by Matthew Ward
Kai rose, knuckles braced against the table to steady a wave of dizziness. “Will be for Melanna to decide. Tomorrow, I secure her throne. After that… After that, I don’t know that it matters. Now, if you’ll excuse me, the air in here has grown rather stale.”
Elspeth’s brow flickered. “Should I come with you?”
He waved her back. “I need the wind on my face, that’s all.”
Kai wandered without purpose through the lanes of tents and fires, four Immortals following at respectful distance. The air did help his dizziness, though it was hardly fresh. No air could be sweet in an encampment the size of a small city, and it would only get staler still. But for all that, he didn’t mind. Such places were more his home than the palace in Tregard, or the villa in Kinholt. The sights, the smells – memories of good times and bad. The greatest victories, and the humiliation of defeat. A warrior’s life, and he’d lived it well. One last victory to open wide the Republic’s gates, and it would be done. A man who lived five-score years could not achieve more.
So why did he resent it?
Melanna. It always came back to Melanna, and the fear that she was right. That the war of men was becoming one of gods, and that his every action accelerated matters. That the angry words of their parting were to be the last he’d have of her, or she of him.
Perhaps he should have told her the truth, while the chance had been there.
Lungs heaving, Kai crested the hill that marked the encampment’s eastern extent and passed beyond the ghostfires. In the distance, the crumbled spires of Tarvallion stood jagged against the dusk. Too distant to make out the briars and ivy that had overtaken the city, though he saw them plainly enough in memory. He saw too the Tressians who’d been too slow to flee, black roots wound thick about their bodies and glistening red with the feast. That, he’d as soon forget.
Jack hunched out of the gathering dark, a strawjack lurching at each shoulder. There’d be more, out in the woodland gloom. How many more, Kai had never ascertained. Waving for his bodyguard to stay back, Kai held his nerve as the other drew down, and told himself that the Goddess’ sword would protect him, had he the need.
Certainty lasted until the strawjack’s stench reached him. Rotting flesh and fresh sap. A glint of gold beneath the wended fronds of one, and a swathe of bloodied king’s blue bound tight within the other. The dead reborn in divine service. And not only the dead. He’d seen the straggling columns of men and women led into Starik Wood on clouds of thornmaiden pollen. Was that the fate Jack intended for him? A puppet dancing on vines? His soul trapped in bonds of briar, never to know Evermoon’s grace?
What manner of man was he to accept such allies?
{{Tomorrow, you will have your triumph,}} crackled Jack. {{Soon after, your bargain falls due.}}
“My future?” Kai coughed away a waft of sickly sweet sap. “I wish you the joy of it.”
{{I anticipate nothing but.}} He leaned closer, stooped shoulders bringing the smooth mask level with Kai’s face. {{You are in need of respite? You sound like a clock winding down. Tick. Tick. Tick.}}
“I will have my victory. That’s all that matters.”
{{Yes. A victory. A coronation. My brother bested at his own game. A day of days.}} The sap scent thickened with Jack’s laughter, the ragged hood bobbing and swaying in an invisible wind. {{There will be roses for everyone. My queen will insist, and I… I will be pleased to grant the favour. You will see.}}
Kai tried to picture what horror might take Jack as husband, and decided he’d as soon as not find out. “I suspect I should be glad not to.”
{{Yes.}}
Skin prickling, Kai turned his back and stared out across the encampment. Far to the west, mist hung heavy on Govanna’s fields.
One more day. A throne secured through victory, and a god’s bargain cheated through death.
Fifty-Six
Otherworld shimmered, a hollow mirage beneath viridian skies. Tattered market canopies rose like islands out of the mist, the etravia drifting between them, patrons even in death. Beyond, a stone wall, higher than anything Kurkas had seen, and a vast fortress staring out into the fields beyond. The city with the defences it needed. Something he’d longed to see, now made real as Otherworld shifted to match his perception.
Kurkas had glimpsed living souls only once. He’d almost called out to them – would have done, but for instinct. The Tressian woman had looked almost familiar, somehow, with her dark ringlets and sweeping skirts, but her companions had been Hadari, and all three of them in furtive manner and peculiar garb. More than enough to provoke distrust. And so Kurkas had hidden until they’d passed on their own unknowable errand, and spent every moment since regretting that he’d not asked the phantasms for aid, and chanced the consequence.
He staggered to a halt and set Apara against an empty stall. Etravia gazed disinterestedly and drifted on. “Which way? Come on, lass. Can’t do this without you.”
Apara offered no answer save for fitful breathing. Too much blood in all the wrong places, despite his attempts at binding her up. Too little time and no chances left. She’d been a dead weight for longer than Kurkas cared to think on, the point when “dead weight” became simply “dead” drawing nearer all the time. Bad enough all by itself, but he’d no notion how to find one of her “weak points”, much less open it up.
He could keep walking, of course, but what was the point?
“Just my bloody luck.”
Wasn’t true, of course. He’d had plenty of luck, even in the last few days. But sooner or later, fortune failed and you paid your dues. A prizrak’s distant weeping reminded of payment’s form. Would he even notice as the mists hollowed him out? Would he know enough to fight the hunger as it turned to madness?
Kurkas fought back self-pity. Sidara. Constans. Altiris. They needed him. But his limits lay well behind. Everything now was hope and baling twine. You put your faith in what you had. He was in Otherworld, right? Closer to the Raven than ever. Give him a coin and he’ll hear you.
He fished a battered silver shilling from his pocket and pressed it to his lips.
“We’re not exactly on closest terms, you and me.” His cheeks warmed with ridicule, but there was something else there too. A frisson of fear that it might actually work. It might be better to be ignored. “But I’ve sent my share of folk your way. And I was born vranakin, for whatever that counts. So help out, would you? My old dad claimed you were the last friend a fellow could seek, and I’ve nowhere else to turn.”
He tossed the coin into the mists. Heard it strike stone and roll away. Heartbeats crept by. Kurkas felt them go, their heaviness a reminder of the years the mists had taken from him in recent days. He chided himself for falling back on superstition. But what else was there? Nothing.
As the seconds passed, it became apparent that nothing was to be his reward. No dark shape in the mists. No beckoning hand. No flutter of wings. Not even the rising weep of a prizrak, come to end his troubles.
With a sigh, he gathered Apara back onto his shoulder. “So much for that. Walking blind, it is.”
It was then that he realised one of the etravia was watching him, hand extended in beckon. She stood a short distance off, the vapour of her apparition’s form twitching as the motion of her peers drew it away, the unreal cloth of a phoenix tabard fluttering on unseen breeze. She was more solid than the others, more form and less vapour. Recognition came slowly, hampered by colour washed away to greenish-white.
“Halvor? Revekah Halvor?”
The etravia turned away without reply and vanished into the street opposite the one Kurkas had thought to take. An emissary from the Raven, guiding him home? An illusion conjured by desperate longing? Whatever. Some hope was better than none at all.
Taking a deep breath, Kurkas staggered off in pursuit.
“Apara? Apara! Stir yourself, will you?”
Apara’s nightmares yielded to mist, and vicious pain edged with numbness. Was she dead? Did the dead feel pain, or just its memory?
A one-eyed shadow loomed over her. A filthy hand patted her cheek. “Made crow-born tougher in my day. Knife in the ribs was our way of saying good morning.”
She knocked Kurkas’ hand aside with her own left. The right was too numb to obey. Surroundings eased into focus. A vaulted roof, green skies blazing through broken spans. Walls thick with cobwebs and tellers’ desks. And something glimpsed with an inner eye less tired than the outer. Beyond the cracked flagstones and the desiccated roots, a door of light and shadow, masked by sculpted timber. A way through.
“How… did you find… this?” she gasped.
He shrugged. “Had help, didn’t I? Best shilling I ever spent.” Joviality hardened. “Can you get us out of here?”
Hope burned away numbness. “Help me stand.”
Every step set daggers stabbing at Apara’s side, made every breath a wet rasp. Her right hand refused response as she reached the door, but her left conformed. Mists recoiled as she set her palm to the door, her faltering will rousing light to overcome shadow.
A final push, and the door bled from sight. Off-balance, she stumbled into the woken void. Kurkas grabbed her, held her upright.
“I’ve got you.” He eyed the mists beyond the door, indistinguishable from those in which they stood. But the sky was the black of night, and not Otherworld’s lurid green. “We just walk through?”
Apara nodded, too tired to speak.
A lurch, a stride, and they were through into the cold air of the high harbourside. Released from her grip, she felt the doorway fade. When she glanced behind, it was gone – crumbling red brick beneath a bowed wooden lintel. Away down the street, pale blue ghostfires danced from lamp post and sill.
“Right,” said Kurkas, his voice full of sudden vigour. “I walked in endless bloody circles last time. This is your territory. Where can we get you some help?”
Apara nodded towards the nearest alley. “Through there… Marketplace… Shrine.”
A kernclaw’s screech echoed above. Daggers renewed their attention on Apara’s ribs as Kurkas propped her against brick. “I’ll take a gander first. We’re neither of us in a state to run. Don’t die on me.”
Then he was gone, lost to the mists. Sounds rose to replace him. The dull thump of fist on flesh. A girl’s wail. A chorus of youthful, jeering voices.
A second cry, and Apara stumbled towards the sound. Rationale became increasingly difficult through the pain. She felt only a need, a desire beyond question, that she not stand by. She’d stood by too often. If moments were seeping past, better to make them count.
The gang’s ringleader paled as she rounded the corner, his meaty face frozen in horror.
“Prizrak!” shrieked a girl already scrambling away.
Not an unfair assumption, Apara supposed, bloody and filthy as she was. And fortunate. A gang of aspirant rassophores were more than her match.
The rest scattered, all save their erstwhile victim, weeping face-down in the gutter. Breath rasping, Apara helped her up. Stared into a young face harrowed by hunger and dread, bruises already forming beneath smeared silt. Just another dregrat. Even with the Crowmarket on the rise, there were those down in the mud. Always would be.
“You’re not cut out for this,” said Apara. “Leave while you can.”
The girl scrambled away and vanished into the mists. Apara stared after, frozen by old memories. Those words. The same she’d heard as a girl. The warning she’d ignored. Her warning? She stuttered a pained laugh. The arrogance of ignoring an elder’s advice was bad enough, but when that elder was yourself…?
“Oi!” Kurkas appeared at her shoulder. “Raven’s Eyes, but you wander good for someone with one foot in the… Well, you know. What’s going on?”
Apara stared after the girl who might have been herself. Had she even existed? A trick of a weary mind, or a piece of the past come unmoored in the mists? Pain receded behind numbness. “Nothing… that matters.”
He slipped his arm beneath hers. “Come on. The way’s clear. Let’s get you inside.”
She clung to consciousness as Kurkas half-carried, half-dragged her along the alley and across the empty marketplace. Down the old stairs that belonged to another life. When she’d still been the Silver Owl. A broker and a thief, not a murderer.
“Ain’t no one about,” said Kurkas. “Not that I saw.”
It had always been a slim hope. The shrine’s keeper was likely taking advantage of the city’s disorder. But at least she could rest. Apara gestured beneath the broken rafters to the stairs. “Cellar.”
“All right,” he replied, the words muffled. “I’ve got you.”
She came to lying sideways on the bed, the lantern-lit cellar fuzzy to weary eyes. Where it had all gone wrong. Where she’d been given to the Raven. Full circle.
You’re not cut out for this. Leave while you can. If only she’d listened to the woman…
To herself?
Kurkas – a dark, uncomfortable presence at the end of the bed – coughed. “No easy way to say this, but I’ve done all I can. Those kids… They come first. You understand?”
Apara swallowed. Was there anything more pathetic than a wasted life? “Go,” she gasped.
He drew closer. His hand found hers. “You did good.”
The far wall fell away into mist. Apara’s heart fluttered in fear. A thin cry parted dry lips. The Raven was coming to claim her. The bargain falling due as her life faded.
Kurkas spun around, hand reaching for a scabbarded sword he didn’t possess. A growl of defiance gave way to an awestruck stutter.
“I don’t bloody believe it.”
The blonde woman strode into the cellar, the mists of the gateway clinging to her shimmering skirts. Kurkas moved to bar her path and subsided, mouth agape, as her eyes met his. It wasn’t so much the eyes themselves that gave him pause, but the years behind them – the sense of a billowing, divine presence unfolding from an ephemeral form perhaps half his age. She perched on the bed beside Apara and took her hand.
“This is her?”
“It is.” Lord Trelan cast a suspicious eye about the cellar, only relaxing when his gaze settled on Kurkas. His expression soured as he looked upon Apara. “Doesn’t look like she’ll be much use to you.”
“Don’t question my mother,” said the Hadari woman at his side. A face from the past, before fire had devoured darkness. The princessa.
Kurkas at last found his tongue. “Might’ve know you were part of this, shadowthorn. Always trouble when you show your face.”
He started forward. Shadow shifted behind the princessa, coiling into the form of an antlered knight.
It growled.
Kurkas glared back and tried to forget that the other was a good head taller than he. “And you can shut your bloody trap, too.”
The knight stepped forward.
“Captain, please.” Lord Trelan took Kurkas by the arm and led him to the corner of the room. “I can see you’re not having the best of days, but a little decorum wouldn’t hurt.”
From the look of things, Lord Trelan wasn’t having the best day himself. Not a mark on him, not until you paid heed to his expression. Worries deep behind the eyes, seeking the escape of tears. For all that Lord Trelan often appeared thus – hard head and a soft heart never made an easy life – this was worse.
“Last I heard,” said Kurkas, “we were at war with shadowthorns, and their heathen gods were stomping us flat. That all done with, is it?” Tiredness and heartache made the question a challenge.
The antlered knight growled. The princessa levelled an unfriendly stare. Lord Trelan glanced away. “It’s complicated.”
Kurkas sank against the wall, dislodging a chunk of musty plaster. “Ain’t it always? Been a bugger of a week, sah. The vranakin have half the city. Lady Reveque’s dead. And… they took the kids. Sidara and her brother. Her to bury alive, and him to keep her quiet while they do it. Altiris went after them… couldn’t stop him.” He hung his head. “Sorry, sah. B
abbling.”
Lord Trelan nodded. “What about Malachi? Ana?”
“Don’t know about Lord Reveque. The vranakin burned Abbeyfields with us all inside, so at best he reckons his kids are in the mists along with his wife. As for the plant pot…” He hesitated. “She didn’t make it out either. The whole bloody building came down on her.”
To his amazement, Lord Trelan offered a grim smile. “Is that all? She’ll be furious.”
Kurkas stared. Were the other’s wits as astray as his taste in company? “Did you not hear me?”
“I’ve stopped underestimating Ana.” The smile faded. “Right now, we all need a little hope. Put yours where you will. I’m entrusting mine to her until I’ve reason to do otherwise.”
Hope. Belatedly, Kurkas remembered why Lord Trelan had left in the first place. “Lord Akadra not with you?”
“Viktor has his battle to fight.” He shot a glance at the princessa. “So do they. The Crowmarket is mine. Ours, if you’re up to it.”
Was it the challenge of the words, or the sympathy of the tone? Kurkas wasn’t sure. But he found the strength to stand straight again, even to offer a salute. “Always. Just you and me?”
“If need be. But it won’t come to that. One is a man alone. Two are a beginning.”
Kurkas squinted. “You sure Lord Akadra’s not coming? Because that’s the kind of rot he comes out with.”
“I’ll settle for half Viktor’s success.” The grim smile returned. “We’ve a city to take back. Or are you too busy?”
For that manner of work? Never. And yet…
Kurkas glanced at Apara, lying motionless beside the woman in the shimmering dress. “What about the crow-born? She came good in the end. Deserves better than this.”
Lord Trelan’s lip twisted. He shared a glance with the princessa. “That’s up to her.”
Apara stood alone in a darkened room, no sound save for the deep, fitful pulse of a drum. She stepped forward, bare feet on polished wood, and a black skirt moulting bloody feathers behind.
“Is it that time already?” A lantern flickered to life, casting dizzying reflections across a polished marble hearth, yet the outskirts of the room remained lost to darkness. The Raven stood at the mantelpiece, elbow against the wall. “Barely a blink, and you’re done.”