The Empire of Ashes

  She and Tinkerer followed the woman on a southward trek through winding streets and alleys. She moved with an automatic precision, turning this way and that without pause as if locked into a pre-set course. Eventually she emerged from a narrow walkway onto the broad wharf of the Valazin dockside. She side-stepped the many carts and barrows with unconscious ease, making for a large three-storey building Lizanne recognised as the port’s Custom House. Tinkerer’s mother walked up to the uniformed guard on the door and presented the box, Lizanne catching her soft precise tones as she said, “I was told to give you this.”

  The guard’s face broke into a puzzled smile as he bent to accept the box. The expression abruptly turned to consternation when the woman turned on her heel and walked briskly away. The guard had time for a half-shouted command to stop before the box exploded. Lizanne was impressed by the woman’s skills, somehow managing to cram so powerful a device into such a small container. When the smoke cleared there was little left of the guard save a red smear surrounding the ruined Custom House door. Tinkerer’s mother stood a short distance from the carnage, hands folded over her fulsome belly and an oddly satisfied smile on her lips. When a squad of constables descended on her a few moments later she said, “Free Valazin, death to the Empire” with all the conviction of a child reciting a poorly remembered rhyme.

  Why? Lizanne asked as the memory faded into a grey mist. She hardly seemed the radical type.

  She was told to, Tinkerer answered as the surrounding mist formed into a more familiar scene.

  Scorazin, Lizanne thought in sour recognition. This vision possessed the same clarity as the first memory, made all the more disconcerting by being an unwelcome reminder of her time within these walls. They looked out on the prison city through a part-shattered window, more roof-tops than she remembered just visible through the familiar haze of smoke fumes. Tinkerer had managed to perfectly capture the signature scent of sulphur, coal and death she had hoped would never again assail her nostrils.

  She turned at the sound of a small plaintive cry behind her, seeing a man cradling an infant beside the bleach-faced body of a woman covered by a filthy blanket. Stepping closer, Lizanne confirmed her suspicion that it was Tinkerer’s mother, face even emptier now having been slackened by death.

  They sent her here, Tinkerer said, moving to stand by the man with the infant. As he knew they would. Even a pregnant woman can expect no mercy if the crime is treason.

  Lizanne looked closer at the crouching man, seeing a stocky, bald-headed fellow in his thirties, his face possessed of the sallow hardness that marked those who spend years within the walls. He stared down at the child in his arms with what appeared to Lizanne to be cold animosity, his face betraying not the slightest twitch as the baby raised a tiny hand to his unshaven cheek. Who is he? she asked.

  You met him once before, Tinkerer said. But he was dead by then.

  Lizanne recalled the chamber beneath Tinkerer’s quarters in the cinnabar mine, the fourteen corpses that had included the long-dead Artisan. He brought you here, she realised, her mind stumbling over the implications with unaccustomed confusion. How?

  The trance, Tinkerer replied. He stepped back as the man got to his feet, moving with the infant to the window.

  Lizanne frowned in consternation, this all being so far outside her experience. How could a man compel a non-Blessed soul to such extreme action via the trance? She remembered what Clay shared with her about Silverpin’s revelation when they discovered the White’s lair, about there being more to the trance than just shared memory. Blue is a remarkable product, your kind understands only the barest fraction of its power. Somehow the blade-hand had compelled the rest of the Longrifles to keep searching for the White long after it became obvious the most rational course would be to return to Carvenport. Also, she had been able to bind Clay somehow, forcing him to confront the sleeping White. But they had both been Blood-blessed whereas Tinkerer’s mother couldn’t have been.

  He had the blessing, Lizanne said, nodding to the man who now stood cradling the infant as he stared out at the prison city. As do you. But your mother didn’t. The blessing is not hereditary.

  What is the mind if not a means of controlling the body? Tinkerer said. To share a mind is to share control, or surrender it to a greater will. He had been searching for me for a long time, or one like me. Sending his mind out far and wide until he snared a Blood-blessed infant still nestling in its mother’s womb. The mind of an unborn child is blank, easily claimed, and through it, so is the mother. Later, he saw fit to share the memory of the act that had brought her here, the crime he had forced her to commit. I believe he hoped it would distress me. Instead I found it fascinating.

  The man at the window spoke then, his voice low and croaking, the rasp of a guilty soul. “You poor little fucker,” he said as the child squirmed in his arms. “If I was any kind of a man I’d strangle you right now.”

  The memory shifted again, swirling into another darker space. His home in the mine, Lizanne realised, looking around at the rough-hewn rock. Tinkerer was at least ten years old by now, though his slightness of frame may have made him seem younger. He sat on a stool next to a bed, holding a cup of water to the lips of a barely conscious older girl. Though apparently in her mid-teens the girl was so tall her bare, soot-covered feet protruded off the edge of the bed.

  “Can’t stay,” a raspy voice said and Lizanne turned to see the man from the previous memory standing unsteadily in the chamber entrance. His countenance had become even more sallow and sunken in the intervening years and his eyes were dark reddish holes in his face. A half-empty bottle dangled from his hand and Lizanne could smell the acrid stain of whatever concoction it contained on the man’s breath. “Can’t have her here,” the man went on, voice loud and slurred as he waved the bottle about. “Shouldn’t’ve brought her.”

  The young Tinkerer barely glanced at the man, continuing to hold the cup to the girl’s lips and speaking in a flat voice he would carry into adulthood. “I expected you to have expired by morning. Your organs must be close to failing by now.”

  The man responded with a snarl which sounded somewhat half-hearted to Lizanne, as if he had long exhausted all anger for the boy he had condemned to this place. “Always the fuckin’ same,” he growled. “Ever since you were old enough to speak. There’s no soul in you, boy.” He took a long drink from the bottle, his throat working with greedy, desperate gulps that told Lizanne this was a man engaged in a protracted suicide attempt. “We’ll sell her to that bitch who took over the Miner’s Repose,” he added upon draining the bottle. “Once she’s healed up, and all.”

  “No,” Tinkerer said, setting the cup aside. “You will be dead soon, and I require assistance.”

  The girl on the bed groaned and shifted a little, Lizanne noting the marks of a recent and severe beating on her face. Despite the discolouration and the swelling, it was still possible to recognise Melina’s high cheek-bones and strong nose, although at this point she evidently retained possession of both eyes. Lizanne had liked her, as much as it had been possible to like any inmate of Scorazin. Melina, although brutalised by her years within the walls, had at least possessed a straightforward fairness and lack of duplicity that set her apart. Lizanne found she couldn’t suppress a twinge of guilt at the woman’s eventual fate, shot in the head during the first chaotic charge into the wreckage of the citadel, itself a spectacular distraction Lizanne had orchestrated to facilitate her own escape.

  Your regret is misplaced, the older Tinkerer told her. She would certainly have killed you had she survived. Forgiveness was not a trait she possessed.

  As interesting as this all is, Lizanne replied, you have yet to show me what became of the Artisan.

  He became him. Tinkerer nodded at the sallow-faced drunkard, now glowering at the boy in impotent rage. In time, so did I.

  Another shift in the vision, the setting switching to a
much darker place. The young Tinkerer had sprouted several inches in height in the interval. He crouched at the drunkard’s side, holding up his ingenious lantern so the focused beam could fully illuminate the man’s face. The drunkard had lost much of his body-weight by now, his features gaunt and skin resembling old yellowed paper in the lamplight. It was clear to Lizanne he had only a small amount of life left to him. His eyes were half-closed and his lips moved in a faint murmur. The young Tinkerer leaned closer to catch the sibilant rasp, “You’re the last, y’know that?”

  “The last of what?” the youth enquired, a rare frown of puzzlement on his brow.

  “These . . .” The dying man’s hands jerked and Tinkerer turned the lamp to illuminate the bodies, thirteen in all and soon to be joined by one more. “All of these . . . lived wretched lives trapped in this place . . . just to bring you here.” He managed to lift a shaking hand and extend a finger, Tinkerer’s lamp following it to reveal the oldest corpse, the one chained to the wall. “That one . . . began it all. Fucker!” The man coughed out the insult and began to jerk spasmodically, breath catching. “Started it . . . Called the first one, found her in the womb . . . just like I found you.”

  Tinkerer turned the lamplight back on the dying man, head angled in curiosity. “Why?”

  The man fumbled for something in the pocket of his besmirched clothes, coming out with a small glass vial. “It’s time,” he rasped, holding the vial out to Tinkerer. “She’ll be coming . . . soon. Need to be ready.”

  Tinkerer took the vial, Lizanne recognising the hue as he played the lamplight over it. Blue.

  “Ready for what?” Tinkerer enquired, his voice betraying only mild interest, which Lizanne suspected concealed a raging curiosity.

  The man grunted out a wheezing laugh, baring half-rotted teeth in what was probably his first smile in decades. “Escape . . . you little shit. What else?” He held out the vial. “Drink.”

  Lizanne watched Tinkerer take the vial and lift it to his lips then hand it back to the dying man. “If you do happen to find the Artisan’s ghost one day,” he said, tipping the remaining Blue down his throat, “give them my undying hate.”

  He leaned forward then, grunting with the effort, staring into Tinkerer’s eyes. The trance shifted again, the chamber fading into a black void, absent of light or sensation. Lizanne had experienced shallow minds before, mostly lacking in thought or imagination, but nothing as completely empty as this. She searched for Tinkerer but found nothing. Somehow, he had been removed from a memory in his trance. Then she saw something in the dark, a small bright glimmer in the void. It grew as she went to it and she saw it to be a metal box, spinning in the darkness, a box of gears and cogs that caught the non-existent light as it spun and spun. A box she had seen before. The solargraph-cum-music-box that had once belonged to Tekela’s father. The work of the Artisan’s very own hand that had set her and Clay on this path. The mystery they had spent many hours trying to unlock in Jermayah’s workshop.

  The trance vanished. Lizanne found herself blinking into Tinkerer’s blank gaze. For a long moment neither of them said anything.

  “Well?” Lizanne demanded as the silence stretched.

  “That is all I can give you.”

  “For your sake, I hope that is a lie.”

  “I showed you all that I can.”

  “There has to be more.”

  “There is. But it is behind a lock I cannot undo. But now you know the key.”

  The solargraph, she thought. The solargraph is the key. Everything always comes back to that damned box. “You know how it works?” she said, jaw clenched as she bit down on her frustration.

  “No. But if you want the memories in my head, you will have to find it and make it work.”

  Lizanne swallowed a hard, bitter laugh. “All those tales you had to tell me,” she said. “Of his days in Arradsia, his many discoveries. Of the women he loved and the men he hated. You don’t actually know any of it, do you?”

  “No more than educated guesses.” He angled his head, frowning in marginal confusion. “I would have thought someone in your profession would appreciate creative dishonesty when demanded by necessity. You were always my only means of escape.”

  She turned away from him, clenching her fists to stop herself reaching for her revolver. “You were expecting me,” she realised after taking a series of calming breaths. “That man, he said, ‘She’ll be coming soon.’ He was referring to me, wasn’t he?”

  “I expect so. I believe it was a vision shared with him by his predecessor. But not one he chose to share with me. Out of spite, I suspect.” Tinkerer paused, raising his gaze to the cabin roof as a loud pealing cry sounded throughout the ship. “What is that?” he enquired.

  “The ship’s siren,” Lizanne said, refusing to be distracted. “How could he possibly have known I would be there?”

  Tinkerer’s eyes narrowed slightly in a gesture she had come to recognise as bemusement at the stupidity of others. “A question I pondered briefly until the answer became obvious, once all other possibilities had been discounted.”

  Lizanne winced as the ship’s siren came again, three long blasts. He didn’t know, she thought, striving to concentrate. The Artisan knew, centuries ago . . . “The future,” she said as the answer came to her in a rush. “He saw the future.”

  “Yes. Though quite how I do not know. I suspect the answer is locked away with the other memories.”

  But she already knew the answer. White blood. Lizanne experienced a small moment of inner triumph stirred by at least knowing one thing he didn’t. The Artisan must have drunk White blood.

  “That sounds urgent,” Tinkerer said as the siren sounded again.

  “Stay here,” she said, rising from the bunk and moving to the door.

  “What does it mean?” he enquired.

  She paused to glance back at him, wondering if it might be better to get him to a life-boat whilst there was still time. But she knew it to be a desperate notion; they would scarcely be any safer adrift on the high seas than on a Protectorate battleship.

  “Enemy in sight,” she replied. “If the guns start up, lie down on the deck. If the White’s forces seize the ship, I advise you to find the most efficient means of killing yourself.” With that she hauled the door closed and started off along the passageway at a run, making for the bridge.

  CHAPTER 3

  Sirus

  Slaves we may be. Monsters we may be. But if we can be merciful, can we not love too?

  Katrya’s words drifted through his head like the whisper of a morning breeze, kept deliberately faint by the fear he used to cloud the image of her death whenever it arose. But still it was hard not to dwell on the sight of her scaled, despoiled features, so vibrant at the end, glowing with triumph during that last instant before his bullet tore through her head. We can be merciful . . .

  The words felt like the distant echo of a bad joke as he surveyed the city below, the view being preferable to the spectacle unfolding behind him on the roof-top. He could see neat columns of Spoiled moving through the streets towards their billets in the dock-side warehouses. Smaller parties were engaged in a methodical search of every house, workshop, shed and sewer for any Feros citizens who had survived the assault and so far escaped capture. Many of those doing the searching had been citizens themselves only days before and Sirus wondered how many sons or daughters had been dragged from their hiding-places to find themselves staring into the distorted visages of their parents.

  He stood atop the imposing fortress-like tower that had been, until very recently, the headquarters of the entire Ironship Syndicate. The White had chosen to nest on the building’s broad flat roof, along with its clutch of adolescent kin. Also present was the Blood-blessed Mandinorian woman who had inexplicably arrived on a passenger liner the day after their seizure of Feros. So far, she was the only one of her kind not to face ne
ar-immediate slaughter upon entering the White’s company. Instead she had received instant elevation to the pinnacle of this monstrous army, something that Sirus found piqued his pride in no small measure, much to his self-disgust. Morradin had been quick with his taunts, sensing Sirus’s resentment with grating ease. General no longer, eh? Victory, it seems, brings no reward in the Legion of Flame. For such a self-interested soul the former Grand Marshal had a remarkable facility for divining the feelings of others.

  Sirus’s mind churned with questions regarding this woman. Who is she? Why does the White dote on her as if she were one of its own? Why didn’t it kill her like the others? But the biggest mystery of all was the fact that the woman’s mind remained her own, unshared and impenetrable. However, this didn’t prevent her from invading the minds of other Spoiled.

  What are you looking at?

  He turned to find her standing at his side, head angled in faint curiosity. The torn and scorched dress that had barely covered her when she first arrived in Feros had since been exchanged for a formal attire of dark blue, the kind usually worn by women of the corporate managerial class. Adorning the otherwise plain jacket were four silver shareholder pins, each one taken from the corpse of an Ironship Board member. With one more to come, Sirus thought, resisting the impulse to look over his shoulder as another scream sounded.

  “The search is proceeding well,” he said aloud in Mandinorian, choosing to maintain his custom of speaking rather than thinking. He was curious to see if she objected to spoken communication. Besides, with this one there was no obvious indication she had absorbed any thought he might share. He sent a subtle probe her way as she followed his gaze, hoping to detect some faint leakage of emotion. But as usual there was nothing. Trying to touch her mind was like jabbing at a wall fashioned from cold unyielding iron. He wondered if his inability to reach her thoughts was somehow related to the fact that she was only partially Spoiled. Instead of the spines and discoloured scales of his fellow slaves, her brief exposure to the Blue crystal’s light had left her with a mostly human appearance. A cluster of scales had appeared around her eyes and a series of barely perceptible bumps marred the otherwise smooth perfection of her forehead. The eyes themselves showed the most change and were another unique and mysterious facet of her story. Instead of the yellow eyes with which they had all been afflicted, hers were like two red coals set into black orbs.