The Waking Fire (The Draconis Memoria, #1)

by Anthony Ryan

a skull so large and jagged it could only be a Black. Clay paused for a closer look, eyes tracking over the many teeth to the gaping nostrils and eye-sockets until he found a single ragged hole in the centre of the beast’s forehead. “Is this . . . ?” he began, causing Braddon to linger on the stairs. “That’s him,” he said. “Harvesters made a gift of him a couple of years back, part-payment for a hefty consignment of Green and Red. Finest shot I ever took.” Clay found himself unable to look away from the skull’s empty eyes, imagining what they must have seen that day. You killed my mother, he told it. Did you even know?

“Though right now I’m not sure which one of us your pa will kill first.” “Kill you first,” she mumbled, curling up on the bed and snuggling childlike into the covers. “Kill you for murdering your pa . . .” After a few seconds she began to snore.

“Thank you, Auntie,” he said, quickly consigning the vial to his pocket. “Rest assured I’ll pay you back . . .” “Oh, hush now.” She leaned close and planted a kiss on his cheek then withdrew a little, hands on his shoulders. “Knew your mother. Only a little, but I liked her well enough. Knew your father too, more than I wanted to. Sometimes there are men who just need to be taken out of this world. So, regardless of my husband’s view on the matter, I see no reason to bar you from this family.

The horse, he realised, his gaze alighting on a partly severed hoof before finding the animal’s head. It lay with mouth agape, eyes still wide and frozen in terror. I may have done a foolish thing,

“The life I chose?” Clay felt the unwise heat building again, making him acutely aware of the forbidden vial in his pocket. “Thought it was you chose it for me, Uncle.” The faint vestige of humour faded from Braddon’s face, resuming his unreadable frown as he turned back to his daughter. “No place in my house for a boy who kills his own father.” Auntie thinks different. Auntie thinks your brother was better off dead.

“They really as ugly as they say? Like men but all twisted up, I heard.” “They ain’t men.” There was a grim insistence to her tone, her affability suddenly vanished. “Ugly they is, inside and out. But it’s evil that makes ’em so. Don’t ever mistake a Spoiled for human, and never let ’em take you alive.” —

Tekela just sniffed and marched through the doors with her nose raised. He’s far too good for you, Lizanne decided. Though you’ll probably be in your sixties before you realise it. Any amusement occasioned by the thought soon expired under the weight of another. You know the girl has to die .

Not just killed, he realised, glancing back at the circle. Ripped apart . . . feasted upon. “It nested here,” he said aloud, realisation dawning in a rush. Wittler’s blasted body, not a cannon-shot, an egg, bursting apart in flame and fury as they did when their mothers bathed them in the waking fire, setting free what waited within. “She used the Red’s heart-blood to birth the egg. The White hatched, ate up what was left of Wittler and came here where the Spoiled fed it, fed it with their own flesh.”

Why thank you, Mr. Torcreek. And congratulations, by the way. For what? The Island girl. Though you may want to have a care. I hear they mate for life. With that she was gone, leaving him pondering a means of better guarding his secrets in the trance.

What a trial it is to submit to the whim of fools.’”

“Have you ever been back?” he asked instead, taking the rifle and inspecting the chamber before peering down the barrel. “To your home island?” Steelfine’s gaze clouded and he accepted the rifle from Hilemore in silence, returning it to the rack and hefting another. For several moments it seemed he wouldn’t give any answer but it appeared his continuing sense of obligation to Hilemore compelled some form of response, albeit softly spoken. “A dead man has no home.”

They had huddled together in the dark as the constables searched the temple, forced into intimate entanglement by the confines. If the major felt any arousal at finding himself in such close proximity to two young women, it was well hidden behind a pale, sweat-covered mask of pain.

Lizanne staggered amidst the carnage she had created, all but a few dregs of product in her veins as she scanned for more targets, finding only dead and dying. She sagged, relief and exhaustion mingling to bring forth an unusual and unfamiliar sound from her throat. It took a moment’s puzzled reflection to recognise it as a sob. How many years since that happened? she wondered, thumbing a tear from her eye as the sob turned into a rueful laugh.

“I was welcome in this house long before you,” Zenida said, face paling with anger as the man patted her down. “My contract is with the Directors,” Lockbar replied in a neutral tone.

“You appear strangely certain the outcome will go in our favour.” Hilemore shrugged, recalling something his grandfather had said, “A captain is always certain.”

Gunshots!

My niece, however, requires a secure home . . .” Hilemore moved in a blur, darting forward too fast for Lockbar to react, covering the distance to Arshav in a heart-beat and delivering a hard back-hand cuff across his face. The pirate reeled back, blood on his face as his mother scrambled to her feet with a shout of outrage. Hilemore stood back, hearing a tulwar scrape from its scabbard an instant before the sharp point began to press into his back. He fixed his gaze on Arshav, kneeling and wiping the blood from his nose as he glared up at Hilemore, face quivering with rage. Hilemore smiled and spoke a single word in Varestian, “Challenge.”

Gangster!!!

“Any fragments?” Madame enquired, dragging her attention away from the defences. Fragments was a catch-all term for the vestiges of deceased trance-mates that sometimes appeared in a Blood-blessed’s mindscape, but only when they had died in mid-trance. Lizanne counted herself fortunate she had never experienced one. “No, Madame.”

“Continue to report any progress to me. Regardless of the fate of this city, the device must not fall into Corvantine hands, nor any knowledge that might enable them to reconstruct it.” She held Lizanne’s gaze until she gave a nod of affirmation, the implacability in her once-cherished mentor’s gaze birthing a thought as she walked away, surprising in the depth of anger that accompanied it. You vicious old bitch.

It was a nightmare Clay hadn’t had for many a year, though it had haunted him for a time in the Blinds, fading when he found Joya and Derk. The scene was much as it had been in life, though whatever vicious corner of his mind crafting this version had added a few details; the blood covering his father’s hands for example, and the rent and torn body of Clay’s mother on the card-table before him. A stack of scrip and exchange notes were piled atop the corpse, stained red but otherwise unnaturally rigid and neat. Clay’s father turned, cigarillo poised before his lips as he regarded the boy standing at the tavern-door with a less-than-welcoming grin. Clay could see the faces of the cards in his other hand, a winning hand in Mourning Jacks, unbeatable. He was about to become a rich man, though give him another day and he’d be poor again. “Ma’s dead,” Clay said, as he had when this hadn’t been a dream.

“She showed me the door.” His father laughed as one of the other players upped his bet. “Ain’t no obligations twixt us, boy. Go on back to your uncle.” “How much were you gonna give to Ma?” The pistol was an aged one-shot hammer-lock and felt heavy in his boy’s hands. His uncle kept a chest of old weapons in his basement, securely locked but Clay knew where he kept the key. He chose the pistol because it was the only one with ammunition that seemed to fit, though he wasn’t too sure he had loaded it right. Even so, he had every intention of finding out. His father froze as Clay drew back the hammer with a loud click. “Showed you the door ’cause you broke two of my ribs after you broke her nose for the second time,” Clay said. “Showed you the door because you’re a mean drunk and a lousy gambler.”

“She,” he said, nodding at the corpse on the table, “was a fine woman who deserved better. She had a kindness and grace rarely seen in this place, and I always knew I wasn’t worthy. It made me hate, and drink and seek death in the Interior. I know this is my end, I know my own son will kill me this night, and I know it to be fitting.” He hadn’t, of course, said any of this. These words were born of the nightmare. In fact he had said, “Your ma was a whore. Fucked if I ever knew you were even mine.” It didn’t matter, though in the succeeding years Clay would often lie to himself that it had been these words that sealed his father’s fate. But the fact was, nothing was going to save him.

“I had just drunk the heart-blood of a Red drake and used it to birth something far worse, killing a man I had begun to fall in love with in the process. It’s fair to say my reasoning was somewhat impaired. I got back on the raft and let the river take me away.”

The Black stared down at Clay with narrowed eyes, small tendrils of smoke leaking from its nostrils as it gave another low, rumbling growl. It sat perched on the tower’s stepped, pyramidal roof, sickle-like claws latched onto the stone and wings folded as its tail swayed gently behind. Blue eyes, was the only coherent thought to pop into his head. It has blue eyes. But these eyes were so different from the eyes of the Greens that had assailed them at the temple. There was no hate in them, no desire for blood or death. Looking at the way the light caught them, the way they gleamed, he knew he was looking into the eyes of something that looked back and understood what it saw. This beast can think. “Well, that’s a relief,” Ethelynne said. “It seems we are all of like mind.”

“Do you have any relatives likely to question the legality of this proceeding, or pursue vengeance and feud in the event of your death?” Hilemore’s thoughts flicked briefly over his brothers and the complete absence of correspondence between them. “No.” “You are not married?” Lewella’s eyes the last time they met, tearful, regretful, but also so very angry . . . “No.”

“How many enemies have you killed in single combat? An approximate figure will do.” “Is this really necessary?” Tragerhorn merely raised his thick eyebrows above his spectacles, a polite smile of expectation on his lips. Hilemore sighed. “Battle does not count as single combat, I assume?” “No, sir.” “Then one. I fought a duel in Varestia seven years ago.” “Just one, sir?” “Just one.”

The sound of laughter brought him back to full sense, his vision focusing on the two prisoners. The blast had evidently torn the doors of their cages free and they stood amidst the ruins of the gaol-house, joyful at their good fortune. Two pistol-shots sounded and the prisoners fell, Hilemore turning to see Zenida lowering her revolver. “Child rapers,” she said with a shrug.

I will resume trancing for a short time at the allotted hour in five days. Hopefully, by then I will have more information to guide you. Seems to me a lot depends on you making it through the coming battle. She found herself touched by the concern evident in the sombre hues of his mindscape, so different now from the ill discipline and self-interest of their first trances. Fortunately, she replied, thanks to an old friend of mine, I may well have the means to do just that.

Lizanne thought of poor Mr. Drellic’s words regarding Grand Marshal Morradin and concluded the old butler hadn’t been so mad after all: The great commander, no more than a pig grown fat on the blood of wasted youth.

Arberus took a rifle from one of the conscripts and shot the man in the head, his body collapsing onto the piled remains of his men. “A trifle harsh, Major,” Lizanne commented as Arberus lowered the rifle. “When the Scarlet Legion took Jerravin,” he said, “they chained up all the surviving defenders and made them watch as their wives and daughters were raped and beheaded. Then they doused them in oil and burned them alive. I stood and watched them do it, laughing along with all the other butchers, because that was my role then.” He turned and handed the rifle back to the conscript, the manager he had forced to his feet earlier. “You asked if I had any qualms,” he said to Lizanne. “I trust this stands as sufficient answer.”

No good choices in war, he reminded himself, another of his grandfather’s observations. War is a storm, lad. With a good crew and a good ship, maybe you can ride it out. But there’s never been a ship didn’t take a battering in a storm. Hilemore ran a hand along the

“She made . . . an approach. When I refused her she looked elsewhere.” Lizanne looked down at Tekela, recalling the less-than-pleasant meeting at the museum. “Diran,” she said. “Yes.” Arberus sighed. “Dear old Uncle Diran. Tekela had the misfortune to happen upon them at the wrong moment. Diran came to me in a right old state, worried what it would mean for his friendship with Leonis, not to say access to all his valuable documents and artifacts. I made it very clear to him that this unwise assignation had to end. Salema . . . didn’t take it well.” Lizanne crouched down at Tekela’s side, drawing the blanket up to better cover her shoulders. The nightmare that woke her that first night, she remembered. I didn’t tell . . . “I had to pay a sizable bribe to the doctor and the coroner,” Arberus went on. “Leonis was near mad with grief as it was. If he had known it was an opium overdose rather than a lesion of the brain . . .” He shrugged. “What else could I do?” “But she knew,” Lizanne said, rising from Tekela’s side. “Didn’t she?” “I expect so. It seems carrying the knowledge did little to improve her temperament.”

who Truelove actually was,” Madame said. “Just that they now had a very useful stream of intelligence tranced to them via a well-paid and well-guarded intermediary firmly positioned in neutral territory. Convincing them to trust me wasn’t so very hard: designs for some of Jermayah’s more effective innovations, the identities of a few Exceptional Initiatives operatives in Corvantine territory, the location of an Ironship-sponsored pirate den in the Isles. Then, as time went on, reports containing subtle indications that the Protectorate had taken a renewed interest in the fabled White Drake. It all stoked the Emperor’s naturally avaricious tendencies to the required pitch. Your little excursion to Morsvale was a tricky thing to engineer, but I trusted your ability to navigate the various difficulties. After the Cadre’s spectacular failure to capture you, and prevent the successful retrieval of the solargraph, my intermediary reported that the Emperor was now much more amenable to negotiation. Especially since Captain Torcreek’s company had successfully negated a Cadre attempt to stop them at Edinsmouth and appeared to be drawing ever closer to their goal. Sadly, I was obliged to allow this military farce to play out for a time until I could trance with my contact. Still, all those infantrymen piling up outside the walls did focus their minds. With a global war to fight, they can’t really afford to prolong their campaign here.”

It appeared her intervention against the Blood Cadre had done much to enhance her standing. It was there in the grave nods of respect from Contractor and soldier alike, in the shouted thanks and the name they murmured as she passed by. Of course, few, if any, even knew her true name. Instead they had crafted a new one; “Miss Blood.”

“How many of them even understood what they were dying for, I wonder? Come all this way to face slaughter in pursuit of profit, and it’s all pointless anyway.” She paused, watching his sorrow for a time and wondering if his irksome fanaticism might have eroded amidst all this fury. He would be so much more interesting without it.

She nodded and made for the ladder, pausing as her gaze alighted on a slender figure on a neighbouring roof-top. It was a girl, perhaps a couple of years older than Tekela with the dark complexion of Old Colonial stock. Her face was faintly familiar but it was the way she moved that made Lizanne pause. The girl was evidently part of a Growler crew from the bandoliers of ammunition criss-crossing her chest. She was attempting to teach a dance step to a younger comrade, a Dalcian girl barely twelve years old by Lizanne’s reckoning. The older girl smiled as they swayed back and forth, but it was a sad smile and somehow Lizanne doubted she had laughed at all recently. Suddenly the girl spun away from her pupil, performing a series of flawless pirouettes, dark hair flying as she twirled before coming to a rigid halt, posed with arms raised in statuesque perfection. She smiled once more as her comrades clapped, bowing in theatrical gratitude.

Added to that was the burn in his chest, the old heat stoked to a new intensity worse than anything felt in all his years in the Blinds. He only made it this far ’cause of me, he knew, realising he had forgotten one of the hardest lessons learnt in the Blinds: a true friend is like a ten-scrip note lying in the street; you might find one, but only when you ain’t looking.

Just me now, he thought, realising this was the first time he had truly been alone since leaving Carvenport. Come an awful long way to seal myself in a mountain.

“Call me Fredabel, or Freda if you like.” “Lizanne.” “Lizzie?” the older woman suggested as they shook hands. “No,” she replied in an unambiguous tone. “Lizanne.”

An egg bathed in fire and cracking open to reveal the screaming infant Black inside, the flames fading to reveal an old man in a robe staring down at the fledgling drake with the expression of a proud father. Clay’s eyes latched onto the symbol emblazoned on the man’s chest, an upturned eye, the same eye that adorned the outside of the building above.

The last sight he saw before the parade of images became too fast to follow was the most baffling: a field of ice beneath a starlit night sky, small figures labouring across the field towards something jutting from the ice near the horizon, something monumentally large that vaguely resembled a church spire, but twisted with deep rents in its massive sides, as if damaged somehow . . .

Clay found he couldn’t feel anything beyond guilt, clawing away at his insides as he lowered his gaze once more to Silverpin’s corpse. Lover, saviour, betrayer . . . monster. She had been all of them, and yet he knew this was a crime he would never escape.

The hood of the jacket was raised but Clay could see the glimmer of a Maritime Protectorate cap badge inside it, and the man’s face; blockishly handsome of North Mandinorian complexion. His gaze was direct and focused, making Clay realise he was present in this scene, no longer just an observer of baffling mysteries; he was really here. The man regarded Clay with an expression of shrewd if cautious satisfaction, the face of a man receiving a debt he never expected to be paid. After a second he gave a soft grunt and turned to regard the great spire rising from the ice. “So,” he said in a voice rich in military gruffness, “this is where we save the world, Mr. Torcreek . . .”

His mindscape faded a little, indicating he was nearing the end of his product. He managed to hang on for a few seconds, however, his thoughts conveying a sincerity that warmed her. Lotta people died on account of our contract, miss. All in all, I’m glad you weren’t one of them.