Mark Lawrence - The Wheel of Osheim

Neither Martus nor I had an answer for that. We stood in silence, listening to the crackle of the flames. The breeze rippled through the smoke and for a moment I saw shapes there, one moving into the next, almost a grasping hand, almost a face, almost a skull . . . all of them disturbing.

It took half an hour before the coffin fell in with a dull crash, a scattering of blazing logs and a maelstrom of sparks lofted toward the heavens. The heat reached us even on the upper tiers, red upon our faces. The archbishop signalled and the palace flag was lowered to indicate the start of mourning and that we could leave.

“Well, it’s done.” And Hertet levered himself up then stomped off down to the courtyard. Others took their cue and followed. Some lingered. My cousin Serah turned to offer my brothers and me her condolences for Uncle Reymond, Rotus shook our hands. Micha DeVeer waited for her Darin at the margins of the courtyard in her black dress, a milk-nurse beside her with my niece, pink and pudgy in her mourning cloth. Barras and Lisa said their words, kind ones, but they rolled off me. And finally it was just three brothers, and the possibly empty box on the tier behind us.

“I’m going to get drunk tonight.” Darin stood. “We never saw the best of that man. Maybe our sons will never see the best of us. I’ll say a prayer for him, then drink a drink.”

“I’ll join you.” Martus got to his feet. “I’ll drink to Uncle Hertet taking the forever nap before the Red Queen quits the throne. Christ, I’d see Cousin Serah take the crown before that old bastard.” He slapped his hands to his upper arms. “You’ll join us, Jalan. You’re good at drinking at least.” And with that he set off down the steps.

“Steward.” Darin bowed to the palanquin, put a hand to my shoulder, then followed Martus.

“How stand our defences?” Garyus’s voice emerged from behind the curtains.

“The west wall is crumbling. Sections need to be underpinned. The suburbs need to be burned and razed. Martus’s men are bored and picking fights with the guard. We’re short a hundred crossbows and half our scorpions are in want of maintenance if they’re to fire more than twice before breaking. Grain reserves are a third of what they should be. Apart from that we’re fine. Why?”

“You’ve looked at the figures?”

“Some of them, certainly.”

“Ghoul sightings inside the city walls in the past four days?” He’d picked one I actually noticed when Renprow pushed it across my desk. “Uh, three, then seven, twelve yesterday, another dozen or so came in this morning before I left after lunch.”

“They’re scouting us,” Garyus said.

“What?” I leaned forward and pulled his curtain aside. He looked like a monster in his shadowed den, an unwell monster, pale and beaded with sweat. “They’re scavengers, half-dead corpse-eaters following the riverbanks. There have been dead floating downstream for weeks-some army of Orlanth laying waste in Rhone.” I wondered if Grandmother would be clogging rivers with dead Slovs before the month was out.

“Have you mapped out the captures and the sightings?” Garyus asked.

“Well, no, but there’s no pattern to it. Except more by the river than anywhere else. But they’re everywhere.” I tried to see it in my mind. Something about the picture I came up with worried me.

“All over. Never the same area twice?” Garyus looked grim.

“Well, occasionally. But not often, no. Once the guard see them off they don’t come back. That’s a good thing . . . isn’t it?”

“It’s what scouts do. Checking for weakness, gathering information to plan with.”

“I should go,” I said. “Had reports of corpse attacks in the outer city.” It was the ones within the protection of the city walls that worried me most, but the recent messages spoke of a rash of attacks coming quite suddenly.

I made to turn away but something glinting on the palanquin’s floor caught my eye. “What’s that?” I leaned forward and answered my own question. “Pieces of mirror.”

Garyus inclined his head. “The Lady is trying to open new eyes in Vermillion. She knows my sisters are coming for her-perhaps she’s desperate. I hope so. In any event, I advise against using any mirrors. A handsome fellow like you shouldn’t need to check his reflection-that’s a pastime for us ugly people in case we forget our appearance and get to thinking that the world will look well upon us.”

“I gave up mirrors a while back.” A shudder ran through me: too many glimpses of movement that shouldn’t be there, too many flickers that might have been blue. “Your sisters have left us to find the damn woman but what’s to stop her stepping out of someone’s looking-glass and murdering the lot of us while they’re gone? Not to mention that the ghoulproblem hasn’t gone away. Grandmother said that was a distraction to keep her here. Well she’s gone now . . . but we’re still finding bodies missing-dead ones and live ones. I don’t like it. Any of it.”

Garyus pursed his lips. “I don’t like it either, Marshal, but it’s what we have. I’m sure my twin has left enchantments in place to close this city to the Lady Blue-at least from physical intrusion. She learned that lesson at a very young age. The rest of it is for us to take care of.”

I sighed. I would have rather heard a comforting lie than the frightening truth. “Duty calls.” I glanced down at the Black Courtyard, preparing to go. The yard stood clear now of all but a few mourners, the clerics set to watch the pyre burn down, and of course Garyus’s guard. The air above the embers rippled, reminding me of how Hell rippled when too many died at once and their souls came flooding through. I stared at the hot orange mound and through the heat shimmer I caught sight of a figure approaching. I watched, uncertain of what it was until it rounded the fire and I saw clear.

“Dear God! Guards! Guards!” I pointed a shaking hand at the thing walking calmly toward the stands. “It’s a . . . a . . .” I had no idea.

The six men at the base of the seating tiers looked up at me and, following the direction of my finger, they seemed to see the flayed man for the first time. They recoiled in horror, but only for a moment, trained men these, hard men, Grandmother’s elite. As one they reached for their swords . . . then, as one, they let their arms fall, looked away. A moment later they were standing as they had been before, as if for all the world there wasn’t a hairless, skinless man in a black cloak walking calmly toward them.

“What?” I glanced back at Garyus in his palanquin. “What the hell? Garyus! Tell them! It’s possessed! A rag-a-maul’s had him!”

Two of the guards looked up at me, frowning as if offended by my tone of voice.

“Leave it be, Jalan. Luntar is a friend.”

I moved quickly to the side of Garyus’s box and drew my sword. I would have hidden behind the thing but it had been pushed back against the wall of the building that the stand rested against. “That thing is a friend? It’s been fucking skinned!” I looked down at the palace guard who were scanning the courtyard, wary for any threat to the steward. “And what the hell is wrong with your bodyguard?”

“Burned. Not skinned.” The black-cloaked man smiled up at me as he climbed the last few steps, his footprints wet behind him. “And the guards have merely forgotten what they saw. Memory is the key to any man. It’s all we are.”

I kept my sword up as he closed the last couple of yards. I’d seen burned men before and dearly wished I hadn’t. Our visitor looked rather as if Father might have if he decided to clamber out of his coffin after the flames had taken hold good and hard.

“Luntar,” Garyus twitched a hand up in greeting. “Good to see you, old friend.”