Chapter 18

A VILLAIN'S MAKING

You know, sometimes it’s rather nice to have a conversation that doesn’t end in somebody getting stabbed, shot at, or imprisoned. That somebody being me, of course. This was my first in months.

‘Ahhhh…’ exhaled Malyka Horu’s Daughter with foam all around her lip. ‘Nothing bloody better.’

I swirled the greenish ale around in my glass tankard and frowned. ‘Why in the nether is it green?’ I asked. It smelled green as well. That’s the only way I could put it. Of leaves and grass.

‘Kelp,’ said Malyka.

‘Who’s kelp?’

‘Not who, what. Seaweed. The bay’s full of it. You can see fields of it at low tide.’

I waited until both she and Scramp sipped their measures, just to be sure. I hadn’t forgotten my first tavern visit, and I’d already made sure to watch the ale being poured from the same barrel. Only then did I take a drink, and you’ll have to forgive my crassness, but fuck me, was Malyka right.

‘Gone gods,’ I said. The ale tasted salty on the first sip and ended up as sweet as crushed fruit, cold enough to put an ache in my forehead after several gulps.

‘Told you,’ said Malyka, as she clanked her tankard against mine. ‘So ’ow long were you in that festering pit they call Catacrone, eh?’

‘Three months by my count.’

‘Shit.’

Scramp garbled into his ale, lapping up the drink with his tongue like Tasparil snatching sparks from a chimney.

‘Scramp asks why.’

I made them wait. ‘Venerance amusement.’

Malyka leaned close, eying the handful of port workers behind us in the corner. It was a place half the size of Big Toad’s, but also half as filthy. Weak and dusty blightlamps fizzled in their sconces. Tasparil sat in the rafters, preening his scales.

‘Come on. We‘ve all broken the scripture once or twice, ’aven’t we? You think these blades are for decoration, hmm? Scramp here once bit a cheating trader’s arm clean off.’

‘It—he did that?’ I thought it best to stay on the creature’s good side, even though the gawky thing was currently having a tough and rather laborious time finding a way to sit on a stool with a tail involved.

Malyka nodded. ‘That ’e did.’

Scramp looked very pleased with himself once he’d managed to find a spot.

‘Why would you care?’ I asked.

‘Suspicious sort, aren’t you? That’s fine. Trust is a rare and precious stone in these Realms. It’s a stretch to say we care, but ’ow else are you supposed to make friends? Besides, I bought the ales. That means you ’ave to talk.’

‘That a Bashkar tradition?’ I asked.

Malyka winked. ‘Heh, for all you know.’

‘They found some blightpowder on me and decided without question that I was a smuggler,’ I admitted.

‘And you’re not, I take it?’

‘No.’

‘Then do tell, Dwellin! What are you?’

‘A cook. A damn good one at that. Or at least that’s what I was in Canarva before all of this. Gutter rat. Disappointing sister.’ It all seemed so long ago, and what little I had to show for that chunk of time. They say time heals but I say that’s lizard-shite. Time’s no medicine. It’s a damnable disease that eats flesh and memories. ‘Got into some trouble in the north and had to find a new place to call my own.’

‘So you came to Bashkar. Step up from Canarva. New lows, new highs.’

‘I have family here. A brother who I lost.’

‘Here to mend a wound or two, are we? I see.’

‘Quite the opposite.’ Maybe it was the ale, but I felt the need to talk. Speaking my problems and plans aloud to another brought my purpose alive again. It made it feel tangible instead of a dream weaved from the depressing gloom of a cell and the screams of the maddened. ‘To cause some more, in fact.’

‘A good ole revenge story. I can get on board with that, too. Been there myself.’

I shook my head. ‘This is much more than revenge.’

‘I,’ Malyka said, with a slap of her hand on the bar, ‘used to work for a travelling odditarium.’

‘Like a circus?’

‘No, not like a bloody circus. An odditarium. We both worked for Aznor the Wondrous, and what a fuckstick ’e turned out to be. I was the Iron Zephyr who threw knives and performed tricks to the cheerin’ of crowds. Poor Scramp ’ere was captured somewhere out past Korishal, almost under the belly of the Watcher, see. They called him Beast from the East, and kept ’im in a cage most days for children to poke at. Well, one thing led to another and we found ourselves out of luck, pocket, and living in the street. We’ve worked our way as mercenaries ’alfway across the Realms, and somehow we keep coming back to Bashkar. Lot of work for the open-minded and the quick-handed. You know—’

Scramp muttered something before Malyka could say any more.

‘One moment.’ The woman cupped a hand to hide her face from me but spoke just as loudly. ‘I don’t care if you don’t like the scent of ’er, Scramp, that’s probably just the smell of prison. We’ve been looking for a third, ’aven’t we? She’s young, sure, but somebody with the balls to escape Catacrone must be worth a shot, eh?’

Scramp took a good look at me with his bulging pink eyes. He said something that sounded like ‘Gnarfnunkle,’ and Malyka whacked the bar once more.

‘You be nice, now!’ she snapped. ‘Sorry about him, Dwellin. Truth be told, times ’ave been tough for work. Not getting many at all. I think ’e was looking forward to climbing about in a tunnel and getting his claws on some loot. Don’t know much about Scramp’s kind – or even if there is a kind – but they sure love shiny things. Me too, right? They ’ate birds, though. Can’t stand the bloody sight of ’em.’

I held Scramp’s stare, but it was like staring at a painting. I swore I heard a chuckle when I gave in and turned back to my ale.

‘What can you do?’ Malyka asked. ‘Besides cook, that is. That cleaver’s not for chopping bloody carrots, I know that much.’

‘I can fight,’ I said, pausing while the barkeep came to refill our tankards. ‘I know how to use blightpowder.’

‘Like a rawcerer?’

‘No, like an engineer,’ I corrected her. ‘And what in the nether is a—?’

‘Rawcerer. Little nickname some give those few in the Vale who are have a natural talent for magic when they take the powder, just like an alchemage. Raw blightpowder and talent, no prophecies. And sorcerers, like in fairytales?’

‘Trust me, I get it,’ I said into my tankard. ‘And I imagine you throw knives, while your furry friend here bites people. Strange, that you’re not getting work.’

‘I never miss.’ Malyka cackled before falling momentarily, and peculiarly, sombre.

It took a nudge from Scramp to revive her, and after gulping her ale, she dragged two short knives from crossed scabbards on her belly. I immediately leaned back on my stool, hand grasping for my cleaver’s hilt and already cursing my terrible decisions, but the woman chuckled. Instead of what I expected, she placed them flat on the bar to let me look. They were far more ornate than any other blade I’d seen on a smith’s table. One was a long shatter of turquoise reforged with gold, the other speckled jade with silver edges. Both had handles of spiralled horn.

‘These, she said. ‘These I stole from a slaver man of the far south. The blue blade is Arenin. You tell her a name, a true name, and she will always find her prey.’

Trust me, I made an urgent and bold note in my mind to keep my full name hidden until I had the true measure of these two. ‘And the green?’

‘This is Adavir. Always comes back when called by name. Some manner of spells writ by the ancient Augurs, but I ain’t complaining. And that’s why…’ Malyka paused to spin the blades around her hands and into their scabbards. ‘You’ve got to be very careful with these two. Now this baby ’ere…’

‘Agark,’ squawked Scramp.

‘Fine. Later, maybe,’ Malyka grumbled.

A silence of slurping and sighing fell upon the bar. I thumbed the chips in the tankard’s glass.

‘What do you say then, Dwellin of Canarva? Want to seek fame and fortune with us, the Iron Zephyr and the Beast of the East? You help us, and we can even help you take care of that pesky brother of yours, no charge.’

Malyka held my intrigue. ‘Why?’

‘Because that’s what friends do. And I’ve decided that’s what we’ll be.’

‘Then I have to warn you: most of the friends I make seem to end up dead,’ I replied with a laugh. ‘And besides, I have plans of my own.’

‘Is that so?’ Malyka said with a smirk. ‘Big plans, I bet? Known a lot of people who said the same. And a lot of them are either Blighted or dead by now. That’s the allure of Bashkar.’

‘I wouldn’t know.’

Malyka snorted as she gulped down her ale. ‘Then we’ll just ’ave to show you, won’t we?’

*

Slamming the tavern door shut behind us – and eliciting a loud and foulmouthed complaint from the barkeep in the process – Malyka wasted no time and no breath. I thought tours were supposed to be full of talking and explanation, but she walked as silently as she did determinedly and left me to my own staring. Tasparil took a liking to a matted strand of my hair and nibbled it as I walked, the pestering beast.

The Halfstreets were an overlapping tangle of bridges and walkways sheltered by a forest of docking towers and oppressive buildings. Stairwells reached up or down at unpredictable intervals. Lifts on pulleys rose and fell in rattling concert. We walked five streets and I still didn’t know if there was solid earth beneath my feet. The sky was hardly visible between the architecture thanks to the towers and the fact some thoughtful person had strung up awnings and nets to keep cargo from crashing down onto the streets. Something I imagined to happen regularly, given the dents in the wooden streets.

Between the shops and craftspeople, ladders led in all kinds of directions. Pipes bled steam overhead and sometimes underfoot. It was, frankly, a mess, and somehow I enjoyed every glimpse of it.

Malyka continued her march, leading ever upwards until we curled around the stone innards of a giant market that almost deafened me with its noise. Spices made me sneeze. Tasparil glided around the columns of coloured smoke like a vulture looking for a corpse. When we ran out of walkway, rickety ladders took us up and out to a balcony that zigzagged through tiered gardens of brick. Their flowers shamed the colours of the Belégan forests. Skinny trees with deep green fronds gave us shade while a salted wind buffeted us. A pair of white, fat birds screeched from a nearby rooftop, making Scramp snarl. Tasparil flapped to pester them instead and sent them scurrying.

When my legs were beginning to seize up on yet more stairs, and I was close to cursing Malyka, we emerged onto a rooftop between two port towers. There, at bloody last, I saw Bashkar in all its glory.

A confession: if I thought I was well-versed in the joy of a rooftop, I was proven terribly wrong. I stood twice as high as I ever had, and I was still dwarfed by the city.

Bashkar thrusted out before me to an ocean that was a glittering turquoise. Half a dozen pale ochre marble towers barred the aircraft-spotted sky. The huge edifices didn’t stand rooted in the ground as I’d see most towers do, but floated several hundred feet above giant cradles. Thin balloons protruded from their peaks, painted a spectrum of colours. The largest, of course, was the Venerance temple, standing at the highest point of Bashkar on the brink of the ocean cliffs. A spire the shape and colour of a crystal shard pivoted slowly in the sky beneath gilded balloons. As if that wasn’t enough of a feat, a giant halo of marble encircled the spire’s base, like too large a ring on too skinny a finger.

What buildings that didn’t rise into the sky still did their best at stretching as close to it as they could manage. I was lost merely trying to count the streets that were lined with white trees, never mind the buildings they shaded. I couldn’t begin to understand the amount of people that must have filled all these spires and turrets, or who in the nether needed such space and grandeur. Admittedly, I was as jealous as I used to be in Canarva, watching the barons in their carriages.

Malyka’s voice jolted me. ‘Well?’

‘It’s…’ The words failed me for a moment while I tried to take it all in. ‘My first question is why are the towers flying?’

‘Because they can,’ she chortled. ‘Shells and blightpowder. Those are the true religions of the Venerance. Great Watcher’s got nothing to do with it. Anyone who can’t see that is an idiot. People think this is a city of opportunity, but it ain’t unless you’re already rich, born into the right family, or plain lucky enough. The real city – our city – is beneath.’

‘Guttervale,’ I said, still unable to stop staring.

Malyka nodded. ‘The ’Alfstreets are the border between the two. Bashkar started down there in old Augur tunnels. Two thousand years of construction is what you’re looking at. Every year the rich and the religious seem to climb ’igher while they leave the rest stay behind. But you know what?’

‘What?’

‘We like it down there.’ Malyka clapped me on the back. ‘See there? You can see cargo balloons rising up from that bit that looks like a crater, see? That’s the roof of the Vale.’

‘Where is that school for chosen ones I’ve heard so much about?’ I asked.

‘The Prophetic Academy. That building with ’alf a dome, over to the south. All white marble. Looks like a bloody cracked egg, if you ask me. You can ’ear the chosen ones’ swords and spells clashin’ if you stand outside it.’

‘And where’s Reverent Lectra to be found?’

‘Hmm. Don’t know why you’d want to do that, but she’s right there. Got ’er own spire beside the temple.’

I spread my hands across the railing, staring at the tower Malyka had pointed out. ‘Lectra rules Bashkar, I hear.’

‘She likes to think so. Competition’s never been fiercer with the Blight trade getting so bloody rampant. The Venerance might be in power, but there’s plenty that have carved out their own piece of the city to rule.’

I sucked my teeth. ‘Like this Do Larasta that wants you dead?’

‘Good memory,’ Malyka said with a wag of her finger.

I didn’t need to be told. I’d brought it up on purpose.

‘Luckily Lal Do Larasta is a middling gang leader in a shitheap part of the Vale, with a wife far too beautiful for him to know what to do with, and he can frankly can go fuck himself. Do Larasta’s not successful but worrisome enough for me to stay out of ’is way for a while. There are far more dangerous people to get on the bad side of ’ere, Dwellin, don’t you worry.’

‘Tell me about them. I want to know it all.’

Why? You might be asking, my dear reader? I would ask whether you have ever used a map. It was the same principle. I didn’t need a parchment listing streets and spires and how damn steep a hill was, but I needed a map of Bashkar’s ladders if I was going to climb them. I also needed something remotely useful to butter up that hopeful fool Quintessi with, if they hadn’t thrown her in a cell of her own by now. We would see.

‘All?’ Malyka whistled to the wind. ‘Shit, alright.’

She stuck a thumb out. ‘Go deep enough in the Guttervale and you’ll find Dor’Jiri lurking in the brawl-cages. They call ’im the Brute, and if you ever see the big, southern Drola lump, you’ll understand why. Ain’t the sharpest blade on the rack, but ’e controls the gambling and protection rackets, burglaries and kidnappings, all sorts. Dor’Jiri’s idiot lackeys like to call themselves the Chaos Club for some inane reason that they’re very proud of.’

Malyka’s hand glided to point north. Two, she counted with her fingers.

‘Over in a district they call Quarrysfall is a woman the Venerance hunt on the daily. She was a cleric in her early days; an intellect turned bad. They call her Mother Phaeta, an old Watchhaven name that means poison.’

‘Mother Poison. She sounds lovely.’

‘That’s her. Though she mixes up powder better than any other, and though she’s the skinny and withered sort of figure, I hear her devious brains make up for it. That and her madman of a bodyguard. Covered in the words of the Great Watcher from ’ead to toe.’

A third was counted. ‘Now Phaeta has a twin brother. They don’t like each other much these days but they keep it civil, and between the two, nobody soaks Bashkar in powder like they do. His name is Barcalos, the one they’ve named the Blightlord, or the Gutter’s Prince. This chap is the one that keeps me up at night, and not in a good way. He’s a rawcerer. A failed alchemage, and Barcalos has no qualms fighting the prosecutors every bloody chance he gets, and with magic in the streets. There’s a true insanity in that one. I’ve heard he once skinned a man alive just for stepping on his toe.

‘The fourth is Anvilskin. Strange chap with a thing for armour and clockwork and things of the past. And for machinery in general. You know, few would ever say it to his horrendous face – mostly because nobody’s ever seen it – but he’s the weirdest one. He has a problem, I tell you. A metal fetish. What makes it worse is all the dark priests ’is Screechings gang likes to keep company with.

‘Other than that delightful bunch, there’s a score of gangs and barons I’d avoid, and all manner of rogue, pickpocket, shanker, and monster to be found. Bashkar’s a big pie. A lot of mouths want their bite, but first at the table sits the Venerance, and the corrupt bastards take all they can get. Like I said, shells and blightpowder.’

‘Then Lectra makes five.’

Malyka shrugged. ‘Somebody’s got to win the bloody game, right? She plays it well, by the look of it. Gossip says Lectra shakes hands with the Guttervale as well as the rich. After all, they say she’s got ’er heart set on the Grand Venerate’s seat in Tempest. You can’t do that without an obscene amount of power. You’d have to unite the whole Vale to reach ’er level. And even then, you’d still have to contend with the power of Tempest. It all lies at the feet of that fanatic the First Chosen. Might as well count him, if you want to be thorough.’

I did. Without the Venerance, Aberan would not have been chosen. I tensed my jaw as I felt for the scrap of godgear around my neck, so unremarkable even the prosecutors hadn’t stolen it. I still struggled to believe it contained power of any kind, but I had to trust it was enough, and to be honest, that so was I. The godgear and I were the same.

In my years, I’ve come to learn that there are seven kind of villains in the world. Let’s count them together, shall we? We have the cruel baron. The self-serving rogue. The ravenous beast. The devious intellect. The psychotic madman. The mindless machine. The cold megalomaniac. The blind fanatic. I had already found the first two in Wrekham and Voldo. Now six remained standing in my way. I wondered what kind I would be, when all was said and done. I guess, my good reader, we’ll have to find out together.

‘A game,’ I muttered to Malyka.

‘That it is. Well, Dwellin? Want to play it?’

‘You have no idea.’ I grinned, turning my back on Bashkar and looking to the sprawl of grasslands. The Watcher was still visible above the mountains. Since my travels south, the great creature had turned his shoulder northwards.

Voldo might have left me in a hurry, but his words on the road had refused to leave my head. They had whispered to me in the darkness of Catacrone, over and over. A cause that differs from the lawful standards of the world. A skill, mental or physical. A weapon, perhaps. A power. A nemesis or hero to oppose. Lackeys. A lair.

It was a fine guide to this new life I’d chosen, I had to admit. A cause I already had. Riveno had taught me my skills. My cleaver and godgear were my weapons. My nemeses were in sight. If you haven’t been following, lackeys, a lair, and power where what I needed next.

I stared between Malyka and Scramp. ‘I’ve got a better proposal for you.’

‘Oh, do you now?’

‘Work as mercenaries for me instead. That’s what you want, right? Work?’

Scramp snorted. ‘I agree,’ said Malyka, holding back a laugh. ‘Why should we work for you? A child. An admittedly scary child, but still. You’ve got no coin. What are you going to do, cook your way to fortune?’

‘Something like that.’ I smiled. ‘I’ll get you a piece of that pie. A huge chunk. You can trust me on that.’

The woman’s dark eyes turned narrow. ‘We’re supposed to take you at your word?’

‘Yes,’ I replied immediately. ‘And to prove it, I’ll even get this Do Larasta off your back.’

Malyka tutted in doubt. ‘How?’

‘I have my ways,’ I said, picking at a nail. ‘If you want to be a part of something important, all you have to do is follow me, and if you don’t mind, refrain from stabbing me in the back.’

Scramp and Malyka swapped a look. Much to the former’s squawking, Malyka’s shoulder slowly rose up in a shrug.

‘Say what you want, Scramp, but there’s something intriguin’ about this one. No risk, no reward, right? That’s what my father used to say. Besides, our luck can’t get any worse than this.’

Scramp skewered me with his bug-eyed stares while he chattered away beneath his breath. Malyka patted Arenin and Adavir.

‘Just be wary, Dwellin. We’re not the kind you can easily cross. Just because we’ve got nothing to lose doesn’t mean we won’t fight for it. You don’t prove yourself or get us paid, we ain’t friends anymore. It’ll be quite the opposite.’

I made sure to nod my head solemnly, disguising my smile. My day was turning out rosy; I’d already found my first lackeys.

I clapped my hand around Malyka’s proffered wrist. ‘You’ve got a deal,’ I said. ‘But first, show me to that academy. I’ve got somebody to see.’

‘Who could you possibly have to see at the academy?’

I stared at the cracked egg of a building, nestled in between bell towers and white awnings, and felt the settling of a stone in my chest.

‘A traitor,’ I said.