Chapter 48 #2
Her head whips around, the spike of adrenaline in her heart setting her pulse racing.
The gallowswatcher’s glowing eyes are steady, the dry skin drawn back from its brown teeth in a forced grin. Its head regards her for a moment or two, then tips to the side with a curious rattle. ‘Kisser.’
She recognises the voice now. She’s heard it before, in the temple, hissing from a mess of meat and bone.
‘Again, unclean corpse?’ She fingers the knife at her belt, the handle heavy and reassuring. ‘I thought I’d sent you out with blade and binding.’
The gallowswatcher laughs, an impossible sound, its frayed vocal cords scratching together like chafer song. ‘Oh, you got rid of me just fine. Jointed me up and parcelled me out.’ A bony finger digs between its ribs, pulls a maggot out speculatively from under paper skin.
‘It’s not the first time I’ve been sundered, crow-witch. I hold no grudge.’
Crowkisser narrows her eyes. Breathes deep, from the belly, counting her heart down into steadiness. ‘The dead rarely mean well. What do you want? Who are you?’
The light in the corpse’s eye flares like a struck match.
‘I’m not dead, dearest crow. Just dispersed.’ It laughs again, mirthless and empty.
‘I’m the last person that tried to stand up to your father, before you. Or rather, I’m what’s left of them.’
Her heart starts at that, but she simply tightens her grip on the knife. ‘How do you know my father?’
The gallowswatcher’s dry tendons pull its jaws wider. ‘The same way you do, more or less. He destroyed my world.’
Crowkisser looks at the corpse for a second. The wind pushing insistently against her shaking legs. ‘I don’t have time for this.’
She turns and leaves, her feet marching her furiously up and over the wet earth of the coast road.
The scream that tears from the corpse’s throat stops her in her tracks. She turns, and the wail slithers wetly down through the gale, before coiling into a laugh that shakes the gallowswatcher on its perch.
‘You need me, little Crow. You need into my mountain.’
A spike of shock in her heart. She hides it deep and turns slowly.
The hanged man is silent as she slowly stalks back towards it. Just the faintest glimmer lights the gallowswatcher’s scoured sockets.
Her jaw juts as she spits the question. ‘How do you know that?’
The corpse twists slowly, its fingers twitching. ‘Because I listen to the dark, just like you.’ It beckons. ‘Come closer.’
Reluctantly, she steps a little further forwards, close enough to see the bones shift under frayed cloth, to hear the rip of old, rotten skin.
Its voice is a rough whisper, soft, confident. ‘Listen, child. I understand you. We are both from humble beginnings. Both blessed with incredible mothers.’ Its voice dips to a snarl, ‘Both betrayed by the weaver.’
Crowkisser watches its dry lips, its cracked teeth. How na?ve does it think she is?
She raises a finger. ‘I’ll not deal with a dead man just because you’re crammed full of spite.’
‘Spite?’ it says. ‘Oh, more than that. I’ve known spite, Crowkisser. Spite, and rage, and terror, and hatred.’
She shakes her head dismissively. ‘I’m not here to help you salve your grudges.’ She unsheathes the knife and takes a hold of its leg. ‘Time to go, corpse.’
The corpse kicks out, a chipped nail grazing her mouth as she jerks her head back.
‘No!’ Its voice steadies as it collects itself. ‘No. Not yet. Listen a moment.’
Crowkisser watches it warily, her blade hovering between them like a promise.
The gallowswatcher hisses a breath through snail-shell teeth. ‘You know that your army would break against that mountain even without Shroudweaver set against you.’
It turns a palm outwards as it talks, scratching at the holes and frayed flesh.
‘The people of Thell have lived with war forever. I schooled them in it. When they died in service to the mountain, I raised them up again to fight beside their friends, their families. When their enemies fell against us, I took them, and taught them, and placed them in our ranks, to make a new accord.’
Its eyes flare green in the driving rain. ‘Alliances. Brotherhoods beyond death.’ Its voice crackles like a banked fire. ‘We knew such peace.’
Crowkisser eyes the corpse flatly. How quickly her racing nerves have subsided into curiosity.
‘Who are you?’
The gallowswatcher’s head flops in the gale, legs and spine dancing a brutal jig as the wind picks up again.
She staggers, leans into it.
‘They used to call me the Emperor of the Dead. Now’ – it laughs, and a frayed hand traces the length of its body from broken neck to salted feet – ‘Now, I’m diversifying. With a little help.’
A nail scratches idly at a desiccated finger, flaking skin down to raw bone. ‘I had such loyal subjects. Such harmony, within our mountain, our city. I would have gifted that to the world.’
Its head turns slowly, rattling, as the wind pulls loose wisps of hair across its skull.
‘Look at us both. Seekers of harmony. Architects of peace. Unafraid of our tools.’ The corpse’s jaw widens again, swings loose as a sickle.
‘Of course, the world is still adjusting to your gift.’ Something that might be a laugh scurries around its empty ribs.
It watches Crowkisser step closer, a fish on a hook, her feet bare and blue in the sodden grass.
She runs a hand through her hair. So tired, even if she’s trying to hide it behind pulled back shoulders and an upthrust chin. Good. They’re so much easier when they’re tired.
‘All I want is peace,’ she says. ‘All I wanted was freedom. Real freedom. From the gods. From all their whims.’
The gallowswatcher clicks as sympathetically as a corpse can.
‘Naturally,’ it coos, in its beetle-thick rasp. ‘All good rulers do.’
Her face clouds, ‘I’m not a ruler.’
Its dry cheeks stretch. ‘Are you not? What are you then, to the people in Astic, in Dryke, and Sedge? To all those sleeping babies and careworn fathers? To your dark friend with the beautiful gun? What are you then?’
She shakes her head. ‘I’m …’
It interrupts. ‘You are their ruler. In your own fashion, and through your own methods.’
Crowkisser nods, but the word hanging unsaid on her lips is not ruler. It’s mother.
The corpse smiles again, for that’s all its stripped jaw can do. ‘Are we asking for so much? We want to include all people in our union. A strong union. A safe union.’ Its voice drops to a hiss. ‘We want to keep them safe.’
She nods slightly at that, and its dead heart rejoices.
Its voice rolls on, over the wet cliffs and down the darkened path.
‘My people were safe, Crowkisser. We had peace. We had as much freedom as was needed. Until Shroudweaver. Until your father. Until he came to feed the snakes among them. To fatten their restless hearts.’
She takes another step closer. Her hand lingers on the yellowed bone of the gallowswatcher’s hip, the ruin of its flank.
‘I know so little of the fall of the Empire. The rise of the Republic. He wouldn’t speak of it.’
A snarl curls its rotten lips. ‘None of them will. Twenty years of trying to scour my triumph from the face of the world and still they fear me.’ It pauses, and she wonders what secrets it just hid in the silence.
‘We can use that fear, you and I. We can use it to have our revenge.’
She taps the handle of the knife impatiently. ‘Well, I’m listening, but only one of us is getting soaked through out here. Make it quick.’ Her voice hardens. ‘Tell me what I need to know.’
It laughs again, lurching and wet as the rain slowly fills its open throat.
‘Very well. But understand this. I knew my people. I knew their every thought, so long as they stayed within my mountain, every whisper filtered down to my ears. And those that escaped, my loyal subjects brought to me like gifts. A trinity of advisers at my heel. Wiser and braver men I did not know. There were no snakes in my mountain, until Skinpainter came. Until they taught my people to hide dissent in their bodies. In their skin, and their pulses, tapping out messages on collarbones, on wrists, on arms. Hiding betrayal in the count of their breath, and the flicker of their eyelids.’
‘That’s clever,’ Crowkisser smiles.
‘Yes,’ the Emperor says. ‘Unfortunately clever. And Skinpainter was clever beyond that. Clever enough to call out to your father. To lure him into meeting my army at the city of the jewelled lips.’
Crowkisser’s mind races, searching the rumours and scraps of history she knows.
‘At Luss.’
‘Luss.’ The word falling from the corpse’s lips like a wet rock.
‘My greatest betrayal. My own people turned against me. Months of Skinpainter’s lies and promises.
Bringing some of my best and most treasured into their vile embrace.
Elevating rabble to the status of leaders.
Secret promises of a better life tapped out on skin.
’ Its voice drips venom. ‘Kinghammer. The Deadsingers. Belltoller. Traitors all. But Skinpainter the worst of them. A thief. A liar. A killer.’
‘You were outplayed,’ Crowkisser says, a faint smile on her lips. ‘You got lazy.’
The corpse’s eyes flare again, the green light hissing and spitting where it meets the falling rain.
Its voice is bitter. ‘I have had twenty long years to learn my lesson, Crowkisser. That’s why I’ve come to you.
I don’t want you to make the same mistakes I made.
I don’t want your people to suffer like mine suffered. ’
She raises an eyebrow. ‘How kind of you.’
It snarls. ‘I also want Skinpainter to bleed. I want to see that ink-stained thief in pieces. I want to watch the meat fall from their bones.’
Crowkisser smiles slightly. ‘Now, that I can believe.’ She taps the hilt of her knife against the gallowswatcher’s leg. The corpse shudders in response.
‘We still haven’t got to how you help me win.’
The Emperor is silent for a while, inside the hanging body. The rain streams down the man’s broken nose, over that bird tattoo, and is whipped off and out to sea.