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Authors: Edward J. Rathke

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BOOK: Twilight of the Wolves
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Then it’s true, the soldier heard the mutterings of what they must have known, words of disease, of the whores, of the bridge, the quick steps out of the square, the darting eyes. The coughing through the tents and pavilions and alleyways of stalls that wound labyrinthine through the square, a syncopated percussion tracing the causal lines of disease.

The soldiers walked through the square, fingering the oddities said to be from across the world, over oceans and
mountains, from Soare or even from the far west, where barbarians ruled, lands untouched by Arcanes or Deathwalkers or even Angels. After an hour, the soldier separated from his comrades and made his way to the temple.

The temple, pale stone glowing beside the canal, the boys, younger than him, standing, adorned in many cloths or nude or carrying chains, their bodies modified by metallic rings and bars. The coughing and the bodies contorting spasmodically in pain but remaining, watching him watch them.

A girl stood behind the soldier and spoke in a language he did not understand.

What?

She spoke again and pointed. Her lips pouted, her head shaking, she spoke louder and slow.

He turned from her to the boys on the stone steps, then back to her. He waved her away, Go back to your mother. Stepping onto the stone, he turned back and she still watched him, her hands closed together.

Alina fingered a stain on her dress and cursed. Looking around the square, the people looked haggard, grey, limp. With every day the crowd grew thinner, the coughs louder, and the soldier population rising.

Wha make ov it?

Tsukiko shrugged counting coins subvocally. When finished, she turned to Alina, Sickness spread, her Garasun accent still noticeable.

They shutdown the temple. The soldiers.

Aye, but only moved. North under the forest. All manner of boys coughing their innards out.

Alina cleared her throat, picked at the stain, Too late closing the temple and won’t stop noving, aye. Their perversion wha’s got vem into trouble like.

Aye, not safe anywhere. Now.

Alina looked at Tsukiko who looked away, Wha you vink? Why come here today?

Same as those boys on the steps. Need the coin.

Aye, wha a world to live in like. No rest, not for nobody or noving.

Tsukiko nodded, tears in her voice, Me own daughter’s coughing now.

Alina cleared her throat and shifted in her seat, How long?

Since Redday.

I’m sorry, love. Need anyving like?

She shook her head, Not that one may give.

Malik did not go home. He wandered the empty market and bridges, coughing. The moons were silent but bright and he watched their reflection in the canal, the air beginning to cool with autumn and the coming north winds. The breeze blew his Garasun robes and he coughed into his sleeve, staining it a red that appeared grey in the moonlight.

Walking back through the market, he turned north towards the fragmented moon, orange and unstable in the sky. Never cleared of people, even long after the merchants and traders went home, the youth sat about copulating, drinking, laughing. Malik walked past them, his coughs startling the boys and girls who watched.

Past the empty stalls and over the streets still thick with the haze of particled dust and dirt, around the west edge of the Anthill, which rose grey and muddy to his right, and then he saw the glow of many fires near the forest, lighting the Shrine of the Fox and the Temple of the Wolf, both abandoned, crumbling. Keeping his head down, he walked faster. The soft flickering light of the fires illuminated the flesh poorly and he walked back and forth amongst the boys, some dying on their feet, others on the ground, some shifting and scratching themselves, nervous, starting at every cough, eyes wide.

Why are you here, boy, Malik stopped before a small Vulpen child with blackhair and blackeyes flecked with red.

The boy looked at him and blinked, shivering, naked, chewing on his fingertip.

Can you not speak?

His mouth opened and his words came but they were the pidgin of the Lucan slums, not ones Malik knew well.

You’re from the Anthill.

Aye, the boy’s voice was high and musical with fear.

Malik touched his cheek, then pulled his hand away to cough in. He coughed until the pressure mounted against his eyes, the world turned glossy. When he recovered, the boy was gone.

Beyond the boys he saw the shadows move, flickering back and forth, dancing.

A young man approached after having a fit of coughing and spitting into the grass, You’re sick.

We’re all sick or we wouldn’t be here.

Tsk, tsk, I’m not sick, only greedy. You, though, you’re chasing little brothers like Raol. The rest of us, I mean, no trouble if you’re into children. Things can be arranged easily, maybe easier—he poked Malik’s chest with a finger that traced up to his beard and tugged on the greying hair—but, well, I think maybe you’d like a man, for once.

Malik snorted then tried to suppress a cough, then was driven to his knees and emptying his lungs into the grass.

The young man lifted him with gentle hands, Tonight we’ll make you better.

Malik followed him into the woods, his hand wet from his own blood, the tears still in his eyes. The young man disappeared into the shadows and when Malik reached him he stood, tall and proud and hard. Malik disrobed and took the young man in his hand, This may be the last night in my body.

The young man kissed his neck, his hand on Malik, teasing, It’ll be your first night in mine.

Malik emptied himself into the young man and received the young man’s seed in his mouth, then vomited it and blood against a tree. The young man coughed beside him and stroked his back.

Back in the firelight, Malik watched the shadows shift and dance. They danced until they solidified and the pale bony hands stretched through the edges. He turned in all directions, the shadows alive, the Deathwalkers all around. Hundreds of boys and twenty or fifty Deathwalkers hovering at the perimeter.

Malik’s limbs heavy, his cough torturing him, wiping away the blood from his mouth, the tears from his eyes. The heat unbearable in his robes, the sweat covering him despite the cold. He lay in the grass staring at the fragmented moon and its sisters arranged around it, all the same pustule shade.

The air shifted beside him and he turned to see the Deathwalker crouching beside him, watching, the intensity shimmering through the shade of his eyesockets.

You’re here for me, Malik’s voice was ragged and barely audible. I have lived and now I shall die. We all must die, that’s what you crows are for, aye? To take us to her. The goddess. He coughed and vomited into the grass but the Deathwalker did not move. Take me now, Malik said, I’m tired of waiting. The last night in my body and I use it to rape a boy for coins that mean nothing now. All the sky shifts above me but without me. I have a daughter, just born. I’ve stayed away for her—he grabbed the cloak of the Deathwalker, like the rough feathers of ravens—so she may live. I stayed away for her. Gods know I may have already killed her and her poor mother. All for coins, all for sex. What comes next? Where do you take us? Won’t talk to me, aye? Aye, I wouldn’t either. A poor and miserable—he coughed his lungs through his mouth and spoke no more, and then the singing began, slow and far away but echoing in Malik’s skull.

The Deathwalker lifted his head in its hands and stared into Malik’s dying eyes. Malik’s lips moved but no words came. The
Deathwalker breathed into his face and Malik’s body blew away.

The streets grew more and more deserted but the market teemed. All strangers from far away, unaware, the coughs a surprise but not a concern, trade continued and the forest was full of bodies, living, dying, trading, transforming. When night came all was quiet but for the forest north of the market.

I’ve heard the war’s getting serious.

You saw the dirigibles today, aye?

Aye, wha’s it about, you vink?

What’s a dirigible.

That bit flying like up in air. Ving’s a warship.

Aye, carrying soldiers and Death. They head south far as I can tell.

Are we at war with Drache?

We?

Not me, not at war wiv nobody.

Aye, she’s right, we’re not at war. Luca can’t go to war. Luca’s simply Luca, for trade and so on.

Right, aye, wiv trade and wivout governing like.

I know but aren’t we kind of tied to The Federation and the Crown?

Wiv bastards like vat, aye? Nah, no, not me.

We’re tied to them just as much as we’re tied to Drache. Luca’s the center of all but the property of none. No, the war should leave us be. Too much at stake. What’s to be worried on is this illness.

Blood everywhere like, real nasty shit, aye?

I thought they closed the temple.

Boy, how long you been here?

All my life.

And you vink, really, you vink boys like that’ll just go on home, stay where told? Aye, no, no place for bastards like. Living
to sell and selling to live, go on so till they’ve nothing left inside like.

Aye, the temple is closed but they find ways. They always find ways. Do you not hear the songs?

What songs?

Aye, fool of a boy! No noving, aye? Deavwalkers, that haunting melody like. Sticks in me vroat and can barely breave when I hear it.

The Songs of the Dead, aye. It’s all I hear these days, even now. Listen.

What’s to be done then? If not the war, then maybe this. Everyone gets sicker and sicker and no one gets better. Even the Arcanes don’t help. They’ve all disappeared.

Arcanes never do.

Aye.

But so what’s to be done?

A fairskinned man with black hair watched the soldiers coming and hurried into town. They carried fire and rifles and steel. Tall and stern with faces covered by monstrous helmets, resembling demons and lost gods of the frozen north and the perilous east. The man ran ahead as fast as he could, faster than mortal. Then shouted and yelled for the merchants and traders to run, and then through the labyrinths of streets and alleys and dormitories, grabbing who he could, telling them all to run, to escape, to take nothing and go.

His hair grown long, his cheeks touched by faint sickle moons, his eyes bright as the bluesun.

The soldiers arrived and with them came the fire and slaughter. First with the whores north of the market, all murdered side by side, watching one another exit the living in the hands of the Deathwalkers, now more numerous than the boys. They moved south to the market and looted the wares then burnt the pavilions, the shops, the stalls.

He raced, urging them to go, the screams following and preceding his approach, his warning. Through the fires he watched children dying, men and women vomiting blood or burning alive or slaughtered in the dirt. The soldiers marching through the streets setting everything to the pyre, the dormitories and homes, the wood spreading the blaze faster and faster, cooking alive those too old or sick or asleep.

The tears came and did not stop but he moved quickly through, warning those he could, hiding mothers with children, telling them to swim south or north or anywhere away from Luca.

The soldiers formed a ring round Luca’s perimeter and slaughtered those who ran, by ironball or sword, from the too young to the too old.

Luca in flames. Luca drenched in blood. Luca emptied of all humanity.

The ships and the port, the market and homes, once-great Luca, cremated.

Above them a dirigible flew with Vulpen colors: crimson and black. The flames leapt upward, dancing beneath it, calling for it, and it dumped fire upon Luca, raining incineration. The fire illuminated its opulence, the intricate metalwork, the careful textiles. Its shadow dwarfed burning Luca, blocking the suns from the blaze.

The man came to a woman halfscorched holding an infant. Azura’s hair burnt away, her face blackened and sizzled, she stared into the white face, into the blue eyes with rings of gold. Her tears did not come and her voice torched out of her, she stretched her hands towards him, holding the child, untouched by flames.

Azura’s lips moved but no sound came, her arms trembling.

Sao took the child in his hands and it cried. Watching Azura, her desperate lips clenched into a tight smile, she lay down, her arms still stretched towards him, watching him. He turned and
walked away, the city burning round him, and he ran, carrying the child and its tears with his own.

The dirigible caught fire, fulminating, and then the descent. The great flying machine, Vulpen pride, combusting, consumed by flame, falling, falling, falling.

He left Luca behind, burning, as the dirigible crashed down amongst its sisterfire. Great Luca, made a pyre in a day, burnt for three.

The world was a forest and he walked through for months growing leaner and stronger. His hair grew back to his shoulder and his smooth cheeks were marked by the faint outlines of sickle moons, but his eyes remained the same bright blue ringed with gold.

He exited the forest as naked as he came and found himself amongst brown people wearing fabrics of many colors speaking incomprehensible words. Sao walked towards them but stopped from the abject revulsion contorting their faces. He passed them and walked away from the forest, from the music of the trees, from the howls of the wolves. The air thickened the further he walked from the shade of trees but he did not turn back. Walking north, he found himself at a market where the tumultuous babble of racketeering, trade, and prostitution collapsed upon him as a barrage of linguistic barriers culturally thick. The eyes followed him, some leering, some digesting, some calculating. The world weighed upon him and he left the market down a narrow alley where he was stopped by two smiling men in grey trousers speaking at him. Sao tried to pass but they barred his way, laughing, gesturing, talking, touching. Sao turned and walked back to the market crowd but they followed and he did not turn around. The eyes and laughter stalked, and Sao’s neck reddened, his face hot, and his legs wavered. Words thrown at him then he was pushed from several sides, mostly behind, but he kept his feet, kept them moving, did not turn.

A pale man in a blue robe and blue paint on his eyelids shouted and the pushes ceased and a way was cleared. The short pale man had a flat face and eyes the color of spring and he spoke to Sao who did not understand but pushed past him. The man gestured conspiratorially towards the crowd, the inflection in his voice meaningful, and he hooked an arm through Sao’s and led him away followed by two silent black men. The man led him to a cart pulled by horses and they entered. The black men did not, but clung to the sides.

Inside the cart the man spoke with his hands and Sao watched his face: the smiles, the flash of his eyes, the dance of his eyebrows, the pouts. His cadence was whimsical and full of complaint, the pitch higher than Sao’s and drew itself out longer. Sao studied but did not react. The man spoke and spoke and spoke over the clamping of hooves.

Sao found himself in the home of the pale man. He led him to a room and a young black man dressed him in a blue robe with yellow trimming. The man pointed to Sao’s eyes, flickered his own, then smiled ecstatically, throwing his hands into the air, his voice getting higher.

The man fed Sao who ate flesh for the first time since caring for the wolf and sat on a chair for the first time. Pork and potatoes and cabbage but Sao only ate the pork. From the first bite, all else dimmed and he tore at it with his hands, with his teeth, ignoring the shiny cutlery set for him on the table. The man watched him, at first shocked, then in awe. No longer eating, only watching Sao, he fed him more and more meat, and Sao ate until there was none left. Only then did Sao return, see the grease on his hands, soiling his gifted robe. His face flushed and he kept his eyes down while the man stood, his voice growing higher, singing now, dancing over to Sao, raising him from his chair, kicking it over, and pulling Sao along by the hand, dancing round him. Ashamed, confused, Sao’s expression shifted through many emotions, from bewilderment to joy.

That night the man led Sao to a bed so soft Sao began to cry when he lay down. The man’s expression fell and he sighed, massaging Sao. Frustrated, the man rolled over and let Sao cry until they slept.

In the morning Sao was alone. The redsun already high in the sky and the bluesun rising, he stretched and walked through the man’s home. Expansive, full of things. Sao did not touch
anything, only walked. The walls and the floor were hard and white and cool, covered in ornamentation and paintings. Statues, colors of all hues, violent brushstrokes and soft dabs, scenes of humans, of gods, of animals depicted in every room. He found many people living within the man’s home, all of them working: cleaning rooms or making food or tending the garden, which was the size of his former village. Sao walked outside and through the trails of the artificial forest of bushes and trees and flowers arranged in a regimented aesthetic, rather than the chaotic beauty of nature’s design. A large fountain at the center, three meters high and three wide, water cascaded from the mouths of ten dragons onto a great stone basin with more scenes of humans—most of them nude—carved on it. Sao closed his eyes and breathed slow through his nose. He itched at his skin and tugged at the soft fabric covering him. Shifting it back and forth, he stopped and let it harass and irritate his skin. He touched the petals of tulips and smelt the chrysanthemums. Walking through a grove of trees, he stopped and touched the white bark, ran his hand over it, then climbed it to the top, and looked over the wall to the city beyond where humanity swelled. The suns above and the land below, he sat and closed his eyes and breathed, in and out.

The pale man touched his own chest and said Yuske and then said it again. He touched Sao’s chest with the flat of his palm but Sao said nothing. The man touched his own chest again and said Yuske then touched Sao’s chest and waited.

Sao, said Sao.

The man smiled and clapped his hands once. He picked up an apple and said a word then repeated it until Sao repeated it. He repeated the process with everything in the bedroom, smiling. When Sao repeated the Garasun word for bed for the third time, they laughed, together.

Heart, Yuske’s hand pressed against Sao’s chest, warm against his skin.

Sao put his hand on Yuske’s, Hand.

Yuske kissed his cheek, Moon.

Moon.

Where did you come from, Heart?

Tree.

Yuske pressed his face against Sao’s chest, nose in his armpit, voice muffled, You smell wild, like an animal.

Sao’s eyebrows lowered and he touched his cheeks, hot.

Yuske put his cheek against Sao’s chest, You’re like a man from another planet, another world, locked in time, in tribalism. Do you know what the world is? You don’t. You know nothing of this place, of civilisation, of power, of money, of possession.

We not words for me. No, he trailed off.

Pronouns.

Ng, there not have I or you.

There was not, not there not have.

Ng.

I love that.

Ng?

That. That noise. Ng. It’s so primitive, not even a word, but it means everything, conditionally. Tell me more. What is your village called?

Not mine. No name. Mm, it, mm, Sao, I different from others. White not brown, black not red, blue not black. Sao mean star. Eyes.

Fantastic! You are a star, you know. You’re radiant, electric, and so warm! I’ve never felt skin so hot, it’s like lying against a furnace. I can barely even take it sometimes. Like last night, it was so hot, I lost myself and, well, you know. I came too fast, but you ravage me! Even when I’m inside you, I feel that you’re the one possessing me rather than me taking you.

Sao’s eyebrows flicked and he closed his eyes.

Do you understand?

Ng.

Sometimes I think you’re just pretending to be ignorant of Garasun. You look like a Garasu, that’s why I stopped you and brought you here. I thought they had mistreated one of my countrymen! They’re a bit savage in the Federated States here. They vote and allow everyone a say. They even allow women to rule if they’re elected, which is all the time. There hasn’t been a male Minstru in years. Can you believe that? Oh, probably not—he ran his hand over Sao’s stomach—you don’t understand politics. How could you? You’re my savage woodland creature, my wildman.

Sao not yours, Sao rolled over.

Yuske’s voice failed him and his mouth hung open, No, Sao, please, come on, a joke only.

Not funny.

Sao, Sao, my dear Sao, forgive me, he touched his shoulder and grazed his fingertips over his arm, I would never demean you so.

I am caged by language.

Then I shall set you free.

You cannot.

Yuske reached over him, touched his cheek, and pulled him face to face, Then we shall. You and I.

Sao will eat not more meat.

But you love meat.

Will eat not more.

Why, Heart?

It changes Sao. Makes me no man. Full of hunger and and and, he trailed off, looked at his hands.

It’s okay. What would you like then?

No meat, he whispered and touched his cheeks, burning.

Sitting in the garden, he breathed as the dawns broke over the horizons. Eyes closed, legs crossed, in through his nose and out his mouth, he breathed slow and deliberate, disappearing into himself. Yuske found him at midday and told him to come to the Twilight Games, but he did not respond.

Yuske stood beside him then lay down, watching him. He traced the point of his jaw, the arch of his brows, the curve of his lips, and the lines of his neck.

When the suns switched horizons, Sao opened his eyes and smiled at Yuske who slept. He threw grass on his face but he did not wake so he kept throwing it on until he did. Yuske squealed and laughed and threw grass at Sao, rolling him into the grass.

In heavily accented Limpa, Sao said they should go to the Twilight Games.

Yuske’s mouth dropped and his eyes widened and Sao put a handful of grass inside.

Why live here?

Don’t you like my home, Heart? I have so grown attached to it. Even to the boys—he batted his eyes at Sao—though I wouldn’t suggest you’re jealous. Oh, I don’t know—his wrist drooped lazily back and forth—I’ve grown so used to it here, and, here, one can still really live as one chooses. It’s quite fantastic.

No. Why here? You are not Vulpe. You are Garasu. Why here?

Oh, Yuske’s expression changed, grown hard for a moment then shrugged away, Here, in the Federated States, life is…In Garasu, there are certain, hm, eccentricities that simply are not tolerated. Certain, how to put it, proclivities that are not only frowned upon but may be fatal if one chooses to indulge one’s taste, if you follow.

Sao stared.

Beyond that, life is simply freer here. In Garasu who one is born is who one must always be. Lots of formalities, customs,
rituals, and society is rather rigid, inflexible, but, here! in Vulpe!—he gestured expansively—anyone may rise and there’s no prejudice against merchants the way there is back home. In Garasu, mercantilism is, well, to put it a certain way, it is tolerated, not accepted, even though the Crown would be destitute without it. See, it is the merchant class that drives the world, from fashion to art to political power, all lies in the hands of the merchants, but never mention that to an aristocrat or a political! They may have your head and your hands and whatever else they deem necessary to show the world how wrong you must’ve been. But what they don’t realise, or refuse to acknowledge is that true power is economic. The Crown’s power comes from the Glass and Drache’s from the promise and threat of dragons, which is dubious at best. No one outside of Drache understands, really, what a dragon is beyond the old tales, but we all believe, collectively, that they hold some deep dark beautiful ingenious knowledge that even outshines the Arcanes, if you can believe it. But Vulpe, Vulpe is less rich in resources but simply overflowing with resourcefulness. Owe it to the unique powers of women. Only here are they fully integrated properly and so only here is egalitarianism an actuality. Any life one chooses is available, if only one chooses to take it! The only place that even compares is Luca, great Luca, and maybe Luca’s even better as the trade and exchange is so much more central there, because there’s nothing else. You know they don’t even have a governing body? All freedom! No taxes, no laws, only economics! Pure and unrestrained and perfect. Oh! If only it were farther from Garasu and Drache! I’d live there in the next heartbeat, but, alas! It’s too dangerous for me to leave Vulpe, but I stay as close to the edge as I can because even Vulpe is only the shade of paradise.

Sao studied the words in the books and ran his fingers over the many different markings.

That one’s Garasu, Yuske said pointing at the complex designs
with long heavy curves, and that’s Limpa, pointing at the simple lines and small arcs. Limpa’s a much easier language as it’s built for trade but Garasu’s meant for music and poetry, so different from this brash and savage language. Oh, if only you could hear Garasun singers! You’d simply die, my Heart.

Cannot read this.

It takes time, dear star. In Limpa, every symbol attaches to a sound, so when you get the sounds down it’s simply a matter of audible construction. Garasun is far more complex and not phonetical. Yes, it’s a tiresome language to learn, but it’s far more worth it, if only to be able to read the poetry and hear it in your own thoughts. Every symbol represents a word but symbols are combined to make more complex meanings. For example, fish is made up of the symbols for meat and water, understand?

Sao nodded, his forehead knit.

Oh, beautiful boy, don’t think too hard or all the smoothness of your skin will fade away and I’ll never forgive myself for indulging your curiosity!

Don’t you love me?

It is only boy stuff.

That’s all that I am. It’s all the love I have.

Sorry.

You love another? Some whore you saw in the market?

It is not here. She is from long ago. She is my heart and I am hers.

Where is she?

Do not know. Home.

My Heart, you don’t even know what you say. You can’t. Not yet. You’re still so young and innocent. Here, let me hold you. You’re on fire, always, my Heart. Your blood is the blood of eternity, I know. I can tell. I see it in you, from these moons to your eyes and the burning beneath your skin. You are a god. A young god, but you don’t know it yet.

Sao’s hair fell down his back and he straightened his violet vest, laced his white trousers. She—brown and red, Vulpen—purred appreciatively and said in Limpa, I’ve never had a man like you. You’re like a demon or an animal.

Maybe both, he exhaled through his nose.

She laughed and told him to return to bed, called him a violent star.

Smiling, he kissed her hand and left.

BOOK: Twilight of the Wolves
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