by Darius Hinks
They rushed through the colonnaded portico and back out into the square. The sound they had heard in the crypts was deafening out here, and the night sky had been torn open by fireworks. The Curious Men knew how to keep the mob happy, and the display was as impressive as ever – a dazzling, coruscating storm of light, exploding over the crowds, showering embers on their upturned masks and drowning out their cheers with screams and bangs.
Isten staggered out into the night, pieces of firework landing all around her, clattering on the ruins and sparking in the dark. “We lost him,” she muttered, coming to a halt and shaking her head, looking at the silhouettes of mausoleums and revellers.
Brast ran to her side, breathing heavily. “Maybe.” He nodded at the flagstones beneath their feet. There was a large pool of fresh blood where Sayal must have paused to bind his wounds. “Maybe not.”
12
After leaving the festival, Isten stayed in the north of the city and headed to the Alcazar – a circular network of narrow, shady streets, surrounded by a high, vine-swamped wall. Like many of Athanor’s districts, Alcazar had once been a kingdom in its own right, a fortified city, and, as Isten and Brast walked through the old Eastern Gate, it was like entering a different country. The sun, rising behind them, threw long shadows down the main street, leading them into Alcazar’s dusty maze. The buildings were low and blocky, slabs of sunbaked sandstone and terracotta, so parched and ancient that they looked like they could be dissolved by a decent downpour of rain. Balconies and vine-draped pergolas stretched overhead, so that the streets seemed more like tunnels than open roads, but there was none of the intricate, metal tracery that covered much of the city. Athanor had never quite managed to conquer this web of quiet, thyme-carpeted alleys and looping, poppy-filled thoroughfares.
Most of the locals were asleep as Isten and Brast trudged through the dust, still clutching their bloody falcatas and covered in cuts and bruises. Isten made her way to the street Alzen had chosen for their rendezvous and looked around at the various teahouses that lined it. Even at this time, many of them had put out awnings and tables. She laughed quietly when she recognized one of the owners, recalling how she had once enraged him. He scowled at her but she took a seat all the same and, after a few minutes, he wandered out and clanged a samovar and some cups on the table without a word of greeting.
They sat there for a while, sipping the spiced tea and massaging their various wounds. As they drank, a few shutters started to open in the walls around them as the Alcazar started to stir. A group of children appeared, chasing cats through the streets, kicking up dust and laughing as they fought with sticks.
“So, what next?” asked Brast eventually.
Isten’s head was pounding. She was already regretting sampling Alzen’s cinnabar in the Sisters’ house. She would need to ask him for more when he arrived later or the shakes would start again. She shrugged. “I’ll need to find out if Sayal survived or not. Maybe Colcrow will be able to tell me.”
Brast grimaced at the mention of Colcrow. “And then? If Sayal is dead?”
The owner of the teahouse had emerged to scowl at her again. Isten gave him a mocking smile, then, when he sneered and shuffled back inside, she answered Brast. “I need to speak with my contact again. We arranged to meet on this street. He’s offered to give me more help.”
Brast viewed her closely over the rim of his teacup. “He sounds like a helpful soul.”
She ignored his attempts at trying to wheedle the name out of her. “He might be. It depends how successful we were last night.”
“What game are you playing, Isten? You abandoned the Exiles for a year, sick of the sight of them, half killing yourself with cinnabar, now you’re back trying to help them again and you’re getting information from someone so disreputable you won’t even tell me their name. Who could be more disreputable than me? What are you hiding?”
He was speaking in the mocking tone he used when trying to disguise how desperate he was to please her. She started to remember why she had avoided him for so long. She felt like she had returned to the scene of a crime. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “I have a new source of information and one of his conditions is anonymity.” She fished out one of the coins Alzen had given her and placed it on the table. “Here, have some money. And get back to whatever you spend your time doing.”
He looked offended, but took the coin. Then he leant across the table. “At least tell me this. Why did you leave them for a whole year? What made you run away like that? They all know you’re a wreck, so it can’t be that.” He was staring at her. “What did you do that was so bad?”
Isten tightened her hands into fists and glared at the table. None of the Exiles must ever know. Especially now, after she had compounded her treachery by consorting with one of the Elect.
“If I need you again, I’ll find you,” she said.
He leant back in his chair. “Oh, will you? And then will you tell me what’s going on?”
She said nothing.
He shrugged, finished his tea and stood, looking back down the blazing, coral-coloured avenue. “Then don’t bother finding me.” He turned his gaze back on her. “You’ve plumbed new depths, Isten, I can smell it. I can’t imagine what can be so bad that even you won’t speak of it.” He frowned, about to ask a question, then shook his head. “Thanks for the tea.” He sauntered off, heading towards the old city gates, giving the dust a few desultory slashes of his sword as he went.
Isten watched him go, missing the chance to share her burden. If anyone could hear the truth and not want to kill her, it was Brast.
The owner of the teahouse dragged himself out into the sunlight and glared at her.
She held up her cup with a smile.
He grimaced, took the samovar and shuffled off to fill it again.
Isten spent the next couple of hours sat in the shade of the teahouse, tracing shapes in the dust with her foot and watching the Alcazar fill with people. Many of them were staggering, hungover revellers from the square, still wearing their yellow masks. The paint was smeared now and covered in blood-red wine stains. As she sipped her tea, Isten felt as though she was watching the return of a defeated army, round-faced and grinning, weary and demented, their features disfigured by fire. The yellow faces began to stretch and mutate, coming alive, bloated heads staring at her with excited grins. Suddenly, she felt as though everyone on the street had come looking for her.
She shook her head and looked away. It was the cinnabar. Whatever Alzen gave her must have been powerful stuff. She was starting to hallucinate. The hallucinations always became more vivid as cinnabar left one’s system, and more threatening.
She listened to a rattling sound for a while before she realized that it was her cup, dancing on the metal table. Her hand was shaking. She gripped it with her other hand and looked around. Still no sign of Alzen. Her anxiety grew. She needed to find some more cinnabar soon. Or at least something to dull the madness and the tremors. She kept her gaze locked on the table, but she could still sense the yellow, grinning faces, pressing closer, hungry and desperate.
“Torus,” she said, trying to keep her voice level as she rose from the table and entered the teahouse, pushing through curtains into the gloomy interior.
The old man was just inside, hunched over a table, writing something. He leapt up at the sight of her, horrified.
“What do you want?”
She held up a placating hand. “I know you remember me, Torus,” she said, looking round the room. It was a small, rough-hewn chamber, lined with rows of shelves, crowded with tins of tea and gleaming samovars. The only light came from an arrow-slit window, and after the glare of the street, Isten found it hard to see clearly. “I need something.”
“Tea?” he asked, backing away from her. “I’ll bring it to your table.”
“Not tea,” she said, leaning against the doorframe to steady herself, giving him a pointed look.
He ste
pped forwards and the single shaft of light fell across his face. His gaunt, grey, stubbly features were twisted into a snarl. “I don’t sell anything else.”
Isten’s head was spinning more violently than it should have been. What had Alzen given her?
She reached beneath her jerkin and grabbed a coin from the purse Alzen had given her. “Are you sure?” She held the coin up so that it glinted.
He glared at her in silence, but she saw a telltale twitch in the corner of his mouth.
She took another coin out.
He looked anguished now, rubbing his hands together and glancing at a doorway at the back of the room. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I don’t.”
Isten held the coins out for a few more seconds, trying to keep her hand steady. Then she cursed and took out a third.
Torus’s eyes widened.
“What have you got?” she asked.
“Seeds,” he whispered, staring past her to the street outside, checking no one was near.
“Vistula?”
He nodded, looking disgusted with himself.
She nodded.
He gestured for her to follow him into the next room.
This one was darker and more cluttered – a storeroom, piled with crates and jars. Rats scattered as they entered and someone stirred upstairs.
“Torus?” came a voice from the room above. It was a thin, scared-sounding croak.
“Yes,” he called back. “Just getting more tea.”
He moved some boxes and fished out a pewter bowl with its lid tied securely in place. He removed the lid and revealed the contents. Isten knew what they were, but they really did look like small, black seeds, like onion seeds. They filled the storeroom with a pungent, medicinal aroma.
He snatched a mortar and pestle from a shelf, then hesitated.
“Give me the money,” he said, not meeting her eye.
She felt a sinking feeling. Why had she offered him three coins? That was almost everything Alzen had given her. Waves of nausea were washing through her and she had no option but to hand them over.
He looked at them in shock for a moment, then stashed them under his robes.
He put all of the seeds in the mortar, along with a selection of powders that he took from a wooden cabinet. He gently pressed the ingredients with the pestle, releasing more of the smell. Then he grabbed a jug and poured a few drops of water into the powder.
He gave the mortar to Isten, went back into the larger room, peered out into the blazing street, then hurriedly returned to her and snatched the mortar back.
They both stooped over it, peering at the contents, wondering if such old seeds would work.
It took a few seconds, but then the paste began to coagulate, bubbling and clumping together, as though moulded by invisible fingers. As it moved, the paste grew paler, turning grey and then translucent white as it formed into a small, writhing grub – a fine, segmented worm, like a tapeworm, coiling and tumbling across the black metal of the mortar, reaching up into the air, trying to escape.
Despite his earlier reluctance, the old man seemed pleased with himself as he gently plucked the worm from the mortar and held it up in front of Isten.
He nodded at her and she knew what to do, pulling her lower eyelid down and looking up, exposing the underside of her left eye.
He leant close, so close that his garlic breath filled her nostrils.
He placed the writhing worm under her eyeball.
She closed her eye and the grub shifted under her lid, cold and frenetic, trying to escape. It felt like a muscle spasm, fidgeting and tickly against her retina.
Isten felt no revulsion, knowing what came next.
The worm burst, exploding across her eye, dissolved by her tears, spreading its juice.
Torus checked the door again, then repeated the process, producing another pale worm and dropping it in Isten’s other eye.
For a few minutes she sat there in the dark, wondering if nothing had happened, blinking away tears, but then the drug started to take effect. One by one, her muscles relaxed and the tremors vanished. She slumped back against the wall with a sigh of relief, causing Torus to hiss a curse and move the jars she had nearly dislodged. Everything Isten had been tormenting herself over – her betrayal of the Exiles, her pact with Alzen, even the way she tormented Brast, suddenly seemed delightfully absurd. None of it mattered, she realized. She laughed, grabbing Torus’s shoulder.
For a moment his wariness vanished and she saw pride in his eyes, the pride of a skilled artisan who rarely gets to practice his craft.
Then he looked panicked. “Outside,” he whispered, helping her to her feet.
“I have to wait here,” she said as he bundled her out into the daylight and tried to steer her past the table.
He hesitated and she dropped back into her chair. “More tea,” she said.
Torus looked furious again, but he was obviously keen to avoid a scene. “Be normal,” he hissed in her ear, leaving her at the table and going back inside.
Isten sprawled happily in her chair, watching the sunlit crowds jostle through the alley. Her eyes were now dry, but the world still looked as though it had been refracted by tears, painted in shifting dabs of colour, beautiful and pointillistic, tumbling past her like breeze-snatched blossom. The hallucination was only a side-effect – the true wonder of vistula was its power to dissolve fear and pain, but Isten enjoyed the display all the same. The yellow masks that had so disturbed her a few minutes earlier now seemed like blissful friends, smiling at her in greeting rather than leering like predators.
Isten spent the rest of the morning this way, enjoying the colours and sounds of the Alcazar and forgetting her troubles. The sun had almost reached its zenith when she recognized a tattered black gown. Alzen was wearing a battered wooden mask, just like everyone else pouring into the Alcazar.
Alzen nodded as he sat down.
“Sayal is still alive,” he said.
Isten knew she should be angry and disappointed, but the vistula made that impossible. She sat up in her chair and was about to answer when the teahouse owner came out again, carrying a cup for Alzen.
She waited until the old man was gone before speaking.
“He heard us and doubled back,” she said, sipping her tea. “But don’t worry. I can do this.”
He smiled and held up his hands, as calm as she was. “Of course you can. It’s fine. Don’t worry. This was just one chance. There will be others.” He looked thoroughly pleased. “The men you locked in the catacombs were his most trusted brothers. You’ve caused him a big problem. Sayal is furious.” He laughed. “And not at all well, from what I’ve heard.” He sipped his tea, still smiling. “We’ve dealt him a serious blow. The metal in that crypt would have bought him even more men and weapons, but now he’s on the back foot, wounded and trying to work out which of his simpletons he can trust to lead his various operations.”
Isten laughed. She had half expected Alzen not to arrive, or to arrive in a rage and say the deal was off, but he seemed delighted.
“He has no inkling that we’re connected,” said Alzen, speaking to himself as much as to Isten. “So I can keep informing you of his plans until his whole organization collapses.”
Isten looked around to make sure no one could be listening in on their conversation. The Alcazar was now crowded with people, as noisy as any of Athanor’s bazaars, but the din was so great that none of the passers-by would be able to hear their discussion.
“What next, then?” she said, trying to focus on his eyes, despite the way the vistula was making his mask ripple and flash. “What about the cinnabar you promised? Do you have it here?”
“Let’s deal with Sayal first. We’ve wounded the oaf, but we’re not rid of him. He’s got a burgeoning rebellion on his hands so he’s called a meeting, tonight. He’s gathering all the brothers he thinks he can trust and he’s going to promise them positions of power if they swear t
o back him and talk down all his doubters. He’s bringing them over to his house in Gamala.”
“Gamala?” Isten was shocked. Gamala was one of the wealthiest quarters of the city. Only the Elect’s most senior diplomats and officials lived there; or so she had thought.
Alzen’s tone soured. He clearly found the idea as repulsive as Isten found it surprising. “Yes. He bought the Bethsan Palace and filled it with blubber.” He shook his head. “No matter. By tomorrow we can be rid of him.”
Isten shook her head. “I have no men. My friend from last night…” She hesitated, unsure what to say about Brast. “I’m sure I could take on Sayal on his own, but not if he’s surrounded by guards.”
Alzen moved his chair closer, dragging it through the dust with a shrill scraping sound.
“I saw what you did last night.”
Isten’s stomach turned at the idea Alzen had been watching her without her knowing. “How?”
Alzen laughed. “The Art. It can do more than move the city, Isten.” He nodded to the mark he had made on her arm. “There are many forms of conjunction.”
Isten gripped her bicep, as though she could rid herself of Alzen’s taint by simply hiding the mark he had left on her.
“You’re fearless,” he said, tapping her falcata, “and a skilled fighter. I was impressed.”
She shrugged. The vistula made even Alzen seem like a trustworthy friend. “I was expected to be a leader one day – in my homeland, I mean. My mother thought I would lead a revolution. My childhood was spent practicing with a sword while she preached to angry crowds.”
Alzen made no pretence he was interested in her history. “Whatever the reason, I think you are a worthy partner in my endeavour.”
“Endeavour? Killing Sayal?”
“He’s just an annoying obstacle. I’m embarked on a far greater work, Isten. A work you could never hope to understand, but yes, you could help me by removing Sayal. And in doing so, you can make your Exiles more powerful than any gang that has ever walked the streets of Athanor.”