A Company of Shadows - Rachel Harrison Read online

  As the tunnels go deeper into the mountain, they narrow. There are Sighted everywhere, as if they’ve been called to muster. Wyck watches them through Zane’s glamour and realises muster is the wrong word. They are all laughing, grinning. Some are singing.

  It’s a celebration.

  ‘This is bad,’ he whispers.

  Zane nods. ‘There is a darkness at the heart of this place,’ she slurs. ‘It grows. Every moment.’

  She stops walking so suddenly that Wyck nearly slams right into her.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ Zane asks.

  ‘What?’ Wyck hisses.

  She turns and looks at him. There are trails of blood running from her bionic eyes. It freezes on her skin. Wyck fights the urge to run from her.

  ‘It sounds like wings,’ Zane says. ‘Like beating wings.’

  The glamour flickers. Wyck smells the cold air of the cave for an instant. He hears a lot of things, but not the sound of wings.

  ‘Feathers,’ Zane murmurs. ‘Black wings and talons. They follow like shadows.’

  The glamour flickers again, for longer this time. A group of Sighted who just passed in the other direction halt. They stop their singing and one of them looks back and frowns.

  ‘Fix her, sarge,’ Crys says in a warning voice.

  Fix her. As if there’s any fixing something like Lydia Zane. Something wicked and broken and wrong.

  ‘Stop,’ he says to Zane. ‘It’s in your damned head.’

  ‘Shadows,’ Zane says, louder now, her voice hoarse. ‘Like shadows at my back!’

  She starts clawing at her face, her arms, fighting something he cannot see. Her nails cut bloody furrows in her skin. Wyck does the only thing he can think to do.

  He drives the butt of his rifle into her face.

  Zane stumbles and falls to one knee. She is mumbling witch-words and drooling clots of blood onto the ground.

  ‘Don’t you break,’ Wyck hisses at her. ‘Not now.’

  The glamour flickers again. Wyck grits his teeth and drops to his knee beside her, then grabs her by the arm.

  For less than a heartbeat, Wyck hears the wings of birds. Sees them, too. A black, heaving cloud of them flapping and crying and tearing with their talons, all pulling to a point that’s so dark you could never hope to see through it.

  He lets go, his fingers burning with cold and his heart singing with fear. Zane’s head snaps up and she locks her false silver eyes onto him.

  Just enough, and then no more.

  Wyck’s mind burns with her voice.

  Give me the vial.

  She knows. She saw him, like he saw her. He should never have touched her.

  Give. Me. The. Vial.

  It’s his last one, but he can’t deny her. She won’t let him. He reaches into the pouch at his belt and puts it in her hand in such a way that the others won’t see. Zane presses the injector against the inside of her arm. Wyck hears the hiss as it bites, and misses the rush of it.

  ‘We need to move,’ Andren Fel says.

  The Sighted are right near the edge of Zane’s projection, their guns up and their voices loud and wary.

  ‘Get up,’ Wyck whispers to Zane.

  She’s shaking. More blood on the stone.

  ‘Let it hit you,’ he hisses. ‘And get up.’

  Zane’s hands curl hard. She exhales a ragged breath, then gets to her feet. She glances at the Sighted through the smeared-glass edge of the glamour, and they freeze in place and start murmuring and shaking. Another word Wyck knows. A cousin to the other one.

  Death.

  The Sighted drop their guns. Their eyes roll back and they shake and bleed from their noses and ears. As one, they stagger back the way they came, impelled. Zane is running with sweat that freezes instantly on her skin. There are open wounds on her arms and face and throat, some from her own nails and some that look as though they were opened by talons.

  ‘Now, we move,’ she whispers.

  One by one, the Sighted bring their prisoners and chain them at specific points around the central circle of stone. Around the symbol that makes Raine’s stomach turn. The symbol on which Arcadius Verastus now stands, arms outstretched. He casts off his cloak of feathers to reveal words burned into his skin. More push up like new scars even as Raine watches, turning black in seconds. His gemstone eyes flicker as if caught by candlelight.

  There are those among the prisoners that Raine knows. One is Antari. Captain Karin Sun, of Gold Company. Then there is regimental advisor Haran Yale. Beside him, Delvaren Kharadesh, the firstborn son of Gholl’s most powerful noble house. Then there are others who she does not know. Non-military. Two are dressed in the robes of acolytes. One in the vestments of a priest. One in worker’s gear. The last of all is a pale man dressed in ragged clothes. He is old and young all at once with black shadows under his sunken eyes. Cables hang from his scalp, disconnected and severed. A psyker, unchained.

  He’s the first to have his eyes taken.

  One of the Sighted does it, while the psyker screams. It’s a long howl that tapers off slowly, replaced by words murmured through his teeth.

  ‘Dark. Dark. Dark.’

  The Sighted cuts the psyker’s throat in one smooth motion. The murmuring becomes a gargle, then stops altogether. The psyker slumps forward and his blood begins to flow along the channel carved into the floor, towards that central symbol. Towards Verastus.

  The woman in the worker’s gear takes up the screaming. Kharadesh begs, shouting for clemency, that he has money, power. Secrets. It reminds Raine of Mayir.

  I have influence. Anything you want.

  Raine doesn’t scream. Doesn’t beg. She focuses her burning, hurting mind and pulls at her bonds. At the scholam they tested her many times by binding her feet and hands and blindfolding her. They would leave her in the lower levels and wait for them to flood with ice-cold ocean water. It was a test, to see if she would panic or give up.

  Raine has never done either.

  The chain won’t break and nor will the loop. It has been hammered into the stone long enough for fingers of lichen to wrap around it. Raine looks down at her hands. They will break, long before the chain or the loop. She knows from experience.

  The Sighted is taking the eyes of the priest now. The man doesn’t scream; he only prays loudly and forcefully until the Sighted silences him with a punch that snaps his head back. Another body falls. More blood flows into the centre of the room. Smoke begins to rise from the words painted on Verastus’ skin. The feathers of his cloak stir.

  Raine pushes against the thumb of her left hand until she hears a snap as it dislocates. Pain blinds her for an instant. She looks at Verastus, but he is catatonic. Shimmering. The Sighted pays her no mind either.

  He is busy with Haran Yale.

  The regimental advisor doesn’t make a sound. Somehow it’s worse than the screaming. Verastus is alight now. No, not alight. It’s an unlight that streams from him. From everything but his glittering eyes.

  The chains binding her slacken, just barely. Raine wriggles her feet, loosening them further.

  One of the acolytes dies in a noisy, messy thrashing. More blood, more feathers. Verastus’ cloak encircles him like folding wings. His hands curl like talons. The air in the cave is cold and howling, carrying flakes of ice with it.

  Raine is next around the circle. Next to have her eyes taken. Despite her focus and her fury, she is afraid. Her heart is loud. She thinks of Lydia Zane, who lost her own eyes on Drast. About the mess of those dark sockets.

  The Sighted pads across the stone in front of her.

  ‘Severina Raine,’ he says. ‘It is time to make your fate.’

  She looks up at him, at the knife with which he means to cut her.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she says, pulling free of her bonds.

  Raine’s l
egs are numb and her head sings with pain, but she throws herself at the Sighted and knocks him flat on his back. The knife goes skidding across the stone circle. Raine puts her knee on the Sighted’s throat, drives her fist into his face, once, twice. His nose bursts. His lip splits. On the third swing, her arm freezes and locks, the Sighted struggling beneath her. On the dais, Verastus throws up his hand, and Raine is pulled towards him. He catches her by the throat, his arm trailing darkness.

  ‘Always fighting,’ he says in a twinned, echoing voice. ‘Even when you have no hope.’

  Raine can barely take a breath. The claw of his hand closes tighter.

  ‘There is always hope, if you have faith,’ she rasps.

  ‘You speak to me of faith as if I do not understand it.’

  Raine’s vision tunnels until Verastus fills it. ‘Because you don’t,’ she says. ‘You will die. Your lord will die. Your lies will die.’

  Arcadius Verastus laughs loudly.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘You will die, but first I must take those eyes of yours.’

  Verastus raises his other hand. His skin is iridescent and the fingers are tipped with talons. They get so close to her eyes that they go out of focus. Raine struggles and kicks and thrashes.

  Then she hears a sound, echoing and strange, but familiar.

  It’s a voice.

  Lydia Zane’s voice.

  We have you, commissar.

  It’s Raine’s turn to laugh. Verastus freezes, and Raine realises he can hear Zane as clearly as she can.

  ‘They are–’ he begins.

  Verastus never gets to finish. Wounds open up across his face, scattering Raine with his black, oily blood. He staggers back and drops her. Raine falls hard, the impact knocking the air from her lungs and crashing her teeth together. She looks around through half-lidded eyes to see Lydia Zane stepping up to join her at the circle’s edge, her arm outstretched. Her skin covered with wounds and glittering with frost. Wyck is with her, along with what’s left of the Wyldfolk. Five more, clad in shadow grey. The Duskhounds, and Andren Fel. Their lasguns light the cave as they put down the Sighted who have begun to flood the room.

  Raine drags herself to her feet, her body alight with pain from head to toe. She pushes her dislocated thumb back into its joint and takes the heavy laspistol that Andren Fel gives to her, holding it in her right hand. Her good hand.

  ‘What are you?’ Lydia Zane says to Verastus, taking a step forward. ‘Theta? Zeta, perhaps. Is that why you need to seek strength elsewhere?’

  Arcadius Verastus seems to fold light around him. His cloak flutters. He raises a taloned hand, the action staggered and stuttering as Zane works to deny him.

  ‘I am blessed,’ he says in his doubled voice. ‘By true gods. By the fates.’

  Lydia Zane smiles a wolf’s smile. Blood runs in a thick stripe from her nose and down her chin.

  ‘What a mighty creature you must be,’ she says. ‘But I am Epsilon.’

  She raises her hand. More wounds open across his arms, his throat.

  ‘I am Antari.’

  She lifts him from his feet.

  ‘And I deny your liar gods.’

  Zane throws her hands out. There’s a thunderclap of pressure. The snapping of bones. Verastus is hurled through the air, trailing blood and feathers. He lands in a crumpled heap and goes still. Raine takes a step forward, her pistol raised.

  ‘Is he dead?’ Wyck says.

  Raine opens her mouth to speak, but Verastus answers for her. He regains his feet with a clicking and resetting of bones, those words on his skin glowing with bright blue light.

  ‘Enough,’ he says, and the unreal becomes real.

  Wyck doesn’t see the cult leader anymore. He sees something that floods him with fear and makes him want to run. It’s a great black hound, trailing smoke and shadow, locked onto him with red crystal eyes. Its growl is the thunder of guns. It’s just like the old Antari story. The one that Fel’s storm troopers took for their name. It’s a duskhound. It’s death.

  And it’s coming right for him.

  Wyck fumbles his rifle and takes a couple of steps backwards. The firing mechanism is locked, and his fingers are clumsy and slow and the hound is so close. He drops the rifle, letting it swing from the strap. Gets his hand on his blade.

  And out of fear and fury, Daven Wyck tries to cut death.

  The knife snags. Cold blood runs over his fingers. The hound howls, and it flickers and changes, all except for those red crystal eyes. Its true shape is a man in a feathered cloak, with painted words on his skin. Wyck brings the knife around again, but he’s too slow. He sees the cult leader’s gemstone eyes flash and there’s an impact that knocks the air out of his lungs and his feet out from under him. He sees the silvered stone of the cave rush up to meet him, then he hits it hard, and sees nothing more.

  Verastus tears through the Wyldfolk towards Raine. He’s flickering and changing, becoming nightmare shapes or vanishing altogether with a turn of that feathered cloak. She can’t draw sight on him. The Antari are staggered and shouting, all seeing their own fears. Verastus opens Nial’s throat with a swipe of his clawed hand. Breaks Awd’s bones with another boom of pressure. Puts Crys on her back, bleeding. Andren Fel shouts warding words, somehow keeping his feet the first time Verastus hits him. The second blow splinters his carapace armour and shatters his mask. He falls silent. Falls to his knees. Raine levels her pistol. She can barely hold it steady as Verastus tears his way towards her. She fires once. Twice. Feathers and oil-black blood burst from him, but he doesn’t stop. He reaches for her, his hands outstretched. Raine sees herself reflected a dozen times in his gory gemstone eyes. But then Arcadius Verastus slows. Stops. Snarls through his teeth. Frost crawls over his skin as Lydia Zane staggers forward, breathing hard through bloody lips.

  ‘Do it,’ Zane says. ‘Kill him.’

  Raine presses the barrel of her pistol against Verastus’ forehead. ‘It seems your false god did not see fit to show you your own fate,’ she says.

  Arcadius Verastus, Ninth of Nine, smiles slowly. ‘Of course he did. He shows me all fates. All truths. In my dreams I have seen you standing there, with your brightly burning soul. In this fate, you shoot me and I die.’

  ‘Then you always knew you would fail.’

  Verastus shakes his head. Frost glitters on the hard angles of his gemstone eyes. ‘Death is not failure,’ he says. ‘You know this, Severina Raine of Darpex then Gloam. Bastard child of a coward and a queen. Death always has a purpose, so give me mine. Shoot me, kill me, and know that you go on making fates by the will of my lord.’

  It’s the way he says it. Her name. Her home. Her family. The way he aligns her so assuredly with his false god. Raine cannot stand it. She fires the pistol and keeps firing until there is not even a trace of his gemstone eyes left. When the magazine is empty and smoke coils from the barrel, she sees feathers scudding across the floor of the cave. One brushes the toe of her boot.

  Death is not a failure, echoes the voice of Arcadius Verastus.

  With Verastus dead, the Sighted break like springtime ice. Some keep fighting. Most flee. A few try to surrender, pleading that they were tricked. Manipulated. All of them get a swift death. It’s a mercy that they hardly deserve.

  Wyck only lost Nial in the stone circle. The rest of the Wyldfolk are hurt, bleeding and broken, but they’re alive enough to run with Zane protecting them. The psyker is at the limits of her strength, pale and muttering about feathers and shadows at her back. Raine sticks by her, that borrowed pistol at the ready. Andren Fel and his Duskhounds carry the rest of the prisoners between them, defending them from those Sighted who still have the will to fight. Wyck stumbles and staggers but he doesn’t stop running. He’ll be damned if he’s going to survive cutting death itself just to have High Command bring the mountain down on top of him.

  Th
ey clear the mouth of the Maw and run out into the cold air. It’s fully dark, the sky lit with stars. Wyck’s legs burn and ache and it’s agony to breathe with all of those broken ribs, but he’s still among the first to hit the top of the ridge. To look back and see the star that grows brighter than the others.

  ‘Get down!’

  His words are stolen as the orbital lance spears down into the mountainside. Wyck throws himself to the ground alongside the others and squeezes his eyes shut, but there’s still a moment when his world is light and pressure and heat. When it fades, there’s nothing left of the mouth, just the Maw. It has opened wide, massive, broken pieces of stone sliding down into it to be swallowed whole. For a moment, Wyck could swear he sees red crystal eyes in that darkness.

  ‘You would think that would silence it,’ Zane says. ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  Wyck looks at her. At the way she draws her robes close with her thin fingers hooked like claws. At her open wounds and the dried blood and the way her silver eyes seem to see deep into the Maw.

  ‘What?’ he says.

  Zane starts to laugh, and Wyck thinks that she really is wicked and broken and wrong. Maybe more so than before.

  ‘On your feet. This whole area could collapse.’

  Raine’s voice makes Wyck flinch. The commissar is a wreck, covered in blood, both hers and the cult leader’s. Her hands are skinned and bruised and her wrists are swollen from the restraints. Her braids are a matted tangle, her clothes tattered. Despite all of that, her eyes are clear and sharp. It is, after all, not the uniform that makes Raine a commissar.

  But now he knows that’s not all there is to her. He knows about that timepiece. That it made Lydia Zane cry even with her false eyes and her broken soul. He knows about the name carved into the brass.

  Lucia.

  Now he just has to figure out how to use it.

  Raine takes her seat at the table opposite Lydia Zane. She puts the thick parchment file down. Her pen and ink. Raine opens the file and flips through the pages until she reaches an empty form.