by Ben Galley
‘Emp—Nilith.’
Mizi touched her horns with three fingers and then gestured inside as shouts came rolling down the caravan. It seemed the intrepid donkey’s wings had been trimmed, and the Jubub were ready to chase the wind again.
‘What about Ghyrab?’
‘Men walk.’
‘And the women?’
Mizi gestured again, impatiently. Nilith started to like the sound of this tribe.
A half-circle of women, a spectrum of different ages, watched her as she climbed into the wagon and out of the wind. They were draped in multicoloured cloth, and apparently the older the woman, the more clothing she was required to wear. The youngest sat bare-chested with a skirt of threads, two nubs of horns on her brow. The oldest looked like a small, pointy hill of white hair swaddled in a knitted rainbow. She had the look of a ram, with grey horns that curled in spirals around her ears. Every face was uncovered, blank as a new scroll, eyes staring hard. Each of them must have been related in some way to the next; their features were too similar, even down to the spread of freckles across their noses and cheeks. As Nilith looked around the half-circle, it was like watching time perform its awful dance, from elfin girl to wizened great-grandmother.
A pillow was thrust towards her, and Nilith tested it with her backside. It was a lot softer than Anoish’s backbone. Mizi joined her, shutting the wind out with the curtain and a toggle to tie it fast.
Silence reigned in the wagon, brooding under its low ceiling, thick like its smoggy air. Nilith was glad when the vehicle jolted forwards; the rattling wheels and howling of the wind took away the silence’s edge. The moment she felt the wheels spin freely and the wagon rise slightly, the oldest of the women spoke up.
‘Zeratim, bal am kitish. Fareni kazim Jubub leera.’
All of the circle besides Nilith laughed. ‘What did she say?’
Mizi covered her mouth. ‘She say you have pretty face. Could almost pass for Windchaser.’
Nilith cracked a smile, and the old woman replied with a grin, showing off a row of teeth that looked like a burned fence.
‘Zerimir herin lesim?’
‘She ask if you are hungry?’ Mizi translated.
Nilith’s stomach replied for her, rumbling away.
‘Zerimir asta?’
‘Do you like wine?’
Silence fell as the wagon lifted and bounced along the sand three times. The Windchasers leaned in to hear Nilith’s answer. A sudden and terrible thirst had come over her grit-speckled tongue. Though she felt a twang of angst over halting her pursuit of Farazar, she could push Anoish all the harder on the morrow. She had not seen such charity since Eber and Ole Fen. It seemed her luck had changed, and she was not about to spurn its gifts.
‘Does an Arctian like half-coins?’ she said to another round of chuckles.
Chapter 17
Cellars
Who said religion and the gods were dead? I see religion all over! How about the church of half-coins? Is the Code not a doctrine? Or the Consortium and their cult of silver! King Neper’s Bazaar makes a fine cathedral. Or what about those who gaze up, enraptured, at lofty towers? I see them praising on every street corner. And what of the worshippers of beer, wine and fucking? What are we, if not devoted to our gods? We are at church this very moment! Lift your tankard!
Overheard in an Araxes tavern
I stared at the cow blood decorating my plain wall for most of the day. It had dried brown in half-formed, macabre puddles. All the while, two words had stuck in my head.
A gift.
Haphor and Basht’s words, not mine. It jarred somewhat with their talk of duty. It was like calling a broom a gift and then asking me to sweep the streets of Araxes.
‘A gift.’ I said it aloud to taste the madness of it. Somehow it was bitter in my mouth, and set a stir in my vaporous stomach. If what the cow had said was true, the dead gods were merely trying to help themselves. Feed themselves, more like. They were no friends of mine, and I wanted no part in their duty.
My problem was I had no real idea how to use my so-called gift to my advantage. Last time, I had killed a man. I dearly hoped that my haunting didn’t require murder to work. If so, it was no gift at all, and the gods could go fuck themselves all the more.
I had weighed murder against all the benefits of escaping, and then against all the downsides to staying in Temsa’s clutches. I had realised one thing was certain: I couldn’t stay here for long. I had even less trust for Temsa than I did for the Cult. Whatever other choices I explored, the widow was still my best path out of this mess. Horix was my mistress, whether I liked it or not.
My jaw set and grim, I strode towards the door. What was another step towards darkness, as long as it set me free? My redemption, if I was owed any, could wait until after that.
I pressed my head to the iron door once again. There was just one guard out in the corridor. I had heard him coughing for most of the day, and no guard stands with company for so long without a bit of chat. After spending most of my life avoiding them, I knew a thing or two about hired swords. The other truth about them is they’re never that smart. It was as if the worldwide prerequisite to be a guard was a subpar intellect and outstanding gullibility.
There was a wide hatch in the door’s face for plates or bowls, in case Temsa wanted to hold a living prisoner in this cell, and keep them alive with water and vittles. My blue fingers pried at its cold, rusty steel, but found no budge in it. It had been opened only once, when a shade had come to gaze at me for a time. I thought it had been Danib at first, but the face was smaller, without a helmet, and more intrigued than grumpy. The guard had shooed him away, and I had thought no more of it.
Years of battling locks had taught me many things, first and foremost that a lock definitely wouldn’t open if you didn’t try to crack it. Baring my teeth, I crouched down, concentrated, and rammed my fist against the door three times.
‘Oi!’ I cried for good measure.
There came a sigh, and then the thud of a more solid fist on the other side. ‘Shut it.’
‘It’s important!’
A grunt, and the hatch squealed as it slid back on rusted runners. I pressed myself to the door, watching as a nose poked into view, eyes somewhere behind it, scouring the cell. It took an age for the clank of a bolt to come. I could have sung.
‘No tricks, shade!’ ordered the guard as the door swung inwards. Its hinges complained even more than the hatch. Temsa’s tavern was in serious need of grease, I pondered, as I scuttled along with the swing of the door.
This guard was smarter than the usual sort. At the very least, he had been duped by a similar trick in the past. He thrust a hand behind the door, skimming my head. Before his eyes could swivel down to my glowing form, curled like a spring, I pounced.
He fell awkwardly, arms flailing at my face. I felt the sting of copper and saw he had rings around each finger. I winced as a fist caught my eye socket. My vapours turned solid where the rings struck me, pain lancing across my face and neck in white veins of light.
I sought the guard’s throat, somehow wrapping myself around him as he squirmed from under me. He seemed too horrified and outraged to yell for help. Instead, he made strangled grunts of revulsion as my cold limbs encircled his neck.
‘Get… off!’ he panted. ‘Bloody… shade!’
I pushed my forehead into the back of his skull, trying to ignore the blood-gorged louse nestled there among flakes of skin like spring blossom. Think of nothing, I thought, internally yelling at myself to ignore the stupidity of such a statement. I clamped my eyes shut and pressed, squeezing with my arms. I prayed I would not have to strangle him.
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
As before, I felt something slip, like the pop of an aching joint. At first I thought his neck had failed him. Immediately I felt a force rail against me as my cold met a wall of warm flesh. This man’s soul was stronger than my last victim’s, and fought hard for its body. It battered against me, forcing me out for a br
ief moment before I drove my concentration into the man’s skull like a forge-hot knife.
Within a moment, I lay sprawled on the floor, clutching at empty space around my aching neck. All was silent in the cell save for the trundle of cartwheels and idle scuffing beyond the barred window. I smelled my own stink first; a tang of unwashed armpits and nethers. If I hadn’t known better, I’d have said the man was already dead, and three days rotted. For a moment, I feared I had killed him, but the beat of a stolen heart said otherwise. As did my lungs. No pipe-lover, this man. He had the lungs of a forgotten childhood, when I had run for endless miles through meadows, never without breath. That had been before city soot, dusty workshops, smog-filled taverns, and the general ravaging of age.
Straining to hold on to the body, I remembered those simpler times, and coveted them. All children are blank canvases, waiting to have life’s brushstrokes and splatters spread across them. Some they paint themselves, others are painted for them, some dark, some light, and more come every year, until our self-portraits are one day finished.
Perhaps that was why all souls echoed their deaths; unfinished canvases stolen before they were complete.
When the man’s muscles had slackened under my hold and no longer fought me, I tested my limbs and found them sturdier than his care for hygiene would have suggested. This guard was strong. I wondered whether it was because this one hadn’t used a club for a headrest.
I put his strength to good use, dusting off my borrowed clothes and getting to my feet. I slid the hatch shut on the second try, once I’d gotten used to my fingers, and the door quickly after. I remembered the bolt before I shuffled down the corridor.
Despite the wax that clogged my ears, I heard the rumble of the Slab above me, busy in the hotter midday hours. I shoved the guard’s feet towards the first set of stairs I came across: a spiral case that led me up several levels. At the uppermost step, a guard clacked a spear-butt and my head snapped up. I heard a crack in my neck as an old but unfamiliar wound dogged me.
‘Spiss. What are you doing up ’ere?’
I grunted, clearing my throat, and said, ‘Need to find the boss. Gh—shade’s acting up.’
‘Tor, you mean. He put a knife through Olageph’s throat t’other day for callin’ him boss.’
‘I’ll remember,’ I said. I tried to peer past him to see if Pointy lay on the desk, or hung from the wall. No such luck. ‘So… is he in there?’
‘Nah, down in the cellars.’
I nodded my thanks, but another knock from the spear caught me before I left.
‘Oi, you remember what I told you?’
I turned slowly, my face torn between a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile.
‘You idiot. Too much ale is your trouble. She had twins.’ The man beamed. ‘Two healthy twins.’
I was about to congratulate his new fatherhood when the guard tucked his spear into his armpit and grabbed at imaginary – and rather huge – breasts. ‘Two very healthy twins, if you know what I mean. Could barely walk after a night with h—’
‘Good for you,’ I cut him off as I turned away. Cheated of his celebration, he grunted and went back to his guarding. His muttering followed me down the stairs.
‘Suit your fucking self.’
I figured the cellars must be where I’d been locked up on my first visit to the Rusty Slab. The weeks since then had stretched into what felt like a year. I chose down instead of up, and wandered into the dark of the tavern’s cellars and tunnels. I felt my bare skin prickle in the cool air, hairs dancing. I shivered at the sensation. It was marvellously diverting.
The warren of underground cellars and warehouses Temsa had dug beneath his tavern were winding, and they led me a merry pattern past the cages of the dead. I looked at them and their woeful expressions, the same as I’d once worn. I spied the high-born amongst them, with their proud cheekbones and marks of torture. One was burned to a sapphire husk.
The cages were full to bursting in places, the ghosts twitching as their comrades pressed them up against the copper bars. Temsa had been busy indeed. I had spent three weeks wallowing in indenturement. He had spent them becoming a tor, and being a tor in this town meant owning a lot of souls. Temsa had collected thousands in these cellars. I dreaded to think how many more levels he had stuffed with ghosts.
I saw at least one more down another set of curling stairs, where vats of Nyxwater sat between the cages. The floor was freshly spattered with its inky waters.
Ghostly hands pawed at me, their owners managing faint murmurs as I brushed through a narrow section and out into a wide dome of a room. My borrowed heart skipped a beat, my own feelings leaking into the body as I saw Temsa standing with Ani Jexebel and a group of her guards. They were busy overseeing the construction of more cages. A gang of ghosts in drab loincloths were supervising the hammering and bolting. They wore leather on their hands, saving them from the copper.
‘Faster!’ Temsa was yelling, stamping his eagle’s foot. I noticed with a stiffening of my lip that he had Pointy in a scabbard hanging from his round hip. ‘I need this finished by tonight, you hear?’
‘Yes, Tor!’ came the awkward chorus, some voices hoarse and new, others barely formed.
‘There you are,’ said the sword’s voice in my head, somehow knowing it was me. ‘Is this one alive, or did you kill him too?’ I nodded to the soulblade and ducked into an alcove, pretending to stand guard. I poked at a nearby cage of innocents for good measure.
Temsa was grumbling. ‘I tell you again, Ani, the Slab’s getting tight. New accommodations are required, methinks.’
‘Hmph,’ was all the big lump of Jexebel had to say.
‘Did you hear me?’
‘I did.’
‘Again with your doubt, m’dear! You’d better start trusting me again, or put a fucking cork in your complaining. One or the other.’ He wagged a finger menacingly. I watched from the corners of my eyes, which had begun to sting from the effort it took to keep them under my control. The man was desperately trying to wink.
‘Magistrate Ghoor’s tower might be just to my liking, and more fitting of my new station once I wash his stink from it. I have grown bored of Bes District. I shall have myself Weighed again tomorrow, to seal the claim.’
‘A Chamber of the Code magistrate, though… Tor. Some might say it’s too bold. Starsson said he’s had the whiff of a scrutiniser sittin’ in the bar, combing for clues, and after that oaf Omat killed one of ’em…’
Jexebel backed off as Temsa gave her a venomous look. ‘We have our princess to cover that. Sisine will keep them off our trail,’ he said.
That raised my eyebrow.
Jexebel changed the subject. ‘What’s the plan?’
‘Tonight at midnight, we pose as guests for Ghoor’s party. Enlightened Sister Liria was kind enough to give us several invitations. The Cult continues to impress, despite irritating the fuck out of me.’
My eyebrows were well and truly raised now. The cultist in the streets started to make more sense.
‘Is there an invite for me?’ asked Jexebel.
‘Naturally. And Danib, too.’
‘I’ve got a few men in mind.’
‘We’ll take Caltro, too.’
I flinched at my name.
‘Surely he can wait—’
‘We take him,’ Temsa replied firmly. ‘I don’t trust that fucking widow. She’s a crotchety old bag, or so the tongues wag. Might decide enough is enough and cut her losses with his half-coin. Better I get as much use out of him while I can, just in case.’
Another grunt from Jexebel. She proceeded to kick a ghost with the copper toe of her boot; it sent the woman sprawling, her near-severed limbs flailing.
‘Faster, he said!’ Jexebel bellowed, before returning to Temsa’s side.
‘Keeping the sword, then?’ Jexebel asked.
‘I am. Seems a fitting blade for a tor. And besides, it’s inordinately sharp.’ Temsa looked as though he would pull it forth with
a flourish, but his hand shied away from its hilt. I noticed the bandage on his thumb.
‘He tried to sharpen me. I cut the whetstone in half.’
‘Sounds like a soulblade to me.’
‘Nonsense, Ani. Old fairy tales.’
‘Grandfather had an axe like it. Soulaxe, I s’pose… Hey! You! I told you to watch the shade’s cell!’
It took me a moment to realise Jexebel was speaking to me. Her giant frame striding towards me, finger raised, was my first clue. Why in the Reaches do they have to breed them so big in the Arc? I thought.
‘I—’ My body twitched, once again trying to signal her in some way and betray me. I clenched harder. This haunting was more difficult than the last.
Jexebel brought her burst-veined nose close to mine, bending down so she could snort in my face. ‘Well?’
‘Hekal’s down there. Wanted to swap.’ Why did I choose such a Krass name?
‘Swap? And who the fuck is Hekal? Don’t remember such a man.’ She prodded me hard in the sternum and I choked on the other man’s soul.
‘Hekal, er… Half-Tongue? New man. Doesn’t like the door shift.’ I prattled off some more fiction.
‘Very nice,’ Pointy quietly congratulated me.
I saw Temsa clanking his way over, curiosity piqued, and I grappled for an excuse to escape Jexebel’s shadow. ‘I—I’m sorry, I’ll get back up there right away.’
My body convulsed again, but I turned it into a swift lunge towards the doorway. I winced my way into the corridor, expecting a rough hand to land on my shoulder at any moment. But none came, and I proceeded back the way I’d come. Jexebel’s curse of ‘Fucking amateur’ was the only thing that chased me, as well as Pointy’s voice, faint with distance.
‘I’ll wait, then, shall I?’
I exhaled only when I was alone, save for the crowded pens of ghosts. They looked on at me, confused and uncaring. They had their own deaths to deal with.
My encounter with Jexebel had been far too close for comfort, but her conversation with Temsa had been a mine of information.
Firstly, the infamous Cult were aiding Temsa. Secondly, he was going after the Chamber, the only pillar of justice I knew of in this godsforsaken city. A bold move indeed for a soulstealer, never mind that he had murdered his way to nobility. And lastly, he had a princess in his pocket.