Viscera

by Gabriel Squailia

  Now he’d earned his pain, and an itch that felt downright fungal besides.

  “Keep up, then, Deuce,” he yelled over his shoulder, reaching as deep as he could into the tight, filthy fabric and letting his fingernails fly.

  They ate flatbreads, sour cheese, spiced meat, and pickled vegetables, all loaded onto waxy leaves. The Davins ate, anyhow; Jassa was too upset by the putrescent corpses sprawled mere steps from the cook tent to make so much as an attempt at a bite. She pushed at the plugs in her nose instead, making her look like a mannerless child.

  For Rafe, it was disturbingly comforting to taste his family’s food again, a feeling cut short the instant his mother wiped her mouth on her wrist.

  “So,” she said. “Whatever passed between us, I think we can all agree that five years is too long.”

  Rafe remembered the day she’d stopped speaking to him.

  He’d stayed far too long, after. But if he admitted that now, they’d both start yelling, and he was tired already.

  “It’s a long time, all right.” He couldn’t very well admit that he’d come here by accident. But he needed directions. “We’re hoping to get back to Eth by nightfall.”

  “Oh? So soon? I thought you’d stay the night, at least. The Davins can offer safety,” she said, appealing to Jassa, “and there’s always more than enough food to go around. Expecting ten, cook for thirty—that’s the Davin way.” She smiled, setting her own leaf aside. “I’m Lura,” she said, smiling. “Rafia seems a bit too—” She glanced at the welts on their necks, holding her expression steady. “—too tongue-tied to introduce her—friend?”

  Jassa worked her lips without a sound, choosing her words carefully. “I’m Jassa Lowroller. I’m, ah—that, is Rafe is—we’re associates.”

  “Haiji, some wine?”

  Rafe’s cousin leapt up and fetched a wineskin for Lura, looking faintly terrified. Rafe himself waved it away, to Jassa’s great disappointment.

  “Jassa,” he said, “is my Deuce. My subordinate.”

  “A business arrangement, then?” Lura drank deeply. “And what is your enterprise?”

  “Harvesters,” said Jassa.

  “Trappers,” said Rafe.

  They glared at each other.

  “We procure rare game, for wealthy clients,” said Rafe.

  The Davins looked at Jassa’s sodden bag. “I see,” said Lura, still smiling. “I thought the rich rather enjoyed hunting, no? In any case, I’m sure it’s—very lucrative. But I would like to point out to the both of you that there is plenty of work to go around here. We have the Thirteenth Designation, as you can see, and three other killing fields to care for, besides. Jassa, has she told you at all about what we Davins do?”

  Jassa let out another laugh, this one more considered.

  It would be better to go, with or without a plan. He was just about to stand up when Jassa found her tongue.

  “I was told something about how you belong to the dead gods under Eth,” she said. “But tell me, Lura—which loop of intestine do you lot call home? Is it Gone-Away Frig, or Gone-Away Frag?”

  Lura’s smile froze, and for a moment Rafe thought the act was over.

  Then she drank. “I guess that’s how it must seem, eh? A jumble of ancient guts, forgotten under the streets. Everyone disagreeing about which one belongs to which deity, and all the translations seem to argue with themselves. An endless fight, and all that power goes to the wayside.” She was staring at Rafe now. “But the Davins are above all that. We belong to Nex, the Place Between. Her brain lies below the Uni, and Her gazing-trees surround the city. We know just who we are, Jassa—the Goddess’ guardians, the keepers of Her temple, now as ever. We are they who quiet the dead according to Her wishes—and make a good living at it, too, I would add.”

  Rafe could see where this was going. “Look.” He leaned forward, pointing. “See that pile, Deuce? All those bodies, heaped together?” Jassa followed his finger and nodded, disconcerted. “When the Davins are done washing those strangers’ stinking feet, they’ll dump them all in a mass grave, singing them lullabies. And then,” he said, getting louder as he pointed at a row of skeletons, “they’ll come back months from now, dig them up, and scrape all the rot from their bones. That’s what quieting means—nothing more. A little song, a little dance, two burials, a heap of silver, and then rubes like you believe they’re safe from the grasping fingers of Grandpa’s ghost.”

  His face was red, and so was Lura’s. She gripped the wineskin as if it might fly away. “Tell me something, daughter. Why is it that you believe in all the other wonders of this world, but the teachings of your own people are beyond the pale? Is this really about the unquiet dead—or have you something else to say?”

  “I can keep it to this subject well enough,” said Rafe, crossing his legs. “It’s easy enough to see that the Gone-Away lived—we can tour their rocky guts. And there’s no arguing with enchantments—they can squeeze us to fucking death. For any of your other wonders, there’s actual evidence, but where are your unquiet dead? Jassa insists that they’re chewing on her good luck! Uncle Grimple claims they’ve robbed him of an erection! We never see them, we just blame them—but the dead themselves? They’re intangible. Invisible. Imaginary.”

  Lura must have put away a full bottle by now. “So you don’t believe in what you can’t see, is that what you’re saying?”

  Rafe could feel Jassa staring at him—thinking of Fortune, no doubt.

  “You know I don’t.”

  “Then how,” said Lura, flashing her stained teeth, “do you explain your so-called manhood?”

  Rafe shoved his chair away, heart pounding. “Deuce,” he shouted, standing up. “We’ll be on our way.”

  “Rafia, wait.”

  His mother lurched up, but Jassa hadn’t moved.

  “That was rude of me,” said Lura. “What I meant to say—however poorly—is that there’s a place for you here.”

  “Not as myself,” Rafe said, quietly. “There never has been.”

  “For you, girl.” She stumbled at him, slurring. “For my first-born daughter. Dress how you like. Act how you like. No more silent treatment, love. Just recognize—that we are suffering without you. With you and your father and your Gran gone, Rafia, we have too few hands to do the work. The other clans are at our heels, threatening to take our contracts out from under us. The Devourers, those filthy corpse-eaters, have all but convinced the Guvnor that we’re useless. Help us, love. Please.”

  “I can’t.”

  He wanted to say more. He wished he could destroy her with his words. Instead, he waved a hand at Jassa.

  She smiled at him, as if all this were a grand entertainment.

  “Up, Deuce!” he shouted.

  “As you say, milady,” Jassa said, under her breath.

  Rafe cracked her so hard across the mouth that blood sprayed onto his uncle’s lunch.

  “Hell,” said Lura, as if nothing at all had happened, “we’ll even make room for your paramour. There’s room for you both—and pay.”

  Jassa stood, wiping blood from her chin. “Me?” she cried. “His—her paramour? You must be off your nut, woman—I had no idea she was even bent!”

  “Enough!” shouted Rafe.

  The entire clan swiveled their heads.

  Rafe’s hand itched for the dagger.

  He ought to do it here, in front of all of them. The Widow of Lank Street, they called her. She’d kill him, sooner or later.

  And what would the Davins do? Call the guards on him, miles from Eth?

  They’d bury her, that’s what.

  He saw then, quite clearly, that he couldn’t do it.

  Whatever he’d done in the farmhouse, whatever he’d felt, it was gone now.

  “This—this was a mistake,” he stammered, and started to leave the tent.

  “Leave now, and you’re leaving forever,” said Lura.

  “That’s the idea.”

  “The spade,” she shouted.<
br />
  She wrapped a hand around the handle of her own, and every Davin in the tent followed suit. Even Haiji, who looked like she was about to weep.

  Rafe stopped, and Jassa stumbled into him.

  A dozen Davins drew. Bone gleamed in the sunlight.

  They were bluffing. They had to be.

  A rustling of tendrils shifted the field of corpses from beneath.

  “Rafe. Boy!” whispered Jassa. “Let it drop.”

  Rafe tugged the tool from his belt and tossed it into the field. His cousin sucked air between her teeth.

  “I don’t need it, now,” he said.

  “It would seem you never did,” Lura said. Scooping it up, she weaved close enough that Rafe could smell the wine on her breath, the oil in her hair. “Rafia?”

  Rafe looked up.

  “You will never be quiet, girl. Even if you plague me in death as you did in life, your soul will never leave these lands.”

  Rafe didn’t look away, at least. But a muscle in his foot began to twitch, causing his whole body to shake.

  “Is this what you wanted, when you left?” she said, pointing at the puncture-wounds on his neck, twisting her lips. “Boy?”

  Rafe spit on the ground.

  “Close enough.”

  He left the tent, stalking through the bodies, and Jassa followed, slowing their pace to a crawl as she hopped and staggered. Rafe kept his burning face tilted to the ground until they were clear of his relatives.

  “Where are we going, boy?” Jassa hissed.

  “I don’t know, Jass.”

  That’s when he saw them.

  Hairless, pallid, and stripped to the waist, they were looking down at the corpses—and whispering.

  “Devourers!” Rafe screamed, scrabbling at his belt.

  On his left side, where his spade no longer hung.

  He groped for the dagger.

  They raised their hands, and the field erupted.

  A geyser of black flame tossed Rafe through the air, sucking the heat from his skin. Jassa flounced up beside him, surrounded by red droplets. For an instant he thought her satchel had burst, that they’d lost their cargo, that the tlak they might have earned was lost.

  But no—she’d been ruptured by a fist of fire.

  Blood sprayed through the gaps in her teeth.

  They were dead, he supposed.

  Ah, well.

  It was night when he woke, and the moon was full and high. Rafe lay bleeding, surrounded by the bodies of his kin, some living, most dead. A ring of black flames burned in a wide circle around them, penning them in.

  He couldn’t see Jassa.

  He could see his mother, though.

  She was missing her head.

  His cousin Haiji still lived. She was the only one who sat upright, listening to the flames hiss.

  “Haiji,” he croaked. “Haij.”

  She turned, a little. It took some time for her to decide to crawl to him.

  “Don’t make noise,” she whispered. “They killed Draymun for crying. They don’t need us alive.”

  “Is it the contracts?” he whispered back. He tried to sit up and regretted the motion.

  Haiji shrugged. “I think. Maybe the Guvnor gave them our lands. Because their methods are faster than ours. Else they’re just taking them.” She wiped her eyes angrily.

  “Gran used to tell me about them.”

  “Same. ‘You don’t mind me, child, the bald-heads will chew your bones.’ ” She looked with suspicion at the ring of flames. “They’re not quieting anyone’s souls. They’re not letting them pass on into peace. They’re burning them, Rafe.”

  Rafe didn’t care what they did to him now—dead was dead. But he was glad that Haiji had called him by his right name, at least.

  He’d landed between two soldiers, his head pillowed by their ribs. Inspecting them, he found Jassa, still breathing a bit, though so much of her body was glistening that it stung his eyes to look.

  No wonder he’d thought the satchel had split. She was halfway disemboweled.

  Somehow he laughed.

  “So they’ll eat us up, then?”

  “Only a little,” came a sonorous voice from the edge of the ring, where the flames were parting like a velvet curtain around a woman in a purple cloak.

  Her head gleamed, hairless, browless, coated in grease. She didn’t even have eyelashes, Rafe noticed as Haiji scurried away.

  He noticed, too, that an infant slumbered on her chest, tied there with a purple sling.

  A tiny greased baby. And why not? They were a clan, after all. They lived and died like any other.

  “A dollop of bone marrow, that’s all we actually swallow,” she purred as she sat beside him, folding her legs atop a corpse’s back. “One from each shank.”

  She touched Rafe’s leg.

  Not like Jassa would have touched him. Like a lover.

  Her hands were very warm. Her baby was burbling.

  “Some say we eat the whole corpse. But how many of us would there need to be, to chow on a field this size? We’d have to outnumber the armies we serve, and at that point we might as well fight them, and eat whatever we caught. No, just a taste of each—a dollop!—mixed together in a savory paste.” She touched her throat as if it were a piece of expensive machinery. “I take it down slowly, enjoying the flavor. Anticipating the digestion that will bind the dead to this world. It is not a taking, but a joining. There is beauty, on both sides. But you’ll see for yourself. For a moment.”

  Each time Rafe blinked, it took longer to open his eyes. He saw figures dancing in the darkness, where there were none. He couldn’t be far from the end. He wondered if he’d been punctured, where his side ached. Maybe his bandages were the only thing holding him in.

  “You’re amusing yourself,” he murmured, though he felt no anger. “That’s why we’re alive, isn’t it? An audience.”

  “I am amused!” said the Devourer, brightly. The baby began to squirm, rooting for her breast, and she obliged, pulling out a breast and helping until the little mouth latched. The child gulped greedily. “I’ve waited for this a while. Your scrappy little clan has held these fields for an awfully long time. Everything else comes and goes, doesn’t it? The rulers, the guilds, the babies, the soldiers, the enchantments. All turning over and over, making such fantastic mulch. Everything except the Davins, and a few other favorites of those tenured madmen at the University. Finally, it’s our turn.”

  She touched Rafe’s face slowly, very slowly, outlining his nose, his cheeks, his lips, with such hot consideration that he gave himself over to her touch.

  At least someone would see him as he died, he thought.

  He was surprised to learn that it mattered.

  “But I like what you are, little Davin. Not like the others, are you? Something new, right at the end of the line. A delicacy. I’ll eat you on your own. I’ll make sure that your dollop isn’t mixed with the rest.”

  “Thank you.”

  His eyes slid shut, then open again. It felt like his last blink.

  “Oh! But I should be thanking you. I thought we’d have to fight the matriarch, and I wasn’t entirely sure which way it would go. I’ve heard stories about her thorns. As big as trees, they say! But then you came along. Such a timely distraction.”

  Either the flames were parting a second time, or Rafe’s brain had begun to drown.

  The Devourer looked up, light playing on her gleaming face, and on the hairless skull of her child.

  “Hate to interrupt,” came a voice from the edge, “but we found this lurking in the wood.”

  Rafe must have been hallucinating again.

  It was the dead woman from the farmhouse.

  He didn’t believe in ghosts.

  She didn’t seem to care.

  “Always room for another at our table,” the Devourer said, stepping across the corpses like stones in a pool.

  The ghost looked at her—then glanced down at the baby on her chest and recoiled
.

  It was odd, wasn’t it? That a ghost should be afraid of a child.

  But she cringed, and started spitting.

  The Devourer paid her no mind.

  She was too busy staring at Haiji.

  The girl’s back was silently heaving.

  “No crying,” said the Devourer, and ruptured her body with a sudden burst of flame. Then she left him, and the ring of black fire closed behind her.

  Rafe ought to feel something, he supposed, but there was no room.

  The dead woman’s ghost sat beside him, cradling a handbag in her lap, spitting occasionally. Everything went silent, except for Haiji’s body sizzling and the whispers of the flames.

  “Come for vengeance?” he whispered, his eyes crossing. “You’d better hurry.”

  The ghost didn’t speak, but her handbag did.

  “These dimwits will bleed out before the hour has rung,” it rasped in a voice like two flat pebbles rubbed together. “And then we’ll be sunk! Can’t you do something?”

  “I’d really rather not,” said the ghost, sounding bored.

  “Don’t make me beg, Ashlan Ley. I’m worse at begging than at reaching high shelves.”

  The ghost sighed, leaned in, and pulled the dagger from Rafe’s belt.

  The one he’d used to kill her.

  He deserved this. He wondered if she knew it was a mercy.

  But she didn’t stab him after all. As calmly as he might cut an apple, she slashed herself twice, once on the pad of each thumb. She stuck the blade in the dirt and shoved a bleeding digit in his mouth. The other was for Jassa.

  Rafe squirmed from the taste of salt and copper.

  The ghost pushed her thumb deeper.

  “Suck,” she said. “If you want to live the night.”

  Like a baby himself, he obliged.

  —Nerves—

  “It’s safe,” said Ashlan, patting the side of her bag. “Relatively.”

  Hollis pushed the flap open and peered out, his burlap brow nearly folded over. “What is all that?” he rasped, pointing at the black flames.

  “They call it hellfire. Burns cold.”

  “The name seems a trifle dramatic.”