Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  “Language,” Alothenes replied.

  I didn’t bother apologizing this time. He could count himself fucking lucky I didn’t say worse.

  This was just my fucking luck, wasn’t it? To just barely miss him. Who knew if that would be time enough to save the kids, to stop Vraki, to find Jindu, to make them pay?

  And yet… I didn’t feel quite so heavy. Not anymore. I had a lead. I had an answer. It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than I had a moment ago. Don’t get me wrong, I still had questions. And none were bigger than the one that sprang to my lips.

  “Well, what the shit am I supposed to do until then?”

  “I had thought you might wonder,” Alothenes replied. “Would it soothe you to use my facilities until then?”

  It would, I couldn’t lie. Alothenes didn’t often loan out his room, but the temptation of a regular bath and a bed that wasn’t made of dirt and birdshit was too much to pass on. What interest I showed on my face emboldened a mischievous little smirk on his face, one I had only seen twice before, and each time it had been followed by…

  “And since we’re catching up…” He reached into his vest, produced a thin metal pipe. The rank aroma of the dried herb packed inside it filled my nostrils. “I thought you might like to celebrate the old way.”

  Thesha. That old son of a bitch kept some.

  “Fuck me.” I held a hand up, kept my eyes on the pipe. “Sorry. But… where’d you get thesha all the way out here? It only grows in Cathama.”

  “I suppose, then, that there remain yet wiser reasons to work for Cathama beyond a bizarre definition of family, don’t there?” He pulled a tindertwig from his vest, lit the pipe, and inhaled deeply. The smoke that came out was a hazy purple and filled the room. “I wouldn’t waste it on the nul peasants here. They’d hardly know what to do with it. But an old…” He searched for the word, finding nothing. “For you, anyway, I suppose I can be persuaded.”

  I’d had smarter ideas than taking the pipe when he offered it to me. Thesha, when it was a raw weed growing in the wilds, had the tendency to drive any beast that so much as sniffed it berserk and drive the minds of people who touched it to madness. The average nul couldn’t handle the strain it put on the mind.

  But to those of us who could hear the Lady’s song?

  I took a deep inhale, felt the smoke fill my lungs. My body began to tingle, a thousand tiny hands pushing a thousand tiny sinews of muscle to ease. When I breathed out the cloud of purple smoke, it felt like all my worries and fears went with them.

  They’d be back, of course, and I’d feel them all the keener when they visited me with a pounding headache and mouth dry as dirt. But for now, I knew where Riccu would be. For now, I knew I could find Vraki. For now, I could worry a little less.

  “How does it taste, Salazanca?” he asked.

  “Mmm,” I replied. My eyes were already drooping. It had been ages since I had hit this stuff; my tolerance wasn’t what it used to be. “Good.”

  “Do you feel very good, Salazanca?” he asked. His voice was flat, droning. A product of the weed, surely. “Do you feel at ease?”

  “Yes.” The word dribbled out of my mouth. I didn’t remember saying it. I couldn’t feel my lips speaking it.

  “Salazanca.”

  Darkness ringed my vision. My breath came slow. The muscles in my body relaxed to the point they felt like jelly, like I was sinking into the sofa. The drug wasn’t supposed to do this. Something was wrong. My head screamed at my heart to start pushing blood back into my limbs, but my heart had forgotten how to pound.

  “Why are you really here?” Alothenes asked.

  I should have shot him. I should have gotten up and left. I should have done that when I first got here. But I couldn’t remember how to do any of that. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t stop myself from speaking.

  “Vraki,” I muttered, the word sliding out of my mouth.

  “Here?” A note of surprise in his voice, but he kept himself calm as he spoke. “Where, Salazanca?”

  Don’t! my head screamed to my mouth. Don’t you fucking dare. Something’s wrong. He’s screwed us! The drug’s making us—

  “Husks,” I groaned, unable to stop the word from coming out. It was as though Alothenes had pushed my brain directly to my mouth. I couldn’t keep the thoughts from my lips. “Riccu…”

  “He would know the way, wouldn’t he?” he said. “I’m afraid he’s actually here in Lastlight as we speak, in fact. Forgive me that lie, if nothing else.”

  Alothenes sighed, rose from his chair. I couldn’t move my head to follow him. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw him change. With every step, his clothing, his skin, his hair color vanished. And by the time he reached the door, Alothenes was gone, and a young girl dressed in a simple frock and hat was standing there. He looked back at me, frowned at me through feminine lips.

  “I won’t ask you to thank me, Salazanca,” he said. “Nor will I ask you to believe me when I say it’s for the best. But your hands will be clean and a villain will be brought to justice.”

  He pushed the secret door open, disappeared behind it.

  “Take pleasure in that, for your own sake.”

  I was screaming inside my head. He had drugged the drug, laced it with something. I had to fight it, had to stop him. I couldn’t let him find Riccu, find Vraki, steal my revenge. I had to get to my feet.

  One foot. I forced my left up. Now the other. I forced my right. Now, take one step forward.

  I did.

  I fell.

  The floor opened up beneath me into a yawning black pit.

  And I disappeared.

  FORTY-FOUR

  SOMEWHERE DARK

  I opened my eyes and I was dead.

  Or… was I soon to be dead? I couldn’t quite remember.

  I still drew breath, slow and steady and clean in my lungs. My limbs still worked, legs carrying me, arms swinging. My heart was quiet in a way that it hadn’t been in a long time.

  My body worked. But my brain was smothered, held underwater by a pair of hands with iron fingers. I couldn’t remember how I got here. I couldn’t remember where I came from. And I couldn’t remember where here was.

  Somewhere dark, beneath the earth and choked in the dust of a hundred dead monarchs and a thousand dead ambitions. They stared at me from the walls, their faces in the hard edges and rigid amethysts that had shaped an empire. There was the crown of Empress Litany, black iron spikes tipped with amethyst shards. There was the crown of Emperor Song the Fourth, silver coiling around a central violet gem. There was the crown of the Mad Emperor, brass and twisted, briars shaped like a grin.

  This was all that was left of them. Their bodies had been taken, their Dust taken, and a few chunks of metal and rock were all that the empire they built had to remember them by. They drank the light of the lantern in my hand, going dimmer with each step I took until it disappeared completely.

  I stepped into darkness.

  I don’t know where I came out.

  “There’s no need to be nervous.”

  Jindu was beside me. His smile was perfect and bright in the darkness. I couldn’t remember when he had come. I couldn’t remember why he was smiling. His smile was as bright as the sword at his hip.

  “Vrakilaith has been working on a solution,” he said. “He and the others have an idea how to take care of this. We’re not going to serve a Nul Emperor. Not anymore.”

  He reached out. And he took my hand. And I couldn’t remember why it hurt to have him hold it.

  “We didn’t enter this lightly. No matter what happens,” he said. “It’s worth it, right? For the Imperium?”

  I closed my eyes and I spoke the worst lie I ever spoke.

  I opened my eyes. And they were all there.

  Kreshtharan, lingering at the corners in the darkness and laughing. Rogonoroth, arms crossed and attentive and face like a carved stone. Galtathamora, scratching at the few thorny protrusions poking out
of her brow. Jindunamalar, standing beside me, smiling like he did, like everything should be okay.

  I didn’t know why it didn’t feel like that.

  All thirty-four of us were down here. They were my friends. They told me I was needed. Jindu had told me I was needed. So I had come. And for some reason, every step felt painful.

  From somewhere high and far away, the barest shaft of a setting sun thrust down into the chamber. The thrones of the old council stood empty, withered and ignored from a time when we thought words could ever solve anything. At the center, the chair of the first emperor lay in collapsed rubble beneath the light of the dying sun.

  And Vrakilaith stood atop it, a crown on a shattered skull.

  “It can’t be that simple.” Zanzemalthanes looked up at Vrakilaith, scratching his featureless face. “We just… make a new emperor?”

  “Impossible,” Talthonanac rasped from the darkness.

  “He’s right,” Galthathamora growled. “What’s the use in jabbering about this shit, anyway? The army is behind the Empress. We should just go Vagrant, like the others.”

  “And then what?” Vrakilaith’s voice, deep and resonant like a knife plunged into flesh, boomed. “After the Imperium built its palaces over our Dust, after we conquered their new world and threw down the upstart Revolution that would tear it apart, you would have us simply leave?”

  “What other way is there?” Ricculoran muttered. “The Empress will have no more children.”

  “It’s hardly her call to make, is it?” Kreshtharan laughed. “So she made one nul. Throw it away and try again.”

  “The army’s thrown its lot behind her,” Jindunamalar said from beside me. “It falls to us to honor the sacrifices of those who came before and those who will come after.”

  “The Nul Emperor will lead us to ruin,” Vrakilaith said, nodding toward Jindunamalar. “He cannot hope to comprehend the power at his fingertips, let alone use it responsibly. The Empress has chosen her spawn over her nation. It falls to us to remedy this.”

  Rogonoroth, ever patient, spoke. “A Scrath cannot hope to be controlled, even by a Prodigy like you, Vrakilaith.”

  “Summoning is an art, like any other. It is a power offered, a Barter demanded.”

  “You speak of summoning a living, thinking creature,” Moraccus protested. “What Barter could you possibly offer in exchange for that?”

  “The Lady Merchant does not want us to Barter.”

  The mutters of the crowd quieted. Vrakilaith’s eyes settled upon me. And all of theirs followed.

  “She wants us to give something back.”

  The light vanished.

  Fire.

  Lightning.

  Sound so fierce that it shook the walls.

  I saw them in flashes, shattered fragments of a broken window. Zanzemalthanes shifting, twisting into a black serpent and rearing toward me, cast aside by a wave of my hand. Grishoktha howling, the air shaking at the wall of sound bursting from his jaws, silenced when thunder fell upon him. Galtathamora hurling her painted wards, watching them incinerate and fall to embers as flame swept over her. Jindunamalar rushing. Jindunamalar rising. Jindunamalar’s blade…

  Striking.

  I drew in a breath.

  Darkness fell upon me.

  And then… light.

  Not sunlight. Not lantern light. It burst in a bright halo of violet in the darkness above me. The cold stone seeped into my body. My blood hung in fragments, drifting lazily in quivering droplets across the air, weeping out of the cuts in my cheek, my belly, my legs and drifting into the sky. The light brightened. A great breath of air was drawn in. My blood vanished into the halo.

  And something else came out.

  It stood up on shaking legs. It opened a mouth that spanned six hands wide. It sang a song in one discordant shriek.

  And the light disappeared.

  I opened my eyes. I ran through the halls, blood trailing behind me. Screams burst from everywhere.

  Darkness.

  Light.

  I crawled across the stones. I was bleeding too much. My breath was gone. I couldn’t fly. I used to fly. Why couldn’t I fly?

  Darkness.

  Light.

  I couldn’t go any farther. I fell down before a crown. I looked up, into brass briars. And they grinned back at me.

  Darkness.

  Darkness.

  Darkness.

  FORTY-FIVE

  LASTLIGHT

  Once, I took down a particularly tough bounty. I had celebrated that night with a very strong man and a much stronger whiskey. Turns out the bounty, some warlord south of the Husks, hadn’t actually died and came for revenge. And also the very strong man was actually his brother. All of this happened after I had gone through two bottles of cheap brown liquor.

  Anyway, words and bullets were exchanged and, the next day, I woke up alone, surrounded by dead bodies, bleeding from two holes that hadn’t been in me when I passed out and suffering a hangover trying to hack its way out of my skull with an axe. That had been the most terrible way I had ever woken up.

  This was worse.

  My eyes snapped open as I screamed. Or tried to scream anyway. Really, what came out was more of a choked, gurgling sound. Breath and voice were likewise robbed as something stirred from inside me. I felt something moving in my belly, something that had grown sharp claws and teeth and was trying to gnaw its way out. The blood swept out of my limbs, leaving me cold and numb as everything pulled itself to my innards.

  I’m not sure how I found the strength to roll onto my stomach and crawl to my hands and knees. The tears pouring from my eyes came thick and slimy as I retched, struggling to force something out from inside of me. My fingers dug into the carpet so fiercely they bled. Something came crawling out of my stomach and into my throat and it fought, with twitching, shrieking fury, to keep itself inside there.

  I have never been happier to puke than I was when I finally forced the bleakbrew out of me.

  It—for I had no idea what else you’d call the twitching, amorphous collection of congealed liquid other than “it”—fell out of me in a glob. It let out an angry hiss; its violet hue disappeared and was replaced with an ugly ochre shimmer as it tried to inch its way across the carpet. It left a trail of my blood and bile behind it as it twitched, shivered, and fell still, falling into a reeking pool.

  I lay down next to it, drawing in ragged, gasping breaths, trying to force air into my lungs and blood into my limbs.

  Bleakbrew isn’t an alchemic. It’s a living thing, the barest essence of a mage. How it heals isn’t pleasant. Going down, it was bad. But eventually, it had to come out. And that was worse.

  And that was, near as I could tell, why I was still alive.

  The thesha had been laced with an alchemic. It made my brain go soft and the words dribble like drool out of my face. Likely, it was supposed to keep me unconscious a lot longer than it had, maybe forever. But the bleakbrew inside me had absorbed it, eaten it, and now it lay dead beside me in a pool of my own blood.

  Lucky me, right?

  I was just lucky that Alothenes hadn’t known.

  Alothenes.

  It hurt to think of what had happened. Because I couldn’t think of him, of those words pretending to be gentle, of that face that pretended to be caring, without rage flooding into my head and sending my skull pounding. And yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  He betrayed me. He pulled thoughts from my head and words from my lips. And now he was going to find Riccu, and from there, Vraki.

  And Vraki would die as a famous criminal, the man who nearly toppled the Imperium, rotting away in a prison even as papers and books celebrated his life. And not one of them would spare a single sentence for the lives he stole, the blood he spilled.

  For him to face justice, he would have to die by my hand, alone and forgotten and bleeding out on the sand. And for that to happen, I had to find Riccu before Alothenes did.

  And so I let
the anger fill me, send my blood boiling in my legs and push me to my feet. I staggered against the wall for support, drew in sharp, sour breaths. I could still taste the Bleakbrew on my tongue, still feel it writhing in my belly. But I ignored that, just like I ignored the pain in my skull, the agony in my limbs, the long time it took to make my way to the door.

  The Cacophony burned on my hip, chiding me for falling for that trick. Alothenes had left him there with me, of course. He knew enough about the weapon to be afraid of touching him.

  There was a saying about pride and how it makes a man a dumbass. But I couldn’t think of it at that moment.

  I pushed on the door, found it fastened shut. Maybe to keep me in, maybe to keep someone else out. I didn’t care. I drew the Cacophony, aimed him at the door.

  Normally, using a shell to open a door would be considered wasteful.

  But I wanted to express my appreciation for that little trick of his.

  And I thought I’d show it by destroying only the door.

  You might have thought I was mad.

  Really, I understood why Alothenes did it. He was loyal to the Imperium. Vraki was the most dangerous threat to his Imperium, his Emperor, and his very way of life. He would risk anything, including our tenuous relationship, to stop him. Likewise, I knew he understood why I didn’t tell him at the start. He knew what Vraki meant to me, if not exactly why.

  So I wasn’t mad.

  I was fucking furious.

  And that fury kept me moving through the streets of Lastlight, spitting curses to get people to move out of my way and shoving those who were hard of hearing. Out of the dumpling shop, out of Beetle Square, and into the fucking streets, I stormed through the alleys, struggling to figure out where, exactly, I was going.

  The thesha didn’t help.

  The streets had thinned out as night became midnight, yet Lastlight was a city that didn’t sleep. Merchants hawking night-wares, crowds of jubilant drinkers and knots of soldiers alike thronged the streets still. If only I could tell exactly how many there were.

  The drug’s lingering effects still clouded my mind, my judgment, made it hard for me to tell what was going on. Was that a crowd of three people or seven? Were those Revolutionaries scowling at me as I passed or someone else? Did I just hear my name called or did I—