Smoke and Stone

by Michael R. Fletcher

  “We’re here,” said Captain Yejide.

  The Artist’s tenement looked like all the others.

  Akachi started forward and Yejide put a hand on his shoulder, halting him.

  “Ibrahim,” she said. “You and Njau in first. Njau, signal when it’s clear. Search the basement. I don’t want any surprises. Gyasi, eyes on the approaches. Check alleys.”

  “Be careful,” Nafari said to Gyasi before she left. She flashed him a smile and for an instant was someone Akachi never met.

  We change each other. Had he changed Yejide? She used to smile like Gyasi just did; he hadn’t seen that in days. Not since he started dosing himself in preparation for what was to come.

  That fraying. It’s my fault.

  What effect did she have on him?

  He considered the changes in them both. I think she makes me stronger, but I weaken her. Was it her caring that weakened her, or her worry he did himself harm? You’re dodging the blame. If he loved her as much as he thought he did, shouldn’t he do whatever was needed to make her happy, to make her strong?

  I will. Once this is over.

  Amethyst. He pushed the thought away. “Yejide.”

  She turned to face him.

  Akachi wanted to apologise, to explain. “This will all be over soon.”

  Only after the words were out did he realize how that might sound. His thoughts swam in narcotics. Foku fought to pull his attention to the perfect gutters lining the streets. Bihurtu stretched the veil of worlds so thin he saw his spirit animals circling impatiently, ready to come to his aid. Jainkoei peeled his soul, exposed him to the gods. He felt them all around him. Their will drove him, made him dance like a marionette. He was a twig caught in the raging torrent of divine need. He couldn’t think what to say to Yejide to make it right. There wasn’t enough of him left.

  “Soon,” he repeated, hoping she understood.

  Yejide looked doubtful.

  Gyasi returned from a nearby alley, walking with one hand pressed to her side. “All clear. Too hot for Dirts to be out causing trouble.”

  Glancing past Akachi, Yejide said, “Njau is waving us in.” She turned to Gyasi. “You come in too. Get out of the sun.”

  “I’m fine,” said Gyasi, but she followed them in.

  NURU – I AM THE END

  At the end of the Last War, the surviving gods swore to save what remained of humanity. With the formation of Bastion, an eternal cycle of life, death, and rebirth was created. After each death, a person is reborn in proximity to the gods based upon how piously they lived their previous life. Even the lowest Grower can be reborn closer to the heart of Bastion by living a true and pure life in service to city and god.

  —The Book of Bastion

  Nuru gathered what narcotics remained. She examined the shrunken pile of dried seeds and leaves and leathery mushrooms. The spider sat on the floor where she placed it. It felt like it was watching her. Red eyes. Blood. Hunger. Its legs were barbed and sharp, knees jutting up past the woman’s head. The girl part was pretty, in a fragile way, and entirely terrible.

  That’s madness. No such creature existed. It won’t work. But if it did? What if she became that? The carving terrified her.

  “You ready?” asked Chisulo.

  Nuru blinked up at him. He’d once again donned the armour he stole from the Bird. The cudgel, their only weapon, hung from a loop in his belt. He even wore the sandals, though the straps looked wrong, sloppy.

  Chisulo shrugged. “In case there’s trouble.”

  “By now the nahual knows there a Grower dressed as a Bird.”

  “Maybe it’ll be enough to make them hesitate. You’ll pretend to be prisoners. Or something.”

  “Or something,” said Efra.

  Nuru wasn’t sure if the girl found humour in the statement or was mocking Chisulo. She delivered everything with the same lack of emotion. Almost everything.

  Nuru turned back to her stash of drugs. Gathering them together, she shoved the entire lot into her mouth and chewed. Some, she knew, were more effective if smoked. She didn’t have time to prepare the mixture properly. The comedown, after, would be ferocious. She’d likely be bedridden for days while her mind and body recovered. But if they were venturing out, she wanted to be ready for anything. Hopefully she could get more from the Artist.

  Swallowing, she collected the spider and returned it to its pouch. “Let’s go.”

  Chisulo led them up the stairs and into the blinding sun. Eyes slitted, she staggered under the savage weight of its heat. Efra followed.

  From the basement she heard Happy call, “Hurry!”

  Once on the street, Chisulo stopped. “The fields,” he said, staring outward.

  Columns of twisting smoke reached up into dark clouds like the legs of a spider.

  Ash choked the sky, a spreading cancer.

  The fields which grew the food for all Bastion were on fire. Nowhere out there was free of smoke.

  That’s the future burning. She saw it. This is the end.

  “We have to move,” said Chisulo.

  Pushing them all into motion, he set a fast pace.

  Efra jogged to keep up. Nuru’s longer legs let her match his stride, but she stumbled often. She felt weak, drained. She hadn’t eaten more than a few crusts of stale bread in days. Her stomach felt like it had collapsed in on itself. Spasms of nausea ran through her.

  Sorcery came with a cost. It burned her from the inside, devoured her. This weak, she had no idea what would happen if she pushed hard. A vision of greasy ash dancing pirouettes in the wind caught her attention. Distracted, she tripped over something and fell to her knees. She was still watching the swirling ash, knowing it was her, when Chisulo pulled her to her feet. Blood trickled down her shins.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “No. I’m dead.” She looked at him, saw his skin burn and peel away like parchment held to a candle. He was bone, burnt and black. “I am the end, the destroyer of worlds.”

  “You’re smoky,” said Chisulo. “What did you take?”

  “Everything.”

  Efra appeared at her side, small and real like stone. That scar, dividing her face, it halved her. Good and caring on one side. Pure selfish evil on the other. She wants to be better and doesn’t care what it costs.

  Hooking an arm under Nuru’s armpit, Efra kept her upright.

  “Lean on me,” the girl said.

  I will.

  Chisulo, abandoning all pretence of being a Bird, took the other side. The three staggered through the streets. Having fled the brutal sun, the tenements were crowded with cowering Growers.

  “They’re all here,” said Efra. “Who is fighting the fires?” She kept glancing over her shoulder, eyes bright, showing no hint of terror. If anything, she looked excited, like she expected this.

  “No one,” said Nuru. “They’re all hiding.”

  “From the fires?”

  “From the end.”

  “This isn’t the end,” said Efra. “It’s the beginning.”

  “Only for some.” Nuru examined the girl, watched the two halves of her face do battle for her soul. “You knew. You knew this would happen.”

  “I saw the spider’s legs,” she said, gesturing at the distant swirling columns of ash. “Eventually they’ll touch every ring.”

  “There it is,” said Chisulo, pointing. “The Artist’s place.”

  A bellow from behind stopped them. Turning, they saw Happy running down the street toward them. The sky behind him grew dark as the clouds of ash spread. Moment by moment more of Bastion fell into shadow.

  Dead world. Stained. A false night crept over the city.

  “No,” said Chisulo, voice falling flat, shoulders slumping in defeat. “He wouldn’t leave Omari unless—”

  “Unless he’s dead,” said Efra.

  He can’t be. Squeezing tight like the coils of a constrictor, the walls of Bastion closed in on Nuru. She couldn’t breathe.

  Omar
i. Her whole life. Her friend. Her thoughts stuttered and collapsed. In turning to face the lumbering Happy, Chisulo and Efra released her. Nuru slid to the ground. She stared at the stone beneath her. Red sand dusted everything. The stories the nahual preached every day since her birth ran through her thoughts. Red sand, the dried blood of billions. She didn’t even know what ‘billions’ was, just that it was more than all of Bastion. Tears fell, pattering into the sand.

  Turning it back into blood.

  Happy arrived. He stopped. Eyes red, he said nothing. He shook his head.

  Chisulo took the big man into his arms and held him. Happy made a low moan of broken misery, forlorn and alone. Unable to watch, Nuru focussed on the uncaring stone. This close, she saw tiny cracks, miniscule chips and divots. They were everywhere.

  Not so perfect.

  Had it ever been, or could Bastion age and die?

  “We’re here,” said Efra, pointing at the Artist’s tenement.

  Ashen clouds drown the world.

  AKACHI – TRAFFIC IN SIN

  The proper mix of narcotics will open a nahualli to the will of the gods. In our stable state we are blind to their light, deaf to their wisdom. In thinning the veil, we become receptive.

  But stare wide-eyed at the sun for too long and you will go blind.

  The gods are too much for us. Their purest light will burn us clean, leave us hollowed and empty.

  —The Book of Bastion

  The Artist lived alone. Though, like any Grower, he slept on a single blanket on stone, his tenement brimmed with sin. A magnificently detailed mural of a woman being thrown from the Sand Wall covered the ceiling. It reminded Akachi of the tapestry in Bishop Zalika’s chambers, and looked to be several years old, judging from its chipped and faded state. Wood bowls of paint lined the table. Akachi couldn’t imagine how this man created these colours. Sheets of heavy paper depicting scenes from public lashings to portraits of Dirt faces, lined and haggard, littered the floor. An open bowl of black ink, dried to a hard crust, sat on the stone table beside a row of sharpened feathers and what looked to be porcupine quills. Burnt stumps of slumping tallow candles lay scattered everywhere.

  “Gyasi,” said the Captain. “Search the basement for contraband.”

  Gyasi left without a word.

  The Artist stood beside the table, studying Akachi. Meeting his eyes, the man nodded greeting. “You are the new nahual in the church of Cloud Serpent.”

  “I am.”

  “You’re young.”

  The Artist had at least a decade on Akachi. It was hard to judge with Growers; they aged so fast.

  “You traffic in sin,” said Akachi. “Tattooing is forbidden. Art is forbidden. Tools are forbidden.”

  “Crafters make tools.” He glanced at Akachi. “You bear many tattoos. The Gods’ Wall is a beautiful piece of art.”

  Akachi swallowed. It was impossible. This Grower could not have seen the wall separating the priests from the gods. Someone, some careless nahual, must have told him of it. “These things are forbidden to Growers.”

  “And yet nahual ignored such things for years. Generations. I’ve made no attempt to hide. Everyone knows me as the Artist.” The Artist examined Akachi with knowing eyes. He showed none of a Dirt’s fear or subservience. “Why now?”

  Akachi pointed at the ceiling. “Defacing Bastion is punishable by death.”

  “Only in the Life Ring.”

  How did he know the original name for the Growers Ring? Only the oldest copies of the Book of Bastion still bore than name. We’ll discover this truth too.

  “I have questions,” said Akachi. “Questions you will answer.”

  “Not offering me a deal, priest? Not even forgiveness if I cooperate? Perhaps a commuted sentence, lashings instead of bleeding out on the altar?”

  “Cooperate, and you’ll be sacrificed to be born again. Though another chance is more than you deserve. Otherwise, you’ll be thrown from the Sand Wall.”

  Glancing at the mural above, the Artist laughed, mocking. “Can’t get much further from the gods than I already am.”

  One of the papers littering the floor caught Akachi’s attention. Foku-honed obsidian-sharp memories stabbed through his thoughts. He bent to collect it. A charcoal sketch, it somehow conveyed weight and reality. The eyes, infinite shades of grey, were alive.

  “You’re very good,” said Akachi, turning the paper so the Artist could see. “I particularly like how you captured the scar.” He turned it again so he could further study the piece. “Otherwise, she’d be a real beauty.”

  “She is. There is no otherwise.”

  The Artist was right. Somehow, the girl owned the scar. It should have marked her. She should have been embarrassed, self-conscious of her flaw. She wasn’t. She looked like she either didn’t know she was scarred, or didn’t care.

  That makes her strong.

  “You understand,” said the Artist. “I see it in your eyes.” He smiled a sad smile. “I’d like to draw you as you are right now. To show you. So you can see yourself in this moment.”

  “Dirts don’t draw.”

  “Dirts. You never used to call them that.”

  He’s guessing. But he wasn’t wrong. Akachi remembered the first time Yejide used the derogatory term, his own uncomfortable embarrassment. He remembered the first time he said it.

  I grew to hate them, to loathe their laziness. What changed, he wasn’t sure. The longer I was among them—the longer I was away from the comforts of home and the beauty of the inner rings—the more I hated them. He felt like they stole something from him. I was happy in the Priests’ Ring.

  “You don’t like them,” said the Artist.

  “They’re filthy. Lazy. Stupid.”

  “No. That’s what you tell yourself to justify your hate. It’s what you’re trying to make them. What they are is people, just like you.”

  You’re wrong. Akachi remembered his vision, ranks of Turquoise Serpents wielding obsidian swords. Blood in the streets. Blood running in gutters, a fast-flowing river of spilled life.

  The fields burned. There would be panic, hoarding, a war for food. The only things growing in the inner rings were flowers and trees, their purpose beauty rather than survival. The inner rings would starve.

  Was I sent here to make all this happen, or to stop it?

  “Your eyes,” said the Artist. “You’re riding the edge of brain-burn. You’ve done a bad job of mixing your narcotics. You’ve been sloppy, and you’ve taken too much.”

  “What would you know of such things?” demanded Akachi.

  The Artist shrugged. “So many questions. No answers. That’s life, young nahualli.”

  Akachi raised the picture of the scarred Grower. He shook it, paper making sharp snapping sounds. “Where does she live? What is her name? Who is she?”

  “I don’t know where she lives. Her name doesn’t matter.” The Artist grinned perfect white teeth. “And she is the beginning.”

  “Captain,” said Gyasi, coming out of the basement. “I found something.” She held a marble bowl with a close-fitting lid, something no Grower should possess. “There’s dozens of these down there. Mortars. Pestles. Plants hanging from the ceiling. Mushrooms growing in pots of horse dung. Glowing fungus on the walls.” Gyasi lifted the lid and held the bowl out for inspection.

  A small amount of liquid, creamy yellow shot with swirls of blood red, swam in the bottom. Akachi recognized it immediately. Etorkizun, the sap from a rare tree. Mixed with the blood of a nahualli, it was used by tezcat, practitioners of divinatory magic.

  “You’re a street sorcerer.”

  “Your terminology belittles everything they do,” said the Artist.

  “They?”

  “You’re running out of time. Best ask your questions.”

  Running out of time? Stupid Dirt thought he could smear etorkizun on his eyelids and see the future.

  Akachi drew the sacrificial dagger. It numbed his arm, cold and foul. The weig
ht of countless souls clogged the air, made it difficult to breathe. He felt it move in his hand, hungry.

  “That dagger hasn’t been to the Gods’ Ring in a long time,” said the Artist.

  “Shut up.” Akachi didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t. When had he lost control of this? “Tell me what I need to know. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  Why doesn’t he look scared?

  The etorkizun. Had this strange Dirt caught some glimpse of a future where he got out of this unscathed? Didn’t he know how fickle such visions were, how open to interpretation?

  He thinks I can’t do this, that I don’t have it in me to cut him.

  The Artist was wrong.

  “Ibrahim, hold him.”

  The big Hummingbird dragged the unresisting Artist to the table, pinned him there.

  The Artist studied Akachi.

  He’s looking for weakness.

  “I have to do this,” explained Akachi.

  “No, it’s a choice.”

  “It’s not. Not really. I have to.”

  “Educated,” said the Artist, “is different than intelligent.”

  Akachi frowned. What did that mean? “Tell me about the girl.”

  “No.”

  Akachi let the obsidian ask the next question.

  “Stop,” said Yejide. “He’s dead.”

  Akachi blinked. Gore splashed his arms to the elbows. Foku smashing through his veins, he remembered everything in perfect detail. Every cut. Every hiss of parting flesh. The Artist’s blood soaked him. His robes hung sodden and hot. He stunk like an abattoir, meat left long in the sun.

  Looking at the floor, he saw the art there, sprayed red. The picture of the girl—Efra, he now knew—was spattered in gore. Only now did he notice the narrow gutters. The blood on the floor trickled outward to the walls where it was funnelled out to the larger gutters in the street. He watched the flow. The floors must be slightly convex. He admired the perfection. Was it the same everywhere? Even standing here, knowing the floor must have some curve, he couldn’t detect it. He had no memory of gutters in the other rings.