by J. C. Staudt
Frustrated and still griping, Lizneth wondered if she should stay and search for another way up to sea level. A cold putrid wind brought with it the stench of bilge, ruffling her fur as it sighed down the channel. She thought how strange it was that this street was paved for foot travel, being that it was part of the drainage system. Returning to the claybridge to ask someone else for directions seemed like the best thing to do. Just as she turned to go back, the breeze subsided, and she heard a splash from down the street. This was followed by a shallow gurgling sound and a gaggle of wheezing laughter. Curiosity pulled her in its direction.
A rectangular opening, caught by the light of a nearby street lamp, ducked into the landside wall and shot inward to form an alley of sorts. By the time she could make it out, someone from within had spotted her. He stepped into the light and twitched his whiskers. The wind blew again and carried his haick to Lizneth, a pungent odor of infection and unwash. His fur was patchy gray-black and matted in places with smears of something wet and tacky. He wore grease-stained canvas and held a knurled cane in his hand. Lizneth stopped in her tracks and whirled, her curiosity quashed.
“Oy, se gha,” he called after her, then said something else in a low growl she couldn’t quite discern. His voice was scabrous against the levee walls, and it made her want to walk faster.
Lizneth’s whiskers caught a rush of air as bodies sprang into motion behind her. Through the stones, she felt the vibrations of four-pawed footsteps. She glanced over her shoulder and saw three bucks galloping toward her. The one she had seen was now accompanied by two enormous, savage-looking brutes. Her cloak billowed out behind her as she dropped to all fours and darted forward.
“Veh hijr kiqag kiqae,” one of them yelled, but she couldn’t tell which.
I doubt that, she thought. And I don’t think I’d like that very much either.
By the time she looked back again, one of the big ferocious bucks was already at her heels, slack-jawed and slavering. His broad arms propelled him forward as the thump-clack sound of paw and claw on the cobblestones drew closer. His snout was etched with deep claw marks, the black of his fur flat and dull, and he was gaining on her despite a slight limp. Lizneth could see it in the irregularity of his strides and hear it in the offbeat rhythm of his footfalls. An old wound on the rear right leg, and one she would keep in mind if he caught up with her. Easier to aggravate old wounds than make new ones.
On the tip of a whisker, Lizneth sensed movement at the top of the sloping wall beside her. Someone was waiting in the shadows. Had the bucks left a lookout? The path back up to the claybridge came into view ahead, but her pursuer was so close now that she could feel his breath along every whisker. Cobblestones flew by beneath her, and with every forward bound the muscles in her legs tightened. She felt as if the ground were made of paste; that it would swallow her up and hold her there if she let herself slow.
The tremor she had felt from above became a shape on the wall top. The shape leapt from behind a moss-covered plinth, pitching a dead line down the embankment and hurtling straight at her.
She turned her path to angle away from the edge of the slope, thinking she could avoid them both if she was quick enough. The movement turned out to be a mistake; it brought her within reach of the thug behind her, and when one of her hind legs went up, he raked it aside with a heavy paw to throw her off balance.
The shape shot down the wall, hesitating long enough to let her go past before making a final vault onto the street. She heard the two bodies slam together just as her feet tangled and her face struck pavement.
Her shoulder skidded into the rut between two cobblestones, but the weight of her hindquarters kept coming, throwing her end over end in a morass of fur and smothering cloak. The world was upside down and turning like a wheel. Soon the rest of her caught up, and she rolled to a stop. Momentary stillness swelled into pain, and she let out a long, guttural groan.
Presently she became aware of the squeaking and scuffling of the two violent masses of fur a few fathoms off. They were tearing at each other, biting and grating and slapping with tooth and claw and tail. The shape that had come down from the wall was that of a young bluefur. Amidst the fighting, all she could see was the outline of his glossy light-gray fur against the matte black of the brute he was wrestling with.
Lizneth’s arms wanted to move, but she couldn’t make them. She was helpless to cry out or intervene when the black brute took the upper hand, pinning the bluefur against the cobblestones. She saw the thug draw his dirk, and she could only watch as he raised the bluefur’s arm and slid the blade deep into his chest.
The bluefur squealed, a sound so high and penetrating it made Lizneth’s stomach churn. The brute released the bluefur and watched him thrash in his own blood, his claws frisking the hilt, all four limbs fondling the slicked blade in a desperate hunt for traction. The other two bucks came scampering up beside the first to spectate; the elder with the cane, and the second black-eyed brute, a blazed cinnamon with a bearded white snout.
As they all watched, the bluefur managed to get enough of a grip on the blade to give it a tug. It slipped free and clattered on the stone, a bloody spout bathing the ground after it. Arching his back into an impossible contour, the bluefur made a horrifying sound, then withered and curled into a ball. His chest pulsed with quick, shallow breaths. The black brute stepped into the crimson lake and took up his dagger.
By now Lizneth could feel her body returning to her. She twitched a hand to be sure it would respond, then lifted herself up on wobbling arms and caught the brute’s attention. He gave the bluefur an uncertain glance before stepping over him and lumbering toward her. It proved to be his last mistake.
The dagger that appeared in the bluefur’s hand bore a greenish sludge on its blade. The bluefur opened the brute’s thigh with it as he passed. The brute yelped in surprise, collapsing as the muscle gave out. No sooner had the big brute fallen than the bluefur sent the dagger spinning through the air.
The cinnamon’s gut grew a handle, and he toppled over. The elder twisted his cane and skimmed a flamberge blade from its casing. Lizneth was already bounding toward him on sore legs. A long, low jump was all it took to bowl him over, the street’s downward slope putting her high into his chest by the time she connected.
Her teeth broke the tough skin of his neck and sunk through flesh with remarkable ease. Haick rife with corruption flooded over her, a more potent rendition of what she’d scented earlier. Tears filled her eyes. She felt the air move around her midsection as the buck stabbed backward at her in a series of gainless strokes.
Though he was thin with whatever ailment plagued him, he was still a buck, and that made him taller and heavier than Lizneth was. She knew she wouldn’t move him without a little help, and she’d tussled with her siblings often enough to have experienced the power of leverage before. Yanking him by the throat, she flung him crosswise over her body. He rolled like a pillbug, his spine cracking over hers as if they were two gears pairing, and she dropped a shoulder to fling him hard against the ground on the lower side. He squawked as the flesh tore free from the side of his neck; the flamberge skipped away and rattled along the stones. Lizneth gagged, her mouth full of his sickly black fur and its taint.
“Se dyagth,” spat the patch-furred elder, staring through black eyes crusted with red.
I don’t see how that’s a very fair thing to say, Lizneth thought. You should’ve expected it, the way you’re behaving.
The elder regained himself with startling quickness, rolled to his feet, and canted off down the sloping road, holding his neck. It would’ve been no use talking with him. Even if he understood a lick of the Aion-speech, chasing him wasn’t worth the chance that he might lead her back to others of his ilk, and she was still too bruised and sore from her fall to go for a voluntary run just yet.
The two brutes were now prostate and groaning, while the bluefur had slumped onto his back again after throwing his dagger. There was a looming silenc
e in the street now, apart from the faint lapping of water against the far side of the levee wall. Trickles of crimson had begun to flow in the grooves between the cobblestones, making them look like a cluster of islands in a shallow red sea. The blood was cold on the pads of Lizneth’s feet, as was the clammy hand she took in hers when she knelt beside the bluefur. Spots appeared on her cloak as it drank both blood and water, but her concern was with her wounded hero.
She stumbled for words, not knowing what to say first. “Thank—thank you. For rescuing me.”
The bluefur’s eye slivered open to stare at her, his head still pressed to the pavement. “I didn’t rescue you,” he said, his speech labored. “I’ve been after those krahz for weeks now. Thanks to you, Morish just got away again.”
“You don’t have to be vulgar,” Lizneth said. She was beginning to find most metropolis ikzhehn incredibly rude. “I did what I could. I’m not an assassin, like you are.”
“That’s very gracious of you to say,” the bluefur said. He laughed, then grimaced at the pain. “Most call me by other names. Criminal. Thief. Murderer. Those names are more fitting for someone like me. I knew you would be an easy mark when I spotted you at Akikrish-Ziirah.”
“You’ve been following me since the claybridge? You… you were going to rob me.”
“You say ‘was’ as if anything’s changed,” he said, his chuckle turning into a cough. “I’m Curznack, and I wish the circumstances of our meeting had been more in my favor.”
Lizneth released his hand and shuffled backwards, adding a fathom of distance between them. “It sounds like they saved me from you as much as the other way around.”
“They’re slavers,” Curznack said. “Would you rather I’d mugged you, or they’d turned you into a slave?”
“I would rather have enjoyed my trip to Bolck-Azock without anything so awful happening. It’s not like you’d find much if you did rob me, though. My pockets are empty.”
“I saw you trade for the glowfish. And the cloak before that. My intention at first was purely to steal from you, but when I noticed you were headed for the sea, I took a chance that you’d be the perfect bait to help me find them. They would’ve taken you if I hadn’t been here. A healthy young scearib like you would fetch a high price across the Omnekh.”
The very thought made Lizneth shiver. She considered running. Or taking up the bluefur’s dagger and finishing the job the brutes had started. The two enormous thugs were pallid and bloated, their eyes bulging and their tongues lolling. Their heaping shapes rose and fell in slow, measured beats.
“You got your wish,” Lizneth said. “I led you right to them, didn’t I…?”
“And Morish fled yet again,” Curznack said, with another cough.
“What do you want with yinbelahn like them?” she asked, substituting Curznack’s previous obscenity for a kinder word.
“That old buck is dying. He’s riddled with disease.”
“I could smell it on him. Taste it—” Lizneth almost gagged again thinking about Morish’s haick in her mouth, the flesh and fur he’d left behind. “Will I get sick too?”
“No,” Curznack said, simpering. “It’s a defect. His papa was taken captive by calaihn many years ago. They did terrible things to him. Tests. Every brood he sired developed the same condition when they grew up, and Morish has been searching for a way to cure himself ever since.”
“I’ve heard the stories,” Lizneth said. “Not this one, but others like it. About the calaihn and their aezoghil.”
“Morish performs the same aezoghil on them,” Curznack said. “The sickness in his body has brewed a lunacy in his mind. He has this notion that calaihn have something inside them that will make him well. He and his thugs kidnap ikzhehn like you and exchange them for calaihn wherever they can find them. It takes three or four of us to buy one of them, but a scearib like you would’ve fetched the price of a whole calai almost by yourself.”
“So not just a slave, but a slave to the calaihn? That’s what they would’ve made me?” There were sour knots in her stomach. Panic abraded her like sandpaper.
“It’s likely.”
“I have to get home. I should never have come here.”
“Don’t,” Curznack said. “His brutes watch every path. They’re trained to notice healthy females like you. Now that he knows your haick, Morish will find you—maybe even follow you—wherever you go. Even now, he’s probably gathering his thugs to come back here and take us both.”
“I thought you wanted to find him,” Lizneth said.
“Not like this,” he said, as if she should’ve known better than to suggest such a thing. “I can’t defend either of us now. Morish knows your value, so I doubt he’ll let you go. The closer he gets to death, the more desperate he becomes.”
“Why have you been after him, then?” said Lizneth, wondering aloud. “Why don’t you just wait and let him die on his own?”
“Because he’s the only one who knows where my brothers are.”
“What happened to them?”
“They were taken, like you almost were. He put them on a ship and sold them across the Omnekh. The both of them probably bought him less than half an eh-calai slave put together.”
Alarm and confusion struck Lizneth like a blow. She wished so badly that she had stayed at home, found a place in her fields to mope until her mood had passed and she’d been able to forgive her parents. She forgave them now, for all the good it did her. “I wish I could help you, but I need to get home.” I’ve lost brothers and sisters too, and I don’t want to lose any more of them.
“I told you, you can’t go home,” Curznack said. “It’s past that now. They will find you if you try. The only way to make them lose your haick is to use the sea. Haick doesn’t carry over the water. My brood-brothers and I have our own boat. We can bring you out on the Omnekh and make sure Morish and his thugs never scent you.”
“Can’t your brothers just take me back the way I came? How close does the Omnekh get to Tanley?”
“Tanley?” Curznack gave a wet cough that might’ve been meant as laughter. “Tanley is far from any part of the sea.”
“But I don’t want to come with you,” Lizneth said, tears blurring her vision. “I want to go home.”
“I can’t bring you home. Not yet. But if I promise we’ll keep you safe, will you at least trust me?”
She thumped her foot on the cobblestones, then smelled and listened both ways down the street, expecting to hear the sounds of Morish and his thugs heading in their direction. The smell of salt and the fizz of the lapping seawater were all that came to her. “Maybe there’s some way I can send my family a message. Something to let them know I’m okay.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Curznack said, his words abrupt. “Now help me up. We need to get moving.”
Taking his hand in hers once more, Lizneth lifted the bluefur and supported him with a shoulder. Neither of the brute’s bodies was moving now. When Lizneth slipped Curznack’s dagger from the cinnamon brute’s gut, a pustule of yellow slime trailed out from it. She would’ve been sick if she hadn’t been so frightened.
“Careful with that. Here, wipe it on his fur and put it back in my sheath. It’s built special. I don’t want you to get contaminated.”
They hobbled up the causeway and reached the ramp to the claybridge. Curznack guided her up through the misty gloom and took them onto a side platform Lizneth hadn’t noticed on her way down. Curznack was getting heavier as they went uphill, so she was pleased to find that when the mists cleared away they were just on the other side of a narrow stone bridge that led to the docks. Another bluefur scrambled to the top deck of one of the ships and waved.
“Is that your older brother?”
“One of them,” Curznack said. He grinned, and shifted his weight just long enough to wave back.
There were several pieces missing from the cobblestone bridge, so they had to navigate it with care. Lizneth looked down and saw, dozens of fa
thoms below, an angled trough that looked like the same one they’d come from. That carter never told me I needed to turn to find the docks. Things might have been very different now if he had, she supposed. Brungzhe. If I ever see him again, I’ll have meaner things to say than that.
It might be a long time before Lizneth would see her family again, she realized, as they neared the ship. She feared for them, for what Sniverlik would do if they didn’t bring in a big enough harvest this season. For now, she pushed her fears to the back of her mind and considered herself fortunate to be among friends instead of in some slaver’s shackles.
As they stepped onto the dock and approached the small galley where Curznack’s brother stood, a third bluefur appeared at the end of the gangway. His coat was mottled in white strands that gave it the dull flatness of age. A bright red headcloth held back a mass of overgrown scalp fur, and his canvas britches were ragged and frayed at the seams.
“What’ve you brought us, little brother?” he called out.
“A good one. Better be quick about it.” Curznack grunted as he shoved Lizneth forward, giving it all his effort.
There was a bag in his brother’s hand; a brown canvas sack. When Lizneth stumbled forward, he netted her head with it and tightened the drawstrings around her neck.
“What are you doing?” Lizneth’s voice rasped through the choking cords, her fingers frantic at the edges.
Someone grabbed her hands and pulled them down before she had a chance to loosen the drawstrings, tripping up her legs so she fell hard against the dock. She felt a second pair of hands helping the first, then the rough bristle of rope against her wrists and ankles.
“These are fine threads,” another voice said, and she felt hands fumbling at her neck to loosen the cloak and tear it from her shoulders. They hoisted her up and carried her, one on either end, letting her swing from side to side like two gravediggers hauling a corpse.
