No Return

by Zachary Jernigan

  “Not far now,” Churls said to no one in particular.

  “Yes,” Vedas and Berun responded together. Vedas cleared his throat.

  Keenly aware of how little time they had left as companions, Churls fought to keep the melancholy from her face. She had failed to determine what Vedas and Berun ultimately meant to her, though she had spent no small amount of time pondering the question.

  Perhaps she and Berun could remain friends. He liked her, and might even be swayed to stay with her in the city, even accompany her home—positing, of course, that they did not kill one another in tournament.

  But Vedas? She could not be Vedas’s friend, even if he wanted such a thing. Her desire would always betray her.

  Despite her persistent attempts to reign in her emotions.

  Despite the anger this lack of self-control inspired.

  The curve of his lips, the timbre of his voice, the way thoughts showed on his face several heartbeats before words ever came out: She had memorized every detail of Vedas Tezul. His presence had long ago become a dilemma, causing her every ounce as much distress as joy.

  It ached in her marrow, being so close yet so far.

  ‡

  After nearly two hours of walking, they reached the northern end of the city, which to Churls’s eyes was indistinguishable from the southern. The streets were crowded this close to the White and Black Suit camps, filled with the sounds of conversation and trade. Revelers spilled from every inn and restaurant door.

  Clearly, lodging near Vedas would be difficult to find. Churls wondered how long it would take for the man to comment on this fact. Undoubtedly, he wondered why his companions had remained with him for so long.

  She had no answer. It was foolish to prolong the inevitable, yet she could not help herself. She stole glances at him, found excuses to slow their progress.

  It took her a while to understand that such diversions were not only being allowed, but encouraged. Vedas and Berun were dragging their heels. Twice, Vedas complained of soreness in his legs and asked them to stop in a park—an awkward moment, both times, as he massaged his thighs and stretched while she examined plants that held no real interest for her. Berun was no help, standing in place as though he were a statue.

  Light spilling into an alleyway marked yet another inn. Unlike the others, it appeared relatively unoccupied.

  “We should stop for a drink,” Churls ventured. “Say goodbye and all that. Celebrate our arrival and soon-to-be victories.” She laughed, and it sounded pitifully hollow.

  Berun smiled, nodded. Vedas looked northward, clearly conflicted.

  “All right,” he said. “Just one.”

  They entered the dimly lit interior, where the smell of coffee hit Churls like a friendly kiss. Contrasting sharply with the biting cold that descended with nightfall out of doors, the inn was delightfully warm and close. She whistled softly, surprised by the opulence of the room. Voluptuous Knosi women in diaphanous robes reclined on low couches, dipping folds of spongebread into various sauces, sipping from small flutes of wine. The few men, mostly soft-looking Knosi in fine silks, each had two or three women attending to their every need: peeling grapes, massaging feet and shoulders.

  Reaching under waistbands.

  It was all quite cozy, yet Churls understood immediately why the establishment had attracted so few customers. The influx of travelers into the city must have spurred the opening of dozens of new bordellos, each offering cheap wares. An establishment catering to the wealthy must therefore have seen a drop in business.

  Churls had been to more than a few whorehouses in her day, and none of the acts performed within had ever scandalized her. Nonetheless, she could imagine few places less conducive to the kind of goodbye she had hoped for.

  On second thought, perhaps it did not matter. Vedas managed to be uncomfortable in any social situation. That he had agreed to a drink at all was a minor miracle.

  She sat on a couch and signaled to the bar, at the same time conducting a quick survey of the room. Several of the prostitutes were watching her. Many more had their eyes on Vedas. Churls considered how best to dissuade the women from approaching him, but shelved it as irrelevant. He would not return their attentions.

  He sat opposite her. “Interesting choice,” he said. “Isn’t this out of your price range?”

  “A little,” Churls allowed. “Where’s Berun?”

  “He stayed outside.” Vedas shrugged. “I looked back, but he just waved me in.”

  Churls hid a smile behind her hand.

  A server arrived—a teenage girl with proportions Churls had once cursed herself for lacking. Now such women looked soft and ungainly to her. Fighting with breasts like that would be almost impossible. How did the girl know who she was without scars, tattoos to prove she had been to this place at this time? Very likely, she had never been anywhere but Danoor, traveled no farther than a nearby quarter to see her parents.

  To be the daughter of this man, the wife of this man, etcetera and etcetera. Nothing more.

  Churls thought of Fyra. She would be about the server’s age if she were alive. What would she have said about her family, her position in the world? Would she have been a warrior, a good lover to a faithful, boring man?

  “What is your desire?” the girl asked. She looked only at Vedas and cocked her hip slightly, causing the fabric of her short robe to part, offering him a view of her shaved pudendum. In most whorehouses, this view alone cost money.

  The drinks would be expensive, Churls reasoned.

  Of course, the girl might have revealed herself on a whim, made a flirtatious gesture for the heroic Black Suit. Vedas had received enough shy looks in the streets, suffered enough awkward greetings. Due to the lack of other suited individuals, Churls gathered brothers and sisters of the Order were not allowed to stray from camp during the tournament. A smart move. Fighters became lax if pussy and cock were free for the taking.

  “Tecas,” Churls answered. “Two. And glasses of water, iced if you have it.”

  The server ignored her and lingered for a moment, as if she expected Vedas to speak. He glanced up, eyebrows raised, and then looked away. The girl’s exhalation was audible. Churls laughed out loud, breaking some of the tension constricting the muscles in her chest.

  “What do you think they’ll charge for the water?” she asked.

  ‡

  She watched his hands, which were thickly muscled and large enough to envelope her own. She hated stubby or tapering fingers, but his had grown to the perfect length and thickness. Though somewhat obscured by the fabric of his suit, even the veins on the backs of his hands crossed flesh and bone in graceful arcs.

  She had long ago noticed the way he touched himself constantly, compulsively, running his hands over the hard contours of his body—testing the springiness of his ridged abdomen with his fingertips, caressing the inside of his thighs—laying a palm over his heart, rubbing his heavy pectoral muscles as though reassuring himself of his own existence. He did these things, and it did not seem to matter where he was. She assumed the actions were subconscious, automatic, an expression of the sensual he did not otherwise allow himself.

  She could not blame him. The things she would do with his body if she inhabited it.

  In truth, there was no end to his allure. Sometimes she hated his beauty, considering its existence an affront to her desire. A gross injustice, being subjected to it every day. It had been decades since she had felt so selfconscious about her own looks. Not so much the quality of her appearance, but the differences between her and Vedas.

  Walking the streets of Danoor, she had been especially aware of the disparity. Reading judgment in the dark gazes around her was easy. Knosi, after all, were famed for their flawless complexions. Her freckles, a feature she had always been proud of, suddenly seemed like so many imperfections on her sun- and wind-burnt skin.

  She ordered a second round, and he did not object or bring up the time.

  “A plate of b
read, as well,” he told the server, for which Churls was grateful. They had not eaten since noon, and the alcohol intensified her hunger.

  They continued talking of inconsequential matters, lingering on details of their trip, avoiding any mention of the tournament. His gaze never drifted to the prostitutes, many of whom had situated themselves on couches closer to him. He looked at his drink, his hands. He met Churls’s eyes more often as they drank. In order to eat the highly spiced food, they both had to lean toward the table. Twice, they reached for bread at the same time. Once, his hand brushed hers and did not immediately pull away.

  An hour stretched to two as business picked up. It became too loud to talk softly, but she did not mind holding her tongue. Apparently, neither did he. She ordered another round, another plate of food. He leaned back and she could not stop her eyes from drifting to the bulge of his genitals outlined by the fabric of his suit.

  He folded his hands on his lower belly and sighed. She heard a signal within it, dreaded hearing the words it presaged: I have to go.

  “I’ve rewritten the speech.”

  She blinked, quickly reorganizing her thoughts and suffering a pang of guilt. She had managed to shuffle his speech to the back of her mind, had failed to make her opinion of the document more obvious. It was important. He had asked for her help. But the crash on Tan-Ten had turned her world upside-down. She had spent the last month flinching at every shadow, staying close to campfires for fear of encountering Fyra again.

  And the claims the girl had made? Churls avoided thinking of these at all costs. Only the proximity of Danoor had been enough to tear her away from obsessive evasion.

  “Oh, yes?” she finally said, hating the tremor in her voice. “You’re happy with it?”

  He sat up and rested his forearms on his knees. He offered a wan smile. “Happy’s not really the word. I’m satisfied with it. I’ve said what I want to say, instead of what Abse wants me to say. I’ve...” He gestured vaguely. “I’ve come to terms with the things I’ve seen since leaving Golna. I’m not the same man. Abse won’t like what I have to say. Many people won’t like it. But it’s better than the alternative, which is more of the same violence on a larger scale.”

  She leaned forward. “What about the Tomen?”

  He grimaced. “They’ll still attack. I don’t see a way anyone can stop that. The longer I think about it, though, the more likely it seems that violence will erupt even without the Tomen threat. I can’t explain how, but I feel it in the streets, the nervousness. I felt it on the trail, too. Hopefully my message will at least sway the fighting in a different direction, away from innocent people.”

  He licked his fingers clean, and then frowned. He looked toward the door, making her heart sink. “This talk reminds me, I have to get going. I have a little dust left. Not much, but I should help you pay.”

  “You don’t have to go,” she said.

  “Yes, I do. The first rounds are tomorrow. You...” He stood, shouldering his pack. His eyes eventually met hers. “You’ll be there? For the final fight on the eve?”

  Her right hand twitched in her lap. Only a short reach to grab his hand.

  Only two words: Don’t go.

  “Tell me you will,” he insisted.

  “Yes,” she answered, and watched him leave.

  ‡

  Two hours later, she emerged from the whorehouse, drunk and lightened of nearly eight grams of dust. Berun was nowhere to be found, so she bought a packet of sempa resin from a street vendor and smeared it on her gums. After fifteen minutes of searching, she located a normal inn crowded with reveling travelers. She ordered a lager and sat down to survey the crowd. A number of nationalities were represented, though porcelain-skinned Ulomi men comprised the majority, and Tomen were absent altogether.

  At a table in the center, a group sat playing kingsmader, a Stoli tile game at which Churls possessed no skill. She knew the rules, but nothing of the nuance.

  The inn’s banker weighed her dust and counted out four grams in bone chips. All she had left.

  She sat down, nodded to her fellow players, and selected her tiles. Across from her sat three young Ulomi men with straight backs and even straighter teeth. The youngest appeared no older than sixteen, and when he moved his arm to raise the bet his robe parted, revealing the white elder-cloth suit he wore underneath.

  He caught Churls’s stare and smirked. He whispered to the largest of the three, causing this man to wink at her.

  She ignored them. It soon became clear that she was not the only one. The couple on Churls’s right, a Stoli merchant and his wife by the look of them, frowned at the table every time one of the three men spoke. The cauliflowereared Castan, a fighter obviously, stared right through them and did not so much as twitch at their bawdy jokes. Only the olive-skinned woman, shaven-headed and ethnically ambiguous, noted their presence with any enthusiasm. She eyed the thinnest of the three, the one with the smattering of light freckles on the bridge of his nose, as if she intended to eat him.

  Churls hemorrhaged chips. Before long, she became the butt of the youngest White Suit’s jibes.

  “You know what they call a woman in the Castan badlands?”

  “There are two types of people who can’t gamble. One of them is in this room.”

  “Ever heard of a bluff?”

  “What’s the difference between an Adrashi whore and an Anadrashi whore?”

  She listened and smiled when he or one of his mates announced the punchline. All the while anger stewed in her stomach. Though the boys were young and most likely had not yet mastered the use of their suits, she knew backing away from the table, getting away with a portion of her money, would be the smart thing to do.

  Unfortunately, she was not in a smart frame of mind.

  The scrape of her chair against the wood floor signaled a situation that would soon get out of hand. A hush fell over the room. The bald woman frowned, picked up all but two of her chips, and left the inn.

  “You owe me an apology,” Churls said. Her heart boomed so loud she did not hear the words.

  The youth rolled his eyes. “I said a lot of things. Which one hurt your feelings?”

  Churls leaned forward, knuckles on the table. “Stand up.”

  The largest called over his shoulder to the bar. “Get her a drink. Maybe then she’ll have the courage to ask for a fuck.” He looked Churls up and down. “We could fuck you.”

  A smile touched the corners of Churls’s mouth. She switched her grip and overturned the table, sending chips and tiles to the floor. Surprised by her maneuver, the three White Suits tumbled out of their chairs and backed up close to the bar.

  She rounded the table and followed with a smile so wide it hurt.

  ‡

  The boy’s cheek collapsed under her knuckle, accompanied by the satisfying crack of shattering bone. She followed her fist forward with two quick steps, shoving the boy into his companions. The three fell backward, toppling and tripping over bar stools. Someone screamed and the bartender pulled a crossbow from under the counter. The movement might as well have been in slow motion. Churls hopped forward and slapped the weapon from his hand.

  “The fuck you will,” she said. “Stay put and shut up.”

  The boy with the dented face remained down, but the other two regained their feet quickly. The smaller moved away from the counter, putting tables and chairs between himself and Churls. He was not her main concern. He had not been running his mouth. One of those who had was already down, possibly dying, and the other would soon join him.

  Blood pounded in Churls’s veins violently enough to make her whole body shake. She could not have anticipated how the sempa resin and alcohol would interact in her system, but discovered she liked it.

  Fear could not touch her. Vedas was a distant memory.

  All that remained was rage, pure and simple.

  The big man, barely more than a boy himself, shrugged off his robe and pulled his elder-cloth hood over his head. He sm
iled and flexed his chest. Like the other two, he was beautiful, broad and sculpted and sheathed in white. His teeth were alabaster tiles, his bone-pale skin shone with health. Unlike his smaller companion, he did not look scared in the least.

  “Glad you did that,” he said in his thick Ulomi accent. “Been looking for a fight all night. It’s too polite, this city.”

  As he spoke, the material of his suit thickened visibly along his shoulders and forearms. The hood covered his temples, rose over his chin and onto his cheekbones—far slower than Vedas managed with his own suit.

  Churls returned his grin. “Pretty boy doesn’t want to get his face ruined.”

  The man gave himself away too easily. The twitch of his right pectoral signaled the punch. As it flew, Churls gripped his forearm in her left hand and twisted inside his guard, pressing her back against the solid wall of his torso. Using his own forward momentum, she bent at the waist, levered down on his arm and threw him. A table split in two under his weight.

  To his credit, he rolled clear and stood rapidly, guard up.

  She had not moved. “Come on. Clear a way. We’ll wrestle.”

  He kicked the rubble of the table to one side. “Castan fucking bitch. My grandparents have a row of your ancestors’ heads mounted above the hearth. You know what grandpa says about them? Know what he says their mouths are good for?”

  Churls pushed off from the counter. “I don’t care.”

  The man shrugged. As his shoulders dropped, he slammed both palms into Churls’s chest. The graceless, full-bodied attack took her by surprise, forcing the air from her lungs, and she stumbled backwards into the bar counter. He followed with quick jabs, the first two of which grazed her temples.

  Buoyed by alcohol and drugs, the light battering amused her. He was not a formidable opponent, despite the speed and strength his suit granted him.

  Laughing, she batted the third punch aside, planted both hands on the counter behind her, and thrust her kneecap into his groin. He grunted, unharmed, just as Churls had expected. It was meant as a distraction.