Three Acts of Penance [01] Attrition: The First Act of Penance

by S. G. Night

  The boy looked down at the money and almost yelped in astonishment. The purse was one that Racath had filled with assorted change. In total, it added up to about one whole scion. A short, delighted laugh burst out of the boy’s chest and his eyes brimmed with overjoyed tears.

  Racath had to push another tear of his own back. He knew how much this meant for the boy. An urchin might spend all day begging or pickpocketing in search of a copper penny or two, just to buy a lonely loaf of bread. If he scrimped and saved enough to put a whole dyre together, he might have been able to buy himself a night by the fire at an inn. But a gold scion was worth a thousand of those hard-earned pennies. The boy had probably never spent a whole scion in his entire life.

  He remembered the time when the sight of a single dyre would have looked like heaven to him. Now, with the nearly unlimited resources and funds of the Genshwin at his disposal, the purse was nothing. Just bits of shiny metal that he used to barter with. But to the boy…it might be enough to change his life for good. Get him off the street, for a while at least. Racath knew the thunderous relief that was pounding in the boy’s chest — the same relief he had felt when Toren had first found him as a child. When the Genshwin first took him in.

  “Careful with that,” Racath cautioned, a warm smile finding his face. “It won’t last long if someone else sees you carrying it.”

  The boy’s eyes bounced back and forth between Racath and his new treasures, the happy tears spilling down his cheeks. “I…I—” the boy stammered, his grin seeming too big to let the words form. “T-thank you so much, sir!”

  He ran at Racath, latching onto him in a surprisingly tight hug. Crouched as he was, it almost knocked Racath over. Laughing, he ruffled the boy’s messy hair and smiled at him again. “You have a name, kid?”

  “Quentin, sir.”

  “You got any family, Quentin?”

  Quentin’s eyes dropped a little at the question. “Just a liddle sister, sir. Me mum and pap, they…”

  Racath put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. “I understand. Now, you get off these rooftops, stop cutting purses off strange, armed men, and go show your sister what you’ve found.”

  The boy hesitated a moment and nodded. “Y-yes, sir! Will do! Is there…anythin’ I can do for—”

  “Yes, actually,” Racath said, peering down over the rooftop ledge at the square below. A crowd was gradually growing in the middle of the plaza, surrounding a large wooden platform. “Can you tell me what’s going on down there?”

  Quentin looked, brushing his hair out of his eyes and squinting. “What? Ya mean the hangings? They started ‘bout…I dunno, a hour ago, maybe?”

  Racath’s eyes narrowed. “Who are they hanging?”

  “There’s the funny thing,” Quentin said, scratching his head. “It’s odd, what they’re doin’. Them Arkûl guards just pulled a few people off the street and started hanging ‘em.”

  The casual way the boy said this, the utter lack of surprise or revulsion in his voice, brought a hard frown to Racath’s face. Looking more closely, Racath saw that the boy was right: a line of black-armored Arkûl stood between the crowd and the platform — the gallows — and five more were posted on the stage itself. Five Humans were bound up there as well, an ominous noose dangling in front of each of them.

  Oh, God….The executions. The edict! Jared hadn’t been bluffing. The Demons really were retaliating against the Genshwin.

  “How many are dead?” Racath asked quickly.

  “That I saw?” Quentin hedged. “Dunno, maybe ten?” The boy looked at the gallows and suddenly gasped, swearing.

  Racath saw it, too. Four of the Humans on the gallows were men. The last was too short for the noose, and had been made to stand on a rickety stool. It was a girl. A tiny girl. No more than eight years old.

  “Gods’ piss!” Quentin exclaimed as the Arkûl fitted the nooses around the prisoners’ necks. “That’s me sister! That’s Clara! Dammit, I told her to wait for me in the alley! What’s she—”

  Racath was already running.

  ——

  On the gallows, one Arkûl in a dark hood — the lynchman — recited pedantically from an official looking parchment, shouting the words out to the silent crowd of Humans.

  “In recent months, a series of clandestine actions of treasonous and heretical natures have come to the attention of the Demonic Dominion of Io. The Dominion has decreed that, henceforth, the guilt of such seditious acts is to be shared by the public at large. Understand that this is for the betterment of the entire Dominion, and the appeasement of the Nineteen who watch over us from beyond. Blessed be the Nineteen.”

  The lynchman nodded his head deferentially to a portly, cream-robed Human who stood on the platform beside him. The man wore the coronate of a Mnogo priest, and in his hand were several holy emblems of the gods.

  “After many offerings made in His name,” the priest droned, making ritualistic gestures with his hands. “The dread master Lavethion, lord and god of death and the Underworld, has revealed to us, the Church, His will. Praise be His Dark Eminence.”

  “Praise be His Dark Eminence,” the crowd repeated. The chant was respectful, but listless — something done more out of habit and shock than genuine reverence.

  The priest continued. “Verily, Lord Lavethion has demanded that a score of Human lives be offered in recompense for the treasons committed against the Dominion. Praise be His Dark Eminence. Praise be each of our Nineteen patrons.”

  “Praise be His Dark Eminence. Praise be each of our Nineteen patrons,” came the echo.

  The priest nodded back to the Arkûl hangman. A wicked smile twisting his black lips, the lynchman stepped forward and took a firm hold on the lever that would release the trapdoors beneath the prisoners’ feet. He readied to pull.

  The silence was overpowering. The air was thick with it, and the crowd was soundless. Not even the little girl made a whisper, quiet tears streaking her face.

  “Stop.”

  The single word, that one, sudden commandment, was lightning amidst the black silence: a solitary lance of white, blinding sound that struck with the authority of God Himself. It split the silence in two, shattering it, like a chisel through brittle shale. All eyes — the crowd, the lynchman, the guards, the priest, the prisoners — turned toward it.

  From apparently out of nowhere, a tall man in a hooded, midnight cloak had appeared on the edge of the platform. No one had noticed him before. It was as if he’d melted out of the shadows cast by the hodgepodge of shanty buildings, a nighttime angel adorned with a dozen steely weapons.

  Racath stood tall, staring down the lynchman. His fists were clenched at his sides, but they did not shake. The Arkûl on the stage turned their spears toward him, but none came closer, as though he were wrapped in a cocoon of fire. The Humans stared in dumbfounded awe.

  “How dare you!” the priest said, aghast, clutching his precious relics to his chest. “How dare you interrupt a ritual of the Church! You infringe upon the rites of the blessed Nineteen, sir!”

  The lynchman was just as livid. “You are interfering with Dominion business, rukt. I hope you have a sanction to carry those weapons.”

  Racath took a single step forward. Everyone else seemed to take a single step back.

  “Let these people go,” he said, loud enough for the whole crowd to hear. “They have done nothing to deserve this.”

  He looked at the little girl, Clara, allowing her to see his face under his hood. He met her eyes, saw the fear inside them. She looked back at him with a desperate hope that made his heart scream.

  “Deserve?” the priest repeated, incredulous. “It has nothing to do with deserve. His Dark Eminence, Lavethion, has demanded recompense for—”

  “I don’t give piss what your gods demand,” Racath interjected, his voice cutting the priest short, like a sword through paper. “Let. These. People. Go.”

  The lynchman sneered under his black hangman’s cowl. “I’ll only say this once
more, rukt. You are interfering with Dominion business. Leave now, or I’ll have you strung up for sedition and unsanctioned possession of arms. What the Dominion does with its citizens is not your concern.”

  Rather than replying, he turned to the crowd. They had remained silent the entire time. Some of them had tears in their eyes as they had watched the hangings, and others mourned quietly to themselves. But for the most part, they just stood there, staring. There was sadness in their eyes, certainly. But no anger. No outrage. It shocked him.

  “How can you just stand there and watch this?” he shouted to them. “You stand there and watch your friends and family members become the victims of these monsters’ whims. Does this not anger you? Does it not make you angry that your gods and your government have never done anything but take away the people you love? Why do you let this continue?”

  The crowd was silent. It was like they had never considered it before. Like they didn’t know the answer.

  “Because you are afraid of them,” he told people. “Because they have convinced you that you are weak. That you owe your loyalty to them. That their word is law. That their gods are powerful. That is why you do nothing. Because no one has ever stood up and told you that they lie.”

  “Hold your tongue!” the lynchman roared. “You fauling—”

  “Look at yourselves!” Racath ignored him. “Look at us! Look at what they’ve done to us!”

  A murmur rolled through the crowd as they did as he said, looked at themselves, at each other. At the filth. The rags. The poverty.

  “Look at what they’ve done,” Racath said again. “They call us their citizens, but we are not. We are subjects. What government worth your loyalty would tear down our prosperous nation, take away our wealth, our pride, and our lives? What law worth obeying would strip us of our rights, condemn us to the gutter to die in loneliness? What gods worth revering would demand our family’s lives as sacrifice? I tell you now: there is no such government, no such law, and no such gods as these.”

  “Seize this heretic!” the priest cried. “Bring him to me!”

  The Arkûl on the stage looked nervously at each other, uncertain of how to proceed.

  The faces in the crowd began to change. Tears stopped flowing. The fear thawed somewhat. The expressions shifted almost unanimously as Racath spoke, moving from awe, to shame, to resolve. And then anger, anger that had been hidden by fear for so long. Anger stirring from a century of hibernation, stretching its brimstone arms. The air warmed with it, radiating from fingers that slowly turned to ominous fists.

  “These false things have no power of their own. They draw their strength from us, from our submission. By their lies, they convinced us that obedience is inherent in our nature. That we are weak, and that nothing can change that.”

  Racath could see the energy dawning in their eyes. He could see their hearts change as his words found them, could see a forgotten power building in their chests. It was like they had been asleep, like they had forgotten the strength they wielded. And his words were waking them up.

  “Make no mistake,” he said. “Their forces are real. The iron of their weapons, the strength of their arms — those are real. But surrender is a choice. No man, no matter how hard he beats you, can make you give your freedom away. Even if he takes your life, by your final act of defiance, you are the stronger, because you would not kneel. In your final breath of life, you live freer than any other man. So who will stand strong, free with me today, and tell them that we are done with their lies?! That we are awake, we are powerful, and that they cannot make us kneel!?”

  The anger in the crowd was churning, bubbling up into unadulterated rage. The Humans began to edge forward. Some bent to the road, picking up loose cobblestones and broken glass. The line of Arkûl that guarded the gallows leveled a wall of spears, struggling to hold the approaching mob at bay.

  The lynchman jabbed a warning finger at the crowd. “You rats stay back!” He grabbed hold of the lever again. Suddenly, those on the gallows were no longer merely the subjects of execution — now they were hostages, lives used as shield against the crowd.

  “See how they fear us?!” Racath exclaimed. “Because without our submission, they are powerless. Because on our knees, we can be broken. But together, on our feet, no law, no gods, no Dominion can touch us!”

  The lynchman snarled ferociously at the other guards on the platform. “For gods’ sake, take him!”

  “Today, Ioans, we do not kneel!” Racath shouted, opening his Stinger and raising his hand high. A rift opened up in the clouds above, and the blade caught the sunlight. “Fight with me today, brothers and sisters, and show these tyrants that We! Will! Not! Be! Conquered!”

  The roar could have drowned an earthquake. Like a dam giving way before the flood, the crowd surged forward, battering the guards with stones and flying punches until the Arkûl were pinned against the stage. The Humans mauled them, driving them to the ground, ripping away their spears. A hail of stones battered the Arkûl lynchman across his face and chest, knocking him over backward.

  But not before he yanked the lever.

  In a horrible, infinite second, there were five heavy thuds of trapdoors opening. Five hopeless cries. Five snaps. Five taut ropes squealing. Five pairs of kicking feet. Five voices suddenly silenced.

  A howl exploded from Racath, tearing at his throat, and the mob screamed with him. The little girl squealed, but the sound was cut off as she reached the end of the rope. Racath heard snapping sounds from the necks of some of the Humans, but Clara was too small for the fall to kill her. Instead, she hung there, tiny eyes bulging, her little feet kicking madly.

  Two of the guards rushed Racath, their spears thrusting out to greet him. He caught the hafts of both weapons and pulled, tearing them away from their owners’ grips. As the pair of Arkûl stumbled forward, he spun the spears in his hands so that the iron tips pointed into their chests. The guards staggered, tripped, and impaled themselves on their own weapons.

  The third Arkûl panicked, his advance suddenly paralyzed by the shadowy man’s unexpected strength. Racath threw a haymaker punch into the Arkûl’s temple. Opening his second Stinger, he slashed upward as the guard toppled sideways, cutting through the Arkûl’s unarmored throat.

  The final two guards kept their composures. They charged him, heavy boots pounding on the platform. Stepping smoothly into Kestrel, Racath met them. Lashing outward with both Stingers, he parried their weapons away. He stepped between them, arms out to his sides, and whipped his Stingers forward in a double-forehand strike. He moved between them, past them, his scissoring blades passed through flesh and bone. Both collapsed, blood spraying across the wood from their truncated necks. In almost musical unison, both guards’ severed heads thudded onto the platform.

  The prisoners — he had to help them! Without thinking, he snapped open his vindur’scain, its four curving blades unfolding into a sharp cross of Ioan steel. He sidearmed it.

  The four-bladed star darted across the platform, cutting clean through each rope and burying itself in the sternum of the Mnogo priest. The priest wailed and toppled backward off the platform, his creamy robe stained by blood and the muck of the street. The five victims fell from their nooses onto wooden planks of the gallows.

  Shouting, blood oozing from his split chin, the lynchman came at Racath with an axe. Out of the corner of his eye, Racath saw the tiny pile of rags on the platform. Clara. She was motionless. Her eyes were open, but they were empty, unseeing. Her breath had given out before Racath could get to her.

  In that brief instant, the image scorched itself Racath’s mind. The image of a little Human girl, almost too young to understand what was happening. Her face tearstained. Her eyes hollow. Her skin cold. Her neck bruised and purple.

  Rage overpowered him. One Stinger slid shut and his fist launched forward with all the fury of a battering ram. His gauntleted knuckles connected with the lynchman’s voice box. Almost instantly, blood and bile erupted from the Ark
ûl’s mouth in an awful, rasping wheeze. He dropped his axe, his hands flying to his pulverized throat.

  Racath caught the axe before it could hit the ground. Screaming, the Majiski whipped it around and drove it through the lynchman’s boot, nailing his foot to the platform. Opening both Stingers again, he stepped behind the Arkûl and slashed through both hamstrings. Gargling, the lynchman fell to the wooden planks, crippled but alive.

  His breaths coming sharp and angry, Racath looked around to find the mob standing over the stoned corpses of the street-level guards. But his heart plummeted when he saw a boy standing at the front of the throng, eyes colored a raw, teary red. It was the urchin, Quentin. With painful slowness, the boy climbed the stairs to the platform. The crowd fell into a reverent silence, pity and pain in their eyes as they watched Quentin.

  He went to the broken body of his sister, taking her in his arms. She looked so small. Racath watched as sobs choked Quentin, tears tumbling down his face as he stroked Clara’s soft, raven head.

  “Clara…” the boy mourned, a sad smile creasing his face. “She’da been eight next week. She were all excited about it…I’d been savin’ up to buy her this silly liddle doll she fancied…” Quentin looked at Racath. “She were the sweetest liddle thing…she didn’t do nothing. Why her? Why’d they pick her?”

  Quentin’s words were like a spike in Racath’s heart. His own tears fell, hot and stinging on his face. He had failed them. Failed Quentin. Failed Clara. “Because they could,” he answered quietly. “Because they hate anything beautiful.”

  There was a wet cough. Everybody looked toward the source of the sound. The maimed lynchman at Racath’s feet coughed again, his chest heaving violently.

  Quentin’s face darkened. He rested his sister back down on the platform. The boy walked over to Racath’s side, standing over the broken Arkûl.

  Fists shaking, Quentin looked from the lynchman, to Racath. “What do we do with ‘im?”