by Watson Davis
“Yes?” Her eyes met mine, acknowledging my existence in a way I hadn’t known I needed, but I needed desperately just then. She blinked, her hand waving before her face. “Yucky flies.”
“Have you noticed—”
“There it is, my home!” Rucker whipped his leg over Spot’s withers, sliding over the side and throwing himself to the dusty ground.
“Wait,” I said, reaching out to snare him, but he evaded my grasp.
He ran, not hearing me, or ignoring me, sprinting across the street, yipping in pleasure.
I touched Spot’s flank, saying some words, asking him to pull to the side and wait by the sidewalk. Spot nodded his head, and pulling the reins from Aissal’s surprised hand, moved to the sidewalk closest to us, finding a place with shade from the sun, falling asleep, only his tail swishing, agitated.
Aissal stumbled after Spot, trying to snatch the reins back that had been jerked from her hand.
“Let him go,” I said, walking to Aissal’s side. “He’s fine.”
Aissal stood, taking a deep breath, stretching, rolling her shoulders, rubbing her hand over the back of her neck.
“Have you noticed?” I asked.
“That there’s no laughter?” she said, slapping her cheek.
“Oh.” I raised my eyebrows, pursing my lips, scratching my cheek, looking back down the somber street behind us. “I hadn’t noticed that. But now you’ve said it, the place seems serious.”
We stood in middle of the street, moving out of the way of the carts and horses and people on their way to do things with a dogged, silent, joyless determination.
“What were you going to say?” she asked.
“No one looks at you.” I ran my fingers through my hair, feeling something moving, a fly perching on my hair. “At least, no one acknowledges you.”
Aissal straightened, looking this way and then that, her hand jerking, rising to scratch her chin. She strode away and I followed.
A woman sat on a step peeling evir-roots, dropping the cuttings and the roots into a pail of water between her feet on the step below her, her head bowed, staring down at the pail of water.
Aissal bent forward, raising her hand. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
The woman’s head turned and her empty eyes fastened on Aissal. She said nothing.
Aissal licked her lips, rubbing her hands together, looking back at me before returning her attention to the woman. “My name is Aissal, what is yours?”
“Collean.” The woman blinked, her paring knife slicing the last sliver of skin from the root. “You’re not from around here.”
“No.” Aissal smiled, a weak little smile, looking like she was about to puke. “I’m from the World of Winds.”
The woman looked down, dropping her peeled root into the water, reaching to her side for another. “Not much call to talk to strangers.”
I ran my fingers over my forearm, brushing a fly away.
“Yes.” Aissal nodded. She shook her head, running her fingers through her hair. “Well. Do you remember a little boy who lived around here named Rucker?”
The woman peered down, watching the knife slide through the skin of the root with a practiced ease, a slow economy of motion, slice, slice, slice, drop. She sighed, picking up another root. “Lots of boys born around here. Can’t keep track of all of them.”
“But one named Rucker?”
The woman shrugged. “Could be.”
A scream cut through the hot, sooty air, a woman’s voice, high-pitched and shrill. I jumped, my head turning in the way that Rucker had run, the direction the scream had originated, my heart thumping. Aissal gasped, looking the same way.
I took a step toward the racket but stopped.
Aissal stared at the woman cutting away on her root, oblivious. “Collean?”
Aissal bent, placing her hands on her knees, her eyes searching the woman’s who gazed down at her evir-root. “Collean, didn’t you hear the scream?”
Slice, slice, slice, drop, the woman raised her eyes as though through a force of will, her head wobbling like one exhausted and verging on collapse, like one who’d imbibed too much hard liquor. “Lots of screams around here. None of my business.”
# # #
Lenya Brightfox sat on her shins on the cold stone beside the pool, the cool wind blowing in, swirling in the room around her, the wind so fresh with the sweet scent of the fir trees that she imagined herself running free through the forest, bow and arrow in hand, on the trail of the great white bear, losing herself in the memories of another time, another world.
Water splashed.
“Lenya,” General Silverhewer called out with her voice like the grating of stones in a landslide. “Come. Attend me.”
Lenya rose, the murmuring of the other slaves tickling her ears. Towel dangling from her hands, she stopped where she was, going still, suspicious. The other slaves filed out of the bath, the soles of their naked feet padding on the stone.
Is this finally, thankfully the end?
Head high, steeling herself to endure another one of Silverhewer’s tortures, Lenya strode on the cold stones she’d walked over so many times, a path she knew only too well, around the edge of the pool, her bare feet finding the patches of water that had sloshed out when Silverhewer entered, small pools of icy wetness.
“Drop the towel and scrub my back,” Silverhewer said.
Lenya tossed the towel aside, away from the pool, hoping the gods would let it fall on a dry spot of the floor. She knelt, arms reaching out, hands spread, fingers tapping the stone to find a sponge.
“To your right,” Silverhewer said.
Lenya shifted to the right, her finger brushing a sponge, her hand wrapping around it. By the edge of the pool, she held out her hands, waiting until Silverhewer’s back pressed up against them. Lenya dipped the sponge in the water and brushed away, squishing the sponge against Silverhewer, dangerous muscles rippling underneath Silverhewer’s stony hide.
“Are you unhappy in my service, Lenya?” Silverhewer asked.
“I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking,” Lenya said, marking her current position on Silverhewer’s back with one hand, dipping the sponge in the water once more with the other. “Serving you is akin to being in a hell from which there is no escape. Would you call that unhappy?”
Silverhewer slid under Lenya’s hands, letting Lenya wash another portion of her. Silverhewer said, “You can always end your service: slit your wrists, throw yourself from a parapet, disembowel yourself. You have had infinite opportunity with the freedoms I’ve allowed you.”
“Do you think I do not do so because I have found some sort of joy in serving you and your minions?” Lenya snorted, chuckling, shaking her head, but continuing to scrub.
“You, Onei, confound me,” Silverhewer said, the water spattering. “You have work, a place to rest your head, food to fill your belly, an ordered life. What else do you want?”
“Let me think a moment, what else could I possibly want?” Lenya placed her forefinger across her chin, turned her face to the sky, pursing her lips. “Your death would be a great place to start. My people freed. The empire destroyed.”
Silverhewer jerked away from Lenya, sharply, as though Lenya had touched a sensitive part of her gigantic body, the water swooshing, waves spilling over the side of the pool. Silverhewer’s voice lowered, growing dangerous, asking, “Is that why you sent some vile, honorless assassin against me?”
Lenya smiled, spreading her hands, defenseless. “I have told anyone who would listen I would gladly pay everything I have to see you dead.”
“I admit making a mistake in allowing you to have anything.” Silverhewer’s hard fingers wrapped around Lenya, picking her up, pressing against her, threatening to crush her. “Can you think of a single reason I shouldn’t kill you right now, little, insignificant woman?”
Silverhewer’s fingers crushing the breath out of Lenya, she whispered, “You should kill me, because I swear by everything holy
in every universe that exists that I will see you dead.”
Silverhewer’s grip released Lenya, not dropping her, but tossing her in the air, the whole world whirling around, up and down, totally disorienting. Lenya hit something flat and hard, a wall, and slid to the ground. Ears ringing, she crawled away, grunting, willing the air to enter her lungs by the force of her will.
The ground below her shook, water splattered to her left. Lenya stood, forcing herself to her feet, gasping for breath, her ankle aching beneath her weight, an annoyance she refused to acknowledge, preparing herself for a fight she could only lose.
“See me dead?” Silverhewer laughed, a horrid sound like a herd of wounded reindeer being crushed. “That day will never come because you’ll never see anything ever again. Or have you forgotten?”
Lenya reached out to find some landmark to tell her where she was in the room, afraid to step in any direction, lest she tumble into the pool.
“You know,” Silverhewer said, “I saw your son at Master Diyune’s before I returned home.”
Lenya’s heart stopped. Caldane? Still alive?
“Unfortunately, Diyune cut out the poor boy’s heart, and left his soul wandering through the Hell of Infinite Fire.” Silverhewer smacked her lips. “He died mewling, a disgusting coward. I can’t believe that pitiful excuse for a human came from your vagina.”
Lenya growled, a feral snarl, and sprinted toward Silverhewer’s voice, launching herself at that loathsome sound.
Only to land on the ground, her breath knocked out of her. A mass squashing down on her, on her chest, her ribs cracking from the pressure. She screamed in pain, and impotent rage, wriggling to free herself, dragging her fingernails across Silverhewer’s rock-hard skin.
# # #
“Come on.” I put my hands over Aissal’s upper arms, moving her toward the source of the scream, jogging that way, the dirt crunching beneath my boots. She ran with me, continuing to glance back toward the woman on the steps.
Rucker bounded out of one of the buildings, a brewery of some sort, a big building framed not unlike a barn with a big roundish, onion shaped boiler. Massive tubes soared up out of the boiler like veins and arteries stretching up out of a giant beast’s beating heart, feeding through windows and vents into the building through long banks of articulated panes of glass. Rows of chimneys extended up to the edge of sky, belching out fat clouds, a system of troughs stretching down a gutter to the river, sludge sliding down those canals.
Rucker raced toward us, but turned and jogged backwards, moving away from the building while he watched for something. Ready to run, to flee, he bounced on the tips of his toes. His entire body moved up and down with each breath.
“What’s wrong, little one?” Aissal asked, falling to her knees on one side of him, her hands on his chest and back, examining him, searching for injury.
He shook his head, tears forming in his eyes, glittering like melting icicles in the morning sun.
I knelt on the other side from Aissal, staring back toward the brewery, seeking the reason for Rucker’s distress.
“I don’t…” He huffed and puffed, struggling to catch his breath as though he’d been running for days. “My mom’s there. But…”
A stout woman stomped out of the brewery in the modest work clothes of a craftswoman of moderate standing, heavy boots on her feet, her unruly brown hair pulled back and tied up in a torturous knot, smudges of muck and anonymous oils and greases on her square-jawed face. Her head swiveled, her eyes locking on Rucker. Her face calm, devoid of emotion, impassive, belying her hands clenching into fists, the set of her jaw. She stormed up to us.
I rose, letting my arm fall to protect Rucker, tugging at the hood covering my head to make sure it stayed down. Rucker edged away, pulling out of Aissal’s light grip, taking a spot behind me, using me as a shield from the woman. I gulped, hoping he hadn’t committed a horrible crime.
She glowered at Aissal, snorting in disgust or distaste, pointing at Rucker. “Is this little brat your get?”
“Well.” Aissal’s eyes darted toward me, her face clouded with concern and confusion. She shook her head. “No. Not really.”
The woman whipped her gaze around to me, and at least her gaze met mine, at least life and fire burned in her eyes, unlike the sweeping woman, unlike Collean. She looked me up and down, to gauge me or what, I don’t know, her nostrils flaring. “Yours, then, boy?”
“You could say I’m looking after him,” I said, fingertips drifting to the dagger tucked in at my waist. Rucker trembled against my hip, his hands grabbing my thigh, his fingers digging in, surprising with their strength.
Aissal stepped away from us, murmuring an incantation, moving her fingers and hands in precise movements.
“Well, keep him out of my house,” the woman said, pointing at me, “or I’ll have your hide.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, bowing. “I don’t understand but—”
She whirled and walked away, leaving me standing with my arms spread, my mouth open, words dangling on my tongue. With her gone, I turned to speak to Aissal who was looking everywhere but at me, her head turning slowly, her eyes moving this way then that. I glared down at Rucker and asked, “What did you do to that woman? Try to steal a pie from her window?”
Tears flowed down his cheeks. He shook his head, gesturing toward the door through which she’d disappeared. He said, “She didn’t know me.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, putting my hand on the top of his head. “That’s pretty obvious.”
“But that’s my home and that’s my mom.”
The Helpful Abbess
“Your mother? You’re sure?” I knelt to get face to face with him. I asked the question but peering into Rucker’s eyes, his body trembling under my hands, I knew the answer.
“That’s my mom,” he said, the pleading in his voice a pitiful whine, a confused mewling. “I know my mom. Come on. I’m not stupid.”
“Caldane?” Aissal whispered, moving up behind me, her shins touching my back.
“Does she have a sister you’ve never met, maybe?” I knew I threw stones at the moon, but her reaction, his reaction, nothing made sense. “Someone else, a relative come to console her with your loss, someone who doesn’t know you, but looks like your mother?”
He shook his head. “Uh-uh.”
“Caldane.” Aissal crouched behind me, her hands on my shoulders, her lips at my ear. “Cast a magesight.”
Glancing back at her, noting her seriousness, her distress, I spoke old words taught to me by a shaman long dead, opening that space in my soul and reaching in, making the motions with my fingers, tuning into the forces flowing underneath the veil of reality. The world darkened, a shadow infusing every space in the sky, staining the blue sky almost to black, the sun a hard, gilded disk in the sky, a dark mist hovering like a fog over the dirt between the buildings. I grimaced. “This is why I hate towns.”
“This isn’t a town thing,” Aissal said, standing up, swaying, rotating, staring around through the gloom. “I don’t know what this is.”
“One thing at a time,” I said, placing my hand on Rucker’s chest. “We’ve got to solve Rucker’s problem first.”
“I’m not leaving Rucker here,” Aissal said, a stark finality in her voice.
“You’re going to keep him from his mother?” I stood, smirking down at her.
“I didn’t say that.” She raised her index finger, tilting her head, correcting me. “Maybe we can convince her to come with us, but I’m not leaving him here.”
“Oh, yeah.” I snickered. “Convincing her to come with us should be easy after we convince her that her son is her son.”
Aissal edged toward me, watching a woman, who’d been sweeping, saunter out on her porch, dumping dirty water into the street. She whispered, “Do you see that?”
The woman resembled all the Timyiskil townies, brown-haired, pink-skinned, humorless, in simple clothing, without any attempt at adornment beyond pulling her hair
up. I opened my mouth to say so, but I stopped. The black murk moved around her, clearing away before her, coalescing behind her into a tendril, a pulsing cord of darkness that draped down her back and dragged along the ground.
A sickness, a revulsion rose up from the deepest pits of my bowels, up the back of my throat, tasting of bile and poison. Tracing the cord from her back, I discovered several other cords of various thicknesses extending out from her, winding through the street almost invisible on the ground. I jumped back, snatching my feet up realizing that I was standing on them, that these vile things passed through my own feet.
“What is this?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?” Rucker looked around, not seeing what Aissal and I saw but seeing our reactions.
“Ugh.” Aissal put her hand over her mouth, gagging, cringing. “I have no idea but it’s not good.”
I said, “Let’s go talk to Rucker’s mother and get out of here.”
Aissal looked at me with wide eyes, questioning both my plan of action and my sanity. “I think we should leave. Right now.”
“We’re here,” I said, grim, unwilling to come this close to retreat. “So let’s do this now. Let’s talk to her, figure this out, and leave.”
Aissal sighed, crossing her arms over her chest, hugging herself, her shoulders hunching up, looking back out at the street behind us.
I peeked down at Rucker, smiled, and winked, trying to appear unconcerned by the things surrounding us. “Come on. Let’s get to the bottom of this mystery.”
Rucker and I strode to the door to his old house. Aissal sighed once more, rolling her eyes and slouching her shoulders, but she followed along behind us.
The graying wooden door stood closed, showing the aging of many seasons, the planks splintered and uneven. I knocked, afraid the door might collapse if I hit too hard, rapping with the knuckles of my left hand, my right hand on Rucker’s shoulder, pinning him against my thigh.
The door opened, heat pouring out, an oppressive wet heat of bubbling cauldrons, stinking of fetid potions and mixtures of arcane ingredients I could not fathom. I twisted my face away from those noxious fumes, shaking my head. The very air stung my eyes. I squeezed them shut, grimacing. Rucker withstood the putrid atmosphere within unfazed, only tightening his grip on my leg when I inched back.