by Gregory Ashe
Chapter 39
Ilahe crouched in the deep afternoon shadows of one of those massive stone buildings. The taste of too-hot dirt and burning garbage clung to her tongue and throat, but she stayed in her spot, grateful for the pile of rubble—once part of the stone building—that hid her. Grateful, too, for the cool, solid stone against which to rest her back. It had been so long since she had been in a stone building; the Khacen houses, all of wood, were so different from what she had grown up in.
She had discarded the mask, and now her thick braids, still knotted with black mourning cloth, stuck to her sweaty face and neck. Sunset, the contract had said. Sunset, every day, someone would be at this building, waiting for her. Well, it was sunset now. The sun sat just on the cusp of the horizon, as though that angry, red orb would kiss the earth—and, with that kiss, send its fire raging across the land. Conflagration. This foreign sun, this sun that the rest of the world saw—it must desire nothing else. One fiery kiss to char the world to ash.
The sound of children—three small boys, their voices high and excited, then laughter—forced her to move. She could not bear to hear them anymore. It was almost time for the meeting anyway, so she crawled over the rubble, the broken stone bare and weathered. It was the first place she had not seen something growing, except for inside the houses themselves. Watchful sunflowers stood at the other end of the rubble, a screen for the hill that the monolithic building ran up against.
She clambered out between the plants; the gentle slope of the hill overlooked street after street of wooden houses, smoke from cook-fires rising up like a thousand grey feathers on the city’s back. The horizon deepened to the color of blood, a long gash that faded, through ocher and saffron, to blue-trimmed black. The open expanse, the infinity of nothing spiraling open above her, made Ilahe shiver. With quickened steps, she hurried into the building, eager to have something—anything—over her head again.
The dimensions of the building were strange. Doors two or three times taller than a man, and just as wide, led from one vast, empty room to another, all identical in shape. In some, elaborately carved windows, without glass or shutter, ran almost the length and height of the outer walls. Ilahe kept to the shadows in these; it would be too easy for someone from the street to glance her way.
Her footsteps echoed off the high ceilings, ringing in Ilahe’s ears like alarm bells. After she had toured the first floor, with no sign of anyone to meet her, Ilahe made her way back to the stairwell at the center of the building. Steps, spaced too far apart for even a tall man’s stride, ran up and up, and through the well in the middle, Ilahe could stare up until the steps converged on themselves in the distance. She had no idea how tall the building was, but it was taller than anything she had been in before.
Perhaps the solars’ temple in Osmir was this tall. Ilahe had seen only its dungeons.
The thought of gods brought a wave of anger, but also of caution. If she would not trust Hash because he was a man, and a whore at that, then Ilahe knew she should expect even less from men who had hired her to kill their god. Trust, though, did not matter. What mattered was money—enough money to begin her own plans, and, eventually, to kill her own gods. Men too, if they stood in the way.
For the moment, Ilahe removed her boots. Clutching them in one hand, she crept up the stairs in nothing but her footwraps, making no more noise than an eel slipping into water. More windows lined the rooms of the next floor, and even more the floor above. The dying sunlight filled the rooms, warm as blood against Ilahe’s skin. After she had searched the third floor, Ilahe stopped, put on her boots again.
Something seemed wrong. She had searched three floors of this massive building, but without a sign of life. For whatever reason, the Khacens avoided this place, although it could have easily housed hundreds of them. Better shelter than the shacks they lived in now. More importantly, though, Ilahe saw no sign of her employers. The contract had been most explicit, but they were not here.
Her skin prickled. The men in the Danma had known she was coming, had known why. What if they knew who employed her? If he were dead, or captured, then the journey had been pointless.
Worse, if he had sold out, then Ilahe was in even more danger than she had anticipated. Cursing herself to the blackness, Ilahe drew her swords.
With slow, quiet steps, she made her way back toward the stairwell. The fading red light cast deep shadows, and more than once Ilahe stopped, heart pounding, as she thought she saw something moving along the outside of the building. Just at the edges of the great windows, where carvings and statues of men and beasts glared out at the city. Each time, though, only stone met her gaze. The leather grips gnawed her palms as she clutched the blades tighter. She stepped toward the next doorway.
A slight puff of air, almost a breeze, brushed her face, and then suddenly the sound of bootsteps. Behind her.
Ilahe spun, slashing out with one blade even as she held the other to parry. A bald man, powerfully built and dressed in green and brown, stood behind her. Her pink blade, rainbows shivering across the salt-metal, skittered across the bald man’s chain with a shower of sparks. He stumbled back, surprise on his face. As he moved, though, his overly large sword, half again the size of any longsword Ilahe had seen, dipped toward the earth. The man’s wrist gave as a snap as it broke under the sudden weight.
The bald man let out a howl and dropped the blade. It struck the smooth stone floor with a crack, flat and echoing in the strange building. Ilahe thrust, taking the bald man in the throat, his blood dark against the pink metal. More bootsteps, and then a twang and thrum, and something struck Ilahe in the shoulder.
The blow spun her to the right, and pain exploded, hotter than the strange sun. Ilahe’s arm dropped; she could no longer hold it up, not with the pain blazing through her, but she still clutched her blade. Other sword held high, Ilahe stared at the newcomers.
Three men—all wearing chain and the same green and brown robes—stared at her in anger. They held no weapons; perhaps they had learned from their companions’ misfortune. As they moved toward her, though, Ilahe saw more men with bows in the room. The massive open doorway gave them plenty of room to shoot.
Ilahe cursed and moved toward the open window. The wall blocked her from some of the archers, for a moment at least—she could hear them moving. The three weaponless men advanced on her. With another oath, Ilahe dropped the sword from her good hand, reached under her shirt, and broke the purple disc cam-ad against her chest. It fractured with the sound of a single chime—not the cracking of glass she had expected it.
Purple shards pierced her hand and breasts, hot and cold at the same time, and hurting worse than any knife. The world slowed around her. Ilahe gasped, drew forth her hand, where blood streamed around the splinters of glass. The men were moving forward, but so slowly. The shards of glass quivered in Ilahe’s body, resonating in time to the stretched out chime.
In a heartbeat, they softened, like wax in summer sun, and slid inside her—Ilahe felt them running under her skin, burning and freezing at the same time. And then, suddenly, the world shifted around her. Everything flattened, taking on hard edges, as though the world were remade in crystal. Even the light—diffuse, dying—took on sharp lines, cutting through planes of shadow. The men’s face became shards and angles of flesh, the smooth folds of their robes became slabs of green and brown cloth, sliding as the men moved toward her.
The pain in her shoulder did not diminish, but Ilahe did not let it distract her. She sheathed one blade, grabbed the other from the floor. In that world of lines and edges, she moved faster than the men coming toward her. She stepped forward, swung the sword with one hand.
It caught the nearest man in the midsection. Flesh and bone parted like cloth and rotted wood. The force of the blow, magnified by the cam-ad, threw both halves of the man backward. The legs slid to a stop at the base of a window, while the upper half, letting out a choked gasp, flew through the opening, arms flailing.
Ho
rror grew on the other men’s faces, but too slowly. She ran one through, and in that space between heartbeats, severed the other’s head with a flick of her wrist. Arrows, their tips shining, the wooden shafts a series of clean lines, flew toward her, but Ilahe ran, and she outpaced them. Distantly, she heard the clink of metal on stone as they hit the wall.
Ilahe did not wait for the men to reload; she could feel the slices of glass within her, burrowing through flesh and blood, and she did not know how long the cam-ad’s power would last. In that world without curves, anything seemed possible. She ran to the open window and, without a second thought, jumped.
Air took on shape, streaming around her body in fine, almost invisible lines, and it whistled in her ears—low and too slow for nature. She hit the ground hard, and the shock rippled up through her legs to rattle her teeth. Somehow, she was still whole.
Shouts came from up the street. A small crowd, men and women, pointed at the severed body of the man who had fallen. More people joined them, and the shouting—filtered through Ilahe’s increased speed—gained strength. Ilahe paid them no attention.
She had been betrayed. There was no job for her here.
With the fragments of the cam-ad still worming through her, Ilahe ran, the arrow in her shoulder burning like a brand. Time to leave.