And his friends followed with him.
AKACHI – SINS OF TOLERANCE
Whoever utters the truest name of a god must be put to death. The whole community must stone him, whether alien or native. If he utters the name, he must be put to death.
—The Book of Bastion
By the time they reached the church of Cloud Serpent, Akachi, Nafari, and Jumoke, shuffled with exhaustion, their robes soaked through with sweat. Blood and bruises aside, the Captain and her squad looked as if they’d gone for a leisurely morning stroll. No one talked about the attack.
From outside, the church looked like every other church in the Growers’ Ring. Ancient stone, rounded from relentless millennia of wind and sand. No cracks or seams. It was big enough to hold a few hundred standing Growers at worship, with chambers for a dozen or more staff in the back. Dead trees and a tangle of desiccated weeds littered the courtyard. Akachi ran his hand along the trunk of one tree on his way to the main entrance. The ancient wood, wormed through with holes from generations of insects, crumbled beneath his touch.
A week. Maybe two. Then he and Nafari could put this place behind them. Zalika made no secret of the fact she wanted to replace Akachi with a real pastor. Where they’d be sent after that, he had no idea. Anywhere has to be better than this.
“How long has this parish been empty?” Nafari asked.
“Bishop Zalika said the church had been abandoned for hundreds of years,” answered Jumoke.
Akachi studied the rubbish-strewn grounds. “I wonder what happened to the last pastor.”
“Murdered,” said the acolyte. “They dragged her from the church and sacrificed her in the public square. They flayed the tattoos from her living flesh, and then opened her ribs to expose her heart to the gods. It’s an ancient Loa practice. I read about it—”
“We’ve read it too,” said Akachi, not wanting to hear more. Let’s hope Zalika calls us back before that happens to me.
Or had the last pastor done something to deserve such a gruesome death? No. The Loa heretics must have incited the Growers to such violence.
Captain Yejide and one of the other Hummingbirds, a man with a beard too big for his face, drew their cudgels and took the lead.
“Wait here,” the Captain said, leading the Human Beard into the church.
The rest of the squad took up positions around the priests and watched the street.
First, in a trickle, and then in increasing numbers, Growers shuffled past.
“They’re returning from the wheat fields,” said Nafari.
They looked tired, soaked in sweat, and filthy.
Akachi felt the weight of eyes. With the sun sinking toward the horizon and the day’s heat finally relinquishing its grip on Bastion, the Wheat District seemed peaceful.
He remembered the crush of struggling bodies, the grunts of effort, the wet sound of wood on flesh. Angry glares. Bared teeth. A dirty Grower choking Captain Yejide with a scrawny arm, her eyes rolling back as she lost consciousness. They tried to stab him with a sharpened stick covered in shit!
It’s a lie. Peace is a lie.
At least it didn’t smell as bad as many of the districts they passed through.
“It’s empty,” said Captain Yejide, exiting the church.
Akachi nodded his thanks and entered. He stopped at the threshold. Total destruction. Broken wood littered the floor. The pulpit, a raised section of stone for the residing pastor to place his prepared sermon on, had been sloppily painted in what might have once been red but was now a faded pink. Quotes from the forbidden Loa Book of the Invisibles, painted in the same pale pink, adorned the walls.
‘The Black One is the oldest god.’
‘Mother Death built Bastion and we betrayed her.’
‘Open yourself to the stone and Nephthys shall fill you.’
‘On the day of fire and smoke, when the fields burn, and the wells fill with ash, Kālarātri, the Destroyer, shall return.’
Like all young priests, Akachi had read the book. Being forbidden just made it all the more tantalizing. Why else would the library of the Northern Cathedral have so many copies?
‘Know your enemy,’ said his history teacher.
He remembered passages speaking of the Last War, when the rings of Bastion battled for control of the city. They mentioned Mother Death, the original Lord of the Underworld. She’d been cast out by her husband for plotting to betray the pantheon. Though the Book of the Invisibles claimed it was she who had been betrayed.
This doesn’t make sense. Growers can’t read or write. Had the Loa defaced the church? But if the Loa heretics are literate, they must come from the inner rings.
Even the Crafters could only read enough to follow craft-related instructions and do simple maths. Could there be renegade priests? Had the Loa infiltrated the church, or had they always been there?
“Home sweet home,” said Jumoke, passing Akachi on his way into the church. “I call first pick of rooms!”
“Absolutely, young acolyte,” agreed Nafari. “As long as you want the dirtiest, most cramped quarters.”
The boy whooped in mock joy and went in search of his room.
Standing at the entrance, Akachi examined the hall. In the Crafters’ Ring there would have been pews of stone, all part of the rock of Bastion. In the Priests’ and Bankers’ Rings, oak pews were adorned with soft cushions of rich materials. Here the main hall was a large and largely empty stone room. Growers stood.
Before the raised pulpit sat the sacrificial altar. Troughs and runnels lined its surface and the floor around it. It held him entranced. He’d been to the lectures, read the passages in the Book of Bastion detailing the rites of sacrifice and bloodletting. He knew how, but couldn’t imagine doing it.
“The most beautiful ritual,” he whispered, remembering his teacher’s words. “Never closer to the gods.”
Will I have to sacrifice someone?
Having recently been attacked by the very people he was supposed to preach to, he knew the answer. It was, he knew, his holy task to guide the souls of his district. They were his wards, his responsibility. If they lived in contradiction to the Book, that was his failure.
Was that why Zalika sent him here?
One week. Maybe two, he repeated.
He’d get the church cleaned up, do a few sermons to the locals, and have everything ready for his replacement. When they saw how good he’d done, they’d send on word of his success, and Zalika would hate him all the more.
He grinned at the thought.
Nafari stepped up beside him, gesturing to the altar. “How many Growers do you think have been sacrificed on that?”
The grin fell. “This church stood for twenty-five thousand years,” said Akachi, as if that answered the question. Maybe it did.
“Can you imagine what this place will smell like when it’s filled with sweating Growers?” Nafari grimaced at the thought. “The Northern Cathedral will send us supplies, right?”
Akachi couldn’t tell his friend how good that casual ‘us’ made him feel. I’ll get him drunk later, once we’re settled. Though, come to think of it, he had no idea where to get alcohol here. Maybe he could have it delivered from the Northern Cathedral.
“Zalika send supplies?” said Jumoke, returning to the hall. “Some poor bastard is going to have to go get them.”
“Excellent!” said Nafari. “Thanks for volunteering.”
“We have to tidy this up before we sound the drums,” said Akachi. He wanted this place pristine when his replacement arrived.
Would Growers show up tomorrow at the recently reopened church? Did they even know it was being reopened?
“Will the Hummingbirds help?” asked Nafari.
“Not their job.”
“We’ll help,” said the Captain, re-entering the hall. “This is our home too.”
“Thanks.” Akachi gave her tired smile which she ignored.
That attack was an aberration. It had to be. According to t
he Book of Bastion, Growers were peaceful, docile. Or had the Loa tried to assassinate him as they’d likely assassinated the last several priests sent from the inner rings? That, Akachi decided, made more sense.
Nafari was here with him. Together they’d take on the world. Captain Yejide, though overly serious and kind of scary, seemed a decent sort, if somewhat distant. Breaking the Growers wasn’t something she wanted to do, it was something she had to do. Responsible for the immortal souls of all Bastion, nahual made hard choices every day.
I’ll make a go of this. I’ll show Bishop Zalika, throw this back in her face.
First, he’d clean up the church, then he’d clean up the district. He might not be here long, but he’d leave the Wheat District a better place than he found it. This posting would not be his failure. The Growers wanted leadership, they craved order and simplicity. This empty church was more than likely part of the reason the district was in such rough shape.
I’ll give them back their gods, show them the path and the light.
This was going to work. It was an opportunity, his chance to earn his way back into the inner rings.
“The kitchen is a mess,” said the Human Beard, joining them in the main hall. He looked heartbroken. The rest of the destruction didn’t touch him, yet a messy kitchen was apparently an affront to the gods.
“You,” said Akachi, pointing at the acolyte.
“Yes, Pastor?”
“I’m not really a—Never mind. Your first job is to clean up the kitchen. Put it in order. Take a look around, make a list of everything we’ll need.”
“We’ll need a cook from the Crafters,” said the Captain.
“Well, that hurt,” said the Human Beard.
“Add it to the list,” Akachi told Jumoke.
“Yes, Pastor,” said the boy, rolling up the sleeves of his charcoal acolyte’s frock as he left.
“I’ll help,” said one of the Guards, following.
Akachi turned a complete circle, examining the hall that would soon hold his congregation.
My congregation. He couldn’t believe it. He might not be a real pastor, but here he was with a parish of his own and years younger than when his father first earned his.
Did I earn this?
If earning Bishop Zalika’s enmity counted, then yes.
Spider webs adorned every corner. The skeletal remains of birds and rats and gods knew what else lay littered among the debris. Smoke stains, twisted snakes of soot, climbed one wall. It looked like squatters lived here for many years, though not recently.
We clothe them. We feed them. We give them homes. We supply everything they could ever need. Why would they want to live in an abandoned church?
Akachi, Nafari, Jumoke, and the seven Hummingbird Guard, spent the last hour of light dragging refuse from the church and piling it in the yard. When the sun dropped below the horizon, Akachi realized he hadn’t thought to bring candles. The church was dark and silent. Stumbling with exhaustion, he retired to the pastor’s chambers. After making sure nothing dangerous lived in there, he examined the raised slab that was to be his bed. Stone never looked so inviting.
I need a mattress and heavy blankets. For all Bastion’s heat during the day, each night the inhabitants saw their breath. Tomorrow he’d send Jumoke and a couple of the Hummingbirds for supplies.
Taking the sacrificial dagger from his pack, he placed it on the writing desk, a stone slab extending from the wall. Even that small distance felt like a weight lifted from his shoulders. It reeked of violence. Even without narcotics in his blood, Akachi sensed the thinning of the veil around it. One did not need to be a nahualli of Father Death to sense its power.
Grimacing, he pushed it to the back corner of the desk with a fingertip.
Collapsing onto the uncomfortable bed, he wrapped himself in the one blanket he’d brought and was asleep in moments.
A colossal snake banded in red, black, and white.
The beginning of the end.
A black stain, starting in the Grower’s Ring.
An infection, growing to devour all Bastion.
Fire, the sky blackened by smoke.
The wells filling with thick ash.
Akachi stood alone atop the Grey Wall separating the Growers from the Crafters. He looked down into the Wheat District.
Platoons of Hummingbirds, armoured in jade-green stone, drew swords of obsidian. Southern Hummingbird’s elite, the Turquoise Serpents. They were said to be immortal, their swords unbreakable. Akachi stared in horror as the nahual of Southern Hummingbird marched against a mob of Growers, cut men in half, spilled all they were to the stone.
From atop the Grey Wall, Akachi saw something he’d never before noticed. Blood runnels, just like those beneath the sacrificial altar, lined every street. Sanguine rivers, straight and perfect, ran toward the centre of Bastion.
This could only work if Bastion was a bowl with the Gods’ Ring at the lowest point. The mathematical precision of such a construct, the sheer scale, staggered Akachi.
This entire city is an altar.
Every ring, the entirety of Bastion, funnelled blood inward.
The rings. The hundreds of thousands of souls. All this endless, seamless stone served one purpose: Feed the gods.
No. It can’t be.
It was too much. Akachi reeled, searching for balance and calm. Cloud Serpent would never—
Akachi saw a Grower girl down in the street. A brutal scar split her face from above her right eyebrow to the left side of her chin. Baring her teeth in the scar-stretching snarl of a mad dog, she glared up at him. Smoke stained the air around her. Though the Hummingbirds and Growers battled in every alley, none of it touched her. Both sides passed around her, left her space as if unwilling to come too close.
As if afraid.
Kill her. Kill her! He wanted to shout at the Guards on the street, but they couldn’t hear.
The clouds over the scarred Grower girl changed. Thin funnels, like the legs of a spider, reached down into every ring of Bastion. Where they touched, death and destruction followed.
The red, white, and black snake coiled around Akachi, crushing him.
The gods are at war, my Heart, Cloud Serpent said, voice like scales on sand. Hunt the girl.
Akachi woke to find Nafari standing over him. Jumoke stood at his friend’s shoulder.
“Time to rise, Pastor,” said Jumoke.
“Go away.” He remembered the dream, the scarred Grower girl. It was real. He was a nahual of Cloud Serpent, Lord of the Hunt, and his god had shown him his prey. Somehow, she was at the heart of something terrible.
“You all right?” asked Nafari.
“I had a vision.”
“A true vision, a dream, or were you smoky?”
“Smoky as fuck,” opined Jumoke.
“Please don’t use Grower language.” Still groggy from sleep, Akachi wasn’t ready to talk about it.
That was no dream. It was real. He knew it in his blood, in his bones. Cloud Serpent burned it into him, left no room for doubt. Everything he thought was important last night was now less than irrelevant. Excitement, awe, and raw terror shivered through him.
Cloud Serpent spoke to me!
He’d lived in fear of disappointing his father.
Disappointing his god would be far worse.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Nafari, brow crinkled with worry. “You look ill.”
Still wearing his robes from the day before, wrinkled and dirty, stinking of sweat, Akachi waved away his friends’ concern and climbed out of bed. “Let’s see what the Hummingbirds are up to.”
Wandering down to the main hall, they found the Hummingbirds already up and bustling about, tidying. Captain Yejide called from the entrance. When Akachi reached her, picking his way through the detritus littering the floor, he understood. The yard was empty, cleared of the garbage they piled out there the previous evening.
“I think the Growers are welcoming you to the nei
ghbourhood,” said Nafari, at his side.
“Or they stole it to burn for warmth at night,” said Jumoke. “I wish I’d thought of that.”
After sending Nafari, Jumoke, and two of the Hummingbirds to get supplies—including candles, mattresses and blankets, food, and more—Akachi wandered into the yard to find a stump to sit on. Two Hummingbirds, the man with the monstrous beard and the woman Nafari had been chatting up, followed him out to stand guard. They ignored him.
Akachi sat, watching the Growers go about their day. Men and women, universally thin, shuffled past, heading out to the fields. Walking in clumped groups they joked and talked, a herd of grey and sweat stains. Some wore subtle accents and accessories. A bracelet of seashells. Bones tied in hair. Some had altered their thobe to hug their form or show a little more flesh. Such modifications, while forbidden, were generally ignored as harmless. Or used to be. Now he wasn’t sure. Most of Bishop Zalika’s sermons were on the sins of tolerance and the necessity for absolute adherence to the Book.
Some of the younger women batted eyelashes, making no attempt to hide their attention or intentions. Having spent most of the last few years surrounded by the predominantly male priesthood of Cloud Serpent, Akachi decided leaving the Growers their small displays of individuality was probably for the best.
Nowhere did he see the hate and rage of yesterday’s attack.
Of course not. These are the good Growers, those who work the fields as they should.
An old Grower hobbled past on his way out to the fields. He used a bent stick as a cane. Technically such use was a crime, but who would forbid a man his needed crutch? His thobe was so dirty as to be more brown than grey.
Dirts. Captain Yejide’s word for the Growers.
Akachi pushed these thought away; it was unworthy. Sitting here, in the same robes he wore yesterday, he was hardly a paragon of cleanliness.
Across the street he spotted a young Grower woman lounging against a tenement wall. She studied him, her eyes impossibly bright.
I know her.
He’d seen her before, when he left the Northern Cathedral.
Smoke and Stone Page 4
