Eells tongue was dry. He licked his lips and tasted acrid smoke. He did not breath through his nose, not down here. From underneath the eaves of a shuttered shop he studied the the soggy list of names in his hands. Rain pattered above him, on the cobblestone around him. It fell hard, splashing his boots and staining the hem of his robe dark. He licked his lips again, tasted sweat and smog. A passerby coughed into their gloved fist—a thick, ragged sound, like a faucet disgorging sewer water.
Eells drew his tongue back in over his teeth and resisted the uge to spit.
His eyes scanned the six names again. They were all women, and they were all in Celedin. Beyond that he knew nothing. The document provided their residential districts, but not specific addresses. The interworld hub didnt have the authority or manpower to log the locations of the millions that traveled here from other worlds, especially when considering the fact that most people had no permanent address. The poor and destitute moved as frequently as the tides, wordlessly obeying the gravitic whims of economics and disease. Two of the names on this list didn’t even have residential districts—they were simply listed as “itinerants.”
He bit his lip, and looked over the six names circled in red ink.
- Aratria Geddon, Rainslick Plaza
- Tori Kebbulut, The Dregs
- Elspeth Frume, Poroncio District
- Therazine Morlo, Itinerant
- Xian Xiozu, Marrock Hill
- Dramm Ofthezeg, Itinerant
No other information. All women. None of them were nobility or prominent businessfolk. All of them had come from Lormian. His target was one of the women here. Primio had made certain of this, as his last act in the Real. The two itinerants would be most difficult to track down. The others would not be simple in a city that was brimming with over a billion fermenting souls, but how many Tori Kebbuluts could there be in the Dregs? Or Xian Xiozus in Marrock Hill?
Eells grimaced. That last name felt sour every time he read it. That was not a Celedine name. He could practically see the pits of bubbling tar and black skies of whatever world this Xiozu woman hailed from. He imagined the pagan idols that she must have brought with her when she migrated to Celedin—skull charms, sickly glowing Aether bands, bound clusters of animal bones. Perhaps her home would be easier to identify than the others.
“Why you reading in the rain?”
He looked up and saw a woman standing in the street before him. A wet grey coat hung from her shoulders. Her knotted hair fell in fat clumps over her shoulders. Her trousers were far too tight across her bulging thighs. She wore makeup of some sort, a clear varnish over her lips that Eells did not know the name for. But she had applied it poorly—it glistened around the edges of her mouth like a new scar.
He narrowed his eyes and said nothing.
“Why you reading in the rain?” she repeated. Her brow was furrowed, and her sunken eyes were full of curiosity. She did not seem to recognize the X-shaped scar on Eells’ face. The way she stood there, watching him. It was late in the evening. Did she not have to hurry back home? No. From the way she stood, from the vacuous way she regarded him, Eells was certain that she did not have family depending on her somewhere. There was a wax wrapper crumpled in her left hand, the refuse from an unnecessary midnight sandwich; no doubt her fourth or fifth that day.
Eells felt his stomach turn and growl as he thought of food, and he felt a bloom of pride at the resiliency of his spirit to withstand the body’s incessant carnal craving for food. He briefly wondered what other vices this woman surrendered to, but the images that snuck into his mind made his skin crawl.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The woman blinked. She opened her mouth and her neck sagged with it.
“I’m Desi. Who are you?”
“Begone, wretch.”
The woman frowned, and walked off down the street. She called him some name as she vanished into the rain and crowd but Eells did not pay her any attention. His eyes had returned to his list.
Marrock Hill was far, on the opposite side of Mount Recep. Similarly the Dregs was a district adjacent to the docks, and thus on the coast seven miles to the west. But Rainslick Plaza was only the next district over from where he currently stood. On foot he could reach the center of the district in a few hours. He briefly entertained the idea of summon a coach or cab, but the thought of a Bereaver using such mundane forms of transportation disgusted him.
He would walk, and arrive precisely when he was meant to.
---
Rainslick Plaza itself surrounded a large open area of land that at one point had been a park, but now was six square blocks of single-story squat buildings and fields of tents. Two short conversations had led Eells to a sore-covered vagrant who had set up his home under an ancient dead tree near the edges of the plaza. The vagrant did not consider himself fortunate enough to own one of the ramshackle huts or even the stained tents, but before he could regale Eells with his tale of woe he was silenced. Eells explained to the man that he did not care, that his plight was unimportant, and that all that mattered was that this man provide the Bereaver with the information he needed. Some gleam in the vagrant’s eye suggested he had some former schooling with the Order of Prevalistics, and that he knew exactly what Eells’ title implied. He capitulated in a stammering, apologetic way.
The woman in question, Aratria Geddon, lived in a building just up the hill. The vagrant gave him her apartment number, and her usual morning routine, and the various colors of dress that she wore whenever the rain let up, and the types of men that she invited into her home, and a detailed description of her smile and the bounce of her hair, and the special trick that was needed to knock down the ladder to the her fire escape, and the fact that the blinds to her bedroom window were bent and if you showed up just after sunset then—
Eells silenced the man again and left. He found the building—a tall, black stone structure with a crown of acid-eaten gargoyles. The streets surrounding the building were empty this early in the morning, and there were only two amber lights on in the myriad windows that covered its dark surface. The door to the lobby was locked.
He circled the building twice before finding the fire escape. The vagrant’s instructions had been accurate—with a knock from his sheathed rapier the ladder came down with a cold rattling clang. Were it not for the driving rain, the sound might have awoken someone. He climbed four stories. His hands were slick and scratched from gripping the rusted railings. A four pane window stood ahead of him. The blinds were drawn; there were no lights within. He leaned in and cupped his hand over his eyes, finding a gap in the old brown blinds and waiting for his eyes to adjust to the deep darkness within the apartment.
A cluttered room. Indistinguishable art on the walls. A figure bundled up on the bed.
Over the din of the rain, Eells heard the flap of wings. Talons clasped onto the railing of the fire escape. He turned, and saw a rotcrow perched there.
“Do I even need to say anything?” Silas said.
“Begone,” Eells said, looking back at the window. “You are not needed here.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m here anyway. So, how are you going to do it? Pry the window open quietly and slit her throat? Or just bust the glass and pick her up? Maybe declare your divinity as you toss her to her death?”
“Your words won’t change anything here, Silas. I am free of conflict.”
The rotcrow spread its wings and looked back and forth. “Apparently not. I’m not real, remember? I’m just in your mind?”
“I said begone.”
“Or maybe I am real. Have you considered that? Your poor dead brother has returned from the Aether to warn you about the consequences of your wicked ways. Pretty sure mother read us a story like that when we were younger.”
“Mother never read us anything.”
“Maybe not you. But then, I was always her favorite son.”
Eells turned sharply.
“Your words,” Silas said. “Not mine.”
“Why are even here? Why are you trying to stay my hand, when it was you who has led me down this path?”
“I didn’t lead you anywhere. This is all you. I’m just telling you what I know.”
“You were the one who told me that the source of the Schism was a woman, foul creature.”
“Just giving you the facts as I know them. It’s you who is making these decisions, not me.”
“So are you or are you not trying to stop me?”
“Is that doubt I sense in your voice, dear brother?”
Eells struck out at the rotcrow, but Silas flapped and jumped to perch on the ladder above him.
“Not so loud,” Silas said. “You’ll wake her.”
“Get out of here,” Eells whispered. “Get lost, and never come back. You do nothing but cloud my purpose.”
“Maybe that’s my purpose. Have you thought about that?”
Eells growled. “Tell me what you have come to say and then leave.”
The rotcrow chirped, and a feather fell from its neck.
“It’s not her.”
Eells ground his teeth. “You can’t know that.”
“Maybe not. But that’s what I came to tell you. This isn’t the one.”
Eells regarded the window again. The blackness within, and the still form that lay within that blackness. One of six. The woman he sought was one of six.
“Then which one is it?”
“Not this one,” Silas said, rocking on the ladder.
“That isn’t good enough.”
“That’s what I have to tell you. Nothing else.”
Eells just stared at the window. After a moment of silence, the rotcrow spread its wings and flew away into the rain.
Eells breathed in deep, tasted the smoke in the air. He smelled feces wafting up from the tent city in the center of the plaze, heard a dog growl in the alley below. There were five other names on the list. They begged his attention now. But he had come all the way here. He tried the window and found it locked. He was frustrated, but not surprised. For a few minutes he simply stood in the rain and thought. Then he hissed through his teeth and descended the ladders of the fire escape. He almost reached the bottom before he stopped.
Was Silas merely a manifestation of his psyche? A specter from his past? He knew that strange magic existed in the distant realms of the Real, and knew that the Aether could generate even more terrifying apparitions. But how was one to tell the difference between sorcery and the flickering morality of the human spirit? What part of him was reacting to his own sound judgment, and what part of him was being manipulated by the Pale Light to be thrown off his path?
He hung on to the last rung of the ladder, just above the alley.
Rambolt Eells was the Bereaver. He had been given that title because he had a gift, a sight. He could feel the fissures in reality whenever the Aether attempted to spill into his world. That was why the Council had entrusted him with his job. He could not trust his thought, but he could trust his instincts. His intuition was truth.
And right now, that truth told him that Silas was lying.
He climbed the fire escape again. His shoulders ached as he pulled himself over the fourth-story railing. Without pause he shattered the central window pane to Aratria’s black bedroom. The woman screamed, and continued to scream as he crashed into the safety of her home. The next few minutes were a blurry, adrenaline fueled haze of groping hands, banging knees, and warm sprays of arterial blood. In the panic and darkness he never drew his sword. But when the screaming stopped and he stood above her bed sweating and heaving he knew that his holy work had been done.
His eyes could not be trusted. In darkness he had prevailed. His thoughts could not be trusted. Only his intuition, his soul, would tell him the truth. One down. Five to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment