1163rd Year of Blaze’s Slumber

  105th Year of the Nazalam Empire

  9th Year of Empress Lasean’s Rule

  Taterztayl stood half a dozen feet behind Leading Sorcerer Tynell. The Nazalam banners snapped in the wind, the spars creaking above the smoke-stained turret, but here in the shelter of the wall the air was calm. On the western horizon across from her rose the Anisoptera Range, reaching a mangled arm northward to Puerlos. As the range swept southward it joined the Zaragoza in a jagged line stretching a thousand leagues into the east. Off to her right lay the flat yellow-grassed Stout Grasslands.

  Tynell leaned on a merlon looking down on the wagons rolling into the city. From below rose the groans of oxen and shouting soldiers. The Leading Sorcerer hadn’t moved or said a word in some minutes. Off to his left waited a small wood table, its surface scarred and pitted and crowded with runes cut deep into the oak. Peculiar dark stains blotted the surface here and there.

  Knots of tension throbbed in Taterztayl’s shoulders. Meeting Crusherskull had shaken her, and she didn’t feel up to what was to come. ‘Linktorches,’ the Leading Sorcerer muttered.

  Startled, the sorceress frowned, then stepped up to stand beside Tynell. Descending from a hill off to the right, a hill she knew intimately, rode a party of soldiers. Even from this distance she recognized four of them: Swift Nevis, Aqida, Uiscejacques and that recruit, Sorrowful. The fifth rider was a short, wiry man, who had sapper written all over him. ‘Oh?’ she said, feigning lack of interest.

  ‘Uiscejacques’s squad,’ Tynell said. He turned his full gaze on the sorceress. ‘The same squad you spoke with immediately following the Satellite’s retreat.’ The Leading Sorcerer smiled, then clapped Taterztayl’s shoulder. ‘Come. I require a Study. Let’s begin.’ He walked over to stand before the table. ‘Nano’s strands are twisting a peculiar maze, the influence snares me again and again.’ He turned his back to the wall and sat down on a crenel, then looked up. ‘Taterztayl,’ he said soberly, ‘in matters of the Empire, I am the servant of the Empress.’

  Taterztayl recalled their argument at the debriefing. Nothing had been resolved. ‘Perhaps I should take my complaints to her, then.’

  Tynell’s brows rose. ‘I take that as sarcastic.’

  ‘You do?’

  The Leading Sorcerer said, stiffly, ‘I do, and be thankful for it, woman.’

  Taterztayl pulled out her Pack and held it against her stomach, running her fingers over the top card. Cool, a feeling of great weight and darkness. She set the Pack in the table’s centre, then lowered her bulk slowly into a kneeling position. Her gaze locked with Tynell’s. ‘Shall we begin?’

  ‘Tell me of the Spinning Coin.’

  Taterztayl’s breath caught. She could not move.

  ‘First card,’ Tynell commanded.

  With an effort she expelled the air from her lungs in a hissing sigh. Damn him, she thought. An echo of laughter sounded in her head, and she realized that someone, something, had opened the way. A Riser was reaching through her, its presence cool and amused, almost fickle. Her eyes shut of their own accord, and she reached for the first card. She flipped it almost haphazardly to her right. Eyes still closed, she felt herself smile. ‘An unaligned card: Sphere. Judgement and true sight.’ The second card she tossed to the left side of the field. ‘Newborn, Tall House Dying. Here scarred and blindfolded, with blood on her hands.’

  Faintly, as if from a great distance away, came the sound of horses, thundering closer, now beneath her, as if the earth had swallowed them. Then the sound rose anew, behind her. She felt herself nod. The recruit. ‘The blood on her hands is not her own, the crime not its own. The cloth against her eyes is wet.’

  She slapped the third card immediately in front of her. Behind her lids an image formed. It left her cold and frightened. ‘Assassin, Tall House Black. The String, a count of knots unending, the Sponsor of Assassins is in this game.’ For a moment she thought she heard the howling of Canines. She laid a hand on the fourth card and felt a thrill of recognition ripple through her, followed by something like false modesty. ‘Nano, Woman’s head high, Master’s low.’ She picked it up and set it down opposite Tynell.

  There’s your block. She smiled to herself. Chew on it awhile, Leading Sorcerer. The Woman regards you with disgust. Taterztayl knew he must be burning with questions, but he wouldn’t speak them. There was too much power behind this opening. Had he sensed the Riser’s presence? She wondered if it scared him.

  ‘The Coin,’ she heard herself say, ‘spins on, Leading Sorcerer. Its face looks upon many, a handful perhaps, and here is their card.’ She set the fifth card to Nano’s right, edges touching. ‘Another unaligned card: Crown. Wisdom and justice, as it is upright. Around it is a fair city’s walls, lit by flames of gas, blue and green.’ She pondered. ‘Yes, Matlabistan, the last Free Metropolis.’

  The way closed, the Riser withdrawing as if bored. Taterztayl’s eyes opened, an unexpected warmth comforting her weary body. ‘Into Nano’s maze,’ she said, amused at the truth hidden in that statement. ‘I can take it no further, Leading Sorcerer.’

  Tynell’s breath gusted out and he leaned back. ‘You’ve gone far past what I’ve managed, Sorceress.’ His face was drawn as he looked at her. ‘I’m impressed with your source, though not pleased with its message.’ He frowned, planting his elbows on his knees and steepling his long-fingered hands before his face. ‘This Spinning Coin, ever echoing. There’s the Clown’s humour in this shaping – even now I feel we are being misled. Dying’s Newborn, a likely deceit.’

  It was now Taterztayl’s turn to be impressed. The Leading Sorcerer was a Talent, then. Had he, too, heard the laughter punctuating the laying of the field? She hoped not. ‘You might be right,’ she said. ‘The Newborn’s face is ever changing – it could be anyone. Can’t say the same for Nano, or the String’s.’ She nodded. ‘A very possible deception,’ she said, pleased to be conversing with an equal – a truth that made her grimace inwardly. It’s always better when hatred and outrage stay pure, uncompromised.

  ‘I would hear your thoughts,’ Tynell said.

  Taterztayl started, shying from the Leading Sorcerer’s steady gaze. She began collecting the cards. Would it hurt to offer some explanation? If anything, it will leave him even more rattled than he already is. ‘Deception is the Sponsor Assassin’s forte. I sensed nothing of his presumed master, Blackrule himself. Makes me suspect the String is on his own here. Beware the Assassin, Leading Sorcerer, if anything his games are even more subtle than Blackrule’s. And while Nano plays their own version, it remains the same game, and that game is being played out in our world. The Twins of Fortune have no control in Blackness’s Dominion, and Blackness is a Warenne known for slipping its boundaries. For breaking the rules.’

  ‘True enough,’ Tynell said, rising to his feet with a grunt. ‘The birth of that bastard realm has always troubled me.’

  ‘It’s young yet,’ Taterztayl said. She picked up her Pack and returned it to the pocket inside her cloak. ‘Its final shaping is still centuries away, and it may never happen. Recall other new Houses that ended up dying a quick death.’

  ‘This one stinks of too much power.’ Tynell returned to his study of the Anisoptera Range. ‘My gratitude,’ he said, as Taterztayl went to the steps leading down into the city, ‘is worth something, I hope. In any case, Sorceress, you have it.’

  Taterztayl hesitated at the landing, then began the descent. He’d be less magnanimous if he found out that she had just misled him. She could guess the Newborn’s identity. Her thoughts travelled back to the moment of the Newborn’s appearance. The horses she had heard, passing beneath, hadn’t been an illusion. Uiscejacques’s squad had just entered the city, through the gate below. And among them rode Sorrowful. Coincidence? Maybe, but she didn’t think so. The Spinning Coin had faintly wobbled at that instant, then its ringing returned. Though she heard it in her mind day and night, it had become almost second nature, and Taterztayl found she had to concentrate to find it. But she’d caught the nudge, felt the pitch change and sensed a brief instant of uncertainty.

  Dying’s Newborn, and the Assassin of Tall House Black. There was a connection there, somehow, and it bothered Nano. Obviously, everything remained in a flux. ‘Terrific,’ she muttered, as she reached the bottom of the staircase.

  She saw the young marine who had approached her earlier. He stood in a line of recruits in the centre of the compound. No commanding officer was in sight. Taterztayl called the boy over.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  ‘Yes, Sorceress?’ he asked, as he arrived to stand at attention in front of her.

  ‘What are you all standing around for, soldier?’

  ‘We’re about to be issued our weapons. The staff sergeant’s gone to bring the wagon round.’

  Taterztayl nodded. ‘I have a task for you. I’ll see that you get your weapons – but not the tiny ones your friends are about to receive. If a superior officer questions your absence, refer him to me.’

  ‘Yes, Sorceress.’

  A pang of regret hit Taterztayl upon meeting the boy’s bright, eager gaze. Chances were, he’d be dead within a few months. The Empire had many crimes staining its banner, but this was the worst of them. She sighed. ‘Deliver, in person, this message to Sergeant Uiscejacques, Linktorches. The fat lady with the spells wants to talk. You have it, soldier?’

  The boy blanched.

  ‘Let’s hear it.’

  The marine repeated the message in a deadpan tone.

  Taterztayl smiled. ‘Very good. Now run along, and don’t forget to get an answer from him. I’ll be in my quarters.’

  Captain Pa’an swung around for a last look at the Darkness Anisoptera. The squad had just reached the plateau’s crest. He watched until they disappeared from view, then shifted his gaze back to the city in the east.

  From this distance, with the wide, flat plain in between, Liet seemed peaceful enough, although the ground outside the walls was studded with black basaltic rubble and the memory of smoke and fire clung to the air. Along the wall scaffolding rose in places, tiny figures crowding the frameworks. They appeared to be rebuilding huge gaps in the stonework. From the north gate a sluggish stream of wagons wound out towards the hills, the air above them filled with crows. Along the edge of those hills ran a line of mounds too regular to be natural.

  He’d heard the rumours, here and there. Five dead mages, two of them Leading Sorcerers. The 2nd’s losses were enough to fire speculation that it would be merged with the 5th and the 6th to form a new regiment. And Satellite’s Offspring had retreated south, across the Zaragoza Range to Lake Lapis, trailing smoke, drifting and leaning to one side like a spent thunder-head. But one tale reached into the captain’s thoughts deeper than all the rest: the Linktorches were gone. Some stories said killed by a man; others insisted that a few squads had made it out of the tunnels before the collapse.

  Pa’an was frustrated. He’d been among Anisoptera for days. The uncanny warriors hardly ever spoke, and when they did it was to each other in that incomprehensible tongue of theirs. All of his information was out of date, and that put him in an unfamiliar position. Mind you, he thought, since Puerlos it had been one unfamiliar situation after another.

  So here he was, on the waiting end of things once again. He readjusted his duffel bag and was preparing for a long wait when he saw a horseman top the far plateau’s crest. The man had an extra mount with him, and he rode straight for the captain.

  He sighed. Dealing with the Talon always grated. They were so damn smug. With the exception of that man in Puerlos, none seemed to like him much. It had been a long time since he’d known someone he could call a friend. Over two years, in fact.

  The rider arrived. Seeing him up close, Pa’an took an involuntary step back. Half the man’s face had been burned away. A patch covered the right eye and the man held his head at an odd angle. The man flashed a ghastly grin, then dismounted.

  ‘You’re the one, huh?’ he asked in a rasping voice.

  ‘Is it true about the Linktorches?’ Pa’an demanded. ‘Wiped out?’

  ‘More or less. Five squads left, or thereabouts. About forty in all.’ His left eye squinted and he reached up to adjust his battered helmet. ‘Didn’t know where you’d be heading before. Do now. You’re Uiscejacques’s new captain, huh?’

  ‘Sergeant Uiscejacques is known to you?’ Pa’an scowled. This Talon wasn’t like the others. Whatever thinking they did about him they kept to themselves, and he preferred it that way.

  The man climbed back into his saddle. ‘Let’s ride. We can talk on the way.’

  Pa’an went to the other horse and tied his bag to the saddle, which was of the Seven Metropolises style, high-backed and with a hinged horn that folded forward – he’d seen several like this on this continent. It was a detail he’d already filed away. Natives from the Seven Metropolises had a predisposition for making trouble, and this whole Pueblosian Conquest had been a foul-up from the very start. No coincidence, that. Most of the 2nd, 5th and 6th Infantries had been recruited from the Seven Metropolises subcontinent.

  He mounted and they settled into a steady canter across the plateau.

  The Talon talked. ‘Sergeant Uiscejacques’s got a lot of followers around here. Acts like he doesn't know it. You got to remember something that’s been damn near forgotten back in Nazal – Uiscejacques once commanded his own company …’

  Pa’an’s head snapped around. That fact had been thoroughly stripped from the annals. As far as Empire history was concerned, it had never happened.

  ‘… back in the days when Taysom Ultrix ran the military,’ the Talon continued blithely. ‘It was Uiscejacques’s Seventh Company that ran down the Seven Metropolises’ mage cabal out in the Hol’basday Desert. He ended the war then and there. Of course, everything went to hell after that, what with Cowl taking Ultrix’s daughter. And not long after that, when Ultrix died, all his men were pulled down fast. That’s when the bureaucrats swallowed up the Infantry. Damn jackals. And they’ve been sniping at each other ever since and to hell with the campaigns.’ The Talon sat forward, pushing the saddlehorn down, and spat past his horse’s left ear.

  Pa’an shivered, seeing that gesture. In the old days it had announced the beginning of tribal war among the Seven Metropolises. Now, it has become the symbol of the Nazal 2nd Infantry. ‘Are you suggesting,’ he cut in, ‘that the story you’ve just told me is commonplace?’

  ‘Not in detail,’ the Talon admitted. ‘But some old veterans in the Second fought with Ultrix, not just in Seven Metropolises but as far back as Falgari.’

  Pa’an thought for a while. The man riding beside him, though a Talon, was also 2nd Infantry. And he’d been through a lot with them. It made for an interesting perspective. He glanced at the man and saw him grinning. ‘What’s so funny?’

  The man shrugged. ‘The Linktorches are a little hot these days. They’re getting chaff for recruits and that makes it look like they’re about to be disbanded. You talk with whoever it is you talk with back in Nazal, you tell them they’d end up with a mutiny on their hands, they start messing with the Linktorches. That’s in every report I send but no one seems to listen to me.’ His grin broadened. ‘Maybe they think I’ve been turned or something, eh?’

  Pa’an shrugged. ‘You were called in to meet me, weren’t you?’

  The Talon laughed. ‘You’ve really been out of touch, haven’t you? They called me in because I’m the last one active in the Second. And as for the Fifth and Sixth – forget it. Languish’s Cest Velle could pick out a Talon from a thousand paces. None of them left, either. My own Talon Leader was garotted two days back – that’s something else, ain’t it? You, I inherited, Captain. Once we hit the city, I send you on your way, and that’s probably the last we’ll ever see of each other. You deliver your mission details as Captain of the Ninth Squad, they either laugh in your face or they stick a knife in your eye – it’s even betting what they’ll do. Too bad, but there it is.’

  Up ahead loomed the gates of Liet.

  ‘One more thing,’ the Talon said, his eyes on the merlons above the gate, ‘just a bone I’ll throw you in case Nano’s smiling on you. The Leading Sorcerer Tynell’s running things here. Drin’s not happy, especially considering what happened with Satellite’s Offspring. It’s a bad situation between them, but the Leading Sorcerer is relying on his being in close and constant communication with the Empress, and that’s what’s keeping him on top. A warning, then. Drin’s soldiers will follow him … anywhere. And that goes for the Fifth and Sixth Infantries, too. What’s been gathered here is a storm waiting to break.’

  Pa’an stared at the man. Acme had explained the situation, but Pa’an had dismissed the man’s assessment – it had seemed too much like a scenario devised to justify the Empress filling the gallows. Not a tangle I want to get involved in. Leave me to complete my single task – I desire no more than that.

  As they passed into the gate’s shadow, the Talon spoke again. ‘By the way, Tynell just watched us arrive. Any chance he knows you, Captain?’

  ‘No.’ I hope not, he added silently.

  As they trotted into the city proper and a wall of sound rose to meet them, Pa’an’s eyes glazed slightly. Liet was a madhouse, buildings on all sides gutted by fire, the streets, despite being cobble-heaved in places and dented in others, were packed with people, carts, braying animals and marines. He wondered if he should start measuring his life in minutes. Taking command of a squad that had gone through four captains in three years, then delivering a mission that no sane soldier would consider, coupled with a brewing firestorm of a large-scale insurrection possibly headed by the Empire’s finest military commander, against a Leading Sorcerer who looked to be carving his own rather big niche in the world – all of this had Pa’an feeling somewhat dismayed.

  He was jolted by a heavy slap on his back. The Talon had moved his horse close and now he leaned over.

  ‘Out of your depth, Captain? Don’t worry, every damn person here’s out of their depth. Some know it, some don’t. It’s the ones who don’t you have to worry about. Start with what’s right in front of you and forget the rest for now. It’ll show up in its own time. Find any marine and ask directions to the Linktorches. That’s the easy part.’

  Pa’an nodded.

  The Talon hesitated, then leaned closer. ‘I’ve been thinking, Captain. It’s a hunch, mind you, but I think you’re here to do some good. No, don’t bother answering. Only, if you get into trouble, you get word to Tocken the Youthful, that’s me. I’m in the Courier Corps, outrider class, the Second. All right?’

  Pa’an nodded again. ‘Thank you,’ he said, just as a loud crash sounded behind them, followed by a chorus of angry voices. Neither rider turned.

  ‘What’s that you said, Captain?’

  Pa’an smiled. ‘Better head off. Keep your cover – in case something happens to me. I’ll find myself a guide, by the book.’

  ‘Sure thing, Captain.’ Tocken the Youthful waved, then swung his mount down a side-street. Moments later Pa’an lost sight of him. He drew a deep breath, then cast his gaze about, searching for a likely soldier.