Shower of Stones

by Zachary Jernigan

  Surely, whatever Fyra had done to her would compensate to minimize the effects.

  Any moment now … she thought. Please … But the pain persisted.

  The light warned her, a second too late. An elderly Tomen woman rounded the corner, stepping down from the stairs at the end of the hallway. She jumped when she saw Churls, dropping her lantern with a glass clatter.

  Churls flipped the ceramic knife. Underhanded, it was an awkward throw. The pommel glanced harmlessly off the woman’s shoulder and struck the plaster behind her, but by that point Churls had already taken two steps in a run toward her target.

  The woman got out one syllable of a warning or curse before Churls’s forearm crushed her windpipe. Churls pinned her enemy against the wall and watched as the light fled from her eyes. For several seconds afterward, she held the woman there, heart pounding heavily enough to shake her entire body, breaths labored and painful as she struggled to keep them quiet.

  Listening, over the roar of her pain.

  A footstep on the landing above. The strike of a phosphor match.

  Bright spots swam before Churls’s eyes as she hauled the dead woman out of this new person’s line of sight. The muscles of her chest and stomach had tightened with the pain, constricting her. She could not breathe in enough air, and tore at the buttons of her vest, alleviating the pressure slightly.

  Above her, voices. Two men. She recognized one of their words.

  Shira.

  Her eyes shot to the ceramic knife, which lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs.

  She did not think. Thinking would do no good in her current situation.

  She rounded the corner and charged up the steps, sword in hand. Both men stood, stunned into statues by her appearance. She ran the first through his left lung and slammed into the second, carrying them both to the floor. They rolled twice before she got the upper position, and then struck him twice, open-palmed and in quick succession, forcing shards of cartilage into his brain, killing him instantly. She stood and pulled her sword free of the first, hastening his death by drowning.

  The house woke up around her. From the sound of it, there were far more than a handful of men. Perhaps Fesuy had not been so incautious, after all.

  She ran down the hallway, where she knew Vedas and Berun would be found.

  ‡

  The two girls Fesuy had slept alongside—she would not think of them as women—sobbed in the corner. The man himself lay unconscious on the bed, naked, wrists and ankles tied and linked behind his back, bleeding into the sheets from a shallow cut on his temple. A heavy chair, propped against the doorknob, kept anyone from easily entering the room from the outside.

  Of course, every member of the household knew Fesuy would die if they tried to enter, and this kept them out. For now. It was only a brief matter of time before they stopped caring and came in, regardless of the threat to their leader.

  Churls finished her second search of the room, which every instinct told her must contain Vedas and Berun, and limped over to the bed. Fesuy groaned as she flipped him over. When she wound his long red hair around her hand and pulled him onto the floor, he woke and began cursing her, first in Tomen and then, when she let his head drop onto the rough wood floor, in Common.

  “… dick I’ll rip out, your asshole I’ll fill—with blades I’ll …”

  She knelt and slapped him, hard. “Shut the fuck up. Where are they?”

  He started to speak, paused. She met his stare. When his eyes registered their recognition, she smiled. She pulled the knife he had kept in his bedside table from her boot and waved it. The pain in her jaw and temples had only increased, but she would not allow this to show on her face.

  “So, you dress to look like a man,” he said with a sneer. “You should not worry about that. You looked enough like one, already. In this camp, no one would have touched you. I have fifteen men in this house, all unmarried, and not one could I have convinced to lay with you.”

  “Thirteen,” she said. “Your men are easy to kill.”

  She drew a shallow, straight cut on his lower stomach, and crossed it with another. He snarled and spit in her face.

  “Where are they?” she asked again, pointing the tip at the X’s junction.

  He spit again, and she pushed the knife into him.

  He screamed. Fists pounded on the door.

  “Where are they?” she asked a third time, twisting the man’s own blade in his guts. Not a fatal wound, not yet. He screamed again, louder, and the door jumped in its frame as his men hurled themselves against it. She stilled the knife and repeated her question, watching his face.

  He tried to spit at her a yet again, and got it no farther than his own chin.

  She took his face in her hands, leaving the knife sticking out of his belly. “Where, Fesuy? You have them here. Tell me where they are, and I’ll leave you to your men. A good healer will have you up and about in a couple weeks.”

  He began cursing in Tomen again, but his eyes gave him away.

  Her head whipped about to stare at the ceiling in the northwestern corner of the room. A ladder leaned against the wall underneath. It was an item she had mistaken as decoration, for which purpose they were sold throughout Danoor. She again hauled Fesuy by the hair, trailing blood behind. When the door burst open, she wanted him close at hand, but knew it would only stall the inevitable.

  She needed to find Vedas and Berun. Now.

  The ceiling was not high—only seven feet or so. This fact had not struck her before, but now it seemed noteworthy. Even the hallways had been a greater height, maybe nine feet. She examined the corner Fesuy had focused on, and nearly cried out in her delight. A square had been cut out of the plaster. It lay nearly flush with the rest of the ceiling, rendering it nearly invisible.

  Her discovery had not been missed by Fesuy, who now began yelling instructions to his men. The door bucked harder in response.

  Churls knelt, pulled the knife from Fesuy’s belly, and plunged it into his chest, straight through his sternum. She screamed, pulled it out and hammered it home again—too hard: she felt something pop, something tear. She wished, for a handful of seconds while she stared at the hilt of the weapon protruding from him, gritting her teeth agony bloomed in her right shoulder, that she had been able to draw out his pain.

  She recalled the earnest smile on his face, a several months ago, a lifetime ago, when he handed her a mejuan pod and they toasted it together. She recalled the smell of shit that rose from the body of the woman he killed the following morning.

  The door burst open, sending the heavy chair crashing against the bed. Fesuy’s men roared, and the girls in the corner screamed. Churls climbed the ladder and slammed her palm into the ceiling panel, shoulder screaming in protest.

  She heard rather than felt the snap of bones in her hand. Uncaring, she hit the panel again. It levered up, and she pulled herself into the dark space beyond.

  Every bone in her skull pulsed in redoubled white-hot agony. She shrugged it off as so much noise, slapped the ceiling door closed, and jammed the point of her sword into its unhinged edge. It would not hold against a concerted effort to open the panel, of course, but she hoped to have another solution soon.

  She turned in a half-crouch, rapidly cataloguing the contents of the low room.

  No windows. In the center, a single magelamp, set very low. A woman sitting behind it, eyes closed, legs crossed, apparently unaware of any cause for alarm. The mage.

  A mountainous, man-shaped heaping of brass spheres, dimly seen in the far corner.

  Beside it, a low camp bed. Upon it, a dark-clothed body.

  ‡

  She limped over to the mage and kicked her in the stomach.

  Immediately, the pain in her head ceased. She nearly fainted in relief.

  The mage yelped as Churls pulled her head up by the hair. Her eyes slowly focused.

  “Hello,” Churls said through gritted teeth. “I’m your new boss. You do what I fucking say,
immediately. Show you understand me.”

  The mage nodded, fear in her eyes.

  Churls did not smile. “Good. There are people trying to get in here, so you have only seconds to secure this room. Fail, and I kill you.”

  ‡

  Ten seconds. Twenty. The pounding on the ceiling door continued. Thirty.

  “Bitch,” Churls said, tightening her grip on the mages’ greasy hair. “I’d take me very seriously. Make this happen, right n—”

  The pounding stopped.

  “They’re asleep,” the mage said. “All of them.”

  ‡

  “And me?” Churls asked. “Why am I not asleep?” She needed to know what threat the mage was to her.

  The woman swallowed, her eyes searching Churls’s face. She was clearly Knosi, not Tomen. Potentially, a good sign: perhaps she had no loyalty to Fesuy.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “Something’s standing in the way. I can’t touch you.” Panic crossed her features. She had admitted to trying it. “Please … I wouldn’t …”

  Churls clapped the mage on the shoulder with her good hand. “Yes, you would. Keep them asleep, and we all live for a bit longer.”

  She crossed the room to her companions, bent partially over to keep from brushing the ceiling. Vedas lay immobile, sheathed completely by his black elder-cloth suit—worrying, as she had only seen him do so while conscious—but his pulse and breathing were strong. Her eyes avoided the hollow of his belly, the prominence of his ribs. His arms and shoulders were noticeably smaller. Slowly, with one and good hand and a barely functional second, she untied his wrists, which had been tightly bound with steel cord to the bed.

  As for Berun, she had no way of checking on his status or removing his immense shackles, and so ignored him for now.

  “Vedas,” she said. She put her hand to his chest and shook him slightly. “Vedas.”

  No response. Churls limped back to the mage and crouched before her. The woman flinched away.

  “What’s wrong with them?”

  The mage’s confusion was obvious. “Asleep. I told you, everyone is asleep.”

  Churls kept herself from slapping the woman, barely. “Not them. Everyone sleeps but the people in this room. Wake them, now.”

  She did not wait for a reply, but went and knelt by Vedas’s bedside again. She repeated his name, and waited as long as she could—perhaps thirty seconds—before turning back to the mage and gesturing her impatience. The mage, still obviously frightened, shook her head and protested ignorance.

  “I don’t know when they’ll wake,” she insisted when pressed. “They make me keep them out for most of the day. I allow the Black Suit to wake for feeding and voiding himself, but they still make me keep him in a daze. It always takes him a while to come to, longer each time. I can’t force it or I risk hurting him. The construct I’ve only allowed to wake twice so the Titled Amendja could speak with him. He was weak, nearly insensate, both times.” She pointed toward the roof, only five feet overhead. “The sun. He needs it, and I can only give him so much. Enough to keep him alive, no more.”

  Churls stood to examine the roof. “Increase the light,” she ordered.

  The magelamp brightened to a small sun, illuminating the bare room and revealing yet another ceiling panel above Vedas and Berun. Churls reached to unlatch it and paused.

  “Everyone is asleep?” she asked.

  “Yes,” the mage said. “And no one is on the roof.”

  Churls open the panel, letting it fall back onto the roof. She looked quickly around to confirm what the mage had said, and also to determine if her assault on Fesuy’s home had alerted any of the locals.

  No one ran wild through the streets. She noticed a few more people about, though none seemed in any hurry. She relaxed slightly, thanking fate for thick, insulating clay walls.

  The horizon glowed faintly, only forty or fifty minutes away from showing the sun. She wondered how long it would be before someone noticed the blood below the front door, noticed the missing guard, or failing either simply tried to enter the building for business. She doubted the mage could defend the entire structure from attack. Mages were specialists, after all: to become skilled in manipulating a man’s consciousness took time and effort.

  She checked on Vedas again, saw no change, and crossed the room again.

  “Can you keep people from wanting to enter this building?” she asked the mage. “Or, better yet, can you make them disinterested in entering the building?”

  “Yes. I can turn individuals and maybe small groups away from this building.” The mage met Churls’s stare and held it. The woman’s eyes were dull and half-lidded. She had been overexerting herself or—more likely, Churls imagined—had been forced to overexert herself. Nonetheless, there was now a note of defiance in her expression. She had realized her value to Churls.

  “But I can’t do it and keep everyone asleep,” the mage said. “It’s just too much.”

  Churls sat back, and for a moment refused to think.

  The moment passed, and her shoulders slumped.

  “Fuck,” she said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  ‡

  Churls could not trust the mage not to wake everyone in the home once she was otherwise occupied. As a result, Churls brought the woman along.

  Blindfolded, as she could not conceive of forcing anyone to watch her at her task.

  Nonetheless, the mage understood what was occurring immediately. Even an unconscious body made noise in the process of dying. Inside the house, it was very quiet.

  Thankfully, killing the two girls Fesuy had bedded proved unnecessary. They would not be able to escape the bonds and gags Churls used to restrain them. The rest, however, were clearly warriors, capable of a great deal more. She could not risk one getting loose, and so did what needed to be done. It remained a far, far from pleasant task—she had never killed an unconscious person, even an enemy—but at least, she reasoned, they were not the sort of men the world needed in greater quantities.

  She breathed a sigh of relief: it seemed the only innocent death on her hands would be that of the woman she had killed upon entering the building. Then, in a small, nearly overlooked room on the first floor, she discovered two small children.

  She removed the mage’s blindfold and forced the woman to look.

  “Dear Adrash,” the mage whispered. Her eyes were wet, but her disgust with Churls was clear. “Why are you showing me this?”

  Churls laughed without humor. “I’m showing you because something needs to be done. I won’t kill them or tie them up, and I have no way to get them somewhere beyond these walls. There’s too great a chance of our being discovered, even if I could get them to a place of relative safety. Tell me you can push yourself a bit harder.”

  They regarded one another. Churls anticipated the woman’s refusal, and her resentment flared. The woman had allowed Fesuy to capture Vedas and Berun, an extraordinary feat considering their combined abilities. She had kept Fyra from finding them for an extended period of time. And now, now she would make an argument as to why a simple task could not be done?

  Churls curled the fingers of her left hand into a fist.

  “Please,” she forced herself to say, voice flat.

  Slowly, as if to draw out her slight success, the mage nodded. “I’ll need them closer to me, however. That will make it easier.”

  Churls took one child in her arms, the mage took the other, and they returned to the attic.

  ‡

  The day began, entering the room from its sharp angle to crawl slowly down the western wall. Neither Vedas nor Berun woke. Instead of watching time pass, Churls occupied herself by fetching bedding for the unconscious children and dragging bodies one-handed to the cellar. She made a good sweep of the floors, as the thought of tracking blood around the house sickened her.

  When she could not rationalize avoiding it any longer, she explained the situation to the two frightened girls trussed on Fesuy’s bed. They star
ed at her, comprehending only with repetition. Clearly, each had been sheltered and understood little of the language used beyond their country’s border. Both looked horrified by the suggestion that Churls would assist them in using the toilet. They did not want her to touch them for any reason.

  Churls sighed. “Fine. Piss and shit yourselves all you want. When you need water, you’ll let me know in your own way.”

  She checked with the mage, who assured her that all was well, that she had deterred three people from approaching the house. The morning became afternoon. Her companions continued to resist waking, and so Churls took another camp bed from one of the lower rooms and placed it alongside Vedas’s. She held his limp hand and did not sleep. She could not sleep, in fact—for fear of the mage trying something odd in her absence, but also, simply, because she had run out of tasks to keep her mind distracted. Even her worry over the fate of Vedas and Berun, the constant factor that had kept her from taking the broader view, was now at an end.

  Whatever happened, would happen together.

  This realization brought her comfort, but also consternation. She could no longer ignore the world around her—a world going mad.

  A world that her lover had brought into existence.

  This fact bothered her less than she would have imagined. Truthfully, it distressed her more that she could not summon the expected outrage, that she had not lied to her daughter. Vedas had been right to deliver his speech, exhorting men to stand with each other against Adrash. She approved of it, still, despite the chaos it had created. Staring at the night sky, denying or openly accepting the reality of what The Needle represented for generation after generation: neither spoke well of mankind. Both perspectives had warped the world into a place where no progress could occur.

  Why labor to change anything when it might soon come to naught?

  Better to stir the pot slowly, or not at all. Keep shuffling into tomorrow.

  She could no longer countenance a world like that, but berated herself for being so brutal in her assessment. How could she look at the falling sky and prefer it to an uncertain, but certainly longer, future? (A preference, she reminded herself, even Vedas did not share. He persisted in punishing himself for what he had done.) Surely, men could do nothing to stop Adrash from exerting his will.