Page 64 of The Devils

The Language of Violence

They were coming.

Alex could hear their footsteps, in the throne room below. The confident tap of expensive shoes on an expensive floor.

She stared wretchedly about the eyrie at the top of the Pharos, bathed now in a sickly blue glare, flashing from the thousand thousand chips of mirror that covered the inside of the dome.

They were coming.

A hideous scream split the night. A hiss like steam below, and the scream became a bubbling whimper, then silence.

Alex stood frozen, sweat tickling her scalp. From the heat of the flame. From the climb. From the abject terror. The nun stood gaping, hard to say if she was sticking to her vow of silence or had lost the power of speech.

They were coming. And there was no way out.

Well, there were about twenty, it was just that beyond each wide archway there was nothing but a spectacular view of her darkened Empire and the longest drop in Europe.

The footsteps had made it to the stair below.

‘Oh God.’ Alex scrambled to the nearest opening, leaned gingerly over the parapet, and her stomach flipped.

A dizzying vastness of dusk yawned beneath her. The side of the Pharos dropping away, the side of the Pillar dropping away below that, the pinprick lights of the city far below that , the lanterns of the ships in the bay, the dregs of sunset gleaming on the black mirror of the harbour.

When she fled through the rigging from Constans’s fish-men she’d thought herself very high up. How quaint her death plunge into the freezing Adriatic seemed now.

There was only one small mercy. Basil the Builder had clearly loved a bit of decorative stonework. He’d spared no expense on fake pillars, false windows, sculpted plants, animals, faces, and that had left handholds everywhere.

The high, cold wind caught Alex’s hair and flicked it around her smarting face, caught her gauzy gown and flicked it around her goose-fleshed legs.

She could hear voices on the steps.

‘Oh God.’

She thought of Arcadius, shattered into a thousand frozen fragments.

No one wants to see doubts.

She planted her arse on the centuries-old names, gritted her teeth, and swung both legs over. She slithered down, clinging to the parapet beside her until the cold stone dug into her armpit, bare feet paddling desperately about till one toe caught something sticking from the side of the tower.

A gargoyle. She’d never seen the point of the ugly bastards before but she was damn grateful for it now. She teetered there, sideways on, perched atop a little stone head too small for both her feet.

She gritted her teeth even harder and peered down, focused on her toes. Not beyond. Not all that swallowing, dizzying beyond. Not the tiny buildings and the pinprick lights and the fall. How long would you fall for?

‘Oh God.’ She told herself that didn’t matter. Who cared whether you only broke your neck or your body exploded into soup? It was just like being a thief, climbing up some merchant’s drainpipe. She made herself let go of the parapet, palms sliding down the masonry as she bent her knees, slowly, slowly, cold wind chilling one shoulder, cold stone scraping the other, praying for balance.

‘Oh God.’ Heart pounding in her mouth. Pounding behind her smarting eyes. She got her straining, tingling fingertips to the gargoyle, thighs digging into her churning stomach. She worked one foot off it, then the other. Its stubby stone horns scraped her shins, then her knees, then her stomach, then her chest. Her arms trembled and her hands burned with the effort as she lowered herself, dangling over the void, every muscle aching as she stretched out.

She’d always wanted to be taller, but never half so much as in that moment.

The tip of one fishing toe brushed stone, and with a whimper she trusted to fate and let go. Her heels thumped onto a ledge and she stood gasping, plastered into a shallow alcove, one of a set that ringed the lighthouse, matching the gallery of archways at the top.

‘Where is she?’ The voice echoed from above and Alex pressed herself even tighter to the stone, not daring even to breathe.

‘I asked you where ?’

A sudden gust blew up, trying to peel her from the Pharos, singed sleeves of her imperial bedwear whipping at her eyes, and she dug her fingertips into some carved vine leaves and clung on like grim death.

‘You’re a Sister of the Flame? I can give you flame.’

There was a hideous screech. Alex couldn’t hold in a gasp of terror as something plummeted past her, blazing brightly, flailing wildly, shrieking like a boiling kettle.

The nun.

‘That was a waste.’ Placidia’s voice, but so cold Alex could hardly believe it was the same girl who’d so gently combed her hair that morning.

‘No more talking.’ Zenonis’s voice. ‘No more plotting. No more picking that stringy shrew’s dirty toenails. It’s time to take back what’s ours .’

‘Then we have to trap our little rat and kill it.’

Alex realised with a surge of fresh terror that Placidia was coming towards the parapet, leaning out to look down. She sucked in her stomach and pressed herself to the Pharos, shrinking from the blue glare above, eyes squeezed shut, toes trembling as they clung to the ledge, fingertips worming into the carvings, clutching a handful of her whipping gown close so it couldn’t give her away, holding her breath like Sunny would’ve and wishing she could disappear the same way.

Any moment, she’d hear the cruel laughter, see the fire glow through her eyelids, feel the searing pain, and follow that sorry nun downwards, the shortest and most disappointing reign in Trojan history ending in a human torch—

‘Downstairs.’ Placidia’s voice moved away. ‘Check the throne room again.’

Alex let out a shuddering sigh. She yearned to sob or blub or even scream but didn’t dare to so much as squeak. She forced her feet to move. To edge along that shelf of stone. She peeled her sweat-sticky back from the masonry, twisting to face the wall, one fishing foot over the void, toes straining towards the ledge of the next alcove along—

Something flapped at her, clattered around her, batting wings, squawking beaks. She lost her grip with one hand, swinging out by the other, clutching at nothing, weight tipping over the drop, swinging, out of control, and she gave a whooping gasp—

Stone smacked into her face, filled her head with stars.

She gripped on by broken, trembling fingernails. Salt in her mouth. Head spinning.

Her feet were on the next ledge, wedged among a wreckage of twigs, slimy with droppings and broken eggs. Birds, nesting high up. She tried to breathe through the dizziness, the pulsing pain in the side of her jaw.

There was a pillar beside the alcove. She shuffled to it, wrapped her legs around it, clinging to the carved leaves at its top. She tried to ease downwards, but right away she began to slip, juddering, shuddering, stitches popping, gauzy material ripping.

She squeezed her eyes shut, growling through gritted teeth as the rough stone chafed her raw—

Her feet hit something, and she realised she was still. A ledge at the base of the pillar. There was a great window beside her. One of the windows of the throne room, the welcoming glow of lamplight leaking out into the dusk.

Alex had spent some bad nights on the streets, but the idea of inside had never held so much appeal.

She shuffled her grazed feet towards the window, clung to the frame with her bleeding fingers, peered into the room, and froze again.

There they were. Placidia crouched, long limbs seeming longer than ever, eyes sunken in dark rings and her lips turned pale blue, her jewellery glittering with frost. Zenonis stood tall beside her, streaks of blood down her face from the cut cheek Alex had given her, eyes wide and wild, scorched dress and shining hair stirred as if by a hot draught. Two of the missing members of Eudoxia’s coven, right beside her all along.

Alex cursed silently to herself. Beautiful people, tending to a piece of shit like her? She’d forgotten Gal the Purse’s last lesson! Never trust the rich. They’re even more treacherous than the poor.

‘How’d she get away?’ Zenonis poked at something with her shoe. A heap of bubbling fat and blackened armour that must once have been a guard.

‘Rats are clever little creatures,’ said Placidia, each word with a little puff of chilly smoke, ‘when it comes to finding holes to hide in. Tell the others we’ll have to do this the hard way. Scour the Palace. Kill anything that might be loyal to her.’

Zenonis sniggered. ‘I like the hard way.’

Her shining eyes flicked towards the window and Alex shrank back against the stone, squeezing her eyes shut. Then she snapped them open.

Duke Michael! She had to warn him!

And maybe, just maybe, together, they could get out of this alive.

She clung to the outside of her own palace as another chilly gust whipped around her bare arse … could she feel specks of drizzle on the air?

‘Oh God …’ What girl doesn’t live in fear of rain on her wedding day?

Though most brides don’t have to climb down the outside of a giant lighthouse after the groom’s been shattered into a thousand pieces.

Jakob had never been much with words. But in the language of violence, he was a poet.

He’d been steeped in it since he was a babe in arms, speaking it eloquently since before he could walk and – try as he might to learn others – violence was still the language he first thought in. He knew its every dialect, from tavern brawl to pitched battle. He understood its every subtlety and idiom. It was his mother tongue.

So when he heard it whispered on the streets of Troy, he understood the meaning. A wildness in the eyes of the revellers. A shrillness in their cries as they pointed up through the drizzle towards Saint Natalia’s Flame, still burning an eerie blue. It was fair to say no one liked the elves, but for most of Europe they were a far-off menace. Eat your dinner or the elves will eat you. Here in Troy, where their unearthly savagery had boiled over the edges of the map within living memory, the hatred and terror were of a different order. Keep your sword always sharp and your eye ever watchful, lest the elves eat your family the way they ate your grandfather.

A damp crowd had gathered before the lift, held back by a double line of Palace Guard. ‘All’s well!’ their captain was bellowing, though his drawn sword wasn’t putting any minds at rest. ‘The elves are not coming!’

‘No more’n one, anyway,’ muttered Vigga as she ploughed through the angry press.

‘I’m Brother Diaz!’ called the monk, stepping from behind her, not at all cowed by the naked steel. ‘Envoy of Her Holiness the Pope, and I’m concerned for the safety of the Empress!’

‘Who’s this brash bastard and what’s he done with Brother Diaz?’ muttered Baptiste out of the corner of her mouth.

‘I know who you are.’ The captain had a twitchy look. ‘But there’s nothing to—’

‘Then why the blue flame?’ demanded Diaz, and the crowd muttered in angry agreement.

Jakob slid past him and beckoned the captain close, one professional to another. ‘No one wants to add to your troubles, but we’ve all got superiors to answer to.’

‘Let us go up there,’ said Baptiste, gold teeth glinting as she grinned. ‘All’s well, we can help you put minds at rest.’

The captain considered the gathering mob, then glanced towards his men. One shrugged. Another nodded. ‘All right.’ And he sheathed his sword as he turned for the lift. ‘We’ll go together.’

In the language of violence, Jakob was fluent. He’d had his suspicions, but as the soldiers slotted the rail into place behind them, the captain pulled the lever, the machinery rattled into life, and the city fell away beneath them, the hints he saw left no room for doubt.

How one guard had his weight all in his front foot, body slightly twisted, like a bent bow. How another rested his hand on the buckle of his sword-belt, thumb nervously tap, tap, tapping. How a third watched Baptiste, standing that bit too close, a muscle working on the side of his head.

‘Glad to have you with us!’ Brother Diaz grinned at the guard beside him. In many areas, the monk had proved himself surprisingly erudite. But in the language of violence, he was illiterate.

Jakob couldn’t tell exactly how many guards were around him without turning, which might’ve given him away, and definitely would’ve hurt his neck. So he kept his eyes ahead, and took a long breath, and let it sigh out. Strange, how it was only at a time like this that he felt truly calm. Sometimes it’s a burden, to know just what’s coming. And sometimes it’s a wonderful comfort.

‘Your Palace Guard must be some of the best equipped soldiers in Europe,’ he said.

The captain glanced sideways at him. ‘Every man pays for his own armour, he’s that honoured to serve.’

‘Acacia wood shafts to your spears?’ asked Jakob, admiringly. ‘Must be shipped in from Afrique?’

‘The best,’ said Vigga, raising a knowing brow at the spears of the four guards clustered close around her. She could miss the point in almost any tongue, but when it came to violence, you’d get nothing by her.

‘And you carry the paramerion.’ The captain’s left hand was gripping his sword. He had to let go to show off the gold on the hilt. ‘I’ve always favoured straight blades.’ Jakob let his right hand rest carelessly on his dagger, but made sure he left it there, thumb hooked under the pommel. ‘They’re what I grew up with. But I’ve seen those sabres of yours do deadly work, especially from the saddle. The Empress doesn’t skimp in equipping her elite, eh, Brother Diaz?’

‘I … suppose not.’ The monk frowned back at him. ‘You’re talkative, of a sudden.’

‘I’m among men who speak my language!’ Jakob clapped his hand down on the wet-beaded shoulder-plate of the man beside him. A sergeant with a scarred face he judged the worst threat within reach. ‘But I’ve fought many battles. Many. And there’s a piece of equipment you don’t have. One that can make all the difference.’

‘What’d that be?’ growled the sergeant.

‘An invisible elf.’

There was a pause. The captain gave an uncertain laugh. A couple of his men chuckled. Jakob stayed stony, though, gripping the sergeant’s shoulder a little tighter. Soon enough, as Troy dropped away into the flitting rain, the chuckling sputtered out.

‘No,’ said Jakob. ‘Really.’

They were good soldiers, but when it came to the language of violence, their vocabulary was limited. They were drilled for warfare, not a street fight on a lift. Their instinct was to use their spears, or draw their swords, poor tools for such close quarters.

Jakob had always been as comfortable with a back-alley knifing as a charge of heavy horse. As the captain’s hand twitched towards his sword, Jakob was already lifting his boot. Even leaning on the sergeant’s shoulder, he couldn’t get it near as high as he’d have liked, but it caught the captain around the hips and made him take a step back. That was enough, since he tripped over something that wasn’t there, pitched over the railing, and vanished from sight with a high scream.

In many languages a rhetorical pause can be devastating. In a fight you make every point quick as you can, hoping you’ll leave your opponent unable to retort. Jakob was already ripping out his dagger to smash the pommel into the sergeant’s mouth. As he dropped, coughing on his own teeth, Jakob was whipping the blade the other way. The man on his right twisted so the point missed his eye, only scraped down his cheek guard and gouged off a great flap of his face.

He stumbled back, bloody fingers clapped to the wound, fumbling for his sword with the other hand. Jakob pinned him with it half-drawn, stomped on his foot, then butted him in his bloody face, and finally swung him by his slippery breastplate, flung him into one of his comrades and – with some help from a timely invisible foot – sent the pair of them tumbling over the railing.

Brother Diaz was stumbling about in a clinch with the guard he’d been so happy to have with him. Baptiste was snarling as she stabbed a man, a dagger in each hand. Another stared at her, desperately tugging at his sword. Sunny flashed into view for an instant, heaving in a breath as she hung off his arm. Jakob stepped forwards, rammed his elbow into the man’s throat, and dropped him, clawing at his neck.

Three guards lay mangled about Vigga’s feet. She caught the wrist of the fourth as he tried to swing a mace at her, grabbed his helmet with the other hand, and shoved it against the back wall as it rushed past. Metal screamed, sparks flew, the man gave a shriek as a great bloody streak was painted down the masonry.

The last guard stood against the rail, one armoured arm around Brother Diaz’s neck and a dagger to his throat. ‘Stay back!’ he bellowed, spraying spit. ‘Stay back, you devils, or I kill him!’

‘Can’t advise it,’ snarled Vigga, letting the corpse drop, head a misshapen mass of glistening meat and twisted metal, her tattooed arm spattered red to the shoulder.

‘Let’s take a moment!’ Jakob forced his aching fingers open to show his palms. ‘Let’s do nothing … hasty .’

Sunny appeared from nowhere, hugging the guard’s forearm and sinking her teeth into his fist. With a shocked cry he fumbled his dagger and Brother Diaz tore free. When his eyes focused, it was on Vigga grabbing his breastplate with both hands and bending him back over the railing.

‘Vigga!’ Brother Diaz caught her elbow. ‘Wait!’

She showed her teeth as she pushed the man towards the ever-lengthening drop while he fumbled hopelessly at her tattooed wrists, his feet leaving the floor. ‘For what?’

‘I order you not to hurt him!’ squealed brother Diaz. ‘What’s happening up there? Is Empress Alexia in danger?’

The man glared at Sunny, at Brother Diaz, at Jakob, who was kneading at his throbbing knuckles. ‘There’s nothing you can do! Your impostor shall not pollute the Serpent Throne for—’

‘Oh, fuck off,’ snarled Vigga, hefting him over the rail. He gave a little disbelieving squeak, then tumbled flailing from sight.

Brother Diaz stared after him. ‘I said don’t hurt him!’

‘Shit.’ Vigga scratched her head. ‘Right. Must’ve forgot.’

There were more guards at the top of the lift, but Sunny wasted no time on them.

Alex needed her.

She held her breath and darted sideways between the points of their levelled polearms as they roared a challenge, off the paved path and through the carefully chosen shrubs of the Hanging Gardens, towards the Palace.

To no one’s surprise, the trouble didn’t end at the lift. Sounds of violence stabbed at her from every direction, torchlight glared as running figures clattered by beyond the trees.

Sunny had helped start two coups, and neither had been any fun at all, and this felt very similar. She stifled a burp, winced as she swallowed acid. The Pope’s binding starting to tighten its grip, dragging her back to the Holy City, which was just the extra problem she needed while trying to hold her breath in the middle of a civil war.

But Alex needed her.

She passed a pair of soldiers rolling on the wet grass, struggling over a dagger. She could’ve tipped the balance, but which way? Who was on the right side, who the wrong, and who was she, an enemy of God, to make the call? So she tiptoed guiltily around them as they fought to the death, mouthing a silent sorry, hid behind a tree trunk long enough to take another breath and hold it, then scurried on.

The doors of the Palace stood open, which seemed bad. Unguarded, which seemed worse. Sunny padded down the hallway beyond, dark portraits of gloomy Emperors and Empresses watching her pass. There was a great slick of blood partly soaked into a carpet, a wide spray across a wall then smears leading her on, trails of red footprints down the marble. That seemed, honestly, terrible.

But Alex needed her.

She found the right panel, the catches to either side, popped them open, and slipped into the darkness of one of the secret tunnels, where she could breathe again, and do another sore burp, and wipe the chilly sweat from her forehead.

Then she padded to the nearest stairway and started to climb.

Alex slithered through Duke Michael’s window face first, tumbled across his desk knocking things all over the floor, and finally sprawled in a sobbing heap on his carpet.

Her lungs were on fire and her feet caked with bird droppings, every muscle quivering from the effort of clinging to the rain-greasy exterior of her own palace. Her wedding-night gown was ripped and singed and stuck to her with drizzle. Every bony spot on her body – which was pretty much all of it – was scraped raw by masonry, and where her skin wasn’t torn, it was chilled to clammy gooseflesh.

She would’ve liked nothing more than to lie there and cry, but she was still in mortal danger, and so was Duke Michael.

She clambered up, skinned knees trembling, catching the edge of the desk with one blood-smeared hand, absently gathering the things she’d knocked from the top with the other – a quill, a stub of old candle, a sheet of parchment already written on …

From the Office of the Head of the Earthly Curia to His Grace Duke Michael of Nicaea, on the Festival of Saint Jerome, the fifth of Forbearance,

My eyes and ears in the Balkans inform me that our plans have borne fruit beyond all expectation. Duke Sabbas has joined his brothers Marcian and Constans in hell and the devils are even now conveying Princess Alexia to Troy.

This seemed at first a complication, but I begin to see in it the hand of God, for it occurs to me that an offer of royal marriage might serve to lure Duke Arcadius into a state of vulnerability. A state in which Eudoxia’s students, carefully positioned beforehand, might remove him from the board.

It may be that Alexia must be crowned after all but, if so, let it be the briefest reign expediency demands.

It is in the interest of Her Holiness’s Earthly Curia, and indeed the cause of humanity, that you are raised to the Serpent Throne, that the schism between the wayward Church of the East and its mother in the West is healed, and that you lead the united forces of Europe in a new crusade against the coming scourge of the elves.

I know you are a man possessed of considerable stocks of the thirteenth virtue, who will not balk at what must be done. I pray for your success.

Needless to say, it would be best if you destroyed this letter.

Zizka

For a moment, Alex didn’t even breathe. Just stared at the paper, while horror flowed to the torn tips of her fingers like ice water.

Duke Michael was in on it, the cheating bastard ! The man who stood to gain most, in fact! Her own uncle, plotting to kill her! Well, he wasn’t really her uncle, of course, but he didn’t know that, the lying shit ! She crushed the letter in her trembling fist, smearing it with red from her broken fingernails. And Cardinal fucking Zizka was in on it with him! She’d known the woman was a snake—

‘Alex! Thank God!’

She spun to face the door, and there he was.

‘We have to get you to safety!’ Duke Michael held out his hand, and he looked so earnest, so honest, so worried for her, that she almost reached to take it.

‘Most of the Palace Guard will still be loyal, I’m sure of it!’ He took a step towards her, and she couldn’t help shrinking back. ‘But we don’t know …’ He noticed the letter in her hand. ‘Who we can …’ His eyes flicked from the crushed paper to her face. ‘Trust.’

He looked in her eye and she looked in his. Too late to hide her shock. Too late to disguise what she’d read. In an instant, she knew … that he knew … what she knew.

‘Oh.’ He puffed out a long-suffering sigh and swung the door shut with a final clunk . ‘Don’t tell me someone taught you to read?’

The same nose, the same mouth, the same eyes, but suddenly there was no trace of kindness in his face. No trace of guilt, either. No strong feeling at all. A man unexpectedly assigned an unpleasant chore.

‘I should’ve seen it,’ she whispered. ‘I should’ve guessed.’

‘Oh, you’re being far too hard on yourself.’ Duke Michael stepped over to a chest where a jug and glasses stood and poured himself some wine. ‘After all, you’re a fucking idiot. It runs in the family. Both my sisters were fools. Eudoxia, a crippled pervert obsessed with parlour tricks. Irene, a preening do-gooder without the courage to dirty her hands. And don’t get me started on my nephews – spleen, avarice, vanity, and sloth. The Serpent Throne should always have been mine.’ He took a sip, then grunted as though he’d tasted better. ‘I was born in the Imperial Bedchamber, too, don’t forget. Michael Pyrogennetos has a pretty ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘Then … why find me?’ whispered Alex. ‘Why bother to bring me here—’

‘I needed a decoy. Only that. I hoped you and the devils might distract Eudoxia’s sons long enough for me to get a foothold in the city.’

‘That’s how they got the Papal bull …’ muttered Alex. ‘You gave it to them!’

‘I circulated a few copies ahead of time. You’d have made a piss-poor diversion if no one knew about you.’ He washed another swig of wine thoughtfully around his mouth and swallowed. ‘Bit inconvenient that Marcian found us so soon, mind you. I was supposed to be well out of the way by the time he tracked you down. Was going to twist my ankle falling off my horse or something.’ He put on a sad expression. ‘I can’t carry on! Keep going without me, Alex!’ And he chuckled, and shook his head, like this was all the height of drollery. ‘But it turned out pretty well, overall, I’d say, wouldn’t you? I never dared dream you’d kill three of the four. Well done!’ He raised his glass and knocked it off with a toss of his head. ‘And then , serendipity, you actually got to Troy, and made the perfect bait for my last and most dangerous rival. I was sure I’d have to fight another bloody civil war against Arcadius.’ And he slung his glass back on the chest where it rattled around on its base. ‘I can’t tell you the effort you’ve saved me there.’

‘Delighted to be of fucking service,’ snarled Alex.

Michael’s smile faded. ‘Well, did you really think for one moment … that we could have a scrap of rubbish from the gutters of the Holy City sitting on the Serpent Throne? A thief and beggar being mother to a dynasty? A piece of shit as Empress of Troy?’ He drew his sword. ‘Really, really, no .’

He took a step towards Alex and she shrank back, not that there was anywhere to shrink to but into the desk. She clawed at the top for any kind of weapon, but all her grasping fingers found was the quill she’d just put there.

‘Sorry to say …’ Duke Michael came on another step. ‘When it comes to a fight …’ He lifted his blade. ‘The pen really isn’t mightier than the sword—’

There was a thud and he stumbled forwards. He spun around, slashing wildly at the air. Alex caught a sudden and extremely welcome glimpse of Sunny, ducking low as the blade whipped over her head, then vanishing again.

Duke Michael snarled as he dropped into a crouch, eyes darting about the room. ‘You fucking – oof!’ He bent over, eyes bulging. Alex would’ve very much liked to follow up with a boot of her own, visible or not, but the point of his sword was still flailing around dangerously, and a moment later she felt her wrist caught, so the best she could do was throw the quill at him as she stumbled out into the corridor and watch it flutter wildly through the air as the door slammed shut behind her. Sunny appeared, turning the key in the lock then flinging it away.

‘You came back for me?’ whispered Alex.

‘Of course I did.’

‘I don’t deserve you.’

‘Of course you don’t,’ said Sunny, and she pulled Alex down the corridor.