One Man

by Harry Connolly

  He could feel the creature’s wet mouth on his leg—could feel it sucking blood from his calf. Jallientus couldn’t kick himself free, so he reached for the thing’s eyes. It straightened suddenly, lifting his foot into the air. Jallientus dangled upside down. The bloodkind was only a little bit taller than him, but it was as strong as a grownup. Maybe stronger.

  Jallientus tried to lift his whole body and jam his thumbs into the bloodkind’s eyes, but he wasn’t strong enough. He wondered if those glowing eyes were hot, like coals from a fire. The light they gave off was cool and blue, and the creature’s glowing fangs had pierced but not burned him. Pale and blue and cool, the light was. He’d never seen anything like that before. He scratched at the thing’s legs. He pounded his fists on the side of its knee.

  He was too weak to hurt it, and it just kept sucking his life away.

  His blood made the creature glow, faintly, like a lantern on a faraway ship. He really was going to be killed by a bloodkind—he could barely believe it. Again he saw that for all its strength, it was no bigger than he was, only the size of a child. Now that there was light, he could see that its skin was like ivory, paler even than that Katr. Curly dark hair covered its head, hands and bare feet, and it wore the same sort of tattered, filthy, oversized tunic that Jallientus wore himself.

  In the bitter darkness, the creature shone like a beacon.

  This creature that was killing him—this bloodkind—was the last thing he would ever see, and it was beautiful.

  “Stop.”

  The whisper came out of the darkness, as if the cold stones had spoken in Jallientus’s defense.

  * * *

  According to childhood folk tales Kyrioc grew up hearing, the spellkind were able to vanish at will, and the godkind could change shape into anything from a mountain to a raindrop. Whether or not those stories were true, they didn’t matter, because the spellkind were gone and the gods were dead.

  Kyrioc’s cloak of shadows did not make him invisible any more than his cloak of iron made him invulnerable or his cloak of mirrors changed his appearance. All it really did was darken the space around him while allowing him to see normally.

  Down in the space below the docks, that meant his cloak intensified the darkness. But it did allow him to see clearly.

  “Stop,” Kyrioc said again, “or die.”

  The bloodkind stopped. “This is permitted! We have an arrangement with his elder. It’s my turn!”

  The little figure puffed out its chest and drew itself up to its full height of three foot nothing. It would have seemed comical if its eyes and fangs had not been glowing.

  “Tell me your name,” Kyrioc said.

  “My name is Mr. Harhand. Now, sir, you tell me yours!”

  “You know who I am.”

  The figure stepped back. Its didn’t release the boy or lose its outraged expression, but it gave way slightly. “Darkness.”

  “I thought your people called me Mr. Darkness, or have you forgotten your manners?”

  “Don’t you talk to me about manners!” the bloodkind blustered. “This boy’s master and I have an equitable arrangement—a contract!—which you have most rudely—”

  Kyrioc drew the sword he’d stolen from the ironshirts in the south tower. The slow rasp of steel on leather silenced Harhand. “If you keep talking about your ‘arrangement,’ I’m going to skewer you onto a length of wood and float you out into the straits. You don’t like that, do you? The sun kills your kind, but starlight will make you sick. Until dawn.”

  “Is that— Is that what you did to my cousins?”

  “Walk away, Mr. Harhand. No matter what you hear whispered down in the bottom of the city, I don’t hate your kind. If you let this boy go, I’ll let you go. But if we have to fight over him, I’ll make you wish you’d never left your hole.”

  Now that it’d stopped feeding, the bloodkind’s glow began to fade. It glanced at the starlit water, then back at the boy’s leg. A thin trickle of blood ran onto its shining hand. “What am I supposed to eat tonight? A rat? Again? A rat? I’ve waited for this. We made a deal—paid good silver to his employer—and it’s my turn. Who are you to void a contract between third parties?” It spoke with the wounded dignity of a petty merchant who’d been cheated. “No one delegated a controlling interest in this boy to you! You’re nothing special. You’re just humankind. You have no rights here. No right!”

  Kyrioc let his cloak of shadows drop. The bloodkind’s fading glow fell on him, revealing the way he crouched awkwardly beneath the deck with the constable’s short sword. He held it point forward, a little too high.

  Mr. Harhand sneered, dropped the boy, and charged. It slapped the sword out of his hand with that terrifying strength—just as expected—and Kyrioc raised his left wrist in a defensive position.

  Bloodkind loved to go for the wrist.

  It snapped at his hand, an attack he could have easily dodged, but his cloak of iron was already in place. The creature’s fangs struck, but his protective magic held.

  Its first reaction was to furrow its brows in confusion. Before it could act further, Kyrioc opened his left hand and wiped the clove of garlic he’d been palming against the bloodkind’s ear.

  It didn’t scream or cry out in pain. It simply sighed as though it had settled into a warm bath, then collapsed.

  With the coil of rope Zikiriam had given him, Kyrioc bound the bloodkind’s hands and feet. He tucked a second clove between the thing’s cheek and gum, then gagged it.

  Kyrioc looked around for the sword, but it was nowhere in sight. The bloodkind had slapped it pretty hard. It didn’t matter. He didn’t really need it.

  The boy lay where he’d been dropped. His pulse was fluttery but he was awake. Tearing a strip from the kid’s tunic, he bound the bleeding leg. A clean bandage would have been better, but this would have to do for now.

  “I have questions for you,” Kyrioc said.

  “Fuck you.” The boy’s voice was weak but he sounded like he meant it.

  “You heard it. Your boss sold you.”

  “It was lying.”

  “You know it wasn’t.”

  The boy began to cry. “I was going to prove myself. I was going to make the boss proud and have an easy life.”

  “There’s no such thing. Answer my questions and you can have a decent life.”

  “No,” the boy said. “No, they’ll kill me if I talk to anyone. They said so.”

  Kyrioc leaned in close. “As far as they’re concerned, you’re already dead.”

  The boy thought about that for a moment, and when he spoke again, he sounded alert. “Tell me about this decent life.”

  So much for gratitude. Kyrioc slipped off his stolen cloak and wrapped the bloodkind in it, covering it from head to toe. Then he slipped the boy over his shoulder and dragged the creature into the shallows.

  Zikiriam and his people stood at the edge of the planking, looking worried. Kyrioc climbed the ladder and set the boy on the edge. “This boy needs a job. You should sponsor him at Suloh’s Tower, after you’ve seen to his injury, then take him on. He’ll work hard.”

  With an audible gulp, Zikiriam said, “Suloh’s… Do you know what that costs? But I will, if you ask.”

  “This will help defray the costs,” Kyrioc said. He jumped back down and brought out the bundled cloak. “Take this to the tower—don’t unwrap it here—and sell it to Fiellas defe-Presse admir-Presse hold-Presse—”

  “Er, Presse?”

  “Yes, she’s the Steward-General’s granddaughter.” He passed the bundle to one of Zikiriam’s bodyguards. “She’s been studying bloodkind all her life, but as far as I know, she’s never had a live specimen.”

  They turned pale.

  “That’s your new life,” Kyrioc said to the boy. “An education, then a job with a small but growing shipping line. Tell me who your boss was.”

  “Tin Pail,” the boy said woozily. “Are you going to kill her? I hope you kill her.”

&
nbsp; “Where can I find her? Where can I find the other kids like you?”

  “There’s a warehouse in Wild Dismal,” he said. “The sign above the door has two buckets leaning together.”

  “Rest.” Kyrioc turned to Zikiriam, who stared wide-eyed at the bundled cloak. “Zikiriam. Zikiriam!” The former captain snapped out of his trance. “Take the clove out of its mouth and it will start to wake up. Leave it in too long and it will die. Academics in the tower pay a fair price for the dead ones, so they’ll spend a fortune for a live one, along with the means to control it. Go quickly.”

  Without waiting for a response, Kyrioc dropped back down into the water and hurried into the darkness below The Docks.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Onderishta did not know what to expect when she returned to the south tower, but it wasn’t this.

  Her interrogator had been with her for ten years. The man had a sixth sense about prisoners: when they were about to break, when they would lash out, when they needed a kind word. But when she returned to the tower, she found him lying on a cot. His jaw was broken and he was missing five teeth.

  The two ironshirts who’d worked the room with him were local chainball players, lead rippers on the south tower team and captains in an upcity league sponsored by one of the noble families. Each had a broken leg and a broken arm.

  There were four more on the other cots. Trillistin was wrong. Seven constables had been injured in the escape.

  One man did this. They were armed and armored troops, with shields and truncheons and live blades at hand, and the scarred man went against them with only his bare hands.

  Now he was free.

  Naufulin, child of Namfalis, one of Onderishta’s fellow investigators, strolled through the room as though it was an elaborate performance arranged especially for her. “What sewer line did you crack this time, Onderishta? Because the shit is raining down everywhere.”

  “I should be asking you,” Onderishta snapped. “Did your parsu send a heavy down here to punish the constables for that Upgarden raid?”

  Naufulin served the Lorruds, just as Onderishta served the Safroys. And because Harl was in the Lorrud sail, she sometimes impeded investigations against him.

  “My parsu hasn’t asked me to do anything about the people you collared in that raid,” Naufulin said. She sounded sincere, as she always did. “He certainly didn’t hire someone to attack your people. He prefers to work within the system.”

  Which was true. When the Lorruds flexed their muscle on Harl’s behalf, they were never this clumsy. Evidence might disappear, magistrates might be bribed, or records altered, but all those were crimes within the bureaucracy. The noble families were creatures of the system. It’s what kept them afloat on this ocean of blood and shit.

  To break into a tower and brutalize the constables when they could have bribed them? Never.

  That left her with a simple question—who the fuck was this guy?

  “Besides,” Naufulin continued, “I have strict orders to keep out of this mess.”

  Onderishta kept her expression stoic. She’d guessed right. That murdered woman spooked the Lorrud clan, and Harl was getting by without the protection of his parsu. At least for now.

  She pulled Fay aside. “Go to the east tower. Tell them what happened here. Tell them about their fellow constables, and have them triple the watch on that pawnshop. This asshole will go back there. He has to.”

  Fay went. Onderishta turned back toward her people, but Naufulin was right beside her. “He stole weapons, you know. A constable’s sword and knife. It was the last one he injured on his way out, down by the gate. Just broke the man’s arms, unbuckled his sword belt, then ran off into Stillwater.” Naufulin sighed. “This is looks bad for us, Onderishta. Constables beaten? Having their weapons stolen? This could get ugly.”

  Onderishta looked down at Naufulin. The woman was clearly enjoying herself. Onderishta wondered how she had survived so long. “It’s an ugly world.”

  The doctors finally arrived, and Onderishta looked after her people.

  * * *

  Midnight passed. Fay paced back and forth in the common room of the east tower. Ironshirts, under orders to search every brothel, tavern, platform hall, and gaming room for Harl or his top heavies—or this Broken Man—had returned hour after hour with nothing to report.

  But had they found nothing? Or were they taking Harl’s silver in exchange for their silence?

  Fay carefully examined every expression when the ironshirts made their reports. He saw no smirks, no nervous hesitation, no sign that they were lying. But the fact was that he didn’t trust them. Not a one.

  If he’d had any idea where to look, he’d have gone into the city himself. Instead, he waited, and wrung his hands, and wished for news.

  * * *

  When the commotion started, Mirishiya, child of No One, was lying in bed, unable to sleep. Her thoughts never stilled in those late hours, and once the others began to snore, sleep would not come. Nights out on the streets had been quieter than this, although she’d spent most of those nights filching from kitchens and had slept through the shadows of the day.

  Her fellow apprentice, Trillistin, was the child of some servant family, and she figured he slept in a servant’s room up on High Slope. Was it quiet there? She had no idea. She lay in the dark, running her tongue over her crooked teeth. Back and forth, back and forth.

  Suloh’s temple had been built as a tower, and every wing, laboratory, and dorm hung off that open central space. But for once, as the commotion moved up the stairs, there were no angry hushes or sharp slaps from administrators. No one was quieting this disturbance.

  The other apprentices were still struggling awake when Mirishiya slipped into the hall and leaned over the stair railing.

  A small knot of people came up the spiral stair, a broad, loose mob crowded behind. Leading the way was a woman she didn’t recognize in an academic’s robe, and as she passed each level, she pushed bystanders back so that the guard behind her would not be blocked. The guard was carrying something Mirishiya couldn’t quite make out. A painted child?

  Two more guards came close behind—one was a captain, of all people, and when had anyone ever seen an event so important that a captain left their post during their watch? The other guard carried an orphan child dressed in rags. The orphan’s cloth shoes were in fairly good shape, so he was probably a beetle. Behind them was Impilak, child of No One, the boy working the overnight messenger shift.

  At the rear was a pack of academics jostling to be near the front of the pack and calling to the woman at the front. “You’ll need a good transcriptionist!” “My lab has the best cages in the tower!” “I’m most qualified to make the dissection!”

  Mirishiya glanced back at the guard near the front of the pack. He was higher now and she could better see what he was carrying. It wasn’t a child and it hadn’t been painted. It was the boogeyman of every Salashi kid’s nightmares. Bloodkind.

  From below, someone shouted “She’s not going to dissect a living specimen, you fool!” and Mirishiya felt goosebumps run down her back. Could the temple academics be reckless enough to bring a thing like that past the iron doors and armed guards?

  Of course they would, if they thought they might gain renown within their little community for it.

  An odd feeling came over Mirishiya. She worked for the investigator bureaucracy now, and she liked it. Something in this situation pulled at her the way a lodestone pulled an iron needle.

  While the academics shouted and the young woman at the front of the procession grimly shoved others out of the way, Mirishiya darted into the pack, caught Impilak by the wrist, and dragged him down the hall into a quiet corner.

  The child struggled. “Ow! Stop! I want to see them kill it!”

  “They’re not going to kill it,” she hissed. “They’re going to keep it alive and feed it.”

  The boy’s eyes grew as big as plums. “Inside the tower?”

 
“You know I’m working with the investigators now, right? Tell me everything.”

  * * *

  Wherever he went in this city, Killer of Devils felt out of place, but nowhere more so than here. His duties had never taken him north of Low Market before—past the cock and cunt, as the heavies liked to call it, although if the gods once had the parts they would need to fuck, they rotted away long ago.

  The Folly, this deck was called. According to the Salashi, it was named this because it was the first deck ever constructed, spanning the distance between Yth’s massive thigh bones. This was the site of the oldest plankways in the city.

  From his table in a sidewalk cafe, Killer found it unexpectedly pleasant. The neighborhood was crowded with small houses and modest apartment buildings. The streets were lined with cafes and craft shops, and in some spaces, trees grew in large planters. It was a place for the tradesfolk, bureaucrats, and merchants of Low Market to raise families, and after his time in Wild Dismal, Spillwater, and the Apricot decks, he had not realized this doomed city had space for something that looked so much like the little towns of his homeland.

  Perhaps someday, when the Pails were dead and his service ended, he would simply walk out of the city, passing through these northernmost decks on his way to the river, so he could be reminded once again what he was returning to.

  Unfortunately, unlike the southern parts of the city, The Folly was a sea of Salashi faces. Killer’s pale face stood out like a child’s tooth on a dark pillow. The only other non-Salashi in sight was a veritable giant sitting in a cafe across the street. He had the look of a Free Cities trader, although he held himself like a bodyguard. In fact, the awkward way he sat suggested he carried something uncomfortable on his back—probably a weapon—so perhaps he was the bodyguard for the expensively dressed Salashi girls chatting at the next table.

  The waiter returned to ask about the Katr ale. The owner had ordered a couple of barrels and, while the locals seemed to enjoy it, he wondered what a native thought. Killer chatted frankly with him about the way ales age as they ship, and what alternates the owner might stock instead. It was a pleasant conversation, but it made him even more homesick.