Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  He waved a hand. The creature answered, throwing back its head in a sound that was a dying man’s wail and a starving beast’s howl fighting to be heard over each other.

  And, upon its horrific mass of limbs, it charged.

  I kicked Congeniality’s flanks, sent her running through the streets. Behind me, the beast bayed, though not loud enough to drown out Vraki’s voice.

  “Your bones will be a city, Salazanca!” he screamed. “A bedrock of misery upon which I’ll erect a monument to your failure!”

  See? How come I never say anything that badass?

  “You made me break my word!” he howled. “You ruined everything! It will take years to earn their trust again!”

  His words didn’t make sense to me, but he spoke them with a clarity he hadn’t before. The desperation that I had heard back in Dogsjaw was gone. His thoughts were as clear as the anger in his eyes.

  He was lucid.

  Good. I wanted him to know what was happening when I ended him.

  Of course, I also wanted to not die horribly, so…

  I pulled Congeniality’s reins, kicked her flanks, sent her weaving as portals opened around us. We darted between pikes of thorns and stone that burst out from thin air. We leapt over walls of grasping hands and gnashing teeth erupting from the earth. Purple fire that whispered with human voices erupted in gouts around us.

  But he couldn’t touch us. Prodigies didn’t pay Barters, but even the Lady Merchant couldn’t teach him how to aim. I kept Congeniality running as we rounded a corner toward the north gate. Just so long as I kept this up, I could—

  “Halt!”

  Of course.

  A line of blue coats and black barrels appeared before me. Revolutionaries, kneeling in a firing position, stood before me, their officer raising his sword.

  “Get out of the way!” I screamed.

  “In the name of the Great General and his Glorious Revolution, I hereby order you to cease all hostilities and submit to—”

  I stopped listening about the time I heard a whistle behind me. I ducked, pulling Congeniality’s head low, as a flurry of rock-hewn blades went spiraling over my head. They struck the Revolutionaries in a burst of crimson and a riot of screams, sending the officer flying through the air in chunks.

  Maybe if he had shortened his speech, he would have heard it, too.

  I spurred Congeniality forward, leaning over in the saddle to pluck up a gunpike as we rushed past. It wouldn’t be much of an advantage against his magic, but it was all I had.

  Aside from the scattered Revolutionaries I ran past—or over—I didn’t see many people in the streets and what few I did were running south, away from where I was leading Vraki. Cavric had gotten word out; the people were getting clear of danger. They’d come home to ruins, but they’d come home. They could rebuild. They could endure.

  Unless I died here, of course.

  Then I guess they’d all be killed to summon another Scrath.

  So I guess no plan is perfect. But this was the best one I had and every part of it required me to be alive.

  And Vraki dead.

  I jerked on Congeniality’s reins. She squawked and pulled hard down a corner. The main thoroughfare of the freehold sprawled out before us, a long and empty stretch of street leading straight to the north gate. Less obstructions to hide, fewer corners to take—I’d be an easier target. But I had no choice.

  I spurred Congeniality forward, heard the crash of ice behind me as Vraki caught up. I glanced over my shoulder, saw the blood and chunks of meat staining the hide of his beast, stray limbs shoveling chunks of flesh into its mouth as it loped. His hands were raised, his eyes were focused, but he held his spells. He was waiting to get closer, wanted a clear shot.

  Me, I was fine just where I was.

  It had been years since I used a gunpike, but I knew how to shoot. I twisted in the saddle, leveled it at Vraki, steadied my breath, and felt myself rising and falling with the bird’s stride.

  In. Out. Up. Down.

  And then, at the moment where her feet left the ground and gave me a clear shot, I pulled the trigger.

  Gunfire cracked. So loud I almost didn’t hear the Lady’s song.

  Time seemed to slow down as the bullet flew. I know that’s cliché as fuck to say and sounds like something out of a cheap opera, but here’s the thing. The operas always say time slows down in moments of great passion—when the villain falls, when the heroes embrace, that sort of thing. Reality isn’t romantic like that. In reality, time only ever slows down to give you time to appreciate how completely fucked you are.

  Like I felt when the air in front of Vraki blurred. As if from shadows and smoke, a lithe form appeared, a blade flashing in its slender hand. It swung, a flurry of sparks where the sword struck away the bullet, keeping it from finding Vraki’s chest. The figure seemed to hang there for a moment.

  Just long enough for Jindu to look me dead in the eyes.

  And then he vanished again.

  I caught him moving as a blur, disappearing and reappearing, each time closer to me. He swept up the street, moving like a bad dream. He vanished and reappeared beneath the lampposts at the corner of my eye. Behind me. Beside me.

  In front of me.

  By the time I saw him appear in front of me, it was too late. His blade flashed, quicker than I could scream, let alone pull on Congeniality’s reins. A bright arc of blood painted the sky. The bird reared beneath me, letting out a terrified squawk as a gash was torn in her breast.

  I flew.

  The wind was knocked from me as I struck the earth. I swallowed dust and cold, scrambling to my feet. Congeniality tore off running, terrified, leaving me with bloodstained earth, a sword, and a gate sprawling before me.

  I made a break for it. But before I could even feel like I might have made it, a wall of thorns and stone rose out of the ground between me and the gate. I whirled, bringing the gun up. I saw Vraki’s hand wave.

  Then I saw the wall come to life.

  Thorns pierced my flesh, stone groaned as they lashed out and coiled around my arms, my waist, my legs and lashed me to the wall behind me. A scream formed in my throat as I felt my blood weep down the briars, but I swallowed it back down.

  I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

  The horrific beast came shambling forward, Vraki atop it. Without the adrenaline of the chase to fuel it, I could see how broken and tired it was, shambling on crooked and bent limbs, its sole human eye twitching in unthinking horror. It came to a shuddering halt, bowing its head low to allow Vraki off.

  I expected to see a smile when I looked at him, an ugly grin as he commanded that beast to add my blood to the stains upon its glistening hide. What I didn’t expect was to see him turn toward it, stroke the misshapen flesh of its face affectionately, and press his brow to it. Its eye closed. It let out a low moaning sound.

  “You have done well. Thank you.” He opened his eyes and light filled them. “Go back to her now.”

  Another portal opened beneath it and, like ice melting, the beast slid into it, its last sound an agonized moan that lingered long after the portal closed.

  “To be in our world hurts them,” he said. “The light, the sound, the emotion. It’s too much for them. That’s why they need hosts.” He looked toward me, his jagged stone blade in hand. “You have no idea what trauma you caused that creature at Dogsjaw.”

  Too breathless to speak, too dizzy to focus, I found the energy to scowl at him as he approached me. Though the thorns denied me even the dignity of a futile struggle, constricting my body so tightly, it chased what little breath I had left.

  I still had enough in me to scowl, though. Over Vraki’s shoulder, I saw a shadow of a man who had once stood tall. Jindu met my eyes for but a moment. Before his frown became so deep that it pulled his eyes away.

  “Don’t watch, Jindu,” Vraki muttered. “I will handle this.”

  I kept my stare on him, daring him to meet my eyes. I opened my mo
uth to curse him when he turned away from me. But what was left to say? He vanished from sight. I let him go. I turned my anger back to Vraki.

  “Don’t wait for me to beg,” I rasped. “The only thing coming out of my mouth will be spittle and a request that you step closer and open your mouth. Not in that order.”

  “I don’t want your dignity, Salazanca.” Vraki shook his head slowly, regarding me through those burning eyes. “I merely desire understanding.”

  “You desired to kill hundreds to drag out a hellbeast from beyond the stars,” I spat back. “What the hell about that sounds ‘mere’?”

  He shook his head. “After all this, you still don’t understand them. Like all the others, you still think of them as monsters, your judgments rendered from stories told by grandmothers to frighten children into obedience.”

  “Yeah, fucker, it’s me who doesn’t understand.” I tugged against the thorns, even as they tried to crush my wrist. “Not the guy who tried to murder children to make friends with inhuman monsters.”

  “Monsters, no,” Vraki replied. The vague nostalgic sort of smile that you only ever see on mothers and murderers crept across his face. “Inhuman… only for the moment.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “If that’s your big ‘I’ve gone fucking crazy’ speech, I have to admit I’m disappointed.”

  “I don’t blame you.”

  I couldn’t bear the sound of his whispers. Cursing, snarling, gloating, laughing—I could have handled anything but the soft, almost pitying voice he offered me.

  “I was afraid of them, too, when they first spoke to me. They are afraid of themselves. And she is afraid for them.” He shook his head. “I still thought of them as merchants, traders of power. I thought they could give us a new emperor. But they can give us so much more.”

  “I’ve seen what they desire,” I growled. “And I’ve seen what you’ve given them. Whatever the fuck they desire isn’t worth it.”

  “They desire what we desire,” he snapped back. “Peace. Stability. A world bereft of war or hatred.” His eyes drifted skyward. “They see everything. It hurts them to watch it. They would give us so much more if they could only set foot on this earth. And I can show them how. I can help them. As they helped us.”

  I’d have retorted but if I opened my mouth, I might have vomited at his saccharine opining. But in another second, his eyes were filled with anger as he turned back to me.

  “But you ruined it,” he hissed. “As you ruined the Imperium, as you ruined our ambitions, as you ruin everything. And though I was content to leave you to your devices so long as you could leave me to mine, your machinations drive me mad. I find my thoughts clouded, consumed by a single word.”

  In the blink of an eye, he swept toward me. His hand was around my throat. That sword of stone and thorns leapt into his other and he leveled it at my heart.

  “Why?” he hissed. “Why do you destroy everything? Why do you seek to undo all our work?”

  “Don’t pretend to be dumb enough that you don’t know why,” I snarled through his hand. “You stole my magic. You took the sky from me.”

  “It was never your magic,” he roared back, yet his voice sounded almost petulant, wounded. “It was hers. It was always hers. No one knows why she gave it to you, but you didn’t deserve it. I gave it back. I had to give it back to open the door.”

  I always wondered what my last thoughts would be before I died. I had hoped it would be faces of people I loved. Failing that, memories of times I was happy—or close to it, anyway. At the very least, I thought it’d be people that I killed, staring at me accusingly as I joined them in death.

  I hadn’t expected them to be the words that left my mouth.

  “What did you give at Dogsjaw?”

  They were just words. Yet Vraki recoiled, as though slapped. The ice spike withdrew. He stared at me, dumbstruck. And as a cold realization settled at the base of my head, I asked again.

  “What were you going to give at Dogsjaw to summon the Scrath?” I asked. “You said you needed my power, down in the catacombs all those years ago. But you didn’t have anything to offer at Dogsjaw.”

  “The… the sacrifices,” he stammered. “They were…”

  “Hosts,” I replied. “For the Scrath. You weren’t using them in the summoning.” My eyes narrowed, my mouth hung open. “You’re a Prodigy. You don’t pay a Barter even for a summoning, do you?”

  And suddenly, my breath left me. The petulant, whining tone of his words resonated in my head. And then I realized…

  “You never needed my power to summon it,” I whispered. “You never needed anything, did you? You could open the door whenever you wanted.”

  He released my throat. “At the time, I—”

  “You what? You couldn’t do it? You hadn’t figured it out? You were too fucking stupid to open a door, even with all your knowledge and unlimited power, but you thought you were smart enough to fix the Imperium?”

  He stepped back, shaking his head. “N-no, that’s not it. Our cause was too important to—”

  “Our cause? Your cause? Your cause to fix the Imperium? To fight its armies and its mages and all its resources? And you didn’t think you might need me, another Prodigy? I was Red Cloud, fucker. The people would have rallied around me. With my power, I could have toppled the Imperium and all its—”

  My voice died.

  My eyes went wide.

  The realization hit me, a bullet that punched through my skull and settled in my brain.

  “It was my power,” I whispered. “You wanted a way to get rid of my magic.”

  Vraki the Gate, whose lips had spoken spells that had ended worlds, hung his mouth open in a silent grab for words he couldn’t find. Vraki the Gate, whose eyes burned with the Lady’s favor, shot me a wounded look like a child who had been caught sneaking treats before supper. Vraki the Gate, whose schemes strove to bring the Imperium low, couldn’t think of what to say.

  He stepped back, seemed to fold in on himself—had he always been that skinny? He looked at his feet, licked his lips—had he always seemed that nervous? In my head, he was huge, imposing, a shadow looming large over me. This man before me, this scrawny, fidgety weakling who couldn’t look me in the eye… I didn’t recognize him. Or maybe I always did. Maybe this was the real him.

  Vraki the Gate, last of the Prodigies…

  Vraki the Gate, Scourge of the Scar…

  Vraki the Gate, greatest weapon to ever be used by or against the Imperium…

  As petty, as greedy, as spiteful and envious as any regular piece of shit you could pull out of the gutter.

  I felt sick, like I’d throw up just looking at him. I felt angry, like I could tear my own limbs off to get to him. But more than anything, I felt a cold sliver of disgust.

  “Fuck me, Vraki,” I whispered, “were you always this clichéd?”

  “Silence,” he hissed back.

  “It was all about power? All your lofty ideas? All your grand speeches? And you just didn’t feel special enough? Like some kind of opera villain?”

  “Quiet!” His hiss became a growl as he scowled at me.

  “Not even a good opera. For all that power you had, you couldn’t aspire to more than a two-knuckle, cheap piece of—”

  “SHUT UP!”

  He threw his hands over his head. More blades emerged from portals in the air. They came together, joining into a great spike of stone and thorns. His howl so loud that it drowned out the Lady’s song. His scream so vast that it swallowed the sound of flame and carnage. His wail so loud that neither of us heard the hum of a bowstring.

  Nor the whistle of the arrow.

  Nor even the sound of a damp explosion as it punched through his side.

  He paused, blinking. He looked down to see the red patch blossoming upon his clothes. And for the second time that day, he was speechless.

  I’ve got to say, though, I liked this one a lot better.

  I looked over his head, to a distant rooftop
. She was faint, a shadow against the setting sun. But I saw the smoke trailing from the barrel of the very big crossbow she carried. I saw the glint of the dying light reflected off her glasses. And though I couldn’t tell, I liked to think that, at that moment, Liette was smiling.

  “Jindu…”

  My attentions returned to Vraki. His ice spike fragmented, fell to pieces around him as he collapsed to his knees, clutching his side. I felt the chains around me go slack, vanish into dust. Vraki shut his eyes, screamed.

  “JINDU.”

  I heard the Lady’s song before I saw him. A blur of motion, Jindu rushing down the streets, leaping onto the eaves of buildings, his blade naked and his eyes on the distant rooftop.

  In hindsight, I could have killed Vraki right there. He was wounded, distracted, bleeding. I had one shot left. I could have put one in his head and been done with everything.

  But, at the moment, I wasn’t thinking. I was only feeling.

  My legs pumping under me as I ran.

  My heart trying to claw its way out of my chest.

  Her name, lodged in my head, like a knife.

  Liette.

  I seized another fallen gunpike from a nearby corpse, checked to find it loaded. But even as I ran toward her, I knew I couldn’t get to her soon enough. Jindu was faster than me, faster than the human eye. Already, I saw Jindu leaping from the eaves of a building onto its roof, onto the next roof, until he was right next to the one Liette stood upon.

  No time, no time, not fast enough, not fast enough, I can’t, I can’t…

  Those words in my head faded into silence. And somehow, through the panicked screaming inside my skull, I heard four words, crystalline and cold.

  He strikes from behind.

  And then, I wasn’t thinking anymore.

  I skidded to a halt as close as I dared. I brought the gunpike up, steadied my aim as I pointed it at Liette. From atop the roof, I could see the confusion and fear on her face as she saw me aim my weapon at her. I drew in a deep breath, held it.