by S.
"We're north of where we first fell in." The words raked his dry throat. Kaitar sat up and glanced at the sun's position, then turned his face windward. "We need to get back to the scrub. It's going to be a hell of a long walk. Tonight, I'll make a water trap with my duster, so when the fog comes—"
"Leave me here."
Sympathy and anger rose like a tide, threatening to break over and wash him away. Without speaking, Kaitar brushed himself off, got to his knees, and regarded his hands. Grime outlined the pads of each finger, and small cuts webbed his palms. The sight of those miniscule wounds made him aware of how much his entire body hurt, every bruised muscle and strained tendon swelling to a deep ache.
Sighing, he reached his torn hands to his friend. "I'm not leaving you here. We’ve gotten up from worse before."
"It's all gone," Mi'et replied despondently. "The Xi'jahata. The Shyiine. It's over. Kill me first if you want, but leave me here."
Kaitar smashed his fist into the brick-hard jaw. Mi’et’s head thumped against the ground, his lips parted with a grimace of surprise. For a moment, he did nothing but stare back, rubbing his chin. Then, he spat a mouthful of blood and narrowed his eyes.
Kaitar flexed his bruised knuckles. "That lesson. You remember it? If you feel pain, it means you're alive and not ready to die yet. Get up. We're going back."
Mi'et bared his crimson-streaked teeth. The broken weapon strapped to his left arm rattled softly as he stood, so broad and tall he blocked the sun.
Kaitar met the murderous look without flinching. "Got you up, didn't I?"
A sound rumbled from the half-breed’s chest—a snarl, twisting into a deep chuckle. "You still don’t hit very hard. You're better with those knives." He spat more blood.
"Never was much of a fist fighter," Kaitar admitted, feeling a smile inch over his face. “But I don’t have to be to get your attention, I guess.”
Mi'et stared over the dunes, dabbing at his busted lip and bruised jaw. “They might still be out there, across the Belt."
" If any Shyiine are still across the Belt, they’re past that glass field where no human can ever get to. Where no former slaves can get to, either. They left us to our fate. They. . . " Kaitar trailed off, not knowing how to tell Mi’et the truth; there had been no life in the echoes he’d heard in across the empty Belt, only a static drone. He would never forget how it had risen to a babbling wail as he’d crawled back into the Nith’ath nest, a sound of death in its rawest form. Now, as he pondered the loss over the fabled Xi’jahata—whatever and wherever it had been—the only grief Kaitar could muster was for Mi’et, not the Shyiine who might be dead. The half-breed had been willing to sacrifice himself for a glimpse of a home he knew only through stories and lies.
Kaitar nudged him. "It's not over. Maybe out there it is, but it's not over where we came from."
Mi'et looked at him and stopped fingering his split lip.
"We were born slaves,” Kaitar said. “Forty years, and over twenty as Enforcers. How old were you when they made you a cull?"
"Twenty-two or three, perhaps."
"A boy. Even if you were bigger than most men, still only a boy with a head full of stories. Think hard about it."
"You were ready to die a few months ago. Now, you're lecturing me on life."
"You hammered it into my head to keep going, just like the old days." Stooping, Kaitar inspected his bare feet, as glass-cut and blistered as his hands. The small toe on his left foot was missing, the victim of an accident so long ago it seemed another lifetime. The first scar among many, smashed under the hoof of Madev’s favorite mare.
Mi’et, too, was looking at the scar, and then flexed his own disfigured hand. "Dogton is under Niles now. We can't go there. He has a bounty on our heads we’d hang for. And even if it wasn’t Niles, you can’t hide what you are anymore, can you?”
“I’ve hidden it for a long time. Why would now be any different?”
“You know you can’t keep it a secret after what’s happened. The humans would find out and kill you, even if Niles lost the town. They’ll tolerate an Enetic that keeps their head bent to their work, but not one who can call fire or turn light to dark or speak to threk.” Mi’et shook his head. “There’s no place left for us now."
“Bullshit. I told you before, I know how to live out in the scrub country. I have a few friends out there, a few places we could go if we had to. Steig for one. Northtown for another.”
“You’d go live among bandits?”
“Bandits need scouts, too.” Kaitar scooped a handful of sand and studied the fine, shimmering grains. Minuscule pieces of Worm Glass shone against his cupped fingers, spilling between the cracks to the ground. "And don’t know for sure what’s happening with Dogton. I have to try, Mi’et. If there’s something I can do? Heh, I don’t think keeping a secret for another few months or a year will make much difference. I can last that long, if you help me.” He tossed the handful of sand aside.
Mi’et frowned. “Why do you care so much about it? It’s been nothing but grief for you with the humans.”
"That last trip with Leigh and Romano was bad. The Bywater business fifteen years ago was bad. But not all of it has been."
"No?"
"No. Has it been for you?"
"I tried not to think about it." Grimacing, Mi’et reached into his back pocket.
"Start thinking on it. There's no collar on your neck now, or any Sulari getting ready to beat you if you don't do well in the pits. No weapon. Just you." He paused, tilting his head as Mi'et continued to fish around in his fatigues. "The fuck are you doing?"
"I want to see my mother and sister." Mi'et slid the two cards from his pocket and cradled them in hands. "I promised them I'd take them home."
The faded images printed on the cardboard stared back, tattered and bent after their long journey.
"I remember the way your mother used to smile at you. Mariyah always boasted how you could beat any cull without half-trying. They would understand."
Mi'et closed his eyes and did not speak.
"Here." Reverently, carefully, Kaitar pulled the cards from the mottled fingers. Mi’et made no protest, but opened his eyes to watch. Wiping some of the grime marring the photographs, Kaitar motioned at the miet. "Let me help you take that off. We can make a hole and bury all of it.”
“Do you have something of Molly’s?”
The pain of bruises and cuts evaporated under the raw hurt welling inside, making his throat tight. But that grief was too new, and his voice went hollow. “No. It all went when she did.”
Mi’et reached into his pocket again. “Here.” He and held out a single, sharp-edged incisor. “Offer it to Yvres and let her go with them, Kaitar.”
“You kept my tooth?”
“Take it.”
Kaitar did, rolling the tooth in his palm and pressing his tongue against the spot it had been knocked from his mouth. He placed the incisor and cards at his feet and looked at his old friend.
Mi’et’s hands clamped against his shoulders, reassuring and steady. “Help me take off this miet so we can bury them. Then, we’ll go back to Dogton.”
Like a God
Zres chewed the heel of his palm, not caring the dirt ground into the skin tasted sour. His attention, what few shreds he could summon into a ragged whole, honed onto the Veraleid. At some point when he’d left the rover to find a bush to shit behind and returned, someone had tried to contact him. Or, more likely, had tried to contact Opert Reeth, two weeks dead and rotting at the Harper’s well.
Maybe someone had found Reeth’s body, along with Felix, all fly-blown and purpling. Perhaps it was someone from Dogton who had tried to contact Reeth. Or maybe Niles, wondering if he—Zres Corrin—had been duly executed at the Citadel.
But Reeth had hinted at some other fate than execution, something bigger than a mere hanging. Now, Zres would never know what that might have been— he only knew he sat sucking his palm nervously and staring at the blinking Ve
raleid in the middle of the Shy’war-Anquai desert.
He reached to flip the switch, then pulled his hand back as if the device were an ornery snake. Sniffing, he curled his fist into his lap, smelling the reek of sweat and dust wafting around him like a foul perfume. Some of the Enforcers knew how to make a bath out of ashes, sand, and Harper’s Hand, but Zres hadn’t paid any attention to those lectures. He wished he had. What water remained in the barrel had to be saved for. . .
For what? A final wash before dying?
Before he could stop himself a second time, Zres tapped the replay switch and leaned back in the seat. The sun-warmed leather soaked into his shoulders, making a new wash of sweat break out underneath his shirt. Knowing it was stupid and not caring, he peeled off the shirt and wrapped it around his head.
A clipped voice blared through the Veraleid’s speaker. “Light’s Spider—”
Light’s Spider? What’s that mean?
“—we’ve been awaiting your arrival. If we do not hear from you in forty-eight hours, we’ll cut the Wolf’s leash. Please report immediately.”
The ominous transmission ended as abruptly as it had begun. Zres checked for any other messages that might clarify the strange words he’d heard, but found none.
With the sun grinding down on his back and glaring across the still desert—where nothing larger than a dung beetle roved the noonday inferno—he mulled over the transmission. Light’s Spider might refer to Reeth; his codename—something Soulmakers used when sending potentially sensitive information through a Veraleid frequency. The more Zres thought on it, the more he was certain of the hunch. The Wolf might be another Soulmaker, too, one being sent out to find the murderer Opert Reeth had failed to deliver to the Citadel in a timely manner.
Zres peeked over to the passenger’s side. There, lying against the worn seat, Reeth’s big revolver shone in the sun, contrasting sharply with the simple black cover of the Good Book beneath it. He hadn’t wanted to touch either the weapon or the book, but he needed a gun. The Good Book—Reeth’s own worn copy—might contain some subtle clues as to the inner workings of a Soulmaker, though Zres hadn’t willed himself to open it yet. Just touching that volume made his skin crawl and goose pimples break along his arms. But what choice did he have, now?
Holding his breath as he reached over to the gun and the book, his hand hovered, nervous as a moth looking for a place to land on a cactus. His fingertips brushed the hot metal. Carefully, Zres hefted the revolver and looked it over, feeling a shiver dart up his spine at the thought of Opert Reeth’s hands gripping in the very spot his own did now. Heavy and exquisitely made as the weapon was, he didn’t like it at all. When he turned the gun over, Zres saw an inscription etched into a small silver plate at the bottom of the grip.
“Salvation.”
The ornate letters seemed to glare at him accusingly.
“You killed him. . . Mary’s Spider. But now the Wolf will be after you, won’t he? Wolves are bigger than spiders. They have teeth, and they hunt. Spiders merely wait in webs for the right moment. . . isn’t that true?”
Shivering, Zres shoved the gun into his belt, but could not shake the queasy feeling in his belly.
“Sun sick, that’s all,” he announced to no one. “Touch of the nerves. Mama used to—”
Mama.
Tears scalded his eyes. He hadn’t thought about his mother much since the Harper’s well, but he thought of her now, remembering not the chiding hypocrisy, but her cool hand on his forehead. The hand that had sometimes comforted him as a little boy. Then, a different image came to him; the delicate fingers turning black and red, flickering with ashes and cinder.
A scream of fear and grief welled up in his chest and nearly worked its way out his mouth. The sound came out a squeak and twisted into a nervous, shit-eating grin. Still smiling, Zres reached for the Good Book. The thin, waxy paper stuck together when he tried to open the cover. Inserting his thumb and prying the sweat-soaked book apart, his eyes fell to a passage on the page he’d managed to free up.
And ‘lo, Death came unto the world in a great Blackness, shrouding the sun. But Mary said unto her devoted, “Be not afraid, for Death has no power over the soul, nor over Light.
But the people were afraid, and they did lament and cry for Her to save them from the pitiless Black. Death walked the world, and for a time, no Light prevailed.
Underneath the dismal passage, an allegory for Toros, Reeth’s neat handwriting cut a crisp note on the parchment.
“Epiphany”.
He shrieked and hurled the book. It slapped against the ground next to the vehicle, still open, the wind lifting the cover an increment.
It was me the whole time. He knew. Reeth knew. Maybe Moad knew.
Pain prickled the roof of his mouth when he tried to swallow, and Zres realized he had bitten his tongue near in half. Overhead, the sun blazed, a white, hot ball of flame that bleached every bit of color from the sky. Wild, frantic thoughts throbbed in time with the pulse of heat. Fingering the ignition switch, Zres pressed his forehead against the steering wheel, breathing hard, feeling the hot air scorch his lungs.
They both knew.
The rover started with a groggy rumble that shook the whole frame. Without thinking, Zres pushed the accelerator and the Draggin sped west. He could picture what it must look like from above—an insignificant speck rolling through an empty wasteland. Through the swirl of hysterical revelation, he thought he heard a wolf’s howl.
Blue
As Leigh stepped inside the jailhouse, Sairel’s muffled, off-key drone became a throaty symphony.
“Underneath, dark these quiet chambers
Here my ancestors stare from the walls, preserved
And honored
The air breathes, but naught comfort it brings
These Dry Halls, under old Templace
And beyond, in the depths
Ulros the black swims, blind
The sun does not burn here, but the cold sea
Awaits my arrival
After my bones have dried and my skin withered
In these quiet chambers
Forever.”
The words jammed themselves into the Estarian language at unnatural angles, making Leigh shudder. Whatever nightmare place the Shurin sang of, she never wanted to visit it. She watched Sairel kneeling on the floor, breathing deeply as he basked in the patch of sunlight the single window allowed. His chanting fell away and his pointed ears twitched, but he did not open his eyes or turn his face from the warmth.
“Do you have any clothes to put on?”
Sairel blinked drowsily, as though he’d woke from a long dream. “Clothing? I suppose it’s time, then.” The mother-of-pearl eyes flicked to the gun at her belt. He smiled. “That belongs to Niles. I heard shots a while ago. Were you the one pulling the trigger?”
Leigh touched the pistol. “Stand up, and put your hands atop your head. You’re being taken out, clothing or no.”
“To my death?” Sairel rose, his awful grin faltering as he placed his hands on his head. “Or have you already filled your execution quota for the day?”
Leigh set her jaw against the accusation, freed the pistol, and motioned him forward. “If you try to attack me, I will shoot you. I’d rather not have to do that.”
Sairel padded close on bare feet. “I’m not suicidal. Bullets can kill a Shurin as quickly as anyone else. We’re made of flesh and bone and we bleed—not black or green, but red, like yourself. Will you tell me where we are going, or is it a surprise? If I’m going to be executed, I’d prefer to know. It’s inhumane to make a man guess at his fate until the last moment, isn’t it?”
The key hit the lock, rattling, against the worn mechanism. Leigh frowned. “I don’t know what Neiro plans to do with you. I told him what you told me, and he’s ordered me to take you to speak to him.”
“Neiro?”
“Yes.” She jerked the door open and ushered him out. “The people are going to stare at yo
u when they see you. They will be afraid. Don’t do anything to scare them more than they have already been frightened these past few months. If a riot starts, I may not be able to stop them from killing you.”
If the thought of having half the town gawk at him bothered Sairel, he did not show it as he moved out of the cell. “Evrik Niles is dead?”
“Yes. Walk, Sairel.”
“I’m not surprised. He never understood. Worms on the end of hooks rarely realize they’re just bait. Pity, really.” He drummed a beat atop his head, mussing the straw-blond hair. “Do you know this will be the first time I’ve been out in the sun for almost two years? And before that I spent a decade in the Junk.” He took a deep breath. “I hope Neiro’s come to his senses, or he may end up like Evrik Niles soon. Almost did, I suppose.”
“Stand against the wall and wait for me to open the outside door. If you move your hands I’ll—”
“Yes, you’ll shoot me. I know. And you’d do it, too; you’ve a hard way about you.”
Garv had said the same thing to her not an hour ago, but Leigh didn’t feel like a hard-hearted person—she felt tired. “Follow orders and you won’t have to worry about being shot.”
Sairel slid toward the back wall, eyes fixed hungrily on the front room. Brilliant sunlight lanced the room as Leigh shouldered the door open. Just outside, people clustered together waiting, many with blood still on their boots. Hubert stood scowling at the forefront of the crowd.
“Why’re you taking that Enetic garbage out of there? What’s going on? You can’t just let him walk around, free; he’s a Cursor.” He pointed at Sairel. “I should put your head up on the wall in the Bin.”
Leigh lifted her voice above the din. “No. Go back to your homes. I’m escorting the prisoner to Neiro. There will be an official announcement, tomorrow, when the real work of fixing Dogton will begin. Go home.”
Two or three of the townies did drift away, their shoulders hunched, expressions pinched with worry. Most stayed, watching as Sairel crossed into the sunlight. He cringed from the heat and shielded his face with a forearm, seeming unaware at the gawking and curses.