Twilight of the Wolves Read online

  The Deathwalker lifted his head in its hands and stared into Malik’s dying eyes. Malik’s lips moved but no words came. The Deathwalker breathed into his face and Malik’s body blew away.

  The streets grew more and more deserted but the market teemed. All strangers from far away, unaware, the coughs a surprise but not a concern, trade continued and the forest was full of bodies, living, dying, trading, transforming. When night came all was quiet but for the forest north of the market.

  I’ve heard the war’s getting serious.

  You saw the dirigibles today, aye?

  Aye, wha’s it about, you vink?

  What’s a dirigible.

  That bit flying like up in air. Ving’s a warship.

  Aye, carrying soldiers and Death. They head south far as I can tell.

  Are we at war with Drache?

  We?

  Not me, not at war wiv nobody.

  Aye, she’s right, we’re not at war. Luca can’t go to war. Luca’s simply Luca, for trade and so on.

  Right, aye, wiv trade and wivout governing like.

  I know but aren’t we kind of tied to The Federation and the Crown?

  Wiv bastards like vat, aye? Nah, no, not me.

  We’re tied to them just as much as we’re tied to Drache. Luca’s the center of all but the property of none. No, the war should leave us be. Too much at stake. What’s to be worried on is this illness.

  Blood everywhere like, real nasty shit, aye?

  I thought they closed the temple.

  Boy, how long you been here?

  All my life.

  And you vink, really, you vink boys like that’ll just go on home, stay where told? Aye, no, no place for bastards like. Living to sell and selling to live, go on so till they’ve nothing left inside like.

  Aye, the temple is closed but they find ways. They always find ways. Do you not hear the songs?

  What songs?

  Aye, fool of a boy! No noving, aye? Deavwalkers, that haunting melody like. Sticks in me vroat and can barely breave when I hear it.

  The Songs of the Dead, aye. It’s all I hear these days, even now. Listen.

  What’s to be done then? If not the war, then maybe this. Everyone gets sicker and sicker and no one gets better. Even the Arcanes don’t help. They’ve all disappeared.

  Arcanes never do.

  Aye.

  But so what’s to be done?

  A fairskinned man with black hair watched the soldiers coming and hurried into town. They carried fire and rifles and steel. Tall and stern with faces covered by monstrous helmets, resembling demons and lost gods of the frozen north and the perilous east. The man ran ahead as fast as he could, faster than mortal. Then shouted and yelled for the merchants and traders to run, and then through the labyrinths of streets and alleys and dormitories, grabbing who he could, telling them all to run, to escape, to take nothing and go.

  His hair grown long, his cheeks touched by faint sickle moons, his eyes bright as the bluesun.

  The soldiers arrived and with them came the fire and slaughter. First with the whores north of the market, all murdered side by side, watching one another exit the living in the hands of the Deathwalkers, now more numerous than the boys. They moved south to the market and looted the wares then burnt the pavilions, the shops, the stalls.

  He raced, urging them to go, the screams following and preceding his approach, his warning. Through the fires he watched children dying, men and women vomiting blood or burning alive or slaughtered in the dirt. The soldiers marching through the streets setting everything to the pyre, the dormitories and homes, the wood spreading the blaze faster and faster, cooking alive those too old or sick or asleep.

  The tears came and did not stop but he moved quickly through, warning those he could, hiding mothers with children, telling them to swim south or north or anywhere away from Luca.

  The soldiers formed a ring round Luca’s perimeter and slaughtered those who ran, by ironball or sword, from the too young to the too old.

  Luca in flames. Luca drenched in blood. Luca emptied of all humanity.

  The ships and the port, the market and homes, once-great Luca, cremated.

  Above them a dirigible flew with Vulpen colors: crimson and black. The flames leapt upward, dancing beneath it, calling for it, and it dumped fire upon Luca, raining incineration. The fire illuminated its opulence, the intricate metalwork, the careful textiles. Its shadow dwarfed burning Luca, blocking the suns from the blaze.

  The man came to a woman halfscorched holding an infant. Azura’s hair burnt away, her face blackened and sizzled, she stared into the white face, into the blue eyes with rings of gold. Her tears did not come and her voice torched out of her, she stretched her hands towards him, holding the child, untouched by flames.

  Azura’s lips moved but no sound came, her arms trembling.

  Sao took the child in his hands and it cried. Watching Azura, her desperate lips clenched into a tight smile, she lay down, her arms still stretched towards him, watching him. He turned and walked away, the city burning round him, and he ran, carrying the child and its tears with his own.

  The dirigible caught fire, fulminating, and then the descent. The great flying machine, Vulpen pride, combusting, consumed by flame, falling, falling, falling.

  He left Luca behind, burning, as the dirigible crashed down amongst its sisterfire. Great Luca, made a pyre in a day, burnt for three.

  The world was a forest and he walked through for months growing leaner and stronger. His hair grew back to his shoulder and his smooth cheeks were marked by the faint outlines of sickle moons, but his eyes remained the same bright blue ringed with gold.

  He exited the forest as naked as he came and found himself amongst brown people wearing fabrics of many colors speaking incomprehensible words. Sao walked towards them but stopped from the abject revulsion contorting their faces. He passed them and walked away from the forest, from the music of the trees, from the howls of the wolves. The air thickened the further he walked from the shade of trees but he did not turn back. Walking north, he found himself at a market where the tumultuous babble of racketeering, trade, and prostitution collapsed upon him as a barrage of linguistic barriers culturally thick. The eyes followed him, some leering, some digesting, some calculating. The world weighed upon him and he left the market down a narrow alley where he was stopped by two smiling men in grey trousers speaking at him. Sao tried to pass but they barred his way, laughing, gesturing, talking, touching. Sao turned and walked back to the market crowd but they followed and he did not turn around. The eyes and laughter stalked, and Sao’s neck reddened, his face hot, and his legs wavered. Words thrown at him then he was pushed from several sides, mostly behind, but he kept his feet, kept them moving, did not turn.

  A pale man in a blue robe and blue paint on his eyelids shouted and the pushes ceased and a way was cleared. The short pale man had a flat face and eyes the color of spring and he spoke to Sao who did not understand but pushed past him. The man gestured conspiratorially towards the crowd, the inflection in his voice meaningful, and he hooked an arm through Sao’s and led him away followed by two silent black men. The man led him to a cart pulled by horses and they entered. The black men did not, but clung to the sides.

  Inside the cart the man spoke with his hands and Sao watched his face: the smiles, the flash of his eyes, the dance of his eyebrows, the pouts. His cadence was whimsical and full of complaint, the pitch higher than Sao’s and drew itself out longer. Sao studied but did not react. The man spoke and spoke and spoke over the clamping of hooves.

  Sao found himself in the home of the pale man. He led him to a room and a young black man dressed him in a blue robe with yellow trimming. The man pointed to Sao’s eyes, flickered his own, then smiled ecstatically, throwing his hands into the air, his voice getting higher.

  The man fed Sao who ate flesh for the first time since caring for the wolf and sat on a chair for the first time. Pork and potatoes and cabbage but Sao only
ate the pork. From the first bite, all else dimmed and he tore at it with his hands, with his teeth, ignoring the shiny cutlery set for him on the table. The man watched him, at first shocked, then in awe. No longer eating, only watching Sao, he fed him more and more meat, and Sao ate until there was none left. Only then did Sao return, see the grease on his hands, soiling his gifted robe. His face flushed and he kept his eyes down while the man stood, his voice growing higher, singing now, dancing over to Sao, raising him from his chair, kicking it over, and pulling Sao along by the hand, dancing round him. Ashamed, confused, Sao’s expression shifted through many emotions, from bewilderment to joy.

  That night the man led Sao to a bed so soft Sao began to cry when he lay down. The man’s expression fell and he sighed, massaging Sao. Frustrated, the man rolled over and let Sao cry until they slept.

  In the morning Sao was alone. The redsun already high in the sky and the bluesun rising, he stretched and walked through the man’s home. Expansive, full of things. Sao did not touch anything, only walked. The walls and the floor were hard and white and cool, covered in ornamentation and paintings. Statues, colors of all hues, violent brushstrokes and soft dabs, scenes of humans, of gods, of animals depicted in every room. He found many people living within the man’s home, all of them working: cleaning rooms or making food or tending the garden, which was the size of his former village. Sao walked outside and through the trails of the artificial forest of bushes and trees and flowers arranged in a regimented aesthetic, rather than the chaotic beauty of nature’s design. A large fountain at the center, three meters high and three wide, water cascaded from the mouths of ten dragons onto a great stone basin with more scenes of humans—most of them nude—carved on it. Sao closed his eyes and breathed slow through his nose. He itched at his skin and tugged at the soft fabric covering him. Shifting it back and forth, he stopped and let it harass and irritate his skin. He touched the petals of tulips and smelt the chrysanthemums. Walking through a grove of trees, he stopped and touched the white bark, ran his hand over it, then climbed it to the top, and looked over the wall to the city beyond where humanity swelled. The suns above and the land below, he sat and closed his eyes and breathed, in and out.

  The pale man touched his own chest and said Yuske and then said it again. He touched Sao’s chest with the flat of his palm but Sao said nothing. The man touched his own chest again and said Yuske then touched Sao’s chest and waited.

  Sao, said Sao.

  The man smiled and clapped his hands once. He picked up an apple and said a word then repeated it until Sao repeated it. He repeated the process with everything in the bedroom, smiling. When Sao repeated the Garasun word for bed for the third time, they laughed, together.

  Heart, Yuske’s hand pressed against Sao’s chest, warm against his skin.

  Sao put his hand on Yuske’s, Hand.

  Yuske kissed his cheek, Moon.

  Moon.

  Where did you come from, Heart?

  Tree.

  Yuske pressed his face against Sao’s chest, nose in his armpit, voice muffled, You smell wild, like an animal.

  Sao’s eyebrows lowered and he touched his cheeks, hot.

  Yuske put his cheek against Sao’s chest, You’re like a man from another planet, another world, locked in time, in tribalism. Do you know what the world is? You don’t. You know nothing of this place, of civilisation, of power, of money, of possession.

  We not words for me. No, he trailed off.

  Pronouns.

  Ng, there not have I or you.

  There was not, not there not have.

  Ng.

  I love that.

  Ng?

  That. That noise. Ng. It’s so primitive, not even a word, but it means everything, conditionally. Tell me more. What is your village called?

  Not mine. No name. Mm, it, mm, Sao, I different from others. White not brown, black not red, blue not black. Sao mean star. Eyes.

  Fantastic! You are a star, you know. You’re radiant, electric, and so warm! I’ve never felt skin so hot, it’s like lying against a furnace. I can barely even take it sometimes. Like last night, it was so hot, I lost myself and, well, you know. I came too fast, but you ravage me! Even when I’m inside you, I feel that you’re the one possessing me rather than me taking you.

  Sao’s eyebrows flicked and he closed his eyes.

  Do you understand?

  Ng.

  Sometimes I think you’re just pretending to be ignorant of Garasun. You look like a Garasu, that’s why I stopped you and brought you here. I thought they had mistreated one of my countrymen! They’re a bit savage in the Federated States here. They vote and allow everyone a say. They even allow women to rule if they’re elected, which is all the time. There hasn’t been a male Minstru in years. Can you believe that? Oh, probably not—he ran his hand over Sao’s stomach—you don’t understand politics. How could you? You’re my savage woodland creature, my wildman.

  Sao not yours, Sao rolled over.

  Yuske’s voice failed him and his mouth hung open, No, Sao, please, come on, a joke only.

  Not funny.

  Sao, Sao, my dear Sao, forgive me, he touched his shoulder and grazed his fingertips over his arm, I would never demean you so.

  I am caged by language.

  Then I shall set you free.

  You cannot.

  Yuske reached over him, touched his cheek, and pulled him face to face, Then we shall. You and I.

  Sao will eat not more meat.

  But you love meat.

  Will eat not more.

  Why, Heart?

  It changes Sao. Makes me no man. Full of hunger and and and, he trailed off, looked at his hands.

  It’s okay. What would you like then?

  No meat, he whispered and touched his cheeks, burning.

  Sitting in the garden, he breathed as the dawns broke over the horizons. Eyes closed, legs crossed, in through his nose and out his mouth, he breathed slow and deliberate, disappearing into himself. Yuske found him at midday and told him to come to the Twilight Games, but he did not respond.

  Yuske stood beside him then lay down, watching him. He traced the point of his jaw, the arch of his brows, the curve of his lips, and the lines of his neck.

  When the suns switched horizons, Sao opened his eyes and smiled at Yuske who slept. He threw grass on his face but he did not wake so he kept throwing it on until he did. Yuske squealed and laughed and threw grass at Sao, rolling him into the grass.

  In heavily accented Limpa, Sao said they should go to the Twilight Games.

  Yuske’s mouth dropped and his eyes widened and Sao put a handful of grass inside.

  Why live here?

  Don’t you like my home, Heart? I have so grown attached to it. Even to the boys—he batted his eyes at Sao—though I wouldn’t suggest you’re jealous. Oh, I don’t know—his wrist drooped lazily back and forth—I’ve grown so used to it here, and, here, one can still really live as one chooses. It’s quite fantastic.

  No. Why here? You are not Vulpe. You are Garasu. Why here?

  Oh, Yuske’s expression changed, grown hard for a moment then shrugged away, Here, in the Federated States, life is…In Garasu, there are certain, hm, eccentricities that simply are not tolerated. Certain, how to put it, proclivities that are not only frowned upon but may be fatal if one chooses to indulge one’s taste, if you follow.

  Sao stared.

  Beyond that, life is simply freer here. In Garasu who one is born is who one must always be. Lots of formalities, customs, rituals, and society is rather rigid, inflexible, but, here! in Vulpe!—he gestured expansively—anyone may rise and there’s no prejudice against merchants the way there is back home. In Garasu, mercantilism is, well, to put it a certain way, it is tolerated, not accepted, even though the Crown would be destitute without it. See, it is the merchant class that drives the world, from fashion to art to political power, all lies in the hands of the merchants, but never mention that to an aristocrat or a polit
ical! They may have your head and your hands and whatever else they deem necessary to show the world how wrong you must’ve been. But what they don’t realise, or refuse to acknowledge is that true power is economic. The Crown’s power comes from the Glass and Drache’s from the promise and threat of dragons, which is dubious at best. No one outside of Drache understands, really, what a dragon is beyond the old tales, but we all believe, collectively, that they hold some deep dark beautiful ingenious knowledge that even outshines the Arcanes, if you can believe it. But Vulpe, Vulpe is less rich in resources but simply overflowing with resourcefulness. Owe it to the unique powers of women. Only here are they fully integrated properly and so only here is egalitarianism an actuality. Any life one chooses is available, if only one chooses to take it! The only place that even compares is Luca, great Luca, and maybe Luca’s even better as the trade and exchange is so much more central there, because there’s nothing else. You know they don’t even have a governing body? All freedom! No taxes, no laws, only economics! Pure and unrestrained and perfect. Oh! If only it were farther from Garasu and Drache! I’d live there in the next heartbeat, but, alas! It’s too dangerous for me to leave Vulpe, but I stay as close to the edge as I can because even Vulpe is only the shade of paradise.

  Sao studied the words in the books and ran his fingers over the many different markings.