Raising Fire Read online

  Where is Blaise Von Hart?

  Where can we find the envoy extraordinary?

  Tell us where he hides his fragment of the harp.

  Later, exasperated and growing sick of him, the True Names dragged him back to his cell and locked him in. One of them shoved a tray through the bars. A bowl of porridge, some bread and milk. A feast for a sparrow, not a dragon. The little cell reeked of urine and sweat. The air was thin, telling him that he languished at some altitude. If a natural heat hadn’t run through his veins, retained even in human shape, he was sure the nights would’ve seen him freeze to death.

  Why did you even listen to her?

  He thought he knew the answer to that. He could tell himself that Jia had given him purpose, reminding him of his Pact. After all, she had spurred him to warn the Guild of the Broken Lance about the unleashed dragon and this Ghost Emperor of hers. But that was only on the surface. Had it been the sadness in her eyes, her veiled sorrow a mirror to his own? Or perhaps it was loneliness, blinding him to her true intentions? Because even now, something didn’t quite add up. Much like the harp, all he had was fragments, pieces of a larger puzzle that he was struggling to click into place. No one would ever call him Sherlock. Instead, he had found himself hoodwinked and captured, placed on death row. As he stood in his cell with a lunewrought collar locked around his throat, maybe he even thought he deserved it. Lord knows, the sin-you, this paragon of justice and the Lore, had nothing nice to say about him. And sarcasm aside, she had probably spoken the truth.

  Who is the real enemy here? Me?

  He couldn’t even cut his losses; he had nothing left to lose. The Sister might have violated his lair, but he couldn’t say he mourned the wrecking of the house. The place had always been a mask, an empty shell, and it was highly unlikely that anyone—either the True Names or the fire brigade—was going to dig through the rubble and break into the caves under the building. If anyone made it past the protective enchantments, they would discover the haul of the century, of course, but for now Barrow Hill Road was the least of his concerns.

  What does the Chapter want with the harp? Yeah, I think you know the answer to that one too. Re-forged, the artefact does only one of two things …

  The Chapter wasn’t taking any chances, it seemed. Unconscious, possibly drugged, he had been bundled away from London (he recalled a vague dream of rotors chopping at the air) and up into the mountains somewhere, the Sister removing the manacle and replacing it with the lunewrought collar. A canny move, he thought. Unlike his hand on the oil rig, he wasn’t about to cut off his own head in order to escape. The silver restraint burned coldly against his flesh, tingling with a subtle magical force. It was a constant source of irritation, as if fingers lightly tickled his neck. The collar might look brittle enough, but the metal was stronger than any on earth, forged as it was from the splinters of the Cwyth, the mnemonic harp.

  Back in the day, the Curia Occultus had learnt of the lunewrought’s legendary power. The Fay metal was anathema to Remnants, a nullifier of transformation and a dampener of ability, much like iron to fairies and garlic to vampires. Over the years, Ben had heard about the odd Remnant captured by the Chapter, rumours of interrogation, even torture, although of course, the Guild of the Broken Lance firmly denied the latter. No one had asked too many questions. In 1215, the Pope had insisted on the Chapter’s inclusion on the Curia Occultus and the cult had hidden behind a wall of holy smoke ever since, much the same as any world religion. And, of course, its reputation relied and fed on fear …

  Still, Ben couldn’t deny that some Remnants needed discipline from time to time, sometimes even punishment. And on the rare occasion, he had found himself ordered to deal with them. A part of his oath.

  Your love for humans has murdered us all.

  Discomforted, he tugged at his collar. The slightest touch and the lunewrought throbbed and drew tighter, constricting until he took his hand away. Without the collar, he could’ve torn his cell apart like orange peel. The Sister had bound him in man form, the red stubble of his shaven head lending him a brutish appearance, one that echoed his mood. His draconic genes glowed in his stomach, an aggrieved and disconsolate heat, his strength and his fire held in check.

  Likewise, he was trapped here with his guilt. There was no escape from it. The creeping dread that Mauntgraul was right.

  Rakegoyle, Gard, a handful of others …

  All Remnants fallen by his hand. Fallen to preserve the Pact. Murdered? Could anyone call it that? Had his love of humans blinded him so much? His rose-tinted glasses had shattered last year and the frames remained bent out of shape. Had he chosen the wrong side, all those centuries ago? He could’ve rebelled, rallied the Remnants and taken his fury to the Curia Occultus, fighting for his place in things, his right to exist. Or going down in the flames of freedom …

  Von Hart. The fucking fairy convinced you otherwise …

  And still he had given the True Names nothing. As far as information went, he had little to give. The location of Club Zauber remained firmly locked behind his lips.

  Ben groaned, rubbing his head. The harpies of doubt circled in his mind, scratching and biting. Remember. Remember what those Remnants did. A burning bridge. Devoured people …

  Traitor …

  Ben screwed up his face, trying to force Mauntgraul out of his skull. The harpies cackled.

  The Pact. Was it really all for nothing?

  Noise outside his cell startled him out of his self-reproach. Several footsteps, three or four guards coming down the corridor, the unmistakable clanking of keys.

  But for once, the True Names weren’t coming for him.

  Two of the guards carried Jia between them, supporting her weight, her bare feet dragging on the flagstones. At her back, another True Name ushered them on with a raised gun, an absurd precaution considering the state of the sin-you. Strands of hair hung in her face, her long braid half undone. Blood smeared the front of her suit, black on green, and as the agents shoved her into the cell opposite Ben’s, slamming and locking the door, he caught the glint of the manacle around her wrist, binding her just like him.

  A True Name obscured his vision, a leer spread across his lips.

  “We’ll be back for you, wyrm. The hour of judgement is at hand.”

  Ben muttered under his breath, too weary to argue, his concern—his ire—focused on the woman in the cell opposite.

  Disappointed, the True Name retreated, leaving the two of them alone.

  Ben allowed Jia a minute to get herself together, to realise that her ordeal was over. He knew only too well what they’d put her through and he could see that her assistance with his capture hadn’t won her any friends or spared her from interrogation. She smoothed back her hair and pulled herself up on her bunk, her spine straightening, the usual composure. But he could see how she trembled, the pain running through her, barely restrained. He could see her shackled hand clench and unclench, revealing her resentment. Her face was lost in shadow, her breaths heavy and slow. None of these sights prompted his sympathy. Nor did they hold his anger in check.

  “So you got me out in the open to draw the Chapter,” he said, keeping his voice low, a heated grumble. For all he knew, the True Names were listening, wanted them to talk. “Smart move. Did you think the Cardinal would thank you? Give you a medal? Whatever’s going on here, it’s bad news for Remnants. And that means you, honey.”

  She said nothing to this, silence spinning out between them.

  “Your plan was clumsy. It stinks of desperation,” he told her. “But I’m not as stupid as I look. That whole fight business on the train was a set-up, wasn’t it? Ditto healing me. A way to get into my good books, to obligate me. I reckon you knew the Chapter wanted my head in the first place. And if you knew the Chapter wanted my head, then you probably knew why. And let me take another wild guess here. Someone must’ve told you about it.”

  Someone.

  Again, silence.

  Ben banged the b
ars of his cell.

  “Well, you got what you wanted. A free three-night stay at the Invisible Church. And when we check out, we’ll check out forever. Is that your idea of justice? Nice one!”

  She looked at him then, her eyes sharp. The bruise around one of them shoved his anger back at him, curdling with his guilt. But the sight of her injury didn’t catch him off guard half as much as her question, spoken softly yet painfully clear.

  “What do you recall of your mother and father, Ben?”

  “My mother and fa— What?”

  She didn’t repeat it, meeting his scorn with the same maddening calm.

  “These questions you ask are a mirror,” she said, “reflecting your own truth. But for you, the glass remains black. You simply don’t want to see. You prefer the comfort of lies.”

  “I don’t see how it’s any of your business, lady.”

  “Walls,” she said. “Smoke and mirrors. You know the truth as well as I do. It’s just too hard to swallow.”

  Christ. She’s a pain in the arse.

  “What the fuck are you getting at? You know, we don’t have time for these games.”

  So she told him. “The Remnants are dropping like flies. Isn’t that what you said?” Her voice was barely a whisper, her gaze unblinking, steady. Full of sadness, he saw, rather than judgement. “You might as well tell me. This is probably the last time we’ll speak. What were their names? Can you even remember their faces?”

  “Ah, shut the hell up.”

  He turned his back on her, another wall. But he was hiding his own surge of sorrow, bubbling under his rage. The truth was, she spoke to the heart of his fear, plucking his despair from him like grey thread from a black pillow. These doubts had been with him all along, right from the start. Small surprise that Jia shared them. If he’d needed any confirmation, du Sang had shown him the present state of the Remnants in Paris, the inflexible nature of the Pact. How stupid they’d been. How naïve! They’d been sold a fairy tale to end all fairy tales. How they’d eaten it up.

  One shining day, when Remnants and humans learn to live in peace, and magic blossoms anew in the world, then shall the Fay return and commence a new golden age.

  Cut to the present day and most of the Remnants had given up, accepting that the Fay would never return, their reward for signing the Pact a slow march to extinction. Over time, the false promise, the hollow hope had worked like an acid, its corrosive nature gnawing at the heart of things. Wasn’t that the way it went? The Lore had shaken in the face of that despair, he thought, shaken and fallen apart. Honour. Duty. Faith. Were these the comforting lies Jia meant? He believed so. And he hated to admit it, but she was right. After years of living under the Lore, he could hardly bear to face the truth.

  And, yes, he remembered her. Jynnyflamme, the spawn of Pennydrake. Jynnyflamme. The Sun Tear.

  Among his kind, draconic sires tended to remain faceless, a passing wyrm on a few nights’ mating, blood and fire crashing through the trees. The female of the species bore the eggs and, once laid, the custom was to then abandon them—in a cave, beside a lake, deep in a Marches forest …

  It was up to the hatchling to grow and find his or her mother, thus proving the will to survive and thereby earning the ancient teachings of dragonkind. Once upon a time, Ben had made that journey himself. He’d been distracted, heartsick, grieving. And his mother had welcomed him in the Great Forest to commence his training, to kick and to claw the weakness out of him.

  He remembered her, all right. He remembered saying goodbye.

  “The Chapter welcomes our destruction, Ben,” Jia said. “The world has forgotten its true nature. To the humans, we are myths, as good as dead. The circles are breaking, drawing an army of hungry eyes. But the war was over centuries ago. The Ghost Emperor merely comes to sweep up the pieces. Nothing more.”

  “Is that what you told the True Names? Your mission of warning.”

  “Yes. But the Cardinal will not listen, as you say. Driven by blind faith, the Chapter opens its arms to a cataclysm. And now it is too late. I have failed.”

  He spun back to her, letting his anger override the sight of the tears rolling down her face.

  “To get to the harp? You still haven’t told me why you want the damn thing.”

  “You think it’s safer in the Chapter’s hands?”

  This checked him for a second. He had seen the ruins of Paladin’s Court and the True Names present at the site. He had no way of knowing if the Chapter already had its hands on another fragment, the harmonic curve of the harp. As for Mauntgraul … he was reasonably sure that the dragon wouldn’t lay a claw on lunewrought, even if his wake of destruction happened to turn up the artefact. Its power would frighten him, surely. The last thing he’d want was to find himself bound all over again.

  Ben realised that this was a faint hope. Vexed, he said, “That isn’t an answer. But you know what, Jia? I’m bored of this. It’s pretty obvious why you’re after it. The harp is kind of a one-trick pony. If you’re planning to do what I think you are, let me tell you now that it’s a very bad idea.” He swallowed, compassion twisting his voice into an awkward growl. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

  “I told you. I have no choice.”

  “And you’re afraid I’ll try to stop you, isn’t that right? You’ve got your doubts, the same as I do.”

  “No. I have seen the truth.”

  He snorted, letting her know that he wasn’t a complete fool. “The Ghost Emperor.”

  Jia met this with silence. She shook her head at some private thought, throwing off something he couldn’t read. Some uncomfortable secret, if he knew secrets at all.

  “Do you honestly expect me to trust you?” Ben said. “After the stunt you pulled at Paladin’s Court?”

  She raised her chin a little. “I am Jia Jing, the appointed judge of the court of Kublai Khan, Guardian of the East, Keeper of the—”

  “Yeah, yeah. And a former student of Blaise Von Hart,” he reminded her.

  As soon as he said it, a thought struck him, a flash of insight so bright that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen it before. In all the events since she’d come bursting into his life, challenging the White Dog on top of the train—appearing so conveniently, he’d noted, in such a way as to gain his trust—he’d missed the most vital clue dangling under his nose.

  “Christ, that’s it,” he said. “You were using me as a stepping stone to get to the Chapter and the harp. But you knew exactly when and where to step, right? Someone had to have told you.”

  Someone.

  “Ben …”

  It had been there all along, right in front of him. The missing envoy. The Chapter’s hunt. That weird message in the fortune cookie back in Paris, conjured up now to confirm his fears, his blood running cold at the thought.

  When the time comes, let me fall.

  “Jesus. It’s a matter of basic maths. One plus one equals two.” He laughed, but there was no humour in it. “You probably assumed that the Chapter had nabbed the Guild’s fragment of the harp, confiscated the relic during its takeover. And if you came here after the neck and the soundboard, then you must’ve been reasonably confident of securing the pillar, the third and final piece. Jia, that can only mean one thing.”

  He grinned, a savage leer of pride. But the sin-you didn’t look remotely impressed.

  “You’re a quick learner,” she said, in a tone that conveyed that she didn’t think that at all.

  “You’re on no mission of mercy. You’re on a raid. And you don’t seem to care who gets hurt along the way. I hate to break it to you, but the White Dog won’t stop killing. He won’t stop smashing shit up. Did you think about that before the envoy went and woke him up?”

  Jia looked away, gazing into space.

  “Time has taught us other lessons,” she said, half to herself. “The value of sacrifice. The price of the truth.”

  Ben wasn’t listening to her.

  “Von Hart,” he said. “
You know where he is, don’t you?”

  It made sense. She’d lied about her mission, so why wouldn’t she lie about her loyalties? As far as Ben knew, Von Hart still had the final fragment of the harp in his possession—but Jia hadn’t seemed dead set on finding him, focusing her efforts on the Guild and the Chapter. He’d suspected her complicity back in Barrow Hill Road; her subsequent treachery only cemented the uncomfortable notion. She wasn’t working alone. And unlike the envoy, Ben knew that he himself was far from inscrutable. Von Hart must have counted on the fact that he would come to China to challenge Mauntgraul, face down his old rival. That was his duty as the Sola Ignis, after all. The envoy had known that the Chapter wanted his head. Was it such a stretch that the fairy would’ve sent his student to him, a way to get to the Invisible Church and thus the harp by luring him out into plain sight? Yeah. It sounded like Von Hart, all right.

  “And he’s still your master, isn’t he?”

  Before she could reply, a familiar clanking echoed down the passageway, breaking off the chance of further conversation. Frustrated, Ben thumped the bars of his cell again, watching the sin-you retreat into shadow, apparently awaiting her fate. Another Remnant giving up.

  The face of a True Name eclipsed his vision, the same old leer, the same raised guns. One of the guards fumbled with the keys.

  It was too late to get to the truth. The hour of judgement had arrived.

  SEVENTEEN

  “And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent who deceiveth the whole world: he was cast down into the earth and his angels were cast down with him.”

  The words rang out around the walls of the chamber, under the watchful eyes of the saints. Kneeling on the platform in the middle of the temple-cum-courtroom, manacles around his wrists and heavy iron chains binding him to the floor, Ben craned his neck to see them, the looming statues circling the space. His judges and jury. The arched windows, open to the air, had not been kind to the sculptures, the ebb and flow of countless seasons weathering their sombre, hooded faces, eroding crook, halo and sword. Cracks riddled their granite robes.