The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (8 page)

“I don’t live in Bolck-Azock,” Lizneth said. “I’ll never be
able to do a favor for you if you don’t see me again.”

“I’ve never run my business to make enemies.
Ikzhehn
repeat their dealings with me because they know I’ll treat them fairly. So
whether or not I see you again,
parikua
, I would rather you leave my
shop a friend. Don’t worry about whether you’ll return. The kindness behind a
favor is worth more than the favor itself.”

Lizneth exhaled the stubborn breath she’d been holding. “You
really weren’t laughing at me?”

“I promise, no.” He handed her the cloak.

In return, she dropped a fistful of mulligraws into his
cupped hands.

“My name’s Nathak. I call my shop the Claybridge Emporium. If
you ever need a friend around here, you’ve got one. On days when I’m not around—which
are few and far between—my wife Shirz or one of my two eldest daughters will
be. Consider us all your friends, and if you ever come back, be sure to visit.”

The fabric was supple and strong between Lizneth’s fingers,
and it gave a pleasing
zwhirr
when she slid her claws over it. She spun
the cloak about her neck, letting it conceal the bulk of her milk-white fur in
its deep protective folds. Wearing it made her feel lighter than a ghost and
softer than a whisper.

“So, you’re headed home then?” Nathak asked.

“Soon,” she said, an adventurous smile creeping up from
behind her longteeth. “Now that I’m here, I might as well see the Omnekh.”

“Ah, the sea is a fine sight, so long as you don’t mind the
smell. Cross the claybridge that way and you’ll be headed in the right
direction.”

Lizneth nodded and turned to leave.

“One more thing,” Nathak said. “A word of caution. Keep to
the heights if you want the best views. The nethertowns down by the water’s
edge are no place for a young doe like you to be found alone.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lizneth said.
But I want to see the
water up close
.

She grasped her new cloak, feeling the fabric between her
fingers again, and she couldn’t help but smile. This was turning out to be a
good trip after all. She gave Nathak a shallow curtsy, then turned and lost
herself once more in the crowd.

CHAPTER 8

Electing

“The council will come to order.” Raith’s voice boomed
down the hall, overpowering the chattering councilors and bringing them to
silence. The room was alive with energy; not the kind of energy that coursed
through the lightbeams on the walls, but the energy of progress—of hope.

Today, Decylum’s council would decide on the fate of its people.
Their edict, whatever it was, would be followed to the letter until they took
another vote to change it. That was how things worked in Decylum.

Councilors paced the hall, most too nervous to sit. Raith
raised both hands and lowered his palms toward the floor, bidding them to do so
anyway. “Do we have anyone who wishes to give the opening remarks this
morning?”

More than half the councilors raised their hands. Raith chose
Daylan Albrecht, then sat and folded his arms over his massive chest to hear
what the man had to say.

Daylan was a mirthful fellow with thick brown hair that waved
from a loose center part, an able-looking build which he wrapped in tight green
synthtex, and a dormant mischievous look about him that flashed to the fore
whenever he smiled. Raith found him endearing and cringeworthy all at once; it
was evident in the crease of a smile that kept wanting to creep up the sides of
his mouth that Daylan had as much difficulty taking himself seriously as
everyone else did. His delivery was never eloquent or poetic, but then, he was
the youngest councilor by a solid five years.

“Yes, thank you. All I wanted to say, was that after
yesterday’s meeting, I was at home with my wife and kids last night, and I was
thinking how it’s been crowded around here lately. Yeah, that might be true,
but we’re all here together, we’re healthy, and we’re safe, and I know when I
leave our hab unit I don’t have to worry about something happening to them. My
family, I mean. This is a good place, where we live, and why would we just want
to waste it and think we’re too good for it, and try to find someplace better
when it’s just right for us? Here, I mean. We have so much room to grow, and if
all it takes is some digging and building new houses for people and gathering materials,
then that’s what I think we should do. We shouldn’t just up and leave just
because maybe we think we deserve something better. We can make
this
better. Our home, I mean. Decylum.”

“I speak,” shouted Kraw Joseph, as much to encourage the
younger man as to agree with him.

If Daylan had meant to continue, Kraw’s interjection must
have put it out of his mind, because he rolled his bottom lip, nodded politely,
and retook his seat.

“Well said, Daylan.” Raith lifted his brow in search of the
next contributor.

Cord Faleir was a veteran, having served on the council for
the third-longest behind only Kraw Joseph and Hastle Beige. He’d been a logical
choice for Head when Kraw abdicated, but the council had elected Raith instead.
At the time, Raith only had a year of service under his belt, and he believed
Cord resented him for that. This wasn’t something Cord was apt to admit, of
course—just a feeling Raith had. Even when he’d spoken with Cord openly in
hopes of putting the issue behind them, the other councilor had denied any
grudge. But the animosity with which he had treated Raith since said otherwise.

An angular, emaciated man with impeccable posture, Cord
Faleir was shrewd and biting, with a slender nose, a puff of soft brown hair,
and a pale face that had scrunched itself into a perpetual sneer.
He might be
close to handsome if not for that sneer
, Raith thought, choosing him to
speak next.

“We do ourselves an injustice by putting such constraints on
our thinking,” Cord said, meeting each of his listeners’ eyes as he flowed
across the room in a collared sentyle longcoat of deep violet. He carried
himself like a diplomat, resting his blackened hands on his silver doublevest, skeletal
fingers pressed together. His black synthetic slacks clung to his scrawny
lamppost legs like grocery bags. Every now and then he punctuated his words
with a gesture. “Mr. Albrecht is… correct,” he said, tossing Daylan a glance,
“in that we owe ourselves the safety, health, and prosperity befitting those of
our pedigree. Most of us in this room have the giftings of superior men, as do
many of our spouses and children, those we live and share our homes with. Our
kind is a race that will live on after all those above us are dead. We are the
inheritors of the Aionach. As such, it is our deserved privilege—our birthright—to
thrive here, with the inclusion of anyplace that may be inhabited by those
lesser than ourselves.”

Raith snorted. He leaned forward and put his elbows on his
knees, readying himself to overrule Cord if this tirade got out of hand. Cord’s
remarks about blackhand supremacy were reminding Raith of his dear old Uncle
Vigden.
Always going on about how the surfacers didn’t deserve to live.
By
the time Uncle Vigden had gone above and met his death, he had convinced
himself it was his duty to rid the Aionach of every surfacer alive.

“What if there is such a place?” Cord was saying now. His
pitch was growing tight and shrill as he worked himself into one of his
frenzies. “A place of greater opportunity; of greater resource and natural abundance?
Of… more physical space? Would we not be foolish to ignore such a possibility?
And would we be so wrong to merely
look
for it? What if there are other
strongholds like the Arcadian Catacombs that time and legend have forgotten?
Why should we be the ones suffering in this canker of a hole while the gleaming
halls of paradise languish under the footsteps of some lesser race? What if
there are other strongholds lying empty somewhere?”

The other Councilors were looking around at one another,
trying to gauge the sentiment in the room.

“I speak, hmm, with you,” said Loren Horner, raising two
fingers.

Cord blinked twice, nodding at the bespectacled councilor in
recognition. “I urge you all to consider your future. The futures of your
families. Dwell in the present no longer, my friends. A superior home awaits
us, if only we are willing to have patience, and a little faith. Thank you.”

A brief round of applause followed Cord to his seat.

Raith called on Wardel Slake, Loren Horner’s nephew. Slake
was a sandy blond fellow who shared his uncle’s rotund build, though he
smuggled his chins behind a thick beard. Slake was known for driving his
arguments home with all the subtlety of a mallet on a spike. He was blunt and
direct; even worse, he was good at it.

“I also feel that to abandon hope would be a travesty,” said
Wardel. “I don’t know how it is that for all these long years, we, the
mightiest of men, have cowered here below while the dregs run wild above our
heads. Their feet trample the dust, and we’re frightened of the sound of their
footsteps. What cowards we are.” Slake paused to cast a disgusted,
condescending gaze over the council. “Lesser men squander what wealth the land
still holds; they trifle at their good fortune, riding it happily to their
deaths. Yet we propose to satisfy ourselves by picking up their scraps. ‘We’ll
gild our halls in the refuse they’ve left behind!’ we cry. ‘It’s good enough
for us!’ What insanity we’ve allowed ourselves to believe. It’s as if we’ve
grown so accepting of our lot that we settle for taking the simple path. We’ve
given up on the possibility that anything better exists. Or, as in Mr.
Albrecht’s case, we don’t believe we
deserve
it.”

“I speak with you,” said Laagon Dent, gesturing.

The room was beginning to stir with the beat of a quickening
rhythm. Raith could feel the momentum of the argument starting to build.

“You’d like to say something more, wouldn’t you, Laagon,”
said Wardel Slake, pointing him out.

“It’s as you say,” Laagon said, standing eagerly. The formal
precedent was to yield the floor to the Head Councilor between each speaker,
but Raith let it go.
I have to choose my battles today
, he told himself.

“Cord said it before,” said Laagon. “It’s the simple path.
The easy route. The patience we need to have, and the courage we all need to
show in times like these. That’s what it comes down to—an easy solution versus
a difficult one. It would be
so
easy
to stay. To be satisfied
with scraps, like Wardel said. Picking out junk from the city and making it
into new hab units. Nobody is denying that Decylum has been exactly what we’ve
needed for all these years. But I feel like we’re leaving
so much out
by
not exploring. Sure, we have our fables and our stories about the way things
used to be on the surface. How many of them are still true? The hunters only
know what they see. Only what they hear from the few surfacers they cross paths
with. The rest is hearsay and rumors. Before we put all this effort into staging
an all-out war on the city… because we all know that’s what’s going to happen
if we march out there and start dismantling their buildings. We’re going to upset
someone, mark my words. And I don’t think any of us likes the idea of going to
war, let alone leading an angry adversary back to Decylum and putting our
families at risk. So before we go digging around where we have no business
digging, why don’t we see what’s out there, further than our hunters have gone?
It’s been so many long years since any of us have gone further from home than
the hunters do. Present company excluded, Hastle. So that’s why I am backing
the plan to scout first, exercise a little patience, and
then
see what
we’re dealing with.”

“It isn’t patience some of us need,” said Hastle Beige, “it’s
common sense
.”

The council hall erupted.

It took Raith a few minutes to restore order again before
they could continue. “Hastle, do you have something relevant to say? Something
that adds to the discussion?”

Hastle gave him a wounded look, then nodded and came to his
feet. “I wouldn’t ask any of you to take note of the color of my skin unless it
mattered, nor would I wish you to see any more of it than you had to.” He
lifted the hem of his synthtex tunic as if to expose himself. Some of the councilors
were not amused. “It’s been years since I’ve been out in the daylight for
longer than a few minutes, and I still look like this. That’s not because I
fill my wash basin with mud at night. The light-star has marked me permanently.
You’d be surprised how long they kept trying to build cities after the Heat
started. Everything was breaking down, and back then they were still repairing
the power plants over and over. I guess they thought the flare was temporary.
That it would end. The pulses would hit the surface and everything would get
fried and they’d take us all off our regular jobs and send us to fix them
again. I worked for a company called Glaive Industries, from the time I got my
first construction job all the way up until I was a full-fledged engineer. That
whole time, they kept building, even though their systems kept breaking down.
Stuff is melting and dways are getting hospitalized, and every day is hotter
than the last. A lot of the older cities that already had huge numbers of citizens
were deteriorating, or had already failed. Those Glaive dways didn’t care.
‘Just get it built,’ they said. ‘Put the buildings up and shove more people
into them.’ They didn’t care. Bunch of inhuman monsters.”

Hastle’s volume had waned until he was mumbling. He sighed
and blinked away his daydream stare. “Anyway. What I’m getting at, is that the
world leaves a stain on you. Rounding up our bravest and pointing them toward
the door is not the easy route. Easy for us, maybe; not for them. The only
reason any of us think that’s
easy
is because we’re not the ones going.
Last time I was above, the temperature outside would’ve made a hundred degrees
feel like an icebox. The truth is that neither option we’ve discussed is easy.
Those of you who have never lived up there, or who haven’t been alive long
enough to know what it was like before the Heat—Kraw and myself are the only
members of the council who are that old, I believe—it’s abysmal. Raith was
talking about this yesterday; you have no idea what that kind of oppressive
heat does to a man. The way it drains you, squeezes the life out of you. If we go
up together, we’ll have plenty of water. Food. Supplies. Portable shelter.
Everything we need to make it there and back. And most importantly, we’ll have
each other if anything goes wrong. That’s the way to survive in the wasteland.
Send every hunter out by himself, or even in pairs, and you’re just asking
Infernal to drive them mad, if they don’t die first. Let’s go gather the raw materials
we need from Belmond. That’s how we’re going to improve our home. It’s not
short-sightedness or cowardice that keeps us in Decylum. It’s wisdom. Wisdom to
know when we’ve got it good, and when it isn’t worth wasting that goodness for
the sake of some entitlement complex. We have a home. It’s here. Let’s make our
home better instead of taking someone else’s. That’s all, councilor.” Hastle
sat down.

“If I may once again have the floor,” said Cord Faleir,
without waiting for Raith to give it to him. “There is a third option that
hasn’t been discussed in this Council for quite some time. It is an option that
may work in tandem with either of the other two. That is, the cycle of chosen
births.”

Raith spoke up. “The culling of infants, you mean. It hasn’t
been discussed because it isn’t an option.”

“That’s a rather harsh description, Councilor Entradi. I
prefer to describe the process in a more fitting way. It’s a means of grooming
Decylum’s population by way of long-term birth management. We hand-pick the
most promising children to carry on our future.”

Daylan Albrecht was interested. “That sounds good to me. I’m
all for trying out other options. How does it work?”

“Every newborn child is exposed to a blackhand’s power,”
Raith said, interrupting Cord as the slender councilor was opening his mouth to
speak. “Those who survive are shown to have the gift, and are thus deemed
worthy of a place in Decylum. It means that in a generation or two, everyone in
Decylum will be a blackhand. It’s killing in the name of ego and vanity.”