Lies of Descent

by Troy Carrol Bucher

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Let’s see, there was something else . . . oh, you’ll scrub the cart with sand once every tenday. It’s too late tonight, but you’ll do it tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He grabbed Riam’s shirt and pulled him up onto his toes so that their faces were only a hand apart. “Don’t even think of running or going anywhere else. With that glyph on your arm, no one will help you. They won’t even let you buy anything if you have the dregs to pay for it—not even food—and when I find you, you’ll spend the next month chained to the cart.”

  Riam nodded.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Get the straw.” Pekol shoved him away and pointed down the lane. “I’ll be back at sunrise,” he called over his shoulder as he headed the opposite way.

  Riam watched Pekol until he disappeared—likely going home or to a tavern to drink. Pekol reminded Riam of his grandfather in that regard. He seemed the type to spend his nights in a cup.

  Once he was gone, Riam headed toward the inn—only he didn’t stop when he came to it. Instead, he walked down the lane for a time, taking in the shops and homes. The lane was lit here and there by lamps, and a few men and women were out in the early night. They didn’t move in fear of the darkness, but they didn’t dally along either. A few glanced his direction apprehensively, but as soon as they spotted the glyph on his arm, he became invisible to them.

  A short man with a head-wrap came out of a nearby shop. He struggled one by one with the rolled-up rugs that leaned against the wall, bringing them in for the night.

  “Would you like some help?” Riam asked when the man came out for the third one.

  The man took one look at Riam’s arm and turned away. “Get away from my shop, or I’ll call the guard,” he said. “Filthy little criminal.”

  The man didn’t seem in a hurry to do it, but Riam moved quickly down the lane just the same. It probably wouldn’t go well if the guards found him out wandering.

  The lane met a wide street, double the width of the one he walked. In the center of the intersection stood a statue depicting Parron, the Fallen God of Light. The god held a sword at the ready and long wings protruded from its back, coming down so far they nearly touched the cobblestones of the street. He’d never heard of the Fallen having wings. He supposed it was possible since they’d come from the heavens, but he doubted it. Gairen said that Draegorans were descended from Parron, and none of them had wings—nor did he for that matter. He ran a hand over the smooth stone. He couldn’t imagine how it was made or what tools were used to make something so exquisite with rock. Magic maybe. The details of the face captivated Riam. The Fallen God appeared vengeful and sorrowful at the same time, depending on where Riam stood. It seemed to mirror his own feelings. Crazy to think I’m somehow related to this thing. They would stone him for blasphemy for thinking such a thing back home.

  A woman walked by and scrunched her eyes in suspicion at seeing him touching the statue, but she didn’t say anything. It was odd to be so free and yet not free at the same time. I could walk this street all the way to the docks, but then what? There was no guarantee he’d find a Draegoran, and if Pekol found him missing, the man would keep him locked to the cart once the guard caught him.

  It was hunger that finally brought him back to the inn. He would worry about finding the docks and a Draegoran tomorrow. He poked his head through the gate. In the darkness he could make out the stables and a pile of hay against the far wall. He grabbed an armload and moved back toward the gate.

  “You must be Doby’s replacement,” a voice said.

  Riam dropped the hay and spun around. The silhouette of a man stood in the shadows next to the back door of the inn. Something small and red glowed in his hand.

  “I suppose I am,” Riam said.

  The man put the glow to his lips. It brightened as he inhaled and his face lit up, revealing a thick mustache and dark eyes. Exhaling loudly, he stepped out of the shadows. The smell of burning torgana leaves filled the air. “I saw you on the street. You were smart to come back. Most new churps try to run at first. It never ends well for them, and I’m sure Pekol’s hoping you try so he can give you a lesson for it. He likes to start off new churps that way.”

  Riam swallowed. “He told me to get straw from here,” Riam said defensively. “Are you Bortha? He said you two have an arrangement.”

  “I am, and we do.” The man inhaled from the rolled torgana a final time and dropped it to the ground. “Once you get the straw you need, come by the kitchen.” He stepped on the burning ember, twisting his foot back and forth to make sure it was out.

  It took three trips, and Riam’s stomach growled by the time he had the straw spread evenly in the bed of the cart. Three armloads didn’t look like much, but he measured it would be enough to satisfy Pekol. It certainly wouldn’t make it any softer for sleeping, but it wouldn’t be much different than the deck of the barge. It was certainly better than the cage.

  Riam knocked on the side door of the inn. No one answered, so he opened it, revealing a small but organized kitchen with an oven, a few cupboards, and a table. Pots hung from hooks and two washtubs were poked in the corner. A large block in the center of the room held several knives and a small cleaver.

  For a brief moment Riam thought of taking one of the knives. For Fallen’s sake, what do I need a knife for? The answer came quickly—nothing. There wouldn’t be any Esharii in the city, and there was no one he could trade or sell it to with the glyph on his arm. Plus, it was stealing. He couldn’t see himself stealing anything without it being a matter of life and death. In truth, he felt a little guilty for having thought about taking it at all. And besides, he still had Gairen’s sword. It’d been thrown in the river, but he could still feel it whenever he thought about it. It was simply a matter of retrieving it somehow.

  He closed his eyes. It was definitely the sword he felt in the distance—like a beacon, somewhere far and faint, off to his left. With his eyes closed, he could see the thin line that connected him to the weapon. He reached toward it, his arm out like a compass needle, and his eyes came open in surprise. The glyph glowed. He opened and closed his eyes, comparing the tattoo-like lines on his skin to what he saw in his mind when his eyes were closed. With them open, the lines were black and flat, like a drawing, but with them closed, the lines went deeper and wove in and out, like a rope. No, a rope was too large—more of a thread, or several threads, winding their way in and out of his skin. He followed the lines with his senses. The threads formed a complicated knot centered in his forearm.

  He touched one of the threads where it came to the surface of the skin with his other hand and pushed gently. Nothing happened. He continued to examine the lines. They reminded him a bit of the line connecting him to Gairen’s sword. He’d used his mind, not his hands to save himself from being drained by the sword. Would that work again here? He concentrated on one of the strands and tried to push it to the side with his thoughts.

  The line quivered and pain shot up his arm and into his chest. He sucked in his breath between his teeth as the pain faded. He tried again.

  The knot moved once more, pulling the strands around his arm tighter. The pain returned, but this time he was prepared for it. He tugged harder and the pain increased.

  “What are you doing?”

  Riam let go and opened his eyes to find Bortha watching him curiously.

  “Nothing,” Riam answered. “I’m tired. I almost fell asleep standing here.”

  “With your arm sticking out?”

  Riam shrugged.

  “It looked like the glyph on your arm moved. Must be the light playing tricks on me. Guess we’re both tired.” Bortha moved to the table that held the knives. “Are you hungry? You look like you haven’t eaten in days.”

  “Starving.”

  “I’ll make you a plate.”

  Riam
started to protest, “Pekol said nothing but scraps—”

  “Pekol can go pound sand up his ass. If I want to give you a plate of food, I’ll give you a plate of food.” He grabbed a knife and a tin plate and opened the large, wood-burning oven to reveal the remains of a large bird.

  Riam’s mouth hung open. He’d never heard anyone use words quite like that. It was worse than Gairen’s talk at the baths.

  Bortha dug around the carcass and cut away some of the remaining meat. He tossed it on a tin and added something like a tuber back home, only orange with yellow skin, and a scoop of beans from a pot. He slapped the tin onto the table and set a knife next to it. “Go ahead. I’m sorry I’ve no bread left tonight.”

  Riam looked from the tin to Bortha. Is the man trying to trick me? He didn’t want to be in trouble with Pekol. He scratched at the glyph on his arm. The tingling had returned.

  “If you don’t eat it, I’ll throw it out. It’s late enough that no one’s ordering anything but ale or wine in the main room.”

  Riam stepped forward hesitantly.

  “Doby and I had an arrangement, and I’m hoping to continue it.” Bortha took off his apron and hung it on a peg. He placed his palms on the table and nodded for Riam to eat.

  Riam couldn’t resist any longer. He slid forward and grabbed the knife. He wanted to fall on the food and devour it in big, heaping bites, but he didn’t want to appear as desperate as he felt. He forced himself to cut off a small piece of meat and used the knife to skewer it.

  “Well, you’ve more manners than Doby.”

  Riam cut a second piece and ate it slowly. The dark, almost black meat melted in his mouth. It had to be one of the large birds with sharp spurs he’d seen outside the wall. It had a gamy flavor, but it beat eating sage hens flat out. No wonder they went to the trouble of keeping the dangerous birds.

  “I’ve no stable boy, so I’ll make you the same deal as Doby. A plate like this every night, and in return you’ll muck out the stables and brush down any of the animals I tell you need it.”

  Riam didn’t think he’d be around long enough to keep his end of the arrangement, but it didn’t hurt to agree. It might take longer than a day to find a Draegoran. Besides, Pekol wasn’t going to feed him any more than it took to keep him alive. “I’ll do it, but I’m afraid Pekol won’t like it.”

  “As long as you do your work and I’m paying the cost of feeding you, he’ll be content. Besides, he doesn’t have to know a thing about it. In fact, no one needs to know anything about it. I’m bending the rules a bit feeding you. Don’t let it bite me in the ass.”

  Riam choked on his food. City folk were certainly more direct with their words.

  Chapter 25

  A body lay at the mouth of an alley on Painter’s Street on the morning of Tenth Day. Riam found it facedown with its arms bound behind its back. At first, he feared it might be Stick because it sat right at the border between Pekol’s lanes and where the older churp worked with his raker, but when they flipped it over, a woolly beard adorned the face. Whoever the man was, he’d had the life sucked out of him until all that remained was a withered corpse—the work of a Draegoran. The body had darkened and shrunk, leaving the face stretched tight over the skull. It looked familiar, but it could have been anyone.

  The grotesqueness of it gave Riam the shivers, and he watched his hands to keep from staring. He counted the days on grimy fingers. How had a tenday passed so quickly? It didn’t seem possible. He hadn’t intended to remain with Pekol so long, no more than a day or two at most, but he’d not seen a single Draegoran—or anyone else who looked like they could help for that matter—on their rounds or during his short walks while exploring at night. The Draegorans, it seemed, were like the rabbits he’d hunted back home. If you were short on food, you never saw one, but if you left your sling at home, you’d see a dozen.

  The days with Pekol were hard and long, partially explaining why he hadn’t found a Draegoran to hear his case. Picking up refuse from sunrise to sundown, interspersed with trips to the pit, and then cleaning Bortha’s stalls to earn enough food to keep from starving didn’t give him much time for anything else. Every day lasted an eternity, with the same mindless routine, and he was so tired that he kept putting off his escape. Yet the tenday had flown by like the wind. He hadn’t even had a chance to do more with the glyph on his arm than to take a few halfhearted looks at it with his inner sight before falling asleep.

  If he could figure out how to remove the glyph, he would be free to do whatever he wanted. No one would question him searching out a way to the island. The idea had come to him last night before falling asleep in the back of the cart. If he didn’t find a Draegoran soon, he would need to find a way to untangle the glyph.

  “Quit dallying and grab the legs.”

  Riam did as Pekol said, and they carried the dead man to the cart. The skin around the man’s ankles crumbled and flaked away in Riam’s hands, brittle as rotten wood, exposing the dried veins and sinews beneath. The muscles felt like weathered strips of leather beneath Riam’s fingers. Even the exposed bone was sun-white and porous. The corpse mirrored the last image he held of his grandfather. He tried not to look at the face, but he found himself drawn to the way the lips pulled back into a morbid smile, as if the man died happy instead of in the agonizing pain of being drained—a pain Riam remembered from the timber yard.

  Pekol let out one of his usual cackles, tearing Riam away from his thoughts. “Reminds me of Doby,” he said when he stopped laughing.

  How could the man laugh while they were carrying a body, and especially about the death of a churp who’d served him for years? Stick was right. There was something very wrong with Pekol. The raker would never let him go, even if he served the full time—which he would not. He needed to get away, and he needed to get to the island to begin his training as a Draegoran.

  “We’ll go straight to the pit. District wardens don’t like us parading their handiwork around the city for all to see.”

  They rolled the body over the sidewall and dropped it into the back of the cart with a thump. The dead man’s purse fell from beneath his vest and lay exposed on the floorboard of the wagon. Pekol ignored it, which was puzzling. The man never let a thing go into the cart without checking and rechecking it for anything he could sell or trade. He knew Pekol saw it fall. Why ignore the pouch? There was something going on here he didn’t understand.

  Pekol moved to take the handles of the cart. Without thinking, Riam reached for the pouch. He closed his hand around it and yanked, but the cord fixing it to the corpse’s belt held. He expected the pouch to be hard with coin, but instead it felt soft.

  Pekol stepped around the arm of the cart. Riam pulled again, harder this time. The cord snapped, and he hit the sidewall with a loud thwack. With nowhere to hide the pouch, Riam dropped it to the ground right as Pekol looked back.

  Pekol tilted his head quizzically. “What are you doing?”

  Riam rubbed at his hand. “Splinter,” he said. His heartbeat pounded in his ears. The pouch by his feet seemed larger than the cart. He forced himself to stare at his hand and did his best to look uncaring about anything else. Please, don’t let him look down.

  Pekol rubbed his bottom teeth back and forth against his upper lip.

  Riam pretended to bite at a splinter. He felt a flake of skin on his tongue and jerked his hand away, spitting until he was sure it was gone.

  “Let’s get going,” Pekol said. He took up his position.

  Riam started to grab the pouch before the cart rolled passed and froze. The pouch had come open when it landed, spilling a dark wad of torgana leaves. With a sinking feeling, he knew whose body lay in the cart, and he knew that somehow Pekol was responsible. He didn’t know how Pekol had arranged for a Draegoran to kill the guard from the gate, but that meant there was at least one Draegoran around. Do I really want to find one who is killin
g guards for Pekol?

  * * *

  —

  Pekol whistled and hummed for the rest of the morning. He didn’t yell at Riam once to hurry or scold him for missing something that he hadn’t had time to collect. He even paid for a small meat pie that they split after finishing their first two lanes and returning from the pit. Riam sat on the back of the cart, eating the pie. Pekol stood next to him. Around the square, rakers haggled over their finds. From a simple sandal lace to a cracked tankard, everything usable held value to someone in the square.

  “Beautiful day to be alive,” Pekol said between mouthfuls.

  Riam didn’t know how to answer. The sun burned down from above, making the air hot and sticky.

  “Easy runs, a fine spiced pie, what more can you ask for, eh, Doby?”

  “I’m not Doby,” Riam said. The pie tasted bland and the crust soggy. Between that and thoughts of the dead guard, he’d only been able to eat a few bites.

  “What’s that?”

  “You called me Doby. Doby’s dead.”

  “I did not. The heat’s rattled you. You’re hearing things.”

  “You did.” Riam knew better than to press, but he couldn’t help himself. Pekol’s smug happiness made something inside Riam burn. Pekol had been a part of the guard’s death and he’d had Doby killed. And those things made him happy? Riam wished he still had Gairen’s sword with him. If he did, he’d do his best to run Pekol through.

  “I know Doby’s dead. Shut up and eat your pie.”

  “No, he’s right. You called him Doby,” Stick said from behind them.

  “Butt out, Stick.”

  “Why? Today’s the day, Peke,” Stick said, walking confidently up to them. “I’ll be free as soon as the district warden arrives, and he’s on his way.”

  Riam sat up straight, his grim mood forgotten. He would finally get his chance to talk to a Draegoran and be free of Pekol. Somehow, he would get the warden’s attention without Pekol stopping him.