2012-09-Shattered Steel Read online

  “Your crooked game lures in the desperate. Your accomplices spread lies and prey upon the hopes of the poor. You bully and rob those who come. You kill any who try to take back what you steal. You are a cheater, a thief, a murderer, and a coward.”

  “What!? I don’t force anyone to come here!” His excuses sounded like a piglet’s squeals as he scooted back against and up the curved wall, trying to regain his feet. “And it’s not my fault if they don’t have the money to play. I’m no murderer!”

  “You are.”

  It wasn’t as clean as that. The dead men’s sister hadn’t muddied her brothers’ memories with unflattering truths. And Quil hadn’t murdered them with his own hand. His confession had even pointed me toward someone who might be even more dangerous. But being a lesser evil didn’t make him innocent.

  My steel flashed again. This time Quil didn’t whimper.

  ∗∗∗

  The back alleys and forgotten streets of the old city wound together into a singularly wretched urban quagmire. At times I found myself wading waist-deep through piles of trash, the wreckage of broken lives, and the filth mountains of rodent despots. At others I had to retrace my steps entirely to avoid a collapsed building or a gang’s territorial barrier. Fortunately, the prisoners of this labyrinth didn’t bother me—those who even roused at my passing knew well enough to squeeze their eyes back closed and hastily forget. But some things were bolder, and knew or cared less about my armor’s infamous reputation. More than once a hail of loose shakes clattered onto the cobbles behind me as something skidded upon the rooftops. I never saw more than a dash of shadows or the reflection of the moon off oily eyes, but I knew that more than men preyed upon those lost among these streets. In the old city, garbage collected in the gutters along both streets and shingles.

  Despite the debris and denizens of the slums, I soon reached my destination. The Slug’s Trail was little more than a blind alley leading to the walled-in courtyard of a half-collapsed insula. It took its name from both its short length and the years of discarded oils and cooking greases that coated its walls, thrown from the rear stoop of a long-emptied fish fry. Flies congregated here in droning plagues, and the squirming things they spawned weren’t slugs. But despite the swarms of shit-eaters, this had also become a kind of wretched safe house for the most pitiable street dwellers. No gang or roof crawler cared to contest the flies for their home, and the high walls of the surrounding buildings sheltered against much of the wind and weather. The alley was filthy, infested, and disgusting, but still preferable to many of the hunting grounds where gangs of self-proclaimed slumlords insisted upon rents paid in either silver or skin.

  Tonight, though, the Slug’s Trail was something other than a glimpse of urban Hell. It was empty.

  Narrow and largely uncluttered, its shadows shallow, the alley’s rough stone formed an unobstructed channel to a sagging entryway, the inner yard beyond visible in ghostly shades as moonlight filtered through the night’s pooling mist. Barely noticeable in the dark, a narrow, uneven window watched from just above that opening, a single lazy eye lolling over the ugly alley.

  It wasn’t difficult to recognize this for what it was—not just a dirty cul-de-sac, but a killing ground. Anyone attempting to enter the insula would have to pass beneath that window and whoever might be lurking amid the shadows within. I considered that I might be paranoid, but if I was hunting a killer, I preferred not to give my quarry any undue opportunity.

  Somewhere over the buildings and across the nearby docks, a ship’s bell rang out the meager hour. By the time its echo had faded I’d found another of the insula’s exterior walls and, using slanting bricks as handholds, climbed through the window into a second-story apartment. There were few who could move as I did in full armor—but then, few had their armor specially fitted to their body’s every angle, the skin they were born with overridden by steel. I could hardly call it a blessing, but I am the creature I am, and tonight steel moved as soundlessly as silk.

  The apartments within obviously hadn’t been rented for years, but also hadn’t wanted for residents in that time. Broken glass, shattered furniture, and other garbage littered the floor, while layers of crass graffiti and outdated gang symbols covered what remained of cheap plaster walls. The rats had been at the place as well. I didn’t see them, but their smell was thick in the air. Time and violence had thoroughly devastated the interior, reducing the multiple apartments into a broken hall, cornering at right angles around the central courtyard and divided only by the low remnants of walls and splintering supports.

  Slipping through the wreckage as stealthily as the irritable floorboards allowed, I reached a corner and looked down another row of rooms. Here would be the one with the window overlooking the Slug’s Trail. There was more, though. By weather, shoddy construction, or more deliberate violence, much of the inner wall had fallen away, calving in great pieces into the courtyard below.

  A figure in black, his form concealed by shadow, knelt at the window, his head resting upon the sill. I jerked back into the dark, not eager to lose my advantage if he looked over his shoulder. It seemed my caution had proved warranted. If I’d come down the alley, the hiss of a crossbow bolt would likely have been the last thing I heard.

  A momentary gap in the night’s clouds threw a weak wave of moonlight over the figure. At first I thought he was much bigger than a man, his shoulders impossibly broad, but a glint of steel suggested that heavy spaulders had inflated my impression. The shoulder guards weren’t out of place, either, as plates weighty enough to bring the unaccustomed to their knees girded all but his head.

  This was something I hadn’t expected. I thought for sure that Quil had lied to me, or gotten lucky by finding some thug with actual skill, but here was something else—someone either trained to wear that armor or suffering the worst kind of madness. Of his features, I could see little, the outline of a head shaved nearly bald being the only hint of a man beneath the steel plates. If he was armed, I couldn’t tell, the night and his dark steel conspiring to make him a shadow only slightly more lustrous than the rest crowding the wreckage.

  At first I thought he was waiting—perhaps even for me. Could he be a guard, and this some elaborate trap? But as I waited and watched from the darkness, I began to see his head nod almost imperceptibly, slowly, with even breaths. He was asleep. This didn’t seem careless, though, with his vantage over the best approach and armor still fastened. He seemed more like a soldier in hostile territory, as ready as he could be while still at rest. Or it was a ruse.

  Either way, I moved cautiously as I slipped around the corner, picking through the ruin to come upon him from behind. During my nearly silent approach he hadn’t moved. That changed quickly as I clamped one hand around his neck, digging my thumb into a tender point, my other lifting his chin with the cold length of my dagger.

  “Who are you?” I demanded, the rasp echoing hollowly within my locked helm.

  I could feel him jar to wakefulness and tense with surprise, but that passed in an instant—not a good sign. He’d been trained to control his shock, his instinct to go rigid. Without a word he reversed his balance, throwing his weight against my chest.

  My own training countermanded my curiosity, and my blade slid across his throat. But instead of being gripped by the slight resistance of separating skin, the dagger screeched across a gorget hidden in the dark, doing nothing to slow the armored figure’s rearward charge. I suddenly became aware of the crumbled inner wall behind me, my legs kicking backward to keep me upright, heels skidding on glass and garbage. The remains of a plaster window frame caught me in the small of my back, and I reflexively released my grip, lashing out for any handhold in reach. I snagged a piece of wooden beam, only to have it crumble like a chunk of clay.

  A vision of clouds made ghostly by moonlight blurred through my vision as I toppled backward through the air.

  Chapter Three: Wounds that Rust

  I crashed down on my upper back with a peal of
metal thunder, the impact as much a sound as a physical blow, jarring every steel plate and fragile bone. Flashes of lightning exploded within my helm, and I fought to remain conscious as I slid sideways down a mound of rubble, part of a small avalanche of splinters and broken bricks. I think I momentarily lost my senses, as the next thing I remember was a commotion of unpleasant sensations, pinpricks cascading across my limbs as my confused body tried to either reawaken itself or rage against the grip of paralysis. Something in my memory urgently vied for attention, the lingering flickers of rational thought screaming at me, going hoarse with desperation.

  A shadow fell across my unseeing gaze, and my mind rallied.

  I kicked as fiercely as I could, silently exulting at the sensation of my legs—though heavy—actually moving. The motion slid me further down the pile of wreckage, spinning me just as a heavy object impacted the rubble where my head had been, pelting my slightly askew visor with debris. My heels hit the semi-level stone of the courtyard and I was up, taking two long stumbling strides as one hand righted my helmet and the other gripped my sword. I spun, my blade half from its sheath before reflex threw me into another motion more akin to ballet than battle.

  The barbed spike of a halberd whistled as it swung, swiping through vision up-flung by the extreme arch of my back. Muscles like taut chains snapped my torso upright, and I faced my attacker with blade fully drawn, a deadly extension of my outstretched arm.

  What light filtered into the courtyard barely glinted from blackened plates as much weapons as armor, bladed and forged with the visage of a fiendish skull dominating the breastplate, its monstrous teeth gnashed together in a wall of daggers. The infernal steel piled upon a mountainous figure, his face now hidden behind the featureless visor of a newly donned helm. Had the night itself sent its own legionnaire against me, its manifestation could not have been more menacing.

  A Hellknight. Now it was clear who Quil had found to avenge him against the Calavettis so affordably. Initially I’d assumed just some sadistic gang member or bloodthirsty lunatic, but those possibilities had largely evaporated when I’d seen the Slug’s Trail emptied of its huddled occupants. So much for optimism. The Hellknights served no lord other than their own grim vision of justice, meting it out sometimes for the coin of those seeking lawful revenge, and sometimes merely to make examples of those who flaunted their crimes. I suspected Quil had convinced this monstrosity that the Calavettis fell into that latter category—they had robbed the crooked gambler, after all. It’d be easy to see them as the villains and undertake their execution with only half the story—Quil’s half. I couldn’t help but wonder if I would have done the same if Quil had come to me.

  The Hellknight’s tempered, dispassionate voice jerked me from my fantasy of morality, his words sounding almost mechanical as they reverberated from his heavy helm to mine. “There’s no defense for your being here,” he said, his tone that of judge delivering his verdict. “Having rejected amnesty, you are a war criminal and a traitor to the new order. Throw down your weapon and submit.”

  He was right. Just wearing this armor made me a criminal, an embodiment of slaughter and mad ambition. After the queen fell, the city’s new rulers offered us our old lives back. They humbled us and called it mercy.

  But they didn’t know what it had been like. They might have had their families killed and their bodies scarred, but so had we—and worse, we had done it to ourselves. We were the Gray Maidens, the elite, the bodyguards of a queen as beautiful as she was ambitious—and viciously insane. Few chose to join the queen’s guard, but she and her followers were not to be denied. The beautiful, the talented, the unscrupulous—I forget which I’d been—all of us were made to serve. Those of us who hadn’t reveled in our cruel authority had our minds shackled as thoroughly as our bodies, the parts of us that made us who we were locked away, transforming us into the marionettes of a mad woman. The scholar I once was—the one who had dreams, who indulged in magic words, and whose blood I too often bled—died long ago, executed in all but body for deeds performed against her will, but performed nonetheless. And not the sweep of a thousand bureaucrats’ pardons would resurrect her. There was only this. Only a chance, a hope, that I could make something right in whatever days I had remaining. That I might have a chance to prove that something like a heart still beat within this armor.

  But the Hellknight cared nothing for my redemption. His halberd hung in the space between us, its curved blade all too suggestive of an executioner’s axe. If I submitted, at best I’d be handed over to the city guard, put on public display, then executed as either a zealot or a dangerous lunatic. Or he might exact his view of justice here and now—as he did with the Calvettis. He didn’t appear to be carrying any manacles. In any case, I doubted he would be the first of his kind to show sympathy.

  I stepped forward, as if preparing to lunge. The knight’s weapon came around in a predictable arc, but far faster than I’d anticipated, barely giving me an instant to dance back. The blade passed and I shot forward again, seeing how close I could get between scythelike swipes. Farther this time, but not far enough. The Hellknight channeled the momentum of the long-hafted axe like a deadly conductor, directing his steel around in a lethal figure eight, the weapon never even slowing as it wheeled around, intent on cleaving me in two. I flung myself back just barely in time, the point of the halberd’s spear tip clattering across the steel scales of my midsection. If he’d been able to adjust his weight fast enough, he could have impaled me in that instant. I slid farther out of reach, and regarded him even more cautiously.

  He knew his weapon, had greater range, was likely stronger, and was at least as well trained as I. This was going to be nasty—but he didn’t have all the advantages.

  The Hellknights serve no lord other than their own grim vision of justice.

  His heavy blade waving between us, I darted in once more, directly toward the weapon. The spear tip shot forward to meet me, seeking to punch through my armor’s weaker scales. It hit almost directly—an inch closer to my middle and it would have skewered me. As it was, it struck where I’d intended. I spun with the impact, twisting hard away from the curved axe head. Flexible scales rolled the weapon’s point across my midsection, and for an instant the knight saw my back—probably believing he’d struck a deadly wound. I eagerly disillusioned him. My upraised sword arm came around with my spin, sliding my blade cleanly under his spiked gardbrace, tearing into his shoulder.

  A growl of surprised pain rang within the dark armor and I yanked my sword back as though it were a knife, preparing to stab again. With me inside his guard, he couldn’t effectively bring his polearm to bear. I had him.

  His armored fist erupted upward, catching me under the chin. Stars flashed across my vision, and the blow snapped my jaw up hard, rattling my teeth as though I’d caught a thrown rock in my mouth. I stumbled back, slashing wildly, but succeeding only in scoring the fiendish face snarling upon his sculpted breastplate.

  My sword almost didn’t come up fast enough. The axe-head skidded along my blade and I had to use both hands to throw it aside, the power of his blow forcing me back another step. The vibrations of the impact rang through me, dulling the feeling in my arms. Just as fast, the next strike came. The bloodied Hellknight had perhaps lost a measure of his composure, but none of his vigor. His attacks hammered down, raining over me like a taskmaster’s lash. Before the tremors of the last strike subsided the next was already falling. It felt as though my bones were being reduced to dust in their sockets. I gave ground just to keep my balance, each impact forcing me back farther, each step a chance to slip or find myself backed against a wall.

  I felt his rhythm before I even realized it, my limbs expecting the coming blow, my sword arm rising to parry an attack high and to the left. The Hellknights prided themselves on their mercilessness, on their unfeeling exaction of law, but obviously didn’t value imagination. This one had trained himself to be a clockwork soldier—deadly, but predictable.

&
nbsp; I, on the other hand, had the dubious fortune of having been trained by maniacs.

  The halberd came leveled for my head, and I wasn’t there. Dropping low, I slid under the swipe and drove my blade down with all my weight, puncturing the metal guarding his left foot, momentarily pinning him to the ground. His growl worsened to a roar as he reflexively tried to jerk back. Lashing wildly, the butt of his weapon came down hard on my shoulder, knocking me away. I rolled as best I could, slashing at his legs. The armor seemed weaker there, and my steel cleaved through leather and skin—but not without a price. The spear-tip fell, and I threw up my arm to catch it. The barbed spike grated through metal and flesh with equal ease.

  Immediately, the length of my arm coursed with wet warmth, rivulets leaking through armored gaps. It looked black as oil in the courtyard’s shadows. My sword rose wildly, scraping the plates of my attacker’s groin. It didn’t find a mark, but the impact alone caused him to flinch, pulling his bloodied weapon along with him.

  Bounding to my feet, I pressed forward, trying to keep him on guard as long as possible. We clashed like living swords, both of us weapons honed for similar purposes, but still far from alike. Where my armor granted me flexibility, his reinforced the impression of some hellish automaton, and what strikes he couldn’t deflect with his weapon he beat aside with gauntleted fists. Again and again my blade struck like a cat’s claw, his metallic hisses signaling a dozen minor scratches, but none telling. From the lines of dark droplets sprayed across the courtyard rubble, I had to be wearing him down, but his movements gave little sign. He fought like a fanatic, and as the fight ground on I realized he’d never back down. For him, this wasn’t a battle with another soldier—it was against an enemy of his blind convictions. Somewhere, someone’s word ordered him to fight unto victory or death. It was simple.

  For a moment, I almost envied him. But my days of freedom through obedience died with the old queen.