The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  By the time he became aware of her hands, wrapped around the white feather and the pouch at his hip, it was far too late. And at that point, all he glimpsed was her tiny body fading quickly into the distance over the bridge as she took off running.

  “Hey!”

  Before Lenk had even taken a step, Mocca let out a wistful sigh.

  “I wouldn’t.”

  Before Mocca had finished speaking, Lenk was already running.

  The pristine wealth around melted him into a featureless tunnel of ivory and green as he darted down streets and past lawns. The noises of passing, well-clad strangers and their accompanying, well-armed bodyguards blended into nonspecific grunts and curses. The thoughts of Miron and money were still standing beside Mocca.

  Everything that mattered right now was forty paces ahead.

  And aggravatingly nimble.

  Not that it would surprise him too much that a small child in dirty clothes should prove better than a mostly grown man in relatively shabby garb at navigating the streets, but the way the urchin moved—slipping ghostlike between people, ducking under passing palanquins—seemed downright unfair.

  Or maybe it was just him. His body, so clumsy and useless. His mind, so sluggish and numb. His life, reduced to chasing a filthy child through streets while being chased by the curses of rich men.

  All for a feather.

  A feather that he couldn’t take his eyes off and couldn’t make his feet stop over.

  The urchin took a sudden, sharp turn down an alley. He skidded clumsily as he turned and pursued her into the lightless crack between two towering buildings. A third stood at the end of a short corridor, blocking any possible egress.

  That would have been more heartening, Lenk thought, had the urchin not been standing there with her arms crossed and a confident shine in her eyes.

  “I’m not in the habit of pummeling children.” His words were laden with heavy breath. He pressed a hand against the wall, leaning hard on it. “That said, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t…”

  His threat vanished in the gloom. He didn’t worry too much about it, for he suddenly had bigger concerns. And, after all, it was hard to appear threatening when one’s hand was stuck to the wall.

  He pulled at his appendage, to no avail. It was held fast by some kind of shimmering, sticky film.

  “Spiderwebbing?” he muttered.

  “Yeah,” the urchin grunted. “The spiders leave it everywhere in the rich man’s town. Usually the shepherds clean up real nice after ’em, but not here.”

  “So, your plan was to get me stuck and then rob me blind,” he muttered. “Clever.”

  “Uh, naw,” she said. “That was an accident. I was just supposed to bring you here so he could meet ya.”

  “Who?”

  “Me.”

  Lenk craned his neck. A tall, gangly creature wrapped in rags even dirtier than the urchin’s stood behind him, staring at him through heavy-lidded eyes. The young man squinted to make him out in the darkness, not that there was much to discern in him that wasn’t wrapped in cloth.

  “Khaliv?” he asked. “What are you doing here?”

  “Told ya,” Khaliv grunted, reaching into his pocket. “You owe me.”

  “Owe you what?”

  Khaliv drew a small vial out of his pocket. “Forgiveness.”

  Lenk didn’t have to ask. He didn’t have time. But he did manage to open his mouth just in time for Khaliv to uncork the vial and throw a viscous, reeking liquid in his face. It slid down his mouth like a thing possessed. Immediately, he felt his stomach churn, boiling inside him, raking at his intestines.

  He felt ill.

  He felt dizzy.

  He felt like he was about to throw up.

  But as he slumped against the wall, eyelids fluttering and tongue swelling up inside his mouth, he felt nothing.

  SIXTEEN

  PREY

  She didn’t know where she was; the city streets and buildings were all alien monuments to concepts she didn’t understand.

  She didn’t know who these people were; the creatures staring at her from the edges of the street, stepping aside as she passed, whispering words she didn’t know.

  She didn’t know where she was going; every street stretched on for eternity, into far-away nothingness of more of the same monuments and the same creatures.

  None of that was important.

  “Shict! HALT!”

  The men chasing her, though? With all the sharp swords?

  That was important.

  Should have killed them when there was just one, she thought between the pounding of her feet beneath her. Hell, could’ve just shot him in the leg and run before he could call for more. But no.

  “Somebody stop that oid!”

  You had to be culturally sensitive.

  Nobody in possession of anything bigger than a coin—such as two coins—seemed willing to put it down to grab her. Anybody that might have thought to do so was quickly deterred after somebody seized her by the arm and was promptly rewarded with a thumb jabbed directly in his eye.

  After that, everybody seemed quite content to quietly shuffle out of the way and let her run.

  But there were still bodies. Human bodies. Everywhere.

  Behind stalls and in front of stalls, lingering in doorways and walking in streets, buying, selling, arguing, cursing humans. One body for every brick in every wall of every building.

  All of them staring, eyes wide and horrified, muttering about how someone should stop that savage, spitting words like “beast” and “barbarian” and “long-eared deviant.”

  She shut her eyes and flattened her ears and gritted her teeth and heard only the sound of blood pumping in her skull and feet thundering under her. It wasn’t enough; she could still feel their stares, their horror, the scowls they reserved for wild beasts and other things that shouldn’t be here.

  And like the beast they thought she was, she could feel the panic that comes from looking up and not being able to see the sky through the looming buildings.

  She wanted to collapse. Or vomit. Or just shoot them.

  But any one of those actions would mean stopping. And so, for want of a better plan, she shut her eyes tightly and ran wherever the panic told her to.

  She ran until she could feel her teeth ache in her gums and her feet bleed in her boots and her breath turn raw in her chest. And then she ran until she could feel nothing at all.

  When she finally opened her eyes, she was breathless, senseless, and alone.

  There were no humans here; somewhere in her blind flight, the river of people had dried up into a dusty bed. The ground beneath her was hard and sandy, bereft of cobblestones. Whatever merchant stalls remained here were hollow skeletons, bereft of silver flesh or golden blood. The next breath she took was a long, weary sigh.

  Bereft of relief.

  Humanity might have been absent, but it wasn’t gone. The sky was no less choked by their legacy. The buildings here were wooden and hollow, staring down at her with black, empty window eyes. Their broken, splintered crowns loomed no less high. Human litter—shattered glass, empty bottles, raggedy dolls forgotten by children—lay everywhere, the last stains from civilization’s giants long since bled out.

  She found it calming, the absence of humanity and their staring eyes and their snarling whispers, but not as much as she should have. These, she knew, were Cier’Djaal’s precursors and its husks. The humans had moved from here, the old city, when they figured out how much sturdier bricks were. The overall impression was one of a field after a swarm of locusts had moved through: barren and devastated.

  She walked numbly through its streets. Her ears were open, but the silence was absolute. Even the sound of her feet on the sand seemed to echo off the shadows. No sound of her pursuers, of humanity, or of anyone.

  Except…

  Something like a faint buzzing, at the very tip of her left ear. The echo of a rapid heartbeat. The faint ache of memory. Of him?


  Her ears flattened against her head, folded over themselves. She didn’t want to think about sound right now. Or anything that might remind her of what she had left behind.

  All her attentions were for what lay ahead of her.

  And what lay ahead of her loomed large.

  Towering, tremendous, and with all the wood of a forest’s graveyard, a wall stood before her.

  Though the word “wall” may have been too generous for the haphazard pile of shattered timbers, splintered logs, and sharpened stakes that blocked her. Wedged uncomfortably between two buildings like a thorn, it was equal parts obstacle and message.

  And, judging by the sight of red stains upon the stakes and a few choicely placed skulls hanging from jutting timbers, she didn’t think too hard on what that message was.

  “Shict!”

  She whirled at the sound and beheld them. Six men, all wearing the colors and armor of Jhouche guards, advanced upon her. Their hands were on their swords—still sheathed, for whatever reason. But whatever reason wasn’t good enough for her; her bow was up, and her arrow was nocked and aimed at the lead one as she took a single step backward.

  And promptly felt the sharpened tip of a stake prick playfully at her bare back.

  “Easy, oid,” the lead guard said. “We didn’t come all this way to fight.”

  “Then someone gave you the wrong directions,” she snarled. “Take another step and I’ll put this in something tender.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Commander,” one of them muttered. “Don’t let a savage talk to you that way.”

  “Is that even the one we’re looking for?” another whispered. “She’s too pale. I thought all shicts were dark like us.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” a third whispered. “Don’t even talk to it. It’s not going to talk without a fight.”

  She narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth. The bowstring creaked just loud enough to drown out a tiny voice in her head that advised her to go ahead and shoot them anyway.

  “I said,” the lead one snapped, “we’re not here to fight.” He fixed a steady gaze upon her. “Yesterday, oid, there was an event. You know what I’m talking about because fasha Ghoukha’s men told us you were there.” He held up one hand higher but kept the other on his sword’s hilt. “A lot of people died there. A lot of people have died in this footwar, and a lot of people are going to die still if you don’t help us figure out what’s going on, oid.”

  “My name isn’t oid,” she growled. “And I’m not telling you anything. Go away.”

  “Told you,” one of the guards muttered. “Just rush her, already. No need for this.”

  “Be careful, though,” another said. “She’s got teeth. They bite you, you get all kinds of diseases.”

  “We aren’t leaving,” the lead guard said. He lowered his hand, but remained tense, ready to draw his blade at any moment. “This concerns all of Cier’Djaal. And Cier’Djaal says that I’m allowed to take you in by force if you won’t come peacefully.”

  “Take two steps further,” someone very close and very dark whispered, “and you aren’t in Cier’Djaal anymore.”

  Their eyes turned, as one, up to the wall of splinters. And there he sat comfortably atop the shards and the stakes, like he had been born in a nest of briars. A man, large and powerful and thick with dark muscle, who rose to sandaled feet and skipped down the pile of jagged points as easily as he might a grassy hill.

  He landed on the sand beside her and, this close, she could tell he was a shict like her. Only by the long, notched ears poking out of a mane of black hair, though. Everything else about him was far too thick. The sandals he wore strained against the muscle of his calves and the simple silk kilt he wore about his hips bared most of his broad, muscular physique.

  He looked like some hero out of a story. Not any story she had heard, though. The heroes of shictish stories were all clever, small, and agile. This male, thick and dense and bristling like the splintered wall behind him, looked like something fit for the tales of the humans before him.

  The edge of awe that crept into their voices certainly suggested as much.

  “Listen, Thua,” the lead guard said, stepping carefully over the shict’s name, “I meant it when I said we don’t want trouble. But this oid has to come with us.”

  Thua nodded thoughtfully for a moment. He turned and looked down at Kataria. Between the veils of his mane, she could see a plain wooden mask, two perfectly round holes for eyes and a thin slash for a mouth, adorning his face. From within, his voice sounded disembodied and far away.

  “I believe you said your name was not ‘oid,’ yes?”

  “That’s… that’s right,” she replied.

  “Well,” Thua said, turning back to the guards. “As you can see, nobody named ‘oid’ is present. If you’d like, you may take nobody back with you and ask nobody what they think.”

  “Don’t try to be cute, Thua,” the lead guard snapped. “Your little camp is still in the limits of Cier’Djaal and, at a word, I can have guards swarming it.”

  The large shict canted his head to one side, then the other. His ears quivered a little.

  “Which word?” he asked.

  “What did I just say?”

  The guard’s voice cracked on the last word. An edge of anger swept into his voice and cleanly lopped off any authority he might have carried. He was trembling now, his nerves apparent in the shake of his hand and the strain of the frown he tried hard to force onto his face and tried harder to look menacing.

  And even though she couldn’t see past his mask, Kataria got the distinct impression that Thua was smiling broadly.

  “I am glad you came here without the intention of fighting, Commander,” he said. “I would hate to sully our special relationship with violence in front of your family and mine.” He glanced down at Kataria. “And make no mistake, she is one of us. If you wish to speak with her, you may come to camp tomorrow, when she has had time to recover from being chased through the streets by your men. If she feels like talking to you, you may speak to her.”

  Beneath the eyeholes of his mask, something tender flashed at her.

  “Is this acceptable to you, sister?”

  She nodded weakly, not quite certain why. And again, she could sense Thua’s smile without seeing it as he turned back to the guards.

  “There we are. A perfectly nonviolent solution, perfectly acceptable to men claiming they have no desire to fight.” He canted his head to the side again. “Assuming they are genuine men and not filthy, lying kou’ru.”

  “We give you and your camp a lot of pull around this edge of town, Thua,” the lead guard snapped. “And in exchange for keeping guards out, we expect you to help us out once in a while.”

  “‘A while’ is a long ways away, yet,” Thua replied.

  “He’s not listening, Commander,” one of the guards muttered as his sword came free of its scabbard. “This is a waste of time.”

  “Hold your steel,” the commander shot at his man. “Remember where you are. We’re one wall away from Shicttown.”

  “And there’s only one shict here, Commander.” Another guard added his sword and his snarl. “This is our city. They don’t own anything here.”

  “This is true,” Thua said. “This is your city. These are your buildings.” He angled a finger up to the two broad, empty wooden structures flanking them. “We merely take up space.”

  Kataria looked up along with the guards and saw the same thing they did. In every window, in every shadow, they were there. Smiling with wide grins, staring with hollow eyes, leering, scowling.

  Watching.

  Over three dozen wooden masks appeared in the windows, each one silent and still as the trees they had been carved from. Only the leering wooden faces were revealed, bodies and bows and blades still hidden within the shadows of the buildings.

  That seemed to be enough for the guards. They instantly huddled together, pressing backs to backs, all blades out and at the ready.
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  “Easy, Thua,” the commander said, “you don’t want this much blood on your hands.”

  “I do not,” Thua replied. “I do not want you here at all, dead or alive. Tomorrow, Commander. You may return then and ask questions of my people in my camp.” He made a dismissive gesture. “Until then, I ask you to leave my sister in peace.”

  Despite the painfully palpable hostility that burst from it, nothing more than a baleful glare came from the commander. At a word, swords slowly found their sheaths, boots slowly found their sand, and Kataria watched the guards slip away, muttering to themselves.

  “Can you hear them?”

  She turned to Thua. The large shict’s eyes were up on the windows, at all the wooden faces looking down at his.

  “All of them? So close to you?”

  He looked to her. She looked up to the windows, to the many empty eyes and the many empty smiles all fixed upon her. Her eyes moved from window to window, building to building. And she saw only wood and shadows.

  “I can’t hear,” she whispered, “any of them.”

  Her chin suddenly felt very heavy. Her neck suddenly felt very soft.

  “What does that mean?” she asked the sand at her feet. “What does that make me?”

  He laid a hand on her shoulder. She felt the warmth from his overlarge fingers as he offered a gentle squeeze.

  “Ah, sister,” he said softly, “it makes you gullible.”

  She blinked, spoke flatly. “What.”

  “Did she fall for it?” a voice, light and airy as an arrow descending, cried out. “She did, didn’t she? I told you she would!”

  Kataria’s ears grew wide and trembled, shifting from side to side as she tried to find the source of the voice. She narrowed her eyes upon the wooden faces in the windows and came to an insultingly slow realization.

  Only one of them was moving.

  It was far unlike the others. Its grin was big, broad, and eerily pleased with itself. Its eyes were in the shape of upside-down crescent moons. Where the other masks were hollow, this one brimmed with a life all its own.

  A life that still managed to pale in comparison to its wearer’s.