The Mountain Gate was the largest and most important of Caso’s great fortifications. The neighbourhood outside of the city centered around the Mountain Gate was planned and purposeful. The homes here were constructed, rather than cobbled. The people didn’t share stresses with their neighbours down by Lake Casoya. In all ways but taxes, the Mountain Gate neighbourhood was an extension of the city. And now it was in shambles. A warning for what was to come.
The cleaner cobbled streets on the mountain road north were no longer filled with travellers. The palm trees that lined the avenue leading out of the city were charred and blackened to stumps from the fires. Buildings and inns along the corridor, purposefully built to take advantage of the cheaper taxes outside the city, now withered without Caso’s walled protection. Vandals had smashed and destroyed much of what they could get their hands on during the last riot. Several shops and homes now stood as blackened skeletons. The people left avoided them like the plagued.
Soldiers patrolled in small groups. Gone were the ghata clubs the Soldier’s Guild was known for. Now they carried spears with rattan shields. Some even carried crossbows and swords. Blood had been spilled and everything had changed. Kuta watched with distrust as they not-so-randomly dragged people out of the crowd to stop and search. She pulled her hood over her head and kept her head down. She was leaving the city, after all. Leaving shouldn’t be a hassle. It would be returning that might prove difficult. A scream rang through the street and Kuta could do nothing but turn towards the horrible sound. The soldiers she had passed now stood over a body. A man’s corpse. One soldier subdued a woman who was screaming in grief. Spirits, guide me safely, Kuta prayed. She did it for strength and resolve. Instead, she felt guilt.
Kuta looked down at the piece of parchment she clutched in her fingers. She had destroyed most of it. The part about who it was from and what is had said. Keeping those details on her would be tantamount to treason. Moreover, it would have been a betrayal against family. All that remained now was the address of a man she had only heard whispers of. The letter no longer read his name, but everyone in Caso had long heard whispers; Viiran, leader of the mountain independence movement. The ‘gang-leader’ most wanted by the Casoyans. Without Jiral’s letter, Kuta wasn’t even sure Minoc’s network of spies had the resources to find the hideout. But apparently, rebellious girls in the mountains afraid for their brother’s safety did.
And so Kuta walked alone, trusting her cousin’s written word. She repeated the dictation of Murak’s arrest in her mind, “You have been supporting rebellious factions in opposition to your duties as Patzau and orchestrated the attack on Patzau Yohati.” It was all a lie, just as Minoc said it was. A coup. Kuta only hoped that Jiral’s letter would help her find the two men who could prove Patzau Minoc’s innocence. Bartiin, the man who had orchestrated the attack. And Yoharum, her own cousin, the one who had carried it out. Only they could prove Minoc’s innocence. Yoharum said so himself, Patzau Yohati hadn’t even been their target.
Back towards the city, far above and beyond the dark city walls, the Casoyan fortress loomed high. It towered above even the two great domed palaces. That would be where they held Patzau Minoc. She worried for him. For his looming trial. Her mind traced the problem, never able to colour in the full picture. Nobody will believe me, not without evidence. And so, evidence she would find. One way or another.
What was she willing to sacrifice for Patzau Minoc? Kuta still wasn’t sure. More than anything, she wished to speak with the portly Patzau. He was the one soul she trusted to navigate his way through this mess to a reasonable solution. Without his guidance, she felt blind, and if she failed to free him, that feeling would become permanent. He had been good to her. More than that, he was a good man deep down. She felt she owed it to him.
Stopping atop a terrace, the landscape below revealed itself to her. Lake Caso stretched alongside the city’s walls out towards Mudtown further south. Muddy water gave way to a sea of muddy shacks. Most of the year, the lake was more of a marshland than a real lake but with the recent floods, dirty water spilled out into the streets. It pooled below the stilted hovels and shacks assembled by those too poor or unwelcome to life inside the city. The trees that had once speckled the farmlands and pastures were long cleared. Those that remained clung desperately to the ever-eroding hillsides. Kuta hiked down from the terrace following a winding trail. She passed by decreasingly smaller homes until she reached edge of the lake.
The odour was unpleasant. Kuta’s shoes squelched in the sludge that seemed to cake everything in sight. Up close, it was clear the muck wasn’t all mud. Garbage littered the streets. Broken glass and plates, discarded food, ripped clothes, and pottery sherds speckled the muck. The soiled corpse of a waterbird lay half buried at her feet and Kuta nearly retched at the sight of the maggots. Her clothes were already splattered in the filth. She paused a moment on the side of the pathway and closed her eyes, willing the queasy feeling to pass. It did. She opened her eyes and watched four figures appear. Unlike her, the filth of this place seemed a part of them. If she was splattered in it, they were covered in it. And just like the filth, their faces were uninviting. They quickly surrounded her.
Two men stood before her, eyeing her with wolfish grins. On her right stood a third man. A woman watched from her left side. And behind her, a fifth figure loitered on the trail she had just finished descending, blocking her escape. Kuta muttered a curse under her breath. She looked ahead at the two men and committed to trying to pass casually. Both men stepped into her path.
“Are you lost, little miss?” the man on the left said. He spoke city Casoyan with a heavy mountain accent. Kuta looked up at him from under her hood and could see a wildness in his eyes. He had dark slicked-back hair that fell to his shoulders and a swollen nose that looked recently broken. A fresh burn-scar was visible on his neck. On his hip, she could see the hilt of a crude knife. Kuta ignored him and tried to pass again. This time, the man on the right stepped in front of her and held his arms wide.
“My friend here asked you a question” the second man demanded, “I thought ladies from the city were supposed to be kind and proper, Eh?”
Kuta looked up at the second man who blocked her path. He had the same thick accent and dark look, but with a tall and wiry frame. He had a puckered face with a thin and splotchy moustache that made him look younger than her, despite his height.
“You should leave me alone” Kuta said.
“Hey now” the tall thin man continued, “we just wanna know what a well-dressed gal like yourself thinks she’s doing down here.”
“Please, let me pass” Kuta repeated, ignoring the question.
“Little bitch” the thin man cursed. It took Kuta a moment to realize he hadn’t said it in Casoyan, but in a mountain dialect. Their shared native tongue. Or at least a version of it.
The broken-nosed man put a hand on his friend’s shoulder and also spoke in their native language, “We’ll have to teach this girl some manners, eh cousin?”
“This girl knows her manners” Kuta said sternly, switching tongues to match. “If anything, it’s you two who need a lesson in manners. I won’t ask again, let me pass.”
The two men stared at her in surprise. Kuta still had the hood over most of her face. “Nah, nah” the tall and thin man stammered, “Who are you?”
Kuta didn’t answer. She didn’t want to answer. She wasn’t even sure how to answer.
The slick-haired man spoke this time, “He asked who you are, girl. You speakin’ like you one of us but you dress like a Casoyan. Which tribe are you from?”
Kuta looked to the woman on her right for help but to her disappointment, she looked hungrier for blood than the two men in her path. “My ancestral home is outside Cabiya” Kuta said, switching the conversation back to Casoyan.
“Cabiya?” the broken-nosed man repeated. “I don’t believe you.”
“That doesn’t change the fact that its true.”
“Who fucking cares” the woman on Kuta’s right cut in. She spoke the mountain tongue with the same confrontational tone Yoharum did. “Look at the way the bitch is dressed. You think a Cabiyan would look like her? She’s a fucking traitor. Gut her and let’s get out of here.”
“You have some nerve,” Kuta retorted timidly, “when you’re so bent on–”
“What’s that?” the taller thin man interrupted. “Speak up, I can’t hear you.”
Kuta got angry. She growled out the words that followed, “I said, that you have some nerve calling me a traitor when you would kill a fellow mountain-girl over… what? Money? Ego?”
“Bitch, I will kill you simply because I don’t like you” the woman said, walking over to stand in line with the two other men. She smiled and waived a knife in Kuta’s face. Kuta remained unphased. “Now, hand over everything you’ve got and maybe we let you leave with a few small scars on that pretty little face. Or we can leave your corpse in the lake for the animals.”
“That’s it then?” Kuta asked scowling. “You’re set on violence. You won’t let me go?”
“What? Are you stupid too?” the woman sneered.
Kuta sighed. She poured her consciousness into her agindan. The spirits around her appeared to her senses like candles lit in the darkness. She collected power and poured it into a familiar spirit. There were several to choose from. She channelled her spiritual power through the spirit like a lens and into the knife in the woman’s hand. She became one with the metal in the blade. She knew it as intimately as a mother knows her child. She saw the impurities. She sensed the knicks and bends on the unsharpened edge. She felt the rust eating away at the metal. All of these senses flooded through her in the blink of an eye. Then, she pushed.
The metal within the blade collapsed into a ball and then expanded outwards like an urchin, utterly destroying the wooden handle and impaling the woman’s hand and fingers. She yelped. Kuta shifted spirits, channelling through a new lens. Still focused on the urchin, she pulled the weapon back to her. It ripped itself from the woman’s hand as it flew towards her and hovered just above her own hand, where it stayed. Drops of blood dripped down from the spikey flail of metal that hovered over her palm. The man behind Kuta took off at a run up the stairs. He had no other metal on him and, not wanting to take her attention off the four in front of her, she resigned to let him go.
The other three men stood frozen while the woman screamed on the muddy ground in agony. Her hand that had once held the blade was mangled and blood flowed from the wounds. The man to Kuta’s right drew his own small knife and Kuta ripped it from his grasp, bringing it to the same spot above her hand where the bronze urchin floated. The metallic smell of her sorcery spread outwards and the three men cowered. It was too late now.
“You should have let me pass” Kuta pleaded.
“Please” the thin man groveled, dropping to his knees. “Grant us mercy, great Aginjigaade. We didn’t know you were her.”
“We would never have harmed you” the broken-nosed man begged. “It was all to scare you. We’re thieves, not killers.” He switched to the mountain tongue, “Please, cousin. We beg for mercy and forgiveness.” He pulled his own knife from his belt and made to throw it in the lake. Kuta caught it with her agindan, and drew it too into her grasp of control.
“I’m sorry,” Kuta said with disappointment, “but I cannot grant forgiveness without repentance.” The men’s faces fell. “I could have been anyone. Had I been any other girl, would you have granted her mercy.” Terror flooded through them. Only the woman, whom sat on her knees with hatred in her eyes looked unapologetic. The woman lunged. The attack was in desperation and hatred and fear. The mixture that yields the worst outcomes. Kuta was ready for her. The metals melded together and pierced outwards like a giant needle. It pierced the woman’s body and retracted just as suddenly as it came. The woman crumpled into the mud, dead.
The man to the right took the same opportunity to throw a stone and run. Kuta ducked, letting the rock sail past her and focused her attention on him. Attacking was his second-to-last mistake. His final mistake was forgetting the chain he wore around his neck. Kuta grasped it and clotheslined the man. He crumpled to the ground. Kuta hoped she hadn’t killed him.
“I didn’t want to do that” Kuta said. “I just wanted to pass. We solve nothing this way.”
The two remaining men cowered in the mud. Kuta saw their eyes dart towards the woman’s lifeless body and to their other friend unconscious in the mud. They groveled before her. Kuta focused on the metals floating above her hand, she channeled them into two solid masses, and then altered their shapes into cleavers—wide flat blades perfect for slicing through meat and bone. She reached up and grabbed both blades by the handles, then tossed them towards the two men still on their knees. Their newly honed edges shone with razer sharpness.
“Remove a hand… each” Kuta ordered. “You can choose which. At the wrist. Do so, and you’ll go free to live with my forgiveness. Refuse, and join your friends in death.”
The older broken-nosed man grabbed his blade without hesitation. He set his left hand down atop a muddy brick and raised the blade.
“Wait!” Kuta ordered. He looked up at her, wide-eyed. “Together…” she said. He looked to the younger man who met his gaze. The younger man looked over his shoulder at the headless body behind him, and picked up the second cleaver. His hand trembled as he held the blade. He looked up at her, fearful. Her gaze never faltered. She focused. The men raised their blades high. “Together” Kuta repeated. The two men looked apprehensively at each other. They held the impossibly sharp cleavers overhead, counted, and chopped in unison.
The men screamed in pain and shock and anguish. The blades struck with a hard slap. Kuta had channeled as they swung and both cleavers changed shape, folding flat. By the time they found flesh, they were as flat as spatulas. It was painful, but no hands came away separated. Second chances change lives. Kuta believed it. She needed to.The two men screamed for the phantom pain they imagined, not the real pain they felt. It took moments for them to realize they still had working hands and trembling fingers. They stared wide eyed at each other, then up at Kuta.
“Leave the city” Kuta commanded. “If I catch you again, I’ll do more than take those hands.” She left them behind in the mud.
Around the block, Kuta dry heaved. She wanted to vomit but it wouldn’t come. She stood stooped against a mud-crusted hut a short distance from where she left the woman’s corpse. The thought of it made her sick and she gagged again. She had killed, once before. But this was the first time she had done it intentionally; the first time she hadn’t needed to, and chose to anyway. She told herself it had been the fear. She was going to kill me. They all were. Weren’t they? It felt terrible. But it also felt powerful. And the surge of adrenaline she felt was as frightening as the act itself. The woman had died so quickly. One moment she was charging forward and the next Kuta had ended her life like a fly under the swatter.
Not for the first time in her life, Kuta’s feared her abilities. She feared herself. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. It too was mud stained. A group of children ran past, each one covered in the yellowish-brown muck, giggling as they ran. They seemed unperturbed. Giddy even. Kuta prayed they wouldn’t stumble upon the scene she’d left behind.
She rose and turned. There, an unfamiliar man stood a few paces away. He leaned casually on one of the other wooden shacks and Kuta pulled back defensively. “I’ve been waiting for you” the man said. Kuta eyed the stranger. He was average in both height and build. He had a small head and wideset eyes. His hair was cut short to stubble, while his beard and moustache were both dark and well trimmed. The clothes he wore were unassuming, but he wore war paint in the old style and there was a spark in his eyes that told her he was telling the truth.
“And you are?” Kuta asked, sizing him up and checking for obvious weapons.
“My birth name will hold no meaning to you. But you may know me as Viiran” the man answered. “And I believe that you are looking for me as well.”
Kuta scowled, “And how could you know that I’m looking for you?”
“Because I know you” Viiran answered. “Not personally,” he clarified, “but all people of the mountains have heard of you. Kuta, the only Aginjigaade seen in a generation. You’re a beacon of hope to some of us; a sign that change is coming.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“There are a few among us who know not only of who you are, but where you’ve come from and which families you share relations to. I consider your cousin Yoharum a friend and I write to his sister on occasion to ease her worries.”
Jiral? And he knows Yoharum? “Is my cousin with you?” Kuta asked.
“Yoharum is safe” Viiran answered. “He and the foreigner are with me.”
“The foreigner…” Kuta repeated. Bartiin? Or someone else? “Will you take me to them?”
Viiran scratched his chin with long fingernails. “Of course,” he said. “But I have one stipulation. I’ll take you most of the way, but I must blindfold you for the last leg. I believe you to be a person of great honour, but this is a matter of security and safety. I hope you understand.”
A person of great honour, Kuta repeated. She didn’t feel very honourable. Turning to Caso’s criminal underbelly to save Patzau Minoc seemed the opposite, in fact. “I consent.”
“Then, I will lead the way.”
Viiran led her through a maze of narrow alleyways where the air was still sticky and smelled burnt. It was so pungent that on first whiff Kuta believed for a split second there could be Aginjigaade sorcery afoot. As they walked, Kuta caught glimpses of men and women loitering in alleyways and at intersections. Besides their wayward glances, each person looked unassuming to the eye. But under the scrutiny of her agindan sense, she could sense the weapons they hid within. Kuta counted them. First two and three, then another pair and two more after that. Viiran wasn’t just leading her through a gang of thugs, but a small army.
Viiran stopped in an unassuming crossroad and pulled a cloth. She turned and let him place it over her eyes. This is stupid, she thought. Using her agindan, she could sense the spirits around her and keep track of their route should she wish. Regular people are ignorant of our skills and strengths. Viiran led her forward, deeper into the shadier parts of Mudtown. They climbed as the buildings here stacked atop one another along the eroded hill. Finally, they stopped and Viiran removed the blindfold. They stood in front of a small unassuming doorway and Viiran knocked once. A watchman with huge muscles and a lazy eye looked her once over. Kuta shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. That and the giant chert-studded war club he held with one hand. The door opened and Kuta stepped through the portal into a small house, then through a back door into a long and narrow hallway.
“I’d prefer if Yoharum came to me” Kuta said trying to keep the discomfort from her tone.
“It’s not far from here” Viiran replied dismissively.
He wasn’t lying. They turned and then emerged into a large hall about as large as her local bathhouse. The room was far larger than Kuta had expected. It was larger than she believed possible in Mudtown. She thought back to a memory with Patzau Minoc. The two of them standing high above the Lake Gate and looking down over the walls into Mudtown. Kuta couldn’t remember once seeing a structure large enough to contain a room this large. Around them, dozens of people lingered and milled about. They looked up with reverence as Viiran strode across the room and suspicion as Kuta, dressed in her Casoyan robes, followed behind him.
To his credit, Viiran didn’t waste time. He brought her across the room straight to where Yoharum sat, still covered in bandages and reddened skin. Across from him sat another man with his back to her. Yoharum didn’t smile as Viiran approached, but neither did he smile upon seeing her behind him. Whatever conversation he and the other man were having was cut short as Yoharum rose hurriedly to his feet and strode towards them.
Behind, the other man, the foreigner, turned and Kuta examined his face. He was rather handsome. He had a diamond shaped face with a dark moustache and thick trimmed beard that complimented his jawline. Curly hair danced its way down to his shoulders and he looked at her with a cunning curiosity. She, of course, recognized him immediately by description alone. This was her cousin’s patron and accomplice, escaped suspected murderer, and catalyst for all of the fire, death, and destruction that had rocked this city over the last few weeks. Worse, he was the man whose crimes had landed Patzau Minoc in prison; Bartiin Foxstring of Gaag. Or, the Careyago? She wasn’t certain. He met her gaze and smiled sweetly. Kuta expected the gesture to revolt her, but it didn’t. She didn’t return the smile and turned instead to face her cousin who brought his hands to her shoulders.
“What are you doing here?” Yoharum asked. He pulled her aside as the other two watched.
Kuta cast a glance over at Viiran, then looked back at her cousin. The outrage returned, rekindled like coal stoked with new fuel. “What are you doing here?” she asked accusatorily. “Come to ensure the rest of Mudtown burns too?”
Yoharum’s scowl deepened. “How did you know I was here? How do you even know about this place? Kuta, go home!”
“I’m not Jiral, Yo!” Kuta hissed. “I can take care of myself! I’ve been taking care of myself all my life. Besides, I came for your help; something only you can do. And I expect it in exchange for not ratting you out to the Casoyans.”
“That’s not asking for help” Yoharum scowled. “That’s blackmail.”
“Is there a difference to thieves and murderers?” Kuta chided. “I wasn’t aware.”
“How did you find this place?” Yoharum asked.
“Your help” Kuta repeated.
“You said you were never going to rat me out to the Casoyans” Yoharum argued.
“All the more reason for you owe me a favour” Kuta emphasized.
Yoharum huffed, chewing on words to say before relenting. “Fine, what do you want?”
“Patzau Minoc has been arrested” Kuta said.
“And…?” Yoharum said.
“For your crimes” Kuta repeated. “The other Patzau believe he was the one who ordered the assassination against Yohati. You and I both know he didn’t do it. I need your help coming up with a way to prove his innocence.” To her surprise, Yoharum burst into laughter. Kuta scowled and tucked her head into her shoulders as people in the room seemed to stare. There were tears in her cousin’s eyes and pain written across his face as he slowed his breaths. “What the muddy hell is so funny?” she sneered.
“Why the hell would I help your Patzau, Kuta?” Yoharum wheezed. “Let the bastards kill each other. We’d be better for it.”
Kuta sucked in a breath and tried again, skipping the bullshit. “Give me Bartiin of Gaag” she hissed. “I don’t need you to do anything if I can take him. What is he to you? To family? I can turn him over as a witness and get Minoc freed. He’ll go down for it, not you. We need Patzau Minoc back. He’s the only Patzau on our side.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit” Yoharum scoffed. “None of them bastards are on our side.”
“Patzau Minoc is an ally, why else would I work for him?” Kuta hissed. “If I can free him, we have somebody powerful on our side. One who owes us a favour.”
“No” Yoharum said decisively.
“What?” Kuta exclaimed in surprise. “What do you mean no?”
“I said no, Kuta” Yoharum repeated. “I won’t give you Bartiin.”
“Who is he to you?” Kuta hissed. “I am you family! Why the hell not?” Her temper boiled over and she hammered a half-hearted fist towards Yoharum who caught it in his large hands before it ever hit him. She tried to pull away but he held her wrist firmly.
Yoharum wiped his face with his hand and smeared something dark across his stubbled chin. It was strange seeing him so hairless. The smear was distracting but Kuta tried to ignore it. “Kuta, I have always believed you were the smartest among us…” Yoharum said, speaking slowly, “certainly smarter than I am… than I’ve been. Even without your gifts—curse—you’d be a force. But right now, you’re being really fucking stupid. You’re being blinded by desperation.”
“Stupid!? What’s that supposed to mean?” Kuta yelled angrily, still trying to pull away.
“It means that giving you Bartiin the Fox won’t help your Patzau, Kuta” Yoharum insisted. “Even if I walked in there myself and admitted I killed the fuckin prince myself, those Casoyan bastards won’t listen for a single second. Oh, they’d kill me for it too and it would be a grand celebration of their justice and honour, but the other Patzau don’t think for a second that Mellen-fucking-Minoc orchestrated an assassination coup against Patzau Yohati. Don’t be daft. They’re not fools. They’re the ones orchestrating the coup against him. And the more you tie yourself to him, the quicker you’ll drown as he sinks.”
Kuta stopped fighting. She wished her hands were free so she could punch him in his smug little face. It would feel really satisfying. More satisfying than the realization that he was right. And the fact that he was right made her all the angrier. It was so obvious. Spirits, she had believed so foolishly. Yoharum let her hand go.
“The other fault in your plan is thinking you could force a man like Bartiin to go with you, and then admit to any such conspiracy. You’d be asking the man to testify against himself. He’ll never admit to anything. What was your plan to get a confession out of him? How were you going to get him back into the city?”
“I don’t know…” Kuta said in exasperation, “I guess I thought I could turn him over to a friend in the military and she might know a way of getting a confession out of him.”
“And how do you know this person isn’t in on the plot to remove Minoc?” Yoharum asked. “They’re all schemers. Every damned Casoyan is looking for some advantage over their friends and neighbour. They’re deceitful, treacherous, greedy little–”
“I don’t know” Kuta said harshly. “It was stupid. I was stupid…” Frustrated tears welled in her eyes and she blinked them away. She wanted to cry. She wanted to punch something. She wanted to cry while punching something.
Yoharum put his hands back on her shoulders and Kuta looked up at him. “You’re a lot of things, Kuta” Yoharum said, “but stupid isn’t one of them. I know you. You’ll think of something.” He waited for her to steady her breaths before asking, “Did you mean what you said about Patzau Minoc? Is Minoc really the ally you claim he is?”
Kuta thought about it again. “He’s on the right path” she admitted, “He’s a strange man, but he has a good heart. He cares deeply about people. And fairness, and justice. Real justice, not the Casoyan kind.” “Then I take back what I said about him. I hope you think of something.”
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