Warriors of an empire which slept in the shadow of glaciers. Followers of an Emperor who craved blood. Times past, they had pushed far south from the mountain, almost to the gates of Hesper itself.
She creeps up the bed as she says this, the lamplight swaying, just enough of a smile on her face that he doesn’t scream. His Da’s muffled laughter fluttering round the side of a whisky glass.
And as Thell’s warrior had conquered, they’d died. And they had built homes for their dead. Great tombs beneath the earth. But those dead slept lightly, for their Emperor lived in theirblood and always called them, called them, called them back to war.
And here was Millet, sleeping in the shadow of one such tomb. And when the good people of Millet slept, and dreamt, the old ghosts of those warriors crept down the hill on the night wind, soft as wending. Skulked through alleys and rapped on windows. Waited for the one house with an unlatched door, the one window without a light to guard it.
And when the lock was loose and the light was dimmed, they would strike. Dragging a child from its bed and back up the dark hill on the cusp of the wind. Stifling its screams and pulling it down into the black below until they could slit its throat, slake their thirst and finally, sleep again. Red with blood, quiet as the grave.
Quickfish had barely moved. Pressed back against the wood, breath stilled in his chest as he imagined dead fingers on his throat, dead mouths drinking hot blood. And of course, his mother had pounced, pulling him tight against her breast. Soft cloth and strong bone. The warmth of her like nothing else. The smell of her; herbs and cooking oil, perfume and steel.
And she’d reassured him that the warriors were long gone and the Emperor dead. And he knew it was true, because his own mum and dad had done it. She had shown him the sword she swung, and the armour she wore.
There were no monsters anymore, because his mother had killed them all. She had repeated this as she kissed his cheeks and tucked him back in. Tight as a shroud, she’d said. Ruffled his hair, kissed his forehead again, held on it. Said his name, which does not exist anymore. Which slips through the memory like an oiled absence, and vanishes.
Quickfish remembers the touch of her lips though, and the feel of her hands. The callus where the sword grip had rested. The way the killing she had done to keep him safe had marked her body. The way her smile lingered in lamplight as she kissed him. The way she shrank back into the dark bulk of his Da’s body, tipping her head for a different kiss. The pair of them against thelight. Solid as shadow. Fading as his memory slips back to the present.
To the curve of a river, to the hill above a town. To a tomb upon the hill. Millet had survived the stories, but there was enough truth to them that he had been pulled out of Hesper to chase the shape of the tale. Roofkeeper dutifully plodding ahead of him, broad shoulders set against a fine rain, axe swinging loose at his side.
The tomb on the hill was real. And Thell was real. The Empire had been real. And perhaps their magic had been real. That magic that called the dead back simply for the memory of blood. The hunger for life.
Quickfish had read about it in the tower’s small library, and when that was exhausted and insufficient, taken himself to the street of small saints, and when that had given only rumours, he’d visited the Glass Archive, and paid the price for some real knowledge.
And what they had told him was simple: that Thell was an empire which had defeated death. Until it was itself defeated. His mum and dad had killed the monsters he now needed to find, and put the Republic in their place.
The connection was clearest in what the sources didn’t say, be they book or back alley or archive. The Republic was not so distant from the Empire it had overthrown. Something of that Empire still lived on in Thell. Which meant that magic might still sleep there. Like a maggot in the wound, like a worm in the soil.
And if there was any hope of bringing his mother back into the light, Quickfish would take it. Even if it meant stepping into the place of his childhood nightmares.
Ahead, Roofkeeper has stopped to chat with a miller working by the lock, with two children who are very hale, and not at all starved of blood. He looks back and beckons.
‘Got a bed for the night, and some food too if we don’t mind bending our backs to the wheel.’
Quickfish smiles at this man who has left house and home withhim. Because of love. Because of hope that something can still be saved.
And maybe Quickfish had stopped believing that, at points. And maybe he needed to see that face, with its honest brow and firm bones. He catches up with Roofkeeper and kisses him on the forehead. Lingers on it for a second. Smiles at the kids as they go to chase ducks down the eddies.
‘Time to earn your supper, your majesty,’ Roof mutters, and Quickfish kicks him.
‘Time to mind your tongue.’
Roof holds his eye as he hefts a sack of flour. ‘I thought that was your job.’
And Quickfish doesn’t mean to blush, but the blood is in his cheeks before he knows it. Roof’s laughter cutting the rill of the mill water.
‘Come on, come on. Town’s not so bad after all, is it?’
Quickfish hefts a second sack, and looks at Millet as it shelters in the river’s bend. At his back, the Grey Towers of Hesper still limn the sky. In the tallest tower, his mother, and all the stories she ever told. If he’s going to get her back, he’s going to need to go Thell.
Perhaps it’s like Roofkeeper says. Perhaps the stories are just stories. Perhaps there is only enough magic left to fix the world, not break it again.
Shoulders set and cheeks aglow, Quickfish steps into the town, into the shadow of the hill, and the shadow of that tomb.
9
These berks are so superstitious
they shit into their own shadows.
