CHAPTER TWO
The Hush
Dust-skitters hummed their rising song into the morning. The insectile buzz rose to a single fever pitch until the sound cut off abruptly, then started again. One jumped out into Leta’s path, mid-buzz, startling her. Its long, black body crunched underfoot, its part in the song unfinished. Well, isn’t that too bad? Leta exhaled and thought of her conversation with Tarisof.
Krista. She should have gone straight to Zarina’s room or The Hush to get started, but she needed some fresh air. With the sun just leaving the horizon behind, only a few wanderers and sleepers were on the Roc’s lawn, within the rebar-checked concrete walls. The thought of redesigning her operation, retraining her people, and then finding a source of kavil made her want to stomp the dust skitter until it was beaten into the arid dirt below.
“It wasn’t harming you. You didn’t have to kill it.”
Leta looked around for the source of the voice. To her left stood a large man, bald and broad with—no, that couldn’t be—Cattoleiri tattoos wrapping both forearms to the elbow. He still wore the Sjlunroca-issued outfit, loose cloth pants and shirt, the color and approximate texture of burlap. He’d need to get some article of clothing that reached his wrists before someone from the order saw him. She looked down at her forearms, or rather, at the solid gold cuffs that wrapped the lower half of her forearms to her wrists. At least now she wouldn’t have the most notable arms in the ‘Roc.
The Cattoleirin stood comfortably upright, hands clasped before him as if he were wearing a preacher’s cloth instead of a prison uniform. He’d undoubtedly look more at home in a church than a prison. Leta’s eyes flashed to the ‘Roc, then back to the man. Or maybe…but Leta couldn’t get that lucky, could she?
“Didn’t hurt me, no. But that’s only because I’m still upright and not ill. You have skitters where you come from?”
The Cattoleirin shook his head.
“You must be from a city, then. On the outskirts, where there’s nothing but ash and dirt and no one to collect one and water the other,” she picked up the insect by its black wings, “you get these little devils.” Leta extended it towards the man’s face as if to give him a better look. As she’d anticipated, once the insect got close, it sprung back to life, its head extending at the man, jaws snapping away from its twisted body. A slimy, maroon ichor spurted out onto Leta’s hand. She allowed herself a small smile at his surprise and discomfort before tossing it away. “They’re damned hard to kill, and if you hear one make a ‘creak’ while the rest are all quiet, you better run. That’s them calling their friends that they found dinner. I’ve seen them skin a dying man in less than a minute. But they’re not always full after that.”
The Cattoleirin swallowed hard enough to hear. Leta wiped her hand on her jeans, probably only making her hand dirtier, but it seemed polite after handling a bleeding skitter. She proffered it with her most winning smile. “I’m Leta. Welcome to the Divine Sjlunroca Temple.”
“Clarkson, pleasure.” He shook her hand, his right hand in hers, his left clasping around the back of her wrist. He used his forefinger and thumb only, placing them in the small space between her hand and cuff. The gesture was unconscious, as Clarkson did it as if he had shaken hands like this his entire life—which he would have if he had been from Bellemeade.
It wasn’t ideal. Clearly, this was a holy man of a religion that eschewed the use of drugs, but Leta could hope that he was a reformed user, maybe even a reformed dealer. It was ridiculous, of course, but any information Leta could glean about the Nava trees, which were so common in Bellemeade, would be more than she had. Kavil. Each time the word came to mind, her headache worsened.
“Have you been here long, Clark?”
His eyes flashed to the outside walls, then back to Leta. “No, not at all. I’m still getting my bearings about me.”
“Long sentence?”
“No, not too long.” He smiled a genuine smile, all the way up to his chilly blue eyes.
The smile hid something. Leta narrowed her eyes but turned it into a smile. She wanted him on her team, and it wouldn’t do to expose her distrust. “Where have you been staying?”
“Outside, actually. The season has been mild, thankfully. Though the hoofhounds do wake me quite early.”
Leta closed her eyes and sighed. Shoots—never know what’s good for them. “You’ve been lucky, then. There’s a reason people don’t like to sleep outside.”
“And what would that be?”
“The other people.” Leta gave an exasperated sigh. “You seem like a nice type. Come with me, and I’ll get you set up with somewhere to stay before you get robbed or shanked.”
“Shanked?” The word was ridiculous in his high accent.
“Asha wept. Just come with me.”
* * *
Leta tried to see the temple through his eyes: the eyes of a believer. The travertine murals on the ground were mostly covered with grime, and the occasional prisoner was asleep in a corner. Two-story peaked windows once filled with decorative shatter glass were now boarded against the ash and elements. It had been a place full of divine light and believers that had been turned into an oversized tomb full of people trying to forget they’d been left to rot.
They walked around a pile of plaster that had crumbled off one of the large central columns. Clark looked up at the top of the column. It's best not to look too closely at the architectural soundness if you like your sleep at night. But Leta said nothing. A little unease would serve her purposes. Thorne, she reminded herself, and whatever he was hiding.
"Is that man okay?” Clark asked, eyes fixed upon Norris Holdsted, who was sleeping flat on his back against the cool stone, wearing nothing more than a pair of undershorts worn to the same color as the ground below. The occasional whimper escaped him as he wrestled with his tophra-fueled dreams. Poor Norris Holdsted (never just ‘Norris’ or ‘Ol Nort’) had a mean skin condition that caused terrible welts to break out on his torso—back and front. It wasn’t contagious; Norris Holdsted would tell you that as soon as you met him—and then every time after, for good measure—but they were painful, and the only relief he could find was in laying on something cool—and, of course, tophra. Norris Holdsted found the summers excruciating, and Leta had to spend a good deal of her time and wiles making sure he didn’t accidentally overdose during those hot months.
‘Ol Nort wasn’t looking good. She saw him yesterday passing her room and walking towards the suicide stone. It was a frequent occurance for someone living on the top floor, the suicide stone sat high up below one of the main arches of the ‘Roc. Usually, she would take his old shoulders and turn him away from the stone telling him, “Not today, Petey.” She would wrap her arm around his rounded back, hunched more from despair than age.
He would ask her, “Have you a reason for me today?” And Leta would feel the vibration of his speech in his ribs through his threadbare uniform. He never bothered to wear regular clothes, even when Leta had given him a pair.
Sometimes, she told him she’d seen something beautiful or interesting that she wanted to show him. Some days, she kept a story for him. On bad days, when Leta felt just as weary as Petey, she told him that he could always go tomorrow but couldn’t always stay today. But yesterday she had said something different—
“Something feels like it’s changing, I smelled it in the ash. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you if I was right.”
She didn’t know why she said it, only that it felt true.
She turned back to Clark. “He’s fine, just spending some time with Kallex.”
“Kallex?” asked Clark.
Leta stopped walking towards the sweeping double staircase to look at Clark. He seemed genuinely confused. Leta smiled at his innocence; then her smile faltered as she remembered it wouldn’t last long. “He’s high—on the nod, tophra tripping, getting’ away—ya ken?”
Clark gave the man an appraising look. “Sure, sure, but who’s Kallex?”
“It’s just punter slang; they say when you smoke tophra, you see a bright manifestation of heaven, and a beautiful god of light welcomes you in. They call him Kallex. One of those things that gets passed around in a group until you forget it was all made up.” Leta felt like that often, only she felt like the group around her had been carrying out a joke on her where they pretended she used to live in a big castle and wear prim dresses, and people called her “princess” without a sardonic gleam in their eye.
“Is that something you do… spend time with Kallex?” The name sounded too well-formed from his mouth, two distinct syllables like he’d split the word right down the middle to hold it open and look at its guts. Everyone in the Roc barely pronounced the middle ‘L’s, like they were trying to get the word over with, or could only manage to look at it from the corner of their eyes.
“No,” said Leta firmly. “And if you’re smart and plan on living for more than just a quick stint, you won’t either.” It’s not that she didn’t wonder what it was like or wish for a sweet escape from the ever-pressing horrors of now and here. Maybe it was because she was still a kid with a head not too far removed from Nanny Spry’s fairy tales when she first came to the Roc, but the truth was that the idea of using tophra scared Leta. And not just because she was worried about becoming like Norris Holdsted with his back full of rot and his mind even worse. The truth was, she had mentally personified Kallex into a burning dread god, birthed from a great crevasse in the earth to claw into people’s dreams.
She would spend no time with him.
"I think you’re right,” said Clark, “I don’t think I will.”
Ah, yes. But that’s what they all think—at first.
* * *
It made her a terrible hypocrite, of course, to fear and revile a drug then serve as its lord and master, but control over a thing gave her power, if not peace. Leta walked Clark to The Hush through the back routes of the Roc. The back route had fewer Order members, and thus, fewer opportunities for trouble. But more importantly, the back routes held all the secrets that the nice law people liked to hide. She hoped the creaking floorboards strewn with cast-off needles and dreams would be a poignant contrast to The Nest.
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The walk to the Nest seemed to wear out the man beside her. He was almost the same size as Thorne, but his mass was not muscle but soft, squishy bits all the way through. He stood in front of the door, his breathing heavy, and watched as Leta opened it for him.
The Nest was not loved by Leta or those who worked there, but it was well cared for. It was the orphan child adopted by an elderly gentleman, and its succor was money. Clean, efficient, and correct, but without warmth or adoration. When the door swung open into the first room of her curated maze, the smell that poured out reminded Leta of clanks and clangs and other things that could keep her safe and warm and fed. That is what she focused on: what it provided her, and not what it left behind in any empty bits in her soul.
Before she even stepped into the room, an undersized young man came scurrying up to take any belongings Leta no longer cared to carry. He offered them refreshment, and Leta looked to Clark, who only shook his head. Leta couldn’t tell if he was being dim in not taking food and drink when he had the chance or smart in avoiding becoming indebted to her.
“I’ll bring you two,” said the young man. “Miss Leta needs a bit of encouragement to eat. Too busy to remember.”
“You’re not wrong,” said Leta. Between running The Hush and keeping herself and Bonne alive—it slammed into her again, stones upon her weary head. She’d lost The Order’s business, and the only way she would keep herself and dozens of others safe and fed was to find a way to make kavil of all things.
“Who’s the cattle?” the young man asked. Leta could tell he wasn’t trying to be rude, just unable to stifle his curiosity. It was probably what got him locked up in the first place.
She ignored his question and spoke to Clark without removing her eyes from the young man. “Please excuse the rudeness of—”
The boy reddened, “Petta, Mistress.”
“Petta. We don’t get a lot of Cattoleirin here in the Sjlunroca. Just two flats and juice please, Petta.”
The young man dropped a too-deep bow and scurried off.
The sounds of bustle sprung up from corners of the room as people noticed Leta’s presence. The main room was mostly for business concerning the nest itself: cooking food for employees, small meetings with other factions or people interested in joining the operation, and storage and upkeep of cooking materials—the real cooking materials. All the other business took place in the rooms beyond. Rooms that could be easily locked down to prevent intruders from stealing tophra, money, or secrets.
They stood side by side, their forearms resting at their sides: black, black, gold, gold, while the hustle and bustle of The Hush swarmed around them with morning duties.
Clark watched the action swirling around them. “Why do you call it The Hush? It is quite loud.”
“Come with me.”
Leta led Clark to a room like all the others. There was no sign on the door or anything else to mark it as special, but it was the very first room Leta had here and still served as the most important. It was the reason for every person here and their every hustle and bustle. The Hush.
The door opened to a plume of sickly yellow smoke: the paintbrush that had bleached the front of Leta’s hair straw-yellow against the midnight black and dyed her pure blue eyes the color of dying leaves. Leta insisted that the door to The Hush be sealed against the smoke, the smell made her sick with memories: burnt chocolate and hunger. But it was the sound of the cooking tophra that gave the place its name. To make tophra, first one needed to scour the grounds for topherroot. That was the difficult part. Topherroot itself was a mild version of tophra and as soon as it began to sprout, it would be yanked up by some punter or a picker from one of the tophra manufacturers. That’s why most of the larger operations, and by extension, Leta, who had been the largest operation, arranged topherroot from outside the bounds of the ‘Roc. From there—if one had the proper supplies—the rest was easy. The brown and crooked roots were bundled with string, and a cook would hold the bundle by the very top (avoiding the thorns, of course) and run the bundle along the inner walls of a pewter cauldron filled with water and acetone. The sound of the tophrerroot scraping the sides of the cauldron created the eponymous hush. From there, it was a simple matter of waiting for the topherroot to soften to the correct consistency before smashing, drying, weighing, wrapping, bundling, running, and selling.
Only, now she might as well just burn it all down.
“Hush, sounds like a hush, get it? Great.” Leta hurried Clark out and back into the main room.
Celia, one of the kitchen women, awaited Leta when they exited the hush. She handed her two flats and two cups of juice—watered-down mallo by the looks of it. The flats were cold but still had some of the smell on them from being out of the boiler not too long ago.
“Rootin’ boy,” Celia said. “He’s a hard worker but,” she knocked on her own head, “thicker than the ice ring, he is.” She gave a quick curtsey with her apron before hurrying back towards the galley kitchen on the far side.
“Thank you, Celia.” Leta said at her back, then passed one flat and one juice to Clark, who held the wrap like a young uncle holding his niece for the first time. “Safe to eat,” said Leta. “Promise.”
Leta looked down at her own flat. Her stomach was not interested; it was too busy roiling and reminding Leta she had more important things to do than eat. Very well, then. Best be on.
"Clark,” Leta said, a bit more sharply than she’d intended.
“Yesh,” Clark said, swallowing hard and coughing. “Sorry. Yes.”
“Did you finish that whole thing already?”
“It seems I have. Complements to the chef.”
“Here,” she passed her own flat to him. He made some mouth and head movements that seemed like general polite refusals before taking the flat and pocketing it beneath his uniform. That wouldn’t last long. Clark was not only tall but broad, bordering on pudgy. A sure sign of a newbie in the ‘Roc.
“I have some things to do, so I’m going to have someone help you find a place to stay. Do you have any coin?”
He looked around at the people moving about him, then lowered his voice from a boom to a stage whisper. “I have some.”
Lord Below. “Great. You’re probably going to need some more. Shane will show you some of the different options for available rooms. They’re not free. Not the ones you’re going to want to stay in. You’ll need a source of income. After you’re settled, come back here. I’ll find you something to do.”
“And what would that something be?”
Leta sighed and looked around at The Hush. All her employees kept half an eye and two ears on Leta’s conversation. Paranoia was pervasive in the Divine Sjlunroca, but Leta couldn’t blame them. She’d seen most of their fears come true. She couldn’t let them know what had happened this morning with Tarisof. They’d all hear different rumors over the next few days, and she’d shrug them off as gossip until she had a plan in place. Although, with so many players involved, she might not even have that long. “Let’s sit and talk in my office for a bit, and then I have some work to do.” Leta might even be desperate enough to ask Clark to pray for her, though certainly, any whisper of that rumor would end in both of their deaths.
* * *
Leta sat in the hard-backed chair. It tilted to the left as she sat on it. Clark sat on his own with some hesitancy. Leta’s office was one of the nicest places in the Roc, but that was akin to saying Patyre Doone was the classiest whiskey dealer—true only through relativity.
“You’re here because I think you would be a good fit for my operation. You see, here we make a product that gets people down there through their days, and in return, we live a bit more comfortably. It’s a symbiotic trade.” He seemed to understand the word; not everyone did. If she really was going to have to keep this shoot as one of her employees, she’s rather him not be a dolt. Thorne and his little mystery better be worth it.
"I believe you’re talking about your Kallex.”
Leta ignored the mention of Kallex. “Tophra, yes. And possibly something new. And I know that this business is not the most… acceptable enterprise on the outside, we’re on the inside now, Clark. The rules bend as they enter through the front door, and if you’re smart, you will to.”
“I’ve seen quite a few people suffer and die from tophra use.”
“Aye,” said Leta, “and I’ve seen men killed when thrown from a horse. The best we can do is raise up gentler mares and train them with a keen eye. Fewer people overdose on my product than anyone else’s. This place, The Divine Sjlunroca makes me fear not the afterlife. And I’m not the only one. Sometimes, getting away is the only thing that keeps people from the suicide stone. And no one makes a safer product than I do.”
"I don’t know that I could forgive myself or even ask forgiveness of the Cattoleiri if I were a party to this. Though, there is always redemption to be found if one looks.”
Leta ignored the jab. “I owe no god forgiveness. Did you not see the horrors as we entered? Do you not feel the hopelessness of the people you call the gods’ children? Any conversation I have with any god will need to start with their begging forgiveness from me.”
“The Cattoleiri may work in mysterious ways, but then to do men.”
“Much to my mother’s chagrin, I was not born to become a man, and as the woman I am, I work in one way only: forward. I will not look back and apologize for what I’ve done: for what I’ve had to do.” The guilt and shame of what she’d done knocked at the door Leta kept them in, but she ignored them. They were not welcome here.
Clark folded the torn piece of napkin around his wrap and put it down on her desk, then smiled at her in the beatific way some holy men had—the holy men who were really in it for the love of their Gods, and not just for their own betterment. Morons, in other words. “I’m sure there is something I can do around here that would be acceptable for both of us. Though I don’t believe that I would like to work directly with any product you create.”
Leta’s mouth pulled into a flat line, and she closed her eyes to hide their roll. Her headache was starting early today, damnable Cattoleirinn. She needed him to help her secure a kavil source, and she needed him to want to do it. “I understand that some things here may clash with your beliefs. I think that I have a compromise that would suit both of us.
“And what would that be?”
“I believe you’re from Bellemeade?”
Clark’s eyes widened, and he even jumped a bit backward. “Why, yes, I am. What gave me away?”
What didn’t? thought Leta. “I just have a sense for these things. I have been thinking of expanding my production into something…else.” She looked for a way to frame kavil as a benefit to the people of the ‘Roc, but couldn’t find one—since there wasn’t one.
"And what would that be?”
“I believe in Bellmeade, you call them world trees.”
“Kavil?” Clark’s persistently reserved smile dropped, and his bushy eyebrows burrowed deeply towards his squinted eyes. “You’re thinking of making Kavil?” He shook his head quickly, like he’d never be able to rid his mind of the word. But then, he took a breath and forcefully reset his face to its former beatitude.
“We all have to do things here that we don’t want to do, and if you don’t want that thing to be dying, I recommend reconsidering what your stay here will look like.”
“I know little of the world trees, and even less of kavil.”
“Being from Bellmeade, I’m sure you know more than you think you do. At least more than I do.”
“I think you’d be pleasantly surprised with my cooking skills. I make impressive charred rice.”
Rolling back her shoulders and taking a deep breath, Leta smiled at him in the patient way that predators have—the smile of a scourgecat who knows she can’t be outrun. “This is how it’s going to go, Clark. You’re going to leave my establishment, you’ll finish the rest of that wrap if you’re smart, then you’ll wander until you find a place to put up your boots. They’ll be dirtier than you’re used to, but that will be just the beginning. You’ll get robbed for the little you have then you’ll have to find a way to earn enough to get by. Oh, I know what you’re thinking: the government of the good country of Umara provides for the lost causes of the Roc. And that might be true, but even if you can hold on to your handouts, they won’t keep you filling out that vest for long. And then you’ll think to yourself: by all the Cattoleiri who have ever had a tune in their hearts, why didn’t I join with that nice lady while I had a chance, before I was forced to become harder and meaner just to get a good breakfast in the morning? And after you brush your ego off your thinning shoulders…I’ll be here.” Leta kicked her boots up on her desk, the speed startling Clark into a small chuckle.
“That’s what you think? That I’ll become hard and mean? That I’ll give up what I believe when things get tough?”
“You might be older that I am, son, but I’ve been here for a dozen years. That’s a lifetime in the Roc. You’re nothing but a newborn baby, screaming to be put back in.”
Clark looked down, shaking his head slowly, but when he looked back up, his smile was still there, though he looked somewhat…disappointed. “Since I was born—several decades ago—my feet have grown from that of a babe and have taken me all over. But my heart has always stayed in the same place. There’s a reason The Creators placed it in a cage. We must protect our heart from those who would pound at it and try to shape it into something wicked.”
“And I am one of those wicked ones?” Leta held up her golden cuffs before him.
“No, Miss Leta, they are yet to come.”