Thieves' War

by Clayton Snyder

  Honey I’m still free

  Take a chance on me

  “Cut that infernal racket out,” Crood grumbled at the blade.

  To its credit, it lowered the volume so Crood could hear himself think. The landscape below transitioned smoothly from the snowcapped mountains that were home to the Cloisters to a lush forest carpet. Despite Xel’s advanced age, the dragon still had a great deal of speed in him, and Crood suffered him to live for this reason alone. They neared the tree line, and smoke billowed from several places at the edge as the trees gave way to hilly plains. Below, men shambled about amid the wreckage of a camp. Even as he watched, they looked up as if with one mind.

  “What do you think that’s about, then?” Crood asked Xel.

  Xel dipped his head to look, and they descended a little way. “A rout, maybe?” The dragon rasped out.

  Below, the men unraveled, a thing that even in a small millennium, Crood hadn’t seen before. Streamers of flesh unwrapped from naked bones, skeletons collapsing into a sort of gray goo. As one, the new forms slithered toward one another, entwining, merging in a way that was pleasant to neither the eye nor the ears, a wet slurping echoing across the plain.

  Crood watched with detached interest as the disparate flesh reformed, an enormous foot taking shape. He raised a brow in puzzlement. Is this something he should kill now, or later? Later, of course. There was no challenge in slaughtering a single foot. But should that foot become attached to something more glorious, his own glory would only multiply. He set his spurs to Xel, and the dragon rose in the air, heading ever west.

  “Gods, I hate those things,” the dragon complained in response.

  “You may hate anything you like,” Crood replied, half-distracted. “As long as you serve.”

  Xel muttered something under his breath. Crood did not notice however, too caught up in visions of glories to come.

  Of Death and Dr. Porkenheimer’s Boner Juice

  We stretched sore muscles and legs in a melody of relieved groans and crackling joints. I lit a cigar, inhaling the pleasant burn. We joined a thinning crowd of newcomers waiting their turn to enter. Cord told us northern entry wasn't a common occurrence, but it was the easiest way for travelers from the inland cities. I looked ahead and saw no guards, but still the line stopped and started. I turned to Cord, the old thief strangely quiet for once.

  “What next?” I asked.

  He shrugged, as if it hadn't occurred to him to think it out. It probably hadn't. "How do you stop a war, Nenn1?"

  "Is this a theoretical question?" I asked. I knew it wasn't. "Take their money and supplies? No troops, no war."

  He nodded and looked up at the wall. A sign outside the entrance read DR. PORKENHEIMER’S BONER JUICE2. He shook his head.

  “No, it's a good thought. But that's not the way the world works. They'll just conscript. Enslave. Take and use, until the bodies run out. And you know how they'll replace them?" He pointed to the sign. "No, I’ve got a better idea," he said.

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “We’re gonna end death.”

  “Fuck.”

  We slipped past the guards in the small crowd, then into the city proper, the gaping skull gate swallowing us whole. The fountains trickled, the people chattered, and all seemed oblivious of the previous carnage only a few short miles away. We moved into the city in hopes of finding food and beds.

  “Hasn’t changed much. Made a trip here when I was a soldier. Orleght was giving away leave passes, and I couldn’t pass up a chance to see Vignon. We’d all heard of it back then. City of Light. City of Sin. When you’re twenty and don’t have much to your name but a blade and a fat purse, what else would you do with your time?” Cord said.

  “So why are we back?” I asked.

  “Why wouldn’t we be? If you want to hide from a god, what better place than under another god’s nose?”

  “Fela,” I said.

  Lux interrupted us with the sound of a raspberry. “Pbbbbbbbt,” she said.

  “Yeah, I don’t believe it,” Rek agreed.

  “Wha- I-,” Cord protested.

  “They’ve got a point,” I said. “You’ve never been exactly forthcoming. ‘I have a plan’ isn’t exactly letting everyone in on it.”

  He opened his mouth to answer, and the food arrived. We'd found a nicer hotel than the ones we could usually afford. Partially due to Cord's, however dubious status, of mercenary captain. The plates were piled high with roast pheasant and potatoes, glazed carrots, and biscuits the size of my fist. I started shoveling it in with a vengeance.

  Lux sniffed the air. “Death. Everywhere.”

  Cord nodded. “This is a city of conspicuous consumption. Everything you see is built on the backs of the dead, or worse.”

  “Worse?” I asked.

  He made a face, twisting up his mouth and wrinkling his nose. “Slaves. The city rounds up ‘undesirables’ and forces them into service as fodder legions to protect their lifestyle.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Ah what?” he asked, leading us toward the sprawl.

  “I see why we’re here now,” I said.

  “You do?” He asked.

  “Sure. Injustice. Wrongdoing. People to free,” I said.

  "And?" He asked.

  "That's it," I said.

  "Mmhm," Rek said around a mouthful of bird.

  "Likely," Lux said around the same, though more delicately.

  "Fine," Cord sighed. "I need Fela here."

  "There it is," Rek said.

  "There what is?" Cord asked.

  "I think what Rek's trying so delicately to say is that you want your knob shined," I said.

  "Hmph. How crude," Cord said. "I prefer the phrase 'glistening with love'."

  About this time, you're probably thinking of asking me two questions: “But Nenn, how do we end death?” and “Why the fuck do you keep following this guy around?”

  The answer to your second question is straightforward. When I met Cord, I wanted to improve my lot in life. To make a little money, and to retire a long way from the shithole I’d grown up in. And then I spent time with him. And I realized that as batshit, cover-yourself-in-honey-and-taunt-a-bear insane as he was, what Cord wanted was something else. He wanted to improve everyone’s lot in life. And that kind of thought is infectious. It’s not doing good. It’s doing right. And right is always better than what society says is good. It’s also the hardest thing to accomplish.

  As for the second, well, there’s a story there. There always is.

  After dinner, we made our way to our rooms, two suites connected by a door. I lounged on the couch in our apartments with a cigar in one hand and a glass of brandy in the other. The others had already retired, and Cord sat across from me, his slipweed pipe leaking blue smoke as he absently puffed.

  I was reading a book I’d picked up in a poorly lit corner store, a thing titled Captain Morelli’s Spear. The author’s name was embossed on the cover in raised gold letters: Bert Mancrease. The clerk had sold it to me as ‘A rousing pirate adventure’. What it was was awful dreck, a particularly terrible passage catching my attention:

  She was all leg and ass and tit, in that order, as if the gods had built her from the ground up so as not to waste any flesh. A monument of flesh made to entice flesh, as if flesh was the purpose and the fuel. Flesh. Mona lamented time and again to Morelli in private that no tailor had yet been able to engineer a garment that cupped and fondled her flesh the way his hands did. Morelli for his part, tuned out her shrill voice—the one flaw in an otherwise perfect creature—one he could overlook, however. Even the gods did not give with both hands, unless you were talking about his fleshy cock. He stared instead at her nipples, the color of warm sausage, and fleshy areolas that made him hungry for bologna flesh on a warm summer day. He admired her lips, full and fat flesh, made specifically for the purpose of resting his meat spear, like a fleshy end table. Her eyes, slightly crossed, like a woman recently knocked in the fleshy pa
rt of the skull with a small hammer. He felt himself stir and

  I whipped the book across the room, denting the plaster of the wall. If I ever met the author, I’d give him a lesson in anatomy. Piece by agonizing piece.

  “That’ll probably win an award, you know,” Cord said.

  I grunted. Part in acknowledgement at the snark. Part in irritation at the fact he was probably right.

  “Did I ever tell you how death came about, Nenn?”

  I blinked. “No.”

  “Ah, that’s a story. We’ve some time.”

  I settled in. Because let’s face it. Even Cord’s most vile stories are still better than the shit-smeared pages I’d been reading.

  She is old. Time weighs on her like the sagging skin on her bones, age painting her hair like the desert in a fitful snowfall, ache surrounding her like the buzzing of bees in their hives. She raises her head to sip from the water her son provides – her son, Kiva, his skin the color of sandstone buttes, his eyes dark and clear. He holds her head, tilting it toward the mug as if he were guiding a newborn deer to its mother’s teat, and waits while she purses her lips, her throat bobbing like a kingfisher seeking prey. When she is done, he lowers her gently, and she takes his hand.

  She knows he will come soon, the Skeleton Man, the Keeper. She wonders if he remembers her slight, and in her heart knows it to be true, and her hands tremble just a little more, her skin grows a shade paler, and she swallows. Despite the water, it is needles in her throat, and she chuckles, because she knows that when he comes, it will matter either not at all, or forever.

  “What is so funny, mother?” Kiva asks, a scowl darkening his face.

  She sighs internally, knowing he would rather be with the other men, playing games, or tracking an antelope, and not here, in this room smelling of sick old woman. And yet she holds to him, her grip tightening on his, her lips turning up in a smile. Because despite those things, he is still here. When she speaks, her voice is raspy, the consonants and syllables thrashing like a rattlesnake in coals.

  “Have I told you about your father?”

  Kiva looks at her and shakes his head. What could she tell him about Hawaovi? The tribe’s secrets were an open book, their lives laid bare. His father had died ten years ago, and it still stings his heart, a barb of sorrow he covers with bravado and stupidity. But then, Soyala thinks, everyone is stupid in their own way. It is a common vein that runs through all of humanity, and a trait even the gods share. She also knew that if you are clever, you can exploit it, a miner laying bare ore to get at the gold beneath. And the truth about Hawaovi wasn’t an easy one – he had died twice now, and though it laid her heart raw and bare, she could not bring him back a second time. Once had been enough for a lifetime – once had been all any mortal should have to endure, and it was enough to know that when he went the second time, it was with a good life.

  Soyala looks to the window, past the mask of a coyote on the wall, and sees the sun, not yet dipping at the horizon, but beginning its descent, a bird gliding to the shade of a butte, hoping for relief. Shadows have grown longer, and she sees Kiva’s enlarged, a man in his prime. She smiles again and clears her throat. She coughs, and pink spittle flecks her lips, which Kiva wipes dutifully. His frown deepens for a moment, and she smiles, pats his cheek.

  “So serious. So serious.”

  He attempts a smile, but it’s slippery, an uncaught thing that hides in the shadow eclipsing his face.

  “You were going to tell me a story?”

  She knows what he’s doing, but she’s glad for it nonetheless. She settles back on the pillow and stares at the ceiling, the bare beams and adobe forming pattern and memory. She clears the coppery taste from her throat and begins.

  “When you were young, your father died.”

  Kiva gives her a confused look. “He has only been dead ten years, mother.”

  She shakes her head, brittle yarn hair making a whispering sound on the pillow. “Yes. And he died once, before.”

  Kiva raises one eyebrow, convinced the end is nearer than they’d believed. She doesn’t blame him. It has been decades since it happened, and the last tellers of the story have moved on to the other world. That too, was a thing that happened. The world moved on even when you weren’t ready for it, time burbling on like water from a swift stream. You could cast your rock into the water, and for a time, your story would move it, send ripples out. But time and tide wore all things down eventually, and your rock too would end as little more than another smooth stone on an endless riverbed.

  She clears her throat again, the needles back. She needs to be swift before they take her voice.

  “When your father died, we were young. Believe it or not, I was once strong. Tall and willowy, my hair the color of night. My voice did not waver, and my hands did not shake.”

  “I believe you.” His smile is gentle, maybe a bit patronizing, she thinks. A curse of the young, to listen, but never believe. “How did he die?”

  She shrugs. It seemed so important once. As with most things, time erodes the big features and twists memory into surreal shapes. To be true, she could no longer remember. “This thing or another. Perhaps he fell into an arroyo. Perhaps he angered Coyote. The important thing is that he was dead, and I was alone.”

  It wasn't such a bad thing, being alone. She had never thought a woman needed a man to be complete, or that a woman without a man was a failure, as some elders did. It was the act of sharing she missed. The camaraderie of holding another's hand, or laughing at a private joke. She reflects that she could have done all those things as easily as with a woman, and a few she had, but her heart remained with Hawaovi.

  "Then how did he come back? Surely Raven didn't carry his soul back to you at your asking?"

  She shakes her head again, again the whispering from the pillow. "I went for him. I went to the Skeleton Man to bring him back, and I succeeded."

  "Just like that?"

  Memories of a temple to the dead, an ossuary of bones. The Skeleton Man atop a seat of living flesh, his face behind a bone mask. He leaned forward, viewing Soyala in her nakedness. She smiled, and Hawaovi squirmed free from the throne, tiptoeing to the side as Soyala embraced the Skeleton Man, her lips on his mask, his breath like that of the cougar, rich and thick with blood and meat. She shuddered to think of what she had done with Hawaovi's captor, but only a little. It was a small thing, giving herself to him in the dark of that place in exchange for her love. A small thing the world made too big, if you asked her. After, while he slept, she took his mask and found the sunlight. They lived happy for a long while, and yes, looking back, a small thing.

  She smiles again. "No, not just like that. But I think time is growing short for the story."

  Soyala squeezes his hand and looks to the window. The sun is sinking faster now, time slipping away like desert sand. The rocks outside glow orange and red, the sky pink. She thinks it beautiful. She thinks it melancholy, the earth giving her one last sight before she slips from it. Her vision dims for a moment, and a chill creeps into the room. Gooseflesh raises on her arms, and Kiva tugs the blanket closer to her chin. She opens her eyes, and a shadow in the corner drifts across a wall, long and lean, smelling of blood and earth. Soyala turns rheumy eyes to her son.

  "Leave me for a moment, please."

  Kiva's face contorts, but he brings it under control quickly. He nods, and steps out, the blanket over the door dropping behind him. She can hear him singing quietly to himself, and she smiles. It is a lullaby she sang when he was still tiny in his bed. Memory snakes across her vision again, and she sees Hawaovi's face beside the fire, a smile licking at his lips like a flame as she sings.

  Her sight clears, and the shadow detaches itself from the wall, taking shape. It is a man, handsome, his nose straight, his lips full. His hair is the color of snow, though he is neither young nor old. He smiles, and he heart quails. The man moves across the room on silent feet and takes the seat beside her, his cold hand grasping her still-
warm one. Outside, Kiva continues to hum.

  The Skeleton Man leans in, his breath still warm, still bloody and thick, and whispers in her ear.

  "I have missed you, Soyala." He looks around the room, his eyes lighting on the coyote mask. His lips turn up. "I see you still have it. You haven't forgotten me after all."

  Despite herself, she returns his smile. Her lips feel dry and cracked, and she thinks of asking him for water, but knows it will matter little soon. She turns to the window, where Kiva's head pokes above the windowsill, a stray hair floating in the wind.

  "How could I?"

  "Will he miss you much?"

  She sighs. "Not as much perhaps, as I will miss him." She swallows, and for once, the needles aren't tearing her throat. "Will it hurt? Will you forgive me? Will Hawaovi be there?"

  "No, Soyala. And yes. And yes." It's his turn to pause a moment. "You could stay with me. When it is Kiva's time, we could be a family."

  She thinks about this. "Can I give you my answer when we get there?"

  "Of course."

  He takes her in his arms, her body light as a feather, as life has weight, and she had little of it left in her. He moves to the window and pulls the mask down, setting it on her chest, and her fingers close over it, her lips turning up. Then, he moves again, swift as the wind, to a corner where shadow has pooled. He steps in, and they are gone.

  “In time, they birthed a daughter of their own, and named her Fela.”

  Cord’s voice trailed off. Dusk had turned to deep morning, and he yawned.

  “Time for bed. We’ve a busy day tomorrow.”

  “Wait. I need a better explanation.”

  “For?”

  “For how you think bringing Death here is going to end people dying. And why you think that making everyone immortal is just going to fix things.”

  “Because if we cause enough chaos, she’s gonna show. She’s going to want to see what I’m trying to do. Maybe she’s gonna want to stop it.”