Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  Blinked.

  Opened my eyes.

  Jindu appeared behind her, his blade naked and shining, his eyes cold and distant and fixed on her neck.

  I fired.

  He swung.

  Blood stained the sky.

  I could hear Jindu’s scream as the bullet punched through his shoulder. I could hear Liette’s cry as his blade missed her neck and carved a line through her back, sending her toppling over the edge of the roof. I could hear my feet crunching on the dirt as I rushed forward, as I leapt, arms extended to catch her. I could hear the sound of my body hitting the earth as I landed belly-first.

  And while I couldn’t hear the noises I made when she landed on top of me, I bet they weren’t nice.

  She clambered off of me, wincing. When I looked up, her hand was extended. She helped me to my feet with a grunt and held my hand in hers, her other on my arm. Her eyes were intent as she looked at me and, for a minute, I could almost forget what I’d done.

  “You came back for me,” I whispered.

  “I did.” She nodded. A smile fought with a wince for control of her face. “You saved me.”

  I glanced at the blood weeping out of the wound in her back. “Sort of?”

  “I’ll be fine.” She glanced over my head toward the many flames and corpses decorating her city. “Possibly.”

  “You need to get out of here,” I growled. “It’s not safe.”

  “It’s fine,” she insisted. “I can handle it.”

  “You’re not cut out for this.”

  She stared at me, unblinking. “I just shot a guy. Pretty good.”

  “With a giant crossbow, yes,” I replied. “But that’s not a guy. That’s a Prodigy and—”

  “And I shot him in his fucking liver.” She swatted my hand away. “I can handle this, Sal. I need to help you. I need to—”

  “You need to leave.”

  “He almost killed you.” An edge of panic crept into her voice. “You can’t handle him alone. If he’s not dead, then—”

  “Then nothing changes,” I said, taking her hands in mine. “I destroy everything I touch. I’m going to burn this town down, whether I live or die. But I can’t let you burn with it.” My voice came breathless. “You were right… You were always right. You…”

  I pressed her fingers to my lips. I drew in the scent of oil and Dust and flowers I saw in my dreams. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore the way her breath shuddered when she held it.

  In opera, this would be the point where I made a great overture. We’d confess our true feelings, I’d come out of this okay, and we’d ride off the stage together. And I always thought I’d have a great speech—or at least some good words—to say when this moment came.

  But everything I wanted to say turned to ash in my mouth, choking me whenever I tried to say it. And when she looked at me, waiting for me to say something, I had nothing.

  And then there was the sound of thunder. And suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore.

  I followed the sound up to the smoke-stained sky and saw the birds, their great wings beating back columns of soot and fanning flames. From atop their backs, arcs of lightning flashed as thunderbows fired upon the town below to strike through fortifications, barricades, and anything else that might have been close.

  I heard the Lady’s song. I saw flashes of violet light burst into being across the spattered streets. Portals carved themselves out of thin air, swirling halos wrought by Doormages flying overhead. In another instant, troops wearing Imperial violet, carrying weapons flashing with flame and frost, emerged from a dozen different points.

  “Fan out!” one of them called. “Find the traitor Vrakilaith! Kill anyone who tries to—”

  “TEN THOUSAND YEARS!”

  The Revolutionary battlecry cut through the air as they came flooding out from beneath cover and behind barricades. The crack of gunpikes and cannons accompanied them, met the sound of roaring fire and hissing steam as they clashed with their foes across the city in bursts of blood and flashes of fire and the hail of bullets.

  And my eyes were on Liette. And I found the only word I could.

  “Go.”

  Her eyes trembled, her mouth hung open. But she said nothing. She simply reached into a pouch at her hip and produced a small box. She placed it in my hand, closed my fingers over it, then turned away.

  “Stay alive,” she said. “Or I’ll kill you.”

  That didn’t even make sense.

  But I didn’t say anything as she turned and vanished around a corner.

  I looked down at the box. I opened the lid. And my face, warped in the reflection of circular metal and scarred by writing scratched upon it, looked back at me in fifteen different circles.

  The Cacophony seethed with pleasure at the sight.

  Shells.

  She had made me more shells.

  I inhaled sharply. I plucked three of them out. I pulled the gun from his holster, chambered them, and flipped it shut. His eagerness burned so brightly that I thought my hand might catch fire.

  It hurt.

  But it wasn’t the worst pain I’d felt.

  FIFTY-NINE

  LOWSTAFF

  I put my head down and tried to ignore the sound of the world ending around me.

  My body ached—wounds hadn’t healed, breath hadn’t returned, bones shook in my body with each frantic step I took. But I kept running, I kept breathing, I kept my eyes on the dirt as I rushed down to the street, back to where I had left Vraki.

  The sounds of war encircled me. Above, Krikai birds shrieked to accompany the crack of thunderbows raining electric arcs onto the town below. Behind me, the silence of the dead made an oppressive wall to block the screaming of the dying. And pretty much in any spot that wasn’t filled by one of those two sounds, the staccato crack of gunfire provided a grotesque chorus.

  The Lady’s song filled my ears. I heard the whisper of smoke that preceded the roar of flame. I skidded to a halt. An eruption blew gouts of fire from the windows and doors of a nearby building, like a many-headed dragon from whose mouths the charred and burning bodies of Revolutionaries fell or fled, screaming as flame consumed them. An Imperial Embermage, hands ablaze, wandered nonchalantly out a moment later and dawdled off to find more enemies to incinerate.

  I kept moving.

  I leapt over the smoldering carcass of a Revolutionary who reached out for me with a blackened hand. Nothing I could do for him. Or anyone, really. Cavric would be the one to save the people. All I could do was find Vraki and finish him. However bad things were, they’d be worse with a Prodigy running around.

  I returned to Lowstaff’s north gate and found only a pool of blood remaining.

  Perhaps he had tried to escape. Perhaps he had teleported away. But I knew he wasn’t dead.

  Because I hadn’t killed him.

  I closed my eyes. I opened my ears. I took in the sound of guns blazing and fires roaring, of birds shrieking and of machines whirring, of death and blood and weeping and homes collapsing. And everywhere, the sound of the Lady’s song arose in perfect, harmonious chorus.

  Save one spot.

  I glanced down a nearby street. There, down a narrow path winding its way between the homes and buildings, I heard something faint. It was the Lady’s voice, but… mournful. Still a song, but no longer the elegant choir I was used to. More like… a dirge.

  I pulled the Cacophony out and followed it.

  My suspicions grew with every step I took into the street. Its path was decorated with corpses. Revolutionaries were impaled and twitching on stony thorns bursting from the earth. Imperial mages and soldiers were hurled through walls and torn into pieces and scattered like shredded paper on the wind. Nith hounds lay broken and moaning in the dust. Guns—from small gunpikes to massive cannons—lay twisted and torn apart in the dust like the discarded toys of a bored child.

  I know it’s a little fucked-up, but the whole scene was oddly serene. The death and destruction was so absol
ute that it rendered the distant sounds of the battle muted. As though an entire war had to sit in quiet awe of the carnage.

  A Prodigy didn’t have to pay a Barter to use his magic, but that didn’t mean his strength was infinite. For Vraki to use this would have taken immense concentration and power. He was panicked, worried.

  Weak.

  I followed the path of carnage through the city streets, listening for the ebbing song that led me across bloodstained earth and through forests of iron and ice, until I finally came to a halt before the doors of a shop.

  Selmin’s Sundries.

  Just a humble shop, far away from the main street. Too small to be of help to anyone. You wouldn’t ever know it was here unless you knew where to look.

  And here was where Vraki the Gate came to make his last stand.

  Ironic. Or poetic. Or just coincidence. I’d let someone else figure out which, long after he was dead.

  The Cacophony in hand, I took a breath and kicked the door open.

  I swept the gun’s barrel across a scene of shelves packed with bags of rice and dried meat and barrels of pickles. Darkness greeted me as I entered, the owner long having fled and left everything behind. A trail of black stains across the floor led behind a counter to an opened trap door and a staircase leading down.

  And from the dark below, the mournful music wafted.

  I kept the Cacophony trained before me as I took each step, finger ready to pull and unload a torrent of fire and frost the second I saw Vraki’s face. But I never did. By the time he came into view, his back was to me.

  He sat in a dark puddle, yet didn’t seem to notice. His attentions were on a swirling sphere of light before him, a tiny echo of the great portal he had ripped open over Dogsjaw. Its song, far from the shrieking echo back then, was a lonely murmur now. And its pitiful light was only enough to illuminate his pallid, sweaty face staring into it intently.

  Like he could understand it.

  “Strange how we never figured it out, isn’t it?” he whispered. “We listened to her song for so long and yet we never once even suspected there might be a language, let alone try to understand it.”

  He reached out, as if to touch it, and the light trembled, fragile and weak.

  “Even now, it’s like listening to a child…” He stared at the light, winced. “I understand a few words, but they’re out of order, more sounds than speech. But I know what they want. And they know what I want.”

  He closed his eyes. His breath made his body shake, every gasp an effort.

  “They know what I’m afraid of.”

  He reached out for the light. A stray, glowing tendril separated itself from the sphere, as if attempting to reach back.

  “In my heart, I know I wasn’t lying when I said the Nul Emperor needed to be overthrown.” He sucked in a hot breath. “I said a nul cannot lead the Imperium, and that was true. I said it dishonored the memory of we who built the Imperium, and that was also true. Many of those who entered the conspiracy with me believed them.”

  A sad smile creased his face. The light let out a soft, mournful whimper.

  “Jindu, most of all,” he said. “He had seen too much death, lost too many friends to let the Imperium crumble under a nul’s watch. I did not lie to him when I said we had to save it… but I didn’t tell them the truth. Perhaps I didn’t even know it until now.

  “But on that night, when we… when I sacrificed your power, when I gazed into the portal and saw her looking back at me, they revealed what I had always feared. They showed me a world without magic at all. Where the nuls walked over roads under which our Dust had been buried and thought not once about the greatness that shaped this land.”

  He let out a sigh. The light flickered, a candlelight that threatened to snuff itself out.

  “Perhaps it was that fear, that fear that I would disappear and someone else would be there to fill a void I thought only I could fill, that led me to… what happened with you. With your power. For that, I regret it. But I do not lament what I did.”

  He rose to a shaky knee, took a few deep breaths.

  “It was for all mages. For this land we tamed. For the lives we built. For the worlds we have yet to create, that they could help us create. My fault was my passion. I see that now. And I am sorry.”

  He rose to his feet, his arms hanging heavy at his sides. He drew in deep, gasping breaths, his body shaking. Slowly, he turned to me, eyes dim and soft.

  “So, if you still want to kill me after—”

  Steel flashed. He stopped talking. He stared down at the blade in his chest like he wasn’t sure how it had gotten there. He looked back up at me, staring into my eyes. He blinked, mouthed a word.

  “But—”

  And I stabbed him again.

  He fell to one knee.

  I stabbed again.

  He fell onto his back.

  And I just kept stabbing. His body twitched with every cut, every red blossom that burst across his skin. I stabbed him until he emptied out on the floor. I carved him until he was more meat than man.

  Until his body was almost completely red. Until the light left him entirely. Until I took the hilt and found it stuck fast in his body.

  I stepped back. I whispered a word.

  “Sorry.”

  Not to Vraki. But to the weight burning on my hip. After all this time, the Cacophony hadn’t even been the one to kill him. But he didn’t seem to mind—perhaps he appreciated the poetry of a common piece of steel bringing down the scourge of the Imperium in a basement full of dried goods. Or maybe he just enjoyed being here to see it.

  Through it all, the light remained.

  The tiny glowing sphere trembled and shuddered but made no other move. And though it lacked a face, or even eyes, I knew it was looking at me. It turned its attention back toward Vraki. It let out a single, crystalline note that slowly died as the light, too, dimmed.

  Until they both stopped.

  And I was left alone, in a dark place, cold and quiet.

  SIXTY

  LOWSTAFF

  Maybe this was just my life now.

  Maybe I would forever be going into dark places and coming back out to find everything destroyed.

  Maybe someday I would look back on this and call myself clichéd.

  But when I emerged into the ruins of Lowstaff after who knows how long I spent below, I couldn’t yet feel anything but sorrow.

  The freehold wore its wounds like jewelry—bullet-hole necklaces and crowns of corpses. Fires still burned from windows and doors, their laughter occasionally punctuated by the groan of a building collapsing under the weight of the flames. Spikes of never-melting ice punched through suits of Paladin armor; repeating gun nests lay abandoned and shattered.

  The dead were an afterthought, corpses of Revolutionaries and Imperials lying still in the wake of the carnage. Another price paid, another Barter offered. I took some small, cold comfort that I saw only soldiers dead. No civilians.

  However many people Cavric had gotten out, they’d still live.

  “Thank goodness for Sal the Cacophony,” they’d say. “Our homes are ruined, our livelihoods destroyed, our very memories wiped the fuck out, but thanks to her, we’ll at least be alive to appreciate dying in crushing poverty.”

  Actually, they probably wouldn’t say that. There’d be, like, a lot more cussing and crying and oaths of vengeance.

  But I wouldn’t blame them if they did.

  A cry filled the air. I glanced up and saw a black bird with white eyes, the same from when I had woken up, sitting atop the crown of a smoldering building. It regarded me carefully for a moment, as if impressed that I had managed to destroy an entire city since it had seen me last.

  There was something terribly familiar about that look.

  It turned one way; I turned the other. And we both vanished into the smoke.

  When I walked out of that still, silent ruin and onto a hill outside the gates, I looked back and saw the lights of the fires d
ying, swallowed by the night. Soon, it’d stand as still and silent as Stark’s Mutter. Vraki had taken every soul from that town but left its houses standing. I had destroyed their homes, but the people were still alive to curse my name.

  Fair trade, I figured.

  But I hadn’t done it alone.

  The armies had retreated after the skirmish. There would be negotiations for the corpses later, bodies returned to each other. When the mages turned to Dust, their magic would fade—even Vraki’s horrors would be forgotten. The Revolution would build more machines. More mages would be born. They’d find a new place to ruin and we’d do this all over again and maybe I’d be alive to see it and maybe I wouldn’t.

  Maybe Vraki was wrong. Maybe no one ever gets replaced because nothing ever changes. Not really.

  But then again, maybe he was right. Because he sure as shit wouldn’t be around to see what happened next.

  I reached into my pocket. I pulled a sheet of parchment out and unfolded it, looked at the top of the list, and pressed a piece of charcoal against it.

  Vraki the Gate.

  I stared at that name for a good, long moment. And for another good, long moment, I didn’t even recognize the name. It looked less like a collection of letters and more like… like a landmark. Like I could only see the shape of it and know what it was, where I stood in relation to it.

  And now that it was gone… I didn’t know what to feel when I looked at the space where it used to be.

  But in the next second, I felt only a burning heat on my hip.

  And I knew I wasn’t alone.

  The whisper of wind, the soft moan of steel filled my ears. I felt the cold tip of the blade leveled at the back of my neck. I turned around, felt the tip an inch from the hollow of my throat as I stared down a length of black steel into a pair of eyes I used to know.

  Jindu just stared back at me.

  It’s funny. You only ever remember people in pieces: eyes, hands, smiles. Once you look at the whole of them, they look unfamiliar. In my head, Jindu had always been a perfect smile, shining eyes, a flashing sword, and nothing else. But standing before me, he was a man. A man with tense hands, messy hair, dirty skin, slumping shoulders. And every part of him was shaking.