by C. A. Lang
“What the hell is going on, Alim?” Vasi would know, but where was she? And Dannac?
Of all the people to be stuck with, it had to be Alim. The worst part was that she still felt a hint of comfort at a familiar face, even if the man wanted to kill her.
The phalanx of hand-cannons advanced. Unless this was some convoluted trick, Alim would have to cooperate with her.
She jumped from his chest and extended her hand to him. “Come on, there’s no use fighting these people.”
Alim’s mouth gaped for a second. The two met eyes, Alim’s blazing with a fervour she knew he was consciously tempering. Just when the moment began to slide into an uncomfortable exchange, he gripped Capra’s forearm, and she pulled him to his feet.
The soldiers began to bellow crude remarks. Sheepfuckers! Suck on this! You stupid cunt, get back in the kitchen where you belong!
Alim nodded and the two broke into a mad sprint away from the shadows and their puppets. Fatigue crept into her lungs and muscles, but when they passed a crowd of men playing a round of darts with an elderly man tied to a lamppost as their target, she quickly found the wherewithal to overcome a few stitches in her sides.
“The rules are strict,” someone said. “We will, after this game, divide the group by virtue of their scores. Landing your dart between the eyes will earn you an automatic spot in the new Council of Ten-Thousand!”
Rules? It was chaos.
Another voice: “We will once again establish the rule of law, just as we did with the Fire Giants.”
They rounded a corner near a park decorated with white columns, and they decided to hide among the false ruins. She dropped to her knees and panted, mouth parched and throat burning. “I wish I had paid more attention in our religious classes, Alim. I have no idea what these people are talking about.”
“The shadows,” he said between gasps. “Wanted to organize nature the way they saw fit. It could have been perverse, like this, or it could have been heaven... but the fire giants resisted their taint, and fought back.”
“What a choirboy you are.”
“Understanding the religious differences between us and the Ehzeri is a tactical advantage, Capra. You should have paid attention.”
In this one moment of discussion, this exceptional suspension of their relationship as defector and hunter, Capra felt like she had before she had left the army. Before they had shipped her to the Red Sector to help quash the never-ending rebellion, before she had witnessed what really happened in Red.
“What are you smiling about?”
She erased her out-of-place grin. “Nothing.”
“Well, you obviously found something funny about depravity in the streets and the shadow men ruling the natural world.”
“It was nothing. Just memories. Ghosts.”
He grumbled and peered around the column, into the madness. “What do you know about this? Were you going to stop it?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I was on my way to... well, maybe I shouldn’t tell you these things. You are, after all, in bed with Sevari.”
“These things don’t acknowledge our allegiances.” He drew a deep breath and gazed at her with blatant malice flashing in his eyes. “We can sort that out afterwards. Neither of us will gain anything with Sevari’s madness spreading into the streets through these shadow men.”
“I just have a hard time trusting people with the same tattoo I have.”
“Don’t bring up issues of trust, Capra. You are the one who has spent the last three years running from the law of your own people and surviving by leeching off the rich and their petty whims.”
How could he know all of this? She could only blink and wonder which of her secrets he had uncovered.
“Oh yes, Capra. I know a lot about you. They gave me everything I needed to track down the war resisters. I know what you have stolen, what you have sabotaged, and three of the five men you were involved with.”
She felt her cheeks become hot. “Five? You need to go back and do some more investigating, Alim.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
They were copulating in the middle of the road, faces caked with oil and soot, bodies writhing in ripped clothes and smearing puddles of engine grease. Dannac seriously considered putting them out of the misery that seemed to have overtaken them.
“I had no idea this was what they wanted,” Vasi said. “If I had known, I would never have agreed to work on the project.”
The makeshift bandage on her back was bright red and beginning to leak. “Stop and let me change the bandage. It is still bleeding.”
She shrugged away from him. “I will be fine. We need to find Capra.”
“The shot could be laced with poison.”
She shut her eyes and shivered for a moment. “I am not poisoned, and if I were, most poisons are easy to remove.”
They moved on, while everyone they passed either fought or groped or ate dirt and a dozen other inedible things.
Dannac shuddered as he realized that were it not for this depravity, the ambush would have been successful and they would be dead. “I should not have left her behind.”
“We had no choice. You know she can take care of herself.”
A flying boat roared overhead, and in its wake, several black specks fell to the ground.
Passengers.
“You seem to be able to take care of yourself as well.”
She jolted. “What?”
“Any of our fighters could recognize what you are. Sevari must be either truly insane or too stupid to check out the people he hires. I imagine the line of discipline that prevents you from levelling his clock tower is thin.”
She butted against him, apparently not satisfied that none of the deranged people around them cared about her secrets. “It is not the way to fight. If they had given me a bow and shoved me onto the front lines, I would have stayed to defend our people. But the archon they turned me into...”
“Relax. I left them too, remember? I just wonder if you ever stopped to think that a weapon like yourself placed in a place like Blightcross could be more disastrous than anything you ever saw in Mizkov.”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought about that? It haunts me every day. Sevari’s work helps to keep me focused and stable.”
Thank the Blacksmith for that.
They dodged a clump of revellers and turned onto a side street. The oddness seemed to be collecting, organizing itself along the main arteries of the city, and Dannac thought it best to avoid any more confrontations with these corrupted people.
If, that is, they still were people. Perhaps he would do them a favour by killing them. The thought persisted in his conscience—was it right to let them fall victim to these shadow men?
He sidestepped a headless corpse. Around the next corner, they drew back at the sight of a dozen black-suited men patrolling the street. Dannac pulled out his hand cannon, heart racing. Their eyes swept the block, at once both vacant and searing. A depraved laughter rattled above on a metal staircase. He coiled into a ready stance, like a flinching reptile. Hanging over the railing, the gibbering idiot above stared with crossed eyes and brandished a cocked crossbow in one hand, and a corn broom in the other. Dannac aimed the cannon between the man’s eyes and held his breath.
“Dannac, what are you doing?”
He kept stone-still. “Get behind me. There are shadow men in the street, and a fool with a crossbow in the balcony.”
“Let’s just keep going. He’s not well. I doubt he can even aim his weapon.”
But the man blew a lock of his hair from his eyes and raised the crossbow. Dannac ground his molars and squeezed the trigger. The shot slammed his arms, and the alley was a thunder-filled canyon. The round shattered the man’s face, and sprayed the wall behind with the pulp of his head.
Dannac nodded with satisfaction, reloaded the cannon, and gestured to the street. Vasi could stand there and stare if she wanted. While he might with Capra, he woul
dn’t try to reason with Vasi.
Finally, she rejoined him, her head kept low. That is, until they passed a group of shadow men, and she let out a quiet, startled noise. Dannac tried to stare them down as they passed, but they did not break their gaze.
When they passed, Dannac could barely admit to himself that he had held his breath and recited prayers in his mind. But the apparitions made no move against them.
A few blocks later, Vasi broke the eerie silence.
“You would have to worry about your friend less if you would just let me tell her the truth.”
“She is not one of us.”
Vasi flinched at a guttural sound coming from one of the alleys. “How do you explain her ability? Her sensitivity to the storms? The family knot around her neck that is identical to mine? We are related, she and I. It is...”
“Crazy. She stole it from the body of one of the hundreds she has killed.”
“I thought that at first, but I cannot believe it now. She is not the type to carry trophies. It could really be a family heirloom, like she said. Only she doesn’t appear to know the significance of it.”
He wanted to cover his ears, or her mouth. What Ehzeri could even imply that one of those Valoii monsters was actually one of their own? True, he had accepted Capra out of necessity and in the end had grown to appreciate her friendship and expertise, but he could never forget who she really was. A few symptoms of cloud sickness and the ability to receive vihs images in her mind did not replace Valoii blood.
“It is wishful thinking. Sevari has worked you to the bone, and the stress of your worrying about Rovan has taken your ability to reason. Capra cannot be one of us.”
She stopped. “You think I am this delicate little chuzka, don’t you? Do you have any idea what I can do? The things I have done? I am not imagining things. Capra is Ehzeri.”
“If Capra is Ehzeri, then use your witch-sense to find her so we can stop wandering aimlessly. I do not like delays. I must get to that tower.”
“You seem very interested in this tower. Are you an engineer?”
“No.”
She made a little noise, then kept quiet.
Was having sight worth doing dirty work for Yaz and the Republic?
“There she is.” Vasi skipped towards a plot of short grass decorated with benches and granite columns.
“Are you joking?”
Obviously not—there she was, cowering behind a column. With another man.
Another Valoii.
He grabbed Vasi and guided her behind one of the columns. “Are you insane? That is the Valoii.”
“The soldier Alim? I know. It seems they have reconciled for the time being. It would be foolish not to, given the state of things.”
“You are much too trusting.”
“That is what you think.” She gave him a look of utter defiance and tore free.
“Wait, just do not complicate matters by speaking of your bizarre theories. We have enough to deal with as it is. All right?”
She nodded, and they approached their comrade.
Alim shot to his feet, hand on his sword hilt. Capra stayed behind the column, since she was hardly equipped for a fight.
In hindsight, they should have picked up one of the hand cannons dropped by their attackers. They could not be that hard to figure out, could they?
“What is it?” she whispered.
“Four of them.”
“Four of what?”
“Men in black.”
“But not humans with axes and cannons?”
“No.”
She stood. “Perhaps they would negotiate. We could gain the upper hand. I’m a good talker, Alim.”
“I know that.”
“So let’s see if we can outsmart them.”
He ducked back behind the column. “There is no outsmarting them. There is nothing to negotiate with. They are shadows, Capra.”
“Then how are they walking towards us? How are they driving the city to madness? Alim, they have to be intelligent, they have to be capable of listening and comprehending.”
“I don’t pretend to understand them. That’s just what they are. Sevari could tell you what their power is—something about the space where something isn’t being more powerful than the thing that fills that place. It’s all mad, and we’d best get moving.”
The only question was of where they could run. To the south, the main street began to pack with these men in black, all standing beside or behind a depraved worker or mother or child, as if guiding them in some obscene ritual.
To the east, Capra glimpsed the likely source of the sulphur reek she had noticed. Rising above the low buildings were the cargo cranes, and beyond these the Golroot River pushed its sludge towards the ocean. Across the bridge stretched a dead expanse of desert, broken only by a single grey monolith—the prison.
“I say we go towards the docks, at least,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because most of the shadows were concentrated on the refinery and the centre of the city. At least, in the air they were. We get out of the fray, regroup and come up with a better idea.”
They scrambled from column to column, and Capra could not ignore a strange sensation at her back, as if her awareness were pulled partly out of her body and could sense the phantoms pursuing them.
Once they cleared the park, it was as though they had walked into an arena of death-sport. The streets were empty of business and wagons, blades and hammers lay in pools of blood, men swung barbed chains, and legions of the shadows watched dispassionately like bored patricians barely staving off their ennui.
Capra skidded to a stop. “We’re surrounded.”
“We might pass through them. They appear occupied. Almost as if there’s some plan to play out, and they’re filling roles and establishing some new structure. If we don’t fit with it, they’ll ignore us.”
“You mean kill us?”
Alim shrugged. “It seems even the victims of this death have taken on a role. Look.”
He might have been right, but why would anyone choose to be subservient? A lean, strong man who must have worked in the foundry and lived through his share of fistfights, somehow struck down by a teenager with a hook on a rope and a nasty grin. Even a greying, wrinkled lady found a way to bury the point of her parasol into the throat of a young man in business attire. Why would these people accept their deaths?
Alim drew his sword, and Capra still held her little switchblade.
He whispered, “Walk slowly, don’t look at the shadows.”
“Alim, are you crazy?”
“If we run, they will notice us, like cats. They can’t see worth a damn, but when something makes sudden moves, they will take notice and pounce.”
It almost made sense. Enough that Capra obeyed and tried to block out the mad raving and gang beatings and copulation. It was as if the city itself were writhing in a fever-dream, legs and arms squirming in the streets, a complete breakdown of language and all of the basic assumptions one took for granted if they were to function in society.
They decided to head for the darkened alleys wherever possible. Capra hated the feeling of walls flanking her. She stepped around human waste and puddles of spilled beer.
The alley residents were slumped against the wall. An inhuman reek hung over them like localized extensions of the smog above the city. Would they attack her? If they did, perhaps it would be a cry for help, a way of ending whatever had come over them.
Wouldn’t they be better off dead?
She caught herself in the middle of that thought and cringed. It was not her place to decide.
“What happened to my friends?” she asked, since conversation would help to keep her nerves in check.
“My men were taken by the shadows minutes before you came into the ambush. By then, they didn’t care who they killed, it seemed.”
“Is that a yes?”
“They disappeared in the crowd. Maybe they were hit, maybe not.”
/> That didn’t sound very encouraging, but she then remembered that Dannac was armed for the occasion, and that Vasi could hold her own. She might even have healing abilities.
Wouldn’t that be handy about now? And why weren’t the city’s Ehzeri fighting back?
Had Capra possessed those skills, she would jump at the chance to fend off these shadows. Although, it was probably more complicated than simply firing random bolts of thunder at an enemy and destroying them. Who was she kidding—she had no idea what it was like. No Valoii of her generation did, not even the instructors who drilled them on how to recognize this or that type of attack, how to spot a vihs-enabled person, how to counter them with certain elements.
How to kill them.
Just a few steps from the alley’s end, and the beginning of the docks, Alim jolted to a stop.
“What now?”
He said nothing, readied his sword.
“Shit, are you kidding me?”
She brought her hands up, muscles tense and vibrating. She stepped to Alim’s side, and saw the impasse: four soldiers, each with large axes and hand-cannons stuffed in their belts.
“We’ve received orders to round up any suspicious characters,” one of them said.
Alim said, “I am working under Sevari, you dullards. Let us pass.”
“All men who look like you do are to be interrogated.”
“Men who look like me?”
“There are agents here, Sir.” The soldier advanced, licking his lips and raising his axe. “They told me about the agents. They say that you are one of them. I must interrogate you, Sir.”
“This is ridiculous—”
Capra tapped him with her elbow. “He’s been corrupted, Alim.”
“Thought it was worth a try, anyway. You never know.”
“Never know? Look at him. He’s a lunatic.”
Four against two—it wasn’t so bad. Scientific studies had confirmed that Valoii training could enable the average person to take on three trained Tamarck infantrymen at the low end. It would be over in a matter of seconds, with these bastards at their feet and—
A small axe sliced through the air and grazed her arm, and she reeled. Alim jumped into them, and Capra rushed in, striking with her fists. She landed a blow against one of the soldiers’ jaw. He stumbled once, and slashed again with his axe. She whirled and drove her knife into his thigh, twisted, and tossed him to the ground.