In these gutters, garbage reeked, though not too much of it; things that were still useful would be put to use. The people passing along these streets were patch-clothed, dirty-cheeked, lank of unwashed hair. Many wore long knives; a few bore flintlocks. The only unescorted women were those plying a trade, and a few men who loitered dark doorways or alleys drew back into their lairs as the Gage passed, each footstep ringing dully off the cobbles. He was reminded of tunnel-spiders, and kept walking.
As he drew closer to one base of the Blue Stone, though, he noticed an increase in people walking quickly in the direction opposite his. Though the night sweltered, stored heat radiating back from the stones, they hunched as if cold: heads down and shoulders raised protectively.
Still no one troubled the faceless man. Messaline knew about Wizards.
Others were not so lucky, or so unmolested.
The Gage came out into the small square that surrounded one foot of the Blue Stone. It rose above him in an interlaced, fractal series of helixes a hundred times the height of a tall man, vanishing into the darkness that drank its color and translucency. The Gage had been walking for long enough that stars now showed through the gaps in the arch’s sinuous strands.
The base of the monument separated into a half-dozen pillars where it plunged to earth. Rather than resting upon a plinth or footing, though, it seemed as if each pillar had thrust up through the street like a tree seeking the light—or possibly as if the cobbles of the road had just been paved around them.
Among the shadows between those pillars, a man wearing a skirted coat and wielding a narrow, curved sword fought silently—desperately—valiantly—for his life.
The combat had every appearance of an ambush—five on one, though that one was the superior swordsman and tactician. These were advantages that did not always affect the eventual result when surrounded and outnumbered, but the man in the skirted coat was making the most of them. His narrow torso twisted like a charmed snake as he dodged blows too numerous to deflect. He might have been an answer to any three of his opponents. But as it was, he was left whirling and weaving, leaping and ducking, parrying for his life. The harsh music of steel rang from the tight walls of surrounding rowhouses. His breathing was a rasp audible from across the square. He used the footings of the monument to good advantage, dodging between them, keeping them at his back, forcing his enemies to coordinate their movements over uneven cobblestones.
The Gage paused to assess.
The lone man’s skirts whirled wide as he caught a narrower, looping strand of the Blue Stone in his off hand and used it as a handle to swing around, parrying one opponent with his sword hand while landing a kick in the chest of another. The kicked man staggered back, arms pinwheeling. One of his allies stepped under his blade and came on, hoping to catch the lone man off-balance.
The footpad—if that’s what he was—huffed in pain as he ran into the Gage’s outstretched arm. His eyes widened; he jerked back and reflexively brought his scimitar down. It glanced off the Gage’s shoulder, parting his much-patched garment and leaving a bright line.
The Gage picked him up by the jaw, one-handed, and bashed his brains out against the Blue Stone.
The man in the skirted coat ran another through between the ribs. The remaining three hesitated, exchanging glances. One snapped a command; they vanished into the night like rain into a fallow field, leaving only the sound of their footsteps. The man in the skirted coat seemed as if he might give chase, but his sword was wedged. He stood on the chest of the man he had killed and twisted his long, slightly curved blade to free it. It had wedged in his victim’s spine. A hiss of air escaping a punctured lung followed as he slid it free.
Warily, he turned to the Gage. The Gage did not face him. The man in the skirted coat did not bother to walk around to face the Gage.
“Thank . . . ”
Above them, the Blue Stone began to glow, with a gray light that faded up from nothingness and illuminated the scene: glints off the Gage’s bronze body, the saturated blood-red of the lone man’s coat, the frayed threads of its embroidery worn almost flat on the lapels.
“What the—?”
“Blood,” the Gage said, prodding the brained body with his toe. “The Blue Stone accepts our sacrifice.” He gestured to the lone man’s prick-your-finger coat. “You’re a Dead Man.”
Dead Men were the sworn, sacred guards of the Caliphs who ruled north and east of Messaline, across the breadth of the sea.
“Not anymore,” the Dead Man said. Fastidiously, he crouched and scrubbed his sword on a corpse’s hem. “Not professionally. And not literally, thanks to you. By which I mean, ‘Thank you.’ ”
The faceless man shrugged. “It didn’t look like a fair fight.”
“In this world, O my brother, is there such a thing as a fair fight? When one man is bestowed by the gods with superior talent, by station with superior training, by luck with superior experience?”
“I’d call that the opposite of luck,” said the faceless man.
The Dead Man shrugged. “Pardon my forwardness; a true discourtesy, when directed at one who has done me a very great favor solely out of the goodness of his heart—”
“I have no heart.”
“—but you are what they call a Faceless Man?”
“We prefer the term Gage. And while we’re being rude, I had heard your kind don’t leave the Caliph’s service.”
“The Caliph’s service left me. A new Caliph’s posterior warms the dais in Asitaneh. I’ve heard your kind die with the Wizard that made you.”
The Gage shrugged. “I’ve something to do before I lie down and let the scavengers have me.”
“Well, you have come to the City of Jackals now.”
“You talk a lot for a dead man.”
The Dead Man laughed. He sheathed his sword and thrust the scabbard through his sash. More worn embroidery showed that to be its place of custom.
“Why were they trying to kill you?”
The Dead Man had aquiline features and eagle-eyes to go with it, a trim goatee and a sandalwood-skinned face framed by shoulder-length ringlets, expensively oiled. Slowly, he drew a crimson veil across his nose and mouth. “I expected an ambush.”
Neither one of them made any pretense that that was, exactly, an answer.
The Gage reached out curiously and touched the glowing stone. “Then I’m pleased to see that your expectation was rewarded.”
“You discern much.” The Dead Man snorted and stood. “May I know the name of the one who aided me?”
“My kind have no names.”
“Do you propose then that there is no difference between you? You all have the same skills? The same thoughts?”
The Gage turned to him, and the Dead Man saw his own expression reflected, distorted in that curved bronze mirror. It never even shivered when he spoke. “So we are told.”
The Dead Man shrugged. “So also are we. Were we. When I was a part of something bigger. But now I am alone, and my name is Serhan.”
The Gage said, “You can call me Gage.”
He turned away, though he did not need to. He tilted his featureless head back to look up.
“What’s this thing?” The Gage’s gesture followed the whole curve of the Blue Stone, revealed now as the light their murders had engendered rose along it like tendrils of crawling foxfire.
“It is old; it is anyone’s guess what good it once was. There used to be a road under it, before they built the houses. A triumphal arch, maybe?”
“Hell of a place for a war monument.”
The Dead Man’s veil puffed out as he smothered a laugh. “The neighborhood was better once.”
“Surprised they didn’t pull it down for building material.”
“Many have tried,” the Dead Man said. “It does not pull down.”
“Huh,” said the Gage. He prodded the brained man again. “Any idea why they attacked you?”
“Opportunity? Or perhaps to do with the crime I ha
ve been investigating. That seems more likely.”
“Crime?”
Reluctantly, the Dead Man answered, “Murder.”
“Oh,” said the Gage. “The poet?”
“I wonder if it might have been related to this.” The Dead Man’s hand described the arc of light across the sky. The glow washed the stars away. “Maybe he was a sacrifice to whatever old power inhabits . . . this.”
“I doubt it,” said the Gage. “I know something about the killer.”
“You seek justice in this matter too?”
The Gage shrugged. “After a fashion.”
The Dead Man stared. The Gage did not move. “Well,” said the Dead Man at last. “Let us then obtain wine.”
They chose a tavern on the other side of the block that faced on the Blue Stone, where its unnerving light did not wash in through the high narrow windows. The floor was gritty with sand spread to sop up spilled wine, and the air was thick with its vinegar sourness. The Dead Man tested the first step carefully, until he determined that what lay under the sand was flagstone. As they settled themselves—the Dead Man with his back to the wall, the Gage with his back to the room—the Gage said, “Did it do that when the poet died?”
“His name was Anah.”
“Did it do that when Anah died?”
The Dead Man raised one hand in summons to the serving girl. “It seems to like blood.”
“And yet we don’t know what they built it for.”
“Or who built it,” the Dead Man said. “But you believe those things do not matter.”
The girl who brought them wine was young, her blue-black hair in a wrist-thick braid of seven strands. The plait hung down her back in a spiral, twisted like the Blue Stone. She took the Dead Man’s copper and withdrew.
The Dead Man said, “I always wondered how your sort sustained yourselves.”
In answer, the Gage cupped his bronze fingers loosely around the stem of the cup and let them lie on the table.
“I was hired by the poet’s . . . by Anah’s lover.” The Dead Man lifted his cup and swirled it. Fumes rose from the warmed wine. He lifted his veil and touched his mouth to the rim. The wine was raw, rough stuff, more fruit than alcohol.
The Gage said, “We seek the same villain.”
“I am afraid I cannot relinquish my interest in the case. I . . . need the money.” The Dead Man lifted his veil to drink again. The edge lapped wine and grew stained.
The Gage might have been regarding him. He might have been staring at the wall behind his head. Slowly, he passed a brazen hand over the table. It left behind a scaled track of silver. “I will pay you as well as your other client. And I will help you bring her the Wizard’s head.”
“Wizard!”
The Gage shrugged.
“You think you know who it is that I hunt.”
“Oh yes,” the Gage said. Scratched silver glittered dully on the table. “I can tell you that.”
The Dead Man regarded his cup, and the Gage regarded . . . whatever it was.
Finally, the Gage broke the impasse to say, “Would you rather go after a Wizard alone, or in company?”
Under his veil, the Dead Man nibbled a thumbnail. “Which Wizard?”
“Attar the Enchanter. Do you know where to find him?”
“Everyone in Messaline knows where to find a Wizard. Or, belike, how to avoid him.” The Dead Man tapped the nearest coin. “Why would he kill a poet? Gut him? In a public square?”
“He’s a ghost-maker,” the Gage said. “He kills for the pleasure it affords him. He kills artists, in particular. He likes to own them. To possess their creativity.”
“Huh,” said the Dead Man. “Anah was not the first, then.”
“Ghost-makers . . . some people say they’re soulless themselves. That they’re empty, and so they drink the souls of the dead. And they’re always hungry for another.”
“People say a lot of shit,” the Dead Man said.
“When I heard the manner of the poet’s death, and that Attar was in Messaline . . . ” The Gage shrugged. “I came at once. To catch up with him before he moves on again.”
“You have not come about Anah in particular.”
“I’m here for Anah. And the other Anahs. Future and past.”
“I see,” said the Dead Man.
His hand passed across the table. When it vanished, no silver remained. “Is it true that darkness cannot cloud your vision?”
“I can see,” said the faceless man. “In dark or day, whether I turn my head aside or no. What has no eyes cannot be blinded.”
“That must be awful,” the Dead Man said.
The lamplight flickered against the side of the Gage’s mask.
“So,” said the Gage, motionless. “When the Caliph’s service left you, you chose a mercenary life?”
“Not mercenary,” the Dead Man said. “I have had sufficient of soldiering. I’m a hired investigator.”
“An . . . investigator.”
The corners of the Dead Man’s eyes folded into eagle-tracks. “We have a legacy of detective stories in the Caliphate. Tales of clever men, and of one who is cleverer. They are mostly told by women.”
“Aren’t most of your storytellers women?”
The Dead Man moved to drink and found his cup empty. “They are the living embodiment of the Scholar-God.”
“And you keep them in cages.”
“We keep God in temples. Is that so different?”
After a while, the Dead Man said, “You have some plan for fighting a Wizard? A Wizard who . . . killed your maker?”
“My maker was Cog the Deviser. That’s not how she died. But I thought perhaps a priest of Kaalha would know what to do about a ghost-maker.”
“Ask the Death God. You are a clever automaton.”
The Gage shrugged.
“If you won’t drink that, I will.”
“Drink it?” the Gage asked. He drew his hands back from where they had embraced the foot of his cup.
The Dead Man reached across the table, eyebrows questioning, and waited until the Gage gestured him in to tilt the cup and peer inside.
If there had been wine within, it was gone.
When the lion-sun of Messaline rose, haloed in its mane, the Gage and the Dead Man were waiting below the lintel inscribed, In my house there is an end to pain. The door stood open, admitting the transient chill of a desert morning. No one barred the way. But no one had come to admit them, either.
“We should go in?” the Dead Man said.
“After you,” said the Gage.
The Dead Man huffed, but stepped forward, the Gage following with silent precision. His joints made no more sound than the massive gears of the gates of Messaline. Wizards, when they chose to wreak, wrought well.
Beyond the doorway lay a white marble hall, shadowed and cool. Within the hall, a masked figure enveloped in undyed linen robes stood, hands folded into sleeves. The mask was silver, featureless, divided by a line—a join—down the center. The robe was long enough to puddle on the floor.
Behind the mask, one side of the priest’s face would be pitted, furrowed: acid-burned. And one side would be untouched, in homage—in sacrifice—to the masked goddess they served, whose face was the heavy, half-scarred moon of Messaline. The Gage and the Dead Man drew up, two concealed faces regarding one.
Unless the figure was a statue.
But then the head lifted. Hands emerged from the sleeves—long and dark, elegant, with nails sliced short for labor. The voice that spoke was fluting, feminine.
“Welcome to the House of Mercy,” the priestess said. “All must come to Kaalha of the Ruins in the end. Why do you seek her prematurely?”
They hesitated for a moment, but then the Dead Man stepped forward. “We seek her blessing. And perhaps her aid, Child of the Night.”
By her voice, perhaps her mirrors hid a smile. “A pair of excommunicates. Wolf’s-heads, are you not? Masterless ones?”
The supplicants h
eld their silence, or perhaps neither one of them knew how to answer.
When the priestess turned to the Gage, their visages reflected one another—reflected distorted reflections—endlessly. “What have you to live for?”
“Duty, art, and love.”
“You? A faceless man?”
The Gage shrugged. “We prefer the term Gage.”
“So,” she said. She turned to the Dead Man. “What have you to live for?”
“Me? I am dead already.”
“Then you are the Goddess’s already, and need no further blessing of her.”
The Dead Man bit his lip and hid the hand that would have made the Sign of the Pen. “Nevertheless . . . my friend believes we need her help. Perhaps we can explain to the Eidolon?”
“Walk with me,” said the priestess.
Further along the corridor, the walls were mirrored. The priestess strode beside them, the front of her robe gathered in her hands. The mirrors were faintly distorted, whether by design or flaw, and they reflected the priestess, the Gage, and the Dead Man as warped caricatures—rippled, attenuated, bulged into near-spheres. Especially in conjunction with the mirrored masks, the reflections within reflections were dizzying.
When they left the corridor of mirrors and entered the large open atrium into which it emptied, the priestess was gone. The Dead Man whirled, his hand on the hilt of his sword, his battered red coat swinging wide to display all the stains and shiny patches the folds of its skirts hid.
“Ysmat Her Word,” he swore. “I hate these heathen magics. Did you see her go? You see everything.”
The Gage walked straight ahead and did not stop until he reached the middle of the short side of the atrium. “I did not see that.”
“A heathen magic you seek, Dead Man.” A masked priestess spoke from atop the dais at the other end of the long room.
The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, 2014 Edition Page 63