by Sam Sykes
“Oh, you know…” I sniffed. “Stuff.”
“That’s an awfully big gun for doing stuff.”
“I’ve got a very long to-do list, Sergeant Proud,” I replied, never taking my eyes off the soldier. “Your children put their toys down, I’ll go back to doing it and I won’t add ‘blowing a bunch of dumb assholes’ brains out’ to it.”
“She knows something, Sergeant,” one of the soldiers said. “I know it. She knows something about Relentless. Why else would a Vagrant be skulking around?”
Cavric held a breath. “Sal, if you’d calm down and come with us, we’d—”
“Touch me and you’ll bury your boys here, Sergeant,” I replied.
He glanced over my shoulder at Liette, concern in his eyes. “Your companion, she’s—”
Liette huddled behind me. I held my arm out in front of her, snarled.
“Touch her and I won’t leave enough to bury.”
He didn’t know me well. But the look in his eyes told me he knew enough to know I wasn’t lying. “There’s no need for this to escalate.” He glanced toward his soldiers. “If we all just lower our weapons…”
The intricacies of the Revolution’s chain of command were lost on me, but presumably the gentle way he made a suggestion to his troops instead of, you know, actually commanding them was probably why Cavric was a low sergeant.
I heard a hammer click behind me.
“Soldiers,” Cavric said, warning. “This won’t help us find Relentless. Lower your weapons.”
Too late now. What little discipline they had was overwhelmed by fear.
I heard someone take two steps closer from behind.
“By the General’s graces,” Cavric said, “don’t do this!”
They weren’t listening. I wasn’t listening. We were all running it through in our heads, a hundred different ways this could end, all of them badly. My body tensed, my finger twitched. I got ready to pull the trigger and run.
I heard a gunshot go off behind me.
I heard a scream.
And I heard a body hit the ground.
I whirled, saw the smoke from the barrel of the soldier’s gunpike as he toppled to the ground. I saw the blood leaking out from the gaping wound in his chest. I saw the red glistening off the machete of the tattooed, half-clad Havener standing over him with a manic grin on his face.
“My, my…” The Sightless Sister croaked out as she shambled forward, her remaining two henchmen running up to reinforce their brother. “Such treasures the Seeing God has sent us today. A single heretic, a slew of atheists, and a…”
Her eyeless sockets turned toward me. Her wrinkled lips curled into a snarl. Her mouth opened in a shriek and…
Well, you know when you meet someone new and you don’t know their name but they know yours and it’s really awkward?
“Slaughter the heretics!”
And they also want to kill you?
“Bring me that weapon! Bring me the Cacophony!”
Yeah.
That.
SIXTEEN
STARK’S MUTTER
Now, it’s true that among the kidnappings, the burning of people at the stake, the destruction of entire towns and whatnot, not a lot of Scarfolk have many nice things to say about the good people of Haven. But spend a little time around them, you start to learn that they have a lot of good qualities.
“BLEED, HERETIC!”
Like their enthusiasm.
The Havener, the big fellow with the bloody blade, came leaping over the twitching body of the soldier. Red painted the air as he swung his sword madly, dashing toward me with a shriek on his lips and blood on his mouth. He charged past the Revolutionaries, completely heedless of them.
Right up until they fired, anyway.
Gunpikes cracked. Clouds of smoke blossomed in the street. I heard a bullet go past my ear just before I heard it punch through a human skull. Five little red flowers bloomed on the Havener’s skin, the biggest and brightest right in the middle of his forehead.
I glanced behind me. Cavric was still staring down the sights of his gunpike, eyes trained on the Havener.
That turned out to be a good idea. Because, as I learned once I felt hands wrap around my throat, he actually wasn’t quite dead.
“Bleed… bleed… bleed…” the Havener growled, and I wasn’t sure if he was talking about me or himself. He had dropped his weapons to grab my neck, tactics forgotten in the urge to kill me with what strength hadn’t leaked out of him yet. But blood was streaming from the holes punched through his body and his grip was weak.
Weak enough that he felt it when Liette rushed up and jammed her quill right into a vein in his wrists. He screamed. I whipped the Cacophony up, smashed his grip against the Havener’s skull. Bone crunched, and the bastard finally took the hint, falling to the ground, unmoving. And in my hand, I could feel the gun growing pleasantly warm to the touch.
He liked this.
And he was going to like this next part a lot more.
“Fire! Fire at will! Bring them down!”
Cavric was screaming more for his benefit than his soldiers. Their weapons were already reloaded and blazing, firing round after round at the Haveners. It was the reckless, eyes-closed, first-day-on-the-job terrified shooting, no one bothering to aim or even to look.
Which made it a fucking pain to get out of the way.
I went low, grabbing Liette by the hand and hurrying to the other side of the street and ducking into another alley, which, as it turned out, had the town’s wall at the other end, making it about the best place to get pinned down I could have chosen.
“Stay,” I snarled as I shoved her into the alley.
She didn’t question me, offering me only the briefest of nods. Despite knowing exactly which muscle to stab a man to get him to let go, she wasn’t a fighter. But neither was I.
Me and the gun in my hand? We were killers.
As I turned and peered out into the street, the Cacophony was humming in my hand, waiting to be unleashed. In the fracas of screaming fanatics and cracking fire, I imagined he could cause a lot of chaos. But chaos is only useful if it’s pointed away from you. And at that moment, the street was alive with flying bullets.
“Death to heretics!”
Not that this seemed to bother the Haveners.
In the middle of the street, the closest Revolutionary was backpedaling in a desperate attempt to get back to his comrades, squeezing off a shot. It whizzed past the Havener rushing toward him, bit through a bleeding arm. It didn’t seem to slow the Havener down one bit as he took a flying leap and landed on the soldier, bearing him to the ground.
Metal wailed, blood flew as the Havener’s blade pumped mechanically, carving through the feeble, flailing defense the soldier put up as he screamed for someone to help him.
I hoped his comrades heard him. Because I sure wasn’t feeling like getting murdered.
Blood sprayed as another bullet took the Havener in the ribs. It should have killed him. I have no idea how it didn’t. Neither did the soldier who fired it. The poor Revolutionary dope merely stared, slack-jawed, as the Havener picked up his ever-burning torch and hurled it, spinning, through the air to take the soldier right in the face.
He went down screaming, clawing at his seared flesh. His comrade leaned down to help him. Admirable, but not smart. Neither of them saw it when the Havener leapt upon them and tore into them with his blade.
The air was alive with terror, with blood, with bullets. The two Revolutionaries went down screaming, punching and flailing with their gunpikes. Their comrades thrust their weapons into the Havener’s flanks. He just howled with anger, heedless of anything but the blood on his blade and the bodies under him.
The reek of fear and fluid mingled with the acrid tang of gunsmoke, neither of which were enough to smother the sounds of the dying.
I bolted out of the alley, hoping that, what with the wanton murder and shooting, no one would miss me when I ran for the gates.
Of course, that plan had been better before I remembered there were three Haveners.
I pulled to a halt just in time to narrowly avoid the swinging blade. The Havener roared, stepping into his next swing as he lunged at me again. I couldn’t tell the difference between the fanatics most of the time, but I recognized this one. Or rather, I recognized his facial wounds. I had just nearly caved this fucker’s head in a moment ago.
So how the hell was he still up?
He leapt toward me. Jeff was out and in my hand, rising up to meet his thick blade. I caught him at the crossguard, drove my knee up into his groin. And when that didn’t do it, I brought the Cacophony up there instead.
Brass smashed between his legs, sent him reeling to the ground. And even with the kick to the jaw I gave him, he wouldn’t take the hint. He was already scrabbling to get back to his feet.
I glanced around. There was Havener blood on the ground, but no Havener corpses to go with it. They continued to fight, through bullet wounds and lacerations the Revolutionaries had given them, showing no signs of even being tired, let alone dying.
Amid the blood and steel flashing through the air, I could just barely make out the glow of a pair of hellish lights in eyeless sockets. The Sister stood nearby, leaning on her staff, sharpened teeth twisted in a smile as her eyes burned with unearthly light.
Her. Whatever fucked-up magic she had was keeping her brothers alive and fighting. Take her out, I knew, and I had a chance at ending this. I dropped to one knee, flipped the Cacophony’s chamber open, and jammed my sword into the earth. I heard the jingle of metal shells, the screaming of the dying…
“The Great General is with us, brothers.”
And, cutting cleanly through it, the sound of things getting much worse.
At the other end of the alley, Relic Guard Onerous appeared. Unfazed by the carnage, he stepped over the corpses of his fallen brethren. He stood tall, raising the Relic, that alien weapon, in his hands and leveling it down the alley. In his hands, the strange stone weapon began to stir—not fired. Something like a Relic doesn’t do a thing so rudimentary as “fire.”
No.
That weapon woke up.
And screamed. I’ve been unlucky enough to be on the receiving end of a Relic once before. And though I was lucky enough to live, I’ll never forget the sound it made. The sound of earth groaning under your feet. The sound of stone screaming as it tore itself out of the ground. The sound that sent me pressing myself, belly-down, into the dirt and covering my head.
For all the good it would do.
The crystal on the end of the Relic glowed with a painfully bright light. And from it, a hail of projectiles launched. Thin and needlelike, yet brighter than a sun, it was as though hardened bolts of light spat from the Relic’s maw. They flew on rasping whistles, leaving the reek of smoking air in their wake as they punched clean, perfectly shaped holes through wood, through dirt…
Through flesh.
The Haveners’ mouths gaped open, in screams or in curses, I didn’t know. The sound of their agony was lost beneath that groaning noise, those rasping whispers, as the light punched through them. They fell, one after the other. The first in two pieces, the second in six, the third with one tremendous hole through his chest.
Or so I thought. I couldn’t count them accurately from down here. I couldn’t hear them over the groaning weapon. And I didn’t dare look up. Not until the sound died in my ears and the smell of burning blood hung in a still, quiet air.
No smoke. No fires. No more blood than had been there when the weapon started firing. Relics were not weapons of carnage. They were weapons of cleansing. They were not employed to kill, but to wipe clean.
The Haveners lay where they had fallen, their wounds bloodless, as though someone had simply reached out and plucked skin and bone and organ out of them and left behind husks. The Revolutionaries, those who had remained, lay not far away. And the ones who had been granted the grisly deaths at the hands of the Haveners almost looked luckier than the ones who had been rent apart by their comrade.
Relics were of no origin that anyone but the Great General knew. They could snipe a bird’s eye from a hundred yards and leave not a drop of blood. But they were only as good as their wielder. And if he didn’t happen to care where he hit…
A familiar sight caught my eye. In a pool of blood, against the wall of a building, Cavric lay facedown in the dust. His hands still curled feebly around the gunpike, as though he weren’t ready to quit, even now. I couldn’t tell if he had died by the Relic or by the Haveners.
“Ah, fuck…”
I wasn’t sure why I said that. I wasn’t sure why it bothered me. Whatever they said about protecting the common people of the Scar, the Revolutionaries were as savage, brutish, and vicious as the people they fought against. A few more dead ones shouldn’t have bothered me.
But, fuck, he had just seemed so nice, you know?
I made to inch toward him, as if to see if he had somehow been spared. Or maybe just to close his eyes. I didn’t know. And it didn’t matter.
“Do not weep for them.”
I had another problem.
I twisted onto my back, bringing my blade up as a shadow fell upon me. A heavy boot followed, its heel catching me at the elbow and bringing it back down to the earth. I screamed as pain lanced through the joint, my arm pinned beneath a heavy foot and my blade with it.
“A Revolutionary’s greatest goal is to give his life in pursuit of the Mandate.” Onerous stood over me, the weapon still twitching, alive in his grasp. “They would have been proud to have seen the Great General’s will done. And they would have been insulted to see their lives mourned by a Vagrant such as yourself.”
He aimed the Relic at me. And I know this sounds crazy, but I somehow thought the damn thing was smiling at me.
“Sal the Cacophony.”
“You’ve heard of me,” I replied, wincing in pain.
“Among the Revolution, your name is known, your vile deeds are written, and your treachery is legendary.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
There was the sound of boots on the ground nearby. Onerous and I both looked up to see Liette emerging from the alley, a bloodied quill intended for him in her hand. He narrowed his eyes, unsure what to make of this frail woman’s sudden appearance.
I, however, was very sure of what to make of it.
I pivoted, swinging my legs up even as I swung my head away from the Relic’s maw. Onerous glanced down just in time to see both my legs wrap around his left and use the weight of my lower body to pull him off his feet. He screamed, struggling to aim the weapon toward me. I brought my scarf up with my free hand, wrapping it around his wrist and pulling the weapon away. With my other hand, I brought up my sword and jammed it up through his armpit.
The weapon fell from his grasp. His scream tore through the air. He lay, bleeding, upon the earth.
“If my treachery were truly legendary,” I said, “you would have expected something like that.”
I glanced toward Liette, who stared back in alarm. But before I could say a word to her, another voice spoke.
“Dear me, dear me…”
The Sightless Sister came shambling up, unfazed by the carnage and untouched by the Relic’s fire. Leaning heavily on her staff, her glowing sockets rested upon the least damaged of her kin.
“I confess, to my eternal shame, that the rumors of your capacity for violence would be so inadequate,” she said through a sharp-toothed smile. “Cacophony. Our scriptures are rife with tales of your malevolence.”
Funny how, in all of this knowledge about me, not one of them ever mentioned how pretty I was.
“Had I known, I would have invoked him sooner.”
She pressed the tip of her staff to the brow of the dead Havener. And, though I like to think I was a well-traveled woman, I almost vomited to see him stir back to life.
“Sister…” the Havener gasped, reaching up with one trembling hand to find her
withered fingers. “I… I have failed him. I have failed the God… ”
“You have, brother,” she replied. She shook her head and lay her hand upon his brow. “But you shall be with him soon. Your immortal soul shall answer to him. But your flesh…”
She smiled broadly. Her staff glowed.
“He has a use for your vessel.”
A red light consumed her body. It flowed from her flesh into his. The Havener’s body stiffened upright. I saw the fist that was his heart glow crimson, the light racing through his veins. Her grin was black against the light.
I started backing away, uncertain of what I was dealing with, but damn certain I didn’t want to stay to see it finished. Yet before I had taken three steps, I heard something behind me. Groaning stone, a weapon stirring to life, a rasping curse from a dying man’s lips.
“Ten thousand years,” Onerous snarled.
I whirled. He held the weapon in the hand that still worked. The Relic sighed itself alive and fired. A bolt of light cut through the sky. I leapt to the side and tumbled away as the bolt sped past me. The Sightless Sister fell, a hole punched through her throat, a grin still etched on her face.
One heartbeat. That was all it took to kill her. So fast.
And too fucking late.
Even as the Sister’s body fell, smiling and lifeless, the Havener was rising. His body stiffened, his shattered spine suddenly ramrod straight. His heart continued to beat, the glow racing through his veins brightening with every audible thump. He bent over, let out a guttural, raw-throated howl. He clutched his belly as though he were about to be sick.
As I was about to find out, he was going to be much worse.
Magic, true magic, comes from the Lady Merchant. You make the Barter, you get the power. It’s the way the Imperium was built, the way the Emperors held power for sixty generations.
But there are other ways.
It isn’t an art what the priests of Haven do. The power granted to them by their Seeing God isn’t like that of the Lady Merchant’s. The scholars of the Imperium call it pagan magic, regard it with the same amused disdain one might look at a child draped in adult clothes in an attempt to look grown up. The Seeing God’s power is unreliable; its effects are uncontrollable; its costs are unpredictable.