Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  The first thing I noticed when I opened the door was the wind. My scarf lashed about my face, almost flying off my head.

  The next thing was the screaming. A sound so distant and faint I could barely tell the difference between it and the wail of the wind.

  I had a moment to wonder what was going on.

  Of course, once I saw the body flying through the air, I figured it out.

  I slammed myself against the door as he went hurtling past me—or at least, I assumed it was a he, but everyone kind of sounds like a little girl when they’re thrown through the air at a hundred miles an hour.

  The Ashmouth went tumbling in a jumble of limbs, the black cloth of his uniform shredded from his body as a gale carried him in a twisting shriek over the edge of the ship’s railing to disappear into the river below.

  I’d have helped him if I could. But as I turned toward the direction he had come flying from, I saw a bigger problem approaching.

  I shrieked something profane but it was lost in the hurricane blowing toward me.

  A wail of wind. A fit of frightfully excited laughter. Flash of gold and white. Straight and fast as a bolt from on high. I tried to duck back into the cabin and slam the door shut, but it was pulled from my hands and then from its hinges. Something flew past me with the force of a storm, tearing boards from the deck, glass from windows, doors from hinges. The few poor Ashmouth bastards who poked their heads out to see what was happening joined the cloud of wreckage that went screaming into the wind, cast out into the river like black feathers upon a gray sky.

  The wind’s howl dulled to a whisper. I heard the splash of bodies disappearing into water. I heard the groan of the ship as its metal bent and its wood splintered. And, between the sounds of things dying, I heard a long, delighted cackle.

  I heard him laugh.

  Everyone’s got one—a glass shattering, a child crying, a door with a squeaky hinge slamming shut. Everyone’s got a noise that takes them somewhere else, makes them someone else.

  That laugh, that shrieking wail of a laugh, went through my scars, through my skin, seized something inside of me and strangled it.

  The air suddenly felt too thin to breathe. No matter how hard I gasped, I couldn’t get enough of it in my lungs.

  The mists closed in around me. The boat disappeared. I blinked.

  And I didn’t know where I was anymore.

  I felt cold stone on my back, so cold that I could feel it through my clothes. I saw a purple halo of light above me, gaping wide into a violet, toothless mouth. I saw droplets of red blood, my blood, gliding lazily through the empty air above me, like raindrops down a windowpane.

  I blinked again. I was back on the ship. The wind’s whisper twisted, became a whistle, became a howl. I felt it turn, a great serpent of air and cold, and head toward me. And through its breathless wail, I heard his voice.

  “Run,” he spoke on the gale. “It’s funnier when you run.”

  And I did.

  My body remembered what my mind was still struggling to figure out. My legs knew to carry me across the deck. My hands knew to keep one on my scarf, the other on my gun as I ran. And my ears knew to close themselves to the sounds behind me.

  The howling moan of the wind. The groan of boards and nails torn out of the deck and sent flying into nothingness. The shriek of metal and glass as doors were pulled off hinges and windows were shattered.

  And through it all, his laugh.

  Listen and die. Shut it out and live. My body knew. It kept me running toward the stern of the ship, past the great waterwheels, even as the rest of it came apart behind me.

  I rounded a corner, flattened my back against the rear of the ship. The white of the Weary Mother’s wake sprawled before me. I glanced up and saw an Ashmouth run past me, a bow in his hands as he rounded the corner I had just come from and raised his weapon.

  I shouted a warning. He couldn’t hear me.

  Not with his head cut off.

  A burst of crimson painted the mist. The Ashmouth’s limp body and severed head went flying off the deck to disappear into the gray. And, even shielded as I was, I almost followed them, the force of the wind nearly tearing me from my feet.

  I saw him flying through the air. I saw him, thin as the black blade in his hand. I saw the mane of golden hair trailing behind him as he disappeared into the fog. I saw the droplets of blood drifting in the air.

  And I was gone again.

  I was back on the cold stone, somewhere far away and in a dark place. I saw shadows surrounding me, their eyes on me—some with revulsion, some with laughter, one with pity. I saw my blood floating in the air, drawn out of my flesh in rivulets, crimson sighs drawn from my weary body. I saw them slip up into the sky, disappear into the halo of purple light.

  I blinked again. I was back. There was a hand on my shoulder.

  The Cacophony was in my hand; I didn’t know when I had drawn him. I pulled his grinning barrel up to a breathless face. But Necla, even staring down the barrel, didn’t notice. The horror that had made his eyes go wide was one my gun couldn’t compare to.

  “What…” he gasped, breathless, “what was that?”

  I opened my mouth to reply. No words came out. Somewhere, in a dark corner of my skull, something kicked me.

  Talk, it told me. Sal the Cacophony doesn’t sit there gaping. Not in front of this fuck.

  I forced iron into my eyes, a growl into my throat. “You mean what is that,” I said. “He hasn’t left yet.”

  “Skymage,” he said, staring out into the mist. “It had to be a Skymage. I’ve never seen magic like that.”

  I sneered, if only to keep the fear out of my voice. “A mage is still a man. All men die.”

  “Shut up. Shut up,” Necla hissed, clutching his head as if he could wring a plan out of his brain. “Your gun. We need your gun. He’s moving too fast for me to pin down with my magic.”

  I didn’t want to tell him he couldn’t pin down a foe like this. His illusions could only show people what they wanted. And he—that shrieking, laughing demon on the sky—had taken everything he wanted from the Lady Merchant.

  And me?

  I looked down at the Cacophony. He looked back at me.

  We were going to take it all back.

  “He said your name,” Necla whispered. “He’s here for you.”

  “He is,” I grunted.

  “You have to help.”

  “I don’t.”

  “But—”

  “But I came here, did my business, didn’t get what I want, and now I’m done.” I fixed him with a hard-eyed glare. “You want me to help, you’re going to do one of two things. You either persuade the Three that I’m worth the effort”—I glanced down at his pocket, tapped it with the barrel of my gun—“or you just hand that little trinket I gave you back over to me.”

  No one knew much about the Three who led the Ashmouths, but there were three facts known to anyone who had heard their name: You didn’t piss them off, you paid what you owed them, and you never got them to change their mind.

  But I saw an opportunity for the third. Maybe we were in that deep of shit. Or maybe he had a really good favor he wanted.

  But he looked into my eyes. He nodded. He whispered.

  “Fix this.”

  I grunted, flipped open the Cacophony’s chamber. “Try to keep him blind. Weave your mist as thick as you can,” I said. “How do I get to the top of the ship?”

  “There are ladders at the other end of the deck,” he said. “But how—”

  “Need room to fight him.” I plucked three shells from my pouch, loaded them in. “Down here, he’ll tear the place apart.”

  “And what makes you certain he’ll follow you?”

  “I don’t know, champ.” I flipped the chamber shut. “If you had a chance at killing me, would you take it?”

  Necla looked at me, considered, then nodded.

  “Good luck, Sal.”

  I grunted an acknowledgment and too
k off. I whirled around the deck as I heard the wind blowing wild behind me. Out there in the mist, he was searching for me, trying to figure out where I was. He’d lose patience soon, I knew, and start tearing the ship open to get at me.

  I had to give him a target before then.

  Fortunately, on the list of people he wanted to kill, I was close to the top.

  Just like Kresh the Tempest was on mine.

  The Weary Mother tilted under my feet as I stared down a deck that seemed suddenly impossibly long. But there it was, at the end just like Necla had said: an iron ladder welded to the hull leading upward. That’s where I needed to be.

  The wind started howling.

  And I started running.

  The air was thin, torn apart by his magic. It made my lungs burn, my heart thunder as I charged down the deck. I couldn’t spare a thought for how much it might hurt. I couldn’t take my eyes off that ladder. I couldn’t keep my ears shut to the sound of the wind.

  To the sound of his laughter.

  I blinked. I was on the cold stone. My blood left me, swallowed by the light.

  The wind’s whisper became a howl.

  I blinked. The shadows closed in around me. Their eyes winked out, one by one.

  I felt my hair whipping about my face.

  I blinked. The purple light filled a sky above me. I looked at my hand, impotent and fleshy. Above me, someone whispered two words.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I said something back.

  I couldn’t hear what. Not over the sound of his laughter. Not over the sound of my scream.

  Not over the sound of the wind behind me. Above me.

  Right next to me.

  My scarf whipped against my face. I leapt, tumbled to the deck, clasped my hands over my head. The gale struck a moment later, a great pillar of wind that slammed against the hull. The boat rocked beneath me, windows shattered above me, and broken glass rained down on my shoulders. In the distance, I heard him laugh. Out in the fog, I could see his rail-thin figure hovering there, black sword raised.

  “Lucky as ever, Cacophony. I salute you.” He drew his blade back. “It looks a lot like killing you, but don’t be alarmed. Just hold still and…”

  He swung. The wind screamed. I was on my feet and running again before the next gale hit, rocking the ship and threatening to knock me off my feet. But I kept my balance and I kept my speed, even as he hurled blast after blast after me, always just shy of smashing me against the hull.

  Maybe his aim had turned to shit. Maybe he was toying with me. Maybe this was another one of his sick fucking games. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t luck. Sal the Cacophony didn’t need luck.

  The people on her list did.

  My lungs were on fire, my skin was cut up from the broken glass, the iron burned in my hand. But I made it. I scrambled up the ladder, all the way to the top of the ship.

  It sprawled out like an iron plain before me, empty but for six smokestacks that marched its length like long-dead gods wheezing their last. Gray plumes coiled out of their gaping maws, rising up to join the gray clouds roiling overhead. Thunder rumbled in the distance, and in the wake of its echo, I could hear him.

  And I swore—to me and to the burning metal in my hands—it would be the last time I’d hear him laugh.

  I let the Cacophony hang from my hand, his grip burning in anticipation, and I walked to the middle of the ship’s roof. And as the wind picked up, cold and cruel as winter, I waited.

  You can’t outrun a Skymage. And you can’t hide from them. They can be anywhere as quick as the wind can take them. The Lady Merchant gave them the power to look down on the rest of the world and sneer at the pitiful people who couldn’t hope to reach them.

  Just as well.

  You run from a beast. You hide from a storm. But men like Kresh the Tempest, laughing men who paint the sky with blood, you do neither.

  You stop. And you stand. And you look them straight in the eye.

  And you tell them how they’re going to die.

  And when I looked up into that gray sky and saw his black shadow, I told him.

  But way up there, he couldn’t hear me.

  He descended from the gray mist like some kind of distant god who wanted to see what suffering looked like up close. And when he emerged, I’d forgive you for saying he looked human.

  Kresh was slender, well muscled, young. His body was bare but for a pair of black breeches that clung to him like a second skin and the black lightning bolts tattooed across his chest. His hair, long as he was tall and gold as wheat, danced above his head like angels in the breeze that kept him aloft. And his face, narrow and angular in all the right places and a perfect match for the weapon hanging lazily in his hand.

  A sword. An Imperial blade. Black as pitch and sharp as his smile.

  I remembered how both of them had bled me.

  If you didn’t know him, you’d say he looked beautiful.

  And if you did, you’d say he looked like a monster.

  “Hey, girl.”

  That smile, that jagged white scar masquerading as a grin, grew broader and he spoke in a voice that had tricked so many people into thinking he was human. It had fingers, that voice, spindly little ones I could feel digging their nails into my skin, trying to pull me into that dark place with the cold stone and that purple light.

  But I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Hey, Kresh.” I regarded him carefully. “You’re looking well.”

  “And you’re looking”—my scars ached as they felt his eyes on them—“ragged. Is life rather hard down there, darling?”

  “Could be worse,” I replied. “I could be from Stark’s Mutter.”

  There was a brief moment of confusion on his face. Then, as he remembered the name, the bodies, the dead, his smile almost split his face open. And he laughed that laugh again.

  You’ve heard his laugh before. Everyone has.

  It’s the giggle of the cruel child who kicks a dog and lies to his parents’ faces. It’s the chuckle of the man who knows a woman isn’t allowed to say no to him without losing teeth. It’s the snicker of the bandit who tells a prisoner that all he wants is his money.

  And it made my scars burn.

  “You saw it, then.” His voice was electric with excitement. “Or did you only see the mess it left behind?” He shook his head. “Grotesque, that, but you’d appreciate it more had you seen what preceded it.”

  He raised his arms. The muscles of his body flexed as he spun in a lazy circle, his hair a golden halo in the sky.

  “Ah, Sal… Sal, Sal, Sal…” My name dribbled from his lips like blood from undercooked meat. “If only you’d have been there, if only you’d have seen it. The sky was black as pitch but for a pinprick of light that grew vast as a maw. The very earth shook in anticipation of what we did. And her song…” His eyes shut, his body shuddered. “I’ll never hear it so pure again.”

  “And the people, Kresh?”

  His lazy flight came to a slow halt. He turned quizzical eyes upon me.

  “The people?” he asked.

  “The people you murdered,” I replied. “The people Vraki sacrificed for his scheme.”

  “Murdered…” He tasted the word, not quite sure what it meant. “Oh, right. To the nuls, I assume it was rather frightening. So many lights and noises. A few of them tried to run for help, tried to ruin everything. But they didn’t get far. They never do.”

  I remembered the horror scarred across the faces of the people at Stark’s Mutter. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them had looked into the sky and seen that same smile I was looking at right now.

  That same smile that I had seen when I lay on that cold stone.

  That same smile that had that same black laughter.

  That same smile I wholly intended to put a bullet through.

  “So, Kresh,” I said.

  I was going to kill him. I was going to end him. But first…

  “That’s what Vra
ki’s got you doing?”

  First, I was going to hurt him.

  His smile vanished. It wasn’t the words that I spoke that did it. Men like him, they didn’t listen to words; they only heard noises. They knew sounds that excited them: frightened squeals, desperate pleas, wracking sobs.

  The stifled yawn I offered him was none of those.

  “Kresh the fucking Tempest,” I said. “First to join the Crown Conspiracy. The mage who blew the towers of Revolutionary forts down with a breath and flew faster than their engines could spit fire, reduced to chasing down townspeople.” I clicked my tongue. “So, which was the bigger challenge to run down? The children or the old women?”

  “They shouldn’t have run.” He forced the words through clenched teeth. “Vraki’s plan needed them, needed me. They could have made it easy on themselves if they had just—”

  “Oh, come now, are you really blaming them?” I sniffed. “Such a talented Skymage like yourself? I thought you said it was glorious.”

  “It was!” he protested, shriller than he had sounded a second ago. “Vraki’s plan, his summoning, he needed me to help him. It couldn’t have succeeded without me.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He entrusted all his most delicate tasks to me.”

  “I bet he did,” I replied. “And I bet all of them kept you far away from the summoning.”

  Men like Kresh are used to being feared. They’re used to people quaking, watching them, waiting in fear for their next move. You can fight them, shoot them, cut them and that might bother them. Hell, it might even kill them.

  But to really hurt them?

  All you had to do was look bored.

  And if it kept him talking long enough to tell me what I needed to know…

  “What would you know of it?”

  Well, I wasn’t going to stop him.

  Kresh spat the words. “You, wallowing in the dirt with the nuls, scrabbling for their metal, doing their vile dirty work. What would you know of ambition? Of what Vraki has planned?”

  “Same shit I always did,” I replied. “Same stupid rituals, same pointless murders. You can talk about ambition, but you’re still a cheap opera villain.”

  “He needed me, my power, my grace. His plan couldn’t succeed without me.”