Reaper's Gale

  Did he? Well . . . yes. A nudge. What I do best.

  The sceptre cracked hard against the side of Tanal Yathvanar’s head, exploding stars behind his eyes, and he staggered, then sank down onto one knee, as the blood began flowing. Above him, Karos Invictad said in a conversational tone: ‘I advise you, next time you are tempted to inform on my activities to one of the Chancellor’s agents, to reconsider. Because the next time, Tanal, I will see you killed. In a most unpleasant fashion.’

  Tanal watched the blood fall in elongated droplets, spattering on the dusty floor. His temple throbbed, and his probing fingers found a flap of mangled skin hanging down almost to his cheek. His eye on that side ebbed in and out of focus in time with the throbbing. He felt exposed, vulnerable. He felt like a child among cold-faced adults. ‘Invigilator,’ he said in a shaky voice, ‘I have told no-one anything.’

  ‘Lie again and I will dispense with mercy. Lie again and the breath you use to utter it will be your last.’

  Tanal licked his lips. What could he do? ‘I’m sorry, Invigilator. Never again. I swear it.’

  ‘Get out, and send for a servant to clean up the mess you’ve left in my office.’

  Nauseated, his throat tightening against an eager upswell of vomit, Tanal Yathvanar hurried out in a half-crouch.

  I’ve done nothing. Nothing to deserve this. Invictad’s paranoia has driven him into the abyss of madness. Even as his power grows. Imagine, threatening to sweep away the Chancellor’s own life, in Triban Gnol’s own office! Of course, that had been but the Invigilator’s version of what had transpired. But Tanal had seen the bright gleam in Invictad’s eyes, fresh from the glory of his visit to the Eternal Domicile.

  It had all gone too far. All of it.

  Head spinning, Tanal set out to find a healer. There was much still to do this day. An arrest to be made, and, split-open skull or no, Karos Invictad’s precise schedule had to be kept. This was to be a triumphant day. For the Patriotists. For the great Letherii Empire.

  It would ease the pressure, the ever-tightening straits that gripped the people – and not just here in Letheras, but across the entire empire. Too many fraught rumours, of battles and defeats suffered. The strictures of not enough hard coin, the strange disappearance of unskilled labour, the tales of once-secure families falling into Indebtedness. The whisper of huge financial holdings tottering like trees with rotted roots. Heroic victories were needed, and this day would mark one. Karos Invictad had found the greatest traitor ever, and he, Tanal Yathvanar, would make the arrest. And they will hear that detail. My name, central to all that will happen this day. I intend to make certain of it.

  Karos Invictad was not the only man skilled at reaping glory.

  * * *

  Ancient cities possessed many secrets. The average citizen was born, lived, and died in the fugue of vast ignorance. The Errant knew he had well learned his contempt for humanity, for the dross of mortal existence that called blindness vision, ignorance comprehension, and delusion faith. He had seen often enough the wilful truncation people undertook upon leaving childhood (and the wonder of its endless possibilities), as if to exist demanded the sacrifice of both unfettered dreams and the fearless ambition needed to achieve them. As if those self-imposed limitations used to justify failure were virtues, to add to those of pious self-righteousness and the condescension of the flagellant.

  Oh, but look at himself, here and now, look at what he was about to do. The city’s ancient secrets made into things to be used, and used to achieve cruel ends. Yet was he not a god? Was this not his realm? If all that existed was not open to use and, indeed, abuse, then what was its purpose?

  He walked through the ghostly walls, the submerged levels, acknowledging a vague awareness of hidden, mostly obscured patterns, structures, the array of things that held significance, although such comprehension was not for him, not for his cast of mind, but something alien, something long lost to the dead ages of the distant past.

  No end to manifestations, however, few of which captured the awareness of the mortals he now walked among – walked unseen, less than a chill draught against the neck – and the Errant continued on, observing such details as snared his attention.

  Finding the place he sought, he halted. Before him stood the walls of an estate. None other than the one that had belonged to the late Gerun Eberict. It stood abandoned, ownership mired in a legal tangle of claims that had stretched on and on. Gerun Eberict had, it seemed, taken all his wealth with him, a detail that amused the Errant no end.

  The huge main building’s footprint cut across the unremarked lines of an older structure that had once stood bordered on three sides by open water: two cut channels and a stream born of deep artesian wells filled with cold black water beneath a vast shelf of limestone that itself lay below a thick layer of silts, sand lenses and beds of clay. There had been significance to these channels, and to the fact that the fourth side had possessed, beneath what passed for a street seven thousand years ago, a buried tunnel of fire-hardened clay. In this tunnel, kept distinct from all other local sources, there had flowed water from the depths of the river. Thus, all four sides, the precious lifeblood of the Elder God who had been worshipped in the temple that had once squatted in this place.

  Eberict should have been mindful of that detail, in which a hired seer might well have discerned Gerun’s eventual demise at the blunt hands of a half-breed giant. It was no accident, after all, that those of Tarthenal blood were so drawn to Mael, even now – some whispering of instinct of that first alliance, forged on the water, between Imass and Tarthenal – or Toblakai, to use their true name. Before the Great Landings that brought the last of the giants who had chosen to remain pure of blood to this and other shores, where the first founders would become the vicious, spiteful gods of the Tarthenal.

  But it was not just Gerun Eberict and the countless other citizens of Letheras who dwelt here who were unmindful – or, perhaps, forgetful – of the ancient significance of all that had been swept clean from the surface in this city.

  The Errant moved forward. Through the estate’s outer wall. Then down, through the cobbles of the compound, sliding ghostly past the rubble and sand of fill, down into the foul, motionless air of the clay-lined tunnel. Knee-deep in thick, soupy water.

  He faced the inner sloping wall of the tunnel, gauging his position relative to whatever remnants of the old temple remained beyond. And strode forward.

  Shattered stone, jammed and packed tight, stained black by the thick, airless clays now filling every space. Evidence of fire in the burst cracks of foundation blocks. Remnants of ore-laden paints still clinging to fragments of plaster. Ubiquitous pieces of pottery, shapeless clumps of green copper, the mangled black knuckles of silver, the defiant gleam of red-tinged gold – all that remained of past complexities of mortal life, reminders of hands that had once touched, shaped, pressed tips to indent and nails to incise, brushed glaze and paint and dust from chipped rims; hands that left nothing behind but these objects poignant with failure.

  Disgusted, nauseated, the god pushed his way through the detritus, and clawed his way clear: a steeply angled space, created by the partially collapsed inner wall. Blue tesserae to paint an image of unbroken sea, but various pieces had fallen away, revealing grey plaster still bearing the grooved patterns left by the undersides of the minute cut tiles. In this cramped space the Errant crouched, gasping. Time told no bright tales. No, time delivered its mute message of dissolution with unrelieved monotony.

  By the Abyss, such crushing weight!

  The Errant drew a deep breath of the stale, dead air. Then another.

  And sensed, not far away, the faint whisper of power. Residual, so meagre as to be meaningless, yet it started the god’s heart pounding hard in his chest. The sanctification remained. No desecration, making what he sought that much simpler. Relieved at the thought of being quickly done with this ghastly place, the Errant set out towards that power.

  The altar was beneath
a mass of rubble, the limestone wreckage so packed down that it must have come from a collapsing ceiling, the huge weight slamming down hard enough to shatter the stones of the floor beneath that runnelled block of sacred stone. Even better. And . . . yes, bone dry. He could murmur a thousand nudges into that surrounding matrix. Ten thousand.

  Edging closer, the Errant reached down and settled one hand on the altar. He could not feel those runnels, could not feel the water-worn basalt, could not feel the deep-cut channels that had once vented living blood into the salty streams filling the runnels. Ah, we were thirsty in those days, weren’t we?

  He awakened his own power – as much as she would give him, and for this task it was more than enough.

  The Errant began weaving a ritual.

  Advocate Sleem was a tall, thin man. Covering most of his forehead and spreading down onto his left cheek, reaching the line of the jaw, was a skin ailment that created a cracked scale pattern reminiscent of the bellies of newly hatched alligators. There were ointments that could heal this condition, but it was clear that the legendary advocate of Letherii law in fact cultivated this reptilian dermatosis, which so cleverly complemented both his reputation and his cold, lifeless eyes.

  He stood now in Bugg’s office, hunched at the shoulders as if to make himself even narrower, and the high collar of his dark green cloak flared out like a snake’s hood behind his elongated, small-eared and hairless head. His regard was languid in that lifeless way of his as he studied Bugg. ‘Did I hear you correctly?’ the advocate asked in a voice that he tried hard to make sibilant, but which instead came out awkward and wavering. The effect, Bugg realized with a faint start, precisely matched what he would imagine a snake would sound like with words emerging from a lipless mouth. Although, he added to himself, the specific question hardly seemed one he would expect a snake to utter. Snakes don’t ask for clarification.

  Do they?

  ‘You wear a most odd expression,’ Sleem said after a moment. ‘Did my inability to understand you leave you confused, Master Bugg?’

  ‘Did you truly misunderstand?’

  ‘That is why I sought reiteration.’

  ‘Ah. Well, what did you think you heard?’

  The eyes blinked. ‘Have we truly uttered all these words to return to my original query?’

  ‘I invite you to use some more, Sleem.’

  ‘Rather than simply repeating yourself.’

  ‘I hate repeating myself.’

  Advocate Sleem, Bugg knew, despised discombobulation, although that was in all probability not even a word.

  ‘Master Bugg, as you know, I despise discombobulation.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’

  ‘You should be, since I charge by the word.’

  ‘Both our words, or just yours?’

  ‘It is a little late to ask that now, isn’t it?’ Sleem’s folded hands did something sinuous and vaguely disreputable. ‘You have instructed me, if I understand you correctly – and correct me if I am in error – you have instructed me, then, to approach your financier to request yet another loan with the stated intention to use it to pay a portion of the interest on the previous loan, which if I recall accurately, and I do, was intended to address in part the interest on yet another loan. This leads me to wonder, since I am not your only advocate, just how many loans you have arranged to pay interest on yet other loans?’

  ‘Well, that was expensive.’

  ‘I become loquacious when I get nervous, Master Bugg.’

  ‘Dealing with you gets more costly when you’re nervous? That, Sleem, is really quite clever.’

  ‘Yes, I am. Will you now answer my question?’

  ‘Since you insist. There are perhaps forty loans outstanding with respect to addressing interest payments on still other loans.’

  The advocate licked suitably dry lips. ‘It was reasons of courtesy and respect, Master Bugg – and, I now see, certain misapprehensions as to your solvency – that encouraged me to refrain from asking for payment up front – for my services, that is, which have been substantial. Although not as substantial, proportionately, as I was led to believe.’

  ‘I don’t recall leading you into any such assumptions, Sleem.’

  ‘Of course you don’t. They were assumptions.’

  ‘As an advocate, you might have been expected to make very few assumptions indeed. About anything.’

  ‘Permit me to be blunt, Master Bugg. Where in this financial scheme of yours is the money you owe me?’

  ‘Nowhere as of yet, Sleem. Perhaps we should arrange another loan.’

  ‘This is most distressing.’

  ‘I am sure it is, but how do you think I feel?’

  ‘I am resisting asking myself that question, because I fear the answer will be something like: “He feels fine.” Now, were I to cling with great faith to those particular assumptions we spoke of earlier, I would now insist that this next loan be devoted exclusively to addressing my fees. No matter what lies I deliver to your financier. Which returns us, alas, to my original utterance, which was voiced in a tone of abject disbelief. You see, your financiers’ present state of panic is what has brought me here, for they have reached a level of harassment of my office with respect to you, Master Bugg, that has reached absurd proportions. I have had to hire bodyguards, in fact – at your expense. Dare I ask you then, how much money is in your possession?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bugg drew out his tattered leather purse, prised it open and peered inside. Then he looked up. ‘Two docks.’

  ‘I see. Surely you exaggerate.’

  ‘Well, I cut a sliver off one of them, to pay for a haircut.’

  ‘You have no hair.’

  ‘That’s why it was just a sliver. Nose hairs. Ear hairs, a trim of the eyebrows. It’s important to be presentable.’

  ‘At your Drowning?’

  Bugg laughed. ‘That would be fun.’ Then he grew sober and leaned forward across his desk. ‘You don’t think it will come to that, surely. As your client, I expect a most diligent defence at my trial.’

  ‘As your advocate, Master Bugg, I will be first in line demanding your blood.’

  ‘Oh, that’s not very loyal of you.’

  ‘You have not paid for my loyalty.’

  ‘But loyalty is not something one pays for, Advocate Sleem.’

  ‘Had I known that delusions accompanied your now-apparent incompetence, Master Bugg, I would never have agreed to represent you in any matter whatsoever.’

  Bugg leaned back. ‘That makes no sense,’ he said. ‘As Tehol Beddict has observed on countless occasions, delusions lie at the very heart of our economic system. Indenture as ethical virtue. Pieces of otherwise useless metal – beyond decoration – as wealth. Servitude as freedom. Debt as ownership. And so on.’

  ‘Ah, but those stated delusions are essential to my wellbeing, Master Bugg. Without them my profession would not exist. All of civilization is, in essence, a collection of contracts. Why, the very nature of society is founded upon mutually agreed measures of value.’ He stopped then, and slowly shook his head – a motion alarmingly sinuous. ‘Why am I even discussing this with you? You are clearly insane, and your insanity is about to trigger an avalanche of financial devastation.’

  ‘I don’t see why, Master Sleem. Unless, of course, your faith in the notion of social contract is nothing more than cynical self-interest.’

  ‘Of course it is, you fool!’

  So much for awkward sibilance.

  Sleem’s fingers wriggled like snared, blind and groping worms. ‘Without cynicism,’ he said in a strangled voice, ‘one becomes the system’s victim rather than its master, and I am too clever to be a victim!’

  ‘Which you must prove to yourself repeatedly in the measuring by your wealth, your ease of life, of the necessary contrast with the victims – a contrast that you must surround yourself with at every moment, as represented by your material excesses.’


  ‘Wordy, Master Bugg. Smug ostentation will suffice.’

  ‘Brevity from you, Advocate Sleem?’

  ‘You get what you pay for.’

  ‘By that token,’ Bugg observed, ‘I am surprised you’re saying anything at all.’

  ‘What follows is my gift. I will set forth immediately to inform your financiers that you are in fact broke, and I will in turn offer my services in the feeding frenzy over your material assets.’

  ‘Generous of you.’

  Sleem’s lips disappeared into a bony grimace. One eye twitched. The worms at the ends of his hands had gone white and deathly. ‘In the meantime, I will take those two docks.’

  ‘Not quite two.’

  ‘Nonetheless.’

  ‘I can owe you that missing sliver.’

  ‘Be certain that I will have it, eventually.’

  ‘All right.’ Bugg reached into the purse and fished out the two coins. ‘This is a loan, yes?’

  ‘Against my fees?’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I sense you are no longer playing the game, Master Bugg.’

  ‘Which game would that be?’

  ‘The one where winners win and losers lose.’

  ‘Oh, that game. No, I suppose not. Assuming, of course, I ever did.’

  ‘I have a sudden suspicion – this very real truth behind all the rumours of impending market collapse – it is all your doing, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hardly. Countless winners jumped in, I assure you. Believing, naturally, that they would win in the end. That’s how these things work. Until they stop working.’ Bugg snapped his fingers. ‘Poof !’

  ‘Without those contracts, Master Bugg, there will be chaos.’

  ‘You mean the winners will panic and the losers will launch themselves into their own feeding frenzy. Yes. Chaos.’

  ‘You are truly insane.’

  ‘No, just tired. I’ve looked into the eyes of too many losers, Sleem. Far too many.’

  ‘And your answer is to make losers of us all. To level the playing field? But it won’t do that, you know. You must know that, Bugg. It won’t. Instead, the thugs will find the top of every heap, and instead of debt you will have true slavery; instead of contracts you will have tyranny.’