by Sam Sykes
“Tastes fine,” Lenk lied through a mouthful, though the grimace that followed his swallow betrayed him. “Better than eating a crossbow bolt, anyway.”
“Yes, I heard about tonight’s…” Mocca slid into a hum, making a vague gesture. “What would you call it? ‘Debacle’ is too tame a word; ‘catastrophe’ has a rather inappropriately playful connotation…”
Too tired to humor Mocca, Lenk fell back into the sofa and felt something cold brush against his leg. He looked down and saw his sword, exactly where he had left it propped when he had come in. It leaned against his leg, hilt staring up at him like an overaffectionate dog. Out of pure habit, he picked it up and drew it from its scabbard.
He hadn’t looked it over in days; there were new nicks, scratches, a spot of blood he hadn’t wiped away yet. His hand unconsciously reached for a napkin from the tray of fruit and began to rub the spot clean. Its rhythm felt so smooth, so natural, he hardly noticed doing it.
Just as he hardly noticed Mocca clearing his throat.
“Come now, Lenk,” Mocca chided. “Is a chunk of steel really so much more entertaining than conversation with me?” He smiled teasingly. “You hold it like your child.”
Lenk paused and looked at himself in its reflection. A dead man’s tired eyes stared back at him and he sighed.
“When I left Steadbrook”—he caught himself—“what was left of Steadbrook, this sword was all I had. Parents gone, someone attacked in the night; I don’t know. I sifted through the ashes the next morning, looking for their bodies, but all I found was the sword. I picked it up and started heading west. I guess I thought a man could find some coin so long as he had a blade.
“I found people. Found Denaos in Redgate, after I came out of the Silesrian, when he tried to rob me, found Asper when she tried to stop him. Picked up Dreadaeleon when he was thrown out of his tower, pulled Gariath out of a hole between there and Muraska.” He bit his lower lip. “They weren’t coin.” He watched his face sink in the steel. “Lost them just as easily, though.”
“And when did you meet her?” Mocca asked. “When did you meet Kataria?”
“The Silesrian. I found her first, actually.” He shook his head. “She found me, anyway. Four days in, food and water run out, sleeping on a bed of lichen with a rock for a pillow; and I wake up to her sitting on top of me, looking at me like I’m the weirdest thing she ever saw.” He chuckled. “I guess maybe I was. She said I was so loud she could have found me miles away. In the dark. Blindfolded.”
“In the dark…” Mocca furrowed his brow. “And blindfolded? That doesn’t make any—”
“Yeah, I know; I thought it was weird, too. I thought she was weird. Hell, I was terrified. I remembered enough from my parents to know what they told me shicts did to humans on their land. But I couldn’t get to my sword and she was sitting on me, so… you know.”
“Of course. What happened next?”
“She led me out. Took another four days. She showed me deer trails, showed me where to find food and water, told me about her tribe, her life”—he hesitated—“her father. Wouldn’t shut up about how easily she could kill me. You know, if she wanted to. She walked with me all the way to the edge of that dark forest, then kept right on walking out into the daylight with me.”
When he looked up, he saw that Mocca’s smirk had grown especially obnoxious.
“What?” he demanded.
“You’re smiling,” Mocca replied.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the steel, just in time to see a wistful smile flee from his features. Left in its wake was something soft, sad, and weary.
“Yeah, well…” He scabbarded his blade and tossed it onto the far end of the sofa. “She was with me then.”
“She’s with you now.”
Lenk glanced down the hall where she had disappeared. “She says that.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you want to?”
He leaned forward and stared down at the floor, and the silence spoke for him. Mocca leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers before him.
“Then,” Mocca said softly, “that has to be enough.”
Lenk’s heart rose at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall. But when he looked at the doorway, it was only Sheffu who emerged from the darkness, wielding a small oil lamp in his hand.
“You are still up,” Sheffu observed.
The fasha’s composure seemed to have returned with his clothes. Once again, he was swaddled beneath layers of dingy silk robes and veils, leaving visible only amber eyes that flashed with their familiar enigma.
“Can’t sleep,” Lenk replied.
“Force yourself to,” Sheffu said. “Tonight, the city bleeds. Tomorrow, it will stanch its wounds and start looking for someone to blame. Every way out of the city will be watched by a soldier or a thief, and all of them will be happy to claim your head. We must leave at dawn.”
“Do we have a plan?” Lenk asked.
“My last source of revenue is a small rice farm a few miles from the city. It will serve, but not for long. There, you may rest a few days and recover your strength while I formulate what we must do next.”
“And that is?”
“Forgotten cities of long-dead God-Kings, sadly, are not listed on many maps. I must find out where you are going and then find a way to secure passage for you and your shict. Getting two people into the Forbidden East is not a cheap endeavor.”
“Then you’re not going to enjoy finding passage for three,” Lenk said.
“Pardon, shkainai?” Sheffu raised a single brow.
“I know I’m involved in this,” Lenk said, “and I know that I can help fix it, if what you say is true; but there’s no way I could have come this far without Mocca.”
He glanced across to the chair and flashed his companion a smile. It seemed a tad odd, he thought, that Mocca should look as utterly panic-stricken as he did at that moment. But then again, being dragged into adventure always took one by surprise, didn’t it?
And no one entered adventure ever, save by dragging.
“Wherever I go,” Lenk said, folding his arms with an air of finality, “so does Mocca.”
He hadn’t expected that statement to go unchallenged. He expected Mocca to leap out of his chair and protest being inducted into this madness. He expected Sheffu to scoff at the idea of buying passage for three individuals. He expected himself to interrupt everyone and back out and go running into the streets, away from all of this.
What he hadn’t expected was what Sheffu actually said.
“Who is Mocca?”
Lenk furrowed his brow. “Your guest?” He gestured at the chair. “You know?”
Sheffu looked at the chair for a long moment, his gaze completely blank. A long sigh sent his veil fluttering at he looked back at Lenk.
“Perhaps it is just the stress of tonight, yes?” Sheffu asked. “You are babbling nonsense, seeing things.”
“No, I’m…” He looked intently at Mocca. Mocca, in turn, flashed a look somewhere between panic and a sheepish smirk. “I don’t… but…”
“At dawn, Lenk,” Sheffu said, turning to leave back down the hall. “Sleep well. Be less crazy in the morning.”
The young man was left staring at the chair, mouth agape, blinking dumbly. The light was good in this room. Sheffu was not deranged. Had he just not seen Mocca? But then, why hadn’t he recognized the name? Had Mocca given him a false one? Had Mocca been lying this whole time?
The questions came not as a flood, but as rocks upon which the water broke. Each one struck him, robbed him of his breath, made his head swim.
Why did he look at Mocca as though he wasn’t there?
Why did he look at me as though I was crazy?
Why hasn’t anyone ever acknowledged Mocca?
Why has Mocca never touched anything besides a chair?
And why, he thought, did he know Kataria’s name when I never told it to him?
Out of pure habit, Lenk reached for his sword and drew it from its scabbard.
“I suppose,” Mocca said slowly, in the way one would speak to a snarling animal, “you’ll want an explanation for this. It’s quite simple, you see—”
Lenk rose from his sofa, the sword naked in his hand. He drew it back. Mocca threw up his hands and shouted out.
“Now, Lenk, wait just a moment, I—”
Lenk leapt and thrust the blade. It drove through Mocca’s chest, burst out between his shoulder blades, cut through the cloth and wood of the chair, and emerged out the back. He left it there, impaled through a man and a piece of furniture, and stepped back, speechless.
Mocca, without a single drop of blood upon him, stared back at Lenk. He leaned back in his chair and, for a moment, as a mote of dust burned in a candle’s flame and the shadows shifted across his face, something about Mocca seemed very hard and very old.
“That,” Mocca said through a long and tired sigh, “was unnecessary.”
The man pulled himself out of the chair, passing through the blade as though it were as airy and insubstantial as he. He stepped away, not so much as a single thread of his robe out of place, and folded his hands in front of him.
Lenk stepped backward, tripped on the table, and collapsed. He couldn’t feel his wound protest, couldn’t feel his breath leave him, couldn’t even feel the need to blink as he scrambled onto the couch and further away from Mocca.
Or whatever Mocca was.
“This is why I had hoped to explain it to you earlier,” Mocca said, sighing. “To avoid all this—”he flitted a hand in Lenk’s general direction—“melodrama.”
“Stay back!” Lenk shouted.
“Or what? You’ll ruin another awful piece of furniture and hope my aesthetics bleed?” He smiled softly at Lenk, exactly as he always did, yet now all Lenk could see were the shadows left by his grin. “I’ve been with you this whole time, Lenk, even when you couldn’t see me. If I wanted you dead, I would have at least tried.”
Lenk stared until his eyes and lungs could not take it. He shut his eyes, let out a slow, staggered breath, and gasped.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“You know who I am, Lenk.”
He racked a brain that suddenly felt very feverish, trying to understand what was happening to him while at the same time trying to deny that it was happening to him. He shook his head, words and images tumbling through his skull, crashing off of each other; and all the while Mocca’s smile grew broader and darker.
“Say it. It will make you feel better.”
And then it hit him.
Such an innocuous sentence that had been uttered by Sheffu when he had first met the fasha and his book.
He speaks through visions.
Lenk swallowed hard. His mouth felt dry. The word pried itself out of his lips and simply fell to the floor.
“Khoth-Kapira.”
Mocca inclined his head slowly, raised it. “Hello, Lenk.”
“Disciple to His Will,” Lenk babbled, unable to hold back the words spilling from mind to mouth, “God-King, Shaper of Flesh, Aeon, demon!”
“Shepherd of Men, Servant to Gods, and so on and so on.” Mocca sighed. “So many names I’ve collected over the years. I like ‘Mocca’ the best.”
Stunned silence hung between them. Or at least, stunned on Lenk’s end. Mocca’s quiescence was something softer, a considerate moment as if to let Lenk gather his wits. And yet Lenk still started when Mocca spoke, even if his voice was just as soft.
“Ask me,” he said.
“Ask you… what?”
“You know what.”
Lenk did know what. And yet he desperately did not want to know what. The words, he had to force from his lips now, he had to know.
“Is it true?” he asked.
“Yes,” Mocca said.
“All of it? All of what Sheffu says?”
“Mostly,” Mocca replied.
“Obviously,” Lenk said, rubbing his head. “‘He speaks through visions.’ You’ve been in my head this whole time, just like the Khovura, turning me into some kind of lunatic fanatic, killing people through me.”
“No.” Mocca’s voice was firm, his eyes hard. “I speak to you through visions, yes, as I speak to them. But I cannot control you, or them, or anyone. All those deaths, all this blood, was not my doing.” He extended his hands. “All I can tell you is what you’re already thinking.”
“And what am I thinking, then?”
He regretted asking the moment the words left his lips, but did not truly fear doing so until he saw Mocca’s smile return.
“You want me to fix things.”
“I don’t want a demon’s help,” Lenk said, rising up and moving to stalk away. After a moment, he turned and began to pace instead. “I’ve fought demons, I’ve killed demons. I do kill demons.”
“Indeed, you do. Do you remember the first one you killed? The first one you ever killed?” Mocca watched him pace. “Do you remember how it cried out, like a child? How it wept and begged you to stop hurting it? It couldn’t at all remember pain, and you reintroduced it. Did you hear that?” He smiled. “Because I did. I heard it echo through hell. That was the first time I heard your name.” He shook his head. “But not the last.”
“No?” Lenk whirled on him, stormed to the chair, and pulled his sword free. He held it up before him. “And what about your followers? Your Disciples? The Khovura? Did you hear it when I put this in them? Did you hear it when I killed them?”
Mocca’s smile faded. His voice choked in his throat. “I did.”
“And what about when they were howling for my blood? When those they killed were crying out? Did you hear that?”
“I heard it. I hear them all. I hear them now, wherever they are. They are screaming for me even now.”
“Then go answer them. If you’re a real God-King-Whatever, go deliver them.”
“I am doing so,” Mocca said. “When they speak to me, Lenk, they do not ask for power; they do not ask for wealth; they do not ask for blood. They ask of me what they asked of their Gods who did not listen.” He turned and looked long out the window. “They ask ‘save me.’”
“And you gave them fire and steel.”
“This city is dying.” Mocca whirled on Lenk, anger flashing in his eyes. “But not by flame or steel. It was dying long before that. It’s just one tumor growing from a festering patch of disease. Tonight, there is fire, there is steel, and there is blood. But they have been screaming for much longer than one night. I have had eternity to hear them.”
“I’ve met a lot of people promising deliverance,” Lenk said. “I came here looking for it myself. If it’s in this city, I couldn’t find it.”
“You looked with the edge of your sword,” Mocca said. “Look now with your eyes. Look with your eyes. Look upon me.” He gestured to himself. “And look upon salvation.”
“Whose?”
“Everyone’s. What Sheffu said is true. I did see my own end coming, as I saw my own resurrection. I was supposed to rise ten days ago, but something happened.”
Lenk blinked. “That was the day I arrived.”
“And I remembered your name,” Mocca said. “And I saw you slay my Disciples and the people who cry out for me. And I know the demons who came before me, who tried to slay you and failed. So I stayed down in this pit and called out to you.”
He stepped closer and reached out as if to touch Lenk. The young man flinched away and Mocca winced, as though struck. He regained his composure, folding his hands.
“I am coming back, Lenk. I won’t be so arrogant as to suggest you can’t stop me. If you wanted to, you could hurt me, possibly kill me, and certainly kill many of those who cry out to me. I come to you not as the God-King, nor even as Khoth-Kapira, but as Mocca.”
He extended his hands to the side and bowed low before Lenk.
“And I am asking you to let me return.”
“You’re a d
emon,” Lenk said. “I’ve seen what your kind does. I’ve seen what your monsters have done.”
“And I do not blame you for slaying them, though it pains me. But how many have my followers slain, truly?”
“There was the Souk—” Lenk said.
“Where they waged war on a gang of thieves who bleed the city for coin.”
“And Ghoukha’s—”
“Where it was your companion who burned them alive.”
“And tonight—”
“Where it is people who kill in the name of Gods, not demons.” He shook his head. “My hands are not clean. I will not try to convince you otherwise. My people have killed in my name. But not nearly as many as others have killed in the name of loftier titles.
“Your priests have told you that this world was made by your Gods for you. That’s not entirely a lie. But look at it now. Look at the city burning. See the armies drowning the streets in blood, see the people dying in squalor, see their lives coming and going like candles in the wind and watching them fall to their knees and praise the Gods for giving them this hell.
“Now imagine that across a single world and a thousand centuries. Clearly, somewhere in all that time, your Gods have failed you.”
He clasped his hands and held them up before him.
“Let me fix this.”
The intelligent thing to do, Lenk knew, would be to shut his ears to the words of a demon.
No, a more intelligent thing to do would be to go to Sheffu, explain all of this in slow, painstaking detail, twice, and then see what could be done about it.
And yet maybe the best thing of all would be to just go to Kataria’s room, climb into bed beside her, breathe in her scent, sleep forever, and never wake up.
“Would you like to know what was on the note she wrote?”
Lenk’s attention was seized by Mocca’s words. The man smiled softly, encouragingly, all the malice having fled from his grin.
“Would you like to know what she’s thinking? Who she’s dreaming of? What her terrors are? What she wants to hear you say tomorrow to make it all better?”
“No!” Lenk had to restrain himself from swinging his sword at Mocca, if only because it would aggravate his wound. “You stay out of her head.”