by SGD Singh
She watched Aquila shake his head at something Kelakha said as Ursala leaned toward him, and tried not to laugh as the three boys made the same rude hand gesture.
Are you gonna come sit with me or spend the whole night arguing?
Aquila turned his head, his eyes finding hers in the darkness, and Asha felt her heart leap as a dazzling smile lit his face. Kelakha and Ursala spread their arms in protest as he rose with his easy grace and crossed the garden to sit behind her, wrapping her in his arms. Asha leaned against him with a sigh.
'Lakha thinks he can convince Chakori to put us back on active duty, and Ursala wants to force Uma to change her mind by doing something stupid to prove they need us.
And what do you think?
I think I'm sick of their whining. He kissed her neck, his lips soft and warm, and Asha caught her breath. And there's no place I'd rather be than here.
“Asha,” snapped Lexi. “You were the one who asked Arihan to tell this story. At least listen, for fuck's sake.”
The others kept playing their card game. Freya and Hua Tseng laughed at Wei Feng's expression as his cards changed from a royal flush to a pair of threes. Ariella and Bao Chen threatened to quit playing with the Illusionists. Hua Tseng shrugged, throwing her cards down and turning toward the fire.
“We want to hear this story, anyway,” the Illusionists declared in unison. Freya tossed her cards at Ariella and turned to Arihan. “It's how you got your scars and Dhevan lost his foot, right?”
Arihan inclined his head at her. “That it is.”
Kelakha and Ursala came to sit on either side of Asha, pointedly ignoring Aquila behind her, and everyone turned their attention to Arihan.
“As I was saying,” Arihan began again, “it was Mucenici, the ninth of March, and there we were with no Mucenici, which, anyone who's been to Brasov knows has to be eaten fresh. The situation was unacceptable.”
Ariella turned to Dhevan. “He's making shit up again just to mess with us, right?”
Dhevan shook his head, smiling at the fire.
Arihan motioned everyone forward. “Gather around, my friends, and listen to my cautionary tale of high adventure and gore. I promise you will not be disappointed.”
“But you'll most likely be confused,” said Dhevan.
“First, the secondary hero of our story will recite for you a list of brief and mind-numbingly boring historical facts.” Arihan waved at Dhevan, who shot him a dark look, then cleared his throat.
“Brasov is the fairly small city in Romania where a number of us completed training. Headquarters looks down from Tampa Mountain onto the old city, hidden within an illusion of trees. Mucenici is a traditional holiday in Romania and Moldova. It's a feast, celebrating and remembering the forty Christian martyrs of Sebaste who refused to give up their faith. They were tortured and drowned by Emperor Licinius somewhere around 320AD. Every March 9, people pay homage, celebrate the spring, clean out their homes, and burn trash in the streets. In olden times, they thought burning trash would bring heat back to the earth. They also eat—”
“All right, all right, they get the point,” Arihan said. “You're putting them to sleep.”
Dhevan glared. “They also eat reteta mucenici moldovenesti, which is a dessert made in the shape of a figure eight, symbolizing the human figures of the martyrs.”
Lexi asked, “Is that really what happened, the forty martyrs, or was it Underworlders?”
Dhevan shrugged his massive shoulders. “Who knows? There's nothing in the books. And believe me, we checked.”
Arihan made a sweeping gesture.
“So! Imagine, if you will, a group of extraordinarily striking youths, much like yourselves, only much more attractive.” He grinned at them. “And like yourselves, we had endured months of training during which we were forced to eat only the healthiest, most wholesomely distasteful food. But, unlike you, we had once experienced the syrupy, lemon-zesty, walnut-covered deliciousness that is a freshly baked, drizzled with honey mucenici.”
He turned to Nidhan. “Just knowing the dessert was out there, a short stroll down the hill away, growing colder and staler with each passing minute… it was truly unbearable.”
Lexi rolled her eyes and leaned on Nidhan's shoulder.
Dhevan tapped his false foot with a jagged knife. As Asha watched, the metal limb flashed in the firelight, and its carving of the screaming demon seemed to come alive.
He pointed the knife at Arihan and smiled around at the group. “Uma told him he couldn't get into town and back without any of the Masters noticing.”
“Yeah, that too. And you decided to prove her wrong about Tvastars, just so she'd declare her undying love for you once and for all.”
Everyone froze, waiting to see if Dhevan would react with a violence he seemed more than capable of, but he just laughed, studying his carved foot with apparent pride.
“Love,” he said. “Never has there been a more potent force to motivate brainless, idiotic action.”
Ursala shifted uncomfortably. “This isn't a story about how you and Mom hooked up, is it? 'Cause if it is, I can go dig a ditch or something.”
Asha elbowed him in the ribs, and Lexi snapped, “The next person to interrupt gets my laundry duty.”
“Thank you, Hewitt,” Arihan poked at the fire with a stick.
“You can't just arbitrarily decide to give people your laundry duty,” Nidhan told Lexi, and she scowled, then leaned into him, whispering something in his ear that made him laugh.
Asha called, “Who's not paying attention now?”
Arihan threw a log the size of a grown man onto the fire, and sparks erupted into the dark sky. “It's a twenty-minute walk from Headquarters down Tampa to Town Hall Square. From there you take a shortcut through Strada Sforii and then over one street to a little restaurant called Carne Si Dulciuri.”
“Meats and Sweets.” Dhevan smiled, shaking his head.
Wei Feng raised a hand. “What is a straata sfour-dee?”
“Rope Street. It's the smallest street in the world or something, like a super narrow alley. Dim and cobblestoney. A person can reach out and actually touch the buildings on either side. We barely fit through the damn thing.”
Dhevan flipped his knife in his hand. “The street is about four feet wide. It was originally built for firemen, but has become a tourist attraction.”
“Okay, no more boring facts, yaar. Seriously. You're not contributing to the excitement of the tale.” Arihan rolled his eyes for the benefit of the group.
Dhevan made a gesture with his knife that Asha had never seen, and Nidhan laughed.
Arihan waved him off like a pesky fly and leaned forward again, his eyes sparkling. “After a heated argument with Uma and Chakori, where I believe we convinced them Tvastars are superior to Jodha in every way, we left Headquarters. I won't bore you guys with how we got through security. Let's just say Tvastars don't need full-security rings.”
The whole group turned simultaneously to Nidhan, and he shrugged, looking confused.
“So we got through the forest, past the church and the square, no problem. And then, on the other side of Strada Sforii, there are these four assholes beating up a little kid.”
“A girl,” said Dhevan, and Lexi sat up straighter, frowning.
“Right.” Arihan grimaced, his metal teeth flashing. “So, I shout something really pithy like, ‘Hey, motherfuckers!’ And the guys turn and take one look at us and split, right?”
Everyone laughed.
“But Dhevan, probably figuring Uma would swoon if he beat up some spineless scum, takes off after them. And that's when this woman rushes at him from out of nowhere, gushing and crying about how thankful she is that he saved her granddaughter, or something. And she's pulling on his arm and trying to drag him into a house. Meanwhile, I'm helping the kid, you know? She's all shaky and crying, her clothes are torn, and there's blood coming out of her nose and shit. She's a mess.”
Dhevan pointed his knife at Ar
ihan. “Uma would've totally swooned. Still, we should've noticed that kid wasn't really hurt.”
“Way to spoil the big surprise, yaar.” Arihan made an irritated noise, and Dhevan grinned.
He did lose a foot, for Christ's sake. No one's surprised it was a trap.
Aquila rested his chin on Asha's head, wiggling the rings on her fingers. Lexi won't give you her laundry duty, Asha. She just wanted to get a reaction out of Nidhan.
Asha looked across the circle at Lexi, who narrowed her eyes at her suspiciously.
I'm not taking any chances.
“So we go into the house, and it's this restaurant-hotel place, right? It's dark and creepy in a worn-out, falling-apart kind of way. Very ‘local color’. There are a few middle-aged guys drinking, and a kid in filthy rags cleaning tables. And we notice it right away. The irresistible smell of fresh mucenici.”
‘
Dhevan nodded. “I’m trying to get the old hag off me, and she's shouting something toward the kitchen, and the next thing we know about five ladies are herding us to a booth. They're all smiling with grateful tears and shoving mucenici under our noses.”
“That's what we were in town for in the first place, right?” Arihan spread his arms wide and kicked at the log, causing a fountain of sparks to spray into the night sky like angry insects. “I mean, what would you have done? And it was better, I mean way better, than the stuff at Meats. No comparison.”
“Maybe the poison added to the flavor,” said Dhevan brightly.
Arihan looked thoughtful. “Huh. Maybe.” He grinned. “I never thought of that.”
“Jesus…” Aquila muttered behind Asha, and she laughed silently.
“So, yeah,” Arihan said. “I realized the mucenici was rotten in Denmark when Dhevan passed out. He's a faster eater than I am, you see.”
Dhevan bowed his head and swept his arm in a sitting bow.
“Turns out, the whole place was crawling with Reavers that night because of something the Masters hadn't bothered to tell us about, and which is a whole different story.”
“You're confusing them again.” Dhevan tapped out a beat on his metal foot with his knife. “Reavers, boys and girls, are like familiars on crack. Or, pirate familiars, if you will. Instead of just worshipping Underworlders for their own gain, Reavers enjoy the hunt. They enjoy perpetrating crimes for crime's sake. Underworlders pay the best, so Reavers are more than happy to work for them.”
Arihan grimaced. “Fucking Reavers, man…” He shook his head, then seemed to remember his audience. “Anyway! They must've thought I ate more than I did, 'cause I came to while the little girl, the one we thought we'd helped? She's ripping my fucking tooth out of my head. She's got these pliers, and she's just twisting and yanking the shit out of my tooth, you know? It takes a lot of self-control to pretend to be unconscious, work restraints, and have your teeth pulled all at the same time. I want you all to just take a moment to acknowledge that fact.”
Everyone looked around at each other, wide-eyed with genuine admiration.
“Thank you.” Arihan nodded. “I'm not ashamed to admit it. When I got my arms loose, I may or may not have thrown the little bitch against the wall, which may or may not have killed her. And if you have a problem with that, you can bite me.”
“No one has ever had a problem with it,” said Dhevan, rolling his eyes. “You're the only one who keeps beating yourself up about it.”
Arihan shrugged, and scowled at the fire, his expression filling with guilt for a brief moment before his eyes flashed with rage. “My weapons had been taken, obviously, but I'm working the remains of the restraints as I stagger out of the room. It was a tiny stone room, real moldy. Even creepier than the restaurant. Quiet. I can tell it's pretty far underground, and I'm concerned that Dhevan would still be out. Anyway, I have a couple pretty good knives by the time I hear the sound of machinery starting up.”
Arihan let the silence drag out for a moment, letting everyone wonder about the machinery.
“And then I hear excited laughter, the kind that makes your skin crawl. I turn the corner, following the sound, and just as I get to a doorway, the most horrible scream I've ever heard fills the whole basement. I mean, Dhevan has a magnificent pair of lungs on him, yaar.”
“I'd like to hear the sound you'd make if you woke up to your leg being pushed through a fucking meat grinder,” Dhevan growled. “And those were pretty shitty knives.”
Arihan waved that away. “So there's these five Reavers, laughing it up while they try to force a still-drugged-up Dhevan into a giant meat grinder. I won't lie to you guys. I froze for a second. Time seemed to slow down, and my shocked brain managed to register a big sticker on a freezer that said ‘Meats and Eats: The Best Muschi de Porc la Cuptor in the World.’ I mean, a couple of our friends ate that shit.”
‘
Asha realized she was gaping at him right along with everyone else. Dhevan grinned. “Muschi de porc la cuptor is a Romanian delicacy of pork—or, in some cases, I suppose, human—with rice, tomato sauce, eggs, and parsley, which is all wrapped in pickled cabbage leaves, and served with polenta and sour cream.”
The stunned silence dragged out.
Asha tried not to smile as she noticed Lexi glaring at the two Masters. She felt Aquila laugh silently against her back as Lexi shouted, “Are you guys fucking kidding me right now? What happened next? Pickled cabbage leaves and polenta, my ass!”
“Well,” Arihan drew a slow circle in the ashes of previous fires, letting the seconds draw out with a mischievous smirk. “My shitty knives came to the rescue. What do you think happened? First, I took out the main guy holding Dhevan. Big, ugly dude with rotten teeth. The second knife went into the guy taking the majority of Dhevan’s weight. After that, it was just a simple matter of smashing my fist through the faces of the next three Reavers, then tearing my shirt to tie a tourniquet on Dhevan's leg, and we were good to go.”
Dhevan nodded. “Except for the Asura.”
“Oh, shit,” Ursala muttered. “I forgot about his scars.”
“How could you forget about his scars?” Asha whispered.
They had all seen the six jagged lines that reached from the top of the Tvastar's freakishly large shoulders all the way to his waist. They were almost as dramatic as Nidhan's fresh marks. After all these months, Asha still had to force herself not to stare every time they had training sessions in the forgery.
Ursala shrugged and looked at his father's metal foot in a new way. “I guess I'm just used to them.”
Arihan grinned. “You must have realized by now that nothing makes more beautiful scars than Asura.”
Lexi smiled at Nidhan. “Almost nothing,” she said, and Asha could've sworn Nidhan blushed.
Arihan nodded in agreement, shrugging. “So, we climb this narrow staircase, and it's really disgusting, like the walls were made of mold, right? And we're almost out when we see two Asura hunched over a table of bones. Apparently, they're there to buy stuff for Witch spells or some shit. I'm assuming my teeth would've fetched a pretty price.”
“I still wonder what was wrong with my teeth,” Dhevan said, running a finger along his perfect teeth and shaking his head. “But there wasn't time to ask. And now we'll never know.”
Everyone blinked at him in the firelight, each of their gazes traveling to his false foot. Asha always assumed he lost his foot to something that looked like the hideous creature that was carved on it.
“Anyway,” said Arihan, “we knew we had to get to The Black Church—”
“So named for the fires that blackened its stone walls.”
“Are you finished?” Arihan spread his hands and gave the dark sky a tortured glare. “I'm just getting to the exciting part, and you have to ruin the mood with historical facts, yaar.”
Dhevan tapped the flat of his knife along his foot, and the demon seemed to wince in the dancing flames. “I'm finished.”
Arihan gave him a final scowl, then looked around the circle. “
So. We could see a door leading out into a street. All we had to do was get past the Asura, out the door, through Strada Sforii, across the square, and into the church, and we'd be home free. But we were unarmed, right? 'Cause I'd already used my shitty knives.”
Dhevan opened his mouth to say something, but Arihan raised a hand. “Now, Asura sense fear, which you know. Plus, they're pretty damn fast, and they obviously love the idea of getting their slimy claws on Guards' parts and pieces.”
Everyone burst into laughter.
“Okay, that came out wrong.” Arihan pretended to be embarrassed, but he was grinning.
“Dhevan was beyond pissed off at this point. They weren't going to get any fear out of him. The problem was that I was facing the task of carrying his gargantuan ass all the way to the fucking church. I mean, I'm strong, but at seventeen I still had limitations, you know? So, yeah! I may or may not have had a tiny twinge of anxiety. Sue me. So the Asura turn, and they're looking right in our direction. I could see they were about to come carry us both back down into the mother-fucking meat grinder, right? So we did the only thing we could at that point, which was to ram them.”
Dhevan nodded. “When in doubt, ram 'em.”
“We had about a three-second element-of-surprise head start on them, but then they turned into these really, really horrifying dog-demon things, and came after us.”
Everyone's eyes snapped back to Dhevan's foot, and he raised it proudly into the light.
“I've got Dhevan across my shoulders, and I'm hauling ass through Strada Sforii, and by now I'm kinda grateful to the monsters for helping me forget about what my body can and can't do. The damn street is so narrow, I'm worried I'll smash Dhevan's head against the wall, and I'm trying not to hold his legs too tight 'cause one of them is all ground off and shit. Meanwhile, these things are gaining, you know? Growling and gurgling like… well, demon-dogs. Very intense. Let's take a moment to appreciate the heroism.”
Arihan bowed his head, folding his hands.
