by Ben Galley
‘Do you understand, Hasheti?’ she said.
Once more, he prostrated himself. ‘Completely, Majesty.’
‘Rebene? You look unsure.’
‘I…’ His mouth flapped around an answer. ‘This is still just… so unusual. So irregular. Soldiers have not patrolled the streets for hundreds of years. Surely Emperor F—’
Sisine skewered him with a practiced look, sharp and cold. ‘My father the emperor is a wise man. He knows better than anyone that these are irregular days, Chamberlain Rebene, and that such days call for irregular steps. Do not be so naive to think that the world can stay the same forever. Change is survival. Refusal to change is the mark of ruin. If you do not believe me, I would suggest asking the empires that came before the Arc, but alas, they are no more than dust.’ She let her point sink in like the tip of a dagger. ‘Have these soldiers marked as officers of the Chamber, and have your man Heles put them to good use.’
‘Woman, Majesty. Scrutiniser Heles is a woman.’ At the empress-in-waiting’s uninterested stare, Rebene added, ‘And yes, right away.’ He bowed along with Hasheti, and Sisine swept away, leaving them there between the glowing ranks.
Etane matched her long-legged stride, keeping the umbrella over her all the way to her litter, which was waiting behind a small army of Royal Guards. Silk-draped shades in masks waited beneath stout poles, ready to carry the construction of mahogany and silver filigree. Etane gifted another servant with the umbrella and then perched on the edge of the litter as it was hoisted up.
Sisine didn’t say a word to him. Not during the sweltering canter through the alleyways of the High Docks, and not during the shaded walk beneath the awnings of the crowded Spoke Avenues, some of the oldest streets in Araxes, palm-lined and thick with gawping tourists. Musicians stood in worn alcoves, plying pipes or arghuls. The hot air was thick with spices; the catch of chillies at the back of the throat, and the silkiness of cinnamon and cumin to tickle the nose. They wafted from tavern doors and stands where oil-drenched and skewered things roasted over coals. Between the drip and hiss of fat, merchant stalls sold scarves that floated on the sea breezes and pawed at passersby.
Every now and again, one scarf would grow too bold and touch a nearby coal. It would vanish in a burst of smoke, and an argument would ensue between merchants in thick Arctian tradese. Clapping abounded from swathes of oafish tourists too used to a bucolic homeland, too foreign to recognise a fight when they saw one. Half of them were already pink with sun-scorch. The other half would likely be dead by dawn.
Sisine watched it all, holding a finger to part the litter’s chainmail curtains. Anything to endure Etane’s silence. His punishment for blabbing to Temsa about Basalt had been hers to dole out, and yet somehow it felt as if she were the one being penalised for his loose tongue.
It was the staring, like the rapt eyeballing of a pitiful hound. Ever-present and practised for decades. She had bid him be silent and chosen to ignore his presence, and yet Etane repaid her with that look. It was infuriating, and more so because she was wise to his game. After a hundred and twenty years dead, he knew exactly how to deal with his masters and their punishments, and that was to be either as vital or as annoying as possible depending on the situation. It was why he was the freest indentured shade she had ever known.
“Patient” was a word not usually found near her name, spoken, written or otherwise. Yet today it was Sisine’s new mantra. The weapon of silence was a difficult one to wield for those unused to it, but she was set on victory.
She had gone an hour, maybe more, when Etane loudly cleared his throat and caused her to flinch. Even in that minuscule way, she had acknowledged his existence. It was a cheap trick, and it made her roll onto her shoulder and poke her head through the chainmail. At least there she could drown in the noise of the avenues.
As they entered the finer districts, the buildings reached higher, as if in praise of the Cloudpiercer. The tourists and traders faded, replaced by those of a richer kind. Tors and tals. Wealthy business owners. Bankers. Veterans, once lord-generals or admirals. Celebrities of music or art. They took their turn to clog the streets.
Like Sisine, each was encircled in their own rings of guards. Though clothes and face-paint could lie when it came to status, the cut of a person’s guards were a better measure for how many half-coins they had banked. Guards were pure fashion in Araxes. The first purchase anyone with coin made was either a guard or a lockbox. Those who went without soon found out why security was so popular, and usually they found out too late to do anything about it. The City of Countless Souls devoured the weak and foolish.
Though Sisine’s litter lacked any royal glyphs or seals, the turquoise plumes and fine gold armour of the Royal Guard drew plenty of stares. As soon as one bystander had the smarts to bow, the rest followed suit. A wave of respect followed her like a wake behind a keel. It was for this reason Sisine refused her guards’ suggestion to take the high-roads back to the Piercer, as any royal would. The adoration was worth the danger.
The empress-in-waiting sat straighter to smile, and left a hand in the sun to wave casually. A royal should never spurn her subjects, even in a world that demanded only wealth as the right to rule, rather than royal bloodlines.
Her sharp mind found names for the faces she recognised behind the wall of golden shields.
Tal Resalp. Up and coming, so they say.
Tal Sheput. Down and drowning.
Arak-Nor. So-called finest voice in the Arc.
Serek Warast. Useless sack of whining shit.
Tor Farut. Gotten fat in his old age.
Admiral Nilo, the Champion of Twaraza. Looking very good for his age.
And Serek Boon…
The shade was standing on the balcony of a building wedged between two towers. He was leaning on the balustrade, overlooking the street by a single floor. His glow was pale in the hot morning light, but Sisine could see his white eyes returning her stare.
It was not his impertinence that infuriated her, or that he had made no attempt at a bow. It was that he did not stand alone. Two shades stood behind him. They wore white feathers on their breasts as Boon did. Their long robes were a deep scarlet, knotted with silver rope, and their hoods were drawn back to show bald heads.
There was a fourth shade beside them, and it was a rare sight. The dead hound sat at heel, leashed by leather cored with copper. The animal glowed a deep, dark blue, and its eyes were piercing white. Sharp, upright ears made a right angle of its long snout. Its vapours outlined the curve of thick muscle. Cobalt fangs poked from its lips. This was no strangebound, locked into a living body, but a phantom. A pure-bound shade of an animal.
Sisine hadn’t seen a phantom in more than a decade, not since her childhood, when the emperor had bought her a blue jay that glowed white when it sang. Her father had sent it away for singing too loudly and too constantly. If she remembered rightly, that had made her cry, and that had made father even madder.
It took immense effort to bind the shade of an animal, never mind binding it in a stable state. It only worked with smarter or larger animals, already accustomed to humans. It had never worked with wild animals, though many had apparently tried. Five hundred years ago, phantoms had been the fashion of the day, but it only took so many stories of phantoms turning on their owners to erode their popularity. They were unpredictable, largely because they struggled to reconcile their minds with their ghostly forms. Spooked dead things could be just as dangerous as spooked living things, if not more. Since then, the Nyxites had lost the art, as they had with deadbinding and strangebinding.
As fascinating as the phantom was, it was not what held Sisine’s attention. The two shades were the subject of her interest.
Sisine needed no more reasons to despise the Cult, but it was the habit of a hate-filled mind to seek out more reasons to affirm the hatred, however banal. That was why many prejudices refused to erode, no matter how many years passed. She refused to let her hate die. It was as stea
dfast as the Cloudpiercer.
She watched the figures until her litter turned around a corner. Staring straight ahead, Sisine waved mechanically as her mind churned over possibilities for why Boon would be with two of the Cult, and so close to the Core Districts as well. Since the Cult’s banishment, she had occasionally spotted a scarlet robe between the tight gaps of the mighty towers, or preaching the glory of Sesh on a street corner, feet on a crate. Sisine always made a point of having her guards move them on.
Twenty years had done nothing to blunt her abhorrence of the Cult. She had watched with her own eyes how they had weaselled their way into the Piercer, then the Cloud Court, and then her grandfather’s ears, all the while having the gall to call themselves a ‘church’. Milizan’s foolishness and greed had cost him his life, and at the hands of his own son. Her father. Sisine had learnt a valuable lesson the day her father had taken to the turquoise throne, leaving smears of blood across the crystal. Trust nobody, not even family.
Part of her yearned to turn her litter around, to have her guards take the building and muscle the cultists into the street. Make an example of them. She would spit on them, and show the crowds how fiercely the royals’ dislike of the Cult still burned, and how little the city cared for their talk of dead gods. The order hovered on her tongue, but some better judgement kept it from creeping further. Perhaps it was Etane’s eyes, still gazing at her, but now with a different glint to them. No, they seemed to plead.
Sisine felt the angling of the litter as the carriers began to climb the slight mound the Cloudpiercer was built on. Etane chose that moment to leave her side, and walked on ahead. He didn’t join her again until an hour later, once she emerged from the jagged doors of the shade-lifts, high at the top of the Piercer.
Sisine found him loitering in the corridor outside her chambers, head bowed.
‘Hmph,’ was all she gave him, sweeping past and heading for her balcony. She needed to gaze down on the city instead of crawling through its dusty streets full of morons and traitors. A petty assertion of dominance, perhaps, but what else were towers built for?
The breeze was fierce and tugged at her braided black locks. She felt Etane standing behind her. His cold washed over her in the rushing air.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Why what, Your Radiance?’
‘Why would Boon be standing with two shades from the Cult? Enlightened Sisters, no less! I was only a child, but I still remember them: the heads of their foul order. They are easy enough to make out.’ Silver rope around scarlet cloth. Heads as bald as eggs. A haughty look that only centuries dead can teach. ‘Tell me I’m wrong!’
Etane came to stand at her side, hands resting on the railing. ‘I can’t. But how should I know what business Boon has with them?’ His voice was not argumentative, but rather low, ponderous. It infuriated her more.
Sisine didn’t speak with Etane’s level of calm. ‘Because you were a cultist, once. You know their minds. Their wily, fetid little minds!’
‘I did once, perhaps. But no longer. I have not had contact with the Cult since your grandfather died. Unless you count that hulk of a shade that belongs to Temsa?’
‘Don’t you dare speak that name so lightly! I still haven’t forgiven you for setting our new tor onto our missing locksmith. I gave you no such order.’
Etane bowed his head. ‘As I said, Your Grandioseness, I thought Temsa would have the best chance of finding our locksmith. Then, when the time is right, we procure him from Temsa, and continue with the original—’
Sisine screeched in his face, ‘Forget the locksmith! Nobody can open the Sanctuary but the emperor! Haven’t you realised that yet? The plan was a gamble from the start, and I will not waste any more time on Caltro Basalt while Boon and the Cult plot away behind my back!’ She took a breath, feeling more than the sun heating her cheeks. ‘You forget yourself, half-life. You make decisions you have no right to make, believing you have a say over my plans! You dare to treat me like you treated my mother. You overstep the mark, and I won’t have it!’
The shade did not look at her. He spoke to the floor. ‘More silent treatment, Princess?’
‘Duties!’ Sisine cried. ‘Duties aplenty! For a start, you can see to the cleaning of the Cloud Court before session tomorrow. And by cleaning, Etane, I mean the entire hall. By yourself. Not a single house-shade at your bidding.’
Etane kept his mouth shut, and wisely so. The dark glow about him suggested any words he uttered now would be regretted. Sisine cocked her head as a question, and that broke him, sending him packing into the corridor with a low growl. Sisine couldn’t resist smiling at his back. She could play her own games, and hers didn’t stop at forlorn staring.
Now that Sisine was alone, she took deep breaths, steadying her heart. Her gaze wandered east and north, between the Outsprawls and the faraway smudges of islands. Her mother had crept back into her mind of late. Usually at dawn, when dreams faded into dust motes and shafts of sunlight. Sisine would wonder where she was, whether she was actually in Krass, or a beach in the Scatter, or if it was all some elaborate hoax and she was simply hiding in the emperor’s Sanctuary with him. Sisine snorted. If that were the case, then one or both of them would be dead by now. There had never been any love between them to lose. Not that she could remember, anyway.
Outwardly, they were a noble, regal couple. In private, they were as incendiary as oil and flame. Sisine could count a thousand nights they had spent spitting and hissing like cats stuck in a barrel. She had spent most of her twenty-two years waiting for one of them to move from words to a dagger, but it had never happened.
What irritated Sisine was not knowing. If her plans were a neatly woven cloth, her mother was a frayed end she longed to snip off.
Bezel. His name flitted through her mind. She swept from the railing and marched towards her bedchamber.
Using the keys around her neck, she prised the padlocks from her steel chest. Inside, the mahogany-and-iron box was already lying open. Sisine took the silver bell from its velvet cradle and, holding it with both hands, returned to the balcony. She held it aloft to make its feather and storm cloud patterns shine in the sun.
Clang.
The note was piercingly high and clear.
Clang.
Six bells, the falcon had instructed.
Clang.
Six bells, and he would return at his own speed.
Clang. Clang…
Sisine wondered where he had got to, and how far a falcon could fly in two weeks. He could have been in Skol by now, or Belish. It could take another week for him to wing his way back. The bell hovered high once more, teetering. It must have been long enough.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Patience had never been one of her virtues.
‘I don’t give a shit if you’re hungry. You heard what the man said. Poi-so-nous.’ Nilith sounded it out for emphasis. Her finger was so close to the falcon’s face she was almost tickling his chin. Bezel just stared back at her, golden eyes narrow and defiant.
The bargeman repeated himself once more, shouting from the tiller. ‘Blacktooth’ll rot you from the inside out, I say. Only fish that eats you after it’s dead.’
‘You know it won’t kill me,’ Bezel replied, loud enough so that only Nilith could hear.
Nilith nodded. ‘True, but I’ve already got a sick horse. I don’t want a sick bird. We need your eyes to tell us what’s coming. Or what’s behind. So, please. Don’t eat the fish.’
Bezel squawked deep in his throat, the bird version of a growl. ‘Fine. But I swear to the dead gods, the next fucking sparrow or dune-pigeon that rears its head, I’m catching it, and you ain’t getting any…’ His muttering became inaudible as he hopped away down the barge’s rail and flapped into the sky.
‘Bloody recalcitrant bastard,’ Nilith sighed.
She chose an infinitely more pliant beast instead, and settled down by Anoish’s side. The horse lifted his head, sprightlier than he had been
in days, but still weepy-eyed and stiff. She patted his ribs, feeling the rise and fall of his breath, and the rumble of his stomach. It was calming, and she half-closed her eyes.
At the tiller, Ghyrab cleared his throat with an inordinate amount of noise. ‘That horse ain’t ready to run yet.’
‘I know, I know. A few days yet,’ replied Nilith, helping Anoish to stretch out his injured leg then roll to his front. Twice he tried to stand, but the wallowing of the barge made it harder, and twice the leg crumpled to the knee. Perhaps it’s just numb, Nilith quietly prayed. ‘Maybe fewer. He’s a tough bastard.’
Anoish snuffled at that. She wished she had something to feed him besides a bowl of poisonous fish. Why Ghyrab let her catch the spiny little beasts before telling her, Nilith wasn’t sure. Perhaps he wanted to alleviate some of her boredom, and it had worked for a time, but it hadn’t changed the fact they were starving.
They’d pushed the barge day and night since their escape from the Ghouls. They’d had no rations besides those they had run with and the scraps Ghyrab kept aboard, and they were long gone. They had fresh river water, which was always a pleasure in the desert, and if she grew even hungrier, plenty of splinters to gnaw on. At least they weren’t being chased. Nilith felt the horse take an extra deep breath, and exhaled with him.
Bezel had seen nothing of Krona and her Ghouls. Perhaps the river led too far north for their interest. Maybe their crater on the Firespar called to them, or Krona had succumbed to rot and pain. Whatever the reason, Nilith was glad for it.
Since leaving Kal Duat, the Ashti had become steadily busier. Before, Nilith and the others had gone half a day without seeing another person on the water. Now, a boat or a barge passed them every hour. It was fortunate the river had also widened in recent miles. The Ashti was no longer a quiet, secluded rift cutting through the desert like mould through cheese. All manner of craft now filled its waterway: wizened old fellows on flat rafts like Ghyrab’s; empty stone-barges, heading back to the White Hell; patchwork dinghies filled with laughing children; fishermen on reed coracles, lines on their bare toes and cotton hats tipped over their faces.