Honourbound - Rachel Harrison Read online

  Save for the fate-mark cut into his skin, struck through. The day of the forge.

  ‘She changed my fate,’ Rol says. ‘Gave me a new one to keep me from the After. Saved me from death.’

  Tyl shakes her head. Her fingers are going numb, and her vision is blurring. She knows it won’t be long before she blacks out.

  ‘You haven’t seen it,’ Rol says. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to hang over the edge like that. To know it’s over and to be offered a way out.’

  ‘And all it costs is your soul,’ Tyl snarls.

  Rol sighs. ‘You get nothing without giving something in trade,’ he says. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Ommatid is using you,’ she says. ‘You are nothing but a weapon.’

  ‘And you?’ Rol says. ‘What do you think that winged eagle you wear means? We are all just weapons to be used. At least I know what I am being used for.’

  ‘Well, I’d rather be used in the name of light than of darkness,’ Tyl says.

  Rol looks wounded then, as if he were hoping for a different answer.

  ‘She said you’d say that too,’ he says, with a sigh. He takes his hellgun from his belt and points it at her face. ‘Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see it. When you’re hanging over the edge like I was.’

  Tyl hears the pistol whine as it builds charge. That’s when she moves with all of the energy she has left and all of the speed she can muster. She pulls his combat blade out from between her ribs and buries it in his neck. Rol fires the pistol reflexively and misses her by a handspan. Then he slumps sideways, choking.

  ‘There’s no changing fate. No escaping death.’ Tyl drags herself into a sitting position against the cold wall of the corridor. ‘A Duskhound should know that.’

  He gasps and whines, blood spreading across the floor. It looks black.

  ‘Cass,’ he says to her.

  Then his eyes go glassy and his limbs go still and Tyl sees a new fate-mark take shape in the blood on his face. It matches perfectly to the time-code in her mask’s display. Right down to the second. Tyl feels a tear slide from the corner of her eye under her mask. She goes to the pouch on her belt. Her hands shake as she opens it and takes out the auto-cauteriser and burns the knife wound closed. She lets her head rest against the wall and looks down the corridor at the shield.

  The shield they have been tasked with dropping.

  Then Cassia Tyl takes a long, slow breath, drags herself to her feet and goes to fetch her gun.

  Severina Raine finds herself alone in a corridor hewn from old stone. There is a gentle thrum carrying through the walls and floor. Rhythmic, like a heartbeat. A push and pull.

  The ocean.

  The wind howls around her, carrying flakes of snow that sting her skin and melt against her greatcoat. Torches snarl in sconces, flickering in the wind. Raine moves up with her pistol raised, her boots echoing on the flagstones of the floor. On the wall to her right, there are letters painted on the wall in red.

  Honour. Duty. Faith.

  Raine lowers her pistol slowly and holsters it. She reaches out with one of her gloved hands and puts her fingers to the word ‘faith’.

  ‘Do you have it?’

  The words echo strangely, as if spoken by two voices. Raine looks around to see a man standing there, dressed in white, with a red sash slung across his chest. His medals glitter in the firelight and his eyes glitter too. Behind him stand four Lions of Bale. Their faces are hidden by dark cloth masks.

  Executioner’s masks.

  ‘Faith, Severina,’ says Lord-General Militant Alar Serek. ‘Do you have it?’

  Raine drops her hand away from the letters. She salutes him without thought, an instinctual reaction.

  ‘Yes, lord,’ she says. ‘My faith is my shield, and my sword.’

  He shakes his head. ‘If that is true, then why are you carrying so many doubts?’

  Raine blinks. ‘Doubts?’ she says.

  Serek takes a few steps towards her.

  ‘About the crusade,’ he says. ‘About those who serve alongside you. About Mardan Tula’s death.’

  He narrows his eyes. They look different to Raine, not as blue as she remembers them to be.

  ‘Doubts about yourself,’ Serek says.

  Raine curls her fists. ‘My doubts about the crusade are founded, lord,’ she says. ‘The Kavrone. Sylar. They killed Tula to conceal their own actions. They are moving against you.’

  ‘Are they?’ he asks her. ‘Or are you seeing traitors in every corner because you want to see them. Because you want to believe that your sister was incapable of breaking faith.’

  Raine shakes her head. ‘No,’ she says.

  ‘Is it because you want to believe yourself infallible?’ Serek asks her. ‘Unbreakable?’

  His words feel like cuts. Like gunshot wounds. She cannot stand them, nor the idea that she has disappointed this man that she so admires.

  ‘No,’ she says, through her teeth.

  ‘You took a soul off the line today, against orders and without seeking permission,’ Serek says. ‘You are acting against High Command, because of your doubts. You are acting against the crusade. Tell me, Severina Raine, what is the name we give to those who act against the crusade?’

  Raine tries to speak, but the words escape her.

  ‘The word is traitor,’ Serek says.

  His voice distorts and breaks up like a bad vox-signal, and those eyes of his are definitely not blue. They are green, and faceted like gemstones.

  On either side of Raine, other figures take their places against the wall. To her right, Mardan Tula, with ligature bruises marking his neck. Andren Fel, bruised and bleeding, his grey eyes flat as if he is broken.

  ‘No,’ Raine says.

  To her left, Raine sees Lucia. Always Lucia. Looking at her sister is like looking in a mirror. Her warm brown skin. Dark eyes. Stark white scars.

  The blood, blooming on her tunic from the firing squad that shot her.

  ‘Say it,’ Serek says. ‘Admit what you have done. What you are.’

  Raine has her back against the wall. Against the word ‘faith’. She puts one hand to the cold stone and feels the thrum of the ocean through it. Raine looks at Serek and at the Lions of Bale with their guns held across their chests and she grits her teeth, tasting blood and cold air and smoke from torches.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Because I know the truth of my heart. I know the strength of my faith. I am no traitor.’

  Raine raises her hands in front of her chest and makes the sign of the aquila.

  ‘And I know that this is a lie,’ she snarls. ‘And I will not be broken by it.’

  The world flickers, just like the torch light. Like a corrupted pict-capture. Serek smiles at her, and it looks in no way as it should.

  ‘Yes, you will,’ he says, and his voice echoes and doubles. ‘Everyone can be broken.’

  Serek holds up his hand and the Lions raise their guns as one, but they do not fire on her. The Lions fire on Tula first and he dies all over again, slumping down against the wall, leaving a thick trail of blood down the word ‘Honour’.

  ‘I will not break,’ Raine shouts again.

  Then the Lions point their guns at Fel and fire. Raine cannot help but blink reflexively at the crack of las-fire, nor can she help the way her heart aches as Fel dies too with his blood spattered across the word ‘Duty’ and across her face and throat. Raine blinks again.

  ‘I. Will. Not. Break.’

  The words burn on the way out as the Lions turn to point their guns at Lucia.

  ‘I was wrong,’ Lucia says.

  Her voice doesn’t echo or distort. It sounds exactly as Raine remembers it from the last time they spoke.

  ‘I thought that I could not be broken,’ she says. ‘That I could not fail, and neither could you
.’

  She looks at Raine with tears in her dark eyes and puts out her hand. Her fingertips brush the sleeve of Raine’s greatcoat.

  ‘I was wrong,’ she says again.

  And the Lions fire, and Lucia falls, and just like the first time it leaves Raine with a vacancy in her soul. A part of her taken. Extinguished. Raine feels her whole body start to tremor, though she knows that this is a lie. She drags her eyes from Lucia and looks back at Serek.

  ‘I will not break,’ she says, her voice barely a whisper.

  The Lions turn their guns on her now and Serek shakes his head.

  ‘It is over,’ he says, and he sounds disappointed.

  ‘Service is my duty,’ Raine says, as the Lions take aim. ‘Duty is an honour.’

  She snarls the words through her teeth and through the blood in her mouth.

  ‘The greatest honour is to know true faith,’ she says, as they open fire.

  Daven Wyck staggers and falls against something. The bole of a tree, rimed with frost. He blinks hard. Snorts blood back into his nose. Tastes it in the back of his throat.

  ‘What?’ he mumbles.

  His own voice echoes back at him from between the other trees. What, what, what, until it sounds like a crowd of accusers. Wyck raises his lasrifle and braces it against his shoulder, pointing it into the mist and the forest until the word stops echoing back at him. Everything is pin-sharp from the stimms. Bright with shadow and light. He smells damp earth and stagnant water and hears the rustle of leaves. Wyck’s heart hammers and it’s not just because of the dose. It’s because he knows exactly where he is.

  But he can’t think how he got here.

  ‘No good,’ Wyck says to the forest.

  That echoes back at him too. No good, no good, no good.

  Wyck pushes himself away from the tree, leaving a bloody handprint on the bark.

  Just like the last time he was here.

  The echo of his voice fades away to be replaced with another sound. Another echo, only this one is mournful and hollow and it makes his heart want to stop in his chest.

  Howling.

  He hears howling.

  Wyck starts running without looking back. He can’t look back because he knows what he’ll see. Vicious shapes trailing smoke. Coalfire eyes and snarling maws.

  Duskhounds, come to take the soul that they are owed.

  The howling follows at his heels as Wyck throws himself through the trees, snagging on branches that reach like claws, and roots that try to trip him. He feels the heat of the hounds at his back. The howling is deafeningly close.

  Wyck breaks the treeline and sees it. The lake, stretching out like a black mirror. He doesn’t stop running until he’s in the water to his waist. It is freezing cold.

  Only then does he look back.

  But the shoreline is empty. He can’t hear the howling anymore. Just the lapping of water and the gentle knocking together of stones pushed by the lake’s edges. The wind pulls at his fatigues and ruffles his hair.

  They are gone. He outran the hounds.

  Wyck starts to laugh so hard that it hurts and makes his eyes run.

  ‘That’s right!’ he shouts at the shoreline. ‘Not this time!’

  That feeling fades along with the laughter as something pushes against him in the water. It bobs to the surface with a gasp of old air. A body, floating face down, wearing black carapace armour and stuck through all of the soft joints. Wyck takes a step back, and the lakebed gives under his boot, miring him. He bumps against another body. The blank, this time. Blood blossoms from the knife wound in the soulless man’s chest, turning the water even more black. More bodies swell and rise and float to the surface. No Sighted. No cultists or fanatics or curselings.

  Just the others.

  Wyck backs up until the water is up to his chest. It presses on him and makes it hard to breathe. Another body emerges from the blackness. Pale like a moonstone from a long time spent at the bottom of the lake. Grey eyes, wide with horror. Another knife wound, but no blood from one so old.

  Raf.

  What have you done, Dav?

  His old friend’s words are the push of the water and the clatter of stones. They are the thunder of Wyck’s heart.

  ‘Shut up,’ Wyck shouts, but his voice doesn’t echo now. The only echo is Raf.

  What have you done? What have you done? What have you done?

  The water rises and presses and Wyck starts thrashing to get clear of the grip of it and the echo of his dead friend’s voice, but he can’t see the shoreline now. Can’t see anything but Raf’s grey eyes, wide with horror. He fires his rifle until the cell empties. Then a pair of blue-white hands burst from the lake’s surface and wrap themselves around him, pulling him under.

  Lydia Zane cannot keep Ommatid out, certainly not of her kinfolk’s minds, but there is something that she can do. She bows her head and concentrates all of her strength. By categorisation, her primary abilities are telekinetic. Like her regiment, she is made for breaking. Telepathy is secondary, it is harder for her to use and to control. It costs her even more than her other gifts.

  But she has little choice.

  You want to play games?+ she pulses to Ommatid. +Then let us play.+

  Zane squeezes her eyes shut and feels the world wash away until she cannot smell the burn of las-fire or the cold stink of the dead. Frost patterns over her skin and the old wounds open up across her body. Her blood soaks sluggish into her robes.

  She opens her eyes again to a vast star-scape. The stars are aligned as you would see them from the coast’s edge on Antar, in the spring when the sky is clearest. The planet turns slowly below her, dressed in green and grey, just like those who call it home. Zane sets her feet down on nothing at all. Her birds circle her lazily.

  A figure stands opposite her in the blackness, haloed by stars. She wears a robe made of hundreds of gossamer-thin layers. Hundreds of colours, too, if such a thing is possible. The woman is thin too. Almost semi-transparent, just like her robes. Her feet are bare and bloodied and her eyes are two green gemstones set into a pale, drawn face. Her hands are curled like claws, with jagged, broken fingernails.

  Zane starts to tremble at the sight of her, because looking at Cretia Ommatid is like looking into a broken mirror.

  ‘Oh, well isn’t this a delight?’ Ommatid says, with a wide, pointed grin. ‘You spoil me, my sweet.’

  With effort, Zane takes a step towards Ommatid, trailing flakes of frost. She draws her dagger, spun from Antari darkwood.

  ‘Your world is wild,’ Ommatid says, looking down at Antar as it turns. ‘Quite beautiful, really.’ Her crystal eyes snap up to meet Zane’s. ‘Would you like to guess the number of fates in which I have seen it burn?’ she rasps. ‘I can give you a hint if you’d like. It is more than the number of times that I have seen you win this fight.’

  Zane shakes her head. ‘I know fate,’ she says. ‘As do all from Antar. You are not its master.’

  Ommatid laughs, and it echoes from every star.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘I am not its master, but I am favoured by it. I see many paths. Many choices. I see the shadows that cling to the heart of your precious crusade.’

  Zane tightens her grip on her spun wooden dagger. Ommatid tilts her head.

  ‘You would so love to know, wouldn’t you?’ she says. ‘Which faces are just masks. Whose hearts have turned black. How they were turned.’

  Ommatid takes a step forward. They are almost within arm’s reach of one another now. Zane’s birds cry over and over. Warning calls. The bindings inside Zane’s head ache and the cables embedded in her scalp click and hum.

  ‘Your mistake is believing that souls can be turned at all,’ Ommatid says. ‘Souls cannot be forced or fooled. They choose. Out of ambition, or greed. Fear or fury. The path to truth is written into every mortal
soul. It is only in following it that we become free.’

  ‘Free,’ Zane says, softly.

  The spun blade shakes in her hand. Her mouth is thick with drool.

  ‘Free,’ Ommatid says. ‘And you could be too, my sweet. You just have to choose.’

  Free, free, free, echoes the first of Zane’s birds.

  ‘Look within yourself,’ Ommatid whispers. For a moment, her voice is that of Zane’s mother, from the day beneath the singing tree, long ago. ‘See the path. See the truth.’

  Zane takes a ragged breath and closes her eyes.

  ‘I see it,’ she murmurs. ‘The truth.’

  ‘And your choice?’ Ommatid asks in her mother’s voice.

  Zane’s eyes snap open and she plunges her wooden knife into Ommatid’s chest. No hesitation. A deep cut. Just like Wyck told her. Zane pulls the blade free again and Ommatid’s blood scatters, freezing as it leaves her body to make new stars in Antar’s night sky.

  Fall, says Zane’s other bird.

  ‘I agree,’ says Zane, to the bird.

  And she grabs Ommatid by the shoulders as the nothing beneath their feet falls away and the two of them tumble down, towards the turning face of Antar below.

  Severina Raine snaps awake on her knees in the Sanctum of Bones with Ommatid’s lie echoing after her. Her chest burns from the Lions’ gunshots and from having what really matters twisted against her. It would be so easy to give in, in that moment. To allow the pain to break her.

  But Severina Raine is made to endure pain. She is made never to give in. So she grits her teeth and gets back on her feet though her limbs ache and her mind is reeling. She wipes blood from her nose onto the back of her glove.

  Raine sees Vander nearby. He has his sword drawn, in guard. She can see the way he shakes as the dream peels away. Raine shouts his name, but he remains still, save for that shaking. When she approaches him, he is murmuring something in his sharp-edged accent.

  ‘I meant to stop it,’ he is saying, over and over. ‘I can still stop it.’

  Raine does not trust Vander. She does not know if he is a part of Sylar’s plan, or just oblivious to it, but she knows that here and now, she needs him. Until she is sure, she cannot condemn him, as much as she loathes him.