There Is Life in the Tree and Death in the Well

by Shane Burkholder

  Arnem shook his head and reached into the absurd distance between the edge of the canal and the cadaver, trying to grab its tattered boot. "Will you just help me get it out instead of wasting time talking about it?"

  "I've a mind to kick you straight in with it. Don't touch the thing. Are you mad?" Verem circled around and Dob barked. "Here, get out of the way."

  The boy's cousin unsheathed the sword that hung from his narrow hips. Its blade thin and delicate with the slightest of curves, it was the object of many of Arnem’s boyhood fantasies. He imagined it cutting brigand throats aboard ships tangled together on the choppy eastern seas, running through self-made debt collectors and sore losers at dice. He dared not ever ask Verem about having such a sword, for fear that his cousin would think he wanted that one and ensure he never did; but it was a promise that he made to himself that one day his hands would know the heft and weight of his own and fire the imagination of some other youngster.

  "Careful," Arnem whispered.

  "Of what, you fool?"

  "It might get unstuck, float away."

  "Don't think I can fish out a deader?"

  Verem hooked the point of the sword into the belt of the corpse and pulled it close enough to the edge that together they were able to pull the ragged, waterlogged thing onto the stone. The smell, divorced entire from the river of sewage and sullied waste, struck them like a Slaughterhauser's maul straight between the eyes. The body itself looked clumsily hacked and sawed at, the flesh missing in chunks and the skin entirely gone, and the boy wondered if the poor wretch really had been passed through one of the abattoirs of the Slaughterhauses. That it wasn't stripped was stranger still to him. The killer hastily extracted what meat they could and then threw the remainder aside.

  "I don't know why you're so concerned with these things," Verem said, struggling with the thing's surprising weight as they hauled it to the other side of the culvert, out of the shadow of the bridge and into the daylight. "Not every deader is the work of a beastie or monster or whatever you call them."

  "Monster," Arn grunted.

  "Whatever. Point is, down here people go crazy more often than something gets hungry. I swear to you–"

  Verem cut himself off with a scream as he watched the corpse's head distend and contract until it resembled more a loose bag made from human faces than something bound together by bone and tissue. He dropped the corpse and Arnem couldn't shoulder the weight alone. It fell so that the legs hung well over the lip and the head hit the stone between their feet with a wet smack that put both of them to retching. When the boy saw what his cousin had, he finally did give up his meager breakfast into the darkly befouled waters tumbling beside him.

  The cranium, smooth with skin like that of an overripe fruit, pulsated and strained against itself. Then the body began to slip and the current latched onto its legs before either of them gathered their wits enough to reach for it. The canal drew the dead thing back into its embrace. The mystery Arnem sought to answer was carried with it down into that place where all the Midden’s mysteries are destined to dwell: the bleak weald of the Witherwood.

  "Damn it, Verem," the boy said when he at last the corpse sailed out of sight on the rapids of sewage and floodwaters.

  "You saw what I saw," his cousin said and shoved him. "No, you're not scrawny at all." He smoothed his rich leathers and silks and Arnem did not know why he bothered or why he wore them at all. If there was one constant in the Midden, it was the unclean. "Can't even hold up your half."

  The boy tightened all over to conceal the hurt. "Maybe it'll get hung up on the next culvert," he said. "There's still a chance. Maybe we can find it again."

  "Oh, aye, there's a chance. A chance you'll get swallowed by something between here and there. Not a damn thing that way," Verem said and pointed down the length of the canal, "except the forests. That means druids, and druids means Bloodbriars. Or whatever else they cook up in the Witherwood."

  Slowly Verem watched the spirit curl up behind his cousin’s eyes until in a moment there was not much resemblance with Arnem, the Monster Slayer, whom he had pulled into the shadow of the canal bridge just a little while ago. He burned away as much of his fear as his spirit could, and envied the boy that he had not yet learned to be a coward.

  “But keep up,” Verem said, clapped Arnem on the shoulder and turned to leave. “We're going with you.”

  "We?" the boy asked his cousin's back, bound for the start of whatever journey he'd decided upon for them. “Verem, who’s we?” His cousin said nothing more and, when he kept his silence on into the distance, Arnem finally made to follow.

  Chapter Four

  A Simple Job

  Five men huddled at the edge of an alleyway. Some waited eagerly at the corners of the buildings that hemmed it in. Others lounged in the gloom between the roots that ran down the walls. There were many such folk in the Midden, many such alleyways. But these were the Stormcrows and, if one were disposed to ask them, they were the finest of scoundrels and the pettiest of thieves. Any day, their namesake would begin their seasonal migration out of their mountain roosts, chasing the thunderheads of the stormy months. It was their time and Verem, their captain, told them that everyone was about to know it.

  "Oh," Muro the Hawkfaced groaned. "I don't see him. And the Cistern is almost set to open. We've been fooled, I say."

  "What do you know about it," Dura chided him from along one of the many vines that ran down from the canopied heights of the ruins. "You've got a bird for brains."

  "The brains of a bird, you godsdamned monkey," Quarr said from the entrance to the alleyway, and hacked up a gob of tar to spit into the gutter at their feet. "The brains of a bird. You've never even seen a bird anyway, besides the crows."

  "No." Dura climbed higher upon her perch and contorted to swing there by her feet, crossed her arms. The dark, short curls of her hair moved hardly at all. "I do believe you're the only one who has, old as you are."

  "Climb down and say that, you little cretin," the fat bruiser said to himself and watched for their mark to pass out in the street.

  "Where's Verem at, anyhow?" The Hawkfaced did not have the eyes of his namesake, but they kept him as a lookout anyway. There was a certain propriety in it. Tradition begged that they do so. "He's the one's supposed to know who this damned bludger is."

  "I know who he is if you would all shut up long enough for me to concentrate." Quarr spoke the truth, but did not know if he believed what he said. He had been with Verem the longest of the five of them, and some might say had a hand in shaping Verem into what he was to them. But this latest scheme of his—he did not know how reliable their captain's intelligence would prove. "Where is the bastard?"

  "Well who is he then," Dura said, clinging still out of reach but tauntingly close. "High-wise and all-knowing master?"

  "Your arms can only hold out long enough," Quarr muttered and dug at an itch in the forest of his beard. "A man to us from the Crowbills, is all I know, and due when the Cistern opens. Says that he knows where it is that snake Segved makes his lair."

  "Oh, I do hope it's Qurzin," said the Hawkfaced. "When he's done bilging, maybe we can make him smile."

  "And he's going to tell us? Is Verem mad?" Kurr said and her brother, Burr, went on in her stead: "They're as loyal to that bird-brain as the mountains to the sun. He won't tell us a thing."

  "Muro knows more than most about bird brains," Quarr told them. "Ask him if the Crowbill bastard'll spill anything more than blood."

  "Bastard yourself, you drunk," Muro said, the glimmer of eyes speaking from the inner shadows of the alley. "The Echoes have got a point."

  "Shut up," Quarr wheezed suddenly and flung a hand out blindly, as if he did not care whether it quieted the men behind him or struck them. It was all the same to him. "I believe we've got him. Look, there!"

  He pointed his fat gloved finger out into the street, at the crowd of Middeners which for the moment went by uninterested amid the mass of pipes and hig
h stone walls that was the Cistern. A man in black was stuck in amongst them, clothed in rags that covered every part of him except for his face, which was hidden beneath a crude mask of bone, leather, and bits of iron sewn and fastened into the shape of a bird's skull. The black pits above the beak, where the eyes of whatever great bird it had been would have sat, stared back at them where they hid in the alleyway. They had some sentiment, and some knowledge, that the animal face which scrutinized them was not only that of a crow, but a stormcrow's: the skull of their own namesake.

  Their histories were so intimately associated with one another that commonfolk did not know a Crowbill or a Stormcrow by name. For them there were only those who wore skulls—and for the fact were steered clear of—and those who did not, and the two were caught in the mire of a war without end. Neither could expect much else. More violence and thievery went on in the Midden without the commonfolk's blessing or their involvement by far. It could not matter to them if there was a little more, done by rogues who dressed up and mantled their shoulders with fearsome names. The real fear was eating one night to the next, or knowing two sorts of cough apart. Death was the only underlord in the Midden and he walked every street, broke through into every house.

  "Is that him?" Dura whispered. She had climbed down to dangle dangerously within reach of Quarr, but he was much too preoccupied to take advantage.

  "Don't know who else it could be." Muro edged past them both to stand at the mouth of the alleyway. Kurr and Burr filled his absence. They wondered aloud what they should do.

  "Damn it," Muro said. "Where is Verem?"

  "Blast the man," Quarr told them. "We do this now, before he blows the deal." He stomped out of the threshold, his heavy frame unable to walk in any other way. His words trailed after him. "Probably dawdling at a brothel as we speak. I might know the one."

  The other Stormcrows were swift to follow him. They always were, where Quarr was concerned. A third party might imagine that Quarr was more than the fist behind the organization, that Verem was more a titular boy-king than a criminal underlord, and they might be half right. But to believe it, one would necessarily need to have not ever met Verem. Just as Quarr's dominance was a half-truth, the Stormcrows under him were not half so cunning as when guided by the smooth power of their true leader.

  "Are you him, then?" Quarr said to the Crowbill, who had yet to offer even the customary greeting between thieves, and jutted his head at him with his bull's neck.

  "I might be," a voice told him, lost beneath the mask that he wore so that only his words could be understood. The tones and their speaker were lost.

  "Meaning what, exactly?"

  "Yeah," Kurr and Burr said and came forward to buttress their captain on either side. "Meaning what?"

  "Are you the Stormcrows foolish enough to believe one of my own men would betray everything to you?"

  "Segved," Dura said, and all the air went out from her lungs.

  Quarr punched him, square upon the makeshift beak. The bone turned to powder in the air, and the leather crumpled. But there was no blood that spurted onto the ground or ran down the rest of the ruined mask. Muro had sat through enough of Quarr's drunken brawls and petty scuffles to know that his hands were the quickest he had seen, though they carried more than their share of weight. And he did not land his blow against the Crowbill. The man was fast.

  High shrieks erupted in the grey dawn that chilled them to the bone. The crowd threw itself into chaos, and scattered. They began to thin, emptying into the safety of the arterial side streets to watch from afar, and so unveiled the black-garbed men who made the almost inhuman calls. Jagged, rusted warpicks were raised above their heads and they sprang through what remained of the onlookers to reach the Stormcrows.

  Quarr had started to trade blows with the Crowbill who had lured them into the street, whom Dura presumed to be Segved himself. The hands of the one were as quick as the other's and when they did not fail to connect as they leaned and weaved, they parried each other's strikes away. There was a knife stuck in his boot that could change up the odds for Quarr, but he did not reach for the handle sticking obviously out from the cuff. He enjoyed it this way, bone on bone.

  The others were not so honorable. The Crowbills, true to their name, fell in with the Stormcrows, swinging their picks down in quick succession. Dura ducked a wide swipe and then slipped out of the way of another before she managed to clamber onto the leaning arm of a signpost. At once she whipped her feet around at her attacker's head. His mask burst in a cloud of bone and iron shrapnel and the Crowbill himself crashed into a stack of crates, emptied that morning to supply the stall beside them. He did not get back up again, though the merchant whose they had been tried to rouse him, and, when that failed, to kick him awake.

  The twins were not the most renowned combatants of the Midden's daily and nightly dustups. The term could only be applied to them in its loosest sense, and 'able' was a level of skill Kurr and Burr had managed to cling to through most of their lives. Alone, they were not the best of pickpockets either. Just as a gate will collapse if one wall to the side of it falls, either of the Echoes would have certainly been done in by the wild cuts of the Crowbill's pick. But together they could sell water back to the rainclouds and outmaneuver the bloodiest of pit fighters. Dancing about their unlucky match, throwing a dagger from one to the other, laughing and taunting more than they stabbed and lunged, they dangled a life before their eyes and could have cut its thread any time they chose.

  Dura ran to the aid of Muro, who tried to keep his awkward lanky frame out from between two more of Segved's men. She smacked the first man she came within reach of, ignorant of her presence, squarely on the head with her club. She heard the man's teeth clack together before he crumpled under his own weight to the rainslick street. When his companion turned to see who had dispatched him, Muro dashed forward and hacked off his pickhand with a stout blow from his hatchet. The Crowbill's cries filled the air, his blood the gutter. He fell to his knees and clutched the stump.

  Quarr had the man they took to be Segved cornered against the ancient, rusted gates of the Cistern and looked to be hammering him in the sides with the great meat of his fists. The captain of the Crowbills, the other Stormcrows thought to themselves, would be pissing blood tonight. And they delighted in it. But Quarr could feel his knuckles falling only on hard elbows, useless stretches of arm and shoulder.

  The Crowbill that Muro had unmanned snatched up his pick while they watched, and impaled its point through the tip of the Hawkfaced's boot. Burr stumbled over a broken thrust of cobble in the road and gave up his balance. The Crowbill that the Echoes toyed with saw it and took advantage at once. He stove the pommel of his pick into Burr's jaw, knocking him to the ground and into unconsciousness. A look came over Kurr as if she were a child again and her conspirators had suddenly bolted, leaving her with the blame for some unjustifiable act.

  Segved lashed out with a clumsy jab, arcing straight toward Quarr's bulbous nose. The Stormcrows' lieutenant shifted his stance to counter it and put enough force in the return blow that his back foot came up a bit. But a foot swept out like a snake before his punch ever landed. It slammed against the knee he had put all his weight on, knocking his legs out from under him. Stiff kicks left his mouth and nose bleeding into the gutter.

  "Pity your boss didn't show," Segved said, his voice hollow inside the metal beak. "Would have been best." He wheezed. "To murder you all at once. My men could take. All the time they'd like. With that boy."

  Quarr looked around for the others, and found himself alone against the mad leader of the Crowbills. The twins had been subdued, and Dura tried to see to the wound in Muro's foot without bandages on hand. A great, heaving sigh passed through the old barrel-chested pit fighter. When he looked back at Segved, his eyes burned.

  "Go on and do it, you cheap hood."

  "With pleasure."

  Segved raised his crossbow.

  The gates to the Cistern swung open noisily
upon their rusted hinges and pounded against his skull. He dropped to the cobblestones, bleeding into their mortared creases, and his body wedged the doors shut. Men cursed from behind them and pushed against him. His men stood confusedly, their war-picks slowly dropping away from their charges, and then rushed to his side. They pulled him away just as the horde of onlookers who had gathered surged forward at the opening of the Cistern. Quarr shouted for his men to get clear and shouldered his way to the other side of the road, out of harm's way.

  A stuttering kind of roar echoed out from the bowels of the Cistern, which wound away from the opening gates into the deep innards of the city-beneath-the-city. They became as still as stone again, the Crowbills and the Stormcrows. The crowds recoiled which had awaited the end of their scrap as if they watched two birds pecking at each other. The doors were knocked aside and a hulking shadow lumbered into the pale light of day, struggling against the pull of iron chains hooked into its flesh. Men labored at them in the darkness of the threshold behind it.

  Screams and yowls issued from its dozen mouths, bestial and alien at once, though something vaguely human creeped beneath. It stomped about the arena made by the onlookers on two great stumps of legs and lashed out with myriad arms, as unalike as they were many. The mass of pink sinew and flesh watched all of them with uncounted eyes, pleaded and raged and resigned. The leather-coated men of the watch shouted for one another to keep it still and to watch its strikes. They danced and pulled as if caught in some horrid performance that would see them dead if they could not keep up with the steps.

  A man appeared from behind the display, garbed in tattered robes and cowled deeply with shadow. In his hands he held the silver haft of a queerly burning torch, the rain fizzling as it met the emerald flames, and in the other a crimson sliver of crystal that was dark with minuscule lines of script. When he raised the latter up to the seal which sat above the gates of the Cistern, and shined the torch behind it, the gem shone with the refracted glow and cast a shaft of light against the sigil. The eldritch characters which ringed its graven image, worn and defaced by years of neglect and erosion, glimmered back at him weakly. Gears turned and ground. Slowly, as if with the clumsy vestiges of life, the gates of the Cistern began to close again.