headlong for freedom.
Bells chimed, rousing the constabulary to pursuit. Darrow tackled one fugitive, captain and quarry striking the weed-choked gravel with bone-crunching force. Another shoved a constable and bolted for the undergrowth. Dark shapes crashed through tangled branches. Cries of alarm and the dull smack of truncheon on flesh rang out. The clash of steel upon steel. A scream, and the crunch of a body falling onto gravel.
It was over by the time Josiri reached the manor itself. Constables led living fugitives to the clogged fountain and forced them to their knees beside a growing pile of confiscated weapons. The dead, they dragged by their heels. A scruffy bunch, but then the vranakin were seldom otherwise – crow-born with tattered wings. The desperate, the poor and the hungry rubbing shoulders with the thuggish and malevolent. Society’s left-behinds. No one chose a life in Dregmeet.
Darrow broke off from conversation and hurried over. “We’re secure, my lord. I’ve set watches on the exits. No sign of anyone yet, but I’ll wager we’ll find a few rats inside the walls.”
“Let’s take a look, shall we?”
Darrow’s scowl deepened, but she nodded and turned away. “Sergeant Marzdan? You’re in charge out here. Drag this rabble to the cells. I’ll want a long talk with them later.”
Josiri ascended the weatherworn steps. The archway keystone bore the ever-present rays of Lumestra’s sunlight, and also a tide motif. An oddity, but he supposed it made sense that the portreeve would offer deference to Endala, if only to ensure safe passage for his ships. For all the church liked to pretend otherwise, Lumestra was not the only divine power worshipped in the Republic.
He reached for the door.
Kurkas grabbed his arm. “Hold up.”
“What is it?”
The captain pointed at the arch, where the upright began its gentle curve towards the keystone. There, concealed by the dawn’s shadow, was a bundle of black feathers, bound with woollen thread and topped with a corvine skull. Nailed into the mortar at shoulder height, its eyeless gaze cut across the threshold. It gave the impression of something waiting to pounce.
“Crow charm,” said Kurkas. “Used to mark territory and warn away the curious. Give the Raven a coin, he’ll hear you. Give him a feather, and he’ll guard you.”
“Is it dangerous?”
Kurkas shrugged. “Plenty of folk’ll tell you they bring bad fortune.”
“And you?”
“Do I look like a man smiled on by fate?”
The captain’s face held a measure of wariness, but it was a rare day when it did not. Might have been a trick of the eyepatch, but superstition was a fickle thing. Priests and crowmarketeers alike grew fat off it. But just as all lies held a grain of truth, superstition coalesced about fragments of the divine. Harmless, until it killed you.
“Not often, no,” said Josiri.
“Too late anyway.” Kurkas snatched the charm from its nail and crushed it beneath his heel. “Crossing the Crowmarket is bad fortune. Don’t let anyone tell you different.”
Josiri stared down at the fragments, shook away a pang of dismay and eased the door open. Darkness loomed beyond.
“I’ll need a light.”
“Typical highblood. Never prepared.” Darrow unclipped a small iron-bound firestone lantern from her belt and handed it over. “Can’t have you falling down a hole and breaking your neck, can we?”
Josiri nodded his thanks and twisted the knob at the lantern’s base. Quartz blazed to life behind the glass as captive magic roused. Fitful light granted shape to cracked and peeling walls, to collapsed stairs and a bowed ceiling.
He edged into the entrance hall. Somehow it felt colder inside than out, the mist thicker about his feet than before. A filthy chandelier hung from a twisted chain, the glass of its firestone housings shattered and its crystals smashed. Water-stained portraits stared down from the walls like weary vigil-spirits. And the smell. Musty and cloying, with a sour, metallic tang. Forgotten years and old death.
He pressed on across the hall. Lanterns bobbed as constables pressed after him.
“You want upstairs, or down?” asked Darrow.
Josiri peered at the rotting staircase and the equally uncertain ceilings. “Down.”
She offered a crisp nod. “Right you are. Kressick? Treminov? You’re with me. Jorek and Narod, you keep his lordship from getting into too much trouble. And that goes double for you, Vladama. Still can’t believe you talked me into this.”
Kurkas shrugged. “Can’t help my silver tongue, can I?”
Darrow shook her head and stormed away towards the stairs.
Kurkas relieved Narod of his lantern. “You two see to what’s left of the kitchens and the service quarters. His lordship and I will take the rest.”
The constables withdrew. The glow of Jorek’s lantern bobbed along the kitchen passageway and out of sight. Josiri gripped the pommel of his sword, fingers clenching and unclenching without conscious bidding.
He followed Kurkas through the great hall’s mouldered furniture. Marks in the filth betrayed recent travel, but such was hardly proof of illicit business. The wretches outside might simply have needed a roof over their heads – even when that roof was more open to the sky than not. But of the spent fires and refuse that went with such habitation, Josiri saw no sign. Strange, given the downpours of recent days. Sommertide was but a memory, and Fade had its cold talons tight about the city – even the leaves of the Hayadra Grove were curling.
“Now here’s a thing.”
Kurkas stumbled past the fireplace and out into what had once been a wide stairway, now clogged with debris from the upper landing’s demise. The lower stair was clear of rubble. At its foot, a wooden door practically gleamed among the decay, unsoiled by mould and lichen as it was. The heavy bar set across its jambs and a second crow charm all but demanded investigation.
Josiri started down the stairs. Kurkas’ hand fell heavily on his shoulder.
“Now you’ve not forgotten our little chat about lumps and the taking thereof, have you, sah?”
Instincts screaming reluctance, Josiri allowed Kurkas to pass him on the stairs. The captain reached the bottom and dealt with the second crow charm much as he had the first.
“Who knows,” he said conversationally, as bone splintere
d under his boot. “Maybe if you break enough of these things, bad luck comes good again. You know, like a wheel turning. Can I trouble you for a hand with this bar?”
Josiri set down his lantern. Taking a firm grip on the bar, he hoisted it aside. A soft chorus reached his ears. Muffled. Barely more than whispers, and readily lost beneath the creak of timber floorboards.
Caution demanded he call for Darrow and her constables. Impatience insisted he press on.
Impatience won.
Josiri drew his sword and eased back the door. Wooden stairs and cracked plaster gave way to bare stone and deepening mist. The sounds, no longer muffled, betrayed themselves as soft whimpers and hurried breaths uttered by those hoping to escape notice. Josiri reclaimed his lantern. Kurkas set his own aside in favour of drawing his sword.
With a last, shared nod, they continued their descent.
The stairs opened into a vaulted cellar, heavy with the rank stench of sweat and bodily waste. Corroded iron cages lined the walls. Most stood empty, though trampled straw and other detritus suggested they had not always been so. As Josiri approached the foot of the stairs, a handful of gaunt, filthy faces turned away and shuffled back into the darkness. All save one, belonging to a red-haired lad. Where his neighbours shrank away, he pressed close to the bars, eyes widening at Kurkas’ tabard.
“The Phoenix…” A grimy hand reached through the bars, the dark whorls of the rose-brand stark against a pale wrist. “Are you here to free us?”
Crouching beside the cage, Josiri took the lad’s hand. The fingers were cold and thin, but he took encouragement from the strength of his grip. “We are.”
“Did Lord Trelan send you?”
Josiri ignored Kurkas’ soft chuckle. Another unwanted reminder of his changing circumstances. Traitors, however high-born, didn’t merit the statues and portraits by which common citizens might recognise their betters. But for Kurkas’ phoenix – long the symbol of the Trelan line – there’d have been no clue at all. The lad looked barely old enough to have been born at the time of Exodus, some sixteen years before. To him, Lord Josiri Trelan, the duke of vanished Eskavord, could only ever have been a stranger.