by Matthew Ward
“Because she doesn’t believe you’ll listen! I do! Because…” Melanna swallowed, straining to control a galloping temper. “Because you’re not your lies. Because everything I know about honour, and kindness and the humility of rule, I learned from you.”
He turned away, head bowed. “It seems the Goddess knows the father better than his daughter.”
“Father…”
“No!” He spun about, face tight. “You have wearied my ears with your demands and your complaints. Now you will listen. If I sue for peace – if I even withdraw – I will face accusations of weakness, and challenge after challenge from those who covet the crown. Rule of the Empire will pass to another. I will be dead, and you will have nothing. Not a throne, nor a crown. You will be a bride of brief moonlight and cast aside.”
“I’ll die first.”
“Either way, the House of Saran will be ended. Better the whole world falls into shadow than that.”
And with that, he was a stranger. A man who wore her father’s face, but possessed none of his nobility. “You can’t mean that.”
“The Tressian Republic will fall. This is my law.” He stepped closer, eyes on hers. “Will you serve me, as an heir should?”
There it was. The line in the sand. Melanna crossed it without hesitation. “No.”
“Then I’ve no choice but to strip warleader’s rank from you.”
The words should have hurt, but taken alongside all else they occasioned barely a flicker of loss. “I’ve already set it aside. Your army marches under the command of Naradna Andwaral.”
His eyes widened at the distaff surname, but only a little. A sign, perhaps, that the man she’d loved was somewhere in there still. “Then a woman’s sword may yet bring me to victory. As for the rest? Go where you will, so long as it is far from my sight.”
“Goodbye, Father.”
Torn between sorrow and rage, Melanna strode from the tent.
It took all of Kai’s fading strength to keep the tremor from treacherous knees until Melanna had gone. So many sins. So many failures. He could at least spare himself the embarrassment of weakness before his daughter. Better her hurt than his humiliation.
He reached the chair before his legs gave way entirely, half-sinking, half-falling into its embrace.
“Elspeth!”
She came at his call, a ghost passing through the tent’s gloom. “My Emperor?”
“I need you.” He spread his shaking fingers, appalled at their frailty. “It’s worse.”
“I told you it would be.” She knelt beside him, fingers cold upon his hand and his brow. “Your body is wearing thin. A few days, and I’ll be powerless to help.”
The words echoed about the hollow of Kai’s heart as his strength returned, fed by Elspeth’s moonlight. A few days. Time enough to make an end of things. Especially with Jack’s creatures mustering beneath the eaves of Starik Wood. Tarvallion would fall, then Tressia itself. A war that should have stretched into weeks, brought to swift victory by divine hands. A legend for the ages. Jack could have his future, as bartered – indeed, he was welcome to whatever brief span lingered past victory – but the House of Saran would go on.
Divine hands…
“Melanna claimed your mother wants this war ended. She says it will be the end of everything.”
Elspeth snorted. “My mother delights in half-truths. You know that better than anyone. Or has she not made a walking corpse of you? She pushes us around like pieces on a gaming board, and demands we praise her manipulations. She doesn’t deserve your regard.”
With Elspeth’s help, Kai shuffled deeper into the chair. “A daughter should speak better of her parent.”
“Had the parent earned it, she would.”
He examined grey eyes for irony. “Is that why you remain while your sisters depart?”
“I stay because I promised to serve you.” She stood, fragile stance defying him to question her further. “It’s a bargain my mother cannot annul. It’s mine.”
“So I’m your pet, as well as hers?”
“No.” She frowned, offended at his poor joke. “You are my Emperor. I chose you.”
Kai closed his eyes, still little the wiser to her thoughts. “You chose a stubborn old man.”
“I chose…” Familiar defiance replaced the flash of timidity. “I chose a parent who has earned my regard.”
Peculiar though her assertion was, it felt right – little different to Melanna claiming Ashana as a mother. A madness fit for the times. “Then tell me, daughter. What advice have you for this stubborn old man?”
“What does your heart tell you?”
The end of everything wagered against the end of his bloodline. But this wasn’t the first doom Ashana had foretold, was it? Six months ago, she’d beheld a world drowning in Dark and set them all on this course. Error or lie, what was the difference? Elspeth was right. Ashana hadn’t earned his regard, she’d only inherited that granted by tradition, and tradition was as flawed as she.
“That nothing has changed,” he said at last. “That I should bequeath Melanna an Empire, whether she wishes it or not, and hope that one day she understands.”
Elspeth smiled her delight. “Then the war continues?”
“It does.”
Forty-Eight
Treadmane Street. Again. With its knackered, peeling sign and two simarka frozen mid-prowl at the crossroads and the tumbledown factory beyond.
Kurkas slumped against the twisted lamp post, its meagre blue-white ghostfire sputtering into the mist. The first dozen or so times he’d found himself opposite the old tannery the filthy cobbles had been empty. Now, they were crowded with corpses. Constables, most of them, but a few highblood colours too. A high price to confirm he’d not lost his wits. Not yet. He’d come close. His clothes were as sodden now as then. The cold burrowing in his bones urged him to lie down and rest his eyes.
Kurkas stumbled on, round and round through the impossible streets, trusting to luck stretched beyond thin. With his sword lost in the Estrina’s waters and his limbs atremble, he appraised his chances of fighting corpse-eaters or crow-born as roughly that of a kitten’s.
Only once had he doubted. Back an hour, a day, or a week – however long it was – a wagon had rumbled by. Kurkas had sought hurried shelter behind a crumbling wall, sluggish corpuscles roused by the sight of weeping children, hands thrust through the bars as they were borne deeper into Dregmeet. He hated himself for letting it pass without challenge, but it would have been his death to do so.
A right turn. A left. A stumble over a narrow wooden bridge more gap than plank.
Treadmane Street. Again.
Frustration welled to a growl. “You’ve got to be bloody kidding me!”
Kurkas knew the flash of temper was a mistake before the shout’s echo faded away. Before the sound of boot on stone behind. He sighed. Maybe it wasn’t all bad. Might be a malnourished kitten. He could win that fight, if he landed the first blow.
“Come on, then,” he said. “Let’s be to it.”
He lurched about. His fist rose as close to a boxer’s stance as he could manage.
[[Really, Vladama. That’s no way to greet a lady.]] Anastacia stood on the cusp of the mists, etravia parting languidly about her. A long-handled woodsman’s axe rested against her shoulder, the spatter on its blade a match for those on the sleeves of her ivory dress. [[I’ve already had to chastise a crow-born. I expect better manners from you.]]
Kurkas’ fist fell. His jaw followed. “Plant pot?”
[[Better. But still a hair short of actual respect. Have you any idea how long I’ve been looking for you?]]
The chime of bells, distant beyond the foundry chapel’s soot-choked and cracked stained-glass window, offered no clue to the passage of time. Hours tolled out of sequence, in repetition – and for heart-wrenching spans, not at all. What glimpses Altiris risked of the street granted no greater guidance than the bells. The sky was always the shiftless grey of thunder, the
etravia-laced mists unyielding.
Eventually, he’d stopped looking, rising only out of need to shake loose the veil of sleep. Thoughts creaked. Senses shrieked with every whisper of movement. Had it been him alone, he’d have settled among the broken pews and slept. But doing so would rob Sidara of the slight protection offered by his presence.
She’d not stirred since he’d laid her down on an intact pew, his outer jerkin bundled as a poor pillow. The bleeding had stopped, though her bandaged arm was crusted dark with its aftermath. She resembled nothing so much as the bas-relief upon a tomb, or perhaps a rendition in oils of some princess cursed through reckless deed or a suitor’s spite.
Altiris blinked, aware he’d stared at Sidara far too long, and all of it without even really seeing her. Sleep. He needed sleep. Even if the vranakin came to the chapel, he couldn’t do much more than fall as a dead weight atop them.
Admitting defeat, he sat down and let his eyes fall closed.
“Altiris?”
Gummed eyes creaked open. The sour dizziness of rest taken too fleetingly rushed in. Sidara gazed down, a grubby, pale serathi with wings of stained glass behind.
Blinking furiously, Altiris hunched to a sitting position, and wiped a spatter of sleeper’s drool from his cheek. “My lady Reveque? How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Hungry.” She shook her head. “And it feels as though someone’s tied a sack of meat to my arm. But for the throb, I’d think they had.”
“Can’t you heal it? After what you did for me, I’d have thought your arm was nothing.”
“I’ve tried, but I don’t think it works like that.” She scowled at her arm. “I wish it did. And the light’s… distant. Barely a glimmer. Where are we? Where’s Captain Darrow?”
Altiris’ gorge thickened with failure. “I don’t know. She told me to leave. To get you out. I tried, but the streets kept turning back on themselves.” Even that wasn’t the whole truth. It missed the terror of tattered vranakin masks glimpsed through the mists. The scramble to seek concealment as they passed. “Then I saw the foundry gates. When I found no help inside, I realised I was too tired to keep going. I’m afraid I’m not much of a hero, my lady.”
She sat beside him, and winced as her left hand manoeuvred the injured right into her lap. “You’re doing fine.”
So close, her face smudged and strained, she looked different. No longer the imperious young woman who’d taunted him by the riverside, but… normal. Whatever “normal” was. Had events softened her? Or had they emboldened him? “Luck had more to do with it. Luck, and Captain Darrow. Why did you do it?”
“The light wanted me to.”
“It spoke to you?”
“It pushed me. It wasn’t so much that it wanted me to help Captain Darrow, but to hurt the vranakin who sought to kill her. The one with the eyes.” She stared down at her hands. “What do you suppose he was?”
“I don’t know.” Altiris shuddered away the afterimage of the pyre. Knowing it hadn’t been real robbed little of its power. “He cast me into a nightmare of my father’s death. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even think. What did you see?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she replied, the lie written on pursed lips and wary eyes. “But for a moment I wasn’t in control. I could feel the light acting through me. That should scare me, shouldn’t it? That it doesn’t scares me most of all.”
“You’ve always terrified me.”
Sidara glanced up. “Truly?”
“You’re a daughter of the first rank. A word from you, and I’d be in the cells, or bound again for the labour camps.”
“I’d never do such a thing,” she said sharply.
“Wouldn’t you?” He rubbed at the rose-brand hidden beneath his left sleeve. “You’ve never admonished an indentured servant for meeting your gaze when you wished it otherwise? That’s enough, if there’s an ambitious constable nearby.”
“We’ve not had indentured servants at Abbeyfields since I was a little girl. Father freed them all when he became head of the household. He paid full wages for time served whether they chose to stay or not. Grandfather was furious, but Mother backed the decision, and that was that.”
Altiris blinked. Convention aside, the monetary cost must have been staggering. “Truly?”
“That’s when my grandparents moved to the house at Claveside. I didn’t see them much after that.”
He grunted, unwilling to abandon the point. “You still have the power to ruin my life, even if you don’t use it. More than that, you perform miracles ripped straight from fable. Blessed Lumestra, but even your blood shines.”
Tired eyes widened. “Is that why you called me a phoenix?”
He’d forgotten that. “The Phoenix, and I didn’t mean you, my lady. The Phoenix of Belenzo’s prophecy. It was always my father’s talisman during dark times.”
“You definitely called me Sidara. I heard that. That’s not how a respectful hearthguard behaves, southwealder.”
Altiris gritted his teeth. So that’s how it was? “Yes, my lady Reveque.”
She sank tiredly into the corner of the pew. “So we shall just have to be friends, shan’t we? If you can bear that.”
Altiris blinked, belatedly realising he’d misread her tone. Friends. Equity between a dregrat and a highblood. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“I’ve not been kind to you. I’ve scarcely been civil. It’s not becoming for a daughter of the first rank. Of any rank.” She sighed. “I was jealous.”
“Jealous? You have everything.”
“Because you come and go as you wish. You’re free of everything that binds me.”
Irritation flickered. “Free to go hungry. Free to sleep in an alleyway and hope the rain holds off. An empty belly in payment for being out a heartbeat after curfew, or for meeting an overseer’s eye when he wanted otherwise. I’d have given a leg to be bound as you’re bound.”
“I know that, and it only makes me more ashamed. I can’t help how I feel, but I can stop treating you as I have.”
Did she even realise the paradox of her request? They could only be equals if she chose. Even in kindness, status was leverage. But even lost to bitter exhaustion, Altiris recognised his unfairness. For all that only Sidara could decide that they were equals, they couldn’t be friends without his choosing. And there, in the silent chapel, he realised friendship was all he’d ever sought.
“Friends it is.”
She smiled. To see it made the decision worthwhile. “So, what now?”
“Can you walk?”
“I think so. At least a little. And we can’t stay here. Whatever Father meant Captain Darrow to do, I think it’s safe to say it didn’t work.” Rising, she made unsteadily for the chapel door. “If he meant it to.”
Stiff muscles voiced complaint as Altiris moved to bar her path. “It’s not pleasant out there.”
Sidara glanced around the chapel. “Is there food in here? A path beyond the mists? Plumbing?” She twitched a wan smile. “Even if we had those things, we’ll see vranakin long before we see friendly faces. We’ve no choice but to leave.”
She eased open the door and froze.
“Queen’s Ashes…”
Altiris steeled himself and joined her at the doorway.
Even with the forges silent, and the smelter’s rivers cold and dark, the twilight glow of the mists revealed more than he wished. The constructs were bad enough. Half-finished kraikons and simarka hung from the chainway, skeletal forms trapped for ever waist-deep in the spillways of solidified metal that were to have formed their skin. Others stood as statues at the chamber’s extent, chill and lifeless. For all that Altiris had spent too much of his life in fear of a kraikon’s shadow – for all that he knew the constructs were nothing more than automata – he felt a pang to see them thus.
The bodies were worse.
They hung from the gantries by their heels, tethered by ropes and chains, arms and legs bound tight with black ribbon. Dozens, scores, stretching away
until darkness swallowed them up. Some wore proctor’s gold. Most the thick, practical drabs of men and women who laboured day and night with hissing, volatile alloys within arm’s reach. Dried blood crusted every eye socket. A charm of bones and feathers the centre of every brow.
Sidara grimaced and dipped her head, the knuckles of her good hand pressed to her lips.
“I warned you.”
She swallowed hard, and nodded. “You did.”
Boots scraping and doubled over the banister for support, she descended the stairs. At the very bottom, she stumbled – out of weakness or horror, Altiris wasn’t sure. He eased her into a sitting position on the lowest step. A simarka – this one finished – stared blankly from beside the ornate sunburst newel.
Sidara hung her head. “My father did this. At the very least, he helped it along.”
“How can you say that?” Altiris couldn’t settle on which surprised him more: her words, or the granite delivery. “Lord Reveque—”
“The vranakin told me. He boasted of it.”
“Why believe him?”
“Because I know a lie when I hear it, and I didn’t hear one.” She pointed through the mists, past a knot of drifting etravia to where a gantry sat cold and dark. “Last year, a kernclaw nearly killed my mother. Right there. If Uncle Viktor hadn’t saved us… Was Father part of it, even then?”
Altiris gazed out across the horror, uncertain of what to say. “What do you believe?”
“What I believe doesn’t matter.” Sidara ran her hand across the simarka’s stylised mane, fingers gentle as one fussing a flesh and blood cat. A spark of golden light flashed behind its eyes, and then was gone – lifeless bronze once more. She scowled. “It only matters what he did.”
Heartbreak called for comfort a southwealder hearthguard could never have provided. But a friend? Closing his mind to the foundry’s horrors, Altiris sat beside her on the stair, and jumped only a little when she rested her head on his shoulder.
Halfway along Lacewalk, Anastacia jerked to a halt beneath the jettied eaves. Kurkas, his arm slung across her shoulders for support, yelped as momentum paid cruel attention to a weary shoulder.