Smoke in the Glass

by Chris Humphreys

  Desperate! Why had he not seen? Why had he not listened? Why had he not been brave enough to leave her in Balbek, forbid her to come? He would have missed her, but she would still be living now, and for the rest of her natural life. Instead, she’d killed herself, for him. No. He’d killed her.

  ‘Lara,’ he sobbed. Too loud. A man kneeling close by glanced sharply at him, then turned to the man next to him and muttered. The name had become infamous in Corinthium, along with that of Stephanos, a young man who’d had a wasting disease, and an old woman, Thraxia. Their names were shouted at crossroads so all could revile them in their prayers. Two leaders of the cult had been caught, along with many members, and stoned to death by mobs. One leader, a woman, and some others, were still being hunted.

  He glared at the man and his companion who both turned their faces away from the angry soldier, for he was dressed as such, in the garb he’d wear for a long march, his sword with its bloody grip at his side in its worn scabbard. But in their fear he remembered who he was, and then what he was to do now. So he looked up at the altar again, at the dried flowers he’d laid upon it, and spoke her name one last time, clearly, defiantly. ‘Lara,’ he said, before rising and walking from the temple.

  They were waiting for him under an awning across the street, sheltering from the chill winter rain. Lucan still looked nothing but annoyed, as he had from the moment Ferros had insisted on stopping for one last prayer. Annoyed too, no doubt, by this exposure to the many who stopped to gawk – it was rare for an immortal to descend from the Sanctum on the Hill and stand, dressed in his fine purple robes, so close to the docks. But even more stared at Roxanna, wrapped again in full leather, with dagger and short sword at her hips.

  Her face, however, showed nothing but compassion. She took his arm. ‘Is it enough, Ferros?’

  ‘It will never be enough. How can I ever atone? I will carry this for the rest of my life.’ He grunted. ‘No matter how long that is.’

  She squeezed his arm. ‘Perhaps atonement lies ahead, in what you do now for our people. For Lara and everyone else.’

  ‘If you have finished,’ Lucan rasped, ‘the peasants are getting presumptuous.’ He slapped away the hand of a small boy who’d managed to dodge the immortal’s three hefty servants and had reached out to touch his beautiful robes. ‘And tides do not wait for prayers.’

  They set off down the street, Sanctum guards clearing the way, a small crowd following. Every time Ferros had passed a temple of Simbala he had insisted on stopping. But this last had been the final one before the docks, and they were soon upon them. A ship was berthed there, the Goshawk, a two-master, much bigger than the vessel he’d arrived on. Necessary, he supposed, to deal with the seas that few ventured upon this late in the year. The water was calm enough now, though the sky was dark and the wind gusting. The reason for this rushed departure was Lucan, who had been a fisherman before he’d died of the plague and become one of the first immortals, and who still recognised favourable winds. With a sailor’s good fortune, these would bear them swiftly to their destination.

  ‘Aboard,’ he urged, snatching his daughter into a swift embrace. He turned to Ferros. ‘There was so much more that we could have taught you, young man. But what you have learned must suffice. Roxanna has scrolls that I have laboured long upon, for you to read and discuss on the voyage. They will tell you more that you need to know about the dangers you are to face.’

  He had heard some. Roxanna had tried to distract him from his grief by telling him of their mission. He had not taken much in, though a name came to him now, along with his anger. ‘Dangers? From a wilderness messiah?’ he snorted. ‘We saw them come and go at Balbek. Men in dirty loincloths with thorns in their flesh, ranting about paradise. A sword dealt with them then, and a sword will deal with them now.’ He patted his scabbard. ‘Why should this “Smoke” be any different?’

  ‘Because you cannot stab smoke,’ answered Lucan. ‘And to even try you would have to get past the hordes he is said to have recruited.’

  Ferros scoffed, went to speak, but Lucan stopped him, raising his hand sharply. ‘No more talk. The wind sits in your sails. But know this, young man. This Smoke is no ranting messiah. And his message is simple.’ Lucan lifted his eyes and stared at the leashed sails jumping in the gusts. ‘“Immortality is dead,” he says. “Now all we have to do is kill all immortals.”’ He looked at them again. ‘Aboard!’

  Roxanna and Ferros boarded. Ropes were swiftly cast off. The captain on his poop deck let tide and the wind in smaller sails carry the vessel a little way from the dock before bellowing for the big sheets. Hoisted fast, they bellied swiftly. Two men turned the wheel and the ship made way out of the harbour, vessels clearing before it as their captains noted the red flag of the Sanctum at its mainmast.

  It swiftly reached the entrance formed by the cobs that curled inwards. No man or boy stood upon them now, casting lines in the water, for none would risk the wind and rain, both more intense as they neared open water. Roxanna left him when he wouldn’t take shelter, just stood with his face raised, his eyes closed. He didn’t open them, even when they passed under the joined stone arms of the Twins, those huge statues that he had explained to Lara only … only seven weeks before.

  The memory stabbed him, as every memory did, sharply through his guts.

  He’d prayed long for Lara in temples of Simbala, Goddess of Birth and Death and Birth. Now he turned back to something more familiar: to Mavros, God of War. Though this time his prayer was short.

  ‘Let it come.’

  Lucan remained on the dock, ignoring the murmurs of the crowds who ogled him, watching the ship pass under the stone arms of the statues, with the words ‘Wisdom’ and ‘Strength’ carved onto them. My daughter has both, he thought, though sometimes she lets her appetites get in the way of her reason. Ferros? He’d learned that the young man was not simply the dull provincial he’d first taken him for. Indeed, with more time he could have been moulded – as Lucan himself had been moulded when he’d first arrived as Melankythios, a fisherman every bit as stolid and ignorant as the soldier, more than four hundred years before.

  Four hundred? he thought, rubbing at an ache that came suddenly in his right temple. Closer to five now. One of the first immortals to be reborn, gathering with the few others who’d had the same experience; and that, it was said, only a few decades after ‘the visitor’ – Andros the Blind – had passed through his fishing village. It was said, he thought, his lip curling into a sneer. All talk of the coming of immortality to the world was so lost to myth, there were no hard truths to be found any more. Personally, he believed that there’d been no Andros, no bringer of the gift. Immortality simply was. Some were chosen, born to live for ever so they could grow wise – and rule wisely for ever.

  The Goshawk had vanished, blending into the grey clouds that stretched across the horizon, lost even to his long sight. He rubbed again at his temple – though the ache was within, not upon the skin. It was odd, because such aches – like death wounds, like hangovers – would usually pass quickly with an immortal’s healing powers. This one was growing. Perhaps it was hunger. All he’d eaten that morning, in his haste to get to the port – a haste slowed by the soldier’s interminable praying at every roadside shrine – was one dry crust of bread. He would take the Heaven Road back to the Sanctum, and feast.

  He turned. His guards began to push through the gawking crowd. He took one step after them … and stumbled.

  Someone had driven an iron spike through his head.

  His left arm, his left leg, neither would move. He tried to speak, call out, but his mouth didn’t want to work. He fell then, he must have done, because he was looking at a duck’s feather, attached to a cobblestone by dung. Then that faded, as darkness flooded his eyes.

  I’ll be born again, he thought. As always.

  And then he knew he wouldn’t.

  ‘Tell Rox�
�’ he began, to the shapes bending over him. But he died before he could finish saying her name.

  12

  Flight

  ‘Shh! Listen!’

  ‘I tell you, there’s nothing.’

  ‘Be quiet, will you. I heard … there! That!’

  ‘That scratching?’ Ravaya, older than Atisha, and her partner this night, peered down into the darkness. ‘It is nothing. Or it is a monkey. They live on these cliffs.’

  ‘Where a monkey goes, a man can go.’ Atisha sat back. ‘Fetch Besema.’

  ‘No, child. Besema has barely slept since the siege began. Now she does, she will not want to be woken for a monkey.’

  Atisha reached to a pile of rocks. Two weeks before, after she’d burned the bridge, the only true access to the crag on which the City of Women stood, the war council had identified three areas of cliff that desperate men might try to climb, and assigned guards to each, with rocks to hand. Two nights before, one spy had made it all the way up – a man Intitepe had sent fast ahead when news had been brought to him, on the road down, of the bridge’s destruction, because this man was a renowned climber. But he proved less good at stealth and had been swiftly captured as he tried to sneak into the main building itself. At first, he’d stayed silent. But under inventive interrogation, he’d ended up gratefully telling all he knew – not least that after Intitepe’s defeat by the rebels, other parts of the land were rebelling too.

  She picked a stone up now, leaned over the edge. Swayed. Before the birth of Poum, she had never feared heights. But others had told her that giving birth changed much about a person. It had changed that in her and now she hated being high up. So, stepping back, she lobbed the rock. They heard it strike some jut of cliff. Eventually, there came a faint splash as it reached the river. There were no other sounds.

  ‘You see?’

  ‘You are right. Let’s go.’ Atisha gestured to the hollow in the rock face that they had made their guard house, the firepit in it. ‘You sleep if you like. I’ll wake you – but only if I hear men, not monkeys.’ She toed a smaller stone over the edge and turned away.

  The yelp was faint. The splash that followed a few seconds later was loud. The two women looked at each other and Atisha hissed, ‘Besema!’ As Ravaya ran shouting down the path, Atisha snatched up a thick stave wound with oil-soaked wool and jabbed it into the firepit. The torch flared immediately and she went again to the edge and thrust it out.

  There were six of them that she could see, faces upturned, eyes wide and startled in the flamelight. Men with black-painted faces and knives held in their teeth. They were maybe five of her body lengths down and, like ants caught suddenly under an overturned rock, they began to scramble, moving fast and silent towards her. Crying out, she looked around her, placed the torch so its flaming end was over the edge, grabbed two rocks, leaned out, swayed, but flung them down. Both bounced off overhangs, missing the men, who came faster.

  She tried again – one rock struck a man on his forehead, he slipped, flailed, held on. Kept coming. They were two body lengths below her now and they were spread wide. They would arrive at the same time and she could not keep all of them off the ledge.

  She grabbed another stone, flung, missed. She thought of running. But now she saw more faces below, ten at least, maybe more. If these men reached the top, the siege was over. The friends who’d saved her would die, and not quickly. More, Poum, her child, the reason for all this, would be taken and then—

  Poum. The name in her head centred her. She stopped swaying. And when the first man placed his hand upon the cliff edge, she stamped on it.

  He fell. There was another pulling himself over. She shoved the torch into his face. He shrieked, tumbled into darkness. A third grabbed at her ankle. She kicked him in the face with her other foot but he held on, pulled her sharply. She fell backwards, landed hard, breath knocked from her, though she used the last she had to drive a heel into his eye. He vanished. But now there was a man standing to her left, another to her right. She reached for the obsidian dagger at her belt, found breath. ‘Poum!’ she shouted, like a war cry, rising to her knees.

  ‘Poum!’ It came like an echo but it was made by women, the six who rushed down the path with spears and axes. There were three men on the clifftop now, others just hauling themselves over. But the women had their force and their fury and for now the men had only their daggers. The three who stood were knocked backwards into the dark. The ones who reached for the clifftop had their hands broken and followed. Rocks were lifted, hurled straight down. There were screams for a while, terrible screams. And then there was silence, save for the harsh breathing of the women, pluming the cold air before them.

  Atisha sat. The whirl of combat had prevented her seeing more than shapes. Now she saw them clearly – three women, young ones, whose names she did not know; and three old ones, who she knew well. Tall Norvara, small Yutil. And, of course, the third of the three: Besema, her spun-silver hair loose about her shoulders. Besema, their leader.

  She had the torch now and waved it side to side over the edge. ‘Goat-fuckers are gone,’ she said, and spat into the void. ‘All gone.’ She turned to Atisha. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘I am … all right.’ Atisha rose to one knee, took breaths to steady her heart. ‘You came fast.’

  ‘We were lucky. I was already awake, and coming to get you. So,’ she jerked her head towards the edge, ‘the gods continue to favour us.’

  Atisha frowned. ‘Why were you coming for me? My duty here is till dawn.’ She started. ‘Is Poum safe?’

  ‘Safe, and sleeping. It is not that.’ She bent, offered a hand which Atisha grasped, hauling herself up. ‘It is this,’ Besema continued. ‘He has come.’

  Atisha’s breath was taken again. There was no need to say who he was. But she thought his name anyway, as she turned and stared into the darkness which, she saw now, was just beginning to streak with light.

  Intitepe.

  The Fire God stood at the blackened end of what had been the bridge, staring across the gorge at the City of Women. Creeping dawn was bringing its many buildings, its vast and flowing terraces, from shadow into sight.

  They amazed him. Some three hundred years before, he’d stood at this exact spot, the last and only time he’d been there, looking back across a one-person rope bridge at the single, simple structure he’d ordered to be built. A gift for her who’d been ‘the One’ then.

  ‘What was her name?’ he muttered to himself. Cava, that was it. She was from this province and had asked to end her days there. He’d loved her, of course, but her twelve years were over. He happily granted her request; had even accompanied her there, seen to the building himself, furnished it well so she would be comfortable, alone with only women around her. Most of the women of his marana would return, after their time with him, to their home provinces; take husbands, raise children, their prestige high, having been loved by a god. Cava had been the first to say that no man would ever touch her again, for no man could come close to the touch of Intitepe. He’d understood – of course he had, how could he not? – and had granted her request. As others asked the same, he let them come too, then allowed other women to arrive as well, approved every new building requested to house them, provided the funds and the men to build them. When the city had grown to house two hundred, he appointed a governess chosen from his marana, to keep order, with soldiers under her command – for gossip had reached his ears, lurid tales of women and their night-time activities. He did not mind them, rather the reverse – the image of women he’d once loved loving each other gave him pleasure. But his subjects were simple folk, and rigid in their morality. The governess was meant to keep all such excesses within the city’s walls.

  What was her name, the latest one? Muana? No, Muna! Not a ‘One’, an uninventive girl in his bed, but clever and organised beyond it – or so he’d thought. But he’d been wrong, for sh
e had failed him, utterly. Failed to enact his simple order: seize and imprison the girl Atisha and her child, her monstrous child. And then somehow, Muna had provoked a rebellion.

  Intitepe leaned forward, spat. A rebellion of women? It was absurd. Well, he was there now, and he would end it. When he was done he would raze the place, knock down every building, salt every terrace, and give all these rebels to the lava of Toluc. What a day that would be! With the last to swim that cursed Atisha … clutching her monster child!

  Someone coughed behind him. He turned, winced. When he’d reached Toluc and allowed the physician to finally pull out the arrow he’d taken fighting those rebel fishermen, he’d died, of course. Been reborn hours later. But he’d healed more slowly than he had in the past and there was still some pain. Then the journey south had been hard, Autumn’s rains with winter’s chill within them. Another season he’d have sailed, lived in ease in his luxurious cabin aboard the Sea Serpent, converted from the warship it had been when he’d taken it to the Shadow Islands to kill the last of his sons, Santepe, who’d created a fleet there. But the winds blew from the south at this time of year, against him, forcing him onto the roads.

  He shivered. Even immortals grow older, colder, he thought as he looked at the one who’d coughed – Tolucca, his eldest daughter. She was immortal, yet in this dawn’s grey light he thought she looked older too. She’d arrived ahead of him, just after the bridge was burned. ‘Well?’ he snapped.

  Tolucca swallowed. ‘They failed.’

  ‘Failed? Where are they?’

  ‘Dead in the river. All d—’

  She stepped back as he snarled and reached for her. He’d ordered the cliff attack as soon as he’d arrived. It was the obvious thing to do. And if the local commander, Tokat, had done it three weeks ago they wouldn’t all be standing there now. Well, at least Tokat would have been one of those broken at the cliff’s base. As he deserved for his failure.