Mindripper

by Baron Blackwell

  “Help me up,” Tizkar said.

  Enk and Lulu crouched down and lifted the older boy upward, straining under his weight while trying to keep their hands free of the worst of the filth. Something brown and green drifted past their booted feet. Enk clenched his jaw.

  “You have to understand, Enk,” Lulu said through teeth gritted against welling disgust. “There is nothing worse than being a parentless child. Without a family to protect you, you become prey for those with the worst appetites.”

  Tizkar pushed the circular manhole free and climbed out into the sparkling muted bright of midnight. After a second, he reached back down and pulled Lulu upward with a helping boost from Enk.

  Enk considered what Lulu had said as her rising rump faded from view. He lowered his gaze and swallowed around the ache in his throat. He was not nearly as naïve as she thought, but she was wrong about more than that. Sometimes a family was not enough, sometimes the horror came from within the familial halo.

  Mother. How could one word hold such boundless dread?

  “Quickly.” Tizkar hung above him, his head framed within the circle, his hand outstretched. A metaphor made flesh.

  This, Enk realized, was what it meant to be alive: to trudge through an ocean of incomprehensible excrement, to reach above for something grander. The only difference was that there was rarely a helping hand to lift you up. What you grasped, you grasped on your own.

  He reached for the proffered limb—

  “What are you two doing?” a voice shouted.

  Tizkar’s head jerked upward as he rolled out of Enk’s line of sight. The sewer filled with the dwindling echos of a gargling scream, and Enk’s chest clutched, as if his ribs had become iron claws.

  “Tizkar!” he hissed in a panicked whisper. “Lulu!”

  Silence.

  Enk gripped the hilt of his sword. “Tizkar—”

  Suddenly something human-shaped fell from the sky, right through the opening in the ceiling. Enk leaped back, barely avoiding whatever—whomever was crashing down toward him. Sewer water splashed out in a ring, and he lifted his arm over his eyes, protecting himself from the worse of the swill.

  No-no!

  Enk lowered his arm in pensive dread. The upturned face of a young Peacebringer blinked up at him. A pleading hand rose from the muck, trembled in the air.

  Enk’s heart rebelled. Bubbles and dark scarlet gushed from the man’s neck. What? What had Tizkar and Lulu done?

  “Hurry.” Tizkar’s voice cracked the air above.

  Enk jerked on his feet, avoiding the dying man’s glazed look. His heart throbbed in his throat, but there was nothing to be done. This was what revenge for Merka demanded! Yet, if that was so, why this maddening guilt?

  Stepping on the thrasher’s chest, Enk leaped up and caught hold of Tizkar’s outstretched hand and left the dank darkness of another’s glossy-eyed despair behind, rising into the twinkling glitter of a cloudless night.

  He collapsed onto his back and peered up at the heavens, so far yet so near. Haunted orbs, made even more so by welling moisture in his own. He drank deep on alcohol scented air, clawed at his thigh as he sat up.

  Enough!

  Enk tore the rag from his face. Lulu knelt beside him, calmly wiping the blood from one of her throwing knives. So near and yet so far, her eyes held none of the passions, he knew brittled his own. And for a moment, he hated her and her tranquility, despised her with a bone-cracking fire. Why must he be needled with constant doubts while she remained carefree?

  “It doesn’t bother you at all, does it?” Enk asked her.

  Lulu pocketed her face rag. “What?”

  “Killing an innocent—” he began.

  “Enough!” Tizkar dropped the manhole covering back into place and motioned at the spheres of light blossoming within once dark second-floor windows. “Look.”

  Enk closed his mouth, gripping tight the seething edges of his billowing rage. He did not resent Lulu’s dispassion, not really. All this was merely another ploy—another attempt to misdirect himself from the path his ideal demanded of him. Choices had consequences.

  Tizkar pushed a musket into Enk’s hands. “Let’s go before we have more to regret than the needless death of a thrasher.”

  Wordlessly, Enk followed Tizkar and Lulu into the deeper shadows, pressing against the wall of a gated estate, no different in the dark than all the others that lined the street. The affluent neighborhoods of Dilgan all shared a similarity of aspect, much in the same way as the teeming tenements of the slums.

  Home. I’m a stone’s throw away from home.

  And it pimpled his chest, this thought. Were he not a member of the Second Estate, he would have spat in disgust. Home? Home was a thing denied, a place corrupted by the excesses of sin. He had only himself and . . . his new friends.

  This thought warmed where the other had chilled.

  Something tugged on his sleeve.

  Enk blinked, freed from his sudden stupor. Tizkar and Lulu watched him, their faces etched by shadowy bands of concern. Yes, he decided, he had his new friends.

  He nodded at them, and they nodded back. Then they crept forward in a line, avoiding the radiance of street lamps and the sounds of patrolling Peacebringers while keeping close to walls tangled with vines.

  Within minutes, Enk’s ailment returned to inflict punishment, and his breath came in rasping gasps. But despite this, the night seemed plum with great import, and the young Peacebringer’s face was already fading from his mind.

  Tonight, the hunt would finally end.

  “We’re here.”

  Tizkar’s whisper drew Enk’s limbs to thankful stillness. He gave a quick glance to his surroundings, but the wall the older boy crouched beneath looked no different from the others they had passed.

  Opening her satchel, Lulu dropped a long rope tipped with a four-sided hook onto the ground at her feet then handed Tizkar a thick piece of red-dripping meat.

  The older boy tossed it over the wall. “Now, we wait.”

  “Excuse us for a minute, Tizkar,” Enk said, pulling Lulu by the arm, testing the weight of the musket in his other.

  Tizkar’s eyebrows knitted together. “This isn’t the time to be exchanging kisses in the dark, we have—”

  Enk waved the complaint away. “Only a minute.”

  Lulu looked between the two of them, mirroring Tizkar’s expression down to the bewildering flare in her delicate nostrils. After they rounded the corner, she firmed her feet and refused to be moved further.

  “We need to talk,” Enk said, letting her go.

  “Tizkar’s right—wait, this isn’t about the dead thrasher is it?” She hissed. “Because—”

  “No.”

  A frown. “Well, then can’t it wait?”

  “No.”

  “Go on then before Tizkar thinks we’re conspiring to murder him and steal all his marbles.”

  “Marbles?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Enk, get on with it, whatever it is.”

  Enk took a deep breath, yet no words were forthcoming. Why was this always so hard? He closed his eyes. Why could he never just do what he knew he must without a protracted battle? Why did being moral take so much fucking work? His hand balled about the musket. Why? Why when Ilima always made grace appear so effortless?

  You’re broken, an inky voice within whispered. The whore’s womb damaged more than your health. You came out more aphid than man. That’s why Inanna left, she sensed it.

  Yes, that was the answer in all its unholy glory—the one he most feared.

  “Hey,” Lulu said, touching his arm. “Are you all right?”

  Enk blinked hot tears from his eyes and smiled. “No. No, I’m not. I want to be better. I have to be. Do you understand?”

  “Marbles,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Marbles.” Lulu squeezed his arm. “Tizkar was obsessed with them when we were younger. We were neighbors, did I ever tell you that?”

&
nbsp; Enk shook his head.

  “Well, we were before his pa’s crimes caught up with him at last. His father was a hard man, a very hard man. Prideful in the way of young boys, Tizkar took on some of his manner at early age. He would terrorize me and my sister.” A soft laugh escaped her mouth, filled with reflective warmth. “Pulling our hair, breaking our dolls. Our parents would do nothing about him for obvious reasons. ‘Weather him,’ they would say.”

  “What does—” he began, only to fall silent when she carried on without pausing.

  “But we would have none of their advice, so we plotted our revenge. He had two great loves back then, his marbles and his little sister, Nanefe. But Nanefe was our friend, we couldn’t do anything to her. That left his marbles. We tried to convince him that if any one of his marbles had a flaw in it, it would bring bad luck—no matter how minute the imperfection.”

  “And he believed you?” Enk asked.

  “No, not at first.” Lulu snorted. “He was hard-headed even then. It was only when his ma got sick that he began to doubt his former insistence. Countless nights, we’d watch him through my bedroom window holding marbles up to a lamp, searching for a flaw he knew had to be there. It was funny at first, funny until it became—”

  Something of the desolation in Lulu’s tone pinched Enk’s breast, and he found himself pulling her into a kiss. Taken aback, she stiffened then slowly relented, wrapping her arms around his back, and for a time nothing else seemed to exist but the points of contact between their two bodies. He floated in a world without direction while blood roared beneath his rind and through and along his organs.

  Out of breath, Lulu pulled her head back. “Oh. . . .” A shy smile quicken her lips. “That was nice, but—”

  “Will you marry me?”

  “What?”

  Enk touched his nose. “Will you marry me?”

  “You want to marry me?” she asked with a squeak in her voice. “Why?”

  “I want to be the best version of myself.”

  “I make you better?” she asked, eyes wild with nascent storms. “But we’ve barely known each other a day? How could I make you better? I don’t understand, make this make sense.”

  “No—yes. I’m not saying this right.” He thumbed the pommel of his sword. “Cat spoke true this morning.”

  “Cat?” Rapid blinking. “Oh. . . . You want to marry me because it’s the honorable thing to do, because you talked me out of my small clothes?”

  “Yes.”

  A deadening about the eyes. “You understand how ridiculous that sounds right? Noblemen don’t marry the whores they bed.”

  “Don’t say that,” Enk said crossly. “You’re not a whore, not to me. And that’s not the only reason. When I look into your eyes. . . . You remind me how. . . .” He turned from her, kicked at the turf. “Why is talking about feelings always so hard?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He spun to face her.

  “I’ll marry you,” she continued, grabbing him. “Now, let’s go back before Tizkar throws a fit.”

  Enk was much too conflicted to resist her. He had done the right thing, and there was joy in that fact, almost as much as in the sensation of Lulu’s hand hot against his own. But there was a sense of loss, too, loss in the echo of another’s name: Inanna.

  Tizkar rose from a crouch beside the wall with a scowl knitted across his brow. “What was all that about?” he asked.

  “Enk proposed to me, and I said yes.” Lulu winked at Enk. “We’re getting married.”

  “Oh. . . .” Tizkar said slowly, looking from Lulu to Enk and back again. “No wonder he looks like he has been crying.”

  Lulu kicked Tizkar in the shin. He hopped away, hissing, laughing.

  Enk chuckled and shook his head, but he knew Tizkar spoke true, there were tears cold against his cheeks. Something had been lost—yes, yet something just as precious had been gained.

  A wife. He had found his future wife.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Drifting

  Enk descended like a spider from a string of silk, his hands knotted loosely about a sweat-slicked rope, his eyes shut in the manner of terrified souls. But inwardly, he nearly clucked for glee, so alive was he with the memory of Lulu’s lips pressed against his own. The kiss—his first—was so very different from the peck on the cheek Inanna had given him before she left, and he could not help but compare the two, now. One timid and cold, the other fierce with waxing desire. Yes, so very different, and yet. . . .

  A jarring impact rising from the soles of leather boots.

  Enk grunted and opened his eyes. The twinkling firmament greeted him, hanging above a monstrous oak. Beneath it, Tizkar and Lulu huddled beside roots like black snakes coiled about the earth, peering out at the sprawling expanse.

  He tugged on the rope then stopped. His ears roared with something—a gagging whimper, as though torn from the mouth of a dying ape. The darkness spun about him as he searched for its source.

  Two hounds, their fur the color of midnight, lay on their sides within easy view. The first lay impossibly stiff, but the second still twitched, its lolling tongue bright with flecks of crimson, its glossy eyes mystic with deadly poison.

  Enk returned his gaze to the trembling rope, to his trembling hand. Why? Why did this view affect him so? He had known what would happen to the dogs; it was part of the plan. His jaw throbbed. There was something . . . something he was forgetting. Yes, but what?

  Again. He tugged on the rope again.

  “Leave it,” Tizkar hissed. “It’s unlikely to be seen, and we might need to make a quick escape.”

  Enk nodded slowly. Later. He would puzzle out the mystery of this later. He retrieved the musket from the dirt at his feet, then touched the pommel of his sword.

  Death. More death comes.

  He no longer wanted to cluck for glee—the former joy was all but gone, replaced by the anxious shadow of a blanched thought. Whatever tonight yet held, it was unlikely to be pleasant. Tonight was a night for killing, not love, and the very air seemed to proclaim as much, whether it was the eerie song of unseen tree crickets or the creaking of wooden limbs.

  Tizkar motioned at their destination. It was across a great baying lawn, narrowed by living pillars and angelic-shaped scrubs that gave way to ivory-colored fountains then cobblestone that faltered before a union between landmass and sky—an unlit mansion alive with geometric symmetries borrowed from the architecture of classical antiquity.

  Tizkar lowered his hand, then they were off, slipping from tree to tree, weaving between intricate cloaks of rippling shadow, until the only cover was the deep distance of the endless above. They paused beside a fountain of dancing elks, basked in the gurgle of flowing water as they took in their surroundings.

  Enk pushed his hands into the clear pool, and Tizkar and Lulu copied him, darkening the water with their grimy digits.

  “Looks like he’s out,” Lulu said, nodding in the direction of the stables. “The carriage is missing.”

  Tizkar frowned, thumbing the cavalry pistol jutting out of his waist. “I expected him to be back by now. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait too long.”

  “Do we wait outside?” Enk asked. “Or inside?”

  “We might as well go in and question the servants.” Tizkar turned to regard Lulu. “Only two actually live here, correct?”

  She nodded. “One maid and a butler, who doubles as the carriage driver. The rest are shipped in at dawn then are sent home at dusk. So with the carriage gone, only the maid should be here.”

  Tizkar made his way toward the front doors, pulling a strange assortment of wires and keys from his inner coat pocket. The coat was embroidered with dark branches and dull-colored leaves that might almost have been black in absence of strong light.

  Enk followed closely behind the older boy with Lulu at his side, marveling at Tizkar’s endless wellspring of hidden talents. And as they came to a stop, he studied Lulu from the corner of his eye. She
combed her hair behind her ear with absentminded fingers.

  My future wife.

  Though numb and obtund, the thought stirred the dregs of his dwindling passions to an echo of their former excess. Then the night air nearly hummed with the rhythm of a drum—his heart flexing its solitary authority to lash order out of chaos.

  Lulu noticed his secret study, flashed him a hesitant smirk. And, for an instant, they hung cloistered in some realm with only the semblance of reality—one void of injustices, one suffused with wonder and awe, the kind that uplifts even as it makes distant.

  The grind and click of metal gears.

  Lulu looked away shyly, and the moment passed.

  Tizkar opened the door with a dramatic bow, nearly scrapping the ivory curls of his wig off of the floor. “After you, my Lady.”

  “Oh. . . .” Lulu trailed, taken aback. “Thank . . . you, my good sir.” She sauntered forth then turned back, assuming the haughty manner of a highborn lady. “Shall we, Lord Husband?”

  Enk snorted, unamused. Shadows bobbed about him, dimensions warping and combining as he pushed past Lulu and entered the mansion, listening to the ring of Tizkar’s muted glee. The darkness before him made the one behind him seem as bright as high-noon. He squinted his eyes, his steps faltering, his throat oblong with heat. Jokes made at his expense always left this intense throbbing in their wake. They were another way of judging, of laying bare his idiosyncrasies to the world. And these reminders never eased tensions, only provoked ever darker passions.

  Tizkar’s quiet chortling ended abruptly, cut short by what sounded like an elbow to his solar plexus. He coughed, wheezed, and slowly joined Lulu at Enk’s side, muttering under his breath.

  Enk relaxed his grip on his musket and looked about. Though almost fully acclimatized to the deeper darkness, there was not much to see in the hall—well, not really. The lack of light made a grotesquerie of the animal designs imprinted to the blue wallpaper. The emerald-eyed shapes leered in every direction, so that no matter where he looked, at least one was peering right back at him.