One Man

by Harry Connolly

  Wood had also rotted in the dueling yard, the barrack, the workshop, and the low apartment buildings near the spine. Some time earlier—more than a decade, Kyrioc thought—this place had hosted gladiatorial combat where the constables and bureaucracy could not interfere.

  Not only were the buildings falling apart, they’d been cannibalized, too. Planks had been stripped…

  Kyrioc stopped. He could peer into all the buildings except the workshop. It hadn’t been stripped.

  He loosened a broken shutter and peered inside. It was nearly pitch-dark, but the magic of his cloak let him see the faint outlines of benches and work stations. He stepped away and noticed the shutters on the next window didn’t match the one beside him.

  The other buildings had been cannibalized for this one.

  Kyrioc circled three sides of the building—the northern end extended beyond the edge of the deck. There were only two doors and no guards. The small side door was either locked or jammed. The front double doors were as big as the warehouse doors in the Pails’ headquarters in Wild Dismal, and they were large enough to admit a horse-drawn carriage.

  That’s when he noticed faint sweep marks on the front approach. There was no trace of carriage wheels or hooves, but the dirt and grime had been swept recently.

  Kyrioc pressed his ear to the jamb. At first, he heard nothing. Then there was a nicker, and a human voice murmuring as if in greeting. Other voices responded. They didn’t sound kind. The building was guarded, but the guards were inside.

  He circled to the side of the building facing the spine. The double doors faced the street to the south, and the small door hung in the eastern wall. Once, the whole of Yth’s rib had been covered with a smooth deck of ordinary wood, but in the years since, small stumps had burst through. Even all the way down in the dark, Yth’s bounty grew.

  Kyrioc willed the Childfall Staff to stretch to the length of a quarterstaff, then he wedged one end into a notch where two stumps stood close to each other. Bracing himself, he willed it to extend farther, straining against its growing weight until it was long enough to rest on the edge of the roof.

  Hooking his ankles around the rough surface of the staff, he climbed. It bent slightly under his weight, but it bent slightly—though never more than that—under almost any weight. Kyrioc would have preferred to reduce the angle of his ascent so he could walk up—being able to move quickly off the ground had saved his life many times in his exile—but the staff would have been too heavy to manage quietly.

  What he found on the roof surprised him. The roof was slanted toward the north and had been re-tarred recently. If the sides of the building made it look derelict, the top was pristine. Someone had spent time and money to make sure the filthy runoff from the decks above could not get inside.

  The Childfall Staff had become wedged between two roof slats, but at Kyrioc’s touch, it grew narrow enough to pull free. Then he lifted it, struggling to keep the far end from dragging on the deck or slamming against the building while he shrank it to a manageable weight.

  There was a hatch on the northern end of the roof, and it was unlocked. Kyrioc descended into a small room. Long brooms stood in the corner, and the shelves were lined with buckets of tar.

  The room opened onto a catwalk. A dim lantern burned at the southern end of the building. He crept close enough to see the horses still hitched to the carriage, and the carriage driver playing cards with three heavies.

  Kyrioc crept to the northwestern corner of the catwalk and descended a spiral stair. It creaked but no one noticed. He reached the workshop floor, but the stairs continued down.

  Basements were not a common feature in the architecture of Koh-Salash. Light shone from somewhere below, and Kyrioc headed toward it.

  The stair ended in a large room lit by a single lantern turned down so low, it barely glowed. The walls had been scrubbed clean—in fact, the sting of vinegar was still sharp, and bucket and brush still stood in the corner.

  Then Kyrioc noticed a row of tables and the large glass tank against the far wall.

  All three tables had bodies on them, each covered with a long cloth. The two nearest were full-grown adults, but the third was smaller. Kyrioc’s hair stood on end and his stomach felt leaden. Who was under that cloth?

  He forced himself to walk to the nearest body, forced himself to touch the edge of the cloth, forced himself to lift it.

  Forced himself to look.

  It was a young man, not particularly large or handsome, but very dead. His skin was quite pale. It took Kyrioc a moment to realize he was Carrig. His eyes had been taken. Lifting the cloth higher revealed that his abdomen had been emptied.

  The second body was like the first, but female. She, too, had been opened and emptied.

  Finally, he approached the last table. The figure looked so small…as small as Riliska.

  Kyrioc couldn’t bring himself to lift the cloth from the end, so he moved to the side and raised it there.

  A tiny hand. The nails and fingers had been painted. He touched the cool, dead flesh and saw that the face Riliska had painted onto his nail still remained. What’s more, it matched. Riliska had done this child’s art, too.

  Goosebumps ran down his back, and the dragon inside him stirred.

  Was it her?

  From the child’s wrist and upward, there was nothing but exposed meat. This little one had been skinned.

  Her hand must have been too complicated to cut, and with that thought, Kyrioc moved to the head of the table and lifted the cloth to reveal the head.

  It wasn’t Riliska. Her face was intact from the chin to her hairline, and it wasn’t her. The Pails had taken her eyes, her scalp, and her skin but, it seemed, not her organs.

  Kyrioc went to the tank against the wall. Mesh bags hung in the cloudy water. The largest held folded skin. Long black hairs floated out from it. Of course. A Salashi might take a Carrig liver or eye, but they didn’t want a patch of pale skin on their dark one, not if they didn’t have to. And what would be smoother and more attractive than the skin of a child?

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Kyrioc laid a trembling hand on the side of the tank. Little children, skinned… In all the years he’d spent in exile, he’d seen unbelievable suffering and faced innumerable hardships. He’d done things to survive that filled him with shame even now.

  But no one was killing these children to survive. They were doing it for a little extra coin. The Pails had protection rackets, casinos, white tar, brothels, and more, probably, but it wasn’t enough.

  Kyrioc’s skin was flushed, his senses fully alert. The urgency to find Riliska reopened within him like the door of a furnace. Would she be next? Was she already dead?

  He opened a door to reveal a broad hallway filled with thick copper piping as wide as a loaf of bread. They came upward, curling like the pipes of a still. At three intervals were broad copper junctions, like curving tubs. Each tub had a small plugged drain on the bottom and a sealed nozzle entry at the top. A faint bubbling sound came from them. Water traps. Whatever was being vented was being filtered through water to clean it first. After the third copper box, the outflowing pipe led back along the ceiling of the hall, presumably to vent out the northern side of the building.

  The acrid smell made Kyrioc queasy. At the end of the hallway was another catwalk, but this one was made of skywood—no creaking planks here. He leaned forward.

  The pipes originated from a huge copper kettle—about four feet across—that was round and flat like a bun someone had sat on. A low fire made it burble gently.

  Three children in brown smocks walked in circles around it, stirring the contents with long skywood paddles. Standing against the wall were two heavies. One had a billy club tethered to his wrist, flipping it back and forth in a bored way. The other looked to be asleep with his eyes open. Unlike the children, they wore silk masks over their noses and mouths.

  To the left was a long table. A half-dozen children—all about the same age as Ril
iska—stood around it, pulling small brown stones from a bowl in the center and laying them in a vise. The children were wearing leather mittens, and that’s when he realized they were not stones at all.

  Those were ulund nuts, although they were larger than the ones he’d seen on Vu-Dolmont. The children scraped the insides of those broken shells, smearing the sticky resin and cluster of white seeds into a little bowl.

  After that, he knew, the bowls would be emptied into the kettle and cooked into white tar.

  There was something familiar about one of the girls at the table. Kyrioc could only see the top of her head but—

  Then she turned toward him to stop a smaller child who was about to touch his mitten to his nose, and Kyrioc could see that she did not look like Riliska at all.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  The sudden shout startled everyone, including Kyrioc. Wooden Pail stormed out from beneath the catwalk and rounded on one of the children.

  “It was time to add wood to the fire, sir,” the child said. His voice was so faint, he was difficult to hear. The boy glanced at the heavies. “He told me to—”

  “I don’t fucking care!” Wooden shouted, bending low to move his face close to the boy’s. “Do you know what happens if this shit cooks over? Well? Speak up!”

  “The fumes will kill us all?”

  “A cookover will ruin the whole batch! And we’re not adding water to cool it down, because that shit has to be carried all the way down here. Now pull out that piece of firewood. Right now!”

  The boy glanced at the nearest heavy, then stretched his hand toward the fire. A piece of wood jutted from the flames, and the fire slowly crawled up its length. The boy stuck his bare hand in quickly and yanked it out. The burning hunk of wood clattered onto the floor, and the boy cried out and clutched his wrist.

  “Oh, look at this,” Wooden said, “a new generation of martyrs. You”—he pointed at the heavy who’d been fidgeting with his billy club—“take this kid in the back and clean him up. I don’t want to hear him crying.”

  The heavy shrugged, lightly rapped the boy on the top of his head with the club, and took his arm. The blow was not enough to harm the kid but painful enough to frighten him. He fell quiet as the man dragged him around the kettle, through the dark, empty space to the right, and into another little room.

  Kyrioc followed.

  His skin was tingling. He felt as though he was standing on the edge of a precipice, and if he just leaned out far enough, he would plummet with no way to stop himself, and damnation take those below.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Kyrioc descended a ladder in the darkness. The only lights were on the far side of the kettle—which threw its shadow over him—and a lantern in the side office where the heavy had led the boy. Its wick was set so low that only shadows seemed to move within.

  The little boy whimpered quietly. The man told him to shut up. Kyrioc moved toward them, feeling as though he was floating like a ghost.

  The heavy had settled onto a stool with his back to the door. He lifted a jug of brandy and pulled the boy’s burned hand toward him.

  “This is going to hurt, but it’ll hurt more if you noise at me.” He poured the brandy on the boy’s fingertips. The boy shuddered and bared his teeth but stayed silent. By the fallen gods, he couldn’t have been older than seven.

  There were three more children lying in a bed of rags in the room. All were between four and six, and they were filthy. The chamber pot in the corner brimmed over.

  The small children turned their attention to Kyrioc standing in the doorway. Then the injured boy looked up at him.

  Kyrioc had dropped his cloak of shadows without realizing it, but it didn’t matter. In this moment, very few things did.

  The heavy glanced over his shoulder, then smiled. “Hello, friend,” he said, his hand groping for his billy club.

  Kyrioc slammed the iron staff onto the top of his head.

  The heavy grunted loudly and collapsed.

  “You better not be touching those kids again,” Wooden called from the other room. “You can’t afford them.”

  Kyrioc put his finger to his lips and waved the boy with the burned hand toward the other children. They stared at him with terrified expressions. He doused the lantern and summoned his cloak of shadows.

  Two heavies approached from the far side of the kettle, knives drawn. Kyrioc knew they would see only inky darkness, so he stood in the doorway and watched them creep forward, fear and confusion on their faces.

  If they ran, Kyrioc would let them live. Only if they ran.

  They crept forward like goats to a pit trap.

  Wooden followed, head tilted like a curious dog. He raised his lantern, angling the mirror to shine into the doorway.

  That bright, focused light made Kyrioc’s cloak retreat, so he pivoted out of the doorway and dropped it. He cocked his arm back, ready to lay the first blow the moment a face appeared. If it was the tall heavy, he’d aim for the throat. The short one would take it on his forehead. You can’t afford them, Wooden had said, and the terrible rage Kyrioc was trying to keep in check thrashed inside him.

  He had to keep control. He was only going to kill these men.

  The first lunged through the door and thrust to the side, straight at Kyrioc. Had he seen something, or was it a lucky guess? Kyrioc’s swing, already in progress, altered to meet the attack, slamming the man’s wrist against the wall as the blade caught the edge of Kyrioc’s vest.

  The knife clattered to the floor. The second rushed in, point forward, and shoved the first toward him.

  Kyrioc went flat against the wall, letting the heavy fall past. The second man brought his knife up, but Kyrioc caught his wrist and kicked the inside of his knee.

  The man went down with a pitiful cry. The first dove for the knife he’d dropped. Kyrioc crushed his skull in one swift strike.

  The second called for help.

  Kyrioc bolted through the doorway. Wooden was already sprinting around the kettle toward a ladder on the far side of the room. The children immediately ducked beneath the furniture. “Guards!” Wooden shrieked. “Guards!”

  Kyrioc pursued, feeling like a hound eager to taste blood.

  Wooden reached the ladder but didn’t have time to climb it. He flung the lantern at Kyrioc.

  He could have dodged it easily, but it would have smashed on the floor near the children, the kettle, and all that white tar. Kyrioc twisted and caught the lantern’s handle as it flew past.

  Then Wooden was on him, slashing with his long knife.

  The attacks were swift and savage. Kyrioc leaned away from the first one, but the tip of the knife still caught him on the chin. He dodged the second completely, and parried the third with such force, the weapon flew from Wooden’s hand. Wooden froze, suddenly unsure what do to. Kyrioc kicked him, hard, in the crotch.

  He stumbled but didn’t go down, so Kyrioc slammed the Childfall Staff against the side of his jaw.

  From the mezzanine above, a voice called, “Boss? Did you shout for us?”

  “Cookover!” Kyrioc shrieked, trying to match Wooden’s panicked voice. He dragged Wooden under the catwalk out of sight. “Cookover! Help!” He coughed and hacked, making choking noises high in his throat.

  The voice above cursed in surprise and fear. Kyrioc promised himself that if any of Wooden’s heavies came down the ladder to help the kids, he would let them live. He would have to fight them, probably break some of their bones, but he wouldn’t waste their lives.

  Kyrioc listened to several sets of retreating footsteps.

  Wooden writhed on the floor. “Wait here,” Kyrioc said, then slammed his iron staff onto the man’s ankle. While the gangster choked out a scream, Kyrioc carried the lantern to the dark office.

  The heavy with the ruined knee had gotten to his feet, although he could only put weight on one of them. His left hand braced against the table and his right held his knife.

  “Keep back
!” he barked, sweat pouring down his face. “Or I’ll take the point to you.”

  Kyrioc stamped, feinting at the man. The heavy shifted his balance in response, put too much weight on his injured leg, and collapsed with a cry of pain. Kyrioc kicked the knife away and rolled him over, clearing a path to the door.

  “Wait out there with the others.”

  The kids scampered past.

  The heavy held up his empty hands, pleading silently.

  Kyrioc hungered to take his life. He could have spent hours on it. No bloodkind could have savored a feast as much as Kyrioc would enjoy killing this man.

  But the children in the other room needed help, and they would lead him to Riliska. Kyrioc smashed the man’s skull with merciful swiftness.

  The kids waited for him in the main room. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then went upstairs. The guards were gone but the carriage driver had just finished harnessing the horses. Maybe it was more than his life was worth to return without them, cookover or not.

  While he backed the horses toward the front doors, Kyrioc came up behind him, spun him around, and struck him in the throat. Then he shoved the driver through the open doors. He fell onto the street, clutching at his throat and trying to breathe through a crushed windpipe. Someone nearby cursed in terror. Someone else shouted, “Cookover!” More footsteps led away.

  Kyrioc tied the horses again, shushed them, and returned to the kids.

  “Are there any other kids nearby?” They shook their heads. “Okay. Can you guys find me some rope?”

  Three ran off. One older boy had an odd look in his eye. It was part anger, part sadness, and Kyrioc couldn’t read it.

  The blankets on the children’s beds stank of piss, but they were large and without holes. Kyrioc threw the three largest onto the catwalk. Then he dragged the two smaller corpses into the main room. Wooden Pail was utterly still and his face ashen, except for the discoloration at the base of his jaw where it was broken. He’d fainted. Kyrioc helped himself to their purses and money belts.

  By then, the children had returned with a coil of rope at least fifty feet long. While Kyrioc tied a loop around a dead man’s chest, he heard a light step behind him. He pivoted away.