The Hod King

by Josiah Bancroft

  Every step of the black trail was uniquely crooked. The path seemed to have been engineered for stumbling, for twisting ankles and piercing heels. Senlin would’ve preferred to stoop and crawl along on all fours, to feel the pitfalls he could not see, but Tarrou could not walk unassisted. So Senlin acted as his crutch, and Tarrou acted as their eyes, guiding their progress with a stream of directions: “A little to the left, Headmaster. Duck a bit. That’s good. Another hole here. And then a big step up. Easy does it, easy! To the right … a little more. There.”

  When they fell, they fell together, landing in a sprawl on the uneven rock. They took each tumble as an occasion to catch their breath, and as they wheezed and huffed, Senlin asked where they were going, and what did the trail look like, and who was muttering in the dark around them? Senlin found he preferred even the grim picture Tarrou painted of the black trail to what was forming in his imagination.

  Tarrou admitted he had no destination in mind. For the moment, he was only eager to put some ground between them and the gatehouse. Gatehouses, he said, were notorious, dangerous places. The desperate and dishonest congregated there, waiting to take advantage of new arrivals to the trail.

  Every hod’s collar included an iron pendant called a bondlet, which contained the history of the hod’s debts. Bondlets were sealed with wax and stamped with the insignia of whichever ringdom had inspected them last. Hods without a bondlet, or those whose bondlet showed signs of tampering, were not allowed to take on new loads, which essentially left them stranded on the black trail with little honest hope of escape.

  Tarrou told Senlin tales of hods who came to the black trail with minor debts, only to be befriended by desperate hods, men who owed fortunes. Those hopeless debtors would convince the newcomers that they alone, of any soul on the trail, were worthy of trust. Then they would kill the novice hod just to get at their bondlets. “If anyone asks,” Tarrou said, “you owe a king’s ransom.”

  “Probably not far from the truth,” Senlin said, remembering who had pinned the bondlet on him. He had no doubt the duke had chosen some extreme figure and would have little difficulty fabricating the paperwork to support the history of the debt. “But is everyone on the trail really so ruthless?”

  “Not at all. It’s mostly fine and ordinary folk. If I had to pick between sharing a bottle of port with a man plucked from the upper ringdoms or the black trail at random, I’d pick the trail every time. But since there are no laws, no judges, and no constables here, the wicked hold a lot of sway.”

  Tarrou had been shot in the thigh. Mercifully, the ball had missed the bone and major arteries and passed cleanly through. John had bound the wounds as best he could with a strip he tore from the hem of his sarong, but the effort did not stanch the flow completely. Even as they walked, hip to hip, Senlin could feel the growing slick of blood. They did not remark on it because, Tarrou continued to insist, this was a time for jokes. Though at the moment, neither of them could think of any.

  The black trail was like an old, poorly maintained mine, Tarrou said. The tunnels rambled and crossed and ended abruptly upon cave-ins or shrank into impassably narrow chutes. “I have seen hods try to wriggle their way into the smallest gaps, hoping to find a shortcut up or down or out. There are always rumors of shortcuts and new means for divining them. And I’ve seen hods stuck in holes they couldn’t wriggle out of. They died with nothing but the soles of their feet showing. They lie entombed like a nail in a plank.”

  Because the grade of the trail was so slight, and often ranged alternately up and down, it was not uncommon for hods to get turned around and then waste hours or even days traveling downward when they meant to go up. Some hods were lost and didn’t suspect it; others were going the right way but doubted themselves. Disorientation was just part of the natural order on the black trail.

  “But what is that incessant barking? Are people barking?” Senlin asked.

  Tarrou’s laughter was tinged with pain. “That is the tattle post, Headmaster. They’re not barking. They’re saying hark.”

  The tattle post, as Tarrou described it, was essentially gossip that was passed from hod to hod like a germ. The majority of messages that traveled by tattle post were brief statements that communicated danger, or opportunity, or some other tidbit of news. There were a few conventions for using the tattle post. Each broadcast was preceded by the word “Hark!” and concluded with “Relay!” No requests for information regarding missing persons were allowed because everyone had lost someone. You could not use the tattle post to plead for help because everyone needed it. And obituaries were barred because everyone was dying, more or less at the same plodding pace. These rules were meant to keep the tattle post clear for important announcements, or at least salacious gossip. Because each message relied upon the participation of every hod in the chain, frivolous messages never traveled far. Generally, posts dwindled after a few hours or days, but the more urgent warnings or sensational rumors could linger for weeks, bouncing about the black trail like a ripple in a dishpan.

  Senlin asked Tarrou what news was passing by at the moment, and Tarrou said he would have to listen awhile. They eased their backs against a rough wall that seemed to be coated in a fine dandelion-like fur. When Tarrou repeated what he’d heard, he did so at a shout for the benefit of farther-off ears. “Hark! The watering trough at the Kiver Gatehouse is dry. Relay. Hark! The trading station at Andara Sur is closed. Relay. Hark! Eight hods were lined up and shot in Pelphia. Relay.”

  “I was there. I saw that,” Senlin said, the memory returning with unwanted clarity. “They executed old men, women, children. It was senseless.”

  “People who pretend that executions are sensible forms of communication are the same sort of people who believe in articulate bombs and swords that sing. Violence is always incoherent; it only babbles. Speaking of which—there’s a lot more hoddish being spoken on the tattle post than the last time I was on the trail, though that was a few months ago.”

  “Really?” Senlin said, wondering again about Luc Marat’s increasing sway, and whether that influence reached as far as his old friend. Hoping to get some sense of Tarrou’s fidelities, Senlin asked, “Do you speak hoddish?”

  “I understand it some, but I don’t speak it.”

  “Why not?”

  Tarrou shouted a laugh, though it seemed to wind him. “Because they don’t have a word for rapturous or effervescent or sublime. It’s a stupid language that’s only good for articulating a primitive sort of life. It’s only slightly more sophisticated than pointing and grunting.”

  Encouraging as Tarrou’s dislike for hoddish was, Senlin noticed he’d begun to slur his words. Suspecting that Tarrou was nodding off, Senlin found his shoulder and shook it.

  “We can’t sit here, John. You can’t fall asleep. Not until we figure out what we’re going to do about your leg and my head. We need help.” Under Senlin’s prodding, the two got to their feet, knees shaking, unsteady, and gripping each other like men attempting to stand up in a rowboat.

  Once his arm was hooked over Senlin’s neck again and the two had resumed their stagger onward, Tarrou said, “Help is not easy to come by here, Headmaster. Honestly, sometimes the help is worse than the need.”

  “What do you mean?” Senlin said, trying to not let the strain of supporting Tarrou’s weight affect the pitch of his voice.

  “If you want a collar removed or a wound cleaned, there’s really only one option on the black trail, at least for men of our meager means, and that’s the zealots.”

  “Marat, you mean,” Senlin said.

  Tarrou expressed his surprise that Senlin knew the name. Though there didn’t seem time enough for a full explanation, Senlin provided a brief account of his ill-advised search for Luc Marat and their disastrous meeting in the Golden Zoo. He concluded that they had parted on poor terms.

  “What do you mean poor … Left a bit. More. No, don’t step on that. That’s someone’s lunch. How poor of terms?”

 
; Correcting their course, Senlin replied, “My crew and I killed a dozen or so of his men, and we blew up some of his supplies and helped ourselves to some others.”

  Even through the blinder, Senlin could hear the amazement in Tarrou’s voice. “How can one little tourist make so many mighty enemies? Commissioner Pound, Luc Marat, Duke Wilhelm … Is there anyone left in the Tower you haven’t burgled or irked?”

  “I have been on a bit of a spree.” Senlin knew he would eventually have to offer a complete explanation of what he had done to anger the duke, which would also require a confession of how he’d failed his wife a second time. It was only fair that Tarrou know the whole reason he had been expelled. But that wound was still too fresh and their circumstance too dire to go into that now. “I don’t suppose we have any other options?”

  “We could try to find you another head and me another leg.”

  Senlin chuckled. He just happened to know someone who might be able to help with that. He wondered what his friend would think if he confessed to having met the mythical Sphinx. Probably John would just assume the blinder had driven him mad. “It works in our favor that I was traveling under an assumed name when I met Marat. To him, I am Captain Mudd. As long as we don’t run into him or any of the—let me see—probably three dozen hods that saw my face, we should be all right.”

  “Only you would break into a man’s house, then think to sneak around to the kitchen to beg for scraps,” Tarrou said, just as his wounded leg gave way and shoved the both of them hard against the ragged tunnel wall.

  The coral-sharp stone abraded Senlin’s shoulder, but when Tarrou asked if he was all right, rather than answer, Senlin resumed the conversation: “Well, it seems that our options are either the zealots or a slow death. I find the older I get, the less patient I am.”

  Without a better option, the only question that remained was where to seek the zealots out. Tarrou had encountered a zealot camp during his hateful trek up from the Baths to New Babel. He estimated it was perhaps a day’s walk. At least it was downhill.

  They fell into a regular rhythm of direction and step. The process was oddly hypnotic, which was not a good thing. Senlin discovered how quick his imagination was to fill the void created by the blinder. He began to see specters in the darkness. At first the hallucinations were just sprites and jets of color. But soon the fireworks began to gather and organize. Faces emerged, some of them familiar, some of them strange, but none of them kind. And though he did not recognize them all, he knew who they all were. They were the people he’d wronged since coming to the Tower, people like Nancy, whom he could not blame for hating him or exposing him to his enemies. She had every right. He saw the faces of men he’d killed, saw the faces of the widows he’d made and the children he’d orphaned.

  It was curious to think there had been a time in his life when he could lie awake at night, stare into a dark corner, and ponder the world without dread or loathing. Back then, he might dream up a new lesson plan, or contemplate the latest chapter he’d read in a novel, or puzzle out a new design for a kite. Now he wondered if the dark would ever be so friendly again, or if for the rest of his life, the witching hours would only invite all of his lurking sins.

  He couldn’t bear it. He interrupted Tarrou’s stream of directions to beg for a distraction.

  “A distraction? I didn’t wear my dancing shoes, Tom,” Tarrou said.

  “Well, tell me more about the black trail. I have so many questions!” Senlin wished to know what all the hordes ate and drank and where they slept. Did everyone just flop down on the rocky path and hope not to be stepped on? How did everyone see where they were going? Wasn’t it as dark as a grave inside the walls of the Tower?

  Tarrou answered as best he could, though the effort made him a little breathless. Senlin learned that the black trail was lit by the same lichen that illuminated the Silk Reef. The gloamine grew in stretches and patches, and was so plentiful in some spots, it could be harvested, jarred, and carried as lamps. Some tunnels were murkier than others. There were stretches where the lichen had withered from drought or been harvested to scarcity. Though even there in the stumbling gloom, an open flame was considered an option of last resort. In the course of its history, nearly as many hods had perished from fire and smoke as hunger and thirst.

  A complex system of airshafts had been built to serve the trail, but not all of them produced air anymore. In addition to those vents, the engineers of the Old Vein had installed oxygen springs to sweeten the air. The springs were essentially little ponds of algae that were fed by well water, which was fresh enough to drink. The algae produced breathable air at a ponderous though reliable rate.

  According to Tarrou, the trail had once been full of such springs. Clean water had streamed from fountainheads and pooled in troughs, some for drinking, others for the breath they made. Over the decades, lengths of plumbing had clogged and others cracked. Once upon a time, the ringdoms attempted to maintain and repair the pipes of the Old Vein, but what was called a duty by one generation was considered a charity by the next and, soon enough, a burden. Eventually, the ringdoms refused to be exploited by their poor any longer, and the neglected plumbing began to fail.

  The springs that remained were either desolate or overtaxed. The same was true of the mushroom beds, which had been laid to provide a sustainable source of food for the hods. The beds had been decimated, first by faulty irrigation, then by desperate and starving souls who overharvested them. The hods had been forced to expand their diet to include beetles, bats, and the rancid goods that were rejected by the ringdoms. It wasn’t unheard of for a hod to starve to death while toting a sack full of grain, a basket of potatoes, or a rack of cured meat. In desperation, some would murder to get at the load of another hod. In despair, it was said some had resorted to cannibalism.

  But according to John, the most terrifying danger of all was not hunger nor fire, not robbers nor man-eaters. It was the chimney cat.

  “What’s a chimney cat?” Senlin asked.

  “They’re wriggling death, is what they are. Their original purpose, I’m told, was to keep the air vents clear. They snaked through the ducts, sweeping away cobwebs, bird’s nests, soot, bones, and anything else obstructing the flow of air. They have fur that’s as coarse as a wire brush. They’re living, breathing pipe cleaners that also happen to be omnivorous beasts.”

  “But what are they? What do they look like?”

  “They have broad heads, short legs, long bodies. They look a bit like weasels.”

  “Weasels aren’t so bad,” Senlin said, thinking of the gray stoats commonly found in the countryside around Isaugh. They had twinkling eyes and naturally smiling mouths.

  “These weasels grow to be fifteen feet from snout to tail. They have jaws that can crack a skull as easily as an egg and teeth as long as your finger. And they stink like a dead skunk in summer. The only thing worse than their smell is their disposition. Chimney cats will maul a man and then carry his corpse around in his mouth like an old slipper. I believe the consensus is, they don’t like eating men, but they do enjoy chewing us.”

  The description left little doubt in Senlin’s mind that the creatures had been bred by the Sphinx, much as she had created the spider-eaters and the bull snails. Like those creatures, the chimney cats had been bred to serve a practical need, which had resulted in some undesirable qualities, such as gnawing on people.

  Even through the blinder, Senlin could discern the change in the ambient noise. There were more people, and they spoke more animatedly. Their voices seemed as distant as geese flying overhead and just as comprehensible. He asked Tarrou where they were.

  “The Pelphian trading station. It’s basically a big cavern. It’s where we deliver our goods and have our debts docked. This is where they shave your head and give you a new load to carry. Excuse us!” Tarrou shouted, and Senlin felt a collision of shoulders and hips that nearly upended them both. They just kept their feet and carried on. “This is also where hods wi
th clean records and minor debts can sometimes find work off the trail. City managers come here to recruit street sweepers, or a housekeeper will come to put out a call for a scullery girl. They’re always crowded. Wait! Feel a bit ahead with your left foot. Feel that? That’s a watermelon. Don’t step on it.”

  “Why is there a watermelon there?” Senlin asked.

  “There are melons everywhere, Headmaster. Melons, sacks of cotton, bundles of leather, jars full of eggs, spools of wire, and on and on forever. You can’t see it, but we are staggering our way through one of the Tower’s pantries. Every imaginable good is waiting here to be delivered. It’s like a bazaar, only no one’s making any money. Well, at least no one on this side of the gate. There is also an uncomfortably large number of soldiers pointing their rifles at our heads as we speak, so try not to make a spectacle of yourself. Come on. To your left. Lightly now.”

  Senlin was still listening to the receding din of the trading station when he felt something wet spatter upon his shoulder. His imagination surged, and he saw the vision of a monstrous weasel, reared back, teeth bared and dripping saliva. He shouted and would’ve run had he not been fettered by Tarrou’s arm. Tarrou hugged him and gentled him, then said it was only a dripping pipe, which made Senlin feel very foolish at first, but then quickly brought a question to mind. “Wait. If there’s moving water, does that mean there’s a working fountain nearby?”

  “Yes,” Tarrou said. “We just passed one. There was a line, which is a good sign. Means the water’s probably sweet enough.”

  Senlin came to a halt. “Why didn’t you stop? Surely you’re thirsty.”

  “I don’t like to drink alone,” Tarrou said with an unconvincing snicker.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’ll be fine for a while longer. Besides, I’m not the one who’s losing blood. You need to drink.”