The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “Ask me what I’m going to do when I get back,” he said.

  “What?” Kudj asked.

  “I’m going to burn this city to the ground.”

  “How?”

  He snorted. “I’ll find a way.” He turned and began to stalk away. “There’s plenty of stew left. It tastes awful.”

  He had begun to climb the next dune when Kudj bellowed after him. “Squib know way around desert?”

  “No.”

  He had reached its peak when Kudj called again. “Squib want help?”

  He didn’t say no.

  Kudj took the pot in one hand and upended it into his maw. When it was drained dry, he hurled it aside, scraped sand over the fire, and let out a tremendous belch. He rose to his feet, rested on his knuckles, and came clambering after Gariath.

  “Kudj not so fond of city life, after all,” he said. “Kudj’s mother paint inaccurate portrait of wonder and mystery.” He glanced down at Gariath and the dragonman looked up, unused to the sensation of doing so. “Maybe squib need friend in the desert?”

  Gariath did not “need.”

  Need was something that humans did. They needed their cities. They needed their coins. They needed their silks and their wars and their societies more than they needed air.

  More than they had needed him.

  Gariath did not need.

  But as he trudged across the sand and as Kudj’s shadow fell over him, he did not say no.

  FORTY-FOUR

  THE FASHA AND THE FOOL

  As the world burned, they laughed.

  Beneath a halo of lamplight, they giggled as they chased each other around the lamppost. He, young and carefree with hair as long and silky as his clothing. She, tittering behind an elaborately painted face as she evaded his reaching hands. She darted this way and then that; he tried to snatch her about the waist. Finally, she relented and was pulled into his arms, laughing.

  Drunk on expensive foreign liquors—or maybe just each other’s company—they spun in lazy circles, laughing merrily. They came to a slow stop, staring into each other’s eyes for the briefest of moment before they came together in a kiss, smearing the paint on their faces as they did.

  And they swayed in each other’s arms as the breeze carried stray ashes from someone’s home over the wall to fall on them like black snow.

  Lenk supposed he couldn’t blame them. They were nobles of Silktown, after all, as unaware of the violence going on beyond their walls as they were of him observing them from the manse’s window.

  And yet, he wondered: Had they not smelled the smoke? Could they not hear the screams? Could the bloodshed really be so far away that no one here could hear it? Or did they simply find it easy to ignore?

  Here in Silktown, a wealthy man’s moonrise was clear and quiet, painting silver light upon the houses that could afford peace.

  There was a flash of movement from the nearby wall. A pair of skinny hands reached over the top, hauling up an equally skinny man. He tumbled over the top of the wall, landing on a lawn not ten paces away from the young lovers. He wore no weapons and there was no room for malice in his eyes behind the hungry desperation.

  The two nobles did not look away from each other as the vagrant crept across the lawn and into the street. He seemed content to ignore them, as well, perhaps just as glad to be free of the rest of the city’s own apocalypse. He looked around, presumably for a safe place to hide.

  The stones shuddered with the force of a bellowing roar. From the edge of Lenk’s vision, he saw one of the colossal gray dragonmen come charging down the street, ax in hand and black eyes fixed upon the vagrant.

  The man held up his hands, lips babbling in a desperate plea. The dragonman’s sole answer, however, was a tremendous upraised foot.

  Coming down.

  Even one story up and behind a pane of glass, Lenk could hear the thick popping sound as the vagrant was crushed beneath the dragonman’s foot and left as a greasy red smear upon the pavement. The dragonman’s lips peeled back in a sneer as he scraped the corpse from his scales.

  With an effete delicacy unbefitting a creature of that size, he stepped aside as the two young nobles broke from their embrace and walked past. Hand in hand, lost in each other’s painted smiles, the lovers strolled daintily down the street, heedless of the dead man they walked over to do so.

  As soon as they were gone, contempt replaced itself on the dragonman’s face. His onyx glare swept upward toward the windows overhead. Lenk ducked beneath the sill and waited there until the thunder of the brute’s footsteps faded.

  In hindsight, coming to the house of Sheffu might not have been the wisest idea, he admitted to himself. True, out there, there were hundreds of foreign soldiers and many more looters and cutthroats and, in here, there were fewer than a dozen of the dragonman mercenaries patrolling the streets of Silktown.

  But when it came to monstrous creatures the size of houses with axes the size of horses, how many did one really need?

  Just one, he told himself. Just one to see you, just one to recognize you. Then it won’t matter who you try to hide behind. Even a fasha won’t be able to save you.

  He leaned against the wall, covered his face with his hands, and breathed in the scent of smoke and sweat on his palms.

  Seeking help here wasn’t a very good plan, he knew. But all his good plans had burned away in fire and bled out on the streets. All that he had left were desperate measures and half-assed rationale.

  Though clearly, if he was in this situation, he couldn’t have had too many good ideas to begin with.

  He hauled himself to his feet, gasping with the effort. His body ached, and somehow the smell of dust and age that permeated the hall seemed to make the sensation that much more acute. He found himself walking much more slowly than usual as he followed the hall of Sheffu’s manse to a sealed door.

  Khaliv spared him an impassive glance as he approached, but did not move away from the door as he leaned against it, arms folded.

  “I need to talk to Sheffu now,” Lenk said, trying to keep the breathlessness from his voice.

  “Soon,” the saccarii replied.

  “I didn’t say I needed to talk to him ‘soon,’ did I?” Lenk snarled, eyelid twitching.

  “Ya didn’t hear me say ‘now,’ did ya?” Khaliv looked less than impressed with Lenk’s display of aggression, merely cocking a brow from behind his veil. “Ya don’t look good, shkainai. Go to the houn with your pointy-eared friend and rest there. I’ll send Eili down with some tea.”

  The thought of standing here before the saccarii, his wound throbbing beneath his bandages and his body begging to be off its feet, was not a tempting one. But the thought of being near Kataria right now was somehow even less so.

  The route Denaos had led them through to Silktown had been harrowing. They had darted past squadrons of Karnerians, beneath flights of Sainite scraws, behind patrolling dragonmen. They had crept through thieves’ alleys and old sewer passages in which shadows breathed and light was forbidden. No ordinary person could be blamed for finding the situation too tense for words.

  But Kataria was far from ordinary. And she hadn’t said a thing.

  Not until Denaos saw them safely to Sheffu’s house, at any rate, at which point she asked Eili for paper and excused herself to the houn. She hadn’t once asked what Lenk was planning to ask Sheffu for. She hadn’t cracked a single joke or commented on his human stupidity. She had looked at him only once during the entire trip.

  She had stopped, dead in her tracks, and simply looked at him, just for a moment, before picking up and walking again.

  And the thought of that look was enough to make him reach out and shove Khaliv aside.

  The saccarii did not deign to pursue Lenk as the young man shouldered his way into the room. Old candles burned in bronze censers hanging overhead, filling the room with the scent of lilac incense and casting an orange glow upon the old stones. Lenk saw Sheffu—or rather, Sheffu’s shadow—from behin
d a paper changing screen over which the fasha’s robe hung.

  “You could not wait?” Sheffu asked. Behind the screen, he poured a jug of water over himself.

  “I needed to talk to you,” Lenk said.

  “And I needed to clean myself,” Sheffu said. “And, to be fair, I was already in the bath when you arrived.”

  “It can wait,” Lenk said. “If you hadn’t noticed, your city’s going to shit.”

  “My city?” Sheffu chuckled blackly. “Not so long ago, you wanted to call this city yours. Now that it’s on fire, it’s mine?” He poured more water over his head. “But yes, I had noticed. Long before it became fashionable to do so.” His shadow tilted as he looked at Lenk through the screen. “And I hear you got yourself in a bit of trouble, hmm?”

  Lenk sighed in exasperation. It hurt.

  “Let’s not drag this out,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “You know what I want from you; I know what you want from me.” When Sheffu did not answer, he allowed himself a mutter. And it hurt. “I need to get out of the city. They know me here and everyone thinks I did it.”

  “Did you?”

  Kind of.

  “No,” he replied. “And I know I turned you down before about searching for Khoth-Kapira. But I can do it now, if you’ll do this for me.”

  “And you think that’s what I want?” Sheffu asked.

  “I do.”

  “Then you were never listening in the first place.” The fasha’s voice took a hard edge. “I spoke of a demon who once ruled a world of his own design with an iron fist and whose word for ‘mortal’ was synonymous with ‘slave’ and ‘food.’ You speak of bargains and brokerings. I asked you to go out and bring me back a way to save a thousand lives. You ask me to save one.”

  “What’s it matter?” Lenk demanded. “It gets done, doesn’t it? Help me and my friend get out of the city and I’ll do what you want.”

  “Before Khoth-Kapira was a demon, He was an Aeon, a servant of the Gods created to shepherd mankind. He was created to serve, He was ordered to watch, and He was given the power of a deity to do so. What did it matter, then? What did it matter until He used that power to become a tyrant? With demons, intent is everything, Lenk.”

  Sheffu’s shadow reclined with a groan as he leaned against the edge of the bathtub.

  “What is to stop you from simply fleeing once you leave the city?” he asked. “For that matter, why couldn’t you just have the Jackal that brought you here get you out?”

  “Denaos isn’t—”

  “Is that the name he goes by now?” Sheffu interrupted.

  “Word will have spread beyond the walls soon,” Lenk said. “Settlements from here to Muraska will know who I am before I even do. I don’t just need your help getting out of the city, I need your help surviving once I’m outside it. I need you.”

  “And if you are caught, what then? Say you are tortured. Say you tell them I helped you. My influence here is shrinking. The other fashas already think me mad and useless. If they find an excuse to carve up what I have left up, they will not hesitate to do so. It is not enough to merely survive.”

  “Well, then, what the hell is enough?” Lenk shouted. “Why can’t it be enough that I’m just willing to do this for you?”

  “Because you are only willing to do it for you. Not me. Not for all the thousands who will die if you don’t. But for you.”

  “You think you’re some saint, then? Just because you know a bit about demons and doomsaying?” Lenk stormed toward the changing screen. “You think the world rests on your shoulders just because you read a book?” He grasped the screen, threw it aside. “Who gave you the—”

  He recognized the amber eyes that stared up at him in alarm, but nothing else. The creature that lounged in the shallow water was not Fasha Sheffu. The creature that rose up, naked skin glistening, was not even human.

  Sheffu was long and thin and gray beneath his robes, his skin patchy with rough spots of flesh reminiscent of scales. His left arm looked almost boneless, hanging at his side. And his right existed only as a hand, the rest of the limb fused to his body by webbed flesh. Hair clung to one side of his head, the other malformed by scaly flesh.

  And when he spoke, a forked tongue slid between long fangs.

  “Perhaps,” he said, “my motives in finding Khoth-Kapira’s powers are not wholly driven by selflessness.” He stepped out of the tub, heedless of Lenk’s terrified backward scramble as he passed. “On behalf of most saccarii, I am most intrigued by the legends regarding his powers of flesh-shaping.”

  Khaliv hurried forward, collecting Sheffu’s dressing robe and wrapping it around him.

  “I was not lying when I said Khoth-Kapira represents a threat to all,” he continued. “I am not lying when I tell you that the lives of thousands rest on you. But if you and I benefit along with those thousands… perhaps that is not such a bad thing. Yes.”

  He looked quite shaky outside of his robes and veil, each step uncertain and shuddering as he made his way to the door. He ran a hand through his hair and scratched at the scaly patch of flesh across his scalp.

  “I can get you out of the city, yes. I can get you to the mountains in the east. I can get you to Khoth-Kapira’s seat of power.” He looked over his shoulder. “And can you, Lenk, get me a way to save my people and yours?”

  Lenk was stunned beyond words, beyond even nodding. Yet somehow, he found enough nerve to swallow hard and bob his head dumbly up and down.

  “Good.” Sheffu wandered out the door, into the hall. “Good.” He walked away, his voice echoing off the stone. “Good.”

  At the second step from the top of the stairs, Lenk froze. He held his breath, steadied himself on one foot, and didn’t even blink for fear that she might hear his eyelids close.

  Kataria knelt near the doorway to Sheffu’s houn, staring through Eili’s veil and into her eyes. She was whispering something Lenk couldn’t hear, and the little saccarii nodded at every word. Swiftly, Kataria slipped a folded-up scrap of paper into the girl’s hand and patted her on the head. Eili tucked the paper into her robe, opened the door, and disappeared out into the streets.

  The door slammed shut. Lenk let out a breath. Kataria’s ears pricked up and she followed, leaping to her feet and whirling about with alarm in her eyes. Her expression softened as her breath left her.

  “Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she said.

  I could never sneak up on you. No one can sneak up on a shict. Isn’t that what you always used to say? What happened?

  He did not ask this, for he feared the answer.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Everything’s fine.”

  Everything isn’t fine. The city’s up in flames, they think I’m responsible, and you weren’t there when it happened. It’s just you and me now and we both know nothing’s fine.

  He did not say this, for he did not want her to confirm it.

  “Did you talk to Sheffu?” she asked.

  “Yeah, he…” He paused and rubbed the back of his neck. It ached. “He says he can get us out of the city. He just needs something from us in return.”

  She hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”

  It’s not okay. Nothing is okay. He’s going to send me out of one hell and into another and I did it because I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t know what you’re doing and I wish someone would just tell me where I fucked this all up.

  He did not say this.

  Instead, he said something much stupider.

  “What did you write?” he asked.

  She stiffened up and pressed herself against the doorway. “What?”

  “In that note you just gave Eili,” he said. “Where did she go?”

  And Kataria looked at him again. Like she had on their way here. She paused, canted her head slightly to the side, and stared at him. Slowly, she closed her eyes and sighed.

  “Do you want me here?” she asked.

&
nbsp; He nodded.

  “Well, I’m here,” she replied.

  Something in the tone of her voice, in the way her eyes lingered on him and her lips curled down at the edges, in the way she turned around and departed down the hall without looking back…

  Something about her frightened him terribly at that moment.

  “Wait. Come back. I don’t care what it was, really. I mean, I do, but… if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I just… I need you right now. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know if I ever did. I need you. Come back.”

  He did say this.

  But if she heard him, she didn’t return. Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed as she disappeared into a nearby bedroom.

  He wanted very much to sleep, as well. But he couldn’t. Deep down, some part of him knew that if he lay down to sleep now, he would never open his eyes.

  So he contented himself with taking in Sheffu’s houn with all its musty furniture, dusty tables, and frayed tapestries. Not so much “modest” as simply “given up,” the room—a large square with wooden floors and drab gray walls—resembled something like a welcoming party at a mausoleum. Candles burned softly in sconces upon the wall, incense tried to cover the scent of dust and age, and the carpet lay drab on the floor.

  Even the food that had been laid out upon a small table looked depressing. Granted, Sheffu hadn’t been expecting them, but still, a fasha should have more than stale flatbread and fruits so dried they were like jerked beef. Still, eating was something to do instead of worrying, so Lenk reached down, plucked a piece of bread, and began to eat.

  “I wouldn’t, if I were you.”

  Lenk glanced up. He wasn’t sure when Mocca had come in, or even if he had been there the whole time. The man in white smirked, easing back in a nearby chair.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, taking a bite.

  “Sheffu decided to show his gratitude for my bravery back at Ghoukha’s house by inviting me to stay for a while.” Mocca gestured to the flatbread. “And I’m fairly certain the servants here scrape up the dust and ash and use it to bake with.”