The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Read online

  “Captain?” said someone. Through the haze of voices, he couldn't tell who. He tried to close his eyes but it didn't help; he was seeing through his whole face now, his head, his hands, and every uncovered scrap of flesh.

  Fumbling, disoriented, he managed to find the winged-light pendant and grasp it tight. Immediately the template reasserted itself, and his vision collapsed to two points, the static ebbing. He tried to speak, but his nerveless lips made only nonsense sounds. It was a long moment before he could feel his tongue again.

  “I...apologize,” he managed finally. “I was unprepared for the news.”

  “Bloody pikes, you really are a monster,” said the governor.

  Looking up, he found them all on their feet, Greymark standing before the governor and matriarch with the faint outline of a hammer in his hands—ethereal, not quite manifested. The Enforcer had taken a step back and her guards stood with batons drawn, ready to attack. The sounds of kitchen-work had ceased. Only the girl remained in place, staring across the counter with an expression of avid interest.

  Sarovy tried to form a smile, but he hadn't been good at those even while human. “Yes. There is no question of that.”

  The Enforcer snorted and made a hand-signal at her agents—then another, more sharply, when they didn't move. With clear reluctance, the pair eased back, sliding their batons into their belts. “Should have expected that,” she said. “Your abominations reacted much the same, though without the...” She gestured at her face. “Blurring.”

  “My apologies.”

  “You are what you are. Now, thoughts?”

  We are doomed, was the first in his head, but he doubted she wanted to hear that. Still, he felt certain of it. The sun failing to rise on Darkness Day? It was a clear sign of the end of the world. The Light had deemed them unworthy and abandoned them to the night and the Void.

  “I could not begin to speculate,” he said slowly, “except that we who experienced the seizure and sense of loss had all been remade by the Imperial Palace. Bound to it.”

  The governor scowled. “If you're trying to say that your stupid Light was the sun—“

  Enforcer Ardent overrode him. “Your connection with the Palace hasn't returned?”

  “I don't feel a change. I only know that I was not...unstable before the incident.”

  “So perhaps something has happened to the Palace.”

  He shook his head. “I would advise asking the Messenger, but...” He saw her face tighten. Before she could reply, he said, “I want to see my men.”

  Her inkdrop eyes searched his, then she nodded curtly. “Might as well.”

  *****

  “Ardent,” said the governor as they started toward the cellar door.

  She cast him a hard look, but he wore the bullish expression of a bureaucrat determined to see his paperwork done, and she knew she'd hear no end of it if she walked away. She made a curt hand-sign to Zhahri and Ticuo—'out of earshot'—then moved to rejoin the Bahlaerans as her agents prodded the captain through the door.

  “Enforcer Ardent,” she said coolly, eyeing the governor.

  He waved off the admonition, still angrily flushed beneath his tan. “I haven't seen you enforce much. From what I can tell, you'd rather collaborate with him!”

  She tried not to let her irritation show, but it was difficult to keep her scarred lips from twitching. “I think you forget that I am not your subordinate, governor. Nor obligated to help you.”

  “After the trouble you've stirred up—“

  “I?” She sucked air through her teeth to head off the impending shout, and turned it into a hiss. “It wasn't I who chose to assault their company while they were investigating one of our warehouses. That was your garrison commander. You should be thanking me for coming to his aid, else he and all your council could have been strung up by the neck that night.”

  “You should have been aiding Tonner from the start!” the governor barked, fingers knotted in the edges of his rumpled brocade coat. He hadn't changed since the company's raid on his mansion, and beneath the bluster he looked old and tired, his thick dark hair showing its salt. “If you'd set aside this ridiculous neutrality and just killed them all, we wouldn't have a hundred-plus more mouths to feed—and Commander Tonner would still be alive.”

  I will not speak ill of the dead, she told herself firmly. Instead, she said, “I made our policies clear to him, and to you. We do not shed blood in the shadows unless necessary. I have violated that rule too much already because of your poor planning.”

  “The blasted Imperials would have done the same to us!”

  “Mekhos, I agree with the Enforcer,” interceded Lirayen. “We shouldn't have antagonized them. Perhaps we could have trapped them without harming them or endangering our militia.”

  The governor bared his teeth. “What would trapping them have accomplished? We don't want them. And now we have another gang of them on Old Crown, sacking the guilds and the council hall and the bloody bank! Sun or no sun, those madmen are determined to destroy us!”

  “Let them have it. They cannot eat gold,” said the Mother Matriarch sternly. “This is no longer an issue of occupation, but of dire emergency. We must gather our people into shelters to weather this freeze, not plot how to put them in further danger.”

  “Eradicating the Imperial threat, here and on Old Crown, is of preeminent—“

  “No,” said Ardent. “We don't execute prisoners. The barrier between the Shadow and the Dark is thin enough already.”

  “But these aren't prisoners,” sneered the governor. “These are abominations created by the false Light, unworthy to be considered people. The Hammer agrees with me, yes?”

  Ardent slanted a look to Gwydren Greymark, standing cross-armed beside the arguers. She knew him only by reputation: the Hammer of Brancir, dedicated both to the Trifold's elder forge-goddess and the lion-spirit Athalarr. He was said to be millennia old, and by the opaque distance in his green eyes, she could believe it. She had 'aunts' with the same ancient gaze.

  “They were created,” he answered gruffly, “but not from nothing. I know their maker. He and the Emperor have to answer for this, but their creations... No. They were human once. Perhaps they still are.”

  “This is not productive!”

  “Mekhos, dear, you've had a trying time,” said the Mother Matriarch, setting a hand on his arm. “How long has it been since you've seen your lady wife? We should reunite you with her; I'm sure she's been dreadfully worried. Allow my people and the Enforcer's to see to supplies and evacuations, and bring you your advisors as we locate them. There will be much to do in the coming weeks, and you must rest so you can rally the populace with a clear mind.”

  The governor muttered something foul, then made a visible effort to exhale, straighten, and smooth down his hackles. The look he cast Ardent was coldly dismissive as he let the Mother Matriarch guide him to a chair. “Very well, let us all do what we do best.”

  Ardent inclined her head to the Mother Matriarch, who offered an encouraging smile. As she turned toward the cellar door, though, she heard boot-steps following. Glancing back, she found Greymark at her heels.

  “I wish to see these creations,” he explained to her scowl. “Your agents have kept them under lock and key since their taking.”

  “It's not wise.”

  “I'll mind my tongue, I promise.”

  She didn't like it, but the Trifold had not always been the Shadow's ally, and she had no desire to start a quarrel. “Fine,” she said, and stalked onward, past the cooks' helpers and through the door to where her agents and the captain waited on the stairs. Below, orange lamps lit a path through the extensive cellar to the hidden entrance of the goblin tunnels.

  Together, they trekked down.

  *****

  Sarovy observed with interest as unexpected passageways opened before him. He had been down in these depths once, chasing a goblin decoy into a Shadow Folk trap, and from the rung-lined vents in the ceilings,
he had no doubt that such a trick could be pulled here too.

  The tunnels were made of the same stuff as his isolation chamber: concrete, apparently, with smoky orange light-globes recessed near the ceilings. Narrow staircases spiraled through the material, occasionally permitting glimpses of other chambers or hatch-like doors; sometimes the native stone showed through as well, jutting uncut from the grey walls. He wondered what great cavern this might have been before it was filled up with concrete honeycomb.

  Despite their depth, the air was good, and they occasionally passed little alcoves with benches and troughs of running water. They didn't stop though, instead navigating by tactile signs at the corners that the Enforcer grazed her fingers over.

  More grey walls, more portcullises, then finally they passed through into a grander space like a cafeteria, filled with rank upon rank of broad tables and benches and overlooked by a railed balcony on which black-clad Shadow Folk and metal elementals stood guard. Over a hundred people occupied the ground floor, gathered in bunches at tables or drifting about, their garb a shabby array of homespun, hand-me-downs, and tattered uniforms.

  Faces turned toward the door as it opened, wariness shifting to surprise. “Captain?” said a scruffy fellow nearby, amber eyes wide. Sarovy recognized him after a moment, and with profound relief realized that all the men on the ground floor were familiar.

  “Corporal Wolfsden,” he replied. “Good to see you well.”

  “Captain, you're all right? Where've you been?” The corporal stepped forward with several men on his heels, and the Enforcer and her guards faded back without seeming to yield—more like they were presenting him than surrendering him. Then he was being pulled into the group of soldiers, hands clapping his shoulders as others called out the news and the whole crowd shifted toward him.

  For a moment, surrounded by incredulous and happy faces, he couldn't believe it. He'd never been the focus of such enthusiasm. But as he let himself be pushed and cheered and back-slapped toward the center of the room, he felt a tug at the corner of his mouth. A smile?

  “All right, settle yourselves. Settle,” he told them as he took up a position atop a table. They did so rapidly, most forming automatic ranks while others climbed on the further tables for a better vantage. A scan of their faces showed him fading bruises and burns, bandages, dark-rimmed eyes and the occasional nasty scar, but nothing worse, nothing recent—and no defeat.

  What he didn't see were his specialists, or his lieutenants.

  Or the mages.

  “Sergeant Benson,” he said, spotting the stocky ex-merchant who'd served as his supply-master, “how many are we, and where are the others?”

  Benson shuffled forward, running a hand over his balding pate nervously. He had the typical low-slung, sturdy stature of an Amand, his eyes like black dots that evaded Sarovy's gaze. “One hundred thirty-six, sir,” he mumbled. “Thirty-seven, with you.”

  The number slid into him like a knife. He'd arrived in Bahlaer less than a month ago with two hundred and thirteen men—and he'd lost a third of them. Not in honorable battle either, but to traps and ambushes and his own rapacious leaders. Many had fallen before Darkness Day, but this new tally doubled the count.

  “And the disappeared?” he forced out. “How many are still gone?”

  “Um. None, actually. The Shadow Folk dumped all the living back in here with us and showed proof of the dead. Like Lieutenant Gellart,” Benson added with a grimace. “They salvaged some of our papers too, and I've gone through the roster. We're all accounted for.”

  Sarovy cast a look toward the door he'd come through but couldn't find it. Instead he spotted the Enforcer and her entourage on the overlook, a rope ladder folded up by her feet. She had her arms on the railing, whiteless eyes fixed on him. “Every single one of us?” he said.

  “Yessir. Except you—but now here you are.”

  He scanned the crowd again and spotted a blond man standing on one of the tables, peeking over the taller soldiers. The blond flinched down when their eyes met, but Sarovy recognized him anyway. “Stormfollower, come out here.”

  There was a brief uproar on that side, and some kind of struggle, then Stormfollower was shoved out before Sarovy's table. Straightening, he lifted his chin and said, “Yessir?”

  Sarovy regarded him a moment, then sighed. Jonmel Stormfollower was one of the problem cases of the lancers, a hotheaded Jernizen expatriate who had sold his loyalty to the Shadow Folk for the promise of gold and women. Apparently he'd been taken by the Shadow Folk during the Midwinter Rites and then returned.

  “Your experience of the cult's hospitality?” he prompted.

  Stormfollower blinked, stance easing marginally. “Uh. You mean when they grabbed us from the cells? They put us in this creepy dark place and asked some stuff about the specialists and the Messenger, but there wasn't much to say. Then they brought us to this window-thing to watch you all fight with the colonel at the garrison. Think they wanted to see how we'd react. Then we got bottled up in here with everyone else. It's been fine, I guess. If you want someone who got tortured, that's Seff and Bru.”

  Sarovy blinked. Seff Tycaid and Brulin Taregnon were two of the lancers he'd considered killed at Old Crown—eaten by the Dark. When they let themselves be prodded to the front of the crowd, though, they looked no different from the rest: a few more bandages but no missing pieces, no hollow-eyed stares.

  “Got chewed on some by the shadow things,” said Taregnon, laconic as always. “Old guy there stopped it.” He indicated Gwydren Greymark.

  “Why?”

  “Something 'bout neither of us being proper Imperials anyhow.”

  That was true. Tycaid was Jernizen like Stormfollower, and Taregnon was from Averogne—a small protectorate tucked into the shadow of the Rift, shrouded in forest and all-too-cozy with anti-Imperialist Gejara and the smugglers on the border. Anyone born west of the Rift was too far from the Light to be trusted.

  “Maybe they took enough bites outta our hide to satisfy them,” said Tycaid. “Either way, they haven't bothered us since they chucked us in here.”

  Sarovy nodded slowly. “And the others? Lieutenants, specialists?”

  “The specialists are down that way,” said Sergeant Benson, gesturing at the one visible door on this lower level. It stood open, an orange-lit hall trailing out of view. “Barracks space there, then the infirmary and a few cells. We've had to lock up a couple people—Breisart, Corporal Coromant, some others. And Nachirovydry. He was getting violent.”

  “'We'?”

  The sergeant fished a ring of keys from the pocket of his patched tunic. “They let us handle our own, sir. Only ones down here who aren't us are the medics, and nobody would touch them. That traitor Rallant is locked up too, so Acting— So Lieutenant Linciard gave me the keys to keep himself from being...you know.” He wrinkled his nose. “Influenced.”

  Just the thought of the controller gave Sarovy a headache. “Is Linciard there, then?”

  “All the lieutenants, sir. They go down to that end when they don't want us to hear what they're up to. I think they like to include Lieutenant Vrallek. The mages are probably there too.”

  He felt a twinge of relief about Vrallek. The huge houndmaster had started out as a thorn in his side, only to become a staunch ally and a guiding hand for the specialists in the company. The last he'd seen of him had been a crumpled form, seizing in the light of the garrison fire.

  “I'll speak with them,” he said, casting another look across the crowd. “We are not in danger at this time, but there are...” He realized suddenly that, caged this deep underground, they'd have no idea of the vanished sun unless someone told them—and it seemed like a secret the Shadows had kept. If it was even true. “There are questions as to the disposition of the Crimson Army right now. We made ourselves renegades in our last action, so for the moment we must consider this place a shelter.”

  A murmur went through the soldiers, more puzzled than uneasy, and Sarovy was thankful
that so many of these men came from the outer protectorates and the west. It had made his choice clear when Colonel Wreth had pressed him for their conversion, and he did not regret it.

  “Sergeant Benson, with me,” he said, and started for the hall, his men parting before him.

  *****

  The last thing Erolan Linciard wanted was to revisit this argument again, but as Acting Captain, he didn't have a choice—no matter how many times the command staff cornered him on it.

  “I still say we should split from them,” rumbled Shield-Lieutenant Arlin, casting a dark look toward the infirmary beyond. Bandages crisscrossed his brow and cinched his left arm to his side, and his once proud blond moustache had been singed half-off—a devastating loss to company morale. “They're no use to us now, and since the Shadows hate them so much...”

  “They're still company men,” said Scryer Makoura Yrsian, arms crossed over her borrowed medic's dress. “The captain wouldn't abandon them—“

  “The captain is one of them! Was one of them.”

  “He's not dead.”

  “How do you know? Can you reach him? He went off with the Shadows ages ago.”

  The scryer's gaze flicked to Linciard, and he grimaced, recognizing it as his cue. He wasn't comfortable with the role the other lieutenants had thrust upon him, and suspected they'd done so at least partially because they were afraid of the scryer. For his part, Mako yelling at him was starting to feel normal. He was sure his recent misdeeds should have disqualified him from the captaincy, but no one else seemed to care as long as it meant they didn't have to deal with the mages or the Shadows.

  “They're our comrades, Arlin,” he said as levelly as he could manage. “I understand your concern—“

  A snort.

  “—but I don't think the Shadows will change their opinion of us just because we've distanced ourselves from the specialists. In fact, they might condemn us for it. If we can't keep faith with our own, how can we do so with them?”