There is a thing in opera they do where, right before things get awful—before the lovers turn away from each other, before the hero is about to die—where a single note is played and left to hang for as long as possible before fading. The entire cast stays silent during this moment until the note fades and the play resumes.
They call it a Vocca fui Fultho.
The Voice of Sorrow.
It’s said this started as an homage to the Lady Merchant’s song and its often single, solitary notes. It’s also said that this started when playwrights wanted time to let the atmosphere sink into the audience. But I like my explanation.
The reason they do that in opera is because that happens in real life.
There is a noise that rings out, just a moment before the shit sweeps right over you and you know in your bones that you’ve just fucked up something that can’t be unfucked. And like in opera, it’s different for everything. Different for each person, each moment, each situation.
Sometimes it’s a glass shattering. Sometimes it’s a door closing. Sometimes it’s the little breath someone takes right before they’re about to tell you the three words that are going to break your heart and ruin you forever.
The sound of Rudu’s pipe falling from his lips, striking the stones of the street, bouncing twice and then falling. The hiss of ashes of his pipe spilling from the bowl, the embers glowing briefly before going gray and disappearing in the breeze. The tiny whistle of breath it took someone to whisper Necla’s name.
Three sounds. One right after each other.
In an opera, you would know the hero was fucked.
Turns out that’s also something that happens in real life.
I stood there, stained with Necla’s remains, staring at the wide, empty face of the man who had just been sitting next to him not half an hour ago. Rudu stood there, his pipe on the stones, his hands hanging limp at his sides, every last hope he had for this ending well draining from his face.
And, of course, the Ashmouths stood there.
The people of the square—the patient parents and the bustling bakers, the laughing grandmothers and the complaining grandfathers, every smiling face and charming little personality right down to the fucking girl with a cat on her lap—now stood ready to kill me. Hand crossbows and alchemic flasks had been pulled out from under aprons and shirts. Vests parted to reveal tough leather beneath as kind-eyed men and happy women pulled long blades free from their clothing.
Rudu tried to say something. I could see the question boiling behind his lips, struggling to understand. I could see his eyes racing as he slowly realized it didn’t fucking matter. And I watched as he leaned back and made ready to watch me die beneath a hail of bolts and blades.
I, personally, did not like my odds.
But between the two of us concerned, I was outvoted.
The Cacophony seethed in my hand. His steam coiled from between my fingers. His brass shivered, excited at the idea. Of course. What did he have to be worried about? He wasn’t about to be full of knives.
I tried to remember what I’d loaded. Discordance, of course. Then what? Hellfire? Hoarfrost? Sunflare? What the fuck was useful here?
“In the name of the Great General, HALT!”
A distraction. Yes. That would be very useful.
If it were anyone else, that is.
The Ashmouths flooded to one side of the square as a great black fist punched through their ranks. Tretta appeared from the corner leading to the bridge, blade in hand and sporting a number of fresh cuts across her face. That would have been concerning enough.
But the Twenty-Second lined up behind her, unreadable behind their masks and their saw blades shining in the smoke-stained sun, made every scar on my body go numb.
I was relieved to see she’d brought only half as many—the ranks behind her were made up of regulars. Tough-looking regulars, many of whom I’d recognized from my last encounter with them, many of whom recognized me as the person who’d torn their friend apart with Steel Python—but still, regulars were handle-able.
Ashmouths were handle-able.
Rudu and Tretta were handle-able.
All at once was less handle-able and more—
“I don’t need this fucking mess.”
Rudu said it best.
“By the order of the Glorious Revolution of the Fist and Flame,” Tretta bellowed, her troops snapping to attention. “And in the name of his Great Generalship’s mighty retribution, we do so render judgment as to—”
“Okay, yes, very impressive. All hail his mighty cock or whatever.” Rudu waved a hand, irate. “This is Ashmouth business. Fuck along.”
“Do not dare speak of the leader of the Revolution in such terms,” Tretta snarled, leveling her blade at Rudu. “And do not presume to ask of me respect for the business of criminals. The right of the Revolutionary Mandate of retribution supersedes the business of all, especially those of murderers and Vagrants.”
Fuck. I was kind of hoping she hadn’t noticed me.
“These brave soldiers saw the horrors of this animal’s war firsthand.” She swept her blade menacingly toward me before gesturing to the regulars. “And were so moved by the Great General’s infinite vision that they joined immediately. And the refugees she made that could not take up arms told us where she lay. Their passions burn for the righteous fire of vindication!”
I had to admit, that hurt.
It hurt that the refugees I’d tried so hard to protect had turned on me like that. It hurt that I knew I couldn’t bring myself to blame them for it. But there wasn’t any room in me for hurt anymore.
My breath was hot steam in my mouth. My blood ran in cinders through my veins. The Cacophony burned at my hand and I didn’t flinch. I didn’t know what chance we stood. Neither did he. And neither he nor I had the good sense to calm down right then.
I could barely hear their words. But if I had taken a moment to breathe, I might have heard, somewhere far away, the sound of chains jingling.
“Then I’ll stroke their hair and tell them they’re pretty after I’m done here.” Rudu narrowed his eyes. “Last chance. Fuck off.”
And if anyone else had fallen silent, they might have heard the sound of heavy breathing growing louder. Closer. Above us.
“The Revolution cowers to no one. Mage, fiend, or criminal.” Tretta struck a salute with her sword. “Retribution awaits the Ashmouths and all foes of the Revolution! Ten thousand years!”
“Ten thousand years!”
As it was, though, there was not much listening going on. A lot of chanting from fevered lips. A lot of stares from cagey, desperate eyes. And with the stink of all the violence and fear in the air, it’s easy to see why none of us bothered to look up.
Not until a slender shape the color of night fell from the sky.
And punched into Tretta’s throat.
Her chanting became a cry, her salute a flailing thrash as something wrapped itself around her and pulled blood from her neck in crimson flashes. Two of the Twenty-Second rushed forward, restraining her thrashing while a third soundlessly lunged to tear the thing from their commander’s neck. Blood wept from the wound—not nearly enough to indicate a major vein had been hit, just my fucking luck—as her soldier hurled the missile to the ground.
Where it promptly rolled, got back to its feet, looked up with beady little eyes, and shrieked through a bloodstained mouth.
A kite viper is a horrid little thing. Picture the offspring of a snake that got obliterated on a small senate of illicit substances and subsequently, and in defiance of all logic and nature, managed to fuck an eagle and a shark at the same time and you’ll have a decent idea. They come in a stunning variety, as well: venomous, paralyzing, stinging, or if you’re really unlucky, saw-toothed.
Like this little fucker screaming on the ground.
They’re a horrific scourge in the denser jungles of the Scar; massive swarms of them come flying out of the trees and leave behind skeletons. But there are a few upsides. Kite vipers are nocturnal, for one. They don’t ever leave their forests. And you never, ever see them in cities.
Like this one.
So, as you can deduce, this wasn’t a great development.
“Ordinarily, I wouldn’t interfere with the squabbles of nuls.”
A voice beckoned the kite viper back to the sky. All eyes followed it as it coiled, eel-like, through the air to perch upon a slender shoulder and curl adoringly about a slender throat.
Beneath a black veil, I could feel a pair of hateful eyes locked upon me.
“But, if you can stand some frank criticism, your posturing needs work.” The woman spoke from beneath a shroud of lace that obscured her features—not that it mattered: I knew the voice, the veil, and the hate behind both of them. “I could not, in good conscience, permit you to control the stage further.”
She ran long-nailed fingers across the kite viper’s throat.
“Particularly when your concerns are with my quarry.”
“Who the fuck are you?” Rudu demanded of the woman on the rooftop.
And I wish he hadn’t asked.
The woman—slight as the kite viper nuzzling her throat—was seated, dressed in a long black dress to complement the black hat and veil, upon a towering armoire of polished redwood looking like it had been plucked straight from an antique store. Thin silver chains bound its doors shut. And carrying the whole horrid affair on his back was a thick, powerful-looking man, head bowed and knee bent as he came to a halt at the edge of the roof.
Beneath the veil, I could just barely make out dark lips curling into smile. Upon the pale skin of her chest, I saw a halo of violins arranged in an elegant tattoo. A Vagrant’s ink. And it was ink I knew.
She fucking loved this part.
“I am the song of vengeance. I am the dirge all miserable women and wounded men sing before I darken their door.” She slid from a sheath upon her hip a violin of a deep black hue, a matching bow in the other hand. “I am the storm that swallows the sun, the swarm that ends your crops, I am—”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Chiriel, can you hurry this the fuck up?”
I know I shouldn’t have shouted—it was just bad manners to ruin a fellow Vagrant’s introduction. But then, it was also bad manners to blow someone’s head off after using a Redfavor, so it’s not like I had a lot to lose here.
Behind her veil, I saw her frown. Good.
“You profane everything you touch, Sal,” Chiriel muttered. “And you ruined my introduction, you perverse philistine.” She leveled her violin bow at me like it was a sword. “Your sacrilege alone would be reason enough to kill you. But a holier mission compels me here.” She swept her veil across the Ashmouths and Revolutionaries. “And I must insist you leave.”
“I have had enough of indulging the demands of fops and Vagrants.” Tretta roared, directing her sword skyward, “OPEN FIRE!”
“Wait, you’re not supposed to—”
Autobows whirred. Crossbows clicked. A hail of bolts flew toward Chiriel, shrieking as they sailed through the air. Through the whine of their flight, I could hear a faint, musical note.
In flashes of purple light, the bolts winked out of the sky, disappearing mere inches from Chiriel’s face. The murmur of confusion that followed lasted only as long as it took for another note to play.
I hit the floor.
Light flashed. The bolts, still in flight, came back into existence. They streaked across the square in a haphazard burst, punching through Revolutionaries and Ashmouths and into the door above my head as I ducked.
I fucking knew it.
She had a Doormage.
“All right, you dicks, if that’s how you want to play it.”
Chiriel rose to her full, demure height. She stomped a gorgeous heeled shoe upon the top of the armoire. The burly man carrying it suddenly dropped it. The chains rattled, fell off. The doors trembled. A faint hiss emerged from inside.
Chiriel’s eyes glowed bright purple behind her veil. She placed bow to string. The Lady sang a wailing, resonant note.
“Chiriel the Four-String will play the saddest song just for you.”
She pulled the bow across her violin. A smooth, velvety note rang out. The doors to the armoire flung themselves open.
“Ocumani oth rethar.”
She invoked the words—the same words all Vagrants invoke—in a screech.
And what happened next is a little difficult to remember. I remember seeing the darkness behind the doors. I remember seeing the hundreds of glistening eyes, the thousands of glistening feathers and scales.
And I remembered, very clearly, having a thought.
Oh, right. Chiriel’s a Hivemage.
And then I started panicking.
But we all were by that point.
The armoire buckled with the force of their flight. They came vomiting out in a clot of glistening black ink, pouring in an endless font that bled into the sky. Chiriel’s violin sang out a delicate tune and they danced to it. They twisted and curled in one sinewy mass, a writhing column that spun, twirled, bunched together.
And descended.
The screaming started immediately. Dulcet violin music accompanied the sounds of saw blades roaring and alchemics exploding, all to the chorus of the sounds of hundreds of kite vipers tearing into flesh.
Bursts of hot red blood flashed around the battlefield. The kite vipers tore into exposed throats, legs, arms, shredded through whatever they needed to get through to get to flesh. Revolutionaries and Ashmouths shrieked and fell in flailing heaps, going still as kite vipers swarmed over their fallen bodies to quickly dispatch the remains before flying off to seek new prey, leaving behind a shredded carcass. They grew fat on blood and flesh, gorging and vomiting and gorging again as they feasted over and over.
Whether it was their quarry’s flesh or their own, they were not particular.
Kite vipers fell in sheets. Some flew recklessly into clouds of Ashmouth poison and fell dead and twitching on the ground. Some gnawed futilely at the armor of the Twenty-Second as they calmly swept their saw blades this way and that, bisecting the little beasts from the sky, even as their fellows shrieked and tried to pull gnawing fiends off of each other. Of Tretta or Rudu, I could see no sign.
Ordinarily, kite vipers would retreat by now. Ordinarily, they’d eat their fill and move on as soon as they could. But these were a Hivemage’s vipers. They were not ordinary.
Chiriel writhed atop the armoire, lost in the frenzy of her own violin song. She thrust this way, the kite vipers followed. She struck a screeching note, the kite vipers flitted, found new targets. You might mistake them for expertly trained pets, if you’d never seen a Hivemage.
I’d never worked much with them when I was in the army. Neither did anyone else. Hivemages were creepy fucks. The Lady gave them the power to harmonize their consciousnesses with lesser intellects, bending them to their wills. If you read between the lines, the implication is that they could dominate your mind if they thought about it hard enough. And if you didn’t read between the lines, Hivemages were still freaky fucks who sat around talking to roaches and teaching rats tricks.
Chiriel had been one of the best.
I knew because I had known her.
She was on my list.
And you might be wondering how I had the time or space to contemplate all this in the middle of a swarm of killer, magically controlled flying snakes.
To which I would say, if you didn’t think I ran the hell away when I got the chance, your opinion of me is too damn high.
I took off running, pushing through the chaos best I could and bearing only a few nicks for it. I didn’t know why Chiriel had shown up here. I didn’t have time to think of it. I had to get clear. I had to get to Liette. I kept running, tearing around corners, heading for the curry shop where I’d left her.
Call it my good luck. Call it their bad luck. I didn’t fucking care. I wasn’t going to waste it, either way.
But luck is like wine. If you don’t use it while you have it, it goes real fucking sour.
The Lady’s note rang out in my ears as I pounded down the street toward the curry shop. Purple light flashed. The armoire, with Chiriel on top of it, fell down to crash upon the street with a thud. I tensed as the refugees and people of Toadback went fleeing, their panic filling the square. But Chiriel didn’t even seem to notice them.
“I had hoped you wouldn’t think so low of me to assume I came here solely to kill nuls, Salazanca,” she said, her voice low and dangerous.
The doors to her armoire shuddered. I slid my hand beneath my scarf, kept it out of view as I fished something out of my satchel.
“I don’t know why the fuck you’re here, Chirielanthi,” I replied, sliding a shell behind my back. “But if you’re after Twenty-Two Dead Roses, I’m going to tell you the same—”
“I have no idea who that is,” Chiriel snapped. “I am not here for you. For me. Or for anyone else but on the behalf of one.”
She leveled her bow at me. She spat the name.
“Darrish the Flint.”
I’d been hit a lot lately. I’d taken blows that left me reeling, cuts that left me bleeding and in so much pain that I felt like collapsing under the weight of my own scars some days. But until this moment, until I heard that name…
I don’t think I’d been wounded.
“Darrish…,” I whispered. “What happened with Darrish and me is no business of yours.”
“DON’T.”
Chiriel’s bow trembled. I slipped the Cacophony’s chamber open behind my back.
“Don’t you fucking dare say that, you forsaken animal.” Neither anger nor hate pulled those words from her mouth. They came on tears and sobs. “Don’t you ever say that Darrish is not my business. She was good to us, Sal.”
Chiriel the Four-String. Chirielanthi yun Vuinti. Who had served alongside me in the army. Who had done the bidding of Vraki. Who had sat in the shadows and snickered as I was betrayed, broken, and bled of my magic.
She wept. Unabashedly. Painfully. She wept.
“She was good to me,” she whispered. “And you killed her.”
I remembered Darrish. I remembered the day I left her. As that airship had begun to plummet out of the air, as a man I’d once thought my friend tried to kill her, as I couldn’t bring myself to forgive her, even then…
“I didn’t,” I whispered, in a way that suggested I didn’t really believe it. Because maybe I didn’t. “I did not kill Darrish.”
“Don’t lie.” Chiriel pressed her bow to her violin. “And don’t move.”
She struck a chord. My arms moved without thinking. The armoire’s door burst open. The Cacophony’s chamber slammed shut. Kite vipers came pouring out in a stream of teeth and beating wings. I raised the gun, looked away. I could feel their screaming in my skin. I pulled the trigger.
Funny thing about Hivemages.
The Lady gives them impressive powers. Chirielanthi herself had once put down a local rebellion with just a dresser full of her little friends. But she asks for a steep Barter. As a Hivemage communes with their swarms, their thoughts begin to leave them, their individuality plucked out of their heads, bit by bit, by the Lady’s deal. Until one day, the consciousnesses are no longer separate.
Because you see, when you share thoughts, you share everything: strengths, speeds, skills.
And senses.
The Cacophony fired. Sunflare burst as it met the swarm. Bright light engulfed the square. I heard the confused terror of people who hadn’t looked away as their sight was struck from them. But only barely.
Over the sound of Chiriel and her kite vipers, writhing in blinded agony upon the ground, I could hear nothing else.
“IT HURTS! IT HURTS! STOP IT! GET IT OUT OF OUR EYES!”
Individual deaths and wounds across their pets don’t tend to affect a Hivemage—you needed to hit their swarm all at once to get a reaction like this. Usually, that’s tricky. But Chirel was intent on killing me and that made her at least a little more predictable.
Lucky, lucky me.
Her wails were soul-deep, the agony of each of her little pets shared between them and delivered to her. Their anguish was profound and painful in my ears.
Not enough to get me to stop, though. I ran over them, crunching as many of the little fuckers beneath my heels as I could as I rushed past the armoire and Chiriel. I slammed a Discordance shell into the Cacophony, looked at her writhing on the armoire, helpless for as long as it would take them to recover.
And then I looked at the people. The refugees. The citizens. Toadback. Paralyzed with fear.
And I sighed.
“DO YOU FUCKERS NOT GET IT?”
Sometimes I hate being such a nice person.
“THIS IS A VAGRANT’S TOWN NOW.” I aimed the Cacophony at a nearby house that looked the emptiest, hoped I was right. “LEAVE NOW OR GET BURIED HERE. YOUR FUCKING CALL.”
To their credit, they started running even before I pulled the trigger. But the resulting explosion of glass, wood, and—fortunately, for fucking once—no body parts, I hoped, would send the message home. And if the screaming was any indication, it had worked.
I didn’t like doing that—particularly when I could have come up with a better line, I see that now—but I also didn’t fucking want any more refugees. Whether I was going about it the right way or not, I’m open to debate. But I wasn’t then.
“SHE’S HEADING FOR THE SHOP!” Chiriel found the mind to scream behind me. “THE SHOP! STOP HER!”
Her pets didn’t respond, continuing to twitch. Ahead of me, the curry shop’s sign loomed. The doors flung open, the people inside fleeing out into any direction but mine. All but one of them.
“Are you all right?” she asked me, breathless.
I wasn’t, if I was honest. But I grunted.
“There was a noise and then everyone started running. What happened?” Liette demanded as she rushed up to me. “Where are the Ashmouths?”
“I don’t know. Probably devoured.”
She blinked at me. “Devoured?”
“Devoured.”
“So I shouldn’t ask?”
“Not yet.” I pushed her toward the fleeing people. “We need to go. Keep your head down and don’t stop moving.”
We had begun to do just that when I heard another note of the Lady’s song. Coming from somewhere close. A purple light blossomed inside the curry shop through its windows. I saw a massive shape emerge. And that’s when I realized…
Chiriel hadn’t been talking to her pets.
The front of the shop exploded. And not because of me this time. Glass and wood were launched in a spray as a huge silhouette emerged from within. Heavy feet thumped, making the fragmented foundation shudder. A great pair of curving, jagged antlers tore free the remains of the door frame as something very tall, very broad, and very heavy emerged from the curry shop and glowered down at me.
“Sal,” he said.
“Grishok,” I acknowledged. I looked across his bare chest, saw the broad tattoo of a weed painted across a great cask of a body. “Gone Vagrant?”
“Yeah. Same as you.” A pair of meaty hands lazily swung a small tree that had been splintered into a large club. “But you knew that, right? I’m on your list, aren’t I?”
“You heard about that, huh?”
“Yeah.” He drew his club up over his head. “Can’t say I’m happy about it.”
I shouted, shoved Liette back as I pulled away. Grishok’s club pounded a hole in the pavement, knocked both her and me to our asses, and sent stone fragments flying. I slammed a shell into the Cacophony, aimed.
“Yeah, well,” I said, “maybe think before you betray me next time, you piece of shit.”
And fired.
Hellfire swept over him. Gnawing, devouring, laughing. It savaged his body as surely as the kite vipers had savaged everyone else’s. It swallowed him whole, chewed him in fiery teeth and spat out a glistening, skinless husk of burned flesh and charred, bubbling sinew.
A husk, I should point out, that was still standing.
“That’s what I said.” Grishok’s skin twitched. Blackened flesh trembled, shrank. Scorched sinew pulled itself together. The wounds disappeared as his skin regrew, healthy and dark over his great muscle. “So I figured I wouldn’t bother looking for you. Maybe not even fight when you came for me. I know I did you wrong.”
He lumbered forward as I got Liette to her feet and backed up, keeping myself between us. He wasn’t bothered by Hellfire. He didn’t even look burned anymore.
But that was Mendmages for you. And among Mendmages, few were as legendary as Grishoktha ki Jurl. That’s why the Empress had made him one of her chosen, after all. That’s why he’d been there that night I’d lost everything.
He towered even taller than Agne, his shoulders almost scraping the eaves of houses as he pursued me, unhurried, through the streets. His chest and belly were broad, thick fat laid over thicker muscle. His arms were huge and powerful, his legs like tree trunks. He barely bothered to clothe himself, the only adornments upon him being a pair of tattered pants, a large sack, his tattoo, and of course, his antlers.
The Lady Merchant takes a Mendmage’s blood in exchange for their powers. And the alchemic concoctions they quaff to replace it result in unusual growths. Some people get scales. Some people grow fins. And some people become horned, unstoppable killing machines the size of small barns.
She’s a whimsical one, that Lady.
“If you want to leave now and wait for me to be done here,” I said as I loaded the gun again and aimed, “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”
The Lady sang. Light flashed. A shadow fell over me.
Ah, right. There was a Doormage, wasn’t there?
Grishok and his huge fucking club appeared behind us. I shoved Liette away, tried to move myself. I avoided the blow, but not by enough. This close, even being near a weapon that size hurt. It clipped me as he swung, almost took my fucking leg off. I screamed at the hit as Liette helped me back up.
“See, that’s my problem there,” Grishok muttered. “I know I deserve to die for what I did to you, Sal. I made peace with that.” His lips curled into a broad frown. “But Darrish didn’t deserve that.”
“I didn’t kill Darrish.”
“Yeah, I heard what you told Chiriel. I believe you. I believe you think you didn’t kill her.” He hefted his club again, held it high over his head. “But she was the best of us. Better than me. Better than you. She talked with me often. Gave me my Vagrant name, even.”
He paused, smiled softly.
“Grishok the Dandelion. Like it?”
I swallowed. “I do.”
“Yeah. So did I. I loved her, Sal.” He sniffed. “Ocumani oth rethar, right?”
“Eres va atali,” I replied.
And decorum was satisfied.
He roared, pulled his club high. I couldn’t move, not with my leg fucked up like this. I shoved Liette, tried to limp away. I felt the club come down, falling onto the streets.
Behind him.
Which might be on account of the great, gaping, severium-smoking wound in his neck.
He blinked, uncertain as to what had happened. I didn’t know myself. Not until I heard a hammer click. And when I saw the flash of Tretta’s hand cannon, I put it together pretty fucking quick.
The severium charge unloaded into Grishok’s face as Tretta came tearing out between the houses. His jaw flew off. His face became a spray of gore painted upon the walls of a nearby house. He fell, shaking the ground, as all of him—without half his skull—collapsed to the earth.