Skullsworn

by Brian Staveley

  The empire of the midday sun won a great battle in Dombâng, and suddenly, the world over, a legion of cartographers lurched into work making new maps, as though millennia of loyalties and pride could be elided through a single fight and the shifting of a few inked lines. The old priesthood was still in the city, although hidden, forced underground. Women and men still remembered the old songs. The figures whose statues still stood in the plazas and atop the bridges were those who had ruled Dombâng when the city was fierce and independent. For the better part of two centuries, Annur had forced everyone to pretend that the city had no history, but history is ubiquitous as water, as rot. All it took was a little red paint and my handprint to remind everyone: for all that those legions bearing the blazing sun claimed to be a defending force, they were an occupying army.

  It was obvious, watching the soldiers at the other end of the tavern, that they understood that fact. In addition to the too-loud laughter and forced jollity, they all carried their short swords despite the heat and inconvenience, as though they half expected to need to cut their way free. All of which was massively inconvenient, given that I’d come to kill their commanding officer.

  In a simpler world, I could have just given the lot of them to the god. My Trial, however, forbid such indiscriminate largesse. Anyone can kill, after all. A Wing of imperial Kettral could have destroyed the entire tavern and everyone in it with a single well-timed explosion. Something more is required of Ananshael’s faithful. A priestess of Rassambur must prove her restraint even in the moment of her most perfect devotion.

  I’d already confirmed with Ela and Kossal that the Neck could fit the rhyme; what is a soldier, after all, if not a “dealer of death”? I might have killed one of the others for singing, but they were all singing, and the song only gave me one. Which meant I needed to somehow separate the Neck, who was already wary, from the rest of his legion.

  Across the dimly lit room, the legionaries struck up another raucous song. They had good voices, for soldiers. Three of them carried the melody while the Neck bellowed out the bass refrain: For a soldier’s a soldier no matter how old.

  As he sang, the massive man met my eyes, then smiled. I gave him half a smile of my own, holding his gaze as I raised the cup of quey to my lips. The liquor looked like water. It smelled like hate. It tasted like velvet fire on the tongue.

  The legionaries kept singing:

  When he’s dead, dig him up!

  Bring him in from the cold.

  Though his hands are all bones

  They still know how to hold:

  His cock or his tankard, his sword or his spear …

  Then the Neck, still watching me, still grinning, still pounding the table half to splinters, finished the chorus: For a soldier’s a soldier, no matter how old!

  He sang as though performing the verse just for my enjoyment. When the song was over, he slammed his tankard into those of his companions, smiled wide, then raised it to me. To my chagrin, I found myself liking him. Fishing gets tricky if you start worrying about the worm.

  Bait, I reminded myself. He is bait.

  Even if I left him alive, someday something would kill him. Disease, dagger, drowning—or one of Ananshael’s other subtle, unnumbered tools. The death that I planned to offer him ranked among the kindest: fast and painless. I would cut him free from the world in his undiminished prime. Presumably there were other ways to fall in love, ways that didn’t involve wading through a pile of dead bodies, but in all the long trek from Rassambur, I hadn’t managed to think of one. Call it a failure of imagination.

  He kept his tankard raised, but instead of meeting the toast, I glanced down at my open palm, dragged a finger across it, then pressed it to the table. The gesture was quick, subtle. To most people it would have looked like no more than a young woman fidgeting, but I counted on the Neck to be more observant than most people. Which he was. His gaze hardened. After a moment, he set down his own mug and pushed back from the table, as though getting ready to stand. I gave an incremental shake of my head, nodded toward the door at the rear of the tavern, laid a quick finger across my lips, then rose from my seat.

  The rear door of the tavern opened into a narrow hallway that fronted a series of stalls, privies that dropped directly into the canal below: there was a reason that the slums of Dombâng were all to the east, downstream. I entered the farthest of the five—a tiny room barely large enough to sit down, a wooden bench along the back wall worn smooth from generations of asses, the hole in the middle just large enough for me to squeeze my body through; if the Neck brought the rest of his legion, I wanted a way out that didn’t involve a hallway filled with soldiers and swords. I was, however, counting on him not bringing the others.

  Enormous men might not be any stupider than their smaller brethren, but they are, as a rule, less careful. The Neck outweighed the tavern’s average patron by as much as a small pig; he wasn’t used to feeling vulnerable. If the notion of the whole city rising up in rebellion had done little to slow his drinking, it seemed unlikely that one lone woman—relatively small, seemingly unarmed—would give him pause. In all Annur, there might have been a few dozen women—Kettral, probably, or other priestesses of Ananshael—who could kill him in a hand-to-hand fight. Following me into the privy wasn’t a stupid bet.

  Unfortunately for the Neck, even the smartest bet can lose. That’s why they call it a bet.

  The soldier bellowed his way through one more song before coming after me. While I waited, I slid both of my knives from their sheaths. I sank one into the wood of the privy wall just behind the door, the other I plunged into a rafter overhead, so that the handle hung down within reach. It was one of the strangest things I learned in my first years at Rassambur, this kind of willing disarmament, but I’d had plenty of chances since to see the wisdom: people, especially soldiers, are trained to watch for someone pulling a knife, trained to see the motion and counter it. Reaching past a man, however, or above him, sparks none of that training. Most people will turn instinctively to see what you’re reaching for, will only notice the knife after you’ve pulled it from the wall and started parting their flesh. I could have waited for the Neck with the knife already in my hand, but I figured he’d have a good look at me before actually entering the privy. He seemed more likely to come in and close the door behind him if I wasn’t brandishing a pair of naked blades. It took me only a moment to strip the sheaths from my thighs and tuck them into the thatch above.

  Water sloshed and chuckled around the piers below; I could hear oarsmen farther out in the current, the slap of their broad blades as loud as their curses. Waves of shouting and laughter washed out of the tavern itself, gathering, cresting, crashing, then gathering once more. I could make out no sign, however, of the dull clomp of the Neck’s heavy boots. Only when the latch to the hallway door clinked shut did I realize he was coming after all, moving far more quietly over the squeaking boards than I’d expected from someone his size. His knock on the door to my stall was likewise soft, as though he had tapped with a single knuckle.

  I pulled the door open.

  He made no move to enter, scanning the inside of the privy with a careful eye before turning his attention to me. Close up, he looked even bigger, at least two heads taller than me and so broad I wondered if he would fit through the door without turning sideways. A pair of small scars creased his shaved scalp—too rough and jagged to have been made by blades. A jaguar, maybe. Or crocodile. Depended how long he’d been down here. His short sword looked more like a long knife hanging from his belt, and though he’d left the weapon in its sheath, one massive hand rested on the handle. He was pale, obviously not from Dombâng, and his cheeks were ruddy with ale. He remained steady on his feet, however, and his gaze didn’t waver.

  “What?”

  I beckoned him in. “A message.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Ruc Lan Lac sent me.”

  He sucked at something between his teeth. “Never seen you before.”

/>   “That’s the point. Get the fuck in here before someone walks through that door, notices us both, and gets killed just for wanting to take a piss.”

  “Killed?” He raised a brow. “Who’s going to do the killing?”

  I bared my teeth. “You will, once you hear what I have to say.”

  I held his stare while my pounding heart marked out its quick, silent tempo. This wasn’t training anymore, this was my Trial. I had little doubt I could survive the encounter, little doubt I could kill him, but I needed to do more than just kill. I needed time with the body after, time I wouldn’t have if I botched the cut, or if the big bastard managed to shout, or if it took so long to get him in the ’Kent-kissing privy that one of his friends came looking to see what was wrong.

  I stepped halfway out the door, reaching for his tunic, as though to pull him in. It was the move of an idiot or an amateur, the kind of thing that left me off-balance and open to attack. That was the point. The less professional I seemed, the more likely he might be to drop his guard. He seized my wrist, then dragged me into the hall. I gave a small cry, loud enough for him to appreciate, quiet enough that no one outside the hallway would hear, then put up a vague and ineffectual struggle as he ran his hands down my sides, up my back, down each leg, then up over my ass.

  “Ruc didn’t tell me I’d be molested for my trouble,” I hissed.

  He rolled his eyes, shoved me back through the door into the privy, then followed a step behind.

  “Save the outrage. I’ve been in this city long enough to know that even kids like you carry knives.”

  The privy felt suddenly tiny with both of us inside. I held up my bare palms. “No knives, asshole. Now, if we can close the fucking door…”

  I reached past him. As he turned to follow the motion, I plucked the knife from the post, then drew it back across his neck, opening his throat.

  Even huge men die surprisingly easily. Chop off a cock’s head, and it will run circles, blood gouting fountains from the wound. The Neck, by contrast, just gave a rough, quiet cough, took me by the shoulder, his massive hand strangely gentle, leaned forward, as though to murmur a secret in my ear, then collapsed onto the privy bench.

  “The god’s mercy upon you,” I whispered.

  It was harder than I’d expected to shift him onto his back, but once I’d managed it, it took only moments to unbutton his leather vest. I found two wide pockets stitched inside. The first held half a dozen Annurian silver moons—enough to cover an evening drinking with his men, and then some. I left the coins where they were. The second pocket was empty. I fished inside my trousers, then slid free the note I’d composed earlier in the day. The paper was damp with my own sweat, and the ink had bled slightly, but the writing was still legible—two simple lines, no name or date. I glanced over it once more, hoping it was enough, then tucked it inside the Neck’s empty pocket.

  I’d just finished buttoning his vest when the door from the tavern into the privy hall slammed open.

  “Neck, you thick bastard, don’t think you can hide in here all night.” Boots thudding on the floor, a heavy fist hammering on the first of the stalls. “A bet’s a bet, and there’s no way in ’Shael’s darkest pit I’m letting you sober up before you face it.”

  I retrieved my second knife from the rafters above, tucked the sheaths into my belt, glanced down through the hole in the bench, and grimaced. I’d been hoping to walk out the way I went in instead of bobbing out toward the distant sea with the shit. The Neck gazed up at me somberly, as though he understood. I patted him on the cheek; like me, he’d been hoping to walk out.

  I sighed, checked over the tiny stall once more, then lowered myself through the hole. The water was a dozen feet below; I hit with a small splash, but managed to keep my head above the surface. Almost directly overhead, the soldier was pounding on the door to the final stall. It would be obvious soon enough how I’d escaped, but I wasn’t concerned. The night was dark and the current swift. By the time the Neck’s men got over the shock and thought to come after me, I’d be gone.

  A few strong strokes took me out toward the middle of the canal. Fish-scale lanterns hung all around me—from decks, from fishing weirs, from the sterns of narrow, silent boats—lacquering the water’s black with a slick, red light. When I was well clear of the docks and wooden pilings, I rolled over and floated on my back, letting the current take me. After years swimming in the chilly mountain streams around Rassambur, the delta water felt blood-warm, at once welcoming and strange. From the balconies and windows above, from the gently rolling decks of the boats, I could hear voices, dozens of them, hundreds, testing the whole range of human emotion—a man growling the name of his lover over and over, children bickering over their bed, an old woman singing the same few notes of an ancient Dombâng rowing song. I floated unseen, unknown between all those lives. After a while, I let my ears slip below the surface, where the only sound was the water’s bass thrum.

  “Three,” I murmured to myself.

  I’d been back in Dombâng less than a week, and I was almost halfway through my Trial. The easy half. I had ten days left to make four more offerings—fine. Ten days to fall in love. My limbs felt heavy, suddenly reluctant. The water lifted me, carried me lazily eastward. There was a peace in being so still in the midst of so much motion. I imagined the Neck beside me, also floating, caught in the soft grip of Ananshael’s warm and unrelenting hand, both of us carried all the long, silent miles to the waiting sea.

  “Someday,” I said.

  He didn’t reply.

  Slowly, I opened my eyes, rolled onto my side, and started swimming for the bank. There’s no point setting a trap, after all, if you don’t plan on being there when it springs shut.

  7

  The Purple Baths comprised a steaming labyrinth of pools—public and private; cold, hot, warm, perfumed; some intimate, some large enough to float a small oceangoing ship—all beneath a soaring wooden roof held aloft on massive pillars of mahogany and dripping with red-scale lanterns. Almost as amazing as the bathhouse itself was the sheer acreage of naked human flesh. I was used to seeing women and men in all states of undress—Rassambur is no place for the prudish—but I had forgotten the scope of Dombâng’s bathhouses. There might have been five thousand people in the vast hall on the evening when I stepped inside—the night after I’d killed the Neck—some submerged to their necks, others floating lazily on their backs, still others plucking towels from massive stacks, rubbing palm oil into their skin before getting dressed, turning to the nearest companion—male or female, stranger or friend—for help reaching shoulders and backs.

  A good number of those ministrations ranged well beyond the purely practical. Sex in the bathhouses was frowned upon, but no one looked twice at the two men kneading a woman’s naked buttocks, or the lovers in one of the hot pools, the length of their bodies pressed tight together. I wondered suddenly at the wisdom of choosing this place, of all the spots in Dombâng, for my reunion with Ruc, then glanced down at my body, aware in a way I had not been for years of my own nakedness. I was a shade paler than most of the city’s inhabitants—a legacy of my foreign-born father—and slightly taller than most of the women. I certainly had more scars. Eyes lingered on me as I passed. I wondered what Ruc would see. Did I look like the woman who had accosted him outside the Si’ite temple years earlier, or had I changed?

  It was a relief to sink into the massive pool running down the center of the hall. Warm, lemon-scented water closed over me, steam wreathed my face, and as I floated out toward the middle, people lost interest, shifted their gazes to the naked bodies closer at hand. Just what I’d hoped for. Although the main pool was open to all eyes, no one paid it much mind—the city’s richest and most beautiful preferred the smaller, more secluded baths tucked behind carved screens along the walls. Anyone looking for gossip was looking there, hoping to catch a glimpse of something exciting.

  When I reached the perfect center of the pool, I sank down until just my nose a
nd eyes were above the water, then waited, wondering if my plan was insane. I had little doubt that Ruc would come—he was thorough enough to search the Neck’s jerkin, and there was no way he would ignore the note I’d hidden there. Meeting him, however, was just the first step. It was possible that he had changed, possible he hated me for the way I’d disappeared six years earlier, possible he’d arrive in the bathhouse with a dozen Greenshirts at his back. And my own unknowable emotions were even more worrisome.

  Back at the statue of Goc My, Ruc had seemed like the man I remembered: casual, confident, just a little dismissive. On the other hand, I’d only seen him for a few moments, and from some distance. Hardly enough time to guess if I could fall in love, to know if whatever ember had smoldered in my breast all these years could be coaxed into an open flame.

  I’d half convinced myself that the whole thing was a fool’s errand, that I’d be better off hurling myself at one of the other innumerable naked beauties in the pool, when I saw him. Most men and women tend to sink slowly into the bath, luxuriating in the clean water, letting it wash them, wash over them.

  Not Ruc.

  He waded in as though the pool were an impediment beneath his attention. He had none of the awkwardness of men trying to walk through water. Instead of just charging ahead, churning up a bow wave, holding his arms awkwardly clear, he moved like a knife slicing the surface, slow but inevitable. I’d missed the way he moved. That smoothness alone was worth watching, never mind the fact that he was naked.

  I remembered those shoulders, broad but lean and well muscled. I remembered running my hands over those ribs, trailing my nails over the brown skin, and I remembered slamming my fists into him, trying to find the liver or the kidney beneath that solid flesh. I remembered his fists, too, and though he was too far away for me to make out the detail, I could see, in my mind’s eye, the scarred knuckles, the crook in his middle fingers where he’d broken them over and over. Dark stubble covered his face—he hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. And then there were those green eyes, unmistakable even through the steam.