by Sam Sykes
“Have you known what it is to be left wanting? To be left desiring? To feel a vast emptiness where something should be?”
Gariath lowered his gaze to the earth.
“I have known that,” he said.
“As have we all, brother. As Ancaa has taught us.”
The man raised his hands, as though trying to paint a picture with his fingers in the dusty air.
“She spoke of many things, and chief among them, of wealth. She told us that it was not made to be hoarded as the fashas do. Wealth is there to better mankind, and coin was only as good as the man who carried it. And so long as one man was too poor to rise above the filth, so too would all mankind.”
He gestured to the river of the flesh.
“And so, until every man can rise above poverty, no man shall. And we shall all crawl, as the lowest man shall.”
The look on the man’s face was delirious. But the scent he exuded was treacherous, a kind of noxious blend of aromas that wafted into Gariath’s hood and filled his nostrils. A sickly sweet odor of excitement clashed with the wafting stench of desire, but neither were nearly as prevalent as that most common, stale stink of humanity.
Fear.
“Join me, brother,” the man said, breathless. “Join me in this great endeavor.”
Gariath didn’t. The man didn’t bother to look as he threw his belly to the stones and joined the other worshippers in crawling as their lowest member to whatever distant goal they hoped lay at the end of their river.
And this, he thought, was why he hated them.
To them, suffering came from neither loss nor tragedy, but from desire and denial. To them, suffering was no famine or drought. Suffering was a belly not yet full to bursting, a mouth that drank water instead of wine. To them, suffering was something temporary, to be overcome, to be put aside and placed on a mantel with all their other things made of metal.
To a human, suffering was a novelty.
To a Rhega like him, it was uncooked meat.
To a Rhega, it was the scar that taught him to watch his back. To a Rhega, it was precious blood spilled and every drop counted. To a Rhega, it was as constant as the sun and as unforgiving.
To Gariath, last of Rhega, suffering was constant.
Below his cloak, his wings felt stifled, constrained. His tail ached from being coiled up to avoid dragging on the ground. His skin felt hot and itchy and his claws tensed, ready to rip this puny cloak asunder and give these weaklings something to really fear.
It was hard to think here—too many noises, too many smells, too many humans.
But he kept himself calm. He forced himself still. Lenk was depending on him to do just that. And while Lenk’s desires never really superseded Gariath’s, he respected the man enough to at least spare a moment of consideration before rampaging.
And so Gariath held on to that moment as long as he could. He breathed deeply, in and out, in—
And that’s when he caught it. A stray scent on the breeze. Something stronger than fear, something stronger than a human. Anger tinged with hate, hate blended with derision, derision caked upon sorrow. It was a powerful scent. A familiar scent.
A scent of true suffering. Like the Rhegas’.
Pushing effortlessly through the crowds, Gariath followed it, through the river of flesh and into a forest of canvas and wood.
The fortieth time Dreadaeleon found himself nose-to-groin with some sweaty, belligerent barkneck, he wondered if it wouldn’t be easier to just burn the whole Souk down and find Miron by sifting through the ashes.
Granted, his quarry would doubtlessly be consumed in the inferno, as well, but surely no court would convict him. Men could be pushed too far, and being pushed into someone’s sweaty lap was at least twelve paces past too far.
He muttered something between a curse to the person who had shoved him down and an apology to the person whose belt his face had brushed against. Neither seemed to notice as he hauled himself to his feet and dusted himself off.
Again.
It’s not right, you know, he told himself. They look at you like some vagrant. Do they not see the book? Do they not sense the palpable purpose seething within?
He looked down at himself. He saw a boy in a dirty coat and dirty trousers, a book too heavy for him hanging from his hip. He thought he could sense purpose seething within, though that might just have been the curry he ate earlier.
Or perhaps, it was something else entirely. A familiar pang of dread that welled up inside him, seized his heart, and twisted. He felt it as he picked his way through the crowd, suffering the jostling and the shoving with numb acceptance.
Perhaps some manner of disturbance as pertains to the disconnect between the body and the Venarie that flows through it, he surmised. It’s feasible to surmise that an aftereffect of magical use has lingered, some disturbance that’s resulted in heightened tension, bowel disorder, and general anxiety.
At the edge of the crowd, he found a long, wooden bench. And when he sat upon it, he found himself suddenly much heavier.
It’s also possible that you’re just a colossal coward.
That felt more plausible with every passing moment.
Every moment he wasn’t out searching for Miron. Every moment he labored under the masquerade of being friend to Asper and the others. Every moment he spent out here in the tide of people instead of doing what his duty as a wizard and member of the Venarium commanded him to.
It was all so easy when you planned it out, wasn’t it?
It was, by design, going to be a relatively simple endeavor. When he arrived in Cier’Djaal with his companions, he would use a simple spell to go over the Harbor Wall and leave them behind.
It was, by execution, even simpler. Breaking off from Lenk and the others was no more difficult than the spell itself.
It was, as ever, only in hindsight that everything completely went donkey’s-balls.
Because nothing involving magic—by design, execution, or hindsight—was ever simple. And it never didn’t go donkey’s-balls.
That was duty. The duty his fellow wizards had put upon him. The duty he was supposed to be performing right now.
He rubbed his eyes. That was a mistake. He could feel it every time he closed his eyes: a steady pressure, a fluctuation of temperature, a subtle arc of electricity that sent the hairs on his neck standing on end.
Magic.
The Venarium.
They were here, in Cier’Djaal.
Exactly thirty-four degrees east, nine hundred and fifty-one paces in a straight line, he could feel the pull of Venarie surely as compasses felt north. It didn’t call to him, of course; magic didn’t work like that. It wasn’t flighty or seductive. It was constant, a fact of life. And so it merely made him aware of the fact that it existed and always would.
And with that awareness came the creeping reality of his situation.
He should be going there now. Protocol dictated that every member in good standing of the Venarium—as every wizard living was—should report to the nearest sovereign tower and give a detailed listing of their discoveries as to the properties, practices, and executions of magic in their travels.
Yet he did not make a move to rise, let alone to go.
It was hardly his fault that nearly every item in such a listing involved a transgression against nearly every protocol, rule, and bylaw—all punishable by incarceratory punitive research until such a time as he expired and his organs, skin, and bones were suitable for harvesting.
As outlined in article sixty-six, item D of The Seven Noble Laws.
And because he had read that article several times, because he knew exactly what awaited him when he arrived at the Venarium, here he was.
On a dirty bench in a dirty coat among dirty people, ignoring a task given to him by friends that he intended to abandon. Trying to figure out how to best manage his time between doing a task for imbeciles and avoiding imminent and painful death by protocol.
I should sta
rt keeping a tally for every time this happens, he thought. Every third time, I could reward myself with a treat. Something really nice, like—
“Excuse me.”
He turned to his left. A pair of bright green eyes greeted him, shining through a dusky, unwashed face, stars against a dark sky.
“This isn’t a bench you want to sit on.”
He blinked. For a moment, he failed to register her as a girl. Her dress was tattered and dirty, her hair hung about her face in thick, black strands, and there wasn’t a bit of dusky skin that didn’t bear some desert grime.
But he noted by the angle of her face and the weariness of her eyes that she was a young woman. Though she seemed more young than woman.
And more dirt than human, he noted.
At his intent scrutiny of her, she leaned back, regarding him down the slope of her nose.
“Unless someone told you this was the bench for creepy boys who stare too long,” she said.
He stared, shaking his head. “Oh! Uh, sorry. I didn’t…”
His words and his gaze alike drifted off, over her head and down the bench. A number of other people of various ages and common grime sat upon it, heads bowed, bodies bent. At the very end of it sprawled a wooden platform before a gathered crowd, not unlike a stage.
“I’m, uh, not from around here,” he said, offhandedly.
She took him in—his pale skin, his lanky build, his dirty coat—with eyes that battled between unsurprised and unimpressed.
“You don’t say,” she said.
“So, what is this? Some sort of play? Should I move?”
“Yeah.” There was a deep weariness in her laughter. “A play. It’s a production of To Wed and Be Bled.”
“Highly unlikely,” he replied. “To Wed and Be Bled—or its original title, Red Sheets Weeping, as it’s still known in its native Karneria—is a stage performance that benefits from more organization and pomp.”
He pointed past her to the stage and its bare wooden planks.
“The orchestra should be well-warm by this point. The curtains should be hung. The paper dragons should be ready to go ablaze to introduce Lady Liaja, the Djaalic princess offered to the Karnerian emperor. Her entry sets the tone for the entire piece.”
“It’s a humble production,” the woman said, lips straining to contain her smirk. “The director had a minimalist vision.”
“Lunacy,” he said with a sneer. “Even a functioning illiterate could look at the script and realize that it was intended to be presented with fanfare and flowers and fire.”
“It’s highly inconsiderate to critique a performance before it’s gone on,” she replied down her nose.
“Well,” he responded, puffing himself up like a poorly endowed bullfrog, “it’s high crime to premeditate the murder of such a classic work of theater.”
And she laughed.
And she ceased to be anything that he knew. No longer a girl, nor even a woman. Her smile, white and wide against the dusk of her skin, made her altogether something else. She was something too warm to be ethereal, something too distant to be smoldering. She was… she was…
“Funny.”
He blinked. “What is?”
“You, little northern boy,” she replied. “You make me laugh.”
“I hardly see where the humor lies in turning a theatrical masterpiece into a massacre.”
Her smile faded. Her brow furrowed. She looked at him incredulously before shaking her head.
“No, we aren’t actually—”
Her voice drifted off with her eyes as she looked over her shoulder to the stage. A glance became a gaze became a long frown that would have fit better on someone much older.
Perhaps she was getting into character, he reasoned. He fidgeted briefly in his seat before rising to leave.
And that was when she touched him.
Hers were not delicate hands, used to firmer flesh than his, and she did not let him slip through them. When he turned to her, her smile was back. No longer wide and cheery, it was something sad and subdued. Silk curtains in a stiff breeze.
“Stay and rest your feet, northern boy,” she whispered. “My cue isn’t for some time. The Lady Liaja has not yet emerged.”
He looked out toward the crowd, where he should be searching. He looked thirty-four degrees to the east, nine hundred and fifty-one paces in a straight line, where he should be going.
“I should go. I’ve got…” He searched for an appropriate word, found only one. “Uh, people… to meet.”
That was embarrassing. Not quite as embarrassing as the ease with which she pulled him back to the bench, though.
“One does not meet people,” she replied. “One leads people, one kills people. One ignores acquaintances, one betrays associates, one avoids lovers. One only meets friends.” She leaned back against the wall, tapping her chin in a show of contemplation. “But you didn’t say ‘friends,’ so you’re not meeting anyone, you’re just trying to get away.”
He furrowed his brow. “That seems a massive leap in logic.”
She chuckled. “Am I mistaken?”
He wasn’t quite sure which part about that question bothered him the most. Her logic defying leaps, her tremendously assumptive arrogance, her aggressively unspoken accusation…
If it wasn’t clear to him, though, it certainly was to her. She ate the flush of his face through a wide, feline grin. She leaned forward, elbows on her lap, chin cradled by her hands.
“So where are we running to, northern boy?”
“I’m… I’m not… there’s nowhere to—”
“You know what your problem is?”
“I am aware that my list of problems is growing by the breath, yes,” he muttered, fixing a glare upon her.
“You have no love of lying,” she replied, heedless of sour word or sour look. “You believe what everyone else does, that lying is something you’re supposed to use as a last resort, if at all. You take no joy in the act or the feeling it creates.”
“The feeling it creates being a hollow sense of fulfillment and a fleeting sense of security?”
“Only if you’re an amateur of the art,” she said. Her smile strained at the edges, chips on a porcelain plate. “If you feel hollow, then you didn’t love the lie. If your security is fleeting, then you didn’t believe it.”
“And if you love it and you believe it?”
Something on her, something in her, broke. The porcelain shattered, the curtains hung still, the grime of her face peeled just slightly as a tear fell at the edge of her eye. And beneath the sand, beneath the dirt, she was soft, and she was dark, and she was a warm night at the crest of a grassy hill.
“Then,” she said, “it’s not a lie, is it?”
He stared at her, at that corner of her eye, at that long line of skin wiped clean by tears, at that fragile, soft, silk-and-porcelain smile. And just as he could not turn away, she could no longer bear to look at him. She looked past him and her smile diminished. He followed her gaze and saw the man approaching.
A small, slender fellow in silks and gold chains approached. His smile was strong and false below a waxed mustache. He gave a cursory glance at Dreadaeleon before turning his smile to the woman.
“My dear,” he said, making a long, false bow. “They await your debut.”
He gestured down the bench of broken people. She nodded once. She turned back to Dreadaeleon and offered him a soft look. It faded as she rose. Her shoulders stooped as she walked. Her body shuddered as she placed a foot upon the step.
And then he remembered to call after her.
“Wait!” he cried. “What is your name?”
And he saw the smile once more as she looked over shoulder.
“My name? Why, I am Lady Liaja, to be offered up as sacrifice for the adoring masses.”
“No, you’re not,” he replied.
“Love the lie, northern boy. I cannot bear for you not to.”
She ascended the steps. She walked to the e
dge of the stage, where another man in silks was waiting. A number of hands went into the air, a number of words were hurled at her, a number of peering eyes lay upon her. The man in silks hurled words back, pointed to people, nodded and shook his head, and laughed in their faces.
Dreadaeleon watched, far away and with ears too small to hear what they were saying and eyes too big to turn away.
“You like her, my friend?”
He remembered the man in silks at his side. He looked to him briefly. He saw only the false smile before he found his gaze drifting back to her.
“The bidding has only just begun,” the man said. “If you’ve coin enough, you may try to purchase her for yourself.”
“What?” Dreadaeleon asked, incredulity on his face.
“Ah, I see. You have never seen a debt auction before?” He made a gesture over Dreadaeleon’s face. “Your skin. Of course. This must look strange to a northerner.”
“Strange is one word for it, yes,” Dreadaeleon replied. “‘Illegal,’ ‘amoral,’ and ‘disgusting’ are other good adjectives for slavery.”
“Slavery? No, no, sir.” He held up his hands, shaking his head. “She merely owes more money than she can pay. To whom does not concern us. She came to us to find her a respectable buyer and she has the final say in who purchases her.” He glanced over his shoulder at the crowd. “At the moment, it looks like the bathhouses have taken an interest in her. Good prospects. Wealthy clients.”
“What the hell’s a bathhouse?”
“You may call them something significantly more crass in the north. Whorehouses? Pleasure-dens? Here in Cier’Djaal, we respect a business’s dignity.”
“How can you speak of respect when you sell people? People! What about their dignity?”
“Indeed, northerner.” The man’s tone turned hostile as his mirth faded. “And how can you speak of dignity? I have heard tales of what happens to the poor in your cities. They are offered mercy from a church that wants their servitude; they are offered respite in an army that wants their lives. If they are truly allowed dignity, they get to beg on the streets and watch their families starve to death. Here, at least, a man or a woman has a choice in the matter.”
“How can they have a choice if the only way out is selling themselves?”
