by Ben Galley
‘Besides, who said there was only one? Temsa might have partners. He might be a pawn. Never accept anything as certain, Proctor Jym. Never in Araxes.’
‘Yes, Scrutiniser.’
‘Come, there are more questions to be asked before we are certain.’
Jym fell in tow and Heles led them across the district, back to the streets surrounding Busk’s tower. She looked above the rooftops to see its stubby point, and saw the windows had been shuttered against the daylight. That was new.
Today their disguise was of Outsprawl peasants: clad in cheap tarred linen, caked in sand, shuffling here and there and gawping at every building taller than three levels. Sprawlers and desert-folk were only a fraction higher than shades in the food chain of Araxes. It meant eyes spent more time avoiding their dishevelled appearance than examining it. Jym seemed used to the garb.
They circled Busk’s tower twice over the course of an hour. Heles’ eyes were constantly in motion, watching stalls and windows, comers and goers.
A local would always have a pattern. They would walk the way they’d walked a hundred times before. They would know which traders they trusted and which beggars managed to survive the night. Above all, a local did not dawdle. Heles watched out for these types. Every time she encountered one, she or Proctor Jym would ask their subtle questions. It was hard reaping. Most refused to answer on principle. For a city where everybody constantly watched their backs, an awful lot seemed to go unnoticed.
That was unless it seemed trivial. Heles had discovered this years ago; ask enough people the same banal question, and there was always one dullard who didn’t notice anything suspicious about even the most suspicious of events.
Heles found her dullard in the form of a merchant with dark rings under his eyes. Jym hovered nearby as she scrutinised his rainbow collection of dried fruits.
‘Six gritapples for half a silver!’ he brayed.
‘Hmm, not my taste,’ she replied. ‘Say, you here a lot?’
The man was pleased for a chance to boast. ‘Every day and night for a decade, madam!’
It always amused Heles how traders were quick to bray how long they had been in business, as if time was the measure of quality. A merchant could sell shit for ten years and still be selling shit. Experience was the real measure of quality, and that came through learning, not just doing.
‘You must know all the gossip around here, then,’ she coaxed him.
The trader scrunched his face, growing cautious. ‘Why you askin’?’
‘Looking to move from Dawar District.’
‘Mm. Rough district.’
‘Want to know if here is better. Anything been going on?’
‘Not much to say, gladly. Just talk of some spat between the tor who lives in that tower over there and some old noble wench from another district.’
‘Oh?’
‘Nothing worrisome. Whole bunch of her soldiers came through here yesterday afternoon. Single half-life with them. Was here cleanin’ up when I saw them come past. Went to the door, delivered the shade and left again. No clashin’ or fightin’. Peace offerin’, methinks.’
Heles found a sappy palm-pear she liked the look of and flicked the merchant half a silver. ‘And which old wench would this be? Not from Dawar, is she?’
‘Too many bloody nobles to count these days. Big soldier had a seal on him.’ The merchant poked at a blackened tooth with his tongue. ‘Three hanging corpses. That were it. Came right past me.’
Heles turned her gaze to Jym, watching him trying to match up a name. He was clueless, staring at the azure sky for help.
‘Mm,’ she hummed. ‘Well, I’ll hopefully be seeing you around, friend,’ she said.
The merchant nodded absently as he bit the silver and winced sorely.
‘Who’s three corpses hanging?’ Jym asked as they moved back into the throngs of people.
‘Widow Horix, Proctor Jym. One of the oldest tals in the city. Quiet woman. Quite the mystery. Been a noble for fifteen years or so, I believe, since some husband of hers died. Extremely fond of her privacy. Doesn’t like to meddle. That’s why it’s unlike her to be sending her house-guards out into the city at night. Especially here, amongst lower nobles.’
She could almost hear the proctor’s mind churning, as if it were full of ratchets and cogs instead of grey mush. ‘So…’ he said, groping to make sense. He wasn’t alone. Horix’s involvement complicated matters. Heles spoke her thoughts aloud. She always found that helped to untangle them.
‘So, Proctor Jym, Horix may be involved or she may not. It is strange Miss Jexebel should make an appearance, I admit, but all we’ve discovered is that more questions need to be asked. And though that may be irritating, is it not our job? To ask questions? To find answers? Remind me of the Chamber’s creed, Proctor.’
‘Crime is falsehood. Justice is truth.’
Heles grunted. ‘You’re learning, Proctor. Slowly, but you’re learning.’
‘What do we do now, then?’
‘I think we’ll pay Tor Temsa and Widow Horix a visit.’
‘Now?’ Jym looked far too eager for her liking.
‘Not now.’ Heles was firm. ‘But soon. Now, we report to Chamberlain Rebene. If he doesn’t get some news soon, I think he might rupture something.’
It wasn’t that she cared for the chamberlain’s health. All she cared for was justice, but bureaucracy was still a game to be played, and she couldn’t do her job with Rebene breathing down her neck.
‘Here,’ said Heles, tossing the remaining half of the palm-pear to Jym. ‘Eat something. Keep up your strength. You’ll need it.’
Chapter 14
Here be Monsters
Ma’at was originally a minor goddess, one of truth, balance and justice. It is her feather, her symbol, that we see on today’s shades, or ba’at, as they are still called amongst Duneplain tribes. The concept of ma’at was rather significant in the legal systems of those that came before the age of shades. It allowed every citizen, with the exception of slaves, to be viewed as equals under the law regardless of wealth or social position. And with the law, what went around came around, so to speak. Like Ma’at herself, it was fair and balanced. Sadly, it is a concept that has retreated to the sands with the desert-folk.
From ‘A Reach History’ by Gaervin Jubb
The moon made a dark rift of the river. The Ashti was now some distance away, and the land had become uneven and rocky. Dunes and stretches of sand curved in strange, gigantic whorls. Some looked like gurning faces, twisted by hate or horror. Others were like whirlpools waiting to swallow an unwary traveller. The moon painted everything a silvery grey. No colour had survived the day, only the faint glow of the golden city lights in the far distance, and several campfires burning amidst the wastes.
Brazen as any bandit party armed to the teeth and running on revenge, the Ghouls had set three fires to light their camp that night, gathered around a small outcrop of rocks and skinny dunes.
Nilith shaded her eyes, blocking out the glare of the huge moon. It was almost full tonight, like a bone saucer. Nilith stared only at the camp, trying to gauge numbers, patterns, or weaknesses. Occasionally, the night breeze would bring her a cackle or a scream, cowing the noises of desert creatures.
‘You can’t be serious,’ Ghyrab said again, his mantra for the evening. ‘You, against all of them?’
‘Deadly serious. Farazar could be down there, prime for the binding at the next town. I can’t let that happen. Besides,’ she said, patting her neck, ‘that Krona bitch stole a copper coin from me. I want it back.’
‘You’re mad. You’re just one person. You won’t catch me ’elping you.’
‘You’re no help to me anyway, old man. Not in your condition.’
It was true: the bargeman was of little use. His wounds were keeping him from anything but a shambling waddle. His back was as bent as a fishhook. He was currently propped up against a rock, halfway through eating a gritapple he had found in the
oasis.
Anoish was sprightly at least. His days on the barge had clearly made him miss the desert sand, and even though plenty had passed under him since losing Farazar, he seemed eager for more. It was a shame the bright moonlight made him so easy to see coming.
Nilith laid out her plan for Ghyrab, to see if that would shut him up. ‘I’ll wait until they’ve drunk themselves into a stupor, as they did in the crater. Then I’ll use the dunes to sneak in and quietly take down the lookouts. I’ll fetch Farazar if he’s there, then slit Krona’s throat, torch the camp, and send the rest packing off into the night.’
‘You’re still just you.’
‘Just me will have to be good enough.’ She patted the golden scimitar she’d taken from the dead Ghoul. ‘Won’t it, horse?’
Anoish cocked his head and drummed his hooves. The horse was brighter than a sunray; he knew what was going on. She wasn’t surprised when he stood up with her.
‘Not tonight, Anoish, but I’ll be back. Then we’ll ride all night, I promise. For now, you stay with this old coin-purse.’
‘Less of the “old”, Majesty,’ grumbled the bargeman.
‘Look after my horse.’
Without waiting for his reply, encouraging, doubtful or otherwise, Nilith stepped over the lip of the ridge, and slid down onto the swirling duneplain.
The spiralling banks of sand made her path weave back and forth. It made the going slow, and if she measured the stars right, it took an hour to make it to the outskirts of the Ghouls’ camp. Every step was measured, every breath controlled. She barely blinked, constantly looking out for shadows, or the dreaded purple glow of a dunewyrm’s dangling lure. The Duneplains were full of the fearsome creatures.
Nilith settled down behind a dune shaped like a goatherd’s crook. In its curve, a watchman sat rubbing his shoulders against the cold. The noises of laughter and revelry that had led her across the plain had died away to a muttered conversation.
She crept along the crook, keeping herself low and her sword down lest it shine. As her free hand plunged into the sand, she felt a ridge beneath her, like an armoured plate. The lip that poked into the air was black against the grey sand. Nilith paused to trace its jagged edges, rough like a beetle’s hide, though it was too big for even the largest of riding insects. It must have been a sunken boulder. She ignored it and moved on, honing in on the heavy snuffling of the Ghoul watchman.
Nilith desperately longed for a cloud or two. The moon cast her a clear shadow, though one that fortunately fell away from the direction of the camp. She pressed herself against the lip of the dune, barely a lunge from the guard, and stilled her heart. Peeking over the sand, she studied the fires of the camp. Four tents squatted at the edges of their glow. Between them was a crag of rock with a wide basin of blackened stone at its base.
Her heart forewent a beat.
A Nyxwell.
She cursed beneath her breath, reaching up to tug at her hair. These wild, untended springs were rare. If Farazar had been captured, they could have already bound him, and that ruined everything she had fought for. Nilith refused to let that possibility distract her. She tucked her knees into her chest, ready to pounce.
Pounce she did. With a move akin to a starving panther, she jumped straight over the lip of the dune and down onto the man. He turned in his last moment, gawping, but her scimitar had speared his windpipe. Not a gurgle came from his lips. The blade had cut into his spine, and his carcass sagged to the ground.
Nilith crouched to take his long knife, the kind made for throwing. She ripped a length of fabric from his dirty shirt and pulled out the pouch from around her neck. It had dried out since her dousing in the river, and made a good stand-in for her coin until now.
With much care, she poured out a hefty pinch of Old Fen’s black powder. Maybe a third of it went into the strip before she bagged it up and slid it into her pocket. She kept the pouch around her neck, hidden under her tunic.
When she was ready, she pushed out along the edge of the camp, towards the next Ghoul: a yawning woman holding a triggerbow, barely wider than the span of her hand. Nilith slit her throat before she knew she had company. She caught the bow as the woman fell dead. One bolt was all it held, but it still meant an easily-made corpse, and that was worth it.
With half the camp unguarded, Nilith crept closer to the fires, where handfuls of Ghouls lay about, like flies on a cold windowsill. Half of them snored, the other half lolled about like fattened hogs, still swigging determinedly from flagons or skins, mumbling the occasional wisecrack or nugget of drunken wisdom. No ghosts could be seen amongst them. No Farazar.
The tent listed at a violent angle. A slight scratching noise was coming from within. Nilith used the sword to poke aside its fabric, and inside she found a half-naked man, his back slick with sweat, gyrating away against another half-stripped body, face down in the sand. Whoever they were, they were not putting up much of a fight. Another limp form lay in the corner, blond hair painted orange with blood and grit. Nilith pulled away, but not before the Ghoul spoke.
‘In a bit! Leave a man to fuck in peace!’
Something in his tone reminded Nilith of a rat-faced man and groping hands. Without a second thought, she pushed into the tent and drove her sword under the Ghoul’s armpit. Coughing blood, he wriggled off the blade and crumpled by the side of his victim, a young man with pale skin. Nilith brandished the triggerbow while she tugged at the young man’s arm, trying to wake him. The skin was colder than it ought to have been, limp as a clubbed fish. He was already dead.
Horrified, Nilith shrank away, only to come back swinging at the foul man lying blubbering and bleeding in the sand. She drove the sword deep into his groin, and with a twist, she spilled his insides. Such creatures didn’t deserve to die swiftly.
The outside air tasted sweet after the vileness of the tent, and with a dizzy head Nilith crept on to the next. This one contained something just as loathsome, though this one was fast asleep, lying on her back while her chest lazily rose and fell. Krona still wore her patchwork mail even while she slept.
Though it was a struggle to tear herself away, Nilith let her sleep, slipping away to check on the last tent and the Nyxwell before wetting her sword once more. Farazar wasn’t there, and the dead emperor was more important than her revenge, as sweet as it might be.
She ducked under the next flap to find two sleeping Ghouls, naked as babes but filthy with dust and blood. An empty wineskin lay between them. Still no Farazar.
Nilith dispensed with all creeping as she rushed to the well. She heard no trickle of water. The Nyxwell had no shimmer of moonlight to it. When she pressed her fingers to its stone pan, she found it drier than desert bones. It seemed the rich men of the White Hell had been right: there was a Nyxwater drought. Despite how unusual that was, the relief sent her sprawling. Nilith refused to believe Krona would have sent a sellable soul to the void in spite. Not even to get to me. She whispered that to herself as she snuck back to the bitch’s tent.
Nilith took a stance by Krona’s neck, scimitar and knife hovering ready as she stared down at the twisted scarring of the woman’s face. The eye was gone, now just a white smear bleeding into the crisscross of char-marks and raw flesh. A portion of the wound had healed since Abatwe, perhaps through Nyxwater and a ghost’s touch. The rest looked far uglier: rot had spread into the veins around the wound, web-like and the colour of coal. There was a musty smell around the Ghoul, and not from lack of washing. Nilith wondered how long it would be before the decay claimed her. Nilith gritted her teeth. Even one more day alive would have been much more than Krona deserved.
Beside the Ghoul’s head, half-buried in the sand, was a copper coin on a leather string. Eyes wide, Nilith grabbed it, holding it tight against the handle of her knife and feeling the cold metal dig into her palm. It was a relief to reclaim it, and she quickly looped it around her neck, letting it hang next to the powder. Though it was just a simple copper coin, it was worth more than that to N
ilith. After the long weeks in the desert, it had become the symbol of her struggle. The embodiment of her goal. It was the would-be half-coin that would change her life.
Taking a deep breath, Nilith raised her blades for the kill. As she did so, a drip of Ghoul’s blood escaped the sword’s tip, landing on the good side of Krona’s cheek. The bitch’s eyes snapped open, and seeing the resolute face hanging above her, she flung herself sideways.
Nilith stabbed down as fast as she could, nicking the side of Krona’s unprotected neck before she could escape from her bedroll. In the monochrome of night, a spurt of blood stained the sand a dark grey. Again and again Nilith stabbed, but her blades met only sand and air. Before Nilith could catch her, Krona was up and ripping aside the tent flap so she could fight in the open, where she was at her most dangerous.
Nilith ducked under the canvas and dashed for the nearest fire. Krona came barrelling after her, one hand clamped to her neck and the other clenched in a fist. Her wordless, enraged screeching began to rouse the camp, but not fast enough. Many were still mid-yawn or blinking goggle-eyed as Nilith’s blade slashed their throats. She sprinted past the drunkards and their fire, tossing the bundle of Old Fen’s powder into the flames as she did so.
Despite flinging herself to the sand like a mouldy sack of flour, nothing happened. She threw a wild look behind her, seeing no pop. No fizzle. Only Krona’s grinning face, smeared in blood.
Just as Nilith was about to curse Fen for being nothing but a trickster, the powder caught.
CRACKOOOM!
The campfire exploded in a mushroom-shaped cloud of white and yellow flame. Screams and a piercing ringing filled the night air. Pale smoke billowed upwards as the fire died away.
Half-blinded by falling cinders but grinning all the same, Nilith took a stand halfway up the nearest dune and raised a fist for Old Fen.
The force had knocked Krona to her knees, but only momentarily. Though her hair and armour smoked, she kept on coming, tree-trunk legs pummelling the sand. Bloody spittle flew with each raging grunt. Nilith raised her triggerbow, and the bolt struck Krona in the shoulder. It barely made her stumble. The woman snapped the shaft from her skin and contemptuously tossed it to the sand.