by Sam Sykes
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ACT ONE
THE HUMAN TIDE
PROLOGUE
Cier’Djaal
Some crappy little boat
First day of Yonder
You can’t lie to a sword.
It’s a trait you don’t often think of between its more practical applications, but part of the appeal of a blade is that it keeps you honest. No matter how much of a hero you might think you are for picking it up, no matter how many evildoers you claim to have smitten with it, it’s hard to pretend that steel you carry is good for much else besides killing.
Conversely, a sword can’t lie to you.
If you can’t use it, it’ll tell you. If you don’t want to use it, it’ll decide whether you should. And if you look at it, earnestly, and ask if there’s no other way besides killing, it’ll look right back at you and say, earnestly, that it can’t quite think of any.
Every day I wake up, I look in the corner of my squalid little cabin. I stare at my sword. My sword stares back at me. And I tell it the same thing I’ve told it every day for months.
“Soon, we reach Cier’Djaal. Soon, we reach a place where there are ways to make coin without killing. Soon, I’m getting off this ship and I’m leaving you far behind.”
The sword just laughs.
Granted, this probably sounds a trifle insane, but I’m writing in ink so I can’t go back and make it less crazy. But if you’re reading this, you’re probably anticipating the occasional lapse in sanity.
And if you aren’t yet, I highly recommend you start. It’ll help.
I’ve killed a lot of things.
I say “things,” because “people” isn’t a broad enough category and “stuff” would lead you to believe I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it.
The list thus far: men, women, demons, monsters, giant serpents, giant vermin, regular vermin, regular giants, cattle, lizards, fish, lizardmen, fishmen, frogmen, Cragsmen, and a goat.
Regular goat, mind; not a poisonous magic goat or anything. But he was kind of an asshole.
When I started killing, it seemed like I had good reasons. Survival, I guess. Money, too. But the more I did it, the better I got. And the better I got, the less reason I needed until killing was just something I did.
Easy as shaking a man’s hand.
And when it’s as easy as shaking a man’s hand, you stop seeing open hands. All you see, then, is an empty spot where a sword should be. And will be, if you don’t grab yours first.
I’m tired of it.
I don’t live in lamentation of my past deeds. I did what I had to, even if I could have thought of something better. I don’t hear voices and I don’t have nightmares.
Not anymore, anyway.
I guess I’m just tired. Tired of seeing swords instead of hands, tired of looking for chairs against the wall whenever I go into a room, tired of knowing lists instead of people, tired of talking to my sword.
And I’m going to stop. And even if I can’t, I have to try.
So I’m going to. Try, that is.
Just as soon as I get my money.
I suppose there’s irony in trading blood for gold. Or hypocrisy.
I don’t care and I sincerely doubt my employer does, either. Or maybe he does—holy men are odd that way—but he’ll pay, anyway. Blood is gold and I’ve spilled a lot of the former for a considerable sum of the latter.
Ordinarily, you wouldn’t think a priest of Talanas, the Healer, to appreciate that much blood. But Miron Evenhands, Lord Emissary and Member in Good Standing of the House of the Vanquishing Trinity, is no ordinary priest. As the former title implies, he’s a man with access to a lot of wealth. And as the latter title is just cryptic enough to suggest, he’s got a fair number of demons, cultists, and occult oddities to be eradicated.
And eradicate I have, with gusto.
And he has yet to pay. “Temporary barriers to the financial flow,” he tells me. “Patience, adventurer, patience,” he says. And patient I was. Patient enough to follow him across the sea for months until we came here.
Cier’Djaal, the City of Silk. This is the great charnel house where poor men eat dead rich men and become wealthy themselves. This is the city where fortunes are born, alive and screaming. This is the city that controls the silk, the city that controls the coin, the city that controls the world.
This is civilization.
This is what I want now.
My companions, too.
Or so I’d like to think.
It’s not as though anyone chooses to be an adventurer, killing people for little coin and even less respect. We all took up the title, and each other’s company, with the intent of leaving it behind someday. Cier’Djaal is as good as any a place to do so, I figure.
Though their opinions on our arrival have been… varied.
That Gariath should be against our entrance into any place where he might be required to wear a shirt, let alone a place crawling with humans, is no surprise.
Far more surprising are Denaos’s objections—the man who breathes liquor and uses whores for pillows, I would have thought, would feel right at home among the thieves and scum of civilized society.
Asper and Dreadaeleon, happy to be anywhere that has a temple or a wizard tower, were generally in favor of it. Asper for the opportunity to be among civilized holy men, Dreadaeleon for the opportunity to be away from uncivilized laymen, both for the opportunity to be in a place with toilets.
When I told Kataria, she just sort of stared.
Like she always does.
Which made my decision as to what to do next fairly easy. This will be the last of our time spent together. Once I’ve got my money, once I can leave my sword behind, I intend to leave them with it.
Their opinions on this have been quiet.
Possibly because I haven’t told them yet.
Probably because I won’t until I’m far enough away that I can’t hear my sword laughing at me anymore.
ONE
AN ARCHITECT OF BONE AND MARROW
He smelled the corpses before they came.
That odorous smell of sun-cooked meat heralded the corpsewagon long before the rattling of wheels and jangling of priestly chains could announce the presence. Captain Dransun pulled out the kerchief he wore beneath his Jhouche guard badge and held it over his unshaven face. He had not yet seen enough death to be inured to the stink.
But, then, it was only the beginning of the week.
“Hold up, hold up,” he commanded the petitioners lining up before him, waving them aside. “Gevrauchians coming through.”
No protests. Not so much as a word from the unruly crowd at the mention of the death priests. The press of flesh that had demanded to enter the city since dawn shuffled quietly aside. The impending procession required lots of room.
Before anything else, he saw the lanterns. Lit despite the noonday sun and glowing with a cold brightness, the caged lights of the priests swung on lo
ng, willowy boughs strapped to their stooped backs like the lure lights of fish from a deep, dark place. Behind the glass circles sewn into their burlap masks, neither face nor eye could be seen.
This made them only slightly more unnerving than their cargo.
Drawn by the Lanterns, the corpsewagon groaned like an old man as it was hauled through the gates. The petitioners impolitely covered their mouths at the sight of burlap-wrapped bodies in various stages of dismemberment.
The Lanterns didn’t care any more than the dead. Followers of the Bookkeeper were notoriously hard to offend.
As Dransun watched the cart thresh a wake through the humanity thronging the harbor, he became aware that he had been holding his breath. Whether from smell or some omen he had yet to give a name to, he began to release it, only to have it leap right back into his mouth when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. He whirled about, reflexively reaching for his sword.
The Quill, so named for the rank bestowed on those senior Gevrauchians, stared through tiny glass circles. The spear-long rolled-up scroll strapped to his back glistened with cleanliness not shown his black ceremonial garb. His glove, particularly rotten with grime and dried blood, thrust a similar, if smaller, scroll toward Dransun.
“Twelve bodies today,” he said, voice flat behind his burlap mask. “Seven identified, dismemberments excluded. Please place this upon your notice board at your leisure, Captain, and remind families they have eight days to collect their loved ones before Gevrauch’s Right is assumed.”
“Right,” Dransun replied, taking the scroll from him. “Will this be the last time you come through today or…”
“Death is an inevitability, Captain,” the Quill reminded him. “As is our duty. We come when we are required. And we are required often of late.”
“Yes, I get that,” Dransun replied through clenched teeth. “It’s just that the fashas are getting antsy. All this death and violence are bad for business.”
“Your employers should consult those who make the corpses. We merely clean up after them. Death is our business, Captain. Business is always good in Cier’Djaal.”
Dransun felt the color drain from his face. The Quill stared back for a moment before scratching the back of his head.
“That was a joke,” the priest muttered. “We shall return later, Captain.”
After the Quill departed, Dransun hesitated to wave the crowd back into place. Seemed pointless; this wouldn’t be the last visit from the Lanterns today. They were always finding new victims in the Souk.
And yet, wave them back into line he did. These were the merchants, after all: the spice men, the artisans, the dust dealers, and the trade bosses. This was Cier’Djaal, where the only things more constant than death and odor were coin and protocol. The Gevrauchians could concern themselves with the death of the city. Dransun’s concerns were for the life of it.
And more specifically, for those who would spill it on the ground.
“All right, then.” Dransun tucked the scroll into his belt and produced his logbook. Sparing a quick glance for the towering petitioner before him, he flipped open the page and pressed charcoal to paper. “Name?”
“Daaru.”
“Daaru.” He jotted it down. “And what is your—”
“Saan Rua Tong Clan.”
“No, I wanted to know your—”
“Born from the bleeding stomach of Rua, when the dead God earned His name, born from the sands—”
“Oh, son of a bitch…” Dransun muttered, it only occurring to him then to take a closer look.
A pair of yellow eyes, wide and wild as daybreak, didn’t bother looking back.
A head taller than any man present, even without the jagged mane masquerading as hair, the creature was deep in the throes of reciting his ancestry. Hairy, apelike hands provided accompanying gestures. Lips peeled back with every word, flashing teeth so large and sharp as should only belong on an animal.
“Who the hell let a tulwar in line?” Dransun called out to his subordinates, who looked up briefly from their own lines and shrugged. “What do you turds think we have all these protocol meetings for?”
“—and painted the walls with his own blood,” the beast called Daaru continued, “and when my father did dislodge the spear in a gout of—”
“No, no, no.” Dransun held up his hands. “Didn’t you read the signs? No tulwar.”
Only at this did Daaru stop.
His glare ran a long journey down his face. Thick scars mapped the simian slope of his nose and overlong jaws in symmetry that Dransun couldn’t quite grasp. Too smooth, too perfect to be from any battle, they began to fill with a wild splendor of red, blue, and yellow color as Daaru bared his teeth in a growl.
Dransun hid his fear behind an unblinking blue stare. The Jhouche were little more than the face of Cier’Djaal, but the fashas demanded they be an unflinching one.
“No tulwar,” he repeated firmly. “No shicts. No vulgores. No oids.” He gestured to the parchments plastered across the Harbor Gates. “Souk’s on high alert. Unless you come in with round ears, flat teeth, and coin to trade, you don’t come in.”
“Trade.” Daaru repeated the word with black enthusiasm. “I come with trade.”
His hand settled on the grip of the long, curved blade strapped to his hip, a perfect match for the shorter one tucked beneath it.
“I come with swords.” His smile was feral and unpleasant. “Your streets are awash with blood. The death priests come day and night. The city you built on the backs of my people begins to crack. Let the tulwar solve the human problem.”
“The fashas have their own forces,” Dransun replied. “Human forces. We don’t need more swords. Let alone those considered…”
His voice and eyes trailed off the tulwar and onto the petitioners behind, attention caught on a short man wedged uneasily in line, glancing about nervously.
“Unstable,” Dransun murmured.
Admittedly, the man might not have been planning to do anything. Men under six feet tall typically possessed an air of twitchy suspicion as a matter of nature.
Regardless, he rapped his gauntleted fingers upon his pauldron. His guardsmen spared a brief nod for the signal before giving their swords a shake to loosen them in their scabbards.
“The Uprising was in response to your city expanding,” Daaru snarled, demanding Dransun’s attention. “You brought your swords to our homes. And now that we have a taste for blood, you’ve lost your appetite?”
“That’s life,” Dransun sighed, glancing back at the twitchy man.
“This is death,” Daaru snorted. “My father died in the Uprising so that I could stand here. And now you deny me the right to avenge him even as I do your dirty work. This is not over, human. Before I am done I will spill the blood of your—”
“Ancaa alive, I get it,” Dransun snapped suddenly, turning his ire back to the tulwar. “Boo hoo, humans are so mean. The Uprising is over and you lost, oid. The city needs swords that’ll answer to authority, and it doesn’t pay for dramatic speeches unless they’re on a stage. So either slap on a costume more ridiculous than what you’ve got on or get lost.”
Dransun didn’t bother paying attention to the threat Daaru made as the tulwar stalked away. His attentions followed the short man in the crowd, growing twitchier.
He was short, wiry to the point of being too skinny for the sword he carried upon his back. His face was far too young for the harsh angles of his jaw and nose and the many scars on his chin and bare arms. Far, far too young for hair the gray color of an old man’s, but it hung around his face in poorly trimmed locks all the same.
And yet the cold blue eyes matched perfectly. Dransun recognized the stare of a man who had earned those scars, even from the Harbor Gate.
He knew the stares of men like these, just as he knew what ran through their heads. He laid a hand on the pommel of his sword and waved the next person forward.
Son of a bitch, Lenk thought. He saw you. He looked do
wn at his hands. Obviously. You’re twitching like a dust-snorter three days clean.
This was bad. This whole plan was bad. Why had he even listened to Denaos for this? What on earth would that thug know about breaking into a city?
Probably more than a little, Lenk admitted to himself. But if this was such a genius plan, why isn’t he here to see it executed? He glanced over his shoulder, searching for a sign of his scraggly companion. Likely because he doesn’t want to be around to see you executed, the coward.
He looked back up over the heads of the people in the crowd. The surly-looking guard at the Harbor Gate looked embroiled in an argument with whoever was trying to get through. His fellow guards looked equally busy with their lines.
Denaos was nowhere to be seen. His other companions were likewise worthless. Once again, it was down to Lenk to get everything done.
Right. Deep breaths. Try not to look crazy.
He pulled himself out of line and began to walk past people toward the gate. Head down, eyes forward, wearing a face he hoped looked at least a little intimidating. The only way this was going to work was if this no-necked guard believed Lenk was mean enough to not be worth stopping.
“Ah.” A gloved hand went up before Lenk’s face. “Stop right there.”
Of course, he sighed inwardly.
“I didn’t specifically say ‘no mercs,’ I know.” The surly-looking guard angled his voice down condescendingly. “But I did say no unstable types, didn’t I?”
Lenk’s hand was up before either of them knew it, slapping the captain’s hand away.
“Marshal your words with greater care, friend,” he whispered threateningly, voice low and sharp like a knife in the dark. “Or I shall hasten to incite you to greater discipline.”
What the hell was that?
The guardsman blinked. Once. Slowly.
“What?”
Well, don’t change now. He’ll know something’s up.
“Was I too soft in my verbiage?” Lenk asked. “Did you not feel the chill of death in my words?”