Dead Stars - Part Two (The Emaneska Series) (68 page)

‘Close that door you oaf! We’ll freeze down to our bones!’ Seria scolded from the table, her hands firmly on her stew-spattered apron.

‘Calm yourself woman, there’s a bird out ‘ere, trying to get in. Flapping like a flag in a storm he is!’ Traffyd hollered over his shoulder. Sketched in the bright light spilling through the open door, Seria could see her husband’s shadow flailing about madly, trying to catch something deranged and fluttering with a blanket.

‘Well don’t let ‘im in! He’ll be up in the thatch for hours!’

There was a cry and a thud and moments later, Traffyd came hobbling through the doorway, wrestling a quivering bundle of blanket onto the tabletop.

‘There,’ he whispered to it soothingly, whilst Seria fussed and bothered around him. ‘Easy now, you mad bird.’ The hawk was soon calmed. Traffyd had a way with animals.

‘He’s got a bag on his leg,’ Seria jabbed with a spoon. ‘See if you can get it off.’

Traffyd was slowly stroking the hawk’s feathers now, holding the blanket over its eyes. ‘You get it. I’ll keep ‘im calm.’

Seria puffed out her pink cheeks. ‘I’m ain’t touchin’ that rabid thing!’

‘He’s a fine bird, Seria, not some mangy crow.’

Seria huffed but curiosity soon got the better of her. Her nimble fingers quickly saw to the twine around the bag’s neck, and while Traffyd gently placed the hawk in a warm part of the kitchen, Seria gently shook the bag out on the table.

The note came out first. A thin square of paper. Traffyd pinched it between his soil-darkened fingers and peered at its scribbled words. He read them aloud, slow and steady, in a quiet voice not used to letters.

To traffyd and Seria. May this bring you the same luck it has brought me. It saw me through death and back. Twice.

Thank you deeply.

Farden

Another shake of the bag, and a pendant tumbled out onto the smooth wood. Seria held it up to the firelight, letting it glitter.

It was a thin sliver of a dragon scale, sandy-orange in colour and sparkling as though it had been dipped in gold dust, dangling from a thin metal chain. Its colours danced in the glow of the fire. Traffyd rubbed it. It felt like rough metal.

‘Well I never,’ was all he could say. Then he began to laugh, slowly and quietly at first, but then louder and heartier, until he was braying to the rafters. Seria looked on, a severe frown on her blushing face.

‘What are you laughing at, you old fool?’ she chided.

‘He’s alive, Seria, alive and well! Don’t you see? Jötun be damned. That mage has more lives than a cat!’

Seria tried. She tried very hard indeed, but in the end, it was futile to resist. As she clutched the dragonscale pendant to her chest, she began to laugh, slowly and quietly at first.

Dawn was a bitter sight, bringing a light drizzle and bad news. It came by hawk, exhausted, bedraggled, and half-dead by any rights.

The bird flopped onto the Nest and crumpled to a heap next to Malvus’ right boot. It’s glazed eyes, speckled with rain, stared up at the bony fingers of the marble trees above. Malvus nudged the poor hawk onto its side, and then bent down to rip the scrap of grimy parchment from its spindly ochre leg. Malvus wrinkled his lip as he unravelled the wet mess with the tips of his manicured fingernails. It was barely even a scrap, to tell the truth. Torn from a book, no doubt, charred on one side, ripped on the other, with its words scratched and spattered. Urgent. Angry.

Malvus’ lips twitched as he read silently to himself. There wasn’t much to read. An infuriating handful of lines, only three, but they told him all he needed to know in aching brevity.
Saker had failed. Orion was dead.

‘Problems?’ asked a voice. A confident voice, considering the weight of Toskig’s armoured hand resting on the stranger’s shoulder, considering the guards hovering in the dripping shadows of the marble trees with their knives drawn and ready, waiting for a word.

Malvus pinched the parchment between two fingers and ripped it down the middle. He contemptuously tossed its halves over the edge of the Nest and watched them drift like dead feathers into the dark of the city below. ‘None that concern you,’ he replied.

‘You don’t seem too happy, milord,’ came the reply. Still confident. The stranger’s assuredness grated against Malvus.

‘All has gone to plan,’ Malvus lied.
Why hadn’t that blasted seer told him about the failure of the daemons?
Had she lied? Or had she not known?
Malvus clenched his fist. The daemons were but one chapter in his story.
All will be settled
, he told himself. Pasting a smile onto his face, he turned around to confront his visitor.

The stranger was a tall, thin gentleman, almost treelike with his spindly arms and skinny legs, like a winter-bitten willow escaped from a riverbank. His face was gaunt, his eyes a dark shade of brown, and his nose wide and crooked, a sign that it had been broken some time in the past. It hadn’t been set well. His hair was shaved within a fraction of its life. Already the years were beginning to pull its dwindling borders back. Albion-stock, clearly. Malvus sneered.
Peasants
.

‘So then,’ Malvus began, superciliously folding his arms across his armoured chest. ‘Jeasin says she knows you.’

The stranger smiled. ‘We’ve crossed paths before.’

‘Why?’

‘She was some assistance to us, actually, in the endeavour I mentioned.’

‘And who is
us
, exactly?’

‘Duke Kiltyrin, of course, before he lost his mind.’

‘I see.’
That mad fool.

The two men stared for a moment, through the drizzle and the shadow, each trying to gauge the other. Malvus looked to the north while he rubbed his chin. ‘You lie to me, and I’ll have you drowned in the harbour, after I have the guards remove your tongue that is. Do you understand?’ he asked, eyes like flint.

The stranger’s head bobbed up and down. ‘Clear as day, milord.’

‘Now,’ Malvus leant against the marble, ‘you will tell me all about the Nine you spoke of.’

Loffrey smiled once more.

‘Are you lost, sister?’ Hel grumbled, watching the tall, faded figure emerge from the gloomy tunnel and make for the gangplank. Her dress and bare feet rustled softly against the pebbles.

Evernia waited until she was aboard before she answered. She shimmered, barely visible in the bright lights of
Naglfar
’s lanterns. A faint, fitful snoring came from the bow of the ship. Hel was sprawled against a bulwark, sullen and dejected.

‘Not in the slightest, my sister,’ Evernia replied. Her voice sounded faraway and lost. Hel shrugged. She pointed a black fingernail at the silk sack hanging from the goddess’ left hand.

‘What’s in the bag?’ she asked.

Evernia wasted no time with preamble or conversational foreplay. She knew her sister well, and she could see the mood she was in. Black as her eyes. With a flourish, she undid the cords of the sack and let it fall to the deck.

Hel sat up. ‘Your scales.’

Evernia held up her golden scales, perfectly balanced as always. ‘Indeed. Our new weapon.’

‘I thought Farden was your new weapon.’

Evernia tilted her head. ‘A weapon for a different sort of enemy.’

‘Loki.’

‘And his plans, whatever they may be. Heimdall watches him. He is furtive.’

‘And you never saw this coming.’

Evernia bowed her head, truly upset. ‘Never.’

‘The scales then, sister. Divulge your intentions.’

‘Hel has now been rendered a home for souls. No longer a path, but a warehouse if you will. This could be very dangerous in the wrong hands.’

‘Or claws. I have fended some off already.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Your plan?’

Evernia crossed her arms. ‘We provide another home. One out of the daemon’s reach. We cannot take them all, but we take the ones we can. Haven and Hel. One above, and one underneath.’

‘And we decide, how?’

‘By weighing the souls,’ Evernia said, laying her scales gently on the floor. ‘Fear not sister, the balance is heavily tipped in our favour. These are my scales, after all.’

‘So, the boatman has become the merchant.’

Evernia nodded. ‘If you will.’

Hel took a deep breath, and got to her feet. She took a moment to dust herself off. ‘The battle for the soul has begun then.’

‘Whether we like it or not, sister. Whether we like it or not.’

Six days, it took them. Six days to find the
Waveblade
again.

Roiks nearly hugged the mast when he came aboard. He would have done, probably, had it not been for the broken arm he now wielded. Nuka hugged him instead. Him and every other of his sailors that had returned to him. There were a sorry few, that was the truth. At times like this, joy and grief are the best of friends.

‘Home,’ Farden said, when the whales had finally broken them free of the ice. The whoosh of dragon wings ruffled his hair. He blew it out of his face with a snort. ‘What a strange word that is.’

‘More so than ever, now that we can’t go back to Krauslung,’ Elessi sighed. She hadn’t left Modren’s side since he had found her sprinting across the snow towards their weary column, bare feet almost shredded from the ice. The Undermage had practically carried her all the way back to the ship.

‘Where to then?’ Lerel asked, leaning heavily on her own mage, Farden. Like Roiks, she hadn’t survived the battle unscathed. She had broken a leg, and was insistent that Farden was the best crutch around. He certainly was the shiniest. He had yet to remove any of his armour besides his helmet. He glittered in the sunset, almost dragon-like himself.

They all took a moment to think.

‘South? To Paraia?’ suggested Durnus, leaning wearily against the railing of the ship. Nearby, Ilios looked up with an eager trill.

‘Perhaps, at first,’ Farden shrugged.

‘Albion?’ Elessi ventured. Everybody, even Modren, pulled a face, Farden especially.

‘The sea is my home, and we have the whole of it to ourselves, ladies and gentlemen,’ boomed Nuka, as he sauntered towards them along the deck. ‘Let me show you the world one port at a time. Once you’ve seen them all, then you can decide…’

‘North,’ Farden announced, staring eastwards, where the Tausenbar faded into the creeping purple velvet of night. Heavy clouds lingered overhead, hinting of snow. ‘That’s where we’ll go, when we’re finished. To old Scalussen.’