RDM Whittaker
Western Dawn
1
‘The Inquisition send you?’ he asks, scraping the red poker
out of a black brazier.
You say nothing.
The end of a scrawny roll-up glows under his hood. The
smoke he exhales, thick and blue, smells sweet. It is a
reprieve from the acrid stink of metal and body odour. He
releases the poker and it remains aloft, suspended by
invisible force. The glowing tip of the poker weaves lazily in
the air.
‘Keep watching the poker,’ he says, tracing a line in the air
that the poker mimics. ‘Consider how I’m going to use it.
Consider that secrets will not keep you alive. Here, secrets
will condemn you to pain and then to a preventable, and
severely unpleasant, death.’
You ignore the poker.
You look at the metal hanging on the north wall. Gleaming
tools, weapons and armour dangle by the reinforced wooden
door. They tap-tap-tap on the wall, snagged in the currents that
swim around your captor, the so-called Apex. In your hands,
any one of those weapons could mulch his face, turn his brain
to pulp.
The fire in the brazier pops and crackles. You wince,
unable to grip the arms of the chair.
‘Again! What is your name? Who is with you? Where is
your next target?’
The window is a small rectangle near the ceiling, some
metal bars, no glass. Dust, lit by the flames outside, rolls
through the aperture. Soldiers’ boots stamp on street cobbles.
The city will be ash before morning, it just doesn’t know it
yet.
He paces in front of the big furnace on the eastern wall,
patting a rag at his face. He looks like a corpse, drained of
blood. His waxen skin, the colour of moonlight, writhes with
black veins that spread from his eyes. His eyes are black and
wet, utterly inhuman.
He shuffles beyond your vision, clutching at his ribs.
You’d track him, but the clamp around your neck keeps you
looking forwards. Swollen flesh compresses your right eye
shut. The stumps of your wrists throb. You feel pins under
fingernails that are no longer there.
You glance at the black knuckles crackling in the brazier.
A clever move, that. Can’t cast nothing if you got no
hands.
‘How many are in your conspiracy?’ he asks. He sways
gently. ‘What is your name?’
White light slashes the gloom, slanting from window to
wall. Thunder rattles your metal chair, drills the cold stones
under your feet.
He staggers to the little window by the ceiling and peers
out. ‘Stormcasting?’ Little fragments of hail rattle through the
hole. He paces between the window and furnace, alarm
twitching across his features. His mouth is moving, inaudible,
swallowed by the elemental assault outside.
He is counting to himself, trying to work things out. He
hasn’t realised yet.
Good.
You tinkle your chains to attract his attention. Perhaps you
will finally talk? Perhaps fear has broken you. He has nothing
to lose by talking to you, nothing but time.
The belts of his coat clink as he leans against a workbench.
He cranks the handle on a creaking pulley.
Eek. Eek. Eek.
The chains about your limbs and neck clank as they
tighten. The glowing tip of the poker continues to weave in
the air, like a firefly on a lonely summer evening. The metal
is cold, despite the heat from the row of furnaces. Some fine
workman filed the edges smooth.
Got to appreciate the little things.
‘How many are in your conspiracy?’
A wave of his fingers and the metal collar leaps into the
recesses of the smithy. It lands with a dull clang.
Cool breeze hits your neck. It’s as if you’ve never felt air.
Rivulets of sweat roll from your hair to the linen on your
back. Your head lolls to one side and you try to blink away
the—
Skin squeals, rupturing into steam. The glowing tip fills
your eye socket, hovering on the edge of your eyelid. You’d
scream, but your shredded throat can only rasp. Don’t move,
just don’t move. He needs information, not a corpse.
The poker dives into a trough of shrieking water. Vapour
mushrooms upwards and when it clears you spy flecks of
skin swirling in dark liquid.
You try to blink away the pulsing purple smear burned on
your vision. Your eye is dry and your eyelid is raw and
splitting.
‘Who are you?’ he asks. Despite his steady voice, sweat
rolls down his features.
Pain floods in from your cheek. The shocked numbness is
being washed away by a raging glow. He’s burnt you. Again.
And your face won’t ever be the same; it has a new range of
rosy flesh mountains. Your crotch is saturated with urine.
You’re a disfigured cripple, now. Your skin throbs, each pulse
a fresh scourge. You feel hands that aren’t there being burnt
again.
No. Your skin is made of lies. You are as immune to pain
as the dead. All of this hurts no more than a blacksmith
branding leather. Your pain can be folded up, placed under
cold earth. You are Death. You have killed him, he just doesn’t
know it yet.
He lifts something. You struggle to focus.
‘A glass dagger,’ he says, balancing your broken weapon,
turning it over in his hands. His voice is even but his fingers
tremble.
You nod.
‘Very clever to use glass.’
Sticking him with it was exquisite, a real treat for the
senses. His face collapsed from smug to confused, to disbelief.
You plunged until the edge squeaked on bone and the blade
cracked. Before he reacted, you twisted it, splaying the shards
like petals inside him. You hope it hurt.
That’s when he grabbed you, crushed your neck. You
survived.
‘Difficult material to turn into a weapon, glass,’ he says.
‘Fragile, difficult to work. Nobody uses it anymore, of course.
I suppose that’s why it worked. All you needed to do, you
imagined, was to use it once; to poison me. And the
Inquisition knew you couldn’t use metal.’ He looks upwards
and you follow his gaze to the metal objects circling on the
ceiling. Hammers, tongs and rasps drift like leaves in a
whirlpool. ‘Makes sense that the Inquisition would attempt
a countermeasure. They already sent armies, I turned them
to piles of slag. Did you hear about that?’
You smile your wet, gummy smile back at him.
‘Yes, well,’ he says, his voice momentarily unnerved. ‘You
alone have landed a blow on me. Impressive, certainly, but
ultimately you have only doomed yourself.’
The metal objects rain down, pinging and clanging around
you. You squeeze your eyes closed.
When they open, you see the glass dagger sticking out of
your shoulder, the handle moving with your shallow breaths.
He crunches the glass in your wound and drags the weapon
out wetly. He places the cracked blade onto the workbench
where it leaks viscous black liquid onto your lone silver coin.
There is no pain in your shoulder, just numbness.
He uncorks a heavy flask on his belt. It sounds half-empty.
He takes a deep swig and tosses some at your face. The
distilled alcohol burns the exposed flesh from cheekbone to
ear. He knocks the last of the liquid back, swallows and gasps.
His fingers don’t tremble anymore. ‘Glad to see that your …
spirits are up,’ he says.
Torture is one thing, but wordplay is evil.
He slaps his hands together and the blacksmith’s grotto
blooms an unstable, sickly white-green. The light swells and
recedes from the unholy tattoos on his arms. ‘I think we know
each other well enough. I needn’t hide the fact I can heal
anymore, eh? There’s nobody watching us. I could heal your
wounds, would you like that?’
You turn from his blasphemous display. You shake your
heavy, dripping head.
‘You’re a fanatic,’ he says, jabbing each word into your
skull. ‘I’m the Apex. A fanatic can’t kill the Apex because he
disapproves of what the Apex has to say. You can’t just
murder your way through a city to get to me. I’m beyond that.
I’m an idea, a movement. I’m making a stand here, the
people, they…’
You don’t care. These are the squealings of a boar with a
broken dick, nothing more. The shoulder wound feels… cool.
Two images of him circle in front of you, patting at their
chests, making grandiose gestures.
‘…for all those people out there. That’s why the Inquisition
sent you to stop me. They’re desperate. The Inquisition knows
I’m too powerful, and there’s nothing they can do to stop me.
The world will be better after, when the Inquisition is gone,
surely you must see that? When the people, people like you,
real people, are free from–’
You spit blood, hoping it will land on his face. It just
dribbles uselessly down your chin.
‘No interest in politics, eh? No matter. If you want to avoid
liberation, that’s your business. Live how you like. This is my
offer, I will only make it once – I want your name, the names
of your co-conspirators. I must stop this senseless murder.’
All you need do is wait him out.
‘You need not suffer. You will be released after the
Inquisition has been destroyed, free to live the life of an
anonymous cripple. As long as you do not threaten my
subjects. Refuse and the torture will continue. I am merciful,
but I am not without limits.’
True. This thing has its limits, despite what his cult says.
His ability to talk about himself, however, that may be
limitless.
‘The revolution is underway, assassin, and I will see it to
its completion. Humanity’s course will be corrected.
Someone, somewhere, will know who you are, who your
family are. You cannot protect them unless you help me, now.’
You gurgle and wheeze. He squints at your neck.
‘Is your voice damaged? Did I damage it?’
You nod. He lifts your coin and releases it. It falls, bounces
and circles to a stop on the workbench.
‘The penny drops!’ he says.
He grips your neck and holds his other hand up,
contorting his fingers so the tattoos form a specific symbol —
decay— but inverted. The intricate lines of the symbol glow
pus-green, the sickly light arcing and dancing between the
geometric shapes across his flesh. The glow flows out of him
and pushes inside you, spreading through your veins and
tissues. Warm tendrils filling the gaps inside you, spreading
and uncoiling. The tears inside knit and twist themselves into
their correct alignments; ligaments twang, and bones grind
and reset.
Your skin covers the wound in your shoulder but the
inside remains cold and numb. His tattoos sputter green
sparks and he releases his grip.
Your hands remain charring in the brazier.
Your voice croaks in your throat. You stretch your new
vocal chords.
‘Speak now,’ he says, positioning a black iron nail in the
gap next to your kneecap. He weighs up a wooden mallet in
his other hand.
You groan. ‘Torture don’t work on me.’
‘What is your name? Who are your conspirators?’
‘Gods and fortune.’
Thock. You flinch. Cold metal pierces soft tissue and
embeds in bone. ‘You a gods-fearing man, mister Apex?’
‘No, not especially.’
You stare forwards. A flash. Thunder. Wind. The flames in
the brazier flutter.
‘Can’t say I’m surprised. My advice? Pray.’
‘Pray?’
‘Aye, pray, mister Apex. We’ll be meeting them soon
enough.’