scrivespinster (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:35 am
scrivespinster) wrote2020-08-17 11:35 am
WIP: Valkyrie Bags a Legend, Chapter 5
I received letters, from time to time.
Still safe, they said. Still well. They spoke of lessons, friendships and rivalries, small fears and small joys. One or two contained echoes, heavy in the envelope; the sight of those coins in my hand left me with a funny, hollow feeling, but there were orphans and old folk around Spite who might get a hot meal or a new coat because there was money I could give them, and I wasn’t too proud to turn aside help when there were those that needed it. I thought maybe my brother might realize that, and it was for them he sent that charity, not for me. I hoped so.
There was never any way of returning those letters, so instead I kept them in a box beneath a loose floorboard next to the Vake-hunter’s notes, tied together with a piece of string. I read each of them once, carefully, then tucked it away. I couldn’t bring myself to read them again.
Beyond that – time passed, and all of us grew older. I set myself to learning what I could of the things I would need to know – fighting, tracking, how to walk unseen and unheard through darkness – and the Ringbreakers and I made our living that way, as hunters of the beasts that thought to prey on the people of our city. You can hear similar stories, I think, from any eradicator in the Marshes, and though I’d be happy to share a few others when this one is over, they have little to do with the hunt I speak of now.
There is one tale, though, that I should tell you.
I was young, still – no longer quite an urchin but not yet grown – when a woman caught up to me in the streets of Spite. I recognized her, after a moment, as a chandler from Watchmaker’s Hill, the one with the frost moth troubles. She was panting from a hard run, hair and skirts all in disarray, and her eyes were frantic.
“I heard,” she said, struggling to catch her breath, “that you’re one who’s willing to help those that need it.”
“I am,” I said. “We are. The Ringbreakers. More moths, is it?”
“Not moths,” the chandler said. “The eradicators wouldn’t listen to me. Said I was one for the Beth. Only it got my Emily, and now she’s wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Dreams. Terrible dreams – running, hunting, being hunted. And her scar didn’t heal right, and it seems these days she’s always hungry.”
“Did it fly?” I asked. Always, that question was first in my mind, and hearing of dreams and hungers, it took on a new urgency. But she shook her head, a bleak smile passing briefly across her face.
“I should bloody well hope not, at any rate,” she said. “Was some manner of dog, I think. Or a wolf.”
“Tell me.”
And so she did, her voice all hushed and distant with memory. They’d been walking home together, she and her sweetheart, on a part of the road from Watchmaker’s Hill where lamps grew sparse and shadows abounded. She’d heard something slinking along behind them, she said, and when she turned to look, it was there behind her: a monster that seemed carved from darkness, crouched in the mouth of an alley with teeth all bared and red tongue lolling.
”It leapt for my throat,” she said, “and I couldn’t move. Was Emily that saved me. Pushed me down, out of the way, and it was – it was her that got bit. It got her instead.”
And after that, what she remembered was mostly confusion. She had screamed for help, and she could recall grabbing a piece of splintered wood from the ground and breaking it across the creature’s back, but couldn’t say with any clarity what happened after. There had been violence, though, the stench of fur and blood and beast, and it had ended with bright lanterns and gunshots and the two of them alive but bleeding. Good luck, she’d thought at first. Her own wounds were shallow and healed quickly, without a mark. The bite on Emily’s arm scarred white, but that seemed to be the worst of it, until the dreams began.
I knew what it was, or thought I did. My unfortunate Vake hunter had mentioned it briefly in his notes – called it a damned distraction, in fact – and it had its place in the eradicators’ gossip too. Most all of them put it down to periodic bouts of collective madness, not least because multiple hunters claimed to have slain the thing, months or years apart, and none of those deaths ever seemed to stick – but the chandler, from what I knew of her, was a steady, canny woman, fearful of moths but not prone to chasing after dreams. You can’t be, in her line of work, if you don’t want to lose your mind and not get it back.
But dreams, it seemed, had gone chasing after her someone she loved, and the dread of that was something I understood too well.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “No charge for this, but I’ll need your help with some tools.”
If I was right about the beast, it couldn’t be slain in the waking world; we would need to track it back to where it made its lair, and that meant a shared dream with Emily, to start. The Chandler’s home would offer a safe place to catch the trail, but the means to get there was another matter entirely, and one beyond the reach of a one-time urchin with few riches to her name.
“Of course,” she said. “Just tell me, and I’ll do what I can.”
“So will I,” I promised her, and hoped like hell it would be enough.
.
I called the Ringbreakers to a feast that evening, and to a council. Heorot’s rooftop hall was was warm and bright, despite the wind that whistled past the windows and through the cracks in the walls; between us, we’d brought together coin enough to hang the room with lanterns and set the table with cheese and potatoes, brown bread fresh from the baker’s oven and even a bit of smoked fish. I shared scraps of mine with the cat who curled on my lap, sleepy-eyed and purring – the least I could offer her, after everything I owed. The Trickster had even acquired a bottle of wine of uncertain provenance, and we shared it among ourselves, taking sips from tin mugs and making faces at the taste.
We’d all changed some, since we were children. A few among us had started to go down our own roads – the Trickster playing with magic tricks and mirrors, the Poet haunting Veilgarden and trying to make her name as a writer – but all of us called Heorot home still, and all were there around that table, waiting to hear what adventure I’d found for them now. All but one, and I’d come to accept that he wouldn’t be returning, but this was no night for melancholy. We had hunters’ work to attend to. I called the council to order with a fork tapped on the table, and as they all fell quiet and turned towards me, I told them what little I knew of the Eater of Chains.
“A black dog,” I said. “Supposed to be a myth, but it isn’t. It’s been troubling London since the Fall, and now it’s hunting one of our Watchmaker’s Hill folk through her nightmares. Maybe it’s a nightmare itself, but it’s one that can be fought, and I mean to fight it.”
The others listened with something approaching solemnity, the jostling excitement of a quest tempered by the knowledge that this foe was more than some hungry beast from the Marshes. Good. We’d need that focus, come the hunt.
“It’ll be dangerous,” I said. “More’n most things we’ve faced. If it gets its teeth in you, it gets in your head, and I don’t think any of us wants to find out what happens then.”
Dreams, I thought, and hungers, and despite the room’s warmth, I found myself shivering. It wasn’t the same, but Salt and Storm, it was too damned close.
I gave them a moment – and myself too, if truth be told – to gather their thoughts and make their choices, but I knew them all, and I knew what they would choose.
“Are you in?” I asked.
The Bodyguard nodded, steel in his eyes, and Poet and Tracker and Slinger all followed with hardly a second of hesitation among them. The Wolf-hide slammed a fist into one cupped palm, grinning with berserker ferocity. The Trickster was the last, but not from apprehension; I could almost hear the subdued laughter in his voice as he said, “You couldn’t pay us to miss it.”
And so it was settled: I’d carry my message to the chandler tomorrow and make arrangements for the battle ahead. Until then, it was time for planning, and for feasting as well, as heroes did before they went to fight. I sang, that night, as I hadn’t in far too long – a piece from the latest opera, sweet and nearly mournful until the rest of the Ringbreakers joined the chorus and turned it into something brighter. After that, the Poet shared a few verses of a satirical ditty she’d overheard at the Singing Mandrake, bawdy humor disguising political bite, and by the time that song was over, and the next, the world seemed a little brighter too.
.
A few days later, Emily met us at the door to her home, a small, unassuming dwelling on a small, unassuming lane where the lamps were bright-lit and no one expected trouble. She was a quiet woman, dark haired and nervous, though it’s hard to say if that was who she always was or just the consequence of being set upon by a nightmare.
“So you’re the ones she found to help me,” she said, looking us over with restrained skepticism. In truth, I couldn’t blame her; all of us were young enough to seem untested to those unfamiliar with life in the Flit, our clothing threadbare and our weapons makeshift – though that wouldn’t matter so much, where we were going. But she said nothing, only led us on into the parlor where tea was waiting, and invited us to sit and make ourselves at home until the Chandler returned. There were couches and cushions set about for dreaming – incongruous outside of a back-alley honey den, but appreciated – and I perched on one with my spear across my knees, watching Emily trail her fingers restively across picture frames and ceramic sculptures as though such things might soothe her. Finally, with a distracted shake of her head, she turned and settled in beside me to wait.
“It might get bloody,” I said quietly. “Will that bother you?”
Her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, if you weren’t watching her eyes.
“Watched someone set hisself on fire in front of me once while I was minding the shop. Don’t think a fight can scare me after that – though I am scared I might go the same way.” Her hand went to her arm, where the scar must have marked her beneath her plain muslin dress, and she shuddered. “Is this how people catch it, d’you think?”
I shook my head. “I think what got you is a different kind of nightmare.”
Small comfort in that, I was sure – but maybe some comfort all the same. And at the least, neither of us had much time to dwell on it; it wasn’t long before the chandler returned, carrying a small wooden box in her hands, which she set on the table and opened with a click. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a neat row of delicate glass vials.
I’d never planned to try honey. There were too many people I’d seen lost to it, wandering mazed through streets it isn’t safe to walk down or dreaming their days away while their waking life was left to crumble. But there aren’t many other ways to bodily enter dreams, and I knew of none that were safer.
I handed the vials around to Emily and the other Ringbreakers, then held mine up to take a closer look at the contents. The honey shone in the lamplight, opaque as amber, golden as captured sunlight.
“On three,” I said. “One, two – ”
When I tipped the stuff back, it was lighter than I’d expected, less cloying, and its sweetness seemed to linger on my tongue like dreams linger in the mind after waking. I’d never seen sunlight, but if I had to guess, I would guess that sunlight feels like honey tastes. I felt my eyes grow heavy and my body grow lax, and I lay back against the cushions, clutching my spear tighter for fear of letting it drop and entering the dream without it.
Darkness came over me like a blanket of fog, and when I opened my eyes, I was elsewhere.
It was a city square, intersected by broad, straight streets and branching alleys leading off into dingy, secluded courts – much like the London I knew, except for the chill and emptiness. The sky above was black and distant, lit by a huge yellow moon – for I knew enough to recognize the moon, though I’d never seen the like of it before – and specked with lights that I didn’t think were false stars, but might not have been real ones either. The ground was layered with mist rolling off a Stolen River that looked deeper and darker than the one I knew in waking.
Emily was pale. She stood stiffly, clutching her skirts with white-knuckles hands as her eyes darted around the edges of the square, lingering on all the shadows.
“Do you know this place?” I asked.
“This is where it hunts me,” she said. “Here, along the river.”
I held up my spear – brighter here, with a keener edge – and met her eyes, trying to let no doubt show when it was courage she needed.
“This time,” I said, “we’re the ones hunting it.”
I gestured at the others to go carefully – search the area, fan out to cover ambush points and escape routes. The Slinger picked a loose dream-cobble from the ground and fit it into his sling’s leather cradle, and in the next few minutes of quiet, the Ringbreakers did what one-time urchins do best: took to high ground, clambering up cracked walls, hiding in the shadow of windows and behind gargoyles. The Eater of Chains couldn’t fly, and dog or wolf as it was, I figured it probably wasn’t much for climbing. The Bodyguard, Wolf-hide and I stayed on the ground, keeping Emily between us. If there was a target, it was her, and I didn’t know her well enough to say what she might do when frightened.
It was the Tracker who first sighted the Eater of Chains. She raised a warning of three sharp whistled notes: enemy approaching from eastwards. I narrowed my eyes, searching the shadowed square and seeing nothing – until I caught a ripple of motion at the edge of the square, a hunched shape in the darkness and the glint of teeth. Then it was out of cover and closing fast. It moved like smoke, slipping in and out of perception, but it had been solid enough to sink teeth into Emily’s arm, and that meant it was solid enough to fight.
And fight we did. The Wolf-hide and Bodyguard moved to flank me, weapons held ready. A sling stone shattered a few centimeters to the beast’s side; another struck its flank, and it turned, snarling, as the Trickster and Poet dropped to the ground behind it with a weighted net. But even as they flung it, I saw the mistake, and even as the trap fell heavy on our adversary’s shoulders, I was sprinting forward, whistling a command to fall back with every breath I could spare. This wasn’t a creature that could be held by a cage – not here. Not in dreams. The Eater of Chains surged forward, snapping ropes between its teeth like brittle twigs, but it was tangled still, and distracted by every stone the Slinger loosed. That bought me one slim second to get between it and the other Ringbreakers before it could shake itself free.
Then it was loose, leaping for the fleeing Trickster, and I was there, somehow, to block its path. I forced it back with my spear held crosswise, my arms aching from the effort. Jaws snapped in front of my face, close enough for me to feel hot breath and droplets of spittle landing on my skin. And from a direction where there had been nothing but empty water before, I heard the Shieldmaiden’s voice.
“Hoy!” he called. “Hunter of dreams! My nightmares will make a better meal for you than hers will.”
I couldn’t help it. I lifted my eyes to the river, and for the first time in years, I saw him there. He stood in the open door of a golden birdcage bobbing down a slow, dark current, surrounded by carmine silks and glittering jewels. Below the water, or reflected in it, ghostly marsh-wisps danced. The beast turned towards his voice, scenting the air, growling through bared teeth. I should have taken the chance to strike. I couldn’t make myself move.
My brother leaned out of his cage toward the river, reaching down to cup the water in his hands; it flowed over his wrists, slick and dark as the blood of a god, and he bent down thirstily and drank. Then, lifting his head again, he spoke softly but clearly. “Do you fear me, dream-wolf? Or do you fear what I carry with me?”
The Eater of Chains recoiled. A low growl rose in its throat, half-feral and half-cowed, and the fur on its nape bristled. For a moment it stood motionless, and I didn’t know whether it would retreat or leap to attack. Then, all in a blur, it turned and fled along the riverbank into the darkness.
I didn’t give chase. I was too focused on the sight of my brother, close enough to talk to after years of being unable to reach him. I took a step towards him, and he tilted his head, curious.
“Did you get caught in my nightmare?” he asked, with a terrible sort of calm. “Or did I get caught in yours?”
That was enough to break the spell of my stillness. I ran after him, calling out his name, even as the river carried his cage onward. I would have to swim for it. I thought I could. But as I drew close to the water’s edge, he met my eyes and said, “Save the ones you can.”
Then, still looking at me, he took up a knife from the pile of treasures, jabbed it into the palm of his hand, and vanished.
The other Ringbreakers were staring at the place where he’d been, all as stunned as I was. The Rough-Knuckled Poet seemed thoughtful. The Bodyguard looked stricken. And I knew that if I said nothing – if I let myself disappear into memory, or ran down the path of everything I could have done differently – I’d fail the one whose dreams I’d come here to guard. So I tore my thoughts away from blood and black water, and slammed the haft of my spear down on the stone ground.
“He’s right,” I said. “We have a mission.”
The tracks of the Eater of Chains were pressed deep into the river mud, leading westward in a clear trail. That might mean little. This was a dream, and our quarry was a dream hound. Perhaps it could disappear and reappear anywhere, and west might not stay west, or lead to where the stolen river went. But it was what we had to go on, and all I could do was follow the path and make sure there was nothing turning us in a direction we didn’t care to go.
The place we ran through was like Spite, but deserted, humanity’s presence evident only in the garbage piled in the mouths of doorways and the flotsam washed up along the banks of the river. Empty windows stared black from buildings that seemed just slightly distorted in their lines and corners, clear when you looked straight at them but bending oddly when seen from the corner of the eye. I recognized fragments from my waking life – the lamp post, the grey cat, the cart overturned and spilling mushrooms across the street. And I saw a shadow ahead of us, darting across an alley. It might have been the Eater of Chains. It might have been something else.
I signaled the Ringbreakers to halt, and to keep close around Emily while I ventured ahead. Foolhardy, maybe. I could have used their help, but seeing the Shieldmaiden had struck a hollow note inside me, and I needed to know if I could do this alone.
The narrow street ahead of me was more shadow than light, and between the open doorways and age-weathered statues, there were too many places where an enemy might hide. I moved forward slowly, spear in hand, waiting an ambush. The creature I’d seen in the alley was nowhere in sight, but in the silence, I heard the scrape of claws on stone – somewhere to my left, and close. I didn’t let myself look, but as it leapt, I spun to meet it, lashing out behind me. I saw a rippling shadow twist from my path as I moved, and I felt my spear whistle through empty air – but though I hadn’t scratched its skin, I’d thrown it off the course of its attack. And I had it in my sights now: a dark shape at the alley’s mouth, less substantial than any true wolf should be. Even standing still, its image blurred and wavered hypnotically. If I dropped my guard, it would be on me, teeth closing on my throat; if I looked away, it would be gone. I held my ground and waited, trying to clear my mind. I had a sense of how this beast liked to hunt, and as it broke into a charge, slipping from shadow to shadow, I fell to the side and whirled to strike, again behind me. I heard a yelp of pain and felt my spear hit home, scraping along the ribs just close enough to make it bleed – but it knew me now too, and that was an opening I wouldn’t get again.
The Eater of Chains advanced, head bowed low and ears laid back, like I was dangerous prey. We circled each other like duelists, clashed and broke apart and returned to a wary stalemate. Its claws tore at my sleeve, barely missing flesh; I jabbed at it with the point of my spear, tried to trip it with the haft, and it flowed away like water, only to dart at me with teeth glinting. I parried, fell back, parried again. It was growing harder to keep track of where the beast was, and where it would be soon. And as I moved, I could feel the pavement turn rough and broken under my boots, uneven cobbles shifting without warning. My enemy was driving me onto difficult ground. I could work against that, if I tried – but it knew this terrain better than I, and I could scarcely afford another distraction. Better, I realized, to let it think me ignorant. I felt my way with care, until my heel found the sunken edge of a broken paving stone, and I let myself stumble. I pitched backwards, and the Eater of Chains surged through the dark towards me. And as it leapt – as I caught myself with one leg thrown backwards, and lunged forward – I stabbed up, whispering a prayer to any god listening that I might strike true.
I did. The point of my spear caught the Eater of Chains at the apex of its jump, piercing deep between two ribs. It bled hot dream blood, snapped and snarled and fought to reach me, but it was pinned at a distance, and I held on with all the strength I could muster. And then the Ringbreakers were there, with knives and ropes, the Slinger’s stones and the Wolf-hide’s heavy cudgel. They forced the beast back, and down, and as they did, I drew my spear back to strike again, this time through the heart.
That was all it took, in the end. The Eater of Chains shuddered once, and fell still, its burning eyes dimming to charcoal. And I stood, shaky and restless now that the fight was over, trying to reorient myself to idleness. The Ringbreakers clustered around me, exchanging grins and congratulations, but there was a quiet tension hanging over the group that couldn’t quite be banished by relief or celebration. They hadn’t forgotten the Shieldmaiden. Neither had I.
But again, there would be time for that later. I looked to Emily, who stood a little distance away, watching the Eater of Chains’ corpse with a curious expression, half uncertainty and half relief. She gave me a cautious smile, and lifted her sleeve to reveal a scar that looked to me well-healed, and older than I knew it truly was.
“It’s over, I think,” she said, as the dream started to fade around us back into the warmth of the parlor. “I think it’s over.”
And then I opened my eyes to light and safety, and the sight of the Chandler kneeling at her waking sweetheart’s side, and for a moment, at least, all was well.
.
I don’t think we killed the Eater of Chains permanently. I’m not sure anyone can. It’s a dream, and dreams don’t die like we do, as long as there’s someone left to bring them back. And to tell you the truth, as dangerous as it is, I’m glad of that; when I remember that cage my brother dreamed himself into, I can’t help but think that any creature that devours its own chains is worthy of respect.
But dead or not, when I spoke to Emily in the week after, her scar and her nightmares had faded, and I never heard of them returning. The end of that story, then – but not the one entwined with it, though that dream by the river was the last I saw of my brother for a long time.
I had known what I had to do and set it aside, knowing I was not yet strong enough. Now, I pulled the Vake-hunter’s journal from its place beneath the floorboards, fearing all the while that I had waited too long, missed some chance that I could have seized if I’d only been stronger. But I‘d fought the Eater of Chains that night, and surely that meant I had what it took – not yet to win, perhaps, but to begin the fight in earnest.
I climbed onto the roof in search of solitude and opened the battered cover, running my finger along the careful notes: a mandrake, a tooth, black wings absinthe to taste my enemy’s dreams. These things, I could acquire. And – my hand went to my throat, and the rosary I still wore – a sisterhood of nuns, who knew more than anyone else. I sat and read until the streets grew quiet and lamplighters came to dim the lights below, and after, by the light of a low-burning candle. It was there that the Bodyguard found me, hunched over that book long after both of us should have been sleeping.
“Valkyrie,” he said, “that was – ”
“I know,” I said. I put the journal aside, and patted the crate beside me, inviting him to sit.
“There’s something I haven’t been telling you - about why I mean to kill the Vake.”
I’m sorry, Shieldmaiden, I thought. I can’t keep all your secrets. Only the cruelest of them.
Still, I chose my words with care, trying to find the balance between too little and too much truth.
“It preys on us – on urchins, them that join the Songbirds. Gets into their heads, sends terrible dreams, leaves them suffering. It got him.”
“And you mean to get him back,” the Bodyguard said quietly. I wondered if he was angry that I hadn’t told him before. I would have been, I think. But all he did was meet my eyes without rancor and say, “What can I do?”
“I’ll need to leave,” I said. “Not yet, I think, but soon. Will you take care of them when I go?”
He nodded – no doubt, no hesitation, only a somber sort of acceptance. He trusted me, I realized, not just to mean well but to do what was needed. It was a humbling thought.
“Of course,” he said, “but – when you go? Try to come back.”
He’d never been a fool, the Bodyguard, or prone to flights of dreaming; both of us knew that it was the only thing he could ask of me – and I, in turn, promised the only thing I could.
“I’ll try.”
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Index page here.
Still safe, they said. Still well. They spoke of lessons, friendships and rivalries, small fears and small joys. One or two contained echoes, heavy in the envelope; the sight of those coins in my hand left me with a funny, hollow feeling, but there were orphans and old folk around Spite who might get a hot meal or a new coat because there was money I could give them, and I wasn’t too proud to turn aside help when there were those that needed it. I thought maybe my brother might realize that, and it was for them he sent that charity, not for me. I hoped so.
There was never any way of returning those letters, so instead I kept them in a box beneath a loose floorboard next to the Vake-hunter’s notes, tied together with a piece of string. I read each of them once, carefully, then tucked it away. I couldn’t bring myself to read them again.
Beyond that – time passed, and all of us grew older. I set myself to learning what I could of the things I would need to know – fighting, tracking, how to walk unseen and unheard through darkness – and the Ringbreakers and I made our living that way, as hunters of the beasts that thought to prey on the people of our city. You can hear similar stories, I think, from any eradicator in the Marshes, and though I’d be happy to share a few others when this one is over, they have little to do with the hunt I speak of now.
There is one tale, though, that I should tell you.
I was young, still – no longer quite an urchin but not yet grown – when a woman caught up to me in the streets of Spite. I recognized her, after a moment, as a chandler from Watchmaker’s Hill, the one with the frost moth troubles. She was panting from a hard run, hair and skirts all in disarray, and her eyes were frantic.
“I heard,” she said, struggling to catch her breath, “that you’re one who’s willing to help those that need it.”
“I am,” I said. “We are. The Ringbreakers. More moths, is it?”
“Not moths,” the chandler said. “The eradicators wouldn’t listen to me. Said I was one for the Beth. Only it got my Emily, and now she’s wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
“Dreams. Terrible dreams – running, hunting, being hunted. And her scar didn’t heal right, and it seems these days she’s always hungry.”
“Did it fly?” I asked. Always, that question was first in my mind, and hearing of dreams and hungers, it took on a new urgency. But she shook her head, a bleak smile passing briefly across her face.
“I should bloody well hope not, at any rate,” she said. “Was some manner of dog, I think. Or a wolf.”
“Tell me.”
And so she did, her voice all hushed and distant with memory. They’d been walking home together, she and her sweetheart, on a part of the road from Watchmaker’s Hill where lamps grew sparse and shadows abounded. She’d heard something slinking along behind them, she said, and when she turned to look, it was there behind her: a monster that seemed carved from darkness, crouched in the mouth of an alley with teeth all bared and red tongue lolling.
”It leapt for my throat,” she said, “and I couldn’t move. Was Emily that saved me. Pushed me down, out of the way, and it was – it was her that got bit. It got her instead.”
And after that, what she remembered was mostly confusion. She had screamed for help, and she could recall grabbing a piece of splintered wood from the ground and breaking it across the creature’s back, but couldn’t say with any clarity what happened after. There had been violence, though, the stench of fur and blood and beast, and it had ended with bright lanterns and gunshots and the two of them alive but bleeding. Good luck, she’d thought at first. Her own wounds were shallow and healed quickly, without a mark. The bite on Emily’s arm scarred white, but that seemed to be the worst of it, until the dreams began.
I knew what it was, or thought I did. My unfortunate Vake hunter had mentioned it briefly in his notes – called it a damned distraction, in fact – and it had its place in the eradicators’ gossip too. Most all of them put it down to periodic bouts of collective madness, not least because multiple hunters claimed to have slain the thing, months or years apart, and none of those deaths ever seemed to stick – but the chandler, from what I knew of her, was a steady, canny woman, fearful of moths but not prone to chasing after dreams. You can’t be, in her line of work, if you don’t want to lose your mind and not get it back.
But dreams, it seemed, had gone chasing after her someone she loved, and the dread of that was something I understood too well.
“I’ll help you,” I said. “No charge for this, but I’ll need your help with some tools.”
If I was right about the beast, it couldn’t be slain in the waking world; we would need to track it back to where it made its lair, and that meant a shared dream with Emily, to start. The Chandler’s home would offer a safe place to catch the trail, but the means to get there was another matter entirely, and one beyond the reach of a one-time urchin with few riches to her name.
“Of course,” she said. “Just tell me, and I’ll do what I can.”
“So will I,” I promised her, and hoped like hell it would be enough.
.
I called the Ringbreakers to a feast that evening, and to a council. Heorot’s rooftop hall was was warm and bright, despite the wind that whistled past the windows and through the cracks in the walls; between us, we’d brought together coin enough to hang the room with lanterns and set the table with cheese and potatoes, brown bread fresh from the baker’s oven and even a bit of smoked fish. I shared scraps of mine with the cat who curled on my lap, sleepy-eyed and purring – the least I could offer her, after everything I owed. The Trickster had even acquired a bottle of wine of uncertain provenance, and we shared it among ourselves, taking sips from tin mugs and making faces at the taste.
We’d all changed some, since we were children. A few among us had started to go down our own roads – the Trickster playing with magic tricks and mirrors, the Poet haunting Veilgarden and trying to make her name as a writer – but all of us called Heorot home still, and all were there around that table, waiting to hear what adventure I’d found for them now. All but one, and I’d come to accept that he wouldn’t be returning, but this was no night for melancholy. We had hunters’ work to attend to. I called the council to order with a fork tapped on the table, and as they all fell quiet and turned towards me, I told them what little I knew of the Eater of Chains.
“A black dog,” I said. “Supposed to be a myth, but it isn’t. It’s been troubling London since the Fall, and now it’s hunting one of our Watchmaker’s Hill folk through her nightmares. Maybe it’s a nightmare itself, but it’s one that can be fought, and I mean to fight it.”
The others listened with something approaching solemnity, the jostling excitement of a quest tempered by the knowledge that this foe was more than some hungry beast from the Marshes. Good. We’d need that focus, come the hunt.
“It’ll be dangerous,” I said. “More’n most things we’ve faced. If it gets its teeth in you, it gets in your head, and I don’t think any of us wants to find out what happens then.”
Dreams, I thought, and hungers, and despite the room’s warmth, I found myself shivering. It wasn’t the same, but Salt and Storm, it was too damned close.
I gave them a moment – and myself too, if truth be told – to gather their thoughts and make their choices, but I knew them all, and I knew what they would choose.
“Are you in?” I asked.
The Bodyguard nodded, steel in his eyes, and Poet and Tracker and Slinger all followed with hardly a second of hesitation among them. The Wolf-hide slammed a fist into one cupped palm, grinning with berserker ferocity. The Trickster was the last, but not from apprehension; I could almost hear the subdued laughter in his voice as he said, “You couldn’t pay us to miss it.”
And so it was settled: I’d carry my message to the chandler tomorrow and make arrangements for the battle ahead. Until then, it was time for planning, and for feasting as well, as heroes did before they went to fight. I sang, that night, as I hadn’t in far too long – a piece from the latest opera, sweet and nearly mournful until the rest of the Ringbreakers joined the chorus and turned it into something brighter. After that, the Poet shared a few verses of a satirical ditty she’d overheard at the Singing Mandrake, bawdy humor disguising political bite, and by the time that song was over, and the next, the world seemed a little brighter too.
.
A few days later, Emily met us at the door to her home, a small, unassuming dwelling on a small, unassuming lane where the lamps were bright-lit and no one expected trouble. She was a quiet woman, dark haired and nervous, though it’s hard to say if that was who she always was or just the consequence of being set upon by a nightmare.
“So you’re the ones she found to help me,” she said, looking us over with restrained skepticism. In truth, I couldn’t blame her; all of us were young enough to seem untested to those unfamiliar with life in the Flit, our clothing threadbare and our weapons makeshift – though that wouldn’t matter so much, where we were going. But she said nothing, only led us on into the parlor where tea was waiting, and invited us to sit and make ourselves at home until the Chandler returned. There were couches and cushions set about for dreaming – incongruous outside of a back-alley honey den, but appreciated – and I perched on one with my spear across my knees, watching Emily trail her fingers restively across picture frames and ceramic sculptures as though such things might soothe her. Finally, with a distracted shake of her head, she turned and settled in beside me to wait.
“It might get bloody,” I said quietly. “Will that bother you?”
Her mouth twitched in what might have been a smile, if you weren’t watching her eyes.
“Watched someone set hisself on fire in front of me once while I was minding the shop. Don’t think a fight can scare me after that – though I am scared I might go the same way.” Her hand went to her arm, where the scar must have marked her beneath her plain muslin dress, and she shuddered. “Is this how people catch it, d’you think?”
I shook my head. “I think what got you is a different kind of nightmare.”
Small comfort in that, I was sure – but maybe some comfort all the same. And at the least, neither of us had much time to dwell on it; it wasn’t long before the chandler returned, carrying a small wooden box in her hands, which she set on the table and opened with a click. Inside, nestled in velvet, was a neat row of delicate glass vials.
I’d never planned to try honey. There were too many people I’d seen lost to it, wandering mazed through streets it isn’t safe to walk down or dreaming their days away while their waking life was left to crumble. But there aren’t many other ways to bodily enter dreams, and I knew of none that were safer.
I handed the vials around to Emily and the other Ringbreakers, then held mine up to take a closer look at the contents. The honey shone in the lamplight, opaque as amber, golden as captured sunlight.
“On three,” I said. “One, two – ”
When I tipped the stuff back, it was lighter than I’d expected, less cloying, and its sweetness seemed to linger on my tongue like dreams linger in the mind after waking. I’d never seen sunlight, but if I had to guess, I would guess that sunlight feels like honey tastes. I felt my eyes grow heavy and my body grow lax, and I lay back against the cushions, clutching my spear tighter for fear of letting it drop and entering the dream without it.
Darkness came over me like a blanket of fog, and when I opened my eyes, I was elsewhere.
It was a city square, intersected by broad, straight streets and branching alleys leading off into dingy, secluded courts – much like the London I knew, except for the chill and emptiness. The sky above was black and distant, lit by a huge yellow moon – for I knew enough to recognize the moon, though I’d never seen the like of it before – and specked with lights that I didn’t think were false stars, but might not have been real ones either. The ground was layered with mist rolling off a Stolen River that looked deeper and darker than the one I knew in waking.
Emily was pale. She stood stiffly, clutching her skirts with white-knuckles hands as her eyes darted around the edges of the square, lingering on all the shadows.
“Do you know this place?” I asked.
“This is where it hunts me,” she said. “Here, along the river.”
I held up my spear – brighter here, with a keener edge – and met her eyes, trying to let no doubt show when it was courage she needed.
“This time,” I said, “we’re the ones hunting it.”
I gestured at the others to go carefully – search the area, fan out to cover ambush points and escape routes. The Slinger picked a loose dream-cobble from the ground and fit it into his sling’s leather cradle, and in the next few minutes of quiet, the Ringbreakers did what one-time urchins do best: took to high ground, clambering up cracked walls, hiding in the shadow of windows and behind gargoyles. The Eater of Chains couldn’t fly, and dog or wolf as it was, I figured it probably wasn’t much for climbing. The Bodyguard, Wolf-hide and I stayed on the ground, keeping Emily between us. If there was a target, it was her, and I didn’t know her well enough to say what she might do when frightened.
It was the Tracker who first sighted the Eater of Chains. She raised a warning of three sharp whistled notes: enemy approaching from eastwards. I narrowed my eyes, searching the shadowed square and seeing nothing – until I caught a ripple of motion at the edge of the square, a hunched shape in the darkness and the glint of teeth. Then it was out of cover and closing fast. It moved like smoke, slipping in and out of perception, but it had been solid enough to sink teeth into Emily’s arm, and that meant it was solid enough to fight.
And fight we did. The Wolf-hide and Bodyguard moved to flank me, weapons held ready. A sling stone shattered a few centimeters to the beast’s side; another struck its flank, and it turned, snarling, as the Trickster and Poet dropped to the ground behind it with a weighted net. But even as they flung it, I saw the mistake, and even as the trap fell heavy on our adversary’s shoulders, I was sprinting forward, whistling a command to fall back with every breath I could spare. This wasn’t a creature that could be held by a cage – not here. Not in dreams. The Eater of Chains surged forward, snapping ropes between its teeth like brittle twigs, but it was tangled still, and distracted by every stone the Slinger loosed. That bought me one slim second to get between it and the other Ringbreakers before it could shake itself free.
Then it was loose, leaping for the fleeing Trickster, and I was there, somehow, to block its path. I forced it back with my spear held crosswise, my arms aching from the effort. Jaws snapped in front of my face, close enough for me to feel hot breath and droplets of spittle landing on my skin. And from a direction where there had been nothing but empty water before, I heard the Shieldmaiden’s voice.
“Hoy!” he called. “Hunter of dreams! My nightmares will make a better meal for you than hers will.”
I couldn’t help it. I lifted my eyes to the river, and for the first time in years, I saw him there. He stood in the open door of a golden birdcage bobbing down a slow, dark current, surrounded by carmine silks and glittering jewels. Below the water, or reflected in it, ghostly marsh-wisps danced. The beast turned towards his voice, scenting the air, growling through bared teeth. I should have taken the chance to strike. I couldn’t make myself move.
My brother leaned out of his cage toward the river, reaching down to cup the water in his hands; it flowed over his wrists, slick and dark as the blood of a god, and he bent down thirstily and drank. Then, lifting his head again, he spoke softly but clearly. “Do you fear me, dream-wolf? Or do you fear what I carry with me?”
The Eater of Chains recoiled. A low growl rose in its throat, half-feral and half-cowed, and the fur on its nape bristled. For a moment it stood motionless, and I didn’t know whether it would retreat or leap to attack. Then, all in a blur, it turned and fled along the riverbank into the darkness.
I didn’t give chase. I was too focused on the sight of my brother, close enough to talk to after years of being unable to reach him. I took a step towards him, and he tilted his head, curious.
“Did you get caught in my nightmare?” he asked, with a terrible sort of calm. “Or did I get caught in yours?”
That was enough to break the spell of my stillness. I ran after him, calling out his name, even as the river carried his cage onward. I would have to swim for it. I thought I could. But as I drew close to the water’s edge, he met my eyes and said, “Save the ones you can.”
Then, still looking at me, he took up a knife from the pile of treasures, jabbed it into the palm of his hand, and vanished.
The other Ringbreakers were staring at the place where he’d been, all as stunned as I was. The Rough-Knuckled Poet seemed thoughtful. The Bodyguard looked stricken. And I knew that if I said nothing – if I let myself disappear into memory, or ran down the path of everything I could have done differently – I’d fail the one whose dreams I’d come here to guard. So I tore my thoughts away from blood and black water, and slammed the haft of my spear down on the stone ground.
“He’s right,” I said. “We have a mission.”
The tracks of the Eater of Chains were pressed deep into the river mud, leading westward in a clear trail. That might mean little. This was a dream, and our quarry was a dream hound. Perhaps it could disappear and reappear anywhere, and west might not stay west, or lead to where the stolen river went. But it was what we had to go on, and all I could do was follow the path and make sure there was nothing turning us in a direction we didn’t care to go.
The place we ran through was like Spite, but deserted, humanity’s presence evident only in the garbage piled in the mouths of doorways and the flotsam washed up along the banks of the river. Empty windows stared black from buildings that seemed just slightly distorted in their lines and corners, clear when you looked straight at them but bending oddly when seen from the corner of the eye. I recognized fragments from my waking life – the lamp post, the grey cat, the cart overturned and spilling mushrooms across the street. And I saw a shadow ahead of us, darting across an alley. It might have been the Eater of Chains. It might have been something else.
I signaled the Ringbreakers to halt, and to keep close around Emily while I ventured ahead. Foolhardy, maybe. I could have used their help, but seeing the Shieldmaiden had struck a hollow note inside me, and I needed to know if I could do this alone.
The narrow street ahead of me was more shadow than light, and between the open doorways and age-weathered statues, there were too many places where an enemy might hide. I moved forward slowly, spear in hand, waiting an ambush. The creature I’d seen in the alley was nowhere in sight, but in the silence, I heard the scrape of claws on stone – somewhere to my left, and close. I didn’t let myself look, but as it leapt, I spun to meet it, lashing out behind me. I saw a rippling shadow twist from my path as I moved, and I felt my spear whistle through empty air – but though I hadn’t scratched its skin, I’d thrown it off the course of its attack. And I had it in my sights now: a dark shape at the alley’s mouth, less substantial than any true wolf should be. Even standing still, its image blurred and wavered hypnotically. If I dropped my guard, it would be on me, teeth closing on my throat; if I looked away, it would be gone. I held my ground and waited, trying to clear my mind. I had a sense of how this beast liked to hunt, and as it broke into a charge, slipping from shadow to shadow, I fell to the side and whirled to strike, again behind me. I heard a yelp of pain and felt my spear hit home, scraping along the ribs just close enough to make it bleed – but it knew me now too, and that was an opening I wouldn’t get again.
The Eater of Chains advanced, head bowed low and ears laid back, like I was dangerous prey. We circled each other like duelists, clashed and broke apart and returned to a wary stalemate. Its claws tore at my sleeve, barely missing flesh; I jabbed at it with the point of my spear, tried to trip it with the haft, and it flowed away like water, only to dart at me with teeth glinting. I parried, fell back, parried again. It was growing harder to keep track of where the beast was, and where it would be soon. And as I moved, I could feel the pavement turn rough and broken under my boots, uneven cobbles shifting without warning. My enemy was driving me onto difficult ground. I could work against that, if I tried – but it knew this terrain better than I, and I could scarcely afford another distraction. Better, I realized, to let it think me ignorant. I felt my way with care, until my heel found the sunken edge of a broken paving stone, and I let myself stumble. I pitched backwards, and the Eater of Chains surged through the dark towards me. And as it leapt – as I caught myself with one leg thrown backwards, and lunged forward – I stabbed up, whispering a prayer to any god listening that I might strike true.
I did. The point of my spear caught the Eater of Chains at the apex of its jump, piercing deep between two ribs. It bled hot dream blood, snapped and snarled and fought to reach me, but it was pinned at a distance, and I held on with all the strength I could muster. And then the Ringbreakers were there, with knives and ropes, the Slinger’s stones and the Wolf-hide’s heavy cudgel. They forced the beast back, and down, and as they did, I drew my spear back to strike again, this time through the heart.
That was all it took, in the end. The Eater of Chains shuddered once, and fell still, its burning eyes dimming to charcoal. And I stood, shaky and restless now that the fight was over, trying to reorient myself to idleness. The Ringbreakers clustered around me, exchanging grins and congratulations, but there was a quiet tension hanging over the group that couldn’t quite be banished by relief or celebration. They hadn’t forgotten the Shieldmaiden. Neither had I.
But again, there would be time for that later. I looked to Emily, who stood a little distance away, watching the Eater of Chains’ corpse with a curious expression, half uncertainty and half relief. She gave me a cautious smile, and lifted her sleeve to reveal a scar that looked to me well-healed, and older than I knew it truly was.
“It’s over, I think,” she said, as the dream started to fade around us back into the warmth of the parlor. “I think it’s over.”
And then I opened my eyes to light and safety, and the sight of the Chandler kneeling at her waking sweetheart’s side, and for a moment, at least, all was well.
.
I don’t think we killed the Eater of Chains permanently. I’m not sure anyone can. It’s a dream, and dreams don’t die like we do, as long as there’s someone left to bring them back. And to tell you the truth, as dangerous as it is, I’m glad of that; when I remember that cage my brother dreamed himself into, I can’t help but think that any creature that devours its own chains is worthy of respect.
But dead or not, when I spoke to Emily in the week after, her scar and her nightmares had faded, and I never heard of them returning. The end of that story, then – but not the one entwined with it, though that dream by the river was the last I saw of my brother for a long time.
I had known what I had to do and set it aside, knowing I was not yet strong enough. Now, I pulled the Vake-hunter’s journal from its place beneath the floorboards, fearing all the while that I had waited too long, missed some chance that I could have seized if I’d only been stronger. But I‘d fought the Eater of Chains that night, and surely that meant I had what it took – not yet to win, perhaps, but to begin the fight in earnest.
I climbed onto the roof in search of solitude and opened the battered cover, running my finger along the careful notes: a mandrake, a tooth, black wings absinthe to taste my enemy’s dreams. These things, I could acquire. And – my hand went to my throat, and the rosary I still wore – a sisterhood of nuns, who knew more than anyone else. I sat and read until the streets grew quiet and lamplighters came to dim the lights below, and after, by the light of a low-burning candle. It was there that the Bodyguard found me, hunched over that book long after both of us should have been sleeping.
“Valkyrie,” he said, “that was – ”
“I know,” I said. I put the journal aside, and patted the crate beside me, inviting him to sit.
“There’s something I haven’t been telling you - about why I mean to kill the Vake.”
I’m sorry, Shieldmaiden, I thought. I can’t keep all your secrets. Only the cruelest of them.
Still, I chose my words with care, trying to find the balance between too little and too much truth.
“It preys on us – on urchins, them that join the Songbirds. Gets into their heads, sends terrible dreams, leaves them suffering. It got him.”
“And you mean to get him back,” the Bodyguard said quietly. I wondered if he was angry that I hadn’t told him before. I would have been, I think. But all he did was meet my eyes without rancor and say, “What can I do?”
“I’ll need to leave,” I said. “Not yet, I think, but soon. Will you take care of them when I go?”
He nodded – no doubt, no hesitation, only a somber sort of acceptance. He trusted me, I realized, not just to mean well but to do what was needed. It was a humbling thought.
“Of course,” he said, “but – when you go? Try to come back.”
He’d never been a fool, the Bodyguard, or prone to flights of dreaming; both of us knew that it was the only thing he could ask of me – and I, in turn, promised the only thing I could.
“I’ll try.”
Chapter 4 here.
Chapter 6 here.
Index page here.