Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) (44 page)

A shout rose above the hubbub, ringing through the little city square. ‘The gods are displeased with the lax attitude of humanity. They require sacrifice and repentance!’

‘And action too!’

‘That is not what I said…’

‘Just a minute here. What do you mean by
sacrifice
? You’re not suggesting some blood-of-a-virgin rubbish, are you?’

‘No, I…’

‘Then what?’

‘
Personal
sacrifice. Holy lives. Prayer. A righteous life.’

‘And coin, too, no doubt?’

A murmur of agreement rippled through the little crowd, stalling the debate for a moment.

‘If you ask me, mates, I don’t think the gods are that fussed with us. They didn’t help us in the war, why should they help us now?’

‘
Fussed
?! You make them sound like skinny damsels picking over pastries!’

‘They didn’t help us, dear boy, because we weren’t praying enough!’

‘Or praying to the wrong one!’

‘Heretic!’

‘Evernia is our goddess.’

‘Njord. Always has, always will be!’

‘You’re a sailor, you would say that. I say Thron is overlooked.’

‘Siren-lover!’

A fist banged a table, jolting pint glasses and bottles. ‘The Arkmages are the problem. They’re the ones letting this get out of hand. Lax attitude you say? They’re the lax ones, I tell you!’

Another murmur of agreement then, louder than the first. The arguers had finally found a common ground.

‘Aye! They’re deaf to our shouts, they are!’

‘Incompetent!’

‘Taxes are going up again, I hear.’

‘UP?!’

And so it went. Religion, so they called it. It would never stir a man like taxes can.

Sitting on a step in a nearby doorway, Malvus Barkhart sipped his cragleaf tea with smiling lips. He was watching the growing gaggle of vehement debaters with a happy eye. He had seen this a hundred times in a hundred tavern courtyards. The arguments were almost scripted now. The lines had been drawn. Camps chosen. The battlegrounds? Public places. Taverns. Boardwalks. Market stalls. The weapons? Opinion, discontent, and loud voices.

Malvus caught the eye of one of the men and winked. The man nodded in reply and went straight back to his ranting, decrying the marble thrones and the useless fools that dared to occupy them. It was music to Malvus’ ears, music that was coin well-spent.

He finished his tea with a gulp and got to his feet. The dregs of the cup left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he grimaced. He looked down into the cup and wrinkled his lip at the sludge that had gathered there. He had half a mind to complain to the tavern owner, but he was already going to be late.

‘Read your leaves, sir?’ A nearby voice slithered into his ear.

Malvus turned to find an ageing, obsidian-haired woman standing very close to him. She was clutching a withered arm to her chest. She was reaching out for his cup with the other. Malvus pulled a face and shoved her hand away. ‘Out of my way, beggar. I’m not interested.’

‘Are you sure, Council Barkhart?’

Malvus paused. He was well-known in the city. She could have picked up his name from anywhere, but the way in which she croaked it plucked ponderously at the superstitious string in his mind.
With so much familiarity
. ‘How much then?’ he asked. ‘State your price, beggar. And let’s not make it too extortionate, shall we?’

The woman tapped the side of her nose. ‘What’s a future worth to you?’

‘That depends on the future.’

The woman chuckled, a hoarse cackle. ‘And your future depends on the questions you ask.’

Malvus narrowed his eyes, wondering if he was wasting his time. ‘How decidedly odd. I was under the impression my future depended on my actions.’

The woman cackled some more, louder this time. ‘Hah! Every man is a book, Barkhart, and every book has a beginning, an end, and the chapters in between. They’re already written, m’dear, you just have to turn the pages.’

‘I disagree. A man makes his own fate, as I have made mine.’

‘Whatever you say, Council, whatever you say!’ The woman smiled and pointed at the cup. ‘But say that you did ‘ave a book, you fancy skipping a chapter or two?’

The woman’s words made Malvus wary. ‘I thought your kind read stones, not leaves?’

The woman beckoned to the cup with a handful of long nails, as if willing it closer. Her voice had become quiet, urgent. ‘Leaves, stones, feathers, guts. It don’t matter to those with the skill to read,’ she whispered.

Malvus contemplated. He looked deep into the woman’s grey eyes and patted the coinpurse at his belt. ‘Your words will decide my payment.’

‘A fair deal,’ she said. She pulled her skirts around her knees and settled down on Malvus’ step. Malvus did the same, but made sure to keep his distance. Beggars carried diseases. This one looked particularly filthy. Her skin was that of cheap leather.

Malvus handed over the cup and she snatched it away. She held it to her breast and began to whisper to the greenish sludge sitting at its bottom. She shook it, once, twice, then again, and then began to whisper to herself. She seemed genuine enough, and that got Malvus’ heart beating. He had seen enough seers to know. He leant forward to try to catch the words, but they slipped away from him. He licked his lips impatiently. His future was constantly at the forefront of his mind these days. He had his dreams, his plans, his grand designs, but there was nothing like having a seer lie them out for him to make the blood rush.

‘What do you see?’ he asked. Several moments went by without an answer, so he asked again. ‘What do you see, woman? Tell me!’

So she told him.

It took several minutes for Malvus to take it all in. Council Barkhart was not a man who often stammered, if ever at all, but on this one occasion anything was possible. ‘W… why are you telling me this if my book is already written?’ he squeaked.

The seer squinted at him. ‘Because a journey is always quicker if the traveller already knows the road. Besides, everybody reads books different, see? You might skip an important line, read too eagerly, miss the plot.’

Malvus tried to shake himself from his daze. Her metaphors were getting muddled up. The blood was rushing indeed. ‘I am not fond of riddles, woman. Tell me, why you? What interest have you in my future?’

The seer ran a hand through her dark hair. ‘Revenge,’ she said. ‘And repayment.’

Malvus drew back. ‘For what?’

‘For my death,’ she smiled a wry smile, one that had no trace of humour in its curves. My life has its own book, Barkhart, and like most stories, it ends. Our fates may already be written, but you can read slower, if you catch my drift. Stave off the ending, so t’speak.’ A look of disgust came over her face. ‘I’ve staved off my ending long enough, it seems. But I ain’t done there. I want revenge on the one who ends my story, understand? Kill the man who kills me. It’s simple. I help you. You help me.’

‘And why would I do that for a mere beggar?’

‘Because in return,’ the smile returned, this time with humour splashed all across it, ‘I’m going to tell you how to live forever. Now is that worth your pretty coin, Malvus Barkhart?’

The smile that spread across Malvus’ cheeks was so wide it actually hurt. Not only had his hopes been confirmed, nay,
ameliorated
, by this woman, but now his dreams, and most private desires, were being dangled in front of his face.
What a lucky day it was
, he thought.
Thank the gods for cheap cragleaf tea.

With a slow and steady movement of his hand, Malvus reached down and untied the strings of his purse. He took the cup from the woman’s palm and tossed it into the street. Then he took his purse and upended it over her hands. Coin poured from its mouth like a butchered pig spilling golden entrails. The seer counted them as they fell.

‘Tell me,’ he told her. ‘Tell me everything.’

In a dark and sodden hole, underneath the salty boardwalks of Port Rós, where the sewer pipes met the sea, a young girl squatted in the dark and held her nose against the stench of Krauslung’s piss and shit. If she cared, she didn’t show it. She didn’t grumble. She didn’t moan. She just held her nose and poked the dead rat once more.

The brown rat was the size of a hunting dog, a sewer monster. She hadn’t killed it, merely uncovered it in the seeping effluent that was trying its best to invade her sturdy boots. It lay on its back with its legs in the air. Its head was tilted back and its mouth open, revealing rows of black, needle-sharp teeth. A trio of maggots were having a picnic on its grey snout.

Samara prodded it in the chest one last time, wrinkling her nose at the feel of its sagging ribcage. It had been there quite a while.

‘Come on,’ she urged it. ‘Hurry up.’

It did just that. Its tail twitched and its feet trembled. Much to the maggots’ dismay, an unseen handed guided the rat’s head up and over with a squelch. Its mouth jiggled, trying to find its tongue. Its black, dead eyes began to blink. ‘Where are we?’ it hissed, with a voice no rat could ever muster. Nor any human for that matter. It was a voice made up of many speaking in unison. For anyone else but Samara, it was blood-chilling. She’d heard it before.

‘Krauslung,’ replied Samara, with a smirk of satisfaction. They may have been lurking in the sewers, but they were finally here. Every time she entertained that thought she got a little shiver of anticipation.

‘Ahhhhhh,’ the breath slid from between rat-lips. Even though it sighed and gasped, its chest never quite moved. ‘Finally. The time is near?’

‘Tomorrow night.’

The rat smiled. ‘Tomorrow night. It will be our pleasure. What is the occasion?’

Samara cracked her knuckles. ‘Some sort of wedding. The Undermage’s, Lilith says. Ruin will be there, and Tyrfing, and all the other mages. It’s perfect.’

‘More than perfect.’ The rat turned its head then, as if listening to something faraway. The dead rat sniffed, its whiskers twitching. ‘He asks of Farden?’

‘No sign,’ the girl replied. She couldn’t help but glare. ‘Lilith said he’ll be there. I hope she’s right this time.’

‘Then guard yourself until the last moment. We can taste the stench of gods in that city. Do not alert them.’

Samara couldn’t help but look confused. ‘Gods? Here?’ she asked.

‘Shades, shadows, apparitions of prayer. Mere ghosts. But they may still raise the alarm. Hide your magick.’

‘I already am,’ Samara replied. It was a constant effort but she was managing. It felt like a thunderstorm was trying to burst out of her chest.

The rat looked away again, and then turned back. It gazed at her with its beady eyes. They were so narrowed that in the dark they looked closed. ‘Are you afraid?’

Samara was taken aback. She wondered if she should lie. She realised she didn’t have to. ‘The only thing I fear is failing.’

‘Ahhahaha,’ the rat convulsed as the voices chuckled. It was haunting. ‘Two millennia of waiting come to an end tomorrow, child, and you shall bring the end crashing down. Until then,’ it said. As it spoke, its head fell slowly back into the slop gracing the floor of the pipe. Samara left it to the maggots and shuffled back the way she had come.

‘Until then,’ she said to herself, trying to calm her beating heart.

When, at long last, she made it back to their hiding hole, a little alcove in a larger tunnel, Lilith was waiting for her. She looked out of breath, greased with slime.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Lilith flicked a drop of something black from her nose. ‘He’s here,’ she said, in a low tone.

Right above their heads, where the boots paced the cobbles, where a market had squeezed itself into a tiny square between three streets, Malvus Barkhart felt a tapping on his back.

‘Council Barkhart?’ asked a high voice. Malvus turned to find a skinny messenger, no more than a boy, standing behind him. He was dancing from one foot to the other. Dartsoles, yet another gift of the markets, designed to allow their wearer to move twice as fast as normal. According to the messengers, they were incredibly painful to wear, but least they got the job done in half the time.

‘What?’ asked Malvus. There was an unusual smile still pasted on his face. Had the messenger had time to think, he would have found it rather unsettling.