Ten Arrows of Iron, page 49
She hesitated, lips trembling as if the words hurt just to hold in her mouth. She shook her head.
“It’s not magic, Salazanca,” she said softly. “It’s not explosions or flying or making nightmares. It’s… something more. It doesn’t just destroy—it changes. Sounds. Sights. Itself. There’s not a magic or machine in the Scar, the Revolution, or the Imperium that can do that.”
She smiled softly. Not at me. Never at me.
Never again.
“Whatever you heard about the Relic, whatever you know or don’t know,” she whispered, “it’s not enough. Nothing we know is enough. With this, with what’s inside, we can change things.”
She looked at me. No. She looked past me. Through me. To something that wasn’t broken so badly, something she hadn’t sung to at night, something else.
“We can change this world.”
Like I said, do what I do long enough, you can meet every kind of villain. But you only ever need to meet one to know they all want great things. I don’t mean gold or weapons, though they all certainly want those, too.
Every villain—every warlord and baron and murderer and poacher and Vagrant—wants to change the world. They want to live on longer than the terror they’ve sown, to leave a mark on the world deeper than their swords can cut. They try a lot of different things—magic, alchemy, charity, conquest.
But in the end…
“Who gives a shit?”
Nobody is ever anything more than the bodies they leave behind.
“Sal.”
Liette said my name. An hour ago, I would have killed to hear her say it. But now my sword was lowered, my eyes were on Darrish, and my chest felt cold.
“What the fuck do you think you’re going to change?” I asked.
“With the Relic,” Darrish replied, “we can—”
“Fuck the Relic. Fuck whatever’s inside it. What do you think you, Darrish the Flint, are going to change?”
She furrowed her brow. “I don’t—”
“What, are you going to end wars? Are you going to feed the hungry?” My lips trembled. My eyes grew wet. “Are you going to take this back?”
I reached up.
I pulled down my collar.
I let her look at my last memory of her.
She cringed away, as if it hurt to look at that scar twisting down from my collarbone. Good. I wanted it to hurt her. I wanted it to do more than hurt her. I wanted to sharpen it—this scar, that night, that moment she looked away from me—into a point and jam it in her chest and let her look at it every day she woke up.
“Look at me, Darrishana,” I growled. “LOOK AT ME.”
She looked back at me. Quivering. Trembling. Weak.
“You may have fooled her into thinking you care about the world—”
“I haven’t fooled anyone,” she tried to protest.
“I’M FUCKING TALKING!” I roared. “You can fool her, you can fool the Revolution, you can fool yourself and the whole fucking world if you want. All your ideas and your speeches and your hopes don’t count for shit. You can save every child, stop every war, give every home a puppy and it won’t change a fucking thing.”
My face was hot. I didn’t remember when that happened. Nor was I sure when the tears started falling down my cheeks.
“You took the sky from me,” I whispered. “You took everything from me. Nothing can change that.”
She swallowed hard, opened her mouth to respond, found nothing but a sour taste and empty breath. The Barter she’d given for her magic, I knew, made her feel every wound like it was fresh, even one as old as this. But I didn’t care.
It didn’t hurt as bad as mine.
And it wasn’t going to hurt as bad as this.
“Except this.”
I snarled, raised my blade. Darrish took a step back, eyes wide with terror. I moved to swing, found myself unable to, with the sudden addition of a very small, irritated woman clinging to my bicep.
“Run,” Liette said, giving an urgent look at Darrish over my shoulder. “GET OUT OF HERE!”
Darrish made a move as if to intervene, as if to protest, and maybe she realized that either of those options would end with my steel in her chest because she chose, instead, to rush out the door and slam it shut.
Like that was going to stop me.
Before I could reach the handle, Liette darted out in front of me. Before I could stop her, she’d pulled a writing quill free from her hair and an inkwell free from her belt. Her hands moving quicker than my feet could, she hastily scrawled a series of sigils upon the door frame and gave them a flick.
They hummed to glowing life, taking on a pale purple hue that hurt my eyes to look at. But even as I glanced away, I knew those sigils. Back from that time we didn’t want to be disturbed at that one inn in Murmursoft. And that one other time when I was tripping hard—and I mean hard—on doom pepper.
A locking sigil. No one was getting in or out of that door without breaking it down.
Which I would have.
Just as soon as she got out of the fucking way.
“Sal.”
Soft words. Small, delicate hands spread out, demanding I stop. Short, slender body pressed against the door. That’s all that stood between me and that name on my list, all that stood between me and getting one step closer to feeling this ache in my chest go away. I’d cut down murderers, generals, monsters, and worse to get to my quarry before. I wouldn’t even have to use my sword to get through her. Blood, red-hot and angry, was draining out of my head and into my hands, demanding I reach out and remove her, hurl her aside, break her.
Which I would have.
Only…
Murderers, generals, monsters—none of them looked at me the way she looked at me now. That plaintive, urgent stare that made me feel like I could breathe deeper, stand straighter, do anything…
When she used to look at me like that.
“There’s more at stake here than—”
“Than what?” My words. Hard. Cold and sharp. I’d never used them on her before. “Than me?”
She looked like I had just punched her in the face. Fuck, maybe it would have been nicer if I had. Her lips fumbled for the words, hands searched for something she could do, could pull out to convince me.
“Than all of us,” she whispered. “Than everything. Can’t you see that?”
“See what?” I asked. “This magical world you’re going to create? These great things you’re going to do? Let me ask you, Liette.” I stepped toward her, my footsteps echoing in her chamber. “Can you see me in that world?”
She looked up at me. Her eyes glistened. And I wanted to leap out the window.
“No,” she said. “I understand you’re upset, but—”
“I’m not upset,” I replied. “I’m Sal the fucking Cacophony. And nobody… nobody gets in the way of Sal the Cacophony.”
A sigh, deep and annoyed. “Tiresome.”
“Fucking right it is,” I snarled as I tried to push Liette aside. “Get out of the fucking way.”
“NO!” Liette clung to my arm, tiny and tenacious, digging her heels into the floor. “I won’t let you ruin this, Sal! Not like everything else!”
“Ruin what? Ruin your perfect world? Ruin your perfect plans?”
“Ruin everything! With your gun! With your list! With your fucking revenge!”
A long, irritated grumble. “Petty.”
“The hell it is,” I spat, trying to dislodge her. “Let go of me, Liette.”
“I can’t.”
“Fuck me you can’t. Let go.”
“Or else what, Sal?” she demanded. “Or else fucking what?”
“Or else I’m going to burn this ship, every ship, and every last piece of your precious fucking Relic and cram every last ounce of its ashes into every ass I can find from here to Cathama!”
A weary, bemused chuckle. “Interesting.”
“And if you don’t fucking shut up whatever noise-tube is making that sound, I’m going to start and finish with Darrish’s ass and stop for tea halfway through.”
That was a good threat.
Hell, maybe my best one.
Made me wish anything had been said to warrant it. Or anything said at all, really. As it was, though, Liette just stared at me, puzzled.
Liette paused, echoing her look. “What noise-tube?”
“Those fucking tubes on this ship that you talk through.” I growled as my voice slid into snide mimicry. ‘Tiresome,’ ‘petty,’ ‘interesting.’ If everyone doesn’t fucking stop talking and let me get stabbing, I’ll… I’ll…”
My voice trailed off. Liette quirked a brow, torn between curious and thinking I might have finally lost what was left of my mind.
“I don’t have one of those,” she said. “I blocked it up when they gave me this room.”
I blinked. “Really?”
She adjusted her glasses. “Really.”
Not to brag or anything, but I know liars when I see them—their emotions are rehearsed, their words are impeccable, and they always have this look at the corners of their eyes like they’re about to get their teeth punched down their throats. I didn’t see that in Liette’s eyes. She wasn’t capable of it.
Whatever I’d heard, she hadn’t.
But that didn’t make sense. If I hadn’t said it, and she hadn’t said it, the only thing left in the room was…
My eyes were inexorably drawn to the jar. From behind its glass, I could feel a certain presence, like… like…
You know when you’ve just met someone and you instantly regret it?
“Ah. I interrupted.”
It was talking. The floating turd was talking to me.
Which made sense, I guess.
Since it was also now looking at me with one huge, bloodshot eye.
FORTY-TWO
THE IRON FLEET
When it comes to survival in the Scar, I like to consider myself something of an expert.
There are those who might disagree with that statement, but as they are all currently dead, you might as well just believe me. The reason I have spent so long avoiding my turn to be called to the black table is because of a simple adherence to three rules.
One: If something calls to you, don’t call back.
Two: Don’t stand in the way of anything bigger than yourself.
Three: If you can’t tell how to kill it by looking at it, run away.
Now, I recognize that “don’t talk to a flying, magical piece of shit” isn’t explicitly on there, but as far as I was concerned, it covered all three, as well as being just good advice. At the very least, a grotesque lump of flesh that was currently staring at me through an unblinking eye was something I was not prepared to see that day, in addition to being something I was completely unprepared to handle, which made it a damn fine reason to turn around and walk right out that door.
I would have, if not for two reasons.
The first being the magical Spellwright lock that Liette had scribbled upon it, and the second…
“Oh, sweet scientific process, I’m a fucking genius.”
Yeah.
That.
All Liette’s ire and fear toward me dissipated in the blink of an eye, along with any attention she had for me at all. She abandoned the door and rushed over to the jar, pressing her face against the glass like a kid admiring a particularly greasy, profoundly unwholesome and decidedly glistening puppy in a window.
I could have kicked the door down—hell, I could have blown it off and she wouldn’t have noticed. But…
Well, I mean, it’s not like I was going to leave her alone with that thing.
“Incredible,” she gasped. “It possesses not only the ability to alter its appearance depending on who’s viewing it, but it can also change its appearance at will, suggesting supreme adaptability unseen in any predator. It has an eye! Or at least… I see an eye. Do you see an eye? I see an eye.”
“Yeah, I see an eye,” I muttered, approaching with significantly more caution, as all flying turds should be approached with. “And I heard a voice.” I swallowed hard, looked at her. “Did… you?”
“She did not.”
Its voice—if you could call it a voice—was not gentle to hear. Possibly because I didn’t “hear” it. Not like I should have. I couldn’t…
You know those moments when your chest tightens up and your breath goes short and you don’t know why? The moment the rest of your body figures out something and your brain is always the last to catch up? The moment when every inch of you knows something is about to go horribly wrong but you haven’t realized just how bad?
Like that, except it’s coming out of a piece of shit.
“My presence is attuned solely to you.” Every word a heartbeat, every breath a rush of blood. “For though extending my presence to another is trivial work, it is you alone who has seized my attention, where all the splendors in all the worlds beyond these could not. I bestow my esteem upon you and you alone.”
I stared at the object—creature? Being? Entity? I cleared my throat. I rubbed the back of my head.
“Uh, okay,” I said. “But could she hear you? That would make this a lot easier.”
A pause. A long, irritated sigh.
“Fine.”
Liette’s eyes went wide. “I heard it.” She turned to me, breathless. “I heard it! Do you know what this means?”
I didn’t. But she only ever asks that question when she doesn’t know, either.
Her enthusiasm might very well have been infectious, but I’d have no way of knowing. Whether she could feel that thing’s voice like I could, I didn’t know, but my ears, my blood, my body were full of its amusement.
And I didn’t like the sensation.
“Such emotion from the tiniest of gestures.” Its eye slowly swiveled inside its socket, surveying us, surveying me. “Is it truly so easy? What else lurks inside your fragile cocoons? What horrors? What delights? What beauties do you still remember?”
I knew this feeling, this seeping unease, that its voice instilled in me. But I couldn’t place it. It felt like staring into a dark spot, like looking too closely at it would mean disappearing into it.
In the face of the unknowable, the overwhelming, my general reaction tended to be to spew curses and threats. I knew that wasn’t going to cut it this time.
But fuck, I couldn’t think of anything better.
“If you don’t want to see what lurks over the edge of this ship,” I growled, “you’d better tell us what the fuck you are, exactly.”
“Sal,” Liette chastised. “We’re clearly dealing with sentience, hence it would be a who the fuck it is.” She squinted at it. “Or… are you a ‘who’? Do you possess an age? A gender? A—”
“It does not matter,” the thing replied. “Perhaps it did once. But I can no longer remember.” Its eye glanced around at grotesque leisure. “Nor do I recall this land. Nor your breed.”
“You are… ancient, then?” Liette whispered. “An ancestor?”
The eye narrowed in indignation… or amusement? Anger? I don’t know, it turns out the expressions of flesh-sacs are pretty hard to read.
“I stood here once. I traveled this land. I left it behind.” It paused, thoughtful, as it stared at us. “You would have called me a person. Or close enough to it that you would not be able to tell the difference.”
“Did you have a name?”
“It does not matter.”
“Well, I suppose not.” Liette scratched her chin. “But for purposes of record-keeping, it would help if we could call you something.”
I opened my mouth to offer a suggestion. She held up a hand.
“Not ‘the turd.’”
“It’s right, though, it doesn’t matter. It’s fucking with us,” I muttered. “Nobody with anything of value to say speaks in cryptic birdshit like this.”
“If it will soothe you, I was once known as Eldest.”
“Eldest.” Liette tasted the name—normal enough, but the way it said it was unnerving. “How long ago were you here, Eldest?”
“Vast ages, untold spans of time.”
“See?” I asked. “What did I—”
“Six hundred thousand years, ten months, two weeks, four days, ten hours, forty-eight minutes, and fifty-eight seconds ago,” Eldest spoke suddenly. “If you truly wish to know.”
“Six hundred…,” Liette whispered, her eyes growing so wide she could barely open her mouth. “That would mean… Hang on.”
She turned, immediately rushed over to a pile of books, rifling through it and ignoring me. Would that I could say the same of this… thing. It continued to stare at me through the glass. While I didn’t know exactly how this thing could talk, I wasn’t going to let it say that Sal the Cacophony averted her gaze from a flying turd.
“You knew all that, huh?” I asked. “Just like that?”
“That, more, everything. I know every sinew, every bone, every nerve of a human’s body. I know the deep things that sleep between the stars. I can follow a drop of blood from a body, into the earth, across the years, into the fibers of the leaves of the tree that it fed. What I know is limitless. And tedious.”
I furrowed my brow, looked over my shoulder. “Yeah, see? This thing is full of—”
She wasn’t looking. She was picking up books, flipping through them, tossing them aside. She hadn’t even heard me.
“She hurts you.”
But it had.
When I looked back, Eldest’s eye was wide open. A single slit pupil expanded to black orb, growing wider with every breath I took.
“To look upon her causes you pain. What do you see? What do you remember?”
Wider. Larger. Until the eye was nothing more than a gash of darkness, impenetrable and dark.
“Tell me. Tell me everything.”
I didn’t have a word for what I felt upon staring into that blackness. All the dread and the creeping cold that came with its voice suddenly seemed so insignificant in comparison to what I saw within its gaze. It was too… engulfing, too attentive, an abyss that stared at me no matter where I turned. I’d known nothing about this thing when I first laid eyes upon it, and now I felt like I knew even less than nothing.
