by Chris Braak
“Fine.” Skinner said. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s just, I’m sure you’d be welcome. Even if it’s just for a few days. We haven’t much, of course, but…”
Skinner waved her off, flushed a little with shame, but still too angry to apologize. “Fine.”
This was how Elizabeth Skinner found herself in Bluewater, in one of the ramshackle tenements inhabited by Trowth’s indige citizens. Bluewater was a site of frequent skirmishes in the Architecture War, but little strategic value, and the whole thing had, in recent years, fallen into the gauche and modern style of the Ennering-Vies. Or so Skinner was told; she had little personal interest in the architecture of the city beyond which families preferred high ceilings, as this affected her telerhythmia. Valentine had once tried to explain the many different styles and aesthetic philosophies that underpinned Trowth’s most complex and byzantine feud, but he might as well have been describing castles on the moon for all Skinner cared.
The Ennering-Vies preferred low ceilings, which made Karine’s family home cramped and hot, and preferred not to spend very much money on houses in Bluewater, which made them leaky and humid. This discomfort was compounded by the unusual numbers that the Akori presented. This group was how Karine introduced them-though she also took the time to provide a given name for every person present, Skinner had not been able to remember any except for Pogo-and Skinner was not sure if “Akori” was a patronym, or some manner of clan affiliation, or simply a regional appellation. Certainly, the tiny house was filled with far more people than might reasonably be expected in any immediately family. Twenty-two at the least, by Skinner’s count, though the noise and the panoply of voices made it difficult to be sure.
Though she was determined to spend the night sulking, one of Karine’s relatives-possibly an uncle or an older cousin-was determined to cheer her up. This was Pogo, and his constant overtures of good cheer were the reason that Skinner remembered his name. Karine had introduced the man as the ramo, which Skinner recalled was some kind of priest. Hardly a minute passed that he wasn’t regaling her with a story about how he had to stab Jorgi once for violating the tabu, or the time he’d found a sixty crown note in the gutter. When he wasn’t telling stories, he was pressing cups of hot mulled wine into Skinner’s hand, or offering her a bowl of starchy fish soup. His charm was aggressive and very nearly contagious, though Skinner struggled hard against it.
In truth, she was happy to just hear someone speaking Trowthi; the family spoke Indt incomprehensibly rapidly, and the only words of that strange tongue that Skinner knew were certain profanities she had hear Karine utter in times of distress. While they found liberal use in conversation, they did not lend any particular clarity to the topic under discussion. Certain words, like malaka, which Skinner knew for a fact to be a malign slander regarding the gender and species of a person’s sexual partners, were used with verve and laughter, belying the word’s clear intent; others, like lobber, which was the slang term that the Indige used for the Lobstermen and ought to be fairly neutral in its value, was said with the sort of unadulterated venom that one would suppose was ordinarily reserved only for the worst malakas.
Only the strongest and most committed of miseries can withstand such a relentless onslaught of charity and hospitality, and Skinner found her resolve weakening. The hatred she felt towards the Emperor was forgotten quickly, of course; her anxiety about her future took longer, but it, too, began to evaporate after the fifth time that Pogo tried to tell his “Fat Trolljrman” jokes. Only an icy pain in her heart when she thought of Valentine remained. The thin layer of ichor beneath the silver plate on her eyes had dissolved her tears before they could reach her cheeks, but she’d shed them, nonetheless, and still sometimes felt more coming. It wasn’t that she had liked Valentine, precisely. He had, in fact, been more than a little annoying. It was just that she missed him, as though she’d grown accustomed to his bumbling good nature. For all the petty inconveniences he’d caused (and Skinner couldn’t help but feel guilty recalling them, knowing that he had lost his life seeking to provide her one great convenience) Valentine had been a good man, and the world always suffers when a good man dies.
Skinner coughed, and realized that she hadn’t been listening to Pogo’s joke.
“You see?” He was saying. “Because he wanted grapes. Haha!”
“Yes, it’s very funny.”
“I know,” Pogo said. “I try and tell Jorgi”-this was the man that he’d stabbed in the leg two weeks ago-“This is a funny joke, I tell him. He doesn’t listen, though. Stupid, huh!”
“Oh, Miss Skinner!” Karine’s voice sprang up out of the forest of Indt. “Do you know this?” The indige girl passed her a wooden object, which Skinner ascertained to be some kind of stringed instrument; like a small guitar, but with a teardrop-shaped body. “I have seen you play something like it. Aga bought it-” she added, not disguising her contempt for Aga’s poor financial decisions.
“-but he doesn’t know how to play it or even tune it.”
Aga responded with an impassioned defense in Indt.
“Well, it’s because you are an idiot, Aga. Miss Skinner, do you know anything about it?”
Skinner lightly touched the instrument, counted the frets, plucked at the strings. “Well, it’s basically like my guitar, but with four strings, instead of six, and a little smaller. These three strings are tuned in fourths, this middle one is tuned to the third of the string below it.” She plucked at the strings again, then fiddled with the tuning keys until they made a proper chord. “Not out of tune at all.” She smiled slyly. “Good choice, Aga.”
“Oh, please don’t get him started, miss, or I’ll never heard the end of it.” The entire room-all twenty-two or so indige cousins held their breath expectantly. “Can…can you play it?”
“Karine, I can’t. I don’t even know…”
Pogo interrupted, saying something softly to Karine in their native language. Karine responded enthusiastically, then said to Skinner. “Please, miss? One song, just to show Aga how to do it, then he’ll play it for the rest of the night.”
Skinner grimaced at the thought of that, but relented. She hadn’t had the chance to play for several days, and it wasn’t all that dissimilar from the guitar. It was practically the same thing, really. “All right. I guess. Let’s see. Something simple, obviously.” She plucked aimlessly for a few seconds, then began to strum the chords for “By Sacred Text Redeemed”-an old rondel that had been one of her favorites. The instrument had a bright, jangling sound, that gave the song a sense of whimsy lacking in most interpretations.
After the first refrain, one of the men began humming a counterpoint in a low tenor. Another began tapping on the table. Two of the women joined in, taking turns switching between soprano and alto parts. They sang in Indt; the words flowed like water. The women invented melodic variations on the spot. More voices joined in, as the whole family took turns playing with the song. When there was a pause, Skinner grinned wildly, and began improvising her own tune, and a mad joy bubbled up inside her as she did, so that by the time the song ended she couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
Skinner played again.
Thirty-One
Fletcher had managed to preserve a fat cigar during the interminable voyage to the Dragon Isles, and he’d lit it up while they rowed ashore in the longboats. The cherry glowed red, almost unnoticed in the morning light, while the men passed it around and sucked on smoke. They were silent, grimly silent, unwilling to break the tension even for a laugh. Fletcher looked the worst-he was pale and twitched, and his eyes kept darting around, scouring the unforgiving landscape of the island of Karcaag, looking for Word only knew what.
Cook wasn’t much better, though. He sat still, but sweated abominably; before the men had even clambered into the longboats, he was already soaked through with salt water. Even Sergeant Garret was dead silent, and the fact that the men were free from his constant haranguing was a small mercy.
Two thousand marines climbed onto the pristine white beaches. Rocky cliffs reared above them, a dusty trail switching back and forth across their faces. Atop the cliffs was the city of Kaarcag itself, walled, blocky, shrouded in mist and impenetrable. This was the home of one of the Dragon Princes, and whatever manner of creatures he shared his island with. It was surely not all reanimates, and yet Beckett found it hard to believe that there were men there, living, human men who would willingly submit themselves to being cattle for the Dragon Prince’s thirst for blood.
The island was as dry as a desert. There was no life visible-no small scurrying rodents, no birds, hardly any plants except for the elephant roses, which looked like the dismembered feet of their namesakes. These had no blossoms or leaves, only thick gray stalks and roots that plunged directly into the rock. Far above, on the cliffline, some strange, twisted trees dotted the landscape.
The sun rose and beat heavily on the men as they disembarked. For two hundred years, the Sarkany Rend had plagued the empire, raiding Trowth’s ships, campaigning against Trowth’s ambitions, trying to seize territory claimed by the Empire. Only once, six months before, had Trowth ever delivered a resounding defeat to the Dragon Princes, chasing them from the nation’s shores in a scheme engineered by Mr. Stitch himself-long mistrusted by the people of his country, Stitch had finally earned their acclaim by thrashing the armada of the same princes that many people believed he secretly served. After Abenhrad, there was no question whose side Stitch was on, and no question as to how much the Empire valued him.
Now, for the first time in history, Trowth controlled the Sanguine Straits. Though Stitch had cautioned against an expedition, Arcon III Vie-Gorgon vowed that he would strike at the very heart of the Dragon Isles. Such a feat was uniformly deemed impossible and, indeed, it proved to be so. Kaarcag was the northernmost of the Isles, practically an outpost, and the only piece within striking distance.
Beckett drew long on the cigar, felt the hot smoke lacerate his lungs. He could feel his heart jumping in his chest, and was unaccountably frightened that someone might notice his quickened pulse. He passed the cigar back to Fletcher and took his shift on the oars, as they beached the longboat. The men shipped their oars and leapt into the soft sand. They took twenty minutes to unload muskets, swords, cannons, and packs, and formed up at the foot of the hills. They had been told that the daylight hours were the best time to strike at the Dragon Princes, who must be asleep in their crypts when the sun rose. The island seemed deserted enough-there was widespread speculation, nervous chatter that flitted among the soldiers, that perhaps the main body of their forces was elsewhere. Perhaps the danger of the princes had been exaggerated through the years. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so hard after all.
It was a lie, and they all knew it. You couldn’t see the shores of Kaarcag, barren of life, of weapons, of fortification, and not know that Czarneck, the chimericist, was waiting for them.
They marched up the hill double-time, and when no defenders had appeared, the men grew confident. They told jokes. Beckett, to his dismay, was near the end of the line-what veterans called the column’s ass. He could see a black river of marines on the march, eager to strike down Trowth’s long-hated enemy.
“…I told him that’s not my cutlery, son, that’s my knife,” Fletcher said, grinning, when the voices came. The men ahead surged back, and the drums beat an erratic time. “What? What is that?” Something was happening to the drummers up the line; some tried to keep tempo, others swung erratically about, trying to fight off…smoke? What looked like smoke, or some tiny foglets.
There was an ominous whistling then, and more men screamed. Dull thuds. And then bodies rose up from the dust.
Thousands of them, everywhere, clawing up from the ground, men with concave skulls (Dummies, Beckett had time to think, they’re called Dummies, men bred with holes in their brains), bursting from the earth and setting about the marines with teeth and nail, some with guns that they fired aimless into the host, but their imprecision didn’t matter, there were many, too many of them, ten thousand or more.
(“What is that?” Fletcher asked again, before a bullet hit him in the side of the face. He stared blankly, still uncomprehending, as blood trickled from his nose.)
The tide turned and the men ran, Beckett trying to keep his feet in the vanished discipline and fleeing soldiers. They ran for the boats, as more dummies sprang up, sinking crooked yellow teeth into necks and arms.
(A dummy clutched at Beckett’s arm, and he saw the thing’s face, the livid purple dent about its left eye, the wall-eyed gaze, sweaty drooling thing, Beckett smashed at its face with the butt of its gun until it let go.)
More fog came then, green and swirling like a living thing. It is a living thing, Beckett realized this, too, as his mind had detached itself from the frenzied rush for the boats, commenting with distant curiosity. Czarneck is the chimericist. Repurposing living things is his nature. More teeth and hands clutched at him, while he tried to wrap his scarf around his mouth, to keep the gas out.
Cook stared at him, fallen to the ground. Beckett tugged at his arm. “On your feet,” he shouted, voice muffled by his scarf, “come on, soldier, up!” The green fog crawled from Cook’s nostrils, drawing blood out with it, suspending it in tiny drops in the air. More cannons sounded, and more detonations. The green fog rose in pillars, and reached out with crooked tendrils for tender lungs.
Blood landed on the soil, and the elephant roses bloomed in waves, slow explosions of tiny red flowers; the fat dry stumps sucking up the last of the living men. A carpet of red roses spread out from the trail, washed over the island’s surface, followed the fleeing marines, as the dummies harassed them.
Beckett made it back to the boats, tried to drag Sergeant Garret back in with him. He held on to the Sergeant’s arms, braced his body against the gunwhale, tried to pull him on board. Garret opened his mouth, but no sound came out, only a coughing sound (Or is that the guns? Is he making any sound?). Dark stains appeared beneath his nose, and at first Beckett thought it was blood, but it wasn’t blood it was two thin, dark green vines that grew from inside his head and reached back up towards his face, sprouting thorns and scratching at his eyes. They wrapped around Beckett’s arms, too, plunged their jagged thorns in and the pain was incomprehensible.
Beckett screamed but held on, held on as they crept up his forearms like fire and Garrett began thrashing madly, held on as the crept up past his elbows and he convulsed…tried to hold on but couldn’t, he let Garrett go and the sergeant’s weight wrenched the thorns free from Beckett’s arms. Garrett fell back into the water, arms still reaching out, face still imploring for succor, vines and waves swallowing him up.
The sun beat down on them, all unmoved by the sight. As the longboat skimmed into the water, Beckett saw Kaarcag, once dead brown and gray, now red and beautiful with blood and roses in the morning light.
Thirty-Two
Back when there were still newspapers, agitators of various stripes and dispositions would often argue that one or more laws, or failures of law, or events or institutions or what have you were absolutely essential to the stability of the city. Essays on the subject-suggesting that a failure to support the new tariff legislation on linen would lead to the collapse of the Empire within the year, or that permitting the Working Woman to return to gainful employment would bring about the city’s imminent doom, or that if the Public Theater’s production of The Country Midwife were not cancelled at once then an entire generation of children would grow up to be moral degenerates-were actually quite common. In the cut-throat world of “printed materials sold on street corners,” it was always the most alarmist demagogue who received the most attention, and therefore the highest sales. Consequently, Trowth’s doom was predicted every three or four days, and so far these street-corner prognosticators had never quite seen their predictions born out.
Perhaps this is because no contributor to the broadsheet ecosphere had ever considered the fact that t
he Empire’s integrity might rest on the back of one crusty old detective in the Coroners Division of the Royal Guard. Had broadsheets and streetcorner pamphlets still been legal, they would be filled with dire warnings about impending catastrophe, now that Elijah Beckett had disappeared. In truth, they’d probably be closer to the truth with these predictions than ever, as chaos swept rapidly through the city in the old detective’s absence. Without Beckett’s brutal, guiding will, the army that he’d assembled quickly dissolved into a mass of vigilantes. They attempted to continue with Beckett’s raids, though guided now by fervor instead of intelligence. They raided docks and offices, started riots with gangs and stevedores.
Not a day went by without at least one bloody, vicious fight breaking out in the streets-some unacceptably close to New Bank or the Royal district. Of course, because there was no longer any news, no one had any idea where the fights were occurring, or when, or why. Numbers and violence were magnified by gossip, which served to be the only entertainment that anyone had left. It was fairly uncommon for people to leave their homes very often in the avalanche of rainfall that constituted late spring, but even these rare trips had been curtailed. People stayed in their homes, feeling besieged, making plans for escape or emigration, or otherwise simply hunkering down and crossing their fingers.