Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  Noting his attention, she nodded, turned, and sauntered down the street, disappearing around the first corner.

  Who was she? Was she spying on him? He made a note to mention it to Captain Yejide. Right now, he had to focus. He came out here to think.

  The dream.

  It wasn’t a dream. It was a vision.

  He thought he was being sent to the Wheat District because Bishop Zalika hated his father.

  That wasn’t it at all. Or rather that might have been Zalika’s reason, but Akachi knew now he was here because Cloud Serpent wanted him here.

  Smoke and destruction. The Growers rising up in rebellion.

  It was unthinkable, but one did not ignore a vision from the gods.

  He remembered the girl from the dream. Was she here in the Wheat District?

  He laughed. Where else could she possibly be? He would never forget her features. That scar.

  Cloud Serpent, Lord of the Hunt, had shown Akachi his prey.

  Returning to his new chambers, Akachi killed off the last of the spiders and cleared away the worst of the webs. After sharing a small room with Nafari for seven years, he felt distant and alone. Though much smaller than what Bishop Zalika enjoyed in the Northern Cathedral, these were the grandest chambers he’d seen since leaving his family estate in the Priests’ Ring. Though large, they lacked the beauty and sophistication of his home. Everything was simple stone. A pang of homesickness tightened his chest.

  A polite cough from the far side of the curtain he’d hung to separate his rooms from the rest of the church interrupted his thoughts.

  “Enter,” he said.

  Captain Yejide ducked through the curtain. She stood for a moment, angular eyebrow crooked, surveying the room.

  When she didn’t speak, he said, “A lot of spiders. Only one scorpion.”

  “You’re lucky. The rooms for the Guard are infested. Gyasi chased a red snake out.”

  Akachi wasn’t sure which one Gyasi was, and even less sure how one chased a deadly viper.

  Captain Yejide’s attention finally settled on him, eyes making no secret of looking him over. A latticework of scars, pale ridges, criss-crossed her arms. Even her face bore scars. She bore his examination, waiting. So utterly calm and composed.

  “You popped in to say hello?” he asked.

  “Back there,” she said, “in the street. Thank you.”

  Akachi shifted, uncomfortable.

  “You aren’t trained in battle,” she said, eyeing him as if measuring, as if truly seeing him for the first time.

  “I’m a nahualli of Cloud Serpent.”

  “Hunting and war are two very different things. That was brave.”

  “Brave? I was terrified.”

  “That’s what made it brave. Don’t ever do it again,” she repeated. “Our task is to protect you. You make that more difficult by exposing yourself to danger.”

  “Sorry,” he lied. If doing that again makes you look at me like this, I’ll do it a thousand times.

  He was about to tell her about the Grower he’d seen watching him when she abruptly said, “We have church matters to attend to.”

  “Already? I haven’t unpacked yet.”

  “Oh, the impropriety. A Grower came to Lutalo while he stood guard at the church entrance. Apparently, there’s a woman in the district who has not surrendered a baby to the church.”

  He had no idea which one Lutalo was. Someone let a Grower take a baby home? “How is that even possible? Was it stolen?”

  “I believe she gave birth in her tenement.”

  “She gave birth in a Grower hovel instead of a sanctioned church?” He shook his head in wonder.

  “It happens,” said the Captain. “They think they can care for them. They think they can hide them from us.” She shrugged. “They aren’t terribly bright.”

  According to the Book, Growers were too ignorant, too stupid, to be entrusted with the raising of children. All Growers were born in church, before the gods, and raised by the nahual in crèches. It was for their own good.

  Captain Yejide cocked her head to one side, waiting.

  “And?” he asked.

  “And we have to go get the child.” When he said nothing, she continued. “You have to come. You must take the child into the arms of the gods. You must decide the woman’s punishment.”

  “Right. Forgot.” Reading about the duties of a nahual in ancient texts was different than carrying them out. “What is the proscribed punishment?”

  “As nahual, you have some discretion in the matter.”

  Some. “What’s typical?” he asked. “What have you seen?”

  “The most lenient punishment I witnessed for this crime was fifty lashes in the public square.”

  How often did this happen that she had multiple experiences to call upon? “Not so bad.”

  “The woman died a week later.”

  “Oh.”

  Captain Yejide shrugged one shoulder. “It doesn’t always happen like that. Dirts are usually quite sturdy.”

  Akachi wasn’t sure how he felt about the term Dirts. While fitting, it was definitely derogatory. None of the student-priests in the Northern Cathedral ever used it. Then again, none of them had been out among the Growers.

  “If you’re ready,” she said, “we’ll go.”

  “Now?”

  “Oh no,” she said, “at your convenience, of course. Perhaps a light meal and a nap first?”

  “Really?”

  She sighed, shaking her head. “Waiting won’t make this easier. Better to do it before she forms an attachment with the babe.”

  An attachment. He imagined someone threatening to take one of his mother’s children. She’d have ended worlds. No force in all Bastion could stand before her wrath.

  Akachi nodded and followed Yejide out of his chambers. She walked with a confident strut. Although a skirt of hardened crimson leather hung past her knees, covering her ass, his imagination had no trouble picturing it somewhat less clothed.

  She would kill you. Focus.

  Captain Yejide snapped her fingers, a loud echoing crack, as they entered the main hall. The Hummingbird Guard lounging there jumped to their feet and fell in around them like a scruffy-looking honour guard. All were armed and armoured.

  The Grower who reported the crime stood waiting in the courtyard. He bowed a few dozen times to Akachi in his desperate need to please.

  Akachi blessed him with a quick prayer. “In your next life you’ll be reborn nearer the light of the gods.”

  The filthy man, thobe stained and threadbare, beamed with simple pride and led the way.

  Refuse littered the streets of the Wheat District. Most of it was discarded foodstuffs and stank like rotting corn. Scraps of grey cloth, cacked with red sand, twitched in the evening breeze. Here and there the broken remnants of the few farming implements, deemed both safe and simple enough for Growers, lay where dropped. Too stupid to use intricate tools, most of what they had access to amounted to fortuitously shaped sticks. Still, it said something of both the locals and the sad state of this district that such thefts took place.

  I’ll have to talk with the Hummingbirds patrolling the fields. They’re getting sloppy.

  Growers eyed their little group from shadowed doorways, though no one sought to impede their progress.

  Half an hour walk out from these tenements lay the wheat fields for which the district was named. In truth, there were many Wheat Districts scattered around the outer ring, but since Growers never travelled, they’d never know.

  The Grower led them through streets and filth-strewn alleys. Though all Grower tenements were identical—perhaps, by the time the gods were building the outer ring, they were exhausted and could no longer be bothered with detail—many were decorated with small personal touches. Strings of shells hung over some doors, while others bore strips of grey cloth. A few even had splashes of what might have been mud or dull paint. Forbidden as such displays were, Akachi knew most nahua
l turned a blind eye. The common wisdom was that without such small touches, the Growers were too stupid to find their way home again.

  ‘Sins of tolerance,’ Bishop Zalika said when preaching absolute adherence to the Book.

  Was she right? Was the Wheat District such a mess because the local pastors were too lenient?

  Akachi saw no harm in allowing some small show of personality. And if it helped them find their homes…

  The Grower stopped, scratched at an armpit, sniffed his fingers, and then pointed out a tenement. “There.”

  Captain Yejide snapped her fingers. “Ibrahim. Njau.”

  Two of the Hummingbirds, one a giant wall of walking muscle, and the man Akachi previously dubbed the Human Beard, approached the entrance. Drawing ebony cudgels, they entered. A moment later, the bearded man returned and nodded to Yejide before retuning inside. Signalling Akachi to follow, she entered the tenement. Another Hummingbird fell in behind them. The other two remained outside, watching the street.

  Captain Yejide led him to the back room. As with most tenements, this one was used as a bedroom. A single wide slab of raised stone served as a bed. Two thin grey blankets lay thrown across it. The room stank of sweat. A young male Grower, no older than Akachi, and a girl of similar age, stood with Ibrahim and Njau. The girl wept with great tearing sobs, baby held clutched to her chest. Her body shook with the force of her crying.

  Serpent’s tongue! Is it already dead?

  Had the stupid Growers killed it with their ignorance? Akachi’s breath caught. The punishment for killing a child was death on the altar. Fear and excitement swept through him. A chance to truly serve the gods, to see a wayward soul given the opportunity for redemption! She’ll be reborn purified. It was right. It was what the Book said should happen. Shirking his duty would be a sin of tolerance.

  Holding his breath, he leaned closer. The baby lived, somehow managing to sleep through the noise. Though relieved, he couldn’t help but feel some disappointment. This would not be his chance to prove himself worthy in the eyes of his god.

  At a signal from Captain Yejide, one of the Hummingbirds pinned the young man against the back wall. The youth struggled for a moment before realizing how outnumbered he was. He sagged, unresisting, the fight gone from him.

  With the exception of the sobbing woman cuddling the babe, everyone stared at Akachi.

  They’re waiting for me.

  He cleared his throat. “The child must be raised in a crèche. We have come to collect it.”

  “She’s not an it,” said the Grower youth.

  The Hummingbird silenced him with a crushing punch to the kidney. The boy folded, wheezing, and the other Hummingbird kicked him in the ribs.

  Frowning, Akachi turned his back on the violence. It shouldn’t have come to this. “The Book of Bastion says all children must be raised in a crèche.” It was a slight lie. The Book said all Grower children had to be raised in crèches. Since Growers couldn’t read, that part was generally left out so as not to confuse them.

  “Captain,” said Akachi. “Collect the child.”

  The Grower woman screamed, waking the babe, who immediately added to the cacophony.

  “And the punishment?” asked Captain Yejide over the noise.

  The woman’s wail of despair broke Akachi’s heart. This felt wrong. I have to be strong. The Book was clear, this was the way. I have no choice.

  He wanted to say none, that this would be punishment enough. He couldn’t. Who did Yejide report to, Bishop Zalika? What would she do if he appeared weak, unable to control and punish the Growers of his district? He’d be a failure in the eyes of his father. He couldn’t allow that. Akachi was here to do Cloud Serpent’s bidding. All this was just a distraction.

  The woman collapsed as the Captain pried the crying baby from her. She lay curled on the floor, screaming.

  “You should have given birth in the church,” Akachi told her. “It’s the law. The gods, the Book of Bastion—” He stopped. She wasn’t listening. “Fifty lashes in the public square,” he announced. Glancing at Captain Yejide, he added, “Try not to kill her.”

  The Captain gestured at Njau and Ibrahim and they lifted the girl to her feet. She hung between them like a broken doll.

  Captain Yejide led the way back to the street and Akachi followed. The two carrying the sobbing woman came last. The young man, curled foetal on the floor, crying, they left behind.

  “What about the boy?” Akachi asked, once they were back in the cleansing sun. After the stink of the Grower hovel, it felt good. He needed a bath to wash their stench from his hair.

  “What about him?” Yejide asked.

  “He’s probably the father.”

  “Dirts don’t understand such concepts.”

  “But—”

  “Giving birth at the church is the woman’s responsibility. She broke the law. She will suffer the punishment.”

  The Captain handed the baby off to another Hummingbird, a woman with hard eyes. “Deliver it to the crèche. Njau, go with Khadija.”

  Njau, the one Akachi dubbed ‘the Human Beard,’ and Khadija broke off from the party. Crèches were never located near where the Growers lived and the nearest was several hours walk out into the wheat fields.

  The remaining Hummingbirds escorted Akachi and the crying woman back to the church. The Growers of the district stopped whatever they were doing to watch them pass, eyes heavy. The walk back felt very different from the walk there.

  My first real act as Cloud Serpent’s nahual in the Wheat District, and I tore a baby away from its mother.

  He did the gods’ work. The Book was clear.

  He still felt terrible, guilty.

  It was for the best, for the good of the child.

  No one spoke.

  After seeing the woman bound and left in the basement to consider her sins, Akachi returned to his chambers. Tomorrow morning one of the Hummingbird Guard would carry out his proscribed punishment.

  I couldn’t whip a helpless woman.

  What kind of person could?

  Captain Yejide could.

  But who then, really, was to blame for this situation? The Hummingbirds were carrying out Akachi’s sentencing. Did that make him responsible? Or was it the woman who knowingly broke the law?

  He spent the rest of the morning listening to her screams and sobs until someone stomped down the steps to silence her.

  He didn’t attend the whipping, but sat in his chambers, writing the sermon for that day. The crack of the lash and the screams of the young mother punctuated every sentence.

  NURU – SERPENTINE SONGS

  Mother Death speaks through the bones of the earth.

  —Loa Book of the Invisibles

  Whatever happens next is my fault. She sent Bomani to watch Fadil. She pushed Chisulo to rush to Efra’s rescue; not that he needed much pushing.

  What if she lost another one of her friends? She wanted to grab him, drag Chisulo to a stop, tell him she was wrong. Except they had to save Efra. It would have been so much easier if the girl had been one of them, with them from the beginning. There’d have been no question of abandoning her. But she wasn’t, not really.

  It doesn’t matter. This wasn’t about saving the scarred girl. This was about the dream, the spider. Without Efra, Nuru would never get the tools she needed.

  And so you risk your friends for a dream? She hated herself.

  Chisulo wouldn’t stop anyway, not once he knew what had to be done.

  The last of the foku and aldatu Nuru ate before, while she’d been carving the spider, sharpened the world. That was good. She needed it. Her ally lived within. She felt smoky and unreal, detached from the dirt, sand, and stone of Grower reality. The veil between worlds thinned to a translucent sheen. The smoke, her ally, was with her. The viper coiled in her heart, calling promises of cold detachment and easy murder.

  Allies existed in the smoke, in the mushrooms and the strange glowing fungus, but they weren’t alone.
Strange intelligences lurked beyond the veil, waiting, hoping. Promising.

  What was the spider? It spoke of a war among the gods. Could she believe it?

  She focussed on the moment, the stench of Bomani’s death thick in her nostrils. Footprints passed uncaring through the blood and straight to Fadil’s. Nuru couldn’t look at the corpse of her friend.

  As they entered the tenement Omari drew a small flint blade with a makeshift handle of wrapped leather. Where he got it, Nuru couldn’t imagine. Owning such a thing meant death. If the Birds found it, he’d be sacrificed for sure. Happy, being a hulking slab of muscle, didn’t need a weapon.

  Nuru drew the carved viper from its place in her thobe. It was warm. She’d based this carving on Isabis. The scales weren’t perfect. The ink, too thick, clumped in ridges in the wood. Her crude tools failed her.

  It will work.

  Chisulo, Happy, and Omari, seeing the carving, shied away.

  “I’ll follow along,” she promised.

  Chisulo nodded, looking like he wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.

  “I’ll be fine,” she whispered.

  Once out of the sun, she knelt, holding the carving before her eyes. She focussed on it, let it become her world, her everything. Her ally moved within, entwining with her soul. They were one.

  The snake is real. She struggled to ignore the imperfections in the figurine. My ally and I, we are the snake. She imagined the way Isabis moved, twisting across red sand. The crudeness of the paint job and the false black of the ink pulled on her focus, threatened to distract.

  Focus. Control.

  Nuru visualized the jaw opening wide, the vicious fangs dropping into place. She imagined how it would feel to have her belly on ground, no limbs, seeing the world in heat. She closed her eyes, the snake foku-locked in her mind.

  Her ally sang serpentine songs.

  She imagined the eyes, green and cold, and hated that she couldn’t paint them that way.

  It will work.

  It had to work. She couldn’t fight. If she failed, her friends might die. She heard them continue into Fadil’s, felt their steps through the stone against her belly. They were splashes of heat and colour, warm life.