The Moonsteel Crown, page 1
ANGRY ROBOT
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All for One and One for All
An Angry Robot paperback original, 2021
Copyright © Stephen Deas 2021
Cover by Karen Smith
Edited by Eleanor Teasdale and Paul Simpson
Maps by Kieryn Tyler
Set in Meridien
All rights reserved. Stephen Deas asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.
Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.
ISBN 978 0 85766 876 9
Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 877 6
Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Nigel, Matt, Sam, Ali, Pete, Tony & Michaela
You can’t magic away what you don’t see coming.
– Sulfane
Contents
1 Seth
2 Myla
3 Fings
4 Varr After Dark
I Interlude
5 Moonsteel
6 Needs Must as the Devil Drives
II Interlude
7 Red
8 Winterscape
9 The Treasure Barge
10 Priest of an Angry God
11 Not How This Was Supposed To Go
12 The Novice
13 Bridges and Goblins
14 The Value of Appreciation
15 Taken
III Interlude
16 The River Gates
17 Blue Robes
18 Sigils
19 Chaos and Fire
IV Interlude
20 A Matter of Family
21 The Voices of the Dead
22 The Morning After
23 Council Day
V Interlude
24 Brothers
25 The Fancy Woman of Bonecarvers
26 The River
27 The Underworld
28 Fire and Ice
29 Wraith
30 Fings’ Gambit
31 Goblins
32 Glassmakers
33 The Pig
VI Interlude
34 Orien
35 The Mage of Tombland
36 The Speaker For the Dead
37 The Sword-Monks
38 Sulfane
39 Lightbringer
40 Sacrifice
41 Dead Men
42 Twilight
43 The First Day of Midwinter
44 The Thief
VII Interlude
45 Don’t Push It
46 Scrawny Fellow with a Pointy Beard
47 Fight Until You Can’t
48 The Moonsteel Crown
Acknowledgements
1
Seth
“Pastries! Pastries! Lovely fresh pastries!” Seth waved his tray of stale pastries left over from last night’s kitchen in the Unruly Pig with increasingly forlorn hope. The Sulk had the city of Varr in its grasp like a butcher about to throttle a chicken, the air a crisp murderous cold that made Seth’s lungs ache. It was the middle of the afternoon and already the shadows from the brooding cliffs of the Kaveneth reached across the tournament field. The crowd had thinned to knots and clusters huddled around bonfires, where they bought roasted nuts and cups of hot, spiced wine as an excuse to stay near the warmth. It was the same every winter: the long silent smothering of cold, the three or four months spent desperately trying not to freeze. The rich and titled fled to Tarantor or Torpreah for the winter, where everyone could get on with their intrigues, plots and occasional stabbings without the added inconvenience of frostbite. Anyone too poor to get away was hiding stashes of firewood, bracing themselves in case they had to fight to the death to defend them.
If you were poor, frankly, winter in Varr was a bit shit. How shit, Seth realised, was something he’d almost forgotten. Unfortunately, he looked set to be reminded.
“Pastries! Pastries! Lovely fresh pastries!” He watched, envious of the fires. For the sake of appearances, one of the Imperial family usually held out until after Midwinter before they ran for warmer climes, but this year? Midwinter was still a month away and none of the bastards had stayed, not a single one. True, there had been more stabbings than usual – Seth had it on good authority that the emperor’s own brother had been murdered, possibly by a demon thing that walked through walls but more likely by his cousin.
He’d make up a story, he decided. Spread it around and see if he could trade it for a few bits, how the Emperor’s cousin had disguised himself as a minstrel and then garrotted the prince with an enchanted lute-string, one laced with wyvern’s blood to keep the moon-priestesses from divining the truth. Something like that only better, because, frankly, that was about all that the lords and ladies of the Empire mattered to people like Seth. They could do as much plotting and stabbing as they liked, but when all the plotting and stabbing happened somewhere else, it meant not as many people showed up to the winter tournaments, which meant not as many people grumbling about the cold while they bought Seth’s pastries.
“Pastries! Pastries!” He was wasting his time. Anyone with sense had already fled to shiver in the comfort of their own home.
You didn’t expect the Emperor to stay, of course. Usually it was his brother, although even Seth had to grudgingly accept that being dead was a passable excuse for Prince Halvren not showing his face. The Emperor’s cousin, Prince Sharda, would have been a crowd-pleaser, if only for the frisson every time he opened his mouth in case he accidentally started a war. Actually, he’d heard rumours rumbling out of the Kaveneth that a war might be exactly what was coming. Seth had no idea why or whom the empire was planning to fight, exactly, since there really wasn’t anywhere left for it to go except across the sea and the Empire didn’t have much in the way of ships. Itself, probably. It had been more than three decades since the last war, after all, when Khrozus the Liberator – or Khrozus the Butcher, epithet dependent on your point of view – had seized the throne.
There was the Emperor’s daughter, of course. Would people have come out to see the royal witch before she came of age or would they have stayed at home? Probably they’d have come in droves. Seth knew all too well how gawping and morbid fascination mostly got the better of common sense.
“Pastries! Get your…” Oh, give up.
Why? Somewhere better you could be?
Shut up. Ma Fings would always give him a scrap of floor, but that meant squeezing in with Fings’ family and dealing with unwanted advances from probably at least two of Fings’ sisters. The alternative was begging a corner in the kitchens at the Unruly Pig, as he usually did, where Blackhand would inevitably want something in return. It would be the Pig, though, because the Pig had Myla, which at least meant a chance of some intelligent conversation, at least until she was drunk. They could agree on how everyone with a title in front of their name could stab each other until they were all dead and how the world would be a better place for it, and she’d share her wine, and probably let him sleep on her floor. He had time for Myla.
Yes. Because she doesn’t mind you being a parasite.
“Pastries! Get your pastries!” Oh, fuck off.
They’d been stale before he started. Now they were either soggy and tooth-jarringly cold or actually frozen solid. He wasn’t sure which and wasn’t keen to find out. His feet and his fingers weren’t much better, either. His tattered boots were soaked through and starting to freeze. To add insult to injury, tantalising smells wafted from the Provisioners’ Guild tent. Fresh bread and hot sausage grease and spiced wine and stewed pears. They had a fire in there too, and canvas to keep in the warmth…
“Pastries! Lovely fresh pastries…!” No one was even listening.
Wasting my time.
He looked around and spotted Fings slipping through the dwindling crowds. Put Fings in a crowd and all you had to do was stand back and watch while other people’s money made its way into his pockets with a will all of its own. Fings saw him looking, waved and started to head over, and Seth was half tempted to turn and run. Fings would inevitably leave him with a handful of bits, enough to buy a hot meal; and Seth knew he ought to be grateful, except Fings would say something trite and facile and cheery and stupid while he was at it, and Seth would have to bite his own tongue not to punch him in the face, which was probably just as well, because he’d only end up doing himself an injury.
“Pastries! Pastries! Shit in a bun! Soggy crap with ice on it!” The light was fading, the air already freezing to his face. Anyone still here was desperate, broke and trying to sell something. And yet he didn’t turn and run, because Fings would give him money, and right now he had nothing, and the Sulk was barely starting.
“Any of that worth eating? I’m starving.” F
“Fresh as the day they were baked. Filled with exotic Southern spices,” said Seth absently. They stood side by side, looking over the archery field, still as white and pristine as it had been in the morning.
“It wasn’t Sara in the kitchen last night, was it?” Fings frowned. “Last time I had anything of hers, it was a week before I was right again.”
“Don’t think so.”
Fings eyed the sad remains on Seth’s tray and helped himself. “Nice girl, but…” he shook his head.
“I should have sold horse shit today.” Seth let Fings see the miserable handful of clipped bits that were his entire worldly wealth. “At least you can burn horse shit, if you let it dry. People pay for that, you know.”
“If it was Sara in the kitchen last night, you probably were selling horse shit.” Fings offered his purse to Seth. “Help yourself.”
Mostly it was clipped bits but there were a few crowns and… Seth reached in and pulled out a coin. Silver. Proper real silver. Somehow Fings, jammy bastard that he was, had landed a precious silver moon. Not an eighth or a quarter but a whole full-moon. Food for a month, that was, if you were careful.
“Yeah.” Fings looked at the silver moon dubiously and wrinkled his nose. “Need to get rid of that.”
“Where did you… How…?”
“You ever get the feeling there’s a set of chains up there with your name on them?” Fings was looking down the river, up to the black bulk of the Kaveneth. “Some mage in the darkness, searching around, picking you out? Some guardsman on the ramparts, looking for you?” He took another pastry,
“Not really, and that’s my livelihood you’re eating there.”
Fings snatched back his purse and his silver moon, and tossed a couple of bits to Seth. “How’s the Murdering Bastard doing?”
Seth shook his head. “Badly.”
“Pity.”
“Really?” The Murdering Bastard’s actual name was Sulfane. He’d shown up at the Unruly Pig a month ago and somehow had Blackhand wrapped around his little finger. He was, as they’d all found out, really quite good at shooting people with his bow. Just a bit… well, indiscriminate was probably about the nicest way to put it.
Fings peered across the snow. “You keep banging on how there’s a war coming. Much better chance he’ll get killed if he’s off fighting in it rather than sitting around the Pig making our lives miserable.” Wars were things that happened to other people, as far as Fings was concerned.
“Your wish may be granted. Blackhand wants me to forge a letter from some obscure lord no one’s ever heard of that’ll get your Murdering Bastard into the Emperor’s Guard.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course I can!”
“You going to?”
Seth caught Fings’ eye. When he was quite sure he had it, he dragged it to his tray of sodden pastries and then gave Fings a baleful look. “Blackhand asked nicely. What do you think?”
What he could have been doing – what he should have been doing if his life hadn’t abruptly turned into an ash-heap six months ago – was sitting in the nice warm undercroft of a nice cosy temple in front of a nice hot fire. What he should have been doing was putting his feet up, toasting his toes, sipping warm spiced wine and chewing the fat with other senior novices and junior priests, discussing politics, theology, and which of the fat old Lightbringers who lorded it over them was the most likely to drop dead before winter ended. He missed that. Truth be told, he missed that a lot.
“Don’t read the forbidden books.” What do you do? Read the forbidden books. “Don’t sneak into the forbidden crypt.” What do you do? Fuck about in the forbidden crypt. “Definitely don’t go into the forbidden catacombs.” What do you do? Not that they’d caught him on the last one.
Of course, no one had said that all these things were forbidden, exactly. That was the galling part. A novice was simply supposed to know by some trick of divine telepathy, and then be a good little cleric and not do them.
But you did know. You knew perfectly well.
All he’d ever wanted was to serve the Sun. To understand the four Divinities.
Yes, and if you’d managed to do as you were bloody well told for five minutes, maybe that’s exactly what would have happened, eh? What you wanted, you cretin, was a little patience.
The end of a lifetime of dreams. There wasn’t even a shred of injustice to it. Warning after warning and he hadn’t stopped. Didn’t even know why, not really. He just… couldn’t.
“I hope you’re fleecing him,” said Fings.
Across the archery field, Sulfane was running from the stump of a tree. Seth watched as he vaulted onto a low platform and fired at one of the targets. He looked very determined. Dynamic. Intense. All good qualities a soldier was supposed to have, Seth supposed. He wasn’t sure where being as mad as a bag of spiders fitted, whether that was good or bad or whether it simply didn’t matter when you were standing in front of a thousand armoured horses bearing down on you at a gallop. Probably helped, didn’t it?
“I said I hope you’re fleecing him.”
“Blackhand? You must be joking.”
“Not Blackhand you idiot. The Murdering Bastard.”
Seth shrugged. “You want him gone, I want him gone, Blackhand wants him in the guard, that’s how we get rid of him.” He took a deep breath and let out a weary sigh. “You know Blackhand – like a pig rooting for truffles when he thinks there’s money about. Start of a new and profitable partnership he says, not that the likes of you or I will see our lives any sweeter.” He pulled the tray of pastries away as Fings snaffled another one. “You and I, brother, we have the same problem. We’re cowards, Fings. That’s what we are.”
2
Myla
Myla crashed into the wall, felt wooden panels bend under the impact, and launched herself through the open door. Snow flew from her feet as the night air hit her. She felt the world close in, the ornamental gardens compressing into a dark tunnel, her at one end, Dinn and Arjay ahead, running down the last of the Spicers through the winter snow.
“Don’t let him get away!” Wil was close behind with Brick and Dox. Somewhere, trailing at the back, was Blackhand.
The Spicers weren’t going to get away. They were bolting for a gate which she and Dinn had tied shut ten minutes ago. It wouldn’t hold for long, but it wouldn’t need to.
How to end this without it getting bloody? The old skinny one wouldn’t be a problem, nor the chubby one, but the other three… Two dark-skinned locals, all brawn and muscles, and a pale-skinned lad with a sword. Young, too. The sort of men who hadn’t yet found themselves on the wrong end of a fight. The trouble with men like that was that they didn’t understand when they were beaten. Made it hard to take them down without hurting them.
The one with the sword. Him first. If she could take him out of the fight fast, the other two might falter. He was from the south. Deephaven, maybe, like her, or possibly Torpreah, so maybe he’d be willing to talk. He was taking coin from the Spicers, that was all. She could appeal to his sense as a mercenary.
Of course, it didn’t help that Blackhand kept shouting out from the back, things like Gut them! and Maim the fuckers! and I want him skinned and his head on a fucking pike! Didn’t exactly set the best of tones for a negotiated surrender, that.
She skidded around a corner, sliding on compacted snow towards a pair of rickety shacks as the Spicers dashed between them and down the waiting alley, straight towards Dinn’s tied-shut gate.
Keep Chubby and let the others go? The old skinny one would take that and be grateful. Blackhand would be livid but he wouldn’t catch up in time to make a difference, and no one in their right mind argued with a sword-monk, even with a lapsed one who’d crashed out of training and drank too much.
“Look out!”
“Shit!”
The shacks were collapsing, their flimsy walls exploding outward in a cloud of snow, and then suddenly there were two shambling figures standing in Myla’s path as Dinn and Arjay ran past. They stepped forward, blocking her way, and the right thing to do was to dance around them, past them, through them somehow, leave them to Wil and Dox and Brick while she stayed close to Dinn and Arjay, but there was something wrong about the way these two stood…
Dead Men.
She snatched a glance over her shoulder. More figures were emerging from the darkness around the edges of the garden. Three, four, maybe more. Like the two in front of her, they were slow and ponderous. She felt a shiver that wasn’t the cold and then a blaze of hungry righteous fury.
