The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

  Teneir sighed, walked to the side of the altar, and stared intently into Denaos’s eyes. Her hands slowly went to the clasps of her robe and, one by one, began to undo them. The silk fell from her body, pooled around her feet, so that she stood as naked as Denaos.

  But what lay beneath her clothing was not the soft flesh of a human.

  What lay beneath her clothing, Denaos wouldn’t have had words for even if he’d had sense to speak them.

  Her skin was covered in scaly gray patches, glistening with moisture. Her limbs snaked out, fluid and jointless, like ribbons in the wind. Her breasts had withered away, disappearing back into her body. Whatever had seemed human about her before was now hidden behind a patchwork quilt of scales and stretched flesh.

  “What do you see when you look upon me?” she asked, her eyes never leaving him.

  He choked out a word, something he couldn’t hear over the ringing in his ears. She frowned, the tips of her fangs protruding from her lips.

  “The shicts looked upon us and saw beasts to be hunted. The tulwar looked upon us and saw monsters to be shunned. The humans look upon us and cannot tell the difference between a saccarii begging in the street and a pile of refuse. And without our stories to say otherwise, so many saccarii begin to believe that they are beasts, monsters, refuse…

  “Sheffu knew this. The human fashas said the same things of him that they did of me. Had he not been so closed-minded, we would have been fast allies. We could have found a world without the need for the Khovura. But he spent his time chasing demons and cures. He looked upon us and saw a curse.

  “Whereas I… I see strength.”

  She stared down at her hands, flexed each finger. They did not curl like normal fingers, but coiled into tight spirals.

  “Because of this, the saccarii stand outside all races. And because of this, we can see what is happening around us. We see the rich people eat each other and throw their bones to the poor, who kill each other for scraps. We see the shicts kill the tulwar kill the humans kill the shicts. We see people bow to gods, but worship the fashas, who in turn bow to criminals like you.

  “Only the saccarii can see it. Only the Khovura can stop it. Only I can end it.” She closed her eyes. Her breath came out in a low hiss. “Ancaa has given me this gift to keep me on the outside, to keep me observant, to show me what I must do. And more importantly, she has shown me what I can do.”

  Teneir’s eyes went wide, staring up through the stone ceiling, to some distant vision Denaos had no hope of seeing. Her voice became soft and reverent, every word sacred.

  “I have seen it,” she said. “No more killing each other in the name of gold or god. No more prices attached to people. No more fashas to rule us, no more thieves to steal from us, no more Cier’Djaal. What will rise up in its place will be something glorious and beautiful and Ancaa will watch over it. And all of us in it.”

  Her head swiveled on its serpentine neck. Her eyes narrowed to thin slits upon him, a pair of ochre blades that cut through keenly as the steel in her hands.

  “You look scared, Jackal,” she said. “Do you fear my appearance?”

  Her neck extended, her head sliding over him. He felt the chill of her breath upon the warmth of his wounds. He felt the very small space between his naked flesh and her fangs as she leered over him.

  “Or do you fear my words?” Her tongue flicked against his flesh with every word. “Do you fear the truth in them, Jackal? To know that this city bleeds and yours was the hand that twisted the knife in its back?” Her head drew back, face emblazoned with a disdainful sneer. “Or are you so vulgar as to merely fear for your life?”

  Had he the breath or the sense to speak, he might have denied that.

  He could not deny that it was fear that coursed inside him. The pain that wracked his body from his bruised and bleeding flesh fed that fear, made it grow fat inside him until it was something thick and wriggling inside his chest, desperate to slither up his throat. And so much of it was for himself, his broken body and his many wounds.

  But more of it was for someone else.

  The last word he had heard Anielle speak—or scream, rather—was his name. Over and over, an echo disappearing down a dark hole. He had been sick with pain, too much so to tell where they had taken her. But there, in the back of his head, between bursts of agony, he still heard her.

  And more than afraid, he felt sick. From his fears. From the fact that Teneir was right. From not having left this all behind when he’d had the chance.

  “For the saccarii, death lost its power long ago,” Teneir said. “We live with the threat of it since the day we are born. The only fear I feel is for saving this city. The only fear I feel is that there are more of your kind out there.” A coy smile—or a macabre mockery of one—played across her face. “But not for long.”

  Somehow, through the haze of agony, he knew what she was speaking of.

  “I had long wondered what price the Jackals had sold their souls for,” she said. “I was surprised when one of your own tried to buy it back. Surprised… and gratified. It was encouraging to see one of your kind try to atone for their sins.”

  “Traitor,” Denaos gasped out, barely aware of the words leaving his mouth. “Rat.”

  “Would you call a soldier who laid down his sword when ordered to kill children a traitor?” Teneir asked. “I would not. I would call him a good person. As I call your ‘rat’ a good person. They saw what you were doing to this city, saw it bled dry by your crimes, saw the gold and food stolen from the hands and mouths of its hungry and poor, saw the despots you kept in power when you could have removed them.

  “How long can you be surrounded by filth before the stench is unbearable, Jackal?” She leaned over him, close to his face. “And when your hands are the ones caked in filth? How long can you bear the knowledge that it spreads to everything you touch?”

  “Who?” Denaos gasped. “Who?”

  She smiled, sadly. “You know who.”

  Anielle.

  Her name, a needle in his neck. The way she had tried to convince him not to go to Silktown. The look she had exchanged with Teneir. Little looks, little words, little lies said by a woman who was an expert in them. With each one he recalled, the needle dug farther into his neck, and he heard her name over and over.

  Anielle. Anielle. Anielle.

  No.

  “Forgiveness is in the soul of Ancaa’s hymns,” Teneir said. “Ancaa tells us that the things we condemn a man for—his poverty, his violence—are things thrust upon him. So, too, are the crimes he commits. So, too, are the lives he takes. The Jackal came to us, repentant. And we, devout of Ancaa, forgave.”

  The words hit him, sank into him, drifted into his body and settled in his back like congealing blood. And he simply listened, numb.

  “And such good works were done,” she continued. “We stopped your crimes from extracting coin and blood from innocents. We burned the unrepentant from their dens. We… killed them.” Over these last words, she hesitated briefly. “But I knew that would be necessary. A healthy body must have its tumors cut out, from time to time. If it will mean that Cier’Djaal will be great and just again, if a few must die—”

  “How many?” The words tumbled out of numb lips, dribbled down his chin.

  “Hm?” Teneir glanced at him. “We slew perhaps… a dozen of your criminal ilk in one den, then a dozen more in—”

  “How many will you kill?”

  “As many as it takes… at first. Cier’Djaal’s illnesses are many. But there will come a time when the world is bloodless and there will be no need to—”

  And he laughed.

  It was not the right time to laugh, he knew. And judging by the scowl etched across Teneir’s face, she knew this, as well. And truthfully, he could not say why he did.

  Perhaps his body had simply been broken to the point where his mind followed. Perhaps, with everything in him being spent on feeling pain, this was all that was left. But in those fleeti
ng glimpses where his sight was not quite so hazy and his breath not quite so ragged, he liked to think it was because of the great absurdity.

  “No wonder you got one of us to join you,” he said. “We’ve done this dance so many times, our feet just go before the music starts.”

  “You speak riddles.”

  “No. Silf help me, but no. You finally make sense to me now. You’re just like us. You and Ancaa.”

  “Blasphemy.”

  “We did the same gods-damned thing when we made it. We were going to change things, be the last gang Cier’Djaal would ever need, make this city fucking work.”

  “You will not speak of Ancaa in that way.”

  “How the fuck do you think we got big?”

  “Silence.”

  “You think we took a consensus? Went door to door? We cut kids’ fingers off. We hung men by their necks from bridges. We cut them up and salted them and sold them by the fucking pound.”

  “I said silence.”

  “And every time, every fucking time, we said, ‘This is what we have to do, this is how we make shit work, this is it.’ But it never ended. We killed people to make it big, we killed people to stay big.” His laughter was hysterical shrieking smothered by the confines of the cell. “And you think you’re different.”

  “Curb your blasphemies, you vile little—”

  “You’ll have priests instead of fashas, ushers instead of thieves, but you’ll cut people apart all the same, otherwise people will start asking questions. You’ll be doing just as much killing, burning, raping as we did, but you don’t have the fucking balls to call it what it really—”

  Laughing.

  Then screaming.

  Cold stone.

  Then burning warmth.

  Her coiling fingers were on his chest, her fingernails hooked into his skin. They raked down, carving eight deep furrows in his flesh and leaving eight red lines to blossom across his pale-pink skin. He thrashed in his bonds, screamed into the ceiling.

  “You think that’s it? You think the world is just that way because you say it?” Teneir tore her nails out of his chest with a spurt of blood. She shrieked to be heard over him. “You and the fashas only think that because you’ve always been the ones to make the rules and your rule was always blood because you could always spill it.”

  She swept to the head of the altar. She seized his hand in one bloodied grip, her knife in the other.

  “But you’re not the only ones who can do that. Not anymore. I will tear your world apart, piece by piece. Do you see?”

  He felt the knife come down. And then he felt… nothing. An absence. A coldness of air hitting his blood.

  And then blazing agony. He wiggled his big finger and felt nothing there. Nothing but sticky warmth painting his palm.

  “Do you see?” she demanded.

  Slower this time. The knife moving back and forth, sawing instead of slicing. A thick popping sound. Another chill, another blaze of pain, another emptiness where a finger should be.

  “Do you see?”

  Jabbing. A thin point working its way between two flat joints. Wedging, levering, twisting. Cold. Hot. Screaming, endlessly, each scream ripped free from his throat.

  Never loud enough.

  Never loud enough to not hear her.

  “Do you see, gods damn you?” she screamed. “Do you see?”

  Darkness.

  Alive?

  Breathing. Cold. Pain.

  Alive.

  His eyes fluttered open, after several tries. They were afraid to see where he was. When they did, he was still where he had been. It had not been a dream. It had not been hell. The altar beneath his naked body was warm now, warmed by his own flesh. The manacles around his wrists still cold. And his head burned, a fever of self-defense, his brain trying to burn out the pain.

  He tried moving his right hand. Pain. And nothingness.

  She had taken them.

  All four of them.

  Down to the first knuckle.

  He wanted to cry, but no tears left. He wanted to die, but too much pain. He wanted to go back into the blackness he had just crawled out of… but no. It would not come for him now.

  He lay there. And he breathed. And he choked on his words. And he listened.

  Screaming.

  Always screaming.

  Someone was screaming down the hall. It was getting louder. Angrier. Bodies hitting the floor. Fires crackling, roaring, laughing at their screaming. He could not put the sounds together, could not make sense of them.

  Not until the door burst open.

  “Son of a bitch, there he is.” Deep voice. Familiar. Resonant. “Don’t just stand there. Get the shackles off him. There’s the key, over there. Hurry, we don’t know how many are left.”

  “Whft fbfft thg rfht?”

  “I don’t fucking care. Move.”

  Rattling of iron. Chains coming off. Someone moved his hand. He felt the emptiness again.

  Someone looking down over him, white eyes in a black face, hidden by a hood. No concern visible, no face visible, but the red tip of his cigarillo still burned.

  Yerk.

  “Ramaniel,” he said. “Are you dead?”

  “No,” he said. Truth.

  “What did they do to you?”

  “Don’t know,” he said. Lie.

  “Rezca had you followed, thought you were up to some shit,” he said. “But we didn’t track you down until just now. We’re in Silktown, somewhere underneath it. We didn’t even know about these tunnels, Ramaniel, or we’d have been—”

  “Anielle.”

  “What?”

  “Anielle.”

  “What about her?”

  “Where is she?” Denaos asked. “Did you find her?”

  “She’s… not here. Should she be?”

  “Find her. Somewhere here…”

  “There is no other place, Ramaniel. There is this cell, a hallway, a storage room… she is not here.”

  Lie?

  Truth.

  He knew it was a truth. He had bled for it. He had screamed for it. He had nothing left to deny it with.

  Anielle was the traitor.

  This was all he had left to feel. All the weight of that truth, settling down on him, as Yerk pulled him off the altar, swept him over his shoulder, and carried him out.

  Denaos stared down at his hand. Four red smears stared back. He wiggled them.

  Funny, he thought. He could still feel them. Somewhere cold, somewhere dark, he could still feel them as he wiggled them.

  Funny?

  Lie.

  THIRTY-SIX

  THE SERPENT’S LAST MEAL

  They had been a large family.

  Or perhaps a family that had just had company over that night.

  Or perhaps a widower who had laid his table out each night for children who had left and a wife who would never return.

  Lenk didn’t know. But he couldn’t help wondering as he looked back up from his journal to take in the scene before pressing charcoal to page to continue his drawing of it.

  A stone table. Not the roughhewn slabs that would make up a fortress’s walls or a street’s bricks, but a smooth slate polished to what had once been a high sheen, seated upon four elegantly carved, slender legs. Arranged upon it: seven plates, seven knives, five objects of cutlery he did not know the purpose of, four wooden cups long rotted, one large platter with its last meal forever remembered as a dusty stain. Around it, seven chairs arranged neatly but for one that had been left sticking out at an angle. That one was a small chair with high legs. Made for a child.

  Lenk paused, looking at his work.

  Absently he began to flip back through the other drawings he had made that day.

  A bed left unmade, a single dusty cushion upon the floor.

  A shrine with prayer mats left out and mercifully spared from rot.

  A fountain depicting a woman pouring water into a basin, jugs left overturned on it.

  Th
en he flipped the pages forward to the dining room. Then back again. Then forward once more. Over and over.

  As though he expected there to be people there the next time he turned the page. As though he had simply forgotten to draw them.

  He couldn’t say why the drawings, the images of lives abruptly over, unnerved him so. He had, after all, seen an awful lot of dead bodies. But they were not scenes. They were stories. The swords fallen from their limp hands and the fragments of their shattered shields told dead men’s last stories. He knew death well. He could explain a dead body.

  And, morbid as it was to admit it, he would have found the city of Rhuul Khaas a thousand times more bearable had its streets been littered with skeletons and its walls painted with blood.

  At least then he could have had some idea of what had happened. At least then he could have explained it to himself.

  A bed for two people, unmade? A jug overturned at a dry fountain? A child’s seat, left slightly askew at a set dinner table?

  He had no idea how to explain that. Without a carcass, they were just… sentences. Fragments of a story that had happened long ago and would never be told again.

  And he needed to know how it ended.

  Everything Mocca had shown him—pristine streets, buildings rising to heaven, works of art on every corner—had been shown in good faith, and everywhere he went, he could see the city that he had seen in his visions.

  But there were no people. No tulwar discussing philosophy with humans, no shicts haggling with tulwar.

  No humans walking hand in hand with shicts.

  Had they all died? Had they ever even existed?

  The scenes he had drawn would not tell the tale. Mocca would not show up to confirm or deny, one way or the other. And the scarce company he had up here…

  “Are you lost?”

  … was proving no help at all.

  “Or have you simply found something more interesting than me?”

  Lenk was an adventurer. This meant that he tended to find the sort of shit that those in respectable professions—like mercenaries or mass murderers—tended to avoid. This being the case, a voice in his head—or at least very close to his ear—did not entirely shock him.