Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  You couldn’t feel the darkness looking back at me.

  I clicked the chamber shut, stared out into the gloom.

  “You going to come out?” I asked. “Or am I going to have to light this place up?”

  You wouldn’t have seen it, at a glance. Hell, I barely did, even knowing what to look for. I stared into the dark for a long while, and to me, it just looked like an endless void. But I let my eyes relax, my mind clear, and soon enough, I saw it. There, in the gloom, was a patch of darkness that was just a shade darker than the rest.

  And it began to move.

  Its steps came slow and with the sound of feet dragging across stone. It shambled closer, an ungainly and teetering limp that made it more distinct with every step. Soon, I could make out a shape that had once been tall but now stood hunched over. I could make out long legs bent awkwardly; I could make out long arms hanging low from stooped shoulders and ending in hands, the only part of him that was bare, that were tattooed with dead trees. I could make out a pair of bloodshot eyes.

  Staring right at me.

  “Sal,” he groaned, voice like he had just swallowed glass.

  I nodded toward him. “Taltho.”

  You probably never even heard the name of Taltho the Scourge. But if you’d spent any time at all in the Scar, I guarantee you knew his work.

  You probably heard about the regiment of Revolutionaries who all suddenly turned their gunpikes on each other and fired. Or maybe the one about the wealthy heiress in Beggar’s Fists who started screaming about spiders in the middle of a crowded ball and started clawing her own face off. Or the tavern in Redriver where twenty men walked into the main room, ordered a stiff drink, then quietly put their own knives through their throats.

  Vagrants love fame, it’s true, and Nightmages are no different. But whereas most want our names remembered, Nightmages want to be known only by the bodies they leave in their wake. And even among Nightmages, Taltho was something different.

  Not that you’d know it to look at him.

  The creature that stepped out into view barely looked like he could stand, let alone put me through the hell I had just seen. He was bent, trembling, and every inch of his lanky body was wrapped in dirty white bandages, as though he suffered from some disease that didn’t even have a name yet. All that was visible were a pair of eyes, unblinking and bloodshot, and two rows of teeth, bereft of lips.

  “Unwelcome,” he said.

  “Should have used something other than your birdshit tricks to try to kill me, then,” I said. “It might have worked.”

  “Liar.”

  I grinned. More for my own sake than for his; after what I had just seen, I felt like I had to do it.

  “Yeah, you always did see right through me, Talthonanac.” I glanced at his face. “Probably because you never blink. I would have come to kill you sooner or later.”

  “Unlikely.”

  I regarded him coldly. “You’ve been awake too long, Taltho. Your memory’s going.” I raised the Cacophony. “You must not remember what you fucks did back in Cathama, or you’d never stop thinking about me.”

  I took a step forward.

  “You’d never stop wondering when I was going to come for you. All of you.”

  I aimed the Cacophony at him.

  “And your very last thought would be my name.”

  I took another step.

  “Sal the Caco—”

  Another step behind me. I whirled around, Jeff in hand, and plunged his blade into soft flesh. He sank to the hilt in someone’s chest. In the darkness, I could only see the reflected lights of a pair of dark eyes as they looked down, bemused, at the sword jutting out of their sternum.

  Those eyes flashed purple. The Lady’s song filled my ears. One hand tore the blade free from flesh, left not even a scar behind. The other hand?

  It flashed out of the darkness to crack against my temple and send me collapsing to the ground.

  I had one last moment to see Taltho, staring at me with those unblinking eyes, before I hit the ground. I couldn’t feel the stone beneath me, couldn’t feel anything but numb cold where working arms and legs had been just a moment ago. Fortunately, I could still use my eyes.

  “Ha! What’d I tell you? I told you she’d fall for it!”

  Unfortunately, I could also still use my ears.

  “How long were you thinking up that line, Sal?” a voice, feminine and as pleasant as a rusty nail being hammered into my ear. “Fuck, I bet you thought you sounded like such a badass. ‘And your very last thought would be my name.’ Ha!” She cackled in delight at her own crude imitation of my voice. “Sounds a little less dramatic if you shit yourself and go rigid while you’re saying it, don’t it?”

  I hadn’t shit myself at least. But that was probably the only thing about this situation that I could smile at. I knew who was coming even before her black boots came to a stop in front of me. And even before she knelt down so I could look right into those dark little eyes set in a face like a hatchet’s edge, I knew I was in trouble.

  “Sal,” Galta the Thorn said through a smile as broad and jagged as a knife wound, “how long’s it been?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  HIGHTOWER

  Vigil.

  Tretta swirled her glass of wine, staring into its darkness. She knew the name of the fortress, of course. Along with Dutiful’s Wall, Long Watch, Greenriver, Bentnail, and of course, Stern’s Last Word. “The Unbreakable Six” was the third song any child in Weiless learned, right after the Revolutionary Anthem and “Praise Unto the General.”

  She leaned against the wall, closed her eyes. How did it go, again?

  “Walls, eternal and wide,

  Break the Imperial tide,

  Revolutionary hammer crafts Revolutionary spirit!

  Unbreakable as the Six and eternal as the sky!”

  Somehow, muttering it to herself in a dark hall didn’t sound the same as when a thousand military cadets were singing it in unison with an accompanying hundred-strong military band.

  But then, maybe it was fitting, given that the Unbreakable Six had been broken ages ago.

  She felt a pang of anger at herself for the counterrevolutionary thought. The Great General said that the fortresses were not broken, that someday they would once again form the bulwark against the Imperium and become the shining wall to safeguard the Scar for the children of the Revolution.

  The Great General was always right. Even when she had no idea how he could be.

  The Unbreakable Six had been the first defenses built when the Revolutionaries—back then, simply called “the nuls” by their oppressors—had thrown off their Imperial masters under his leadership. When the decadent oppressors had returned, it was his Unbreakable Six that kept safe the Revolution.

  At first.

  The counterattack stretched into a campaign. Dutiful’s Wall had been sunk beneath the earth by magic. Long Watch had exploded when the garrison chose to detonate its severium reserves rather than surrender. Greenriver had been taken by the Imperium. Bentnail was a freehold overrun by outlaws. And Stern’s Last Word, her family’s namesake, had been lost in the Husks.

  There were songs about how they were lost. The operas of Weiless had dedicated countless plays to how they would be reclaimed and the Imperial swine would be cast out. Each of the Unbreakable Six had its own opera.

  Except Vigil.

  No one sang of Vigil. No one spoke of its once-verdant fields or thriving mines or happy families. No one wanted to remember that those shattered ruins and blackened skulls had once been home to so many. Of Vigil, there were only whispers, only tears, only names.

  Vraki. Jindu.

  Red Cloud.

  They knew nothing else. Only that three Imperial mages had arrived and an hour later, Vigil had been a graveyard. The handful of soldiers who had accompanied them had never been known, had never even been spoken of, mere footnotes in a long treatise on Imperial villainy. Tretta herself had barely even remembered th
ere were other Imperials besides the three present.

  And now one of them was her prisoner.

  It was rare that Tretta did not regret delaying an execution, but she was feeling more and more justified in her decision. Whatever issues Cadre Command would take with her sparing the Vagrant would be minuscule if it meant she could deliver them the fate of Vigil. They might even promote her again. They might even bring her to meet the General.

  She had never laid eyes on him outside the portraits. No one in her class had. But when she thought of the moment when she met him, it was not his face that she saw. It was her own. Polished and bright and smiling at the commanders and captains and officers who nodded and smiled and saluted as she walked down the halls of Weiless headquarters. And at the end of those long halls? It was Cavric, the Low Sergeant, she saw. The life she had saved. The Revolutionary she hadn’t left behind.

  That would be a fine reward, she thought. That would be a fitting victory.

  If she didn’t die of old age before she saw it, anyway.

  “Are you almost done?” Tretta’s bellow was accompanied by her fist pounding on a wooden door. “It’s been nearly half an hour.”

  “I was almost done,” a voice called back. “Then you went and interrupted me.”

  “It’s a toilet, not a library,” Tretta growled, rubbing her eyes.

  “I can’t help it. Wine goes right through me. Can you hear me?”

  “I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”

  “No, not, like, hear my voice. But can you hear me… going?”

  Tretta blinked, recoiling. “Does it matter?”

  “Well, I can’t go if you’re listening! Can you play some music or something?”

  “For fuck’s sake, what difference does it make?” Tretta slammed her fist against the door. “I already know what you’re doing in there!”

  “Is this what passes for etiquette in the Revolution? You people truly are savages.”

  “I’m under no obligation to accommodate your vanity.”

  “And I’m under no obligation not to piss all over your nice floors. I just thought we’d all be happier this way.”

  “Five seconds.” Tretta kicked the door for emphasis. “Then you’re either out here or I’m in there. And in one of those situations, I’m armed.”

  “All right, all right! Take it easy, for fuck’s sake.”

  There was a grunting sound, which Tretta dutifully strained to ignore, followed by the sound of water disappearing down the drain. A sigh that was almost too relieved later, the door creaked open and a pair of blue eyes peered out.

  “It would have been quicker,” Sal said, holding up her manacled wrists, “without these. Not to mention more humane.”

  “It’s not a matter of humanity,” Tretta replied tersely. “It’s a matter of security.”

  “Security.” Sal lofted a single white eyebrow. “What exactly did you think I was going to do in the toilet?”

  Tretta had heard the sounds of a hundred men dying at once without flinching. It annoyed her, to some extent, that Sal’s particular choice of words should cause a rush of warmth to flush her cheeks.

  But, to a greater extent, it just pissed her off.

  “Out of a necessity for information, I have been accommodating,” she said through clenched teeth. “Out of a necessity to maintain a standard, I might not be.”

  “Of course. I meant no offense. I was simply curious if Weiless’s academies taught you how everything worked down there.” Before Tretta could reply—or strike her—Sal proffered an arm to her, as if inviting her out for a stroll. “Shall we?”

  Tretta eyed her arm and considered striking her anyway, just on general principle. But that was time that would be better spent finding out the fate of Cavric. She settled for roughly seizing Sal’s arm and leading her down the hall.

  “You were at Vigil, then,” Tretta muttered, “the night it was destroyed. You were a soldier for the Imperium, there to support Vraki.” She narrowed her eyes, spat the name. “And Red Cloud.”

  “I was,” Sal said. “I saw it… I saw everything.”

  “Then you see how necessary the Revolution is,” Tretta said. “You’ve witnessed the barbarity of the Imperium and their hated Prodigies firsthand. You know what it is we stand against.”

  “I do,” Sal replied. “But I doubt you do.” She quirked a brow at the woman. “Does it surprise you to know I was in the Imperial army?”

  “A Vagrant is defined by treason,” Tretta said. “You wouldn’t be one if you hadn’t betrayed someone.”

  “I thought you’d approve of me abandoning the Imperium.”

  “That is between you and your abominable goddess.” Tretta guided Sal down the stairs and back to the Cadre’s office. “My concern is for what happened to my soldier.” She shot a glare at Sal. “You did see Cavric again?”

  “If I hadn’t, you’d never find out what happened to him,” Sal replied. “And then you’d go and shoot me and get my brains all over the floors I so courteously didn’t piss on.”

  “I don’t know if it’s that you’re a Vagrant, an Imperial, or worse that makes you think you can threaten me with urination—”

  “I think it’s your nice coat,” Sal replied. “You seem like the type that’d be bothered by stains.”

  “—but it’s pointless. I know you’re trying to distract me.” She jerked hard on Sal’s arm, forcing her to a halt. She sharpened her scowl to a fine point and thrust it right between her prisoner’s eyes. “But no matter what oaths you swore to whom and which you’ve broken, I will exact justice from you. By choice or by blade.”

  Sal met her stare. And there was no more mirth, no joke waiting to be unleashed, no snide comment waiting to pounce. The eyes that met Tretta’s were clear and blue as the sky after a storm, eyes fit for the scar that ran down the right one, eyes that belonged on dead men and the men who killed them.

  And her voice was soft as night.

  “Well,” she said, “I hope it’s sharp.”

  Tretta was a hard woman. A hard woman who felt the urge to remind this Vagrant that she had seen hundreds go to their deaths before this one and would again. A hard woman who wouldn’t flinch at words like that.

  “Soldier!” she barked.

  That said, there was nothing that said a hard woman couldn’t delegate.

  “Governor-Militant!”

  A pair of soldiers—apparently neither one sure which she had called—came rushing up, skidding to a halt and firing off crisp salutes. They looked just a touch confused when she shoved Sal toward them, but took the woman by either arm regardless.

  “Take the prisoner back to the interrogation room,” she said. “Leave her there until I return and lock the door behind you.” She fixed a wary look upon Sal. “And do not talk to her. Am I understood?”

  “Yes, madam!”

  Another salute, a jerk on Sal’s arms, and they were off. And just for a moment, Sal’s eyes, still so blue and so empty, lingered on Tretta before they, and the scarred woman they were fixed in, disappeared down the hall.

  It was easy to forget she was a killer, Tretta thought. She had a way of talking, between the flashy descriptions and the eloquent verse, making it seem like they all deserved it, like she wouldn’t have killed them if they weren’t guilty. But if Vagrants were defined first by treason, there was one hell of a knife fight for second place between violence, lying, and the sheer effortlessness with which they did either.

  Tretta narrowed her eyes, scowling at the hall down which her prisoner had just disappeared. She’d had a gnawing at the back of her neck since she’d first laid eyes on Sal, an irritating pain that grew more aggravated with every word she spoke. But only now did she recognize it for what it was: the creeping suspicion that she was being made a fool of.

  “Governor-Militant,” a shrill voice piped up, “a word?”

  Then again, she thought resentfully, given the many, many pains in her neck around here, perhaps she was having tr
ouble telling one from the other.

  “Clerk Inspire.” She spoke his name before turning around with such icy contempt that she hoped he would take the hint and not be there when she did. Alas. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “But I didn’t say anything yet!” Inspire protested, cringing as she turned on him. “You can’t possibly assume you don’t have time for what I haven’t said.”

  “Were that true, Inspire, I wouldn’t have this latent desire to punch you in the face.” She waved a hand. “Make it quick.”

  “O-of course.” Inspire’s head nearly fell off with the force at which he nodded. “I merely meant to bring up the subject of the Vagrant’s confession. You know”—he cast a conspiratorial look about before leaning in and whispering—“about Vigil.”

  The urge to punch Inspire in the face vanished and was, in about a second, replaced with a white-hot urge to shoot him in the head. Given that Tretta instead settled for seizing him by the throat, shoving him into a nearby alcove, and slamming him against the wall, she thought she had struck a good compromise.

  “Clerk,” she whispered, her voice jagged and harsh, “you are going to do three things, in order. You are going to tell me what you know of what the Vagrant said, you are going to tell me how you know it, and you are never going to speak a word of either inside or outside this command ever again. Or else you will be doing one thing and doing it very quickly once I draw my hand cannon. Do you understand?”

  “Y-yes, madam! Of course, madam!” Inspire squealed, holding up his hands like they would stop her from doing anything. “I… I merely overheard! I… I… I was coming to the door and I heard her whisper the name and then I… I couldn’t… I had to…”

  “Breathe, Inspire, while it’s still only mildly difficult.”

  He inhaled sharply. His gaze steadied, just enough to make an effort to meet her eyes. “Madam,” he said, voice low, “I believe she’s telling the truth. Part of it, anyway.”