Arc 1: And Greyhaven
Chapter 1: Like Worms
Lotta wetworms this year. Hospital would be filled to bursting by season’s end. Probably.
Five of them were wriggling in a puddle beside the tunnel lid. You could tell by the waves and ripples radiating around them — way bigger than the drip of the rain. But you couldn’t outright see them, not unless you had real good eyes. My eyes were real good.
Between the roaring falls and the very Waterweft rain, the mist was terrible and they told you, with tone like stone, that this was the worst way to get ’em. In the mist you can’t even see ’em, they say. And ’ey love when it’s wet.
Mist never bothered me. I see them just fine.
One crawled out the puddle toward me. Smelled me, I bet. Wetworms could smell in the rain. Don’t know how, but they could. Probably.
At the puddle’s edge another hid between grass blades. I only saw it move when a big sprite-fly darted by. It didn’t even flee: the worm just sank down into the dirt. Even I couldn’t see it then.
Two of the worms were on top of each other. Mating. Probably. I looked away.
Last one got spooked by the fly and flopped into the air. It smacked down with a squish on top of the tunnel lid.
Ridged and braided and squishy. Long as a face. Couldn’t see much of the thing itself — mainly saw it for the specular reflections on the body as it curved away from you. Rimlight.
The tunnel — the entrance, rather, was crouched at a middle angle, running from the muddy floor up to the city’s sheer rock wall. Rivulets of rain carved tracks in the stone, and rust streaked the metal lid. Two handle holes sank into lid, the wetworm poised between them.
I had lost my gloves. When I reached down, I knew, it would lunge and row upon razor-like row of tiny teeth would slice into my flesh, hook in and hold it there.
Carefully, I reached out with a boot, and nudged the squirming thing.
Now even the specular reflections were gone.
Two phases. I’d heard it talked about, and I’d seen it enough to be sure — wetworms had phases, it was what made them dangerous. Their fear response was to dissolve into the liquid they clung to like to life. They became liquid, as far as you cared. And they could rematerialize wherever they needed to, wherever they wanted to. Wherever was most inconvenient. Most fatal.
It was why if a wetworm ever bit you, while you still technically had hope, there wasn’t much of it. Flesh is water enough — blood is water enough — that the instant they touched you your odds lay entirely in how much money you could throw at a doctor. Cut twice in half. Probably.
I waited. If I were counting, I could probably have counted to a hundred, once or twice.
I waited long enough to feel a movement in my jacket pocket. My heart stopped a moment, and with terrified fury a brightmouse — one of my brightmice — was clawing out of my pocket into the wet freedom of the outside world.
The pocket was on the same side was the puddle, but had been facing away from the manhole. The rat found its footing right beside the puddle.
I don’t even think she saw it coming. Brightmice didn’t have good eyes, funnily enough.
One of the puddle’s wetworms rose up and flew like an arrow at the rat, bit right into its side. Mouth spun like a drill, and now there was a red hole in the side of the rat.
Then, again, there were not even reflections. For one second you saw a liquid suspended in the air like gravity had a stuttered. Then it slurped into the rat. The hole was still red, but no blood came out.
The rat would be in pain. Agony. Probably. I’d only heard it described.
But it did squeak, high and harsh in pain, and it was scurrying away with twice the speed it had in clawing out my pocket. It was gone. I wondered if the raindrops had even a chance to touch it as it ran.
I was still waiting, I reminded myself, and spun my gaze back to the manhole. Could have counted to one hundred again.
But the worm went from water to flesh again, and I was faster than the raindrops falling about me.
I squished it. I saw clear liquid that was not water squirt out like blood. Then I was swift reaching down to grasp the handholds and wrenching the manhole cover and practically throwing myself down into the dark.
Wetworms didn’t need to be in one piece. I hadn’t killed it.
I had to be careful when I came back. Or abandon this exit till we get a dry day.
It would be a long time before we got a dry day.
It costs money to get into the city, and it costs money to get out of the city. I broke that law on the daily.
These tunnel openings were for cleanworkers and tunnelbuilders. They only incidentally lead into the city; mainly, they went into the sewers.
Obviously, you weren’t supposed to get into and out of the city through the sewers. And it seemed not many people did — I knew I didn’t have to worry about running into them. The council thought the sewers themselves would be their own discouragement. Probably.
Shaking my head, I slipped into the sewers, and pushed the cover closed behind me.
The city had fourteen openings like this encircling its outskirts. The paths below went in straight lines, up, and there were side-ways that linked them together at intervals. All in all, it was like a spiderweb. And it had nothing to do with the city above. It was luck when the mathematical precision of the sewers lined up with the sprawl of the city, when there were any points of intersection.
I expelled a breath, and drew in another, something I’d forgotten to do for as long as I had worried about the wetworm. A bad thing to forget. I winced immediately, and coughed and had to coax myself to keep drawing breaths.
You never got used to the smell of the sewers. Some told me they did. They were lying. Definitely.
Shit and piss from nine different races coagulated and fermented and catalyzed each other to make a potent brew of pure disgust, running like a river down either side of the walkway. There was slime and snot and blood and half eaten food and vomit and pus too, I was sure. Shed hairs and scales lined the waters. Sometimes there was an organic lump floating like driftwood in the river of disgust. Sometimes it was a big enough to be a body. Sometimes it smelt like rot and corpsebugs. It was just a big tunneldeer. Probably.
You could reach out and touch the walls. You wanted to, to be sure you didn’t slip into the disgust. You didn’t want to, because it was covered in molds and rusted stones.
I had lost my gloves.
The fleshy appendages at the ends of my limbs, pad-like and sprouting digits, balled and slipped into my pocket, and I picked my way along the path deeper in the sewers.
The way was lined with torches of burning oilslime. I pulled out a still-bloody slimesack and squirted more onto the torches as I passed them. I had found the wood in the forest just behind me. I’d hunted the landsquids for their sacs. I was the one who kept this section of the sewers well lighted.
I settled into the rhythm of walking, my limbs swinging forward for balance (making sure to bend them toward my face), and my thoughts crawled back out.
I lost a brightmouse out there. It had woken up and ran off and got bitten by a wetworm and no point in chasing after it at that point. I reached a pad into my cloak and felt the forms of the other brightmice. Three left. From my other pocket I found the syringe and carefully, squeezed a few drops — as little as absolutely necessary — of the faint blue liquid into each of the rats. They shouldn’t have woken up. But I hadn’t factored dealing with wetworms into my reckoning of time.
It’s okay. The mental voice was almost a rasp. Gently, I felt my focus return to the sewers around me.
It was long before I smelt something new. A flowery stench. I could guess the reason. Someone didn’t appreciate the aroma of the sewers, brought down something to perfume it up. I knew the smell. The red lilacs grew in the cracks of the cobbled streets. Cheap.
Most of all: it was the stench of another person.
I slowed enough further, beyond careful and into stealthy. I reached out for a torch, grabbed it, and held it in my right grip. An extra light I could direct. A weapon. Maybe.
I had a blade in my boot. It went into my left. The four digits wriggled and ran up and down the paltry length of it. I could stab my limb and it wouldn’t even come out the other side. It did not have a handle.
I tread further.
All around me the perfect straightness of the tunnel was broken by thin side passages carved long after the initial spider web, with so much less of the care and grace. Commissioned direct pipes to houses, I knew.
I continued forward. My eyes were scanning the flickering forms, expecting every motion of shadow to be someone lunging forward, but none were.
When the air moved, it was toward the manhole grate I’d just came in by. It was up, and it was out. The gases that wanted to escape could do so there, and the air was carried with them.
It meant whatever — whoever — I was smelling was ahead of me.
I kept forward, on and on and then —
Was the smell getting fainter?
Were they running away? Were they down some other branch of the sewers? Were they never even near, the smell just a figment of the wind? Were they —
Behind me. It was luck that they weren’t half as stealthy as I. Loud.
Taller than me, towering. Growling deep in their throat — light glinted in their eyes and I saw red irises, flat pupils. Their maw was opened and I smelt their lunch.
And I knew whoever this was, it was not a Hanst.
Because that was meat I smelt on their breath.
I took a moment to make my voice the right volume and pitch and decide how I should present — confident strength, or pleading weakness? Which would they respond best to? I went with a pleading tone.
“Mister, sir, what are — what are you doing down here?”
They shook their hooded head. With my torch lighting them from below, their face was something horrible, meager spots of light casting against alien forms. Were those horns?
“Won’t matter to you, soon enough.”
Didn’t matter. The claws at the ends of their digits were out. The legs were bent — backwards — in the posture learned from too many fights. I knew what they intended.
I turned and ran. Two steps, four — they were faster. Right behind me. I kicked out with my standing limbs. They caught it and yanked. I fell face first onto the hewn stone of the sewer floor. With a wet splash, and I kept my mouth sealed and glued shut. My torch plunked into the river.
A single glance behind, and I was rolling over before I recognized why — a leg raised over me, about to stomp.
It came down with a powerful impact. The stone didn’t crack. Probably.
They punched down with their arm and hit my chest. I croaked. Sputtered.
Then the punching arms reached over and grabbed my right limb.
I had enough mind left to start taking off my boots. The attacker wasn’t looking behind them.
The other limb thrust down and wrapped around my throat. I sucked in a final breath, and my throat was blocked.
Boots were off. I avoided smirking.
I tried to punch with my last limb, I tried to swipe with the held blade, but they caught my limbs and held them.
I couldn’t see their face; it was in shadow, below the line of torches. I wondered if they were smiling as they killed me — presumably that was what this was. A murder. Probably. Were they excited, triumphant? Frothing angry that I’d interrupted — something? Was this a plan, or was it accidental?
I am careful, as I walk, to bend my lower limbs backwards. Same way people, like my attacker, naturally do. Now, I bent them the other way, and with the deft manipulators at limb’s end I reached up into the pockets of my cloak and grasped the syringe and carefully with two feet I pierced my attacker and, instead a necessary few drops, injected the entire contents. It was only half calculation; mostly, panic.
Six moons of saving up, gone in an instant.
The thing fell on me, twice my weight. I could only just heft him off me, and I rose shaking and panting, heart clicking like mad.
The blade was still gripped hard in one of my pads. I crouched down and held the blade just under the head, by the major vein which, with a simple flexure of my digits, would proceed to vomit out the life of this creature.
Or perhaps I should choke it instead, in a perfect reversal.
Or you should leave it be. Do not kill. Drop the blade.
I did drop the blade, but it was something I chose. For all that the rasping voice commanded, it couldn’t control me. But I knew it’d thought longer and clearer than I did.
I dropped it, and nothing else was said, though I felt the squeeze under my cloak, the body of the voice gripping the back of my torso, under my cloak.
My former attacker wore a raincloak like my own, and I tore off its hood. Underneath, I saw the lightly furred flesh of a Reccel. Their flesh was bulbous with fat and the eyes — unconsciousness came so quick they hadn’t even closed — the eyes were red with the curious minus sign pupils of Reccels. Horns erupted from the back of the skull, but these had been shorn.
I stood, and thought a while.
They had known where to find me, and sought to kill me. The evidence arrayed wasn’t enough to decide that it wasn’t just a mad criminal dwelling in the sewers, killing me out of convenience.
But deep inside, I knew it was an assassin. I knew my past had come for me again.
This one passage way had been carved in commission for a house which had long since been abandoned and sold. Probably. It was my secret way in and out of the city, and no one ever complained at my trespassing. I’d seen other figured in ragged clothes and with haggard looks sleeping here sometimes. There was no one to care. Definitely.
I climbed up the pit that lead to the sewers. They weren’t for climbing — really, they were for pouring shit down into the sewers — but the pit was thin enough that you could hold yourself up with arms and legs.
One room of this place had a lock, and a key I’d picked out after a long search of the house. I kept my little belongings in here — mostly paintings, books, knives — and I’d only been robbed once or twice. Best of all, I had a bloody stone table where I conducted my most important business.
At that worktable, I layed out the brightmice I’d trapped in the outskirts forest.
My disappointment was immediate as I turned them onto their backs. Two of them had the telltale bulges between their legs that meant they were unsuitable. I threw them back into the sewers to rot, and rot quickly.
But the last one, the last one was perfect. It had a belly bulging out with the treasure I needed. With the blade that hadn’t drawn blood — today — I split the brightmouse down the middle and dug in the guts for hard orbs.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
Thick haul. I piled them up beside the viscera, the gleaming white orbs like marbles of marble. The most valuable objects that pass by my hands.
I bent my lips in smile.
I knew I would eat this week.
Chapter 2: Like Rats
There are two blades I keep on me at all times. One is the rusty, handleless piece of crap in my boot, and the other is deep in my skull. Only one of them is any danger, really. I hardly used the bootblade for anything but surgery and cutting up animals — that raspy voice saw to that. (And even then, I had scalpels and scissors; the bootblade would be little more than a hindrance.)
I tried not to neglect either, but my mind most of all. It was why of the the little closet room I all but lived in was taken up by books and paintings and writing pads. I mediated on the words of the books. I contemplated the paintings. Sometimes a poignant thought struck true, and landed on one of the pads. Just as quickly I would tear the page and watch it crumple in my grasp and throw it to the sewers. It was garbage. Probably.
There were books of three provinces, here. Books I’d bought with a little change — should have gone to food, but didn’t — and books I’d taken from the library, which I was sorry I couldn’t keep forever, and last of all, books the owners didn’t know I had.
I took down the dog-eared, bookmarked tome that already poked a little bit out of a shelf. The title got to the point quickly: Of Demons. The subtitle was a bit more forthcoming: “On the variety of black Beings and Devils dwelling in the Waterweft.”
I’d just gotten to the chapter — six, I believed it was — cursorily describing the workings of signs and sigils. (It was a fight to get to the later chapters of any book, where the juicy, savory bits were always stored. So much easier to just start a new book.)
But my eyes had gone rapt when I came to this chapter. I brought forth answers to questions I didn’t know I had.
Rincechild Workings, was what they were called. Gigantic energy circles anchored to massive crystals, wards against all demonkind. It was why we could have cities at all in the Waterweft, and weren’t all quickly infernal playthings.
It was a word that intrigued and fascinated me deeply. Demon. It appealed. Something about it, the otherness, maybe, or the mystery. Probably.
I’d like to meet a demon one day. Maybe on the other side of a minor Rincechild Working, but still. One day.
I tossed the thought and looked back to the book page. Started reading the words aloud, to keep myself on track.
“The taxonomy of even the small amount of daemonidae we have captured and observed has proved more frustrating than botany. The forms of even a single daemonid from year to year is highly mercurial, and is subject to seemingly arbitrary, seemingly directed mutated; doubly so for the offspring, which may bare little resemblance if any to the parents. Truly, it is a wonder that demonidae as a whole bears enough internal resemblance that they can be effectively warded against. The author wonders if one day this proclivity toward mutation may be sufficient to undermine even the great Workings of Rincechild.”
Pay attention, came the voice again. This is important.
I rolled my eyes and continued reading about the reactions of minor and major demons to the presence of a ward, the “deleterious physiological alterations” that occur when demons persist in a Rincechild field. And—
“Oh my.” It was so startling I said it aloud.
The voice was silent, and I could only wonder if this was what it had wanted me to see.
I read it aloud. Had to be sure I was reading it right.
“Within even the mightiest anti-daemonidae ward, a daemonid is only barred from entrance under their own volition. If, by summoning spell or divination, the body or mind of a powerful daemonid is invoked, the ward may be (locally, temporarily) subverted. This is of greatest concern in the Waterweft, where the very safety of its citizens depend on the integrity of the Rincechild field. If a necromant or evil wizard allows in even a single daemonid, the results could be disastrous. This must be policed to the utmost.”
I read those crucial words, that hopeful sentence, one more time.
“If, by summoning spell or divination, a powerful daemonid is invoked, the ward may be subverted.” (It was underlined twice, and I wondered if the scribbler had the same view of it I did.)
I avoided smirking.
This could be it. The magic bullet I’d half been hoping to find in my endless reading. A secret. A trick. Something to change my life, something I could use to claw my way out of the pit of poverty.
I would meet a demon, one day.
You could tell what time it was by the hue of the streetlamps. They were hot and white-yellow at highest morning, turned orange by midday, dropped down to dim red by the evening time, and when night rolled around, the top lamps were all burned out and the lamps below were lit. Cool green, and that’s what nighttime always looked like.
Right now, it was orange. I’d made good time getting back from the forest, even counting everything that happened.
The street outside the house I stayed at was a walking street. The cobbles were uneven and messy, and the whole affair was too thin to run a cart through. Probably. You’d have to be in a heck of a hurry.
I jumped off the porch, and landed beside a man leaning against the closest streetlamp. He was Hanst — hairless skin, big, round-pupiled eyes, chewing a stalk of celery. He sniffed as I came close, but I didn’t see a wrinkle of disgust. The Raccel in the sewers still had that red lilac perfume, and that’s what this Hanst here was smelling.
Definitely didn’t want to smell like I just crawled out of the sewers. In a pinch — I was usually in a pinch — I could tear off my cloak and let the eternal rain be my shower. But it wasn’t good to get too much of it on your skin.
The Hanst nodded to me and I nodded back. I started up the incline of the street. The city was always tilted so the rain went somewhere instead of pooling anywhere.
In the orange light, there weren’t too many people walking. Another Hanst brisking down the street, looking at the one behind me. When I glanced behind to check, I saw a Raccel in tattered excuse of a cloak coming up behind me. Red minus-sign eyes behind glasses, horns wide and heavy.
I didn’t run. But I was at the fork at the top of the hill quick.
This Raccel had nothing to do with the one in the sewers. Probably. It was stupid paranoia.
But I didn’t like it. I’d be — I was — more comfortable with distance.
I turned left at the top of the hill — park was this way, and had a good view of the city. I took one step and bumped into a smiling Hanst in a red cloak.
“You! You’re the alchemist, arentcha? The one selling the cure-alls the other moon. Whatcha call em, panarea?”
“Panaceas.” I’d shot out the correction them before I even considered the wisdom of owning up to that act.
“Ya, ya, that’s the one. Didn’t have no cash last moon, but my fortunes have turned all around! Look at my new cloak!”
All I could see of him was that gaudy red cloak. It had little loops of iron sewn in, painted yellow. You could tell it wasn’t gold by the hue; gold was greener than people thought. Exactly the type of cloak you bought to feel like you had money.
If I could have chosen look at the cloak and fulfilled his invitation, I wouldn’t have.
“Yep! I was thinking, my leg’s still giving me pain, and now I’ve got the coin to buy what you’ were selling. What’d’ya say? I hope you haven’t jacked up the price.”
“Sorry friend, I’m all out of stock.” And if I wasn’t, I’d jack up the price just to get your roach-smelling ass out of my face.
I sighed. No, I wouldn’t have — for all this annoyance, I’d take his coin. And run.
“Damn, damn, damn. Any chance of you gettin any more?”
I brought a appendage to the bottom of my face, and stroked it with my digits. I glanced up at where water ran off the roofs of houses, into wide gutters. Watched the flow of the gutterwater that was the main ingredient in my panaceae.
“I might, all depends on how the brew turns out.”
Might meant no. Besides him, I don’t think there was anyone else who’d buy; I went into it expecting the scheme to only work once, and I only needed it to work once.
It paid my debts. Some of them.
The man nodded excitedly, and almost started away — but then I saw him sniff with his fat Hanst nose.
“That perfume — is it your own, mister alchemist?”
I drew a breath. “Yeah.”
“I don’t suppose you…”
The breath came out as a sigh. “Sure,” I said. And the digits stroking my chin slipped away to draw the vial of pinkish perfume I’d pocketed in the sewers.
I tossed it, and he caught it so anxiously he dropped it and caught it again.
“Thank you, thank you.” I saw him unstringing a purse full of gleaming coins.
“No, call it a gift.” He needed it
He was smiling before, which took the emphasis out of the grin that sprung on his face now. “Thank you, thank you!”
“You already said that.”
“I mean it!”
He stuffed the perfume in his pocket, and he was laughing. Now he started away for real and I watched his retreating back.
I said one last thing. “That money you were going to give me?” I saw him glance back. “Buy some roachbane. You smell like you need it.”
The park had a glass ceiling. It gave you a great view of the same gray clouds.
Encircling the park, and dotting in places in the inside, thin, specially-leaved trees sprouted up.
The Waterweft sucked. But how much worse was it for the trees, who yes, got more than enough water, but largely only saw the sun as it was filtered through the clouds?
Today was a bright day — you could make out the circle of the sun midmost the sky — but still, it was bright compared to darkness, not to a clear day.
I’d seen a clear day, once.
As much empathy as I had for the trees, it didn’t extend to leaving them alone. (I assure you: no pun at all intended.) I breathed for a moment, and then I leapt and grabbed a branch and began the process of dragging myself up to its crown.
Stepping onto a dubiously thin branch, I misjudged my weight, and it didn’t snap but bent with a harsh sound, and I slipped down the smooth bark and I was carried to the ground and with a crack I landed.
The dirt was like stone with give. Hard as I hit the ground, I didn’t even knock up a clump of dirt. It was held together by a kind of moss or fungi like glue that webbed deep within the ground and ensured no matter how hard it rained, the ground didn’t wash away.
Another try, with less faith put in young branches, and I sat on a thick branch halfway up the tree.
It was a tall tree; from up here you could see the roofs of buildings, and you really got a sense of the lay of the city.
We’re on the southside, so the incline I mentioned earlier goes from the north down. And the buildings only get taller as you go deeper into the city (culminating in the skyspires and, centermost, the black tower). This made the incline look that much steeper.
You could watch the rain roll and race across rooftops on its way out of the city, sometimes falling into gutters and out of the race. It went from the multistory apartments to the homey houses to the shacks of sticks and clay at the very outskirts, and adown the grand wall.
Behind me, I heard the branches creak.
Chapter 3: Like Magpies
“Rainwatching, eh sir alchemist? You must be utterly starved of joy. Finish your books that quick?”
The speaker fell onto my branch like they’d jumped and the branch shook so hard that the water was pouring down below us. The shaking settled, but I’d heard a crack. The idiot.
“Thought I told you to stop tracking me down.”
“How rude of me to use my expert sleuthing skills to —” he made a show of looking down to his hands, like he was checking speech notes “— find you in a public park.”
“Piss off Mijak. I’m busy.”
“What, need to do more observation for some study of the physics of raindrops?”
“I’m thinking thoughts. Planning.”
“Hmph.” I looked over at the sarcastic bastard. He was Slaur. Bright green scales, forked tongue, slit eyes that didn’t blink. Thin and taller than me, despite being several years my younger. He wore a waxed cloak, with not a single rip or tear on it. He had gloves.
He managed about a few seconds before he had to speak up again, flicked tongue slipping back in mouth. “You smell like the cloaca.” The cloaca — that’s what he called the sewers. I’d read the same books as him, we both knew it was an archaic word for the same — still, we both smirked at it.
“Really. And more than one person has complimented my perfume.”
“Perfume, is that what you call that sickness? Lord knows why anyone would want to smell like a slum flower.”
I shrugged.
“Besides the point. I don’t have a feeble tongue that’s distracted by whatever garish scent you cover up with. What were you doing in the cloaca?”
“Business.”
“Business worth you life? There’s a reason they don’t police the cloaca. It guards itself.”
Again, I shrugged.
“Tunnelbears, Grepathi worms, creeping moss, the Grue! Hyla, every trip you take down there is a gamble. It’s only by your massive luck that you’re still alive.”
“Was that a compliment?”
Mijak made a quick gesture with his arms that threw off his balance, and we rocked for a second. “Hyla, what on earth do you think is worth going down there again and again?
I pitched my voice. “Aww, it’s almost like you care.”
He huffed. “My mistake.” And he rolled his neck. Looking off into the skyline, he asked, “At least answer me this: how do you stand the smell?”
“You get used to it,” I lied.
Rolled his neck and his tail slapped my leg.
“What’s got you bugging me, anyways? You never said, earlier.”
“Oh, I just found something interesting when I was browsing my copy of A History of the Waterweft.” My copy, he said. I didn’t have a copy. I had to borrow it from the library.
“I don’t like your tone. Doesn’t sound nice at all.”
“You especially won’t like what I read in this passage.” The Slaur was deft when before he finished speaking he had palmed the massive, sack-splitting book and thumbed to page 345. Was there a bookmark there?
Insistently he pointed down at a paragraph. Not that he needed to; he’d underlined and highlighted it. Not that he needed to; he immediately proceeded to recite it. (Was he looking at the book?)
“The last Raccel queen of Waterweft, Yeniliye the fair, reigned regent for four hundred moons before her son Jagejeya took the throne, and both perished in the fourth Incursion, severing their line of succession.”
“Okaay? Should I care, or…”
“You don’t remember the last argument we had? You claimed there’d only ever been one Raccel ruler and I knew that didn’t sound right.”
“Do you… You do know what regent means, right?”
“She was the effective queen until Jage reached his majority. This is first year stuff.”
“Effective queen. She wasn’t a real queen. Wrong branch of the family.”
“If you sit on the throne you’re a queen, effective or not.”
“She certainly wasn’t effective.”
Mijak glared at me. “Just admit it, you forgot about Yeniliye.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
He sighed as if he’d been suffering something insufferable. “Is it that hard to say the words ‘I was wrong, there were two Raccel rulers.’?”
“What can I say, my tongue doesn’t agree with useless trivia.”
“You’re being a real fool right now, I hope you realize that.”
I curled up the digits of my left pad and drew the limb back and punched the Slaur in his shoulder.
It slid off of the wet, waxy surface his cloak and I was off balance and falling till he stopped me with his arms, steadied me.
He flicked his tongue. “Resorting to violence in a disagreement? Some lousy intellectual you are.”
“What can I say, a good ass-kicking is the best counterargument.”
“You’ll never convince me.”
“Is that a challenge?”
Mijak shook his head. “No, no. I’ve got to go real soon, get back to my studies. I’ve my next class when the lamps turn red.”
I nodded. “Hey, you know Of Demonology?”
“That’s a highly restricted tome you shouldn’t even know about — but I could get my talons on one, if I needed to.”
“If or when you do, check out this one passage. Chapter six, fourth section I think? I want to see what you think of it.”
“Sure, I’ll get back to you on that.” He stood up, carefully balancing on the branch. “One last thing. The librarian told me to tell you your last batch of books are overdue.”
“I know.”
“Five days, Hyla. He was insistent. After that, the fines.”
“I know.”
“Then you should also know the new librarian is so much stricter. He’s not going to waive anything like she used to.”
“I —”
“The books should have been returned. You know this. You told me yourself. You don’t want to go into debt again.”
I nodded exagerratedly, and he just flicked his tongue.
“You think you can spare some coins to get me some food? There’s not much left at the house I stay at.”
“Sorry man, I’m not eating any better than you.” I doubted that. “Books, papers, inks. It sucks up a fat sum of funds.”
You managed to keep that cloak waxed, buddy.
The houses in the old district had been around long enough you could see what the constant rain did to untreated stone. Holes dotted the bricks of the walls of houses like it was a kind of hard sponge or cheese. Moss and tiny slugs lived in those holes.
This was a cart street. You could tell by the way work had been doneto flatten the cobbles. The cart I saw in the midday traffic was one pulled by sweating slaves. Made sense; not like this was a high district.
My eyes were wide, and my ears sharp. Right now, I had heightened awareness of my surroundings; I was conducting that business I mentioned to Mijak.
Appearances counted for a lot. With how old and worn down the houses in the old district could be, you knew the denizens here barely made enough to keep their houses. I kept away from houses with evidence to the contrary: if their bricks were new and smooth, if their gardens were a little too beautiful with fancy flowers; if the drapes seen from windows seemed a bit silky.
There were other hints to watch for, too. Hints were the most important thing. If there were lights in the windows or the shadows of motion, I ignored the house. If I felt the shiver of a ward against spirits and demons, those were magicians or rich folks and I’d avoid (doubly so if there were also wards against pests and rodents. They didn’t need me.) And if I ever saw, scribbled somewhere out of the way but not obscure, the symbol that was an eye with a spiral pupil, I didn’t want to be seen even looking too hard at the house.
When I found a house that meets all these criteria, I gave it the final test.
I stepped up the stairs to the porch, and I knocked.
A Hanst woman greeted me. “Hullo, who are you?”
“Ah!” I said. It was a greeting, not an exclamation of surprise. Definitely. “I must’ve gotten a little turned around. This is 46 Gryphon Road, isn’t it?” I set my voice something posh and sophisticated. Easy to do after talking to Mijak any length of time.
“No no, you want the next street over. This is Pinestone Avenue.” She smiled like one smiles to a fool.
“Ah, thank you. Have a great day, I am sorry for the interruption.” I’m sorry you were home.
I resumed the search. The old district is about fourteen or so streets by seventeen or thereabout. Plenty of ground, at least three hundred houses. I’d exhausted about half them in prior business, and I was letting them lay fallow.
I’d have to find a mark today. Needed to put more food in the cupboard.
Needed to buy a book on summoning.
I stepped up the stairs to the porch, and —
A rasp. Not this house. Avoid.
I turned swiftly around and scurried down the street.
Two more houses went by. One was occupied. The other might’ve been, but I caught a neighbor watching the scruffy stranger (me) who was knocking on an awfully high amount of houses.
I knocked, and there was no answer. Could this be the house? I gave it another look.
Most houses in this district had a stone foundations, but this one was supported in a strange, traditional style. The house — a tall, wide-windowed affair with at least four floors — was builded on a mass of gnarled wood in piles and whorls. The wood crawled up from the foundation, along the walls, denting into the stone.
Root-things. They were like weeds as big as bushes, but evidently some found use for them.
Ignoring that attention grabbing detail, I examined the front again, gave it one last chance to spit up hint.
Glass was weeping and flaking. Cheap stuff. The door was flimsy wood even I could kick in. Probably. And of course, the stone was worn and eroded like cheese or sponge.
I would take the gamble.
The flimsy door had, like most buildings in this district, a weak lock I could pick while it even looked like I was using a (particularly old and distorted) key. The door creaked open and I was in.
And then I heard the voice. Behind you. Hundred and sixty degrees.
I turned and looked —
At the alley behind me and to the right. Dark cloak, eyes behind black-lensed glasses, mouth behind a mask. A whole street to look at, to go about your business on, and they were looking — no, staring — at me.
I had been watched. Followed, even.
They ducked back into the alley and faintly I heard hard footsteps scurrying away.
As one does, I wondered who they were, who sent them, what they wanted, and what they knew.
But deep inside, I knew.
There were a few things I liked to do in every house I enter, welcome or not. If there was a library I liked to browse its contents (here, fiction, largely of the romantic kind, and picture-studded schoolbooks). If there were an icebox or cupboard, I liked to open it up and stare. (There were nuts and dried beanstalks and cornpotatoes. And meat --- these weren’t Hanst, then). I didn’t take anything, but there’s something to imagining being a guest or family member here, and fantasizing about having a full cupboard you could partake of at any time. And I liked to find a bed, and lay it in, and relax.
None of these habits I indulged in more than the bare minimum. I had time before any consequences of what I’d seen in the alley mouth could reach me. How much, I didn’t know. But the city was big, I had been walking a fair while — where they were heading, it wasn’t nearby. Probably.
And what would the spies do, barge into someone else’s home and spill my blood on their carpet? (Yes, these people had carpet. Had I misjudged their poverty?)
Nonetheless, I’d feel most at ease at least back at my safehouse. So I got to work.
I’d brought three clay cups. They were flimsy; I could crush them in my hand. I had lids, too: each one poked with several small airholes. And I had the glue to seal them on the cups.
In each cup I placed one of the white balls I removed from the fat rat. Then I sliced off an inch from my stick of black candle wax, and then lit the candle slice. It could burn --- with a very dim flame --- for weeks. I only needed a few days.
With a ball and lit slice of candle in each, I sealed the cups. Faintly they glowed from the airholes --- but that was unavoidable.
Next I would need to need places to stash them.
One in a closest.
One in an empty, dusty cabinet.
For the last I drew a blank, and then ascended the stairs to see if there were a lonely attic or other I could stash it in and ---
“Daddy, is that you?”
I froze.
Chapter 4: Like Possums
The stairs split at the top, either way leading to a curving hallway, like a big loop upstairs. On the left, the overcast skylight crept along the curve like there was a window.
Foolishly, I’d gone right, thinking it a better bet.
First door on the right was dark inside and almost closed. I was one step past it when I heard the voice.
“Daddy, is that you?”
I could move faster than you’d expect. The girl — it was a girl’s voice — had to be the only one here. If I got the heck out of here quick, would she even think it wasn’t the creaks and moans of any old house? If she didn’t, would her parents even mind her complaints?
I’d placed two cups already. That was enough. I could run.
I don’t get stuck in my head. I’m not paralyzied by analysis and indecision. I had already turned around to face the light, to run quick as lightning —
Except a Raccel girl stepped out at the doorway, eyes wide and staring right into the depths of my hood.
I hadn’t gotten stuck in my head. I couldn’t have been more than a second. Couldn’t have been more than two.
“Are you a burger?”
The girl couldn’t have been closer to me than five years. She had to be one or three growth spurts behind me. Yet she came up to my neck.
The faint light was enough to catch on the white Raccel fur that clung to her, turning to short glossy locks behind her head. Her flexible ears stood up perked and alert, and, at the end of her short snout she had a worried crease around her mouth.
Her shadow was cast along the wall, and there was something in her hand, revealed in the shadow but not in the angle I looked at her. I leaned to see, expecting a stuffed farm animal perhaps —
It was a knife.
The empty hand reached out and poked me, hard and experimental, like checking to see if I were alive. Or if I’d just turned to stone.
“Can you hear me?”
I found my voice. I pitched it deep, and I tried to sound friendly. I did better than you would have. “Yes.”
“Then answer my question silly!”
Her arm other shifted, stiffened, not the poking one which was falling to her side. I took a step back.
She took a step forward.
“I…”
“It’s a yes or no question, mister. Are you slow?”
“I’m… not a burger.” I remembered she was a Raccel. “Yet?” The rumors of just what Raccels were willing to eat were just paranoid Hanst muttering, right?
The girl was frowning a deep, snout-bending frown, and brows were tightening like I’d just admitted to some crime.
…Oh. “I’m not a burglar, no! I’m not going to steal anything at all!”
“Then what are you doing in my father’s house?” She sniffed with the upturned nose at the end of her snout. “You don’t smell like one of my dad’s friends.”
“I wasn’t going to steal anything,” was all I managed. I looked behind me, toward where the hallway disappeared as it curved around. I ought to test my theory that it was a loop.
The girl lifted her free arm in a slow, important gesture and pointing past me snapped her fingers.
I looked again, and saw the mist congealing is a fat cloud behind me, like when you open the window on a cool morning.
The mist became smaller, denser, and started to glow. And then the glow intensified and defined three eyes in a triangle.
Rain spirit, that voice in my head was rasping before I could ask. I felt its body tightening around my back while the figure fully defined itself. It looked like a distant figure in the background of a painting, more brushstrokes than person.
“Hullo hullo Nissewa~” the girl behind me lilted. “Sorry to bother you —”
Like rote, the voice said, “It is always a pleasure to serve my masters.”
“But this stranger says they weren’t stealing but why else would they be in our house?”
Those eyes turned to me, and looked so deep into me I though I didn’t only feel her gaze with my eyes. There was a crawling sensation, almost writhing on my back.
I recognized his discomfort. I didn’t spare an ounce of sympathy. How on earth did he not sense a rain spirit?
“The air watches you, Hyla, and the air remembers. Know that.”
“Well?” the girl asked in a high voice.
The rain spirit addressed the girl, now. “He has not stolen from you.” The silence afterward seem to hold some extra meaning.
“But…?”
“He has given you unwanted gifts. Brightmouse eggs, three of them, spawning in the light of blackwax candles.”
“Rats! I hate rats.” The girl spoke so sharply I turned around, and I flinched — the look in her eyes had me wondering if I didn’t bear some resemblance to a rat in her eyes.
“Look. I promise, I’ll collect the eggs and I’ll leave at once, and never bother you again.”
“I may bind you to that promise, Hyla.” I didn’t turn to face the rain spirit, and it was an act of will. The reverberations of her voice danced across my skin.
The girl lowered her knife. “And take me with you.”
I avoided a dumb ‘What?’ Instead, I paused like I was giving a consideration it did not deserve. Then, I delivered the obvious, only response. “No.”
“Then I’ll watch you leave and tell my father you were here when he gets back.”
“Tell him what?”
“Nissewa has your scent! You can’t go anywhere in this city and escape her.”
I couldn’t back up, stuck between the two as I was. I drew my arms in and slumped a little, looking smaller. I said, “I have coins. I’ll give you all of them if you just let me —”
She was too young to look that smug. “Father would ask where I got them.”
I crouched down, balancing, and looked up to the little girl. “Where would I even take you?”
“You will not take her anywhere.” A deep shiver of cold overtook me, and I wondered if that was the rain spirit stepping (or merely drifting) closer to me.
“Come on Nissie, aren’t we friends? Father doesn’t have to know.”
“I am bound. I appreciate your company, but that comes second to my duties.”
“You just have to protect me. You know that this would be —”
“The very opposite. Even allowing Hyla to stand before you represents a clear and present danger to you. The only reason I do not remove him is I do not know how they can and will react when provoked.”
“Am I a danger? She’s the one with a knife, and all the power here.”
“Don’t think I don’t know of your passenger, Hyla. I know what it is.”
That makes one of us.
The girl brought the dagger to her chin, and tapped it there in thought. “What if I give you another duty?”
It stated, “You should not want to associate with Hyla.”
“He seems interesting. Where do you even get rotten rats eggs!”
There came a rattling wind through the hall, and it pricked a chill — but it was just the rain spirit equivalent of a sigh. Probably.
“I have made my thoughts clear.
“Well I think —”
She was interrupted, with a jump or flinch I mirrored, by the sharp, creakful opening of the door, and the crashing slam.
Everything was falling apart around me. It was almost a visceral sensation, what I felt as my plans crumbled to dust and my future became a swirling cloud of ambiguous doom and terror.
In my deepest pocket, sealed behind three seams, I had the needle tipped with the viscous black black drip, blacker than the darkest night. I always had a way out.
That was what the terror was doing to my mind, but to my body it felt like a current of electricity arc out to every muscle. My legs were ready to launch me in whichever direction I chose. My arms were ready to put up the utmost fight. My heart ticked to a beat that I heard over all else.
The first thing that happened outside of me was the mists behind me dissipating quick. The rain spirit was gone; nothing glowed, and the mist was wafting away.
“Father called Nessie. She’s going to tell him everything. We have to leave now.”
We. I would have said something, but I couldn’t formulate speech right now. It felt far away.
I saw her eyes dart momently to the room, and that was my cue to dash in, her hair blowing a little bit with my speed.
The light was sifting into the room from a window opposite her puffy bed, and I was at it almost as soon as I saw it. I leaned over, reaching out and —
The window was barred. Literally; black iron bars were installed over it, and the lock wielded shut so that the windows could not even be opened to let in a draft.
Why? Confusion nudged away terror for a cycle, and I was able to reach for the empathetic, social parts of my mind. Why did… Father seal his daughter’s window?
“Can’t use the window, this way, my closet!” It was a high whisper, edged with a trembling affect.
I turned. The little girl was throwing open her closest and flinging clothes from where they piled at the bottom. Soon I saw the light of outside reflected up.
The rain-eaten rock. The house had been one of the ones with eroded stones, I’d made sure of it. The girl must have been tunneling into her closet wall to make a way out.
How long had she been wanting a way out of this house?
“Quickly! There’s no way he isn’t going to come up here.”
I dashed over to her, where she was already lowering herself into the hole. It was big enough for her to slide down into.
It was just big enough for her to slide into.
I couldn’t fit.
She realized this with a frown, that melted into a deeper horror. I could imagine; throwing yourself faithfully into a grand plan only for it to crumble right in front of you.
“Go.” I said. “I can handle myself. I’ll meet up with you.”
Right after I got past the man with a bound rain spirit. A rain spirit I couldn’t detect, that my passenger couldn’t detect.
Her horror ebbed just a bit, painted over with a look of trembling hope that would shatter to only greater despair.
As the girl in the silky dress disappeared into the rainy mist of Grayhaven and the pale light of a sun defiantly shining through layer upon wet layer of clouds, I saw the black ink of wardscript crawling under her skin.
And I knew who had to have written them.
I just had to get past the man with a pet rain spirit, secret house wards I couldn’t even sense, and the ruthlessness to bind his own daughter.
I inhaled a deep breath.
I avoided smirking.
After all, I’d survived worse odds.