weight, concentrating instead on watching Back Street, and stepping carefully through the trash-littered alley. Moonlight shone down, rippling and shifting as the clouds roiled above. The way ahead appeared empty.
Knees bent, he shuffled farther down the alley. Coop’s wide body brushed against the walls to either side until he stepped into the street. He stopped at the first door on his right: Seal’s residence.
‘Seal,’ he called, trying to sound hushed. ‘Seal. Open-’
A howl thundered through the town, seeming to erupt from every alley mouth and street. Temper lost his footing and nearly dropped Coop.
‘To Hood with this.’
Grunting with effort, Temper cocked one foot and kicked. The door crashed open, the jamb splintering. He threw himself in, dropped Coop, then stood the door back up against the frame. Embers glowed in a stone hearth along one wall, but other than this the only source of illumination was moonlight streaming in through the broken doorway. He saw a chair and kicked it over to wedge against the door.
‘Don’t move!’ a voice ordered from behind and above.
Facing the door he froze, raised his arms to either side. ‘It’s me, Seal, Temper.’
‘Turn around!’
Temper turned, squinting. In the dark, he could just make out Seal standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a nightshirt. He was holding something — a huge arbalest that was balanced on the second-storey railing.
‘It’s me, dammit!’ Temper growled.
Seal didn’t move. ‘Yes, I can see that. You’ve got a knife. Cut yourself.’
‘What?’
‘Cut yourself. On your hand where I can see it.’
‘I don’t have time-’
Seal levelled the crossbow. ‘Do it.’
Coop groaned from where lay, stirred sluggishly.
Temper clenched his teeth then pressed the kitchen knife’s keen edge into the flesh at the base of his thumb. Blood welled, running down his hand and forearm. He held up his lacerated thumb. ‘See?’
Seal grunted, took a few steps down the stairs, the crossbow still aimed. Closer, Temper saw that the weapon was an ancient cranequin-loading siege arbalest. One of the Empire’s heaviest, ugliest, one-man missile weapons. Seal could barely hold it upright and steadied himself against the banister. Temper fought an urge to jump aside in case it triggered accidentally. If it did, he and the door would have damned big holes in them.
‘Careful…’ he breathed, his stomach clenched.
Seal appeared surprised, then glanced down at the weapon and lowered it. ‘Sorry.’
It wasn’t even loaded. Temper let out a breath, shook his head. He should’ve noticed that.
Seal dropped the arbalest on a table and knelt beside Coop. ‘Hurt?’
‘No,’ Temper laughed. ‘Just scared into a dead faint.’
Crossing to the hearth, Seal touched a sliver of wood to the embers and lit a lamp. ‘What happened?’
Temper surveyed the street through the propped door. ‘Let him tell you when he comes around; I don’t have the time.’ He turned. ‘You still have my gear?’
Seal nodded. The long and loose kinked curls of his black hair spilled forward over his face. He motioned to the rear. ‘In the storeroom.’
‘Right.’ Temper stepped over Coop.
‘Wait, dammit.’ Seal waved helplessly to Coop. ‘Help me get him onto a bench.’ With a sigh, Temper pulled aside a table. He grabbed the unconscious man under the shoulders while Seal took his feet. Together they swung him up onto one of several benches that lined the walls of the room. Waving Temper aside, Seal began unknotting Coop’s apron.
Temper lit another oil lamp. ‘Why the cut?’
Seal was bent over Coop’s head, examining his eyes. ‘What?’
Temper held up his blood-smeared thumb. ‘My hand. Why’d you make me cut my hand?’
Seal raised his head, smiled. ‘Ghosts don’t bleed, Temper.’
‘That damned arbalest wouldn’t be much use against a shade.’
Seal shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘Well, I couldn’t load it anyway.’
‘Fener’s tusks, Seal. You’ve got to get yourself squared away.’ As he reached the storeroom door Temper thought he heard a woman’s voice call down to Seal, and the medicer’s soothing reply.
In the storeroom, behind a travel-chest, he found the bundle of possessions he dared not keep in his room. It was wrapped in canvas, as long as his length of reach. He set it onto a chest and began unbuckling the two leather belts holding it together. Tossing back the oiled hide, he pulled out two belted and sheathed swords. These went over each shoulder, the blades hanging at his back. Short, blunt fighting daggers went beside each hip.
He groped behind the travel chest again and pulled out another bundle, head-sized. Holding it up in one hand, he peeled aside the soft leather. A helmet stared back at him. It was of blackened steel with a mail coif hanging like tattered lace all around, and an articulated lobster-tail neck guard. The T-shaped vision slit and closing cheek guards fixed on him like a ghost from the past: the severed head of his alter-ego. His breath caught; for so long he’d dared not even look at it. He found his armoured gauntlets still stuffed into the padded space within. The stink of sweat, oil, and, he supposed, blood, was prominent. He could almost hear the clash and wails of battle. He shook his head free of the clinging wisps of memory and tucked the helm under an arm. Picking up the oil-lamp, he snorted at the quilted muslin shirt and leather vest he wore. He’d look like a blundering fool strutting around in his bare padded shirt, armed to the teeth and crowned with a helmet!
Downstairs Coop lay moaning, a wet cloth covering his face. Seal crouched at the hearth of mortared stone, feeding a growing fire. A black pot steeped over the flames.
‘What kind of poison you boiling up?’ Temper dropped the helmet onto the table.
Seal turned. His gaze shifted from Temper’s weapons to the helmet on the table. His answer died on his lips. Still eyeing it, he shook himself. ‘Just some barley soup. I’m hungry.’
Temper felt his own eyes drawn the same direction. The helmet looked like a grisly trophy. He cleared his throat. ‘Ah, Seal, you wouldn’t happen to have any armour around, would you?’
Poking the embers, Seal snorted. ‘You’re not actually heading out there again, are you?’
Temper bristled. ‘Yes.’
‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that important, Temp.’
’I don’t even know if it is. But I’ve got to find out.’
Seal raised an arm, pointed to an iron-bound chest against the far wall… ‘My great-uncle’s. From the Grist- Khemst border wars. Long time ago. All I’ve got.’
Temper unlatched and opened the chest. Togg’s teeth,’ he breathed. Inside was a jumble of bundles, sacks, bits and remnants of armour: swatches of mail, grieves, boiled-leather vambraces set with steel rings. From amongst this tangle he lifted a cuirass and skirtings that looked long enough to hang to his knees. It consisted of a front and back with shoulder and side strapping, and coarse scaled sleeves. A leather underpad, almost as thick as his thumb and softened by years of use, supported a layered and patched hodgepodge of mail, bone swathing, studs and horizontal steel, ribbed down the front and back. Interlocking iron rings were sewn from the waist down and over the slit leather skirting. He hefted it, whistling. Whoever humped this over a battlefield must’ve been a bull of a man.
Temper examined the straps. ‘Hadn’t they heard of using the point up there?’
‘It was all hack-and-slash in the north back then.’
He nodded, thinking back to all he’d heard of the generations of internecine warfare between the Gristan minor nobles and their confusion of principates, protectorates, baronies, and freeholds. He’d joined up long after the Emperor had pocketed them like so many paltry coins.
He caught Seal’s eye. ‘Can I use this?’
He waved a help-yourself.
Temper pulled off his weapon belts and began readying the cuirass. While he worked, Coop groaned, then pulled the wet cloth from his face and raised his head. He blinked at Temper. ‘What happened? What’re you doing?’
‘I’m going after those thieves, Coop.’ Temper raised the undershirting, began wriggling into it.
’Thieves? But, Trenech… he, and then he…’ Coop groaned again, shut his eyes. ‘Burn preserve us.’
