The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  The fact that she didn’t so much as shudder when the bolt struck her square in the belly? That was cause for pause.

  “The Disciples said I was chosen,” she said. She didn’t even seem to notice the three feet of wood and steel jutting from her abdomen. “They said the seed had taken root. They said we would change things.”

  She took two slow, lurching steps forward into the firelight. And in the light, Denaos could see that she was not alone.

  “But where are they now?”

  He hadn’t known Lowbrow well—only as a promising thug with a mean streak a mile wide—but he knew the man’s features well enough from their passing encounters. Strong jaw, thick muscle, the sloping forehead that had given him his name; nice guy, strong-looking.

  Though he looked a lot less strong as his limp corpse was dragged by the ankle by a woman half his size.

  “The Disciples left. The visions won’t come. Khoth-Kapira won’t answer me and… and…”

  She looked up. From under a mess of sweat-streaked black hair, eyes completely white and unblinking stared up. Her mouth opened too wide for her head, her lips stretching from ear to ear, and she croaked.

  “It HURTS.”

  Her mouth craned open. Her head swung like the rusted hinge of a splintering door. From somewhere deep inside her, her croak became a scream and her scream became something else entirely.

  Something that erupted from her throat in a spray of red.

  It began as a column of flesh that rose out of her throat, born from somewhere deep within her body. It writhed, her flaccid body swaying with the motion as it twisted this way and that, as if searching for something. Eventually it angled itself toward Denaos and, with a sudden ripple of flesh, became more.

  A dozen eyes opened. A dozen fangs glittered. A dozen forked tongues flicked out, spewing feral hisses into the darkness. The pillar of flesh blossomed into six serpents, bursting out of the woman’s gaping craw like the lashes of a scourge, their yellow eyes glittering in the gloom.

  “Run.” The word sounded distant and dim in Denaos’s ears, even as it tumbled from his lips. “RUN.”

  He couldn’t tell if he had said that or just imagined that he had. He couldn’t tell if Scarecrow and Sandal had heard him or if they were moving. His feet would not move. His eyes would not blink. And he could not tear them away from the sight of the woman.

  As she took a step forward and rushed toward him.

  Arms flopping bloodlessly at her sides, the serpents writhing from what had been her head, she charged toward him inhumanly fast. She collided with him, knocking the breath from him before he even remembered how to breathe. They struck the stones in a tangled mass of flesh and fangs.

  His knife was up, slashing wildly as a matter of instinct, the flailing of a beast caught in a trap even as the snare tightened around its ankle. He was cutting, slicing, hacking; blood flew through the air. But was it his? For every time his blade found flesh, he felt a dozen pinpricks as fangs bit through his leathers.

  He screamed. Without knowing what good it would do, he screamed. The fangs tore his voice from his throat as easily as they tore his blood from his skin. Through the gnashing of teeth and the glittering of eyes, he saw one head rise up above all others, its serpentine mouth split as its eyes locked upon Denaos’s.

  His voice went raw with his scream. So loud that he only barely heard the shattering of glass and the crackling of flames.

  Fire blossomed on the creature’s back, spreading over it in a single smoke-choked breath. The heads jerked away from Denaos, exploding in spasms of shrieking fear as each tried to pull away from the fire rising upon it. Denaos in turn jerked away from them, kicking the limp body off himself and scampering away.

  He glanced at the mouth of the west tunnel. Sandal stood for as long at it took to raise a hand with a single finger. One favor, one courtesy, one that Denaos would have to pay back one day. And then he was gone, disappearing down the tunnels.

  His breath returned to him, and with it merciless sensibility: eyes to see the darkness closing in around him as the flames of Sandal’s fireflask spread, ears to hear the shrieking of the serpents as they were eaten by the flames.

  And dread inching up his spine as he heard the sound of more footsteps echoing down the tunnel from which he had just come.

  His feet found the sense to move before his brain found the time to think, sending him flying off down the eastern tunnel. Perhaps it was instinct or perhaps he still had enough sense to know that Jackals never all escaped down the same route.

  He flew, stale air rushing past him. But no matter how quickly he ran, he could not escape the thoughts that came to him.

  The heads. One of the heads is the traitor. No one else knew. No one else could have known. We only told Scarecrow and Sandal. They chose the people. Lowbrow, the Cado twins, they’re all dead. It had to be one of them. Rezca, Yerk…

  Anielle…

  No! That thought punched through the fear racking his skull. Not her. Never her. It could have been a coincidence. Maybe the Khovura just stumbled upon you.

  But the farther he went into darkness, the more he realized that was impossible.

  He could hear them. Dozens of them. Their feet were in the tunnels, scraping across the stone walkways and sloshing through the waterways. Their arms were on the walls, nails dragging across the stones. Their eyes were on the darkness, their bodies were hidden in the gloom.

  And every one of them was screaming.

  “—lies. They lied to us. They said we’d be strong. They promised. They—”

  “—where are the Disciples? Why did they abandon us? Did I do it wrong? Did we not do what you asked? Come back. Please, come—”

  “—it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts it hurts oh gods oh gods oh gods oh gods—”

  “—make it stop. Please. I’m sorry. I’m so—”

  Men. Women. Khovura, all of them. In such numbers that it could be no coincidence. Someone had sent them down here.

  “Hello?” a dull voice called out in the darkness.

  A man’s voice. Slow. Slurring. Heavy.

  “Is someone there?”

  And terribly, terribly close.

  “Please, come out. I don’t want to be here.”

  “Hush. Hush now.” Another voice. This one rasping, harsh, a rusted knife sharpening itself on a dull stone. “No fear, no voice.”

  “The others, though,” the man said, “they all say it hurts.”

  “It does, at first. You must kill them to make it stop.”

  “How?” the man moaned. “It’s so dark down here.”

  “Back. We go back to where we came from.”

  The sound of heavy feet plodding. The sound of a heavy weight being dragged. The man began to move in the darkness, away from Denaos.

  He held his breath, waited a few moments, and began to follow. This man—or at least the thing he carried with him—sounded as if he knew the way. The sound of shrieking grew dimmer as he went, distant echoes in the darkness.

  Whatever fear he might have felt, Denaos shut it out. He shut out fear for himself, fear for Sandal and Scarecrow, fear for what he might be following and fear for who had betrayed him to put him here.

  One foot after the other. Each one soft, each one soundless. That was all he could do for himself now.

  In the distance a pinprick of light appeared. It grew with each step until he could make out the unmistakable whiteness of daylight seeping from an access grate overhead.

  And, just as quickly, he saw the silhouette of his quarry. A big man, but not so huge as to make the heavy sounds of movement he had heard in the darkness. His body sagged to his left, his foot dragging behind him. What, Denaos wondered, had he been doing to make that noise?

  The answer came a moment later, as the man stepped into the ring of daylight and Denaos choked on his scream.

  It sprouted from the man’s left shoulder, a tuberous, flaccid stalk of sagging, wrinkled flesh that dra
gged on the floor behind him, threatening to topple him with every step. It resembled nothing so much as a limp phallus, twitching and pulsating on the floor. That was not quite the most horrifying thing about it, though.

  “Here?” said the man.

  The fact that it spoke was.

  “Here.”

  It shuddered to life, rising of its own accord. The puckered flesh of its tip peeled back to expose a hairless, wrinkled face that looked like that of an old man gone unkindly in the night. Its eyes pinched shut by red cheeks, it cast a sightless gaze about and spoke through puckered lips.

  “Can’t hear them.”

  “Then we can go, right?” the man moaned. “Say we can go.”

  “Finish what we started. Khoth-Kapira chose us.”

  The man could but moan as the grotesquery that was his arm snaked forward, dragging him deeper into the darkness of the sewers.

  When he could no longer hear the man’s shuffling steps, Denaos crept into the light. Overhead, daylight shafted through a metal grate. A retractable ladder hung at the lip, half drawn up. The grate looked heavy, but Denaos suspected that with a bit of finesse he could—

  “There. THERE. I see one now!”

  Or fear. Fear was also handy.

  “Wicked meat! Hold still!”

  Denaos leapt up and seized the ladder, hauling himself up. His ears filled with the sound of pounding footsteps, the man screaming, the creature hissing. He reached up, shoved the grate. After a grunt of effort and a groan of metal, it gave, flying backward and clattering.

  “No! NO! COME BACK!”

  He scrambled out of the portal just in time to see the phallic stalk of flesh come slithering into the light. It looked up at him through its pinched eyes, its toothless mouth open in a wail as it snaked up toward him. He kicked the grate down, it struck the hairless face, sent it shrieking back to the depths.

  He tore off running out of the alley, into the sprawling daylight. His eyes, familiar with the dark, seared in their sockets as he was suddenly assaulted with daylight.

  It reflected off the white walls of sprawling manses, off the brilliant windows of towering shops, off the polished brass of countless statues and fountains. Lush green lawns rolled like hills in the distance. Elegant fences rose up around him. People in fine silks and finer jewelry surrounded him.

  And, after a moment of appalled stares, the nobles of Cier’Djaal politely turned their noses up and resumed ignoring him.

  He was in Silktown.

  “Hey! You!”

  And he really ought not to be.

  He looked up, saw a small gang of men in the armor of a fasha’s house guard staring accusingly at him. He took off before they could draw their swords, sprinting away and twisting down a corner. He found another alley soon enough, pressed himself inside, and disappeared into the shadows.

  The guards rattled past, too slow to catch him and too inattentive to notice him. He waited until they rounded a corner and disappeared. Then he waited until the rumble of their armored pursuit faded from earshot.

  Then he fell to his rear end, and began to laugh.

  It was a loud, black, and wholly inappropriate sound, doubly so considering the dead comrades he had left behind in the tunnels. But he couldn’t help it. It was either laugh or start screaming.

  “Back the way we came,” he thought. That’s what that thing said down there. They got in through Silktown. Even the house guards wouldn’t have missed those things. Not unless they were ordered to.

  He leaned back, closed his eyes, felt his grin stretch so vast it might well have split his face apart.

  All this fucking time, he thought, they really did have a fasha working for them.

  THIRTEEN

  IN HEAVEN WE ARE QUEENS

  If one didn’t look closely, one would think it was just some kind of hideous growth.

  It sat between the shoulder blades of a man facedown in the water, tiny pincers at the ends of its spindly legs clinging to his moist flesh, a long proboscis spearing down into the back of his neck. Its wings were folded against a translucent abdomen that had grown bloated with blood. Its compound eyes stared blankly out into nothing. If it weren’t for the occasional twitch of its abdomen expanding, one wouldn’t even know it was alive.

  This, Asper had learned in her short time mucking through the shit of the Sumps, was the best time to grab them.

  Hecatines fed on human blood to feed to their young, storing it in their abdomens until they could return to their nests. But the act of feeding rendered them insensate, numb to anything around them and easy to manipulate.

  If not to dislodge, Asper thought as she leaned over the corpse.

  A few quick tugs found the creature locked firmly on to the corpse. She pulled a scalpel from her belt, using it to gently cut the flesh from the insect’s pincers and proboscis. Dead though the man might have been, there was no need to go mutilating him. Yet the creature’s needlelike nose tore the flesh all the same, coming free with a ripping sound.

  She cut it free, pulled the immobile, bloated insect off, and placed it in the satchel at her hip. Left behind was a gaping, bloodless wound where the creature had clung.

  This sort of butchery had bothered her, at first.

  But it was worth it. When they awoke from their comas, the hecatines would instinctively latch on to the closest thing and disgorge their meals—now purified by whatever it was that lurked inside their abdomens—by thrusting out their proboscises. If the closest thing happened to be a victim of blood loss, they proved invaluable in saving lives.

  Surely, she reasoned, any decent human being who had passed would forgive the indecency shown their carcass.

  And if they don’t, she thought as she shut her satchel tight, fuck ’em.

  That thought echoed bitterly inside her, bouncing off some emptiness where vigor and patience had been drained dry by all the days of endless wars and endless victims. It fell down into the very pit of her stomach, where it sat like a lead weight.

  And in response, something inside her yawned a gaping mouth to consume it.

  It made its presence known almost immediately. Her left arm began to burn. She felt her knees buckle suddenly, the aches of her body suddenly overwhelmed by a deeper pain. Something living, old, and wicked stirred inside her flesh.

  And spoke in an eloquent, dulcet voice.

  Ah, Amoch-Tethr said, sliding into her thoughts, have I arrived at a bad time?

  She did not speak to it. She tried not to think about it. But she could not help but feel it. His twitching, breathing, grinning presence.

  No, she told herself. Not “his.” It’s an it. A wickedness.

  I resent that, he replied.

  Her mouth fell open. She stared down at her left arm. “You said you wouldn’t listen to my thoughts.”

  It struck her only a moment later that she should be more offended by that than by any other part of this unholiness.

  I can’t very well help it when you start screaming them, Amoch-Tethr replied. Do be careful, though. You’d not want to be seen talking to yourself. It paused. She could feel his gaze shifting through her. Though I suppose there’s precious little chance of that occurring all the way out here.

  The Sumps carried a multitude of reputations: as a dangerous slum filled with those criminals too vile to be accepted into the Jackals, as a breeding ground for disease bred in the stagnant water that had come when the old seawall collapsed, as the very last hope of the very poorest to make a living in Cier’Djaal.

  It was only after the war between the Karnerians and Sainites broke out that the Sumps had started being thought of mostly as a graveyard.

  The waters that seeped through the shattered streets and crumbling buildings had rendered the place unfit for battle by any self-respecting army. Thus, many people had come here to escape the violence. It hadn’t taken long at all for them to find another kind of violence here.

  They ceased to be people once they entered the Sumps. Here
they became prey for the murderers, the thieves, the rapists and the disease and the stray beasts. The luckiest ones died quickly.

  Today the Sumps stood placid. The waters of the drowned district were still as glass, burbling contentedly when she waded through them. Its violent citizens ejected, it had found new occupants to better fit the tranquil surroundings. They drifted lazily through the drowned streets, bloated and pale and peppered with hecatine bites, staring up at the sun through eyes as glassy as the water.

  And every time she came here, there were more bodies.

  They didn’t blame you.

  In the silence, Amoch-Tethr’s voice rang out in her head.

  When they died, they did not scream how you could not save them. They did not curse your name. Their last words were not for you.

  In the silence, Asper could feel him stare at her.

  Would you like to know what they said?

  She looked down at her arm. Without quite knowing why, she whispered, “Yes.”

  And in her flesh, she could hear him answer.

  The children cried out for their parents. The parents cried out for their children. The childless cried out for the ones they never had. The orphans simply cried out.

  And in her flesh, she could feel him smile.

  And there will be so much more.

  “I’m trying.” She did not know why she said this. She did not know what justification she owed him. She did not know why she was weeping. “I’m trying. But there are so many people and there are so few of us that I can’t—”

  Oh, but you can. How long have I lingered in your flesh? How long have you kept me a secret? How many countless lectures did we sit through from healers and priests? What did they say?

  He twisted inside her. His smile became a spasm of pain shooting through her arm.

  Treat the disease. Not the symptom.

  “People aren’t symptoms,” she shot back.

  But they can be diseases, Amoch-Tethr replied. You know their names. Blacksbarrow. Careus. Fasha Mejina.

  “What are you saying?”

  A thin red line appeared in her left arm. With a sticky popping sound, the flesh split apart, curling over itself to expose the red sinew beneath. The muscle pried itself open, and in the folds of meat, a smile brimming with sharp, gnarled teeth grew wide. A long black tongue flicked out and its voice spoke from a black place ten thousand years away, with brimstone on its breath.