The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  We would have starved a long time ago without that money. The coin tossed in the executioner’s cup by the soon-to-be-beheaded in hopes of buying a good cut. The coppers tossed into the bucket by the crowd. The Mayor’s retainer.

  So when the tiny bell by the door rang, it was with the authority of a thunderclap. The tiny note floated around the old house’s timbers, dripping into the kitchen, and wrapping itself around me as its quivering tones faded.

  This was the first time it had rung since Anto had fallen sick.

  My father was being summoned, as executioner, to bring his axe to the square by the highest of noon.

  Somewhere, across the inky shoving waters of the Sulong River that split Lesser Khaim and Khaim, and up on Malvia Hill and in the Mayor’s House, someone had rung the executioner’s bell.

  The bell was magic, of course. The Mayor swore that the spells that had been cast to create the bells had been formed a long time ago, and that the bells were safe. I wondered if that was true, as I could smell magic softly in the air by the doorway whenever the bell rang. It tasted of ancient inks, herbs, and spices, and it settled deep in the back of my throat.

  Once the executioner’s bell was rung in the Mayor’s House, Deka, the goddess of a thousand multiple roads and choices, dictated which executioner’s bell rang back in sympathy. And Deka had chosen ours.

  Deka was well known for her tricks. The goddess of dice throwers was playing one last little one on my father.

  I looked back over my thick, wooden kitchen table toward my father. His brown eyes were wide, his brows crinkled in intense thought.

  He rubbed his anemic mustache, which was a sign of his failure: that he had only ever had one child, and a daughter at that.

  “The call . . . ,” he said, voice breaking. “Tana. Did you hear it?”

  I moved to him. “You can’t go. You know that.”

  I wondered, as I said it, where the gentleness in my voice had come from. It had never been offered to me in my life by this old man. Not in all the years I’d cooked and chopped wood, or the long years I’d worked as a butcher.

  “I know I can’t go, you stupid girl,” my father spat. “It is well beyond me.”

  The bell needed to be rung if an executioner were here. In five minutes, if there was no reply, the call would go to someone else.

  In a way, that dying ring would signal the death of our family. Without my father’s occasional income, we would have to sell the small house and the land. And then we would become little better than the refugees around us.

  I watched him lie back down onto the bed, gazing up at the thick ceiling beams. “Where is Jorda?” my father asked.

  “Sleeping,” I said.

  “Drunk,” he spat. “Weak. Addled.”

  “Not everyone can see blood spilled as easily as you,” I snapped at my father.

  His jaw set, and he said, “I have always answered the call. Always come back with the Mayor’s coin to keep us alive as the bramble creeps into our useless field. I’ll slit my own throat right here and now before I hand over the executioner’s bell. It is all that keeps my miserable bloodline flowing.”

  “What are you even talking about?” I asked.

  My father coughed. “The gods hate me. Had I a son, he’d be on his way to answer the call already.”

  My voice jumped in anger. “Well, I’m not your son. I’m your daughter. You must live with that.” And then I added, “With what little life you do have left.”

  My father nodded. “This is true. This is true.”

  And then he crawled out of his bed. The blankets slipped off to reveal his liver-spotted arms.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  He stumbled out of the kitchen to the door, sticklike legs quivering from the effort.

  I realized what he was about to do and moved to stop it, but with a last wily burst of energy, he staggered forward and rang the executioner’s bell before I grabbed his arm.

  As the single, clear note rang out and filled the back of my throat with the faint taste of old magic, he crumpled to the floor in a heap of bones and skin, laughing at me.

  “Now you have to go in my place, daughter of mine. Now you have no choice. Jorda is drunk, Duram too young, and Set too crippled.” He panted where he lay, staring up at me with eyes sunk deep into wasted, skeletal sockets. “The Mayor would execute both of us if you try to tell him what we just did. He is not a forgiving man.”

  “When you face Borzai in the Hall of Judgment, he will banish you to Takaz’s torture cells for eternity,” I told him. “When I hear your spirit groan in the night, tortured by Takaz’s demon wives, I will laugh and pretend I didn’t hear it.”

  He flinched at that. “Do you hate me so?”

  I trembled with outrage. “You bring me nothing but pain and drudgery and burden.”

  He thought on that for a long while. Longer than I’d seen him consider anything. “You must go just this once, then. After this, you can turn the bell in. I’ll be dead soon, I can’t stop you, yet you must at least cover the expense of my funeral. I’ll not have my appearance in Borzai’s Hall of Judgment delayed because the rites were not pleasing to him. And after that, if you wish it, it could be your trade. It is a good living, daughter. And with me gone, there will be one less body to care for, one less mouth to feed. You have no field, and butchering people will give you more than butchering pigs.”

  Then he sighed and crawled toward his bed. I said nothing. I helped him back to it, his body surprisingly light as I slung his arm over my neck.

  “How can I kill someone who has done nothing to me?” I asked.

  My father grunted. “Don’t look into their eyes. Consider that the Mayor and his Majister have a reason for their death: they glow blue. Remember that if they have led a proper life, they will be sent to the right hall for eternity.”

  “Won’t the Mayor’s guards be able to tell I’m not you?”

  “No,” my father murmured. “I’ve been wasting away long enough. I’m a small figure, so are you. Wear my hood, carry my axe, and none will be able to tell the difference. It is no different than chopping wood. Raise the axe, let it fall, don’t swing it, and aim the edge for the neck. You’ve killed enough pigs, you can do this.”

  And with that, he slipped away to his sleep, exhausted by all his recent efforts.

  I understood he’d always wanted a son. That he’d wanted the farm to produce the crops it had when he was little, before the bramble grew to choke it. I understood that he never wanted me to marry Jorda.

  I understood that maybe, he’d wanted to give me the bell a long time ago, but had been too scared to do it. Why else would he have begged and called in so many favors from old friends to make sure that I worked as a butcher?

  I walked through Lesser Khaim dressed as an executioner.

  Inside I was still me, Tana, weary and tired, struggling to see through the small slits in the leather hood over my face.

  I’d called Duram down before I’d left, and kissed him on his forehead.

  “What was that for?” he’d asked, puzzled.

  “Just know that I love you and your brother. I have to leave for an errand. But I will be back home soon.”

  After I sent him back upstairs, I’d opened the cedar chest in my father’s room and pulled out the black leather jerkin, hood, and heavy cape of his office. They fit me well enough as I pulled them on, as he had said they would. His canvas leggings slid off my waist, but a length of rope fixed that.

  The axe lay in the bottom of the chest, the curved edge of the blade gleaming in the light.

  It weighed less than it looked, and was well balanced in my hand. Heavier than the axe I used to chop wood with, but not anywhere as heavy as I had somehow imagined.

  Now I rested the axe on my shoulder and walked through the cramped streets.

  The tight alleyways of Lesser Khaim gave way to the mudbanks, stilt houses, and clumps of bramble along the river. I followed a fire crew alo
ng the stone steps toward the newly finished bridge. They wore masks and thick, double-canvas clothing. As they walked they pumped the primers on the back of their tanks, then lit the fires on the brass-tipped ends of their hoses.

  When they flicked the levers, fresh flame licked out across the bramble threatening to creep over the stairs. Clumps of the thorny, thick creep withered under the assault.

  Clearers followed close behind, chopping at the bramble, careful not to touch any of it lest they get pricked. Children scampered around with burlap sacks to pick up bramble seeds.

  They stopped the burn when they saw me, and stepped aside to let me down the path leading toward the bridge that caused the very buildup they were burning back.

  “If it’s magic users you’re sending to Borzai’s judgment today,” one of them called out from behind a mask as fearsome as mine, “then I salute you.”

  Others agreed in wordless grunts as they hacked at bramble with axes.

  The bridge across the river reared before me, the glowing sentinel braziers that Jorda had once tended choking the air with spicy, sweet herb scents. An ominous pall of smoke caused everyone to nervously glance at one another as they set foot on the magical structure, as if the bridge’s furious blue glow would stain them as well. The heads of previous victims stared down upon all as we crossed, eyes warning us of the horror that awaited those who trafficked in magic.

  “It ain’t those unlucky people with their petty spells causing the bramble creep,” someone ahead of me muttered to a friend as he looked up at the heads. He jutted his chin up into the air. “There’s the real abomination.”

  High above us, an unfinished castle hung in the air, the foundation resting upon wisps of cloud. The sharp smell of the magic holding the half-completed structure in the air wafted down toward the bridge: strong, tangy, and dangerous.

  “Mark me,” the man said as we all stepped off the bridge and into Khaim. “We’ll end up like Alacan: choked with bramble and fleeing our city if Scacz keeps building that unholy thing.”

  But he said nothing about the magic holding up the bridge he had just crossed.

  I walked through Khaim, enjoying the taller marble and stone buildings and fluted columns. Sentinel braziers glowed at every intersection, and people almost leaned against the walls to try to avoid the smoke. There were few braziers yet in Lesser Khaim. At first they had sprouted quickly, looming at every gate and market square. But of late their creation had slowed. Perhaps for lack of materials, or maybe, as some whispered, because the Jolly Mayor had mostly been interested in eliminating his velvet rivals.

  But my relaxation faded as I watched people scuttle away before me in nervousness. And it fully vanished when I turned to the public square and the raised platform at the center where the executions were held.

  Early crowds had already gathered. Vendors walked around selling flatbreads and fruits throughout the square.

  City guards waited on the lip at the top of the platform’s steps. They waved me on impatiently, and I saw the figure shimmering blue in chains between them. He turned, saw me, and his knees buckled. The guards held him up under his arms and laughed.

  The Jolly Mayor himself came to the square and puffed his way up the stairs onto the platform with us. His beady eyes regarded me for only the briefest of seconds, then fixed on the blade.

  He smiled and moved closer. “Make this a good one, eh, Executioner?” He chuckled before I could even think to ask what he meant. Which was a good thing, as I wasn’t sure I could reach for a deeper voice. I was far too nervous.

  The guards dragged the sobbing and retching prisoner up the stairs. They shackled him to the four iron rings on the floor of the platform, half bowed to the Mayor, and then retreated.

  Chains tinkled as the prisoner moved, trying to look over his shoulder. “Please, please, have you no mercy? My sheep were dying of mouth rot, my family would have starved. . . .”

  The Mayor did not look at the man, but instead at the crowd. He cried out for all to hear, “Khaim will not fall to the bramble, like the cities of the empire of Jhandpara. Their failures guide us, and we call for the gods to forgive us for what we must do: which is to punish those who use forbidden magic, for they threaten every last one of us.”

  Then the Mayor turned to me and waved his hand.

  A sound like a babbling brook came from the crowd. The murmur of a hundred or so voices at once. Behind that I heard the shifting of chains, and the sobbing of a doomed man.

  I imagined either of my two sons laid out like this, begging for forgiveness. I imagined my husband Jorda’s scrawny body there, his burn-marked arms pulled to either side by the chains.

  I had to steady myself to banish these thoughts, so I wobbled a step forward.

  I raised the axe high, so that I would only need to let it fall to do its work, and as I did, the crowd quieted in anticipation.

  I let the axe fall.

  It swung toward the vulnerable nape of the man’s neck as if the blade knew what it was doing.

  And then the man shifted, ever so slightly.

  I twisted the handle to compensate, just a twitch to guide the blade, and the curving edge of the axe buried itself in the man’s back at an angle on the right. It sank into his shoulder and fetched up against bone with a sickening crunch.

  It had all gone wrong.

  Blood flew back up the handle, across my hands, and splattered against my jerkin.

  The man screamed. He thrashed in the chains, a tortured animal, almost jerking the axe out of my blood-slippery hands.

  “Gods, gods, gods,” I said, terrified and sick. I yanked the axe free. Blood gushed down the man’s back and he screamed even louder.

  The crowd stared. Anonymous oval faces, hardly blinking.

  I raised the axe quickly, and brought it right back down on him. It bit deep into his upper left arm, and I had to push against his body with my foot to lever it free. He screamed so loudly my ears rang, and I was crying as I raised the axe yet again.

  “Borzai will surely consider this before he sends you to your hall,” I said, my voice scratchy and loud inside the hood. I took a deep breath and counted to three.

  I would not miss again. I would not torture this dying man any more.

  I must imagine I am only chopping wood, I thought.

  I let the axe fall once more. I let it guide itself, looking at where it needed to be at the end of the stroke.

  The blade struck the man’s neck, cleaved right through it, and buried itself in the wooden platform below.

  The screaming stopped.

  My breath tasted of sick. I was panting and terrified as the Mayor approached me. He leaned close, and I braced for some form of punishment for doing such a horrible thing.

  “Well done!” the Mayor said. “Well done indeed. What a show, what a piece of butchery! The point has well been made!”

  He shoved several hard-edged coins into my hand, and then walked over to the edge of the platform. The crowd cheered, and I yanked my axe free and made my escape.

  But everywhere I turned the crowd shoved coppers into the pockets of my cape, and the guards smacked me on the back and smiled.

  When I turned the corner from the square I leaned over a gutter, pulled the hood up as far as I dared, and threw up until my stomach hurt. How could my father have done this for days on end during the first purges, when blood had flooded these same gutters?

  Afterward, I looked down and opened the clenched fist I had made with my free hand. Four pieces of silver gleamed back at me from the blood-soaked hand.

  I wanted to toss them into the stinking gutter. But then, where would that leave my family?

  Slowly I began to make my way back toward the poverty of Lesser Khaim. It was only as I approached the Mayor’s Bridge that the clatter of guards sweeping past me over the bridge shook me from my stupor. They shoved past me, rushing. I tried to see who they were pursuing. Instead, across the river, I saw rising smoke.

  Raiders. C
lose to home.

  I rushed across the bridge, fighting against the fleeing crowds seeking safety in Khaim. A screaming man smacked into me. His left arm dangled uselessly, crushed. We both fell to the ground, and he scrabbled up.

  “Damn you,” I grunted, “what are you doing. . . .”

  “Raiders!” he shouted at me. “Run for your life! Paikans have come again.”

  I sat up, pulling the axe close to me, and looked down the street. More smoke seeped into the tight alleyways between buildings.

  And I could hear screams in the distance.

  The streets were filling with people moving quickly for the river, their eyes darting about, expecting attackers in every shadow and around every alley.

  “They’re here to burn us to the ground,” the man said. He was originally from Turis, I could hear it in his accent. He seemed to be looking far away, maybe reliving the horrors of the raider attacks that forced him to come all the way to Lesser Khaim.

  It wouldn’t all burn. Not unless the water brigades failed to put out the fires. The raiders started them to distract everyone while they smashed, looted, and stole. Then they took off just as quickly as they appeared, leaving the stunned warrens of Lesser Khaim behind.

  People jostled past us, a moving river of humanity headed for the riverbanks. “Where are they going?” I asked. They would drown in the river if the raiders got this far, or stumble into bramble along the banks.

  “Away,” the man said, and ran off with them.

  I pushed through the oncoming crowds. They split apart for an executioner, and if they did not, I used the bronze-weighted butt of the axe to shove them aside.

  Five streets from the river, I had to turn away from my usual route home. Smoke choked the street, black and thick, and it spat people out, who coughed and collapsed to the dirt, gasping for air.

  “They set fire to the slums! Don’t go down there!” a woman with a flour-covered apron shouted at me.