Dark Ends

by Clayton Snyder

  To the Cailean he once had been. The man who'd crossed the sea and died, reborn sans purpose with an albatross upon his soul and a scar along his chest. A blemish to remind him things were never as they seemed. To remind him love was fickle if not masochistically compelling. What was it Bar had said? Once you let the devil in your bed there is no letting go. Once marked, always marked.

  "Ig tahn na'tuul." To Bar, the truth inside the madness that was Galska Nuul.

  To the world that Cailean had known. To the world that he had loved. The veil had parted that night in Drahl Muuz, in the fallen angel's arms, a dagger buried in his chest. The coin had flipped upon his resurrection and the truth of things was utter pandemonium. There was only madness.

  There was only darkness in this place.

  Angela Boord

  Angela Boord lives in northwest Mississippi with her husband and nine children, and writes most of her stories at the kitchen table surrounded by crayons and Nerf darts. Dragonmeat was born when, in the process of reading her kids a picture book about a knight slaying a dragon, she wondered, What do the villagers do with the dragon after the knight kills it? Do they eat it, or do they just let it rot? There aren’t any knights in this story, but it does attempt to portray a little slice of history in the Eterean Empire series, long before Fortune’s Fool, when dragons threatened a small island and people were starving.

  What does dragon taste like?

  That’s what people whisper to me in the dark, so no one else will hear.

  Does it taste like blood, all copper and salt?

  Charred and burnt, like ash in your mouth?

  Like chicken, some people joke.

  But dragon tastes like the sky. Like an empty sea, with nothing between you and the horizon. Like the wind lifting you up and setting you soaring.

  Dragon tastes like freedom.

  It began when a man caught me stealing figs in the market.

  I didn’t expect to be caught. I approached stealing the way I approached any other problem in my life—I studied it relentlessly. I would have used my Lyceum library privileges to make a review of the literature if there had been any. But unsurprisingly, the only scrolls I could find on thieving were philosophical treatises written by Eterean scholars debating each other in marble salons while stuffing themselves with roast meats and sugared pies.

  In other words, rubbish.

  What I needed was evidence. Hard facts. So, I spent hours observing street children filch apples and almonds, bread and onions--sometimes even honey candies, though those went only to the bold. It was far easier to stick to the mundane, the ordinary. If you were quick, you might escape if someone noticed you, but you were twice as likely to score a meal if no one noticed you in the first place, or if no one cared what you took.

  In this, I was fortunate. I was just another small woman with olive skin, ragged dark hair, and a cloak full of holes. Not tall or pretty, no scars or distinguishing marks. Just… ordinary. Nobody ever looked twice at me. And I never attempted to steal anything flashy or rare. I would much rather get away with an onion than rot in prison because I had attempted to steal some meat.

  But I couldn’t resist the figs.

  They were smuggled in on an illegal boat from somewhere warmer. The ones at the edge of the pile were soft and going bad. In a normal year, in any other place, they would have been fed to the pigs, and I could have had my pick without going to such desperate lengths.

  But this wasn’t a normal year, nor was it another place. This was Medeas, and everyone was starving.

  A crowd jostled around the stall, poor wives and the servants of the rich all pushing and shoving to get at the rare delivery of produce. In such a mess, who would pay any attention to a girl in a tattered cloak, lurking in the back?

  I darted through a gap between a big male slave and a large woman, both of them using their size to jostle smaller clients out of the way. But being small had its advantages. I shot into the middle of the crowd and grabbed a few squishy figs, then ducked under the table.

  “Hey!” the male slave yelled, lunging toward me. “Come back here with those! Thief! Food thief!”

  A cry rose as if the crowd had become a single animal—a hydra with hundreds of heads and arms. It swelled against the stall, despite the loud objections of the stall owner. I scuttled one way and then another, only to find my way blocked by more legs. The table wobbled, and figs spilled off the edge and bounced and splatted on the ground, releasing a sweet, spicy aroma that made my mouth water painfully.

  “The figs!” a woman yelled and threw herself down, scooping handfuls of fruit toward her. They were so soft and pulpy, they left a brown smear on the dirt, and the crowd paused for a moment, watching as this treasure threatened to be ground into a dusty paste. Then they all cast themselves down—scrambling for the spilled fruit, not caring whether they landed on a body or the ground.

  I caught the woman’s eye for the briefest of moments. Then a man smashed her into the dirt and pried the fruit out of her hands. More people landed on top of her, but even as she was being crushed beneath their weight, she struggled to lick the sweet, sticky mess from her fingers.

  I shoved my stolen fruit into my pockets and wriggled out from under the table in the opposite direction. The mass of the crowd had shifted, piling onto the spilled figs. Soldiers clanked down the street, and metal dogs on chains at their sides—Eterean machines, powered by magic, that would be unleashed on the crowd if they couldn’t keep the peace.

  I clambered to my feet with my head down, preparing to walk off in the other direction. But before I could take a single step, a hand grabbed my collar and hauled me backward.

  “Let go of me!” I shouted. “I’ve done nothing!”

  “So those figs you stole were nothing, were they?” The man who held me spoke quietly at my ear, his voice a strange counterpoint to the chaos—smooth and dark as Eterean silk.

  I thrashed, trying to fight myself out of my cloak, but he’d clamped his fingers tight as a vice on the collar of my tunic, too. If he was one of Granthas’s guards, I was done for.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said in a haughty voice.

  He laughed, more a movement in his chest than a sound. I wrenched around to look at him, preparing my plea of innocence, but the sight of him killed the words in my throat.

  He wore a cloak with a hood covering hair that was white, not blond, though he didn’t seem old enough for it. His skin was a youthful golden color, unmarred by wrinkles. And his eyes…

  I supposed they could be called hazel, but hazel wouldn’t have stood out in the darkness of a hood. They were a mix of green and gold and amber, tawny like a cat’s and with a shine to them, too, as if they would gleam in the darkness like an animal’s eyes. But the left was smashed at the corner, half-closed by scar tissue.

  His mouth curved upward, more like the feral lips of a wolf pulling back to show its teeth than a real smile. “Get a good look?” he said.

  “I—” For a moment, I felt ashamed of the way I’d stared at him. Then I swallowed my shame and fear and forced myself to be rational. I’d never get out of here if I lost my head. “Pardon, ser,” I said, in a voice I hoped sounded more polite than quavery. “I didn’t mean to stare. But you surprised me so.”

  “I imagine I did. But if I let you go, somebody from that crowd will think you’re getting away with their food. Or the soldiers will find you.”

  “Me? But—”

  “You underestimate the drive to survive. See what they’ve become? Animals. Just because they’re hungry. One of them will give you away.”

  “They could just as well accuse each other,” I said and met his eyes, stare for stare.

  “I’m doing you a favor,” he said. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before somebody follows us.”

  “They would have killed you, you know,” he said once we were out of sight of the market. He let go of me and stepped back, and I got a better look at him.

>   With his hair, face, and eyes hidden by his hood, he seemed to disappear in the plain brown cloak—not tall or short, heavy or skinny. Slaves and the very poor perfected that ability, but his simple, neat green tunic and brown trousers marked him as a freeman.

  I smoothed my own cloak as if I could ever make it more presentable. It was so full of holes it was barely a cloak anymore, and the long tunic I wore beneath it was hardly better. The red dye had faded until it was almost pink, and the wrapped leggings I wore under it were ragged and more brown than cream-colored anymore. But like him I was of the free class, and not desperate enough to sell myself as a slave yet. My free clothes didn’t make me stand out, so I continued to wear them with pride.

  “I thought I could get away,” I said, discarding my fiction of protest—which I could see was useless now. “Because the crowd was focused on the figs. I made a study of the apple cart, when we had apples. Unless there was a guard devoted to protecting them, the children who acted normally almost always succeeded in stealing an apple. It was the ones whose fear bested them, who couldn’t wait and then ran, who were caught. I kept track, in my notes.”

  He stared at me for a moment. Then he laughed. “You took notes?”

  “Well. I wasn’t going to undertake a risky venture like thieving without basing my strategy on evidence. That would have been suicide.”

  “Why did you risk the figs then? Didn’t you hear about the food riot down on the docks?”

  “I heard about the riots,” I said stiffly.

  “You heard how they were put down?”

  “By Granthas’s soldiers and his machines? Of course.”

  Granthas was the governor of Medeas, appointed by the Emperor in Eterea itself. He was the man tasked with protecting us, and he took his job very seriously.

  “So even after hearing about that massacre… you started your own riot by stealing a rotten fig?”

  He was right. I shouldn’t have risked it. Figs were much too rare. Everyone wanted one. But I wasn’t about to admit the real reason I had tried to steal a fig.

  I fluffed out my cloak and sniffed. “It wasn’t really a riot, was it?”

  “What would you call it then? A disagreement?”

  “You said it yourself. It’s the drive to survive. Aren’t we all hungry?”

  He watched me for a moment with a measuring look. Then he reached inside his cloak and took out a rectangular packet of undyed muslin. He unwrapped it slowly, corner by corner, revealing a piece of bread.

  He took a big, slow bite out of it.

  Saliva sprang into my mouth so quickly and intensely it hurt. My belly tightened in pain. I could smell it from here—that fragrant, yeasty perfume that made me want to cry out for want of it. I fought back the urge to rip the bread from his hands. When he opened his mouth for a second bite, I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Stop!” I shouted, putting my hands out.

  His eyebrows rose, twin arches a much darker color than his hair. Silently, he held the bread out, in a gesture for me to come get it.

  “And the muslin, too,” I said.

  “You can’t eat muslin.”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “Ah.” He rocked back on his heels. “I didn’t think so. A girl desperate enough to spark a riot by stealing a fig should have been eating it under the table, not saving it for later.”

  “Are you still going to give me the bread?” I asked.

  He held it out to me silently.

  I stepped forward to take it, then stopped. “Why are you so willing to give up a piece of bread? Is there a price attached? Are you an acolyte from the Dragon Temple, trying to tempt me away with you?”

  His hand remained outstretched. “I feel like I’m trying to tame a problem horse,” he said.

  “Forgive me, but I need evidence before I trust a man who just dragged me into an alley.”

  He lowered the bread. “And you’d believe me if I set you a price? If that’s the case, how about your time? Meet me at the Tavern-By-the-Walls tomorrow night.”

  I laughed out loud. “And you expect me to believe all you want is my time? I’m sorry, but there’s no evidence for that either.”

  “Well, if I wanted something else, I’d just take it, wouldn’t I? I could hold this bread up and make you beg like a dog.”

  “Beg like a dog,” I repeated, as if it were the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard.

  He eyed me curiously. “Wouldn’t you?”

  I wanted to say no, but I think he saw the truth on my face. I would beg, because the bread wasn’t for me. I flushed hot anyway, then pressed my mouth shut tight.

  He flicked his wrist and tossed the bread to me with barely a motion. I lunged for it, caught it in both hands, and fought the urge to drop to my knees and rescue the falling crumbs.

  “I’m not asking you to bed me,” he said. “You’re a bit of a scruffy pick-up anyway, aren’t you?”

  I flushed even redder. I had made myself scruffy on purpose, but it embarrassed me to be reminded of it. “Are you done insulting me?” I said.

  “I’m not sure how else I can reassure you,” he said. “Except by insults. If I spoke to you politely, you’d use that as evidence that I was trying to get something out of you. But all I want is for you to meet me at the gates.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to show you something. This isn’t the first time I’ve watched you steal food only to shove it in your pockets.”

  “You’ve been watching me?”

  That drew a real smile out of him. “You’re not the only one with powers of observation. I hang around the markets. I see what goes on. You’ve got light fingers. One might call you a professional food thief.”

  “There are lots of people on the streets who could be called the same.”

  “Most of them eat their spoils right away. But you… you’ve got willpower.”

  “Like you, do you mean? You’re not stealing food, you’re giving it away.”

  “I don’t need willpower,” he said as his smiled widened. For some reason, it didn’t seem like a human smile. It was more dangerous. More... carnivorous.

  “I’m not hungry,” he said.

  We in Medeas had been living under famine conditions for a long time. A few dry years, and the wheat fields withered, the grape vines burnt, the grass that the sheep grazed on died. But the drought couldn’t account for everything. There was money in the coffers. We could have bought our food from the mainland.

  But Granthas barred ships from entering or leaving the harbor. Our city had walls, but cliffs and the sea formed our real prison.

  Granthas had quarantined us because of the dragons. To prevent them from destroying Empire ships and disrupting Empire trade. To stop them killing Empire citizens.

  We were not citizens. We were only provincials.

  “How are you not hungry?” I said in amazement.

  “Meet me at the gates,” the man said. “If you want to find out.”

  He turned to go. He had an odd gait, shambling, like he was dragging one of his feet.

  “Wait!” I called. “How will I find you? What if I miss you?”

  He stopped and turned his head imperceptibly. “Just ask the barkeep for Frost.”

  When he had gone, I hurried home. Or to what passed as home.

  It was only a chilly basement room beneath a house packed as tightly with families as a roll of sardines. Above us, babies cried and children laughed and squabbled, and women fought with and loved their husbands, who hung around the plaza out front and played cards because with no ships, there was little work. The smell of frying oil always hung about the place, even though all anybody was frying were thin cakes of flour and water, sometimes stretched with sawdust and clay.

  The piece of bread Frost gave me might as well have been gold. But only a man whose stomach was full could think gold more valuable than bread. I knew better.

  I clattered down the stairs and fumbled the key out of my clo
ak, shoved it in the door, and disappeared inside as fast as I could. All the way back, I felt like somebody was watching me, just waiting to steal my food. I slammed the door shut and locked it.

  “Peri?” a weak voice called from a corner of the room.

  It came from a pile of blankets on the floor.

  “Papa!” I said.

  I ran to him and fell on my knees. He lay in a fetal position, his legs drawn up to his chest. Once, he had been a big man, like a bear to me. Maybe that had just been a girl’s perspective. But ever since That Morning he had shrunk. I couldn’t help thinking of the day he’d been struck down by his disease as a proper noun, though I suppose to the rest of Medeas, it had been a normal spring day—pleasant, blue-skied and cool. For us it marked the division between life as it was and our new, topsy-turvy existence, in which people said he’d become a shadow of himself. But a shadow was wispy, filmy, ethereal as air. My father was still corporeal, but he had bent and withered like a tree dying from drought.

  His mouth drooped on the right side. When he said Peri, the sound came out mushy and reedy. He couldn’t lift his right hand to eat, to comb his hair, to wash. When he tried to walk, his right foot gave under him, tumbling him to the floor.

  “What happened?” I said. “Did you try to get up by yourself? Where was Yula?”

  “Yula,” he said, confused.

  “The girl above,” I said. “I gave her a bowl of noodles so she would check on you.”

  My father’s face was pinched against the dirt of the cellar floor, but now his brows cleared. “The girl,” he said. “Left. Can get up myself.”

  “Dammit,” I said, getting my arm underneath his. “You know you need help. Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “Peranza. Watch. Your. Mouth.”

  Sometimes when our roles went back the right way, it made me want to cry. “Yes, sir,” I said. I pulled hard on his arm, dragging him up. “Onto the bed again with you.”