An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  Tirdad heaved a sigh that rang in his ribs, so he followed it with a long draw of wine. After laying the missives side by side, he stroked his beard and combed for anything out of the ordinary. Each had unique handwriting, for all that mattered in a world where scribes were easy to come by. If the letters had been written by star-reckoners, they were as unimaginative as they were secretive. The shipping manifests proved a better read.

  Intoxication crept into his vision such that he had to concentrate on individual words as he went, which turned out to be a blessing: striking through that haze rewarded him with an unexplored perspective. Each mentioned death, but curiously so. The letter from the capital insisted that some woman had passed. One responded that she had passed too soon—that she would never be good enough. It urged caution almost sympathetically. The third agreed with the first, as if this woman’s death were up for debate. Its author believed her passing would teach some party a valuable lesson in the dangers of meddling. None of this was said in so many words, but Tirdad could see it now as if it’d been obvious all along.

  Another gulp of wine, this time for his heart. On the verge of tears, his back shook. Ashtadukht had tried so desperately to explain this when he caught her having murdered Mehr-farr, but he didn’t want to hear it. The star-reckoners had conspired against her, knowing full well she was unprepared. This was her proof.

  “Fuck!” he yelled, throwing his goblet across the room, where it dashed its contents and shattered over the stone. “Fuck!” He buried his face in calloused, weathered hands.

  Tirdad had exiled the woman he loved, then he ended her life. Her sins were hers, and there was no getting around their breadth and severity. But this painted them with more telling strokes. A conspiracy by her superiors, her word against theirs? Surely, she knew accusing them would only show her hand. So she’d been careful, calculating, managing to convince them some phantom of a div was responsible for picking them off one by one. By Ohrmazd, the patience it must’ve required. The self-control. Until he’d gone and ruined it for her.

  For the longest he’d seen it as misguided anger. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

  A shadow fell over him, lifting his reflection, and in turn his head. Canted and unreadable besides her fatigue, Shkarag stood with a pair of goblets. “Here,” she said, offering one, and taking a seat once he’d accepted. She drank with gusto, then gingerly placed the empty cup beside her outstretched thigh, watching him as if to say this is how you handle a glass without breaking it.

  He followed her example, then wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Sorry for waking you a second time. I just . . .” He gestured at the documents. “I figured it out.”

  Shkarag probably cocked her head, but he took it as a nod.

  “I should’ve listened,” he rambled. “Should’ve . . . so much I should’ve done differently. Maybe we wouldn’t be here right now. I’m thinking about how desperate she was to explain, for me to understand. It must’ve meant so much to her. She’d kept it to herself for decades. Can you imagine, Shkarag? Holding onto your purpose so resolutely, thinking all the while you can’t trust anyone with the truth? Then, when the one person who should listen forces it out of you, you’re unable to get through to them? They’re deaf to your plight. And you’re alone, exposed, and you were right all along in your distrust.”

  Shkarag’s blank expression hadn’t faltered.

  Tirdad reached for his sword, eager for its comfort. He laid it across his lap, and absently stroked the scabbard. “What do I do?” he asked her, the wine loosening his lips. “She’s gone, and I’m stuck with this guilt for which I can’t hope to make amends.”

  She just stared, pupils expanding as a passing cloud cast its shadow over the estate.

  “No long-winded analogy grasping at wisdom?” Tirdad pressed, unsettled by her inscrutable hush. “Not going to insult me?”

  At that, she parted her lips. Surely, a thousand sinuous suitors crowded at the challenge, all vying to be the one to court her tongue. Shkarag disappointed them all when she deliberately closed her lips around her retort. Still blank.

  Tirdad couldn’t hide his astonishment. So accustomed to her pell-mell character, it was even more unsettling to see what might’ve been discretion. “Shkarag?” he asked.

  She turned that expressionless stare on the sword, then got to her feet. Without a word, she took their goblets and left him alone in his room. Tirdad frowned at that. His thoughts were at the same time distressing and untamed, worried as he was over things he couldn’t make out in his drunkenness.

  After what seemed to him a lengthy absence, she returned laden. Shkarag placed a full goblet in front of him. Beside it, an assortment of eggs. She reclaimed her spot on the floor, and hooked her good leg around a rhyton filled to the brim with wine. All without breaking the silence or her composure. A quaff and she placed her goblet by her side, pointedly gentle. He followed suit, too muddled to do much else. She tilted the rhyton to refill his and only his cup, then picked a mint-coloured egg from the collection. Watching him as if to be certain he was doing the same, she lifted her chin and, looking down her nose, opened wide to give him a clear view of her fang as it uncurled then pierced the shell. A thin stream of yolk seeped into her mouth.

  Tirdad considered the many-coloured clutch she’d given him. There were eggs belonging to eight or nine species, probably from her personal collection. With an expert right in front of him, he figured she’d know best, so he chose a mint-coloured one. Tirdad followed her example, tilting his head back and, because he had no fangs, cracking the egg over his mouth. The contents oozed over his tongue and down his throat, unexpectedly normal-tasting as far as yolk was concerned. What caused him to heave was the half-developed embryo that slid down with it. He drained his cup to wash it down and shot her a look of revulsion.

  “That was fertilized,” he said.

  Still looking down at him with that faraway stare, she cracked open her egg so he could see that hers was as well. The shell joined it, which she chewed.

  “Oh,” said Tirdad. “Guess you use the unfertilized ones for omelettes, huh?” He let whim guide his hand to the next egg—spherical, and the pink of a sky over snow. “We’re going to the capital,” he told her. “I’ve some questions that need answering.”

  Shkarag refilled his goblet.

  V

  Three more weeks of waiting and Tirdad’s blood ran hot with desire. He wanted justice; he would demand it where she had not. Someday, he would demand it for his part in Ashtadukht’s demise as well. For the time being his guilt would have to do—no one else was going to champion the truth in a society that claimed to live by it. He would have stormed off half-drawn if Shkarag weren’t around to keep him level.

  He wasn’t too dense to see the tables had been turned, and it amused him to no end that he was being kept in line by a daughter of the hypostasis of discord. This dominated his thoughts as she stood before him, a thin silhouette at the vestibule’s exit.

  “My ribs have healed,” he said. She cocked her head, which encouraged him to add, “Mostly.”

  Shkarag shifted her weight, rousing his suspicion that her leg bothered her more than she let on. She massaged it at every opportunity as it was.

  “You should rest your leg,” he suggested, not really expecting it to work. “Take a load off.”

  “Thigh’s tickety-boo.”

  “Never mentioned your thigh.”

  She hissed at that. “Can’t heal and travel. Can’t do both. Think you’re hefting two watermelons with one hand like some šo-strapping legend. But the legend isn’t real, because it’s a legend. It’s a quack. You’re a quack. A šo-fucking quack. Not buying your piss water hair oil or tooth repair. Go to bed.”

  Tirdad blew out an irritated sigh. The amusement ended there. She was right, of course, and that only irritated him more. “The wait is eating at me, Shkarag. I can’t sit around any longer. It’s maddening.”

  “Wait is . . . wait is eating at . . .” She t
railed off, but only because of the apparent rage that washed over her. Oftentimes, a person’s voice can take an edge. Shkarag’s skipped the edge altogether and dove off a precipice. She cocked her head the other way, fingers quaking and grasping at the air by her sides. “You don’t know what it means to wait!” she yelled.

  Tirdad took a step back. Perhaps, he admitted, he should just do as she says today.

  “Never waited in your—” Shkarag braced herself on the doorway, fishing in her pouch for a handful of eggs, which she devoured. Her shoulders slumped, and the rancour fled her delivery. “Don’t like waiting either,” she garbled, mouth full and coming off as a confession. “Don’t like it something fierce.” She flexed a claw by her head, and the pitch that she ended on was one he’d come to recognize as an overture to something of import. Instead, she exhaled heavily and walked by, saying, “That’s just as the crow flies. Hit the trail.”

  Tirdad followed her departure with concern. “Are you coming?”

  “Maybe.”

  He prayed it was in the affirmative, because he had no intention of leaving her here, or anywhere for that matter. He’d convince her somehow. Fortunately for his nerves, he didn’t have to wait long. Shkarag soon emerged in her armor with a full sack slung over her shoulder, spear on her back.

  “We’re walking,” he told her. Palm on the ram’s head hilt, he angled it to indicate her thigh. “Can you manage with your leg?”

  She promptly dropped the sack and withdrew into the estate. Shortly after, she returned with a more travel-ready bag, and wordlessly transferred roots, onions, turmeric, and basic cookware from the sack. Shkarag pointedly looked up at him as she tossed aside a pinecone. “Made it this far like some gritted-teeth hero. Can walk just fine.”

  In no position to argue, Tirdad nodded and started for the treeline, determined to get to the bottom of the conspiracy, and if the planets favoured him, do some good on the path. A heady lungful of briny Mazandaran air breathed further life into his stride, with only a slight complaint from his ribs. Fond as he was of these journeys, he loved the smell of home, and missed it when away. The Gulf strove for a similar brackishness, but it was a poor imitation—too salty in its eagerness.

  Shkarag trotted over and fell into step beside him. Finally, he thought, a chance to share the road with the half-div again; he’d yearned for it, but hadn’t realized just how strongly until now.

  “The more direct route is rough terrain,” he said. “Mainly game trails to follow when there’s a trail at all, but the views are worth it, and it’ll bring us right alongside Mount Damavand.”

  Already using her height-and-a-half spear as a walking stick, Shkarag had her head canted, attention darting to sound after sound in the lively summer forest.

  Tirdad regarded her in her half-sister’s trappings, getting a good look for the first time. “The armour suits you,” he said. “You look like someone seeking glory. I’d go as far as saying you look dignified in it.”

  Her stare roamed it appraisingly. “Maybe,” she neither confirmed nor denied. “And the limp?”

  “Well, you know, it’s strange, but I think it ties the ensemble together. Adds experience to the image, and you are a veteran after all. Hardened suits you.”

  She stopped dead in her tracks, throwing him a furrowed brow, cant redoubled.

  “What?”

  “. . .”

  “Something wrong?”

  “. . . Maybe.” Shkarag aimed one of her crooked grins at her bum leg. “I think.”

  At that, Tirdad grinned, too. That he hadn’t the faintest clue why she was pleased didn’t matter, just that she was. “Let’s get moving,” he said, waving her on. “Plenty of limping ahead of us.”

  The deeper they delved into the forest, the more the path narrowed until they were shoulder to shoulder, flanked by a thickening assembly of trees. Alongside the more mundane oaks and alders were the fluted trunks of hornbeam and silk trees flowering with pink tufts. Here and there, a date-palm would infringe on a patch of earth to lay claim to its share of sunlight. Tirdad relished it all. The forest was so verdant it glowed.

  Before long, the path disappeared, forcing them to turn single file into a rut worn by the routine of game. There, woods transitioned to thicket. Low-hanging branches, ivy, and black-berried shrubs reached from all sides as if the pair were heroes advancing through an adoring crowd. They marched on without complaint up a gradual incline until dusk grew near.

  Having happened upon a clearing, and with the sun so close to the horizon, they made camp. Tirdad recited his hymns as he did once during each of the five divisions of the day, then joined Shkarag where she leaned on her spear at the perimeter of the clearing. The treeline parted where a chunk of earth had fallen away, and the resultant vista afforded them a dazzling view.

  Below, the setting sun streamed around the treetops of the plain, scoring swathes of shadows like a rising tide. Where the fleece-busy shore became the more relaxed waters of the Mazandaran Sea, its brassy ripples went on as far as the eye could see.

  “Beautiful,” said Tirdad, the distance of nostalgia leaking into his voice. “Though not by much, Ashta and I grew up farther east. Probably many of the same trees down there that we saw from our jaunts into the hills. I wish you could’ve known her back then. She was full of life, an explorer if I’ve ever seen one.”

  Shkarag surveyed the expanse, scrutiny lingering on select spots before moving on. “Oh,” she said, distracted but not entirely uninterested. Tirdad averted his gaze when she moved to absently scratch the scar on her neck.

  He unwrapped a piece of jellied meat and ate in silence while absorbing the image of what may as well have been his old stomping grounds. When he finished, he washed it down with a draught of wine. “You know, this sure is delicious, Shkarag. You’re a great cook. It’s a shame we went all that time none the wiser.” Tirdad offered her a piece. “I won’t ask where you found the goat, but I’m grateful all the same.”

  Her stare moved, but only to linger on another distant shadow.

  “Shkarag.”

  “. . .”

  “Shkarag.”

  With that, she angled her head his way, eyes rolled high to train on him, paying the food no attention.

  “Thank you for the jellied meat,” he said.

  “They say,” she began, still scratching her scar, “they say you don’t eat a goat until it’s four. Don’t get it. Checked for rings, and how do you tally age without? A real riddle until I quartered it.”

  “Clever.”

  Shkarag returned her attention to the waning sunset.

  Tirdad figured he’d milk the moment for all it’s worth. “I’ve been meaning to ask what gave you a limp. I’m sure you two had a great many adventures without me.”

  The half-div automatically rubbed her thigh. “Lion,” she said. “Or ramparts. Or both. I think.” She pursed her lips, then added, “Ramparts-lion.”

  “Ramparts-lion?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’d like to hear what happened,” said Tirdad, taking a seat and hoping it’d encourage her to do the same. A dull ache had entered his ribs, but that was to be expected after a day’s travel.

  To his satisfaction, Shkarag followed suit, immediately seeing to her thigh. “Ashtadukht,” she grunted, countenance drawn in a focused grimace. “That šo-dramatic planet-fucker, she . . .” The half-div went quiet for a bout of especially rough massaging. “I had that star-reckoner. So close. Close as slivers of bone right—” She squeezed, and Tirdad could’ve sworn he heard a stifled gasp. “There. Would’ve felled him something fierce, but she made the ramparts a lion, and only natural that a person ride a lion if it rears under you. But there’s no šo-majestic mane to billow from, and you’re riding it down, and you’re thinking you’d rather not. But all those ramparts scatter and become ram parts.”

  Tirdad squinted, brow in furrows. “Did you just make light of the downfall of my family?”

  “. . .” She conce
ntrated on her massage.

  Since he had no confirmation, and because he wasn’t sure whether he should take it as insulting or impressive, Tirdad let it pass. “Well,” he said at length, “I’m going to get some shuteye. I suggest you do the same. Won’t do to have you falling asleep on your feet come tomorrow morning.”

  He got up and started off in search of a comfortable plot when she surprised him with a question.

  “What do you think of vegetables planted under fruit trees?” she asked soberly. “Living off the corpses of those heroic dates and limes that dare to hang on high?”

  Tirdad looked back to find she’d ceased her kneading, and though he couldn’t see her expression, her delivery spoke multitudes for her mood. “Heroes are only heroes with someone to depend on them,” he answered without hesitation. “You strive to better the lives of others, especially those in need, and in death if you must.”

  The hush that followed endured, so Tirdad found a nearby plot of grass to lay down for the night. Worn out from the uphill hike, long sword by his side, he dozed off in no time. At the juncture of consciousness and dreams, he saw Shkarag standing before the cliff, claws by her head, lustrous in the moonlight and naked.

  • • • • •

  Tirdad awoke feeling like threshed grain. He emitted a groan, wondering whether this was how his cousin had felt every morning, and how she ever managed to get out of bed if so. With a wince accompanied by another groan, he sat up. Instinctively, he reached for his sword, to find only grass.

  A sudden dread rose in his throat, which flushed out his grogginess like an ice-cold bath. Tirdad shot to his feet, spinning, head jerking in every direction. The clearing was empty. Dread became panic.

  “Shkarag,” he called out. “Shkarag!”

  The woods stirred to his rear, and he spun on the sound to discover the half-div propped against a trunk with the sword clutched against her chest. Relief slackened his muscles, though he panted as if starved for air.

  “Šo-noisy,” she grumbled. “Can’t shout a person awake if you want friends. Just won’t do.”