by S. Cushaway
Big or small, his father had wrapped his strong hands around their legs, hoisting them as easily as if they’d been stuffed with corn husks. Blood, so much blood, staining the sands a dark, thick red. Flies had come by the thousands after the bloodshed was over, and Gairy would never forget the way the black, bloated insects had settled on the rigid bodies to suck up the gore. And the smell . . .
“Boy, you drag that one and put it over with the rest. We got a lot of graves to dig today and I want a drink. You hear me?”
“Yeah, Daddy, I heard. But why do they make them fight? Why do they make them kill each other like that?”
“Because, boy, that’s the way of the world. No use thinkin’ or worryin’ about it. Just be glad you ain’t in the pits along with them. Be glad you got enough Estarian in you.”
“But—”
“No blubberin’. Haul that scrawny son of a bitch over here and let’s get this done.”
As a renewed blast of wind roared from the west, Gairy forgot his grim nostalgia. Like the storm, his thirst would not be so easily dismissed.
“How about a drink to forget all that shit you saw here?” it whispered. “Like Mi’et, maybe. Remember how he scared the living piss out of you, first time you saw him gut a man?”
“Gairy, are you listening?”
He blinked. “What?”
“We have to get out of this wind,” Senqua called, limping toward him. “It’s getting worse. The main entrance is blocked by those columns. I don’t know what could have knocked them over like that, but—”
“Let me have a drink.” He held a hand out, fighting to keep it steady. “If I have a drink, maybe I’ll be strong enough to move those.”
“If you take a drink now, Gairy, you’d die. The Nith’ath is poison.”
“Maybe I’d live long enough to move the pillars, though.”
She shrugged. “I threw the bottle away last night. I don’t even have it now.”
“Liar.” He shoved past her, trying to ignore the way his legs trembled, protesting every step. Studying the wide main gate, Gairy immediately saw what she meant by the way being blocked—two limestone columns jammed against it, too heavy even for a Druen to budge. Above the arching entrance, iron vines—once painted with a thin veneer of gold—twined up toward an iron sun. Some of the gold plating still clung to it, but most of the sun had gone to rust during the long, empty years.
“No getting in this way, Senqua,” he said, peering past the iron bars and along the wall. The barrier veered sharply to either side. “I can’t see if anything’s blocking the other doors, either. Probably the inside columns, or a statue, or some slave cage. Might as well go look, I guess.”
Palm sliding along the rough surface, Gairy made his way to one of the three, smaller entrances situated on the eastern wall. Senqua trailed after him, watching as he pushed at each gateway.
“Barred from the inside.” His throat hurt so badly he wanted to tear it out with his own hands, and his stomach burned with a deep, low fire that might have come straight from hell. The effort of testing the gates left him dizzy.
“If we can get inside, the bathhouse or the hypogeum would be a good place to wait out this storm,” Senqua mused. “There used to be a hand pump in the bathhouse, too. If the well isn’t dry, it might still work.” Nervously, she cast a glance toward the western horizon. “The wind’s getting worse, Gairy. I could just see Pointe Rock a while ago, but now all I can see is sand.” Shaking her head, she added, “I don’t think this is the storm front, either. Only—”
He grabbed for her thin shoulder. She ducked away, fleeing several paces.
“Give me the bottle.”
“I threw the bottle.” Senqua flexed her injured ankle, then straightened. “It’s gone. I tossed it out and it broke against a rock.”
“You’re lying. For fuck’s sake, give it to me. I won’t even drink it until we’re inside. “
“No.” She pointed toward one of the narrow lookout windows cut into the limestone wall. “Can you look through there? Maybe we can see what’s blocking the other doors or figure out some other way in. You could hoist me up here, but I’m not sure how I’d get down the other side without jumping and breaking a leg.”
“Could throw you over,” Gairy muttered, glaring. “I should. Damned thief.”
“Traitor,” she fired back, sounding more tired than angry. “Please, Gairy. We have to get out of the wind. This is going to be a bad storm; I can feel it. We need water, and I need to rest this ankle. You . . . you’re sick. We can’t stay out here in the open, not during a storm this bad.”
“Just one drink,” the thirst reminded him, sly and teasing. “You could beg on your knees.”
“With help, I think I can get through that window.” The Shyiine woman looked at him hopefully. “If I could get in there, maybe I could get a door open from the inside.” The wind shrieked, and she pulled her yalei around her face to stop the grit from blowing into her nose.
Or you could just leave me out here in this storm. You should. Why don’t you just let me die? Hell, I deserve it. Why’re you stickin' around?
But Gairy didn’t really want to know the answer to those questions, and so he didn’t ask. Instead, he shrugged. “Give me the whiskey, and I’ll help you get up in that window. I’m thirsty.”
“You can have what’s left in my canteen if you’re thirsty. If the hand pump in the bathhouse still works, I can refill it there.”
“If the well was still producing, there’d be squatters swarming all over the place. Or bandits. Give it up, Senqua. We’re done.” He pointed a thick finger at her. “You’re just being stubborn. Shyiine are always stubborn, my daddy was right about that much. Don’t know when they’re beat. Look. One drink. Then it’ll be over. Your leg won’t hurt, and my—”
“Help me get up into the window. Once we’re in there, you can do whatever you want, but I will not roll over like some whipped dog and just let myself die.”
Gairy grunted, feeling annoyed and queasy by turns. Dehydration would soon set in, and the effects of his alcohol-deprived body purging itself would make it worse, perhaps fatal. A blessing in disguise, maybe. Sweat poured off his brow. In the hard wind, the wetness made the dust stick to him, slick and red as blood. Senqua moved aside as he lumbered to the window, leaned heavily against the limestone wall, and rubbed his face. He wanted to sit down and rest. He wanted—
“One drink. That’s it. Just one.”
—to sleep.
“Let me look in there first.” The wind threatened to suck the air right from his lungs. He coughed. “See if anything’s holed up in the courtyard. Damn it, just give me the whiskey first.”
Senqua crossed her arms over her chest and jerked her chin toward the narrow window again.
Gairy sighed, pressed his face up against the open cut in the limestone, and peered into the courtyard. At first, he saw only toppled statues, a few rusted holding pens where the slaves had been kept before auctions, and other bits of useless debris. He scanned the desolation, childhood memories whispering about those long-ago days. It seemed—for an instant—the ghosts of rich Sulari nobles strutted forward, followed by their Enetic slaves, while Pihranese merchants called out their wares around the open courtyard.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Gairy? What is it?”
“Grit in my eye, stop nagging.” When Gairy opened his eyes again, he did not see any more ghosts.
The bathhouse, situated smack in the middle of the courtyard, seemed in good shape despite twenty years of neglect. Its sturdy stone walls showed cracks and a few gaping holes, but were not crumbling. It might stand for a hundred years before the desert claimed it. Toward the back, Gairy could just make out the rows of high stone benches and the viewing gallery, built directly over the old fighting pit. He could not see the hypogeum—the Poem, everyone had called it—where the fighting slaves had been kept before matches in an underground stone corridor.
“Looks
empty. No, wait . . .” A dim glow caught his eye, flickering pale yellow from a fist-sized hole in the wall. Then, a sheet of blowing sand obstructed his view, and the glow vanished.
Senqua nudged him. “What do you see?” With a graceful leap, she grabbed the ledge of the window and pulled herself up.
“Get down. Think someone is in there.”
She lowered herself gingerly, resting her weight on the uninjured ankle. “Look then, but tell me what you see!”
He squinted against the sweat in his eyes. The wind pulled at his hat so hard he had to grab at it and jam it back over his head. “Hell, this storm is bad. I can’t see . . . too much dust, too dark back there. It’s in the bathhouse, whatever it is.”
“Let me look.”
“You’re too short to see up here, I told you.”
“There’s a crack in the wall by your knee. Move.” Senqua shoved him, bending down to peer through the small space. “I don’t . . . wait. There it is. Yes, it’s a fire. I think those are squatters, Gairy. Maybe the water is on. Maybe they’ll—”
“Maybe you’ll give me a drink now, you arrogant bitch.” Gairy caught her by the shoulder and hauled her up, ignoring her little yelp of surprise and pain. Senqua struggled like a mad cat, trying to yank free, but he held her tight.
“Where’s the whiskey?”
“I told you, I threw it away!” She beat at him with her free hand, lips wrenched back in a snarl. “Let me go, you bastard, you’re hurting me!”
“Give the bottle over and I will.” Gairy hardly felt the blows or the bruises they left. The thirst was worse, far worse, than Senqua’s kicks and punches. A tremor tilted through his body and he jerked, almost losing his grip before tightening his fingers again. “Give it! Senqua, stop fighting and just hand it over! I’ll push you through the window and you can go ask those squatters for help. Get some water. Get your ankle taken care of. Whatever you want, just give me the bottle first.”
She tried to knee his groin, but he swung her just as she kicked. Dangling against his grasp, she hissed up at him, her features twisted in rage. He hauled her upright again and began digging through her yalei with his free hand. His palm passed over her small breasts and down her stomach, searching—not for the soft swell of feminine flesh—but for the smooth bottle. The Saltang. His release.
“Hold still! Damn it, I just want—” He grunted as her free hand caught him across the mouth. The salty taste of blood touched his tongue. “Stop, or I’ll break your damned neck. Just give me the bottle!”
“Let me go! Get your hands off of me!” She bucked, hanging almost parallel to the ground. Before he could yank her loose, she hooked a leg around his shoulder, bared her teeth, and bit down on his wrist so hard blood spurted between her lips. Gairy howled, dull agony riding up his forearm as he tossed the Shyiine woman like a dog might shake off a flea.
She hit the ground with a thud, rolled onto her stomach, and struggled to her feet. “Come at me again like that and I’ll bite your pen’jaeta off next time!”
“Crazy Shyiine bitch!” Dizzily, he gripped his bleeding wrist, feeling his heart slam against his ribcage until it felt as though the bones might crack. “Senqua . . . I just wanted the damned bottle! Why do you have to—” The words choked off as his stomach lurched. Nothing came up, but ice-cold sweat prickled along his body, making him shiver. The ground wavered; he stumbled to his knees, retching.
Senqua, blinked, rage replaced by alarm. “Gairy!” She took a hesitant step closer, then stopped, staring at him, face stricken. Her little form seemed to recede as if some shadow were sucking it away into a red haze, outlined by the bright sun. Everything went into a whirl as he sank onto the sand, panting, chest tied in knots of pain.
I’m dyin’. This is how it’s gonna happen, then? Damn, it hurts though. Feels like my chest is tearin’ open.
He closed his eyes, and even then the world kept spinning.
“Gairy! They—”
Something cold pressed against his forehead as Senqua’s words cut off abruptly.
The bottle. Oh, thank Mary-in-Heaven, she’s giving me the bottle! This’ll all be over. All of it. One drink.
He opened his eyes. At first he saw nothing but a sky filled with swirling sand, broken by a strange, dark line that was not the whiskey bottle. It pressed down again, cold and hard. A face appeared over him, dark as the onyx statues, the whites of the eyes pale marble. Gairy’s heart gave a frantic tha-thud and then skipped a beat.
The statues came alive. . . .
The statue’s full lips moved, its white teeth flashing as a smooth voice spoke in rolling Pihranese. “Ah. You are a Druen, then.” The mouth burst into a laugh, ironic and deep. “Father, you were right. It is Shyiine and a Druen lost out here. This one looks sick, though. Very sick. Dying, perhaps.”
“How . . .?” The world faded in and out, throbbing with the uneven beats of his heart. “Who are you? Where’s Senqua?”
“The squatters.” Senqua’s sullen voice drifted from somewhere close. “They caught us while we were fighting. They’ve got a hole under the side gate hidden with some brush. One’s got a rifle on you, and the old one has a knife at my throat.”
The face above Gairy broke into laughter again, then vanished from view. The rifle barrel, however, did not move from his forehead. “Old one? Father, it must be a rare day when you’ll stand for that kind of talk from a Shyiine.”
Sulari.
“Prince Gah’leen knows the mutterings of some She-Snake mean nothing to his greatness,” another voice said. A second face appeared above him, older, lines cutting into the dark skin near the eyes and mouth, the lips turned down into a deep frown. “I know this illness. I’ve seen it a thousand times.”
Gah’leen . . . where have I heard that name? Why’s it so familiar to me?
“As have I, Ga’behz,” a third voice answered, creaking like an acacia in the wind. “He reeks of it. His body is sweating all of the whiskey out now. If his heart doesn’t give out, he might live through it. Help my son drag him.”
“Eizen . . .” Senqua said, sounding further away this time. “Can you hear me?”
That name, too, sounded familiar, but Gairy couldn’t remember from where; hearing it hurt even more deeply than the pressure squeezing his insides. Worse, his body drenched in that chilled, awful sweat did smell like alcohol had begun to leak from his very pores. He tried to move, tried to summon some kind of panic to react to the situation, but only felt tired. His heart jerked and skipped in his chest, making his stomach drop until it hovered somewhere in his boots. He was too drained, too thirsty, to be afraid of death.
“Her ankle,” he managed. “She needs help. Don’t . . . don’t hurt her. She’s just a Shyiine. Scrawny. Needs help.”
Senqua’s voice floated toward him again, calling that familiar name—his Druen name—but Gairy didn’t want to listen anymore. The Sulari all spoke at once, and those words, too, twined away on the roaring wind. His eyelids fluttered and his body convulsed. The storm carried him off, somewhere dark and low, too far away for any words to follow. But the thirst was there, and it burned in the blackness with relentless, shrieking torment.
Dogton
“Why did you stop?” Though Kaitar sat only three feet to her left, Leigh had to yell to be heard over the wind. “Is something wrong with the low wagon?”
The vehicle had made strange, grinding noises all night and into the morning, and she had the sneaking suspicion it might have to do with sand getting into the engine or the cell box. But she didn’t know enough about rovers to be certain, and Kaitar knew nothing about machines at all. He swore whenever the rover’s engine bogged while Leigh gritted her teeth and prayed to the memory of her long-dead ancestors to show a little pity. All the while, the storm kept rising, growing worse with each passing hour. They had tied the front tarp over the windows as far as it would stretch, but the wind still howled in, slinging grit with every blast.
“Kaitar?” She raised her vo
ice a notch. “What’s wrong?”
He still did not answer.
He must have heard me. Why’s he staring off like that? Does he see something?
One quick glance toward the open window told her that even if the Shyiine saw something coming, she never would. Leigh blinked at the cell light on the dash. Charged. The engine rumbled, ready to go.
“Why did you stop?” She nudged Kaitar’s shoulder. He turned to look at her, face blank. Dark circles of exhaustion ringed his eyes, and his bruised face seemed gaunt. Leigh didn’t suppose she looked much better.
“Kaitar, why did we stop? Is something wrong? Do you see something? Are we lost?”
“We’re not lost. Dogton’s five miles right ahead of us. See?” He pointed toward the GPS screen next to the cell indicator; the coordinates and direction blinked with neon-green accuracy.
“Then why—”
“All you have to do is head in a straight line, Leigh. Just go slow and look at the GPS. It’s showing Dogton right there, that flashing mark. It’s reading off the signal from Neiro’s Veraleid.”
Leigh’s face cleared with sudden understanding. “You want me to switch off with you. You’ve been driving since the storm hit yesterday. I can take over, if you’ll navigate. I can’t see in this like you can.”
He smiled at her; for once, there was no trace of bitterness in the expression. “No. I don’t want you to switch off with me.”
“This is not the time for games, Kaitar.” Leigh grabbed his shoulders and dug her fingers in until she knew it must hurt. “We’re almost home. We’re almost there! I’ll drive. You’re tired. You look like hell, in fact.”
“Go on.” With a calm, easy movement, he shrugged from her grasp. “Just keep going straight north. Watch the GPS. Go slow. You’ll be there in less than an hour.”
Leigh's nerves snapped like thin wire stretched too taut. “What are you saying, Kaitar Besh? Spit it out. I’m tired. I’m bone tired and I want to go home. Drive, or move over and let me drive.” Tears burned in her eyes, threatening to spill over, but she couldn’t seem to swallow the lump in her throat. Not this time.
