by Robert Rhodes
in Issue 156, January 2025
“They said I should be a hero. They said I could be a king. But all I wanted was to see the sunrise on your face. Every morning, Eleni …”
He whispered those words, my lifelong friend—my blood-brother—Petyr Smith, and I was close enough to hear each one. Standing guard five feet behind him, within the span of a step and rapier’s thrust.
But I was neither seer nor saint, and my tears blurred the chapel’s candlelight as the two of us stood before Eleni’s bier. Her friends and her lone remaining handmaiden, Rhiannon, had prepared her body in a silk and brocade gown of her favorite hunter’s green. They’d folded her hands on a bouquet of sky-blue Saint Dorothea roses and cleverly wrapped her throat with a cloth-of-gold scarf. Her broken rapier glimmered across the greenery at her feet, its damask aetherium-steel rippling like viper-skin. At dawn, Petyr would lead her funeral procession into All Saints’ Basilica, and a river of mourners would see only the incomparable woman, the face—beside Petyr’s—of our revolution against the Echelon Houses. They wouldn’t see the blood-soaked corpse almost decapitated by a cull-hawk’s wing.
Unless those mourners had joined our final charge two days ago into the Echelon Quarter by King Venedict’s Arch, where the Ivory Promenade opens into the Plaza of Silver Light. Unless as Petyr and I had, they’d seen her fall like a string-cut marionette and her lifeblood spray the pale stones.
Outside in the August night, a sudden cheer—a wave of pure jubilation—erupted from the same plaza nearby. Then a low burst like a massive drumbeat echoed high and far away. Another cheer, pierced by drunken whoops and shrieks of surprise, washed through the chapel’s hushed shadows and our vigil.
Petyr shook his head with a faint smile. “The University alchemists found the caches of fireworks. Or else made their own.”
“Good,” I replied. “I hope they burn every last crate tonight. She’d love it.”
We fell silent. I remembered Saint Tibalt’s Night last October and felt certain Petyr did, too. He’d knelt before Elena val Donne in the water-garden behind her House as titanic spheres of silver, azure, and emerald exploded in the heavens, shimmering on the black mirrors of the reflecting pools. He’d dared ask her to marry him; she’d dared say yes.
“You should rest,” I told him as he turned back to her bier. “I can keep watch. The city’ll heap thanks and condolences on you tomorrow. And you have her eulogy. It’s important.”
He exhaled and cast me a sidelong glance, walking away to a window. He tilted his face upward, and a flare of rose-pink, as from a spear of red lightning, illuminated his stark profile. Although or perhaps because we were like brothers, he despised my saying obvious things.
“I know it’s important, Malcolm. It’s the first speech of a new age. A new city.” He didn’t call me Mal; I’d provoked him. He raked his fingers through his black hair. After months of bitter negotiations, then open revolution, he was exhausted. “But,” he said, lifting his gaze to mine and returning, “I know what to say. How … the exact words, only The Blessèd know tonight. But what has never been easier.”
He clasped my shoulder. As always, I felt the strength of his hand and towering presence, as arresting as the explosions above us. In my heart, I believed Petyr the deadliest swordsman, the greatest commander, since Venedict himself. A man of the millennium, and I was his personal guard and closest friend. By divine fortune, I’d been born within one month and two crooked Dock Quarter streets of him.
But before she died, Elena of House Donne, our Eleni, was even more.
“I’m going to tell them the truth, Mal. And when I do, the people of this city will love her. They’ll worship her—forever.” He released my shoulder and faced her bier again.
“The Blessèd know I will.”
* * *
Within days, his speech became known as The Immortal Elegy. The printers near the University flooded the streets with broadsheets and pamphlets of it, dozens of versions pieced together from scribbled notes, memories, and word-of-mouth. These were read aloud in taverns and squares, and soon everyone in every quarter knew Petyr’s words. Troubadours wove them into ballads—countless new songs each week, most exalting Elena. Playwrights and their companies, reforming after the bloodshed, raced to prepare the first performances of our uncharted new age. All the starstruck poets turned their quills to the courtship of Petyr and Elena, how they led our revolution against the Echelon’s tyranny and greed, and the ending—not a triumphant wedding, but her funeral. With the Elegy, Petyr had even written a final speech for them.
I loved our theatres but would never see those plays. Fate was a shite playwright, Eleni was dead, and our work went on.
To stand and fight against our enemies, even those as powerful and ruthless as the Echelon, was one thing. To shape a new city with our diverse allies was another. We knew it’d be this way. We remembered Master val Horn’s wine-sharpened words as he taught us swordsmanship and his utterly practical philosophies years before: You’re two gifted little pricks, for what you’re worth. But a blade only solves the simplest problems.
The city’s problems were endless. Clearing rubble and barricades and restoring order to the streets. Burying the dead. Replenishing markets with food and goods. Reopening the University. And foremost, deciding who would govern and how.
Petyr held meetings every day from dawn till midnight—except one hour on Sunday mornings, when he’d visit Eleni’s grave and talk to her ghost—and I was always at his back. We occupied the banquet hall of House Omnia—the most vaunted before, on the highest hill, our presence now a symbol—and received an endless parade of merchants, priests, scholars, guild bosses, and others too numerous to name.
The constant noise, the bickering, grandstanding, and shameless jockeying for influence … it was maddening. But Petyr endured and, as was his way, began to ride the storm like a galleon adjusting its sails, turning into the tempest, welcoming the chance to prove its mastery of the sea.
Like the monarchs centuries before, the five Echelon Houses had fallen. By September’s end, the city of Coriol Magna had replaced them with a Parliament of representatives from each quarter and guild. They drafted a new charter, voiding all claims of royal and noble blood, and elected Petyr as First Minister.
On October 1st, a day of brilliant sky and amber sunlight, like gifts from The Blessèd themselves, Parliament issued its first decree. And unanimously, with Petyr’s head bowed and voice breaking, Coriol Magna was renamed Elenia—forever.
I’d invited Eleni’s former handmaiden Rhiannon, now an overseer of our household, to stand with me for the occasion. She fought back tears, her frost-blue eyes reddened but sparkling with pride. I gave her my handkerchief and took the liberty of kissing her cheek.
“We did it,” I told her. “And next year will see her memorial fountain in the plaza. Inigo the Elder’s almost done with the design. He envisions five kinds of stone! And Petyr“—I nodded at him, resplendent in the crisp blue and gray uniform of a city watch commander, the white sash of the First Minister across his powerful chest—“he’s helping the people, everything he and Elena dreamed of.” I said the words and believed them in the warmth of her smile.
The next day, the counter-revolution began.
* * *
That afternoon, Petyr and I visited the University. Its location outside the Trade Quarter and the tomb-studded Field of Saint Casbarian had spared it the worst of the conflict. At least physically. More than half of its young men and women had died during the revolution and almost all of its magicians, masters and students alike. We owed them a massive debt, the Ramsdale twins in particular, as well as the alchemists pressed into service as physicians when they weren’t preparing salves and dawn- and duskroot powders to spur our forces beyond their mortal limits.
Petyr and I disembarked from our carriage as it stopped by the Arch of Knowledge on the eastern edge of the University’s main quadrangle. Two of my men, Mathias and Bennett, stayed with the carriage and driver. We passed under the arch’s weathered stones, into which centuries of graduates had chaotically carved their initials, and were greeted by a cheering half-circle of twelve students, their black and brown academic gowns billowing in the fickle wind. Arch-Magister Brand, a glowing amethyst hanging from her golden chain of office, waited behind them, her thin smile offset by the judgment of her stare. We knew her belief that the University had paid too much of the revolution’s price. But if her belief became opposition, Petyr would eventually quote Master val Horn: It’s done. This is the world now. Carry on or piss off. Perhaps with more tact. And ultimately, I doubted the Arch-Magister would compare losses with the man who’d buried Elena val Donne.
The Ramsdale twins broke away from their peers and embraced us, Cora with her dreadlocks, Portia with her black hair shorn to her scalp and a small aetherium stud in her left nostril. Not yet twenty summers, the magician-artificers had perfected their negation lanterns and mirrors last winter. Having those, an answer to the Echelon’s magicians and cull-hawks, gave Petyr and Elena the courage to forge the people’s requests into an ultimatum. Which, of course, made the flames of revolution inevitable.
“It’s good to see you,” Petyr told them. “I wish it’d been—” He frowned at a plume of black smoke rising from a quadrangle tower.
“Magister,” he called to Brand, pointing, “is that a problem?”
The arch-magister and students turned.
“Fire!” Brand cried. “The rare archives!” She gathered up her robe and began running toward the tower as the students erupted with chatter and panicked gestures. But near us, Portia Ramsdale gasped and touched the stud in her nostril.
Cora’s eyes and mouth opened in surprise. She began looking around frantically, then pointed past me to the north.
“Cull-hawk!” she screamed.
A chill tore through my spine, then a flash of heat as my heart surged for battle. Petyr and I pivoted back-to-back and drew our rapiers. I glanced north and registered a shimmering slit in the air before hurling myself to the ground and rolling away from the others.
“Down!” Petyr shouted, shoving Portia away like a child. He dropped his rapier and hurled himself onto Cora, bearing her to the trodden grass and covering her with his body. Through our midst rushed a whine and impossibly swift wind.
I scrambled to my feet and looked back at the arch and our carriage. “Mathias!” I yelled. “Graylight, now!”
Petyr came to one knee, a hand on Cora’s back, keeping her down. He lifted his rapier and stood, his face pale and chiseled by rage. We looked to the south, where the hawk was already rising and turning, a razor-thin V of aetherium—two panels we’d learned, fused with a seam of enchanted diamond-shard, sharper than steel. I glimpsed the crimson flash of the guidestone on its prow, a coin-sized ruby, marking it as one of House Omnia’s.
It dove, twisting again into a silvered blur, then only the glimmer of its edge. On her belly, Portia whispered an incantation, while Cora drew a small mirror from an inner pocket of her gown. I tensed and prepared to drop again.
But Petyr stood his ground.
He balanced sideward, his rapier lifted beside his cheek, the beginning of the Stance of Winter. I yelled his name, helpless, the memory of Eleni bracing her own rapier in desperation before a merciless wing scythed through her blade and throat.
The glimmer sped toward Petyr, level with his waist. “No!” I yelled. But even as I did, he leapt and spun—high and unerring—and slammed his fist and pommel onto the cull-hawk as it passed.
Impossible.
The hawk plowed into the ground, carving a furrow and spraying the twins with dirt, seeking to rise and fly again. But Petyr dashed to it and pounced, the soles of his boots stomping on its wings. Still it writhed through the grass. Petyr spread his arms, balancing, and with a wordless roar speared his rapier into its guidestone.
The ruby shattered into crimson sparks and a stench of hot copper like burning blood. The cull-hawk’s struggles slowed, reduced to quivering.
Bennett and Mathias came running through the arch, the latter with a lantern of silver, aetherium, and ramglass (as the twins had named it). Portia eased herself up and with a snap of her fingers ignited the lantern, which filled the air with a cloud of ashen light. Cora beckoned Mathias closer and, her hands trembling, caught the light with her mirror, angling it to fall on the cull-hawk and shattered ruby.
The cull-hawk stilled. Cora nodded to Petyr, and he stepped off its wings, their sheen dulled by the reflected light. He stared at the smoking quadrangle tower, below which Arch-Magister Brand moved her arms in brisk, geometric patterns. Students scrambled to aid her.
“Eyes sharp,” Petyr said. “Where’s its –”
“There!” Portia cried, pointing to the tower opposite the burning one. A cloaked man stood atop it, his cowl down but a dark neck-scarf pulled up to conceal the lower half of his face. The cull-hawk’s master.
“Traitors!” he called, his voice amplified and distorted by magic. “We are The Torchbearers of Coriol Magna! Restore our city’s name and rulers, or see it purged by fire!” He stepped back from the tower’s edge, vanishing from our sight.
I started toward the tower, but Petyr held up his hand. “Wait, Mal. He’s either going to disappear on the grounds, or he’s only seconds from the New Market. If we get lured, there could be another ambush.” He sheathed his rapier with disgust.
“Besides, I know who to talk to.”
* * *
We’d prepared his prison under the ruined east wing of House Donne. A cold cellar, cleared and fitted with an iron gate and bars from the kennels to create a narrow pen against one wall. Four negation lanterns hung from the ceiling on chains between three full-length mirrors, bathing the musty chamber in thick, mist-gray light. Countless motes of dust whorled in the glare, turning my stomach if my eyes tracked one for more than a moment. We greeted the guards at the outer door and closed it behind us.
Behind the bars, sitting naked on the ancient brickwork, the last magician of House Omnia turned his head toward us and smiled.
“Ah, the great man himself, the people’s champion,” said the magician—the creature—called Lord Nine. “I wondered when we’d speak. Today is what, the 2nd of October? That seems right.” He winced and shifted onto his side, letting his pale head rest on his pale hand. He draped his other arm across his bony hip, leaving his genitals exposed.
Petyr stepped forward beside the central mirror, careful not to obscure it. I circled to its opposite side, glancing at each lantern and mirror, ensuring every pane was intact.
“There are more cull-hawks,” Petyr said. “Are they from a hidden armory, or does someone have the means to make more?”
Nine sneered. “A better question is if you’ve found my talisman. And since you’re not holding it, I think you haven’t. So I’ve no reason to do anything for you. Unless you’re willing to quench these damned lights and free me. They hurt one like me, you know.” His eyes, despite the lanterns, flashed dusk-purple with anger.
I knew only what the Ramsdales and Brand had told us. Decades ago, before the magician-magister left his University post to serve House Omnia, he’d extracted his spirit and channeled it into some vessel. Only the ninth in the city’s history to survive doing so, thus earning his name. He was a perfect prisoner, needing neither food nor drink. But he was also impossible to kill. If we did, Brand warned, even if we cremated him, his talisman would resurrect him beside itself the following night, perhaps more powerful than before.
“We’ll find it,” Petyr said, “so you should prove yourself useful before we do.” He extended his hand, his way of opening a negotiation, whether to prevent a street fight in the Dock Quarter or cool a dispute in Parliament. “You know damn well these lanterns will keep burning. Now, there’s no point in offering better meals, and we’re not torturing you. Some entertainment, then? A troubadour for an hour each night?”
“A book?” Nine asked, eyes narrowing.
Petyr shook his head. “To hurl at a lantern or mirror? No. But a singer or storyteller, with guards and instructions to leave if you speak even one word? I can arrange that.”
Nine shifted and gathered his legs under him. I resisted an urge to step back as he stood and came to the bars, grimacing in proximity to the light.
“We underestimated you,” Nine said, extending a finger through the bars. “Perhaps not you so much as her. Donne was always the softest of the Houses, caring for the opinion of the masses. Charity.” He withdrew his hand and waved it as if dismissing an insect. “I suspected Donne might join the rabble, but what if it did? One House and the rabble against four? We’d have slaughtered you, tin lanterns or no. But when the two of you seduced House Bellegarde?” He clasped his hands, nodding as if at a private joke. “No doubt her sister’s marriage into it helped, but that was a surprise. Three against two then—and the rabble. A proper civil war.” He pursed his full lips as if approving the wisdom of his opinion and nodded. Then he looked Petyr full in the eye, his face twisting into a grin of sheer malice.
“At least we felled your pretty bitch-queen. Elena val Donne, Queen of the Rabble! May she rest in peace.” He stepped back and sketched a bow, his hand sweeping past his crotch, though his eyes never left Petyr’s.
Petyr’s jaw and fists clenched. I’d never known a man to see that look and live. “Petyr …” I said.
He shook his head, holding Lord Nine’s mocking glare. “I’m fine, Malcolm,” he said. “We’re done here.”
“Are you?” Nine called, straightening. “You offer me a story each night, but I’ve one for you. You’re wharf cats pretending to be lions. The Echelon’s branches are wider, its roots deeper, than you’ve dreamed. You ask about cull-hawks because, yes, there are always more. Your war for bread and justice, what’s it done but shatter your own streets? Now the people will remember how the Echelon kept the peace. The most useless were hungry but alive, and those loyal to our memory will fight. Your world’s only been this city, but”—he spread his arms and spun a circle in his cage—“the world is the world, and the Echelon has ambassadors and friends throughout.
“You see, Petyr Pauper-King? Our allies hidden here don’t need to win. They need only keep Coriol Magna easy prey, weakened and distracted. Come spring, Brynthia or Gundjhael will sail to war and reconquer the city, and one day the Echelon will rise again. New bloodlines, but of what value is blood? Certainly, I’m better without it.” Again he came to the bars and shook his head, his tongue tsk-ing.
“You’re riding a dying horse, Captain. You needed her. And your revolution died the minute she did.”
“I said we’re done here,” Petyr growled. He turned and went to the door. I spared what I hoped was a defiant look for Lord Nine and followed.
“Petyr! I can bring her back, Petyr!” the magician called.
Petyr’s hand went still on the door. No louder than a whisper, he gasped as if the words were a dagger sliding between his ribs.
I whirled, my face hot. “Silence, snake! The lanterns hurt you? I’ll hang ten more!”
But in the hush after my threat, Petyr looked over his shoulder and asked, “How?”
Lord Nine lifted his voice, speaking more calmly than before. “On the winter solstice, Saint Innocent’s Night. The gates between worlds can be unlocked. For my freedom, I could do it.”
I laid my hand on Petyr’s forearm. His fist was clenched again, hard as stone. “It’s a trick,” I told him. “It has to be.”
Petyr closed his eyes, his brow furrowed and lips trembling, almost forming words. Forgive me? He shook his head and opened the door.
“She isn’t gone though, devil,” Petyr called over his shoulder. “The city’s named Elenia now. She’s immortal.”
We stride past the guards and away. But as the door closes and the keys rattle on the lock, the rasp of the magician’s laughter, colder than death, follows us down the hall.
* * *
October 9th. The Torchbearers ignite an inferno in the New Market. They burn three bakeries and two ships newly arrived with summer grain and produce. They murder six longshoremen. The merchant guilds overrun Parliament’s agenda, demanding more security.
I thought the insurgents might burn the printing shops, but the broadsheets proclaim Hunger and Famine, and fear is its own ravenous fire.
Late into the nights, Petyr meets with our watch captains, poring over maps, organizing new patrols. The Torchbearers are roaming the sewers and catacombs, but no one wants to hunt them there. I volunteer to lead a special detachment, but Petyr refuses.
“I need you here, Mal,” he says wearily. He has shadows under his eyes, and dawnroot powder tinges his breath like lilies beginning to rot.
I bid him goodnight and close the door to his chambers, with only a few hours till sunrise. Rhiannon is waiting in the hall near my own door, pretending to inspect a tapestry by the light of her candle.
“Is he well?” she asks, the answer already evident on her face.
“He’s tired.” She arches an eyebrow, and I lower my voice. “Since we’re at war again, he’s using a bit of dawnroot. It’s fine, but if your maids find blood on his handkerchiefs or linens, tell me. Otherwise, brew his tea stronger and ask them to be quiet on their morning rounds. He needs sleep.”
“You need sleep,” she chides, “because he needs you.”
“Me?” I smile half-heartedly and run my fingers down the tapestry’s edge. A hunting scene, a great Echelon outing with a dozen green-cloaked lords and ladies on black and bay horses, leaping hounds, a fox peeking from a thornbush, and beside a pale blue stream a white stag, its noble head raised in alarm. “You’re the cornerstone, milady. We can’t even button our shirts and doublets without you.”
She suppresses a laugh and steps away, poses with a charming tilt of her head. “Let me know when you need help with your buttons, milord.”
It’s a candlelit moment I could shape. Rhiannon is slender and fair. She isn’t Eleni, but Eleni loved her and cherished her company. But my eyes flicker to the tapestry, to a green-cloaked lady with raven-black hair—not Eleni but not unlike her—and I let the moment pass.
“Goodnight, milady,” I say with a bow and go to find the darkness of my bed.
* * *
October 18th. Before sunrise, the Torchbearers burn a beloved cobbler and his family alive in their shop, barring the doors and windows from outside. In the same hour, they try to raze The Black Rabbit public house, a favored haunt of young troubadours by the University. Fortunately, a watch patrol paired with two student-magicians is near, and the flames are quenched with little damage.
One insurgent is taken alive. He demands trial by combat, and the watchmen bring him to Parliament. Petyr rises above the assembly and, in Elenia’s name, accepts the challenge himself. We process to a courtyard beside the hall—flagstones smooth as glass, evergreen hedges lining the walls, a saint’s lifelike statute in each corner—and give the man a blade.
Petyr lifts his rapier in the Stance of Summer and runs the man through within seconds. He twists his blade, rips it from the man’s gut, drives the sole of his boot into the man’s knee. The man falls, and Petyr steps over him, spits on his agonized face, and storms back to the Parliament hall.
“Burn him and dump the bones in the harbor,” the First Minister orders without looking back.
* * *
October 30th, Saint Tibalt’s Night. An afternoon storm wanes, leaving a clouded sky like worn canvas for the fireworks display. There’ve been no burnings for days, but the city’s air remains brittle, pamphlets and broadsheets still complaining about the prices of bread and cloth and speculating if our new ambassadors to Brynthia and Gundjhael will be well-received. The people drink and dance on the festival night, but most smiles seem forced, like a child led to supper with a bellyache.
Petyr and I and our closest men, and Rhiannon and her staff, as well as many from Parliament and their families, gather in the water-garden behind the remnant of House Donne. We cheer and toast the explosions and falling stars, yet there are fewer than last year, and I find them dimmer, smaller. When I glance at Petyr’s silhouette, standing alone beneath the fading lights, his shoulders burdened by grief and the city’s fate, my cup of wine seems bitter on my lips.
When I look again, he’s gone. I suspect he’s wandered to Eleni’s grave to remember this night last year, the ecstasy of her yes. It seems so long ago.
Rhiannon and I walk home together. My veins are warm with drink, her cheeks are flushed, and when we halt by my door to say goodnight, I lay my hand on her waist. She comes closer and kisses me, her mouth soft and eager, and we enter my room.
She’s a fine woman, a good woman. In the darkness of my bed, she could be any woman, and I take care to whisper no one’s name.
In the morning, a remark from one of my men brings new worry to the day. Petyr visited Elena’s grave last night.
Then he visited Lord Nine.
* * *
November 27th. “There’s blood on his pillow,” Rhiannon whispers to me during breakfast. She runs her hand over my shoulder, then resumes her duties. I push my food away and go to find him.
But Parliament is a whirlwind of arguments and accusations. It debates winter food supplies, taxes, ambassadors’ reports, preparations for war if diplomacy fails. Master Faron, a merchant lord, and Boss Vause, the head of the Printers’ Guild, have allied and are demanding that Petyr and others justify even the smallest decisions.
As the assembly adjourns, I reach him. “We need to talk—now,” I say. “Mockingbird.”
Our old code for a traitor, it earns his attention. I lead him to the nearby courtyard, where he executed the insurgent weeks before. Above us, a rectangle of late autumn sky glows, royal blue burnished by the setting sun. But we move through cold shadows between the marble saints, our steps echoing softly.
“A mockingbird?” Petyr asks. He sniffles and rakes his fingers through his hair. His face looks thinner, as if he’s aged years in the last months. “Who?”
“You, you melon,” I answer, keeping my voice light. “You’re using too much bloody dawnroot. It’s whipping you, and you know it.”
He glares, his jaw clenching. His lips open then close. At last, he pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs.
“I know, Mal. But you know how it is—”
“You know how it is,” I counter. “Lads think it makes them clever and quicker. And it does. I loved it, too. But it makes them careless. And lads think they’re so clever that no one sees, but we do. You always knew when my da was in his ale, didn’t you? They see, too,” I say, jerking my thumb toward the Parliament hall. “So ease off, or those merchants and bosses will spit you out before spring.”
He nods. “Thank you, Mal. You’re—”
I hold up my hand. “But that’s not why you’re the mockingbird. It’s because you’re still talking shite with Lord Nine. About Eleni.”
His face darkens, and I instinctively set my feet. In mentioning dawnroot, I’ve brought shame. With this, I’ve awakened his wrath.
The next minutes witness the fiercest argument in our friendship’s years. I tell him Nine can’t be trusted, that Nine’s too powerful to risk freeing. I tell him Elena’s with the Blessèd now, haloed and immortal. That she’s watching us and wouldn’t want us to compromise with Nine or House Omnia. That she’d want us to live with our eyes forward.
His eyes glistening, he tells me he needs her back.
I look to the statue of Saint Aurelian, gazing heavenward with his broken lyre. And I release it, my last arrow, knowing it can never be reclaimed.
“Elena is dead, Petyr. This is the world now. Carry on or piss off.”
His palms slam into my shoulders, and I stumble, flinging out a hand to stop myself from sprawling. He roars, vowing to strip me of my rank, to dismiss me from his service, to banish me from Parliament. He chases me from the courtyard with curses, his voice harsh and—I want to believe—thick with tears.
I hurry from the Echelon Quarter, descending to the lower city, turning toward the University. The iron bells of the basilica toll the hour, the clanging of metal like a herald of war. So quickly, too quickly. The brash echoes hound me through the streets, making my path clear.
I’ve less than a month to stop his madness.
* * *
December 20th, Saint Innocent’s Eve. In the early twilight, in the chill of a sunless afternoon, I return to Parliament with Arch-Magister Brand and the Ramsdale twins. Clerks and other visitors stare and murmur upon our arrival.
The guardsmen at the main doors bar us with crossed halberds, but one fought with me by King Venedict’s Arch in August. Dain Fisher, a good man, also a son of the Dock Quarter.
“Milord,” he says, “I’m sorry, but—”
“I need you to trust me, Dain. We’ve urgent news for Parliament. Announce us, please. Arch-Magister Brand first, if you like. And I know you remember Cora and Portia.”
He swings open the doors, raps his halberd on the floor for attention, and sounds our names. I clear my throat and step inside, fixing my eyes on Petyr, who’s rising to his full height across the hall.
“What’s this?” he demands, his commander’s voice resounding to the rafters.
Fate is a shite playwright, and my part has come.
“First Minister! Lords and ladies!” I lift my hands and offer a victorious smile. “Forgive us for interrupting your vital work. We bring great news, news of our final triumph over the lingering threat of House Omnia.” I pitch my voice over their curious murmurs. “As many of you know, in the last days of our revolution, we captured—at great cost—Omnia’s most powerful and cruel magician, Lord Nine.
“This magician, this creature, has shielded himself from death by unholy arts.” This draws fervent whispers and warding signs from the representatives of the Blessèd Church. “For months now, we’ve held him prisoner with the brilliant tools of the Ramsdale sisters.” I pause as if to remember something. “And have we ever thanked them properly?” I ask and turn to Cora and Portia, applauding.
Almost all the representatives are grateful for the twins’ work, for the long-awaited ability to down a cull-hawk in flight or render a House magician no more than a common man or woman. Those nearby clap with me, and soon the hall echoes with a thunder of gratitude. As it subsides, I return my gaze to Petyr, unmoving, unsmiling, his hands clenching the silvered podium before his chair.
“Get on with it, Malcolm,” Cora says quietly, her voice both pleasant and poisonous.
“Today, by the wit and work of Arch-Magister Brand and the Magisters Ramsdale, I bring you news: we’ve found the secret talisman of Lord Nine and can destroy him! Forever!”
I turn to Brand, who lifts her gold chain of office over her head and places it in my hands. At a distance, its magnificent amethyst glows. But in my palms, its light waxes and wanes. Like a heartbeat.
I hold the chain taut, letting the amethyst fall, hanging, spinning, its gleaming facets captivating every eye.
“Remember that, before he served Omnia, Lord Nine served the University. And he cunningly chose this symbol of the University to become his talisman. An object to be guarded and cherished for centuries and, for him, to become his secret hidden in plain sight.”
I nod to Portia, who draws an aetherium chisel and squat steel hammer from her robes. I lay the amethyst and chain on the marbled floor. She kneels beside it. I stretch out the chain and pin it under my boot. With her left hand, Portia centers her chisel on the amethyst. She raises the hammer in her right and awaits my word.
Footsteps approach. Petyr is coming to us. Thirty feet away. Twenty. I stare at him, willing him to understand. Please, brother, see the trap. I’ve caught you. Please let her go and carry on.
In another world, he understands and holds his tongue. He mourns her loss again, the shattered hope of her return, but in the following days he carries on and again becomes the man who defeated the Echelon. He quenches the counter-revolution and brokers peace with Brynthia and Gundjhael. He leads Elenia as it becomes the shining city, where the wealthiest abhor the suffering of their neighbors, the city he and Elena dreamed of.
But in this world, on this stage, I tell Portia Ramsdale, “Do it.” And as she raises the hammer, Petyr’s voice sunders the hall.
“Stop!”
“Do it!” I tell Portia again and step forward to intercept him, drawing my rapier. He gapes with shock and fury and reaches for his.
But it remains beside his seat across the hall.
Behind me sounds the ring of steel on aetherium and a violent crack. A dusk-purple shadow blooms, and in the sudden dimness a howl of despair pierces the clamor of representatives and citizens. Some flee for the doors.
But as the shadow passes, those who remain see me standing before Petyr, my rapier leveled at his heart.
“You all witnessed it,” I say without triumph. “The First Minister tried to spare the life of Lord Nine. Because they were in league. The First Minister sought to free the magician tomorrow, on Saint Innocent’s Night. He wanted the magician to summon Elena val Donne from the dead!”
The outcry lingers. Two priests rush to the doors. Soon Master Faron and Boss Vause approach with a handful of guards. Petyr doesn’t acknowledge them. His eyes remain on me, smoldering.
“What say you, Smith?” Vause asks. “Those are damning accusations.”
Petyr nods, arms folded. A mirthless smile. “Those are the words of a man who was my friend. And Elena’s,” he adds, twisting her name like a knife. “And he deserves no response but this: I demand trial by combat against my accuser.”
I sheath my rapier and bow my head. “Till dawn, then. The water-garden of her House.”
So easily is it done.
* * *
December 21st, The Feast of Saint Innocent. I lie awake in the small dormitory room in the University, where I’ve stayed these past weeks. A cup of wine spiced with duskroot has done nothing to calm my thoughts.
In less than six hours, Petyr—my blood-brother, the friend of my life—will kill me. I resolve to give the onlookers a good show, something memorable for the broadsheets. Dying words worthy of the theatre, perhaps, if he doesn’t cut my throat. Wracked by memories, I teeter like a fool between laughter and tears, a plan to board a ship tonight, the ease of falling on my own sword now.
Someone knocks on my door.
I part the room’s curtains, admitting a wash of ghostly moonlight, and open the door. Rhiannon is there, a fur-lined cloak over a dark dress. Bare shoulders. Ash-blonde hair brushed into a fall of white gold. She embraces me and whispers my name, and as I shut the door, her perfume overcomes me.
Mint and jasmine, fresh and intoxicating. It’s not her perfume.
It’s Eleni’s.
I undress her and lay her on the narrow bed. I lose myself with her for long minutes that touch eternity. Her lips, the sheen of moonlight on her skin, her scent as pure as heaven. At last, I drowse and sleep, her head on my chest an unconditional gift.
I start awake and go to the window. An hour or less.
“Malcolm?” she asks and beckons me. I sit beside her and kiss her hair. Rhiannon, not Elena. And perhaps I only imagine it because of her perfume and dawn’s approach, the day sacred to the dead, but I feel Elena with us. Help us, I ask her. Please help Petyr.
Rhiannon takes my hands in hers. “Remember, Mal. We all want the same things. We’re all mortal.” We share a small smile. How often did Elena say that, to the Houses and the commonfolk alike? “Even Petyr.”
“Look at me,” she says. There’s a gleam like diamond in her eyes, an edge like a cull-hawk’s wing in her voice.
“You’re going to find a way. Because I’m not coming to watch you die.”
* * *
Petyr waits on a flagstone square between the reflecting pools. A bustling crowd surrounds the pools, bundled, restless and shivering in the cold, the mist of their breath rising. I see Cora and Portia, Master Faron and Boss Vause, Dain Fisher, Mathias and Bennett and our men, grim and disbelieving. And I see so many poets and troubadours, like a flock of songbirds or vultures eager to feast.
Rhiannon kisses my cheek and disappears into the throng. The crowd parts, and between stone and water and sky, Petyr and I stand alone.
He wears a hunter’s green doublet with gleaming gold buttons, Elena’s first gift to him, the silhouette of a rampant lion embroidered on the back in cloth-of-gold. He wore it in February after House Quire’s blademaster challenged him, thinking to end the revolution swiftly.
We draw our rapiers and salute one another. I limber up and envision my plan. The Stance of Autumn, then Winter. To survive as long as possible, taunting him, invoking Eleni, declaring how I also loved her. And if I must, to proclaim a torrid affair with her, trysts in this very garden. If I can goad him from technique into blind rage. If …
But he lays his rapier beside one of the pools.
“Parley,” he calls, stepping forward. I lay down my blade and stand before him. His face is shadowed, unshaven, but his eyes are clear.
“Listen, Mal, and listen well. The city and poets are watching,” he says quietly. “I failed you. And the city. And Elena.” He looks away, across the gardens, toward her grave beneath the skeletal trees.
“I dreamed of her this morning,” he tells me. “The city needed her, and she died. The city needed me, but I didn’t carry on. The city needs a new leader now, and I’m choosing you.”
“Petyr, I—”
“This is the world now, Mal. Dance the seasons with me, just like we would for val Horn, Spring through Winter. In Winter, I’ll give you a Saint Warrick’s Lunge, embellished, which opens for you …”
His eyes search mine as we envision the sequence together. I see it, I see myself sinking onto my right knee as my blade dips and rises, and I nod. “The Black Boar’s Riposte.”
“Do it,” he commands, “for Elenia. And for me, if you still care. Let me see her again.” He prods my chest with his finger and turns away, a display of contempt for the crowd. But I see the light in his eyes. My brother has returned.
He’s offered me his heart, and in our dance, my blade pierces it. The crowd gasps, erupting into chaos. The poets watch, engraving the scene in their memories. I kneel beside Petyr as his last breath calls her name and rides the wind like smoke.
* * *
December 24th. We bury Petyr beside Elena, below king’s maples that blaze each autumn. In the afternoon, Rhiannon and I walk the garden paths of House Donne. Snow falls, dusting the paths, vanishing in the reflecting pools.
The winter air is biting, but it’s nothing beside Petyr’s loss. Our broken pasts, our shattered dreams, such are the blades that end our lives long before our bodies die. Sharper than steel, colder than death.
But this is my world now. Rhiannon’s hand in mine, we face the vast city. We can never be Petyr and Elena.
We can only, as ourselves, carry on.
© January 2025, Robert Rhodes
Born in New Orleans, Robert Rhodes now lives in Upstate South Carolina. His stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Gate, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, and Tales from the Magician’s Skull. His early fiction is collected in Shadow, Light, & Steel (available on amazon.com). His Bluesky profile is @rrhodeswriter.bsky.social. This is his first appearance in Swords & Sorcery Magazine.
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