An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  Head hung, Tirdad sighed. She was trying in earnest to explain; that much he knew. So he reined in his temper to ask, “Why, then, would you do this?”

  Shkarag flexed a claw by her head. “Can’t dig up the right word. Eluding me something fierce, like some, like some arch, arch—” Her breathing grew so heavy it dominated the room. “Like some archaeologist poking around without a torch and tossing this or that priceless artifact because they can’t see and turns out they had found it only now it’s all so much ostraca over their shoulder, off galavanting with the rest, prevailing upon this or that scribe for a turn of phrase. When you, when the—” She croaked, which then engendered a pained gasp. “Haunted,” Shkarag said with both finality and triumph. “Being obsessed is . . . not pleasant, but it’s, it’s not indomitable. Being haunted is . . . I’ve been . . .” She trailed off, and the claw she held by her head hesitated by the rim of her hood before pulling it back down. She stared dead at him, unblinking and attention hardly fidgeting at all.

  “Been haunted all my life. When W—” She drew out the sound, patently trying to force the rest of the word out. When she finally did, it was thick with sorrow. “Waray died, everything, all that, it all closed in. Memories smart, but being haunted is—” Her eyes flicked away to find the term before bringing it back. “A curse. Can’t be lifted or cured. Always there, always waiting, always ready to take more and more and more.” She leaned forward. “Don’t want that for you.”

  Tirdad returned her stare through the cage of fingers that sheltered his face. His anger had sloughed away. He never could stay angry at her, even when she was prone to the most infuriating of pranks. Especially not now, not after what she’d said. The trouble with which she strove to answer. He wanted only to make sense of her actions, and to find the forgiveness she deserved. But for her to have undermined him in his quest for the truth—that reeked of betrayal. Had she known the truth all along? Why, then, would she set him on this path to begin with?

  Shkarag got up, plodding over and reaching back with both hands to undo her girdle as she did. Once she reached him, she tossed it to his feet. Tirdad turned consternation and an appraising eye on the girdle. The craftsmanship was astounding, even with a number of its lapis lazuli inlays missing. Coloured as they were, they reminded him of her, which made the vacant slots all the more fitting. He looked up at her. “What?”

  “Don’t know what you’ll unearth,” she said, low and resigned. “Only that, that it’ll be a šo-wretched truth. Maybe those star-reckoners placed Ashtadukht on that carpet, they placed her there like some, like some doomed planet in your, in your board game that . . .” She went silent, searching him for an answer.

  “Nard?” he offered.

  “Like some doomed planet in your nard game,” she picked up summarily, “placed there only to be taken in some strategy, to have the carpet yanked from under her.”

  “Then why—”

  “Maybe they didn’t,” she punctuated. “Doesn’t matter. You’ll be haunted. Can find nothing, can find everything. That’s just as the crow flies. Doesn’t matter. Ever since, ever since you found a thread, I knew I’d made a terrible, done a terrible thing to you, bringing that sheaf of leather and scrolls.”

  Tirdad averted his gaze. As far as she was concerned, disrupting his quest was protecting him. Her reasoning was not unsound. She truly meant well. What’s more, she felt guilty for getting him into it. How could he hold that against her?

  “Phylactery,” she said, nudging the girdle with her boot before about-facing and limping her way upstairs.

  Torn between her actions and her motives, Tirdad followed her departure with a pensive frown. His was a fleeting contest, though. A battle that belonged in the past. He had forsaken honour, and in so doing, had freed himself to act not in the pursuit of lofty ideals, but in the best interests of those he held dear. Honour stopped where their relationship began. That was, foremost, by virtue of being in a relationship with a half-div.

  Tirdad heaved a sigh that became a groan as he got to his feet. He decided to compromise. With that in mind, he made for the steps, only to draw up short and turn back for the girdle. “Phylactery,” he mused as he picked it up. It didn’t just belong to Shkarag; it was Shkarag. He ran his fingers over its surface, as smooth and cool and inviting as her scales. All this time she had vouchsafed her soul in a girdle she treated as casually as old rags—perhaps that was all part of the cover. But the significance ran deeper than its nature.

  Most significantly, he held it. He held it, knowing fully what it was, and at her behest. For someone so prone to distrust, so withdrawn and caught up in suspicion—

  “Fuck,” he cursed under his breath, aiming it at the ceiling. She’d worn him down bit by bit, only to save the most trenchant strike for last. After what she’d revealed today, he would suspect her of planning it as such if he didn’t know how much of a trial any part of it must have been for her.

  Tirdad tucked the girdle beneath on arm. Upstairs then. He scaled them slowly, deliberately, one after the other, and having worked out no part of what he intended to say. Talking from the cuff had never been his favoured saddle; he had long preferred to give his words due regard. She had taught him to speak his mind, so he would do just that.

  He drew up short of the last step, having encountered her earlier than expected. Shkarag peered up at him from the landing, where she massaged the splinters lodged in her thigh. She wore her expectance plain and clear. The massage became a strangle.

  “Shkarag,” he began. She canted ever so slightly. For some unexplained reason, that rapt gaze instilled confidence. “What you said earlier, about needing to break some eggs to keep making omelettes for the person you love, I feel the same, and that’s why we’ll dispose of the body tonight.” He sat on the uppermost step just shy of her outstretched foot and laid the girdle across his lap. “But you already knew that, or you wouldn’t have given me your phylactery.”

  That inspired one of her crooked smiles, exposing her fangs where they curled back into her mouth, but only just. Rare as they were, she smiled more often in the months since her return than he had seen in all their years together. Contented smiles, not those inspired by bloodlust. He wanted more of that. Those uneven flashes were like seeing her surface, if only fleetingly, from a deluge of suffering. He had never been anyone special, never capable of genius or impressive feats, sentenced to obscurity or worse since birth. But that he could bring to her life these pockets of happiness—that was enough.

  “Tirdad,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re . . .” She stared through her foot, and the smile was fleeced away. “We’re family,” she said. “I think.”

  “We’re family,” he agreed. “The two of us.”

  “Not the goat-fucker.”

  Tirdad screwed up his face at the mention of the marzban. “If it weren’t for Chobin, I probably wouldn’t be here talking to you. He supported me when my House crumbled. Chobin is a dear friend, but you’re family.”

  Shkarag inclined her head as if to nod, though Tirdad still couldn’t discern a cant from a nod—if the latter ever happened. “Abarkawan,” she stated.

  “Abarkawan?”

  “Abarkawan.” Shkarag brought up a claw, sweeping it instead of flexing it by her head. “The land all splayed and sunbathing like some, like some lackadaisical viscera maybe, maybe a liver out there and—” She cocked her head. “Why in the, in the seven climates does a person crane at the šo-smoldering sun and think a bath is in order? Don’t get, grasp, understand it one bit.”

  “Seven climes,” Tirdad said.

  She canted and went on. “And it’s a liver maybe, and it’s out there in the ocean, all drawn out for the, it has a long face over being out there, since livers don’t fancy being outside of things, and there’s a sea of blood around it, rippling and honest.”

  Tirdad had been following until the mention of honest blood. “Honest?”

  Shkarag rake
d a claw over her scalp, tilting as she did. “Can’t explain.”

  “So what about this viscera?”

  “Abarkawan. It’s there where the sea thins like alloyed blood.”

  “Oh,” said Tirdad. “I’d forgotten about the island. Abarkawan, then. What of it?”

  “We’ll go,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “To see your star-reckoner.”

  “My . . . what?” asked Tirdad, unable to hide his astonishment.

  Shkarag deepened her cant. She clutched her thigh. “Can’t stop you anymore. Tried something fierce to do the right thing for you. Can’t anymore. We’ll go to Abarkawan.”

  “You could’ve just kept that from me,” said Tirdad.

  “We’re family,” she said, as if that were explanation enough. “But you promise me this . . .”

  Tirdad waited, beetle-browed, when she trailed off and stayed that way. She didn’t seem to have retreated mentally. “Uh, Shkarag?”

  “Promise me this,” she repeated, insistent.

  “I promise?”

  “A promise,” she confirmed. “When you catch these šo-damned answers, when you’ve got them draped over the back of your horse, a trophy to end all trophies, you hang it on your wall or wear it or festoon a thing. You hunt it, you seize it, and—” She leaned forward, muscles straining against her caftan as she grasped her thigh as if she wanted to pull it off. “—you fucking stop.”

  Tirdad meant to reply, but she edged closer, commanding the scene with her intense yet flickering gaze and the checked rage she emanated. “You.” She leaned closer. “Fucking.” Closer still. “Stop.” She had her head even with her foot now, which in turn had it close enough that he could smell the egg on her heavy breaths.

  “All right,” he said. “You’ve got it. Once I’ve found my answers, I’ll stop. And if I don’t, you’ll be there to set me straight. I’m leaving it up to you. I promise.”

  With that, she relaxed, sitting back and returning to her kneading. “Abarkawan is far,” she said.

  “Should we leave tomorrow?”

  “Maybe. Maybe wait. Finish your apricots. Let your šo-woolen goat-fucking friend know. You wouldn’t, wouldn’t like to leave him blind. In the dark, maybe. The dark holds you close, smothers you, makes you feel safe, until—” She shivered, and swallowed audibly. “Maybe.”

  “Huh,” said Tirdad.

  She canted at him. “. . .”

  “Strange.”

  “. . .”

  “You know, I was thinking. Here you’re suggesting I stay true to my word, and that I wait for a friend whose wellbeing likely means as little to you as a bird.”

  “. . .”

  “I figure it’s a mighty thoughtful sentiment coming from a skink-slicker.” He’d hardly finished the sentence when she leapt at him, bowling him over and taking him down the stairs in a tumble that could have killed them both.

  Tirdad released a drawn out groan from the ground floor where he ended up on his back, which was none too happy, and sure to be furious come morning. Shkarag hissed, and crawled on top of him.

  “You’re the only one here with a phylactery,” he said. “I’d rather not die to a flight of stairs.”

  “Oh.” She threw a glance over her shoulder. “Can only lead a horse to a flight of stairs,” she muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Oh.”

  “Skink-slicker,” quipped Tirdad, enjoying the wince it engendered in her.

  “You’re beating it,” she said.

  “What?”

  “That horse. Not even a prized breed like those stallions from Nisaya.” She sat up by his side, and posted on palm on his chest. The look she gave him was as enigmatic as any. “Your jokes are . . . they’re like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Flat,” she said.

  “Thanks?”

  “Your jokes, they’re flat, steep as hot tea, but your jokes they’re . . . they’re the sort of company you don’t mind. They’re good company.”

  “Thanks.” Tirdad meant it this time. No one had ever enjoyed his jokes before. Come to think of it, he hadn’t even enjoyed them. He almost felt as if losing his social standing had been liberating in a way. Almost.

  “Šo-good company,” she added, crawling onto him, her shoulders rising and falling like a mighty beast, the telltale sawing taking purchase on every exhalation.

  “Shkarag,” he cut in with an uncomfortable grimace. “There’s a dead man right behind us.”

  He should’ve known that wouldn’t have had the desired effect. She sucked in a gasp. “There is,” she hissed, and where she simmered before she was now ablaze.

  “Shkarag, don’t—” She shifted forward to reach for the star-reckoner, and the second thing that came to mind was that she had to be kidding him. The first was that he wished she’d be kind to his back. A meaty rip sounded from above, and she shifted back so that her blood-slathered face was above his.

  “Still fresh,” she slurred. “Still hot.”

  Tirdad opened his mouth to object when he realized he didn’t actually mind. Somewhere along the line the vileness of her lineage had become commonplace. Beloved, even. So when it was his turn for her to smear the fresh blood over his face, he concentrated on its warmth, on the metallic smell that filled his nostrils as he sucked in a heady lungful. Whatever had changed in him when he took on a part of Ashtadukht reacted to her aura; it bred in him a fraction of what he saw in her. Crimson bled into his vision like paint through water. Without pretense, and without affording it a second thought, he gave her the adrenaline rush she yearned for. He slipped a dagger between her ribs.

  • • • • •

  Later, after downing his daily apricot, and together with Shkarag under the cover of night, he set out to dispose of the body. He regretted damaging her caftan with the knife, but she didn’t seem the least bit bothered, so as he rode out of the city with a star-reckoner slung over his horse, he ruminated instead on the deed at hand. That called for a distraction, which Shkarag so blithely provided. Tirdad stared at the river, the celestial theatre mirrored on its surface, while Shkarag idly pointed out one constellation after another. She seemed livelier than normal, though she always named them with a hiss.

  “The Lady of the Throne,” she said, pointing and canting at him to ensure he was paying heed. “Those five there, the šo-bespeckled breasts.”

  “I see them,” he replied. And he did with an intimacy she could not have known. They winked in close proximity to his soul.

  “The Bearer of the Div’s Head,” she went on. “Don’t see it. Do you see it?”

  “No.”

  “The Snake Charmer,” she said, indicating a misshapen polygon of stars with a satellite star at two corners. From where she rode ahead, backward in her saddle, he could just make out the poppy-red slivers she had trained on him. “That’s your constellation,” she explained.

  “I suppose it is,” he said, breaking a grin.

  After hours of following the river downstream from the city, connecting star signs with star signs as if they weren’t mortal enemies of everyone present—everyone alive anyway—they found what they were looking for: a marsh. Between its stench, the paucity of those willing to brave its depths, and the veil of reeds, they figured nature would have plenty of time to destroy the evidence. They bound the star-reckoner with ropes and used those to secure stones that would weigh him down. Then the pair dumped him, Tirdad wearing a scowl all the while.

  Decomposing corpses bred more than just disease, they contaminated the land with the influence of the Lie, invited the corpse-feeding Nasu into the world, and seeded the power of divs. This was why dogs were made to follow corpses, for in their noses they carried the power to drive away the Nasu. Only then, and with a priest performing rites alongside, could a corpse be safely relocated without leaving a trail of contaminated earth.

  A similar relationship existed between death and those left behind. It always arrived twofold
. Taking the deceased was never enough. The loss of a single person could infect with grief the lives of many—even go as far as taking some of them. In that way, there is no respite, no attrition of misery: this is why suicide is selfish. Where one person’s suffering comes to an end, their misery proliferates in the lives of those affected. Bereavement sinks its claws into hearts and minds. This is why there is rarely such a thing as a victimless death, and why Tirdad gave pause to needless murder. You’re never running through a single innocent. You’re running through everyone with whom they share a bond. You’re turning that bond into a burden they must bear for the rest of their lives.

  Ashtadukht, Tirdad, and Shkarag—they all carried such a burden. With Ashtadukht, a single death had cost the lives of thousands. With Tirdad, it took his family, his identity. What it took from Shkarag was anyone’s guess, but there was no mistaking that it had deprived.

  • • • • •

  Tirdad hadn’t forgotten his contract. He strove to take it as seriously as his cousin would have. He owed her memory that much. He owed the people of the city that much. With their resident star-reckoner perished by the hand of a daughter of Eshm, they had no one else to turn to. What’s more, they were quick to accept the pair—even if they were unreasonably demanding and not all that grateful.

  So he pored by day over the volumes and notes left by the star-reckoner, and though he learned a great deal a part of him already knew, there was no mention of these forty divs in particular. Or any similar situation.

  By night, Shkarag would use her unique vision and proclivity for the twilight hours to lead him on scouting missions, all of which ended empty-handed.

  Every dusk, he would count another apricot down the hatch, which would remind him he was another day closer to the arrival of the div host. Come every apricot, the same shuffling followed. It seemed to him to be growing in volume, as if it were anticipating the fortieth day, same as him. Here and there, he would check. He even posted Shkarag across the cisterns, but she reported no signs of activity.