Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

Again, the pipe caught his eye. Erlaxatu would counter the pizgarri, allow him to relax.

  Rising, Akachi fetched his pipe and the bag of erlaxatu from his desk. Returning to the bed, he sat cross-legged to smoke.

  I’m not weak. This isn’t an escape. I need this.

  The erlaxatu took his edges away, rounded him like the wind-worn stone of Bastion.

  This isn’t self-destruction. I’ll find the scarred girl and the street sorcerer. I’ll end this tonight. I will not fail my god.

  The jainkoei peeled Akachi’s soul and the searing light of the gods flayed him like a sand storm stripping flesh off a corpse.

  He closed his eyes and fell into nothing.

  NURU – POWER COMES WITH A PRICE

  Bastion has been in a state of decay since its first day. Steps wear shallow. Hairline cracks—ignored by all—mar every surface. Millennia of wind and sand round every corner, widening windows and doors. Every year an increasing number of homes lie empty. Half the warehouse districts in the outer ring have been abandoned for centuries. The fields nearest the Sand Wall have grown wild, unchecked, for thousands of years.

  The Last City of Man is dying.

  —Loa Book of the Invisibles

  Nuru and Efra strode hand in hand. The Crafter sandals, dangling from the loop hooked over Nuru’s toe, made dry thwack sounds as she walked. Efra managed to be slightly quieter, but stumbled often. They headed toward the pedestrian gate in the Grey Wall. At this time of day only a few wagons, loaded with vegetables and bleating animals, were lined up at the main gate. Drying clods of ox dung, swarming with flies, littered the street. Later, under the watchful eye of the Birds, Growers would haul out wood carts to be filled with the collected dung. They were supposed to drag it all back out to the fields, but there was a surprising demand for dried shit, which could be burned for heat. Desert nights were cold, and Growers not allowed more than a single grey sheet.

  A squad of Birds lounged at the gate. They watched everyone, Grower and Crafter alike, with equal suspicion.

  This is stupid. It’ll never work. She glanced at Efra. Her face was a mess, the flesh around her eyes and right cheek swollen.

  Nuru wasn’t doing much better. Her bottom lip was split, a scab forming. It felt like it might start bleeding again if she tried to talk. The only blessing was that, with her head tilted forward, the height of the sun threw her face into shadow.

  “We’re a mess. This will never work. We should turn back now.”

  “Too late,” said Efra. “They’ve seen us.”

  Nuru squinted at the gate. Sure enough, the Birds were all staring at them. “Can you run?”

  “In these damned sandals? No. We’re going through.”

  As one, the Birds stood. They moved toward Nuru and Efra.

  “I’ll tangle them,” mumbled Efra. “You run.”

  Nuru squeezed her hand tight. No one outran an entire squad of Birds.

  The Birds jogged past the two women without so much as a glance. Looking over her shoulder, Nuru saw another Bird limping out of an alley.

  “Trouble. More Birds coming.”

  If someone hurt a Bird, all the other Birds in the neighbourhood got together and busted heads until they found the sinner. Then they made an example out of whoever had been stupid enough to raise a hand against them. Most of the time the poor bastard never made it to a church where he might throw himself on the mercy of a nahual.

  “They’re distracted,” said Efra. “We go now.”

  Dragging Nuru by the hand, she hurried them toward the gate and the lone Bird still there. The man stopped them with a raised hand, but his attention kept straying to the rest of his squad who gathered around the injured Bird.

  “Did you leave any contraband behind in the Growers’ Ring?” demanded the Bird. “You have in your possession all objects, artefacts, crafts, and tools you entered with?”

  Nuru nodded.

  The Bird took a long look at the two women, scowling when he caught sight of Nuru’s face. “Did a Dirt do that?”

  Nuru shook her head.

  “Fucking Crafters.” He turned and pounded on the pedestrian gate with his fist.

  Again, checking over her shoulder, Nuru saw the injured Bird limping toward the gate. The rest of the squad sprinted off into the alley he staggered from. Big trouble. Something had them riled up, and an angry Bird was a violent Bird.

  Something about him looks familiar.

  The gate swung open just enough to allow Nuru and Efra to squeeze through and the Bird impatiently herded them on their way. On the far side she saw a long tunnel through the stone of the Grey Wall. She slowed. I had no idea it was so deep. She imagined the wall being a foot or two thick, maybe an entire stride, but this would take a minute to traverse at a brisk walk.

  Efra pulled her forward.

  The length of the tunnel, the crushing feel of being surrounded on all sides by stone, slowed Nuru. Torches hung every few paces, lighting the tunnel and staining the air with smoke. She’d seen them in churches, during rare late-night masses, and assumed they existed only there, the right of nahual. The Birds are nahual of Southern Hummingbird, she reminded herself. It was easy to forget the head-bashers were actually priests; they didn’t act anything like the nahual of the other gods. But then those other nahual didn’t worship Father War.

  Two squads of Birds awaited within, one at each end of the tunnel. These looked very different from those who patrolled the Growers’ Ring. Even in the smoke-filled tunnel, she saw their armour was brighter, looked better cared for.

  One of the Birds stepped forward. She gave Nuru and Efra a cursory glance, tutted disapproval, and waved them toward the gates at the far end.

  Nuru walked hand in hand with Efra, waiting for the inevitable command to stop.

  At the far end they were met by the second squad. These barely noticed them. One opened the door to allow them through and slammed it behind them.

  Both Nuru and Efra stopped. They blinked in the sun, blinding after the dark of the tunnel.

  “We’re in a different world,” said Efra.

  Looking around, Nuru agreed. Being a street sorcerer, she was accustomed to existing in different states of reality. She understood the laws governing each were different. Through the careful use of narcotics, the veil separating them could be pierced, allowing those rules to leak into her reality. But this… How could this reality exist so close to hers? She felt like, in crossing the tunnel, she walked into an altered state. Could that be true? Could the rings of Bastion be separate realities? Was there something in the smoke filling the tunnel? Her mind reeled at the implications.

  Is each ring its own reality?

  “I didn’t know there were so many shades of brown and orange,” said Efra.

  The Crafters, all of them, wore those colours and only those colours. But no one ever wore both. Did that mean something? Those in brown did seem younger. After the grey of the Growers’ Ring, it was staggering. Some of the women wore wrapped thobe-like sheets of orange or brown, but most wore shirts and pants. They all wore sandals like those the girls took. Crafters went about their business, the soft thwack thwack thwack of sandal-clad footsteps a background hum.

  Outside one large open-air building, fat children herded small animals in pens or fed them grain. Carcasses of slaughtered animals hung everywhere. Nuru had never seen so much meat. Men and women worked at long tables, chopping and preparing.

  The buildings were different, too. Not only were they not identical tenements—each was shaped differently depending on its purpose—but many were painted, splashed with colour. Strange lines and swirls adorned many an entranceway. The Crafters defaced Bastion!

  “That’s forbidden,” whispered Efra.

  Except clearly it wasn’t. Not for the Crafters. The patrolling Birds, working singly or in pairs instead of entire squads, paid the blasphemy no mind.

  The people were so different from the Growers, bigger, stronger. No one looked malnourished. Ma
ny of the elderly had paunches and moved as if they hadn’t been broken by a lifetime of hard labour.

  “Children,” said Efra. “They’re everywhere.”

  “The local crèche must lend them out to assist with labour.”

  It didn’t look like most were working, however. They ran screaming and playing. They got underfoot and were ignored by the adults.

  Nuru turned a full circle, trying to understand. Grower children were born in the church, taken from the woman who gave them birth, to be raised in a crèche. They lived there, working the crèche’s practice fields, learning their assigned jobs, until they turned twelve. Nuru hadn’t seen anyone under the age of twelve since leaving the crèche. Rumour had it the kids were always placed in districts other than the one they were born in.

  “I don’t see a crèche,” she said.

  A woman, voluptuous and soft, unlike any Grower Nuru ever saw, exited a Crafter home and collected a child, scooping him into her arms. The child babbled. Only when he called the woman Mother did Nuru understand: Crafter children were not taken at birth to be raised by the church. They were raised by their mothers, a word she barely knew, had only heard in sermons regarding Her Skirt is Stars, Precious Feather, and Mother Death. She watched in stunned silence as similar scenes played out all around her.

  Tears came. She cried and she didn’t know why.

  Efra, unmoved by the strangeness of the Crafters, grabbed the sleeve of a passing man. “Tools,” she said. “Where can we find tools?”

  The man stopped, annoyed until he caught sight of her face. “Are you hurt? We should get you to a hospice.”

  Hospice? Nuru had no idea what that was, but it sounded bad. When Growers got hurt, they lay in their tenement. Many died, their gaunt corpses collected each morning by the nahual of The Lord, owl-feather cloaks dragging behind them with the hiss of a thousand snakes. The Book of Bastion said, ‘Work a day, earn a day’s food.’ The church forbade sustenance to those who hadn’t earned it. Those lucky enough to have friends to bring them food and water had some chance at recovery, but not many were willing to risk the lash.

  Efra ignored his question. “Tools,” she repeated. “Where?”

  “Well, what kind?” He waved a hand at the street, flustered by her bluntness.

  “Tools for carving stone. Paints.”

  He blinked at her in confusion. “You can’t do both.”

  Efra growled. She pointed at Nuru. “She does the carving.” She pointed at herself. “I do the painting.”

  “Oh! Sorry! I thought—never mind. Silly.” The Crafter nodded at a nearby building. “That’s paints for this district.”

  Now that she looked at it, Nuru realized the swirling symbols did kind of look like a stylized paint brush.

  “For carving tools,” said the Crafter, “you’ll have to go to Sulaiman. He’s two streets that way.” He pointed deeper into the ring.

  Efra nodded and set off, Nuru in tow, toward the building with the brush.

  The Crafter watched them leave, a look of confusion clouding his face.

  “How do we get paints?” Nuru asked Efra.

  “Don’t know.”

  They entered, Nuru marvelling that any part of Bastion could be so different from the endless tenements she knew. Where each Grower tenement had a single identical round hole in the wall to allow in light, this place had several huge square holes that let the sun fill the room. Nuru caught a glimpse of the basement as they passed the stairs. Pure white candles lit the lower level bright as day.

  Glass jars of paint, sorted by hue and brightness, filled the shelves lining every wall. Nuru’s glass jar, stolen hundreds of years ago and passed from sorcerer to sorcerer, was her prized possession. Or it had been, until she left it in their tenement when they fled the nahualli. The loss still pained her, but going back to get it would be stupid. There was more glass in this one building than in all the Growers’ Ring.

  So many colours. Nuru had never seen so much variety, didn’t know that many colours existed. And yet the world of the Crafters was orange and brown. What were all these paints used for?

  A woman approached, her clothes spattered in colour. “Can I help you?” She smiled, friendly and open.

  No fear. No bent subservience.

  “We need paint,” said Efra. “And brushes.” She glanced at Nuru. “For detailed work. Very small detail.”

  The woman nodded. “Colours?”

  Efra raised a questioning eyebrow.

  Nuru coughed, considered the spider with the woman’s body. “I need black. Shiny black. Glistening black like a scarab.”

  The woman nodded again.

  “I need paint that won’t chip or fade.” Nuru paused, waiting for the woman to complain or protest. When she didn’t, the street sorcerer continued. “I need red. Dark like blood. Hints of purple.”

  The woman led them to an entire wall of reddish-purple paints.

  Nuru searched the selection until one bottle caught her attention. She knew instantly it was the right red for the eyes. Lifting the bottle from the wall, she held it up and the woman again nodded.

  Next, they were led to a wall of blacks, from matte to glossy, from hints of purple to blue to red.

  “I never knew there were so many blacks,” said Nuru.

  The woman gave her a strange look, brows furrowing in confusion.

  This time it took Nuru longer to find the perfect black. When she did, it shone and shimmered like the shell of a death scarab in the sun.

  “You have scrips and permissions?” asked the woman.

  “Scrips?” asked Nuru.

  “To pay. And your permissions, signed by a Master Crafter and your priest.”

  “Of course,” said Efra. “But we need brushes too.”

  The woman hesitated, then turned to lead them back to the front where the brushes were. As they passed the stairs to the basement, Efra grabbed her by the shirt, spun her, and sent the Crafter toppling backward with a hard shove to the chest.

  “Efra!”

  Ignoring Nuru, Efra followed the paint woman down. Nuru hurried after.

  The woman lay bruised and groaning at the bottom. She’d hit her head, but was already regaining her wits.

  Spotting a basket of dirty paint rags, Efra grabbed a fistful and stuffed them into the stunned woman’s mouth. “Hold her down,” she ordered Nuru. She wandered deeper into the basement, searching for something.

  Nuru dropped her knees on the Crafter’s shoulders, pinning her. “It’s all right,” she said. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”

  The woman groaned, her eyes widening as she realized what happened. She fought, but the blow to the head left her weak. Nuru held her down.

  Efra returned with a length of orange fabric. “Flip her onto her belly. It’ll be easier that way.”

  It took both of them to roll the struggling woman.

  Efra knelt on the woman’s back.

  “You’re going to be fine,” Nuru soothed, trying to reassure the Crafter. “We’re just going to tie you up.”

  The Crafter woman whimpered in fear.

  “I’ll tie her feet,” offered Nuru.

  “Don’t bother.”

  “But she’ll be able to get up the stairs—”

  Efra flipped the fabric over the woman’s head, looping it around her neck. She leaned her weight back, choking the Crafter. The woman thrashed.

  Nuru stared in horror, shock stalling her thoughts. Not again. “No!”

  She grabbed Efra’s shoulder, tried to drag her off the Crafter.

  Efra clung tight, refusing to budge. “Quiet,” she snarled through gritted teeth. “Let go of me!”

  She shoved Nuru away and the Crafter drew a wheezing breath in the momentary respite. That breath choked to silence as Efra redoubled her efforts.

  Less than an hour ago that had been Nuru, strangled by the big Crafter, allowed sips of breath, just enough to stop her from losing consciousness. Knowing she was dying. Helpless. Her thr
oat ached.

  “Efra, you can’t do this.”

  Efra watched her through narrowed eyes.

  “We can tie her, we don’t have to kill her,” pleaded Nuru.

  “We do. She’ll tell. Don’t be stupid!”

  “We’ll be gone!”

  “Still need tools,” Efra ground out.

  The Crafter kicked and bucked, almost dislodging Efra.

  “Hold her legs!”

  Nuru hesitated, uncertain. Efra was right, they did still need to get tools. What if the woman escaped her bonds and reported them to the Birds? They’d be waiting waiting at the gate. The nahual would torture them until they told where Chisulo and the others hid. Her friends would die. They’d all die. The nahual would bleed them on the altar. She’d never finish the spider.

  “Now!” snapped Efra. “Before someone comes!”

  Panicking, Nuru dropped onto the woman’s legs, helping pin her.

  They choked her to death.

  Nuru, still raw from the dead Crafter boy and seeing children run free, cried the entire time.

  After, when the tears stopped, she sat beside the corpse. Her head hurt, a pressure building behind her eyes. Balanced on an obsidian edge, she felt ready to crack. One more horror would shatter her.

  What is she turning us into?

  Before biting Sefu, she’d never killed anyone. Never even hurt someone. That’s not the kind of person she was. Between her friends, and her reputation as a street sorcerer, people mostly left her alone. Bomani dealt with those who didn’t.

  Bomani.

  I miss him so much. His absence was a gaping wound in the fabric of her reality.

  Now, three people lay dead.

  Everything she’d ever been taught, every word the nahual crushed into her since birth, every story and parable, came back to weigh upon her. She knew her place, and it wasn’t here.

  “I’m done,” said Nuru. “No more. This… killing. The gods forbid it!”

  Efra stared at her, incredulous. “How many times have you seen someone lashed to death in the public square? How many skulls have the Birds broken in the last week? How many people do you know who’ve been sacrificed on the altar for doing something Crafters and nahual do every day? How many penance wagons have you seen in the last month? The nahual kill. The Birds kill. And you tell me killing is forbidden? I’m done with one set of rules for them and another for us. Fuck the gods.” Her words built, gaining momentum. “No one tells me what to do. Not anymore. If we’re good Growers, we’re dead Growers. That spider demon thing, it’s an ally. A powerful ally. You’re going to make it, and I’m going to help.” She stood, hands on hips. “Now get up.”