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Travellers' Rest by James Enge

2010-12-13T14:46:00.002-06:00

Travellers’ Rest

James Enge

INTRODUCTION

MAKING A VIRTUE OF WEIRDNESS

The story you are about to read features James Enge’s wondrous character, Morlock Ambrosius. Morlock is a swordsman, an exile, a hunchback, a drunk, and a wizard, though he himself would use the term “Maker” and say he is a master of the two arts, Seeing and Making. He is a modern descendant of the sword and sorcery adventurer that was birthed in the pages of Weird Tales magazine, and Enge himself has been favorably compared to Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, David Eddings, Steven Brust, and, interestingly, Raymond Chandler. His tales of Morlock the Maker have appeared in Black Gate magazine, in the anthology Swords & Dark Magic, and elsewhere, and Morlock features in the novels Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way, and The Wolf Age. Speaking of the novel The Wolf Age, Locus magazine wrote, “One of Enge’s great virtues as a writer is weirdness—he’s not afraid to do the unexpected, and his imagination is formidable. But there’s an underlying emotional power here, too. The author excels at depicting the bonds of friendship, the pain of betrayal, and the tragedy of well-laid plans going awry, and that emotional payload is what makes this novel into more than just an entertaining adventure story about a guy with a magical sword who fights monsters.” Which is not to say that there isn’t a magic sword, because there is, and where Morlock goes, rest assured there are always plenty of monsters. This story, “Travellers’ Rest,” is no exception. Chronologically, it takes place some years before the events of the novels. If you are new to Morlock, it should make a fine introduction to Enge’s creation, and if you are not, you will be pleased to see the return of at least one old friend. Either way, we hope that you enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Lou Anders, Editorial Director

Pyr, an Imprint of Prometheus Books

Download this story as a free epub or Kindle format ebook in celebration of Pyr's 100th title!

TRAVELLERS’ REST

The awkwardly made maker and his dwarvish apprentice were passing through trackless green fields peppered with large, slow-moving shellbacked beasts. Ahead, scattered around the junction of two roads that met in the shadow of the nearby hills, were some ragged brick buildings. The town, if that’s what it was, looked worn, weather-bitten, barely populated.

The apprentice—a gray-faced, brown-bearded, dark-eyed dwarf named Wyrth—said, “Master Morlock, let’s go on to the next town.”

“No.”

“Morlock, those beetles are taller than I am. Imagine what the bedbugs are like! Next town, please.”

“I believe these are cattle. Note the udder on that one.”

“I have better things to do than look at the private parts of cows! Um. If that’s an udder, there’s another one sprouting from the beast’s other side. Are you sure they’re cows?”

“No. They seem to be chewing cuds, though. If you can bring yourself to look.”

“You may practice your wit on me as you like, Master Morlock. It needs the practice, as God Sustainer knows. I still vote for the next town.”

Since voting had nothing to do with the matter, Morlock proceeded with his loping irregular stride toward the buildings clustered at the town’s center. His lack of reply was all the reply necessary: Wyrth was free to continue to the next town if he liked, but Morlock was stopping here.

“For the conversation, probably,”Wyrth speculated at Morlock’s crooked shoulders and followed him into town.

Two roads met at the town’s center, where there was a fairly large hostel several stories high. But the facade was in poor repair, and the road running westward to the sea was ill tended and untravelled, carpeted with brown weeds. The road running north toward the hills was in a slightly different condition: the weeds carpeting it were more of a reddish gray.

“Next town,” Wyrth muttered rebelliously, but followed Morlock through the broad open door of the hostelry into the shadows within.

One of those shadows was snoring behind a counter. Morlock rapped a knuckle on the counter and the shadow jumped like a startled rabbit and, rubbing its eyes, said in a professionally suave voice, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Your pardon!Welcome to Travellers’ Rest at Boulostreion! What can we do to assuage the weariness of the long roads you have travelled to reach us?”

“Couple rooms,” Morlock said. “Lunch.”

“Lunch. Yes. Lunch. Let’s see. Right now it’s about—”

“Noon.”

“Noon. Not really? I’ve slept the morning away. I hope my good wife and daughters have not done the same. I mean—daughter. Never mind. One moment while I check. Before I go, may I ask how long you’ll be staying with us?”

Morlock opened his hands and shrugged. When the hosteller realized that was all the response he was going to get, he shrugged himself and hurried off.

“If there is cooking going on in this establishment,” Wyrth remarked, “then I’m one of those cow-beetles back there. I didn’t even see a thread of smoke from the chimneys as we approached.”

“They don’t see as many travellers as they once did; that’s clear,” Morlock replied.

“Maybe travellers know something that we don’t and tend to travel a little further down the road? To the next town perhaps?”

Morlock travelled a little further into the hostelry, where there were many tables and benches set up in a roomy (if somewhat dim) dining hall. The benches, tables, and floor were all scrupulously clean, as far as Wyrth could tell. He was about to comment on it when Morlock gestured at something moving in the shadows nearby. It was some sort of insect fringed with dozens of feathery tendrils; it spun endlessly across the shadowy floor.

“Does it eat the dust?” Morlock wondered. “Or just pick it up to deposit elsewhere?”

“What else does it eat besides dust?” Wyrth countered. “How will you feel when you find one crawling up your thigh in the middle of the night? The thing’s bigger than a sausage tray!”

Morlock hung his sword belt over a nearby chair, then unshouldered his backpack and took a cold-light from it. He tapped the crystalline cylinder and set it on one end of the table, giving light to the room.

Wyrth grumbled a little but eventually slid off his own pack and engaged Morlock in conversation on various topics: the weather; the state of politics in the imperial capital when they’d left it; the likelihood that the cows they’d seen were actually blood-drinkers, like bovine mosquitoes; the amount of blood it would take to satisfy such ravening beasts; and so on.

Morlock had little to say about any of it except, “They won’t be interested in my blood.” This was perfectly true: Morlock’s blood tended to set things on fire, and few parasites made the mistake of putting the bite on

him—none made it twice. The same was not true ofWyrth’s blood at all, and reflections on this topic led him to fall into an unusually gloomy silence.

Meanwhile the hosteller returned to his counter and, not finding Morlock and Wyrth, cried out in vexation and something like despair.

“Mine host!” Wyrth said. “We’re over here.”

“Ah!” The hosteller leapt eagerly toward them into the circle of light cast by Morlock’s cold-light. He was followed by a shorter, thinner, paler, female echo of himself. “Ah, gentlemen—may I know your names?”

“No,” said Morlock.

“Oh!” said the hosteller. His plump reddish-brown face looked baffled.

Wyrth was annoyed at his master. The man had his reasons for not giving his name every time he was asked, especially south of the Dholich Kund, but you’d think that by now he’d have figured out some more diplomatic way of answering.

“Canyon keep you, you surly old bastard,” Wyrth muttered at Morlock. “Mine host, this gentleman here is a secretive fellow, but he’s not dangerous when well fed and kept away from poisonous or predatory insects. I just mention that in passing, in case there are any around here. I’m his apprentice in the many arts of making, God Avenger pity me for it. My name is Wyrth, and I don’t give three chunks of chaos who knows it.”

The hosteller was relieved to meet someone of his own talkative turn of mind. “Well! Gentlemen, I am Sunlar; this is my house. Here is my younger daughter—I mean my daughter, Raelio; she will see to your comforts, within reason, of course.”

Wyrth assumed this meant that the girl was not on the menu. That was fine with Wyrth: he himself never dated outside his species, and Morlock’s vices did not include preying on children. “Despite appearances, we’re reasonable people,” Wyrth said to the hosteller, hoping he could make himself understood without any disgusting particularities.

“Excellent, excellent,” said Sunlar. “Well, I’ll leave you with Raelio. I have to go help my—I have to help with the—Some matters await my tending.” He bounced off toward the back of the house.

The child watched him go, amusement and affection gently lighting her dark-eyed weary face.

“He’s awful excited,” she remarked.

“We’re the first guests in a while, I suppose?” Wyrth said.

“I wasn’t supposed to say. If I did, I’d have to count back a month or two. And they snuck out without paying, the scasp-chewing branticules. Still, it was nice to have someone in the house for a while. How long are you staying?”

“A while,” Morlock said. “What’s to eat?”

“I couldn’t exactly say. I was supposed to tell you that the house special was the best thing I’d ever eaten, but I can’t exactly say that because I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to lie.”

“You’re an honest waitress,” Wyrth said.

The girl nodded. “Morlock drags you to hell if you lie. I don’t want to go to hell. So I’m not lying anymore.” Her tone was cool and pragmatic; she had thought the matter through and this was her decision about it.

“Er,” Wyrth said wittily. He was taken aback, and somewhat annoyed to see that Morlock himself was not: the crooked man was used to hearing these wild tales about himself. “Morlock drags liars to hell, does he?”

“Everyone knows that. My mother says so.”

“But—you don’t anticipate death soon, do you? I mean—”

“It can happen to anyone. At any time. Isn’t that true? They can come for you and then you’re gone. So we have to be happy and good while we can. My mother says so.”

“Well. Well. Right she is, of course.”

“Who are they?” Morlock asked.

“Shut up, you old fool; you’ll frighten her. Never mind him, Raelio. He doesn’t mean any harm, as a general thing, but you have to practice ignoring him.”

“They come for you from the hills,” the girl explained to Morlock, ignoring Wyrth instead. “And then you’re gone. We have to hope that you are dead. That’s the best we can hope for. That’s what my mother says.”

“And is Morlock one of those who come from the hills?” Morlock asked. (Wyrth had to admit that his interest was perfectly natural.)

“No, silly. They kill you in the hills and then Morlock and the angel fight over your soul. But the angel won’t fight for you if you’re a liar, so then Morlock gets you. My mother says so. Do you want something to drink? I was to start you with drinks and then inveigle you in innocent conversation. I guess I inveigled first, but I don’t know what that means exactly.”

“Inveigled is—it means—Well, anyway, what have you got to drink?”

“We have wine—”

“No wine,” said Wyrth firmly, looking sideways at Morlock.

“—the beer’s not bad; I had some at breakfast—”

“No beer.”

“Well we have a little mead from over the border, but—”

“No mead. Have you got anything but strong drink? Water, or something of that description?”

“Water’s all right, I guess,” the girl said dubiously. “Our well’s a little murky and we have to pay Gar Vindisc to use the stream.”

“Get us some of his good water, my dear; we’ll pay you triple whatever it costs.”

“Her. Her water. Gar Vindisc is one of the Old Women. What do you think ‘gar’ means?”

“If I told you I knew, my dear, I would have some trouble with Morlock right quick.”

“Wouldn’t you rather have thrinnel? I love thrinnel. It’s even better than beer!”

Wyrth didn’t know what thrinnel was so he asked, “Is it strong drink? Can you get drunk on it?”

“No, no. Babies drink it. It’s yummy.”

“Well, if it’s yummy then we must have some. Now we move on to shiftier ground. What do you think they’re going to offer us for lunch, Raelio?”

“Anything you want that we’ve got. The da is that excited to have people under the roof again.”

“What’ve you got, then?”

“Shellback brisket, shellback liver, shellback kidneys, shellback steaks and tripe, shellback-tail soup—”

“Shellbacks are those remarkable cattle we saw coming into town?”

“I guess.”

“What is there beside shellback?”

“Might be fish. Dry salted fish, from before winter.”

“Seethe some of that in Gar Vindisc’s good water and bring it to us. Bread, too, as long as you don’t make it from shellbacks.”

“And two shellback steaks,” Morlock added. Wyrth looked at him with a sense of deep betrayal, but Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and said, “Might as well see if it’s edible,” and Wyrth had to concede his point.

Raelio fetched them wooden mugs of thick yellowish fluid (“Thrinnel!”) and ran off to carry their order to the back of the house. Both the master maker and his apprentice could now detect the presence of several fires in the house, and anyone with ears could have detected a man and a woman shrieking at each other, with excitement rather than rage, amid the clanking of much cookware. A brief silence prevailed, in the heart of which Raelio could be heard reciting their order. There were some whispered consultations and the clanking resumed, even more purposefully than before, but with less shouting.

“What is this stuff?” Wyrth asked, fearfully peering into his mug. “Pus? Does ‘yummy’ mean what I thought it meant?”

“It’s buttermilk,” said Morlock after sipping some. “Reasonably fresh buttermilk.”

“Buttermilk?” demanded Wyrth, outraged. “And they serve it in a public establishment where anyone might drink it by accident? Civil law must have broken down entirely hereabouts.”

“It’s not so bad. Better than wine. Or beer.”

“Er. Yes.” Wyrth was particularly worried about Morlock getting drunk these days.

“Could you map a four-dimensional image of it onto three dimensions?” Morlock asked.

“A four-dimensional image of a fluid?” Wyrth wondered. Then he realized that lesson time had begun. “Or a fluid in a four-dimensional container? Well, why not? What should I use as a medium?”

“Something particulate. You can use a cementing spell to retain the shape.”

“Yes. If only we had some salt or something. Is there some in your pack?”

“There is a dish of it at your elbow.”

“So there is!”

Someone else entered the front of the hostelry while Wyrth was occupied in his model making.

“Must be a happy day for ourn host,” Wyrth remarked. “Two sets of guests in one day.”

“Eh,” said Morlock, but it was the way he said it.

“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

“Listen.”

Wyrth listened. He couldn’t catch many words, but Sunlar’s voice sounded angry or frightened. The stranger’s voice was low, steady, implacable. A third voice rang out, a woman’s, loud enough for her words to carry to the refectory.

“We’ve done our part!” the woman shrieked. “We gave you our other one! Leave us alone! You said you’d leave us alone. Leave us alone!”

“Morlock,” Wyrth said warningly. “Not our problem.”

But the crooked man was already standing. Wyrth knew the crazy look in those pale gray eyes, and he feared the worst. At least Morlock left his sword hanging on the chair back, Wyrth reflected, which showed he wasn’t intending to kill anybody right away.

Morlock walked back up the refectory hall and into the shadowy entrance hall, Wyrth following reluctantly. The door to the street was standing open and a huge hulking man stood in it. The day was warmish, but his bulk was covered by a full cloak and his flat dull-eyed face showed no suffering from heat. It showed no feeling at all as the stranger said, “I’ve come to take her, that’s all. You know what he says. She is to come with me to the hills.”

Sunlar, Raelio, and an older women that Wyrth guessed must be the girl’s mother were huddled together behind the counter, as if that could protect them from the stranger.

“What is this?” Morlock demanded.

The stranger turned to him. He didn’t seem surprised or even interested in the interruption. He said, “I am to take the girl to the hills. Kyrkylio says so, and I do as he says.”

“That will not be convenient for me,” Morlock said. “The girl is to serve me lunch.”

“The old woman can serve it.”

“She’s cooking it.”

“The old man can serve it.”

“He has other important duties around this busy house.”

“Oh.” The stranger paused, evidently not wishing to be unreasonable. “How long will your lunch take? I can bring her to the hills after you’re done.”

Morlock was usually prepared to be unreasonable, as Wyrth well knew and as the stranger was learning. “I will require lunch tomorrow also,” the crooked man said implacably, “and the next day.”

“How long are you staying here?”

“As far as you’re concerned, forever. Go back to the hills. Tell Kyrkylio that he may not have the girl.”

“He won’t like that.”

Morlock shrugged.

“He gets angry.”

This time Morlock didn’t even bother to shrug.

“I get angry, too,” the stranger said. “You treat me unkindly. I am not used to that.”

“Learn,” Morlock suggested.

“No. I’m done with learning.” The stranger drew a sword from under his voluminous cloak and pointed it at Morlock. “I learned how to cut people open when they are unkind to me. That’s all I need. Now people are kind to me or I cut them open. Which is it for you? What do you say?”

What Morlock said was, “Tyrfing!”

Wyrth dropped to the floor. Morlock’s sword, Tyrfing (its black-and white blade glittering in the light from the open door to the street), flew over his head and into Morlock’s open hand.

The stranger looked without dismay at the sword that had suddenly come to Morlock’s hand when called. “I see it. You are a sorcerer.”

“I am Morlock Ambrosius,” the crooked man replied.

The man and the woman screamed together and hid their faces. The girl seemed frightened, too, but she kept watching.

“I have a name, too,” the stranger said slyly. “A name that makes people scream, a name they are afraid to say.”

He tossed back his cloak, and Wyrth saw that his frame was not so very large after all. What made him seem bulky was the fact that he had six arms, each of them armed with a sword. “I am Iagiawôn,” the stranger said triumphantly. “Iagiawôn the Many-Handed!” He advanced, spinning the blades as if his wrists were on pivots.

“I told you,” Wyrth shouted at Morlock, “we should have gone to the next town!”

“Get them out of here,” Morlock said and retreated a step or two, Tyrfing raised to guard against the rippling hedge of blades.

“That means you!” Wyrth shouted at the family huddling behind the counter. But only the girl seemed to hear him, and she was caught tight in her parents’ double embrace.

Wyrth muttered a brief but sincere curse and dashed across the entryway, sparing a moment to kick at the back of Iagiawôn’s left knee, spoiling his six-fold thrust at Morlock. Unfortunately it did no other harm; the joint had some sort of buglike carapace to protect it. Wyrth half expected one of the six freakishly mobile arms to swing around and stab at him with a sword, but that didn’t happen. When Wyrth realized it wasn’t happening, he knew that was important somehow, but he didn’t have time to think about it.

Wyrth dragged Sunlar and his wife to their feet and pushed them across the floor into the dining hall. “Is there a back door in here?” he asked the wide-eyed girl, there obviously being no point in addressing a sensible question to the sobbing hysterical adults.

“Yes—” the girl began.

“What’s the point?” Sunlar wailed. “Morlock can find us wherever we go! Unless you think Iagiawôn can kill him?”

Wyrth lived on terms of irritable cheerfulness with life, and very few things really made him genuinely angry. But this was one of them.

“You snivelling swill-vendor!” he shouted up at Sunlar’s startled tearstained face. “Morlock is risking his life out there for you and your family, even though he probably doesn’t remember your names. And you’re in here hoping the monster who came to take your daughter—your second daughter as I understand it—you’re hoping he fulfills his wish and cuts Morlock open. Well, don’t worry about it. However the fight works out, you won’t have to worry about Morlock coming after you; all those old stories are lies. Go on; get out of here; run as far and as fast as you can. But remember: every day of your life from now on is the gift of Morlock Ambrosius.”

He turned away from the family and grabbed a heavy drinking mug molded (badly) from pewter. He ran back into the entryway and saw Morlock was continuing a circling retreat, dodging the occasional sixfold thrust.

Wyrth threw the mug as hard as he could at Iagiawôn’s head, hoping it would bash out whatever the insectile thug used for brains. Wyrth was not hampered by any superstitions about fair fighting.

Unfortunately, it did worse than no good. Iagiawôn turned slightly to face the flying mug and caught it in his spinning blades; it shattered like glass. One of the larger chunks bounced off Morlock’s knee and he staggered a bit. Iagiawôn gleefully stabbed at him with his sheaf of blades, but Morlock managed to keep his feet and fend off the blades with a sweeping slash, like a reaper mowing glittering deadly stalks of hay.

“I told you to get them out!” Morlock shouted to Wyrth past his antagonist.

Wyrth hesitated. That meant Morlock thought there was a real likelihood Iagiawôn would win the fight, and Wyrth and the others would be in danger. On the other hand, Wyrth thought he could better Morlock’s odds if he stayed. On the other other hand,Wyrth hadn’t been doing a very good job of helping so far. . . . How many hands was that?

Hands. Suddenly Wyrth realized the importance of something he had noticed earlier. Iagiawôn had six hands, but he couldn’t use them independently. When he moved them, he moved them all in the same way.

He shouted to Morlock in Dwarvish. “Hwaet! Vakt sorn knektan wyruma thledhan; dal sar aknekt ma kapt!” (Hey! The bug has six clever hands but just one stupid head!)

“Yes,” Morlock said. “Get. Them. Out.”

Wyrth was about to say they were out when he noticed the innkeeper and his family watching the fight from the doorway just behind him.

“Go,” he said, pushing them back. “Go, get out. It’s life or death for you.”

He led them into the dining hall, each clash of the blades feeling like a thrust through his own heart. But what could he do? If Morlock thought this was worth spending his life on, Wyrth had better make sure it was not for nothing.

There was a clatter that caused him to look over his shoulder. Iagiawôn had leapt up on the counter to rain cuts down at Morlock’s head. The monster must have been confident about the carapace protecting his legs.

But Morlock didn’t attack him directly. The crooked man jumped to one side and shattered the counter itself with a single slash of Tyrfing’s glittering unbreakable blade. Iagiawôn hit the ground rolling on his shoulder—he had a lot of shoulder to roll on—and was almost instantly on his feet.

Morlock grabbed a stretch of the shattered counter in his left hand, extended Tyrfing, and stabbed at his enemy. Iagiawôn caught the accursed blade in a sixfold bind. Morlock swung the length of wood he held in his left hand and buried the end of it in Iagiawôn’s skull. The six-armed swordsman slumped to the splinter-strewn floor. He was dead by the time Wyrth ran up to stand by Morlock.

“Are you all right?” the dwarf said to his craft-master. “That chunk of metal seemed to hit you pretty hard. Sorry about that, by the way.”

“It’s all right,” Morlock said. “Wyrth.”

“Morlock.”

“‘Out’ does not mean ‘part way into the next room.’ In case this situation comes up again.”

“How likely is that?” Wyrth shouted back, stung. “More important, how would I carry the news to my father under Thrymhaiam that I ran away while you fought to your death against a six-armed beast?”

“I’d prefer that to seeing you die next to me.”

“But I wouldn’t, and neither would my father, as well you know.”

“You think too much of your father’s opinion.”

“And you think too little of it. No, I’ve heard what you said, Master Morlock, and I’ll consider it. You’ll note I obeyed you sufficiently as to be no damn use at all, anyway.”

Morlock’s scarred face bent slightly in a one-sided smile. “It’s a start. Let’s haul the meat into the sideyard. If that suits you, Sunlar?”

The hosteller and his family had approached tentatively and were eyeing the dead body with interest and some dismay. Sunlar realized he had been addressed and jumped. Morlock repeated his question. Sunlar nodded mutely, and Morlock remarked toWyrth, “I want to have a look at his wrists, at least, before we eat.”

“They must be ball-and-socket joints, I guess.”

“Plainly. Though how the musculature attaches is not plain at all, at least to me.”

“Will we have time to make a few incisions?” Wyrth wondered.

“Yes.” Morlock gestured at the greasy smoke billowing from the back of the house. “Lunch will be a little late.”

Sunlar and his wife both shrieked and ran back into the kitchen, calling for Raelio to follow them. She did, reluctantly, keeping an eye on Morlock and Wyrth as they hauled the dead body of the monstrous bravo outside.

~~~

Lunch, when it arrived, was more splendid than anything they had ordered. The fish were fresh, caught that very day, Wyrth guessed (from Gar Vindisc’s pricey stream, possibly). The shellback steaks were, the finicky dwarf had to admit, more than passable, and there were several of them. Wyrth kept fending off a stream of offers of expensive wines and exotic beers. But the thrinnel ran like water, and the water ran like more water, and there was nothing murky about it. Dessert was a plate of spicy custards and a bowl of

multicolored fruit, none of which Wyrth recognized but all of which were juicy, tart, and delicious.

Morlock ate sparingly. Killing a man didn’t put him off his appetite, and Iagiawôn was a borderline case anyway, but food was just fuel to Morlock and whenever he stopped being hungry he just stopped eating. Wyrth had more expansive ideas, and finished off whatever Morlock left behind.

Through the meal they discussed how Iagiawôn had been put together. He had clearly been built through a series of surgeries; the network of scars was easy to read in his skin and his bones. By this Kyrkylio, no doubt—a lifemaker who had a dwelling somewhere in the hills north of town, it seemed.

This much they discovered by inveigling Raelio in innocent conversation, but she wasn’t much inclined to talk to them. But as Wyrth was in the final stages of his victorious campaign against the magnificent lunch, she

looked straight at Morlock and said, “Is my sister still alive? They took her to the hills. I figure you’d know if she was dead. She was a terrible liar.”

Wyrth would have said something, but his mouth was full of custard.

Morlock, whose mouth wasn’t, shrugged. “I don’t fight angels over human souls,” he said.

“My mother says so.”

“Who gave your sister to Kyrkylio?” Morlock asked.

The girl turned away. “No one. No one. The monster, he—he took her. My mother said it was for the best. She said they would leave us alone now.”

“Why do the townspeople let the monster prey on them?”

“It was part of a deal, a long time ago. The sorcerer he . . . I guess he gave people stuff, things they could never get otherwise.”

“The shellbacks,” Morlock suggested.

“Yes. Yes. I guess so. Other things, too. And they. They wanted to pay him but he wouldn’t. He didn’t want money. This was a long time ago; my mother said so. They said they would let the sorcerer take people once in a while. It was travellers mostly. For a long time it was only travellers. But now no one comes here. So the monster he . . . The sorcerer sends him out and he takes people. And people let him mostly. But you didn’t.”

“I hadn’t had lunch yet.”

“You’re a liar!” the girl shrieked, tears running down her face. “Everyone lies! My mother said . . . about my sister . . . like it didn’t even matter! She’d’a said the same when he took me. When I was gone, as if I was never here. And you. I saw your face. I saw it. You hated him. Like I hated him. And you hit him. Like I wanted to hit him. When he took my sister. I wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him until he’s dead and leaves us alone, just leave us alone, why won’t he leave us alone!”

“I hated him,” Morlock admitted. “It’s a weakness. But now he is dead and my hate is dead.”

“Mine isn’t,” the girl said through gritted teeth. “I went out to the yard after you were done cutting him, I was so glad you cut him, but I went out afterward and kicked him and kicked him and spit on him and cursed him

and kicked him. But it didn’t matter and now I still hate him. I think it’s because he took my sister and she’s still gone. He didn’t take your sister.”

“No,” Morlock agreed. “He didn’t.”

Wyrth would have liked to see the late unlamented Iagiawôn try to abduct Morlock’s sister, Ambrosia Viviana, dark eminence behind the imperial throne of Ontil. The ensuing mayhem would have been entertaining to everyone except Iagiawôn. He almost said so, but he had noticed Morlock’s brief responses were getting the girl to talk more thanWyrth’s inveiglements had.

“You didn’t say is she dead,” the girl said quietly. “I figure you know because she is such a liar. Her name’s Iuinoe. I love her, but she lies all the time, like about the dance and Vikels’s harp and boys and things.”

“I don’t know,” Morlock said.

“Can you find out?” asked the dark-eyed weeping girl. “Can you find out is she dead? My mother says she is, says she must be, but I don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows. I want to know. I want her back and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry what I said to her about Vikels’s harp.”

“I guess we can find out for you, Raelio,” Wyrth said, reading the inevitable in Morlock’s scarred taciturn face. “It’s the least we can do for this splendid lunch.”

~~~

A passing crow agreed to carry a message to Kyrkylio’s lair in the hills. He knew the place well and enjoyed going there; it was always surrounded by interesting piles of offal that exhibited a pleasing variety of decay. If he were not a crow of few squawks, like Morlock himself, really, he could have expanded in some detail about the odd sorts of carrion Kyrkylio threw out. For instance, there was this one time—

Wyrth agreed hastily that there were times when concision was really the thing. Morlock often had to warn him about running on and boring people with extraneous detail, especially about subjects like carrion, which are really more interesting when they’re actually present.

The crow, not the swiftest bird in the sky, finally took the hint and flew off with the message clutched in his claws. The message proposed a meeting between Morlock and Kyrkylio.

Less than an hour later, a shimmering blue beetle flew in through the doorway of the Traveller’s Rest. It carried in its horns an oath, specific and binding, and a message agreeing to the meeting if the oath was sworn. An ambiguous clause in the oath would have made anyone who swore it subject to Kyrkylio’s control. Morlock struck out the clause, and sent it back via the beetle along with a note, Agree to meet on fair terms or we will meet with no terms. I am Morlock Ambrosius; I will not tell you twice.

Wyrth was skeptical of Morlock’s diplomacy, but when the blue beetle returned it carried a reasonable oath that self-bound the swearer at fearful cost not to harm Kyrkylio while visiting in his lair, except in self-defense. A talimprint interwoven with the text showed that Kyrkylio had already taken an oath swearing not to harm Morlock and Wyrth while they were in his lair except in self-defense.

“Too swift; too reasonable,” said Wyrth. “We shouldn’t do this.”

But they did, and the eastering sun of midafternoon saw them climbing the slope to Kyrkylio’s hill-cave lair. The adept met them, standing carefully within the shadows over the threshold, but voluble in welcome for the maker he considered his colleague. Wyrth he didn’t so much as glance at, nor waste a word on.

And Kyrkylio was a man of many words, to the extent he was a man at all. He liked to emphasize his words with a dramatic sweep of his long, bristly proboscis, and when he had said something especially decisive he

would clack his horns together—as punctuation or something, Wyrth guessed.

All this, and the spotted golden carapace that adorned his back, and the four arms with their curving clawed fingers, made it hard to think of him as a man. The lower pair of arms seemed more insectile, flexible but armored with yellow chitinous plates. The upper arms were more nearly human, though they were textured with brownish crisscrosses that seemed to have been incised into the scaly pale skin.

The eyes on either side of that buglike nose were pale blue and weary looking, deep in dark sockets. And the adept’s pale sagging cheeks were lined with pain or age (or both). But his voice soared with enthusiasm as he guided Morlock around his cave, rather like a boy showing off his bug collection.

Except in this case it was more like a bug with a boy collection. Anyway, there was an object in a wooden cage that had certainly been a boy at one time, at least in part. But the back of his head had been removed along with its burden of brain. In its place was a forest of yellowish tendrils, each one ending in a red mouthlike opening. The mouths murmured quietly to themselves as the tendrils waved back and forth, but it was not clear that the sounds had any meaning. What had been the boy’s face was as hard and immobile as a piece of wood; there was no life left there.

“And here is something that might interest you,” Kyrkylio was saying. He gestured with one of his right arms while the other hung down, slowly clenching and unclenching its insectile fingers. “I developed it as an attachment for poor Iagiawôn.” Wyrth finally managed to tear his eyes away from the adept’s hands and follow his gesture. Morlock was already bemusedly examining the thing; it lay pulsating on a glass tray. It looked like a crown or necklace and it was made chiefly of eyes, strung like beads on a gleaming cable of nerve.

“It was intended,” Kyrkylio explained, “to give him a complete range of vision and, ideally, let him watch for dangers even when he was asleep. But you inconveniently slew him before I had a chance to perfect the instrument.”

“Doubt he could have used it,” Morlock said, looking away toward a glass jar or cage that stood on a rickety shelf nearby.

“Why do you say so?” Kyrkylio replied, stung in his makerly pride.

“Incomplete command of his augmented limbs. A lack of innate capacity maybe. The limbs themselves were well made.”

Wyrth was fascinated by the struggle in Kyrkylio’s face. It was as if two different people were trying to talk through the same mouth. The face twisted; the mouth issued a rasping quack that was not clearly even intended as a word.

“Thank you,” Kyrkylio said at last. “Iagiawôn was inadequate in many ways. A merely human brain seems unable to effectively master multiple limbs. They rarely use to advantage the ones they were born with.”

Wyrth was inclined to agree about the deficiencies of the human brain; he’d encountered few he could cordially respect. But since he was standing next to one of them, he discreetly kept his meat-hole shut. Also, he thought it was interesting that Kyrkylio referred to humanity as a group separate from himself. Was he a man who’d become part bug, or was he a bug who’d grown to resemble a man? The point was moot, perhaps. The speculations whirled within Wyrth like a cyclone, but he resolved not to speak. It was for

Morlock to pursue these avenues of investigation, for Wyrth to watch and learn from the master.

“Hm,” said Morlock, still gazing with interest at the rickety shelf and the glass cage on it.

“That’s a big word for you,” cried Wyrth, goaded against his will into speech.

Kyrkylio had not once looked at Wyrth and he didn’t do so now. But he said to Morlock, “I can resect as well as augment, in case your servant’s loquacity troubles you.”

This was the perfect opportunity for Morlock to engage in some rallying at Wyrth’s expense, but as usual he failed to rise to the occasion. “If you threaten my apprentice again,” Morlock said flatly, “I will hold your oath violated.”

Kyrkylio unfolded his wings in vexation, then refolded them. “I meant no threat. Certainly I would rather avoid a conflict, if possible, as I assume you would.”

“Hm.”

“You killed my servant Iagiawôn, but I do not resent it. I know your reputation, and no doubt he gave you some cause of offense. Live by the sword; die by the sword. Let me show you—”

“What are those?” asked Morlock, pointing at the glass cage.

“Those. Oh. That. Yes. Well.”

Wyrth took a closer look at the cage that so fascinated Morlock. Inside it was a cloud of bugs that seemed to consist largely of wings and teeth. They were attacking the inside of the cage and had succeeded in etching the inside of the glass. Behind them, at the bottom of the cage, was a greenish lump of flesh with a single human eye.

“That was a failure of mine, I’m afraid,” Kyrkylio said. His lower, more insectile arms reached up and gently caught his upper, more human ones. Wyrth wondered if it was a gesture of concern or contemplation, like a man rubbing his hands together. “I attempted to make a single creature that was a collective of both sessile and motile parts. Unfortunately, the creature whose brain I used for the purpose was most unsuitable. It declined to reproduce and seems to resent me intensely. Periodically I must recage the collective, as the motile rovers eat through the glass. They would do me harm if they could. I could wish I had made their natural defenses a little less, oh, offensive.”

“Hm.”

By now the lifemaker’s insectile claws had sunk deeply into his more human arms, and a yellowish ichor began to exude from the scaly skin.

“I beg your pardon,” Wyrth said to Kyrkylio, “but you seem to be harming yourself.”

“What? Oh! That’s nothing. Er—thank you.” The insectile claws retracted suddenly (guiltily?) and Wyrth realized that much of the patterning on Kyrkylio’s skin must be from this sort of self-injury. The lifemaker was a being at war with himself. Wyrth wished he could bring this to his master’s attention somehow, but Morlock was still examining the rickety shelf.

“You should fix this,” he observed to Kyrkylio. “If the cage fell and broke, you’d be in a bad way.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I have plans to see to it.” The horns clicked irritably.

Kyrkylio showed Morlock a few more of his experiments that once had been men, women, and children and then said, “But I suppose you will be eager to tell me the purpose of your visit. It is pleasant for solitary adepts like you and me to visit and talk shop, but we both have our work to do.”

“I’ve come about a girl you took from the town. Her name is Iuinoe.”

“I’m afraid I don’t keep track of my subjects’ names. I give the successful ones new identities, and the others I dispose of.”

“That’s a problem.”

“I hope this is not some sort of, well, rescue mission. Our oaths were quite explicit, and I have instrumentalities to protect me if you violate your oath.”

“I said I’d ask about her. So I’m asking.”

“Well. I’m not really sure I can help you. The adults in town mostly surrender their children to me when they have a choice between that and surrendering themselves, so a lot of girls have passed through here. When was she taken?”

“Don’t know. She was from the hostelry, though.”

“Oh! The one with the sister!”

“Yes. She has a sister.”

“Now I know the one you mean. I would have shown her to you, but she isn’t finished yet. Come along; we’ll have a look at her.”

Kyrkylio grabbed a lamp with one of his hands and conducted them (or Morlock, really; he still hadn’t looked directly at Wyrth) up a short corridor to a kind of cell. It was lined with glass, like the cage that held the malefic collective being.

Inside the cell was a sort of animal. It looked like a cross between a partially shaven ape and a spider. It had eight legs, except the legs were really arms, and at the end of each was a human hand. The creature’s head was set on a hump in the middle of its back. When it saw them, its eyes gaped wide in fear and horror and it backed away, twisting its head from side to side. Its mouth moved, but Wyrth could not hear the words through the glass cage. It seemed to be saying “Help me!” . . . or perhaps “Kill me!”

“Now, you will notice,” Kyrkylio said, with professional enthusiasm, “how ineffectively she uses her additional limbs. She has a powerful emotional impetus to cover herself, but how awkwardly her limbs answer to her desire! She really only uses one pair fully; another pair she uses like legs; and the others she hardly uses at all. I’ve tried a number of experiments to train her in their use, but they all failed and now I’m convinced there is a real lack of cerebral capacity for the purpose.”

Morlock said nothing, but Kyrkylio hardly noticed.

“So the next natural step would be to augment her cerebrum, or perhaps add a new one. I’ve tried attaching several external grafts, but she rejected them all—you may be able to see the scar tissue just there at the base of her neck. So my latest thought, since she talks so much of her sister, was to make use of the younger girl. The two brains seem more likely to be complementary. I hope you won’t ask me to reconsider; I’m quite set on the project.”

“I’m set against it.”

“Well. Perhaps I can find a way to persuade you. Will you be in town long?”

“Long enough.”

“For the sake of collegial relations, I’m willing to suspend this project for a time. I don’t promise to end it, of course: I expect some collegiality in return! But perhaps we can negotiate some sort of agreement.”

“Maybe,” Morlock said. From his tone Wyrth knew this meant Maybe when the ground gapes wide and swallows the three moons, but Kyrkylio didn’t seem to be aware of it. The lifemaker’s bristly nose-heavy face beamed with professional cordiality, or something.

Kyrkylio escorted them to the exit of his cave, burbling happily about the nightmares he was compounding in its various nooks. As they passed by the rickety shelf, its glass cage buzzed with the attacks of the vengeful collective within.

“I can remove that for you,” Morlock said.

“As a gesture of good faith?” Kyrkylio seemed taken by the idea, yet also reluctant. “That’s very collegial of you. Very collegial indeed. I must say, I don’t know how all those horrible stories about you got started.”

Morlock shrugged. “I would take it out of here. That’s all. You’re in danger from it every moment, you know.”

“I know. But I hate to give up on a project, even when I know it’s failed.” Kyrkylio looked at the glass cage with longing and hatred. His insectile limbs started clawing at his human ones again, but in the throes of making his decision, he didn’t seem to be aware of it. “All right,” he said suddenly. “Please take it away. I’ll be grateful to you for it.”

“Eh,” Morlock said, and picked the glass cage up from the sagging shelf. The eye in the greenish fleshy mound looked sharply at him through the etched glass, then sharply at Kyrkylio. The vicious rovers redoubled their attacks on the glass wall.

“Now,” said the weevilly lifemaker as they reached the threshold of the cave, “I decline to annul my oath, and I hope you’ll do the same. It’s a good foundation for a collegial alliance, I think. We’ll visit again soon, and perhaps I can change your mind about my little project.”

Morlock said nothing to this; instead, he and Wyrth walked out of the cave into the blue of gloaming. Kyrkylio stood on the far side of the threshold and watched them for a moment, then turned back toward the inner cave.

When Morlock had taken three strides away from the cave threshold he turned and tossed the glass cage back into the lifemaker’s lair.

The cage shattered with a satisfying crash. It was followed by Kyrkylio’s shriek, “Your oath! Your oath! I invoke it!”

“I’m not in your cave, Kyrkylio,” Morlock called. “Nor am I harming you. Reach an agreement with your failed project.”

From where they stood, the maker and his apprentice could see the battle between the lifemaker and the life he had made, or marred. The fierce little rovers were chewing through Kyrkylio’s winged carapace. He could not reach them with either set of arms, his horns, or his proboscis, though he tried with all of them. He smashed his back against the walls of his cave, against tables in his workshop, and he did succeed in smashing some of the rovers as they fed on him. But others made it through his shell, and soon they were safe

inside the lifemaker’s body. He shrieked in horror and pain and something like ecstasy as they tore through him, and finally his body fell across his own threshold, twitching and fluttering its wings uselessly. Presently it grew still. Moments later, amid a burst of yellowish ichor, a cloud of rovers emerged from the cavities where Kyrkylio’s eyes had been. The lifemaker was dead.

The cloud of ichor-stained rovers hovered in midair, looking out of the cave at Morlock and Wyrth. The dwarf was wondering if they shouldn’t retreat, lest they become the next item on the rovers’ menu. But they suddenly turned away and descended on the ruins of the glass cage.

Going back home? Wyrth wondered. Where else did they have to go?

Morlock stepped over the corpse on the threshold and Wyrth hesitantly followed him. As he did, he saw what the rovers were doing. They were attacking the greenish lump with the human eye—the sessile portion of their collective self, if Wyrth had understood the now-dead lifemaker.

Suddenly, as one, the rovers ceased to move. The half-eaten fleshy lump was also still.

“Suicide,” Morlock said. “Its vengeance on Kyrkylio was complete and it had nothing else to live for.”

Wyrth nodded slowly, and then he said, “God Sustainer. There’s a whole cave of things like that in here.”

“Yes, we have work to do. Go down to the Travellers’ Rest and get our backpacks. Tell them as little as you can.”

Wyrth gaped at him for a moment. The crooked man opened his hands and waited. Wyrth finally took the hint. He ran out of the cave and sprinted down the hill. When he returned, Morlock had already begun the long grim task before them.

~~~

A few days later, lost children and strangers began to wander down from the hills into the half-empty town of Boulostreion. All were seamed with scars where they had been patched together by Morlock Ambrosius and his apprentice.

Some said this was the vengeance of the Evil One on them for accepting the wicked bargain with the slain lifemaker, and some said it was a trick of Morlock’s for his own amusement. Some waited anxiously for the return of their lost ones; some feared it, and the attendant explanations of why they had been sacrificed for the good of others. Not every family who had lost someone was blessed or cursed by a return, but once again there were two daughters under the roof at the Travellers’ Rest.

One day, without talking to anyone else in her family, Raelio put aside her morning’s work and walked up into the terror-haunted hills. Few walked there still, because Morlock was now known to be living in the lair of the lifemaker he had killed and dragged to hell. But Raelio was not afraid of Morlock, because she knew they hated the same things.

Long before she saw the cave she knew where it was: there was a tall column of greasy black smoke rising like an accusing finger at the sky. She figured that was the place, and it was.

When she arrived there she saw that Morlock and Wyrth were burning things. The cave inside was bare, as far as she could see. Their backpacks were lying on the hill, laced up and ready for travel.

“You’re going home,” she said accusingly to the crooked man’s shoulders.

He turned and looked at her with his cold gray eyes. “I have no home,” he said.

“Ah,” she said, after some thought of Travellers’ Rest, and the strange silences there these days, “a home’s not so great, I guess.”

He shrugged.

“You’re leaving, anyway. Not staying and taking over Kyrkylio’s business. People say you are, but they’re liars, I guess.”

“They’re wrong, anyway. You can tell them.”

“I tell them all the time, only they never listen. Listen, Iuinoe—she says . . . she said you should kill her, but you didn’t kill her.”

Morlock shrugged.

“I guess you don’t say much. Anyway. I wanted to say. Thanks for not killing her. She was talking like she was going to kill herself for a while, but now I don’t think she’s going to. Not totally sure, anyway.”

“It was hard for her,” the dwarf said. “We can’t even guess how horrible it was. Remember that, and help her all you can.”

“How?”

Wyrth shrugged uneasily and looked at his master. Morlock opened his hands and turned away to shoulder his backpack. The dwarf stared after him, then followed to do the same.

“Goodbye,” she said.

“Take care of yourself,” Morlock said and walked away. Wyrth followed him, waving to her in farewell. They hadn’t gone twenty paces before the dwarf started talking about something, but Morlock didn’t seem to answer. She stood beside the greasy stinking fire and watched them go until they disappeared beyond the shoulder of a hill. Then she turned around and went reluctantly home to the Travellers’ Rest.

Travellers' Rest © James Enge

Cover Illustration © Chuck Lukacs

Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Enge lives with his children in northwest Ohio, where he teaches classics at a medium-sized public university. His short fiction has appeared in Swords & Dark Magic (Eos, 2010), in the magazine Black Gate, and elsewhere. His novels are Blood of Ambrose (Pyr, 2009), which was nominated for a 2010 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and listed on Locus magazine’s Recommended Reading for 2009, This Crooked Way (Pyr, 2009), and The Wolf Age (Pyr, 2010). Visit him online at http://www.jamesenge.com/.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Chuck Lukacs has been illustrating for the science fiction and fantasy gaming markets for over twelve years. In 1993 he graduated from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan, and has also spent a number of years studying the crafts of ceramics, book arts, and wood engraving. His clients have included Impact Books, Pyr/Prometheus Books, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Upper Deck, Games Workshop, Atlantic Records, and Alderac Entertainment.

Chuck’s paintings and prints have appeared and won awards in fine art and science fiction & fantasy conventions, galleries, and museums across the globe. He has been featured in Spectrum 7, ImagineFX (June 2010), and Fantasy Art magazine (Peking University), and has authored two fantasy art tutorial books: Wreaking Havoc (2007) and Fantasy Genesis (2010). Check out his website, http://www.chucklukacs.com/, for more info.

ABOUT THE PUBLISHER

Pyr is the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books. Prometheus Books took its name from the courageous Greek god who gave fire to humans, lighting the way to reason, intelligence, and independence. Pyr, the Greek word for fire, continues this connection to fire and the liveliness of imagination. From the outset, Pyr has set the bar high for creativity, intelligence, and quality. To find out more about Pyr and its exciting authors and novels, visit http://www.pyrsf.com/.

The Cardinal's Blades by Pierre Pevel

2010-11-23T14:32:00.000-06:00

Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews calls The Cardinal's Blades “A fast-moving story, full of action, intrigue, and swashbuckling adventures.”

Pornokitsch.com says it's “…a wildly entertaining read with delightfully broken characters. Were I ten again, I'd be running around the park with sticks, pretending to be the half-dragon Saint-Lucq. ...this is a book of swashbuckling excess, and should be celebrated as such.”

“[Pierre] Pevel…makes a stunning English-language debut with this breathless, swashbuckling tale of intrigue, spying, and swordfights… Pevel's adventure is…likely to charm Anglophone audiences who enjoy action-packed adventure with a true historical sensibility.”
--Publishers Weekly starred review

Decide for yourself. Read an excerpt now:

The Cardinal's Blades

Pierre Pevel

Translated by Tom Clegg

A CALL TO ARMS

Long and high-ceilinged, the room was lined with elegantly gilded and bound books which shone with a russet gleam in the half-light of the candle flames. Outside, beyond the thick red velvet curtains, Paris slept

beneath a starry sky and a deep tranquillity had settled on the dusky streets which penetrated even here, where the scratching of a quill barely troubled the silence. Thin, bony and pale, the hand which held the quill traced fine, tight writing, delicate yet steady, making neither mistakes nor blots. The quill paused regularly to take a fresh load from the inkwell. It was guided with precision and, as soon as it returned to the paper, continued to scratch out an unhesitating thread of thought. Nothing else moved. Not even the scarlet dragonnet which, curled in a ball, its muzzle tucked under its wing, slept peacefully by the thick leather blotter.

Someone knocked at the door.

The hand wrote on without pause but the dragonnet, disturbed, opened one emerald eye. A man entered wearing a sword and a fitted cape of red silk blazoned, on each of its four panels, with a white cross. His head was respectfully uncovered.

“Yes?” said Cardinal Richelieu, continuing to write.

“He is here, Your Eminence.”

“Alone?”

“As you instructed.”

“Good. Send him in.”

Master Saint-Georges, Captain of His Eminence’s Guards, bowed. He was about to withdraw when the cardinal added: “And spare him the guards.”

Saint-Georges understood, bowed again, and took care to close the door silently as he left.

Before being received in the cardinal’s apartment visitors normally had to pass through five rooms throughout which guards were stationed on continuous watch, day and night. All carried a sword at their side and pistol in their belt, remaining alert to the slightest hint of danger and refusing to let anyone pass without a direct order to that effect. Nothing escaped their scrutiny, which could shift at a moment’s notice from merely probing to actively threatening. Wearing their celebrated capes, these men belonged to the company of His Eminence’s Guards. They escorted him everywhere he went, and wherever he resided there were never less than sixty men to accompany him. Those not on duty in the corridors and antechambers killed time between their rounds, their short muskets always near to hand. And the Guards were not the only troops detailed to protect Richelieu: while they ensured his safety inside, a company of musketeers patrolled outside.

This constant vigilance was not a simple, ostentatious show of force. They had good reason to guard him; even here in the heart of Paris, in the ornamental palace the cardinal had built just a few steps from the Louvre.

At forty-eight years old, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu was one of the most powerful men, and one of the most threatened, of his time. A duke and peer of the realm, member of the Council, and principal minister to His Majesty; he had the ear of Louis XIII—with whom he had ruled France for a decade. That alone accounted for the numerous adversaries he reckoned with, the least of whom only plotted to disgrace him, while others made detailed plans for his assassination—for if the cardinal were forced into exile he could still act from abroad, and if imprisoned there was always the possibility of his escape. Such plots had come close to succeeding in the past, and new ones were no doubt being prepared. Richelieu had to guard himself against all those who hated him out of jealousy, because of his influence over

the king. But he also had to be wary of attacks orchestrated by the enemies of France, the first and foremost being Spain, and her Court of Dragons.

It was about to strike midnight.

The sleepy dragonnet heaved a tired sigh.

“It’s very late, isn’t it?” the cardinal said, addressing the small winged reptile with an affectionate smile.

He looked drawn himself, both from fatigue and illness, on this spring night in 1633.

Normally he would have been in bed soon. He would sleep a little if his insomnia, his migraines, and the pain in his limbs allowed it. And especially if no one woke him with urgent news requiring orders to be drawn up hastily, or worse still, a meeting in the dead of night. No matter what occurred, he rose at two in the morning and was promptly surrounded by his secretaries. After quick ablutions, he would eat a few mouthfuls of broth and then work until six o’clock. Then perhaps he would allow himself one or two hours of additional sleep, before beginning the most challenging part of the day—the rounds of ministers and secretaries of state, ambassadors and courtiers. But tonight, Cardinal Richelieu had not yet finished with the affairs of France.

* * *

Hinges squeaked at the other end of the library, then a firm step sounded against the parquet floor, followed by a clatter of spurs, as Cardinal Richelieu reread the report he intended to present to the king concerning the proposed policies against Lorraine. Incongruous at this hour and echoing loudly beneath the library’s painted ceiling, the growing noise woke the dragonnet. Unlike its master, it raised its head to see who had arrived.

It was a gentleman, his features marked by long service in times of war.

Large, energetic, still strong despite his years, he had high boots on his feet, and carried his hat in his hand and his rapier at his side. He wore a grey doublet slashed with red and matching hose the cut of which was as austere as the fabric itself. His closely trimmed beard was the same silver-grey as his hair. It covered much of his severe-looking face, rendered gaunt by battle and long hours of riding, and perhaps also by old regrets and sadness. His bearing was martial, assured, proud, almost provocative. His gaze was that of a man who would never look away first. And he wore a tarnished steel ring on his left hand.

Letting a silence settle, Richelieu finished his perusal of the report while his visitor waited. He initialled the last page, sanded it to help the ink dry, and then blew the grains away. They rose into the air, tickling the dragonnet’s nostrils. The little reptile sneezed, raising a smile on the cardinal’s thin lips.

“Apologies, Petit-Ami,” he murmured to it.

And finally acknowledging the man, he said: “A moment, if you will?”

He rang a small bell.

The chimes summoned the faithful and indefatigable Charpentier, who had served His Eminence in the capacity of private secretary for twenty-five years. Richelieu gave him the initialled report.

“Before I present it before His Majesty tomorrow, I want Père Joseph to read it and add those biblical references which His Majesty likes so much and serve the cause of France so well.”

Charpentier bowed and departed.

“The King is very pious,” the cardinal explained.

Then, speaking as if his guest had only just arrived: “Welcome, Captain La Fargue.”

“Captain?”

“That’s your rank, isn’t it?”

“It was, before my commission was taken from me.”

“We wish that you return to service.”

“As of now?”

“Yes. Did you have something better to do?”

It was an opening sally, and Richelieu predicted that there would be more to follow.

“A captain must command a company,” said La Fargue.

“Or a troop, at the very least, which may be more modest in size. You shall reclaim yours.”

“It was dispersed, thanks to the good care and attention of Your Eminence.”

That comment raised a spark in the cardinal’s eye.

“Find your men. These letters, intended for them, are ready to be sent.”

“They may not all answer the call.”

“Those who respond will suffice. They were the best, and they should still be. It has not been so long . . .”

“Five years.”

“. . . and you are free to recruit others,” Richelieu continued without permitting an interruption. “Besides, my reports indicate that, despite my orders, you have not severed all of your connections with them.”

The old gentleman blinked.

“I see that the competence of Your Eminence’s spies has not faltered in the least.”

“I believe there are few things concerning you of which I am unaware, captain.”

His hand poised on the pommel of his sword, Captain Etienne-Louis de La Fargue took a moment to think. He stared straight ahead, over the cardinal’s head who, from his armchair, observed him with patient interest.

“So, captain, you accept?”

“It depends.”

Feared because he was influential and all the more influential because he was feared, Cardinal Richelieu could ruin a destiny with a stroke of his quill or, just as easily, propel a career toward greatness. He was believed to be a man who would crush all those who opposed him. It was a significant exaggeration but as he himself was fond of saying, “His Eminence has no enemies other than those of the State. But toward them, he is utterly without mercy.”

Cold as marble, the cardinal hardened his tone.

“Is it not enough for you, captain, to know that your king recalls you to his service?”

The man unflinchingly found and held the cardinal’s gaze.

“No, monseigneur, it is not enough.”

After a pause, he added: “Or rather, it’s not enough anymore.”

For a long moment, nothing but the hissing breathing of the dragonnet could be heard beneath the rich panelling of the Palais-Cardinal’s great library. The conversation between the two men had taken a bad turn, with one of them still seated and the other standing, each taking the measure of the other, until La Fargue gave in. But he did not lower his gaze. Instead he lifted it, looking straight ahead again and focusing on a precious tapestry behind the cardinal.

“Are you demanding guarantees, captain?”

“No.”

“In that case, I’m afraid I do not understand you.”

“I want to say, monseigneur, that I demand nothing. One does not demand that which one is due.”

“Ah.”

La Fargue was playing a dangerous game, opposing the man said to be in greater command of France than the king himself. His Eminence knew that not all battles were won by force of arms. As the old soldier stood at unwavering attention, no doubt ready to be incarcerated in the deepest, grimmest prison for the remainder of his days, or swiftly dispatched to fight savages in the West Indies, Richelieu leaned on the table and, with a gnarled index finger, scratched the dragonnet’s head.

The reptile closed its eyes and sighed with pleasure.

“Petit-Ami was given to me by His Majesty,” said the cardinal in a conversational tone. “It was he who named it, and it seems these creatures become accustomed very quickly to their nicknames. . . . In any case, it expects me to feed it and care for it. And I have never failed in that, just as I have never failed to serve the interests of France. Nevertheless, if I suddenly deprived it of my care, it would not take Petit-Ami long to bite me. And this, without any consideration for the kindnesses I had lavished upon it previously. . . . There’s a lesson to remember here, don’t you think?”

The question was rhetorical. Leaving the dragonnet to its slumber, Richelieu sank back into the cushions of his armchair, cushions which he piled on in a vain attempt to ease the pangs of his rheumatism.

He grimaced, waiting until the pain lessened before continuing.

“I know, captain, that not so long ago I let you down. You and your men served me well. In view of your previous successes and your value, was your disgrace justified? Of course not. It was a political necessity. I grant you that your efforts were not entirely unworthy and that the failure of your delicate mission during the siege of La Rochelle was in no way your fault. But considering the tragic turn taken by the events in which you were involved, the French Crown could do nothing but disown you. It was necessary to save face and condemn you for what you had done, secretly, by our order. You had to be sacrificed, even if it heaped dishonour upon the death of one of your men.”

La Fargue agreed, but it cost him to do so.

“Political necessity,” he said in a resigned tone while his thumb rubbed the steel signet ring against the inside of his fist.

Suddenly seeming very tired, the cardinal sighed.

“Europe is at war, captain. The Holy Roman Empire has known nothing but fire and blood for the last fifteen years, and France will no doubt soon be drawn into the fighting there. The English threaten our coasts and the Spanish our borders. When she is not taking up arms against us, Lorraine welcomes all the seditious elements in the kingdom with open arms while the queen mother plots against the king from Brussels. Revolts blossom in our provinces and those who foment and lead them are often placed at the highest levels of the State. I shall not even mention the secret factions, often funded from abroad, whose intrigues extend all the way into the Louvre.”

Richelieu looked La Fargue firmly in the eye.

“I cannot always choose the weapons I employ, captain.”

There was a long silence, and then the cardinal spoke again: “You seek neither fortune nor glory. And in truth, I can promise you neither. You can rest assured that I am as ready now as yesterday to sacrifice your honour or your life if reasons of State demand it. . . .”

This frank admission surprised the captain, who raised a skeptical eyebrow and returned Richelieu’s gaze.

“But do not refuse the hand I extend to you, captain. You are not one of those who shirk their duty, and soon the kingdom will have great need of a man like you. A man capable of gathering together and commanding honest, courageous, and expert swordsmen, adept at acting swiftly and secretly, and

above all, who will kill without remorse and die without regret in the service of the king. Captain, would you still be wearing your signet ring if you were not the man I believe you to be?”

La Fargue could not answer, but for the cardinal the business had been settled.

“You and your men liked to call yourselves the ‘Cardinal’s Blades,’ I seem to recall. The name was never whispered lightly amongst the enemies of France. For that reason, among others, it pleased me. Keep it.”

“With all the respect that I owe you, monseigneur, I have not yet said yes.”

Richelieu stared at the old man for a long time, his thin angular face expressing only coldness. Then he rose from his armchair, opened a curtain a little to look outside and said carelessly: “And if I said it could affect your daughter?”

Suddenly growing pale, and visibly shaken, La Fargue turned his head toward the cardinal who seemed absorbed in the contemplation of the nighttime garden.

“My . . . daughter? . . . But I don’t have a daughter, monseigneur—”

“You know very well that you do. And I know it as well. . . . But don’t be alarmed. The secret of her existence is one guarded by a few trustworthy people. I believe that even your Blades are unaware of the truth, is that not so?”

The captain surrendered, abandoning a battle he had already lost.

“Is she . . . in danger?” he asked him.

At that moment Richelieu knew he had won. His back still turned to La Fargue, he hid a smile.

“You shall understand soon,” he said. “For now, gather your Blades in preparation to receive the details of your first mission. I promise you that these shall not be long in coming.”

And at last rewarding La Fargue with a glance over his shoulder, he added: “Good night, captain.”

Agnès de Vaudreuil woke with a scream in her throat, her eyes wide and filled with the terrors which haunted her every night. She had sat up in a panic, and remained dazed for a moment watching the shadows around her bed. She was forced to wait while the furious pace of her heart slowed. Wait until her breathing, almost panting, finally calmed. Wait for the sour sweat to dry on her skin.

The terror left her little by little, with regret, like a pack of dogs frustrated not to have triumphed over their wounded yet tenacious prey.

The young woman sighed.

A peaceful silence reigned inside as much as it did without, a clear shimmering light falling from the cloud-flecked sky and through the open window as far as the four-poster bed. Elegant and spacious, the room was richly furnished, decorated with heavy hangings, valuable miniatures, delicately painted woodwork, and gilded moldings. A certain disarray disturbed this tableau of luxury, however. A chair had toppled over. A man’s hat perched at a jaunty angle atop an antique statuette. Candles had burned down into wax stalagmites

clinging to the candlesticks. The remains of a fine supper stood on an inlaid table and an assortment of clothes were strewn across the carpet.

Leaning forward, Agnès pulled her knees up under the bedclothes, leaned her elbows on them, and slid her fingers through her thick hair, running them from the front to the back of her skull. Then she slowly raised her head, letting the palms of her hands smooth her cheeks. She felt better but the fear was only postponed, not gone for good. The pack would return, always hungry and perhaps more ferocious than ever. There was nothing to do but accept it.

And live.

Agnès pulled herself together.

She rose without disturbing the man sleeping beside her, pulling a rumpled sheet with her and wrapping herself in it. Taller and considerably thinner and more muscular than her peers, who took care to remain plump in order to entice men, she was not, however, without charm. She had an elegance of gesture, a

nobility of movement, and a severe and savage kind of beauty, provocative and almost haughty, which promised failure to any who attempted to conquer her. Thick with ample curls, her long black hair framed a slender but forceful face and underlined her paleness. Her full, dark lips seldom smiled. Nor did her emerald green eyes, in which burned a cold flame. Had they shown any sign of joy, she would have been, all in all, absolutely radiant.

Her left fist holding the cloth tight against her chest, Agnès trampled over the dress and the ruffled underskirts she had worn the day before. Her white stockings still sheathed her long legs. With her free hand she lifted and shook a number of wine bottles before finding one that wasn’t empty. She poured the dregs into a glass and carried it to the window, letting the warm May breeze caress her. From the first floor she had a view over the courtyard of her manor and the surrounding countryside, reaching as far as the distant glimmer of the Oise river.

Agnès sipped her wine and waited for dawn to come.

By daybreak the sheet had slipped a little, revealing a mark on her shoulder blade—a mark which worried some of her lovers and prompted a few to comment that Agnès had something of a witch about her. Remaining at the window, she toyed distractedly with a signet ring she wore around her neck. The jewel, set in tarnished steel, was etched with a Greek cross with arms capped by fleur-de-lis, and crossed by a rapier. Agnès heard the man rise from the bed behind her. She released the ring and thought of covering her shoulder but didn’t turn as he dressed and left the room without a word. She saw him appear in the courtyard and wake the coachman sleeping beneath the harnessed carriage. The whip cracked, the horses snorted, shaking their heads, and the vehicle of this already forgotten gentleman was soon nothing

more than a cloud of dust on the stony road.

Life soon began to stir in the manor, as the surrounding village bell towers signalled the first mass of the day. Agnès de Vaudreuil finally left the window when she saw a valet taking orders from the ostler outside the stable. She performed a rapid toilette and hastily braided her long hair. She changed her stockings, did up her breeches, pulled on a wide-collared shirt, and, over it, an old red leather corset. She chose her best riding boots, then belted on the baldric and sheathed rapier which hung by the door.

The blade had been made for her especially, forged in Toledo from the best steel. She unsheathed it to admire its perfect straightness, its beautiful shine, its suppleness and keen edge. She sketched a few feints, parries, and ripostes. Finally, with her thumb, she made a spike as long as her hand spring from the pommel, fine and sharp-edged like a Florentine dagger, which she admired with an almost loving gleam in her eye.

On its completion, the Palais-Cardinal would comprise a splendid main building, with two long wings, two courtyards, and an immense garden which stretched between rue de Richelieu and rue des Bons-Enfants. But in 1633, it was still little more than the original Hôtel d’Angennes, acquired nine years earlier, although its new, illustrious owner, determined to have a residence in Paris appropriate to his station, was busy having it enlarged and embellished. He was so determined, in fact, that when he was put in charge of the city’s new fortifications he seized the opportunity to extend his domain into the vast area which the old ramparts had occupied, rebuilding the walls further to the west from the Saint-Denis gate to the new gate of La Conférence. The capital gained as much as the cardinal from this enlargement: new streets were laid out and new districts were born where only wasteland and ditches had existed before, including the creation of a

renowned horse market and the beginnings of the neighbourhoods of Montmartre and Saint-Honoré. But Richelieu was condemned to live with the builders a while longer in the Hôtel d’Angennes. The imposing façade of his palace, on rue de Saint-Honoré, would still take years to complete.

Thus it was that, at eight o’clock in the morning, Ensign Arnaud de Laincourt entered the Palais-Cardinal by passing beneath a large scaffold which was already loaded with workmen. The musketeers who had just

opened the wrought-iron gates recognised him and gave him a military salute to which he responded before entering the guard room. This area, with its one hundred and eighty square metres of floor space and its monumental chimney, was where ordinary visitors waited to be summoned. There were already a score of them in attendance, but above all the room was crawling with men in red capes, as it was here that guards who had ensured the safety of His Eminence all night were relieved by those who, like Laincourt, had arrived to take their shift. Rows of muskets—loaded and ready to fire—were arranged on the racks. The light fell from high south-facing windows and conversations blended into a hubbub which echoed beneath the wainscoting.

Slender and athletic, Arnaud de Laincourt was approaching thirty. He had dark eyebrows, crystalline blue eyes, a straight nose, smoothly shaven cheeks, and pale skin. His fine features had a strange charm, youthful yet wise. It was easier to imagine him studying philosophy at the Sorbonne than wearing the uniform of the cardinal’s horse guards. Nevertheless, he carried the plumed felt hat and the white gloves, and wore the cape blazoned with a cross, along with the sword hanging from the regulation leather baldric which crossed his chest from his left shoulder. Moreover, as an ensign he was an officer—a junior officer according to the military hierarchy then in force, but an officer nonetheless, and one who was promised a lieutenancy, so highly did Richelieu regard him.

He was saluted again and, as was his habit, he courteously returned the salute with a personal reserve which discouraged idle chatter. Then he took one of the small books known as sextodecimos from his russet red leather doublet and, intending to read, went to lean against a pillar close to two guards sitting by a pedestal table. The youngest, Neuvelle, was only just twenty-six and had not been with the guards for more than a few weeks. His companion, on the other hand, was turning grey. He was called Brussand, was a good forty years of age, and had served with the Cardinal’s Guards since the formation of the company seven years earlier.

“Still,” said Neuvelle in a lowered voice, “I would love to know who the man His Eminence received in such secrecy last night was. And why.”

When Brussand, leaning on the card table, did not react, the young man insisted: “Think about the fact that he did not pass through the antechambers. The musketeers who guard the little gate were ordered to do nothing but announce his arrival, and not ask questions. All the other guards were kept away. And it was Captain Saint-Georges in person who escorted him to the cardinal’s apartments and accompanied him back!”

“Our orders,” Brussand finally replied, without raising his eyes from his game of patience, “were to be deaf and blind to all that concerned this gentleman. You should not have watched the doors.”

Neuvelle shrugged.

“Pff. . . . What harm did I do? . . . And anyway, I only caught a brief glimpse of a silhouette in the corner of a very dark corridor. He could have shook hands with me without my recognising him.”

Brussand, still absorbed by his game, smoothed his salt-and-pepper moustache without comment, then with an air of satisfaction laid the wyvern of spades, which had appeared at the opportune moment, upon the previously troublesome knave of hearts.

“All these mysteries intrigue me,” Neuvelle blurted.

“They shouldn’t.”

“Really? And why is that?”

Although he gave no sign, Brussand, unlike his young companion, had noticed Laincourt’s discreet arrival.

“Would you explain it to him, monsieur de Laincourt?”

“Certainly, monsieur de Brussand.”

Neuvelle watched Laincourt, who turned a page and said: “Accept that there are secrets into which it is better not to pry, nor even to pretend to have stumbled across. It can prove to be harmful. To your career, of course. But also to your health.”

“You mean to say that—”

“Yes. I mean to say exactly that.”

Neuvelle mustered a weak smile.

“Go on! You’re trying to frighten me.”

“Precisely. And for your own good, believe me.”

“But I’m a member of the Guards!”

This time, Laincourt lifted his eyes from his book. And smiled.

Neuvelle wore his scarlet cape with a mixture of confidence and pride, convinced, not without reason, that he was protected to the same degree that he had been promoted. Because he entrusted his life to them, Richelieu chose all his guards personally. He wanted them to be gentlemen of at least twenty-five years in age, and required most of them to have served for three years in the army. Perfectly trained and equipped, subjected to an iron discipline, they were a company of elite horsemen. The cardinal preferred them by far to

the company of musketeers—foot soldiers—that he also maintained and which recruited professional soldiers from the ranks of ordinary folk. And he rewarded his guards for their devotion by extending his protection to them in turn.

However . . .

“To be in the Guards, Neuvelle, is an honour which particularly exposes you to dangers that the common run of people do not even suspect—or which they exaggerate, which amounts to the same thing. We are like the fire dogs before a hearth which holds an eternal flame. This blazing fire is the cardinal. We defend him, but if you draw too near, you risk being burned. Serve His Eminence faithfully. Die for him if circumstances require it. Nevertheless, only listen to what he wishes you to hear. See only that which you are given to see. Guess only at what you are supposed to understand. And be quick to forget the rest.”

His tirade complete, Laincourt peacefully returned to his reading.

He believed the matter was settled, but still Neuvelle persisted.

“But you—”

The ensign frowned.

“Yes?”

“I mean . . .”

Searching for words, Neuvelle’s eyes implored for help from Brussand, who rewarded him with a black look in reply. The young guard suddenly understood that he had ventured into territory which was delicate, if not dangerous. He would have given a great deal to have been suddenly transported elsewhere and was very relieved when Laincourt chose another target.

“Monsieur de Brussand, have you spoken to monsieur de Neuvelle about me?”

The interested party shrugged his shoulders, as though excusing himself.

“We’re often bored, when we’re on guard.”

“And what have you said?”

“On my word, I said what everyone says.”

“Which is?”

Brussand took a breath.

“Which is that you had intended to become a lawyer, before the cardinal noticed you. That you joined the ranks of his personal secretaries. That he soon entrusted you with confidential missions. That on one of these missions you left France for two years and, when you returned, you took the cape and the rank of ensign. There. That’s everything.”

“Ah . . .” said Arnaud de Laincourt without betraying any emotion.

There was a silence in which he seemed to reflect on what he had heard.

Finally, with a vague glance, he nodded.

Laincourt returned to his reading while Neuvelle found other things to do elsewhere and Brussand began a new game of patience. A few minutes passed, and then the veteran guard blurted out: “To you, and you alone, Laincourt, I would say—”

“What is it?”

“I know who His Eminence received last night. I saw his outline as he was leaving, and I recognised him. His name is La Fargue.”

“This name means nothing to me,” said Laincourt.

“At one time, he commanded a troop of highly trusted men and carried out secret missions on the cardinal’s behalf. They were called, in a whisper, the Cardinal’s Blades. Then there was some nasty business during the siege of La Rochelle. I don’t know the details but it brought about the disappearance of the Blades. Until last night, I had believed they were permanently disbanded. But now—”

Arnaud de Laincourt closed his book.

“The same prudent advice I gave to Neuvelle also applies to us,” he said. “Let us forget all of that. Without doubt we shall be better off for having done so.”

Brussand, thoughtful, nodded.

“Yes. You are right. As always.”

At that moment, Captain Saint-Georges summoned Laincourt. Cardinal Richelieu wished to go to the Louvre with his entourage, and his escort needed to be prepared. Saint-Georges was taking command and Laincourt, in his capacity as an officer, was to watch over the cardinal’s palace during his absence.

Two coaches sat at some distance from each other in a meadow by the road to Paris. Three elegant gentlemen surrounded the marquis de Brévaux by the first coach while, by the second, the vicomte d’Orvand paced alone. He went backward and forward, sometimes stopping to watch the road and the horizon as he nervously stroked his thin, black moustache and the tuft of hair beneath his lower lip and sent impatient looks toward his coachman, who remained indifferent to the entire proceedings but was beginning to feel hungry.

At last, one of the gentlemen detached himself from the group and walked toward d’Orvand, passing through the soft, damp herb grass with a determined step. The vicomte knew what he was going to hear and struck as appropriate an attitude as possible.

“He’s late,” said the gentleman.

“I know. I’m sorry, believe me.”

“Will he come?”

“I believe so.”

“Do you even know where he is, right now?”

“No.”

“No?! But you’re his second!”

“Ah . . . well, that is to say . . .”

“A quarter of an hour, monsieur. The marquis de Brévaux is willing to be patient for a little longer—for another quarter of an hour, by the clock. And when your friend arrives, if he arrives, we—”

“Here he is, I believe. . . .”

A richly decorated coach arrived. Drawn by a splendid team of horses, it stopped in the road with a spray of dust and a man climbed out. His doublet was entirely undone and his shirt hung half out of his breeches. His hat in his right hand and his left resting on the pommel of his sword, he kept one boot on the footplate in order to embrace a pretty young blonde leaning toward the open door. This spectacle did not surprise d’Orvand, who did, however, roll his eyes when he saw another farewell kiss exchanged with a second beauty, a brunette.

“Marciac,” murmured the vicomte to himself. “You never change!”

The gentleman charged with conveying the marquis de Brévaux’s complaint returned to his friends while the luxuriously gilded coach made a half turn in the direction of Paris and Nicolas Marciac joined d’Orvand. He was a handsome man, attractive despite, or perhaps even because of, the disorder of his attire. He was in need of a razor and he bore a wide grin on his face. He tottered only slightly and was the very image of a society-loving rake enjoying his evening, entirely heedless of the morrow.

“But you’ve been drinking, Nicolas!” exclaimed d’Orvand, smelling his breath.

“No!” insisted Marciac, shocked. “Well . . . a little.”

“Before a duel? It’s madness!”

“Don’t alarm yourself. Have I ever lost before?”

“No, but—”

“All will be well.”

By the other coach, the marquis de Brévaux was already in his shirtsleeves and executing a few feints.

“Good, let us finish it,” Marciac declared.

He removed his doublet, threw it on the vicomte’s coach, greeted the coachman and asked after his health, was delighted to learn it was excellent, caught d’Orvand’s gaze, adjusted his shirt, unsheathed his sword, and set out toward Brévaux, who was already walking to meet him.

Then, after a few steps, he changed his mind, turned on his heel without fear of further exasperating the marquis, and pitched his words for his friend’s ear alone: “Tell me just one thing. . . .”

“Yes?” sighed d’Orvand.

“Promise me you will not be angry.”

“So be it.”

“Well then, I have guessed that I am to fight the man in his shirtsleeves who is watching me with that rough gaze. But could you give me some idea as to why?”

“What?” the vicomte exclaimed, rather louder than he had intended.

“If I kill him, I should know the reason for our quarrel, don’t you think?”

D’Orvand was initially lost for words, then pulled himself together and announced: “A gambling debt.”

“What? I owe him money? Him too?”

“Of course not! Him! . . . It’s he who . . . Fine. Enough. I shall cancel this madness. I shall tell them you are unwell. Or that you—”

“How much?”

“What?”

“How much does he owe me?”

“Fifteen hundred livres.”

“Good God! And I was going to kill him . . . !”

Light-heartedly, Marciac continued to walk toward the furious marquis.

He assumed a wobbly en garde stance and declared: “I am at your disposal, monsieur le marquis.”

The duel was speedily concluded. Brévaux took the initiative with assertive thrusts which Marciac nonchalantly parried before punctuating his own attack with a punch that cut his adversary’s lip. Initially surprised, then enraged, the marquis returned to the fray. Once again, Marciac was content to merely defend, feigning inattentiveness and even, between two clashes of steel, stifling a yawn. This offhandedness left Brévaux crazed with anger. He howled, struck a foolish two-handed blow with his rapier, and, without

understanding how, suddenly found himself both disarmed and wounded in the shoulder. Marciac pressed his advantage. With the point of his blade, he forced the marquis to retreat to his coach, and held him there.

Pale, breathless, and sweating, Brévaux clutched his shoulder.

“Very well,” he said. “You win. I’ll pay you.”

“I am afraid, monsieur, that a promise is not enough. Pay me now.”

“Monsieur! I give you my word!”

“You have already promised once, and you see where we are now. . . .”

Marciac tensed his arm a little and the point of his rapier approached the marquis’s throat. The gentlemen of Brévaux’s retinue took a step closer. One of them even began to draw his sword while d’Orvand, worried, came forward and prepared to assist his friend if necessary.

There was a moment of indecisiveness on both sides, but then the marquis removed a ring he wore on his finger and gave it to Marciac.

“Are we now even?”

He took it and admired the stone.

“Yes,” he said, before sheathing his sword.

“Damned Gascon!”

“I hold you in high esteem as well, monsieur. I look forward to seeing you again.”

And as he turned toward d’Orvand, Marciac deliberately added: “Splendid day, isn’t it?”

The Cardinal's Blades © Pierre Pevel; Translated by Tom Clegg

Cover Illustration © Jon Sullivan

Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

Pierre Pevel, born in 1968, is one of the foremost writers of French fantasy today. The author of seven novels, he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in 2002 and the Prix Imaginales in 2005, both for best novel.

The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith

2010-11-02T11:18:00.000-05:00

“I was blindsided by how phenomenal The Greyfriar was from start to finish. Amazing vampire mythology, a chilling alternate history, and a poignant romance that grips your whole heart and refuses to let go. …The vampires in The Greyfriar are frighteningly fascinating. …As rich and absorbing as the vampire empire is, the heart of The Greyfriar was the blossoming romance that grew between Adele and Greyfriar amidst the war between humans and vampires. It was moving and heartbreaking at every turn. … I’m amazed that a story as epic and lavish The Greyfriar comes in at just over 300 pages. That’s a testament to writing ability of husband and wife duo Clay and Susan Griffith who wasted not one word in their superb vampire steampunk novel. The action is exhilarating, the vampires are refreshingly sinister, and the love story a gentle force so captivating that I truly believe it will weather even the most daunting obstacles. Book two in the Vampire Empire can’t come soon enough. My rating: 5/5, Near Perfect - Buy two copies: one for you and one for a friend.” -All Things Urban Fantasy blog, October 26, 2010

“The best book I've read this year...I'm hoping to convince you all to buy this book...a page turner...all-around satisfying, pick this one up. Romance fans will not be disappointed...” -VampChix blog, October 21, 2010

Read an excerpt from this highly anticipated book here:

The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1)

Clay & Susan Griffith

CHAPTER 1

“YOUR HIGHNESS WOULD be safer below. It’s getting dark. Vampires are very unpredictable.”

“Thank you, Colonel. I believe I’ll stay on deck a bit yet. It’s quite warm. That should keep the beasties quiet. Yes?”

Princess Adele noticed a slight smile on the dark, chiseled face of Colonel Mehmet Anhalt, who stood close to her, as was his habit. Under her gaze, the short but powerfully built Gurkha officer covered his bemusement by clearing his throat and offering his brass telescope. “In that case, Your Highness, would you care to have a look?”

“Yes, I should. Thank you, Colonel Anhalt.” Adele crossed the quarterdeck of HMS Ptolemy and leapt with girlish pleasure down three steps to the ship’s waist. A crowd of redjackets from her household guard parted to make a path to the port rail. A stiff breeze rolled the heavy skirt around her calves and whipped the ends of the scarf that struggled to restrain her long auburn curls.

Adele snapped open the telescope and steadied her booted feet expertly against the airship’s sway. The distant clouds were turning brilliant orange and bruise purple in the darkening eastern sky. Five miles
off the port beam Adele spotted two figures floating silhouetted in midair.

Vampires.

The young princess felt a delicious thrill spread through her. Vampire cadavers were displayed occasionally in the streets of her home, Alexandria, and she had even viewed the purported preserved head of the clan chief of Vienna, but she had seen only a few living specimens in her days. These two lay spread-eagle on the air, vibrating in the drafts that buffeted their nearly weightless frames.

Adele felt a tingle of horror when one turned its head and, she thought, stared at her, looking in her eye with its cold glare. She closed the glass with a sharp breath, going pale. Frustration swept through her that the creature should startle her so. It was not as if the beast had truly been looking at her. It merely had looked toward the ship. Struggling to regain her composure in front of her guardsmen, she resumed strolling the quarterdeck.

A young boy suddenly exploded up out of the main hatch. His face was red from the exertion of racing up the companionways, as indeed he raced everywhere he went. He was barely twelve years old and still round-faced as a baby, with darker hair than Adele’s, cropped short. A flowing striped cotton Bedouin robe over breeches and sandals made him look like a ragamuffin from the alleys of Cairo.

He scampered to Adele’s side, shouting, “I heard there are two of them out there!”

Princess Adele cut a very different figure from her wild younger brother, Simon. She was the heir, the future empress, and her very proper traveling garb was chosen for reasons of state. Today she wore a heavy cotton shirt, a leather jacket with a Persian sash, and a long velveteen skirt covering high leather boots. In the sash, she had her prized weapon, a jewel-hilted khukri, a broad-bladed dagger that had been a gift from her mother. More, it was a Fahrenheit blade, with chemical additives in the scabbard that gave the steel an intense chemical heat when exposed to air, making it more destructive than a normal blade.

The blade was not all Adele had received from her Persian mother. A light veil wrapped her head and shoulders to protect her against the sun and wind. Unlike her brother’s red-cheeked visage that he got from their father, Emperor Constantine II, Adele had olive skin and the distinctive nose of the late empress. Her appearance was a subject of murmured derision among the northern-featured courtiers who dominated the imperial court in Alexandria.

“They’re very far away, Simon.” Adele put an arm around her brother’s shoulders. While two lone vampires posed little threat to a heavily armed Ptolemy, she still would have preferred her brother locked safely below.

Prince Simon looked disappointed. “Can I look at the vampires, Colonel Anhalt?”

“May I look at the vampires,” Princess Adele corrected with a light cuff to the boy’s shoulder.

Anhalt was perspiring in his tightly buttoned uniform. “Unfortunately it’s grown too dark for observation, Prince Simon. And Khartoum has blocked our view.” He bowed stiffly to the eager prince, indicating a thirty-two-gun frigate maneuvering through the gathering clouds four miles off the port quarter. HMS Cape Town, Mandalay, and Giza were putting on or taking off sail, struggling to answer the signals to form the nightly cordon around the flagship.

“And you’ve seen vampires before,” Adele argued to Simon.

“So?” The boy craned his neck, straining to peer into the east through the billowing sails of Khartoum. “It’s probably the most interesting thing that will happen on this trip.”

Adele noticed a stony glare on Colonel Anhalt’s face as he looked in the direction of the vampires. It was unusually harsh and uncharacteristic of the man.

“Something, Colonel?” she asked, handing the spyglass back to him.

The Gurkha blinked in surprise, then flushed with embarrassment. He studied his polished boots. “No, Highness. Nothing.”

“Your expression said otherwise.” She stepped closer to him. “Feel free. Have I done something wrong?”

The colonel looked up suddenly, mouth agape. “No! I would never—never—”

“Easy, Colonel.” Adele smiled warmly and laid a hand on his forearm. “You merely looked angry. Is there something wrong?”

He wrestled with his thoughts for a moment, and then said, “Forgive my bluntness, Your Highness, but I think it unwise to send you so far north on tour.”

Adele nodded in consideration.

Anhalt continued. “And to send both heirs. I don’t know what the court was thinking. It’s irrational.”

“Politics aren’t always a matter of the most rational path. I am happy to be here, forging goodwill.” Adele, in fact, was thrilled to be away from Alexandria, on board this tossing ship. The alternative was to be at home, immersed in court tedium. When Lord Kelvin, the prime minister, had suggested the tour, Adele had leapt at the opportunity. But she couldn’t just make the argument that she enjoyed the adventure. There was a purpose, and it was one that was important to her aside from escape. “It’s imperative that the independent city-states on the frontier, such as Marseille, see the future empress of Equatoria. The connections I can make on this tour could be very helpful. There is a war coming.”

This was a fact both Adele and Colonel Anhalt knew well.Within a year, conflict would begin that would reshape the world in blood. Adele was no warmonger, but she knew the fight was necessary.

It had been 150 years since the vampires rose. The monsters had lurked quietly among humanity from the beginning of time, but one dark winter night in 1870 they came en masse intent on subjugating human society. It was not known why they chose that moment to attack. Perhaps a great leader had inspired them. Perhaps they sensed a particular weakness in human culture as it teetered between faith and science. And clearly, humans were not prepared; they were taken totally by surprise. Most people had even given up their beliefs in the existence of such creatures as vampires.

The vampires struck at the hearts of the Great Powers of Europe, America, and Asia. They decapitated governments and armies, and destroyed communication and transportation. Order was replaced by
horror, panic, and collapse. Within two years, the great industrial societies of the north were cadavers and the vampire clans divided the old world between themselves.

At that time, no one had understood the true nature of the vampires. Few enough did, even today. Adele, however, had the benefit of the dons of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Alexandria to teach her what was known, or thought was known, of the biology and culture of humanity’s greatest enemy. Myths about these creatures had grown up over the centuries—myths that were based on truths, but not the truth. Vampires were far more dangerous than the old legends could have imagined.

Most respected men of science stated with certainty that vampires were not the resurrected corpses of humans. The creatures were now classed as a parasitic species that thrived on human blood, and they had been categorized Homo nosferatii. Vampires and humans had disturbingly similar anatomies and physiologies, except that vampires had sharper teeth, retractable clawlike fingernails, and eyes acutely adapted to nocturnal hunting. Four of their five senses were magnificent; sight, smell, hearing, and taste were well beyond the level of a dog or cat. However, vampires had a stunted sense of touch, making it difficult for them to manipulate objects or use simple tools. Anatomy lessons conducted in the gaslit chambers beneath the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Alexandria had demonstrated that vampires seemed to feel no pain and rapidly healed from even the most horrific wounds.

It had never been demonstrated convincingly that vampires created new vampires by infecting humans. Scholars debated with great vigor how, or even if, vampires propagated. There were many theories, but the current dominant belief among the learned was that the creatures lived forever and that there were as many now as there had ever been or would ever be.

Vampires had never been seen to transform into bats or wolves, but they could travel on the wind by amazing control over their density, which was not yet fully understood. Specimens rarely lived long enough in captivity for satisfying experimentation. Sunlight did not turn them to dust, but they were pathologically susceptible to heat, which made them weak and lethargic. Hence, their tendency to come out at night and haunt northern climes.

Certainly none of this latest scientific knowledge had been available to the terrified victims of the Great Killing in 1870. After those attacks, hundreds of thousands of humans had fled south toward the equator, where they sought refuge in colonial possessions and fought savagely for land in a great frenzy of cultural collapse and coalition. Eventually the shell-shocked remnants of northern humanity blended with local people and set about trying to re-create new versions of their beloved societies based on steam and iron in the wilting tropical heat where vampires rarely trod.

Prince Simon scrambled to the rail again. “I think I see them!” He looked back at Colonel Anhalt with a pleading gaze.

The Gurkha offered the young prince his spyglass before turning his attention back to the princess, his hand resting on the hilt of his Fahrenheit saber, an officer’s weapon. “I still think it’s foolish to waste your time currying favor with the border states. There are only two sides to this war: human and vampire. What’s the purpose of diplomacy with those who will need us once the fighting starts?”

Adele sighed cheerfully. “You’re just argumentative. You know it isn’t that simple. We will need the independent states on the frontier as much as they need us. We will want their ports and facilities to move our armies into Europe. Isn’t it better to have an understanding beforehand?

No one expects a human state to side with the vampires, but the border states have self-interests too. And there will be opportunities for the Empire to expand as we roll back the vampires. Our world is about to change forever.”

Adele’s world was very different from the one her great-grandfather would’ve known, and which she had read about in history books. There were new Great Powers that were like the resurrected corpses of the world powers at the time of the Great Killing. Her own Equatorian Empire was built on the ruins of the British Empire. It stretched from India to South Africa, with its great capital set amid the dusty mosques of Alexandria. The American Republic was a republic in name only. It was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families from its center in the torrid quietude of Panama with firm control over most of Central America and theWest Indies, and growing hegemony over the southern region of the old United States.When the vampires attacked Japan, that emperor removed himself to Singapore and spread his power over the green temples of Malaya and much of Southeast Asia. The world over, a
dizzying array of semi-independent city-states struggled along the vampire frontiers, where warm summers made it difficult for the monsters to extend their power on a permanent basis.

Those who traced their heritage to the north remained galled by the vampire clans’ continuing domination of the old lands. They always talked of returning “home” and driving the vampires back into the darkness.

Now that moment was at hand.

The human states believed they were sufficiently reorganized to strike and had the proper technology to counter the swift, savage hordes of the vampire clans. A brutalWar of Reconquest would begin with the coming of spring in the north.

And Princess Adele, standing windswept on the deck of Ptolemy, was a linchpin in the strategy. It was her birthright to be part of the bloody struggle for the future of the world. She was the matrimonial prize that would unite the two greatest human states into an allied war machine.

Adele regarded the imposing figure of Colonel Anhalt and laughed at his worried scowl. “Thank you for your concern, but surely nothing will happen. We are far south of clan territory. Marseilles hasn’t been attacked in—what—fifteen years?”

“Seven, Highness.”

“Seven then. And the weather is quite warm. As our meteorologists predicted.”

Anhalt grunted in tepid acceptance of her logic.

“And I have my White Guard around me.” Adele smiled at the furrowed brow on the dark face before her. “You’ll keep me safe, won’t you, Colonel Anhalt?”

There was a sudden and surprising glisten of moisture in Anhalt’s hard eyes. “With my life, Your Highness.”

Adele replied, “Dear Anhalt. Where would I be without you?”

“I pray you never have to find out.”

“I as well.”

A nervous young naval officer stopped and bowed. “The admiral’s compliments, Your Highness. He says we will have chemical lights momentarily, and perhaps you should consider moving belowdecks.”

The princess replied with proper formality, “Thank you, Lieutenant Sayid.” And she noticed his surprise and pride that the imperial heir recalled his name. “I think that two vampires would hardly dare attack an imperial capital ship of one hundred guns.”

“One hundred and fifteen guns, Your Highness,” the boy responded stiffly.

“Indeed?” Adele smiled. “Impressive. But in any case, since vampiric vision is reputed to exceed a cat’s, surely they could easily perceive the better part of a regiment on deck.”

Lieutenant Sayid raised a knuckle to his brow in salute and immediately turned to pass orders to the bosun’s mates with a less nervous voice. Then he pulled appropriate signal flags and stuffed them into
hardened gutta-percha cylinders. The foot-long cylinders went into shining copper pneumatic tubes and were shot to the platforms high in the ship’s rigging.

Princess Adele watched as gangs of sailors clambered up the shrouds and ratlines toward the gigantic, gas-filled dirigible overhead. The dirigible was encased in a tightly crosshatched metal eggshell designed to protect it from enemy cannon fire. A row of three wooden masts extended laterally from each side and also along the top spine of the steel frame. Sails were set in concert with filling and evacuating parts of the multichambered dirigible, to propel and steer the massive airship. It was an intricate ballet, a wonder to watch.

Simon glanced at his big sister. “You want to be up there with them, don’t you?”

A startled Adele began, “Don’t be silly. . . .” Then she stopped and responded honestly, “Yes. And so do you.”

The boy laughed and nodded his head vigorously, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the fearless sailors. Adele dropped her arm around her brother’s shoulders and followed his gaze upward, feeling a powerful desire to climb the quivering lines alongside the sailors and scale the dizzying main topmast swaying high above the airship to feel the clouds on her face. She envied those simple men who shouted, laughed, and even sang in the wind-ripped tops with only the sureness of their grip separating them from a long but certain death.

On the blustery quarterdeck, Lieutenant Sayid interrupted her thoughts by touching the brim of his cap politely. “Your Highness, if you would please step to this spot between the carronades. I would be loath for you or the prince to be struck by an inconsiderate falling airman.”

Simon immediately planted himself and stared up at the swelling sails, forcing Adele to tow his rigid form against the rail. She began to say something to the young officer, but he was already engaged in another duty. With a heavy sigh, she leaned against the hardmahogany gunwale, content to monitor her restless brother in the gathering darkness.

A maid appeared from below with Adele’s heavy cape and a coat for Simon. The weather was too warm for a cloak, and Adele would have refused, but the maid was only following orders. If the poor girl returned below with the cloak still in her possession it would create a crisis that would envelop Adele’s entire staff. The maid confidently informed Adele that dinner was in exactly twenty minutes. Then, on her way below, the servant exchanged light, bubbling words with the handsome Lieutenant Sayid. Adele watched them, fascinated by the mix of hesitance and boldness; a young woman, a handsome officer. Such charming simplicity.

A sudden flash of moonlight reflected in the ostentatious diamond ring on Adele’s left hand and forced her to remember her wedding was barely a month away. It wasn’t so much a wedding as the starting gun for the war, the signal that Equatoria and the American Republic were one. All the linen, china, and warships would be bound to the same household. Adele thought of the beautiful gold locket that held a picture of her Intended, Senator Clark. War hero. Vampire killer. Scion of a great American house. Undeniably handsome. He had the open brashness of an American, which in another situation she might have found attractive.

Still, the young woman had generally refused to think about the Impending Event because the thought of a stranger’s weight on the other side of her bed caused many sleepless nights bathed in a frightened
sweat and with a shortness of breath. She couldn’t conceive of how her Intended’s war-roughened hands would feel on her skin, nor did she want to. Her spy inside the Office of Court Protocol had confided to her that the issue of sexual commerce was still under negotiation and, although it probably could not be eliminated completely, it would at least be kept to the minimum necessary to conceive an heir. The marriage was a political necessity and, therefore, Adele’s duty, but she doubted it would ever be more than that.

Adele reached up absently and through her heavy blouse damp with perspiration she felt the small stone talisman hanging around her neck. She wore it instead of the beautiful gold locket with a photo of her Intended, which was buried deep in her luggage. Her revered mentor, Mamoru, had given her the religious stone talisman for protection, and it gave her a sense of solemnity and calm. But Adele kept it hidden; no one could know that their princess wore such a superstitious item. Members of court already suspected that her youthful exuberance was a dreadful portent of her failure as empress. Surely they didn’t need to know that she had a penchant for the occult and miraculous. The “better” class of people in Equatoria put religion and magic in the same category. Churches and mosques and temples still existed, and services were still held, but those who attended were viewed as quaint at best and deranged at worst. Mamoru was a very spiritual man, and Adele found that part of him fascinating. He claimed that spirituality and naturalism, as much as steel and steam, would destroy the vampires. It was
only a matter of firm belief and correct practice.

Ptolemy began to glow with the quavering blurs of chemical bulbs. The other ships in the fleet appeared as vague yellow smudges in the night sky. Far beneath the ship the earth was hidden in a swallowing blackness that had fascinated and terrified Adele since they had left the civilizing lights of the Empire for the vampire frontier of southern France.

Prince Simon’s urgent voice interrupted Adele’s thoughts. “Do you think we’ll meet the Greyfriar out here?”

Adele shook her head with confusion. “What? The Greyfriar? What in the world are you talking about now?”

“The Greyfriar! He’s a hero who fights the vampires in the north.”

“Oh, yes. No, of course not. He’s not even real, Simon. Just a story to make people feel better.”

Simon narrowed his eyes at his sister’s ignorance. “He’s not a story. He’s real. I saw pictures in a book. He carries swords and guns and wears a mask. People say he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels. A hundred!” The young prince began to wave his arm around as if he had a sword, striking and slashing. “He’s a master fencer with all blades! His swords move so fast vampires can’t see them! Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Their heads are rolling before they even know the Greyfriar is there! Hah! Colonel Anhalt, you believe in the Greyfriar, don’t you?”

The soldier said over his shoulder with mock solemnity, “Indeed I do, Your Highness. I heard he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels too.”

“You see, Adele! I told you!”

Adele replied, “Simon, be still.”

“Why can’t we meet him? I’ll bet if we told him we were coming, he’d meet us. We’re the royal family of Equatoria.”

“We can’t see him because he’s not real! Now stand still and mind me!”

Simon huffed. “Well, then, will they let me command the ship?”

No, of course not,” Adele snapped irritably. Then she blinked and said more softly, “Not now. Perhaps tomorrow when it’s light.”

Adele wanted to nurture Simon’s youthful curiosity and excitement, not stifle it. His enthusiasm was important. The Empire needed men like Simon, brazen and curious. Currently at court, to her dismay, there already were far too many of the venal type of man he would become if the palace drudges got their talons on him.

“Why not?” Simon wandered from her side, intent on exploring the ship’s wheel, where blazingly bright copper pneumatic tubes gathered to form something like a Baroque organ. Prince Simon was due to become an officer in the Imperial Navy, and this idea excited him.

Colonel Anhalt coughed commandingly at the young prince as small hands played over the pneumo tubes.

Adele darted from the rail and grabbed her brother’s arm. “Simon, don’t get in the way!”

“I’m not going to hurt anything!” the boy retorted.

They were interrupted by the clack of a pneumo arriving from the tops.

With his back straight, Colonel Anhalt said to Simon, “Would Your Highness care to retrieve that signal from the chief of the top mizzenmast?”
With a yelp of joy, Simon lifted a round copper flap, and a rubber cylinder dropped out into his hand along with a splash of dark liquid. “Ew. What’s this?” He lifted his stained fingers into the yellow light.

Oil or grease, Adele thought with mild exasperation, automatically reaching into her pocket for a handkerchief. Anhalt stared at Simon’s hand with furrowed brows. He pulled the pneumo cylinder from the boy’s grasp and sniffed it.

“Blood,” the rough soldier murmured. Abruptly his stern visage turned on a horrified Princess Adele. His voice was firm and demanding. “Your Highness, take your brother below, if you please.”

Adele put one hand instinctively on the hilt of her dagger and with the other tugged Simon toward the main hatch as Colonel Anhalt gazed up at the vast dirigible one hundred feet over his head as if trying to see through it to the invisible topmasts above. Several naval officers on the quarterdeck stopped chatting among themselves and watched with growing interest.

Suddenly the airship lurched. Adele grabbed a pneumatic tube for support and pulled her brother back to his feet. In the rigging high above, she saw a figure tumble sickeningly, flipping this way and that,
unable to grasp a safe hold, until he shot past the deck into the black atmosphere below the ship. Before Adele could understand that sudden tragedy, another man fell and then another. Then she saw strange shadowy things moving with unnatural agility down through the lines, pulling hand over hand toward the deck.

Two dark cadaverous figures settled to the deck amidships with no sound and lifted their bloodstained faces into the light. Adele saw true savagery for the first time. These vampires were not stories or frightening figures in the distance; they were real, covered in blood that glistened in the lamplight. She clutched her brother close.

Sailors stared at the horrific intruders. A squad of redjackets raised their rifles and opened an erratic fire. One vampire was blown off his feet. The other streaked forward, a blur in the half-light, and two soldiers screamed. The wounded vampire then bounded to his feet and also rushed into the fight. It was a short, bloody affair.

Two other vampires dropped onto the quarterdeck, hissing like cats, only yards from Adele and Simon. One leapt at Simon, too fast for Adele to scream or react.

The vampire’s head exploded and the body tumbled.

Anhalt appeared at Adele’s side with a smoking revolver extended and Fahrenheit saber in hand. “Get below! Quickly!” He fired twice, hitting the second vampire in the head, and it dropped palsied to the deck.

“Form square!” Anhalt bellowed over the staccato gunfire erupting across the deck. “Fix bayonets! Up and out! Up and out!” Soldiers scrambled for the quarterdeck and gathered into a ragged square around the main hatch. The men fumbled with bayonets and tried to work their rifles as they’d been drilled, each trooper alternating his aim out or up to cover both ground and air. Some young faces were blank, others stained with horror and blood.

Adele sent her brother down into the companionway. She saw the rigging over her head was full of vampires, perhaps a hundred of them squirming and crawling, like a dead tree full of caterpillars. Then the two royals were below, where soldiers and sailors raced frantically through the corridors. Officers shouted orders and counterorders that were lost in the din of tramping feet. Anhalt dropped quickly through the hatchway and detailed five soldiers to accompany Adele and Simon into the bowels of the ship.

They went down and down, past the acrid-smelling chemical room, into the reeking orlop deck. They were taken to a small dark chamber, fore or aft Adele could no longer say, inhabited by goats, pigs, and crates of chickens.

“You’ll be safe here, Your Highness.” A soldier shoved the royal siblings into the manger, then slammed the door shut.

For a long time, neither Adele nor Simon spoke in the blackness. She hugged her brother, noticing that he was shivering, his unblinking eyes staring at a small goat that stood in the straw nearby. They strained to hear traces of the battle, hoping for hints of victory. Surely, the finest troops of the Equatorian Empire could defeat vampire raiders. The vampires would flee like vermin once they realized that this was not a lazy merchant vessel that had strayed too far north.

The room shuddered and made a heart-sickening lurch to starboard. Simon screeched and squeezed Adele as they tumbled across the manger. Trying to cushion Simon’s body, she hit the bulkhead amid a pile of chicken crates. Adele lifted a crate off her brother and brought him closer.

After several frightening minutes in the dark, the door flew open and Colonel Anhalt appeared with a horrid gash marring his dark face, his tunic torn and drenched in blood. He carried a trooper’s carbine and his saber, smoking with boiling blood. “Highness, quickly if you please. The ship is going down.”

Adele climbed to her feet. “Lifeboats?”

“No.” Anhalt shepherded the royal pair from the room. “Too unsafe.” Airship lifeboats were small gondolas attached to chemically inflated balloons; easy prey to vampires. Three soldiers moved ahead and four fell in behind. As the group climbed to the gun deck the chemical lighting went out, plunging the ship into pitch black. The hallway was listing at a rough angle, and footing was treacherous. Ahead, sailors were filling a room with mattresses and rolled hammocks. Anhalt indicated for Adele and Simon to go inside. “Stay here, Your Highness. And don’t worry.”

Adele pushed Simon to the floor, where he stayed compliantly. Sliding her hand off her brother’s stiff shoulder, she moved back to her trusted Gurkha colonel and whispered, “What’s our situation?”

Anhalt hesitated, but after staring into the steady eyes of the young woman he admired, and again realizing why he admired her, he said, “The vampires have destroyed most of the sails and damaged the dirigible. And we can no longer stay aloft. The White Guard is losing the deck.”

“How is this possible?” she asked, incredulous. “Raiders don’t—”

“These aren’t raiders, Your Highness. This is a full-scale attack by clan packs. They mean to destroy this ship. Perhaps the entire convoy.”

“That’s incredible! Surely we have the firepower to stop them.”

“I hope so. Vampires are desperately hard to kill. The monsters do not know they are injured until they are in pieces. Even with a Fahrenheit blade, you have to destroy a vital organ or sever the head.”

“How many are there?”
He shook his head and hefted his red saber without outward emotion. “Fewer now.”

“How many men have we lost?”

“Many,” Anhalt answered, and turned to leave.

Adele noticed the bloody footprints left by the colonel and his four White Guardsmen, and anger raced through her. The door closed and she knelt beside Simon, dragging a mattress over them. She sang softly to her brother, a lullaby she used to sing to him when he was a baby. They waited.

Adele heard a strange sound mixed with her own voice.

But there was so much noise enveloping the ship that at first Adele dismissed the sound as just part of the battle. Then it came again from just by her ear. It was coming from the other side of the bulkhead. She strained to hear. Men running? The creaking of stressed timber? Rats scurrying for safety? There was something about it that didn’t seem to fit any of those.

“What is that noise?” asked Simon in a small voice.

“Nothing,” Adele responded. “It’s nothing.” But the anxiety inside her wouldn’t go away. She shifted and eased Simon away from the wall. From within her cape emerged her Fahrenheit khukri dagger. The glow from the blade gave her some small comfort, but couldn’t stop the wild pounding of her heart.

Then the wall started to break apart.

CHAPTER 2

ADELE AND SIMON were showered with splinters as a hole was punched in the wall and a thin object snaked through. Something sharp dug into the young woman’s side. There was a horrible hissing noise, almost one of pain as it grabbed her. Arching back with a cry, Adele instinctively slashed at what held her. Her blade came into contact with something long and bony. An arm!

Simon was shouting. The pale arm of another vampire had reached through another hole and was dragging him toward the bulkhead.

“No!” Adele grabbed Simon and stabbed the arm holding him. There was no satisfying screech of pain from behind the wall, only the smoldering stench of burning flesh from the khukri’s chemical, which
would continue to burn for some time.

A skeletal hand slapped the dagger from Adele’s trembling fingers, sending it skittering across the floor. Simon was yanked away from her, and he crashed against the splintering bulkhead. Claws tore at the wood, widening the hole behind Simon.

Adele staggered to her feet and tore through debris for another weapon. Without one, she and Simon would be lost. Her hand landed on something metal, slender, and over two feet long; it was a marlin-
spike. She spun it around and jabbed the closest vampire arm. The small grunt that echoed gave her hope that she could hurt them.

“Adele!” Simon shouted in a panic as he struggled to keep himself from being pulled through the ever-widening hole. The vampire on the other side didn’t seem to care that he didn’t quite fit. It was desperate to have him.

Adele struck again at the hand gripping Simon’s shoulder. “Hold on, Simon!” There was less than an inch of space between her brother and her target, but the steel tooth hit its mark and plunged through the thin wrist. The claw released Simon, and the boy scrambled around his sister.

Adele held onto the spike like she had gaffed a thrashing fish. The hand twisted unnaturally and grasped the tool, ripping itself free of the spike and tearing its own wrist to shreds before pulling its arm back through the wall to safety.

Glancing wildly about for the direction of the next attack, the royal siblings backed away, though there was little space for them to go.

Then a wide portion of the weakened bulkhead close to the deck shattered in a cloud of dust and wood splinters. Through the haze of smoke and dust Adele was looking at the female vampire face that she had seen through the spyglass while on deck earlier. Now there was nothing to stop the vampire from coming in.

Adele dragged Simon with her as she retreated. He was softly crying against her. She could feel her brother’s fear mixing with her own. But there was no time for comforting words, because the face of death appeared in the hole, head and shoulders visible as a long bony arm clawed for purchase.

Determined to protect her brother, Adele reared back with the spike and stabbed again. The spike sank through ribs and flesh and embedded deep into the wood, pinning the female to the deck. The creature bared her teeth and hissed, thrashing in anger, but she couldn’t free herself.

The ship shuddered and threw Adele and Simon to the deck. Their stomachs lurched as the big vessel dropped sharply. Everything in the cabin started a slow slide. Adele grabbed a mattress and tried to use it to shield them.

“We’re going down!”

~~~

HMS Ptolemy hit the ground.

The impact tore Adele and Simon from under the mattress, throwing them into the air and slamming them against bulkheads. Adele tumbled for what seemed hours. Her world was noise and pain. She no longer knew up or down.

When everything finally stopped, Adele lay still in the flickering dark and choked, “Simon! Simon! Are you all right?” There was no answer. She heard nothing—no screaming, shooting, or explosions.

Clawing at the mattresses and rolled hammocks around her, she struggled to stand but was unsure how or where to put her feet. She could smell smoke; the ship was on fire. They had to get out.

Adele saw a small leg sticking up awkwardly into the air. The frantic girl scrambled to it and grabbed the ankle. Tearing at the wreckage, she reached down, feeling along her brother’s torso, and gathered

the front of his robe. With all her strength, she pulled Simon up out of the maw. She stared at his face; his eyes were open.

“Are we dead?” he asked her, coughing against the smoke and dust.

Adele pressed her face against his heaving chest. “No. We’re fine. We made it. Now we just wait for another ship to come and pick us up.” It was a pale attempt to reassure him, and her eyes darted around them. But no frightening faces stared back at her.

Together, the imperial siblings took unsteady bouncing steps across the jumbled mattresses to the door of the cabin. A glint of light caught Adele’s eye, and she saw her dagger lying amidst the debris, the chemically heated blade now cooled into a normal weapon. She snatched it up with a small yelp of triumph and slipped it back into the scabbard at her belt to be charged once more. Adele’s shoulder and legs felt hot, but she didn’t pause to look for injuries. Better not to know for now. They kicked wreckage away from the door, which she then wrenched open. The corridor outside was a world of debris. Wooden planks and metal rods, barrels, and broken beams created a jagged landscape. Redjackets who had been standing guard outside the door were trapped in the chaos. All were dead. Adele shielded Simon’s eyes.

As quickly as they could, the two made their way from the remnants of the cabins into the open gun deck. Massive iron cannons on their huge wooden carriages, each weighing several tons, had broken loose and were scattered like toys or carelessly thrown pieces of driftwood. Sailors stumbled through the wreckage, some helping comrades who were trapped or injured. The hot dusty air was filled with muted moans of pain and anguish, and the smell of smoke and blood.

Adele saw the night sky above through a long fissure in the ship’s bulkhead. “Up there,” she told Simon. “Let’s climb.” She helped the boy clamber his way up the tilted deck. They grabbed whatever handholds they could find. Wreckage shifted suddenly, threatening to throw them down, but they finally reached the jagged hole and emerged onto the sloping hull of the overturned hulk.

Taking in great breaths of fresh air, Adele turned to her silent brother. “Are you hurt?” She touched his limbs and head. She wanted him to talk. She wanted him to react.

The young prince flexed his elbows and knees, then shook his head. “No. Everything works.”

“Me too.” Adele laughed and kissed the top of her brother’s head. “We’ll be okay.”

The gem of the imperial fleet had smashed through a Provençal forest, leaving behind a wasteland of uprooted trees. The airship was heeled over on her starboard side with the dirigible and its metal shell

shredded. Masts were snapped and scattered across the great mounds of earth the crashed ship had gouged up. Men crawled out of gashes across the length of the hull and wandered over the vast beached wooden whale. Adele helped several of them while speaking calmly and encouraging them as best she could. It was her duty in a crisis. Men also moved around on the ground. She saw surviving White Guardsmen among them and searched unsuccessfully for Colonel Anhalt and members of her household staff. She prayed that Colonel Anhalt was still alive.

Adele turned her gaze up to the cloud-filled sky, searching for the glows of the other ships in the fleet. She thought she saw a faint yellow blur, but couldn’t be sure. Then she noticed tiny, wavering shapes flitting over the face of the grey clouds.

How was this possible? It was even warmer on the ground. Why were they still coming? What was driving them?

Adele tried to push Simon back inside the ship’s hull as a vampire landed near her. The creature seized Adele’s arm, but immediately released her with a screaming hiss. He stared intently at the young woman with his head bobbing like an animal. The vampire wore a mixture of military uniforms, including a general’s jacket replete with tarnished medals and badges of honor. But the weird uniform meant nothing; vampires wore what clothes they could loot from cadavers or wrecked homes. He continued to hiss in that language that no human had ever penetrated. Adele realized, without understanding how, that the thing was talking about her. She couldn’t distinguish specifics in the

horrid language, but she suddenly perceived that this entire attack was about her. The vampires were searching for her.

Even more incredibly, this vampire “general” was afraid to approach her. Adele could sense his fear, and she used it. She came forward aggressively, and the thing shuffled back, brandishing his claws. Then Adele heard a short but recognizable grunt from behind. She whirled to see another vampire wrapping his pale, bony arms around her shell-shocked young brother. She lurched toward them as the thing leapt from the ship’s hull with Simon in his grasp. Adele choked a scream as she watched them plummet to the ground. The vampire landed hard on his feet and carried Simon off through the high grass into the dark forest.

Adele climbed down the airship’s ruptured hull. She ignored the vampire general as he continued to hover threateningly. She missed holds and slipped several times, but didn’t panic. The hard-minded

princess didn’t notice her bloody hands as she dropped to the ground and sprinted after Simon, racing headlong past dazed soldiers and sailors who were trying to fight the descending vampires. Pausing only long enough to wrest a saber from a dead trooper, she plunged into the forest, heedless of branches and thorns that scratched her face and body. Her breath tore from her throat and her heart pounded.

The princess came to a stop in a grassy clearing. On the far side of he glade stood a female vampire dressed in black knee breeches and black silk stockings with no shoes, bare-breasted under a dark swallow-tail coat with gold ribbons festooning the shoulders. The female was tall and statuesque, but pale and blue-eyed, like all of her kind, and wore her ebony black hair in a braid that hung long down her back. Simon lay at her feet with his abductor kneeling nearby.

The tall female hissed and pointed with her well-formed hands. Her clawlike nails, which Adele knew vampires could deploy like a cat’s, were retracted to display her lack of fear. The female smiled and said with harsh sibilance, “Princess Adele.”

Adele was shocked to hear a vampire speak English, particularly her own name. She stared at this vile parasite, so much like a beautiful woman.

Then she heard human voices, and two of her White Guardsmen ran into the clearing beside her. The vampire who had abducted Simon was already on the attack. Both soldiers fired, and his torso exploded.

The tall female vampire with the long black braid snarled and moved. The dark creature seemed to appear in front of the two soldiers as they frantically worked their rifle bolts. The two men disintegrated into a shower of viscera and bone without another shot or sound. The female paused to lick the hot blood off her hands.

Adele heard a sound just over her left shoulder and wheeled, catching the image of a pale figure with no splash of soldier’s red or sailor’s white. She cut through the target, feeling a brief tug on the saber

blade, and completed the spin to face the tall female vampire with the saber already back to attack position. A vampire’s head rolled on the ground; the body made a slight sighing noise as it slumped to the dirt behind her.

The princess felt neither exhilaration nor disgust—only duty, and the weight of the sword in her hands. She was naturally aggressive, bursting with relentlessness unexpected in a small girl, which had

always served as an advantage. But she had never mastered defensive skills, earning her many a thumping from her tutor during fencing matches.

She charged the tall female vampire, three strokes already mapped in her mind. In the fleetest part of her brain she saw the female moving at the same time.

Adele looked up from the dirt. Her hands were flat on the ground. The saber was gone. Standing over her, the female vampire inspected a raw stomach wound and a slash in her brocade coat.

The female said, “You struck me. No human has struck me in a hundred years.” The creature was impassive, showing neither anger nor desire for retribution. Still, she eyed Adele curiously.

“Please,” Adele breathed, “take me if you wish. But release my brother. He’s just a boy.”

“We will take you.” The female strolled away from Adele and continued observing her wound with the minor annoyance of someone who has lost a button from her coat. “But he’s not just a boy. He is the heir when you’re gone.” She raised her head and emitted a piercing cry like the screech of a rusted cemetery gate, a scream that seemed to slice across the countryside.

A male vampire slid into view between trees and reached for Simon. Then the creature’s head suddenly parted from his shoulders.

A booted foot shoved the decapitated carcass into the dirt.

A man stood over Simon. He was tall and thin, and his face was covered by a head wrap similar to that worn by the high desert Bedouins. Over his eyes he wore smoked, dark glasses. His clothing was dark grey, almost black, a short military-style jacket and cavalry pants with a red stripe, and knee-high, black riding boots. Over it all he wore a long cloak with a hood thrown back. He had a gun belt with two holstered pistols. In his left hand was a basket-hilted longsword; in his right was a well-blooded scimitar.

The man bounded toward the tall female vampire. “Take the boy and run!”

Adele realized the mysterious swordsman was shouting at her. She scrambled to her feet and ran to her prone brother, already hearing the ringing of steel against claws. The stranger in grey seemed eerily

familiar. Inexplicably, she was afraid for him and afraid of him at the same time.

Adele gathered Simon in her arms and ran. A group of vampires dropped to the ground in front of her, but they were staring beyond her to the fight. As she stumbled past, two of them recovered their senses and flashed over to block her. Their movements were no longer blurs to her. Adele could see their actions with a clarity and purity that surprised her.

She had no purpose other than to protect Simon. Holding him awkwardly with one arm, she landed a staggering blow on the jaw of one vampire. She then drove curled fingers into the face of another. The

princess blocked a swipe, locked the arm, and drove a foot into the vampire’s knee. It would’ve been devastating against a human, but she instantly realized that she’d made a mistake, because the vampire

showed no pain. The thing seized Adele’s neck, but instantly yanked his hand back with a screech.

Clawed hands surrounded Adele and wrenched Simon from her grasp. He was lifted into the air. The boy screamed. The vampire reared back and threw Simon with all its horrible strength. The boy’s little

form flew through the air as if shot from a cannon and smashed sickeningly against a tree.

Adele’s legs nearly gave out as she stared at the sight of her little brother lying motionless. The seemingly endless moments they had shared flashed in her brain, crowding out any conscious thought. All Simon had been, all he could have been, come to this? This was his end? A lifeless body in a forest in France. She started to move toward her brother, but slavering vampires crowded her way, reaching out, slapping sharply at her but hardly daring to touch her.

The swordsman drove his scimitar down through the tall female’s shoulder. The force of the blow staggered her to her knees. He left the scimitar embedded in the vampire as he wheeled toward Adele. Three vampires moved to intercept the charging swordsman. Without breaking stride, he pulled a pistol with his free hand, aimed, and fired. One vampire spun from the impact and collapsed. The swordsman then shot a small female in the stomach and battered the other creature with the basket hilt of the longsword, knocking him onto his back. His foot pressed against the supine vampire’s throat, he plunged the sword into his heart and then fired a shot into the head of the wounded small female, who was rising to her feet.

A clawed hand raked the swordsman’s shoulder, tearing his cloak. He blocked the next swipe, kicking the attacker away. He aimed for a debilitating head shot, but he sensed something behind him and twisted to dodge a savage blow from the tall commanding female that would have torn off his head.

“You will die,” the female told him, with one arm hanging limp.

He wasted no words but drove the palm of his hand flat against the female’s bare chest, sending her airborne back toward the treeline. Midway she changed her density and hit the trunk of a tree with no

more than a subtle bounce. Righting herself, she stepped to the ground.

The swordsman was already running toward the princess. He swung his blade and severed the top of a vampire’s skull. With one hand he reached down to pluck a Guardsman’s saber from a motionless body at his feet and flung it end over end toward the tall female. The blade plunged into the female’s chest and into the tree behind her. The hilt of the vibrating blade stuck in her ribs. She screamed and clawed at it in a rage.

The swordsman grabbed Princess Adele roughly by the arm and dragged her into the dank forest.

CHAPTER 3

ADELE STUMBLED ALONGSIDE her rescuer.

“This way,” he commanded.

“Simon . . .” Adele gasped. “Go back . . . my brother.”

“Impossible. He is lost.”

Her face immediately locked in an expression of horror and anguish.

“I’m sorry, Princess. I must keep you safe.”

Tears grew in Adele’s eyes, though her words were angry and sharp. “Why won’t you help him? I don’t care about me!”

“You are next in line. Your brother is most likely already—”

“Don’t you dare say it!” Adele stopped running, forcing the swordsman to turn back to her. The top of her auburn head barely came to his chin, but her eyes snapped defiance. “He could be alive!”

“They want you.”

“I demand we go back for him.”

“No.”

“My father will hear of this!”

He nodded without great interest. “We must go. Quickly. They’re coming.”

Adele took an involuntary breath of fear.

The swordsman stared at her, the glass lenses covering his eyes hard and cold. “Once we get you to safety, I will go back for your brother, if possible.” Then he added without conviction, “With any luck your troops will have rallied and repelled the attack.”

Adele squeezed her eyes shut and forced her emotions down. She needed to think clearly. She could hear the logic in his words; they echoed in her ears, especially what he wasn’t telling her. It was better Simon die than fall into vampire hands. The swordsman crackled with a compelling urgency, and she knew she was slowing him down in more ways than one.

“Please, Princess, no more discussion.”

She gathered her skirts again. “I’m ready.”

The swordsman turned and was off, sprinting, practically flying over rocks and mossy, fallen trees.

~~~

A squad of determined White Guardmen broke through the trees in ragged formation. Colonel Anhalt was in the lead, a pistol and saber at the ready and two more pistols jammed in his waistband. The sturdy Gurkha had one objective: protect the royal family.

Laid out before him was a sight from his deepest nightmares. A clutch of vampires surrounded the tiny body of Prince Simon with their claws raised and teeth bared. Anhalt fired with a retort that silenced the triumphant cackle of the vampires. The head of the creature closest to the unconscious prince snapped back with a bullet lodged in his forehead, and he slammed to the ground. Anhalt shouted and ran toward his objective. He didn’t know if his men were still behind him or not.

The pistol fired again, accurate to a fault, shattering the jaw of another vampire near the boy. Anhalt blasted the temple of a third vampire as he reached the prince, sweeping his Fahrenheit saber to knock

aside a lifted claw coming from his right. A second later the creature was on the ground and two White Guardsmen were running it through with bayonets.

“Form square! Protect the prince! Or die trying!” Anhalt shouted with his feet firmly planted on either side of motionless Simon. His men quickly complied. There weren’t nearly enough soldiers to form a proper barrier, but it didn’t stop them from creating the barest of defense around the remaining heir to Equatoria.

More vampires descended from above, and the White Guardsmen lifted their rifles to the sky. Every man on the line fired, and the air filled with white smoke and blood. The front wave of monsters fell. Colonel Anhalt knelt low over his charge. When the next surge came from the vampires it too was a gruesome slaughter.

For the first time, the creatures faltered. But the male creature festooned like a general screeched in rage behind his brethren, and they came again swiftly and without mercy.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Anhalt shouted.

A cacophony of shrieking, hissing, and rifle discharge deafened the colonel. Then suddenly the vampires were among them. Bayonets slashed flesh to the bone; pistols shattered skulls to pulp. The fighting and dying all screamed.

Anhalt moved not an inch from his position and hacked relentlessly with his saber. It was not elegant or superb to see, merely effectual and lethal. A vampire came in low under his blade and slashed him on the left leg. Anhalt actually felt it strike bone. He grunted, and the whites of his eyes flashed at the agony, but he twisted his saber and drove down deep into the back of the vampire’s neck, twisting and severing the spinal column. It slumped at his feet, tendrils of smoke rising from its mutilated neck.

Anhalt raised his head, searching for another target, but saw instead the vampires holding back. There were only a few of them now. All bloodied, with gaping wounds, some without arms or legs. They staggered and then took to the air. The Gurkha thought they were gaining altitude for another run at his ragtag squad, but instead they veered off toward the north.

It was over.

Anhalt regarded his men. Most were dead, but seven were still standing, soaking in blood and gore.

“Well done,” he rasped as he knelt to find whether they had been defending a dead boy or a live one.

The youngster stirred. His face was covered in blood. “Where’s Adele?”

“Stay still, Your Highness,” the soldier answered, laying a calming hand on the boy’s small shoulder. The vampires were gone, and Anhalt could only assume they had what they wanted: the heir to the Empire. He feared the worst for the princess, but could not tell her brother yet.

“I want to see her,” Simon gurgled.

“You can’t.”

“Where’s our ship?”

“Don’t worry about the ship.” The colonel didn’t know where the remainder of the fleet was or when they might come. Or if they would come at all. The frigates could well have been destroyed in the attack.

Anhalt knew the boy was gravely injured, but his cursory examination of the prince didn’t show any mortal wounds. Still Simon had to receive medical attention soon. The ship’s surgeon was lost, and none of his aides had been found in the hours since the crash. Marseilles was not far; reachable by foot. Although Anhalt was loath to strike out overland with so many vampires abroad, it was an even greater danger to stay where they were. The prince’s life was even more crucial now, particularly if the princess was lost to them.

His princess lost. That fine young spirited woman. That magnificent heir to the Empire. Gone. Taken by those animals. Subjected to such horrors and degradations. All because of Anhalt’s failure. He smelled the blood soaked into his tunic and felt shame in his gut. He had to bite his lip to prevent utter despair from welling. The gash across his face burned. He touched the butt of his revolver.

The colonel quickly shoved down the dishonor. Plenty of time for that later. He had to see through his duty to Prince Simon. He collected a squad of ambulatory men. There were only twelve, but that would have to serve. He couldn’t ignore the searing pain in his leg where the vampire had slashed him. He bound the wound as best he could, and it would have to do until the young prince was safe. The colonel gently gathered up the boy in his own red-jacketed arms and started off to the west.

~~~

It was hours later when Adele and the swordsman came to the base of a small cliff. Adele couldn’t speak; she only slumped beside the kneeling swordsman with loud, painful gasping. Her quivering fingers gripped his cloak, as much for comfort as for physical support. His back stiffened as she dropped next to him. With eyes tearing in the harsh wind, she could barely see the outline of a tiny hovel embedded in the face of the cliff. Immediately she tried to stand. The swordsman grabbed her arm and yanked her down. Too fatigued to respond, her breath hissed through her lips with harsh gasps.

Why was he so unaffected? She could only wonder, and wish she were a man instead of a feeble girl as she lay muffled by her exhaustion. Staring at him through burning eyes, she wondered again why he

seemed so familiar.

Then it came to her in a rush. He was the Greyfriar. Like everyone, she’d seen a picture of this man: a blurry photograph of this grey-clad figure standing over vampire cadavers on a cobblestone street. The photo had been smuggled out of the north as proof of rumors that there was an active human resistance inside clan Europe. The Greyfriar’s exploits were legendary, but as Adele told Simon, his exploits were so legendary she believed him mythical, the photograph merely fabricated to create hope. The stories, she felt, were born of more than a century of subjugation and frustration, a resurfacing of the legends like Rostam, King Arthur, or Robin Hood. It was an understandable desire for a hero to

deliver humanity from horror.

Then he was in her ear, a slow low voice as if it were a mere spirit on the back of a wind.

“I will make sure the way is clear. Stay here.”

Adele could do nothing but comply.

He melted away before her eyes, dissolving into the predawn twilight that leaked across the European nightscape. She huddled and tried to hear his passage over her harsh breathing. It took effort, but soon her ragged gasps slowed into rhythmic deep breaths.

Several minutes went by, and the swordsman had not returned. The shadows became large patches of pitch that could hide an army. Adele slid her hand to her scabbard, where her fingers clenched the hilt of her jeweled dagger as she pulled it to her chest for protection. She didn’t dare draw it because the glow of the blade might give away her position.

The woods were silent around her. Nothing stirred, not even insects or creatures of the night. Her heart thudded harder against her breastbone, and she struggled to still it. Could the vampires have gotten here before them? Their path had been erratic. No one should have been able to predict or follow their route.

To her left the thicket shifted with a hiss. She spun and her blade struck.

The long steel of a sword pressed her dagger aside. The swordsman eyed the girl, but said nothing and motioned for her.

“Sorry.” Adele laughed weakly and lowered her small luminous weapon, slipping it back into its sheath.

The cabin was nestled at the base of the cliff. It was small and sparse, but seemed a godsend. The swordsman opened the rough-hewn door, and they went inside quickly. It was hard to see through the murky gloom that permeated the room. Still, the swordsman moved through the house and its furnishings as if it were his own home.

Adele stumbled against a chair and took it as a sign. She flopped between its cold padded arms, watching the Greyfriar make their meager sanctuary secure. Before she knew it her eyes had closed. She awoke what seemed like seconds later. The cabin was suffused with pale sunlight. She tightened her grip on her dagger.

Her protector wordlessly offered her a meager meal of hardtack. She took it gratefully and choked it down, followed by a few swigs of water from a tin cup.

A nod of his head indicated clean linen and herbal antiseptic on the table. “For your wounds.”

Adele’s eyebrow rose when he just moved to stand at the window. No offer of assistance came, so she doctored her hands and various other scratches. Perhaps it was more prudent that he keep watch for their enemies.

From his place leaning against the far wall, the swordsman said, “Drink as much as you can while you can, Princess. Our flight took a lot out of you.”

“And you too.”

His forehead crinkled with what Adele could only perceive as humor. “I ate and drank while you slept. Refresh yourself now. We’ll leave soon.”

“Leave? Why? We’re hidden here.” She leaned back in her seat, taking another long draft of water. It had never tasted so good.

“The enemy can find you here,” the swordsman pointed out. “Flay is proficient at such things.”

“Who?”

“Flay led the vampires who attacked you. The tall female.”

“You know it by name?”

Greyfriar hesitated a moment, then nodded. “She is renowned. The most brutal warrior I have ever seen.”

“You sound as if you’re afraid of this Flay.”

“I am.”

That admission did little to comfort Adele. “Where will we go now? Back to the ship?”

“No. Toward the nearest human settlement.”

“How far will that thing follow us, this Flay? For how long?”

“As long as it takes. She won’t dare return to face her master without her prize.”

Adele gazed at her companion for the first time with real scrutiny. His face and eyes, mainly covered, revealed little. She relied more on his body movement to detect what little emotion she could.

His garb hid most of his details, save his height. He was a very tall man and thin, but made a dashing figure in his peculiar uniform. And though he tried to hide it, there was a noble way about him. Something only a princess would be able to see, despite the fact that he hunched his shoulders or stooped a bit lower when he walked. There remained poise and reserve and a touch of arrogance. Traits she knew too well.

Adele’s brain cast about through the various families of noble birth in an effort to place him. She leaned toward him and tried to look into his glasses again, desperate to see something familiar about him.

“You are the Greyfriar, aren’t you?”

He glanced quickly at her. “You’ve heard of me?”

“Of course. Everyone’s heard of the Greyfriar, although honestly I thought you were just a fable. You’re very famous back home in Equatoria.”

The swordsman considered her words. “Do they . . . do they make books about me?”

Adele laughed softly. “Oh well, yes, I believe so. You’re certainly the talk of the ladies in court. They’ll be so jealous of me.”

“These books . . . have you seen them?”

Adele replied, “Sorry, no. I don’t have time for popular reading. The life of a princess, you know. But believe me, you are a great hero to the free humans.”

“I see.” Greyfriar appeared to smile, although his features were draped, and Adele could hear the pleasure in his voice. But then his tone became sharper. “Your future husband is a great hero too.”

This jolted the princess with surprise. “My future husband? How do you know about him?”

“The coming marriage of the Equatorian heir to the greatest American warlord is common news. Even in the north. The vampires fear him, and your union.”

Adele felt the first pulse of pride she had ever taken in her Intended. “Well, he is a soldier of note, that’s true. It’s a rare man who takes the fight to the vampires.”

Greyfriar nodded and turned back to the window without another word. Had she offended him? Adele wondered suddenly. “Why do you dress like that, so mysteriously?”

The swordsman touched his swathed chin. “To hide myself from my enemies. And from those whom my enemies might exploit.”

She couldn’t fault that logic, but still she offered quietly, “There’s no one here but me. I would keep your secret.”

His shoulders bobbed with a bit of mirth as he turned toward her. “You are a hairsbreadth from being captured. It would be foolish to take such a risk.”

Her face fell, not only with disappointment but also with fear. “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

He added, “Perhaps someday when the world is not so harried, I may reveal my identity.”

Adele drew in a deep breath, but her voice did not crack. “I would like that very much. I owe you a great deal.”

Greyfriar said, “Flay’s attack was both flawless and uncommonly large. It’s been years since I’ve seen such a gathering. I’d wager she threw five packs into that meat grinder. All after a single prize—you—and she risked much to seize it. The weather was against her, but she attacked anyway. She drove her army where it shouldn’t have been. Her losses were great, and she still doesn’t have what she desires.” He seemed to smile again as he approached Adele to refill her cup.

“But how did you know about the attack?” the princess asked sharply.

“It’s my business to know.” He tugged gently at his mask to adjust it. “And I tried to prevent this disaster. I sent a warning to the Empire that Flay intended to attack your fleet. My message was lost or ignored.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you. I’m not blaming you.” Adele laid a hand on his. He was chilled. She could feel it even through his glove. It made her guilt even more acute.

He jerked his hand back a bit too abruptly and stepped away. “You have every right to question me. I am nothing but myth and hearsay. I wear a mask to hide my true self.”

Why did he wish not to be touched? she wondered in dismay. Was it merely because of her nobility? Was she wrong about his birth? Was he a common man?

Adele said, “My mentor told me once that only a fool would reveal himself to his enemies out of arrogance or for glory’s sake. I don’t see any of that in you. You want to help push the vermin back, not for accolades and riches, but because you want to see justice done.” She rose and stood beside him. “Don’t ever doubt that you are appreciated by all humanity.”

“Thank you. Now, we should go.”

Adele replied quickly, “I still think we should stay here. We’re hidden and the house has the mountain at its back. We can defend ourselves here.”

Greyfriar paused, studying his charge. “Princess, scent is a vampire’s tool. They can smell the blood of their victims from quite a distance. There is no way to mask it. Flay will have hunters on your trail. The only possible safety is to get you beyond her reach.”

Adele drew a deep breath and shook her head in apology. “Of course. You’re right. I’m just scared. But why should I be? I’m with the Greyfriar. My brother would be jealous. . . .” Her words trailed off as once again little Simon’s death became real. For a brief moment she had actually forgotten. But now that she had remembered, the pain was that much more acute.

“Princess, I will see you home. Trust me.”

Several seconds went by before Adele nodded with a pale smile. “My life is in your hands.”

Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

Clay and Susan Griffith are a married couple who have written and published together for more than a decade. Their credits include two novels for Bantam Doubleday Dell in the mid-1990s and another novel for Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 2002 plus numerous short stories published in many anthologies, some featuring noted genre characters like Kolchak the Night Stalker and The Phantom. They’ve also written scripts for television and published graphic novels. The authors have attended many cons over the years and are committed to doing every con they can for Vampire Empire. Visit them at clayandsusangriffith.blogspot.com.

Salute the Dark by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2010-10-26T12:10:00.000-05:00

“Salute the Dark… returns fans to the vibrant war-torn landscape of the Lowlands. Rich character development, political intrigue and layers of betrayal form a linguistic tapestry best enjoyed in the evening when the hum of insects outside adds depth to the kinden struggle on the written page.”
-RT Book Reviews, 4 stars (Compelling—Page-Turner)

“Fulfills the promise of the Apt series and brings its first part to an excellent conclusion, while starting new threads to be explored next. An A++ based on my three reads of the book so far and vaulting to the top of my 2010 fantasy novels.”
-Fantasy Book Critic

Also by
Adrian Tchaikovsky:

Shadows of the Apt 1
Empire in Black and Gold

Shadows of the Apt 2
Dragonfly Falling

Shadows of the Apt 3
Blood of the Mantis

Preview an excerpt from the book:

Salute the Dark

Shadows of the Apt 4

Adrian Tchaikovsky

GLOSSARY

People

STENWOLD MAKER—Beetle-kinden spymaster and statesman
CHEERWELL “CHE” MAKER—his niece
TISAMON—Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster
TYNISA—his half-breed daughter, Stenwold’s ward
ACHAEOS—Moth-kinden magician, Che’s lover
ATRYSSA—Tynisa’s mother and Tisamon’s former lover, deceased
THALRIC—renegade Wasp-kinden, former Rekef major
NERO—Fly-kinden artist, old friend of Stenwold
FELISE MIENN—Dragonfly-kinden duellist
TAKI—Solarnese Fly-kinden aviatrix

LINEO THADSPAR—Beetle-kinden Speaker for the Collegium Assembly
BALKUS—renegade Sarnesh Ant-kinden, Stenwold’s agent
SPERRA—Fly-kinden, Stenwold’s agent
DESTRACHIS—Spider-kinden doctor, companion of Felise Mienn
PAROPS—Tarkesh Ant-kinden, leader of the free Tarkesh
JONS ALLANBRIDGE—Beetle-kinden aviator
PLIUS—foreign Ant-kinden in Sarn, Stenwold’s agent

PRINCE MINOR SALME “SALMA” DIEN—Dragonfly nobleman, leader of the Landsarmy
PRIZED OF DRAGONS—Butterfly-kinden, Salma’s lover
PHALMES—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, former brigand, Salma’s lieutenant

TEORNIS OF THE ALDANRAEL—Spider-kinden Aristos and Lord-Martial
ODYSSA—Teornis’ chief agent in Solarno
CESTA—Assassin Bug-kinden killer in Solarno
SCOBRAAN—Soldier Beetle-kinden aviator in Solarno

LAETRIMAE—Mantis-kinden ghost from the Shadow Box
XARAEA—Moth-kinden intelligencer in Tharn
TEGREC—Wasp-kinden major and magician, governor of occupied Tharn
RAEKA—Wasp-kinden, Tegrec’s body-slave

KYMENE—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, leader of the Mynan resistance
CHYSES—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, Kymene’s lieutenant
HOKIAK—Scorpion-kinden black-marketeer in Myna
GRYLLIS—Spider-kinden, Hokiak’s business partner

ALVDAN II—Emperor of the Wasps
SEDA—his sister
MAXIN—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef
REINER—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef
BRUGAN—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef
ALKAN—Wasp-kinden general, Seventh Army
LATVOC—Wasp-kinden colonel, Rekef, Reiner’s aide
GAN—Wasp-kinden colonel, governor of Szar
ULTHER—Wasp-kinden colonel, former governor of Myna, deceased
AXRAD—Wasp-kinden lieutenant and aviator
UCTEBRI THE SARCAD—Mosquito-kinden slave and magician
GJEGEVEY—Woodlouse-kinden slave and advisor

DARIANDREPHOS (“DREPHOS”)—half-breed auxillian-colonel and master artificer
TOTHO—half-breed artificer in Drephos’ cadre
KASZAAT—Bee-kinden artificer, in Drephos’ cadre
BIG GREYV—Mole Cricket-kinden artificer, in Drephos’ cadre

Places

CAPITAS—the capital of the Empire
ASTA—Wasp staging post for the Lowlands Campaign
COLLEGIUM—Beetle-kinden city, home of the Great College
THE COMMONWEAL—Dragonfly-kinden state north of the Lowlands, partly occupied by the Empire
THE DARAKYON—forest, formerly a Mantis stronghold, now haunted
HELLERON—Beetle-kinden factory city, occupied
MYNA—Soldier Beetle city conquered by the Wasps
SARN—Ant-kinden city-state allied to Collegium
SOLARNO—Spider-ruled city on the Exalsee, occupied

SPIDERLANDS—Spider-kinden cities south of the Lowlands, believed rich and endless
SZAR—Bee-kinden city, conquered by the Wasps
TARK—Ant-kinden city-state, occupied
THARN—Moth-kinden hold, occupied
VEK—Ant-kinden city-state, recently at war with Collegium

Organizations and Things

THE ANCIENT LEAGUE—a Moth–Mantis alliance of Dorax, Nethyon and Etheryon
ASSEMBLY—the elected ruling body of Collegium, meeting in the Amphiophos
BUOYANT MAIDEN—Jons Allanbridge’s airship
CRYSTAL STANDARD, PATH OF JADE, SATIN TRAIL—Solarnese political parties
ESCA VOLENTI—Taki’s orthopter
GREAT COLLEGE in Collegium, the cultural heart of the Lowlands
LANDSARMY—force of refugees and irregulars led by Salma
MERCERS—Dragonfly-kinden order of knights errant
PROWESS FORUM—duelling venue in Collegium
REKEF—the Wasp Empire’s secret service
SHADOW BOX—an artefact holding the heart of the Darakyon
SKRYRES—the magician-leaders of the Moth-kinden
STARNEST—great Wasp airship used in the conquest of Solarno
WINGED FURIES—name for the Wasp Seventh Army

SUMMARY

Following his victory over the Sarnesh field army, General Malkan prepares to lead his army toward Sarn itself to destroy the military capability of the Lowlands. The alliance of powers that Stenwold brokered at Sarn is still gathering its strength, so it falls to Salma’s Landsarmy to hinder the Wasp advance while the Lowlanders prepare.

Over the winter the Wasps have added the Spider city of Solarno to their Empire, and also the Moth hold of Tharn. However, careful manipulation by the Moth Skryres and their agent Xaraea has ensured that Tegrec, the new governor of Tharn, is secretly sympathetic to their case, being a magician who has hidden his true nature from his kin.

Meanwhile the maverick artificer Drephos has been ordered to take his secret weapons to the city of Szar, whose Bee-kinden people are in open revolt after the death of their queen, whom the Empire was holding as hostage for their continued servitude. However, amongst Drephos’ cadre is Kaszaat, a former citizen of Szar, and the lover of Stenwold’s former student Totho.

The mission to recover the Shadow Box has failed after Tynisa, under the control of the Mosquito-kinden Uctebri, stabbed Achaeos, leaving him severely wounded. The box, meanwhile, has fallen into Uctebri’s hands, and he has promised the Wasp Emperor that he will use the artefact to make Alvdan immortal. However, at the same time, Uctebri plots with the Emperor’s sister to dethrone her brother and make her into an undying Empress.

ONE

Why do these things always come to plague us?

A fatuous thought for a man about to fight a war, but the war had not even begun and already Stenwold had seen too many people hurt—and hurt on his business too. The knot of horror he had felt when they had brought Sperra out had not gone away. And now this.

Achaeos this time. O poor Che, my poor Che, to have come home to this.

And not just Che.

“I am so very sorry,” Stenwold said softly. He tried to put a hand on Tynisa’s shoulder, but she flinched away from it and would not let him.

“It isn’t me you should be sorry for,” she said. He had never seen his ward like this—Tynisa had gone through life without fear, the face and grace of her Spider mother, the lethal skill of herMantis father and a Collegium citizen’s implacable self-confidence. Now she was standing at the door of the College infirmary, afraid to go in, yet unwilling to leave. The beds were not short of patients still recovering from injuries sustained in the Vekken siege. On one bed lay Achaeos, his eyes closed, grey skin gone so pale it was almost white. He had yet to wake up, yet to speak. The College physicians would not commit themselves on whether he ever would.

By his bed sat Che, holding the ailing Moth-kinden’s hand. The sight of her clearly tore into Tynisa with a raw pain, yet she could not take her eyes away. Her sword had put Achaeos where he was, though Stenwold had not needed her father’s protestations of magic to know that she could not have meant the man any harm. That itself was a tragedy, but Stenwold knew that it was the injury to Tynisa’s foster sister that cut deepest: the grief inflicted on Che, that marvel of innocence and foolishness, who would never again be quite the same.

Tynisa shuddered, and Stenwold as much as saw her think, I have now severed her from me for always.

“This war is not finished with its casualties,” Stenwold murmured. He was thinking about Sperra again, his thoughts returning and returning to the moment when the Sarnesh soldiers had brought out the little Fly-kinden’s tortured form. Sperra, who was walking now, even flying a little, but who would never forget what had been done to her. And by her allies! We do not even need the Wasps to maim us when we can harm ourselves.

“Tynisa . . .” he began.

“No,” she said, “I don’t care what you want, Sten. I can’t go out there again. I’m not safe now. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“Tisamon has explained to me what happened—”

“My father has simply invented something to make himself feel better.” She glared round at him. “Don’t tell me you believe it?”

“I believe that he truly believes it, and he knows more about such things than I.” Stenwold shrugged. “Tynisa, you’ve been to the shrine on Parosyal.”

“That was different. They drugged me, and I saw . . . visions, hallucinations.”

He stared down at his hands. “I used to think the way you do, but I’ve now seen so much. . . . There is more to life than just the things we can see. Achaeos would say the same, of course.”

“Much good it did him.”

“Tynisa . . . will you come with me to the council?”

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sten, but I can’t. I can’t trust myself anymore. You’ll have to find someone else.”

He nodded slowly. I can’t force her, for all that I need her. Perhaps Tisamon would have more luck in persuading her. He spared one more look for his niece, Che, and then turned to go.

So the ranks diminish, he reflected sadly, yet the Lowlands was readying itself for battle. Sarn and Collegium and the Ancient League were summoning their allies. Stenwold needed every agent he could get, and he was still short, but he could not make the numbers add up. Sperra was now lost to him, as was Achaeos, who could have proved so useful amongst his own people. Tynisa would not fight, and he had not even asked Che to help him. His resources were growing fewer even as the Wasp armies massed.

He arrived at the council chamber early. Today was another war council and people were still calling him War Master since the siege. He was expecting to see old Lineo Thadspar turn up, and a score or so of other Assemblers, each with their own schemes and advice. There would be Tisamon as well, standing at the back and saying nothing, with a look of disdain on his face . . . and probably the Spider, Teornis . . .

Even as he thought the name the man himself came striding into the chamber, rubbing his hands briskly. He had chosen to wear a bone and leather cuirass over a red silk robe, while a cap of chitin, adorned with the feathery fronds of moth antennae, made him look like some ancient warrior-mystic. Behind him came the diminutive form of the Fly-kinden pilot known as Taki, who had brought Che home from her birthplace of Solarno, fleeing in the face of yet another Wasp conquest.

“Master Maker,” the Spider said, “times move faster than we do, I’m afraid.”

“In what way?”

“I’ve had news that calls me home, as swiftly as I can make the journey. I’ve arranged for an airship to take me and my retinue to Seldis.”

“The Wasps?”

“Camped outside our borders again, but this time it doesn’t look as though the Mantis-kinden will do our dirty work for us.”

“You’ll fight, then? The Spider-kinden will fight?”

“Impossible to say.” Teornis smiled. “However, retinues and mercenaries are mustering at Seldis and Everis, and once they’re gathered there I can make use of them. What’s the use of my being a Lord-Martial if I can’t lord it? Meanwhile, there’s more business afoot at Mavralis on the Exalsee, which is why I’m taking Taki here with me. I fancy the Wasps could do with being jabbed in the rear.”

Stenwold nodded. “My reports seem to suggest that, with their occupation of Solarno, the Empire is becoming overextended.”

Behind Teornis’ smile, something slipped aside to reveal for a moment the genuine tension within him. “My friend, we had better hope so, because if they aren’t, then there’ll soon be a great deal of black and yellow all the way down the southern coast. It may all come down to the abilities of some Wasp clerk filing supply requisitions in Asta, Master Maker. As you know, wars are fought by soldiers but won by logistics.”

“And you’re happy to go with Teornis?” Stenwold asked Taki.

“Sieur Maker, remember I’ve served Spider-kinden all my life. I want to free my city, and the Spiders want my city free.”

“There is another travelling companion that I shall be taking from your side, Master Maker. I trust you will have no objections,” Teornis said.

Stenwold looked at him blankly. For some reason he thought, Tynisa?—perhaps because the girl so clearly wanted to go somewhere and find some purpose to take her away from her guilt.

Teornis’ smile twitched. “I believe Master Nero wishes a return to Solarno. I had not realized that the city had so exercised its . . . charms on him.”

With that, Stenwold could not help glancing down at Taki and thinking, at first, The old lecher, and then, I am in no position to judge!

“What use he’ll be, I don’t know,” Taki remarked. “I just hope he can keep up with me, is all. But, anyway, we’ve got him, so we’ll just have to make some use of him.”

The other members of the war council now were filing in and taking their places, so Stenwold clasped hands with Teornis and then with the Fly girl.

“Good fortune to you,” he said.

“Good fortune to all of us,” Taki corrected him.

~~~

His stance was perfect for his blade: crouched a little, knees bent and balanced to move him forward or back at the speed of his reflexes, not of this thoughts. His arm was not straight like the arrow of a rapier duellist’s stance, but crooked in so that the claw blade ran almost down the line of his forearm, looking deceptively passive but ready to lash out and draw back just like the killing arms of his people’s insect namesake. His off-hand was held out, pointing forward, spines flexing all down his arm to the elbow, ready to beat aside an attack and thus create a gap into which his claw would strike.

He looked down the crooked line of his arm and claw. He looked at her.

Her stance was different in almost every particular, yet identical in its perfect poise, in its patience. She stood with one leg forward and almost fully extended, the other bent beneath her; her back straight. The sword, with its long hilt gripped in both hands, she held low and almost vertical: her entire being and energy focused on its leading edge, its diamond point.

They had not moved, either of them, for what must have been ten minutes, barely even a blink.

He wore his arming jacket of course, dark green padded cloth with his gold brooch, the Weaponmaster pin, on the left breast. She had eschewed her armour, instead wearing the closest she could find to Dragonfly garb: loose clothes of Spider silk pulled in tight at the waist, the forearms, the calves. She wore shimmering turquoise and gold, with a black sash for a belt.

Tisamon and Felise Mienn watched each other narrowly and waited for the other’s move.

His soul was focused on the razor edge of her sword. They could only spar with real blades. To propose otherwise would be an insult to their skill.

Somewhere in the back of his mind was a memory of when they had fought each other on the streets of Collegium. She had thought him a Wasp agent, and for the first time in many years Tisamon had been truly fighting for his life in single combat.

For ten years previously he had made a name for himself in Helleron, hiring his blade to whoever could meet his fees. The money was nothing; the fights were all. He had thought that he was taking pride in his skills, displayed in all those brawls and formal duels, but now he discovered that he had been waiting to meet the one who could properly challenge him. In Collegium she had found him.

After they had fought, after she had stepped out of the fight so abruptly, she had left him so inflamed, so fiercely alive, that he had even spared Stenwold’s Spider traitress. In that moment it had not mattered, because only she signified—only this woman who had walked in and out of his world in those brief minutes, to scar it forever.
Somewhere deep inside, he was now out of balance, as though he had been struck, back then, and was still reeling. Seventeen years of penance he had endured, in Helleron and other places: penance for betraying his race by consorting with the Spider Atryssa; penance for trusting in her false heart; and, at the last, penance for mistrusting her, who had died while being true to him. And I loved her, and she did not betray me after all. It was the most jagged wound of them all that it had been he who abandoned her, in the end. How she would have hated me, had she lived.

His eyes were now fixed on Felise’s—her eyes that were almond shaped, and shifted from blue to green even as he watched and waited for her to move.
It has been so long. His kind bore some of their scars forever, but it had been so long. And I have broken the rules before. Felise’s face remained impassive. He could read nothing in it. He sensed no tension there, could foretell no gathering strike.

He had been dead, he realized, those seventeen years. Only Stenwold’s return and the discovery of Tynisa had awoken him to some kind of half-life, but beneath it all some part of him had slumbered on. Until Felise. He had not known who she was, what her purpose, or her allegiance. He had not needed to, and would not have cared if she had served a Spider lady or been a slave of the Arcanum, or even worn the black and gold. Skill spoke a language all its own and, when he had fought her, even as her blade drove for his heart, he had thrilled to it. If she had killed him, as well she might, then he would have cried out in joy as her sword ran him through.

And he knew she understood that. She was no Mantis, but her kind understood such perfection, such dedication.

She moved, stepping in suddenly with a thrust. He caught it with his claw, parrying it aside, his off-hand lashing in to beat her blade aside.

They stopped, that single move and countermove frozen in time, standing now within each other’s reach, face to face. She would seem beautiful to others, if made up as the Spider-kinden painted their faces, yet to him she was beautiful in every line of her body. Something within him was screaming, as he moved his hand to within an inch of her face, the spines flexing on his forearm.

There was a heavy tread, heralding a Beetle-kinden approaching the silence of the Prowess Forum. It was dark outside, and had been before they began his poised vigil. Tisamon broke away first, still gazing into her face.

It was Stenwold who entered, looking more haggard than ever. He nodded at the two of them but saw nothing of what had existed between them.

“You weren’t at the war meeting,” he said.

“I’m a soldier, not a tactician,” Tisamon reminded him.

Stenwold considered that. “True, I suppose. Imissed you, though. I like to be able to look over at you and remind myself of the reality of warfare. How so many people became experts on fighting wars without ever picking up a sword I’ll never know.”

He frowned suddenly, becoming aware in some small way of the tension here. “Is . . . everything all right?”

“Just sparring,” Tisamon replied briefly. Then: “Tell me, you and your . . .Spider girl, you are happy together, yes?”

Stenwold grinned a little sheepishly. “More than I deserve, with Arianna, yes. But you were right in what you said. After all, the war’s on us now, and who knows where I’ll be when it’s done—or where she’ll be . . .” He pressed his lips together then, no doubt imagining some harm coming to her, or to himself. “Anyway, I’ll leave you now to your practice. Four hours of talk is enough for any man.”

Tisamon barely noticed as the Beetle shuffled off. He himself had said that, had he not? He had said that Stenwold should take happiness where he could, and when he could. The future was looking uncertain—less certain by the day. A hundred thousand Wasps and more were on the march beneath their black and gold banner. There was a score of battlefields ahead waiting to be filled with the fallen.

Tisamon settled into a new stance, holding his claw high and back now, his pose more aggressive, more reckless. Felise countered with a low stance, one leg straight to one side, the other bent beneath her, sword held at waist level and pointing directly at his heart.

There was something in her eyes that pierced him. He dared not name it, but he saw it. He felt the wound.

Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke

Adrian Tchaikovsky was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. Catch up with Adrian at http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/ for further information about both himself and the insect-kinden, together with bonus material including short stories and artwork.

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder

2010-10-14T14:51:00.000-05:00

“This is the book to recommend as to what Steampunk is or should be.”
–The Steampunk Forum at Brass Goggles

“How does The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack stack up to the ever growing offerings of all that is Steampunk? I would say it takes the genre to a new level….Would-be Steampunk writers will now have to work double duty to top this one!” –AstroGuyz.com

“This is an exhilarating romp through a witty combination of nineteenth-century English fact and fiction. Mark Hodder definitely knows his stuff and has given us steam opera at its finest.... A great, increasingly complex, plot, some fine characters, and invention that never flags! It gets better and better, offering clues to some of Victorian London’s strangest mysteries. This is the best debut novel I have read in ages.” –Michael Moorcock, author

Presenting an excerpt here:

Burton & Swinburne in

The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack

Mark Hodder

*THE FIRST PART*
IN WHICH AN AGENT IS APPOINTED AND MYSTERIES ARE INVESTIGATED

A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.
—ARABIC PROVERB

CHAPTER 1
THE AFTERMATH OF AFRICA

Everything Life places in your path is an opportunity.
No matter how difficult.
No matter how upsetting.
No matter how impenetrable.
No matter how you judge it.
An opportunity.
—LIBERTINE PROPAGANDA

“By God! He’s killed himself!”

Sir Richard Francis Burton staggered back and collapsed into his chair. The note Arthur Findlay had passed to him fluttered to the floor. The other men turned away, took their seats, examined their fingernails, and fiddled with their shirt collars; anything to avoid looking at their stricken colleague.

From where she stood on the threshold of the “robing room,” hidden by its partially closed door, Isabel Arundell could see that her lover’s normally dark and intense eyes were wide with shock, filled with a sudden vulnerability. His mouth moved spasmodically, as if he were struggling to chew and swallow something indigestible. She longed to rush to his side to comfort him and to ask what tidings had wounded him; to snatch up that note and read it; to find out who had killed himself; but such a display would be unseemly in front of the small gathering, not to mention embarrassing for Richard. He, among all men, stood on his own two feet, no matter how dire the situation. Isabel alone was aware of his sensitivity; and she would never cause it to be exposed to others.

Many people—mostly those who referred to him as “Ruffian Dick”—considered Burton’s brutal good looks to be a manifestation of his inner nature. They could never imagine that he doubted himself; though if they were to see him now, so shaken, perhaps it might strike them that he wasn’t quite the devil he appeared, despite the fierce moustache and forked beard.

It was difficult to see past such a powerful façade.

The Committee had only just gathered at the table, but after glancing at Burton’s anguished expression, Sir Roderick Murchison, the president of the Royal Geographical Society, came to a decision.

“Let us take a moment,” he muttered.

Burton stood and held up a hand in protest. “Pray, gentlemen,” he whispered hoarsely, “continue with your meeting. The scheduled debate will, of course, have to be cancelled, but if you’ll allow me half an hour, perhaps I can organise my notes and make a small presentation concerning the valley of the
Indus, so as not to disappoint the crowd.”

“That’s very good of you, Sir Richard,” said one of the Committee members, Sir James Alexander. “But, really, this must have come as a terrible blow. If you would rather—”
“Just grant me thirty minutes to prepare. They have, after all, paid for their tickets.”

“Very well. Thank you.”

Burton turned and walked unsteadily to the door, passed through, closed it behind him, and stood facing Isabel, swaying slightly.

At five eleven, he personally bemoaned the lost inch that would have made him a six-footer, though, to others, the breadth of his shoulders, depth of his chest, slim but muscular build, and overwhelming charisma made him seem a giant, even compared with much taller men.

He had short black hair, which he wore swept backward. His skin was swarthy and weather-beaten, giving his straight features rather an Arabic cast, further accentuated by his prominent cheekbones, both disfigured by scars—a smallish one on the right, but a long, deep, and jagged one on the left, which tugged slightly at his bottom eyelid. They were the entry and exit wounds caused by a Somali spear that had been thrust through his face during an ill-fated expedition to Berbera, on the Horn of Africa.

To Isabel, those scars were the mark of an adventurous and fearless soul. Burton was in every respect her “ideal man.” He was a wild, passionate, and romantic figure, quite unlike the staid and emotionally cold men who moved in London’s social circles. Her parents thought him unsuitable but Isabel knew there could be no other for her.

He stumbled forward into her arms.

“What ails you so, Dick?” she gasped, holding him by the shoulders. “What has happened?”

“John has shot himself!”

“No!” she exclaimed. “He’s dead?”

Burton stepped back and wiped a sleeve across his eyes. “Not yet. But he took a bullet to the head. Isabel, I have to work up a presentation. Can I rely on you to find out where he’s been taken? I must see him. I have to make my peace with him before—”

“Of course, dear. Of course! I shall make enquiries at once. Must you speak, though? No one would fault you if you were to withdraw.”

“I’ll speak. We’ll meet later, at the hotel.”

“Very well.”

She kissed his cheek and left him; walked a short way along the elegant marble-floored corridor and, with a glance back, disappeared through the door to the auditorium. As it swung open and closed, Burton heard the crowd beyond grumbling with impatience. There were even some boos. They had
waited long enough; they wanted blood; wanted to see him, Burton, shame and humiliate the man he’d once considered a brother: John Hanning Speke.

“I’ll make an announcement,” muttered a voice behind him. He turned to find that Murchison had left the Committee and was standing at his shoulder. Beads of sweat glistened on the president’s bald head. His narrow face was haggard and pale.

“Is it—is it my fault, Sir Roderick?” rasped Burton.

Murchison frowned. “Is it your fault that you possess exacting standards while, according to the calculations John Speke presented to the Society, the Nile runs uphill for ninety miles? Is it your fault that you are an erudite and confident debater while Speke can barely string two words together? Is it
your fault that mischief-makers manipulated him and turned him against you? No, Richard, it is not.”

Burton considered this for a moment, then said, “You speak of him so and yet you supported him. You financed his second expedition and refused me mine.”

“Because he was right. Despite his slapdash measurements and his presumptions and guesswork, the Committee feels it likely that the lake he discovered is, indeed, the source of the Nile. The simple truth of the matter, Richard, is that he found it while you, I’m sorry to say, did not. I never much liked the man, may God have mercy on his soul, but fortune favoured him, and not you.”

Murchison moved aside as the Committee members filed out of the robing room, heading for the presentation hall.
“I’m sorry, Richard. I have to go.”

Murchison joined his fellows.

“Wait!” called Burton, pacing after him. “I should be there too.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“It is.”

“Very well. Come.”

They entered the packed auditorium and stepped onto the stage amid sarcastic cheers from the crowd. Colonel William Sykes, who was hosting the debate, was already at the podium, unhappily attempting to quell the more disruptive members of the restless throng; namely, the many journalists—including the mysterious young American Henry Morton Stanley—who seemed intent on making the occasion as newsworthy as possible. Doctor Livingstone sat behind Sykes, looking furious. Clement Markham, also seated on the stage, was chewing his nails nervously. Burton slumped into the chair beside him, drew a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket, and began to write.

Sir James Alexander, Arthur Findlay, and the other geographers took their seats on the stage.

The crowd hooted and jeered.

“About time! Did you get lost?” someone shouted waggishly. A roar of approval greeted the gibe.

Murchison muttered something into the colonel’s ear. Sykes nodded and retreated to join the others.

The president stepped forward, tapped his knuckles against the podium, and looked stonily at the expectant faces. The audience quieted until, aside from occasional coughs, it became silent.

Sir Roderick Murchison spoke: “Proceedings have been delayed and for that I have to apologise—but when I explain to you the cause, you will pardon me. We have been in our Committee so profoundly affected by a dreadful calamity that has—”

He paused; cleared his throat; gathered himself.

“—that has befallen Lieutenant Speke. A calamity by which, it pains me to report, he must surely lose his life.”

Shouts of dismay and consternation erupted.

Murchison held out his hands and called, “Please! Please!”

Slowly, the noise subsided.

“We do not at present have a great deal of information,” he continued, “but for a letter from Lieutenant Speke’s brother, which was delivered by a runner a short while ago. It tells that yesterday afternoon the lieutenant joined a hunting party on the Fuller Estate near Neston Park. At four o’clock, while he was negotiating a wall, his gun went off and severely wounded him about the head.”

“Did he shoot himself, sir?” cried a voice from the back of the hall.

“Purposefully, you mean? There is nothing to suggest such a thing!”

“Captain Burton!” yelled another. “Did you pull the trigger?”

“How dare you, sir!” thundered Murchison. “That is entirely unwarranted! I will not have it!”

A barrage of questions flew from the audience, a great many of them directed at Burton.

The famous explorer tore a page from his notebook, handed it to Clement Markham, and, leaning close, muttered into his ear. Markham glanced at the paper, stood, stepped to Murchison’s side, and said something in a low voice.
Murchison gave a nod.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “you came to the Bath Assembly Rooms to hear a debate between Captain Sir Richard Burton and Lieutenant John Speke on the matter of the source of the Nile. I, of course, understand you wish to hear from Sir Richard concerning this terrible accident that has befallen his colleague, but, as you might suppose, he has been greatly affected and feels unable to speak at this present time. He has, however, written a short statement which will now be read by Mr. Clement Markham.”

Murchison moved away from the podium and Markham took his place.

In a quiet and steady tone, he read from Burton’s note: “The man I once called brother today lies gravely wounded. The differences of opinion that are known to have lain between us since his return from Africa make it more incumbent on me to publicly express my sincere feeling of admiration for his character and enterprise, and my deep sense of shock that this fate has befallen him. Whatever faith you may adhere to, I beg of you to pray for him.”

Markham returned to his chair.

There was not a sound in the auditorium.

“There will be a thirty-minute recess,” declared Murchison, “then Sir Richard will present a paper concerning the valley of the Indus. In the meantime, may I respectfully request your continued patience whilst we rearrange this afternoon’s schedule? Thank you.”

He led the small group of explorers and geographers out of the auditorium and, after brief and subdued words with Burton, they headed back to the robing room.

Sir Richard Francis Burton, his mind paralysed, his heart brimming, walked in the opposite direction until he came to one of the reading rooms. Mercifully, it was unoccupied. He entered, closed the door, and leaned against it.

He wept.

~~~

“I’m sorry. I can’t continue.”

It was the faintest of whispers.

He’d spoken for twenty minutes, hardly knowing what he was saying, reading mechanically from his journals, his voice faint and quavering. His words had slowed then trailed off altogether.

When he looked up, he saw hundreds of pairs of eyes locked on to him; and in them there was pity.

He drew in a deep breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said more loudly. “There will be no debate today.”

He turned away from the crowd and, closing his ears to the shouted questions and polite applause, left the stage, pushed past Findlay and Livingstone, and practically ran to the lobby. He asked the cloakroom attendant for his overcoat, top hat, and cane, and, upon receiving them, hurried out through
the main doors and descended the steps to the street.

It was just past midday. Dark clouds drifted across the sky; the recent spell of fine weather was dissipating, the temperature falling.

He waved down a hansom.

“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.

“The Royal Hotel.”

“Right you are. Jump aboard.”

Burton clambered into the cabin and sat on the wooden seat. There were cigar butts all over the floor. He felt numb and registered nothing of his surroundings as the vehicle began to rumble over the cobbles.

He tried to summon up visions of Speke; the Speke of the past, when the young lieutenant had been a valued companion rather than a bitter enemy. His memory refused to cooperate and instead took him back to the event that lay at the root of their feud: the attack in Berbera, six years ago.

~~~

Berbera, the easternmost tip of Africa, April 19, 1855. Thunderstorms had been flickering on the horizon for the past few days. The air was heavy and damp.

Lieutenant Burton’s party had set up camp on a rocky ridge, about threequarters of a mile outside the town, near to the beach. Lieutenant Stroyan’s tent was twelve yards off to the right of the “Rowtie” that Burton shared with Lieutenant Herne. Lieutenant Speke’s was a similar distance to the left, separated
from the others by the expedition’s supplies and equipment, which had been secured beneath a tarpaulin.

Not far away, fifty-six camels, five horses, and two mules were tethered. In addition to the four Englishmen, there were thirty-eight other men—abbans, guards, servants, and camel-drivers, all armed.

With the monsoon season imminent, Berbera had been virtually abandoned during the course of the past week. An Arab caravan had lingered, but after Burton refused to offer it an escort out of the town—preferring to wait instead for a supply ship that was due any time from Aden—it had finally departed.

Now, Berbera was silent.

The expedition had retired for the night. Burton had posted three extra guards, for Somali tribes from up and down the coast had been threatening an attack for some days. They believed the British were here either to stop the lucrative slave trade or to lay claim to the small trading post.

At two thirty in the morning, Burton was jolted from his sleep by shouts and gunfire.

He opened his eyes and stared at the roof of his tent. Orange light quivered on the canvas.

He sat up.

El Balyuz, the chief abban, burst in.

“They are attacking!” the man yelled, and a look of confusion passed over his dark face, as if he couldn’t believe his own words. “Your gun, Effendi!” He handed Burton a revolver.

The explorer pushed back his bedsheets and stood; laid the pistol on the map table and pulled on his trousers; snapped his braces over his shoulders; picked up the gun.

“More bloody posturing!” He grinned across to Herne, who’d also awoken, hastily dressed, and snatched up his Colt. “It’s all for show, but we shouldn’t let them get too cocky. Go out the back of the tent, away from the campfire, and ascertain their strength. Let off a few rounds over their heads, if necessary. They’ll soon bugger off.”

“Right you are,” said Herne, and pushed through the canvas at the rear of the Rowtie.

Burton checked his gun.

“For Pete’s sake, Balyuz, why have you handed me an unloaded pistol? Get me my sabre!”

He shoved the Colt into the waistband of his trousers and snatched his sword from the Arab.

“Speke!” he bellowed. “Stroyan!”

Almost immediately, the tent flap was pushed aside and Speke stumbled in. He was a tall, thin, pale man, with watery eyes, light brown hair, and a long bushy beard. He usually wore a mild and slightly self-conscious expression, but now his eyes were wild.

“They knocked my tent down around my ears! I almost took a beating! Is there shooting to be done?”

“I rather suppose there is,” said Burton, finally realising that the situation might be more serious than he’d initially thought. “Be sharp, and arm to defend the camp!”

They waited a few moments, checking their gear and listening to the rush of men outside.

A voice came from behind them: “There’s a lot of the blighters and our confounded guards have taken to their heels!” It was Herne, returning from his recce. “I took a couple of potshots at the mob but then got tangled in the tent ropes. A big Somali took a swipe at me with a bloody great club. I put a bullet into the bastard. Stroyan’s either out cold or done for; I couldn’t get near him.”

Something thumped against the side of the tent. Then again. Suddenly a veritable barrage of blows pounded the canvas while war cries were raised all around. The attackers were swarming like hornets. Javelins were thrust through the opening. Daggers ripped at the material.

“Bismillah!” cursed Burton. “We’re going to have to fight our way to the supplies and get ourselves more guns! Herne, there are spears tied to the tent pole at the back—get ’em!”

“Yes, sir!” responded Herne, returning to the rear of the Rowtie. Almost immediately, he ran back, crying, “They’re breaking through the canvas!”

Burton swore vociferously. “If this blasted thing comes down on us we’ll be caught up good and proper. Get out! Come on! Now!”

He plunged through the tent flaps and into the night, where he found himself facing twenty or so Somali natives. Others were running around the camp, driving away the camels and pillaging the supplies. With a shout, he leaped forward and began to set about the attackers with his sabre.

Was that Lieutenant Stroyan lying over in the shadows? It was hard to tell. Burton slashed his way toward the prone figure, grimacing as clubs and spear shafts thudded against his flesh, bruising and cutting him, drawing blood.

He momentarily glanced back to see how the others were doing and saw Speke stepping backward into the tent entrance, his mouth hanging open, eyes panicked.

“Don’t step back!” he roared. “They’ll think that we’re retiring!”

Speke looked at him with an expression of utter dismay and, right there, in the midst of battle, their friendship ended, for John Hanning Speke knew that his cowardice had been recognised.

A club struck Burton on the shoulder and, tearing his eyes away from the other Englishman, he spun and swiped his blade at its owner. He was jostled back and forth. One set of hands kept pushing at his back, and he wheeled impatiently, raising his sword, only recognising El Balyuz at the very last moment.

His arm froze in midswing.

His head exploded with pain.

A weight pulled him sideways and he collapsed onto the stony earth.

Dazed, he reached up. A barbed javelin had transfixed his face, entering the left cheek and exiting the right, knocking out some back teeth, cutting his tongue, and cracking his palate.

He fought to stay conscious.

Someone started dragging him away from the conflict.

He passed out.

~~~

In front of the Rowtie, Speke, driven to a fury by the exposure of the shameful flaw in his character, strode into the melee, raised his Dean and Adams revolver, pressed its muzzle against the chest of the man who’d downed Burton, and pulled the trigger.

The gun jammed.

“Blast it!” said Speke.

The tribesman, a massive warrior, looked down at him, smiled, and punched him over the heart.

Speke fell to his knees, gasping for air.

The Somali bent, took him by the hair, pulled him backward, and, with his other hand, groped between Speke’s legs. For an instant, the Englishman had the terrifying conviction that he was going to be unmanned. The tribesman, though, was simply checking for daggers, hidden in the Arabic fashion.

Speke was thrust onto his back and his hands were quickly tied together, the cords pulled cruelly tight. Yanked upright, he was marched away from the camp, which was now being looted and destroyed.

~~~

Lieutenant Burton regained his wits and found that he was being pulled toward the beach by El Balyuz. He recovered himself sufficiently to stop his rescuer and to order the man, via sign language and writing in a patch of sand, to go and fetch the small boat that the expedition party had moored in the harbour, and to bring it to the mouth of a nearby creek.

El Balyuz nodded and ran off.

Burton lay on his back and gazed at the Milky Way.

I want to live! he thought.

A minute or so passed. He raised a hand to his face and felt the barbed point of the javelin. The only way to remove it was by sliding the complete length of the shaft through his mouth and cheeks. He took a firm grip on it, pushed, and fainted.

~~~

As the night wore on, John Speke was taunted and spat upon by his captors. With their sabres, they sliced the air inches from his face. He stood and endured it, his eyes hooded, his jaw set, expecting to die, and he wondered what Richard Burton would say about him when reporting this incident.

Don’t step back! They’ll think that we’re retiring!

The rebuke had stung, and if Burton put it on record, Speke would be forever branded as less than a man. Damn the arrogant blackguard!

One of his captors casually thrust his spear through Speke’s side. The lieutenant cried out in pain, then fell backward as the point pierced him again, this time in the shoulder.

This is the end, he told himself.

He struggled back to his feet and, as the spear was stabbed at his heart, deflected it with his bound hands. The point tore the flesh behind his knuckles to the bone.

The Somali stepped back.

Speke straightened and looked at him.

“To hell with you,” he said. “I won’t die yellow.”

The tribesman leaped in and prodded the spear into Speke’s left thigh. The explorer felt the blade scrape against bone.

“Shit!” he coughed in shock, and grabbed reflexively at the shaft. He and the African fought over it—one trying to gain possession, the other struggling to retain it. The Somali let go with his left hand and used it to pull a shillelagh from his belt. He swiped at Speke’s right arm and the cudgel connected with a horrible crack. Speke dropped the spear shaft and crumpled to his knees, gasping with agony.

His attacker walked away, turned back, and ran at him, plunging the spear completely through the Englishman’s right thigh and into the ground beyond.

Speke screamed.

Instinct took over.

With his awareness strangely separated from his body, he watched as his hands gripped the weapon, pulled it free of the ground, out through his thigh, and threw it aside. Then he stumbled into his attacker and his bound fists swept up, smashing into the man’s face.

The warrior rocked back, raising a hand to his face as blood spurted from his nose.

Speke half walked, half hopped away, his disengaged mind wondering how he was staying upright with such terrible injuries.

Where’s the pain? he mused, entirely unaware that he was afire with it.

He hobbled, barefoot, across jagged rock, down a slope, and onto the shingle of the beach. Somehow, he started to run. What tatters of clothing remained on him streamed behind.

The Somali snatched up the spear and gave chase, threw the weapon, missed, and gave up.

Other tribesmen lunged for the Englishman but Speke dodged them and kept going. He outdistanced his pursuers and, when he saw that they’d given up the chase, he collapsed onto a rock and chewed through the cord that bound his wrists.

He was faint with shock and loss of blood but knew that he had to find his companions, so, as dawn broke, he pushed on until he reached Berbera. Here he was discovered by a search party led by Lieutenant Herne and was carried to the boat at the mouth of the creek. He’d run for three miles and
had eleven wounds, including the two that had pierced the large muscles of his thighs.

They placed him onto a seat and he raised his head and looked at the man sitting opposite. It was Burton, his face bandaged, blood staining the linen over his cheeks.

Their eyes met.

“I’m no damned coward,” whispered Speke.

~~~

The battle should have made them brothers. They both acted as if it had—and less than two years later they embarked together on one of the greatest expeditions in British history: a perilous trek into central Africa to search for the source of the Nile.

Side by side, they endured extreme conditions, penetrating into lands unseen by white men and skirting dangerously close to Death’s realm. An infection temporarily blinded and immobilised Burton. Speke became permanently deaf in one ear after attempting to remove an insect from it with a penknife. They were both stricken with malaria, dysentery, and crippling ulcers.

They pressed on.

Speke’s resentment simmered.

He constructed his own history of the Berbera incident, excising from it the most essential element: the fact that a thrown stone had cracked against his kneecap, causing him to step back into the Rowtie’s entrance. Burton had looked around at that very instant and had plainly seen the stone bounce off Speke’s knee and understood the back-step for the reaction it was. He’d never for one moment doubted his companion’s courage.

Speke knew the stone had been seen but chose to forget it. History, he discovered, is what you make it.

They reached the central lakes.

Burton explored a large body of water called by the local tribes “Tanganyika,” which lay to the south of the Mountains of the Moon. His geographical readings suggested that it could be the Nile’s source, though he was too ill to visit its northernmost shore from whence the great river should flow.

Speke, leaving his “brother” in a fevered delirium, trekked northeastward and found himself at the shore of a vast lake, which he imperiously named after the British monarch, though the tribes that lived on its shores already had a name for it: “Nyanza.”

He tried to circle it, lost sight of it, found it again farther to the north—or was it the shore of a second lake?—took incomplete, incompetent measurements, and returned to Burton, the leader of the expedition, claiming to have found, on his own and without a shadow of a doubt, the true source of
the great river.

They recovered a modicum of health and undertook the long march back to Zanzibar where Burton fell into a fit of despondency, blaming himself for what, by his demanding standards, was inconclusive evidence.

John Speke, less scientific, less scrupulous, less disciplined, sailed back to England ahead of Burton and en route fell under the influence of a man named Laurence Oliphant, an arch-meddler and poseur who kept a white panther as a pet. Oliphant nurtured Speke’s pique, turned it into malice, and seduced him into claiming victory. No matter that it was the other man’s expedition; Speke had solved the biggest geographical riddle of the age!

John Speke’s last words to Burton had been “Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the Royal Geographical Society until you have come to the fore and we appear together. Make your mind quite easy about that.”

The day he landed in England, Speke went straight up to the Royal Geographical Society and told Sir Roderick Murchison that the Nile question was settled.

The Society divided. Some of its members supported Burton, others supported Speke. Mischief makers stepped in to ensure that what should have been a scientific debate rapidly degenerated into a personal feud, though Burton, now recovering his health in Aden, was barely aware of this.

Easily swayed, Speke became overconfident. He began to criticise Burton’s character, a dangerous move for a man who believed that his cowardice had been witnessed by his opponent.

Word reached Burton that he was to be awarded a knighthood and should return to England at once. He did so, and stepped ashore to find himself at the centre of a maelstrom.

Even as the reclusive monarch’s representative touched the sword to his shoulders and dubbed him Sir Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer’s thoughts were on John Speke, wondering why he was taking the offensive in such a manner.

Over the following weeks, Burton defended himself but resisted the temptation to retaliate.

Life is fickle; the fair man doesn’t invariably win.

Lieutenant Speke, it gradually became apparent, had made a lucky guess: the Nyanza probably was the source of the Nile.

Murchison knew, as Burton had been quick to point out, that Speke’s readings and calculations were badly faulted. In fact, they were downright amateurish and not at all admissible as scientific evidence. Nevertheless, there was in them the suggestion of a potential truth. This was enough; the Society funded a second expedition.

John Speke went back to Africa, this time with a young, loyal, and opinion-free soldier named James Grant. He explored the Nyanza, failed to circumnavigate it, didn’t find the Nile’s exit point, didn’t take accurate measurements, and returned to England with another catalogue of assumptions which Burton, with icy efficiency, proceeded to pick to pieces.

A face-to-face confrontation between the two men seemed inevitable.

It was gleefully engineered by Oliphant, who had, by this time, mysteriously vanished from the public eye—into an opium den, according to rumour—to pull strings like an invisible puppeteer.

He arranged for the Bath Assembly Rooms to be the venue and September 16, 1861, the date. To encourage Burton’s participation, he made it publicly known that Speke had said: “If Burton dares to appear on the platform at Bath, I will kick him!”

Burton had fallen for it: “That settles it! By God, he shall kick me!”

~~~

The hansom drew up outside the Royal Hotel, and Burton’s mind reengaged with the present. He emerged from the cab with one idea uppermost: someday, Laurence Oliphant would pay.

He entered the hotel. The receptionist signalled to him; a message from Isabel was waiting.

He took the note and read it:

John was taken to London. On my way to Fullers’ to find out exactly where.

Burton gritted his teeth. Stupid woman! Did she think she’d be welcomed by Speke’s family? Did she honestly believe they’d tell her anything about his condition or whereabouts? As much as he loved her, Isabel’s impatience and lack of subtlety never failed to rile him. She was the proverbial bull in a china shop, always charging at her target without considering anything that might lie in her path, always utterly confident that what she wanted to do was right, whatever anyone else might think.

He wrote a terse reply:

Left for London. Pay, pack, and follow.

He looked up at the hotel receptionist. “Please give this to Miss Arundell when she returns. Do you have a Bradshaw?”

“Traditional or atmospheric railway, sir?”

“Atmospheric.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was handed the train timetable. The next atmospheric train was leaving in fifty minutes. Time enough to throw a few odds and ends into a suitcase and get to the station.

CHAPTER 2
THE THING IN THE ALLEY

The Eugenicists are beginning to call their filthy experimentations “Genetics,” after the Ancient Greek “Genesis,” meaning “Origin.” This is in response to the work of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian priest. A priest! Can there be any greater hypocrite than a priest who meddles with Creation?
—RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES

It was a fast and smooth ride to London.

Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s atmospheric railway system was a triumph. It used wide-gauge tracks in the centre of which ran a fifteen-inch-diameter pipe. Along the top of the pipe there was a two-inch slot, covered with a flap-valve of oxhide leather. Beneath the front carriage of each train hung a dumbbell-shaped piston, which fitted snugly into the pipe. This was connected to the carriage by a thin shaft that rose through the slot. The shaft had a small wheeled contrivance attached to it that pressed open the leather flap at the front while closing and oiling it at the back. Every three miles along the track, a station sucked air out of the pipe in front of the train and pumped it back in behind. It was this difference in air pressure that shot the carriages along the tracks at tremendous speed.

When Brunel first created the system he encountered an unexpected problem: rats ate the oxhide. He turned to his Eugenicist colleague, Francis Galton, for a solution, and the scientist had provided it in the form of specially bred oxen whose skin was both repellent and poisonous to the rodents.

The pneumatic rail system now ran the length and breadth of Great Britain and was being extended throughout the Empire, particularly in India and South Africa.

A similar method of propulsion was planned for the new London Underground railway system, though this project had been delayed since Brunel’s death two years ago.

Burton arrived home at 14 Montagu Place at half past six, by which time a mist was drifting through the city streets. As he opened the wrought-iron gate and stepped to the front door, he heard a newsboy in the distance calling: “Speke shoots himself! Nile debate in uproar! Read all about it!”

He sighed and waited for the young urchin to draw closer. He recognised the soft Irish accent; it was Oscar, a refugee from the never-ending famine, whose regular round this was. The boy possessed an extraordinary facility with words, which Burton thoroughly appreciated.

The youngster approached, saw him, and grinned. He was a short and rather plump lad, about eight years old, with sleepy-looking eyes and a cheeky grin marred only by crooked, yellowing teeth. He wore his hair too long and was never without a battered top hat and a flower in his buttonhole.

“Hallo, Captain! I see you’re after making the headlines again!”

“It’s no laughing matter, Quips,” replied Burton, using the nickname he’d given the newspaper boy some weeks previously. “Come into the hallway for a moment; I want to talk with you. I suppose the journalists are all blaming me?”

Oscar joined the explorer at the door and waited while he fished for his keys.

“Well now, Captain, there’s much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”

“Ignorance is the word,” agreed Burton. He opened the door and ushered the youngster in. “If the reaction of the crowd in Bath is anything to go by, I rather suspect that the charitable are saying Speke shot himself, the uncharitable that I shot him.”

Oscar laid his bundle of newspapers on the doormat.

“You’re not wrong, sir; but what do you say?”

“That no one currently knows what happened except those who were there. That maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all had I tried a little harder to bridge the divide that opened between us; been, perhaps, a little more sensitive to Speke’s personal demons.”

“Ah, demons, is it?” exclaimed the boy, in his high, reedy voice. “And what of your own? Are they not encouraging you to luxuriate in selfreproach?”

“Luxuriate!”

“To be sure. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. What a luxury that is!”

Burton grunted. He put his cane in an elephant-foot umbrella stand, placed his topper on the hatstand, and slipped out of his overcoat.

“You are a horribly intelligent little ragamuffin, Quips.”

Oscar giggled. “It’s true. I’m so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying!”

Burton lifted a small bell from the hall table and rang for his housekeeper.

“But is it not the truth, Captain Burton,” continued the boy, “that you only ever asked Speke to produce scientific evidence to back up his claims?”

“Absolutely. I attacked his methods but never him, though he didn’t extend to me the same courtesy.”

They were interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Iris Angell, who, though Burton’s landlady, was also his housekeeper. She was a wide-hipped, white-haired old dame with a kindly face, square chin, and gloriously blue and generous eyes.

“I hope you wiped your feet, Master Oscar!”

“Clean shoes are the measure of a gentleman, Mrs. Angell,” responded the boy.

“Well said. There’s a freshly baked bacon and egg pie in my kitchen. Would you care for a slice?”

“Very much so!”

The old lady looked at Burton, who nodded. She went back down the stairs to her domain in the basement.

“So it’s information you’ll be wanting, Captain?” asked Oscar.

“I need to know where Lieutenant Speke has been taken. I know he was brought to London from Bath—but to which hospital? Can you find out?”

“Of course! I’ll spread the word among the lads. I should have an answer for you within the hour.”

“Very good. Miss Arundell is also making enquiries, though I fear her approach will have caused nothing but trouble.”

“How so, Captain?”

“She’s visiting the Speke family to offer her condolences.”

Oscar winced. “By heavens! There is nothing more destructive than a woman on a charitable mission. I hope for your sake that Mr. Stanley doesn’t get wind of it.”

Burton sighed. “Bismillah! I’d forgotten about him!”

Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist, was recently arrived in London from America. His background was somewhat mysterious; traces of a Welsh accent suggested he wasn’t the authentic “Yankee” he claimed to be, and there were rumours that his name was false. Whatever the true facts about him, though, he was making a big splash as a newspaper reporter, having taken a particular interest in the various expeditions organised by the Royal Geographical Society. Befriending Doctor Livingstone, Stanley had sided with him against Burton in the Nile debate and had written some less than flattering articles in the Empire, including one that accused Burton of having murdered a boy who caught him urinating in the European fashion during his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. As Burton had been quick to point out, his disguise, skill with the language, and painstaking observation of customs were convincing enough to fool his fellow pilgrims into believing him an Arab over a period of many months; it was therefore quite unthinkable that he’d have been caught making so basic a mistake as to urinate standing up. Besides which, killing the boy would certainly have led to his exposure as an
impostor and a summary execution.

Stanley had also attacked Isabel in the press, vilifying her for her lack of subtlety and overly headstrong character. Burton couldn’t help but think that she was becoming a liability at this crucial point in his career, a situation which Stanley had spotted some time ago and was revelling in.

“Yum!” exclaimed Oscar.

Mrs. Angell had reappeared with a generous slice of pie. She handed it to the youngster.

“It’s nothing special, but I hope it fills that bottomless hole you call a stomach!” she said.

“I have the simplest tastes, Mrs. Angell,” declared the newsboy. “I am always satisfied with the best!”

Burton ruffled the lad’s hair. “Off you go then, Quips. There’ll be a second slice waiting for you when you return.”

Oscar heaved a sigh of contentment, picked up his papers, and flitted out through the door, which Burton held open for him.

As he closed the portal, the explorer looked at his landlady.

“You’ve heard the news?”

“Yes, sir. May God preserve him. Itmust have been a terrible shock for you.”

“He hated me.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I think he was misguided.”

“I don’t disagree. Have reporters been banging on the door?”

“No, sir, they probably think you’re still in Bath.”

“Good. If they call, empty a bucket of slops over them. No visitors, please, Mother Angell. I don’t want to see anyone until young Oscar returns.”

“Very well. Can I bring you something to eat?”

Burton began to climb the stairs. “Yes, please. And a pot of coffee.”

“Yes, sir.”

The old lady watched him as he reached the landing, turned right, anddisappeared into his study. She pursed her lips. She knew Burton well enough to recognise the developing mood.

“Coffee, my eye!” she muttered as she descended to the kitchen. “He’ll be through a bottle of brandy before the evening is old!”

~~~

Burton had, indeed, poured himself a large measure of brandy, and was now slumped in his old saddlebag armchair by the fireplace, his feet resting on the fender. He held the glass in one hand and a letter in the other. It was from 10 Downing Street and read:

Please contact the prime minister’s office immediately upon your return to London.

He sipped the brandy and savoured the fire that sank into his belly. He was tired but not sleepy, and felt the heavy weight of depression dragging at him.

Laying his head back, and with eyes half closed, he focused his mind on his sense of hearing. It was a Sufi trick he’d learned en route to Mecca. Sight was the primary sense; when another was given precedence and the mind was allowed to wander, ideas, insights, and hitherto unseen connections often bubbled up from its otherwise inaccessible depths.

He heard a bookshelf creak slightly as its wood adjusted to the changing temperature of early evening; it was the only sound from within the study, aside from his own breathing and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. From beyond the two large sash windows, though, came the muffled cacophony of England’s capital: voices passing on the pavement below, the clatter and chugging engines of velocipedes, the cry of a street hawker, the choppy paradiddle of a rotorchair passing overhead, a barking dog, a crying child, the rumble and hiss of steam-horses, the clip-clop of real horses, the
coarse laughter of prostitutes.

He heard footsteps on the stairs.

A question came to him: What am I to do now?

There was a soft knock at the door.

“Come.”

Mrs. Angell entered bearing a tray upon which lay a plate of sliced meats, cheese, and a chunk of bread. There was also a cup and saucer, a bowl of sugar, and a pot of coffee. She crossed the room and laid it on the occasional table beside Burton’s chair.

“It’s getting unseasonably cold, sir—shall I light the fire?”

“It’s all right, I’ll do it. Would you take a letter for me?”

“Certainly.”

The housekeeper, who often performed slight secretarial tasks for him, sat at one of the three desks, slid a sheet of blank paper onto the leather writing pad, and picked up a pen. She dipped the nib into the inkwell and wrote, at Burton’s dictation:

I am at home in London. Awaiting further instructions. Burton.

“Send it by runner to 10 Downing Street, please.”

The old lady looked up in surprise. “To where?”

“10 Downing Street. At once, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

She departed with the note. A few moments later, he heard her at the front door blowing three blasts on a whistle. Within half a minute, a dog—almost certainly a greyhound—would arrive on the doorstep and, after she’d fed the animal, the housekeeper would place the letter between its teeth and
announce the destination. There’d be an acknowledging wag of the tail, and the runner would race away en route for Downing Street.

They were part of a fairly new communications system, these remarkable dogs, the first practical application of eugenics adopted by the British public. Each hound came into the world knowing every address within a fifty-mile radius of its birthplace and with the ability to carry mail between those locations, barking and scratching at a recipient’s door until the letter was collected. After each task was completed, the runner would wander the streets until it heard another three-whistle summons.

Messenger parakeets formed the other half of the system. These phenomenal mimics carried spoken communications. A person only had to visit a post office and give one of the birds a message, the name of the recipient, and the address, and the parakeet would fly straight to the appropriate set of ears.

There was one problem, an issue that had troubled the Eugenicist scientists from the start: namely, that whatever modification they made to a species, it always seemed to bring with it an unexpected side effect.

In the case of the parakeets, it was that they swore at, mocked, and offended everyone they encountered. The person on the receiving end of the service would inevitably be given a message liberally peppered with insults not put there by the sender. Nothing, it seemed, could be done to correct this fault. Originally, it had been hoped that every household would have its own parakeet but, as it turned out, no one could bear the constant abuse in their own home. So the Post Office had stepped in and now each branch kept an aviary full of the birds.

In the runners’ case, the drawback was nothing more serious than a phenomenal appetite. Though they were whiplash thin, the dogs required a square meal at every address they visited, so despite being a free system, those who used it often found themselves investing a considerable amount of money in dog food.

Burton heard the front door close. His letter was on its way.

He took a swig of brandy and reached for a cheroot; he had a taste for cheap, strong tobacco.

Explore Dahomey? he thought, still dwelling on what he should do now that the Nile question was out of his hands; for though a new expedition was required to settle the matter once and for all, he knew that Murchison would not commission him to lead it. The Royal Geographical Society was already
fractured by the verbal duel he and Speke had fought, and the president would doubtlessly offer the expedition to a neutral geographer.

So, Dahomey? Burton had been wanting to mount an expedition into that dark and dangerous region of West Africa for some time but now it was going to be difficult to raise the money.

A private sponsor, perhaps? Maybe a publishing company?

Ah, yes, then there were the books. For a long while he’d wanted to write a definitive translation of The Thousand Nights and a Night; perhaps now would be a good time to begin that ambitious project. At very least he should finish Vikram and the Vampire, the collected tales of Hindu devilry that were
currently stacked on one of his desks, with annotations half completed.

Write books, keep a low profile, wait for his enemies to become bored.

Marry Isabel?

He looked at his empty glass, blew cigar smoke into it, held the cheroot between his teeth, and reached for the decanter and poured more brandy.

For more than a year, he’d felt destined to marry Isabel Arundell; now, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. He loved her, that was certain, but he also resented her. He loved her strength and practicality but resented her overbearing personality and tendency to do things on his behalf without consulting him
first; loved the fact that she tolerated his interest in all things exotic and erotic but hated her blinkered Catholicism. Charles Darwin had killed God but she and her family, like so many others, still clung to the delusion.

He sought to quell his mounting frustration with another glass. And another. And more.

At eight o’clock there came a tap at the door and Mrs. Angell appeared, looking with disapproval at the drunken explorer.

“Did you even touch the coffee?” she asked.

“No, and I don’t intend to,” he replied. “What do you want?”

“The boy is back.”

“Quips? Send him up.”

“I don’t think so, sir. You’re in no state to receive a child.”

“Send him up, blast you!”

“No.”

Burton pushed himself up from his chair and stood unsteadily, his eyes blazing.

“You’ll do as you’re bloody well told, woman!”

“No, sir, I won’t. Not when I’m told by a foul-mouthed drunkard. And I remind you that though I am your employee, you are also my tenant, and I am free to end our arrangement whenever I see fit. I shall take a message from the boy and bring it to you forthwith.”

She stepped back to the landing, closing the door behind her.

Burton took a couple of steps toward the door, thought better of it, and stood swaying in the centre of the room. He looked around at the bookcases, filled with volumes about geography, religion, languages, erotica, esoterica, and ethnology; looked at the swords resting on brackets above the fireplace; the worn boxing gloves hanging from a corner of the mantelpiece; the pistols and spears displayed in the alcoves to either side of the chimney breast; looked at the pictures on the walls, including the one of Edward, his brain-damaged younger brother, who’d been an inmate at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum for the past three years, a result of an incident five years ago when he was beaten half to death in Ceylon after Buddhist villagers took offence at his hunting of elephants; looked at the three big desks, stacked with papers, his half-written books, maps, and charts; looked at the many souvenirs of his travels, the idols and carvings, hookahs and prayer mats, knickknacks and trinkets; looked at the door in the wall opposite the windows, which led to the small dressing room where he kept his various disguises; and looked at the dark windows and his reflection in their glass.

The question came again, and he spoke it aloud: “What the hell am I to do?”

The door opened and Mrs. Angell, her expression severe and voice cold, stepped in and said, “Master Oscar says to tell you that Mr. Speke is at the Penfold Private Sanatorium.”

Burton nodded, curtly.

The old woman made to leave.

“Mrs. Angell,” he called.

She stopped and looked back at him.

“My language was entirely unwarranted,” he mumbled, self-consciously. “My temper, too. Please accept my apologies.”

She gazed at him a moment. “Very well. But you’ll take your devils out of this house, is that understood? Either that, or you remove yourself from it—permanently!”

“Agreed. Did you treat Quips to more pie?”

The old dame smiled indulgently. “Yes, and an apple and some butterscotch.”

“Thank you. Now, as you recommend, I think I shall take my devils out of the house.”

“But you’ll not allow them to guide you into trouble, if you please, Sir Richard.”

“I’ll do my best, Mother Angell.”

She bobbed her head and departed.

Burton considered for a moment. It was too late in the evening to visit the hospital; that would have to wait until the morning, and if Speke didn’t survive the night, then so be it. It was, however, never too late to visit the Cannibal Club. A few drinks with his Libertine friends would help to lift his spirits, and maybe Algernon Swinburne would be among them. Burton hadn’t known the promising young poet for long but enjoyed his company immensely.

He made up his mind, changed his clothes, took another swig of brandy, and was just leaving the room when a tapping came at one of the windows. He crossed to it, a little clumsily, and saw a colourful parakeet sitting on the sill.

He pulled up the sash. A cloud of mist rolled in. The parakeet looked at him.

“Message from the stinking prime minister’s office,” it cackled. “You are requested to attend that prattle-brain Lord Palmerston at 10 Downing Street at nine o’clock in the morning. Please confirm, arse-face. Message ends.”

Burton’s brows, which usually arched low over his eyes in what appeared to be a permanent frown, shot upward. The prime minister wanted to meet with him personally? Why?

“Reply. Message begins. Appointment confirmed. I will be there. Message ends. Go.”

“Bugger off!” squawked the parakeet, and launched itself from the sill.

Burton closed the window.

He was going to meet Lord Palmerston.

Bloody hell.

~~~

The Cannibal Club was located in rooms above Bartoloni’s Italian Restaurant in Leicester Square.

Burton found the enigmatic and rather saturnine Richard Monckton Milnes there, in company with the diminutive Algernon Swinburne and Captain Henry Murray, Doctor James Hunt, Sir Edward Brabrooke, Thomas Bendyshe, and Charles Bradlaugh—hellraisers all.

“Burton!” cried Milnes as the explorer entered. “Congratulations!”

“On what?”

“On shooting that bounder Speke! Surely it was you who pulled the trigger? Please say it was so!”

Burton threw himself into a chair and lit a cigar.

“It was not.”

“Ah, what a shame!” exclaimed Milnes. “I was so hoping you could tell us what it feels like to murder a man. A white man, I mean!”

“Why, yes, of course!” put in Bradlaugh. “You killed that little Arab boy on the road to Mecca, didn’t you?”

Burton accepted a drink from Henry Murray.

“You know damned well I didn’t!” he growled. “That bastard Stanley writes nothing but scurrilous nonsense!”

“Come now, Richard!” trilled Swinburne, in his excitable, high-pitched voice. “Don’t object so! Do you not agree that murder is one of the great boundaries we must cross in order to know that we, ourselves, are truly alive?”

The famous explorer sighed and shook his head. Swinburne was young—just twenty-four—and possessed an intuitive intelligence that appealed to the older man; but he was gullible.

“Nonsense, Algy! Don’t let these Libertines mesmerise you with their misguided ideas and appallingly bad logic. They are incorrigibly perverse, especially Milnes here.”

“Hah!” yelled Bendyshe from across the room. “Swinburne’s as perverse as they come! He has a taste for pain, don’t you know! Likes the kiss of a whip, what!”

Swinburne giggled, twitched, and snapped his fingers. As always, hismovements were fast, jerky, and eccentric, as if he suffered from Saint Vitus’s dance.

“It’s true. I’m a follower of de Sade.”

“It’s a common affliction,” noted Burton. “Why, I once visited a brothel in Karachi—on a research mission for Napier, you understand—”

Snorts and howls of derision came from the gathering.

“—and there witnessed a man flagellated to the point of unconsciousness. He enjoyed it!”

“Delicious!” Swinburne shuddered.

“Maybe so, if your tastes run to it,” agreed Burton. “However, flagellation is one thing, murder is quite another!”

Milnes sat beside Burton, leaning close.

“But, I say, Richard,” he murmured, “don’t you ever wonder at the sense of freedom one must feel when performing the act of murder? It is, after all, the greatest taboo, is it not? Break that and you are free of the shackles imposed by civilisation!”

“I’m no great enthusiast for the false pleasures and insidious suppressions of civilisation,” said Burton. “And, in my opinion, Mrs. Grundy—our fictitious personification of all things oh so pure, polite, restrained, and conventional requires a thorough shagging; however, as much as I might rail against the constraints of English society and culture, murder is a more fundamental matter than either.”

Swinburne squealed with delight. “A thorough shagging! Oh, bravo, Richard!”

Milnes nodded. “False pleasures and insidious suppressions indeed. Pleasures which enslave, suppressions which pass judgement. Where, I ask, is freedom?”

“I don’t know,” answered Burton. “How can one quantify so indefinite a notion as freedom?”

“By looking to nature, dear boy! Nature red in tooth and claw! One animal kills another animal. Is it found guilty? No! It remains free to do what it will, even—and, in fact, certainly—to kill again! As de Sade himself said: ‘Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.’”

Burton emptied his glass in a single swallow.

“For sure, Darwin has demonstrated that Nature is a brutal and entirely pitiless process, but you seem to forget, Milnes, that the animal which kills is most often, in turn, itself killed by another animal, just as the murderer, in a supposedly civilised country, is hanged for his crime!”

“Then you propose an innate natural law of justice from which we can never break free, a law that transcends culture, whatever its stage of development?”

James Hunt, passing to join a conversation between Bradlaugh and Brabrooke on the other side of the room, stopped long enough to refill Burton’s glass.

“Yes, I do believe some such law exists,” said Burton. “I find the Hindu notion of karma more alluring than the Catholic absurdity of original sin.”

“How is Isabel?” put in Bendyshe, who’d stepped across to join them.

Burton ignored the mischievous question and went on, “At least karma provides a counterbalance—a penalty or reward, if you like—to acts we actually perform and thoughts we actually think, rather than punishing us for the supposed sin of our actual existence or for a transgression against a wholly
artificial dictate of so-called morality. It is a function of Nature rather than a judgement of an unproven God.”

“By Jove! Stanley was correct when he wrote that you’re a heathen!” mocked Bendyshe. “Burton joins with Darwin and says there is no God!”

“Actually, Darwin hasn’t suggested any such thing. It is others who have imposed that interpretation upon his Origin of Species.”

“‘There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author,’” quoted Swinburne. “De Sade again.”

“In many respects I consider him laughable,” commented Burton, “but in that instance, I wholeheartedly agree. The more I study religions, the more I’m convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”

He quoted his own poetry:

“Man worships self: his God is man; the struggling of the mortal mind to form its model as ’twould be, the perfect of itself to find.”

Milnes took a drag from his cigar and blew a smoke ring, which rose lazily into the air. He watched it slowly disperse and said, “But this karma business, Richard—what you are proposing is that one way or another, through some sort of entirely natural process, a murderer will receive retribution. Do you then count man’s judgement—the death penalty—to be natural?”

“We are natural beings, are we not?”

“Well,” interrupted Bendyshe, “I sometimes wonder about Swinburne.”

It was a fair point, thought Burton, for Swinburne was a very unnatural-looking man. At just five-foot-two, he had a strangely tiny body. His limbs were small and delicate, with sloping shoulders and a very long neck upon which sat a large head made even bigger by a tousled mass of carroty-red hair
standing almost at right angles to it. His mouth was weak and effeminate; his eyes huge, pale green, and dreamy.

Few poets looked so much a poet as Algernon Charles Swinburne.

“But that aside,” said Bendyshe, “what if the murderer avoids the noose?”

“Guilt,” proposed Burton. “A gradual but inescapable degradation of the character. A degenerative disease of the mind. Maybe a descent into madness and self-destruction.”

“Or perhaps,” offered Swinburne, “a tendency to mix with criminal types until the murderer is himself, inevitably, murdered.”

“Well put!” agreed the famous adventurer.

“Interesting,” pondered Milnes, “but, I say, we all know that murders are committed either in the heat of passion, or else with intent by an individual who’s already in an advanced—if that’s the appropriate word—state of mental decay. What if, though, a murder was calculated and committed by an intelligent man who performs the act only out of scientific curiosity? What if it were done only to transcend the limitations that tell us it shouldn’t be done?”

“An idle motive,” suggested Burton.

“Not at all, dear boy!” declared Milnes. “It’s a magnificent motive! Why, the man who would undertake such an act would risk his immortal soul for science!”

“He would undoubtedly see sense and back away from the experiment,” said Burton, his voice slurring slightly, “for once crossed, that barrier allows no return. However, his decision would be based on self-determined standards of behaviour rather than on any set out by civilisation or on notions of an immortal soul; for as you say, he’s an intelligent man.”

“It’s strange,” said Henry Murray, who up until now had listened in silence. “I thought that you, of all of us, would be the one most likely to approve the experiment.”

“You should take my reputation with a pinch of salt.”

“Must we? I rather enjoy having a devil in our midst.” Swinburne grinned.

Sir Richard Francis Burton considered the susceptible young poet and wondered how to keep him out of trouble.

~~~

Burton was not a Libertine himself, but they considered him an honorary member of the caste and delighted in his knowledge of exotic cultures, where the stifling laws of civilisation were remarkable only by their seeming absence. He enjoyed drinking and debating with them, especially this evening, for it kept his mind engaged and helped to stave off the despondency that had been creeping over him since he’d returned from Bath.

By one o’clock in the morning, though, it was dragging at him again, made worse by alcohol and exhaustion, so he bid his friends farewell and left the club.

The evening was bitterly cold—unusual for September—and the roads glistened wetly. The thickening pall wrapped each gas lamp in its own golden aureole. Burton held his overcoat tight with one hand and swung his cane with the other. London rustled and murmured around him as he walked unsteadily homewards.

A velocipede chattered past. They had started to appear on the streets two years ago, these steam-driven, one-man vehicles, and were popularly known as “penny-farthings” due to their odd design, for the front wheel was nearly as tall as a man, while the back wheel was just eighteen inches in diameter.

The rider was seated high on a leather saddle, situated slightly behind the crown of the front wheel, with his feet resting in stirrups to either side, his legs held away from the piston arm and crank which pumped and spun to the left of the axle. The tiny, boxlike engine was attached to the frame behind and below the saddle; the small boiler, with its furnace, was under this, and the coal scuttle under that; the three elements arranged in a segmented arc over the top-rear section of the main wheel. As well as providing the motive power, they were also the machine’s centre of gravity and, together with the engine’s internal gyroscope, made the vehicle almost impossible to knock over, despite its ungainly appearance.

By far the most remarkable feature of the penny-farthing was its extraordinary efficiency. It could complete a twenty-mile journey in about an hour on just one fist-sized lump of coal. With the furnace able to hold up to four pieces and with the same number stored in the scuttle, it had a maximum range of 160 miles and could operate for about twenty hours before needing to refuel. The vehicle’s main flaw, aside from the thorough shaking it meted out to the driver, was that the two slim funnels, which rose up behind the saddle, belched smoke into the miasmal atmosphere of England’s capital, adding to an already bad situation. Nevertheless, the vehicles were currently all the rage and had done much to restore the public’s faith in the Engineering faction of the Technologist caste, a group that had been much maligned of late after the disastrous flooding of the undersea town of Hydroham off the Norfolk coast, and a number of fatal crashes during the attempted—and ultimately abandoned—development of gas-filled airships.

Burton watched the contraption disappear into the mist.

London had transformed while he’d been in Africa. It had filled with new machines and new breeds of animal. The Engineers and Eugenicists—the main branches of the Technologist caste—seemed unstoppable, despite protests from the Libertines, who felt that art, beauty, and nobility of spirit were more essential than material progress.

The problem was that the Libertines, despite producing reams of anti-Technologist propaganda, were unclear in their message. On the one hand, there were the “True Libertines,” such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who were basically Luddites; while on the other, there were the increasingly powerful “Rakes,” whose interests ran to black magic, anarchy, sexual depravity, drug taking, meddling, and general bad behaviour, which they justified as an attempt to “transcend the limitations of the human condition.” Most Libertines, Richard Monckton Milnes being a prime example, fell somewhere between the two camps, being neither as dreamily idealistic as the one faction nor as scandalously self-indulgent as the other.

As for Sir Richard Francis Burton, he wasn’t sure where he fitted. Although it was the country of his birth, England had never felt like home, probably because he’d spent most of his childhood being dragged around Europe by his restless parents. He was therefore rather surprised when he returned from the Nile expedition and found that the country’s current state of social instability somewhat suited him. The rapid changes, more intensely felt in the capital than elsewhere, might be confusing to the majority of the populace but he’d always regarded his own identity as rather a transient and changeable thing, so now he felt an odd sort of empathy with the fluctuating nature of British culture.

As he walked, he slowly became aware of a tapping noise from somewhere above and realised that he’d been hearing it on and off since leaving the club. He peered up and around but saw nothing.
He continued his trek home, listening, and, yes, there it was again. Was he being followed? He looked back, but there was no suggestion of anyone on his heels until a policeman started to trail along behind him, his attention attracted by the lone, obviously rather drunk man’s brutal features. After five minutes or so, the constable drew closer, saw that Burton wore the clothes of a gentleman, hesitated, then abandoned the chase.

The explorer crossed Charing Cross Road and entered a long, badly lit side street. His foot hit a discarded bottle that spun into the gutter with a musical tinkle. Something large flapped overhead and he looked up in time to see a huge Eugenicist-bred swan pass by, dragging a box kite behind it through the mist. A man’s white face—an indistinct blur—looked down from the kite before it vanished over the rooftops. A faint voice reached Burton’s ears but whatever it was the man had shouted was muffled by the water-laden air.

Last year, Speke and Grant had used the same form of transportation to make their way to the Nyanza, following the old route. It had taken a fraction of the time required by Burton’s expedition. They’d set up camp in Kazeh, a small town some hundred and fifty miles south of the great lake, and here John Speke had made one of his characteristic errors of judgement by failing to properly guard his birds. They’d been eaten by lions.Without them he couldn’t circumnavigate the lake, couldn’t ascertain whether it was the source of the great river, and couldn’t prove Burton wrong.

A few yards farther down the road, a man shuffled from the shadows of a doorway. He was a coarse-featured individual clad in canvas trousers and shirt with a rust-coloured waistcoat and a cloth cap. There were fire marks—red welts—on his face and thick forearms caused by hours spent stoking a forge.

“Can I ’elp you, mate?” he growled. “Maybe relieve you of wha’ever loose change is weighin’ down yer pockits?”

Burton looked at him.

The man backed away so suddenly that his heels struck the doorstep and he sat down heavily.

“Sorry, fella!” he mumbled. “Mistook you fer somebody else, I did!”

The explorer snorted scornfully and moved on. He entered a network of narrow alleys—dark, dangerous, and sordid—a dismal tentacle of poverty reaching far out of the East End into the centre of the city. Mournful windows gaped from the sides of squalid houses. Inarticulate shouts came from some of them—occasionally the sound of blows, screams, and weeping—but hopeless silence came from most.

It occurred to him that the depths of London felt remarkably similar to the remotest regions of Africa.

He came to a junction, turned left, tripped, and stumbled; his shin banging against a discarded crate and his trouser leg catching on a protruding nail and tearing. He spat out an oath and kicked the crate away. A rat scuttled along the side of the pavement.

Leaning against a lamppost, Burton rubbed his eyes. The taste of brandy burned uncomfortably at the back of his throat. He noticed a flier pasted to the post and read it:

Work disciplines your spirit
Work develops your character
Work strengthens your soul
Do not allow machines to do your work!

Pushing himself away, he walked along the alley and turned yet another corner—he wasn’t sure where he was but knew he was proceeding in the right general direction—and found himself at the end of a long, straight lane, its worn cobbles shining beneath the haggard light of a single lamp. It was bordered by high and featureless redbrick walls, the sides of warehouses. The far end opened onto what looked to be a main thoroughfare. He could vaguely see the front of a shop, possibly a butcher’s, but when he tried to read the sign over the window, a velocipede clattered past it, leaving a swirling wreath of smoke that further obscured the lettering.

Burton moved on, trying to avoid pools of stinking urine, his shoes squelching in patches of mud and worse, kicking against refuse.

A litter-crab came clanking into view by the shop, its eight thick mechanical legs thudding against the road surface, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly darting this way and that, skittering back and forth over the cobbles, snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace within.

The crab creaked and rattled past the end of the alley and, as it did so, its siren wailed a warning. A few seconds later, it let out a deafening hiss as it ejected hot cleansing steam from the two downward-pointing funnels at its rear.

The automated cleaner vanished from sight as a tumultuous wall of white vapour boiled into the passage. Burton stopped and took a few steps backward, waiting for it to disperse. It billowed toward him, extending hot coils that slowed and became still, hanging in the air as they cooled.

Someone entered the street, their weirdly elongated shadow angling through the white cloud; a figure writ dark, skeletal, and horrific by the distortion.

Sudden flashes of light illuminated the roiling mist, as if it were a miniature storm. Burton waited for the shadow to shrink, to be sucked into the person to whom it belonged when he—for surely it must be a man—emerged from the vapour.

It didn’t shrink.

It wasn’t a shadow.

Possibly, it wasn’t even a man.

The steam parted and from it sprang a bizarre apparition: a massively long-legged shape—like a carnival stilt-walker—a long, dark cloak flapping from its hunched shoulders, bolts of lightning crackling around its body and head.

Burton retreated hastily until his back brought up against the wall. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips.

Was it human, this thing? Its head was large, black, and shiny, with an aura of blue flame crawling around it. Red eyes peered at him maliciously. White teeth shone in a lipless grin.

The creature stalked forward, bent, its talonlike hands flexing, and Burton saw that his first impression was accurate: the thing walked on twofoot-high stilts.

Its lanky body was clad in a skintight white scaly suit that glittered in the dim light of the single guttering gas lamp. Something circular glowed on its chest and emitted bursts of sparks and ribbons of lightning that snaked over the thing’s long limbs.

“Burton!” the apparition croaked. “Richard Francis bloody Burton!”

It suddenly pounced on him and a hand slashed sideways, slapping hard against his right ear, sending him reeling. His top hat went spinning into a puddle. He dropped his cane.

“I told you once to stay out of it!” snapped the thing. “You didn’t listen!”

All of a sudden, Burton felt icily sober.

Fingers dug into his hair and yanked his head up. He felt an agonisingly powerful static charge coursing through his body. His arms and legs twitched spasmodically.

Red eyes glared into his.

“I’ll not tell you again. Leave me alone!”

“W—what?” gasped Burton.

“Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your damned business!”

“What affair?”

“Don’t play the innocent! I don’t want to kill you, but I swear to you, if you don’t keep your nose out of it, I’ll break your fucking neck!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” protested Burton.

His head was shaken violently, causing his teeth to clack together.

“I’m talking about you organising forces against me! It’s not what you’re meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?”

The creature rammed its forearm into Burton’s face.

“I said, do you understand?”

“No!”

“Then I’ll spell it out for you,” growled the stilt-man. Dragging Burton around, it slammed him against the wall, drew back its arm, and sent a fist crashing into the explorer’s mouth.

“Do what—”

Again. Crack!

“—you’re supposed—”

Crack!

“—to do!”

Burton sagged back against the bricks. He mumbled through split lips, “How can I possibly know what I’m supposed to do?”

The fingers in his hair jerked him up until he was looking directly into the thing’s eyes, which stared down, inches from his own. They burned redly, and Burton realised that his attacker was completely insane.

Blue flame leaped from the thing’s head and licked at the explorer’s brow, scorching his skin.

“You are supposed to marry Isabel and be sent from one fucking miserable consulship to another. Your career is supposed to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are supposed to write books and die.”

Burton braced his legs against the wall.

“What the hell are you babbling about?” he demanded, in a stronger voice. “The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday—but he’s not dead!”

The creature’s eyes widened.

“No!” it whispered. “No!” It gritted its teeth and snarled, “I’m a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know—”

A look of bemusement passed over its gaunt, horrible features.

“God damn it! Why does it have to be so complicated?” it whispered to itself. “Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this—?”

Burton, feeling the fingers loosening, took his chance. He jerked his head free, shoved his shoulder into his attacker’s stomach, then threw himself sideways.

The apparition teetered back to the opposite wall. It clutched at it for balance and glared at Burton as he regained his footing. They stood facing each other.

“Listen to me, you bastard!” snapped the creature. “For your own good, next time you see me, don’t come near!”

“I don’t know you!” objected Burton. “And, believe me, if I never see you again, I’ll not regret it one iota!”

Lightning exploded from the apparition’s chest and danced across the ground. The stilt-man cried out in agony, almost falling.

Suddenly, its wild eyes dimmed and Burton saw a brief glimmer of reason in them. It looked down at itself, then at him, and in low tones said, “The irony is that I’m running out of time. You’re in my way, and you’re making the situation much worse.”

“What situation? Explain!” snapped the explorer.

The uncanny, spindly figure stepped forward and the irises of its eyes narrowed to pinpricks.

“Marry the bitch, Burton. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? Leave me the fuck alone!”

It crouched low, glared at him, and suddenly straightened its legs, shooting vertically into the air.

Burton twisted his head to look up. His assailant soared high above the top of the warehouses, and, in midair, vanished.

Burton & Swinburne in

Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht

Mark Hodder is the creator and caretaker of the BLAKIANA Web site (www.sextonblake.co.uk), which he designed to celebrate, record, and revive Sexton Blake, the most written about fictional detective in English publishing history. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and Web producer, Mark has worked in all the new and traditional medias and was based in London for most of his working life until 2008, when he relocated to Valencia in Spain to de-stress and write novels. He can most often be found at the base of a palm tree, hammering at a laptop. Mark has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history (1850 to 1950, in particular), good food, cutting-edge gadgets, cult TV, Tom Waits, and a vast assortment of oddities.

Twelve by Jasper Kent

2010-10-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

Russia, 1812.
It began as a last stand against Napoleon’s invading army.
It would end as a fight against an enemy of mankind itself.…

“Kent's sprawling historical horror debut, the first of a quintet, brings blood-gushing brutality back to vampire fiction… [character] self-examination doesn't impede densely detailed, hard-driving action… and the vampires are genuinely scary villains, more vivid than most of the living characters. With no romantic yearning or teen angst in sight, this is just a bloody good tale.” –Publishers Weekly

Enjoy an excerpt from Twelve, here:

Twelve

Jasper Kent

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Distances

Averst is a Russian unit of distance, slightly greater than a kilometre.

Dates

During the nineteenth century, Russians based their dates on the old Julian Calendar, which in 1812 was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in Western Europe. All dates in the text are given in the Russian form and so, for example, the Battle of Borodino is placed on 26 August, where Western history books have it on 7 September.

PROLOGUE

A RUSSIAN FOLK TALE

Some people place this story in the town of Atkarsk, others in Volgsk, but in most versions it’s Uryupin and so that is where we will keep it. All versions agree that the events occurred sometime in the early years of the reign of the great Tsar Pyetr and all agree that the town in question was infested
by a plague of rats.

Rats always came to Uryupin in the summer, taking grain and bringing disease, but the people of the town, like those of any town, had learned to survive the summer months, comfortable in the knowledge that the cold of winter would kill off most of the verminous creatures—not completely wipe them out perhaps, but at least reduce their numbers so that the next summer would be no worse than the last.

But although the winters had of late been as cold as one might expect in Uryupin, they had had scant effect on the size of the rat population. The number emerging in spring seemed little fewer than there had been the previous autumn, and the number each autumn was three times what it had been in spring. By the third summer the rats were everywhere and the people of the town came up with a esperate solution. They would abandon Uryupin; leave it for the rats to feed in until there was nothing left for them to feed on. Then the rats would starve and the people, after a year or two, could return.

Before the plan could be carried out, late in July of that year, a merchant arrived in the town. He was not Russian but, as far as the people of Uryupin could tell, a European. He told the people that he had heard of their problem and that he could help. He had arrived with a simple wagon, pulled by a tired
mule and covered with a great cloth, so that no one could see what was inside.

The merchant said that what he had in his wagon would kill every rat in the town and that if this did not prove to be the case he would not take a single copeck in payment. The leaders of the town asked what it was that the merchant had inside his wagon, but he would not show them until they agreed upon his price. Few in Uryupin had much appetite for the plan of abandoning the town and many had openly declared it to be madness, so the merchant needed to do little persuading before his alternative was accepted.

He dramatically (some versions of the story say ostentatiously) pulled off the cloth covering his wagon to reveal a cage; a cage containing monkeys—about a dozen of them. They had been placid in the darkness under the cloth, but as soon as the light hit them they began to scream and tear at the bars
that confined them, reaching through as if to attack the onlookers who had crowded round.

The monkeys were not big, perhaps up to a man’s knee, although their hunched posture made them appear smaller than if they had been standing fully upright. Their bodies, but for the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet, were covered in black fur, topped with a white ruff around the neck. Their heads were the heads of old men: fleshy, wrinkled skin, without a single hair. Some said they were more vultures than monkeys.

The merchant opened the cage and the monkeys ran out into the town. On the ground they moved on all fours with most of their weight on their hind legs, their knuckles barely grazing the earth, but soon they were using both arms and legs to climb up the sides of barns or down into cellars. Within minutes they had disappeared.

The people of the town waited. The merchant had warned them to keep their dogs and cats safe at home, since the monkeys were none too discriminating about their prey. Most kept their children at home too, reasoning that if one of these creatures could kill a full-grown dog, then why not a baby or an infant?

With no children playing and with the adults praying for success, the town might have been quiet, but such quietness as they enjoyed was continually broken by the screeching of a monkey as it found another rat. The ecstatic scream as one leapt upon its victim could cut through the town at any time of day or night, emanating from a cellar or from a loft or from behind a wall. No one saw the merchant’s pets at work, but all could hear that they were working.

And soon, within a week, the people did begin to notice that there were fewer rats. The tenth day was the last on which a rat was ever sighted, foraging amongst the bins of pig feed, oblivious to the fate of its brothers and sisters; the fate that it was soon to meet.

The town’s leaders were thankful. They offered the merchant what he had asked and half as much again. But the merchant refused to take anything.

“The task is not yet complete,” he explained. “My friends have not yet returned and will not return until there is nothing more for them to eat.”

Sure enough, though the people of Uryupin saw no more rats, they still heard the screaming of the monkeys at work, although now it seemed to come not from the cellars and the barns, but from the trees and the hedgerows. Rats are devious creatures, the people reasoned, and so no one was much surprised that the last survivors would find such unusual places to hide.

Midmorning of the fourteenth day after the monkeys had been released, the first one returned and settled down in the merchant’s caged wagon to sleep. By early evening, all had returned. The merchant locked the cage, threw the cloth back over it, took his payment and left.

And the townspeople basked in the silence. For two weeks the terrifying screeching of the feasting monkeys had penetrated every corner of Uryupin and the relief at their departure, though unspoken, was shared by all. In their minds the people were glad to have got rid of the rats. In their hearts they
were overjoyed to be free of the screaming monkeys.

But as the days went by, the silence began to weigh on them. At first they had thought the quietness had been so noticeable only in contrast to the noise of the past two weeks, but soon people began to realize it was actually more silent than it had been before; before the merchant and his monkeys
ever arrived in the town. They could cover it up with the noise of speech and of their daily lives, but beyond that, there was nothing. It was an absolute, total silence.

And, as is often the case in these stories, it was a young boy, of about ten, who first noticed. There was silence because there was no birdsong. After the merchant’s creatures had done their work, there was not a single bird left alive anywhere in the town of Uryupin.

Nor did any ever return.

PART ONE

CHAPTER I

DMITRY FETYUKOVICH SAID HE KNEW SOME PEOPLE.

“What do you mean, ‘people’?” I asked. My voice sounded weary. Looking around the dimly lit room, I could see that we were all weary.

“People who can help. People who understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or to kill a Frenchman.”

“You’re saying that we can’t do the job ourselves?” My question came from instinctive patriotism, but I knew a hundred answers without having to hear Dmitry’s reply.

“Well, we haven’t done too well so far, have we? Bonaparte is already at Smolensk—beyond Smolensk by now probably. It’s not about saving face any more. It’s about saving Russia.” Dmitry’s voice showed his exasperation. Bonaparte had rolled across Russia as if the Russian army hadn’t even been there. That was the plan of course, so we were told, but even if that were true, it was a demoralizing plan. Dmitry paused and stroked his beard, the scar on his cheek beneath reminding himof how strongly he had fought for his country; how hard we all had fought. “Besides,” he continued, “there’re only four of us. General Barclay’s idea wasn’t for us to defeat the French with our bare hands.We’re supposed to work out a way to defeat them.” He snorted a brief laugh as he realized he was getting above himself. “To help the rest of the army defeat them.”

Dmitry’s typical arrogance and his recognition of it relaxed the four of us with a ripple of silent laughter that passed around the table, but it quickly evaporated.

“You really think it’s as bad as that?” It was Vadim Fyodorovich, our leader, or at least the highest-ranking of us, who asked the question.

“Don’t you?” replied Dmitry.

Vadim was silent for a moment. “Yes, yes I do. I just wanted to hear it out loud.”

“I wouldn’t have believed it before Smolensk,” I said.

“Perhaps that was the problem,” said Vadim. “Perhaps none of us really believed what Bonaparte was capable of. That we do now gives us some . . . hope.” He rubbed his face, his fingers running through his thick, black beard. “Anyway,” he resumed, with a little more energy than before, “Dmitry, tell us about these people.”

“A small group,” explained Dmitry, “expert in working behind enemy lines. Always attacking when they are least expected. Always causing maximum disruption at minimum risk.”

“They sound like Kazaki,” I said.

Dmitry sucked his bottom lip, choosing his words. “Like Cossacks, yes—in many ways.” He again thought carefully before speaking. “But not Russian.”

“And how do you know them?” From Vadim’s tone, it seemed clear that he knew the answers to his questions already. He and Dmitry had had plenty of time to talk on the grim ride from Smolensk back to Moscow. It was natural—certainly natural for Dmitry—to make sure he entered a debate with half of us already on his side.

“They helped us against the Turks.” Dmitry’s eyes fell on my diminished left hand as he spoke. My two missing fingers had long since rotted away in the corner of a prison cell in Silistria, severed by a Turkish blade. It was a wound that people seemed particularly sensitive about, although I had long
since gotten used to it. The physical scars were the least of the horrors that the Turks had visited upon me.

“So does this mean that you know these people too, Aleksei?” asked Maksim Sergeivich, turning to me. Maksim was the youngest of the four of us. Just as I had noticed that Vadim was already on-side with Dmitry’s plan, Maks was afraid that a three-to-one vote was a foregone conclusion. And that would be a big problem for Maks. He had a thing about democracy.

“No, no. This is as new to me as it is to you, Maks,” I replied cautiously. I looked at Dmitry; this was all new to me, and it was odd—to say the least—that Dmitry had never mentioned it. “Dmitry and I never crossed paths in Wallachia. They seem to get about though, these . . . ‘people.’” I stuck with
Dmitry’s original word. “Fighting on the Danube and then travelling all the way to Moscow to help us. Where do they call home?”

“They’re from around the Danube; Wallachia, Moldavia—one of those places. They fought there from patriotism, to defend the land of their forefathers. Fighting the Turks is something of a tradition down there.”

“Well, the whole thing’s out of the question then, isn’t it?” said Maks, his eager face lighting up at being able to point out a logical flaw. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose as he spoke. “The Danube is as far away from us as . . .Warsaw. Even if you sent word to them today, Napoleon would have taken Moscow and would be warming his hands by the fire in Petersburg before they . . .”

Maks stopped before he finished his sentence. He was, more than any man I knew, able to detach himself from his own world. Most of us would find it hard to describe so glibly the realization of the horror we were all fighting, but Maks could conceive the inconceivable. It was a useful and at the same time sometimes frightening trait. But today, even he understood the potential reality of what he had said.

Vadim bridled at the image. “If Bonaparte were to make it to Moscow or Petersburg, then the only fires he would find would be the smouldering remains of a city destroyed by its own people rather than allowed to fall into the hands of the invader.”

At the time it sounded like tub-thumping bravado. We little knew how true his words would turn out to be.

“Maks does have a point though,” I said. “The whole thing is academic now. If we were going to use them, we should have sent word a long time ago.”

“Which is why I did,” said Dmitry.

He looked round the room, into each of our eyes in turn, daring one of us to object. Vadim already knew. Maks saw no logical argument against a fait accompli. I was tired.

“There was a letter from them waiting for me when we got back here today,” continued Dmitry. “They’ve already set off. They expect to be here by the middle of the month.”

“Let’s just hope they don’t get caught up in the French lines along the way.” My comment sounded cynical, but it was a serious issue. Half of the Russian army had been dashing back from a rushed peace settlement with the Turks and had only just made it ahead of Bonaparte. Dmitry’s friends would be running the same risk. But none of the others cared to take up the point, so I let it lie.

“How many of them are there?” asked Maks.

“That depends,” said Dmitry. “Twenty if we’re lucky—probably fewer.”

“Well, what use is that?” I asked. I sounded more contemptuous than I had intended to, but no more than I felt.

“Davidov performs miracles with just a few Cossacks,” Vadim pointed out. It was below the belt; Denis Vasilyevich Davidov was something of a hero of mine. But the comparison was unfair.

“A squad from a Cossack voisko consists of eighty men or more; not twenty. Are your friends worth four Cossacks each?”

Dmitry looked me square in the eye. “No,” he said. “They’re worth ten.” I felt the sudden urge to punch him, but I knew it was not Dmitry that I was angry with.

“Perhaps you should tell us what makes them so remarkable,” said Vadim.

“It’s hard to describe,” said Dmitry, considering for a moment. “You’ve heard of the Oprichniki?”

Vadim and I both nodded agreement, but Maks, surprisingly, had not come across the term.

“During the reign of Ivan the Fourth—the Terrible, as he liked to be called—during one of his less benevolent phases, he set up a sort of personal troop of bodyguards known as the Oprichniki,” explained Dmitry. “The job of the Oprichniki was internal suppression, which is obviously not what
we’re talking about here, but the method of an Oprichnik was to use absolute, unrestrained violence. Officially, they were monks. They rode around the country wearing black cowls, killing anyone that Ivan deemed should die. Although they were monks, they weren’t educated, but their faith gave them the fanaticism that Ivan needed.”

“And these are the guys that are going to help us?” asked Maks dubiously.

Dmitry nodded slowly. “There are similarities. My friends understand that violence is of itself a weapon. They are unhindered by scruple or fear.”

“And are they religious?” I asked. “Monks, like the original Oprichniki?”

“They’re not monks”—Dmitry paused, as if considering how much to tell us, then continued—“but they have their own fanaticism. Where they come from, on the borders of the Ottoman world, Christianity has always been an adaptable concept.”

“Are they controllable? Trustworthy?” asked Vadim.

“As trustworthy and controllable as a musket or a cannon—in the correct hands. They just need pointing in the right direction and they get on with it.”

“And you’re sure they don’t expect payment?” Vadim’s question clearly referred to a conversation he and Dmitry had had in private.

“They enjoy their work. Like any army, they live off the vanquished.” None of us quite followed Dmitry’s meaning. “The spoils of war. Armies live off the gold and the food and whatever other plunder they take from the enemy.”

“I’m not sure they’ll find enough gold with the French army to make their journey worthwhile,” I said.

“There are rewards other than gold,” said Dmitry with an uncharacteristic lack of materialism. “They are experts at taking what the rest of us would ignore.”

I don’t think that any of us really liked the idea of resurrecting the Oprichniki, but the name stuck, even though we never said it to their faces. Once we’d met them, we got some sense of how Dmitry came up with the analogy.

It was late and Vadim Fyodorovich brought the meeting to a close. “Well then, gentlemen, we have a week or so in which to prepare for the arrival of the ‘Oprichniki.’ That gives us plenty enough time to work out how to make best use of them.” He took a deep breath. He looked exhausted, but tried his best to instil some enthusiasm into all of us. “It’s been a tough campaign so far, I know, but this time I really feel it in my water that Bonaparte has overreached himself and that we’ve turned the corner. Eh? Eh?”

He seemed, against all hope and experience, to expect some sort of rousing cheer of agreement, but he got little more than a nod or a raised eyebrow as we each left the room and headed for our beds. He was not the kind of man to whom stirring propagandist speeches came naturally, nor were we the kind to be stirred by them. That’s part of what had made us, until then, such a good team.

We had ridden at almost full gallop from Smolensk to Moscow, sleeping rough when we could find no convenient lodgings. The weather of early August was oppressively hot for some, but I enjoyed it; I always loved the summer and hated the winter. Even so, it was good to sleep in a real bed again. It was the same bed I always slept in—usually slept in—when staying in Moscow, in an inn just north of the Kremlin, in Tverskaya; the same inn where we had held our meeting. It was the small hours by the time we broke up, but I did not fall asleep immediately. Instead, my mind drifted back to another meeting, the first time I had met Vadim, the time when our strange little group had first begun to assemble.

“Dmitry Fetyukovich has told you what this is all about?” Vadim had asked.

Dmitry Fetyukovich, as ever, had not told me much. It had been seven years before, November of 1805; less than a month before the Battle of Austerlitz. Dmitry had said he knew of a major who was trying to form a small band for “irregular operations.” I’d been interested and so the meeting had been arranged. I’d never spoken to Vadim, but I’d seen him around the camp, usually slightly dishevelled and unmilitary, but always respected by those who knew him.

“Not entirely, sir,” I had replied. “Dmitry just told me it was something a bit out of the ordinary. It sounded worth a go.”

“There’s no ‘sir’s here,” Vadim had told me, firmly. In those days he had been a little more austere than he became as I got to know him better, and as he became better practised at getting his way without coercion. “Respect for your superiors may be the great strength of the Russian army, but it doesn’t always encourage . . .” He could not find the word.

“Thinking?” suggested Dmitry.

“Exactly,” Vadim had continued. “Thinking in the army can get you into a lot of trouble.”

He and Dmitry exchanged a smirk. Dmitry later told me that Vadim had once almost been court-martialled for disobeying an order. In doing so he’d captured an enemy gun emplacement and turned the tide of a battle, but the order had come from a very rich, very noble, very stupid senior officer and
there were many who thought that the sensibilities of that breed of officer were of far greater significance than the winning of mere battles. Fortunately, others didn’t. Moreover, and although none would have guessed it from his manner or demeanour, Vadim was also very rich and very noble, with the added advantage of not being in the slightest bit stupid. He had been promoted to major and given a pretty free rein to do whatever he thought would best harass the enemy.

“And thinking,” Vadim went on, “is what I’m told you do rather a lot of.”

I smiled. “It’s more of a hobby, really. Like you say, there’s not much use for it in battle.”

“Not in battle, no. In battles you obey orders—generally. When I give orders, you obey orders; but that won’t happen often. And don’t imagine you’ll avoid battles either. You’ll still have to fight like a soldier. It’s what we do between the battles that will be different.”

“And what will we be doing?” I asked.

“Espionage. Sabotage. Uncovering information and spreading chaos. Sometimes in a small group, sometimes alone. I’ll tell you what to do, then we work out how to do it. How’s your French?”

Unusually, we had been speaking in Russian—something that was becoming popular amongst those who wanted to prove themselves true patriots.

“Pretty good,” I said.

“Dmitry tells me you could pass yourself off on a street in Paris.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I ventured.

“Well, if it’s true, then say it. Modesty is just another form of lying; useful with the ladies but dangerous amongst brothers-in-arms. You tell someone you’re only a ‘pretty good’ shot then he’ll start taking risks to cover for you. Then he gets killed and it turns out you’re a damned good shot, and his death’s down to you. What are you like as a shot?”

“Pretty good,” I replied. Vadim frowned. “But I’m damned good with a sword.”

Vadim grinned. “Good. Ideally, you won’t need to spend too much time using either. One last thing—for now: can you recommend anyone else for this? We can work as a team of three, but four or five would be better.”

“Another thinker, you mean?” I asked.

Vadim nodded. I thought for a moment, then turned to Dmitry. “Have you mentioned Maksim Sergeivich?”

“I thought about him,” said Dmitry. “He’s very young and he’s a bit . . . odd.”

“He certainly thinks,” I said.

“That’s just it,” replied Dmitry. “He thinks odd things.”

“Sounds ideal,” announced Vadim.

And so the following day Vadim had been introduced to Maks. He had required even less persuasion than I had, but then it would have been hard to find a role that was more appropriate for him. We had all met for the first time within the space of just a few months, but already our band was complete.

But now, seven years later, Dmitry had invited new members to join us—men that only he knew and only he could vouch for. Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies, but as I fell asleep I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about these Oprichniki that Dmitry was to introduce into our midst.

Despite our late night, I woke early the following morning. We had a week until Dmitry’s “people”—the Oprichniki—arrived and, with only a little preparation to be made for them, that meant almost seven days of leisure.

I walked around the still-familiar streets for the first time in nearly six months and noticed little had changed except the weather, and on this glorious summer’s day that was a change for the better. The people were much as they had been. Certainly they knew that Bonaparte was approaching, but they knew too that he must stop. No emperor whose throne was as far away as Paris could ever march his army all the way to Moscow. The fact that he had marched as far as Vilna, as Vitebsk, as Smolensk, the fact that those cities were also unassailable from Paris, they fully understood. But that didn’t change their belief that Moscow itself could not be reached. And I was in full agreement. Of everything I was to see in that long autumn of 1812, despite the almost unimaginable horrors, the most unreal was to be the sight of French troops on the streets of Moscow.

Was it just that it wasn’t my home town that made me love Moscow? I’d lived in and around Petersburg my whole life. It was beautiful and comfortable and familiar. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt, simply predictability. A knowledge of every inch led to few surprises. It was odd then that Petersburg was by far the younger of the two cities. It had been only a century before—precisely a century, in 1712—that Petersburg had replaced Moscow as the capital city, less than a decade after its foundation.

A city built as quickly as Petersburg, and built to the plans of so forceful a character as Tsar Pyetr, appeared to me to be precisely what it was—synthetic. Moscow was created over centuries by people who built what they needed to live. Petersburg was built to emulate the great cities of Europe, and so it would always seem counterfeit—only slightly more real than the cardboard frontages of the villages erected by Potemkin to give Tsarina Yekaterina a more picturesque view as she toured the backwaters of her empire. But Petersburg was the capital, and society adored it. Society had moved to Petersburg, but life remained in Moscow.

My wife, Marfa Mihailovna, loved Petersburg in a way I never could. She was just as familiar with it and used that intimacy as the basis for seeing a depth that I could never perceive. Our young son seemed to love it too, but at five years old, nothing was yet familiar to him; everything was a new adventure. So Marfa stayed in Petersburg and, however far I travelled, returning to one meant returning to the other. Returning to either or to both felt the same—comfortable.

As I meandered through the Moscow streets, I drank in each of the great sights of the city. I walked along the embankment of the river Moskva, looking up at the towers that punctuated the walls of the Kremlin. I turned north, passing beneath the lofty onion domes of Saint Vasily’s and then across Red Square, thronged with Muscovites going about their lives. Then I continued northward, back into the maze of tiny streets in Tverskaya.

But perhaps I was fooling myself. Perhaps I was wandering around the streets of Moscow, marvelling at its people and its buildings, in order only to tease myself before I headed for my true destination, like a man who eats all his vegetables first, praising their subtle flavour while really trying to leave his plate empty of everything but the steak that is the only part of the meal he ever wanted. Or was I like a drunk who wakes early and realizes that there are times when it is too early in the day even for him and so kills time, trying to keep his mind off that first sharp, sweet drink?

It was almost midday when I reached the corner of Degtyarny Lane and sat down again on the bench where I’d first sat the previous December.

Back in the winter of 1811, I’d been there with Dmitry and Maks. Vadim had been home in Petersburg for his daughter’s wedding. I’d been at the wedding too, but had returned to Moscow almost straight after, countering my guilt at the look on Marfa’s face with the strange anticipation that something would happen, had to happen, once I got back to a city as vibrant as the old capital.

But little had seemed to be going on and so the three of us had, before long and for whatever reason, found ourselves sitting on that bench in the quiet, snow-covered square exchanging jokes and watching the men (and occasional women) entering and leaving the building opposite.

There had been a moment of silence as our eyes were all taken by a particularly fine-looking young lady who was leaving the building, a silence which Maks filled with an announcement made in the voice he usually reserved for describing the political affairs of nations.

“It’s a brothel!”

“Of course it’s a brothel,” laughed Dmitry. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed, but thinking about it, it seemed pretty obvious. Dmitry may have been bluffing too, but it always seemed best to appear worldly-wise in front of a young soldier like Maksim, so I laughed along with Dmitry.

“You want to go in?” Dmitry asked Maks. “It looks like it’s something of a military establishment.” And indeed most of the clientele did seem to be cavalry officers, just like ourselves.

“No thanks,” Maks had replied, in a voice that made me wonder whether he had any human desires at all.

Dmitry turned to me. “Aleksei? Ah no. You’ve got the loving wife and family.”

“How about you?” I asked Dmitry.

“Me? No. I don’t like to play the field either.” He winked at no one in particular. “There’s a little place I use on the other side of Nikitskiy Street. Cheap and clean. I’ll stick with that.”

The girl who had caught our attention earlier soon returned, clutching tight to her body the basket of fruit and other foods she had gone out to buy. She was astonishing. Her large eyes sloped slightly upwards away from her nose and her rich lips were pressed tightly shut against the wind-blown snow
through which she struggled.

I felt I had seen her before. Suddenly, it dawned on me.

“She looks like Marie-Louise.”

“Who?” snorted Dmitry.

“The new empress of France,” explained Maks.

“The new Madame Bonaparte,” was my description.

“Ah! The old Austrian whore,” was Dmitry’s.

All of our comments were to a reasonable degree true. In 1810, Bonaparte had divorced his first wife, Josephine, and wedMarie-Louise, the daughter of the Austrian emperor, Francis the Second. Josephine had been unable to provide Bonaparte with children and the emperor needed an heir. How quickly the
French had forgotten what they did to their last Austrian queen.

“She looks a bit like her, but not much,” said Maks.

“Who knows?” I replied. “I’ve only ever seen one picture, but they are similar.”

The picture I had seen enchanted me. It was just a print based on a portrait of her, but she seemed to me truly beautiful—much better than Josephine. But then, they said Bonaparte loved Josephine. That’s why they had stayed together even without children.

“Better have him bed some Austrian harlot than touch the tsar’s sister,” said Dmitry. “She was too young. Very wise of Tsar Aleksandr to tell Napoleon to wait until she was eighteen.”

Dmitry raised his arm. I looked up and noticed that he had made a snowball, which he was preparing to throw at the girl as she trudged her way back to the door of the brothel. However minor it was, it seemed so needlessly cruel that I shoved at his arm with my own as he threw. He was an excellent shot and, even with my hindrance, the snowball hit the wall just inches in front of her face.

She glanced towards us and, because my arm was raised, assumed that I had been the thrower. The look she gave had such a combination of anger and pride, of asking why I presumed to treat her in such a way, that I felt almost compelled to go and apologize, not just to tell her that it hadn’t been me, but to explain why I hadn’t tried harder to prevent it, to be forgiven for even knowing the man who had thrown the snowball.

Dmitry chuckled to himself. “Did you hear what she said to him on their wedding night?”

“Who?” I asked.

“Marie-Louise. To Bonaparte,” replied Dmitry, revealing a greater knowledge of French royal marriages than he had previously shown. “After he’d screwed her for the first time, she liked it so much she said, ‘Do it again.’”

I joined in Dmitry’s raucous laughter, even though I’d heard the story before. Maksim didn’t laugh. At the time, I’d presumed that he simply didn’t get it.

“You know what she’d say?” continued Dmitry through his laughter, indicating the young “lady” whose resemblance to Marie-Louise had started the whole conversation. “She’d say ‘Do it again—second time is half price.’”

This time both Dmitry and Maks laughed, but I didn’t. It’s one thing to insult a French empress, another to insult a Russian whore.

As it turned out, she charged by the hour.

Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

Jasper Kent was born in Worcestershire, England, in 1968. He attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and went on to study natural sciences at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, specializing in physics. Jasper has spent almost twenty years working as a software engineer in the UK and in Europe, while also working on writing both fiction and music. In that time, he has produced the novels Twelve, Thirteen Years Later, Yours Etc., Mr. Sunday, and Sifr, as well as cowritten several musicals, including The Promised Land and Remember! Remember! Jasper lives in Brighton, where he shares a flat with his girlfriend and several affectionate examples of the species Rattus norvegicus. Visit Jasper Kent’s Web site at http://www.jasperkent.com/.

Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes

2010-09-22T14:45:00.001-05:00

One thousand lucky Dragon*Con 2010 attendees received a Pyr sample chapter book containing excerpts from ten new and forthcoming titles. The reception was so fantastic--and immediate--we've decided to offer all our readers the opportunity to preview the same forthcoming Fall and Winter books here online. Pyr books recently celebrated our five-year anniversary in March 2010. In this half decade, we are honored to have been on the Hugo Awards ballot eight times, as well as on the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Locus Award, Chesley Award, and other prestigious award ballots. But the greatest honor has been the way readers have embraced our books. We promise the best is yet to come.

Here, from that sampler, is an excerpt from Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes.

“Wildly descriptive slaughter-fest with a surprising pathos.”
—Stephen Deas

“Imaginative characters, a well-paced narrative, and enough maiming, decapitation, and evisceration to make 300 look tame. . . . A bloody good read. 9/10”
—Total Sci-Fi

Tome of the Undergates:

The Aeons’ Gate, Book One

Sam Sykes

PROLOGUE

NO ROOM FOR HOPE

The Aeons’ Gate
Sea of Buradan, two weeks north and east of Toha
Summer, late

Contrary to whatever stories and songs there may be about the subject, there are only a handful of respectable things a man can do after he picks up a sword.
First of all, he can put it down and do something else; this is the option for men who have more appreciable talents. He could use it to defend his homestead, of course, as protecting one’s own is nothing but admirable. If he decides he’s good at that sort of work, he could enlist with the local army and defend his kin and country against whatever entity is deemed the enemy at that moment. All these are decent and honourable practices for a man who carries a sword.

Then there are the less respectable trades.

There’s always mercenary life, the fine art of being paid to put steel in things. Mercenaries, usually, aren’t quite as respected as soldiers, since they swear no allegiance to any liege beyond the kind that are round, flat and golden. And yet, it remains only a slightly less respectable use for the blade, as, inevitably, being a mercenary does help someone.

Now, the very bottommost practice for a man who carries a sword, the absolute dregs of the well, the lowliest and meanest trade a man can possibly embrace after he decides not to put away his weapon is that of the adventurer.

There is one similarity between the adventurer and the mercenary: the love of money. Past that fact, everything is unfavourable contrast. Like a mercenary, an adventurer works for money, be it gold, silver or copper. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer’s trade is not limited to killing, though it does require quite a bit of that. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer’s exploits typically aid no one.

When one requires a herd of cattle guarded from rustlers, a young maiden protected, a family tomb watched over or an enemy driven away, all for an honest fee, one calls upon a mercenary.

When one requires a herd of cattle stolen, a young maiden deflowered, a family tomb looted and desecrated or an honest man driven away from his own home, all for a few copper coins and a promise, one calls upon an adventurer.

I make this distinction for the sole purpose that, if someone finds this journal after I’ve succumbed to whatever hole I fell into or weapon I’ve run afoul of, they’ll know the reason.

This marks the first entry of the Aeons’ Gate, the grand adventure of Lenk and his five companions.

If whoever reads this has a high opinion of this writer so far, please cease reading now. The above sentence takes many liberties.

To consider the term “adventure,” one must consider it from the adventurer’s point of view. For a boy on his father’s knee, a youth listening to an elder or a rapt crowd hearing the songs of poets, adventure is something to lust after, filled with riches, women, heroism and glory. For an adventurer, it’s work; dirty, dusty, bloody, spittlefilled, lethal and cheap work.

The Aeons’ Gate is a relic, an ancient device long sought after by holy men and women of all faiths. It breaches the barriers between heaven and earth, allowing communication with the Gods themselves, an opportunity to ask why, how and what.

Or so I’ve heard.

My companions and I have been hired to seek out this Gate.

To address the term “companions,” I say this because it sounds a degree better than a “band of brigands, zealots, savages and madmen.” And I use that description because it sounds infinitely more interesting than what we really are: cheap labour.

Unbound by the codes of unions and guilds, adventurers are able to perform more duties than common mercenaries. Untroubled by sets of morals and guidelines, adventurers are able to go into places the common mercenary would find repulsive. Unprotected by laws dictating the absolute minimum one must be paid, adventurers do all this for much, much less coin than the common mercenary.

If someone has read this far, he might ask himself what the point of being an adventurer is.

The answer is freedom. An adventurer is free to come and go as he pleases, parting from whoever has hired him when the fancy strikes him. An adventurer is free to stop at whatever exotic locale he has found, to take whatever he has with him, to stay for as long as he wants. An adventurer is free to claim what he finds, be it knowledge, treasure or glory. An adventurer is free to wander, penniless and perpetually starved, until he finally collapses dead on a road.

It also bears mentioning that an adventurer typically does leave his employer’s charter if the task assigned proves particularly deranged.

Thus far, my journey has taken my companions and me far from Muraska’s harbour, where we took on this commission. We have travelled the western seas for what seems like an eternity, braving the islands, and their various diseases and inhabitants, in search of this Gate. Thus far, I’ve fought off hostile natives, lugged heavy crates filled with various supplies, mended sails, swabbed decks and spent hours upon hours with one end of mine or the other leaning over the railing of our ship.

My funds have so far accumulated to twenty-six pieces of copper, eleven pieces of silver and half a gold coin. That half came from a sailor who was less lucky than the rest of us and had his meagre savings declared impromptu inheritance for the ship’s charter.

That charter is Miron Evenhands, Lord Emissary of the Church of Talanas. Miron’s duties are, in addition to regular priestly business, overseeing diplomatic ties with other churches and carrying out religious expeditions, as which this apparently qualifies. He has been allocated funds for the matter, but spends them sparingly, hiring only as many adventurers and mercen aries as he must to form a facade of generosity. The ship he has chartered, a merchantman dubbed the Riptide, we share with various dirty sailors and hairy rats that walk on two legs.

My companions seem content with these arrangements, perhaps because they themselves are just as dirty and smelly. They sleep below deck even as I write this, having been driven up top by foul scents and groping hands. Granted, the arrangements are all that they are content with.

Every day, I deal with their greed and distrust. They demand to know where our payment is, how much money we’re getting. They tell me that the others are plotting and scheming against them. Asper tells me that Denaos makes lewd comments to her and the other women who have chartered passage aboard the ship. Denaos tells me that Asper mutters all manner of religious curses at him and tells the women that he is a liar, lech, lush, layabout and lummox; all lies, he tells me. Dreadaeleon tells me the
ship rocks too much and it’s impossible for him to concentrate on his books. Gariath tells me he can’t stand the presence of so many humans and he’ll kill every one to the last man.

Kataria . . . tells me to relax. “Time at sea,” she says, smiling all the while, “amidst the beauty of it all should be relaxing.”

It would seem like sound advice if not for the fact that it came from a girl who stinks worse than the crew half the time.

To be an adventurer means to have freedom, the freedom to decide for oneself. That said, if someone has found this journal and wonders why it’s no longer in my hands, please keep in mind that it’s just as likely that I decided to leap from the crow’s nest to the hungry waters below as it is that I died in some heroic manner.

ONE

HUMAN LITTER

In the span of a breath, colour and sound died on the wind.

The green of the ocean, the flutter of sails, the tang of salt in the air vanished from Lenk’s senses. The world faded into darkness, leaving only the tall, leather-skinned man before him and the sword clutched in his hands.

The man loosed a silent howl and leapt forward. Lenk’s sword rose just as his foe’s curved blade came crashing down.

They met in a kiss of sparks. Life returned to Lenk’s senses in the groan of the grinding blades. He was aware of many things at once: the man’s towering size, the sound of curses boiling out of tattooed lips, the odour of sweat and the blood staining the wood under their feet.

The man uttered something through a yellow-toothed smile; Lenk watched every writhing twitch of his mouth, hearing no words behind them. No time to wonder. He saw the man’s free hand clutching a smaller, crueller blade, whipping up to seek his ribs.

The steel embrace shattered. Lenk leapt backward, feeling his boots slide along the red-tinged salt beneath him. His heels struck something fleshy and solid and unmoving; his backpedal halted.

Don’t look, he urged himself, not yet.

He had eyes for nothing but his foe’s larger blade as it came hurtling down upon him. Lenk darted away, watched the cutlass bite into the slick timbers and embed itself. He saw the twitch of the man’s eye—the realisation of his mistake and the instant in which futile hope existed.

And then died.

Lenk lunged, sword up and down in a flashing arc. His senses returned with painful slowness; he could hear the echo of the man’s shriek, feel the sticky life spatter across his face, taste the tang of copper on his lips. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the man knelt before his own severed
arm, shifting a wide-eyed stare from the leaking appendage to the young man standing over him.

Not yet.

Lenk’s sword flashed again, biting deeply into meat and sliding out again. Only when its tip lowered, steady, to the timbers, only when his opponent collapsed, unmoving, did he allow himself to take in the sight.

The pirate’s eyes were quivering pudding: stark white against the leather of his flesh. They looked stolen, wearing an expression that belonged to a smaller, more fearful man. Lenk met his foe’s gaze, seeing his own blue stare reflected in the whites until the light behind them sputtered out in the span
of a sole, ragged breath.

He drew a lock of silver hair from his eyes, ran his hand down his face, wiping the sweat and substance from his brow. His fingers came back to him trembling and stained.

Lenk drew in a breath.

In that breath, the battle had ended. The roar of the pirates’ retreat and the hesitant, hasty battle cries of sailors had faded on the wind. The steel that had flashed under the light of a shameless staring sun now lay on the ground in limp hands. The stench ebbed on the breeze, filled the sails overhead and
beckoned the hungry gulls to follow.

The dead remained.

They were everywhere, having ceased to be men. Now they were litter, so many obstacles of drained flesh and broken bones lying motionless on the deck. Pirates lay here and there, amongst the sailors they had taken with them. Some embraced their foes with rigor-stiffening limbs. Most lay on their backs, eyes turned to Gods that had no answers for the questions that had died on their lips.

Disconcerting.

His thought seemed an understatement, perhaps insultingly so, but he had seen many bodies in his life, many not half as peacefully gone. He had drawn back trembling hands many times before, flicked blood from his sword many times before, as he did now. And he was certain that the stale breath he
drew would not be the last to be scented with death.

“Astounding congratulations should be proffered for so ruby a sport, good sir!”

Lenk whirled about at the voice, blade up. The pirate standing upon the railing of the Riptide, however, seemed less than impressed, if the banana-coloured grin on his face was any indication. He extended a long, tattooed limb and made an elaborate bow.

“It is the sole pleasure of the Linkmaster’s crew, myself included, to look forward to offering a suitable retort for,” the pirate paused to gesture to the human litter, “our less fortunate complements, of suitable fury and adequately accompanying disembowelment.”

“Uh,” Lenk said, blinking, “what?”

Had he time and wit enough about him to decipher the tattooed man’s expression, he would, he assured himself, have come up with a more suitable retort.

“Do hold that thought, kind sir. I shall return anon to carve it out.”

Like some particularly eloquent hairless ape, the pirate fell to all fours and scampered nimbly across a chain swaying over the gap of quickly shifting sea between the two ships. He was but one of many, Lenk noted, as the remaining tattooed survivors fled back over the railings of their own vessel.

“Cragsmen,” the young man muttered, spitting on the deck at the sight of the inked masses.

Their leviathan ship shared their love of decoration, it seemed. Its title was painted in bold, violent crimson upon a black hull, sharp as a knife: Linkmaster. And in equally threatening display were crude scrawlings of ships of various sizes beneath the title, each one with a triumphant red cross drawn through it.

Save one that bore a peculiar resemblance to the Riptide’s triple masts.

“Eager little bastards,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes. “They’ve already picked out a spot for us.”

He blinked. That realisation carried a heavy weight, one that struck him suddenly. He had thought that the pirates were chance raiders and the Riptide nothing more than an unlucky victim. This particular drawing, apparently painted days before, suggested something else.

“Khetashe,” Lenk cursed under his breath, “they’ve been waiting for us.”

“Were they?” someone grunted from behind him, a voice that seemed to think it should be feminine but wasn’t quite convinced.

He turned about and immediately regretted doing so. A pair of slender hands in fingerless leather gloves reached down to grip an arrow’s shaft jutting from a man’s chest. He should have been used to the sound of arrowheads being wrenched out of flesh, he knew, but he couldn’t help cringing.

Somehow, one never got all the way used to Kataria.

“Because if this is an ambush,” the pale creature said as she inspected the bloody arrow, “it’s a rather pitiful excuse for one.” She caught his uncomfortable stare and offered an equally unpleasant grin as she tapped her chin with the missile’s head. “But then, humans have never been very good at this sort
of thing, have they?”

Her ears were always the first thing he noticed about Kataria: long, pointed spears of pale flesh peeking out from locks of dirty blonde hair, three deep notches running the length of each as they twitched and trembled like beings unto themselves. Those ears, as long as the feathers laced in her hair, were certainly the most prominent markers of her shictish heritage.

The immense, fur-wrapped bow she carried on her back, as well as the shortcut leathers she wore about what only barely constituted a bosom, leaving her muscular mid section exposed, were also indicative of her savage custom.

“You looked as surprised as any to find them aboard,” Lenk replied. With a sudden awareness, he cast a glance about the deck. “So did Denaos, come to think of it. Where did he go?”

“Well . . .” She tapped the missile’s fletching against her chin as she inspected the deck. “I suppose if you just find the trail of urine and follow it, you’ll eventually reach him.”

“Whereas one need only follow your stench to find you?” he asked, daring a little smirk.

“Correction,” she replied, unfazed, “one need only look for the clear winner.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind the leather band about her brow, glanced at the corpse at Lenk’s feet. “What’s that? Your first one today?”

“Second.”

“Well, well, well.” Her smile was as unpleasant as the red-painted arrows she held before her, her canines as prominent and sharp as their glistening heads. “I win.”

“This isn’t a game, you know.”

“You only say that because you’re losing.” She replaced the bloodied missiles in the quiver on her back. “What’s it matter to you, anyway? They’re dead. We’re not. Seems a pretty favourable situation to me.”

“That last one snuck up on me.” He kicked the body. “Nearly gutted me.

I told you to watch my back.”

“What? When?”

“First, when we came up here.” He counted off on his fingers. “Next, when everyone started screaming, ‘Pirates! Pirates!’ And then, when I became distinctly aware of the possibility of someone shoving steel into my kidneys. Any of these sound familiar?”

“Vaguely,” she said, scratching her backside. “I mean, not the actual words, but I do recall the whining.” She offered a broader smile to cut off his retort. “You tell me lots of things: “Watch my back, watch his back, put an arrow in his back.” Watch backs. Shoot humans. I got the idea.”

“I said shoot Cragsmen.” Upon seeing her unregistering blink, he sighed and kicked the corpse again. “These things! The pirates! Don’t shoot our humans!”

“I haven’t,” she replied with a smirk. “Yet.”

“Are you planning to start?” he asked.

“If I run out of the other kind, maybe.”

Lenk looked out over the railing and sighed.

No chance of that happening anytime soon.

The crew of the Linkmaster stood at the railings of their vessel, poised over the clanking chain bridges with barely restrained eagerness. And yet, Lenk noted with a narrowing of his eyes, restrained all the same. Their leering, eager faces outnumbered the Riptide’s panicked expressions, their cutlasses shone brighter than any staff or club their victims had managed to cobble together.

And yet, all the same, they remained on their ship, content to throw at the Riptide nothing more than hungry stares and the occasional declaration of what they planned to do with Kataria, no matter what upper assets she might lack. The phrase “segregate those weeping dandelions ’twixt a furious hammer” was shouted more than once.

Any other day, he would have taken the time to ponder the meaning behind that. At that moment, another question consumed his thoughts.

“What are they waiting for?”

“Right now?” Kataria growled, flattened ears suggesting she heard quite clearly their intentions and divined their meaning. “Possibly for me to put an arrow in their gullets.”

“They could easily overrun us,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t they attack now, while they still have the ad vantage?”

“Scared?”

“Concerned.”

“About what?”

Largely, he told himself, that we’re going to die and you’re going to be the cause. His thoughts throbbed painfully in the back of his head. They’re waiting for something, I know it, and when they finally decide to attack, all I’ve got is a lunatic shict to fight them. Where are the others? Where’s Dreadaeleon? Where’s Denaos? Why do I even keep them around? I could do this. I could survive this if they were gone.

If she were . . .

He felt her stare upon him as surely as if she’d shot him. From the corner of his own eye, he could see hers staring at him. No, he thought, studying. Studying with an unnerving steadiness that exceeded even the unpleasantness of her long-vanished smile.

His skin twitched under her gaze, he shifted, turned a shoulder to her.

Stop staring at me.

She canted her head to one side. “What?”

Any response he might have had degenerated into a sudden cry of surprise, one lost amidst countless others, as the deck shifted violently beneath him, sending him hurtling to one knee. He was rendered deaf by the roar of waves as the Riptide rent the sea beneath it with the force of its turn, but even the ocean could not drown out the furious howl from the Riptide’s helm.

“More men!” the voice screeched. “Get more men to the railing! What are you doing, you thrice-fondled sons of six-legged whores from hell? Get those chains off!”

Not an eye could help turning to the ship’s wheel, and the slim, dark figure behind it. A bald beacon, Captain Argaol’s hairless head shone with sweat as his muscles strained to guide his bride of wood and sails away from her pursuer. Eyes white and wide in furious snarl, he turned a scowl onto Lenk.

“What in Zamanthras’s name are you blasphemers being paid for?” He thrust a finger toward the railings. “Get. Them. OFF!”

Several bodies pushed past Lenk, hatchets in hand as they rushed the chains biting into the Riptide’s hull. At this, a lilting voice cut across the gap of the sea, sharp as a blade to Lenk’s ears as he pulled himself to his feet.

“I say, kind Captain, that hardly seems the proper way to address the gentlemen in your employ, does it?” The helmsman of the Linkmaster taunted with little effort as he guided the black vessel to keep pace with its prey. “Truly, sirrah, perhaps you could benefit from a tongue more silver than brass?”

“Stuff your metaphors in your eyes and burn them, Cragscum!” Argaol split his roar in twain, hurling the rest of his fury at his crew below. “Faster! Work faster, you hairless monkeys! Get the chains off!”

“Do we help?” Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. “I mean, aren’t you a monkey?”

“Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,” Lenk replied. “Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.” His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the Riptide’s hull. “Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.”

Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A “mother claw,” some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.

“Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circum stance,” the Linkmaster’s helmsman called from across the gap. “Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?”

The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.

Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying, Lenk noted.

“You might,” the captain roared to his rival, “but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your—”

The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the Riptide as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe.

The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the Linkmaster back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk’s own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria’s modest weight was hurled against him.

His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.

And her.

His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.

He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.

“Hardly worthy of praise, Captain,” the Linkmaster’s helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. “Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e’er do your plight well?”

“So . . .” Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, “do they all talk like that?”

“Cragsmen are lunatics,” he muttered in reply. “Their mothers drink ink when they’re still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull.”

“What? Really?”

“Khetashe, I don’t know,” he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. “The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they’re going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!” He glanced her over. “Well, I mean, they’ll kill me, at least. You, they said they’d like to—”

“Yeah,” she snarled, “I heard them. But that’s only if they board.”

“And what makes you think they’re not going to?” He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. “So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!”

“So we get rid of it!”

“How? Nothing can move it!”

“Gariath could move it.”

“Gariath could do a lot of things,” Lenk snarled, scowling across the deck to the companionway that led to the ship’s hold. “He could come out here and help us instead of waiting for us all to die, but since he hasn’t, he could just choke on his own vomit and I’d be perfectly happy.”

“Well, I hope you won’t take offence if I’m not willing to sit around and wait with you to die.”

“Good! No waiting required! Just jump up to the front and get it over quickly!”

“Typical human,” she said, sneering and showing a large canine. “You’re giving up before the bodies are even hung and feeding the trees.”

“What does that even mean?” he roared back at her. Before she could retort, he held up a hand and sighed. “One moment. Let’s . . . let’s just pretend that death is slightly less imminent and think for a moment.”

“Think about what?” she asked, rolling her shoulders. “The situation seems pretty solved to you, at least. What are we supposed to do?”

Lenk’s eyes became blue flurries, darting about the ship. He looked from the chains and their massive mother to the men futilely trying to dislodge them. He looked from the companionway to Argaol shrieking at the helm. He looked from Kataria’s hard green stare to the Riptide’s rail . . .

And to the lifeboat dangling from its riggings.

“What, indeed—”

“Well,” a voice soft and sharp as a knife drawn from leather hissed, “you know my advice.”

Lenk turned and was immediately greeted by what resembled a bipedal cockroach. The man was crouched over a Cragsman’s corpse, studying it through dark eyes that suggested he might actually eat it if left alone. His leathers glistened like a dark carapace, his fingers twitched like feelers as they ran down the body’s leg.

Denaos’s smile, however, was wholly human, if a little unpleasant.

“And what advice is that?” Kataria asked, sneering at the man. “Run? Hide? Offer up various orifices in a desperate exchange for mercy?”

“Oh, they won’t be patient enough to let you offer, I assure you.” The rogue’s smile only grew broader at the insult. “Curb that savage organ you call a tongue, however, and I might be generous enough to share a notion of escape with you.”

“You’ve been plotting an escape this whole time the rest of us have been fighting?” Lenk didn’t bother to frown; Denaos’s lack of shame had rendered him immune to even the sharpest twist of lips. “Did you have so little faith in us?”

Denaos gave a cursory glance over the deck and shrugged. “I count exactly five dead Cragsmen, only one more than I had anticipated.”

“We don’t get paid by the body,” Lenk replied.

“Perhaps you should negotiate a new contract,” Kataria offered.

“We have a contract?” The rogue’s eyes lit up brightly.

“She was being sarcastic,” Lenk said.

Immediately, Denaos’s face darkened. “Sarcasm implies humour,” he growled. “There’s not a damn thing funny about not having money.” He levelled a finger at the shict. “What you were being was facetious, a quality of speech reserved only for the lowest and most cruel of jokes. Regardless,” he
turned back to the corpse, “it was clear you didn’t need me.”

“Not need you in a fight?” Lenk cracked a grin. “I’m quickly getting used to the idea.”

“We should just use him as a shield next time,” Kataria said, nodding, “see if we can’t get at least some benefit from him.”

“I hate to agree with her,” Lenk said with a sigh, “but . . . well, I mean you make it so easy, Denaos. Where were you when the fighting began, anyway?”

“Elsewhere,” the rogue said with a shrug.

“One of us could have been killed,” Lenk replied sharply.

Denaos glanced from Lenk to Kataria, expression unchanging. “Well, that might have been a mild inconveni ence or a cause for celebration, depending. As both of you are alive, however, I can only assume that my initial theory was correct. As to where I was—”

“Hiding?” Kataria interrupted. “Crying? Soiling yourself?”

“Correction.” Denaos’s reply was as smooth and easy as the knife that leapt from his belt to his hand. “I was hiding and soiling myself, if you want to call it that. At the moment . . .” He slid the dagger into the leg seam of the Cragsman’s trousers. “I’m looting.”

“Uh-huh.” Lenk got the vague sensation that continuing to watch the rogue work would be a mistake, but was unable to turn his head away as Denaos began to cut. “And . . . out of curiosity, what would you call what you were doing?”

“I believe the proper term is ‘reconnaissance.’”

“Scouting is what I do,” Kataria replied, making a show of her twitching ears.

“Yes, you’re very good at sniffing faeces and hunting beasts. What I do is . . .” He looked up from his macabre activities, waving his weapon as he searched for the word. “Of a more philosophical nature.”

“Go on,” Lenk said, ignoring the glare Kataria shot him for indulging the man.

“Given our circumstances, I’d say what I do is more along the lines of planning for the future,” Denaos said, finishing the long cut up the trouser leg.

Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict’s faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman’s leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.

“Are . . . are you going to ask him?”

“I would,” he muttered, “but I really don’t think I want to know.”

“Now then, as I was saying,” Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man’s trouser leg, “being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we’re thinking the same thing.”

“Somehow,” Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, “I sincerely doubt that.”

“That is,” Denaos continued, heedless, “we’re thinking of running, aren’t we?”

“You are,” Kataria growled. “And no one’s surprised. The rest of us already have a plan.”

“Which would be?” Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. “Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live.” He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria’s chest. “Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy
instead of a woman.” He shrugged. “Then again, they might prefer that.”

“You stinking, cowardly round-ear,” she snarled, baring her canines at him. “The plan is to neither run nor die, but to fight!” She jabbed her elbow into Lenk’s side. “The leader says so!”

“You do?” Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.

“Well, I . . . uh . . .” Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos’s hand through the Cragsman’s trousers. “I think you might . . .” He finally shook his head. “Look, I don’t disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you’re doing here.”

“Looting, as I said.”

Denaos’s hand suddenly stiffened, seizing something as a wicked smile came over his face. Lenk cringed and turned away as the man’s long fingers tensed, twisted and pulled violently. When he looked back, the man was dangling a small leather purse between his fingers.

“The third pocket,” the rogue explained, wiping the purse off on the man’s trousers, “where all reasonable men hide their wealth.”

“Including you?” Lenk asked.

“Assuming I had any wealth to spend,” Denaos replied, “I would hide it in a spot that would make a looter give long, hard thought as to just how badly he wanted it.” He slipped the pouch into his belt. “At any rate, this is likely as good as it’s going to get for me.”

“For us, you mean,” Lenk said.

“Oh, no, no. For you, it’s going to get much worse, since you seem rather intent on staying here.”

“We are in the employ of—”

“We are adventurers in the employ of Evenhands,” Denaos pointed out. “And what has he done for us? We’ve been at sea for a month and all we’ve got to show for it is dirty clothes, seasickness and the occasional native-borne disease.” He looked at Lenk intently. “Out at sea, there’s no chance to make an honest living. We’re as like to be killed as get paid, and Evenhands knows that.”

He shook a trembling finger, as though a great idea boiled on the tip of it.

“Now,” he continued, “if we run, we can sneak back to Toha and catch a ship back to the mainland. On the continent proper, we can go anywhere, do anything: mercenary work for the legions in Karneria, bodyguarding the fashas in Cier’Djaal. We’ll earn real coin without all these promises that
Evenhands is offering us. Out here, we’re just penniless.”

“We’ll be just as penniless on the mainland,” Lenk countered. “We run, the only thing we’ve earned is a reputation for letting employers, godly employers, die.”

“And the dead spend no money,” Denaos replied smoothly. “Besides, we won’t need to take jobs to make money.” He glanced at Kataria, gesturing with his chin. “We can sell the shict to a brothel.” He coughed. “Or a zoo of some kind.”

“Try it,” Kataria levelled her growl at both men, “and what parts of you I don’t shoot full of holes, I’ll hack off and wear as a hat.” She bared her teeth at Denaos. “And just because you plan to die—”

“The plan is not to die, haven’t you been listening? And before you ask, yes, I’m certain that we will die when they return, for two reasons.”

“If they return,” Kataria interjected. “We scared them off before.”

“When they return,” Denaos countered. “Which coincides with the first reason: this was just the probe.”

“The what?”

“Ah, excuse me,” the man said as he rose up. “I forgot I was talking to a savage. Allow me to explain the finer points of business.”

Lenk spared a moment to think, not for the first time, that it was decidedly unfair that the rogue should stand nearly a head taller than himself. It’s not as though the length of your trousers matters when you piss them routinely, he thought resentfully.

“Piracy,” the tall man continued, “like all forms of murder, is a matter of business. It’s a haggle, a matter of bidding and buying. What they just sent over,” he paused to nudge the corpse at his feet, “is their initial bid, an investment. It’s the price they paid to see how many more men they’d need to take the ship.”

“That’s a lot of philosophy to justify running away,” Lenk said, arching an eyebrow.

“You had a lot of time to think while hiding?” Kataria asked.

“It’s really more a matter of instinct,” Denaos replied.

“The instinct of a rat,” Kataria hissed, “is to run, hide and eat their own excrement. There’s a reason no one listens to them.”

“Forgive me, I misspoke.” He held up his hands, offering an offensively smarmy smile. “By ‘instinct,’ I meant to say ‘it’s blindingly obvious to anyone but a stupid shict.’ See, if I were attacking a ship bearing a half-clad, half-mad barbarian that at least resembled a woman wearing breeches tighter than the skin on an overfed hog, I would most certainly want to know how many men I needed to take her with no more holes in her than I could realistically use.”

She opened her mouth, ready to launch a hailstorm of retorts. Her indignation turned into a blink, as though she were confused when nothing would come. Coughing, she looked down.

“So it’s not that bad an idea,” she muttered. Finding a sudden surge of courage, she looked back up. “But, I mean, we killed the first ones. We can kill them again.”

“Kill how many?” Denaos replied. “Three? Six? That leaves roughly three dozen left to kill.” He pointed a finger over the railing. “And reason number two.”

Lenk saw the object of attention right away; it was impossible not to once the amalgamation of metal and flesh strode to the fore.

“Rashodd,” Lenk muttered.

He had heard the name gasped in fear when the Linkmaster first arrived. He heard it again now as the captain of the black ship stood before his crew, the echo of his heavy boots audible even across the roaring sea.

Rashodd was a Cragsman, as his colossal arms ringed with twisting tattoos declared proudly. The rest of him was a sheer monolith of metal and leather. His chest, twice as broad as any in his crew, was hidden behind a hammered sheet of iron posing as a breastplate. His face was obscured as he peered through a thin slit in his dull grey helmet, tendrils of an equally grey beard twitching beneath it.

And he, too, waited, Lenk noted. No command to attack arose on a metal-smothered shout. No call for action in a falsely elegant voice drifted over the sea. Not one massive, leathery hand drifted to either of the tremendous, single-bit axes hanging from his waist.

They merely folded along with the Cragsman’s titanic arms, crossing over the breastplate and remaining there.

Waiting.

“Their next bid will be coming shortly,” Denaos warned. “And he’s going to be the one that delivers it.” He gestured out to the crew. “They’re dead, sure, but they’re Argaol’s men. We have to think of our own.”

“He’s just a human,” Kataria said derisively, “a monkey.” She glanced at the titanic pirate and frowned. “A big monkey, but we’ve killed big ones before. There’s no reason to run.”

“Good,” Denaos replied sharply, “stay here while all sane creatures embrace reason.” He sneered. “Do try to scream loudly, though. Make it something they’ll savour long enough so that the rest of us can get away.”

“The only one leaving will be you, round-ear,” Kataria growled, “and we’ll see how long your delusions of wit can sustain you at sea.”

“Only a shict would think of reason as delusional.”

“Only a human would think of cowardice as rational!”

Words were flung between them like arrows and daggers, each one cutting deeply with neither of the two refusing to admit the blood. Lenk had no eyes for their snarls and rude gestures, no attention for their insults that turned to whispers on his ears.

His stare was seized, bound to the hulking figure of Rashodd. His ears were full, consumed by another voice whispering at the back of his head.

It’s possible, that voice said, that Denaos is wrong. There are almost as many men on our ship as on theirs. We could fight. We wouldn’t even have to win a complete victory, just bloody their noses. Teach them that we aren’t worth the trouble. It’s business, right?

“What’s the big deal over a big monkey, anyway?” Kataria snapped. “The moment he raises that visor, I’ll put an arrow in his gullet and we’ll be done here! No need to run.” Her laughter was sharp and unpleasant. “Or do you find his big muscles intimidating, you poor little lamb?”

“I can think of at least one muscle of his that you’ll find unpleasant when he comes over,” Denaos replied, a hint of ire creeping into his voice. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was bearded and covered in iron, too. He’s seen what you’ve done to his men. He won’t be taking that visor off.”

It’s possible, Lenk answered his own thought, but not likely. Numbers are one thing, but steel is another. They have swords. We have sticks. Well, I mean, I’ve got a sword . . . fat lot of good it will do against that many, though. Running is just logical here. It’s not as if Denaos actually had a good idea here, anyway.

“If you run, you don’t get paid,” Kataria said. “Though, really, I’ve always wanted to see if human greed is stronger than human cowardice.”

“We get paid slaves’ wages,” Denaos said. “Silf, we get worse. We get adventurers’ wages. Stop trying to turn this into a matter of morality. It’s purely about the practicality of the situation and, really, when has a shict ever been a moral authority?”

When have any of them ever had a good idea? Lenk’s eyes narrowed irately. I’m always the one who has to think here. He’s a coward, but she’s insane. Asper’s a milksop, Dreadaeleon’s worthless. Gariath is as likely to kill me as help. Running is better here. They’ll get me killed if we stay.

“Well, don’t get the impression that I’m trying to stop you,” Kataria snarled. “The only reason I’d like you to stay is because I’m almost certain you’ll get a sword in your guts and then I won’t even have to deal with the terrible worry that you might somehow survive out at sea. The rest of us can handle things from here.”

“And if I could handle it all by myself, I would,” Denaos said. “Feeling the humanitarian that I am, though, I would consider it a decent thing to try to get as many humans off as I possibly could.”

“Decent? You?” Kataria made a sound as though she had just inhaled one of her own arrows through her nose.
“I didn’t kill anyone today.”

“Only because you were busy putting your hands down a dead man’s trousers. In what language is that decent?”

They’re going to die, Lenk’s thoughts grew their wings, flew about his head violently, but I can live. Flee now and live! The rest will . . .

“And what would you know of language?” Denaos snarled. “You only learned how to speak ours so you could mock the people you kill, savage!”

. . . waiting, waiting for what? To attack? Why? What else can you do? There’s so many of them, few of us. Save them and they kill each other . . .

“And you mock your own people by pretending you give a single fart about them, rat.”

. . . to what end? What else can you do?

“Barbarian!”

What else can you do?

“Coward!”

WHAT ELSE?

The thoughts that formed a blizzard in Lenk’s mind sud denly froze over, turning to a pure sheet of ice over his brain. He suddenly felt a chill creep down his spine and into his arm, forcing his fingers shut on his sword’s hilt. From the ice, a single voice, frigid and uncompromising, spoke.

Kill.

“What?” he whispered aloud.

Kill.

“I . . . don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

He felt a hand on his shoulder, unbearably warm. He whirled about, hand tight on his sword. The shapes before him looked unfamiliar for a moment: shadows of blue lost in the sky. He blinked and something came into view, apparent in a flash of blazing green.

Kataria’s eyes, brimming with disquiet.

With every blink, the sunlight became brighter and more oppressive. He squinted at the two people before him, face twisted in a confused frown.

“What?”

“It’s up to you, we agreed,” Kataria replied hesitantly. “You’re the leader.”

“Though ‘why’ is a good question,” Denaos muttered.

“Do we fight or run?”

Lenk looked over his shoulder. His eyelid twitched at the sight of the pirates, visibly tensing, sliding swords from their sheaths. Behind the rows of tattooed flesh, a shadow shifted uneasily. Had it always been there, Lenk wondered, standing so still that he hadn’t noticed it?

“Fight?” Kataria repeated. “Or run?”

Lenk nodded. He heard her distinctly now, saw the world free of haze and darkness. Everything became clear.

“I have a plan,” he said firmly.

“I’m all ears,” Denaos said, casting a snide smile to Kataria. “Sorry, was that offensive?”

“Shut up,” Lenk growled before she could. “Grab your weapons. Follow me.”

Don’t look, Dreadaeleon thought to himself, but a seagull just evacuated on your shoulder.

He felt his neck twist slightly.

I SAID, DON’T LOOK! He cringed at his own thoughts. No, if you look, you’ll panic. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It’s sitting there . . . all squishy and crawling with disease. And . . . well, this isn’t helping. Just . . . just brush it off nonchalantly . . . try to be nonchalant about touching bird faeces . . . just try . . .

It occurred to the boy as odd that the warm present on his shoulder wasn’t even the reason he resented the birds overhead at that moment.

Rather, he thought, as he stared up at the winged vermin, they didn’t make nearly enough noise. Neither did the ocean, nor the wind, nor the murmurings of the sailors gathered before him, muttering ignorant prayers to gods that didn’t exist with the blue-clad woman who swore that they did.

Though, at that moment, he doubted that even gods, false or true, could make enough noise to drown out the awkward silence that hung between him and her.

Wait, he responded to his own thoughts, you didn’t say that last part instead of thinking it, did you? Don’t tell her that the gods are just made up! Remember what happened last time. Look at her . . . slowly . . . nonchalantly . . . all right, good, she doesn’t appear to have heard you, so you probably didn’t say it. Wait, no, she’s scowling. Wait, do you still have the bird faeces on you? Get it off! Nonchalant! Nonchalant!

The problem persisted, however. Even after he brushed the white gunk from his leather coat, Asper’s hazel eyes remained fixed in a scowl upon him. He cleared his throat, looked down at the deck.

Mercifully, she directed her hostility at him only for as long as it took to tuck her brown hair back beneath her bandana, then looked back down at the singed arm she was carefully dressing with bandage and salve. The man who possessed said arm remained scowling at him, but Dreadaeleon scarcely noticed.

He probably wants you to apologise, the boy thought. He deserves it, I suppose. I mean, you did set him on fire. His fingers rubbed together, lingering warmth dancing on their tips. But what did he expect, getting in the way like that? He’s lucky he escaped with only a burned arm. Still, she’d probably like it if you apologised . . .

If she even noticed, he thought with a sigh. Behind the burned man were three others with deep cuts, bruised heads or visibly broken joints. Behind them were four more that had already been wrapped, salved, cleaned or stitched.

And they had taken their toll on her, he noticed as her hands went back into the large leather satchel at her side and pulled out another roll of bandages. They trembled, they were calloused, they were clearly used to working.

And, he thought with a sigh, they are just so strong. He drew in a resolute breath. All right, you’ve got to say something . . . not that, though! But something. Remember what Denaos says: women are dangerous beasts. But you’re a wizard, a member of the Venarium. You fear no beast. Just . . . use tact.

“Asper,” he all but whispered, his voice catching as she looked up at him again, “you’re . . .” He inhaled sharply. “You’re being completely stupid.”

Well done.

“Stupid,” she said, levelling a glare that informed him of both her disagreement and her future plans to bludgeon him.

“As it pertains to the context, yes,” he said, attempting to remain bold under her withering eyes.

“The context of . . .” she gestured to her patient, “setting a man on fire?”

“It’s . . . it’s a highly sensitive context,” he protested, his voice closely resembling that of a kitten being chewed on by a lamb. “You aren’t taking into account the many variables that account for the incident. See, body temperature can fluctuate fairly quickly, requiring a vast amount of concentration for me to channel it into something combustible enough to do appreciable damage to something animate.”

At this, the burned man added his scowl to Asper’s. Dreadaeleon cleared his throat.

“As evidenced visibly. With such circumstances as we’ve just experienced, the risk for a triviality increases.”

“You set . . . a man . . . on fire . . .” Asper said, her voice a long, slow knife digging into him. “How is that a triviality?”

“Well . . . well . . .” The boy levelled a skinny finger at the man accusingly. “He got in my way!”

“I was tryin’ to defend the captain!” the man protested.

“You could have gone around me!” Dreadaeleon snapped back. “My eyes were glowing! My hands were on fire! What affliction of the mind made you think it was a good idea to run in front of me? I was clearly about to do something very impressive.”

“Dread,” Asper rebuked the boy sharply before tying the bandage off at the man’s arm and laying a hand gently on his shoulder. To the sailor: “The wound’s not serious. Avoid using it for a while. I’ll change the dressing tomorrow.” She sighed and looked over the men, both breathing and breathless,
beyond her patient. “If you can, you should tend to your fellows.”

“Blessings, Priestess,” the man replied, rising to his feet and bowing to her.

She returned the gesture and rose as well, smoothing out the wrinkles creasing her blue robes. She excused herself from the remaining patients with a nod and turned away to lean on the railings.

And Dreadaeleon could not help but notice just how hard she leaned. The irate vigour that had lurked behind her eyes vanished entirely, leaving only a very tired woman. Her hands, now suddenly trembling, reached to the gleaming silver hanging from her throat. Fingers caressed the wings of a great bird, the phoenix.

Talanas, Dreadaeleon recalled, the Healer.

“You look tired,” he observed.

“I can see how I might give off that impression,” Asper replied, “what with having to undo the damage my companions do as well as the pirates’ own havoc.”

Somehow, the softness of her voice cut even deeper than its former sharpness. Dreadaeleon frowned and looked down at the deck.

“It was an accident—”

“I know.” She looked up and offered him an exhausted smile. “I can appreciate what you were trying to do.”

You see, old man? That fire would have been colossal! Corpses burning on the deck! Smoke rising into the sky! Of course she’d have been impressed. The ladies love fire.

“Well, it would have been difficult to pull off, of course,” he offered, attempting to sound humble. “But the benefits would have outweighed the tragedy.”

“Tragedy?” She blinked. “I thought you were going to try to scare the rest of them off with a show of force.” She peered curiously at him. “What were you thinking?”

“The exact same thing,” he hastily blurted. “I mean, they’re pirates, right?

And Cragsmen, on top of that. They probably still believe wizards eat souls and fart thunder.”

She stared at him.

“We, uh, we don’t.”

“Hmm.” She glanced over his shoulder with a grimace, toward the shadows of the companionway. “And what was the purpose of that?”

He followed her gaze and frowned. He wasn’t quite sure why she looked at the sight with disgust. To him, it was a masterpiece.

The icicle’s shape was perfect: thick enough to drive it into the wood of the ship, sharp enough to pierce the rib cage in which it currently rested comfortably. Even as the Cragsman clung to it, hands frozen to the red-stained ice in death, Dreadaeleon couldn’t help but smile. He had expected something far messier, but the force used to hurl it through the air had been just enough.

Of course, she probably won’t understand that. He rolled his eyes as he felt hers boring into his. Women.

“Prevention,” he replied coolly. “I saw him heading for the companionway, I thought he might try to harm Miron.”

She nodded approvingly. “I suppose it was necessary, then, if only to protect the Lord Emissary.”

Well done, old man, well done. The exuberance coursing through him threatened to make him explode. He fought it down to a self-confident smirk. Talking to girls is just like casting a spell. Just maintain concentration and don’t—

“After all,” he interrupted his train of thought with a laugh, “if he died, who would pay us?"

. . . do anything like that, idiot.

She swung her scowl upon him like a battleaxe, all the fury and life restored to her as she clenched her teeth. She ceased to resemble a priestess at that moment, or any kind of woman, and looked instead like some horrific beast ready to rip his innards out and paint the deck with them.

“This is what it’s all about, then?” she snarled. “Pay? Gold? Good Gods, Dread, you impaled a man.”

“That hardly seems fair,” he replied meekly. “Lenk and the others have killed far more than me. Kataria even made a game out of it.”

“And she’s a shict!” Asper clenched her pendant violently. “Bad enough that I should have to tolerate their blasphemies without you also taking pleasure in killing.”

“I wasn’t—”

“Oh, shut up. You were staring at that corpse like you wanted to mount it on a wall. Would you have taken the same pride if you had killed that man instead of just burning him?”

“Well . . .” His common sense had fled him, his words came on a torrent of shamelessness. “I mean, if the spell had gone off as it was supposed to, I suppose I could have appreciated the artistry of it.” He looked up with sudden terror, holding his hands out in front of him. “But no, no! I wouldn’t have taken pride in it! I never take pride in making more work for you!”

“It’s not work to do Talanas’s will, you snivelling heathen!” Her face screwed up in ways that he had thought possible only on gargoyles. “You sound like . . . like one of them, Dread!”

“Who?”

“Us.”

Lenk met the boy’s whirling gaze without blinking, even as Dreadaeleon frowned.

“Oh,” he said, “you.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Well, the comparison was rather unfavourable,” the wizard said, shrugging. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re still alive.”

He still sounded disappointed, but Lenk made no mention of it. His eyes went over the boy’s head of stringy black hair, past Asper’s concerned glare, through the mass of wounded sailors to the object of his desire.

The smaller escape vessel dangled seductively from its davits, displaying its oars so brazenly, its benches so invitingly. It called to him with firm, wooden logic, told him he would not survive without it. He believed it, he wanted to go to it.

There was the modest problem of the tall priestess before him, though, arms crossed over her chest to form a wall of moral indignation.
“What happened at the railings?” she asked. “Did you win?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“In a manner of . . .” She furrowed her brow. “It’s not a hard question, you know. Did you push the pirates back?”

“Obviously, we were triumphant,” chimed a darker voice from behind him. Denaos stalked forward, placing a hand on Lenk’s shoulder. “If we hadn’t, you’d like have at least a dozen tattooed hands up your skirt by now.”

“Robes,” she corrected sharply. “I wear robes, brigand.”

“How foolish of me. I should have known. After all, only proper ladies wear skirts.” As she searched for a retort, he quickly leaned over and whispered in Lenk’s ear. “She’s never going to let us by and she certainly won’t come with us.”

Lenk nodded. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem. He would just as soon leave her to die if she insisted. However, she could certainly call the sailors’ attentions to the fact that they were about to make off with the ship’s only escape vessel. Not to mention it would be exceedingly bad judgement to leave the healer behind.

“So just shove her in,” he muttered in reply. “On my signal, you rush her. I’ll cut the lines. We’ll be off.”

“What are you two talking about?” Asper’s eyebrows were so far up they were almost hidden beneath her bandana. “Are you plotting something?”

“We are discussing stratagems, thank you,” Denaos replied smoothly. “We are, after all, the brains of this band.”

“I thought I was the brains,” Dreadaeleon said.

“You are the odd little boy we pay to shoot fire out of his ass,” the rogue said.

“I shoot fire out of my hands, thank you. And it requires an immense amount of brains.” He pulled back his leather coat, revealing a massive book secured to his waist by a silver chain. “I memorised this whole thing! Look at it! It’s huge!”

“He raises a good point,” Denaos whispered to Lenk. “He might try to stop us.”

“I can handle it,” a third voice added to the conspiracy. Kataria appeared at Lenk’s side, ears twitching. “He weighs even less than me. I’ll just grab him on the way.”

“I thought you didn’t like this idea,” Lenk said, raising a brow.

“I don’t,” she replied, sparing him a grudging glare. “It’s completely unnecessary. But,” she glanced sidelong at Lenk, “if you’re going to go . . .”

The moment stretched uncomfortably long in Lenk’s head, her eyes focusing on him as if he were a target. In the span of one blink, she conveyed a hundred different messages to him: requests for him to stay, conveyance of her wish to fight, a solemn assurance that she would follow. At least, he thought she said that. All that echoed in his mind was one voice.

Stop staring at me.

“Yes, good, lovely,” Denaos grunted. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it now.”

“Do what?” Asper asked, going tense as if sensing the sin before it developed.

“Nothing,” Denaos replied, taking a step forward, “we’re just hoping to accomplish it before—”

“By the Shining Six,” the voice cut through the air like a blade, “who wrought this sin?”

“Damn it,” Lenk snarled, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching figure.

Despite rumours whispered in the mess, it was a woman, tall as Denaos and at least as muscular. Her body was choked in bronze, her breastplate yielding not a hint of femininity as it was further obscured by a white toga.

Hard eyes stared out from a hard face, set deep in her skull and framed by meticulously short-trimmed black hair. Her right eyelid twitched at the sight of them all huddled together, the row of red-inked letters upon her cheek dancing like some crimson serpent that matched her very visible ire as she swept toward the companions, heedless of the puddles of blood splashing her greaves.

“Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates,” Asper said pleas antly as she stepped forward unopposed, she being gen erally considered the person best suited to speak with people bearing more than two names. “We are pleased to see you well.”

“Serrant Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates,” the woman corrected. “Your praise is undeserved, I fear.” She cast a glimpse at the human litter and sneered. “I should have been here much sooner.”

“Yes, scampering in a bit late today, aren’t we, Squiggy?” Denaos levelled his snide smirk at her like a spear. “The battle was over before you even strapped that fancy armour on.”

“I was guarding the Lord Emissary,” the Serrant replied coldly. “You might recall it being your duty, as well, if you could but keep your mind from gold and carnage.”

“Carnage?” Kataria laughed unpleasantly. “It was a slaughter.”

Quillian’s eyes sharpened, focusing a narrow glare of bladed hatred upon he shict.

“You would know, savage.” She forced her stare away with no small amount of effort. “I had hoped to arrive to see at least some modicum of rite was being followed. Instead, I find . . .” she forced the word through her teeth as though it were poison, ‘adventurers.’ She spared a cursory nod to Asper.
“Excluding those of decent faith.”

“Oh,” the woman blinked, “well, thank you, but—”

“She’s with us,” Denaos interjected, stepping up beside the priestess with a scummy grin. “How’s that stick in your craw, Squiggy? One of your beloved, pious temple friends embroiled in our world of sin and sellswording, eh?” He swept an arm about Asper, drawing her in close and rubbing his stubble-laden cheek against her face. “Doesn’t sit too well, does it? Does it? I can smell your disgust from here!”

Lenk caught the movement, subtle as it was, as the rogue gingerly tried to ease his blanching captive toward the escape vessel. Dreadaeleon, too, looked shocked enough that he’d never see Kataria coming to grab him. He readied his sword, eyeing the ropes.

“That would be me,” Asper snarled, driving an ungentle elbow into his ribs and ruining his plans. “Get off.”

“The hallowed dead litter the deck,” the Serrant said, sweeping her scorn across the scene, then focusing it on Lenk. “Innocent men alongside the impure. All sloppily killed.”

“What?” Dreadaeleon asked, pointing to his impaled victim. “That is, by far, the cleanest kill in this whole mess!”

“Incredibly enough,” Lenk added with a sigh, “killing is a sloppy business.”

“These vagrants should have been routed before one of Argaol’s men could be driven below,” she snapped. “You allowed this to happen.”

“Me?” Lenk said.

“All of you.”

“What?” Kataria looked offended as she gestured to Denaos. “He didn’t even do anything!”

“Yeah,” Lenk said, nodding. “How do you figure we’re at fault?”

“Because of the horrid blasphemies that continually spew from your bile holes. You anger the Gods with your disregard for the sacred rites of combat! Your crude tactics, your consorting with heathens,” her stare levelled at Kataria again, “as well as inhuman savages.”

Her eyes were decidedly warier when she swept the deck again.

“And where is your other monster?”

“Elsewhere,” Lenk replied. “Look, we have a plan, but it doesn’t need you around. Is this really—”

“Respect for the Gods is very necessary,” Quillian said sharply. “Yes. Really. Bad enough that you bring your Godless savages here without questioning the divine mandate.”

“Savage arrows took three already.” Kataria’s threat was cold and level. “I’ve got plenty more, Squiggy.”

“Cease and repent, barbarian,” the woman replied, just as harshly. Her gauntleted hand drifted dangerously close to the longsword at her hip. “The name of a Serrant is sacred.”

“I’d disagree with that, Squiggy.” Denaos chuckled.

“Me too, Squiggy,” Kataria agreed.

Stay calm, Lenk told himself as he watched the Serrant fume. This might be better. Neither Asper nor Dread is paying attention. We can still salvage this, we can still—

Kill.

The thought leapt, again, unbidden to his mind. He blinked, as though he had just taken a wrong turn.

Run, he corrected himself.

Kill, his mind insisted.

And, like a spark that heralds the disastrous fire to come, the sudden concern on his face sparked Quillian’s suspicion. Her glance was a whirlwind, carrying that fire and giving it horrific life as it swept from the companions, standing tensed and ready, to the escape vessel.

By the time it settled on Lenk, wide with shock and fury, he could see his plan consumed in that fire, precious ash on the wind.

“She knows,” Lenk whispered harshly to Kataria. “She knows.”

“Who cares?” the shict growled. “Stick to your plan.”

“What? Shove her in, too?”

“No, shove her over. She’ll sink like a stone in all that armour.” She paused, ears flattening against her head. “It was my idea, though, so she counts as my kill.”

“Deserters,” Quillian hissed, “are the most grievous of sinners.”

Damn it, damn it, damn it, Lenk cursed as he watched her sword begin to slide out of its scabbard. This complicates things. But we can still—

Kill.

“I suppose you would know,” Denaos said with a thoughtful eye for the brand under her right eye, “wouldn’t you?”

Her shock was plain on her face, the kind of naked awe that came from the knowledge of a secret revealed. Her lip quivered, her spare hand going to the red ink.

“You—”

“Yes,” he replied smoothly. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind scampering off to scrawl another oath on your forehead or something? We’ve got stratagems to—”

“You . . .” she hissed again, brimming with rage as she hoisted her sword, “you dare!”

There was a flash of steel, a blur of black. In the time it took to blink, the Serrant’s sword was out and trembling, its point quivering at Asper’s throat. The priestess’s eyes were wide and unmoving, barely aware of what had happened as two broad hands clenched her arms tightly.

Denaos peered out from behind her, grinning broadly and whistling sharply at the blade a hair’s width from the priestess’s throat.

“Dear me.” The rogue clicked his tongue chidingly. “You ought to be more careful, oughtn’t you? That was nearly another oath right there.”

Quillian’s eyes were wide, the bronze covering her knuckles rattling as she quivered horribly. Empty horror stared out from behind her gaze, as though her mind had fled at the very thought of what she had nearly done.

It was an expression not entirely unfamiliar to Lenk, but it was usually plastered on the faces of the dying.

“I . . . I didn’t mean . . .” She looked at Asper pleadingly. “I would never . . .”

This is it, Lenk thought, she’s distracted. Denaos has a grip on Asper. Time to—

Kill.

No, time to run. We have to—

KILL!

WE HAVE TO RUN!

“Now,” he whispered.

“What?” Kataria asked.

“NOW, GENTLEMEN, NOW!”

The voice of the Cragsman was accompanied by many others, boiling over the railings of the ship like a stew. The panicked cries of the sailors, mingled with Argaol’s shrieks for order, were hurled into the broth, creating a thick, savoury aroma that Lenk well recognised.

Battle.

Damn it.

Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger

About the author: SAM SYKES is a twenty-five-year-old author living in Arizona. Tome of the Undergates is his first book, with many more to come. He lives with two hounds in a small, drab apartment and has eaten at least one of every animal on earth.