An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  “I see,” said Tirdad, and strangely enough, he did. “We shouldn’t have introduced you to drugs. It’s beneath you. I should’ve objected in earnest.”

  “Nothing’s beneath me. And phylactery fixed the need.” Shkarag got to her feet, sneering and muttering something unintelligible about phylacteries as she did. She limped over and picked a roll of parchment from the spread. “Need help?”

  “No,” he replied, deadpan.

  “Oh.” She dropped the parchment.

  Tirdad tossed his hands, though they didn’t get higher than his shoulders before his ribs denied him the gesture. “Of course I fucking need help. Why in the seven climes would you even have to ask?”

  Shkarag cocked her head, but Tirdad was certain she wore an almost imperceptible smile. He’d missed her impishness.

  “Chopped me to pieces with my own axe,” she mused in a conversational manner as she unrolled the parchment.

  If she was joking, it was unreadable. Her gaze flicked over the page either gainlessly or in a wondrous method of reading. “I’m not sure I follow,” said Tirdad.

  “Cleaved my legs and arm.”

  “What?”

  “Clean off.” Shkarag canted to consider, then went on conversationally. “No. Not clean. Šo-untidy cleaving. Poetic using my own axe, I think. Maybe.”

  A moment’s speechlessness delayed his response while he watched her eyes dart erratically over the missive. When at last he managed to reply, it was thick with concern. “Poetic? That’s terrible, Shkarag.”

  She stared straight at him. “A bit.”

  He blinked.

  She stared.

  He picked up a strip of leather, pointedly ignoring her crooked grin.

  Patently satisfied with his reaction, Shkarag took a seat. The parchment crinkled in her hands. “They did,” she said.

  To Tirdad, her grim profile and the reality behind her joke made her seem almost human—as if those scales were a façade to be moulted away under the right conditions. He loathed that prejudice. Rare though they were, these moments should have enlightened him decades ago. It was never the case of her becoming less div, but of him becoming a better person.

  Overcoming his reluctance, he reached out to rub her back. She straightened, inhaling sharply, but rather than her scales, he was pleased to see her tension slough away. Minutes passed, and there prevailed the whisper of a breeze adorned with birdsong.

  Eventually, Tirdad broke the silence. “You’ve changed,” he said, pondering the indiscriminate scars that befouled scale and flesh, the ear missing its tip. “You seem more sure of yourself . . . more here. Your carriage.”

  “Limp?”

  “Well, not exactly. You’re more confident, but more troubled.”

  Shkarag scratched at her neck. “Before the šo-wretched truths were—” She angled her head so that she was peering at him through the corner of her eye. “—at the edges.”

  “And now?”

  The half-div turned, planting her hand on the plaster behind him and drawing so close he could smell the eggs on her breath. “Here.”

  Under different circumstances, it might’ve been provocative, and irresistibly so. The red in her eyes had been all but swallowed up by her dilated pupils. Her lips were parted enough for him to see the curve of her fangs. Her chest heaved. She trembled.

  That image was sullied by what hung over her. It had no form or footprint, no indication it existed at all besides her composure, but it was incontrovertibly ugly.

  Chobin cleared his throat from where he stood in the wrecked doorway, grinning widely. “So . . . should I leave?”

  Their heads swiveled.

  He lifted a sack in one hand, running his other through his fleece-like mop of hair. “Got the roots. Had I known you were the sort of friends who fuck I would’ve grabbed something for that. Still, should take something for the pain or you won’t be much use to her.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Tirdad said, shaking his head at his friend’s casual crassness. “We’re not up to anything untoward. She was—”

  “Here,” Shkarag finished, or thought she did, whipping face-to-face once more.

  “—explaining in her weird way.”

  That had the effect of a slap to the face. She drew back, incredulous.

  Chobin shrugged, walking over and favouring one leg. “If that’s explaining, I can’t imagine how she goes about seduction. Divs are weird indeed.”

  As he neared, Shkarag tensed like a bow being drawn. “Can’t go . . . around . . .” Uncertain whether the perceived insult took priority over the perceived danger, she maneuvered to crawl over Tirdad while turning her back from the approaching marzban. “Calling a person a . . . šo-weird div when . . .” She transitioned to a defensive crouch and began her retreat as if she were sneaking away. “Who’re . . . you to decide what’s spicy . . .” She reached the wall. A sharp tilt of her head followed. It seemed she had forgotten about it, but couldn’t risk throwing it the glower it deserved. “Or sour. Above your station, I think.” She paused, narrowing her eyes. “Not a div, you šo-shifty sheep-haired sack of roots.”

  “Don’t think she fancies me,” said Chobin, finding some amusement in it. “Looks mighty div-like to me, though.”

  “Half div. Only half div,” Shkarag hissed. “You half, you . . . what do you get when a man fucks a ewe?”

  “Uh?” Marzban and planet-reckoner shared a look of confusion.

  “You.”

  A smile cracked Tirdad’s grimace.

  Chobin caught on soon after, belting his approval and slapping his thigh. “Hah! Calling Pa a sheep fucker, huh?” Head inclined and pointing at her with bent forefinger, he acknowledged his defeat.

  Never let it be said that Shkarag squandered the chance to strike a pose. She raised her fist, though none too happy about it, in the customary flourish of the victor. The flourish was hers. Flush as she was with the wall, its rich yellow stucco bordered in radiating petals and ornamented with confronted rams, and her in her sleek sanguine caftan, she could have been the focal point of a heroic mural.

  All the while, she maintained her distance and wariness.

  “Crude,” said Chobin, “and formidable. You keep good company, my friend. Like her already.”

  “Yeah.” Tirdad went to beckon her over, then thought the better of it. “Do you need him to go?”

  Shkarag gave a quick tilt, adding a firm, “Maybe.”

  Tirdad drew his lips into a thin line, considering his options. From what he knew of them, Chobin would be the least likely to take offense, and Shkarag the least pliable. So he regarded the marzban, who was already doing the same. “She has trouble with . . . people,” he tried to explain. “Rapport is hard-earned. I don’t mean to come off as ungrateful, but—”

  “You’re too shy to fuck with me around,” Chobin interjected.

  “—she needs time.” The jest came as a relief: it meant the marzban was on board. “Let her look after me awhile.”

  Chobin shrugged as if it were of no concern, but he had a pensive look trained on Shkarag.

  “I trust her with my life,” added Tirdad.

  “I know. Just not sure I do,” said Chobin. Another shrug, and he deposited the sack by the bed. “I’ll head home and catch up. No doubt they’re at one another’s throats without me around to charm them.”

  “Surely.”

  The marzban gave Tirdad’s shoulder a squeeze. “Get well, my friend.” Then, more true to form, he winked. “Leave all the grinding to her.”

  Ignoring the vulgar comment, Tirdad bade him farewell, returning the gesture by grasping his forearm. “Safe travels.”

  Chobin gave the half-div one last wary glance before departing.

  His absence brought another bout of calm owned by breeze-livened leaves and the birds that called them home. This one was threatened at its frontiers by charged breathing, but it persevered.

  Dog-tired, Tirdad closed his eyes, content to wait while Shkarag found her
bearing. There prevailed in her a latent danger, a need he could not hope to comprehend. A dreadful lineage that ran thick in her veins. Yet he trusted her all the same. If not her—this erratic, murderous, backwards half-div—then who? He couldn’t help but grin at the absurdity of it.

  “Don’t grin,” she censured, having silently made her way over. “Not going to grind like some pestle down on its luck, not discriminating between grains and herbs and—” She paused, listing toward him alongside her head. “Oh, I’d be the mortar.”

  “Sit,” he bade her. “You look dizzy.”

  Oddly obedient, she did as instructed, facing him with her bum leg out straight. “Maybe,” she said, and began to knead her thigh.

  He observed her for a while, particularly the intense focus she’d bore through the spot where her hands worked, and how she’d list to one side whenever that intensity ebbed. Something was amiss. “I know you’ve issues with strangers, but I can’t recall you ever reacting so strongly,” he said. “You look unwell.”

  The glare she wore curtailed that conversation.

  “Well,” he went on after clearing his throat and avoiding the ire she’d trained on him, “you should know I’m relieved you’re alive, and that we’ve been reunited. Ashta . . . she taught me to read the stars by finding one I could always recognize—the one light I could always rely on even when all the night was chaotic with war. ‘Find that anchor, and the sky’s yours,’ she’d say. Ashta would, well, you know how she was. She’d brood after. I’d wager she thought she’d lost hers when she lost her brother. But I believe the three of us together were our one star. She’s gone now, but—” He eased the blade free of its sheath, admiring it as he did, then continued. “We can still go on, you, me, and what’s left of her.”

  The glare Shkarag had trained on him transitioned to a peculiar expression he couldn’t quite place—almost as if she were baffled and unhappy about it. “Fuck,” she said, angling her head away and averting her eyes.

  After it became apparent she didn’t mean to respond, he pressed on. “I suppose I should explain what I mean by what’s left of her.” He fully unsheathed the blade and lay it across his lap. “This sword—”

  “Starling-black . . .” she said, eyeing it.

  “I always thought it was more magpie-black.”

  She canted her head. “No.”

  “But I really think it looks more like—”

  “No.”

  Tirdad sighed. He strongly subscribed to the magpie camp, but far be it from him to challenge her on such a topic. “Fine. Starling then. At any rate, this . . . starling-black coated the blade when I . . . when I put her out of her misery. It seems she had an imperfect phylactery, so what was left of her migrated to the sword, and uh, to me.”

  He glanced up from the blade. She was focused on it with that same peculiar expression. “Well,” he continued, fingers running through his greasy hair, “in doing so it made me a planet-reckoner. I’m not sure how it works exactly, but that’s what the star-reckoner told me before I ran the bastard through. Just don’t—”

  Shkarag grasped the blade.

  “—touch it.”

  “Can feel my šo-lofty chum in here,” she said, unusually grave. When she canted to look at him, it was with the same starling-black as the blade. “She’s . . .” Shkarag trailed off, either searching for the words or unwilling to admit she’d found them. She relinquished the blade and turned her attention to a map. “Maybe,” she said, plainly avoiding eye contact. She swept her hand over the topography as Ashtadukht had. “Should figure out the Everything.”

  Tirdad nodded, though he wasn’t sure why she insisted on saying ‘everything’ with such gravity.

  • • • • •

  After a month of poring through blood-spattered missives and unintelligible manifests, Tirdad was beginning to suspect this was all part of some elaborate prank. To Shkarag’s credit, she was committed to the ruse: when she wasn’t out and about, she’d be poring same as him.

  Demonstrably, he’d just awoken to find the documents spread in a semi-circle, and her dozing on the floor with his sword hugged to her chest, a scroll bunched in one fist. She’d always manage to find a patch of sunlight, its warmth her bedspread and she a glutton for it. Somewhere down the line he’d forsaken his morning rituals to watch her sleep. A tranquility graced her features that she never carried while awake, and he found no small amount of solace in seeing her at peace.

  An omelette waited by his side, surely just as cold as it was every morning. In all their years together he couldn’t recall her having cooked a single meal. Not so much as a boiled egg. Occasionally, she’d indulge if invited for a feast; otherwise, she ate only raw eggs and the odd fruit. If the sizzling of her efforts hadn’t roused him here and there in the middle of the night, he would’ve suspected she stole it from some luckless farmer come the break of dawn then rushed back.

  Tirdad smiled at the omelette, then at her. It didn’t stop there. She’d been industrious in taking care of him: gathering roots, helping with everyday chores, generally keeping him company. Like he was family.

  “If only she’d make something other than omelettes,” he said, taking a bite. “Least she makes a mean one.”

  Shkarag stirred at that. “Who calls,” she grumbled, groggy and looking it with her bunched face and fatigued eyes. “Go prowl for eggs, tugging onions, lifting turmeric.” She sat up with a grunt, and immediately set to massaging her thigh. “Because some quack, some šo-thankless mallard of a surgeon doesn’t keep spices in the estate he lifted. Says it’s mean. As if my omelette is some villain. Been serving him for weeks, but suddenly there’s a change of heart, and—”

  “Shkarag, please,” Tirdad cut in. “That’s not what I meant.” He would have done so sooner, but speaking during a meal was rude, and the last thing he wanted to do was give her another reason to find offense.

  Bristling, hurt, and nodding off, she fought to finish her wayward complaint, but her heart wasn’t in it. Shkarag fell back, sending waves through the dustlight. “Does the recipe spoil, too? Maybe. Haven’t cooked since . . . since . . .” The rest was little more than mumbling.

  “It’s delicious,” said Tirdad. “And you’re a good friend for looking after me. Don’t get all bent out of shape. I was just thinking I’d like something other than eggs.”

  She craned so that he could see her disgust. “Added onions and turmeric.”

  “That’s a pretty traditional omelette. What I meant was meat. Goat or lamb preferably.”

  “Don’t scoff at tradition.”

  “I’m not.”

  She squinted.

  “I’m not scoffing,” said Tirdad. “Don’t look at me like I’m some—” He caught himself on the cusp of an analogy that would’ve been more at home in her head. “I’m not.”

  Her squint tightened, then she eased her head back. “Won’t promise mutton. But . . . will try to scoop up a lamb your šo-lecherous sheep fucker hasn’t molested.”

  “You’re kinder than you let on.”

  “You’re a quack.”

  Tirdad reached for the glass goblet that’d been left with the meal, and took a pull of wine. He recognized it as a local harvest, notable because he hadn’t stocked any since taking over the estate. “Thanks,” he said as it warmed his chest. “You’ve no doubt been out all night. I’m sorry for waking you. Get some rest, Shkarag.”

  A glance told him she’d already succumbed to exhaustion. He hadn’t the remotest clue what she did while he slept, but figured that was her business. There was no way she spent all that time gathering eggs; besides, they’d stay fresh for at least a week.

  He knotted his brow at her, and a wine-widened smile brightened his features. That’s when it hit him. “Oh, Shkarag,” he whispered. “You’re as clever as you are caring.”

  Quietly, and with the goblet in one hand, he collected the documents and began arranging them around the largest map. Now that he knew what to look for, it came
to him almost immediately. The shipping manifests included eggs that made a regular trip between cities too far apart and too regular to make sense. The eggs would have spoiled in the time it took to cover the distance. He cross-referenced the manifests, and sure enough the ingredients were on every list. With omelettes being a staple, it wouldn’t raise any eyebrows—it’d fooled him until now after all.

  “They all originate in and return to the capital,” he pondered aloud. “There must be some significance.”

  The breakthrough reinvigorated his drive to uncover the secrets hidden in that blood-stained bundle. Like a madman in search of his marbles, he rummaged.

  “Seals?” he mused, sorting anything stamped from the pile. After laying them out, he counted many recurring seals, none of which he recognized. That wasn’t unexpected with all the hands they passed through, especially coming from the capital. He drew his lips into a line and shook his head.

  Mindful of his ribs, he twisted away slowly to retrieve a roll of parchment when one of the stamp impressions caught his eye. “A constellation,” he said under his breath, still careful to avoid waking Shkarag. The stars were arranged in a configuration he wasn’t familiar with. Closer inspection found five more seals, each unidentifiable. He fished in his sacred shirt for Ashtadukht’s seal, which he kept around his neck at all times. As he suspected, it portrayed an unfamiliar constellation.

  The same star pattern sealed every departure from the capital, with one of the five marking each destination. Arrayed before him was a method of covert communication between star-reckoners. Now confident in its significance, he canvassed the missives for anything that stood out.

  Unfortunately, they weren’t as forthcoming. Either some had been lost, or the paltry three were written in code. He’d trawled each countless times by now, and they all read as innocent letters to family.