On the corner two streets away, I found Ciraya eating a plate of charred salmon and greens outside a late-night barbecue-bar. It was your typical Sticktown place – the bar was surrounded by tall, chair-less tables spreading across the pavements and into the road, tables against which a crowd of drunks and hoodlums were lounging, stuffing their faces and talking loudly.
The skinny sorceress was standing there with the rest of them, sticking out in her magister’s robe, and the only deference she’d received from the crowd was that no one had joined her table. She clearly knew no one cared about her status – and she could well have been one of them, ripping into the fish viciously, shovelling grilled cabbage in on top of the mouthfuls…
I felt hungry.
I approached, trudging through the muck with the bronze fey following along obediently behind me. A few people stared, but even the drunks knew better than to stare for long or eavesdrop – at least not in an obvious manner.
She looked up and saw me when I was about twenty feet away.
“Twelbe Helbs,” Ciraya swore through her gob full of food, her eyes fixed over my shoulder, “where’d ‘ou get thab?” She swallowed. “That a sylph?”
“Where’d you get that?” I asked, eyeing her salmon as I halted.
“Help yourself,” she purred absently, wiping her sauce-coated hands on her already-grimy robe and stepping towards Avaelar. “You’re a fine specimen, aren’t you? Where in Aedervaen do you hail from?”
“The Everstill Isles,” he answered her stiffly, still holding the unconscious body of Shadowcrafter slumped between his arms.
I bit off a chunk of the fish-steak and sighed contentedly.
“Where are your wings? I thought sylphs had wings.”
“My wings are in Etherium, ma’am. My m- Feychilde has instructed me not to display them unnecessarily, for fear of rousing the ire of the general populace.”
“How’d you know he was a sylph, anyway?” I asked through my mouthful. “I mean, if he doesn’t have his wings –“
“I’ve read two textbooks that describe the denizens of the otherworld, and the first line in both texts for describing sylphs gives you something along the lines of,” she suddenly lost her foreign drawl, affecting a near-perfect highborn mannerism: “Ostensibly the most appealing of the fey, despite their refined sense of propriety sylphs typically eschew clothing, having no need of it as protection against either the elements or the invariably–watchful eyes of onlookers…”
I chuckled. “Okay, okay, I get it.” I sucked my fingers and thumb clean rather than wiping my hand on my new robe, and checked the crowd out again – only a couple of the drunks were casting glances our way, but one was furtive in his movements, perhaps less drunk than his fellows. He had the stature of one of the Gentlemen.
“An interesting eldritch,” Ciraya said, moving back to the table; she tore her remaining fish in half and offered me the smaller of the two pieces. Her usual croaky voice was lifted with a certain musing quality as she went on, “They don’t let us summon fey very often. That’s more of a Circle Watchers thing, or even the Night’s Guardians.”
I’d just cleaned my fingers, but they eagerly accepted the chunk of steak all of their own accord.
Eating it, I decided to play along. If she was going to avoid talking about the obvious, that was fine by me. I wasn’t feeling tired, despite the advanced hour. Even more so than the magister, I now had the luxury of choosing my hours of work, and before heading out to pick up the robe I’d had a good early-afternoon nap in preparation for tonight’s activities.
Which had amounted to, what, five minutes of fighting? For more money than I’d have been able to imagine not long ago.
“You’re from the Seven-Star Swords? Or…” She nodded in response as she chewed, so I continued, “What’s that like? Henthae offered to have me ‘apprenticed’ to your organisation, if I agreed to take the Magisterium’s rune… and their orders.”
Ciraya offered a one-shoulder shrug. “Where I come from, it’s nothing like this.” She eyed the louts surrounding us. “The Swords took me in when I came here, gave me direction, purpose. You aren’t gonna get an objective perspective on them from me.”
I raised a hand, palm out. “I’m not even vaguely thinking of joining up.”
“Everyone always worries about the same thing…” she muttered with a sigh. Scowling, she wiped her hand on her robe again, then took mine by the wrist, moving it until our hands were side-by-side, palm upwards. “You see these?”
The whole of her hand was a framework of ink that webbed up her wrist, disappearing into the voluminous sleeve, but she was specifically indicating the tattoos that covered the ball of her hand – seven stars.
The dark blue triangles nearest to her fingers were elongated, like force-blades, while the others were stubby, cutting across them like hilts… They seemed to gleam faintly as I looked deeper and deeper into them, as though somehow the indigo patterns were threaded with silver.
“The Seven-Star Swords themselves are the first tattoos we receive, under the constellation of Ismethyl – the only ones that are required –“
I suddenly got what she’d meant. “I’m not worried about getting tattooed! I was just, you know, curious what it’s like for most sorcerers. My own experience has been abnormal from start to finish.”
“Oh. Fair enough, Feychilde.” Her voice lifted again in curiosity: “Do you have any tattoos?”
“I – no, actually.” I grinned to cover my embarrassment as she sighed again.
“Well… it is what it is. Every magister’s advised to sign up with one of the colleges. Free food and board, access to discounted resources and research texts, commission for jobs completed… It’s probably not for every archmage, but if you want to keep it out of Henthae’s nose I can arrange a private meeting with Mistress Arithos. Unless, of course, you’re afraid of a wittle needle…”
She jabbed my palm with one of her long fingernails, and smiled as I recoiled – I clutched my hand melodramatically and gave her a shocked look, as though she’d just gut-stabbed me.
“I forget, though. Archmages have no need of the usual deals and rituals, do they? Not a single drop of your blood’s been spilt to open gates, enact spells. Not a single moment of pain –“
“Now that’s not true.” Oddly enough, I wasn’t thinking about hitting the ground at about a thousand miles an hour or falling into Leafcloak’s talons – I’d had plenty of pain-relief for those, courtesy of druidry – but about opening the portal in Upper Tivertain. “I found out something about my own limits during the Incursion, like you said to me the night we went to the Maginox.”
“Oh, really?” She looked pointedly at the crumpled form of Shadowcrafter in my perfectly-still, perfectly-silent sylph’s arms. “Limits?”
“Well – I’m still exploring them. I wasn’t going to be afraid of one arch-sorcerer, though, was I? Not after that. It’s not like he’s… Dustbringer…”
“I worry that you might’ve learned the wrong lesson,” she drawled.
“I was prepared! I mean, sure, he’d have probably offered me a fair fight – even beat me.” I felt my face frowning, remembering the duel in my apartment with the deceased champion. “But I don’t have to fight fair. He’s a darkmage. If I could’ve just sucker-punched him, that would’ve been great.”
She grimaced in a peculiar way – it looked like she agreed with me.
“And Fe?”
I reached into my pocket, withdrawing her tiny familiar.
“Played her part perfectly.”
“I’ll make sure she gets a nice treat tonight. She’s partial to pig, whole.” The sorceress carefully placed her on the ground then straightened, smoothing down her robe as if she could make it presentable by that single action. “So he really was an archmage.” She approached Avaelar and our captive. “How mysterious. Special Investigations are gonna have a square-day with him.”
“He was likely using ‘the Shadowcrafters’ as a cover, and turning his students into liches…”
I briefly explained Zel’s conjecture and the evidence I’d witnessed tonight.
“I’ll relay it,” Ciraya replied when I was done. “I’m sure they’ll take your ideas under advisement.”
I chuckled. “I’m sure they will.”
“You realise this will probably mean less of a payout for you?”
I gave her a one-shoulder shrug back. “I’m not exactly starving anymore, you know? If they want to give me a quarter-pay for one Shadowcrafter instead of full pay for four, I’m not arguing. I saved the other three from becoming Nethernum-fodder. I’ll take that as a win.”
She smiled, and the smile looked disconcertingly pleasant.
“Are you okay?” I asked, puzzled.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The scowl instantly returned. “Okay?” She curled her lip. “I’m fine.” She looked aside, and raised her hand.
Feast grew to full-size, Ciraya rising with her, and I helped Avaelar manoeuvre Shadowcrafter into place across the yithandreng’s front-most shoulders. The sylph reported that the darkmage was going to be out of action for at least another two hours – plenty of time to get him to her superiors, according to the sorceress.
“If you’re feeling particularly flush with cash, you should be okay settling my tab,” she said once the prisoner was in place. “You should know that was my second plate.”
She stifled a burp, and probably not just for the humorous effect.
I tipped my non-existent hat at her. “I’ll probably pick up some for myself. Kultemeren knows I’ve eaten more than my share today, but I’m dog-hungry and I’m not even slightly tired.”
“The burdens of the newly-rich,” she said, almost sneering.
“Okay, you got me.” I held my hands up. “That was irritating.”
She cackled a bit, nodded her head, and then with a couple of snapped words in Infernal she set Fe off, heading south.
I took Ciraya’s dish back, then bought a couple of plates from the sullen-eyed late-night server, between which to sandwich the grilled pork and salmon I purchased. The staff at these kinds of food-bars weren’t used to having customers who wanted to carry the food farther than could be comfortably staggered while it was being wolfed-down. It would’ve been the perfect time to have a length of indestructible parchment I could use to fashion a bag of some kind – but my goblins were dust.
I flew home, bearing my late-night banquet sandwiched between the two wooden platters. The mighty Feychilde, Protector of Overbrent and Upper Tivertain, feller of the Cannibal Six and the Shadowcrafters… soaring low-enough to be seen, precariously balancing a midnight snack.
At least it’d give anyone who recognised Feychilde a good chuckle. I wasn’t supposed to be scary, for all that the guise could be intimidating. I was supposed to reassure those who weren’t committing nefarious deeds, not frighten them.
Flight (and an onboard fairy who could tell me if I was being watched) meant I did have advantages when it came to the end of my journey, of course – selecting a suitable time and place to change back into Kas. The Springwalk alleyways were usually clear, but not always. Sometimes I’d been forced to wait a few minutes, or even find another spot.
Mud Lane was changed a bit now. Not many of the apartment buildings had been completely levelled, and thankfully none of those were on our side of the street, despite the narrowness of the roadway. Perhaps half of the remaining apartments on the far side and a quarter of them on our side had been gutted by the flames and the minor demons, but overall we’d been lucky. The homeless had been housed in the floating tents now lining the street and the flattened areas, kept out of the mud by the wizardry-runes that had been ensorcelled into the canvas. They’d been expensive; they were a plaything of the rich, mostly, or those adventuring in dangerous acid-bogs and such like. But – so the rumour went – the champion ‘Feychilde’ (upon whose gold they’d been rented and erected) had plenty of spare cash lying around…
If there was something more I could do for them, I couldn’t think what.
The wizards hadn’t started work on rebuilding yet – we were quite literally the bottom of the list – but a number of very helpful brown-robed men and women from the reconstruction guild had been surveying the flattened sites yesterday (or the day before yesterday, by now…). It was only a matter of time before the scaffolding and the new builds started going up.
I landed in the alley around the corner, and headed home to see if any of the sleepy-heads wanted a share of the spoils of victory.
Who was I kidding? Of course they were all going to wake up at the smells, and of course they were all going to want some.
We might have been ‘newly-rich’; we might have had newfound access to the finer things in life that had forever seemed out of reach – but we were Sticktowners, damn it, and if someone brought hot food into the house in the middle of the night and it woke you up then they owed you a portion of it, no questions asked.
* * *
It was truly a beautiful night. The wind was cool but not cold; the clouds above Rivertown had parted, and I lay on the roof with a full belly, staring at the stars.
The gods, if the stories were true, had been depicted for all of time in the ever-changing constellations; the stars of the dark gods were in the blackness in between, invisible, it was said, to all but the eyes of the mad. And it was said that the dark gods were the greater, in the end. It was hard not to believe it, looking into the enormity of the night, the tiny dots of brightness twinkling fiercely – futilely…
Even if they were prophesied to dwindle away into nothingness in the end, that would only make their fierce battle against their encroaching doom the more virtuous, the more vital. Wouldn’t it?
Were they like us? We would fight. Even if we would lose, the fight would be worth it. It had to be. And as some stars fell, others would surely be born, new gods taking the place of the old. Just like champions.
Have you ever interacted with the gods, Zel?
“You’re kidding me, right? I’ve been around a while, let me tell you –“
Please do.
“– and I’ve never once seen a god in person. Their seneschals and servitors, sure. But a true avatar of a god? No one wants to meet something like that.”
How do you know, if you’ve never met one?
“Received wisdom – trust me, gods are more trouble than they’re worth. Don’t you think it’s just great that there are these vast unfathomable intelligences, laden with the power accumulated through millennia of worship, hanging around out there, playing with us like we’re puppets?”
Is that really what they do, though?
“By all accounts.”
But why?
“They need to mess with us, Kas. The way I understand it, Locus doesn’t get any power if people aren’t learning.”
So if people aren’t hopeful, Yune diminishes?
“If you don’t properly till the soil or let the crops rot in the fields Lynastra wilts, and Glaif crumbles when oaths are broken.”
That’s why you get guys like the Chainsmote Company, then?
“Who?”
These warriors in the Northlands, openly freeing slaves – rumour was they had a bunch of clerics in the ranks… I guess they’re working Nentheleme’s will?
“Well if people aren’t free she weakens, and Vaahn gains in strength. Of course, this tends to go one way then the other. Once people are free, they happen to stop invoking Nentheleme’s name in their prayers quite so often, which allows Vaahn to take the upper hand again… That’s why the shrines, the clergy, are so important to them.”
If you forget why you’re free, it’s easier to become a slave again.
“Something like that.”
So… they’re just greedy? Super-beings, stealing up the goodwill – or ill-will – of men and women, in order to make sure they themselves don’t get extinguished?
“Who knows if they believe their own rhetoric? Maybe Kultemeren’s in it for himself, maybe he truly believes in the pursuit of truth…”
The simple fact she could think of him like that shocked me to the core.
“Who cares? So long as they’re out there on their lofty thrones, it’s not like any of us will be any the wiser, is it? She’s coming, by the way.”
She…? My mind turned immediately to Nentheleme for some reason.
“Your magister friend! You told me to tell you –“
Right! You can take a nap now.
“My crucial work is done…?”
Zel.
“Alright, alright.”
My faerie passenger back on her own plane, I sprang down from the rooftop, weightless thanks to my wings, and went to meet Em as she strode up the street.
She tried not to fly all the way home, preferring to walk the last hundred yards. She was open about her status as a magister – which her neighbours seemed to respect – but she didn’t want those neighbours thinking she was spying on them, floating around their windows at night. We’d made an exception last Waneday, for obvious reasons… No one was going to think we were spying while an Incursion was going on.
I easily spotted her, a figure in pristine white approaching me.
“You’ve had a busy night.” Her whisper reached me on the night’s breeze, despite her being too far off for even my ears to pick up her words.
“I was feeling a bit restless,” I admitted.
“So it seems!”
She reached me and we embraced, kissed. The air around her was warm, sweet-scented, but she seemed a little stiff, distracted. I could see in her face that she was tired.
We walked towards her house, arms linked, and she looked up at me, putting a sly smirk on her lips. “So, first ze Shadowcrafters – Shadowcrafter, I should say – and zen ze fight on Funnel Mile –”
“That was hardly a fight. I just stopped a mugging.”
“Did you have to –”
“In my defence, Flood Boy was very drunk… I called it in on the glyphstone like a good champion. Zero explosive daggers used.”
She tutted, but she still had that hint of a devilish smile on her face, and I had to stop and kiss her again.
As we took off walking once more, I assumed a pained expression. “I take it that you don’t get reports from Rivertown?”
“Vot did you do?” she asked wearily.
“Probably an hour back – by the docks. Sent a few pirates for a nice night-time swim. They weren’t very appreciative, but the watchmen they’d been busy hacking at gave them a good round of applause.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Zose eyes of yours – you saw zis happening as you flew over?”
“Well, Zel pointed it out, got me to change course a bit. She’s got terrifying accuracy when it’s called for – I think it has something to do with her divination powers.”
Em drew closer to me, smiling. “I’m sure ze vatch vill be singing your praises.”
“How was your night?”
“Boring, until ze end of ze night,” she replied, biting her lip. “Papervork. Henthae told me it vould be a pain in ze ass but really… I had no idea vot being ze leader of a band vould be like.”
“She’s preparing you for a top position, though,” I mused aloud, carefully avoiding the word ‘grooming’ for all its connotations of malice. “Arch-magisters get fast tracked?”
“Under her, ve do.”
“Well maybe it’s not paperwork all the way up. There’s got to be a point when you get to put your feet up all day and let your underlings do the hard stuff.”
“I vish…” She looked aside.
I halted again – we were only ten yards from her front door now anyway.
“What is it?”
She met my eyes, and I could see that she really was troubled.
“Did I… Did I tell you about ze Undernight magister-band? Vot happened to zem?”
“Not specifically.” I broke eye contact, trying to recall her words. “You said there’d been an attack in Oldtown where a band was ambushed?”
She nodded. “Ve’ve had all ze reports in. Vampires. At least three. And zen just before two ve vere called to a place on ze south side. Haspophel said it voz zem. Seven bodies, dis- dismembered.”
I could tell only a portion of the difficulty she had with the word ‘dismembered’ came from forming the sounds – she had the images in her mind to deal with too. Fighting through an Incursion let you see terrible, haunting things, but they were boxed off neatly once the Bells stopped ringing. They had a beginning, middle and end. They were expected.
Finding seven bodies in pieces… that must’ve been… different, to say the least.
“It’s been handed over to Zakimel – he said he vill set his best diviners on it – but…”
“It’s worrying that they’ve crossed into Sticktown,” I said.
She nodded, then she sighed and placed her head on my shoulder.
“Do you want to, you know, talk about it?” I asked.
“I…” She turned her face up to mine. “Vill you stay vith me? Just until ze dawn?”
“Of- of course…” I felt my face flushing, and was glad the mask and the darkness would hide the worst of it.
This time she used a key, and she emitted a gentle light from her hands, just barely enough to illuminate our route. We made our way quietly to her room, the air redolent with her enticing scent.
We took off our outer layers and boots and bags and, still clothed, laid ourselves down on top of the quilt. She curled up under my arm, head on my shoulder, safe within my shield.
“Thank you,” she murmured after a couple of minutes of silence.
I didn’t quite know how to respond. After awhile, I just said, “Any time.”
I glanced across; she was already asleep.
I lay in the darkness, holding her, hating the things that had driven the girl I loved to such despondency. Dismembering Sticktowners…
I remembered the vampires Shadowcrafter had summoned, the fanged faces, pearly hair not too dissimilar to Em’s. Was it possible that he’d been responsible for some getting loose? Or was this the work of some other darkmage with a predilection for undead eldritches?
Zel.
“Kas?”
Add this to the list for tomorrow: find the vampires who killed the Undernight magisters. Find them and put an end to them.
“That’s all?”
That’s all. Thanks, Zel.
Feeling slightly better that I’d at least resolved myself on a way to help her, help the city, I settled my arm around her more comfortably and looked up at the ceiling, listening to her breathing and waiting for the dawn.