by Ben Galley
The people of the Long Sands spoke of an old god ascending into the sky by these mountains, using them as steps to climb into the heavens to re-join his brethren. The Krass had a similar fable about the Dolkfang, the peak that soared above the capital Saraka. The One-Eyed God was supposed to have climbed to the peak to spend nine nights and nine days watching the earth below, learning its secrets and spells.
Nilith was clearly becoming delirious, dreaming of wives’ tales and dead gods. They were called dead gods for a reason: they were buried and forgotten to most. The enslavement of ghosts meant that man had built a new afterlife for himself, here in the Far Reaches. What use were gods when humanity had mastered death?
There she went again. Nilith hauled herself back to reality, eyeing the peaks once more. She would challenge them, but first she needed to rest. The deaths of the three men had brought no further followers, and they had seen few others on the road since. Their part of the Long Sands was largely untravelled. One had been a carpet trader on the back of a scarab beetle, taking the lesser roads to Hebus. Another was a camel-herder, eager to avoid the dubious-looking woman dragging a body through the desert.
The foothills of the Steps stretched for miles before the mountains thrust from the earth, almost vertically in some places. Gnarled rocks interrupted the rolling dunes, providing Nilith with a good number of nooks and crannies to camp and hide in for the next few days. She was not the only one who needed peace of mind; she could feel the weariness in Anoish, and how his muscles shook beneath her backside. His steps were shorter, his head lower.
‘Almost there,’ she whispered, patting his side.
By sunset, they had found a shallow cave to bed down in. At first it had seemed a simple cave, but they soon realised it was a kind of shrine. A hollow had been carved in the back wall. Within it, somebody had balanced two dozen stones in intricate, seemingly impossible piles. After sliding gradually from the horse’s back, seeing to his reins and the reeking body, Nilith inspected the stones with weary eyes.
There were three piles, each made up of rocks about the size of her fist. They defied the world’s laws, sitting upright on their sharp ends without falling. There was a fragile stillness to them that was mesmerising. They seemed frozen in the very last moment before tumbling, as if a mere breath could ruin their balance, and yet they endured. Nilith found herself holding hers.
‘What is this peasant fuckery?’ Farazar said from behind. ‘Some sort of witchcraft?’
‘It’s a work of art.’ She waved him away from getting too close. ‘And you’ll not disturb it.’
He muttered as he went back to the cave mouth. He crossed his arms and stared at the blazing sun that turned the western sky into liquid fire. ‘Work of pagans is what it is. Some desert cult that worships rocks.’
Nilith followed him at her own pace, checking that Anoish had settled down for the evening. The horse watched her with his mahogany eyes. Was there wisdom or ignorance in his gaze? She had a sneaking suspicion it was the former. Sprawling beside the beast, Nilith let the rise and fall of his ribs relax her. She sighed as she watched the ghost.
Farazar was sullen, but he did not mope. He had taken on a serious expression instead of the slighted child’s scowl he adopted so readily.
She let him stew, seeing to her leg and a fire instead. The wound had finally started to knit together but the pus remained. She spent some time wincing and squeezing the foulness out before redressing it with some cleaner cloth. She had no poultices, no plants to scrape together. Fresh water was the only thing for it. A scant dribble was all she could spare.
After collecting a bundle of brushwood from the surrounding crags, she built a small fire behind a stack of boulders and coaxed it to life. Once she had it crackling gently, Nilith leaned back and half-closed her eyes, feeling the rumble of the horse’s heart and lungs in her back. She summoned up the map in her head. Weeks she had spent memorising the desert paths. The Long Sands and Duneplains shifted constantly, but the nomads, tribes and traders kept the mapmakers updated as best they could. Nilith’s routes were based on landmarks that wouldn’t change. The mountains, for example.
She spent an hour trying to decide which to take. In the end, she left the decision to the morning. All she wanted now was sleep.
Although Farazar hadn’t tried any mischief in several days, it didn’t mean he wasn’t planning some. He spent the nights feigning sleep or wandering his boundaries while she drifted in and out of fitful, feverish slumber. Tonight, she felt the weariness dragging her down into a deep abyss. Inexorably, she fell, hard and fast into a dreamless sleep. It was short, but blissful. At least until she was rudely awakened by a fervent tapping on her shoulder.
‘Someone’s coming,’ came the whisper in her ear. Cold air fanned her face. Her hand flew to the dagger and in a blink had it pressed to his side.
‘Just try it,’ she whispered, voice thick with phlegm.
‘Someone’s coming, you idiot,’ he hissed again, moving away to be deeper in the cave.
‘Who?’
He did not answer. Anoish whinnied as Nilith pushed herself up, dagger in hand. The fire was still burning, but its light had faded. She could barely make out the figure emerging from the boulders scattered around the cave mouth.
‘Stay where you are!’
‘I mean you no harm,’ replied a woman’s voice, curiously deep. At first, Nilith thought it was the glow of the fire, but as the woman came a step closer, she saw the orange colour of her cloth.
The woman held up a wrinkled forearm, showing a stump cut just above the wrist. Nilith imagined a flat hand. ‘I only wish to share some warmth on this cold bitch of a night.’
‘The fire’s on its way out, I’m afraid.’
‘No trouble.’ The woman came forwards again, her hand delving into one of her pockets. Nilith flinched away, letting the woman see the dagger in her hand.
‘No trouble.’ Bending down, she gently threw a handful of blue dust into the fire. The flames danced higher, shining a bright green.
‘Clever trick.’ Nilith had a better view of her now. The woman’s face was a topography of wrinkles and freckles, as withered and as cracked as the desert. Like her eyes, her skin was nut-brown, lighter than the usual desert-dweller’s. Her skin hung in baggy jowls about her cheeks. Thin lips hid teeth like burnt fenceposts. She had little girth to her; her robe hung on a bony frame.
‘Tricksters are ten a gem, young miss,’ said the woman, her accent thick and southern. ‘What you need is a fuckin’ good healer, I think.’ She gestured to the stained cloth wrapped around Nilith’s leg. Already the stain of blood and pus had seeped through.
‘Know any?’
The woman momentarily looked to Farazar, still hovering in the cave. He folded his arms and pretended not to be involved. ‘Hmph,’ she grunted, before gesturing to a spot across from the fire. ‘Might I?’
Nilith gestured with the dagger and the old crone settled down into a strange crouch, hands outstretched to the heat.
‘Do you always greet kind strangers so fuckin’ rudely?’ she asked.
‘Apologies. It’s a new policy.’
A slow nod. ‘The Long Sands are full o’ danger. Dunewyrms. Sandstorms. Soulstealers. Slavers. Bandits. I wager you’ve seen some o’ the latter? That an arrow wound? Smells like shite.’
‘Where are you from?’ Nilith changed the subject.
The woman turned to face her. ‘South of here.’
Nilith hummed. ‘How far south?’
A shrug was her reply. ‘You’re pretty. Got all your teeth, at least. You’re of the city, I’d wager.’
‘Not originally, but yes. I am from Araxes. We both are.’
‘The City of Countless Souls? You and your shade?’
‘We call them ghosts in Krass.’
The woman laughed like a crow choking. ‘I like it.’ Another palmful of dust met the fire with a whoosh. ‘More accurate. “Shade” softens the blow, like a bloody sword wrap
ped in a fancy scabbard. Still fuckin’ steel beneath, right? Shade almost makes ’em sound human, instead of a monster.’
Nilith nodded, trying to decide whether this woman was wise or just plain weird. She had a mouth like a pirate, that was for certain.
‘Saw the great city once. Just its edges.’
‘The Outsprawls?’
‘Saw the city stretchin’ for miles. Beetle farms everywhere. Buildings like mountains in the distance. Bigger than the Steps. Far too big. Far too fuckin’ big.’
Farazar piped up. ‘A hundred miles of streets and buildings from there to the sea. More than a hundred from east to west. Greatest city ever built.’
The woman nodded to the ghost. ‘You go to bind him there?’
Nilith tapped her teeth in thought, wary. The old crone pointed at the wrapped corpse stashed a stone’s throw from the cave, downwind.
‘Obvious, int it? His body hasn’t touched the water yet. So what fuckin’ else would you be doing with it? Don’t worry ’bout me. Never owned a shade, never will.’
‘I am going to bind him,’ said Nilith, feeling the cold of Farazar’s glare. ‘In the Grand Nyxwell.’
The woman waved her stump at the cave. ‘Have you seen the stones?’
‘I have.’
‘And you know what they are?’
‘Works of art?’
She shuffled closer, and it took some effort on Nilith’s part to keep the dagger steady on her lap. The crone’s eyes had taken on a dark shine, gleaming like molten tar. Nilith tried her hardest to match her heavy gaze.
‘A grave, young miss. Something this world has forgotten. We used to spend our lives only once, see. From the moment our bitch mothers squeezed us out into the wide open, we’d thirst for life, breath in yer lungs, grab it with both fuckin’ hands.’ She paused to roll her eyes at her stump. ‘You’d never win, of course, but that was the point. The end of the chase made you work harder, try harder, live bloody harder. Cheat death until it came to catch you. People cared about life. Now we don’t care. Now you just knife a man when you want what he’s got. Now we care nothing to take what isn’t ours, and keep what we kill. Nah. We ain’t chasing life any more. Now we’re just chasing graves. Fuckin’ graves. The world’s died another kind of death, don’t you think?’
Nilith found herself sitting upright. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’
‘Is that so?’ Another rasping chuckle. Another sidelong look at Farazar. ‘Three girls, I had. Fuckin’ three. Taken by shite-brained soulstealers who marched them through the desert heat for four days. Raped them whenever they took a fancy. And when they were near the soulmarkets, they killed them cold in a gutter. Blundered it, though, so nobody would buy them. Save for me, o’ course. I tracked those murdering cunts down. I bought my dead daughters at discount fuckin’ prices, and then I set that slavers’ camp on fire and watched them all burn.’
Nilith wondered if the knife would be enough. ‘I can’t understand the pain you must have felt.’
‘Mm. Their coins are in the Nyx now. That’s all that matters.’
‘Well, I’m sorry,’ Nilith replied, putting more meaning into it than she expected, thinking of other mothers who had recently lost children. She thought of how those children lay under a pile of rocks on a hillside, where their ghosts would eventually rise and be stuck there until they withered away or were bound by passing travellers. Nilith winced.
‘No trouble, no trouble. Desert is a shite place. The sand carves you away, changes you in ways you don’t fuckin’ want. The more time you spend here the more you’re worn away.’ Those gleaming eyes searched Nilith’s. ‘Although there are a few ways to lighten that load. Stave it off.’
They sat there in silence for a time until Nilith bowed her head and began to rummage in a nearby sack. She withdrew a pouch tied with a strip of reed, and placed it between them. She could hear Farazar tutting. He had never been one for charity. Like most Arctians, he barely knew the meaning of the word.
What he didn’t understand was that this was more like a payment. Nilith’s blade had not taken the lives of her girls, but it had taken the lives of those three men. There was ill will that needed to be offset. A balance to be struck.
‘May the dead gods reward you for your loss,’ she said, speaking words she had only read in scrolls before now.
‘You are kind.’
‘And you are kinder.’
The ceremony abruptly over, the woman took the pouch and then gestured towards Nilith’s wounded leg. ‘As it happens, I do know a healer. A great fuckin’ healer.’ She raised a finger like a winter tree branch and prodded her own chest.
Nilith compressed her lips. ‘Of course.’ Another pouch hit the dust.
The crone shuffled closer, going to work. She sprinkled more dust onto the wound, a burnt orange powder this time, the colour of her clothes. The pain made Nilith gasp. She squeezed the hem of her sleeve between her teeth. Gnarled fingers poked at her, pressing it deeper and deeper into the wound. A tiny blade appeared, no more than a shard of black glass, and was used to cut away the rancorous flesh. Then the wound was set with a dark paste and sealed by twine and thread. When fresh bindings were wrapped around her leg, Nilith allowed herself to breathe. Anoish whinnied as she leaned against him once more.
The foul-mouthed crone had already gotten to her feet and was aiming for the night. Before the shadows and glare of the fire swallowed her, she raised a hand and made a closed circle with it. Nilith bowed her head once more in thanks, and then she was gone.
Farazar made sure they were alone before creeping forward, arms crossed and face a mask of disapproval. ‘What do you care for three dead desert girls?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Then wh—’
‘Orange cloth in the desert. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? No? She was a beldam.’
He thought for a moment before snorting. ‘A sand-witch? You’re even more foolish than I thought.’
‘You should have spent less time fucking and drinking and read a scroll every once in a while, Farazar. You know nothing of your country.’ Nilith closed her eyes for patience. The pain had begun to dim, at least. ‘A witch, maybe, but haven’t you ever heard of ma’at, as you Arctians call it?’
Farazar mouthed the words. ‘Life is round?’
‘Life is a wheel in the nomad dialects. The opposite of the idea of ba’at, a bound ghost. What goes around, comes around. A gift from the goddess Mashat when the Arc was just dust and dreams. You know her at least, right? She’s ironically the symbol of your precious Chamber of the Code, after all. It’s something they believe in Skol, but they call it shuld. It means balance, something Araxes seems to have almost entirely forgotten. I give the beldam gems for her children, and what I did to those men is paid for. Balanced out. She makes sure of it, and gives us good luck for the mountain passes.’
‘That’s what you get in the absence of civilisation. Pagan nonsense and superstitious shit-talk from people that don’t know any better.’
‘Suit yourself. But if you ask me, you got what was coming to you. Maybe ma’at does exist.’
‘Says the murderer and the soulstealer. Let’s see what it brings you, shall we?’
She didn’t rise to him, and overcome by frustration, he threw up his hands and stormed back into the cave. Nilith waited for an irritable clash of stones, pre-emptively burning with anger at the idea, but nothing came. Just some faint scuffs of moody pacing. They lulled her into a drowsy half-sleep, where the dying fire and rock walls were muddled up with arcs of splashed blood and gurning faces of pain. Her fingers felt sticky. Arrows hissed past her ears.
It was an intermittent sleep that took her.
Chapter 11
Doors
Nobody was more surprised than the banks when they realised the bond between master and coin still held true behind a vault door and a signature. Until then, for fear the Tenets were fickle and that ownership would pass to another who merely touched the coins,
half-coin fortunes were kept in one’s own possession. It took a brave master, one whom history has forgotten to record, to entrust a coin to a bank. No ownership was conferred. The bond seemed intuitive, keeping as rigidly to contracts and sigils’ marks as it did to physical possession. A new age of indenturement was thusly born: the age of banking. Five hundred years later, the banks watch over the coins of millions of shades, handle thousands of transactions, and preside over every Weighing of every noble in the Arc. And yet there is no Chamber of Banking to govern them. The banks are trusted because they follow the Code to the letter. Or, at very least, they appear to.
From a treatise on Arctian Economic Theory
‘Do you know the secret to torture, Tor Merlec?’
The pathetic whimper of a reply told Temsa that no, Tor Merlec did not know the secret to torture. It was to be expected. The tors and tals of the city were usually more concerned with private balls and dainty cutlery.
Temsa’s ‘cutlery’ was less dainty.
He reached into the case for another savage-looking hook, lying amongst the array of twisted knives and pincers. With his other hand, he used his handkerchief to dab away some of the blood and snot from the man’s bare chest and the velvet couch they’d repurposed into a table.
‘There was once a man in Araxes called the Butcher. Imaginative, I know, but what he lacked in names he more than made up for with his aptitude for prising information and apologies out of people. As it happens, he was the man who taught me everything I know about torture.’ Temsa paused to scrape his talons across the floor, making Merlec wince. ‘Though his price was high, he left me with one invaluable lesson. The secret, my dear fellow, is that the tortured, not the torturer, is in control.’
The tor’s wild-eyed look was one of surprise, as if he had endured the last hour needlessly. He murmured words made almost entirely of vowels. Consonants are hard to make without a tongue.
‘Or fuckih iyin!’
‘No, I’m not fucking lying. Because you can stop this at any time. Sweet release shall be yours, Tor Merlec. Freedom from pain. All you have to do is relent. I lost a leg learning that. What will you lose before you give in, hmm?’