Salt in the Water (A Lesser Dark Book 1)

by S. Cushaway

  “Thirty seconds to get off my property,” Niles announced. “Seems fair. Oh, hey, take that drink Aurlin brought over. Bit of kindness from me to you.”

  Aurlin tossed the bottle. It flashed in the sunlight, shining like gold. Gairy caught it and turned it in his palm. There, a pale, serpentine shape floated, dead.

  That’s a fucking Nith’ath larva.

  Gairy stared at the Nith’ath and it stared back at him, all segments and teeth and spines. The rows of blind, white eyes drilled into his own. Sweat trickled along his brow, dripped onto his cheeks, and slid into his matted beard; but even his disgust and fear didn’t kill his thirst.

  Senqua laughed against the dust. “They screwed you over, and you deserve it! And if Kaitar and the others are dead, that’s your fault, too.”

  “Little hussy has a point.” Niles spoke over his shoulder as he and Aurlin paced toward the waiting fleet. “Now, you can either drink that and have a quick death, use it to clean out that whore’s filthy mouth or . . . I dunno . . . make it a keepsake as you sit out there in the desert. Oh. You got twenty seconds now. Get her off the property, too, or Karraetu will put her down like a rabid mutt.”

  “Should break your neck,” Gairy mumbled, still staring at the Nith’ath.

  “Well, too late for that now.” Niles slid into the Draggin and leaned back in the seat. “Seventeen seconds . . .”

  Without realizing he’d even done it, Gairy slid the whiskey into his pocket and shuffled toward Senqua. She glared up at him, expression strained with fury. “Don’t touch me. Traitor! They’re going to Dogton and my father is there, you—”

  He bent to pick her up. She slapped his face, harder than he would have thought such a scrawny woman capable of. Grunting, he hoisted her, numb to the kicks and punches. “Shut up and keep still. You wanna get shot?”

  “I wish they’d shoot you!” Senqua hissed, still struggling as he dragged her across the sand.

  Me, too.

  On instinct, he took a step in the direction of the northern Senbehi range. He could not see the mountains, but they were there, waiting across empty miles of desert where the Scrappers would not follow.

  “Have a nice walk!” Aurlin called.

  Gairy didn’t turn to see the smile he knew would be on that ugly face. He didn’t turn to see which of the Scrappers yelled “Goat-fucker,” at him, or to see if Karraetu had lowered his revolver. Dragging Senqua with him, he lumbered north. Thirst and the shame circled one another in his mind. He pictured them, hackles raised, coming together to form one massive, snarling beast even a Druen had no chance of taking down.

  Filthy Enetics. All we are. Animals. No good.

  “You damned coward!” Senqua ceased her struggles and went limp, though she cursed now and then under her breath.

  Should have just drank that Nith’ath right then and there. Let them shoot you, Senqua. Be done with it. No more worries. No thirst. Nothin’.

  Pork

  After an eternity, the blackness ebbed down to gray. Pain stalked through that fog, brushing him with a tentative caress. Then, it squeezed the side of his head and neck in a big squall of hurt. He did not want to move or open his eyes. If he did that, the pain would swell to agony and sweep over him like a sandstorm, suffocating any rational thought.

  For a long time, Kaitar kept still, reaching for the cool, soft blackness he’d unwillingly drifted from but could not attain. Each passing moment brought him closer to the waking world.

  Closer to Lein Strauss.

  The haze began to take substance as shapes materialized and the growl of the engine became audible. A square, solid form rattled near his head, vibrating with every bump of the decrepit rover. Kaitar’s lids fluttered again; the crate near his face vanished only to reappear with startling clarity. There was a smell, noxious and putrid.

  The Harper woman . . . am I there, in Bywater Gully? How did . . . no. The engine. Rover. Why does it smell like that? Shit, my head . . .

  A moan escaped him. He tried to move his head away from the rattling container and nearly shrieked at how badly it hurt to turn his neck. A rope cut into his ankles and wrists, so taut it burned.

  “Kaitar.”

  “Leigh?” Gritting his teeth, he rolled to face the Enforcer, his entire body stiffened with the effort.

  Leigh stared back at him without a trace of her usual cold composure. She wiggled closer, struggling against the ropes binding her hands and feet. “I thought they’d killed you. They’re taking us to Bywater.”

  Kaitar swallowed. Even that hurt. “Heh. Maybe we’ll see Gren after all. Where’s Romano?”

  “He . . .”

  They killed him.

  Steeling himself, Kaitar lifted his head a few inches. The effort left him dizzy. He fell still again, studying his surroundings. The low wagon had a deep bed, roughly constructed with old boards and riveted metal. The tarp overhead cast a long shadow, and another stretch of canvas was tied to the frame, blocking any view of the front carriage. Behind that cover, he could just make out three shadowy blobs. The biggest one hunched while the other two sat straight.

  The smell . . . something dead in here.

  Before he could locate the source of the stench, the rover hit a dip in the landscape. Kaitar’s head thudded against the floor, enveloping him in a red sheet of pain. Everything went fuzzy as his pulse rushed through his skull, hammering his temples until he choked on a scream. A trickle of fresh blood leaked down the side of his face. As the pain ebbed, a knot of nausea gripped him, and the rotten scent filled his nose. He gagged.

  “Kaitar! Your head is bleeding again. Are you—”

  “Where . . . what’s in here?” he asked, trembling. “What’s that—”

  “You awake back there?” a voice bellowed from the driver’s seat. The rover slowed, then stopped altogether. The canvas tarp parted, and Lein Strauss’s head appeared between the flaps, streaked with so much sweat and dust it looked as though the skin had been peeled off.

  “Hello, Kaitar. It’s been a long time. Thought I might have hit you a little too hard.”

  “Not hard enough. I’m still alive.”

  “I bet you do have a bitch of a headache right now, for all that you are still alive.” Strauss smiled, tobacco juice dripping from his lip. “Apologize for that, but couldn’t risk you stickin’ me with a knife. Just wanted to invite you to supper, that’s all.” He paused to spit. Brown liquid spattered the coarse planks. “Tonight, at camp, we’ll hold a little celebration in your honor. If you manage to stay alive for the whole trip . . . well, things are lean around Bywater lately. Everyone will be happy to have a bit of fresh meat, even if it’s just a gamey Shyiine.” His muddy eyes roved toward Leigh. “Might let her live a while though, till she gets wore out.”

  They’ve gone cannibal.

  A scrawny man poked his nose through the flaps. “Gonna be fun.”

  From the front of the low wagon, the other shadow moved. “Felix, tell him about—”

  “Shut up, Marty.”

  The tarp fell back into place and gloom covered them once more. The low wagon began to creep along again, bumping over the uneven terrain. Kaitar lowered his face onto his arm, closing his eyes until the sickness and hurt ebbed to a dull throb. He didn’t speak, didn’t want to see Leigh staring at him with big, terror-stricken eyes. If she hadn’t enough reason to hate him before, she had it now.

  I fell asleep. I fell asleep and didn’t hear a fucking thing until it was too late. If I’d have moved faster, got my yatreg into Strauss . . .

  But he knew what would have happened and his mind pictured it with vivid shades; Lein Strauss, a yatreg stuck in his gut all the way to the hilt—bellowing and clutching at the blood-slick weapon. A cry of pain from Leigh as the other two bandits shoved the sidewinder onto her slim, dark throat. Felix yanking the pistol from his belt, shooting Romano dead, and then turning the pistol. Firing again.

  Blackness.

  All of them lying there as the wind
swept sand over their bodies.

  Kaitar took a deep breath and choked as the punch of rot hit him again. He braced himself and lifted his head. Leigh turned her face from him, mute as he rolled to his side.

  Then, he saw it. A big, congealed streak of entrails and blood, smeared across the canopy. The blood formed words—Pork. Oink, oink. More drying gore dangled above. The decaying entrails festooned the back end of the low wagon like hung gourds at a harvest festival. From that mass of decaying flesh, something moved, white and small. Wriggling. One of the wriggling things dropped onto the floor and squirmed there, on top of a small pile of other squirming, white shapes.

  “You know who it is, don’t you, my Besh?” a voice, sly and cruel, whispered beneath that frantic realization—Madev. “He won’t need the cigarette case now, will he?”

  A body lay next to the maggot-ridden heap, fresher than the gore smeared above. Hogtied. Butchered. Big hunks missing out of the thighs and arms. The face, which had once been tanned and handsome, was a jellied ruin. One eye was gone, and the other stared at nothing, glassy in death.

  Kaitar’s stomach heaved, but there was nothing in his belly to retch up. Instinctively, his tied legs jerked, boot toes digging into the floorboards in the effort to get as far away from that horror as he could.

  “Remember the taste of it?” Madev’s ghost whispered.

  “Leigh. Look at me.”

  “I can’t see. It’s dark. Kaitar, are you still alive?”

  “Leigh!” he mouthed, again, wanting to scream at her, but forcing his voice to remain hushed. “Look at me. Where did they put them? My yatreg . . . where are they?”

  She did look at him then. Her skin had gone the color of gray chalkstone, and though her lips opened, no sound came out. For a moment, she lay staring at him. Then, a hard look replaced the watery fear in her eyes. “Strauss has them. They took the canteens, too, and the Harper’s Hand. Up front.”

  “How long was I out?”

  “All day. It’s late afternoon now.” She lifted her chin up so it hovered a few inches from the floor. “How badly are you injured?”

  “Every time I move it feels like my head is on fire. My neck feels like someone ran a poker right down my spine. But it won’t kill me. You know who has us? Do you know what they’re going to do if we can’t get away?”

  “Yes, Lein Strauss. I thought it was just a caravaneer passing by on the way to the Harpers’ Well. I tried to wake you up, but you didn’t move. So I hailed them in.” A little of the old grudge crept into her voice. “You knew there might be squatters so close to the well.”

  Kaitar didn’t deny it. He had known, and the guilt bit deep, hurting as much as his head. “How tight are your ropes?”

  “Rubbing my legs raw through my pants. They didn’t tie my wrists as tightly, but I still can’t get loose.” She swallowed. “He can hear us, you know.”

  “That I can!” Strauss called from the front, his sandpaper voice grating through the heavy material. “Makes me laugh to think of having two more of Neiro’s pups whining at each other.”

  “We could make ’em screw.” A blond woman peeped through the front tarp. She smiled. “Could all of us do it. Why not? Might as well enjoy one last piece before you go, that’s what I think.”

  “Marty, you got so much cock on the brain I’m surprised your head ain’t shaped like one yet.” The canvas rustled briefly as Felix appeared. He pulled roughly at the Estarian woman. “You untie that Shyiine and before you know it, he’ll have a knife in you.”

  Marty shrugged the small man’s hand off, laughing. “A knife, or somethin’ else? Might not mind if he stuck me with that.”

  “Shut up, sick of hearin’ that piss,” Strauss said. “And you two shut up back there. You had enough talk for now.” His shadow hunched lower as he muttered, “Be dark in a few more hours. Hope them damned threk are gone. Never known ’em to track durin’ the day like that. Must be hungry as hell.”

  “Probably smell the wagon,” Felix suggested.

  “Maybe. Don’t matter,” Strauss replied. “Keep your eyes open until we get a good fire goin’. They don’t like fire. Or guns. Die as easy as anything if you hit them in the right spot.”

  Felix closed the tarp again, blocking Kaitar’s view. The rush of sand under the tires grew louder as the vehicle roared up an incline. Kaitar braced his knees, slid an inch toward the back, boot heels ramming into Romano’s body and the squirming gore smeared next to it. He grunted and pushed with his legs, slithering back to Leigh. A box turned, vibrating sideways until it struck his shoulder hard enough to make him wince. The rover’s mad haul up the dune slid into an even grind, and the crates stopped rattling.

  Kaitar shimmied to his back, head throbbing. For the first time, he noticed that each box was marked with a clear print of a Harper’s cross. The sharp odor of ozone lingered around them, faint, but unmistakable.

  This is the shipment Gren was looking for.

  An amber shard pushed through a split in the crate he’d bumped into. It shone in the dim light, no longer than his thumb, and razor sharp. A song pierced his thoughts.

  “The sky rained fire and it rained glass

  A streak in the heavens, black as Death

  The night cried tears of cinder and ash

  When the Shadow fell upon the Jewel of the West

  Come forth the devils and the worms in the sand

  Blooming in darkness, gold shining glass.”

  Worm Glass. Neiro sent us all out to die for some fucking Worm Glass. Gren, Romano, Leigh. Me . . . me, too.

  Kaitar glanced at Leigh. Her gaze was fixed on the gleaming edge poking through the crate. Seeing. Understanding.

  “You lived through the fighting pits and I lived through Nal’ves,” she breathed, mouthing each word so quietly he almost couldn’t hear them. “The desert did not kill us either, did it?”

  “No.”

  “Will this?”

  “No.”

  Outside—not too far from where the low wagon lurched over the desert—a threk screeched; the awful siren song rose and fell in high-pitched wails. A second shriek joined in until the nightmarish chorus filled the evening. Lein Strauss muttered a curse from the front.

  “After all I’ve done for you, my Besh . . .” Madev’s ghost smiled through a veil of memory. “Is this how it ends?”

  Yes.

  Harbinger

  Zres moved the scope a hair to the left so the big, black corpse fly was right in his sights. The fly settled on the dead lizard and sucked at the drying blood, then rubbed its skinny forelegs together in a way that reminded him of Moad clasping his hands for prayer. He wished with all his heart he had his rifled trained on Moad and not just a bug. A tug at the trigger and a bullet would slam into the Harper’s curly head, sending brains splattering across the sand. One eyeball would burst out in a jellied blob as bits of skull—red and white—fell to the ground. That’d be the end of the Harper’s engagement to his mama, at least, even if the other Enforcers would hang him for murder.

  It would be worth it, maybe.

  The fly buzzed off. Zres lowered the rifle. The bench had long since made his ass go numb and the heat of late afternoon only increased his dark mood. Wind blew through the open watchtower windows, too hot to bring any sort of relief from the scorching sun. And, heaped on top of everything—Moad, Leigh's missing crew, his boredom—was the fact he’d be left behind. Again.

  That morning, he had listened to the other Enforcers packing their field gear for a search and rescue. Printz, too, had been making preparations in the early hours. He and his two Scrapper escorts hadn’t managed to reach anyone at Os’tizal; with the reports of possible Bloom activity in the Sand Belt, Printz would wait no longer and was preparing to leave the next morning.

  But Zres would not be going. He’d be there, watching the gates. Stuck. Waiting for his mama to marry Harper Load-of-Bullshit while eating beans alone in the barracks. Feeding the Shurin prisoner. Picking his nose
in the watchtower.

  Slowly, plans smoothed out in his mind like unwrinkled bed linens—pristine and crisp, without room for stains of procrastination. He would not stay in Dogton while the rest of the world moved on. He’d go to Neiro, take all of his water notes, and exchange them for a ticket to Avaeliis. No one Zres had ever met had gone to Avaeliis, and few enough had come from that far-off place, but he would go there. Far away from the Harpers, the Enforcers, and the eternal dust of the red Shy’war-Anquai. Far away from Hell.

  They got indoor plumbing in Avaeliis, and all kinds of food. I’ll never eat beans again. I can get a job doing something. Anything

  A wrinkle appeared. A big one, creasing right down the middle of his intentions. They Shelfed everyone in Avaeliis so they were always hooked up. Vore had told him even Neiro had a Shelf, though he never used it; he had his Zippy for that.

  But the thought of having someone dig around in his brain and put anything there crumpled that plan. Zres tossed it from his mind, imagining it wadded up and rolling across the desert. He sighed, studying his scuffed boots.

  Maybe I’ll just go live with the Shyiine out in the Belt. The worse they could do to me is torture me a few days before they kill me. Might be worth it, if it means I don’t have to call Moad “Stepdaddy.”

  Wrent or Glasstown would be a safer bet, but work was hard to find in Wrent outside of dirt farming, and the notion of yanking beans and gourds out of the dust all day was hardly appealing. Glasstown had the salt flats nearby, offering more in the way of employment. Men hauled in salt day and night out on the flats, carting it to the big Glasstown warehouse. But the flats broiled under the sun and it was hard, heavy work, every bit as tedious as dirt farming.

  Could be a hunter like old Hubert was back when the Sulari ran things. Track down big game, take care of any dangerous animals hangin’ around town. Man of the desert.