by Matthew Ward
She drew closer through spiralling smoke. Close enough to smell the blood pooling beneath Lady Reveque. Close enough to the flames that her raven cloak shrieked its fear. That she saw Sidara’s accusing stare lose its golden lustre, and fade to blue with the girl’s slackening strength. To see the spark of terror in the young man’s expression as the wreckage lurched in new descent. To recognise the hungry gleam in Erad’s eyes.
The floor buckled and cracked, fire racing out as the floor gave way. Blazing furniture tumbling into the abyss.
The shadow in Apara’s soul – her leash, her jailer – screamed at her to stop, to stay back.
It was afraid. It knew. Erad was right. She’d almost bested it before. Break its hold once, and she’d be free.
But who’d be free? The Silver Owl she’d been, or the kernclaw her cousins had made of her? And free to do what? To kill and kill and kill, until she was as dead within as Erad, and as dead without as her elder cousins?
But was the alternative better? Did she even have one? Krastin’s forgiveness was spent. Failure tantalised. Success appalled. And there was no road between.
She stared down at Lady Reveque, her back arched in agony, but her eyes lucid and defiant. Even dying, the better woman.
“No weakness, Apara,” said Erad.
“No,” she said. “No weakness.”
To her surprise, the shadow in her soul – the shadow that had kept her from killing this past year – made no protest as she rammed her talons home. Even when blood gushed to soak her gloves and sleeve. Even when Erad’s sightless, gasping corpse slid free and crumpled at her feet.
Floorboards fell away, tipping Lady Reveque into the flame-edged void.
“No!”
Apara dived. On the cusp of the broken floorboards, fingers closed about those of the woman she’d come to kill. Glowing timber burned her gloves, seared skin beneath. Hands slippery with sweat and blood slid apart.
“I need your other hand!”
“I’m already in the mists.” The other’s smoke-stained face held no fear. No anger. “I hear the choir. Please. Save my children.”
Then Lady Reveque was gone into the fire, and Apara none the wiser as to which of them had let go.
“Mother!”
Sidara’s heartbroken cry echoed in the pit of Apara’s stomach. Even in triumph, she’d failed – the failure was worse for not recognising what was now blinding in its truth. That what had held her back from murder had not been Akadra’s shadow at all, but her own conscience. All else was excuse.
You’re not cut out for this. Leave while you can.
A path she should have taken long ago.
The roof screamed. The wreckage above the porcelain woman’s shoulders inched downwards.
The raven cloak screamed as Apara passed through the fiery cage, its pain so bright and strident in her mind as to be inseparable from her own. Clinging desperately to consciousness, she fell to her knees beside Sidara, and cast away the cloak’s burning remnant.
Dizzy with reflected agony, she barely heard the girl’s banshee shriek. The punch had all the weight the girl herself lacked, and almost tipped Apara into the flames.
Breathing hard, her lungs thick and bitter with smoke, Apara held up a hand. “Let me help,” she gasped.
The girl’s second blow shivered to a halt in the young man’s grip. “Sidara, wait.”
Hawkin Darrow looked up from the boy cradled in her arms. “We’ve nothing to lose.”
Apara closed her eyes and reached out to the mists of Otherworld, drawn close enough to touch by bloodshed. The Raven’s gift. The Crowmarket’s favour. The means by which kernclaws came uninvited beyond a protector’s vigil. Let it serve something more than murder, just this once.
The mists fought, reluctant, but Apara had learnt much about strength that night, and brooked no quarrel. Green-white vapour mingled with smoke, the scent of yesterdays with burning wood. A roiling doorway burst into being, a dark road beckoning beyond.
“Go! If you want to live! Go!”
Suspicious faces glowered back.
[[This is coming down,]] gasped the porcelain woman. [[Be somewhere else.]]
Another creak of wreckage, and reluctance vanished. Hawkin staggered into the mists, the boy drawn behind. Sidara and the lad followed, the unconscious body of the one-armed man borne between them. Apara hesitated on the threshold, her gaze meeting that of the porcelain woman. No words were exchanged. None could have matched the baleful, endless promise of those expressionless eyes.
Apara leapt through into the deadland streets. A groaning, thunderous crash sounded at her back, fire flickering and dying in a land that had no fuel to burn. Falling to her knees, she relinquished her hold on the portal, and lay still among the drifting dead.
Malachi turned at the creak of the Privy Council chamber door. “Messela? Has Master Toldav finally arrived?”
He knew the answer before she spoke, framed as it was by harrowed eyes and downcast gaze.
“No,” she said, her voice raw and empty. “Malachi… Malachi, I’m so sorry.”
Lumendas, 8th Day of Wealdrust
We owe allegiance to more than politicians and principalities. What binds us should always count for more than what drives us apart.
from the sermons of Konor Belenzo
Fifty-Four
“Halvor?”
Kurkas started awake, the pulsating, hammering pain of the dream persisting into reality. Such as it was. Beyond the broken stone of the collapsed wall and through the ruin of the ceiling, dark skies blazed vivid green, broken by the jagged ridges of humbled rooftops, and flights of pallid, translucent birds. Strains of a distant, mournful song rose and fell behind.
Rough, mortar-weeping stone under his hand, he reached his feet and stared out of the sunken window. Street level was little better, thick with sickly mist and the hollow stares of etravia. Cobbles yielded to broken flagstones, walls to cornices and leering caryatids. But if he tried, if he really stared, he glimpsed the reality behind.
The world shifted. Straight lines twisted in on themselves. Nausea squeezed out conscious thought as rubbery legs folded. Someone caught him.
“Don’t fight it.” The voice was impossibly near and far away all at once. “Don’t try to impose your will – just accept what you see.”
The supporting hands fell away. The contorted world righted itself. Balance returned. Fingers splayed against the wall, Kurkas doubled over. The headache flooded back, hammering at his thoughts. He straightened, fingers tracing puffy flesh at his brow. Memories of smoke welled behind his thoughts, just out of reach.
“Thanks,” he said, turning about. “Where…”
The words fell away into a growl as a weeping eye found her face. Auburn curls marred by a silver streak. The kernclaw from Westernport. Ebigail Kiradin’s daughter. Smoke cleared in memory. Screams. The crackle of flames. Abbeyfields ablaze and vranakin everywhere.
His fist formed and swung. She yelped and fell onto rubble, hand wiping a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. Anger drove Kurkas on.
“Captain, no!” Suddenly, a filthy Altiris was between them, arms outstretched. “She saved us.”
“Us?”
Kurkas let his fist fall and noted new shapes in the mist. Hawkin, backed against the corner and a sleeping Constans held close. Sidara, still in filthy nightdress and housecoat, stood at the rubble-spill of the gable wall, staring out into the street.
“Lady Reveque? The plant pot?”
Altiris shook his head.
“They’re gone.” Sidara spoke without turning.
A tone that should have been bleak was entirely too level for Kurkas’ liking. Trouble borrowed from the future. But dealing with the sorrows of a teenage girl lay far outside his experience. And Anastacia gone? That left a hole. Didn’t seem right.
“The roof collapsed,” murmured Altiris. “She held it up. Never seen anything like it.”
“She’d a knack for that.�
� Walling up grief and guilt, Kurkas helped the kernclaw rise. “Seems I owe an apology. What’s your name?”
“Apara.”
“The weather’s a mite… unusual.”
She winced. “It was burn, or bring everyone through to Otherworld. The real Otherworld, not the echo you get in Dregmeet.”
Better and better. With an effort, Kurkas walled up his fear as well. “Can we leave? Green ain’t my colour.”
Apara nodded. “There are… weak points. If we can reach one, I can get us out.”
“Then why haven’t you?”
“You’re a bit heavy, sir,” said Altiris.
“Should’ve left me behind.”
“You weren’t the only problem,” said Apara. “The paths… They’re not right. They’re muddled. I can’t follow them as I should.”
“Lost your map, have you?”
She glared tiredly. “Otherworld’s only as real as we think it is. That’s why it looks so much like the city – at least to us. Know where you want to go and the roads attend to themselves. But it takes effort. That’s why the etravia are trapped here. They lack the will to reach their reward, so they drift for ever. That or because they’ve no reward to find, not until Third Dawn.”
He shuddered. “So you’re saying you’re too tired to find the way?”
“Yes, but I’m not the problem. The girl’s still weak, and they’re all frightened. Strong emotion muddles the paths. They’re fighting me, and they don’t even realise it. I thought a rest might help.”
Kurkas nodded. It made as much sense as anything. Problem was, a bit of sleep wasn’t going to calm Constans or Sidara, and certainly not there. And Hawkin didn’t look much better. Pale and drawn, she seemed ready to bolt into the mists.
The singing dipped and faded away.
“They’re back,” hissed Hawkin.
Sidara dropped down off the rubble and behind the wall. As the others took cover, Kurkas squatted down beside her.
“Who’s back?” he whispered.
She offered a hollow glance. “The rotting ones.”
He risked a look. Perhaps halfway down the unfamiliar street, just at the point where mist swallowed all, a group of three elder cousins drifted through the paler etravia, growing closer all the time.
Kurkas ducked back and took a tally of their options. Altiris still had a sword. Apara – could she be trusted – had her talons. Not enough for one elder cousin, much less three.
“Don’t suppose there’s any chance of you putting a magical whammy on them?” he whispered to Sidara.
“I… I can’t feel the light any more. It’s gone. There’s only emptiness.”
Kurkas focused on the approaching footsteps. Closer and closer they drew, then faded away. A glance over the wall confirmed their departure. He eased a sigh of relief and joined Apara by the ruins of a leaded window. “They looking for us?”
She shot a glance towards Sidara. Her lip twitched.
Kurkas sidled to stand between them. “Tell me,” he said softly.
“She helped Captain Darrow kill Crowfather Athariss.”
Apara spoke so softly that Kurkas read the words on her lips more than in her voice. One of those tricks that never left you. A lifetime ago he’d made good coin spilling stolen secrets. Athariss was one of those names he’d hoped never to hear again.
“Good for her. Good for them both.”
Apara scowled. “What do you think provoked all this? Darrow’s probably dead by now, and the girl…?”
The girl. Kurkas didn’t care for the distance of the term. Made her a thing, not a person. You couldn’t betray a thing. “She has a name.”
“Trying to humanise her?” She shrugged. “They want to bury Sidara alive with Athariss’ corpse. Beneath the Shaddra.”
The centre of the Hayadra Grove? Kurkas grimaced. “Why there?”
“They think it’ll break the power of the hayadra trees and let the whole city slide into the mists. Twin blasphemies offered to the divine sisters of light.”
“If you say so.”
“Krastin believes it. That’s enough to doom the gi… Sidara.”
Krastin. Another name he’d rather not have heard. “Then we keep moving.” He stared out into the street. No sign of the elder cousins. Just the etravia, and that nerve-shivering song. “But let’s be clear: I’ve already lost a friend today. I lose anyone else, I’ll get unfriendly.”
It wasn’t much of a threat, not weaponless and with his head ringing like a bell.
“Don’t worry, there’s no taking back the choice I made.”
Messela had never spent as much time in her office as she had that past day. To all appearances, it wasn’t hers at all, with nothing personal to soften the bare desk and the empty shelves. However much most of her peers longed for the status brought by a suite in the palace, she’d never really accepted her own.
Through the window, black smoke spiralled against the stone ribs of Strazyn Abbey, the fires of the Reveque mansion defying all attempts to douse them. Little of Abbeyfields remained. The city waited, breath held in anticipation. Or perhaps, Messela allowed, that was transference – the empty plaza and huddled streets hunched beneath her own uncertainties.
The first decisions had been simple enough, the orders obeyed without question. Thinking on the conversations to come stole away her breath. Fighting the panic made it worse. Spasm became the coiling black fear that she’d forgotten how to breathe. That threatened to reach through her, and do terrible things. Clutching at the windowsill, she sought calm as her mother had taught her. The attacks always passed. The trick was recognising that in time.
Rebellious muscles eased. Parched lungs partook. Darkness bled away.
Messela relaxed her grip. There. Better.
The opening of her office door threatened to set panic raging again. She stared out across the city, eyes unfocused.
“Well, where is he?” snapped Lord Lamirov.
“In the council chamber.” She clung to the confidence in her reply and willed it to be truth. “I tried to send him away. ‘Where would I go?’ That’s what he said. I didn’t have a good answer.”
That wasn’t all he’d said, of course. This is all my fault. I did this. Private words for a private moment, and not to be shared with the likes of Lamirov. Nor was the fact that Malachi had been dead drunk. He’d lost too much already to make rumour of his dignity.
“I tried the council chamber. Your hearthguards wouldn’t let me in.” He reached her side, a grey and peevish presence on the balcony. “Not the done thing, Messela. The palace is the constabulary’s province. And they told me you’d dissolved the Grand Council.”
“They were flapping around like gaffed fish. Most had fled to be with their families, some were panicking about how a lifetime’s bribes to the vranakin seem to be for nothing. The rest were more distracting than helpful. This is… quieter. We need quiet, Leonast. Quiet, and calm.”
His eyes narrowed. “We’ll see what Malachi has to say.”
“Disturbing his grief gains nothing.”
“Yes, well… I feel for him, I do.” A frown. The bald head dipped in thought. “Is there no chance anyone got out?”
Messela’s throat tightened. “Not according to those who did.”
“Damn the vranakin,” Lamirov snarled. “A wife is bad enough, but to go after the children? I’ll speak with Captain Darrow. If the constabulary can’t keep the vranakin contained in Dregmeet, then they can at least bolster the Council’s protections.”
How typical, thinking of himself even now. “Captain Darrow’s dead.”
He drew up. “Her wounds? The physicians assured me—”
“Poison. Her lips were blue. Lieutenant Raldan says the sweet scent of seldora flower was everywhere. She went into the mists not feeling a thing.”
He hissed softly. “Dark days indeed. If Malachi’s not fit to govern, someone else must.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll need your suppor
t, of course. Evarn and Konor are holed up in their mansions, Rika too, for all I know.” He paused. Effect only, for he’d surely given the matter full consideration. “It’s time we sought peace with the Crowmarket.”
Now. The dreaded moment. Yet Messela felt nothing of that fear, none of the panic. “No.”
Lamirov rounded on her. “What do you mean, no? You’ve read Izack’s reports. Vranakin on one side, and the Hadari on the other. If we don’t make peace with one, they’ll squeeze us dry. The Republic will fall.”
She stared through him, refusing the challenge in his eyes. He’d intimidated her from the start. The stern patriarch thrice her age. Calm. Confident. Collected. Not now. In fact, now the moment was here, she felt none of the panic that had ridden as its herald, only joy. Was this how Viktor felt when he rode into battle? Easy to see how one grew to love it.
“No, we will not kneel to the vranakin,” she replied. “No, I will not support you. But you will support me.”
Colour touched his cheeks. “Is this a joke?”
“No joke. I knew you’d use this tragedy to seize power. And I knew you’d give it away to the vranakin just as quickly—”
“How dare you!”
Messela narrowed her eyes. “I won’t play that game. Your first instinct, as ever, is for yourself, and not our people.”
He scowled. “And you’ve a solution to our woes, I suppose?”
“Not yet. But there’s been too much rashness of late. We’re not used to action, so speed becomes haste, and haste, horror. I won’t invite more until level heads prevail.”
“You’ve no authority.”
“So you won’t support me?” The smile came easily. “Did you count the number of Akadra hearthguard on station when you arrived? Everyone I have left is here. Have you more?”
Lamirov paled. “This is treason. You’ll hang for this.”
Treason. Confidence flickered. “You’re cleverer than that, Leonast. I’m offering you the chance to emerge unsullied from whatever comes next. I’m not Ebigail Kiradin. I just want to keep things together.”
“For how long?”