by Cory Herndon
A cacophony erupted inside the small theater. After the initial shock, most of the remaining audience had been more than happy to watch an actual brawl instead of a staged one. Now they began to murmur to each other once again, murmuring that soon grew to a dull roar in the confined acoustics.
“Uh, ladies and gentlemen. …” Kos began, his voice and face showing the distinct discomfort felt by one not used to finding hundreds of eyes upon him.
“Please disperse in an orderly fashion,” the angel interrupted. “This matinee is canceled, and this theater has been closed pending the investigation of multiple violations of the Guildpact Statutes and the City Ordinances. The League of Wojek apologizes for any inconvenience and hopes you will enjoy the upcoming Decamillennial festivities safely and peacefully.” As an afterthought, she added, “Rioting at this time is not recommended.”
* * * * *
Wenvel Kolkin wasn’t the kind of man to start a riot, or even a mild protest. He was a silk merchant from one of the Orzhov reclamation zones, and he was on vacation.
It wasn’t until the angel mentioned the Decamillennial that he tore his eyes from the stage and turned to his wife.
His wife was no longer there.
“Yertrude?” Wenvel stage-whispered. When his wife didn’t reply, he said her name again—and again, shouting now.
“Hey, fat man! Down in front!”
“Yeah, move! I’m getting my zib’s worth here!”
“Hey, shake those wings, angel-cakes!”
Wenvel suspected that last wasn’t directed at him.
“Have any of you seen the woman who was sitting next to me?” Wenvel asked anyone within earshot. “Er, sort of, er, plump? Wearing robes like, er, like mine? Feathered hat? Kept talking through the show?”
“Me pay for show, not fat man!”
“Yes,” Wenvel said with an anxious sigh, “I’m sure you did.”
Wenvel scanned the crowd in the dim light from the glowing, illuminated stage. He finally thought he spotted Yertrude near the exit. She was facing away from him and halfway out the door. He was beginning to think the zidos he’d spent on this trip to the City of Ravnica might have been better spent on psychomana therapy.
“Yertrude, wait!”
His wife was gone. Wenvel swore under his breath and squeezed through the crowded rows after her. It took him a minute and a half to get out of the playhouse and into the busy street. There were at least six stalls in the market that hadn’t been there when he’d entered, and it looked like more were on the way. Soon Tin Street Market would absorb the theater, and the performing arts would have to travel elsewhere.
The flabby silk merchant paused to catch his breath and tried to spot Yertrude’s garish clothing in the crowd. It shouldn’t have been to hard to spot her, he reasoned, since it seemed most of the people in the street—the ones who were clearly human or humanoid, at least—only wore mixes of dirty brown, dirty gray, and dirty off-white. The midday sunlight fled the depths and slowly climbed the walls of the artificial street-canyon, one of hundreds in Ravnica. The area was already darker than he’d expected, since noon had passed, and already the shadows of the district’s skyscraping buildings filled in the narrow streets below, but the scattered glowposts had not yet come on. His cousin Murri had warned them not to visit ground level at all—too close to Old Rav, the undercity where lurked monsters, dark elves, and people you generally did not want to meet on your vacation. Wenvel shivered and scanned the marketplace again in the dim artificial light. “Should have listened to you, Murri,” he muttered.
A flash of pale crimson, and Wenvel saw her slip around a stall with a sign that loudly declared the merchant’s cheap costume jewelry was authentic and imported. He couldn’t see her face, but it couldn’t have been anyone else. She was moving slowly, which wasn’t unusual but was lucky for him. There was something not right about the color of her robe. It looked washed out. Bleached.
Maybe he was already on the wrong trail?
“This is ridiculous,” the silk merchant said to no one in particular. He briefly considered returning theater to get that wojek, or maybe the angel, but he’d already wasted enough time getting out here.
Wenvel shifted his robes, took a deep breath, and barreled through the noisy (and quite fragrant) crowd of barkers, tourists, beggars, and vendors. All the while the merchant kept his eye on the stall where Yertrude had rounded the corner. He felt a cramp forming in his gut and wished he’d never heard of goblin food. Over the span of a half minute through the market Wenvel refused offers of a dozen different varieties of hot, seared flesh impaled on sticks; turned down an assortment of tonics, perfumes, and oils that were guaranteed to treat most any ailment or desire; and politely shook his head in response to a bawdy, illicit proposition from a scantily clad lizard-person that was probably female.
“Excuse me—Sorry—Never seen one of those, no thanks—Yes, I’m sure it’s—Pardon …” With judicious use of elbows, apologies, and reflexes he didn’t realize he had, Wenvel maneuvered through the clotted mass of busy market life, always keeping one eye on the loud sign. The stall was at the edge of the market proper, and the crowd thinned considerably beyond. He stopped and slapped a hand on the counter in front of the stall keeper and gasped, “The woman—just came through here. A little plump? Robe like this one? Which way did she go?”
“Ah, shirh,” the costume-jewelry pusher warbled. The stall keeper’s general shape was that of a humanoid female in a simple robe, but she appeared to have the head of an owl. Wenvel had never seen one of her kind. Indeed, most people throughout the greater plane supposed they’d actually gone extinct, but obviously not in the city. The silk merchant noticed that amid a nightmarish blend of her own garish wares the owl-woman wore a small silver pin on her collar that was inlaid with a black, eight-pointed, sun-shaped gemstone—the mark of the Orzhov, which even a simple silk salesman from the reclamation zone recognized. Despite her simple appearance, this stall keeper was “well-connected.” Wenvel paid protection to the Orzhov like any other businessperson, but his contacts with the Guild of Deals could not be described as “connections” by any stretch.
“Thish woman you sheek,” the owl-woman replied, “shurely she will be happierh to shee you ish you shring herh a shurprishingly inexshpenshish token shrom Shylyshash?”
“I’m sorry, Shylyshash. I’m not interested. My wife left me and she’s—”
“Shee lesht you?” said the owl-woman. She clacked the tips of her blunted beak together in a sound that he supposed was the lipless equivalent of tsk, tsk. “Unshorshunate indeed, ut ash we shay in theeshe sharts, there ish alwaysh a shurprishe around the cornerh.”
“A what?”
“A shurprishe—”
“Never mind. Please listen,” Wenvel said. “She didn’t leave me, she just up and walked away. Just now. We’re not from around here, and I’m not sure—Just—Did you see which way she went? It was just a second ago.”
“The lady musht ee upshet, shir. It ish all righsh. I shee thish all the tishe. Now I know you musht dye a rare and exshotic pieshe shrom Shylyshash,” the owl-woman replied, her brow feathers twitching and her limpid eyes locked with his.
“Fine,” Wenvel said. He could see how this game would be played. “I wasn’t born yeshter—yesterday though.” He pointed at a simple golden amulet set with a piece of red glass that didn’t look too expensive but was big enough, he hoped, to get the owl-woman to be more accommodating, if he was any judge of merchants. The momentary retreat to his bailiwick would have been refreshing if not for the fact that his wife had disappeared. “How much?” he asked, reaching to his belt for his silken coin purse.
“Only shree zhidos, shir, and we musht shay, you’re getting a dhargain. You hash choshen—”
“I’ll take it for two zidos, not a zib more.” He dropped a pair of square silver coins on the counter and picked up the amulet. “Deal?”
“Deal.”
“Now please, tell me wh
ich way my wife went.”
“Alash,” the stall keeper replied, “we do not know. We hashe not sheen her pash thish way, shir.”
“But you just said—”
“We shaid noshing of shis woman, shir. You did,” the owl-woman said.
“Look, stop playing around with me. I’m not buying any more jewelry. Please, just tell me,” Wenvel said, trying to sound threatening and not sounding very convincing, even to himself. More pleading than threatening, he supposed. “Please. She was just here.”
“You mishundershtand ush, shir, and wound ush ash well,” the stall keeper said. She flapped her wings under her robes in what looked like a display of apology. “We would dhe happy to shell you anosher. We do not play gamesh wish you. We hashe not sheen her. It ish poshidle she shlipped pasht ush, though our eyesh are—”
“I don’t—All right, you didn’t see her. I get it. But please, if you see her, ask her to stay here. I’ll have to try to find her on my own, I guess.”
“Shir, it ish the leasht we can do shor a shalued cushtomer.”
The stall keeper’s voice trailed off behind Wenvel as he slipped around the stall, out of the market proper, and into a maze of cramped residential alleyways. The farther he got from the market, the more scattered and random the lighting was—a torch marking a speakeasy here, a small band of the destitute huddled around an open fire pit there. Still no sign of Yertrude. After ten minutes, Wenvel found himself in the beginnings of a narrow alley that did not have the benefit of sunlight, magical glowposts, or anything else. Already the cacophony of the marketplace was distant, and the air was thick with rotting garbage and quite possibly rotting alleyway residents.
At the distant end, he saw her. She was still facing away from him, now standing still. In the darkness her bright robes looked faded and washed out, like when he’d caught a glimpse of them in the crowd. Yertrude appeared to be alone.
Wenvel was not a warrior, not a hero, and definitely not someone who would usually walk into a dark Ravnica alley alone. But Wenvel was a good, honest man who loved his wife, and that gave him the courage to do what he did next. With a shift of his robes and another deep breath, he took two steps forward.
Something skittered over the top of his sandaled feet. The silk merchant yelped and broke into a run, looking over his shoulder.
Halfway down the alley he stopped, looked forward, and saw Yertrude still hadn’t moved. Wenvel resumed at a jog. If he tripped over a cobblestone or worse in the darkness, she might get away again. “Yertrude!” he called. “Wait!”
There was no reply. As he drew closer, Wenvel finally understood why he could see his wife so well. The telltale bluish corona of light around her gave it away. As realization dawned, a wave of nausea overcame the silk merchant, and he fought back a wave of bile. Like most Ravnicans, he’d seen that corona before. The dead lingered on Ravnica.
Wenvel was looking at the ghost of his wife, not Yertrude.
The ghost turned slowly.
“Y-yertrude?” Wenvel whispered. Every primal instinct in his being screamed at him to turn, run, and flee—for even fat merchants from reclamation zones have instincts in dark, ghost-ridden alleys—yet he could not make his leaden legs move until he saw her face and knew this was all that was left of his dear Yertya.
Wenvel saw her face and screamed.
* * * * *
The acting company and stagehands noisily broke down the set as the last few members of the dazed crowd, assured by nothing less than an actual angel that the show was over and that to continue occupying the space would result in multiple arrests, filtered out through the exits. The sun had barely rolled into early afternoon, but the open roof let in enough light to cast wojek Lieutenant Agrus Kos and the other remaining occupants of the stage in shadow and to illuminate an upstage area not meant for the general public. Like most everything in Ravnica, it was all grimier than one would think.
The lieutenant grimaced, and his teeth flashed in the dim light of a short, blue glowpost. He set his jaw against the pain as he tenderly prodded his side. “You sure you don’t have a ’drop, Feather?” he asked the angel. “I really think I’ve got a couple of broken ribs.”
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant,” the angel replied as she slung a still-unconscious Mr. Gullmott, his hands and feet bound, over one shoulder.
“No need to be too gentle. He’s the one who broke the ribs.”
“I’m sorry, Kos,” the angel said without skipping a beat. “I have no use for your medical magics. Therefore, I do not carry them. Nor do I see why I should continue to abuse a captive who is slated to taste justice.”
“I didn’t mean torture him. Just—Never mind, Feather.”
“Yes, Lieutenant.”
The tall angel’s real name, or at least as much of it as Kos could pronounce, was Pierzuva … and the rest descended into layers of an unpronounceable mess Kos had never penetrated. “Feather” was much simpler. Pier-whatever answered to pretty much anything anyway. Angels, she had told him, always knew when they were being spoken to directly, even from a great distance. She called it “prayer.” Kos called it fortuitous, and just one of the many things Kos had learned in the time Feather had been working off some kind of holy debt by serving as a wojek officer at the Tenth Leaguehall. What kind of debt and for how long, no one knew or asked, not since his current partner, Bell Borca, had drunk enough bumbat one night at the Backwater to let Kos goad him into asking Feather why her wings were bound together.
Borca ended up in the infirmary, the cause of his broken nose and collarbone officially unknown. Feather, on the other hand, no longer frequented the Backwater Pub, at the request of the owner. Her presence drove away Garulsz’s regulars. Which was too bad, Kos thought. No one ever did find out what Feather had done to earn her “sentence,” and for a naturally curious man like Kos that was especially frustrating. Not frustrating enough to ask her about it himself, but frustrating.
Borca was a decent sort and good for a laugh at the Backwater, about all Kos asked for in a partner anymore. He wondered how Borca would have handled himself in the theater raid and decided it was probably better he’d left the sergeant to catch up on scrolls and filing that morning. Borca, who was more than fifty years Kos’s junior and had only been an officer for three of those, probably would have managed to get the audience involved and really made Feather put down a little mob activity. An image of Borca wearing Feather’s angelic costume armor, a bright-red wig atop his head, flashed through his mind, and he laughed—a laugh followed by a pop, a stabbing pain, and wheezing.
This couldn’t be good.
“Ow,” Kos gasped. “You sure you haven’t got anything?”
“There is usually little need for an angel to bring medicine to anyone. It gets in the way of the holy work of justice,” Feather said. “Do you not have any? Mortal wojeks are required to carry a minimum of three at all times. And you seem to be in distress. Where are yours?”
Kos waved a finger around the stage where they still stood, indicating several glittering blue smears, the residue of spoiled liquid mana. He hoped the wooden slats felt better. “There. I think … I landed on them … twice. Don’t walk barefoot over there.”
“Uh, sir?” the vampire-actor interrupted. “Lieutenant, sir?”
“Wha … what?” Kos said. The lack of oxygen was getting to him. Maybe his last ex-wife had been right. Maybe 110 was too old for this job.
“You said you needed medicine? Perhaps we could, er, help?” the actor stammered.
“You realize … you can’t buy me off,” Kos gasped. Gods, if he didn’t get help soon he was going to faint. And he wasn’t going to wake up.
“That would indeed be inadvisable.” Feather added. “Kos, can you respire freely?”
“No, no! We know we have to leave,” the actor said. He produced a blue teardrop from a pocket inside his costume. “But we are prepared for emergencies. Onstage, you never know, eh?” The actor held the drop out in his open palm.
Kos didn’t debate the offer for another second or waste time asking how a ’jek-issue teardrop ended up in the actor’s pocket. He staggered forward, snatched the ’drop from the actor’s hand, and jammed the blunted point into his chest where the pain felt concentrated. Kos counted down from three in his head, and on zero he felt the solid mana sliver go ice-cold in his palm as the pain in his punctured lung subsided to a dull ache. He straightened and tentatively drew a slow, deep breath. His side still pinched, but he could draw air. His chest plastron bore a small hole where the magic had entered the injured area and efficiently disintegrated any inorganic material between the mana and the injury.
Kos still hurt, but he wasn’t going to die. Not right away, at least. He offered his hand to the actor. “Thank you, Mr. …” Kos said.
The former vampire slipped a costume glove off and offered his hand to Kos. “Sorry. Rembic Wezescu. I suppose I’ll be running this thing if you’re taking Gullmott away. Believe me, this is not the first time we’ve had to, er, leave a performance unexpectedly. We’re actors, you know. With the rent Drinj was asking, we were barely breaking even anyway. With the decamillennial so close, I guess he thought he could get away with it. Really, Lieutenant, you’ve done us a favor. My cousin’s got a lead on some much cheaper rent in the Sixth.”
“Truthfully, Mr. Wezescu, I hope you manage to find a home for the players. That was an impressive performance, and I’ve got the bruises to prove it. Mr. Gullmott, incidentally, probably faces at least three months’ exile.” Kos said. “If you care to leave a forwarding address …”
“Thank you. We’ll get by as best we can until then without him,” Wezescu replied. Kos got the feeling the actor didn’t plan on seeing his former boss again. After more than half a century patrolling the streets of Ravnica, Kos could tell when people thought they had it made. It was usually when they got caught, but all the actor was guilty of so far was ambition and probably saving Kos’s life. Before Kos could say anything, Wezescu added, “If you wish, our healer will see to the rest of your injuries. As we’re packing up, she won’t be busy. Please, Officer, it is the least we can do.”
