GHOSTS IN THE GLASS Read online

  “We’re going to the Sand Belt,” Mi’et said. “Kaitar has kin there. I’m taking him to them.”

  Molly nickered, equal parts curious and exasperated as she waded through the goats cavorting gleefully in her wake. Kaitar reached for her bridle. “Mi’et thinks the Shyiine will welcome us.”

  “That so?” Steig patted a yearling nanny goat that bumped against his leg. “You two are fine fools if you think you’ll make it over the Belt. The Shyiine out there ain’t been across to see me in a few years, either. I’d get three-four a year stop in for some trading. Not anymore. My Veraleid’s been pickin’ up some heavy static out that way. It’s a Bloom, I’d bet my hat on it.” He spat. “Throat’s dry. Guess you two’ll want supper. Best get inside, then. There’s somethin’ you ought to hear, anyway, Kaitar.”

  “Is it about the Sand Belt?” Mi’et asked. The Druen’s news hadn’t concerned him over much; he would take Kaitar there, Bloom or no.

  Steig shook his head. “Nope, it’s about you two.” He pointed a thick finger in their direction. “I thought your name was Meat, though. S’what they called it out as. There’s an alive-or-dead bounty on you both, in case you ain’t heard. Banditry’s the claim. Bunch of bullshit, but what can you expect from those Yvres-damned Estarian pigs? Best come inside.”

  Light of Mary

  Zres could not bring himself to look at the bowl Garv placed before him. The smell rising from the stew made him ill, and his stomach had been none too settled in the past few weeks. Already, his pants hung looser than they had a month ago; he’d poked another hole into his belt with a twisted piece of wire he’d found lying in the road. The Scrappers would let none of them carry any weapons. Not even a pocket knife.

  But they still had their spoons.

  His own lay on the table next to the bowl, dingy and tarnished. Garv didn’t clean the utensils half so good as Mi’et, and her cooking barely passed as palatable. Another symptom of Dogton’s sickness, Zres supposed—caused by a disease with a name and a face, plaguing the town from Neiro’s office.

  Evrik Niles.

  He finally looked at the stew. A layer of grease and half-cooked beans floated there, casting his own reflection back in unwavering, pitiless accuracy.

  I’m gonna kill him. Maybe with this spoon. I could take it, hide it in my boots. Request a meeting and dig his eyes out. Go down fighting, like my old man.

  His frustration broiled until he couldn’t hold it back any longer. “No one could eat this shit.”

  The other Enforcers, who had been seasoning their food with listless conversation, stopped their talk to stare at him.

  “Then don’t eat it,” Garv said, sounding more apathetic than offended. “I don’t know how to cook like Mi’et did.”

  Zres glowered at her, hating the pig-faced woman. He hated the lanky sharpshooter sitting next to her, watching with a cocked brow. Most of all, he despised Leigh Enderi, who leveled a dark look at him, chin tilted arrogantly. For all her bravado, Leigh was a coward; anyone who bowed down to Evrik Niles and the Scrappers was no better than a cur rolling over to show their belly.

  A hard grin mashed itself onto Zres’s face. “If you’re so high and mighty these days, why don’t you do the cooking, Leigh? You think you can do everything else.”

  She pointed a spoon at him. Grease dripped onto the table. “Eat your food or go hungry.”

  “Just like Mi’et. I wished you’d pack up and leave, too. Me? I’ll go hungry rather than eat slop.” The bowl clattered to the floor as Zres shoved away from the table. With a well-aimed kick, he sent the dish flying across the barracks. Beans slapped against the canvas wall before dripping into a mucky pool.

  “You might be sorry you did that,” Vore said cooly. “Rations are likely to get tighter than a whore’s ass before summer.”

  “Wouldn’t that be looser?” Garv asked, grinning.

  Vore smirked. “Why, Garv? You plannin’ on givin’ the girls in the Bin a run for their water?”

  Zres sneered. “No one wants to hear your stupid jokes, you cocksucker.”

  Vore’s eyes went cold as sleet, but Zres ignored him and tossed the spoon atop the beans. “I suppose it’ll be another day of tryin’ to get that filter running so we can piss in it and give Niles a clean drink. We might as well go beg for a pat on the head while we’re at it. If we’re lucky, he might toss us some table scraps.”

  Leigh inclined her head toward the mess. “Clean that up first, and then, yes, we’ll all be going to help Dramen Frell with the filter. Dogton needs water.”

  Her voice remained so composed and steady, set Zres’s teeth on edge. “You think you call the shots?” He struck the table hard with his open palms. “You’re glad this happened. You’ve always wanted to run the show, and now—”

  “Knock it off in there!”

  They all turned to stare at the entrance. Karraetu stood watching, holding the flaps open and glaring from behind a sand mask. The Scrapper commander moved aside as a square-shouldered man brushed past. All the hate and anger Zres had aimed on the other Enforcers narrowed to a hot, thin needle.

  Moad.

  Moad smiled broadly, his teeth so white they seemed made of bleached marble. A gold ring inlaid with a Harper’s cross flashed on his right pinky finger, and his clothes were not the rough spun cloth and leather common in Dogton, but tailored cotton. Not a speck of grime marred his fine, cowhide boots.

  Zres felt a vein in his temple throb. “Why are you here?”

  “You sit down,” Karraetu said. “You don’t ask questions. I ask them, and you answer. The rest of you, get to work on that filter. Frell’s been waiting for ten minutes, and it’ll be dark in an hour.” He tapped Queen, holstered at his belt. “I’ll be escorting you, just in case you get it in your heads to wander off the job.”

  Zres plopped down in his chair. The Enforcers swung their jackets over their shoulders and shuffled past without a backward glance. When they’d gone, Moad turned to Karraetu and offered a sloppy salute.

  “Thank you, Commander. Reeth will see to it that the barracks stay secured in your absence.”

  “He’d better.”

  The brief cut of afternoon breeze turned sour again as the heavy canvas dropped into place. A shadow moved outside the fabric wall. Zres stared at it, momentarily forgetting Moad and everything; the shadow could only belong to Opert Reeth, whistling the same muffled song he’d sung atop Orin’s grave. That dirge often crept into Zres’s nightmares to keep company with the cawing of crows until both sounds drifted like loose sand, filling his head.

  He swallowed, hot and cold by turns. With an effort, he shifted his gaze to Moad. “I don’t wanna talk to you.”

  “Regardless, I think we should have a little man-to-man. I am marrying your mother tomorrow. Zerestus, it’s time we put our differences aside and learned to be a family.”

  A smell, more pungent than old stew meat and bad beans, hit Zres’s nose. His eyes watered. “You’re drunk.”

  Moad swayed close, peering at him with reddened eyes. “I’ve had a nip from the bottle, yes. Most men enjoy that.” He reached into his back pocket, produced a tin flask, and gave it a shake. “You want a shot? You’re what. . . twenty years old? A man. Old enough to decide if he wants to have a drink or not.”

  “Why don’t you go back to the Bin? I bet you could get one of those stuffed heads Hubert keeps on the wall to drink with you. They might even listen to your bullshit about Mary Soulmaker.”

  The Harper pulled a chair close and sat, wooden legs creaking under his weight. He set the flask on the table, his bushy brows scrunched low. “Zres, you don’t like me much, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Zres admitted. “I never did. Even when I was just a kid, I wished you’d turn around, haul back to the Citadel, and never show your pimply ass here again.” He tapped the whiskey flask with a forefinger. “Harper’s ain’t supposed to drink.”

  “Harpers can do whatever the fuck they want. . . including put a
bug in Evrik Niles’s ear. About anything, Zres. Giving favors and privileges. Taking them away.” Moad shrugged and folded his hands together. “Or getting you a pass to leave Dogton and come to the Citadel with me and your mama. She’d like that, and maybe it’d improve your temperament a bit.”

  “You’re good at puttin’ things in people, I guess. Bet you and Evrik Niles had practice at it already. You let Reeth and Karraetu watch?”

  Moad slammed a fist against the table. “I’m going to marry your mama tomorrow, Zres, and there’s nothing you can do about that. Best get used to it. I’m trying to do you a favor. Lucy and me, well. . . we go way back. You know that? It’s been ten years since I’ve seen her, but I used to see her plenty.” His lips curled up under his broad mustache. “Plenty, son.” He snatched the flask from the table and unscrewed the lid. When Moad swallowed, his throat bobbed up and down obscenely.

  Zres smiled and hissed through clenched teeth, “Don’t call me son. My old man is dead and buried, and he was a better man than you could ever hope to be.”

  “You sure he was your old man?” Moad wiped his mouth. “There’s been some discussion of that, you know. I even talked to Orin about it once, when you were just crawling around in shitty diapers. He said he didn’t rightly know who might be your real daddy. Could have been either of us, he said. Could have been old Hubert, or Neiro, or just some randy old trader for all he knew. So. . . Son. . . let’s try this again, shall we?”

  Hate lit the base of Zres’s skull, feeling as though it might be burning into his brain, searing his left eye socket. He drummed his fingers against his thigh, and his boot tapped out a beat. “You can’t just come back here after ten years and claim you’re anything to me. You think stickin’ your limp dick in Mama makes you somethin’? You can go fuck yourself, Moad. No, even better. . . you can go fuck Mary. How’d you like that? Stick it in her holy pucker.”

  Moad laughed. The sound pounded through the barracks, thick as the whiskey stink. His head rolled back, mouth opened to expose every pearly tooth as his hands slapped against his shaking belly in unabashed glee.

  Zres stared at him, white-knuckled. If Moad, didn’t stop, he would scream. Scream or laugh or—

  The laughter died away. “Zerestus. . . ” Moad wiped a tear from his cheek. “You really think anyone but the most gullible of fools buys into that Soulmaker bullshit?”

  Zres tapped his foot faster, and his heart raced in time, frantic. “Guess they must. You’re always singin’ about it, and you’re a dumb fuck.”

  The Harper folded his hands on the table again, jutting his broad chin at the canvas flaps near the entryway. He spoke, voice hanging just above a whisper. “It’s all a sham. And do you know what that is, standing there by the door?”

  “Reeth,” Zres answered, looking round at Soulmaker’s murky outline. “Your personal hand job.”

  “Not entirely, Son. But maybe you’re too stupid to know. Your dear mother, well, bless her soul, she’s a kind woman regardless of being a whore.”

  “Shut up about that.”

  “But she’s what we Harpers like to refer to as an empty Light. As in ‘the lights are on, but there’s no one home’. You catch my meaning? Huh, now your face is turning all red. You know, on second thought, I doubt you’re mine. All of my bastards have some sense, and you ain’t got none at all.”

  “You got other kids?” Both boots slammed the ground. Tapping. Marching. Going nowhere.

  “Several. Even a few half-breeds, you believe that?” Moad wobbled as he leaned back, his voice slurry. “I miss the Sulari. You’ll never have the pleasure of holding one of those Shyiine girls under you, Zres. They kept them real thin. Didn’t feed them enough I guess. But, they had the tightest—”

  He punched Moad’s jaw so hard he felt a knuckle crack. The Harper went down like a sack of bricks, legs splayed upward, chair toppling over him. The curly head smacked the ground and he gave a great “oof!” as the air left his lungs. It all happened so slowly Zres could pick out the way each individual hair on Moad’s head fluffed around his heavy face.

  He jumped on the older man, plowing his other fist into the prominent nose. Breaking it. Blood spattered his shirt like red gravy. The Harper opened his mouth to scream for help, but Zres battered it shut, then wrapped his fingers around the thick neck and squeezed until his hands went white. A single, unbidden word wrenched free of his twisted grin. “Beans!”

  Moad’s face flushed from red to purple. The blue eyes bulged as he kicked and flailed, slamming brick-hard fists against the side of Zres’s head. Though his ears rang and he felt a tooth knocked loose, Zres did not loosen his grip. None of those things mattered. His arms—strong from years of practicing with a bullwhip—knotted into long cords of muscle.

  I’M GOING TO KILL MOAD! THE SON OF A BITCH!

  Moad bucked, trying to throw him bodily, his fine boots thumping against the ground with every upward motion. Zres squeezed harder. Everything went red. The Harper’s tongue protruded from his puffy lips and his kicks grew weak, hardly more than a limp trembling. The big hands lifted, slapping at Zres’s face and shoulders with no more force than a sparrow’s wings.

  From a place sounding far away, a woman’s voice asked, “Are they in there, Reeth? Oh, good. I wanted to talk to Moad about—”

  Mama!

  A light cut across the Harper’s face, bringing it into sharp focus; Zres could see every pore, every red blotch against the purpling skin, emphasizing the glassiness in the blue eyes. But he could not unlock his fingers from around the dying man’s neck.

  “Zres!”

  Stupidly, he felt tears spilling down his face as his mother screamed in his ear.

  “Zres! Stop! STOP! You’re killing him!”

  Mama! I’m sorry!

  He shoved her. She toppled backward onto the table and bumped against the main beam, whiskey dumping over her lap as the flask fell.

  “Zres. . . ” Dazed, Lucy Corrin struggled to her feet. Her blonde head knocked the cell lantern hanging on the post. It rocked once, then slipped off the rusty nail keeping it in precarious limbo. The cell shattered inside its iron cage, spraying blue and gold sparks. One landed against the whiskey-soaked calico, caught with a bright flash, and flooded upward in a river of flame. The fire engulfed his mother, turning her slim form into a torch of blazing glory—

  . . . Light o’er dark. . .

  —from which an inhuman shriek rose.

  Mama!” Zres released his grip on Moad’s throat. The Harper’s head rolled limply to one side, foam dripping from around his swollen tongue. Zres tripped over the body and fell to his knees. “MAMA!”

  Fire slithered up the pole like some nightmare snake, devouring the canvas in a big gulp. Beneath it, Lucy Corrin drifted along—a wailing, fiery wraith. The roaring flames peeled her face away, revealing the wet, red flesh beneath. Her brilliant, green eyes burst, leaking down blistered cheeks. Sparks and ash haloed her open mouth as the shriek rose in pitch. Higher, and higher, just as it always did in Zres’s memories of her singing.

  . . . I walk with your Light

  And in your grace

  O'Mary

  Save this poor lost child. . .

  She reached for him, hands mere inches from his face, but he could not move. His screams turned into ragged choking, ripping his throat until he tasted blood. Smoke filled his lungs, riddled with the stench of ozone and burning flesh.

  His mother’s flesh.

  From the world outside the burning tempest, someone yelled, “Get water! Water!”

  Another voice rose, deep and strong. “Get the buckets! Go! Over there, against that side. Douse it, before the wind has this whole fucking town up!”

  “Here, Frell!” a woman’s voice called, the Pihranese accent somehow familiar. “The hose is on the pump. Go!”

  Zres opened his mouth, coughing, trying to yell for someone to get his mama out of that inferno. Someone jerked him back with such force his feet left the ground. He hit
the earth, felt himself dragged, saw the burning canvas slide by overhead. The silhouette of his mother’s flame-lit hand appeared above him, grasping and clawing the air. When Zres tried to scream for his mama, he coughed again, and his entire chest hurt. Then, Lucy’s hand vanished from view, replaced by a red sunset sky sprinkled with bright cinders and long streaks of black smoke.

  Mama!

  The strong, gloved hands dragging him out of Hell released their grip and his head thudded against packed sand. Stomach rolling with painful spasms, Zres retched, bringing up a lungful of smoke followed by a gush of vomit. Puke dribbled down his chin. “Help.” His throat ached. “Mama. . . she’s in there.”

  A face loomed over his, composed even in its anger. The mild, gray eyes peering into his own belonged to Death.

  Reeth patted his soot-streaked cheek with a gloved hand. “You’ve done a terrible thing, Zerestus.”

  “My Mama. . . please. . . ” Zres tried to sit up, and could not.

  “A terrible thing,” Reeth said again, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Poor boy. These things happen, don’t they? I’ll have to take you back to the Citadel.”

  Around them, shouts whirled on, rising to a panicked pitch. But he and the Soulmaker existed in the eye of a storm which could not touch them. The world was in flames, and he’d killed his mama. She’d touched the Light of Mary and it had cooked the flesh from her bones and made her scream for darkness.

  But she was no longer screaming.

  Opert Reeth lifted his revolver. The beautiful pearl handle reminded Zres of a Shurin’s eyes. Gratitude filled him, replacing some of the agony; it would all be over soon, and he wouldn’t have to think about his mother or Moad or about his father being buried—

  . . . was he my father? Or did I just kill my real Daddy . . . ?

  —or any of it.

  The gun came down in a blur, followed by a sharp pain lasting only a second. Then, Zres fell into a place where there was no light.