The Twilight Empire (Swords and Saints Book 2) Read online

  “What in the dead gods are you doing here, then?” I ask her, stepping back from the edge of the canal we’re walking beside as something ripples the surface of the water.

  Vesivia gives me a crooked grin. “Well, they wouldn’t let me join the officer corps. Or the army. Or one of the guilds. And, eventually, I’d have been married off, probably to some grasping merchant who wanted his spawn to carry a drop of noble blood.” The Zimani swordswoman bends down and picks up a stone, then hurls it into the canal where I saw movement a few moments before. The stone bounces off whatever is just below the surface and there’s a flailing of fins and the water froths before settling again. “So to avoid being trapped in such a horrid life I joined the Radiant Sisters, a holy order dedicated to the saint Olyvia. Before she ascended, she was famous for her selfless service to the empire. As a Radiant Sister I chose to volunteer in the Department of Public Works.”

  “It’s also why she shaved her head,” Shalloch says, taking a lantern from where it hangs beside the entrance to the tunnel. “I for one can’t wait until her penance is over and she can grow it back.”

  “But when you two leave the department . . . how will that work . . .”

  Vesivia chuckles. “It’s already a terrific scandal. My mother has disowned me. Few of my relatives are as understanding as Menechus.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Shalloch says, twisting a knob on the lantern he’s carrying until something kindles within and a beam of brilliant white light stabs the dark. “If we must leave Zim, there’s always room aboard ships for a skilled swordsman and a lusty wench.”

  The sewers are a strange and sprawling labyrinth. Large enough for an elephant to trundle through, though I’m not sure if the beasts could avoid toppling into the murky water flowing through the canals. Several times my breath catches in my throat when I see a shape looming out of the dark, only to realize as we draw closer that it is a shrouded statue or a bizarre sculpture. Faded carvings and the remnants of murals decorate the walls, which surprises me until I remember that this undercity was originally dug for the inhabitants of Zim, and only repurposed as a sewer once it became apparent that the disappearance of the gods was not actually a harbinger of the world’s imminent end.

  Shalloch leads us confidently down many twists and turns, keeping up a running commentary of what we would find if we ventured down different paths.

  “Down there is what would have been the royal complex. There’s an audience chamber a thousand paces wide that’s mostly flooded, and that’s where the Blind Worm is supposed to lair. The beast is a hundred paces long, they say, large enough to swallow a man whole.

  “See that, those stairs leading down? Goes into what we call the lichyard, where they were going to intern the dead. We stay out, unless what’s down there comes up to feed.

  “Watch your step, that’s vrow shit and you’ll never get the smell off your boots . . .”

  In the brief moments when he falls silent, I can hear the constant sound of water, either a gentle susurrus as it slips through the canals or a trickling as the pipes leading down here disgorge their foul contents. Vesivia says nothing; while Shalloch seems like he could be taking a stroll through the market, the Zimani swordswoman is highly alert, her hand on the hilt of her sword and her eyes squinting into the shadows. Bright Eyes is silent as well, and I get the sense that she’s cowed by the extent of the undercity. She’s holding her battle-ax with both hands, tightly enough that the olive skin of her knuckles has whitened.

  “Are you all right?” I ask softly, dropping back beside her as Shalloch drones on.

  She glances at me, her eyes more than a little wild. “This is not a good place,” she hisses back. “My people live in the veins of the mountains. I grew up in the dark, with an uncountable weight of stone above my head. But this . . . this is not natural. Man made this, and then abandoned it to darker things.” Her lip curls as bubbles pop on the surface of the rancid water. “All the waste and foulness collects down here and gives birth to nightmares, while those above blithely carry on their lives . . .” She shudders.

  “Merciful shitting saints,” Shalloch says from somewhere ahead of us, and whatever is in his voice makes Bright Eyes and I look at each other in alarm. The swashbuckler is standing beneath an arched entrance, on the threshold of a much larger space, but I can’t see what’s in front of him. Hefting our weapons, the kvah and I creep forward to better see around Shalloch. Then we gasp in unison.

  The chamber is vast and circular, its domed ceiling higher than in the tunnels, large pipes jutting from the frescoed walls. It reminds me of a great wheel, as channels have been carved extending from the edge of the room to meet at the spoke in the center, which is a great drain. These rivulets are overflowing with black water, which laps at the soles of our boots.

  The reason for the flooding is both obvious and stupefying. Wedged into the drain – which looks wide enough for several men to climb into at once – is a creature pulled from nightmares. It resembles a squid, with its gelatinous mantle soaring halfway to the ceiling. A tangle of thick, rubbery tentacles extend from the monstrosity, half-submerged in the fetid soup pooling in the room. One of these arms – as thick around as my waist – reaches almost to where we stand, and I can’t help but stare at the vicious curving hooks on the underside of the tapering tip. The creature’s round eyes, one on either side of its long body, are large as dinner plates and glazed in death.

  “Well, there’s our blockage,” Vesivia says, stepping over a tentacle and into the chamber.

  “What is that thing?” hisses Bright Eyes, drawing back a step.

  Shalloch follows his lover after placing our lantern on the floor, unsheathing his curving sword. “We call ‘em grabbers. Started appearing a few years ago – best theory I heard is that someone dumped a catch of animals or their eggs down a water closet. They grew up down here, and got changed by the alchemical runoff trickling down from the Tinker and science districts. Grew many times too big, ended up as one of the top predators in the undercity.” He steps close to the glistening gray mass and pokes it with the tip of his sword. “This big girl grew a bit too fat and got stuck.” He gestures with his cutlass towards where one of the arms is still hooked into the wall. “And she tried her best to pull herself out. You can tell from the scratches.”

  Now he’s mentioned it, I can see the long marks gouged into the walls. The thing must have scrabbled hard to free itself before finally expiring.

  “Now this is a good job for your ax, kvah,” Shalloch calls out. “We’ll need to hack this thing into chunks to unclog the works.”

  I turn back to Bright Eyes, who has edged farther away. “It’s all right,” I say soothingly. “It’s dead.”

  She bares her teeth at me. “I am not frightened, pinkling.” But her shaking gives lie to these words.

  “We cut up this thing, and we can leave this place.”

  She hesitates for a moment, then nods. Holding her ax higher, she crosses the threshold, and I catch a disgusted mutter as her boots sink into what has collected in the chamber.

  I wince as Shalloch takes a swing and buries his sword in the soft flesh of the creature. Sluggish blue fluid leaks from the cut as he saws away, carving out a chunk of partially translucent flesh.

  I follow Bright Eyes as she slowly approaches the monster’s corpse, and a smell even more powerful than the sewage we’re sloshing through hits me, making me gag. Shalloch covers his nose and mouth with one hand as he hacks away again. “It’s like being in the middle of a fish market when all the catch went rotten days ago,” he mutters.

  “I can see why it got caught,” Vesivia says, her voice floating up from the other side of the creature. “Its egg sack is full to bursting. This grabber was going to be a momma a thousand times over.”

  Bright Eyes brings her ax down where an arm joins to the body of the beast. She slices cleanly through, but the diameter is nearly as wide as a wagon wheel and the limb doesn’t fully separa
te. She glances back at me as goo leaks from the wound, her face crinkled in what I assume passes for kvah disgust.

  “Well, then in truth we’re lucky,” Shalloch says, the strain sounding in his voice as he swings his cutlass over and over again, like he’s a butcher trying to cut apart a particularly tough cut of meat. “Another few hundred of these things sliding around the undercity would have been disastrous. But what I don’t understand,” he says, panting as he pauses to wipe his brow with a cloth, “is where its mate –”

  An avalanche of flesh erupts from a large tunnel across from where we entered. Long arms whip through the air, and before Shalloch can react one clubs him hard, sending him sprawling. I get a glimpse of a bird-like beak yawning wide before I throw myself to avoid a flickering limb. I catch myself before I splash face-first into the water, avoiding a mouthful of sewage, but losing my sword in the process. Frantically, I search for it – the water is just deep enough that my blade has vanished within the blackness.

  I growl in frustration as my questing fingers find nothing. Vesivia’s shriek of pain makes me glance up – the Zimani swordswoman has also lost her blade, her arms pinned to her sides by one of the arms, which has wrapped itself around her. The other limbs are writhing like a nest of snakes, and within the churning maelstrom is Bright Eyes, swinging her great battle-ax to keep the squid-thing from seizing her as well.

  My scrabbling fingers finally close around the hilt of my sword, and I surge to my feet and charge the monster. Vesivia is now being dragged towards the creature’s clacking maw, but Shalloch has recovered and is hacking desperately at the tentacle grasping her.

  The battle-calm settles over me. Time seems to stretch and slow, becoming more attenuated: droplets glitter in the harsh light of the lantern as the monster thrashes; Shalloch’s mouth is twisted with rage and fear as he brings his cutlass down, splattering Vesivia with blue gore. Bright Eyes stumbles as an arm latches onto her leg.

  I charge. The creature does not see me until I’m only steps away. Its black iris swivels, contracting as it focuses on me as I hurtle closer. A tendril lifts dripping from the water, lashing out to intercept me, but I slash it with my sword; for a moment the blade catches, like I’m trying to tear it free from sucking mud, but then a severed arm tumbles away. The creature lurches now, finally realizing that I’m the greatest threat. But it’s too late.

  I drive my sword point-first into the white jelly of the squid-thing’s great eye. There’s resistance, but I put all my strength and weight behind the blow and shove the blade as deep as I can, angling it towards where I hope the monster’s brain might be. I don’t think I’m successful, as it doesn’t die immediately; instead, it convulses, the great mass of flesh violently shuddering. I’m tossed backwards, my sword still buried in the thing’s eye.

  My head strikes stone and for a moment I’m blinded by a flash of white light. While I’m still dazed, a spasming tentacle smacks into my side and sends me spinning.

  Then the madness stops. I push myself unsteadily to my hands and knees, blinking away the lingering spots in my vision. The monster is finally still, a huge mound of gray flesh. Shalloch is helping Vesivia free from the creature’s coils; her face is pale and pained, and as the arm unwinds I can see that her leather armor is torn in places, showing glistening red marks. Bright Eyes stands among a twisted pile of limp tentacles, some unscarred, some bearing the marks of her ax. Her face is painted blue by the creature’s blood, and with her wild eyes she makes me think this is what a kvah berserker daubed in war colors must look like.

  “Gods above and below,” exclaims Shalloch as he cautiously approaches the dead beast. “That was a bloody mess.” He waggles his sword in the direction of Bright Eyes and me. “You two did well, for a couple of green-ears. Though I had everything completely under control.”

  Something hisses in the gelatinous mound and the swashbuckler jumps back with a little shriek of fear. But it’s just the bulbous mantle of the creature beginning to deflate – I must have punctured an air sac.

  “Right,” Shalloch says, regaining some lost dignity by marching up to the creature’s slack beak. “We’ll need these to show to Cassus.” With that, he jams the point of his cutlass into the flesh around the orifice and begins to cut.

  Rolling my shoulders to try to restore feeling to the arm I landed on, I make my way over to where my sword’s hilt still protrudes from the beast. As I pass Vesivia, she lays her hand on my arm.

  “Thank you,” she says simply, and I can see from the crinkling around her eyes that she’s in some pain. She glances over to Bright Eyes, who has retreated to a corner of the room and is now squatting down, resting her chin on the flat head of her ax, her expression slack. “And thanks to her, as well. She surprised me – I thought she might abandon us if we met something dangerous down here, but she was in the thick of it. If she hadn’t distracted the grabber I might have ended up in its mouth.”

  My sword makes a squelching sound as it slides free. The blade is coated with white eye jelly – I know I should clean it now before sheathing it again, but the very idea makes my stomach turn. “She did well,” I say in reply, and Vesivia nods curtly before moving to help her lover extract the creature’s horny beak.

  I slosh over to Bright Eyes while Vesivia and Shalloch attend to their grisly task. The kvah watches me approach with an empty stare.

  “Are you all right?”

  She blinks slowly, as if considering what I just said. The fingers curled around her ax haft are visibly trembling.

  “All right,” she replies numbly.

  I crouch down beside her and cover her hand with my mine to stop the trembling. “You saved Vesivia,” I tell her softly. “You were very brave.”

  She swallows and looks away. “I’m a coward. I was just swinging wildly. That thing was moments away from dragging me down.”

  “You stayed and fought.”

  “I panicked.” Her olive cheeks darken. “I’m no ax-maiden. My sister was, but I was too weak, too craven. I shamed my family today.”

  I grab her by her chin and turn her face towards me. She tenses, startled.

  “You fought as well as any warrior,” I tell her forcefully. “If your family is watching you from behind the veil, they are proud of you. I am proud of you.”

  Bright Eyes pulls away from my hand. She doesn’t respond, but with a grunt she pushes herself back to her feet. I rise with her. She gives me a long, measuring look, and then she steps towards the corpse of the first great beast we saw when we’d entered the room. She hefts her ax, and it looks to me that her hands are no longer shaking.

  “We still need to unblock the drain, yes?” she says over her shoulder as she advances on the grabber, raising her weapon higher.

  I glance at my own sword and its gore-stained steel, then whisper a small thanks for having the foresight to not already have cleaned my blade.

  The sky is spattered with stars, and the city is in the depths of sleep when we finally return to the Department. Despite the late hour, Cassus is waiting for us when we hop down from the wagon; the old Zimani’s craggy face is set in its customary scowl, but his mouth drops open when he sees what Shalloch is carrying. The swashbuckler has one of the giant beaks in the crook of his arm – the other he has somehow affixed to his groin as a codpiece.

  “Mother of saints,” the sergeant breathes, and for a moment his mask of world-weary gruffness fades.

  “They’re growing big down there,” Shalloch says with a lecherous grin, swaggering forward. “Large enough even to contain my monster.”

  “Grabbers?” Cassus says, avoiding looking at what Shalloch is thrusting in his direction.

  “Aye,” Vesivia says, rolling her eyes at her lover’s theatrics. “Mated, one very pregnant. So pregnant that she got stuck in a drain and stopped the plumbing up.”

  “No injuries?” the sergeant asks, real concern in his face.

  Vesivia raises her arms to show her shredded uniform and leather armor.
Bandages darkened by blood are affixed to where the beast’s hooks had seized her. “Nothing very serious.”

  “And the greenears? They acquitted themselves well?”

  Vesivia gives a small smile. “They did well. I think they’ll be around longer than the last few Manticores.”

  9

  “Alesk.”

  Deliah’s strong fingers caress my shoulders, sending little bursts of pleasure rippling through my sore muscles. Her legs are wrapped around my waist, and her hot breath tickles my ear. Before us, on a bed of mounded cushions, Bell kneels, her long hair tumbling over her shoulders in a raven-dark waterfall. She flashes a crooked smile and reaches out to touch my face gently, then leans forward, her lips parting –

  “Alesk.”

  The dream dissolves as I come awake. I lie there on my hard pallet, the realization of their loss a pulsing ache in my chest. Around me, I can hear the snoring and shifting of fifteen others – no light is seeping through the window slits, so the new day must still be a ways off. There is a glow, though, coming from beyond our sleeping cell. Someone has lit the lanterns hanging by the door that leads to the rest of the compound, and these usually stay extinguished after the guards confine us in here for the night.

  “Alesk, is that you?”

  A stranger is outside our cell, almost pressed up against the bars. He’s tall, his features hidden by a cloak and cowl. Evidently he wants to talk to someone in here. Who is Alesk? The name tickles the edges of my memory, but I can’t put a face to it.

  “What are you doing in there?”

  This is spoken so loudly I expect others to come awake, annoyed at having their rest disturbed. I sit up, throwing back my blanket. Enough of the muckers have a violent streak that this fellow should be warned, before he ends up with a shiv in his belly.