by Ben Galley
The shade had been staring at Busk. Studying him, to be more precise. Now he spoke, and fuck it if he wasn’t trying to see a knife between the tor’s ribs like everybody else this afternoon.
‘Busk already has Caltro. Stole him, in fact.’
Temsa cackled triumphantly. ‘Straight from the shade’s mouth!’
Busk instinctively backed away, but felt the armoured bulk of Ani Jexebel behind him. How she had got there so fast was the least of his concerns. ‘I…’
‘Horix wants no part of it,’ continued the shade.
‘Silence!’ Temsa ordered. He’d heard all he needed. ‘Now I am impressed, Busk. Not just by your soulstealing antics, but that you had the coconuts to lie to me. Several fucking times by my count. Ani.’
The cold handle of an axe tucked under Busk’s chin, finding the soft space between jawbone and the lump in his windpipe. Temsa brought his face so close they brushed noses.
‘Tell me where Caltro is.’
The urge to survive overpowered his urge to keep the locksmith, and Busk blurted the answer before the gold spike had even pierced his foot. ‘In a sitting room, fifth floor,’ he croaked. ‘Wardrobe.’
Temsa dabbed his face with a handkerchief and sighed. Busk gargled and spat as the axe handle pressed harder.
‘What shitty luck you’ve had tonight,’ Temsa said. ‘And all because you tried to cross me. To think, I’d probably have shared Caltro with you, once I’d finished with him. But no, you were greedy. Foolish. You know what has to come next.’
He did. Busk thrashed against the woman’s grip, but to no avail. Temsa stepped back as she wrapped her forearms around the axe and yanked hard. With the back of Busk’s skull against her breastplate, the metal handle had nowhere to go but through his neck. There was a wet crunch as she wrenched again, making shards of his spine. The last thing he saw was Temsa thumbing his goatee, a satisfied look on his face.
Busk met the marble, his head attached by skin only. A crimson pool began to spread, and Temsa took steps to avoid it.
Ani wiped her hands on her leather breeches. ‘What about his signature? His banked coins? Didn’t we need him?’
Temsa bent down to retrieve the scroll and the two half-coins from Busk’s limp hands. One was emblazoned with an older year of minting, and so he stored them in separate pockets to save confusion. ‘This was not about shades, Ani. This was about teaching a lesson. Besides, m’dear, Busk has plenty in this stump of a tower to satisfy me. Not to mention a locksmith I’m just dying to meet.’
‘And the shade?’ Ani was already reaching for her copper-edged hatchet.
Temsa turned to face the indentured in question, but before he could make up his mind, the shade had done it for him. He was already spinning cogs and skipping out of the door with chains flying around his ankles before Ani could make a start after him.
‘Leave him, Ani.’
‘You mad, Boss? He’ll spout all of this to Horix!’
‘I have asked you repeatedly to call me “Tor”, m’dear.’ He levelled his cane at her. ‘And don’t ever call me mad, unless you want to see me so. And he will do no such thing. I have his half-coin.’ He produced the shade’s half-coin and trickled it over his knuckles and rings. ‘He ran without thinking, and as such, Horix will stay clueless. Until we pay her a visit, that is, at the behest of our friends the Cult. Care to ensure his silence?’
Ani nodded appreciatively, the way she did whenever his genius dawned on her.
Before the coin had stopped spinning on the marble, her axe had cut it in two. Temsa imagined the blue puff of smoke that would decorate the street for just a moment before vanishing. He wondered how far the shade had got.
‘Right! To this sitting room! Signal the lads, m’dear. On with the show.’
Chapter 12
“Our Worst”
The scrutinisers and proctors do not enforce the Code through a show of force. That would be impossible. Instead, they are gatherers of proof. Experts in information. Like leopards watching for lame prey, they lie in wait, disguised amongst the grasses, choosing their moment to pounce with all their strength and energy. That is today’s Chamber, enforcing the emperor’s Code, one lawbreaker at a time.
From a speech made by Chamberlain Menem at the execution of anarchist Wilson Dank in 870
Sensation drowned me. I stumbled like a drunkard, inebriated by light and sound, taste and smell. The copper and tobacco on my tongue; the rainbow lanterns hanging between washing lines; calls of night-vendors mixed with the sizzle of their spits; the fearsome stench of heavily-used gutters. They all dizzied me.
Frequent stops were made at crossroads or the mouths of alleys. I crouched there, eyes closed and nose to forearm to dampen some of the sensation. I had been dead so long I’d forgotten what life had been like. Our formative years often deaden us to the wonder of the world. I was experiencing it raw, as if for the very first time.
At every pause, Pointy was there to offer me wisdom. Something about his voice floating in my swirling head reminded me of my true state, and illuminated the edges of what I was struggling to grasp.
Street by street, as the neighbourhoods became direr, not richer, I mastered my stolen body. Either I strengthened or Foor weakened. The throbbing in my head refused to go away, and perhaps that was affecting him more than me; slowly sapping away at his resistance. Persistence had once again held me true. I sniffed deep and tasted the city in all its rot and madness.
There was a fork in the road, and with crossed eyes I sized it up. Unsure of exactly where I was in the city – or in other words, lost – I deliberated over which was the better to take. I swore if I fell foul of more soulstealers, I would curse it all and throw my coin in the Nyx.
The notion stopped me dead. For a moment, I had forgotten my half-coin still lay in the hands of Horix, and imagined myself free. The reality was sobering, and I instantly set about denouncing it.
Damn it if I wasn’t the freest I’d been in weeks. There was no feather on my breast, and not a single scowl from the living as I clung to busy bazaars and busier thoroughfares. For all they knew, I was one of them. A drunk or mad one of them, but still with a beating heart in my chest.
As I was jostled back and forth, feeling an old knot in my host’s shoulder protest, an idea struck me. If I could feel some old injury I had no memory of, why could I not feel more? Regrets. Longings. Every missing piece of me could be sated, at least for the short span of this borrowed freedom.
Why not enjoy it? There it was: the inklings of a bad idea.
A bad idea is a clever parasite whose poison is a lie. It disguises itself as a good idea while it devours you at your own expense. Like a maggot burrowing into flesh, the more you let it gorge itself, the more convinced you become of the lie, even when everything around you is a flaming mess.
I felt the numb lips spread in a tentative smile. I tensed, squinted, and looked for the lights of a tavern or the blare of some whorehouse. Neither road held such a thing, but it didn’t deter my temptation.
‘What’s in your mind, Caltro? Where is this Horix’s tower?’ whispered the soulblade by my side. I’d almost forgotten him.
‘That way,’ I said, turning my head to a few bright spears of light above, stark against the darkness of night. It was for show; my eyes remained on the street, watching the flow of chattering people, and the steady gazes of house-guards and sellswords standing atop their doorsteps and plinths. I caught sight of a brawl spewing out of an alley mouth. A door opened somewhere unseen, and I caught a blare of music and voices. ‘There are a few things I want to do first.’
‘What do you mean first? Like what?’
I gave him no answer besides the jostle of my steps, leading us further into the lively-looking district. It was part-warehouse, part-residential. Shacks clustered like barnacles on every upright surface of stone. A few stunted towers belonging to traders or storage lenders rose above the press here and there. One in particular was a sharp pyramid
with a poorly-carved sphinx roaring atop it, braying something about a bank in Arctian glyphs. In between the sprawling warehouses, stables and cobblers had hollowed out their shops. Blacksmiths, too. A few more taverns shone with lamplight and noise, but they looked too crowded for my liking.
Pointy had noticed my wistful staring. ‘You can’t be serious.’
‘As steel, my friend.’
‘You discover a power and the first thing you do with it is go to the pub? You really are Krass.’
I looked down at the pommel stone at my hip, and found the carved face different from before, this time with a downward slant to its mouth. I abruptly saw Pointy in the same light as I saw my conscience, and that was a dim light indeed. He certainly sounded like my conscience, only much, much louder. ‘Don’t admonish me, sword. As long as I can hold it, I can do what I please, surely?’
‘As long as you hold it…’
‘Why is it your problem, hm?’ I challenged him. ‘What does it bother you?’
He had no reply to that. He stayed quiet as I strode on, putting my big frame into action.
Around the next corner, I found my haven: a tavern of ample proportions, built into a pyramid that stood on the junction of several streets. It had glyphs splayed across the pediment of its box-like entrance, and they read ‘The Rusty Slab.’
My foot hovered in mid-air. I knew that name. ‘What are the fucking chances…’
‘What?’
‘That’s Tor Temsa’s tavern. We’ve traipsed all the way back to him, not Horix.’ I looked behind me, but a fiendish idea crept into my head. ‘We’re going in.’
‘I say again: you can’t be serious. Has this haunting twisted your mind, Caltro?’
‘I’m not mad. To sit in his tavern and swill a beer under his nose? That is just too perfect.’ And if I have the scantest opportunity, I’ll find a chest of his to shit in. Now I had bowels again, it seemed a fitting punishment to begin with.
Foor’s body wrenched against me then. I felt a tension in my chest, but I gritted my teeth against it and forced the man forwards. I felt something snap and my borrowed flesh grow limp. He’d given in at last, I thought. Finally learned who was in control. I would give him his body back when I was done with it.
‘This is a mistake, Caltro,’ Pointy warned me one last time before I crossed the dusty expanse of road and squared up to the yawning entrance of the tavern. I could hear the roar of its patrons within. Zithers and arghuls duelled, turning out hectic tunes. Glass smashed so regularly it could have been percussion. During my short pause I witnessed three different troublemakers tossed out into the dust by black-clad guards.
Habit guided me. My legs took to the ramp as they had done in a thousand establishments before this one. This activity was not new, just the flesh I did it with. I wondered absently whether Foor’s insides had the same taste for imbibing as mine used to.
I strode into a wall of pipe-smoke and noise. The stink of whale-oil, old beer and an antipathy for showering almost put me on my arse. So long had my nose been without use that so many smells in one place, and such pungency, squeezed a tear from my eye. I fought through, and scoured the expansive tavern. Dockworkers, sailors, soldiers, traders, street folk, guards like me, and others of various unimportant echelons in Araxes formed the vast crowd. The ceiling followed the rough shape of the pyramid, but rafters and upper rooms kept the seedy atmosphere hovering low over the tables. In two corners, minstrels and players cavorted. I spotted at least two fights in progress, and had I been in the mood to gamble, the gloomy far end of the Slab had the reek of a card den.
It was common knowledge in the Far Reaches that the Krass could drink their own weight in wine. But we paled compared to Arctians. When Arctians drank it was as if they were set on suicide by drowning. Even in my brief scan of the smoky insides of the tavern, I saw various examples of binging that would have impressed a Krass alcoholic.
I muscled my way to the bar, careful not to offend but enjoying the ability to push others aside with a form that wasn’t vapour. Furthermore, I’d managed to find a body several inches taller and thinner than my old one. Muscular, too, despite its increased age. Although it felt and smelled strange, and though every movement required a practiced effort, it was confessedly more useful.
The barman spent a while staring at my forehead with a toothless grimace before hearing my order of ‘Beer!’ I was using my fingers to feel where the dent in my skull had bled through the makeshift headscarf when I realised I hadn’t checked for coin. I patted myself down, and besides a small vial of a dubious dark liquid, I found several small silver coins. The barman took one from me, and I relaxed in knowing I had time.
The dark froth might as well have been the gates of the afterlife. I dove for it, and supped the thick liquid down. Before I knew it, I’d finished half the tankard, dizzy over the taste of grains and cold, sour alcohol.
I gasped at the taste, forgetting to breathe once more. I kept having to remind myself to ensure I didn’t kill the body I’d stolen. Even after just a few weeks dead, the habit of three decades had been swiftly forgotten. They say hogs do the same; even the pinkest, most domesticated pig, finding himself loose and wild, will sprout tusks and dark hair within a week. We humans are the same in that way. Treat us wildly and we become wild.
It wasn’t just breathing I’d forgotten, but other habits of the flesh. A waft of pipe-smoke covered me, and I breathed it in deep to feel its sting. I caught the eyes of a woman draped around a man dressed in hyena fur. Her opal eyeshadow transfixed me for a moment before she turned away, but it was enough to stir me. I saw a man passing papyrus packets under tables in return for coin, silver or copper. The packets were held to buyers’ noses, breathed deeply, and seemed to induce an instant, doe-eyed stupor. Silver well spent, or so I’d heard; I’d never tried peaksnort, or whatever they called it in the Arc.
Even in the brightest corners of the world, you can find it: the human addiction, nay, devotion to destroying ourselves in the tiniest of increments. Both flesh and mind pay the toll. Day after day we kid the truth from our worries; drinking, whoring, preaching, belching smoke or spilling blood, and all the while we excuse ourselves for our iniquities. And why? To feel different from the fibres we were born with. The true hilarity is that we do it to feel alive.
I willingly succumbed to the human condition. And why not, after all I’ve been through? All the toil and trouble and treachery that had been delivered on me since arriving on that accursed ship. At Pointy’s sighing, I thumped my half-empty tankard down on the bar and demanded another, sliding a small silver across the dirty, beer-washed wood.
Somehow, I’d drawn the stare of a fellow douser a stool away from me. She was a knife of a woman, hunched over her drink, eyes hooded and bored.
I raised my vessel to her and quaffed the remaining half, much to Pointy’s private groaning in my head. I thumped my side as I choked the thick beer down and belched. It tasted vile, but I got a cheer from a fellow on my right, and a dull stare from the woman.
‘Charming,’ she said.
‘I’m not here to be charming, madam,’ I said. ‘I am here to drink and be merry.’
‘I assume you’re the sort who uses coin to attract women, then. Not manners.’
I turned my eyes to the rafters and walkways above the bar, where a gang of long-legged temptresses stood, commanding the room with their powdered eyes and pointing fingers. ‘If I must.’
‘Well, good luck to you. They say the man who runs this place only employs the best, but that makes them the most expensive for four districts.’
‘Temsa.’ I spat the name into my new tankard.
A single eyebrow crept up. ‘You know him?’
‘Somewhat.’
The woman looked me up and down, and I her. She had beaklike features, and quick dark eyes. Her dark skin, though lighter than Krass colouring, belied her local heritage. Even under the hood I could tell her fiery hair was shorn. It was done smartly, not h
acked at in some display of shame, like they do Saraka. Her clothes were nothing but simple robes and a purple smock. I saw the dark tendrils of tattoos curling up her neck and creeping from her cuffs. Something about their design was familiar.
She skipped stools to sit beside me. Had my mind been in another place – in other words, my own skull – I’d have thought myself fancied. Yet this woman gave off such a blithe air, I assumed she’d been at the drink a while.
She spoke first. ‘You wear the livery of Tor Busk, but you don’t drink anywhere near his tower. You seem to have some dire wound on your head that makes me wonder how you’re still standing, yet you have a fervent way about you that says you’re more alive than half the people in this room. I pride myself on reading people, and yet you, guard, are a mystery.’
A fresh tankard arrived at my elbow and I raised it to her. ‘Caltro,’ I said quietly, daring my own name. I wondered if she would use hers.
‘Heles. Dead gods be with you.’
‘And you.’
‘So what do you know about this illustrious Temsa? He runs quite the tavern,’ she said.
‘That he does, and I know a little. Not the sort of thing to be speaking out loud and to anyone, mind,’ I said, playing careful. I had no wish to go about drawing suspicion.
‘Some think he’s more soulstealer than soultrader.’
I coughed into the foam of my beer. ‘Some? I wager many.’ Already the tingle of alcohol was climbing into my borrowed brain. Strange how its potency increased with time.
‘Why would you say that?’ Heles asked me.
I wanted to yell in her face and tell her exactly what he’d done to me, but I held myself still, partly due to the body becoming slightly stiff around me. Perhaps I had worn the bastard out. ‘I would imagine he’s wronged many, building what he has. Doesn’t everybody have to step on somebody to climb the ladder of society? I hear he’s a tor now.’