by Matthew Ward
“Roslava! Aid me, my queen!”
Her head jerked back at the Raven’s plaintive cry. All that she was urged her to ignore it, to take the Emperor’s head and have the matter done. Or almost all of her. A piece – a small piece, unfamiliar and unremarked, for it had never before demanded notice – commanded otherwise. It seized the reins, and left the rest screaming impotence.
The Raven hoved into view, a limp, huddled shape, dangling from Jack’s crooked hand. {{Poor brother. Too much bartered to mortals for too little gain. I feel them clawing at the mists, tearing you apart. Allow me the kindness of sparing you its rigours.}}
Command blossomed to imperative; imperative to unshakeable desire.
With a cry as much horror as rage, Rosa brought down the axe. Jack shrieked and recoiled, his free hand clasped to the fresh scar across the mask’s left eye. Frayed robes billowed in a storm of thrashing branches. As Rosa wheeled about for another blow, they snatched her up and slammed her down atop the dead.
Jack’s weight settled on her spine. One foot, then another. Roots and briars burrowed into her flesh; peeling, probing, tugging at muscle.
{{Your queen? I expected something more… durable. She seems confused. Could it be you’ve been less than truthful? You, the last friend to all?}} His tone turned mocking. {{I weep for your shame.}}
Rosa screamed as briar scraped against bone. Pain swirled to sick realisation. For all his claims of admiration and regard, the Raven had made her a plaything. She stared at the Emperor, his black blood seeping away.
The weight on Rosa’s back shifted. The Raven slammed into the wagon and scrabbled for support. Branches wended tight about his limbs and hoisted him high.
“I had no choice,” gasped the Raven. “A bargain—”
He cried out as the branches went taut.
{{Rejoice, Emperor Saran,}} said Jack. {{For the Lord of Fellhallow keeps his promises.}}
Sixty-One
The first strands of mists crept into the Hayadra Grove, spilling over the humbled walls of the old temple and gusting beneath alabaster trees. Dolorous bells and the rapt silence of massed vranakin offered welcome. The pontiffs waited at the grove’s heart, heads bowed. Pallbearers approached a bier set before an open grave nestled in the Shaddra’s roots. Mist curled behind, the blessing of the trees overcome by the ribbon-bound corpses they bore. The scent of damp earth permeated vapour, worm-eaten future mingled with dusty past.
Altiris averted his eyes from the suspended bodies: constables and luckless parishioners caught as the vranakin had flooded in the grove – sightless witnesses to unfolding blasphemy. Too much like the horrors of the mist-lost foundry. But then, the Hayadra Grove had horrors aplenty.
The vranakin in the grove were but half of the cortege come from Dregmeet. The rest had descended into the sunlit streets of the eastern hillside and Sinner’s Mile as a caution against interference. What remained was might enough to contest an army, let alone a single soul clinging to courage’s fading spark.
Kernclaws crouched among the branches, the soft cackle of their cloaks all that broke reverent silence. A ring of elder cousins barred final approach. Sidara’s wagon sat within that ring, she almost a ghost already within the mist’s embrace. Hawkin stood close by, Constans gagged before her, and his wrists bound.
Altiris pressed on, nerves howling at each brush of shoulder and disinterested gaze. Step by step, through the ranks of the raven-sworn and the dispossessed, past bell carriers and beggars, until he found himself at the crowd’s inner edge. Two dozen paces from Sidara’s wagon and as far again from the watchful pontiffs.
All of it a stroll away, and as distant as eternity.
Pallbearers set the mildewed casket on the bier, bowed and withdrew. The taller of the two pontiffs – Krastin, a name gleaned from reverent whispers – approached the body. Drawing back his hood, he stooped to kiss the withered skull.
“Rest easy, cousin. Your passing will not be for nothing.”
Commotion arose to the east. Strife’s clamour washing over the hill from hidden streets.
The second pontiff – Shurla – broke off from her approach to the bier. “What now?”
Krastin stood. Cold, dark eyes – twin to those Altiris remembered so well – swept the crowd and stared east. “The Council have found their courage.” He planted the foot of his raven-headed cane into the sod and crooked a finger towards Sidara’s cage. “Let her be wed.”
Josiri abandoned all hope of order halfway up Sinner’s Mile. The mob came in a rush of bodies, fuelled by hope and pride reclaimed, following the blaze of a serathi’s light. Not an army of shields and martial discipline, but a tide of fists, cudgels and rusted swords that swept into the streets and left bodies in its wake.
“On!” he bellowed. “Keep moving!”
Side streets filled with shadow and steel.
“Watch the sides!” bellowed Kurkas. “Don’t let them behind.”
On they went, brick by brick and stone by stone.
Arrows flickered from northern rooftops. A knight collapsed, an arrow beneath his helm. A Swanholt hearthguard dropped to one knee, snapped the shaft buried in his shoulder and staggered on. A beat of sunlight wings, and the vranakin archers plunged towards cobbles. Ana spiralled away, laughter wild above the din. The sweep of her claymore caught a kernclaw mid-leap and clove him in two.
Josiri helped a wounded constable to his feet, then dropped back to where Malachi stood flanked by Brass and Jaridav’s phoenix tabards. He held a sword – though he hadn’t used it – and Brass was under strict instructions to keep him from the fight. Better to know that Malachi was close to danger, but protected, than to wonder what trouble he’d found. Better still if he’d stayed at the palace with Messela, but that decision was in the past.
“I keep thinking about last year,” said Malachi.
Josiri recalled the confession, offered in the council chamber’s privacy earlier that morning. Lady Kiradin too had clung to the Hayadra Grove, leveraging divine tradition to legitimacy. But for Malachi’s fool’s bargain… “Nothing would have changed. The vranakin had their talons into Ebigail. She’d have fed them anything to keep herself afloat.”
“Maybe.” Malachi’s eyes touched on a leather-aproned corpse. One of many citizens who’d paid steep price for courage, and more to come. “All this for my daughter.”
“For us all,” Josiri corrected, hoping that the words took. “The mists are bound to the Raven, the Raven to the pontiffs. Sidara can break that bond.”
Bird-calls screeched. The clamour at the mob’s head redoubled as more vranakin joined the fray. Josiri nodded at Brass. “Stay with him.”
“Sir.”
Bell-song swept through the gathering mist, mournful notes chiming mockery of a wedding carillon. Blood running cold, Josiri cupped his hands and bellowed at the skies.
“Ana! Don’t wait for us! Go! Go!”
Two vranakin led Sidara down from the cart. Another set a garland of bloodied feathers about her neck. Krastin’s thin, mocking laughter hissed out beneath the bells. Shurla hobbled from her post beside the grave and slid a golden ring onto the corpse’s finger. A second glinted as she turned to Sidara.
“A bride of the grave. You are honoured.”
Taking her left hand, she forced the second ring onto her finger. Sidara flung it into the grass.
Shurla crouched to retrieve it. “Tell me, Lady Reveque… How well did defiance serve your father?” Dark eyes shifted to Constans. “What fortune do you suppose it will bring your brother?”
Sidara went still as the ring was forced upon her a second time, her eyes dull and her last resistance spent. “You’ll pay for what you’ve done to my family.”
Krastin tutted. “I will add the debt to my ledger. Prepare her!”
Altiris watched, torn, as vranakin used black ribbon to bind Sidara’s arms across her chest, and her legs at ankle and knee. Part of him burned to intervene, despite the certainty of death. The rest cowere
d, desperate not to draw the pontiffs’ gaze.
The last strand of ribbon gagged Sidara to silence. Two vranakin laid her upon the bier beside her decaying husband-to-be.
Arms outspread, Shurla turned her back on both. “In the Raven’s holy name, we bind our beloved cousin Athariss to this Daughter of Light.”
Six vranakin bore the bier aloft on tarnished brass handles. They processed towards the open grave, spent feathers of Sidara’s garland trailing behind. The Shaddra’s branches sighed in the fitful breeze.
“With the union of her last breath and his endless shadow, we renounce Lumestra’s claim upon this city.” Shurla’s voice turned shrill with fervour. “Let all within its walls become cousin to the Raven, and servants to his loyal Parliament. Let—”
“No!”
Altiris ripped his mask clear and dragged his sword free of his cloak. Elder cousins closed ranks before him, the stench of dead flesh rank in his nostrils. A withered hand closed around his wrist. Another about his throat. Cold air turned bitter.
High above, sunlight parted the mists. Alabaster branches and golden leaves darkened to silhouette. An armoured body plunged from the heavens, swathed in sunlight. Shurla crumpled beneath its impact. Flesh folded inwards, the crackle of breaking bones and popped joints drowned out by the pontiff’s agonised shriek.
Serathi.
The word hissed through the crowd, uttered with awe in some places, with fear in most.
Golden wings spread wide, Anastacia rose up from Shurla’s mangled body, cocked her head and regarded Krastin with malice. Mist hissed and recoiled.
The pontiff shied from the light, fear yielding to outrage as his hands fell away and courage returned. “You can’t have her!”
[[I wasn’t asking.]]
The claymore gleamed. It severed Altiris’ captor’s wrist with a sound like brittle leaves underfoot. A second sweep of the claymore traced a red arc through the cortege, scattering Athariss’ remains and pitching a wriggling Sidara onto the muddied grass.
“Defiler!” An accusing finger accompanied Krastin’s shriek. “Destroy it!”
The strike of Anastacia’s armoured fist drove him to his knees.
Elder cousins bore down. The first collapsed, insects scattered from her robes as claymore hewed head from body. Anastacia took wing, the sword’s gleaming arc biting deep into the tattered garb of a second. The crowd surged, fear fading into the rising cacophony of bird voices, ceremony and captives forgotten.
A lasso closed about Anastacia’s neck and drew tight, only to be split by a slash of steel. An elder cousin grabbed at her armoured shin and reeled off with half his head sliced away. Another grabbed her boot. A second noose tightened around her neck. A third about her wrist. Wings faltered. Inch by inch they dragged her down.
Her eyes found Altiris’. [[I thought you were a phoenix. Make yourself useful.]]
Then she was gone, sunlight drowned beneath a tide of vranakin grey.
Altiris’ fingers closed around his sword. With a scream, he ran past Shurla’s twitching, distended body and flung himself at the cortege’s dazed survivors. Steel bit. He leapt over the falling body, a scrape of swords driving the second vranakin’s crooked blade aside. The counterblow came as instinct, and then there were only the dead, the dying… and Sidara.
A tug pulled her gag free. His sword sliced away the worst of the ribbons. She staggered to her feet, breathing fast and shallow, her eyes wide. “Is that Ana?”
“You have to ask?”
But not for long. Whatever obsession the vranakin harboured about Sidara now paled beside outrage at Anastacia. The inner grove writhed with bodies, shadows against light.
Metal scraped on metal, and metal on stone. A porcelain hand and tattered sleeve emerged from the brawl. A vranakin spiralled away and struck a tree with a sickening thud. Others pressed forward with rope and blade.
A kernclaw held a dented breastplate aloft to shrieking cheers, and hurled it away. A gauntlet followed. An elder cousin hoisted a chunk of stone high in both hands and brought it crashing down. Anastacia’s head snapped aside, daylight streaming from a jagged crack across her brow. Krastin looked on, lips hooked in malice.
“We have to help her,” said Altiris. “Please tell me you can help her.”
Sidara pursed her lips. Dismay became a scowl. Her breathing steadied. She stooped and grabbed a discarded vranakin sword. “With this, yes.”
“Put that down, my bonny. Play the dutiful wife, and wait your turn.”
Hawkin emerged from the mist, Constans shoved ahead and her dagger never far from his throat.
“Hawkin.” Bitterness flooded Sidara’s tone as she obeyed. Altiris reluctantly followed suit. “Seems only yesterday you were afraid for me. Was that all a lie?”
“This isn’t what I wanted.” For all the doubt in her words, Altiris found none in tone or expression. “But we all owe duty to our family.”
“Your family?” snapped Altiris. “Vranakin aren’t family. They’re vermin. Come lean days they’ll gnaw your bones.”
“Only the weak go to the wall. The strong thrive.”
Altiris cast a hand at an elder cousin’s infested remains. “For what? To become a corpse that doesn’t know it’s dead? That’s not prosperity. You’re a free woman, Hawkin. You can choose something else.”
“Freedom?” Trembling with rage, she tore back her left sleeve. The dark whorls of a rose-brand stood stark against skin. “I’ve never been free, not since the ships came to Disri. Sold one to another, on and on for ten years ’til the Crowmarket bought my bridle and gave me a family. What’s a northwealder’s life next to that?”
Altiris winced. How similar their paths had been, both of them “rescued” by the vranakin – only he’d been marked for sacrifice, and she for service. A slight difference in fortunes, and it might have been his blade at Constans’ throat.
“It can be everything.” He locked his eyes to Constans’ and prayed the boy wasn’t too far gone to fear. “I owe Sidara my life. If it’s lost saving her, or her brother, I’ll consider it well spent. So you have to choose.”
Weaponless, he stepped closer.
“Stay back!” The first panic crowded Hawkin’s eyes, and with it the suggestion that for all her claims she couldn’t bring herself to harm Constans. The dagger slipped from the boy’s neck and jabbed towards Altiris. “I won’t tell you again!”
She doubled over as Constans drove a wiry elbow into her gut. Altiris lunged.
The rag-masked woman crumpled beneath Josiri’s sword, the light gone from her eyes before she hit the roadway. The vranakin line buckled. In ones and twos, resistance melted away. A cheer growled to new heights. The mob came forward, spilling out of Sinner’s Mile and plunging beneath the mist-choked trees.
Josiri ran with them.
A kernclaw boiled out of the branches. Bloody talons snatched a greatcoated sailor into oblivion. Spectral birds parted about the sweep of a pickaxe handle and reformed behind the wielder. Josiri’s sword drove the kernclaw back. Brass lumbered out of the mists and finished the job with a stoic thrust and a disdainful grimace.
“Brass?” Josiri cast about for Malachi. “Where’s Lord Reveque?”
He scowled. “Lost him soon as we hit the grove, sir. Don’t know where he is.”
Mists boiled back from the grove’s centre, laying bare the seething brawl by the graveside, and a cadaverous man, arms spread wide and lips curled in a snarl of rage. “Enough!”
Black eyes gleamed in a pallid face. The day darkened.
Josiri fell to his knees, gasping for breath. The Hayadra Grove drowned beneath an inky veil, thick with keening and terrified moans.
Decaying hands burst from the ground in a spray of soil, dragging him down even as the grave-woken corpses hauled their way into the light. As Josiri reached his knees, grotesque faces stared back. Peeling lips hooked rictus smiles beneath cloudy, opalescent eyes. Plump maggots glistened in rotting, pitted flesh.
&nbs
p; “You let us die,” hissed Calenne.
“You killed us,” said his mother.
“No!” Josiri clamped his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his ears.
Stinking breath rushed across his cheeks. “Traitor!”
“Your bodies burned!” he screamed. “You’re not real!”
He opened his eyes. The apparitions had gone, but the terror remained, chattering at his teeth and writhing like worms in his gut. It hurt to move, even to breathe. The moans of those who’d followed him up Sinner’s Mile echoed about him. Through streaming eyes, he glimpsed men and women on their knees, or twitching in foetal form. Vranakin shrieked and started forward.
Only one man still stood, stumbling towards the grove’s heart like one in a dream, an unbloodied sword in his hand.
Malachi.
Malachi ignored the crowd swarming about Anastacia, their heels rutting the ground as the ropes about arms and wings went taut. He cast from his mind the horror of Sidara’s arms flung protectively about a twitching, mewling Constans; the sight of Altiris clutching hands to his head as Hawkin staggered away. He held his course, one foot in front of the other. The howling horror of Krastin’s gaze assailed him at every step.
An elder cousin drifted to bar his path, only to retreat at a twitch of Krastin’s raven-headed cane. “How is this possible? You cannot resist!”
Worthlessness and failure. Sorrow and loss. Black clouds swallowed Malachi’s thoughts, seeking to stifle his soul.
“What would you show me?” he snarled. “My children dead? My wife murdered? A homeland overrun? This city swallowed through my hubris? I’ve seen it. You made me live it. What more can you do to me?”
With a cry born of every mistake, every loss and every bitter scrap of shame, Malachi rammed his sword between Krastin’s ribs. The force drove the pontiff back until the blade shuddered deep into the Shaddra’s alabaster bark. Letting go the sword, he slipped his paper knife from his pocket and rammed it deep into Krastin’s left eye.
The pontiff’s shriek of pain deepened to a ragged scream.
Malachi ripped the knife free and stabbed it into Krastin’s right.