Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Efra opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it. She blinked at the table.

  She wants to tell me something but hesitates.

  “The gang needs to grow,” Efra finally said. She snapped her mouth closed with a look of surprise.

  Where countless millennium had softened Bastion, rounded her every corner, the ameslari made everything pillowy like a rabbit’s soft belly. A deep desire to curl up on the stone floor and sleep filled Nuru and she fought it with her training. She needed to be awake and focussed, ready when the egia finally took Efra to the edge of the veil.

  Efra managed a lazy half grin. “Things are changing. More guards on the wagons. Whippings in the public square every day. Growers disappearing. The end.” She winced with the last word as if she hadn’t meant to say it aloud. “Hey, my nose doesn’t hurt anymore.” She drank more. “Why did you send Happy to get stuff for my pain when this works great?” She giggled and twisted her nose and immediately looked regretful.

  “So we could talk.”

  “About the end?”

  Nuru nodded.

  “The bones in your hair rattle like…like… Like death,” said Efra. “Can I touch your hair?”

  “No.”

  “When we were kids, no one got tossed from the wall. Now it’s scores every day. Sacrifice on the altar was rare, an event. Now it happens so often no one even comments on it. There will be war. There has to be. We can’t go on like this.” She scowled at the mug and took another drink.

  Nuru waited, intent.

  Dust danced gold in a sunbeam shining through the open window, wrote ancient and long forgotten hieroglyphs on her eyes. She could read them, receive messages from Bastion, were she to focus on them long enough. But doing so would cost her the growing connection with Efra.

  “You’re gorgeous,” said Efra. “Beautiful eyes. I bet Happy—”

  “What do we do?” asked Nuru. She shifted, slouching in her thobe, uncomfortable with being the centre of attention.

  “Whatever we have to. We survive. And I want to fuck Chisulo. I think he’d be good.”

  Nuru’s jaw tightened.

  “Is that okay?” Efra asked. “Is he yours?”

  “Not mine.”

  “Good. I like his shoulders. And his nose. It was broken once, right? Like mine? Except no one put it back into place.” She drank more cider. “This isn’t so bad.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “To fuck Chisulo?”

  Nuru stared at her, waiting.

  “Oh.” Efra looked around the room, gnawing on the inside of her cheek. “I wanted to leave you when that Bird came after us, but I couldn’t because of the spider demon and Smoking Mirror.” She blinked. “Fuck.”

  “Smoking Mirror?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Father Discord is never nothing.”

  Efra laughed at that. “The Birds are going to come with huge obsidian knives as long as I am tall and butcher everyone. He showed me in a dream.”

  Nuru’s heart raced but she kept her face calm. “Oh?”

  “Smoking Mirror said that the gods are at war.”

  Nuru froze. Those words. The spider used those exact words. Could Smoking Mirror and the spider be on the same side? Was this spirit—or whatever it was—a servant of Father Discord? “I knew that,” she said.

  “The spider told you, eh? I think some of the gods seek to depose Father Death. Smoking Mirror said things have been the same for too long and that the city is stagnating. Dying. What do you think the spider thing is?”

  “Banished spirit. Maybe a demon of some kind.”

  Smoking Mirror speaks to Efra, shows her the future. Or a possible future. Did that mean he sided with the Growers? It certainly seemed that way. And Efra said, ‘because of the demon and Smoking Mirror.’ Did the god want Nuru to complete the carving?

  If Father Discord backs Efra, then she’s even more important than I realized.

  “Anyway,” said Efra, “we have to control the Wheat District.” She opened her mouth wide, peeling back her lips. “My mind feels slippery, like wet clay. Each thought slides off it and out my mouth.”

  “The Wheat District?” probed Nuru.

  “Just kidding.”

  “Oh good, I thought—”

  “We’re going to take the entire Growers’ Ring. We need it all. It’s obvious. All the food for Bastion is grown here. Whoever controls the food controls Bastion.”

  Impossible! We couldn’t even take one district. “How?”

  “Chisulo is perfect.”

  Nuru, worried Efra was going to start talking about fucking him again, hesitated to ask. I need to know. “Perfect for what?”

  “Happy is stronger. Omari is faster. Bomani was more dangerous. You’re smarter and you’re a sorcerer. And yet you all turn to Chisulo for leadership.” Efra swirled the froth in the mug around and took another sip. “Sure, when you want you can give orders and they’ll all do what they’re told, but this isn’t Nuru’s gang. Everyone knows it’s Chisulo’s. People turn to him. People like him. He has…charisma. He’s a natural leader.”

  “You’re part of this gang and yet you didn’t mention yourself.”

  Efra grinned at her, eyes softening, losing some of their obsidian edge. “If people would follow me I’d have this district within a week, the ring in a month, and by this time next year I’d rule Bastion. But no one will. I’m too short.” She breathed deep and let it out. “And, as has been pointed out, I’m not good with people.” Licking her lips, she stared up at Nuru. “I think I’m not right in the head. That’s probably why Smoking Mirror chose me. I can do things.”

  “What kind of things?” Was she a secret sorcerer? It was certainly possible to hide one’s talents.

  “Things that need doing. Things that people like you and Chisulo will hesitate to do.”

  Remembering the way Efra attacked the Bird, Nuru let it drop.

  Use Chisulo’s natural leadership to take the district. It sounded insane, and yet if the Growers would unite behind anyone, it was Chisulo.

  Best not to tell him. It’ll scare the hell out of him. She set aside the thought for later. Right now, she needed to get Efra back on topic before the egia took her away.

  “Somehow, it’s all connected,” said Nuru. “You. The carving. Smoking Mirror.”

  The timing could be no coincidence.

  “Smoking Mirror showed me the end,” said Efra. “There will be war in the streets. The fields will burn, the wells fill with ash. The Birds are going to kill us all.”

  “When?”

  “Soon. Real soon.”

  “I meant when did Smoking Mirror show you this?”

  “The day Bomani died. Well, the night before.” She held up the wrist with the black rectangle tattooed into it. “I got this done that morning. The Artist did it. He’s got nice eyes and a great ass.” She tilted her head to one side in contemplation. “Or maybe it’s a nice ass and great eyes.”

  Nuru sat in silence, thinking. What did the black rectangle mean? Was it a marker? Had Smoking Mirror claimed the girl as his own? Would priests recognize it, and if they did, how would they react? If Efra was lucky, they’d merely flay off the offending flesh and lash her to the brink of death. These days it seemed more likely they’d sacrifice the girl on the altar, or throw her from the wall.

  Smoke in the skies. Ash in the wells. The Birds are going to kill us all. Nuru realized she believed everything Efra said, and not just because of the egia. I have to finish this carving. Efra was somehow pivotal.

  “I need stone-working tools and paints,” said Nuru. “You said you knew how.”

  Efra grinned at her and emptied the cup. “This stuff is really good. Where’d you get it?”

  “I made it.”

  “You should trade it for stuff.”

  “No. How are we going to get tools?”

  “We’re going to the Crafters’ Ring. We’re going to take them. We’ll probably have to kill a
few Crafters.”

  Nuru remembered the dead eyes of the Bird Efra stabbed in the neck, and her chest tightened. He was going to kill us. It didn’t make her feel better. And Fadil’s corpse. Somehow Efra had killed the gang leader before they arrived. She killed two people in as many days. Was that the thing Smoking Mirror knew Efra could do where others would hesitate? What about Nuru? She killed Sefu. Am I any better? She wanted to blame it on the snake, but it had been her choice.

  “Probably?” asked Nuru.

  Efra thought it over, rubbing at the scar where it crossed her lips. “Maybe. Do you think Chisulo wants me?”

  “I think he likes you.”

  “Fine, don’t answer.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “I was going to crawl on top of him and start grinding until he got the message. That always works with men.”

  “Good luck,” muttered Nuru. “I meant about getting the tools.”

  “Oh. That. The Crafters come to fuck Growers all the time. There’s a place by the gate where you can meet them. They usually pay with drugs and food. The Birds ignore it.”

  “You’ve done this?”

  “No. You and I are going to wait there. We’ll blow kisses and look horny and hungry—we’re skinny enough. We’ll get one each. We’ll take their Crafter clothes, and walk into the Crafter Ring.” She scratched again at the table. “I feel smoky from the tips of my toes right through my forehead.” Lifting the mug, she found it empty. “Oh,” she said, tilting the mug so Nuru could see. The bottom was flaked and chipped, scummed with apple-scented froth. “You drugged me.”

  “I did.” The ameslari peeled her soul like a flower opening to the morning sun.

  “Why?”

  “I had to know if I could trust you.”

  Efra scowled at the table, clearly trying to remember everything she’d said, trying to figure out if she’d come out of this looking trustworthy. Finally, she gave up and said, “So?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  “No one ever does. Not really. You think you do, but you don’t. Not until you’re tested. Not until they’re tested.” Efra yawned and stretched, groaning at the deep ache in her ribs.

  “You’re wrong,” said Nuru.

  “I’m not. When people are afraid, scared for their lives, they become like me. Until you’ve faced death, you don’t really know yourself. Until you’ve killed…. I can feel the smoke.”

  “You can?” Nuru asked, surprised. The smoke was one of her allies, a creature of sorcery. Did the girl possess some talent?

  “It’s in me. Coiling about my soul.”

  “That’s my ally.”

  “What’s it doing?”

  “Helping me get to know you. You were saying,” prompted Nuru, “until you’ve killed?”

  “It’s so easy to take a life.”

  Maybe it was. But what came next, the guilt and shame, wasn’t. “It shouldn’t be.”

  “But it is.”

  The smoke carried Efra away. The girls’ eyes unfocussed and she stared at nothing. There, but not there. The ameslari in Nuru’s blood thinned the veil between the two women.

  We’re a world of walls. Walls between the rings. A wall between us and the rest of the world. She studied the sitting woman, gaze tracing the jagged scar. A wall between you and me.

  Nuru dismantled the wall and stepped into Efra’s dream.

  Efra dreamed of Smoking Mirror, an obelisk of obsidian, standing in the middle of the street. It was as wide as she was tall, and four times her height. She saw herself reflected in its surface, warped by imperfections in the stone, wreathed in smoke.

  Nuru understood the tattoo, the black rectangle. Efra wore Father Discord etched forever into her flesh.

  “I can’t do this,” Efra told the god.

  Then you’ll die, said Smoking Mirror. Everyone you know and love will die. He spoke in smoke and stone.

  “I don’t love anyone.”

  He laughed at her, mocking. Witness.

  A man in the red, white, and black robes of a nahual of Cloud Serpent stood atop the Grey Wall separating the Growers from the Crafters. Young and gaunt, his long hair hung knotted with snake skulls. Behind the priest the sky twisted with serpentine clouds.

  It rained ash. Fat greasy flakes fell from the sky, coated everything. What little colour the Growers’ Ring possessed disappeared beneath a blanket of grey. The horizon burned, the fields afire, lighting the clouds of smoke from beneath.

  Nuru turned her attention to the obelisk. In its surface she saw the streets of the Wheat District. In the distance, a squad of Birds marched in tight formation. There were more than she’d ever seen, more than she would have believed possible. They wore strange armour, green like jade, glistening like polished stone, and carried obsidian knives as long as her outstretched arms.

  That’s impossible! Sharp as it was, obsidian shattered easily.

  A mob of Growers, ten times the Birds’ numbers, poured from every street. The Birds cut them down with methodical precision. So much blood. Even in the smoky reflection of the towering obelisk, the streets ran like a red river. Bastion drowned in blood.

  That, Nuru realized, wasn’t quite true. It was cleaner, neater. Planned. Spilled blood ran from the centre of each street to fill gutters she’d never noticed before. They lined every lane and alley. The blood flowed toward the heart of Bastion, toward the Gods’ Ring. The scale—the forethought—stole her breath.

  With those terrible long black knives, the Birds slaughtered the growers, cutting them in half, splitting them open, spilling their innards splashing to the stone. Blood fell and gutters ran deep. The Birds fought as one, perfect synchronization, flawless timing. They moved as if each were a part of a single massive seething beast.

  They’re organized. Trained. Where the Birds fought in perfect rows, the Growers were chaos.

  Behind a curtain of ash and smoke, the sun, a dull red disk, fell. Efra stood in the obelisk’s shadow. Instead of looking small and vulnerable, she seemed protected.

  Helpless, the priest up on the Grey Wall witnessed all that happened below.

  He looks terrified, appalled.

  Guilty. Had he somehow caused this?

  He’s so young. It was difficult to judge, but he looked about Nuru’s age. Certainly, no more than twenty. Attractive too, in a wiry kind of way. The skulls of snakes rattled in his hair.

  How did one become a priest? Was it a position you were born into, or did you earn it? Was everyone in the Priests’ Ring a nahual? She had no idea, no understanding of how things worked beyond the Grey Wall.

  The nahual watched with sad eyes, the clouds behind him twisting in rage. Was he her enemy?

  All who dwell in the the inner rings are. Souls entwined, Nuru wasn’t sure if that was her thought or Efra’s.

  Seeing the Birds butcher the Growers with their impossibly long obsidian knives, protected by their strange armour of green stone, Nuru’s thoughts reeled with possibilities. What other marvels were the Crafters capable of?

  Obsidian knives and green stone armour. But the nahual forbid the use of stone in sorcery! They claimed that only the Loa heretics worked in stone. Yet more hypocrisy?

  The Birds were invincible. To fight them, she knew she needed what they had. Efra was right, taking the Growers’ Ring was not enough.

  We need to take the Crafters.

  Was that enough?

  She wasn’t sure.

  The only way to truly be safe is to be in control. That felt more like Efra than Nuru.

  All the power lay in the centre of Bastion.

  Take it all.

  Efra sank deeper into the dream world. Tempting as it was to follow, to see the innermost workings of the girl’s mind, Nuru wasn’t prepared for a deep dive. The primal depths were no place to venture when not braced with the proper narcotics. And a mind like Efra’s… Nuru shuddered to think what she might find.

  The obsidian obelisk saw her.

  When s
he tried to leave Efra’s dream world, it held her there. Terror flooded Nuru. She was helpless, powerless. The scrutiny of a god seared away her sorcerous defences, flayed every shred of her emotional armour, and laid her soul bare.

  She is my Heart, said Father Discord.

  His names ran through Nuru, a litany learned in church: The Obsidian Lord, God of Storms, God of Strife, Lord of the Night Sky, Enemy of Both Sides, We Are His Slaves, He by Whom We Live, Lord of the Near and Far, Father of the Night Wind, Lord of the Tenth Day, The Flayed One, the Jaguar God. On and on. He was older than Bastion, remembered a world of green and blue. Oceans and lakes and forests spanning entire continents. He remembered damp jungles and the taste of his first blood sacrifice. He remembered pyramids of stone that stood for thousands of years and were now long gone, lost to the endless red desert.

  Nuru saw all of this in the stone of his voice.

  Protect her or Bastion falls.

  AKACHI – SCALE OF ATROCITY

  The third ring is the seat of the Senate. From here the rules and laws of Bastion are made. Such rules and laws shall be enforced by the Hummingbird Guard, the nahual of Southern Hummingbird. All citizens of Bastion requiring legal redress may travel to the Senators’ Ring to have their case heard. All legal and political matters fall under the purview of the Senate.

  —The Book of Bastion

  After dismissing the others, Akachi returned to his chambers. He collected his tools and the hawk carving he was working on and went to sit in the sun. Captain Yejide followed and sat nearby. For two hours he worked, nicking out the tiniest notches of wood, little more than dust sometimes. She ignored him, lost in her own thoughts, as she watched the Growers go about their toils.

  When he paused, she shuffled closer and leaned in to examine the hawk. “It’s beautiful.”

  Even on this hot day he felt a flush of heat light his face. “I…uh…Thanks,” he managed. It’ll be even better after I’ve painted it.” He turned the hawk in his hand, examining it from every angle to distract himself. “Almost ready.”

  “Really? Looks perfect to me.” She hadn’t moved away.