by D M Wozniak
None of the three even scream yet—their minds have not caught up with the present. But Chimeline’s has. She kicks her legs out, to get herself away from the carnage, and this causes Yellow Eyes to topple like a marionette losing its strings.
And then, finally, the full fury of their pain comes forth.
Blood is spraying in arcs like the fountains in the Royal House, but it’s mostly lost on the carpeted road.
The effulgent scrambles around it all, over to Chimeline.
Holding onto the gold chain of the voidstone, I slowly stand.
I ignore the writhing and screaming bodies. I even ignore Chimeline and the effulgent, who are now huddled together in the middle of the road. Everything is muted and distant. The world is soft, layered with petals.
My eyes find the Xian skullman.
He glances down at my voidstone in his hand, and then back to Anaxarchis’ stone which is clutched in mine.
“You have another one.”
I nod.
He exhales, looking out into the hilma field, and then up into the blue sky. His entire body seems to slacken, as if he’s giving up, wanting to be carried away by the sickening sweet wind. “Well, if you’re going to kill me with that thing, do it quickly. Cut my neck. Not my legs.”
Kill me with that thing.
I glance back at the writhing skullmen. Yellow Eyes is holding his severed foot in his hands, turning it around as if it’s a missing piece to a puzzle.
I gaze back to him. “I’m not going to kill you.”
He purses his lips, probably wondering why.
I ask myself the same question.
The first reason is this man’s protest of his fellow skullmens’ earlier behavior. That’s worth something.
The second is what he saw in the sky. I’m not done questioning him. He’s seen Marine and the veiled man, and that alone is enough to spare his life.
But the final reason is probably the most important.
I simply can’t do it.
Good Unnamed. I’ve never killed anyone before. Ending the lives of three people.
And I did it with voidance.
Holding out my hand, I try to keep it steady. And my voice as well.
“I'll take that back now.”
The Goodwin Massacre
The Xian man named il-Colu drags the bodies of his three fellow skullmen past my grazing horse and into the roadside. Gone are their screams and the pressurized fountains of blood. Everything has become slow and silent, the coagulation of blackened sap. Only Yellow Eyes moans softly.
“I should end their pain,” il-Colu says, putting his hand on the hilt of his machete. I nod distantly and walk toward Chimeline.
She’s still sitting cross-legged upon the flower-covered road, wrapping herself back up within her patchwork blanket as the effulgent gallops away to search for her runaway horse.
I sit down, touching the soft ground with my right hand to check my balance. In the other, I hold my recently returned voidstone, dangling from its severed, gold chain. Anaxarchis’ smaller stone is back in my pocket, where it belongs.
“Are you alright?” I ask her, my voice as soft as the dead flowers.
She pulls the blanket tighter around herself, and looks at the remains of the skullmen in the gully. il-Colu is efficient, making three clean hacks upon their necks, as if clearing a path through the wilderness.
A few hidden crows take flight, and I follow them against the blue sky to the horizon.
When Chimeline turns back to me, our eyes never meet. She avoids them, instead fixated on the voidstone that dangles from my fist.
Eventually, she gives me an almost nonexistent nod.
She is not alright.
“I can mend your dress with my voidstone,” I say.
“No,” she answers quickly, cutting me off with a surprising amount of energy. “I am fine,” she adds, quieter this time.
A gust of wind comes by, as petals dance between us.
“Please just leave me alone,” she whispers.
I open my mouth, about to tell her that we should talk about what just happened, but then think better of it.
She’s in distress, which is natural. So am I, in a way. However, she seems fearful of me now. It’s understandable.
I am fearful of myself.
I look down the road. The effulgent trots toward us in the hazy distance, leading Chimeline’s tan horse by its reigns.
Standing up, I approach il-Colu.
Before entering the roadside, I touch my voidstone in my left hand, and quickly mend the gold chain that was recently severed. I then drape it over my head again, letting it rest upon my chest in plain sight, as I approach the skullman.
“Tell me everything you know about the airship,” I ask him.
He wipes the blood off of his machete using Yellow Eyes’ black pants, and then sheaths it.
“There is not much to say.”
“How long ago did they pass by?”
“Two days.”
I purse my lips and then frown in concern. At the rate at which they’re traveling, they could be anywhere by now.
“There was a...” He makes a phantom box with his empty hands.
“A basket?”
He nods. “Yes. A large basket underneath the black sphere with two people in it.”
I take a step towards him. “Could you make out any details?”
He tilts his head. “A man and a woman. They were very high. Higher than the millionescents. But I saw enough to tell that they were northerners.”
“What do you mean?”
“Blonde hair. Long. Fair skin.”
“The woman or the man?”
“The woman.”
“And what about the man?”
His forehead furrows. “He was strange looking. He was fair and bald, but...”
I take a step closer. “What is it?”
“Something was off about his face.”
“Blurry?”
He shakes his head. With a scowl, he then points to the effulgent coming back in our direction.
“He almost looked like him. Not as pale, but just as strange.”
“An effulgent?” I ask, hearing the shock in my voice.
He looks at me and nods. “Yes,” he answers. “He looked like an effulgent.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Why?”
I look at il-Colu, with his eye-patch and rough countenance, reminding myself that I can’t trust this man. Despite his sliver of honor, he can still turn on me at any moment, and I may be forced to kill him. But ultimately, any information that I share can be a seed that yields a harvest of new information.
I decide to be truthful.
“The man I am pursuing—that man in the airship—was a voider,” I answer. “And effulgents cannot use voidance.”
After a moment of silence, he grunts. “I figured.”
“What?” I ask.
“There is no other explanation for an immense black sphere flying through the air than voidance.”
I purse my lips, agreeing with the logic of his statement.
“I’m sure they’re headed south to kill more Xians in the war,” he adds. “The redskull thought the same thing, and he would know.”
“How would he know?”
“He’s a voider too,” he says.
My mouth opens and my heart skips a beat.
He taps his chest. “He has one, just like yours. Except I’ve never seen him use it. At least, not like what you did here.”
“What’s his name?”
He hunches his shoulders. “Redskull.”
“No. Not that stupid title. His name.”
il-Colu shakes his head. “He doesn’t go by any name.”
“What does he look like?”
“Northerner. Younger than us. Slightly reddish hair. Thin, average height. He’s gotten thinner since I first met him.”
I look at him questioningly, and he puts two fingers to his purse
d lips. “Partakes in the pipe.”
I run my hand over my short hair as I watch the effulgent approach on horseback with Chimeline’s horse in tow, his back straight and proud.
“What towns are near here?” I ask il-Colu.
“Towns? There are a few, a half-day in either direction. Prainise is the farthest, but also the largest. There’s a hilma field there run by another faction. Very dangerous place.”
“What else?”
“Chartise to the west, Joscaio to the east. But they’re very small, almost nothing to them. Ghost towns.”
“Master voider, are you ready to continue south?” the effulgent shouts out. “Or do you need to kill anyone else before we go?”
I ignore him.
“Joscaio,” I say behind closed teeth, and then I find myself making fists at my sides.
Cleanthes.
There must be some logical explanation to all of this. My former student, Cleanthes—the one I had sent to Joscaio a few years ago—he would never have turned into a depraved redskull. It is simply not possible. A hilma addict, even less so.
The lanky redhead I knew was as straight as they come.
There must be some other explanation.
“Master voider,” the effulgent repeats, “are we going—”
“No,” I say. “We’re going to see the redskull first.”
Both Chimeline and the effulgent look at me in surprise.
The effulgent gets off his horse and storms over to me, still holding both reigns.
“Would you care to explain why?”
I point at il-Colu. “Based on what this skullman said, he’s a voider.”
He takes a breath as he mentally digests the information. “The one you’re looking for, to bring to justice?”
“No.”
He shakes his smooth head, looking into the blue sky. “Then I do not see how it’s relevant.”
“This one was a student of mine. Like Anaxarchis.”
He breathes in and out. “What are you going to do with him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s say that the Xian man is telling the truth, and your student has transgressed. What are you going to do?” He points a finger to the three bodies in the ditch. “More of this? More killing?”
“I killed them to protect Chimeline. And you know that.”
“Only after putting her in danger first.”
“She was never in any real danger,” I say, but I wonder if that’s entirely true.
Walking to my black and white spotted horse, I climb up into the saddle.
“You have a fairly twisted view of danger, master voider,” the effulgent answers, loud enough for all to hear. “Which I find quite ironic, given that you’re only accustomed to the perfect places of the world.”
“Go back to Fiscarlo then,” I snap at him. “Go back to the daughter you left behind. It’s safer there for you, and safer for her too,” I add, nodding in the direction of Chimeline. Part of me doesn’t mean it, but part of me does. Perhaps pushing both of them away from me is the only thing that will keep them safe. “As for me, I’m going to visit my student and give him one last lesson before I head south.”
Neither of them answer, so I guide my horse over to the skullman. “Let’s go,” I tell him.
He glances down at the three bodies before looking up at me. “Shouldn’t we bury them first?”
I shake my head. “Do it later, when you know how big a grave to dig.”
The mansion is up ahead. It’s smaller than the Royal House, but much larger than any normal home. Three stories, symmetrical, chimneys on each side. I count twenty-four windows on the facade, from this distance. It looms over the field, a mile or so away, its white siding and slate roof gleaming in the afternoon sun with a false purity that makes me livid.
The air is heavy with sweetness.
We make slow progress down a dry, dirt path half-covered in trampled, decayed petals. It’s similar to all the other endless hilma rows, except this one is wider. Drooping flowers line both sides of the path, but they’re far enough away that we don’t brush them as we pass.
I can see the black sap seep from the claw-shaped marks, where the bulbs were scored. The effulgent's recollection of the harvesting process was disturbingly accurate. But it’s not the oozing sap I see. It’s the blood of ruined lives.
As the Xian man is the only one walking, he dictates our pace. He walks at my side, while Chimeline and the effulgent reluctantly follow far behind.
“il-Colu,” I say, breaking the silence.
He looks up at me with an odd expression, perhaps surprised that I addressed him by his name. “You can just call me Colu. The prefix was meant to be honorary.”
“You are a helmsman?” I ask, remembering Yellow Eyes’ taunt.
He gives me a bitter laugh. “I was a helmsman in the Xian navy, a long time ago.”
“Before the war?”
He shakes his head. “No. For a brief time, I defended our homeland from the northern aggressors, until this happened.” He points to his eye-patch.
There are many things that I want to ask him. How he became blinded in one eye. How a helmsman in the Xian navy wound up becoming a skullman in a rogue hilma plantation in the Northern Kingdom. What it was like fighting for the other side. But I assume that none of these questions have simple answers, nor would he likely share them with a stranger, so I focus instead on an unexpected term which he had used.
“Northern aggressors?” I ask. “Seems a bit overstated, don’t you think?”
“And what would you call what your people have done?”
I clear my throat. “I am a voider, not a commander or politician, so I do not speak from any seat of authority. But I believe the trouble started when the south started taxing our ships going through Xi Bay.”
He blows air through his dry lips. “That’s a lie.”
“How could it be, when there were multiple accounts of our ships being boarded, and cargo being taken?”
“All lies,” he repeats.
I pause. “If these stories were fabricated, then what happened?”
He forms a fist and repeatedly hits his chest with it. “I was stationed there, during the times before the Goodwin Offensive. There were no armed boardings of any ships coming from the north.”
“Perhaps they happened without your knowledge.”
He just shakes his head.
“Well, from our perspective, that’s what was happening, and it was getting worse over time. We had to defend ourselves.”
“Defend yourselves?”
“Xi Bay is a critical piece of geography. All of our ships traveling down the River Xi lead to it, and from there they go to the different lands. To Xiland. The archipelago. The lands across. Our economy was being strangled—”
“We didn’t tax your ships!”
My brow furrows. “Then how do you explain the Goodwin Massacre?”
“You mean the Goodwin Offensive.”
I study him as he continues, his motioning arms out in front of him. “It was a brilliant tactic. That much I will admit to you. Sending a trading ship which was supposedly full of oil—”
“It was a trading ship full of oil. Which your people set fire to.”
He stops in place and turns to me, so I hold my horse up as well.
“I was on that ship. I boarded the Goodwin on that fateful night,” he says through clenched teeth. “And I’m telling you, it was a trap.”
“You said that you never boarded our ships.”
He looks back as Chimeline and the effulgent come near, and then back up to me. “That was in the beginning. By the time of the Goodwin Offensive, tensions were high. Our ships were already amassed in the bay. We were expecting your army or fleet, but then word came of a sudden truce. We had needed oil, and your young king agreed to send a shipment to us. A token of good will.”
I stay silent, waiting for him to continue.
“We let the Goodwin thro
ugh our barricade after a brief inspection. I was one of the people who came aboard during that inspection. The entire upper and lower decks were full of barrels, stacked together so tightly it was hard to even walk through them. We checked the first few, prying their covers off. It was oil, all right, the crescent moon reflecting on the surface. I even dipped my finger in and tasted it upon my tongue.”
He looks back at Chimeline and the effulgent, and pauses, realizing that he has a sudden audience.
“We disembarked and let the Goodwin sail on. A half-bell later, when it had entered the south side of the bay near our Imperial Docks, the attack started. It was a trap. A masterful trap.”
“How so?”
“Your barrels were full of bowmen.”
My horse stamps his feet in place and raises his mane, eager to travel on, but I don’t move, nor do I say a word.
“A bell rang out. All of them rose out of their barrels, arrows at the ready. I’m still not sure how they did it. False bottoms? Air vents to breathe? Reeds? Custom bows short enough to fit but long enough to carry an arrow the needed distance? Regardless, they lit their flaming arrows and fired at our ships which were still docked. High arcs into the midnight sky. Within no time at all, one-quarter of our fleet was consumed in flames.”
“And then what?”
“We retaliated, of course. We didn’t have flamebowmen, but a few of us took smaller fishing boats, which they didn’t see in the darkness. Once we got close enough, all we had to do was throw some lit bottles of sugarcanex on the deck, and the Goodwin was consumed immediately. But by then the damage to our fleet was already done.”
“And that is how wars begin,” adds the effulgent solemnly.
Colu nods, and then looks up at me, his face a painted snarl. “You are the master voider. You probably knew of this plan well before it was executed.”
I shake my head. “If what you say is true, I had no part in it.”
He doesn’t seem to believe me, the way his eye narrows.
“I should have killed you when I had the chance,” he says. “We could have hit you with the darts before you even touched that stone of yours. Now, you’re going to head south to the front, just like the voiders in the airship, so you can murder more of my people.”