Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  “I WOULD!” I roared back. “I didn’t fucking care. The Imperium, the Revolution, who gave a shit? So long as I had you and you had me, we didn’t need anything else. Not Vraki, not the Emperor, not their shitty little problems.”

  “They weren’t little. Nothing ever was little.” Jindu stared at me with hard eyes, bladed eyes. “You used to fly above it all. You never had to see what was happening on the ground. You never understood that, Salazanca.”

  “I told you not to say my name.”

  “What about your other name? Your true name?”

  “Don’t,” I warned, taking a step forward.

  “The name they called you, the name of the woman who I saw raining fire and thunder upon a thousand screaming souls and swore to heaven that I loved?”

  “Don’t.”

  “I spoke her name every night I went to sleep, every morning I woke up, every time I looked up into the sky and saw her there, protecting all of us and all that we had fought for.”

  Please.

  I couldn’t say it. I wanted to. I couldn’t beg him. No matter how badly I never wanted to hear that name again. No matter how much it felt like blood being torn out of me when he whispered it.

  “Red Cloud.”

  That name. His voice. My head. One of those, maybe all of them, did it.

  They took me back to that place.

  They took me somewhere else, to a place where I wasn’t on the ground, to a place of endless blue and white. I couldn’t hear the rush of water or the sound of death or anything but the sound of wind in my ears and my laugh as I tore through the sky. I couldn’t feel my arm dropping or my scars aching through the breeze of the cold sky on my skin and my hair whipping about my face.

  That name took me back to a place.

  Where I used to fly.

  “I remember those days, Salazanca.”

  I looked up. He was standing in front of me. How had he gotten there? How did he get in front of me without me noticing? How did he have my hand in his? Why wasn’t I pulling away? Why wasn’t he dead?

  “I remember them, when we were young and it didn’t matter.” He spoke softly and I wanted to pretend his voice had always sounded like this, like it had never said a cruel word. “It was you and I out there, Red Cloud and the Blade, fighting against the Revolution, preserving the Imperium. Do you remember them? The days when every glass in Cathama was raised in a toast to our names?”

  I wanted to tell him so many things. I wanted to tell him to die. I wanted to tell him to bleed. I wanted to tell him he was wrong.

  “I remember.”

  I wanted to know why I said that.

  “I wanted it to be that way forever.” When had his voice gotten so soft? When did he draw so close to me, whispering in my ear? “I wanted it to be nothing more than us playing war. But it never was, Salazanca. Maybe you couldn’t see it, flying up there, but I saw all our friends. I saw them die. I saw them torn apart by bullets, by bombs, by all the machines the Revolution churned out. I heard them. When they died with the Imperium’s name on their lips. Cherotha, Makalin, Rendothones…”

  “Aradunar,” I whispered their names, “Sparaculus, Turindara…”

  I remembered them. Sometimes I wondered what names they would have taken when they turned Vagrant. Aradunar was a Doormage, always loved his work. Maybe he’d be Ara the Greeting or something stupid like that. He always smiled; he always looked…

  How did he look?

  I couldn’t remember. In my head, he was just another black dot on the battlefield far below me. From those days, all I could remember was the sky, how easily I flew through it, how I couldn’t anymore. I remembered the sky…

  And him.

  “Salazanca.”

  He was behind me. How did he get there? He reached up, placed his hands upon my shoulders. My skin went electric at his touch. How could he still do that to me?

  “I made a mistake…” he whispered into my ear. “I wanted Vraki to be right. I wanted him to have the solution. I thought… Some part of me thought that you’d understand, what I agreed to. But I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  His hands slid across my scars. They didn’t hurt when he touched them. They always hurt. Why didn’t they hurt now? Why were my eyes closing? Why did this feel the way it did?

  “It was the dead,” he said. “I couldn’t stand the thought of them dying to give a throne to an emperor who didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t thinking. I was just listening to the wrong people and I thought… I thought…”

  His hand slid down my arm, moving with a certainty his words didn’t have. His fingers found mine, squeezed. And even though my brain was screaming and my heart was dying, I squeezed back and hated how good it felt to do that. How much it felt like it used to.

  “But it can be that way again, Salazanca.”

  I couldn’t keep track of his hands anymore. They were on my hand, squeezing my fingers. They were on my sides, traveling over scars that were supposed to hurt. They were around my waist, pulling me closer against him and feeling like it used to when he would hold me and feel so solid against my back, like he’d never run.

  “The plan can work this time,” he whispered into my ear. He smoothed my hair back. His fingers touched my cheek. “We can have a true emperor again. We can have an Imperium that will understand us again, what we’ve given, all we’ve fought for. Everything, everything can make sense again. We won’t need to be Vagrants anymore. We can have beds, wine, all the things we used to have…”

  I don’t know why it felt good. I don’t know why I was listening. I don’t know why I didn’t just pull the trigger and put a hole through his head when I had the chance. I don’t know why I could only remember the feel of his hands on my skin and the sky in my face and not the cold stone on my back or the light in my eyes in the dark place.

  “I won’t ask you to forgive me,” he said. “Or anything like that. If you want to come back to the Imperium, I’ll be there at the gates of Cathama for you. If you never want to see me again, I’ll go away forever. But don’t let everything we’ve done be in vain.”

  He leaned closer, held me tight, whispered a blade into my ear.

  “Let me make this right.”

  You ask the wife who stabbed her husband to death, or the father who struck his child, or the kid who wandered upstairs and came back down with a gun, they’ll tell you the same thing.

  It was a dark voice that made them do it.

  A little, savage part of their mind that spoke dark words in a dark tongue that told them to kill, to hurt, to spill blood. Everyone’s got it, they say. Everyone’s got that dark voice that makes them do bad things.

  But I think it’s the soft voice that makes them do it.

  It’s a quiet whisper in the back of their minds. It’s a soft, gentle sobbing through a worried smile. It tells them that things can get better, that things can feel good again, that things can be normal again.

  If you just forget how bad it hurts.

  Things can go back to the way they were.

  I heard that voice. I heard it in every bone in my body and every breath he took as he leaned close and his lips brushed against my neck.

  No.

  But it wasn’t my voice that said that.

  Don’t.

  It wasn’t his, either.

  He is filth.

  That voice wasn’t soft or dark. It was hot. It was an ember growing hotter, stoking itself to a flame. It was heat in my blood. And it was warm in my hand.

  He has to die.

  That voice. His voice.

  They all have to die.

  I looked down at my hand. Through a cloud of steam rising between my fingers, the Cacophony’s grinning barrel looked back at me. In my head, in my blood, in my skin, I could hear his voice, roaring louder than any voice, dark or soft, mine or his or anyone’s. It howled. It screamed. It told me.

  We made a deal.

  My hand tightened around his grip. My heart burned in my chest. My b
lood boiled. My teeth set.

  Revenge for ruin. Ruin for revenge.

  And in my head, he howled.

  ERES VO ATALI.

  He was screaming. And so was I. A formless howl pulled itself out of my mouth as I whirled around, bringing him up. It tore through the cloud of black smoke that burst out of Jindu’s cheek as I smashed the Cacophony against the side of his head. It filled the cistern, boiled the water, pulled the world apart.

  Jindu fell back, holding a hand to his cheek. It came back with hot blood on his fingers. He looked up at me, shock and fear on his face.

  And my gun in his eyes.

  I pulled the trigger. Hoarfrost burst out, exploded in a spray of ice.

  The Lady sang. He disappeared. He showed up fifteen feet away, his bloody hand up in a plaintive cry for peace that I didn’t hear.

  I pulled the trigger again. Hellfire sang, erupted in a wall of fire.

  He disappeared again. I saw his shadow vanish into the tunnel mouth at the other side. I saw him stare at me with those eyes once again. I saw that perfect mouth open to say the perfect word that would make all of this better.

  And I pulled the trigger again.

  He disappeared.

  Nothing but a faint clicking sound came from the Cacophony. The blood rushed back into my body. The breath I’d been holding exploded out of my lungs. My scars hurt so badly.

  I held the Cacophony in both hands, pulling the trigger over and over, hearing nothing but that clicking sound as tears fell down my cheeks.

  As I fell to my knees.

  As the steam closed in around me.

  As I crumpled into a heap.

  FORTY-NINE

  HIGHTOWER

  Tretta felt cold.

  She had expected to feel something else—angry and warm and full of righteous curses. She had expected to meet this moment with stern dignity, wise words, and a quote from the Great General to guide her.

  But when she decided to kill Sal the Cacophony, she was cold.

  As cold as the gun in her hand.

  It hadn’t come swiftly, the weapon. She had heard what her prisoner had said. She had taken a long moment to let the name sink into her head. And then she had risen out of her chair, drawn the hand cannon from her belt, and pressed it against her captive’s forehead.

  There were no speeches. No great quotations. No one had ever written the script she should follow for the moment she met the woman who had been the scourge of the Revolution for years. She had no words.

  “Tell me your name.”

  Except those.

  Sal looked back at her, down the barrel of the gun pressed against her forehead, into the unblinking eyes of her captor. Her face was empty of fear, her eyes serene and full of calm, as though she had known what was going to happen the whole time, as though there was a script for her, as though she had written the fucking thing.

  “Governor-Militant,” Sal said, “put the gun down.”

  “Tell me your name,” Tretta repeated.

  “I still have more to tell you.”

  “TELL ME.” The hammer of the weapon clicked back. Tretta’s fingers shook. “YOUR NAME.”

  Sal closed her eyes. She let out a slow sigh. And when she opened them again, there was nothing in them. No remorse. No fear. At the moment of her death, Sal the Cacophony wasn’t even gracious enough to beg for her life.

  “I was born in Cathama,” Sal the Cacophony said. “I was a mage at birth. At age eight, I was a Prodigy. On my sixteenth birthday, I entered the Imperial army. I’ve killed thousands with my song, brought towers low with a breath, ended bloodlines with a thought. My name is Salazanca ki Ioril.”

  She stared down at her hands.

  “But you know me as Red Cloud.”

  It should have been done with.

  It shouldn’t even be a word. Just three sounds. The click of the hammer. The crack of the hand cannon. The body hitting the floor.

  Sal the Cacophony. Salazanca ki Ioril. Red Cloud.

  They should all be dead. Vagrant. Criminal. Killer. They should all be dead by Tretta’s hand. They would be, Tretta knew.

  But first, they had to know.

  “Roddin Dutiful,” Tretta said.

  Sal didn’t ask who.

  “Thenna Inspire,” she said.

  Sal didn’t look confused.

  “Merla Proud,” Tretta said. “Keroin Proud, Herry Industrious, Calmont Furious, Anica Vengeful, Ormal Contemplative.” She held a breath. “Vederic Stern.”

  All those names. And Sal didn’t once give Tretta a reason to pull the trigger.

  “My graduating class,” she said. “We went through the academy together, fought together, drank together. They were assigned to Bentnail, to the Imperial front, to Vigil…” She clenched her jaw. “You killed them. All of them.”

  “And more,” Sal said. “So many more.”

  It wasn’t a boast. There was no arrogance or pride in her voice. It was simply a fact, fallen out of her mouth like a lump of iron and lying cold and naked and ugly on the table.

  “Revolutionaries, mostly,” Sal whispered. “The war was in full swing. I was sent out so many times. I had to have killed some who couldn’t fight back. I don’t know which.” She stared at it, this ugly truth, as though it were a real thing. “From up there, they all looked the same.”

  “You filth,” Tretta whispered. “You utter filth. You dare to tell me this now.”

  “You would have killed me otherwise.”

  “I’ll kill you now.”

  “No, you won’t.” Sal looked up at Tretta. “You still don’t know what happened to Cavric.”

  “You dare to weigh his life against the thousands you’ve taken?”

  “It’s got nothing to do with me.” Sal shook her head—as best she could with a gun pressed against it. “You, Governor-Militant, won’t let him disappear. You won’t lose one more soldier.”

  How?

  How did she do this?

  How did she, a prisoner, act like she was in control? How did she, shackled, make Tretta feel like she was the prisoner? How did she, unarmed, make Tretta feel like there was a gun pressed to her head?

  How did she make Tretta pull the weapon away?

  “And why should I listen?” she asked. “Why should I listen to anything a deceiver such as yourself says?”

  “I haven’t deceived you at all,” Sal replied. “I haven’t lied. I simply haven’t told you the entire story.”

  Tretta sat back down. She kept one hand on the hand cannon. She stared across the table.

  “Tell me. All of it.”

  Sal closed her eyes. And she spoke.

  FIFTY

  LONG AGO AND FAR AWAY

  Let me tell you a story about a girl who could fly.

  She was born into a good life—her house had money but not riches, her parents were respected but not adored. And when her mother held her in her arms and her eyes flashed with a purple light, her family was pleased but not enthusiastic. A mage born to them was a blessing, to be sure, but not a miracle.

  That happened when she turned eight.

  It’s always around that age that a mage’s power manifests. They hear the Lady Merchant’s song, and shortly after, they demonstrate their powers. Her family was expecting it. They waited patiently to see what her art would be and what Barter the Lady would ask for it.

  They expected this girl to grab a toy across the room with her mind like a Graspmage; they desperately hoped this girl would have a prestigious art like a Siegemage and break a door without trying.

  But this girl flew.

  One minute she was running around in her garden, chasing imaginary monsters. The next, she was over the walls. She didn’t scream or cry. She simply laughed, like she could do this all along.

  She flew over the roofs of her neighbors’ houses; she flew around the spires of the Imperial Palace; she flew to the roosts of the Krikai, who looked at her, curious what a human was doing all the way up there.
/>   When she got hungry, she came back home to ask her father for a snack. And she found Imperial scholars waiting for her.

  They asked her questions: what did she hear when the Lady sang, how did she feel when she was flying, what price had she paid when she landed? She simply shrugged. She didn’t feel any worse. She hadn’t paid any price, given up anything. The power was simply there and it had been given to her.

  She was a Prodigy.

  And she no longer belonged to her family.

  They watched her go, taken away by the carriage, smiling and waving and cheering. She cried and pounded on the window; no one told her where she was going, who these people taking her away were, why her family wasn’t trying to get her back. She never remembered their names. She wondered if they would ever remember hers.

  At age sixteen, she entered the Imperial army. The minders that had raised her these past years were grateful to see her go. She had been a willful child, resistant to training, responding to discipline by hurling her tutor across the room with a spell. But in the army, she found purpose.

  And in the men and women she fought alongside, she found friendship. They saw her as their protector, someone who would turn the tide of the Revolutionary rebellion. And they protected her, too, and gave her a family she didn’t know she wanted. They called her Salazanca, mostly. Madam ki Ioril, if they were formal. Sal, if they were close friends.

  Until the day she turned twenty.

  And she became Red Cloud.

  She got the name from her coat, the bright red color she had insisted on. She flew over the Scar, unhindered by mountains or plains or anything. She flew where the Imperium asked her to fly and where they sent her friends marching.

  And she killed.

  Hundreds, thousands. With a wave of her hand, there was fire. With a breath, there was wind. With a thought, there was ruin. And she never paid a price for it. Where other mages slowed down or changed as they paid their Barters, she simply kept going, flying, killing. She never really noticed, to be honest. So long as she could still fly, she didn’t think about it. So long as she came back to her friends, she didn’t care.