Ten Arrows of Iron, page 37
“For what?”
“To be made an example of by the Revolution,” she replied. “An airship came out of the sky, they said, flattened the town with cannon fire and fled before Imperial Skymages could retaliate. Their house was destroyed, their mother along with it. Urda somehow managed to pull his sister out of the wreckage, but…”
My mind flashed back to that morning, to Urda shivering in Yria’s arms, silent, frozen with those eyes completely empty, focused on some far-off horror that no one else could see.
So that’s where he’d gone. I had sent to him a dark place today. Maybe even darker than mine.
“She was conscripted into the Imperial army, as all Doormages were,” Agne continued. “He, lacking magical ability, apprenticed into a wright shop shortly after. Eight years old, they were all each other had, and then they didn’t have each other. Tragic, no?”
It was. But I wasn’t going to admit it. Not like I could take back smashing a cup against his face, regardless.
“Of course, twelve years later, she went Vagrant, picked him up in his town, and then the two of them went on to commit multiple frauds, extortions, and robberies across the Scar,” Agne said, “but that’s beside the point.”
“What is the point?” I muttered.
“The point is that they will be fine.” Agne, her coffee finally poured, raised it in both hands in the traditional toast. “Will you?”
I glared at her but returned the toast. “Are you saying what happened last night didn’t bother you?”
“I am not.”
“You’re all right with Jero lying to us?”
“I didn’t say that, either.”
“Then maybe you can clear up”—I didn’t hear the anger, the high-pitched shriek lurking on the edge of my voice—“how the fuck Two Lonely Old Men and his fucking plan are going to make the world a better place when he went and killed all those people last night?”
Agne took a sip of her coffee, stared at me over the rim. “I never heard a story that said Sal the Cacophony was concerned with casualties.”
“You never heard a story that said I liked dogs, either.” I stared into the coffee cup, wondering how I could break it, how I could smash it, to make her listen, to make this all feel better. “No one tells stories about that kind of shit. If they did…”
But the more I looked, the more I just felt… tired. Like even lifting it was too much effort. Breathing was too much effort. So the next time I sighed, all the words that I couldn’t hold back anymore just slipped out and settled into my coffee.
“If they did,” I whispered, “maybe they could tell me what everyone is dying for.”
I expected the long silence that hung between us after that.
I expected her to tell me to toughen up, that our problems were bigger than this, that I was being whiny, selfish, weak. I expected her to lean over and simply slap me hard enough so that I’d go back to feeling okay. I expected Agne the Hammer to act like a hammer.
But she didn’t.
She simply took a long, slow sip of her coffee and asked:
“How did you sleep?”
“What?”
“Did you sleep well?”
“No.”
“Nor I.” She set her cup down, stared into it. “There was a spider crawling across my bed this morning when I awoke.”
“What does that—”
“Did you know I used to be afraid of spiders? Even when I grew up, they terrified me. They moved so quickly and could be anywhere, with gleaming fangs and eyes. But this time, I woke up and saw it and I didn’t feel scared.”
She took in a shuddering breath.
“I didn’t feel anything.”
It wasn’t because of ceremony that she didn’t meet my gaze, that she turned away and swallowed something hard and sour. She didn’t want me to see the tears forming in her eyes. Over a spider.
“I looked down at it and saw just a thing,” she said, “eight tiny legs that I could just crush, whenever I wanted. I used to be afraid of them… before last night.”
I knew then why she wept.
Siegemages, some say, are the most favored of the Lady Merchant. They’re given strength, endurance, the power to tear mountains apart and shake the earth.
In exchange, she takes their feelings. Their fears, their laughter, their sorrows, and their joys.
At the peak of their power, a Siegemage is like a glacier: unstoppable, impenetrable, and terribly, terribly cold.
This morning, Agne had woken up a little colder than she had gone to sleep.
“I suppose that’s why I like the pouring ceremony so much, and pretty dresses and nice scents,” she said, wiping tears away. “Because one day, I’ll use a little too much power, and I won’t like it anymore. I’ll look at the cups and the kettles and just see more things I can break. One day, I’ll use too much power…” She looked at me and smiled sadly. “And I’ll see people the same way, too.”
I knew what loss was like. I had the scars to prove it. But for everything that Darrish and Vraki and Jindu had torn out of me, they couldn’t take the jokes I laughed at, the smells of sweat that made me want to kiss someone, the opera verses that made me mad and I couldn’t explain why. One day, long after I couldn’t lift a sword or fire my gun, I’d still have those.
And Agne wouldn’t.
“I suppose that’s why I joined when Jero asked me,” she said, smiling as she sipped her coffee. “I wept for the dead, because one day I wouldn’t be able to. I believe in this plan, to do something good for the world, because one day…” She smiled at her empty cup. “One day, I won’t know what good is.”
Then she laughed. A nervous, high-pitched giggle punctuated by sniffing and a little sobbing as she unceremoniously poured herself another cup of coffee.
“Sorry,” she said. “Sorry, I know that doesn’t help you. I just… I don’t know…”
“Yeah.” I poured myself a cup. “Me either.”
“Still, you should speak with Jero,” she said. “I’m sure he had his reasons for what he did.”
“Everybody who does bad shit has their reasons,” I muttered. “Doesn’t make it smell any nicer.”
“True,” she replied, smiling. “If you find them unconvincing, you’ll feel that much better when you break his face, fully justified.” She took a sip. “Though I suppose just cutting to the chase with a man can be quite satisfying.”
“Sometimes.” I offered her a lingering smile. My hand slid across the table, brushed against her fingertips. “But I don’t mind taking my time with a woman, either.”
Agne the Hammer, who had just last night smashed her way through a horde of slavering, drug-addled murderers and emerged with nothing more than a scratch, stared at my fingers on hers with wide, astonished eyes.
“Oh. Oh wow.” She laughed nervously, delicately lifting my hand off of hers and setting it down on the table. “Er, sorry, I’m really flattered…” She paused, looked me over, pursed her lips. “I mean, I’m really, really flattered, truly. But…” She cleared her throat, smiled sheepishly. “I like men.”
I blinked. “Oh, I didn’t…” Then I squinted. “Wait, really?”
She furrowed her brow. “You sound shocked.”
“I mean, always, but you’re so… so…”
She winked. “Not quite what you’d expect, hmm? And here I thought I was the pinnacle of effeteness.”
She stood up to her full height, her smile warm and her muscles rippling beneath her shirt.
“My name is Agnestrada ki Dondoril,” she said, closing her eyes. “I like flowers and wearing dresses, I love the color pink, and I can break someone’s neck with two fingers.” She laid a hand over her heart. “All of these things are true. For now.”
She placed a hand on my shoulder, offered me a delicate squeeze that could have killed me with just a little more pressure from her pinky, and then walked out the door, leaving me alone with my thoughts, my pains, and the smell of cinders in my nose.
And I decided I didn’t like it.
THIRTY
THE CANED TOAD
I didn’t give him the courtesy of a knock, choosing instead to push the door open and simply walk in.
So I suppose it’s understandable that Two Lonely Old Men didn’t give me the courtesy of looking up at me.
His hunched-over, squinting attentions were fixed on the tiny city sprawled out on the table before him. Lastlight, in all its minuscule re-created glory, stood timid beneath his shadow. A jeweler’s loupe over his eye, the Freemaker busied himself using a tiny brush to apply detail to the tallest tower looming over the rest of the city.
“Can I be of assistance?” he muttered into his city, barely audible.
“No,” I replied curtly. “I just came to tell you I’m out.”
I was prepared for accusations, threats, various slurs against my honor—just like I was prepared to break his jaw if he made them. What I wasn’t prepared for was the low, noncommittal hum he made.
I came for a fight. If he wasn’t going to start it, then I would.
“I didn’t know if I believed your plan about making the world a better place,” I continued. “But after last night, I know both your plan and your vision were shit.”
“Oh?”
“How did you plan for this operation to work if you weren’t going to tell us what you were doing? That you were involving Haven?” I shook my head. “How the fuck is this plan of yours going to work when everyone keeps dying because of it?”
“A fine question,” he replied, still not looking up.
He wasn’t listening. Maybe he thought someone with a list like mine didn’t care about who got killed. Maybe there was a time when he would have been correct in assuming so.
But I wasn’t a tool to be used. If anyone was going to die, it’d be because I knew they needed to.
“You got an answer?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not,” he said. “I did not anticipate Jero to be captured, nor for Haven’s construct to be present.”
“So, what? It was an accident?”
“No. There are no such things as accidents. Not to victims, anyway. The Haveners were always intended to be cat’s-paws, a useful distraction we could cultivate and unleash when necessary or to concern the city enough to allow us escape, were we discovered prematurely. My idea. Jero’s execution. He saw it through quite admirably, until he didn’t.”
“You…” My blood ran cold. “You let the Haveners into Terassus, didn’t you?”
“I persuaded certain people opposed to their presence to tolerate them. And with Jero’s talents, I kept them pacified, aiming to ensure they would cause harm to no one but the people we intended them to.”
“If that was your aim, you fucking missed.”
“I am aware.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
He paused a moment before resuming his painting.
“How,” he asked, “does one make amends for the dead?”
My blood surged. My jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might break. My finger twitched at the hilt of the Cacophony.
“I’ve heard the same sentiment from every warlord, every Vagrant, every fool who ever raised a knife,” I growled. “Every corpse you leave behind is nothing more than a pile of meat. You’ll shake your head and lament the loss and forget them in another second. And every person you forget that comes crawling out of the shit you made…”
The scar over my eye ached as I narrowed my eyes upon him.
“Is another me.”
He finally looked up at that, took in me and all of my scars, and his lip twitched just a little.
“I don’t know how many more of them I made last night, how many will come out of that with scars or how many will come looking for revenge,” I said, the fire dissipating inside me and leaving behind something cold and sharp. “But I made them because of you. And when they come, I’ll have to deal with them. Because of you. So I’m out.”
“I see.”
“If you want to come after me, that’s fine,” I replied as I turned away, hand on the Cacophony’s hilt. “But whatever you send after me, I’m going to send back to you in pieces, so—”
“Would you pardon me for a moment?”
I seized the hilt as I shot a scowl over my shoulder. I didn’t think interrupting me with that was going to be the reason I bashed his face in, but shit, it wasn’t like I was going to be choosy.
When I turned to face him, he had turned away from me. He set his brush and paint aside, then slowly walked to the head of the table. He pulled a small pouch from his belt and removed from it a whistle. A silver whistle, gingerly inscribed with sigils.
Just like the one Urda had in the Crow Market.
He held it to his lips, hesitant, like he feared to blow it. He summoned up some courage, closed his eyes, blew a single, irritating note. And then…
They came.
People.
Women. Men. Children. Grandmothers and fathers, aunts and uncles. Carts pulled by sturdy working birds, unruly kids chasing dogs through the streets. Laughing. Singing. Arguing. Weeping.
Alive, in miniature, in Lastlight.
Tiny phantasms blossomed in bursts of light on the streets and in the houses of the tiny city as hundreds of illusionary citizens went about their day. Their voices were a gentle roar, telling the same stories and laughing at the same jokes they always had, completely unaware of their ghostly nature or the two people towering over them.
But Lastlight was alive again. Full of people.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Two Lonely Old Men spoke softly, as if he feared the phantom people might look up and notice us. “All this, coaxed from a single note. I built the greatest city this world ever knew, yet I still can’t figure out how they did it.”
“Who?” I asked.
“The twins,” he replied. “Yria and Urda.” He ran a finger over the sigils adorning the whistle. “Did you happen to notice it, back in the Crow Market? When a Doormage opens a portal, they etch it out, make certain that it will go precisely where it needs to go. This is why they can’t open portals to places they haven’t been. And yet…”
And yet. Yria hadn’t been there when Urda had whistled.
But the portal had come all the same.
“I suspect it’s because they’re twins. Whatever connection they have transcends mere biology and infuses itself into their work. It goes the other way, too, did you notice? Typically, a Spellwright like Urda has to be present for his sigils to work. Yet these were activated with just a whistle. Their powers work remotely. I could spend a lifetime figuring out how their abilities work.”
He looked up and smiled.
“Yet all I asked of them was this small favor.”
A reverent silence fell over us. Two Lonely Old Men stood there silently, watching over his resurrected people. A smile, serene and full of sorrow, spread across his face. He closed his eyes, let the sounds of their joy wash over him.
Then he reached back into his pocket, pulled out a tindertwig…
And set the city ablaze.
“Hey!”
I surprised myself with the urge to smother the flames as they raced across the city, consuming the tiny buildings and rivers and engulfing the people. But they were just illusions, unaware of anything but the script they’d been ensorcelled to follow. They just kept laughing as the fire washed over them.
I stared, incredulous, at the Freemaker. “The fuck did you do that for?”
“To remind myself,” he said softly, “why I’m doing this.”
“But Lastlight—”
“Is gone,” he finished, “as is this pale imitation. No matter how many times I rebuild it, or how big it gets, it will never be safe so long as fate is decided by guns and spells. I did not realize how fragile my work was”—he stared into the rising flames—“until I watched it burn.”
Life in the Scar was hard. I could tell you that better than anyone. I was no stranger to fighting, to killing, to crawling out of the darkest places and leaving behind more blood than I’d gone in with.
But up until that moment, I don’t think I knew what hard was.
“You are correct.”
When I glanced up, Two Lonely Old Men stood beside me, his weary gaze locked onto mine.
“It was foolish of me not to tell you the extent of our plan, foolish of me to treat you like a tool instead of a partner, foolish of me to think what we were doing outweighed what we’d do for it.”
Granted, I never expected a guy who would make and burn a tiny city to be all that elegant with apologies, but it didn’t matter. Apologies, excuses, philosophical musings—I’d heard them all come tumbling out of every mouth of every thug and soldier and warlord who wanted to avoid ending up in the same pit they happily put everyone else in.
The words a man trades when he stares down his sins are what he’s made of. Apologies were just tin and wood.
“If you still wish to go, I will not stop you,” he said. “I will not seek retribution, I will not speak your name again. All I ask is one favor.”
I tilted my chin up, listening.
“Let me show you something.”
I narrowed my eyes for a brief moment before sighing. I nodded. He flashed a bent wire of a smile as he pushed the door open for me and led me out.
Behind us, the people of Lastlight continued to laugh and sing as the fires swallowed them whole.
I remembered his face.
When we’d served together in the army, he was just one more mage. A talented Nightmage, capable of weaving hallucinations with a thought, but there had been lots of talented mages and sowing fear wasn’t so special an art as to be memorable.
When we’d both joined Vraki the Gate in his plot to overthrow the Empress and return the Imperium to the mages who had built it, he was just one more crony. He was just a chin nodding at whatever Vraki said, just lips muttering whatever disgruntled chorus he was expected to.
