Herald of the Storm by Richard Ford
No one had ever cared for Rag when she was sick before. She’d always been the one to act mother, always taken care of Chirpy, Migs and Tidge when they’d caught a fever or got a cut or a graze. It made her nervous, made her wary, but still she let him hold her head up and pour that drink right into her mouth. When the cup was empty he laid her head back down on the pillow.
‘Where is he now?’ she asked. Now she had some wet on her lips it was easier to speak.
‘As I said, he’s dead, love. You don’t need to worry.’
‘No, I mean his body. Where’s his body?’
Lincon looked around uncertain, like he didn’t really know how to answer.
‘Until someone comes to take him off for a burial he’s … erm … in our cellar. It’s cool down there, see.’
Rag closed her eyes. Nothing else to say. That was all she needed for now. Lincon sat with her for a while longer, at least as long as it took her to fall asleep.
When she woke later it was dark. What moonlight there was in the room showed she was alone again, and this time Rag knew she had to get up, had to use her legs no matter what.
She sat up in the dark and, holding her breath, slid off the bed and placed a foot on the floor, only breathing out when she managed to put some weight on it without collapsing. Both feet and she realised she could stand, a little shaky but not as bad as she had been.
Somewhere along the line she’d lost her shoes, but that was the least of her worries. Her head throbbed and in the dark she was going to struggle to find Krupps’ body.
Rag opened the door to the room and peered out. The corridor beyond was just as dark as her room. It was like this place was deserted. Typical Greencoats – never around when something was going on.
She stepped out, closing the door behind her, and moved along the corridor. It wasn’t long before she heard the sound of someone snoring. As she got closer she saw it was the young lad who’d come into her room earlier, Denny was it? He was slumped in a chair, arms folded, and at his side was sheathed a short blade.
Just what she needed.
Her eyes flitted from Denny’s face to the sword handle as she reached out, willing him to stay asleep. She grasped the handle, pulling it upwards, feeling it slide easy in the sheath, blowing out one long breath as the blade came free. Denny snored on as he was disarmed, and Rag allowed herself a smile as she tucked the blade under her arm and padded away down the corridor. He’d most likely be in the shit later for losing it, but right now Rag’s need was the greater.
‘We’re not taking him!’ The voice bellowed from a room to Rag’s left, and she barely had time to slam herself against the wall, hugging the shadows for dear life, as a door opened, illuminating the corridor. A tall man in a robe walked out, followed by a grizzled brute with one eye and half an arm. They was both clearly pissed off about something.
‘You’re the District Sexton; it’s your fucking job! What am I supposed to do with him?’ growled the one-eyed man.
‘Burn him in the courtyard for all I care, but unless you can afford the fee the city graveyards are full. And as I’ve said, the fee’s gone up.’
‘Since when?’ He was clearly growing angrier.
‘Since the recent influx of refugees from the four corners of the Free States. Most of them won’t last the winter. Not to mention the bodies that’ll be coming in from the north soon enough. The burial yards are full as it is. If you can’t afford it, you’ll just have to dump him in the Storway. Either way – you killed him, so he’s your responsibility.’
With that the robed man stomped off.
‘Twat,’ mumbled the grizzled brute, as he set off in the opposite direction.
Neither of them even noticed Rag was there.
Before the door could swing fully closed after them, she moved forward, jamming her arm inside. Once she’d slipped through the gap, Rag squinted against the lantern light that illuminated the room, until her eyes adjusted. Her heart began to beat a little faster as she spotted the dark passage leading downwards.
She picked up the lantern off the table and stepped down towards the cellar. It smelled stale, and she wrinkled her nose against it, but considering there was a dead body down there, at least it didn’t stink of rot.
Or she hoped there was a dead body down here. If not she was in deep shit.
The lantern did its job piercing the darkness as she reached the bottom of the stairs, but it didn’t stop the ominous feeling in her stomach. The walls were covered in damp, and somewhere she could have sworn she heard a rat squeak.
This all paled when she saw that in the centre of the cellar, lying on a wooden table, was a body. She couldn’t see its face – someone had draped a brown woollen blanket over him – but Rag knew who it was, lying there in the dark and the cold.
Her courage almost gave out right then. She almost dropped the blade and turned and ran back up the stairs.
Almost.
Weren’t no one going to do this for her. Weren’t no one ever going to do anything for her again. This was her chance. Her one last chance.
She sat the lantern to one side and walked forward. Any moment she expected the body to move, to sit up and throw the sheet aside and look at her and say, ‘All right, Sweets? Shall we carry on where we left off?’ And then he’d take her by the throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze.
But Krupps didn’t do that, because he weren’t there no more. There was a body all right, but it weren’t him. Krupps was gone now, off to wherever bastards went when they died.
All that was left was meat on a slab.
With that in mind, Rag reached out and grabbed the edge of the sheet. No point in doing it slow, prolonging the act, and she pulled it aside, showing Krupps to the world. Or at least what was left of him.
She hadn’t been far wrong about meat on a slab. Those Greencoats had done a job on him all right. His face was a mess of blood, the flesh all blue and black beneath, his mouth hung slack and she could see the teeth within smashed and ruined. Weren’t nothing of his eyes but swollen lumps.
Rag looked at him for a while, wondering how she felt about this. He’d tried to do her in, right enough, but she still couldn’t bring herself to hate him totally for it. If she’d had the guts and the strength, wouldn’t she have done the same to him?
Right now, though, she didn’t feel nothing for him. And for what she was about to do Rag reckoned that was just about the right way to feel.
The blade suddenly felt heavy in her hand, but she lifted it anyway, pausing to take a breath before sinking it into his neck as he lay there. Krupps didn’t make no sound or protest as she went at it, carving him up like a hunk of meat. The going was tough even though the blade was keen all right, but she guessed cutting a head off weren’t no easy thing. There was less blood than she’d expected, and she reckoned that was a blessing – she still wasn’t good with blood. As she continued, Rag resorted to using the blade like a saw, heaving back and forth like cutting through a log, and it seemed to be the best way. There was bone and gristle in the middle – that was the hardest to get through – but when that was done, the rest was easy.
Once she’d sawed right the way through that neck to the table beneath, Krupps’ head moved all of a sudden. Rag stepped back, just watching as it rolled right off the table and hit the cellar floor with a thud. She stared at it, wondering what to do next, feeling the weight of the knife in her hand, strangely tempted to start carving other bits off him, but there weren’t no time for that.
Rag grabbed the brown blanket he’d been laid under and rolled the head inside, wrapping it up tight. A bloodstain appeared in the wool, but there weren’t nothing she could do about that now. Besides, it was dark and with any luck no one would even notice.
Leaving the blade behind, she grabbed the lantern and made her way back up the stairs, only too glad to be leaving the cellar behind her. Someone was going to get a big surprise when they went down there later, and she almost laughed as she imagined t
Once at the top she ditched the lantern and opened the door to the corridor beyond. It was still dark and quiet, no sign of anyone, and Rag slipped out, letting the door close behind her.
She had no idea where she was, or how to get out, but it wouldn’t do to stand around and wait for someone to give her directions. She padded along quiet as the grave, her bare feet making barely a sound as she worked her way around the building, into a wide courtyard. There was still no Greencoat in sight as she hurried across the yard, spurred on by her fear and her excitement, her bruised face and fuddled head all but forgotten.
The yard led out onto the street, a quiet street she didn’t recognise, but it didn’t matter. She was out now, and she had her prize and it would all be worth it.
As she ran, with the filth of the streets squelching beneath the soles of her feet, she got to thinking that all her troubles were almost finished.
FORTY-TWO
Waylian had heard nothing.
Gerdy had seemingly returned to her own chamber without raising any alarms. If she knew whose room she had awoken in she didn’t care – or at least not enough to notify anyone important. Later, when he’d come back to his room and found it empty, relief washed over him like the evening tide.
He’d not seen Gerdy since, which was a blessing he could not stop giving thanks for. As for Rembram Thule – he could rot in the hells.
For a long time he’d tried to work out why Bram had done it. Waylian thought he was a friend, but what kind of bastard drugged someone and left them in a friend’s bedchamber?
Surely that wasn’t normal?
As he sat and stewed about it, Waylian realised he couldn’t bear to be in his room any more, and so he grabbed one of the thick tomes he’d been given by the Magistra and fled.
When he finally reached the top of the tower he remembered it had been here that he and Bram had looked out over the city. Now it seemed even when Waylian tried to find some semblance of solitude, Bram was there to ruin it for him. Nevertheless, there was nowhere else he could go, nowhere else he could be guaranteed privacy.
He sat in the shadow of the parapet and opened his book. The Invoker’s Art by Samael Hayn. Another great masterwork no doubt. How could he ever hold himself back from delving into this rich opus of knowledge?
Quite easily, he reckoned.
Waylian read for some time. None of the words sank in. Even the introduction was dry as a desert and twice as endless, more interested in the author’s notably dull life than in introducing the subject in question. It was so bloody pointless.
He clenched his teeth against the pain of it, the humiliation of it. This book was just the final straw. Yet it was useless to blame anything, anyone but himself; it was his own fault. He’d decided to come here, he’d decided to pack his bags and leave everyone behind and come to the big city. It was his arrogance and pride and ambition that had led him to this. It was nobody else’s fault everything had turned to shit.
With a snarl he flung the book over the side of the tower, hearing its pages flap desperately for a second before it soared off on the wind. Someone, somewhere, would probably find it, most likely quite battered and missing some pages – and they were bloody well welcome. Waylian could only hope they made more sense out of it than he ever would.
He put his head in his hands. When he looked up his vision was blurred with tears. Waylian hadn’t wanted to cry and he’d managed to stop himself so far, but a sob followed the tears, and was itself followed by a flood as he broke down on that roof. He hated it here. He wanted to go home, back to his mother, back to his brother and his bloody dog. And he hated that dog. It had snarled whenever he came near and had even tried to bite him once. It hadn’t drugged anyone and left them in his room though, so it was one up on Bram ruddy Thule.
In that moment it all came out, all Waylian’s misery and self-loathing and regret, as he poured out his tears on that lonely roof, overlooking a city he hardly knew, miles away from home. And never mind his loneliness and his uselessness – there was an invading army on its way to the city gates, and a rogue magicker on the loose within its walls.
What in the hells was he even doing here?
It was clear then what he had to do. There was no point waiting to be dismissed, waiting for the inevitable. Waiting for an army of savages to descend and cut him and everyone else in the city to offal. He had no friends here, he had no life here and he didn’t want the title of Magister enough to suffer all this.
It was time to go.
He opened his eyes and made to stand when he saw her there, watching him. Magistra Gelredida stood on the stairway that led up to the tower summit, her face an emotionless mask.
This was all he bloody needed. Though it didn’t matter now what she said or how she said it. He was going. She could ridicule him all she wanted. It wouldn’t make any difference.
Even so, he wiped the tears away with the sleeve of his robe, sniffing up the snot that had gathered in his nostrils.
‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.
Like you bloody care.
‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he answered, using the parapet to help him gain his feet.
‘You don’t look fine.’ Here we go, let the ridicule commence. She could do her worst, it didn’t matter a shit now. ‘Is there something you wish to talk about?’
Was this a trick?
‘I … er … it’s nothing, Magistra.’
It was nothing. It was all for nothing.
‘It doesn’t look like nothing to me, Waylian. People don’t burst into floods of tears for no good reason. Or are you prone to outbursts of unbridled emotion?’
Here we go. ‘No, Magistra. I’ve just …’ Oh, what did it matter now? ‘I’ve just had enough. I’m failing in my studies, I’m not making any friends and I’m missing my family. I think I’d like to leave the Tower and return home. I think that’s for the best.’
She studied him, looking deep into his eyes as though searching for something. ‘Best for whom, Waylian?’
‘Best for …’ For me! For you! For everyone! ‘Best for … It’s just best if I go now, before I’m dismissed.’
‘I see.’ She nodded, considering his words. ‘So you’re giving in? Throwing away any potential future you might have here to go back to your ordinary, provincial life?’
‘I’m not …’
But then he was, wasn’t he.
He was giving in, he was running away. What choice did he have? ‘Yes, I guess I am. But it’s only a matter of time before I’m dismissed. This way I’m not wasting any more of anyone’s time. Especially yours.’
Gelredida sighed, then looked out across the city. ‘That’s a shame, Waylian. I had high hopes for you.’
‘I’m sorry, Magistra?’
She looked at him with an expression that could only have been sympathy. ‘Come now, Waylian. I know I’ve been a little hard on you, but it was only for your own good. Some students require nurture. Others, a boot in the arse. It’s always been clear which one you’ve needed. Do you think I’d have spent so much time on you if there was no potential?’
‘I … Potential? But I’m completely out of my depth.’
‘You’re an apprentice, Waylian. A neophyte. Do you expect to be calling down thunderstorms and turning iron to gold in your first year? It takes some people decades to learn their first geas. Loyalty is as much a virtue for apprentices as anything. And it is clear you are loyal, Waylian.’
‘So I’m not going to be dismissed?’
That raised a smile. Only a small trace of a smile that looked like it might split the skin at the corners of her mouth, but it was, for only the second time, a definite smile.
‘Of course not, Waylian. Good apprentices are hard to find, and I’m not in the habit of taking on a new one every tenday. It’s bad enough I have to put up with you.’
The smile was gone now, and Waylian was unsure if she was joki
He stood tall, ready to begin his work anew. Magistra Gelredida thought he had potential, and that was all the affirmation he needed.
‘Shall we continue with our lessons then, Magistra?’
‘We shall. Since those fools in the Crucible Chamber have decided to sit on their hands, it may well be up to the two of us to save this city. It looks like we have a lot of work to do.’
Had anyone else said that to him, Waylian might have found it frightening, but beside his mistress he suddenly felt as if he could accomplish anything, even hold back the Khurtic hordes. Who knew? Maybe he’d be the one to take the head of Amon Tugha and present it to the … well, whoever ended up ruling this place. The queen, he supposed.
‘Have you never thought of sitting on the council, Magistra?’ he asked as they made their way towards the stairs. ‘You never wanted to become an Archmaster?’
‘The traditions of the Crucible Chamber go back centuries. Each of the Primary Arts is represented by one man, and one man only. None of those who represent their Art can show any of the talents of the others. I am doubly blessed and cursed, in that I have more than one talent at my disposal, but it also means I am tainted in the eyes of the council. I can never be an Archmaster.’
‘It seems an outdated tradition. Surely the Archmasters should be picked for their wisdom and power.’
That seemed to amuse Gelredida.
‘Ah, you have much to learn of tradition, Waylian. Many of our customs hark back to the days of the Sword Kings and the War of the Red Snows. They are traditions that have kept us safe, but also kept us from progressing our Art. That is why three of the Arts have been lost over the years. But our traditions are there to protect us. Much of our knowledge and lore was taken from ancient tribes whose ambition and lust for power far exceeded their ability to control it. Our traditions keep us safe from such lusts.’
It reminded Waylian of what he and Bram had talked about days before, of the ancient histories of war and blood. ‘I’ve read about those first days of the Caste. What was it … they took our words of power with hearts of dark stone?’