Cameron Johnston - The Traitor God

A throng of barefoot and muddy children swarmed me, begging for coin. I liked cheeky wee pups like them; their thoughts tended to be far more hopeful than adults, less tarnished than the minds I usually touched. I distracted them with a few coppers and made my escape heading north, towards where Lynas was murdered. I tried and failed to make sense of his muddled vision, to figure out where he’d encountered the shard beast and the hooded man, where my friend had died.

The slums of East Docklands consisted of random formations of five- and six-storey tenements, no two alike, leaning drunkenly out over twisting alleyways. The luckier people lived along Fisherman’s Way in solid stone buildings built during the height of the empire, but here most had one or two storeys of stonework before extending upwards in wood. Every few years a dry summer hit Setharis and entire areas of the slums were razed by outbreaks of fire, only to be rebuilt in new configurations that looked like the scribblings of a mad cartographer.

In the centre of the lower city, the Warrens boasted the worst streets, ones that squelched with ankle-deep shite and piss that autumn rains washed down from higher ground. Folk with decent professions and skills clawed their way upwind to West Docklands to avoid the stinking smog that prevailing winds blew southeast, and where sewage ran downstream into the Warrens instead of pooling at your doorsteps on rainy days.

A sonorous DOOOOOOMMMMMM of a great bell tolling out mid-afternoon made me look up at the looming basalt rock that the Old Town was perched on, a place most low-born would never set foot in if they wanted to keep it attached. They couldn’t have the nobility and the magi rubbing shoulders with the poor – after all, that would be vulgar . On the far side of Docklands, over the river Seth and uphill towards the Old Town, the fine dressed stone abodes of the middle-classes fawned in a wide crescent of higher ground around the base of the rock. A peasant would be lucky to cross those bridges into the Crescent, never mind dream of setting foot in the Old Town.

A pockmarked old whore sidled up to me and gave me a toothless smile. An overpowering floral scent followed her, probably intended to hide her rotten breath. She was no high-class lady of sheets, that was certain.

“Not today, love,” I said, pushing past her and plodding on towards Sailor’s Spire. I had a man to find and kill.

“Eunuch!” she spat at my back.

Ah, it was good to be home.

The black needle of Sailor’s Spire loomed ahead, a memorial paid for by the Docklanders’ own hard toil. Fresh flowers garlanded the stained stone edifice and a widow was on her knees before it, wailing as she offered two straw-woven likenesses of her dead. People paused in passing to lay down a parcel of food, a coin, or just to offer a respectful nod. In a place like Docklands every family had lost somebody to the sea.

At the spire I turned up onto Fisherman’s Way, heading north towards Carrbridge. A short time later I felt eyes watching me from the alleyways. I wrung my hands and looked left and right, peering at the wooden signage of workshops and shop fronts in apparent confusion. Then, remembering the guard’s warning about where the thieves frequented, I turned off the Way and wandered down a side street, then into a darkened alley away from bustling open streets. The buildings above creaked and groaned as I penetrated deeper into the warren of narrow passages.

I passed a group of torch-wielding women at the mouth of a vegetation-choked lane, all clad in thick leathers, busy beating back snapping green mouths of thorny witherweed and searing its roots with fire. The venomous weed was tenacious, hibernating for years in the mud before bursting up overnight to catch the unwary. A single bite could kill a child in seconds, and then it sucked them dry of all fluids before digesting their withered flesh. Witherweed was but one of the many twisted wonders of Setharis, some occurring naturally and others escaped experiments. I kept my head down and continued on through winding alleyways.

Nothing looked familiar. My recollection of Lynas’ message was garbled, the images almost unintelligible and these alleys were all of a muchness. All I could see with certainty were those glittering daemons, a shadowed hood and a red-stained scalpel. I’d need Charra to help me decipher it.

I heard soft footfalls behind me, as expected. I turned to see a rake-thin youth brandish a rusty knife. My heart sank. The pup couldn’t have seen fourteen summers, if that. A tarnished earring of twisted silver wire adorned his left ear.

“Gimme your money,” he snarled, thrusting his weapon towards me.

Staring at the knife, I made a show of cringing back against the alley wall with my coin pouch clutched to my chest. He swept closer and snatched it from my hand. Unseen, my other hand flicked out to his belt and pocketed his own pouch. The thief peered in at my few remaining copper bits and scowled. He’d been expecting more. He eyed my fine coat. It was all going exactly as planned.

I stripped off my coat and thrust it at him. “Here, take this. It has to be worth something.”

He grabbed it and appraised the cloth; it would be worth a few silvers to a fence. He looked me up and down and saw that I had nothing else of worth. His intentions were obvious in his eyes, muscles tensing ready to plunge the knife into my chest. He didn’t want any witnesses left to raise a cry of thief! He stepped in close, knife poised.

I let my mien of meekness slip, a sudden change in posture to radiate killing intent. My eyes hardened, fixed on his own. I’d kill him if I had to, and then find another thief. He flinched back. Street rats needed a strong survival instinct if they wanted to live for long. He had second thoughts, turned and fled down the street with my coat and almost-empty pouch.

The pathetic merchant mask slipped back onto my face. Wringing my hands, I stumbled towards Fisherman’s Way after taking a quick peek into the youth’s own money pouch. I whistled at the sight of silver; seemed the boy had already robbed a few others today. Now I had enough coin for a few nights at an inn, and to my delight I found two tabac roll-ups in there. It was the good stuff too, not the usual choke-throat I found in far-flung villages and towns.

The boy had tried to steal from a bigger and nastier thief than he was. The main thing was that my fine coat was into other hands and onto other backs. The shadow cats shouldn’t be able to survive in the daemon-toxic air of Setharis, but only fools left survival to assumption. If they still hunted me then they should instead pick up the scent of my magic in the wool. I’d been sleeping in it for days, letting it soak up my sweat. No amount of washing would be getting that out soon, not beyond the noses of those damn cats. It might buy me more time. Pity it’d been a barely-weaned pup that robbed me. Even if he’d been about to stick me with a knife, I would still have it on my conscience if the daemons caught up with him before he could shift it on to some nastier, hardened scumbag. Lucky my conscience was a withered husk of a thing. I wouldn’t shed any tears for the likes of him, and I had more urgent things to concentrate on: Lynas had been trying to warn me that far more that his own life was at stake. I owed it to him to finish what he’d started.

The Gift-bond to Lynas was no longer a constant presence, his innate goodness helping to steer my wayward morality. When I’d been a Docklands street rat, that selfish mentality had been a boon to survival, but now that I wielded terrifying power it made me dangerous. I wasn’t one to shy away from abusing power if somebody deserved it, and if I could get away with it. Without his comforting guidance in the back of my mind all I could do was keep asking myself: what would Lynas do ? I would try not to disappoint him.