by Sam Sykes
“Don’t remember me?” The beggar laughed again. “Aye, that’s probably all that saved me. I kept to myself, didn’t go to any festivals, didn’t attend any gatherings. I was fleeing shit back east, didn’t want a life there. But I got one.”
The beggar’s voice quavered. His eyes glistened.
“I had a life. I had a wife. She had a name and so did I.” He spoke through clenched teeth, the words trembling. “Gathwer. That was mine. You took hers.”
“I don’t remember.” Lenk’s voice sounded distant in his ears, like someone else’s.
“Her? I’m not surprised.”
“Any of it. I remember shadows, fire, people dying.” He shook his head. “Bandits.”
“Bandits?”
“Or shicts. Or tulwar. Or a Karnerian raiding party looking to expand eastward. A barn fire that got out of control, something, I don’t know. It’s happened before.”
Gathwer’s mouth hung open. “You murdered the lot of them and you have the blasphemy to say you don’t remember—”
“Do you?” Lenk seized him by his dirty clothes, slammed him against the wall of the building. “Do you remember seeing me kill them?”
Gathwer held firm, as firm as a man like him could, before answering. “No. But I remember you. I remember the sullen, brown-haired kid with the dark eyes and smelly grandfather. I thought you just another farmer’s runt until the night it happened. You disappeared in the fire…”
He raised a trembling finger and thrust it at Lenk.
“And you came out of the ashes,” he hissed. “At first I thought it was someone else. He had your features, your build, but his hair was gray as a mule and his eyes were cold. But it was you. Gods help me, I know it was you.”
“Horseshit.” The word came too late, too quavering to sound convincing to either of them. “Horseshit.”
“Wizardry, a god’s curse, demons,” Gathwer said. “I don’t know what caused it and I don’t care. I don’t care what made you do it there or in Cier’Djaal. I don’t care where you’re going so long as you stay the hell away from me.”
His arms were skinny from years of hunger, his muscles shot with weakness. Yet when he shoved out, Lenk felt his legs go out from under him, suddenly bloodless. He fell to the ground as Gathwer took off running, disappearing down another alley.
He should pursue, he knew, lest the beggar go and report him to some guard.
Failing that, he should begin counting off the reasons why the beggar had to have been lying, why that story was insane.
Failing that, he should run and find a dark place to hide until things started making sense again.
But men like Lenk were ill suited to thinking. He lived body to body, cut to cut. And perhaps the only way out of this was more cutting.
He could only hope Farlan Sandish would be a different man than he was.
“This isn’t any wiser than before,” Mocca protested.
Lenk, of course, was not listening. His legs had found their blood and his ears had found the sound of dirt crunching under his feet.
“Really, have you not learned that yours is not a life that begs haste?” Mocca’s voice was shrill as he hurried to catch up.
Lenk, of course, did not answer. He could not afford to. He had to keep moving.
“Will you at least stop long enough to tell me where you’re going?”
“Back to my room, then to the docks,” Lenk said, turning down another alley. “There were some boats there. I can cobble enough money to hire someone to take me upriver.”
“Unnecessary,” Mocca said. “Guards must be inundated with false reports about the assassin of Cier’Djaal. I highly doubt that anyone will take the word of a filthy northerner.”
“I don’t care about that,” Lenk said. “I have to get out of here.”
“What? And go where?”
“Anywhere, I don’t know. Away from here. Away from all of this.”
“All because of the ravings of a madman?”
“He wasn’t mad.” Lenk turned a glare upon Mocca. “I looked into his eyes. He believed what he was saying.”
“No one ever accused the insane of insincerity. It’s highly possible he was terrified to the point of lying. Or perhaps he misremembers.”
“That would make two of us, then,” Lenk snapped, the ire rising in his voice. “I certainly don’t know what happened that night. Or the night before. Or any other night. When I think of Steadbrook it only comes in flashes, snippets like stories I’ve overheard. I can’t remember the first girl I ever kissed or my mother’s face or what I did on that farm. I can’t remember how anyone died or what I was doing before I picked up this.”
His hand went to the bundle of sticks on his back, found the hilt of his blade as though it had reached out for him. He pulled it free, the sword shining bright against the waning moon, eager to be out and unhidden.
“Maybe he was lying,” Lenk said, looking over the naked blade, “maybe he was scared. But I can’t say he’s wrong.”
“What does it matter?” Mocca held his hands out. “Lies or truth, it’s in the past. We’ve come this far for the future, to find a new life, to—”
“We have done nothing!” Lenk all but roared. “I came this far for a life. My life. Because I wanted something good.” He held the blade up, looked at himself in its reflection. “But how the fuck would I know what that even looks like?”
“You’re overreacting.” Mocca’s voice came out on an exasperated sigh. “Though I suppose I should hardly be surprised. Your desperation to find any excuse to flee from responsibility is growing a tad predictable.”
“Responsibility? For all this shit that fell on me?”
“Despite what poets and priests might say, fecal matter does not fall from the sky. One has to step in and then decide whether or not he wishes to clean it off.”
“I’m not going to listen to a demon about matters of cleanliness.”
“As I said, whatever stories you’ve heard are—”
“DEMON.” Lenk spit the word, let it sizzle on the air. “Whatever the stories, whoever the storyteller, that’s the word they use for you. And whatever you did to earn it, you still earned it. Tell me whatever you wish, but don’t expect me to listen to any lectures on responsibility.”
Mocca’s face grew hard, his eyes narrowing to thin slits. “The world is not so vast as mortals pretend it is, Lenk. Trust someone who has had eternity to watch it rot.”
The stare Lenk returned was as hard, as dark, and much, much colder.
“The list of things I trust is growing shorter every breath,” he said simply. “And on it, you are at the very bottom.”
There was, Lenk decided as he turned away and stalked out of the alley and into the streets, very little satisfaction in arguing with a demon.
Granted, he hadn’t been certain what he was expecting. Demons—insofar as he had experienced—were prone to dramatic speeches and senseless gibbering in equal measures. But then again, most of those demons had been in the process of trying to kill him. He could have tolerated a declaration of doom laced over fiery rhetoric. He could have suffered a howling, shapeless shriek hurled at his back.
But the funerary silence that fell between them as Mocca watched Lenk depart without a word was something altogether too chilling.
He slid his sword back into the makeshift sheath on his back. In the echo of his words, he was given time to think. Gathwer’s words still hung about his neck like a yoke, dragging his head down as he made his way through the streets.
He tried to ease his thoughts with bigger concerns, such as how to get back to the inn. He glanced up and saw that he was at the center of a dusty square between a cluster of merchant stands and the looming wall of a barracks. He looked down the street he thought led to it, then let his eyes settle upon the shadows.
And the man who crouched within them.
His gaze lingered too long, he stiffened too noticeably; either way the man came creeping out of the sha
dows, eyes wide and bright as the naked sword in his hand. Lenk heard footsteps on dust behind him, cast a glance over his shoulder, and saw three more men emerging from the alley and street mouths. Two held shorter blades, the third a spear, each one made of new steel, untested and shiny.
Djaalics, though not from Cier’Djaal, if the cut of their shabby clothes was any indication. Their eyes were big, but the fear within them was not so thick that it could hide the intent echoed in their weapons. Lenk made a show of sliding his sword out from behind him, shrugging off the bundle of sticks and raising the blade.
“It’s not worth it, boys,” he said. “I don’t have any money and you’re not going to like how this ends.”
The first man, the one with the biggest sword, seemed to register the words, but merely looked over Lenk’s head to the three behind him.
“You’re sure that’s him?” he asked.
One of them held up a wanted poster bearing his image. The man looked it over, then looked back to Lenk and nodded.
“Yeah, it’s him.”
“But he’s got no hair,” the man with the spear said.
“I’m not him,” Lenk said. But he could see in their eyes that they were not listening, or at least not convinced.
“It doesn’t have to be hard,” the lead one whispered, stepping closer to Lenk. “It doesn’t have to be messy. We don’t even have to kill you, if you just cooperate. The fashas, they’ll…”
Apparently he could think of no reassuring way to end that sentence. Lenk held up his blade, edged his way toward a wall to take all of them in his view. They made no move to stay out of his line of sight, clustering together. Inexperienced, Lenk recognized, standing too close together, probably thought it’d keep them safer.
“He’s not going to listen,” one of the men with the short blades hissed. “We’ve got to do this. We’ve got no choice.”
“You’ve always got a choice,” Lenk replied, coldly. “Yours are to see this end cleanly or in a mess on the dust.”
“He can’t take all of us.” One of them went into a twitching stance of readiness, holding his blade out as if it were a lance. “Come on.”
“But—”
“I SAID GO!”
He loosed a shriek as he charged toward Lenk. The one with the spear shakily echoed him, following. But once they drew closer and the one with the blade made a lunge, the spear-carrier faltered, perhaps out of fear of accidentally striking his friend. Or out of fear of being killed.
Lenk wasn’t about to stop to ask.
He let the one with the blade make his move, lowering his sword as he stepped deftly past a clumsy thrust. His blade came up in an instant, finding reflexes sluggish and flesh unguarded. Blood spilled on the ground, spattering in a bed upon which the man fell, unmoving.
The one with the spear faltered further, stepping back as he jabbed his spear, as though Lenk were a dog who could be held at bay with a stick. When he pressed forward, undeterred, the man turned the spear sideways and held it up before him as a makeshift shield.
Perhaps he was inexperienced with the weapon, or perhaps he just underestimated Lenk’s strength. He certainly looked surprised enough when Lenk leapt forward, bringing his blade down in an arc upon the center of the spear, behind the weight of the head, to cleave first through wood and then through sinew.
Splinters flew amid drops of scarlet as Lenk planted a boot in the man’s stomach and jerked his blade free in a wet burst. He leapt over the man’s body and rushed toward the other one with the short blade.
This one leapt back as Lenk swung, narrowly avoiding a cut across the chest. Immediately he tried to get back in with a low thrust, attempting to use the short blade to get inside Lenk’s swing. A sound plan with a clumsy execution; he stumbled on his own feet and Lenk darted back, bringing his blade up to hack at the man’s wrist and send the blade flying from his hand.
He screamed, clutching at his wounded arm with his good one and then holding both up as a flimsy shield as Lenk’s downswing came upon him. Bone snapped, dust crunched beneath a body, and Lenk turned and saw, through the red that dotted his face, the last one.
The man with the big sword stood now, as he had stood the whole fight, with eyes wild with amazement. He held the weapon in front of him, hands wrapped one over the other on the hilt, as though it were a ward that would keep Lenk at bay.
It did not. And as Lenk advanced, he took a step backward. His lips quavered, trying to form words that wouldn’t come. A plea? A threat? Lenk didn’t know, Lenk didn’t care. He couldn’t afford to.
He sensed the man’s uncertainty, rushed to capitalize upon it. The man brought the blade down in an awkward swing. Lenk met him in a lock of blades, twisted his own grip so that the man’s weapon pointed down and hammered a fist against the man’s now unguarded jaw.
He staggered backward, dizzy from the blow. When he recovered, the fear was gone from his stare. Now his eyes were simply bright with surprise.
Perhaps he hadn’t even noticed it when Lenk had driven his sword through his belly.
He stared down at the weapon dumbly. Again his lips twitched. The words came on a slurry of blood and tumbled upon the dust. He followed them as Lenk pulled his weapon free and stepped backward.
Through the sound of his own heart beating, he almost missed the sound of footsteps approaching behind him. And when he turned into a swing, he almost tore off the head from which two blue eyes stared at him.
“Easy.” Two hands caught his wrist, held the blade quivering a finger’s length from the soft flesh of a neck. “Easy.” And though his flesh and his steel were both painted red, her voice was calm. “It’s over.”
That woman, the one in black. What was her name?
“Shuro,” he whispered.
“Farlan Sandish,” she replied.
It took him a moment to remember that name. And in that time, she eased his sword down and away from her. Suddenly aware of what he had almost done, as well as what he just had done, he stepped away. She raised the brim of her black hat, observed the bodies, and knelt down beside them.
“They came after me,” he said. “I didn’t—”
“I know,” she said. “I saw. They attacked first.”
He paused. “What else did you see?”
She looked up at him meaningfully. “Nothing else.”
True or not, he chose not to challenge her statement. “What are you doing out here?”
“Same as you, I’m sure,” she said. “Jalaang’s best prices come after midnight. I was closing a deal when I heard the commotion.” She pried open one of the dead men’s hands, observed his palms. “Soft hands.” She glanced at the weapons lying scattered and unbloodied. “Too soft of this kind of steel. These weren’t warriors.”
“Then they—”
“They had no business drawing them on someone who was,” Shuro said. “Don’t explain yourself to me.” She glanced up at the sky. The moon was gone entirely, indigo night having given way to pale dawn. “In fact, you’d do well to not mention this to anyone. The Old Man is leaving in a little over an hour. The guards here don’t get paid enough to find bodies in that time, let alone find who made them.”
She looked at him. Her eyes seemed different from when he had seen them in Gurau. Brighter, more alert, maybe.
“Head back to the inn. Take the back alleys. I’ll tell the innkeeper there’s a problem with my room. Check to make sure he’s gone, then go up to yours and wash quickly. Be at the docks when the time comes.”
He furrowed his brows at her. “But how can I—”
“And don’t. Ask. Questions.” She rose up, carefully checking her clothing for any traces of blood. “You don’t need me to tell you that, do you?” At his shake of the head, she nodded. “Be quick, Farlan Sandish.”
That was good advice, Lenk knew. She was clearly a woman who knew more than she was letting on. It would be smart to listen to her.
But then again, just about anything would have been sma
rter than what he’d done.
He knelt beside one of the dead men, looked over his face. Plump cheeks, clean-shaven, not a single blemish beyond wrinkles of middle age, let alone a scar. He wasn’t just not a warrior, he was someone who shouldn’t even have heard of battle outside of what stories he told his children.
Did he have children?
“Merchants.”
Lenk did not start at Mocca’s voice. Nor was he surprised to see the man standing amid the slaughter, white robes unsullied and expression unflinching. His hands were folded behind his back as he surveyed the dead men.
“The one with the big sword was, at least,” he continued. “His business in Cier’Djaal did poorly. A fasha came to collect on his debts. He took all he had left to buy that sword, hoping to collect on your bounty. This one”—he glanced at the one with the spear—“was his brother-in-law and partner. The others were his cousins, in similar straits.”
“How do you know?” Lenk asked.
“I try not to pry, where possible, but the thoughts of dying men are difficult to ignore. Their final wishes, their hopes and prayers, go out for miles in all directions. Mostly, though, they think of their families.”
“And did they?”
“They did,” Mocca said. “From the moment they saw your face on the poster to the moment they saw your face painted with their own lives.”
Mocca, in cruelty infinite, said nothing for a moment, that his words might hang in the silence like a man from the gallows. And when he spoke, his words were a macabre mercy.
“It won’t stop.” He looked at Lenk, unblinking. “There will be more to come. Men, women, old, and young. Some greedy, some wicked, but most of them desperate. For them to live, you must die. No matter what life you crave, what life you had, all you will have is more of this.”
He gestured over the dead men. And in the spaces of dry dust among the pooling blood, his point lay.
“What do I have to do?” Lenk asked, so weak he barely recognized his own voice.
“Do as the woman instructs. Go to the Forbidden East.”
“And then?”
