Acolyte's Underworld

by Levi Jacobs

  Too soon, the current of traffic brought her to the Councileum. A massive stone bowl ringed with columns and arches and ornate statues, it stood two hundred paces high and a thousandpace wide, dwarfing the sizeable mansions and inns around it.

  Marea took the Ergstad gate, the siren statue looming over it noticeably newer than the rest of the building. Her breath caught at the end of the dark tunnel, as it always did at the sheer size of the place. She felt like an ant dropped into a bathtub—only this bathtub was crawling with other ants, and she needed to murder one of them.

  Plenty of people sat near the bronze plaque of Alsthen’s lantern and hammer, but only one in a Galya surcoat. Josell was older than she’d expected, sandy hair thinning on top. He watched the slaves battling on the arena’s sandy bottom with a scowl, right hand fingering a polished wood cane.

  Marea slowed. Attack here and there would be a thousand witnesses. Try to entice him into attacking first, then? But if lawkeepers intervened, there was no guarantee the man would die. And Uhallen would only give her power if the man was dead.

  Attacking first was out. Getting him to attack first was out. So what?

  She tried to think of options, but her mind was a blank. What would Tai do? He would probably swoop down and fly off with the man before anyone could follow him. Feynrick? He’d walk up to Josell and deck him, most likely, though she couldn’t see Feynrick agreeing to the kind of mission she was on.

  What about Ella? Ella would engage him in talk, leading him into deciding to get away from the crowds with her, then timeslip a knife in his back when they were alone.

  Of the options, Ella’s seemed the best. So heart in her throat, Marea stood and approached the man she was planning to kill.

  “Excuse me,” she said, clutching her suit kurta in one hand. “You wouldn’t happen to have seen an elderly woman in this section, would you? My height, maybe wearing black and green?” As she spoke, she felt carefully for any hint of a resonance. If the man used mindsight, she would be hard pressed not to give the whole thing away instantly.

  “Huh?” the man said, looking her way. His eyes swept her up and down once, then turned away. She was used to that reaction from men—she’d always hoped as got into her teens that her body would grow some curves, but at sixteen rains she was just a bigger version of the skinny kid she’d always been.

  “An elderly woman,” Marea repeated. “I was supposed to meet her here, but she hasn’t shown up.”

  “Maybe she’s late,” Josell said, eyes back to the dying men below.

  “I’m worried she went to the teahouse ahead of me,” Marea said. “The Thorn and Puceleaf. Have you heard of it?”

  “No kid. I’m busy. Ask someone else.”

  “Please,” she said. “I’m from The Racks, and I don’t know my way around here. I’m worried she might have gone on ahead.”

  It wasn’t a great story, but it’d been the best she could come up with. Nor did she have Ella’s silver tongue when it came to convincing people of things. Marea was almost resigned to doing something more radical when he looked back and his face softened. “All right, I could use a stretch anyway. What was your name?”

  “Marea,” she said, then thinking better of it, “Marea Mattoy.”

  “Mattoy, huh? You got ten brothers and sisters like everyone else in your House?”

  “Seven,” she said, mind racing ahead to the next step in this process. “But mother’s pregnant with an eighth. A boy, she thinks.”

  “Hmph,” Josell said. “Never did get it myself. All kids do is eat up your money, far as I can see.”

  He led her out of the stadium and onto a quieter side street. Marea had chosen The Thorn and Puceleaf specifically because it was on the quietest West Cove street she could think of.

  Not that she had any intention of actually going to the shop. While Josell went on about his opinions of Mattoy procreation, Marea summoned her shamanic arm and snagged the revenant from a passing Yersh deacon. The man gasped, but Josell didn’t seem to notice.

  Then as they turned the corner into the dead-end street, she slammed it at his neck with all her shamanic might.

  He caught it.

  Josell turned, grinning, the midnight-blue revenant vibrating between them. “Thought you’d take me unawares, hm? On to you from the second I checked your revenants. Should have stuck one on before you came—not too many people walking around without them. Who sent you?”

  Marea’s thoughts raced, heart beating. Josell’s push was strong enough she wasn’t sure she could force the revenant on him. She could fatewalk something—but in the meantime, if Josell really was tracking Uhallen, telling the truth might buy her a little safety.

  “Uhallen,” she said. “He wants you guys to leave him alone.”

  Josell’s weathered face went pale. “Uhallen? Uhallen sent you?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “And he told me what you did.”

  As she spoke she struck resonance, willing the vision she’d created into reality: Josell’s cry as his feet tangled. His look of surprise as he fell, the thwack as his head met pavement. The revenant slamming into him and her knife a moment later.

  And he did cry, did fall, and his head did thwack on the paving stones. But as he did a second revenant, fiery red, appeared from nowhere and slammed into her.

  Marea screamed, falling, body erupting in pain. Struggling to not lose focus, she dropped her push on the blue revenant and seized the one sticking to her neck, ripping it free.

  A blissful moment of non-pain, in which she saw the older man struggling with his cane. Then the blue revenant slammed into her, and the world again went monochromatic with agony.

  Again she clung to control. To the voice racing through possibilities—how had he thrown the blue revenant at her while still pushing the red?

  Marea wrenched her shamanic arm around to grab at the thing tormenting her, losing control of the red as she grabbed the blue. There was only one possibility: he had two shamanic arms.

  It pulled free in a moment of relief. Marea didn’t waste it try to get up or recover. Instead she took all the detail she’d invested into her shamanic arm and doubled it, creating a left hand to match her right.

  And just in time, as Josell shoved a new revenant at her, pulling a knife from his belt meanwhile.

  This time she was the one to catch it. Marea grinned a feral grin as she struggled to her feet, shamanic arms braced against his, two revenants caught between them. Her uai was gone, lost in the revenant attack, but she had new ways to battle now. If she could make two arms, why not three?

  A third limb appeared in shamanic sight and she snatched a drifting tatter from the air, Josell’s mouth making a comical “o” before it slammed into him and he fell screaming. Marea glanced around, keeping pressure on all three limbs. These screams would draw eyes in West Cove, dead-end street or not. She saw no one, but they were surely coming.

  No time, then. She ran to him, slamming a new revenant into him as one of his arms pulled off the tatter. “You’re not getting away that easy,” she growled, ripping the dagger from her thigh and burying it in his throat.

  His scream turned to a gurgle. Marea pulled the blade free. Hot blood sprayed out, coating her face.

  She froze, heart pounding, the thrill of battle turning to shock as she realized what this blood meant. Another spurt, staining her white blouse. She’d murdered a man on the streets of West Cove in broad daylight. Another spray of blood, weaker. With detached clarity, she realized the sprays were timed to the weakening beats of his heart.

  Marea threw down the knife and ran. A woman stood in the intersection, staring at her with a look of horror.

  Without thinking Marea spun, grabbing the blue revenant with one of her arms and slamming it into the woman. Her grayish one ripped off and the woman clutched her head, screaming. Marea ran past, out into the wider street, panic driving her feet. She needed to get away.

  Two figures ran toward her—oh sweet scatstains t
hey were lawkeepers. And she was covered in blood.

  Marea spun and grabbed the gray and red revenants in two shamanic arms, then slammed them into the lawkeepers. One fell flat on his face, screaming. The other one spun in shock, looking confused but unaffected.

  Of course. Because he had a revenant in already, and her shove hadn’t knocked it loose. Knowing every second exposed her to more eyes, made it less likely she was getting out of this alive, Marea ripped the standing lawkeeper’s revenant free and pushed her own in.

  He fell. She kept hold of his revenant just in case, then ran back into the dead end street.

  Clothes. She needed new clothes. Better to be naked than run around drenched in blood. Marea ripped the bloody blouse from herself, panic pulling buttons loose, and looked around. The first woman still rolled and screamed on the paving stones—she could steal her clothes, but it would take too long with her thrashing.

  Her kurta! It lay where she’d dropped it in the fight. Discarded and blessedly blood-free. Marea snatched it up and forced herself to slow down, getting as clean as she could, fighting to think rationally as panic pushed her to run for her life.

  That way lay suicide. She wasn’t clean—there was still blood on her hands, her arms, she could taste it on her lips. Marea gagged, eyes darting to where Josell’s body lay in an expanding pool of blood.

  “Oh saints praise it oh sweet Prophets,” she whispered, panic taking her. They were going to find her. She was going to be executed for the murder of an innocent man, unable to explain herself—

  “No,” she whispered fiercely, seizing control of her thoughts like she would a stray revenant. “Think, Marea. You can do this.”

  She needed somewhere to get clean. The teahouse had a washroom, but she’d be seen. There was a door on the far side of the street, likely a mother-in-law apartment built into the main building facing the wider street. Marea ran to it, shouts chasing her from the street beyond, and tried the door.

  Locked.

  Whimpering, heart pounding, somewhere between panic and despair, Marea slammed her body into the door. It gave. She lurched into the dark space, slamming it shut behind her, then forced herself to open it and wipe the blood from the handle. She re-locked it. Looked around, ragged breaths loud in the narrow space. It was an apartment of some kind, bed to one side, cooking implements stacked by the rear door. Empty, praise the currents. She didn’t know if she had the heart to stick another revenant on someone, and the way they screamed meant it wouldn’t work anyway.

  Marea walked to the back door, trying to breathe deep, to calm herself. It opened onto a shared courtyard with wash buckets and cookpots, blessedly empty. A large cistern stood in one corner, fed by rain troughs from the surrounding roofs.

  Marea took a worn wood bucket and filled it, water cool in the day’s heat. Plunged her hands in and scrubbed. Josell’s blood gummed to her skin. She pushed her hands into the sand bucket and scrubbed again, then rinsed them off—still stained. Dumped the water, found a bar of castile and scrubbed again.

  Marea pulled her hands out, raw and bleeding now in places from scrubbing so hard. The stink of blood was everywhere, raw and coppery, the tang of it foul on her tongue. Was it hers or Josell’s?

  Her shoulders started shaking, the man’s face rising before her, the heat of his blood on her face. “No,” she whispered fiercely. “Pull it together, Marea. Cry when you’re safe. Stop now and you’re dead.”

  She forced herself through the rest of the washing, scrubbing her arms and face and the smears down her chest. She pulled her skirt off to scrub at the few stains there too. It took forever, but as her mother used to say, there was nothing castile and sand couldn’t get out of clothes or skin.

  If only memories were the same.

  West Cove’s massive carillon tolled fifteen bells. Marea stood in the shared courtyard, wet and raw but blood-free. Though it felt like ages, maybe fifteen minutes had passed since stabbing Josell. In that time voices had echoed from the street—there was no doubt a gathering there. It was only a matter of time till they checked the apartment—there was nowhere else to go on the dead-end street. The lawkeepers she’d put down with revenants were also likely recovered and there, so they would recognize her face.

  Marea cursed, pacing in the narrow courtyard. The apartment was too cheap to have windows, so she had no way of knowing who or what was out there until she opened the door. She could fatewalk, of course, imagining walking out of the dead-end street and out of West Cove without being discovered, but fatewalking only made what was possible more possible. Walking past the men she’d attacked in the middle of a crime scene without them noticing? That was impossible.

  “Think, Marea,” she muttered. What unlikely-but-still-possible-escape could she make work with her resonance?

  The other apartments. Three or four other doors lead into the courtyard, the shared design more efficient than giving each family its own outdoor space for washing and cooking. She could try fatewalking through their houses—still a potential of getting caught, but a sight less than walking back past the lawkeepers and Josell.

  So she started trying doors—the third one was unlocked. Marea squared her shoulders, struck her resonance, and swung it wide. A hallway opened, leading straight through the apartment to the outer door on the far side. Marea walked briskly, hearing sounds of slumber from one of the bedrooms but not pausing to look. Instead she clung to her vision of stepping out into the afternoon sun, the murmur of conversation and the scent of roasting mutton as she walked back through the Councileum square. Clung to her vision and burned uai.

  And that was how it happened. The front door opened on the broader street leading to The Thorn and Puceleaf’s dead end, and no voices or echoing footsteps chased her as she walked back to the square. Her fear started to ratchet down as she blended into the square’s thickening crowd, workers ending daily shifts and heading for the docks. The tension left her shoulders by the time the river taxi pushed off, replaced with a bone weariness she hadn’t known since her first days as an orphan, trying to survive on the streets of a rebel city.

  Compared to that, and the scene she had just come from—no, the scene she had made—the quiet and garden-lined streets of Widow’s Hill were surreal. She kept expecting someone to step from a nearby hedge and demand she come with them, or to hear pounding footsteps behind her. Kept seeing Josell’s aging face on the people she passed, or glimpsing his corpse sprawled in the underbrush.

  No one assaulted her. No one accused her. No one even greeted her beyond the servant who let her into House Fetterwel. Marea followed the spiral stairs up to the south wing, empty except for her old room, itself bare save for her childhood bed. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  But as she pulled the still-damp clothes from her body and found the dagger bound to her thigh, bits of Josell’s blood dried into the hilt, she found there was something she needed to do more.

  Marea collapsed on her bed and wept.

  17

  Aran was different—not only was this an attack on our own nation, not a protectorate, but it was an attack without economic merit. So I ask again, if it was not for nationalism, and not for profit, why then did we attack? These are the questions we must ask our Houses, because there is more to the story.

  —Malia Galferth, A Citizen’s Tale of Aran’s Last Days, Con’t printed in Delta’s Oath

  It took two days to find the secretary. Ella found a balcony restaurant with a good view of the Alsthen gates and settled in to wait.

  After hiding in an alley and alternating between weeping and bashing her fists against the wall, of course. Mothers. Apparently they never got easier.

  Ella spotted the secretary the second day, a willowy woman with almost enough strands of black in her hair to be fyelocke. She was scared out of her wits when she understood Ella was looking for the man who’d send her to Eyadin. It had taken a combination of wit and a judicious display of force—most people in Worldsmouth had never seen true r
esonant power—to get her to talk.

  When she did, the answer was not as straightforward as Ella had hoped. No names, no position at Alsthen—though the woman had thought he did work for them—not even a meeting place. What she had known was that he was a full darkhair, tall, and always smoked cigars while they talked.

  And that the man had threatened her with bluefoot fever too, if she didn’t cooperate. That more than anything convinced Ella she was on the right trail. The cigars were a strong lead too—sage-smoking had a long history in Worldsmouth, but the preferred method was by pipe. Cigar blending and rolling was a refined art, and cigar smokers tended to be wealthy men wanting to display their wealth by smoking what would otherwise be a week’s worth of sage at a go. Her father had smoked cigars occasionally, but never for pleasure.

  Cigar smoking fit with her image of an archrevenant. And better yet, there were only a handful of cigar shops in Worldsmouth that such men would frequent. Hunting for a tall darkhaired man in the ranks of Alsthen could take months. Hunting for him among the cigar-smoking lighthaired elite of Worldsmouth, though? There was an easier fish to hook.

  Ella started that very night, at The Gentleman Sage in West Cove. She learned two things very quickly: she stood out in a cigar shop worse than she had in Ayugen, and she hated cigars.

  The first posed more of a problem than the second. Cigars smelled awful and she felt sick after just a few puffs, but she could put up with the stink and the nausea. The sheer egotism of the clientele, though? That she had a harder time with.

  Barely was she in the door than the worker had smirked at her behind the polished teakwood bar, and conversation had stilled among the dozen or so men seated beyond in plush chairs. There were no women. Nor were there any darkhairs.

  According to the browning spots on her hands, her resonance was starting to age her, but still the patrons eyed her like a fisherman’s prime catch. Her attempts to get some sort of useful information from the worker were entirely disrupted by a stream of smoke-belching older lighthaired gentlemen. Solicitously they asked if she needed anything, if she’d like a cigar, where she was from, etc., while stealing glances at her chest. One even asked her what her yurability was, like that had become some kind of pickup line in the years since she’d left the capital.