The Tangled Lands

by Paolo Bacigalupi

  “This is your last full day,” he said. “It needs to be done by tonight. My father will be here in the next morning.”

  “Then I have work to do.” I pushed him back out.

  “It is my right,” he said. “It is mine to look at.”

  “If you want it done by tomorrow, then do not cross the threshold,” I hissed. “Do not interrupt my work or it will take longer. Come in, and I will stop work.”

  Savar stepped back, but prowled around the threshold anxiously. I thought about it. He knew he couldn’t use magic. But he knew he would be following his father into a fight of some kind tomorrow night.

  He wanted his armor.

  “I will leave the door open, though, so you can stare as much as you’d like.” He could watch me sweat as I hammered shapes out on the anvil.

  “Your parents do not have forever,” he said coldly as he backed away. “Do not delay me what is mine.”

  Servants waited outside with a palanquin for him. Savar avoided the rising morning sun for the next hour by sitting inside its shade on comfortable tasseled cushions, sipping teas and making my stomach growl as he had sweet meats delivered fresh from the markets by men he would whisper to, then dismiss with a flick of his wrist.

  I could not remember when I’d last eaten.

  Savar would stare at me as I paused for a drink, or pushed the sleeves of my tunic up. I knew that, once the sweat began to drip down my arms, chest, and sides, the tunic stuck to me in a way passing men found hard to ignore.

  Let him stare, I thought as I shaped the metal. As long as he didn’t get inside to look behind the armor. Or see the supplies I had packed away under the tool trays throughout the forge.

  A woman in dirty robes slid next to the palanquin halfway through the morning. She whispered to Savar. She carried nothing with her, but her words changed his whole body. He stiffened.

  Savar slipped off his feathered cushions, brows furrowed, and stalked toward the forge.

  5

  AS SAVAR WALKED TOWARD THE forge he pointed at the nearby guard posted by the palanquin. “Leave,” he said, his voice filled with the assumption that his command would be followed. “Now.”

  The guard looked at me standing by the glow of the forge’s fires, at Savar, and then melted away.

  I ran to shut the door and bar it, but Savar got there first and slammed his back against it. He lowered the bar down with his left hand, facing me.

  “Get out of our forge,” I said. But I thought, gods, I’ve made the wrong choices. I hadn’t understood the signs given to me by the prophet lying in the room deep inside the temple. I was supposed to save my life. To run. “Savar, leave!”

  Savar ignored me and walked toward the armor. For a second I was torn. Try to stop him from seeing the armor? No, if I did that, he would know something was wrong for sure.

  He had left me at the door. I could run. Lift the bar up, yank the door open, and run.

  With nothing but the sweaty, dirty clothes on my back.

  I would die, begging for scraps somewhere along the road out of the city. Or I could try to hide in the city, always looking over my shoulder for one of Savar’s agents hunting me.

  Or I could stand here, arms crossed, hoping he didn’t circle around to the back of the armor. Hoping that, whatever he’d been told, he wasn’t going to peer into the shadows.

  “Savar.” I tried to draw his attention back to me. But Savar ignored me and leaned around the armor.

  I sucked my breath in.

  “You lowborn piece of shit,” he said. His voice was almost reassuringly soft. “The man I set to follow you around was right, despite his babbling about truths. You haven’t finished the suit. You are stripping gold away from it to sell.”

  “Zlatan,” I muttered angrily.

  “I don’t know who that is. Is that the name of the old woman?”

  Milaka? I slumped, the betrayal sucking the energy out of me. I was already so tired from not sleeping.

  “That one crumbled when offered our gold and favor.” Savar looked thoughtful. “But, seeing as that she was stupid enough to help you, I think instead we will send the city guards over to her shop and arrest her as an accomplice when I am done here.”

  I opened my mouth to protest. But Savar was a duke’s son.

  “That old woman; those brittle bones will break so easily when they make her pay the price for an offense against my father,” Savar continued.

  Milaka had betrayed me, but those words still struck me. “You can’t. She was just trying to help.”

  “Help cheat me.” Savar pulled out a slip of parchment tucked into the sleeve of his tunic. I had seen that spelled artifact before. He wouldn’t dare. Or would he? He had sent the guards away. The forge was locked. I moved my back against the door and felt for the bar. “Cheat me of the armor you had until tonight to create. But it isn’t finished. Not only that, you have continued to try to steal from me, just as your parents tried to steal from me.”

  I grabbed the bar to the door and shoved it up. Savar leaned forward and blew on the parchment, holding it in both his hands. The smell of citrus blasted through the room.

  The bar slammed back into place. My fingernails scratched at the wood as I tried to hang onto it.

  I forced it back up, but it felt like invisible hands were shoving it down. I glanced over my shoulder. Savar stood by the demon-headed armor, his hands and wrists glowing with parchment dust and the black ink of ancient symbols writhing on his skin.

  “The price of thievery is to lose your hands,” Savar said. “But I’m going to rip the skin off them first and watch you scream. You’re an oaf. An ugly, thick, muddy, lowborn bitch who can hammer things. You can shove me out of a door, but I can rip you apart.”

  Cold hands grabbed my neck and yanked me free of the door. I struggled to breathe. “Blue . . .” I gasped. “You can’t . . .”

  Savar swung his hands to the side and my head struck the stone wall. My vision wavered and I staggered.

  “There are no censori here tonight.” Savar made a fist and punched the air. I doubled over, clutching my stomach. “And when I am done, my men will come, wrap me in blankets, and put me in my palanquin to bear me home until the magic fades and I am safe again.”

  Blows smacked my head and face. I tried to hold my hands up to block them, but I couldn’t see where the next invisible attack came from.

  I lurched at the forge.

  “Tomorrow night my father will fight without me. He’ll be disappointed.” Savar’s voice cracked slightly. “But I’ll show him I’m still a man. I’m still strong. I’ll show him what I do to a thief.”

  I spat blood that sizzled as it hit the hot brick around the forge fire and tried to reason. “You left me with so little to make this armor I had to take the gold from it, but the steel plates to finish it are right here, there’s still time . . .”

  “You have stolen gold from a True Family!” Savar shouted, moving closer. “Your life is forfeit.”

  “There was nothing else I could do,” I protested.

  “Your . . . life . . . ,” Savar repeated. He slapped my face with his free hand from the other side of the forge fire.

  I rocked back, pulling away from him as I blinked tears out of my eyes. Savar and his father, they had always planned to kill us. We’d struggle to finish the armor, they’d accuse us of stealing, then kill us so no one knew anything about the armor.

  Because who would miss us? We lived on the wrong side of the river, after all. This was our fate. I knew I couldn’t fight it. But I had hoped to save my parents and myself anyway. I had hoped to run from it. But I couldn’t.

  Maybe Borzai would judge me well and I would have a good afterlife. In the balance of my life, I had done many small injustices that would weigh against my soul, but had there not been enough done to me to compensate? Had I not worked hard for my parents, hammer in hand, day in and day out? My once-small hands had been blistered at first. Now my fingers were rough and call
used.

  I circled the bricks around the forge, a rabbit trying to flee, and looked back at Savar with my head hung low. There was something in his eyes as he jumped up onto the bricks to look down at me. A feeling that had broached from deep within a fetid soul.

  It was hatred. Anger. And glee. He was looking forward to torturing me.

  I would be another mutilated body that floated down the Sulong.

  “The armor is almost finished.” I tried to placate him one last time. “Come back in a few hours and it will be done. It will be amazing. Believe me . . .”

  He was so close, just on the other side of the hot, rippling air of the forge. He raised his hands.

  “There are other blacksmiths we can pay to finish it by tomorrow. But for you, there is no tomorrow!” Savar screamed as he raised a fist. The next invisible strike knocked me back from the bricks and to the floor. My fingers brushed a pair of tongs and I grabbed them without a second thought.

  Savar stepped around the circle of bricks, massaging his hand. “Do you know what happens to those who steal from a duke in the Blue City? Have you ever seen it? Majister Scacz is always on the lookout for fresh bodies. What kind of animal will he place on your neck with his magics? I think a pig. No! An ox. Dumb and strong.”

  I jumped backward, tongs in one hand behind me.

  “You are a thief, and you will get the thief’s reward.” Savar punched me in the stomach.

  “Please,” I begged. “Please, my lord.”

  “By my family’s right, your head will sit on a pike by the bridge yet today,” Savar spat.

  I threw the tongs at him and ran.

  I was leaving the forge, my tools, even the gold. I was leaving my plans. I was abandoning my parents. But it was the only thing I could do.

  But Savar was surprisingly quick. He dodged the tongs and those invisible hands grabbed my hair and yanked, hard enough to pull me right off my feet. I hit the floor hard, gasping, but saw him stumbling forward.

  He had spelled hands, but he hadn’t gained strength. I stood up.

  “Stop this,” I said, my voice strong and clear.

  Savar pulled a dagger out from his waistband. It glinted as a stray beam of firelight struck it.

  This was it. This was the path of the road we were on. Savar’s fingers clenched the handle and took a deep breath.

  “No,” I said, and ran right at him.

  Savar hit me, each strike knocking me off my stride. But all they did was slow me. Savar sneered, hit me one last time, and then raised the dagger.

  He stabbed at me with it. But I grabbed his forearm and stopped the blade halfway to my throat.

  “No,” I said again, firmly.

  He struggled to pull free of my grip, but my fingers were accustomed to the strike of hammer on metal. They were thick and strong. Anger grew in his face, but he couldn’t free himself. “Let go!”

  I wrenched his arm to the side and hit him in the face. The crunch of knuckle against nose sounded like a walnut being cracked. Savar jerked back and yanked free as blood flowed from his nose.

  We stared at each other, him unsteady on his feet and quivering with rage, me with my feet planted solidly. The symbols on his arms were starting to fade, and the parchment dust turned to sweaty ash on his forearms.

  “Go,” I said. “Leave my forge.”

  I had done the incomprehensible. I’d struck a duke’s son. He would run and come back with guards. But I would have time to grab a few things and run as well.

  And we would both live.

  But Savar could not hear my words. Rage burned uncontrolled through him as he shrieked. “You are mud. I am a lord! You will die. Stop fighting. Your life is nothing.” Tears leaked from his eyes as he pulled out another dagger, this one crusted with diamonds around the hilt.

  I stepped back as he stabbed again at me. The blade nicked the tunic and sliced my shoulder. Blood ran down my upper arm as I jumped back toward a tool bench.

  Savar slashed at me. Not at all the delicate swipes I’d seen when knife fighters brawled in Lesser Khaim, but enough to force me to keep backing up against the bench. I grabbed one of the forge hammers by the handle.

  The worn, smooth wood felt comforting against my callused palms.

  Savar swung his glittering dagger. Metal clinked against metal as I knocked his weapon away with my wedge-shaped hammer.

  I tried to warn him away, but my words died as he lunged. He tried to stab at my heart and grab at my shirt with his free hand. I grabbed his wrists and kicked him back hard.

  The duke’s son sprawled on the floor, his robes fluttering and pale legs flopping on the ground, and for a second I felt horrible about what I had done. I wanted to take a step forward.

  Savar scrabbled backward and pulled out yet another piece of parchment. Gods, the forge was going to glow if the censori ever approached. It was sick with it now.

  He balled the paper up and bit it between his teeth. Then with a satisfied smile, he began to chew.

  The smell of sulphur made me cough, and a dark green glow built inside the wet wad in Savar’s mouth. He stood up, brushing his robes off and putting the dagger back into the hilt inside his thick belt.

  A wind stirred inside the forge as the power between Savar’s mouth began to suck the hair from around us toward itself. He raised his hands and they seemed to glow.

  This minute, I realized, would only release one of us alive.

  I rushed toward him as the hair on my arms stood up and began to dance with a pale fire. I ignored the searing sensation. I ignored Savar’s hands rising toward me, burning my flesh as he tried to stop the impact.

  I slammed my hammer down as if Savar’s head were a glowing strip of steel.

  The hammer didn’t bounce, as it did whenever it struck metal. It did not require the steadying of my forearm. It just buried itself deep into a wet explosion of blood.

  An explosion of heat threw me onto my back.

  I dropped my hands away and looked at Savar.

  The hammer remained in his forehead, the handle sticking up into the air over his dripping red face. He screamed, spitting more blood and pieces of parchment, and staggered toward the door before he fell to his hands and knees.

  His eyes looked beyond it, though. To another realm. To something I couldn’t see as he crawled forward, dripping blood on the forge floor.

  I couldn’t let him leave. Not keening like that. Someone would hear it the moment the thick doors opened.

  I dragged him back from the entrance.

  He pawed at me with one hand, smearing me with blood. His words sounded real, but made no sense to me, despite their earnestness.

  “You can’t go,” I said. “It’s too late. You can’t go now.”

  Savar looked over my shoulder at the thick beams of the roof and screamed. Screamed like one of the cats I had seen the riverboys throw in the Sulong for amusement, then pelted stones at it until they stopped struggling and slipped under the oily surface.

  I cupped my hand firmly over his mouth. “Be quiet.”

  A loud gurgling sound bubbled up through my fingers. I looked away. I had to find a cloth to stuff down his mouth, and then rope to bind him with. Then I could run.

  Then I could run.

  All this because of gold filigree. All this over the suit of armor.

  Savar shook his head and screamed again with those strange, nonsense sounds.

  I was already dead. I couldn’t walk away alive from this. But if I moved quickly, I could save Milaka from him. I might yet be able to free my mother and father.

  Looking slightly off to the side, I yanked the hammer free of Savar’s face and raised it again. I smashed it into his face and he screamed even louder. So I hit him again. And then again. And again. Until he stopped screaming and blood dripped softly from around the edges of the dying wad of light he clenched between his teeth.

  I watched dust motes sparkle in the morning air above the coals of the forge as I sat on the floor and trem
bled. What had I done?

  What had I done?

  I panted like a dog, suddenly unable to draw a full breath. I scrambled on my hands and knees around the forge to put the warm bricks between me and the body of Savar.

  For long minutes I waited for the door to splinter. For city guards to spill in and drag me out into the dusty street.

  For anything.

  But there was only the still, slowly warming air of the forge.

  My face still felt numb from his slaps, my shins ached from his kicks. But he was dead on the floor, now, on the other side of the forge from me.

  I peeked around the bricks. A red pool of blood grew around his ruined head, the hammer still buried so deep into his face. I kissed my thumb and little finger and touched them to my stomach. “Assim. You gave me a sign. So why is this happening to me? Have I made the wrong choice?”

  Assim did not respond.

  After my breathing slowed I struggled back up to my feet and walked to the door. I cracked it open to look outside. Savar’s palanquin sat untended at the corner of the street, beaded wet with late-morning mist that the sun had long since burned away. The city’s air was now filled with squawking chickens, hawkers, songs, bells, and all the cacophony of a city well into the swing of its day.

  No one was coming for me. Savar had sent them all away.

  I shut the door, barred it, and put my back to it.

  But what would happen when the guard came to look for his lord? How long would it take for them to think of me as the killer, and to come hunting for me? A day? Half a day? The pool of blood around Savar flickered as fire licked higher into the air in the forge.

  A fly landed in the blood and started licking at it. Life can be found, even in death, I realized. I needed to stop thinking about things that may or may not happen and make choices.

  The fly, heavy with blood, took to the air as I shifted.

  “Soot,” I said. My father hated it. We kept the floors scrubbed. But most forges were caked with soot.

  “It covers everything, sticks everywhere, unless you keep a clean shop,” my father had said.

  His words echoed inside me as I looked around. If I hid Savar behind the woodpiles, maybe the guards would not spot him. And if I spread soot around to soak up the blood, maybe it would just look like a dirty blacksmith’s shop.