The Nichan Smile

by C. J. Merwild

  A smile stretched the Orator’s mouth, widening it so much that, for an agonizing second, Gus thought the man would transform. But he just smiled and turned to his own.

  “The only words worthy of an abomination, are they not?” Issba found only the attentive silence of his disciples. He turned to Gus. “Your time will come, and may the Gods forgive you.”

  The man returned to his table and after a few frantic heartbeats, the buzz of conversation resumed. Outside, the rain was still pouring down on the building.

  Gus had clenched his fists so tightly his joints were now sore. He rested his palms against his thighs when he saw him. At the other end of the room, Beïka stared at him with his depthless eyes. Gus hadn’t noticed him until then. Unlike Issba, Domino’s brother stayed in his place. No one was interested in the object of his attention. Gus decided to do the same.

  He veered his gaze to the opposite wall, stopped it for a moment on Matta sitting a little farther away, and waited for the rain to pass.

  Night had fallen quickly after the storm passed. Gus was exhausted from scraping the black, slimy shit of the Corruption with the others, yet he couldn’t sleep. He’d been going over the same heady thoughts for hours. Domino, Issba, Domino, Matta. It promised to be a long night.

  As he sat up in bed to get a sip of water, the door of the hut opened then closed almost immediately. It was dark—rays of light slipped through the shutters. Someone had come in. Gus could make out the outline of their tall, strong figure. He could clearly hear the raspy breath surging from their lungs. And though he couldn’t discern their features, Gus knew exactly who had just burst into his house uninvited.

  He stood motionless, not even bending his arm still reaching for his bedside.

  The crash broke the silence without any warning. It spun around Gus in a downpour of disheartening sounds and furious heartbeats. The world exploded around him. Fragments of wood, terracotta, glass. They splattered everywhere.

  Then the bed shook.

  In an instant as brief as the jump of a flea and at the same time interminable, his home was wrecked by Beïka’s silent anger. Not having moved an inch, Gus forced himself to calm his breath. His heart threatened to climb up into his mouth. He was close to vomiting.

  Don’t show him anything. Don’t give him that pleasure. If Domino was here he—

  Cowering in spite of himself, he suddenly choked his thoughts. He didn’t need Domino to save him. Gus forced himself to talk, to take back control. “You’re good? Feeling any better?”

  Beïka punched him in the face. It shoved Gus against the bed. Nothing could have prepared him for that. He couldn’t have prevented it, either. Blood slid from the inside of his cheek ripped open against his teeth. The metallic, salty taste invaded his mouth.

  Lost in the darkness of the night and the pain palpitating throughout his skull, Gus realized that Beïka had crossed the distance that separated them when a thick wad of spit landed near his eye.

  “Next time you insult our Orator or any of us, I’ll kill you,” Beïka said. “Then I’ll tear this country apart to find my brother and show him your fucking head.”

  He bit his lip, perhaps holding back from carrying out his threat in the moment. He could have done it. Folded in on himself, fighting in vain against the terror knotting his throat, Gus would have had no choice but to accept his own death. Amidst the sparks that flew before his eyes, he was able to contemplate it. He’d always been able to contemplate it.

  The taint calls for death. It will find you, Issba had promised.

  To his surprise, it didn’t come. Beïka only turned around, stepping on the broken furniture, and walked out.

  Gus sat on his bed immediately. How could he have cowered like that, like a frightened beast, like a helpless child? With a wave of his hand, he wiped off the spit glued to his skin and grimaced as pain pulsed down the side of his face. His eyes suddenly burned. Pain wasn’t the only matter. No, it was something more insidious, more intimate. Humiliation. He felt it in his whole being, in the bloody wound following the curve of his molars, in the smell of dried saliva on his cheek.

  His muscles tightened, his jaw contracted. He pushed back the tears with all his might.

  I said no! he scolded against his own weakness.

  He slapped himself, the contact brutalizing his already bruised nerves, and pushed back the tangled hair stuck in his eyelashes. He sniffed hard and stood up.

  Of course the lamp had been knocked over with the rest.

  Never mind, I know this room like the back of my hand.

  Gus held back a scream as the sharp pottery shards made contact with the soles of his bare feet. He fumbled on the ground, found his woven savates and put them on after shaking them of their possible contents. He had always been messy, but this was something else entirely. This wasn’t his home.

  Nothing insurmountable. Gus was no longer a child. He was a man. He’d let go once dead and gone.

  In the next few minutes, repressing the suffering that made him sway from one foot to the other, he fully opened the shutter, bringing some light into the room. He picked up his laundry, tied up the rope to hang it back up, gathered up the pieces of his bedside table, refilled his clothing chest, swept the pieces of terracotta scattered all over the place, pushed it all close to the front door to take out at daybreak. Finally, he drew water from the fountain behind his hut and washed his face twice. He rinsed out his mouth, spattered red water on the cobblestones, and then did it again, ignoring the soft open flesh, the raw nerves, and the molar he could tilt with the flick of his tongue.

  When he went back inside, he checked that no one had taken advantage of his absence to invite himself in again.

  The hut seemed soiled, as if Beïka had taken a shit in the middle of the room.

  Back in bed, Gus was now certain he wouldn’t sleep that night.

  X X V

  “Will you stop making that face?”

  Memek’s voice caught Domino off guard. He looked up, making sure his cousin had spoken to him. Memek, half transformed, skin as black as a midnight sky, stuck her claws under the thick scales of the saurian she and her father had just killed. She spread her arm away with a sharp movement, and the skin peeled off from the rest of the beast’s powerful muscles. On the other side of the campfire, Ero piled up enough wood to warm them all night. He didn’t react to Memek’s words.

  “What face?” Domino asked.

  “The face of a sulking child,” the young woman said, returning to her human form. “You should have cut the legs off by now.”

  Indeed. It was essential to retrieve the skin and claws of the huge reptile before its flesh turned cold. Both were sold at a significant price, and if Domino didn’t hurry, the fragile scales would soon become inseparable from the rest of the animal. They needed the money if they were to sleep in a real bed by the time they reached the next village. If only someone allowed them to do so.

  None of the villages they’d passed through since Kepam had offered them the shelter they longed for. And south of the capital, nichan sanctuaries were becoming increasingly rare.

  “Papema is a quagmire,” Ero had said as they advanced through the fields on the outskirts of the massive city. “If we walk in there, we’ll never get out. So forget it.” Just like that, Memek’s everlasting request to join the capital had been rejected.

  Papema had been built along the border of the Arao, forming one whole with the villages and other towns that had developed at the foot of the holy land. The Torb capital stretched for hundreds of miles, crossing part of the country. It was now, according to the natives, a muddle of merchants, beasts, whores, and refugees trying to reach the Meishua without being able to leave the city afterwards. Anyone who entered the capital got lost, robbed, and found a way to incur several debts in the process. It wasn’t Ero’s habit to give credence to peasant gossip, but he obviously wanted to avoid setting foot in Papema. Memek had kept her eyes on the big city of warm, golden tones. She s
eemed to care nothing for the wind-waving steppes that stretched as far as the eye could see, or the lines of mountains of frozen peaks that could be seen beyond the sharp buildings and through the low clouds. She wanted a bed, and in the weeks that went by, her mood only darkened.

  Domino readjusted his grip on the handle of the damn knife he’d received from Ero. He’d eaten all his life with cutlery, knew how to handle tools for gardening and building a house. But something was preventing him from holding that very tool properly. Even though most of his anger targeted his uncle, he couldn’t deny that his lack of goodwill was probably at fault.

  He picked up where he’d left off. Once again, the perfectly sharp blade slid and slashed the surface of the precious greenish scales.

  “Damn it,” he swore between his teeth.

  Memek reached out and pushed the hunting knife away, preventing her cousin from doing any more damage. “That’s at least thirty heads you just wasted,” she raged.

  “The fucking blade slipped out of my fingers.”

  “Poor thing.”

  “You think I did that on purpose?”

  “I think you’re only doing what you want to do, and it’s costing us a fucking lot. Silver doesn’t just fall out of the sky, you know.”

  “Since when do you care so much about money?” Ero asked, leaning before the golden flames gradually taking over.

  “We need it,” his daughter reminded him, arms and back stiff, her clenched fists pressing on her lap. “To sleep with a roof over our heads. To—”

  “We’re on a pilgrimage, Memek. We’re not visiting the country.”

  The girl paused, her bloody hands soiling her pants, her eyes fixed on her father. They’d gone from anger to a cold impassiveness. “To sleep with a roof over our heads,” she repeated, drawing her father and Domino’s attention for good. As far back as he could remember, Memek had never been so restive with Ero. “To eat, because soon all the meat will be gone for winter. To wash. I’m pretty sure Domino and I have lice. Is it so ridiculous to try to make this trip a little more comfortable?”

  “We’re on a pilgrimage,” Ero said, repeating himself, mirroring his daughter’s way of speech.

  He stared at her, calm. Memek sent a quick glance at Domino and pointed to him with a wave of her bloodied hand before turning back to her father.

  “And what a pilgrimage! You might say we’ve made great progress.”

  Domino stuck his knife into the cool earth beside him and sat up. “If you have a problem with me, talk to me. I’m right here.”

  “I have a problem with you and with you,” she said, flashing her eyes at Domino and then at her father.

  There was a silence that only the crackling of the fire disturbed. Ero hadn’t looked away from his daughter for a second. “I’m listening,” he said.

  “It’s been almost two months since we left,” the young woman said, raising her eyebrows. “You bought him a knife. A fucking knife. I mean, we don’t take him hunting anymore. He just stays here guarding the camp, Papa. If that’s not called resignation, I don’t know what it is.”

  “Tell me what you want from me, Memek.”

  “This pilgrimage had two goals: to knock some sense into him, and to prepare us to fight the Blessers.”

  “That’s not changed.”

  “We’re going in circles! We go from village to village. We hear about these partisans who learn to fight, who raise money to murder us. And we don’t move a finger. That’s why you wanted to avoid Papema. You’re running away from rumors, from the news from the east. It would only remind us of the mess at the border. You don’t want to hear about the partisans. Well, fuck that! Those rumors are everywhere. Every time we are turned back to a village, it’s their influence that gets in our way. And we just walk around doing nothing when we should be cutting them to the bone. For fuck’s sake, have you forgotten that it’s one of their kind that killed Javik?”

  She suddenly fell silent, tears of anger in her eyes.

  Facing her, Domino stopped breathing for a moment.

  At first he’d expected Memek to complain about him, expected her to ask to go back to Surhok. She must miss her mother and her family. No doubt she did, but her frustration went far beyond that. For the first time, his cousin’s violent desire for revenge was like frost in his veins. She wanted to get rid of partisans; Domino was a burden preventing her from doing so. Domino was no match for those fuckers. Not with a knife he could barely handle to defend himself against their sabers and pistols.

  “You have a lot of nerve asking me this question,” Ero said to his daughter without losing his calm. “Your brother died before my eyes.”

  “Why are we heading south?” Memek asked, changing the subject abruptly.

  “It’s part of the pilgrimage.”

  “Stop saying that!” she shouted and stood, wiping her sticky hands on her pants. “We don’t fight. And he refuses to transform. If you don’t order him to do it, what’s the point of all this? Might as well go home and wait for these assholes to come and get us.”

  She was right. Domino looked down and searched for the flow within him. The spark of his essence, the taint of the Corruption . . . Anything would do. Again, no buzzing. Just an overwhelming void.

  Ero stood up and stepped over the campfire. “Domino,” he said, his authority restored. “Finish butchering this beast. Keep the fire burning. You”—he pointed at Memek—“you’re coming with me. We’ll go for a walk, hunt some more meat.”

  “I—” started the young woman.

  “Do as I say, Memek. Nobody likes saurian meat anyway. Don’t argue. I have to talk to you.”

  She hesitated, arms folded, still full of resentment. Eventually she accepted, and father and daughter turned their backs on Domino before disappearing between the half-naked trees.

  Once again, Domino found himself alone.

  You got yourself into this shit, a voice said in his head. It’s up to you to make it right.

  Responding to the order coursing through his body, he uprooted the knife half-buried next to him and took care of retrieving the scales from the saurian without turning the task into a massacre. The day was waning when he grabbed the skin of the beast, removed the remains of flesh, and hung it on a branch to dry. After extracting the animal’s fangs, Domino emptied its mouth of the tongue and a gland as big as his fist, capable of producing venom even after death. He collected enough meat, rekindled the fire, and began to dig with his bare hands to bury the remnants of the reptile underground. A waste of meat, but Ero was right: nobody liked saurians, and its meat was only kept in case other animals went missing.

  His body moved like a tool dealt by his uncle’s hand. Efficient, fast, and lifeless. His promised future if nothing changed.

  A growl interrupted Domino in his task. He tracked the source of the noise, but the curtain of scaly skin blocked his view. He sniffed the air. Animal, young, male. Big. Another growl, closer. This time he heard the paws treading the ground, the claws scraping the rocky earth with each slow, heavy step. A shadow passed under the animal skin. Domino stood up and stepped back, his senses alert.

  It can’t be.

  An animal, so close to him, less than five paces away. It grumbled as it appeared on the other side of the dark scales swaying in the wind. Domino froze. It was a bear. Its brown fur was wet with all kinds of filth. The smell of the animal intensified.

  It shouldn’t have been here. Animals, all but birds, feared nichans. Larger predators could smell them from hundreds of yards away. As a result they fled as far as they could. They always did. That was why nichans hunted for miles and miles. It was the effort it took to flush out, catch, and kill the prey.

  But not this one. This bear was definitely right here, just a few steps away from Domino.

  The young man looked for his knife. The thing was by the fire where he’d left it with the meat. Slowly, without taking his eyes off the animal, Domino moved toward the flames casting vivid shadows in all
directions. Not a single threatening move. The bear reacted as if it was. It growled, straightened up on its hind legs, and growled again, louder, just in case its intention wasn’t clear already. Domino stood still. Another nichan would attack. So attack the bear it would be, as his instincts urged him to do.

  Using all his speed, he ran to the fire and slid on the rocks and dirt. When he jumped to his feet, the knife was in his hand. The bear charged at him, and its clawed paw swept the air. Domino struck with a circular motion. None of their blows were effective. They both charged back in a second attack.

  Blood splashed all around. Coral blood. An icy wind forced Domino to the ground. His ass and back crashed on the rocky earth, and his breath got stuck in his throat. But nothing could have outmatched the ache piercing his stomach. On reflex, he raised his hand to his side. Warm blood flowed between his fingers.

  No! No!

  Facing him, the shadow of a scratch circling its drooling mouth, the bear came for retaliation.

  Get up! Get the fuck out of here!

  Domino gathered his senses and obeyed his survival instinct. He couldn’t fight. Nearly four years earlier, he’d transformed himself in the face of danger. Now he had no time to even try.

  He got up and ran as fast as he could, but the pain slowed him down. He dared look back. The animal chased him, its gait heavy, enraged by the stab that had sliced the corner of its snout. Domino forced his legs on, his heart missing a beat with each step, blood spilling out from under his ribs.

  Suddenly, the ground slipped from under his feet. He fell, and the world swirled around him, made of branches, sharp rocks, and thorns. He couldn’t find anything to catch himself as he rolled down. A muffled crack ripped a gasp out of him. He continued to fall down the steep hill. On and on and on.

  Then his back hit an obstacle. His descent was abruptly interrupted.

  Breathless, his first reflex was to find his wound again and cover it with the flat of his hand. A scream escaped from his throat. His shoulder hurt terribly. He clenched his teeth, not wanting to know why he was in such pain. He had to move, check that the bear was gone, stop the bleeding. With his left hand, he pressed against the open cuts. With the strength of his legs, he sat back up and searched for the animal around him. Domino could vaguely distinguish the slope he’d just descended. Quite a height. He sniffed the cold dusk breeze, no longer found the musky smell of the bear. The damn thing obviously didn’t want to follow him down here. Good, because a glance was enough to notice the crooked angle of his right shoulder—dislocated, no doubt—and the waves of blood gushing from his belly.