The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1)

by J. C. Staudt

  Running back to the outskirts took him less time than it had taken his bearers to ride him out. He angled his approach to stay well south of Bucket Row, hidden from the men in the birdhouses. The Sentries—what a laugh that had been. One day the Scarred would be his. He swore it to himself then, as if the thought had just entered his mind for the first time. He would unseat Wax and take his place. He only hoped the men he had healed knew what he’d done for them, and why. It was his best chance of gaining support in the city north.

  There was a ratty laundromat a few blocks inside the city. Merrick kept to the deepest shadows as he made his way there, knowing it was foolish to expect kindness from any southers he came across. He could see an apartment and a tiny storage room on the second floor above the laundromat. From the rear, he could see shattered windows and one collapsed corner of the building that had fallen into a shallow sinkhole.

  Water stains still patterned the cheap tile floor within. There were bare spots in the shape of the old washing machines, bordered in lint and grime. Merrick ascended the stairs, creaking wood beams bowed and splintered by the collapse. He climbed out onto the fire escape and pulled himself up to the flat, gravel-covered terrace roof. He tried not to make noise as he walked over the gravel, but the way it dug into his bare feet made the task laborious. There was a shredded blue tarp near the HVAC unit in the middle of the roof, but he didn’t find signs that anyone might be living here.

  Looking out over the street, he saw a row of storefronts, a few office buildings, and a concrete overpass that arched like a flat snake above the city. There was an old Ministry government building in the distance, trimmed in triangular pediments of discolored limestone. A grand staircase and columns as fat as ancient trees adorned the building’s front, but the overall effect was that of a thing decaying, like a tarnished silver cup hidden on a back shelf.

  A shadow moved atop the roof of the Ministry building—or so Merrick thought. The shadow melded itself with the dome on the building’s roof and was gone too fast for him to be sure.

  He descended the fire escape and found a stained mattress in the apartment below. The springs poked him in the back when he lay down, and his hands were bleeding from the gift, but he was too tired to care about either discomfort. He had pushed himself too hard in getting here, maybe. But he could rest now. If the Commissar really does kill his problems, Merrick thought, as he drifted off to sleep, then he must not have considered me a problem. He should have.

  It struck Merrick as odd that he could stay asleep so long with the mattress coils poking him in the spine and the light-star shining full in his face, but somehow, half the morning had passed before he woke. He was drenched in sweat, and a vague outline of his shape darkened the mattress when he got up. His fingers had crusted over and started to heal, but his legs still ached from all the running he’d done the night before.

  The streets around the laundromat were empty. The echoes of shouting voices and barking dogs reached him over the rooftops, and he could see lines of new breakfast smoke trailing into the sky. It was like waking up in a bad dream and reliving his childhood all at once. But it wasn’t a dream, and that made it a nightmare as real as any he’d ever known. He was truly outside the safety of the city north now. The south was an untamed territory where no one would come running if there was a disturbance; no one decided who was allowed in or out. There was no law.

  Memories of waking up in dilapidated tenement buildings like this one, of hiding from either gangers or his father, depending on the hour, were all that remained of Merrick’s formative years. He was six when Pilot Wax organized the Scarred Comrades and put up the first border walls, reopened the White Birch Primary School and gave Merrick a sense of structure he’d never known before.

  The mark of the Scarred at the crook of his thumb was unmistakable, shining black in a luster of sweat. He drew the knife and examined the blade. Kugh had taken good care of the weapon, if this was his. Merrick held it like a pencil, with the back of the blade resting on his knuckle and the point resting over the mark. He began to scrape. The first drop of blood came quickly, and it hurt. The tattoo was an inch long at least. It would take time.

  He bit his lip as he worked, ignoring the grumbling in his stomach. His eyes stung with sweat and ran with tears, but he didn’t stop until after he’d scraped away the last signs of the mark. Both his hands were bloody, and so were the knife and the wooden planks in the floor. He ignited and touched himself with a fingertip. The heat began to cycle through him in a bizarre current. He felt it leave him, and he felt it come back in just as quickly. The scraped-off skin began to heal over with smooth white scar tissue. Now he really was scarred, but it was the scar itself that was hiding who he used to be.

  When he was done, he risked climbing to the roof again for a better view of his surroundings. He saw the first people he’d seen since he got here; an old scavvy pushing a junked utility cart down a side street, its metal bed rattling with the man’s treasures; a group of hoodlums ambling along behind at a distance, trying to discern whether the old man had the means to defend himself; a woman shaking the dust from a rug on the patio of a distant high-rise. Everything looked familiar, like something from recent memory, though he knew it was only his childhood come calling again.

  Now that it was light out, Merrick could see the details of the government building a little better. There was a fence of scaffolding and plywood surrounding it, as though renovations had begun but were never finished. There were spray—painted signs too weathered for meaning, while tatters of plastic sheeting hung along the top, fragments of the larger pieces people had torn off and hauled away. There was an air of solitude about the place, something foreboding Merrick sensed in the empty streets around it. Someone lives there, he surmised, and the other residents are afraid of whoever it is.

  The shadow appeared on the roof again. Merrick’s eyes darted toward the movement, but the figure ducked behind the dome and was gone. The movement had been more timid than menacing. Merrick felt drawn to it, whether by some instinct, or out of loneliness, or the need to make a new ally. Nothing was worse in the city south than being without an ally. Nothing was worse anywhere. He was still wearing the gray fatigues of a Scarred Comrade. Even without the mark, that would make friends hard to come by. He’d been here less than half a day, yet he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone so long without talking to someone.

  Whatever was in that building that was scaring the southers so much, Merrick decided he wouldn’t let it scare him too. If he was going to survive, he had to get off this rooftop and find food. If he couldn’t find food of his own, he would have to take someone else’s. That was the way of it, plain and simple.

  The ladder on the fire escape squeaked on rusted hinges as he climbed to the ground, keeping his wits sharp about him. The shadows were waning, but he clung to them where he could, molding himself anew in the shape of every chunk of edifice. His mind clicked into gear like a reflex, the automatic surrender of emotion to reason; of fear to training; of anxiety to habit.

  He came to the end of the row of buildings and peered out onto the street. There were several stretches of bare asphalt between him and his destination. He took a deep breath, and darted into the open. When he passed the next cross street, the hoodlums he’d seen earlier were right at the corner—six of them, thin but scrappy. They were laughing and joking, their packs a little fuller than before. Merrick was exposed, and there was nowhere to hide. One of the hoodlums pointed in his direction, and they broke off after him. Coffing shit. ‘Fernal son of a bitch. And I called myself brave for going out alone at night in the city north. What a delusion that was.

  If he’d had his rifle, Merrick would’ve stood his ground and sprayed them full of metal as they came. It would’ve been easier than picking food from between his teeth. The knife in his pocket was a poor replacement, so he bolted toward the Ministry building instead. Whoever lived there was about to have more visitors than they knew what to do w
ith—unless these hoodlums were the ones who occupied it, in which case he was about to walk right into their living room.

  The hoodlums were older than him, but they had the benefit of less wind resistance to slow them down. Merrick had a long way to go, and he knew he shouldn’t wear himself out too soon, but he had to widen the gap. When he ignited, he found it impossible to differentiate the heat in his chest from the daylight beating down around him. At the next cross street, a couple of hoodlums split off to either side. There were two left trailing him, and they were keeping pace. I might be able to take on just two of them, he thought, but he knew better than to try. The distance between basements and storefronts could be deceptive; streets and alleyways twisted through passages hidden from sight, and these hoodlums were likely to know every step, obstacle, turn, and stair. Cautious and safe was better than overconfident and cornered.

  Arms heaving, feet smacking pavement, Merrick’s breath began to go ragged. He veered around a corner and found himself in the midst of a leftover construction site, a dead-end section of road littered with scraps of plastic traffic drums and bright orange road cones, cement barriers and holes in the pavement. A knife of daylight shone through the slot between two buildings, blinding him to what lay ahead. He could hear it, though; footsteps, first from the right, then from the left, hoodlums materializing from whatever clandestine passages they’d taken.

  The course through the construction zone was treacherous. Merrick had to keep his eyes sharp, both on where he was going and who was around him. The hoodlums were shouting to one another, calling out his position. Someone flew into step behind him, shoes sliding over loose gravel. He hurdled the concrete barrier, surprised that he’d reached the end of the construction zone already, and landed in the shallow pit on the other side. Scrambling up and out, he jumped down onto the underside of a half-built bridge.

  It was a wide bridge, and the underside was so low he had to bend forward to run without hitting his head. Less than halfway across, he smacked a shoulder into a jutting support bracket. Steel, as it turned out, was harder than he was. The impact spun him to the side. He twisted his knee and lapsed into a one-legged hobble as the pain came, bright and flashing, through his synapses. His hopping foot buckled, and he slipped off the edge. It was a long time before he touched down on anything solid again. He hit hard and slid, then tumbled, down the concrete slope, as the world strobed between darkness and daylight.

  He ended up on the road that ran underneath the bridge, still unsure whether he was igniting or acting on adrenaline alone. He used the lingering momentum to roll to his feet, his vision still doing somersaults. The hoodlums poured in around him like wolves to the kill. He whirled and sprinted down the road, following the faded yellow lines until he emerged from below the bridge. From there he turned northwest, where the taller structures cleared away and he could see the Ministry building ahead. He was limping hard at first, but as he ran, his twisted knee began to loosen and feel right again.

  The hoodlums were close now, but he resisted the urge to slow himself down by looking over his shoulder. He could see the wall of scaffolding ahead, and the rubber-marked white of the sidewalk that curved around the perimeter. It felt like his destination was horizons away, though it was no more than a hundred yards off.

  He sprinted with everything he had until a weight came down hard on his back. Thin vice-like hands pinned his arms to his sides and wrapped him in a tight bear hug. Feet tangled with his, tripping him up. For a second he was floating, waiting for the next foot to fall in front of him, wondering where it had gone and why it was late. Then he was horizontal, tied up and falling like a roll of old carpet being dropped from a high window.

  He cracked his head on the pavement, and everything blurred. An anemic face, lined deep with hunger and desperation, the eyes sunken and jaundiced. Stones in Merrick’s sides, hands pummeling him with strokes as hard as iron, the sky crowding with fists that charged and retreated. Blurry shapes, silhouettes against the dawn, trees standing and waiting to take their turns, to drink his blood. A zip, crack, snap.

  The anemic face lifted away and the weight slumped aside, and Merrick was swimming in blood that wasn’t his own. One blurry tree fell where it stood, and the rest uprooted and fled. A blank space in time. Blinking against the crimson spray, wiping his eyes, Merrick saw a new shadow. It was upside down, looking at him as he looked up into the red sky. The trees were gone, the trees that had been the hoodlums, and all that was left was the shape of an upside down man, hooded and cloaked. The same shape Merrick had seen on the rooftop of the Ministry building. The shape of a gray shadow made flesh.

  CHAPTER 49

  Toward Home

  When Lizneth drank the tincture, she felt it course through her like the remains of a wave through creases of rock. Soon her tail was ice-cold, and she could feel the texture of the sand in the wounds from Bilik’s nails as if she were no bigger than a shovelcrab. She had already bled the porphyrin from her eyes with Jakrizah’s Oculus Cordial, and though they had itched and stung at first, the effects were astounding; she could stare into the center of candle flames and torches without squinting, while at the same time her eyes could draw vivid color and luminance out of even the deepest shadows.

  Artolo the Nuck was sullen, wind tugging at his fur. “Why do you have to go?”

  The crags above the valley were already a deep shade of blue, receding into the violet-gray of evening. The reasons Lizneth had to go were too many to name, truth be told. She was ready to leave all of this behind her and go back to her plain old normal life. She needed to be gone before Morish arrived, with his disease and his aezoghil. He would recognize her haick, there was no doubting that. There could be nothing more between her and Artolo, whom she’d taken as her lover like the fool she was, without knowing who he really was.

  Zhigdain and Dozhie and all the rest would get by—and better without her. She’d already wished them farewell, but when she’d told them what she intended to do, the dams had begged her not to go. It was too risky, they said. Fane, ever the pragmatist, had told her she would fail. You’ll die a long year before you ever make it home, he’d said. And Zhigdain, with his fatherly propriety, had invited her to stay with him and Dozhie, to become their adopted cuzhe. When she had refused him, he’d given her the goggles as a parting gift, wishing her luck in his typical unvarnished way. She still wasn’t sure how she felt about Zhigdain. She had a feeling he was the type who looked out for his own and had a problem with everyone else. She only hoped he would treat Dozhie better than he had treated everyone they’d met since they disembarked from the Halcyon.

  Then there was Qeddiker. If Morish hadn’t found Lizneth in Gris-Mirahz, Qeddiker would’ve. Maybe Qeddiker knew Gris-Mirahz was Morish’s town. Maybe he was afraid to go there, and that was why he hadn’t followed their haick sooner. Whatever the reason, Lizneth was done with slaves and captives and criminals. She needed to get home and save whatever was left of her family. If something had happened to them because of her absence, she’d never forgive herself.

  “I can’t stay and watch that eh-calai get sliced up. I don’t have the stomach for it. And I told you I would be on my way home as soon as Jakrizah was done mixing her potions. My parents need me to tend our fields so they can stay on Sniverlik’s good side and live out another harvest in peace. Dyagth, I never should’ve left.” She tugged the straps of her waterskins, put a hand to her pouch and felt the glass vials clink inside, checked the knife belt to make sure it was snug. Purple liquid sloshed inside the tiny bottles of antivenom Jakrizah had placed into the pockets.

  “I would go with you…”

  “No. No, you can’t come. I know you can’t leave Gris-Mirahz. If things ever change in Tanley, maybe we’ll see each other again.”

  Artolo moved close, nuzzling her neck.

  Krahz, get me out of this. “All of this, it means a lot. You’re very kind. I wouldn’t have been able to do this if it weren’t for you.”

&nb
sp; “I know, and I hate myself for it. Why have I been so nice to you?” Artolo chittered, a pleasant sound, but sad.

  “Goodbye, Artolo the Nuck.”

  “So long, Lizneth the Adventuring Scearib Parikua.”

  Lizneth turned and scampered off, knowing there would never be a right moment to tell him goodbye forever. There was an ache in her chest, but it was a different ache than she’d felt when she was with him. It was the feeling of loss, yes, but it was also longing. Homesickness.

  She followed the ridge north across the Brinescales, away from Sai Calgoar and the harsh deserts that lay beyond. The terrain here was hard to navigate, but she kept the vale to her right and the mountains to her left at all times, traveling at night to keep cool. Ikzhehn weren’t meant to live any further south than the calai city, she decided; being there had felt unnatural, and any country not blanketed in mountain and hollow beneath wasn’t worth the dirt it had been made from.

  Each day, Lizneth found a cave or hollow to shelter in and wait out the bright heat, though even with Jakrizah’s cold tinctures she never got enough sleep. She would have food all the way home as long as she rationed it, but the variety was poor, and the dried kelp tasted so bad that she never ate it until she was ravenous. Things that live in the sea do not make good food for traveling, she decided.

  When she dreamed, it was of her family and Sniverlik, of torture and slavery. She began to have a recurring dream where a great hole opened in the mountain beneath where she lay, and she would wake up falling, falling, some distance so great it was unnerving. But always in the dream she knew the Omnekh was below her, somewhere so far down she could never see it in the black. She wore chains in the dream too, so that when she finally landed in the sea, she could only flail about and wait for death and darkness as the waves crested, higher than mountains, and swept over her.