Mother of Slag

by Timandra Whitecastle

  Diaz heard Bashan’s voice, but it was the chink of coins that woke him fully from a light slumber. He rolled over and cast a glance at the pinch of sky in the porthole to gauge what time of day it was. But the heavens were clouded. The peak of the Needle broke through a heavy mist. It could be daybreak. It could be evening. He couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t think I’m not aware,” Bashan continued. Diaz could just make him out, his slender figure leaning into the shadows by the door, counting coins into a small leather pouch. “I, too, have been here before, at rock bottom, or at least I thought so at the time. Turns out, things can always go from bad to worse. I guess you’ve been here, too, Diaz. I remember how I found you, the best godsdamned warrior I’d ever seen passing as a broomsweeper, being ordered about by a woman. I saw you and I thought, here’s someone who is recovering from a history. Just like me.”

  With the last word, Bashan stood straighter and strode over to the bed. He pulled slippers over Diaz’s feet, They hung overlarge from his toes.

  “What are you doing?” Diaz sat up, and Bashan draped Diaz’s good arm over his shoulder.

  “Hey!” Diaz protested feebly, the room spinning around him, and his legs so weak from days, no, weeks of rest. It sickened him how much he needed to lean onto Bashan for help to simply stand.

  “I’m not an overly inquisitive man.” Bashan had something to say, it seemed, and would not be deterred from saying it. “I never asked about your mixed heritage, for example. Nor about your relationship with Suranna. I figure there are some things people want to share, other things that can be used against them they do not want to share, and things you just don’t want to poke because you don’t know what a rat’s nest it’ll prove to be to them and yourself.”

  He dragged Diaz across the room to the door.

  “What are you talking about, Bashan? Where are you taking me?”

  A narrow, rickety staircase led down past other doorways to other rooms. Diaz had been carried up to their rented attic room on a stretcher and had no memory of the steepness of the place. He grabbed hold of Bashan’s coat and hung on as Bashan navigated Diaz down the stairs, one careful, strained step at a time.

  “Did you know that when my father banished me from court because of that stupid prophecy,” Bashan continued, “he didn’t take my estate? I was denied the right to rule, but not access to our family’s wealth. So I squandered it, feeling sorry for myself. I drank, and whored, then drank some more. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to live or for what. My future had seemed so bright and clear. My whole life I had been groomed to be emperor after my father died. Here was my path, here was my purpose, and it filled me. And suddenly I didn’t have that anymore. I hated him. How could he do that to me? My own father? How dare he? Watch that last step; the board is loose.”

  They stumbled down another dark and narrow corridor to the next flight of stairs. Diaz groaned. How high up were they? He wasn’t wearing a shirt—it had been too hot under the roof and the loose sleeve had caught everywhere—but now his back was slick with sweat from the exercise. He was panting hard when they finally reached the bottom. Bashan let him rest for a moment, his forehead against the jamb.

  They were walking out of a door cut into the belly of an overturned frigate with monstrous additions to make more living quarters. As Bashan helped him into a sleeveless longcoat with a deep hood, Diaz’s gaze wandered across what seemed to be a tiny town square, dominated by a wooden platform cobbled together from all the figureheads of the shipwrecks cobbled together. A wooden mermaid was split in two at the topmost point, both halves of her mouth smiling maniacally down at Diaz. He shuddered, and not just because of the breeze singing through the cracks and nooks of the shanty town.

  Bashan pulled the hood down over Diaz’s face, studying the effect.

  “Well, we can’t do anything about your tattoos,” he said, shrugging, “but perhaps no one will notice your merman eyes and try to gut you for them. Come, now.”

  Pulled outside, Diaz could see that it must be late afternoon. The light of day had fallen into a clouded twilight. Scores of merchants hurried to brighten their stalls and wares with fish oil lanterns. Men and women sold everything from dried shrimp to glass eyes in gutted cargo holds of the ships that lined the square. During the daytime, the sick and dying lay in their cots; the noise faded into the normal hush of a hospital ward, people treading lightly lest they disturb the ailing, orders given by self-professed healers in serious undertones, groans and screams muffled behind the closed doors. But now, it seemed, everyone who couldn’t or wouldn’t sleep at night came out onto the streets. Nighttime was busiest on the Wards. The stalls filled with bushels of herbs next to exotic remedies catering to the sick, the shuffle of the hopeless to the smoke dens to buy painkillers of one kind or another, the insomniacs walking, walking, walking the Wards, only to disappear come morning.

  Bashan waited for a knot of drugged young men—staring at the evening wonders with eyes too wide and talking with voices too loud over the buzz of the crowd—to slip into the mass of people with Diaz hanging onto him. He was thronged on every side, as though the entire population of the Wards had flooded the streets tonight.

  “So many,” he croaked.

  “The world has gone to shit, my friend,” Bashan chuckled. “They’re here for the same reason we’re here. Too many fugitives looking for healing and solace where there is none. When an empire falls and civilization collapses, you move onwards, ever onwards. Now where was I?”

  They moved with the flow of crowds down the labyrinthine pathways, ever downwards, passing by harried mothers in their wide, oiled aprons, swinging baskets of herbs and bandages for their children’s sores and ulcers; former shipwrights and woodworkers with their tools strapped around their waists; toothless cripples lining every alley, sitting, crouching, or lying on every doorstep; dogs whined and cats hissed, and children roamed in the commotion. The press of bodies, the humidity of the place, and the hum of conversation after so many days and nights of relative peace, intensified by the shimmering reflections and memories conjured by his own mind, made Diaz reel.

  “What do you do when your world collapses? Look. You move on, searching for a new world. A stable place.” Bashan nodded at Diaz. “For myself, I went to Shinar to find my purpose. I bade Suranna look into my future for me. She gave me a new direction, led me to you. I was young and desperate, and she knew it. I can’t really fault her for trying to use me, can I? But I’ve been thinking. Did she foresee that I would be the one to find the Blade and hope to use it through me? Or did she send me on my way knowing I would find it and lose it again? Would I have gone on my quest so willingly if she had told me what the Blade would do to me? Take my mind and reason, and then my life? She must have known, right? She’s a seer. The Seer,” he corrected himself. “She knew and sent me anyway, the bitch.”

  They snaked down with the rest of the crowd to a natural shelf of rock jutting out from the water, and Diaz picked up a new ripple of excitement passing through the mass of people congregating at the waterside. Tendrils of mist stretched white fingers from the shrouded island of Nessa over the dark seas to the Wards. By a trick of the twilight, it seemed to Diaz that one patch of mist rolled closer to the shoreline where the crowds waited. A hush fell over the congregation.

  “The ladies,” a mother close by Diaz and Bashan sighed in relief, clutching her sniveling child to her side with one hand, the other pressed on her chest.

  “The ladies?” Diaz asked.

  She turned to face him and he saw her bloodshot eyes, the dark rings of insomnia, the ravages of anxiety on the flesh. But he also witnessed the edge of insanity, the nearly unhinged state of mind in her moist gaze, and was suddenly glad for the hood so she couldn’t see his eyes, for fear she would try to claw them out for a promised remedy.

  “The ladies are the ghosts of the priestesses of Nessa,” she whispered in rapture, squeezing the hand of her child so tightly, the little one fidget
ed to get away. “Once a month they journey from the Dark Road back to us living, and for one evening they try to heal the damage done to us. Tonight is their night.”

  She turned back to stare ahead at the mist, and Diaz gave Bashan a puzzled look. This was what he had dragged Diaz out of their room for? A mass delusion? But the latter simply returned a knowing smirk and remained silent.

  “The ladies, the ladies, the ladies are coming.”

  The word was being passed from mouth to mouth as the mist crept ever closer. The crowds shuffled into a loose sickle-moon form, many standing on the stone steps, spilling over to the sides and into the water beneath the gutted ships that made up most of the foundation of the Wards. At both ends of the semi-circle, sick beds with patients who couldn’t stand or walk anymore were lowered onto the waves, the blind were led into the water gently, old people shuffled down the wet stones, and parents stood in the lapping waves, holding their lanterns high so that the light illuminated their children, missing limbs and sporting burns and trauma.

  When the mist had nearly crept up to the drifting cots, it halted, roiling above the people’s heads; the clouded skies parted to spill silvery moonlight onto the ghostly scene. A hush fell after the chanting, and only the gentle whisper of the water could be heard.

  “What do you do when you finally understand that the world is an unjust place that owes you nothing and gives you nothing and takes everything from you in return?” Bashan breathed into Diaz’s ear, taking up his train of thought one last time. “I know the answer now. It’s the same as it’s always been, only I forgot in the blinding light of Shinar’s supposed purpose for me. I thought I had to heal the wound in me, fill it with something other, something greater, higher, than me. Heal the wound of the world by carving out a place for something new to replace the old. But that was the wrong way to go about it. I know that now.”

  Diaz gave the man a look over his shoulder. Bashan’s face was half hidden in the shadows, and his eyes were narrowed on the looming spectacle as he spoke.

  “Look at them, Diaz, craving healing from without because there is nothing left within. These people await the small mercies of these ladies, restorers of fortune and good health. They try to fill their wounds, seal them shut with the token gifts someone else bestows upon them out of their abundance, but that’s not how it works. The gods are dead. We killed them ages ago. We will never be handed magical trinkets from divine sources to heal ourselves. That’s not how the world should work.”

  “No?” A cold shiver ran down Diaz’s spine. Nothing Bashan said made sense, and yet at the same time it made frightening sense. “How should the world work?”

  Bashan’s smirk grew wider, into a toothy grin.

  “No one else can heal you but you. You don’t wait for someone else to help you. That was my mistake in going to Suranna. No. Instead, you must embrace the darkness. You let the pain win, Telen. And you take all of that, your pain, your darkness, your helplessness, and your rage, and you forge them into a living blade out of your own hurt, a wicked shiv carved from the ice gathered in your stomach. And with it, you make the world give you what you want.”

  A collective gasp made Diaz shut his gaping mouth.

  Three women in gray cloaks and long veils hiding their faces stepped out of the mists, walking on the crests of the lapping waves towards the first of the cots.

  Chapter 18

  A single drum beat started as the ladies walked up to the sick. They took their positions on top of the waves, a triad of goddesses, the water crisping beneath their feet to sheets of thin ice. The first lady bowed down to the helpless wretch on the sick bed floating nearest to her. Touching his outstretched arm, she must have passed something to him since he shuddered and then tried to sit upright on the cot. She pushed him back down gently and shoved the cot back towards two younger men who had lowered it into the waves. The older man on the bed was crying and mumbling thanks as his sons raised him from the cot and he walked out of the water with them.

  With others, it was the same. They came unto the ladies with outstretched arms, and the veiled goddesses took them in and healed them. When they returned to the stone steps out of the water, many could walk upright once again, though still weak. The crowds shuffled and parted to let those healed pass by, touching them as though belief only came through touch. And above everything, the sound carried by the water, the steady beating of the drum, like the heart of a huge animal, docile and trusting.

  Without thinking, Diaz stepped forward into the water.

  He strode into the waves towards the cluster of folk circling the periphery of the ladies influence, and waited his turn.

  Now he was closer, he could see a soft glow emanating from the ladies skin. Their faces gleamed below their veils, and their bare arms and hands seemed to catch the silver radiance of the moonlight and reflect it. The rest of their bodies were cloaked in overlarge garb. It was impossible to tell their age, or even if they were indeed ladies. Or even human.

  He peered intently at the shrouded faces, but could make out little detail.

  Their eyes remained hidden in deep shadow. The features of the lady in front of him were smudged ink stains, two black holes where her eyes should be, a darker line for her nose, her mouth a thick black line across the soft paleness.

  The lady touched the woman in front of Diaz just below her jawline, and some of the soft glow dusted off onto the woman’s throat but faded. He saw her swallow, her throat limned by the translucent skin of the lady. The elderly woman clasped her hands over her mouth and her shoulders shook.

  “Thank you,” she muttered, reaching out to grab the lady’s hands in gratitude. “Goddess bless you.”

  The black line of the lady’s mouth curved upwards briefly as she returned the elderly woman’s squeeze, then she dropped her arms and stepped back.

  The elderly woman turned to leave, and Diaz took her place in front of the lady.

  He tipped back his hood a little, half expecting the lady to show some shock at his wight eyes. But she did not even flinch. She glided closer on her ice sheet and pressed her cold fingertips onto his chest. It felt as if the ice on which she stood were spreading into his heart and lungs, freezing him, but at the same time he was keenly aware of someone else, another presence flickering under his skin.

  He had felt something like this before. Not with Suranna, but with …

  “Talitha?” he blurted.

  She twitched at the name.

  “Talitha Cumi?”

  For a moment the black holes that had seemed to be her eyes were replaced by a wide-eyed stare from human eyes. Pale blue eyes beneath the gray veil.

  As the lady recovered from her surprise, she cast her eyes downwards again, and Diaz nearly laughed as he understood the mystery of the ladies.

  The black was khol applied thickly across their eyelids and around their eyes. The pale shimmering skin was a paste mixed with chalk and something else, perhaps flower pollen or pyrite dust, that made it glimmer so in the moonlight.

  There was nothing overly magical about the appearance of the ladies.

  They were simply bloodwitches, the healing priestesses from the island of Nessa, skilled in the manipulation of water and bodily fluids. So someone was still over there, minding the traditions in the Temple of the Water Goddess, regardless of what the fisherfolk had said.

  She put one hand back onto his chest.

  Was she taking in the damage done to his body and mind?

  He took a deep breath, but could smell nothing but salt water and seaweed as her other hand roamed across his brow, his lips, his wrecked shoulder. Her fingers rested there.

  Then she let her hands drop to her sides and stepped away, shaking her head gently.

  “Wait!”

  He made to follow, but she made one sweeping gesture and suddenly she and her sisters were swallowed by the mists again.

  Diaz heard the dismal outcries of those still behind him but pressed on forward into the dense fog.<
br />
  “Wait!”

  “You scared them away!” a man behind him called out, and grabbed Diaz’s arm to pull him back. He started berating Diaz, but the words died in his mouth as he looked up into Diaz’s face and saw the black pupil-less eyes. Instinctively, the man pulled back, falling into the shallow water, and made the sign to ward off evil at Diaz. He pointed wordlessly, his mouth opening and shutting like a fish on dry land, but was unable to do more. Diaz pulled his hood deeper so that the rim nearly touched his nose, and left the man flailing.

  “They’re gone!” a woman wailed as Diaz waded out of the water. “Another month waited in vain.”

  The crowd was dispersing already. The show was over, lanterns were being lit as the people left for their homes. A few people remained in the water; some who had waited patiently for their turn sat on the stone despondently staring into the rolling mists.

  Like a rock, Bashan stood still at the center of the onlookers, a smirk imprinted on his sharp face, radiating a cool aloofness that made families and friends part around him instead of buffeting him out of their way. Wet from the waist down and dripping, Diaz came to a halt before him.

  “The old gods are dead, Telen,” Bashan said quietly. “They cannot heal you. These goddesses cannot give you what you need. We must shape our own destiny.”

  “It’s true,” Diaz answered. “These ladies … they’re not goddesses.”

  “They’re charlatans with neat tricks,” Bashan drawled. “Beguiling the weak-minded. But not us, my friend.” Bashan laid a hand on Diaz’s good shoulder. “We will heal ourselves. We will take what is our due, and have our vengeance on she who wronged us both.”

  “You mean Suranna?” Diaz cocked his head, trying to follow Bashan’s trail of thoughts.

  Bashan nodded. “If it weren’t for her, the prophecy to my father about my ending his empire would never have been made. If it weren’t for her, I would never have started my search for the Living Blade. If it weren’t for her, you’d be a different man. A whole man. What do you say? You and I—we take on our destiny together and bring the Queen of the South to her knees.”