Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  And he smiled.

  We made a deal, he and I.

  Revenge for ruin, he said to me.

  And I said to him…

  “Show me.”

  And I closed my eyes. And I held my breath. And I started walking.

  He seethed in my hand, his heat dim as we walked in one direction, warming up as I turned. I could smell the mist swirling around my feet, hear the crunch of dead leaves beneath me. And between the sounds of branches breaking and mist whispering, I could hear a voice.

  “Sal.”

  Her voice.

  “What are you going to do, Sal?” Liette’s voice, so serious and heavy, in my ears. “Are you going to kill me, Sal? Are you going to kill everyone, Sal? Are you going to hold me in your arms when I die, Sal?”

  I wanted to open my eyes. He told me not to. His heat grew bright in my hand, his grip hurt to hold.

  “I’m sorry, Sal.” Jindu’s voice, whispering from all edges, crawling into my ear and curling around my brain like a cat. “I’m so sorry, Sal. Please forgive me, Sal. Please don’t kill me, Sal. Please, let me help you, Sal.”

  I wanted to go back to the dark place. He wouldn’t let me. He was burning in my hand.

  “You’ll never find me, Sal.” Vraki, sharpening his cackle to a thin shiv and jamming it into my skull. “You’ll never kill me, never hurt me, and I’ll never even think of you before I—”

  I stopped.

  The smell of my own flesh cooking was in my nose. I could feel my blood seeping between my fingers, slippery on the trigger. The gun pressed against something firm.

  I opened my eyes.

  And I stared into Taltho’s.

  One bloodshot eye stared at me from either side of the barrel pressed against his forehead. Between a mass of bandages, his mouth hung open and rasped a single word.

  “Inevitable.”

  A click of metal. A short burst of air. And Taltho the Scourge finally found his rest. He slumped to the ground, motionless, staring up at an empty sky through a pair of bloodshot eyes and an icicle protruding perfectly from the center of his forehead.

  The forest melted away around me, trees becoming ash that were lost in the wind, the scent of cold and mist giving way to smoke and earth, the voices ebbing away and disappearing beneath the sound of my own long, slow breaths.

  I looked at the Cacophony in my hand, at my blood sticking in burnt patches to his metal, at the steam rising out of my hands.

  And I knew, somewhere in all that brass and blood, he was looking back at me. And smiling.

  I knew, then, that I had made a mistake in asking him to show me. I knew that his was the kind of smile reserved for watching people fall down stairs and children being lied to. We made a deal, he and I. And whatever he had just given me, he would take something for someday.

  I took my wrist with my other hand, forced him back into his holster and pried my fingers, one by one, off his grip. Feeling crept back into them, bloodied and trembling, and they splayed apart to reveal the skin torn from my palm.

  He had taken my skin. My blood. And somehow, I knew, something else.

  They call it an art and dress it up with fancy words and complex theories, but magic is as simple as love. It is just a price and a person willing to pay it.

  I stared across the courtyard and saw them. They would be Dust soon, but for now, they were testaments. Lessons for anyone who thought they could do what they’d done to me.

  Riccu the Knock, facedown in the earth as the fires behind him chuckled and danced at his misfortune. Galta the Thorn, a garden of briars and flesh forever watered by her own blood. Taltho the Scourge, asleep with three eyes open. And Vraki the Gate…

  I knew he wasn’t there. Even before I turned and saw the patch of earth he had just been in, empty but for a few bloodstains on the dirt. Taltho had simply been buying him time to escape.

  That wasn’t so bad, I told myself.

  Three people who deserved death had found it—four, rather. I forgot about Kresh. The children were safe. Stark’s Mutter had been avenged. And a plot to pull a monster into this world had been foiled, even if I hadn’t gotten the monster behind it. That was enough.

  That’s what I told myself.

  And I wished I were good enough at lying to believe it.

  I sighed. I turned my back to the death and the ruin. And I started back toward Erel and the others. They would be safe at least. I would take them and all their scars to someone who could handle them. And I would leave this place to the dead and the dust and the sound of the howling wind.

  “You.”

  A voice. A wail of the wind. A single note of a fractured melody sang from the bottom of a deep hole in a dark cavern.

  I had no idea what to call it. I had no idea what had said it. And when I turned around and stared up at the sky, I had no idea what was looking back at me.

  The halo of light was no longer a circle, but a wound, a jagged and lightless red tear opened across the clouds. And within it, something huge and impossibly dark stirred. Something with a head and endless arms and a great, gaping eye that leaned out of the portal, hauling itself out on black claws.

  And stared right at me.

  “Where is our herald?” I heard its voice in my bones as its head swung ponderously slow, looking this way and that. “Where are our green trees and blue skies?” It stared at me, with eyes I couldn’t see, and peeled back my skin and my sinew and pried apart my bones and looked into that dark place inside me. “He promised us.”

  I reached for my gun, completely oblivious to the stupidity of that. What the fuck was I going to do with it? I’d never even seen a Scrath like this.

  Behind the wound, it raised a boneless arm, long as a tree was tall. It swung it down, smashing against the red light as though it were a pane of glass. And all the stones in the earth and wind in the sky shook with the impact.

  “He promised.”

  I started backing away. It let out a howl. The earth shook beneath me, knocked me from my feet. Black cracks appeared across the jagged rent in the sky, the portal threatening to fracture.

  “He promised.”

  It smashed its limbs against the portal. It shook. I staggered to my feet.

  “HE.”

  It smashed against the wound. It groaned, cracked, weakened.

  “PROMISED.”

  Broke.

  The Scrath emerged with a shriek that cut through the wind, the stone, my skin. It pulled itself out of the portal, a writhing column of shadow and bone, of skin and light, of colors I didn’t know and words I couldn’t hear. It twitched and trembled as it erupted out and onto the ground, its skin writhing as though the very air were trying to tear it apart.

  I clasped my hands over my ears as it screamed, but it did no good. I could feel its pain inside me, slithering in through my mouth and nose and trying to pull itself out again. It swept itself around, searching through the courtyard with eyes of darkness and light, for something to ease the pain.

  And it found Galta.

  In a coiling, shrieking column, it swept toward her. It dissipated like a mist, slithered in through her nose, her mouth, her many wounds. Instantly, her body shot upright, a scream tearing itself out of her mouth as her eyes grew wide, searching about with terrified confusion.

  And I found myself screaming, too.

  I hadn’t killed her.

  Fuck me, she was still alive to feel it.

  But not for much longer. The Scrath flooded her body, bloated her as it tried to fit itself into her skin. One eye shot wide open, growing to the size of a melon. Her jaw snapped, teeth becoming jagged spikes of bone as it pulled itself impossibly wide. Her left arm burst, muscle the size of a tree trunk suddenly erupting from skin too small to hold it. Her flesh rippled like water, twitching and trembling and twisting and tearing as it tried and failed to hold the creature inside it.

  “It hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts IT HURTS IT HURTS it hurts,” it screamed, its voice a ragged ble
at. It swept that gigantic eye toward me. “YOU DID THIS YOU YOU YOU YOU YOU—”

  It had more to say, of course.

  But fuck, I wasn’t going to stick around to listen.

  I was running, back through the courtyard, toward the fort. I could hear it hauling its great walking charnel heap of a body after me, screaming and wailing and begging for a peace neither I nor any living thing on this dark earth could give it.

  I burst through the doors into the halls of the fort. Erel was there, the kids in tow behind her, quivering and crying and weeping. She stared at me with eyes wide and unthinking with fear.

  “Sal,” she gasped, “what is—”

  “No.” I held up a finger, pointed it down the hall. “Go.”

  Whatever else, she had the presence of mind to nod. She pointed the kids down the hall and screamed a word. They followed that fear, along with her, as she ran down the hall toward the tower. I pursued, digging out whatever shells I had left and jamming them into the chamber of the Cacophony.

  “hurtshurthurtshurtshurtsHURTSHURTSHURTSHURTS—”

  The door exploded behind me in a spray of splinters. The Scrath pulled itself into the hall, stared at me with that single eye as I ran after the children. It let out a shriek, dragging its body after us as we ran through the twisting halls, trusting in Erel’s fear and memory to guide us.

  “Why does… not supposed to hurt…”

  We found the north tower’s stairwell; the children fled up it in a flood. Those who stumbled, they helped up. Those who wanted to weep, held it back. Fear was all that kept them going as we rushed up the tower’s stairs and onto the battlements. At the bottom of the stairs, the Scrath stared up at us through that colossal eye.

  “He… promised… promisedpromisedpromised… PROMISED… he said… he said… he said…”

  I didn’t listen. It didn’t chase us. Fucking fine by me.

  I could hear the children’s breath run ragged as we rushed across the battlements. They didn’t have anything left in them by the time we made it to the other side. Whether it was fear for each other or something else that kept them going, I didn’t know. A hallway stretched out before us, the doorway leading to the portal at the other end.

  “A little farther!” Erel screamed from the front. “Come on, you have to try!”

  She rushed forward, leading them as they charged for the room. From below, I could hear stone shattering, timbers breaking. My heart caught in my throat, choked me as I shouted out.

  “Erel, look out—”

  I didn’t get to finish it before the floor exploded.

  Erel fell back against the screaming heap of children as a hole was rent through the floor. The Scrath hauled it open. The bones of its shattered jaw creaked and cracked as it opened its mouth in a scream.

  “WE WERE GOING TO BE LIKE YOU.”

  Over them, around them, between them, I pushed my way to the front of the crowd. I threw my arm out, shoved Erel backward. I put the Cacophony’s grin in the thing’s face and pulled the trigger and prayed to gods I didn’t believe in that it would help.

  Sunflare hit it in the face and exploded in a bright burst of light. I had barely enough time to shield my eyes as it hit the Scrath’s oversized eye. It tumbled, screaming, through the floor. I turned around, shouted into a world I could only half see.

  “Erel!” I screamed. “Can you see?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “You were in front of me, but the others…”

  “Help them to the portal,” I said. “I’ll cover you.”

  She started barking orders, too young to do that but too scared not to. The kids who had seen the explosion were helped around the hole in the floor by those who hadn’t. One by one, they made it across and disappeared into the room.

  I nearly collapsed with the relief I felt from hearing the Lady’s song coming from within. The portal was still active—Galta’s runes were keeping it open and Galta…

  “whywhywhywhywhywhy”

  … was still alive.

  I looked into the hole. Three floors down, in the darkness of the fort’s basement, I could see the thing stirring back to life. With an overlarge arm that stretched to obscene lengths, it hauled itself onto the first floor.

  “Hurry up!” I screamed at the kids, who screamed back in reply. “Come on, faster!”

  Not helpful, maybe. But not false, either. The remaining children pulled themselves across the floor and into the room. Erel stood in the doorway, looking at me as the Scrath pulled itself up again.

  “Sal!” she cried. “Come on, you’re the last one!”

  I edged around the hole. A great clawed hand reached up, seized the lip. I pushed Erel into the chamber, toward the portal in the wall. The Scrath’s twisted shape appeared in the doorway, stared at me, straining to express a sadness its face couldn’t manage.

  “we were going to be…”

  I shoved Erel through the portal.

  “… like you.”

  I leapt afterward.

  The sensation of being ripped apart and put back together on the other side was intense. I emerged into a dark tunnel to find kids weeping, some vomiting. But I didn’t have time to tell them what they were feeling. And I sure as shit didn’t have time to feel it myself.

  “Get back!” I shouted as I turned to the portal. “Cover your ears!”

  I didn’t know if they did or didn’t. I didn’t have time. That mass of twisted flesh masquerading as an arm reached through the portal. I aimed the Cacophony at the runes surrounding it, pulled the trigger.

  A wall of sound.

  A burst of stone.

  I was hurled backward, dashed against the wall, and fell limp onto the floor. The light vanished, casting the world into darkness. The arm was sucked back through a portal that winked out of existence.

  And even as I breathed out a breath I had been holding for ages, the sound of its scream still lingered.

  In my skin.

  In my bones.

  In my blood, weeping gently onto the floor.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  LASTLIGHT

  The human body is a finite thing.

  It’s only so much skin and so much blood that can hold so many dreams, disappointments, and most importantly, fear. Get enough fear in you—or hate or anger or whatever, it doesn’t matter—and you can push out things like pain and sense and futility and just fill yourself with all the terror you need to keep you going through just about anything.

  It’s not the worst way to go through life, but it’s not great, either. Because fear, like any other part of you, is finite. Some of us have a lot, some of us have a hell of a lot, but eventually, it runs out. It seeps out of you in every breath and it gives way to all the pain and the blood and the regrets stirring around inside you.

  I didn’t have any fear to carry me out of that dark tunnel and into the starlight. But when I came limping out of the sewers of Lastlight, I had plenty of everything else.

  My wounds nagged after me, the gashes left by Galta’s claws and the bruises left from being hurled around and the skinless palm wrapped beneath a bandage all spoke to me in various mutters, pleas, and outright curses, begging me to stop walking. My exhaustion agreed with them, every bone in my body complaining and demanding I sit down. And, through it all, I couldn’t ignore the little nagging voice wedged between my skull and the top of my spine.

  You didn’t kill him.

  I had other things to worry about besides that, of course. I had children I had left in that hole, bidding them to wait as I checked things out. I had lost a lot of blood. My body felt like it was going to fall apart if I took another step. Another Scrath had been released into the world and I hadn’t stopped it. I had plenty of more pressing matters than whether or not I had killed Vraki.

  I wish I could tell you I was worried about them and not him.

  I shambled out of the tunnel mouth into a city gone silent. The canal water lapped around me, its murmur broken only by the bump of a corpse
bobbing gently against its wall. The lanterns overhead hissed as their light flickered, desperately trying to stay lit. The exhausted sigh of smoke carried itself in weary clouds over the shattered roofs of buildings.

  From below, it looked like a city.

  When I reached the bridge overhead, it looked like a graveyard.

  Like headstones, the ruins of buildings marched silent, shattered, and smoking down the streets. Broken glass and abandoned belongings were left abandoned on stoops like flowers laid on graves. The silence was a dirge all its own, its chorus the hissing embers of fires dying and its verse the groan of a building as a great chunk of stone collapsed and splattered across the streets.

  In the distance, I could hear the sounds of fighting. So faint, I could have pretended it was a bad dream if I was just a little bit more tired or a lot more drunk. But I could hear the crack of cannons and the roar of Revolutionary chants between the shrieks of Krikai birds and the sound of thunder.

  They were still fighting, then. They hadn’t bled each other dry, so perhaps reinforcements had arrived. Perhaps they would never stop, this conflict a bomb with a fuse so long it wouldn’t stop until there was nothing left to blow up. Perhaps this was inevitable. Perhaps this wasn’t my fault.

  But I don’t know if there was enough liquor in the world to convince me of that.

  That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try, though.

  I limped down the ruined avenue, pointedly avoiding looking into the alleys where motionless limbs lay and shattered storefronts over which still bodies were draped. If I looked too long, my aching body might start to envy them and my weary mind might try to make me remember that they were dead because of me.

  Right now, I needed something that would shut both my body and mind up.

  And, as if in answer to that, my foot brushed against something and I heard the clink of glass.

  Now, like I said, I don’t believe in gods. But my faith isn’t unshakable. If I looked down at my feet and found a bottle of whiskey there, I was more than prepared to admit the existence of a kind, forgiving deity who wanted me to be happy and pledge a life of atonement for my many, many sins.