Authors: Tom Lloyd
Sorpan gaped and leaned forward, this time not even noticing the tightness in Enchei’s face as he did so. ‘But
three hundred thousand
troops died, without counting the villagers who lived there!’
Enchei grimaced. ‘I don’t need reminding.’
‘And you think they should be written out of history too?’
‘Just how they died. If I could write that out of my mind so easily, I would’ve long ago. That whole celestial month – from the snow storm sealing the passes to the day I dragged myself out. As it is, I can’t. All I can do is remember the friends I lost, the folk I met and watched die…’
Enchei lowered his head. The memories washed fresh and sharp over him now. He was aware Sorpan’s moment had come; if the man was there to take him Enchei was at his weakest, his most vulnerable.
Part of him wanted it to happen. The ache in his heart grew and grew, threatening to burst out of his chest and set the room aflame. His precautions were in place. They’d never get him alive, and for one brief moment the grief and guilt were so strong that a voice inside him begged for Sorpan to spark that final conflagration.
But it never came. Slowly the consuming horror subsided and Enchei opened his eyes again to see the other man looking aghast. With an effort Enchei pushed himself to his feet, the unnaturally-strong man feeling the full span of years on his shoulders.
‘Some things are best forgotten by history. The Fields of the Broken is one of them.’
One year later
Clear, cold light traced the frost-rimed cobbles. The street was still and quiet under the white glare of the Gods. It was deep into the night and the ruling Order of Jester was halfway over the horizon. Lady Spy would be in Ascendancy for another few days. She led Jester’s wheel of divine constellations across the sky so her light had already fallen below the horizon.
The cloudless sky wore a milky collar of lesser stars upon which the divine constellations shone like diamonds. By contrast the moon was a dim and sullen shape that seemed to skulk close to the horizon. Two men and a woman stood in the deserted street and surveyed the slender constellations of Cripple and Duellist that flanked Lady Jester.
The mortals were an even less likely trio than cold-hearted Jester, ever-suffering Cripple and proud Duellist. One man was tall and pale-skinned, with neat clothes and a dark beard, a sharp contrast to the woman ahead of him; teeth white against her ochre skin, blonde hair pulled untidily back in a knot. A north-continent man of money, a south-continent woman of more practical means. The woman’s clothes were a patchwork of cloth and metal; battered scraps of steel stitched and riveted onto a long coat marked by scorch marks and roughly-repaired rents.
‘This is the place?’ asked the third man, at last turning away from Lady Jester’s light. Enveloped in a heavy silver fur he was also pale, but not of the north this time. Deathly-white skin and grey hair coupled with lilac eyes marked him as a Leviathan, from that House’s islands far to the south-west. ‘This is where we will find the trail?’
The first man stirred into movement and nodded. With a grey cloak edged in pale fox fur, he resembled a statue in the cold winter light. There was the faint glint of frost on his shoulders and a silver badge gleamed at his throat.
‘Here.’
‘On this night?’
‘You keep questioning me, Leviathan,’ he said sternly. ‘I’m growing tired of it.’
‘That is not my concern.’
‘Pissing me off should be. You’re not your master.’
The Leviathan turned to face him. ‘No, Ghost, I am not – but neither are you. You answer to me as you answer to Priest, and I am yet to be impressed.’
The man from House Ghost regarded him, still barely moving. ‘You don’t believe me?’ he asked with a mixture of amusement and contempt.
‘You have shown us nothing, Master Sorpan, nothing but supposition,’ the pale-eyed man said with an equanimous shrug of the shoulder. To Sorpan it seemed an oddly neat and understated gesture from the broad man, but characterised what he knew of the Leviathan. ‘I am here because this may yet be a trap.’
‘A trap, Kebrai? You think I was set up by my own? Unlike House Leviathan we’re not composed of paranoid madmen – there are no senseless purges or childish scheming between fiefdoms.’
Kebrai grinned nastily. ‘No purges you ever noticed, but such things are as inevitable as the turning stars. Where power gathers, paranoia is but a whisper away.’
Sorpan spat on the ground and nodded towards the side-road they stood near.
‘The tavern’s there and this is the night, but he’s a survivor not a fool. The trail begins here, but you’ll not have him tonight.’
‘Priest understands patience as well as any alive; just remember your life rides on this. There are too many eyes watching the Imperial City to act here without good reason.’
‘If the reason wasn’t good, we wouldn’t be here at all.’
‘It is so.’
They both looked at the woman ahead of them whose eyes had moved from the passing stars to those at their zenith. Sorpan didn’t need to follow her gaze to know which constellation she had fixed upon – the Order of God-Emperor was high above them now and the south position was occupied by Lord Huntsman. Though she dealt with demons and cultivated a savage appearance, she was hardly the crazed shamaness he’d expected and she was particular in her honouring of Huntsman.
An icy breath of wind shivered over them, bringing with it the muted sound of voices. Even at this late hour the streets of the Imperial City were not deserted and the Leviathan turned to check on his trailing guards. No signal came from the House Smoke mercenaries who’d escorted them here, so Kebrai nodded.
‘Sharish, it is time.’
The shamaness, Sharish, bared her pointed teeth and beckoned to Sorpan. He followed her across the cobbles to stand opposite the side-street’s entrance. From there he could just see the tavern, the slender threads of light around the shutters and the sheen of ice on its tiled roof. It seemed an unremarkable place to find an Astaren hero, grown shabby under the battering sea breeze.
A small upper storey and a roof peaked like a prow to part the south-westerly wind, an alley covering two sides. According to the grey-eyed mercenary who’d been sent to scout the place there were three men inside who could be the target, but Sorpan knew none would be as they watched each leave. You didn’t get to be an old Astaren by getting sloppy and retirement wouldn’t diminish the man’s instincts. If anything it would sharpen them.
A loose tile on one of the rooftops clacked noisily as the wind picked up, breaking the hush of deepest night. Old instincts made Sorpan wary; abrupt noises in the dark and dangerous strangers made poor companions.
‘Come.’
Sharish had a velvety growl to her voice, one that seemed to match the three long claw-marks down her cheek. Sorpan ducked his head and allowed her to put her callused palms around his bearded face.
‘Keep still.’
‘No.’ That prompted her to curl her lip, a snarl ready, but he smiled and forestalled her anger. Light flickered briefly in his eyes. ‘I will give you the scent.’
‘I don’t work that way.’
‘I have layer upon layer of defences in my mind. You’ll likely burn your senses out before you get anything.’
He brought her head closer, almost close enough to kiss those full lips, and began to mouth secret words to the night. Her confusion deepened initially but then threads of light began to appear in the air, shifting shapes that twisted and spiralled in no breeze they could feel. These wound their way to her face and he held her still as they burst as delicately as tiny bubbles – minute flashes of light illuminating the muddy-green of her eyes.
‘I see him,’ she breathed, ‘I have the scent.’
Sorpan stepped back. ‘Good.’
At her urging he retreated further, finding Kebrai had moved away too. With a gesture the man recalled his mercenary guards; four lithe, light-skinned warriors from House Smoke, a major House within the Dragon hegemony and thus a common sight on the streets of its protectorate city. They silently fell in behind, all watching Sharish as she stepped forward.
In the shadow of an overhang, Sharish unfastened the thong on a long object wrapped in grease-stained cloth. With delicate movements she unveiled a staff which she held out as she knelt. Made of some pale wood, it had sigils scratched into its surface and a head split into three twisted tines. Fat coils of copper wire bunched around the base of those while both the shaft and tines were wrapped in haphazard twists of more wire, creating a bulbous flared shape that reminded Sorpan of a henbane flower.
The winter wind seemed to blow colder as Sharish muttered in some strange dialect of her own language. Behind him the mercenaries began to shift uncomfortably. Sorpan knew she could use demons to hunt a particular scent, but their anxiety triggered a memory of his. His career had been unremarkable thus far – minor work in the greater scheme of things – but his training had been thorough.
Either I’m wrong, or Sharish’s more insane than she appears.
His answer came soon enough. The wind’s cold fingers slapped across his exposed face, dragging at his coat, and with it came a distant sound to chill the heart. The faint call of a hunting hound, barely audible over the strengthening wind but laden with savage intent. Without meaning to, his hand went to the pistol at his waist and for a moment Sorpan was glad he’d come dressed as a warrior caste, red on his collar and a gun at his side. Then he remembered his suspicions and realised a gun would do little.
He forced himself to stay very still and watch Sharish with horrified awe as she continued her mantra of summoning. Fleeting sparks began to dance around the metal flower-head, swiftly building in intensity. Soon there were fitful bursts of light shuddering within it, the hiss and crackle momentarily drowning out her words and prompting the shamaness to continue her refrain in a louder voice. The distant howls grew no louder, but began to come from all directions, as though whatever made them was circling its prey. With little warning the stuttering burst of light grew to blinding proportions – one great flash, then two more in rapid succession.
At each flash the street was bathed in light – all but black shadows cast in stark relief ahead of her. A glimpse was all Sorpan needed to gasp and fall back in horror – each glimpsed shadow different in size and outline but the smallest still the size of a pony. The suggestion of long lupine snouts and enormous fangs was all he could make out, the sharp line of ears and mass of muscled shoulders with no detail visible.
Gods on high!
Sorpan fought the urge to curse aloud, all too aware he did not want to attract further attention.
Gentle Empress and the Lady Pity, what have I just unleashed on this city?
‘Oh Jester’s Knives, again?’
Lady Kine Vanden Wyvern closed her eyes, lips pursed and pale against the wave of pain around her belly. With an effort she took a breath, short and ragged, then another. Bent like an old woman, Kine gripped the back of the chair she stood over as though it were a lifeline. Despite everything, between huffs of breath she felt a moment of absurd humour. Standing there, panting like a dog, she couldn’t help but hear the disapproving voices of her aunts echo across the sea from her homeland.
A noblewoman must walk with grace – haste is for warriors. Never let your breathing be heard
–
panting is for dogs and rutting peasants. A noblewoman must never raise her voice – cries and pleas are the domain of the religious caste.
‘Look at me now, you shrivelled witches,’ she moaned through gritted teeth, ‘waddling like a sow, grunting and gasping like a commoner. Shame upon shame staining you all!’
Kine bowed her head as a final burst of pain clamped around her, then it swiftly faded to just a memory in her bones. She gulped down air as she gingerly straightened and looked around the room. Ahead of her stood an elegant desk of polished wood as dark as her own skin – the pearl inlay as clean and white as the teeth she’d been taught to hide from men whenever she smiled.
The things we women do to each other,
Kine thought as she took a tentative step towards the window.
Little cuts, every day these little cuts to keep others weakened and bleeding.
Another step and a phantom breath of cold ran down her spine.
But it’s not the little cuts I need to fear now. Never again will I care about petty things.
She edged round the desk as best she could, one hand on it for support, the other pressed protectively to her swollen belly. Month after month she’d grown used to her burgeoning size, working hard to maintain that elegant carriage her aunts had beaten into her. Now it was all gone and she heaved herself flat-footed across the patterned rugs, past the crackling fire and to the window. Kine hauled back the heavy brocade curtains and felt a gust of cold air like a slap in the face.
Lead-lined panes of glass reflected the dancing firelight back at her. In the centre of each window was a single red pane that bore a blue wyvern, a device that adorned every window in the entire palazzo. Kine grimaced as she saw it – sickened now at the sight of her nation’s emblem. She was glad that her private rooms were at the rear of the palazzo, overlooking her husband’s jungle-like garden rather than the sandy enclosure in the square where a real wyvern lived.
The beast was a sad sight in Kine’s eyes; wings clipped and confined to a rocky home a mere two dozen paces in each direction. She had seen wyverns hunt once. The boldest of the desert noblemen reared a few from birth just for that purpose and the savagery of the swooping predators had taken her breath away.
‘As you are too, my little one,’ she whispered, looking down at her belly.
Her shift had parted slightly, caught on her protruding stomach, and offered Kine a sight of the paled skin where it had stretched. Kine had grown up knowing her dark mahogany skin could almost pass for the near-black of House Dragon itself and would have been a factor in her marriage to a man of higher station. Raised to be proud of her flawless and even colouring, the sight of it blotchy and pale triggered a childish anxiety inside her.
Her fingers fumbled briefly on the window’s brass bolts, the metal so cold it seemed to nip at her fingers as she gripped it. With a little persistence she worked them open and pushed the window wide. The night air was shockingly cold, enough to make Kine gasp as she pulled a white scarf from around her neck. Clear starlight gleamed on the frosted roofs of Dragon District; the snarling statues and peaked ridges picked out in the glistening white of the Gods.
Trying to ignore the biting chill, Kine leaned carefully forward and let the air wash away the last mustiness of sleep from her mind. It was late into the night and high above she could just make out the constellation of General, first among the Ascendants of God-Emperor. Past midnight then, but not so late that there was no hope.
Kine glanced back at the cream damask sofa she’d been asleep on these past few hours, a tangle of blankets and cushions half-slipped onto the floor below. As she did so a warning tingle began in her belly and Kine’s eyes flashed wide open – so soon? With the awkward haste of panic Kine gritted her teeth and leaned over the windowsill, hands questing for a hook set into the mortar just below it. At last she found it and slipped one corner of the silk scarf through, tugging hard before tying a knot in the scarf to secure it.
By the time she was done, the pain had intensified and now washed in sharp, piercing waves through her body. Kine jammed her knuckle into her mouth to stop herself crying out, biting down on her hand as the pain only worsened. With all the concentration she could muster and a force of will no less than that of her conqueror ancestors, Kine reached for the open windows and dragged them shut again. Her knees shook, ready to collapse; her arms turned to jelly as she fought the window clasps.
The pain in her belly was white-hot, exquisite and all-consuming. A red haze fell over her vision and the shadows darkened, but somehow she refused to submit. At last both windows were closed and the numbing whips of winter wind ended their scourging. Gasping and heaving for breath, Kine took hold of the floor-length curtain and dragged herself forward, putting much of her weight on it as her knees refused to obey. One brass fitting popped open and she lurched forward, barely catching herself as her fingers clawed and long nails dug into the embroidery for purchase.
Distantly, she was aware of herself keening; a high, animal sound unlike any she’d heard herself make before, but she had only the safety of her baby in mind. Another stuttering half-step brought her within reach of a chair. Just as more curtain fittings burst apart, her slender arm slipped over the thick back of the armchair and she sagged forwards, slipping down to her knees and the safety of the rug-strewn floor. Hands gripping the chair, Kine gasped for breath, desperate for air after the battle even a few paces had been.
Sweat streamed down her face, and a trickle of something warm and sticky coated the ankle folded under her body, but she had achieved victory merely by making it safely down. Now there was nothing but the pain and the fear that followed it. Her entire body was a slave to it, everything a distraction to the bands of pain around her belly. From somewhere she found the strength to suck in another lungful of air and at last she screamed properly – a mangled attempt at her maid’s name that was loud enough to make the actual word an irrelevance.
She heard the door crash open, the underwater sound of a voice failing to make sense through the pain and then it began to recede again. Shuddering at the effort of breathing, Kine felt hands under her armpit and howled until they stopped trying to lift her. The red veil faded from her vision and she found herself blinking at the back of the chair, beside which crouched the rounded face of her maid – a shy young girl called Esheke.
The maid’s hair trailed loose around her shoulders and Kine was struck momentarily by its length, almost to Esheke’s waist. Kine had only ever seen it pinned neatly up.
‘My Lady,’ the maid wailed, ‘is it coming?’
Kine almost slapped her, but a lifetime of reserve interfered so she merely nodded and whimpered at the last sharp twinges. She could feel the sweat run freely down her face and her limbs shake with the effort of staying still, but somehow with Esheke’s help she rose a fraction and edged past the chair.
‘Get me to the sofa,’ Kine whispered, ‘then fetch the midwife. My baby is coming.’
And I pray she is not the only one to be here soon,
said a voice in the back of Kine’s mind as an image of her lover, Narin, flashed across her mind.
There was no chance he could be there, however much she desperately wanted his presence at her side – his anxious, guileless face that shone with a blazing, unwavering love. He had been terrified of this moment for months – unable to sleep for days on end or even enjoy the Emperor’s own command that raised him to the rank of Lawbringer. And now the day they both feared most had come, and he could not be here without certain death at the guns of her husband’s guards.
But let someone come,
Kine prayed desperately as she crawled onto the sofa and her maid darted off.
God-Empress, let someone come.
It would not just be the midwife Esheke fetched, there could be no doubt of that. Kine’s cuckolded husband had hired doctors too and they had barely left the palazzo since Order’s Turn. A pair of quiet, sharp-eyed men from the homeland, their skill as physicians she had been unable to fault, but she knew why they were truly there. Castrated in the attack Narin had saved him from, Lord Vanden had hidden the injury from his peers, knowing the shame such a thing carried in Houses Dragon and Wyvern. Once the baby was born, Kine would have only moments to live – her last days won only by the chance of a male heir so desperately craved by her husband.
Lady Chance save my child
she found herself crying out in her mind, fear for a daughter more profound even than her own life.
I beg you, save a life tonight – just one. If this is a girl, I’ll gladly give my own.
The pain returned and all thoughts of prayer fled.
Bredin looked up from the bar at the empty room ahead. The last patrons had left for the night and he’d bolted the doors already, and yet … He frowned and touched two fingers to the club cradled on hooks underneath the bar. The fat bar of wood was there as always and its presence was enough to reassure him.
He’d run the Lost Feathers for a decade now, long enough to know the settle and groan of its timbers like he knew the face of his wife, Sennete. She had already retired for the evening, leaving Bredin with the takings and that tiny slip of a maid, Feerin, to sweep and wipe. By now she would be asleep, drained by a long day with dawn’s chores always too close at hand.
‘Feerin?’ he said out loud, fingers still on the club.
As though in response there was the bang of a door at the top of the tavern. The hatch to the loft, where Feerin slept.
‘Must be just getting old then,’ Bredin said with a weary smile.
His fingers never left the club, but that sixth sense of being watched had faded. The tavern room was still and quiet, full of shadows now the lamps were turned low and the fire burned down to embers, but he’d never found anything to fear in those shadows. The tables were scrubbed down, the floor swept. All was in order and with a shake of the head he went back to the pile of coins on the bar.
Almost ten years older than Sennete, Bredin had never been much for education and only bothered to learn to count when his ten-year bond on a merchant ship was almost up. Despite that, he finished quickly, the tally half in his head already as little Feerin couldn’t ever be trusted to make change right.
The last of the coins swept into his palm and deposited into a battered strong-box, Bredin locked it and re-hung the key around his neck. Just as he did so he caught a faint sound, one strange enough to make him look up. Few people in the city had dogs; there wasn’t the space for them. Aside from the hunting hounds of House Wolf you rarely saw anything other than a ratter keeping the dock’s vermin in check. And yet, faint in the distance, it could almost have been a wolf’s howl he’d just heard.
‘Strange thing to hear,’ he muttered to himself. ‘But I s’pose, after the demons of summer, maybe not so strange as all that.’
On a whim, he brought the club with him as he carried his strong-box all the way round the bar and back to the kitchen door. By the grace of Lady Chance, they hadn’t been affected by the goshe fever-plague the demons had borne in their wake, but Brodin had seen one with his own eyes and lived for days fearing the worst. As he’d watched the Lawbringers pursue it through the streets, converging like hungry ghosts in the evening gloom, he’d only been able to think of the fever cutting a path through his home district as it had across the city.
As he reached each of the lamps, Brodin turned the wick right down so their light was extinguished. The room was already chilly as the first real bite of winter was upon them, but it seemed to get colder still when the light drained from the room. A final inspection revealed a room in good order, tables and chairs silhouetted by the orange ghost-glow of embers still formed in the shape of the logs they had once been.
Just as he turned his back, the embers spat out a spark across the stone hearth. Brodin flinched at the sound then felt his guts turn to ice as it was followed by a low rumble like a growl – as quiet as the distant howl, but now close at hand.
‘Anyone there?’ he asked, raising the club.
Brodin peered around the room. He could see nothing out of place but would have sworn on Lawbringer’s stars that he’d heard some sort of dog. From where he stood he could see the whole room except behind the bar he’d just come from – there was nothing there, only a glow on the stone floor that he went to tread out after a moment’s pause. After another check around the room he set the strong-box down on a table and used his club to break up the remaining embers. The orange light flared brighter while he dragged an iron fire-guard across the front, casting its light up towards the ceiling beams while the lower half of the room became incrementally darker.
Brodin turned back to the strong-box and froze. The shadows around the table had changed. He could still see the chairs on either side and the strong-box on the bare tabletop, but some part of his mind wanted to form a different shape out of the darkness there. A rounded shape that swept down behind, the hint of a protrusion ahead. The hairs on his neck prickled up as Brodin blinked.
Just a shadow,
he told himself, able to see the line of a chair-back through the darkness.
He reached out with the club, heart hammering with childish dread, and waved the tip through the darkened air. It met nothing, no resistance at all as he moved it back and forth and feeling foolish he lowered it again.