The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  They followed the envoy’s directions farther down to the end of the cellar. In a small, round room lit by a dim lantern, a thick iron grate barred a hole the size of a man leading into darkness. The sound of rushing water reached their ears: not the cheerful nonsense of a babbling brook, but the ugly, curse-laden mutter of a sewer.

  Kwar swept in and took a quick survey of the grate. She glanced at the envoy. “It’s locked.”

  “Keys!” the envoy shouted as she was set down before Kwar. “I have the keys!”

  The khoshict canted her head to the side, glancing at the woman’s sash. She reached past her arm, ignoring the frightened whimper that emerged, and plucked out an iron ring laden with keys. She held them up before her, inspecting them.

  “It’s the copper one,” the envoy spoke up, voice quavering. “The copper one unlocks it.”

  Kwar nodded slowly, tucking the key ring into her belt. “Anything else I should know?”

  “I… I don’t think so.”

  “Think hard.”

  The envoy shook her head. “N-no. Nothing else. I swear.”

  “Good.” A flash of steel, Kwar’s dagger was in her hand. “Then you get to die quick—”

  “WAIT!”

  The dagger’s blade paused a hairbreadth from the envoy’s throat. Kwar visibly stiffened as she looked over her shoulder. Through the moon-shaped slits in her mask, Kataria should see her dark eyes aflame.

  “Kill her and there’s too much blood,” Kataria said. “Too easy to track.”

  “We dump her in the sewer,” Kwar replied. “No mess.”

  “If the humans find out it was you—”

  “They won’t.”

  Kataria opened her mouth. Nothing came out but a single word, pathetic and weak to her ears.

  “Don’t.”

  During the moment Kwar held her gaze, Kataria swore she saw something in the deepness of her eyes. Not a fiery scowl, nor even a cold glare of contempt. What burned in those eyes was something bright and desperate, a wordless howl that pounded at the wooden mask like a prison door, begging to be free.

  All that came from Kwar, however, was a long sigh. The tension fled her body as the dagger slipped back into her belt. With an almost petulant ease, she smashed the back of her hand against the envoy’s face, sending her limp in her companions’ grip.

  “Go hide her in a room somewhere,” Kwar said.

  “That doesn’t sound smart,” one of the khoshicts replied with a wary glance.

  “No, it doesn’t.” Kwar lifted her mask and regarded Kataria through a face softened by a frown. “Do it anyway.”

  Kataria could feel the khoshicts’ glares keenly, even through their masks. Still, their enmity for her seemed to be outweighed by their respect for Kwar. They plucked up the unconscious envoy and hauled her out into the hall.

  Kwar didn’t look up as she went to work unlocking the grate. She didn’t make a sound but for a strained grunt as she tried to lift it. Slowly, Kataria crouched down on the other side of the grate and took a grip.

  “Humans keep access to their sewers in their houses?” she asked.

  “Rich ones do,” Kwar muttered.

  A breathless moment passed between them.

  “Thank you,” Kataria said softly, “for that.”

  “Yeah, well…” Kwar sighed. “What’s another human running around, anyway? Not like you’d solve the problem just by killing one.”

  “It must have been difficult.” Kataria stared down at her own hands wrapped tightly about the iron bars. “Your father told me… about your mother.”

  There was only the sound of rushing water. At her silence, Kataria finally looked up at her companion. For the second time that night, she saw someone different.

  The laughing young woman and the silent predator were both gone. What remained was someone who looked uncomfortable under all her muscle, who looked too scared to look so strong.

  “I remember when she died,” Kwar said, her voice a whisper against the water’s burble. “I was just a child, but I remember. The humans were trying to fight us. She, my mother, stood up before them and raised her blade and dared them to come get her and they…”

  She closed her eyes. Her lips tightened into a thin scar.

  “She dropped her blade and I ran to pick it up,” she said. “Thua tried to stop me, ran up behind me and grabbed me. But I was always bigger and stronger than him. I kicked him hard, so hard it made his shins bleed. Then I bit his fingers. He was crying, so I called him a coward. Then I used Mother’s blade and cut him on his arm and he let me go.

  “I was going to kill the humans.” She growled. “All of them. But Father, he—”

  She shook her head.

  “He wanted to make peace with them. He said it’s what Mother would have wanted. He’s a liar. Thua is just a coward; he can’t help that, but he believes our father. My mother wanted the shicts to be safe. And for that, I would kill every last human, no matter how long it took.”

  When Kwar finally looked up at Kataria, her face was soft. Her eyes were wet. Her smile was sad.

  “But,” she said, “I suppose I can let a few live if it’ll make you happy.”

  It was so rarely that Kataria ever found herself without a retort. Very cruel of Kwar to do that to her, she thought. Very cruel of her to make her feel as if something was caught in her throat as she opened her mouth.

  And yet, Kwar’s ears twitched all the same, hearing something unsaid.

  But not for long.

  Kataria’s ears pricked up at a distant sound. Voices from below, feet sloshing through water. Far away, growing closer. Someone in the sewer.

  “Ah,” Kwar said. “We should hurry. Our contractors won’t be happy if they find their way in still blocked. Give me a hand with this, will you?”

  Kataria nodded. With a grunt, they strained to haul the grate up, opening the manhole in the ground. It fell open with a crashing sound.

  “Good,” Kwar said. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

  “Why? Don’t you need to be paid?”

  “Payment was arranged beforehand,” Kwar replied. “We don’t want to be here when this place gets ugly.”

  She made a beckoning motion for Kataria to follow, but the shict hesitated. She leaned closer to the hole, the voices growing clearer. It was a language she didn’t understand, but one whose fervor and harshness were all too familiar. She turned to Kwar with wide, accusatory eyes.

  “Who hired you?” she asked.

  “It’s not important.”

  “Who?” Kataria demanded.

  Kwar’s stare was firm. “I know they are violent and crazed. Frankly, I’m counting on it. If the humans want to kill each other, who am I to stand in their way? Fasha, Khovura…” She sneered. “They all look the same to me.”

  Kataria’s mouth hung open for a moment. She hadn’t a word to offer, not that any could be heard over the sudden thunder of her heart.

  The Khovura.

  The Khovura were coming.

  Kataria looked to the grate. Too heavy to lift on her own, and she knew she couldn’t convince Kwar to help her. The sound of the fanatics echoed through the tunnels. Even a round ear could hear them now.

  There was no time to explain why she suddenly took off running. And certainly no time to stop and wait when Kwar called after her.

  But if she hurried, if her lungs held out and her legs held firm and someone up in heaven decided to put aside racial differences and stop hating her for just a single moment, there might just be enough time to find Lenk before the house of Ghoukha was painted scarlet.

  THIRTY-THREE

  THROUGH GILDED VEIN

  Fish eggs?

  Asper shook her head.

  No. But they are eggs, aren’t they? All glistening and… quivering and… and… She forced a visible cringe into a visible frown. Do I really want to know?

  Whether she did or not, when she looked up from the tray to the headman who had just handed it to h
er, she was met with a glare and a rather forceful gesture to return to the guests.

  She did so, eyes never leaving the glistening green sacs quivering upon flatbreads. She delicately evaded guests, pretending not to hear their calls or notice their reaching hands. She made her way to the corner of the room where the corpsewagon lingered, still given a large berth.

  She glanced around the room and, once she was sure no one was watching, pulled up the tarp covering the wagon and slipped the tray in.

  There was a faint rustling from beneath, followed by a low growl.

  “What’s this?” Gariath muttered beneath the tarp.

  “I don’t know,” Asper said. “Spider eggs, I guess? Ghoukha likes to make an impression.”

  “I told you to bring me meat. Why would you bring me this? Did you want me to hit you? We could have worked something out.”

  “It’s all they serve here!” Asper retorted, trying not to look like she was talking to a corpsewagon that should definitely not be talking back. “Just eat it.”

  “What is this room called again?”

  “The houn. It means ‘boast’ in Djaalic.”

  “What’s it made of?”

  “Mostly gold. Other expensive stuff.”

  “And they eat things that come out of a bug’s anus.”

  “That’s what you do when you’re rich,” Asper whispered. “Look, if you don’t like it, you can just wait until we’re out of here. It won’t be long now. Probably.”

  She looked across the houn. Dreadaeleon and Denaos would be easy to spot even if they weren’t dressed in sheer black, just by the total absence of people around them. True to the disguise, though, every guest and servant seemed to be taking exceptional pains to avoid even looking at them, let alone interacting with them.

  They had taken positions at various doors at the walls of the houn, ready to disappear once Ghoukha appeared. There had been murmurs of activity upstairs, which she could only assume was Ghoukha preparing to come down.

  Either that or something had gone terribly wrong with Kataria and Lenk. That worried her. But, with so many things with so much potential to go wrong, she could but trust in their ability to handle themselves. Not like she had much of a choice, anyway.

  “I smell fear.”

  “That might be me,” Asper whispered back.

  “It’s everywhere. I smelled it back in the city. The scent of people who cling and grasp.” There was a long pause. “You say the room is made of gold?”

  “It is.”

  No response. Not so much as a growl. Gariath was completely silent.

  That, too, worried her.

  Almost as much as the hand that shot out to seize her by the arm and drew her close.

  “Hey, northern,” one of the servants, a young girl with a tray of wine, snapped, “do me a favor and take this to Fasha Teneir.”

  “What?” Asper grunted as the tray was shoved into her hands. “Why can’t you?”

  “For one, you’re new. For two, you’re northern. For three, you haven’t had a chance to understand why no one else wants to do this.” She gave Asper a swift slap on the rump, shoving her out onto the floor. “The saccarii with the Ancaaran. Just nod and smile.”

  Sparing a wary glance for Gariath’s hiding place, Asper made her way out to the floor. She hadn’t ever seen Teneir yet—though various whispers floating between guests and servants had given her a good idea of what to expect, even before she saw the ornately dressed Ancaaran priest and the veiled woman standing beside him.

  The only person in the room who was given a wider berth than a wagon purportedly full of dead corpses.

  The moment she crept within range, a pair of amber eyes, sharp as knives, was whirled upon her.

  The woman’s eyes were as lit and lively as fireflies, flitting from Asper’s face to Asper’s hands to Asper’s middle to Asper’s shoulder. Wherever the saccarii’s gaze lingered for longer than a breath, she felt a flinch of pain, as though the woman’s eyes could prick as surely as any needle.

  “This wine.” Teneir’s voice came scalpel-thin from beneath her veil, an elaborately stitched green ensemble that matched the rest of her dress. “It was made from grapes grown in the shadow of a tall building whose windows are cracked and where people huddle together?”

  It hurt to hear her voice. It hurt to look her in the eyes. Asper could but do as she’d been advised, forcing a trembling smile to her lips and nodding.

  “And was it crushed by the washed feet of a poor mother with a bent back? Were her children hungry and her husband gone on a holy day?”

  Asper forced her grin a little bigger, for fear that it might collapse into a grimace at any moment. She nodded again.

  Teneir’s slit gaze lingered on her for a moment longer before she reached down to pluck the wine from the tray. Asper caught but a glimpse of her delicate hand before it retreated back into its sleeve: It was gray, almost scaly.

  “At least Ghoukha manages to show some respect to Ancaa, if only in drink,” Teneir muttered to her elaborately dressed companion. “I should renew my objections to his plans for mediation.”

  “Your passion for the faith is admirable, Teneir,” the Ancaaran priest replied through a smile as sparkling as his headdress. “But there is no need. Peace between the foreigners will bring glory to Cier’Djaal. Why should it not be made in the most glorious home of Cier’Djaal?”

  “And what of Cier’Djaal’s people?” Teneir asked sharply. “Ancaa loves the poor most of all. If this peace is to benefit them, then why not do it where they can see it? The Meat Market lies between the Souk and the Sumps, at the heart of—”

  The Ancaaran priest made a face as though someone had just broken wind. “The Sumps! Fasha, you cannot be serious. So much dirt and grime.”

  “Dirt is the cloth of the impoverished. Grime is the cloak of the oppressed. Let the people witness the peace Ancaa delivers them! Let them know She is no deaf Goddess.”

  “I’ll hear no more of it!” he replied. “Please, let us speak of other things.” Instantly, the grimace was wiped clean by a silken sleeve. In its place was a simpering smile. “Now, as to the donation you were speaking of…”

  “Yes, yes,” Teneir replied. “I have already instructed my accountant to—”

  Without even a pause, Teneir’s eyes cut to Asper, drawing thin as razors. Asper didn’t know if yelping was as dignified as smiling and nodding; at least she managed not to use the tray as a shield.

  “Do you require my attention, shkainai?”

  Asper shook her head, trembling.

  “Then go.”

  Asper didn’t know if there was a dignified way to flee, either. She turned sharply on her heel and left, all the same. She felt Teneir’s gaze chase her, the pins pricking with every step she took, until she felt the guests and servants close in around her once again.

  Asper cast a glance over her shoulder. Everyone was behind her. No one was behind her.

  She turned to head back to the wagon and felt a sudden jolt as another body collided with her.

  “Your pardon,” she said, making sure to throw in an exaggerated bow. “The fault was all—”

  She looked up into darkness.

  He had a face. She knew this, only because she knew he had eyes. And everything he was—the tall thinness of his body, the narrowness of his mouth, the slope of his shaven head—was swallowed within a wide, unblinking stare.

  “I didn’t mean…”

  She emptied her words into those eyes, watched them drift into aimless whispers. She caught the rest of him in periphery, unnecessary details of a body there only to bear the burden of his stare. His clothes were threadbare and coarse. He wore no shoes. His skin should have been dark, but looked drained and pale.

  He did not belong here.

  She did not belong before him.

  “Haven’t…” she whispered, “haven’t I…”

  “You have.” His voice was soft, deep, a yawning hole into which a lake slo
wly drained. “You will not again.”

  He blinked. The world blinked with him. When it opened its eyes, he was behind her.

  “Noisy in here,” he observed. “Do you think Talanas will hear you when you pray to Him?”

  She asked him something that she couldn’t hear. The houn’s noise was eaten alive by the sound of a loud gong. When she turned around, the man and his eyes were gone. But everyone else’s were turned to the stairs and the man upon it.

  The gong rang out with every step of the servants that carried him along the upper hallway to the top of the stairs, as if to suggest that his coming was thunder and his smile was the sun. A burden of gold sat upon his neck and shoulders, just as his burden of flesh sat upon the palanquin his servants set down upon the marble.

  As vast and painted and glistening as she remembered him from the Souk, Fasha Ghoukha surveyed his golden land like a glutted god.

  “Friends,” he bellowed over their heads, “esteemed emissaries, men and women of all Gods.” He swung his meaty arms over his houn. “Be welcome to the House of Ghoukha.”

  Light applause. Just loud enough to hide the spiteful whispers exchanged among a few more envious attendees.

  “Long have we fashas led by houn,” he continued. “By our ambition, by our gold”—he gestured to the ceiling, where the source of his wealth skittered across on eight legs—“by our friends who have, in turn, led us to be the voice of Cier’Djaal. For years, our voice has been houn. And only houn.

  “This was the way of our fathers.” He held up a thick finger and waved it. His chins shuddered. “But not ours. Our fathers could count the luxury of isolation. But we, their sons and daughters, live in a different Cier’Djaal.

  “We are a city of many races”—he swept a hand to Man-Shii Kree, who bowed respectfully—“of many faiths”—he found Blacksbarrow and Careus in the crowd and met their scowls with a smile—“of many people. No longer can we speak with only one word.

  “Let us therefore, find a new way to speak,” he continued. “Let us add to our vocabulary. And let the first word be—”