A Company of Shadows Read online

  He smiles.

  ‘So strong,’ he says. His accent is strange. He is not of Gholl. ‘Your mind is a cage, Severina Raine.’

  He knows her name. Of course he does. He’s been inside her mind. Raine’s stomach turns. She can still feel the cold metal grip of her pistol in her hands. The way Andren’s blood spattered her face. She cannot help but let slip a wordless noise of rage.

  The man stands up and turns his back on her, making the feathers of his cloak stir. They are in a cave that stretches up and away, the ceiling lost to darkness. Crystal stalagmites stand sentry around a central dais. There’s a pattern carved into it that stings Raine’s eyes when she looks at it. The man treads across it, his feet leaving bloody prints that disappear almost immediately, swallowed up by the stone.

  ‘Won’t you ask my name?’ he says. ‘I know yours.’

  She spits on the ground, trying to rid herself of the taste of roses. ‘Traitors have no names. They are just that. Traitors.’

  The man sighs.

  ‘Come, now,’ he says. ‘There is a great power in names. You know that is true, Severina Raine of Darpex, then of Gloam. You who chose to keep your mother’s name, and not your father’s.’

  Raine’s limbs shake with the need to get to her feet and kill him. The need to take back her secrets and her self from the traitor with the gemstone eyes.

  ‘I am Arcadius Verastus,’ the man says. ‘Ninth of nine.’

  His robes are plain and dark. No insignia, save for the silver chain around his neck on which hangs a charm in the shape of a feather. Nothing to tell her what he is, beyond the name and the title he has given himself.

  Ninth of nine.

  The number prickles at Raine’s skin.

  ‘Whatever it is that you want, you will not get it from me,’ she says. ‘I will tell you nothing.’

  Verastus smiles patiently.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ he says. ‘But then I do not need you to. I already know all about you. I know that you allowed yourself to be captured in place of Saleen Mayir and that you pinned your hopes of rescue on a man who hates you.’

  Raine’s throat tightens.

  ‘You thought we wanted Mayir,’ Verastus says. ‘But she is a mundane creature. Plenty of blood on those hands, but no real value. Only small boons are granted in exchange for those like her.’

  He takes a couple of steps towards her. The stone drinks his footprints.

  ‘You think value and you think of rank. Of medals and pins and petty little things.’ He crouches down in front of her. ‘True value is in potential. In the way the fates tremble at a soul’s touch. As they do with yours.’

  The smell of old flowers is coming from him. Sweet and rotting, all at once.

  ‘It was always you,’ he says. ‘In my waking dreams you fell from the sky on wings of fire. By the light of your soul, the flames seemed plain and dim.’

  He lifts his hand as if he might touch her face, stopping just short. Pressure begins to build behind Raine’s eyes.

  ‘The things you have done. The things you would do, given the chance. You are a fatemaker, Severina Raine, and my lord will give great things in trade for your soul.’

  Raine keeps her head up, though her vision is running at the edges. ‘So much faith in false promises,’ she says. ‘You will die, and so will your lord.’

  Verastus rocks back on his heels and he laughs. It’s a dry rasp, like claws on stone.

  ‘My lord will die? Oh, please.’

  His too-wide grin grows wider.

  ‘You cannot kill a god.’

  Before the Valkyrie takes off, Wyck takes Nuria Lye aside, away from the others, where the roar of the gunship’s engines keeps their words between the two of them.

  ‘No,’ she says, before he even asks anything.

  ‘Nuria. You owe me.’

  It’s true. For lots of things, just like with Awd, and if there’s one thing Wyck knows, it’s the value of a debt.

  ‘You’re chasing death,’ she says. ‘By rights the amount you take should have killed you already.’

  ‘You make it sound like you care.’

  Lye looks furious. For a second he thinks she might hit him. He almost wants her to.

  ‘About you?’ she says. ‘I don’t. Not a damn bit. I care about what you’ll do to the regiment. To our reputation.’

  Wyck can’t see the truth like Lydia Zane can, but he knows Lye still cares. It’s why she always gives in, in the end.

  ‘You say I’m chasing death,’ he says. ‘But I’m not. It’s chasing me, and it has been since Cawter. You know that.’

  She runs her hand through her shock of red hair. ‘I should report you,’ she says.

  ‘Then they’ll put a bullet in you as surely as me,’ he says. ‘And nobody wins but death.’

  Nuria Lye lets out a long, slow breath. She reaches into the pouch at her belt, takes out three vials and presses them into his hand.

  ‘Enough to get it done,’ she says. ‘And then no more.’

  He closes his hand around the vials. It’s what she says every time, and it’s never true.

  ‘As you say,’ he says. ‘Just enough, then no more.’

  ‘A god,’ Raine says in disbelief. ‘You are not just a traitor – you are a madman. A heretic. There is only one god, Him on Earth.’

  ‘That is what they tell you, isn’t it? From the day you are born it is driven into you over and over again. I suppose you heard it many times at the schola progenium.’ Verastus pauses, and there’s a flicker in his face. ‘I know I did.’

  Raine’s limbs flood cold, as if she’s been dropped into ice water. She wonders what he was before he took those lies into his heart. Before he gave up his eyes for gemstones.

  ‘Do not bother to voice the question,’ Verastus says, answering her thoughts. ‘It’s like you said – what we were before scarcely matters, does it?’

  Raine pulls at her restraints at the sound of her own words coming from his liar’s mouth, but she can’t reach him. Can’t silence him.

  ‘You are so blind,’ he says. ‘Shuttered and closed.’

  He turns his outstretched hand and the pain in her head dials up.

  ‘Let’s see if we can change that, shall we?’

  The world frays, tearing away like cloth, until Raine stands with Verastus in a wide-open space. Pockmarked grey stone stretches away on all sides, bordered by fortified walls that reach up to the sky. It looks like a parade ground. Snow falls silently. Where it hits Raine’s skin, it burns.

  She tries to hurl herself at Verastus, to hurt him, even if it’s only in this world of dreams, but her limbs refuse her. She stays locked in place, breathing hard through her teeth.

  ‘Always fighting,’ he says. ‘But then, that is what they made you for.’

  The huge stone doors on the far side of the parade ground open with a rumble. Figures file in through them in formation. A company of shadows.

  ‘I said that you were a fatemaker,’ Verastus says. ‘And these are the fates you have made.’

  Raine sees Yevi, his skin running like wax. She sees Tevar Lun, his honest face shattered from her bolt pistol round. She sees Varn, holes punched through him wide enough to see through. Dayn and Ludi and Selk and dozens and dozens more Antari. Then there are the others that came before, from every war on every front. A muddle of fatigues and battledress and robes. Then last of all, slight figures in soft-soled shoes and scholam clothes.

  ‘This is your revelation,’ Raine says. ‘You show me the dead as if you expect me to flinch from them. To feel guilt or shame. I am a commissar. Death is my companion, and delivering it is my duty.’

  Verastus looks at her sidelong.

  ‘Pretty words,’ he says. ‘But this is not everything that I have to show you.’

  Wyck exhales a slow breath as
he watches the Sighted scouts come into the clearing through the crosshairs of his rifle. His fingers twitch by the trigger. Heat rushes in his head. Whatever Lye gave him, it worked. But then, he did take two doses.

  Enough to get it done, just like she said.

  It’s an effort not to drop from the tree he’s hiding in and chase them down. Throne, he wants to move and fight and hurt them. But he can’t, because they need to do it quietly. He has to wait for them to come close. Just like with the other patrols they’ve silenced on their path deep into the Maw.

  The Sighted are talking in their own tongue. Wyck knows a few words. The sort of words you pick up during a war.

  Guard, or protect. Seek, or watch.

  Then that last word.

  Keep. Not keep as you would a possession. Keep like a castle.

  The stronghold.

  They are on the right path. Zane’s witch-sense is working.

  There’s a snap of twigs from between the trees. The Sighted fall silent, and their rifles come up. The one with the sword at his hip gestures and the group splits. Six keep coming towards Wyck and the Wyldfolk, including the one with the vox-set on her back. Five go back in a ragged spread towards where the Duskhounds wait in shadow.

  Wyck’s ears ring with their footsteps. His mouth is dry. His heart loud.

  They have to get closer. Into the circle.

  The circle is Crys and Awd and the rest of his Wyldfolk, waiting among the trees and the scrub and the standing stones. Waiting for the circle to close, for when they can coil around the Sighted like briars and not let go until they’ve bled them.

  They have to get closer.

  The Sighted with the vox-set turns, her face settling in Wyck’s sights.

  He holds his breath.

  And they step into the circle.

  Wyck fires his rifle, and the Sighted with the vox-set drops with a yelp and a spiral of smoke. There’s a shout from the one with the sword at his hip. He draws it, lurching forward into the trip line that Crys has set. There is a series of low pops and fire bursts in a circle around the Sighted. More shouting. Another word Wyck knows.

  Kill.

  Wyck drops from the tree, right on top of the scout leader with the sword, knocking him to the ground. That pretty sword is useless when your attacker has got a knife between your ribs. Blood makes his hand slick. The Sighted claws at his face and throat. Wyck twists the knife. More blood. The clawing stops.

  The ambush has become a melee, with the Sighted fighting back like cornered wolves. There’s shouting and cursing. Thrashing, desperate movement. Flashes of las-fire and motes of flame. To Wyck, it all seems to be happening so very slowly. He sees Crys put one of the Sighted down with a punch to the throat. Another of them goes to stick one of their black-bladed knives in her back. Wyck gets between them because he’s faster. Faster than he’s ever been. He breaks the Sighted’s knife arm, then hits him with the butt of his rifle, shattering the glass of the Sighted’s goggles and most of the face underneath. Teeth and blood and bone. He turns to face another of the Sighted, hits him too, then puts a las-bolt in him. Sweat and oil and smoke. Wyck’s heart is loud. So loud. A shadow moves in his peripheral vision. He snaps around, with his ears ringing and his heart beating like a rolling drum.

  And realises with an instant to spare that he’s pointing his rifle at Andren Fel. His fingers twitch. It’s a conscious and deliberate effort to lower his gun.

  ‘It’s done,’ Fel says slowly.

  Or maybe it’s not slowly. Wyck can’t really tell. He looks around at the Sighted, slumped and still. Silent. His Wyldfolk are watching him. So are the Duskhounds. He tries to ignore the burning in his limbs and the prickling against his mind. The thunder of his heart.

  ‘We cut them,’ Wyck says absently.

  Fel tilts his head. ‘They cut you, that’s for sure.’

  Wyck feels it then, a distant stinging. The cut goes right across his throat, just shallow enough not to open it all the way.

  ‘We should keep moving,’ he says, his voice hoarse.

  ‘There is not much further to go.’

  Zane stands at the edge of the clearing, just beyond where the circle of fire is burning low. Her pale face is like a moonstone in the dim light. She has never looked so much like a bad spirit.

  ‘Follow me,’ she says. ‘To the mouth of the Maw.’

  Verastus waves his hand and the scene kaleidoscopes before Raine’s eyes.

  ‘I said that your value is in your potential,’ he says. ‘In the fates you might make. The tremors you send singing through the futures.’

  There’s a flicker like the changing of a vid-reel, and Verastus places his hand on Raine’s shoulder.

  Raine sees Gloam aflame, the hives toppling to be swallowed by the sea. The sky splits with lightning and the sound of screams.

  She sees rows and rows of Antari dead, draped in cloaks of forest-drab. Each one bears the single wound of execution.

  She sees Lord-General Militant Serek lying dead from a single bolt pistol round, his blood spreading across a floor of white marble to touch Raine’s boots.

  She sees Daven Wyck, coming at her wild-eyed, blood up from the stimms. He puts a knife in her chest, too fast to stop.

  She sees Lydia Zane, alight with psychic fire that burns until even her bones are gone.

  Last of all, she sees Andren Fel, standing with his back against cold grey stone, facing down a firing squad for crimes committed in her name.

  ‘Tricks and lies,’ Raine manages to say.

  Verastus ignores her. His grip on her shoulder tightens.

  ‘And then there are the fates that made you,’ he says.

  The scene changes again. Raine sees her mother, decorated in bright regimental dress. Her father, decorated with blood from the executioner’s bullet that killed him.

  There’s one more figure. One that steals the air from Raine’s lungs.

  Her sister.

  ‘Lucia.’

  Raine can’t help saying the name. It claws free of her throat on its own. Her heart missteps, going out of time. She coughs up blood.

  Verastus sighs. His smile is beatific.

  ‘I thought you should see it,’ he says. ‘Your value.’

  Raine looks at the heretic leader through blinking, bleary eyes. ‘No,’ she says, the words coming as agonised whispers. ‘This is not my value.’

  And with a scream of effort, she locks her hands around his throat.

  Verastus struggles, but Raine hangs on, her vision dazzling and her mind alight. The world around them shatters and all of the fates blow away like smoke. Reality reasserts itself, all traces of the waking dream gone, save for the pain and the burning in her mind.

  Arcadius Verastus looks down at her. He wipes the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. Psycho-stigmatic bruises mark his throat.

  ‘You know,’ he says, his voice hoarse, ‘it really will be a pleasure to kill you, Severina Raine.’

  Wyck and the Antari follow Lydia Zane to the cliff’s edge. She stands there for a moment, buffeted by the wind. The cliff is open and exposed, and it makes Wyck uneasy.

  ‘You said it was close,’ he says. ‘Where is it?’

  Zane turns to look at him. She looks pulled thin, like an animal skin set to cure. ‘It is close,’ she says. ‘Can you not see it?’

  Wyck curls his fists. ‘No, I can’t see it, because there is nothing here to see. Now stop with your damned witch-words and start making sense.’

  Zane laughs. ‘Follow me,’ she says.

  Then she steps off the cliff.

  Wyck’s hammering heart skips a beat, but Zane doesn’t fall. She doesn’t scream. She just disappears completely, as if the wind took her.

  ‘Emperor’s bloody wounds,’ says Crys. ‘Now what?’

  Wyck sc
owls. He’s just worked out why he feels so uneasy, and it’s not because they’re exposed. It’s because there’s more witchcraft here, and it’s powerful. He spits on the ground at his feet.

  ‘We follow her,’ he says, and he takes a step forward.

  It’s like pushing through a waterfall, all noise and cold for a moment, and then it’s behind him and he’s standing on a ridge looking down on the mouth of the Maw. The Sighted stronghold. It’s a deep, dark hollow cut into the rock, big enough to take the height of a scout titan, fortified with void shielding and gun emplacements. Floodlights make a circle of light in front of the entrance, painting hard black shadows on the ground from the groups of Sighted guarding it.

  ‘Well,’ Andren Fel says. ‘This isn’t going to be easy.’

  For once, Wyck finds himself agreeing with the Duskhound. ‘We can’t fight our way in,’ he says. ‘Not through that.’

  Zane shakes her head. There’s frost patterning her shorn scalp. ‘We will not have to. I can hide us, just as they hide this place.’

  ‘Just like that?’ Wyck says flatly.

  Zane’s brow furrows. ‘Nothing is done just like that. I will not just be hiding us from soldiers, but from those who see like I do. It will tax me.’

  ‘But you can do it?’ Fel asks.

  ‘If we are fast,’ Zane says, with a humourless smile. ‘And lucky.’

  Wyck looks down at the mounted guns and the low, tracked vehicles and the deep dark mouth of the Maw, and he suppresses a shudder. It’s not the thought of running towards his death – it’s the thought of trusting Lydia Zane to hide him from it. But then again, he doesn’t have a whole lot of choice about either.

  And he’s been slipping past death for a long while now without it catching hold.

  ‘Do it,’ Wyck says. ‘Let’s end this.’

  The Antari pass into the mouth of the Maw, invisible and silent. The world as seen through Zane’s projected glamour runs like wet paint. Sound is muted and distant. They pass under the gun emplacements. By the vehicles and patrols. Wyck keeps his rifle levelled. His hands are clammy on the stock and the trigger. It would only take a second. One lapse in Zane’s concentration, and the Sighted will have them. They’ll be torn to shreds. It is cold inside the glamour, and getting colder with every passing second. The rasp of Zane’s breathing is like a blunt blade on a whetstone.