by Luke Scull
Cole stared up at the ceiling and didn’t reply, blinking desperately, hoping Derkin would think the sudden tears in his eyes were down to the slap he’d just given him.
A misshapen hand settled on his arm and gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘Don’t let them break you,’ his friend whispered. ‘You’re stronger than they are.’
‘I’m not strong,’ Cole replied hoarsely. ‘I’m a nobody. A common bastard.’
Derkin shook his head. ‘That doesn’t matter now. It’s not what you’re born as that’s important. It’s what you become.’
‘You don’t understand.’
‘Don’t I?’ Derkin said quietly. ‘Look at me. I was born a freak. My ma and I were sent to live with all the other undesirables. There’s a whole city beneath Thelassa, a city no one ever sees except criminals and the deformed. The Mistress doesn’t want people like me ruining her perfect paradise.’
Cole thought back to his lessons with the Darkson in the ruins beneath Thelassa. ‘Sanctuary?’ he whispered. ‘You mean there are people living in those ruins?’
Derkin nodded gravely. ‘People and other things. The Abandoned. They’re like men, but… they’re not all there.’
‘That’s why you came to Newharvest, isn’t it?’ Cole said slowly. ‘To escape the ruins. Even this place is better than where you came from.’
‘Yes. At least here I’m worth something. I have a livelihood, a home of my own. I can look after my ma.’
Cole stared at the hunchback and was overcome with sympathy. How hard must Derkin’s life be with his curved spine and twisted fingers and eyes that seemed to stare off in opposite directions? He himself had enjoyed an easy time of it growing up in Dorminia, he realized. If he’d ever wanted for anything, he’d merely had to ask. The Grey City was a hard place for most, but the truth was that he had been privileged. Maybe he ought to have been more grateful for the blessings he’d enjoyed. Looking back, he had at times been selfish and self-centred. Most of the time, if he was honest.
His rare moment of introspection was interrupted by the sudden and strange sensation something was amiss. It took him a moment to realize what it was. He could hear a second heartbeat coming from the next room: a second heartbeat besides that of Derkin’s mother.
‘Derkin,’ Cole whispered urgently, dread rising in him. ‘You’d better check on your ma.’
The hunchback’s brow creased in confusion, but he nonetheless hobbled over to the door and poked his head into the other room.
‘Hello, runt. Corvac sends his regards.’
Cole’s blood froze. It was Shank, the Condemned who’d stabbed Ed and left him fighting for his life.
Derkin’s outraged cry cut through the sound of the storm raging outside. There was the crash of furniture breaking, and then silence.
‘You bit me, you little swine!’ came Shank’s voice, shrill with disgust. ‘What kind of man bites another? You might’ve given me some sort of disease! Well, you can just lie there and watch while I skin your ma alive. After that I’ll deal with your friend in the room over there.’
Cole searched around frantically, desperate for a way to escape. There was a shutter on the wall above his head, which Derkin and his mother occasionally opened to let in fresh air. It was closed due to the awful weather battering Newharvest, but if he could just struggle to his feet…
The world swam as he tried to rise. He staggered, knocked over the piss bucket next to the bed and felt warm liquid soaking his trousers. He didn’t care about that, he was too terrified the clatter would alert Shank.
He released the latch on the shutters and flung them wide open. Windswept rain immediately gusted in to sprinkle his face. The window was just wide enough to crawl through. He took a shuddering breath and prepared to climb out.
Derkin’s sobs tore his attention away from the opening. He looked from the doorway to the window and back. The old Cole wouldn’t have hesitated; he’d have stormed into the room and confronted the deranged knife-wielding maniac without a second’s thought.
He wasn’t that man any more and besides, he didn’t have a weapon. There was nothing he could use against Shank. Not unless he fancied wielding a piss-stained bucket. Full of self-loathing, he readied himself to climb out of the window.
There was a sudden flapping sound from outside, and a dark shadow fell across the room. Cole jumped back in shock. Beady eyes stared at him from the window, black feathers dripping wet from the storm.
‘You,’ Cole whispered.
The crow had landed on the window ledge. It was clutching something in its claws, something bright and sharp and with a large ruby in the hilt—
‘Magebane,’ Cole gasped.
The crow released the dagger and the weapon clattered to the floor. ‘Caw,’ the crow said. Not cried, but said.
Cole reached down with shaking hands. The last time he’d seen his magical dagger was the night he had slid its cold length inside Salazar’s withered old body. As his hand closed around the jewelled hilt, a soft blue glow sprang up around the blade.
‘Please,’ begged Derkin from the other room. ‘Don’t hurt her. That’s my ma.’
The crow leaped down to the floor and regarded Cole with a frighteningly intelligent gaze. Cole looked at the bird and then out of the window. He could seek refuge with the Whitecloaks. Shank would be arrested, Corvac too if Cole could prove the Mad Dog leader had freed the knifeman. He hesitated again.
Davarus Cole was no hero. But neither was he a coward. He wouldn’t abandon his friends.
Gritting his teeth, he turned and stumbled towards the doorway.
Derkin was curled up on the floor, a big gash on his head. A broken chair lay nearby. Shank was leaning over Derkin’s mother, a fistful of her hair in one hand. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face where the knifeman had made a small cut in her scalp.
‘Ghost,’ the maniac drawled when he saw Cole standing in the doorway. ‘I was planning to save you for last. Corvac promised to pardon me for stabbing that big retard if I brought your head back to him.’
‘Let her go,’ Cole said, trying not to let his weakness show. His hands were trembling and his heart was racing and he felt as though he might collapse at any moment. He raised the glowing dagger in his shaking palm.
Shank whirled Derkin’s mother around, positioning himself behind her. He placed the edge of his own knife against her neck. ‘You come any closer and I’ll slit her throat. Is that… magic? The Trinity will tear you apart when they learn you’ve stolen it from them!’ The knifeman shook his head in self-righteous indignation. ‘I might have butchered men and women like hogs but I’ve never stolen from anyone. You’re nothing but a dirty thief. You know something? People like you make me physically sick.’
Cole stared at Shank. At the bastard who’d threatened to cut off his balls, who’d made a ruin of poor Ed’s chest. Who was even now threatening to slit the throat of a helpless old woman.
Something snapped.
‘Shank,’ he said flatly, all his fear forgotten.
‘What?’
‘Fuck off.’
He had only a few inches to aim for, the top of Shank’s forehead poking out just above his hostage’s bun of white hair. It was a tiny target, a difficult ask even back in his glory days, but a cold certainty seemed to guide his hand as he flicked Magebane around and launched it at the deranged knifeman.
The spinning blade nicked the old woman’s hair on its way to burying itself in Shank’s skull. He stood there dumbly for a moment, the ruby hilt sticking out of his head and quivering almost comically. Then he collapsed stone dead.
Cole stared at Shank’s corpse. ‘I killed him,’ he said incredulously.
Derkin’s ma seemed more confused than afraid. ‘I thought it mighty strange, him being outside in this weather. That’ll teach me to open the door to strangers.’
Cole shook himself from his stupor. He rushed over to the old woman and examined her cut. ‘You’re bleeding.’
&n
bsp; She waved a wrinkled hand at him. ‘Oh, it’s nothing, dearie. I’ll be fine. Babykins!’ she cried suddenly. ‘You’re hurt! My baby’s hurt!’
‘Ma, don’t call me that in front of my friend,’ Derkin said desperately, rising panic in his voice as he tried to climb back to his feet. His mother bustled over to help him up, fussing over him, heedless of her own wound.
Cole bent down to retrieve Magebane. Shank’s expression was accusatory, his eyes wide with shock in the moment of his death. Cole gripped the dagger’s handle, preparing to wrench the blade free. As his fingers closed around the hilt a sudden surge of strength washed through him and he gasped. He felt alive – more vital than he had for many weeks.
He stared down at his hands. Even as he watched, the colour began to return to his skin, ghostly pale flesh slowly turning a healthy pink. He felt a pulling sensation and looked down. His stomach wound was somehow knitting back together.
‘Ghost!’ Derkin exclaimed, having finally regained his feet and assured his ma he wasn’t in any immediate danger of keeling over dead. ‘You look ten years younger.’
Cole reached up and touched his head. His hair felt thicker and less brittle. The deep exhaustion that had settled into his bones had all but disappeared. ‘What’s happening to me?’ he said, bewildered.
‘You just fed upon that man’s soul,’ said a measured voice, as hard as iron. Standing in the doorway was a tall man wearing a tattered black overcoat. He had a red cloth tied around his eyes.
‘Now then, how did you get in here?’ Derkin’s ma exclaimed. Staring at the man, though, Cole knew the answer immediately.
‘You’re the crow,’ he whispered. ‘You saved my life in the shambler pit. You spoke to me. In my head. Are you… are you some kind of wizard?’
The stranger cocked his head, a movement that struck Cole as distinctly birdlike. ‘I’ve been watching over you since Dorminia, Davarus Cole. Since I found you propped against a building, your life bleeding out. I was on the ship that brought you to this place. I saved you from the men who were trying to rob you.’
‘It was you that killed them,’ Cole said, putting the pieces together in his head. ‘You killed them and took Magebane.’
‘Yes. To keep it safe. The weapon you hold is an anomaly. Forged of an alloy of abyssium, the demonsteel that drinks magic, and yet somehow is itself enchanted with great power. A most potent tool.’
‘Salazar made it for my father, who passed it down to me. I don’t want it. It’s an evil weapon.’
‘There are no evil weapons,’ the wizard replied. ‘Only evil men who wield them. I knew Salazar, many centuries ago. He was one of the few I considered my equal in the age before the fall of the gods. My memories are grains of sand scattered by the winds, but this I remember.’
‘You’re a Magelord?’ Cole exclaimed, shocked.
‘A Magelord?’ The man laughed, a harsh sound absent of humour. ‘I played no part in the Godswar. Immortality is a burden I need not suffer.’
‘The gods perished centuries ago! If you’re not a Magelord… how are you still alive?’
‘For five hundred years my soul survived housed in the undying body of my familiar,’ the wizard explained. ‘Every minute I walk the earth in my true form brings me closer to death. I am not immortal. I merely choose when to spend the time remaining to me.’
‘What are you doing here? What… what do you want?’
The wizard in the tattered coat shrugged. ‘What every man wants. The truth. I want to know who I am.’
‘You mean you don’t know?’
‘If I did I would not require your help! Long ago, the White Lady stole my memories. Stripped my mind bare of everything except my name: Thanates. I remember little, but this I know.’
‘Why would she do that to you?’
‘I do not recall. But I intend to find out.’
Cole glanced at Derkin and his mother, aware that neither had spoken in a while. There was something odd about them; their eyes were fixed in place, locked on the tall figure with the cloth around his eyes.
‘You put a spell on them,’ Cole said accusingly.
‘Yes,’ agreed the wizard who called himself Thanates. ‘They will not remember I was here. Now, listen to me. There is no time for questions. Retrieve your dagger.’
Cole bent down and wrenched Magebane free from Shank’s skull. The curved blade came free with a soft pop and a spatter of blood. Despite the wizard’s warning not to ask questions, Cole couldn’t stop himself. ‘You said I fed on Shank’s soul. I was dying, but now I feel stronger than ever. What’s happening to me?’
‘The stolen divinity Salazar possessed. It would seem your dagger can absorb more than just magic.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘The two of you shared a link through Magebane. When he died, the dagger transferred a part of his soul to you. Like Salazar, you are now god-touched – a custodian of the Reaver’s divine essence. Death itself resides in you. Feed it and you will grow stronger. Resist… and it will feed on you.’
‘God-touched,’ Cole whispered. He stared down at his hands.
‘Do nothing to draw attention to your powers! And keep away from the glow-globes that illuminate the town. The magic mined from the Black Lord’s corpse is tainted. The Blight itself spreads madness, but the glow-globes exacerbate its effects.’
That brought a dozen new questions to Cole’s lips, but before he could speak Thanates raised a gloved hand and his next words caused them to die in his throat. ‘The White Lady will soon have this town razed and all within massacred. We have but one chance to avert disaster. Listen carefully and I will tell you what must be done…’
Shadowport
Sasha leaned over the rail again and heaved. She hated sea travel. The motion of a ship beneath her feet made her feel nauseous at the best of times, and standing on the deck of The Lady’s Luck, staring down at the mass of bloated corpses rotting in the waters of Dusk Bay, was decidedly not the best of times.
The ship had departed Thelassa’s harbour yesterday afternoon. A monstrous crowd had gathered to watch them leave. The White Lady herself, the city’s beloved ruler, was to lead a rescue mission to the flooded remains of Shadowport, searching for survivors. Which would have been a noble gesture – three months ago.
Sasha wiped sour vomit from her chin and tried not to let her cynicism show on her face. She recalled the dead bodies that had washed up in Dorminia’s harbour in the weeks following Salazar’s greatest crime. There’d been little chance of anyone surviving a billion tons of water dropped on the city. No chance at all they could have clung on this long, even if they’d somehow survived the initial catastrophic magical assault.
Ambryl’s voice drifted over her shoulder. ‘Something troubling you, sister? Perhaps you should seek refuge below deck if the sight of death unsettles you so.’
‘It’s not the sight of death that unsettles me, it’s this endless rocking.’
And the moon dust I snorted this morning, she thought, but she didn’t add that last part. She still felt guilty about the jewellery she’d stolen from the Siren. Willard had been passed out drunk in the common room and the opportunity was too good to resist. The silver necklace and bracelet had fetched a good handful of gold between them and hunting down a dealer had been laughably easy. It seemed that in Thelassa, narcotics changed hands as readily as coin.
There was still no sign of Willard’s wife Lyressa, who had been taken the night of the festival. Sasha felt awful about taking advantage of the woman’s absence, but that taste of hashka during the Seeding had awoken all her old needs. She was a mess.
Ambryl was watching the approaching coastline with pursed lips. ‘I begin to see how foolish I was,’ she said bitterly. ‘Salazar was no god. He was a tyrant. And like all men when they do not get what they want, he lashed out. How many bodies churn beneath the waters here, sister? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Innocent victims of one man’s greed and wounded pride.’
Behind Ambryl, the all-female crew busied themselves as they neared land. The White Lady’s handmaidens were motionless statues, while the Magelord herself stood near the prow, staring at the ruins of the city up ahead. If the watery graveyard they were passing through bothered her, it didn’t show in her enchanting purple eyes.
‘What did you talk about at the palace?’ Sasha asked her sister. The adulation on Ambryl’s face as she gazed at the White Lady troubled her. Just like the crowd that gathered to cheer them on their way, Ambryl seemed to worship the immortal wizard. Almost as if she were a goddess.
From would-be assassin to devoted follower in the space of a week. The turnaround in Ambryl’s attitude was frightening.
‘We spoke of many things, sister. Of the injustices we both have suffered. Before the fall of the gods, the Mistress was the high priestess of the Mother.’
‘So it’s “the Mistress” now?’
Ambryl shot her a look. ‘It was a man that made her turn her back on the church and the Congregation and join the Alliance. She was the greatest wizard of her age and might have reconciled the church with the mageocracy. But he poisoned her heart. It was he we must thank for leading us to this Age of Ruin.’
Sasha crossed her arms and stared out over the railing. Not so long ago Dusk Bay would have been heaving with trading vessels and fishing boats. Only a year past a fleet of warships had sailed forth from Shadowport to engage in a naval war with Dorminia over the Celestial Isles.
Now the bay was a desolate wasteland. She hadn’t spotted even a single fish amongst the wreckage of the city. As far as Sasha could see, it was only a matter of time before the cartographers scribbled out Dusk Bay and replaced it with Dead Bay.
‘Lyressa still hasn’t returned,’ she whispered so that only Ambryl could hear. ‘According to Willard, the White Lady’s handmaidens took her. He won’t say why.’
Ambryl shrugged and took a bite out of an apple she had rustled up from somewhere. ‘We won’t need to put up with his moping around for much longer. I serve the White Lady now, sister. Soon I will be part of the governing council.’