Silk Fire Read online

  “Have you forgotten that I saved you?” Steel flickered behind his soft blue eyes. “I follow Vashathke because he’s strong. Not because he’s good. Strength will put him on the throne. Kindness and charity have brought me nothing but your dagger in my soul.”

  I flinched. Had my leaving really made him this ruthless? Or perhaps I’d been so greedy for love I’d overlooked his darkness. My loves turn to ash in my fingers. A bastard, a whore, a monster’s son. Maybe only cruel, fetid hearts could safely love me. True hearts, I devoured.

  “Wine, gentle dzaxa?” came the meek, rough-edged voice of a dull.

  Akizeké’s serving man, the one who’d given me a tissue, clambered clumsily into the socket I’d easily leapt inside. Wine glasses rattled on his tray. His long, dark eyes peered out beneath a low brow, capping a thin, straight-nosed face. He stood shorter than me, broad shoulders corded thick with muscle. Knife scars laced the gold-brown canvas of his chest. With his long, tied-back hair and his untrimmed goatee, he painted a portrait of trouble.

  Zega snatched a glass, swirling sunlight-pale wine below his nose. “The bouquet’s off,” he snapped. “Are your senses so dull you can’t spot a bad wine?”

  “Zega!” My eyebrows arched. I turned to the serving man, whose smile masked any anger at Zega’s slight, and took a glass for myself. “I’m sorry for my friend’s rudeness. You walked far to bring us these, and you were so kind to me at the ceremony. Let me tip you.”

  “No need, dzaxa. Please, enjoy your drink.”

  Of course there’s a need. Little luxuries meant everything when living dull. I grabbed a gold thera and reached for the sash of his black uniform skirt. He tried to dodge, but I was brighter. Quicker. I tucked the coin in the band—

  My fingers licked the edge of a blade.

  The sash spilled its jangling contents as my bloody hand pulled free. Grappling hooks, wire cables, throwing stars, lockpicks—and, exposed atop his skirt, the hilt of a sword. A long, single-edged blade in the Scholarly District tradition.

  Lethal weapons had been illegal since the fall of the gods.

  “Assassin,” I whispered, and his placid servant’s simper cracked into a wicked grin.

  Fear washed out my propriety. Awakened my abominable anger. My motion blurred as the flat of my wrist slammed into his throat. My wine glass fell to shatter with the others as his tray dropped. I pinned him in a shadowed, rain-worn crevasse in the marble, my bare chest pressed to his. “Who hired you? Am I your mark, or are you after Zega?”

  He struggled. But body-to-body, only brightness mattered in this contest. The knot of his throat trembled as his breathing sped. His steel bracers drummed helplessly against stone. But his eyes—dark brown bleeding black—refused to flicker wide in fear. They slipped over me and found Zega, rapid as a racing hovercraft.

  “No one hired me. Your friend bought my enmity himself.” With a defiant grin, he shrugged off the thevé cloth covering his shoulder. A poem in Old Jiké glyphs, shaped like a bell, tattooed the broad muscle beneath. Ash and ruins, it read.

  “Faziz of the Slatepile.” Zega sniffed, then poured out his swirling wine. A green film clung to the glass. “Shouldn’t a gang leader have people to do his poisoning for him?”

  Faziz of the Slatepile. A name cursed by dzaxa, merchants, guards and lawyers. A dull immigrant man who controlled fifty thousand illegal apartments in Victory Street’s Slatepile ruin, offering cheap housing the law couldn’t reach. A legend bringing hope to naïve dulls. In flesh, this legend smells of sweat and ashes.

  “I have people in places that’ll scare you shitless,” Faziz said. “This is personal, Zega. Under your orders, Vashathke’s guards evicted six hundred of my apartments last week and collapsed a cavern with holdfire charges. People of mine are sleeping on the street. Seventy-two have died. Mostly children.”

  “Killing me won’t bring back their essence.” Zega yawned. “It’ll only destroy my essence store alongside theirs—and mine’s a million times brighter.”

  Faziz thrashed. His dark eyes locked on my hand with murderous intent. Would he bite free? “It’s not about essence, you reeking shit. It’s about people!”

  “Everything’s about essence,” Zega said. “Or money. Or power. You’re as foolish as Koreshiza here if you think the world is any different.”

  Faziz’s eyes flickered to me. “Koreshiza Brightstar. The courtesan.” He named my occupation without the customary twist of judgement. “Let me go. The whispers below Victory Street say you want to keep your father from inheriting the judge’s throne. Zegakadze is your father’s dirty right hand. Let me cut him off, and neither man rises.”

  Let me cut him off. I shivered, not slacking my grip. Did Faziz know how spite had kept me alive, my early years of sex work? Dreams of Zega’s shattered skull and my fists painted red? Three young men, alone, body to body. The dzaxa at the wedding would cluck their tongues at the promised indecency of us. They’d lean in to glimpse the lewd spectacle, unbelieving it could turn to murder.

  We three all had bloody fingers in our hearts.

  “Did you order mass evictions?” I asked Zega, my voice thin as strangling wire.

  “Vashathke isn’t afraid to protect Victory Street from criminals.” Zega drew his baton. “I’m not afraid to protect myself.”

  Silver flashed off the weapon’s scalloped sides. I recognized it. “You still carry the baton I gave you?” Strange hope fluttered in my heart.

  “Of course.” He pressed a hand to my bare back, drawing in close. Beneath me, Faziz cursed in a language I didn’t know. “I haven’t forgotten you, Koré. Maybe we can start again. Maybe I’ll leave your father’s campaign for you. If you kill this dull.”

  “Manipulative asshole,” Faziz gasped as I pushed harder. “Come on, Red Eyes. This steaming shit isn’t worth my blood on your manicure.”

  “This isn’t you,” I told Zega, because he wouldn’t care if I said I don’t want this to be me again. “That’s my father’s bloodlust you cry.”

  “Faziz would have poisoned you, too!”

  “I deserve it.” I met Faziz’s eyes. Tried to make my point over the hammering of my heart. “No one dies today.”

  I flung the outlaw over my hip and out into open air.

  Zega cursed and leant out into space. Gravity’s light tug had already pulled Faziz five stories down. My ex seemed to consider leaping after, but, while our world’s natural gravity wouldn’t kill a falling human, giving chase meant missing the reception. “I could have you arrested as his accomplice, Koré!”

  “Try.” My words came curt. I had no energy left to please him.

  Zega had driven children from their homes. Had urged me to murder on the promise of a kiss. I’d been foolish, appealing to his good nature, believing something genuine lingered between us. I’d been arrogant, hoping Akizeké would see me as a potential ally, someone worth her time. The tears blurring my eyes stung with more frustration than sorrow. Even how I broke down was ugly and wrong.

  What was I doing with my life? Believing a sex worker could bring down Vashathke, who reached to rule one-twentieth of the planet? But I’d sacrificed too much for revenge—safety, purity, eight years of my life—to stop fighting. My world had revolved around Vashathke’s ambition since before my conception. If I wasn’t his enemy, I’d be his pawn. And, with his minions driving the poor from their apartments, I wanted to be his enemy.

  As I stared at my ex, trying to decide between choking him or asking him to hold me, gravity flexed like a fist on the back of my neck. A frozen wind billowed down from the north. Zega’s eyes widened, and he pointed over my shoulder. “Do you see that too, Koré?”

  I turned. On the edge of my bright vision, between hovering clock bells and spires rising from the sea, a floating black bar shadowed the foot of Victory Street.

  A hovership. The dark iron craft was long and narrow, tapered to a wedge on the ventral side. Silver swirls of holdweight substance, its sheen and texture between plastic and metal, traced faces on its flanks: women, men, and children, screaming in agony. White-gold figureheads lifted axes and smiled cruel grins. Not a whisp of exhaust escaped as it rose, soundlessly, to float as a black bar against the sun.

  “I see it,” I said. “It’s… uninviting.”

  “I’ve only seen pictures of those craft in schoolbooks,” Zega whispered. A tangled mix of awe and terror had pressed the guile from his voice. “That ship is Temple District work. From the age of the gods.”

  A shiver spider-stepped down my spine. “That’s impossible. Nothing and no one has left the Lost District in ten thousand years.” I’d sooner expect to meet my mother’s shade than travelers from that ruined neighborhood.

  We stood silent for a breath, watching it hover and hum. Shadows that might have been crew or my imaginings crawled over the silver faces. All down Victory Street, windows dropped open and whispers of awe rose high. From one sill, a very-illegal antique rifle pointed up at the craft, until a steel-ringed hand pushed it back inside. Even the cobblestones seemed to hold their breath.

  Nothing drew my street together like the prospect of conflict.

  “Maybe they’ve come to witness this historic occasion?” Zega suggested. “Me elevating the first male judge to the throne of War?”

  A tiny, bitter laugh fluttered up in my throat—and died when I realized he meant it. Legends didn’t rise to mark the deeds of upjumped commoners and bastards. Zega and I had swept fragments of power together to build our lives on Victory Street, but history and majesty belonged to trueblooded dzaxa. The years that transformed the Lost District into legend would crush us smaller than footnotes.

  But my own insignificance gave me freedom. I feared no fabled nightmare more than my father winning the power to shat
ter my life.

  Again.

  “They’ve come to support Akizeké,” I said. “They only don’t know it yet.” Traveling diplomats all sought the same comforts, whether they came from neighboring districts or the ancient mists of time. Once they fell into my arms, I’d collect their endorsements for Akizeké before anyone could lure them to my father’s cause.

  She’d have to appoint me a strategist then. And I’d ruin Vashathke’s dreams of power as neatly as he’d ruined my dreams of a father’s love.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Upper Victory Street

  2nd Kafi, Year 92 Rarafashi

  “Those who dwell in light forget shadow wove the universe”—inscription on Lost District artifact salvaged by Fire Weavers 5728 Post-Liberation

  “Some power is too great for any one woman to wield unquestioned. We have seen the destruction caused by unrestrained war. On this day of hope, we lay the foundations our children will build into a perfect, peaceful, and just future.”—remarks by Judge Dzefik-eké II (also known as the Traitor Judge) upon the signing of the Treaty of Inversions and the formal conclusion of The Brass War

  Deep-fried meat sizzled and hissed beneath clanging bells. Coconut. Chilies. Nutmeg. Bobbing tissue-paper lanterns lit the chef’s pale brow as she passed me snake fillets. Each stretched two hands long, the breading packed with red onion and black peppercorn. Nutmeg pâté spread down each strip in a dripping line. I balanced six scorching fillets on my outstretched left arm.

  “Two thera,” said the chef.

  “Are you trying to cheat me?”

  “Whores cheat essence from the marriage bed. Hurry, you’re holding up the line.”

  I sighed and handed over my gold. It seemed half of Victory Street waited behind me.

  My father had thrown a parade to welcome the Lost District envoys—and, hopefully, secure their endorsement. The Treaty of Inversions specified that seventeen international endorsements were required to qualify for the judgeship of War. After its codification, our magistrates and ladies had swiftly demanded their own say in the process. Seventeen international and thirty-eight domestic endorsements: numbers weighted in ten thousand years of custom and lore, a target every candidate had to strike before receiving the essence store and throne of the dying judge. A mark Akizeké had to hit before my father.

  A curtain of sound rose around me as I pressed through the crowds. Merchants sold souvenirs in five languages. Brontosauruses called, low and trumpeting, as butcher teams pulled their leads. Protestors with the smooth accents of Engineers shouted, “No welcome!” and “The Fire Weavers warned us!”

  Banners flew the names of favored candidates for the judgeship, glyphed into elaborate sigils. Akizeké’s snowflake topped several tall poles, and one fool still flew Kirakaneri’s mushroom, though she’d dropped out of contention. But Vashathke’s dagger-petaled lily marked a sea of handheld white pennants. His guards stood on every street corner, offering his flag free to passers-by. To the envoys, it would appear every soul on Victory Street demanded Vashathke’s ascension.

  This was why Akizeké needed me. I understood optics. How making oneself appear desirable invited desire in.

  The courtesans of the High Kiss had been pushed against a steel guard barrier. My poor employees had successfully protected their white silk-and-metal finery from pushy spectators, but beneath their crowns of steel flowers, their expressions were as unappealing as balance sheets.

  “Eat up!” I said. Kge and Stonefire took one fillet apiece; the boys tore theirs into neat portions. “You might have two or three clients before your next break. We want to get the ambassador into our party and make her leave happy. The High Kiss should be her home on Victory Street.”

  “Are you after something besides her money?” Bero asked, flicking crumbs from his painted lips. “When the envoys from the Husbandry District wanted to schedule a private party, you made me tell them we were booked solid.”

  Their judge already endorsed my father. I might as well host an open house for spies. I licked grease from my fingers and shrugged. “I plan to franchise the High Kiss and open a location in the far north. I suppose the staff will need to wear shirts.”

  Bero lowered his voice. “If you’re going to be sarcastic, I’d prefer no answer at all.”

  “Really? My sarcasm is delightful.”

  “But hardly appropriate. I’m your assistant manager. I can’t help implement your business plans if I don’t know what they are.”

  I bit my tongue. This goes beyond business. If my employees knew I was interfering with the judge’s succession, they’d decry me as a dangerous fool and run screaming from the High Kiss.

  Thankfully, from further down Victory Street—at the foot of the great stone dragon sculpture—a horn sounded and cut off conversation.

  War’s trumpets played brass defiance. This deeper, slower note rose from the planet’s heart, from the ancient foundations of the world-sized city of Jadzia. Ruin stacked atop ruin, all the way down.

  I smiled to hide the shiver in my soul. “Look lively, boys! We have guests!”

  Raptors shrieked as a fleet of guard reja swept the street. Batons flashed, steel and shards of green holdspark. Drumbeats rolled through air and bone, their players advancing in neat formation. Men in translucent skirts spun to the horn’s ceaseless call.

  “Are those dogs?” whispered young Opal, his eyes wide with fear.

  “They’re direwolves,” I said. Five dozen of the beasts, white-furred and wide-shouldered, towed a hoverplatform up Victory Street. Amber and iron flashed as envoys flung tokens to the cheering crowd. Singers chanted in an ear-stinging, twisting language. All the party wore fur cloaks and skin leggings, even the gold-crowned ambassador, who sat atop the massive bone horn.

  A foreign fashion. That didn’t bother me. All districts of the city-planet valued my goods. But War simmered with resentment of other, wealthier districts. Vashathke had made a name for himself, early in his political career, by denouncing the neighboring Engineering District’s ownership of Victory Street’s crossways, threatening tariffs that never became more real than words. He’d quieted his blowhardery now he needed international endorsements to rise to the throne, but the world outside War would never count him a friend.

  I could offer these envoys more than his thin-lipped smiles and backhanded insults.

  The endless note wavered and died. The horn’s player winked at me. Pale, dark-haired, and commanding, she shone every inch as bright as the ambassador.

  “They look like they can afford us,” I told my employees. “Let’s go.”

  We slid past the barrier in a perfumed tide. Bero slipped a purse to the guards, who turned their backs on our trespass. I leapt atop the hoverplatform and bowed to the ambassador. “The beauties of War, for your pleasure!”

  “We have fucking at home,” said the horn-blower, accent clipping her words. “I am Tamadza of the Twelfth River. Why should I buy flesh when I can love at my leisure?”

  I smirked up from under lowered brows. “Flesh is cheap. Do you know decadence? Wine, spirits, games and dance? Come to the High Kiss, where no rules bind the bright.”

  Tamadza groped up the cup of Stonefire’s fajix, pushing through the garment to fondle her breast. Stonefire grabbed the diplomat’s arm, and the women held steady. Pinned by lust and anger alike.

  I bowed. “Welcome, Envoy Tamadza.”

  Opal let an older guard sweep him into her plump arms. Neza posed for a wolf-driver, flexing powerful arms as she giggled and stared greedily. Ruby and Bero clambered up the bone horn, whispering to the ambassador about a delightful game for three.

  I scanned the crowd for my own mark. But only one or two of the visitors looked my way. Had I gone dull? My eyes shone Dzaxashigé red, a scarlet as wicked as bloodshed and lust. The skirt I’d worn, white satin patterned with pink roses, drew out the famous color. My thevé, pauldron-cut cloth covered with silk petals, perfumed my left shoulder. You can only get this in War.