The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “And what,” Sheffu asked with a cold hostility, “have you lost?”

  A girl.

  A friend.

  Everything.

  Lenk said none of this. Sheffu didn’t wait for him to say something different.

  “Because whatever it is, you stand to lose much more, along with everyone else, if you do not act.” He held his left hand out to his side. “Because if you do not, then who will?”

  Lenk looked up. He met those sharpened eyes of Sheffu, now dripping with scorn, and stared flatly at him.

  “Are you going to make me?”

  And, for the first time, Sheffu looked away.

  “I am not,” he replied.

  Lenk said nothing beyond a mumbled gratitude as he rose from his chair, turned, and left. He didn’t hear Mocca rise from his, but the man in white was beside him in an instant, walking with him to the nearby archway, turning into the hall, and trying to ignore Sheffu’s scowl burning into their backs.

  “I was rather proud of myself back there, you know,” Mocca said finally.

  “You didn’t say a damn thing,” Lenk said.

  “To my inestimable credit,” his companion shot back. “I doubt I could have opened my mouth without laughing in his face.” Now that he was out of earshot, he saw fit to indulge himself with a chuckle. “Demons. And he expects you to kill them?”

  “I’ve killed them before.”

  “Then why is he surprised that you don’t want to do it again?” Mocca sighed dramatically. “Don’t worry yourself overmuch. What would she say if you abandoned her only to go back to killing?”

  Lenk stopped dead in his tracks, turning a glare upon his companion. “I never told you about her.”

  Mocca smiled. “You talk in your sleep. I put the pieces together myself.”

  That made sense, Lenk thought, resuming his trek toward the door. Though it was hard to feel at ease knowing that Mocca had heard what he hardly spoke of himself. The man in white stopped at the door, making a gesture inviting Lenk to go first.

  “Shkainai! Hey, shkainai!”

  The young man hesitated, hand on the knob, when he heard Eili approaching. The little urchin came rushing up, stopping before him and reaching out to take his hand. She placed something in his palm and curled his fingers over it.

  He didn’t have to look to know what it was. He could feel its quill, its barbs. Still soft, still warm, still white, still hers.

  Kataria’s feather.

  “Thanks,” he muttered. “For not keeping it.”

  “Figured ya’d want it”—she turned and stalked down the halls, muttering over her shoulder—“since ya’d kill us all for it.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ASSASSINS

  Asper walked on a dead woman’s legs.

  There were people all around, laughing and singing praises to various gods—though mostly just one—as they ran through Temple Row. She walked through the shadows of looming cathedrals as the sun waned overhead. She stepped over a river of people crawling on their bellies as they scaled the steps to Ancaa’s church.

  And she noticed none of it, consumed by a singular echoing thought.

  Miron is dead.

  The man she had been searching for after nights of sleepless worry and muttered prayers to a God she wasn’t sure would even listen.

  Miron is dead.

  The man she had spent countless nights discussing what it meant to heal to and who convinced her that treating a scraped knee was as important as treating a head wound.

  Miron is dead.

  The man who guided her through a world filled with blood and corpses and companions who were eager to make more. The man who helped her hone her skill as a healer. The man whose presence made her never doubt that the Healer was always watching over them.

  That man was dead.

  And she had just spoken to him four days ago.

  But Aturach had shown her the logbook. Miron Evenhands had never reached the rank of Lord Emissary. Miron Evenhands had been a priest of no great notoriety who had studied briefly at various temples in the north and south before dying quietly and leaving no estate or relatives.

  Could it have been mistaken? Could it have been lying? Could the scribe making the entry have been overworked, thinking of soft women and warm wine and simply… fucked it up?

  No, she thought. No, how could that have happened? If Miron hadn’t been dead, then they would have amended the record when he showed up again, wouldn’t they? He would have returned to the church and they would have known they’d made a mistake. But he never returned to the church.

  Her head was pounding, each thought a hammer blow to her skull.

  Then who have you been talking to all this time? Who took you to Cier’Djaal? Who convinced you that healing people wasn’t a waste of time? Who convinced you to stay with Lenk and the others even though you knew it was wrong?

  Her skull seared. Her left arm itched. The curse inside her reacted to the tumultuous thought and grew agitated. She looked down at her arm and winced. She had never told him about it. But he had told her so much else.

  He knew my problems. I told him about how my parents turned me over to the clergy on my eighth birthday. I told him about the time we sneaked out of temple and I met a boy and I loved him for that night only. I told him about… about Taire and… and about sneaking wine into our dormitory and… and…

  “He knew me,” she whispered. And she tried very hard to ignore how that statement now made her skin crawl.

  She rounded the corner and saw the Death Line that bisected Temple Row. And for a brief, merciful moment, she saw something horrifying enough to take her mind off of her own problems.

  Painted like tributaries from a river, smears of blood mingled with the Death Line. Some were small, puddles after a drizzle. Others were great abstract portraits in a single color.

  On either side of the Death Line, Karnerians and Sainites went about the grim work of cleaning up. The dead and wounded they carried out on stretchers without so much as a flinch. The corpses of their foes that had happened to have fallen on their side, though, they took great care to leave burning or impaled or otherwise desecrated.

  There was no air of suffering here, as there had been in the temple of Talanas. Nor was there a basking fervor, like at Ancaa’s temple. There wasn’t even a trace of the tension that had been present when she first arrived.

  It was a casualness that fell over the court like a heavy, woolen blanket. And it was the casualness that unnerved her. Here, men and women looked past the dead without tears, reverence, or horror. They plucked up their dying comrades like baggage, trod over their dead foes like litter. They moved with a weary familiarity that suggested they had done this all before and would do it all again, so who would bother getting upset that they had just seen so many people die?

  If Miron were here to see this, she wondered, what would he say?

  The man she thought was Miron, though, would have lamented the loss of life. He would have told her to keep her chin up, to not take the sign of such casualness as indicative of all humanity. He would have said that there would be at least one soldier in his bunk at night, weeping into a pillow because he had just seen his best friend die, and it was for that man that she must continue.

  But the man she thought was Miron was a fraud.

  Was everything he had said also a lie? How could she trust the words of a pretender? A liar who wore another man’s identity as his own? How could she take his comfort when the comfort he gave wasn’t his?

  She sighed and walked along the Death Line. Not a soul looked up to challenge her as she began to trudge wearily toward the gates of Temple Row and, ultimately, back to the others.

  Lenk would want to know.

  Well, that’s not true, she thought. Lenk would want to know where Miron was. Lenk won’t want to know that Miron doesn’t exist and he’s never getting paid. Should I even tell him?

  She paused at the gates, thinking.

&n
bsp; Should I even go back? Miron was the one that told me to stay with them. And he’s… She shook her head. But they need to know. They need me. Don’t they?

  To do what?

  Make more corpses?

  Listen mutely to her lectures?

  Ignore her when she prayed quietly to a God that might not be there?

  Not too far away, the Souk’s distant hum of coins and lives changing hands was quieting as the sun continued to sink. It felt like a long, lonely road back to the inn and her companions. A road made all the harder by the dead woman’s legs beneath her.

  Absently, she pondered just sitting down here and quietly waiting for someone else to come along and tell her what to do, so she could at least be ready when she was disappointed again.

  Or maybe she would die first. That might be nice, too.

  “Shkainai! SHKAINAI!”

  Of course, she thought with a sigh. Someone would have to go and interrupt that, as well.

  It was a Djaalic man who came running up to her, pale and sweating. Not a rich one, either. His clothes were shabby and his eyes were sunken. When he skidded to a halt before her, his breath was desperate and short.

  “Healer? Yes?” he gasped, gesturing to the pendant about her neck. “You’re a healer? Talanite?”

  For a brief moment, she wondered if it might be better if she pretended to be someone going to a costume party with a religious theme. Her weary nod, however, was automatic.

  “Please, come,” the Djaalic said, frantically. “My brother, he fell. He can’t get back up, he won’t stop shouting, and… and I don’t know what to do.” He looked up at her, pleading. “I left my wife and cousin with him. Please, you must help.”

  “The, uh, the temple of Ancaa is just behind—”

  “Ancaa can’t do anything! Her followers don’t know anything other than how to talk pretty and spend money!” The desperation on his face pooled in his eyes, glistening. “No one else can do this, shkai—” He caught himself and winced. “Priestess. Please.”

  That, she was certain, was almost definitely not true.

  Even the Karnerians and Sainites had field medics. The Ancaarans probably had a few people who knew a bit of healing. And there were always the Quills and Lanterns of Gevrauch.

  But they were far away. And she was here.

  And this, apparently, was reason enough to start moving.

  The Djaalic fell over his feet and his words as he stumbled ahead, leading her down the cobblestones, babbling gratitudes the whole way. She barely heard him. The dead woman’s legs were gone and her thoughts with them. Returned were the old familiar habits of the healer.

  She was here. She could help. Even if Miron was an impostor, even if her companions were savages, even if there would be more suffering, more bodies, more blood tomorrow, she would always be able to do something, no matter who told her she was capable.

  Not much of a reason.

  But enough.

  The outskirts of the Souk were notably more rustic than the core of the city. Its homes were largely well-worn, uncared-for wood alongside a few very old houses of carved stone. Sunset seemed to arrive sooner here, with windows shut and only a few old men and women on the street, who disappeared into their doors as she and the Djaalic passed.

  “Here,” he said, pointing down an alley. “We live down here. He collapsed on our doorstep.”

  A narrow confine of walls and doors greeted her as she rounded the corner. Huddled together at the center, a woman and another man crouched and sobbed hysterically over a dark shape.

  “Get back!” she barked. “Give him some air.”

  Muttering pleas, they fell back, leaving her room to kneel over the man. He was clad in a thin robe, curled up on his side, trembling with contained agony. She laid a hand on him; even through the robe, she could feel the fever in his flesh.

  “Who… who?” the agonized man gasped.

  “It’s all right,” Asper replied. “I’m a Talanite. I’m here to help. Tell me where it hurts.”

  “T-Talanite? Was once… once…” He shook his head, droplets of sweat falling. “Didn’t listen… couldn’t ignore the v-visions, what he s-said…” He drew in a sharp breath through a choked throat. “W-wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ready!”

  Delerium. Fever. Shortness of breath. Diseases and suffering sometimes seemed like the only bountiful things in life.

  One despairing thought at a time, she cautioned herself. She took him gently by the chin, pressed a hand against the back of his skull and raised his head up. Choked voice. Something must be swollen.

  “Open your mouth for me,” she said softly.

  “Burns… hurts… wasn’t…”

  He either hadn’t heard her or couldn’t do it on his own. With a little bit of pulling, she was able to pry his lips apart and open his mouth. She stared down his gullet and saw everything looking perfectly pink, unswollen, and healthy. Past his tongue, there was only darkness.

  And it was from this darkness that an eye, wide and white and bloodshot, stared back at her.

  She fell back with a shriek. The man groaned in reply, rolling onto his back. His robe parted, exposing a tremendously swollen belly, spherical and quivering as his groan became a scream.

  His agony grew louder. His mouth opened wider. Long gray fingers ending in dirty black nails curled over his lips as something inside him reached out.

  And ripped his mouth into a doorway.

  Asper’s heart was pounding, her breath was short, and her limbs were flailing beneath her as she scrambled to her feet. As she whirled about to run, she saw them. The woman and two men were pulling black veils over their faces, drawing knives from their clothes, fixing wild stares upon her.

  “Kapira,” they whispered in lilting, crazed harmony. “Kapira, anshaa.”

  She froze before them, even as they advanced. She didn’t dare retreat, for she could already feel black eyes upon her.

  “They looked upon us as Gods, for they knew not the difference between God and learned man.” The demon’s rasping groan came to her ears, carried on the thick, glistening sounds of flesh stretching and snapping. “The burden of knowledge was one we did not wish upon them. The agony of thought was one we were content to spare them.”

  Its words slithered across her flesh, into her ears. She knew then that if she didn’t turn to face it, she would run screaming into the daggers. And so, when she whirled around, she did so biting her tongue, hoping the pain would be enough to distract from the fear.

  No such luck.

  Rising like a plume of smoke from a fire extinguished, the demon emerged from the man’s mouth, stretched unnaturally wide to let the expanse of its gray, withered coils escape. Through scribble-black eyes pinched between a columnar skull and the wrinkles of an old man’s jowls, it stared at her.

  “Would you take our burdens, priestess?”

  She felt her body grow tight beneath its gaze, as though every drop of blood inside her went still, fearing that they might be spotted if they moved. Her eyes were locked wide open. Her jaw was clenched tight. Every bit of her was frozen in fear.

  Save her left arm.

  Skin twitched beneath her sleeve, sinew burned beneath her skin, blood beneath the sinew. And beneath all of that, she could hear it, the pain of the curse in her arm.

  This thing, hate it, want it dead, keep it away from us, hurts us, want it dead.

  She couldn’t speak to it. She couldn’t move. Not even as she heard feet scuffling behind her and felt the iron stares of knives pointed at her back.

  The demon raised a hand. Behind her, the Khovura halted.

  “We have sensed your thirst,” the demon said. It shed the dead man from its flesh as it slithered forward slowly. “It is rain on parched lips, priestess. You seek answers into matters beyond your concern. Such was our way before we were turned.”

  Was it just that demons were incapable of not being cryptic, she wondered?

  “But knowledge is a terrible sin in th
e eyes of the Gods you serve,” it hissed, drawing closer. “To know is to be without fear, and to be without fear is to know no God. What lies did yours tell you?”

  The temple, she realized. They know where I’ve been. They’ve been following me.

  That was her last thought before thought, too, froze with fear. The beast leaned close and she could see past the black scribbles of its eyes to the bloodshot orbs buried beneath the darkness.

  “You know that which you should not,” it rasped. “You keep company of slayers, the cold-eyed heretics who slew us for our sins of knowledge.”

  “Lenk?” she whispered.

  “They have no names, for they have no souls. When they go, they shall be one of many taints expunged.”

  She watched a long, thin arm rise up around her. She felt thin fingers wrap around her neck, the tips of black nails prod at the tenderness of quivering flesh. She heard a voice rasping, a long tongue flicking against desiccated lips with every word.

  “Let this knowledge soothe you,” it said, “as you learn the price of knowledge.”

  “BACK!”

  A single thought made into a single word spoken from a single voice. And none of them were hers.

  Not entirely, anyway. It was her left arm that reached up and dug fingers against the gray flesh of the demon’s wrist. It was her pain that raced through her veins, down into the marrow of her bones. But it was not her choice to do so.

  Nor was what happened next.

  Her sleeve split apart in a burst of crimson, erupting in a hellish light that painted her skin red and her bones black. It lasted for but a moment, an eye into the keyhole in the door between earth and hell that closed shut in a breath.

  But the scream that followed lasted much longer.

  The demon’s grasp slipped from her as it fled down the alley, chased by its own wail. It coiled over itself defensively, clutching the blackened, smoking flesh where her hand had touched. Between its coils, it scowled spitefully from a withered face.

  “You dare to touch the learned Disciple?” it snarled. It leveled a thin black fingernail at her. “She is a vessel, tainted! Unfit to hear His word! Rend her.”