Guilty Blood (2 page)

That's when a grip like a pair of smith's tongs clasped my wrist.

I should have stuck to my weekly rounds.

"Ho there, missy," came the boatman's gritty voice. I turned, trying to disguise nerves with outrage at the rough hand on my arm. All three at the table were looking at me, the girl sneering, Sayn half standing, his hairy hand locked on mine. "Not as sly as you thought, huh? I think you owe us a round with those coins you're stinking up."

I knew I couldn't pull away. Maybe I could scream like he was accosting me, but no one around looked the hero type. Maybe if I—

"No, they're hers," Garmand said calmly, interrupting my escape plans and surprising his companions, who turned on him as though he'd gone mad. He produced his pouch and fingered the extra opening I'd just added. "Have a seat, miss. If you're as talented as you just demonstrated, you might be even better than the one I was waiting for."

He gestured to the unoccupied fourth seat. "At the very least, hear me out. I've got an idea that could buy us each our way out of the city, avenge a friend, and slap the aristocracy across the face—all of which must sound better than getting hauled off to the Watch. But tell me, does your skill end at cutting purses?"

∗ ∗ ∗

The skiff didn't run aground. It ran a-grave.

A tombstone jutting out of the water halted our journey and we pulled the sad little boat ashore, rubbing away handfuls of flaking white paint with every tug. The black water lapping against half-submerged tombstones sounded like the lake was trying to hush us, as though it didn't want us to wake the untended dead it had crept upon. In morbid curiosity, I peered into the languid waves, wondering if I could make out an unearthed coffin or a drowned skull, but the cloudy night helped the lake keep its secrets.

Looking inland hardly helped calm my imagination. Evercrown Cemetery. Here Garmand sought his revenge on the living by way of the dead.

The cemetery rose upon a low hill, where naked autumn trees grasped heavenward, their curled finger bones doing little to hide dozens of small structures scattered randomly between them as if tossed by some gargantuan hand. Thousands of discrepant silhouettes vied to be more ominous then their neighbors, holding aloft ornamental wings, urns, or obelisks, while larger shapes hulked like ghoulish giants collecting bones in the dark. The trees and wild grasses rustled in the chilly breeze, their roots seeming to draw up the smell of the dead, their haze of motion disguising anything that might lurk amid the graves. I could make out the nearest of these tombstones, their memorials lost in shadow, but each seeming to bear ominous promises for trespassers.

Hoping not to excite my imagination too much with my first step upon the burial grounds, I looked back the way we'd come. The few lights of the sleeping city flickered across the lake called the Tears, so named for the elaborate burial processions that crossed it to reach the city's mausoleums. Only royalty and nobles were buried here, those who could afford the honor of such costly rites. All others were burned to ashes. Such was a pauper's fate, but one nearly everyone in Ardis expected. Such was also the crux of Garmand's scheme.

Gathering us a few strides away from the shore, a cask of oil and two crowbars under his arm, Garmand spoke hurriedly and in hushed tones.

"This is going to be simple: corpses for a corpse. We find the Venacdahlia mausoleum, break in, and burn everything we find. We keep it small. We're not trying to start a blaze that will have the Watch running. If there's time, we gather up the ashes and put together a fine little memento for the countess. We clear?" It was exactly as we'd agreed after leaving the Old Horn

"And tomorrow we wake up rich men with big houses and fat wives. That's how this all ends, right?" Sayn's tone was arch. Garmand frowned. His sister, Liscena, cursed.

"No," Garmand replied. "Tomorrow we wake up just like we always do. The countess, her daughters, and half the inbred nobles in town, though—they wake to find their forefathers going back a dozen centuries gone, the ones who gave them that noble blood, are just ashes. All burned up, just like we're going to be when we pass on." His tone took on an optimistic enthusiasm. "And maybe, like you'd expect from folk with no sense, the nobles gussy up their dead like they're headed off to the opera. So we help ourselves to a little of that, hock a few trinkets, and finally get out of this place on their coin. Seems like justice to me."

He nodded at me. "All that, but only if you're as good as I hope you are."

"I like my turnout better!" the burly boatman chuckled.

Liscena rolled her head. "Can we get on with this?"

∗ ∗ ∗

It took nearly an hour to find the resting place of the county's rulers, the Venacdahlia mausoleum. We searched without light, fearing the attention it might attract on the exposed hill. Broken flagstone paths, twisted roots, and spidery ground creepers hid among the shadows of tombstones, making the cemetery so treacherous to traverse that in places we had to crawl amid the ornamental mourners and deathly effigies. We found our aim near the end of a walk that wound up from the eastern gate, squatting near the hill's summit, commanding a lordly view of the Tears and the city beyond.

Angels prayed at the tomb's corners, years of grime giving them the wings of crows. Artfully twisted pillars circled the small, temple-like structure, and the dead eye of a shattered, stained-glass pediment window stared down. A tarnished bronze door barred the way inside, its surface etched with a flight of surprised-looking green cherubs in mottled armor, a large keyhole piercing one's breast like a spear wound.

Not waiting for a cue from my evening's employers, I found my makeshift picks and kneeled at the door, trying to avoid making eye contact with any of the angelic mourners. The Venacdahlias earned their reputations as skinflints that night—two twists of the metal sliver and the tumblers gave way. I fumbled with the lock for several moments more, underscoring the worth of my participation. Eventually I stood and, with a casual hand, swung the mausoleum door wide.

Although the burial chamber was open and lofty, the air within was close, with the thick smell of dust and old rot. I'd expected that. I'd even expected the hairy black spiders and other less distinct shadows that fled our intrusion. But I hadn't expected the foreboding, the feeling of blasphemy that rained down from the vaulting, the accusations of eyeless sockets glaring through the lids of dozens of burial alcoves. We were trespassing in the home of the dead, and though they couldn't physically stop us, their indignation loomed even past death's veil.

We'd hardly paused to take in the dilapidated monument for a moment before Garmand moved to the bier at the chamber's center and set down the crowbars and cask of oil.

"Start with the high alcoves and pull down what's inside. We'll burn them in piles." His instructions were matter of fact, though his shifting eyes belied his disquiet. "If you find anything valuable, it's yours to keep."

I helped them, and, being the easiest to lift, even tugged down the remnants of some of Ardis's historic rulers myself. I didn't make any friends among the historians that night—to say nothing of the country's nobility. It had fortunately been some time since any Venacdahlia had been buried here, so we were mostly contending with dry remains, and what we were tossing down looked inhuman enough that we could fool our consciences for the time being. Within minutes Garmand was pouring on the oil and we had a modest blaze going, the smoke of old rulers wafting up through the broken window and invisibly out into the night. The lurid light flickering through crackling skulls did little to lessen the foreboding weighing in the pit of my stomach. Somehow the hellish light seemed ominously prophetic.

Here and there we'd find something worth pocketing—a brooch, a pair of earrings, a gold-capped walking stick—but it was Liscena who first laid eyes upon the dagger.

"Whoa," came her flat interjection, escaping with such dumb surprise that we all turned in curiosity. She had just wrested the lid off a low alcove, not far from the fire. Inside, something caught the light and danced like a serpent's tongue in the corpse-fueled flames.

"I found it. It's mine!" Liscena snapped as we crowded close, doubtlessly not even sure what "it" was. Cautiously, her brother reached into the alcove and tugged forth a corpse unlike any we'd defiled that night.

On the dusty marble of the mausoleum floor lay a withered form in a grim military uniform, its chest seemingly crushed under the medals weighing upon it. Its high-collared coat shone with gold thread, broad epaulettes, and silver clasps. At its hip, a gilt-encrusted saber jutted from an elegant ebony scabbard. But although the corpse was interred with the honors of a leader, it was obvious it didn't receive such esteem in life's final moments. Four vicious wounds marred the body, the open buttons of the jacket and shirt revealing a ragged path from the face, neck, and collar to the center breast, which rot had deflated like an emptied wineskin. There, from the sternum, as though the murderer had tired mid-crime, jutted the handle of a silver dagger. Yet more remarkable than the apparent murder weapon being interred along with the victim was the dagger itself.

Although the blade hid within its morbid sheath, what was visible bore an exotic elegance reminiscent of treasure-laden Katapeshi palaces. Delicate flourishes adorned the hilt, but the handle appeared to be carved from a single miraculous crimson stone imprisoned within a web of delicate gold filigree. Proud and deadly, it was the weapon of royalty—and, apparently, the slayers of royalty.

An impulsive girl, Liscena already had her hand around the pommel, yanking before anyone else made a move. Thinking back, I'm not sure whether it was the girl or the corpse who screamed first.

The dagger didn't come away cleanly, but rather burst from the corpse like a surely secured stopper, spilling the thief backward. A geyser of something like luminescent entrails erupted forth from the unplugged wound, an ephemeral burst of upward-roiling ethereal humors. Gushing from the dead man, the torrent of nether fluids refused to rain back down, accumulating and writhing in the air above the corpse, hanging there in defiance of gravity and sanity. And with the glowing viscera exploded a terrible sound, a depthless intonation from an indistinct distance. A noise that grew evenly in volume, as if it falling up into the crypt from the pit of the world.

A moment later, a grotesque apparition hung above the empty carcass, a knot of churning, unnatural organ-stuff glowing the unsteady green of a flickering altar votive. With revolting deliberateness the mass churned and took shape, as if worked by the hands of some invisible fiend. Limbs, garments, a withered visage rent by slashes—each took shape until the thing floating there was a spectral copy of the husk below. And all the while the sound came, issuing from the form like a scream heard through a shattered window, the horror-stricken source hidden at some unworldly remove.

When the phantasmal form moved, the four slashes marking its disfigured body stared like a vertical row of empty sockets, taking us in even as they unleashed that terrible, voiceless howl.

I can't say who made the first move, but terror gripped us each in unique ways.

"Proud and deadly, it was the weapon of royalty—and, apparently, the slayers of royalty."

Garamand was at his sister's side in a blur, shouting something as she gaped dumbly, brandishing the long, silver blade of her prize. For my part, I realized I was backpedaling as the crypt's doorframe came into view, managing to halt myself before my shuddering limbs carried me further. Sayn's terror took the boldest route. Hardly stepping back from the phantom, he hefted a discarded crowbar and, with a bellow, sent it spinning end over end toward the thing.

Were the vaporous corpse a creature of bone and flesh, surely it would have shattered from the wild gusto of the blow alone. As it was, the bar clanged upon the vault's far wall and skittered into the dark.

Like a blind thing, the ethereal carcass's head snapped to where the tool had cracked the aged mausoleum stone. In a series of jerks, it turned its neck in the direction of Sayn's bellow, directing its own howl toward the big man, the slash across the thing's face connecting its empty eye sockets in a single cyclopean hollow. Awkwardly, like a thing unused to moving, the spectre wrenched forth the saber of faintly glowing ghost steel at its hip. Slashing a weird gyre before it, the dead thing propelled itself, blade and body, toward Sayn.

The boatman stumbled backward in the face of the armed shade, obviously rethinking the impulse not to flee as a swipe of the spectral blade transfixed him. The ephemeral saber emerged bloodlessly from his chest, seemingly nothing more than an illusion. Looking down upon his unwounded body, Sayn's face reflected his surprise and the beginning of a smirk in the instant before he collapsed.

A gasp from Liscena drew the deadly wraith's attention. Garmand yanked his sister off the ground bodily, intending to flee, but halted as the spectre came to hover a step between them and the door. Valiantly, he moved between the thing and his sister. As he did, the howling reached a hollow crescendo.