City of Lies

by Sam Hawke

  It came from the water.

  Battle forgotten, everyone around me—rebels and Silastians alike—pushed and crowded to see the lake. The surface rippled, bubbled, like converging currents. Trickster’s Bridge itself shook visibly, the stone groaning. People crowded tight on the docks, the sound binding us together. Though part of me knew what was happening, that rational portion of my brain was buried beneath the instinctive emotional response. And I gasped out loud with everyone else when something emerged from the eerie mist above the water.

  Scatterburr

  DESCRIPTION: Common, hardy weed with papery purple clusters of flowers, highly toxic to grazing animals such as oku and lutra; inhalation of smoke or contact with ash from burning scatterburr plants also toxic to humans.

  SYMPTOMS: Chest pain, breathing difficulties, emotional distress.

  PROOFING CUES: Smoke is heavy and smells sweet.

  32

  Jovan

  Like a ghostly monster rising from the deep out of a children’s story, something broke through the mist above the lake, its graceful motion accompanied by the wail that still resonated in my chest.

  When its head first broke through, people around me screamed. A pulse ran through the crowd as we all instinctively drew back. Black and gray and dripping with water and slime that poured off it like long tendrils of fluid hair, it was immense, it was beautiful, it was …

  “Os-Woorin,” a woman cried, and as the great echoey noise quieted, the crowd on the west shore picked up that cry. The thing rose further, shoulders visible now, then its outstretched hands, somehow even more unnerving in silence. All around me, men and women dropped to their knees, some weeping. The Silastians crowded in our tight little circle remained standing, but just as frightened. Everyone seemed to have forgotten their weapons. Across the lake, it looked like every remaining person in the city had come down to the shore. I spared a glance over my shoulder and saw Aven’s army and the fleeing rebels still moving in from the streets, but now crowding to see the lake rather than fighting. I even spotted the Warrior-Guilder herself, scarlet cape and ornate armor agleam, on top of a canal wall to observe. Others had clambered up on walls and buildings to get a view.

  I turned back in time to see Os-Woorin—the statue, I had to remind myself, because the play of the mist and the wind moving the slimy fingers trailing from the stone gave the impression of the great thing breathing, moving, living—slide gracefully to a stop.

  Then the creature spoke, and the screams and sobs in the crowd died away into a silence of terror too complete for sound.

  “Stop,” it said, and the booming voice carried a palpable chill. “This battle must stop.”

  It was at that point that I caught a glimpse of one of the mercenary leaders of the rebel army. A tall, orange-haired man built like a warehouse, his face carried no awe, and where many had dropped their weapons, he kept his up and craned about as though searching for a trick or a trap. I swallowed and tightened my grip on my own sword. “Hey,” I murmured, squeezing the Order Guard’s shoulder. His head spun about as if on a spring, and his eyes were wide with fear and confusion. “Listen. You have to get everyone, all the Silastians, to put down their weapons.”

  “But…” He looked back at the figure in the lake, shaking his head, and his voice came out high and squeaky. “What is that thing?”

  “Just get everyone’s weapons down,” I said. “You have to. Now.”

  He stared at me, looked back at the lake, then back at me. Then he dropped his eyes and nodded. I patted his shoulder and worked my way through the gawking crowd toward the mercenary.

  “This war ends now,” Os-Woorin declared. By the fortunes, whatever amplification device that thing had, even our modern theaters could not compete. “No more death.”

  As I moved through the crowd, I heard the murmured prayers and quiet cries of people in every direction. But the tears and clutching hands, the bowed heads and frightened eyes, came not just from Darfri rebels. More and more people of city and country alike were dropping their weapons and falling to their knees. But the mercenary had obviously been paid well enough to ensure this war didn’t end so simply. As I approached the orange-haired man tried to incite the people around him. “Get up, fools,” he hissed. “This is some city trick. Get up and get your weapons.” He kicked at a few nearby kneeling figures, but they seemed to barely notice.

  I crept up behind him and clubbed him with the butt of my sword.

  He fell in silence, half landing on two women beside him, but they remained transfixed by the figure in the lake and simply shook him off like an insect. I took his sword and moved on through the crowd, hunting my next target.

  The pause stretched out longer and longer, and inside I wondered, What is he going to say next? Perhaps Tain himself didn’t know. Speeches had never been his strength. But somehow, instead of making the crowd suspicious, the long silence intensified the atmosphere. Even the motionlessness of the great figure worked in Tain’s favor, because the anticipation for the lake spirit’s next words grew, even winding tight inside me in flagrant disregard for rationality. I hadn’t truly believed this thing could be real, had not fathomed how it could have worked all those years ago. Now I understood.

  I had just incapacitated the second mercenary when Os-Woorin spoke again.

  “I speak to you with the voice of the great spirit of the lake, Os-Woorin,” it said, and this time the east shore rang with cries of fear and confusion. Visible waves of reaction spread through the crowd there, the irreligious Silastians, after weeks of increasing rumors and inexplicable events, now faced with what appeared to be a giant supernatural being. I glanced up at the crimson-and-indigo-colored soldiers penning us in from the lower city, and saw much the same response there. This is going to work, I told myself. Fortunes stay with us now, I think this is going to work.

  And then my heart almost stopped when the voice rang out again. “But I am not Os-Woorin.”

  Oh, shit. And it was going so well.

  The murmuring started around me, confusion and distrust amidst the awe. I stared at the statue with everyone else, no longer knowing what Tain planned to do, hoping that at least he did.

  “I am Tain Caslavtash Iliri,” it said. “I am the Chancellor of this country, and I speak to everyone here as a plea for peace, a plea for forgiveness, and an acknowledgment of blame.”

  Anger, now, bled through the faces around me. Some rebels stood back up. Then people cried out anew as the back of the statue opened, a door in the thinning mist, and a figure stepped out to perch on an unseen platform. Tain, unarmored, bare-headed, carrying a speaking trumpet. Dwarfed by the giant statue, he looked almost pitiful. Frustration burst through me, hot and furious. He’d had everyone, on both sides, laying down their weapons. Why would he jeopardize that now, waste the last, desperate opportunity the submerged statue had granted us?

  “The Credol Families, the Council, and the Guilds of this city have committed terrible injustices,” Tain cried out, speaking through the trumpet. His voice was his own, now, not the eerie echoey voice of Os-Woorin, and though it carried well enough across the water, it lacked the power that had silenced the crowds. He’s going to lose them.

  “I know why our own people laid siege to this city, I know what drove you to it. It’s not enough to say that I’m sorry, but I’m saying it anyway. Not all of us are Darfri. Not everyone believes in the old religion. But you don’t have to be Darfri to see that we have at best ignored and at worst encouraged abuses of the land that we all stand on. Our land. That we have ignored or encouraged the disrespect and the denial from the majority of the Sjon people of the very privileges that were supposed to distinguish our society.”

  I licked my lips, unable to swallow through the dryness of my mouth. Muttering grew louder around me as more and more people stood, Silastians and countryfolk alike. Any moment, someone would swing a weapon again, and the mob would take over. And yet, I understood, and I loved him for it. To use the Darfri
beliefs against them once again, even for the purpose of peace, would have been a further indignity, a stain on his offer of respect and equality. What peace could be built on such a further betrayal? Hadrea would approve. I was surprised to realize that I approved, too. Even if it cost us everything.

  “These are transgressions spanning centuries. My ancestors built this thing you see, this fake Os-Woorin, to use the Darfri religion against its own followers, to give them unearned authenticity. They pretended they honored and respected the land and its spirits but really they were just greedy for the future they wanted and willing to go to incredible lengths to get it. The most elaborate lie in our history. Look at it! All of that engineering, all of that skill, that artwork, put to use for such a purpose. The Chancellors and the Council have been betraying their own people—our own people—from the beginning, in a thousand small ways and some huge ones. I am ashamed. Ashamed for me and for my ancestors.”

  Tain faced the west shore. “I’m here before you, unarmed,” he said. “You can shoot me down. But you need to know I will listen and learn if you’re willing to help me.” He paused, and though it was too far to see his face clearly from this distance, I fancied I saw him lift his chin, shut his eyes, as though waiting for the arrows that must surely come. Silence stretched out around me, and though I looked desperately for the person who would start the onslaught, no one moved. Yet. “Sjona—all it was meant to be, all it can be—is for all of us. I don’t deserve your help, but your children do, and their children. I think together we have to try.” The words sounded familiar and I realized suddenly that he had drawn from my sister’s suggestions after all. I fought down the hope and optimism at the thought of Kalina.

  Then I saw the boat, just a small rowboat, moving from the east bank out to the statue. I counted two—or was it three—figures in it, but couldn’t see who they were. Meanwhile, Tain stood there, exposed and vulnerable to our side of the lake and all the enemies that might lurk among us.

  I sensed sudden movement from the crowd near me, and ran toward it without conscious thought. He was close, so close I could see the sweat beading on his forehead as he drew the bow back, but there were people in my way, I wouldn’t get there in time.…

  I lunged out, diving through a gap between two people, and slashed wildly with my sword at his bow.

  The sword barely clipped the bow, but it was enough; the point caught in the limb tip and drove the bow down just as the mercenary released the arrow meant for Tain; it thudded harmlessly into the dirt and I was upon him, closing my elbow around the back of his neck and squeezing until he folded to the ground. I looked up to see three or four rebels staring at me. My breath caught in my throat. But then a voice rang out over the lake—not Tain’s, a woman’s—and all turned away from me, back to the lake. I craned along with them, fear redoubling inside me, a stone in my stomach.

  I knew the voice before I even saw the figure.

  “My name is An-Salvea EsLosi,” she said, her rich, gentle tone reverberating through the speaking trumpet. “And I stand here with Tain, with my daughter and my son, because I trust him. I believe you can, too.” My eyes fastened on the other figures: Hadrea, by the fortunes, Hadrea, and Salvea, and Davior, all standing there, with Tain, the last people in the world I could bear to lose. They crowded around the base of the great Os-Woorin statue, looking so small, water lapping around their legs. I could do nothing but stare, and hope.

  “No one else needs to die,” Salvea said. “No one else needs to be hurt. I am here for surety, with all the things that are valuable to me in my life. I make myself vulnerable to you just as the Chancellor has.” She picked Davior up, clutching him to her hip. “Will not representatives for each region meet with us? Will Speakers not come forward and offer their wisdom?”

  I looked around the crowd. Silence. But only for a moment; small, fierce discussions bubbled up between the rebel fighters in every direction, some erupting into larger arguments between the pragmatic and the passionate, the desperate farmers seeing a chance of going home and the true rebels, who would prefer to be slaughtered by Aven’s force than discuss peace with the Council.

  And then, “I will,” someone called out. A round-bellied man with hair in a long tail down his back pushed out of the crowd, shoving to the front to stand on the docks by the lake. His voice rang out, unashamed. “We have no reason to trust the Chancellor or the Council, but I know you, An-Salvea, and I will take your surety.” He looked back at the crowd behind him. “I have family back home. I would like to see them again.”

  Another person stepped forward, this time a woman, old enough that it surprised me to see her here, fighting. “And I,” she said. “I will take this chance. We will see how well this Council listens.”

  The Es-Losis stepped back into their rowboat. At least a dozen rebels, clearly men and women of some influence, had come to meet them at the docks. Even several Speakers had emerged warily to join them. I could see no more mercenaries in the crowd, and no signs that the more zealous rebels would turn on their fellows rather than support negotiations. On the lake, where Tain lowered Davi down into his mother’s arms. I dared to feel the tiniest glimmer of hope, and its reflection all around me, from Silastians and rebels alike. We just might have our truce at last.

  And then, as though my foolish optimism had conjured disaster like Darfri magic, it all fell apart.

  A deep rumble sounded first, like underground thunder, and then a tremendous crack from the lake. It took a moment to identify the cause of the sound, but then people began pointing and screaming: it was the statue, the fake Os-Woorin, rent with a massive crack from base to tip. As we stared in horror more cracks shot off from the initial fissure and the great face slumped suddenly as half the head compacted and began to slide downward. I found my voice as I pushed through to the shore, against the sudden flow of the crowd. “Get out of the way!”

  Of course Tain couldn’t hear me; he stood transfixed, staring up at the cracking, splintering statue, even as rubble rained down around him. Hadrea reached toward him from the wildly rocking boat, the screams of the crowd drowning out her yell, as if I watched a stylized silent play with actors in slow motion. I stumbled to the shoreline. Another huge crack made me jump. One of the Os-Woorin’s arms split from its torso and thundered down toward the water like a great swinging hammer and Tain finally—finally—jolted to attention. He spun and grabbed hold of the stern of the rowboat but instead of leaping inside it he shoved it away from the path of the falling arm with all the force of his body, so hard it sent him sprawling face first into the water. My shout echoed Salvea’s and Hadrea’s, lost in the enormous splash of rock into lake. The little boat was flung away with the ensuing wave and Tain disappeared from my sight.

  “Tain!” I bellowed. Frantically I scanned the shoreline but of course there were no boats on the west side. The force of the wave sent water spraying up as it hit the docks and rose the tideline dramatically; people shrieked and ran from the encroaching water. Back on the lake, the EsLosis’ boat was still intact, Hadrea and Salvea soaking but upright, with Davi howling and clinging to his mother’s shoulders, but it had been carried twenty treads from the Os-Woorin. The great statue continued to falter and fall in slumps and crumbling chunks, and still I couldn’t see Tain.

  “There!” Hadrea shouted, pointing with her oar.

  Tain’s dark head emerged from the churning water. Whether he heard my relieved cry to swim for the boat or not, he began stroking away from the collapsing statue to where Hadrea and Salvea frantically tried to fight the artificial tide being created by the heavy plunging stone pieces. But each collapse sent them farther and farther toward the docks. Salvea looked at the docks, then Tain, then up at her son on her shoulders, and the agony on her face cut me to the core.

  “Bring Davi back!” I shouted, splashing into the water and loping toward them clumsily. “Get him safe!”

  Then the very platform itself began to shift and tip, and the entire remainde
r of the statue plummeted into the water with a groan and a smash. The resulting wave spread so fast there was no time to get out of the way; I was knocked over and plunged underwater, spun about so I wasn’t sure which way was up. I scrambled, twisting, until I found my feet, then stood and almost cracked my head on the EsLosis’ boat. Hadrea was already leaping out beside me and together we dragged it back onto the shore. Davi jumped onto his sister’s back and I helped Salvea out.

  She stepped free onto the sand and as her hand dropped away I became bone-chillingly aware that something was wrong. More than wrong. This was not the crumpling of an ancient machine not used in centuries. Amidst the noise and the confusion I had missed it, but now I recognized the sensation in the air, the thickening, crackling pressure around my head.

  I looked down the west bank to where the Speakers had gathered, already starting toward them, then stopped dead. When they had used Darfri magic—fresken—against me, they’d had a particular look: intense burning gaze, hands holding something of the substance they were manipulating, slow and controlled walking. Now, instead, the women had fallen to their knees and clutched at their faces and hair, crying. Whatever was going on, they were not drawing on the magic; it looked as if something were drawing on them.

  Then the faces in the crowd around them changed, growing exponentially more fearful, and almost as one they started to scream.

  I spun back to the lake. The water in the center was bubbling, spurting, raising steam in great clouds that surrounded a watery shape emerging, just like the statue had, from the depths.