The Crooked Key, Chapter 9: The Green Spike
The Crooked Key by Kyle Marquis
Chapter 9: The Green Spike
The slaughter down below was horrific. When the venomous tentacles had killed everything in a great arc around the front of the green tower, a door slid up and open, and the Mollusk Knight strode down a gangplank armed with a trident of orange coral. He laughed, and his laughter was like waking up underwater. Eilo shuddered; it felt like cold worms were burrowing into the capillaries of his eyeballs. Even Skaithness gasped and fell to one armored knee.
Panzu screamed and fled. She kept fleeing, and did not come back. She ran as if the alternative were death, and it probably was: if even that priest back in Upper Bant had nearly turned her into a monster, what would the dreadful will of the Mollusk Knight do to her?
When one of the venom squid floated past, the banisher saw that its cap of green stone was not a helmet, but rather a kind of platform. A man stood upon it, controlling it with a hooked needle driven into whatever passed for its brain. The man wore a blank helmet of jagged shell.
Skaithness looked up and down, as if considering her chances, then stepped back and jumped, clearing the gap between the wall and the venom squid. She landed on its platform. The rider turned and drew his cutlass, but Skaithness parried it on her greaves, then shoved the man off the platform to die somewhere far below. She considered the hooked needle for a second, as if performing another complicated geometric calculation, then just yanked it to the left as hard as she could. The squid-thing veered off toward the donjon and burst against its wall.
The banisher was only half paying attention to Skaithness’s ordeal: there were citizen-soldiers on the interior wall one floor below him, still alive but petrified with fear.
“The riders!” he shouted, seeing that most of the soldiers had bows or arquebuses. “Look, each of those things has a rider!”
Word went up and down the line and soon they were all shooting at the riders. Most of the shots went wide, but arrows hit at least two riders, and one squid went tumbling down onto the zig-zag street below the castle, where it exploded into transparent jelly.
But most of Lady Ryphonia’s loyalists were already dead. The banisher looked down and saw Rynne herself, still mounted, flanked by two riderless horses, as her lamp bearers were both dead. The dead around her were so numerous that she could not wheel her horse around. She was trying to escape from the Mollusk Knight, who was finishing off the wounded around the green spike. Two giants followed Nowan de Valc. They each had four arms that ended in rough, spiny hands, and each pair of hands held a huge, wavy sword. Their eyeless brown-pink heads were not so different from their hands—they were seven-armed sea stars, Eilo realized, forced into a vaguely humanoid shape and strapped into steel belts.
The level between Eilo and Lady Ryphonia was full of screaming, wounded soldiers: he couldn’t get down that way. But the donjon had been undergoing extensive repairs before all this, and he could see a way down. Hoping he had enough strength left, Eilo adjusted his glaive, jumped off the wall, and caught an iron support bar with the hook of his weapon. He landed, balancing, on the next-lower bar, then repeated the trick until he dropped down right beside one of the Mollusk Knight’s starfish bodyguards.
The monstrous warrior pivoted instantly, sweeping one huge sword through a deadly arc, but the banisher had already hopped out of range. The monsters stood about eight feet tall, and though they wore armor on their legs and had wide steel belts, they had no armor above their chests. Eilo extended his glaive and drove it between the upper and lower arms. The monster executed the same flourish as last time, this time with both swords, but it wasn’t a person trained to fight; it was a mindless sea creature that acted on reflex, more man-shaped than the venom squids but probably not much smarter. The banisher’s next attack sheared off an arm, and the final lunge hit something vital, as the huge monster spasmed and fell, curling in on itself.
The whole exchange had taken just a few seconds. Two things happened then. First, Eilo looked up at Lady Ryphonia, whom he hadn’t seen since they were both children. A flash of recognition darted between them. And then the Mollusk Knight hurled himself on the banisher, his coral trident an orange blur as he screamed with frustration. The banisher fell back, using the same parrying sequence he had used against all three enemies in the pool room; he was barely fast enough. His head throbbed from the Mollusk’s Knight’s inhuman keening, which seemed to come from the helmet, not the man. But when the banisher retreated out of trident range, he spoke to Eilo man to man.
“You’re the last banisher,” Nowan de Valc said. He had a broad western drawl, aristocratic and a bit effete-sounding. He was biding his time, Eilo knew, as the other four-armed giant maneuvered into position.
“I hate hexguards,” the banisher said. He could feel icy bloody trickling down his ribs and filling up the waistband of his breeches.
“So do I,” Nowan said. “But they taught me so much. They hurl their hate and fear around like these would-be revolutionaries splashing paint on the walls of our palaces. But I have learned to focus that will. I have learned to reshape the creatures created in the last age. And with them, I will bring a new—”
He lunged suddenly, blindingly fast, and the banisher’s desperate parry deflected two tines of the trident but not the third, which pierced his bicep. He stumbled back, tripped over a dead castle guard, and fell—right in front of the starfish giant. Its mindless instincts told it prey was near, and it started to sweep its two huge swords through its monotonous killing routine.
Then something slammed it into the ground with the force of a catapult shot. The impact momentarily deafened Eilo, and knocked the Mollusk Knight off his feet.
Skaithness crawled out of the obliterated monster, covered in green slime. She yanked her weapon—the ten-foot hooked needle the riders used to control their venom-squids—out of the smashed giant, which now looked like a burst stomach.
“So, you’re Nowan de Valc,” Skaithness said.
The banisher rose cautiously, trying to avoid the Mollusk Knight’s attention. He noticed that Skaithness was gasping; her whole panoply moved like a bellows. But she leveled the needle with the flawless grace she demonstrated with every movement and faced her foe.
“And you’re the girl who has no idea who she is, where she comes from, or what those whispers in the vault were really telling her to do,” Nowan said. “Do you think you’re going to bring about a new age, child?”
“I don’t know,” Skaithness said. “But I know that if I kill you—”
Nowan lunged again. Skaithness barely twisted out of the way, and the tines of Nowan’s trident tore rents in the intricate armor of her breastplate. Before she could bring her needle around, the Mollusk Knight hit her with the pommel of his trident and she flew away into a heap of dead soldiers. The needle clipped Nowan as she flew away, and he stumbled a little, then planted a foot in the guts of a dead starfish-giant.
A half-second chance: Eilo took it. He would never be quick enough to kill the Mollusk Knight, not hurt and bleeding, but he hooked the knight’s ankle with his glaive and pulled, tripping him. Nowan recovered instantly, balancing with his trident, but the banisher had just enough time to run for it: he ducked a final lunge aimed at the back of his skull, jumped over a heap of dead and dying people, and reached Skaithness.
Smoke boiled out of the castle’s devastated wall, and flames were spreading through some of the outlying buildings. When Nowan tried to pursue the banisher, part of the wall near him gave way, burying a dozen corpses under stone blocks. He fell back toward the entrance to the green spike. Overhead, one of the venom-squids was ablaze, and the fire was spreading down its tentacles as it lurched pitifully through the sky.
“Skaithness! Skaithness?” the banisher said, shaking the suit of armor.
She climbed to her feet. Nowan de Valc was barely visible through the smoke, giving orders to the hexguards who had sworn themselves to him.
“Run if you can,” Eilo said. He ran for an obliterated section of wall. Skaithness followed, and soon outpaced him. It was a warm night, even away from the flames and smoke.
News did not travel instantly, and in the darkness it was hard to see the green stone tower and the floating squid-things. Most of the city had no idea what had happened at Old Rock—in fact, it would take years before both the events and the motivations behind them could be reconstructed in anything resembling a correct order. The first and deadliest wave of street-fighting had passed, and now all the factions hid behind barricades, waving flags and shouting slogans. One group shot arrows at Eilo when he turned down the wrong street. Another shouted and jeered, calling him a “sea dog.”
“It’s not specifically a naval hat!” the banisher shouted. “I’ve never actually been on a ship.”
They shot at him anyway.
He tried to make for the fortress where he had seen Lady Ryphonia’s flag, but all the roads were blocked, and soon he was in such a maze of alleys that he couldn’t figure out which way to go, even with Skaithness lighting the way.
“Eilo,” the armored woman said.
“What?”
“I need...I need to stop.”
The banisher looked back at the armored woman. She stood as straight as ever, but there was a hitch in her voice when she spoke. Her light dimmed and flickered out.
They were at the edge of the North City artisan quarter, and Eilo spotted a looted silversmith’s. Someone had marked the outside with the first “Pigpen” (as we call it now) that Eilo had ever seen: a hash symbol set at a 45-degree angle so it resembled a diamond. Later, its meaning would be interpreted as the three tribes of the Emmer Duchies (the First Clans, the New Clans, and the Welcomed People) and the three people who supported the restructuring (men, women, and children), but it meant all sorts of different things to all sorts of different people in those early years. And in any case, neither Eilo nor Skaithness had any idea what it meant.
The banisher checked inside the looted store, but the proprietors had all fled, and everything of value had been stripped from the downstairs shop and the rear workshop. He led Skaithness upstairs and lit a taper from what was left of the fire in the hearth.
Skaithness was covered in red and green blood. Her blue feathers were long gone. Scratches and dents marred her armor, including a deep gouge from the Mollusk Knight’s trident. Eilo could hear her shallow breathing through the helmet.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
The blank silver face split open vertically. Skaithness’s real face was bruised, her lip bloody, her skin ashen. She opened her mouth, then turned and vomited into a chamber pot.
“I think your ribs are broken,” the banisher said. “We need to get you out of that armor.”
“It doesn’t come off,” Skaithness said. “But it can heal me, given time.”
“It doesn’t come off?”
“I don’t think so,” Skaithness said. “That’s why Aklurian was so frustrated. He couldn’t get at me once I lowered my mask. I mean, obviously he could have just thrown me off a cliff—my padding isn’t invincible—but a lot of the priests were opposed to killing me, and he was so excited by the idea of drowning me in that fancy pool…”
She turned gray again and fell silent, though she remained as straight as ever.
“You really can’t leave your armor?” Eilo asked again.
“No.”
“How do you poop?”
“An intricate serials of valves and siphons—”
“Actually, that was idle curiosity, which is a bad habit in a banisher. Never mind. Let me see if we can find something to eat and drink. I’m not an expert on magic armor, but I know that healing doesn’t work well on the hungry.”
The banisher stoked the fire, then searched the deserted apartment until he found a wedge of blue cheese and a brand-new interior faucet, which spurted cold water when he turned it. The banisher used that to make tea while they ate their cheese. Then he spent a few minutes with a rag and warm water, cleaning Skaithness’s bruised face.
“How are you feeling?” the armored woman asked.
“I think Panzu put something in these bandages, too, just like when the hexguards hit me in the head,” he said. “I feel better than I should.”
“Do you think she’s okay?”
“I don’t think she’ll be back.” He hated saying it aloud, but he knew the truth: Panzu would get as far away from the city as possible. Too many fanatical wills were fighting it out in Baristoc, and she was obviously terrified of the Mollusk Knight. He doubted they’d board the same ship out of town. “We can’t stay in Baristoc. Either de Valc has the strength to claim the whole city, in which case he’ll eventually find and kill us, or the civil war will continue to rage with Nowan and the Trusted Seven on one side and Lady Ryphonia and her people on the other, with every street gang and trade union using the chaos to settle old scores, which means eventually we’ll get arrested and executed.”
“A revolution appears to be happening in the capital,” Skaithness said, “triggered by the fighting among the dukes, but not entirely connected to it. Maybe we can use that? I’m supposed to bring about a revolutionary new order of the world, after all. When I do what I must do, every tower in the world will chime like a clock tower, and people’s work will be efficient and honest, counted to the second. Today, the dukes use clocks as weapons. I will return time to the people, and banish the intermediaries who believe they can govern the hours of the day.”
Eilo had never actually heard Skaithness propound a philosophy before. He had listened to the rants of various witches and would-be apostles in his time without much interest, but the armored woman spoke as if she saw the future as plain as the present. Maybe she was right. Or maybe it would come down to either her or the Mollusk Knight, in which case the banisher knew who he’d choose. Even if all the talk about clocks sounded a bit insane.
“But anyway, how do we get out of the city and get to the lighthouse?” Skaithness asked.
“Right, the lighthouse that leads to the metal island that this preacher who got executed told you about,” the banisher said. “Is that our best chance?”
“The crooked key can straighten the towers of the new world to come,” Skaithness said. “Then everyone will have the time they need. If we don’t find the key, Nowan de Valc will. And though I’m interested in what’s happening in Baristoc, I don’t think we can stay here long enough to make allies. We need to go. Can you...maybe this is rude...can you unbanish? Can you summon something up to help us escape, like you did with Panzu?”
“I didn’t summon Panzu. Hm, but I have an idea. Can you move?” Eilo asked. “I mean, as fast as I’ve seen you move before?”
“Almost, but I can’t fight. I can’t feel anything below my cheeks. Which means either I’m healing or I’m dying. So unless there’s another library with another wisdom cat buried underground—could we go underground? Oh, could we use the sewers? I want to see the sewers!”
“Look into that chamberpot if you want to see the sewers,” Eilo said. “No, we’re going in the other direction. We’re going to fly.”
*