“No choice. Go!”
Efra was right. If the Crafter got out and told the Birds, she and Efra would be sacrificed on the altar. If, that is, the Birds didn’t kill them right then and there. Cursing, Nuru scrambled to her feet and chased after the man. Dropping one end of the garrotte, she entered to find him kneeling over the boy, keening like a wounded goat.
She leapt at his back, but he turned, his elbow catching her in the cheekbone and sending sparks arcing across her vision. Stunned, she stumbled and fell. He screamed something and punched her in the chest. Blows fell, one after the other. A few she caught on her arms, but he was twice her weight. She went down under the onslaught, every instinct screaming at her to curl up and protect herself, but knowing he’d beat her to death if she did. He wailed and screamed, incoherent rage and loss.
One hand still gripping the wooden end of the garrotte, she rolled away and lashed out with it. The chunk of wood at the other end struck him a glancing blow, opening a gash on his forehead and spilling blood into his eyes. He kicked her again, this time connecting with her ribs. It felt like he shattered something.
Blindly, she lashed out. He caught the other end of the garrotte and tore it from her hand. Wood clattered on stone as it he tossed it away.
“Going to kill you,” breathed the Crafter. He knelt over her, trapping one of her arms and crushing her beneath his weight. “Fuck the priests’ justice. You killed my boy. Going to fucking kill you.”
Huge hands wrapped around her neck. He lifted, and then brought the back of her head down hard on the stone. She lost everything.
World gone.
She heard a voice, distant and boxy. “No, not yet.”
Someone smacked her, open handed, across the face.
An eye opened. She couldn’t focus. Hands around her neck, squeezing. No air. Her body kicked, twitched with the need for breath. Fading.
“Not so fast.”
Hands loosened allowing the tiniest sip of air. Just enough to bring her back. Then he crushed her throat closed in his fingers. She clawed at him. He didn’t care.
Buzzing filled her ears. Collapsing night.
“No fucking escape.”
A sucking intake of breath tore her throat and was gone. She kicked, weak. Her body bucked with need. Fading.
“Not done with you, fucking whore.”
Black.
The hands around her neck loosened. Air rushed into her, a screamed inhalation.
Bubbly choking, but this time not her.
Nuru cracked open a bruised and swollen eye. The Crafter still straddled her, but Efra stood behind him. She had a knee against his back and her garrotte looped around his throat. Teeth bared with effort, she growled low and feral as she pulled.
The Crafter hooked a finger under the garrotte and struggled to get more in there.
She’s weak. Her arms will give out.
Efra’s strength faded fast.
But both hands clawing at the garrotte left the Crafter exposed. With her free hand Nuru punched him in the groin. It was an awkward blow but got his attention. She hit him again. When he adjusted his weight, trying to twist away, she pulled her other arm free.
She remembered the fight with the Bird, the blow that took the wind from her. She knew exactly where he hit her. She hit the Crafter there. She hit him over and over, driving her knuckles into the centre of his chest, just below where his ribs met. When he dropped a hand from his throat to try and ward away her attacks, she abruptly changed tactics and grabbed his arm with the fingers caught under the garrotte.
Yanking it free, she screamed, “Choke him you fucking bitch!” at Efra.
Efra twisted the garrotte tight, turned so she held it over her shoulder, and put her entire weight into it.
Nuru fought to keep the Crafters’ hands entangled.
Finally, his eyes rolled up and he hung limp from the garrotte.
“Bitch,” grunted Efra through gritted teeth.
A moment later her arms gave and the Crafter pitched forward to land on Nuru. Rolling him off, Nuru crawled away. Every breath hurt. Everything hurt.
She knelt, tears streaming, shaking. Her gaze twitched from the youth to the big man, attention lingering before darting back. “You killed them.”
“We had to.” Efra rubbed her head where it had hit stone. She scowled at Nuru. “Why are you crying?”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the boy. “He was just a kid!”
“You killed Fadil’s man, that shit-stain Sefu. I don’t remember that bothering you.”
Nuru glared at her, eyes stinging. “When I killed Sefu I was the snake. When a nagual becomes an animal, she becomes that animal.”
“I don’t—”
“When I was the snake, it filled my thoughts. For a snake, killing a man is nothing. I’m not a snake. I cried for hours that night.”
Efra studied the young man’s corpse and shrugged.
She feels nothing.
“You’re not a snake,” Efra said. “But I kind of am.” She turned to Nuru. “Stay there.”
Limping to the curtain, favouring her ribs and grinding her teeth against the pain, she peered through. “The old Grower is gone.” She returned to Nuru, pulling her to her feet. “Where is Chisulo? What about all that ‘People can depend on me’ crap?”
“Something must have happened.” Nuru stared at the corpses.
“What would keep him away?”
Nuru shrugged, wiping her eyes.
“You look weirdly normal with your hair cut short and tattoos hidden,” said Efra. “Just another Dirt girl.”
Except I’m not. “Birds,” said Nuru.
“What?” Efra hurried back to the curtain and checked through a crack in the fabric.
“The Cloud Serpent nahual we saw in the basement. He must be looking for us. He saw you, your scar. He saw Chisulo’s squished nose. They’re distinctive. Everyone knows you’re with us by now. Someone must have said something.”
“If the Birds have Chisulo, it’s only a matter of time before he tells them what we’re doing.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“You drugged me and I told you everything. You think a nahualli can’t do that and more?”
She was right. Of course she was right.
Efra peeled off her greys, unwrapping layer after layer of her thobe and dropping it to the floor. Bruises ranging in colour from dark blue to a slurred yellowish purple covered her torso. “Hurry up. We have to change.”
“If they have Chisulo, all this is pointless.”
“He’ll be fine. Smoking Mirror wouldn’t let anything happen to him.” She grinned at Nuru. “I need him. Anyway, we’re still alive. Even without him, life goes on.”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“Yes,” said Efra, “it does.”
Efra struggled with the boy’s corpse, trying to remove the clothes.
“We have to wait,” said Nuru.
“No, we have to leave.” Efra stalled her argument with a raised hand. “If the Birds have him, we can’t help. They’ll search the tenements near the gate. I promise you they know about the Crafter whorehouses. If something else happened, if he was delayed for some reason, we’ll find him when we get back.”
“Get back?”
“We’re still going. You and me.”
The spider. The demon, if that’s what it was. She wanted it. She wanted to finish the carving. She needed to. That’s what this was all about. She couldn’t forget.
“We are coming back?” Nuru asked.
“Of course. But if we don’t get out of here now, we might see the other side of the Sand Wall.”
Nuru cursed under her breath and then stripped off her greys. The boy’s corpse kept drawing her eye, the bulging, staring eyes, the red wound around his neck where Efra garrotted him with Nuru’s hair.
I didn’t want this.
What happened to Chisulo? Where was he? Sick with guilt, sick with worry, she followed Efra’s lead with numb obedience.
Efra tried to adjust the brown shirt so it didn’t chafe her armpits.
“Stop fidgeting,” said Nuru. She turned Efra in a circle, examining her. “I think it’s on backward.”
“How can you tell?”
After squirming her arms out, Efra turned the shirt around. It looked better.
The youth’s clothes were big on Efra, but passable. Nuru disappeared into the man’s shirt.
In the end they settled for rolling up the sleeves and legs at the wrists and ankles. It would have to do.
And still Chisulo failed to arrive, Worry built in Nuru’s gut, a tight, nauseous tension. She wanted to call this off, tear the dead man’s clothes off, and climb back into the familiarity of her thobe. Everything about this was wrong. But Efra wouldn’t let her. The spider wouldn’t let her.
Chisulo will be all right. He has to be.
“Right, then,” said Efra. “Let’s go.”
“Sandals,” said Nuru.
A few minutes later, when they could walk without tripping, the sandals smacking the stone as they shuffled about, Efra decided they were ready. “Now?”
Nuru stopped her with a hand on the shoulder. “We look like we lost a fight.”
Efra showed bloody teeth in a savage grin. “But we didn’t.”
AKACHI – THE STONE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION
Sin Eater ruled the pantheon for two thousand and thirteen years before her Heart’s Mirror was assassinated by Loa heretics during a Crafter uprising. In the resulting seasons of wither, one fifth of Bastion’s population was lost to starvation and war. For seventy-nine years the gods’ Hearts battled for supremacy, with Father Death’s Heart finally emerging victorious and claiming the title of Heart’s Mirror. The current Heart’s Mirror is the eyes and voice of The Lord. She is seven thousand six hundred and eighty-three years old.
—The Book of Bastion
Alone in his chambers, Akachi set aside the pipe, pushing it to the far corner of his desk. It rolled to one side and lay still, accusing and abandoned.
No.
He would not escape his failures by fleeing into the narcotic bliss of erlaxatu. Much as he wanted to. Such cowardice would shame him. How could he face Yejide knowing he’d abandoned his responsibility? How could he face his father?
But what could he do?
He needed to be proactive, to make things happen.
I need to find that scarred girl and the street sorcerer.
“I found them once,” he whispered. “I’ll find them again.”
How?
He’d been dream-walking when he discovered them last time. The street sorcerer was no threat, but the scarred girl, backed by the power of a god, shattered his sorcery.
Once again, the pipe and narcotics drew his eye.
“I wasn’t ready for battle.”
He’d confronted them, secure in his superiority, confident his knowledge and sorcery were enough. But preparing oneself for war in a smoke reality was different than pursuing a victim and crushing an ignorant Dirt street sorcerer.
What if he tried again? What if, this time, he went in prepared for a fight? His allies, spirit animals, servants, and peyollotl charms, would serve him as well in that reality as they did here. He couldn’t hope to defeat a god, but Smoking Mirror hadn’t actually manifested. Father Discord remained in the Gods’ Ring. Only some infinitesimal shred of his power reached out to the Growers’ Ring. Now that Akachi knew what he faced, he could be ready.
He remembered sinking his teeth into the Loa sorcerer’s wrist, the salty explosion of blood, the meat of her, the delicious fat. The way she gagged, trying to suck a breath past his fangs in her throat. That moment when her body gave its final twitch and stilled.
The boy in him rebelled, stomach churning at the memory. The puma animal spirit, an ally never far from his thoughts, craved flesh, revelled in the beautiful savagery of feeding.
Would that work? If he surprised the scarred girl as she surprised him, could he bite off the arm carrying Smoking Mirror’s sacred mark? The more he thought about it, the more sure of success he felt. This time he would kill the lot of them in the dream world. They’d never awaken, their souls having fled. He’d have ended Smoking Mirror’s madness, caught his prey as Cloud Serpent commanded.
This, he decided, was much better than escaping into the smoke of erlaxatu and abandoning his responsibilities.
Grinning with excitement, Akachi set about gathering his narcotics.
Once he had everything heaped on his desk, he sorted through it all, setting aside those he needed.
Jainkoei to open his soul to the will of Cloud Serpent. If he had more of that in his blood last time, perhaps his god’s presence would have counteracted Smoking Mirror.
Aldatu, so he could access his nagual powers, become his spirit animals.
Foku to sharpen his senses so he missed nothing.
Ameslari, of course, so he could enter the dream world, bend its mutable reality to his will.
He paused to consider his choices.
It’s not enough.
He’d been unprepared last time and wouldn’t do that again. Another failure would be too much.
The erlaxatu drew his eye. Just one. Half a bowl.
“No.”
He turned away. He wouldn’t be weak. The amethyst was nothing. The stone of self-destruction carried no power. Crystal magic was a laughable farce without Mother Death’s influence.
Unless I’m right, and she’s inside Bastion.
It couldn’t be. The gods would never allow it. No way she could penetrate the sorcery writ deep into the Sandwall. There had to be another, more sane, option.
He eyed the heaped narcotics. Was it enough?
Selecting a dose of gorgoratzen, he added it to the pile. Don’t want to forget anything. He wanted every moment of his final victory written forever in his blood, engraved in his mind.
Pizgarri to keep me alert, to aid in concentration.
He added that too.
Those narcotics he could ingest by eating he devoured, chewing fast and hard, grinning at the foul taste. Black saliva spilled from his lips, stained his chin, and he wiped it away with a careless sleeve.
Those requiring inhalation he hurriedly ground up and crushed, heaping it together in a chaotic blend on his desk. He laughed, contemplating the apoplectic fit his teachers back at the Northern Cathedral would have at such careless handling.
It doesn’t matter.
Victory, a successful hunt, was more important than suffering through what would no doubt be an epically bad comedown.
Cloud Serpent watches over me.
Shoving the blend into the bowl of his pipe, he realized there was too much. He’d have to refill the bowl three times to get it all. Lighting the pipe with a candle, he inhaled deep, holding the smoke in his lungs until the need for air forced him to exhale. Over and over, each inhalation held until the world collapsed around him.
Eyes open. Hyper-focus. Crisp clarity.
The texture of Bastion’s stone screamed at him, sawed at his thoughts like a jagged knife in tender flesh. He heard Yejide’s slow deep breaths from two rooms away. She slept.
I could enter her dreams.
Would she like that, or would it be an invasion?
What was she like in there? Who was the real Yejide, the one she never showed to the world?
No, he decided. He would not intrude.
He heard Njau’s steady pace as the Hummingbird patrolled the church. Beyond his window the stridulating of grasshoppers changed until they sang in infinite harmonies. One hundred thousand voices, each with its own note, and he discerned them all.
After smoking the last bowl, he tossed his pipe aside and lay down on his bed. The down-filled mattress, acquired through se
emingly magical means by Jumoke, floated him like soap bubbles on water.
He lay motionless, staring at the ceiling, examining the stone as he never had before. The foku brought it into impossibly sharp focus and the gorgoratzen locked it indelibly in his mind. He would remember this ceiling until he drew his last breath.
I need to relax.
His lungs and throat felt like they’d been pulled inside out and scoured by one of those sandstorms that periodically pummelled Bastion’s great Sand Wall.
Dream walking was achieved through a state of detached reality, oneness with everything. Inner peace. But excitement tumbled through him. His thoughts jumped and skittered, racing from one topic to the next. The curves hidden under Captain Yejide’s armour. The way she smelled. Was Nafari in Gyasi's room? Akachi’s friend had been oddly quiet on his relationship with the Hummingbird, but the two were always together. Sometimes, when Captain Yejide talked, he got the feeling he was missing some deeper context. There was something in the way she looked at him. Two days ago, he would have said that she liked him, was maybe even interested in him. But after yesterday, that look had to be pity. She saw him kill and half devour a woman.
She must be disgusted.
He missed her strength and wished she was here with him. Someone to talk to. Someone to listen. The hunt. The gods. The stone of self-destruction. He coveted Nafari’s easy way with women.
So alone. Such crushing responsibility. He couldn’t do this. He was going to fail.
Fail his father.
Fail his god.
Fail Yejide.
Fail everyone.
Why did Cloud Serpent choose me?
The gods are at war, my Heart, Cloud Serpent said during that first vision. My Heart. What did that mean? Was it simply a proclamation of love? That didn’t feel right. It was familiar, too. There was some mention of Hearts in the Book of Bastion, but Akachi couldn’t remember it, couldn’t concentrate.
If only I’d read it while dosed.
Hearts, and the Heart’s Mirror. Obsidian Heart. My Heart.
His thoughts skittered and jumped back to Yejide.
Too much pizgarri, he realized. It kept him awake, stopped him from achieving the trance-state he needed to dream walk.
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