NADYA

Sneaking out of the Fortress is harder than anticipated because of the added security measures in place. Where there are typically only a few dozen Gate Keepers, there are now over thirty at the front entrance alone. We look out at the guards in place from the balcony in front of Kaki’s chamber.

Over his shoulder, Kaki has two bags. One for the books he obtained from Jeran, and one for the stone knives we obtained from the Kitchens. I made quite a big deal of this. He said I was being dramatic, but I insisted that we need some form of protection. What of the Boneheads? What of the fires, the gangs with their guns and all their horrid violence? Especially as we are leaving under the scrutiny of the Moons and not the protection of the Suns.

It may be silly, for I know a stone knife will do nothing if we are to get into trouble. And the possibility of us getting into trouble makes my stomach churn. But Kaki has such a hard, determined look to him that I can’t back out now. He’s even washed his hair and tied it back, so as to better present himself as respectable to this ‘Lucy.’

“How are we to leave if the Gates are being patrolled?” I say.

“I never go out of the Gates,” he says with a small smile.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s an entrance that most people don’t know about. On the Northside of the Fortress.”

“What?”

“On the Northside.”

The Northside is on the opposite side of the Gates. What would a second entrance to the Fortress be necessary for, when the Gates have been perfected? With our dozens of Gatekeepers, who is patrolling this second entrance?

“What if we’re caught?”

“We won’t.”

“There are dozens of Souls out at night and—”

“Well then we can blame it on a romantic walk through the courtyard,” he says, without a hint of sarcasm.

“Excuse me?”

He chuckles and nudges my shoulder. I take a step farther from him. “You don’t have to look so disgusted. I would make a wonderful, thoughtful, charismatic partner.”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t disagree.”

“I would never want you as my lover, Kaki.”

“You’re so sweet, you know? Like the sweet paste stews. You’re just like that. Sappy and warm. All the time. I mean, just look at that big smile—”

“Shut up.”

We make our way down the stairs of the Gerasim Wing, which is always empty for none are fractureless like Kaki. In our black cloaks, I feel a bit like a hero in one of those romantic books Kaki read to me, when we were much younger. There are few romantic novels—or perhaps there are more and I do not know of them for they do not interest Kaki—yet they are captive, indulgent representations of imagination.

Imagination is a hard thing. It does nothing to better society, lest you are Pure enough to have the capabilities to turn imagination into a physical vessel. So imagination is not exactly looked down upon, but it is quite clearly useless. Yet romantic novels capture Soul and beauty perfectly in a physical vessel which contributes nothing to society. It is an enigma, a word that Kaki was obsessed with when he first heard it.

So I turn my mind away from the romantics.

The Gerasim Wing reminds me a bit of the Tyn Wing, in its silence, its numbered doors with their dusty metal hinges. There is never the constant pitter-patter of footsteps. Every breath feels as though it is being projected because of the ways the halls turn inward to create an echoed environment. As Gerasim was blind in His Physical life, there are no paintings nor much decor. What is appreciated are the abundance of textures carved into the stone walls.

When we are at the base of the Wing, we do not turn left to reach the Courtyard, as is typical. Instead, we walk around the outer perimeter, staying close to the stone walls. There are few Souls out at this time, and none bat an eye at our hooded figures.

It takes me a second to realize which direction we are headed: the Slaughter Houses.

“Why…?” I begin.

Kaki speeds up his pace. “Don’t you ever wonder why we never see bodies being brought into the Fortress?”

“They don’t come from the City. They’re our dead.”

“Well, ‘our’ includes the City, doesn’t it? And think about. You work in the Kitchens. I mean, the amount of people that die of the plague here doesn’t equate into how much food is cooked for the hundreds of Souls that have to be fed, right?”

I’ve never thought about that. “I suppose.”

“So some come from the City. Or, at least, somewhere else, but probably the City.” Kaki walks us around the depressing stone cubes, to the sliver of space between the Houses and the Fortress walls. There are no lights and it seems quite like the alleys we’d run through in the City. It is such a small, desolate space, one which screams to be avoided at all costs. Yet Kaki enters this field of darkness without hesitation. And so I follow, tugging at the edge of my frock so much the stitching begins to fray.

There is a metal grate, just a few legs into the passage. It is larger than I expected, about three times the size of a door and three times its width.

It smells absolutely horrendous. Of course, there is always a bit of odor to be expected when one is in the vicinity of the Slaughter Houses, but it reeks in this place. Not as badly of the City, but I still bring the cloak up to my nose.

His speaking calms me a bit. “The Bloodmixers and Butchers come through the back of the Fortress, with shipments of bodies from the City through here. Sometimes they bring carts full of them.”

“That’s why we never see them.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“That’s….” I begin softly.

Kaki turns to me. I cannot see his face in the darkness as he fiddles with the gate. It seems to not have been locked—I suppose it doesn’t have to, if no one but the Bloodmixers and Butchers know it exists. “It gets you wondering, right? How much we really don’t know, how much is kept from us. About anything. Ah, here we go. Come on. We want to be back here before Innokenti rises.”

Stolen story; please report.

***

I expect the City to be in a state of absolute chaos. I expect there to be hundreds of Souls running rampant from gang men with guns over their shoulders, as they had during the Boneheads’ protest. I expect there to be double the amount of chained bodies to the streets. I expect there to be beggars and weeping women and fires being lit on every street corner, for those are the rumors that penetrate the Fortress. I brace myself for this.

In a way, I’m correct. It is not the thick plumes of smoke in the air or the rank odors or the long lines of thin, malnourished Souls that cast an air of destitution over the City. Those that we pass have blank faces or even smiles. Music can still be heard for legs. Despite it all, there are still drummers and singers on every street corner, besides bloody sidewalks. What causes the heavy air is the way that the people whisper to each other behind metal fences, dodging the eyes of men and women who seem to don attire which marks them as dangerous. I cannot tell what makes these men and women as dangerous. And there seem to be an extreme amount of authorities patrolling even the back streets.

Kaki and I stick to abandoned alleys full of trash and dead bodies. Kaki tells me that he knows exactly where this ‘Lucy’ lives, but it feels as though we are traversing a maze of dirty plague-ridden wood and brick. Every step feels like a thousand.

“She doesn’t live very deep into the City,” Kaki says. “So it’ll be fine. Trust me.”

On the walls, there are posters with various drawings, or the remnants of such. Many have been visibly torn off the wall and torn into pieces, which were re-pasted onto the walls, along with dozens of graffiti drawings. To my horror, I notice that many of these ‘murals’ include pictures of the Enlighteneds with their heads chopped off.

My mouth waters at the sight of every body on the ground. Most are dead, but some convulse and thrash.

We have only been outside of the Fortress for a few moments when I grab Kaki’s arm and tug him back. “Kaki.” My voice wavers.

“We can go back,” he says. He grabs my hand and squeezes.

These are likely the men and women and children who are carted into the Fortress through that secret back entrance, packaged up into rations, and sent to me to serve the Fortress families on silver platters.

Just thrown into back alleys like this. As though their lives were meaningless.

I shake my head.

“Nadya—”

I shake my head again.

It is as though I feel some obligation to acknowledge these dead. To see them. I live off of them. Kaki lives off of them. I feel no such disgust when I see the raw flesh in the Kitchen cupboards—I do not know what it is about eyes that humanizes a person so, but I can’t look at them. But I can’t close my eyes either, for the dead penetrate the black and gray beneath my lids.

He rips a piece of his cloak just so I can have a thicker mouth covering. I let go of his hand.

“Here. I’m sorry,” he says. “Let’s get out of these alleys. The main streets are less horrific.”

I shake my head again. “It’s fine,” I say, but I’m not sure if he can hear me beneath the mouth coverings.

The body in front of me is an extremely plague-ridden child, with her hands entirely black, growths coming out of the side of her head, her tongue hung out of her lifeless skull. It is dark purple in color. I fight the urge to scream or perhaps cry.

“Nadya, what are you—” Kaki begins.

I kneel beside the body, and I begin to click to the distant rhythms of buskers on main streets legs away. I whisper a Prayer to Kirill. While most Prayers are supposed to come from one’s Soul, are supposed to be unique to the speaker, Prayers for the deceased are typically memorized; passed down from Mother to Mother, Father to Father. They are known as the Final Prayers of Redemption. They are supposed to be uttered for every Soul brought into the Slaughter Houses.

I’ve not thought about the sheer number of people it takes to feed a hundred living in the Fortress. I’d always assumed that the Mothers and Fathers were simply so attentive and dedicated to their dedication to the Suns that they would get through every Soul.

My eyes begin to burn. The Prayer is short and sweet, for I do not know the true Final Prayers of Redemption. I hope the Suns do not find my blatantly false attempt offensive.

I cannot bring myself to touch the forehead of the dead child, but I let my hand hover, despite the overwhelming urge to run far, far away from this alley and back into the comforting walls of the Fortress.

So, for every body that we come across in these alleys, I kneel beside them and Pray.

It gives my mind something to focus on. A mission. A goal. The power of the Prayer keeps me from completely destroying the skirt of my frock.

Throughout it all, Kaki says nothing, despite the fact that I know I have just cut down Kaki’s time to speak with this Lucy tenfold. The rising of Innokenti, the smallest and Purest Moon, approaches rapidly.

Each Prayer feels like an out-of-body experience. I do not quite register the words I whisper. Perhaps it is better that way. Perhaps the words are less hollow that way.

At some point, as we have rounded a sharp corner by a bunch of teetering, decaying apartments, Kaki grabs me aggressively by the shoulder and shoves me against the wall mid-Prayer. I almost shout out, but he covers my mouth.

Over his shoulder, I see two men walk by. The first thing I notice about them are their red necks, as though they had painted their skin with Enlightened blood. They are unusually plague-ridden. One man has claws coming out of his hands, but his arma and cloak are designed to emphasize his cursed mutation. The other has shaved his head to reveal the black spots appearing on the skin. They drag behind them a skinny boy, no more than a few cycles older than Kaki, with wide eyes and unusually pale skin. They shove the boy against a wall that is just hardly blocked from my view.

I gasp against Kaki’s hand. I see nothing, only hear the blows to the stomach. The screams of the boy. The bones being cracked against stone and wood. My eyes widen and I flinch as the boy cries out, “Help me! Help me!”

And then he goes silent.

The worst part of the whole ordeal is that not a single word is exchanged between the two red-necked men.

Kaki grabs my hand and shifts his body to fully cover me from the sight of the men. Then he gently urges me deeper into the darkness of the alley, so that we are not seen as the two men walk by.

We hear their footsteps become lighter and lighter. Only then does Kaki let out a breath. I cannot find one in me.

He squeezes my hand. “Nadya? Are you alright?”

“Who—”

“Those were Ruby men,” Kaki says. “One of the gangs. One of the bad ones. Come on. It’s dangerous, if there are any more like them waiting. Lucy lives just across from here, I remember. See that tree? How it’s shaped like a heart? That’s the landmark Jeran gave me.”

“I-the boy—”

“I know,” Kaki whispers. “I know.”

“How—” I shake my head.

How can Kaki have been witness to this violence for Peakings and be more interested in old books, when he has been blessed with the familial connections and Purity to obtain a seat in the Court? Where real change occurs? Once more, I think of Lightened Roe. Yet, does change occur in the heart of the Court? I don’t actually know, do I?

And what am I doing? Standing shell-shocked?

“We can’t do anything about the boy, Nadya,” Kaki tells me. “He’s gone.”

A horrible thought comes to me: he’s gone. He’s now just another meal.

And so we keep moving, at a much faster pace, not stopping once for Prayer. As we walk, it begins to rain. Our cloaks offer little protection, so it is a relief when Kaki finally stops. We’ve reached an apartment complex that is just as gray and dilapidated as all the others, yet there are no loitering Souls.

“This is it,” Kaki says.

There is no door to knock on, just a thickly weaved sheet of black and purple plague-ridden vines hanging from an arched entrance and a flimsy wooden bar.

“Hello?” Kaki calls. “Does a Miss Lucy live here? Lucilla of the Elms?”

“Who’s askin?” a low, gritty voice comes with a strange accent, like she’s saying ‘aye-skin.’

“Bakiyoria. Jeran’s friend.”

“Shit! Shit!” There comes the sound of something very large and metal falling to the ground. It echoes across the dark streets. More cussing ensues, and I hear a second person cry out. Then silence falls. “What do you want?”

“I know you enjoy your privacy,” Kaki says. “But there’s a book that I think Jeran told you I had and I figured your expertise would be—”

“Arlan, grab the gun!”

“What?” I say, taking a step back.

Kaki pales. “Wait, I am not here to—”

Suddenly, a head pops out of the weaved vines. An older woman with her hair shaved off and bright yellow eyes that glance around the scene wildly. She smells very strongly of smoke.

She takes less than half a second to assess Kaki and I before grabbing us both by the shoulders and tugging us inside.

***