There Is Life in the Tree and Death in the Well

by Shane Burkholder

  “Matron,” he murmured to the ground and kept his eyes fixed there until her white slippers, slick with grime and blood, entered that space. “You grace me.”

  “Oren Zados,” she said. Her voice was a bird’s trilling from deep inside the deepest grotto. The long fingers of a delicate hand lifted his chin that he might look upon her radiant vision once more. “Provost of the Fourth Ward of the Tradesmen’s Tier. You grace me. I chose your jurisdiction in specific. The presence of the Faithful in Sulidhe’s administration—the courage it must take—is not received lightly.”

  “I am honored to be of any notice at all.”

  “Please. Stand.”

  He did so, too quickly. “I don’t presume to ask your business.”

  “Simply ask.”

  “I’ll start with who sent you. Your men are close to blows with the Lictors while the work of the Edict is piling up. We–”

  Her upraised hand, unfolding like a pale flower, stopped him. “I gave you leave to speak, not to redress.” Oren looked down and folded his hands, a chastised schoolboy. “We are here by our own will. To help. Formality required sanction of the act, but Auxiliary Trease gave it. Your Lictors are disrupting the execution of matters of state.”

  A commotion started behind him, and the Matron Sohrabaia’s head snapped to it like a wolf’s. Her eyes narrowed until their brilliant green seemed pushed from them like an effulgence. She gestured and he turned. The men of the Church-Oppugning parted to admit Huer into their presence.

  “We don’t have time for kneeling and fawning and haggling,” he said to the Matron. “More unsanctioned are drifting in while we sit here staring at each other. What’s it to be, Oren?”

  “There are fires down below,” he said. Simple words were best in crises. “If we can’t hold the lift in the Midden, it won’t matter who has rights to the lift in the Tier. Matron.” The word spilled out of him clumsily. “I believe your lot should go down below, if you’ll have it. The Faith is more welcome there than any Tradesman.”

  “I have enough men for both sides of the threshold.” Huer’s teeth did not move as he spat the words. “The Judges rule here. Not you, Provost. Not these fine, fine Churchfolk.”

  “Some of them below come up here to worship,” the Provost said, quick enough to silence anything more. “All of them come up here to trade. Middeners will see your swordstaffs and just know you for the people who watch them like they’re starved dogs while they trade. Who beat them if they steal.”

  “Oren–”

  Oren made a show of imposing his bulk onto the man, but pulled him close. His strength was inarguable, though Huer tried to resist. “There’s more here than you know. You saw the Church’s acolytes in the Circumspex same as me.” He pulled away from him and said, louder now, “I want you up here. Where you’re trusted.”

  Huer turned to face his men, his eyes lingering on Oren’s, and shouted above the din of the crowd for them to regroup alongside the watchmen and get the exiles into order. The other Lictors were no less pleased with Oren than their captain, and he felt the pang of guilt under their gaze. Of betrayal. A lithe, frail hand on his shoulder interrupted his remonstrations against himself.

  “We thank you, Provost,” the Matron’s voice trilled in his ear, supped delicately at his shame. “As a man of the Faith, you understand that the Church ever seeks to lend its aid.”

  “Of course, Matron,” he said. But he did not look at her. There was something at work in his blood counseling him that he did not know what waited at his shoulder. “By your leave.”

  “We will board with the next departures and see that the Circumspex’s will is done.”

  The Provost gave a curt nod and broke through the ranks of the Exchange now standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his watchmen. The distinct feeling came over him that he left a part of himself behind with each step, but not to the replenishment of any other. This was a day of chains, of tethers, and they pulled at him from all the anchors of his life. His surface was coming apart. And he did not know the interior except as an amorphous, foreign land. The ground before him was treacherous, the city shifting that for so long was intransigent and unmoving. His want for a sure thing conjured the same image without fail.

  “Helyett,” he called and started for her where she stood a watch over the proceedings, making sure no one slipped through the cordon. “Have you seen anything of Meveled?”

  “Nothing since we saw him off last night,” she said, her look perplexed. “Was he supposed to report today? I thought he was to protect the boy until the Edict was fulfilled.”

  “Right,” Oren said and thumped her stiffly on the shoulder. “Right. Maybe Kodes has heard something, then.”

  “Pardon, sir. We need you up here. I can stomach this charade no more than you, but here we are. Your boy is safe. Meveled’s the best fighter we’ve got, the cunt that he is.”

  “My boy.” A smile dared to penetrate and hold on the turbulent storm of his face, and he dared to turn it on his lieutenant. “You’re a good woman, Helyett, and a better watchman. When I’ve gone, make sure the others don’t beat you away from that desk. The map is yours.”

  A smile cracked her stolid face at once and imparted to him a lightness that passed sentence on the whole business. As if it would be led away in chains and with that being the end of it. He felt the absence of a weight as he could not possess himself to feel even in the most absolute quiet and stillness, and it soothed him now amid the violent fury of the day. Indeed, he found himself able to consider the fact of the map as he had not ever been able to before: with a warmth in him. As if in coming to terms with the leaving of it, its passing on, he could see its streets and places and titles in a brighter and clearer light. The light of the truth of the past, of a thing that had been and now was no more. But in his thinking a shadow without source began to lower over him. The map, he thought and then thought again. Repeated it in his head like a refrain, the last words in a hymn, intoned until finally the venerated was drawn forth.

  His thoughts spilled over onto his tongue. “The map. The canals. The boy, my boy.” Oren remembered then what he had seen the night before, remembered Meveled’s task and remembered the horrid thing that Arnem had shown him. The thing which still sat stinking and moldering inexplicably in his home. “Meveled is not going to be coming back,” he told Helyett. “I want men sent to the Cistern.”

  “Oren, I don’t understand. Now? With the Edict? There’s already men at the Cistern.”

  “Send more. And send word to the other Provosts, however you can, that we meet tonight around Sofis’s table. Or whoever’s table it must be. But we must meet!”

  ◆◆◆

  Kodes understood what he felt it was his duty to understand and little else. He did not count himself stupid, though in this he was joined by only a few others. Rather the mind was a vessel, and he endeavored to keep his emptied. Otherwise his thoughts would overflow when he needed them most. As too often they did for others. With an empty vessel he could remember only what he chose to remember and notice what needed noticing. Far from stupid, his mind was a clear and focused weapon. It was why he made such a good watchman, or so he told himself. And why, once seen, he seized the resplendent image of the servants of the Sundered Faith descending into the Midden and sealed it deep and kept it safe. He would need it—he felt, he understood—before long.

  “Churchmen,” Kodes greeted them and took note of the exceedingly tall woman, utterly absent of hair and clothed all in white and silver, at the forefront. “I am surprised to see you here.” The lift met the earth in a dull clang and the gates were pulled aside by the watchmen who had waited to receive it. “Why are Churchmen here in the Midden?”

  The woman drew up to him and stood well past his height, such that he had to look up into her face. Her eyes were deep wells of emerald sunset. They at once took him in and repelled him. As if he were caught in the tides of another world, another time.

  “Do you see a man before
you now?” she asked him.

  “I see Churchmen, Matron,” Kodes said. “And I do not hear an explanation.”

  A tremor passed over the Matron Sohrabaia’s face that disappeared into a smile, a centipede crawling from one rock to the next and out of the light.

  “Your Provost asked we Churchmen down to assist you,” she said, her words put as delicately as a bird fluttering in the morning sun. “That assistance appears needed. Sorely.”

  Sohrabaia inclined her head to the throng that pressed against the line of men he had assembled to keep a cordon around the landing of the lift. They were all manner of people crying out for all manner of things. There were born Middeners, former exiles, painted Daerians and refugees from border villages raided by the same. Fires burned behind them, deeper into the Midden, the testament to their passage and their rage.

  Kodes kept himself deaf to their voices, so well that their surging numbers were little more than an extension of the decrepit stone from which they emerged. There was only so much life left in the Midden. Kodes knew this. It was his own existence not so long ago before Oren found him. The greater the teeth of the Eaters, the sooner that life would be consumed. But he did not ask himself what there was to be done. It was another thing he understood, let himself understand. There was only ever so much life.

  “You surmise the right of it,” Kodes told the Matron. “I do not know for how much longer we can keep control alone.”

  “Alone?” A smirk twisted Sohrabaia’s lips.

  Wordlessly, the men of the Faith advanced in serried ranks and slid into stance: right foot forward, longflails held out at the ready. The strangled light of the sun and that of the blazes set farther into the Midden glimmered faintly across the golden embossments on their armor, bringing to life the twisting and squirming shapes. Kodes did not like to look upon them. Not even in the calm of the Tradesmen’s Tier or their facsimile in miniature that daily hung around Oren’s neck. Neither did the press of humanity that burgeoned against his men.

  A disturbed quiet came over them. Some among them lashed their fingers together and raised them above their heads with a single finger erect, a sign of obeisance to the faith. They calmed and withdrew while the remainder, comprised primarily of Daerians, were incensed. Their painted bodies pressed all the more against the line of Kodes’s men. But the line held. Kodes did not worry. Not until the centermost conscript melted into a pile of rags and worn leathers.

  The crowd shied away to admit a man clothed in the hair and bones and tanned skins of men. A skull obscured all but the thick plume of beard that descended from its teeth. Kodes did not need to see beneath the mask to know the mystery. The answer was plain. The newcomer stepped into the bubbling pile of undone flesh and viscera, crunching underfoot the bones of the man they had comprised. A rod was clutched tight to his chest that was capped at both ends with a triptych of human faces. Their ragged lips muttered indefinite litanies.

  “Bring the gol’yems,” Kodes shouted to the captain of the small reserve he had kept withheld from the ranks, and the man disappeared with a nod. He turned to Sohrabaia. “A Flesh Priest,” he told her. “How did one get inside the city? It is best to keep your distance.”

  “Your presumption is an enviable quality, watchman.” Sohrabaia sighed, and her men advanced. “I thank you for your concern; but the Daerians’ is a heathen religion, possessed of no more power than that of the Druidic Cults. Whatever their tricks. Utquod protects those who submit to the Whelming. We know no other power.”

  The Flesh Priest paid as much regard to the acolytes of the Church-Oppugning as he did the watchmen closing in around him: none at all. He waited calmly as they encircled him while his fellow Daerians retreated from him, a receding tide of mangy hair and painted whorls. The Churchmen advanced until the Priest was well within reach of their longflails and even then he did not move. It was only when the first hands were laid upon him that he fell to one knee and disappeared within a sphere of seething flesh.

  Those who held him were gone inside its depths, and those nearest turned to flee. Arms grotesque with sinew erupted from the surface of the globe, one after another, and retrieved them. Three of the Matron’s men were taken before they fell back. When the flesh collapsed, sucked back into the void from which it sprang, there was only the Priest waiting for them. The faces of his staff whispered the secrets of those they had consumed.

  ◆◆◆

  The Jedezi were gone, and Arnem was glad to be alone again. He finished the climb down from the tower onto which they had deposited him and sat the rickety heights of the plasm grafted onto its face and that overlooked the lift. It was among the most well-maintained and safest, but today it was only one of the Midden’s few that were not aflame or already carried away on the floods. Today, there would be violence—and blood marred what fire did not touch.

  It was with no small delight that he watched the Daerians fill the gap left by the devoured watchmen and acolytes. They fell upon those who remained like starved wolves with knives and clubs and all the crude weapons of the Midden. Longflails crushed their faces and truncheons broke their bones, but their numbers were strong and held. The boy thought of all that Haldok had told him and of the unhallowed remains that lay scattered throughout the Temple of Istadek. A heat built in him as he watched the melee that fired his spirit with an unknown feeling. He would come in time to know it as vengeance. And, when the first gibbering howls came within earshot, he would receive his first lesson in its despairingly thin longevity. The world did not suffer justice for long.

  The conscripts that Kodes had sent away emerged from the casern that bulwarked the lift’s landing, dispersed into three teams that danced around the gol’yem each was charged with. As if the creatures were the ambulatory idols of ancient gods, as if the watchmen were Daerians themselves. The things raged against their nests of chain, desireful of the blood of the congregated, and the watchmen and acolytes scattered before their advance. But the Daerians moved not at all. Silence came over them. They fell to their knees as the gol’yems were let loose. Their prayers filled the morning even as the creatures scythed through them like grass.

  Hands fell onto Arnem’s shoulders and startled him enough that, if not for their grip, he would have toppled from the plasm’s heights.

  “Here I am,” a woman’s voice said. “Breaking promises to your cousin already.”

  Relief came over the boy. “Szrima. What do you want?”

  “Little from you. I was to keep a watch until the day was done, should your Provost not come to collect you. I lost you in the night.”

  “You saw me?” Arnem spun away from her. “You saw what happened. That thing. And did nothing?”

  “I see only a frightened boy. Far, far outside his ken.”

  Her dark eyes looked down on him with the faintest of lights, and the same smile quirked her violet lips that she had graced him with in her lair. It was a message she did not intend for him to interpret, one that he was not ready to hear; but he took something from it all the same and just as he had before. Arnem wanted to put that look into her eyes again and again. He wanted to see himself in them and how they saw him—how he could never see himself.

  “Where is your beast?” she asked.

  “I told you before.”

  “You sent him away.”

  “I need to do this on my own,” Arnem said and turned to face the slaughter below. “And I need to see Verem, to tell him.”

  “Stand up,” the Flesh Priest cried. “These are not your gods! You have seen them decaying in the lost places of this city. These are blasphemes of the Mageblooded! Stand and fight! Stand and–”

  The impalement of a blade through his breast silenced him. Its fleshy, gibbering mouths drank the blood that washed down its edge and devoured the flesh that they could reach at the edge of the wound. The Daerians wept and forgot their weapons and themselves, offering prayers of exultation. Again he thought of the bones ornamenting the floor of Istadek’s templ
e, of the Vertebrae suspended forever over the Midden and their sickly glow.

  “How can your people be so stupid and so smart all at the same time?” Arnem asked Szrima.

  “A thousand generations of war, rape, and murder. Until all your beliefs are stories and your gods are just the tools of another nation. But at least we know enough to be stupid, boy.” She took him by the scruff of his neck. Her hand was like iron wire as she made him witness the dirty faces of the Middeners who looked upon the scene with only a vaguely resigned disgust. “Look at your people. The Urakeen outside this city’s walls aren’t any different. You’ll bow to whoever, whatever. Just so long as you’re promised you will see tomorrow. Even if tomorrow is a lie.”

  He twisted out of her grip as though he twisted out of a vice.

  “Just take me to Verem, will you?”

  A blast thundered through the chaos of the Midden. It overcame and then silenced the shouting and the fighting, the hammering onto bolted doors. Smoke and red dust drifted lazily into the skies and then dissipated. In its wake, slowly, like a briefly receded tide, the day’s pain resumed and did away with the quiet.

  “I’ll not be taking you anywhere,” Szrima said and shoved Arnem onto his rump. “But I’ll give him your regards.”

  She had fallen away into fog long before the boy got to his feet. All he could hold were the wisps of her.

  ◆◆◆

  The view from the top of the tower was sparse, looking out on a flooded clutch of alleys nestled amid the lofty remains of guildhalls and countinghouses and conservatories, but even these could not conceal the day’s events. Plumes of smoke stretched higher than the highest tower, fanning out against the resistance of the dome and leaking through its pockmarked wards. It was thickest at the wall of the Trademen’s Tier and entwined about the skeletal expanse of the Tree of Sul as if the woe of the ancient dead had finally risen from its roots. The screams radiated out from that point farther than the Midden could hold in its smothering innards. The Witherwood was nearer at hand than the wall or Marskol Square and the Tree of Sul. More than the usual conflagration—born from the ambient and erratic madness endemic to the Midden—was afoot to reach so far into the anterior neighborhoods.