by Ben Galley
‘If that’s the Krass term for tower, then yes, Caltro.’
‘I knew this tavern couldn’t hold an ego the size of yours for long, no matter how far down you dug.’
Temsa narrowed his eyes at me. ‘Seeing as that cell can barely hold yours, I would agree.’
‘Did you come down here purely for an exchange of wits, or…?’
The black and silver blade of Pointy slammed up against the slot.
‘Hello, Caltro.’ His voice was clear in my head, as metallic as usual.
‘This sword. Where did you get it?’
‘I stole it from Busk.’
‘And where did he get it?’
‘How am I supposed to know?’
‘The man liked to brag, long and loudly.’ Temsa spat. ‘What do you know of it?’
I made a show of thinking. ‘That it’s bloody sharp.’
‘I’ve taught him that a few times now,’ Pointy interjected.
‘Anything else? Did Busk mention a curse? Anything about a soulblade?’
‘Curse?’
‘Like a charm or a spell on it?’ he replied irritably.
I pulled a face. ‘What have you been doing with him?’ I asked this more of the sword than Temsa.
Temsa seemed flustered. Specks of spittle darkened the sand at my feet as he snapped at me. ‘What a stupid question! It’s a sword, damn it! Not a him.’
‘I’ve been whispering to him at night. Like this.’
Temsa viciously waggled a finger in his ear. ‘Bloody thing has a curse on it, I say! If you know anything, you’ll tell me!’
‘Busk didn’t say a thing about it. Honest.’ I held up empty hands.
‘Poetry, for the most part. A few insults every now and again. I get bored.’
I could have hugged the sword.
‘Bah!’ The tor slammed the grate. I listened to his angry footsteps recede down the corridor with a smile on my face. I almost laughed aloud when I heard a thwack and a guard’s yelp. Instead, I returned to my bars to watch the sky bruise and blacken, like a fist-fighter’s eyes.
Sunset pounced quickly in the desert lands. No sooner had the sun receded behind the peaks of steel and brick and glass than the heat died. When its fiery glow had faded, leaving a wake of dark red and purple, the city began to sparkle with lamps and torches. Ghosts in cowls moved around the outside of the Slab, lighting the tavern’s lights as they went, and filling my street with their liquid gold. I felt their heat on my reaching arms, but they gave me no warmth. One of the guards accompanying the ghosts was nice enough to kick my hand back inside the cell. For the second time that day, I found myself wishing for faeces to throw. Half of Temsa’s men would be bespattered by now.
I took once more to pacing about my cell. Even though my muscles couldn’t appreciate the effort, my mind could. My scuffing gave me a beat to which I could drum out my irritable thoughts. It helped to drown out the doubt and impatience that were gnawing holes in my plan to wait for Temsa to grow complacent.
I had to give it to Pointy. The sword was a marvellous irritation to more than just me. It could have been the day of boredom, the silence, or his mischief, but I found myself briefly missing my cellmate.
He did have a spell on him, and I found myself wondering what other magics the Nyxites had once weaved with soul and metal, or animal flesh, all for the fashions of the Arc. Before they’d been banned from doing so, that was.
I’d heard of an hourglass that could shout the time. I’d listened to stories of statues coming to life with the souls of ghosts. I’d once even stolen a spear that almost always hit an enemy when thrown. How many souls had been dead or strangebound just to amuse the living? It felt as if there was a locked door before this subject, and ever the thief, I wanted through it. If only for curiosity’s sake.
It was nightfall when my final visitor announced himself with a scuffle.
When the moon had sandwiched itself between two lofty spires I could crane my neck at, the guard changed. It did so with some muffled conversation; talk of certain tavern girls, an irritable Temsa and the like. I listened to the footsteps leaving while the squeak of stool legs told me this guard was a tired guard. I heard him muttering to himself, complaining to an empty corridor. This went on for some time, until he made a game of throwing nutshells – or that’s what it sounded like to me – against the wall.
Then came the thud, shortly followed by another. The first came from down the hallway. The second came from outside my door. I hugged the corner, wary as ever.
The waiting made the shadows grow, and every noise from outside a clattering. Keys momentarily chimed, then a hand silenced them. They rattled in my door before it swung open. There was a faint blue tinge to the light that spilled inwards.
‘Caltro. Caltro Basalt?’ hissed a voice I had never heard before.
I’d been waiting until he peeked past the door until I answered, but the spiked tip of a club preceded him, and I held my tongue. It was a ghost, willowy of build, bearded, wearing some dark leather garb and wrapped in a black cape. He was barefoot.
‘Here,’ I said, curious enough to speak. ‘Who’s asking?’
White eyes turned on me. ‘Widow Horix.’
I understood, but the situation called for some cheek. It was how I dealt with surprises and their usually spiky edges. A blanket of humour always dulled them. ‘Horix? You’ve gained weight, found some manhood, and died since I last saw you.’
He strode towards me impatiently. ‘I am Meleber Crale, and if you want to get out of here then I’d advise you to shut your face and come with me. Widow Horix has sent me.’
Temsa wasn’t the man to dabble in idle tricks. This was no game. I recognised the glint in Crale’s eye as one of impatience. He had as much to risk as I did, and judging by the white feather dangling around his neck from a chain, perhaps more. I wasn’t about to complain. In fact, I may even have grinned as I followed him eagerly out of the door. At last! I’d been right in trusting the old bat. My solution had come to me after all. Fuck Temsa. Fuck the dead gods.
I stumbled over the prostrate form of a guard, face-down, lying in a pool of his own blood. ‘What are you?’ I asked my rescuer as I followed on the tails of his cape.
‘I’m a spook.’
‘A what?’
‘Don’t have us in Krass? Maybe I should move there. Make a killing, so to speak,’ he hissed over his shoulder. ‘We’re hired by people who need things done. Things only a dead man can get away with.’
He held me back at a corner, peeking ahead. I could hear the rumble of voices and feet above us, and the clanging of cage doors below us.
‘If you’re good at something—’
Crale finished my sentence off. ‘Never do it for free.’
I grabbed at his shoulder. ‘Wait. I need my sword.’
‘What sword?’
‘It’s a… special sword. Family heirloom. I promised it… myself I would take it with me.’
Confusion twisted his lip. ‘Where is it?’ he snapped.
‘On… Temsa’s belt.’ I felt that thing they called guilt tug at me. It was still a new experience. I had broken so many promises I couldn’t remember the definition of keeping one, and yet here I was, about to break another, and nibbling my nails like a tardy schoolchild over it.
‘Impossible. I’m not even sure I can get you out. You’ll have to come back.’
‘No, I have to take him now.’
Crale bared his teeth at me. ‘Tough. It’s my vapours on the line here too. If I don’t come back with you, Horix will take a copper blade to my throat. I don’t care if it’s the emperor’s sword. We leave now.’
‘No.’
He shoved me back the way we’d come, his palms thumping against the vapours of my chest. ‘All right, back to your cell it is!’
‘No… wait.’ He stared at me long and hard with burning eyes, daring me to disagree. ‘Fine,’ I growled, consoling the guilt with the fact I’d at least tried.
We stared down a corridor, empty save for the two black-clad men lounging at the end of it. ‘Any other way out?’ I asked.
‘Few, and each of them worse than this. Temsa is apparently at war with the city. He’s not stupid. Now!’
Holding his cape out in front of us and sticking to the shadows, we pelted it halfway along the corridor, our bare, ghostly feet making hardly any noise on the flagstones. Say one thing for being dead, if you like sneaking around, it’s the perfect state to be in.
Crale produced a coin of iron and threw it past the guards, down into a stairwell leading to the Slab’s bowels.
‘What the fuck?’ came the combined grunt of the guards. As they wandered over to investigate, Crale tugged me past them and up another stairwell.
The cape did us no favours this time, and one of the guards spied the flash of blue.
‘Did I just—Oi!’
‘Run, Caltro!’ hissed Crale, thrusting me forwards. He paused briefly to deal the man a wallop around the head with his club, spattering skin and brains on the wall. With a kick, the body tumbled backwards into his colleague.
Within three paces the spook was back at my side, leaving me to wonder if being free meant being more alive. I resolved to find out one day as my feet thrashed the flagstones in an attempt to keep up.
‘Left!’ Crale cried as another figure came around a corner. ‘Right and up!’
More stairs flew by beneath us. I imagined I could taste the night air ahead. A door to the tavern passed us, momentarily dousing us in light and blaring noise. I could hear the clank of armour and thud of feet in hot pursuit. Crale could hear it too. He moved ahead of me, pulling me along as we weaved through more passages.
He spied the archway before I did, and barged me in its direction. Its glowing frame was lit by twin braziers from the street. A lone guard stood in its glow, and two more in between him and us. Crale raised his club, and I heard him utter ‘Shit’ beneath his breath.
As Crale dashed the first man to the floor, I felt my brief hope come crashing down into a pit of anger. I leapt over the flailing body, somehow having time to admire the crater Crale’s club had left in his skull. Shouts filled the narrow gap of stone and steel, squeezing the glowing door tighter. I reached out for it as I ran, face contorting in a noiseless shout.
Hands groped for my shoulders, but without copper their fingers couldn’t grip me, and I barrelled on, Crale the spook close behind. One of the guards snagged his cape, and the ghost let him have it with a flourish that dragged the man to the ground and knocked him senseless.
‘Almost to the street!’ he yelled, sounding almost breathless. Perhaps it was the worry I recognised in his wide eyes. He didn’t look the sort who was used to failure, and this corridor of blood and yelling bodies screamed failure.
The shouting had summoned the attention of the guards outside. I could see one poking his head around the archway, blocking my way. I launched myself at him as he ran inside, spear at the ready. Crale’s club knocked the weapon aside as I dove into him.
I don’t know whether it was my desperation to be free, or an accident, but by into him, I wholeheartedly mean into him.
In an instant, I felt the warmth of a body envelop my coldness, and yet I was still falling, facing backwards now. A wall struck me, and I felt a dull pain lance through my back. I tried to draw breath, but I could not. Something was stinging my skin, as if my chainmail was fresh out the forge.
My chainmail?
All too late I realised where I was, and the haunting broke, snapping like a frayed rope. I burst free of the guard’s body, staying upright just long enough to catch Crale’s shocked expression, frozen just like the rest of his body, club still raised over a cowering guard.
The spook’s hesitation cost him his legs.
As I collided with the wall, a broadsword swung out from my peripheries. There came twin bursts of white light as the blade passed through Crale’s thighs, and reduced everything below to blue smoke. He crumpled, splayed and whimpering on the floor. A blue shine washed over me as Danib Ironjaw emerged from an alcove like a troll from his cave. He wore no armour tonight, just a bare torso that looked like a mountain range covered in scars. A kilt of mail hung from his waist, and a horned helmet encased his head.
Without a word, he rested the tip of his humongous sword on the stone next to my head.
‘I—’ was all I managed. The guard I’d briefly inhabited was coming to, twitching as if spiders infested his clothes and mail. His words were condensed into one stream of panicked screeching.
‘Whatthefuck! Whatthefuck!’
I winced as the sword arced from the floor, grazing my cheek before lopping half the chest from the guard. Steel bit through iron links and sternum with a horrific crunch, and the man sailed into the street.
The corridor quickly filled with guards. They came upon the scene with horrified, confused looks. Sword still raised, Danib greeted them with a growl. He pointed to the half ghost, and then upstairs.
‘Come on, lads,’ said a self-appointed spokesperson. Gloved hands set to the spook and Crale Crale was hauled away through pools of blood, leaving a faint smear behind him. He had few glances to offer me. They were mostly reserved for his missing legs. But when I did meet his eyes, all he had for me was hatred.
I lay there waiting under Danib’s glow while the rest of the bodies were hauled away. I had no words or taunts for once, but plenty of inner cursing to be done. I should have known better. I should have taken my chance. I shouldn’t have hesitated. All manner of self-made accusations rained down.
They say there is a beauty in hindsight, but I say it is an ugly creature. Almost as ugly as its daughter, regret. Life is made of many paths. The cruel joke is you can only choose one, and move only forwards along it. Regret is the bitch that follows behind you and paves the paths you didn’t take with gold and glitter.
Danib saved me from my thoughts by grabbing me by the throat and lifting me upright. The ease with which he did it was frankly unfair for a dead man. Once I was on my feet, I began to brush myself down. The only noises were armour scraping down stairs, and the clamour of the tavern several walls away from us. A small crowd had gathered in the street, stopping to look at tonight’s entertainment: the broken corpse of a guard bleeding all over the sand.
I was about to make a pun about tough working environments when Danib pushed me ahead of him. He practically carried me down the corridor. Had I any less shame, I could have let my feet dangle and been held aloft solely by his grip on my neck. Even to my cold vapour, his fingers felt like ice.
Out, he took me. Not down. Not up. Not to Temsa or the cellars. Out. I watched the corridors grow narrower until we came to a dark space with a thin square of light etched into it.
‘What are we—’
Danib pushed me forwards with a grunt, pressing me up against a door.
‘M’kay,’ I garbled, my face against the rough iron panels.
Light blinded me as his keys turned, three altogether. A brazier shone to my left, lighting a thin street bordered by two warehouses, stocky and windows dead but for a faint blue glow. I still heard the clanging of work within their walls. That, and the rumble of drinking and singing from the building behind us.
Danib guided me around the borders of the tavern and then across the sand and wagon-ruts to an alley heading north. At least, that’s what the moon told me. I’d spent enough bored nights watching her passage to know her movements as well as the sun’s.
The ghost still pushed me before him, but at least he had released my neck. I rubbed away the cold echo of his grip as I idly stared up at the canyon walls of sandstone and window ledges and guttering. The sky was a speckled strip above me, and I followed its path more than the alley’s.
Danib spared as many glances behind him as he did for me and the road ahead. The noise of the tavern and the warehouses had died, but the streets ahead were brightly lit, and offered their own clamour. We switched from darkness to l
ight once again, and I negotiated the busy traffic of shabbily dressed people and masses of ghosts. Between impatient shoves from Danib like a battering ram to my spine, I caught sight of bazaar stalls glowing with candles and blue light. Ghosts stood behind their wares, both free and bound. They offered little in the way of food or drink, but plenty of trinkets, costumes, scrolls and books. Mountains of books.
I supposed when you had immortality to waste, spending it on books wasn’t such a bad idea. I saw the sense in it. Books – at least the good sort – were doors into worlds beyond our miserable own. Perhaps I’d pay this night bazaar a visit when I had my own time to waste. That was, if Danib wasn’t escorting me to a chopping block.
‘Temsa won’t be pleased,’ I warned him, trying to avert any permanent fate he might have planned for me. ‘Whisking his locksmith into the night.’
Another shove was my only reply, and together we took another alleyway. This one wound about the busy areas, taking a curving route to the edge of the city’s core. We walked in stilted and one-sided conversation. I probed him about his previous life, whether his armour chafed, and how heavy his sword was. Every time I got either a grunt or another knock from those ham-like fists.
I was about to ask him what it was like working for a maniac when I felt his fingers around my neck again, and he brought me to a halt.
Blue, knotted knuckles met the wood of a nearby door three times, and Danib stared at me through the holes of his helm while he waited. I avoided those blank white canvases. A man could have drawn any emotion on them. Perhaps that was Danib’s secret to surviving so long in the proximity of men like Temsa. That and being the size of a cottage.
I stared at the door instead, finding it unremarkable save for its crimson colour, freshly painted, its brass bars and the lack of a handle. The building it belonged to was a featureless wall of stone, reaching high into the night—
Crimson.
I flinched in the ghost’s grip, a fraction before the door creaked open to reveal two women clad in red robes. They must have been sisters, for they were practically identical, both of shaven head, hooded, and sharing the same impassive expression as my captor.