Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  “YOU… FUCKING…”

  Skymages are sometimes called the Lady’s favorites. They’re given the power of flight, of swiftness, of the wind itself to carry them laughing over creation. And the price?

  “I’LL… KILL…”

  Their breath.

  With every spell, it comes harder. With every flight, there’s less of it. The most careful Skymages can make it through life with only a few breathing problems.

  “YOU!”

  But Kresh was not careful.

  He threw his head back in a scream. His eyes erupted with purple light. Over the wail of the wind, the Lady’s song filled the sky.

  The wind rose around him in a sheer wall, pulling him higher into the sky. The debris, the twisted metal, droplets of blood flew into the air with him, surrounding him in a maelstrom of iron and agony.

  He swept a hand out. A great gale followed his lead, crashing across the roof of the ship and striking Necla like a fist. His cry was lost in the wail of wind as he went skidding over the edge.

  I’d have helped, but I had my own problems.

  Kresh’s eyes were on me. His smile was tremendous. Though I could barely hear him over the wind, there was something that came inside from that tornado, something that sounded very much like his laughter.

  But I didn’t go to that place this time. I didn’t think of the purple light and my blood in the air and the voice whispering “I’m sorry” in the dark, cold place.

  I just thought of the gun in my hand and the murmur of the wind and the words on my lips.

  “Eres va atali.”

  He spun in the air. He leveled his blood-slick blade at me. The wind shrieked as it carried him and his maelstrom toward me, fast as the swiftest bird.

  I didn’t move out of the way. I raised the Cacophony. And I aimed.

  And I fired.

  It streaked out as a piffling little bolt of light that ascended into the sky on an arc of luminescent smoke that quickly guttered out. I held my breath for a second, turned my eyes away.

  And then the world exploded into shadows and light.

  A great golden glow was birthed in a screaming, soundless life. Yellow shafts of light punched through the mist, punched through the gloom, punched through the night itself. Even with my eyes shielded as they were, I had to squint to avoid being blinded. The few unlucky Ashmouths who hadn’t quite died shrieked as the spell took their sight. But I could barely hear them.

  Not over the sound of Kresh.

  The light took him square in the face. He screamed as his eyes were taken and the wind screamed right along with him. He went spinning through the air, control over flight, over the wind, over everything lost.

  He charged, blindly, and twisted. For a brief moment, he was every bit the wailing hurricane that had killed a hundred men before he had been stopped.

  And then he hit the smokestack.

  His body caromed off the metal and crumpled, motionless, onto the roof. The winds died from a wail to a moan, a lament for the man who had ridden them. Softly, they ebbed around his body, as if pleading with him to get up.

  I’d have called it poetic.

  If I could think about anything else but finishing it.

  The sound of the wind vanished into a funerary silence. The maelstrom of debris came to a slow, awkward halt, the lethal timbers and twisted metal clattering to the ground in motionless chunks. And in the quiet that followed, I heard a proud voice let out a soft moan.

  I unsheathed Jeff. Behind me, I thought I heard Cavric saying something, telling me to be careful. Or maybe that was Liette. I didn’t know.

  I couldn’t hear him over the lonely sound of my boots clattering across the metal roof, over the sound of the gun’s hammer drawn back, over the rasping breath of Kresh as he tried to struggle to his feet.

  When people looked to the sky to see Kresh the Tempest, they saw a black bolt from heaven, a laughing god who grew drunk off their fear. On the ground, though, he was just a skinny kid with too-long hair and too-tight pants. His body shook and shivered as he clambered to his feet. His voice was mirthless and soft as he wheezed:

  “Not… not like this…” He held up a hand. “I can’t… die… like this…”

  No “please,” no “spare me.” Men like Kresh didn’t beg. Men like Kresh didn’t ask. They took. And when they couldn’t take anymore, they did what everyone does when they’re called to the black table.

  “I can… tell you…”

  They bargained.

  “Vraki… Galta… Taltho…” Names he had once sworn oaths to came tumbling out of his breathless mouth, lay limp on the floor. “I can tell you… where… how…” He waved his hand. “Let me… find a better death. You… you win…”

  “Sounds like a surrender to me,” Cavric said, stepping forward. “Those names have a lot of blood on them. He could be a big help.” He looked at me so intently I could feel his eyes through my scars. “Take him in, Sal.”

  Take him in.

  Like he was just a criminal. Like he hadn’t laughed that laugh. Like he hadn’t been there on that dark night.

  “Sal…” Kresh whispered. “Please. I can tell you… everything.”

  “You can save a lot of lives, Sal,” Cavric said.

  It was true. I could.

  Those names were steeped in blood, it was true. They had killed many, would kill many more, it was true. I could save them.

  “Sal.”

  The wind had quieted and her voice came just as gentle. I turned and saw her there, Liette staring at me, like she had when she pulled me out of the water. No anger in her eyes. Just fear. But that had been a fear that I’d been hurt, that I’d almost died, that she might have lost me.

  In her eyes now, I saw the fear that she already had.

  I looked back down at him, that gasping, wheezing boy as he reached up a hand, as his black blade lay limp and useless. My eyes lingered on its edge, remembering how it had felt, how it had looked with my blood glistening on it.

  Each one of the names on my list had a blade just as black.

  I could find out where all those names were, if I just let this one go. I could follow those names, cross them off, if I only agreed to let this one stand. I could tell Kresh that I agreed, that I was going to let him live.

  But…

  “Sal, what are you doing?”

  I wasn’t going to have it said Sal the Cacophony was a liar.

  “Wait!” Cavric shouted.

  I heard him.

  As I raised my sword.

  As I brought it down.

  As I rammed it through Kresh’s throat.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  HIGHTOWER

  At the end of the hour, Tretta suddenly became aware of a severe ache in her forehead.

  Her brows, she realized, had been steadily furrowing themselves for the past hour. And as soon as she felt the pain of them unclenching, she became aware of the tension under which her entire body had been held: her knuckles sore from clutching her hand, her leg tired from nervously bouncing her knee, her jaw aching from having clenched it tighter and tighter with every word.

  Yet, for all the pain that came from this, all of it was forgotten and replaced by a much more familiar ache as she looked across the table.

  “What?” she demanded of the woman staring incredulously at her.

  “Not a thing.” Sal’s smile was easy as she held up her hands in surrender. “This is just the first time you haven’t interrupted me with an outburst or by slamming the table.” A look of mild umbrage crossed her features. “Or was I simply not interesting enough to warrant it this time? Should I be offended?”

  “And how,” Tretta snarled through gritted teeth, “am I supposed to react?”

  “Well, I just described gunning down a man who flew through the sky. A little shock might be nice. Maybe you could grasp the table and utter something dramatic like ‘This world has gone mad’ or—”

  “Shut up.”

  “No, that�
��s a little too common,” Sal replied, scratching her chin. “Maybe like ‘Who could have known even gods could fall’ or—”

  Tretta didn’t bother interrupting this time. Not with words at least. She placed both hands on the table and pointedly shoved as she rose, thrusting the end of it into Sal’s midriff and sending her doubling over, grunting.

  Her stiff body complained, but Tretta rolled out those aches as she began to pace the length of the chamber.

  “If you can be trusted…” She caught herself. “If your words can be trusted, you’re telling me that not only did you abduct a soldier of the Revolution, steal our closely guarded engine, and deliver both to a gang of assassins we’ve been trying to clear out, but also that we have traitors within the Revolution who would sell our technology to ruthless murderers?”

  “Oh, come on.” Sal rubbed where the table had struck her belly, looking wounded. “I tell you a grand tale of adventure, replete with romance and a gunfight, and all you heard was the part about the engine?”

  “And further, you say that the Weary Mother actually exists,” Tretta growled. “The Ashmouths’ ship was said to be a myth.”

  “Who do you think said it was a myth? The Ashmouths prefer to be thought of as such.” Sal shrugged. “I suppose they’ll be pissed I told you, but hey, you’re going to have me executed, so what are they going to do?”

  Tretta only barely heard the Vagrant. Her words did not so much gnaw at Tretta as bite her by the neck and shake her violently back and forth. And, as if to break that grip free, she shook her head.

  “No,” she announced loud enough that she might believe it. “You’re lying.”

  “About which part?” Sal leaned back. “I admit, I might have embellished a few of my lines, but I can’t say something clever every time.”

  “About the Righteous Fires.”

  Sal paused. “Why would I lie about that?”

  “Oh, I have no doubt the Ashmouths are in possession of our technology. By some murder or theft, it’s possible.” Tretta rubbed an ache out of her knuckles. “But by treason… impossible.”

  “Oh yeah?” Sal grinned. “You think they infiltrated Weiless, the capital of the Revolution, snuck past its teeming armies and giant engines of destruction, penetrated its vault under guard by a hundred thousand men, and pilfered the bombs themselves?”

  “As you said, they prefer to be thought of as mythical.”

  “If we all were what we thought we should be, you’d be telling me I smelled nice.” Sal took a sip from her water cup. “Why would they go to all that trouble just to steal an engine? Why not steal state secrets to blackmail your General with? Why do either of those when they could just pay someone to give it to them?”

  “Because the Revolution is incorruptible!” Tretta shouted without realizing it. “It burned itself free of the Imperium’s decadence and the taint of its magic, a verdant tree rising from the sick swamp of its society. And with the Great General’s guidance, we’ve made this world safe for the pure and uncorrupted who will never again be slaves to mages! Our nation is forged in truth, our vows in fire, our machines and our bonds in iron! Unbreakable! Immutable! Cavric knew this.”

  She looked imperiously down her nose at Sal.

  “Which is why he tried to stop you.”

  Her prisoner simply stared back at Tretta. It was with some morbid pride that, even though it lasted but a moment, she noted indignation painting itself across Sal’s features. And her next words came slow and venomous.

  “That’s a real nice speech,” Sal said. “How many times did your commanding officer beat you before you could recite it by verse?”

  “Your envy reeks.” Tretta resisted giving her prisoner the satisfaction of slapping her. “A Vagrant from the Imperium, you saw firsthand the corruption that made the Revolution necessary and forsook even those frail loyalties to pursue greed and violence for no other reason than your own.”

  “That and the fashion.” Sal pulled back the sleeves of her shirt, exposing the dancing storm clouds and birds tattooed across her arms. “But, at the very least, when someone’s out to kill me, I see it coming.”

  Tretta narrowed her eyes. “The Revolution protects its—”

  “Yeah, it’s nice and all.” Sal waved a hand, yawning. “You nuls put together a fine nation and it serves everyone well. But with or without magic, we’re all still human. A man can’t get his dick wet from patriotism. National pride won’t keep any girl warm at night.”

  “But it can’t happen,” Tretta said, all too aware of the quaver in her voice. “Not to us. It happens to other nations, other people.”

  “Yeah…”

  Sal’s eyes grew empty as they drifted down to her hands. She ran a finger down to her tattoos.

  “That’s how it’s supposed to go, isn’t it?”

  The woman’s silence did not go unnoticed by Tretta—if only because this was the first time since their meeting that Tretta could recall feeling something other than infuriated annoyance. Rather, it was a stoked curiosity that drove her to pull her chair up and sit back down at the table.

  “He knew you,” Tretta said. “The Skymage.”

  “I said as much, didn’t I?” Sal asked without looking up.

  “That would imply a degree of honesty, which would imply that there is somewhere inside you that is not filled with shit where honesty could lie. What you did was hint that he knew you.” Tretta leaned forward, hands clasped together in thought. “One assumes you knew the Crown Conspirators based on your having a list of their names, some reason to pursue them. But that could be anything: an insult, an unpaid debt, whatever petty reason Vagrants kill each other over.”

  “Take your pick. They were a fruit basket of assholes.” Sal paused, considered. “An ass basket, if you will.”

  The Vagrant leaned back in her chair, yawning again as she kicked her feet onto the table and slid her shackled hands behind her head. Her face settled into bored disinterest, easy as she might slip on a cloak. But Tretta had interrogated many prisoners. She had seen enough such cloaks to recognize where their stitches frayed.

  And she saw it in Sal’s face. The woman’s jaw was tight. Her posture was too awkward, too rigid to be naturally bored. And her eyes, though they played at disinterest beneath heavy lids, watched Tretta a little too intently, as though studying to see if she bought it.

  Tretta pursed her lips.

  “What is your favorite opera?” she asked.

  To Tretta’s satisfaction, surprise scarred itself across Sal’s face. “Huh?”

  “Before I learned better, mine was A Young Man’s Two Fancies,” Tretta continued. “An Imperial opera, technically illegal in Weiless, but all officer candidates are required to study it to understand the Imperium’s treacherous mind. It’s a military story, you know; the General believes it provides insight into how the enemy thinks.”

  “Then your General has shit ideas, as well as shit tastes. Two Fancies is a child’s opera.”

  “I will agree with one of those sentences and beat you within an inch of your life if you repeat the other.” Tretta leaned back and folded her arms over her chest. “Yes, Two Fancies is what a child thinks war is. I learned that once I read all the verses about the eyes. There were quite a few lines about the horror of men’s eyes as they marched off to battle and met their fates. They just went on and on.”

  “They do love their poetry in Cathama.”

  “Exactly. Those lines were made to affirm the beliefs of decadent hedonists in the Imperium, to confirm that war was simply one vast drama, so they need never stay up at night wondering what hell they were sending their soldiers to.” Tretta idly pulled her glove tighter. “My first battle, I don’t remember what anyone’s eyes looked like. We all wore the same glassy-eyed stare, like lenses in spectacles.”

  She clenched her hand into a fist. The stitches of her glove creaked tighter under the strain.

  “What I remember,” she said, “were the smiles.”
/>   There. Tretta wouldn’t have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking for it. While Sal’s face settled back into boredom, her jaw clenched tightly on the right side. The side with her scar.

  “I remember those. The men and women who waded through the mud and corpses. Their eyes were as empty as ours, but their mouths were wide and smiling, even as people screamed around them and choked in the melting snow. Like they were born to be there, like they were made for violence.” She regarded Sal through cold eyes. “Like Kresh the Tempest.”

  Sal didn’t bother to hide the contempt creeping onto her face. Or maybe she simply wasn’t capable of it. When she turned her face away, Tretta leaned forward again.

  “You knew that smile too well,” she said. “You knew what he had done because you had seen it firsthand. And if you knew him, I wager you knew the other ones.” She narrowed her eyes. “You were part of them, weren’t you? You were involved in the Crown Conspiracy. You know more than you’re telling and—”

  “The Veils of My Lady,” Sal suddenly said.

  Tretta did not so much flinch as reel, as though struck. “What?”

  “That’s my favorite opera,” Sal replied. “The Veils of My Lady. The original version, not that reimagining they did.”

  “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “I’m not. You asked. I answered. And your General seems to think you can tell a lot about a person by their favorite opera.”

  Tretta furrowed her brow. “The Veils is… irrelevant. Convoluted and pointless.”

  “Oh? Don’t you remember the opening verse?” Sal closed her eyes, whispered, “‘Where war and spell cannot separate two, how can two stand so close and yet ne’er see each other’s eyes?’”

  “It’s a ridiculous verse and a more ridiculous question.”

  “That’s the beauty of it. It’s the question of how two people can be so in love that they cannot be separated by war, yet lack something so profound that they cannot find their feelings for each other.”

  “It’s just a silly love story.”

  In their brief time together, Tretta had become keenly aware of the panoply of her prisoner’s smiles—the petty smirks, the haughty grins—but the smile spreading across her face, soft and restrained by the scars it stretched against, she hadn’t seen yet.