by Luke Scull
The ‘script’ began to writhe, just as it had on the corpse back at the morgue. Eremul held his breath and watched it like a hawk. As it crawled out of the prisoner’s skin, the Halfmage triggered his spell.
‘Got you,’ he hissed triumphantly. He bent down to scoop up the bizarre object. It had a smooth metallic body with six serrated legs. Holding it up to his ear, he could hear a faint whirring noise coming from within. He realized then that this parasite wasn’t a living thing – it was a construct, built by hands far more delicate than those of any human.
The prisoner jerked suddenly. ‘Who are you?’ he moaned. ‘Where am I?’ He tried to rise, then seemed to realize he was bound to his chair. ‘What am I doing here?’ he asked, his voice rising in panic.
Eremul and Lorganna exchanged looks. The Halfmage placed the tiny device carefully into one of his many pockets and stared down at the prisoner. The man’s demeanour was entirely different now: nervous and afraid. ‘That accent,’ Eremul said. ‘You’re from Espanda?’
‘Yes,’ the boy replied fearfully. ‘I was on my way to Tarbonne to celebrate the Rag King’s coronation. Someone attacked me on the road. I remember a bag being pulled over my head. Then… nothing.’
‘The Rag King was crowned over two years ago,’ Eremul said slowly.
‘Two years? That can’t be possible… Wait. What year is this?
‘The five hundred and first year of the Age of Ruin.’
The young Espandan paled. He looked like he was about to vomit.
‘Tell me. Have you heard of Melissan? Do you recall anything of the last two years? Anything at all?’
‘Nothing. Nothing except… nightmares. People burning. Voices whispering to me, making me do terrible things. What… what have I done?’
The Halfmage placed a hand inside his pocket, checking that the tiny device was still safely within. It felt strange. Alien. He turned to Lorganna, who was watching the captive with an intense expression. ‘Call a council meeting,’ he said triumphantly. ‘I believe we have our proof.’
Knock. Knock.
He smoothed his robes one last time. This was it. There was no turning back now.
Eremul wheeled himself to the door, took a deep breath, pulled the latch, and yanked it open to reveal the slender, dark-haired figure of Monique. Her crooked grin and the smell of her perfume and the tight black dress she wore almost took his breath away.
‘May I come in?’ she asked in her lilting Tarbonnese accent. Eremul realized he’d been sitting there gawking at her.
Shit! I have the manners of an ape.
‘Please do,’ he said gallantly, backing his chair out of the way and accidentally running over a half-eaten bone Tyro had left on the floor. He swept an arm towards the interior of the depository. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’
He wheeled himself over to his desk and yanked open the bottom drawer. ‘Carhein white,’ he said triumphantly, pulling out the bottle within. The wine merchant at the Bazaar had charged a small fortune, but it was Monique’s favourite and he wanted put his best foot forward, so to speak.
‘Why are you smiling?’ Monique asked curiously, and Eremul realized he was grinning at his own wit. Laughing at one’s jokes was generally considered the mark of the insane or at least the insufferably smug. Whilst Eremul was reasonably certain he was guilty of at least one of the two, it couldn’t hurt to keep Monique ignorant of his failings for a little while longer.
‘How can I not smile when in the company of such radiance,’ he declared, resisting the sudden urge to punch himself in the face. To his amazement, Monique’s cheeks blushed red.
‘You flatter me,’ she said. ‘I brought you these.’ She held up a bunch of bright blue flowers, an exotic variety he had never seen before. ‘They are found only in the northern mountains, where it is so cold nothing else may grow. They can survive for months without water before the flowers wither and die. Shall I place them here for you?’ She walked across to his desk and set them down neatly.
‘Er… thank you,’ he said, silently cursing himself for not sprucing up the place a little more before their evening together. ‘Would you join me for a drink?’ He wheeled himself over to the desk and pulled out the spare chair Isaac had once kept in the back. Monique took the proffered seat and he poured them both a generous measure of wine.
‘Where is your dog?’ she asked, giving him a warm smile as she brought the glass up to her violet lips.
‘Tyro? I locked him in the other room. He gets excitable around new faces.’
‘Is it easy? Training a dog in your situation?’
‘My situation?’
‘I meant only… Oh, I am sorry. Please forgive me.’ Monique blushed again and stared down into her wine.
‘Nothing to forgive,’ Eremul said magnanimously, fluttering his hands at her desperately. ‘I was only teasing. Apparently it’s common when a man… er… likes… a woman.’
Shit.
‘So you like me?’ Monique looked up from her glass and brushed a few strands of sleek black hair away from her face.
Now it was Eremul’s turn to blush. He felt terribly out of his depth. ‘I, ah… I value your friendship,’ he finished lamely.
‘Yes?’ Monique raised a perfect eyebrow. Her dark eyes danced with mischief. ‘Friends are always good. But I had hoped that you might see me as more than just a friend. In what way do you like me?’
Eremul’s heart began to hammer. He glanced around, searching for a distraction, hoping desperately that Tyro might somehow escape from the back room and start taking a piss on a few of the less valuable works of literature. Anything to get him out of this excruciating predicament. ‘Er, well, that would depend on one’s definition of “like”. That, ah, that is to say—’
‘Hush.’ Monique placed a finger against his mouth. A moment later she leaned forward and her lips pressed against his. He felt her tongue probing and sat there in shock for a moment before he returned the kiss, tasting the faint hint of spice in her mouth. Though Monique’s eyes were squeezed shut he had his wide open, and he felt strangely detached, as if he were a mere observer to the momentous event taking place. He watched her delicate fingers stroke his arm and then make their slow way down his robes; he felt himself respond in anticipation. He was simultaneously filled with dread and an undeniable, tingling excitement…
Shit, he thought. Oh shit.
There was a mighty crash from behind him and the wards that guarded the depository flared into life, triggering a series of pulses in his brain. He pulled away from Monique and turned, not needing the magical alarm to tell him there were intruders trying to enter the building. The door was hanging off its hinges; as he watched, stunned, a group of Watchmen burst in, the crossbows they held aiming straight at him. Monique gasped in terror, and it was her obvious distress that snapped Eremul of out his daze and filled him with a sudden rage.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he demanded of the soldiers in the red cloaks. ‘Do you know who I am?’
‘We know,’ said the largest of the men. It was Bracka, the bushy-bearded Marshal of the Crimson Watch. His arm looked to be well mended now, judging by the crossbow he was pointing at Eremul’s face, though he winced as he took a step into the room, his foot evidently still sore from kicking the door in. ‘You make one false move and I’ll have my men shoot you. Your woman too,’ he added, as Eremul began to mutter the arcane words that would summon a protective shield around him. The spell died on his lips as the Marshal’s threat registered.
‘Why?’ the Halfmage said in a strangled voice.
Bracka stepped aside and a ragged old fellow with a faceful of grey stubble pushed through the soldiers. It was the drunk who had jostled him on his way to the abandoned lighthouse. The Halfmage’s eyes narrowed. He knew that face—
‘Treason!’ Spymaster Remy barked, pointing an accusing finger at him. The man’s hand shook and he hiccupped as though he was still half-drunk, but there was an unmistakable glint of menace in h
is eyes. ‘Your plot has been uncovered, traitor.’
‘Plot? What are you talking about?’
‘I followed you to Raven’s Bluff. I know about your meeting with Lorganna.’
‘What of it? The last time I checked I was still a free man. Half a man, perhaps, but free nonetheless.’
‘You conspire to bring the city to ruin! Don’t try to deny it. I’ve been spying on you for weeks, on the Grand Regent’s orders. The evidence is quite overwhelming.’
Eremul stared at the soldiers and then at Monique. She looked as shocked as he was. ‘I’ve been trying to uncover the nature of the threat posed by Melissan’s rebels,’ he said slowly and deliberately. ‘Lorganna has been assisting me. I apologize if using magic in an interrogation offends your delicate sense of propriety, but it hardly qualifies me as a traitor bent on bringing the city to ruin.’
Remy sneered unpleasantly. ‘You’re a piece of work, Halfmage. A real piece of work.’
‘That I’ll grant you. It’s your other claims I find so offensive.’
Dorminia’s Master of Information took a step forward and leaned over; Eremul could smell the ale on his breath. ‘She broke easily in the end, you know,’ he growled.
‘Who did?’ Eremul snapped back, though he was beginning to feel a deep sense of dread.
‘Lorganna. We arrested her before coming here. Oh, she did well to integrate herself into the Council, taking advantage of her position as Civic Relations Minister to help foment insurrection. Targeting her employees in the arson attacks was a fine piece of misdirection. But I’ve got a good nose for sniffing out a rat.’
It took a moment for Remy’s words to sink in. ‘Lorganna and Melissan are one and the same,’ Eremul said numbly, realization hitting him like a hammer blow to the head.
How could he have been so stupid? It was the perfect ruse. And, like the witless cretin that he was, he had fallen for it.
‘She’s already confessed to everything. There’s no point denying your guilt. You’re coming with us.’
‘What’s going to happen?’ Eremul asked. Monique met his eyes and the accusing look in her dark gaze made the situation immeasurably worse. I’m innocent, he wanted to tell her. But what was the point?
Remy hiccupped again and waved Bracka and his men forward. ‘I think you already know the answer to that. It’s the gallows for you, Halfmage.’
The Unborn
Sasha stared out of the window, peering between the beads of rain that crawled down the glass. The autumn storm sent sheets of water pounding against the inn. She thought she’d heard shouts coming from the direction of the harbour, but the incessant roar of the downpour made it hard to be certain. Maybe it had just been the idle imaginings of her drug-starved brain; a sudden manifestation of the paranoia that stalked her, waiting for the slightest opportunity to create a thousand unnamed threats.
Sasha glared at the door and then turned back to the window and almost put her fist through the glass. The upper floor of the Siren was a good twenty feet above the street and there was nothing to grab hold of to break her fall, but after a week and a half locked in this room she was giving serious thought to just taking the plunge and hoping for the best.
She stared at her trembling palms. She needed a hit. She needed it bad. The Whitecloaks Ambryl had brought with her from the palace had turned the room upside down in their search and confiscated every last ounce of moon dust she’d been able to hide away. She’d screamed and scratched at them, but the guards had only continued to restrain her while her sister had calmly stated that either she accepted a fortnight of isolation in the inn or she would be taken to a cell with nothing but a dirty bedroll and shit-stained bucket by way of comforts.
She grabbed a pillow and was about to hurl it across the room when she glimpsed movement on the white marble streets below. A Whitecloak patrol was hurrying west towards the docks, their booted feet sending up great splashes of water. Without warning the sky suddenly lit up, heavy black clouds rendered an eerie blue for the blink of an eye. She thought it might have been lightning, but the tremors that shook the inn a moment later put paid to that notion. The vase she had purchased at the market to replace the one Ambryl broke toppled over, rolled a few times on the table, and then tumbled off to shatter on the floor.
Sasha felt the room spin as panic gripped her. Alchemy, she thought in terror. Memories of the Wailing Rift and the night Dorminia burned flooded back. Her breath quickened; her trembling palms began to perspire. She thought she’d resigned herself to another few days between the deathly dull confines of these four walls, but the sudden anxiety that overwhelmed her made a mockery of that resolution. Not even the threat of her sister’s wrath was enough to quell the frantic impulse to flee, to escape this building by any means necessary.
She called for Willard, but received no response. The inn shook again. She rushed across to the door and pulled desperately on the handle. The door was locked tight, as she knew it would be.
‘Someone let me out!’ she cried, rattling the handle desperately, giving the door a hard kick for good measure. In Dorminia one of the other guests would surely have answered her cries, if only to tell her to shut her whore mouth or something similarly charming. Not so in Thelassa. If the inn had other guests, they were content to mind their own business.
There was another flash of light from somewhere off in the city. She was certain she could hear distant screams, now. She picked up the small round table the vase had been resting on, thinking to ram it through the window and follow up on her earlier plan, wondering if she might force the straw mattress or at least a pillow through the opening to break her fall. Then she spotted one of Ambryl’s hairpins on the floor near the bed.
She put the table back down, hurried over to the bed and scrabbled around until her fingers closed around the thin piece of metal. She pulled away the few strands of red-blonde hair caught in the pin and tried to recall the lecture Cole had given her on how to pick a lock. As always it had been more an excuse for him to boast about the new skill he’d learned than any real desire to impart his newfound knowledge, but Sasha had been blessed with a keen mind for details. She’d been blessed with a keen mind for many things, when it wasn’t half-baked from narcotics.
She bent the end of the hairpin a little so that it stuck out at an angle, and then she carefully inserted the makeshift lockpick into the door’s keyhole and wiggled it around until she felt the locking mechanism catch. Despite her nerves, she managed to keep her hand steady long enough to gently ease it apart until finally it clicked. With a shuddering sigh of relief, Sasha thrust open the door and raced down the stairs into the common room.
It was empty save for Willard. The manager of the Lonely Siren had his back to her and was standing in the open doorway, staring out into the pouring rain. Sasha was about to ask him what the hell was going on when Lyressa emerged from the kitchen.
‘No need to be alarmed, dear,’ the innkeeper said brightly. ‘Probably just some troublemakers that have had too much to drink. The handmaidens will deal with them.’
Sasha stared, open-mouthed. She hadn’t laid eyes on Lyressa since the Seeding Festival over a month past, when the White Lady’s handmaidens had come for the woman in the middle of the night and taken her away. Yet here she was, back in the Siren as if nothing had happened, a kindly smile on her face and everything about her exactly as Sasha remembered it. Everything except one important detail.
‘You…’ she began in astonishment, hardly believing what she was seeing. ‘You were heavy with child…’
Lyressa rested a hand on her stomach. Where before it had been visibly swollen in late pregnancy, now it was almost flat. ‘Heavy with child?’ the innkeeper laughed. ‘I know I haven’t got the body I did ten years ago, but you wait till you get to my age, missy! Willard doesn’t seem to mind that I’ve put on a few extra pounds.’
At his wife’s mention of his name, Willard turned from the doorway. There was something strange about his face,
Sasha thought. His eyes seemed… glassy. As did Lyressa’s, now that she examined the woman more closely. A shiver ran down her spine. Something was very wrong here.
‘You were at least six months pregnant,’ she said, trying to remain calm. ‘You went missing the night of the festival. I was upstairs when they came and took you away. I found Willard on the floor. He was in tears.’
As Sasha spoke, a strange thing happened. Lyressa began to blink. Slowly at first, but then more rapidly. Willard, too, was in the midst of some kind of internal turmoil, his eyelids flickering dementedly, his face shuddering as if there was something beneath his skin trying to break free. Sasha’s sense of unease deepened to a rising dread.
‘You’re mistaken,’ Willard snapped. ‘Your sister said you had to be kept locked up in your room. It’s the drugs, isn’t it? You’re a hashka junkie. Your mind’s playing tricks on you. I’m not judging you; we all have our problems. But you can’t come down here saying crazy things. You understand me? You can’t come down here saying crazy things!’ There was something frantic in the man’s tone, a rising mania like a kettle of water about to boil over.
Sasha reached up to her face and massaged her throbbing skull. Was Willard right? Could years of abusing every substance she could get her hands on finally have turned her crazy? She’d suffered hallucinations before, during her worst excesses. But they’d always passed quickly, leaving her in no doubt as to their source. She spotted the chair with the broken leg, the one that had been damaged the night Lyressa had been abducted, and she knew with utter certainty that she hadn’t imagined it.
‘I… apologize,’ she said slowly and deliberately. ‘You’re right; I’m talking nonsense. Excuse me. I need to go outside and get some air.’
Like the sun suddenly emerging from behind a thunderhead, Willard’s tortured expression relaxed into one of utter serenity. The abrupt change in his mood was every bit as unnerving as his crazed behaviour a moment before. ‘Go outside? Why, it’s storming something fierce! You’ll be soaked to the bone.’