Dusk

by Tim Lebbon

  “This won’t help us find Rafe,” he whispered to A’Meer. “It’ll more likely hide him from us more.”

  “There’s someone I know,” she said. “She’s not far from here; we’ll go to her. She’s always listening out for news of strangers passing through. She’ll know if Rafe has been seen.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Shantasi spy.”

  Kosar allowed A’Meer to draw ahead so that he could follow. He tried not to catch anyone’s eyes, but after staring at the Shantasi they would inevitably move on to him, their gaze questioning, eyebrows raised in query. A few glanced down at his hands and saw the bloodied strips around his fingertips, and their curiosity grew. A mercenary and a thief, one of them whispered. I wonder what he’s hired her for? Kosar stared at the whisperer, not moving away until the man averted his eyes.

  But everywhere the looks and mutters were the same, and it did not take long for Kosar to become paranoid, fearing that the whole of Pavisse knew their business. In reality, much as their appearance caused a brief commotion as they passed, he knew that in the hidden districts there was always something else to draw attention. They may well be talked about, but their presence would not alter anyone’s day.

  He followed A’Meer blindly. Every time he heard someone raise their voice he turned around, convinced that he would see a Red Monk, blood-hungry sword drawn and eager to bathe itself in Shantasi flesh.

  . . . and now mercenaries, and this is a dark day dawning for sure.

  Kosar stopped, turned, trying to make out who had spoken. A group of children stood huddled against a timber fence surrounding a scorpion-plant garden, eyes wide and afraid. To their left an elderly couple stood arm in arm, and when he met the woman’s eyes she glanced away, looking for something in the dust.

  “What and mercenaries?” he asked quietly.

  She did not answer until her partner jerked her arm, nudged her in the side. His eyes had strayed over Kosar’s right shoulder to A’Meer.

  “Monk,” the woman whispered. “Red Monk.”

  “Where? When? Alone?”

  “Last night, passing by my house. I couldn’t sleep. I was sitting at the window watching the stars, writing a poem.” She glanced up, perhaps expecting ridicule, but seeing only stern interest on Kosar’s face. “I saw it walk by below my window. Even in the dark I could see its color.”

  “You didn’t tell me—” the man said, but the woman continued, ignoring him.

  “It stopped just past my window and raised its head, sniffing at the air. I could hear it, sniffing! It knew I was there, and it must have heard my heart. But then it went on into the shadows.”

  “In which direction?”

  “No. It went into the shadows. It did not move, it slipped away. No direction.” She was crying now, an old woman’s tears that looked like those of a child.

  Kosar glanced back at A’Meer, whose attention remained focused on the woman. “We should go,” he said. “Find whoever it is you think can help.”

  “Was it a good poem?” A’Meer said suddenly.

  The woman’s crying stopped, shocked into silence.

  “The poem,” A’Meer repeated. “Was it good?”

  “I’m not sure,” the old woman said. “I think I’ve forgotten.”

  “Never forget the poetry in your heart,” A’Meer said. “It may yet have some use one day.” And then she turned and marched away.

  Kosar followed, wondering what had happened back there. The old woman was not crying anymore, and as he looked back one last time Kosar saw the old man questioning her, touching her, trying to tear her gaze from the morning sky. Yet another surprise from A’Meer.

  “If they came here and found nothing, maybe they moved on?” Kosar said.

  A’Meer stopped and guided him over to a building, its walls composed entirely of the outer shell of an old machine. Breakers had obviously been at work here—a slab of the machine lay discarded in the street, and people walked around it rather than touch it or move it aside.

  “If the Monks came here they came for a reason,” A’Meer said. “We know there’s more than one or two—there may be many—and coming out in force means that they know Rafe is here. They’ll not leave until he’s dead.”

  “How do they even know of him?”

  A’Meer shrugged. “Whispers on the wind. Rumors. Mostly I think they can sense it; magic is their madness, and they’re well attuned to its cadences.”

  “So why not do what they did in Trengborne?” Kosar asked. “Kill everyone so that they’re sure Rafe is one of them?”

  “It may yet come to that,” she said. “But for now, I guess they know that if they start wholescale slaughter, Rafe will disappear in the panic. Pavisse is a little bigger than Trengborne.” She smiled, but it barely touched her eyes.

  Too many memories resurfacing in there, Kosar thought. Memories of her training, perhaps, and what she had been charged with. And recollections of her battle with the Monk in Ventgoria. Perhaps she was scared that she could not repeat that victory after living so long as a normal person.

  “A’Meer,” he said. “I don’t have a weapon other than my pathetic little knife.”

  She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. “Just how prepared are we, huh?” She drew a long, thin blade from a scabbard at her hip and handed it to him. “Listen to me, Kosar. I know you can take care of yourself, but this is a Shantasi blade. It’s not charmed or cursed, but it is hungry. And it’s sharper than anything you’ve ever seen.” She was unlacing the scabbard as she spoke, slipping the leather cord out through other knots that held her own weaponry. She removed it in seconds without disturbing anything else. “If you draw this, you draw blood.” She reached out and touched her hand to the sword he held, wincing as a line of blood appeared across her palm.

  “Don’t!” Kosar said, shocked. He stepped back and held the sword to his side, looking around to see if anyone had noticed. There were several people watching, too interested to let their fear drive them away.

  “It didn’t hurt,” she said, smiling. “Believe me, once drawn, the sword won’t settle until it’s wet.”

  He looked down at the weapon, expecting it to curl around his hand like a snake. He touched one fingertip to its flat surface and a drop of A’Meer’s blood slicked across the metal, catching the morning sun.

  “You speak as though it’s alive.”

  “No.” A’Meer shook her head. “Of course not. Not alive, not magical, just . . . hungry. The Monks’ swords are the same, but fed by their owners’ madness so that the effect is magnified. With me it’s more tradition, I guess, something that was drummed into me by the Mystics in Hess. But every tradition like that has some root cause.”

  As Kosar strapped on the scabbard—it was uncomfortable, as if molded specially for A’Meer’s hips and not his own—he asked where they would go now.

  “The woman I mentioned,” A’Meer said. “She’s a madam. Works out of an old machine a little way from here. Five girls, a couple of them fledgers. She even has a fodder. Novelty value, I guess, although I wonder how she stops men from biting her.”

  “You know the most charming people.”

  “Hey, I work in a tavern full of criminals, wrongdoers and misfits.”

  “Where you met me.”

  “That’s right, thief.”

  They smiled at each other, not knowing what to say next. Banter did not feel right given the circumstances. Things were winding up, like a sling spinning and ready to release its shot. The direction it fired in depended wholly upon what happened over the coming day. By evening they may be on the run from Red Monks, taking with them the boy from Trengborne. Or perhaps they would be burying his remains, A’Meer mourning the magic that might have been. Or maybe they would both be dead.

  “How did this happen?” Kosar said, not sure exactly what he meant.

  “These things do.” A’Meer stretched on tiptoes and planted a kiss on Kosar’s lips, and then she turned and walked
on.

  THE WOMAN WAS huge. Her name was Slight—a misnomer if ever there was one—and Kosar had no idea how she could move. Her arms rested on massive hips, her legs were all but hidden beneath rolling waves of fat, and her eyes were tiny beads in a face that looked like a ball of pasty dough.

  “A’Meer!” she screeched upon seeing them. “You’ve decided to come to work for me after all, then! But what’s with the blades, vixen? You know I don’t cater for that side of things.”

  “Slight,” A’Meer said. “It’s good to see you. Been cutting down on the fried sheebok fat, I see.”

  “I weigh almost as much as all my girls combined,” she said proudly. “Who’s the cock? He want some? You want some, cock?”

  Kosar shook his head, unfeasibly embarrassed in front of this mountain of a woman. The inside of the great machine was unrecognizable, hung as it was with drapes and curtains. It was an assault on the eyes, so much color and form stealing concepts of up or down, left or right. Someone passed by on the other side of a drape wall, but they were little more than a shadow. Someone else snored gently nearby. From elsewhere, he thought he heard the muted sounds of lovemaking.

  “Slight, I’m looking for someone,” A’Meer said.

  “Someone other than him?” the madam said, nodding at Kosar. The movement sent her whole bulk shaking. Her loose breasts, each almost the size of a small sheebok, quivered as if possessing of a life of their own.

  “A boy,” A’Meer said. “Slight, it’s important. This boy is precious to me, and his life is in danger.”

  “Precious to you, or precious to New Shanti?” A’Meer did not reply. Slight looked her up and down. “And you all tooled up.”

  Kosar did not like her. She seemed too casual, too ready with a witticism, and all the while he sensed a wily mind working behind her button eyes.

  “There are a few things about me I’ve never told most people,” A’Meer admitted.

  “I’ve heard about Shantasi warriors,” Slight said, shifting her weight to one side and moving, slowly, toward a wall of curtains.

  A’Meer looked at Kosar and shrugged. He frowned, trying to communicate his distrust.

  “Girls!” Slight called. “Slight wants a word!”

  “I’m busy,” a voice said, sounding as if it came from the next street.

  “When you’ve finished, then, Honey. Don’t rush the gentleman; he’s paid his way.”

  Shadows came first, appearing on curtains and drapes from different directions, slowly manifesting as women. They pushed through into the central room where Slight, A’Meer and Kosar waited. One of them was beautiful. One was fodder, fat and scarred with bites. One was with child, another looked half dead from rotwine and bad fledge, and the last was a fledger, tall and yellow-eyed.

  “The boy a stranger?” Slight asked, and A’Meer nodded.

  “Girls, my friend here’s looking for someone. A boy. You won’t have seen him before. Maybe he was on his own; or if he’s a stranger, someone in the districts may have picked him up. You seen anyone with a stranger? Anyone we know?”

  “Hope,” said the fledger. “That mad old fucking witch-whore threw a sac of poison spiders at me. She had a boy with her, filthy little bastard farmer boy, scared.”

  “When was this?” A’Meer asked, but the fledger stared through her.

  “When was this?” Slight rumbled.

  “Yesterday.”

  “Where does Hope live?” A’Meer asked Slight, and the fat woman asked the fledger, and she told them.

  “Street down south, Fifthborn Circle. Not too far from here.” The fledger addressed A’Meer directly for the first and last time. “When you find that old witch-whore, are you going to slit her throat?”

  “No,” said A’Meer.

  The fledger raised her eyebrows at Slight. The big woman nodded and her girls disappeared back through the curtains, their movement sending a whisper in every direction.

  “Thank you, Slight,” A’Meer said.

  The huge woman smiled. “And yet again, you owe me. You’ll have to come and work for me soon, Shantasi.” She eyed A’Meer’s weaponry, and through the fat Kosar could not be sure of her expression. Perhaps being inscrutable served her well.

  A’Meer nodded, performed a low bow and then nudged Kosar out of the old machine ahead of her.

  THEY HEADED SOUTH, moving as fast as they could through the serpentine streets. Kosar kept one hand on the new sword at his belt. It banged his leg as he ran, uncomfortable and yet reassuring with its presence. He could not shake the feeling that they were rushing headlong into trouble.

  When they reached Fifthborn Circle A’Meer strolled quickly along the street, looking at doors as if she would perceive a witch’s abode by its appearance.

  “We’ll have to ask,” Kosar said.

  A’Meer had stopped in front of a building, the door closed tight, windows shaded and mostly still unbroken. She stood back slightly and looked up at the facade, down at ground level, back to the front door again. “This is it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A witch marks her ground,” she said, offering no more.

  Kosar followed her gaze but saw nothing.

  “She’s in the basement rooms,” A’Meer said, kneeling to take a look at the narrow slits piercing the building just above ground level. “Her signature is Willmott’s Nemesis root, I can smell it.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  A’Meer stood and nodded. “Quickly, but quietly. And I’ll go first.”

  Kosar did not argue. A’Meer stood with her hand on the door handle, paused, looked around at him, frowning.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Something—”

  The door burst open, smashed from its hinges. It crashed past the frame and splintered wood stung the air. Kosar stumbled back as A’Meer was thrown against him. A shape burst from the opening, a Red Monk, its decidedly feminine mouth wide open in a frozen grimace of agony and shock. Kosar kept stumbling backwards, certain that his own feet would trip him, and the Monk trampled over A’Meer to get him. Its hood was snagged back by a spear of wood, and Kosar could see its bald head, veins standing out like worm-trail, red, leaking where they split the skin. Its eyes were wide and surely sightless, such was the rate of their expansion and the scarlet pooling of blood in their whites. Its hands stretched out, one of them grasping a sword that seemed to twitch at Kosar, smelling his blood.

  He fell, finally, still trying to draw the sword from his belt, and kicked up as the Red Monk came at him. His feet connected and the Monk staggered back, screaming at last. Kosar was momentarily pleased, but then the Monk stumbled quickly away, still screaming, the shriek high-pitched and ragged as if its throat was being boiled.

  “A’Meer!” he shouted, but the Shantasi was already on her feet, one hand holding a sword, the other sporting a slideshock. Her eyes were wide and terrified, her mouth hanging open as if to gasp in air, and Kosar felt terrified for her.

  The Red Monk was running along the street. People scattered out of its way. Its arms flailed, and blood misted the air as veins on its scalp began to burst. It fell suddenly and moved onward on hands and feet, jumping from one place to the next like a foxlion, still shrieking.

  “A’Meer!” Kosar called again, running to her. She had splinters in her face, several of them drawing dribbles of blood. She looked at him and shook her head, unable to speak. “We have to go after it!” Kosar said.

  She shook her head again and looked at the shattered door, stepping back as if expecting another Monk to come through.

  Kosar drew his sword and stepped in front of A’Meer in a foolish act of bravery. Here he was, a lowly thief, offering to protect a Shantasi warrior. He would have laughed had he not been so petrified.

  “Inside,” she said at last. “We have to check, quickly, and then we’ll follow. But be careful, there are things in there. I think it was bitten by a slayer spider.”

  “Mage shit,” Kosar whispered.
He had heard about these creatures. Right then, he was not sure which he would rather face: a Red Monk, or a slayer.

  A’Meer darted around him and slipped through the door. Her arm twitched and the slideshock whipped out, hitting something in the dark.

  Kosar ran in behind her and sidestepped the still-twitching spider on the floor, fat as an eyeball. “Is that it?” he asked.

  “No, I’ve never seen one like that before. The slayer must still be around somewhere.” She headed downstairs to the basement rooms, Kosar on her tail. They were checking for Rafe, but Kosar was certain that his body would not be here. The Monk—inflamed by pain as it was—had also been clean. There was no blood on its sword, none splashed on its face other than its own.

  “A’Meer, that Monk is on Rafe’s trail.”

  A’Meer nudged open the door at the bottom of the stairs and went in, flipping her arm out and slicing a scorpion in two as it dashed from behind a cupboard. Kosar followed more cautiously, looking around, checking the walls to either side and above the door for any telltale shadows.

  “Well, he’s not here, at least,” A’Meer said. “Stay alert, there are at least five smashed jars on the floor.”

  Kosar checked around his feet amongst the smashed clay shards. Nothing there. He glanced at the shelves, lined with hundreds of other jars and leather containers, wondering just what else Hope kept in here. He had never known a witch, let alone been in the home of one. The hanging herbs, the jars, the charts, the paraphernalia disturbed him, perhaps because of how this place would be perceived by many: one step closer to magic.

  “We have to go,” A’Meer said. She turned around, her eyes went wide and her arm flipped up quickly, the slideshock’s weighted wire lashing out and plucking something from Kosar’s shoulder. He felt the splash of its insides pattering his bare arm as the dead slayer spider dropped to the floor. “We really should go,” A’Meer insisted.

  “I agree.”

  They left the room to whatever was left alive, shutting the downstairs door in an effort to keep the dangers within.

  A crowd had gathered outside. Children ran back and forth, collecting handfuls of the smashed front door to show their friends later as they bragged of what they had seen. Adults hovered farther away, their caution born of experience telling them that, really, this was not their business. And striding down the street, three militia rattled their swords with self-importance.