Cold Iron

by Miles Cameron

  Master Sparthos frowned. ‘Little pie, I have told you never to interrupt—’

  He looked past his daughter at Aranthur, who met his eye while trying to imagine that the fearsome master swordsman had such a talkative daughter, or a daughter at all. Sparthos coughed.

  The cough went on too long and left him with a look of distaste, as if illness was a form of failure. The swordsman pursed his lips.

  ‘Timos,’ he said. ‘Had enough of Vladith?’

  Aranthur didn’t know what to say. ‘I …’ he began, and flushed.

  The two students were doing a drill he knew: one would cut at the other’s leading leg, who would remove his leg and make a counter-cut.

  ‘I would like to become your student,’ Aranthur found himself saying.

  Sparthos raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course you would. But I don’t take just any ragamuffin who stumbles in, however good his manner with my daughter.’

  Aranthur wanted to say that the master had in fact offered to teach him. But he shrugged inwardly.

  ‘Yes, Magister,’ he said.

  ‘Good. The only possible answer. Take off your gown. Take a sword. Any from that rack.’

  That rack held more swords than Aranthur had ever seen: all similar, straight double-edged swords with blades about the length of a man’s arm, and simple cross-hilts and heavy pommels. They had sharp edges, covered in nicks, and rebated, round points.

  Aranthur chose a heavy one with a broad forte and a heavy cross guard.

  Sparthos took a sword, apparently at random. He was in an arming coat, quilted hose, and cloth shoes.

  ‘Garde,’ he said.

  Aranthur had expected as much; his sword came up.

  The swords were sharp.

  Sparthos drove him around in a circle until he made a cut at the master’s arm that slowed his attack. There followed a brief phrase, with a cut and a parry by each, and then Sparthos’ sword was resting on his outstretched sword arm.

  He didn’t even feel the blow. He just froze.

  ‘Adequate,’ the master said. ‘Try harder.’

  Aranthur tried a deception in the centre line that deceived no one, and then a change of line, low to high, that got him a cut on his forearm – just a thread of a cut.

  ‘Hmm,’ Sparthos said. ‘Show me something you think you do well.’

  ‘Calligraphy?’ Aranthur said.

  Sparthos smiled. It was a thin smile, but it looked genuine.

  ‘Eh,’ he said, and attacked with a cut heavy enough that, had Aranthur missed his cover, he’d have lost a hand.

  Aranthur set himself and made his own cut, a simple reverso from high to low. As soon as the blades crossed he launched forward, his left hand looking for Sparthos’ sword wrist. Instead he found the elbow, but his cross remained intact and he drove the master’s elbow up.

  Sparthos allowed his arm to rise, pivoted his own blade on Aranthur’s blade at the cross, and slid it along in a glissade. The round point came to rest against Aranthur’s temple like a maiden’s kiss, and was gone – Aranthur had finally mastered the man’s sword arm with his own and had an arm lock.

  He let go immediately.

  Sparthos smiled. He gave a nod.

  ‘That was very promising,’ he said.

  ‘Except you would have stabbed me in the head,’ Aranthur said.

  Sparthos shrugged. ‘Perhaps, perhaps not. It is hard to know when we play with sharps and try not to hurt our students. The difference between a killing blow and a failed blow … No one should be arrogant about such a thing.’ He shrugged. ‘Your arm strike was simple and you developed it well, though your set-up from the reverso blow was childish – you all but stopped the fight to inform me it was a feint. I played along because that’s good teaching. You rewarded me by actually having an excellent second intention.’ The man smiled. ‘I will accept you as a student.’

  ‘I have a friend …’ Aranthur said.

  ‘As good as you?’ Sparthos asked.

  ‘Syr Kallinikos,’ Aranthur said, using the noble surname ruthlessly.

  Sparthos sneered. ‘Ah, a Kallinikos. Well, I do prefer paying customers. Splendid. Bring him and we will see.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘His father is one of the Duke of Volta’s friends, I believe. Still …’

  Aranthur Timos all but skipped home.

  He stopped at Kallinikos’ rooms and found him with a crowd of aristocratic friends. Kallinikos waved at him, and introduced a freckled young woman as his sister, but the other young men looked down their noses. Aranthur heard ‘Arnaut’ and ‘foreign’ and knew he was not welcome. He wrote a note on a scrap of paper for Kallinikos’ long-suffering butler, Chiraz, and went back into the street. He wished he was rich enough to take his friends out for wine, because he was wildly excited.

  But his golden future turned into ruminations on the coming rent which he could not meet, because they were a student short in their rooms. All three of them had assumed that the Zhouian would join them and pay – eventually.

  The pinch of poverty was especially tight because of the horses, which ate more than two students.

  ‘I will have to sell them,’ Aranthur said out loud.

  He stopped at the gleam of bronze in the street, stooped and found a single bronze obol, the value of about half a fish pie. Fish pie was the students’ staple food at the Academy. Aranthur had some pride, and he was only willing to force himself on Kallinikos once a week to get a larger dinner. Dinner at work was his usual method of quelling hunger, but he found that, like his sudden passion for women, he was suddenly hungry all the time.

  He picked up the obol and turned for a walk and some food, going south along the canal as far as it went, threading his way through the tenement district on the north side of the Academy. The streets were narrow and the sun never really shone, and there were hundreds of rickety bridges and ropes above the little street, connecting families across the air above him. Here the tenements were ten storeys tall and he heard terrible tales of life in them: of people who were born and died without leaving their building’s courtyard, because most of them were four-sided towers with a central yard almost as overshadowed and dark as the street. It was said that gangs ruled the towers, holding old people to ransom for street food, murdering pets, and kidnapping residents.

  Aranthur walked along the street and saw little sign of such crime. There was graffiti on every building, much of it religious and the rest sexual: Draxos is God alongside Fuck Everything and Bevan kisses like a fish. And various signs and sigils, a few of them lit with power.

  Almost anyone could access the power, since the Revolution. There were people who lacked the ability to concentrate, even with a talisman. Others lost the ability in old age, or with too much drinking. But in general, anyone could touch the source and cast, with a little instruction.

  Midway up a tenement on the east side of the street, were the words Follow the Master, Live in the Pure in bold Liote, the letters three feet high, and neatly executed.

  Aranthur kept moving quickly – more quickly now, because he was almost at the precinct wall of the Academy and he was too hungry to keep walking. But the smell of fish pie slowed him, and he turned his head to look.

  There was a girl, maybe ten years old, with a scarf wound like an Atti turban, selling a delightful smelling pie.

  ‘How much?’ he asked.

  ‘One obol,’ she piped up. She was very young, her Liote heavily accented.

  He gave her the obol and took the pie, and it was unusually delicious. Cardamom and something else. He chewed on a bit of cuttlefish. It didn’t do to ask too closely what went into a fish pie – any more than a meat pie – and he ate it quickly, because he was ravenous, as he walked back across the Academy. He entered through the gate, which was only open to second years and seniors, because it led directly into the halls and the library, but Aranthur had never been one to obey every rule. He cut across the magnificent square, decorated with fifty marble statues, and Sophia in ivory and gold
under a shimmering canopy of power that stood over her at all times and had since the Revolution.

  He went down the steps on the far side of the square and along the high street to his door. At the Lady shrine in the foyer, he paused and said a prayer of thanks for the pie, and for the girl. She was obviously a refugee. She needed the Lady.

  The pie got him up five flights of stairs, all the way to Kati’s door. He paused, because he was suddenly afraid, and because his breath stank of fish, and other, foolish reasons, and then he knocked.

  There was movement; his heart raced, and then the door opened and Kati’s oval face appeared, the door only open as wide as her head.

  ‘Yes?’ she asked. ‘Oh, Aranthur,’ she said with an encouraging smile.

  He sketched a little bow. ‘Have you seen the Book list?’

  She smiled. ‘I have, too. Come in.’ She smiled and backed away, opening her door. He followed her.

  He was inside Kati’s rooms. He would have smiled if he hadn’t been so intimidated.

  She smiled, her eyes bright. ‘We will be together all year.’

  He couldn’t believe … she sounded as happy as he was himself.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said, in a slightly different tone of voice.

  He was not all right. A drop of something had just landed on his hand with a plop. He looked down.

  It was blood.

  Another drop of blood fell from the ceiling. The floors were only boards laid on the ceiling joists; the first drops of blood were followed by an evil trickle.

  Kati choked a scream. She backed away, and suddenly had a knife in her hand.

  ‘Those are my rooms,’ Aranthur said, and he looked up.

  Kati narrowed her eyes.

  ‘Loan me your knife and I’ll go up,’ he said.

  It was happening again – that thing that had made him fight a duel and attack the bandits.

  Wordlessly, Kati handed over her knife. It was a good knife, an Eastern pattern-welded blade with a horn grip.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  He went to the door, but she kirtled her long robe through her belt, showing her legs to the knee, and took the iron poker from her fireplace. She had a fireplace. Only then did he note how much warmer her rooms were than his.

  He was on the steps by then, and going up, and she was right behind him with the poker resting over her shoulder. The door to the sixth floor was still open, cold air rolling down the steps like an icy waterfall.

  Arnaud was lying face down, a ragged gash along his throat, obviously dead. There was blood all over the floor. The pool had spread a long way and was congealing at the edges, fresh and scarlet in the middle. Aranthur’s thoughts were frozen on the smell of the blood, the sight of it.

  A tendril seemed to escape from the pool like water overflowing a dam. It ran over an uneven spot on the old wood of the floor and ran down towards the eaves.

  Who the hell would kill Arnaud?

  And is he still here?

  Aranthur had Kati’s knife. His sword was on its rack; he could see it beyond Arnaud. His own knife was … somewhere. He’d left it somewhere.

  A floorboard creaked. But he couldn’t tell if he’d done it or Kati had. He knew a working that tested for life, for organic existence. But he didn’t think he could muster the will to work it. And his talisman was hanging in the window.

  Aranthur entered cautiously, and then moved to Daud’s curtain, which was closed. He didn’t want to open the curtain – he was deeply afraid of what he would find: an enemy; an assassin; Daud’s dead body …

  He pulled the blanket back and the cubicle was empty. The bed was made; Daud’s copy of the Lexicon, his most precious possession, was on the good wool blanket. No thief would have left either.

  But his leather case was open, and all his clothes had been dumped on the bed.

  All that in a glance. Aranthur whirled, and moved to his own cubicle, with Kati at his shoulder. He raised the knife and she flicked his curtain aside …

  Empty. His own bed was unmade, and he was vaguely ashamed that Kati saw how slovenly he was. But this was worse. It took him a moment to take in that his malle, the one from the inn, was upended. The ends had been slit open to get at the lining; all his possessions were on the floor, and looked like they had been stirred with a stick.

  ‘Thieves,’ he said, without intending to speak. ‘Damn them to the icy hells.’

  ‘Shh,’ Kati cautioned.

  He turned slowly, releasing his own curtain. The two of them went after the third set of hangings. Arnaud had well-sewn tapestry curtains worked with knights and goblins in a crude, Western way with wool yarn.

  Aranthur scooped up his sword. He drew, and he motioned Kati back. She gave him a look – part exasperation, part admiration.

  ‘Of course, you have a sword,’ she said. ‘Give me my knife.’

  ‘You said shhh,’ he whispered.

  ‘There’s no one here.’

  He flicked at the tapestry and moved the curtains.

  ‘No one,’ Kati said. ‘See?’

  Aranthur didn’t agree. He thought that there was a small man, or a woman, standing very still in the far corner of the hangings, hidden by a good working that he was penetrating because he knew what to look for.

  ‘Wait …’ he began, and the thing moved.

  It wasn’t a man and his senses screamed as it came at him, eyeless, with a fanged mouth, taloned hands, arms and no legs. His impression was of something arcane, eldritch, terrible, and then it was through the curtains, talons outstretched.

  He cut. He didn’t think, didn’t measure, and the cut severed a reaching hand at the wrist. Just for a moment, the sword seemed to glow.

  The arm deflated, and the monster struck with the other claw.

  He sidestepped, stumbling, batting ineffectually with the blade …

  Kati slammed her poker down on the thing’s head. Its head crumpled as if she’d hit a bag of straw. It stopped moving; the severed hand bled smoke – black smoke – and something foul and oily dripped from the cut.

  Then the empty arm grew a sword. It grew very quickly and cut at Aranthur, even though its head looked like a burst sack.

  Aranthur made his cover, stepping to the left, tripping over Arnaud’s body and almost losing his sword. He stumbled, wincing in revulsion at planting a foot in his dead friend’s stomach, and almost falling as the black thing’s sword crossed his blade. His blade bit deeply into the black blade as if it was made of horn. Aranthur’s stumbling near run dragged at it. It didn’t seem to have much mass.

  Aranthur got his feet under him as his left shoulder slammed into the back wall of the room.

  Kati hit it again.

  It ignored her and came for him, sword first.

  This time, he crossed the odd organic sword deliberately, from the inside, moving it to his own right. He rotated his hand, just as Master Vladith taught, and plunged his point into the thing’s chest. At the same time, he put his left hand on its sword arm, as he had with Master Sparthos.

  It was like grabbing ice.

  Aranthur was too focused on the combat to worry about ice. He closed his left hand and shoved, spinning the thing, putting its talons farther from his face, keeping his blade through its chest. It was almost as light as air, and his shove collapsed it.

  Kati slammed the poker into its head for a third time.

  The taloned hand came up like lightning, but not to attack. It grabbed at its own mouth, a slash in the eyeless face, like a cut in a bag, and pulled. The head ripped open, and a black bird, like a songbird, but black and eyeless, crawled through the gaping mouth, beat its wings, and burst past Kati, who swatted at it with the fire iron.

  She missed. It turned in the air like a starling and went up the chimney.

  ‘Holy Sunrise!’ Kati shrieked. Her fire iron slammed into the opening in the flue. ‘Blessed Disa! Sunlight save us! Oh, fuck!’ She teetered against the wall.

  Aranthur was watching the sm
all hole in the flue, more like a hooded opening than a fireplace.

  ‘Get help, Kati,’ he said. ‘Get someone. Get …’ His mind rushed through the possibilities. ‘By the Eagle. Get us a Lightbringer.’

  ‘Where do you think I’d find a Lightbringer?’ she spat. ‘On a street corner?’

  She stumbled and he caught her, his sword still in his right hand.

  ‘Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods!’ panted Kati. She buried her head against his robe. Then she backed away. ‘What the … What was that?’

  Aranthur slumped. ‘No idea. But the bird … The …’ He was having trouble speaking, and the feeling of cold was spreading, not diminishing. ‘Kati? Something is wrong.’

  ‘Blessed Disa, save us!’ Kati put a hand on his brow. ‘Don’t die, Aranthur Timos,’ she said, as if scolding him, and then he heard her feet on the steps.

  He put his back to a wall and watched the brazier. It was burning on the hearth, and the smoke was flowing into the hole in the chimney that served them as a fireplace. He couldn’t cast, and he was losing consciousness. He set himself to fighting the latter, doing exercises in his head. His left hand was going an alarming red-brown colour, swelling rapidly and painfully.

  He found that he was slumping against the wall, and he pushed himself upright. He thought he heard a stirring in the chimney. His vision was tunnelling. His left arm was unresponsive. He used the wall to get upright and made a butterfly cut in the direction of the brazier.

  Right hand works.

  He was slumping against the wall again. But nothing else does.

  The floor began to vibrate. He was moving in and out of consciousness, having trouble holding on to the present reality. He awoke with a sense of falling and caught himself against the wall.

  Master Kurvenos stood in the doorway, outlined in a purple-red light. He had a staff in his hand and looked fifty feet tall.

  The tip of his staff rose and inscribed a Möbius strip in the air in blue light which flexed and began to travel, like the belt on a polishing wheel. It made a crackling sound. Sparks flew, and the black corpse on the floor began to smoke.