VI
Armé Jusqu’aux Dents
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> He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Áskēsis 7:7 (the Verse of Scabbards) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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The night was long and full of terrors of the decidedly olfactory-kind.
Were it not for the perfume, I would contend with the Damoclean blade of the assassin; fitful sleep waylaid by the fact that every snore might be my last.
Ignoble end, being killed mid-snore. The sort of thing that made it on your tombstone.
I slept like a babe which was to mean that I woke up seven times in the night. Rats were rather social creatures once you got past the absolute disgust of waking up to one on your chest. It was the same rodent, looking for heat in the cold sewer.
A finger caressed the embodiment of the black plague as the rest of me arose from the waters of Somnecres. I hadn’t settled yet on a name though I was partial towards Bellamie for reason of insanity.
Speaking of, I felt the shape of Lamaré return to a semblance of consistency. His presence at the back of my head had been less than that of a familiar spirit than a trickster d’yabel, uttering words strung up in sentences that only made sense to lunatics.
Réveillez-vous, Ré—how’re ya feelin’?
A pause.
Either I met God and He decided that my innuendo was too much to bear for Eternity or that assassin’s blade had been liberally coated in a neuro-toxin.
“I do not think that it was. I wasn’t as affected as you, though I did exhibit—let’s say—strange symptoms.”
Focal seizures are not indicative of psychotic episodes—neurotic tics are common enough in general but there was something fishy going on last night.
“That was the worst pang of anger and arrogance I’d ever experienced, Ré.” My voice was even though my gaze distant. “I did not care—could not care—about anyone but myself then. I would kill and I would maim if it got me what I wanted.”
The sips I’ve taken of your memories of yesternight are heavily-soaked in mania, El. You were, quite literally, not yourself then. Your body was flooded with alien hormones from the vampyre parasite—I reckon that this is an intentional evolutionary trait made to help vampyres feed on other humans. It overrides inhibitions and erases pain as if a barbiturate but does not dull ‘positive’ emotions; I do not mean the good kind but instead emotional qualia that is additive in nature as opposed to subtractive in the case of depression.
Beyond this, your ability to empathise was heavily tampered with—something I did not think possible outside of a psychopathy though it does track with acute mania. Whatever was in your veins then, was not you.
“I maybe understood half of what you said. Though I do get the gist of it: the parasite embedded in my back did something in response to my heart-amber being nicked. On top of all that, mayhaps Mallory’s blade was envenomed.”
Pretty much, yeah.
A moment of weary silence passed, the both of us still wrung dry.
Oh! I want to try that thing you did with your voice box.
Lamaré did not wait, his excitement a spear by which he pierced through the veil. I felt tendrils of his will take the reins of my throat like a repo-man collecting his levy tax.
Rattles, hisses and stranger noises rumbled-out from my closed mouth.
I pushed away my resident spectre for a moment to speak.
“Didn’t know you could do that.”
Hm? Do what?
Lamaré rummaged around my brains for a moment and then I heard a ‘whoop’ somewhere in the back of the rent-free accommodations of my head.
We can divide control over the body. Let me in again.
My resident spirit took control of the entirety of my vocal apparatus, morphing my voice until it was entirely his own. At first, he croaked out some syllables that didn’t sound much like me and a handful of words later, he belted out the solfège as if he were here in the flesh.
“Minor polymorphie of the trachea, vocal chords, tongue, soft-palate, uvula and laryngeal tissue.”
His voice changed to that of Claude.
“Can’t modify tooth placement so finer details such as whistling can’t be accurately replicated.”
Then he spoke with Med’s Nazirese accent but none of his resonant cadence.
“There’s something missing—the backtones aren’t quite there…”
I felt the flesh of my sinuses mutate, cells bubbling and transmuting into whatever shape that Lamaré deemed fit.
“Now that’s better. Forgot about interference and reverberation of the hollow cavities of the nose. The air-flow through them acts like an ocarina, moulding sound through ebb and flow, forcing the fluid through the path of least resistance.”
Are all noble bloodlines this knowledgeable? I’ve absorbed about a quarter of the concepts you’ve just used through osmosis and I feel twice as wise as before. Didn’t even know about fluid-exchange through ambarique pressure differentials before—handy concept; got anything to do with binding vampyres through salt?
“Yes and no. Most have the resources but not the aptitude toward study—before I cast my tongue in silver, my escape was the book and candle.”
Lamaré’s voice turned into Paul’s.
“As to binding spirits and monsters through salt; you’re spot on—it’s a mixture of alquemie and ambarique pressure. Salt is used to bind ichor to the body; alquemiquement, it is made of sodium metal and chlorine gas.”
And now he spoke with a tenor I did not recognize. I felt my spine stiffen but it was not commanded to do so by my consciousness.
“Supernatural creatures are more than flesh imbued with God’s blood. They exist dually in physical existence and in the chthonic realm where ichor flows like milk and honey—salt interacts readily with the underworld, binding, calcifying, sealing wayward concentrations of élan vital.”
My spine unstiffened, the vertebræ relaxing their locked and rigged posture as the ramrod of fear was removed from my bum. I did not ask whose voice the past one had been because I already knew.
Ré spoke with his own tongue now.
“Water flows towards where there’s the greatest concentration of salt.”
He retreated back into my mind, suddenly humourless when just a moment ago he’d been happy as a bairn.
“Wanna go and help me pick out a sword?”
I’d like that, yes.
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I washed Bellamie with soap and water, bought anti-flea powder and bathed him in that. By the end, the rat was cleaner than me as he slept in my pockets.
Why do you insist on keeping that?
I laughed.
“Since I’m already collecting strays, why not one more?”
Lamaré did not laugh.
It’s positively unsanitary—they carry the plague, you know?
“My body, at rest, is too cold to incubate disease spirits or animalcules of any kind. When exerting myself, it is hot enough to denature proteins that are not my own. Suffice it to say: I will not get sick.”
I waved his worries and disgust away.
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“Besides, it’s the fleas that carry the pox, not the rodents themselves.”
Ugh, I knew I never should’ve explained germ theory to you! Moreau’s treatises are wasted on a man that takes a rat as a pet.
“Don’t listen to him, Bellamie.” I whispered while I caressed the hairy thing sleeping in my trousers. “He’s just jealous.”
I am not jealous!
“The lady doth protest too much.”
The fact that Ré became deathly silent afterwards meant that I had, for the first time, won a duel of tongues.
I whistled as I made my way to the Ironworks, the great big belly of the machine beast of Saint-Getaine. Grammarie, ambaricité, and mechanical toil came together in an industrial revolution the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Man invented the wheel.
My quarry was a blacksmith, not a weapon-store proper—the latter was far too expensive and dubious in the quality department. I did not know how to identify high-brow swords or any arms for that matter—neither did Lamaré. He was the lover to my fighter, a maker of peace rather than war which made what we planned to do in two weeks time all the more grim about the mouth.
I settled on Gendrie’s Assorted Arms and Armor.
It opened into the man’s workshop, first and foremost, the ‘shop’ shop just behind. His arms were bare of sleeve but not mark—mass-produced rúna known as charms lined his biceps and forearms. They were non-modifiable, permanent, and could be annulled by whatever contract that Gendry had signed to get them should he renege. The previous two clauses made the last one all that much worse: Gendry would be left without his livelihood, the rúna on his skin dead weight that could never be removed.
These days, people sold their souls to the company store instead of to Azazel.
“Well met,” I called out to the man as he struck while the iron was hot. “Need me a dependable estoc—bastard-style in proportion, fitted to my measurements.”
The rhythm of hammer against anvil did not stop while we spoke, the smith letting his tool rebound off the surface so as to sustain momentum. It was about as calm as the sound of running water, of a bubbling brook.
That was currently host to someone drowning several cats.
“Have something like that in the back—could fit a tang into a hilt today. Let me finish drawing out the core for this one.”
I sat on a wooden stool and waited for Gendry to finish. He was a bachelor, going by his lack of a wife to attend to the shop. Maybe widowed given his age, though he was a handsome fellow that I doubted would remain without a companion for long; the soot of the forge deepened the creases on his skin, crow’s feet turning into a rookery fit for dragoons. On the farther side of forty, that one—only two more decades till he retired, taking apprenticeships to supplant his dwindling might. Not even rúna could hold together an ageing, mortal body; was just how it was.
You only became a grandmaster once you couldn’t physically keep up with your craft.
Gendry carried the drawn-out sword core with tongs to an older, not-often-used anvil, letting it sit atop the well-worn iron.
“Seven?”
“Aye, seven generations, that one. I stopped using it ‘cause it made me swords too dense. Mostly the gentry buy from me, so—didnae make much sense to forge swords that weighed ten pounds and took a fortnight to forge just the core.”
I really liked the sound of that.
“I’ve a strength charm myself—wouldn’t mind taking a look at your older, unsold stock.”
Gendry gave a shrug and waved me to follow into his shop; it was dirty, unkempt, and the only things that shined were the well-oiled steel and the placard that said: ‘do not touch the blades; I’ll find you by the finger-prints left behind.’
Mark of a master, really.
Though, that did mean much; so long as you had a shop, you were considered one. Journeymen tended to, well, journey around Naranca, looking for a place in need of a smith for them to set down their roots. This was when they married and were on their way to master status—a decade in the same place was all it took. There were no Collegiums to certify a smith like an occultist, or say, an alquemiste.
We went into the back where Gendry unbuckled and then lifted the lid of a chest that was near as long as I was tall. Inside, wrapped in oiled cloth, was a blade without a hilt. Well-waxed, the edge was simple with no engravings but the maker’s mark at the base—this marked the backside of the blade as the contra would be where the rúna would sit.
It’s weak ended in an estoc tip like I wanted, made for skewering men like stuck pigs. A fuller ran along its centerline, the precipices converging into a centre ridge that was nary a millimetre taller than the surrounding edge. The ricasso of the blade was broad of shoulder, sporting a design that erred towards the liberal use of parry—I never really understood why some smiths insisted upon sharpening a section of steel that would have no use for cutting, so I was rather smitten by this man’s magnum opus.
Although Gendry did not hand me the cloth-wrapped tang with reverence, I could see it in his eyes; this was a relique, a holy artefact, the culmination of seven generations of his bloodline.
It weighed twelve-pounds, more than triple the weight of a longsword—there was a supernatural metal mixed into its alloy because no anvil could make steel this dense without breaking natural law.
“What’s the ratio?”
“One part teatánz-bone, two parts calcedonian copper, seven parts iron. Not my make, though. Got it from a retired grandmaster that didnae want no teat-suckling apprentices in his golden years. Called it lead-steal on account of the weight.”
Teatánz-bones were the fossilised remains of lévayathans and b’hémoths, composed mostly of heavier metals such as bismuth, lead, and carbon-rich iron ripe for steel making if you could filter out the impurities while keeping the char.
“Didn’t ash it during the temper, I reckon—more than enough char content inside the teatánz-bone.”
“Aye. Oil, water, then acid. Lost a good bit of ore trynae figure out the temper—‘master didnae sell me a complete diagram.”
There was nothing otherworldly about the blade; no shimmer, no damascene weld pattern or blood-silver striations—just solid, dependable steel. I took a rag from atop a wooden crate and gave the sword a test bend, hearing its keen-song; a nice one that was like rich-wine.
I whistled.
“It’s a beaut—I’ll give you fifteen for it.”
“Just because it's an old piece don’t mean you can rob me blind.” Those were some fighting words that left me as befuddled as a chick without its mother hen.
I looked at Gendry. Gendry looked at me. I looked at Gendry again.
“You mean coppers, dontcha?”
In response, I took out a coin purse, removed five silvers and gave the rest to Gendry’s disbelieving hands.
“That’s for the crossguard, hilt, and pommel—plus a good kiss to the grindstone and a shine that no bootshine can contend with.”
The smith took out a Crown and bit into it. A tooth chipped and he was all the happier for it.
Gendry looked at me. I looked at Gendry. Gendry looked at me again.
“Follow me.”
And I did, like a chick after its mother hen.
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In the end, I decided for a grip of spridjan-wood—I could either switch it out for a better material later or enchant it as it was. Spridjans were a type of tangible familiar spirit or ‘hob’ that arose from ancient trees fed on the blood of generations upon generations; they guarded the treasure of tombs, cairns, and barrows—so long as it was not a mass grave of war and well-consecrated, any old ruin with a centenarian could sprout a spridjan.
The Church called them by their High Narancan name: Ereilim.
Their flesh was wood and their skin, bark; they bled like a man when cut, rich in ichor that could be harvested for use in the occult sciences. Much like most monsters, a spridjan crystallised a heart-amber after death, the coalesced amber of their God-given blood—chalice rúna were inscribed upon heart-stones and measured in the ounces of ichor that they could hold.
Though Gendry did not say it, he had included a three ounce chalice out of gratitude—smiths of his renown were not well liked, well treated, or well paid. I intended on breaking that mould now that I was swimming in Her Majesty’s silver.
The heart-amber was set in a spiral pommel, a wine-cap or gobblét as they called it. An alquemiste would etch the accompanying rúna later on—the contact points for pathways and the like had to be pre-set and so most heart-stones were only etched when a person had their mind set on an enchantment schema.
For the cross-guard, I went for a sensible cruciform with flared-out quillons. There was no engraving on it but Gendry would supply me with one by the end of the month—he had a sister cross-guard that he would work on while I used this temporary one. Thankfully, most swords only relied on the pommel and blade for their primary rúna, so I wouldn’t have to worry about incompatibilities in its matríz, its matrix.
“You are an artist, Gendry.” I said while I swung my blade through a strung-up scarecrow. “Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.”
Cloth bound by string and stuffed with hay fell before my sharp edge, each stroke fluid as can be though I was barely a novice at swordsmanship. This would not make me into a master but I would need to become one to be worthy to wield it.
“Needs a name. A sword like this needs a name, Gendry. And I’ll only accept it being christened by you.”
If my antics hadn’t thrown the poor man in for a loop before, now they left him well and truly stupefied. The smith took a moment to think, and I gave him the unnamed sword to comfort him with its weight in both body and soul.
“Roots trace back to before the Narancan conquest—I’ve a few Tirrish words leftover from the Purge. Great-great-great-and-then-some-grandfather came from Dál Riathöm—Land o’ the Lakes; ‘bout… seventy-or-so leagues below Tir-La-Tuín.”
Though I could hear him, I did not fool myself into thinking that Gendry spoke with me; instead he prayed out loud to his ancestors, to the nearly-erased culture of eld that he carried with him in his veins. I knew how important it was, to safeguard a legacy, to see it survive past your own death.
Éder meant ‘vessel’ in the black tongue of Kalé.
“My line comes from the mountains where lightning struck and we erected wooden idols as effigies for the solstice. The royal sword of Tir is caladth-bolc—’lightning trapped within the sword.’”
It was nearing noon and Gendry looked up at the bleeding sun, porphyric clouds lazily floating on the ether below the weeping moon.
“I have no high blood in me—my veins are as low as they come.”
Though he looked down upon the sword in his hands, it was the transcendental beyond that he saw through the reflection of the blade.
“Luaith-liath—what is left behind: ashen-grey.”
Gendry, Son of Dál Riathöm, handed me the reliquaire-blade, and I took it.
“We’ve no virgin to baptise Luaith but from what I remember of my Éderi stories, the Tir make blood oaths to signify brotherhood.”
I cut my palm along the edge just above the shoulder of the blade and this time, I bled, smearing my ichor across the ricasso. Gendry took Liath and did the same.
We did not wash away the rust we had made but instead put a capote above it to safeguard the oath we’d just sworn. If you asked me what we’d sworn to uphold, I couldn’t answer you.
Not for secrecy but for the simple fact that we needed not a single word—the social contract between brothers was implicit. It did not require breath to make it binding.
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I gave Gendry a warrior’s farewell, forearms touching and all, and left to make my way towards the Mangy Feline. Luaith was sheathed in a scabbard on my back; simple cow-hide and wood splints, a steel locket and chape without any bells or whistles. To draw it, I needed to tip the locket forward by tapping the chape—not a quick nor easy draw, mind, but it was worth it to protect the Ashen from dust.
That was… beautiful, El. I did not know you had the heart of a poet.
I chuckled, grim about the mouth.
“Non-Éderi always call us poets, as if we care for wagging our tongues. We do not speak, Lamaré D’Amice. We listen and we commit to eternal memory what we hear. Song and rhyme are just vehicles to carry the words spoken to us into the future.
“Rien de plus; rien de moins.”