Issue #134 • Nov. 14, 2013

“A Death for the Ageless,” by Margaret Ronald

“Forsaken Beneath the Stars,” by Jason S. Ridler

For more stories and Audio Fiction Podcasts, visit

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A DEATH FOR THE AGELESS

by Margaret Ronald

        I sent the sparrow two minutes after my first look at the body. Some might say that this was intellectual cowardice, but I knew my limits, and I knew when to call in aid.

        “It’s not supposed to happen,” Fries said again as I inspected the wounds. He stayed close to the edge of the flat roof, as if distance would shield him. “It can’t happen.”

        “So I guess we’re not here, then?” I turned back the corpse’s eyelids, first one then the other. Silver veins spread out from the wide irises. I let go and stood, my feet crunching on the tar paper. “We’re not here, no one called us, and the Ageless Elariel here—he isn’t dead.”

        Fries shut his mouth over another not supposed to happen. Elariel of the Ageless, once high in the courts of Poma-mèl, had been taller than most human men, with the harsh and elegant bone structure common to all Ageless, his expression now distant and tranquil. Shame about the multiple stab wounds; there was nothing tranquil about that ruin of a chest.

        Those of us who’d managed to come back from the war in Poma-mél had seen what happened when an Ageless was cut: the wound sealed up, the blood dissolved into smoke, and usually the formerly wounded Ageless just looked annoyed. Even now, when they were in exile, their healing powers were known through the City. Fries was right: this wasn’t supposed to happen.

        The ladder leading to the rooftop shook as Crighton ponderously climbed up, taking Fries’s hand to steady himself as he reached the top. “Judas,” he muttered. “This is a mess.”

        “That’s what I’ve been saying, sir!” Fries bleated. Fries was Patrol, not Inspector, and I often had to remind myself that he wasn’t representative of Patrol.

        “Knife wounds, by the look of it,” I said, stepping aside to give him a better view. “There’s also a contusion on the back of the head, but I think that happened after death. Probably when he fell.”

        “Fell?” Crighton squinted at the body.

        “Placement of the limbs is consistent with a fall from a significant height. He wasn’t killed here, though; there’s no other sign of a fight, no blood or ash. And we got the call because someone two floors down heard the thump around tenth bell.”

        “And they didn’t call it in till first bell. Lovely.” Crighton circled Elariel’s body. “Swift, send a sparrow to the lady Avrin. She’s going to want to know her husband’s dead.”

        I hesitated, one hand going to my belt where the brass bird usually rested. “I—must have left without it—”

        Fries started to splutter, but Crighton just glared at me. “Swift, you milksop. You called in that little goblin, didn’t you?”

        “Kobold!” We all looked up at the high, piping voice; none of us had heard the ladder rattle. Mieni hopped over the edge of the roof, adjusting the lines of her suit. Many koboldim wore children’s clothes, but Mieni had made a point of wearing a ladies’ suit tailored to her diminutive frame. If anything, it made her look like a child playing dress-up. “Kobold, not goblin. I do insist on the distinction. And yes, I was called. I am always happy to lend my poor brain to the aid of good Mr. Swift.”

        Fries snickered, while Crighton just looked as if he’d stepped in something. The koboldim had caught the worst of public opinion in the wake of the war. Most other refugee populations were too small to bother with; the draugar were too unnerving, the devourers—well, those were another matter—and as for the Ageless, you couldn’t hate them. Ageless were tragic exiles; koboldim were rats fleeing a ship. But they were under the Ageless’ protection, so they were grudgingly accepted by most, as we’d accepted other changes the Ageless brought. Myself, I’d met Mieni during the war, when she occupied a position parallel to my own current role as Inspector. I’d never known a puzzle she couldn’t solve.

        I gestured to the body. “You see the problem, Mieni.”

        She paused, hairy red fingers twitching. “Indeed. Indeed. May I?” I glanced at Crighton, but he’d turned away to fiddle with his sparrow. Mieni returned my own sparrow as she trotted past. “Indeed,” she said again, her voice lowering to a croon. She pulled a lens from one of the pockets on her vest. “See, how the blows struck through muscle and bone here, but not here? Most curious.”

        “Would the depth of cuts make a difference?” I asked, crouching next to her. It was difficult; Mieni was about two and a half feet tall, and so trying to see from the same angle from my six-foot-three was more than a little difficult.

        “Depth? No. Disembowelment would not stop them; depth of cuts would do nothing.”

        Nothing could stop an Ageless, or so it had seemed. Nothing but political treachery. Elariel had been the one most outspoken since; a voice for the expatriate Ageless while the Usurper held the throne in Poma-mél. If this had been a political crime—and at the moment that looked as likely as anything else—then the City was sorely unprepared for any repercussions. “Has this ever happened before?” I asked quietly.

        Mieni shook her head. “There are stories of murdered cent-ans—of Ageless, as you say—but there are always stories. No, my friend, this is a first for me as well.” She leaned over and sniffed at the wounds; her wide flat nostrils twitching.

        “You’re just going to let that—that goblin snuffle at him?” Fries snapped finally.

        “Kobold,” Mieni corrected. “Mr. Swift, you see? This incision here, and this, over the heart, were partly healed but did not close. While these here were made through bloodless skin—already the death had taken hold.” She sniffed again at the wounds, probing at the gaping edges. “It was neither the first nor the last strike that killed him.”

        I peered closer. “So what did?” There was a faint scent to the wounds, something like burnt lavender.

        She rocked back onto her heels. “I think the question is rather why.”

        A gold spark lanced across the far side of the rooftop, splitting the air in two. Crighton stepped back with a very satisfied smile as an Ageless woman stepped out from the broken air, sealing it behind her with a wave of one long, glimmering hand. The split-step, one hallmark of Ageless magic. I jumped to my feet. “Crighton—”

        Crighton glared at me. “Standard procedure in any case involving Ageless is to contact their liaison.”

        “And standard procedure in a murder case is another thing entirely! Your pardon, lady Avrin,” I added as she turned to face me. “But I don’t think you should see this.”

        Avrin was tall as her husband had been, her own skin faintly gold to his silver, and a crown of magnificent auburn hair spilled down her back, held in place by chains so fine they could have been silk. All Ageless were beautiful, but Avrin was more than that; she had a quiet grace that balanced her husband’s fiery conviction and a dignity that human monarchs could only ape. The two of them, married shortly after they arrived in our city, had made a name for the Ageless expatriates. The elegant line of her mouth turned down. “I do not care what you think. I will see this.”

        Her eyes widened. I turned to see Mieni squatting by Elariel’s head, opening his mouth and inspecting his teeth. “Lady, I am sorry, but this is the scene of a crime, and we cannot—”

        “So he is dead,” she murmured, and I stopped. You didn’t interrupt Ageless. “I felt it—I could no longer feel him on what we share, and I thought at first he must have withdrawn from me. But he is truly dead.”

        “You—felt it?”

        “We are bonded, he and I. Were bonded.” She shivered and turned to Crighton. “I ask that the body be returned to our lodgings. We will entomb him here, as he would have wished.”

        “Of course,” Crighton said, just as I shook my head. Crighton glared at me. “Standard Ageless procedure, Swift.”

        “We haven’t even examined the scene properly! We have to at least find out how he died—”

        “That is exactly why we do not want you to do it,” Avrin said sharply. “If you find out how he was killed, what then? Do you think we want every fool with a grudge to know exactly how we can be killed? Will you take responsibility once that information makes its way through the Usurper’s spies? No. We will take the body.”

        “But—” Legally, I didn’t have a leg to stand on; City laws had been changed in the wake of the war and were extremely favorable to Ageless. As were most other human dealings with them. “Don’t you want to know who killed him?”

        Avrin’s face contorted, and both Crighton and Fries caught their breath in muffled sobs. I felt my own eyes prickle from the sight; grief, on an Ageless face, is frightening and powerful, not to mention contagious. “What good would it do him now?” she whispered.

        “You heard the woman,” Crighton said in a choked voice. “Swift, get the goblin out of here.”

        I turned away. Mieni had moved on to the dead man’s hands, lifting them much as I had done and examining the nails. “I’m sorry, Mieni,” I muttered. “Time to go.”

        “You see this, Mr. Swift? Look at the nails; two are broken, one torn. I do not know any cent-ans who grow them long enough to tear. Perhaps he had begun to try koboldim fashions, hm?” She got to her feet, gazing at the body. “You have brought me quite the puzzle. Thank you.”

        “The kobold should move,” Avrin said icily.

        “The kobold will move, indeed,” Mieni said, and turned to face Avrin. “As we move when the cent-ans ask, hm?” Slitted yellow eyes regarded luminous silver ones, and for a moment I had the odd sensation that Avrin was not contemptuous of Mieni so much as frightened. Little could frighten an Ageless, though, and at length Mieni nodded. “My sorrow for your grief, cent-ans. I heard nothing ill of this man, and I think I shall not now.”

        “You will not,” Avrin snapped. “Gentlemen?”

        “We’re leaving,” I said before Crighton could order me away.

        Mieni scuttled down the ladder ahead of me and waited at the street, “I’m sorry, Mieni,” I said. “I thought we might have a little more time to work.”

        “Time is not the question, Mr. Swift. Have I not told you as much over the years? The question is what is here.” She tapped her forehead, hard enough that I could hear the sound. “What we see quickly can be as important as what we then learn. It is all in how we consider it.”

        “So you’ve said, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to do so.” Mieni snorted. A kobold snort can be particularly eloquent, and I knew this one from past arguments; Mieni was not a fan of self-deprecation. “What do you think of the situation?” I asked, to stave off a new lecture.

        Mieni’s eyes lowered, and she began to walk at a good clip. “I think.... Walk with me, Mr. Swift. You are expected back?”

        “Not soon.” Undoubtedly Crighton’s report would reach the Quarter well before me.

        “Good. Yes, I am curious. But I am not yet sure it is a good curiosity.” She shook her head again, ears rattling, and turned toward the river district.

        The walk to the river district starts off pleasant and then progressively becomes seedier, going into the slums that have not yet been reclaimed by koboldim, then out by the docks and the traders who don’t want their presence officially known. There have been half-hearted attempts to quash smuggling from Poma-mèl, but no Inspector will take on such a colossal job. Besides, I personally have found it useful to know what comes into the city, and enough of the smugglers are veterans that we stay in touch.

        Mieni paused at some of the stalls, investigating new brass sparrows and greenglass lenses. “Poor work, lately; the draugar standards have not been kept up. Ah! Oranges.” She handed the stallkeeper a few coins and held up the fruit. “Straight from Poma-mèl. You can tell by the gleam.” I couldn’t, not in this light, but I’d take her word for it. “You are well, Mr. Swift? You are eating enough?”

        Mieni was a great-grandmother, as the white tufts over her ears attested, and if I ever forgot that fact, her attitude toward me was a constant reminder. “Do I look like I’ve missed any meals?”

        She squinted up at me. “It is hard to say from down here. Perhaps you have shrunk, and I would not notice. Take care of yourself, Mr. Swift; the mind is held by the body, and a weakening body hurts a thinking mind.”

        “Even such a mind as mine,” I agreed.

        Mieni made a spitting noise. A cluster of whispering draugar started at the sound and huddled farther away from her, their hair still dripping ghost-water. “You noticed the scent on the body, Mr. Swift?” she asked softly, so that I had to stoop to hear.

        “I did. Lavender and ashes, I thought.”

        “The ashes are no matter; that is simply the residue of blood-smoke. No, my friend, there was more to that scent. Oil of bergamot, for a start, and white crescent, and I am not certain of the last but I suspect false-stellate.”

        I shrugged; no lead there. “All of which are common in the city.”

        “Common by necessity. Think, Mr. Swift.”

        It took no great leap of logic to know the source of such a scent: antivenom, the Ageless’ boon against another group of refugees. The devourers were much less of a problem than they could have been, thanks to the antivenom. Many people, myself included, carried antivenom-treated weapons in case they ran into a hungry devourer, and rare was the household that did not keep a supply on hand. “You don’t think he was killed by a devourer? That’s impossible; those were knife marks, and I’ve never known a devourer to use a weapon.” I’d also never known a devourer to leave a corpse without a few bites, but that seemed in poor taste just now.

        “No, I do not... but still.” She tapped her throat thoughtfully. “Mr. Swift, could you bring me to a devourer?”

        I stopped in my tracks. A barge on the canal passed us, a few of the human pilgrims—illegal, now that the Usurper was on the throne—gazing listlessly at us as they went by. “Mieni, you’re not serious.”

        “You know me when I am not serious, Mr. Swift. Am I so now?” She blinked up at me, and while one corner of her fanged mouth had pulled up, it wasn’t in any sort of real smile. After a moment she sighed and began to peel one of the oranges. “No trouble, then. I can find one in the catacombs; surely our couriers know where they can be found.”

        “No!” I shook myself. “No. If you’re that set on it, then better if you come with me.” Koboldim could fight, but they were best in numbers, and the catacombs were no place for that sort of skirmish. And call me a fool, but I do still have some misguided notions of chivalry.

        We went down a side street, and when I was sure we weren’t watched, I wrenched open a manhole cover. Normally, Patrol handled devourer problems, but I’d been bumped to Patrol so many times that I knew my way around the catacombs. I glanced at Mieni as I started down the ladder. “Stay close to me, and stay in the light if you can.”

        “I do have some vision in darkness, Mr. Swift.”

        “I don’t, and I’ll need to see where you are.” I began my descent, trying not to look longingly at the sunlight vanishing above.

        For all the bad press koboldim got, the devourers were truly the worst of the refugees. At least we assumed they were refugees; they appeared not long after the others, though not via any road we’d monitored. We in the City may not like draugar or koboldim or even Ageless, but we can at least talk to them; devourers are nothing but mindless hunger. And they are contagious; within a few weeks of the first of them turning up, we discovered that anyone who died from their poisonous bites eventually rose again as a lesser devourer, with the same bite but less speed and strength. Things could have gotten very bad in the city, had not the Ageless stepped forward with the antivenom. The concoction burned the devourers, split their skin, and prevented the ill effects of their bite.

        Elariel himself had been the one to offer the antivenom, I remembered, not long after several of his fellow Ageless had returned to Poma-mèl. Would a devourer make that connection and seek vengeance? Unlikely; they were cunning, not reasoning. Though that could have been just such an assumption as the ones Mieni was constantly ordering me to put from my mind.

        I dropped from the ladder onto the damp floor of the catacombs and drew my service blade, peering ahead to the little squares of light from the street above. Many of Patrol carry firearms, but one too many mornings in the war cured me of that—mornings when I wouldn’t know whether pistol or rifle would even work in the uncanny land of Poma-mél. A blade was less secure but more reliable.

        Mieni hopped down beside me, sniffed the air, and trotted off to our left, away from the river. “Should they not be here already?”

        “It’s daylight,” I said, blade held at the ready. “Give them time. If I had raw meat, maybe the smell would bring them....”

        Mieni shrugged and continued to peel her orange. A noise like half a dozen rats startled from sleep echoed down the closest tunnel, and I turned to see two white eyes staring out from the darkness. “Back,” I whispered, dropping to guard. “They never come from the first direction.”

        Indeed, after a second the eyes winked out. More skittering started up, from the left this time, and I turned in place, trying to keep Mieni at my back.

        Devourers may be mindless, but they still have some hunters’ instincts. The thing jumped at us just as I turned, bowling Mieni over and scattering her oranges. The half-peeled one mashed up against the wall, and the devourer wheeled on it as if it were a rat. For a second it gnawed at the destroyed pulp, juice gleaming in little gold trails, then turned to the closer source of food: us.

        Long clawed hands slashed at my face. I brought my blade up, but this was no contagion-driven shambler but a greater devourer, lean and uncannily quick. The thing moved fast, darting first to the wall and then uncoiling like a cut spring, this time lunging for Mieni.

        Mieni never even flinched. She never defended herself either, instead ducking inside the devourer’s grip. To my horrified amazement, she scrambled up the devourer, using its bony body as a ladder, and grabbed its face, prying the jaws apart. The devourer snarled at her, but she simply inspected the sharp teeth, nodded to herself, and jumped away.

        I met the devourer blade-to-claw as it dove for her again, and managed to first knock it back then slice it across the face. The antivenom hissed and smoked, peeling the edges of the wound back, and the devourer gave a keening cry, reeling just long enough for me to make the two swift stabs to kill it. Throat then heart, within the space of three breaths; that’s how they taught us in Patrol, and it’s a more difficult task that you’d expect when a cut throat doesn’t even slow a devourer. This one, though, slid off my blade in a heap.

        I stood over the body, panting. If there were more, I hadn’t heard them yet. Mieni lifted one of the devourer’s clawed hands, examined it, and let it drop again. “Not good,” she murmured. “Not good at all. Some things, I do not like knowing... Mr. Swift! Mar de sang, you are cut!”

        I raised one hand to my forehead, where a trickle of blood had started. “It’s a slash, not a bite.”

        “Caution, caution, that must be our byword when dealing with things such as these.” She picked up one of her scattered oranges—still gleaming faintly, even in the dim light—regarded it thoughtfully for a moment, and tucked it back into her bag. “Come; my home is not far, and I have copious supplies of antivenom. You will have dinner, yes?”

        Mieni bundled me off to her flat, and I sent my sparrow to let the disposal unit know that there was a greater devourer dead in the River District catacombs. Whether they’d do anything about it was another matter.

        Mieni lived in one of the old tenement buildings that koboldim had taken over and subdivided the floors so that the number of rooms was doubled. Mieni’s flat, however, differed in one major way from most: the foyer was human-sized enough that I could stand, though not without some claustrophobia. The far wall opened onto the subdivided space of the rest: a kitchen below, a library above, and a little wooden staircase connecting the two. Some years ago, I had asked about the unusual accommodations. Mieni had only smiled and said that I was not the only one of my stature to seek her aid.

        She insisted I apply a full dose of the antivenom to my forehead, then began work on a salad (washing the orange thoroughly, I noted with some relief). I perched in the armchair with a kobold-sized cup of tea, similar to what my niece might use in a tea party, and watched her bustle about. It reminded me a little of when I’d had to hide in a kobold enclave during the war, though the setting was much changed. In a city so depleted by the war, though, we did need them. That might have been why so many resented their presence.

        I sat back in the chair gingerly, as if it were made for koboldim rather than humans. “I think I’ve figured out how Elariel ended up on that rooftop.”

        “On, on.” Mieni gestured at me to continue while she checked the flame under a pot. She nodded, then scurried up the stairs to the library.

        “Ageless use the split-step to travel quickly, like Avrin did this morning. Elariel knew that he was being targeted by the Usurper; he must have had a delayed-action magic set to whisk him away if he were in danger. Only it didn’t kick in in time.”

        “And by the time it does, his magic is fading with his death, so it fizzles and drops him on a roof.” Mieni produced an egg from one of the bookshelves—what it was doing there, I had no idea—and nodded to me as she descended. “Excellent guess, Mr. Swift. You are learning.”

        I shrugged. Mieni’s not-undeserved arrogance could be a little wearying at times. “It doesn’t solve anything, though; it just means the murder scene could be anywhere. And I don’t think a devourer could have done it; those were knife wounds, not claw and bite.” I drank the rest of my tea and grimaced at the taste. “Was there a point to our detour today?”

        “Oh yes.” She split a garlic clove and rubbed it on the inside of a wooden bowl. “If nothing else, it served to teach me humility.”

        Now it was my turn to snort. Nothing in this world or any other would ever teach Mieni humility.

        “I am very sorry to have gotten you wounded,” she added.

        “I wouldn’t mind if I knew why we went there. Why did we need to see a devourer, Mieni? What did you learn?”

        Mieni was silent a moment, gazing into the boiling water. “I am not sure. No—I wish not to know. That is different. And you, Mr. Swift, I think you would see the connection were you not so enthralled by the cent-ans. Though I do not blame you; it is easy to set aside one’s instincts when dealing with them. It is how they are, even in the home country.”

        “They should never have been exiled.”

        “It is a voluntary exile. Had not Elariel stated as much in his protests? And for the cent-ans, exile is much more weighty a decision than for koboldim or draugar.” She regarded the egg, turning it between her fingers. “For you or for me, leaving a home is a simple thing. It may hurt in the head, it may fuss in the preparation, and we may be abandoning much that we love.” She sighed. “Much. But it is still simpler for us. The cent-ans, they are part of their home, and it is part of them. To be separated is to leave behind their true selves.”

        I glanced sidelong at her. “You have a guess how it was done.”

        “A guess, no more. And enough that I have my doubts whether to speak it.” She bared her teeth, then gently lowered the egg into the water barehanded, shaking boiling drops off her fingers as if they were nothing. “Do not distract me, please. If we are to have a proper coddled dressing then I must time this.”

        I sighed and set my teacup on the floor. “At least they had each other. Even if exile was harsh, Elariel and Avrin were closer than any human couple could be.”

        “...twenty-eight, twenty-nine, how so, Mr. Swift? Thirty-one....”

        “They were bonded. She even felt him die.” I shook my head. “I can’t imagine being that close to a person and then having that taken away.”

        “Sang!” The salad bowl tumbled off the table, and I turned to see Mieni staring at me. “They were bonded? You have proof of that?”

        I sat up “What—on the roof, while you were examining the body. She said she could no longer feel him on what they shared.”

        Mieni put both hands to her ears, tugging at them. “Why did I not think of this? Of course, he was so much older than any other cent-ans, and she his bonded partner, it would make perfect sense!” She ran to the back of the kitchen, opened the window, and shrieked a string of kobold words into the street. “Mr. Swift, we must go. I hope you are agile enough to hang on to a railcart.”

        “I—yes, but what—”

        Mieni shut off the flame and muttered darkly at the now-overcooked egg. “Salad another time, Mr. Swift. Now, it is a matter of preventing another death.” She hurried to the door, then turned back to me. “And bring that orange!”

* * *

        The railcarts used by koboldim are one of the reasons that their presence in the city has caused friction: narrow carts balanced on a single wheel, made so that as long as the load is in balance, they can be steered with a single light touch. Useful, yes, but they tend to be handled recklessly, and this was no different. A team of kobold youths charged after this one, driving it along the streets faster than a horse could gallop, and even though Mieni and three other kobolds clung to the other side, I still had to hang on and shift with it to keep my weight from throwing us all into the gutter.

        “You are a fair inspector, Mr. Swift,” Mieni said as we careened through the streets, as casually as if we were still in her flat. “But you have the same blind spot for the cent-ans that all humans have. You assume that because they look like you, they are you. Their exile is not your homesickness; their bonding is not your marriage.”

        We bounced off a corner, and I snatched my fingers back in time to avoid getting them crushed. “How so?” I managed.

        “It blends their lives, Mr. Swift. Not in the sense of your metaphors; in truth. And Avrin is young—and Elariel was old, as even cent-ans count it. Very old.”

        “I don’t see what that—”

        Mieni shook her ears at me. “How many older cent-ans came with him into exile? How many are still in this City?”

        That stopped me cold, mainly because it seemed irrelevant. But Mieni was right; of the Ageless who had fled to the City, few of the elders remained. Even my old commander had left the city within months of arriving, and he had never been one to compromise with the Usurper. He hadn’t even announced it, just up and vanished one day, like Elariel’s elder kin, and Whitebreath the strategist, and the Lord and Lady Modian....

        A horrible suspicion began to bloom in my mind, borne of Mieni’s questions and the devourer—and the wounds in Elariel’s throat and chest. Before it could solidify, though, we lurched to a stop at the high arched doors of Elariel’s home. The other koboldim scattered, leaving Mieni and me to face the two silver-faced guards alone. “No admittance,” one said with a sneer, and I couldn’t tell which of us the latter was meant for.

        I took my warrant scrip from my breast pocket. “Arthur Swift, City Inspector, following—”

        “Cent-ans,” Mieni said, her shrill voice cutting through mine. The next words she said were neither koboldim nor any human language; I thought they sounded like phrases I’d heard in the war. Both of the Ageless paled and stepped aside. “I dislike calling in favors,” Mieni muttered as we passed through the door. “Not only do I have few resources, but the sensation of obligation is unpleasant in the extreme.”

        We hurried up through the halls to the highest room, where Elariel had held meetings of his expatriate council. The door was locked, and Mieni nodded to me. “Swift, City Inspector!” I called, and set my shoulder against it.

        “Go away,” said a weak voice. Avrin’s.

        I may not be as strong as I was during the war, but I will never be called weak, and the Ageless prefer delicacy over sturdiness in their surroundings. The lock splintered after the second kick, and Mieni and I burst into the room.

        It was high and arched, a breath of openness in the cramped City, and almost empty. Avrin huddled at the far end, curled on her husband’s council chair, her auburn hair a waterfall hiding her face. Before her stood a table with two long blades suspended point-out on a rack, as if primed for something to be impaled upon them. Beside them stood a crucible just coming to the boil, smelling of lavender and bergamot and white crescent. “Antivenom?” I asked without thinking. “Is this—”

        Mieni hurried ahead of me, both hands held out. “Cent-ans, bon cent-ans, you do not have to do this. There are other ways.”

        “So my husband said,” she whispered, and never have I heard an Ageless sound more miserable. “Said it for years, while refusing the one way we knew would help. But he was wrong.”

        She looked up, the fall of her hair sliding away from her face, and I caught my breath. She was still the same beauty that I’d seen that morning, but something had changed in the planes of her face in the hours since, something more than just the ravages of grief. Her teeth were less even, more pointed, and the nails of the trembling hand that she raised to her face had grown out coarse and cruel. And behind the ever-luminous silver eyes there was now a faint gleam, the pale light of devourers’ eyes in darkness.

        “Judas,” I whispered. No wonder we’d never been able to find out how the devourers got into the city. They were already here. They’d been welcomed in.

        “You are changing,” Mieni said, and I think only she could make it sound compassionate rather than an accusation. “As Elariel changed. As all cent-ans change, do they not, when they are far too old and severed from their home.”

        Avrin curled farther into herself. “He became a devourer,” I said, and she flinched. Mieni made a harsh, silencing gesture, but too late; I went on anyway. “And you killed him.” With the antivenom, and two strikes to the heart and throat, the same that would have killed a devourer who’d completed the change. And the multiple knife wounds after, to hide the two fatal wounds, to hide how an Ageless—even a decayed and changed Ageless—could be killed....

        She nodded, her head heavy on her slender neck. “He was dying, and worse than dying. He would have become what we have feared since arriving in this city. Since we came here, and those who were older than he began to change, away from the green earth of Poma-mèl.”

        Mieni shut off the flame under the crucible, and Avrin winced, her nearly-clawed hand stretching out to it. I started to wince in sympathy, driven as always by the intensity of Ageless emotions, but I clung to the memory of the devourer instead. “I thought,” she whispered, “I thought because I was here, because we had bonded after realizing what might happen, that maybe it wouldn’t happen. But it did. And because my life fed his, now I—” She lowered her hand and turned her face to the high empty dome of the chamber. “And I am so hungry,” she wailed.

        Mieni nudged me. “Mr. Swift, the orange.”

        I started, remembering the orange from Poma-mèl, and held it out to Avrin. She stared at me, and for a moment I thought she might forego the orange altogether and simply devour my hand. But instead she seized the orange and tore into it, peel, pith, and all, shredding it in great, inelegant bites. And when she looked up from her juice-stained fingers, there was a little more—not humanity, but something like it—in her eyes than before. “I must die, too,” she whispered. “Please—I cannot become one of those things.”

        “There is another way,” Mieni repeated. She approached closer, closer than I dared, and laid one brick-colored hairy hand over Avrin’s slim, golden fingers. “You can go back—”

        “I cannot go back,” Avrin said, a little of her composure returning. “Do you know what it would mean for the expatriates, that Elariel’s bonded wife returned to lands under the Usurper’s control? Even to set foot on them long enough to heal? He would not go back, and he—and I have tried to be true to him, even as I had to end him.”

        “And if no one knew?”

        Both of them turned to me, Mieni’s brows drawn together in consternation, Avrin’s in puzzlement. “If you isolated yourself in mourning for your murdered husband,” I continued, more slowly, “then your absence would be explained.”

        “If I returned,” she whispered, and the longing in her voice hurt to hear. “You would—would do this for me?”

        I nodded. “I know a few of the smugglers. They take pilgrims—they might take a leper, wrapped up from sight. Someone who has a need to get to Poma-mél unseen.”

        She rose, still holding on to Mieni’s hand. “And you would keep it silent? That my husband was changing, that we change?”

        I could not answer. So instead I bowed, as I had once bowed to my commander in the war (my commander who, I realized, must have become one of the greater devourers, perhaps even the one I’d slain today). I had forgotten that Avrin, too, had commanded human troops in the war, and when I straightened up, she too had taken on a martial posture, one hand out like a captain giving orders. “I will owe you, Arthur Swift,” she said, her voice ringing through the chamber much as her husband’s once had.

* * *

        Mieni and I stood at the edge of the river docks, watching the barge make its way down past the locks—minus its cargo of smuggled oranges and sparrows, plus one veiled, cloaked figure. “They didn’t question the leper story,” I said after a moment. “Humboldt doesn’t question much, if he’s paid well.”

        “That is the case all over the world,” Mieni said. She turned to face me, the same scowl on her brow as in Elariel’s council chamber. “So now, Mr. Swift. We keep her secret, I suppose, and prepare more antivenom against more devourers.”

        I bowed my head. “I lied,” I said, unable to look at the figure in the boat as if she might hear me. “I have to tell Patrol, at least, and then.... Well. I don’t know what it’ll mean, politically, but they have to know where the greater devourers are coming from. So that we can be on our guard against the next, when another Ageless disappears. To keep the City safe.”

        When I looked up, Mieni’s eyes were wide. She blinked at me several times, then chuckled and thumped me on the knee. “Well-lied, Mr. Swift. Well-lied indeed. Perhaps I was wrong about you and your approach to the cent-ans.” We stood a moment longer at the docks, and Mieni shook her head. “Still, the decision she made, to bond her life so tightly with another’s, that it put them both in danger of becoming monsters—”

        “Devoted,” I said, watching the still figure at the prow of the barge, looking forward to when it might finally reach Poma-mèl. “A love for the ages.”

        Mieni glanced at me out of the corner of her eyes. “Or perhaps I was right about you and cent-ans, after all,” she said sourly. “I was going to say incredibly foolish.” She thumped my knee a second time. “Come. I have procured fresh greens and an egg. Even if you say you are eating enough, I will not believe it till I have fed you.”

Copyright © 2013 Margaret Ronald

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Margaret Ronald’s short fiction has appeared in such venues as Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, and Clarkesworld Magazine. She is the author of “Dragon’s-Eyes” in BCS #9 and BCS Audio Fiction Podcast 007, and the series of stand-alone stories set in the same steampunk world that began with “A Serpent in the Gears” in BCS #34 and includes “Salvage” (BCS #77), “The Governess and the Lobster” (BCS #95), and four other stories. Soul Hunt, the third novel in her urban fantasy series and the sequel to Spiral Hunt and Wild Hunt, was released by Eos Books in 2011. Originally from rural Indiana, she now lives outside Boston. Visit her website at mronald.wordpress.com.

Read more Beneath Ceaseless Skies

FORSAKEN BENEATH THE STARS

by Jason S. Ridler

        Yellow bones, yellow bones. So small and frail and sickly. But they spoke to Hesher in whispers while the new city reveled in the growing dark, the red dust of stampeding campaigner boots turning the world into a haze that denied them the stars.

        “Fitting, baby-tam,” she said, sitting before the ashfire of her hearth, tiny knotted box on her lap. “The conqueror’s god is a wanderer, they say, walking the night sky from bright to bright. But the blood on the boots blocks them from his light.” She laughed, caressing the box, too scared to touch the bones. “Serves them right, baby-tam.”

        Her gnarled finger closed the lid, but a whisper rose from the bones.

        Marsat.

        Hesher closed the knotted box and exhaled, tasting old rope across her lip as the memory stung deep. The memory of today, of years ago, when they took a small, fragile body from the grave.

        “She is yellow, but not sick.”

        “That don’t mean we take her, Agrello.”

        “She died to help us. They’ll think she’s sick. You’re a Kulat, Hesher. This is a knotted blessing. With her, we will be untouchable.”

        “She has no name yet!”

        “Call her Vengeance, Kulat. For she alone will shield us so we can strike the outlander when he sleeps tonight on Marsat.”

        She closed the lid. “You deserved a better name, baby-tam.”

        The bones spoke no more.

        She looked at her wall of knots, of hair, of hemp, of leaves. Some loose. Some tight. All waiting to be made and unmade.

        A deep red knot of thornwood vine, coiled like a serpent bent on suicide, breathed.

        She caressed it, heart aching. “I hear the past is coming.”

* * *

        Above the red din of Glintono, a canopy of bright stars emerged. They would have recognized Enrick despite his simple attire, the adornment of neither a holy man nor soldier but the scrabbled and stitched clothes of the street urchin. No one else would have. As the Macti said, “everyone is a stranger in Glintono beneath the stars.” Considering what was sold past midnight, it was best that way. Enrick was happy for the heathen custom and hoped he’d find heathen magic.

        From the castle-top above the city, the deep evening sounds of the Lord Maestro’s pipe organ snaked through the air to the market, a song of slavery and freedom, the dusk prayer-song like familiar knots in Enrick’s mind as he walked past the geina smoke-dens and their sleeping dead.

        Blessed be the Wayfarer, whose foot taps golden shores

        For his hands have graced the rising sun and falling moon—

        “And a thousand-cunted whores!”

        Laughter broke from two Bestorian soldiers in leathers and boots. They cackled and leaned against a stable wall, skins of carabus half-empty, minds swollen with drink. Hike-swords, with hacking blades sheathed, hung like third legs in a drunken dance. Their thundering-irons stayed hidden in the arsenal, where they slept unless the Macti became restless.

        Last year, Enrick would have bought them a round and started in on the second dirty verse, and in an older life, he’d have chastised their blasphemy and received a peppering of wounds despite his holy robe. But here and now, in neither a soldier’s armor or a minister’s robes, his contempt was so deep that it swallowed any joy or righteousness that might have once bloomed.

        So he walked on.

        He hunted the market street, assailed with the pungent stench of sin and avarice as the various skins of nations passed him by: Bestorians, like himself and the soldiers, ranging from traders to administrators; Macti esquires, who had sided with the Bestorians and now ran the local government; Kinma traders in rough cloth and severe looks.

        “Comfort?” said a strong, local voice.

        The jewel embedded in her skin was bright, hiding as it did the usual scab and wound from hookspiders nettles from the barrowlands. But she was no mere whore. The calluses on her hand were those of a knifer.

        Rust dripped off Enrick’s voice. “What makes you think I can afford it?”

        Her smile was reptilian. “You’re dirty, but strong. Not broken, like the bowl beggars. And your voice is harmony, deep harmony. Performer? No? Soldier, I take it. Just out of uniform.” She laid a hand on his shoulder. “Soldiers need comfort.”

        Enrick tasted the forewarning threat of her knife in his back but remained still. “No. Information.”

        She smiled, and the jewel in her cheek jingled. “I do both.”

        “Just want one. The kulat witch Hesher.”

        The jeweled girl laughed, but a flicker of terror bit her lips before they started to spew her patter. “I am she, master! You found me at last!” She reached for his arm and pulled him toward the narrow veins of the city archways, farther from the drunk soldiers. “Come and let me show you the lost knowledge of heathen pleasure.”

        It was a trap. And he was unarmed.

        He did not care.

        They stepped between dark and light as the alley narrowed, and the jeweled girl laughed, pulling him further, toward a junction of alleyways in this maze of a city, away from anyone who would hear him scream—

        —then her grip vanished as she ran to his right. In the dark, her laughter echoed.

        She screamed in Macti. Whatever the words, they meant murder.

        Three of them. From behind, to his left, and dead ahead. Blades moved in the air, as well as the rush of breath and the heat of movement. But death, he knew, would not free him.

        He surrendered to the moment, and began.

        Seconds later, a strangled silence remained in the wake of ripped flesh and the last gasps of the wretched and the dying.

        Enrick waited in shadow, bodies leaking at his feet, until he heard the jeweled one’s voice call out their names. Her soft feet patted toward the carnage. She’d known them well, he figured. Family. Fighting to survive. Another scar for any god to judge, he thought, as if there were any more room on his flesh.

        “Balix?” she whispered. “Agi?”

        He gripped her by the mouth and drew her into the dark.

        Her blade shimmered out, aiming between his ribs, and he let it jab close before gripping her wrist in an awful twist, and the clank of knives on the stone path sealed her fate.

        “I had no wish to kill them,” he said. “Nor you. Take me to the heathen witch, and I will release you back into this den of snakes to live as best you can. Or continue your blade’s journey, and I will crush your jaw so you may never seduce the drunk and foolish again. Your choice.”

        She pulled back the blade.

        He released her jaw.

        She spat, then said a heathen balm for the dead.

        He repeated it.

        “Why you dare speak our words, Bestorian?” she said. “How do you know them?”

        He ground his teeth. “I’ve witnessed too many Macti burials.”

        “And why the hell do you want to see our witch?”

        Her righteous anger burned low and then retreated as his preacher’s voice swelled within his soldier chest. “My god has abandoned me,” he said. “I’m hoping yours are still here to listen to a dead man’s prayer.”

        The Old Walled City was the outskirts of Glintono proper now, after a hundred years of Bestorian rule and governance, and so Enrick’s eyes watched the shadows as he and the jeweled woman walked the broken and crooked path of the thoroughfare, past warped wooden shops filled with smoke and the stench of decay. The original walls, of course, had burned under the iron fire of the Bestorians, so the once-thriving heart of the small capital of old was now desiccated, holding in those who dared not mix with their esquire brethren; holding on to the old ways like a dying man’s hand on a tightened noose.

        Old Macti watched from shadow and crook and slit. Their hate for him, his kind and their rule, felt a pox on his skin. It had stung him when he came ashore, so young and rash, as a priest of good intention from the capital, bringing the Wayfaring God to a people whose pantheon seemed small and trite and capricious. Those memories, though, were bled of color and joy.

        All that remained was one ghost who prowled his nightmares.

        Until, he hoped, tonight.

        “Here,” the jeweled girl said, venom in her words for the man who had killed her kin. It was a crushed grippa hut, mashed between two others. If walked past, it would seem as sunken as the rest. But closer... it was made of twisted branches, each shaped like a different creature; crushed together in a mosaic, as though they were all running from the iron fire that had destroyed the fabled walls of the old city.

        He tossed her one of his change purses.

        Her bitter face loosened with shock as the purse went open. The starlight danced upon the coins, making them shine. “These are pure.”

        He shh’d her. “Lest you befall the fate of your kind, close your mouth and purse tight and go.”

        She did not thank him, but her knife held fast on her belt, unused, as she took to the shadows.

        The grippa hut was slumped, like many of its kin. As a soldier, he’d burned his fair share. But the twisted figures here spoke of flames not yet snuffed out. For a moment, he held himself before it and listened.

        “If you are not gone,” he whispered to it, “if you are with me as you were the day I took my robe and chain, if you are truly the wanderer who touches all life, then stop me from stepping upon this pagan home. Speak to me.” He looked above. “Please.”

        The red dust blotted out the sky. He was forsaken, beneath the stars.

        He knocked.

        Silence greeted him.

        “I will enter as a guest or an intruder,” Enrick said, voice grated with the old commanding tone of the line. “Your choice.”

        From the cracks and dark spaces between the wooden shapes that made the door, a flicker of light grew, and with it he studied the twisted figures.

        Ornate. They were etched with sigils and signs of warning and power in the old language of the Macti, but not the hard knotted scraps and scrapes seen on destitute wooden armor, the charms these people had held to as the iron roared and tore through them with righteous predation. These were literate, and considered. Akin to a codex. The language was too old and arcane for Enrick’s limited grasp of Macti scrip, but the detail, and the time that it would have taken, spoke of one thing. Obsession, to the point of madness.

        The flicker of light approached the door and opened. “You are expected, but not welcome.” The voice carried the tone of ash. She was dark as most Macti, age lost to her stoic features. A mother of adults, he figured, though that was a rough sketch. “Enrick.”

        Surprise betrayed him. “We’ve met?”

        She nodded, and he saw the spider web of grey in the crease of her black hair. “Before you took to swords and guttings. I knew you at Marsat. Minister Enrick.” The cold memory flooded him. “You were brave that day. To be a man of your word. A man of god, of... peace.”

        Anger coiled around fear, and he strangled the urge to run, or to lash out. Holding fast was required. “Were you one of my Macti students?”

        The witch laughed, with the cadence of crushed leaves. “Oh no, brave Bestorian, I never abandoned my own gods when you defeated our soldiers. And by the stain of your countenance, I believe you are grateful for it. No, I was no student.” The candle waved under her chin, the yellow scar across her left eye sown shut. “I was one of the bearers.”

        They’d come with a coffin. Inside, a child, dead with the yellow pox that ran wild among the newcomers to the archipelago. The Bestorian guards had allowed them passage and stayed away as they had come to Minister Enrick and asked to bury it in the ground where his small church lay. He’d told them they could use it, so long as they lit a candle for the Wayfarer to take the child’s spirit.

        Baysha had warned him. “Savages have no god,” she said. “You’re fooling yourself if you think you can reach them. Take the captain’s commission, and we can leave this island of horror for Glintona.”

        “One cannot resign one’s faith,” Enrick had said. “They are a good people. But they are lost in a sea of gods almost as numerous as the islands of this archipelago. We will never bring peace by sword and cannon alone. You know this is true.”

        “But you’ll catch the pox again!”

        “I’ve survived that trial and, as Minister Remus has said, that is a hell you cannot catch again.”

        “Remus is a drunken fool and no better a doctor than I am. Do not do this, Enrick.”

        He had held her and spoken with the calm of spring rain on dried and cracked soil. “If we never reach out in friendship, in cooperation; if we only force them to march and break their wills and make slaves instead of brothers and sisters, the war here will never end. And the Wayfarer walks with all of us, Baysha. Even those who scorn him.”

        He’d dampened her ire. She’d relented. And when he arrived to light the candle for the dead child, he found the procession around the coffin. But beneath the yellow baby was a mass of metal: graven blades as long as a child’s arm, sharp and jagged and soon to be red.

        A single blow had stolen the light from his eyes before he could sound an alarm.

        When he’d woken... the nightmare was cold. The garrison, slaughtered in their quarters.

        And Baysha—

        “I come here,” he said to the witch Hesher, “for a heathen spell.”

        The witch smiled. “Plagued with the sores of that day still, Minister? Has your god not answered your wandering prayers?”

        Her laughter died in his grasp. She was off the ground, throat clutched in his hand, while the candle in her fingers shook but did not go out. “My god left me that day, witch, when I cut down all of you that I could find for what you did. I’ve fought on more of these isles of damnation than you have likely seen from your hole in this dead, lost city. I’ve slaughtered more Macti in the name of a cure to what ails me than the twigs you’ve twisted into this hut.”

        He dropped her.

        “I am godless in your country,” he said. “But still cursed.”

        He dropped a sack of coin as large as a child’s head at the feet of the witch.

        “I need you to perform an exorcism.”

* * *

        The gold was heavy and real within the cloth, Hesher could tell. The man before her, though, was rootless and poor. Enrick... she’d heard what had happened to him. The priest who wished to light a candle for the baby-tam. The blood soldier he became, for the army of that wandering god and distant king. The ragged thing now at her door.

        “You would trust me to do it?” she said. “I think not, I think not.” But the gold was so solid. “After what we did to your wife.”

        Enrick exhaled with bitter control. “Who do you think it is that haunts me?”

        She stuffed down the guilt. Hesher knew full well what they would do to that miserable Bestorian princess while her own blade was stabbing a sleeping guard in the throat, the guard’s mouth clamped by her hand as she eased him into the black waters of the afterlife. She knew what Garo and his band would do to a rare creature such as a Bestorian princess while the man of peace lay ghosted on the church floor. “She should have never come to Marsat.”

        “On that, we agree.”

        Hesher snickered. “Only now, only because you’re broken and damned. Remember your speeches, Minister. About the walk of life, and those who walk with your beggar god and those who fall behind in his shadow? Do you remember those? They’re still chanted in this old city, older than your god.” She spat and dropped the purse. “You undo us. Your words turn a knot into threads... and we either accept your bindings or our own noose. You’re damned for a reason, Minister Enrick. Your knot, I will not untie. Go.”

        He bent, retrieved the purse.

        And she saw the top of his head.

        Hair could not grow where her blade had cut him. Cut a man of peace. And the other scars upon his skin, fresh and old, were born of the river of that scar.

        For twenty years, she’d had no regret for what they had done. She’d killed soldiers by the score in their beds. Poisoned their well with the limbs of the dead.

        But it now fell to her to drop the man of peace who’d found the courage to walk into a room he thought plagued. Who lit a candle for baby-tam, who showed compassion for a grieving mother, even if he had come on a conqueror’s boat.

        Killed him, she thought. I should have killed him

        The sack with the golden innards sat in his palm. When he stood, she saw the void in his eyes reflected by dying specks of light. He turned to the door and let the purse hang in his hand between his fingers.

        “Why?” she said, pulling herself up as he stepped further into night. “Why have you not drowned in the black waters?”

        The sack swung in his hand as he walked away. “I would take her with me to the guts of the earth. I sought death in the battlefield, and saw it in all but my fate. I was spared a warrior’s clean end. Now, the campaigns are ashes and lies. If you cannot help me find peace for Baysha, I will find someone to end me.”

        He took one step before her knotted hand rose. “No.”

        He halted.

        “Keep your conqueror’s coin,” she said. “I will draw out the prisoner. But if I fail, rest assured.” His scarred head seemed made of knots. “I will kill you for free.”

* * *

        Enrick sat before a small wooden table made of oarak wood, the legs twisted shapes of creatures and animals from the far reaches of the Macti pantheons. The fire in her hearth was a dull red and seemed to come from pure ash. On the other side of the table, Hesher the Kulat sat.

        “What must I do?” Enrick said.

        Hesher rubbed her hands, fingers thick as old kipa branches. “We talk, and draw the damned out,” she said. “Convince them to let go and find their way to their own islands.” She reached into the darkness behind her and brought a dusty bottle with a rag stuffed in its mouth.

        “Some heathen elixir?” he said.

        Hesher grunted. “Just rupin.”

        “Grass wine?”

        “It helps some talk.” She lifted her chin to look down her squat nose. “You look disappointed. You would prefer I dress up like a wildling and burn dead sigils on your skin?” She laughed, but the cadence was bitter, like the wine. “Your face holds no lies to me, Minister. You still look down on us, even as you ask for help.”

        He exhaled slow. “No. I heard tales of Macti magic on the battlefield. Of animal blood and the healing toad—”

        Hesher snickered. “Pretenders. They need colorful glyphs and costumes to sell themselves to the bandits, make themselves fierce. But our magic is older. Our magic is the knot of the world. We will undo the knot in your soul.” A cold relief bit Enrick’s heart, but Hesher’s nostrils flared. “But will you permit me to lead her to a heathen heaven?”

        Enrick nodded. “After so long, any heaven will do.” The red ash burned but warmed little. “Do you think your heathen gods will accept her?”

        Hesher smiled without joy. “We have safe havens for such women lost in battle.”

        Such women? “Then you know what they did to her?”

        “Yes.” She took the rag out of the bottle. “And if that cold spot in you wants to lash out, feel free. Remember, though, that you will have killed her last chance for salvation.” She took a swig, and a green dribble swirled down her thin lip. “Now, do we begin? Do we?”

        Enrick nodded, thin hair falling in front of his eyes. The scars on his head itched. “We do.”

        She wiped rupin from her lips. She stood, and consulted a wall of what he thought was clothing... but as his eyes adjusted, its form emerged. Knots. The wall was a collection of knots.

        Her thick fingers plucked a red and black mound, then she sat back before him. “She talks to you?”

        He nodded.

        She gripped the mess of knots, massaging them, fingers like iron worms, flexing in and out. “In daylight?”

        He shook his head.

        Her eyes closed. “Night?”

        “She comes to me in sleep,” he said. “Always the same.”

        “Tell,” Hesher said.

        “I am chained with black ropes, in my home. A dozen Macti are inside. I struggle. But the black ropes draw tighter. She screams. I cannot see her. But she screams at me as they all go into our bedroom.”

        His vision shook. The words were raw cold meat slithering out of his mouth. He’d never spoken of it. Not a whisper.

* * *

        Hesher worked her knots, the broken man before her dribbling his story. “What does she say?”

        Gripping his knees, Enrick shook his head. “She doesn’t speak—”

        The knots of crimson gumroot constricted against Hesher’s fingers. “Don’t lie,” she said, sight turning the same color as the burning ash. “She does not howl like the wilderness at you. The words are sharp. What does she say?” The heart of rope in her hands breathed, looser and then tighter. Her calluses burned as she dug in deeper. “Say it.”

        His voice was soft as threshneedle on a summer floor. “She screams.”

        The knots breathed deeper. She pulled, eyes on him. “Screams what?”

        Twitches bit his eyes with the random fleck of a dewbug. “Coward. She... she screams coward.”

        The knots untangled before her hand. Hesher held them to the ashlight. The creature would be revealed from the space in the knot. It cannot avoid looking into a Kulat’s eye, especially one so skilled as Hesher herself. The dull silver glow of a spirit trapped awaited her verdict. Hesher had pulled them free for her people so many times, the tortured souls. She would see a dull silver essence that needed to be drawn out like puss from a sore....

        She peered within the knot’s empty mouth.

        The Minister writhed before her.

        Nothing. Within the knot, no silver shimmer, no ghost of the dead.

        Hesher betrayed no horror at the empty sight, but part of her screamed.

        His wife, she thought. She... she is not in him.

        “Please,” said the Minister. “Is she free?”

        “Shh,” she said, staring at the void. But not an unnatural one, for the ashfire light did touch it. It was the emptiness. That was the heart of it.

        She was gone, Hesher knew. She died under our blades and anger and went wherever those people go, to wander with their Wayfarer and conquer the world with iron. Part of Hesher cackled at the tortured mind before her. It had forged chains of painful memories upon itself. A little man of spiritual weakness, who failed to save his own, and tortures himself with that memory as he carves out a life of blood and suffering....

        The whisper of yellow bones were a breeze against her ear.

        He is ours.

        We made him, Hesher thought. Just as surely as he made us that day, coffin of weapons upon our shoulder. We made him. A man of vagrant god; ambassador of a ludicrous faith... we laughed at him as he tried to walk among us with courage into a poisoned house. We made him.

        Through the knot, the suffering on his face had a taste. Bitter root and ash.

        Hesher steeled herself. We cannot help him, baby-tam. There is no ghost to chase.

        But can we unmake him?

* * *

        His bones hollowed from the pull of memory, Enrick gripped his skull with what strength he had. The dim ashlight made shadows ripple. “What do you see?”

        The witch’s face was hidden by the crimson knots in her hand. “Everything and nothing.”

        He tore his hair. “No parables! No riddles. She must be free. I have marched awake for days so that I could get here and have her removed to safety! What do you see?”

        “A whisper,” she said, eye through the knots. “Of an old promise. From an old god.”

        Terror forced his eyes open, meeting hers through the knots. “No... he has forsaken me. He has—”

        “He is a wanderer. How hard have you tried to find him? When the anger at your weakness cooled, you became a soldier, a monster of blood and iron. But he is elsewhere. That is why you have not found him.” The final notes of the midnight prayer tickled the air from distant brass pipes. “That is a song of your nomadic god?”

        His jaw shook, but he coughed out “Yes.”

        With her left hand, she rummaged through a mound of cloth and animal totems. “Here,” she said, then tossed something.

        It jangled as he caught it. A leather purse, rivers of cracks. “What is this?”

        She grimaced. “I believe you’d call it a donation. Your faith has never lasted long in the old city. But your forefathers certainly tried. There is a resting house for your god and his people at the far end of this road. If you can arrive there, and light a candle, she will be free.” She tossed the knots into the ashfire, and there was a flare of dull red flame.

        He huffed, eyes wild. “Are you sure? Are you sure he waits for me?”

        She watched the flame of old blood burn. “This is your last chance, Minister. I suggest you take it.”

        He stood, holding the purse with both hands, coins clanking loudly. “I... thank you.”

        She nodded. “Go on. From what you people say, your god does not tarry. Go as a man of peace, not of the blade. Go and be returned to him.”

        Enrick nodded, a blister of hope in his heart, then tore open the door and walked into the night while the last of the evening song played.

        He walked the path, words coming from a guttural place inside him:

        “Blessed be the Wafarer, who rides on wind... and sea. The light of hope, our intrepid captain, bound... to eternity.”

* * *

        Hesher watched him scurry down the path, prayer song muttered beneath his whiskers, the jangle of his coin purse loud enough to wake the poor and the dead.

        He walked onward, singing a tune of salvation and bound for a church that had burned down before Hesher had ever touched a knot.

        Shadows followed. And grew.

        One had a jeweled face and blade in hand. It looked back at Hesher.

        Hesher caressed the knotted box at her breast, and nodded.

        The shadows descended, but he walked on, bleeding with prayer and wound, bound around the curve of the city, out of sight.

        Hesher turned to the ashfire and the heart of rope she’d tossed. Smoke was all that remained. And her memory.

        She closed the door and said the Macti prayer for the damned, then cried upon the yellow bones.

Copyright © 2013 Jason S. Ridler

Read Comments on this Story on the BCS Website

Jason S. Ridler is a writer and historian. He is the author of A Triumph For Sakura, Blood and Sawdust, the Spar Battersea thrillers (Death Match, Con Job, and Dice Roll), the short story collection Knockouts, and has published over sixty stories. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. Visit him at his writing blog, Ridlerville, jsridler.livejournal.com, on Facebook, and on Twitter @JayRidler.

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COVER ART

“The Rickety Tower,” by Jeremiah Morelli

Jeremiah Morelli lives in southern Germany and currently works as a middle school teacher for English and Art. He sees his painting mainly as a hobby, though he has been selling prints for several years. Colorful, whimsical scenes are what he likes most, and he hopes to publish a children’s book one day.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies

ISSN: 1946-1076

Published by Firkin Press,

a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization

Copyright © 2013 Firkin Press

This file is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 U.S. license. You may copy and share the file so long as you retain the attribution to the authors, but you may not sell it and you may not alter it or partition it or transcribe it.