by Matthew Ward
“How can we find a piece of the Raven that even he’s ignorant of?”
Her demand drew a sour look from the princessa, but Apara was growing used to those. Just as she was used to making no dent in Ashana’s serene composure.
“Because none of this has happened yet,” said Ashana. “We’ve walked the face of the clock into tomorrow. That’s why the Raven doesn’t know to hide it. He’s the Keeper of the Dead. His whole being looks to what was, not what will be. Death belongs to the past. Light – my light – exists everywhere that is everywhere.”
“That’s not possible,” said Melanna.
“Time flows differently within the mists,” Ashana replied. “Past and future are woven together. If you know the paths, they are yours to travel. How else can a journey of days become one of minutes, or one of weeks become days?”
Delivered thus, simply and without brag, outrageous claim became inevitable. Had not Apara met her younger self in Dregmeet? At what point was it better to accept that delusion was reality?
Apara nodded. “Before I left Tressia, the mists had twisted the streets back on themselves. More than the streets. I saw… I saw a piece of my past. When I was a child, I saw that same moment as a piece of my future. I didn’t recognise it, but that’s what it was.”
“Then the Raven – any of you – can walk in the past or the future?” said Melanna.
“We can, but our actions change nothing – that remains an ephemeral privilege,” Ashana replied. “In our way, we’re as separate from the flow of time as Otherworld’s mists. We all experience the passage of time differently, just as the worlds of the celestial clock experience time differently. In any case, my siblings seldom bother in the attempt. It would mean admitting to error. Divine pride is a thing both rigid and fragile.”
“But not yours?” asked Apara.
“No. At least… not yet. I still remember what I was. One day, I’ll be as distant and cruel as any of them. But today, I can still think like an ephemeral and perceive enough of time’s passage to make this possible.”
Melanna’s brow creased. “If we’re here, in days to come… Does this mean we’re successful? The Reckoning doesn’t happen.”
“When the Reckoning comes, it won’t happen all at once, everywhere. It’s still a war, and wars are fought over territory.” Ashana stared up at the tunnel roof, a hazy arch half-seen through the dark. “The world might be ending, even as we speak.”
“You mean you don’t know?” said Apara.
“It might be best if you hurried.”
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for.”
“A piece of the Raven. You’ll know it when you see it.”
Apara bit back a retort. Etravia drifting from her path, she stalked uphill along the tunnel, footsteps guided by the harsh overspill of firestone lanterns somewhere up ahead. Either Ashana genuinely didn’t know what she wanted found, or she delighted too much in playing games to say. And if a war between the gods were unfolding aboveground, the sooner Apara was gone – saying nothing of being parted from the Goddess’ company – the better.
“She saved your life,” said the princessa, drawing level. “Show some respect.”
“She’s using me. As she’s using you.”
“That’s not true, she—”
A deep, grinding rumble flooded the tunnel and set Apara’s teeth rattling in her jaw. The princessa halted, her eyes widening in alarm and her hand falling to her sword.
The moment of vulnerability – the loss of poise – went some way to easing Apara’s frustration. “Relax, princessa. It’s just the soul of the world singing. At least, that’s what a priest told me. Go deep enough in Dregmeet, you’ll hear it all the time.”
“The soul of the world…” Reverence mingled with suspicion in Melanna’s tone.
“Not really. That’s just what they call it. It’s kraikons digging out new mausolea for the highbloods. I saw one of the machines once. Big as a house. Can’t have the rich dumped in a pauper’s grave, can we? And if the war’s going badly?” She shrugged. “That means a lot more digging.”
The rumble faded. The princessa’s hand slackened on her sword and they pressed on until the darkened tunnel opened up into a broader cavern, awash with singing etravia and the sickly green light of Otherworld’s mists.
Stuttering firestone lanterns gave shape to a simple loading terrace on Apara’s right, and to an ornate archway leading beyond. On the left, the tunnel wall arced up to meet the ceiling’s crooked fixtures. Too florid for an abandoned mine. A half-finished mausoleum, left to rot, its construction tunnels sealed somewhere beyond? That would fit.
Sadness thickened the air, a sense of abandonment Apara often felt when walking Dregmeet’s decaying monuments. Not everything was useful for ever. Then again, with Otherworld clinging so close, who was to say how the place usually appeared? The Raven’s crooked art was everywhere. Grotesques leered atop curved stone buttresses, and above decaying mosaics depicting the clash of armies. And beyond Otherworld’s echo, a shimmering mirage of mismatched tile and torn posters.
The song faded. Weeping arose in its place. The manner of sorrow that left the listener heartsick and raw, if they didn’t hear the hunger beneath. “Princessa…”
Etravia scattered as the prizrak came shrieking out of the mists. Apara glimpsed bloodied eyes beneath a tattered hood. Black claws opened her cheek to the bone as she twisted away. Balance lost, she fell, her head striking the terrace’s stone floor. The pain was distant, as all pain had been since she’d woken into her new life, but the world reeled drunkenly.
Half-blind, she lashed out a boot. A crunch of bone and the prizrak dropped atop her, slashing and tearing at her face and throat. Now the pain demanded recognition, a score of tiny fires billowing to a blaze.
Apara brought her talons about. Prone as she was, the angle robbed the blow of force. The prizrak barely flinched, its sleeve shredded, but little else.
A cry. A gleam of steel. A fountain of dark, stinking blood. The prizrak slumped sideways, its head bouncing away into the loading gulley before coming to rest against a corroded rail. The panting princessa let her sword drop from its two-handed grip and helped Apara to her feet.
Apara’s fingers traced flayed flesh as the muscle and skin of her face reknitted, the wounds healing just as those inflicted by Hawkin Darrow had before. It still seemed unreal.
She stared down at the prizrak as calmed etravia resumed their song. It had been a woman once. Possibly a vranakin, by her garb. What she herself might have been. If Kurkas had abandoned her in Otherworld. Had Krastin made good on his threats. Prizrak or eternal. Fates bound close enough to touch.
Perhaps she did owe the Goddess a measure of respect.
She offered the princessa a sharp nod. “Thank you.”
The other wiped her sword clean on the prizrak’s corpse. “What now?”
Apara cast about. “I don’t know. Through the arch, perhaps. Or… Hold on a moment. What’s this?”
She followed the loading terrace to where it joined the tunnel wall and halted at a charred mound. The embers of a fire long burned out, save that it smouldered the same green as Otherworld’s skies. She felt a kinship with the remains, similar to the one she’d shared with her late, unlamented ravencloak, though immeasurably feebler. Crouching, she glimpsed the unmistakeable shape of a hand among the fragments.
Rising, she sought the princessa in the mists, but found no sign.
A hand closed about the wrist of Apara’s talon-hand. Another at the base of her neck. A bellowed warning in an unfamiliar language, a shove, and she found herself up against the tiles, shoulder creaking as her assailant twisted her hand towards her shoulder blades. Torn posters fell like falling leaves.
She tried to pull free. A sharp tug on her arm, and stars burst behind her eyes. Leverage was everything. Her attacker had it, she didn’t.
He shouted again, hot and urgent in her ear.
Blotting out the man’s gibberish, Apara
tallied options. Talons pinned against her back. No way to communicate. No way to get free without a broken arm. But broken arms healed. Even thinking it provoked nausea, but what else was there if the princessa was down, or fled?
She gritted her teeth and shifted position.
Another stream of foreign words echoed through the mists, this time in the princessa’s voice. The sword’s whisper silenced the man’s angry reply. The pressure about Apara’s wrist and neck vanished. As she pushed away from the wall, he slammed into it, hands raised level with his head and the princessa’s sword-point at his chest.
Apara glared. “Took your time.”
The princessa offered a lopsided shrug. “I wasn’t sure whether the place was vulnerable, or just looked it.”
“Hilarious.” Apara made practised appraisal of the man, alert for threat. Younger than her, older than the princessa. Complexion more a match for a Tressian than Hadari. More wariness than malice in his eyes. “You understand him?”
“Mostly,” replied the princessa. “It’s a Britonisian commoner’s dialect. His accent’s appalling and his grammar’s non-existent.”
What was a Britonisian doing beneath Dregmeet? Was Tressia doomed to become a province of Empire? “Good to know you rub shoulders with commoners. You want to be careful. Bed down in the kennels, and who knows what you’ll pick up.”
“You can’t rule people who can’t understand you,” she replied icily.
Apara grunted away her surprise. “Tell him we don’t want to hurt him.”
“Don’t we?”
“Not unless he gives us reason.”
“I doubt he will. He’s not a warrior.”
The fading ache in Apara’s arm and shoulder begged to differ, as did her instincts. For all that the man was dressed like a steward whose employer had fallen on hard times, instinct said otherwise.
“No. He’s a watchman of some kind. Maybe something more.” She glanced to her right, and the doorway hidden in the crook of the smooth cavern wall. “Tell him we don’t want to hurt him. Ask him what happened.”
A stream of strange syllables followed, a back and forth between the princessa and the man that stuttered and faltered as they wrestled disjointed language to common purpose.
“His name’s Loqueton,” the princessa said at last. “He speaks of a battle here… against the Raven.”
Apara swallowed, the mists colder than before. “Is… Is he still here?”
The exchange began anew. Loqueton’s eyes darted to the pile of smouldering ash, two paces distant, then snapped back to the princessa’s sword.
She scowled. “It’s hard to follow. The words are all jumbled. But I think he’s saying that there is no Raven any longer… Something about a pale queen usurping him. She promised to stop…” She paused, head canted and eyes half-closed as she sifted another burst of gibberish. “Something about mists in the streets. Maybe she didn’t uphold her end of the bargain, whatever it was. I don’t really understand that part. He says he was watching in case she returned.”
“Then I suppose we’ve come for the ashes,” Apara said.
But what use were ashes? The heart she understood. It was a part of Jack, and such a prize could be leveraged in all manner of ways. Blackmail was blackmail, ephemeral or divine. But ashes?
She stared at the Raven’s remains. Somehow, her life was nothing but ash of late. First Abbeyfields and Lilyana Reveque, then the ghastly bride in Fellhallow… At least she’d missed the burning this time. If the Raven was gone, maybe the Reckoning was raging aboveground, and he its latest casualty. How much of the city remained? How much of Tressia remained? The desire to see was outweighed only by apprehension over what she would behold.
The ashes shifted. A beady eye gleamed. The charred hand rolled aside, and a glossy black wing flapped free. Another spill of ash, and a bird, no larger than Apara’s hand, strutted back and forth atop the embers. She pounced on the raven without thinking, fingers closed tight about its small body before it took wing. It went deathly still and shot her a glance with rather more malice than it should have been capable.
With the bird under her hand, the ashes turned dark in Apara’s mind – the part of her that was still vranakin, even now, losing what fleeting kinship they’d shared. The bird, however? It felt like a part of her – or a part of who she’d been. Ashana had been right: she did know it when she saw it. She was holding the Raven, or whatever fragment remained after his queen’s betrayal. Diminished. Perhaps not even fully aware. Was that why the mists lingered?
A god trapped in the palm of her hand. At her mercy.
Close her hand tight and it would repay all that had been done to her in his name. All she’d been forced to do.
But then the world would die, and everyone she knew alongside. Ashana had freed her from the Crowmarket. Strange symmetry in sparing the Raven in turn. A vranakin took everything she could, even life. The Silver Owl had the luxury of choice.
She looked up to find both the princessa’s and Loqueton’s eyes on her. Suspicious. Wary.
“This is what we came for.”
“The bird?” replied the princessa. “You’re certain?”
“It’s a piece of the Raven, just like your goddess told us.” Her left hand tight about the bird, Apara smoothed back the feathers of its crown and earned another baleful glare from beady eyes. “Let Loqueton go. Tell him the mists might recede once we’ve gone. Tell him I hope they do.”
Sixty-Three
The Raven’s scream reverberated through Rosa’s bones. Anger and fear. Intoxicating. Dizzying. No longer able to determine whether those sensations were hers or belonged to the bleak god who had made himself her master, she knew only that she had to act. Hands braced against stone. Boots dug through grime and found purchase.
Even as she tensed, the weight on her back shifted. Jack’s roots scraped at her spine. Muscles spasmed, every inch of her body afire. The Raven’s scream faded beneath her own.
{{Hush,}} said Jack. {{Don’t you want to be free of him?}}
The roots drew back. Rosa collapsed, wheezing, hands trembling. The blue-white blaze of a burning thornmaiden blurred. Duskhazel muddied her ragged breaths.
{{We will all be free of him.}}
White flame blazed beneath grey skies. Saran’s sword hacked through thrashing branches. Jack screeched and flung a hand to shield his face. Moonfire sliced away a pair of crooked fingers. The weight on Rosa’s back shifted as Jack staggered, his voice thick with outrage.
{{Betrayer!}}
Branches whipped back. Released, the Raven crashed against the wagon. A wheel splintered to spars beneath his falling body. His hat rolled away. Roots ripped free of Rosa’s flesh, leaving her gasping. She glimpsed the Emperor stumble away, a wounded leg dragging. A black stain soured the golden scales at his waist.
“You used me!” roared Kai.
His voice was as frayed as his appearance, but his sword struck true. Bark scattered, dark with glistening sap.
{{You made a bargain. It binds us both.}} Thrashing briars tore dark rivulets across the Emperor’s exposed skin and were severed in turn by white flame. {{You will have your victory, and I will have my queen.}}
“I’ll die first.”
{{As you wish.}} Jack lunged. The crooked fingers of his uninjured arm lengthened to talons. They plunged into Saran’s chest. Golden scales swept away on a dark rush of blood. The Emperor howled. {{But the bargain endures.}}
Inch by agonising inch, Rosa reached her knees. Grasping hand found scabbarded sword.
With a wordless cry, she swung at Jack’s head. He jerked, frayed robes swirling. Branches snapped, others swaying like serpents as she hacked at his leg. He screeched, sap cloying over the blade. Thrashing briars flayed Rosa’s flesh to the bone and burrowed in through the welts. Blind with agony, she tore them free. Others lashed about her arms, her throat. Squeezing. Contracting. Vertebrae ground together. Nausea oozed beneath the pain.
Polite applause rippled. T
he Raven leaned heavily against the wagon’s edge.
“Very impressive, brother.” He jammed his hat on his head, weariness discarded as he rose to his full height. “But not impressive enough.”
Duskhazel fires blinked out. Mist rolled in. The Ash Wind, fitful all day, roared to a sudden gale, filled with squalling, corvine shapes and thrumming black wings. The feathered storm swept over Jack, tearing deep into cloth and gnarled limb. Rosa’s bonds slackened. She threw up her arms to shield her face, sight and sound buried beneath the storm.
“Can’t you feel it?” Triumph roared beneath the Raven’s cry. “The mists are mine again.”
With a crackling moan, Jack let Saran fall and stumbled away into the mists.
Birds spiralled outwards and upwards. Grey skies darkened to brooding thunderheads. Revenants coalesced across the corpse-strewn courtyard. No longer spirits with the meanest grasp on existence, they were solid as the inevitability of death. Rosa glimpsed riders hidden deeper in the murk. Buildings shook to the grave-call’s boom, and the dark host flooded east.
Screams thickened anew beneath the Raven’s laughter.
Wounds reknitting, Rosa cast about for the fallen Emperor and found only a smeared black trail amid the dead. He wouldn’t escape. She’d come so close. She started in pursuit.
Laughter faded. “Rosa. No. He’s not important.”
She halted, unable to resist the command. “Release me!” Fury flickered and ebbed, forbidden to her by the Raven’s will. “What have you done to me? You’re no better than him!”
A gloved hand seized her throat. Eyes blazed beneath the domino mask. “How dare you! You did this! I warned you not to make it a bargain, but you insisted. Make the Hadari suffer. I’ll serve you. I’ll be whatever you wish. I wanted a queen. An equal. You made yourself a servant. And now this…” Releasing his grip, he spread a hand wide and clamped it shut in frustration. “This is what it is, and neither of us what we sought to be.”
“You could have refused!” said Rosa.
“Don’t you understand?” he snarled. “I can refuse you nothing!”