His thoughts, ever in movement, veered from one possibility to the next. Did he know anyone in requisitions? No. Archaeology? Geology? No. No one in the churches would help him, he felt sure—and their security was tighter than all other departments combined, their oaths the most binding. One could never underestimate their magics, either.
If Pol needed further proof of his desperation, the fact that he considered thievery sufficed.
Suddenly, a possibility presented itself to him. He did know someone in the medicines department, a young man whom he had bedded for a brief time several years previously. A human, beautiful in a thick way, not all that precocious but eager to please. A dark-haired Castan. He worked in the morgue. They had rutted on an examination table, once.
Jorrin? No. Jarres. That was the name. He had confessed to Pol that some of his mates filtered alchemical juices from the human and elderman corpses in their custody. They had made quite a bit of money this way.
Pol left the Esoteric Arts building and angled toward the White Ministry Hospital.
‡
The Avenue of Saints honored those who had died defending the name and nature of Adrash. Statues of men and women, eldermen and human, lined the avenue as it wound through the academy grounds. It was the end of summer, and the vala trees had bloomed copper and purple. Arching over the roadway, they created a perpetual twilight in which the saints took on a sinister bearing.
Evertin The Belligerent appeared ready to jump from his marble base and start hacking away with his greatsword, which scholars claimed he had called Harrowing. Domas Alastetl rested wearily on her throne, a great wound in her side, face so cunningly carved it seemed to move as one passed. And Oilo The Ghost hovered above his plinth of skulls and weapons, a fluid, ferocious form barely recognizable as human.
At the intersection of the Avenue of Saints and Villus Street, the exact center of the academy grounds, stood a statue of Adrash. Pol made a point to visit it every day, for it represented the god during wartime, in his most awful aspect—this, and it reminded Pol of home, where the iconography displayed a harsher edge than in the capitol.
Carved from a block of unveined black granite, the sublimely proportioned god stood prepared to meet an enemy. At first glance his posture seemed to convey an odd calm, but close examination revealed the tension in his neck and shoulders, the flexion of his forearms. His feet rested upon a base designed to look like a sphere of the Needle. Its rims disappeared into the ground and roadway.
The sculptor had dripped molten red gold onto Adrash’s heavily muscled torso and arms: the blood of men and beasts. The god’s left arm and portions of his chest and back had been carved from white marble, and the join between black and white was a sinuous line, showing that the divine armor had begun to sheath his body. Yellow gold covered his eyes. But for the armored section he was naked. The sculptor had endowed him with assets befitting a god.
Pol’s eyes lingered on this detail for a few seconds. Pressing his left fist to his forehead, he bowed deeply before moving on.
He had not always believed in Adrash’s benevolence. What he mirrored as a child could hardly be called faith, and what he rejected as a youth could not be called informed. He had felt as if his mother were forcing him to believe. For many years he had transferred his frustration onto Adrash, who became in his mind a bully of monumental proportions.
When he left his mother’s conservative Adrashism for the academy, he carried some of these sentiments with him. A sixteen-year-old boy, elderman or human, could not be expected to recognize his own arrogance for what it was—especially when that boy had recently arrived from Pusta, the Kingdom of Stol’s exclave on the coast of Knos Min, a virtual world away from the capitol. The boy’s blind arrogance could be a shield against the prejudice of his peers, who thought him a backwater fool.
Quickly adapting to their fighting style, Pol learned showing mercy came back to bite more often than not. So he stopped showing mercy. By the age of eighteen, he had killed seven men in self-defense and fought eleven duels. He became known for his temper and skill, as well as his genius in the magics.
He did not defend the reactionary beliefs of his youth or the people of Pusta, both of which he had long since come to view with amused disdain. Instead, he railed against the rote pronouncements of his teachers and peers, the mindless repetition of dogma. His own faith became a thing of fire and muscle. Adrash would not look kindly upon a weak people, sitting in contemplation, asking for his favor. The god, Pol came to believe, responded to strength. He did not want followers, but leaders.
The Avenue of Saints ended. At Skintree Road, Pol waited for a gilded carriage to pass before crossing the street, though he did not bow to the nobleman or woman inside as strict decorum dictated. An outbound mage, in whose veins elder blood flowed, bowing to an earthbound human? Ludicrous.
Once out of the manicured academy grounds, one could not help notice the change in atmosphere. It stank of human and animal waste, cooking fires, and cheap alchemy. Putrid, human smells, but they bothered Pol not at all. He had become used to the fragrances during his frequent trips out.
You take too many risks, Ebn had told him on more than one occasion. Typical of the outbound mages, she rarely traveled into the city, and never alone. Attacks on eldermen, even in the clear light of day, were not uncommon. But for ascensions into orbit, several of the senior mages had not left the academy in decades.
Pol refused to restrict himself so. Urban Tansot offered a range of products and services unavailable within the confines of institutionalized academia. Inevitably, many experiences had ceased to compel him—drugs, in particular, became superfluous as he grew into his magical talent—but sex had not. Partners were for the taking if an elderman knew where to look.
He reached the hospital, a clean, austere building that contrasted sharply with its dilapidated neighbors—a common sight in Apetia, the most culturally and economically diverse neighborhood in Tansot. Technically part of the academy, White Ministry benefited from its patronage as well as the city’s. Its grounds were immaculately maintained, to Pol’s eyes somewhat overdone. A stereotypical Stoli statue of Adrash, farcically epic and devoid of personality, stood in the front entrance courtyard.
Pol walked past it without a glance.
‡
Jarres had grown a thick beard that did not flatter him and acquired several pounds of muscle that did. His chest strained against the white medicines tunic, and despite his serious intentions Pol found himself mildly aroused. Nothing like an old lover to tempt a man from his course, he knew.
In his estimation of himself, Pol had one major weakness.
“Tanz?” Jarres asked, eyes moving down Pol’s body. “How long’s it been, mate? God, what, two years? You look good.”
Pol smiled. He had forgotten how raggedly the man spoke. Medicine, more than most magics, did not require a surplus of intelligence. The body was relatively simple, after all. During their affair, Pol had picked up more than a passing knowledge of medicines from Jarres—a fact that probably accounted for the relationship’s dissolution. Medical mages guarded their trade secrets every bit as jealously as other disciples of magic.
Pol clasped Jarres’s forearms and kissed his cheeks. “Almost three years, Eamon.” Thank Adrash the other man had spoken his name first. Pol had forgotten that in public Jarres preferred to use second names: the convention in Weas, the city of Jarres’s upbringing. “You look well yourself. You have certainly filled out.”
Jarres laughed, squeezing Pol’s forearms in return. His teeth flashed, straight and white, contrasting with the heavy darkness of his beard. Laugh lines had deepened alongside his nose, around his light blue eyes. Pol remembered why he had been so attracted to the man, and reconsidered his stance on the beard.
They disengaged somewhat awkwardly, and Jarres looked Pol up and down again, one eyebrow quirked.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
Blunt as well as ragged, Pol recalled.
Yet it was oddly refreshing after his meeting with Ebn.
“I am here to ask a favor. Have you a place where we can talk? Somewhere private?”
A smile fought to reach Jarres’s mouth, and won. He closed his eyes for a moment and then said, “My shift is over in eighteen minutes.”
‡
Exhausted, they lay together on Jarres’s bed. Pol had thrown a leg over the man’s thigh, but felt otherwise content to dry alone. Unlike most eldermen, Pol enjoyed the feeling of fluid on his skin. Large bodies of water made him uncomfortable and he did not enjoy swimming, but the occasional bath was nice. Sweat was nicer. A uniquely human smell, sweat. He had come to appreciate it in the same way he had come to appreciate the smell of lake water.
Jarres blew a stream of pipe smoke at the ceiling. “Now that we’re relaxed, let’s have the truth. You’ve got a great many men to choose from in this city, which means you’re here for something other than a simple fuck.”
“True,” Pol conceded. “I am. Do you remember when you talked about the black market with me? You had a friend.”
Jarres turned his head away from Pol. “Yeah, I remember all right. They let Kolin go, Espe nearly went to jail, and I had to talk before the head surgeons—was forced to defend myself when I’d done nothing wrong. If you’re looking for that sort of thing, I think you better look someplace else. Thanks for the lay, but I can’t help.”
“I’m not asking you to start up a business, Eamon.” Pol laid a hand on Jarres’s lean stomach. “I need a few things only. Me. I need them. No one else will know what we are doing and no one knows how much alchemy the corpses have in their veins until you mark it down. You could do it. You said it yourself.” He inched his hand downward slowly. “Or were you just bragging?”
Jarres groaned—not in pleasure, but frustration. A bit more pushing and he would relent, Pol thought. He felt confident in his ability to reduce simple men to formulae, spells to be cast and then molded. His clawtips moved lightly through Jarres’s thatch of pubic hair. The man’s cock shifted, began to swell.
“I will be honest with you,” Pol said. “My research is at a standstill, and I have no friends at the academy. I cannot afford to pay you much, but you will have my gratitude.”
Jarres chuckled, and pushed Pol’s hands the final inch.
“Just your gratitude, huh?” he asked.
Pol smiled. “This is how I show my gratitude. But you need to do this per my instructions, Jarres. I need specific things.”
Jarres flexed his hips and sighed, this time with pleasure. “Yah, I can do that, I suppose. You have a list?”
“I will write it out for you afterwards. I know you must be careful not to arouse suspicion, but the faster you do this for me the more grateful I will be.”
“Understood,” Jarres said. He yawned and stretched out under Pol’s ministrations, clearly enjoying himself. “When you’re finished there, how about celebrating our new arrangement? Visit the docks, see a fight like old times?”
Pol considered. It had been some time since he had seen a fight, and even longer since he had seen a good one. The docksides attracted the best. Still, there was work to be done. Planning.
Before he could answer, Jarres spoke. “You’ve heard of Shav? No. He’s a quarterstock they’ve got fighting tonight. A close cousin of yours, maybe.”
Pol stopped considering instantly. He would go. He had never seen an elderman’s offspring, and knew no one who had. Though elder sperm fertilized any species’ egg, the product of the coupling was seldom fertile. On the rare occasion that it was, its offspring suffered extreme birth defects. This quarterstock Jarres spoke of was possibly such a one. Most likely, the whole thing was a hoax, but it could not be ignored on that basis alone.
Pol wondered why he had heard nothing of it. Academy biologists estimated the world population of eldermen to be less than one hundred thousand. They were expensive and risky to gestate, but highly valued for their magical facility. Surely the living child of one would be of interest.
Or perhaps even some use.
‡
The walk from Jarres’s apartment took them through two of the roughest neighborhoods in the eastern quarter of the city.
Composed of southern Ulomi and western Castan immigrants respectively, the populations of Donsiter and Torn would not brook the other’s existence. Tansot’s governors had on several occasions begun campaigns to turn the tide of sectarian violence, but to no avail. With the support of the city’s conservative Adrashi churches, the Ulomi of Donsiter were slowly gaining the advantage over their atypically militant Castan neighbors.
This did not make Donsiter any safer. Though its denizens strutted outwardly, inwardly they feared Torn’s increasingly desperate acts. More than this, perhaps, they feared being in the churches’ debt. The churches would remember and extract two grams of bonedust for every gram spent in assistance. In fact, they had already begun. The church soldiers stationed in Donsiter took what they pleased.
Torn, on the other hand, had peopled itself with criminals, men and women the seniors of the community hired to help wage their war. Murderers and thieves, out-of-work and disgraced soldiers of the Tomen border, Anadrashi reformists and scrabbling gladiators, all of whom took the money offered to them and caused trouble. The streets became a place to air one’s grievances with one’s fist or weapon.
After dark, a man took his life in his hands if he walked the streets of either neighborhood with less than two men at his side.
Pol and Jarres armed themselves accordingly. Pol carried his hand-carved liisau, a seven-foot tall ironwood staff tipped with a foot-long dagger blade and butted with steel. He had designed the weapon to suit his unique fighting style, which blended the staff arts common to eastern Knoori and the many bladed styles of Pusta.
Jarres carried nothing so exotic. Holstered over his left shoulder was a compound crossbow, an ugly little quickdraw that had probably cost him a week’s salary. Castans were famously skeptical of magic and the reliance on magic, often arming themselves with muscle-powered arms rather than the more common alchemical varieties. At his right hip swung a vazhe, a short, heavy broadsword held in contempt by nearly all Stoli swordsmen. Better for chopping wood, they claimed, glossing over the fact that vazhe-wielding Castans had kept Stol out of their border for nearly seven hundred years.
Pol’s staff-end rang hollowly on the hard-packed earth. He refused to slink in the shadows like an animal, and had not asked the other man’s opinion. Jarres did not appear overly discomfited by this.
Though he would not admit so, Pol found himself wishing for a confrontation. He had restrained his anger with Ebn. He had been patient with Jarres. He could not be otherwise, for his plans depended on Ebn’s ignorance and Jarres’s assistance, but the acts would never be enjoyable. Now, he wanted release.
Unfortunately, no one presented him with an opportunity. The night was quiet but for the rustling of scrawny sycamore trees lining the roadway. Before very long they arrived at Docksides Boxing, a large, low-roofed building on a floating platform at the end of two stationary docks. They stopped at the entrance to one, where a doorman waited under a single torchlight.
Pol became impatient as the sunken-eyed man held their entrance fee, a half-gram bag of dust, open under his nose. As if the man could discern anything with such dull senses, Pol thought. Academy studies revealed that most of the bonedust used as payment in the city tested below forty percent pure. Ground sheep bone was the most common filler. If properly trained, an elderman could smell the difference. A human? Never.
Jarres became impatient as well. “Satisfied?” he asked the doorman, whose skin looked like wrinkled parchment in the flickering light.
The doorman shrugged. “Suppose so. Smells okay. But this ain’t enough.”
“Not enough?” Jarres shook his head. “Put it on the scale.”
Pol grinned at the doorman’s expression. It was a serious insult, asking a money handler to weigh dust. The
doorman spat at Jarres’s feet and then dropped the waxpaper bag on the scale on the stool beside him.
“I told you,” he said. “Half a gram. Not enough.”
Jarres laughed, but there was a definite edge to it. “The entry has always been half a gram. What are you trying to pull?”
“Not tonight, it ain’t half a gram.” The doorman folded the bag and held it out so that Jarres could either take it or add to it. “Tonight’s one whole, on account of the quarterstock we rustled up. Idiot’s fighting that bitch Stasessun everybody loves. She’s gonna kill him for sure. Biggest fight in a long time. So, one gram. Pay or leave.”
Pol took out a thin leather wallet. “Here,” he said, handing the doorman another bag. “Half a gram of pure, and if you insult me by smelling it I will probably murder you where you stand.”
The doorman looked unimpressed and started to open the bag. Pol stepped into the cone of torchlight and leaned forward, forcing the man to look into his eyes.
“Shit,” the doorman said, backing against the light pole. “Okay. Okay. I don’t need to smell it. Don’t touch me, please.”
Pol straightened, pretending shock. “Surely, you do not think I want to?”
Jarres clapped him on the back and they entered Docksides Boxing. The tension in Pol’s shoulders began to ebb away as the smells reached him. Sawdust. Blood.
Sweat.
‡
The quarterstock Shav was not a hoax. Pol had caught glimpses of him through the crowd before the main fight began. Rolling his immense scarred shoulders, loosening his bullish neck.
In most ways, he seemed the perfect compromise between human and elderman. His skin was lustrous, a rich lavender hue, and Pol could see a fine sheen of sweat on his brow. Well over six feet tall, he must have weighed close to four hundred pounds. Thick slabs of muscle hid the slight skeletal and ligamentary anomalies of his build, but he stood with a slight forward tilt like an elderman, as if he were always on the balls of his feet. Any half-competent anatomist would be able to identify the subtle differences at first glance.
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