Red Wishes Black Ink

Cortland Finiron, Hammer Master of the 12th Renown, Kingdom of Infinzel, always a step behind

Bel Guydemion, Quill of Soldier's Rest, babysitter

9 Blossum, 61 AW

The pyramidal city of Infinzel, North Continent

51 days until the next Granting

In the armory, Carina had left behind two crates of the magnetized discs and a third crate of the hollow orbs that produced artificial sunlight. The items were fastidiously packed, each one wrapped in waxed paper so as not to disrupt the stenciled rune-work. She had also included parchment with detailed pronunciation guides on the words that would activate the devices. The arcane tongue made sense to Cortland—it was the language of his Ink—the commands simple: "pull" for the discs and "shine" for the orbs.

"I didn't know she made all this," Cortland said.

"She checked in a couple times. I think she was disappointed they didn't see much use." Walton crouched by a rack of satchels and packs, pulling out a worn, leather bag that Cortland could sling across his chest. "Will this do?"

Cortland glanced his way. "That's fine. I'll need water and flint and my armo–"

The bells began to ring.

At first, Cortland thought that he'd triggered some trap by rummaging through the logician's boxes. Of course, that made no sense, and he steadied his hands before shoving the crate of magnetized discs onto the floor. The noise wasn't coming from anything in the armory but was vibrating through the stones of Infinzel itself. A steady, pulsing ring, slower than Cortland's heartbeat.

"Is that—is that the alarm?" Walton asked.

Cortland had seldom heard the bells—only in half-assed drills conducted for Garrison cadets, and even then their sound had been muffled so as not to frighten the entire city. There were wards woven into the mechanism, wards that flowed directly to Cizco, so that any use of the bells could be stymied or amplified by the king himself. They were relics of the last age, before Infinzel and every other city had gained the gods' protection. What use was a warning system for attacks that would never come?

The bells rang now, loud, and unimpeded.

There remained three places to set the bells ringing: an alcove near the fortified entrance to the Underneath, another on the mid-tier observation deck where the generals of Infinzel once organized the city's defense, and a third in the king's own apartments.

"Breach," Cortland said.

Without saying more, Cortland bolted from the room, his hammer in hand. He still carried the weapon that he had used [Forge] to make on Nortmost. The alabaster chunk of a stone walker proved durable and he liked the weight, but he had gotten Infinzel's finest blacksmith to affix a few bands of spiked steel around the stone head, and wrapped the marble handle in soft, sticky leather. He would carry this weapon into the Granting and a part of him had been excited at the promise of work to do in the Underneath that would give him another chance to try it out.

These were not the circumstances he had envisioned.

Cortland raced down two flights of stairs, then hooked around a hallway, and reached the blockaded entrance to the Underneath. The soldiers posted there—hunkered behind stone barricades with crossbows ready—flinched as Cortland skidded to a stop amongst them. His brow furrowed. The great slab doors that sealed the descent to the Underneath were closed. The men stationed there shifted their crossbows with every toll of the bell, as if there were targets they couldn't yet see.

"It's not us!" one of the soldiers yelped.

"Hold here until you're relieved," Cortland snarled. "Keep those doors shut."

He spun back around the way he had come, bumping shoulders with breathless Walton who had only just caught up with him.

Back up he went, emerging into the Garrison near the training pit. He smelled blood, turned, and saw Issa Firstdot-Tuarez hobbling toward him with a wounded guard propped against her shoulder. The blood belonged to the guard, not Issa, though it had ruined the clothes she'd been wearing for her day off-duty. A sour thought about how Issa spent her leisure time crossed Cortland's mind, but he forced it away and focused on the wounded man. Something had ripped a great chunk out of the guard's leg and his face had gone pale from the blood loss. Neither Cortland nor Issa slowed as she headed toward the infirmary and he toward the exit.

"Gargoyles," she said.

"Where?"

"I was in Underbridge," she replied. "They're everywhere."

"Not fucking possible," Cortland replied. "Get your gear and meet me…"

He didn't know where he would be, so Cortland left it at that, confident that Issa would either find him or make herself useful in some other way. With Walton trailing behind him, Cortland sprinted the short distance to the Garrison's side exit that fed out into the Underbridge. By the time he reached the hallway, he found himself shoving through a tide of panic—merchants, workmen, sailors—all of them terrified, some of them bloodied. A few screamed questions at Cortland or grabbed at his sleeves to beg for help, but he shook free of them.

The bells were ringing faster and faster now. Ding-DONG. Ding-DONG. A high note, then a low note.

Cortland burst through the crowd and into the cool, riverside air of the Underbridge. Two Garrison soldiers with their weapons drawn flanked the exit, waving people through, and scanning the river beyond the churn of people. One glanced back at Cortland.

"Champion, what's happening?" she asked.

"You fucking tell me," Cortland replied.

A body lay on the paving stones twenty yards away, its head caved in. Another body, dropped across the top of a merchant stall, dripped blood from a leg bitten down to a stump. Boats were turning in wild arcs in the water, trying to maneuver against the current to avoid a capsized barge in the middle of the river. A handful of sailors trod water or clung to bits of debris. Some of the merchant stalls that lined the river road had been destroyed, wood broken, canvas torn and flapping, like a boulder had careened through them.

As the guard tried to answer Cortland, the crowd surged and she stumbled. Cortland grabbed her arm, steadying her. The bells were nearly overlapping now.

"Where?" Cortland yelled at her. "How many?"

As if in answer, a gargoyle reared up from the remains of a merchant stall, sending puffs of colorful, spiced air outward as it flexed its wings through broken jars of cinnamon and turmeric. The crowd screamed and swelled toward the single entry, bouncing off [Unmovable] Cortland like he was a statue planted in their way. Cortland had trouble seeing over the people, so he shoved them aside, not gently.

"Move, assholes!" Cortland hollered, and they did.

He cocked back his arm and used [Hammer Toss].

The gargoyle's stone face caved in and, though it lumbered on, the creature didn't make it more than a few steps before Cortland had returned his hammer to his hand and relaunched it again with enough force that the beast's torso shattered and its arcane core went dark.

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"Where did they come from?" Cortland growled, more to himself than the people ducking behind him. "I need to get higher."

"Cortland!" Walton jostled his way through the crowd and thrust the satchel forward. "I grabbed what I could."

Cortland heard the clinking of discs and orbs as he slung the satchel over his shoulder. "Good lad," he told Walton.

"They were massing… they found another way out!" Walton shouted. "I should have… I should have…"

Cortland dug his fingers into Walton's shoulder. "Fuck off with that. Go back to the armory and hand the rest of those weapons out to our people. I'm going to the east staircase and from there the observation deck. Meet me there."

Walton nodded, doubled-back, rejoining the press of bodies evacuating into Infinzel. Cortland bulled his way forward until he was closer to the river than the wall, and thus free from the fleeing citizens.

His eyes caught on the barge tilted and sinking mid-river. Slabs of stone harvested from the mineral garden were strapped atop the deck. A gargoyle rolled across one of them, like a dog in a mud puddle. Cortland cocked his arm back but, at that moment, the creature clamored to its feet and took flight—just as the restraints snapped and the stone slid into the river.

The gargoyle went high, its wings scraping the colorful moss portrait of King Cizco on the Underbridge's ceiling, and then tucked its body tight. It dove for a sailor who had just hoisted himself onto the dock's edge. Cortland lunged forward and used [Greater Shield]. The gargoyle bounced off the wall of force and landed with its back legs in the river. As the beast scrabbled for purchase, two more sailors armed with oars raced forward and shoved it into the water. Everyone in Infinzel knew that stone sank. The heavy gargoyle beats its wings, but it was too unbalanced. The spring current swallowed it.

The tolling bells nearly overlapped now. Soon, the high note and the low note would strike in harmony. Cortland paused. His mother had told him something about the bells once, hadn't she? Some grim tale of the siege years.

The three sailors were on their way toward the entrance. "Hold on!" Cortland called after them.

The bells chimed as one. A last solid, single, powerful note, and then were quiet.

WHUMP.

Displaced air breezed across Cortland's sweaty head. Above, the apartment windows carved into the arch of the Underbridge—a view much sought after—snapped closed like stone eyelids. Cortland could not see through the crowd, but he knew the door he'd exited from had closed just the same, the stone of Infinzel smooth, gray, and impenetrable.

The king had sealed the city.

Cortland heard the howling then. It was the guard who he had spoken with. She'd been too close to the door when the stone had snapped shut and it had taken bites from the back of her foot and buttocks. Whoever had been passing through the door when the stone closed was even less lucky.

"Champion!" someone shouted. "What do we do?"

There were still at least thirty stragglers in the Underbridge. As one, they turned to Cortland. His grip tightened on his hammer.

"With me!" he yelled. "Stay tight! Anyone with weapons, stay on the outside of the others! There will be a way inside from the east staircase!"

"What if there's not?" someone yelled.

"Then I'll fucking make one," Cortland replied, and took off at a run, trusting the people of Infinzel to follow.

Bel Guydemion always had an eye for talent. It had become a necessity for him during the Final War, during years spent waging a running battle against the Orvesians and their allies. His family was of Infinzel's nobility and thus afforded certain privileges. Bel had been named an officer in the cavalry for no better reason than that. As his ranking officers died around him and Bel found himself thrust into command of the host, he had come to depend upon those people who his parents had spent their lives looking down on. Men and women with Work in their names, refugees from other cities, defectors from Orvesis, masked assassins and Twiceblacks. Bel was never a skilled rider, or a talented swordsman, and he never dabbled in the arcane. He was never even a very good noble, as his mother had made clear upon his overdue return to Infinzel, when Bel had come back swollen and sickly and with no interest in making an heir, even after he learned how his brothers had perished in the siege. His one and only talent was finding people and putting them in the right position—first to survive, and then to thrive.

The people who came to Guydemion's tavern thought that he was wise and clever. Perhaps he was those things, Bel admitted to himself, but he was also old. Some people mistook experience for genius, and some people mistook Bel's stubborn patience for the guile of a master planner. But Bel's secret was that he didn't plan so much as he placed—he placed his talented people where they needed to go and trusted them to do the wise thing once they were there.

In that moment, on what should've been a quiet evening, the right place for Otis Opensky was the crawlspace hidden behind the bar.

"My sketches," Otis said.

"I have them, I have them," Bel replied in his papery, high-pitched rasp, a voice so different from the one of his youth that a part of Bel still recoiled whenever he heard himself speak.

"The bells stopped," Otis said. "Does that mean it's over?"

"No."

Child-watching. Now, that was an old man's job, although not one that Bel minded. He was old, after all. And he was weak and disgusted with his own infirmity. His body swelled in places where it should not have. A dying stink rose off him no matter how thoroughly he washed, and he had taken to hiding it beneath a sandalwood-scented cologne, an act of vanity befitting his noble breeding. He could barely leave his wheeled-chair these days and needed to be wrapped in blankets like a newborn. During the outer district strike, some men from the pyramid had come down to make trouble. They had called him a swollen slug and threatened to salt him, and Bel had laughed and laughed to hear his own thoughts echoed from the mouths of scoundrels, and he'd laughed still while Watts and Traveon beat those men and sent them running home.

Traveon. Far away. Somewhere safer.

Watts. Close, hopefully. On his way back to collect his boy.

Bel's favorite sons.

Bel's arthritic hand trembled as he took one last look at the sketches Otis had made. Spinning propellers that floated palettes of stone into the air. The open sky, claimed by Otis Opensky. His parents had been two of Bel's talents, so it was no surprise that the boy himself had gifts surpassing them, and was more brilliant than any of the other children Bel had played some small part in raising across the decades—perhaps all except for one. Otis was kinder with his intelligence than Carina had ever been, and Bel thought that was good.

There was new screaming outside. Something landed on the roof, shook the building, and took off again. One of the pendants hanging from the ceiling came fluttering down. Otis' eyes widened.

"These are marvelous," Bel told Otis as he handed the sketches down to him.

For a moment, the fear left the boy's eyes. He rarely missed an opportunity to discuss his work. "The ge'nezza guide my hand," Otis said.

The gods of progress. They were not gods that showed themselves, except via inspiration. Bel did not believe that they existed. The achievements in the sketchbook belonged to Otis and Otis alone. The gods could not take credit for everything. Regardless, Bel would make sure that Otis lived to see his creations made real. He would not let down Watts and Hellie in this simple task of child-watching, an old man's job.

"There's room down here," Otis said, scooting deeper into the crawlspace. "Maybe not for your chair but…"

"So there is," Bel said. He looked up and raised his voice. "Anyone else? No shame in retreat. I've done it a hundred times."

The tavern hadn't been crowded when the attack started. The shift change in the pyramidal city hadn't come yet and the dinner rush hadn't started. Bel's cook was there, and a couple of old timers who liked to drink early, and the new bouncer Bel had hired to replace Watts—though he had been the one screaming outside and was now gone quiet, likely mauled in the courtyard. The cook had armed himself with a skillet and a cleaver, and the old timers had taken spears down from the wall. Bel wasn't sure how sharp they were.

The three of them shook their heads in unison.

"Just you," Bel told Otis. "Our old bodies hurt too much to bend."

"Bel," Otis said, sounding like his mother. "Come on."

"Stay down there until someone comes to tell you it's safe," Bel said.

"Until you come," Otis replied.

"Yes."

With a numb foot, Bel kicked the crawlspace shut. Otis would do as he was told. He had not yet discovered rebellion.

Bel reached under the bar, though his joints flared at the effort, and grasped the crossbow that Traveon kept there. He discarded the common bolt already loaded and instead retrieved a box of arrows they had purchased from a Beacon merchant back when the assassins had installed their contemptible fountain in Bel's courtyard. The bolts were strung with pouches of some explosive concoction. They hadn't worked on the fountain, but Bel felt certain they could handle a gargoyle. Loading, cranking, setting the crossbow across his lap and under his armpit—this was a painful process that brought water to Bel's eyes. The others knew better than to offer assistance.

"Bring me around," Bel told the cook.

"You should've gone down too," the cook replied, though he took up the handles on the back of Bel's chair and pushed him around the front of the bar so that he faced the door.

"I've been in worse shit than this," Bel said.

"Not me," the cook replied.

"Don't worry," Bel said. "It's not our time yet. I have work to do. You have dinner to cook."

It had taken ninety years, but the gods had finally noticed Bel Guydemion. They had given him a golden inkwell and Bel had been relieved that the quill did most of the work for him when he marked his champions because otherwise the phoenix feather was too slim for him to grip. The gods had fashioned for him a symbol of his own that represented the things he believed and the people who believed them. Their symbol was a broken wall, but Bel always told his people to envision themselves linking arms and fitting into that gap, making what's broken whole again with their solidarity. He knew that Traveon had been using that in his speeches to drum up the strike, and it made him proud. Words could last, too, where bodies didn't.

They could hear the flapping of wings outside.

And so, for the first time in many years, Bel Guydemion aimed a weapon.

The first gargoyle burst through the door like a swaggering drunk. Bel fired. The creature exploded.

Bel reloaded.

The second gargoyle came in through the roof and crushed Bel Guydemion beneath the weight of a hatred older than even him, a rage newly freed, without direction. A pointless, mindless thing, but heavy. So, so heavy.

At last, Orvesis had caught up with Bel Guydemion.