Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  He turned, frowning. “This is incredibly undignified, Sal.”

  “You’re trying to kill me,” I gasped. “How am I supposed to act?”

  “Don’t turn this back on me,” he said, shaking a hand free of stone shards.

  “I’m just saying.” I raised the Cacophony, leveled it at him.

  He sighed, raised a fist. Suddenly, his face contorted in confusion and pain, along with the rest of him, as thunder rolled. His body convulsed, fingers of electricity dancing across his body. He let out a confused howl—unsure what pain was, let alone how to handle it—as he collapsed to his knees.

  That had been really impressive.

  Makes me wish I had been the one to do it.

  The Krikai swooped upward, turning away as its rider nocked another arrow. One Vagrant down, I supposed, was as good as another—and Calto was a much bigger target. I guess I should have been grateful for my good luck.

  And if the world wasn’t burning down around me, I might have.

  “TEN THOUSAND YEARS!”

  From the alleys, Revolutionaries came flooding out in squadrons, a wave of blue uniforms and clattering steel. They took positions in firing squares with all the rehearsed ease of opera singers—those in front fell to their knees and raised their weapons, while those behind lay their weapons on their comrades’ shoulders.

  Hammers clicked. Steel shuddered. Gunfire cracks rang out. A garden of smoking flowers blossomed in the air.

  I fell to the ground as the severium-charged bullets whizzed overhead. I heard them punch through flesh, heard the screams of the people, heard the blood spatter on the ground and the bodies follow. It had happened so quickly, I didn’t even realize a war had broken out.

  Not until the other side fought back.

  Out of cafés and taverns, they came. Their robes austere and glimmering in the night, their masks empty of emotion as the Imperials launched their counterattack. The song of the Lady filled my ears. An Embermage thrust her hands out, a wave of flame crashing over the canal to wash away screaming Revolutionaries. A Frostmage reached to the sky and hauled frigid boulders from nothingness to crash down into the other side. A Graspmage wove his hands about and fallen weapons rose of their own volition to impale their former masters. And the people…

  The people died.

  Cut down by bullets. Incinerated by flame. Washed away beneath the canals. They fell. They screamed. They died.

  Because of me.

  The people, tripping over their fancy skirts and stumbling over their fancy shoes. Pulling each other into alleys, putting up tables and chairs as barriers, or simply falling to their knees and covering their heads and screaming for someone to help them. And above it all, Cavric’s voice, hoarse and impotent.

  “STOP! PLEASE, STOP! THEY’RE CIVILIANS!”

  Civilians. Dead. Dying. Screaming. I couldn’t tell who was what.

  Only that I had done it.

  “There’s one!”

  I turned, saw the Revolutionary squadron rushing toward me. At their head, wearing a headband with their crest and waving a saber, a captain led the charge.

  “Imperial swine! Answer for your crimes!” He skidded to a halt, pointed his saber at me. “Fire!”

  Through the sound of violence, a single note of the Lady’s song cut. Before his soldiers had even taken up positions, the ground beneath whispered breaths of hoarfrost. The sound of gunpikes cracking went unheard above the groan of cold as a wall of ice shot up behind the captain, separating him from his soldiers.

  He blinked, looked down a nearby alley. A blade of ice shot out, cutting into his throat and separating him from his shoulders.

  “Barbarians.”

  I knew the blade before I knew the voice. And when the tall man came out in a calm, confident stride, his face obscured by the metal mask of an Imperial Judge, I knew exactly how bad things had gotten.

  Judge Karthrien yun Acalpos spared little more than a sneer for the headless corpse bleeding out at his feet. The frostbrand, a blade of frigid tears, crackled in his hands.

  I thought I had killed him. How had he survived? I fucking hate, hate, hate mages.

  “Leave it to a nul to make a mess of things, eh?”

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Maybe I could have taken him. Maybe I could have even taken him and whatever reinforcements he had that were doubtlessly close by. But I didn’t have time. And he hadn’t noticed me. I could still get away.

  I turned to run across another bridge and got exactly ten steps before I remembered things were never that easy.

  Something caught my foot. When I looked down and saw the patch of shadow blossoming beneath my heel, it was too late. Tendrils of black shot out, snaked up my legs, past my waist, seizing my arms and pinning them to my sides. I snarled, the Cacophony echoed me, burning in my hand as I struggled to break free.

  “Goodness.” Karthrien’s hum was insultingly disinterested as he approached me. “Sal the Cacophony in the same city as I am?” Behind his mask, I could feel his grin. “Such poetry befits an opera.”

  “An opera wouldn’t be so creepy.” I pulled at the tendrils again, growling. “You know this is fucking weird, right? The tentacles?”

  “They’re shadowgrasps, not tentacles.”

  “Oh, yeah, in that case, that’s not weird at all.” I sneered. “You dumb piece of—”

  “Silence.” He leveled his blade at me. “From the carnage, I had expected someone a little more high profile. The Inferno, perhaps. Or the Tempest.”

  “The Tempest’s dead, fucker,” I growled. “If you’d like to see how it went, dismiss your fucking spell and fight me.”

  “Mmm. Typical. Starving dogs consume each other. You traitors are depressingly alike.” He reached out, gingerly took me by the chin as he aimed his blade toward my belly. “So utterly predictable, despite the carnage you cause.”

  If I didn’t have time to fight him, I sure as fuck didn’t have time to indulge his posturing. My skin prickled, feeling the cold radiating off his blade as he pulled it a little closer. I held my breath, clenched my jaw, angled the Cacophony just slightly.

  A little closer, you fuck, I snarled inwardly. Just get a little closer.

  He didn’t.

  He got farther away.

  His eyes bulged behind his mask, as a great hand appeared around his throat and hoisted him, struggling and gasping, into the air. His concentration broken, Karthrien’s spell dissipated, tendrils falling away from me. I stepped back, the shock in my eyes a match for his. Calto’s stare, however, was deadly calm as he squeezed his fingers a little tighter around the Judge’s neck.

  And something snapped.

  He dropped a limp corpse to the ground, stepped over it. “This grows tiresome, Cacophony.”

  “Don’t blame me,” I said, raising the Cacophony at him. “You could have stayed in the fucking water.”

  He didn’t even flinch away from the gun’s grinning barrel. I stepped backward as he approached, giving ground to him as I drew the hammer back. He spread his massive arms wide, gesturing to the carnage raging around us.

  “Gaze upon the ruin you’ve wrought,” he said. “Your very presence wreaks destruction.”

  Maybe that was an accusation, or maybe it was admiration. I wanted to say I wasn’t going to take that from a man who breaks things just by walking. But in every furtive glance, from the corners of my eyes, I could see flashes of gunfire, bodies sprawled in the street, piles of smoldering rubble.

  And in the quiet moments between each breath, I could hear a little voice telling me he was right.

  I tried to keep it down. I tried to force it beneath the pounding of my heart and the blood rushing in my ears. He was wrong. The people had escaped—I had made sure of that. I could save this. I could fix this.

  “Foes of the Revolution.”

  But soon, I couldn’t hear anything more.

  “Your judgment has come.”

  Not over a booming voice. Not over the s
ound of gears whirring. Not over iron feet crushing stone.

  “Gaze upon the answer to your madness.”

  Nor over the sound of the Revolutionary anthem blaring.

  Calto’s stare rose up and over my head, widening. I dared to turn around. And when I saw my own horror reflected back in the Paladin’s iron carapace, I realized.

  Things weren’t bad.

  They were much, much worse.

  FORTY-SIX

  LASTLIGHT

  Despite the fact that they’re usually trying to kill me, I admit a certain awe for the machines of the Revolution.

  Nuls, of course, had no grasp of true art, but there is a certain aesthetic to the smooth bore of their gunpikes and the fire-spewing rumble of their engines. I mean, the sheer talent needed to make armor twice as big as a man move on its own must merit it as some sort of art, right?

  Really, you’d have to be ignorant not to admire something like the Paladin.

  “Ten thousand years.”

  Of course, if you were still admiring it when the guns started whirring, you probably weren’t so much ignorant as stupid.

  Also dead.

  I liked to consider myself an intelligent person.

  And when I saw it raise its arm, with the spinning barrels of the repeating gun attached to it, I did what any intelligent person would.

  I turned and bolted behind the biggest thing I could find—the gigantic man currently trying to kill me.

  Calto only barely seemed to notice me. His brows furrowed as he glared upon the Paladin.

  “Another Revolutionary toy,” he muttered. “I remain unimpressed by—”

  Then the guns started firing.

  It burst off shots in one continuous blazing chorus, bullets shrieking haphazardly from fiery blossoms. They ricocheted off stones, flew into nearby buildings, shots tossed off like an old lady throwing bread crumbs to birds. I lay flat behind Calto, head pressed to the ground, desperately hoping that a stray bullet didn’t find me or that he didn’t decide to sit down.

  When the gunfire stopped and the whirring barrels quieted, I dared to look up. Calto stood over me, not moving as I cautiously got to my feet. His eyes were wide, his mouth hung open, bullet holes peppered his chest, spatters of red painting his skin. He was still alive, breathing deeply, but his face was painted with a shock he should have Bartered long ago.

  For the first time in twenty years, someone had made Calto the Hardrock bleed.

  Past him, on the other side of the bridge, the Paladin raised its massive arm, standing by. Smoke poured from the vents on its back as a deep voice resonated from behind its visor.

  “Surrender or face consequences,” it boomed.

  “Consequences?” I shouted. “What the fuck were all those bullets supposed to be?”

  “This is your last chance.”

  I knew whoever was driving that monstrosity had two things: an exceedingly poor grasp of how to persuade people to surrender and a shit-ton more bullets. Calto—colossal, powerful, unstoppable—was paralyzed with shock. The Paladin could probably kill me if it sneezed. Lastlight was devastated, the sounds of war and terror fighting each other to fill the sky.

  The intelligent thing would be to surrender.

  And I was an intelligent person.

  To a point.

  If the Paladin was perplexed by me running away, it didn’t stay that way for long. I tore off down one side of the canals and hadn’t gotten ten feet before I heard its engines roar to life. From the corner of my eye, across the canal, I could see the glimmer of armor and the roaring flames of engines.

  I glanced to my right and saw it—all two tons of armor flying across the street on the other side of the canal, propelled by two great infernos of severium smoke roaring out of the engines on its back.

  “IT CAN DO THAT?” I screamed. “NO ONE NEEDS TO DO THAT! WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?”

  It answered by raising its repeating gun. The barrels sang its shrieking song, scattering bullets across the streets. On the plus side, a gun that big was hard to aim while standing still, let alone while flying on completely unnecessary engines.

  On the negative side, it was a giant fucking gun.

  Sparks kicked up around me as bullets ricocheted. Corpses shuddered as haphazard gunfire tore through them. And yet, despite all that, things still somehow got worse.

  A wall of ice loomed before me. It hadn’t been so polite as to die when the Judge who conjured it had. No alleys to dart down, nothing to hide behind; once I hit it, the Paladin would have a shot at me that even its gun—which, I remind you, is fucking gigantic—couldn’t miss.

  You might have noticed by now, but there are only three ways I handle a problem. I couldn’t run any farther and I didn’t have any whiskey. So I picked up the Cacophony, aimed for the wall, and fired.

  Discordance shrieked out, struck it with a burst of sound. The ice erupted into colossal shards. Jagged pieces punched through walls, dagger-sized icicles impaled into bodies, a massive chunk of ice went flying into the canal.

  The Paladin saw my ruse, stopped firing. Its engines roared as it streaked ahead of me, rounding the bridge ahead of me to cut me off. My head and body screamed at each other to do something, but neither had any ideas.

  I can’t say which one of them thought it’d be smart to jump into the canal. But I did it anyway.

  I hit the water, already felt the chill of ice creeping into me. I splashed madly toward the chunk of ice, scrabbled up its side as it bobbed precariously in the water. Upon the bridge, I saw the Paladin’s engines die down to low roars as it craned its visor about, trying to get a look at me as the ice chunk between us slowly turned in the water.

  “Do not attempt to resist your fate,” it warned in its echoing voice. “Through the might of the Revolution, the sickness of Imperial aggression shall be cleansed.”

  That was a lot of words to say “You’re fucking dead if you don’t think of something.” A lot of pretty accurate words, because as I fumbled with the Cacophony tucked under one arm and rooted around in my satchel with my hand, it turns out I wasn’t great at thinking under pressure. Not the kind of pressure that comes from bobbing on an ice floe slowly turning toward a giant killer suit of armor anyway.

  I thumbed through the shells in my satchel, searching each of them.

  Hoarfrost? No, that thing’s engines will melt the ice soon as it hits. Hellfire? No, no, come on, think of something better.

  My fingers grazed the writing across a shell. Writing I barely remembered, I used this type of shell so rarely. It was risky.

  “With your last breath, embrace your end with dignity and reflect upon the ruin you have wrought.”

  But it’s not like anything about this situation wasn’t.

  Slowly, the ice floe turned. Slowly, the Paladin came into view. Slowly, its gun whirred back to life.

  There was a pilot inside it, I knew. But behind its giant visor, I couldn’t see them.

  Pity.

  I would have loved to see their face when I pulled the trigger.

  The ice floe turned just enough to give me a clear shot at the bridge. I fired. The Cacophony sang a jarred, crackling tune. The shell struck the rim of the bridge and exploded in a shower of electric sparks. The air trembled around it, quivering like water. I saw the Paladin brace itself, then glance around, confused as to what that was supposed to accomplish.

  Once its armor began to groan, though, I trust it figured it out.

  The metal shrieked and came crashing down, electric arcs dancing across its metal hide as the Paladin was pulled to the stones of the bridge and pinned there by some unseen force. It thrashed, metal groaning, engines roaring, guns shrieking as it awkwardly struggled to get back to its feet.

  I wished it all the very best luck in that.

  I leapt off the ice floe, began to swim for a staircase leading out of the canal. I hadn’t expected that to work. Shockgrasp—I know, but it sounded impressive at the time—was unreliable at best. I
t pulled anything metal toward itself, as liable to tear your own weapons out of your grasp if you weren’t careful. I only ever kept three or so on me, never really expecting to use them.

  But how often do you fight a giant suit of armor that moves on its own?

  I pulled myself out of the canal, shaking water from my boots. The Paladin had added metallic-tinged cursing to its futile struggles, but it wouldn’t be long before the spell wore off. I had to get out of here before it did.

  And I would have, had I not heard the Lady’s song at that moment.

  Faint, hard to hear through the din of battle elsewhere in the city. But I heard it. And, as the air shimmered at the other end of the street, I saw it, too.

  Or rather, him.

  He was short, hunched over in the way that people think makes them harder to notice. He was wrapped in a dingy brown cloak, hard to make out amid the filth and rubble of the battlefield. You’d have a hard time noticing him, I’d assume.

  What him teleporting and all.

  He was at the mouth of an alley, a hooded face peering out. I could just barely make out a ratlike visage poking out of dirty cloth, an arched gate tattooed over his right eye. I blinked and he was somewhere else. There, scurrying across the bridge as a squad of Revolutionaries charged to a distant battle. I blinked. He was on the other side of the bridge. I blinked. He was on a stone staircase. I blinked. He was standing in the mouth of a tunnel I had just emerged from and looked around. And for a split second, I saw his scheming, nervous little face.

  Riccu the Knock.

  My plan had worked.

  Or at least, the part where I flushed him out worked. The part where I caught him I was still working on. I hurried off to pursue him and had just gotten past the bridge when I heard engines roar to life.

  I stopped short just in time to avoid being crushed by two tons of flame-belching metal. The Paladin flew past me, colliding into the wall of a building. It shrugged off the impact, shrugged off the grit and stone falling off its armor, as it whirled and regarded me through that empty visor.