The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “The Secondary Lector…” Shinka paused, casting a glance toward Palanis. “Approves with reservation.”

  Broodvine. He wants to use broodvine. Of course. Why wouldn’t he want to use broodvine? He doesn’t just want you to fail. He wants to annihilate you. He wants to render you into an inert, gibbering pile of meat ready to be harvested.

  Admittedly, when it came to rendering people into inert, gibbering piles of meat, few methods were more efficient than broodvine.

  The clerk crept carefully from the shadows of the chamber, a polished wooden chest in his hands and a terrified expression across his face. He approached Lector Palanis, drawing back the lid to reveal a pair of black seeds upon a purple velvet cushion.

  It was quite a bit of reverence to unveil what, to the untrained eye, would appear to be just a pair of stale, inedible pebbles. But Dreadaeleon knew what these little seeds were capable of, and he found it hard to fault them for the fanfare.

  Even to the rest of the world, broodvine had a reputation as a hallucinogen strong enough to be eschewed by even the most deviant smoke-eaters. It was a seed that began in a man’s smoking pipe and ended in a man’s forehead when the hallucinations caused him to use said smoking pipe to dig out his own eyeballs to extract the rats he thought were making nests in his brain.

  It took a wizard to appreciate broodvine, because it took a wizard to weaponize broodvine. The common man would be slave to the illusions the smoke showed him, but a wizard could control them, shape his own dreams, forge his own nightmares, and inflict them upon those of lesser mind.

  Some became addicts themselves, using the broodvine to shape their own imaginary worlds to escape into.

  Others employed them to deadly effect, using the smoke of the broodvine to create nightmares to warp the minds of their foes.

  More often, though, the only sanctioned use of broodvine was what Lector Palanis was doing as he stepped down from his podium, took a seed from the chest, and stood exactly thirty paces away from Dreadaeleon.

  A broodvine ordeal was, quite simply, the most straightforward assessment of a wizard possible. A trial of fear and pain, during which the mind would be twisted, warped, and quite often shattered. Those who had the will to resist and control the nightmares heaped upon their tender brains would be found too useful to terminate.

  Those who didn’t…

  “Concomitant?”

  Only then did Dreadaeleon notice the clerk standing before him, chest presented, seed staring up at him. Only then did Dreadaeleon notice just how bad his hands were shaking as he lifted the seed gently from its velvet throne.

  He looked thirty paces across the room. Palanis was smiling broadly, the morbid pleasure on his lips at odds with the ire in his knitted brows.

  He looked twenty paces to his left. Annis and Shinka tensed in their chairs, hands stiff and flat upon their podiums.

  Half a dozen eyes were upon him.

  Waiting.

  His hands shook as he pressed the seed past dry lips. It tasted of ash and dust on his tongue. Through trembling thought, he called to mind the spell. He bit down and felt sparks fly between his teeth and ignite his breath. Just enough to choke his senses with fever-sweet perfume.

  His lips parted and a plume of smoke scintillated from his mouth. Across the room, Palanis opened his maw like a hellbeast of legend, great gouts of gray pouring forth. With every breath of Lector and boy, the broodvine smoke slithered from mouth and nostril. It painted the air, shimmered purple in sunlight seeping through the windows. It carpeted the floor, drowning tile in a lake of roiling wisps. In moments, it filled the room.

  And then, the nightmare began.

  With voices, at first: nonsensical, jibbering, wailing, cursing, crying, laughing. The sounds of uncontrolled thoughts given voice and shared between minds.

  Next, reality bent. The floor quivered, rippled like liquid, a vast lake upon which men stood as insignificant as pebbles cast across the surface.

  The smoke began to breathe without the aid of Dreadaeleon or Palanis. From its tendrils formed hands, wispy fingers brushing against the boy’s cheeks. From its clouds formed faces, opening smoky mouths in wordless screams. From its veils formed bodies, writhing through space to brush against each other and dissipate into nothingness.

  There was a scream. The clerk went running for the door. Wise, Dreadaeleon thought; in another few moments, it wouldn’t exist anymore.

  Dreadaeleon fought the urge to follow him. Dreadaeleon fought the urge to flinch, to blink, to do anything but breathe. The body was a primal thing, one that responded to animal impulses. The mind must be strong to control the body. The body must be strong to control the mind.

  But in another moment, he couldn’t control either.

  Lector Palanis’s smile grew broader as he seemed to grow taller. No, Dreadaeleon realized as he felt the tile turn to liquid beneath him. He looked down and saw his feet disappearing into the floor, the tile rippling and becoming nothing as it swallowed him up. Beneath it, the earth grew solid again, seizing his ankles, drawing him deeper into a coffin of stone and salt.

  He felt it around his knees, crushing. He felt his chest slide into the tile, breath escaping him. He felt the tile splash as he clawed at it, struggling to pull himself.

  Steady, he told himself. It’s not real.

  He looked desperately to Annis and Shinka. Their gazes trailed down, following him as he sank deeper. They could see it happening. He could feel it happening. Palanis was making it happen.

  If everyone saw the same thing, how could it not be real?

  Fight it. He slapped the tile. It splashed beneath his palms. Assert your will. He slid deeper. The floor seeped between his fingers. You aren’t this weak, are you?

  He clenched his teeth, drew in a smoky breath between them, and reached out as he sank up to his armpits.

  The floor was solid.

  He gasped, clawed his way out, and felt breath return as he emerged from the tile. He struggled to remember how to breathe normally. The floor felt solid beneath him.

  But not for long.

  Cracks appeared in the tile, spread across the floor, a spider’s web of wounds. The floor groaned, split apart, and erupted into fragments. An arm of desiccated flesh clinging to ancient bones reached up into the air. Another followed. Another and another and another until a forest of limbs stood swaying between Dreadaeleon and Palanis, the Lector standing tall and smiling.

  The withered hands groped blindly about the tile, seizing handholds in skeletal fingers and pulling. Dust-choked moans followed as bulbous heads with the thinnest veneers of ancient flesh rose out of the earth. One by one, corpses hauled their withered bodies from the earth to rise and fix empty black sockets upon Dreadaeleon. One by one, they began to shamble toward him, moaning.

  He cried out, fell onto his rear, and scrambled to get away from the advancing horde. He felt something grab his wrist, looked down to see a skeletal claw wrapped around his hand, a desiccated face looking up at him from a dark crack. He shrieked, pulled away, and felt blood blossom across his skin.

  It’s not real, he told himself. Energy that leaves a body cannot return to the body. It is impossible.

  He looked up at the horde. He rose to his feet. He saw them and all their gnashing teeth and their eyeless sockets and their shambling flesh. And in the instant he saw them approaching, he knew the truth.

  It should be impossible.

  But the broodvine made it possible. The broodvine wrenched the waking and dreaming worlds until there was no difference. Perhaps this was but a dream, but it was Palanis’s dream, it was Palanis’s will.

  The only way to control the former was to be stronger than the latter.

  The horde closed in around him. He raised his hands.

  Skeletal claws, tattered flesh dangling from their bones, reached for his flesh. He drew in a long, sharp breath.

  Warm blood began to trickle down his face; pain shot through him. He clapped his hands togeth
er.

  And screamed for all he was worth.

  The horde fell apart, dissipating into wisps of smoke. The floor was whole beneath him once more. The veils of smoke parted to reveal Palanis, standing not quite so tall and not smiling at all.

  It worked. Dreadaeleon thought this only because he had no breath left to speak it. Son of a bitch, it worked. You can’t concentrate, you old fart, can you? You can’t force this on me.

  The Lector’s face tightened into a grimace, as though he could hear these very thoughts. His eyes narrowed to thin slits. Dreadaeleon felt something slither up his leg. He looked down and saw a serpent, one of many, writhing up his leg in a great swarm. That was frightening, he knew. But he did not feel fear.

  He reached down, tore them from his body, and threw them across the room. There they pooled; there they gathered, twisted around each other, and coalesced into one massive, giant serpent.

  And Dreadaeleon felt as though he weren’t showing the proper professional respect by not being as afraid as he should be. But he had to hold onto that fearlessness, that will. This would be his reality.

  A giant snake. Brilliant. Is he just mocking me now?

  Dreadaeleon looked past the serpent. He saw Palanis’s face contorted with concentration. No, it appeared that the Lector genuinely was putting a tremendous amount of effort into this.

  And that’s when it occurred to Dreadaeleon.

  The Lector had achieved his position through years of research, locked away in a tower, surrounded by books to read, colleagues to debate, and pupils to practice on. In any other ordeal, be it fire or frost, his technique would be so refined as to reduce Dreadaeleon to a pile of ash in a heartbeat.

  But here, in a world of illusion and imagination, Palanis knew only what he had read about in books. He knew only what he thought people found frightening.

  And just like that, Dreadaeleon could see no more serpent, hear no more voices. He saw nothing before him but a cloud of smoke swirling about an old man.

  And he saw his chance.

  He inhaled; the smoke swirled. He twitched his fingers; the smoke danced. He closed his eyes. And the world changed around him.

  The voices that had faded to a distant murmur grew stronger now. Their laughter became shrieking cackles. Their wailing became agonized moaning. Their senseless jibbering became clear, coherent. They had language. They had words.

  “Weak,” they whispered.

  “Pathetic.”

  “Insignificant old fool.”

  “What?”

  That last one had been Palanis, a whisper offered to the smoke that swirled around him.

  “Couldn’t harm anyone.”

  “Useless. Just give up.”

  “All that knowledge, wasted.”

  “No, I… it’s not real, it’s a trick…”

  He was trying to reassure himself. Vocally, Dreadaeleon noted. He dared not do it mentally. The boy suspected the Lector’s mind was becoming quite crowded.

  Dreadaeleon willed the earth to move. It did. The tiles quivered; the walls trembled. Across the floor, upon the ceiling and the walls, pouting lips sprouted like plants, mouths opened in twitching whispers, and eyelids winked to life and focused upon Palanis.

  “What good are you?”

  “You’ve done nothing with your power.”

  “You’re going to die alone, no fear, no love.”

  “Stop it,” Palanis muttered. “Stop it!”

  Dreadaeleon could only barely hear him. The voices were louder. The mouths were twitching endlessly. The eyes were locked upon the Lector as he bent low, cowering beneath relentless stares.

  Dreadaeleon shut his eyes. The world disappeared. An eager midnight seeped in through the windows, drowning the sun, light, and smoke. Annis and Shinka vanished into the darkness; Dreadaeleon followed. The many mouths and many eyes disappeared. All that remained was a quivering, cowering old man.

  And the many, many voices.

  “Nothing. You are nothing.”

  “No wife. No child. No legacy. Nothing.”

  “Why go on? Why bother? Kill yourself.”

  “Kill yourself.”

  “Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself. Kill yourself.”

  And then, there were no more voices. No more words. Just one long, loud noise as Palanis collapsed upon the tile, screaming endlessly and unblinking into the void.

  That, Dreadaeleon thought, was the value of his time in the world. Palanis understood theory, technique, and any number of things that could be learned in books. But the knowledge of how to break a man? That could only be learned in practice.

  And Palanis was broken, perhaps to the point where he would not ever fix himself. Proof of Dreadaeleon’s own value had been offered. He should stop.

  But he did not.

  He deserves this, he told himself. He deserves to shatter. He thought he could break you. He thought you were nothing. Show him, old man. Show him how wrong he was.

  He was aware of that thought. He was aware of how petty it sounded. He was aware that he should care more than he did.

  But he was unaware of just how broad his smile was at that moment.

  “That’s ENOUGH.”

  A great gale ripped through the chamber, twisting smoke and darkness into a columnar whirlwind that was sent writhing out an open window. The air was cleaned, the day was returned, and the chamber was once again whole and unbent.

  And Lector Annis, standing at the center of it, was trembling.

  His arms were spear-straight at his sides; his face was twisted up in a grimace as he stood between the boy and Lector Palanis, quaking on the floor. His eyes began to glow red, the crimson energy of Venarie seeping into his scowl.

  “You are proving more costly than you are worth, concomitant,” he spoke through clenched teeth. “A Librarian lost, a Lector disabled, and now…”

  He didn’t bother finishing that sentence. His magic did that for him. Power radiated out of him as the blaze in his stare grew brighter, more magic boiling up from inside him, leaping to his fingers, setting the tips ablaze with fire. The force of his will alone was nearly enough to knock Dreadaeleon back.

  Certainly, it should have been enough to make him reconsider calling his own magic, letting his own power bleed out his eyes, stepping challengingly toward the Lector.

  “Concomitant. Lector.”

  Through the roiling energy, Lector Shinka’s voice cut like a blade. She stepped between them, coattails wafting about her legs, hands folded delicately behind her back.

  “If we could perhaps cease comparing genitalia sizes?” She smirked. “The ordeal has been completed to the satisfaction of the law. The concomitant’s value has been proven.”

  “The Primary Lector,” Annis said angrily, “protests.”

  Dreadaeleon had to admit: It was admirable that Annis could restrain his rage enough to respect protocol.

  “An inquisition may be arranged at a later date,” Shinka replied. “Though it is the opinion of the Secondary that we’d find no grounds for anything other than approval of the concomitant’s abilities.” She glanced past Annis to Palanis, coiling like a serpent upon the floor. “That he could do… this to an initiated Lector proves the extent of his value to the Venarium.”

  This did not seem to soothe Annis. The Lector’s teeth clenched tighter; the fires at his hands grew brighter.

  “Further,” Shinka spoke softly, “I would point out that we have much to learn from the concomitant and that killing him will most definitely not bring Librarian Bralston back.”

  Annis flinched. The light from his eyes faded. Smoking tendrils drifted from his fingertips as the flames extinguished themselves. And an instant later, he was back to the very portrait of a composed, severe Lector: hands folded behind him, face set into fixed serenity.

  “The Primary Lector accepts,” he said, “with reservation.”

  “Acknowledged.” Shinka turned a nod to Dreadaeleon. “You are free to g
o, concomitant. Under Venarium law, you are instructed not to leave the city until our conclusions as to your ordeal are drawn and made manifest.”

  “I came here to request access,” Dreadaeleon muttered, “to divination—”

  “If you’ll pardon the coarse phraseology, concomitant,” Shinka interjected pointedly, “do not push it. Lector Palanis requires our full attention, and we have further concerns as to your insubordination. Consider it reward enough that you are permitted to walk away with our admiration for your… field research.”

  He should have protested. He should have pressed them. Lenk would have wanted that.

  Fuck Lenk, he decided. Lenk couldn’t have taken down a Lector. Lenk couldn’t have done any of that. None of them could. And none of them will.

  Dreadaeleon nodded stiffly at the remaining Lectors before turning and heading toward the door. There was vigor in his step, a trembling energy coursing through him as he went to the door. He hadn’t accomplished what he had come for.

  He had accomplished so much more.

  And now he was going to do more still, once he found her.

  What was her name?

  Liaja.

  TWENTY

  COMPANY MEN

  It used to be that thievery was an honest job.

  Back in the day, if someone wanted to pull a job—a real job, not some pickpocket guttersnipe hit man trash job—one worked for it.

  If one wanted a good disguise, he or she watched the target for hours, days, weeks; enough to get every last detail of their countenance down. Then there was the matter of acquiring—legitimately or otherwise, and no one ever acquired anything legitimately—the material to craft it. And then, countless favors were pulled and promised to make the ruse a success.

  It was difficult, yes. But it was through the labor that thieves—honest thieves—proved their worth. It demanded time, it demanded money, and sometimes it demanded dabbling with the very lowest of scum: crooked smiths, Bloodwise Brothers, and, Silf forbid, actors.

  And one false slip—and there were many false slips—would see an amateur hanged, beheaded, or worse, depending on which fasha caught him.

  Denaos, by necessity and elimination, had not hung around with amateurs.