Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  He drew his fist back. His stride brought him closer. I could see his eyes.

  And somehow, through the fear, I felt vaguely offended that a man about to pulp my head should look so bored.

  He leapt. His fist came down. I darted, leaping to the side, falling into a tumble.

  A shriek tore itself from my throat as I came to my feet. I felt warm blood weep out and stain my shirt.

  My stitches had split.

  But my head hadn’t been reduced to a fine red mist, so, hey, relativity.

  I got to my feet, clutching my side as I backed away. I saw Calto grunting, struggling to pull his hand free from the boulder it was stuck in. It was a sizable thing, at least half again as big as he was, but it still groaned and cracked as it clung to his fist.

  “I’m surprised, Calto,” I said, fighting to hold on to my breath. “This task seems beneath you.”

  “It was a happy arrangement,” he replied, not looking up. “I was on the way to the Lastlight already. They offered me quite a bit of metal in exchange for killing people.”

  “In exchange for guard duty.”

  “Whatever.” He sneered. “You are correct, though. I am bound for greater things. And I shall find them in Lastlight.” He looked at me, his eyes empty. “And with the Gate.”

  “The Gate?” My eyes widened. “Vraki. So he is in Lastlight.” Through the pain, my mind somehow managed to pull the pieces together. “Son of a bitch, you’re going to join him?”

  “He is in need of new people. I am told that you are the cause of that.”

  “Shit, Calto,” I spat. “You… you can’t do that.”

  He pulled his hand free of the stone, fragments of rock falling from his knuckles. “I can do anything, Sal.”

  “Vraki is a killer,” I snarled, backing away. “He’s a lunatic, a madman chasing an insane plan. Just listen to me. I know what he’s going to do and—”

  “I have heard his plan,” Calto replied. “He will return a mage to the Emperor’s throne. He will remake this world for mages once more.”

  “Since when have you cared about that?”

  “I don’t.” Calto seized the boulder. With a sigh of dust and a groan of earth, he hoisted it high over his head. “But it’s something to do.”

  I took off running. My wound hurt, but getting crushed by a boulder would hurt a lot worse. But even as I ran, I knew my pace was uneven, my legs wouldn’t keep up. And so did Calto.

  “Ocumani oth rethar, Sal,” he bellowed.

  I felt a shadow fall over me. I looked up. The boulder came crashing down. The Cacophony burned in my hand, told me what to do. Without thinking I whirled, I aimed, I shot.

  Discordance flew, struck true, exploded. In a wave of sound that drowned out the explosion of rubble, it blew the stone apart. Fragments of rock fell in a heavy rain, landing unceremoniously in tiny plumes of dust.

  I shielded myself from the rubble, escaped with only a few pebbles landing on me. It had been dumb luck that kept me alive; if Calto hadn’t weakened the rock already, Discordance wouldn’t have done much but make a lot of noise before the boulder crushed me.

  As it was, it only delayed my death.

  Calto walked toward me, through the falling rain of dust, leisurely as he might stroll through a park in Cathama. And why shouldn’t he? He knew I was wounded. He could see my blood. He saw no reason to hurry.

  Wish I could have said the same.

  My body tried to hurry away from him. My mind tried to hurry to think up a plan. Neither of them had much luck. My wound was bleeding badly. My brain was on fire with fear and pain. And my gun had nothing left but Hoarfrost.

  So at least I could give him awkwardly erect nipples before he killed me.

  Out of desperation, I let out a sharp, angry whistle. If Congeniality was close, she’d hear me. And if she wasn’t too far, too slow, or just too ornery, she’d come. And then I’d have at least a few more breaths before Calto ran me down and killed me.

  Yeah, I didn’t like this plan, either.

  He was getting closer. I was bleeding more. I had no more options.

  Except the dumbest thing I could think of for the second time that night.

  I veered sharply, ignored the pain and the blood as I ran a circle around Calto, back toward the caravan. He quirked a brow, puzzled as to why I wasn’t making this more fun for him, before he saw me rushing toward the carts. Then his eyes widened. Then he was no longer walking so leisurely.

  He thought I was heading to kill the people paying him. His concern would be for protecting them first. Good. I needed him distracted.

  Otherwise, he’d see this coming.

  Renita and the caravan guards looked confused as to what I was doing, no doubt seeing that Calto’s mad dash was closing in on me. I could see the bewilderment plain on their faces. I could see Renita’s brow furrow suspiciously as I looked up at her.

  As I grinned.

  As I whirled about and aimed at the ground.

  And fired.

  The shell exploded, struck the earth in a blossom of ice. Hoarfrost erupted in a bunch of icy brambles, jutting up through the earth to form a frigid blue hedge in front of Calto. Naturally, he didn’t give a shit. He kept charging, lowered his head, burst through the icy spikes without even hesitating.

  That was fine. It wasn’t the spiky part I was planning on tripping him up with.

  That part came an instant later.

  The frigid brambles might have been gone, but the icy patch beneath remained, and as his foot came down in just the right way, he went skidding. He had been moving too fast to control himself, his charge turning into a wild, staggering struggle to right himself. And as he went flailing across the ice, he couldn’t stop himself as he went bellowing past me and rushed right for the carts.

  Renita put it together quicker than anyone else did. With a scream—either for her safety or for those very nice clothes that were about to get dirty—she leapt from the cart. Dennec followed her, leaping off as Calto came barreling in.

  There was the shriek of metal as his face collided with the cart. The rothacs lowed. The cart groaned as it went rising up on its wheels and, then, with delicious slowness, went collapsing over onto its side.

  The guards fled, pulling their birds clear. The rothacs wailed, their hooves flailing as they were knocked onto their sides, suspended by their yokes. Of Calto, there was no sign. But I couldn’t count on a man who walked out of a pillar of flame unscathed to be hindered by a little thing like running face-first into an iron cart.

  Fortunately for me, help arrived with a squawk and a foul odor.

  Congeniality came rushing over the hill, fashionably late. To her credit, she was at least hurried as she came running down the hillside and pulled up to a halt next to me. I spared her a stroke of her beak with one hand while I searched in the saddlebags with another.

  Fucking hell, where’d I put it? I thought as my fingers groped through the contents. Dead rabbit, dead rabbit, half a dead rabbit, empty bottle—why do I keep the fucking bottles—Hoarfrost, Discordance, Hoarfrost…

  The metal behind me groaned as something very big and screaming some very creative curses pulled itself free of the wreckage. My fingers wrapped around a shell, felt the spell written on the side of it.

  Ah. There you are.

  I pulled it out in just in time to see Congeniality squawk and run from me. In another second, I turned and saw why. I barely had time to hurl myself to the ground as two tons of flailing, bellowing, pissing rothac went sailing over my head.

  I got up, looked toward the cart. Calto was already tearing the second rothac free from the yoke.

  “Sal the Cacophony,” he snarled. “You are annoying.”

  He seized the beast by its neck. It let out an animal bellow, legs wagging as it he raised it over his head.

  “I did not believe you could be so much trouble as Vraki said. Alas.” He narrowed his eyes. “Like all unbelievers, I am keen to repent.”

&nb
sp; As speeches went, that one wasn’t bad. I felt kind of bad for only half listening. My attentions were on the sights of the Cacophony as I lined him up, as I drew the hammer back, as I whispered into the night…

  “Eres va atali, Calto.”

  I pulled the trigger and fired.

  And Sunflare did the rest.

  The shell erupted in a bright white light, banished the night in one brilliant flash. I shielded my eyes to be spared the worst of it. Though, fortunately, not so long that I didn’t see what happened next.

  Siegemages go so long without feeling pain, they never know what to do when it actually hurts them. And when the light assaulted Calto’s eyes, he did what anyone else would have done. He screamed, he shut them tight, and instinctively clapped his hands over them, too late.

  Why the fuck do they always do that?

  The rothac fell from his grasp, fell atop him, and bore him to the ground in a thrashing, lowing heap. Blinded, Calto found his ways to his knees. Unhindered, the rothac found its feet. And, in another instant, Calto also found its feet as it lashed out with a vicious kick. Its hooves sent Calto staggering forward, plowing into a nearby guard. Blinded, furious, he did what came naturally to all killers.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a man’s skull get hammered into his belly like a stake, but if you get the chance, I recommend looking away.

  Calto wasn’t used to being helpless, he wasn’t used to losing, and he wasn’t sure where I was. That combination made for a savage spectacle as he thrashed blindly through the caravan, swinging his massive fists, smashing the carts and the few guards stupid enough to try to stop him. He was well past caring who he killed. His temper needed to be quenched in blood; mine, theirs, he didn’t care.

  He never did.

  The scene was chaos. The rothacs lowed, strained at their yokes, broke free, and began thrashing. The birds shrieked, bolted, and tossed the riders who weren’t strong enough to hold them. The guards smart enough not to get in Calto’s way struggled between avoiding him, calming their beasts, and trying to find their wayward boss.

  Now would have been a good time to run.

  I wouldn’t blame you for calling me stupid for rushing toward it.

  But I didn’t have a choice. My gun was empty. My body was on fire. My side was weeping blood. And my eyes were on the satchel on the ground, in the middle of the carnage.

  I darted forward, kept low, kept silent. Not that I really needed to, what with the screaming people and the howling beasts and Calto smashing the caravan apart. I drew up short, held my breath as he charged past to blindly plow into another cart. I ducked under a rothac’s kick as one of the beasts stampeded past me. I brought the Cacophony up and smashed his grip against the jaw of the only guard stupid enough to try to stop me.

  I picked my way to the satchel, mercifully untouched by the chaos. Its flap was open and within I could see the telltale white of a healer’s kit and, nestled with it, a few bars of metal and a single bottle of whiskey.

  I glowered. You might think it crazy to have taken offense at seeing a single bottle of whiskey, given the circumstances.

  But I had told Renita I wanted two. After I had gone to all this fucking trouble, I wasn’t walking away shorthanded.

  I plucked up the satchel, cast a glance about the wreckage of the caravan until I saw a glimmer of glass. There, tumbling out of an upturned crate and nestled in straw, a few vials of liquid spilled out. Not the fine brown of whiskey, but a deep, ugly purple that danced and swirled.

  My eyes lit up.

  Not whiskey.

  But I sure as fuck wasn’t going to pass up bleakbrew when I saw it.

  I snatched up a vial, carefully slid it into the satchel. I had just reached down to take more when the cart next to me groaned. It shuddered with a sudden impact as Calto struck it, teetering over.

  Now it was time to run.

  I bit back a scream as I hauled myself to my feet and took off running. With a crash, the cart toppled over where I had just been, burying whatever was left beneath a mess of tangled iron. My side was screaming as I tore off into the hills, but I took a moment to glance over my shoulder.

  Calto stood at the center of the wreckage, the beasts and guards fled, the carts destroyed. He flailed wildly with his fists and, finding nothing but air to vent his frustrations on, let out a roar that shook the earth. The blindness would wear off before long and he’d be looking for my body in the wreckage. I planned on being far away when he realized I wasn’t there.

  Siegemages are a lot of things: invulnerable, implacable, and most importantly, impatient. It turns out when you spend most of your life being able to shrug off bullets like they were raindrops, you don’t really bother to learn the little things like, say, tracking a fleeing woman through twisting hills.

  I ran as far as I could before my side threatened to split me apart. The blood ran red and warm down my side, made my shirt stick to my skin. The pain had burned itself out in my body, leaving behind a cold numbness. I didn’t have much time.

  Fortunately, I didn’t need it. Not anymore.

  “Sal!”

  Cavric came running up, steadying me as I nearly collapsed. He hurried me away from the carnage, putting it far behind us.

  “That was your fucking plan?” he asked. “You said you were going to negotiate!”

  “I did,” I said. “It didn’t go well.”

  “You can’t keep doing this,” he growled as we rounded a dune. “You can’t keep just doing shit and hoping it works out. You need to—”

  “I need to do something else right now,” I said, pulling a hand away from my side and holding up a bloody palm. “If you don’t mind.”

  We crouched in the shadow of a hill. I struggled to catch my breath, failed. I was drawing in ragged, gurgling rasps, my hands shaking as I reached into the satchel and found that little bottle.

  It was tiny, no bigger than the palm of my hand. I could have broken it if I squeezed too hard. The liquid inside looked thick and viscous, an unhealthy purple color that resembled the sickly sheen of sunlight on oil. Yet when I held it up to my eyes, it danced, as though alive. And, despite it being a mess of sludge in a bottle, I got the distinct impression that it was looking at me.

  Bleakbrew was weird like that.

  “Is that…” Cavric’s eyes went wide with horrified recognition. “Sal, you can’t…”

  I didn’t have time for him to finish that thought. Or to listen to him. Or to be sickened. With one hand pressed against my wound, I pried the cork free of the bottle with my teeth. A slender coil of liquid slithered out through the bottleneck, as if peering at me. I winced, shut my eyes, opened my mouth, and tilted the bottle back.

  It fought me, struggling to go back in the bottle as I poured it down my throat. I could feel it moving all the way down as it slid past my tongue with the taste of bile on fire, oozed down my gullet, and settled in a gruesome coil in the pit of my stomach. I could still feel it moving in my belly.

  But not for long.

  Suddenly, my body reignited with pain. A bright and angry fire exploded inside me, chasing away the numbness. I fell to my knees, doubled over, robbed of the breath I needed to get out the scream trapped in my throat. My muscles seized. My breath went quiet. My vision darkened.

  But that was just how it worked. First, it tried to kill you. And if it couldn’t…

  Under my hand, I could feel sinew closing. I could feel blood slithering back into my body. I could feel the skin reaching out to each other with a thousand little hands, pulling itself tightly together and sealing shut.

  My senses were overwhelmed with agony, my eyelids fluttered as I threatened to pass out, yet even through it all, I couldn’t help but marvel at the process.

  You never get used to bleakbrew.

  The pain eventually passed. My breath returned, and when it did, it came slow and easy as it should. I looked down at my side. My skin, whole and hale and unbroken, greeted me. My body was still caked w
ith dried blood, but fuck if I was going to complain about that.

  I looked at the bottle in my hand, frowned. You might call it a miracle, this shit. I might have, too, if I didn’t know where it came from. And when I looked up and saw Cavric’s terror, I knew he wasn’t so lucky, either.

  “That’s…” he whispered. “That’s a mage you just drank, Sal. That’s a person.”

  I pretended I was still struggling for breath. I pretended it hurt too much to look up. I pretended it was anything except the fact that I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me.

  It’s not smart to think about what happens to a mage after he turns to Dust. If they’re given a noble purpose, they’re made into something useful like ink for a wright. If not, they might be studied by a Freemaker. But it’s an unlucky bastard who gets made into bleakbrew.

  It can heal anything, it’s said; disease, wounds, broken bones are all cured by a gulp of the stuff. But the process to make it is known by only a few.

  And the price?

  No one’s sure exactly how they do it, but occasionally a Freemaker with too much knowledge and too few scruples awakens a pile of Dust. The barest hint of the mage’s consciousness—fears, angers, sorrows—is stilled and forced into a cramped bottle to live in a glass tomb, knowing nothing but terror and fury, before it’s eaten alive. It stays alive in there, a living creature that fixes you from the inside, absorbing toxins, cleansing decay, repairing wounds before it dissipates.

  That is, if it doesn’t kill you. One of you dies, of course, for how else can you restore a life than by taking one?

  It’s rare stuff, expensive stuff—dangerous to hold, let alone create. It explained how Renita Avonin had made her money, but I wasn’t thinking about that.

  I was thinking about the poor bastard I had just drunk. And, though it chilled me to do so, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was someone I knew.

  “I had to.” I dropped the bottle to the ground. “There wasn’t any other way.”

  I got to my feet and started to stagger away. I wanted to be far away now—far away from Cavric and his prying eyes, from the shattered bottle of the person I just drank, from everything that made me think Liette was right to think I was broken.