Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  But he didn’t let me get more than two steps.

  He didn’t grab me. He didn’t pull me back or curse at me or demand I stop. He just put his hand on my shoulder. And somehow, that was enough to make me stop.

  “I believe you,” he said, painfully soft. “I believe you didn’t see another way. But…” He sighed. “There is. There has to be.”

  “I don’t recall hearing you say anything,” I muttered.

  “Because you never asked me!” he shouted. “You never tell me anything. Maybe I could have thought of something. Or maybe I couldn’t, I don’t know. But we could have tried, if you had trusted me. There has to be another way other than breaking yourself to do it.”

  He squeezed my shoulder. His hand felt warm.

  “Because if you do,” he said, “no one else can stop Vraki.”

  The wind blew softly, carrying with it the smell of burned earth and melting ice. I turned to stare at him. And he, who had every reason to hate me and every chance to run and leave me to die, stared back at me.

  And he smiled.

  “We have to trust each other,” he said. “We don’t have anything else left.”

  I don’t know what made him this way. I don’t know where the Revolution failed to turn him into an unthinking thrall of the Great General. I don’t know how the Scar hadn’t turned him into another monster.

  But, for once, I didn’t want to know.

  I smiled back. And he picked up the satchel. And together, we started climbing the hill.

  We found Congeniality at the top, peering at me curiously. Clever girl must have followed us. I smiled wearily, stroked her beak as Cavric slipped the satchel and its supplies into her saddlebags.

  Almost died, I thought. But I got some metal and some whiskey out of it. Fair trade, I’d say. I sniffed. A pity I couldn’t get one of those fancy blades, though.

  I heard the click of a weapon behind me.

  I turned around, slow, and saw him standing there. Knees shaking, hands trembling with the weight of the gun, eyes wide under the shaggy mop of sand-colored hair on his head, the boy who had been driving the cart with Renita stood at the edge of the hill.

  Pointing a hand cannon at me.

  “Don’t do it, son,” Cavric said to the young man.

  I held up my hand to keep him back. I started walking toward the kid.

  From the look in his eye, it was the first time he’d ever drawn that weapon on another living person.

  And it’s not that I didn’t want his first time to be special, but I had already faced down a creature from beyond worlds, a beast the size of a boulder, and a Siegemage who could hurl that beast through the air like it was a ball.

  Whatever would they say if Sal the Cacophony was suddenly scared of a little thing like that?

  I walked forward, slowly, eyes locked on his eyes. He backed away, right up until he hit the edge of the hill. He looked behind him and, when he looked up, the barrel of the gun was six inches from my chest.

  I glanced down at it, then looked back at him. And without blinking, I took it by the barrel and pulled it out of his hands. He fell back with a shriek, landing on his rear end. And when he looked up into the grinning mouth of the Cacophony drawn on him, he let out a much less dignified sound.

  Cavric held his breath behind me, dreading what I might do.

  My eyes, narrowed to thin razors, drifted to the clean white of his clothes. I made a gesture with the Cacophony.

  “And give me your fucking shirt.”

  He didn’t ask why I wanted it; he simply got right to unbuttoning.

  I decided I liked this guy.

  “Tell me,” I said to him, “when you tell people how this all went down, what are you going to say?”

  His lips trembled, trying to find the words as he handed over his shirt. “I’ll… I’ll say that Sal the Cacophony showed up, robbed us blind, and—”

  “Honey.” I drew the Cacophony’s hammer back. “You can do better than that.”

  “I’ll say that Sal the Cacophony appeared from nowhere!” he blurted out in a fitful cry. “As though from a nightmare that chased us into the waking world, she was upon us in the time it took to scream her name!” He hid behind his hands, sputtering. “I’ll say that she spat fire and frost like the breath of a dragon! The winds stood still for fear of drawing her attention! The greatest Siegemage was struck blind by the brightness of her glory! And when she left, only blood and ash and silence lay in her wake!”

  “Damn.” I raised both eyebrows. “What’s your name again?”

  “Dennec, madam,” he wheezed.

  “You’ve got a real way with words, Dennec. You ever think about going into opera?”

  “N-no, madam.”

  “Huh.” I eased the Cacophony’s hammer back down, sheathed him. “Well, give it some thought.”

  And with his—pardon, my—new shirt slung over my shoulder, I turned and walked back to my bird, my hand on my gun, Cavric at my side, my mind on the hardest-earned bottle of whiskey I’d ever have.

  FORTY

  LASTLIGHT

  Try to understand.”

  The guard, a fellow with better grooming and a cleaner uniform than you’d expect, clasped gloved hands together, plaintive.

  “Lastlight is a freehold, yes. But it is not the typical hive of whiskey-soaked thieves masquerading as a civilization you’re used to. We stand under the protection of Two Lonely Old Men, wisest of Freemakers, and like all geniuses, he demands certain standards be met.”

  A fine sight himself in his red and white uniform with matching pin, he gestured to the gates behind him. Carved though it might have been into a graceful arch and emblazoned with the sigil of a red and white lantern, the gate looked no less sturdy for its opulence. The stone was thick and hewn with artisanal care, its walls defiantly smooth, as if daring the wilds of the Scar to come and try to blemish them. The gaggle of snipers, long crossbows gleaming, patrolling the walls would be waiting for whatever dim-witted outlaw who chose to take up that challenge.

  “Our fair home has been host to empresses, barons, generals, the greatest men and women to stride across the Scar. Dignitaries from every nation, scholars of every culture. Proud people are made humble in the wake of Lastlight. We are accustomed to a certain standard of visitor and, against even the most blistering storm, refuse to relax that standard so much as an inch.”

  The guard looked at me pointedly.

  I, through eyes ringed by dark, sleepless circles, looked back. I brushed dirt from my tattered, bloodstained shirt and scratched an errant itch on my ass. I snorted, spat a red and green glob on the ground, and wiped my nose with the back of my hand.

  “So, what are you trying to say here, pal?”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” the guard said, accompanied by a dramatic sigh fit for opera, “that the city of Lastlight is closed to visitors of your caliber.”

  “My caliber,” I repeated.

  “A polite way of saying a woman dressed like a thug, tattooed like a cultist, carrying a gun bigger than her head and reeking of birdshit, yes.”

  “All right, that’s just unfair.” I jerked my thumb back down the road, toward a large corral. “I stabled my bird back there, so I can’t possibly reek. I stink, at worst. And secondly, how the fuck are you going to tell me the biggest freehold in the Scar isn’t accepting visitors?”

  “I didn’t say ‘visitors.’” The guard held up a finger. “I said ‘visitors of your caliber.’ If you’d like, I can use ‘ruffian,’ ‘undesirable,’ or ‘general nuisance.’” His eyes drifted over the blood staining my shirt and the Cacophony hanging off my hip. “Though perhaps a stronger word needs to be invented for your particular caliber.”

  I restrained the urge to show him my particular caliber and instead sighed. “Listen, I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want a bathtub and a glass of something harder than water, preferably both big enough for me to disappear into.” I patted the hilt of the Cacophony, ignored h
is seething heat. “This, you have my solemn word, never leaves the sheath.”

  “Your word.”

  “Yeah, my word.”

  “So, is that something people trade when they have no money or…”

  I narrowed my eyes. “It’s something I give when I could very easily blast someone’s head into a pulp and make a stiff drink out of the offal, but am choosing not to because of how fucking nice I am.”

  “And that is precisely the sort of caliber we’re trying to avoid here.” The guard glanced around, wary. “Look, it’s hardly my decision. Tensions are running high in the city. Two Lonely Old Men would prefer that volatile elements present be kept to a minimum until things calm down.”

  The sound of tromping boots drew my attention. I glanced to my side in time to see a regiment of Revolutionary soldiers, gunpikes over their shoulders, dust on their coats, march in tight formation past a pair of guards who waved them in with hardly a look.

  “Well, what the fuck do you call that?” It would have been impolite to make the gesture I wanted to, so I settled for gesturing to the soldiers. “You don’t want volatile elements but you’ll gladly let in guys with guns for cocks?”

  The guard rubbed his temple. “No one, even Two Lonely Old Men, can keep an army out. I, however, can keep one reeking”—he paused—“apologies—stinking outlaw out.”

  “Birdshit,” I spat. “What have they got that I haven’t?”

  He blinked. “Thousands of soldiers, incredible firepower, and shirts that aren’t drenched in blood.”

  “Is that all?”

  I reached into my bag, pulled out a wad of linen. I snapped free the shirt that Dennec had so generously donated to me. And, with a little protest from the guard that turned into a lot of protest from all the guards, I promptly stripped off my bloodstained garment and tossed it to the ground.

  Their outrage didn’t last long. I was quick about my business as I pulled Dennec’s shirt about me. It was frightfully large—funny, he hadn’t seemed that big a kid—and I rolled up the sleeves, tied the hem off. I gestured to my new, clean, and very not-soaked-in-my-own-blood garment.

  “How about now?”

  “Now they’ve got thousands of soldiers, incredible firepower, and shirts that fit.” He sighed, shook his head. “Kindly leave, madam. No one wants to see this turn ugly.” He studied me for a moment. “Uglier, anyway.”

  Maybe it was the fact that I’d been riding so long without sleep I couldn’t remember how long it was. Maybe it was the Cacophony burning a hole into my thigh. Or maybe it was the way the light hit this guard’s face, so clean and well groomed, that made it look like it could stand a few more holes in it.

  “You don’t, maybe.” My hand drifted to the Cacophony. He burned in anticipation. “I happen to think ugly is a good look.”

  Mistake.

  I felt them before I even heard the strings drawing. Atop the gates, three crossbows were drawn, black bolts aimed right for me. I held my hand where it was, glanced from them to the guard before me, who shot me an insufferably smug smile.

  “It’d be no uglier than the mess your corpse will leave on the pavement,” he said. “But please, if not for your own squandered dignity, have some care for the poor bastard we’d make clean it up.”

  From any other dust-necked, shit-for-brains guard, I would have walked away long ago. From a dust-necked, shit-for-brains guard with clever insults like that, though, I had to actively fight the urge not to blow his head off and deal with the consequences.

  As it was, though, I imagined he’d somehow look even more smug if I were to get shot—even with his head blown off. So I eased my hand away from the Cacophony and turned on one heel to stalk away.

  My furious exit was hindered as I started limping. The Cacophony burned against my hip. If he could talk, he’d doubtlessly be demanding I turn and fight, or perhaps demanding to know why we were bothering with this city to begin with. Fortunately for me, he couldn’t communicate outside of causing pain. And I found that pain easier to deal with than the futility of my situation.

  Vraki hadn’t been in the Husks.

  The one place I was sure he’d be, he wasn’t. And if he wasn’t there, I had no idea where he might be. I was out of leads. I was out of hunches. I was out of ideas, entirely, and left with only a single, desperate hope.

  And it lay behind those gates.

  Ah, well, I thought as I walked down the road. At least it isn’t personal.

  That thought provided the coldest of comforts as I was greeted with the sight of dozens of rejected visitors. Across the scrub grass and upon the riverbanks, they gathered in clusters: merchants tending to restless rothacs, yawning mercenaries repolishing weapons for the sixtieth time, refugees from places no one had ever heard of or would ever hear from again staring at nothing in particular with empty eyes.

  It wasn’t right. Or normal.

  It was true that Lastlight was one of the richest freeholds in the Scar. Rich enough that it had been the desire of both Imperium and Revolutionary armies, as well as rich enough to fight those armies to a standstill and force them to come in as peaceful traders. And it was also true that Two Lonely Old Men, the Freemaker who ran it, held it under a tight fist. But it was wealthy precisely because of people like these, the people who brought trade—be it coin, blood, or news—from all around to feed into the tightly regulated machine that Two Lonely Old Men had made his city into.

  For them to be barred meant Two Lonely Old Men was actively turning away money. And whatever could have occurred for him to make that decision, I didn’t know. I only knew three things: I needed to get in, I wasn’t getting in, and someone was being absolutely no help in achieving either.

  “What was that you said back there?” I screamed at Cavric as I found him up a dune on the outskirts of the city. “‘We need to trust each other, we’re all we’ve got, weh weh weh weh.’” I thought my impression of his voice was flawless, but he didn’t even look over his shoulder as I approached. “Where the fuck were you?”

  He didn’t answer and I didn’t ask again. When I saw what his eyes were locked on, neither of us had to.

  I got my answer in the cloud of severium smoke hanging in the sky, in the sound of soldiers mustering for battle, in the rows of cannons marching the length of the valley below.

  Three dozen gunmetal-gray gravestones, in want of bodies.

  Their Relic engines hummed, sending their armor and wheels rattling against the barrels. Around them, Revolutionaries buzzed like flies, either barking out orders or heeding them. Machinists hammered on metal. Soldiers drilled with gunpikes. Commanders shot hand cannons into the air to accentuate their roars.

  Everything was present for a war… except the war.

  “This is… a mistake.”

  I wasn’t the only one to notice.

  “There shouldn’t be this many guns here.” Cavric shook his head. “There shouldn’t be this many guns anywhere except an active battleground. This is… this…” He looked over his shoulder toward the city. “Lastlight is neutral. There are only a few Imperial diplomats here. Nothing that would require this kind of…” His face screwed up, as though he could chew sense out of the situation if he just gritted his teeth hard enough. “Why are they here?”

  I looked at him. And for a moment, I thought about just shrugging and walking away. But something in me—an itch that I couldn’t scratch ever since I had met him—made me speak.

  “Have you gone down there and asked them?”

  He looked at me with surprise. He knew as well as I did what that meant. He could go down there, tell them what had happened, be back with his people and be rid of the woman who had abducted him at gunpoint. Whatever blood or bodies or burnt wreckage I was going to leave in my wake, he could be free of it.

  He could be free of me.

  And that itch would hurt, turn to something sharp at the base of my skull, when he finally took off down that valley and left me and the gun to be by ourselves. B
ut it would hurt worse if I didn’t do it. I was expecting hurt.

  “No.”

  I wasn’t expecting that.

  “No, that wouldn’t make sense.” He shook his head, pointed down to the valley below. “See the commanders? Only sergeants among them. No one down there knows anything but their orders. It’d be a waste of time.” He looked over my shoulder, to the city walls. “There’s no command tent in the valley, which means the higher-ups must be in the city.” He nodded. “Which means we need to get in.”

  “Yeah,” I grunted. “I tried that already. They didn’t let me in.”

  “What? Why not?”

  I shut one eye, raised one leg, let out a brief fart. “No idea.”

  He sighed. “We’ll try another way, then.”

  It felt weird to be the one following him for a change—or at least, following him without pointing something stabby or shooty at his back—but I did, anyway, as he took off at a jog back to the city gates.

  He just looked so excited, you know?

  I hurried to keep up with him as he started pushing through the crowds and travelers. “What?” I said. “Are we going to charge the gates?” I drew my gun. “Like, I’m down and all, but I could have thought of that.”

  “No!” he shouted back, picking up speed. “No guns! And stay twenty feet behind me and to the right.”

  “What? What for?”

  He shot a look over his shoulder. “Trust me.”

  I did. Every part of me screamed not to, to just keep running past him and start shooting and hope for the best. But I fell behind him. I held off to the right. And I watched as he burst into a sprint and came to a skidding halt in front of the gates.

  “Halt!” The nice-looking guard who had stopped me earlier held up a hand, his other on his sword, though he didn’t draw it. “If you please.”

  “Can’t… can’t…” Cavric’s breath came dramatically short and wheezy, sweat pouring off his brow. “Trouble… in the valley. Need help.”

  “What help?” the guard asked, furrowing his brow. “If it’s a Revolutionary matter, we can fetch your commander for you and have him here in—”