Rafe looked around, feeling faint, as the others were brought up behind him. Over the toes of his boots he could see how many buildings had been reduced to dust and brick, how many neighborhoods had sunk out of sight. Shiny Clump was jutting at a madcap angle some hundred feet lower than usual, and the silvered dome of the Uni was simply gone—swallowed whole by the catacombs. Eth was in ruins, and at its edges he could see its pearly wall in pieces, the sun shining on the open fields beyond.
I’ll run, he thought. As soon as I can move.
The Assemblage will never find me, because I’ll never come back.
Then Loxia touched down, a tentacle patting her on the head.
Seeing her shocked face in the sunlight, an unrecognizable mask of dust and blood that surely mirrored his own, made him feel safe for a moment. If Jassa was looking for him, she wouldn’t be able to spot him until he bathed.
She seemed so far away. All of it did. This chaos had swallowed so much.
A curious gratitude overcame him. The city seemed too broken to hurt him, for now.
They gave him food, water, and enforced rest, but Rafe was too stubborn to stay down—within a day, he was blearily working, helping Graven Jacks organize the waves of survivors coming into an abandoned schoolhouse at the inner edge of the shattered wall. Though he and the others from underground had joined a far larger group of complete strangers, they labored without any noticeable hierarchy—people popped in and out of rooms, shedding and taking over responsibilities as their areas of expertise became needed elsewhere. Jacks himself, in addition to lending brute force where needed, seemed to act as the building’s living reference library for such skills. He called everyone Chuck, even Loxia and Rafe, but he seemed always to know what each individual Chuck was best at.
“Ah, found some unspoilt meat, did you?” he roared as two boys carried in a side of beef peppered with rubble. “You’ll want squinty Chuck, tall white fella with the broken spectacles, last seen on the third floor, I b’lieve. He was a chef, or at least a mess cook—can’t recall, but at any rate he won’t add a finger to the stew!”
Rafe himself had been carrying messages and fetching people for hours, ignoring his body’s complaints as best he could, when Jacks waved him over. “Got a job for you, Chuck,” he said, with no less volume than usual, though his grizzled visage was far more somber. “A woman was just brought in, over off the western hall. She’s not going to make it. I need you to see her out, now.”
“You want me to—”
“Sit with her while she shoves off, yeah.”
“You really think that’s the best use of our resources, Jacks?” Rafe was instantly red-faced. “It’s not a favor she’s likely to remember. And there’s need all around.”
Jacks rolled a massive shoulder. “Seems pressing enough to me. I don’t believe anyone ought to go alone, especially strangers. Might be because I’m a bachelor, and it makes me feel like I might have a hand to hold.”
“Maybe you ought to do it, then,” Rafe snapped.
“Hm.” Jacks scratched his stubble, looking at Rafe like a puppy nipping at him. “Suppose I misread you, Chuck. Looked like you’ve seen your share of endings. But if you’re too squeamish, I’ll find someone with a tougher lining.”
“Squeamish, my ass.”
Rafe stomped away.
And into the schoolhouse.
Was he that easy, that a tossed-off taunt could change his course? If so, he hadn’t changed a whit.
I could leave, he thought, fuming. I could duck out the back and slip through the broken wall. No one would know until I was far, far away from here.
There was nothing to keep him. He didn’t know these people. Whatever contract he’d held with the freaks was broken, and though he’d heard nothing of the Assemblage in the jumbled rumors about camp, a living Jassa would be a certain threat.
Rafe could run.
But where?
His eyes danced in the dust that swirled through the sunlight. He pictured himself in the wood again, without weapons or food, getting good and lost. Or trudging along some dusty road, hoping the next place was kinder to bent folk than Eth had been.
Then Loxia passed by, carrying a crate of supplies down the hall. “Five doors down on the left, Chuck.” Everyone was saying it now—it was easier than learning so many names at once.
“Thank you,” said Rafe, and then his feet were carrying him down the western hall.
The woman’s brown skin was ashy, her hair a curly cloud. She was just about his age—he wondered why he’d thought she’d be older. Her amber eyes were very mobile, and seemed only intermittently to be able to focus on his face.
He could feel himself trying not to look down.
Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. You’ve seen this enough.
You’ve done this enough.
So much of her flesh was open to the air that he couldn’t believe she was awake.
This was why people believed in ghosts. It felt as if she might reach out and take him with her.
But that was the opposite of what he’d been taught—when he’d sat beside his father, with Gran and Lura at his side.
His father’s head had been carved open by some drunken soldier’s blade. They’d showed Rafe his brain, telling him not to fear, that this is what they all were made of, and a Davin didn’t flinch from the truth inside.
The soldier had seen their cloaks and mistaken them for an army. His father spoke words that had no business standing together.
Rafe hadn’t run then.
Surely he hadn’t grown less brave in twenty years.
We will carry you along with us, Gran had told his father at the end, until you’re strong enough to go.
And Rafe had said it, too, and believed himself.
“Hello,” said Rafe, his heart thudding as he approached the side of the dying woman’s bed.
Thinking of Graven Jacks’ words, he forced his hand out.
She clasped it. Her grip was both desperate and weak.
“You’re not alone,” he said, looking back at her eyes.
She looked dubious.
He couldn’t manage all that talk about carrying her with him. They were strangers, and the words wouldn’t come.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said instead.
At this, her forehead smoothed.
Rafe had no idea what he’d say next. But the story he’d pasted up on the wall of Mrs. Dallow’s Cut-Rate Boarding House came to mind, about his childhood adventures on a pirate ship.
Feeling absurd, he closed his eyes and let the words come.
He didn’t need many of them, in the end.
After sundown, Rafe was chewing slowly, staring into a shifting field of his own exhaustion, when Graven Jacks came back to the table, a bottle of whiskey in his paw. “Here,” he shouted, “and no more apologies from you!”
The woman across the table was shaking so badly that Jacks had to pull out the cork for her. “But I am sorry,” she grumbled after she’d gotten a few slugs down. “People dying all around, and these are my priorities.” She noticed Rafe staring, and held out the bottle.
He considered it.
Finally he shook his head. “Too bitter for my taste.”
“Cut yourself some fucking slack, Chuck,” shouted Jacks, waving away the bottle from the woman. “You’ve a sickness, not some moral fucking failing! I mean, hell, I don’t know you, maybe you’ve got both. But in a city like the one we’ve been living in, I’ve never seen the point in blame. Am I to be hung for murder, when I was paid to kill? You steadied your fucking hands, Chuck, now work your hardest, and have your little slap-fight with your personal demons when there’s solid ground underfoot.”
Rafe waited until Jacks’ cloud of bluster had blown on. “Easy for him to say,” he muttered.
“Sure is.” She’d nestled the bottle between her feet and was staring at it guiltily.
“Rafe Davin.”
“Rainer Mory.” She didn’t
look up.
The urge to tell her more nearly drove him from his seat. But everyone here seemed to be confiding in a stranger. Rafe leaned forward on his elbows, shoving his bowl away.
“I was a junkie before this,” he said, tapping his neck. “A tlak addict. Then I—I took a fall. Down below, I couldn’t get any for a time, and—well, now I’m clean.” He glanced around, unsure who it was he thought might be listening. He left the freaks out of it, just in case. “But it wasn’t by choice. It’s like I was—like I was enchanted. Like someone took it from me. It doesn’t feel like anything I deserve.”
“You know how lucky you are?”
Thirsty as she’d been, he’d expected Rainer to understand, not hand him platitudes. “Lucky,” he muttered, “would have been if I’d asked for it.” He started to go.
“No, no. I don’t mean that.” She drank, then corked the bottle, leaning forward herself. “You really haven’t heard?”
“Heard—what?”
“About Left-Handed Luce.”
Rafe gripped the edge of the table.
Loxia Lydus slid in next to them, setting down her bowl. “The name on everyone’s lips,” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“I haven’t heard.” Rafe was finding it hard to breathe. “What happened?”
Rainer shied away now that Loxia was here. “The word is,” said Loxia, “all this mess was triggered by the Assemblage. The sweet-necks went on a killing spree.” She broke her bread and dipped it into her bowl. “Their leader, some junkie who styled herself Left-Handed Luce, had promised them a lifetime supply of tlak if they slaughtered a bunch of elderly folk from a hospice.”
“Elderly folk? Ha! I heard it was a sack of forty-nine babies, snatched from a nursery.” Jacks tossed a loaf of fresh-baked bread onto the table and sat before a second bowl.
“Whoever it was,” said Loxia, “it brought on the little quake. And the guards lost control after that, and clamped down hard enough to cause the big one.”
“And the big quake,” said Jacks with a grin, “collapsed the fucking God-Gland, didn’t it?”
Rafe laughed out loud, too horrified not to. “You mean—”
“The only known source of tlak, in Eth or beyond,” said Loxia, holding her hand out for the bottle of whiskey, “is now buried under a city’s worth of rubble, thanks to Luce.”
“See what I mean?” said Rainer Mory, smiling a little. “You got out at the right time.”
“Loxia,” said Rafe.
Amusement had blown right through him. He was shivering now.
“Hm?” She passed the bottle back to Rainer.
“Did you—happen to hear what became of her?”
“Luce?” She nodded. “Her gang took control of Crunkshank Gallery just before the big quake hit. They were set on taking a run at the Guvnor. Then her followers got the news about the God-Gland.”
“Carved their leader up like a side of beef,” said Jacks, waving a meaty spoonful of stew. “She’s strung up there now, I hear.”
The table moved on, and Loxia scooted closer. “Question for you.”
“All right.”
“Met a kid yesterday. Crosswise girl, younger than you, looking for razors and feeling pretty scared to be so—out in the open about it, all the sudden. All I told her was that I might know someone she could talk to, if she wanted. But I didn’t say who, because I never asked how out in the open you want to be.”
“As far as it gets.”
His cheeks were hot. The words surprised him.
But Loxia just nodded. “I’ll send her your way, then.”
Rafe sat, skin buzzing, and watched a number of smaller decisions ripple out from that one.
He knew what he was about to do, but had to work through convincing himself regardless.
Then, when he couldn’t ignore it any longer, he turned.
“Jacks.”
The big man looked irritable at being interrupted midway through a gory description, then saw Rafe’s expression. “What’s on your mind, Chuck?”
“I’ll need your help.” He gripped Jacks’ shoulder, standing. “To bury our dead.”
Jacks nodded. “Quite a few of ’em by now. Be good for morale, no question. I’ll gather up some diggers.”
“I’ll handle the rites,” said Rafe.
Rainer looked surprised.
“I don’t look the part, I know. But I come from a—religious family, you could say.” Rafe made a stack of bowls, and more started coming down the table at him. He set a fistful of spoons in the top bowl on the stack and lifted the lot. “Jacks, in the morning, when the diggers are all organized, let’s carry a stretcher over to Crunkshank Gallery.”
“Chuck?” Jacks looked confused.
“Left-Handed Luce,” said Rafe, “is one of mine.”
Rainer went down to the creek once more while Jacks dug holes with the rest. Everyone was sweaty from hauling bodies and swinging shovels in the sun, but they left the pails of water alone, watching Rafe work with a wary admiration. What he was doing—undressing the dead, bathing their bodies, whispering to them about their lives, even when he didn’t know them—must have looked, to them, like a sort of magic.
He could even see it in Jacks’ eyes when the big man looked his way. For all the death in his life, he had no intimacy with it. For centuries, Ethians had relied on clans like the Davins to stand as their intermediaries, leaning on a ludicrous superstition about the malice of the unquiet dead.
The dead will eat your luck. The dead will give you gout. The dead will smother you in your sleep.
The dead, Rafe thought, dipping his hands in cold water, could care less about the living.
Even still, what he’d told his mother—that the Davins were preying on the superstitions of suckers—no longer felt quite right.
This business of quieting the dead wasn’t an outright lie. It was a useful fiction.
He was quieting someone as he washed this stranger’s feet.
It just wasn’t the corpse.
It was Rafe himself.
And that, in turn, was calming all the people watching, who had, for reasons unimaginable outside of this catastrophe, put their trust in him.
He finished washing the body of this young man, and leaned in, his lips next to its ear.
“Sleep well, love.”
It was a daft thing to whisper. But when he stood, he could feel that the attention around him had tightened, as it did every time he spoke to one of the dead.
Carrying the strange weight of their respect, he came to the end of this long line of bodies, now prepared for burial according to the methods he’d been taught by his mother and grandmother.
Only a single corpse remained.
He’d saved Jassa for last, hoping exhaustion might make it easier.
Rafe and Graven Jacks had met the keeper of the Gallery that morning, just past dawn, trekking through streets that the quake had rendered into peaks and valleys, some of them shifting at the merest footfall. The Gallery itself still stood near the back of an unshaken peninsula clinging to the northern wall, its high marble columns a testament to the city’s one-time commitment to architectural stability. The keeper, a young woman with very long hair, had been relieved to hear what they’d come for. “These others are kings,” she said, pointing at various blotches on the walls. “I’d have had to throw her out on the street! By the rules, you know, not out of callousness.”
Rafe and Jacks stood for a while, staring up at the shelves. They’d only have been allowed in Crunkshank Gallery on a Feast Day, otherwise, or as part of a heavily guarded train after a coronation. This was Rafe’s first glimpse of the story of Eth, told in bodily leavings—the solemnity of its ancient crypts overwritten, in the past few centuries, by a proud display of butchery. A row of crowned heads, devoid of their bodies and rotting to dust, stood above a skeleton reordered so that its skull was lodged in its pelvis. Rafe spotted a tangle of dried intestines, which the keeper confirmed as belonging to
Malachi the Emperazor, strung over a chandelier of mummified hands, each boasting at least one gaudy ring. “Your friend here’s simply out of place,” said the keeper, still sounding worried about it. “She did rule, on a technicality, for a moment or two—but there were none of the necessary rituals performed, just a riot of drugs and gambling before the second quake hit. And then, when her—disciples heard the news about their drug supply, they—well, I guess you can see well enough for yourself.”
“Cut her down,” said Rafe, and Jacks had complied.
Now she was lying in the open field, far from the broken wall of Eth, near to the edge of the wood, her body a pincushion for daggers. In place of her eyes stood a pair of dice that had rattled in her sockets as they’d carried her, blanketed and secured to a homespun stretcher, out to her resting place.
The digging was done. The others crowded as close as they dared. Rafe tugged out the blades, one by one, noting how the people around him flinched every time, showing her corpse a compassion he doubted they’d have felt if she was still alive.
It was almost time for the ceremony. He’d meant to invent a new one, but there was precious little left in his mind.
He’d use Clan Davin’s framework, then. It was as good as any. Better than the Devourers saying grace, at any rate.
Rafe washed the daggers clean. The bucket’s water gone red, he waved for Rainer to switch it out, and she did so with a woozy solemnity that seemed somehow appropriate. The blades themselves would be buried with Jassa’s body—by the customs of his clan, whatever killed a person became part of their flesh. Then, when the corpses were dug up again, all this would be cast aside, and their bones scrubbed, before their second burial. Only then would they be proclaimed quiet.
On second thought, maybe he’d skip the second burial. He was the last living Davin, after all, and it wasn’t as if anyone else would miss it.
Rainer brought a fresh pail. Rafe set his jaw, peeling off the leather clothes Jassa had been wearing since the treehouse, stuck to her body now.
He’d never seen her naked before. Jassa had hated to be touched, though she never seemed to mind doing the touching.
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