We reached the outskirts of Port French before Lisa gathered herself enough to ask, ‘You have brought a ship haven’t you?’
‘Well. A ship brought me, that’s certainly true.’
Lisa shuddered. ‘I never want to sail again. I was sick the whole way to Vyene!’
‘Ah. Well, we are on an island, so…’ I fell back alongside her, stepped in closer and put an arm around her shoulders. ‘Don’t worry. I know a lot of people don’t take well to boats. I’m a great sailor and even I felt a little rough during my first storm, but I took to the whole business with the ropes and whatnot immediately. Taught those Vikings a thing or two…’
‘Vikings?’ She looked up at me and frowned.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘And why are you dressed as a shepherd out of the nativity? Is it some kind of disguise?’
‘Kind o—’
‘And why.’ She shook my arm off. ‘Are you so muddy?’ She poked at a particularly filthy part of my Bedouin robe. I didn’t like to tell her it wasn’t mud. Camels are disgusting creatures, a week at sea does nothing to improve them, and I’ve never seen the like before when it comes to projectile shitting.
Rather than explain my garb I diverted her with a question. ‘Why were you in Vyene?’ I couldn’t think what business she would have in the Empire’s capital – or at least former empire’s former capital.
‘Barras was taking me to meet his family and settle on one of their western estates—’
‘Barras, is he—’
‘He’s fine.’ Anger creased her brow. ‘He got held up with his father’s business in Vermillion – the Great Jon went ahead of us to Vyene – so he didn’t sail with me as planned, just sent me and my maids on with some more of the effects from the rooms in the palace… At least I think he’s fine.’ Lisa put her hand to my arm. ‘He must be looking for me, Jal. He could have come to harm – you said the pirates—’
‘I’m sure he’s in good health.’ I may have snapped it. My momentary concern for Barras had vanished as soon as I heard he didn’t sail with her. I wondered how many men he had out searching for his wife – trust Rollas to come closest to the mark – a man of many talents. ‘Come on.’ I picked up the pace. ‘We need to get to our ship.’
Lisa hiked up her sackcloth and hurried after me.
The Santa Maria lay where I left her, waiting for the tide, and we boarded without incident. Bartoli also remained where I left him, leaning against the ship’s rail, scratching his hairy belly. He extorted two pieces of crown silver from me before allowing my guest passage to the port of Marsail, a price I paid without complaint, not wishing to seem cheap with Lisa watching on.
Before sailing we managed to secure Lisa a dress, negotiating with the rogues on the quays over the side of the ship. A short to-and-fro with some tailor’s shop hidden back behind the warehouses and a dress was brought out, little more than an embroidered sack in truth, but better than the actual sack I’d purchased her in.
I stood guard outside the tiny cupboard that served as my cabin, defending Lisa’s honour against the largely uninterested sailors whilst she changed clothes. She emerged, tugging at the sleeves but without complaint. She looked sick even in the gloom beneath decks.
‘Are you all right?’
She put a hand to the door to steady herself. ‘It’s just this rocking.’
‘We’re still at anchor, tied to the quayside.’
Rather than reply Lisa covered her mouth and made a dash for the steps.
When we set sail two hours later on the afternoon tide Lisa hung over the stern rail, groaning. I stood behind her, cheerfully watching Port French slip into the distance. I may have overstated my claim to being a good sailor, but in fine weather on the Middle Sea I can keep my footing and do a passable impression of enjoying the whole nautical affair. Lisa on the other hand proved to be a sailor who would make me look good on my worst day. I had thought I would never have shipmates messier, louder, or more given to complaint than the three camels Omar foisted on me, but Lisa outdid the trio. Like the camels the slightest swell emptied her from both ends. Only my robust objection prevented Captain Malturk having her kept in their former accommodation.
I learned on the second day of our voyage that Lisa’s violent response to travel by sea had at least made her sufficiently unappealing to the corsairs who captured her vessel that she had remained unmolested during the long passage back to the Isles. Her maids were not so ‘lucky’ and were sold into a different market at the corsairs’ first port of call. Lisa’s escape was not without cost though, since she had arrived in Port French so close to death that the slave master came within a hair’s breadth of dumping her in the harbour rather than invest in her recuperation. At sea once again she went into a rapid decline and spent the three-day voyage curled up in my tiny cabin with two buckets. I kept to the deck and we saw little of each other until the blessed call ‘Land ho!’ from somewhere up in the rigging finally coaxed her into the open.
She stood, pale green and shaking, as I manfully endured her stench and pointed toward the still-invisible coast as if I could see it. ‘The Port of Marsail! We’ll charter a place on one of the cogs that sail up the Seleen and be in Vermillion within two days at most!’
Home! I couldn’t see it but I sure as hell could taste it, and this time I’d be staying put.
7
In Marsail Lisa and I spent two days and a night recuperating incognito. We took two rooms – at her insistence – at a fine inn on the Prada Royal that runs below the various palaces of the old Marsail kings. I spent more of Omar’s gold to get us both decently attired, a fine jacket for me with just enough brocade to hint at military connections without being vulgar, trews in a neutral grey, long black boots polished to a shine sufficient to see one’s face staring back out of them. Lisa abandoned the soiled dress and selected some modest travelling clothes that would neither shame her nor draw too much attention.
A trip to the bathhouse, the barber, a fine meal at one of the better harbourside restaurants and we both started to feel a little more human. The conversation between us still ran in uneven and awkward bursts, skirting around talk of her marriage whilst still covering, again and again, her various worries about Barras and any trouble he might encounter on his search for her. Even so, I saw flashes of the old Lisa, drawing a few smiles and blushes as I talked about old times, carefully avoiding mention of her dead brother and father.
In the end Lisa’s terror of yet another boat trip, even by river, saw us making the trip to Vermillion by express carriage, rattling along the various roads that track the Seleen’s path east toward the capital. We passed several days side-by-side, opposite an old priest, and a dark-haired merchant from some distant Araby port. By night we jolted sleepily against each other as the carriage carried on, changing horses at various staging posts along the way. I was pleased to find that, asleep with her head against my shoulder, Lisa smelled as good as I remembered. Almost good enough to erase the memory of how badly she had reeked when staggering off the Santa Maria at Marsail. It occurred to me during one of those long nights as Lisa’s head slipped from my shoulder to my lap, that although all three DeVeer sisters had married in indecent haste after my supposed death, Micha to my brother Darin, Sharal to the murderous Count Isen, and Lisa to my faithless friend Barras Jon – who I would never have let down – that it was really only Lisa I mourned the loss of.
All would be well. Home. Peace. Safety. The key would be secure in the palace. The Dead King might pose a threat to small bands of travellers in the depths of the desert or the wildness of the mountains, but he could hardly march an army through Red March and lay siege to the Red Queen’s capital. And as for stealthier attempts – the Silent Sister’s magics would surely not permit necromancy to function within the halls where she and her siblings dwelt.
Mile after mile vanished beneath our wheels and as my grandmother’s lands rolled past, hypnotizing in their green and patterned familiari
ty, thoughts rolled through my head. The things I’d seen, people, conversations, all spooling out across the smoothness of my mind. Occasionally I would raise the shade screen and stick my head out through the window to enjoy the breeze. Only then did I feel any hint of worry. The road stretching out ahead, the parallel hedgerows to either side arrowing into the distance, growing closer, closer, never meeting, lost in the future. Only when looking ahead like that did my fears give chase, skittering along behind the carriage. Maeres Allus waited for me, there, in the midst of my city.
I had confided my problem to Jorg Ancrath that drunken night on a Hamadan rooftop. He’d given me some advice, that thorn-scarred killer, and there, in the hot darkness of the desert, it had seemed sound, a solution. Was he not, after all, the King of Renar? But then again he was just a boy… Also, whatever he’d said to me had been washed away by a river of whisky and all I could remember of it was the look in his eyes as he told me, and the completeness with which I had believed him to be right.
The carriage rocked and jolted, miles ran beneath our wheels and home grew ever closer. We overtook three long columns of soldiers marching toward the capital. Several times the road grew so crowded we had to edge along past idle baggage-trains, arguing teamsters, soldiers shouting commands down the line. And somehow amid all that rattle and clatter, the heat, the noise, the anticipation … I fell asleep.
I dreamed of Cutter John, grown vast and satanic, as if the reality weren’t bad enough. I saw him reaching for me with his remaining arm, pale and hung about with the grisly trophies of his trade, lips he’d taken for Maeres Allus and worn as bracelets. I tried to run but found myself bound to the table once again, back in Allus’s poppy halls. Those great white fingers quested for me, growing closer … closer … me screaming all the while, and as I screamed the walls and floor fell away, turning to dust on a dry wind, revealing a dead-lit sky, the colour of misery. Cutter’s hand shrank back, and in that moment, knowing myself once more in Hell, I actually shouted for him to grab me and lift me back, not caring what fate awaited me – for the best definition of Hell is perhaps that there is nowhere, no place, no time to which you would not run in order to escape it.
‘Something’s wrong.’
I look up and see that Snorri has stopped ahead of me and is eyeing the ridges about us. ‘Everything’s wrong. We’re in Hell!’ Words won’t shape it but even if all you’re doing is walking down a dusty gully following the flow of souls, Hell is worse than everything you’ve known. You hurt, enough to make you weep, you thirst, you ache with hunger, misery weighs on you as if it were chains about your neck, and just standing there feels like watching everything you’ve ever loved die wretchedly before you.
‘There!’ He points toward a jagged collection of rocks on the ridge to our left.
‘Rocks?’ I don’t see anything else.
‘Something.’ Snorri frowns. ‘Something fast.’
We walk on, bone tired. Here and there the earth is torn and fissured. Long tongues of flame lick out, flickering skyward, and the air is foul with sulphur, stinging my eyes and lungs. The gully broadens into a dusty valley, studded with boulders. The wind has carved them into alien shapes, many disturbingly like faces. I start to hear whispers, indistinct at first, becoming clearer as I strain to make sense of the words.
‘Cheat, liar, coward, adulterer, blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer—’
‘Are you hearing this, Snorri?’
He stops and lets me catch up. ‘Yes.’ He glances around, still spooked. ‘Voices. They keep calling me a killer. Over and over.’
‘That’s it?’
‘…blasphemer, thief, cheat, liar, coward, adulterer…’
‘You’re not getting “cheat” or “thief”?’
Snorri frowns down at me. ‘Just “killer”.’
I cup a hand to my ear. ‘Ah, yes, it’s clearer now. I’m getting “killer” too.’
‘…coward, adulterer, blasphemer…’
‘Blasphemer? Me? Me?’ I spin around glaring at the rocky faces pointing my way. Every boulder for fifty yards seems to sport a grotesque set of features that wouldn’t look out of place on the statues that decorate my great uncle’s tower.
‘Anger: you have committed the sin of anger…’ from a score of mouths.
‘I’m not fucking angry!’ I shout back, not sure why I’m answering but swept up by the tide of accusation.
‘Lust: you have committed the sin of lust…’
‘Well … technically…’
‘Jal?’ Snorri’s hand settles on my shoulder.
‘Greed: You have committed the sin of greed…’
‘Oh come on! Everyone’s done greed! I mean, show me a man—’
‘Jal!’ Snorri shakes me, spinning me to face him.
‘Yes. What?’ I blink up at him.
‘Lust: You have committed the—’
‘All right! All right!’ I holler over the voices. ‘I lusted. More than once. I’ll put my hand up to all seven, just shut up.’
‘Jal!’ A slap and my attention is firmly back on the Northman. ‘These aren’t things the gods care about. This is your creed. This is the nonsense churchmen rail against.’
He has a point. ‘So what?’
‘The deadlands are shaped by expectation, but there are two of us and our faiths don’t agree.’ He lets go of me. ‘We were in Hel’s domain, where she rules over all that is dead. But—’
‘But?’
‘Now I think we’ve strayed into your Hell.’
‘Oh God.’
‘…thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain…’ Bishop James’s voice, though my father’s second had never sounded quite so much like he wanted to peel my face off.
The underworld that Snorri’s twin-aspected goddess, Hel, rules over is a pretty horrendous place, but I have the feeling that my Hell of fire and brimstone, replete with sinners and with devils to roast them, might outdo it for nastiness.
‘Let’s get back.’ I turn around and start to retread our path. ‘How did we even end up here? You’re the believer.’
‘…unbeliever, unbeliever, burn the unbeliever—’
‘I mean you’re the one with the strongest faith.’
‘…faithless, faithless, harrow the faithless—’
‘Not that my faith isn’t really strong too, praise Jesus!’ I cross myself, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and not that half-hearted wave of the hand that Father does but the deliberate and precise action that Bishop James employs.
‘It might not be you, Jal.’ Snorri’s hand on my shoulder again, arresting my motion. I glance back and he nods ahead.
Something flits across the gap between two of the larger boulders scattered across the valley floor. I catch only the edge of a glimpse – something thin and pale – something bad.
‘This is our enemy’s Hell. He’s brought it with him on the hunt.’ Snorri has his axe in his hands now.
‘But, nobody knows we’re here…’ I put my hand to the key, lying beneath my jerkin, just above my heart. Suddenly it feels heavy. Heavy and colder than ice. ‘The Dead King?’
‘It might be.’ Snorri rolls his shoulders, blue eyes almost black in the deadlight and fixed upon the rock the creature has vanished behind. ‘If he’s somehow been alerted to our presence he could just want revenge for us keeping the key from him.’
‘About that…’
The creature steals any further conversation, emerging from the shadows at the rock’s base and starting to run toward us with appalling speed. It drives forward on bone-thin legs, the power of each thrust veering it to one side, only to be corrected by the next so that it threads an erratic path through the boulder-field, weaving around them and leaving the stone faces screaming their horror in its wake. The thing puts me in mind of the white threads you’ll see in the muscle of a man laid open by a sword blow. Nerves, one of my tutors called them, pointing to the nightmarish drawings in some ancient tome on anatomy. It looks like a nerv
e: white, thin, long, dividing into limbs which in turn divide into three root-like fingers, its head an eyeless wedge, sharp enough to bury itself in a man.
‘Lichkin.’ Snorri names the beast and takes three paces toward it, timing his swing. He roars as the head of his axe tears through the air, muscles bunching as they drive it forward. The lichkin blurs beneath the blow, surging up to catch Snorri by the neck, the other hand on his stomach, lifting him high off the ground and slamming him down with a sick-making crunch. Dust billows up around the impact and I can’t see how he landed, though with so many boulders around it’s unlikely to be well.
‘Shit.’ At last I remember to draw my sword. It sings out of the scabbard, the deadlight burning along the runes that mark its length. My hand is shaking.
Snorri’s axe rises, unsteady amid the billowing dust, and the lichkin snatches it, continuing the motion to bring it round and down in a circle that buries the blade roughly where I expect Snorri’s head to be. The impact is dull and final. I can just make out the axe handle, pointing up unsupported as the lichkin abandons it and stalks toward me, the dust still rising smoke-like about it. Terror comes off the thing like heat off a fire.
‘Oh crap.’ I thrust my off hand down the neck of my jerkin and bring out Loki’s key. ‘Look, you can have it, just let me—’
The lichkin charges and it’s so fast I think I must have been frozen in place. One moment it’s there at the edge of the dust cloud and the next it has one hand wrapped around my throat and the other around the wrist of my sword arm. The thing’s touch is foul beyond imagining. Its white flesh joins mine, seeming to merge. It feels as if innumerable roots are sinking into me, burrowing between veins, each afire with an acidic agony that leaves no space even for screaming.
I’m held, useless and immobile while that white wedge of a face inspects me and all I can do is beg to die, unable to get the words past a jaw locked so tight that I expect my teeth to break in the next moment, to just shatter all in one go.