Ravnica

by Cory Herndon

  Kos pushed himself to his feet, then reached into his pocket and retrieved the ten-pointed star. He affixed it to the breast of his civilian tunic. He pulled a set of silver, cufflike lockrings from his belt. Though Phaskin had reinstated him earlier, he hadn’t felt right wearing the badge. Now the badge meant everything.

  Kos strode across the dais, stooped over the smoldering form of what he saw to be the greatest evil in the world, and fastened the lockrings onto Szadek’s forearms. They snapped together, glowing softly, bound by the spell of the Guildpact. Not even the Lord of Secrets could break it as long as Mat’selesnya still lived.

  “Szadek,” Kos said, “I’m placing you under arrest for the murders of Luda, Saint Bayul, and Sergeant Bell Borca of the Tenth Leaguehall. If you try to resist, you will be beaten senseless. I’ve had a very rough week.”

  No signatory or signatory designee shall reveal the existence of the tenth signatory. Violation of this amendment will result in immediate imprisonment and/or execution.

  —Guildpact Amendment X (the “Hidden Charter” or “Guildmaster’s Law”)

  1 SELESZENI, 10000 Z.C., AFTERNOON

  “But where did they come from?” Kos asked. He stirred three lumps of sugar into his hot tea and marveled again at how quickly the owners had reassembled, if not completely rebuilt, Aul House.

  “From her,” Fonn said. “From Mat’selesnya herself. And Biracazir. We stopped him in time, and she was able to create newborn dryads from the tree.”

  “You stopped him. I just made the arrest. Not that anyone will tell me what they did with the bastard,” Kos said. “All they’ll tell me is that Szadek has been ‘dealt with.’”

  “Hope that means they executed him,” Jarad said.

  “Me too,” Kos said, “but it’s not my problem anymore.” He stirred sugar into a cup of hot tea and sniffed peppermint. “But I’m glad Biracazir’s going to be supervising the new dryads. That’s one smart wolf you’ve got.”

  “One smart wolf I had,” Fonn corrected, looking down Tin Street to Vitu Ghazi, where goblin work crews and engineers were helping the Conclave reconstruct the towers and verandas that had been built into its sides over the years. All over the center people bustled, rebuilding, watching, and gawking, many mourning those who died. She moved to pick up her beverage with her missing hand, winced, and switched to the remaining appendage.

  “I miss him, but I can still hear him.” Fonn grinned. “And you’ll be happy to know he’s convinced the others to abandon the idea of the quietmen. They’re too dangerous. They’re a weakness in the collective.”

  “It’s going to take work to purify the Tree,” Jarad said, “but they’ve got my oath it’s never going to happen again.”

  Kos considered the Devkarin, still wearing his lizardskin trousers and hunting vest. His long dreadlocks were pulled back and knotted. As the new guildmaster of the Golgari, he wore a silver guild sigil on his breast. There had been no one left to challenge him upon his return to Old Rav, and Kos suspected that was just as well. He doubted he’d ever completely trust Jarad, but he was certainly better than the alternative.

  When Savra was killed, the teratogen forces attacking Centerfort fell apart. Feather’s presence alone at the battle, which she joined when she could not immediately find Sunhome through the usual means, was enough to turn the tide. The angel had grudgingly allowed Ludmilla to live so long as she served her sentence, but if she ever again showed her face on street-level Ravnica, Feather promised to personally execute her on the spot. Kos had been amazed at the change in his friend’s personality once she was free of her bonds. The silver had shackled more than just her wings, it seemed. Now she was almost bloodthirsty. But the angel had not turned in her badge and promised to return when she had news.

  Most of the other Golgari had received a blanket pardon—to do otherwise might have meant the dissolution of the guild, and frankly Ravnica couldn’t survive without the Golgari. It was a fact of political and social life in the city.

  Now Feather was gone, searching the plane for the rest of the angels. Their disappearance was baffling and worrisome, and Feather, as the “last” angel, had taken on the search as a personal mission. Kos wondered how long Ravnica could last without the fiery warriors of the Boros host. They’d done all right without the angels this time, but the ’jeks had no intention of pushing their luck.

  Whatever they pushed, they were going to push it without Agrus Kos, however.

  “Are you sure about this?” Fonn asked. “About leaving? You’ve been a wojek for so long. Where will you go?”

  “I’ve been thinking of heading to one of the reclamation zones,” Kos said. “Pivlic’s been talking it up. He wants to set up his new restaurant out there. He’s offered me a job working security, at least to start. But I’m through here, and the League can get by without me, I think. It’s time I got out and saw the rest of the world after 110 years.”

  Fonn shot Jarad a glance. He nodded, then got up from his seat. “I’m going to take a walk around the block and stretch my legs.”

  “See you in a while,” Fonn said. She turned to Kos, who looked at her with a combination of expectation and dread.

  He’d been fearing this conversation since he’d first met the ledev again after all these years, but there was no avoiding it now. She was no longer a child, she was right about that. She was over fifty years old herself, but elves (and half-elves) aged much more slowly than humans.

  For a split second, he almost missed the quietmen and the way they tended to interrupt difficult talks like this one.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Fonn said. “I haven’t even said anything yet.”

  “You—you’re going to ask me about—” Kos began but couldn’t bring himself to say the name.

  “Yes, I am,” Fonn said. “I want the truth. I want to know why the records say he died the way he did and why it doesn’t jibe with what my mother told me before she died. You were there, Kos. You know what happened. You owe me that much.”

  “I owe you a lot more than that,” Kos said. “We all do. You and your wolf saved the world.”

  “You’re stalling,” Fonn said, grimacing.

  “Yeah, I am,” Kos said. “You might think you want to hear this, but I’m telling you, you don’t.”

  “Then why am I asking?” Fonn said. “Would it help if I let you hold onto my sword until you’re done? Or, tell you what—I swear you will leave this teahouse alive. Ledev’s honor.”

  “All right,” Kos said, “but you’re not going to like it.”

  “I don’t care,” Fonn replied. “It was fifty-seven years ago. I just want the truth.”

  “The truth,” Kos said, “is ugly.”

  * * * * *

  INCIDENT REPORT: 10/13MZ/430223

  FILED: 1 Seleszeni 10000 Z.C.

  PRIMARY: Cons. Kos, Agrus (ret.)

  SECONDARY: Lt. Zunich, Myczil (deceased)

  Kos was almost glad he’d lost what little he’d had in his stomach back in the warehouse. It meant he only had to deal with violent dry heaves when he and Zunich found the two bodies of their fellow ’jeks. Kos had been the one who’d spotted the two officers, a viashino and a human woman who hadn’t even made it up to the roof before the escaped Rakdos killed them. The ravaged corpses of Maertz and Pashak hung like bloody rag dolls on the suspended landing.

  “Something with claws tore her apart. But those bite marks—they’re human,” Kos gasped before another round of heaves made him lean against the wall. “Aren’t they?”

  “Implanted claws on her fingertips. Probably poison, so don’t let her touch you. Assuming we can find her in here.”

  “But how did she—I mean, that’s solid bone.”

  “Steel teeth,” Zunich said and scanned the rooftop of the next building over, squinting his eyes to peer through thick sheets of rain.

  The Rakdos had led them away from the warehouse and the tower, but now they were headed back where they’d started,
traveling in a wide loop. They still hadn’t seen any sign of the bounty hunter. With luck, additional backup might arrive, but Zunich had warned Kos not to get his hopes up. They’d only been able to send one bird.

  Palla was none too subtle as she led them back to the warehouse—waiting until the last second to duck around a corner, only to appear on the next rooftop over by the time they got there, tantalizingly close enough to continue pursuit. So Kos’s heart understandably stopped for a moment when he turned to check another rooftop and spotted not the Rakdos, with her wild knots of tangled hair and crooked teeth, but the bounty hunter—the elusive elf in the skull mask. Kos tapped Zunich’s shoulder and silently pointed. The bounty hunter was facing away from the two of them.

  “What’s he looking at?” Kos whispered.

  “One guess,” Zunich replied, his voice barely audible in the blowing storm. “That bridge looks stable. We can get there before him. I’m tired of these two leading us around by the noses.”

  “That’s not a bridge, it’s a pile of boards.”

  “It’ll get us there. Palla’s not getting away from me,” Zunich said.

  Kos had to admit that the rickety wooden slats were just barely more bridge than board, but all the same they each had several close calls on the way around. The wet boards had been nailed up fairly recently, but the lichens and molds of Ravnica grew quickly. Under the driving rain, they were slicker than oiled ice.

  An agonizing few minutes of painstaking creeping, barely arrested slips, and heart-stopping accidental missteps later they were on the rooftop that was the focus of the bounty hunter’s gaze. Kos didn’t need Zunich’s raised hand to tell him to stop short of stepping into the elf’s line of sight.

  The younger wojek heard a scrape of tile against tile break through the dull roar of the punishing rainstorm. He nudged Zunich and pointed in the direction of the sound, which came from a cluster of discarded statuary that resembled a giant pile of stone corpses. Workers preparing this area for demolition had left them here to prevent the chunks of marble and granite from endangering other structures, and had stacked them in a sort of dome arrangement that looked like it made an excellent hiding place.

  Lightning and thunder collided and flashed in the downpour and revealed something white moving within the cast-off relics, as white as Palla’s painted skin.

  That was all Zunich needed. He drew his short sword and charged. Kos had little choice but to follow.

  “No!” a man’s voice shouted from behind them. Kos risked a look back and saw the bounty hunter, already on his feet and racing toward them. The elf was making no effort to hide this time. “She is meant as bait!”

  Kos’s eyes were still on the bounty hunter, and he drew his sword and braced himself. The elf would be on him in seconds.

  Zunich shouted, “I don’t care if she was meant to be your blushing bride, she’s killed at least three of my friends.” Kos shifted to his right to get between the bounty hunter and his partner, and he heard Zunich’s sword whipping in an arc through the rain and into the relic pile. A terrified scream erupted for a half second, but the distinctive sound of wojek steel sliding between flesh and bone cut the scream brutally short.

  Kos’s blood ran cold. The scream sounded nothing like a bloodthirsty Rakdos gang boss.

  “Fool!” the elf cried and sidestepped at the last minute to dodge Kos’s halfhearted swing.

  Kos whirled but couldn’t catch the elf. The pale hunter caught Zunich in a flying tackle that brought them both crashing onto the slick tiles. Zunich’s sword flew free, soaked with bright red blood. It flung a scarlet arc into the raindrops as the weapon tumbled out of sight.

  The young constable clutched his sword in a white-knuckled grip. The bounty hunter and Zunich were pounding on each other. There was no sign of Palla, and Zunich’s sword had just been torn out of something that screamed, for a moment, like a frightened child.

  “Please, don’t let it be that,” Kos whispered, but he had an icy feeling in his blood. He moved across the roof in a trance and ignored his partner and the elf as they traded savage punches and dirty kicks. Zunich would call for help if he needed it. Kos had to know what was under the grotesque mound of broken granite arms, marble torsos, and empty gray eyes.

  The ’jek dropped to his knees and found a small gap that barely let him squeeze into the enclosure the statuary pile formed. It would, he supposed, have seemed like the perfect hiding place to a terrified child. It must have seemed that way to the motionless girl who lay staring into the falling rain. Her long black hair fanned out around her head and made her appear to float improbably on the soaked rooftop. Blood completely soaked the filthy rags the child wore and pooled around her body. The rain would take a while to wash it away under the imperfect shelter of stone, but even so the evidence of life would soon be gone.

  Kos crawled in a bit farther, far enough to confirm that the girl was dead. He closed his eyes for a moment and forced his heart to stop racing.

  Only then did the horrified wojek realize that the bounty hunter and his partner weren’t just beating the living daylights out of each other. They were speaking, and it sounded like the elf was getting the worst of it. His brain somehow processed the words as, he silently closed the dead girl’s staring eyes and crawled out of the enclosure and back into the storm.

  “What were—” Thud. “You doing—” Smack. “Using a child—” Thud. “As bait?!”

  Zunich had a forearm across the elf’s throat and had pinned the bounty hunter to the mound of broken stone. Both bore fresh wounds on their faces and bare arms, and the elf’s eyes bulged beneath his skull mask.

  Kos had no idea what he should do. His partner had just slaughtered an innocent girl. He didn’t know how the child had gotten there or why the elf had tried to protect her. In Kos’s admittedly limited experience, people who wore death’s-head masks didn’t try to protect anybody. But he also knew without a doubt that Zunich was going to kill the elf if he didn’t do something. Then there would be nobody to tell them who the girl was. That, Kos could not allow.

  Unfortunately the rookie didn’t hear the elf’s strangled reply to Zunich’s interrogation because Palla chose that moment to strike. The killguilder leaped from her perch atop the jumble of broken stone that for now served as a nameless child’s tomb. She struck Kos’s sword arm with a kick that spun him completely around, then caught him on the return with another kick to the gut that sent him flying. Kos hit the inclined tiles, slid backward and didn’t stop. He frantically clawed at the rooftop and dug his fingers into the rotted wood and moss. The broken ceramic tiles ripped the skin from his fingers and lodged hunks of rotten wood in his palms, but he managed to stay on the roof. Barely. He almost exploded with terrified laughter when something struck his knuckles and he saw it was the hilt of his sword. Kos winced and brought the blade up. Palla was almost on top of him, steel claws splayed, her tattooed face split by a steel-toothed roar.

  In her rage, the Rakdos committed too much momentum to her charge. Kos rolled onto his side and swept out with one leg that caught Palla across the shins before she could leap. The wild-haired cultist crashed into the roof beside him face-first. Moss and broken tile stuck to her bone white face and tangled hair, making her look even more like a ghoul when she raised her head and grinned.

  “That’s better,” Palla hissed. “Hoped you’d fight back. The others went down so easily.”

  They made it to their feet at the same time and circled each other cautiously on the slick tiles. The Rakdos made a few experimental slashes at Kos, but he dodged them as easily as she backed away from his sword.

  Palla flicked soggy, matted hair from her painted, tattooed face. “You’re just a stripling, aren’t you?” Palla taunted. “No wonder you think you can win.”

  “Lady, I already lost,” Kos said. “Arresting you is my consolation prize. Unless you continue to resist, of course, which would really be just fine.”

  “You need to learn some respect
for the Rakdos, stripling. You’re barely out of your training uniform, aren’t—”

  Kos’s throw surprised him almost as much as it surprised the cultist. His sword’s brief flight ended in Palla’s throat. The Rakdos staggered and clutched vainly at the hilt projecting from her neck like a performer stuck in a parlor magic trick gone horribly wrong. Kos stepped forward and jerked the blade free, and with a complete disregard for preservation of the scene that would end up on his performance record as the first of many such rules violations, he kicked the gurgling Rakdos over the edge of the roof.

  “Do what you … will to me …” a choked voice croaked in the rain. “I am not the murderer … here.” Zunich still held the elf in a forearm chokehold, but the bounty hunter’s flailing kicks were almost spasms now. He wouldn’t last much longer.

  And what if he didn’t? Kos took a moment to consider. Zunich had killed the girl, but if the elf was dead, only two people would know. Whatever the child had been doing here, nothing would bring her back now.

  No, the girl’s death had been an accident, a tragic one. What Zunich was about to commit was cold-blooded murder. In Ravnica, it was said, the only murders that counted were the murders of ’jeks, and legally that was true. The greenest rookie wojek knew this. It was pounded into the heads of academy trainees for months on end. Murder, as long as a ’jek wasn’t the target, was often the cost of doing guild business.

  This wasn’t guild business though. It was just ending another’s life in anger. If he let it happen, Kos would not be able to live with himself from this second forward.

  “Sir,” Kos said and leveled his sword at his partner. He walked with measured steps from the edge of the roof to the struggling pair. “Release him. Please.”