Seven Blades in Black
Page 41
I quirked a brow, just far away enough to still hear them—Cavric had been correct, then. Regardless, he shook his head violently and pointed off to the valley.
“No time,” he gasped. “Need you there now! A fight broke out. Some weapons went missing. They accused the Revolution. They’re about to start shooting.”
“What?” The guard squinted. “That’s… that’s a Revolutionary problem. Lastlight’s peacekeepers are needed here for—”
“You fucking moron!” Cavric reached up and seized the guard by his collar. “It was Renita Avonin who made the accusation! The Avonins are saying the Revolution stole from them!”
It’s a thing of beauty watching a lie come together.
I know that makes me sound like an asshole, but the instant I heard Cavric say it, I couldn’t help but be impressed. The Revolution had guns and soldiers, but the Avonins had money. Lastlight wouldn’t want to piss off either of them, especially with so much military build-up and with tensions as high as they theoretically were.
I watched the guard’s face as he pieced this all together, the horror slowly dawning on it. He drew his blade, gestured to his fellow guards.
“You!” He pointed up to the peacekeepers on the wall. “Get word to Two Lonely Old Men. Tell him what’s happened and get more men to the gates!” He grunted at the others. “The rest of you, with me!”
They took off at a run. The peacekeepers kept an eye on them. A call went out as someone summoned more bodies to the gates and travelers complained and shouted and rothacs lowed and birds squawked and absolutely no one noticed a man in a dirty coat and a woman with a scar slip past and into the streets.
And after that? We were just two more people, slipping into the crowds.
We walked for a time, disappearing down a busy avenue and vanishing into the crowd. I glanced over my shoulder and, content that we hadn’t been followed, nudged Cavric with my elbow.
“You can breathe now.”
He let out a sharp gasp, his eyes bulging out of their sockets as he flailed his hands. “General’s graces,” he said, panting, “I did not think that was going to work. I was sure they were going to know. I feel tingly. Do I look tingly? I feel tingly.”
“Relax.” I chuckled, slapping him on the back. “You did some fine fucking work.”
“Praise from Sal the Cacophony, huh?” He shot me a crooked grin of his own. “I’m not sure if I should be pleased or horrified.”
“A little of both is probably your safest bet.”
Lastlight loomed large over us, its buildings of finely polished stone and well-hewn timbers rising into a pristine sky. And prowling atop it, peacekeepers with their fancy crossbows walked. I pulled my cloak up a little tighter around me.
“We should get out of sight soon,” I muttered. “Until we’re sure no one noticed your little stunt back there.”
“Right,” Cavric said, sighing. “I have to find where Cadre Command is and…” He held out his hands, helpless. “I don’t know. Figure out what’s happening and see how many people I can keep from getting hurt.”
“You’ve got a plan?”
“No. But I can’t let that stop me. They need to know we’ve got problems.” He glanced at me sidelong. “I’d invite you to come tell them what you know about Vraki, but I don’t know if I could get a Vagrant in, even to inform on another Vagrant.”
“What?” I grinned. “You couldn’t make up another fabulous lie?”
“That was… just a trick.” He chuckled. “I couldn’t think of anything else, honestly. I thought I’d try to pull what you did on the Redway and say ‘Do you know who I am?’ or something. But I don’t think I could have done it like you did.”
“Yeah, no, never ask that question unless you already know the answer,” I replied. “Still, I’m impressed. Cavric Proud, lying through his fucking teeth. What would the Cadre say?”
“They’d understand,” he said. “If it was to help prevent people getting killed, they’d understand. That’s why I have to tell them about Vraki, about Stark’s Mutter. The Revolution is here to help people, the downtrodden and the oppressed.”
His face dropped a little and I could see his head wander back to the valley, back to the scene below. And I could see him wonder how the hell that many guns were going to keep anyone from getting hurt.
“It’s supposed to be at least,” he muttered.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t look at him as he looked away. And despite the roar of the city—the laughter of people from café patios and the barking of merchants and the raspy crackle of voccaphones playing the latest operas—a funerary silence fell between us.
The loudest sound in the world is a man of faith beginning to doubt.
And over it, I couldn’t hear anything else.
FORTY-ONE
LASTLIGHT
After a guard patrol had gotten a little too interested, Cavric and I had split up with the agreement to meet later.
Or rather, he had agreed to meet up later. I was still mulling it over.
We both had our own business here in the city. His might lead him back to me. And my business, the man I had come here to see…
If there was any justice, my business would lead me to Vraki.
I didn’t tell him about that. And I didn’t feel good about not telling him, especially after such stirring words about trust. But there are a few reasons that would make me do something like that. Revenge was one of them.
A hot bath was another.
So don’t get me wrong, when I walked out onto the streets of Lastlight, the steam of the bathhouse still draped around my shoulders like a mantle, I felt bad. But I also felt clean, the chill of the air pricking the warm skin of my scars and the absence of all the blood and the dirt and the dried sweat that I had left behind to disappear down a drain. And though I knew that more blood lay ahead of me, like it always did, it was nice to pretend, for a moment, that I wasn’t in the business of killing people.
For that feeling, I’d do a lot of things.
I tried to put it out of my mind when I walked out onto Lastlight’s streets. And one of the richest freeholds in the Scar was all too happy to oblige.
Lastlight was everything freeholds weren’t supposed to look like. The buildings were tall and elegant, built of polished stone, with windows and red tile roofs instead of barricades and thick doors. Streets cleaned of stray garbage and stray drunks alike marched one way, lining gondola-choked canals that marched the other. There were cafés instead of public houses, tailors instead of armories, places selling things like fine wines, fine plates, fine tapestries, and all the other things you would never need in the wilds.
And the lights… they were everywhere.
They hung in long, draping streams that ran from rooftop to rooftop. They drifted aimlessly across the surface of the canals, given a respectful berth by the gondolas and boats plying the waterways. Paper lanterns of crimson and ivory sleepily dotted the city and, one by one, awoke with the same soft glow as the city’s sigil.
No one knew what alchemic Two Lonely Old Men had used to make them light up every day, just before sunset, without anyone lighting them. Not even other Freemakers; in fact, as far as they were concerned, such aesthetic frivolity was a waste of his considerable talents that could otherwise be dedicated to their cause.
Liette, after three glasses of wine, would rant for hours about what a dick he was. Her face would get all red and she’d scream and hop up and down and it was kind of adorable.
I missed that.
I missed a lot of things.
However fascinated I was by the lanterns, the people of Lastlight didn’t share my enthusiasm.
And, for as glorious as the freehold might have been, it seemed altogether too shabby for its citizens.
No one was pushing or shoving. The air was filled with laughter, unprompted by dick jokes. There was not a single fight to be seen. Hell, these people looked like they might break if you brushed against them.
And the clothes were the least ostentatious thing about them. Birds of a hundred different colors walked the streets—long-tailed creatures with gemstone feathers perched on the shoulders of wealthy ladies, and young men raced long-legged, ivory-feathered Imperials down the streets. The smoke of alchemic waterpipes filled the air with scents of flowers, of fruit, and—one time—of I think farts? Enchanted platters from Cathama floated in the air, serving drinks to people in cafés while unseen violinists played a tune from instruments hovering five feet in the air.
You’d think that would have been what made me feel weird.
But it felt strange to walk among them for different reasons. Me, with my scars, my tattoos, my shabby clothes, and my heavy gun at my hip. I half expected someone to call for a guard, to be charged with the crime of spoiling some rich man’s view.
But they didn’t look at me. They didn’t talk to me. They didn’t care that a killer was walking around their city, if they noticed at all.
It wasn’t illegal to carry guns in Lastlight, same as any freehold. They didn’t bother even glancing at me as I made my way through the evening crowds. Rather, it was me who couldn’t stop staring at them.
Them laughing, them sipping wine, them walking around with the easy, languid gait of people who’d never even thought about touching a weapon, let alone using it on someone else. I watched those people walk past me.
And I don’t think I could remember how to walk that way, if I ever knew in the first place.
“Step aside, citizen!”
Fortunately, the unease I felt at normalcy was suddenly replaced with the familiar tension reminding me where the fuck I was.
A voice bellowed at the top of its lungs but was drowned out by the sound of iron gears groaning and a scratchy voccaphone playing. Which, in turn, was drowned out by the sound of the earth shuddering beneath a heavy gait as a tremendous mass of iron and severium came lumbering toward me.
From afar, you might have called it a very big man. Its head, topped with a jagged horn, scraped just shy of seven and a half feet tall. Its shoulders spread far enough to take up a city street, its arms massive and its legs causing the earth to shake with every groaning step.
But in place of clothes, it wore a skin of iron, its body a mess of hard angles and hammered metal plates. In place of a face, it wore a hollow visor shrouded in a halo of steam hissing from the massive engines strapped to its back. And in place of a hand, its gigantic arm ended in a big fuck-off gun.
Up close, you’d call it a monster.
But the Revolution called it a Paladin.
“Hail the Revolution and be at ease, citizens.” Its voice was human, though ringing with a metallic echo as it bellowed to be heard over the voccaphone strapped to its shoulder blaring the Revolutionary anthem. “The liberators from the Imperial filth have returned to safeguard this city.”
The Paladins were intended to be symbols, both of might and ideal.
“They stand as bulwarks against the corrupt, crusaders against villainy, as in the legends of old,” their Great General had said of them.
Only he must have thought the legends of old could have stood to have guns that could reduce a man to a bucket of steaming meat in two seconds. The Revolution slapped a Relic engine into them, strapped their biggest, heaviest weapons to them, and turned them loose on the battlefield. I’d seen them mow through ranks of soldiers like they were wheat. Even knowing what I did about them, I could barely believe there was a human inside piloting that thing.
All the magic in the world could barely be as terrifying as machines sometimes.
Six Revolutionaries flanked it, marching in lockstep as they barked at citizens to clear the path, who were all too eager to do so. Yet far from the tension I felt at its passing, the citizens of Lastlight laughed and applauded in its wake. To them, it was one massive prop in a very elaborate opera.
They didn’t see.
Just like they hadn’t noticed me, they didn’t see the soldiers. Knots of blue coats marched in formation up and down the streets, Revolutionary gunpikes bared and glistening over their shoulders as they stalked around like packs of dogs searching for fresh meat.
And they weren’t the only ones.
I heard her song, first, the distant, lilting notes of the Lady Merchant. And then I spotted them. Amid the crowds, I spotted them. The glistening amethyst colors of Imperial uniforms as soldiers of Cathama strode along the promenades. The regal winged crests of the capital glistening on the breasts of officers lounging in cafés. The air felt electric with restrained magic: flameglaives eager to ignite, thunderbows crackling in anticipation.
And everywhere, everywhere, there was violence. In the scowls cast between patrols passing each other on the streets, in the curses hurled between officers over the canals, in the useless displays of dragging a clunky war machine like a Paladin down a crowded street.
This, I supposed, was the “volatile situation” the guard had been referring to.
Lastlight had always been a target desirable for the Imperium and the Revolution. It sat at a perfect nexus of river, road, and coast, bringing trade from all three. Either faction would be eager to have it and loath to alienate it, thus guaranteeing the most awkward truce of all time overseen by Two Lonely Old Men.
But something had changed.
There were too many soldiers on the streets. The scowls came accompanied by hands drifting toward weapons. The curses came with specific and explicit threats. These people were ready to kill.
I pulled my cloak up a little tighter around me. Whatever normalcy I might have felt was dashed now that I was aware of how many people were here who probably had a pretty good reason to kill me.
I saw the red and white colors of snipers patrolling the rooftops, their eyes on the soldiers below, their Freemaker-wrought crossbows at the ready. But they were designed to handle small problems, discreetly. I wondered if Two Lonely Old Men even knew his freehold was a powder keg, let alone how close it was to exploding.
Because his citizens didn’t have a fucking clue.
Someone had to tell them, to warn them.
Someone else, I mean. Someone who didn’t have plans already.
I shook my worries off with each hurried step I took, started making room for plans. Vraki hadn’t been in Vigil, but he couldn’t have gone far if he had left Galta and Taltho behind. The Crown Conspiracy had been shattered and he was a wanted man by both the Revolution and Imperium—allies weren’t something he’d be tossing around easily.
He’d still be in the Husks. And if there was anyone who knew anything about where an all-powerful Prodigy about to summon an abomination from beyond the stars was, they’d be here in Lastlight.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know anyone who knew anything.
Fortunately, I did know someone who knew everything.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t parted with them on the best of terms.
Fortunately, as you’ve gathered, I don’t really tend to give a shit about that sort of thing.
In my head, it sounded like a plan. But then, my head was a noisy place lately. It was full of fears: fears that I was too late, fears that I’d never save those kids, fears that Vraki was thinking six or seven steps ahead and was already gone and laughing at me.
Fears that I’d never find him. Or Jindu. Or any of them.
That they’d get away with it.
Those fears weighed on my shoulders, slowed me down as I went hurrying through the streets, pushing through the pristine crowd of pretty people, over a bridge leading to the other side of the canals, where the houses were a little shabbier and the lights a little dimmer.
&nbs
p; And, for a brief and black moment, I wondered if those worries on my shoulders would be enough to sink me if I just jumped in.
That’s when I heard it.
An avian screech cut through the sky. I felt a breeze carrying with it the scent of lilacs and embers. My muscles tensed, fearing an attack. My gun burned, ready for a fight. But my heart… my heart knew that sound.
And it sang.
I looked up and saw them. Feathers glittering the color of amethyst against the dying light of the day, long tails trailing in the breeze like kites, wings shimmering with every beat. They looked so oblivious to their majesty, like flying and painting the sky with purple was just something they did, rather than something that made my knees shake.
In perfect formation, they flew, each one guided by an Imperium rider in purple armor. The banner of Cathama, the great bird with wings outstretched, flapped overhead. They opened their beaks, each of them, and loosed a cry that cut through my skin.
Krikai.
The great birds from whom the Imperium had taken its sigil. Living omens of the Lady Merchant’s favor. Beasts whose beauty and bloodthirst were awed and feared in equal measure by the Emperor’s foes.
Under their shadows, children raced to keep up, the people looked up with awestruck laughter. And, at that moment, I was one of them.
I had been a girl when I had seen them last. Back then, they’d seemed impossibly majestic, a cruel joke left to remind us how ugly and earthbound we were. I remembered seeing their tails trailing as they spun elegantly in the sky. On that day, I hadn’t cared about war or vengeance or metal.
On that day, I hadn’t cared about anything but being like them, flying like them. And I had barely been able to hold back tears.
On this day, I couldn’t.
The world suddenly seemed far too big, too full of people and too full of noises. My legs felt too small for my body; I had to lean against the bridge. Tears fell from my eyes, stinging when they seeped into my scars.
I must have looked stupid; Sal the fucking Cacophony, weeping like a little girl at the sight of a bunch of extremely fancy pigeons.