by Jon Hollins
A woman scrubbing a child clean in what looked like a tub of beer stared at them with a blank expression as they walked past. A dirty fire just inside the entrance of her house made it appear to be little more than a cave. Guards wearing the High Priests’ colors marched back and forth down a few streets and clustered about run-down temples.
The street leading to the temple they were aiming themselves at largely consisted of a narrow gully running back into a steep-walled cliff. A few façades had been chiseled into the slowly narrowing walls but all of the houses appeared deserted. A few desultory strands of ivy were stretched across the stone, reaching desperately for the narrow slice of daylight that lay far above. At the street’s far end, the walls abruptly opened up to form a broader opening. On the far side of this opening lay the temple.
It was, even to Balur’s uneducated eye, impressive. Care and love had gone into the carving. Elegant columns, delicate relief sculptures, and windows laced with spidery strands of stone mounted toward the heavens. There was an air of divinity clinging to the place, as if human hands had perhaps not been wholly responsible for the work done.
There were also eight of the dozen soldiers who guarded the place, lazing in front of it. Five sat on the ground, casting dice, while another three leaned on halberds, watching from the small splash of light that fell from the gap in the rocks above. One stretched lazily, bronze armor clanking as he did so.
Balur waved as they approached. Will looked at him. “Is that …”
“Important subterfuge?” asked Balur. “I am thinking so, yes. Or were you thinking going in as a knock-kneed quivering mess would be being more convincing?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he pushed into the opening and dumped his barrels on the floor. Beside him, Will sighed. “Okay,” he said, “who wants a fresh tipple?”
Which is not how Balur would have phrased it, because he had things like pride and self-respect, but he supposed it was good enough. And the guards seemed happy with it. And the four other guards even came out of their quarters to join in. When everyone’s hands were full. And so, all in all, for all Will’s unnecessary whining, it was a good plan.
He looked at Lette and smiled. “Now?” he said.
“Now what?” asked one of the guards, as guileless as a fucking lamb.
“Now,” said Lette.
So Balur reached out and, with a short, sharp wrench, snapped the guard’s neck.
It was all over in a few seconds. The guards hadn’t really even been ready to shout. And they’d all been so raucous before, it would have been hard to notice the change in pitch. On the whole, Balur thought as he wiped a man’s intestines off his claws, and Lette wiped her knives clean of blood on her britches, it had gone well. And yet, of them all, Will, without a life on his conscience, was standing there with a look of mild horror and revulsion on his face. And Balur’s conviction that he would never understand humans at all was strengthened.
Balur ignored the bodies and strode into the temple, only mildly concerned that his bloody footprints were sacrilegious. The gods tended to be keen on blood, so, he thought, it was probably okay.
The temple’s interior was less impressive than its exterior. A narrow oval of space had been hollowed out of the cliff face, the ceiling arching up so high that Balur had to crane his neck back to see all the way to its peak. The place was thick with shadows, barely half a dozen flickering torches lighting the way, each one tactically placed to ensure visitors were fully aware of exactly how many screaming faces had been carved into every available surface. Columns of screaming faces supported ceilings carved with screaming faces. Instead of windows, the walls held large rectangular plates of stone carved with … well, to be fair, some of the faces appeared to be weeping, and some had more of a grimace, and one or two just looked to be deeply constipated, but overall most of them were definitely screaming.
“So I guess Lawl really didn’t want people to go down and get this beverage then,” Will said, pushing in behind Balur.
Lette nodded. “He’s not subtle, is he?”
“Well,” said Balur, “he was not actually writing the words ‘fuck off’ across the back of the temple, so for Lawl that is being pretty restrained.”
But then, at the back of the temple, they found a small circular opening, black as a dragon’s maw, ringed with stone thorns, leading down into a roughly hewn opening. And in ornate script, carved into the stone above that opening, were the words …
“Well,” said Will, “it’s not literally ‘fuck off.’”
“‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’?” Lette arched an eyebrow. “That’s like the definitive divine code for ‘Fuck off.’”
Will sighed. “Well, I didn’t bring any hope,” he said tiredly. “I gave up on that a long time ago. Now I just bring my own shitty expectations.”
And perhaps, Balur thought, that was Will’s problem. That he thought reality was shitty. That someone had been giving him unrealistic hopes of something better. In the desert, every Analesian grew up with a comprehensive grasp of exactly what reality was. And thanks to that, through all the beatings, liver stabbings, and ego scourings it had delivered, Balur had found himself pleasantly surprised by life outside the desert’s sandy confines.
Then Will went and ducked straight through the hole.
Lette looked at Balur, then at the hole, and then back at Balur. “You okay with that?”
“Yes,” Balur. He did not like the insinuating tone in her voice. “Why would I not be?”
“No reason,” she said.
Balur examined the hole. “It is looking like a very tight squeeze for an Analesian,” he said, by way of interesting commentary.
And then Will popped his head back out. “It really opens up once you’re through,” he said with what he probably imagined was a reassuring grin, and not the rictus smile his corpse would be wearing.
Balur considered the hole. “I am being very broad in the shoulder,” he pointed out. “Maybe I should be guarding the exit in case more guards are coming to investigate.”
Will pulled himself out of the hole, looked back at it, and then looked at Balur. “Are you …”
Balur’s eyes narrowed and he gripped his sword tighter.
“Are you sc—”
“Don’t say it!” Lette shouted just as Balur prepared to pull his blade and answer Will’s impudent question.
Was he … Was he … As if he was … that of anything. He had killed a dragon. He was a fucking warrior. He was offering to put himself in danger. He wasn’t … that of anything. Certainly not of a hole.
Stupid hole.
Will was frozen like a cornered rabbit. His eyes flicked to Lette.
“Be finishing your sentence, Will,” said Balur. “I am being interested in what you had to say.” They would see who was … that.
“Are you …” Will pursed his lips.
Balur’s growl lacked words.
“Are you scontemplating taking off your robe so none of the fabric gets caught?” Will said in a rush.
“Scontemplating?” Balur had not been expecting that.
“Yeah,” said Will. “Scontemplating. It’s how we say it sometimes in Kondorra. It’s a dialect thing.”
Balur wondered if he was willing to believe this. “I have never been hearing you use it before.”
“Well,” said Will with a not particularly nonchalant shrug, “I don’t have a very strong accent.”
Balur decided that this time he would let that pass.
Of course Balur went through the hole. He did not even take off his cloak. It didn’t get caught. And it wasn’t at all harrowing. And anyone who said that he thought it was would die while watching him use their intestines as a skipping rope. And he was glad to see that Will quickly agreed that the loud, high-pitched whimpering sound that was heard as he went through the hole was definitely due to the rock walls squeaking against his scales.
And then Will grinned at Lette, and both of them seem
ed to suddenly be a lot happier, despite the continued absence of conversational climax.
Balur licked the air experimentally, but they definitely hadn’t been fucking while he was going through the hole.
Stupid humans.
They lit a torch and went on down the tunnel that opened before them. After the grandeur of the temple, the space beyond felt oddly anticlimactic. It was a featureless tube of dry rock that they walked through for almost ten minutes before Lette came to an abrupt halt.
“Oh,” she said, holding the torch higher still. “Oh my.”
“What?” asked Balur from the back. He couldn’t see much past the glare of the torch.
“Oh,” said Lette from the front, “just Lawl dropping the architectural boom, that’s all.”
And then she lowered the torch, and Balur saw.
The walls of the tunnel ended and space began. Simply space. Whatever walls existed, they were lost to it all. The only floor was shadowed depths.
It was not empty space, though. “Are those—” Balur checked himself.
“Yes,” said Lette.
Staircases. A labyrinth of staircases. They crisscrossed back and forth through the gigantic space. They split apart. They merged. They wove in and out of each other. Massive, impossible staircases, balanced on pillars that seemed to stretch down for eternity. In one or two places they appeared to pause at platforms, large enough to camp on, perhaps, but always these platforms led to simply more staircases. All of them leading down, and down, and down.`
“Now that,” breathed Balur, “is being a fucking catacomb.”
Lette shook her head. “You and bloody catacombs.”
As if they weren’t the most exciting thing in the world.
Stupid humans.
36
To Forgive Is Profane
Quirk refused to apologize. It didn’t matter how long Afrit kept that sour expression on her face, she wasn’t going to apologize.
Instead, she looked away from her friend and looked out at the small, stinking temple that was currently trying to contain what appeared to be a riot. The decrepit old pews had been stomped to splinters and cast out onto the streets, and that had just been to make way for more people to enter. It was standing room only, the sweating, seething mass of people crushing into the room so thickly that they could barely move, only pulse backward and forward chanting Firkin’s name.
How did he do it? She knew Firkin would stand up there and tell them what they wanted to hear, and he would do it with a surprising amount of passion, but that was hardly a unique skill. Anybody lacking enough moral fiber could do that. What, aside from his unusually overpowering body odor, made Firkin so special?
Firkin himself stood in the wings, peering out at the crowd from behind a tattered curtain. He had stripped down to his dirty loincloth once more. She was trying to be grateful for the loincloth at least. She also wished his back weren’t turned, so she could tell if his expression was one of horror, or greed, or something in between.
She stared at his back as if trying to tell. Mostly because she knew exactly what look Afrit was currently giving her back. A judgmental one.
Which was, quite frankly, unfair. And wrong. Yes, Lette and Balur had done terrible things, but in this moment those things were simply no longer relevant. Perhaps in a time of peace they could be addressed, but perhaps in this time of war the two mercenaries would redeem themselves. Had Afrit considered that possibility? That resisting the urge to punish laid open the doors for potential good?
So piss on Afrit’s accusing stare. She would not apologize.
Instead she would go and make sure Firkin stayed on gods-hexed message. It wasn’t a difficult message, but that had never stopped Firkin from screwing things up in the past.
She took a step toward the old drunkard.
“We have to be better than the dragons,” Afrit said behind her.
Quirk hesitated.
“It doesn’t matter if we beat them,” Afrit said, “if we’re no better than them.”
Quirk shook her head. “I’m not having this, quite frankly, stupid conversation right now,” she said, and walked away.
“Shouldn’t you get out there?” she said to Firkin.
Firkin licked a dirty finger and held it up as if testing the wind. “Just a little longer.” He smiled at her, showing all of his browning teeth.
Then he rubbed his temples and said to himself, “Just a little longer.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Firkin?” And she knew that she already knew the answer to that. She had been in the cell, and in his chambers; she had seen what was happening to him. But she would feel a lot better about everything if she could say that he’d lied and said he was fine.
But Firkin didn’t say that. Instead he looked deep into her eyes and asked, “How do they know blood tastes coppery?”
Quirk fought to keep her groan inaudible.
“Who’s eating all the copper?” he asked her. “How is it different from iron? Who is this culinary metalsmith that has educated everyone’s palates?”
“If you’re not up to this …” she started, but she didn’t really mean it.
“How do I know what blood tastes like?” His face was as open as a child’s. “When did I drink all that?”
Quirk wasn’t sure if answering the question would make things better or worse. “I think most of us suck a cut at some point in our childhood, or put a shek in our mouths to see how it tastes.”
Firkin shook his head. “Don’t trust children. Always sneaking sips of your wine when you aren’t looking. I never wanted children. Look what I did to my father.”
Which was the first time Quirk had ever heard Firkin talk about his family. And she was curious enough to follow this strand of madness just a little further. “What did you do to your father?”
Firkin stared at her in utter bewilderment. “What?”
“You just said …” But she trailed off. Firkin was shaking his head vigorously, as if trying to dislodge something.
Then something in Firkin changed abruptly. He almost snarled and he twisted away from her, shaking off her hand. “You need me, woman,” he barked. “Not the other way.”
Quirk closed her eyes. May Knole grace her with patience. She was trying to organize a rebellion with a quixotic, mentally unhinged alcoholic as its figurehead. This was not anything that an upbringing under a brutal half-divine warlord, or a subsequent rehabilitation in academia, had prepared her for.
“You’re right,” she said, trying to hide the fact that she was gritting her teeth. “I need you. We need you. All of us. We need you to say just a few things. Just tell them you were captured by the High Priests. Tell them we’re going to fight those bastards. Tell them we’re going to fight to win. That it’s open warfare in the streets now. And then tell them who I am. Make them trust me. That’s all I need. All we need.” She almost touched his shoulder again. “Please.”
Firkin scrunched up his nose. “Maybe,” he said finally.
“Firkin, plea—”
But he had already pushed past her, and out onto the stage. “Yes!” he bellowed at the crowd.
“Yes!” they roared back. What in the Hallows they were all agreeing about, Quirk had no idea.
“I am returned to you!” Firkin roared to the crowd. They cheered back. “The High Priests thought they could shut me up. So they did. Wanted to take me off the streets. So they did.” The crowd howled and booed. Their hatred was a palpable thing. Quirk took an involuntary step back from where she waited in the wings.
“They thought they could shut me up forever. But they can’t hold me.” Firkin grinned a manic grin. “Can’t hold me forever.” As he spoke, his voice dropped almost an octave, its timbre changing, turning from shrill and piercing to loud and booming.
“Returned!” he bellowed, and the whole crowd seemed to rock back, candle flames in the face of a great wind.
Then suddenly Firkin dropped to one knee, gr
abbing at his head.
Oh piss, Quirk thought, Afrit is going to hang me on this one.
Then she recognized the thought for the self-centered idiocy that it was, and rushed out onto the stage. The crowd, already gasping from Firkin’s rapid series of transformations from rabid preacher, to voice of god, to collapsed invalid, gasped once more at this new arrival on their stage.
“Firkin?” Quirk shook the man by his shoulder. “Firkin, are you okay?”
“Sleep,” Firkin moaned. “Shut up and sleep.”
“I can’t sleep right now,” Quirk said, trying to keep the panic at bay. “I’m trying to organize a revolution.”
There was a rumbling coming from the crowd that did not sound entirely compassionate. They had come here for a show, she knew.
“Can you get up?” she whispered to Firkin. “Can you … shout and wave your arms more? You know, do your thing?”
“Get off me!” Firkin shouted, standing up suddenly. He was still clutching at the side of his head with one hand. The crowd cheered, even as Quirk staggered, trying to avoid being sent sprawling by the pinwheeling old man. This was some proper theater.
“Want to lock me up!” Firkin howled. “Well fuck them. How would they like it?” He stared balefully at the crowd.
Quirk stood feeling exposed on the stage. Was it more awkward to stay or to leave? And she didn’t want to disrupt whatever spell Firkin was weaving.
“What if we locked them up?” Firkin asked. And, yes, the crowd liked that. “What if,” Firkin asked, his smile almost lascivious, “we locked up pieces of them?”
The crowd howled with joy. The volume of their exhortations battered at Quirk. The physicality of their exuberance made the experience onstage feel almost like a physical assault.
“What if—” Firkin threw both his hands up in the air and the crowd rose to the tips of their toes. Then Firkin hesitated. And then he keeled over backward.
