City of Scars (The Skullborn Trilogy, Book 1)

by Steven Montano

  Two pieces of paper had been separated from the rest, and they sat neatly folded in Blackhall’s pocket. He’d read each of them a dozen times. Keeping them together reminded him why he had to go through with this, and why the hardest work had to start tonight.

  The trap door opened, and Gess and Slayne crawled up into the room. Gess was his usual drab self, and he looked tired from all of the tasks Blackhall had set him to. Slayne looked even wearier. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his eyes were almost black with fatigue, but Blackhall knew that even in such a state Marros Slayne was still a dangerous man. He’d seen Slayne go nearly four days with no sleep, still able to fight and track and think faster than most men could do when they were fully rested. Blackhall had only worked with Gess for a few months, but he’d known and worked with Slayne for over two years, and they’d been through a lot together. Some of it had even been good.

  “It’s done,” Gess said. “And it wasn’t easy. The good General still insists you’re being too gentle with Ebonmark, but Argus convinced him to let you to stay in control here, so long as we can accommodate Wolf Brigade and their commander, Tonas Jeel. They’ll be here before we know it. The Empress also seemed pleased with your plan, so long as it works…and that, my friends, will be the tricky part. As usual.” Gess smiled. “Congratulations, you just gave us another impossible task.”

  “Were you feeling unchallenged?” Slayne asked Blackhall with a grin.

  Blackhall smiled himself. It was half-hearted, and couldn’t change the truth of what they had to do, but it helped. A little.

  “Did you see him?” he asked Slayne.

  Slayne nodded grimly. “Harrick wasn’t interested in talking to me, and he doesn’t want to talk to you, either, not until you give him those damn swords.” Gess was about to say something but Slayne raised his hand. “Before you ask, I haven’t found the woman. There was too much chaos in the camp that night. But the Black Eagles are working on it.”

  “I can find her,” Gess said, somewhat exasperated. “That was the entire point of bringing the swords here in the first place.”

  “She’s going to have to wait,” Blackhall said. “We need to deal with this crime situation and that Goddess-damned amulet the Empress wants first, and we still have a lot of work to do. Toran, when are you supposed to have your meeting?”

  “Tonight,” he said reluctantly. “I’m sure it will go just fine. Criminals are by no means the most exciting cast of characters one can interact with, but I’m relatively certain I’ll survive.”

  “Just explain to him what’s going to happen. Are you sure we can trust him?”

  “Of course not,” Gess said. “He’s a criminal.”

  Gess bowed and took his leave. Slayne remained, his face colored with doubt. The silence in the air was awkward as Gess slowly made his descent.

  “What’s on your mind, Marros?” Blackhall asked after the Veilwarden had gone.

  “Aaric,” Slayne said. He turned a chair around and sat. “This is dirty business. I have experience in dirty business, but you don’t, and I need to tell you I’m not sure this is going to work.”

  “I know,” Blackhall said. “I’ve had knots in my stomach all day. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had knots in my damn stomach, Marros? I was twelve, about to kiss a girl in the stables.” He ran his hand over his face. His eyes were raw and tired, and he felt like he could sleep for a month. “This is the only way,” he said. “At least it’s the only way I can think of that won’t get a lot of innocent people killed.”

  Slayne nodded. “We’ll get started tonight, and try to find this Targo character. I’m worried about that bastard Harrick…you know he’s as obsessed with those blades as the Empress is with that amulet. When he finds out we don’t have them anymore he’s bound to try something stupid.”

  “I hope he does,” Blackhall said. His teeth clenched. “We have to burn them out, Marros. But we have to do it this way – our way – and not Karthas’s. I know we’re here to do this job, and that we’re not supposed to give a shit about the people living here, but…” He clapped his hands in frustration.

  Goddess, this really is impossible.

  They sat quietly for a time.

  “How’s Cassandra?” Slayne finally asked.

  “Angry,” Blackhall sighed. “She wants to know when I’ll be home.” He put his head in his hands.

  “You’re doing your duty,” Slayne said.

  “She has every right to be angry,” Blackhall said. “I was barely there for a week the last time. Now I’ve been gone again for…how long has it been?”

  “We’ve only been in Ebonmark for a three-and-a-half weeks,” Slayne said. “But we were cleaning out Tuscar camps before that, which would make it…

  “Three months,” Blackhall said bitterly. “Goddess. That means Malachai is almost two years old…” He swallowed. “It would be nice to see home again.”

  “You will,” Slayne said. “Soon. And then you won’t be able to get out of there fast enough.”

  Blackhall smiled. He remembered Malachai’s first steps, remembered his birth, remembered Cassandra’s beautiful face that night under the stars, knowing somehow even before they’d made love that a child would come of it. He yearned to be with them.

  “She said in her last letter he’s becoming quite the terror,” Blackhall said. “Goddess, I miss them. How’s your daughter?”

  Slayne shrugged. “Too old to be worrying about me,” he said.

  “Marros,” Blackhall said. “I know we can do this.”

  “Yes, we can,” Slayne nodded. “It won’t be easy. And it won’t be pretty. But we’ll get it done.”

  Slayne took his leave. Blackhall waited till his friend was gone before he pulled out the letters from his wife. One was an angry plea for him to step down from command and return home, while the other was filled with details about Malachai’s words, the way he growled like a tiger when he was angry, and how he’d refuse to eat anything green. They always made lists of silly details to each other in their letters…“their drivel,” Cassandra called it.

  Despite everything that he still had to do Blackhall pulled out a fresh parchment and quill to write a letter back to her. He needed to produce some drivel of his own.

  Thirty

  Once, I was human.

  He always told himself that when he felt his grip on reality slipping. Now there was no telling what Aram Keyes was. He had only vague memories of his life before he’d become a slave to the drugs and tonics he’d crafted with his own hands.

  The labs were choked with ruby smoke and emerald light. Networks of hoses and wires covered the walls like purple veins. Everything churned and bubbled and gave off fumes that would have killed any normal being.

  Keyes walked with his leathery hands clasped behind his back. The edges of his red cloak dragged on the floor. His skin was taut and yellow and his eyes were narrow and silver. Keyes’s teeth were made of metal, his fingernails were iron, and his heart was a network of artificial tubes pumping vital fluids, coolants and drugs to his extremities.

  Once, I was human.

  Keyes watched his masked and bandaged subordinates haul bags of sulfur and hemlock to the mixing tanks. They still needed more liquefied bone marrow, which would arrive in a matter of hours, a special order placed to the alchemists in Raithe who carried such specimens in large quantity and sold it with equal fervor to the Black Guild or the Phage or whoever else could meet their extraordinary prices.

  Serpentheart was undoubtedly Keyes’s finest creation. The test run had been an unprecedented success, and now he was ready to try a more volatile mix. Keyes detested the idea of that whore Vellexa helping him deploy the toxin, but he had woefully little knowledge of life outside the Cauldron, and he had no idea how his weapon would be moved to Ebonmark. It had been a decade or more since he’d set foot outside the labs. He was an artist, not a soldier.

  Keyes stood over a vat of Serpentheart and gazed at the blood-purpl
e liquid. The vat was large enough to house a school of sharks. One drop of Serpentheart was all it took to kill a house full of people, but the Count insisted they deploy it all. It seemed a bit excessive, but it wasn’t Keyes’s place to question.

  The strong smell of the swirling fumes wafted up to his augmented nose. In another day or two everything would be ready. Keyes was very curious to see how this new mix would affect a living creature…or many. Perhaps it was time to take a trip back to the surface, after all.

  Keyes smiled.

  I’m no longer human. Maybe I never was.

  Thirty-One

  She was beautiful. Kath sat next to the bed and watched her, not with lust but with a sense of awe, for when he looked at her he saw the face of the One Goddess. Corvinia, of course, had never needed to be saved, for she herself was the Savior. She’d freed herself from torture during the Turn of Night, even after the Unmaker spent forty days raping her upon the Stone of Pain, but in the end her own force of will released her from his power and she struck him down and sent him back to the black pits from whence he came.

  Corvinia suffered for our sins, blessed may She be.

  Kath crossed himself. Surely she approved of what he’d done. This woman had performed an act of inexorable kindness, and he’d repay her. He would’ve done so even if he didn’t feel so compelled, so self-consciously obligated.

  I was meant to watch over her. He could sense when her pain got worse even if he was in another part of the house; he’d race to her side and do whatever he could, even if that wasn’t much. She’s a miracle. Thank the One Goddess she doesn’t seem to need me right now, because that probably means she isn’t suffering.

  She lay face down on the bed, her golden hair spilled across her pale shoulders. Her Allaji heritage was evident not only in the paleness of her skin but also in the tattoos on her back, hips, stomach and arms. Kath knew these were different from Den’nari tattoos, which told stories; Allaji tattoos, they said, were magic. Kath might have doubted that before, but he couldn’t now, for the grievous wound on her back – an injury sustained from a ring’tai which would’ve killed almost anyone else – was almost fully healed. Her skin was still hot to the touch, but after surviving that injury fighting off a fever should have been child’s play.

  She was a flawless jewel. He’d been delicate when he’d carried her, had treated her like an artifact. Calestra had undressed her and cleaned her wounds so he wouldn’t see her nude.

  She slept soundly. Kath watched her breathe.

  I’ll take care of you, he thought. She’d saved him, after all. He owed her so much for that.

  Golden afternoon light illuminated the specks of dust in the bedroom like dirty stars. The air was still and cold and his sister’s footsteps in the hall made the wooden floors squeak. He heard horses and the occasional voice in the street outside.

  Kath felt a glow in his chest, a sense of comfort and warmth placed there by the presence of this nameless angel. He couldn’t understand it, couldn’t explain it, but there was a connection between them. She pervaded his every thought.

  After a time Kath left her alone in his small bedroom. He closed the door, and after a moment of dizziness his wits returned to him. He actually felt the bond weaken as he put distance and obstacles between himself and the woman, and that realization made his chest ache with worry.

  He was under a spell of some sort. He felt like he’d been drugged, but only when he was directly in her presence.

  What power does she have over me? Is my family safe with her in the house? Am I?

  Kath didn’t understand magic, and didn’t care to. It was evil, or at least that’s what he’d been brought up to believe. He’d questioned the notion when he was younger. Didn’t the Empress keep Veilwardens, the very beings who Touched the Veil, as retainers and agents? But Kath had learned that the manner in which a Veilwarden used magic was different from the way this woman did, for she was a Bloodspeaker, marked by her black tongue. Kath wasn’t superstitious, but like any reasonable person he was often distrustful of what he didn’t understand. The fact that magic existed was common knowledge, but few people Kath knew had ever seen it used, and that made it seem less real.

  But she’s real. Whatever she’s done to me is real, and that scares me.

  Kath knew he’d been affected by magic. He shouldn’t have brought the woman there – it was treason, since she’d obviously sustained her injuries at the hands of Colonel Blackhall’s henchman Marros Slayne, and that made her an enemy of the Jlantrian authority and therefore an enemy of the city. To make matters worse, by leaving camp and not reporting in after he’d been healed of his sickness Kath was also a deserter. He had to speak with Captain Tyburn as soon as possible. What would Tyburn do? Worse yet, what would the Colonel do – or Slayne, a man everyone knew used to be a criminal and mercenary before he went to work for the White Dragon – if they found out Kath was harboring this woman? She was a thief, after all, and a Bloodspeaker.

  Kath shook his head. It didn’t matter, because magic or no he’d promised to keep her safe, and that was exactly what he planned to do.

  He descended the stairs from the uppermost level of the Cardrezhej home and made his way to the middle floor. Most of the doors were closed, and everything was quiet save for Julei’s soft humming. The house was small and the halls were narrow, though much of the claustrophobic atmosphere stemmed from the hundreds of books piled everywhere. Drogan had a powerful love of reading, as did his children, and every inch of the house not already occupied by something utilitarian or breathing was filled with leather tomes. The bottom floor was Drogan’s bookshop, but Kath and Calestra used to joke that the volumes there in the store were making baby books at night, which was why it seemed they’d invaded every inch of the house. Books were Drogan’s passion and his trade, and Kath envied him that, for it meant his father still had something to pour his love and energy into now that Illistra was gone.

  The second floor consisted of several rooms, including Kath’s sister’s bedrooms and his father’s study, as well as at least one room stuffed with nothing but the ubiquitous books. A single hallway divided the middle level in half, and a small window stood at either end. Kath heard Julei singing in her bedroom, just as he heard Drogan’s muffled voice from the bottom of the stairs and Calestra’s footsteps in the kitchen at the back of the house.

  Kath quietly approached Julei’s room and put his ear to the door. Her singing stopped, and all Kath heard was the quiet mewling of a cat. He carefully turned the knob and pushed into the room with a smile on his face. Julei’s room was small and bright. An oil lamp leaked golden light from a table in the corner. Julei had a cat (Kath could never keep track of its name since she changed it every few days), whose bed of blankets lay on the floor in the midst of a terrible clutter of unfolded dresses, soft-bound books, balls of yarn and dolls. He heard Julei behind the door, so Kath slowly pushed against it until she was gently pressed against the wall.

  “Kath! Stop it!”

  He reached around, found her ribs, and tickled her furiously. After her giggles started to wane he relented and let her go. Julei was a beautiful child, just past nine years old. It was a delicate age, right at the cusp of innocence and the all-too-brief road to adulthood. She had dark hair like their mother, and though Calestra had informed Kath they’d recently cut it shorter it still spilled down to the middle of her back. Julei had a perfectly androgynous figure and a lovely face, with wide green eyes and faint freckles.

  “Hel-lo,” she sang. “Are you feeling better, Kath?”

  “I suppose so. I’m still very tired.”

  “Hmmm…is that lady still asleep?”

  Kath hated to hear her ask about that. He had to get the woman away from there, if he could just figure out a safe place to take her. “Yes. She’ll be awake soon, though, and I’ll help her get home.”

  He sat down on Julei’s tiny bed, hoping his weight wasn’t too much for it. Julei casually walked over to her
yarn. She’d braided a string with her fingers, and while Kath sat there she stuffed it neatly into a small jewelry box before she sat down next to him.

  “Wow,” he smiled. “If only you kept the rest of your room that neat…”

  “Kaaath…”

  “You’re a slob,” he said with a smile. Julei gave him a sidelong glance.

  “You’re a horse head,” she said with a laugh.

  “That’s true,” he smiled back. “But horses are a little bit smarter than me. Sometimes.”

  “I agree,” Calestra said from the doorway.

  Kath looked at Calestra, his younger sister by two years, and now as ever she and Julei’s resemblance to both each other and Illistra was uncanny. Pale and raven-haired beauties, every one, with emerald eyes, faint freckles and thin frames. Julei would grow and in seven years she’d be Calestra’s twin.

  Thank the Goddess I’m the only one who looks like Drogan, he thought.

  “Hel-lo,” Julei said to her sister.

  “We didn’t hear you come upstairs,” Kath smiled. Calestra didn’t smile back. She didn’t smile much anymore, but he supposed he didn’t, either.

  “I need your help in the kitchen,” she said flatly.

  “Me?” Julei asked. Kath couldn’t tell if she was hopeful or terrified.

  “No, horse head,” Calestra said, and she walked back down the hall. Julei laughed, but Calestra hadn’t.

  Kath stood up, his gut twisted with worry. He smiled, picked Julei up and dropped her back onto her bed so he could listen to her giggle-filled cry as she bounced. When that was done he left Julei with her yarn and followed Calestra downstairs, readying for the fight he knew was coming.