Above His Proper Station

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The sky overhead was still blue and pink and gold, but the streets were in shadow—until Anrel turned the corner onto Duty Street. Duty Street was awash in flame, the lurid orange glow a harsh contrast to the peaceful colors of the sunset. The smell of smoke, of burning wood and burning flesh, swept over him.

  At first Anrel could not make out what was happening; the smoke and flame hid much of the scene, and there were people running in both directions, toward the fighting or away from it, getting in his way and blocking his view. Smoke stung his eyes, and the screams and shouts made any attempt at asking questions pointless. At last, though, he pushed through a line of fleeing men and got a good look.

  The Duty Street barricade had been set ablaze and smashed apart, the fiery wreckage scattered in every direction, but it was not the men of the Emperor’s Watch who had destroyed it, it was not the men of the Emperor’s Watch who were now advancing slowly up Duty Street. Instead there were three looming figures, each at least fifteen feet tall, making their way into the Pensioners’ Quarter over a layer of flaming debris.

  They were not human. They each had two arms, two legs, and a head, but that was the extent of the resemblance. These were creatures made of fire and darkness, darkness so complete that where there were no flames they looked not so much like solid, living beings as like holes in the universe, places where the substance had been ripped from reality itself, revealing utter emptiness beneath. They had no faces at all.

  “Demons,” Anrel said.

  He had never seen a demon before, but he had no doubt about what he saw now. He had read descriptions when he was a student—until last year’s rumors about the empress and her hirelings no one had ever reported a demon in Walasia, but there were stories from the Cousins, from some of the distant lands the Ermetians traded with, and from some of the outermost reaches of the Quandish archipelagoes. There were not so much stories as mere rumors of demons, and even worse things, in the mysterious eastern lands beyond the Cousins, such as the legendary Noroda, but those could not be trusted even as much as the tales told by Quandish and Ermetian sailors.

  There could be no doubt demons did exist, but not in the civilized nations. It was common knowledge that certain of the mad magicians of the Cousins had learned to summon, or perhaps create, these beings of incarnate chaos, of walking destruction, and that these magicians had on occasion sent demons to lay waste their foes in the constant internecine wars those unhappy little countries east of the empire fought among themselves. Even when the empire had involved itself in the Cousins, though, no one had ever unleashed demons on the Walasians. The Quandish and the Ermetians considered such a thing to be black magic that would carry far too much risk by its very nature, and the lords and magicians of the Cousins rightly feared the empire’s response should they ever employ such horrors.

  Yet here were three of these abominations in the streets of Lume, spreading fire and devastation.

  This could not be anything the Emperor’s Watch had done; they had no magicians of their own, and the Lords Magistrate, who provided them with sorcery when required, could not have summoned demons. No Walasian sorcerer could summon demons—it was forbidden by the ancient covenants that Anrel had studied before failing the trials that would have made him a sorcerer. Sorcerers could conjure lesser monsters, yes—his own parents had presumably been attempting something like that when their spell went wrong and killed them both—but not demons. That was a form of black magic Walasian sorcerers did not allow themselves.

  But if Walasia’s own sorcerers were not responsible, then how had these three come here?

  Was the empire under attack? Had the emperor’s army invaded some little land in the Cousins that chose this method to retaliate? The demons could not have come here all the way from the Cousins, word would have arrived well before they got this far and there would have been panic. Furthermore, the city walls were heavily warded; demons could not have broken through them without causing tremendous uproar, and there had been no such disturbance.

  No, they must have been summoned here in Lume—but by enemy spies, perhaps? Not by the court’s agents?

  But why would enemies from the Cousins attack the Pensioners’ Quarter, and not the emperor’s palace?

  They would not. The idea was absurd. The only people with any interest in attacking the Pensioners’ Quarter were the emperor’s own government.

  The Emperor’s Watch had no magic that could summon demons—but the emperor’s court did. Everyone knew that the Empress Annineia had brought necromancers from the Cousins to serve as her personal bodyguards. Anrel had not wanted to believe the rumors that they had summoned demons, but surely, they had summoned these. That had to be the explanation. Nothing else was possible.

  But could the emperor have permitted this atrocity in his own city? Wasn’t he bound by the covenants?

  No, Anrel realized, he wasn’t. Walasian sorcerers were bound by the covenants; their true names were recorded on the Great List, and that list was the mechanism whereby any breach was punished.

  But the emperor was no sorcerer. The Cousin necromancers weren’t Walasian; neither were they bound by Quandish or Ermetian law. They were free to use whatever magic they chose.

  And it appeared they had chosen demonology. That thought made Anrel feel cold and sick, but he could see no other possible explanation.

  Right now, though, the demons’ origins were irrelevant. The important thing was to stop them. Physical weapons could not harm demons, Anrel knew that; physical barriers would be ineffective as well, though they might slow the creatures. The right wards could turn demons away, at least temporarily, but Anrel’s feeble knowledge of witchcraft and sorcery did not include any means of setting wards of sufficient power. He could ward off a blow, or a pickpocket, but a demon? No.

  Texts he had read in the court schools implied that demons were controlled with bindings, and bindings could be broken, but would breaking the spell send the demons back to whatever realm they had come from, or merely release them from all constraint?

  Besides, Anrel did not know how to break such a binding. He had learned a little theory from his schooling, but all his practical knowledge of magic came from witches. He knew how to soothe a fever, heal a wound, find the best spot to dig a well, but unbind a demon? That was far outside his very limited expertise.

  Someone shoved Anrel, and he staggered to one side and looked around.

  He was the only one in the street who was not moving, and the tide that had carried him this far had turned; where before he was caught between terrified people fleeing the demons’ advance and eager defenders rushing to confront the monsters, now the entire current was away from those flaming abominations. The street ahead of Anrel, between himself and the demons, was rapidly emptying of people—or at least, of people still upright.

  One of the demons had turned aside, and as Anrel watched it reached out and ripped a house from its foundations, sending stone and flaming wood spraying in all directions. The wood had not been burning a moment before, but anything flammable that even came near the demons burst into flame.

  That included, horrifically, human flesh. That was the source of much of the screaming that had first alerted Anrel to the presence of these fiends—when they had smashed through the barricade they had set ablaze everyone who had been manning the defenses. Burning corpses littered the street. Worse, a few of the flaming bodies were still moving, thrashing about, some even still screaming as they burned.

  This had to be stopped. This had to be stopped now—but how? The demons were invulnerable to everything Anrel knew.

  But the people who had sent them here, the magicians from the Cousins—they were human enough. If Anrel could find them and make them stop …

  He had to get out of the Pensioners’ Quarter, and find the demons’ masters. He could do nothing here.

  He turned and joined the fleeing throng, but at the first intersection, where most of the crowd continued to flee deeper into the quarter,
he turned left; at the corner of Honor Street he turned left again.

  Honor Street was deserted; this part of the quarter was more ruined than most, and largely uninhabited. Honor Street had once led out onto a plaza on the Grand Boulevard, but had been walled off long ago, making it a dead end; there was no way out of the quarter there, and Anrel knew it. Instead he turned left a third time, and made his way through a nameless, rubble-strewn alley, back toward Duty Street.

  The alley ended in a small courtyard, but Anrel had expected that. He leapt up and pulled himself onto the shoulder-high wall at one side, then peered over the low roof ahead.

  The demons were still advancing farther into the quarter, leaving nothing but fire and death in their wake—and as Anrel had guessed, the house that had stood between this courtyard and Duty Street was now gone, reduced to burning wreckage and broken stone.

  He clambered up over the remains of the rear wall, then dropped down into the ruins. He crouched there for a moment, struggling to ignore the heat and smoke while he watched to see whether the demons had noticed him.

  They gave no sign of it.

  Cautiously at first, then moving more quickly as the heat and smoke grew more intense and he gained more confidence, he made his way through the debris until he emerged onto Duty Street, perhaps forty feet behind the demons.

  Then he turned right and ran, away from the demons and out of the Pensioners’ Quarter.

  10

  In Which Anrel Murau Renews His Acquaintance

  with Lord Blackfield

  Anrel had not given much thought to what he might find once he left the Pensioners’ Quarter; he had supposed that the rest of the city would be going about its business in much the usual fashion, blithely unconcerned by the devastation being visited upon their unfortunate neighbors.

  That was not the case.

  Beyond the blasted remnants of the Duty Street Gate was Harbinger Court, which Anrel knew as a quiet little plaza lined with small shops. Ordinarily at this time of day a few late customers would be buying bread and wine and flowers before hurrying home for supper, a lamplighter would be pursuing his trade, and the shopkeepers who had no more trade to attend to would be standing in their doorways, preparing to close their shutters for the evening.

  Tonight it was deserted; most of the shops were tightly shuttered, their proprietors nowhere to be seen. The shutters for their homes upstairs, which would ordinarily have remained open for hours, were mostly closed as well. No customers lingered, and the streetlamps were unlit.

  One shop was not shuttered, though; instead it had been largely destroyed, its windows smashed, its sign torn down, shelving broken and flung across the pavement. The storefront was dark and empty, a hole in the city.

  Anrel stopped and stared. That, he realized, had been Ozrai Lovanniel’s bakery. Why had that, and only that, been destroyed? Had the demons done it? There was no sign of fire, so presumably it had not been the demons—but then who, and why?

  “You!” someone called, and Anrel looked up.

  Several men were standing on the walkway that had once connected to the arch above the Duty Street Gate, not far from the broken end; two of them wore the uniform of the Emperor’s Watch, while others were in civilian attire.

  Two or three of them were wearing ceremonial robes of some sort. Could these be the magicians responsible for the attacking demons?

  If so, if he could get up there, get at them …

  But one of the watchmen was nocking an arrow, and the other was shouting, “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

  He was not going to stop any demons with an arrow through his chest; Anrel was suddenly glad he was wearing good clothes, and hoped they hadn’t been dirtied too much by the smoke and ash. He called back, “My name is Dyssan Adirane; what’s happening? Why are the shops closed?”

  The watchmen who had spoken glanced at one of the civilians—not one of the men in robes—who muttered something. He and the watchman spoke for a moment, during which the archer stood distressingly motionless, arrow drawn back to his ear and pointed directly at Anrel.

  Then the watchman turned and called, “There’s an emergency! Go home and stay out of the streets!”

  Anrel knew that the natural, in-character thing to do would be to ask what kind of emergency, but he decided on caution over verisimilitude.

  “Yes, sir!” he shouted back. Then he turned and trotted up a street whose name he did not recall, but which he knew would lead him to the Grand Boulevard.

  Those people on the walkway had something to do with the demons, he was sure of it, but he could hardly tackle them single-handed. He turned and looked back at the Pensioners’ Quarter.

  Fire and smoke were billowing up into the darkening sky, hiding the three demons from sight. The Pensioners’ Quarter was dying; life there had always been precarious, and now it was crumbling into ruin. Anrel hoped that most of the inhabitants had fled, and had found some way to escape. He knew several people—probably dozens, perhaps hundreds—were already dead and beyond any help, but hundreds more were still back there. He had to help them if he could.

  Perhaps some of them had taken Mieshel’s suggestion and taken refuge in the ancient tunnels beneath the city, remnants of the days when this city had been the capital of the Old Empire, rather than the Walasian. Would the demons find those? Would they do anything about it if they did? Anrel was unsure just how much intelligence or free will demons might have, or how much actual control the magicians who summoned them might have. He knew the homunculi that the more talented Walasian sorcerers created as servants were mere automata, following orders and incapable of true independent thought; were demons the same? If confronted with the unexpected, could they respond without guidance? Did they have some way of communicating with their masters, and of receiving fresh orders to meet changed circumstances?

  Were those people on the walkway the demons’ masters, or merely underlings sent to observe?

  Anrel had too many questions, and not enough answers. He turned again and hurried out to the Grand Avenue, then turned right, heading for Twilight Square—he thought some of his comrades might have gotten out of the quarter there. Perhaps he could assemble a team that could return and get up to that walkway. He did not know whether that would really do any good, but he had to do something.

  The light was fading from the sky, hastened by the pall of smoke spreading out from the Pensioners’ Quarter, and the lamplighters had not been attending to their work, but he could still see well enough—the Grand Boulevard was almost deserted, and the few people he did see on the street were hurrying along, heads down, obviously eager to get out of sight. The arches that crossed the boulevard every quarter mile or so, on the other hand, were not empty; instead a man of the Emperor’s Watch stood atop each and every one, his attention on the street below. Anrel had never seen that before.

  Something strange was going on—not just in the Pensioners’ Quarter, but all through Lume. Where was everyone? What was going on? Was this connected to the strife in the quarter, and the demon attack?

  He found Twilight Square as deserted as Harbinger Court or the Grand Boulevard, and watchmen manned every arch there, as well. He had not thought the Emperor’s Watch had enough men to put one atop every arch in the city, but that seemed to be what was happening, and it was clear that they were not allowing anyone to exit the quarter there.

  He looked around the darkening streets, at the watchmen on the arches who seemed to be staring at him, at the thick column of orange-lit smoke billowing up from the Pensioners’ Quarter, and tried to think what he should do. The world around him had gone mad. Just hours ago all had seemed to be going well—he had a home, he had friends, any pursuit by his old foes had long since vanished, and No-Nose Graun was bringing bread to feed the people of the quarter. Now his home was destroyed, his friends were scattered or dead, demons were stalking the city, and the bread had turned out to be … to be wrong, somehow. Anrel still did not understand ju
st what had been done to that food, how it had been polluted.

  The entire city seemed wrong. No streetlamps lit, watchmen everywhere, everyone cowering in their homes—what had happened?

  He needed to talk to someone, someone who lived somewhere other than the Pensioners’ Quarter, someone who could tell him what was going on—but who?

  He could go back to the Court of the Red Serpent and talk to Orusir tel-Panien, perhaps—but the watch had been watching the courts very closely indeed even a season ago, and Ori and the others had been afraid to talk to him.

  Who else did he know in Lume? Who could he call on who would not be cowed by the Emperor’s Watch?

  He knew at least a few members of the Grand Council, and at last report the council had been in session, so they should be in Lume. There was Lord Allutar, of course—he could hardly expect any aid there—but there were also Derhin li-Parsil and Amanir tel-Kabanim, the two whose election he had advocated on the late Lord Valin’s behalf in his infamous speech in Aulix Square. If he could find them, they would surely answer his questions, and probably provide him temporary shelter, but he had no idea where they lived. He could go to the Aldian Baths and try to talk his way inside, but would they still be there at this hour? The sun was well below the horizon, its glow fading from the sky; the council must have adjourned for the night by now.

  The thought of the Grand Council at the Aldian Baths reminded him of something, but it took a moment for it to register. Finally, though, the name came to him: Lord Blackfield.

  The Quandishman had taken rooms in Dezar House, or so Shoun had told Anrel. Anrel knew where that was. Lord Blackfield was a friend of Lord Allutar, at least after a fashion, but he had been pleasant enough to Anrel when they last spoke, and as a Quandishman he would hardly take allegations of sedition and witchcraft as seriously as a Walasian sorcerer might—he had no loyalty to the emperor himself, and might well forgive another’s failing in that regard.