The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  Dransun felt warm. That might have been the liquor. He handed the flask to the death priest, who took it gingerly. Only now did he look up to see the priest lift the flask up and study it through the glass circles in his mask, as though he wasn’t sure what it did. Slowly, the priest lifted his mask just beneath his nose. There was a face under there, scarred and unshaven, but it was a human’s face that was drinking.

  The death priest was still a man.

  “How do you do it?” Dransun asked.

  The Quill coughed a little, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. He smoothed his mask out over his mouth and chin and turned his glassy eyes to the captain, questioningly. Or maybe that was the liquor, too; it was hard to read expressions through burlap.

  “You follow Gevrauch, God of Death,” Dransun said. “You surround yourself with corpses, the sick, the dying. You don’t try to help them, like the Talanites. You just watch them die and then take their body for rites. How the hell haven’t you killed yourself yet?”

  The Quill looked away, back to his Lanterns as his subordinates began to load the dead bodies into a wagon.

  “Humanity’s reverence for life is misplaced.”

  Cold. Simple. The Quill spoke flatly.

  “Life is fleeting, true. Precious, yes. But people act as though if they simply hold on long enough, they can hold it forever. But in holding on, they learn nothing but how to strangle life dead and leave it on the floor as an empty husk.

  “In death, there is meaning, Captain. Sometimes, it is very simple. We learn much from the bodies donated to our temples, and we pass that knowledge along to the healers. And sometimes, it is very complicated. We sit and wait with a man who is ready to die and we listen to his biggest regret and we tell his children what mistakes his father made.

  “But for life to mean anything, it has to end. And when it ends and another tally is made in the Bookkeeper’s ledger, it is a meaningful stroke of the quill that scribes the name.”

  “But in all this?” Dransun asked, sweeping a hand over the devastated Souk. “In forty-three dead?”

  “In three days, Captain, there will be more merchant stalls built over the ashes of the ones today. There will be new merchants to replace the old. There will be a hungry lust for gold, as powerful as ever, that keeps people coming back to the Souk even though a footwar rages in it near-weekly.”

  “And where’s the meaning in that?”

  “The meaning, Captain,” the Quill said softly, “is that death does not stop life.”

  Dransun looked down at his feet. He was too drunk to see the wisdom in that statement and not drunk enough to take comfort in it. He took another drink from the flask and licked his lips.

  “The dead,” he said, “you said they were all human?”

  “That is correct, Captain. The Jackals and Khovura took their dead, as they always do. We found no oids amid the dead.”

  “Figures,” Dransun muttered. “Gods-damned couthi were probably the first out. The stupid bugs always know when a war’s about to hit.” He rubbed his face. “And I know the dragonmen made it out, because they were there with the fasha’s men, preventing us from getting into the Souk.”

  “The fashas have condemned the footwar, though.”

  “They have, because it’s expected of them. Everyone knows the Jackals are in tight with the fashas. The fashas let them run their footwar unopposed and the Jackals keep the markets running for them and keep the Khovura off their backs.”

  “The Khovura are decidedly not fond of the fashas.”

  “No. That’s why they keep attacking the Souk. They think they’re disrupting the fashas’ coins, but all they do is kill people trying to make a gold piece. Radicals. Savages. Always the cause of—”

  Dransun caught himself. He looked swiftly to the death priest.

  “You said all human. You’re sure?”

  “I am sure, Captain.”

  “You didn’t see a shict, did you? Sometimes they look like us, if you don’t pay attention to the ears and teeth.”

  “I am acquainted with shicts, Captain. I would have recognized them. Why?”

  “There were reports of a shict and a bunch of northerners causing trouble with Ghoukha’s men.” Dransun hummed, rubbing his chin. “They had a monster with them. Like a dragonman, but smaller… and red.”

  “You suspect them of having a connection to the Khovura?”

  “Or the Jackals. It’s not unheard of for footwar gangs to bring in mercs. And if these foreigners were messing with the fashas…” Dransun let his voice trail off into a nondescript hum as he scratched his chin thoughtfully.

  “It sounds as though you’ve found some meaning in today’s deaths, Captain,” the Quill said, rising to his feet. “I will leave our report with your men. You may inform the families of the deceased at your leisure.”

  Dransun spared him a nod as the Quill left. Dransun did not look up or at his feet, and though he stared straight ahead, he seemed to see nothing at all. His mind was somewhere his eyes could not follow, somewhere with suspicious shicts and red monsters and mysterious northerners. He no longer looked anywhere but straight ahead.

  Certainly, he did not look up and over his shoulder.

  If he did, he would have seen a pair of green eyes staring down at him from the roof of a nearby stall left standing. He would have seen a pair of long, notched, pointed ears twitching as they slowly sank away, full of information.

  And he would have known just how much meaning there was in these deaths.

  Kataria swept silently through the streets. It wasn’t difficult to remain unseen; no one had yet returned to the Souk besides the guards and the death priests. It was easy enough to make her way to the outskirts, where more stalls stood unscarred and fewer torches hung.

  And there were plenty enough shadows to obscure the five people huddled in the corners of a pair of abandoned stalls laden with cheap, cotton clothes.

  Asper knelt beside Dreadaeleon, treating a gash across his brow from his rough landing. Gariath huddled toward the back, crouched on his haunches in quiet brooding. Lenk and Denaos discussed something between themselves, yet all looked up when she returned.

  “They know we’re here, but they have no idea who we are,” she said. “I don’t know how long that’s going to last, though, since the human in the fancy armor sounded pretty interested in us.”

  “Did they say anything about the demon? Or about Miron?” Lenk asked.

  She shook her head. At this, Denaos glanced lazily toward Lenk.

  “Plan?” the rogue asked.

  “Easy enough, isn’t it?” Lenk asked. “We find out what happened to Miron, track him down, and get our money back.”

  “Easy,” Denaos repeated.

  “Simple enough, I mean.”

  “Track down Miron—who only you saw—and find out what happened to him—after he disappeared into nothingness in the middle of a battle—track him down—when he may be in the clutches of one of two groups that tried to kill us today—get our money back—assuming they haven’t already killed him.”

  Denaos clicked his tongue.

  “That’s not simple. It’s another word that begins with ‘s,’ but not simple.”

  “It’s simple enough if you still want to get paid,” Lenk replied sharply. “If you’re fine with throwing away all the blood we’ve already spilled for that man and getting nothing for it, feel free to stay here.”

  “Money aside,” Asper began, looking up from her patching of Dreadaeleon, “I’d want to find Miron, even if we weren’t getting paid. He’s a good Talanite and has always looked out for us.”

  Denaos snorted. She glared at him before speaking louder.

  “But Denaos has a point. Surely it can’t be as easy as that.”

  “No,” Lenk said, “but it can’t be impossible. Cier’Djaal is a big city, but he wouldn’t have been able to leave it just yet, would he? If he’s been kidnapped, he’s still here. And if he’s left, we can go find
him on the open road.” At his companions’ silence, he rubbed his eyes. “Look, I realize the task may seem enormous, but there are six of us. We can find him.”

  They exchanged brief glances. Asper looked uncertainly at the ground.

  “There are bound to be temples here,” she said. “He’s the Lord Emissary of the Church of Talanas. If he escaped, he’ll have gone there. I can ask around.” She gestured toward Denaos. “And Denaos has his own contacts here.”

  “You do?” Lenk asked, looking to the rogue.

  “Oh, let’s not go acting like you’re surprised that I know people in bad ways,” Denaos said with a dramatic sigh. “Yeah. I’ll ask around. Only because that’s not money I want to throw away.” He pointed at Lenk. “You owe me twice, though.”

  “Yeah. I sure am lucky you’re both shifty and greedy,” Lenk replied with a sigh. He looked to Dreadaeleon. “And how about you, Dread?”

  “How about me what?” the boy muttered, holding a wadded-up bandaged to his brow.

  “You mentioned there was a Venarium outpost here, didn’t you? Couldn’t you… wizard something up?”

  “Wizard something up,” the boy repeated, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Are you quite sure you wouldn’t like to simply go barreling your way into the Venarium, slapping people about the face and demanding answers?”

  Lenk sighed. “I assume there’s a reason for this outburst beyond the fact that I have apparently committed a lot of sins against some passive-aggressive Gods.”

  “I could have stopped the demon,” Dreadaeleon spat. “I could have killed it. I had near-limitless power at my command and you went and solved everything by hitting it with a big metal stick.”

  “Of course. How rude of me. Everything seemed to be going quite well until it threw you like filth from a monkey’s hand.”

  “You don’t need to be the one to save everyone,” Dreadaeleon snapped.

  “When they can’t be incinerated, I do,” Lenk spoke coldly, harshly. “If you’d rather we all have been eaten alive while patiently waiting for you to come back and try something else that didn’t work, I’m sorry. But for now, I need to know if you’re either going to help or leave, because those are your only options right now.”

  A tense moment of silence roiled between the boy’s burning scowl and the young man’s cold stare. It ended with Dreadaeleon sliding to his feet and sneering something at Lenk. He turned, he skulked, but he stayed.

  Lenk permitted himself a sigh of relief. Thus far, it seemed as though everyone was at ease with the idea and everyone had something to contribute. Plans never went this well for him, he noted. Usually there was something to make things more difficult.

  And that was when he found his gaze drawn, inexorably, toward Gariath.

  His stare was scrutinizing at first as he appraised the dragonman. Slowly, it turned quizzical, then confused, then worried. The dragonman stared back at him blankly before slowly raising his right hand.

  “I promise,” he growled, “to kill only as many people as can reasonably be expected to help.”

  “I’ll take it,” Lenk said.

  He would have said more, but at that moment, the sound of distant shouting and the authoritative tromp of boots silenced him. They huddled down low as the glow of torches gleaming off of polished helmets hurried by in disorderly fashion.

  “If you’re hoping this was all going to take place outside of a prison cell,” Denaos muttered as they disappeared, “we should probably find somewhere to lie low for the rest of the night.” He gestured toward the other end of the Souk. “There are some places between the harbor and the Souk that don’t ask questions. We can make our way there and plan out further.”

  The rogue gave his companions a swift glance over and frowned.

  “Probably better if we don’t all move together. Make for the eastern gate and we’ll meet up there.”

  With that, they broke, vanishing down alleys and into shadows as they hurried on. Lenk was about to head out on his own path when he felt the familiar pain of a pair of green eyes boring into the back of his neck.

  He looked over his shoulder. Kataria hadn’t made a single step. Nor did she move at his insistent stare.

  “No part in this plan for me,” she said.

  “I figured you and I would go out and try to track him down ourselves,” he said, “cover the places the others couldn’t.”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  “If you don’t want any part in finding Miron—”

  “I don’t care about Miron,” she snapped suddenly. “I don’t care about humans.” The look she shot him wavered between fury and fear, both angry and nervous at once. “Not most of them, anyway.”

  “Then what is it? You just don’t want to help?”

  “Help you get your money? Help you find coin so you can settle down here and be like them,” she snarled, sweeping a hand out over the Souk, “those kou’ru that called me an animal?”

  “They’ve always called you an animal,” he shot back. “They’ve called you worse. You’ve called them worse and done worse to them. You bit off a man’s ear today and now you suddenly care what they think? What changed?”

  “What changed is you”—she thrust a finger at him—“you want to be like them. You want money. You want to stop fighting. You want to scrape at dirt and be ruled by other people. You want to be normal and you’re not.”

  “I’m one of them. I’m human.”

  His voice was flimsy, quavering at the edges. His words were trembling, a boulder teetering on the edge of a cliff. And in his eyes, something suggested he didn’t quite believe what he said.

  That suggestion was reflected in Kataria’s eyes and amplified tenfold in her black, snorting laughter.

  “One of them? No,” she said. “And maybe not even human.” She drew closer to him, holding out a hand warily. “You killed that thing, Lenk. You killed what mortal weapons couldn’t. You’re not normal. I don’t know what you are and I’ve never cared up until now. But I know you’re not one of them.”

  Her hand settled upon his shoulder. He did not return the touch. The smile he offered was soft, trembling.

  Weak.

  “And I liked it when you thought that, too,” she said.

  “Then, what am I?” he asked softly. “I can kill. I can murder. I can make things that don’t bleed, bleed. And you want me to hold onto this?”

  “I want you to be true to yourself.”

  “I don’t even know what myself is,” he all but roared. “Do you have any idea what it was like to kill that demon?”

  She opened her mouth to speak; he cut her off.

  “They don’t bleed like people. They don’t die like people. Because they don’t remember what pain is like. And so when they get hurt, it’s that kind of pain that only someone who thought he was invincible can feel. Their pain is so loud. It’s so powerful. It’s… it’s pure.” He looked at his hands. They were shaking. “When you cause that pain, you can feel it; you can taste it. And I did. You know what I felt?”

  She didn’t bother to speak this time. He looked at her, all cold, all quiet.

  “Fantastic,” he whispered. “I felt fantastic. Like everything else that I’ve been thinking and feeling just fell into some perfect shape the moment I feel blood on my face.” His voice began to run hoarse. “And the more I do it, the more normal I feel and the more dead people there are in my dreams.”

  His voice faded. His lips went dry. His skin felt as though it were sand. The words hurt to speak, and the tears forming at the edges of his eyes felt unbearably hot as they slid down his cheeks.

  “And I… I can’t keep doing that,” he said. “I can’t keep killing people. I can’t keep feeling this way. And for you to tell me that I have to choose between you and… and…”

  Something deep within him shook as though it might break if he spoke another word.

  “I might not be like them, now or ever,” he said softly. “But I can’t just live like I do
n’t want to be.”

  And Kataria said nothing.

  She looked at him, as she often did, with a gaze unwavering. There were no tears at the corners of her eyes. There was no trembling of her lip, no frailty in her body. What she felt, he knew, was not something one shed tears over. What she felt was something one shed blood over.

  And so she was silent as she removed her hat.

  She said nothing as she reached behind her head, wove fingers into the tousled mane of golden braids, and undid the bindings that secured the feathers to her hair.

  She said nothing as she plucked a long, white one from her hair, took his hand, and laid it gently in his palm.

  She said nothing. Not as she turned from him to walk away, never looking back as she vanished into the darkness.

  THIRTEEN

  SYMPHONIES FOR DEAD MEN

  Mundas did not know the young man’s name, nor did he care to.

  They were all alike, these people. Their bodies may have been different, of course: some older, some younger, some men, some women. Mentally, though, they were all the same as that man who stood up as his name was called.

  They were desperate. They were reckless. They had no idea what they were doing here beyond the fact that none of them could live another moment in the lives they had been born into.

  It was that utter desire to be in anyone else’s skin that made that young man rise from the crowd of hundreds that looked just like him. It was that sole trait that made Mundas continue to stand on the balcony and observe, as he had done for every young man, for the past two years.

  “Kapira, Kapira, Kapira…”

  The chant began almost immediately as the young man rose. Amidst the crowd of the black-shrouded Khovura, their many skins hidden behind many veils, a long gap appeared in the mass of flesh.

  And the young man began to walk.

  In the vast, rock-hewn hall, he was watched. By his fellow Khovura, kneeling upon the floor and staring with envy in their eyes. By the many hard-faced statues carved out of sandstone to march the walls of the hall, granite frowns observing his progress. And by Mundas, from a spot wedged neatly between two of those statues, who watched him closely.