Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (3 page)

By the time she exited the basilica through its stained-glass
front doors, the gates were open. Priests and acolytes lined the west yard,
clustered beneath the building’s shadow in robes of purple velvet. Sister Larue
was leading the new initiates through the gates. They passed between two
opposite-facing rows of Cypriests standing at attention and halted before the
Most High.

The initiates were as lean and unwashed as any group Bastille
had ever seen. While most of the Order’s recruits were from South Belmond, the
basilica saw the occasional arrival from some remote corner of the Aionach.
That seemed to be the case today; one of the young men had the look of the
eastern port cities, and Bastille immediately picked him out as a Farstrander.
He strutted in like a spring rooster, wearing netted cloth and rope jewelry
infused with beads and seashells. His eyes were wild and fierce, and his hair
hung about his shoulders in thick tangled knots. Bastille guessed him from
Yellow Harbor or Cowl’s Pier, a former ship’s hand or beachcomber searching for
something more.

They’re all searching for something more, aren’t they?
she thought bitterly, her head throbbing like a bruise.
How many will be
fortunate enough to discover that there
is
nothing more?

The gates were banded with new metalwork where Brother Jaquar
and his artificers had reforged them. The hinges creaked as the Cypriests
guided them to a close. Bastille remembered the day when she’d stood where
these newcomers were standing now, watching the gates shut out the world behind
them. Brother Froderic had given them a short speech as they waited in the old
bus station down the street.

“The Most High Order of the Infernal Mouth takes no
hostages,” Brother Froderic had said. “There are no prisoners within our
walls—only those who have chosen to be there. Choose now the way you will go.
Leave here and walk in freedom… or follow the Mouth and walk in service for the
rest of your days. The Mouth is the perfect enemy of all living things, and
there is no mystery of life it cannot unravel. The Mouth blesses those who
serve it and devours all else. If you enter our gates today, you will leave
again only by the Order’s authority.”

Bastille could still remember the long walk from the bus
station to the basilica’s gates with piercing clarity. As they drew near, those
high walls had risen like an omen, heightening her fear with every step.
Bastille—then Lakalie Hestenblach—had reconsidered her decision several times
during that walk.
I could fall toward the back of the group and slip away
into an alley or a side street
, she remembered thinking. But she had come
too far and endured too much to give up the dream she’d been holding onto for
so long. On top of that, she’d had nowhere else to go.

After her father’s death, Bastille’s stepmother Carudith had
redoubled her efforts to drive her away. Carudith had conceived three times
during her marriage to Bastille’s father. Those pregnancies had ended in two
stillbirths and an early miscarriage. As a result, there seemed to be no end to
the resentment she bore toward her late husband’s daughter. Carudith would
never let her return to Wynesring now. Never again would she behold the dusty
rancher’s town beneath the shadow of those dark northern foothills. The
basilica was her home now, for better or worse.

Even as she reminisced about her own uncertainty, Sister
Bastille felt no pity for the initiates who stood before her now. Those who
wished to pledge service to the Order must face the same trials as everyone
before them.

The initiates formed a loose crowd in the center of the yard,
rows of priests before them and Cypriests behind. Sister Larue whispered
something to Brother Liero, who stepped forward to address them. His lavish
purple robes were lined with gold embroidery and black velvet panels that
swished when he moved. A deep pointed hood veiled his face in shadow.

“Welcome all,” said the high priest. “You are here because
you have chosen to dedicate your lives to the Most High Infernal Mouth. Doing
so will require a great deal more than words, however. You will now confirm
your belief in the Mouth and your devotion to our Order through the performance
of the sacred rites. The initiation to follow will be a test of your obedience.
Know that those who stand before you once stood in your place. They have earned
their colors. Your path toward that prestige begins now. Brother Lambret, if
you please.”

Oh no
. Bastille realized then what Brother Liero had
meant when he said her presence was required for the welcoming. She’d been so
tired she’d forgotten about the devouring ritual. Brother Soleil had always
handled the necessary arrangements before. Bastille hadn’t accounted for all
the responsibility Soleil had carried around here.

As Brother Lambret brought forth the items for the death
ritual, Bastille slipped away and tiptoed along the basilica’s outer wall.
Brother Liero raised his voice to pierce the yard’s quiet. Bastille froze,
thinking he’d caught her out. When he began the ritual instead, she sighed and
slipped around the corner. She could still hear him chanting as she snatched up
her robes and darted through the south courtyards.

The steel ball crashed from side to side as she sped through
the conservatory, bounded down the hallway, and rounded the cloister. Since
there was no one around to question her propriety, she took the basement stairs
three at a time. When she arrived in the silence of her preparation rooms, she
realized there were no prosaic robes to change into.
No matter
, she told
herself.
I’ll be careful
.

There wasn’t time to disrobe anyway, so she pushed up her
pointed sleeves and began to work. The flesh was raw and recent, the blood
profuse with every cut.
How many initiates were there?
she tried to
remember.
Eight? Nine?
Her headache had been so severe she hadn’t
noticed. She carved out ten strips of flesh, just to be safe. Her sleeves
insisted on sliding down every time she moved, forcing her to push them up with
her forearms. In the end, she wasn’t careful enough.

When she had laid the last strip of flesh onto its tray, she
looked down at herself and was horrified at what she saw. Spatters of blood
covered the front of her robes. The point of her left sleeve had somehow come
to rest in the drainage trough and was drenched in crimson. What was more, her
hands were sticky with blood and there was no water in the washbasin.

“The Mouth,” she breathed. “What have I done?”

Sweat was soaking through her robes by the time she rounded
the basilica’s southwestern corner. She caught a few disapproving glances from
her fellow priests as she slipped back into line. The initiates were scattered
around the yard now, hard at work on the death ritual. A few had completed the
task and were holding the broken bodies of the mice Brother Lambret had given
them. Others were still working up the nerve, hands trembling. One girl had
been clumsy enough to drop her prey and was chasing the tiny gray rodent across
the yard.

Bastille was having trouble with her balance. She held the
steel tray at waist level and tried to blink away the pounding behind her eyes.
The mixture of blood and sweat on her palms was making the handles slippery.
Blood trickled from the fresh cutlets and pooled at the tray’s edges,
threatening to drip over the side.

It wasn’t until the last few initiates finished the ritual
and resumed their places that Bastille realized she’d made a terrible mistake.
There weren’t eight new initiates. There weren’t even nine or ten. There were
eleven
.
She counted again.
Eleven. How could I have miscounted?
There were ten
portions on the tray. Only ten.

“In death, all life is hallowed,” said Brother Liero.

“In death, all life is hallowed,” the members of the Order
repeated.

“Now, as the Mouth devours, so must you also. Sister
Bastille… if you would.”

Bastille shut her eyes. She could feel their scrutiny,
imagine their stares settling on her bloodstained robes.
I’ll be a laughing
stock
, she told herself.
My first impression to the initiates will be as
an incompetent
.

“Kind Sister,” Liero repeated. “If you would.”

She came forward, praying her ten pieces of flesh might
miraculously multiply. She received no such aid from the almighty Mouth. Each
initiate took a chunk of meat between thumb and forefinger and peeled it from
the tray as Bastille worked her way down the line.

When she came to the end, the haggard blonde woman waiting
there lifted a hand. She gave Bastille a curious look when she saw there was
nothing there for her to take. Thin rivulets of reddish fluid glistened on the
bare metal. Bastille’s heart was pounding as hard as her head now.
What a
stupid fool you are
, she scolded herself.
Of all the days to slip up
…

There was nothing to be done. Bastille gave the initiate a
hard look, as though it was her fault for being the eleventh person in line.
Blood dripped from the tray when she lowered it in one hand and retreated to
stand with the other priests. When she turned around, the initiate had picked
up her mouse and was waiting for Brother Liero to begin the devouring ritual.
Liero gave the woman a strange glance before he continued.

“Most High Infernal Mouth, by whom all is devoured,” Liero
began. “We now consume these morsels as a token of homage. Leave us undevoured,
we pray.” He looked at the initiates. At his nod, they began to eat.

The mouse’s tiny bones made an audible crunch when the blonde
woman bit into it. Bastille swore she saw a few of the priests shudder at the
sound. The blonde woman was staring at her from across the yard as she chewed,
a look that chilled Bastille to the core.
I may never hear another word of
this incident as long as I live
, Bastille thought,
but I’ll see it in
their faces every time they look at me. My esteem will be forever marred by it.
That is, if the Most High don’t rescind their offer and decide I’m not worthy
to be esteemed after all
.

Bastille didn’t think they would go that far. As long as she
was the only living person who could perform the Enhancements, the Most High
had it in their best interests to value her highly.
What will they do after
I’ve passed my knowledge on to someone else?
she wondered.
Gallica knows
I was there when Froderic died. She knows how many of the Order’s secrets I’ve
learned. If she can make Froderic disappear, she can do the same to me
.

CHAPTER 3

Trace

The shepherd lay supine on the desert’s soft bed, the
ground beside him stained scarlet, his breaths coming in shallow gasps. Grains
of sand crawled along his body, marching like tiny yellow ants into the pair of
bloody bullet holes in his clothes. The cipher was keeping him alive, but the
cipher wouldn’t last much longer.

Jallika Weaver stared at him through the dusk as the
light-star shrank to a shimmering red bead on the horizon. The shepherd would
be dead before nightfall, she knew with certainty. She had slowed the deaths of
many with her ciphers, but she had never garnered the power to stop them
altogether. That was work for those who possessed different talents; the
Bonemen in the far northern reaches, or the warlocks of the Clay Nomads in the
western coastlands.

Willis Lokes stood on a nearby outcropping, his wide-brimmed
hat in his hands, keeping watch over the desert—as if Weaver needed the help.
Lokes turned when he felt her looking at him, gave her half a smirk, and resumed
his vigil.

There was no one around for at least a horizon in every
direction; Weaver could feel it in the sands. Thus, there was no need for Lokes
to keep watch. But she let him do it all the same. He had better vision than
anyone she’d ever met, so he might as well put it to good use. Besides, it made
him feel useful, and feeling useful always seemed to keep him in a level mood.

“He gonna make it?” Lokes asked without looking over.

“‘Course he ain’t,” she said. “You poked him too good for
that. Better just hope he lives long enough to tell us where this Toler fella
went.”

“You said that. Don’t gotta be reminded twelve different ways
about one mistake.”

“Is that what you call a mistake? Them revolvers just… pull
themselves out and do the killing for you?”

Lokes’s face reddened. “Yep. And they might just do it again,
you don’t shut your mouth about it.”

Weaver ignored the affront. “The cipher’s taking. He’s
breathing better. Might be he can talk now. Come here and help me with him,
will you?”

Together they propped the shepherd into a seated position
against a slanted rock. He groaned when they moved him, but Weaver wasn’t too
worried about aggravating his wounds. The cipher would hold. She stood up and
looked him over.

The shepherd was thin and crooked. His hair fell past his
ears in thick waves the color of damp oatmeal. His eyes were a dull green, his
skin pale from blood loss.
He sure don’t look like no shepherd
, Weaver
observed.
Ain’t never seen one so scrawny.

“Alright, Shep,” said Lokes, still on his haunches beside the
man. “Time for words. You know where this Toler dway might ‘a gone off to, you
said?”

The shepherd opened his mouth to speak, but his face
tightened into a grimace.

Lokes tried to coax him along. “Whoops—there, there, now,
Shep. Don’t choke on your tongue. That’s good. Fight through it. Say, you know
what you remind me of? A duck. You ever seen a duck? Talk to me, ducky. Don’t
let me think I done shot you for nothin’.”

The shepherd squinted as though struggling to form a thought.
He gave Lokes a hollow stare and spoke in a dry whisper. “Unterberg.”

“Hah. One word’s all it took. He’s all yours, darlin’.”

“Ain’t you forgetting something?” Weaver touched her chest
and nodded toward the strange iron star hanging from Lokes’s neck.

Lokes looked down and smiled. “Out of sight, out of mind, you
know?” He pulled it off and dangled it in front of the shepherd’s face. “This
looks like something important. What’s it all about, ducky? Hey… pay
attention.” Lokes slapped him, waking him from the alluring charms of sleep and
death.

The shepherd blinked in shock, eyes rolling in his head. It
was a moment before he focused on the three-pointed iron star, and another
before recognition set in. “It’s a key,” he said.

“Key to what?”

“Catacombs.”

“Ain’t never heard of no catty-cooms. What’s that?”

“Hidden places. Across the Inner East. Riches beyond count.
Evils… beyond measure.”

“Evil riches?” Lokes gave Weaver a mirthful glance. “Hmm.
Sounds like that ought to be worth a look-see. Where they at?”

“I only know… of one. In Belmond.”

Lokes drew a revolver, lightning-quick. He pressed the barrel
to the man’s forehead, where the luster of sweat announced the arrival of a
fever. “Specifics, if you’d be so kind.”

“Nothing in that one,” choked the shepherd. “Checked it myself.
All… worthless.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” Lokes pointed the revolver at
the man’s knee. “We can make this as long-winded as we got to, ducky. Tell us
your secrets.”

“A church. City south. Across from Union Park. The old
fountain.”

“Ah. I know it,” said Lokes. “Crazy ol’ kooks in purple
robes. High walls, old-fashioned weapons. Yeah, I know the place.”

The shepherd nodded.

Weaver knew the place, too. Nobody who knew that place ever
went near it. They said the men who guarded those soaring stone parapets were
super-human somehow. They carried only crossbows, but they never missed. The
cultists did emerge from time to time, but only to trade or gather new
recruits. Weaver had heard other stories about them, too. Disturbing stories
about human sacrifice. Cannibalism. Torture. Whatever went on inside those
walls, she wanted no part of it, whether or not there were riches involved. She
and Lokes’s money problems were their own fault, and they could solve them
without taking risks that big.

Lokes seemed to share Weaver’s sentiment. He shook his head.
“That place is full-on spooky. Dangerous too, I heard. How’s a fella like you
wind up in a nuthouse like that?”

The shepherd smiled—with pain or humor, Weaver couldn’t tell.
“I… joined the Order.”

Lokes guffawed. “You’re kidding me. You ain’t no shepherd,
you just a daggum fool who runs around with the crazies. You can’t pull one
over on ol’ Lokes, now. Where them other catty-cooms at?”

“I was… looking. For the others.”

“That makes me innerested. Where was you fixin’ to look?”

“North, first.”

Lokes brushed away the idea with a hand. “Bah. Ain’t shit up
north. Been there a hundred times. No riches or catty-cooms I ever seen. I
reckon you’d ‘a been wasting your time.”

The shepherd gave him a weak smile. “Hidden things… no one
has seen… since… before.”

“Since before what?”

The shepherd’s eyes went cold. He let out a final breath and
died.

“What the—hey.” Lokes slapped him again. “Hey. Mister. Hello.
Hello?” He turned to Weaver. “He done croaked already? Thought you said he
weren’t gonna do that yet.”

Weaver crossed her arms and thrust out a hip. “That was
before you done slapped him to death.”

“That cipher was supposed to close him up. Used to be you
could do a better job in half the time. I reckon you’re slipping.” He tapped
his temple and gave her a condescending stare. He was provoking her, and she
knew it. He knew just what to say to get under her skin.

“I ain’t never promised you he was gonna live or he wasn’t.
You shot him the way you shot him. Innards gonna do what they do. You puttin’
words in my mouth.”

“You keep running that mouth of yours…”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” he mumbled.

Anger boiled inside her. “How many times I gotta tell you? I
ain’t no doctor. I told you you’d better hope he lived. That weren’t no joke.”

Lokes spat. He stood and kicked the shepherd’s body. “Dumb
coffing luck. I oughta quit being such a good shot.” He gave her a cocky smile.

Weaver was in no mood to placate him. She turned away,
evading his bid for attention. Sometimes she had trouble remembering why she
had taken up with Lokes to begin with. The man who was now her lover and
constant companion had been facing the hangman’s noose the day she found him,
up for some string of petty crimes throughout the nearby territories. Law was a
foreign concept across most of the Aionach, but the Calsaire’s Guild enforced
its own brand of justice on the countryside of middle Calgareth.

Guildcross was one of the larger frontier towns in the north,
and home to the Calsaire’s Guildhall. Jallika had been sent there as a child,
less to hone her craft than to unburden her father. The Guild administered
fairness and balance from its vantage point atop the bluffs of a high mountain
pass, the only way through the Vors’ Rhachis for horizons around. There the
ancient Guildhall stood like a doorway to the skies, its smooth plaster walls
crumbling with age. A wide gate spanned the gap beneath it; no one ever came
through the pass without the Guild’s permission.

Lokes had never been a man to follow the rules, such as they
were. As he had always told her, “
Only reason anybody ever made a rule was
so’s he could get a head-start on breakin’ it
.” Weaver was a Calsaire of
the Guild, however, bound to her oaths and sworn to keep the sacred code at all
costs. It was a creed as old as the Aionach itself, they said—one which had
been veiled in secrecy for thousands of years.

Weaver had never revealed the tenets of the code to anyone,
least of all Lokes. It was the most significant secret she had ever kept from
him, though far from the darkest.
On this day, I speak these sacred words,
never again to be imparted unto any living thing
, she had sworn.
I take
these oaths as my bond, putting vengeance aside and renouncing death for the
sake of retribution. For a thousand deaths will never pay for the first
. It
was a promise she intended to keep, if for no other reason than that the eyes
of the Guild were always.
For ere the world is ended, we will meet the fates
as one
.

They had made her swear that if she ever encountered a normal
sandcipher—normal being a subjective term, since sandciphers, trained or
untrained, were of exceptional rarity to begin with—her obligation was to offer
her services in training said sandcipher in the ways of the Calsaire. As yet,
she had only sensed the passage of another sandcipher on one occasion. The
other had been so far away over the sands that the feeling had lasted no more
than a moment.

I will use my talents always in the service of maintaining
balance in the world
. This last point Weaver found rather ambiguous, since
she could almost always find a way to interpret her own actions as ‘balanced,’
even when the justification suited her own ends more than anyone else’s. She
rarely felt balanced when she used her talents to help Lokes. Today had been no
exception. Lokes had shot a man because he felt like it, and she had tried to
keep him alive because it was what Lokes wanted. The only way to achieve any
sort of balance from the incident would be to leave the man unburied, letting
his body nourish the birds and beasts, and thus returning him to the world.

“What’s your problem?” Lokes asked. “Why you being all quiet
and sulky over there?”

She shrugged. “Just thinking.”

“‘Bout what?”

“Nothing.”

Lokes scowled. “Fine. Put this dway in the sand. I’ll rustle
us up some firewood.”

“I’m not burying him, Will.”

Lokes squinted at her through the growing darkness, cocking
his head as if he hadn’t heard her correctly. He raised his voice. “You think
I’m gonna sleep with this feller lookin’ through his eyelids at me? Put him in
the sand, I said.”

Weaver sighed, too tired to fight him.

“You heard me?”

“I heard,” she whispered.

“Good, ‘cause I ain’t gonna repeat myself,” she heard him
mutter as he stalked off into the twilight.

Jallika Weaver didn’t need Willis Lokes. Not for protection,
and not for comfort. She’d left the man she was with to follow Lokes into the
wastes—left the Guildhall and its familiar faces and routines. She hadn’t been
looking for a man who would coddle her. She’d fallen for him because he was strong;
because he knew what he wanted, and because he didn’t treat her like a helpless
flower who needed to be rescued all the time. That was what had kept her by his
side through all the long horizons. She loved him because he didn’t need her.

Taking the dead shepherd by the ankles, Weaver pulled him
away from the slanted rock. It took all her strength to move him; scrawny
though he was, he’d been a tall man, so the weight was heavy in his bones. She
traced a line around him, then spent a still moment with her palms pressed to
the sand, feeling its intricacies and making sense of its imperfections.

Before she began the burial cipher, she glanced over to make
sure the horses were a good distance away. Meldi and Gish were grazing on a
patch of scrub a dozen or so fathoms off, minding their own business. Weaver
set in, willing every grain to yield its place. The sand slid out from under
the shepherd’s body, a million entities moving in perfect conformity. As the
sand spread, the corpse receded, sinking like a stone in the quick, as if time
were speeding by in multiples. The ground rumbled, but the horses didn’t spook.

It was only a moment before the body was gone. Buried and
forgotten, deep enough that even a passing fox who might sniff it out would be
hard-pressed to dig for it. There would be no carrion birds circling above when
they woke in the morning; they would observe no fresh-blossoming death-stench
over breakfast. Most importantly of all, Lokes would be satisfied.

He returned with an armful of kindling and a small bundle of
felling’s grace, a fibrous weed whose slender leaves became dry and stringy
during the long year and made good tinder. Lokes got the fire going, then
plunked himself down against the slanted rock where the shepherd had lain. He
drew his knife and began scraping at the dirt beneath his fingernails. All the
while he said not so much as a word to Jallika. It was as if he didn’t even
notice she’d buried the shepherd like he asked.