Moontide 02 - The Scarlet Tides (59 page)

Justina explained how she and Ramita came to be here, fugitives from a broken Ordo Costruo. They had no news of the outside world, or how the Crusade progressed, and Alaron’s confidence in coming here began to wane.

‘Uh, when is your child due?’ he asked Ramita during one of the increasingly long gaps in the conversation.

‘The second month,’ she replied in her thickly accented Rondian.

‘Febreux?’ he clarified. She waggled her head side to side, a strange gesture he’d never seen before, but it appeared to mean
yes
. ‘Um, it’s a shame that …’ He trailed off, realising that he’d been about to say something stupidly insensitive about her dead husband. Silence filled the room again as he flushed bright red.

Well done, Alaron. Another brilliant conversational gambit.

Her voice uncharacteristically wary, Cym started, ‘Mother, I need to tell you something.’ And she launched into the tale of the lost Scytale, not naming it, just calling it ‘an artefact’.

Alaron watched Justina’s eyes narrow as the tale progressed: from General Langstrit and his trail of clues, to breaking into the Governor’s Palace, that frantic night in Norostein that had cost the lives of the general and Alaron’s mother, and their flight across Yuros and the Bridge …

Justina grew more and more agitated as she listened, and as Cym’s story drew to a close, she asked, ‘Where is this “artefact”?’ Her eyes went immediately to the bag lying on the table beside Alaron’s right elbow.

He glanced at Cym.
I guess this is where we find out if this was the right thing to do
.

He picked it up and handed it to Justina Meiros.

She pulled the bag open and removedthe cylindrical leather case. She stared at it curiously, then pulled the cap from the top. She lifted the rune-carved pottery to her eyes and read them with a puzzled frown.

Finally she looked at Cym. ‘What is this?’

Alaron was a little surprised that she didn’t already know. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was Cym’s place to tell her mother. He glanced sideways at Ramita, who was also looking blank.

Cym’s voice was tentative. ‘Mother, this is the Scytale of Corineus.’

The look that came slowly across Justina Meiros’ face was impossible to read; there were just too many emotions. Amazement certainly, and shock: total shock. And fright even – but not ambition or greed, to Alaron’s enormous relief.

She put it down and stared at it, made no attempt to pick it up again. Her mouth opened and closed a dozen times as she sought words.

‘How?’ she gulped at last.

Cym gestured at Alaron. This was his story now: it had been his thesis, the piece of work that had torn his life apart. His ridiculous theory, that the Noros Revolt had been triggered not by a rebellious king, but by three Noros-born priests and one outrageous theft. It felt unbelievable, even now that he’d been proved correct.

He couldn’t blame Justina Meiros for shaking her head as he spoke; he was too, and he’d lived through it.

‘I wish Father were here,’ Justina muttered into the silence when he finished.

Eyeing this brittle, closed-in woman, Alaron found that he was wishing the same thing.

After that, it was as if they were all too awestruck to speak. No plans were proposed, no decisions reached. As the evening stretched on into even larger silences, he yawned ostentatiously, scooped up the Scytale and announced that he was going to bed. Cym came with
him and they took to the stairs together. He was longing to soak in hot water, and the little Lakh woman had said there was a bath below with hot water available from a tap. This miracle he had to see.

‘Well?’ he called softly to Cym as she went to her room.

‘Well what?’ she replied coolly, tossing her hair.

‘Have we done the right thing?’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Of course.’

He found that he couldn’t quite agree.
These two women are as lost as we are.

*

Ramita watched the two young people leave, sipping the last mouthful of the one cup of wine she’d allowed herself. She’d not understood most of their story, other than that this ‘Scytale’ was somehow important, so once they were gone, she asked Justina about it.

The jadugara answered absently: it contained a recipe to grant people the gnosis. It took a while to understand everything this meant – after all, she’d become a mage just by conceiving; what did it matter that there were other ways? Then she thought about a world in which everyone became a mage just by sipping a drink, and it was as if all the air had left the room.

At first she wondered whether her husband had somehow foreseen this, that this was all part of his plan, but this was unlikely. He would have said something of it, surely? So it could only be coincidence: she, apparently potentially the strongest mage in the world, was now one of four people possessing the greatest artefact in that world. If it was not pure coincidence, then every mage with the skill to cast a divination would be here with them. No, her husband had not brought this thing here; the gods had.

‘Justina,’ she asked softly, ‘what are we going to do?’

Justina appeared to be so stunned that she did not even object to the word ‘we’. She said blankly, ‘I don’t know. Kore’s Blood, what can we do?’

Ramita recognised that the question was rhetorical: Justina Meiros did not ask the likes of her for an opinion. But she offered one
anyway. ‘Let’s take it to Vizier Hanook. We could found a new order of Lakh magi.’

Justina looked as if she’d rather eat vomit, though she constrained her a reply to a crisp, ‘I don’t think so.’

Then she began to talk wildly of recruiting suitable candidates – only women, because women were by nature more peaceful and trustworthy than men. This was news to Ramita. Some of the most aggressive and larcenous people to grace Aruna Nagar Market were women. Most men were like lambs compared with Vikas Nooradin’s wife, to name but one. But in Justina’s mind, she and her new sisterhood could force an end to the wars.

It sounded foolish to Ramita, not at all something Antonin Meiros would have done.
I miss you, my husband, more than ever.

‘The boy seems clever,’ she observed. Naïve and nervous, certainly, but growing into a good man, she decided.

‘The little troll better not think he has any hope of marrying my Cymbellea,’ Justina snapped.

‘He knows this. They are only friends.’

‘How would you know?’ Justina asked waspishly.

I may be only a market-girl but I know how men and women look at each other.
‘It is clear: she has nothing but friendship for him, and he knows this.’

‘Hmm. Well thank Kore for that. A merchant’s son …’

‘I think he is a nice boy,’ Ramita remarked, mostly just to annoy Justina, though she thought her words true.

‘Huh.’ Justina finished her wine with a gulp. ‘Sol et Lune, what am I going to do?’ She poured herself another drink. Her eyes were glazed from shock and the onset of intoxication.

Ramita stood and left her to it. ‘Don’t worry, Daughter,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘I’ll think of something.’

*

Malevorn started as Raine’s mental voice filled his head.

Her mental touch caressed his mind. It was a slick, slimy touch
with a tang of her own juices, both repellent and alluring.

He looked in the direction she was indicating, but there was nothing there but sea, for hundreds of miles.

They’d lost valuable days waiting for Adamus to secure them a new windship in Pontus, but for the rest of the week since Vordan’s death the Fist had been furiously hunting. The new windship was now slowly following the line of the Leviathan Bridge, providing them with a mobile base. It was big enough for the four remaining venators to sleep on the decks, and it had come with three pilot-mages and a squad of soldiers. It must have cost a fortune – or would have, if Adamus actually used money; as it was, the word
Inquisition
turned out to be currency enough.

Malevorn and Dominic had been flying in a spiralling pattern broadly following the line of the Bridge, circling every windship they saw to check it wasn’t the one stolen from them. Each day saw three or four other windcraft traversing the ocean, laden with supplies if going south and plunder if returning to the north.

Malevorn searched the Bridge from up here – though it was still little more than a dark line with white water bursting about its pillars – seeking a place to land. It was dusk and his venator was exhausted, barely able to do more than glide.

he returned.

Raine purred.

Mother, guide us in.
He felt a twinge of excitement.
She might be right
.

he called, suddenly keen to see her.
Perhaps she and I can find this thing ourselves?

Her mental touch became more intimate and secretive.

Damn.
he called, sending a little mental caress of appreciation. He felt her squirm hungrily at the touch and she sent back a lewd fancy that made his blood smoulder. He wanted
her, but circumstances kept intervening. They were never paired on a mission, and it was beginning to feel like a deliberate thing. Was Dranid trying to drive a wedge between them?

he sent. But then Dranid’s gruff voice filled his mind, summoning them back to the ship. Clearly their new Commandant thought Raine’s clue worthy of further attention.

They’d been scattered over miles of empty ocean, but after Dranid’s call they gathered again on the new windship, the
Magol
– named after a giant of Lantric legend – at midday the next day. The ship was circling the massive tower on Dawn Island. The light atop the great pillar of stone was too bright to look upon directly; it lit Adamus’ soft face luridly as he brought them up to date.

‘Sister Raine has served us well,’ he told the gathered First. ‘She was on the eastern beat when she heard a gnostic call: a female, strong but untutored. I am confident it was Cymbellea di Regia. She was calling to someone she addressed as “Mother”.’ He licked his lips. ‘Our patience and resolve will be rewarded, brethren. We are going to fly east from here, towards the Javon coast. This time, the hunt will not be for naught.’

Malevorn glanced around the circle. Dranid was all conviction, and the others were lost in the increasingly rare feeling of triumph.
And sure, I’m pleased too. But who the Hel is this girl’s mother?

Shaliyah

Is there a place on Urte which approaches the glory that awaits us in Paradise? Yea, the city of the prophet Aluq, Shaliyah the blessed, Shaliyah the holy, Shaliyah the beautiful. All who dwell there live in the undimmed light of Ahm.

T
HE
K
ALISTHAM
, H
OLY
B
OOK OF
A
MTEH

Peroz, and the road to Shaliyah, Antiopia
Zulqeda (Noveleve) to Zulhijja (Decore) 928
5
^th
and 6
^th
months of the Moontide

The character of the heat had changed. The air was perfectly still, and subtly charged. High clouds scudded across from the west, but at ground level there was no wind at all, other than that summoned by the Air-magi to power their wind-vessels. Distant lightning storms had become a nightly show, but there was no rain yet.

The southern army was not so much fighting its way across Kesh as shitting and fucking its way across: the arrival in Peroz had enabled them to restock their supplies, but it still meant a change of diet for the legionaries, for they’d finished the last of the Yuros stores. The unfamiliar Antiopian fare meant a new wave of stomach upsets – Legion camps had a foul stench at the best of times, but this was worse than anyone could have anticipated. And because disease was rampant among the city’s refugee-swollen populace, the soldiers were confined to camp – but the ever-resourceful legions managed to procure women who had been vetted and cleared by the healers, so it wasn’t long before their tents were operating as normal.

The demand for poppy increased too, driving the price up even further. The temptation to cash in was ever-present in Ramon’s mind, but his plan – and his constant dream of his mother’s freedom – required him to restrain that urge, and Kip’s forceful reminders of his promise did the rest. Keeping the small group in the know from betraying them took a great deal more intimidation, but between his threats and the presence of the giant Schlessen, they managed. He suspected Storn might be selling a little on the side to prevent the whole ruse from collapsing, but in the circumstances he had little choice but to turn a blind eye.

Peroz was a large city, one of the biggest they had yet seen. A river ran through the sprawling mass of poorly made mudbrick buildings, and all life revolved around its sluggish flow, though it was by now little more than a trickle, and undrinkable, if you actually looked at the riverbed, a stinking morass of silt and debris. More than half a million people dwelt within the walls like ants in a mound, and the whole place was encircled by refugee camps, filled to the brim with suffering and sickness. Duke Echor’s first order was to send the refugees west, and the Thirteenth, still at the rear of the advance, met these pathetic columns, human tides of misery stumbling along under the lash of their guards, as they marched into the city.

That day Ramon, Kip and Severine were waiting beneath the balcony of a wrecked farmhouse, watching a khurne rider trotting towards them. The way Seth Korion held himself told Ramon all he needed to know.
A rukking waste of time.
He glanced at Severine, who was groggy with lack of sleep.

‘He listened,’ Seth told them after he’d dismounted and led his khurne to where it could graze the sparse dried-up weeds that passed for vegetation in this hellish land. He sat down on one of the rickety chairs and looked around at the group. ‘He told me that I was observant. He was very interested, he said.’

Kip spat. He’d long since stopped shaving – there was no spare water and he was fed up with the constant cuts – and his ragged blond beard and hair were bleached to white-gold by the sun, but his skin was darkening. ‘So what is he going to do about it, eh?’

‘I don’t know,’ Seth admitted miserably. ‘The Duke told me I was not to speak of this with anyone else – not even Duprey.’

‘Did you tell him about us?’ Severine asked timidly.

Seth shook his head.

‘Good,’ Ramon said lightly. ‘That way the Inquisitors will come for Seth first.’

Kip chuckled at that, but the general’s son sniffed morosely, not at all certain that such a thing wouldn’t happen. ‘He told me to keep my eyes open, and to let me know of anything else I learn.’

‘That’s something,’ Ramon said, more to make Seth and Severine feel better than with any real conviction.

Severine met his eye. There was a bond between them now, from sharing this intrigue and the fact that he had actually supported her. ‘Perhaps if we can find more evidence, he will step in,’ she said.

‘The Inquisition are beyond all authority,’ Seth said. ‘Even I know that.’ He stood up. ‘I need to pray.’

As he stumbled away, Severine said, ‘He is friends with the chaplain. They pray a lot.’ Her voice was heavy with sarcasm.

‘Frand is as big a wimp as he is,’ Kip remarked, wrinkling his nose.

‘Tyron Frand’s all right,’ Ramon said. ‘He’s scared of women, but he’s basically decent.’

Severine sniffed wetly. ‘I don’t like either of them.’

‘I’m sure it’s mutual.’ Ramon watched as Seth Korion’s khurne came at his call, then swiftly carried him away. ‘You know what? I got a look at Duprey’s new maps last night after the staff meeting. We’re on the edge of almost three hundred miles of desert. There are maybe a dozen waterholes on our route, but there’s no vegetation at all. Just sun and sand.’

Kip picked up his canteen and slugged some musty warm water. ‘Yar. Our men are exhausted. It takes weeks to fully recover from a long march at the best of times. We’ve come five hundred miles or more already with hardly any rest.’

‘Duprey said some of the legates asked Echor to delay the march on Shaliyah, but the duke’s informers say Salim’s gold will be shipped to Mirobez soon, so we’re marching in two days.’

‘It’ll take us the whole of Noveleve to reach Shaliyah,’ Kip estimated.

Ramon glanced at Severine. ‘There will be no refugees in the desert. Maybe your visions will stop.’

She turned to him. Her eyes looked desolate. ‘I hope so,’ she whispered.

*

The camp was settling in for its final night outside the mudbrick walls of Peroz. The Thirteenth was just one small group amidst the great serried ranks of tents, indistinguishable from a distance. Ramon was taking his turn infusing the keels of the legion’s windskiffs. Somewhere in the distance he could hear Argundian drinking songs, and further away, the rhythmic rattle-drums of Estellayne. A few night birds called out, the remnants of the shrieking dusk cacophony. There were no trees left. The army had cut down the few groves for firewood, and burned every bit of scavenged furniture too before resorting to the dried dung the natives relied on. They’d drained three of the city’s six main wells to refill the water-caravans, not caring that their depredations were leaving the people of Peroz to face extreme privation once the army had left.

Ramon was more concerned about his scheme than how the natives would fare. He was due to make another payment to his investors before they left, and this time some of them were demanding gold instead of his promissory notes. He had no wish to be parted from the thousands of coins he’d amassed so far, and he was now isolated from any contact with the Yuros merchants who’d provided most of his last batch of new investors. He was beginning to wonder if the time had come to destroy the opium and vanish with the money, but extrication would be difficult, and although he had amassed more than three hundred thousand gilden, that was still short of the amount he calculated he needed for his plan.

So for now he would hold on, awaiting the one last big injection of money his plan needed: like Duke Echor, he was counting on the Sultan’s gold to solve all his problems.

‘Ramon.’ Severine Tiseme’s voice reached him a few seconds
before she appeared, wrapped in her travelling cloak. She touched the keel. ‘I’ll help.’

He blinked.
A helpful Severine? Unprecedented!
Though in truth, there was something between them now. It was just a question of what that was, and what they might do with it. She was certainly pretty, even exhausted as she was, with those great black circles under her eyes. And he actually sort of liked her. But he didn’t
trust
her, not by any stretch of imagination.

‘I’m nearly done,’ he lied, but she snorted impatiently, closed her eyes and reached out her left hand. A powerful surge of gnosis poured into the keel and it was replenished in a fraction of the time it would have taken him. Without another word she moved on to the next, Ramon hurrying behind her, and repeated her actions, until the little fleet was almost glowing with power.

‘Now, come with me,’ she ordered, and strode away, making her way purposefully through the ranks of tents towards the city.

He scurried to catch up and grabbed her shoulder. ‘Where are we going? Did you have a vision?’

‘No, I cast a Divination and it told me to find a certain place.’ She took his hand impatiently and pulled him after her.

He stopped dead, asking, ‘What place? Severine, where are we going?’

She put a finger to her lips, hushing him, and murmured, ‘Just follow, Ramon – I’m going to show you.’

They had to use the gnosis to aid their vision as she led him through the darkness into the maze of city alleyways, slipping cautiously past the houses of the Keshi. The city was supposed to be under curfew, but the further into the narrow, twisting lanes they went, the less this was enforced. They had to evade prowling gangs of youths, angry little mobs of Keshi armed with knives and home-made clubs. Once they came upon a murdered legionary, lying face-down in the dust. He had a slit throat and no purse, but Severine didn’t spare him more than a glance.

Finally they came to a tall building near what sounded like a livestock market. Severine looked about and once she was sure they
had not been seen, pointed to the crumbling stone stairway built onto the back of the house and leading to a shadowed doorway.

They climbed the steps into the deserted building and Severine led them to the front windows as confidently as if it were her own home. When Ramon tried to question her she turned and fiercely hushed him, until he threw up his hands and nodded his acquiescence, and proceeded to follow her without further comment.

The windows opened out over a square. Severine pulled up her hood and made sure her hair was tucked out of sight before creeping forward, beckoning Ramon after her.

They pressed against each other in the cramped space and peered down onto the dimly lit plaza, where a horse was lying on its side, squealing. It took a moment for them to realise it was in the throes of giving birth. Then something glinted on its head, and Ramon realised that it wasn’t a horse birthing; it was a khurne.

Interesting
.

Then he looked at the men standing around the thrashing creature and felt his heart leap into his throat.

The animal was surrounded by the members of Siburnius’ Fist. Delta, the bald branded mage, was standing there too, just a little outside the circle, and he was watching the khurne’s labour with fierce concentration, his eyes gleaming, even in the darkness. The Inquisitors were also watching intently. No one was paying any attention to the shadows – after all, who would
dare
attack Inquisitors?

It took a while, more than half an hour, before the new foal emerged. Though it was hornless, it was somehow not quite a horse but something other, something alien. It thrashed about, shrieking in fear at the men who surrounded it, terrified by this new world, by the lights and the movement. Its mother watched it, prostrate with exhaustion, unable to do anything as the creature tried to stand on wobbly legs and fell, wrenching its head about.

The bald mage came forward, intoning something in a low voice, speaking too quietly for Ramon and Severine to work out what he was saying. The newborn khurne watched him coming closer and began to panic, but then calmed and lay there transfixed.

Animagery
, Ramon guessed. Severine, pressed close up against him, was trembling too, he realised. He linked fingers with her and squeezed.

The man reached out, holding something in his right hand. It was pulsing green and purple, glowing through the flesh, revealing his skeletal digits.

Severine whispered into his mind.

Delta bent down and touched the khurne colt between the eyes with the gem, and all at once it flared, a dazzlingly bright flash that illuminated the square like a great bolt of lightning, bathing all those watching in its putrid colours.

The colt’s head fell onto its chest and it started shaking.

What in Hel’s name—?

Severine squeezed Ramon’s fingers so tightly he began to lose feeling in them, but he didn’t pull away; he needed the comfort of another’s touch as much as she did. They stared as the little construct –
is it still a construct if it is actually the born offspring of a construct?
– thrashed about weakly, its limbs still shaking as it tried to toss its head. It was still caught in the gnostic glow.

Delta spoke – in fluent Keshi, to Ramon’s great surprise. The mage’s melodious voice carried easily in the otherwise silent night.

Ramon turned to Severine and pulled her head close. As quietly as he could – if they could hear Delta that easily, surely he could hear them? – he whispered, ‘He said “Get up”.’

First the colt twitched at the branded mage’s words, then on awkward limbs, it rose to its feet and stood obediently.

More Keshi spilled from Delta’s lips.

‘“Walk”,’ Ramon translated, grateful for his easy facility with foreign languages; his paterfamilias had always encouraged language lessons, both at Turm Zauberin and since.

The little khurne staggered forward, its legs akimbo.

‘“Walk in a circle, then stamp three times”.’

As they watched breathlessly, the colt did
exactly
what the mage ordered.

The implications hit them both at once, and Severine closed her eyes and pressed her face into Ramon’s shoulder, stifling a sob – so she didn’t see what happened next: the man standing beside Siburnius turned to the Fist Commandant and shook his hand. As he stepped into the light, Ramon saw a face he knew, though he’d only ever seen it at a distance, on the parade grounds or at the head of the army, leading the march.