Chapter 2
The absence of wind was so sudden that for a moment I thought I must have fallen from the rooftop, that I was dead. Pain fought through the muffling quiet, un-muting my senses to the warm night. I turned around, squinting in an attempt to make out my surroundings as I wadded through dense air. Cautiously stepping forward, my bare feet met an expected softness after the cold stone. Checking behind me revealed lamps in the far distance, and half hidden shadows prowling the rooftops in-between me and Maeth, my home.
Idiots. A blind man could see them against those lamps. I snorted; very unladylike I know but what do you expect? I live on the streets after all.
As the adrenaline filtered from my system my eyelids drooped, and I found the softness pressed against my cheek. It had been an unbelievably long day.
Vivid colours sprayed across my vision: the purest white to the most opaque black, the whole spectrum. They fought and flickered in circles blending together into a seamless cacophony of light. I opened my eyes. Hay littered the floor in-front of me, stretching out to a translucent glass wall swathed in interwoven rainbows. Scattered around the room were the great rotting carcases of everything from desks to an ancient hanging post. An avalanche of pain erupted from my muscles to join the agony rippling outwards from my back and shoulders as I rolled over.
“uhhhhuugg”
Damn. Didn’t think I’d battered myself so badly last night.
My eyes hurt more, but lacked any justification.
I tried to stand; instead stumbling two steps before falling and the unforgiving stone caught me face first. Spitting hay I tried again, this time managing to stay up, albeit wobbly with a split lip and extremely sore right cheekbone.
Some twentieth birthday this is.
My balance has always been superb, it is necessary to survive on the slanted rooftops in this city. Only now I felt as though I weighed more in peculiar places and was over compensating. There is no way I could make it a week like this.
Glancing around, I swear you could hear the ‘thunk’ as my jaw dropped and my eyes grew wide.
Walls of mismatched frosted glass and murals created a huge cylinder finally reaching a cone of Splects’ that served as a roof. Splect’s are similar to murals, only they are animated. Filled with forces I didn’t begin to understand. Stars fought for space among the planets, spiralling and weaving through each other, creating an ever shifting canvas seeming to float down from the heavens. They played across the stark white ribcage of an aged skeleton visible within its torn clothing; brown, rust-like colour tainted the stone beneath it.
I approached slowly, careful not to stumble with my new-found clumsiness. Even I could tell that this person had been tortured, it's kinda hard not to notice the missing fingers and toes. Closer now, I could see that the torn clothing was actually a butchered leather hauberk, flaking from lack of care. The skeleton’s curved scabbard was empty, but its wrist sheaths were not. A slight queasiness wormed its way up my throat as I reached out to turn its arms over. Trying not to think, I undid each of the eight cleverly disguised latches and slowly pulled them off. The knives they held were long and thin, the blades pitch black and the hilts wrapped with the same supple leather as the sheaths, these were much better preserved than the hauberk. A few minutes later I retied the final latch, taking a few moments to marvel at their fit before my stomach began grumbling at me, all traces of unease gone. The last time I had eaten was…lunchtime yesterday, if you could call stale bread lunch. The throbbing had returned and my eyes stung. I needed to get home. June, my best friend, would be freaking out and probably thought I was dead, or had been robbed of my innocence and press-ganged into one of the many ‘gentleman’s bars’ sported by Cardeth. Now intent on getting home I staggered over to the single arched doorway and out into the raging wind.
I spent the next three hours climbing the four stories to the ground and making my way to ‘the bakery’ above which June and I lived. It isn’t really a bakery, yet the divine smell of fresh bread always wafted from the chimney, behind which we lived.
Stepping carefully on the thin tiles I entered our home. Home consisted of the space underneath the overhang from 'the bakery's' roof which left a metre gap in-between it and a smaller home for us to sleep. We covered all but the tiniest entrance with broken wooden panels. June sat, eyes wide, with her back against the chimney, stealing its heat.
"Alica! I thought you were dead!"
"Raphiel doesn't have the balls to kill me."
Her shoulders relaxed.
"Same old Alica. Raphiel again, you're really ok? Nothing....happened to you?" She eyed my scrapes and bruises.
"Just had to climb a few buildings in Sumian"
June’s eyes widened, mousey brown eyes staring into my sky blue ones, "What?! People don't go there for a reason Alica," her voice an octane higher than usual.
"We have any food? I haven’t eaten since yesterday."
She handed me a hunk of the same stale, and now soggy, bread as I sat, back to the other half of the chimney.
"What was Sumian like?"
"Dusty, but the last building I climbed was amazing! It had this huge like, glass room on top and the roof was made of Splects of stars and planets."
No reply came so I glanced at her. She gestured towards my wrists.
“Where’d you get those?”
“From a dead guy I found. Cool huh?” I pulled one of my sleeves up further displaying the full extent of the sheath snaking from my wrist to elbow, elaborate twists and patterns disguised the fact that it held a knife.
“Yea. Did they have anything else?”
June and I had searched corpses before. There was an abundance of unexplained deaths in Cardeth, and when we got the chance we were desperate enough to risk it.
“No wallet, no jewellery, no food, nothing.”
Chapter 3
With the sky still bright we left for The Beard. The Beard is the best inn I’ve ever been to, perfectly decorated with maps and marvels from all around the globe, collected by Patrick ‘The Beard’ himself. Pat stood behind the bar as usual, polishing the already immaculate bar-top. He smiled broadly as we entered, pulling his great black beard up giving him a mischievous air, and pointed towards a large crowd to the right of the bar. Old Joseph sat near the enormous fireplace, plying his trade.
Old Joseph is a storyteller. Storytelling was a rare and much needed commodity in Cardeth. Filling people’s heads with better times, giving hope that maybe one of those heroes would come save them and leave this hell burning in their wake. Unlike anyone else I had ever met, Joe was entirely content with his current existence. Instead of working for money, he worked for a meal, a bed and anything alcoholic. June and I sat at our favourite table in the corner, next to the stage; The Beard often had bards, jesters and the like. With his story at an end Old Joe sat down opposite us and gave us a sly wink as he ordered a jug of Serl Red, the best cheap brew in the southern reaches.
“Now what’a you two doin here? You know some old sleazebag hangs around here trying to take advantage of pretty young women like you” He smiled widely, showing his yellowed, crooked teeth. Joseph was as harmless as a tree. Unless you ran into it, it couldn’t hurt you.
June piped up, “Why, we came to see you of course Joseph. No one will try anything while you’re here”, she grinned. Joe may be old, but he’s built like an ox.
“I was talking ‘bout me lass. Speakin’ of sleazebags an’ the like, I’ve…heard of a few…unwanted characters around so you two keep yer heads low”
Something was wrong, Joe's smile had turned grim, no trace of his usual cheerfulness. He looked…scared, a sallow pallor to his skin I had never seen before.
Suddenly the door slammed into the wall, shaking on its hinges and leaving a doorknob shaped hole in the thick wood.
Incomplete silence filled the room, broken only by the soundless footsteps of the one, heavily armed man who entered. Twin scabbards crossed his back, belt loaded with thin, oddly shaped, hilt-less knives. Old Joe stood and a staring contest begun. The pale mans pupils seemed to puncture, as though filled with ink, leaking into his iris’s and then whites, flooding them a shade darker than black. Fear spread through me and the throbbing pulsed against my skull. A ripple passed through his dull grey hair as curls straightened, and matched the colour of his eyes. The room erupted into chaos. Joe dived sideways into a roll leaving a trail of quivering knives behind him. June froze and stared in shock until I pulled her under the table. The stranger leapt at the ceiling, pushing off with his feet into a headlong lunge at Old Joe. Faster than my eyes could follow his swords were in his hands, the fires light tingeing them a bloody crimson. Old Joe shoved a table at him and jumped backwards. The stranger flipped in midair and, now coming feet first, used the table to hop forward and bury both swords to the hilt in Joseph’s chest.
Ripping his swords sideways, severing Joe’s upper chest from his body in a spray of blood, he blocked Patrick ‘The Beard’s first stab. Pat swivelled on the balls of his feet, matching the stranger in speed and beating him in skill. Pat’s blade stuck again and again, always on the offensive, never allowing the stranger to even think of retaliation. Striking high followed with a dazzling spin kick to the chest; Pat knocked the man off his feet and dove forward. The stranger rolled through the growing pool of blood, but not before Pat sunk his sword deep into his side, parting armour as though it was made of leaves. Staggering up from his roll, the stranger stepped back into the corner, swathed in darkness. Pat thrust forward, only the man was no longer there, just shadows and bloody footprints leading to nowhere.
