Vanth lay in her narrow bed, listening to the insistent gong of the morning bell reverberate up the stairs from the great hall. She should have been rising with the rest of the Salt Swords. Instead, she pulled her blanket up to her chin and continued to stare at the ceiling. She had barely slept but still her mind was whirring, poring over every detail of her meeting with Gwin.
She frowned in the early morning gloom, her stomach turning with a sickening wrench as she imagined how the other Salt Swords would react if they found out she let a magick user go free. A magick user who had turned her illegal powers on her, no less. She would be stripped of her position and cast out onto the streets. That was if her luck held, and she was not naturally lucky. She should have arrested that blue-haired witch.
A loud thumping on the door made Vanth start. She relaxed her grip on the blanket.
“Come on, you lazy cow,” Albin called from the other side. “You’re going to miss breakfast.”
“I’m coming,” she lied.
The thought of breakfast made her queasy. She slipped further under the blanket and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the real reason for her lack of sleep. Gwin had practically told her she was moon-blessed, and Vanth had believed her.
Amongst her family, there were rumours of a great aunt who could walk in peoples’ dreams and an ancient grandfather with a wild glint in his eyes, but Vanth had always believed they were merely tall tales. Now she was unsure. The Purple Mother had finally seen fit to raise her head and she had pressed her questing finger firmly into Vanth’s chest. Vanth wished she could tell her to sod off.
A sudden desire to see her own mother bloomed without warning and she let out a long, shuddering breath. There was no one she could ask about those misty family stories. Vanth was the only one left.
She was a broken girl when the Salt Swords took her in. Her family’s farm had been floundering for years. An exceptionally harsh winter stole her father and brother, breaking her mother’s spirit even as she struggled to continue. The summer passed and the harvest was poor. They had to kill the last of their pigs just so they could eat. Then winter came back around, bringing with it another cruel sweep of disease. If there was any mercy in the world it would have passed by their farm that year, but there wasn’t and it didn’t and Vanth was forced to watch her mother steadily wither.
In the long, dark throes of midwinter, amid a violent hacking fit that sprayed the bedsheets with droplets of blood, she watched life leave her mother. Her eyes became dark and ashy before extinguishing like a snuffed candle, and Vanth felt some deep and vital part of herself leave with her.
She stayed long enough to bury her next to her father and brother. Then, with no money for animals or seed, let alone farmhands, Vanth locked the gates of her family’s farm and made for Armoria.
Many in Vanth’s position would have made a life on the streets, eking out an existence by pickpocketing or whoring. This time though, Vanth’s luck finally turned. As she entered Artisan Square on that first frozen morning, just seventeen-years-old and shivering beneath a threadbare shawl, she was drawn to a group of smartly dressed men standing together and talking to passers-by. When she approached them she learned they were Salt Swords, and they were recruiting.
The Salt Sword trials were rigorous and brutal. Vanth had to show them she could run faster, fight harder, and survive longer than the other hopefuls. Many times, she thought she would pass out on a particularly gruelling hike across the Snowberry Plains or go mad from the pain in her arms after wielding a broadsword for hours, sparring with opponent after opponent. But she survived, passing the trials with a numb determination borne of grief and desperation.
The Salt Swords had saved her from the streets. They had given her a new life and now they were her family. That’s what made Gwin’s revelations so frightening. A moon-blessed person, capable of dangerous and therefore illegal magick, would never have been allowed to join Armoria’s revered city guard. Vanth would probably be thrown in the Pit if the truth was discovered.
“I’m not leaving until I hear you move,” Albin called again. “Get out of bed.”
“Sod off, Albin. I said I’m coming.”
Vanth waited until the man’s footsteps had receded back down the stairs before pulling the blanket from her face. The morning bell had stopped. The great hall would be full of Salt Swords busying themselves over bowls of porridge. Still, she did not move.
Fears floated before her like leering ghouls. In her racing imagination, Dewer rode at the head of a demon army. Their grotesque bodies were contorted, their slathering mouths full of sharp teeth. Gwin marched towards them, surrounded by wild-eyed changelings armed with bows and long, sharp spears while Armoria burned, the air thick with smoke and screams.
With a deep sigh, Vanth finally threw back the scratchy, grey wool blanket. She stood and reached for the clothes she had dumped over the back of a chair the night before.
The uniform of the Salt Swords was a source of pride for those who wore it and a bitter source of envy for the many who coveted it and the position it represented. The black trousers and shirt were made of softest calfskin, hardly impervious to the slash of a blade but easy to move in. Salt Swords were trained to be quicker than a blade. The accompanying lamellar vest was a thing of exquisite beauty, made from diamonds of tough, black leather woven together with silver thread and studded with minute stars cut from obsidian. The sudden flash of those stars was often the last thing an enemy of Amoria would ever see.
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Pulling on her boots and tying her ebony hair back from her face, Vanth turned to survey the room. It was a mess. Her bed was unmade, waxy puddles of spent candles filled the wall sconces and books littered a small desk beneath the narrow window. Vanth knew Overseer Jewell would have her hide if he saw her living quarters in such a state, but one of the advantages of having a room to herself—hard-won in a dueling contest—was being able to lock the door. She thought about pulling open the thin curtains but quickly decided that throwing light on the chaos was a terrible idea. Better to let the room moulder beneath its familiar veneer of dust and darkness.
She took up her daggers, her personal weapons of choice, long, cruel and beautifully sleek. Slipping them into the twin holsters on her belt, one secured at each hip, Vanth left the comforting clutter of her room and descended the stone staircase that wound down into the bowels of the Obsidian Citadel. It was an honour for the Salt Swords to be housed in Lord Dewer’s great glass tower, but Vanth often thought it wasn’t very homely. Cold shadows gathered in the rounded corners and lingered unnaturally.
Pushing open the doors to the great hall, Vanth could see she was the last to make it down to breakfast. She scanned the long tables running down the centre of the room, looking for her arms-mates, Albin and Pictor. Albin caught her eye and waved her over to where they were sitting at the far end of the hall, near the fire roaring in an over-sized fireplace. An enormous, blackened pot hung over the flames, full of the Salt Swords’ rapidly congealing porridge.
“I thought you’d died in the night,” Albin declared as Vanth slid onto the bench next to him. “Or perhaps you were busy with unsanctioned company.”
“Shut your mouth.”
“I have saved you a delicious bowl of gruel,” he said, ignoring her. “I cannot guess as to the temperature though, it’s been sitting there a while.”
Vanth grimaced at the bowl Albin placed in front of her.
“We’ve been assigned the Pinchpaw’s Quarter again,” Pictor informed her in his monotone drawl.
“I hate that place,” Albin said. “It plays havoc with my allergies.”
“Just don’t blow your nose all over me.” Vanth lifted up a spoonful of porridge, then her stomach turned again and she let it slop back into the bowl.
After breakfast, the arms-mates wound a slow, meandering route through the city. They were an odd-looking trio. Albin had thick, sandy hair and an easy smile. He appeared too laid back to be a Salt Sword, though many a scoundrel made that assumption to their peril. Pictor was a hulking giant of a man with a thickset face that looked as though it had taken one too many punches. Between them walked Vanth, her bright eyes darting from building to building, her footsteps quick and light even in her thick-soled boots.
They slowed their pace when they reached the Pinchpaw’s Quarter. This was the poorest area of the city, hemmed in on three sides by long streets of shops selling goods the people who lived mere steps away would never be able to afford. Low-slung cottages with sagging roofs and patched-up windows jostled against each other, squeezed onto every patch of dirt available along the narrow alleyways.
Many homeless gathered to beg on the corners, often so thin and tattered they appeared to be little more than piles of rags. As the arms-mates turned to walk up a particularly dark alley, the cobbles strewn with rotting waste and muck, Vanth noticed a woman sitting hunched on the filthy ground, one hand outstretched and shaking. The woman looked up at Vanth as she passed, eyes wide and beseeching in her skeletal face. For a moment, the beggar reminded Vanth of her mother—the way she used to look at her in those last days when her cheeks became hollow and her eyes were dark and empty. Her chest clenched painfully. She took a breath to steady herself, instantly regretting it when the thick stench of the nearby tanneries filled her mouth and tugged at her gag reflex. Without thinking, Vanth reached into her pocket and felt for the few coins she knew lay at the bottom. She bent down to press them into the woman’s hand.
“Get yourself a hot meal,” she urged, giving her a small, tight smile.
The woman nodded her thanks. She did not speak or return Vanth’s smile.
Albin and Pictor waited patiently for Vanth to fall back into step with them.
“Don’t start,” she hissed, feeling Albin’s eyes on her.
“I just don’t know why you bother with those people. You know she’ll only spend it on drink.”
“I know no such thing. Besides, even if she did spend it in a tavern, who are we to blame her? If I had her life I’d want to be blind drunk, too.”
“Better to feed them now than have to deal with them later,” Pictor announced, “when they’re forced to steal what they need.”
“You speak rarely, Pictor,” Vanth said, clapping one of his meaty shoulders, “but when you do, it’s pure wisdom.”
“For Thet’s sake.” Albin shook his head. “That wasn’t wisdom you were spouting last night, was it, mate? I had to kick your bunk to make you shut up about meat pies.”
“A skilled baker is an artist,” Pictor replied.
Vanth rolled her shoulders, cold and slightly bored. They would have had more chance of catching a pickpocket or two in Artisan Square or the Silver Quarter. If they were patrolling the harbour and randomly checking the ships, they could have found a stowaway or some illicit cargo. The Pinchpaw’s Quarter though was maddeningly quiet, imbued with a damp chill beneath the dense press of slum buildings.
At the head of the alley was the Star of Armoria—a fancy name for an inn that was little more than a dank hole-in-the-wall with a few rooms available to rent by the hour. As they passed by, the paint flaking from the shutters on the windows, a prostitute appeared from the shadows in the doorway. Her enormous bosom arrived before she did and she smiled broadly at the three arms-mates, displaying a prominent gap where her two front teeth should have been. Her face was thick with powder and rouge in what Vanth guessed was a vain attempt to hide her advancing age.
“Good morning, Salt Swords,” the woman said. Her thick, floral perfume enveloped them as she moved, stinging the back of Vanth’s eyes. “Anything I can do to make your stay in the Quarter more pleasurable?”
“I wouldn't touch your stinking reek with ‘is,” said Alvin, looking to Pictor and laughing. “Thet knows what I’d catch.”
The woman blinked angrily. “Now see ‘ere, I know you lot think you own this place, but I’ve been plying trade ‘ere for thirteen years and I ain’t never—”
They all stopped and glanced at the sky when a great bell began to toll in the distance. Vanth had never heard it ring before and it took her a moment to realise what it was. The sound pounded through her chest, shaking her from teeth to spine. The Salt Swords glanced at each other, their faces white and drawn as the dire magnitude of the situation dawned on each of them. Without a word, they turned in the direction of the bell and broke into a run.
The prostitute screamed obscenities at their retreating backs, still outraged, but Vanth and her arms-mates kept running until her shouts faded into the distance. The Salt Bell was ringing for the first time in a century, and they might already be too late.
