Chapter 1
My name is Anton Dinzeni. You probably haven’t heard of me, which is as it should be. This is my story of the fall of Sarcanth.
Let’s start on the first day of spring, in the 1532nd year of the City of Sarcanth. Spring weather had come right on schedule. Rose District blossomed with life as its residents swarmed the weekend market, buzzing with anticipation of the night to come. Festival happened every year; festival on a Saturday was a happy conjunction that came only once roughly every seven years. With no work that day and no work the day after, the festival was bigger, livelier, and drunker than in other years.
The morning market stalls, erected amongst the festival decor, the lights, and the viewing stands, would be torn down early to make way for festival booths and stages. Buyers and sellers alike quickened their paces ahead of the early deadline.
Despite the rush, I took my time reeling in Dav, my mark for the morning. I had spotted him sitting alone on a bench between two market booths. He was forty-ish, balding, a little round in the middle, looking less tired than unfulfilled, like he’d come out to the market looking for inspiration but hadn’t found it. I figured I’d give him that inspiration.
I stopped next to his bench. “You mind if I sit here a minute?” I smiled and did my magic, the undefinable thing I did to get people to like me. I didn’t know how it worked; I just knew I could do it and other people couldn’t.
The magic worked. He smiled, made space for me, and said, “Be my guest! Nice to meet you, my name’s Dav.”
Beautiful. I sat down and extended a hand, which he shook. “Rivik,” I lied. “So what’re you up to at the market, Dav?”
“Looking for something interesting.”
I looked conspicuously at his empty hands. “Looks like you haven’t found it. But I know how it is, sometimes I just wander from one place to the next, but nobody’s got the thing I want.”
Dav nodded emphatically. “Exactly! Even though you don’t know what it is. You do that too?”
I gave my most empathetic nod. “All the time. What are you looking for?”
Dav shrugged. “A lot of things, but I guess mostly books, collectibles, that kind of thing.”
“Great! I’m interested in collecting, but I don’t have a clue where to start. Say, would you like a cup of coffee?”
“That would be great.”
“I’ve got a friend at the Green Magpie who will set us up with some. Coming?”
I took him to my reserved table at the coffee shop. My associate, on cue, moved in to take our order.
I asked Dav, “Ever try a Dorusian?”
Dav shook his head. “No, what’s that?”
“It’s a kind of coffee made on the island of Dorus. It’s made with espresso, cardamom and arriset, and if done well it’s a revelation. It’s done very well here. Try one?”
“Sure.”
In reality, the “Dorusian” was a drink my coffee shop friend and I had made up. It was actually pretty good, but I had neglected to mention the key ingredient: a dose of ossiva, which is a sedative known for increasing the subject’s suggestibility. Ossiva is easy to grow in low-light conditions, hence it is pretty cheap throughout the city.
Once we had our coffees, I focused on reeling him in. This is the part you can’t rush. The important thing here is to get the mark talking about himself. Flatter him. Make him feel smart and important. I started off with some questions, and pretty soon he was chattering away about books: novels, authors, genres, and so on. It turned out he was a voracious reader; it was all I could do to keep my eyes from glazing over.
Once enough time had passed for the ossiva to take effect, I went to the endgame.
I made a show of counting my bags. “Damn! My leather satchel’s gone!”
Dav’s face screwed up in sympathy. “That’s terrible! Do you suppose someone stole it?” He looked genuinely upset.
“Could be. The problem is, it had all my money in it.”
At this point, a mark would always hesitate. That was okay. I just had to ease him past the problem.
“Hmm…” mused Dav. “What’re you going to do?”
“It’s okay, I’ll ask my friend to let me owe it to him.”
My associate saw all this going on and on cue showed up with the bill. Dav was a little taken aback; the Dorusians were forty crowns apiece — your typical fancy coffee cost about three crowns. I needed to distract attention from the check.
I begged the waiter, “Hey, I’m having a little trouble here; the bag with all my money was stolen. Can I run a tab until next weekend?”
My accomplice sighed and looked dubious. “You and everyone else today. Sorry, maybe you can get your friend to cover you. I’m trying to run a business.”
I acted stunned for a moment. “Fine. I’ll figure it out.”
Dav was hesitating in reaching for his money. “Well…”
“No way, Dav, no way. Look, I’ve got something here that’ll more than cover the bill.” I rummaged through my bags until I found what I wanted. “Here. A set of signed Ranus Vorth novels. The whole Haunted City tetralogy, autographed right before his death last year. Cool, right?”
Dav had confessed earlier that he was a fan of horror fiction. “Yeah, definitely.”
“I picked this up earlier today for fifty crowns, but I know for a fact the real value is at least a hundred.” I had gotten the set for a crown each. “If you bring it down to the Stekson Market, you’re sure to find someone who’ll give you that much. Can I give this to you?”
Dav thought for a moment. “Sure. That’ll work. I’m real sorry about your bag.” Some people, it seems like they’re just waiting for someone they like to come along and like them back. I offer them this service, and they pay me well. In this case, my new friend Dav would pay me by overpaying for coffee and a set of signed third editions.
After Dav had gone on his way, I met my associate in back of the coffee shop. We split the proceeds thirty-seven crowns each, with six crowns to go to the shop for the two espressos we used. He grew the ossiva for his own personal use, so that was his expense. Subtracting the four crowns I had paid for the books, I made a profit of thirty-three crowns.
I wasn’t gullible; I didn’t really believe in magic. But ever since I was a kid I’d been able to make people like me and want to make me happy. Like me a little, for a little while, that is. It was enough to make me an income.
It was enough that my wife and son and I were reasonably comfortable, by Beetle Hollow standards, as long as both of us worked. That’s something.
After getting my cut of the earnings, I hopped on the elevated train back home. Gazing out across the rooftops of Rose district I was struck by the impeccably attractive sameness of it all. Rose had upper-middle-class in its soul. It was rows and rows of aesthetically void, monstrously large, vomitously expensive houses crowded one against another, in a constant cycle of being torn down and rebuilt in the latest style on the bones of the previous generation.
The track descended as it went, and the districts got poorer and meaner. That was the way of Sarcanth, where social status followed the landscape, from the kingly Royal district at the peak of Vonyan’s Hill, to the slums and ghettos of my home district, Beetle Hollow, at the bottom of its eponymous depression.
Getting home from Rose District required a change of trains in Vorham, which coincidentally was the dividing line between what I considered a nice district like Rose, and a not-so-nice district like Beetle Hollow. I dashed from the comfortable, quiet train from Rose to the squealing cacophony that was the Chethurst line. There was nowhere to sit; the festival traffic had started early. A man in a fraying black suit did sleight-of-hand tricks for whoever would watch; he called himself a cryptomancer, a profession I thought he probably invented. Here and there a person would give him a coin or two. It seemed to me like an awfully tiring way to make a meager few crowns.
As we pulled away from Vorham towards Chethurst, the train passed a prominent sign of the old city. Arrayed throughout the city were a dozen or so ancient towers, known as Formyn’s Towers after the ancient emperor thought to have built them. They were constructed of a green-black, lustrous substance of unknown composition, beyond the powers of today’s scientists to replicate. Nor was it known how to enter the structures, if indeed one could. They prevailing theory as to their purpose was the generation of electricity, but by what principle no one could say. The electricity that powered the Chethurst train, as it sparked and screeched down and down into the bowels of the city, came from huge thermal generators buried deep in the rock below by the great geomancers of King Emmuel II, some seven hundred years ago. Formyn’s Towers were much older, some said fourteen hundred years.
By the time the train approached Chethurst Station, the character of the city had changed considerably from the antiseptic order of Rose. Chethurst was a riotous mixture of the ramshackle, the rundown, and the ruined, punctuated by the occasional renewal project, with its rows of identical, anonymous, but livable, communal housing.
No train led into Beetle Hollow. I got off in Chethurst and walked the rest of the way down Abyssal Street. Beetle Hollow was similar to Chethurst, only the renewal projects hadn’t reached that far yet. As I walked the mile or so down Abyssal I passed pawn shops, drug dens, corner stores with the cashier behind a metal grill, dubious-looking massage parlors, boarded-up storefronts — countless signs of rampant poverty and crime.
When I got home Zin was on our little two-seater sofa reading to Raz. I stood for a minute and watched the two of them. Zin gave me a wink but kept reading.
Raz was a four-year-old all over, smart, funny, curious, silly, and always full of energy. He got his dark hair and skin from his mom, and his cool blue eyes from me.
He noticed me after a minute. “Daddy!” He raced over and gave me a hug. “Whaddya bring me?” Aha, fortunately I had that covered. At the market I had found and quietly pocketed an ingenious ball that changed color as it rolled. It wasn’t too bouncy and wasn’t too noisy, so there was a chance Zin wouldn’t hate me for bringing it home.
Zin lay back on the couch. “Hey, An. There’s some dinner on the stove.”
“Ooh thanks. You didn’t forget our date tonight, did you?” I wandered into the kitchen and stuffed the thirty-seven crowns I’d made into the house money jar.
“Nope. Mrs. Argyre will be down here in half an hour to watch Raz.”
“Excellent. I just need a few minutes to eat and clean up.”
Everyone loved the festival. All over the city of Sarcanth the people crowded the streets, enjoying the festival lights, gawking at the street performers, sampling the street vendors’ wares, and celebrating the new year. Even in the poor little district of Beetle Hollow, the forgotten, dirty basement of the city, we had our share of entertainment and merriment.
Zin and I went out to see the people and whatever acts struck our fancy. We held hands and shared a hidden flask of some lousy local whiskey, pleased to be out on the town with no kid in tow.
We strolled to Mardenol Square, the cultural center of Beetle Hollow, inasmuch as it had any culture. The ancient, defunct light columns of the old city, their once-luminous glowspots now dark, marked out an octagon along the edge of the square, each post ringed by tiered seats erected for the occasion. The makeshift stands were crowded with the drunk, the rowdy, and the disreputable, some watching the performers, some just sitting, and here and there an incongruous family trying to catch their breaths and finish their orange ices before moving on to the next attraction.
We flitted from one act or vendor’s stall to another. I bought us sticks of gwozim, an Enjuri food that Humans actually find palatable made from an imported desert succulent. Zin pointed out the mathematical intricacies of a lumomancer’s light display. My arm around her waist, together we marveled at the talents of a group of Skioti rizizizi, the rough equivalents of Human acrobats.
I whispered something suggestive in her ear and she laughed. “Sure babe, you want to explain it to Raz when he wakes up and comes into our room?” she asked.
“You have a point. What were we thinking having a kid anyway?” I responded with a chuckle. I ran my fingertips up and down her side and she shivered.
“Stop that. Don’t worry, a year or two and he’ll be old enough to sleep over his sitter’s place.” She kissed me, then something caught her eye. “Ooh, magic!”
Zin had a child’s enthusiasm for magic shows. I appreciated them, but with more of a professional interest. I was always looking for methods of misdirection, and I enjoyed trying to figure out how a trick was done.
There was one trick I couldn’t figure out at all. The magician, a woman dressed in a tuxedo comically formal for the occasion, started by asking for a volunteer. After she had one – his name was Paul – she instructed him to secretly select a Dukket token from a bag and reveal to the audience what letter was on the token. It was the letter kip, an Old Empire letter no longer used.
“Now put the token in your pocket,” she said and the volunteer complied.
“Turn around one full turn.” Paul did as she asked.
“Now jump up and down,” and he did.
“Bark like a dog.” He obeyed again.
She grinned and said “Just wanted to see if you’d do it.” The audience laughed.
“Actually Paul,” she said, “I think I have your letter right here.” She pulled a token from a pocket in her tuxedo. She showed it to him and asked, “Is this your token?” It was an f.
“No,” replied the audience member, with a sheepish smile.
“Really?” she said, clearly chagrined, and throwing the token on the pavement. “I could have sworn I did the trick right this time. I’ll try again.”
She pulled an x out of her pocket, and Paul shook his head. She threw the x on the ground and pulled out an l. Then a q, a laf — another Old Empire letter, and a t in rapid succession.
She stopped, stamped her foot, and said “Ugh! I really thought I could do it this time. I really feel like a nut.”
The audience stared. There was just the hint of a murmur.
Paul looked confused.
“Why don’t you look in your pocket?” the magician said.
Paul reached into his pocket and pulled out something small.
“Show it to everybody, Paul. What is it?”
Paul held the object up for everyone to see. “A walnut,” he said to the crowd.
The audience was quiet for a second, and then burst into applause.
“But wait wait wait! Paul, could you open the nut for me?” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a nutcracker, which she handed to him.
Paul gave the nut a good crack. His eyes opened wide. The magician said “Is that your token, Paul?”
Paul pulled a Dukket token from the shell of the walnut. He held it up to crowd. It was a kip.
The audience went wild. Zin grabbed my hand. She was laughing and bouncing up and down.
Several minutes later, the magician was just finishing her act when there was a disturbance in the crowd near us. I was turning toward it when someone pushed past us in a hurry. I recognized him — it was the lumomancer from earlier in the evening. He kept going and I lost sight of him in the crowd. Strange, I thought.
Zin and I were getting thirsty, so we decided to go to Fournic’s, our local. Getting from Mardenol Square to Abyssal Street turned out to be difficult through the crowd. So we decided to duck down a short alleyway to cut a few minutes off our trek.
Once in the alleyway we heard voices nearby. Another alley branched to the right just ahead. The voices were coming from there.
I don’t know what we were thinking. Foolishly, Zin and I crept to the corner and peered around it.
The second alley was a dead-end about thirty feet long. Three Guardians — Sarcanth’s police officers, recognizable by their distinctive blue and orange uniforms, had a man backed against the wall. The lumomancer.
He cringed as he spoke. “I’m not the guy you want. I don’t know what you think I have, but I don’t have it. I just make pretty lights, I don’t hurt anyone!”
One of the Guardians answered. “Bullshit, Horx. We’ve been watching you for weeks. Where are the plans?”
Horx the lumomancer stood up straight. “Fuck you. Fuck you and the Angels straight to oblivion. Even if had them, I wouldn’t give them to you. I’d die first.”
The Guardian chuckled. “Oh, you will. Grayvil, do it.”
Another Guardian raised his arm and pointed towards Horx. There was a high whine, and then without spectacle, Horx fell where he was standing.
Zin and I sucked in our breaths. By rights the Guardians should have heard, but the two of us got lucky. We turned and ran out of the alley the same way we had come.
We didn’t go far, though. We stood by the entry and kept watch — we could see the second alley. Soon the Guardians appeared, walking away from us. We could hear laughter; Zin whispered “fuckers…”
As soon as the Guardians were out of sight, we re-entered the alley and hurried to find the lumomancer. He had been left where he had fallen.
There was no sign of violence, no blood.
But he was dead. We knew, because where his heart should have been, was a neat, bloodless hole.
