So, does it feel good to be the Mighty Maroto again, instead of just plain old Useful?” asked Dong-won as they strode down the gangplank to the statue-skirted jetties of Darnielle Bay, harbor city of Azgaroth. “Or let me guess, this ain’t quite how you remembered it, either?”
“No, this is about how it usually went, actually,” said Maroto, trying not to trip over his manacles and go into the drink. “Gonna level with you, I got clapped in irons all the damn time.”
“Just not when you were trying to help people for a change?” said Niki-hyun from the front of the chain gang. Unlike certain pirates Maroto could name, Niki-hyun had taken their further decline in fortunes in good stride. Maybe it was just to rub her former captain’s nose in her poor choice in cabin help, or maybe she was just pleased as rhum punch to die anywhere but on Jex Toth; didn’t much matter so long as she kept taking Maroto’s side.
“I can see why you’d guess that, given some of the songs they used to sing about us old Villains,” said Maroto, his legs going wobbly as they reached the steady stone of the quay. “But the thing is I was always trying to help people, just so happened more often than not I was one of them what stood to benefit. Now that you mention it, though, those times I stretched out on behalf of those less fortunate than myself were the ones I was most likely to scald my fingers—you’d think I’d learn my lesson one of these years.”
“Yes, you fucking would,” grumbled Bang from her position right behind him. Her tone was still as black as the incense-rubbed armor of their guards, and the countless Chainite robes flooding the docks all around them … robes they had all been stripped of following Maroto’s revealing himself to the Holy See back at Othean Bay. He had genuinely believed that once the Black Pope’s de facto heirs heard his song they would want him to come along and meet the Empress of the Immaculate Isles, to have the famous Villain’s inside scoop on Jex Toth as they engineered an alliance against the greater threat. Instead the Immaculates hadn’t let any of the Imperials come ashore, the three pirates were rounded up and treated to the same shabby treatment as Maroto, and the whole fleet sailed south. “What a shitty place to die.”
“Worse towns to be martyred than Darnielle Bay,” Maroto opined as they were herded toward the high, spiked walls of the harbor. “You think being impaled up there is bad, but that’s only because you’ve never seen what they do to rogues in Lemi or Cockspar. Azgaroth … Azgaroth has not been high on my list of potential retirement spots.”
“Always heard the one thing this primitive province did right was they didn’t let the Chain in,” said Dong-won, talking good and loud so all their black-robed handlers could hear. “Everyone knows the Azgarothians would rather break off from the Empire than bow to a pope.”
“Even dogs may understand the word of the divine, if it is delivered with authority,” said the black-robed cardinal with the bright red hat and matching facepaint who seemed to be the gilded mouthpiece of his fellow clerics on the Holy See. “Yet many hounds shall hear an order and still disobey, until they are brought to heel. What a blessing it is for such simple beasts, to be given the gift of discipline.”
That this Cardinal Triangle or whatever his name was had transferred Maroto and his cohort to the lead galleon had been worrisome, but not nearly so much as the fact that he now literally led them by a golden chain as they marched along the quays toward the harbor walls. There was a wide promenade that ran along the bay, but while an army could drop anchor and march up it toward town, wasn’t nobody walking inside unless those ancient gates opened to admit them.
“Wonder how far you’d have to hike down the strand to see the edge of the Immaculate wall,” said Niki-hyun.
“A lot farther than you’re going,” said one of the platemailed handlers who held on to the chain between the lead prisoner and the cardinal.
“If it stretches from the end of this inlet clear to the Bitter Gulf it must be the biggest miracle since the Age of Wonders,” said Dong-won. “The real miracle being how this close to the construction you Imperials didn’t notice our people sticking up a giant wall between you and Linkensterne.”
“Probably some graft, and definitely some willful ignorance,” said Bang, finally getting into the spirit of winding up their captors. “Cockspar and Lemi always took a hard line against Immaculate expansion, but Melechesh is right across the water there, so Darnielle’s always had what you’d call a more progressive view of us neighbors to the north. Wouldn’t be surprised if all the delays merchants are having getting into Linkensterne these days are some sort of a kickback to funnel traffic over here instead, where they’ve got daily barges ferrying folk back and forth between Darnielle Bay and Melechesh. No wait, either!”
“The days of such petty sins have passed. All will answer for their actions, and receive exactly what it is they have asked for,” said the cardinal. Pointing toward the thickening thorns atop the harbor fortifications, he looked back at them with one of those creepy smiles you only ever saw on the faces of fundamentalist loons. “Why, when you are placed atop this wall you may well have your prayers granted, and gaze upon the fence that your infidel countryfolk constructed to cheat the Burnished Chain of its tithe.”
“If you think a single money-worshipping merchant-prince of Linkensterne ever tithed anything more substantial than a dry fart to the Chain you’re even stupider than the Miserable Maroto,” called Bang, which led to her catching a fox-o’-nine-tails to her already raw back. Their guards must think her pretty foolish to keep needling people who carried torture implements the way most people kept pocketknives, but Maroto knew better. After all the things they’d gotten up to in Jex Toth and later, on the boat, he was convinced the captain was a bigger switch than the hickory one she liked to use on him.
“Look, Cardinal, you say we’re way past petty sins and on to the big stakes, I’m right there with you,” said Maroto, because while he’d thought he’d become resigned to his fate on the trip down here, now that he could actually see the human-shaped shadows spitted on those spikes he figured it really couldn’t hurt to try and whittle this nut down. “So with Jex Toth risen and wroth, what good comes out of holding on to old grudges? Sure, I was with the Cobalts and you’re with the Burnished Chain, but that was before the Vex Assembly declared war on the Star! We’re all in this together, aren’t we, mortals against monsters?”
“From the mouths of anathemas spill the gospel of the saints,” said the cardinal as they reached the promenade and the sea of black they bobbed through parted to let them stand in the clearing that had formed in front of the harbor gates. “Old grudges shall indeed be put aside, and you, oh wretched architect of the apocalypse, shall assist in this healing of rifts.”
“Architect of the … apocalypse?” asked Maroto, a little hurt. This cardinal had hit the nail on the noggin, all right.
“You forgot wretched,” said Bang. “Wretched architect of the apocalypse, and lousy lay.”
“Don’t bear false witness in front of the cardinal, Cap’n,” said Maroto, willing to own his past but unable to sacrifice his one point of pride just because Bang was still testy. “We both know I’m the devildamned best there is, bottom, top, or monkey in the middle.”
“Muzzle their filthy mouths,” said the cardinal, and once the guards had fitted Maroto’s braided strap in place he looked over his shoulder at Bang to remind her how dashing he looked with a gag in place. It certainly suited him better than it did her, the pirate looking as though she might bite through the leather at any moment, or burn it off with the heat from her blazing eyes. He tried pleading with his, and perhaps she took pity on him at last, because when the call to bow went out she lowered herself down instead of forcing their captors to dole out more grief.
Turning back to the commotion ahead of them, Maroto tried to make himself comfortable kneeling in his rags on the hot flagstones because they were without a doubt going to be here all day. No matter how far in advance the Imperial fleet had exchanged messages with this Imperial city, Dong-won was right: any cooperation between Azgaroth and the Burnished Chain would not come naturally for either party. Hells, even if the two powers had been on friendly terms, marching an army of this size into any city would require plenty of pomp and ritual from the civic authorities. Add to that the Chain’s flair for stretching the matter of a moment into the spectacle of an age and they would be lucky if they were admitted into Darnielle Bay before next week.
The Holy See had brought their comfy chairs all the way from Diadem, apparently, and while the rest of the blessed army knelt on the brine-dusted stones of the seafront these cardinals made their roost just ahead of the prisoners in the small open area that remained between here and the high walls. The cardinal who held their chain lifted a black glove, and a polyphonic hymn rose from the surrounding Chainites. Either they’d planted a chorus in the front rows or golden pipes were one of the Fallen Mother’s blessings for all her chosen children.
Squinting at the hundred-foot gate and seeing that what he had assumed was simply bumpy white stone was actually formed from countless human skulls, Maroto supposed it didn’t get much worse than being kept waiting for your own execution. When he was a younger barbarian he’d figured being obsessed with death was one of the hallmarks of old age, that it wasn’t until your sand really started running out that you stopped being able to focus on life. He hated to think he’d turned into the very sort of morbid fogey he’d found so annoying, but really now, everywhere you looked were grim reminders of mortality. How could you miss them?
And here was a better question—fired up as he’d gotten at the prospect of redressing his wrongs and uniting the Star to beat back the monstrous hordes, what had he even been thinking? Everyone was going to die once the Tothans attacked, sure, but they were going to do that anyway, sooner or later, so why try to prolong the inevitable for strangers when all it got him was a fast track to his own end?
This right here served him right. He’d gotten so caught up with the idea of redeeming himself, in swanning back onto the stage to play the hero for the ghost of Purna and everyone else he cared about but who were also probably already dead, that he’d thrown away his life on yet another profitless gambit. If he hadn’t just betrayed the whole damn Star to keep himself alive you would think Maroto didn’t value his own skin, quick as he always was to volunteer it for some grand gesture. As always, it was only after his ambitions had all come to ashes that it occurred to him he really ought to have just minded his own back for a change.
And that was what pinched his pouch so bad, not fear over his current dire predicament but the self-resentment that came from knowing that even if he did somehow manage to defy the odds and slip free from yet another attempt on his life, he’d just find some other bold-hearted and hollow-headed bind to embroil himself in. Listening to the rising chorus of the Chainites and reflecting on it all, Maroto wondered if quite without his noticing he’d actually become a suicidal maniac with delusions of grandeur. Funny how those little changes slip past undetected as you age; you bemoan the fatigue and the breathlessness and the lingering aches and pains and the occasional case of jelly-bone, but somehow the spoilage of your brainfruits escapes your notice …
Except if that were all true he would have died fighting back on Jex Toth, instead of collaborating with the enemies of mortalkind. If it were true he would have stayed with his injured father and six-year-old nephew back on a Flintland battlefield, instead of abandoning them. He would have fought Queen Indsorith to the death in their duel, instead of accepting her mercy after she disarmed him. Truth be told, he would have lived a very different life if his selfless heroism hadn’t conveniently dozed off whenever the going got rough … and he could have died one of a hundred different deaths, if he’d stuck to the courage of his convictions any of those many, many times when he’d been tested and found wanting. Any one of those bloody fates would have been preferable to the one awaiting him here, and he relived them now, one by one, as he had so many times before.
Some ungodly number of paeans later bells tolled from beyond the wall of Darnielle Bay, and the spike-crowned, skull-studded gate at last creaked outward. A procession emerged from the city, some in the elegant purple Azgarothian robes of state and others in Crimson parade dress. These soldiers must be either retired or officers in strictly ceremonial uniforms, since from what Maroto had overheard in the hold of the galleon the entire Fifteenth Regiment had fallen at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue. That would explain the legion of mourners who filled out the rest of the Darnielle Bay delegation, black lace everything from their heels to their headdresses, the lot of them making a discordant caterwauling as the city’s representatives greeted the Holy See.
Even with both ears working again Maroto couldn’t hear everything that was being said between the two parties, but he made out enough canned phrases to read between the lines and get the gist of the Chain’s pitch.
The Crimson Queen and the Black Pope have both fallen before their own ambitions. Meaning: so what do Chainites and Imperials have to fight about anymore?
Diadem is doomed. Meaning: ’cause we’re sure as shit not going back there.
Jex Toth declares war upon all the Star, but the Immaculates refuse to rally to the common cause of all sane peoples. Meaning: you’re not going to be like them, are you?
The Burnished Chain has risked everything to come warn Azgaroth. Meaning: we got booted from Othean, and Darnielle Bay is the strongest, most defensible Imperial port, so please let us in?
Imperials of all creeds bleed crimson. Meaning: we can put a cork in the religious talk and focus on good old-fashioned nationalism if that helps.
We deliver unto your justice the Villain Maroto… Meaning: never was that popular in Azgaroth, and everybody likes a public execution.
… One of the wretched architects of the apocalypse, who worked with the rest of the Cobalt Company to summon Jex Toth back from hell. Meaning: hey wait a tic—
Through the sacrifice of the valiant Fifteenth Regiment at the Battle of the Lark’s Tongue they conspired to sell our world to the devils of the First Dark. Meaning: what the fuck, now!
The problem with them getting Maroto’s dander all up with this bullshit was now he couldn’t hear them over the sound of his own angry heartbeat. Yet as if they’d read his mental objections at not being able to hear just how exactly these Chainite berks were scapegoating him, several members of the Holy See and the Darnielle Bay delegation turned their heads toward him. The lead mourner was an age-shrunken old woman in a tremendous cloud of jet lace, her blocky headdress housing a clock in the shape of a coffin, and while he couldn’t make out her hissing voice or clearly see her face through her black pearl veil, the accusatory finger she pointed at him didn’t make Maroto think she was advising a full pardon.
“Certainly,” said the cardinal who held the prisoner’s chain, every syllable hitting Maroto’s ears now that the rest of the wailing mourners had gone silent. “The Holy See applauds your decision to execute these war criminals immediately, and are pleased to accept your invitation to witness the justice of Azgaroth being carried out. Let the death of one who sought to tear the Crimson Empire asunder be the first act of its unification.”
Everyone had a good clap about that, Chainites and Azgarothians alike, and Maroto put his own palms together. The cardinal was a miserable fucking liar, of course, but he’d given a far better performance than Maroto had expected. He’d also given the weary Villain something he’d never been able to achieve for himself: an honest-to-the-gods martyrdom. Sure, once they had him lined up for an impaling he’d probably lose his enthusiasm, but for now Maroto was just relieved that his decision to reveal his identity to the Holy See had indeed helped unify the armies of mortalkind against Jex Toth. A pity his relief was destined to be so short-lived.