Stands a Shadow (53 page)

Gasping, he pushed himself off the floor again as Swan did the same. He managed to get a knee under his weight, then flailed his good hand around until it grasped the bed. Up, onto his feet, grunting and straining from the effort, seeing Guan’s body lying there. His balance lurched around a spinning point. His vision receded until he teetered in the darkness of his own head. He bore down on it, applying focus, seeing a crack of light appear like a doorway.

He came through it, and saw Swan coming at him with the knife.

A desperate sidestep, a slippery grip of an arm and a foot out-thrust to trip her. They fell hollering towards the floor with Ché riding her down with all his weight.

The stick of wood shot through the back of the woman’s neck with a crunch of teeth and bone. She quivered once, as though in a delayed shock, then lay there perfectly still.

A soft whine of air escaped her lungs as her body deflated.

Ché gasped for a breath and rolled himself clear. He lay for some moments with his remaining energy flooding out of him, his mind beyond thought or reason.

He had the shakes when he finally regained his feet. He looked down at the two dead Diplomats. Swan was sprawled with her face pressed against his brother’s, their bodies extended in opposite directions. They looked as though they were two lovers kissing.

‘
Here I am
!’ Ché spat at them with a hard slap to his chest.

In the shadows by the side of a minor canal, Ash finished his preparations and listened to the sounds of revelry in the distance. He observed the tall mansions on the opposite side of the canal, where priests walked past lit windows in suites they had made their own. Above the rooftops of the fine buildings, the rock of the citadel rose into the night air. Sasheen’s flag was still flying up there.

A window opened, and a woman threw the contents of a chamber pot out into the water. Someone was singing in the room behind her. Ash maintained his stillness, confident that he was hidden by the shadows, until she withdrew again and closed the window, cutting the song off in mid chorus.

Quickly, he removed his clothes and placed them in a neat pile beside his weaponry. Next to them sat a small wooden keg filled with blackpowder; a mine he’d appropriated from a Mannian munitions cart.

Goosebumps rose on Ash’s skin from the caress of cold air, and he rubbed his arms and legs to generate some warmth. His breath was visible in the shimmer of lantern light cast across the black surface of the canal.

The lakeweed had been shorn here to create the vertical sides of the waterway. Beams of wood shored them up further. He sat on the boardwalk at its edge then gently eased himself into the lukewarm water. It felt good against the tensions of his muscles, the abrasions on his skin, so he simply rested there for a while, near delirious with the relief of it. Beneath his feet, down in the depths of the clear water, he could see the distant glimmer of lights. He kicked to stay afloat, watching the brilliance of them between his toes.

When he felt ready, he rose up and grabbed the mine and pulled it into the water with a splash. He shook his face clear and checked the line of fuse that hung from a tarred hole in the bobbing keg; it floated out across the surface and up to the boardwalk above him, where it was tied around his Acolyte body armour, and then to a heavy portable reel fixed to boardwalk by a knifeblade, where the rest of the fuse line was tightly coiled.

He pulled on the line of fuse until the armour toppled into the water with another noisy splash. It sank instantly, and a moment later pulled the mine down with it. Ash looped a portion of the fuse around his wrist while he breathed hard and fast. He felt the tug of the line against his hand, and dived beneath the surface, letting himself be pulled into the silent depths while the reel of fuse played out above him.

His eyes stung, and he blinked and forced them to stay open. His chest tightened as he dived deeper, drawing nearer to the rock all the time. The lights were bleeding from windows of thick glass far below, carved from the steep flanks of the rock the citadel stood upon. Ash kicked towards them as he dropped, pulling the line with him even as it pulled him. He knew he had one good chance at this.

He scattered a shoal of fish from his path, and then at last he felt the weight slacken in his hand as the armour settled on the ledge of one of the windows. The mine spun slowly close to the glass. Ash uncoiled the line from his wrist and swam down. He chanced a look inside, saw a brilliantly lit chamber of couches and chandeliers; a priest talking to another; a pair of Acolytes next to a doorway.

Ash struggled to drag the armour to one side and the mine with it, so it would be less likely to be spotted.

His chest was bursting now. He kicked off for the surface, stars flashing in the edges of his vision. It took longer than the descent. He recalled his panic on the sinking ship; the weight of the world’s water pressing him down.

Ash floundered when he resurfaced, gasping with lungs that still did not seem to be working too well. The noise of the city returned to his draining ears, and he looked about and was grateful to find the side street still deserted.

In vain he tried to pull himself out of the canal, found he couldn’t manage it, couldn’t breathe hard enough to restore his energy.

He settled himself in the water. Calmed his breathing and tried once more. Ash rolled onto the boardwalk wheezing for air. He sat up, rested his arms against his knees and let his head hang between them. He stared at the little pools forming where the lake water dripped from his skin.

A man cursed not far away. Shapes at the dark end of the street, someone relieving himself while others waited, talking drunkenly.

Ash looked at the line of fuse hanging in the water. All he needed to do was slice through it and toss it in the water and run.

The knife suddenly drew his attention, standing as it was with its tip buried in the boardwalk. Its blade was stained dark with the blood of the priest he had murdered in the previous hour.

How many had he killed now in his pursuit of retribution
? he wondered with a start.

He couldn’t recall; had lost count somewhere along the way; had made them something less than human, faceless, without worth. The two camp followers he had felled during the battle – simply to be clear of them – were nothing but vague impressions now, save for the crisp sound of a kneecap breaking.

Ash had come so far. In his revenge he had climbed a high pinnacle into the rarefied sky, forsaking the R
ō
shun order as he did so, the only home left to him, the only way of life where his anger had remained leashed by their code and by the better part of himself.

He felt as though all this time he’d been climbing upwards without a single glance behind him; and now, turning back to look, all he could see were corpses heaped along the steep track he’d been following; and past them all, Nico with his boyish laughter and a mother’s fierce love for him, and far beyond his apprentice, way down at the dim beginnings of the trail, his son Lin, throat-singing with the other battlesquires, and close by a whitewashed homestead struck by sunlight, his wife waiting for a husband and son who would never return.

The summit was almost within his reach. All he had to do was cut the fuse.

Sasheen deserved to die. All of her kind deserved to die.

With trembling fingers, Ash reached for the knife and plucked it free.

When Sasheen woke, the first thing that she saw was Lucian staring at her intently, and for the briefest of moments she thought they were lovers again, wrapped in each other’s arms.

But then she saw that he was only a severed head perched on the bedside table. She remembered how he had betrayed her, and her heart sank into bleakness.

‘I never wanted this, you know,’ she told him now.

His lips parted, spilling a dribble of Royal Milk down his chin. But he said nothing, only watched her.

‘I never even wanted to be Matriarch. It was my mother’s desire, not my own.’

‘
I. Know
,’ came his wet belching voice, and he glared with hatred in his eyes.

How to make him understand? The pain he had caused her, the loss of faith in the one person she’d thought she could finally trust. Sasheen had wanted this man like she had wanted no other, and he had cast her aside for the sake of his foolish insurgency and the fame that went with it.

‘I’m dying, Lucian,’ she told him.

He seemed pleased at that, for he smiled.

Even now he could hurt her.

‘Do you remember the time we spent together in Brulé?’

‘
No
.’

‘Of course you do. You hardly stopped talking about it. You said we should retire there. Grow olives, like simple peasants.’

‘
I. Was. A. Fool
.’

‘You were anything but a fool, Lucian. That was one of things I was attracted to, most of all.’ Wistfully, she said, ‘We were a good match, you and I.’

Sasheen could see it now, her life as it might have been, had she only found the courage to spite her mother’s wishes, to renounce her position as Matriarch, to live a simple life of luxury with her lover. What had it gained her, any of this? Only a lonely death in the damp innards of a rock; a few scratches in the memory of Mann.

‘I only wish . . . I only wish . . .’ and she closed her eyes, and felt a wetness on her cheeks, and an ache in her chest as if the whole awful world was standing upon it.

She fought for a breath, wheezing hard until sweat beaded her skin. She gasped, blinked to focus on Lucian again. Beyond him, through the glass of the window, the waters of the lake were a black nothingness waiting to engulf her.

‘What do I do?’ she panted, lost in herself. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

His stare possessed all the force of a thrust knife.

‘
You. Die
.’

A sudden flare lit the night sky over Ash’s head. Of their own volition his eyes were drawn to the brightly lit ground.

Ash saw, stretching out from the base of his feet, how he ended in shadow. He faltered.

For long heartbeats, he stared down at the knife and the fuse wire held in his shaking hands.
A strange fellow
, came the words in his head. Nico had said that once, about the R
ō
shun Seer.

Why did that come to his mind now?

The Seer had cast the sticks for them before they had set forth on vendetta to Q’os. He had told of a great shock in store for him, and of the paths that would face him beyond it.

After shock, you will have two paths facing you. On one path, you will fail in your task, though with no blame and much still to do . . . On the other, you will win through in the end with great blame, and nothing that would further you
.

Great blame
, Ash reflected.
Nothing that would further you
.

He blinked. Tears stung his eyes. His hand dropped to his side, and the knife clattered to the ground.

The flare faded, taking his shadow with it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Rendezvous

Curl stood on the rooftop of the warehouse while men scrambled up the rope-ladders onto the waiting skyship. The vessel was badly damaged, its hull scorched by fire and its rigging in tatters. Another ship was already climbing into the air in a sluggish lift-off, turning in a long curve towards the south with its deck crammed with soldiers.

It was the second run the ships had made since she had arrived there. Greyjackets and archers manned the edges of the roof, firing down at the imperial forces moving in on their position. More enemy forces were converging along the marina. It was clear it would be the last trip out before the building was overrun.

‘Who are you waiting for?’ asked a passing Volunteer, a man so haggard in appearance he could have been twenty years old or forty.

‘A friend!’ she shouted over the noise of the gunfire.

‘Girl, we have to go now – there isn’t time to wait.’ And he tried to pull her towards the ship.

‘Let go of me!’ she yelled in his face, breaking free from his grip. He looked startled for a moment, but then he gave up and ran for the ship.

Curl scanned the skies and could still see no sign of enemy skyships. She took a few steps closer to the edge, to look down at the surrounding streets and the marina, at the Imperials closing in. Some Khosian troops were still filtering towards the warehouse, many sprinting for it, others in squads performing fighting retreats.

Where are you, you idiot
?

Curl didn’t know what to make of this man whom she had only just met, yet he seemed to pluck all the right strings within her. Certainly their lovemaking had been memorable in the long hours they had shared together, free-spirited and playful when not intensely passionate. Beyond that, though, who was he?

He was a mystery, and a dangerous one at that, she sensed.

Curl was well aware of how she’d fallen twice already for such men in her life. She was beginning to suspect that it was a trait not entirely good for her, for in hindsight they had both been selfish bastards.