Silk Fire

by Zabé Ellor

Genres: Sword & Sorcery; Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

Koré wants to destroy a man. Koré knew that meddling in politics could end badly, particularly when trying to sabotage his aristocratic father's campaign before it destroys the city he has come to love. And when a chance encounter with a dying god imbues him with magic-breathing powers, it gets worse: he suddenly becomes a commodity - and a political player. But the corruption in his city runs deeper than just one man, and an ally's betrayal unleashes an army of the dead on his home street. Koré must trust the world with his deepest secret to stand beside the woman and man he's finally let himself love, as only the bright truth of dragon's fire can break the iron fist of a necromancer's hold.

© Zabé Ellor 2022 (P) Penguin Audio and Rebellion Publishing 2022

Release date: July 5, 2022

Publisher: Solaris

Print pages: 475

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

Atop the statue of the stone dragon

19^th Zxo, Year 92 Rarafashi

“Above all, a wedding is a financial transaction. Dress as richly as if you own a bank and behave as politely as if you owe that bank money.”—Men’s Life Magazine: “Ask Jasper.” Published and distributed in the Palace of Ten Billion Swords

“A good boy is a jeweled chalice. A stupid boy is a leaky sieve. A bad boy is a water pistol. I’m a bad boy.”—Hishura, Blood and Stone 3: The Bloodletting (Modern Jiké subtitles)

The father of the groom stopped halfway up the aisle to spit in my face.

With the bright store of essence tied to my soul, I could have dodged. But I didn’t believe another man would behave so crudely in public until the hot, wet missile struck my cheek. The guests – mostly wealthy dzaxa, with a few Engineers for added prestige – tittered and laughed. My pale skin went scarlet. I yearned for the pavilion to collapse on my head.

“Whore,” the groom’s father growled. “You humiliate chaste men and rob essence from our marriages. Behind that pretty face, your soul is shit and worms.”

I said nothing. I couldn’t deny the charge. All Victory Street knew Koreshiza Brightstar, courtesan and proprietor of the High Kiss brothel. And I stood out starkly beside this man, who, though dressed in rich purple velvet, had the lined face and prominent pores of a dull. He’d invested most of his essence in his child, leaving him weak and worn. I’d gathered essence from my patrons in their pleasure, brightening myself with flawless skin, racing wits, and the strength to shatter steel.

Small wonder this man’s wife had hired me to warm her bed tonight.

The groom’s father marched on, to the dais, where his wife and the bride ceremonially haggled over dowry goods. The groom stood between them, silent in a skirt of translucent 

white. Staring at me like his eyes could dagger an unwelcome guest. Spit was sliding down my neck, and I’d brought nothing to wipe it away with. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t act.

I deserved this shame. I’d accepted a contract for a wedding and invaded the most important day of the young groom’s life. I’d done it not for money, not even for essence, but for an excuse to get in and introduce myself to the woman I hoped to place on the imperial throne.

My long and winding path to vengeance, sundering another family.

“It’s okay,” whispered a serving man with long, dark hair, passing me a tissue. “Your client made the mess, not you.”

I wiped my cheek and neck as the ceremony began.

The groom’s father trembled as he touched his son’s temples. Space fluttered around them, a flock of soundless starlings. The lines on the father’s cheeks deepened, cracking through his makeup. Silver furrowed through dark hair, and the skin of his chin sank low. Light bloomed in the boy’s eyes, turning his red irises deep as wine, tightening pale curls and deepening muscle lines. Shaping alluring beauty from a merely pleasing smile.

The last tithe. I hoped the groom enjoyed this part of the ceremony, if nothing else. He’d surrender most of his essence to his wife before she chose to conceive. He’d never shine so bright again. But Victory Street would know him for a good dzaxa husband, a respectable member of the ruling class. Most men found that a worthy trade.

The groom’s mother gave the wedding speech, detailing the goods she’d exchanged with her son. She and the bride signed the contract; then, fashionably progressive, let the groom sign too. The bride nicked her finger, and the groom’s, on a ceremonial razor, and pressed both together.

As the cheering crowd pressed forward to congratulate her, I sought my mark.

Akizeké Shikishashir Dzaxashigé, Magistrate of Armory Street, pushed to the head of the receiving line and embraced the bride. Her eyes were the stewing hue of old blood; her white-blond hair fell neatly to her chin. Crow’s feet and stretchmarks lent her maturity and wisdom

, and the wedding pavilion shook in echo of her laugh. The picture of a traditional politician—albeit one with little traction so far in her campaign to succeed our dying judge.

If she chose me as one of her campaign strategists, I’d have every notable from southmost Coldwater District to the blighted border of the Lost District demanding her ascension. Every wealthy lip on Victory Street would endorse her for the throne with the same eagerness as they begged me for private sins. I’d spent years preparing for this moment. Building connections. Collecting debts. I would flip the succession contest over as easily as I’d dangle downward on the dancing pole.

That was what I’d told myself this morning. Now a dzaxa magistrate was walking past me on her way to the bar, draped in gold and sparkling steel. Her stagnant campaign needed help, but suddenly, it seemed I’d have an easier time restoring the gods to life than convincing Akizeké to put her political future in the hands of a sex worker.

“Pardon me, Magistrate,” I said as she passed, lifting a hand. “If I may have a word—”

“A photograph? Of course!” Akizeké flashed me a toothy smile, a politician’s grin even dull eyes could pick out from miles away. She slung an arm around my hip and pulled me in, closer than I normally let strangers come without charging. The serving man who’d given me a tissue—one of her personal staff, perhaps?—shouldered a camera. “Think how pissed off your father will be if he sees his bastard making nice with his chief rival.”

His only remaining rival. I smiled as the orange holdlight bulb flashed. A piece of photo-paper spat out below the lens, slowly resolving. The glare off Akizeké’s gold-trimmed pauldrons had wiped my face from the image. “Actually, Magistrate, I’d love to speak with you about my father and the campaign—”

She patted my shoulder and tucked the blurred-out photos into my sash. “Hold onto those. Tell your future children how you met me just months before I ascended to judgeship.”

“Thank you, and I will.” I tried to sound gracious, grateful, but I had to make my proposal before someone more important stole her away. “You’re my political role model. How you defended Armory Street’s salvage rights in the border ruins. How you’ve funded the War District’s

museums. I only wanted to know… are you looking to hire more campaign strategists? I have excellent references.”

Akizeké considered me. I shivered under her clotted gaze. “You’re young. Pretty. Well-connected. But there’s a hundred million other boys in that exact same position. If you want a job on my campaign, earn it.”

My cheeks flamed. Venomous whispers in the pit of my stomach hissed fool and imposter. But I hadn’t come empty-handed. I spoke for my aunt, and her allies. I could offer Akizeké a powerful block of supporters—

“Magistrate Akizeké!” A young man clad in green and white, like a living lily on the stem, shouldered in between us. “Have you scheduled a date for your concession speech? I need to file permits for my candidate’s coronation parade.”

She laughed. “Announcing six foreign endorsements in one day was an excellent trick, Zegakadze Kzagé. Your boss scared half the candidates into dropping out. But tricks won’t keep me from my throne. And when I rule as judge, I won’t need parades and parties to prove I have power.”

Shaking her head, still chuckling, Akizeké set off toward the bourbon fountain with the hungry purpose of a stalking raptor.

Well. She certainly had an ego sized for the judge’s throne.

“You’re looking for a campaign job, Koré?” Zegakadze Kzagé—Zega, as he’d bid me call him when we’d been a couple—turned to me, faint humor playing around his lips. Brown curls framed his fair face in casual disarray. “A natural progression from sex work. Only in politics, you don’t get to wear a condom when someone fucks you over.”

“I hardly bother with prophylactics. Getting a prescription costs a fortune. Quite a few inappropriate itches plagued me when I entered the industry, but I gained immunity when I brightened.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. I wished I could believe him. His pillow-soft words too often concealed slaps. “You don’t want to work for Akizeké. She’s too far behind to win. Join 

us. Magistrate Vashathke will find you a place on his campaign staff.”

“As a pretty party favor?”

“As his son. He loves you, underneath everything. He’s always asking me to tell stories about you.”

“How convenient. He becomes a caring father the moment a visible bastard can hurt his career most. Who does he plan to marry me to in exchange for their support? It can’t be anyone too important. I’m used goods.”

“I would never let him marry you off against your will. Because I still care for you.” He declared that like a gambler revealing a winning hand. But I knew what was written on the back of his cards. You didn’t protect me from my marriage, Koré. You didn’t care enough. And you owe me yourself for that.

I was done being someone else’s tool. Even if they said they loved me. Even if they were my own skin and bone. If it meant I had a heart of stone, so be it. Only stone survived Victory Street untouched.

My client was posing for photographs with her new daughter-in-law. Akizeké was circling the pavilion shaking hands. I had more than enough time to learn how far Zega would play this.

“How kind of you,” I purred to my ex, offering him my arm. “Shall we go for a walk and discuss?”

He slid his elbow through mine. The lily perfume drenching him flooded my nose, blooming from the lace choker at his throat. My skin tingled where his delicate blue veins brushed my inner wrist. A dead reflex. My brain, not my heart, led me now in the great and small games I played. Careful to keep my smile vapid and my steps directionless and light, I led us outside the tent and onto a granite walking-path.

The wedding pavilion ran along the top of the stone dragon, a massive, ancient sculpture carved to mark some pointless, bloody victory. Its hollow body held only seventy thousand apartments, making it one of Victory Street’s smaller buildings—and one of the quietest. Even my bright, sensitive ears couldn’t find the background din of hallway traffic, arguing voices

and clashing jazz harmonies that rang out life on Victory Street. The dzaxa landlady who owned this building had raised rents and driven folk from apartments they’d rented for generations, turning her building into a luxury address for the rich and bright.

All because Magistrate Vashathke had undone the old rent-control laws. Dzaxa who’d sworn a man couldn’t rule Victory Street now praised him as an innovator while stuffing their bank accounts. The dull children begging on the yellow, brontosaurus-sized cobblestones of Victory Street—their ranks swollen from mass evictions—knew Magistrate Vashathke by cruder names. “Bully” was the tamest I’d heard.

My father had picked wrong when he’d bullied me.

“This is such a boring building,” Zega moaned. “Forget my cousin’s wedding. Let’s jump down to the crossway and find a jazz bar. With how bright we both shine, we could be dancing together in minutes, and the whole place would queue up to buy us drinks.”

“You’re a respectably employed widow. You can show off your essence. People get upset if I remind them a bastard sex worker can punch through sheet metal.”

“What’s the point of power if you can’t have a little fun?” He pulled a compact from his purse and flipped it open. Red powder flashed inside. Zega grinned, then ducked into the sheltering nook of the stone dragon’s carved, empty eye socket. I slipped in after him, bending my tall head to fit the space.

“Power isn’t a toy,” I said as he snorted the firepowder. “What’s left of the War District’s influence could also fit up your nose. We all must use what little we have strategically.”

“Or—” He held out the compact. I shook my head. “—or we could simply accept the slow death of our world and enjoy the fall on our way down. Be as tiresome as you wish, Koreshiza, you’ll never bore these beacons to burn bright.” He tapped the side of the socket.

Once, everlasting ruby fire had burned in the great statue’s eyes, reflecting the glory of our massive neighborhood’s dragons. But the dragons had died with the gods, and the supply of fresh essence they breathed had dwindled to drought. The Temple District had crumbled into the Lost District, from which no explorers returned. The survivors of the cataclysm, and the wars that preceded it, had brokered a city-wide peace, ensurin

essence in the battlefield dead. They’d created the playing field Zega and I stood on today.

No battles. Fewer bombings. Higher stakes.

“Zega,” I hissed. My ex shivered at the first brush of a high. “Listen to me. I can’t work for Vashathke, but that doesn’t mean there’s no hope for us. You’re no longer a boy trapped in a bad marriage. Don’t keep following Vashathke’s bloody path to power. Take your skills and connections. Help me get on Akizeké’s good side. We can raise her to the judgeship. Together.” My heart stuttered on the final word. Reckless. Bidding so plainly for his loyalties was a gamble, even if all I stood to lose was the faint flickering hope I could fix our relationship if we tried again.

“Elevate Akizeké and share half the credit with you?” he scoffed. “You’ve grown more selfish since you left. Or perhaps you’ve just grown more like your father.”

The comparison ground into me like broken glass. My parentage was an open secret, and people often compared my looks and manner to Vashathke’s. But Zega knew my history, and saw the deeper tie—I, like my father, wove plots and treacheries behind gold-lined scarlet eyes. “I was born with Vashathke’s face stamped on mine. You chose to serve him.” My voice rose, half-hysterical, slipping beyond my control. “Have you forgotten how he had me and my mother thrown out on the streets?”

“Have you forgotten that I saved you?” Steel flickered behind his soft blue eyes. “I follow Vashathke because he’s strong. Not because he’s good. Strength will put him on the throne. Kindness and charity have brought me nothing but your dagger in my soul.”

I flinched. Had my leaving really made him this ruthless? Or perhaps I’d been so greedy for love I’d overlooked his darkness. My loves turn to ash in my fingers. A bastard, a whore, a monster’s son. Maybe only cruel, fetid hearts could safely love me. True hearts, I devoured.

“Wine, gentle dzaxa?” came the meek, rough-edged voice of a dull.

Akizeké’s serving man, the one who’d given me a tissue, clambered clumsily into the socket I’d easily leapt inside. Wine glasses rattled on his tray. His long, dark eyes peered out beneath a low brow, capping a thin, straight-nosed face. He stood shorter than me, broad shoulders

corded thick with muscle. Knife scars laced the gold-brown canvas of his chest. With his long, tied-back hair and his untrimmed goatee, he painted a portrait of trouble.

Zega snatched a glass, swirling sunlight-pale wine below his nose. “The bouquet’s off,” he snapped. “Are your senses so dull you can’t spot a bad wine?”

“Zega!” My eyebrows arched. I turned to the serving man, whose smile masked any anger at Zega’s slight, and took a glass for myself. “I’m sorry for my friend’s rudeness. You walked far to bring us these, and you were so kind to me at the ceremony. Let me tip you.”

“No need, dzaxa. Please, enjoy your drink.”

Of course there’s a need. Little luxuries meant everything when living dull. I grabbed a gold thera and reached for the sash of his black uniform skirt. He tried to dodge, but I was brighter. Quicker. I tucked the coin in the band—

My fingers licked the edge of a blade.

The sash spilled its jangling contents as my bloody hand pulled free. Grappling hooks, wire cables, throwing stars, lockpicks—and, exposed atop his skirt, the hilt of a sword. A long, single-edged blade in the Scholarly District tradition.

Lethal weapons had been illegal since the fall of the gods.

“Assassin,” I whispered, and his placid servant’s simper cracked into a wicked grin.

Fear washed out my propriety. Awakened my abominable anger. My motion blurred as the flat of my wrist slammed into his throat. My wine glass fell to shatter with the others as his tray dropped. I pinned him in a shadowed, rain-worn crevasse in the marble, my bare chest pressed to his. “Who hired you? Am I your mark, or are you after Zega?”

He struggled. But body-to-body, only brightness mattered in this contest. The knot of his throat trembled as his breathing sped. His steel bracers drummed helplessly against stone. But his eyes—dark brown bleeding black—refused to flicker wide in fear. They slipped over me and found Zega, rapid as a racing hovercraft.

“No one hired me. Your friend bought my enmity himself.” With a defiant grin, he shrugged off the thevé cloth covering his shoulder. A poem in Old Jiké glyphs, shaped like a bell, tattooed the broad muscle beneath. Ash and ruins, it read.

“Faziz of the Slatepile.” Zega sniffed, then poured out his swirling wine. A green film clung to the glass. “Shouldn’t a gang leader have people to do his poisoning for him?”

Faziz of the Slatepile. A name cursed by dzaxa, merchants, guards and lawyers. A dull immigrant man who controlled fifty thousand illegal apartments in Victory Street’s Slatepile ruin, offering cheap housing the law couldn’t reach. A legend bringing hope to naïve dulls. In flesh, this legend smells of sweat and ashes.

“I have people in places that’ll scare you shitless,” Faziz said. “This is personal, Zega. Under your orders, Vashathke’s guards evicted six hundred of my apartments last week and collapsed a cavern with holdfire charges. People of mine are sleeping on the street. Seventy-two have died. Mostly children.”

“Killing me won’t bring back their essence.” Zega yawned. “It’ll only destroy my essence store alongside theirs—and mine’s a million times brighter.”

Faziz thrashed. His dark eyes locked on my hand with murderous intent. Would he bite free? “It’s not about essence, you reeking shit. It’s about people!”

“Everything’s about essence,” Zega said. “Or money. Or power. You’re as foolish as Koreshiza here if you think the world is any different.”

Faziz’s eyes flickered to me. “Koreshiza Brightstar. The courtesan.” He named my occupation without the customary twist of judgement. “Let me go. The whispers below Victory Street say you want to keep your father from inheriting the judge’s throne. Zegakadze is your father’s dirty right hand. Let me cut him off, and neither man rises.”

Let me cut him off. I shivered, not slacking my grip. Did Faziz know how spite had kept me alive, my early years of sex work? Dreams of Zega’s shattered skull and my fists painted red? Three young men, alone, body to body. The dzaxa at the wedding would cluck their tongues at the promised indecency of us. They’d lean in to glimpse the lewd spectacle, unbelieving it could turn to murder.

We three all had bloody fingers in our hearts.

“Did you order mass evictions?” I asked Zega, my voice thin as strangling wire.

“Vashathke isn’t afraid to protect Victory Street from criminals.” Zega drew his baton. “I’m not afraid to protect myself.”

Silver flashed off the weapon’s scalloped sides. I recognized it. “You still carry the baton I gave you?” Strange hope fluttered in my heart.

“Of course.” He pressed a hand to my bare back, drawing in close. Beneath me, Faziz cursed in a language I didn’t know. “I haven’t forgotten you, Koré. Maybe we can start again. Maybe I’ll leave your father’s campaign for you. If you kill this dull.”

“Manipulative asshole,” Faziz gasped as I pushed harder. “Come on, Red Eyes. This steaming shit isn’t worth my blood on your manicure.”

“

This isn’t you,” I told Zega, because he wouldn’t care if I said I don’t want this to be me again. “That’s my father’s bloodlust you cry.”

“Faziz would have poisoned you, too!”

“I deserve it.” I met Faziz’s eyes. Tried to make my point over the hammering of my heart. “No one dies today.”

I flung the outlaw over my hip and out into open air.

Zega cursed and leant out into space. Gravity’s light tug had already pulled Faziz five stories down. My ex seemed to consider leaping after, but, while our world’s natural gravity wouldn’t kill a falling human, giving chase meant missing the reception. “I could have you arrested as his accomplice, Koré!”

“Try.” My words came curt. I had no energy left to please him.

Zega had driven children from their homes. Had urged me to murder on the promise of a kiss. I’d been foolish, appealing to his good nature, believing something genuine lingered between us. I’d been arrogant, hoping Akizeké would see me as a potential ally, someone worth her time. The tears blurring my eyes stung with more frustration than sorrow. Even how I broke down was ugly and wrong.

What was I doing with my life? Believing a sex worker could bring down Vashathke, who reached to rule one-twentieth of the planet? But I’d sacrificed too much for revenge—safety, purity, eight years of my life—to stop fighting. My world had revolved around Vashathke’s ambition since before my conception. If I wasn’t his enemy, I’d be his pawn. And, with his minions driving the poor from their apartments, I wanted to be his enemy.

As I stared at my ex, trying to decide between choking him or asking him to hold me, gravity flexed like a fist on the back of my neck. A frozen wind billowed down from the north. Zega’s eyes widened, and he pointed over my shoulder. “Do you see that too, Koré?”

I turned. On the edge of my bright vision, between hovering clock bells and spires rising from the sea, a f

hovership. The dark iron craft was long and narrow, tapered to a wedge on the ventral side. Silver swirls of holdweight substance, its sheen and texture between plastic and metal, traced faces on its flanks: women, men, and children, screaming in agony. White-gold figureheads lifted axes and smiled cruel grins. Not a whisp of exhaust escaped as it rose, soundlessly, to float as a black bar against the sun.

“I see it,” I said. “It’s… uninviting.”

“I’ve only seen pictures of those craft in schoolbooks,” Zega whispered. A tangled mix of awe and terror had pressed the guile from his voice. “That ship is Temple District work. From the age of the gods.”

A shiver spider-stepped down my spine. “That’s impossible. Nothing and no one has left the Lost District in ten thousand years.” I’d sooner expect to meet my mother’s shade than travelers from that ruined neighborhood.

We stood silent for a breath, watching it hover and hum. Shadows that might have been crew or my imaginings crawled over the silver faces. All down Victory Street, windows dropped open and whispers of awe rose high. From one sill, a very-illegal antique rifle pointed up at the craft, until a steel-ringed hand pushed it back inside. Even the cobblestones seemed to hold their breath.

Nothing drew my street together like the prospect of conflict.

“Maybe they’ve come to witness this historic occasion?” Zega suggested. “Me elevating the first male judge to the throne of War?”

A tiny, bitter laugh fluttered up in my throat—and died when I realized he meant it. Legends didn’t rise to mark the deeds of upjumped commoners and bastards. Zega and I had swept fragments of power together to build our lives on Victory Street, but history and majesty belonged to trueblooded dzaxa. The years that transformed the Lost District into legend would crush us smaller than footnotes.

But my own insignificance gave me freedom. I feared no fabled nightmare more than my father winning the power to shatter my life.

Again.

“

They’ve come to support Akizeké,” I said. “They only don’t know it yet.” Traveling diplomats all sought the same comforts, whether they came from neighboring districts or the ancient mists of time. Once they fell into my arms, I’d collect their endorsements for Akizeké before anyone could lure them to my father’s cause.

She’d have to appoint me a strategist then. And I’d ruin Vashathke’s dreams of power as neatly as he’d ruined my dreams of a father’s love.

loating black bar shadowed the foot of Victory Street.

A 

g no district would lose valuable