The Dew of Flesh

by Gregory Ashe

  Chapter 50

  “Come on,” Abass said, tying the last knot of the dew pouch. “You ready?”

  “Just a moment,” Fadhra shouted from down the hallway.

  Abass shut the door of his room and turned toward the landing. The Sleeping Palaces; tair fend, it was so obvious. Of course Abass wouldn’t be the only one to use the Sleeping Palaces. Even if most people were too afraid—or respectful—to enter the Palaces, there were always people who had no fear, or respect, of the mortal or the divine. Abass was starting to realize that the eses might fit into that group.

  As Abass reached the landing, Qatal sprinted up the stairs, his movement only visible because of the dew coursing through Abass’s veins. The handsome blond man came to a smooth stop in front of Abass, but blood and ash stained his cheeks.

  “What happened?” Abass asked, his heart pounding. “Isola?”

  “I’ve checked the other holds,” Qatal said. “I—” He stopped and swallowed. “I didn’t find her.”

  With the dew racing through him, and with the fury it brought, Abass barely kept himself from striking Qatal. “You bastard,” Abass growled. “You were supposed to take me with you.”

  “I can’t keep putting you in danger,” Qatal said. “This is my responsibility; if something happened to you, Isola would never forgive me.”

  The words sounded strange to Abass. She still cared about him? After everything that had happened? It seemed madness. The fury of the dew drove those thoughts away, and Abass, anger growing, shoved Qatal.

  “I’m not your responsibility,” Abass said. “She’s my sister, and I’m going to go with you, by the Father, whether you like it or not.” His hands were shaking with anger, and Qatal’s hard, blue eyes did not make him any calmer. Drawing a deep breath, Abass tried to control himself. It was the dew that made him act this way. Only the dew. “Lucky for you,” Abass said when he thought he could speak without shouting, “I’ve figured out someplace else we need to check.”

  Fadhra emerged from the other hallway, still all in black, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. “Where have you been?” she said.

  Qatal glared at her. Fadhra walked over and wrapped one arm around Abass’s waist.

  “Where?” Qatal asked.

  “The Sleeping Palaces,” Abass said.

  Qatal ran one hand through his hair. After a long moment he nodded. “You might be right. The type of people who trespass the Palaces . . . I don’t know if anyone would notice if they went missing. If they chose the right Palaces, they could fortify them with no one being the wiser.”

  “Which Palaces?” Abass asked.

  “Father take me if I know,” Qatal said. “There’s one in Old Truth. A bad enough area that the temple hasn’t sent anyone to dedicate the Palace in a few years. Anyone wandering around there would be easy to dispose of, and the gangs could be bribed to keep people away. Perhaps one or two other Palaces I can think of, but most of them are too close to residential areas. Too great a chance of being seen or overheard.”

  Abass nodded; he knew the gangs that worked Old Truth, and, like any gang of thugs, all of them could be bought. Old Truth seemed like the perfect spot. “Let’s start there, then.”

  Fadhra squeezed him again, the curve of her breast pressing against his side. Lust flared again. Abass crushed it down, breathing deeply, and pulled away from Fadhra. Later, when there was time, he would let the desire overcome him; until then . . . He pushed the thought away. To judge by Fadhra’s breathing, by the look of disappointment as she stepped away from him, she had similar ideas.

  For a long moment Qatal stared at them, as though just now realizing they had been touching. He shook his head once and hurried down the stairs ahead of them. “Hurry,” he said.

  Squeezing Fadhra’s arm once, fingers practically burning at the feel of her flesh through the thin cloth, Abass turned and ran down the stairs. He needed a channel for the dew, something to direct it. Qatal had left the front door open, and Abass followed him outside.

  It was late—the early hours of the morning, Abass imagined, although with the dew in him, he felt no fatigue, saw no darkness. The stars above shone against the broad, purple-white expanse of sky that the dew-light revealed, but down below, in the street, it was as though they stood in daylight. The colors of the mural across the street—a garish representation of a naval battle, done in clashing pastels—were unaffected by the dew-light.

  Fadhra closed the door behind her, and Abass looked at Qatal. The blond man stood with shoulders slumped, dark circles under his eyes, but he sprang into the purple expanse above without a word. Abass followed. They flew through the air, south and east, into Old Truth. The changes below them were obvious: fewer buildings bore murals, and those that did were chipped and faded. Paint peeled from rotting boards in long strips or, in many places, had been worn away by time and the perpetual summer sun of Nakhacevir. Where the streets near Maq’s house had been empty at this hour, Abass saw groups of men, and occasionally women, gathered in the alleys of Old Truth.

  The Sleeping Palace surged up ahead of them, a slab of darkness against the dulled colors of Old Truth. No lights shone in the vast windows; no one moved on the balconies. Abass could see no sign of ambush in the ornate stone facade, although, better than anyone, he knew how many hiding places the ornate stonework concealed. He landed on the roof of an inn with the crack of slate.

  “Distracted?” Fadhra asked with a grin as she landed silently next to him.

  Abass rolled his eyes and did not answer.

  “Well?” Fadhra said, turning to Qatal.

  “No separating this time,” he said. “We almost lost you in the hold. This time we stay together.”

  “That will take forever,” Abass said. “Maq only gave us two days.”

  “We stay together,” Qatal said. “And we move fast.”

  Abass shook his head, but kept silent. He didn’t mind keeping an eye on Qatal; the bastard had betrayed his own wife—Abass wouldn’t put it past him to betray anyone else who got in his way. Without a word, Abass launched himself toward the top of the Sleeping Palace.

  In a matter of heartbeats he landed, skidding for a few paces across the unnaturally smooth stone of the Sleeping Palace. He had never stood on the roof before; there were no obvious points of access, and it seemed dangerous. As he stood atop the Palace, though, Abass realized again how utterly strange the buildings were. No seams showed in the stone below him, no place where stone met stone, or where mortar peeked up at the sky. It was all one massive piece, as though pulled from the earth as a whole. It was impossible and terrible, and yet somehow it was there, beneath his feet.

  Fadhra and Qatal landed quietly. “We’ll start at the top,” Qatal said, “since Abass decided to bring us up here. Stay within sight.”

  He moved to the edge of the roof with that strange walk of a Renewed and dropped off the side without a sound. Fadhra and Abass moved to join him, but something caught Abass’s eye. A shadow moving against the white horizon.

  “See that?” he asked.

  “What?” Fadhra said.

  “Someone jumping,” he pointed, “over there.”

  “Tair fend,” she said. “It’s probably Serhan again, or Maq, or Eyl. Now hurry up. He’s already down there.”

  Abass shrugged and allowed her to pull him to the edge. They dropped into the night below, and Abass drew on his dew, letting it speed up his body so that everything seemed to slow around him. A broad balcony, without balustrade, jutted out from the building a good twenty feet below. Abass and Fadhra landed kneeling, side by side, and with the dew in him, Abass watched the twin clouds of dust slowly spiral up around him as he hit the stone.

  Sprinting forward, Abass let the dew recede as he entered the Sleeping Palace through a vast opening in the stone. To anyone without dew, the vast open gallery of windows would have been lost in shadows, but to Abass it was as bright as day. Qatal waited just inside the empty gallery, a frown marring his handso
me features, and he turned and ran with the speed of a Renewed into the next room.

  Fadhra at his side, Abass followed, letting the dew give him speed and endurance. They ran through room after room—spacious, proportioned for something two or three times Abass’s size, and every room completely empty. A quick race through the upper story revealed it was completely empty. Abass’s heart sank.

  Qatal brushed back long blond hair and frowned into the dew-light. After a moment, face grim as death, he ran toward the stairs. Abass and Fadhra followed. Room after room, floor after floor, they followed the former lap-esis through the vast, echoing chambers of the Sleeping Palace. With each empty floor, Abass lost hope.

  Perhaps halfway down the stairs, as they prepared to emerge onto another floor, the sound of stone on stone reached Abass’s dew-enhanced hearing, and he slid to a stop. Qatal paused, his strange grace letting him come to a complete stop with a single step, although Fadhra had to take a few silent paces before she could halt herself. Qatal glanced over at them and, at Fadhra’s single nod, continued forward, his steps almost inaudible even to Abass’s hearing.

  Abass followed behind Fadhra, heart pounding like a hummingbird in his chest. The frantic excitement of the dew was boiling over into bloodlust, into a fighting rage that Abass recognized, however dimly, as something rooted deep inside him, below consciousness and civilization, where whatever was animal in him still lurked—a determination to kill or be killed, no matter what the cost.

  His hummingbird-heart practically burst free of his chest when he entered the next room behind Fadhra. Bodies, arranged in piles, filled the enormous chamber. Even stranger, though, were the twenty, perhaps thirty people—men and women, children and the aged—who hunched over the bodies. Bodies that had been carved and sliced with surgical precision. The stench of blood and bile, clear, if somewhat stale to Abass’s enhanced senses, struck him as he drew breath. His heart pounded so that he thought he would pass out.

  One of the men closest to them looked up. Sunken, half-closed eyes. Wasted flesh. Wounds like dark holes in his chest and side. Skin the color of granite.

  Wights.

  It rose to its feet, its strange, stone-colored boots rasping, stone against stone, on the floor. At the sound, every other wight stopped feeding and turned to face the three humans.

  “Father take me,” Qatal said.

  The click of stone on stone, repeated a dozen times, was the only answer. The wights blazed toward them, faster than Abass remembered them being. Qatal leaped into the air and came crashing down in the middle of a knot of wights, the crack of stone echoing through the room as he landed.

  Abass could not pay him any attention; the wights moved too quickly. Abass dashed forward and caught the closest wight with his shoulder. It was like slamming into a pillar of stone. With the dew in him, though, Abass felt the creature’s chest cave beneath him, even as the shock of the impact traveled up Abass’s arm and rattled his teeth.

  He ducked a wight’s outstretched hand, ripping his dew forward, but even with enhanced speed Abass still found himself barely staying ahead of the wights. They had fed so recently, their speed matched his, and he could feel his heart beating like an Istbyan drum—his dew was close to running out. Abass still yanked it forward, not willing to let himself slow for a second.

  Twisting, Abass brought his arm down hard across a wight’s elbow. The limb cracked and fell beneath the below. Abass ducked the wight’s remaining arm and kicked the creature in the chest, sending it staggering back and out one of the giant, open windows.

  Using the force of the kick, Abass flipped into the air. He landed behind a pair of wights. Still slamming the dew through his veins, Abass grabbed each wight by the head and slammed them together. Their skin and hair, rough stone, cut his hands as he slammed them together again. Great chips of stony flesh tinkled to the ground, and he felt the head of one wight loosen. Gripping the stony head as tight as he could, pushing away the pain as it cut deep into his palm, Abass wrenched the head loose. The wight’s body toppled to the ground, sending cracks rippling through the seamless floor below.

  Head still in one hand, Abass danced back, but too slowly. The wights were moving more quickly, and a crowd of them had almost surrounded him, pressing him toward another of the open windows. Stalactite fingers raked through cloth and flesh with ease, and only Abass’s dwindling speed kept their talons from reaching vital organs. Blood, warm and stinking, ran down his side, and the scent of it seemed to drive the wights wild, for they scrambled toward him.

  Pain blazed in his side as Abass felt the dew sliding away. He gripped it as best he could, forcing it through his veins, but—unlike the resistance he had felt near the strange fires in the hold—this was different. It was like trying to draw water from an empty well. The wights pressed closer, suddenly moving faster and faster. Abass stumbled back, swinging the stone head to keep them away, grateful when he heard the crack of their claws breaking.

  He stood almost in the corner of the room, and the wights pressed in on him. Drawing the last of the dew forward, Abass kicked off the wall behind him into the air. Razor-sharp claws tugged at one leg, a slash of pain, but Abass just pushed off one of the wight’s heads—grateful, for once, for their stability—and hit the ground rolling.

  Coming to his feet, Abass ripped at the pouch of dew at his side. Shadows, thick without the dew to give him light, hid much of the room. Qatal spun between wights, the crack of stone echoing through the Palace as he landed blow after blow, but his efforts did not seem to stop the wights—only slow them. Fadhra stood in a circle of wights, her arms blurring to Abass’s unenhanced vision as she swung some sort of weapon. Clouds of dust and stone chips filled the air around her.

  With their enhanced speed, the wights were almost on Abass, tearing great gouges in the stone as they raced toward him. He ripped the pouch open and grabbed a single cube of dew before the pouch slipped from his grip and fell to the floor. Abass popped the dew in his mouth. The burst of rich, heavy dew against his mouth as the cube dissolved seemed to take forever as the wights raced for him. It trickled down his throat, impossibly slow, as the first wight reared up, one stony hand blurring toward his face.

  The dew blazed to life inside him. Abass ducked and let the wight’s swing carry it off balance. He brought his knee up, caving the creature’s stony chest in, and slammed the creature back into the mass of wights. Dew, fresh and plentiful, gave him speed and strength again. The twilight-noon of the dew pushed back the darkness, revealing the press of wights. The statue-like faces surged forward, pressing around Abass, their grey talons reaching for him.

  He ducked and spun, faster than the wights now, and added the force of his movement to his next punch. With a crack like thunder, Abass’s fist drove completely through the wight; shards of stone clattered to the ground. Abass drew back his hand, disgust rising under the throbbing of the dew-inspired bloodlust. Spiderweb cracks spread along the wight’s waist and torso, and with a series of audible pops, the creature’s upper body broke free and fell to the ground, leaving the legs fixed in place like the remains of a long forgotten sculpture. The wight’s head and torso broke into large chunks and slid across the dusty floor, coming to rest against the piles of bodies.

  Light caught Abass’s eyes, and some of the wights turned as well, their grey, glazed eyes seeming to follow his gaze. Men with torches stood at the entrance to the room. Men with chain coats over green robes. Eses. From behind them, moving with the impossible grace of a Renewed, came a tall, well-built man with hair like polished copper. The wights paused, turning at the presence of so much life. Fadhra’s attack slowed, and Abass saw, out of the corner of his eye, that she was using two stone wight arms as clubs.

  “Tair bless you, Qatal,” the copper-haired man said. “I should have known you were behind this.”