13 - Alma Bryde

Syatt was awake as Pox lay stretched out on a patch of grass, asleep and snoring. They were beneath Harpy Bridge on the cities' eastern side, on the periphery of a small vagrant's encampment there on the exposed banks of the Slybos and beneath the shadow of the bridge. The command post, arsenal and training grounds of the Yarthanguard were across it to the west, on an island in the river called Arsenal Island, and from there it continued to the Towers and academic districts of the west side.

The boys had first gone to Crow's Tavern on Locust Street, where a thin man behind the small bar with slicked-back hair had told them politely that Alma Bryde wasn’t there, so they wandered over to the bridge at the end of Ironworks where it met East Current Street. The river was low, and many small islands and previously submerged rock formations were reachable where they’d not been before. The two spent some time exploring, wading in the muddy pools of the river’s edge before settling down beneath the bridge for a midday nap, the events of Glass Avenue still a fresh mark on their thoughts.

Syatt hadn't been able to sleep. He sat squatting with a network of anthills between his feet, elbows on his knees as he studied the insects and their work. A barren landscape of pyramids in miniature. I must be a god to them, he thought, then quickly doubted himself. No. Simply a giant. They don't worship me, or us, or anything.

He wondered whether or not the gods who ruled over them cared about the lives of ants or other insects. Syatt could destroy their entire civilization with a brush of his hand if he wanted. He wondered if the ants would know the loss. Would they weep in some secret language over the destruction, would Syatt be punished for his careless cruelty in the afterlife, or were ants somehow lesser, and did his ability to contemplate these things make him closer to or more loved by the gods? He thought about all of life in its massive complexity; the strange creatures of the vast oceans- the earth beneath him writhing with living things- the ancient forests, worlds unto itself- the weeds that grew through the cobblestones. Even the vegetables they’d eaten yesterday had been alive once. What does it mean to be alive? Am I an ant to something else? he wondered.

The river lazed by. Pox snorted, smacked his mouth and turned over, falling back to his rhythmic snoring, and Syatt's thoughts were interrupted by a cheerful salutation from the direction of the encampment.

"Hail, Quiet Syatt of Tabby Square, of the great City of Yartha," Alma Bryde said as she approached them from the commons area of the homeless camp and sauntered over to them. Over her freshly sheared head was a wide-brimmed hat, the kind that shepherds wore, and she carried a gnarled walking stick of driftwood. Her wide smile displayed her wooden front teeth. "What're you doing on this side of the Slybos, westerner?" She shook the stick and scowled at him in mock threat, then laughed.

"Miss Bryde," Syatt said, smiling. He stood up, mindlessly demolishing most of the ant's terrestrial colony with his giant's foot.

"Alma, if you don't mind," she said, and looked over at Pox's sleeping form. "He even runs his mouth in his sleep, I can see and hear," she said.

Syatt nodded. "Yep." He picked up his tunic from the ground, used as a mostly functionless pillow when he had dozed off for brief moments earlier, and shook the sand from it and pulled it over his wiry frame. "He's always snored like that."

“That ain’t normal for someone as young as him,” she said, but she smiled. Her face shone with sweat. The real heat of the day had just begun. Dragonflies hung over the water, and the endless drone of insects proclaimed that they would always be the world's true proprietors, no matter what the maps of the people read. Alma poked at Pox’s leg with the walking stick. "Wake up, boy! Quittin' time! You can stop your sawin' them logs now!"

He groaned and placed his forearm over his closed eyes, then lifted himself up on his arms and stared dumbly at Alma before recognition touched his face. He smiled. "I'll be damned. Alma Bryde. You know, that cult about your friend is the talk of the city.”

“And they are after you,” Syatt added, then embarrassed. “I think.”

She turned her head and spat. "That don’t surprise me," she said in a voice considerably more sober than it had been that afternoon. "Come on, though. Let's get the hell somewhere it's cool. It's cool where I stay, and it's close. Not to mention it's where my beer's at, so you can follow me or not, but that's where I'm a-headed. I found you boys a job if you want it, and I'll tell you all about Varnabas if you want to hear it."

They looked at one another and nodded, and followed her down the rocky banks of the Slybos to a place where they ascended planks of wood that had been set into the earth- steps up to Locust Street, busy with foot-traffic. They walked a little over two blocks, and several passersby greeted Alma warmly during the short trip. Syatt got the impression that she was well-liked in the area, respected even. Finally they arrived at the old stone grist mill that had been appropriated into a tavern. The water wheel that protruded from the side of the structure was broken, long still. Above the entrance to the front door was a weathered, painted sign that read "Crow's," but they went around to the side of the building. A short set of cobblestone stairs descended to a well where Alma stood and turned to a door that led to the mill's cellar.

She produced a ring of brass keys after much rummaging around her person, and unlocked the sturdy oak door, pushing it open to cool darkness and the smell of mildew. She said to wait while she found a light. There was more rummaging, and they stepped into the cellar as it was illuminated with the flickering glow of an oil lamp. Stone walls lined with kegs of beer and stairs cut from the same stone ascended to the main floor of the tavern. There was a small bed in one corner and a table and chairs in the center of the room next to a wood stove with a tin chimney. Above them was the hardwood flooring of the tavern upstairs. A good amount of clutter was everywhere.

She immediately grabbed an empty tankard on the table and set to pouring herself beer from one of the kegs. "Go on and sit down. I'm assuming you'll join me," she said, her back to them. She turned to them holding a tankard filled with a dark brew and thin foam. She sat it down on the table and searched through a shelf with a clatter for more containers.

"You assumed correct, my good lady," Pox said, his attempt at a distinguished voice.

She gave him a dry laugh. “Y’all are too skinny to handle any more’n a cup or two,” she said. This here’s East Side grog. It’ll put hair on your chest.” She found two more tankards and went to fill them.

The boys sat down at the table, both of them worn out from the walk and the debilitating heat. She was right, Syatt thought. The cellar was nice and cool. He saw in front of him on the cluttered surface a wooden bowl full of human and animal teeth, an offering to the goddess Kytra. He nudged Pox and pointed to it.

"I thought you followed Slybbon," Pox said. "What's with these teeth?"

"Well,” Alma said, and sat their tankards of beer on the table where there was space, Syatt’s right next to the offering. “I suppose I like to take bits and pieces from the whole lot of the deities, as to make sure I'm in good graces with a number of them before I meet the afterlife." She sat down, took off her hat and threw it across the cellar to a bed where a long-haired orange and white cat was sleeping, until then unnoticed. It looked up at her and slowly blinked as if unimpressed, then went back to its nap.

Alma drank. "Ah, that's good," she said.

"You gotta pay for these?" Pox asked her.

"If by pay you mean with a sore back, then yes, I do. I haul them barrels up the stairs when need be. Fit a rope round 'em and drag 'em up. Crow can't do it, himself. That man has arms and legs like string beans. In return for that and giving him a hand when the place gets busy, which is rare, he lets me stay here and gives me a barrel a week, which is just about how long one'll last me if I drink by myself, but what fun is drinkin' by yourself?" She tipped her mug to them. "I don't mind, though. Keeps my legs and back strong. What that string bean armed son of a bitch didn't tell me is that this damn cellar is haunted. Crow says it's the wife of the old owner. Took a stumble on them stairs cause of a damn cat at her feet and bust her head on the wall at the bottom. Her husband knew it was the cat because she cursed the cat's name and that's the last thing she ever said. The haunt is friendly, but she gave me a hell of a fright the first time I saw her. She's alright. She mostly just laughs and shakes her head 'bout the dumb way she died."

Syatt looked at the orange and white cat stretched out luxuriously on the bed. "Um,"

"That's a different cat. That's Gus. I don't know what happened to the murderin' cat." Alma did some quick math on her fingers. "Well, I suppose it's long dead, as this was quite some time ago."

Syatt smiled and took a drink. Yartha was a city of strangers. Trust didn't come easy to them, but he found that he liked Alma almost from the start, and he could tell that Pox did, too. The two of them were already debating the existence of ghosts, and from Alma's smile, Syatt surmised that it may have been her goal.

They sat, drank, and talked for a while about the orphanage and the last few years the boys had spent outside on the streets. "I pinned you as orphans," she said, "but from what I can tell, you ain't run with that bad crowd yet. Either I'd have left that line at the alley without my coin purse, or you'd have left it with an ass beating. There's a whole lot of y’all, ain't there? Thrown out close to three calendars back if I remember right." She gazed up at the rafters and clicked her tongue. "Poor lil' babies. I felt the worst for the little girls. Of course, there was plenty of you that got found homes. About every church but the truly strange ones saw to that, but the streets turned a mess of you rotten. Turned y'all to mean little bastards."

She stood to pour herself more beer. Neither of them had put much of a dent in theirs, though Pox seemed to like it. It was certainly stronger than the ale Millie had poured them.

"Nope," she said, "I can tell that y'all still got your consciences. That's good. Keep 'em. That being said, I'd appreciate it if all the clutter here in my hovel is still here when you leave, and now that that unpleasantness is out of the way, let's drink some more."

"Don't worry," Pox said, "We ain't going to steal your bowl of teeth."

"Best not," she said.

"Or nothin' else," Syatt added, slightly embarrassed that she had assumed, however correctly, that they were thieves.

"But we could have pulled one over on ya in that line," Pox continued. "We just didn't want to."

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Syatt could tell Pox was drunk. “We wouldn’t have-” he started, then laughed when he realized that he was too.

Alma didn't miss a beat with her response. "No you most certainly wouldn’t. No siree. I used to be a guard of Lordly Tower, you know."

Pox scoffed, but Alma just smiled and took a long pull from her tankard and put it firmly down on the table, empty, then raised a finger in the air with a dramatic pause before beginning to speak.

She told them the story of her life leading up to that point. A version of it, anyway, it was hard to tell with her. They lost count of how much she drank down there in the cellar, cool and quiet. A stark contrast to the busy, blazing streets above them.

She told them that she had been born in a small town north of the city, along Old Road, called Gorgon’s Crossing. Her father had been a metalsmith and she had learned the trade from him. She came to Yartha as a young woman only to find that, according to recent laws, in order to perform her trade in the city she would need to obtain a license which meant at least a year at the academy. Instead of going through schooling to learn something she felt she already knew, and without the funds to attend the academy, anyway, she tried out for the city guard, was accepted, and rose through the ranks.

She began patrolling slums and the dockyards, and by the time her days with the Yarthanguard ended, she was a resident guard of Lordly Tower, arguably one of the most important stations in the city, for it was where the governor of the academic sector lived, and where, on the top floor surrounded by balconies and a magnificent view of the city, the entire council voted and convened. She had served Governor Bantam Wyse. But, she told them, by that time alcohol had long been part of her daily routine, and the boredom of her new station had led her further to drink until she was demoted and eventually fired. "After that it's somethin' of a haze," she said. "I sold mirrors for this feller for a while. He'd known me when I was a guard and I guess I'd treated him alright, so he tolerated my habit. Not my proudest day, I'll admit. A guard of Lordly Tower, hawkin' cheap mirrors. When she's able to stand, that is."

They sat in silence. Finally Pox slurred, "You ever killed anybody?"

"Pox," Syatt muttered.

Alma snorted and stared at him, slowly shaking her head. "You just say whatever rattles out of that little head of yours, don't you? Yeah, I killed a few. You're lucky it ain't a sore subject for me. Didn't them clerics at the orphanage teach you manners? I know for a fact they did. But I ain't sore on the subject, because the men I killed- and they was all men, by the way- they needed killed, or else there'd be more killed." She seemed to be churning over something. Finally she spoke. "I ain't sore on the subject, but damned if thinking about justice don't give me a headache. If you think about it long enough, it all comes back to the ever-elusive meaning of life, then you're thinking about creation and the river, all of it. That's what beer and spirits'll do to a woman's trail of thought, but I was going to tell you about Varnabus, wasn’t I?"

Her eyes went from Syatt to Pox and back to Syatt, and her tone became serious. "Now, I don't see any harm in taking those cultists money, but I wouldn't get too close to them blue-robed sons of bitches, or whatever that thing that looks like Varnabas is, and don't donate no more hair or nothin' else. That'll no sooner bring rain than I'll squat atop Lordly Tower an' piss it.” She sighed, then said, “When we got our hair chopped off, y'all were sick to your stomach, right? Light-headed?”

The two nodded, and she looked at them for a long while as if choosing her words. "I won't frighten you with wild speculation here,” she said, “but that magic in that alleyway was real. The first time I felt it, magic, I was sixteen years old and had just moved myself to the city. I'm sure you've heard some of the old timers talk about Sara Wyse, or the house on Otter Street? That's the last time it was around the city that I know of. The last time a whole lot of folks was witness to it, at least. Sometimes it ends up bein' fairly harmless like that, but I've heard the old timers tell you some stories that would chill your bones. The thing about magic is that when it's around, everything you thought you knew is now out the damn window. It's more dangerous than it's ever been helpful if you ask me, but you wouldn't believe the amount of stiffs they've got trying to figure it out at that academy. I know this first-hand. Some people think all sorts of things about it- that it's things spilling out from a million years ago, or a million years in the future, or from another world entirely, but what they think about it all comes down to diddly squat when it comes to really knowing what it is. There's folks that believe it can help us. That it can elevate humans to a higher plane of existence. What they don't think about- and this is something I have given much thought to over the years- is that what is commonly considered magic is simply the unraveling of our shared vision of what’s real, and we should avoid fucking around with it too much if we want to keep the assumption that up is up and down is down."

Syatt spoke first, eager. "It's all black magic, then?"

Alma shook her head. "It's just magic. It can go either way, I suppose, but that's the case with everything. We put this sort of thing in boxes of black and white 'cause it's easier that way, but every damn thing is really a shade of gray. It's the same problem with calling yourself law."

"What’s that about Otter Street?" Pox asked her.

Syatt nodded. “We just know bits and pieces and we don't know if any of it’s true," he said.

"Of course they wouldn't tell you about this at that orphanage,” Alma said. “Those old ladies like their secrets. Sara Wyse lived in a little place on the academy campus, there on the corner of Otter Street and Willow. She taught botany, which is plant science. She was a sucker for plants if there ever was one. Had 'em hanging in that little cottage of hers all over, and the cottage itself was covered in ivy and she grew roses. It was all real pretty. Looked like a little painting, it did.” Alma took a drink, frowned as she spoke again. “Until this new type of moss showed up in the flower garden, which was right next to the front door of the cottage. It showed up in little clumps around the posies or whatever the hell she was growin' in there. She hadn't ever seen it before, and I shit you not, that moss or whatever the hell it was was shining like gold. Well anyhow, ol' Sara Wyse is pretty happy about this, thinking she's found herself a new type of plant, and that it just so happened to show up at the literal front door of the head botanist of the biggest, probably only school that studies such a thing. So she goes to sleep that night and when she wakes up in the morning she gets herself ready to go to the school hall and she can't open the door. Then she notices that that yellow moss had creeped into the cottage through the windows and under the door, and the strange thing was that it seemed to have made a beeline for her other plants. Smothered and killed 'em. Rumor has it that she also found that one of these tendrils had almost made its way to the bed she had been sleeping in. Right next to where her head had been layin’. Anyways, when she finally manages to get out with the help of neighbors and students and so on, she comes to see that this golden moss has grown over her entire cottage and garden and everything. As you can imagine, it gathered quite a crowd. A sixteen year old me was in that crowd of folks, and the feeling I had staring at that big ol' mound of shining moss was the same feeling I had when I was in the tent with Varnabas. It was real magic."

She drained the last of her beer in her tankard and went on, "They tried to salvage the house, but the moss had seeped into the wood and eaten away at it. Ended up burning the whole thing down when come sundown it had spread a considerable distance. Sara wanted to keep a sample of the stuff but the governors took a vote and they voted against it. Burned every last bit of it."

"That's when the creature ran out, right?" Pox asked her.

Alma got quiet. "Creature? What ignorant son of a bitch told you that? 'Tweren't no damn creature."

Pox shook his head. “I knew that son of a bitch was pulling our leg, Sy.”

"What happened to Sara Wyse?" Syatt asked her.

"Well, what happened to Sara Wyse is that the scientists and eggheads poked and prodded at her, didn't find nothin' out of the ordinary. Some of the religious wackos accused her of making deals with devils and all sorts of things, but she went back to teaching and died an all-too common death in the year 783 by the same fever that got your folks. That’s another thing. Some think that the plague come from another world."

"Magaia?" Pox asked her. “Do you believe in the gods?”

"I believe, all right. But I think our ideas of them ain’t quite correct. Yes," she said. “Magaia is what they call it.”

"What was Varnabus like before?" Syatt asked her. "You said he's different. Aside from that I'll bet he didn't eat hair before."

"Old Varn was a drinking buddy," Alma told them. "His bony ass is prob’ly imprinted on the bar stool right up them steps. It wasn't off that some nights he wouldn't show up to the bar. Being a professional drunk will take even the most faithful barfly on some grand adventures, and on short notice at that, but when it got to be a week we started to worry. The last thing he'd been up to was he was talking about how he’d built a little fishing dock downriver. Not his land, mind you, but I went there after he went missing and all that was there was his shabby work. I went to every spot I could think of. Anyways, we all feared the worst. Then out of the blue I spotted him on Chatter Street, carted in a rickshaw surrounded by a group of those brown-robes. I run up to him with a cheerful if puzzled greeting, and I'm intercepted with this notion that he is a prophet of Hyne. Now, you gotta know that Varn was not a particularly religious man. I offer to buy him a drink and he don't answer but the group declines for him. That's when I really knew something was wrong. He wasn’t yet in the state that we saw him in today, but he didn’t look good."

She shook her head slowly, and smiled weakly at them as it seemed she was rushed to the present moment. "This morning I heard the same thing you boys did. That there are all these folks with their heads bald, matching robes, and they got a savior who eats hair, of all things. Later that day after hearing this I see their whole group is comin' down Locust, and as I'm laughin' and wonderin' what they're gonna think of next, who do I see but my old pal Varnabas in the middle of all of them, this time in a damn palanquin like some kind of fucked up royalty. They wouldn't let me get to him. I was so mad I almost started swinging, but marched myself to Roost Tower and tried to get the guard involved. I thought I still had some friends there but I didn't get far. I was shit-faced drunk and… hell, I probably wouldn't have listened to me, either. When I sobered up I figured the only way to see him was going to be to go along with their bullshit, and it was in that line of bullshit I met you boys. Varnabas didn't know me from anyone else in that line. I just sat in that chair and tried not to bawl like a little baby while they chopped my hair off and I watched the sorry bastard eat it. All the while I'm trying to keep myself from jumping up and causing a scene, batting away the hair that keeps floating up to my damn face. He looked like hell. Poor bastard. That Brother Byron knows more than he's letting on. That's the truth. I know from my days in the guard when I'm talking to a bad liar, and I was talkin' to a bad liar. In that short interaction I had with him, I knew. This won't end well, I’m afraid."

Syatt rubbed his temples and ruminated on their strange day, feeling the effects of the alcohol.

"I agree, Quiet Syatt. Enough of this shit." She belched loudly. Pox followed shortly after with his own. They looked to Syatt to complete the unspoken ritual, and all laughed at the pitiful croak he managed. Alma looked at them from across the table and decided then to make them the offer she had been making at the vagrant camp earlier. She was a job scout of sorts, always looking for work herself, and passing down the jobs she didn't want or couldn't do to those who might need them.

"You boys looking for a little work tonight, right?" she asked them. "It's legitimate work, and easy as hell, and the fellow offering it will give you ten copper bits for one night's work. The job's really just meant for one, I believe, but I don't think he'd have a problem with you splitting it up."

They looked at each other. "Well, what is it?" Pox asked her.

"This fella, Mr. Perias, needs somebody to watch a row of stalls tonight, up at the bazaar in Endstown 'til first light. The kid who usually does it is sick, I guess. Ain't far from here, and y'all got plenty of time to sober up."

"Squealers," Pox said.

"You want it or not, smart-aleck?" Alma said.

They agreed after little consultation. Ten copper bits, along with the two silver they'd made earlier, would be enough to feed them for weeks, even with the gouged prices of food, and lifting their meals wasn't a safe option at the moment. She gave them directions to the place.

"And no thievery or foolishness or I promise you I'll have your asses if Mr. Perias don't get to you first. But anyhow," she said, "We've drunk enough and talked enough and I won't keep ya. That's my polite way of sayin' I feel like taking a nap."

She found a pencil and drew out simple directions and a short note, stamped it, and told them the generalities of the task. They thanked her, and as they left, she stumbled over to the bed and displaced Gus the cat as Syatt pulled the door closed behind them.

They ascended to the blinding streets where an angry sun reigned in the sky, and joined the throngs of the tired and the hungry. The cries sounded all around; a hundred-thousand merchants and priests, thieves and cultists, old crones and young lovers. The day was late and all were helpless to cease their clockwork function in the great city of Yartha.