by Matthew Ward
[[You know what I think?]] Her sing-song voice flooding with rare warmth, Anastacia cocked her head. [[I think you’re the most intriguing person I’ve met in a very long time.]]
Sidara beamed, and bobbed a curtsey. “Thank you, Lady Psanneque.”
[[Please, call me Ana.]] Her fingers brushed Sidara’s brow and tucked a strand of golden hair back behind her ear. [[You’d like to show me something, wouldn’t you?]]
“I’m not supposed to. I’m to keep it locked away, and not even think about it.”
“Not to be impolite,” said Kurkas to Sidara, “but what in Raven’s Eyes are you talking about, miss?”
Anastacia turned a quarter circle and slid her arm across Sidara’s shoulders. The frozen lips of her mouth pressed close to the girl’s ear. [[Show him. He won’t tell anyone. I won’t let him.]]
Sidara giggled, a spark of youth breaking deportment’s façade. With a conspiratorial glance at Kurkas, she knelt before the nearest simarka. She looked this way and that, peering carefully through the door before returning her attention to the lion. The construct stared back, unflinching and motionless, as they always did until roused by a proctor’s command or an intruder’s presence. Her fingers traced the stylised curves of the leonine mane and smoothed its jaw.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, to Kurkas’ astonishment, soft, golden light began to play about her head. Speechless, he looked on as the same glow awoke within the simarka’s eyes. Swallowing hard, he reached Anastacia’s side.
“Plant pot, this ain’t—”
[[Hush.]] The sudden, insistent pressure of Anastacia’s hand about his wrist lent urgency to her murmur. [[No one else can see.]]
She was right. From any distance at all, Sidara’s light would be swallowed by that of the veranda’s firestone lanterns. The house’s drapes were closed, and the girl was kneeling well below the level of the door’s glass panels. He’d just about remembered that discovery wasn’t what concerned him when the simarka began to purr.
Kurkas had no other way to describe it. A deep, guttural rumble betraying profound contentment. And as if to dispel all doubt, the construct then leaned into Sidara’s hand, guiding her fingers to the desired spot.
“I’ll be damned,” muttered Kurkas.
So much now made sense – not least Sidara’s reclusiveness and Lord Trelan’s oblique explanations as to why that should be so. Sidara had a proctor’s magic, blazing with light and possibility. Fourteen was more than old enough to serve in the foundry, sharing that light with new-forged kraikons and simarka. Was necessary, even, as fewer and fewer were born to the light with every passing year. In fact, Kurkas couldn’t think when he’d last seen a proctor with less than twenty-five years behind them. That Sidara wasn’t already in the foundry meant that her parents hoped to keep her gift secret.
“Everyone thinks they’re just machines,” said Sidara, “but they’re not. There’s a spark of something else, but it’s buried deep. It calls to me. Just like you called to me, Ana. Sometimes I can feel them clear across the city. I see snatches of what they see.”
The house bell tolled for a quarter to midnight. The purr faded as her hand slipped away, the simarka growing silent and motionless.
“I have to go.” She rose to her feet and dusted herself down. “I’m to be there when Father gives his speech.”
With a glance torn between exhilaration and embarrassment, Sidara slipped back inside.
[[Don’t worry, child,]] Anastacia said softly. [[I’m sure we’ll speak again.]]
Kurkas looked from the simarka to Anastacia, her skirts fluttering in the southerly Ash Wind but the rest of her stock still in contemplation. He stifled a shudder. One storm had passed. Another was building. Anastacia had found her mischief.
Malachi stared down from the balcony as the midnight chimes faded, taking in guests arrayed for his speech. The clock’s chimes had brought stragglers in from the gardens, servants had furnished them with dark wine for the toast, and all stood shoulder to shoulder. Waiting on him.
How things had changed. Little more than a year before, most wouldn’t have accepted an invitation to Abbeyfields, fearing that to do so would be to show unwelcome allegiance. Now they feared refusal. A strange power to wield, and Malachi hoped never to grow comfortable with it.
Thin fingers found his and squeezed. He offered Lily a sidelong smile and glimpsed its reply beneath a veil worn to hide her scars. Such were the moments that made it worthwhile. The long hours. The interminable disputes. The Parliament of Crows’ Emissary as an intimidating presence at his shoulder. For the first time since marriage had bound him to the Reveque family, his wife had reason to be proud of him. The Republic was changing, perhaps just a little, but maybe enough.
Footsteps on the stairs heralded Sidara’s flustered arrival on the balcony. Squeezing past Captain Kanda, she took position at her mother’s side. Late, but at least she was there. Unlike her brother, who showed no signs of growing into the responsibility that would one day be his. A problem for another time.
“My lords and ladies. Honoured guests.” Malachi found his rhythm as nervousness faded. “Lily and I would like to thank you for sharing tonight with us. Life too often brings us together in moments of opposition, or sorrow. We forget that each day can be a celebration – a reminder of all the Republic has endured, and the struggles we’ve overcome.”
He paused, letting his eyes touch on those he’d not yet had time to greet: Josiri Trelan, standing among the knot of guests beneath the chandelier. High Proctor Ilnarov, a quiet, dignified presence at the back of the room. Izack, Rother and Mannor, the masters of the city’s foremost chapterhouses. Friends, or at least allies, and pushed to the back of the list because of it. Too many others needed a firm handshake and kind word to keep them true.
“Look around,” Malachi continued. “Whatever our quarrels, whatever has happened in the past, we are all of the Republic. We all serve its prospects and its people. Remember that, as we continue to heal the wounds that sundered our southern kin. As we seek a peace with the Hadari Empire that has eluded us so long…”
A few unhappy growls sounded, as was only to be expected. Until Jardon Krain sent word from Tregard, there were no facts to quarrel over, only concessions and humiliations to conjure. It would change soon enough.
“But let us never lose sight of what lends the Republic its greatness: the courage of its soldiers, the strength of its bloodlines, and above all, its unfaltering allegiance to Lumestra’s light. My lords and ladies. Honoured guests. My friends.” He raised his glass, the motion mirrored all around the room. “Our glorious Republic, may its light—”
A whip crack sounded. The mooring rope thrashed like a wounded serpent. Lantern light scattering mad shadows, the chandelier plunged. Malachi glimpsed Josiri falling clear, his arm tight about Hawkin’s waist as he dragged her aside. Glass shattered and darkness drowned the hall to rising screams.
Malachi twisted on his heel. “Lily?”
She was already gone, running down the stairs, Kanda on her heels, her tone strident in instruction. The screams below turned to the commotion of vying voices and hurried footsteps – the slam of doors thrown open to the night. Malachi turned to Sidara, who met his gaze with wide eyes and a hand pressed to her mouth.
“Go to your room. I’ll send for you.”
She nodded blankly and departed, leaving Malachi alone in the dark.
By the time he looked out over the balcony once again, wan light gave shape to events. A floor covered with glass. The twisted wreckage of the chandelier watched over by horrified faces. And the bodies pinned beneath: a proctor, his gold robes already dark with blood; one of the maids, her body so mangled that only her uniform offered clue to her identity; and pinned beneath the chandelier’s fluted stem, Sabelle Mezar stared blankly at the ceiling.
Malachi’s blood ran cold before he felt the whisper of movement at his shoulder.
“You pushed us to this,” murmured the Emissary. �
�Have a care you do not push us any further.”
He spun around, but she was already gone.
Eight
“First night out on patrol, and the skies open,” muttered Dvorad. “Queen’s Ashes, but I get all the rotten luck.”
Haval pulled his cloak tighter. Dvorad was indeed blighted by poor fortune. Everyone in the 2nd knew that, because he seldom ceased complaining. Poor rations, unfaithful women, feckless comrades, medical complaints that mystified physicians… the litany went on. And would do so for some time, if left uninterrupted.
No one wanted that. Not Haval, and not the cluster of studiously blank faces sharing the shelter of the rocky hillside. Midnight was past, the patrol done. Ten bedraggled men and women in sodden uniforms and rain-slicked plate longing for the limited comforts of Arkgard. Krasta would have been better, but Krasta lay to the east, not the west, and had been abandoned the year before during Maggad Andwar’s attempted invasion.
The watch-forts weren’t exactly civilisation. They weren’t meant to be. But their palisades kept out the wind, and their campfires held the promise of a hot meal, thin rations or not. If a body was to be stuck on the wrong side of the Ravonn, with Hadari lurking behind the eastern hills, better to be so behind walls and at garrison strength.
“Could be worse, sarge,” he said. “And I reckon it’s easing.”
Dvorad peered suspiciously out from under the rocky overhang. “You might be right.”
No sooner had he finished than Haval’s words, spoken more in hope than truth, became prophecy. Hissing rain eased, the bright silver of moonlight broke through murky clouds. Even the wind, whose fingers had long ago pried beneath armour and rain-soaked cloth, faded to nothing.
And away to the west, its lights just visible through a strand of trees, the walls of Arkgard. Two miles that would have been nothing but misery in the rain now seemed no distance at all.
“That’s good enough for me.” Dvorad straightened into some semblance of soldierly appearance. “Move out.”
The soldiers shuffled to their feet, as glad as their sergeant to be on the move.
“I don’t like this.”
Predictably, the objection came from Calarin. If Dvorad was the patrol’s whinger, she was its alarmist, always seeing portent in the fall of shadow or the shape of spiderweb. But then she’d been born within sight of Fellhallow’s eaves. Hallowsiders were strange folk.
Dvorad glared. “No one cares what you think.”
“The air’s not right,” Calarin replied.
Now she mentioned it, there was a strange smell on the breeze. Not perfume as such, but a taste. Crispness beyond that which normally followed rain. If fond memory had a scent, it would be that. Haval shook his head. Nonsense, like everything Calarin spouted.
“Nothing’s ever right for you,” growled Dvorad, seemingly unaware of the irony. “Think old Jack’s stalking out of the deepwoods to make mischief? You’re welcome to stay and greet him, but I’m heading back.”
Dvorad at the fore and Haval at the rear, the patrol headed briskly out through the rising mist.
No one spoke as their scattered line picked its way across the muddy moorland. Not even Dvorad about his ill-fitting boots, nor Calarin concerning the night’s ill omens. Haval was as glad of the latter as the former. For all the church preached that Lumestra’s light was supreme among the divine, it was hard to take solace in such promise when the sun was down. If Jack o’ Fellhallow really was abroad that night, a prayer would be too long reaching Lumestra’s ears to be worth the breath.
It was therefore with some relief that Haval reached the strand of trees. Halfway, and with no greater ills than skin chafed by sodden cloth, and flesh both hot and clammy from exertion after rain. Or at least, what Haval hoped was halfway. The mist had thickened. The sparse trees were shrouded by it, dark shapes half-hidden by a luminescent, vaporous grasp, as if the moon herself had reached down to embrace them. The scent of old memories was thicker than ever.
“I told you I didn’t like this.”
Calarin slid a hand beneath her tunic, fingers closing on the sun-pendant she always wore against her skin. The rest of the patrol were lost in the eerie splendour of the mist, figments of fleeting shadow. All too easy to imagine shapes moving where they shouldn’t. Easier still to worry about having strayed from the path.
“Sarge?” The mist swallowed up Haval’s shout as readily as it had Calarin’s complaint. “Meskin? Daskarov?”
No answer came. Fear wormed along Haval’s spine. By unspoken accord, he and Calarin picked up their pace. Boots snagged on root and fallen bough.
He’d drawn his sword even before the singing began.
The notes danced through the mist, borne aloft by a chorus of women’s voices, and bore in turn sharp-accented words in a tongue Haval couldn’t speak, but recognised from the close-fought horror of border skirmishes. Not Jack o’ Fellhallow.
“Shadowthorns,” he hissed.
Calarin let go her pendant and drew her sword. “Their women don’t fight.”
That was true. At least, true at the Ravonn. But Haval had heard rumours that things were different elsewhere. That women had ridden at the fore of Kai Saran’s invasion of the Southshires. Tales of pale-witches, moonlight swords and victories pledged to faithless Ashana, whose silver burned away sunlight. With that cold, clear hymn echoing all about, such tales were easier than ever to believe.
A scream split the air. Not from ahead, where the rest of the patrol should have been, but away to Haval’s right. He spun about, but the shadow-shrouded mist offered only uncertainty.
“We can’t stay here!” Calarin’s face was pale, her voice taut. The point of her sword twitched back and forth, challenging every shadow.
Instinct told Haval to run. Duty demanded he stay. “What about the others?”
Another cry. This one more whimper than scream.
Calarin shot him a harried glance. “Do you really want to find out? Or do you…”
The woman did not so much step out of the mist as coalesce from within it, her close-fitting white robes dancing in harmony with the drifting vapour, and the silver traceries of her wooden half-mask writhing. A dagger of angular, silver light flickered in the pale-witch’s hand. Calarin fell, dying hands clutching at a ragged throat.
Through it all, the pale-witch didn’t stop singing.
Haval bellowed to drown out the song, to drive back the fear clutching tight his chest. He hurled himself across Calarin’s corpse, sword two-handed and swinging wild.
The dagger shimmered like glass. The blow that should have beaten down the shining blade and split the wooden mask instead scraped aside. Haval staggered, balance thrown, and cried out as a cold, searing spike slipped between breastplate and pauldron to jar against bone. The woman whirled away, untouched.
Blood slicked an arm suddenly numbed. The sword fell away into undergrowth.
Haval stumbled away. The pale-witch advanced, her white robes splotched scarlet.
The mists parted to a wild bellow. The pale-witch’s song faltered as Dvorad’s armoured shoulder thumped into her chest.
Down they went with a crunch of breaking bone. The shard-dagger skittered off the sergeant’s breastplate as he kneeled above her. His sword thrust down, and the pale-witch’s song ceased.
“Shadowthorns,” Dvorad growled. “Bloody hate shadowthorns.”
The mournful chorus heightened through the billowing mist. Three more pale-witches coalesced, daggers wicked in their hands.
Dvorad’s shoulders dipped, then came up straighter with a sword levelled in challenge. His eyes met Haval’s.
“Get to Arkgard! Warn them!” He rounded on the nearest pale-witch, sword alive in his hand and defiance in his voice. “Death and honour!”
Good arm cradling the other, Haval ran.
He drove hard for where he’d last seen Arkgard’s walls, praying that the mists hadn’t scattered all sense. He didn’t look back as Dvorad’s scream sounded, b
ut forged on through mist and shadow, his desperate pace a match for a ragged, thundering heart.
The trees’ oppressive shadow passed away to suggest clear skies overhead. Still Haval ran. The cruel, aching song faded behind, and still he ran.
He stumbled at the brook, ankle turning as rushing waters clutched at his boots. Muddy ground slipped away into a rain-soaked ditch. A palisade loomed dark through the mist.
“The shadowthorns!” he shouted. “The Hadari are coming!”
His words vanished into the mist without reply. Gasping for breath, Haval stared up at the walls, hoping for a sign he’d been heard. None came. Between mist and the diffuse glow of firestone lanterns upon the battlements, all was opaque.
The brook gave Haval his bearings. His course had run too far south. The gatehouse lay to the north. Lungs a fiery ache, he stumbled about the ditch’s perimeter.
The drawbridge was down, without sentry in sight.
Relief rushed cold. Not a soul seen, when a dozen men should have offered challenge. Haval edged across the bridge, the crackle in his skin growing. The song might have faded to the east, but the scent of the mist remained. Memory and longing, all bound together.
He passed beneath the gatehouse, leaving bloody palm print as proof of passage. Still no challenge. No voices. No bodies.
The courtyard spread before him, vaporous tides ebbing and flowing about barrack house and stables. Horses champed and whinnied in their stalls. But there, at the base of the beacon tower… a shadow in the mist – a hint of king’s blue cloak and steel armour.
He wasn’t alone.
“The Hadari are here. They—”
The shape shifted and fell with a clatter. Not as would a body cast down or struck, but one who simply no longer wished to stand. Haval glimpsed Captain Bandar’s bearded face, eyes closed and lips slack in a contented expression.
“Do tell.” The young woman who’d let Bandar fall was unlike any Haval had ever seen. She wore no robes, nor mask to conceal her wistful expression and close-cropped ash-blonde hair – only a pale shift dress worn over skin shining silver. What beauty she had was not so much cruel as disinterested. A cat waiting to unsheathe claws, but uncertain of making the effort. “Which would you prefer, the dagger or the dream? It doesn’t matter to me, but I am to give you the choice. Mother insists.”