head to see BroadWing, one of the Icarii who had aided Maximilian to cross the FarReach
Mountains, and who had then fought with Malat and Georgdi as the Skraelings seethed through
the Central Kingdoms.
BroadWing looked to the gathering clouds. “The ghosts arrive,” he muttered.
The Lealfast. Gods, Axis hoped so, and then fresh nerves set his stomach roiling.
Maximilian stood as easily as had Axis, likewise turning in slow circles so he could meet
the eye of each rank in turn.
“You may know something of me,” Maximilian began, his own voice carrying as well as
had Axis”. “A king of a small eastern kingdom called Escator, a king of an amiable people, and
who had little else to do save supervise the weekly bean market.
“But I came to my throne strangely, and from a strange place—and I go from the throne
of Escator strangely, and to an even stranger place. Perhaps you know something of my early
manhood—trapped in a gloam mine for seventeen years, and with no memories of my early life
beyond the hanging wall, because to remember would have been to go mad.”
He stopped, as if thinking, and Axis frowned slightly. He had to do something more than
this… “Ah,” Maximilian said, “but what are words? Any man could stand before you and spend
half his life describing who he was in words without any of them truly showing you what he was.
You need to know me before you can trust me, or before you can choose to lend to me your
lives. Ishbel, if you please.”
Ishbel drew a deep breath and walked toward Maximilian.
He took her hand briefly as she reached him.
Thank you, Axis saw him mouth, then Maximilian let go of Ishbel”s hand and addressed
the massed soldiers once more.
“Allow me to present to you Ishbel Brunelle Persimius, Archpriestess of the Coil, my
former wife, and a woman more powerful than perhaps you can imagine.”
Axis looked at Ravenna at that.
Her face was a rigid mask of impassivity, but Axis could see that the tendons of her neck
were tight, and he thought she must be angry. She would hate it that Maximilian had called
Ishbel to him, and not her.
Axis looked back to Maximilian, who had unbuttoned his jacket and tossed it across a
nearby rock, and was now rolling up the sleeve of his left arm.
Axis frowned. What in the stars’ name was he doing?
Maximilian held Ishbel”s gaze, then he raised his bared arm, and turned in a slow circle
so that all could see it.
“I have scars all over my body from my years in the Veins,” Maximilian said. “Scars
caused by the vengeful swords of guards, and scars caused by the collapse of the uncaring rock
face. This one here,” he tapped his arm just above the elbow, where ran a livid, twisted scar, “I
will ask the Lady Ishbel to uncoil for you, so that you may see and understand from whence I
came.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “Whatever happens next, my friends, do not fear. It will
pass.”
Now he held out his arm to Ishbel.
She hesitated, then stepped close and wrapped both hands lightly around his arm over the
scar.
She bowed her head, Maximilian doing likewise so that their foreheads almost touched.
For a minute…silence, then…
Axis found himself existing in nothing but blackness. He had no name, and he had no
identity, save that of his number: Lot No. 859. If he had ever had a name, he did not know it.
There was nothing in his existence save the rhythmic raising of the pick above his
shoulder and burying it in the rock face before him, over and over. Five swings over his left
shoulder and five over his right before swinging back to his left shoulder.
There was nothing but the black tarry gloam collecting around his naked feet, nothing
save the grunts of the anonymous man chained to his left ankle, and those of the seven other
anonymous men in the chained gang.
Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe. Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe.
Keep doing that, day after day, week after week, year after year.
“This was my life.” Maximilian”s quiet voice intruded, and Axis managed to pull himself
out of the vision sufficiently to understand that it was only vision, and not reality.
“This,” said Maximilian, “was my entire world—for seventeen years.”
This was the entire sum of existence, nothing else. Occasionally when someone in the line
of chained men died, and another was brought to fill his place, the new man would babble about
sun and wind and children and happiness beyond the hanging wall—the rock face that hung over
their heads.
But Lot No. 859 knew there was nothing beyond the hanging wall, just a greater
blackness, extending into infinity. Sometimes he thought he dreamed of something—an echoing
memory, a glimpse of a rolling green sea, the scent of something called apple blossom—but Lot
No. 859 knew these were figments of his imagination. Lies created by hopelessness to torment
him.
He raised the pick, swung it, buried it in the rock face, feeling pain ripple throughout his
body, but ignoring it because pain was such a constant companion that it had ceased to have any
meaning.
Every so often men came, and demanded they stop, and gave them food and water, and
told them to sleep.
Lot No. 859 did not ever sleep, or, at least, if he did, then he did not know the difference
between dream and waking.
“One night,” Maximilian”s voice intruded again, “the guards thought they needed some
amusement.”
“Jack and I,” said one of the guards, “can’t decide whether or not you feel pain. You
never complain. You never moan. I ’ve seen you standing with blood running thick down your
body and never a single whimper. Why is that then, eh? Do you have some magical ability to
withstand agony?”
Lot No. 859 did not answer.
The guard grabbed at him, shaking him a little. “Why is that?”
Lot No. 859 did not answer. It was of no interest to him. If they did not require him to
wield the pick at the moment, then he would just stand here, and breathe.
Just…breathe.
The guard cursed, angry that the prisoner ignored him, and grabbed something from one
of the other guards. It was a piece of wire, and the guard wound it tight about Lot No. 859’s left
arm just above his elbow.
“D’you feel this, then?” the guard said, and twisted the wire with a knife, tightening it.
Lot No. 859 felt it. The wire cut into his flesh, slicing through skin and muscle. It did hurt,
it agonized, but the pain did not disturb Lot No. 859. He set it to one side. It was of no matter.
All that mattered was that he raise the pick, swing it, bury it in the rock face. Breathe.
Rest. Then raise the pick once again.
“The guard screamed at me,” said Maximilian. “He tightened that wire until it cut down
to the very bone. But I did nothing. Nothing mattered to me then, save that I continue to breathe.
“That—the constant tightening of the wire—was my life, my entire existence, for
seventeen years.”
Axis blinked, and suddenly he was standing once more in the hollow. All about him men
were blinking, coming back to their senses.
Ishbel and Maximilian still stood close in the center of the hollow, then Ishbel slowly
pulled her hands away from Maximilian”s arm, gave him a long look, and stepped back a pace.
“That was his life, his entire life,” she said, echoing Maximilian”s own words. “For
seventeen years. You have seen and you have felt what he endured. Could you have survived that? Could you have emerged sane at the other end of it? Maximilian Persimius is not Isaiah the Tyrant. He is not a battle leader.”
She waved a hand briefly toward Axis. “You have Axis SunSoar for that.
“What you have in Maximilian,” Ishbel continued, once more looking about at the crowd
of soldiers, “is a man to whom you can entrust your hearts and souls, and not fear that he will
destroy them. Maximilian is endurance, and he is understanding. If you find yourself lost amid
blackness, my friends, then he is the man to lead you forth from it.”
Axis had his mouth slightly open at the end of Ishbel”s speech. By the stars, if that was
something she could do for a man when she professed not to love him, then what could she do when she admitted love?
There was a gentle snow falling about them now, and Axis suddenly realized its presence.
He glanced up at the sky: it was leaden gray, low-hung with clouds. Here and there…no, in
myriad places, individual snowflakes did not fall, but hovered within the air.