The Blasted Wastes, page 1
part #1 of Edge of the Knife Series
The Blasted Wastes
J Boothby
Edge of the Knife: Episode 1
The Blasted Wastes
Prelude: Blackwell
“I see you like my books?”
When I heard the old voice, I knew I was dead.
The voice had a sound like dry, brittle paper, but there was an edge to it, too.
A sharp one.
I spun around with a guilty look on my face. “I…sthorry. I…”
The human language wasn’t coming.
The sounds felt too soft and slithery on my tongue. “I did not mean…”
“No harm done, kid.”
The human strode briskly through the doorway and took the book I was looking at in his hand.
“The Gloaming Day,” the man said, looking at the spine. I knew he must be reading the glyphs printed in gold on the black leather cover.
He handed it back to me. “Huh. A totally rare book, and an interesting choice. Do you read yet?”
I shook my head. “Picthurth,” I said awkwardly. “I like picthurth?” The sounds were so hard to get my mouth around. My teeth got in the way. How did humans do it?
“Ahh.” The human nodded. “Yes, the illustrations in this edition are really quite remarkable.”
I studied him. He studied me. He was quite a bit smaller than I’d expected—much smaller than any of my fathers had been.
He was dressed in tight-fitting brown pants that billowed out toward his feet, which were wrapped in old sandals. His shirt was loose and airy, dyed in bright colors, and open down his surprisingly hairless chest. He wore purple-tinted circular glasses over his small, bright eyes.
Even though long hair grew from the top of his head down to his waist, held back from his face with a rainbow-colored headband, he was so hairless in general that I wondered if he was seriously ill.
His neck was so thin I didn’t think it would hold up even his small, round head.
He was the first human I had ever seen.
The Bakarh tattoo below the left side of his jaw stood out starkly against his pale skin.
And as my eyes came to rest on the elegant knife that sat on his belt, I realized this was also the man who had taken my tribe in.
Humans were tricky. Humans had hunted us, once. Some of them still did.
Did this one?
All my hair went white. The human was watching my face.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly. “I’m not going to eat you. What are you called, kid?”
I told him, standing straight and proud, using the true name my mother had given me.
But the man shook his head. “You honor me, kid,” he said. “But that name is for you and your people alone to know. Do you have a common name?”
I could feel the hair across my face and neck flush with embarrassment.
I was truly as stupid as my aunt claimed. “Blackwell,” I said, frowning.
My thirdfather had given me my common name. I liked it about as much as I had liked my thirdfather.
The man nodded and extended his knife hand, palm open. “Welcome to my home, young Blackwell. I am Sartosh. Would you like me to tell you the story that goes with these pictures?”
I hesitated, trying to read his tone, his body language. I knew I should run. We’d been running for years. I was good at it. And yet…
“I shouldn’t be here.” My aunt was cleaning somewhere in the house, and had told me not to move from the large entry hall. If she found me here, with a human, there was no telling what she’d do.
Sartosh laughed. “You shouldn’t be here, and yet here you are. A story won’t change that.” He sat on the floor and crossed his legs. “Join me,” he said, patting the thick carpet.
After a moment I did, and Sartosh set the book before us.
There was a picture of a human queen and long rows of other marines in bright battle armor.
They stood before a tall, shimmering tower of stone.
I was amazed to see a Hulgliev like my fathers, dressed in the same white armor as the rest of the mages, kneeling before the queen.
His head was streaked with the traditional marks of a warrior.
The queen was offering the Hulgliev an elegant flower with a stem of forged silver and a jeweled bloom carved from a single stone.
I looked at Sartosh and he nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It was a very different time, wasn’t it? You weren’t always a hunted people, Blackwell. Once you stood with kings.”
I leaned in close, studying the drawing. All of the mages in carried knives across their chests.
I didn’t have the words for it, so I simply pointed at the knives in the book and then at the knife on Sartosh’s belt.
“You’re an observant one, aren’t you?” Sartosh said. “A knife is the heart of a mage, Blackwell. With it we draw on the power of the aether and shape it to our will. Would you like to see it?”
I nodded eagerly.
Sartosh handed it to me, hilt first.
I took it, careful to keep my claws retracted.
There were small blue gems embedded in the hilt that sparkled in the light, and writing that I didn’t understand.
It was heavy for such a small thing.
As I held it, a soft light began to form around the edges of the blade, and it was as though the world around me suddenly came into sharp focus.
The glyphs on all the books covering the walls became crisp and legible.
I could feel each fiber of the carpet beneath me—it was as if this extraordinary alertness rose from somewhere below the carpet and flowed through each of my limbs, filling me.
I could make sense of the cloud patterns outside the windows. I was aware of every dust mote that hung in the air between me and Sartosh.
I could see each of the muscles in Sartosh’s strange, hairless face stretch themselves into a smile.
“My god, Blackwell!” the mage exclaimed. He sat back and clapped his small pale hands together. “Such talent! I knew you Hulgliev were strong, but this is quite impressive. It took me more than a year of practice to tap the lei-lines my first time. Your family must truly be proud.”
I frowned. “My firstfather, they dead now,” I said awkwardly, looking at the book on the floor.
I didn’t have the words for these feelings in any language. “My mother, she…”
“Of course, kid,” Sartosh said softly. “I’m sorry, Blackwell. Try this, though. Try and extend that light you see out beyond the edge of the blade. There is plenty of aether piped up through these walls. Feel the energies flow up through you, feel them reaching out. Just a bit will do.”
I looked at the knife and the glow around it, and imagined it doing what the mage had asked.
I exhaled a deep breath, and as the air left my body the light left the tip of the knife.
It reached across the room to the engraved desk at the far end, by the bay windows, and came to rest there.
The beam of light hung in the air, glimmering, making the sunlight seem pale by comparison.
On the surface of the desk, the varnish crackled and started to smoke. Small flames broke out.
Mortified, and trying to think of how to form the words of an apology, I looked over at the man, only to see his tight smile break into an open-mouthed laugh.
“Excellent, Blackwell! You are a true prodigy!”
The man’s teeth were very small, and quite yellow. He stood and clapped his small hands together repeatedly, which I understood to mean he was pleased. “I really am quite impressed! One more test, if you please.”
Sartosh extended his hand to me, and I understood I was to take it.
I stood and did so.
As Sartosh closed his eyes, I felt a flow of energy coming from him, in the same way I had felt it flow up through the floor.
Only this energy was sharper somehow, more focused and intense. I let it pass through me, merge with the other energy I had from the house, and flow out through the tip of the knife.
The golden beam sparked even brighter. At the far end of the beam, the desk exploded into brilliant red and gold flames so suddenly that I gasped and dropped the knife.
Instantly, the golden beam vanished, but the desk continued to burn.
Smoke billowed up from it, toward the high ceiling of the room.
“My god,” Sartosh whispered to himself. “My god.”
Then, to me, he said, “When a mage takes on the willing power of another mage, with proper training, their energies expand exponentially. Remember that. The mage who stands alone is only as good as himself. One only achieves true greatness by working in concert with others.”
Sartosh crossed to the windows and slid them open to the street.
The hallway door burst open, and servants with red cylinders came running in. The cylinders had black cones attached to them that spit white foam over the desk.
“Mind the books!” Sartosh called out. He didn’t seem disturbed in the least. Just very thoughtful.
I picked up the knife and, with some reluctance, handed it back to Sartosh.
As I did, he glanced beyond the men to see my aunt step cautiously into the doorway.
She sniffed the air and looked about the room.
As she saw me, an expression of fury crossed her face.
Instantly, all my hair went white.
She dropped the cleaning materials she held in her hands, strode across the floor, grabbed me by the scruff of my neck, and jerked me roughly to her side.
“I am sorry, khalee, very sor
She turned and pulled me toward the door.
Head down, hair white, I went limp. I knew better than to resist.
“Stop,” commanded Sartosh.
I looked up and saw different emotions crossing my aunt’s face, first fear and then more anger.
Anger that was all too familiar.
Sartosh came across the floor to us. The man’s voice was firm and held a commanding tone now that it hadn’t before.
“The boy has great talent, Clarinda. He’ll be trained, I think.”
My aunt frowned, and looked down at me with a foul expression.
She did not turn around.
“You honor us, khalee,” she said, in a tone that implied quite the opposite. “But you should not trouble yourself…”
“He will be trained,” Sartosh stated flatly, the edge back in his voice.
He put his small, pale hand on my aunt’s large, furred bicep and turned her around to face him.
“As long as you are here in my house, on my lands, Clarinda, you will bring him to me daily.”
Her face was bitter, impassive. She nodded once to the mage.
I understood several things in that moment.
First, that my aunt had no choice.
Second, that her fury about it would quickly find its target: me.
Third: now I was dead for sure.
Sartosh tucked the book into my arms and patted me on the side of my face with that strange, hairless hand. “His fathers were mages, were they not? His mother as well? It would be a shame if the boy did not continue in the trade. I will see you again soon, young Blackwell.”
My aunt would not meet his eyes.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had reached out with her claws and cut that poor, fragile man open from throat to groin.
“As you wish, khalee,” Clarinda said instead, through gritted, razor-sharp teeth.
We donned our greatcoats and thick hats, left the house by the back door, and walked quickly down the alley.
On the main street, humans hurried by without seeing us.
A streetcar passed.
A dog lifted its head and sniffed in our direction, but before it could react we were moving down a side street that humans couldn’t see: the corpse road.
Here the city noises faded.
The fog cleared, revealing towering trees, sky, and a long dirt path through woods that ran down to a series of low stone kivas dug into the ground.
The air smelled of pine.
We were back in Kiryth, on Sartosh’s land, and my tribe’s home now.
I hugged the mage’s book tightly to my chest, and tried not to show any expression.
I was going to be trained! As a mage!
I walked in a daze, dreaming.
I didn’t notice how all of the other Hulgliev of the tribe we passed took one look at my aunt and quickly stepped out of our way.
It wasn’t until I came down the ladder into the small kiva that my aunt finally turned and cuffed me sharply across the face.
“You could have killed us all, do you know that?” she seethed in our High Tongue. “If you’d done ANYTHING to anger that Bakarh”—she spat the unfamiliar word out between her sharp teeth—“then we would be homeless once again, and sooner or later the hunters would find us. And when they found us, they would surely kill us.”
She growled, spit at me, and kicked me repeatedly where I’d fallen to the floor.
I wrapped myself tightly around the book to protect it. “You are a stupid, ugly child!” she yelled.
“You are a worthless little beast. You should have died alongside your fathers and my sister, and my own son should now be standing here in your place. You are lower than a pile of shit. Even that heretic is better than you.”
I stayed where I was, pigmenting all of my hair to something like the color of the floor and trying not to move or cry out.
I knew that if I gave her something, anything, to react to it would only make it worse.
She cursed me a while longer, hitting me across the sides and back.
Finally she went off, sat by the fire, and smoked her clay pipe until the thick smell of leaf filled the kiva.
When I was sure she wouldn’t notice me, I crept off to my dirtnest in the far corner of the room.
I cleaned myself, and then—with only the flickering of the fire to light the pages—I carefully opened the book.
I stared at the glowing illustrations. The firelight made them dance. In particular, I studied the picture of the great armored Hulgliev and the flower, Te’loria.
How thrilling it would be to hold such power, such respect.
A mage, I thought. A mage!
And despite the bruises I felt forming under my fur, I smiled into that smoky darkness.
1
Blackwell
There’s a clap of thunder and a flash of white light as the battered podship I’m riding in cuts down through the clouds.
I’m strapped in the back, the place they use for cargo. I’m starving and frozen, and even if there was anything left in my stomach it’d be all over the rusting metal floors, walls, and roof by now.
Most of my team doesn’t look any better.
Josik is a bright shade of green. I’ve never seen a human go quite that color before; against his bright red hair it makes him look like some strange, undead version of himself. His eyes are closed, his lips moving soundlessly. With a death grip, he hangs on to the frayed straps that hold us all in.
Pirrosh grins back at me. He’s a Solingi; I get that. They’re mostly human, but they live in the air, and apparently they like this shit. But despite that, I can tell this is a lot even for him. I can see it in the tight skin at his jaw and the whites around his eyes. This isn’t a lazy blimp ride. This is a nightmare.
The Buhr we hired is curled up into a ball of fur in the corner. There’s so much noise from the rattling of the ship and the storm outside that if it’s making any sounds, I sure can’t hear them.
And then there’s the girl with the tattoos.
She’s staring out the window at the ocean below us. She’s new, and I haven’t worked with her, though Josik swears she’s got a lot of potential. Matthias, the kid we’d originally trained, got himself cut up over an orange he’d bought in the market—some withered old thing not good enough to get shipped to the mansions on the cliffs, where all the real money in Tamaranth is. It probably didn’t even have any juice left in it. Some thugs had jumped him, deep in the Warrens. We’d bandaged him up as best we could and left him with a friend to heal.
The girl is a mystery to me.
She senses me watching her, looks over in my direction, and nods. I can see it in her eyes: she’s been through a lot of crap, and this is just another in a long string of bad days.
I can relate to that. I can respect it, too.
Below us is nothing but the southern ocean, and now it seems we’re falling into it. I can hear the pilots cursing to themselves in languages I don’t understand. The water is dark, steel grey, and edged with whitecaps—just the way oceans look in my dreams.
And then, without warning, the ship rolls over and we plunge into a storm of these fat, glowing bags of fluorescent water. They’re suddenly all around us, like electric blimps. They’re huge, each at least ten times the size of this old, tiny ship.
Kittiber fluvare, right out of my mentor Sartosh’s old books.
It’s not at all like I thought it would be, when he’d let me read them as a child. When I was looking at those books for so many long hours while my aunt fumed in front of her hearth, I always imagined myself as some great mage leading an army, the fluvare overhead, my enemies (the hunters, always the hunters) running from me.
Instead I’m broke.
I’m starving.
I’m stealing artifacts for some dead Earth gangster I met while I was drunk and wandering too long on the corpse roads, just so I can get by.
I live in a dark hole in a dying city, and my friends are getting knifed over pieces of old fruit.
The podship sideswipes one of the fluvare, and sets off a jolt of electricity that crawls across the ship’s hull. The hair all over my body stands on end. With his hair spiked, Josik looks like some strange red flower. Pirrosh’s two rows of teeth chatter so loud that I can hear them over the sounds of the ship.
