Scribes

by James Wolanyk

  “Moskos don’t understand too much. Truth is it’s not in your blood.”

  “You wanted some of their salt. That’s the truth.”

  “Truth is muddy,” the tracker reminded her. “Listen close, and you’ll see my point.” He turned his gaze to the dunes. “Before the war, Radzym was a shadow. Any man old enough to use his prick would tell you that he never had two fingers to the throat of your land. Never put sweat into the fields, and neither did his kin. Probably never saw the eastern fields until they gave him the writ, in fact. And bury my name if he could pick out Bylka on a map.” The tracker gave a hollow laugh, as though he had attempted, and failed, to mimic true amusement. “The korpa has barely thirty years, and he’s held the writ since before your first breath. How he got his hands on the parchment . . . well, it depends on the imagination. Each tale is different, but I’ve seen the way his eyes crawl around in his skull. My guess is that he turned on Adym once the war broke out, but not with a blade. Too bold for him. He probably told the Moskos how to surround the keep, stack their straw, and burn out the family.” The tracker shrugged. “That was how the Moskos divided up the land, girl. They didn’t care who could thresh wheat or crack an enemy’s line. Crooked-tongues were rewarded. Crooked-tongues like Radzym.”

  Radzym’s name had drifted through her father’s post once or twice, but nobody spoke much of him. What little Anna had heard of the bogat, however, vindicated the tracker’s story. The riders, and sometimes Anna’s own father, had called him the novy sinka—the new runt.

  “What did he do to you, then?” she asked.

  “Not a thing,” the tracker replied. “Not personally, anyway. He’s a crooked-tongue, and he worked with Moskos, but I’ve no blood-wish with him. I only met the korpa when he needed trackers.”

  “You’re not a tracker,” Anna said. “I’m not sure what you are, but you’re not one of them.”

  “According to what?”

  Wind whistled over the kator, filling the silence. But Anna’s first night in the ruined keep was enough to make her point. Somewhere in his heart, the tracker knew it too. “Why was he taking them?” She couldn’t summon the nerve to ask about Julek specifically.

  “Enlightenment.” The tracker cocked his head to the side. “Do you know that word?”

  Someday, I will, she assured herself. “Go on.”

  “Most would wager he wanted something warm in his bed,” the tracker said. “All of those young boys . . . a few girls, just for thrills. A quick-lipped messenger near Veszula thought he was forcing duzen broth down the boys’ throats, adding more giants to his pens, but it didn’t explain why he’d take the maimed ones. A few cycles in, words slipped through cracks in his walls. Words that called for skilled help.” He took in a measured breath. “The bogat is young, but he’s no hare. Doesn’t need to fuck every pretty creature that walks through his gates. That’s what his sukry are for.”

  “You didn’t—”

  The tracker held up a callused hand. “There’s a certain slowness to the truth of things, girl. Tales within tales.” He looked back at Anna. “The whisperers said that Radzym had gone mad for runes. Not just these,” he said, gesturing to the luminescence beneath his burlap, “but of another breed. Radzym’s scribe carved up his neck five, six times each day with what I’m carrying, but they wanted what they couldn’t have. New marks.”

  As Anna listened, the symbol that screamed light danced in her periphery, begging for attention. “What do they look like?”

  “Don’t know. Radzym doesn’t know either, far as word went. At the heart of things, the problem was simple: Nobody had ever seen them. It was chatter slipping through old walls. Words from Nahora, from some sunbaked wanderer in Desh Safar. Doesn’t matter a grain though, because there was never any proof of them.”

  “It doesn’t make sense,” Anna said, seizing the natural break in the tracker’s words. “Did they think Julek was a scribe?”

  “Of course not. He was scrap parchment.”

  “I don’t understand,” Anna said, a thread of anger worming through her chest. His riddles were tiring.

  “You said you didn’t want to be treated like a child,” the tracker said, more comfortable than ever. “Listen here, then. Radzym thought his scribe could figure it out, if he just kept at it. Rumors about their shapes were everywhere. Moon-curves, mountain-teeth, waves, they tried everything, but none of them worked. Nobody even knew what they might do, if they ever found the fucking things. And each time they failed, it left another ruined neck. Nothing but scar tissue, if they even lived.”

  As far as Anna knew, there was no reason why marks were confined to the throat. It was just the way things had always been, how they’d been justified by a dozen different legends. She slowly raised her hand to her neck, feeling over the stitches and rough flesh. No matter what she’d once felt about her voice, she felt fortunate in that moment.

  “So they cycled new blood in, new blood out,” the tracker continued, oblivious to Anna’s gesture. “They always needed fresh bodies. It wasn’t just Radzym doing it, you understand. The krolgaty turned a blind eye.”

  Seated ones of Malchym, Anna recalled from her father’s sparse explanation of the term. Bogaty among bogaty. So much power was beyond comprehension.

  “You’d be hard pressed to find a bogat that wasn’t looking for those runes, or churning through whole villages to work at them,” he went on. “Even Malchym, you know. Maybe their low swords don’t know, but their council, all of the krolgaty, must know.” He gave a dark laugh. “Defenders of justice. Why do you think their men were searching that tomesroom? The korpy thought that a looted keep might hold their answers. I don’t know what those runes do, girl, or if they even exist, but everybody wants them.”

  “They’re just symbols,” Anna said, watching light squirm in the darkness. “Maybe they should be afraid of them. If they exist.”

  “Now there’s a shred of thought,” the tracker said. “But they’re just hounds. They’re so hungry for a kill, even if it’s leaking pus. Loose words say the runes will set Rzolka aflame, and each bogat’s hunting for the torch.”

  Anna pulled herself back from the man’s words, suddenly realizing how they’d spoken of Julek. How they’d called him parchment and whitewashed his death. He meant nothing to men who answered to no one.

  “Those among my circle tasked me with watching Radzym,” the tracker said, disinterested. “We have one attached to nearly every bogat, and four in Malchym. Three in Kowak. But I was correct, girl: There was nothing to Radzym besides a crying, tit-hungry boy. My work near Bylka was a waste.” He stared at Anna, his violet irises churning. “Until I found you.”

  “You were looking for me?”

  “No,” the tracker said, waving his hand in dismissal. “But what a merry little accident it was. Moment I found you, I knew it was time to head north. Time to bring home the one respectable thing in your backwater pit.”

  An accident, she thought numbly, mulling over the words. It calmed her to think that she hadn’t been the reason for the trackers following her. In some ways, she figured it would’ve resonated in her gut to hear you’re not worth killing for. Yet there was no solace in the explanation. There was no reason for anybody’s death. The more he spoke, the more Anna recalled her meditation, and the fleeting nature of life.

  Perhaps in a just world, one without scribes, wicked men would not outlive their victims.

  “Goes without saying that you’re special,” the tracker said. “And partnership means fair treatment. So the honest way of it is, you’re a good sort of special. Anything you want, anything you need, anything you whisper in your sleep, my circle will have it for you. How’s that for an earning?”

  Earning. The word was cracked coal and mashed dandelion in her mouth, so bitter that her throat clenched. “Don’t try to buy me,” she whispered. “Not anymore.”

&n
bsp; “You have your truth,” the tracker said.

  “No,” Anna said, “I have your words. One man’s words.”

  “Cooperation from an honest man puts you off, eh?”

  Anna’s stare was unwavering. “Tell me about your circle.”

  His eyes were creased with the enjoyment of a man in the thick of dice-gambling. But upon hearing circle, the veil evaporated. He tilted his chin up with slow resolve. “They’ll save Rzolka.” His voice was deep and determined, his words rehearsed.

  “How?”

  The tracker’s pupils, darkened to black droplets in the night, drifted upward to watch the sky. “Take the simplest truth, girl. Politics are a tired game.”

  Her father had said as much. Not even the bogaty seemed interested in dealing with the missives from Malchym. But Anna had always heard of Malchym’s councils, which supposedly seated as many women as men. Like all half-truths about Malchym, it had a certain element of foreign allure to it. Malchym was a place where all things could’ve been true, because she had never been inside of its walls or able to dispel the illusions.

  “Besides,” the tracker said, closing his eyes, “we wouldn’t want to overfill your mind.”

  “Tell me,” Anna said. She did her best not to sound like a petulant child, but it was fruitless.

  “There’s no need, girl.”

  “Yes, there is,” Anna shot back, her voice a hoarse whisper. “I don’t know what you want to save Rzolka from. I don’t know how they plan to save it, or why they want my help. I don’t know what politics has to do with anything. I don’t know—I don’t know a lot of things, and you owe me the answers. And I want you to stop calling me girl.”

  The tracker arched one eyebrow. “Oh?”

  “Panna,” she replied, recalling the term she’d once heard among bloodletting women in her village, often directed at her mother. A term of respect, if not deference.

  “By the Grove,” he moaned. “It’s what Malchym calls its women, its girls, its cockless animals. Leave it in the shit, where it belongs.” He sighed. “And since when did you bleed, girl? Your sheets are as white as bone.”

  “You’ll call me panna,” she whispered. “And you’ll tell me about your circle. About your politics.” Even if she didn’t understand, she would pretend that she did. She couldn’t surrender her advantage.

  She couldn’t surrender the truth.

  “It’ll breeze past you, panna,” he began, practically spitting the word, “but you want the whole truth of it, so I’ll indulge you. It’s not like anything I tell you will reach inside and twist your little heart, though. It’s all history and songs to you. You don’t know a breath of this world.” The tracker laughed like a hound that’d lapped up its water too quickly and sputtered. “Before you crawled from your mother’s slit, Rzolka was strong. Not perfect, you understand. I’ve never been one to drown things in honey.

  “But strength was what we needed when Nahora reached the eastern shores and started undermining the markets in Kowak. It was what we needed when the Hazani slugs crept down the Flats and put their seed in every girl from here to Chemna. When the Gosuri burned a trail toward Malchym, and their krolgaty did nothing to stop them. When the north haggled every log and strip of kindling out of the Splinters, and Malchym gobbled up their metals in return.” He sneered. “Can you see the way of it, Anna? Out in the fields and pinelands, there are plenty of decent bogaty who knew how soil felt on their hands. Blood, too. But the runts under the Mosko banners were city-born, and they only knew salt. Only wanted to spread their legs for the north. Those runts hardly had a dozen holdings outside of Malchym, but that was all it took. Writs from that marble cesspool had a way of stirring things. And in Kowak, you could already see the end. Huuri crowding the slums and salt changing hands a thousand times over, paying off foundlings to put a blade through any honest bogat’s spine.

  “Malchym threw coins at the bogaty near Kowak, and the men danced for them. And do you know what happened when the old wolves tried to cull their litter, to pick up the Moskos and their fleas by the scruff of the neck? The fucking runts bit at them, bled their own fathers dry. Kowak’s proper lot held out for a while. Until Nahora stuck their cocks into the affair, sent galleys across the straits to show the runts how to fight. Those pups bit and bit and bit, and they lapped up the blood at Malchym’s side. Imagine that, Anna. Two cities, Kowak and Malchym, both hobbling under the Mosko standard, putting villages to the torch to bring peace. Roasting the old wolves in their armor, and stuffing blackened flesh into their wives’ mouths. Hanging boys from the lantern posts and standing around with their sacks in hand, laughing. All of that, done for order, and unity, and peace.

  “Now they say their den is safe, but it’s cracking again, just as it always did. Both cities want their scribes. They want payment and foreign masters and fat bellies. The cities are a cancer on Rzolka, panna. They’re runts who bitch and moan to their mothers when fists turn to blades. They’re the reason for the trackers in the mist. They’re everything you grew to hate. They’re why you grew up among thorns, not honeysuckle. They’re why your father needed the salt.” The tracker grew still for a moment, his eyes glazed over and shadowed. “They’ll crawl out of their dens soon enough, and they’ll tear each other to bits. But there won’t be any old wolves to tug at the scruff of their necks.”

  Anna held her question in the back of her throat, piecing together the words carefully to avoid whatever rage still festered in the tracker. She’d never seen him in such a state. It was a trance of sorts, thick with loathing and memory and hatred. “What did you mean about my father?”

  The tracker didn’t look up. “Was that all you heard? Like I said, politics are beyond you.”

  “Why’d he need salt?” Anna asked. “We had plenty.”

  “Enough to haul you to Malchym in safety? Not a chance.”

  Anna froze. She could feel the truth like the season’s first snowflakes on her tongue, chilling her and fading in the same instant. “Malchym?”

  “So I suspected,” the tracker said. “Your father told some sod about heading for Malchym a full cycle before we laced up our boots. Radzym bled the korpa for everything he knew. Do you have any idea how much salt the Malchymaz would pay for a scribe like you? Your kin wanted to pawn you off, panna. Wanted to fill their pouches and move along.”

  Not even the kator’s whistling registered. Anna leaned back against the iron railings, tilting her head up and toward the nebulae. She saw her father by the hearth, his face warm and soft and lit by the orange glow of quarter-split logs aflame. His phantom hands combed through her hair, asking, Where have you been, kohana? Did you gather the sap for your brother?

  “Look here.” The tracker rested a hand on Anna’s ankle. “No reason it had to be that way. This is the litter’s fault.”

  Where is the sap, Anna?

  Anna’s eyes throbbed. “Your circle.”

  “What of it?”

  “You call it Patvor, don’t you?” Anna whispered. “I heard it. You call yourselves monsters.”

  “Fear is the only thing the runts can understand,” he said. “Imagine when we swell up from the soil with your army, girl. When we make them pay before any runt has time to burrow, before they dredge up our names at all, and they hear that death’s riding on the back of monsters. When they cry out for mercy from monsters.” Another stifled laugh. “Just like the old songs, eh? We’ll cull them and raise a better litter, a better pack.”

  Anna thought of the old wolves and the pack and the runts, trying to anchor her hatred onto a mass without a face or name. There were countless runts, she imagined, but their numbers didn’t lessen their crimes or her losses.

  Burrowed or not, she would bring their judgment.

  Chapter 12

  Her first glimpse of Malijad was a raging fire. Unlike the autumn bonfires she’d fed in Bylka, where she join
ed the other girls to collect kindling and fallen branches and withered roots in the clearing, this fire would see no huntsmen bring their kills. This fire was violent, clogging the skies with black smoke and burning the air into a melting haze. The peaks of Malijad’s setstone structures were obscured by the smog, even at twenty leagues away.

  She’d woken early that morning to find the tracker sitting cross-legged in the pod’s central aisle, staring at her with those cavernous burlap eyes. It’d been expected, considering he’d carried her back to the pod, covered her, and waited for her to fall asleep. For the first time in cycles she woke with purpose, with the vague hope of saving Rzolka and hanging wicked men.

  She’d wandered outside with a telling glance from Bora, full of unspoken caution about the flats and the men who might roam them while she was so exposed. After the attack, however, the Dogwood guards had become far stricter about keeping passengers in their pods. Freedom was a luxury.

  The world beyond the pod reminded her of home, where winds moved in sleepy gusts and the sky was a starry pink veil. But blotted along the horizon was smoke billowing from deep channels in the flats, gathering like tufts of black cotton. The scope of the destruction was mesmerizing.

  “Jesh,” the tracker said from behind. The closest translation was eat, and Anna had only ever heard it from her mother.

  Anna glanced back to find him standing in the doorway and slipping a chunk of hardtack under his mask. He didn’t need to eat, if the stories about men with runes lasting over a day were true. Then again, he also didn’t need to sleep, or even breathe. Living habits were difficult to abandon. “Don’t you see that?” she asked.

  “Skies don’t take the sting out of your belly.” The tracker sighed. “Come on.”

  Seeing the monoliths bathed in smoke was surreal, but perhaps it was a common thing in Hazan. In her new life. “Do you think it was an accident?”

  The tracker eyed Anna wearily, then stepped aside and nodded toward the doorway, his stare lingering on the smoke. “Head inside. Shouldn’t have to say it three times.”