Cold Iron

by Miles Cameron

  Drako spat. ‘A little torture now will save a thousand lives tomorrow.’

  ‘So men like you always tell yourselves,’ Kurvenos said. ‘I taught you better. All you are when you are done is a torturer.’

  In another room, Ansu and Dahlia, with bodies at their feet and bloody swords in their hands – Ansu’s long and curved, Dahlia’s long and straight. Dahlia had a jewel in her hand, and her mouth was moving. Ansu’s shoulders had the posture of intent restraint, the very edge of violence.

  And in the street, a dozen soldiers, and Ringkote kneeling on a man’s back, his victim’s arm broken and being used as a restraint. And General Tribane standing with a dead man at her feet, cleaning her sword. Iralia in a swirl of jewelled light – her compulsion throbbing like firelight.

  And the darkness, all around, rising to take him.

  ‘None of that,’ Kurvenos said.

  ‘Stay with me!’ begged Drako.

  ‘Damn,’ said Sasan, in Safiri. ‘Damn.’

  Sasan sounded as if he was crying.

  Book Two

  Master of War

  True mastery of the art of war leads not to victory,

  but to equitable peace.

  Legatus Giorgios

  Aranthur awoke.

  His first thought was about Sasan, and a host of thoughts tumbled after, and then he realised that he was lying in a white room with hundreds, if not thousands, of incantations, supplications, and other workings inscribed on the walls in copper ink.

  And then he thought, Sophia! I am alive!

  The room smelled deliciously of religious incense, and he inhaled deeply, and his side hurt.

  A door opened outside his range of vision. He tried to turn, and found that he was restrained.

  Kurvenos, the Lightbringer, stood there. He was an unremarkable old man with deep brown eyes and a scraggly grey beard, but in his mind’s eye he saw the man in another form – the form with which he’d assailed the Servant. It was difficult to decide which was the true Kurvenos, and that thought disturbed him.

  Kurvenos smiled. ‘You live,’ he said.

  ‘I do!’

  Aranthur felt wonderful. He felt elated, light-headed, and yet his thoughts came clearly …

  ‘Our chirurgeon burnt a little of your youth to heal you quickly,’ Kurvenos said. ‘I’m sorry, but it seemed to all of us that you have a great deal of youth.’ He smiled.

  ‘Burnt my youth?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kurvenos shrugged. ‘Yes. Literally. There are other, potent sources of power besides the winds. Or the talismans.’ A shadow fell across his face. ‘The easiest power comes from within us – our own life force. Especially when used to heal the same spirit that generates the force, it is potent. Puissant, even.’ He shrugged.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I would like Tiy Drako to explain – mostly so that I could watch him squirm.’ Kurvenos did not sound like a nice old man. He sounded like a cynical old soldier. He shrugged. ‘But he would attempt all sorts of equivocations, and one of the vows all Lightbringers take is to tell the truth. No matter what.’

  ‘That must be hard,’ Aranthur said.

  Kurvenos raised an eyebrow. ‘So hard.’

  He looked around, vanished for a moment, and came back at the edge of Aranthur’s vision with a stool. It was a very pedestrian stool – made of wood, not particularly well fashioned, and very much at odds with the room.

  Kurvenos sat and crossed his hands on his staff.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Once you asked me if there were Darkbringers. I answered truthfully – within my knowledge – that there were not, but I was wrong. There are, in fact, although I’m quite sure that in their minds they are the saviours of humanity.’

  ‘The Disciples,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘There is a great deal more to their movement than the group who call themselves the Disciples,’ Kurvenos said. ‘But let us lump them all together for a moment. There is a faction, across the known world, who desire to roll back the reforms of Tirase and return magik to the hands of the various old aristocracies who have all clung to power since the Revolution – as much in Zhou as here in the Empire. But this faction has a spectrum of members who are as varied as the colours of the rainbow, from those who merely wish to preserve the traditional wealth and political power of the old aristocracies, across a broad range of beliefs, to those who seek to destroy the non-human races, eliminate the use of magik by those not considered worthy, to hoard all the talisman materials for the use of the “deserving”, and even end the worship of Sophia. Many of them believe that magik is quantity, and that each act of power diminishes the store. All of these beliefs can be found, sometimes feuding among themselves, sometimes allied.’

  ‘And they are the Darkbringers?’ Aranthur asked.

  Kurvenos shook his head. ‘No. They are merely human, with human frailties and ignorance. Zhou and Atti and the Empire have all held beliefs just as pernicious, and condoned acts as horrible, in their time. But the aggregate – the poisonous brew of aristocratic ideology, anti-intellectual assaults on political power, and a monochromatic view of the multiverse, along with access to the ars magika – has created an engine capable of enormous evil. They worship power. Increasingly, we see in their adherents a simple desire for power untinged by any ideology at all. And the worship of power is close to the worship of evil.’

  Aranthur nodded.

  Kurvenos nodded. ‘At the heart of this movement is the Master and his Disciples and Servants, and the elite who call themselves Pure. They are now a nation state – they are doing their best to conquer the world. Stated that way, it seems simple, but nothing about this is simple.

  ‘And so, to you. Through no fault of your own, you became en-tangled in our operation – a relatively unimportant one, or so we thought, to take Syr Xenias and turn him back to our side. We thought he had a connection to the Duke of Volta. Later, when Iralia joined us, we acquired, too late to use it, enough knowledge to understand that the Duke of Volta was our target – the Disciple for the Empire, or so we still suspect. Or one of them …’

  Aranthur saw them seated in the tavern. ‘But …’

  ‘Chance always plays a role. This time, chance was a tyrant and Tyche ruled our actions more than Sophia. We had nothing to do with the mercenaries who killed Syr Xenias. We were too slow to understand that he was dead. We had no idea what he was carrying. We were, in fact, far behind in the race.’

  Aranthur squirmed and his gut hurt. ‘Race?’

  Kurvenos put his bearded chin on his hands. ‘A race that is not over. Let me continue. Drako searched your gear – in fact, he searched everyone’s kit. He found nothing, we dismissed our fears, and we continued west, looking for our man. The rest you know.’

  ‘I don’t know anything!’ Aranthur said.

  ‘True of most of us. Very well. When you were attacked by the spectre, the kotsyphas, we understood that you must be important, somehow, to the other side. And we had some doubts about you. I’m sorry to say that your Arnaut background made it possible … This now seems to me merely prejudice, but we suspected you.’

  ‘Arnauts are known to be so violent,’ Aranthur said with a smile.

  ‘Yes,’ Kurvenos said. ‘We are not perfect, you know. Lightbringers. We are human.’ He shrugged. ‘Anyway, the spectre struck. You lived. We knew you were important. We started searching for Syr Xenias and his belongings all over again. We made another mistake, in not looking for simple, human agency. We looked for a powerful Magos, and failed to find one. We placed one of our own to protect you.’

  ‘Dahlia,’ Aranthur said with bitter clarity.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Aranthur spat, his mood suddenly darkened.

  ‘She wants to speak to you. It is not as it appears.’ Kurvenos shrugged. ‘I forget how strong the passions of the young are, but Aranthur, she is – was – quite fond of you. She merely had other duties and you were treating her abominably, using her for sex and
ignoring her as a person. How could you imagine that she would feel?’

  ‘I …’ Aranthur leant back, because the tension in his stomach muscles hurt his wound. ‘I …’ He paused.

  ‘Telling the truth can be quite painful, but I assure you that it has beneficial aspects. For example, your mistreatment of her is banal. It may be an unspoken and shameful thing to you, but to me it is as clear as the nose on your face and I will not hesitate to mention it.’

  ‘But she was only watching me for you!’ Aranthur protested.

  ‘Does that justify your behaviour? Spare me your protests.’ Kurvenos nodded. ‘Dahlia watched over you. Incidentally, we have no idea if the bandits who attacked you on the road were related to this matter – “not every road leads to the City” as Tirase says. Regardless, we now know that you had a fortune in kuria crystals all along, shipped directly from the Disciples in Samnia all the way to Volta to avoid our customs and our agents. You had them. The largest of them is a masterpiece of infusion and contains power meant to be released in a single pulse – a massive wave of destruction that could kill thousands of people. It was meant to detonate on Darknight, in the City.’

  ‘Gods!’

  ‘Well might we all call upon the gods. The smaller kuria crystals were, if anything, worse. Your Master of Arts has peeled them like garlic and they hold the seeds of a disease that attacks a person’s bones, burning them like a cold fire. Using the power of the stone.’

  ‘The bone plague!’

  ‘The bone plague, directed against the poorest people, and those with no magikal training. Our adversaries are subtle. They want these people to stop using power and they are happy to use terror to get what they want. In fact, I believe it actually pleases them to use terror. It speaks to who they are, that they enjoy these techniques.’

  Kurvenos was silent for a while. ‘This place where you were tortured was merely a safe house. It was not their headquarters – indeed, I wonder if they even have a single headquarters. But we found very little of their kuria. I am afraid that there is more out there.

  ‘Many of the Easterners you found in the woods were dead from the bone plague. But most died of malnutrition and exposure, because they were not lighting fires or cooking food.’ Kurvenos nodded. ‘I think you have had enough logic courses to reason out why.’

  ‘Sophia!’ Aranthur breathed.

  Kurvenos gave a wry smile. ‘And all of that is bad. But, largely thanks to you, we found some of the poisoned jewels and now we know what causes the bone plague. There must be other sources – in fact, we know there are. We are riddled with adherents of the Disciples, Aranthur. Some are Easterners, but most of them are our own people. So far, we can’t stop the smuggling of kuria crystals. We can’t even slow it.’

  Aranthur frowned. ‘So what did you do?’

  Kurvenos was silent. He looked at the writing on the walls for an uncomfortable time.

  ‘We used you as bait.’ His brown eyes met Aranthur’s green eyes squarely. ‘I’m sorry. Drako’s idea. I gave the order.’ He went on remorselessly. ‘We have tried following thuryx dealers and we’ve tried raiding houses, arresting couriers – almost nothing. But you … They wanted you. We tried, very carefully, to put you where they could see you. In positions of prominence, but well protected.’

  Aranthur thought about it for a moment, considered anger, and abandoned it.

  ‘It worked,’ he said.

  ‘Yes and no. You are not dead. You survived torture and a terrible wound, for which we are responsible. We took a large supply of tainted crystal, and we captured a dozen of their agents – the most we’ve ever taken. But the Servant escaped. He was too powerful for me to render him harmless and take him. On the other hand, we know who he is. We have his house and some of his documents.’

  ‘He said he’d been detained,’ Aranthur put in. ‘He told me that. He said it was embarrassing that an Uthmanos had been detained by the Watch.’

  The Lightbringer closed his eyes. ‘He was detained and I wasn’t told? But who would release him?’ He opened his eyes. ‘We are riddled with traitors,’ he said again. ‘Well, at any rate, we have set mousetraps on both houses.’

  ‘Mousetraps?’ Aranthur asked, still thinking through being the stalking horse for all this.

  ‘A mousetrap is a time-honoured system for catching thieves and spies and political undesirables. When you take a malfeasant, you render his house as normal as possible and set people inside to take anyone who enters. Thus, you take all the fellow travellers, and couriers, and friends. Some will be innocent. Many will be guilty. We have already taken a courier carrying crystal. And we have enough proof of the Servant’s murder of his wife to hang him in court.’

  ‘Eagle! What did we find?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Her mummified head,’ Kurvenos said. ‘Listen, Aranthur. I am a Lightbringer. I do not believe that the end justifies the means. I believe that the means are everything. I do not eat meat, I do not lie, and I do not kill.’ He gave a small, bitter smile. ‘Actually, though, since becoming a Lightbringer, I have lied and I have caused people to die, and I’ve had some delicious beef broth.’ He shook his head. ‘We are men and women, not gods. I ramble. In a moment I’ll be confessing my many sins. Let’s leave it at this. Your survival and our apprehension of these miscreants owes more to luck than to our brilliant planning. When they attacked the Master of Arts—’

  ‘What?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Under cover of the House war, bravos attacked the Master of Arts as she walked to her rooms.’ Kurvenos shrugged. ‘We were warned and she was protected – Drako was there. But no one was watching you when you were attacked, relentlessly, and then when you chose to pursue your attackers …’ Kurvenos smiled. ‘Sasan saved us all. He went to the soldiers at the gate. The General was nearby, and we were very lucky.’ He sighed. ‘I am sorry, Syr Timos. We used you, and we didn’t even do it well. And now we have hurried your healing in hopes that you will help us again.’

  ‘What was the target? Of the jewel?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘It was to be chosen by the Duke of Volta. Though I can’t prove it. Really, you now know a great many secrets.’

  ‘And we will arrest the duke?’

  ‘No. But we are in the process of proving his guilt to his cousin, the Emperor. We took enough, in papers and prisoners, to prove to most of the political factions in the Empire that this threat is real. Now we need to see how deeply the Disciples have penetrated the Sultan’s court, and if we can stop a war that can only serve our adversaries. And alongside all that, we prepare for war with Atti, which would be a disaster, but may also be required.’

  ‘The Master of Arts is alive?’ Aranthur asked.

  ‘Wounded, but recovering. She is in an Academy facility. Her attempted assassination and the information we gained in the last nine days may save her job. The faction out for her blood is discredited – perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever.’ The Lightbringer smiled cynically. ‘Probably for about three weeks.’

  Aranthur turned his head slightly so that his eyes met the Lightbringer’s.

  ‘Syr,’ he said. ‘Is the iron cold, or hot?’

  Kurvenos smiled bitterly. ‘You are too astute.’

  ‘Is there a finite amount of power? The Servant said there was.’

  Kurvenos hesitated.

  He seemed to be reading a conjuration off the wall.

  ‘An excellent question. Perhaps. Our adversaries believe in a very simple world – black and white, strong and weak, good and evil, power and emptiness. Lightbringers believe in a world as complicated as the very nature of truth. It may well prove that the power of the winds of magik is finite. But there are other sources of power, harder to tap, and weaker, but nonetheless potent. And their contention that the old aristocracies hold the germ of the true use of power is hogwash. They just want to keep it for themselves, like all ruling classes. They would be more ideologically dangerous if they offered a meritocracy of power, where only the very be
st practitioners were allowed access to the purest wellsprings. Regardless, they are correct in their contention that mages before the time of Tirase could draw more power and perform feats largely lost to us.’ He smiled. ‘Hence the Safian grimoire.’

  ‘All workings powered from within the target,’ Aranthur said.

  ‘And all dating from before Tirase. You know they didn’t have as much kuria in Tirase’s time?’ Kurvenos rose to his feet. ‘The big sources were only located by the Jhugi four hundred years after Tirase died.’ He looked away. ‘You realise that you, and you alone, have been at the centre of every incident involving the Disciples in the last year? Drako had no choice but to have you watched. I ask that you understand that.’

  ‘Yes,’ Aranthur said. ‘Yes. I must have looked very suspicious. But I guess we now know why they were always after me.’

  Kurvenos made a wry face. ‘Perhaps. I still have concerns. I think there is something more to know.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m going to knock you out for another day. You are healing splendidly. That body of yours is almost superhuman in its healing ability.’

  ‘What if I said that I wanted to be a Lightbringer?’

  Kurvenos smiled. It was a different smile, as if the sun suddenly rose.

  ‘That would be wonderful. Although in truth many are called and few are chosen, and all of us are inadequate to the task. We will speak of this again.’

  Aranthur awoke, and this time he was immediately conscious of the room.

  And of Dahlia.

  He knew her scent before he opened his eyes. She was looking at the writing on the walls; he watched her for a while.

  He had forgotten how beautiful she was. She was leaning back, so that her back was against the wall and her stool was up on two legs.

  He tried to remember why he had been unable to find time for her. He considered how seldom he had asked her anything about herself. He had never gone to her room, met her room-mates, taken her fencing …

  ‘I am an idiot,’ he said aloud.