He hung there for just a moment longer before his weight made the ice snap. He slumped to the earth, falling to his knees. And there he sat, hollow eyes turned to the ground as he gasped for air, groping at the icicle in his chest.
I drew my blade as I approached, slowly. No sense in taking chances with any mage, let alone one who could tear that icicle out of his chest and fling it at me. But as I came up beside him, I could see, for the first time, the eyes behind his mask.
They were wide. And terrified.
“Last…” he gasped, pausing to cough a spatter of red through his mask’s mouth. “Last… words…”
I grimaced. So this was it, then. No last curses, no desperate attempts, not even a plea. Daiga the Phantom was a gentleman to the very end.
I nodded to him. I reached down and gently pulled the opera mask from his face.
I’m not sure why I imagined him younger. I’m not sure why it felt weird to look on his face—a face that could have been my grandfather’s, if both of us had made better choices in life—and see his rheumy eyes shining bright with the last traces of life. Even the skeletal hands tattooed across his throat couldn’t make him look any less gentle.
I’m not sure why I let him stare up at the sky and speak through a mouthful of blood.
“Lady… find me worthy…” He paused to cough. “Ocumani… oth rethar.”
I pressed my blade against his throat. He closed his eyes. I closed mine.
“Eres va atali,” I whispered in reply.
Before he turned rebel and became a Vagrant, Daigalothenes ki Yanturi was one of the greatest Graspmages in the Imperium. He was a lecturer, a scholar, a decorated war hero against the Revolution back in his younger days. His telekinesis was so strong as to have a hundred Graspmages in his bloodline.
But when I drew my sword across his throat, you know what came out?
The same wet red that comes out of everyone.
FOUR
HIGHTOWER
You knew each other, then?”
Tretta leaned over the table, her eyes in a hard glare upon her prisoner. The white-haired woman merely shrugged, leaning back in her chair and propping dusty boots up on the table.
“In the same way I knew him,” Sal replied. “He’d heard my name, knew what I’d done. Among Vagrants, that’s all that really matters.”
“Even among Vagrants who hunt other Vagrants?” Tretta asked, sneering.
“It pays.” Sal shrugged. “But most of our little family tends to find the money easier in becoming warlords or robbing caravans.”
“As Daiga no doubt desired,” Tretta muttered. “And he knew of your weapon, too.”
“Well, obviously.” Sal’s grin was so wide it made her scars deepen. “Find me a man in the Scar who hasn’t heard of the Cacophony.”
Tretta was not a woman who tolerated that kind of flippant talk from her own soldiers, let alone a prisoner. Her eyes narrowed into angry slits, her frown a scar on her face. Without looking away, she raised a hand to a subordinate.
“Bring it.”
“Governor-Militant!” a soldier barked back, firing off a salute.
He hurried out of the room, gone for barely a few moments before he returned with a metal box secured with a dense iron lock. He set it upon the table, saluted once more, and returned to his position at the door.
Tretta fished a key from her pocket, unlocked the box, pushed the lid off. She gazed upon its contents and paused.
The Imperials, in all their vile sorceries and superstitions, were the ones who believed in depraved magic and put their stock in the impossible. Men and women of the Revolution were made of more sensible stuff. They believed in hard things: hard metals, hard answers, hard truths.
It shamed Tretta that she should feel so hesitant to reach into the box and produce the weapon.
The Cacophony was a large gun, it had to be said, even among the gaudy and impractical weaponry of Vagrants. Though its color was that of an ancient brass organ, it was far lighter in her hands than it ought to be. Its grip was polished and black, its cylinder oversized, its barrel carved into the visage of a dragon. She studied its face—its horned brow, its grinning, toothy maw—until she met its empty gaze.
And wondered, in a fleeting and shameful thought, if it was staring back at her.
“A ridiculous weapon,” she scoffed. “Ostentatious, even by Imperial standards.” She tested its heft. “I’m not sure how anyone could even aim this thing.” She flicked the cylinder out, frowned. “And three chambers? This thing is barely a weapon. Ridiculous.”
She suddenly realized how soft her voice had gotten. Somewhere, she had stopped talking to her prisoner and started talking to herself.
“Lighter than he looks, isn’t he?”
Sal leaned over the table, something mischievous and a little cruel in her smile.
“Tell me honestly, Governor-Militant… did you try to fire him?”
Tretta shot her a puzzled and slightly offended look. “Him? It’s just a gun.”
“The Cacophony’s got a name,” Sal replied. “Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps. But why do you call it a man?”
Sal humored her with a half-grin. “What else would he be?”
“Our engineers studied it.” Tretta placed the Cacophony back in the box. “We could not find any ammunition that fits its chambers. Whatever name you call it by, this is just another Vagrant abomination: impractical, ridiculous, and grotesque.”
“Wouldn’t fire for you, would he?” Sal chuckled. “No need to pretend to me, darling. The Cacophony is a fickle thing. He has to be inspired.”
“But you command it, do you not?”
“You don’t date much, do you, Governor-Militant?”
Tretta’s left eye twitched as she wondered if it might not spare her a lot of grief to simply shoot the Vagrant in the head right now.
“Commands are fine for an army.” Sal grinned. “But a relationship is built on cooperation.” She gestured to the weapon. “I choose the spells that go into the bullets. I choose the bullets that go in the chamber. I choose where to point him. But it’s his job, and a point of personal pride, to shape the magic.”
“That’s insane.”
“That’s the Cacophony.”
“The Cacophony.” Tretta removed another weapon from the box—an old, if well-tended-to, blade wrapped in worn leather. She slid it halfway out, inspected it. “What manner of odious title does this weapon possess, then?”
Sal shrugged. “I don’t know. Jeff?”
“What?”
“It’s just a sword.” Sal leaned back in her chair. “Not even my best one.”
“An Imperial sword,” she noted, studying the blade. The steel was forged well enough to be honed, despite clearly having been sharpened far too rarely. A slight blue tint accompanied the edge, causing her brow to furrow. “An officer’s weapon.”
“You recognize it, then?” Sal sounded impressed.
“The Cadre is very familiar with the Imperium’s perverse hierarchies. Their service to their depraved Empress is rewarded with hued blades like this.” She held the weapon up for inspection. “From lowest to highest, each officer is granted a blade. Copper, bronze, silver, gold, blue, red, and the very highest in her service being granted a black blade.”