City of Bones

by Martha Wells

  Khat decided he needed to see how many determined pirates were still out there. He scrambled up the face of the gorge to where he could crouch on a ledge just below its rim, then crawled along it at an angle. Occasional peeks over the edge showed him an empty landscape of silent stone and shadow. He paused once, listening to a faint wheeze-click sound that seemed to come from the folds of rock toward the road. It was an air gun's reservoir being pumped up in preparation for firing, maybe the same air gun that Elen's lictor Jaq had carried, salvaged from the wreck by the pirates. A well-made rifle could fire twenty bullets with no more sound than a sharp exhalation that would be inaudible a few feet away, though pressure in the air reservoir would drop with each shot, decreasing the range.

  After Khat had gone a considerable distance along the ridge he reached a craggy area that provided some cover from anyone scouting the top level, and eased up into a crouch.

  From here he could see across the slope that led down to the artificial cut of the trade road. After only a few moments' wait, he sensed movement somewhere.

  Finally his eyes found them. Below and about half the distance to the road two forms crept over the top layer of rock, one behind the other. Then the one in the back disappeared, suddenly and silently, dropping through a sinkhole down into the midlevel. Khat blinked. It had been so quick even the man's companion hadn't noticed. Then a stealthy form rose out of the same sinkhole, creeping toward the second unlucky pirate. There's someone else down there. Another ambushed traveler, a pirate from a rival band? The silent form took the second pirate from behind. But as they struggled quietly in a flurry of robes, Khat saw three more forms closing in on the first two.

  As they moved out of the shadow of an upthrust crag, moonlight glinted off knife blades and showed Khat the long, distinctive outline of a rifle barrel. Otherwise occupied, the patient pirate-eliminator below hadn't seen them.

  The second struggling form slid limply to the rock, and the approaching pirate with the rifle stopped to raise it as the killer straightened up. Khat yelled, "Look out!"

  Echoes distorted his voice, but the quarry dived down the sinkhole and the pirate's shot went wild, the sharp crack of the bullet striking stone reverberating off the waves and folds of rock. Khat slid back down below the level of view, quietly cursing himself. The echo would prevent the pirates from guessing the direction his shout had come from, but best to finish with this and get back to the Remnant. It was far too noisy out here for his own good, anyway.

  He made his way hurriedly back along the ledge. As he climbed down to the floor of the gorge he could hear the skittering retreat of the few predators who had come out to nibble on the dead pirate. He would have to finish here and leave quickly, before the smell of so much fresh meat drew more attention than he could handle.

  Sitting on his heels on the floor of the gorge, Khat knotted his robe up to make a bag and stuffed in the carcass of the bloater. Not only was he still hungry, but the stomach lining would make a water container for tomorrow's walk back to Charisat. Khat could've done the walk without water, though he wouldn't have enjoyed it, but Elen wouldn't last a mile, even traveling in the partial shade of the mid-level. Something small and overzealous struck him on the ankle and withdrew in confusion, frustrated by the thick leather of his boot.

  Turning to the dead pirate, he shoved the stinking robes aside and quickly searched the body underneath. There was a knife, though its balance was far inferior to that of his own, and a pouch containing dried meat, hard little rounds of black bread, and dates. These are wealthy pirates. First firepowder bombs, now city travel provisions. You'd think they were paid in advance. It supported the theory that Elen's secret relic was not as secret as she had hoped. He carefully picked out the meat and tossed it onto the gorge floor, where it sank beneath the sand as soon as the belowground night hunters sensed it. With the sort of meat pirates preferred, you couldn't be too careful.

  Khat tucked his finds away in his makeshift bag, then rolled the body over. Something fell out of the front of the man's robes, and he picked it up. It was another painrod.

  Damn. Can't get a close look at one for years, and suddenly they're falling out of the sky. But why didn't he try to use it on me? Khat turned the weapon over, running his thumb carefully along its length in the negligible moonlight, and felt a split in the metal. Broken. And whatever blow had cracked the case had undoubtedly shattered the works of the tiny arcane engine inside. The weapon was still worth several hundred days on the Silent Market. Doesn't explain how the bastard got it...

  He didn't hear the quiet step behind him, any more than the dead pirates had.

  Something struck him low in the back, and he doubled over, dropping the dead pirate's painrod. Falling onto his side, he moaned for effect and slipped Elen's rod free of his belt. As the figure bent over him he triggered it and swept it upwards. The man staggered, but the rod didn't incapacitate him, and he caught Khat's arm and slapped the device out of his hand.

  Khat twisted and punched his attacker in the midriff, momentarily freeing himself. But as he scrambled to his feet he was yanked back again from behind and a hand clapped over his mouth to silence his involuntary outcry. He bit down hard on it, swallowing a salty mouthful of blood to keep from choking himself. Ramming an elbow backward into his attacker's chest had no effect, and he took a swipe over his head, trying to find the man's eyes and encountering only a tangle of cloth and veiling. He ripped at it, hoping to blind his attacker anyway, and was suddenly lifted off his feet. Before he could brace himself he was shoved into the rocky face of the gorge, one arm twisted painfully behind his back. Whatever had him, it was far too solid to be a ghost, and it was big and very strong.

  He kicked backward, striking what he hoped was a knee joint, knowing a broken arm was preferable to a slit throat. With his free hand he unobtrusively felt along the wall, searching for a loose rock, but it was solid as pavement. He cursed himself for not going for his knife in the first place. He was beginning to think that painrods were only useful for their market value, where they could be sold to other idiots who thought they gave some imaginary advantage in hand-to-hand combat.

  The pain was making his eyes water, but his opponent didn't exert the final pressure that would snap the bone. The hand was removed from his mouth, the palm bleeding what looked like black fluid in the colorless moonlight. A voice close to his ear said, "You were the one who warned me."

  The accent was educated, the voice deep, with an actor's gift for measured tone and timbre. It sent Khat right over the edge into homicidal fury. His own voice tight with suppressed rage, he said, "I swear I'll never do it again." His knife was still in its sheath, but he couldn't get to it without it being patently obvious what he was doing and giving away the location of the weapon.

  Sounding amused, the man said, "But why did you do it?"

  Khat bit his lip in frustration, then said, "Because, you bastard, I'm not a pirate." He felt unwilling sympathy for Elen; he had handled her almost this easily when he had taken the relic away from her, though he had been far less rough. And how did he find me? With the echoes tossing his voice around, his shouted warning could have come from anywhere.

  "You don't smell like one, I'll admit. How do I know you're not a new member of their little band?"

  "I'm kris; they wouldn't let me in their 'little band' even if I went mad and wanted to join."

  There was a hesitation, and Khat tried to shift his weight to give himself some advantage. Then the man's free hand reached around him, felt down his chest and across his stomach. Khat swallowed an inarticulate snarl. The man was looking for the line of rough skin that marked the pouch lip, something no one but a krismen would have, unless he was a city dweller with a well-placed scar. "A little lower," he said acidly.

  Finding it, the hand dropped away, and the voice said, "Pardon me, but I had to be sure. My enemies wouldn't employ a krismen. But there is this ..."

  Elen's painrod appeared in the corner of Khat's righ
t eye. Being struck in the head with it would kill him instantly, but maybe this madman didn't know that. It certainly hadn't affected him much. Khat said, "I'm borrowing it from a friend." The hold on his arm had loosened, just a little. Perhaps just enough. And the force holding him against the rock was not quite so strong.

  Amused again, the voice said, "Are you?"

  As Khat drew breath to answer there was a rush of cool air directly overhead and an eerie whistling. In another instant it was gone. It was an air spirit, brushing dangerously close to them and lifted almost immediately away by a gust of wind. Khat felt the man behind him jerk in surprise. He took advantage of the instant of distraction to shove away from the wall, spinning out of the painful hold and freeing himself. He dived and rolled to put some needed distance between himself and his larger opponent, and came to his feet in a crouch with his knife ready.

  The man was across the little gorge already, back by the pirate's body. He was a big, shapeless figure in dark robes, featureless at this distance. He said, "You will have to tell your friend you lost it."

  "Fuck off," Khat suggested, still furious, knowing he had been intentionally released.

  The other man chuckled, and disappeared back into the rocks.

  Khat waited until his heart stopped pounding, afraid the blood rushing in his ears would affect his hearing. He didn't like surprises and meant to do his best to avoid another one tonight. Then he found his bag, added the pirate's broken painrod to the collection, and made for the dubious safety of the Remnant.

  Chapter Four

  Elen woke suddenly and sat bolt upright. It was a moment before she remembered where she was, that the heavy stone walls stretching up in the flickering firelight were the walls of the Remnant, that the strange shapes the flames cast against them were only shadows. She leaned back against the side of the pit, grimacing as she stretched out her injured leg. The spider bite felt as if a coal from the fire had been buried in her flesh.

  Then she remembered again that Jaq and Seul were dead, and forced back the shame with a Discipline of Silence. She needed to make herself think constructively, not wallow in self-recrimination. Seul, at least, had known the danger, and it had been partly his idea to bring the relic here. But Jaq had come only out of loyalty to her, and his death was on her head alone.

  A fine Warder I am, Elen thought, disgusted with herself. The strip of knotted cloth should have kept Khat from crossing the threshold back into this room. She had meant to weave a structure of avoidance into each knot, and it had worked no better than a street fakir's love simple. She sighed and rubbed her eyes. It was only fortunate that she hadn't needed it to protect herself. Or not from Khat, anyway.

  She had never been that close to a krismen before. She had studied what little was known about them, as Warders were required to do. They were, after all, the creation of the Ancient Mages, though it was accepted now that they were a faulty creation. But she had never met one before.

  His skin was a golden brown, and the flicker of the fire had brought red highlights out of what should have been ordinary brown hair. She had heard stories that everything about the kris altered with the sunlight, or lack of it, but the only change she had noted was in his eyes. The odd color transformations weren't too noticeable, unless you looked for them, but the canine teeth that were just a bit too pointed were a disturbing reminder of otherness, of the Waste and its intrusion into the world. And when he smiled wide enough for her to see them, she didn't think the expression was meant to be taken for a smile anymore. That hint of danger combined with a form that was all lean muscle and cheekbones the palace artists would have sighed over made an intriguing combination, despite the fact that his nose had obviously been broken at some point in his youth. One of the stories said the Mages had bred their creations for beauty, though in Khat's case it wasn't so much beauty as a very masculine sort of handsomeness. Elen sniffed disdainfully. From what she could tell, they certainly hadn't bred them for an engaging personality.

  She caught herself chewing nervously on a fingernail, and winced. The worst part was that his mind was entirely closed to her. When he had been sitting across the fire from her, she had felt nothing, and she couldn't even sense his presence in the Remnant now. She had known it would be that way, of course. It was one of the reasons the Warders were so certain the Ancients' experiment had failed. If Warders couldn't sense the thoughts and emotions on the surface of the krismen's souls, then they must be without souls at all.

  It's a theory, Elen decided. She wasn't sure how much credence she gave it. One of the earlier Master Warders, who had lived a few hundred years after the Survivor Time, had declared that women had no souls, because they had no power. His son, who had succeeded him and undoubtedly had his own set of grievances against the old bastard, had widened the search for female Warder candidates, and trained the first one himself. But even now Elen was the only one of her generation. She suspected it depended on the Warders who did the searching, for if they had done their job thoroughly, they would have found more female candidates.

  And a day's acquaintance with Khat had increased her doubt in the theory. Anyone with quite so much . . . personality must have a soul, or some equivalent.

  And where is he? Elen wondered. She had assumed he was somewhere else in the Remnant, but it felt so silent, so empty. Human souls left traces on physical objects, on the stone walls of long-used homes, on jewelry worn next to the skin. Even with her poor skill Elen could sense these faint traces, especially in the homes of Warders. But the Remnant held no traces at all, not even from her presence. It was as if that strange golden stone reflected souls as well as it shielded against the heat and light of the Waste. It made the place feel bare and isolated and, curiously, as if it were waiting for something to fill it up ...

  No, that was only her imagination at work, surely. Elen peered at the wall where the door to the ramp was, but it was lost in shadow, and her Sight was useless with the firelight blinding her. She considered searching for Khat, but the bite wound was making her leg ache all the way up to the hip, and what would she say when she found him? That she was lonely? He wasn't terribly impressed with her competence as it was.

  She leaned her head back against the stone and closed her eyes, clearing her mind for one of the Disciplines to banish pain, and shutting out the aching emptiness of the Remnant.

  Her brows drew together. As she focused her thoughts, she could sense something outside the thick stone walls. Something foul, like an untended sewer, like the miasma of despair and rage and desire that hung over the Eighth Tier. Like the miasma that had enveloped the trade road, just before the pirates attacked, that either she or Seul should have recognized.

  Something thumped against the thick stone that closed the entrance, and Elen started. The thump was repeated, and she struggled to stand, wishing she had something to use as a crutch. Now she had to find Khat.

  ***

  Too tired to make the precarious climb down into the well chamber unassisted, Khat used the rope. As he dropped the last few feet, a voice said out of the darkness, "Where were you?"

  Khat spun to put his back against the wall before he realized it was Elen. Recovering his breath, he said, "You wouldn't believe what's going on out there. It's as crowded as the Arcade on Tax Day."

  "That's why I was looking for you," she said, her voice sounding worried and reassuringly normal after everything else. "The pirates are trying to get in down below. They're forcing the block up."

  "It's about time." Pushing off from the wall, he handed his bag to her. He had left the dead pirate's painrod on the roof, under the rope's oilcloth.

  "What's in here?" Ellen had presumably opened the bag and was peering in. "Something dead," she answered herself.

  This near to the door of the antechamber the walls were blocking out much of the moonlight, and Khat could see nothing more than her vague outline. He said, "The leather packet's for you."

  "Um, what's in it?" Elen asked cautiously, evi
dently reluctant to reach into the bag.

  "Dried dates and bread, courtesy of one of the pirates," Khat said. Elen could have used a stick as a torch to light her way up here. Instead she had limped up the pitch blackness of the ramp and identified Khat climbing down the rope in the deep shadow of the well chamber. And she can see inside that sack.

  "Oh." Without having to feel around for it, Elen found the packet and freed it from the folds of the robe. "What about the pirates?"

  They were walking back toward the door of the antechamber and down the ramp. Khat found his way by knowledge of the route and a natural feel for distances and where things were in the dark. Elen walked as if it was broad daylight. So Warders can see in the dark, or at least Elen-the-Warder can. Was that one of the mysterious abilities they were supposed to have? The maniac out on the Waste had had excellent night vision as well. He had taken Elen's painrod, but hadn't bothered to stop for the pirate's because over Khat's shoulder he had seen that hairline crack in the metal. So maybe it's a mad Warder loose outside. There's a happy thought. "We have to convince them there isn't any reason to loiter around here."

  "Huh." Elen sounded skeptical. "You used that rope to climb down from the roof? What were you doing up there?"

  "Looking around. Maybe it wasn't a good idea." He darted a sideways look at her, useless in the dark. "There's someone else out on the Waste distracting our friends. That's why they haven't tried to break in before. They must have thought we were safely penned up, then . . ." Then I gave in to nerves and warned that bastard out there, letting them know some of us at least weren't as penned up as they liked.

  "Then they saw you," Elen finished. "It doesn't matter. They would have come after us anyway."

  They reached the central chamber. The fire had burned low, an orange glow in the pit. The grinding that must have woken Elen was loud to Khat's ears too, the grating protest of the block mechanism as the pirates tried to lever it up from the outside.