Nether Light

by Shaun Paul Stevens

“Perfect.” Probably the best-furnished prison you’ll ever see.

  Felix smiled. “Easy going lad, aren’t you? I like that.”

  Conversation moved on to unfamiliar Maker business, so Guyen turned his attention to the food. It was delicious. They ate like kings around here. Damn, he’d certainly miss this raisin bread, but it stuck in his throat picturing the others back home shovelling in their bland oats. Were they missing him? Mother needed to know he was all right. He’d send a letter.

  Around the refectory, the men and women at the trellis tables laughed and joked with one another. All sported fine dress, well-fed rumps, coiffured hair and nails, and egos to match their privilege. He’d never fit in here. He didn’t want to. He had to get home, back to Yemelyan and Mother. But how?

  16

  Six Thrones for Six Kings

  Four reverberating clangs sounded down in the quad. Fourth hour. Guyen put down The Book of Talents and went to the window. Makers streamed busily across the paving below, eyes set on the exit. This Congress thing was a right headache and no mistake, the thought of the long trek back to the gaudy Devotoria hardly appealing. It was bound to be a stuffy affair, and what help would he be anyway? From what little information he’d gleaned, the Devotions were assembling to sentence someone for crimes against Binding. Who knew what they were? Mulling the possibilities over, he took out the fake silver, spinning it on the sill. It landed heads as last set. Crimes against Binding had better not include being able to cast spells on a coin, or it would be him in the dock.

  Mood sour, he gathered his things together, locking the book away in the safe—it wasn’t like he had anything else of value to put in it. He picked up the city pass Felix had dropped off—a maroon booklet with a silver Star of Devotion on the front. Inside, carefully scribed, they’d recorded every aspect of his appearance, Assignment, and Devotee status. The document only made this whole messed-up situation more official, a depressing thought, but the statutes demanded he carry the booklet at all times within the city, on pain of imprisonment. And that sounded like no fun at all. So he slipped it inside his jacket. He locked up and headed down to join the throng, Toulesh in tow.

  A turret of stairs wound down from the sixth floor in a never-ending spiral, dizzying by the time you reached the bottom where a lobby filled with antique suits of armour and oil paintings led out to the quad. He hurried towards the gatehouse. Several men in green and black uniform stood in the way, one accosting him. It was the unfriendly fellow with the receding ginger hairline who’d accidentally-on-purpose spilled his drink.

  “Pledge?” the man barked.

  “Excuse me?” Guyen said.

  “Your Pledge, Maker. I’d see it, please.”

  “Sorry, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  He rolled his eyes. “When did you get here?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “I see.” He leaned over the counter, retrieving a scroll. “Name?”

  “Yorkov.”

  “Foreign name, is it?”

  “Krellen, if you must know.”

  “Oh.” He scanned the scroll. “Ah, you haven’t been issued one yet. Wait here.” He strode over to another guard while someone else pointed a sword at him. Well, these people knew how to make you feel at home! The guard disappeared through a side door.

  The sergeant marched back over. “Won’t be a minute. Stand clear.” He shoved Guyen aside as a group passed. All wore neck chains, displaying them as they cleared the checkpoint. “So, you’re the new Bindcrafter?” he muttered, tasting the word, not liking the flavour.

  Guyen offered a blank stare. “What gave it away?”

  The sergeant nodded towards the street beyond the gate. “Think you’ve got what it takes to survive out there, do you?” The boulevard was filled with stalls, livestock, merchants and shoppers. He pursed his lips. “You know, my brother died fighting your lot.”

  A sticky silence descended.

  “What’s a Pledge?” Guyen asked.

  The sergeant ignored the question, instead waving another group of well-tailored, middle-aged fellows through with some meaningless banter. He seemed well-known to them. He turned back. “Twenty he was. Twenty! That’s no age, is it?”

  “I suppose not.”

  The other guard reappeared with a small wooden box. He passed it to the sergeant, who opened it, revealing a rectangular stone attached to a chain. Black as coal, it caught no light despite its polished surface. “Your Pledge, Bindcrafter.”

  “What’s that for?”

  “So as we’ll have godsight on you, friend.”

  “Dare I ask, what is godsight?”

  The jobsworth wasn’t in the mood to answer questions. “Make sure it stays in contact with your skin at all times. Take it off and we’ll know about it.” He dumped it in Guyen’s palm, whereupon it heated, smoked slightly, then returned to what passed for normal. It bore an inscription: Yorkov.o.MAK. Guyen removed his tricorne and looped the chain around his neck. He repositioned his hat.

  “Make sure you’re back for curfew by eleven,” the sergeant grunted.

  The other guard looked up. “Ordinate curfew’s tenth hour, Hielsen.”

  Hielsen sniffed. “My mistake. Must be getting forgetful in my old age.”

  Forgetful and obnoxious, Guyen thought. “What happens if I’m not back by ten?” he asked.

  “You’ll be up before the Maker Justice,” the other guard said, “and a strike put on your permanent record.”

  “How many strikes is bad?”

  “Not many.” They exchanged a look. “You go careful now.”

  Hielsen stepped aside, waving him out onto the Bustle, as the market boulevard was known.

  Late-afternoon sunlight bathed shoppers purchasing herbs, linens and meats. It felt better to be outside Maker walls, if a little daunting set free in the city, although how free was debatable—the Pledge was still prickly warm against his skin. He fell into step with a group of Makers, hanging back so they didn’t notice him. Their confident, some might say arrogant demeanour marked them out, regular Carmanians giving them as wide a berth as they gave the shit in the gutters, of which there was plenty. They passed squares and churches, following canals, cutting through hidden markets selling produce from all over the Feyrlands, and he was soon lost. What if the group he was trailing weren’t going to Congress after all? But they turned onto a main road and the Devotoria shot up straight ahead, a swarm of colourfully dressed men and women gravitating towards the street entrance. He approached.

  “Devotees only,” a guard barked. Guyen pulled out the Pledge. The guard scowled, tapping another of his security detail on the shoulder. The man turned round, face white as snow.

  “I don’t like the look of this one,” the first guard said. “Check him out.”

  The white-faced man looked Guyen up and down. “City pass?” he prompted.

  Guyen handed it over.

  He examined it, looking up with surprise, then frowned. “According to this, you’re a Bindcrafter,” he said. “Isn’t that a metallurgy mark on your neck?”

  “They changed their minds,” Guyen said. Maybe they wouldn’t let him in after all this? That would be a let-off.

  The man hummed a concerned note, hooking up his Pledge for a closer look. He grunted. “Must be right then.” He handed the passbook back and waved him through. Oh well, no escape then.

  He went with the flow, following a horde of well-heeled Devotees processing up the steps. Reaching the grand entrance, the crowd funnelled down a wide flight of stairs, puffed-up Highborns pressing in all around. They obviously thought they were harbingers of high fashion—the women sporting flouncy hats and rich dresses set off with colourful fans, the men in uniforms or natty suits, lavish wigs powdered in a rainbow of pastels. Devotees, it seemed, were a disparate bunch, the only thing in common their egos and the Pledges hanging around their necks.

  The corridor at the bottom of the steps ended in a foyer. A black expanse stretched
out beyond several archways, an underground amphitheatre—the Underbelly someone called it. Choosing an archway at random, he walked through, receiving a token as he did from a clerk—a tin coin embossed with a Star of Devotion. There was no time to ask what it was for.

  Sweeping tiers of musty, wooden stalls stretched out, a hubbub of chattering voices filling the air. There had to be hundreds, maybe thousands of Devotees here. The atmosphere was dank and smoky, the place lit by torches. What was wrong with these people, had they not heard of sodalight? He took the nearest empty seat, resting his tricorne on his lap.

  The focal point was a stage which wouldn’t have looked out of place in the theatre district. Upon it, six chairs seated the Prime Wields, Rialto second from the left. Six thrones for six kings, Guyen thought, to rule a sick country. They wore the stiffest, most vacuous clothes you ever saw—ornate robes, hats and hairpieces, all trying to outdo each other in solemnity, pomp and superiority.

  A majestic clock hung above the stage. Something about it irked, so Guyen loosed Toulesh to get a closer look. Immediately, the feeling came back it was more than just a time teller. The metallic surface glimmered grey in the torchlight, then a spinning orb on top, part of the Faze mechanism working the thing, glinted blue. Odd. It struck the hour with a hollow chime, triggering an attack of clamour, and the Underbelly was suddenly too hot, too confining, buffeted with too much noise and energy.

  Return, he sent.

  Toulesh folded back in and the oppressive feeling lifted.

  The portly man at centre stage rose to his feet. Sporting the longest, curliest wig, and the stiffest collars, he had to be the Grande Prime—Scholar Wilhelm. As head of the Prime Council, the buck stopped with him. How much of that buck had involved deploying the soldiers responsible for Kiani’s death? It would be worth meeting the man down a dark alley to find out. He raised his rod and slammed it against the lectern. A blinding light shot from the end. The Underbelly let out a unison gasp, then ripples of nervous laughter. What was that? Some kind of Faze trick? Rialto looked distinctly unimpressed.

  Guyen scanned the faces of the other Primes, matching them to the crests on their chairs, recalling their names from the inscriptions on their study doors. A silver-haired woman—Volka, she would be Corpus Prime, a slick fellow with a pencil moustache, that had to be Ferranti, the Merchant Prime. A tall, stately-looking man in a powder-blue wig would be Lord Devere, head of the Culturalists, and a stocky black man in crisp red uniform, that could only be General Berese, Prime Wield over War. It was a rogues’ gallery of the bastards responsible for destroying his family. Vengeance burned for Kiani.

  “I declare Congress now in session,” the Grande Prime boomed.

  A latecomer, a young woman, squeezed onto the bench. Guyen shuffled up. She elbowed him in the ribs. He moved a little further.

  “Thanks,” she whispered.

  He smiled politely, returning his attention to the Grande Prime. The Scholar had no need to bellow at his audience, the acoustics unnervingly placing his voice directly in your ear.

  “Most honourable fellows, we are here today to uphold our gravest duty in defence of the Binding. We must judge a member of our body who has chosen self over society and chaos over order, threatening the fragile balance we are sworn to protect. The choice before us is a binary one, whether to incarcerate or impose the ultimate penalty. As one body, we must act in good conscience, and as tradition dictates the vote will be a free one. But be in no doubt, fellows, the citizenry watch on and will judge us. Let their judgment not be that we are weak.”

  The girl in the next seat was distracting. Slight, but lean and athletic, black hair braided, she had wide, brown eyes, and carried off a well-tailored, blue leather jacket with style, suggesting coin or at least taste. The distraction stemmed from the switchblade she flicked repeatedly open and closed.

  She noticed him looking and stowed the knife inside her jacket. She leaned in, smelling of jasmine. “What’s the matter,” she whispered, “ain’t you seen a girl with a blade before?”

  “Not one that deadly.”

  She frowned. “It’s only for peeling fruit.”

  From the design and her proficiency with the device, that sounded unlikely. The best course of action was to ignore her.

  But she ploughed on anyway. “Mist, they call me. What do they call you?”

  “Guyen.”

  “You’ve got green eyes,” she observed.

  “Have I?”

  She missed the sarcasm. “Pleased to make yours.” She held out a hand. He touched it lightly, then pressed his hand over his mouth in what he hoped was the universal language for quiet. He nodded meaningfully at the stage. She seemed to get the message and changed position to focus on Wilhelm.

  “And now to business,” the Grande Prime declared. A commotion arose at the side of the stage, two guardsmen hauling a struggling man into view. A black mask covered most of his face, depriving him of speech, a straitjacket denying him movement. Jeering broke out. Wilhelm signalled for Culture Prime Devere to take over.

  The austere man stood, regarding the prisoner. “Xeithor Bala Higuen,” he proclaimed, “by the damning evidence presented to Council, you have been found guilty of sacrilege against Binding in the first degree. Today, you will receive your sentence.”

  The man thrashed wildly, but his captors held him tight.

  Devere addressed the audience. “In accordance with Primearchy statutes, only the body may condemn a fellow Devotee to death. It is not a duty to be undertaken lightly, but these are times of war. In Krell, we fight the Unbound in ditches and caves, and in the east we are attacked at our borders by Althuisan raiding parties even as their armies gather beyond the Crystal Mountains. Our resources are stretched, fellows, and all the while, refugees flood down the Galt, the Unbound hiding amongst them. We cannot allow these abominations to weaken us from within, yet this man before you gave them shelter.”

  More jeers rang out. The Sendali certainly knew how to play to a crowd.

  “The Unbound filter into our streets and cafes, unseen and unrecorded,” he continued. “They lurk outside our windows at night. They rape our wives and defile our children. A stand must be made, not only against the Unbound, but against Binding denial in every guise, rooting out the uncertified, the halfbound, all who would harbour disease among us.”

  “Hypocrite,” the girl muttered.

  Guyen glanced sideways. “What?”

  “His halfbound slave,” she hissed. “Over there, by the side of the stage.” She pointed at a dishevelled man dressed in little more than rags. The poor fellow. The loathsome articles of slavery legalised the ownership of halfbounds—those whose mental faculties had been destroyed by Binding, but such victims needed help, not exploitation. Devere had to be low to show his slave off in public like this, but then, a lot of Sendalis thought them status symbols.

  An elegant woman stood beside the halfbound. Guyen double took. Wasn’t that the High Mistress who’d visited the Office of Assignment in Tal Maran? Her flowing auburn hair was unmistakeable. Ariana had said she was Devere’s wife. She had to be twenty years his junior. The man had done well, better than she had anyway. Jal Belana, yes, that was her name.

  Belana? Hadn’t that name cropped up somewhere else recently?

  He stroked his nail, using the memory prompt to recall Rialto’s list of the Talents. It formed in his mind’s eye as if he held it in front of him. Globes, there it was, next to Politique—Belana. Why hadn’t he registered that? Like your typical pig, he’d assumed the Wields would all be men. He’d only gone and applied to serve under the Culture Prime’s wife—that hardly constituted keeping a low profile. Oh well, there was nothing he could do about it now, maybe it wouldn’t be her, Belana might be a common Sendali name. He loosened his collar, wishing for fresher air and an end to the day.

  Devere raved on. “These people deny the Binding. They even pursue rights for the Unbound. They must be made an example of. So, the motion before
us is whether to pass a sentence of death. As you cast your ballot, consider the sanity and health of our great nation, that you may make this painful yet necessary choice with clear conscience.” He paused for effect. “I call the vote.”

  A horn sounded, and the Devotees rose, filing out through the arches. Guyen exchanged a look with the girl. “What’s happening?”

  She grimaced. “Now we cast our votes, Greens.”

  The voting system was simple. Each Devotee passed their token to a teller as they walked through one of two doors, into either the Aye or Nay lobby. An Aye vote would be for execution. Well, Guyen wasn’t about to condemn someone to death on the word of a Sendali lord. But the Nay lobby was deserted, whereas the queue for the Ayes looked infinite. A familiar face lined up amongst the sheep. Forgotten anger rose afresh—Rossi.

  Toulesh stormed up to him. The cadet glanced over, jaw dropping. Ha! I bet he wasn’t expecting to see you today. Thoughts of Rossi had not been uppermost, what with everything that had happened recently, but now only one thing sprang to mind—revenge for Yemelyan. The bastard would pay at the first opportunity. And it would be expensive.

  “Come on,” the girl said. She made to join the queue for the Ayes.

  Guyen summoned Toulesh. “I’m not going through there.”

  “What?” She looked puzzled. “Why not?”

  “I’m not voting to kill him. Why should I?”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s the done thing, Greens. No point making a scene. No one cares, look at the line, it’ll make no difference what we do.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “The name’s Guyen, and it always makes a difference. You should stand up for what you believe in.”

  She grunted a sore laugh. “You might be right, but it doesn’t do to get noticed around here. Not when there’s nothing to be gained.”

  The crowd thinned, revealing another familiar face, a pretty one—Ariana. She sidled over, fingering her token.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded. Her eyes dropped to the Pledge. “I’ll be damned. They’ve admitted you to the Devotions?”