SMOKE AND BLADES Read online

  You give me Life

  I give you Death

  Come let us hold our final breath

  On winter’s earth

  We make our bed

  And we will turn the snow blood red.

  The Snowtears bloom

  On coldest peak

  Against the frost

  No life prevails

  Beneath your veil

  In the Land of Gloom

  He will be with you soon.

  In the World of Shade

  Our bond was made

  Blood for blood

  And kiss for kiss

  To settle score

  Then breathe no more

  How did it come to this?

  The Snowtears bloom

  On coldest peak

  Against the frost

  No life prevails

  Beneath your veil

  In the Land of Gloom

  He will be with you soon

  And now before I am to bed

  Begins my final game

  To turn the world upon its head

  And set the wreck aflame

  The last thing they will hear my love

  Before they join the dead

  Will be your name in tears and rain

  As softly they are bled.

  FREE REIGN FOLK SONG – ANON

  1.

  The Salientians danced and clapped as they paraded down the street. They didn’t know that death was coming.

  The rain spattered on their upturned faces and fell into their mouths. The parade held up commuters in taxis, the tram system, and horse drawn cabs but no one seemed to mind. It was a welcome splash of colour on a Monday morning in Free Reign.

  Red eyes were glazed over in rapture as cymbals clashed and pipes blew. Webbed feet slapped the concrete and throat sacs ballooned in song. Banners and paper lanterns were stretched high between the buildings. Their race was only a small enclave here in the east Longshadow district but they were determined to make the best of it.

  It was the annual spawning festival and there were pockets of celebrating frogfolk in all districts of Free Reign. To the humans gathered on the pavement to watch, it was an artist’s palette of colours passing before them. They cooed the way they cooed at fireworks as skins dappled orange and red danced by, or bright stripes of yellow on slimy black.

  One large Salientian near the front of the little parade balked a loud mating cry and rattled his tambourine. He turned to the crowds on the pavement and gave a wide toothless grin, just before the top of his skull was blown off.

  Crack!

  The creature tottered on its sinewy frog legs and then collapsed onto the dirty pavement. Its brains were dripping out of its skull like an upturned porridge pot.

  It took a moment for the information to filter amongst the revelers. It happened so fast that many people just looked at each other for explanation.

  Then the two raggedy men burst through the parade, greasy haired and pointing shotguns in the air. One of them let rip both barrels into the sky. He shouted out to the panicking crowd.

  “Move! Get out the fucking way!”

  The taller of the two men strode forward and swept his weapon across the pedestrians on the pavement, who all dove for cover.

  “Nobody look up at us keep your stinking faces in the dirt!”

  The two men ran across the road, jerking their heads back the way they had run. They wore dark suits and waistcoats but they were a poor parody of gentlemen. Hobnail workman’s boots stamped the earth under them and their second hand finery was much repaired and patched.

  The taller had the ruddy face of a drinker, the shorter the pinched features of poor nutrition. They ran across the street amongst the panic and stopped at the entrance to an alleyway, breathing hard.

  The smaller man had a bulging leather satchel across his shoulder. As he ran, coins fell and tinkled from it like a trail of breadcrumbs. The taller man slapped his forehead.

  “By the good Spark Sanny, you’re throwin’ it all away!”

  Sanny caught his breath and snarled back.

  “Well I runs faster as it gets lighter Kray. Why am I the one lugging this anyway? I don’t weigh much as a lambsworth soaking wet anyhow!”

  Kray brought up his iron and pointed it back across the pavement.

  “Cos I’m a better shot, and you’re a better listener. So hear what I’m tellin’ ya. We planned that raid too long to lose a single coin about now. And we killed two folks we didn’t meant to doin’ it. So it’s hangman’s money now. Keeping it together is our only way out.”

  Sanny heard shouts through the crowd on the other side of the street. He tensed and looked at the options around them.

  “Talking of way out Kray, where’s ours? Cos that’s the wardens I hear.”

  Kray chewed his fleshy lower lip and murmured. He glanced behind them down the alley.

  “This way.”

  Sanny screwed up his face.

  “Ain’t nothing but an entrance to Below along there, Kray.”

  Kray saw the uniformed wardens appearing amongst the crowd, weapons up, searching for the two robbers.

  “We need to get somewhere we can’t be found, son. And fast.”

  He grabbed Sanny by the shirtsleeve and dragged him along the alley. It stank of urine, and rats scurried from them as they passed. The overflowing bins of Longshadow’s many chophouses spilled out onto the cobbles. It was an area populated by blue collar workers and bohemian students, fashionably grubby and acceptably dangerous.

  At the far end of the alley was an ancient brick tunnel, a remnant of the foundations of Free Reign. Moss grew around its edges and half-forgotten language was inscribed around it.

  Sanny dug his heels in at the tunnel entrance and shook his head.

  “No way. I’m not going down into the warrens.”

  Kray stopped to catch his breath and glanced behind him down the alley. He couldn’t see the lights of the wardens yet, but he could hear their shouts.

  “Are you crazy, the wardens will never find us in there. It’s another world they don’t police it.”

  Sanny stared into the tunnel like it was the maw of a great worm.

  “Didn’t you see what happened to Jakin and Robestone?”

  Kray spat up phlegm into the drain to clear his lungs. His wheezing calmed a little.

  “Course. Those flatliners owed a lot of money to a lot of people. Someone just made an example out of them.”

  Sanny wiped rain and sweat from his forehead and barked a mirthless laugh.

  “An example? They were skinned and warped into weird fucking angels at the entrance to the Mudstock tunnels. Most terrifying thing I ever saw.”

  Kray shrugged.

  “So? It was a message.”

  Sanny peered into every shadowy nook in the jumble of pipes, alleyways and warehouses that made up the low levels.

  “You didn’t see it Kray. No gang on the east side uses that as a warning. It was him.”

  “Who?”

  Sanny lowered his voice and drew close, spittle flecking his chin.

  “The Plague Doctor and his Wraith.”

  “Oh for Spark’s sake.”

  Sanny drew himself up tall and waved a finger.

  “Don’t shoot me down like that! They’re not the first. The Vostok boys told me they lost three collectors last Clawday. The Frant brothers. You ever see the size of those boys?”

  Kray raised his eyebrows and nodded.

  “Yeah they were a tough gang but no one found anyone hanging on any walls. They probably just got out the game in the only way you can. By running.”

  “Or by dying.”

  The sound of stomping boots and authoritive voices drew closer. Kray could see the
beams of torches being cast at the end of the alley they crouched in.

  “Well that’s our choice right about now Sanny. If those wardens catch us we’re both dead. So swallow your fear down into your guts and run!”

  The two robbers gritted their teeth and gathered ragged breath. They grasped one another’s sodden waistcoats and nodded in silent agreement. They both knew they deserved whatever was coming to them but they had no desire to pay for their lifestyles in blood. So instead they loaded fresh shells into their shotguns and swept their greasy hair back from their eyes. Then they broke cover and ran straight into the dark tunnel.

  The first hundred feet of the tunnel had been used as a shelter by vagrants and a place to store loot by gangs. Graffiti tagged the mossy brickwork and a few broken old carts lay half submerged in the filthy water. It was the very fringe of known city.

  The two killers were right to be afraid of the deeper dark. The warrens of Free Reign were the dumping ground for centuries of thaumaturgic waste. Half formed Chimera slithered down salty tunnels howling at their abandonment. Elementals, disconnected from their function and cut loose slopped through the mud, rudimentary intelligence warping into childish anger.

  As the eternal lights of Free Reign vanished to a tiny distant circle at the tunnel entrance, Kray took out his moonglobe and shook it. The chemicals mixed and the glass ball lit up with a pearly light.

  He held it up in front of them and breathed in their options.

  “Three tunnels. All marked with Glottish graffiti.”

  Sanny crouched in the water with his shotgun cocked on his knee. The freezing sludge had soaked through his tatty boots and right into the wool socks beneath. He would have slotted anyone for a bottle of gin and a seat next to the fire in the Beggar’s Rest. His keen eyes narrowed as he strained his vision down the tunnel.

  “I don’t see ‘em Kray. They ain’t following.”

  Kray turned his head and his pockmarked face was lit like a ghost by the moonglobe.

  “Told ya, boy. No one polices the warrens. Nothing down here to police and they’re just too big.”

  Sanny stood up and stared at the three branching tunnels. He shivered with cold and nerves.

  “Well then why in blue fuck are we going further in? We’ll never get out again. I’m not ending my days staggering about in the dark going mad once that moonglobe’s run out.”

  Kray murmured to himself and nodded as he studied the tunnels.

  “One on the left is marked as leading down under Candlehill. Now I don’t want to be wandering about in the pipes where all those wizards been flushing their magic shit for a thousand years. If we’re gonna find something weird, we’ll find it down under there.”

  Sanny wholeheartedly agreed. He patted his pockets down and brought out his baccy and papers.

  “It’ll be protected anyway. No way would those old freaks let anyone crawl about under their ivory towers.”

  Kray grunted.

  “Hmm. Okay then. Fuck left. Middle one here says it curves just under the Salientia quarter and on past Fallen Willow.”

  Sanny scraped a match against the wall and lit his rollup. His pinched face flared orange and the expression said fuck that.

  Kray took a deep breath and conceded.

  “Ain’t gonna argue that point, partner. Could live my whole life and not go within a mile of those creepy skull-faced fuckers at Fallen Willow. And if they catch us we both know what happens.”

  “Third one a charm?”

  Kray held up the globe and peered at the fading graffiti, his mouth working in silent words.

  “Fuck. Comes out somewhere between Northgate military academy and Free Souls College.”

  Sanny blew out bitter yellow smoke.

  “So either the army gets us or the zealot newborn wizards just itching to sizzle their first scalp. Why don’t I just finish this rillo then blow both our heads off?”

  Kray turned on his wiry accomplice.

  “Look you winging little wretch, do you want to die? Do you want to? Cos all I’m hearing is regrets and a longing to get caught out of your snaggly little mouth. I live my life with no regrets, son. I killed, I raped and I stole from those took my fancy. Got no regrets.”

  Sanny grinned showing the big gap in his front teeth.

  “Well ain’t you a fresh breeze in an old tunnel, Kray.”

  Kray puffed out his chest and lit his ghoulish face from beneath. The buttons of his waistcoat strained against the fat of his beer belly. His expression was proud.

  “Life’s ugly, but I noticed it looks less ugly when I bring everything else down to my level. So I cut me up some beautiful women, I orphaned some happy little ‘uns, and I snatched the life outta some undeserving men. And what do you know, my world looks a little sweeter for it.”

  Sanny sucked on the dregs of his rillo.

  “Yeah and now we’re tunneling down to hell to save the reaper a walk. About the only person we ever did a favour for.”

  Kray shook his head and tutted.

  “No helping those that don’t wanna live. Well I plan to survive this night Sanny, to spend some of this here money in some good whorehouses and eat me some fine frosted cake.”

  Sanny let the ember drop and it fizzled in the sludge. He took one of the gold Florreks out from their loot bag.

  “Fine. We flip for it.”

  Sanny thumbed the coin and it spun up in the tunnel, glimmering like a star as the light from the moonglobe reflected on it.

  When the roar came echoing down the tunnel, Kray and Sanny jumped and forgot about the coin. It spun all the way down and plopped into the muddy water, lost forever.

  Kray brought up his shotgun in one hand and raised the moonglobe in the other.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Sanny crouched low, resting the stock of his weapon into the crook of his shoulder. His greed and violence kicked in. He felt the weight of the leather satchel on his back. No way was any living man going to take away his well-robbed gains.

  The roar intensified. It seemed to rattle the tunnel walls, shaking dust from the old labyrinth to drift down on the robber’s heads. Kray squinted as he saw a flickering red light emanating from the right hand tunnel.

  “Look. There’s something coming at us!”

  “Kray, am I going flipheaded or is that someone riding an Angeldart coming down that tunnel?”

  Sanny braced himself for the fight. Suddenly the roar stopped and the light extinguished.

  Silence.

  Kray and Sanny heard the sound of their own ragged breath echo in the tunnel. The iron felt cold and heavy in their hands. Kray extended his arm a little and the light from the globe reached further into the gloom. Then he saw a movement.

  “What? Who are you? Step out into the light you fucker or you’re getting peppered dead!”

  Kray started as he saw the silhouette standing in the tunnel. Tall and lean, it wore a long duster coat and wide brimmed hat. Green eyes glowed dimly. The face was dark and didn’t look human, didn’t look like any of the races that lived in Free Reign. Kray propped his shotgun on his hip and braced. Sanny called from behind.

  “Is it Wardens?”

  Kray bit hard on his lip until it bled. He was weighing up his options.

  “No. Coming from the wrong direction. Wardens go light to dark. This fucker’s come up from deep.”

  “He armed?”

  “I’d bet that bag of coins on it.”

  Kray strained to make out the figure in the dim light. Then he saw it brush aside the hem of its coat and was sure he glimpsed the shine of a gun hooked on its hip.

  “Last warning traveler. You’ll just be another notch on my shotgun.”

  Suddenly the moonglobe began to sputter and die. The tunnel fell into blackness.

  “No no no come on you piece of shit.”

  Kray frantically tapped the orb with the barrel of his shotgun and it flickered briefly back into life. He peered down the tunnel and to his horr
or saw that the figure had moved at least ten feet closer. He brought his weapon up just as the moonglobe died.

  The tunnel reverberated with the report of the shotgun. In the muzzle flash Kray saw the figure again, not more than a few metres away.

  “Bastard!”

  He let loose the other barrel and in the flash saw the figure standing in front of him. A black pistol was raised and the barrel pointed at his chest. The moonglobe flickered dimly, on its last legs.

  Kray just stared for a moment. In a breathy whisper he spoke.

  “You ain’t a person. What in the First Spark are you?”

  Kray was knocked off his feet as the figure shot him. His old boots went heels up and he splashed down in the dirty water with a gargle. When he surfaced it was with a mouthful of sewage and a collapsing lung. He spat blood and water out onto himself and tried to stand but only got halfway up when his legs gave.

  This time Sanny caught him under the armpits and dragged him backwards. He kept his gun in one hand, pointed at the stranger, and propped Kray up on the dry ledge at the tunnel wall. The bigger man just sat there coughing and wheezing, blood hissing from his chest. Sanny stood up and took his shotgun in both hands.

  “You put your iron down. Put it down and we can talk.”

  The figure stood there in the fading glow of the moonglobe that sat half submerged at its feet. It cocked its aquiline head to one side and regarded Sanny with green eyes.

  Sanny had seen the thing dodge a whole heap of buckshot. He wasn’t about to waste his two cartridges if he wasn’t certain he could get a clean hit.

  “You ain’t warden. So that means we can deal. In my bag here…I got a whole heap of Florreks. Enough to live pretty. Now there’s blood on ‘em, but blood washes off, right?”

  The dark figure nodded its bird head.

  “So what I say is, how about you and me just split some of this right here? You can have Kray’s share.”

  Kray tried to protest but coughed up a gobbet of dark liquid instead. He folded double and nearly fell face first into the water. With a weak hand he held himself up.

  “Don’t…you…dare….that’s my…fucking…money.”

  Sanny just kept staring wild eyed at the stranger, grinning like a fool.