TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Thirteen, Part Two

Rain on her coat, soaking through her sleeves and making the leather stick to her forearms. Sick rain. Damaging. Not refreshing, not life-giving like the rain that fell on the deserts of Lormian. This entire world was wet with infection and felt like it was dissolving under her feet. Therazine drew her hands into her sopping sleeves just to stay as free from the rain as she could.

Vexxer was running his hands under a drains-pout and splashing the filthy water into his face to wash the flecks of blood from his skin. He didn’t appear bothered by the rainwater.

Therazine was leaning against a stone wall, watching down the street. There were no people out now. Not this late. The neon signs were still switched on, blaring their pinks and yellows through the haze, but the lights of apartment were few and far between. A line of rats was running across the road.

Vexxer through his head back with an exhalation. He stared with his eyes closed up into the rain.

“That shit’s poisonous, you know,” Therazine said.

Vexxer turned to her. “What? The rain?”

“It falls from unclean clouds. Drags all of the venom and smoke out of the air and delivers it back down to this city. The sky refuses to accept the harm we do to it.”

“Awfully poetic, coming from you.”

“Don’t splash that shit into your face.”

“Don’t have a whole lot of options, Thera. This is the water we got. Not quite as fresh as Lormian rains, I take it?”

Therazine shot him a look. “What?”

Vexxer cocked his head. “What?”

“I never told you I relocated to Lormian.”

“Your wanted poster.”

“Right.” Therazine grimaced and looked back out into the street. The line of rats had disappeared back into the sewers, or had snuck into an apartment building and were traveling up out of the rain. “We need to get off the streets.”

Vexxer walked up and leaned against the wall next to her. “Maybe not another bar so soon.”

“No. Let’s go back to Maddy’s. Maybe she’s got a gun ready for me.”

Vexxer didn’t object, and when Therazine turned to look at her she saw his eyes were wide and watery, staring at her with concern.

Therazine inched away from him. “What?”

“Thera, you almost shot a man back there, and it broke you.”

“It didn’t break me,” she said. “It’s just been a while.”

“You didn’t look out of practice to me. You would have killed that guy if not for... you almost killed him. Skill wasn’t the issue. But then you broke.”

“I didn’t break.”

“You fell to your knees and started crying about your dead—”

Therazine stepped up to him, adrenaline suddenly up and heart pounding hard. Vexxer put up his hands defensively.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I know what I’m doing, Vexxer. I don’t need you to hold my hand through this. Do you think I’m not capable of killing anymore? Is that it?”

“No, not at all. That’s not what I’m saying. You seem just as comfortable as you always have.”

Therazine’s stomach turned. No, he was wrong. She’d changed in the last few years. She hated this world. Hated the people, hated the culture, hated what it reminded her of. She wasn’t a killer—not anymore. So why was she defending herself from his accusations? Why couldn’t she just admit to him that he was right, that she had a problem?

She wasn’t comfortable. Not with any of this. She shouldn’t be there standing in the rain with Vexxer Roz talking about killing. She should be at home, on her ranch. With Kohl and the boys.

“Let’s go,” she said, and turned from him.

“Thera. I didn’t mean anything by that.”

She marched onto the path, back down the alleyways that led to Ivy Street. She avoided the dark puddles in the depressions of the cobblestone and concrete, especially where no rain fell. Windows were barred. Doorways were barricaded, and occasionally marked with blue drawings indicating that they were warded by the Order of Prevalistics. The black waters that ran below the street trickled up from the sewers and infected people’s bodies, and the doctrine of the church bled down from the high towers and infected their minds. This city was being corrupted from above and below—just as it had been ten years ago. Therazine saw the signs of degredation and decadence as they consumed this world, and she tried to focus on them. Closed-down soup kitchens and newly established brothels. More shadowed foot-traffic and yet fewer faces and voices. Ancient statues slowly being devoured by the ever-present and ever-increasing acid rain. Laminated posters put up by the Order praising piety and decrying individual thought. The decrease in the presence of the Constabulary and the increase in the presence of government gangers.  She needed to keep her attention her—on her rage, and not her sorrow.

They reached Madeline Rhines’ House of Clocks as the rain broke. It continued to come down, but it let up somewhat, letting Therazine’s thoughts return as the pounding of rain diminished. Maddy’s lights were out. Therazine walked up her stoup and knocked.

“Were you trying to keep Lormian from me?” Vexxer said behind her.

“I’m trying to keep as much as I can from you.”

Vexxer paused. “Why?”

Therazine ground her teeth. That had hurt him. She’d meant it to, but after the comment landed she regretted it immediately. Vexxer was only trying to help her, to be there for her. But he couldn’t. She couldn’t let him.

She knocked again. “Maddy,” she called. She tried the doorknob, and was surprised to find it open. She pushed the door and it slid open gently, creaking. Light from the street crept in, outlining the shelves and counters. A soft ticking came from within.

Vexxer stepped up closer, into the doorway. “Ms. Rhines?”

Therazine walked in, cautious. One hand stuck out before her to catch any onjects in the darkness, the other hovered above her hip in an instinctive gesture. After Vexxer crossed the threshold, a voice came from the darkness.

“Close it.”

Therazine turned towards Maddy’s voice. She saw, dimly, a person sitting behind the counter in the gloom. Therazine straightened. Vexxer closed the door.

“Just sitting around in the dark?” Therazine asked.

“Waiting for you.”

Therazine let out a breath. She didn’t like this. “I thought you were fixing up a gun for me?”

“The weapon’s done,” Maddy said. “It’s upstairs. I’ll get it.”

“Okay.”

“But first we need to talk, Husk.”

A shot of anger straight to her gut, of shame. Therazine bit her tongue. Part of her wondered if Maddy had a gun in her hand right now. “Turn on a light, then.”

She heard the sound of a chain switch being pulled, and the small desk lamp on the counter came on. Ruddy light flooded out from under its shade. Maddy sat behind the counter in an alluminum fold-out chair, leaning forward on the countertop. She was still in the clothes they had seen her in earlier, but no eyepatch. Maddy’s face was dominated by the reddish, shadowed depression under her broken brow ridge. It wasn’t the empty socket itself that drew the attention, though—it was the glossy patch of flesh that surrounded it. The scars threaded across her face like a poor weaving, like it had been burned off and she had frantically tried to pull undamaged skin back across the wound.  Therazine remembered taking that eye. She’d had little choice in the matter, but she could still see the spray of bone and gore as Madeline Rhines’ eye exploded out of the side of her head.

“Did you find anything out there?” Maddy asked.

Therazine looked Maddy up and down. She was unarmed, but she was shaken by something. She hadn’t been down here all night. The tallycounter wasn’t anywhere nearby.

Maddy looked past Therazine at Vexxer, barely acknowledging him.

“Let’s get that gun,” she said.

Maddy locked the front door and then took them upstairs. The small room was the same as before. None of the trunks were opened, and Therazine could only assume their contents hadn’t been touched. The workbenches were still cluttered and unlit. She looked to the large rifle that was sitting under the window. Therazine had noticed a harmonica clip leaning against it precariously before she had left—the clip was still in that same spot. Nothing in the room had been obviously touched.

“What have you been doing for the last few hours?” Therazine asked.

Maddy stopped in front of the large steel door that led to what Therazine had assumed to be her firing range. Maddy produced a key and unlocked the door.

“I had visitors,” she said.

Therazine stopped. Vexxer stopped with her.

“Here?”

“Obviously,” Maddy said, throwing open the bolt.

“Who?” Therazine said.

“My landlord. And his friends.”

“Why?”

Maddy looked back as she slid open the door, glaring with one eye. “I took care of my rent.”

Therazine took a step back, touching Vexxer’s thigh right where his Darnull was holstered. She felt his hand come down and grab the butt of his gun.

“Maddy,” Therazine said. “What did you do?”

The room beyond Maddy was cold and dark. Therazine could smell gunpowder and lead. Maddy stepped in and pulled a chain that hung from the ceiling. A fluorescent lamp hummed to life, illuminating the firing range.

“I found you a lead, Husk.”

Therazine shook her head slowly. She tapped Vexxer’s leg again, and he unbuttoned his holster with a light snap.

“Tell me what you told them,” she demanded.

“Very little,” Maddy said. “But… enough. You can’t utilize your old resources within the Bloodletters Society. Not without letting them know you’re here. And you certainly don’t want that. So I’ve arranged for you to have a meeting with the local Deputy Administrator—”

Therazine went through her mental database. The Deputy Administrator was second in line for the position of Magistrate in the event of the Magistrate’s death or sudden resignation, after the Administrator. She dug up a name: Patrick Kettle. Deputy Administrator Patrick Kettle of West Celedin, if nothing had changed in the last ten years. Try as she might, she could not place a face to the name.

“—assuming you do something for him.”

“No.”

“Don’t be shitty,” Maddy said. “I haven’t told you what it is.”

“I know where this is going,” Therazine said, “and I won’t kill someone to pay for your bills.”

Maddy shook her head. “That’s already taken care of. You’re being obtuse. I only told them I’d pass on this offer to you—then my end of the deal is taken care of. Whether or not you actually do it is none of my concern.”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?”

Maddy frowned, and placed her hands on her hips. “I don’t give a shit what you believe. But I know that you didn’t find anything useful out in the streets. I know that you’re lost in a world you no longer recognize—”

“I know this city better than you do.”

“Do not interupt me again,” Maddy said. “Do not.”

Therazine stood tall, her shoulder blades pushing into Vexxer chest. She knew he had released his grip on the gun. He’d sensed that whatever danger might have been present was gone now. Therazine stared into Maddy’s eye and stayed quiet, waiting for the other woman to continue.

Maddy growled in the back of her throat. “You’re looking to murder someone big, and I found you a way to maybe get close to that big someone by murdering someone small. I’m fucking helping you, despite all of my soul telling me otherwise. Don’t you spit on me.”

“You’re only helping yourself. You’re selling me to get the local slumlord off your back.”

“Fuck you. If I came to you asking for help with finding materials for a new gun, and you told me that in order to get those materials that I first had to make a gun for someone else with the tools I already have? There’s no question there. It’s utilizing my talents to further my career. You’re a murderer. That’s what you do. Don’t act like I’ve done something reprehensible and you haven’t.”

Therazine shook her head. “I’m not a killer.”

Maddy laughed—a dry sound free of mirth. “That’s right. I forgot. You’re a housewife now. A mother bound to the kitchen and the house. Tell me: do you let your husband fuck you while you cook for him? Or do you make him rub your feet first?”

Therazine lunged at her, but Vexxer’s big hands grabbed her shoulders and drew her back. She struggled against him, but only for a second. Her fingers curled into fists and she forced her body to relax. Maddy was grinning.

“We’ll do it,” Vexxer said.

Therazine looked up at him. “No.”

“Yes, we will,” he said. “We don’t have any other leads. No connections, no resources. And Ms. Rhines is right: we have skills, Thera. Skills that people need. If we leverage those skills, we can get what we need and move on with this job. That’ll be the end of it. Done all the quicker.”

“I won’t kill a man for information.”

“But you’ll do it for money,” Maddy said.

Therazine thrashed in Vexxer grasp. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea why I’m doing this.”

“I’m sure your reasons for killing the Emperor are sublimely heroic.”

“Stop,” Vexxer said. He addressed the room, not either of the women in particular. “Please. Just stop. This is what’s best for all of us. Let’s accept that. Let’s move forward.”

Maddy nodded to Vexxer. “He understands. Listen to your man.”

Therazine wanted to shout at her, to rush her and tear out her other eye. She hated being constrained like this—both physically by Vexxer and in regards to her options. No one should decide her fate. Her life was her own, to ruin or to empower.

“Let go of me,” she said in a low voice.

Vexxer did so immediately, and Therazine felt her limbs slackened. Her blood cooled just a little bit, and she breathed in deep.

“Fine,” she said. “Tell us what this job is.”

Somehow in those last few minutes Maddy had scooped up her little silver tally counter again. She clicked it once. Therazine could feel that in her bones.

“It’s simple enough,” Maddy said. “Patrick Kettle is up for reelection this year. The polls show that his numbers are down, because he’s a piece of shit. He wants his competition eliminated. A man named Anton Carlaca.”

Therazine could feel her mind already running through plans, and it made her sick.

“Why is this other guy leading the polls?”

“Does that matter?”

“No.”

“He wants this Carlaca dead. That’s all you should care about. He wants him dead, and he wants it obvious he was killed. Wants a message to be sent to anyone else who might think about running against him in this cycle. Don’t give me that look. It’s not like you haven’t done this exact same thing before.”

Therazine looked away. That was true. Many, if not most, of the contracts that were offered to the Bloodletter Society were political killings. Assassins were just tools that men used to further gild their own crowns.

“I haven’t heard of Carlaca,” Vexxer said.

“He’s never run before,” Maddy said. “Local Ivy Street boy. Kettle’s son says he’s running on a platform of reformation and ‘hope.’ Whatever that means.”

It was suddenly cold. Therazine closed her eyes and held back a small whimper. Maddy had used the word ‘boy.’ It occurred to her that she might be agreeing to kill someone else’s Bren. Who was she fooling? Of course she was killing another woman’s son. All men are some mother’s son. How many cherished baby boys had she killed in the past? How many mothers had she left mortally childless? Even MonDozer’s sons, as wicked as they were, were the children of one or more of MonDozer’s dozens of wives.

That thought brought her back a little. Wallace MonDozer had been a child at one point, yes, but at the time she killed him he was a murdering bastard and nothing more. As people grow they are no longer pitiable children. As they commit evil they lose their innocence. For all she knew, this Anton Carlaca was just as rotten as Wallace had been.

And here she was—already justifying the murder of a man she did not even know. She bit the inside of her lip until it bled. She saw Vexxer reaching out to touch her shoulder in compassion, and she wriggled away. She stood up straight and stared at Maddy.

“The gun,” she said.

“Ah, yes,” Maddy said. “The surgeon needs her tools to work, doesn’t she?” Maddy stepped into the firing range. The sickly white glow from the fluorescent lamp made her clothes look dirtier, made the skin of her shaved scalp seem flaky and unwashed. It illuminated the fresh bruise under Maddy’s right eye.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Thirteen

The rifle bucked in Maddy’s grip. The walls were heavily insulated and the gunshot did not echo. Even if it did, she only heard a soft thump through her earmuffs. Her firing range was small and lit with fluorescent bulbs, making the atmosphere a clear workspace but unpleasant. Work benches lined the wall behind her, covered in casings and tools. The concrete wall on the far end was concave so that ricochets went away from her—the concrete itself soft enough to absorb excess energy but firm enough so that misfired bullets redirected into the bullet trap that was hidden from view. There were no targets hanging on that wall. This was not a practice range, merely a place for her to make sure her guns did their jobs properly.

She fired again. A burst of black smoke popped from the barrel. She watched the motion of the barrel as it let the bullet fly, and kept an eye on the long tube that ran from the mouth back along the barrel to the receiver. The priming handle jerked back, ejecting the spent casing. The chamber locked closed again.

She pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. Maddy lifted her head and held the gun out. It worked, but it didn’t work as well as she’d hoped. The expanding gas from the fired bullet wasn’t pushing the piston in the tube back fast enough. It expelled the brass from the spent bullet with ease, but it didn’t travel back far enough to load in a new cartridge. So when she pulled the trigger, nothing happened. She primed the priming handle. Another brass cartridge slid into the chamber.

With a grumble, she removed the magazine and ejected the unshot bullet. She’d have to figure out how to apply more pressure to the gas piston effecting the speed and trajetory of the bullet, or think of a way for the piston to travel smoother without more force.

Thoughts of Therazine and her contract swirled around Maddy’s skull. She and that Javadoan had marched out into the night suddenly, seemingly without any plan, or at least without telling Maddy about it. Therazine certainly acted like she knew what she was doing, but Maddy wasn’t so sure. The woman had changed in the past ten years. She was still a violent, unrepentant creature, no doubt, but Therazine’s edges appeared to have been rounded. When she walked to the window and stared out into the street, seeking answers in the wastrels below. She seemed… less patient, somehow. Perhaps out of practice. Maddy wondered how long it had been since Therazine had taken a life. She cradled the gun, looking over the thing in her hands and briefly fantasizing about Therazine using this very weapon to kill the Emperor of the Real.

A light in the corner of the room flipped on. It was just a simple, colorless light, coming from a white box buried in the darkness of the ceiling. It was an alarm, telling her someone had just opened the front door of her shop.

It was well after midnight. Maddy set the rifle down on the reloading bench and picked up a revolver. She slinked out of her firing range and shut the door behind her, throwing the bolt and locking it. As she made her way to the stairs she popped open the cylinder of the revolver and checked itse contents. Seven loaded rounds. She reached the bottom step with the pistol raised in her right hand.

The shop’s lights were still off. Dozens of clocks ticked in silence. The front door was open. Three wide shouldered men were silhouetted in the doorway by pale streetlight.

“Miss Rhines,” said the man in front, his voice coated in a grimey accent that betrayed his noble birth.

Maddy ground her teeth, and drew the hammer of the revolver back.

“You’re trespassing on private property, Chestin.”

The man struck a match and lifted it to his face to light a pipe. The tiny flame cast shadows across young, craggy features, and yellow eyes that stared straight at Maddy.

“Can’t trespass on my own property, Miss Rhines.”

“I rent the place,” Maddy said through clenched teeth. “It’s my home. As long as that’s true then you are walking where you shouldn’t. You have five seconds to get out.”

She heard clothing ruffle, and in the darkness saw the suggestion of the other two men pulling guns from their coats. Chestin Kettle smiled, the pipe stuck between his square teeth.

“You’re falling behind on your payments, Miss Rhines. It’s not yours if you don’t pay for it. I’m here to discuss business with you. Nothing more. Might you turn on a light?”

“Might you get the fuck out before I kill you and your boys?”

She couldn’t see the movements of the other two, but her eyes were adjusting and she saw Chestin gesture for them to stand down.

“There’s no reason for any of that. You wouldn’t kill me, Miss Rhines. You wouldn’t dare.”

“You have no idea what I'm capable of.”

“We’re just here to discuss payment plans. Nothing more.”

The gun felt heavy in Maddy’s hand. But it was steady, and she didn’t drop it.

“No need for any of these hysterics,” Chestin said.

Maddy felt her gut tighten.

Chestin sighed. “Miss Rhines, I haven’t got all night. If you’re going to shoot me, just get it over with so we can all go about our lives, however short they may be.”

Maddy kept the bead of the gunsight on the glow from Chestin’s pipe. His face was stoic. She could almost see him through the gloom, unblinking and unafraid.

She lowered the gun, and hit the switch on the wall. A warm orange light came to life near her desk, illuminating everything in a soft glow. Chestin Kettle and his flunkies stood in her open doorway, broad-shouldered and wearing finely-tailored black suits. They were all immaculately groomed, with thin goatees and cropped hair underneath grey flat caps. Each had a button on their lapels—a red raven in flight.

Chestin’s stone-like features wrinkled in a grimace. He squinted his eyes, like he’d just stumbled in on his parents having sex.

“By all that’s Real—over that up, would you?”

Maddy was suddenly and painfully aware that she wasn’t wearing an eyepatch, and her empty left socket was gaping out into the now lit room. She reached up reflexively to cover it with her hand, and then stopped herself. She made no effort to pull her eyepatch out of her jacket pocket.

Chestin shook his head. He ground the pipe between his square teeth, and then straightened his jacket.

“You gonna invite us in?”

“You’re already in.”

“Only just. It’s cold out there, Miss Rhines. Don’t be improper.”

“Close my door.”

“I suppose being proper isn’t a habit for someone like you. You heard her, Neddy.”

One of the thugs turned and shut the door gently, and then came back. Maddy stared at them, still as a statue, gun in her hand. Chestin Kettle removed his hat and hung it on the hooked corner of a clock sitting on her shelves. Then he took off his jacket and laid it gently across her counter. He stepped closer to her, taking a big puff on his pipe and letting it out in a slow sigh. He was as broad in the chest as a bull, and paced across the room like a rooster in a henhouse. He stopped in front of her, leaning against the dusty, cluttered shelves. For a chilling moment, Maddy thought he was going to reach out with one of those meaty, calloused hands of his and grab her. It was certainly his style—and the style of the Corbie Club—to take everything he wanted in a straightforward manner. Chestin Kettle’s father had set the example years ago with his unabashed rape of Ventri Kardina the butcher when she’d failed to pay for his protection. Horror storeis surrounded Chestin himself—stories that he no doubt took pride in. Part of her hoped he’d grab her by the waist right then, just so she’d have the excuse to plug him in the gut.

But Chestin Kettle was smart. He knew who Madeline Rhines was, knew her reputation. He stopped just short of her and looked her up and down, twirling his pipe in his mouth.

“You are one ugly bitch. You know that, don’t you?”

Maddy felt heat behind her cheeks. Her hand twitched, wanting to go up to her empty socket again—and she hated her instincts for that. She hated that such simple words from a piece of shit like this made her feel so worthless. But she didn’t say anything. She wouldn’t let him have that, wouldn’t let him think that he could weaken her. She remained standing rigid, staring him in the eye and clutching the revolver in her shaking hand.

Chestin held her gaze and waited. When she didn’t relent he raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘I tried.’

“How’s about the money you owe me?”

“I’ve never been late on a payment—”

“Until now.”

“I’ve never been late on a payment.” Maddy raised her voice just a touch. “But these last few weeks have been unusually slow. People are avoiding Ivy. The docks are… And the sewer-sickness is blooming. People aren’t coming in.”

“Isn’t changing the price of rent, Miss Rhines.”

“I’ll pay up what I owe as soon as I can,” Maddy said. “That’s all I can say. What else do you want?”

Chestin smiled. “There’s always… other forms of payment.”

Maddy frowned, and gripped the gun tighter.

“You know what I mean.” Chestin nodded upstairs. “You gotta have some of Old Man Rhines’ stock laying around.”

Maddy’s eyes went wide. This fucker wanted her guns.

She lifted the revolver and pointed it at his stomach. “Get out.”

The other two came up quick, hand reaching inside of their coats. Chestin’s hand waved them off.

“Come on,” he said. “Just one of your father’s antiques and we’ll be square for the next two months.”

“You don’t dare talk about him. Get out. I won’t repeat myself again.”

“Perhaps you don’t quite understand the position you’re in, Miss Rhines.” Chestin took another step up to her, pressing his belly against the barrel of her gun. “You owe money to Deputy Administrator Patrick Kettle. People pay him what they owe, or they accept whatever consequences come their way.”

The muscles in Maddy’s jaw twitched. Her nostrils stung as Chestin blew out a puff of rancid smoke. Patrick Kettle had significant sway in the politics of this district—and near legal immunity while he held the position of Deputy Administrator. He was also a land owner, a slumlord. The less fortunate suffered under his administration, and the wealthy prospered—mostly because the wealthy of Ivy Street consisted of his close friends and dear family. No matter what Maddy threatened, she knew that she couldn’t even so much as slap Chestin Kettle without his father bringing down her entire life.

She lowered the gun, and swallowed hard.

“I don’t have… Father didn’t leave me anything.”

Chestin frowned. “Bullshit. Man loved you. He left you everything.”

“No.” Maddy shook her head. “Not after what happened. The Bloodletters took everything.”

“The Society?” one of the thugs said. Neddy, Chestin had called him.

“Bullshit,” Chestin said again. “He left you his fortune, and his toys. That’s how you leased this place from my father in the first place. Don’t you lie to me, Miss Madeline Rhines. I got a Corbie nose. I can smell a lie before it’s even spoken.”

“They took it all,” Maddy said. “He didn’t expect to die when he did. He hadn’t had anything arranged. The Bloodletters claimed it.”

Chestin grabbed her by the wrist and pulled the gun up between them. Maddy winced at the violent motion—it was like being grabbed in the talons of a massive hawk. The dark steel of the revolver reflected the orange light minutely as Chestin twisted her wrist around, displaying it to her.

“Then where’d you get this piece?”

For an instant Maddy tried to pull her hand free, but it was no use against a brute like Chestin. “It was mine. Gave it to me before he passed. The Bloodletters took—”

“I said don’t lie to me!” Chestin shouted, squeezing her wrist.

“Those assassins are bad news, Ches,” said Neddy behind them. “Wouldn’t surprise me if they took it all when Rhines died.”

Chestin glanced back. He didn’t shout at or scold Neddy for speaking up—and in fact seemed to consider the point now that it had come from a fellow Corbie.

“Why do think I sell fucking clocks now?” Maddy said.

Chestin looked back to her. He twirled the pipe between his teeth. Ash spilled over its brim as it swayed back and forth.

“Maybe,” he said, nodding. “Which is just unfortunate for you, Miss Rhines. Because now you got nothing to pay us with.” He lifted her arm up, twisting so that she’d drop her gun. But Maddy held on. If there was one thing she learned from her father, it was to never let a man disarm you. Not in this horrid city. In Celedin, if a woman lost her ability to kill, then she was as good as dead.

She suddenly thought of Therazine. Chestin’s arm pulled back and his rope-like fingers curled into a fist.

“Wait!” Maddy shouted. It wasn’t a desperate word, but a demanding one. She held up her free hand in a gesture of placation. Chestin paused, his arm still cocked back.

“Wait,” she repeated. “Your father. Patrick. He’s up for reelection soon, isn’t he?”

“So what if he is?”

“Well. I’ve seen the numbers in the last few months.”

Chestin frowned.

Maddy swallowed again, and breathed in deep. “They aren’t getting any better soon, are they? Not with the exodus of West Celedin workers, I imagine. Not with businesses heading offworld.”

“So, what? You promising to vote for him if I don’t break your face? Don’t make me laugh.”

“No,” Maddy said. She looked him dead in his yellow eyes. “Therazine is back in town.”

Neddy gasped. The other thug looked around to make sure there was no one else hiding in the shadows, and drew his gun.

Chestin tilted his head. “The Stiletto?”

“The ex-Archblade herself.”

“You threatening me now?”

“Quite the contrary. I’m offering you a deal.” She grinned. “Tell me your father couldn’t use a little muscle in this race of his.”

Chestin was quiet for a long while, staring at her and moving his jaw in silent contemplation. Then he let go of her arm.

“If it’s true she’s back,” he said. “Why do you know?”

Maddy pulled her arm back and flexed her wrist, keeping the gun pointed at the Corbies.

“Because I’m the only person she trusts.”

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Twelve

He hadn’t said anything, but Therazine knew what Vexxer was thinking.

It had been two hours since they’d left Maddy’s gun shop. Two hours of walking up and down Ivy Street and its neighbors, picking out vagrants apparently at random and shaking them all down for information. Most had been entirely out of their minds with addiction or despair. A few had been unconscious and wouldn’t rouse. None were helpful. It was well after midnight at this point and Therazine’s legs were starting to hurt. Her farmer’s boots were rugged and made for tromping through mud and Lormian hills—but they weren’t adequate for walking along cobblestone and concrete. It had been over a decade, but she missed the firm comfort of the light, flexible steel toe boots that she used to wear when traveling the city. Almost every shop down these crowded avenues was closed, and the crowds were thinning. The neon from the bars and gentlemen’s clubs to the south end of Ivy Street burned bright through the haze, but the lights of apartments had gone out. The foot traffic that remained was sparse and paranoid—they avoided eye contact like they thought it could kill them.

Therazine knew what Vexxer was feeling, and she wished he would just say it. He thought they were wasting their time, thought that she had rushed to find a lead out in the night with no clear aim. He thought that this was all pointless, and yet he kept his mouth shut. Why? Because he thought it polite? Because he just liked being around her, regardless of the situation? She remembered him like this back in the day, soft-spoken and considerate, but never as quiet as he was now. If he thought this was all a waste of time, then why didn’t he just say that?

She wanted to turn around and stop him in his tracks. Stare into his wide-set eyes and confront him, ask what he thought they should be doing instead. But she knew how childish that would be. How fragile and small that would make her look. Better to just keep her head down and push forward, and pretend like Vexxer wasn’t even there.

They turned a corner. Down the street ahead the canopy above them opened up. Dusty rain mixed with the white glare of street lights, obscuring the government building that capped the intersection at the other end of the block. She narrowed her eyes, trying to remember the building. Its columns and domed towers were clear indicators of its public nature, but the identity of the building itself eluded her. She recognized the neon-lit fish shop on the corner, closed down for the evening. The bank across from it, with its large edifice and heavily barred portals.

“Justice Depot,” Vexxer said behind her.

She frowned. “I know.” The 17^th Ward Justice Depot. The local prison and safehouse for the persecuted. JDs were epicenters of crime and degeneracy, towering monuments to just how low and damaged humanity could become.

“We’ll not find anyone we need in there,” Vexxer said.

“Where will we find them, then?” Therazine snapped. She did not look at him.

Vexxer was quiet. A tall man in a heavy trenchcoat approached out of the rain. As he stepped under the canopy he shook himself, like a dog. He took off his hat briefly to shake the water from it, revealing a large scar that ran from the base of his skull and over to in between his eyes. Therazine shuddered in instinctual revulsion. The man replaced his hat and walked on by.

“Thera,” Vexxer whispered.

She didn’t respond. Only stared out into the rainy street beyond.

“Thera, what are we doing?”

“Finding a lead.”

Vexxer sighed. “There’s no one out here. What are we looking for?”

“Don’t call me that.”

Vexxer was quiet for a moment. All Therazine heard was the patter of rain against stone, and somewhere, distantly, a fog horn. Buried in the steel and concrete of these streets she almost forgot that the harbor was so nearby.

“Can we step out of the rain for a moment?” Vexxer said. “Get a warm drink, maybe?”

Therazine ground her teeth, then looked back at him. Vexxer had droplets stuck in his red beard, stray rain blown in from outside the canopy. His head was slick with sweat and rain, and his eyes were turned down in a sorrowful way.

“Yeah,” she said.

They walked into the nearest bar—a violet-lit place with a wooden hanging sign that read Eimbry’s Taproom. The heavy door reluctantly permitted them ingress, and the room beyond was warm and softly glowing. It was a large space, with four columns punctuating an otherwise empty room. A few tables were scattered, all full of people, and the bar itself was wide-set with twenty seats in front of it. Dark red paint covered the walls, muffling the already contained atmosphere that the candle-lighting gave the place. Planks of wood decorated otherwise brick walls, each piece with a plaque underneath. Without getting close enough to read Therazine knew that these plaques advertised that their associated lengths of wood were from offworld. Every bar had its own gimmick.

She sidled up to the bar, Vexxer in tow. They sat between two perfectly quiet men who both appeared to be only a few drinks from unconsciousness, and they seemed to be happy in that place. Behind the bar Therazine saw ornately carved shelves containing dozens of bottles of dark liquid. Those shelves were undoubtably local bogwood—cheap and unremarkable, which explained why the shelves didn’t have a plaque of their own. She glanced at herself in the mirror behind the bottles, and was unhappy with what she saw. A sunken-eyed, long-haired woman matted with rainwater and grime, her heavy clothes clinging to her body like the wet coat of a shaggy dog. Vexxer beside her sat like a giant—a head taller than her and shoulders twice as wide.

The bartender was chatting with a patron at the other end of the bar. Therazine didn’t even try to signal him. Vexxer patiently thrummed his fingers on the bartop.

“You’ve gotta be tired,” he said.

“No time for sleep.”

“Always time for sleep.”

Therazine felt like she’d had this conversation with him in the past. Ages ago, when they were killers together. He was always the practical one, the one who made sure they had a warm place to stay and hot food every night, no matter how far out into the Real they were.

“Thera.”

“Dammit, man.”

“Sorry.” Vexxer blinked rapidly and shook his head. “Old habits. I… You seem frantic. You’re not thinking clearly, I don’t think.”

“Excuse me?”

“Not saying that—Not saying that you ain’t thinking. That’s not what I’m saying. You’re focused, is all. Too focused. What is our plan tonight?”

“Weed through this shitty neighborhood until I pull up the one plant with roots.”

“To what end, though? What are we looking for?”

“Anything.”

"That…” Vexxer bit his lip. “We need direction. We need a course.”

“I have a course,” she said.

“Could you… enlighten me, perhaps? What are we looking for, and how will we know when we find it?”

“I don’t know, Vexxer.” She clenched her fists and stared forward, into the mirror. “I don’t fucking know, okay? I just… I just need to keep looking. I can’t rest. Not now. Not yet. Not while my family’s still—”

“What do you want?” the bartender said. Therazine hadn’t even noticed him slink up. His words were sharp, aggressive. She understood immediately that he wasn’t asking what they needed to drink. And he was staring at Vexxer.

“Kalaphan rum, please,” Vexxer said. “Two. Over ice.”

The bartender stared at him. He had a pencil mustache, and tiny, bat-like eyes that refused to blink. The bartender couldn’t have been half Vexxer’s weight, and yet he stared at Vexxer like he was about to pounce on him and bite his throat out.

“We ain’t got Kalaphan here.”

Therazine glanced up at the carved shelves. Half a bottle of reddish liquer caught her eye, its label reading KALAPHAN FINE IMPORTED RUM. She sat up straight, brushed her hair behind her ears. A glance over her shoulder saw that two men had stood up from the nearest table. They had long coats, and their hands hovered at their hips.

Vexxer’s eyes shot to the bottle on the shelf, and then immediately back to the bartender.

“No problem,” he said. “Coffee will do, if you got it.”

“No coffee for your kind.”

Therazine froze, bolt straight, with her head tilted so that she had one eye trained on the bartender and the other on the slowly approaching patrons.

Vexxer grinned and nodded. “I think we might have stumbled into the wrong place. Sorry about that, friend.” He pushed his stool back and stood up.

One of the men stepped close. He was tall, with a thin, hideous beard and wool skullcap. He placed a hand on Vexxer’s shoulder, fingers digging into Vexxer’s thick coat. Therazine kept her eye on the other man, and on the two more who stood up from the same table.

Vexxer turned, his wide bulk gently and naturally shaking the man’s hand off. His eyes were still downturned, still kind.

“Is there a problem?” he said.

“Yeah,” said the man with the skullcap. “About thirty years back when you stepped into our world, rock-eater.”

Vexxer pursed his lips. “I’ve only been here seventeen years, friend. You must have me mistaken.”

“Only mistake here is you showing yourself out at night. Constables can’t protect you now, Javadoan. No law’s gonna stay our hands this late.”

Therazine watched the other three men form a half circle around Vexxer and the man with the skullcap. One of them reached into his jacket and placed his hand on the hilt of something—a club or a knife.

“I made a mistake. Didn’t come in here looking for trouble,” Vexxer said. “The war was a long time ago.”

“Not for us, it wasn’t. Your kind killed more of my friends than I care to remember. Kept me in the cold and the dirt for six years of my life. And you have the audacity to show yourself here?”

“As I said, this was my mistake. I’ll leave.”

“Not before we take our reparations, you won’t.”

One man stepped forward, his hands coming up in fists. Therazine shot up and kicked her stool out, sending it sliding across the floor and knocking the man’s legs out from under him. He went down and his jaw cracked on the floor.

The bar exploded in noise and movement. The man in the skullcap threw a punch and Vexxer caught his fist. The two others came at Therazine, one drawing a truncheon from his jacket. Therazine reached behind the bar blindly and whipped a bottle at the man in front, hitting him between the eyes and sending him crashing backwards into a table. The other man rushed her with the truncheon. She got her arms up as he struck her, taking the force of the blow on her leather-clad forearms.

Vexxer broke the wrist of the man in the skullcap. He screamed, foam bubbling across his unkempt beard, and he fell to his knees. The man on Therazine struck at her viciously, again and again, but there was no technique to his blows. No skill. It was like he was hacking away at an overgrown plant. Therazine absorbed another hit with her forearms and waited as he pulled back to strike again. In that moment she reached out and grabbed his curly, greasy hair and drove his face into her knee. He went down with a wet shout.

Vexxer kicked aside his barstool and stood next to Therazine. Four men were down, two were weeping. The drunk who’d had his legs knocked out from under him by the stool wobbled to his feet. Another man massaged the bleeding lump on his forehead where Therazine had cracked him with the bottle.

Therazine breathed in deep and held it. She stared at these two, and in the corners of her eyes she watched the other patrons in the bar. She could feel the moment balancing on a thin point. Either she and Vexxer had been quick and brutal enough to discourage any further action, or the violence had been galvanizing and the moment would fall to the other side of the point. Her hand twitched above her gunless hip. She dared not move, lest the patrons be provoked.

She heard the spin of a thumb wheel, and turned just in time to see the bartender raise a rifle. Her hand shot out and snagged the barrel, forcing the gun up—the bartender shouted in shock and his finger slipped off the trigger.

With that, the bar plunged headfirst into chaos. Three men charged them, knives and bottles in their hands. Therazine shoved the rifle into the bartender’s neck and sent him crashing into his ornate shelves and bottles. The sound of breaking glass was melodic to her ears.

Vexxer met the first man with a punch that would have floored a bull. The assailant’s head cracked back like he’d been shot and he went tumbling into a table. Therazine spun with the rifle held like a club and broke another man’s teeth. She had just a split second to step closer to Vexxer before the next man reached her with a punch the swung far too wide. She grabbed the rifle with both hands and struck it forward, breaking his nose. Vexxer grabbed another man by the arm and flipped him onto his back, just as a knife came at his shoulder. Therazine swung for the attacker’s head just as Vexxer parried the knife with a slap from his left hand. The knife-wielder spun, blood spurting from a broken jaw, and fell.

Two more dove for them and were put down just as quickly. A third fell upon Vexxer as he kicked one of the downed men in the stomach. Vexxer didn’t see that man, and that man had a steak knife. Therazine aimed the rifle at the attacker, her finger settling on the trigger. For the briefest moment she was aware of what she was doing and what she held in her hands. The gun had come up so naturally, so simply. It had obeyed her commands without question. She demanded that it kill, and it rose to the occasion. The taste of mortal fragility flared suddenly on the end of her tongue. She squeezed trigger.

Vexxer turned just as the rifle went off. The man was taken aback by the Javadoan’s remarkable reflexes and vigilance, and he paused in his stride. The rifle fired, and the bullet passed just in front of the man’s nose before shattering a dark wood plank that hung on the far wall.

Everyone in the bar froze. The men ceased charging, the people at the tables stopped their jeering. All stared at the woman by the bartop with the rifle in her hands.

Therazine felt a rush of fear sweep through her veins. The rifle shook in her hands, and without a directive thought she spun the thumb wheel and chambered another round.

The man with the knife went white. He opened his mouth as if to scream as the harmonica clip of the rifle slid into place, feeding another bullet into the chamber.

Vexxer loomed large and grabbed the man by the back of the head, and then slammed him face first into the corner of the bar. A wet crunch, and blood and teeth splattered against the glasses on the bartop. The man fell to the ground in a pile of screaming, writhing agony.

Vexxer looked at Therazine. The rifle went limp in her hands.

She turned, and saw everyone staring in horrified silence. Their eyes shifted between her, Vexxer, and the mangled people at their feet.

Vexxer breathed heavily through his nose. Flecks of blood dotted his already red complexion.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. Then, to the crowd: “Vekrath’egh Javadahg denu arrkechit.”

Therazine nodded, and let out the breath she had been holding the entire time. She grabbed the clip on the side of the rifle and yanked it out of the gun, throwing cartridges across the floor. The brass clattered and glittered in the candlelight. She pocketed the clip and dropped the rifle, then followed Vexxer out of the building.

The stepped out into the wet night, heaving and pulses pounding. She watched the heavy door swing closed, and the latch itself. Vexxer leaned up against the wall and flexed his hands into fists over and over. Dark spots on his knuckles flared with each movement. Therazine stared at him, waiting for him to stare back. When he finally did he dropped his hands to his sides as if he had been doing something unscrupulous. She only stared. He nodded, and the two of them stepped up the few steps into the open street.

“That surely escalated,” Vexxer said.

“I’d thought the animosity from the war would have burned out by now.”

“It has, mostly.” Vexxer sighed and cracked his neck. “But there are still holdouts of salty veterans. People who see red hair and think, ‘if I kick that guy’s ass, then maybe my dead friends will come back.’”

Therazine frowned. “‘If I kick that guy’s ass, maybe my wife won’t leave me for being an abusive, drugged-out prick.’”

“‘If I kick that guy’s ass, maybe I won’t have picked up my alcoholism during my tour on Javadoa.’”

“‘Maybe if I kick that guy’s ass,’” Therazine said with a small chuckle, “’my government won’t have sent me to get my own ass kicked by those red-haired barbarians in the first place.’”

Vexxer laughed, and shook his head. “Heh. ‘Barbarians.’ Thanks, Thera. I’d almost forgotten about the posters all across this city when I first emigrated here.”

Therazine remembered the propoganda about the Javadoans when she was a little girl. Posters that depicted them as axe-wielding devils with bright red skin and wild eyes. Radio shows where they spoke in gutteral, alien tongues. Stage plays where strong-jawed Celedinian heroes rescued busty women from the salacious clutches of hulking Javadoan barbarians. The memories made her hate this city even more. As a child, she had assumed Javadoans were brutes and monsters. Vexxer was the kindest, gentlest man she had ever met. By the Aether, how old must he have been when he traveled here from Javadoa? Fifteen? Sixteen? How the Celedin must have looked to his young eyes. A superstitious people less than a generation from a grizzly war—people who still hung signs on the doors of their shops that proclaimed NO JAVAS.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” Vexxer said. “People are just people. Scared and stupid.”

“I almost killed a man in there, Vex.”

Vexxer looked at her curiously. “Yeah? So did I. If I’d put a little more oomph into that last guy, I’m sure I would have got him.”

“No,” she said, clutching her shoulders tight. “I almost killed a man. With that gun. And I didn’t even think about it. It… it just came naturally.”

“Yeah. Heat of the moment. That’s what you do when you’re fighting for your life.” Vexxer furrowed his brow. “Are you alright, Thera?”

“I almost killed someone.” Therazine stopped and stared at the cobblestone, shaking. “I haven’t… I haven’t killed anyone in a decade. Not since—I haven’t. And this just came so… so… If he hadn’t stopped short, I would’ve… just…”

Vexxer stopped too, and turned fully to her.

“Thera? What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t even think about it, Vex. I just grabbed the gun and went to do it. On reflex. On instinct.”

“That makes perfect sense. It’s alright. You’re just conditioned. Even after ten years, you’re back in this place. It’s what you did here. Just falling back on old habits, that’s all.”

Therazine clutched her head and shook violently.

Old ways, old ways,

Falling back on old things

Gone back, gone back,

Old birds still like to sing.

“I’m not that person anymore. I’m not. I’m… I’ve changed.” She fell to her knees, and felt rain soak through to her skin.

Vexxer was down beside her an an instant. “Thera, what’s going on? What is this? Are you okay?”

“I’m not the same,” she said. “I’m not. I left. I left everything. I’m a wife. I’m a mother. I’m—” Her heart jumped, pumping acid pain through her chest as she remembered Bren. She tucked her head into her knees, clutching her hair with trembling hands and sobbing into the street.

Vexxer wrapped his thick arms around her. She fell into him, weeping uncontrollably. He held her tight, saying nothing.

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Eleven

It was dark under the bridge. Dark enough that he was hidden from view, but too dark for Eells to read the transcripts he had procured from the interworld hub. The list of travelers from Lormian to Celedin was only seven pages, but there were seventy-five names on each page. It was honestly less than he had been expecting, but upon thumbing through the sheets he realized the task was significantly more daunting than he had anticipated. He adjusted his seat on the mud under the bridge, leaning to his left and stretching his arm out so that the dull glow from the streetlights might help illuminate the pages. But as he stuck the documents out, rain pattered on their edges. He pulled the transcript back before the acidic droplets could eat away at the delicate pages. Then he was back in the dark, sitting in the dankness and stench near the river and straining his eyes through the murk.

Although it wasn’t really a river. He glanced up from the pages at the stagnant, immobile body of water in front of him. Swarms of night-bugs and barely-perceptable motes of light floated above the dark, colorless sludge that swept under the bridge and spanned one shore to the other. Here and there the stems of crooked plants broke the surfce like dead fingers reaching out of a grave. Eells knew that no boats traversed this waterway. No fish swam beneath its still surface. It wasn’t used for commerce or water collection, glory to being. It was just there, cutting through this section of the city like an infected wound. Avoided and untalked about—like every sin in this city.

There were no bums down here. No wayward souls seeking isolation. And any drunk that wandered near the river invariably stumbled into the mire and drowned themselves. Even the destitute and damned stayed clear of this place, which is why Rambolt Eells had sought it out. Here he could pore over the transcipt without any fear of interference or discovery. But also here there was no direct light, and years of studying in the abbey had not been kind to his vision. He strained simply to read the printed words—and when he finally deciphered them, he realized he had no idea what he was looking for. He had expected the name of the woman who had caused the Schism to jump out at him like a firework, that the letters would emblazon themselves like witchlight. Instead he saw hundreds of female names, and hundreds more that could have been female or male. The transcripts didn’t detail the sex of the travelers. How was he supposed to know if the Domrian name “Chezga” belonged to a man or a woman? And even then, if he could somehow determine the name, where would he go? There were no addresses, no destinations except for “Lormian-Celedin Aperature.” What was anyone supposed to do with this modicum of information?

He was frustrated. Worse than that, he was angry, and he had no one to direct his anger at. He wanted to tear the pages apart and hurl them into the river, but he knew how stupid that would be. Perhaps he would head back to the interworld hub and find the ticket-seller behind the counter. This was assuredly her fault, if anyone’s. He’d pull those iron bars off of her booth and drag her out screaming, or he’d just wait in the tunnels for her to get off her shift and sneak up behind her and slice open her heels…

“Not very holy thoughts.”

Eells looked up. A rot crow was perched on a decaying pylon that stuck out of the river.  Its feathers sagged off of its wings, and it stared at him with dead eyes.

Eells frowned and buried his nose in the transcript. “You can’t read my mind, Silas.”

“I only exist in your mind, Ram. Of course I know what you’re thinking.”

“I’ve never let an unholy thought pass through my skull.”

“So say you.”

Eells glanced up. The rot crow was preening itself. Eells snatched up a handful of mud and hurled it at the bird. In the darkness, he heard a heavy, wet splat off to Silas’ right.

“Begone, demon.”

“I’m only here because you want me to be.”

“I’ve never wanted you near. Not when you were alive, and certainly not now that you’re dead. Begone from here. I have work to do.”

“Right, right. Your hole-punched list of names that you don’t know. Tell me, how long before you get frustrated and just start killing everyone on that list?”

Eells trembled in irritation. He hadn’t even considered that option. He had one person to find on this list. Just one. And when he found her, he would kill her, ending the threat that she posed to the Real. All he had to do was divine who on this list she was.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”

“There is no task beyond my abilities. I am the Bereaver, Silas. ”

“That doesn’t mean anything. That’s a nonsense title given to you by superstitious old men who are too desperate and proud to seek actual help.”

“How dare you?” Eells shouted. “How dare you speak such blasphemies to me, foul Aether-thing? I have earned my position. I have suffered for this. You of all people should know this.”

“You’ve suffered? You? I’m dead, Ram.”

“Then you should not be here.”

“I’m not. Remember?”

Eells grimaced. Then he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, pushing his eyeballs back into his post-orbital walls to the point that it hurt. Upon reopening them the bird was still there, preening itself.

“You’re not going to make any progress sitting under this bridge like a troll.”

“I need no sage advice from you.”

“True. I don’t know anything you don’t. Because I’m just in your head, right? That’s what you told me last time we talked.”

“Do not pretend that my words offended you, Silas.”

The rot crow cawed rhythmically, bobbing up and down. Laughter, perhaps?

“You need someone’s help, Ram. You can’t do this on your own. You have no idea what you’re looking at. The sooner you admit that, the sooner you can find her.”

Eells looked down at the papers in his trembling fingers. Then back to Silas.

“Why do you believe the source of the Schism is a woman?”

The rot crow stood silent, motionless. Then it bobbed again.

“Find your old pal Primio. The bookkeeper. Surely you haven’t burned that bridge yet.”

Primio. The Elder Scribe of the Dineghast Abbey, where Eells had once studied. When he was a boy. When he still relied on mother’s approval, and when Silas still lived. Eells remembered going to Primio’s lectures. He remembered listening through the floorboards one night when Primio had surreptitiously brought a whore into the abbey.

The rot crow spread its wings, and took off to the east. Rambolt Eells did not call after it. Silas showed up when he wanted, and left as soon as he thought appropriate.

If ever he really left at all.

--

Rambolt Eells wiped rain and sweat from his face. He gazed upwards, directly into the moonless night sky. The rain on Celedin was near constant. Only sometimes in the mornings would it cease. And also, notably to him, on occasion just at dusk. When the sun touched down on the horizon, sometimes the storm would break and a thin line of red and yellow could be glimpsed above the rooftops. It was only ever momentary, as if Celedin was showing its people exactly what they weren’t seeing through the clouds, and then the rain started again. Light had fled from this city, and Rambolt Eells saw no reason for it to return.

Before him rose a prominent, intensely sloped hill. Its surface was too steep for building, or so it had been claimed by generations past. But Celedin had long since outgrown its own landmass, and even this bluff had to be claimed for human habitation. Dineghast Abbey had been built upon the top of the hill centuries before Eells had been born. Once it rose higher than any structure for miles, and looked out upon West Celedin from a place of loftiness and grandeur. But soon the surrounding towers had reached as high as the raised abbey, and eventually ambitious architects had started contructing houses along the slopes of the bluff itself. Gabled roofs and pointed towers crept up its sides like moss covering a rotting stump, poking up ever hirer until the abbey was completely surrounded. Its revered position was now crowded by lights, stone, and steel.

Eells again wiped his face and began the arduous climb up to the abbey. The hill itself was too steep to permit even motorized vehicles—only foot traffic could possibly reach the top. Cobblestone switchbacks wound between poorly constructed homes and listing towers. Lights burned inside every window. At this time of night, no one dared wander outdoors. Distant howls and closer chittering kept Eells alert even as his legs cramped and his pulse pounded in his ears. He saw more than a few rats along the narrow road. At one point he stopped to catch his breath, leaning against a dilapidated archway for support. When he looked up, a dog-faced thing was staring at him from an alley across the road. Its body was hunched and manlike, and its bulging yellow eyes wept. Rambolt drew his sword, and the thing vanished.

He stopped again at the top, grasping an iron fencepost and letting his legs recover for a moment. He looked up at the abbey, ancient and magnificent. Its four towered corners protruded from the walls defiantly, appearing to drive back the encroaching houses that crept up the sides of the bluff like water into a sinking boat. Acid rain had eaten away at the gargoyles and statuary adorning the abbey, but clear efforts had been made to restore the place. Memories of this place flooded back to him without calling—lectures and lessons, students and friends. Quiet contemplations in the cloister, and raucous celebrations during the Feast of Sealing. Letters received from Silas during his time in the army. A single letter from mother at the time of father’s death. Sneaking out in the night with brothers to catch a showing of The Seduction of the Jungle Queen at the theater on the neighboring hill, and the hushed conversations about the scene in the Jungle Queen’s canopy-chambers for weeks after. He remembered the lessons on the Aether, on shunning the Pale Light. Most of all, he remembered Rector Egan telling him coldly that his mother had died, and that day taking an oath of asceticism.

The abbey cast this all upon him, whether he wanted it or not. Some secrets were his alone, and some this abbey claimed with him. He looked out upon the never-ending sea of lights and smog that was West Celedin. There were so many people out there. So many potential sinners, so many who might be the woman he sought.

--

The candle flickered as a breeze swept through the room. Elder Scribe Primio puased in his reading for the little flame to recover. The flame seemed to fall in the breeze, flashing and then pulling itself back upright like a toddler that had fallen over. Upright again, the flame plumed bright once more. Primio turned his eyes back down to the open book on his desk—a copy of Jeon Triveste’s Economics of the Frimmian Era. His eyes skimmed the pages and took in anything that his spirit deemed important: the conslusions of graphs and charts, thesis statements and their outcomes, dates that preceded long paragraphs or stood on their own. The calloused fingers of his right hand flipped through the book in a rhythmic, fluid motion that he was only distantly aware of. With his left he scratched notes into thick ledger whose pages were heavy with blue ink.

The candle flickered again. He glanced up with a note of annoyance chiming in the back of his mind. He had been staring down at Triveste’s Economics for so many hours that his neck cried out at the sudden motion with a crack and a jolt of pain. The flame shook, and the righted itself.

He frowned. The occasional errant breeze wasn’t uncommon, but such a thing should be seldom seen in the basement office where he worked. He sat up straighter and looked about. Everything was dark beyond the little glow of his candle. The floor below him was uneven stone, same as the wall that his desk touched. In the dark he knew there were other unoccupied desks. Shelves lined the walls of this chamber, containing volumes of his notes and thoughts that spanned nearly a century. At the far end was a staircase that led up into the abbey, shrouded in darkness like everything else.

The sound of a boot touching the bottom step echoed across the chamber. Then all was silent again. The candle remained unflickering, and he knew that the gusts had come from a door being slowly and silently opened.

“My old eyes will not adjust before you have time to reach me,” he said. “Who is there?”

He heard footfalls across the stone, coming for him. Whoever this was, they had abandoned stealth for purpose now.

“At least speak to me,” Primio said. “I have no weapons. I cannot stop whatever it is you came here to do, so at least let me know your voice.”

“You know my voice well.”

A figure stepped into the globe of candlelight, and Primio’s eyes went wide. The person before him was tall and wearing the blue robes of a monk of the Order. His ceremonial rapier was in his right hand, stained dark and glinting orange. The tall man’s hair was swept back and held fast by rainwater, making obvious the pink wound that disfigured his face. Even more prominently, however, Elder Scribe Primio saw the fire and steel blazing in the man’s blue eyes.

“Brother Rambolt,” he said.

“You will address me proper, Primio,” Rambolt said. He swung the sword and touched his face gently with its tip, cocking his head so that the X that scarred his flesh might be illuminated better. “I have ascended.”

“I’ve heard of the actions of the Council. I did not imagine that they was true.”

“Rumor spreads quick, it seems. But you have heard correctly. I am no longer a monk, no longer your student.”

“You haven’t been my pupil in years.”

“As far as I am concerned, I never was. Everything that I once possessed is ash, everything that I once was has been annihilated. All I am now…” He gestured broadly with the rapier and stepped forward with one foot, as if to bow but refusing to bend. “… Is what you see before you.”

Primio swallowed a lump in his throat. “I have heard the other rumors, as well. They are searching for you, do you know that? Your fellow monks, and the Constabulary. They believe that you have killed men and they seek explanation.”

“I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I have been given immunity and purpose, Primio. Every action of mine is blessed and necessary. My quest concerns the safety of the Real itself. I can’t afford to hinder myself by answering to mere mortals.”

“Mortals,” Primio whispered. “I see. And what have you come here for?”

Rambolt’s eyes narrowed, and the wound on his face wrinkled in a way that must have hurt. But if it did he did not show it.

“You have still failed to pay proper homage to me, Scribe.”

Primio nodded, and bowed his head. “Of course. What have you—”

“Stand.”

Primio shifted in his seat. He stared up at Rambolt Eells. The man was a third his age. He remembered Rambolt as a boy, sitting alone in the dining hall of the abbey and always skulking about by himself. Rambolt had always busied himself with his studies, had always been an exemplary student. But he had never made any friends, despite the attempts of the other boys. Primio had always assumed that it was because of the abuse Rambolt had suffered from his father, but after that man had died Rambolt was still the same. Unfazed, even. He recalled sickly one night when he had discovered a young Rambolt Eells sitting alone in the cloister, clutching brass reliquary containing the bones of long-dead saint. When questioned, the boy had said he could hear the saint’s secrets speaking to him, and that the saint had been falsely canonized. Primio had lashed the boy severely for that.

Primio rose to his feet, legs shaking. Standing was an ordeal for him at this age—one that he only chose to undertake two or three times a day. He bowed his head again.

“What do you seek from me, Bereaver?”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fingers around Rambolt’s sword relax. The tip of the blade gently went to the floor.

“You may be seated, Scribe.”

Primio nodded once more and took his seat. Rambolt Eells sheathed his rapier and stepped up to the desk. He glanced down at the piles of scribblings and notes and disregarded them.

“I have a task for you. It must come before anything else you may be doing.”

“I am quite busy.”

Eells paused and waited for the scribe to continue. When he didn’t, he went on.

“There has been a Schism. I don’t need to explain to you how important that is. All you need to know is that the Schism was caused by a human being—a woman, to be precise. A woman from Lormian.”

Primio stared in silence, listening.

Rambolt reached into his robes and pulled out a wet stack of paper. “I know that this woman arrived within the last few days, and went through the interworld hub. I’ve procured a transcript of all travelers from Lormain in the last week. I require you to figure out who she is.”

“I see.” Primio took the papers. Seven sheets, with hundreds of names. “Do you have any other information for me to go on?”

“None that I can share with you, Scribe.”

Primio let out a short sigh. He scanned the list, and recognized lineages and surnames from across the Real. Lormian was only recently colonized. A Lormian citizen could come from anywhere. He began to calculate how best to categorize these people. Surely he could scratch off a number of people simply from knowing family businesses—a scion of the Rennegush dynasty would surely pass through the apertures frequently enough that they couldn’t be the source of this Schism. It would have to be someone who hadn’t gone through in years, or decades. He could likewise cross-reference with records of employees of the hub, rule out any of them. Powerful land owners would surely have been noticed before if their traveling caused disturbances in the fabric between worlds, likewise their servants and soldiers. Right away he could cut this list in half, and with minimal source-checking he could cut it in half again.

“This will take me some time.”

Rambolt Eells frowned. “Every second I spend here is another second that the source of the Schism gets away from me.”

“I will prioritize my every moment to this, Bereaver. But even then, I do not know anything of the person that you seek. At its soonest, this will take me a few days.”

Rambolt’s fists tightened. He breathed heavily through his nose for a moment before speaking.

“Does anyone know you are down here?”

“Yes, most people. These days the Rectors and the other Scribes leave me to my work down here, but they know where to find me should they need me. Brother Zemple brings me bread and water in the mornings, just to check up on me. Makse sure I haven’t died at my desk.”

“Then you are mostly undisturbed.”

Primio nodded.

“Well,” Rambolt said. “Then I will wait here.”

“For days?”

“You forget, Scribe. I was a monk. I am well-trained in the ways of fasting and waiting.”

“I thought you told me that everything you once were has been annihilated?”

Rambolt grabbed the ledger from Primio’s desk and hurled it into the darkness. Something glass shattered.

“Do not be cute with me, scribe,” Rambolt said, clutching the back of Primio’s chair and leaning in so that his face was only inches from the Elder Scribe’s. His breath was hot and rancid, like he had been eating old meat, and the wound on his face was irritated and almost glowing with infection. His steel eyes pierced through the gloom.

“The Bereaver has set set you about a task,” he said, spitting. “You will obey, and will not speak to me unless spoken to. You will be lucky to come out of this encounter with your fat tongue still in your wrinkled skull.”

Primio swallowed again, and nodded. Rambolt stood tall and breathed in deep. Then he looked away and marched into the darkness.

“Begin,” he said. “I will be here, at all times.”

TIME AWASH WITH BLOOD-- Chapter Ten, Part Two

Jayson wiped the caustic slime from his face with gloved hands. He spat out the black liquid in a sputtering, ragged effort, but at the same time he licked his lips and drew some of it back into his mouth. He knew the danger of this, knew how toxic the pools of Ivy Street were, but his tongue had tasted wetness and he couldn’t stop his body from craving a reprieve from his unending thirst. It tasted sweet, like a pepper. Part of him wondered if the man in the fancy coat had kicked the water in his face as a kindness, so that Jayson might break through his fears of street-water and discover its tastiness.

He spat again and scraped his tongue with his fingers. Toxic, poison. Infectious. He knew how evil these puddles were. Memories of lost friends came on like dim lights—friends who died in agony and covered in tumors. A junk woman had once told him that these black puddles were the run off of sewer ghouls, that parasitized men came up in the deep dark of the night to piss out steaming pools of blackness onto the cobblestone. Jayson did not want to become like them. He did not want to sink into the gutters and die and bloat and feed the rats with his poisonous flesh. He spat again.

But he was so thirsty. How long had it been since he’d tasted fresh water? Every few days he would travel down to the Wharf District and try to drink from the tide pools that formed between the flophouses, but the saltiness of seawater scared him. Something in his body instinctively told him that Salt Water Is Death. Funny that he didn’t get that same feeling from the black puddles of Ivy Street. His rational mind had to tell him that.

Jayson chuckled. ‘Rational mind.’ He hadn’t been sure of the things his mind told him in years. Decades? No, not that long. Surely not that long. He had only been on the streets for a few years, nothing more. His days at the factory weren’t that far behind him. He could still feel the warmth of the machines as he fed their fires, could still feel the tenderness of his wife in their tiny apartment in the Lower Reaches. His stomach turned as he thought of Miria… No, that wasn’t her name. Marya. No. His eyes opened wide and he stared into the dimness of the marketplace. By the Aether, had he truly forgotten her name? He felt a sudden, blooming ache in his gut, an ache that eclipsed his hunger and thirst and spread through his veins like a virus. Despair crashed unrelenting on the shores of his focus. Had his mind truly traveled so far into the abyss that he couldn't remember the love of his life? He could still feel the softness of her neck, still picture her green dress with the puffy shoulders, sense the way she hated the tightlacing of her corset but wore it anyway, but he couldn’t picture her face. Was that where names dwelled? Did they attach themselves to the face? But, oh no, how could he have forgotten her beautiful face?

As his gaze unfocused he lost track of the people passing in front of him. They became a slow, pulsing blur of muddy coats and tromping boots. They were all bound for somewhere, but they didn’t matter to him anymore than he to them. His eye grew watery, but he did not blink. He just stared, waiting for some flash or motion to bring back the memories of his wife’s features.

“Hey,” came a woman’s voice.

Jayson recoiled. A woman was standing above him. She wore a long coat and heavy leather pants, with a brown vest that buttoned all the way up her neck. So unlike his Moira, who loved showing the world the pale flesh and the fullness of her breasts. The woman before him was silhouetted by pink neon, making her look like an angel. The colorful light turned her blonde hair red and silver.

“You changed your hair, Mara.”

The woman said nothing. She glanced over her shoulder. A wide-shouldered man stood behind her—a Javadoan. He recognized Javadoans. One of those red-haired fucks had punched his teeth out when he used to work the rail lines, back in the day. That he remembered with clarity. Full red moustache, sweeping red hair, and blue eyes that seemed to never blink and contain all the fierceness and alacrity of a hawk. Why could he recall the countenance of a man he fought a lifetime ago, but not the face of his wife? He squinted into the dimness and glare that surround the woman. He couldn’t see her face. What had changed about Mira in the last however many years, he wondered?

“Are you cogent?” the woman asked.

“Moria, I can’t see your face. What do you look like these days?”

“He’s got tasp scars,” the Javadoan says.

“Fuck you, fire-face.” Jayson spat out some more trace droplets of the black water. “I haven’t wired.”

The woman crouched down. He could see her now—blonde hair running down her covered shoulders in wet tangles. Green eyes that looked sunken, sad. But beautiful. He couldn’t remember his wife’s eyes. This woman’s shoulders were too heavily covered, he couldn’t tell if she had soft, perfect skin. And her neck was buttoned up by that damned vest.

“Do you see much from down here, old man?” she asked.

Old man? Jayson wasn’t old. He’d quit the factory at forty. He was still in his prime. “Myra, why do you cover up your beautiful neck? Your eyes have changed. Are you sick?”

She stared into his eyes. Green, like emeralds. Set in a face like chiseled stone, and framed but dirty gold.

“I asked, are you cogent?”

“Thera, he’s got tasp scars.”

The woman glanced back. “Names.”

The Javadoan frowned. “He’s a wirehead. I don’t think it matters.”

“I haven’t wired since my days at the factory, you son of a bitch!”

Jayson felt the woman’s hand on his shoulder, and realized he had moved to stand up. He felt energy leave his body, and he let her slowly move him back down onto his blankets.

“How long ago was the factory?” the woman asked.

Jayson shook his head slowly. “Not long. Quit when I was thirty.”

“And how old are you now?”

His mind strained at that. “… Forty.”

“Thera…”

“Don’t call me that,” the woman said. “My friend, what’s your name?”

“Jayson.”

“And who do you think I am?”

“Meery. My wife. But, also not her. Haven’t seen her in many years. Since the factory. You’ve changed since then.”

The woman frowned. “Was the factory out east?”

Jayson shook his head. “No. Here, in West Celedin. Up the road. I stayed close in case they change their minds and want me back.”

“And how long ago was that?”

“Thirty years.”

The woman looked down. Was she disappointed by that? Her green eyes came up and met his again.

“Jayson, what is it you used to do?”

“Made engine parts for ships. Pistons, big as a man. That sort of thing.”

“Did you make these parts for private or public vessels?”

“Don’t know. I did know, though. I remember some of the ships. The Sea Warden. I liked that name. Thought of it as a prison ship but for whales. Or, the sea was the prison, and the whales were trapped there, and this ship—”

“Therazine,” the Javadoan said. “We’re wasting our time. We weren’t going to get anything from the first vagrant we saw.”

“I know.” The woman stood, and her green eyes left Jayson’s. He felt that hunger-despair in his stomach again. “Do you have any glit for him?”

“He didn’t give us anything.”

“Look at him.”

“I am looking, Thera. He’s got tasp scars on his skull bigger than my thumb. I’m not giving him any money.”

The woman glanced back down at Jayson. He hoped to see affection in her eyes, or even pity. Instead he saw nothing. Cruel indifference.

“I think I might be parasitized,” Jayson said, touching his lips with a dirty glove. “Think some of it may have gotten in my mouth.”

“Let’s go,” the Javadoan said.

The woman stared at him for a moment longer. Then she turned away. For a moment the motion excited him, the thought of maybe seeing her backside, but that damned heavy coat was still there.

“Wait,” he said. But she didn’t. “I think some of it got in my mouth. I think—I don’t want to become like Gennon. He fell sick and… I can’t handle the thought of eating man-flesh, Mareh. I think I might be…”

The two disappeared into the crowd. Jayson looked around—faces everywhere, none glancing his way. The corner of his quilted blanket had dipped into the black puddle, and he pulled it out quick. It was thick withthe oily substance. He brushed off what he could, but dark stains remained. They always would, he figured. He’d have to burn the blanket. But maybe he could give it to his friends—or the sewer-dwelling things that had once been his friends. He wondered if they still sought blankets, or even warmth. But the thought of their mutated, predatory faces filled his mind with horror, and he banished the image.

He touched the side of his head gently—felt the crater-like scar on his temple where once he’d connected a tasp. He’d told the Javadoan the truth about that. Not since the factory had he wired, and even then it had only been with friends, on nights when Mary was away. The factory. He should go back to work. Surely, they’d be able to provide him with freshwater, or medical care if he had indeed been parasitized. He moved to stand up, and felt pain in his right knee. A glance at his now uncovered leg showed the bloodstains where a cart had backed over his shin, laming him. Fear and memories and pain washed over him.

Ah. Yes, he couldn’t walk. Which is why he was still here, on Ivy Street. Which is why he was thirsty. And hungry, despite the stalls of food all around him. Probably also why Mora left him. What use is a husband who can’t get out of the way of a horse-drawn cart?

Jayson leaned over and picked up his mug again. He held it out and gently twirled it so that the stones inside made a rattling sound. He just needed a little glit, just enough to get him a meal, and then a carriage ride back to the factory so he can beg for his job back. And maybe to the electro-den down the corner, where he might hook himself up to a tasp. Just for an hour or two, as a reward to himself. He was planning on working hard today, after all.