Ravencry Read online

  Dedication

  This one is for Kit.

  RAVENCRY

  The Raven’s Mark

  BOOK TWO

  ED McDONALD

  GOLLANCZ

  LONDON

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Blackwing: What Has Gone Before

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Also by Ed McDonald from Gollancz

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  ‘Sure, the second book will be easy!’ I said.

  Hah!

  When you write a book, you tend to get all the credit, but a novel is a team effort. Significant thanks are well deserved by:

  My editors Gillian Redfearn, Jessica Wade and Craig Leyenaar for their invaluable contributions in terms of story development, bouncing ideas around, keeping me ­focused when imposter syndrome or complete befuddlement threatened, and teaching me that ‘gotten’ is not an actual word.

  My agent Ian Drury, to whom I am immensely grateful for placing his trust in me and sending me tumbling down the rabbit hole.

  The hard-working teams behind the scenes, including Miranda Hill, Stevie Finegan, Alexis Nixon, Jen McMenemy and everyone else who has played a role in helping this series along.

  Gaia Banks and Alba Arnau at Sheil Land, for all their amazing work in getting this series into an ever-increasing number of languages.

  Everyone at London Longsword Academy who has trained and sparred with me over the last four years, your heads have provided fantastic targets to test out the fight sequences.

  Andy Stoter, who named his first talking +3 war hammer ‘Spoon’ and lived a dozen different lives with me through the worlds of our imaginations.

  A special note of thanks must go to my grandparents, Mollie and Leslie, whose stories of life during the second world war provided a great deal of inspiration for this book. I doubt that I’ve done real justice to their stories, but in a sense, I have been able to share some of them.

  In the time since Blackwing was released and writing these acknowledgements today for Ravencry, I have relied heavily on the infinite patience of two people who deserve special thanks. My long-distance friends, Taya and Meg: we may not have met in person, but you listen, and there is nothing worthier of thanks than kindness.

  And finally, my ongoing thanks must go to my mum, who from my earliest memory was instilling me with a ­desire to create and tell stories, and my dad, who put the first wooden sword into my three-year-old hand. My obses­sion with goblins and dragons may have puzzled you at times, but I hold you both entirely responsible.

  Blackwing: What Has Gone Before

  The Nameless and the Deep Kings have been at war for longer than anyone remembers. The Deep Kings seek to enslave humanity and turn them into drudge – enslaved, deformed creatures that worship them. The Nameless, cruel and caring only for the final victory, stand in their way.

  It has been eighty years since Crowfoot unleashed the Heart of the Void against the approaching enemy forces and, in doing so, created the Misery – a toxic, mystic wasteland where ghosts walk and mutated creatures scavenge the sands, and neither distance nor direction are ever quite what they seem. It can only be navigated by specialists taking readings from the three moons.

  Ryhalt Galharrow is a Blackwing captain, magically bound to serve Crowfoot, one of the Nameless, and charged with rooting out dissenters, traitors and spies. On a mission to save Ezabeth Tanza – a Spinner, able to manipulate light energy into magic, a woman he’d loved and lost twenty years before – from drudge attack, they made a terrible discovery. That Nall’s Engine, the weapon that protects the Misery’s border, was unpowered, allowing the Deep Kings to bring their vast armies to bear in their war against the Nameless.

  Together Galharrow and Ezabeth, along with a swordswoman, Nenn, a navigator, Tnota, and Ezabeth’s brother Count Dantry, uncovered a web of conspiracy that led to the very top. Prince Herono was being manipulated by Shavada, one of the Deep Kings, and though Galharrow defeated the prince it was too late. Nall’s Engine had failed, and the drudge were on the march.

  In a desperate fight, they found the secret that allowed the Nameless to defeat King Shavada and save the city, but not without cost. In saving the city, Ezabeth was destroyed.

  Now rumours abound of a ghost that lingers in the light network, a spirit seldom seen . . .

  1

  Levan Ost’s note insisted I come alone.

  The clocks were poised to strike four as I approached the meeting point. The night carried a purplish cast, Rioque and Clada both waxing, unobscured by cloud. I stepped briskly through the winter cold. Hooded. Armed. Alert. The last time I’d met Levan Ost, he’d tried to shank me with a broken bottle. But that had been a long time ago and, truth be told, I’d probably deserved it.

  The smell of the canal met me three streets before it came into view. The waterway was blacker than oil, the streets around it mostly deserted. Nobody wanted to live near that stench. Valengrad’s canals had never been fit for swimming in, but after the Siege, we’d tossed all the dead drudge into the canals to rot. Bad magic isn’t so easily washed away though, and the pollutants had stained even the water. Four years later, it still bore the memory.

  Ost wanted to meet on a barge docked along Canal Six. It was an old waterway on the western edge of Valengrad, out past the stacked rows of soldiers’ tenements. I passed barges loaded with cut stone, floated south for the ceaseless construction work on an immense phos mill being built in the Spills. Hundreds of tons of masonry sat low on the reeking water, waiting to become part of the Grandspire. Canal Six wasn’t one of the worst, but the stench still forced itself all the way to the back of my throat.

  I paused in the deep shadows at the street corner. Narrow boats and barges were moored against the banks, cargoes lashed down tight. We’d suffered two quakes in the past week, and nobody wanted to fish spilled stone out of the polluted water. I watched silently from the shadows, let the minutes tick by. No need to be impatient.

  Nothing moved on the black water. The light tubes were dim, humming low. No sign of anyone on the decks and the barges were dark, empty by night, with only a single cabin window giving light. It had been a pleasure barge once, but hauled cargo through the indignity of its retirement. Forty feet long, bare deck. An odd place to lay a trap, if that’s what this turned out to be. I shifted the gear beneath my coat, but if you walk into a trap, it rarely matters if you’re armed. It was Ost’s name, our old association, that had brought me out here alone. My recruits would scowl and gripe if they saw me abandon the caution that I drilled into them, but the rules were for them, not for me.

  I placed a hand beneath my coat, cocked the hammer on a flintlock pistol.

  ‘Ost!’

  The black water took my words, flattene
d them.

  A shadow appeared against the grime encrusted glass. A bolt grated as it was drawn back and then the cabin door opened. A gnarled and narrow figure was silhouetted against the cabin light.

  ‘Captain Galharrow?’ a gruff, smoker’s voice asked. ‘That’s what they call you now isn’t it? Wasn’t sure you’d come.’

  Levan Ost looked like he’d been on lean rations for a year and then tumbled down a hillside, maybe more than once. He had an untidy, clubbed-together shape to his body, muscle slowly losing the battle with age. His beard was long, the colour of ashes, but his eyes were still keen. His face had a peppering of circular scars where he’d suffered from Misery-worm.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Levan,’ I said, although it wasn’t.

  ‘Come in. Letting the heat out,’ he said, and by the way he swayed as he turned I figured he was drunk. I had plenty of experience with drunks.

  He didn’t look much like a threat. If he’d invited me here to end what his broken-glass assault had started all those years ago, he’d prepared badly. I eased the pistol lock slowly back to rest, though I didn’t take my thumb from it altogether as I climbed aboard.

  Unlike the cargo boats filling most of the docks, the barge had been a luxury river cruiser once, the kind the nobility spent dainty afternoons drifting about on. Then had come debts, boredom, or the blackening of the canals, and its owner had either sold it or turned it to shifting fruit up and down the waterways to cut a profit.

  ‘Any crew aboard?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  The cabin was a simple room, twelve by twelve with a few worn chairs and an old-fashioned oil lamp hanging from a hook in the ceiling. Ost offered me a seat. I didn’t take it. He seemed unsure of himself, adjusted a few items on a simple table. A folio of papers and a bottle of wine, a vintage that spoke of neither wealth nor taste. An empty bottle stood beside it. Another lay on its side up against a wall. A basket-hilted broadsword lay scabbarded on the table. I didn’t think that Ost intended to use it on me but I wasn’t worried if he tried. He was old, he was out of shape and he was drunk.

  ‘It’s been a long time,’ I said softly. In the deep night, some primal fear of the dark makes us favour hushed tones.

  ‘I suppose,’ Ost said. ‘Haven’t seen you since the day you fought Torolo Mancono.’ His voice had retained its self-assured roughness. He may have never held a rank above navigator, but that had still earned him respect and a place in the command tent. He’d never liked me, because he was common stock and I’d been born with cream for blood, and in fairness I’d been a cocky bastard.

  ‘Still bitter about that?’

  Ost shrugged.

  ‘I always liked Mancono,’ he said. ‘He listened, even if he was born rich as a prince. You gave him a bad death, but I suppose you can’t shoulder all the blame. He asked for the duel.’

  I hadn’t come to relive the past or settle old grievances.

  ‘You said you had information vital to Valengrad’s safety,’ I said.

  ‘Wine?’ Ost asked. The cups on the table were smudged with fingerprints so I probably shouldn’t have, but I took one all the same. I’m not one to turn down a smudged cup of worst-quality wine, no matter the hour or the situation.

  Ost looked over my uniform. He noted the long, close-fitting black coat that fell to my knees, with its dual rows of silver buttons. He noted the raised silver wings stitched to the sides of the shoulders. Once, I’d sworn to never wear a uniform again, but time, money, and prestige make liars of us all, and this was a coat of my own colour. I let him look as I drank, and waited for him to speak.

  ‘Looks like life’s treating you better than it has the rest of us,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Depends on your point of view.’

  ‘You got a nice operation going with Blackwing now, don’t you?’ A hint of resentment. Hard to describe Blackwing as nice; hunting down deserters, spies, traitors and the miserable bastards that the Cult of the Deep got their claws into hardly made me popular, and having to answer to Crowfoot was no tea-dance. ‘You’re on the up since the Siege, back in favour. Seems like the princes have thrown you a sack of gold to keep order around here and half the world’s afraid of you.’

  ‘Guilty consciences breed fear,’ I said. ‘Some people should be afraid.’

  Ost nodded. He ran a hand over his balding scalp. He had to be sixty years old, maybe older. A proud man. It was taking him time to work up to whatever he needed.

  ‘I didn’t want to come to you, but you’re the only one I can trust with this,’ he admitted at last. The only reason you ask a man to come alone and at night is either you’re planning on killing him or you need something you’re too ashamed to ask for in the daylight. He hadn’t tried to kill me. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘Talk.’

  ‘Where to start?’ Ost said. He threw back his wine, bared his teeth, locked his jaw. ‘I got mixed up in something. Something bad. The kinda thing you hang men for. I’ll tell it all. But I want a deal.’

  ‘You think I need to give you one?’

  Ost’s chin jutted proud and raw. He wasn’t impressed and sure as hell wasn’t scared. He’d navigated the Misery for forty years, a lot longer than I had. Up close I could see the tiny green veins beneath the skin, little slivers of corruption that had taken up residence. He’d seen dulchers and skweams, he’d fought drudge and seen men evaporate into mist. I was just an ugly man with more grey in my beard than colour.

  ‘It’s not for me. It’s for my daughter and her kid. If I run my mouth, I’m done for anyway, but my family are clean in all this. I want you to make them disappear, somewhere beyond the states. Hyspia or Iscalia. Somewhere they can’t be reached.’

  I watched him carefully, and figured he was telling the truth. Something about kids brings out the few remaining strings of sympathy on my bow.

  ‘What do they need protecting from?’ I asked.

  The canal barge began to rock, slightly at first and then harder, rattling the shutters in the window frames. The wine bottle fell from the table with a smash as the boat rose and fell on sudden waves and glass streetlights cracked and shattered, dimming the banks. I gripped the table to stay upright.

  ‘Shit!’ Ost yelped as he lost his balance and fell hard. A bunch of raincoats fell from their pegs to bury him in oilcloth.

  The earth rumbled and groaned. Somewhere distant something unstable, something that was probably somebody’s home, collapsed with a crash. And then, with a growl, it was done, the tremor passing as quickly as it had risen. Ost ignored my hand, preferring to pick himself up.

  ‘Third earthquake in a week,’ I said. I didn’t like that. Anything out of the ordinary is usually something to worry about. But, as Valiya had told me, even Blackwing couldn’t do much about the earth heaving.

  ‘Let’s go out on deck,’ Ost suggested. ‘I could do with a smoke and the barge owner gets pissy if I light it up in here.’

  ‘Why are you living on a barge?’

  Ost shrugged. ‘Cheaper than anywhere else, if you can tolerate the smell.’

  Outside, the cold had left the air tight and brittle. Clada was starting to sink, giving way to Rioque, the purple light turning redder. The phos lights along the streets were set to one-third power and one of them sputtered, crackling at a bad connection. I lit up a pair of cigars and passed him one. A gesture of understanding, if not of friendship.

  ‘Pol is innocent,’ Ost said. ‘She don’t even care to see me, lot of bad blood there. But I owe her.’

  It seemed a fair trade.

  ‘You give me something heavy, I’ll see she finds a new life in some other city.’

  ‘Good enough,’ Ost agreed. He took several heavy draws on his cigar. ‘I took a job. Misery work, navigating out with freelancers. They gave me false names, but a true location. A fixed point, Tiven’s Dale. You know it?’
/>   I nodded. It was four days ride into the Misery, a place where the boulders were perfectly spherical. About as far as our regular patrols went, these days.

  ‘They were well armed, heavy crossbows for the most part. Good armour too. Tough men. They had a pair of Spinners with them, and they were paying a lot – practically a pension. So I figure we’re going relic digging. I know, I know, that’s not legal. Misery contraband ain’t permitted, but collectors will sell their horse for an Adrogorsk goldmark. The money they were paying would have set Pol up real good.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So. We get out there and I know there’s something wrong with the soldiers. They pitch up camp the first night, and none of ’em laugh. None of ’em joke. Just sit there, silent all night. You and I know that there’s little laughter to be had in the Misery, but what really got my goose? They weren’t scared neither.’

  ‘Experienced men?’

  ‘They’re the ones that should be most scared. Only an idiot ain’t scared in the Misery.’ Ost said the name with care, like he was holding a wobbling candle over a bowl of blasting powder. There’s no power in the name, but only a fool disrespects it.

  ‘True enough.’

  ‘So we get to Tiven’s Dale and there are drudge there. I hit the dirt, thinking we’ve stumbled into some crazy long patrol, only the Spinners don’t unleash their magic on them, not even when I see there’s a Darling down there. Had to be, for all he was as changed as the drudge, and I ain’t never seen that before. Face like a fish, you know, but definitely a Darling. Had a fucking tail too, if you can believe that. Anyway, the Spinners, they go talk to him awhile. Then they come back and say we’re going back. That was it. They just talked to him, then we come back.’

  Short of the Deep Kings they serve, there is no creature more bent on the destruction of humankind than a Darling. Even the mention of one is enough to make most soldiers reach for an amulet. Darlings commanded power far beyond that of our own sorcerers, a gift from their terrible masters.