Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Get up. Fight.

  Except he didn’t know how. Priests of Cloud Serpent learned no martial skills. His power lay in his sorcery. With no narcotics in his blood, he was powerless. Knowing the fierce reputation of the Wheat District, should he have dosed up before leaving the Northern Cathedral? But that was hours ago! Whatever he took would have left his system by now.

  Half rising, he was again knocked down as one of the Hummingbirds backed into him, driven by the weight of the attackers. They clawed at the Guard’s armour, stabbed at him with fire-hardened spears. A Hummingbird took the spear from one Grower, shattered the nose of another with its blunt end, and then spun it with nimble fingers to stick it in the throat of the man he took it from.

  Where the Growers screamed insults and curses, the Hummingbirds fought in silence. Where the Growers’ eyes were lit with murderous hate, the Hummingbirds wore calm masks of deadly intent.

  The young Hummingbird Nafari had been chatting with broke a man’s arm, twisting it, using her cudgel as the pivot, until the bone popped. She moved like magic, weaving a spell of destruction. Hard fingers stabbed eyes. Knees found soft bellies. Vicious elbows shattered jaws, crushed noses. That cudgel was everywhere, sometimes a fulcrum, sometimes a stabbing weapon, sometimes a club. But never crude. She moved like she was three steps ahead of her opponents.

  That’s their sorcery.

  Yejide made her look clumsy.

  A spear, tip carved sharp and coated in dripping shit, stabbed at Akachi from between two Hummingbirds. Yejide caught it in a fist and shattered the man’s cheekbone with her cudgel. He opened his mouth to scream and fell silently, choking as the Hummingbird beside Yejide caved his throat in.

  Too many. There are too many!

  The weight and stink of Grower flesh threatened to drown Akachi. Scores. Hundreds. Thousands. An entire district of hate throwing itself against seven Hummingbirds. The Guard staggered, retreated another step, crushing him.

  And then, space. Three Growers grabbed Captain Yejide and dragged her from the formation, exposing her. She fought, kicking and spinning, lashing out with deadly precision. Someone hit her from behind, pitching her to her knees.

  Already the remaining Hummingbirds were closing ranks, filling the gap left by her absence.

  They aren’t going to save her?

  A man kicked Yejide and she caught his foot, but another grabbed her from behind, wrapping a scrawny arm around her throat. Releasing the foot, she struggled to pull loose the choking grip, but the man who kicked her grabbed her wrists, held them.

  They’ll kill her.

  Why weren’t the Hummingbirds trying to get to her?

  He understood. They’re protecting me.

  Choked from behind, arms held by another man, Yejide’s eyes unfocussed and her body slumped, limp.

  Gathering his feet under him, Akachi lunged through the closing gap, shouldering aside one of the Hummingbirds. Grabbing the man choking Yejide, he dragged him off the woman, shoving him so he fell sprawling into several other Growers. Someone Akachi didn’t see hit him in the face and his eyes watered. He fought near blind, terror giving him strength, kicking out at the man who held Yejide’s arms.

  And then the Hummingbirds surrounded them, the entire formation having moved in unison. Akachi huddled over Yejide, sheltering her with his body. She blinked up at him, eyes regaining focus as her wits returned.

  “Don’t you ever do that again,” she said, voice raw.

  Someone screamed in visceral agony and the Growers ran, scrambling in all direction, abandoning their dead and wounded. The Hummingbird Guard straightened and surveyed the scene.

  “Anyone hurt?” asked Yejide, climbing to her feet.

  “I dislocated a finger,” said one of the men, a giant stuffed into red leather.

  “Aw, poor muffin.” Yejide grabbed the oddly bent finger and yanked it straight until it popped back into place. He looked bored.

  “Akachi?” she asked without looking.

  “Fine,” he said, rising. He clawed ox shit from his face, grimaced at his right hand, the knuckles scraped and swelling.

  “I’m fine too,” said Jumoke. “Thanks for asking.”

  Yejide ignored him.

  The acolyte seemed remarkably unfazed. He grinned at Akachi. “Adventure turns out to have been overrated.”

  “I can’t believe they attacked us in broad daylight,” said Nafari, brushing himself off. “What did they hope to achieve?”

  Captain Yejide eyed the fallen Growers littering the ground. Many lay still, but some, curled around their wounds, moaning in pain. A few were trying to crawl away, dragging themselves toward the nearest tenement entrance.

  “The Loa pay them in narcotics and food for dead nahual,” she said. “They have to bring proof. Flesh with the right tattoos. Anyone bringing in a live priest is promised food and water for the rest of their lives, freedom from working the fields.” She turned to Akachi. “What is your judgement?”

  “Judgement?” He shook, tremors of adrenalin aftershock running through him. “I… I don’t know.” What was he supposed to do? A conflicting surge of emotions—the realization he’d survived, anger at being attacked, the dregs of fear—scattered his thoughts like fleeing Growers.

  “The punishment for attacking nahual is death,” said Yejide.

  Sacrifice.

  It is a nahual’s holy duty to shepherd the souls of Bastion. How many times had he been told that? His teacher’s words ran through his thoughts. To send a damaged soul to the gods to be cleansed and reborn is the most beautiful experience. Nothing will bring you closer to the gods.

  A beautiful experience. This was his holy duty.

  Father would never hesitate.

  Akachi felt the vile sickness of the sacrificial dagger emanating from his pack where he’d stuffed it.

  “Bringing the wounded back the church for proper sacrifice will slow us,” added Captain Yejide. “They’ll likely stage another attack in an attempt to rescue their friends.”

  He wanted to go home, wherever that was now. He didn’t want to face another attack.

  “We should move fast,” he said.

  She took that as some kind of decision and nodded to the other Hummingbirds. “Break them.”

  Akachi watched in horror as the squad spread out and systematically smashed the wrists and ankles of all who still lived, conscious or not. They broke bone to dust. As with the brawl, they worked in silence. Those receiving their sentences were less quiet. When the squad moved on, Akachi, Nafari, and Jumoke once again at the centre, they left behind a discordant choir of misery and pain.

  “Why?” he asked the Captain.

  “A message: The Guard do not go lightly.”

  NURU – BRITTLE AND SHARP

  The fifth age ended in catastrophe and the death of a world. We live now in the sixth age, the age beyond life, the age of apocalypse. We live a nightmare. We are damned souls, doomed to a slow and rotting demise.

  —Loa Book of the Invisibles

  Searching the dark corners of their tenement basement, Nuru found Isabis, her black viper, coiled and dozing.

  “How’s my pretty girl doing?” she cooed, caressing the snake’s scales, feeling the dry strength of her. “Want to come upstairs and scare Chisulo?”

  Isabis raised her head to examine Nuru.

  “That’s what I thought.”

  Retrieving the snake, she looped it around her neck where it promptly fell asleep.

  Collecting five crude wooden mugs, she filled them with fomented apple cider she aged in stolen barrels previously used for carting tomatoes from the Growers’ ring to the Crafters’. Cradling them in her arms, she carried them up the stone steps to the ground floor.

  Chisulo sat on an over-turned wood box in the tenement’s communal eating room. Having recently shaved his head again with one of Omari’s flint knives, his skull was a mess of nicks and scabs. He glanced up when she entered. Seeing Isabis sleeping around her neck, h
e paled and shuffled his box a little further away. “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “She’s a viper, not a constrictor.”

  He rubbed at his broken nose, squished to one side. “Still. Gives me the spine shivers.”

  “Where are the others?” she asked, placing one the mugs on the table before Chisulo and setting out the rest where her friends would sit.

  Chisulo shrugged. “They’ll be back soon. Everyone knows we have a gang meeting today.”

  Calling them a gang always seemed funny to Nuru. Five friends who’d known each other since they were in the crèche, scraping a living by selling narcotics from their one street corner of turf. Six, if you counted Efra. The girl never could decide if she was in or out.

  She ran a hand over his scalp, enjoying the prickle of stubble.

  I can’t lose you. I can’t lose any of them, but especially you. She loved his stone sense of right and wrong, but worried. You’re too quick to put yourself in danger to protect your friends.

  Ignoring the contact, he eyed the stained wood mug filled with cloudy cider sitting before him. “What’s that?”

  She let her hand drop. “Cider. Mostly.”

  “This stuff undoes the knots life ties in me.”

  “Poetic.”

  “And leaves me feeling awful the next day, like an entire family of rats shat in my skull.”

  “Less poetic.”

  “Mostly cider?”

  “I added a little something to help with the fight.” She should stop this, convince him the war could wait until she finished the spider. He’d listen. He’d do as she suggested. Fadil, however, wouldn’t wait. The rival gang would take their hesitation as weakness and strike. They could lose everything they’d fought for.

  Chisulo drank, swallowing quickly. “The things I’ll suffer for a buzz.”

  The tenement—two bedrooms, a communal front room, a waste closet where they shat and pissed into a hole, and a basement—was identical to every home in the Wheat District. Only the furnishings, what little there was, and a handprint smear of stolen grey paint over the door, faded to almost nothing, marked it as theirs. Bomani did it in one of his many moments of drunken recklessness. Nuru had been sure the nahual would command them to wash it away and dish out lashings to all involved, but so far, the priests ignored their pathetic rebellion.

  Home.

  Chisulo rubbed again at his flattened nose. Happy broke it during a fight back when they all still lived at the crèche. Since then it had been crushed two more times, though not by Happy. Chisulo long ago gave up on straightening it.

  Happy arrived first, ducking to enter and brushing the shell curtain aside with a hand that looked capable of crushing skulls. His grey thobe stretched tight across his broad shoulders and chest. The big man intentionally chose clothes too small when the priests handed out new garments each month. Red sand dusted tight curled hair the colour of oak bark. Many mistook Happy for a man much older than nineteen. This morning he looked like someone asked him to eat dried goat dung.

  “Happy,” said Chisulo in greeting.

  Happy nodded to his two friends and collapsed onto a box. Meaty hands, fingers like over-stuffed sausages, made fists, knuckles popping. He glared at Chisulo from under bushy eyebrows. “I was with Kayla.”

  “I know.”

  “She has the most fantastic—”

  “We know,” said Nuru. “You talk about them continually.”

  “Worth talking about,” grunted the big man.

  “We’ll start the meeting as soon as soon as the others get here,” said Chisulo.

  That, too, was funny. Chisulo’s meetings usually revolved around talking about how they were going to grow the gang and sell more erlaxatu, and each week nothing changed.

  The spider will change that. It was going to change everything. If, that is, she found the tools to finish it.

  Omari entered the room slapping the beads aside. He stood blinking at his friends, eyes red, chest heaving to catch his breath.

  “What—”

  “Bomani,” said Omari, interrupting Chisulo. He blinked and tears ran free. “Fucking Fadil.”

  “No,” said Chisulo, a quiet denial.

  Happy’s knuckles popped like cracked whips. “What happened?” he asked, voice rumbling threat.

  “Fadil. His gang. They killed Bomani. Just now.” Omari saw the mugs on the table, grabbed one, and downed it in a single swallow. “Fucking…”

  Nuru couldn’t speak. Words were gone from her, stolen. It can’t be.

  “I sent him to see what Fadil was up to,” said Chisulo. “This is my fault.”

  Except it wasn’t, not really. He only sent Bomani because Nuru told him to. It’s my fault.

  She couldn’t move. “Are you sure?”

  Omari swallowed, baring teeth in a silent snarl. “Amza saw it all.”

  Amza was no friend to Chisulo’s gang but would never lie about something like this.

  Bomani dead. Nuru couldn’t fit her mind around the idea. There had to be some mistake. It must have been someone else. Bomani is too damned mean to die. “There must be—”

  “No,” said Omari. “Amza was sure. He said…” Omari grabbed another mug and raised it to his lips, pausing when he realized who it must have been set out for. Closing his eyes and whispering something Nuru missed, he drained the mug. “Amza said they smashed him until he was unrecognisable. The priests won’t even be able to tell who he is. Was. Fuckers.”

  She wasn’t sure who the fuckers were, the priests, or Fadil’s gang. Doesn’t matter.

  Happy stared into his full mug, unblinking. He slid the cup to Omari without a word and Omari nodded and drained it.

  If they killed Bomani, were they coming here next? Should they run? Hide? Should they try to strike back? A maelstrom of confused emotions flooded Nuru. Rage, fear, loss, and pain. She didn’t know what to feel and so she felt all of them. She wanted to lash out and hurt someone. She wanted to huddle her remaining friends close and protect them. She wanted blood, and she wanted to run and hide.

  “Fadil grabbed Efra.” said Omari. “She was following Bomani for some reason. Amza saw that too.”

  His words cut through her confusion. The spider. Efra. She was important, somehow. “We have to go get her,” said Nuru.

  I need her. She felt a stab of guilt at her selfishness. Efra was hard to like at the best of times and certainly didn’t go out of her way to make friends. Nuru wasn’t sure how she felt about the girl. Sometimes she caught Efra staring at Chisulo like she was either thinking of stabbing or fucking him and Nuru could never tell which. Efra was intense about everything, rarely smiling. When she did speak, half the time Nuru wondered if she was smarter than the rest of them. The other half she knew she even crazier than Bomani. She was cute. She was scarred. She was small, hard like the stone of Bastion, and yet brittle and sharp like obsidian.

  She scared the shit out of Nuru.

  Oh, Bomani. I’m sorry, my friend. Can you forgive me?

  Did the dead ever forgive? The nahual of The Lord preached of a dark underworld filled with souls awaiting Father Death’s judgement and the chance to be reborn. They made it sound like it was beneath Bastion, as if you could get there by descending enough stairs.

  Nuru imagined Bomani there, alone, knowing he was dead because she told Chisulo to send him.

  I got him killed.

  Chisulo stood. “We’re going to get Efra.”

  A twisted knot of rage and loss, Nuru and her friends headed for Fadil’s tenement.

  She grabbed Chisulo’s hand, held it tight.

  “Tell me you have a surprise, something to tip the odds.” he said, his dread of her sorcery writ plain on blunt features.

  She nodded and brought out a viper carved in wood from within her thobe. Painted ink-black, it fit in the palm of her hand.

  “Oh gods,” he said, “a snake.” He shuddered.

  Bomani. Nuru remembered all the times her friend’s sh
ort temper got him in trouble. Bomani could never turn his back on even the mildest, most accidental, slight.

  What happened?

  Had he died cursing her?

  Was it a bad death?

  Such a stupid question. Was there any way being beaten could be a good death?

  The other Growers saw Chisulo’s little group and stayed well clear. By now, everyone knew what happened to Bomani. No one wanted to get caught in a gang fight, no matter how small.

  Glancing at Chisulo, she saw fear in the rigid set of his shoulders, his clenched jaw. Even Happy looked scared. The big man walked like he had to push himself forward. Only Omari showed no sign of fear. He looked angry. Angrier than Nuru ever saw him before.

  Chisulo noticed her attention and said, “Of all the scary people I know, Fadil and Sefu, Bomani and Omari, you are easily the scariest.” He took a steadying breath. “Thank the gods you’re on my side.”

  Was that supposed to be a compliment? She’d never understand men.

  “We have to rescue Efra,” he said, watching her reaction from the corner of his eye.

  He doesn’t want to do this, doesn’t want to fight. And yet he kept moving forward because he knew it was the right thing to do and could do no less.

  “We have to hurry,” said Nuru.

  They ran.

  Rounding a corner into Fadil’s territory, she spotted the gang’s tenement. Five strides from the entrance, a huge pool of blood browned in the sun, staining the street. In the centre lay Bomani, crumpled and broken. She recognized the shape of him. Not far from Bomani lay Sadiki, one of Fadil’s men, his skull misshapen, dead eyes swarming with flies. At least Bomani took one with him. The stench of rotting life clung to everything.

  Striding to the home, Chisulo entered without stopping.