City of Light

by J J Hane

  Not wanting to risk either of us rethinking or, more accurately, thinking, I jogged across the dead zone.

  Chapter 6

  The ground there was treacherous, nearly causing me to fall several times. I must have looked like a drunk, staggering across the dead zone. Large portions of the soil had been superheated by the Archangel long ago, turned to a slick, glassy substance. Jagged, solid earth would slow any tribes trying to cross, giving security time to stop them. It also successfully reduced my already low gracefulness.

  “You walk like a deformed duck,” Serenity said by way of greeting once I had reached her.

  “That’s unkind.”

  She shrugged. “Come on. We need to get out of sight of the cameras.”

  I didn’t bother to tell her that hiding in the trees wasn’t going to provide much more cover than standing in the open. Instead, I followed her into the foliage that went from sparse, sickly looking grasses at the edges to a thick line of sturdy trees within a few feet.

  Serenity nodded to my pack. “Is that it?”

  “Yes. How far to your camp?”

  She gave me an annoyed look. With visible effort, she forced a smile onto her face. “Not far. Maybe an hour if we walk quickly. And ‘camp’ makes it sound like we live out here because we like the recreation.”

  As she turned away from me to lead the way further from the city, she dropped the smile, reverting to the more familiar scowl of disapproval. I preferred that over the unsettling forced friendliness.

  Already, she had given me more to think about. First, why was she suddenly trying to be nice? She obviously did not like the idea of bringing me along, so why even do it? Honestly, she probably could have taken the medicine from me if she really wanted to do it. Second, how had I never realized how close the tribes were to the city? After all this time, they had stayed within walking distance. It made sense, I guess, since they were always trading with the Martyrion: broken bits of metal and plastic in exchange for medicine.

  “Where exactly do you live?” I asked after a moment.

  Serenity shushed me. Her voice took on a strained tone, the way some parents sound when they want to scold a disobedient child for doing something stupid or dangerous. “Be quiet. Please. We’re not safe here. Anyone could be roaming these woods.”

  A chill that had nothing to do with the cool morning air ran down my spine. I looked around in the uniformly dim grey light, wondering if we were being watched.

  Serenity saw my nervous glances and gave a quiet laugh, her breath appearing as a wispy cloud in the cool morning air. “I doubt you’d be able to see them, city boy. The only reason you’re even seeing me is that I’m letting you.”

  I huffed, irritated by her smugness. “Your camouflage won’t actually do much to hide you from Martyrion Security, you know.” I regretted the petulant words as soon as they came out of my mouth. Serenity said nothing for a minute.

  “You people aren’t the only killers in this world,” she said quietly. “Most of us don’t have the luxury of killing from a distance.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, keeping my voice low. What did she mean by that? Was she implying that she was a killer? Given what I knew of the tribes, it wouldn’t have surprised me.

  Despite my best efforts, I was making plenty of noise just walking through the underbrush; I doubted that a little conversation would make us that much more conspicuous. I put a little note of hopefulness into my voice. “Maybe if our peoples could get to know each other better, we could avoid the violence.”

  Serenity didn’t seem inclined to speak, so we walked in silence for the next twenty minutes or so. There were plenty of old, broken buildings all around us, reclaimed by nature. My guide kept a significant distance between us and any of the ruins that we couldn’t easily see into. Some of them were nothing more than rusted frames, while others created artificial cave systems that could have held any number of unpleasant things. At one point, she led meal the way around a fallen structure that looked like it might have once been nearly as tall as the Martyrion itself, taking us several minutes out of our way.

  “I would usually go through it,” she told me, just above a whisper, “but I know how to handle myself in a fight.”

  I wisely did not point out that I had nearly bested her in our scuffle on the street. Of course, she didn’t look any worse off for it, and the lump on the back of my head had made sleep even more difficult.

  My first sign that we were approaching the settlement was the faint smell of smoke. Through the trees I could see a huge concrete wall stretching out at odd angles. Broken remains of some sort of signage marred the weathered exterior. As we drew closer, the smell of wood smoke grew stronger, mixing with the odor of animals and something less pleasant. I could hear cattle lowing nearby. Where had they found cows to breed and how they had gotten them here, to what used to be one of the many hearts of a vast city?

  At some point we crossed what was, to me, an invisible line delineating the territory of Serenity’s tribe. My excellent powers of observation determined this when two men, dressed in clothes similar in style to hers, dropped out of the lower branches of trees on either side of me, brandishing crudely made short swords.

  Serenity, who was ahead of me, turned around and stuck her fists on her hips, a look of mild annoyance on her face.

  “Stop!” one of the men ordered. His face was covered by a dark brown scarf, and dark eyes glittered maliciously from the shadows. He was about my height, skinny in the way that many outlanders were. With a deft flick of his wrist, he brought the blade of the sword up to my throat.

  “What the hell is this, Serenity?” he asked, eyes focused on me.

  “Put it down, Derrick,” she replied, her tone almost bored. “He’s with me.”

  I gave a little wave, without lifting my arm too high. The blade pressed more firmly against my neck.

  “This city dweller is with you?” the man, Derrick, sneered. “Why’s that? What’s he giving you?”

  There was something distinctly perverse in his tone. I tried to shuffle back a step to ease the pressure of the blade, but he twisted it slightly. I felt it break skin.

  “Move again and you’re dead,” he said.

  Serenity sighed, stepped forward, and seized Derrick’s sword arm. He turned to face her for the first time and got a close-up view of her knuckles. He staggered away from the punch, Serenity giving him a shove as he went. I couldn’t keep myself from reaching up to the cut he had given me. My fingers came away with a little smear of blood. Definitely going to have to get this looked at by the medical staff when I got back…

  “I said he’s with me,” Serenity said in the same patient tone used by people who are accustomed to repeating themselves. The other guy, who had been silent the whole time, let out a little wheezing laugh.

  Derrick pulled the scarf away from his face, rubbing his hawkish nose and swearing profusely. “Do that again!” he shouted, whipping his sword up to point at Serenity’s belly. “I swear, I will kill you right here!”

  Although he was my height, Derrick had less mass. Whether from sickness, hunger, or something worse, he was quite a bit skinnier than me, and I wasn’t exactly overweight. While the other guy had yet to move, I was more than a little afraid that Derrick might kill Serenity and then me. I made up my mind in an instant.

  Dropping the strap of my pack from my shoulder to my hand, I swung the bag hard with my left arm, striking the outlander in the side of his head and sending him off balance again. Not giving him a moment to recover, I charged him, driving all my weight into his side. We both fell, but Derrick hit the ground first and I landed on top of him. I jerked my knife out of my pocket, flicking the blade open and pressing it against Derrick’s neck before he could recover from the fall. He had managed to keep ahold of his sword, but the appearance of a razor-sharp blade at his throat kept him from moving. He glared up at me with hatred in his eyes.

  “Raphael!” Serenity barked. “Get off of him!”


  “He started it!” I called back. “Drop the sword, Derrick.”

  He obeyed, but Serenity let out another irritated huff. “Would you two quit fighting? We don’t have all day.”

  “Is he going to attack me if I let him up?” I demanded. Adrenaline was keeping my heart rate up, my muscles tense. I didn’t actually want to hurt him, although I was starting to worry that I might accidentally cut him. That could make a bad impression on the tribe.

  “Not if he likes the current layout of his face.”

  “Fine,” I muttered. I shoved off of Derrick, stepping back quickly in case he tried anything. He immediately scrambled to his feet, grabbing his sword and taking a menacing step toward me.

  Serenity slipped around me, planting herself between us. She fixed a withering glare on Derrick. “Get back to your post,” she told him. “I’m taking the city boy to see Azrael.”

  Derrick hesitated at that. “Azrael knows he’s here?”

  “Of course he does, idiot,” she snapped. “Come on, Raphael. We’ve wasted enough time.”

  I followed Serenity away from the other men. A nervous tingle formed in my shoulder blades as my imagination conjured up images of being stabbed from behind. Each step further from them brought a little bit of relief until I was able to breathe normally again. The adrenaline rush passed, leaving my knees feeling a little shaky.

  “Who is Azrael?” I asked after I steadied my breathing to make sure my voice didn’t shake. Just because I was afraid didn’t mean I wanted Serenity to know that I was.

  Serenity pursed her lips. “He is our leader.”

  My stomach suddenly felt very cold. I was beginning to think that this whole trip was going to be a lot worse for my overall health than I had expected. “Why does he want to see me?”

  She shrugged, the movement unnatural, her voice coated in feigned nonchalance. “He wants to meet the boy who provided medicine for his people, I guess.”

  “Oh. Great.” It was, I thought, decidedly not great. Deeply ingrained paranoia made most of the chiefs of the various tribes refuse to be personally present during trades with Martyrion representatives. It was unusual for them to want to meet someone from the city. Unusual circumstances were often bad circumstances. I really did not want the leader of this tribe to know I was visiting, much less know me by name and sight. In retrospect, it was a foolish hope. I had been thinking of civilization on the scale of Martyrion, with tens of thousands of people roaming around. Obviously, that couldn’t possibly be true out in the wilds.

  I followed her to the huge, ancient structure. It was several stories tall, mostly blank, bland concrete. At the ground level there was a long opening that once held glass doors, now covered with ivy and narrowed by carved wood panels. Two more sentries stood guard at the entrance. They were older than the two we had already met, though it was hard to tell by how much. Probably not that much older; the life expectancy of outlanders isn’t very high. Evidently, the older sentries were less interested in a fight, as we walked right past them into the building.

  It was even bigger inside than it had appeared. Ancient columns that looked like marble but probably weren’t flanked the interior entrance. I could see a pair of staircases not far away leading down to another floor below us. The room we were in was cavernous, lit primarily by the light that spilled in through gaping holes in the roof. On the far side of the room I could see what looked to be a wide, open hallway where the original roof was simply gone, letting in grey October light.

  People were everywhere. Whatever the room had been in the past, it had been totally converted into an enormous kitchen and dining room. Several fires were burning along one wall, contained in metal grills. The smell of wood smoke and food permeated the air. People were cooking, eating, laughing, fighting. Some were even sleeping. It was hard to be certain, but it sounded like there were more people doing many more things in the rest of the building. I could hear the pounding of metal on metal somewhere in the distance, the laughter of children, and other noises that I couldn’t quite identify.

  I hadn’t realized that I had stopped moving until Serenity grabbed my hand, pulling me along after her. The contact startled me, but I didn’t pull my hand away.

  “Come on, city boy. Quit staring.”

  Serenity’s voice was a little gentler than before, while somehow also firmer. She was, I realized, proud of what she was showing me. I could see it in the set of her shoulders, the confidence of her stride. She was at home, and she was not at all ashamed of the circumstances that were so different from the city I had grown up in.

  When she led me out into the great hallway, I could see another floor below us. Wood panels and curtains made of animal skin had been added along the marbled walls to enclose the areas that lay beyond. People stopped to stare at me as we walked. Many of them looked suspicious, reaching for weapons hanging at their sides.

  The variety of archaic weapons with which these people might elect to flay me was both impressive and alarming.

  Looking up at the ceiling, pretending to be curious instead of afraid of making eye contact, I suddenly realized where we were.

  “This is a mall!” I exclaimed. Serenity gave me a puzzled look. “A mall?” I repeated. “You know, one of those big buildings people used to go hang out at and buy tons of crap? No? I guess they were pretty much all out of business before the Fall, anyway.”

  “How do you know this?” Serenity asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “History class. A couple of the old movies.”

  She snorted in derision. “It isn’t a ‘mall’ anymore. It’s our home. Azrael calls it the palace.”

  I felt a little silly trying to talk to her about movies, given the context of her daily life. Ab and I liked to watch adventurous movies that often had the heroes travelling through strange and dangerous places. Serenity’s entire life was in a very dangerous place. I imagined it wouldn’t have quite the same appeal to her. Maybe a good dark comedy would be more in her tastes….

  We walked in silence for a few minutes until we reached what had been the entrance to a large store in the center of the structure. Carved and painted wood panels separated the area within from the rest of the ancient mall. The decorations were more intricate than those I had seen elsewhere, depicting everything from trees and fields to violent battles between the tribes. One of the panels even had an image that I could only assume was a stylized version of the Archangel destroying a caravan. Three men and one woman stood guard outside, each of them armed with guns rather than the homemade swords.

  Serenity stopped in front of them, bowing slightly. I followed suit. “We have an audience with Azrael,” she said without making eye contact.

  The woman nodded. “He is expecting you. Go in.”

  As Serenity stepped forward, I glanced anxiously at the guards. “Shouldn’t you take my knife or something?” I asked, thinking of security protocols in the city.

  The woman laughed. “If you tried anything,” she said, her eyes sparkling with mirth, “you’d be dead before you realized it. If you were lucky.”

  “Oh.” That was a deeply disturbing thought. Knowing that I couldn’t take any of those people in a fight was one thing. Being told that even if I was armed I wouldn’t be any kind of threat to their leader was unsettling on another level entirely. At least she said it with a smile, though.

  We entered through the doorway, brushing aside a heavy fabric curtain. Inside, the room was not quite as big as I had expected. More partitions turned the former store into something more like a wide hall, with a makeshift throne at the far end. It was built up from the floor on a series of short steps, the chair itself being wide and comfortable. Real torches lit the room with a warm glow.

  A handful of others occupied the room. Most of them were relatively young, probably in their early twenties, although there were two older men who looked like they could be in their fifties. That was impressive for outlanders.

  Lounging on the throne, r
eminding me of a cat surveying its household, was the chief, Azrael. He was not at all what I had pictured. ‘Chief’ makes most people think of an elderly man, probably with a big, grey beard, bundled up against the cool autumn air. Azrael was none of those things. He looked to be in his early twenties, something like ten years older than I. A mop of jet black hair fell down nearly to his eyes, hooding his effortlessly predatory expression. His dark eyes, glittering in the light of the torches, were calculating, observing everyone in the room simultaneously. He was thin without being skinny, his body made of ropy muscle. He wore a coat that would hang down to his calves if he were standing, open to reveal numerous scars on his chest and abdomen.

  Azrael stood with all the grace of a wildcat. Everyone stopped speaking. A compact, dangerous looking gun glinted beneath his coat on one side, with a long, jagged knife on the other. It was the air of absolute authority that he carried with him that was the real danger, though.

  Serenity bowed at the waist, bending lower this time. “Chief Azrael,” she intoned, “this is the city dweller who brought us medicine.”

  Azrael prowled across the room to meet us. When he spoke, his voice was surprisingly pleasant. His tone was friendly, although it reminded me of an old children’s rhyme about a spider and a fly.

  “Welcome, welcome,” he said. The man’s voice came out quietly, like the sound a snake would make when slithering through the dirt. He touched Serenity’s shoulder, encouraging her to straighten before he reached out to shake my hand. Azrael didn’t try to crush my hand, like insecure guys do. I got the feeling that he could have broken it if he wanted to, without needing to put out much effort.

  “Raphael, isn’t it?” he continued, somehow making his question sound like a statement. If my name wasn’t Raphael, I might have still have said yes. He didn’t wait for me to answer what he already knew was true. “Welcome to the home of the Tribe of the Jackal. I am Azrael, Chieftain of this tribe and chosen leader of the Eight. You have my deepest gratitude for protecting one of my own, and for bringing us the medicine all the way from the City of Light.”