An Ill-Fated Sky Read online

  Tirdad stared at its cowl for a moment, attempting to pick out anything behind the fabric to no avail. He then glanced at the marzban, who only offered a shrug. This was his first venture into Ashtadukht’s world without her, and he was already beginning to understand just how little he knew. He swallowed and spread his arms. The star-reckoner uttered an indistinct phrase, lifted its branch-like arms, and just like that his wounds were closed.

  “I . . . thank you,” he said, his awe evident, as the star-reckoner did the same for Chobin. He thought it was strange that the Eshm sisters came to mind, but he didn’t fight it. “Why not heal them?” he asked, gesturing at the crowd.

  “You were injured in my home. They were not. They can only afford shelter.”

  Right. It’d almost slipped his mind that this was a rogue star-reckoner—purely mercenary. “Of course,” he said.

  “An uncommon question,” it mused, its tone briefly betraying curiosity before a swift return to business. “Not what I would have expected. Now, what do you want?”

  Tirdad cleared his throat. He felt ill at ease and was having second thoughts about asking a creature such as this for its help. The star-reckoner scarcely breathed, but when it did, those heavy inhalations pulled at his soul. There was no mistaking it: he was in over his head.

  Chobin answered for him. The marzban wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated, and his flippant tone reflected as much. “So much for hospitality,” he said. “My friend here finished off a planet-reckoner. Things got strange as fuck after that. So here we are.”

  “Go on.”

  “That isn’t quite right,” Tirdad cut in, finding his confidence in what he believed to be a disservice to Ashtadukht. He had done so much more than finish off a planet-reckoner. “In my youth, my uncle—a great general if there ever was one—once asked me the distinction between a ram and the ram. ‘Exactly that,’ he had said. ‘Distinction.’ So no, I didn’t finish off a planet-reckoner. I finished off the planet-reckoner.” The passion of his delivery commanded the attention of everyone present.

  “With this blade,” he said, unsheathing it to reveal its magpie-black coat. Tirdad then related the tale of the night in question. Once he’d finished, he craned to look into the cowl of the star-reckoner. “I need answers. I need to know what happened to my sword. What happened to me.”

  “I will look,” the star-reckoner replied.

  A prolonged silence intervened during which a queasy sense of being watched by something hidden and terrible threatened to empty his stomach. It made his hair stand on end. He had had about enough, and was on the verge of making that patently clear, when a power best described as a planet’s glower amassed within. It too made his stomach turn, but in a manner he had never thought possible. A pleasant nausea. Then, when it sloshed at the lip of his too-full soul, it surged free. Out of nowhere the star-reckoner was hurled through the crowd and against the ramparts at the far end of the courtyard with such force it cratered the stone. Tirdad made to run over, but the Eshm sisters were once again hankering for a fight. Before they could act on their bloodlust, the star-reckoner spoke up.

  “Do not attack them,” it said, its voice quaking. With a great deal of effort, legs shaking like a newborn foal, the star-reckoner got to its feet. Where it towered over the sisters, it favoured one side, and its cowl was splashed with blood where its mouth must have been. It shambled over, crowd parting around it. “This will not come cheap,” it said. “You could have killed me.”

  Beetle-browed, Tirdad spread his hands. “I did nothing.”

  “Was standing by his side the whole time,” Chobin added. “He tells the truth.”

  The star-reckoner tilted its head. “I see. Not directly, but through you. That makes sense. Still, the fee is double.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Chobin fumed, pointing his sword at the star-reckoner. “Think you can pull a fucking fast one on us because you consort with divs?”

  Tirdad placed a hand on his forearm, easing the sword back down. “Don’t,” he said. “Thanks, but it isn’t necessary.” He turned a frown on the star-reckoner. “If anything was behind what just happened, I’d wager it was your overconfidence. Now, I’ve travelled far to enlist your services, and still wish to do so. Are you going to start charging for your recklessness? Because word gets around.”

  After brief consideration, the star-reckoner consented. “Very well. I would however ask that you pay the rate for undertakings rather than divine consultation.”

  Tirdad nodded. That amounted to a fifty-percent hike, but he had expected those rates coming into this. Ashtadukht had told him that competition bade rogue star-reckoners to offer fees similar to what the empire imposed. He untied a pouch from his belt and handed it over, noting the too-long digits that raked the inside of the star-reckoner’s sleeve as it accepted his payment. “Forget whatever formalities are involved,” he said. The unknown had weighed on him long enough. “I’m interested in hearing it in full. Immediately.”

  “Here?” the star-reckoner asked, referring to their audience.

  “Here’s fine.”

  “I would be remiss in my service if I did not warn you of the danger of this information, especially in the hands of those who would wish you harm.”

  Tirdad glanced at Chobin, who offered a sinister grin. Of course he would. “Your warning has been noted. Now, if you would.”

  The star-reckoner took a seat, its slender legs showing signs of giving out as it did, and everyone present gathered around. The Eshm sister with the mangled arm drew up beside Tirdad as if she hadn’t just made an attempt on his life.

  “It all started with her sacred girdle,” the star-reckoner began as if they were sitting around a campfire. “From what I could gather before you kicked me out, Ashtadukht had unwittingly created a phylactery of it over the years. With every knot, a little of her would be tied to the fabric. When you ended her life, the phylactery did what phylacteries do: it set to reviving her. Your blade seems to have obstructed its path, or perhaps it sought your blade because the phylactery was unfinished. That I could not ascertain. What I can tell you is that her soul was redirected partly to you, mostly to your blade. Having said that, I should make this clear: Ashtadukht is no more. You have preserved a mere shadow of the planet-reckoner. Her sentience is lost.”

  Tirdad interrupted by raising his palm. In the span of a few sentences his hopes had been summarily reinvigorated, then dashed. He turned a pensive frown on the blade, and began tracing it from end to end, watching with intensity as the splashes of iridescence danced at his touch. In a way, it was beautiful. He would have likened it to a black pearl if there were such a thing. He told himself that this was all that remained of her—that what he held was no mere sword, but a relic. Chobin gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Continue,” he said without looking up.

  The star-reckoner did as instructed. “The events had the effect of investing in you her access to the celestial theatre. Think of it as assuming her stamp seal. But the sword, having inherited the bulk of what was left of her, contains her control over planet-reckoning. Without it, you will be thrown into the heavens head first, and next time you will not be so lucky. So I strongly recommend you do as it said and never let go. Always keep it within reach.” A contemplative pause. “You have become a planet-reckoner. I would say an unconventional one, but there is no established convention. So few and far between are they that most star-reckoners of our time are unaware the title exists at all.” Another pause. “A planet-reckoner need not be a servant of the Lie.”

  “Planet-reckoner,” Tirdad said. “How’s that possible? I couldn’t draw a lot if my life depended on it.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “Well, no. But—”

  “Do not try here.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it. There’s something else, though. I get glimpses of what I believe are her memories.”

  “What are we but the sum of our memories? She is a part of you, a part of the sword,
so it is only natural.”

  Tirdad applied a white-knuckled grip to the blade, which was all too eager to draw the heat from his blood. “You’re positive?”

  “Yes.”

  One such memory had just come to him with excruciating precision. Smell heralded its arrival, reeking of blood and sweat and too much hatred for one person. The stench flooded his nostrils and stole him away like the incense of priests. What followed did so all at once. Blood, unmistakably metallic, clogged his nose and coated his mouth; it gurgled at the back of his throat. Wildfire spread through his lungs, one of which was crushed, shoved aside so that the claw that bore through his back could tease his heart. Pinned against hewn stone, his skull drummed where his many injuries found a splitting juncture. Fingers like leathery spider legs clamped his face in a cage, twisting his head and drawing it back such that he thought and hoped it’d be torn from his shoulders. Beneath them, the tears had become salty tracts, and the one eye he could see out of glared with untrammeled malice at the stars that had forsaken him—stars he had trusted and adored. He cursed them for their mockery, vowed to give their children their just desserts. This failure changed nothing.

  He would smear the heavens with their souls, stain the windows an eternal vile. Through the ages, long after he had returned to dust, the stars would still have no choice but to observe the world through the gore of their chosen.

  A white cowl leaned into his vision. “Am I losing you yet?” it asked with insincere concern. “Would that I could revive you and start anew—oh, but I guess we have already figured that one out for ourselves.” It sunk its nails into his heart. Then the memory absconded, leaving Tirdad to sort through the aftermath.

  Rage and hatred swelled within—some belonging to him, some the dream. Tirdad bellowed so loudly it rattled in his throat. He surrendered to the aftermath, and in one swift lunge his blade pierced the star-reckoner’s cowl and emerged triumphant from the other side. Sparks popped and sizzled in its sleeves, remnants of a rejoinder that was cut brutally short.

  “Good riddance,” he spat, then planted his boot on the star-reckoner’s chest to kick it free of his blade. The corpse folded backward, and its sleeves caught fire. Without giving it another thought, Tirdad lifted his sword and turned a circle, daring someone to challenge him. As he did, Chobin shuffled in to cover his rear.

  “By Ohrmazd,” said the marzban, doing his best to watch his half of the crowd, though he would have been fully aware his best wasn’t good enough. “You are fucking full of surprises lately. Anything else you want to throw at me?”

  Tirdad offered no reply.

  The Eshm sisters had drawn their weapons, and though they emanated bloodlust, they were patently distant, heads askew and pupils dilated.

  “Think this one through?” Chobin asked as they circled back to back, having found themselves back where they started.

  “Less than I’ve ever thought anything through,” Tirdad admitted.

  “I can tell. What’re they doing? Toying with us again?”

  “Haven’t the slightest, but it’s off-putting.”

  In a round of hisses, the Eshm sisters broke their trance and retired in the direction of the corridor the pair had passed earlier, cursing and throwing down their weapons along the way. Only the leader remained.

  “You’re a lucky menstrual-fucker mhm,” she said as she eased her arm back into the sling. “Get out of here before . . .” She bared her fangs, but not at anyone in particular. “Just get.” She picked up the coin pouch meant for the star-reckoner, looked Tirdad square in the eyes, then went to join the others.

  Tirdad wasted no time breaking into a sprint that his feeble torchlight couldn’t hope to guide. He had gotten what he came for and more. Now, he wanted to put as much distance between him and this wicked castle as his lungs would allow. Once the head of the stork had disappeared around a bend in the gorge, Chobin took purchase on his arm and stopped him as true as an anchor.

  “What the everliving fuck happened back there?” the marzban demanded.

  Tirdad spun on him, torch throwing stark shadows on the glower that twisted his face. “Exactly what it looked like, Chobin. I shoved my blade through the skull of a star-reckoner. I smeared his soul across the heavens, and I can only hope the stars were watching.”

  Chobin wore an incredulousness unlike anything he had ever seen in the man. Planet-reckoner and marzban stood silent for a few heavy minutes that seemed to go on forever. The planet-reckoner was the one to fold.

  “That . . . that thing!” Tirdad shouted, thrusting a shaking finger at the castle. Rage still coursed through him, which bled into his delivery. He let out a charged scream that went on until it cracked just to give the rage a chance to escape. With that, and under Chobin’s unwavering scrutiny, he deflated. He was being judged. “If you’d seen what I saw,” he said, which drew his face into a grimace. “If you’d felt it as if you were . . . as if you were her.”

  He dug his fingers through his hair, staring daggers at the sky. “What it did—”

  Her heart had been in its dreadful grasp. In her chest. Something about that made it so much worse than if it’d been ripped out. The star-reckoner had no interest in killing her; it wanted to violate her.

  Tirdad’s stomach turned, and he lurched over to wretch, hands on his knees as it splattered the earth. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve without a care for his appearance. “Ugh.”

  He looked up at the marzban, whose judgment still had not been reached. “The things it did to her, Chobin. I just had to.” His tone plainly read that he was sick of explaining himself.

  The marzban expelled the sort of sigh a person uses when they have no desire to be cross with a person, but all the justification. He offered his waterskin. “What kind of person wears a cowl backwards?”

  Tirdad took a swig, relieved to see the casual amusement once again honey his friend’s features, even if they were fraught with concern. “The kind who walks into swords I imagine.”

  Chobin let out an uneasy laugh and slapped him on the shoulder. “Something is wrong with you.”

  III

  Waray tried to suck in a breath. And another and another and another. The trouble, she discovered, was in getting them to go down. Suffocating, she panicked, eyes wide and kicking her feet as she frantically scratched at her neck.

  Try as she might, she couldn’t get in. The gash that had so inelegantly drained her of her life had been reduced to a scar. So she dug her nails into her flesh in an attempt to rip the wound open and free the squirming mass that clogged her throat. Waray struggled for minutes, but the more she panicked, the more her lungs cried out, the less fight she could muster.

  It wasn’t long before her racing thoughts had slowed to a crawl. Waray pawed weakly at her neck where she had managed to rake out a few maggots. Then tranquility dethroned panic. She stared vacantly into the sun, though she didn’t really see it. Her pawing ceased, and her futile breaths grew further and further apart until, quiet and alone, she died again.

  Within seconds, her soul was shunted from her corpse. This had the effect of thrusting her into a world swathed in starling-black that stretched for eternity in every direction. Cage might have been a better term for it; it kept her in and everything else out. Waray couldn’t see a thing—not even herself—but her connection to the world of the living remained. Through that, she could sense the Nasu buzzing around her.

  They were the divs that polluted the body and soul after death if they weren’t driven away by priests. She had seen them many times, and they had devoured her other selves after the forty-armed div struck them down. Nasu seemed to her the result of a fling between a crocodile and a fly, though as creative as her mind was she couldn’t conjure the image of the two copulating. The logistics were a nightmare. But she had convinced herself that life had found a way. Even life with knobby limbs like runaway gout, soggy wings that had no business generating any amount of lift, and a snout flat and picketed. They buzzed irritably
, unable to breach her cage.

  Waray sat down, or thought about it anyway. Here, surrounded by curtains of starling-black, things were clearer than they had been in centuries. She remembered. She had been different back then, had—

  She coughed up chunks of maggots and dried blood. “Šo-damned—” She cursed when it came back down to land on her face, and bared her fangs at what she believed to be a conspiracy orchestrated to have her eat maggots. Waray rolled over and struggled to get to her hands and knees. “Šo-damned cabal plotting like some . . . like some land over yonder with—”

  A coughing fit had her littering the earth with everything she had managed to dislodge before dying, and wheezing all the while. When her esophagus was finally cleared, she threw an irritable hiss at the squirming mess. “—a compost heap.”

  Next thing she knew the breath was knocked out of her. As she fell over, she realized peripherally that she had been kicked, but was more concerned with losing the air she had finally tamed. She had worked so hard for it, too—died for it. Then it just fled like so much wind.

  Having landed on her back, Waray made to spring away, but it turned out dying had done a number on her reaction time. The infantryman who had presumably kicked her was already driving his spear into her gut, which tore through her organs, severed her spine, and lodged in the ground. Pain like a falcon’s curved beak ripping at her abdomen shot up her torso and latched onto her vocal cords. But before she could wail, her lineage rushed in.

  A wave of heat swept over her flesh, the pomegranate-red of bloodlust swamped her vision, and enough adrenaline for thirty men coursed through her veins. The pain no longer registered. She bared her fangs, saliva dripping from her mouth, and snapped at the air.

  “I’ll make you slop for the broodmother!” she screamed. “I’ll nap in your šo-steamy offal, then I’ll shovel you into her gullet!”