Wintercraft: Legacy (10 page)

‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to throw you out of that window and claim you jumped to your death through cowardice and fear,’ he said. ‘I had no argument with you before I stepped into this room. Speak to me the way you did here again and I will tear out your fingernails and gut you in front of the men you seem so eager to impress.’

The councilman shrank before him. He tried to speak, but fear would not let the words come out.

‘A prisoner is about to be interrogated,’ Silas said to the warden. ‘I think a representative of the council should be there to witness his confession and listen to any information he may share.’

The councilman’s eyes widened in shock at the thought of being present at an interrogation and the warden could not quite hide his smile. ‘I will escort him to the cells at once,’ he said.

The man was led roughly out of the room and taken in the opposite direction from the others. The doors fell closed and Silas and Edgar were left alone.

‘I think that went well,’ said Edgar.

Silas took his sword from Edgar’s hands. ‘They think I am wrong,’ he said. ‘They will deny there is any threat until the first arrow flies over the walls.’

‘Do you think the wardens will follow your orders?’

‘Most of these men have known me longer than you have been alive. They will follow my word out of respect. The others would not dare to defy me.’ Silas walked to the window and looked out over the eastern half of the city. ‘Fume is not prepared for an attack. Its people have become complacent.’

From the window, Silas could see memorial towers rising over the moonlit city like giants striding through the streets. Every one of them was different, but one tower in particular caught his attention. Its stones were edged with silver and looked as though the cracks between them were belching smoke. The meeting hall’s window began to rattle. Tiny cracks veined through imperfections in the glass and the air around the distant tower filled with the shadowy forms of the dead.

Whatever was happening inside that tower, the shades of Fume were retreating from it like wolves from a fire. Their hazy forms drifted above the surrounding streets, until something powerful shifted within the veil. The air filled with sudden pressure and the smoke blasted outwards, sending the surrounding souls fleeing in fear.

‘Get away from the window,’ snapped Silas. ‘Now!’

Edgar ran for the table and slid under it as the entire pane exploded inwards, sending shattered glass spearing across the room. Silas had turned away, but slivers of glass embedded themselves in the side of his neck and bristled down the back of his arm. Shouts carried up from the city and Silas heard the screams of hundreds of shades, desperate to escape the smoke. To his eyes, the streets blackened as phantom souls washed through them, pouring
from the area around the tower and heading towards the edge of the city. There they collided with one another, unable to breach the boundary created by Fume’s outer walls, making the stones surge with energy that reverberated through the city as a sickly whisper of terror.

‘What was that?’ asked Edgar, scrambling out from his hiding place, trying not to cut his palms on the glass.

Silas raised his chin and plucked shards out of his neck, already making his way to the meeting-room door. Edgar noticed that his eyes had lost their usual grey and looked instead like ominous puddles of black. He had never seen Silas’ eyes do that.

‘Is your neck all right? Do you want me to get someone to . . .’ Edgar’s voice petered out, not expecting an answer. He couldn’t tell if Silas was angry about being caught by the shattering window, or about whatever he had seen happen outside it.

Silas pulled more glass out of his arm and dropped a handful of shards on the floor before rubbing a slick of blood from his neck. The cuts were healing, but his vision blackened until the corridor ahead of him appeared heavy and oppressive. It looked as if the walls were preparing to crumple in upon themselves, ready to crush anyone who passed that way. It was a feeling Silas had experienced before, but it had been years – more than a decade – since he had managed to force it to the back of his mind.

He was seeing that corridor through the eyes of his torn soul: the lost part of his spirit that was trapped within the horrifying depths of the veil. His mind was layering the horror of his soul’s prison over what his eyes could see
in the physical world. He felt the familiar claws of madness scratching through his thoughts and it took a huge effort of will to silence the rising anger and terror that spread from a place no human eyes should ever have seen. He felt the creeping touch of lost souls scratching and blistering beneath his skin. The screams that never died. The vast open chill of the black. In that place, madness was the only way out, death was unreachable and ravaged souls hoped only for oblivion.

Silas knew that place too well. Dalliah’s spirit had been torn the same way his had been. If she saw the same horrors when she closed her eyes, he understood her need to bring it to an end: to tear down the veil, reclaim her soul and hope that death would finally accept her before the black dragged her back down. Silas had endured twelve years of torment. Dalliah had survived centuries. Whatever release she needed, no matter how misguided her methods, he understood her need to escape.

Edgar could tell that something was wrong, but he waited for Silas’ eyes to settle back to grey before stepping too close. ‘The window,’ he said quietly. ‘Was that Dalliah?’

‘It is not Dalliah you should be worried about,’ said Silas. ‘This was too much, even for her. The veil is being torn apart. This is Kate Winters’ doing.’

While Dalliah collected up her belongings in the tower, Kate slipped the discovered note safely between the pages of
Wintercraft
. The two of them descended the steps together and Dalliah noticed immediately that the key was missing from Ravik’s bones.

‘Unlock the door,’ she ordered.

Kate pulled out the hidden key and they stepped outside. The streets were in uproar. People were wandering around, some bloodied and confused, others simply angry at the damage caused to their homes as windows stood cracked or smashed within their frames.

‘Our work may have attracted some unwanted attention,’ said Dalliah. ‘If I had known you would be so effective, I would not have used so much of your blood.’

‘That spirit’s life did not have to end that way,’ said Kate.

‘Its true life was over long ago.’

‘What about Ravik’s life?’

Dalliah shot Kate a pointed look. ‘He should not have defied me.’

Dalliah secured her bag alongside the Blackwatch package on her saddle, held Kate’s horse still while she climbed up, then mounted her own horse and looped both sets of reins around her wrist.

They rode on towards the centre of the city until a disturbance blocked the street ahead, forcing them to slow down. A clutch of private carriages were parked in the centre of the road, each one covered with bags and boxes stuffed with expensive items that were strapped on to every piece of available space. Dozens of families were attempting to leave the city, only to find their path blocked by other carriages belonging to people who were still packing.

‘Back!’ shouted one of the carriage drivers, brandishing his whip and making his horse stamp. ‘Clear the streets!’

Angry voices shouted back, many of them insulted at being told what to do.

‘Petty, worthless arguments,’ said Dalliah. ‘They are too caught up in their small lives to understand what is happening around them.’

Kate’s horse stayed close to Dalliah’s as they moved through the crowds, passing through narrow spaces between buildings where carriages could not reach. When they emerged on to a wide road covered in shattered glass, Kate’s horse tugged against Dalliah’s grip and Kate
struggled to stay in the saddle as it backed away from a commotion that was flaring up ahead.

People were staring down into an adjoining street, where shouts and fast hoofbeats were echoing loudly from the walls, and a grey horse bolted powerfully out of the shadows, dragging a carriage behind it. The driver was not quite solid enough to pass as one of the living. He was dressed in brown robes, his eyes wild with terror, his mouth open in a scream as he drove the vehicle along its ghostly path. Waves of silver fire poured from the windows on either side of the carriage, but instead of passengers Kate spotted a stack of coffins inside, every one of them crackling with flame.

People fled from the eerie vehicle as it burned down the street, turned a corner in the opposite direction to the curve of the road and vanished through the front wall of a grand house. For a moment, everyone who had witnessed it just stared. Kate had become used to seeing shades, but the coach and driver were clearer than any apparitions she had ever seen.

Once their minds had caught up with the evidence of their own eyes, people burst into action, even more desperate to leave that place behind. Dalliah bullied the two horses along, not caring whom she might trample beneath their hooves as the crowd parted to let her pass, but one man was too busy staring at something behind them to move. When Dalliah’s horse knocked into his shoulder, he barely noticed. Kate turned to see what he was looking at, and spotted the shade of a black-robed warden standing right in the middle of the road. She knew
that face. His teeth were black and twisted, his skin stained with pale mud.

‘
I remember
you,
girly
.’ The warden’s robes were worn and tattered and a slit over his heart oozed with dark blood. ‘
I’m not finished with you yet
.’

‘Kalen?’

Kate’s horse worried and fought against its reins as the man walked towards them. He shuffled forward on rag-wrapped feet, leaving footprints of ghostly blood on the ground behind him.

‘
Ya’ll regret what ya did to me. I’ll make ya scream before the end, just like yer daddy did
.’

Kate could hear the rasping sound of his breathing, even though he was long dead. Dalliah stopped the horses and turned to see Kalen for herself.

‘
Ya know what’s comin’
,’ said Kalen. ‘
Ya can feel it
.’

‘Leave us,’ Dalliah ordered, treating Kalen like some kind of stray animal. ‘Go.’ Kalen looked up at Dalliah as if he had not noticed she was there and stopped walking at once. ‘Our history can always find us in the veil,’ she said to Kate. ‘Now is not the time for unfinished business.’

‘Why can we see him?’ asked Kate.

‘Souls have long memories,’ said Dalliah. ‘Hate can feed their anger for a very long time.’

‘He has no reason to hate me.’

‘His hate is not drawing him here. Your hate is doing that,’ said Dalliah. ‘This is what drives many of the Skilled into madness when the veil is weakened. Ordinary people see random souls, but the Skilled attract those whose deaths they have touched. At least you remember him.’
Dalliah looked away and snapped the horse’s reins. ‘That is a good sign.’

Kate noticed the sharpness in Dalliah’s voice. Kate had said too much, and she knew it.

Kalen’s spirit voice echoed around the street. ‘
Ya won’t chase me off!
’

Dalliah and Kate rode on, but Kalen kept moving. Kate saw his essence disappear from the living world and thought he was gone, until cold hands gripped her ankle and Kalen’s soul tried to sink beneath her skin.

Kate screamed and kicked out. Her boot connected where Kalen’s face should have been, and he twisted away, lost in a burst of writhing mist.

‘Unwanted souls can be difficult to deal with,’ said Dalliah, stirring the horses to a faster trot. ‘It takes a strong will to see them off. I am impressed.’

Small clusters of people were crying, staring, holding on to their children and trying to reassure each other that what they had seen could not possibly have been real. Just a few months ago, Kate would have doubted her own eyes as well, but she saw the look of triumph on Dalliah’s face as they passed by. Somehow, this was all part of her plan. She wanted chaos. She wanted the people of Albion to be afraid.

The streets surrounding the lake were in a part of Fume that was ill-kempt and run down. The small district was a warren of alehouses and shops. The smell of straw and stale alcohol overwhelmed everything, and the people there had locked themselves in their homes and the alehouses to escape the commotion outside. These were
the servants’ streets. Litter blew through the gutters and tattered banners hung down from every gable, each one roughly painted with a blue eye. The horses shied as the cloths snapped in the wind, and Dalliah told Kate to dismount. It would be easier to lead the beasts from now on.

‘I see people have not yet let go of their superstitions,’ she said. ‘The dead are not interested in pointless pieces of cloth.’

‘It’s a tradition,’ said Kate, who had often hung banners in memory of her parents during the Night of Souls.

‘It is a way for the living to calm their fears and believe they are still in control. The dead are not listening. They have either moved on to the next life, or they are tormented by their own doubts, fears and grief. They do not care how many candles are lit in their memory, or how many whispers are shared in their name. The dead are lost. They cannot aid us any more than we can help them. It is foolish to believe otherwise.’