by Tom Lloyd
‘You realise you can’t win,’ called a woman’s voice from somewhere above Enchei. ‘Not against both of us.’
Enchei suppressed a curse.
‘Your point?’ he replied after another furtive check.
He could see no one and the voice seemed to echo from three different points on the upper floor – she was clearly masking her location. The incantations in his mind changed to staccato pulses flooding around the building, but the demon was a vast sucking hole in the world. The outline Enchei saw was so warped by its presence that he could make little sense of it, and certainly not find the speaker.
‘You do not need to die.’
Enchei paused. ‘You got a weird fucking way of selling that one. I’m all for foreplay, but days o’ hellhounds chasing me is a step too far.’
‘I’m a practical woman. I recognise you’re adept at staying alive and I would prefer to be out of this place quickly and clean.’
‘You mean before House Iron’s Astaren come?’ Enchei felt a moment of hope as he spoke. However problematic the presence of Astaren might be, if she was keen to avoid them that gave him something to work with.
‘Don’t get your hopes up, Master Tattooist. Their presence in the city is modest and they know the dangers of the Terim.’
‘Who, then?’
‘I am not here to kill Lawbringers, not if I can help it.’
‘Doesn’t help the recruitment effort, eh?’ Enchei ventured. ‘Your Eagle paymasters might be unhappy if the Emperor turned against them.’
She laughed, a thin and dead sound. ‘Paymasters? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Right, my mistake.’ Keep talking, give the others time. I’m not getting out of here without a distraction. ‘Still – best only Dragons die while you’re hunting me down, eh?’
‘Say what you like about House Dragon, they don’t whine about casualties.’
‘They do seek revenge, though.’
‘I intend to be somewhere they cannot find me.’
Aye, unless the coming war goes disastrously and if that’s the case, the whole Empire’s in chaos, so you’re well down the list of priorities.
‘What do you want, then?’
She sighed, a whisper of breath that raced up and down the length of the palazzo. ‘You know that – and now your time is done. Give yourself willingly or have the Terim rip your memories out of your eyes as you breathe your last.’
Enchei started to move towards a slightly more protected corner, watching the demon shift slightly to follow him. ‘You think my mind’s as easy to crack as all that?’
‘I will manage.’
The certainty in her voice made him believe her. Whatever failsafes and defences had been implanted into his mind by the mage-priests of Ghost, he wasn’t willing to gamble they’d stand up to the combined efforts of a higher-order demon and the most terrifying of Leviathan’s Astaren. They spoke to the Gods of the deep, legend told, and Enchei was one man who knew the terror of a god’s presence in his mind.
‘Guess you won’t take my word there’s nothing of value in my memories? That you’d never make it through the valley passes?’
The tiniest of flutters sparked in his gut – one he quelled instantly, but enough to make Enchei linger on the thought. The Fields of the Broken – the god he’d killed. Even the Ascendant Gods had been kept from that valley while the various armies tore themselves apart; it hadn’t just been snow and ice cutting them off from the rest of the world.
‘I like a challenge, if the reward’s sufficient.’
‘It’s dead. I killed it before it fully woke,’ he said more in hope than expectation. If there was nothing of value or danger left in that valley, it wouldn’t have been sealed off.
‘That hardly matters. Your answer is no, then? As you wish.’
‘Wait!’ Enchei yelled as the Terim took a step forward.
Her impatience was palpable and icy. ‘Yes?’
Enchei looked around for inspiration, desperate to prolong things even a few more moments, but the gilt-edged furniture, wire-bound lanterns and long curtains provided him with nothing. The moment stretched out until Enchei felt a manic grin slip on to his face. He whispered an incantation and felt the warmth against his skin as the armour obeyed.
‘Nah, I got nothing,’ he muttered and broke into a run.
As he ran, his boots crashed down on the flagstones in a shower of sparks that seemed to ignite the air around him. From under his clothes burst a glittering smoke, pouring from his armour with a threatening hiss as he moved to disperse it as far as he could manage.
Bursts of utter dark came from the possessed man in reply. Through the peripheral haze and smoke, Enchei glimpsed the after-echoes against the smeared grey of his mage-sight. A tall upright body and long forelimbs, curved neck and spread wings – the size of a true dragon and just as terrible to behold.
The Kobelt ran forward just as Enchei ducked behind a staircase and checked his stride. A darting claw of shadow smashed forward across his path, slicing neatly through a wall-hanging before smashing a sideboard to splinters. Enchei hit back with darts and baton, cutting furrows through its shadow wing and studding the man’s tattooed cheek. Neither seemed to slow the demon but Enchei was already moving, smoke billowing in his wake.
Up ahead a grey figure appeared, causing Enchei to lurch to one side, darts spitting as he went. They passed through the ghost without effect as it advanced with claws raised. He dropped and skidded on a rush mat, sliding into the grey figure as it struck. Claws caught his forearm and screeched down the armour while Enchei’s blow met no resistance. He spun and drove up to face the ghost again, but now his metal fingers were surrounded by spitting light.
One swipe gouged through the ghost and sent it reeling, one step and a lunge burst it apart. Grey tatters billowed briefly in the smoke-laden air then dropped back into nothingness but as Enchei turned to resume his charge around the palazzo he caught sight of a huge shadow limb grab a fretwork partition and rip it away.
He turned and retraced his steps as the possessed Kobelt stepped forward, ducked down in echo of the hunched demon shadow that surrounded it and reached claws after Enchei. One came within a whisper of hooking his leg and Enchei checked his stride, seeing an opportunity. He twisted and chopped down with his open palm, hammering a glow rune against a shadow-claw as long as his forearm. It connected with a burst of light and sound that made Enchei reel, the detonation driving him back against the outside wall as the claw exploded. A terrible screeching rang around the palazzo but the demon’s fury was only increased and it raked furrows in the stone walls as it struggled forward in the cramped space behind the stone stair.
It was increasingly hard to see anything with the glitter smoke still billowing from his armour. Enchei was forced to fire his baton blind, knowing it would do nothing more than slow the demon. From his belt he pulled a misshapen metal ball. It was an ugly and crude weapon, but as the trails of lightning around his fingers ignited the fuse and he tossed it, the veteran wasted no time in diving clear.
The grenade exploded in an even brighter light; a sputtering orb of white forming on the flagstone floor and shredding a limb of the demon. The explosion was more palpable this time and the force pitched Enchei into a panelled cupboard set to one side of the atrium.
Stars above! Enchei thought blearily as he shrugged free of the wreckage and fought his way upright. At least we know those work.
The grenades were a recent creation. After Narin’s recognition by the Emperor himself, Enchei realised the chances of meeting another Astaren had just got greater. He’d sacrificed his battlefield weapons when he faked his death all those years ago, knowing what his comrades would be looking for if anyone required confirmation. Until now that had been a risk worth taking, but the goshe’s firepowder weapons had reminded him that he might one day need to pierce Astaren armour.
Before he could move, another ghost materialised and leaped for him. Claws scored
the armour at his throat as Enchei was driven back. He twisted frantically then slammed his palms together in a burst of light inside the ghost’s head. It vanished in the same storm of tatters but behind it was a greater danger still. While the demon’s howls of pain and fury shook the stones under his feet, there was a moment of quiet in Enchei’s mind. At the far end of the hall was a figure – a living person who paid the demon no mind. A woman; the Benthic Knight.
She wore a long black coat that would have been severe except for the ornate filigree of its collar, buckles and cuffs. From her dead white skin and hair he could see she was a Leviathan and, as he looked, the air trembled around her. There were faint ghostly images of figures flanking her but Enchei’s attention was more drawn to the slim black cane resting gently in her hands. She flicked it idly in his direction and Enchei felt the impact like a slashing sword across his chest.
He reeled sideways, glimpsing a dull reddish light in the tip of the cane as it was twitched back across him and another blow struck his helmet. A volley of darts in reply was swatted aside and then Enchei was running again – the demon’s rage building to shuddering proportions behind him.
As he went left and right, cloth was slashed open and wood splintered under the impact of her unseen lash, but Enchei kept his head down until he reached more secure cover. At another staircase he pulled one of his precious grenades from his belt and tossed it blind into the centre of the hall, but as it exploded he heard no cries or alarm from the Knight.
A little help, girls, he thought frantically, knowing his daughters couldn’t hear his thoughts – chillingly aware he’d been cut off from theirs since being dragged into the palazzo. Narin, Kesh – any of you. Win me a chance – Gods above just give me that!
Enay signalled to her sister and readied her lance. Maiss pulled herself up to the top of the palazzo’s rear wall and levelled a pistol over it. Before her head was up, a bullet had struck the crest next to her and her own shot was hastily fired. A second bullet spat up from the stone by her fingers, but in the next moment Enay was up and the Dragon’s Breath churned a path of flames across the memorial statues standing in the moonlight.
A flash of movement attracted her eye and she moved with it, pulling away just in time as a zip of air sliced the side of her head. In the rear garden of the palazzo, the renegade Ghost, Sorpan, dived out of the skewed path of her weapon. He came up shooting again, his pistol inexhaustible it seemed, while Enay knew her sister only had one loaded gun left.
Enay spun away, feeling the trickle of blood down her ear as she went. The Dragon’s Breath was her best defence, she knew – its indiscriminate and terrible power forced the man into haste. As she fired again she sensed Maiss drop down over the wall and crouch behind a broad urn-topped memorial. Sorpan saw it too and directed a shot in her direction but then had to hide again as Enay swept the searing heat lance across his hiding place.
‘Sorpan!’ she called as she joined her sister over the wall. ‘Give yourself up!’
That threw him, she sensed it almost as clearly as she did her sister’s advance. The strange powers they had inherited made them an effective and lethal hunting team. Though Sorpan would be counting on being able to hear any directions they gave to each other, the twins didn’t need to do any such thing. Their connection was bone-deep and instinctive – Enay had an understanding of how Maiss would move or act that went beyond communication.
In the palazzo beyond, she could sense her father moving again. She couldn’t reach him with her thoughts, but his last gift to the pair of them had been the ability to sense him wherever he was. It was a lesser bond than the one with her sister – just a tiny scratching at the back of her mind when she focused on him – but one she knew was the product of Astaren magic.
He hadn’t been able to be any more of a father and it was a feeble gift by some standards, but in the low moments that happened in every life, sometimes it was enough. Though Enchei might have been on another continent and had buried a compulsion to stay away, all their lives they had been able to at least face in his direction.
‘You’re here for me?’ Sorpan shouted back at last.
As he spoke, he tossed a bag high in the air. On instinct Enay raised the lance and caught it with the Dragon’s Breath – only to have the bag ignite in an eye-watering burst of glittering fire. She recoiled from the blinding light as long sparkling trails streamed down through the air and obscured anything beyond them. She changed position almost blind, having to feel her way to another carved standing stone. Blinking furiously, Enay realised from its height the stone was one of the largest in the garden – a robed Lord Pilgrim with arms outstretched in supplication.
‘We’re here for you,’ Maiss replied on her sister’s behalf.
‘Without second skin or armour?’ Sorpan called. ‘No guns or darters? No snares or stings?’
‘We don’t choose the missions,’ Maiss said. ‘No trace of Ghost, that’s the order we got here.’
‘But a Dragon weapon’s allowed?’
Enay answered that with a burst from the lance that scorched a path up the wall behind, a slit window bursting inward under the intense heat. The curtain of glittering light still hung between them, the breeze shifting it slightly while the Dragon’s Breath cut a furrow that dragged trails inward in its wake.
‘You don’t need to die,’ Enay added, though she accompanied it with another burst from the lance. ‘You have his word on that.’
Again, a slight hesitation. ‘Whose word?’
‘The one you went to.’
‘No – no, it’s too late for that.’
Enay felt a moment of panic as Sorpan rose from behind a memorial – not the one she was expecting – and fired two shots in quick succession at her. She flinched away, the shallow wound down the side of her head flaring hot at the movement. Before she could aim the lance again, Sorpan was running forward with Maiss closing on one side. Something detonated with the blinding flash of a starflare as Maiss passed an oval memorial, smashing her sideways out of his path. As Maiss fell heavily Sorpan dodged away, rounding a chunk of stone and lunging for Enay with a glittering blade.
She barely managed to parry with the body of her lance, the impact throwing it to one side and giving him an easy shot at her belly – had it not been for the crack of a musket. Chips of stone exploded by Sorpan’s ear and Enay saw her chance. She dropped the lance and grabbed his arm, levering the pistol away as she punched up at his armpit. The blade inside her palm flashed in the moonlight as it shot out – only to skitter off the second skin Sorpan wore under his clothes.
He struck back with a boot to the gut, but Enay rode the mule-kick blow and twisted in to slash inside the reach of his short-sword. She headbutted the man and swiped a second blade across his throat, but something in his neck resisted the edge and it failed to tear his gullet open. A second gunshot interrupted their struggle and Enay felt it through his body as she sensed her sister pull the trigger from a dozen yards away.
The bullet struck him in the small of the back and she could tell it penetrated his second skin – a lesser armour than the soldier’s one her father wore – but Sorpan only slowed for a moment. He crashed an elbow down on her shoulder and Enay screamed as it jolted from the socket. The impact drove her to her knees, Sorpan almost leaning on her as he pulled back for the killing blow.
With a shriek of anger and pain Enay punched up with her remaining good hand. This time the rigid blade in her fist slammed into the man’s throat and burst the pale mesh of his second skin, driving right through his jugular. Sorpan’s head snapped backwards, hands suddenly weak and feebly pawing at the wound. His oval eyes widened as the pain struck him and then he toppled unceremoniously, limbs enfeebled and unable to support him as his blood gushed black in the starlight.
Scooping up Sorpan’s pistol Enay awkwardly levelled it, determined to make sure of the kill. The blade protruding from her hand made the grip difficult, but she managed to put the gun to his face an
d fire. The dead Astaren spasmed and kicked before abruptly falling limp, but now Enay moved in even greater haste.
She peeled away and slipped behind the nearest monument as a hiss began to rise from the corpse – spells woven into the second skin releasing the power stored inside it. Out of the corner of her eye a fierce light shone from under his clothes, followed by the whump of them igniting and the hiss of his flesh starting to burn.
Enay averted her eyes as the searing light intensified, the heat painful even by her levels of endurance before, within a few heartbeats, the power was spent and the light was replaced by the stink and crackle of skin burning, the acrid stench of super-heated metal scraping at her tongue.
Enay looked up towards her sister. Maiss was sitting up, spent gun in her hand, with blackened streaks and bloody strips of cloth marking her right side. Advancing towards them was the Wyvern knight, Myken, her musket discarded in favour of pistols now, but the woman’s attention was on the burning corpse on the ground rather than Enay.
‘Is that the renegade?’ Myken asked. ‘What did you do to him?’
The young woman grunted and hauled herself up to drape her arm over a stone sleeve of some ancestor of the palazzo’s owners. Using it as a fulcrum she tugged down on her useless arm, inwardly howling at the pain as her shoulder jolted back into place. She leaned on the statue a few moments, panting and fighting the pain.
‘I killed him. The magic inside his armour did the rest. Maiss, you good?’
‘Will that happen to you?’
She looked sharply up then shook her head. ‘No armour for the likes of us. Easiest if we don’t get killed.’
Myken sniffed at that, a rare quizzical look on her face. ‘And people say the warrior caste have a strange attitude towards death.’
‘It’s a family thing,’ was Enay’s sour reply.
‘From what I’ve seen of your father, I can well believe it. Will his armour do the same?’
Enay ignored her and went to help her sister. Maiss was hurt worse than Enay, but it didn’t look life threatening. Blood ran freely from a series of gashes down one side of her head as Maiss tugged a fragment of something from her skin and tossed it aside with a growl. Her left arm hung limp at her side, the clothing and leather armour torn to bloody strips, while a grey splinter protruded from the meat of her thigh.