by J. C. Staudt
Gazhakk was sitting on the old bench in front of his hovel, grinding spices with his mortar and pestle. He had a meager dwelling, a small cave set into the cavern wall next to the rusted metal monstrosity the villagers called the Dead-end Door. The door had been there for longer than anyone knew; so long in fact, that the strange lettering on its surface was as dingy and faded as the cavern itself. The savory tang of Gazhakk’s spices wafted to Lizneth’s nostrils, and she couldn’t help but stop and pick up a pinch or two of this or that before she went on. The Goatbrothers, Nurnik and Skee, were guiding their herds across the cliffside, bickering at each other in perfect harmony with the bleating of their animals. They suspended their argument long enough to wave down at Lizneth as she passed.
All the villagers in Tanley were cordial, but their smiles couldn’t outshine the gloom that hung over them.
The tiny cottage Lizneth shared with her parents and twenty siblings was simple but well-fashioned. A comforting warmth greeted her as she entered and closed the thick ironwood door behind her. Lizneth was taller than both her parents, and she had to lower her head to avoid the rafters as she crossed the worn cobbled floor to the hearth. Her brothers and sisters were crowded around the gnarled ironwood table, gorging themselves on a thick stew of meat and vegetables. The youngest nestlings had missed more than they’d eaten; the fur on their snouts was matted, and scraps of food clung to their faces like beards.
“A good harvest today,” Papa said, nodding towards the basket under Lizneth’s arm. He hobbled across the room to join Mama, his kind face stiffening as he lowered himself into his chair.
“Rotabak and his brutes were here today,” Lizneth said, setting the basket on the small block table near the hearth. She spooned a helping of stew into a wooden bowl and took a seat facing her parents. Little Raial lost a chunk of broadroot and squirmed up onto the table to chase after it. Lizneth snatched him up by the scruff of the neck and took him into her arms. “Sit still while you’re eating, cuzhe,” she said, giving him a tickle before she set him back on the bench.
Mama gave Lizneth a concerned look. “Are you alright?”
Lizneth nodded. “I hid in the mulligraws until they were gone. They pulled Kroy out of the mill and made a spectacle of him in the street. They took so much of his grain.”
“Better his grain than him,” Papa said.
Mama sighed. “I was beginning to think they’d forgotten about us.”
“Sniverlik will never forget about Tanley,” Papa said. “He grew up here.”
“Fortunate for us, isn’t that? The orphan turned warlord. Not even a family here to make him stay his hand against us.”
Papa disagreed. “Rhi and Taznik raised him. They’re as good a family as he’s ever had, but you don’t see him giving them special treatment. Sniverlik’s a bad seed, is all.”
“He didn’t used to be. It’s the scepter that makes him that way,” Mama said.
“That’s a myth. Every new warlord the Marauders raise has wielded the Zithstone Scepter, from time and time before. It’s a symbol of leadership. A useless trinket.”
“Your Papa thinks I’m a quinzhe for saying this, but I think it’s the scepter that turned Sniverlik sour. He was such a pleasant little nestling.”
Papa curled his upper lip, exposing his longteeth. The firelight made the incisors gleam like frozen waterfalls. “Do you know how Sniverlik became warlord? He had Ankhaz stretched by the tail until lahmech. That’s how he took power and earned the privilege to bear the scepter. He was corrupt long before he ever touched the Zithstone. Besides, he’s got sons of his own now, and they’re as rotten as he is.”
“I heard he sired each of his litters on a different ledozhe,” Lizneth said.
Mama shot her a look. “Lizneth. Not in front of the cuzhehn.”
“None of those ledozhehn were willing participants,” Papa said with a smirk.
Mama glared. She checked to make sure none of the nestlings were paying attention. Several had wandered off into the recesses at either end of the room, slumping into naps, scurrying about, or staging wrestling matches in the fresh straw bedding. Raial slid beneath Lizneth’s arm and laid his head on her lap, giggling and writhing as she scrunched her fingers across his scalp.
“How were they today?” Lizneth asked, catching Malak by the scruff just before he scrambled under the bench.
“It was a madhouse,” Papa said. “Your brothers and sisters are too wild for us to keep up with anymore.”
Mama laughed, but it was a tired sound.
“I’ll take them down to the river for a while tomorrow and give you two a rest,” Lizneth offered.
Papa gave her a kind smile. “You’re too good to us, cuzhe. It would be nice to have a moment to ourselves. You and your Mama are just the same, you know that? You do far more than what’s expected of you, and you never raise a fuss.”
“Should I raise a fuss?”
“You already do everything you should and nothing you shouldn’t. Don’t go changing things on your old kehaieh now.”
“I almost let them see me today,” Lizneth admitted. “I wanted to ask them about Deequol.”
“No, hiding was the right thing to do,” Papa said. “Never let them see you if you can avoid it.”
“Papa and I miss Deequol and everyone else very much. But Lizneth, you must promise never to put yourself in danger like that. You’re the last of your litter, and Papa and I need you here. They’re more forgiving during the harvest when our yields are high. If they ever took you—”
“I know. The nestlings aren’t old enough to work in the fields yet. It’s too much for you and Papa to do by yourselves anymore. I know. I’m doing the best I can. I just wanted to know how Deequol is getting along. I’m sorry.”
“Deequol has another life now.” Papa was firm, verging on angry. “We don’t worry over him or Nawk or Vikkish or Craik or Ritin, or any of the others. As hard as it is, this is the way of things. We can’t do anything about the children we’ve already lost, but we can work hard to keep the rest of the cuzhehn with us.” His voice softened. “Having you here is such a big help. We’re so proud of you. But please, cuzhe. As much as you love and miss your brood-siblings, you must forget about them. We may see some of them again, but there’s no use holding out hope for it.”
Lizneth had often wondered why her parents were so content to live like this. Whenever she asked them why they put up with Sniverlik and his Marauders, they said it was because many villages had it even worse than Tanley did. Sorry for myself is the last thing I should feel, she often thought. I’m doing what makes my parents happy and I’m working to keep our family together. Still, she knew her parents didn’t always say how they really felt. “Don’t you ever feel trapped here?” she asked.
“We try not to look at it that way. We have a good plot of land in Tanley. In any other village we’d have to start over from nothing. And there are only so many patches of good soil in the below-world.”
That patch of soil had become the entirety of Lizneth’s world. Every time she woke, she nursed it, nourished it, tended to it… resented its existence. She had learned long ago to suppress those feelings of resentment, pouring herself into her work as a means of finding relief from the pressure. But the discontentment still tugged at her, unraveling the delicate fabric of her circumstances. In time, she found it wasn’t the hard work she hated; it was the fact that she had no choice.
“Your brothers and sisters will be parikuahn in a year or two,” Mama said, “and they’ll ease the burden you feel now. Things will be better.”
“Yes, they will.” Lizneth looked down at her stew. The table was a mess of overturned bowls, tipped mugs, and puddles of split broth. She hadn’t taken a bite yet. She took up a spoonful and let it splash back into the bowl.
“But, you…” Papa began, and thought better of it.
“But I what?”
“But you wish for another life,” Mama finished. “A life that’s more than
planting and harvesting.”
Papa laughed. “Is there a parikua in all the Aionach who hasn’t wished for more? This life is no adventure.”
Lizneth sighed. “I suppose there’s a part of me that wishes I could see places far away. To just go somewhere, and live. Live for the sake of living, not just for the sake of meeting someone else’s demands.”
“Then perhaps your old Papa should take you on a travel one of these days,” Papa said with a meager smile.
“That’s thoughtful of you, Papa. But there are only two places you can ever be at the end of a travel… somewhere else, or back where you started. And you would mean for us to come back.”
Papa’s brow wrinkled. “Of course I would. Where else would we go?”
Lizneth knew they would never understand her, despite any attempt she might make to explain. “Never mind,” she muttered.
“What, then? What is it that you want?”
“Only a little independence.”
Mama’s apprehension showed through a flimsy mask. “That’s a natural thing, dear. But you must be patient. You know this. There will be consequences for all of us unless you put this family ahead of your desires, for now.”
“I have, and I will. I’m not going to leave you and Papa on your own. Sometimes I want a break from it all, just like you do. I’d like to know what it’s like not to be responsible for anyone but myself, even for a day. I don’t think that’s so much to want. Is it?”
Her parents hesitated, glancing at one another.
“No, cuzhe. But know that whether you are parikua or the mother of your own family, or both, you will be bound by a duty to others,” Mama said.
“Maybe I don’t want to be either of those things, then.”
“Someday you may see it differently.” Papa placed his hand on Mama’s, where it rested on the arm of her rocker.
I’m sorry Papa, but I won’t. Lizneth wanted to say the words, but she didn’t see the point. She didn’t see the point in letting some brash buck sire his brood on her, only to watch her children taken from her one by one. She decided she wanted to drop the subject, so she said nothing in her defense. But as always, her parents were two, and she was only one.
“Lizneth, we raised you this way because this is the only future we have.”
“This is no future, Mama.”
“Not the one you prefer, maybe. But we have more of a future here than you’ll ever find out there.” Papa gestured toward the door.
Something in the way he did it made Lizneth clench up like a stuck jar. Out that door is exactly where I want to be, she thought, and she found herself becoming too upset to bear her parents’ company any longer. “I’d rather fail making my own way than be stuck here without a choice,” she said, rising to her feet. She scampered across the room and let herself outside without looking back. Even after she’d whipped the door shut with her tail, she could hear her parents’ cries coming from within.
The road lengthened behind her as she ran, falling to all fours where it was steepest. Mulligraws twinkled on their vines in the flat hollow where her fields bordered the path. She had intended to stop there, to run through the beanstalks and hide away until she calmed down, shielded from view in her secret place. But where that section of road ended, there was another that stretched far beyond. It was so tempting. Just to run past her mulligraw fields and never stop. The ceiling of the subterranean den crested at a height almost further up than she could see, then dove down toward the far end of Tanley, where the road shot under a covered passageway she had never taken before.
Once the thought hit her, Lizneth didn’t hesitate. Hesitation would’ve been the end of it. She darted down the path and entered the tunnel to begin the hours-long trek. The sudden release of some long-fought suppression swept her up and carried her along. She found herself unsure of her actual intent, but too flushed with excitement and anticipation to stop. Abandoning her family was not her aim; she knew what would happen to them if she ever left for good. She only longed for something to break her away from the monotony of her life, if only for a short while. Just then, she wasn’t clear-headed enough to have a plan; she only knew where she was headed: the basin, a labyrinth of roads that joined the nearby metropolis of Bolck-Azock to its border towns.
The metropolis’s distant bedlam swelled as Lizneth drew near. She arrived at the foot of the basin after two hours of jogging, her fur filthy and her tail heated. Above her, layer upon layer of ramps, walkways, and staircases wound through streets and platforms cloven into shelves of rock and dirt and clay. Bolck-Azock was the center of culture and trade for the ikzhehn in this part of the world, a place bustling and awake at all hours with the sweet haick of possibility. Thousands of Lizneth’s kin scurried among the spires; dealers and shopkeeps, beggars and bandits, treading the city’s latticework with the effortless equilibrium afforded them by instinct. Lizneth had even heard tell that the calaihn, the strange spindly-legged creatures who lived in the blind-world, sometimes came here to trade.
Independence. If there were a place in which to gain that most liberating of conditions, it was here, in the metropolis of Bolck-Azock. Lizneth took her first step into the city proper, past the rotting sign that signaled her arrival. The euphoria of freedom washed over her.
CHAPTER 4
Detail
The whole city stank to high Infernal, but the strongest scent on the breeze today was the sharp tang of death. Merrick’s stomach turned when he considered that his comrade’s body was causing the smell, but there was no escaping it; his shift didn’t end for another hour. So he sat in his rusted metal folding chair with the heavy rifle laid across his lap, looking out the ragged fourth-story corner window-hole and down the street they called Bucket Row.
He could see all the way to the eastern edge of Belmond from here, between the dilapidated buildings and down the pulverized road that ran the length of the city from east to west. At the outskirts, the asphalt sank into the sand, and the endless desert beyond swallowed the road like a predator. Merrick didn’t know where the name ‘Bucket Row’ came from, but this was where most people who tried to get into the city north without permission kicked the bucket, so that seemed as good a rationale as any.
The muties had left Praul on the street below, naked and holding an armful of his own innards. It would be a long time before anyone ventured into the street to retrieve the body. More than likely, it would wind up a meal for the birds, maggot-ridden and shriveled in the heat—if something else didn’t drag it off during the night. There hadn’t been a trade caravan for months, and the southers were getting hungry.
Pilot Wax had ordered the muties chained by the ankles and strung up from the Hull Tower roof to serve as a warning to any others who would dare attack the Scarred. Sometimes the Commissar’s ‘warnings’ hung there for days before they died, drawing hundreds of carrion birds to perch nearby and drench the surrounding streets with their droppings.
Merrick spotted a shadow on the pavement two blocks down, where a shape was moving behind a tall pile of rubble. When he raised his rifle’s spyglass, a second shadow joined the first. More muties, he told himself. Muties, or humans with boiled pink skin and bad posture. Whatever they were, they were from the city south, and that made them unwelcome. One of their heads swayed into view. A chunk of concrete erupted in a puff of dust, and both shadows vanished. The sound of the shot came to Merrick a second later, complements of one of his fellow Sentries further down the Row. Merrick waited a few minutes, but the shadows did not return. ‘Fernal muties. Better not come down the Row my way, or my first shot won’t be a miss.
The chair squealed in protest as Merrick stretched his legs and slouched in his seat. He set his rifle on the floor beside him and stared up into the building’s eviscerated interior. The missing floors above gave him an unobstructed view to the crystal chandelier hanging from the seventh story ceiling. He wondered how well it was bolted in. If it comes loose and falls, I’ll have to interrupt my moment
of relaxation in favor of my good looks.
He checked the street again. Still no sign of the muties. The gaping hole in the wall in front of him had been a picture window once. He was sitting in what would’ve been the dining area, he guessed, noting the splinters of dark hardwood around the room’s edges. The faded billboard mounted on the apartment building across the street urged him to visit Providence Hills, a new luxury active adult community in northeast Belmond, just off Route 292 before the overpass. There was a picture of a gray-haired couple in a hammock, gazing at each other like star-crossed teenagers. The tagline at the bottom of the billboard was burnt away, so Merrick had made up a few taglines of his own. Providence Hills—where the wealthy go to die, was his favorite.
Merrick rested his hands on his belly. It was depressing to note how much of the soft doughy flesh he could pinch between his fingers. I’m getting fat. It had been easier to keep the weight off before he’d become a glorified security guard. Ever since his job description had changed from ‘roam the city and kill things’ to ‘sit on a rusty chair and do nothing,’ he’d been packing on the pounds. He was surprised it was even possible to gain weight with all the sweating he did out here.
The rattle in his lungs had gotten worse, too. The air in the city was as bad as any in the wastes, but lately the four-story climb to his post constituted the bulk of his physical activity. Sometimes he was out of breath by the time he’d made it to the second floor. Forbid it that an alarm gets raised and I have to hit the street in a hurry. I’ll pass out before I get down the stairs, he mused.
The alarm never went up, though. Most of the locals knew better than to provoke the Scarred Comrades. Neither the Mouthers nor the Gray Revenants had sufficient numbers to pose a threat, and the souther gangs and mutie communes were too small to threaten anything but the occasional mischief, so the only action the Row ever saw these days was the occasional brief skirmish.