The Dawnhounds

by Sascha Stronach

  Źao laughed.

  “Too late,” he said. “They’re coming home.”

  Kiada shot him once, in the chest.

  “WAIT,” shouted Yat, but Kia shot him again. His body jerked, then he slumped and went still. She screamed and pulled the trigger again and again while the firing pin clicked through empty cylinders, each empty metallic ping punctuated by a word.

  “Leave

  Click

  her

  Click

  alone.”

  She put the gun to her own head, pulled the trigger. Another empty chamber.

  “Fuck,” she shouted. “Fuck.”

  She threw the gun to the ground. The sparks from the fireworks were gone, but their afterimage lingered and, in the sky, Yat could sense it. She couldn’t control that many spores; she couldn’t control half that many spores, or a tenth, or a fraction so small she didn’t have numbers for it. Billions on billions, each one packed with magic, raining down across the city and—

  Yat took a deep breath, then let it out. It was too much, but everything was too much: a blizzard of papercuts. The world overwhelmed her every day, but she kept going. Yesterday had been too much; today was too much. She was still standing. Tomorrow might be too much, or the day after. There was no secret to stop her hands from shaking—to stop her chest from burning, and her veins pumping acid.

  She was going to burn anyway: it couldn’t hurt to try.

  She took a deep breath, and let it out. Then, shaking so hard she thought she might fall apart, she reached into the sky.

  Fire rolled over her, and through her. Her cells screamed, the water in her blood boiled away to steam. She couldn’t even begin to control it: the power arcing through her was more than she’d thought was even possible. It rooted her to the ground, paralyzed her, broke down every bond holding her together. She couldn’t close her eyes, or twitch her fingers, or breathe. She could smell her flesh cooking, feel her skin begin to slough off and—

  She heard a voice on the air, from right beside her, from a thousand miles away. The voice of a girl, lost. The voice of a girl, found. It came from two mouths at once.

  “No,” it said, in a whisper that could cut glass, “tonight, we live.”

  Kiada kissed her.

  She kissed back.

  They’d kissed once before: coyly, on the cheek, like they were playing a game. This wasn’t that. Through the haze of pain, she felt: one hand around her waist, pulling; one hand against the back of her head, wrist against the nape of her neck, elbow between her shoulder blades, pushing. She tasted like salt, coffee, and tobacco. Yat couldn’t let go, but she didn’t want to. When their bodies wove together, their threads wove together: the same pain lancing through them, building, threatening to burn them down.

  They kissed as though they needed to fit a life of it into a single minute. With death raining down, they kissed for every missed hour, for every swollen silence, for every thrice-cursed goodbye. Despite the urgent crush of their bodies, Yat stopped inhabiting herself and lived only in that second. It was a kiss for lost time. While the sky bloomed with fire, they came together in a single endless moment.

  The monstrous heat built up in them, and they closed their bodies around it, crushed it down and down into a fist, then a shard, then a needle of pure concentrated magical energy. They held it between them. Yat had expected it to be vicious: for the thing that had caused so much suffering to lash out one last time. She realised that the malice she’d felt wasn’t malice: it was hunger. In the absence of that, the spores were just stupid beautiful animals. Tiny, tiny things. Instead, it was curious; innocent; lost, but seeking. They took the needle and, without resistance, cast it down into the earth.

  It pierced through the soot-stained brickwork, through the foundations, through the silt and clay. A single light, tearing down through the darkness, through the crushing pressure of the earth. At the very bottom, it ran out of thread, and it blew.

  Waves of life rippling out, waking long-dormant seeds, nourishing hungry roots, spreading out through the network of vines and hyphae that linked the city together. Where the lines went dead, it made new ones: growing a whole new ecosystem beneath the earth, bursting through stone, pushing aside great heaving of mineral and hard stone, going through where it could and around where it couldn’t.

  Yat did not see that. She saw, from inside Kiada’s arms: the street erupting with trunks; the houses breaking their bond and spiralling up and up; on the wall of Arnak-Vonaj, in the distance, vines thickening, tightening, spreading out like seeking fingers, a filigree of green spiderwebs unfurling until it seemed like the implacable iron edifice was transformed into shattered stained glass; a sky filled with sparks; a tearing of metal, a screaming of bolts and joints, a shattering of masonry; a skyline twisting, growing while she held onto Kiada, buried herself into her shoulder, knew her warmth as though it were her own; the houses growing tall, the wall coming down, tearing in a thousand places, being dragged down and being pulled over and being so thoroughly broken you couldn’t even melt it down for scrap; Kiada’s rough hands on her and Kiada’s soft lips so very close; a world erupting, being torn down, being born; a slowing, a cessation; the cover of branches and hyphae, the creaking of new wood, the warm silence of a city anew.

  They stood together as the sparks fell. They did not speak. When the sky had gone dark and the shouting had died down, they stepped apart.

  “So uh,” said Yat. “That was uh, something.”

  Kiada looked, if possible, sheepish. It was possible that this was a little outside her expertise.

  “A good something?” she said.

  “Yeah,” said Yat, “yeah definitely a good something.”

  The Anyasz building had been torn in half by a gigantic amanita cap covered in metallic scales. It twisted in the wind. Its thick, pale neck made it look like an old man in a very large hat. It leaned right, and knocked some more brickwork loose. If somebody put in the time, the thing could fit a dozen families. There would be more of them, too. Yat didn’t know how many more. Her fingertips were numb, and they tingled when she rubbed them together. She’d come through the fire unburnt. They’d come through.

  Stumbling together arm-in-arm, Yat and Kiada watched the last sparks fall to earth over a brand new town.

  Come here, little bird. I’ve something to show you.

  As the beasts pushed your people back through the streets of the market district, as the Kopek fell, as the hotel barricade came down, as the sky filled with green fire, something wonderful happened: your girls pulled through.

  Faith is rewarded. Remember this. I know it hurts, but the scars will heal: they always do. You were right: you always are. That is why you are so very precious to me.

  Come closer, let me show you some more.

  See the new flesh melting like spring snow. See the stumbling naked people looking at their hands, trying to come to terms with their memories. Not all got out, nor most, nor many. Most rot in gutters, barely recognisable. Some return to their bodies, without memory, and stumble into streets they do not recognise. Nevertheless, some did get out. A miracle, but I allow those from time to time, when nobody is looking. I have my tricks.

  See the people emerging from their houses, tearing down the boards on their windows, coming out into the street: first cautious, then tentative, then bursting into sobs—sorrow, relief, joy. It differs from soul to soul. They are weeping because your girls pulled though.

  See the streets where the crew of the Kopek stand. The soldiers tried to come for them, but they held. They have scars now, or did they always have scars? It is hard to tell with your time; let us say their scars are new again. They bleed, but they stand, and the city rises around them.

  See soldiers sifting through the wreckage of the wall, see the police trying to figure out just who in all the hells took control of their entire dep
artment. They know, of course, but it is easier to pretend they don’t. Nobody will ask questions, and those that do will be made to stop asking. Some of the guilty will pay for this, though not nearly enough.

  See a little red cat crawling from the wreckage, yowling. It is missing large patches of fur, and has lost blood. It will find your girls, and they will love it, and it will heal.

  See movement, from North-to-South and South-to-North. The soldiers try to stop it, at first, but they are tired, and wounded, and no more orders are coming in. They relent. Weeks pass. Pieces of the wall jut from the earth like the fingers of a great iron god reaching to heaven. They are a monument to something, though I cannot yet say what.

  See the shipwrights marvelling at the Kopek: how a warship got itself stuck in the canal. They try to get it out with a crane, but it’s stuck fast. The city offers to buy a new ship, as payment for services rendered. It could never be the same, but you smile and nod and, in the dead of night, have a crew of trustworthy sailors move the heart from one to the other.

  See the twins. They were not made for a life on the waves. They come to you one night and ask to stay, to look after the city’s children. There were already so many lost, and now there are many more. They are part of your family, but they seek to build another, and you would not stop it for all the wine and cacao and apricots in the turn of the world. You give them another bag of gold, to begin their work. What is gold, now? There is too much of it, and your withered heart still beats for lost children. You will not see them again. The years that follow will be hard for them, but what’s new? They will outlast you.

  See Wajet standing before the politicians. His arm is in a cast, his scars have healed poorly. The men in the seats shout, they roil, but Wajet stands at the lectern with a grin like a cat in a rats’ nest. He likes this, you know: he was made for it. You’ve given him everything you know, and as he stomps up and down the Lords’ Chamber, jabbing his finger and waving papers, piece-by-piece, the hall falls silent. When this is done, almost half of them will be in chains. When it is done, he will have a seat with his name on it. I cannot say whether he will use it well.

  See the woman put on her veil, and step out of the green room and onto the stage. The bouncer is new, and there are scorch-marks on the walls. It has been a strange and difficult week, and the room in front of her is not as full as it once was. Still, the crowd wait for her—this place is still home, despite all. She takes a deep breath, and begins to sing.

  See Kanq-Sen pacing back and forth while the Brass tell him that he’s a Good Cop, that he did the Right Thing, that he’ll keep quiet if he knows What’s Good For Him. See him slow, lean on his cane, look so very tired. They’ve given him his badge back, but it feels too heavy, and the pin keeps jabbing him. “And what if I talk?” he says. They laugh. “Whoever will believe you?”

  He nods, then takes off his badge and puts it on the table.

  “Gentlemen,” he mutters, “I think we’re done here.”

  He leaves without another word, and makes for the last place he felt good.

  Come closer, little bird, I’ve a memory of you.

  Near the cliffs, behind the olive groves, in a place far from here, there was a town. When the first boy went missing, they thought it must’ve been a wolf. They mourned, then got on with things: it was not a common thing, but not as rare as it should’ve been. When the second and the third went missing, they sent out search parties into the night, and slew every wolf they could find. When the fourth went missing, they came for you.

  Your mother had died the year before. She lived on the edge of the forest, and knew every berry, bark, and leaf. She could ease pain, quicken or extinguish the flame in a woman’s belly, send men into strange dreams. They called her ‘witch’ but they dared not move against her, because she kept them healthy.

  When the children started to go missing, they blamed her. You’d put her in the ground yourself: she passed in the depths of winter, coughing up phlegm and bits of lung, and nobody in the town would give you the things you needed. They came for her anyway: said she was a spirit, a demon, a revenant come back for the flesh of the innocent. When they couldn’t find her, they chased you.

  Out of the forest, out onto the plains and through the olive groves, out to the coast where the wind flattened the tough cliffside grasses. You ran for hours, but the hounds did not end their chase.

  That is where it ended; that is where it began. They beat you, and burned you, and threw you over the cliff. They did not break you; if there is one thing I have seen throughout time and time and time, they cannot break you. Down through the water, all the water to the bottom: so dark that all time gets crushed together by the monstrous pressure. In the darkness, in the nexus of future and past, you hear feathers unfurl.

  You rise up through the water but too deep, too deep, and you drown. You drown again, and again. You drown for a thousand years until you are shrieking, insensate, knowing only darkness and pressure. You drown until you are caught in a fisherman’s net and he pulls you up and up and the sunlight through the deep water burns you and you ache with power. I have seen a lot of violence, little bird, but I still have no words for how you hurt that man. An aeon of suffering, forced outward, filling him with so much pain that his wrists opened on their own and he spilled out across the deck of his own little ship. I do not mean to hurt you with these words, but they must be said: that hurt makes hurt. You must understand your enemy if you are to defeat her, and none know her better than you. You will break the cycle, starting with yourself, then the girl, then the gods. It takes a thousand years; it will take a thousand years; it has taken a thousand years.

  I saw all this, but did not speak: I could not speak. I alone knew what was coming, but I also knew I would never be believed. That is past now: Crane’s eye is off you—she searches the jungles for more of her great enemy. Hainak will stand another day. At last, at the dusk of ages, you come to me.

  Little bird, little shipwreck, little Sibbi.

  Wise woman, lost girl, eater of days.

  Come closer, there is work to be done.

  Jyn Hok-Yat and Kiada sat together on the dock, looking out at the lighthouse. The heaviest rains had come and gone, but a gentle almost-mist fell around them. It was warm, and not unpleasant. Time had passed enough for their hearts to stop fluttering, and now they sat in comfortable silence. Fea purred in Cannath’s lap. He was stubborn, and wouldn’t let them heal his scars: he’d scamper away if they ever tried. They’d given up, and just let him heal naturally. Sibbi’s new ship sat in the drydock, across the harbour. She hadn’t named it yet: it was bad luck to name a ship before it sailed.

  “Iacci almost gave the game up,” said Kiada. “I told him to keep it a secret: that I didn’t want you to know. I told him and Rikaza I’d seen you in town, and we made up a Northern name on the spot, just in case you were, well, cruel, different from what I remembered. We heard you almost arrested a roof rat and I thought maybe you’d changed, and at the last minute I just couldn’t see you, so we improvised. The crew didn’t question it: folk on the ship change their names all the time. I just—I wasn’t sure I was ready to see you again. I asked Wajet to bring you onboard and then I couldn’t deal with it, so I made up a story about being some Northern girl, and my friends did their best to make you believe it.”

  “You speak Northern?” said Yat.

  “Not a fuckin’ word,” said Kiada. “Why, you speak Accenzino?”

  It occurred to her that she did not speak, as Kiada had said, a fuckin’ word.

  “You could’ve just talked to me,” said Yat.

  Kiada tilted her head back and gave her a very disbelieving stare.

  “Just talked to you? You, even more scarred-up than me? You, who was so deep in yourself that you didn’t even recognise me? That made me mad, you know: I wore a mask because I was worried you’d know straight away, but you didn’t, and you didn’t kn
ow after the mask came off. You didn’t know after we ran together, you didn’t even realise after that moron Iacci started playing our song. I don’t understand that man. He finally caught that fucking mouse, and he put it in a box and let it out in the Docks Ward Station. All that work so it could get fat on police cheese.”

  “Wait,” said Yat, “our song?”

  “Yeah,” said Kiada, “our song. I sung it once and you liked it, so I kept singing it because I liked to see you happy. I don’t even remember where I heard it first: I came to Hainak when I was so young. It was during the war, you know: lots of folks displaced, stuck in one town or another, waiting for it to blow over. I remember a ship, and I remember somebody singing that song to me. I’ve been back to Accenza a few times, but it doesn’t feel like home—I don’t know anybody. Home is where your family are, you know? You make a family, and that’s what makes a place home. Even if you haven’t got one, you find other folks willing to walk beside you and you put your heads and hearts together and that’s how family happens. We were family, once. We had a song and everything.”

  “Were?” said Yat. She kept catching on little words, all the little fish-hooks.

  Kiada let out a long, slow breath. “Are,” she said. “We are. Maybe. I don’t know if I’m there yet. It’s been a big week, you know?”

  “Tell me about it,” said Yat.

  Kiada told her about it. They had a lot of catching up to do. As the night rolled on, they shouted, and kissed, and ran their fingers through Fea’s gnarled fur, and they did so until the first fingers of dawn came up over the eastern horizon.