by Sam Sykes
“No one but a demon would know what it is to look upon creation and see nothing but flaws. When I gazed upon mortalkind, I saw suffering, disease, war, hatred.” He vanished, reappeared at the window. “Heaven charged me to watch creation.” He raised a hand to the slats, watched it disappear, immaterial, through the wood. “And I watched it wither.
“The view from on high is absolute. The sound of a spider’s legs skittering toward a squirming fly is deafening up there. I saw everything. Every rape, every murder, every fire, every gorged cannibal, every orphaned child, every starving creature straining to remember it was once a man even as it pawed through offal for scraps.”
Something within the man—if he could still be thought of as that—changed in the moment he turned to face Lenk. His eyes drank the darkness of the room and became black as night, and his words took the weight of his name.
“Demon,” he said. “The swine that rutted in the muck I beheld called me that. I heard their words clear as any. But to my people…” He threw his hands out wide. “I was KING.”
And that weight, that terrible weight, struck Lenk like a hammer. The air rippled, a gale from nowhere howling out from behind Mocca, sending his robes whipping about and casting Lenk to the floor with its force.
The walls of the room fell away. The floor split apart. From somewhere deep in the earth, pillars began to rise: great columns of golden stone, each one carved in the image of a robed man with a short beard and a halo of serpents, granite eyes staring down upon Lenk. From between them, banners of white and red and gold flew, depicting encircled bands of snakes. And behind Mocca, the last wall of the room was swallowed by a great golden light.
Lenk shielded his eyes. He heard footsteps. He felt a shadow upon him. When he looked up, it was not Mocca who stared down at him. It was not the man he knew. This man stood taller, prouder, wrapped in a robe of the most pristine white and crowned with a halo of golden snakes that writhed and twisted and held themselves aloft with regal bearing, with ruby eyes glistening with an intensity reflected in the man’s own gaze.
“And I was,” the king that Mocca had been said. “I called the water that cleansed the filth and blood from the earth. I wrote the laws that made the animals civil. I abolished war. I cast out sickness. I healed the wounded and fed the hungry.” His smile was broad, triumphant. “Demon, they call me? I wear the title with pride. If it was a demon’s hubris that made beast into man, then it was a god’s vision that made it possible. I built heaven on earth, Lenk. And I can do it again.”
He held his hands out in benevolence, his skin painted gold by the light flowing from behind him.
“All you need to do… is…”
“Is what?” Lenk didn’t even hear himself, so weak and small his voice was against the splendor before him. “Is what?”
“Stand aside.”
“What?”
A small word. Fraught with confusion. The barest exhalation to summate the profoundest ignorance.
Yet it was enough to banish everything. Lenk’s eyes fluttered, and when he saw clearly once again, Mocca was gone. The golden light, the pillars, the banners, and the warm wind had all followed, leaving four lightless walls and a solid floor upon which Lenk sat.
Alone.
But not for long. The door shuddered on its hinges with a pounding whose urgency suggested that it had been going on for an appreciably annoying time. Lenk glanced at the window, saw the silver dawn light turning to golden day through the slats.
How long had it taken for what had just happened?
What had just happened?
Questions concerning demons, though pressing, were hard to focus on when the sound of wood rattling filled one’s skull. Lenk clambered to his feet and reached for the lock, then paused and recalled something that had been established when he had first arrived here.
The password.
“Ah.” He paused, trying to remember it as he spoke through the door. “Is it raining outside today?”
“It’s going to be raining red after I stab you and throw you off the fucking roof if you don’t open this door.”
That was not the password.
And considering the fury with which the threat had been delivered, it was a little alarming how quickly Lenk undid the lock and threw open the door. He could scarcely help it, though. No more than he could help the wild-eyed look of need that crossed his face when he stared at his visitor.
Bright-green eyes framed by dirty golden hair. Long pointed ears poking out between braids, flattening against her skull in a show of aggression. Lips curled up in a sneer, overlarge canines left threateningly bare.
It was decidedly more alarming that this sight should relieve him so much.
“Where the hell have you been?” he asked.
Kataria held up a dirty burlap sack with a moist brown stain.
“Getting breakfast,” she grunted.
“For six days?”
“For a few hours,” she replied, shoving him out of the way with her free hand and stalking into the room. “The other six days were spent taking care of some things.”
“And you didn’t send word? Didn’t stop in?” Lenk shut the door behind her, followed her to the center of the room. “You couldn’t be bothered to stop by and relieve me from wondering if you had been captured, executed, or—”
He caught her movement only in glimpses. First the whirl of her hair, then the thrust of her gloved hand as it shot out to grab him by the collar of his tunic. Finally he saw her teeth flashing bright white as she drew him in and pressed her lips to his, pushing past his teeth with her tongue.
After a few breathless moments, they parted with heated exhalations. She sighed, pressed her forehead against his as she ran a hand up behind his head, fingers coiling through his silver hair.
“There’s got to be an easier way to make you shut up,” she said.
“You punched me the last time,” he said.
“And what did you learn?”
He laughed. It wasn’t funny, of course; few of her jokes, which mostly revolved around violence and flatulence, were. And this wasn’t the sort of situation that lent itself well to humor.
But he couldn’t help it. It had been so long since he had spoken to anyone who wasn’t Mocca, so long since he had felt his hands touch warm skin that wasn’t his. He breathed her in, the scent of dust and leather, and felt the sweat of her brow kiss his flesh.
But she did not return his laugh. When she pulled away from him, her eyes were hard and her mouth tight. And he felt his own lips pull into a frown in response.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She opened her mouth as if to say something. Then sighed and shoved the burlap sack into his arms.
“Eat first,” she said. “If we’re lucky, you might choke and you won’t have to worry about it.”
For close to an hour, they sat on the floor and ate in silence.
Or at least they ate without words. The food Kataria had brought was a chunk of unseasoned and mostly cooked ox—it was the only edible animal this side of the Green Belt—and crunchy black bread. And they were people used to eating quickly and without utensils.
Some of us more than others, Lenk noted as he watched Kataria rip off a string of ox flesh with her teeth. The half-cooked blood dribbled down her chin and onto the lean muscle of an abdomen left exposed by her half shirt.
His eyes lingered there, upon her pale flesh and the blood staining it, stark against the absence of other grime. He squinted hard as he bit off more bread and chewed it.
Six days, he noted. And yet she wore no dust, no mud, no stains of travel upon her skin. Her shirt was dirty, as always. Her doeskin leggings were caked in dust, her boots likewise muddied. But her skin was clean, pristine.
She had washed recently.
A hand went to her belly, wiped the blood off with her glove. He looked up and caught her fixing him with a hard stare. She swallowed her food, took another bite, and only then started to spe
ak.
“The bad news,” she said through a mouthful, “is that the wanted posters are everywhere. Every village and farmhouse out here knows what happened in Cier’Djaal. And they all know that they have you to thank for all the refugees, vagrants, and bandits that have started crawling along the Green Belt.”
He nodded, only half-listening. His thoughts were otherwise occupied. Had it really taken her six days to find that out?
“The good news is that the posters aren’t too accurate,” she continued, swallowing. “I’ve listened to some conversations, asked those who didn’t mind these.” Her pointed ears twitched in demonstration. “No one’s quite sure what you look like beyond the obvious: male, human… short.”
At this he finally looked up. “Short? How short?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Like, shorter than average or short like a child or—”
“The one thing everyone knows about you, though,” she interrupted, “is the very obvious.” She pointed to the top of his head. “Namely, the fact that you’ve got a pelt like an old man.”
“It’s hair,” he muttered, touching his silver locks. “Not a pelt.”
“I’ve talked to Sheffu about it.”
“What the hell would Sheffu know?”
“Considering he’s paying to save you from whoever might want to take advantage of whatever reward is offered by those posters?” Kataria asked. “Anyway, he says we can still proceed with the plan, just so long as we do something about it.”
“Something,” Lenk repeated, echoing her ominous tone.
“Yeah.” She rose to her feet, pulled a slim-bladed hunting knife from her belt. “Something.”
With the shearing of a blade the only sound to disturb his thoughts, Lenk watched another lock of hair fall to the floor before him. He reached down, took it between his fingers, and held it up. There, shorn from his head, dull and gray, he supposed it didn’t look so unlike a pelt.
Just a piece of fur that could have come from an animal.
Any animal, really, so long as it had fangs and claws.
For what else was he?
Certainly not a man. Men were creatures of desire, of reason, and, most importantly, of choice.
Two weeks ago he might have called himself a man. He had wanted a new life, free from the bloodshed that had followed him ever since he had picked up his blade and called himself an adventurer. He had sought it in Cier’Djaal’s walls, looking for the perfect place to lay his sword to rest; maybe in the corner of a dusty little shop, or over a mantel, where he would one day point it out to grandchildren when they asked for stories.
Desire and reason he understood.
It was that last part, choice, that he always had trouble with.
Everything he had found in Cier’Djaal, he’d found with the blade. He’d found war between the gangs of the Jackals and Khovura. He’d found war between the Karnerians and Sainites. He’d found war between rich and poor, shicts and humans, tulwar and humans, all with the blade.
And with the blade he’d found himself in the middle of it, unable to put it down and walk away.
What could one call a man who couldn’t let go, even for the sake of his own life, but an animal? What could one call a man who was turned loose at the whim of another but an animal?
That was what Sheffu wanted. An animal. Any animal, really, so long as it had claws and fangs. Lenk just happened to be the one that needed something from him.
Of course Sheffu didn’t see it that way. He used big words like righteousness, savior, necessity to describe what he called a “duty that must be served to preserve mortalkind’s right to sovereignty.”
And he’d used these words to convince himself—if not Lenk—of the necessity of going to the Forbidden East, to the last known holdings of the demon known as Khoth-Kapira, to find any and all information that could be used to stop the demon’s return to the mortal world.
Lenk glanced at the spot where Mocca had stood.
If only he knew.
But for all that he didn’t know, Sheffu knew enough about men and animals alike to know what they’d do when cornered. He had promised Lenk that, if he would do but this one task, Sheffu would clear his name. He was a member of the aristocratic fashas of Cier’Djaal, and such a thing wasn’t entirely outside his power.
What could Lenk do, he asked himself, but hold on to the sword?
What choice did he have?
Another shearing sound filled his ears. Another lock of hair fell into his lap.
“What if we ran?” he asked.
“Ran?” Kataria seemed nonplussed by the suggestion, taking another clump of hair and lightly cutting it away. “Where to?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Back north, maybe. Or further south. Somewhere where I’m not wanted for the murder of hundreds.”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”
“We could move back with your parents, maybe.”
“My parents.” Her voice was flat. “My tribe, as well?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“My tribe that’s warred with human scum for centuries?”
“There’ll be tensions at first,” he replied, a grin touching his face. “But I’m likable scum. They’ll come to love me.”
“Firing their homes? Eating their livers? Hanging them up by their feet in trees and cutting their throats so that they might water the—”
“You could have just said no,” Lenk said.
“I didn’t want to sound pessimistic,” she chuckled. “Past the Green Belt, it’s nothing but desert. To get out of here, we’d have to have help. To get help, we’d have to talk to people. To talk to people, we’d have to—”
“Let them kill me for the reward money, right.” He sighed, leaning forward and burying his face in his hands. “We’re stuck here, aren’t we?”
“Well, you are, yeah.” She cut another thick strand. “I could leave anytime I wanted.”
He didn’t know why his hands shot up at that. Not until they curled tightly around her wrist.
“Don’t,” he whispered, his voice soft and desperate.
Only in that whisper, the breathless hush of his voice, was it clear. Not all these days, when he had been without her voice, her warmth.
Only in that long moment, that long hesitation before she placed her hand upon his, did he know why he clung to her.
“I won’t.”
That moment of hesitation stretched out, long after her words had failed to soothe him. He lived in it, that moment, dwelling on why it had taken so long for her to touch him, so long for her to say those words. Why was she clean? Where had she been for six days? Why did it hurt so much to think?
He lost himself in that moment, as she sheared the last lock, turned the blade, and scraped his head raw. And he didn’t look up until she dipped a cloth in a basin and drew cold water across a suddenly naked scalp.
“Think it’ll work?” Kataria asked.
Lenk stared at his pelt lying on the floor before sliding over to stare into the washbasin. When the water settled enough that he could see himself, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. This hairless man had his scars, his angles, his jaw, but there was something in his cold blue eyes that hadn’t been there before. A deep weariness that he hadn’t had two weeks ago.
The eyes of a dead man.
“Yeah,” Lenk replied. “It’ll work.”
How could it not?
Even Lenk didn’t recognize whom he was staring at.
And as he rose to his feet, trudged to the door, and plucked up his sword, he wasn’t sure if that was such a bad thing.
TWO
FRAYED
The important thing here, Asper told herself, is not to breathe too deeply.
That seemed logical to her. Breathing deeply had a calming effect, steadied the nerves. For this next part, she had to be nervous.
She leaned out of the alley mouth, peered into the square. Signs with phrases like Fine Tailors, E
xcellent Curry, and Reasonable Solicitors greeted her, their hinges creaking in a stale breeze as they swung like men from nooses.
She wondered if this place had been busy before the war. She wondered if this place had seen a lot of people: harried men darting between businesses, frazzled mothers trying to ignore children pulling at their skirts as they passed the sweetshop.
Her eyes drifted down to the cobblestones of the square, to the corpses splayed upon the streets, cooling in the morning air.
Yeah, she thought to herself. This place was probably really busy.
She took a deep breath, then reminded herself not to do that. She glanced over her shoulder at the five or so men and women behind her, their faces alternately resigned and terrified. Only the man at their front, wearing a guardsman’s armor still immaculately polished, had an expression that looked anything like that of someone ready to do what they were about to.
“Clear?” Dransun asked.
She leaned out, listened. On the wind were no sounds of stomping boots, clashing steel, or war horns. She looked back to him and nodded.
“Whenever you’re ready, then,” he said, returning the gesture.
After another breath she waved a hand and slipped out of the alley into the square. The five or so volunteers shuffled out softly behind her. She could feel their nervous stares on her back. Understandable. This was a war zone, after all; nervous stares were warranted, but they should be on alleys and entrances, not on her.
They looked to her because they were scared. And because they looked to her, she spoke to guide them.
“Remember, we prioritize the wounded,” she said. “Stop the bleeding, apply tourniquets if you need to. If no wounded, then we look to the dead. Children first, no matter what. Leave the soldiers.” She glanced over her shoulder, saw them still looking at her. “Now.”
Fear had its advantages. So long as they were at least a little afraid of this northern woman, they could be counted on to do as they did: scatter about with makeshift medical bags filled with whatever supplies they had been able to find, kneel over bodies, check for pulses and wounds, ask where it hurt. She was gratified to hear a few groans rise from the bodies, to see a few people being helped to their feet.
