The Mortal Tally

by Sam Sykes

“But I can’t do it alone, Ramaniel.”

  Denaos drew in a breath full of the scent of water. He looked up at Rezca. He saw those calm, clear eyes through the glass of his spectacles. He saw the smile that men as hard as Rezca weren’t supposed to have. He saw Rezca’s open hand, extended to him.

  Just half a breath before he felt Rezca’s knife enter his back.

  No pain. Not this time. Just cold steel parting flesh and sinew and scraping against bone. Just warm life seeping out of him and staining his clothes. Not even a thought to spare as it plunged into his back three more times.

  “Teneir has resources I don’t,” Rezca said between strokes of the blade. “Her ideals are ridiculous, of course, but this city won’t run without me, no matter how hard she prays. It really was the better deal, Ramaniel.”

  Denaos froze, twitching, body unable to understand what had just happened. His mouth craned open in an agonized shriek that wouldn’t come. He rolled onto his back, eyes welded shut, limbs locked in mid-spasm. He felt Rezca loom over him, lay a hand gently upon his shoulder.

  “Anielle would forgive you,” he said. “But not me. I hope you’ll tell her, though…” His voice shuddered, broke. “For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

  Steel in his chest. Stone beneath him. Blood blossoming in bright trails as he was pushed gently over the edge and plunged into the water below.

  And sank. And sank. Until it no longer hurt.

  FORTY-TWO

  THE BLADE, FALLEN

  It had once been a man.

  Or a saccarii. Maybe a tulwar or a shict. A warrior, a merchant, or a beggar. Maybe a father or a grandfather or just some orphan who wandered into the wrong place and said the wrong words.

  Doesn’t matter much now, I guess, Lenk thought as he peered out from the doorway. Whatever it is, it’s an ugly son of a bitch.

  And yet as he dared to edge closer to the door and look out onto the street, lit by the unnatural light of the globe-lamps, ugly seemed too weak a word and son of a bitch too generous.

  It loomed seven and a half feet tall, its upper body a mass of bulging, bloated muscle that its skinny, all-too-human legs seemed ill equipped to handle. Its left arm was just as thin, while its right was an almost hilariously disproportionate pillar of muscle ending in a massive clawed hand. Its chest was a barrel-shaped mess of scales and leathery skin. The remnants of its face, which once had been a man’s, were contorted in a gaping-mouthed, unblinking vision of agony.

  And somehow, for all its misshapen horror, that still wasn’t the weirdest thing about it.

  From each of the abomination’s shoulders sprouted a long, glistening serpent. And where the formerly human face was a witless, unseeing patch of flesh, these serpents swung their spade-shaped heads around on writhing coils. Their eyes were bright with attention, tongues flicking in and out as they searched the empty street.

  A moment. They swung their heads over to Lenk’s hiding place in a nearby door. He held his breath and slid slowly behind the frame.

  They can’t see you, he told himself to keep himself calm. They can’t see you. Stay calm. They can’t see you.

  Their twin gazes rested on his hiding spot for a tense, breathless eternity. Then, slowly, swung away and turned their attentions back down the street. The tiny legs of the abomination quivered as they began to haul the bulky mess of muscle atop it down the street, seeking prey elsewhere.

  Lenk waited until the feeling of wanting to vomit passed. That, he supposed, was as good an indication as he was ever going to get.

  “It’s gone,” he muttered, turning to the darkness of the house. “Are you all right?”

  Shuro didn’t take her eyes off the bandage she was wrapping around her arm. She looked more annoyed than in pain, which Lenk couldn’t help but feel impressed by—he had seen the gash that thing had made in her arm.

  “I was careless,” she spoke through clenched teeth. “Let my guard down. Won’t do that again.”

  “You could be forgiven.” Lenk eyed her sword lying beside her, its blade slick with red. “You killed about six of them first.”

  “And there were twenty more.” She leveled an icy glare at him. “There will always be more. The fact that they’re here means we are out of time. Khoth-Kapira has called his chosen. He is ready to rise.”

  Lenk wanted to counter that, or at the very least ask her how she was so certain. And he just might have, had his eyes not been drawn by a flash of movement within the empty house.

  There, white against the darkness, Mocca stood at the back of the house. His eyes were affixed to Lenk with a hard look. His lips were pursed in unwavering silence.

  A day and a night had passed since Lenk had discovered his secrets: Oerboros, his breeding pits, his plans. A day and a night of finding Shuro, fighting their way through the twisted, hulking forms of the Khovura. A day and a night of fleeing, searching, surviving.

  In all that time, Mocca had never once disappeared from his sight. And in all that time, Mocca had never once said a word.

  His face was unreadable, his expression inexplicable. Lenk was tempted more than once to just start screaming, demanding what he wanted. And he might have, had Shuro not been by his side this entire time.

  “So what do we do?” Lenk asked.

  “We stop them,” Shuro said. Her sword all but leapt to her hand as she rose. She inspected it, drew a cloth from her belt, and wiped it clean. “There are a number of ways a demon might be called back from hell and our order is not clear on how these are done. But we know that they all require outside intervention.”

  “That’s what the Khovura are here for. Hell, they must have crossed miles of desert,” Lenk said. “So we stop them and…” His eyes drifted up. Mocca stared back, silent. “And we stop Khoth-Kapira from returning.”

  “The Khovura would be here to protect whatever they’re using to call to him,” Shuro said. “A ritual, maybe. Or a sacrifice. Whatever it is, it’ll be done in a single location.”

  “Find that, find the Khovura, stop them,” Lenk said. “Easy enough.”

  “Easy.” Shuro made a sound that was either a chuckle or a grunt. “Sure.”

  “You’re sure you can handle it?” Lenk eyed her arm. “With your wound and all…”

  “Whether I’m sure or not is irrelevant.” Whatever mirth was in her vanished, replaced by cold words and cold eyes. “I have a duty to do, so I will do it.”

  Lenk nodded. “What about Chemoi?”

  “Not a priority. If she’s not dead, we’ll find her after we’re finished.”

  He had expected that, spared nothing more than another nod for it. He returned to the door of the house, leaned out, and glanced up and down the street. Beneath the artificial orange light of the marching lamps, he saw nothing.

  “All clear,” he said. “What do you—”

  He turned and found her standing not a hairbreadth from him, eyes locked on him. Her stare was as deep and blue and intense as ever, but the severity he usually saw inside her eyes was softened, somehow, resolution replaced with a quiet desperation.

  “I need to tell you,” she said, her voice frightfully soft, “that I hope we both survive.”

  Lenk blinked dumbly. “Is there a reason for—”

  “Because we might not,” she interrupted. “And this whole time I’ve been talking of duty, I forgot you never swore the same oaths I did. You could go now, if you wanted.” She glanced to the floor. “I wouldn’t stop you.”

  And there she was again: the Shuro he had seen so rarely that he wondered, at times, if he had simply dreamed her. A girl with a carefree laugh and shy eyes who got nervous around him. It was as though there were two women, and Lenk wondered which was the real one: the swordswoman with a hidden laughter or the girl who buried herself under oath and duty.

  Maybe he could find that out, he thought. Maybe, after all this was done.

  After all… a cold feeling welled up inside him, an iron knife stuck in his belly that cut its way up to
his throat. What else do you have to go back to?

  “I’m here,” he said. “You’re here. We’re not leaving without each other.”

  She looked at him for a moment. She did not so much move toward him as fall into him, stumbling awkwardly to him and pressing up against him. She wrapped her arms around his body, held him tightly, as though this were her very first hug and possibly her very last.

  “Thank you,” Shuro said.

  She pulled away from him. And just like that, the girl was gone. Her eyes were hard as the hand clenching her sword. She spared him one more look before pushing past him and stalking out into the street.

  She glanced down to one end of the street, made a motion for him to follow. He did so, blade in hand as he counted ten paces behind her: enough to move and enough to be close should they be ambushed. They kept close to the walls of the buildings lining the streets, walking beneath the shadows of the looming houses and temples as they followed the street west.

  In the open air, their footsteps made not a sound. The guttural roars and hisses of the Khovura abominations were silent. Even the wind no longer moaned, leaving the city in a state of absolute silence.

  “She loves you.”

  Naturally, Lenk supposed, Mocca would choose this moment to start talking.

  “Or at least the idea of you.” The man in white appeared at the periphery of his vision. “One can hardly blame her. Surrounded as she was by acolytes and hearing of nothing but duty, you must seem rather exotic.”

  Lenk ignored Mocca—or tried. He kept moving, kept his eyes forward, left Mocca behind. Though it didn’t help. No matter where he walked or looked, the man in white was always there, at the edge of his vision.

  “Not to imply that you lack virtues,” Mocca continued. “Well traveled, courageous, having seen places and met people she could but dream of… well, who could fault her being attracted to the idea of that?”

  Eyes forward, he told himself. Eyes forward, sword ready, ears closed.

  “I imagine the idea of her has allure, too, doesn’t it?” Mocca’s voice was flat, incisive, a scalpel blade given sound. “Once this is all done, you could go back to the monastery with her. Of course, they’ve trained all their lives to kill, so your desire to put down your sword will sadly go unfulfilled. But then, that hasn’t been working out, has it?” No mockery. No sneering. That was a cold, bleak truth. “And who knows? They’ve been training all their lives to kill me. And once I’m gone, perhaps they’ll dedicate themselves to something else?”

  He chuckled. “After all, it’s not as though this world will be any less awful for my absence.”

  Lenk had known a few demons. He had killed each and every one of them. And each and every one of them had died screaming, cursing, savagely wailing in the agony of their last moments. Demons were plucked from hell and given a brief taste of a cleaner world before he sent them back to the darkness. It made sense that they would resist going back with everything they had.

  To hear one of them speak so casually, so calmly of his own demise, left Lenk slightly unnerved.

  It’s a trick, he reminded himself. Remember what you saw down there. Remember what he’s done.

  He kept his eyes on Shuro as she led the way, creeping toward an intersection where the street emptied out into a square.

  “Perhaps you weren’t meant to put down your blade after all,” Mocca said, his voice trailing behind Lenk’s ear. “There were thousands of opportunities to do so, after all. But you’re still here, aren’t you? At the very least, were you to go back to her monastery, you wouldn’t be alone. You could share time, share a bed, perhaps more.”

  Shuro swept to the corner of a nearby building, crouched down, and peered out over the square. Lenk began to rush to join her.

  “Of course,” Mocca said softly, “she’s not the one you love.”

  And Lenk froze in his tracks. Mocca’s voice was a slow poison spreading through his veins, making his blood run cold and his guts clench into knots. Whatever warmth had lingered from Shuro’s embrace was gone. What remained was a cold truth, ugly and heavy as a beaten anvil.

  Shuro had many sides to her, it was true. But whether she was the girl who had been given a sword too young or the warrior with flashes of laughter and shyness, it didn’t matter.

  She was not Kataria.

  But then, that didn’t matter, either, did it? Kataria was gone, fled with another woman, of her own kind. Wherever she was, if she was even still alive, she was happier. And even if she wasn’t, she was not here.

  Shuro was here.

  His blade was here.

  And so, so many things he needed to stick it in were here.

  Up ahead, Shuro waved him over with an urgent expression on her face. He hurried over, crouched down behind her by the building’s corner. The giant square, a nexus of four streets, was dominated by a towering statue at the center. Mocca’s robed body rose from a stone pedestal and atop his shoulders, one head with four of his smiling faces looked down each street.

  But it was what lurked beyond the statue that drew Lenk’s attention.

  Hulking and withered, slithering and shambling, hauling flaccid limbs and sprouting serpents, their faces contorted in witless agony, the mutated remains of the Khovura dragged themselves across the street on the far side of the statue. More emerged from other streets, joining them in a slow-moving river of malformed flesh, all of them flowing into the street leading north with a singular purpose.

  Both Lenk and Shuro breathed shallowly, did not move. The multitudes of heads present in that macabre parade did not turn their way yet, but the slightest movement might draw their attention. Stillness was imperative, silence was absolute.

  “Have you forgotten?”

  Almost absolute.

  “You began this journey for a new life and the shict, and now you have neither.” Mocca leaned over him, speaking bold words that no one else could hear. “No matter whether I live or die, you’ll have nothing left but the very sword you’ve tried so hard to put down.”

  Shut up, Lenk thought, as though he could simply will Mocca’s silence by thinking hard enough. Shut up.

  “And all of it, all the promise I hold and all the good I could do, you’re willing to throw away for what?” Mocca hissed. “The words of a spited lover? The mistakes you saw in the pit? They were but the cost of creation, sins I paid to bring progress and perfection to a people sorely in need, sins I have paid for over thousands of years. Am I not entitled to redemption? Am I not permitted to atone for those sins by improving this wretched world?”

  Lenk wanted sorely to scream, if only to shut up the man in white and drown him out with sheer noise. But he didn’t dare speak now and reveal his secret to Shuro. Now was not the time.

  “So that’s it?” Mocca muttered, sounding almost petulant. “Wars I could end, diseases I could cure, lives I could save… you don’t care at all for them? The misery of this world does not move you? So be it.”

  A pause. Long and filled with dreadful anticipation. When Mocca spoke next, it was a whisper right next to Lenk’s ear and it carried with it the venomous chill that he had felt.

  “But what of Kataria’s misery?”

  Every muscle beneath Lenk’s clothes clenched. His blade shook in his hand. Only by the sheerest will did he not whirl and strike at Mocca for even speaking her name, for all the good that would have done.

  “Forgive me,” Mocca whispered. “I know it was your desire that I stay away from her and out of her head, and perhaps that I sought her out will be but one more sin for which I’ll atone. But I did. I reached across the desert and found her.” He hesitated. “She… did not leave you by choice, Lenk.”

  “What?” he demanded, narrowly avoiding shouting out.

  “Silence,” Shuro hissed, remaining still.

  “She was taken in the night,” Mocca continued. “And now she stands at the center of a war that will soak this world to its core in blood. I have seen it, all of it. The sh
icts are on the move, ready to slaughter. The tulwar march to Cier’Djaal to burn it to the ground and the humans stand poised to tear each other’s throats out before all they know becomes bone and ash. A hundred tides of battle and they will all converge upon her.”

  It’s a trick. Lenk repeated to himself, over and over. It’s a trick, it’s a trick.

  A pause. A singular, momentary absence of thought. And then…

  But if it isn’t…

  “Lenk, listen to me,” Mocca said, “I have made countless mistakes, maybe some so severe that I cannot fix them, but failing to stop this war cannot be the last one I make. I can save this world. I can save everyone. If you cannot put down your sword, let it be used to save a thousandfold more lives than it’s claimed. And if none of that moves you…”

  Mocca spoke softly.

  “Then let me save her, Lenk.”

  Lenk looked at him, at this man, this figment, this demon. And in his eyes and in his face, it was easy to forget what he was. Within his eyes danced urgency, desperation, impotence: common maladies of common tyrants whose grasps had proven slipperier than they’d thought.

  But looming large over these vulgar emotions, the slate upon which they were chiseled and the cracks at the edges, was a more peculiar emotion. One that Lenk had seen before in the eyes of men and women who knew the value of life shortly before it was taken.

  Fear.

  Honest, breathless, common fear. Such as any mortal would feel.

  “Let me do this, Lenk,” he whispered. “Let me help her.”

  “They’re gone.”

  Mocca vanished. Lenk’s attentions jerked back to Shuro. She was up, creeping out into the square. The shuffling, groaning press of flesh continued toward the street leading to the north two hundred paces ahead, none of them bothering to look behind them.

  “They’re all heading to the same place,” Shuro whispered. “That’s where it’s happening.”

  They crept down the street after the Khovura procession, sticking close to the buildings. The city grew like a forest around them. The humble low-roofed domiciles rose with each city block, becoming towering spires that reached high into the night sky. The glowing lamps thinned out, plunging the city into a deeper darkness.