by Alec Hutson
A fat, sweaty man hails us as we draw closer to the stables. After a quick negotiation with Bell he claps his hands and a trio of scrawny boys materialize from somewhere and take the reins of our horses.
“I’ve booked a stall for a month,” Bell says as Deliah takes her stallion’s head in her hands and whispers something that causes its tail to swish irritably. “Now let’s get to the Blight.”
“The what?” I ask, but Bell has already turned away and is hailing one of the rickshaws drawn up near the stables. A bearded man squatting in the dirt throwing dice leaps to his feet and clambers up into the driver’s seat, then flicks a leather flail lightly across the back of the giant cockerel drowsing in the sun. The great bird stretches its red and gold wings and lets out a challenging screech, then surges forward, pulling the rickshaw alongside where we’re waiting.
“Where to, lovelies?” the driver asks, flashing a smile with more gum than teeth. The cockerel turns to regard us with glittering black eyes.
“The Blight,” Bell says as she pulls herself up into the carriage. Watching the great bird’s curving beak warily I follow her, finding a seat on the faded velvet bench. Deliah squeezes in beside me, removing the weapon from her back and angling its haft so that it fits in the small space with us, and as soon as she’s settled the driver lashes the bird with his flail again, sending us clattering forward.
“The Blight, eh?” the driver says, turning to spit a wad of red juice onto the flagstones beneath us. “What are you nice young folk gonna do in a place like that?”
“None of your business,” Bell retorts, and the driver chuckles. He doesn’t sound the least bit offended.
“What’s the Blight?” I ask Bell as we turn down a street hemmed by buildings of umber brick and topped by slanting tile roofs.
“A neighborhood,” she replies, watching the crowds flashing past with a strange expression on her face. Very quickly she dabs the corner of her eyes, as if surreptitiously wiping away tears. “There’s a tavern in the Blight. A meeting place.”
I look at her for a moment longer, and then I let the chaos of the city draw my attention away. It is a swirl of colors and movement: here a group of tall black women in bright orange and yellow dresses decorated with geometric designs haggle with a man in a featureless white mask who is selling spices and peppers from overflowing copper urns; there a group of shrieking urchins chase a waddling lizard into an alley, pelting it with stones; smoke rises up from the outdoor grill where a man with cinnamon skin turns a vast array of skewered meat and insects while a crowd waits impatiently. Laughter and curses and the bleating of animals swirl around us and quickly fade as we rush down the streets, passing ivory palanquins where veiled women lounge beside farmer’s carts piled with cabbages and knobby purple fruit.
“I’ve missed this.”
Bell’s voice is faint, barely a whisper. I glance at her but she’s still staring out at the swirling tumult of the city. She wasn’t speaking to me, so I don’t say anything in reply.
The road is crowded, but the other wagons and horses and litters give our rickshaw and the ornery bird a wide berth. After a few moments of watching the city I settle back on the bench, acutely aware that I’m pressed between two attractive women who right now hold radically different opinions of me. Deliah’s hand is on my leg, and I don’t know whether it’s natural or a perfume but her smell is heady and delicious. Bell is turned away, her arms crossed over her chest and her jaw clenched. I glance at Deliah and she smiles at me.
The city blurs around us as the bird picks up speed, but I can tell we have passed into a very different neighborhood. The chaos of the street market has vanished, and the few people I can see are hunched and furtive. There actually seems to be more activity recessed in the shadowed alleyways than out on the roads. The buildings here are older, cracks webbing the facades, and in some places entire structures have collapsed, spilling chunks of stone into the streets.
“The Blight?” I ask, and Bell nods curtly.
“You going to The Last Word?” asks the driver, not turning around.
“Yes,” Bell calls back, loud enough to be heard over the clatter of the bird’s talons as we race over the pockmarked streets.
“Well, then we’re here,” the driver says, yanking on his reins. I lurch forward, nearly spilling into where the driver sits as the rickshaw sharply slows.
There’s more activity in this area of the Blight – a few stalls and wagons have attracted crowds of customers, though it’s nowhere near as bustling as the market district we first passed through. They’ve been set up around a huge, rambling old building that sprawls like a sleeping lover over most of a city block. Random turrets – several of them listing dangerously – sprout in odd places from the topmost floors, and strange stone beasts crouch on the eaves, snarling down on the streets below. There’s a massive arched entrance up a short flight of stairs, the doors flung wide.
“What is this place?” I ask as Bell pays the driver. As soon as the coins clink in his hand he flicks his lash and with an indignant squawk the great cockerel jumps forward.
“The Last Word,” Deliah says, slipping her long weapon once more through the loops on her back so that the curved blade juts out over her left shoulder.
“A tavern,” Bell says, turning to face the decaying building.
“And what’s the clientele?” I ask dubiously as a figure in a tattered cloak stumbles through the doorway, clearly drunk despite the early hour.
“Adventurers,” Bell says, striding towards the rickety stairs leading up to the entrance. “Malingerers. Thieves. Dissidents. Revolutionaries. Charlatans. Swindlers.”
“Scum,” Deliah clarifies helpfully.
A ragged man with a rather feral look about him sidles up to Bell. “Dreamtime? Ashnic seeds? Dragonsmoke? What’s your poison, governess?”
Bell makes a dismissive gesture. “Get away from me, vermin,” she says, and without another word the man obligingly steps back.
“Rather rude calling him that,” I remark, and Bell snorts.
“His name is Vermin. And it fits him, believe me.”
I glance in surprise at the man, who is now moving in the direction of two flamboyantly dressed fops, both of whom look extremely out of place in this neighborhood. “You know him?”
“I do,” Bell says as she starts on the stairs.
“You’ve come here before?” I can’t keep the note of incredulity out of my voice. This doesn’t look like the kind of place Poz would approve of at all.
“There was a time I practically lived here,” she says as she reaches the landing and passes through the entrance.
I follow, blinking as my eyes adjust to the darkened interior. The space is vast and filled with two dozen tables, most of which are occupied by a startlingly diverse menagerie of humans and not-humans. A wave of laughter and loud conversation washes over us, and a pall of acrid smoke makes my eyes sting. Around a low table near where we’ve entered the tavern are clustered a group of small humanoids with skin the color of ash, long pointed ears, and preternaturally beautiful faces. Most of them are sucking on tubes that feed into a bulbous contraption squatting in the center of the table, smoke leaking out of the corners of their mouths. One of them turns to us as we enter and slowly waves, his face slack and his eyes unfocused.
The humans seated around the tables are almost as different from each other as they are from these drug-addled, pointy-eared creatures. There are fur-draped warriors with skin the color of milk, piles of bones and empty tankards scattered before them, and tall black men and women in elegant robes sipping flutes of some shimmering liquid. Sparks drift up from whatever the drink is, quickly winking out of existence. There seems to be no division based on wealth: men in tattered clothes rub shoulders with women in silken dresses. Shadowed alcoves have been built into the far wall, beyond the reach of the lanterns. Strange, angular shapes shift in the darkness, segmented limbs that bend and twist unnaturally.
Bell s
talks between the tables over to the long bar. The bartender, polishing a dented mug, watches her approach with a slight smile. His hair is long and falls past his shoulders; half is ink-black, half white, and each side matches the color of the tattoos coiling up his arms.
“Bellamina,” he says, setting down the mug and putting his elbows on the bar. “Good to see you again. Find what you were looking for in the Chemerik?”
“Found it, Mal. Lost it. Working on getting it back.”
“And how’s your crazy father?”
“Working on getting him back, too.”
The bartender blinks in mild surprise at this, and then his eyes widen as he catches sight of Deliah. “A lamias,” he breathes, running a hand through his flowing hair. Suddenly he pauses, his fingers still tangled in his black and white locks. “Wait. I know you – you came in here with a big lizard once. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right,” Deliah says, coming up to lean against the bar.
With some effort the bartender tears his gaze from her and looks at me. “And the alethian’s not here now, which means . . .” He swallows, the mild surprise in his face sharpening into a wary respect. With practiced grace the bartender grabs a tankard and fills it from one of the casks behind the bar, then slides the foaming mug in front of me. “On the house, friend.”
“I need to talk with Ferelin,” Bell says impatiently.
The bartender gestures at a table towards the back, where a few cloaked individuals are busy dicing. “Ferelin got nicked about a month back and is currently cooling his heels in the Maw. But Chev has his ear to the cobbles, if you’re chasing whispers.”
Without so much as a thank you Bell starts across the common room, angling towards the hunched gamblers. I take a hurried sip of my drink – a dark ale, earthy enough to make me think there might be some actual sediment floating around inside – and am about to follow her when I notice one of the strange shadows detach itself from the darkened alcove.
It scissors into the light with strange, jerky motions, its many-jointed legs clattering upon the wood. I’m frozen, the tankard halfway to my open mouth. This thing looks like the stuff of nightmares: a bulging abdomen, covered in bristly dark hair; curving jaws longer than my forearm, wickedly serrated; and a multitude of gleaming black eyes of varying sizes.
“Don’t stare,” Deliah hisses, but I can’t help myself. This must be one of the arachnia that Bell had spoken about on the road outside Ysala.
The spider-kin scuttles up to the bar not a sword-length from me, and then its back legs seem to fold beneath it so that part of its abdomen raises higher. A nub of black chitin that reminds me of male genitalia is thrust forward, almost brushing the bar’s countertop.
“What in the name of the –” I begin, and then nearly drop my tankard when a stream of silk issues forth into the air. As the gossamer threads slowly begin to drift down to the scarred wood one of the spider-kin’s smaller front legs jabs forward, and its tapered point catches the silk, swirling it into looping shapes. The bartender watches this carefully with narrowed eyes and then nods.
“One Cerilian nectar and a plate of fried locusts, coming up.”
What in the abyss?
The arachnia seems to finally notice my staring and shifts so that its multitude of eyes are locked on me. I can see myself reflected in the gleaming black depths of each of the little orbs, my expression one of shocked revulsion.
Again a streamer of silk shoots out of the spider-kin, more than before. I have to take a quick step back, as the stuff nearly webs my face. Meanwhile the spider’s front leg – or is it an arm? – flashes out again to manipulate the falling strands.
Is it . . . writing?
It is.
“What . . .” I read out loud in the drifting silk, the first word now clear as the arm moves on to the next. “The . . . fuck . . . are . . . you . . . looking . . . at?” The sentence scribbled in silk settles on the counter softly, and the spider-kin’s jaws make a clacking sound, as if to punctuate what it’s just conveyed. I swallow and look away, forcing myself to stare at the bartender. He looks embarrassed for me.
I start as Deliah’s hand closes around my wrist. “Let’s go find a seat,” she says, pulling me away from the bar.
My thoughts are whirling as she leads me to an empty table. The noise . . . the smells . . . the dizzying array of creatures . . . it’s all so overwhelming, and I feel like I’m floating even as I slide into one of the rickety wooden chairs. I can’t stop myself from staring as the arachnia picks its way back to the shadowed alcove where presumably others of its kind are waiting.
“You look a bit lost,” Deliah says, then takes a sip from a stemmed glass filled with a pale green liquid.
“Wherever I came from, I think there were only humans who walked and talked and drank ale.” A heavily armored thing with the lower body of a slug rises from a nearby table and begins to slide slowly towards the bar. Its head is entirely encased in a metal helm, except for where a pair of gray stalks tipped with lidless eyes rise from the top.
“That sounds like a far-away place. I’ve never heard of a land with only humans.”
I shake my head, trying to clear it. “You’ve come here before?”
Deliah runs a finger along the rim of her glass and then licks it clean. “I have. Once or twice.”
“For the company?”
“For this,” she replies, gesturing at her drink. “It’s made on Vel from the sap of bonewood trees. Only a few taverns in Ysala carry it.” Deliah picks up her glass and swirls the sluggish liquid. “Though it is true that The Last Word is more welcoming to other species. This city is mostly human.” She takes another sip, then glances at me. “I have to admit I’m curious about you, Talin. Tell me how someone could be so ignorant of the lands they are traveling through.”
“Well, that is indeed a story, though not a particularly long one.”
Deliah settles back in her chair, her drink cradled in her hand. “Entertain me,” she says, fluttering her long lashes.
My tale spills out of me, beginning with my awakening in the red waste and my time among the copper-eyed tribe. She arches a thin eyebrow as I describe the glowing doorway and how it carried me away from that dying world, but she does not interrupt. I recount my meeting with Poz and Bell, the kvah ambush, and our night spent inside the war golem repurposed as an inn – though I do omit some of the more salacious details. I’m just describing our approach to Soril when Bell flops down in an empty chair, frowning.
“Some of these villains,” she says angrily, almost slamming a bottle of blood-red wine and a few cups down between us, “would sell their own sisters to the silk houses.”
“Did you find out anything?” Deliah asks, turning to look at her. I can’t tell from the lamias’s carefully guarded expression what she thought of my story – whether I’m delusional or truly the victim of otherworldly sorcery. Perhaps she’s regretting choosing me back in the fighting ring.
“Nothing of any real interest,” Bell says, twisting out the cork in the bottle and then pouring a generous measure into the cups. “This Chev is a real blackguard – he knows about the glitter, and that the Marquis stole it out from under the Contessa’s nose, but he’s refusing to share any insights about why unless I hand over enough coin to pay for a week’s worth of fun in a dragonsmoke den. Apparently, the Red Trillium Trust has gotten quite the reputation the last few years, ever since the new Marquis replaced the old one. Even gossiping about them costs a small fortune.”
“Then we seek out the Contessa,” I say, trying the wine. Despite its dark color the taste is surprisingly light and fruity.
“I suppose so,” Bell says after taking a deep draught that nearly drains her cup. “Though I’m worried she’ll simply dismiss us – or worse, punish us for losing the glitter in the first place.” She’s quiet for a long moment.
This gives me the opportunity to ask her about something that’s been bothering me. “Bell, do you rememb
er the other prisoner with us in our cell back in Soril’s gaol?”
She blinks, as if her thoughts are returning from some distant place. “The blacksmith?”
“Yes. It’s good to hear you say that. I thought I might truly be crazy – the guard watching us claimed that he wasn’t there, that we were the only prisoners at the time.”
A flicker of confusion passes across her face. “There was something odd about that, actually. I didn’t want to watch you get led off to your death; I was awake, but turned towards the wall. I heard him beg for your ale, and you two talking, and then the guard came and got you. Soon after that I sat up and looked around, but you were both gone. I thought he must have been released at the same time as you.”
“He wasn’t.” A cold trickle of unease is working its way down my spine. “Who was he?”
Bell runs her fingers through her black hair, her brow furrowed. Then she swallows, and I could swear she almost looks afraid.
“A blacksmith . . . who loved ale. Vanishing like a spirit.” She glances over at Deliah. “Do you think it’s possible?”
The lamias shrugs, but she looks troubled. “It . . . could be. But why?”
“What is it?” I ask, my concern rising.
“Bolivan,” she says, tapping a finger on the side of her cup. “Patron saint of blacksmiths and brewers.”
“A saint?”
“Yes. Once he was just a man . . . but he found a way to become something more.”
“Like a god?”
She waves away my words. “No. Saints are . . . something else. The gods are eternal, unknowable, uncaring. If they were ever real, they seem to have vanished. Nobody bothers with them. But saints . . . saints are just like us in that they love and hate and desire, yet they are also immortal and wield great power.”
“How do they become saints?”
“There are different ways. Different paths. But the common thread is that they were all extremely accomplished before they ascended. The absolute pinnacle of something. Bolivan was considered the greatest blacksmith south of the Wall . . . though some say he was granted sainthood because he was the first to brew a dark stout beer.”