Mark Newton: Nights of Villjamur

Randur had been travelling for weeks. Somewhere on the way, on a superficial level, he'd become someone else. His mother was back in Ule, on the island of Folke. A stern yet strangely faithful woman, she'd raised him on her own in spite of the collapse of their wealth, which had happened when he was too young to know about it. He remembered hearing her coughing upstairs, in a musty room, the stench of death all too premature. Every time he entered it, he never knew what to expect.

She'd found him a 'job' in Villjamur. It came through the influence of one of his shady uncles who was well connected on Y'iren and Folke as a trading dignitary, though he'd never shared his wealth with them. The man had always commented on Kapp's good looks as if this was a hindrance in life. Then that same uncle informed Kapp's mother that a man the same age and appearance as the lad had disappeared only the previous week. His name was Randur Estevu, and it was known that he was headed for employment in the Emperor's house. He had even been a rival of Kapp's at dance tournaments and in Vitassi bladework during the island's festivals. The young man had made enemies all right, boasting all too often that he had sanctuary guaranteed in Villjamur before the Freeze came.

'You lot'll turn to ice, fuckers,' the lad had said at the time, 'while I got me safe digs at the warmest place in the Empire. Can't say more, though, because I wouldn't want you lot getting in on my connections.'

They'd found his body, or what was left of it, stuffed inside a crate on a decaying boat that hadn't left the harbour at Geu Docks for as long as anyone could remember. No one was even shocked the boy was dead. They were more interested in the old boat itself, as it seemed to fulfil some maritime prophecy someone had mentioned the week before.

Kapp then became Randur Estevu. Fled south with fake identification to the Sanctuary City.

He was told by his mother to seek his fortune there, where the family line might have a chance to survive the arrival of the ice. He had no idea what the real Randur Estevu was to be doing in Villjamur, as the stolen papers didn't explain. Besides, Randur, as he would now be known, had his own schemes.

He fingered the coin in his pocket, the one the cultist had handed him all those years ago, in the darkness, on that night of blood.

Garudas loomed above on the battlements beside the final gate leading into the city. They stood with folded arms. Half vulture, half man: wings, beaks, talons on a human form. Cloaks and minimal armour. White faces that seemed to glow in this grey light. During his few days in a Folke station of the Regiment – which he joined on a poetic whim, and primarily to impress this girl who was all longing glances and unlikely promises – the men talked much about the skills of the garuda. It seemed only a talented archer stood a chance of deleting one from the skies.

Soldiers had checked his papers at the first and second gates. At the third they searched his bags, confiscated his weapons, and questioned him with an alarming intensity.

'Sele of Jamur,' Randur said. 'So, then, what news here in the Sanctuary City?'

One of the guards replied, 'Well, the mood ain't good, to be honest. People ain't happy. See a lot of miserable faces, both outside and in. Can understand it out there, like,' he indicated the closed gates behind which huddled the refugees. 'But in there they've got faces like slapped arses, the lot of 'em. They're the ones who're safe, too, miserable sods.'

'Perhaps no one likes being trapped, even if it is for their own good,' Randur speculated.

'Hey, they're free to fuck off any time,' the guard grumbled. 'Nah, it'll bring more than just ice, this weather.'

After this final search, Randur continued through, and at last he found himself standing inside the Sanctuary City.

Whoever built Villjamur, or at least whoever designed its intricate shapes and eerily precise structures, could surely not have been a human. Garish buildings were coated with painted pebbles, whilst other oddities possessed coloured glass in the stonework so they glistened like fractured gems. Randur stared around in awe, not quite sure which way to go first. Possibilities grew exponentially. The chilling rain transformed into drizzle then began to stop. Fish was cooking in some far alleyway. Nearby, two signs said 'firewood'. From the windows of one of the terraced houses, a couple of women started hanging out sheets. Two young men talked in some local hand-language, their sentences needing a gesture and a glance for completion. Ahead of him, roads branched on two sides, each leading uphill in a gradual arc, while pterodettes raced up the cliff faces looming in the distance. Kids were sliding on patches of ice in horizontal freefall. A couple walked by, the blonde woman much younger than the man, and he judged them 'respectable' by the quality of their clothing. Randur was tempted to make eye contact with the woman, and perhaps tease a reaction out of her. It seemed to matter, stealing a smile from that man's life. Not just yet, though. He had only just arrived. He had a cultist to find.

*

In a top-floor bedroom, in one of the expensive balconied houses gracing the higher levels of Villjamur, a woman with a scarred face relaxed on top of a man who was still panting from his sexual exertions.

They kissed. Tongues slid across each other – only briefly, as it didn't quite feel right, and she wasn't sure which of them was causing that reaction. She pulled away, then clutched his chest, began playing with the grey hairs. His face was small, his features delicate, and his hands were rough, but at least they were touching her. Neither of them had ruined the sexual act with words, something she at least was grateful for. Meanwhile he continued to run his hands along her sides, rubbing her hip bones gently with his thumb, as if he had a fetish for the firm ridges of her body.

She pushed herself forward till her long red hair fell across his face. She then waited for him to brush it aside, and slowly, she could see the inevitable disappointment appear in his eyes, just as she had learned to notice it regularly over the last few years. At first his eyes remained fixed on hers. Then she saw his pupils clearly register the terrible blemish on the side of her exposed face. This one's reaction isn't so bad, she reflected. He had been a little drunk when they met, and his vision easily blurred. She had remained disappointed, though, in his overall ability to maintain his erection.

It always seemed to end up the same when she sought her own pleasure – something very different from when she was merely doing it for the money. Her job made it hard for her to meet normal men, certainly stopped her having a decent relationship. Her visible disfigurement didn't help either, that blistering down the right side of her face.

But this was her night off, and she had wanted a fling to make her feel better. She so much wanted to feel close to someone, had wanted that for so long.

In her younger days, she had known the world was cruel, how people judged you by first appearances. How that childlike prejudice against the unnatural could continue into adulthood as people merely found a way of better hiding their revulsions.

She pushed herself off him slowly, and then reached for her dressing gown. Walking over to the window, she looked out across the spires and bridges of Villjamur as if she was now trying to put the greatest possible distance between the two of them. In the opposite corner of the room, covered canvases of various sizes were stacked against the wall. She could still smell the chemicals from the painting she had begun yesterday evening.

'Wow,' he said at last. 'By Bohr, you're amazing.'

She now gazed at the bruised skies hanging over the city, the last of the rain driving lightly across its architecture. Lifting the window sash, she could hear a cart being drawn across the cobbles, could smell the scent of larix trees from the forest to the north. She looked up and down Cartanu Gata and the Gata Sentimental, alongside the art gallery – a place where she doubted her own paintings would ever hang. People merged with shadows, as if they became one. Directly under her window, a man stumbled in and out of her vision, his sword scraping against the wall. For some reason she couldn't understand, each of these qualities of the city merely heightened her sense of loneliness.