JADE 2.7: MOURNING BELLS
“Shallow lie the dead
Whose hearts are turned from his grace
Restless and waiting
Remain with me, love
Your greatest sacrifice mine
Nothing left to fear”
– from ‘Gravensongs’
I was still keeping a lid on it. I’d let it out later, when no one was looking, where no one could hear. Where no one could burn to death.
It’d been so close. The idiot had nearly burned me; I almost killed him by protecting myself, and a part of me had just wanted to let him burn.
Telrose.
Morsus.
I clenched my fist as I strode out of the warehouse under the cloudy pre-dawn sky, Avaelar following closely behind me.
It was so obvious. I suspected when I gave him the plat that it’d be the death of him, and I did it anyway.
It was my fault.
“There was nothing you could’ve done differently, nothing you could’ve known in advance.”
She said for the twelfth time.
My advisor wisely didn’t bother replying again.
The girl was waiting for us in the alley, and then together the three of us walked past the pair of thugs that’d been on watch, now flopping about uselessly on the ground with just their mouths exposed – their faerie-parchment bindings would disappear the moment the sun hit them, which would be a few hours off yet.
We moved down the passage, skirting a vicious-looking pack of alley-cats, to turn onto the street. The girl was leading just a half a pace ahead of me – I made sure we were out of earshot before I spoke.
“How did he do that?” I asked in a rather grating voice. Zel hadn’t had a clue either, but the girl might know.
To her credit, she seemed to realise straight away what I was getting at. “He ate inkatra. It empowers the devourer, for a brief time.”
As we walked I looked her up and down, and not for the first time. She was a mess. Hair that was probably dark brown hanging in black-looking clumps, sodden with sweat; her plain smock was stained with what smelt like blood to my heightened senses (leaving aside the wine, which was technically my fault). She was probably five-seven, five-eight at a push, and would’ve been attractive with her oval face and button-nose if it weren’t for the addict’s fever in her eyes, the general dishevelled appearance. She had my colouration, my accent; she’d probably grown up around here, not ten minutes’ walk from Mud Lane, but I’d never seen her before.
“Is that what’s happened to you?” I asked. “Inkatra?”
“Not exactly,” she said, with a tinkling laugh. “I just became an arch-diviner.”
“Told you. That’s why it all changed.”
I didn’t doubt it, did I?
“An arch-diviner – that’s how you moved like that,” I said aloud. I couldn’t help recollecting my late-night visit from Duskdown, the way he sped up and slowed down seemingly at will. “What was that man to you? The one you beat halfway to death.”
She chuckled. “He had it coming, Feychilde, trust me.”
I cast her a sidelong glance. “It appears you have the better of me…?”
She glanced back at me, meeting my gaze, then moved her eyes across the street, pointedly staring at the various beggars and drunkards who were still awake, still moving, watching us. At least six of them, probably spurred on in their curiosity by the very unusual sylph following dutifully along behind us.
And she was staring at them for my benefit, to let me see them, let me understand why she spoke quietly when she said –
“Killstop.”
“Kill…” I repeated, mumbling. I paused – I almost forgot to keep pace with her.
I got the message immediately, but – seriously?
Eventually I tried a dubious, “Bless you?”
She flashed an intense grin at me that would’ve suited my mask.
“Killstop. It’s the number one job of a champion. That’s who I’m going to be.”
“You don’t think it’s a little on-the-nose?”
“It’s no Waterwizard, but I tried my best,” she replied with relish.
Waterwizard hadn’t lasted long; a rumour went around a couple of years back that he’d been specifically killed on account of the obnoxiousness of his chosen moniker.
I opened my mouth to give voice to this notion but she raised a hand, cutting me off before my tongue even started up.
“I know what you’re going to say, and there’s no simple way to put it… I’ve already seen glimpses of me going by other names, and they’re not half as fun. Why’d you think Everseer went all out on it?”
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I caught myself almost smiling, then put down the emotion furiously.
My fist was still clenched.
Diviners… almost as bad as enchanters, I growled internally.
“Hey now, nothing’s as bad as –“
Not now, Zel… Look, take a trip to the otherworld, will you?
And I could tell that she was gone.
We walked on, into the thick blanket of smog lying over the street.
“Killstop… I can’t imagine the darkmages taking that very seriously.”
“Feychilde: I can’t imagine the darkmages taking that very seriously either,” she parroted back.
I gave her another look-over. Her skipping step. The distracted smile on her face.
I waved a hand behind myself, gesturing at the silent figure in my summon’s arms, his breast rising and falling gently in time with his shallow breathing. “And this guy my sylph’s hauling?”
“My boyfriend,” she said with a shrug.
“You’re not acting like your boyfriend just nearly died.”
“I’m not acting like my dad just died either,” she said in an observational tone.
Her dad just died?
There was so much death going around.
I felt my brows furrow behind my mask. Perhaps her behaviour made a little more sense to me now – she’d experienced a major bereavement, then got a bunch of mind-screwing powers right on top of that grief. She was probably absorbing herself into the past, or the future, or distant places… whatever exactly it was that diviners got up to when their minds drifted.
“That’s… true,” I said, then hedged; “is there anything you… you know… wanted to talk about?”
“I wish I’d done it years ago?” she replied, still with that trill of laughter in her voice.
“You did it?”
My brain instantly started grasping at straws again for a means to take on an arch-diviner in a fight, but I could tell she wasn’t hostile, wasn’t a killer. She was young and confused and probably suffering from some incredibly savage mental scarring. There were probably only a few years between us… she was probably the age I was when my own mum and dad died…
“Xaba did, I suppose,” she said. There was softness to her voice now, a sadness. “Or Father did it to himself. But it isn’t about placing blame.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I don’t see you sending frantic messages to the watch about the criminals you just tied up.” The sorrow was already gone from her voice, her eyes lighting back up with that drug- or divination-inspired intensity.
“I… Yes. I guess you’re right.” I had the glyphstone – it’s not like it would’ve been difficult to get them arrested. It was hard to put into words; I settled on giving her the summarised version. “I don’t mean to throw drop on the watch – they do their best, I’m sure, and the work must truly suck. But they can lock up or hang as many criminals as they want – gods know, most of them deserve it – but there’ll just be more to fill the gaps tomorrow… And what’s worse, there’d be three times as many, all wanting a piece of the pie, killing each other in the alleys for the right to the territory… I don’t exactly approve of the present state of affairs, but it isn’t really my job, is it? Fiends made out of razors, check. Gigantic regenerating spiders, sure. But a gang of petty thieves and bullies? Beyond destroying their cache I don’t really know what else I can do. I might be wrong, and…”
I looked across at her. The girl’s eyes were shining as she stared over her shoulder at me, still walking ahead, stepping around obstacles and over puddles of gunk without even looking.
“Aaand… They’re going to have a hell of a time anyway. Those bindings are impenetrable to ordinary blades, and I very much doubt they’ve got a cutlery drawer full of magical weapons hanging around, so they’re only going to get out when they’re put under direct sunlight. I wonder how long it’ll take them to figure that out.”
“Willow Jonsen and The Stain will be freed first, then,” she said brightly.
“The… Stain? If that’s what they’re called…”
“I’m afraid so. And here you were, worrying about ‘Killstop’!”
“You don’t think you’re going to attract darkmages with a name like that? I mean – Waterwizard –“
“Who says that isn’t exactly what I’m going for?”
She gave it a brazen, overconfident spin that fired off warning signals in my head yet again.
“Are you?”
“Of course not,” she said with a snort of disbelief. “But I’ll have my fair share of fights, trust me. Might even win a few.”
There would be no dissuading her.
But I might be able to help stop her getting killed.
“Fine… Killstop.”
It’d taken this long for me to twig onto the fact that the real reason she was disturbing me so much was that she was very similar to me. The way she used barbs to demonstrate her new status. Acting as though she didn’t care whether she lived or died. Throwing herself into the role of a champion with even less consideration than I’d used at first.
She almost looked manic. Was this how I’d looked a few weeks ago, to those around me? They hadn’t known the truth – only Zel had known, and whenever Xantaire or Orstrum or… Whenever they asked me what was up, I’d always diverted them with hastily-constructed excuses. I was off in my own world half the time, hardly any worse after my ‘awakening’ than I’d been before it – even at work I’d be busy thinking of ways to persuade Jaid and Jar to read the book I was reading, or just daydreaming about being one of the characters…
No. I rejected the idea. There was no way I’d ever looked like she did right now. She looked alive – she stank like a dead cat – a drunk dead cat – but she looked alive, in some intangible way that was quite simply beyond me.
Arch-diviners. Duskdown said something about going mad.
We crossed the street, her feet taking her off the boardwalk and onto the muck of the roadway a split-second before I would’ve done it. She certainly knew where she was going.
I supposed just about everyone would know where the Shrine of Wythyldwyn was located, deep in Cutter Crew country – it was impossible to miss. There would be the perpetual queue of beggars and supplicants stretching from the outer gates all the way to the corner. ‘Queue’ might’ve been too-nice a word for it – a squirming, flea-bitten morass of bodies and odours, arranged in a vague line down the side of the street. There was some semblance of order, but not out of any sense of fair-play – it was just that most of those in the crowd were simply too ill to claw their way to the front.
We were only five minutes away now, at most.
“What’s it like?” I asked at last. If I could get her to share, perhaps it’d help steer her away from the cliffs of insanity. “Arch-divination, I mean.”
“Like an unravelling bolt of cloth, only bigger than imagining,” she answered at once, a resolute smile on her face, “and it never stops unravelling, never stops growing, doubling, doubling, instant upon instant upon instant… Every tiny gap in the weave, every miniscule void you couldn’t even see never mind slip a hair into – every one of them is a place, a time, an event. A reflection. Pick one thread with your thimble, and watch as you slice half the cloth away in a huge, undulating wave, over and over again…”
Her voice had a certain dreamy quality, and I couldn’t help but imagine an immense, ocean-like sheet of silk, stretching off to the horizon, rippling in mountains and ravines under a fierce wind.
Every gap in the weave a place, a time, an event?
No wonder she was acting this way – no wonder diviners went strange. They had this to deal with on a moment-by-moment basis? They basically had what I’d always thought of as, well, godhood, just randomly thrust upon them by a cosmic twist of fate.
I shuddered.
A part of me noted her impressive vocabulary too. Did that come with the power?
“I don’t even know your name,” I said. “Your real name.”
“I don’t know yours,” she retorted.
“You don’t?”
“I… well, I didn’t, thanks for that.”
This time I couldn’t stop the brief burst of laughter from coming out of my lips.
Tears came too, but that was okay. The mask hid them.
Killstop looked at me.
I could pretend, at least.
When I stopped walking, shut my eyes and started sobbing, I felt her hands on my shoulders, pulling me into her embrace.
It was okay, wasn’t it? She was an arch-diviner. She already knew everything I’d ever done, everything I could ever do. She’d seen this, hadn’t she?
I clutched her soaking-wet smock and wept.
“Hush,” she murmured, patting me on the back gently, “hush now, Kas. My name is Tanra, and together we’re going to fix everything.”
* * *