LEAVE ME! he thought. But they only grew stronger.
The creature withdrew its hand and tossed Menutee to the floor. It stood only a few footfalls away, its body a black cloud coiling about the air like a living nightmare. Menutee reached out to touch it, but orange veins of light exploded across its form.
The creature screamed as flames engulfed it. Seconds later, it crumpled in on itself like a piece of burning parchment, leaving nothing but a heap of ash upon the floor.
What have I done? Menutee thought as the atuan fell dark. He stared at it for a time after, eyes blank as alien power coiled around his soul. The voices were still there, tearing at his waning strength and sanity. But much of the power the rock had granted was already gone.
A torch appeared in the distance, accompanied by frantic voices calling out his name.
Menutee closed his eyes. What has happened to me?
Footsteps approached, frantic and haphazard. When Menutee opened his eyes, Belnius and half a dozen men surrounded him.
“Hold still,” Belnius said. “You’ve been bitten by the ice.” The boy handed his torch to a fresh-faced apprentice and sat down beside his master.
“Manga Tare Yor,” Belnius whispered as he placed his hands on Menutee’s chest.
Thank god he was given his dose, Menutee thought as sensation slowly returned to both his arms and legs.
Standing behind Belnius, two fresh-faced apprentices watched in awe as Menutee’s blackened flesh began to heal.
“What’s happened to him?” one of them asked.
“Be silent!” Belnius hissed. He withdrew one of his hands from Menutee’s chest and touched it to his brow. Moments later, warmth crept back into Menutee’s extremities.
“Stay still,” Belnius said. “The others are coming.”
A fur-clad man approached, his watery eyes darting between Menutee and the cracked atuan. “Is that it?”
Belnius nodded.
“And what of him?”
“Take him to master healer Charda,” Belnius said. “Once he’s safe, bring your excavators and several more apprentices. I fear the two we passed will be of little use to us now.” The fur-clad man nodded and signaled the apprentices to move forward.
Menutee tried to speak then, but he was still too weak and could only stare at the atuan as they lifted him onto the stretcher.
Belnius knelt down beside him and slowly whispered in his ear, “Now we hold the reins, Master. Now we hold the world in our hands.”
Menutee looked up at his servant and tried to smile, but Belnius shook his head.
“Rest now,” he said as he placed a hand over Menutee’s eyes.
Menutee felt warmth overwhelm his body as the world faded into darkness. But before he drifted into a dreamless sleep, he heard Belnius whisper one last thing into his ear.
“By the grace of the gods, the final atuan can now truly begin.”
1
(100 turns later)
M
ichael Carter squinted against the angry sun, his back aching with the weight of four gallons of precious water.
Before him, the Culver work line stretched far into the distance, it’s hundreds of sunburned backs anxiously awaiting the morning work call.
Another day, another coin, he thought. Exhausted, he raised a cracked cup to his lips and swallowed. The water tasted of steel and age. Piss, he told himself. But it would sell.
“Water here!” he cried, liquid sloshing against his back. Ravenous eyes followed him, sizing him up. Michael kept his distance. Only two days past, he’d seen a waterman torn to pieces for a mere cupful of brine.
“One coin a cupful,” he shouted.
A man approached. Like most Culver rats, he was shirtless, his teeth black and skin blacker. Michael watched as he fumbled a coin from his pocket.
“Clean?” the lout asked.
Michael nodded.
The man dropped a filth-encrusted coin into Michael’s palm. “Full cup now, you hear?”
Michael raised his dented cup to the cask’s rusty spout. When it was full, he handed it to the man and watched as he gulped it down.
Others looked on longingly as water splashed down the lout’s chest. Michael grew tense; this was how trouble started.
Finished, the worker belched and tossed the cup at Michael’s feet. “Thanks . . . water boy.”
Michael quickly picked up the cup and moved on.
“Water! Water I say! One coin a cup!” Sweat dripped down his face and back, precious fluids lost to the Culver scorch. It’s hotter than usual, he thought. A brutal, dry bake drawing sweat from every pore. And the sun isn’t even at its peak. He picked up his pace, shouting louder as he moved down the line. It would be best to finish within the call. Before the thirsty grew desperate and deadly.
“Water! Water I say! One coin a cup!”
The remainder of the morning passed without incident, and when his cask was almost empty, he ducked into a ruined hovel in search of shade.
It was several degrees cooler inside the ruin, but as his eyes adjusted to the dark, he realized he wasn’t alone. On the far side of the shattered room, a man lay half-conscious atop a pile of bleached hay.
Flies buzzed about the stranger’s head, plucking at his chapped and bloody lips. His eyes were wider than most men and his nose was nothing but a scarred hole.
A damn gob, Michael thought. Of late, they had been pouring into the Culver by the thousands: cast outs, thieves, whores. The metal city’s useless and unwanted. And like ghosts, they existed on the fringes of the cities, nightwalkers and pariahs whose twisted and grotesque forms justly garnered them their nickname.
He’ll be dead soon, Michael thought. The thirst ‘will see to that.
A single, bloodshot eye followed Michael as he stepped across the room.
“I pray for death,” the gob said, his voice but a whisper, “and what do I receive . . . but a boy?”
Tritan trash, Michael thought. He would never accept them. Not after what their machines had done to the Culver. And to father.
“That water you got there?” the gob asked.
Michael hesitantly nodded.
“Can I trouble you for two sips?”
Michael glanced at the cask. There was a mouthful left, enough to earn a coin or more along the line. But then he remembered the bloated dead lying in the sand, their swollen tongues and peeling lips frozen in eternal agony. It was a death he wished upon no man. Not even a gob.
“Please, friend,” the gob pleaded.
Michael emptied the last few drops into his cup and handed it to the man.
The gob quickly sucked it down. “Thank you,” he gasped.
Michael nodded.
“But as much as I appreciate it, I am afraid I’ll have to ask for more.” The gob pulled a crude-looking Tritan crossbow from the hay and leveled it at Michael’s chest. “And I’ll take whatever coinage you got as well.”
Michael cursed himself as he stared at the bolt. I should have known better than to trust him.
“Let’s go,” the gob said, gesturing to Michael’s pockets. His widened as Michael withdrew a bulging sack. “Well, well, well! What have we here?”
Michael tossed it into his lap. “This how you always get your coin?”
The gob smiled as he weighed it in his hand. “Is there a better way, boy?” He shouldered the empty cask, making sure to keep the crossbow leveled at Michael’s chest. “See you around kid.” And with that, he ducked outside into the blazing light.
Michael waited until his footsteps faded from the ruin before withdrawing another leather satchel from his pocket. “You forgot these, though,” he whispered as sunlight glinted off his real stash of coinage.
Within the call, Michael was back along the lines. And as he walked, defeated and forlorn, several past patrons perked with delight.
“Bet you’d fetch a coin for that cock now, eh brother!” a man shouted behind him.
“Come on, boyo . . . fetch us a c
up!”
“Fetch us a cock, more like it!”
Michael ignored them. But without the weight of water on his back, he felt incredibly vulnerable and exposed.
Get to the cistern, he told himself. Just get to the cistern.
He’d found it only three weeks earlier. A gift from the gods concealed on the outskirts of the lines amongst the ruins of an abandoned bathhouse. Since then, he’d been careful to keep it secret, visiting it only at night and when necessary. It won’t remain secret for long, though, he thought. There were too many eyes in the Waste, too many desperate men seeking refuge from thirst and sun.
More men eyed him as he walked down the line of sickly, skeletal shades who would think nothing of killing him for a sip of water. Michael picked up his pace. When he reached a bend in the road, he broke from the others and ducked into a crumbling ruin.
Inside, a few chairs lay shattered on the floor, crushed beneath what remained of the fallen, thatched roof. Michael went out the backdoor onto a cracked and weed-choked courtyard, where dozens of draba bird skeletons sprawled across the shattered slate. Probably got caught in an elemental, he thought.
The storms were everywhere these days — cyanide clouds, firestorms, sandstorms, ice clouds — leftover weapons from the Meridium War. And like animals, they preyed on warmth and flesh, always hunting, always killing.
Three more hovels surrounded the back of the ruin, all shattered and falling to pieces. Between each were tangles of fireweed and bramble. Michael approached the patch on the right side of the center building. When he was sure no one was around, he knelt down and pushed aside the weeds.
A metal cap jutted from the sands, another cask stashed close beside it.
Michael quickly pried the man-sized cap loose and looked down into the yawning cistern. It was enormous, capable of holding more than a thousand gallons of water. As he took in a deep, moist breath, his reflection stared back at him from the water’s mirrorlike surface. By the gods, I look like a ghost, he thought as the bucket shattered his image. When it was full, he hauled it back up and resealed the lid.
“Well, well, well,” a familiar voice crooned behind him.
Startled, Michael turned. The gob stood a few footfalls away, the crossbow aimed at his back.
“A funny thing happened this day,” the mutant said. “Here I thought I might get a taste of some real Culver wine, when don’t you know it, I’m told my coinage ain’t worth shit!” He tossed the sack of slugs at Michael’s feet. “So I got to thinking. If this fop slung me some fakes, perhaps he’s still got worth fetched somewhere on him.” The gob snapped his fingers. Moments later, an enormous brute emerged from the adjacent ruin.
The brute stood shirtless, revealing dozens of faded tattoos scratched across his sunburnt chest. In his hand, he held a bent and rusted dagger.
Michael stood up and gauged the two as best he could. The gob’s crossbow hand was trembling, probably due to thirst and hunger. He figured he could avoid the bolt. But then there is the brute to deal with.
“Let’s move it!” the brute spat. “Unless you want to gift some blood to the sands.”
Michael reached into his pocket and withdrew the sack of real coinage. But instead of handing it over, he kicked the lid off the cistern and dangled it above the hole.
“You drop that, it’s your throat, boy!” the gob hissed.
Michael squeezed the sack longingly. It contained over a hundred in coinage.
Three weeks’ worth of sweat and dreams.
The brute inched closer, the dagger leveled at Michael’s chest.
They will kill me either way, though, Michael thought as the gob glanced from the sack to the hole. Better this way than to give this lout some pleasure back in town.
Sighing, Michael dropped the sack into the cistern.
“NO!” the gob cried.
Michael rushed forward and knocked the bow from his gnarled hand.
Enraged, the gob swung at his face, but Michael ducked past the blow and used the mutant’s momentum to toss him headfirst into the black hole.
The brute lunged forward, slashing the air with his knife. Michael ducked just as it whipped overhead. When the brute rounded on him, Michael grabbed a fistful of sand and tossed it into his face.
“Fuccckkk!” the brute cried, shielding his eyes.
Michael took off through the ruins, crashing over shattered tile and rooftop. Get to your bag, he thought as he entered open desert. Just get to your bag. It was hidden in a patch of fireweed on the far side of a massive dune. Inside it, his meager possessions: a compass, water skin, matches, and clothes. Most important, though, his rusty dagger.
The dune was just up ahead, looming beside the line like some slumbering giant. Michael gasped, his lungs on fire, his legs cramping. He was almost there. He just . . . had to keep . . . running.
Michael plowed into the fireweed. The world spun dizzily around him as he swept his hands beneath the sand. When he finally found the bag, relief washed over him. But it was a short-lived sensation.
“Don’t move, kid,” said a calm, raspy voice, and it was close.
Michael froze. To his right, a lone figure sat atop a tumbled pillar.
Another goddamn plunderer? he thought.
“Drop the pack,” the man ordered. He withdrew a small, hand-sized crossbow from the folds of his filthy white cloak and aimed it at Michael’s chest. “Now, please.”
Michael let it fall at his left side a few inches from his feet.
“You the water seller whose been working the west end of the line?”
“Who wants to know?”
The man raised the bow and fired, grazing Michael’s cheek.
Michael swallowed. “What’s it to you if I am?”
The man quickly reloaded the weapon and leveled it at Michael’s crotch. “I’ve watched you creep the sands for two days now, disappearing into these surrounding ruins. And every time you come back with a full cask. So I ask again. Where is it?”
The brute rounded the dune. His face was beat red and his chest pumped wildly. “You!” he cried.
Michael looked at both the blade and the plunderer’s crossbow. If I run, this one will strike me down, he thought. But if I stay, they will both have their way with me.
Michael gestured over his shoulder at the brute. “Ask this one. He knows.”
The plunderer cocked an eyebrow. “And who, my dear, are you?”
“The last thing you’ll ever see if you don’t lower that bow,” the brute replied.
The plunderer turned back to Michael and smiled. “It appears there’s one too many snouts at the trough today, eh, boy?”
Michael tensed. He wanted to run. But before he could move, the soaking wet gob rounded the other side of the great dune and cut him off.
“You owe me blood,” the gob spat, his mouth a crimson ruin.
The plunderer shook his head and laughed. “Another guest? That’s unfortunate. I fear there is room for only one at this table.”
There was a sudden thwack, like the sound of a club hitting meat.
Moments later, the brute stumbled forward, an arrow shaft protruding from his stomach.
As the plunderer reloaded, Michael pushed past the stunned brute and ran back into the desert.
To the lines, he told himself as sand sucked at his feet. No blood can be spilled along the lines. He expected an arrow to slam into his back at any moment. But he kept running, sweating, gasping, and breaking every rule he had ever learned about life in the Waste. It wasn’t until a crossbow bolt cut across his path that he finally regained some semblance of his self and halted.
“Stand fast, lout!” a voice shouted.
Michael froze. To his left, an armored guard stood atop an ancient, sun-bleached platform, an empty crossbow in hand. Behind him, Michael could see a portion of the work line snaking off toward Cumlety.
Two more guards broke from the line, their crossbows aimed at Michael’s head.
Michael rai
sed his hands in the air as they approached.
“What’s your business running about like a fool?” the tower guard shouted.
The plunderer appeared behind Michael. But when he saw the guards, he quickly turned and retreated back into the desert.
“That one with you?” the guard asked.
Michael shook his head. “A thief,” he gasped, “stole my coinage and water cask.”
The guard laughed. “Get back in line, dreg. Before I have you sent to the Nagra Plains.”
“Cumlety justice. eh?” Michael shouted as the two guards took him by the arms.
“This is Culver, son,” the tower guard laughed. “The only justice here lies beneath the sands.”
Michael stood silent, baking beneath the merciless sun. Death was on the wind, a pungent, gassy stink that flowed into his nose like a river of waste.
He glanced at the ground beside the line. Dozens of bodies lay half buried in the sand, draba birds and baby scorps tugging at their rotting flesh. Will I be next? he wondered as he looked away in disgust.
The line of dead and dying inched forward like a silent funeral procession. Few would find work this day, and of those, only a handful would return alive. As for the rest, starvation and thirst awaited them on the lines. Even now, Michael could hear the familiar frantic shuffling of feet as yet another soul succumbed to the dreadful heat. When the dust cleared, silence would engulf the line. Death had arrived, and none wanted to draw its attention.
“Keep it moving, you slogs,” a guard bellowed atop a ramshackle tower. His rusty armor glinted dully in the sunlight, casting shards of golden light into Michael’s bloodshot eyes. Two more days of this, and I’ll welcome the madness, he thought as the boy in front of him stumbled.
“One foot for the Culver, one foot for your lives!” another guard shouted as he marched down the line.
The tower guard raised a dented brass horn to his chapped lips and blew a guttural call.
The line quickly stiffened to attention, every blistered lip trembling with anticipation. It was the first work call the Circle had put forth in almost two weeks, and no one dared to exclude himself from the selections.
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