The City Stained Red

by Sam Sykes

  “Do you remember the times when we used to fight alongside each other?” the dragonman asked. “Before I was relegated to carrying your shit?”

  “It’s just for a little bit,” Lenk replied. “You’ll be here when we get back?”

  Gariath looked at him flatly. “Where else would I go?”

  The heat in Gariath’s words made him consider the wisdom of leaving the dragonman alone. Yet Asper beckoned him to follow as the guards stepped aside, opening a gap for them to walk through.

  He had scarcely taken five steps beyond them when Asper stopped abruptly and turned to face him.

  “What is it now?” His voice was ringed with irritation.

  “You’re not getting paid.”

  “What?”

  “You have to know that by now. Whatever happens here, there’s no Miron, there’s no gold,” she said. “If you set foot here, it’s either for revenge or to keep people from dying. And if it’s the former, don’t think I won’t tell Aturach to get rid of you. So which is it?”

  “I’m here to help,” he said. The words sounded hollow on his lips, and in her ears, if her frown was anything to judge by. “Really.”

  Whether she was satisfied by that answer or not, she was at least moving. He followed her into the square, glancing up around the towering buildings. He hadn’t noticed before, but as the sun faded beneath the city’s horizon, he could make out blue coats stationed atop the roofs. He suspected he had found the reason there weren’t as many Sainites on the ground as Karnerians. Standing at the ready, crossbows loaded and eyes locked on the Meat Market below, at least six Sainites stood on every roof.

  Except for one.

  At the east end of the square, upon the roof of one of the shorter buildings rising behind one of the taller walls, a small squad of Karnerians sat cross-legged. Clad in white robes, heads shaven, and a Karnerian numeral tattooed on each of their scalps, they stared straight ahead, lined up in numerical order, unmoving, unblinking.

  “Who are those Karnerians on the roof?” he asked.

  “Machine Cult,” Aturach replied from ahead.

  “What’s that?” Asper asked.

  “If the mediations go well, we’ll never find out,” Aturach muttered, pressing on through the grimy square.

  The Meat Market, it had been rumored, was where the Jackals first got their start with the bloody mass execution of a rival gang. Since then, it had become a popular dumping ground for bodies, and Lenk could see why. The many snaking walls and alleys left a lot of hiding places, the plaster and stone still discolored with bloodstains long past.

  An ideal place for an ambush.

  He chose not to mention this to Aturach. The man looked as if he was about to shake himself to pieces as it was.

  “I need to go and make sure Savine and Malauch got in all right,” he said to Asper. “Can you be on hand? You know, in case something happens. I don’t think it will, but…”

  “I can and I will,” Asper said, nodding to the priest as he slipped into the crowd.

  Something would happen. Too many armed men for it not to. Lenk chose not to state this fact, either.

  After all, no one else seemed bothered by it.

  At the center of the square, all eyes were upon a well-polished table brimming with documents, pitchers of wine, and plates of food. It looked like it would be more at home in a houn than at a mediation. And its attendants looked like they’d be more at home on a battlefield with each other’s swords in each other’s throats.

  A stern-faced, black-armored Karnerian and two soldiers sat at one end of the table, glowering across at the dusty glare of the Sainite woman, her spear leaning against her chair, flanked by a pair of Sainite bluecoats. Glares, for the moment, seemed sufficient to satisfy either party. They exchanged hostile words filtered through the Ancaaran priest seated at the middle of the table. Here, too, was a face that looked serenely bored with the proceedings.

  This was supposed to be the mediations upon which war and subsequently thousands of lives hung in the balance, wasn’t it? Yet no one present, from the mediator to the observers, seemed quite so invested in that outcome.

  On this side of the Karnerian line, anyway.

  It didn’t sit well with Lenk. Too many weapons, not enough of a shit being given about using them. There was a proverb there somewhere, one he would think of after he told Asper. Her arms were folded, eyes upon the table. He reached out to seize her shoulder and her attention.

  But something seized his first.

  Striding like a ghost among the living, there he was. Each step so graceful that he walked through a crowd without touching a single soul, tranquility painted in the smile across his face, hands folded delicately before him, he paused and looked across the mediation table to Lenk and smiled as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Miron Evenhands.

  The priest’s smile, once so warm but now so smug, lingered on Lenk for a moment longer before he turned and vanished down a nearby alley. The young man glanced at Asper. If she had noticed, she wasn’t giving any sign that she had, her eyes still locked on the mediations.

  He half-considered telling her. He half-considered asking her to help him. He half-considered taking her advice when she would doubtlessly tell him to leave it alone.

  That was his sensible half talking. The other half, the half of him that was so tired of killing, the half of him that wanted to start over, the half of him that had poured so much blood and sweat into this moment already…

  That half spoke much, much more loudly.

  He said nothing. He ducked into the crowd. He did not look back.

  “‘You shall show no foe your back. You shall show no foe your feet. You shall show only the blade. They shall know you not as men, but as weapons.’ This is the Conqueror’s holy mandate. It is all we seek to enforce in this city. Whether you force us to choose that or not is on your heads.”

  They were not diplomats.

  “The fuck it is. I’ve read your ‘mandates,’ ripped them out of a book, and wiped with them. A bunch of tripe stewed up by ancient old shits to excuse all the people they killed. We let you enforce this ‘mandate,’ Karnie, we might as well just let you burn the city to the ground. Fuck if we won’t do it first.”

  They were warriors.

  “Speaker, Wing-Sergeant, please. We can come to terms.”

  This was not peace.

  “There can be no terms where the compromise is blasphemy.”

  This was a farce.

  “Hard to fucking sign a treaty with a wolf that can’t even wipe the blood from his paws.”

  Asper hadn’t been here long, but the set of their scowls told her that little had been exchanged between Careus and Blacksbarrow that hadn’t involved accusation. The table was littered with documents—rough drafts of treaties, maps of Cier’Djaal, holy scripts, mission statements. The food and drink provided, though, went largely untouched save by the Ancaaran envoy who even now proceeded to fill his plate.

  “We have gathered here”—he waved a hand around the assembled crowd—“for the purposes of restoring peace. Surely, there is a way we can all get what we want here.”

  No demands for Cier’Djaal from him. No lines drawn in the sand. Not so much as a harsh word for either party threatening to destroy his city.

  He had no interest in peace. He had eyes only for the crowd, all watching, all judging, all waiting for him to finish this and be done so that they could carry on with their lives. Yet only with as much attention as could be expected from a noble. The crowd began to yawn and mingle among themselves, as though this were an exceptionally dull party.

  Out of the corners of her eyes, though, Asper could see there were those who were hanging on every word. The Karnerians and Sainites gathered in gangs at opposite ends of the square. Slowly but surely, they had been assembling into loose formation, ready to strike.

  “Keep an eye on the Sainites”—she leaned over to whisper to Lenk—“and I�
�ll watch the Karnerians. If anything happens, we find Aturach and the others and protect them. All right?”

  Lenk did not answer.

  Maybe he was as uninterested as everyone else.

  Or, far more likely, it was because he was across the square. She saw his wiry form, his silver hair, his stare directed down an alley into which he quickly disappeared. And she felt her jaw clench together.

  That son of a bitch, she thought. He lied to me.

  Granted, she wasn’t certain he’d lied. There was a chance—a small one—that he was heading that way for some other reason. Maybe he had seen someone in need of help. But then why didn’t he tell her? Why wouldn’t he have gotten her to help, too?

  She would decide for herself, she thought as she took off after him, after she had pummeled him senseless.

  “You will not catch him.”

  A voice spoke. It was not loud. It bore no emotion. It did not so much as change inflection. Yet Asper heard it very clearly, for it had been meant for only her to hear. It was made loud by the absolute certainty with which it spoke.

  She turned and saw him. In Ghoukha’s houn, he had looked out of place in his threadbare robe and his bare feet stained black and his wide, sleepless eyes. Here, he looked like an open wound on society: something dark and ugly and poor in a sea of wealth.

  And yet no one seemed to see him but her.

  And she wondered, as she approached him, if anyone else could.

  “You can chase him,” the man with the stare that saw everything said. “You can slow him down, this time. But you will never catch him. You will never stop him. He goes into dark places. He finds violence. This is what he does.”

  “Who are you?” Asper asked.

  “And you,” the man said, ignoring her question, “go after him. You are forever chasing. You are forever trying. You are forever failing. This is what you do.”

  “The hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You fail because you are made by the chase. You do not exist without something to pursue, without wounds to heal, without villains to slay. For you to be of any value, someone must first act that you may react. And for this reason, you will always be too late.”

  He looked at her. His eyes swallowed her. Voices around them faded. The light of the setting sun vanished into his stare. There was nothing left but her and a world that existed entirely within his eyes.

  “As you were last night.”

  She found she had no answer for that, within or without. No words on her lips. No anger behind her brow. His words echoed within her, made her cold and empty.

  “Ask me,” he said.

  “What is your name?”

  “Mundas.”

  “Are you with the Khovura?”

  “Yes.”

  That cold feeling welling up inside her became a spike of ice lodged firmly in her lungs, one that made it hard to speak. “What are you planning?”

  “Nothing.” He turned back to the mediations. They suddenly looked so unimportant, so puny. A boy and a girl fighting over tin soldiers. “I do not intend to lift a finger or move from this spot. There are no Khovura here and none will come. There are no demons here and none will be summoned.

  “But very soon, many people will die. And shortly after, many people will swear that it was a good and honest thing that they did. They will praise Gods for what they have done and say it was the will of heaven, not their own, that killed so many.”

  “I’m here to stop that,” she said.

  “You cannot. I cannot. I have tried many times before. But each time, I fail, like you. Everything that happens now is out of the hands of Gods and men. The sole difference is that men actually bother to reach out and try to grasp events as they happen.”

  Her face fell flat, nearly sliding right off her head. It was something in his voice, the absolute conviction with which he spoke.

  “What you’re talking about, it sounds so…” She shook her head. “Sick.”

  “Do you intend to cure the illness?”

  “I do.”

  “As do I.”

  Mundas blinked. The world went black for a moment and people ceased to exist. When he opened his eyes again, she saw the world rearranged. He was elsewhere, across the square, vanishing into the shadows of the nearby alleys.

  Yet his voice was just as soft, as clear, as certain.

  “When this is over and you speak to Talanas again,” he whispered to her from so far away, “remember that even He was powerless to stop this.”

  And he was gone, leaving only the cold feeling in her gut to confirm that he had ever been there. The crowd in his wake seemed a writhing, nebulous thing, without individuality or beginning or end. So many faces blended together; so many voices rose at once; so little of it seemed to make sense.

  She looked up because she could not bear to look at them anymore. And perhaps it was that tapestry of faces, that endless lack of distinction, which enabled her to spot the glint of the last fading light off of a steel arrowhead.

  And she could see it, from so far away as to be able to be powerless to stop it.

  A crossbow bolt aimed from the window of a nearby building, straight at the Ancaaran envoy’s heart.

  Only a few passing glances were given to Lenk as he wound his way into the alley. Mostly bemused aristocrats wondering how someone in such filthy clothing had been invited, none nearly interested enough to call attention to him. He moved through the shadows of the alley, caught sight of Miron, stark white in the gloom, and instinctively reached for a sword that wasn’t there.

  He caught himself and cursed silently as Miron looked around warily.

  Then cursed a little louder as Miron’s shape began to twitch and ripple like liquid.

  Miron’s skeleton twisted, snapping into shorter limbs with a more compact spine. Clothes changed color, then cloth, and then everything as his white robes became a blue Sainite coat. Face trembled, shifted, and rearranged itself until a strong-jawed, stubble-cheeked, blue-eyed Sainite soldier looked out.

  Miron—the thing that had been Miron and had never been Miron—looked over its shoulder warily. Lenk barely had the presence of mind to duck farther into the shadows. The creature’s gaze swept the alley cautiously for a moment before turning and heading deeper into the maze of streets.

  Lenk was not certain what made him follow. Perhaps it was that uncertainty that kept him going. The uncertainty of what he had just seen, of what it was planning, of what he was even going to do if he caught up to it.

  Some things were so uncertain that the logical mind could not abide them. Some things were so uncertain that they must be made certain.

  And if those things happened to owe a person a lot of money…

  The alley twisted the farther he went in. He followed and kept his distance by the sound of the creature’s footsteps. When they came to a halt, he peered out around the corner of the alley and saw the creature standing at the doorway of one of the buildings overlooking the Meat Market.

  Another Sainite guard, a young man with barely any hair on his cheeks, stood at the door armed with a buckler and sword. He and the creature exchanged a few words in a crisp Sainite accent. The creature added something the guard chuckled at before waving it through, sending it into the door.

  Now was the time to turn back, Lenk knew. Now was the time to acknowledge that whatever he had planned, whatever he thought he was going to do to Miron, was obviously not going to happen. Now was the time to walk away.

  And give up on everything he had hoped to build in this city.

  And surrender everything he ever wanted.

  And go back to killing.

  Over the wall, he could hear the discourse of the mediations growing louder and more heated. An excited murmur rose up among the crowd.

  No, he told himself. You can’t go back now. That thing is plotting something, right? It has to be. How can you build a new life in the city it will destroy? He looked up at the building it had just entered; thre
e stories tall, plenty of windows overlooking the Meat Market. You told Asper you were here to help, right? Are you?

  He answered himself in a single step as he walked out of the shadows and approached the doorway.

  The Sainite guard held up a hand to discourage him. “Ease off, mate. This area’s forbidden to all civs.” He glanced Lenk over. “Which is what you look like. Head back the way you came.”

  “I need to get in there,” Lenk said, gesturing to the door. “The soldier you just let in isn’t who you think he is.”

  “Really? Because I certainly think that’s my mate, Trescel.”

  How long has Miron been doing this? How many other lives does he lead?

  “And I certainly think I’m not going to let a slack-jawed foreign dimwit spew shit about my fellow soldiers,” the Sainite said. “Get back to where you came from, civ.”

  “I just want to take a look inside,” Lenk said, taking a step closer. “That’s all.”

  “Mate.” The man’s hand went to his sword. “Walk. Away.”

  Lenk hesitated. He became aware of the vast shadows behind him leading back to the Meat Market and how far he had walked through them to get here. He became aware of the door before him and how very little he knew of what was behind it.

  Of the young man before him, of the sword in the scabbard, he was only barely aware.

  He took another step forward. Steel hissed against leather. And a step became a leap. Lenk caught the sword’s pommel and shoved the blade back in the scabbard. His hand went for the Sainite’s belt and slipped into his coat. The soldier’s buckler caught him in the chest. He fell back, feeling the dagger from the belt come with him.

  The Sainite reached for his sword again. Lenk lunged, darting low as the sword flashed over his head. He flipped the dagger in his grip, pointed it upward, and drove.

  Hard.

  He felt warm life dribble out onto his hands. He felt a great weight go stiff and then settle on the blade. When he released the weapon, the Sainite fell to the ground and lay limp, eyes frozen wide as though he still hadn’t realized what was going on even as the dagger was jammed up beneath his chin.