Dead Stars - Part One (The Emaneska Series) by Ben Galley Page B

was turning colder now that afternoon was dying, making way for evening. He stared out of the window, half at his grizzled reflection, half at the city, with its veins of dubiously-coloured water. A lone and brave star hovered in the eastern sky, just to the left of a chimney-pot across the street. Farden scowled at it, and shut the window with a thud.
    The mage walked to the other side of the room, where a thin sliver of polished bronze had been propped up in the corner. Farden confronted his metallic reflection. It had been so long since he had seen it. Now he curled his lip at it, like an unwelcome guest.
    His hair was even longer than his fingers had suggested. It was a tangled, black mop, the ends of which had clumped together in places to form long knots. Even the bath hadn’t helped them. Farden pulled at one and frowned.
    Next he looked to his shoulders and chest, probing them with his rough fingers and feeling knots of a different sort, hiding under his dry skin and in between his tired muscles. Every few inches of so, his fingers would come across a gnarled lump, or a puckered indent, or a twisted line. Scars, young and old. Some were camouflaged by the black hair on his chest, others were in plain sight, like the missing finger on his left hand, Vice’s parting gift. He ran his palm across his chest and felt them all, bloody memories, every single one. Farden reached down and lifted his towel up over his shins and knees to look at the scars there too, a tapestry of bloody blades and daggers and sharp, evil things.
    Farden turned to the side, slowly, and looked at the tendrils of black script that curved around his ribs. He turned some more, craning his stiff neck so he could see his whole Book, splayed across his back. He noticed that not a single scar dared interrupt the lines of black script. Selfish magick , he thought. There was a patchwork of scars across his shoulders and spine, silvery, wandering trails like snail-grease, but wherever they met the obsidian ink of his tattoo, they faded and gave way, reappearing in between the lines and runes for brief moments until they died completely. The same could be said of the key-shaped tattoos on his forearms. Farden looked down at them and scowled.
    On the bed, Jeasin rolled over in her sleep. Two coin purses sat on the side of her bed; one large and stuffed, the other smaller and lighter, with a few flecks of clay-coloured mud on it for good measure. Farden tiptoed over to the end of the bed, where his clothes lay folded over the curved spine of a chest. His pack and haversack lay on the floor to the side of it, crumpled and tired. New equipment was needed, he thought. That meant the market. Farden had grown to hate them with a passion that bordered on violence. Markets meant magick, and Farden had already had enough of that in his life.
    With a snort, he rubbed his forehead. The dull headache had returned to pester him. Farden lifted up his clothes and reached for something gold and red and shiny underneath. He sat on the bed, garnering a sleepy groan from Jeasin in the process, and put the two vambraces on his lap. They clinked as they rolled together.
    ‘What’s that?’ muttered Jeasin, head entrenched in a pillow. Farden turned to look at her. Her hair covered most of her neck and her chest. Gold, curly hair. Even though her eyes were blind, they looked as perfect as could be. They were not misted, nor scarred, and had her eyelids been opened, she would have stared out of eyes the colour of an empty winter sky. Blue and cold. Farden reached out to move the hair from her face, thought better of it, and cleared his throat with a deep cough instead.
    ‘Nothing,’ said Farden, sliding one of his vambraces onto his arm. The metal was cold, and at the touch of the mage’s skin, the overlapping scales of steel shivered and rattled. They contracted around his arm until they fit perfectly. Farden savoured the coldness against his skin, cooling his veins, numbing