Seven Blades in Black

by Sam Sykes

  She jerked her hand back, slamming the beast back down to the ground. It tried to scramble for footing again when her foot came down on its wing. There was a loud snapping sound. The bird’s beak craned open in a decidedly human scream.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” she asked. “The chicken in Stark’s Mutter? The turkey in Vigil? The fucking rat? You tried to beat Sal the fucking Cacophony by turning into a rat?”

  The bird’s scream became a moan as she brought her boot down upon its neck, her heel digging into its throat. She aimed the sword at its neck.

  “Come on, Zanze,” she said. “Is this really the shape you want to die in?”

  The bird lay still upon the earth, breast shuddering with labored breathing. Slowly, it closed its eyes. And the Lady’s song rang out one more time.

  When it opened its eyes, there was a human throat beneath the heel of her boot.

  “Lucky guess,” Zanze the Beast groaned.

  Or, at least, he had once been a man. Years of magic had left the Maskmage almost without features. His nose was nothing more than a pair of nostrils. His eyes were wide and lidless. His skin was pallid, hairless, and pale. All that served to differentiate Zanze the Beast from a very large grub was the familiar groan in his voice.

  “Aw, Zanze.” Sal made a mocking pout. “You already made me spend this whole fucking time hunting you. Don’t insult me on top of everything.” She grinned at him. “I figured it out back in Lowstaff, once you showed up outside my window. You’ve been trailing me since Stark’s Mutter, haven’t you?”

  “I was covering Vraki’s trail,” he grunted. “He thought someone would come looking for us.”

  “And you didn’t think it’d be me? I’m hurt, Zanze.” She shifted her weight, ground her heel into his neck, drawing a scream from him. “Truly.”

  “Yeah, fuck me, right?” he said through clenched teeth.

  “Not even if you could turn into a bottle of whiskey with an ass,” Sal replied. “But you didn’t do that, did you? You turned into a Revolutionary. I saw you, back in Lowstaff.”

  “Left that part out of your story, didn’t you?” he muttered. “I was listening.”

  “Like I’m going to tell a Governor-fucking-Militant I let myself get captured to kill a shape-shifting mage hiding in her midst.” Sal leaned forward on her knee, driving her boot farther against him. “And somehow, that sentence isn’t even the most fucked-up thing about this. I’d have thought you’d flee, Zanze. Vraki was dead. The Crown Conspiracy was over. You had to have known that, once I found you, I’d kill you. You had no reason to stick around in the cadre, unless…”

  She leaned forward, her voice a harsh whisper.

  “How long have you been keeping this up, Zanze?” she asked. “Working for Vraki, working for the Revolution, who else are you taking money from?”

  “Now you’re insulting me, Salazanca.” Zanze’s laugh was throaty and guttural. “You think they’d call me Zanze the Beast if I cared about money? They’d call me Zanze the Girl With a Nice Pair of Tits and a Pretty Mouth and Give Me Your Fucking Inheritance, You Dick.” His body deflated. “Nah. It was never about money. I’m the Beast. All I cared about was survival.”

  He craned his neck to look at her out the corner of one white, wide eye. And Sal, for reasons she couldn’t quite explain, felt colder.

  “You told Tretta a good story, but you left out a few parts.” He chuckled, his voice black and rasping. “I thought I heard you slip up a few times, thought she’d catch on, but she never did. She thinks your gun is just a funny magic weapon.”

  His eye craned lower, toward the burning brass hanging at her hip.

  “She doesn’t realize that thing is alive, does she?”

  His lip curled back in an ugly sneer.

  “She doesn’t know you’ve been feeding it.”

  That cold feeling crept over her, settling like a wispy cloak across her body. He knew, then. Of course he knew—he’d been following her the entire time; he had probably seen it happen.

  The pang of dread she felt, she told herself, was ridiculous. What did she care for the judgment of a fiend like Zanze the Beast? What had she done that could possibly be worse than what he’d done to end up on her list?

  And yet…

  A sudden surge of heat brought her attention down to her hip. The Cacophony, she knew, was staring at her expectantly, reminding her.

  No one could say that Sal the Cacophony was a liar. She had told Tretta Stern that she and the gun had made a deal. It wasn’t her fault that Tretta Stern had falsely concluded what it was.

  “That’s why you wanted him,” she whispered. “Thought you could save yourself from him.”

  “I thought I could save us all,” Zanze grunted. “I deserve to die for what I did. To you. To a lot of people. I made peace with that. But what you did to Kresh, to Vraki…” Zanze sneered. “Even they didn’t deserve it.”

  He sighed. His eye craned away, stared off toward the burning horizon.

  “There’s nothing I can say that would make you stop, is there?”

  Sal said nothing. A long wind sighed across the sky.

  Zanze nodded to himself. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s what I thought.” His eyes closed. He laid his head upon the ground. “See you around, Sal.”

  Sal nodded slowly.

  “Yeah.”

  Steel flashed. Flesh parted. His body twitched. The earth grew dark beneath him.

  “See you around.”

  She stepped back, watched the damp, dark earth spread beneath him as he stared out over the great, endless sky. Quietly, she reached into her scarf and pulled a piece of paper and charcoal from it. She unfolded it, found a name upon it, and made a single stroke.

  Zanze the Beast.

  She stared at the name for a long moment, at that black mark, through it like one more scar.

  That long moment stretched into eternity, broken only by the sudden sear of heat at her hip.

  Ah, right.

  She had almost forgotten.

  She tossed the sword aside, pulled the Cacophony out of his sheath, and cradled him in her hands as though he were a child of brass and cinders. She approached Zanze’s cooling corpse and held the weapon over him.

  She always hated this part.

  A song rose. Not the Lady Merchant’s dulcet tones, ringing out from somewhere distant and growing impossibly closer. This song was low and dark, torn from the belly of a beast long buried. It sang a single, droning verse that carved its way into her skull and sat there, groaning, laughing.

  Burning.

  Zanze’s corpse twitched suddenly, a puppet of flesh and bone on tangled, invisible strings. Violet light bloomed in his eyes. Then his mouth. Then every pore of his pallid flesh. The light engulfed him, his power coalescing into a glorious brightness that hurt her eyes.

  And then the Cacophony fed.

  The song burned brighter in her head, a great inhale in preparation for the next verse. And the light came flooding out of Zanze’s corpse, twitching and writhing and screaming in a discordant harmony as it tried to flee into the sky before it was drawn, inexorably, toward the gun.

  The light disappeared down his barrel, past his grinning jaws, and into the brass. Its wailing song faded. And slowly, the burning verse fell silent as well. And Sal stared at the gun.

  And the gun stared back at her.

  Blinked a pair of brass eyes.

  And grinned a little broader.

  “Ah,” the Cacophony whispered. “Much better.” On a voice of burning cinders, he chuckled. “Shall we?”

  Sal stared at him wordlessly for a moment before nodding. She replaced him in his sheath. She pulled her scarf up over her face and pocketed the list.

  She turned around and walked down the ridge, back to her bird, back to the list, the next name, the next scar.

  And in the sky behind her, the smoke continued to rise.

  THE STORY CONTINUES IN…

  BOOK TWO OF THE GRAVE
OF EMPIRES

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are few feelings as good as the easy smile and beating heart that comes from crossing into new territory with old friends.

  And Seven Blades in Black is as new a territory as I’ve ever ventured into. Guns, machines, more magic and worldbuilding than I’ve ever done in one sitting—this was an all-new undertaking, and I was pleased to have my old friends with me.

  I thank Danny Baror, my agent, for selling it. I thank Will Hinton, my editor, for setting it up. And I thank my family for being there for me with each shaky step I took onto this new ground.

  But for as valued as old friends are, the new friends are their own experience, and special thanks is owed to my new editor, Bradley Englert, who ably, swiftly, and nobly took up the reins of this piece when Will had to move on.

  And above all of them, this book is thanks to you, readers. Whether you’ve traveled with me before or are just signing on to the journey for the first time, I hope we go far together for many years to come.

  extras

  meet the author

  Photo Credit: Libbi Rich

  SAM SYKES—author, citizen, mammal—has written extensively over the years, penning An Affinity for Steel, the Bring Down Heaven trilogy, Brave Chef Brianna, and now The Grave of Empires trilogy. At the time of this writing, no one has been able to definitively prove or disprove that he has fought a bear.

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  SEVEN BLADES IN BLACK

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  THE RAGE OF DRAGONS

  The Burning: Book One

  by

  Evan Winter

  Game of Thrones meets Black Panther in this debut epic fantasy about a world caught in an eternal war and the young man who will become his people’s only hope for survival.

  One in twenty-five hundred Omehi women are Gifted, capable of controlling the world’s most destructive weapon—dragons. One in a hundred of their men are strong enough for the Gifted to infuse with magic, turning these warriors into near unstoppable colossi.

  The rest are bred to fight, ferocious soldiers fated to die in the endless war. Tau Tafari, an Omehi commoner, wants more than this, but his life is destroyed when he’s betrayed by those he was born to serve.

  Now, with too few Gifted left and the Omehi facing genocide, Tau cares only for revenge. Following an unthinkable path, he will become the greatest swordsman to ever live, dying a hundred thousand times for the chance to kill three of his own people.

  Landfall

  Queen Taifa stood at the bow of Targon, her beached warship, and looked out at the massacre on the sands. Her other ships were empty. The fighting men and women of the Chosen were already on shore, were already killing and dying. Their screams, not so different from those they fought, washed over her in waves.

  She looked to the sun. It burned high overhead and the killing would not stop until well past nightfall, which meant too many more would die. She heard footsteps on the deck behind her and tried to take comfort in the sounds of Tsiory’s gait.

  “My Queen,” he said.

  Taifa nodded, permitting him to speak, but did not turn away from the slaughter on the shore. If this was to be the end of her people, she would bear witness. She could do that much.

  “We cannot hold the beach,” he told her. “We have to retreat to the ships. We have to relaunch them.”

  “No, I won’t go back on the water. The rest of the fleet will be here soon.”

  “Families, children, the old and infirm. Not fighters. Not Gifted.”

  Taifa didn’t turn. She couldn’t face him, not yet. “It’s beautiful here,” she told him. “Hotter than Osonte, but beautiful. Look.” She pointed to the mountains in the distance. “We landed on a peninsula, bordered and bisected by mountains. It’s defensible, arable. We could make a home here. Couldn’t we? A home for my people.”

  She faced him. His presence comforted her. Champion Tsiory, so strong and loyal. He made her feel safe, loved. She wished she could do the same for him.

  His brows were knitted and sweat beaded on his shaved head. He had been near the front lines, fighting. She hated that, but he was her champion and she could not ask him to stay with her on a beached ship while her people, his soldiers, died.

  He shifted and made to speak. She didn’t want to hear it. No more reports, no more talk of the strange Gifts these savages wielded against her kind.

  “The Malawa arrived a few spans ago,” she told him. “My old nursemaid was onboard. She went to the Goddess six days past.”

  “Sanura’s gone? My Queen… I’m so—”

  “Do you remember how she’d tell the story of the dog that bit me when I was a child?”

  “I remember hearing you bit it back and wouldn’t let go. Sanura had to call the Queen’s Guard to pull you off the poor thing.”

  Taifa turned back to the beach, filled with the dead and dying in their thousands. “Sanura went to the Goddess on that ship, never knowing we found land, never knowing we escaped the Cull. They couldn’t even burn her properly.” The battle seemed louder. “I won’t go back on the water.”

  “Then, we die on this beach.”

  The moment had arrived. She wished she had the courage to face him for it. “The Gifted, the ones with the forward scouts, sent an Edification. They found the rage.” Taifa pointed to the horizon, past the slaughter, steeling herself. “The dragons are nested in the central mountains, the ones dividing the peninsula. A dragonness has given birth. There is a youngling and I will form a coterie.”

  “No,” he said. “Not this. Taifa…”

  She could hear his desperation. She would not let it sway her.

  “We were only to follow them,” Tsiory said. “If we use the dragons, we’ll destroy this land. The savages, how can we ever make peace if we do this to them?”

  The argument wasn’t strong enough to change her mind, and he must have sensed that.

  “The Cull will find us,” he said, sending a chill through her.

  She closed her eyes, desperate to forget what they had run from and aware that, could she live a thousand cycles, she never would. “Can you hold this land for me, my champion?” she asked, hating herself for making this seem his fault, his shortcoming.

  “I cannot.”

  “Then,” she said, turning to him, “the dragons will.”

  Tsiory wouldn’t meet her eyes. That was how much she had hurt him, how much she had disappointed him. “Only for a little while,” she said, trying to bring him back to her. “Too little for the Cull to notice and just long enough to survive.”

  “Taifa—”

  “A short while.” She reached up and touched his face. “I swear it on my love for you.” She needed him and felt fragile enough to break, but was determined to see her people safe first. “Can you give us enough time for the coterie to do their work?”

  Tsiory took her hand and raised it to his lips. “You know I will.”

  Champion Tsiory

  Tsiory was exhausted. Every movement and moment felt like too much. It had been three days since he’d last been to the ships to see Taifa. He didn’t want to think he was punishing her. He told himself he had to be here, where the fighting was thickest. She wanted him to hold the beach and that was what he was doing.

  The last of the twenty-five hundred ships had landed and every man, woman, and child that was left of the Chosen was now on this hostile land. Most of the ships had been scavenged for resources, broken to pieces so the Omehi could survive. There would be no retreat. Losing against the savages would mean the end of his people, and that Tsiory could not permit.

  The last few days had been filled with fighting, but his soldiers had beaten back the natives. Tsiory had taken the beach. Still, he couldn’t pretend he wasn’t angry. He loved Taifa, the Goddess knew he did, but she was playing a suicidal game. Taking the beach, or whole peninsula, with dragons wouldn’t mean much if they brought the Cull down on themselves.

  “Champion!” An In
dlovu soldier entered the command tent, breaking Tsiory out of his reverie. “Major Ojore is being overrun. He’s asking for reinforcements.”

  “Tell him to hold.” Tsiory knew the young soldier wanted to say more. He didn’t give him the chance. “Tell Major Ojore to hold.”

  “Yes, Champion!”

  Harun spat some of the calla leaf he was always chewing. “He can’t hold,” the colonel told Tsiory and the rest of the assembled guardian council. The group of men were huddled in a makeshift tent beyond the beach. They were off the hot sands and sheltered by the desiccated trees that bordered them. “He’s out of arrows. It’s all that kept the savages off him, and Goddess knows, the wood in this forsaken land is too brittle to make more.”

  Tsiory looked over his shoulder at the barrel-chested colonel. Harun was standing close enough for him to smell the man’s sour breath. Returning his attention to the hand-drawn maps their scouts had made of the peninsula, Tsiory shook his head. “There are no reinforcements.”

  “You’re condemning Ojore and his fighters to death.”

  Tsiory waited, and as expected, Colonel Dayo Okello chimed in. “Harun is right. Ojore will fall and our flank will collapse. You need to speak with the Queen? Make her see sense? We’re outnumbered and the savages have Gifts we’ve never encountered before. We have no true supply lines and we’re low on food. We can’t win.”

  “We have orders,” Tsiory said.

  “How long do they need until we have the dragons?” Tahir asked. He was pacing and didn’t look like the man Tsiory remembered from Osonte. Tahir Oni came from one of the Chosen’s wealthiest families and was renowned for his intelligence and precision. He was also a man who took intense pride in his appearance.

  Back on Osonte, every time Tsiory had seen Tahir, the man’s head was freshly shaved, his dark skin oiled to a sheen, and his colonel’s uniform sculpted to his muscular frame. The man before Tsiory was a stranger to that memory.