by Sam Sykes
And everywhere he looked for that absolution, he found nothing but empty rooms and shadows.
Perhaps it was time to admit that. Perhaps it was time to let Ramaniel and Denaos both die, to tuck them into an alley and let them burn with the rest of the city. After all, he had come up with a new life before, he could do it again. It was easy as coming up with a name.
Stonk appealed to him, for some reason.
He was just about to voice this to her when he heard something.
Faint, as though from an act that had been done with great care, but he heard it all the same: the creak of wood and the click of a shutting door from upstairs. He looked up, saw the movement of a shadow as it disappeared down the hall.
“How much longer do I have?” he asked, his eyes on the upstairs.
“Maybe half an hour,” Anielle answered, fixing him with a curious glance. “But—”
He was already running, slipping as quickly as he dared, as silently as he could to the staircase and up to the second level. Anielle, in a show of frustration, merely watched him from below with a glare and folded arms. But he saw this only out of the corner of his eye as he leaned against the wall and peered around the corner.
His attentions were for the blue-clad figure making his way down the hall.
Denaos would have called him a noble, were it not for the fact that his fine robes bore holes and frayed edges and the luster of his jewels had faded to dullness. As it was, the man walking down the hall, back turned to Denaos, seemed a little like a vagrant who had looted a very fancy carcass somewhere.
But the man didn’t carry himself with the bearing of a vagrant. He strode down the hallway rather than skulking, as though this were his home. Far too shabby to be Mejina, far too well-dressed to be a servant, Denaos could only assume he was an intruder, like himself.
He wasn’t holding any valuables, though, so he was clearly no looter. What had he come in search of?
The man stopped suddenly and turned. Denaos slipped back behind the doorway. When no sign of alarm came, he peered back around and saw the man’s face: veiled by an indigo swath of silk beneath ochre eyes.
A saccarii, Denaos noted.
A saccarii very interested in Mejina’s house. The hall bore many doors on the left wall, with the right dominated by large, sweeping windows. His attentions were focused on one such window, pane shattered and frame splintered. His ochre eyes studied it carefully, never once looking away.
Even as he spoke.
“Exactly what are you hoping you’ll see me doing?”
A tense moment passed before Denaos registered that the saccarii was talking to him. And in that time, the veiled man turned and fixed a languid glance upon him.
“If you’re here to loot, go right ahead,” the saccarii said, voice deep. “Mejina squandered most of his wealth to fund his security efforts, but there remain a few heirlooms you might take.” He took in Denaos in another breath. “Though you look a bit overdressed for such low ambitions.”
Denaos remained unmoving, hand rigid upon the hilt of his blade. He hadn’t been certain what to expect in Mejina’s house, but a well-dressed saccarii certainly wasn’t it. This was a complication in a situation already crowded with complications.
And yet, he thought, it’s not like anything gets easier with a dead body.
He slowly released his grip on the dagger. He glanced over his shoulder to the houn below. Anielle had wandered off somewhere else—or left entirely, more likely. It galled him to turn away and walk toward the saccarii, but he had no choice.
He had come here for answers and this was the only one he had so far.
Even if it did raise more questions.
“Ah.” Recognition tinged the saccarii’s voice as he drew closer. “I recall you. I was indisposed at the time, but you came to my home not long ago. You are Lenk’s accomplice, no?”
The realization struck him like a lady of good breeding: gently, but firmly. There were only two well-dressed saccarii in Cier’Djaal, and one of them was female.
“Calling him an accomplice makes him sound guilty,” Denaos said, “Sheffu.”
“Men who are not guilty of something do not flee the city,” Sheffu replied. “He sought atonement, regardless of the fact that he did not start this war.” He quirked a brow at the tall man. “I suspect you didn’t tell him who did.”
Denaos leaned back, letting his fingers rest upon the pommel of his knife. He regarded Sheffu evenly, betraying nothing through his pursed lips.
“Don’t presume to know Jackal business, fasha.”
He hoped that sounded as menacing as he thought it did.
“So you are with the Jackals.”
“Oh, fuck you, old man.”
He was certain that sounded far more frustrated than he’d thought it should.
“Fuck it, then,” he muttered. “How much do you know?”
“Of Jackals? Not much. But I have been in Cier’Djaal long enough to know which way rats scurry when their holes flood.” Though his face was veiled, Sheffu’s mirth was all too clear. “You hoped to buy yourselves time to regroup by starting a different war to distract. You did this once, back before the riots, between the Morose Family and Hell’s Harlots. But the Khovura required a bigger diversion, so you instigated a war between the Karnerians and Sainites.”
He looked out the window, toward distant columns of smoke rising into the night sky.
“How is that working out for you, by the way?”
“Listen, I’ve been doing this a long time myself,” Denaos replied with a sigh. “So maybe, for once, when I meet a mysterious strange old man in an abandoned manor, I could be spared the usual cryptic bullshit and cut to the point?” He tucked a thumb into his belt. “What are you doing here, fasha?”
“The same thing any Jackal would.” Sheffu shrugged. “I seek to find the connection between Mejina and the Khovura.”
“Then he was helping them. I knew it.” He slammed his fist into his palm, triumphant. “I knew it.”
Sheffu eyed him distastefully. “I imagine most rats feel the same rush when they discover a kernel of grain in a pile of offal.” He turned away, resumed his stride down the hallway. “Mejina was not helping the Khovura. Not directly. He was a man terrified of losing status. While fear makes excellent pawns, it breeds poor conspirators.”
“You can’t be serious.” Denaos hurried to catch up to the surprisingly swift saccarii. “It all makes sense. Mejina reached out to the Khovura to enhance his own status.”
“It is in the fashas’ best interests to keep things exactly as they are. Why would they speak to a cult prepared to destroy everything?”
Denaos scoffed. “This is a footwar. We’ve seen a hundred gangs before the Khovura and the game never changes. The uniforms do, but every thug in the city still wants to rule it.”
Sheffu merely fixed him with a look that suggested the previous rat analogy might have been too generous a description for someone of Denaos’s intellect.
“All right, fine,” Denaos said, “they’re considerably more fucked up than your average gang. What would they want with Mejina?”
“Whatever it is, they have already done it. The slaughter at the Silktown gates was out of character for Mejina. He was a small man pretending to be big. Violence is not in his nature.”
“How would you know?”
“We had tea often. Among the fashas, Mejina and I were something of kindred anomalies. Pardon the vulgarities, but those broke as shit tend to keep each other company.” Sheffu waved a hand. “It is concerning, though. For Mejina to have ordered such savagery, something must have changed. And if the Khovura are behind that change, they are seeking something in the fashas.”
“Like what?”
Sheffu halted as the hallway ended, surveyed a tall door that marked its end. “Something they could not achieve through violence, as they did with Ghoukha. It troubles me.” He studied the door carefully. “Blades, you will find, are the resort of ma
licious and desperate men. When they put them away, they are no less malicious, but far more patient.”
Denaos met his ochre gaze for a moment. When he spoke, he did so slowly and clearly.
“So,” he said, “what did we agree about the cryptic bullshit?”
“I never agreed to that.”
Sheffu took the handle of the door and gave it a tug. It held fast. And despite each successive tug he gave, he could not budge it.
“Strange,” the saccarii murmured. “It does not feel locked, but…”
“Use both hands,” Denaos said.
“That… could prove difficult.”
With an exasperated grunt, Denaos nudged the fasha aside. He took the handle and gave it a tug. Sheffu had spoken true: There was not so much as a give, let alone a rattle that would indicate a lock. It was as though the door had been sealed completely into its frame. Undeterred, he took the handle in both hands, put one foot on the wall to add extra pull, and, with a massive heave, jerked it backward.
A slight give. And then an eruption.
The door flew open with a burst of stagnant air, flying off so violently as to hurl Denaos aside and crack against the wall. He staggered back, his marvel at the reaction overwhelmed by the stench that followed.
Stench, actually, might have been the wrong word. The aroma that emerged from the dark room beyond—while certainly unpleasant—was too clean to be called so. It carried with it the scent of packed herbs and stale incense, conspiring to mask some other odor, as though someone had tried to scrub the very air clean.
“No lamps,” Sheffu murmured, stepping forward and peering into the darkness beyond the door. “This is the only room without lights.”
Denaos followed slowly behind the fasha, into the gloom of the room. Through the fading light behind him, he could just make out the outlines of bookshelves, a desk, cabinets. The windows were shuttered and draped. A study, then; maybe some kind of accountant’s office. But before he could dwell on it further, he recognized the scent.
Packed herbs. Stale incense. The things they used to cover the reek of death.
He thought to tell this to Sheffu, thought to draw his knife and leave. But before he could do either, the fasha spoke amid the clatter of things moving upon the desk. A switch was hit. A flame sparked. A wick caught. The study was bathed in a soft orange light.
The better to illuminate the dead body on the floor.
“Ah.” There was no sadness in Sheffu’s sigh, merely resignation, as though he had always known it would end with this. “Mejina. May you find the peace that money never brought you.”
It certainly looked as though he had gone peacefully, Denaos thought as he knelt beside the corpse. Mejina was well-dressed in a nice robe, his body unmarred by visible signs of a particularly violent death. No blood, no wounds, no bruises. Even the paint on his middle-aged features seemed undisturbed.
To all appearances the man had simply fallen asleep and not gotten up. Probably quite recently, if the lack of decay was anything to go by: no rot, no pooling of blood, none of the bloating that usually accompanied corpses long dead. He reached down, expecting to find flesh still warm.
And when he plucked up a hand cold as ice, he all but started.
“That… doesn’t make sense,” Denaos murmured.
“What doesn’t?”
“The body is cold,” he said. “Very cold. There should be some kind of sign of rot already setting in, but…” He left that thought hanging, along with Mejina’s arm. The limb was stiff, almost immovable. “The body’s stiff, but it’s too cold for that.”
“How would you know?”
Denaos blinked, looked up at the fasha. “Really, is the fact that I know Lenk not evidence enough that I happen to see a lot of corpses?” He shook his head, looked back to Mejina. “Asper showed me a thing or two about decay. Something isn’t right here.”
“Who is Asper and why—”
“Shit.” Denaos drew back the collar of Mejina’s robe. Adorning the man’s throat was a puncture wound, perfectly circular. “Look at this.”
Sheffu leaned down, squinting. “So this is how he died? Stabbed like a dog?”
“Do dogs get stabbed?” Denaos shook his head. “Either way, no. This is too small to be a blade. Barely bigger than a pin. But the wound hasn’t closed and it was made too clean, no struggle.” He looked up at Sheffu. “Someone stuck him after he was dead.”
The saccarii’s brows knitted in concentration, his attentions focused on some distant thought.
“The smell,” Sheffu muttered. “Like trying to cover up death.”
Denaos hesitated to ask how the saccarii had come to that conclusion. But, as he said, he had been in Cier’Djaal a long time.
“There are remedies,” Sheffu continued, “toxins and chemicals, crafted by the Bloodwise Brotherhood. The couthi can make things that could preserve a body, prevent decay when injected from within.” He glanced around, drew in a deep breath. “And with the right environment, no light or warmth to advance rot…”
“They preserved his body?” Denaos slowly rose up, staring down at Mejina’s cold corpse. “And left it here… for someone to find it.”
“That is alarming, yes,” Sheffu said. “But not nearly as alarming as the source of the mixture. The couthi are driven solely by money. They do not sell their services cheaply and this… could not have come cheaply.”
“A fasha,” Denaos said, “that’s the only explanation.”
“A fasha, yes.” Sheffu looked down at the corpse and shook his head. “But not Mejina.”
“Then who?”
“One question,” Sheffu said. “But one more prominent occurs. If Mejina has been dead for this long, he could not have been the one to order the massacre at the Silktown gates.” He began to look up at Denaos. “And that means—”
The saccarii’s gaze rose halfway, halting at Denaos’s feet. His eyes grew urgently wide and he whispered something profane beneath his veil. Denaos, quirking a brow, followed his gaze down to his own ankles to see what had alarmed the fasha so.
He wasn’t quite sure what that thing was coiling about his boot: a thin gray tendril of flesh, shyly slithering around his ankle. He wasn’t sure where it had come from or how it had crept upon him. And he certainly wasn’t sure what was happening.
Not even as it snapped taut, pulled him hard to the floor, and dragged him screaming into the hall.
He scrambled for purchase, groping at the rugs and clawing at wooden support beams. He tried to fight back, swinging vainly and flailing haphazardly at the tendril wrapped around his leg. But each time, the tendril jerked sharply and slammed him into the wall or against the floor so that eventually he simply tucked his head low behind his arms and hoped that would prevent the worst of it.
But as it snapped around the corner and smashed him against the hall’s entryway, that seemed like wishful thinking.
By the time he could feel his body being dragged down the stairs, he was numb to the worst of it. Blood trickled from a gash in his brow, pain reverberated in his bones, but he could scarcely feel the jarring sensation of his limp form being hauled over each step.
His breath left him in a heave as he felt himself lifted off the stairs and dangled upside down in the air. Shadows swam through his vision, rendering the houn a dark blur. His ears were filled with noise as the beating of his heart fought against a ringing in his head. His skull felt far too fragile, at that moment, to contain the lead weight that was his brain, and he felt as though it might simply snap the bone and slide out and stain the carpet.
He doubted he would feel it. He was barely sensate enough to see. He could make out dark shapes crowding below him on the houn’s floor. They reached up for him with dark hands as his arms dangled lifelessly. They were speaking—he could hear their voices only in swaddled murmurs, their words lost to the sound of his ragged breathing.
Slowly he spun in the tendril’s grip like a twitching body in a noose, until he came f
ace-to-face with gray lips trembling in wordless murmur. Before he remembered he was upside down, they looked to be smiling with unpleasant broadness. But as his vision cleared, he could see the entirety of the monstrosity’s visage: vast mouth set in a columnar head beneath a pair of eyes that looked as though they had been scribbled black with coal.
A Disciple. A demon. An old man’s torso stacked upon the serpentine tail from which he dangled, withered fingers ending in black claws, and daggered tongue hidden behind shriveled lips.
Had he had the sense to do so, Denaos might have screamed, maybe soiled himself for good measure. As it was he could but blink dumbly at the abomination before him.
He supposed he ought to be thankful for that.
“Why do you resist?”
The demon’s voice crept past his ears and into his mind as sensation slowly returned to him.
“Millennia have I slumbered at the God-King’s request and I awake to a world unchanged,” the Disciple rasped in a voice that came from somewhere dark and damp, “as though my meditations were but a blink, my suffering but a breath. I return to find mortalkind still so terrified of knowledge, still quavering in the shadows so that we must lure them out with craven duplicity.”
Funny how he couldn’t understand the demon any better now.
“Is it any surprise?”
Another voice rose from the floor of the houn. Softer, frailer, female. But no less sinister: It raked across Denaos’s flesh and set his teeth on edge.
“They wither without guidance,” the voice continued, “huddle together beneath silks, mistake the glitter of gold for the splendor of heaven.”
His eyes swung low. Even upside down, he could see the splendor of the woman. She stood a glittering jewel amid the black clothing of the Khovura huddled around her. Her dress was an elegant green silk embroidered with gold designs of Ancaa’s sigil: hands connected in a circle of fellowship. Her manicured fingers drummed thoughtfully upon her arm. But above the finery of her veil, her eyes burned yellow with contempt.
Familiar contempt.
