The Severed City Read online

  Foreword

  Hello

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  This is an advance reader copy of ‘The Severed City’, I hope you enjoy it.

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  Feel free to contact me with any typos/errors/feedback at:

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  [email protected]

  Kind regards

  Christopher

  The Peoples of the Star Continent

  There are five distinct peoples inhabiting the Star Continent. Three are descended from apes, one from reptiles, and one from amphibians. Their evolutionary trajectories have converged, and all five are clearly ‘humanoid’, though physical differences remain.

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  1.The Holdings – the closest to our own world’s Homo sapiens. Excepting the one in ten of the population with mage powers, they are completely human. The Holdings sub-continent drifted south from the equator, and the people that inhabit the Realm are dark-skinned as a consequence. They are shorter than the Kellach Brigdomin, but taller than the Rakanese.

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  2.The Rakanese – descended from amphibians, but appear human, except for the fact that they have slightly larger eyes, and are generally shorter than Holdings people. They are descendants of a far larger population that once covered a vast area, and consequently their skin-colour ranges from pale to dark. Mothers gestate their young for only four months, before giving birth in warm spawn-pools, where the infants swim and feed for a further five months. A dozen are born in an average spawning.

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  3.The Rahain – descended from reptiles. Appear human, except for two differences. Firstly, their eyes have vertical pupils, and are often coloured yellow or green, and, secondly, their tongues have a vestigial fork or cleft at their tip. Their heights are comparable to the Holdings and the Sanang. Skin-colour tends to be pale, as the majority are cavern-dwellers. Their skin retains a slight appearance of scales, and they have no fingerprints. They are the furthest from our world’s humans.

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  4.The Kellach Brigdomin – descended from apes, and very similar to the Holdings, they are the second closest to our world’s humans. Their distinguishing traits are height (they are the tallest of the five peoples), pale skin (their sub-continent drifted north from a much colder region), and immunity to most diseases, toxins and illnesses. They are also marked by the fact that mothers give birth to twins in the majority of cases.

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  5.The Sanang – descended from apes, but evolved in the forest, rather than on the open plains that produced the Holdings. As a consequence, their upper arms and shoulders are wider and stronger than those of people from the Holdings or Rahain. They are pale-skinned, their sub-continent having arrived from colder climates in the south, and they occupy the same range of heights as the Holdings and Rahain. The males bear some traits of earlier Homo sapiens, such as a sloping forehead and a strong jaw-line, but the brains of the Sanang are as advanced as those of the other four peoples of the continent.

  Contents

  1. Excuses

  2. Cartography

  3. The Long Way Round

  4. Fallen

  5. Bloodletting

  6. Lizardo

  7. Plateau City

  8. Judgement

  9. A Hard Day

  10. Rainsby

  11. The Court of King Guilliam III

  12. The Severed Clan

  13. Invested

  14. In Disguise

  15. Trade Winds

  16. Shafts of Daylight

  17. Revelation

  18. The Leftovers

  19. Words of Love

  20. Allure

  21. The Handover

  22. The Fire Within

  23. Mistress of the House

  24. The Call

  25. Manumission

  26. Archways Gatehouse

  27. Inside Out

  28. Kindling

  29. Regime Change

  30. Flight

  31. Admonition

  32. Return to Slateford

  33. Conditional Offer

  34. At the Threshold

  Chapter 1

  Excuses

  Grey Mountains, Rahain Republic – Summer’s Day 505

  It wasn’t her fault.

  The lizards made her do it.

  Keira cracked open her swollen left eye. A watery grey light was seeping under the door. Morning again. She rolled over, her chains grating against the dark stone floor.

  They had told her everyone in the city was already dead, but they had lied.

  She had seen people running, fleeing the flames. Heard their screams.

  She clenched her fists, and blood trickled between the fingers of her right hand as the rusty nail bit into her palm. She had found it on the floor of the flying carriage the lizards had used to bring her to wherever she was being held. For days she had tried to use it to pick the locks on her shackles. When that had failed, she thought up ways she could use it to end her life.

  She was alone in a large room, and although she could hear guards outside the door, she could see no one. Everyone kept clear of her. Afraid, or maybe disgusted, she didn’t know. When she had arrived, a pair of robed lizards had told her that their government was debating what to do with her, and that she wouldn’t be allowed to see her brother until they had decided.

  She had freaked out, really lost it, and had lunged for the bastards, earning a high-end beating from the guards. Still, it had been worth it for the look of sheer terror on the faces of the two officials.

  Slashing her wrists should do it.

  She wouldn’t wait to see what the lizards decided. Either they would execute her, get rid of her, or they would force her to use her powers again.

  Fuck them.

  Let them find her dead on the floor of the cell. Ha fucking ha.

  Keira closed her eyes, and a wave of screams and flames flooded her memory, the same images of burning bodies, the same sounds of agony that had been with her ever since she had destroyed the refugee city. There was no escape from the pain, and her breath caught as she dug the nail deeper into her palm.

  Killop had been right. Part of her was relieved that she had not seen him since that day on the hills overlooking Akhanawarah. How would she be able to meet his eyes? He would hate her for what she had done. He was always the good boy, always trying to do the right thing. Pious prick.

  Another reason to end it.

  She gripped the nail between her fingers, and traced its bloody end down the inside of her left forearm. When she reached her wrist, she moved the nail back up to the soft spot on her inner elbow and ran the nail down her arm again, harder. And again, harder.

  She clenched her teeth as pain burned through her. She brought the nail up again, and hesitated, the point an inch above the scored skin. She opened her eyes. Blood was flowing from the ragged wound, but not fast enough to end her. She would need to do it again.

  Keira stared at the nail, then tucked it back into the palm of her clenched fist. She rolled over, the blood from her arm dripping onto the cold stone floor.

  Not today.

  Not yet.

  Keira lay still in the silence.

  Something was different. She tried to focus her thoughts, but was groggy from the blood-loss, and it took her a few moments to realise what had changed.

  There were no guards. She had heard the day-shift depart that evening, but not the corresponding set of boots that marked the arrival of the night-shift. No guards meant no evening meal, and no water. Without food she wouldn’t heal. Were they just going to let her wither away and die?

  Alone and forgotten. Imprisoned at the arse-end of nowhere. Left to rot.

  She heard a gentle shuf
fling, and a key turning. She opened one eye, just a slit, and saw her cell door swing open. Three men, dressed in black. One carried a small glass-encased lamp, its blue light casting a cold spell on the room. Another had a crossbow trained on her, while the third held a sword.

  ‘Savage,’ one said, ‘lying in her own piss.’

  ‘Wake up!’ the second called, keeping his voice low.

  Keira remained motionless.

  ‘Look at her arm,’ the first said, ‘that’s a lot of blood.’

  ‘Do you think she’s already dead?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ the third said, raising his sword, ‘but we’re not leaving until we have her head. Orders said we were to make sure.’

  The second man raised his crossbow, aimed and loosed.

  A bolt slammed into Keira’s right thigh, jolting her backwards.

  ‘She’s dead all right,’ the first said. ‘Never flinched a muscle.’

  ‘Right,’ the third said, ‘let’s take her head and get out of here.’

  The three men approached.

  ‘She was a piece of ass,’ the first said, crouching above her, ‘be a shame to waste it.’

  The second grimaced. ‘She’s covered in shit, you freak.’

  ‘We could wipe her down first. Just think, we could tell everyone we fucked the fire mage. We can miss out the bit about her being dead.’

  He stretched his hand out to touch her.

  Keira swung her right arm, ramming the nail into his eye. With her left she drew the knife from his belt, and stabbed it deep into the third’s man’s groin. As the second raised his crossbow, she leapt onto him, bowling him over. She punched the knife down into the man’s chest, just under his throat, and ripped him open to the waist. She grabbed the keys from the man’s belt, and unlocked the shackles on her wrists. The chains fell to the floor.

  She looked around.

  The first man was writhing on the stone floor, clutching his face, while the other was crawling to the door, still grasping his sword, blood trailing from the knife wound in his crotch.

  Keira reached down into the rent corpse beneath her, and scooped out a long string of intestines. She stumbled over to the crawling man, and knelt on his back, her weight pinning him down. She wound the slimy guts round and round the man’s throat, and pulled, choking the last breath out of him.

  She turned to face the last assassin. He was lying on the ground, convulsing, blood pouring from his left eye-socket.

  ‘So you wanted to fuck a fire mage?’ she smirked, picking up the glass lamp from the floor. She cracked the casing on the stone slabs, revealing the small blue flame beneath.

  ‘You’ll have to wait a fucking minute,’ she said. She gripped the end of the bolt sticking into her leg, and yanked it out. ‘Bastard.’

  With the exposed blue lamp in her left hand, she wove her fingers above the flames, and directed a short burst of fire at the bleeding hole in her leg.

  ‘Right,’ she said, looking at the dying man at her feet, ‘your turn.’

  She had drunk blood before, she wasn’t ashamed to admit it. When things got rough, and you needed to heal quick, then blood could be a great help. Rahain blood tasted foul, but she bore it, and drank her fill.

  So the lizards had sent men to kill her. Well, ha fucking ha. She shook her head as she lowered the arm she had been drinking from. She had been close to ending it herself, and now she had a small flame, and an unlocked cell door.

  She got to her feet. She took the sword from the dead hand of the third man. It was light, more like a long knife in her hands.

  The screams of the dead refugees were singing in her head, echoing with a new song.

  She opened the door. No guards, and an empty corridor, with glass lamps down one wall. There was a low roar of noise, of gathered voices, coming from the large door at the end of the passageway.

  Sounded like the bastards were having a party. Could it be Summer’s Day already?

  She glanced up.

  A wooden ceiling. She smiled.

  Within moments she had smashed every glass casing in the passageway. She backed up to the door at the end of the corridor, and raised her hand.

  Blue flames began to arc down the wall, joining lamp to lamp, until they formed a single ribbon of fire. She swept her fingers upwards, and the blue ribbon burst across the wooden boards of the ceiling, sending them into a roiling mass of flames.

  She lowered herself to the ground, as the flames grew above her head. Smoke belched down, and she covered her mouth. Cries and shouts came to her ears, and the sound of thumping boots. When the flames and smoke were almost too much, she kicked open the thick door, revealing a large hall, with long tables, and a high wooden roof. Sitting at the tables were dozens of Rahain soldiers, drinking and feasting, maybe a whole company’s worth. Most were looking up, to see what was causing the commotion.

  ‘You wee pricks having a party without me?’ Keira said, rising to her feet.

  An officer yelled, and soldiers began falling to their knees, pushing the tables over, and unshouldering their crossbows.

  ‘Happy Summer’s Day, ya scaly fucks,’ Keira cried. She swung her right arm over her head, firing a vortex of spiralling flame into the hall, smashing it down into the mass of Rahain soldiers. The fire ripped through them, funnelled and directed by Keira’s right hand. Wherever she pointed was incinerated. Her fuel was now almost limitless, as the hall started to burn.

  She pointed at the large set of double doors at the end of the hall, blowing them out in an explosion of metal and wooden fragments.

  Her eyes narrowed as she saw the dark night sky through the doorway. Outside. So close.

  She walked across the hall, clearing a path through the flames before her, and firing bolts of fire at any soldiers who still moved. She heard a great crack, and part of the huge ceiling fell, crashing down onto the floor of the hall behind her.

  She reached the door. Mountain air. She breathed deep.

  All around were shacks and out-buildings, and she recognised some from similar places the lizards had built in Kell.

  A mine. They had been holding her in a mine.

  A crossbow bolt whistling past her nose brought her back to the present. She whipped her arms around, gathering a thick and towering pillar of fire above her head. She swept her hand in a long low arc, and the flames followed, sending every building into flames, and turning any living thing out in the open into ash.

  With half the compound ablaze, Keira shielded her eyes and walked round the burning hall. No one stood up to her. Every lizard within sight ran, and she laughed as she sent little spiralling rods of flame after them, burning through each like spears.

  She reached the gaien paddock, and hitched a wagon to a pair of the beasts. She loaded some gaien feed and water barrels behind the driver’s bench. What was good enough for them would do for her.

  She clambered up, and took hold of the reins.

  ‘Right,’ she nodded at the beasts, ‘Betsy and Bobby, off we go.’

  She heard a rustle from her left, and a squad of Rahain soldiers ran out from behind a building, their crossbows aiming up at her.

  She shook her head, and directed a long stream of flame tumbling from the roof of the burning hall down into their faces.

  The soldiers screamed, she cracked the whip, and the gaien began to lumber through the gates of the paddock, and onto the beginning of a mountain track.

  Keira glanced over her shoulder at the conflagration she had unleashed.

  She smirked. ‘Fucking amateurs.’

  Chapter 2

  Cartography

  Broadwater, Sanang – Summer’s Day 505

  ‘Chane,’ said Agang. ‘Get up.’

  The Holdings woman groaned, but remained sprawled over his bed.

  ‘Hodang will be here any minute,’ he said. ‘You need to put some clothes on.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she mumbled into a pillow.

  Agang shook his head. He took the corner of
the blanket in one hand, and whipped it off the bed, exposing his slave’s naked body.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said, sitting up and rubbing her head. ‘You know I’m not a morning person.’

  ‘Maybe if you didn’t get drunk every night.’

  She gave him a scowl and pulled a robe from the back of a chair.

  ‘How long have you been up?’

  ‘Hours,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t sleep, not with what’s happening today.’

  ‘No one will be arriving for ages,’ Chane said, standing and slipping the robe over her shoulders. ‘Why is Hodang coming over so early?’

  ‘I want to go through the details one more time.’

  She raised an eyebrow, yawned and walked over to the dressing table.

  ‘How about doing something of actual use,’ she said, ‘and making me some coffee while I get ready to greet your chief minister.’

  Agang frowned. He went over to a cabinet, and pulled out a cup and a flask. It was day-old concentrate, but he had no time to waste brewing a fresh batch.

  ‘Sometimes Chane,’ he said, ‘I wonder if I should gag you each morning, and only allow you to speak when your hangover’s worn off.’

  ‘Fucking try it,’ she said, as she applied her make-up. ‘See what happens.’