Stephen Deas: The Thief-Taker's Blade

He turned. The thing had taken a shape that was almost human now. Kakrim was hanging in the air, his feet flapping uselessly in the air, a monstrous hand gripped around his throat. As Syannis watched, another hand smashed into the thief-taker's chest. The struggles stopped, and then the hand emerged, clutching something.

“Holy sun,” breathed Kol. “He was wearing ringmail, too.”

Kakrim. One of the thief-takers Syannis had known right from the very start, from the day he'd first taken the justicar's coin more than a year ago. Snuffed out, just like that.

“What is that thing, Kol?”

The justicar was already up the steps to the firedeck, crouching over the witch-breaker. In the sudden calm that came with Kakrim's death, Syannis could hear them talking. Orimel was alive, at least.

Across the main deck, the thing held still, shaking Kakrim like a doll, tearing pieces from his insides, inspecting them and then throwing them away, almost as though it was looking for something.

“Syannis! Kasmin! Come up here!”

Kasmin ran at once. Syannis hesitated. Again, for a moment, in the pulsing shadows of the demon, he thought he saw the face of a man, stricken with anguish.

“Get him on his feet! Come on!”

He had his sword in one hand, the casket knife in the other. Carefully, he put the knife back in his belt and took the bottle of sunfire that Kakrim had given him instead. From the other side of the ship, from the passageway where they'd been only moments ago, figures began to emerge. First one, then another, then more, six or seven. They milled around the whirling shadows, moaning and waving their arms, as if feeding from its energies. They picked up parts of Kakrim, discarded across the deck by the demon, and waved them in the air. They were almost dancing. A low growl rose from Syannis' throat, a desire to hurl himself in among them, destroy them of he could. Kakrim was. . well, not a friend the way friends had been in years gone by, but the closest sort he had here in Deephaven outside of Kasmin and perhaps one other refugee from his old home.

Yes, the urge was there all right, barely held in check. And what, exactly, was he going to do with it?

Up on the firedeck, Kol was talking to Kasmin, or to the witch-breaker, Syannis wasn't sure which. Wasn't really listening; but then a light flooded the ship. Moonlight, bright silver-white, pouring down. The demon and the restless dead froze. And then a word, a single word like a whip-crack, so loud and hard it made his bones shake. The dead men around the demon screamed and writhed. A silver fire lit up around them like a halo. Their arms flailed, they danced up and down where they stood, shaking their heads, faster and faster. One by one they fell to the deck, silver flames licking over their fallen bodies.

The shadows around the demon flickered. Silver fire plucked at them, fought with them, streamers of light and dark, chasing each other in tight circles, twisting and turning, strangling one another then dying in their turn. In the middle of it all, Syannis saw it again, for a third time. The shape and face of a man, head tipped back, mouth open and screaming, eyes wide and wild, hands clutched to his face. If the robes he'd worn had been yellow, Syannis would have thought him a priest of the sun, but his clothes were darker. Not black, but some colour that was lost in the night, made grey like everything else by the moonlight.

Another word cracked out from the firedeck. More streamers of silver light tore into the demon. This time it staggered. Then it clutched at the remains of Kakrim, still held tight in one hand, and hurled the dead thief-taker's body high over Syannis' head and onto the firedeck.

The moonlight faltered. Only for an instant, but an instant was enough. The shadows devoured it. The monster became whole again. It shrieked, a howl that echoed all the way across the bay, the screaming pain of a hundred tortured souls. And then it moved. Fast. Straight at the firedeck. Straight at Syannis, who was standing in its path.

“Syannis!” Kol's urgent cry reached out from the firedeck, but the rest was lost in a howl of wind and rage. Syannis didn't need to hear it anyway. He understood. Stop it. Stop it if you can. Give Orimel one more chance, time for one more try. He couldn't stop it, couldn't kill it, he knew that perfectly well, that the best he could do was slow it. Confuse it, amuse it, bemuse it, divert it and die. Let it spend its energies ripping him as it had ripped Kakrim. And that was all. Still, he faced it. Didn't flinch.

The first strike was clean, swift, precise. Not like fighting the restless dead in the cabin, no, this time fear was his servant, not his master. He struck at the demon and span away. A perfect blow, exactly as sword-mistress Shalari had taught him. He could almost see the secret smile on her face, the little clap of approval.

The tip of his sword hit. . something. Snagged on cloth or nicked flesh. Something. And then, for all his agile feet, the creature had him. A twist of shadow caught him, wrapped itself eagerly around him and wouldn't be denied. Lifted him hungrily off his feet. An arm, or what passed for an arm, shot out from the shroud of darkness around the demon and gripped his throat, so hard and tight it was crushing his neck.

In a blink and a flick of the wrist, his sword snapped around. He struck the arm at the elbow, or where an elbow ought to have been. Another perfect blow, hard and cutting, but he might as well have struck an iron bar.

The arm drew him closer in. The grip on his neck tightened. He had seconds, perhaps, before the monster crushed his throat and then he began to slowly choke to death. He dropped his sword. Tore at the wax seal on Kakrim's vial of sunfire, and threw it in the demon's face. It screamed, so loud it hurt. Syannis felt it shudder, saw golden flames tear into the darkness around it. Not enough — he knew that straight away, could see it, somehow. Not enough sunfire to fight back so much shadow.

But again the face. The same man, stricken with torment, a rictus of pain, except this time, looking right at him. For a moment, the mouth close, stopped screaming. The wild eyes found a purpose, a focus. They stared at him, seemed to see him, to somehow know him.

The sunfire grew weaker, the shadows shrugging it away. As the face faded, Syannis saw its lips move. Speaking. To him. There were no words, but there didn't need to be. The lips had told him all he needed.

The knife , they said.

With the last of his strength, Syannis pulled the casket knife out of his belt. It felt strange in his hand, the weight all wrong, the handle too heavy and made of gold, the blade with its patterns that shifted and shimmered like a riot in the last of the sputtering sunfire. A cleaver blade, for cutting not for stabbing, but he stabbed it anyway, as hard and as deep as he could, straight at where he'd seen that tortured face.

There was no scream, no flash of light, no howling wind. A shudder, that was all, in the hand around his neck, and then the demon was gone, and all that was left was a withered man in dark robes, frail and fragile, lying on the deck with the casket knife buried in his face. Like a candle snuffed in a bucket of water.

Syannis picked himself up from where the creature had dropped him. He took a moment to look at the man. Didn't know him. Didn't recognise him, didn't recognise anything about him.

“Syannis! What. ?”

Kol's voice. Syannis shifted closer to the dead man beside him. He gripped the handle of the knife, eyes darting across the deck for any more, for the restless dead or whatever else the ship had waiting for them. The knife slipped out of the dead man's head with ease. When Syannis looked, there wasn't even a wound.

“Syannis.” Footsteps of the firedeck. Kol was up there. Syannis let his body hide the knife. Let the justicar not see it. “What did you do to it? What happened.”