The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  Mop threaded his sister’s hair through the comb, running it thrice between the tines, and then he took the hair and burned it in the oil lamp. Smoke rose. The hair sizzled and curled and burned away, spice and Rain and the whispers of his words. The acrid sulphur scent of magic coalesced around him, summoned and bound.

  The flush of power was almost overwhelming. This was what it was to spell. No wonder the majisters of Jhandpara had been unable to stop.

  Mop’s voice rose, a thrumming chant. The power was too much. He was full of it. The flush was too fine, the pleasure too decadent. The chant began to crest. Power poured from his voice into the comb where he waved it above the flame, sifting the smoke of Rain’s burned hair.

  His voice rose to an ecstatic shout—

  The comb flipped out of his hand.

  It hit the floor, skittered about on the flagstones, flopping like a fish, first one way, then another, a thing alive and out of place, trying to find its home and direction.

  It leaped into the air and shot across the room, smacked against granite stonework. It quivered against the wall, and then, slowly, it began sliding along the stones. Scraping, prying, seeking—

  A crack in the door.

  The comb jammed itself into the crack, wedging itself, forcing deeper, quivering and eager to find its target.

  Mop barely managed to grab hold as it sank deeper into the gap. With a grunt, he hauled it back. The comb shook and twisted in his hands, slippery and sly, threatening at every moment to fly free. It trembled with the power he had imbued into it. A thing that was supposed to find ambush—

  And do what?

  Mop’s fingers weakened with the strain of holding back the comb. What had Kalaia done when she sought her ambushers in the kestrel forests of old? Had she spelled something as innocuous as a comb?

  Or had she spelled arrows and sent them ahead of her, flying like angry wasps?

  The comb trembled malevolently in his hands.

  Mop dragged it close, pinned it under his arm, then opened the door. He peered outside. The night was black and still and hot. If he was careful . . . He would have to avoid the braziers, and censori, but now was as good a time as any to go hunting.

  The comb was dragging him already, lunging, jerking him out into the night, hauling him faster and faster as he fought to maintain his grasp on it. The comb dragging him straight for Crooked Square and its sentinel braziers.

  With all his might, Mop hauled the comb back and forced it down a different alley. The comb fought him at every step, but he couldn’t go close to the brazier smoke. One kiss of smoke and he’d be lit up blue, and everyone would be on him for the reward.

  The comb dragged him on, faster and faster. Mop ran with it, stumbling to keep up as he was jerked around corners and galloped down alleys. The comb slammed him uncaring through the crowds on the streets, dragging him. . . .

  No.

  Ahead, a censori and the Mayor’s guard were coming down the street.

  Mop tried to turn back, but the comb kept dragging him closer. He didn’t have enough strength to make it reverse course. Mop opted instead for pressing against the wall, praying to Kemaz for protection, begging the dog-headed one to push the heavy humid air away from him as the censori stalked past. The winds were in his favor. If they held, he had a chance.

  The censori’s feet were soft on the cobbles. Velvet sneaking shoes, inaudible amongst the tramp of the soldiers’ boots who followed. His censor swung, pendulous. Smoke billowed from the bronze-cast snarl of Borzai’s mouth. Blue flame flickered behind the Judge’s eyes, wicked slits. Smoke issued forth, and Mop watched it, terrified that it would blow in his direction and betray his guilt.

  The god seemed to stare into Mop’s soul as the censori and the soldiers passed. The censori’s eyes fell upon Mop. Mop ducked his head, showing respect, his hands so tight around the comb that he thought his flesh would bleed. Still the breezes favored him.

  Heart pounding with fear, Mop turned and began to shuffle away from the censori, his hands cramping with the effort of restraining the terrifying comb in its hungry hunt.

  He pushed past a cluster of drunken river boatmen, putting them between him and the censori, praying to Kemaz and Borzai and Mara and every god he could think of. Praying for mercy, simply praying.

  The way was open ahead of him.

  I’m going to make it. He realized. I’m free of them.

  The wind shifted. Smoke blew over him. His hands blazed blue. The comb gave a sudden jerk, and it too glowed, bright as a star.

  “Magic!” a soldier shouted. “There! Seize him in the name of Mayor and Majister!”

  The boatmen saw Mop blaze with blue light, and made drunken grabs for him. Mop dodged and fled as above him shutters opened and people peered down to see the commotion. More drunks came out of the tavern, trying to trip him as he passed, cheering on the Mayor’s hounds.

  Mop skidded around a corner and collided with a woman carrying brass wares. Pots fell clattering on cobbles, ringing out. The comb skittered out of his sweat-slick hands.

  “No!”

  The comb ignored his anguished cry. Freed of his clutch, it arrowed down the street, then rose, arcing, flying high, a blue star, rising.

  Mop followed it with his eyes, and then it was gone, over the rooftops.

  The soldiers came clattering around the corner.

  “There he is!”

  Mop ran, his whole body aglow with the evidence of his crime. He dodged and ducked, plunging past more jeering townspeople. He reached the city gate and dove through, rolling under the portcullis as it dropped. The gate slammed down behind him, trapping the soldiers on the other side.

  The soldiers cursed and shouted after him as Mop plunged on, pounding out into the darkness of peasant fields, hating that the darkness that should have been his friend was now his enemy as the bright glow of magic marked him.

  Behind him, he could hear the soldiers raising the gate once more, and attempting pursuit. Slower in their armor, but dogged.

  Mop ran until his lungs were raw and his legs were as weak as grass stalks, and still he stumbled on. Ahead of him, the bramble wall loomed, black and tangled. A few tall thorny trunks still guttered orange with flames, like torches lighting the walls of Mara’s fortress before her last battle with the Demon King Takaz.

  Ahead, he spied the cottage that he and the bramble crews had been excavating from bramble not a day before. If he could hide within . . .

  Mop dove inside the chink-stone house, and tried to bury his glow in the loose dirt that had been worked by the bramble crews.

  In the distance he heard the guards, calling. Coming closer. Stalking. Mop held his breath. If Kemaz favored him, he might hope to be missed. They might not see the cottage, or not dare to search it so close to bramble. Mop frantically piled more dirt atop himself.

  He felt a sting and jerked his hand back. He brushed at the stinging nettle and was rewarded with a second sting. He froze. A pale strand glistened on his skin. Numbness tingled in his fingers. Carefully, holding his breath, Mop dragged his hand through the dirt. The bramble strand fell away.

  But now he saw that he was surrounded. Pale wormy, threads that had survived the burning, or perhaps been blown by winds to settle within the roofless cottage, were everywhere.

  Outside, the voices of the soldiers grew louder.

  Mop tried to wiggle himself deeper into the dirt, anything to smother the glow that would give him away to the soldiers. He felt another sting against his bare arm, another on his neck. Bramble kisses. Numbness, spreading.

  It’s only a few. I can survive a few.

  Not far away, the soldiers shouted as they scoured amongst cooled cauldrons of burn paste, and the saws and hatchets of the bramble crews.

  Beside Mop, something moved on the moonlight. A sinuous thing, rising from the ground. A hungry tendril sprout, hatching from some uncollected seed that the pickers had missed.

  Outside, he heard the soldiers calli
ng.

  Mop held his breath. The bramble vine seemed to be sniffing the air. . . .

  Me. It smells me.

  Mop’s heart began to pound. He was stained with magic. And now the bramble was growing, attracted to him and his spelling. As hungry for him as a wolf hungered for fresh-spilled blood.

  The bramble tendril quested across the dirt, slithering slowly toward him. There was more rustling. Mop spied more moonlit vines. The soil seemed to be boiling with tendrils, sinuous fingers emerging from the earth, turning this way and that, all of them seeming to sniff the air. Hungry vines, thickening, gaining strength, fertilized by the hand of Majistra Kalaia, the woman who had trafficked so ruthlessly in the curse of Jhandpara.

  Mop felt a sting and then another.

  Numbness spread through his body, a heavy tingling. It dragged at his face and limbs. Bramble tendrils began wrapping around his arms and legs, entombing him, questing for his bare flesh.

  A vine sniffed at his face and caressed his cheek, stinging. The bramble sleep was becoming overwhelming. One sting, following another, following another. It felt as if an elephant were sitting upon his chest, forcing the breath from him.

  Outside, he heard a woman’s voice calling, and shouts of dismay from the soldiers. Mop fought to keep heavy lids from closing, watching, awed, as a great bramble bough eased in through a window, blotting out the moon, a branching trunk as thick as a man’s waist.

  The soldiers’ exclamations became distant as they fled, terrified. Mop smiled tiredly. They wouldn’t cut his head off, at least. Instead, the bramble would cradle him in slumberous embrace. The cottage would once again be entombed. Eventually, the burn crews might dig it out, but by then, Mop would be long past caring.

  Rain. I’m sorry.

  The stinging was becoming too much.

  A crackling torch flared. The bramble began to burn. Mop squinted against the bright orange light. A familiar face stared down at him.

  “The velvet one returns, it seems.”

  8

  IT TOOK LIZLI ALMOST AN hour to burn him free, and all that time, Mop fought lethargy. When they finally stumbled from the cottage, he leaned against her like a drunk, staggering, his vision blurred.

  “You’re lucky. Only a little more venom, and you’d be sleeping like your sister.”

  Mop struggled to move numbed lips. “W-w-w . . . w-welliwake up?

  “You’ve been spelling,” Lizli said.

  “L-l-l-lost Rain.”

  Lizli sighed. “And so you thought you’d spell her body to your side.” She shook her head. “You, causing more bramble, just to find a dead thing.” She gestured back at the stone cottage, now almost consumed by the bramble that had been fertilized by his magic.

  “How many hours to burn that back again, all because a velvet one like you thinks his needs are greater than mine?”

  She smacked the back of his head, a sharp correction. Mop was too bleary and exhausted to defend himself as she struck him again.

  “This is why Alacan is bramble! People like you! All you Alacaners with your secret special needs!”

  She grabbed his arm and tugged, nearly toppling him. “Well? Come on, then. You won’t be fit for anything for hours, judging from the kisses you’ve taken.” She eyed him with distaste. “And you’ve still got a bit of the glow about you. Need to get you away from the bramble. Bad enough that you spelled, but then you came here of all places. Making it worse for everyone.”

  “Mmm tired.”

  “You will be. For days, I’m sure. And we can’t let you sleep tonight, or you may still not wake.”

  She dragged him on, relentless. Mop focused on putting his numbed feet on the ground. Forcing stony-lug feet and dead-tree-trunk legs to move. Thump. Thump. Thump. Clumsy weights that he dragged in counterpoint. One step at a time. Thump. Thump.

  Lizli’s crabbed hand squeezed his arm, nails digging in. He thought to complain until he realized that she was simply keeping him upright. The steps he took were not even. He swayed like a ship tossed in storm with every footfall.

  If not for his leathers, he was sure that he would already be sleeping, another body to be dumped in the Sulong or sold to the soft-eyed men. His skin burned where the bramble had gifted welting kisses.

  “H-h-how far?” he mumbled.

  “Not far, now,” Lizli said. “An easy walk when you’re healthy.”

  In the distance, Duke Malabaz’s manor glowed with candles and lantern light. Torches burned on its high walks. Mop kept his gaze focused on the light, willing his dead legs to move. Forcing himself to walk toward those flickering glows.

  Quite a lot of light, for so deep in the night.

  “What’s this?” Lizli frowned.

  Ahead, a village huddled close to the manor, the homes of the duke’s servants and farmers along with assorted guards and bramble pickers. It should have been still and silent, and yet now shadow people ran and called out.

  “Your hunters couldn’t be seeking you here,” Lizli said. “They tucked tail for the city. So who is this?”

  Mop couldn’t summon the energy to speculate. Only the rhythm of movement seemed to keep him upright. Dimly he was aware of the shouts and calls and running forms breaking the night stillness, but he couldn’t quite summon his sodden mind to care about the activities of those who dashed amongst the village huts.

  Lizli yanked him to a stop. “You still glow of magic. We can’t return to my home this way.”

  Mop shuffled to a halt, swaying. He stared dully down at his clothes. Indeed, a faint aura still limned his body, but it was dim now. Not as before. Not the sparkling shimmering badge of shame that censori and soldiers had pursued. And now, even as he watched, the glow seemed to be sloughing from his body under the influence of the gentle night breeze.

  It blew away like dust, drifting motes, like the fines of chili powders brushed from Teoz’s hands after he has finished weighing orders for the velvet ones on Malvia Hill.

  Mop brushed clumsily at himself. More of the spelling residue fell away, blowing clear in the night breeze. Lizli watched. She slapped her own hands together, clapping them, as if afraid that some memory of magic might cling to her own skin.

  “I tried,” Mop mumbled as he tried to cleanse himself. “I tried to find her. I just wanted to help her.”

  “And you failed. As everyone who has tried before you. Jhandpara’s Curse is not something we bargain with. It is not something we undo. There is no escape from it, and you knew it when you failed to give your sister the mercy cut when you had the chance.”

  “It wasn’t always this way,” he said.

  “Magic makes bramble, and bramble makes kisses, and kisses make sleep that lasts until Kpala’s children tear us to pieces. It was always thus. And yet you put your yourself above the rest of us, and now all that magic blows in the breeze and brings bramble calling. Your people smothered Alacan under bramble’s blanket, and now you do the same here.”

  “I had to find her,” Mop said. “I couldn’t leave her to the soft-eyed men.”

  Lizli gave him a disgusted look. “And see how that has served you now. You, almost kissed to join her. And a day of our work undone as well. You’ve had a busy night, little velvet one.”

  Mop stopped his protestations. He brushed again at his clothes, and the last of the magic sloughed off him.

  “Well, you’ll pass,” Lizli judged. “Now come with me. But keep clear of whatever is brewing.” She began leading him toward the noise and clamor of the village that clustered beside Malabaz’s home.

  The entire village was awake. For a moment, Mop was gripped with fear that more censori sought him for his spelling and searched the village. Lizli seemed to hear his mind.

  “You show no blue. They cannot catch you now.”

  But still, the torches were alight and the village burned with awful commotion.

  “It’s Cojzia’s house,” Lizli said. “The linemaster. Malabaz’s man.”

  “I ’member,”
Mop mumbled through his numbed lips.

  “Can you walk in the crowd?”

  “Can.” Mop nodded definitively. Something about the clustered people filled him with an overwhelming urge to join them.

  Lizli guided Mop into the crowd. At last they pressed through to the linemaster’s open door.

  “It seems we’ve found your sister,” Lizli murmured.

  Inside the hovel, Rain lay like a broken doll upon Cojzia’s bed. The linemaster’s body draped naked across her.

  Sunk between his shoulder blades, Rain’s comb lay buried. Blood dripped, soaking the bed and pooling on flagstones. The comb still quivered malevolently, smoking blue with magic’s residue. People murmured all around.

  “Always thought he was soft-eyed.”

  “You think he took Aisa, too?”

  “Never liked how he looked at me when I worked.”

  The man had fought, it seemed. His blood was spattered around the house.

  “I heard him shouting,” a man said to Lizli. “Thought he was being taken by Takaz the way he howled.”

  “What do we do . . . with . . . that?”

  “Leave it. It’s cursed.”

  “It’s a girl’s comb,” Lizli said. “Mayhap it came to save her.”

  A murmur of astonishment washed through the crowd. The comb continued to quiver, but it no longer flew, as if the war magic of Majistra Kalaia had been sated by Cojzia’s blood.

  Mop stumbled to his sister’s side and knelt clumsily. “Rain,” he whispered. “Rain.”

  She slept on, unbothered.

  Behind him, people gasped. Mop turned at the commotion and found everyone bowing and ducking. Lizli grabbed his arm and whispered, “Bend, fool.”

  Duke Malabaz stood in the doorway, flanked by his guards, glowering. “What’s this?”

  “M-magic, m’lord,” one of his guards said.