The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (29 page)

Wrestling her through the hold and up the stairs, Bilik threw
Lizneth onto the deck and kicked her in the stomach. She curled into a ball,
groaning. It was hot out now, even without the wind. The blind-world’s light
had risen to a golden orange that edged the cave mouth in its soft glow.

“Give me your tail,” Bilik said, and held out his hand.
Lizneth didn’t move. “Give me your tail or I’ll have Giddho here relieve you of
more than that.”

Lizneth swung her tail toward Bilik, and he grabbed the end.

“You know what we do to slaves who try to escape?” Bilik
asked. “Do you?”

Lizneth felt his fingers clench around her tail, claws digging in.
“N-no,” she said, whimpering.

Bilik looked at Giddho, the grey-and-white roan with half his
tail missing and an ironwood spike for a leg. “We let them go.”

Lizneth stole a glance at him. He gave her a depraved smile,
loosening his grip and wagging her tail playfully, as if it were a length of
rope. He let it fall to the deck and planted a foot on it, hard enough to make
her squeak.

Producing a hammer and a few nails from his pocket, Bilik
knelt. Lizneth clawed at the deck and tried to whip her tail out from beneath
his foot, but his weight was too much to overcome. She stood and turned on him,
but Giddho pounced first, dragging Lizneth down by the neck, choking her with a
thick forearm and hooking his good leg around one of hers.

Lizneth felt a tiny pinprick as Bilik placed the first nail. He
lifted the hammer.

The taskmaster flicked his wrist, and the metallic thud that
followed sent a sharp stabbing pain up Lizneth’s spine. She squealed as Bilik
set to tapping, then pounding. He drove in two more nails before he was done,
each one further up her tail than the last. Most of the crew had gone
ashore, but many of those still aboard had gathered on the deck to watch.
Giddho let her go, and he and Bilik stood back and watched along with them as
Lizneth lay writhing on the deck. They waited, close to motionless, until she
was too tired to squeal anymore.

“There’s the gangway,” Bilik said, gesturing. “You’re free to
leave whenever you like. A good bit a’ chewin’ should be enough to get you
loose. ‘Course, you might not do too well in the blind-world—hard to keep cool
in that heat without a tail, ain’t it, Giddho?”

Giddho laughed, rubbing a thumb over the tip of his nub.

“On the other hand, if you feel like keeping it… wait here
and think about it ‘til nightfall and I’ll knock those nails out for you. Your
choice.” Bilik walked away.

The crew went about their business, though some stayed to
observe her long after the others had left. Lizneth turned around and scooted
up to lay beside the nails, watching her blood stain the deck and dry in the
heat. The pain screamed in her head, but all she could do was stare past the
railing and out over the water, at the waves rolling in from the hollows of the
sea, messengers from some distant place beyond the light’s reach.

Across that distance, where Lizneth had left Mama and Papa
and Raial and Deequol and all the others, was Tanley, where she belonged. It
was where she should’ve stayed. She knew then more than ever that taking her
former life for granted was the worst decision she’d ever made.

When the last slivers of daylight were fading from the mouth
of the cave, and the sailors and tavernkeeps and fisherfolk had begun staging
their lanterns to ward off the nighttime fog, Lizneth felt a thumping from
below. She winced as fresh pain flared down her tail, and she saw the nearest
nail shoot up a quarter inch. Another thud, and the nail poked up further. The
thudding continued, and soon all three nails were loose from the planking. Lizneth
grimaced as she pulled each nail free from her sore, swollen tail flesh.

Looking around, she expected to see Bilik or Giddho coming to
retrieve her, but the decks were empty. She stood on unstable feet, giving out
a yelp when she forgot her wounds and whipped her tail back to steady herself.
There was no one around. She looked toward the gangway and her heart raced,
blood pumping through veins that felt as empty as an upturned tumbler. The
distance from where she stood to the gangway couldn’t have been more than four
fathoms.

She glanced around the ship once more and saw no one.
This
is a trick
, she thought.
They’re waiting for me on the docks. As soon as
I leave the boat, they’ll jump out and take me. And this time the punishment
will be worse
. She felt the air growing damp as wisps of fog curled over
the ship, reaching for the shore. It was getting dark, but she was okay with
that.

There was a splash from the dock side of the ship. One of the
oars popped into view across the bow, then splashed into the water again.
Lizneth darted to the edge and leaned over the railing, edging her way toward
the gangway as she looked down. One of the oars was missing, and Dozhie had her
snout through the empty oar hole.

“Go,” Dozhie said. “Get to shore.”

Of course
, Lizneth realized.
The rowing hold is
beneath the deck. The oar would be long enough to knock the nails out
…

Without a spare thought, Lizneth leapt the railing and sped
down the gangway, her chains jangling, the wooden plank bending and bouncing
her over the cleats. The dock was solid beneath her feet, freedom so close she
could taste it. She set off toward the shore, but after a few steps she skidded
to a halt and turned back. Dozhie, Fane, Bresh, and several of the other rowing
slaves were watching her through the oar holes. They’d pulled one of the oars
into the ship; no doubt that was the tool they’d used in their painstaking effort
to set her free.

“Don’t stop,
cuzhe
,” Bresh said in a loud whisper.

“Get out of here,” Fane said, even louder.

As anxious as she was to be gone, Lizneth knew she could
never leave them here like this. She ran the length of the dock, stopping at
each cleat hitch to pull its mooring line free. Loose in the water, the boat
began to sway.

“What are you doing?” Fane said. “Are you
quinzhe
?”

“You’ve set me free, now I’m doing the same for you.”

The gangway began to slide as the ship parted from the dock.
Lizneth bolted up the ramp, shouting to her friends as she scurried toward
the deck. “What are you doing staring at me? Row!”

The ship lurched, and the plank slid sideways and crashed
into the railing. Lizneth managed to keep her balance, wincing as she used her
tail to steady herself. She took the last few cleats in a series of leaping
steps, then turned and began to pull the gangway up behind her. When the far
end slipped off the dock, the weight pulled it from her hands, and the whole
thing smacked the water with a splash.

There was no time to waste, and Lizneth wasn’t sure how many
of the crew were still on board. She wanted to be sure that Curznack was far
behind them by the time anyone knew they were afloat. She tore open the hatch
and jumped down the stairs into the rowing hold.

“Row,” she yelled. “Harder than you’ve ever done, move this
boat.”

A cheer went up as the excited slaves turned the vessel
about, using the limited view out the oar holes to maneuver. Fane took up the
rhythm, giving them a ‘
hup
’ or a ‘
ho
’ in place of each beat of
the drums. Lizneth scrambled back upstairs, hollering over her shoulder that
she would return soon.

She arrived on deck to find Bilik and Giddho emerging from
the crew’s quarters, along with the drummer and two other taskmasters. Bilik
sent one of the taskmasters back down belowdecks to get help. Lizneth hadn’t
worked out how she was going to deal with the crew, and it seemed the few
options she had were running out.

Each of the four
ikzhehn
drew short blades, and they
began to spread out and advance toward her. Lizneth scurried up to the
quarterdeck and took hold of the rudder. It took her a moment to figure out
which direction to push the tiller so the boat turned out to sea. The sails
were folded, but she could feel the ship gaining speed as Fane and the others
rowed hard below.

Bilik took one set of stairs to the quarterdeck, Giddho the
other, and they converged on her from either side. They moved with tense
caution, their postures spread wide as if they expected her to make a run for
it. If this was going to work, that was exactly what Lizneth had to do.

“Think you know how to sail, do ya?” Bilik said. “You gonna
crew this ship all by yourself?” His voice bore the brusqueness of stifled
anger, his expression menacing.

Not for the first time, Lizneth noticed the
ring of keys at his waist, containing the master key that unlocked every
manacle on board. She relaxed her body, hoping it would make them do the same. “I
was thinking I’d leave that part up to you. We’re in open water, and Curznack
and his brood-brothers are none the wiser. It’ll be a long day before they know
we’re gone. The ship is yours now. I’d set the sails if I were you… Captain.”

Bilik stopped short, less than a fathom away, and gave Lizneth
a critical frown. “Don’t be dumb. Do you know what Curznack and his family will
do when they realize the ship is gone?”

“They’re back there, and we’re out here,” Lizneth said. “I’m
not too worried about it.”

“You should be.” Bilik took two quick steps forward and swung
a fist at Lizneth’s head. She leaned back against the tiller, and the blow
glanced off her snout. The ship pitched, throwing him toward her, but she
ducked and snatched the key ring from his belt as she darted past him.

Leaping the railing, she landed on the main deck and rolled,
stumbling to her feet at a run toward the rowing hold door. More of the crew came
pouring from their quarters, and the two taskmasters made a dash across the
front of the ship to intercept Lizneth’s approach. She sidestepped one of them
and whipped her tail across his face, biting back the jolt of pain it caused her.

The second taskmaster was closing in fast as she reached the
door. She yanked it open and slid through, but she found no way to lock it from
the inside. Grabbing the handrails, she lifted herself and vaulted down the
stairs. She heard the taskmaster fling the door open and fly down after her,
right on her heels. It was her tail he caught hold of first, stripping the skin
in a tight-clawed grip as she ran. He pulled himself along and dropped onto her,
buffeting her from behind and forcing her to the ground.

Lizneth managed to get an arm free as she fell, and she flung
the key ring into the hold for all she was worth. It struck the ceiling and
landed just in front of her; she’d let go too late. Fane reached out a foot,
his claw scratching the deck a mere fingerbreadth away from the key ring. The
taskmaster spotted the keys and climbed over Lizneth, pushing her face into the
floor. Fane whipped his tail through the ring and lifted it, slowly, slowly,
until he’d brought it close enough to touch. Lizneth held her breath. If even
one of the slaves could get free now, there was a chance they could free enough
of the others to fight off the crew.

The key ring dangled from the end of Fane’s tail, his hand an
instant away from snatching it. Then there was another hand—the taskmaster’s,
and it sent the keys flying into the drums with a deft slap. Lizneth reached
for them, but the stairs behind her were stirring with heavy footsteps, and
before she knew it there were crewmembers flooding the hold. They hauled her up by
the scruff of the neck, and Bilik gave her the bashing he’d meant to give her
earlier. Bells rang in her head, and pulsing spots swam through her vision.

“Check all their cuffs. Make sure none of them got unlocked,”
Bilik said. “And
zholiqeh
… turn this ship around.”

Bilik dragged Lizneth up the stairs by her chains, led her
across the deck, and threw her into the cargo hold by herself.

“You’re afraid of Curznack, aren’t you? Is that why you’re
going back to port?” Lizneth said, hoping for a reaction.

“One more word, and I’ll take a hammer to those longteeth,”
Bilik said, slamming the hatch shut. The sound was deafening.

The square patches of light shining through the hatch were
the only illumination in the hold. Lizneth looked around. The rest of the prize
slaves had been brought ashore and sold. She was alone, and when the ship docked
again, Curznack would be waiting.

CHAPTER 27

The Way

Raith Entradi woke to the sound of a very near gunshot.
Purple droplets spattered his green nyleen tent and dribbled down the side. The
tent’s mesh window framed the city skyline within its zippered border. Blighted
buildings stood outlined against the morning sky, so close he could see them
clear through the heat haze; gruesome hulks of shattered glass and crumpled
concrete. Belmond. They’d reached the city while he slept, locked away in his
fever dream and dismantled from the waking world. If he’d been under the
impression that things had gone as planned, the gunshot was reason to think
otherwise.

A man’s thigh, clothed in mottled gray cargo pants, crowded
into frame outside the tent’s window, swiping the skyline from view. Next came
the barrel and fore grip of a rifle. Raith heard the man poke open the nyleen
flap of the tent next to him.

“Up. On your feet, let’s go.” The voice was gruff and throaty
with its first uses after sleep.

“Wh—who are you? What’s this about?” This voice belonged to
Rostand Beige, Hastle’s grandson, who’d fallen lightsick the day before Raith
had.

“Can you stand, mister? I got orders to kill anybody who
can’t walk. I don’t want to waste my time on somebody who ain’t gonna make it,
but I won’t waste a good bullet on somebody who is. You gonna make it, mister?”

“I can stand,” said Rostand, sitting up with a grimace. Raith
could see him through the side window, past the mesh of the other tent.

The soldier offered Ros a hand. Raith heard the young man’s
feet thump on the ground when he climbed down off the flatbed.

It would be Raith’s turn now.

“Anyone alive in there?” The soldier lifted Raith’s tent flap
with the tip of his rifle and peeked inside.

“I’m alive, and I can stand,” Raith said. “Give me some
space. I won’t make any trouble.” Crab-walking through the opening, Raith
lowered himself to the ground. He stood leaning against the flatbed, woozy and
a little dazed. He ran his fingers through a week’s worth of oils to brush the
hair out of his eyes. His ears were still ringing from the gunshot, and his
vision hadn’t adjusted to the daylight yet.

It was early morning, growing hotter. Ros was standing there
with a horrified look on his face, staring at something over Raith’s shoulder.
When he turned to face the city, the sight almost took Raith’s knees out from
under him.

Carnage in the sand, for hundreds of feet in every direction.
Vultures were feasting on fragments of men Raith had known all his life.
Soldiers were wandering the expanse, looking for survivors, picking over the
bodies, and even shooing the birds away so they could loot the corpses. One
soldier was holding a collection of ornamental bone necklaces he’d nabbed from
the carcasses of the hunters. Another was wearing the brown leather boots that
had belonged to Sarl Sandonne.

Raith hadn’t cried in years. The aching in his chest reminded
him of the day his mother had died, and his father, a few years before that;
that sense of childlike helplessness, of having been cheated out of something
you could never have prevented. These were innocent men, each of them born within
the confines of Decylum. They were her children, her sons.

When the soldiers had finished rounding up the survivors, they
numbered only six. Along with Raith and Rostand Beige, there were the hunters
Derrow Leonard and Frasier Dent, the latter of whom was Laagon Dent’s nephew,
the son of his brother Erach. There was also an engineer named Sombit Quentin,
and the old apothecary, Theodar Urial. Six men left of the eighty-or-so they’d
departed Decylum with. There had to be others, somewhere.

One of the soldiers, a narrow-eyed veteran with slender
shoulders and a thick faceful of hair, began to look them over, paying particular
attention to Raith’s hands. “We got a bit of a march ahead of us,” he said.
“Anyone feels like you’re not gonna make it, say so. I don’t want to shoot
nobody, but I will if I have to. Any questions?”

Raith lifted a hand.

“Yeah—big fella. What is it?”

“Who are you, and why are we being detained?”

The veteran looked annoyed. “You never heard of the Scarred
before?”

“We come from a long distance away,” Raith said. “Longer than
the reach of your repute, ostensibly.”

The soldier looked puzzled. He leaned over and whispered to
one of his men, “What’d he say?”

“I said no. I haven’t heard of you.” Raith and the others
had
heard of the Scarred, but he figured feigning ignorance was a good way to learn
more about them.

“Well, then. We’re the Scarred Comrades, the Army of North
Belmond. I’m Sergeant Tym Juniper. Pleased to meet you.”

Raith pursed his lips. “Ah. There must be quite a number of
you, for you to consider yourselves an army. This little contingent doesn’t
look like much.”

The Sergeant counted on his fingers. “Thirty-fi’ hundred or
so, far as I can reckon it. ‘Course there’s less now, on account of that little
attack of yours last night.”

“I’m sure we didn’t attack anybody,” Raith said. “We’re here
to gather scrap. Stone, wood and metal, nothing more. I wish I could tell you
what happened, but I was out cold. Some of us were sick from the journey, you
see, sleeping…” He turned to his fellows. “Do any of you know what happened
last night?”

“I think I was the only one here who was awake for any of
it,” said Frasier Dent, a young wiry man with ruddy skin and a tuft of
dirty-blond hair. He wore a sleeveless synthtex tunic and shorts, and his ears
were pierced with thick brass rings, a sign of the nomadic influence that many
of Decylum’s hunters emulated. Frasier was the only man among the six of them
whom Raith had seen still healthy the day he fell sick.

“What did you see?”

“Not near as much as I would’ve liked to. We were headed
toward the outskirts when they started shooting at us. A bullet struck my
horse, and I was thrown to the ground. I hit my head quite soundly, and I
didn’t wake up until this morning.”

Raith tried to think back to whether he’d been conscious at
all since the day before. No memory came to him. “If you’ll let us search the
outskirts, perhaps we can find others in our company who may have sheltered in
the area. Perhaps they can better explain what took place. If there was some
sort of attack, as you claim, I can assure you we played only the part of
self-defense. We’ll retrieve our companions and go peacefully, if you’ll let
us.”

“Uh-uh. That’s not gonna happen, mister,” said Tym Juniper.
“Y’all are in some serious poop. Corporal, tell ‘em what they’ve won.”

Another soldier began to recite from a chewed-up clipboard.
“You’re being tried on charges of… collusion to commit an act of war, use of
prohibited weaponry inside city limits, disturbing the peace, threats to the
health and safety of the Commissar, cruel and unusual assault and battery,
multiple counts of aggravated murder, including that of Scarred personnel, and
other various crimes against humanity. You’ll now be escorted to the Hull
Tower, where you’ll go before Commissar Wax to answer for these crimes.”

Raith rubbed his temples. “How do you propose we absolve
ourselves of wrongdoing if no one here was awake to know what we did wrong?”

Sergeant Tym gave him a disinterested look. “You’ll have to
take that up with the Commissar, sir.”

Raith pointed at Frasier Dent. “This man says we were
attacked without provocation, yet you allege that the opposite is true.”

Tym clasped his hands behind his back and sighed. “Listen,
mister. Our dways took action ‘cause there was a threat. Oh-kay? Y’all can’t be
comin’ round here, armed to the teeth, ridin’ at us with them glowy things like
you fixin’ to do something violent. Understand? I don’t know how y’all do it where
you’re from, but that don’t fly up here in Belmond. Not nohow.”

Raith’s imagination took him through the motions of ripping
the man’s head from his shoulders amid sheets of melting skin. There were at
least thirty soldiers close by—far more than he and his five companions could
handle in their condition. Derrow Leonard and Frasier Dent were both
blackhands, but they were as lightsick as he was. Without knowing where the
rest of their people were or what had transpired while they slept, it would be
foolhardy to resist them now.

“I understand,” Raith said. He kept his hands at his sides,
feeling the hard skin crack as he stretched his fingers.

“Anyone else got any more questions ‘fore we head out?” Tym
asked, locking eyes on Raith. No one did. “Mm-kay, then. Let’s move.”

The soldiers made a tight formation around them and leveled
their guns. When they set off toward the outskirts, Raith stared up at the sky
and didn’t look down until they’d passed through the field of gore. His
companions weren’t as careful; he heard their cries, their shudders, and one or
two episodes of suppressed gagging. He grieved with them for the lost Sons of
Decylum. He wished he’d been there with them, awake. Maybe he could’ve helped
them avoid whatever situation had led to all this bloodshed. His head swam with
questions he might never know the answers to.

Buildings drew up into their true scale. The sands gave way,
first to scattered patches of rubble, then to the spiderweb mosaics of
heat-fractured pavement. They passed beneath the wide arches of a bridge, where
gnarled scaffolding held road signs in faded green and white. Dead
advertisement screens lined the downtown buildings and littered the streets
below, where entire corners had collapsed into piles of scree. The group passed
through gilded lobbies and grand dust-caked hallways lost to time, and Raith
saw his reflection in the mirror sheen of a waiting area ceiling. Good Things
Happen When You Help the Ministry, said the torn sticker plastered to the side
of a bolted-in garbage can. A bus station poster advised passersby to Surrender
Your Firearms and Report Violations to Your Local Unity Official.

Still weakened and dizzy from his fevered rest, Raith willed
himself to press on. Soldiers surrounded them at all times, vigilant over the
tangles of city on either side. Infernal was as harsh here as on the wastes,
save for the brief periods of shade they enjoyed as they traveled under and
through.

After a trek of nearly three hours, they emerged from one of
the buildings into a wide four-lane intersection. On the opposite corner stood
a monumental cylinder of a building, a spiraling metal skeleton with a thousand
shattered windowpanes. A crowd had formed a desultory line along the curved
marble planter outside the main entrance, where waist-high cylindrical
lightposts ran along the patterned stone walkway. They were all clamoring for
the attention of the two soldiers guarding the doors. When a woman exited the
building, the guards motioned toward the front of the line and permitted a
tall, stooped man to enter in her place.

“Get back in there and wait,” Sergeant Tym ordered. “Lemme go
see what’s going on.” He crossed the street while the soldiers shuffled Raith
and his companions back inside, where they stood in front of the
floor-to-ceiling plate glass windows to watch.

A flare of daylight staggered and broke across the spiral
tower’s glass like a torn yellow rag. Half a dozen desiccated corpses were
hanging from the top of the building. Carrion birds circled above them, pecking
and squabbling over bits of dead flesh, just as ill-tempered as the crowd
below. Sergeant Tym shoved his way to the front of the line, held a brief
conversation with the guards, and returned in a huff.

“No gettin’ in there now. All these people are here to see
Commissar Wax. Most of ‘em are east-siders concerned about all the commotion
last night. Once they get a load of these jokers and find out they’re the
reason for the disturbance, they’ll tear us apart before we can cross the
street. So I say we come back later. My shift ends in an hour, and I need a
drink. Let’s drop ‘em off at the brig and put in an order for tomorrow.”

The soldier with the clipboard jotted something down as the Sergeant
spoke.

Raith cleared his throat. “Please. There may be others in our
company who are injured or lost in your city. Others may be dying on the sands.
By all that is good, give us a chance look for them. Give us the chance to save
their lives. Surely you can’t mean to imprison us before we’ve spoken with your
Commissar.”

“Oh I can’t, can’t I?” Tym brought his face within six inches
of Raith’s, though he was nearly a head shorter. When the Sergeant sneered,
Raith could see the tobacco stains around the roots of his teeth. “‘Til Wax
says otherwise, I can do whatever the coff I like with you and your pals, here.
I can take you up to the fortieth floor of this here building and string the
six of you up by the toes, if’n I feel the urge. Y’all would make the Hull
Tower a nice matching set for the dways that’s already up there. You wanna
prove your absolve-ation or whatnot—you gonna have to wait. I reckon when the
Commissar sees the pile of dead comrades you made, he gonna have me do the
toe-stringin’ anyhow. So how ‘bout you keep givin’ me lip and see where it gets
you?”

Raith was silent. Tym’s fat bearded head was so close, Raith
could’ve plucked it from his shoulders like a ripened fruit. But there were
the rest of the soldiers to think about, and the safety of his companions to
consider. Inciting further violence was not the way. Not yet.

“S’what I reckoned,” the Sergeant said, puffing out his
chest.

Raith never let his eyes leave Tym’s until the Sergeant broke
away.

“Let’s take these fellas back over Malcroft Way.” Tym pointed
into the depths of the building, and they started back the way they came.

Several blocks later, they were standing outside a stark
brick-front building with barred windows and a set of green double doors.
If
these bars are all that holds this prison shut
, Raith thought,
then it can’t
hold me
.