by Danie Ware
Stupid.
It wasn’t there, and he knew better than to expect it. Untangling his clothing, he tried to remember more of the evening, and why he would even think such a thing.
As the sun set completely, the gambling circle fragmented and finally broke up. Far out across the gleaming water, the heights of the crater stood huge against the starlit sky, a tattered giant whose ancient hands cupped the city within.
The evening was a blur, after that. A stumble through the darkened market, urgent kissing, hands sliding down his back, body pressed hard against his thigh like a guarantee. Ready laughter, rich humour. Aden’s touch had kicked Caph’s pulse into clamouring – a wanton chain reaction that left him greedy and craving...
Oh hells…
Heat and promise exchanged – had there been another bottle? Laughter coming easily, figures in the gloom and harder drugs than reed… They’d spun into a whirl of loud, alcoholic humour and trembling, super-heated expectation.
Then a fall through a corridor to a rickety wooden door, a tumble onto a bed that had seen better days. And no willingness to wait, just to reach for skin and sweat and release, all of it in the half-light of the closest room they could find…
*
By every flaming hell.
With an effort, his head still pounding, Caph dismissed the recollection. He shrugged his way into his shirt, into the waistcoat and the long jacket. They seemed pretentious, this morning, all overstated and gaudy. The jacket lacked the usual embroidery, but was still smooth enough to catch on his fingertips.
Feeling ridiculous, he buckled his trousers, pulled on his high boots, gathered his purses and pouches and hung them at his hips. He ran a hand through his long, sandy-coloured fringe, and wondered if he looked as crumpled as he felt.
The light in his timeglass told him it was midday. Any hopes he had of getting home unnoticed had long since gone up like a wharfside insect.
Shit.
But he wasn’t ready to face all that, not yet. He retrieved his short blade from under a blanket, checked the room for the last time, and eased open the door. He would go back to the markets, and try and find some tea…
And some courage.
He snorted, slipped down the corridor and out into the light.
And then he stopped, startled and blinking.
Across from him, far too close and rising massive from the shining water, was the crater’s silent wall. Here, it was no more than a couple of miles away, and, as his eyes focused, he could actually make out the striations of colour, the layers of history and geology, the flashes of crystal that dazzled and danced. Surprised, he turned to follow the curve, to watch it as it smoothed into a flatly crafted wall and a titanic, sealed gate, warrior colossi standing guard. Even from here, he could see their faces were crumbled with vast age, their outstretched hands all fingerless and filthy. He knew what it was – of course he did – the gate had been crafted at the founding of the city and had stood for centuries without number, never opened, never touched. As a child, he’d often wondered what the Builders had actually fled…
Now, it just meant that he was a lot further darkward than he thought he was. The previous night’s adventures must’ve taken him all the way around the wharf to almost its darkenmost edge.
Shit…
Again.
Tension curled. He became aware of the smell, of the garbage, of the dilapidation, of the graffiti. Of the occasional slumped figure, all huddled in blankets.
Uneasily, he tucked his purse into his belt and loosened the blade. He needed to get out of here quickly, and get back to the places he knew…
And he still needed to piss.
Faceless, the distant guardians didn’t care; they had no interest in the city before them. Its tiny, squeaking life was beneath their notice.
Damn, his head hurt.
Dismissing whimsy, Caph turned his back on gate, guardians, the whole bloody lot, and went out to face the day.
The dosshouse doorway bore the curled-feather engraving of its sponsor, house Thantar. It was supposed to be a charity, a place for the homeless and the hopeless, but Caph knew better – these things were more about tax-breaks and deniable labour then they were about altruism. The wharf was corrupt – everyone knew that – and assets moved more quietly on water than they did on land.
Another reason why he shouldn’t be out this far.
Nervous now, he grimaced.
Head down, very conscious of his height and clothing, he walked quickly around the sagging shantytowns, their uprights faltering now and their old homes sliding into the water, many of them still lived in. Swinging bridges took him across narrow channels and made his stomach churn. Ferryboat captains called for business, but he ignored them, paranoid or cautious or both. As he came back to the marketplace proper, his breathing eased – there were crowds and smells and sizzling fish, here. Running children. A crier, calling the news of the day. Men and women and families, all weaving one through another; household staff with baskets on their arms, guild- or family-marked porters. There were lone figures pushing carts or bicycles, carrying cages, or laden with trays of still-gasping sea-life. There were magicians and conjurers, all metal and smoke. There were preachers for every layer of hell that Caph could name, calling threat and damnation as such beings always did. There were performers and panhandlers, craving attention and coin. There were working men and women both. And everywhere there were the dockworkers, their garments ragged-plain and their skins inked in complex patterns. They obeyed no rules but their own, and they carried baskets, wheeled trolleys, unloaded cargo. Any one of the men could have been Aden, and, after his heart hit his teeth for the third time, Caph snorted and gave it up.
The rich scent of cooking fish coaxed him to pay for some breakfast, and he sat at the edge of a small, roofed stall, his head still pounding and his hands round a bowl of tea.
Its warmth ached in the old breaks.
The stallholder cackled at him, waving his tongs in the steam. ‘I have the best fish, the early catch.’ He nodded gleefully. ‘The best vassul-fish your coin can buy!’
He was right, the fish was excellent. Caph nodded at him, and paid him a full ripan.
The day had become hot, the air salty and still. As the crowd shifted and flowed, he could see one of the conjurers on the far side of the square, a tall woman, dancing with wondrous fluidity, her feet never moving, but her arms and shoulders flowing to allow her robe to shift, and to accommodate a brass, many-legged insect that scuttled across her like a pet.
He’d seen her a couple of times before, though he’d never stopped to watch. Now he was curious, so he stood up, heading out across the marketplace.
But he’d got no more than five paces before his own name stopped him like a punch in the kidneys.
‘Talmar.’
The word was pure scorn. And no-one ever used his given name, only his parents, and…
Caph stopped, breath forgotten.
And just as he was starting to feel better.
They lay sleepy, sated, legs tangled and skin gleaming. The night’s adventures were catching Caph now, and he could barely keep his eyes open – the work-roughened fingertips that stroked his back were both welcome, and not helping.
‘Y’know?’ Aden’s chuckle was deep and wicked; his lips brushed Caph’s shoulder as he spoke. ‘You’re gorgeous. What the hells are you even doing out here?’
Faint shrug. ‘Running away?’
Aden murmured in response, then said, ‘Will you run back this way?’
The question was light and softy spoken, it slipped under Caph’s awareness almost without him realising. Half-asleep, he raised a curious eyebrow. ‘Would you be here if I did?’
And in that moment, something changed. Some unwritten rule was broken, surpassed – it expanded beyond the heat and sweat of the wharfside and into something
more. A flicker went through Caph’s body – he was too tired to do anything about it, but he stared at Aden’s impossible blue eyes and he felt the shift in the air.
‘I might even make a point of it.’ Aden had a grin like the wharf itself, pure rascal. ‘Find out all your secrets, city boy.’
The promise had an odd edge, but Caph was too weary to worry. Aden’s smile broadened, wicked in the half-light. His eyes were blue as the moon, blue as the water, and Caph could only look at him, still caught like that struggling fish.
They stayed like that for a moment, then a crane or something cried outside and Aden brushed his thumb across Caph’s mouth. ‘You’re almost asleep. Sorry.’
The fingers returned to caressing his back. He slid under them, sweetly exhausted and knowing, on some level, that the morning would come all too soon.
He didn’t know it, but the fingers continued to stroke his skin long after he’d ceased to be aware of them.
‘Good night, was it?’
The voice went through Caph’s back like a blade, cutting him, severing his spine. He stopped in the middle of the walkway, suspended somewhere over the edge of utter disbelief.
No.
Nonono.
‘You look like every hell.’
The words were caustic.
Any thoughts of Aden fled; there was no space left for them. The man’s voice filled his consciousness completely, filled it with white-cold fear. Caph found his knees like water, his shoulders shaking.
But he turned around.
On the wide walkway, the crowds had rippled back, withdrawing from the figure as if he were a rock, thrown in their midst. The man had changed since Caph had last seen him; he was heavier set, stronger, and his short hair and beard were greying as they met his ears. His skin was paler than Caph remembered, but his bearing was still the same, pure self-assurance; he was strikingly, aggressively handsome and as sleek and fit as a hunting shark.
Dion Mol Ganthar, once nicknamed Molly, had a presence like a fist in the face.
For a moment, Caph stared, mouth dry, couldn’t speak. His world shrunk, screamed. His own fists were knotted and his breathing short. His heart was right up in his throat, choking him. He found himself backing away and made an effort to stop.
‘You’re looking well.’ He managed sarcasm, but only just. ‘The fresh air suits you.’
‘I’m enjoying my freedom.’ Molly took a step forward. He was a hair taller than Caph, but considerably stronger, and the wood creaked under his weight. His garments were a luxurious version of Caph’s own, and his long blade hung at his hip. House Dion was one of the families Elect, and it looked like they were happy to have him home. Caph wondered, slightly dazed, if City Hall had restored his commission.
‘You can’t touch me,’ Caph said. ‘My father will have your head.’
It was meant as a threat, but came out laced with spit and fear.
Molly’s grin spread. ‘Your Daddy doesn’t scare me, little man.’
Caph glowered – Molly was the only bloody person in the city who could call him ‘little’ and mean it. The hangover fought with the fear and the temper and the fish in an effort to see what would make him puke first.
But he didn’t back down. ‘You fancy another two years, Ganth? Collecting garbage and scrubbing stonework? You just keep walking.’
Not creative, perhaps, but it had to do.
Around them, the square was quiet. The conjurer and her spider had gone, evaporated like a dream with the morning light. People were whispering, pointing. At the edges, the crowds were glancing, tense, and moving away. From somewhere, Caph could still hear dancers, a tambourine, but around him the air was glass-sharp and hard as a promise.
Molly chuckled. He sauntered across the walkway, closed one hand round Caph’s throat and lifted him, bodily, to his tiptoes. His strength was ludicrous, effortless. People gasped, but no-one moved.
Forcing Caph backwards into the stall behind him, he leaned in, perfect teeth bared, almost close enough to kiss. He had a grip like a dockside crane, and breath that smelled like wealth and spices.
‘What?’ he said softly. ‘Like this?’
Hells. The scent of him was so familiar…
But those days were over. Caph slammed one forearm into Molly’s elbow, a second time, a third. His body was shrieking tension and fury – he’d done this, exactly this, once before. And it wasn’t happening again.
Molly threw him sideways, the gesture scornful. Caph stumbled, tripped, found himself looking up at the man as if he was one of the gates’ guardian titans. Livid, he scrambled back to his feet.
‘You touch me again…’
With no particular malice, Molly backhanded him across the face. The power in it was staggering.
‘I can do anything I want,’ he said. ‘And no-one can stop me.’
The blow was contemptuous rather than hard, but the hand carried a spiked metal ring. It had slashed at Caph’s skin, and the rip stung like every hell.
The people were scattering now, shrieking for help.
Caph bit on a curse, touched a finger to his sliced cheek. It came away bloody. He couldn’t manage anything better than, ‘You even try it…’
From somewhere, pounding feet were rattling the wharf. The tambourine had stopped. The stallholder was jabbering, gesturing in their direction.
Pressure screamed in Caph’s veins.
Molly glanced briefly back, then grinned. ‘There’s a whole new beginning coming, Tal.’ His dark eyes flared. ‘A whole new world.’
Trembling, a toxic alloy of confusion and fear and fury, Caph wanted nothing more than to slam one hand into Molly’s face. Feel him break. Watch him stumble and fall, watch him bleed.
But it was pointless, had always been pointless. Against Molly, he couldn’t win.
Watching, probably well-aware of Caph’s thoughts, Molly’s grin became a leer. He stroked his thumb across the cut, leaned in, whispered almost in Caph’s ear. ‘Make no mistake,’ he said. ‘You’ll pay for those years, sweetheart. And this time, it won’t be just be your fingers I’ll break.
And then there were pounding feet, demands, fragments of shouts. Molly stepped back, flicked a salute like a promise, his fingertip bloody. He made no effort at stealth, just turned and walked away as if he owned the wharf and everything in it.
And Caph stood there, tense and silent, deafened by his own thundering anger. He knew he should get out of there – but he couldn’t grind his confused body into motion.
And the hollow rush of comedown sucked the air from round him.
CHATPER TWO: PROTEUS
The mist on the water lay soft and grey.
Watchful and silent, Aden stepped out of the flophouse door and paused to listen, his breath a plume in the pre-dawn chill.
Behind him, Caph snored gently, blissfully oblivious to the outside world – he would probably sleep well into the day. There was the gentle hiss of the water against the uprights, and the first creaks and shouts of the harbours’ fishing fleets…
But that was all.
Soaked in blue moonlight, the wharf was still. There were no traders, at this time of night, no conjurers with their robes and smoke. The servants and performers who’d crowded in colours were long gone, and gone were the workers who’d lazed in their wake, the denizens of the warm and sprawling evening. Cupped safely by rock walls, the great city slept, and its wrought-iron gates were all closed. In some places, huge swathes of its empty streets stood waiting – the parts of the lower city never re-inhabited after the famine…
There were those who still lived in their desolation, but they flickered like rumour, unseen.
Here, there swelled a different life. A ghost-life. A life that shifted by the yellow light of the sodium lamps and the blue gleam of the moon. There were shadows here, figures that clumped and plotted
in the darkness, that exchanged words and blades in the places where no-one dared look. Here, deals were struck or broken, lives ended, skin split and blood wasted. In a city once blighted to the point of starvation, where all movement and trade was now rigidly controlled, where City Hall claimed merciless omniscience, the murk of the wharf was inevitable as disease, a seething shadow-commerce beneath its well-dressed, outer skin.
And like all diseases, it spread.
*
Aden gave the quiet a count of ten. Then he offered the sleeping Caph a brief and backward smile, and closed the door. Out across the mist, the moonlight picked out the gate’s guardians, highlit titans that stood in silence…
He didn’t care.
At night, the wharf was tense. Eyes watched from every shadow. His spine prickled, but the sensation was familiar – it was a warning, and he knew it well enough to welcome it. He breathed it in, stink and all; let it flow around and though him.
Let it make him one of its own.
‘Aden’ was not real. The character was a fiction, an illusion, a name and a personality created for the working docklands. And now, fluid in the moon-tinged darkness, his face shifted. It became older, more sallow and lined; his hair became wispy and loose. His body lost the tight muscle and hunched in on itself, hungry and hopeless. His distinctive tats thinned like ink in water, vanishing into his skin. His boots were off, slung over one shoulder on their laces, and he huddled deeper into his cheaply woven blanket, one frayed at the edges and taken from the mattress upon which Caph still slept. His Vei-charm waited in a small pocket.
The dockworker was gone, less than a memory. Now, the man bore a lurker-face, a weathered face that belonged to the extreme poverty of the wharfside outskirts. He’d never given this one a name – it didn’t need one.
Long ago, he’d asked his mentor – why? Why he could do this, could change his skin as he did. He’d asked who he was, what he really looked like, what his real name had once been – but Austen had just shaken his head. Instead of answers, the old man had offered him a label, a something that he could call himself that would give him an anchor, at least, an identity to which he could return.
