“Not yet. I’ll need to eat foku for the final sessions. It’s the only way to get every detail.” He glanced out toward the Sand Wall, though at this distance he couldn’t see it. The scale of Bastion humbled him every time he came even close to comprehending it. “If I can, I’ll visit the menageries one last time. I’d like to see a real hawk again.” He hadn’t been since he was an acolyte. He remembered his last trip, a month spent with a class of would-be nagual and peyollotl, practitioners of totemic magic. They were there to eat foku seeds and study animals. He’d been stunned by all the life. So much green. Colossal menageries housed every kind of animal and bird and lizard imaginable. And so many animals running free! Herds of cows wandering open fields, flocks of birds swooping and hunting. And he remembered the first hawk he saw, riding the hot winds blowing above Bastion, king of the world and free. He knew someday he would carve the perfect hawk.
“You look far away,” said Yejide.
“Sorry. You ever been out into the fields, ever visited the menageries?”
She shook her head.
He hesitated. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Can I take you someday?”
“Someday.”
“Someday,” he agreed. Akachi glanced around, making sure no one was within earshot. He felt foolish. Should I say something?
“Yes?” she asked, studying him.
“This is a blood-tailed hawk,” he said, displaying the carving.
“Mm hm.”
“You can’t tell yet because I haven’t started painting, but the tail will be—”
“Blood red?”
“The rest of the body is a mix of orange and brown. They’re gorgeous.”
“Gorgeous, eh?”
Something in the way she said it made his heart stutter.
“You’re a nagual?” she said. “A shape-shifter?”
He wanted to brag that he was talented in several fields of sorcery, but worried it would seem childish to this woman. He nodded, confused. Why did she change the subject?
Yejide glanced at the hawk in his hand. “Have you ever been a bird?”
“My first carving was a falcon. It wasn’t very good. I was still learning to carve and my narcotics mixes were never perfect.” He pictured the falcon, the rough finish, the flawed feathers.
“Flying, what was it like?”
“Ah, the Bird wants to know what it’s like to fly,” he said, intentionally using the derogatory Grower slang for the Hummingbird Guard.
Her eyes narrowed but held a playful glint.
“It’s beautiful,” he said. “On my third flight I climbed higher than ever before. I could barely breathe.” He dashed an embarrassed grin at her. “Higher than I was supposed to; my teacher was furious. I saw Bastion, the rings. All the life in the world lay beneath me. And beyond the Sand Wall, the Bloody Desert. No matter how high I flew, there was nothing but red sand. Forever.”
“How did it feel?”
“It was freedom, and it was a prison. You walk through your days, thinking yourself free. From up there you see the walls. We ignore them because they’re always there, but they’re always there.” He struggled to put the feeling into words. “Birds don’t know walls. They fly over them like they’re nothing. But the man in the bird, he must return to his flesh. The flesh is a prison. The walls are a prison. The desert is a prison.” He was dangerously close to quoting the Book of the Invisibles.
“Loa blasphemy,” Yejide said, winking.
“But are they wrong about everything?”
“Can anyone be wrong about everything?”
Akachi sounded the drums every day and preached to the Growers who shuffled, stinking and exhausted, into his church. He scanned their filthy faces for that scarred girl. She never came.
Each evening Captain Yejide joined him in his chambers and sat in comfortable silence while he worked at his desk curing mushrooms in preparation for his dream-walk, or writing his sermon for the next day. Sometimes she polished her leather armour to a lustrous red shine. Sometimes she stretched lithe limbs in the most distracting ways and the sermon had to be finished later, after she left.
He thought about her constantly. His stomach knotted whenever she was away. What did she think of him?
Yejide wasn’t at all what he imagined his perfect girl to be. Before meeting her, his dreams were populated by soft bodies, full breasts, and well-rounded hips. She was none of that.
For one thing, she’s a woman, not a girl.
So, she wasn’t his dream girl and he thought about her all the time. He wanted her more than he ever wanted anybody.
Each evening, after Yejide left, Akachi ingested a blend of narcotics and hunted the dreams of the Wheat District. He found nothing. Somehow the scarred girl evaded him. Either she didn’t dream, was a powerful sorcerer, or had help from one.
One night, as he prepared his narcotics, Captain Yejide strode into his chambers to report they’d found Talimba dead, murdered.
“How?” Akachi asked, unsure why it mattered.
“Stabbed in the throat. He must have been outnumbered, taken by surprise.”
“How can you be sure?”
“They’re Dirts. Talimba is Hummingbird Guard.”
Akachi accepted this without comment. Having seen the Hummingbirds fight, he understood the Captain’s confidence. Could this be a coincidence? Talimba was looking for the scarred girl when killed. Had he found her?
“He had long hair caught in his fist,” said Yejide. She held up hair tangled in rat bones.
“Lots of Dirts do that,” said Akachi. “It’s decoration, an attempt at individuality.” Unlike the tattoos, most nahual tolerated such small sins.
“How did they know he wasn’t a Grower?” asked Yejide.
“I don’t know.” Should I tell her about the dreams, about Cloud Serpent’s message?
The scarred girl he saw in his dreams didn’t have long hair with bones tied into it. She looked like any other filthy Dirt.
“They left him to bleed out in the street. His death cannot go unpunished.”
“It won’t,” promised Akachi. “I need the hair.” He could use it to track the dreams of the person it came from.
She handed it to him without question. “I’m taking Gyasi and Njau. I’m going to question the locals. Maybe someone saw something.” Her expression said success was unlikely.
“Should I—”
“No. Stay.” Shoulders set, she spun and left.
He wanted to tell her to be careful. He wanted to tell her he was sorry about Talimba, sorry he put the man in danger. He said nothing. Not until she was gone.
Then he said, “Fuck.” The course language, so typical among the Growers, shamed him.
He stood motionless for several minutes, wondering what he should do.
There were dangerous narcotic blends he’d eschewed in his search. It was one thing to ghost the streets, peering into dreams. It was another to open one’s soul to the will of the gods and allow them to guide you. Any error in the preparation and he might brain-burn himself.
Cloud Serpent watches over me.
Akachi collected his supply of ameslari fungus, a powerful hallucinogen allowing a trained user to slip into the dream world, and spent the next three hours preparing it, blending the fungus with equal parts foku seeds and jainkoei. It was a dangerous mix, but he needed the jainkoei to open his soul to the guidance of Cloud Serpent, and without the foku he might miss some critical detail.
In the past he’d been looking for the scarred girl. It was time to try something different. This time he’d search out whoever killed Talimba. With their hair, it would be easy to find them.
When finished he glanced out the nearest window, gauging the stars. It was late. The Growers would be in the deepest realms of sleep, their spirits wandering the dream world. The ameslari was a dangerous ally, wilful and difficult to control. If he could confront the murderer in that unfixed reality, soul opened to the will of the gods, he had no doubt
he could crush them. He might even be able to dig through their mind and look for memories of the scarred girl.
Akachi was completing the mixture, grinding it into a smokeable hash in which he’d included shavings of the hair, when Captain Yejide coughed politely at the entrance to his room.
“Come in.”
She entered. “Pastor, you are needed.”
Pastor?
She turned and left without waiting for a response.
Stretching his legs, working out the kinks from sitting cross-legged for hours, Akachi followed. He found Nafari, Yejide, and the entire Hummingbird squad awaiting him in the main hall. Gyasi stood hunched, one hand pressed to her belly. Blood seeped between her fingers. She looked pale. Nafari stood at her side, worried and trying to offer support.
A Grower knelt on the floor, surrounded by hostile glares. Filth caked the man’s grey thobe, his hair a stinking, tangled mess. He looked up as Akachi entered and spat blood on the floor. He looked to be missing a few teeth. Akachi got the feeling these were recent losses.
“What happened?” Akachi asked.
If she’d been hard before, Captain Yejide was hewn from ebony now. “We were questioning this Dirt when he stabbed Gyasi.”
“Is she going to be okay?”
“Fine,” said Gyasi, through gritted teeth. She didn’t look fine.
Growers weren’t supposed to have weapons. “What did he stab her with?”
“A damned sharpened stick.”
“Njau,” said Akachi. “Go wake Jumoke. Get him to the nearest Lord of the Root’s church as fast as you can. Find the resident nahual and bring them back here to see to her wounds.”
Njau neither blinked nor moved. Akachi wondered if maybe the man was deaf.
Yejide nodded and Njau left.
“Captain,” said Akachi. “Is this man involved in…” He wasn’t sure what to call it.
“I don’t think so. He panicked because he was smoky and had erlaxatu and a weapon hidden in his greys. I already questioned him.” She lifted her right fist, the knuckles of her leather gauntlets bloodied. “He’s just a stupid Dirt.”
The kneeling Grower glared up at Yejide. “Fuck you, Bird cunt.” He drooled blood between missing teeth.
With an impressive economy of motion, the Captain punched him in the face silencing any further outburst.
“Gyasi will live?” Akachi asked.
“Most likely.”
“No way some smoky Dirt is killing me,” said Gyasi.
“He attacked a nahual,” said Nafari.
Akachi blinked at his friend. “We’ll see how she—”
“He stabbed a nahual of Southern Hummingbird, Akachi. You know the penalty for striking a priest.”
Akachi nodded. A chance to do his holy duty, to shepherd a damaged soul to the gods so they might redeem it!
“Death,” said Captain Yejide.
“Sacrifice on the altar,” said Akachi. He glanced at the stone altar, the blood runnels to direct the spilt life to the gods at Bastion’s heart.
How many generations of Growers has it been since this altar tasted blood?
Suddenly he remembered the dream from his first night in the church. The streets lined with gutters running deep with blood. The ranks of Southern Hummingbird’s elite, the Turquoise Serpents, their obsidian swords and green stone armour.
That wasn’t a dream.
He realized that everyone was staring at him. For a moment he wondered why, and then understanding dawned.
I have to kill this man. Me. As the ranking priest in this parish, however nebulous that rank, it fell to Akachi to sacrifice this Grower to the gods. He’ll be reborn. He’ll be reborn a better man to live a better, purer life.
Aside from squishing spiders or crushing the odd scorpion, Akachi never killed anything. Prior to the journey to the Wheat District, he’d never even been in a fight.
And now I have to bleed a man for the gods.
If this man went unpunished, gods alone knew how the stupid Growers might react to Akachi’s leniency. Would they think it was acceptable to attack priests? This Dirt hadn’t simply raised his hand against a nahual, he tried to kill her. To strike at a priest was to strike at the gods.
Akachi glanced at his friend. Nafari hovered near Gyasi, concern and anger writ clear on his features.
Captain Yejide studied him, awaiting his judgement. Was that pity in her eyes? Concern?
But sacrifice is a beautiful ceremony! At least that’s what his teachers said. Sending a man to his god was the most holy event.
But it was one thing to read about his responsibility for the souls of his parish. Listening to lectures on sacrifice, reading ancient tomes on exactly where to cut. What if he did it wrong? What if the man suffered needlessly?
“I’ve never… Does this have to be public?”
“The fight was seen by few,” said Yejide. “But word will spread.” She reached a hand toward Akachi as if to offer comfort and stopped herself, returning it to her side. “Sacrifice this man now,” she said. “The Growers will know he was taken and never returned. They’ll understand. Later, when you’ve sacrificed a few and are both skilled and comfortable with the act, you must do them in public.”
Skilled and comfortable. His heart beat hard in his chest. He didn’t know what to feel. His stomach writhed at the thought of killing a man, yet he was excited about the opportunity to do his holy duty, to prove himself worthy in the eyes of his father, and his god. How old had his father been when he first sacrificed a man? Akachi had no idea. Father never talked about it.
This will make me a true priest, a real pastor, no matter what Bishop Zalika says.
Akachi closed his eyes, sought calm, tried to open himself to the will of the gods. I wish I had some jainkoei in my blood. Even just a little erlaxatu would take the edge off. He remembered his teacher’s warnings on becoming dependant on the narcotic tools of their calling. Many nahual brain-burned after falling to the lure of the narcotics.
There was no calm.
If the gods spoke, he was deaf to their words.
“Captain,” he said, “take him to the altar. Nafari, fetch the sacrificial dagger from my chambers.”
Captain Yejide and Hard Eyes—Khadija, Akachi reminded himself—grabbed the Grower and dragged him to the altar. The man struggled until Khadija clipped his chin with a short punch.
With a quick nod, Nafari dashed off. When he returned, he held the obsidian dagger pinched between two fingers, as far from himself as possible. Face pale, he looked ill.
“I’m sorry,” said Nafari. “I puked when I picked it up. It’s…” He shook his head, at a loss for words.
“Jumoke will clean it up when he gets back.”
Akachi accepted the dagger. It infected him with its sickness. Fighting the desire to collapse onto his knees and retch the stain from his soul, he turned to face the altar. Yejide and Khadija held the man down.
“The straps are gone,” said Yejide.
“But then—”
“We’ll hold him.”
Akachi approached, the foul black knife in his fist. Its infection crept up his arm, snaked through his veins. He swallowed bile. It’s poisoning me.
“I’ll tell Jumoke,” he said, forcing calm, “to fetch new straps when he returns.”
Though dazed, the Grower understood. “I’m sorry,” he said, eyes wide with fear. “Never again. I beg mercy. I…”
He struggled. Between the Captain, Khadija, and whatever beatings he’d suffered, he was helpless.
“Please.” The Grower pleaded with his eyes, tears falling.
A tear trickled into the man’s ear.
“I’ll leave,” said the Grower. “I’ll go to another district. No one will know you didn’t sacrifice me.” Words poured out now, a torrent of terror. “I heard of priests doing that, letting people go if they promise to disappear. You don’t have to kill me I’m so sorry I panicked I didn’t mean to stab her—”
Cap
tain Yejide twisted his arm until his words choked off in a screech of pain. “The only way you could have heard such rumours is if the stupid Dirt in question stayed around to talk about it. The punishment for striking a priest is death.” She wrenched another scream from him. “You’re lucky we can only kill you once.”
“I wouldn’t stay,” he screamed through the pain. “I’d leave! I swear!”
Khadija punched him silent. The Grower lay limp. Only the rise and fall of his chest told Akachi he still lived.
Akachi approached the altar. The pulse of the artery in the man’s neck caught his attention.
There.
Deep bowls, sunk into the stone of bastion, forever stained from previous sacrifices, waited beneath the altar to catch the precious blood and funnel it to the waiting gods.
We must feed them with our sinners.
The circle of life and death was crucial to the existence of Bastion. Corrupt souls had to die so they might be purified and born again, given another chance.
This isn’t death.
No, that wasn’t true. It was death, but it wasn’t the end. All who died within the rings of Bastion were reborn.
A nahual’s most holy duty.
The most beautiful ritual.
Man and god, connected.
The endless cycle of rebirth without which Bastion would wither and die.
The obsidian dagger hung heavy in his fist. The arm, numb, felt like a weight of dead flesh.
There would be a spurt at first, a great gout splashing the floor. There were runnels down there, too. The gods did not waste the gift of life. The Grower would struggle, ever weaker. Akachi remembered his teacher’s description of how the eyes would stop moving and became dead like polished stones. The old nahual spoke in reverent tones. He said it was the deepest honour to shepherd a soul to the gods. ‘The body will tremble and twitch to the end,’ his teacher said. ‘The meat resists losing the soul. But eventually the meat must die. The meat always dies.’
An unconscious Grower. Meat.
It wasn’t beautiful.
It was a nightmare.
Blood got everywhere.
It sprayed the wall and fell in the dirt. It got in Akachi’s hair and spattered his face. He tasted the man’s soul on his lips. Blood soaked his robes until they clung to him, heavy and rank.
Smoke and Stone Page 10
