Stitch, p.10
STITCH, page 10
“You killed Corin Hale, 'The Dandy Blade',” Antoine's brother said as he looked down at the head. “He was always clumsy.” Obin never let Antoine enjoy anything without some critique, but his sister, Lula was more generous.
“I think it was a glorious first duel, Antoine,” she said. “And the bronzed brute was no easy victory. No matter what your brother says.” She knelt, dipped her fingers in Corin Hale's pooling blood and rose. Then she smiled and smeared a stroke across each of Antoine's cheekbones. “There. It's official, little brother. You're blooded.” She laughed and dabbed a spot on the end of his nose, too. “And the next Hale we meet is mine.”
They put Corin Hale's body and his head back inside his carriage, slapped it on its pale blue leg, and watched it slowly rise and canter down the blackstone, heading South, towards the Hale family's high-walled enclave.
It was nearly dark, so they pitched chameleon-skinned tents carried by their four-legged jerkline wagon and camped just over the ridge from where Obin and Lula had watched their little brother's first duel. They ate and drank and laughed at the memory of The Dandy Blade.
As they slept, the three siblings were close enough to the bodies of the fallen Hale Guard for their witch-writ ears to hear the sounds of flesh torn from bone and the guttural groans of an unnatural beast's pleasure in feeding.
It was like no animal sound they'd ever heard before. The siblings stood together in the silver dappled dark and watched the light glint off each other's eyes while they listened. Then, on light feet, with swords in hand, they crept over the edge of the wooded ridge to see just what kind of beast made the sounds from the road below that were so savage and carnal and somehow so human.
The forest floor was covered in half-rot mulch, soft and giving underfoot – perfect for stealthy creeping. The siblings stepped slow with no more noise than night-breeze makes in bare branched leaves. All the while, the terrible wet-rip sounds of happy flesh-feasting drifted up from the road below.
In the moon's dim, through waving, black leaves, Antoine saw it. Small. No more than a yard-tall figure. Like a fat child wearing a cloak. When the wind shifted the forest canopy, tarnished silver beams played over the figure, and the fur on its head and its paws shone.
A bear. And a little one, too. Antoine had envisioned an abomination made by the Hales' Stitchlife, some nightmare that roamed the forests feasting on the flesh of the fallen. His fear left him in an unsuppressed breath, and when it did, the furry head below looked straight at him.
Antoine expected the little beast to bolt into the wilds, but it didn't. Instead, it stood up. On two legs. Like a man. Then it sniffed the air.
The young noble breathed shallow and silent, but his brother Obin rustled leaves as he pushed a sapling's bough out of his way. The creature turned to face the noise, and Antoine heard it whisper, “Snicker-Snack.” The words made his skin tingle, and in the half-moon light he saw long claws push out from padded paws the talking bear held in front of him.
And then Obin was upon him. The bear cried, “No!” and parried Obin's first two blows with its curving claws. It was as fast as his witch-sped brother. Obin struck again, and this time, the little unnatural trapped his brother's blade between its catching claws and growled. Astonished Obin shuffled back and withdrew his sword from the claw-trap.
“Let me be.” The bear's voice was weary and desperate and worn.
As Obin struck again, the fur-belly ducked low, spun inside his brother's swing, and like a quick-released, uncoiling spring, it thrust its whole body upwards and raked him with its claws. Then it bounded off Obin's body, tumbled in the air, and when it landed silently, it stood and faced his shocked and bleeding brother. “Know that I could have gutted you,” it said. Then, it was gone in a growling blur.
The wounds weren't deep, and when the sun rose, Obin vowed to take the creature as a trophy. Even Antoine could tell that it was his lost pride that he was chasing. He wondered if Obin knew it, too. Lula discouraged her brother from the hunt, but he wouldn't hear her.
The three Waltons set out after the fur-belly, and Antoine hoped there would be a few more Hales to kill on the way.
Chapter Two
The Demon of the Haunted City
The first sailors that visited called it the Haunted City because the gates opened and closed without any apparent means and the wells pumped water by themselves. They said it was alive and that it had a little demon, too: a witch-sped girl. Only days after that first ship's visit, word of the sheltering city spread, and the people began to arrive on foot.
Hundreds came wandering through the gates from the wooded wilds and the rubble-filled fringe sprawls. There were Zabbas from the 'Fills and even some from Wrecks' Landing. Molly imagined that one or two faces she saw wandering out of the wilds were survivors from her own burned and looted town – survivors of the Red-Cloaked Rider's attack on Little Falls. If they recognized the bone-blade girl who welcomed them, then they were too scared of her to say so.
The fields to the West of the walls were full of rabbits, and for Molly, catching them was as easy as picking vegetables. But after Molly caught them, she still couldn't kill them or clean them; the sight of their blood made her fall to the ground and twitch. Vora's ghost said she'd seen too much blood and needed to heal.
Molly cried and shook, and even after she stopped, tears rolled down her face whatever she was doing, even when she slept. Sometimes she dreamed of not waking up, but mostly her nightmares were filled with the dying faces of the hundreds – the Bow Enders, the Dragons, the Blood Dowsers, and the Sons of Samson.
She knew she was healing because weeks later, she only wept after she gutted the rabbits.
As wet-cheeked Molly spit-roasted one over a driftwood fire on the smooth-pebbled beach outside the walls, she wasn't alone. Men and women with shoulder-slung baskets plucked crabs from the beach, and fishermen cast nets out over the water to pull in glittering bundles. A sailing ship had come to trade for the strange sugar-sap fruits grown by the queer, witchy trees of the Haunted City, and it was at anchor in the bay.
When she'd eaten all the meat off the rabbit's little bones, Molly left them for the crabs to pick clean and went inside the walls for water. She stepped off the pebbled beach and onto the smooth, white road that led through the South gate. A marketplace had sprung up just inside, and it was full of people and dried fishes and fire-roasting crab. It was merry with rum from the ship.
As Molly made her way through the marketplace to the well at its center, people stared. She knew some of them had seen her catch rabbits. They knew how fast she was and they were scared of her. When she spoke to anyone, they answered with quick nods or shakes of the head and walked away white-faced. She wondered if they'd heard how many she killed in Wrecks' Landing.
While she drank the well's waters from the bowl of her hands, her eyes were drawn to a group of men who'd just entered the market. As they passed, the crowds parted and mirth waned. They didn't trade for anything; what they wanted, they took. Their swaggering manner and their crude, long-bladed knives reminded her of Ho's Red Hand.
When ships dropped anchor in the bay, they made people collect the helio trees' fruits. Then they'd trade them for rum. Already, they'd claimed a water well and taken a whole block of houses as their own. Molly wondered what would happen as their numbers grew.
She didn't want to ask the ghosts in her wreath what to do because she knew what they'd say.
*****
The tower was a narrow, rising spiral like the shells Molly found on the beach. It was taller than any other structure in the city – taller than even the outer walls. It hadn't grown when the rest of the city pushed itself up from the ground; it had waited for Molly.
Her first day in the city, Vora's ghost told her to go to the skull-topped dome. When she pressed her palm there, the city spoke to her through the wreath. “Welcome, Molly,” it said, “This Is For You.” Then, the ground nearby rumbled, fissured, and shot jets of steam. The pointed, spiral tower rose equidistant from the skull-top and the great, stony, bulge-belly womb where the seeds of the next cities grew.
Molly stood at the balcony near the tower's sky-piercing point and looked out over the tops of the walls into the fields and the hills. Constellations burned where Pietra Fona's glowsies fed. Molly watched them until her weighty thoughts pulled her eyes down through the gaps in the helio trees' broad, luminous leaves and into the city below. Voices from the marketplace rose to her on the wind.
Vora's ghost appeared. And the chameleon-suited General, too. And devious Fin Singh. “We've heard the worries in your mind, Molly,” Vora said. “And we've seen what your eyes have seen: the men in the marketplace, the Long-Knives.”
“They force people to do things, and they take whatever they want.”
“The nature of men doesn't change,” Fin Singh's ghost said. “Not even in a place like this.”
“It's time for you to fight again,” the General said. Molly tried to protest, but she could only manage to speak the first word before the ghosts spoke over her.
“I-”
“Do you want this city to be ruled by fat-fingered Treys who take what they want?” the General asked her. “Hundreds died to make this place. Do you want their sacrifices to be in vain?”
“I-”
“There will always be the Strong and the Weak, some with Power and some without, Molly.” Fin Singh yawned. “It's the way of things. You can't change that. Not even this wondrous gift of a city can change that.”
“But what you can do,” the General added with a broad smile, “is make sure that you're the one in control. What happens after that is up to you.”
“It's time for you to fight,” Fin Singh's ghost concluded. “If you wait, your reluctance will lead to even worse bloodshed in the end.”
“Can't I just tell the Long-Knives to leave?” Molly asked. Fin Singh and the General both laughed. Vora's ghost smiled thinly at her.
“First, Molly,” the General said, “you must show the Long-Knives what happens if they don't leave.”
*****
Molly found three Long-Knives near the edge of the South market, and the General said that three would be enough.
They were cruel-eyed and grizzled, rough-hewn and mean-faced with scars from fights won and lost. They were muscled, too. The arms that protruded from their short, waist-tied tunics were strung with sinew and wire. Molly could see their eyelids hung heavy with rum. “Is this really the only way?” she whispered to the General. He nodded solemnly.
“This is the way of Power,” he said. She found the cold calm in herself and she was glad it was there.
One of them finally looked at her when she got within ten yards. His face didn't show fear until she sped herself, disappeared in a blur, and reappeared close with a spurt of his blood hanging in the air between them.
Her knife sank deep under the second one's ribs, and Molly felt his heart beat once on the blade.
The third clutched his throat where she cut him, but he couldn't hold his color in.
Molly slowed herself to match the pace of the world and watched as the Long-Knives fountained and fell. Then, the General told her to write her name in the blood.
Molly walked back to her tower in a trance and pressed her red palm against the wall. The automata sands swirled and parted in front of her, and after she entered, the wall closed itself behind her. Before she climbed the stairs, she said, “I'll tell the other Long-Knives to leave tomorrow. They'll go now.” She waited for one of the ghosts to answer her, but they were all silent.
*****
The next morning, Molly found the bulk of the Long-Knives in the marketplace, by the well they'd claimed. Now, they were asking a price to drink from it. Molly climbed on top of an empty wagon cart and spoke the words the General put in her mouth. “Long-Knives,” she shouted. The crowd went quiet and looked at her. “Long-Knives! You must leave the Haunted City. You're not welcome here. Go. Go now, and I'll let the rest of you live.”
The people in the market pulled away to the edges of the square, but the Long-Knives gathered around the cart where Molly stood. A tall, bald-headed one with a milky, dead eye said, “Who are you to give us orders?”
“I'm Molly.” She expected them to fear the name like the General had told her they would, but if the tall, bald one who spoke for them feared her, then he didn't show it.
“Did you kill Barnes and Bofi and Whipper?” he asked. She nodded.
“That's what will happen to you if you don't leave,” she said plainly. Molly expected them to leave. She expected them to run in fear. She didn't expect them to draw their knives and reach out to pull her down from the cart.
Molly sped herself and the Long-Knives around her slowed until their faces were frozen in masks of outrage and defiance.
The General was there on the cart with her, and his magic suit dressed him in the Long-Knives open-mouthed, screaming faces. “I don't understand,” Molly said. “Why aren't they leaving?”
“They're challenging your rule. They don't want to take orders from you.”
“But you said they'd go.”
“I said you had to show them what happens if they don't go. I didn't say they'd be smart enough to leave.”
“But what do I do now?” Molly asked.
“You kill them,” the General said. “Here. Now. In front of everybody. All of them.”
“And most cruelly,” Fin Singh's ghost added. “Slowly. Slow enough for the whole crowd to see it happen.”
“You're not just driving the Long-Knives out of the city, Molly. This fight isn't just with them anymore. It's with anyone who would rise and challenge you after they're dead. Killing the Long-Knives in front of this crowd shows everyone what will happen if they disobey your rule.”
“But I don't want to rule anyone.”
“'I'....” the General said, “and 'Don't Want'... We've talked about these words before. You have no choice, Molly. The Strong will always rule the Weak. The only way to make sure the weak survive is to be the strong one and take control. You know that. At least you did when you killed Hob.”
“It's the only way,” Fin Singh's ghost said. “Kill the Long-Knives. Slowly and most horribly.”
“I know you don't want to, Molly,” the General said. “But I also know you understand sacrifice.” Molly still didn't want to kill the Long-Knives, but she decided the General was right; not killing them would be selfish.
She became a blur-balded whirlwind, but she made the Long-Knives die slowly. The people in the marketplace backed away in horror as they watched two dozen screaming men tormented by a streak that danced among them and slashed at each of them again and again and again. Molly's bone blade was everywhere at once, and if the Long-Knives tried to flee, she herded them with its point.
The first wounds she gave the Long-Knives were cruel jabs up and down their bodies. They howled with panic and bled from a hundred shallow, twisting stabs. The crowd watched their crimson wounds appear and multiply wherever the terrible demon-blur passed. When she had pierced them up and down, she sliced them across the backs of their knees so that they all knelt and wailed together in terror. She cut them each a hundred times more until she finally let her knife find their deep-bleeding veins, and the Long-Knives' color spatter-stained the market's stone solid.
When Molly halted her blood-letting, nightmare dance and stood over the dead Long-Knives, covered in their color and sticky with it, she smiled at the crowd. Red face. White teeth. She held the head of the tall one who had spoken for them above her head and showed them. “Good girl,” the General said in her ear. When she saw the crowd's shock-horror faces and she heard their screaming, she knew they all hated her. Molly was sure she heard the word 'monster' before she ran out of the marketplace as fast as she could.
Chapter Three
The Young Witch and the Merry Hales
After only a decade in Kitty Hawk's Coral Castle, Mei Corina secretly lengthened the telomerase chains of her own cells. Fifty years later, she still looked as young and fair as she had then.
She'd been Vora's apprentice until Vora Mbuntu betrayed the Hales and fled their enclave. Now, Mei Corina was the Hales' only Stitchlife.
Vargas Hale stood in her laboratory and glowered at her in his breeches, a buttoned short-coat, and the saber he'd carried since the day nearly a month ago when he'd announced from his balcony that the Hales were going to war.
She could tell he didn't like being there. The lab was filled with syn-wombs, bladders, veins, and living Stitchlife tools that looked like oversized, out-of-body organs. The lab's outer walls were bone, but inside it was fleshy and covered in a thick, gelatinous coating that glowed when you spoke loudly near it. The walls' flesh was lined with massive sugar-sap veins and pale-blue, copper-blood arteries that pulsed under the surface, driven by a single, massive, pump-house heart. There were protuberances everywhere on the walls for feeding equipment and custom-crafted creatures with sugary product and lifeblood. They looked like a thousand misshapen, fist-sized nipples, and whenever Vargas Hale was there, Corina watched his usually confident, focused eyes dart from one protuberance to the next with unease.
“I'm not interested in hearing about delays, Corina,” Vargas Hale said. “Sugar Music is now a city, sitting on the edge of an ocean bay to the North – sitting and waiting for the Hales to take it back.”
“We've discussed the very specific, very special requirements for the golems you'll need. This is no ordinary city. It's made of cellular automata: living grains of witchy sand. If you plan to attack it, then you'll need something custom-crafted for the job. I've written what you need, but even under the best of conditions it takes time for me to grow the very special cellular automata you require. Under the conditions Vora Mbu-”
