Evil is a Matter of Perspective: An Anthology of Antagonists

by Edited by Adrian Collins

  More interesting to Brama is the sheer number of entrances and exits to this gargantuan complex. Like a tribe of desert titans, each building has eight scalloped archways that disgorge or ingest its inhabitants. Each has four courtyards as well, with exits to the north and south. Above, makeshift walkways string between these and the neighboring buildings, making up one small part of the sprawling rooftop neighborhood the Shallows is famed for. No doubt there are even a few underground tunnels leading to and from this place.

  It all makes for the perfect place for Nehir and Jax to hide. And so it was with little surprise that the lights led Brama here. They dissipate, however, when he nears the buildings, and though he’s walked their circumference several times over the past few days, he still hasn’t found her.

  “Why?” he asked me that first night in his beaten brass mirror.

  “The fates are fickle friends,” I told him. “The path is not always clear. It can become clouded by others who hold power or control the fate of those involved. It can become dulled by the sheer press of humanity in Sharakhai. My guess, however, is that for the time being, the fates have found other, more interesting baubles to play with. That or they’ve simply not decided what to do with you.”

  Or, more accurately, me.

  Brama seemed unsatisfied, but it is the plain truth, and the only answer I could give. I worry over it as much as he does, perhaps more. I feel as though this story, however it unfolds, is a test on the part of the fates, a way to offer me a path back into their good graces. For all my power, for all the centuries I’ve spent living in every corner of the Great Shangazi, I am as much in control of my own destiny as Brama is of his.

  Sundown nears as Brama waits. The light splashing against the buildings fades, burns red. And then Jax comes rushing from an alley into the nearest of the tenements’ tall buildings. She slips through a darkened archway and is gone, but Brama is already on her trail. He heads inside but promptly loses her to a stairwell twenty paces along the narrow hallway. Tenement dwellers watch Brama pass by their doorless entries. Some peek out from behind blankets hung across their cramped rooms, or lift their heads from their meals to stare through strings of beads. Some even make love, but it doesn’t do to lower one’s guard in the Shallows, so they watch him pass, then return to their rutting.

  Brama hurries up the stairwell, glancing along the hallway of the second story, then the third. Finding both empty—of sparkling girls, at least—he continues to the fourth floor. At the end of the dirty corridor, a gutted window shows a sky of brilliant mauve gilded in the orange light of the setting sun. Just short of the window, he sees the silhouette of a girl slipping inside a room. Brama approaches carefully, pausing near the doorway, which has a beaten old carpet hung across it. The sound of shuffling comes from within, then the rhythmic thump of a mortar and pestle, accompanied by sniffing sounds. Other sounds rise up all around in this cramped hive of humanity, but lying in the interstitial spaces between them is a sibilant hiss, the rasp of wet breath. The scent of black lotus laces the air, an earthy, floral smell that lingers, especially when one has been smoking it for as long as Nehir apparently has.

  As Brama reaches to move the carpet aside, the mortar goes silent; the carpet is flung wide and the girl rushes out, knife to hand. She presses the knife to Brama’s throat until he’s against the wall behind him. She stares at him, her brows pinched in confusion. She expected someone else—the assassin, most likely, assuming Kymbril’s story is true.

  She starts to speak, then glances back, pulls the carpet back into place to hide the sight of Nehir lying in a hammock slung between the mudbrick walls. “What do you want with us?” she asks in a thick Malasani accent.

  Brama pauses to think. “I don’t know. I only wish to help.”

  She stares at Brama’s scars, clearly revolted, clearly scared. “We need no help from you.”

  “Yes you do. The world is closing in around you. It won’t be long now before Kymbril has you.”

  She frowns, her brow furrowing. “Who’s Kymbril?”

  It’s clear then how woefully incomplete her understanding of the situation is. She knows some—else why hide in this place and cover her tracks so carefully?—but she understands neither the nature of the danger nor its immediacy.

  Before Brama can reply, a filthy man wearing only his small clothes approaches along the hallway. His eyes are dark and haunted, his malnourished ribs like ripples on a windswept pond. He carries something, a single silver six-piece that he holds with both hands toward Jax as if it’s meant to save his own mother.

  “Go on!” Jax shouts. And when he doesn’t, she screams at him, “There’s nothing for you here!”

  He remains, mouth opening and closing uselessly. He shuffles one step forward, holding the sliver of a silver coin out further.

  “Go!”

  Finally the man leaves, the sound of his footsteps replaced by a choking sound from inside the room. Jax’s eyes go wide. She bats the carpet aside and bursts into the room. Brama holds the carpet wide as she sinks to the floor by her brother’s side. His eyelids flutter. His body convulses, rocking the hammock slung between the walls of the narrow room.

  Beneath the hammock sits a grimy shisha, its frayed black tube snaking across the floor. Next to the shisha is the mortar and pestle. She tosses the pestle aside, spraying some of the red paste onto the floor, then uses her fingers to scoop up some of the crushed wolfberry. “Nehir,” she whispers. “Nehir, take this.” She smears as much of the red paste into his mouth as she can, making him look as though his gums are bleeding. “Swallow it!”

  He doesn’t respond. The embrace of the black lotus is already on him, and it’s drawing him deeper and deeper. It will never let him go. As we watch with all the impotence of babes, his spasms begin to slow. His eyes roll up in his head. His breath comes slower, shallower.

  Jax turns to Brama, her eyes brimming with tears. “Do something!”

  Brama stands silent, peering around the room. In a corner lies a bowl of water with a rag folded carefully along one edge. He steps across the room, drops down in front of the bowl, and stares into the reflection. “What can I do?”

  Slowly, the smooth black skin of my face forms in the white bowl of water. Twin horns furl backward. Black spines replace Brama’s curly hair. “Little enough,” I say. “Give him comfort. Give him more of the reek to ease his flight.”

  “You know that isn’t what I mean.”

  “My dear Brama,” I say, reaching out to his mind, “if you wish for my help, you know what you must do.”

  Brama stares into the water, his worries roiling inside him.

  Jax, hands clutched to her throat, steps closer and stares at the bowl. “Who are you talking to?”

  Brama ignores her. “Do it,” he says to me.

  Do it. Allow me to take his form, at least for a time, and to some small degree. It’s doubtful I can do anything more than help with Nehir—the narrow tie between us will not allow me to do all that I might wish—but we both know that the more I’m allowed to do this, the more dangerous it becomes for Brama.

  When Brama first accepted the gem that contains me, I thought surely he would use it to bring himself fortune or to grant himself long life. It would take time, surely, for our dealings before that point were anything but kind to Brama, but so often when mortals gain power, their only wish is to gain more. Brama hadn’t wished for that, though. He’d squirreled me away, sometimes in the lead box, other times beneath his mattress, other times within his shirt. He’d never sought power.

  Until now.

  “There is a cost,” I tell Brama. “You will be required to act in this as well. Your body must suffer in his place.”

  “I don’t care if I suffer.” And he means it. I’ve felt the disregard he has for his own life, the pain that befalls him. I feel it even now.

  “Very well.”

  “Please,” Jax says, and then goes silent as Brama stands
. She watches as he steps to her brother’s side. Watches as Brama takes his hand. In this moment, Brama lowers his guard. It feels not like the opening of a door, but more of a nod, a bow to me. It is all I need.

  I forge a connection between Brama and Nehir, a bond that begins as a thread but strengthens, braiding and multiplying until the two men are intertwined. Their minds are still unique, but their forms intermingle. Their hearts. Their bodies. These are what I care about now. Slowly, the effects of the reek are drawn from Nehir and into Brama. His body carries that terrible burden, leaving Nehir breathing easier, his eyes less restless. Nehir’s shaking quells and he slips into a deeper sleep, and the touch of the black lotus takes Brama. He stumbles backward, falls against the nearby wall. He slips down until his head is resting against the corner of the room.

  He hears the sounds of the tenement, which are wondrous and terrifying in equal amounts. The cry of a babe brightens until it becomes the touch of Tulathan herself. The sound of a man’s feet treading barefoot is the tread of an assassin. Jax squats before him. She speaks, but Brama cannot hear her words. She shakes him, gently at first, then violently. But Brama doesn’t care. Jax is nothing to him, merely one small part in the grand canvas of sounds and scents that grow and shrink like the aeons of life and death in a forest, all experienced in the blink of an eye.

  Down, down Brama drifts, into the forest, the landscape ever changing. Brama wanders through the trees, through the hills, wondering where his place in this new world might be.

  * * *

  When Brama wakes, his head feels as though it’s being pounded like a cubit stone in the quarry. He lies on the floor of the same small tenement room, drool slipping from his mouth, pooling against the red-tiled floor beneath him. As he lifts himself up and props himself against the wall, the pounding becomes so terrible, stars form in his eyes. Only after long minutes of breathing and allowing the storm to pass does Brama realize he is alone. He stares at the empty hammock, takes in the rest of the room, which holds considerably less clutter than it had before he’d freed Nehir.

  Hardly surprising, Brama thinks.

  Still, the betrayal stings, and for a time all he can manage to do is hold his head in his hands and try to press away the pain.

  I’m distanced from his bodily feelings, but not completely so—I helped him to lift the effects of the black lotus, after all. The way his body grieves reminds me of the mortals with whom I’ve bonded in the past. This is vastly different, though. Every time before now, I’d been the one in control. I felt what I wanted to feel, did what I wanted to do with the form I’d taken, and it was often wondrous. Now, the crystal makes me beholden to the one who holds it, and I feel so much less. Brama is duller than he might have been. Less interesting to me. If only I might find a way to free myself from this prison once and for all.

  Brama stares at the shisha. The rank smell disgusts him, but there is a part of him that wants to walk among the trees of the forest once more. It’s a small part, to be sure, but distinct. It was surely due to how addicted to the reek Nehir had been. Brama is strong enough in body and spirit to withstand it and not become shackled to the drug, but were he to continue to do this, he could easily succumb to the desire.

  Brama’s gaze drifts to the empty hammock. “I should have let him die.”

  “Perhaps you should have,” comes a heavy voice.

  Brama turns his head, wincing from the pain it brings, to find a bald man standing in the doorway, pushing the carpet aside. It’s Maru, Kymbril’s man. He steps inside the room, and the carpet flaps closed behind him. Brama reaches for his knife, but finds it gone. Maru gives the room a cursory inspection, then kneels before Brama, a curved and nicked kenshar held easily in one hand.

  He cranes his neck and runs the knife blade over his stubbly neck, scratching an itch. “Kymbril’s going to be awfully disappointed in you.”

  “Why’s that?” Brama asks.

  Maru points the tip of the knife at Brama’s chest. “Told him you didn’t know Nehir. Said you worked for no one.”

  Brama thinks back, frowns. “You were there, weren’t you, outside the door?”

  Maru shrugs his broad shoulders. “He may not act like it, but Kymbril’s a careful man.” Brama opens his mouth to speak, but Maru talks over him. “Now let’s get a few things straight, you and me. First, before I leave this room, you’re going to tell me where I can find Nehir and that little bitch sister of his. Second, at no point in this conversation will you tell me that you don’t know. Third, and this is the most important point, Brama, so bend your ear. Third, Kymbril may be a careful man, but I’m not.” He holds the kenshar up for Brama to see. He stares over it, just above its well-honed edge, into Brama’s eyes. “I’m a messy man. A persistent man. I’m a jackal who’s gone too hungry to care about leopards or lions or whatever the fuck else might be standing in front of me.”

  Since Brama escaped my attentions, he’s had a streak in him that seeks out conflict, that desires pain. Something broke in him while he was in my care, and I can feel it inside him now, rising to stand before Maru like a defiant child before a charging destrier. Worse is the fact that I see a darkness forming around Maru, the sort that comes when something threatens me.

  Beware, Brama! Take my hand!

  To my amazement, Brama does reach for me, but in that moment his hand also grasps absently for the sapphire beneath his shirt. Maru’s hand darts forward and snatches the leather cord around Brama’s neck. He yanks it, snapping the cord, taking the sapphire that holds me with it. My sight, my hearing, so dependent on Brama, both dim, but I can still hear Maru as he says, “None of that,” holding the gemstone up.

  He slips it into his pocket, his eyes still on Brama. Brama chooses that moment to kick Maru in the knee. Maru, however, for all his bulk, is a sinuous man. His leg snaps back, dulling the blow. Then, quick as a cobra, he grabs Brama by the neck, slams him against the rough stone wall, and drops him to the floor.

  “Now.” Maru is close, his dark eyes intense, his kahve-laden breath strong and rank. He holds the knife between Brama’s legs, pressing the blade up against his crotch. Brama grips Maru’s wrist, keeping the knife at bay, but only just. “Choose carefully, Brama. I’m only going to ask you one more time. Where’s that Malasani cunt?”

  “Crawled up one of the Kings’ arses,” Brama shoots back. “Which is good news for you, Maru. You only have to shove your head up a dozen of them to find her.”

  “Bad choice, boy.”

  Maru draws the knife upward. Brama, jaw clenched tight, teeth bared, tries to stop him, but as weak as he is from the effects of the lotus, it’s a losing battle from the start.

  The scene slowly fades—the sights, the sounds, the smells. It represents, perhaps, an uncorrectable shift in my fate, a poorly chosen path. Suddenly the scene brightens. Maru’s breathing is a wet rasp in Brama’s ears. The knife’s edge burns bright between Brama’s legs, searing his skin.

  There’s a hollow thump, and Maru goes slack. His weight falls across Brama, and Brama shoves him away. Jax is there, standing over the two of them holding a heavy, blood-stained ewer above her head, ready to strike again. She’s shivering, panting, staring at the bloody gouge on the back of Maru’s head.

  Brama levers himself out from under Maru and comes to a stand. Jax drops the ewer, which thuds against the floor. After taking takes Maru’s knife and slipping it under his belt, Brama reaches into Maru’s shirt pocket, takes back the necklace, and ties it around his neck.

  “Nehir wouldn’t let me stay,” Jax says, an apology of sorts.

  Brama only shrugs. “I mightn’t have, either, were I him.”

  “I’m sorry. I know you saved us, but he’s scared. He has his wits about him now, though. He has you to thank, does he not?”

  Brama nods.

  “It was the gem?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  The girl takes a deep breath. Someone further down the h
all begins shouting at their child. Jax turns and stares wide-eyed at the carpet over her doorway, but as their argument quells, she turns back to Brama. “I haven’t a right to ask, but I need help. We need help, even if Nehir won’t admit it.”

  Brama looks down Maru. The big man is beginning to stir. “Best we talk elsewhere.” She nods, but doesn’t move. When Brama touches her shoulder, she nods a second time, and the two of them leave together.

  * * *

  In the southwestern quarter of Sharakhai, not so far from the banks of the Haddah, lies the Temple of Nalamae. Save for a few special nights of the year, the broken temple lies empty. Disused. Forgotten and mostly shunned by the citizens of Sharakhai. And yet no one would dare tear it down, not even the Kings. One might ignore the gods of the desert without fear of retribution, but attempting to erase their memory entirely would be like waving a ribbon before a black laugher and daring it to charge.

  The temple is where Brama decides to take Jax. It’s also the very place I was taken, captured, and caught within the falcon’s egg sapphire Brama now wears around his neck. Perhaps Brama wishes to taunt me by coming here. If that’s the case, he has succeeded, for this is also the place where my most loyal servant, Kadir, died, and I feel a growing sadness and anger. The lives of mortals may be fleeting, but Kadir’s blazed higher and brighter than the dim candles of most souls in Sharakhai.

  Brama motions Jax to walk ahead of him into the temple. He slows, watching the way behind, wary of Kymbril’s gang, wary of the assassin. No one is following, however, and the two of them head into the nave, where the temple’s grand, broken dome arcs high above them. Rubble and stone and dust lie all about. The mosaics here depict life in the earliest days of Sharakhai: the river, the mount where the Kings’ palaces were built, the small settlement that grew into the sprawling metropolis that eventually swallowed the open land around this temple.