by Devin Madson
The question rang into a room of quiet whispers. Eyes still watched from all around, but I no longer cared.
Tor clenched his jaw, glaring at me. “I would do whatever it took to save our people.”
“That is a very… Gideon thing to say.” I ran a hand along the regrowth sprouting from my scalp. “Perhaps it is too much, Tor, perhaps it is too late and there is no saving us, no going back.”
“Then you support Gideon’s plan?”
“No! No, this is not our land, these are not our people.”
“Then what? You cannot tell me the great Rah e’Torin would rather just lay down and die, would let the Levanti just lay down and die? Where is your pride? Where is your honour?”
“You ask me to commit atrocities against my own people and then talk to me about honour. If I did what you asked, our hearts would be so heavy upon Mona’s scales that our souls—my soul—would be lost forever in the darkness.”
He slammed his fist down again, even harder. “The gods have abandoned us, Rah! They have let the city states hunt us, have let them poison our leaders’ minds, have—”
“If they have abandoned us it is because we were no longer worthy. We abandoned them first.”
Tor’s jaw dropped. The whole kitchen was silent but for the crackling of fires. Eyes shone in the gloom.
“And so that’s it?” he said, recovering from his shock. “We are not worthy and so you will abandon all hope? Will you stay here with them?” He pointed at the watching Kisians. “Perhaps stay for an empress who can’t even understand what you’re saying? Who will never let a barbarian like you so much as touch her hand, let alone her—”
Exhausted rage surged and I threw my soup bowl at Tor’s head. Most of the remaining liquid splashed onto the table, but enough hit him in the face to leave him gasping as the bowl struck his forehead. It fell, smashing into tiny pieces on the stones, but before remorse could hit me, Tor did. Dripping soup, he lunged over the table and swung. I was too close to escape his fist and it caught my ear, toppling me back onto the stones.
The silence erupted into shouts. Cheering Kisian faces filled the smoky gloom behind Tor, sitting on my chest. Pain sparked white bolts of lightning as he clutched his hands around my throat. “I believed in you! You are the only one who can fix this. Can save us. And you won’t even try!”
His grip on my throat tightened and his snarling face swam. After running away from Whisperer Jinnit, I had lain down beneath the hot sun prepared to die for my shame, but the thirstier and hotter I got the more alive I had felt, the urge to live infusing me. The same determination overrode all the guilt and shame Tor had thrown at my head and I dug my fingernails into his arms, drawing blood. He yelped, and when his grip loosened, I ripped his hands from my neck.
“Stop this,” I rasped, throat raw. “I know you are hurting. I know you want everything back the way it used to be, but—”
He lashed out, but I slapped his hand away and bucked him off into the forest of legs.
“Listen to me, Tor!” I staggered to my feet. “This is not the way. This is not—”
His fist struck my jaw and I reeled back. The faces in the smoky blackness spun and I lost balance, falling into them as blood filled my mouth. The ringing pain in my skull spread down every limb as I landed against something hard, a song of cracking wood and smashing ceramic booming like thunder over the Kisian cheers. And through the chaos lunged Tor, his hands grasping toward my neck like desperate talons. His hair hung around his twisted face and he seemed to have run out of words. He tightened his grip around my throat again and as the room darkened, he was all I could see, spit glistening on his lips and his bared teeth as he squeezed his thumbs hard into my neck. I couldn’t remember gripping his wrists but I held them now, my forearms trembling to hold back the force of his anger. Every breath shortened to a gasp. My vision faded to just his wild, staring eyes, and tasting death I knew a moment of peace. Nothing would matter anymore if I died. Except that I would die dishonoured.
Blood roared in my ears like crackling scrolls as Mona loaded my deeds upon the scales.
I tried to push him off, to lock my elbows and force him back. To tear at his skin. To kick and thrash and slam my knee into his body again and again, and still his rage held him firm. Light was fading.
Tor’s fingernails scored my neck as he was wrenched away, and I rolled onto my side sucking agonising breaths. Words swirled around me, no longer cheers but upraised shouts. Someone gripped my shoulder. The captain’s face appeared, concerned lines marring his brow. They vanished as I blinked blearily and he let me go, calling something to his men. More words whipped around me like a storm. More faces. More noise. Water came but I could not drink it. Wine, but I would not touch it. Even air hurt like knives. Tor had brought me all too close to the darkest of futures.
The boy started to laugh.
I turned my aching neck. He stood close, blood smeared on his hands and manic glee brightening his eyes. “Do you hear that?” he said, gesturing to the soldiers around us. “No, of course you don’t. Well, I’ll tell you, great Rah e’Torin, I’ll tell you what they are saying.” He pointed up at the ceiling. “Your empress has fucked you after all. She thinks you’re Emperor Gideon’s brother and has bargained you as security. But don’t worry, they’re only interested in what fee you might fetch.”
He took a step toward me, but one of the soldiers thrust out an arm to bar his path.
“It’s the empress Grace Bahain wants. If he marries her he won’t even have to wait for Gideon to consolidate power, he can just get rid of him as soon as he’s not useful anymore. Well? What’s your plan now, last great Sword of the Levanti?”
Knowing nothing of what Tor had just said, Captain Nagai clapped his hand on my shoulder and once more offered me a bowl of wine. This time I took it and his face relaxed into a smile. A few of his men laughed as he glanced expectantly at them, the ease so forced they must have thought us truly naive.
“My plan,” I said, unable to draw my imagination away from a scene in which hundreds of Levanti lay slaughtered, Gideon with them, “is not to run when I can help. It is not my place to judge, only to fight for my people. Even those who have done wrong.”
And before he could retort, I dropped the wine bowl and punched Captain Nagai in the face. The man reeled back with a shocked cry, opening space around me, space in which I ripped my knife from my belt. The sharp blade slit skin as I pressed it to my own throat. Every soldier in the dimly lit kitchen froze.
“Tell them it is not dishonourable for me to kill myself,” I said. “Tell them I demand to be taken to the empress, or I will bleed out here and they will take the blame for the loss of the emperor’s brother.”
11. CASSANDRA
Bile splattered into the bowl, leaving me spent. My limbs trembled and my stomach cramped, pain the only reason I knew I was in my own skin.
“Nothing is taking,” the Witchdoctor said, a slight frown marring his sculptured brow. “I am not yet able to make sense of this.”
“I think that’s enough for today, Master,” Kocho said, and his concerned face swam before me as I looked up from the bowl, damp hair sticking to my face. “You’re pushing her too hard.”
“I am well aware of the factors limiting the fortitude of the human physiology, Kocho.”
The old man’s brows knitted and he disappeared from view, leaving me staring at the blurry contents of the room. I had lost track of how many times I’d been pulled free of my body and put back that day. On its own the sensation might have been bearable had I not also temporarily inhabited a number of other bodies. The corpse had been the worst, its stiffness constricting and the taste in its mouth like—
Ash. It’s weird, isn’t it?
I had no energy to even think a reply. Until today, She had spent more time inside dead skins than I had.
Conversation continued overhead.
“Make a specific note about Saki’s inability to move one of Deathwalker Thr
ee’s souls into a corpse and have it remain,” the Witchdoctor was saying. “Given that is the reason why a Deathwalker is so called, I find this development both fascinating and frustrating.”
A quill scratched as I swallowed the urge to puke again.
“I spoke no word of blame,” he went on after a pause. “The frustration is born from the illogical nature of such a situation. Why is it possible for a Deathwalker to pass one of its own souls into a corpse and let go, but you are unable to assist the transfer manually?”
More scratches upon the paper. The room had finally ceased spinning.
“That is possible. The connection to you is stronger than the connection to the corpse. If that is so then we must find a way to strengthen the bond to the host body.”
“When I said I wanted a body of my own,” She said through my lips, “I did not mean I wanted a dead one.”
“As you see, Kocho, Deathwalker Three is uninjured.”
The old man appeared once more. “That’s the other soul, Master.”
“You can tell the difference?”
“Yes, Master.”
“Be sure to make a note of that in your file.”
“Yes, Master.”
Ignoring Her comment, they went on talking over my head.
“Saki, are you removing the same soul every time, or not?”
A brief beat of silence, I could only imagine she filled with a nod.
“Then it is possible one is the host and one is the guest and if they are unequal, they may take differently. I posited this hypothesis before I lost Deathwalker Two but was unable to test it. Remove the other one and try it with Deceased 17-1390.”
“Lost?” I said.
“Master, I really think we should let her rest.”
“Just one more test, Kocho, then you may make them soup.”
“Soup, Master?”
“I have observed the human belief in soup. You seem to have imbued it with a magic it hardly deserves, but as I believe the mind has much more control over the body than even I have yet proved, I shall not seek to make you disbelieve in its undeserved properties.”
I would have laughed had I not ached all over.
“Saki. Continue.”
I braced for the dizzying whirl of being pulled free, but her touch lingered, burning like ice, then she drew her hand away.
Footsteps. Rustling paper. She bent over the worktable. The Witchdoctor watched her write for a while then glanced at me over his shoulder. “That has not happened before.”
She wrote again. And again he answered. “I do not understand.”
What are they talking about? I said, summoning the energy to speak despite the throbbing ache in my head.
No answer came. Yet I knew She was there, for the yearning song of the nearby corpses continued unceasing.
“Try again.”
Saki shook her head. More writing. She stabbed at something on the page with the tip of her quill.
Why is she upset?
Because I wouldn’t go with her, She said.
What do you mean, you wouldn’t go with her? It’s not like you get a choice, she just yanks you out.
No answer.
Hey! What do you mean you wouldn’t go with her?
I clenched my hands upon the arms of the chair.
Kaysa! Answer me.
Amusement filtered through my thoughts. So I have a name now? I am allowed to be a person and not a disease?
Just tell me what you meant.
I meant what I said. You can’t hide from her but I can.
But if you don’t let her move you, you’ll never get a body of your own.
I already have a body of my own. It’s you who needs a new one, Cassandra.
The Witchdoctor was still talking. Saki still writing. And in my head my pulse thumped like a drum. No, I said. This is mine. I was born in it. I—
I was born here too!
Breath came and went fast and I pressed a hand to my thrumming heart. But this is me.
She made no answer.
You can have another one.
Nothing.
Kaysa? “Kaysa!”
The three occupants of the room turned, but it was the Witchdoctor who spoke. “Attempt to remove both,” he said. “One after the other. We are yet to find a soul that has been impossible to remove from its shell.”
“Tomorrow,” Kocho said, with far less deference than usual. “She needs to rest.”
A silent moment went by like an age as the Witchdoctor looked first at me and then at Saki. “Very well. Tomorrow.”
I sank into the bath with a sigh. The hot water was almost as wonderful as the first sip of Stiff after a hard day, and I had lived through many a hard day. Difficult clients, jobs that did not go to plan, arguments with Mama Hera that shook the walls, but none of them had left me feeling quite as empty. As broken.
The hot water eased my aches. The day had been a confused whirl, all ash and bile and the endless scratching of Saki’s quill. Even now my mouth tasted dry, and I lowered my jaw into the bathwater. Some spilled inside, but though it was warm and wet my tongue, it was not Stiff. I let it trickle out, down my chin and back into the bath. Someone had dropped petals into the water, dry white ones that floated on the surface like flakes of skin. They might have given off a scent, but it was impossible to tell through the choking fug of incense. Someone had lit the vile stuff beyond the edge of the wooden tub, but I had not even the strength to complain, let alone move.
Saki had pulled me from my body. The first time I had been sure it was a trick, then she had done it again. Three times. Out and back. Out and back. Out and back. Each time without a word or even a look that displayed anything beyond mild interest. That had been the first session.
Today’s session had been much longer. Out and back. Out and back. Out and into a corpse, with its ashen-tasting tongue and its stiff limbs. Out of a corpse and into Saki, her mind a glowing lantern overhead while I wallowed in her darkness. And always that other voice for company. It didn’t often speak, but when it did it was kind.
When did you ever care about kind?
I shifted my aching limbs in search of hotter tracts of water, sending the dry petals bobbing like boats in a storm. No voices penetrated my thoughts. No footsteps. Nothing at all seemed to exist beyond the edge of the bath.
I swallowed more water to chase away the memory of ash. “Is it always the same?” I said, my voice a husky croak as water spilled down my chin.
I don’t know.
“Has it been every time you’ve walked in the dead?”
She did not answer immediately, but just as I was about to ask again, She said, I have never walked in the dead.
I frowned at the play of light upon the water, beneath which my legs looked like pale, drowned flesh. “What about Jonus? And that commander at Koi?”
You walked in those. I have never left this body.
“Bullshit.”
I thought about Jonus, about running to him down the hillside, feet skidding, and heart thumping. Of crying out. Of touching him. Of leaping forward, yanked into his flesh. I had panicked, but when I realised I could move his body that panic had birthed a wild idea. And throwing wide his arms I had shouted to the Kisians below.
“I should have stayed in Genava,” I said, needing to speak, to say something that might waylay the memories that followed. Of Jonus’s body stiffening around me like a tightening shell until it became a rotting cage from which I could not escape.
Part of me insisted I’d never experienced that pain, and pushing my thoughts toward Her, I tried to read Her mind, to know Her in that moment of doubt, but there was nothing.
I told you not to take the job. Either job.
Back in Genava I would have had my endless stream of clients, Mama Hera’s biting complaints, and Gergo’s knowing smile as I stopped by every few days to refresh my stock of Stiff. That routine had become my life. Unvarying. Safe in its own way. And what other life was there beyond su
rvival?
What other life? A shocked silence rang in my head, clearing it of all thoughts. What other life? She repeated. Any life would have done. Any life would have been better than the one you forced on me. Any life better than taking joy only in how easily you could manipulate people and take their lives, better than being drowned in that cursed Stiff. You could have travelled. You could have seen the world. You could have given yourself to the One True God and helped people, Cassandra, you could have done anything. Remember that lord who wanted to marry you? Yes, he was a silly old fool but what a life that could have been. I could have had children, Cassandra. Children. Oh, the things I could have done with this body if you had not been here, if you had not pushed me into the dark corners. Children!
Children. It had almost happened a few times, such being a danger in my profession. Yet all it took was one evening drinking Mama Hera’s foul babybane tea, and in a rush of blood and pain those unwanted lives had poured out upon the floor.
“No child deserves me for a mother.”
No one deserves you for anything.
The water was getting cold, or perhaps it was just the ice in my bones winning. Either way the bath was no longer comforting. All the aches returned, along with nausea made worse by the angry swirl of memories I could not avoid. Of bodies and bloody floors, and the ashen tongues of the dead bloating behind cold lips.
Someone must have helped me out of the bath. Someone must have helped me dry and dress, but I heard no words and felt no touch, just found myself sipping something hot from a blue-rimmed bowl while footsteps shuffled around me. The sleeping mat had been warmed, but the pillow smelt damp.
I lay down to sleep but it brought no rest. The moment I closed my eyes I was back in Koi, forcing the body of the commander to walk and talk and lie, sure at any moment someone would see the gash in my throat. My throat? The fear felt real yet I had never seen the back alley before where I stripped a dead man of his clothes, never seen the gatehouse and the guards who stared at me open-mouthed as I cut the gate’s counterweight.