Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  They were just more shadows clinging to the earth.

  They cut me. Lucky blows, stray grazes, some so close to piercing something vital that I could feel my heart stop for a second. Inch by inch, their black blades drew blood across my face, across my arms, across my body. But they couldn’t cut clean enough, nor deep enough, nor true enough.

  It didn’t matter to me. Nothing mattered to me but stopping them, but punishing them, but hurting them. And I did. With every wave of my hand, with every word, with every scream, I made them pay. Until they all lay on the ground, groaning and gasping, except for one.

  And he was staring at me with light in his eyes.

  Vrakilaith threw his best at me—his lightning, his fire, his power. He was a Prodigy, too. But not like me. He couldn’t match me. He couldn’t best me. He couldn’t fly.

  I drew my anger, my rage, my pain into my hands. I let my fury fly out in a great, destructive burst of every magic I could think of. He met it with his own, forming a shield out of earth and dust and shadows. But as my anger bore down on him, as my scream reached its crescendo, I could see his shield cracking, I could see his concentration faltering. He took a step backward, his face contorted with pain and effort.

  He screamed out a word. I didn’t even hear it over the sound of my own screaming.

  “JINDU!”

  From the shadows, I saw him rise. He vanished, reappeared on the throne beside Vrakiliath. He vanished again, reappeared in front of me in midair. I had just enough time to see Jindunamalar’s face, a long scar of a frown where his smile should have been, before he vanished again and reappeared.

  Behind me.

  I didn’t even feel the blade until its black tip burst out my belly. I had seen him do it hundreds of times to the enemies of the Imperium. Somehow, I never thought it would feel like this.

  So swift and so cold.

  In. Out. And I was dead.

  My rage died out in my throat. The power fell to cinders and splinters in my hands. My body went limp and I…

  I fell.

  He caught me in his arms, cradling me like he once did on our very first night together. How fucked up was it, I had the presence of mind to think, that I thought of that night now? He carried me, like he had carried me to bed that night. And he laid me down upon the shattered throne. I felt the cold stone on my back.

  I wasn’t dead. Not yet. Jindunamalar’s blade was an extension of his body; it did exactly what he wanted it to. He had only intended to disable me, make me helpless to resist what happened next.

  And I couldn’t.

  The wounded were gathered and taken out. The strong lingered behind to watch, to make sure I wouldn’t fight back. It was an insult, how few of them there were. They gathered around me, my friends, and looked down at me. The light was brighter upon the broken throne. I could see their faces, finally.

  And I didn’t recognize any of them.

  Not even his. Not as he looked down at me. Not as he whispered in that dark place.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I could barely hear him. And in another minute, I couldn’t hear anything.

  Vrakilaith spoke a word. The Lady’s song answered him in a clear, crystalline note that grew louder. And louder. Until it became a singular shriek, loud and painful and so terribly close.

  A halo of light was birthed into life above me—a great violet bloom of luminescence, swirling like a living thing over me. It opened wide, like an eye, and for a moment, I was convinced I was staring into her face and she was looking back on me with pity.

  And then… I felt the light pull on me.

  It took my breath first. It drew the wind out of my mouth, my throat, my lungs. It took my energy next, sapping the will to move, to fight right out of me. But it reached deeper, an invisible hand that pushed through my skin and into my organs until it found something so deep within me I didn’t know where and wrapped ghostly fingers around something inside me that I didn’t know the name of.

  Not until it pulled it out of me.

  I couldn’t call it pain, what I felt. I had felt pain before—pain could be measured; it had a beginning and an end. What happened to me, the agony that wracked my body, it felt… eternal. Like I had always been feeling it and just never noticed. Like I had never not felt it.

  But I was screaming.

  Even without breath, my voice tore itself out of my throat. Tears flowed down my cheeks, the skin trembling and quivering beneath them. I wanted to run, I wanted to move, I wanted to just lie down and die. Anything to make it stop. But I couldn’t do any of that. I couldn’t find the strength to do anything but scream a word.

  “JINDU!”

  But he didn’t answer.

  He didn’t answer me.

  I felt my flesh tear apart in bright bursts of blood. My cheek split open. A great line ripped itself across my eye. A hole tore open in my chest, from my collarbone to my belly. The light pulled my skin apart. My blood drifted out of my body and into the sky, floating lazily through the air in quivering droplets.

  And then came the light.

  From out of me, wispy and ephemeral, violet wept. Not like blood, but like smoke, sighing out of the wound. After my skin had been torn apart and my breath had been robbed, it was as though this was simply… leaking out of me. The light left me, like it had gotten bored of me, and drifted up into the air, past my blood, until it vanished into the halo of light.

  And I was left on that broken stone. I was left bleeding out of a dozen cuts. I was left weeping, with no one to listen to me. And somehow I knew, like I knew I needed that light…

  I would never fly again.

  “It’s done,” Vrakilaith said. His eyes were on that halo above me, swirling and snaking and alive. “She accepted our gift. Now”—he drew in his breath—“we see if she will—”

  He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to.

  She would.

  And she did.

  That shrieking note of a song returned. The halo of light trembled, quivered. It let out an ancient sound, alive and groaning.

  “Concerning,” Talthonanac whispered.

  “What’s this shit?” Kreshtharan snarled. “What the fuck’s she doing?”

  “Vraki?” Jindu asked. “What’s happening?”

  Vrakilaith didn’t answer. Vrakilaith couldn’t answer. He didn’t know. He simply stared at the halo, mouth agape, as he waited for the Lady Merchant’s answer.

  And she gave it.

  It came plummeting out of the halo, falling without ceremony or grace, to land with a splatter upon the floor of the chamber. Ichor pooled around it, a great mass of flesh and shadow. It quivered and trembled like a newborn, reaching out with a shaking arm to grasp at the floor and haul itself to its feet.

  A human. Maybe? It stood on two legs. It had two arms. It had a head and two eyes and a mouth. But it was… wrong. Its limbs were too long. It was far too tall. Its eyes were too big, saw too much, saw things we didn’t want it to, things we didn’t know we had. And its mouth, gaping wide and fitted with hundreds and hundreds of rows of teeth, craned open far too big and…

  “Oh,” Vrakilaith gasped. “I see.”

  It screamed.

  Chaos.

  Shadows flashing.

  Wails in the dark, blossoms of blood, light dying out.

  I don’t know how I found the ability to move. I don’t know how I made it out of there. I don’t know how I found myself down in the halls of the crypts, my hands struggling to find enough fingers to press down on all the wounds on my body.

  All I remember is falling to my knees, too terrified to go on, too pained to stand up, too weary to think of a reason not to lie down and die.

  And I looked up into a crown of brass.

  And it smiled back at me.

  FIFTY-ONE

  HIGHTOWER

  There was no such thing as an Imperial citizen.

  There was no such thing as an Imperial soldier.

  There was no such thing as
an Imperial nation, for there was no such thing as an Imperial people.

  This had been the first noble truth the Great General handed down to his citizens.

  The Imperium, it was known, was a collection of tools masquerading as a culture. Tools to be used at the whims of corrupt Emperors and decadent Empresses and discarded without a second thought.

  You could not feel fear in the face of an Imperial soldier, nor guilt for killing an Imperial citizen, for they were not people. They were tools to be broken, and their rulers would mourn them not. To fight the Imperium was to fight an enemy without a soul.

  And all that kept the humble people once derided as “nuls” from becoming more tools was the Revolution.

  This was the Great General’s noblest truth. It had been the first that Tretta had committed to memory, the first that she recited upon graduating from the officer’s academy, the first she spoke whenever she had led her soldiers into battle. It had served her well. It had made war bearable, to think of her enemy not as flesh and blood, as sons and daughters, but as scythes and rakes used to tend a rotting garden. To be broken and cast aside.

  It had been easier to think of them as tools.

  Red Cloud had been one such tool—sharper than the rest, more dangerous than others, but still a tool. To think of that scourge of the Revolution, that remorseless killer, not as an unstoppable force of nature but as a simple tool had helped Tretta sharpen her fear into hatred.

  She had thought of Red Cloud as just a name to be erased, just a tool to be broken, just a body to be put down. She had never thought of Red Cloud as a person, a woman with family and friends, a woman who joked and laughed…

  A woman who had been betrayed.

  It was with a keen resentment that she stared across the table at her prisoner. Sal had finished her story what seemed like hours ago and now sat, head bowed, eyes staring down at the hands folded in front of her, saying nothing. No explanations, no defenses, no excuses—just silence, long and agonizing as a drawn blade.

  Tretta wasn’t sure why it hurt, this silence. She wasn’t sure why she felt that keenly wounded sensation of betrayal. And though she struggled to explain it away, it did feel like betrayal.

  It was not enough that this woman should take her time, her dignity, with this stupid interrogation, these frivolous tales. It was not enough that she should steal away the fate of Cavric and hoard it, teasing it out in stingy increments. Sal the Cacophony, Vagrant and thief and outlaw, had taken away something much dearer.

  She had stolen Tretta’s hatred.

  “Why would you tell me this?”

  Sal didn’t answer. Her body shuddered as she tried to hold something back. She bit her lower lip. She held her hands in fists and said nothing.

  “What, were you hoping for mercy?” Tretta demanded. “Were you hoping that I’d let you live after hearing that… that tripe?”

  “No. I didn’t.”

  Sal’s voice trembled. No longer smug, nor confident, nor even in control—her words came soft and shuddering on a wet breath.

  “Then what? You want atonement? You think this excuses the lives you stole? You think it explains it?”

  And Tretta’s own voice sounded like cracks spreading across a thin pane of glass. Her words were breathless, almost hysterical.

  “No.” Sal buried her face in her hands, shook her head. “No… I don’t…”

  “To brag, then,” Tretta snarled, rising out of her chair. “To add to your twisted fucking legend.”

  “NO!” Sal screamed.

  “THEN WHY?” Tretta slammed her fists on the table. “Why would you tell me that story? Why would you tell me about Jindu and your friends and… and…” Her hands shook, as though she could just strangle the answer out of her prisoner. “WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME THIS?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sal looked up at her captor, the serenity in her eyes melted away like snow in a spring thaw. Tears, warm and hot and ugly, came sliding freely down her cheeks to pool in her scars. Her mouth trembled, searching for the words. Her eyes darted around the chamber, as though she could find them somewhere in the stifling darkness.

  “I don’t know.” She swallowed a damp, hot breath. “I don’t know what I wanted. I just… had to say it. I had to tell someone.”

  She lowered her stare down to her hands upon the table. Her mouth hung open, numb. Her eyes open and empty. And yet the tears continued to fall, one by one.

  “Sometimes it feels so far away, like it happened to someone else. Or it never happened to all. Like my scars just start hurting and I don’t know where it came from. But then I close my eyes and I hear his voice and I just…”

  No more words. Sal shut her eyes, clenched her jaw tight, pulled her hands into fists, her entire body trembling with the effort to hold on to the last part of herself that hadn’t come out in tears.

  And Tretta stared at her, silent.

  It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  Red Cloud was not supposed to cry. Red Cloud was supposed to laugh, to gloat, to look upon the ruin she had wrought and throw back her head in a shrieking cackle. Red Cloud was supposed to beg, to make excuses, to throw herself upon the Revolution’s mercy. Red Cloud was supposed to be a monster, Red Cloud was supposed to be a demon, Red Cloud was supposed to be slain and everyone would rejoice at her death.

  But perhaps…

  Perhaps Red Cloud had died down in that chamber.

  And all Tretta was left with was this woman. Not Red Cloud. Not even Sal the Cacophony. Neither a monster nor a demon. Just a quiet collection of agonies behind a thin bravado. Just this woman. Just her scars.

  Just Sal.

  There were no words she could offer—even if she wanted to comfort her, she had still slain too many, destroyed too much. Tretta could give her no atonement, no assurances, no mercy. Tretta couldn’t even tell her it would be all right.

  It wasn’t in her to lie.

  Sal didn’t deserve anything, she knew. She was still a killer, still an outlaw, still a Vagrant. And Tretta had nothing she could give her. Nothing but a soft and gentle silence as she waited for Sal to finish crying.

  And so she sat there. With no words.

  The sole mercy she could give.

  Eventually, Sal wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She drew in a cold breath and looked back across the table at her captor. That cold serenity had returned, but there was something else, buried deep beneath the blues of her eyes. Something soft and sad and bleeding.

  Perhaps it had always been there and Tretta had simply never noticed.

  “Nothing has changed.” The Governor-Militant spoke quietly, clearly. “You will tell me what happened to Cavric. Then you will have a glass of wine. Then I will shoot you in the head. And you will die.”

  Sal said nothing. She didn’t even blink.

  “No ceremony. No speech. One drink. One bullet. It will be clean. You won’t suffer.”

  Sal nodded slowly.

  “Okay.”

  And Tretta nodded back.

  “Okay.”

  Tretta could—Tretta should kill her now, she knew. For the glory of the Great General. For the safety of the Revolution. For the men and women and civilians and every brave member who had died at the hands of the Imperium’s greatest monster. She should simply take her hand cannon and fire a single shot.

  Cavric would understand. Cavric would want it this way. Cavric would tell her not to think of him.

  If he was a true soldier of the Revolution, he wouldn’t mind disappearing. So long as it meant the death of Red Cloud.

  But she didn’t.

  The gun lay where it lay. It would still be there when she found out where Cavric was. It would still fire if Sal drew a few more breaths for a few more words.

  Because the Vagrant’s words embedded themselves in her skull, a black shard lodged quivering in her brain.

  She hadn’t been given medals for lives she had taken, but for lives she had protected. Her duty
was not to kill Red Cloud. Her duty was to save Cavric Proud. If she failed in that duty, if she let him become just a name in a casualty ledger, and the men and women she had sworn to protect looked her in the face…

  Would they still recognize her?

  “So, where was I?” Sal asked, sniffing.

  And so Tretta sat. With her prisoner across from her. With her gun beside her. And Tretta listened.

  “Ah, I remember now,” Sal said. “Things were about to get interesting.”

  FIFTY-TWO

  SEWERS OF LASTLIGHT

  I must have killed a hundred mages in my life.

  I’ve stared down rampaging Siegemages, the earth shaking under my feet as they charged. I’ve gunned down howling Skymages shrieking through a storm of their own creation. I’ve picked through the hallucinations of Nightmages woven from my own dreams and fears.

  So you can see why it seemed a little underwhelming to find one of the most talented Doormages in the Scar just by sneaking up on him.

  “Come on, come on, come on.”

  I followed the echoing sound of whimpering in the dark, a shrill voice unable to hold back trembling thoughts.

  “Jindu?” he asked the darkness. “Is that you? Are you there?”

  No one answered him but the sound of rats squeaking and the lonely dark. I would have liked to think of what that’d do to him, to whisper into the gloom and realize no one was listening, like I had. But I couldn’t feel any pleasure at that.

  I couldn’t feel anything, at that moment.

  “Shit, shit, shit,” Riccu whispered from around the corner. “Come on, come on, come. Please, please, please.”

  I couldn’t feel the tears that had dried on my face. I couldn’t feel the blood that ran cold through my veins. I couldn’t feel an ounce of hatred for Jindu, his touch, his smile.

  All I could feel was the sound of that voice in my ears.

  And the need to make it go quiet forever.

  I stopped at the edge of the corner as a violet light blossomed. I peered around, saw the portal yawning to life. A great circle of purple light bloomed into being, illuminated the dank tunnel and the cowering cretin of a man before it.