Recap: Shadowvaster passed through death. There was a great battle in Hulzael Square, and Kitan Ful captured Shaldo. They were going to put him to question when the Castelan Vult intervened. The Azurite Wizard put the sorcers to death immediately. Lifted, twisted, dropped.
And then, snow.
Perhaps for the first time, it snowed in Min’Krinath.
The maja house was crowded, and in good cheer. After three days, the Quarter was still healing from the Battle of Hulzael Square, as it had already been dubbed. They had interred Halen Hane in the necropolis just beyond the stone gates, where he would watch over his people. The Lie Xi were not a people to grieve over-long. Perhaps it helped keep them passive in the face of grief, to move on. The novelty of powdery snow softened the blow.
The Lie Xi and other southerners didn’t know what to do, however. Some of the ex-pats told them to build fires in the streets to drive it away. It was not effective, but extra braziers were put out; lanterns and torches of fire hung all down the thoroughfares on the castlight streetlamps. Pine trees would ward off the ice pixies, but there were no pine trees in Krinath. They made garlands of xantha blooms and ferns instead. The pixies never showed.
A bonfire had been built in Hulzael Square and a great hullaballoo could be heard throughout the Quarter. Indeed, the whole city was lit with firelight and sweet smoke drifted through the streets.
On the street outside Bulrgam’s, Kitan Hane had confiscated Shaldo’s white rickshaw and now wheeled about gleefully, his knees very thankful that he did not have to pedal Shaldo’s magical rickshaw.
The snow was new even for Shadowvaster. He thought it was ash for a moment until he stretched his hand from the balcony and caught a tinge of cold which immediately evaporated from his open palm. He thought about the wild grey ocean and a journey into the west.
Zahaza could hardly face the Quarter, and Loozh would not let her go alone. They boarded a ship westward just that morning. Shadowvaster, Bulrgam and Kitan Ful saw them off at the docks. They would go to Makanakhar—Loozh’s choice and she gladly agreed—then onto the Caravels and Bulrgam’s villa there, which he had offered. She needed a whole ocean between her and her past.
She gave all of Shaldo’s wealth, two small coin chests, to Kitan Ful for the care of the victim’s families. Alchemist Caraza’s ministrations had seen Loozh well on-the-mend, but he would be permanently disfigured. Nonetheless, Zahaza and Loozh seemed quite happy when they boarded their ship. Maybe, like her mother, she would return to Min’Krinath one day. Loozh certainly hoped so.
The scene had put Kitan Ful and Bulrgam in a wistful mood. They sat on the balcony with Shadowvaster, a brazier before them, an empty maja board between them.
“It snowed like this in Pel’ickt sometimes. Once every few years, maybe.” Bulrgam sipped his toddy. A mild cough had set in his lungs.
“Not gone back to home in all years?” Kitan Ful was snuggled in a blanket of krinathi ursine. “After Orrette, you would, I thought.”
Orrette? That was a new name to Shadowvaster.
“No,” Bulrgam replied somberly, then set it aside. “I hate the cold. And I imagine there is still a price on my head… all for a bit of thievery and fun.” They chuckled together, then fell silent for a long while.
Shadowvaster was waiting for Kitan Ful to mention his bloody behavior in the Square. But she never did, and she was no sharper with him than before, he supposed. His actions didn’t matter, it seemed. That almost stung worse, and maybe that was the point. He felt a sullen mood coming over him. Yes, it was time to move on again.
“It was a bad way for him to go,” Bulrgam said after the long silence. “perhaps you were right.” They had not discussed Shaldo and his fate either. The Wizard’s sentence had left them all disturbed, but even naming Shaldo was too much reminder. Maybe that was the way of things here. Done and over with, best forgotten. “He should’ve died. But like that? In front of everyone? And I know you wanted answers.”
“Perhaps you were right too. A darkness in my people,” Kitan Ful said. “Peaceful, quiet, but sometimes… Kitan Hesh, bad way to die, but deserved.” Memories broke the calm on their faces. Kitan Hesh was rarely mentioned, and Shadowvaster didn’t know why. Also best forgotten, it seemed.
“Then Shaldo, those that followed. Strange. Kalm is only light and love, but sometimes, from among us…. I know not from where it comes, what makes us to murder.”
“Desire and love,” Bulrgam replied. “The things we cling to make us to murder. Could we live any other way? Your people are fine. Better than most.”
The night wore on and the braziers burned low. Kitan Hane joined them for a quick maja game, which he lost to Bulrgam, then he drunkenly insisted on escorting Kitan Ful home in his new carriage. One of his boys escorted them down to the street and drove them home.
Tiban closed down while Bulrgam opened his ledger at the bar and spread out the day’s receipts. Shadowvaster shuttered the shutters, then headed off to bed.
The Widest-brimmed Hat hung on its peg next to his laundered poncho. The window was open for him to see the snow, but the kitchen stove was in full flare below. He was hazy with the long, warm night and the cold out his window.
His swords still sat on the trunk. He had already cleaned and oiled them and rolled them up in his makeshift belt. They remained on top of the trunk. He hadn’t put them away. He didn’t know why. He sat on the bed. The sea kept rolling in his mind, but as if beneath a skin through which he could not, or would not, touch.
His lungs rasped up, then coughed—the taste of sulfur. He unsheathed the dark iron scimitar and pocketed the phial of Zahaza’s alchemical bleach sitting on his nightstand. He crept downstairs.
Down a thousand dark corridors he had hunted prey; staggered down crooked stairs and scree of bone in perpetual bellies of darkness; fled his enemy pel mel into the void. And now, Shadowvaster’s hands wrung sweat off the hilt of his old master’s sword, and his body clenched as the odor grew in his brain.
The main room was black except for a lamp and a single brazier by the bar where Bulrgam still sat, his ledger open. Sulfur and bile clung to the shiftless air. Bulrgam was transfixed, terrified. A shadow in the corner.
A pale, emaciated Human torso, lit dimly; and then a pair of ember-red eyes in the dark; and then a long snout of teeth snarled open. Nearly seven feet tall. Shadowvaster tightened his grip. Glasya-labolas had come.
The creature folded its body down to walk on all fours out of the shadows. Its hands splayed like cancerous, nailed paws. Black, matted fur covered its lower body where its sex hung low. Its head was that of a dog’s stretched into unnatural expression. Its maniacal glare followed Shadowvaster as Glasya-labolas crossed the room in only a few strides. It climbed lazily onto the bar, its joints popping and cracking and grinding. It sat there, dog-like, regarding the two men waiting for it to make a move.
“Bulrgam Krelupe,” it preened. “So long our business has been… pendulous.”
“We have no business, demon.”
“Did I not give you what you wanted? Your woman avenged.” It whimpered, feigning hurt.
“You made a deal with this thing?”
“No. I did not.”
“No. His story so moved me I needed to act. Justice compelled me. Has he not told you?” Its lips crawled over the common tongue, like a shadowplay wave of teeth.
“Be fair to me, Shadow. It’s all my fault.”
“Has he not told you of how Kitan Hesh violated his woman? How she died of despair.”
“We made no deal.”
“Did we not? You wanted something done, something you could not accomplish yourself; and I wanted only one thing from you: sell my scroll to Shaldo.” It smiled at Shadowvaster. “And he did.”
“That was a business transaction between me and Shaldo. Not a demonic pact. I didn’t conjure you. I was going to sell it to him whether I knew of you or not. I was an idiot, Shadow.”
“Pact? No. Friendship. You did for me, so I did for you.” It stood upright at the bar, its head bent against the ceiling. Then, it bowed to Bulrgam, its skin creaked like old leather as the spine stretched. Its finger-claws splayed out like tumors, aping courtly manners. “Were you not grateful? Hesh died quite horribly, and it could not come back to you. Shaldo certainly won’t tell now.
“I was certainly grateful to you for that. I made Shaldo what he was, and he was unsurprisingly ungrateful. Thought he could steal my power with his buffoonery—a body count, the waft of fear, and some blather. Truly an idiot. But that Zahaza, a fast learner.
“Well, I just wanted to thank you with one last bit of advice.” It turned to Shadowvaster. “Get rid of this one. He’s already killed one master, a whole prince. And a princess to boot.”
“I didn’t kill her. Your prince did,” He said it—it was true—but not with any great conviction. “Then I killed him,” he said to Bulrgam, edges of panic cutting the truth down to a lie. “I killed him because he killed her.” He turned back to Glasya-labolas. “She was already dead. The fighting had already broken out between their houses.”
Distract it. “The Kings didn’t tell you, did they?” He needed to do something to pull its condemnatory gaze from him.
It scarcely acknowledged Shadowvaster’s jab and turned back to Bulrgam. “Has he not told you of the trailing dead? The destruction? The demon-blood? The god-blood?” It craned and cracked its neck to glare at Shadowvaster. “They closed the underworld after you fled, all that meat slaughtered.”
“He’s just sewing suspicion. It’s what they do.”
“Suspicious truths. Be careful with that blade, little puppet. It is a blasphemy in the hands of one so low, small golem.” It slunk its snout closer to Bulrgam, sniffing. It could snap out with its jaws before Shadowvaster would have a chance to move.
“Now that we know where he is, the Demon-lords of the Auglant will come for him. Mercy will not be shown for those who give him succor.”
“Then we shall have to expel him. But none of that is your business. Go back across the Rift. Go back to the North.” Bulrgam stood and hurled a phial at the demon. It shattered. Glasya-labolas shrieked as its skin bubbled and smoked in tendrils across its torso. The wiry hair burned, and the skin burst open. A noxious gas smoked and seeped from the creature, stinging the men’s eyes and filling their lungs with a burning fume. It raged and whimpered as the flesh of its abdomen and forearms sloffed off, muscle unraveling.
Shadowvaster threw his own phial and charged with a sweep of Demon Killer. Glasya-labolas vanished, rasping and gnashing into the vapors and shadows. The scimitar cleaved into empty darkness and sheered the edge of a table, bit into the hardwood floor.
Bulrgam flung aside chairs, stumbling toward the balcony. He threw open the shutters, heaving through his tears and phlegm. Shadowaster abandoned his sword and flung himself to the open air. He collapsed at the balustrades panting for fresh air and shoveling snow from the rail to cool his burning mouth.
What was he then? He panted breath into the onrush of soft white. Little god? Abomination? Puppet? Hunted. Definitely. From all corners and passes. There was shelter, but there was no hiding. Before long the shelter would be torn down. The hunt ended. The stone would be rolled away and he would be dragged out into the open air and slaughtered.
When they recovered, the two men stood in silence. Blobs of the demon’s tissues smoldered, hissed and bubbled wetly on the floorboards. Shadowvaster wondered how long before the demon returned for its flesh. Neither man acknowledged the blobs. Bulrgam went behind the bar and stared at the liquor shelf.
“I’ll pack my things.”
He pulled two snifters from the rack and a bottle from deep under the counter. He settled back into his barstool, arranged the glasses and bottle neatly, huffed, then poured. “Oh, sit down, Shadow.”
He pondered the order for a moment, breathing. When Shadowvaster didn’t move, he picked the glass up by the rim and planted it closer down the bar.
Shadowvaster sat and picked up his glass.
Bulrgam downed a long drink and poured another. “We’ll sort it in the morning.”
Thus concludes the first tale of Shadowvaster in Min’Krinath. I hope you enjoyed it. Come back around. Bring some friends. Up next: We go back in time and to the other side of the globe, to the Vericanti Republic, the Cagne of Perta, and her greatest fighters The Scarlet Sarks. You’ll meet Mago Tenente Magaritte Assini next Friday.
Love that writing! It has that sound of older things, which is my favorite style to read.