“What’s all this?”
I carried on to my room, not paying her much mind, but she followed me. Things had been a little awkward between us for the past few nights. I arranged the statues, some on the furniture, some on the floor, and stacked the books in two corners, one pile for actual holy texts and one for books about beliefs.
“Frank?” Cassie asked.
“I’m trying to figure out what I believe,” I said.
“Why?” Cassie asked. “Why should any of this be true?”
“Because there could be something. Just because there’s no proof, and the details don’t add up, doesn’t mean we should dismiss the whole idea.”
“But . . . why the interest?” She was walking round the room, her boots thudding, picking up items and looking at them confoundedly as I opened a book about Dezkary religions and started reading.
“There might be something of value in these. I always felt there was value in faith when I was mortal. Many people do.”
“Can’t help you, Frank, I’m truly sorry,” she said, respectfully replacing the idol she’d been examining. “Andreas may be a pain in the arse over this, but I’m basically of the same mind. We know this is all made up. There’s almost zero chance of any of these myths being anything other than the ideas of primitive people from thousands of years ago. I can’t imagine there’s anything of value here.”
I looked up at her. “I need to know if there’s any chance of seeing my wife again,” I said.
She fell silent, gaped at me for a moment, and then her attention was drawn by something in the window behind me. She stared at it, her brow furrowed, her mouth opened. I heard a scratching and turned around.
Perched on the frame of the open window, was a raven.
No, not a raven. It was a cantume bird, distinguished by the short, prickly feathers on its head and thick ruff of downy feathers around its neck.
It inclined its head, regarding me with one beady eye (reminding me of Lucian) then took to pecking the windowsill. It tapped four times, then stopped and looked at me again, then repeated. Peck peck peck peck, stare, peck peck peck peck. Then, in an instant, its wings burst to life and it was gone, swooping between the hab-blocks, over dumpsters and market stalls, wrecks and bunting and beggars.
I leapt to my feet, shot Cassie a glance, asking her to understand.
She nodded at me: go. Fast as you can.
*
I ran, faster than I had ever run before, faster than I ever could have as a mortal, nearly tripping and falling half a dozen times in my haste to catch up with the cantume. As I stumbled into a three-armed Baneful, mumbling an apology and half-hearing his yell of protest, I saw the bird squatting on top of a hab-block, watching me. It alighted again and soared on, casually.
I followed through thirty streets, past children playing with sticks and men fighting with knives, past junkies and buskers and a woman talking to herself about how she had “killed him, I’ve killed him.” I barely saw them, barely spared a glance down from my soaring hopes.
Eventually, the cantume landed on a bronze, life-sized statue of a man, in a small courtyard bordered by buildings on three sides. The plaque identifying the man had long since worn away. The cantume cawed as I approached, but stayed where it was. I reached up to it, and it plucked at a thread on my glove.
The day was overcast, and specks of rain sprinkled down. From a few metres away, I heard a voice. “Hello, Frank.”
My new friend squawked and flew away. The voice had come from my left, from the shade of a veranda. To my astonishment, I saw Sara there, half hidden by one of the supportive pillars, with the visible side of her face almost covered by her loose ebony hair gently floating in the breeze.
“Sara? Why are you here?” I asked. “Did you send the bird?”
“What bird? I’m just on my way somewhere.”
“Where?” I asked, not expecting an answer. I was getting tired of Sara’s vagueness and secrecy.
“Somewhere where you could find some solace, I think.”
Startled by her openness, I began to blurt out more questions, only to have her press a finger to my mouth, tickling my bristles.
“You’ll see,” she said. “It’s a place where you won’t have to be ashamed of how you think, where people won’t shun you or make a spectacle of you. A place where you can talk about whatever’s on your mind, and nobody will be offended or think you’re a fool.”
She led me miles through the East of Caldair. Unlike when I’d been following the cantume, I paid attention to what I saw along the way. We passed a rubbish dump where children scavenged for food and fought over the rotten scraps. We walked through a street flooded with sewage, which an old woman was futilely trying to scoop up with a bucket. In the corner of an abandoned thoroughfare, a man sat and hugged himself, shaking from cold and rocking back and forth. His shakes and shivers turned to spasms and a full-blown fit. We stopped and tried to prevent any injury. When the tremors subsided, he spat and cursed and screamed at us until we left.
In the ruins of two collapsed hab-blocks, people slept in makeshift tents assembled from twigs and torn cloth. People changed and washed and made love in full view of their neighbours, because there was little choice.
The worst sight we encountered was a district of ten hab-blocks that had been burned down. People lay dead everywhere, men, women and children, human and Baneful. Some were burnt, others shot, or bludgeoned, or dismembered. The smell overpowered, forced its way through your nostrils and pervaded every cell of your body and mind.
A crowd wandered through, salvaging what few useful items they could find. Their filthy clothes were literally fraying off their backs, and they were as thin as the sticks that propped up the tents. There was despair here—total, abject misery that went beyond the simple absence of hope. This city had lost its soul. Sara offered no answers, no clue as to what truth I was supposed to learn from this.
Night had fallen by the time we passed the last of these portraits of human suffering. The darkness was welcome, blotting out the worst atrocities of the city.
At the eastern edge of Caldair, before the city gave way to hard-pan and the mountain range beyond, the panorama of hab-blocks dwindled away. In their place, people had erected a shanty town, which stretched for miles, all the way from Llangour in the north to the desolation in the south. These were sturdier structures than the tents we had passed, made from wooden boards and sheets of metal. Built to last, at least for a short while.
Fires burned. Their smoke was pleasant, smooth, aromatic and spicy. Fire light flickered, reflected off every surface it could find. A gentle wind billowed the curtains draped in the shacks’ doorways. Voices in the distance, carried on the breeze. Children playing, yelling cheerfully. Deep voices in deep conversation.
I glanced at Sara. She was smiling, knowingly and kindly.
We walked on. Music played. Drums, oboes, gourds, horns. Sound drifted in and out, the air offered a draft of one, then a sip of another.
Footsteps then, rhythmic, dancing. Singing and laughter.
The shacks passed us by, and we were instantly surrounded by people. Men somersaulting over blazing fires. Belly dancers winding through the crowd.
People in rust coloured robes, humming and swaying and vocalising nonverbally. Women in sarees, playing reeds. At the edge of the festival, an old man singing cappella. And everywhere, the drums. A rhythm that made your feet itch to be off the ground.
Smoke and embers blowing in the breeze. Men cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, heads back, praying or meditating. Moths pirouetting above and around us. People dancing naked around a totem.
The revellers gathered and wandered, chatted and laughed and whooped with glee at the dancers, at this overwhelming of the senses and mingling of styles and cultures.
Separate musicians played, music from all across the World, but each one harmonised with the next, and each rhythm had a counter-rhythm from another musician.
A man,
bare from the waist up, tattooed, carrying a torch, stopped and smiled, swallowed the fire from his torch and blew it into the sky.
Sara laughed with amazement. The man bowed and moved on.
There were barrels and baskets filled with all manner of food, more food than I had seen since leaving Llangour. The disconnect bothered me; why was there so much here, and so little in the city?
“What is this?” I asked, raising my voice to be heard. Another geyser of song erupted behind me, a choir of children complemented by rhythmic chanting.
“People gather here once a month, to worship together and try to answer life’s mysteries the best way they know how—by celebrating them.”
“What are they worshipping?”
“Kal’blay. The universe. The Exalted. The old spirits. Yantaha, the blessed. The suns and moons and stars and the ground beneath our feet. The gods that live in the wind.” She closed her eyes to savour the breeze against her face. “Anything, everything, nothing. It doesn’t matter. I told you: nobody judges.”
“Is there going to be a feast?” I asked, nodding towards the horded fruit and vegetables and meat.
She followed my gaze, then turned back to me, astonished. “No!” Then she laughed. “Well, I guess. We celebrate the common ground we all share, the one thing we all believe in.”
“What’s that?” I still wasn’t convinced. I saw a lot of good here, people with no reason to come together, seemingly no mutual truth, were sharing their cultures and the joys they could bring. But I was still wary. “What could they all possibly have in common?”
Sara beamed up at me, a sort of mercy in her eyes. “Kindness,” she whispered.
The music had stopped. People still talked and chattered, softly, but no-one sang or laughed. A cheer in the distance voiced anticipation for what was about to be done.
Members of the gathering picked up the barrels and baskets, bearing them in their arms, propping them on their backs, or balancing them on their heads. The people slowly wandered away from their camp towards the looming city.
Understanding coursed through me. This food was for the starving people of Caldair. These people, all probably needing food themselves, had come together to help whoever they could. Dozens of different faiths, many probably containing mistranslations and myths and prejudices just like Exaltism, and these people had all managed to hear the same message: Be kind. Give.
The fires continued to spread their warmth behind me as I followed the pilgrims into the bleeding city that had become my home, a crate of food on my shoulders, borne by the strength that being Fallen had granted me.
Deluge
Our would-be saviour didn’t scream as we burned him. Even at a young age—I must have been . . . what? Five?—I had been taught that Fallen don’t feel pain, they pretend to when it suits them. This was one of the fallacies I had to unlearn when I grew older, when I met a Fallen named Andreas and he taught me the truth of things. Andreas told me that Fallen do feel pain, but have more control over their reactions. This Fallen who had tried to save us suffered unimaginable pain in total silence, because he refused to lose his dignity.
He had warned that Llangour’s crystal Shimmer Barrier would kill us. Mum and Dad had said that was a lie, but I wondered if maybe he was being honest. Maybe he knew more than we did. I’d cried when we’d killed him, a deluge of tears. The Procurator conducting the ceremony had glared at us from under his black feathered cowl until my parents scolded me.
“Shush, Italy,” Mum said. “You’re showing us up in front of everyone!”
“I had to shake a lot of sweaty hands to get these seats,” father chimed in. “Don’t ruin this.”
The vaulted ceiling, ivory with gold swirls, was obscured by smoke until I could barely see the glow of the chandelier.
“Mummy, it smells. Why do they have to burn him?”
“Burning will purge the Ruiner’s demon that’s keeping him ‘alive’. You don’t want him coming back to drink the soul from your blood, do you?”
I kept quiet and shut my eyes, and focussed on the chants of the Procurators and tried not to breath too deep.
Years later, Andreas said, “Demons don’t exist. That’s superstition. Fallen are kept alive by our own minds telekinetically stimulating and regenerating our cells. We heal quickly so long as our brains and circulatory systems are undamaged. Burning destroys the whole body, gives us no chance to heal.”
According to him, there’s no such thing as souls either, and that was hard to accept.
But Andreas wasn’t right about everything. I’m not sure he was right to form the Sanguinem Mittere.
*
My family were well off but weren’t extravagant with spending. I never knew any other place than Llangour, never went on trips, and for a while I thought that beautiful city was all I needed. The glass towers of Llangour put all other Realm regions to shame. They were the tallest, the most modern, the safest against undead Fallen and mutated Baneful. The crystal Shimmer Barrier that extended over the city cast an iridescent glow over everything, creating auroras even at night. In the right light, it conjured a halo over our statue of the Exalted, and at sunset it made the statue of the Phoenix ignite.
The streets were paved in marble, opal and peridot, and everybody was immaculately dressed and groomed. But people walked past my home on their way from watching ritual combats where warriors killed each other without spilling blood. These people were thrilled to their fingertips and the roots of their hair, drunk on wine, high on vapours and gorged on sweetbreads.
*
I used to dream of romantic adventures when I was growing up; far-fetched tales of distant lands and brave rebellious heroes. When I was little I saw a story book full of knights and wizards– that must have been what started it. Dad often had things like that around because it was his job to study art and literature and music and ensure it had no dangerous hidden meanings. I was lucky, I was being taught to read because I would be an Educator, like father.
Dad wasn’t around much. Mum loved me, I know she did, but was always distant. Audrey Webster would always sit or stand just so, with never a strand of auburn hair out of place. We’d bicker and she’d shut down. I’d cry over something and she’d have no comforting words. I’d get excited over a new toy and she’d sharply tell me to calm down.
The things I’d do to get their attention—I’d sneak a read of any books within reach, and make up my own stories of magical creatures. I also loved to draw. I could create all the wonderful things inside my head, but I only had a pencil, so none of my creations could have colour. I believed these things were real, and that my stories could come true. When my teachers, and life, dispelled those illusions, it was a devastating loss.
I was always punished for doing these things—“We won’t let you do that in our house!” (It was always their house). I’d run away, to my room when I was little, or out to the hills when I was older. Nature fascinated me. My parents had never taken me anywhere, so my storming off almost became an excuse to go exploring. But I never dared venture across the canyon into the city of Caldair.
*
I was sent to boarding school when I was six. St Deloun’s was a sprawling manor with engraved banisters, expensive rugs and enormous portraits of former headmasters. They trained us to do the jobs we’d do when we grew up, and how to worship the Exalted.
They taught us that the Fallen were undead monsters that had no conscience because they’d lost their souls. They drank your blood, and then you became a soulless fiend too. Everyone knew that your soul lived in your blood, so if you lost your blood you lost your soul, obviously. Some of the other girls used to have nightmares and wake up screaming, but I didn’t.
We were taught about the Baneful too—they lived in slums because they were too lazy or stupid to improve their homes. We were shown pictures of disfigured half-humans. I felt sorry for them, but didn’t dare say so.
We were told of the brave Purifiers wh
o protected us with guns that shot fire and silver. White powder used to pour down from the sky, always from the north, and my classmates and I would play in the ‘snow’ as the black trains chugged past. Later, I found a massive chemical crematorium north of St Deloun’s, where Purifiers took the condemned.
One day, my favourite teacher never came to class, and a different teacher came in her place and told us that Mrs Heegen had gone to live in a mansion. This was true, but I soon discovered that she’d been sent there to be a Procurator’s slave, as punishment for some crime. On my way to the dorm I lingered near a Staff Only door, entranced by voices on the other side.
“They told her not to take any possessions, so she went with just the clothes on her back. When she got there, he took those away from her too. Cut them right off her with scissors.”
I ran the rest of the way to the dorm, where I lay on my bunk with my head buried in the pillow, shaking.
We were told a lot of white lies at St Deloun’s. It wasn’t until I met Andreas that I learned how deceived I’d been, and how valuable truth is.
*
I calmed down when I became a teenager, but was still a secret rebel. The resistance in the disputed countries was romantic, and the Fallen were intriguing. They challenged everything we believed, but everyone that age wants to rail against the established order, and the Fallen did that, constantly speaking out against Realm policies.
When it was announced that the canyon between Llangour and Caldair would be filled with flowing blessed water, to keep the Fallen at bay, there was more talk about them than ever. The Educators kept trying to justify it.
“The Fallen cannot know the Exalted’s love.” Mrs Davenport told the class. “Symbols of our belief harm them, because they are corrupted by dark forces. Fallen cannot cross blessed water when it flows, so Llangour will be safer than ever.”
“But where’s the water coming from?” I asked, not expecting it to be a delicate question.
“That’s beside the point,” she replied. “You’re not here to learn geology.”