Chapter I, Part I

Menagerie

When the animals outgrew their enclosure, there was an order they would establish.

Greg Corcoran & Laura Noema

i

Mornings were vapor in the schoolhouse.

Mira had never shaken that feeling. Heat haze before it, smoke above, spice breeze and shouts. Whenever sandstorms swept the streets of Avarath, she wondered if the school would even be there once they passed. Perhaps tomorrow she would stand in the courtyard, satchel held idle, and watch the brickwork blow away.

Mira stirred from her daydream. Her face had almost relaxed, but she drew it back to its familiar scowl. Three slams of metal. Still she could not fit the iron cog onto its peg. Their assignment was to construct a three-bladed windpump, a smaller version of those that dotted the hemp fields of northern Kaustir.

Nilofer stood the other side of the contraption, hand on hip and brow furrowed behind the warped glass of her goggles. “The inner housing is the wrong size. You’re going to strip it.”

“You shouldn’t help me,” Mira protested as her partner plucked the cog from her hands. She looked to the edificor, who was thankfully distracted. The teacher had leaned against the wall and was twirling an iron bolt through his fingers. Mira kept her eyes on him while Nilofer pried at the housing.

“It’s painful to watch you struggle.” The girl turned to affix the cog, and dark curls spilled from her headscarf. “And there’s only so much radiant swearing I can stand.”

“The swearing makes it work. Eventually.” Mira glanced at Nilofer’s hair then back at the edificor. She preferred the way her own braid pulled her hairline taut. It tugged her eyelids up at a fiercer angle, to grant a resting scowl.

Around them, two dozen pioneers worked in pairs to construct their own replicas. Mira imagined how those wheels would spin if a coastal wind blew suddenly through the cracks of the sweltering work shed. But before her mind could wander again it was recalled by Nilofer’s question.

“What?”

Her partner had returned to the far side of the contraption, jamming errant tresses beneath her headscarf. “I asked if you want to come with me and Vladik to the karagoz.”

It was a favored venue in Avarath city. For a scraap one could hear the latest news of expansion or touch the ore wagons as they rolled in from Dorgrad. There were performers and trained animals to delight the crowd.

Mira had always gone alone. There was a time when her father had insisted, so his child could report on rival bestiaries. But now Tariq was a name of honor, and he no longer asked it of her. Yet still she went, if only to hear a little of the desert campaigns.

To share that place with a girl she hardly knew was threatening. And it felt stranger still that she had to excuse herself. “My father is with the Commissary tonight. I need to help at the menagerie.” She knelt to retrieve a wrench from a rusted tin, then glimpsed Nilofer’s expression. Was this girl actually disappointed?

Mira added quickly, “Maybe some other time.”

The workshop group were in their final days of schooling. Soon they would begin four years of compulsory service to the Czar’s Campaign. Nilofer was like many girls in their class—industrious, creative, and likely to be assigned to the engineer units of the Third Army. It was doubtful their paths would ever cross again.

If they had even crossed in the first place.

“We should enjoy our last days together,” Nilofer said. The strangeness of the sentiment sent a jolt up Mira’s spine. It was difficult to speak with peers — the girls especially. They were connected by a secret which Mira could only guess at. She was deformed by its absence. Why forge relationships with the end of term so near, and after she had stayed so expertly on their periphery?

She had no response for Nilofer’s comment, or at least none that would not insult her. She only hoped that if she remained passive her partner would forget the matter.

ii

At noon the students took their meal in the Pioneer’s Hall. They had known this room as intimately as their own bodies, having laid the bricks as the price of admission. The first class of the first school in Kaustir. It grew smaller in their minds, each passing year.

The room was divided by two rows of four tables, each topped with slate and a tin of chalk. Their childish scrawls of the common alphabet had long been wiped away and replaced by histories of the Scorched Empire. As with any familiar space, the children spared no time claiming their own portion. Over the years, those portions were traded with others as new friendships were made and broken.

In the far corner, belgas teens whispered. Their scaled bodies were hunched so only short breaths could pass between them. Secrecy was in their blood, and even now they were larger than the other children. Few bothered them.

On the middle tables, ghuls, nisir and luvians mixed. It was an odd dance between those three races. Sometimes a single, beautiful luvian would have a brood of ghuls sniffing around her; other times a dark-haired ghul would maintain a cohort of blood cronies. The gangs were impossible to keep track of.

Mira, however, occupied the seat closest the door, as she had since the first day, and was content to eat her meal of boiled polba and fermented citrus flesh. But with Nilofer’s sudden desire to include Mira, eating in peace was a dwindling hope.

Her workshop partner made a point of moving to sit across from her, and worse still, brought an accomplice. Though the term was a loose one where Vladik was concerned. This smooth-talker was the closest thing to a diplomat between the belgas and other cliques. They called him “spice-brained”, a kind of lizard who broke the mold and delighted in talking. The kind that had once built this city and brokered peace with the Czar.

Vladik was occupied with smoothing a clawed digit over something in his palm. It had been made featureless by years of attention, but Mira knew well enough the object of Vladik’s fixation. It was the smallest piece from a nesting doll set.

“Is it true the Czar is in the Fasthold?”

Mira went to answer Nilofer, but the words stuck in her throat. She nodded then drank from her cup to hide her embarrassment.

Vladik tucked the nesting doll in his satchel and looked up. “Have you seen him?”

“Of course not.”

“But your father’s the menagerie keeper?”

This belgas already spoke like his father. He had the confidence of the spice lounges in him. Mira answered, “A merchant’s son would have a better chance of seeing the Czar. He doesn’t talk to the help.”

“I’m not a pretty servant girl. And my uncle’s told me of the Czar’s appetite.” There was no denying his insinuation. Nilofer was first to register indignation by shooting Vladik a withering stare.

“Take it as a compliment.”

Face flushed, Mira forced the paralysis from her vocal chords. The words came low and clipped.

“I don’t take compliments from boys who play with dolls .”

Nilofer caught her laughter in her hand. Vladik’s smile faltered. And from the table behind them a ghul, with skin like polished ivory, smirked over her shoulder while caressing a whetstone to her cheek.

“Careful, Vladik. She’ll turn you to stone.”

Laughter rippled along the table. Mira’s hand tightened around her spoon. She half-rose from her chair, and it was unclear if she would lunge at Vladik or the girl behind him. But Nilofer intervened before she could do either. Leaning across the table, she came between the two of them like an excited conspirator, one hand on Mira’s wrist.

“So, I’ve heard a rumor about General Korsch.”

iii

She had done so well to avoid them — the sneers and insults. Until today the other pioneers had treated Mira with only whispers and turned shoulders. Now it seemed their malice was spilling.

Feticheless. Hollow-Heart. Empty-handed. The nicknames strained behind their smirks, like arrows to be loosed.

Yet they feared the thing they ridiculed. On the rooftop of the schoolhouse, where a slither of ocean glinted beyond the dockyard wall, the children lined up by a table. Tins had been provided, chalked with their names, and into them they slipped their fetiches, parting delicately from their obsessions. A rounded stone; a jewel; a piece of cloth — each fetiche was unique. The edificor stood watch and was ready to flog any child who thought to tamper with another’s object. But the pioneers behaved.

Their only disquiet was when they looked over their shoulders to giggle at Mira. The girl watched the other children from beside the weapons rack. She had no reason to partake in their ceremony.

They spent each afternoon this way, on the flat rooftop, straining their bodies in the sun. The belgas learned how to conserve themselves, to use breath and stance to amend for heat lethargy. The ghuls dressed in veils and trained their non-visual senses. The faro turned flight and balance to their advantage. And the nisir and luvians battled dehydration.

This was Mira’s realm. She trained during recess, and extra hours before morning and evening anthems. A single purpose — to use her body as a well-honed machine, simple and elegant like Nilofer’s creations. The discipline showed in her skin, tanned deep to the color of scorched nectar.

The pioneers, paired as always, would battle with driftwood staffs, as the edificor shouted commands over the keow! keow! of seagulls sailing above. Their only audience would be rug makers on the east mezzanines, looking up from their looms to cheer and place bets. Even in the heat of a work day, the folk of Avarath were gamers and gamblers.

“I’ll fight the keeper’s daughter.”

More gasps and laughter. Mira turned from perusing the weapons to see Vladik with a gaggle of friends: belgas and luvians leering over his shoulder. It was like he had accepted some grand dare: to fight the soulless girl.

It was a day of firsts. No one had ever chosen her before. She had always waited till last, and fought whatever spare pioneer had fallen out of favor with his gang. Did Vladik not know she was an animal? That she would freeze his blood and eat his fetiche? Was he really that cocksure?

“You should come by my father’s house,” he told her while circling to select his own staff. He took it from the rack and smiled. “He has keepsakes from all over the desert. From the Green Realm too. Maybe you’ll see something you like.”

She didn’t answer. Fighting and talking were worlds apart.

A signal from the edificor sent them dipping into a lunge, their quarter staffs extended rapier straight. Her shoulders and thighs burned, but Mira felt Vladik’s stare as she held the pose, searching for proof of her inadequacy. Already her bare limbs were running with sweat, while his cold blood was basking.

Would other girls pacify him by allowing their forms to slacken? The display of weakness would be a small remuneration for peace.

The way the belgas watched her after she had insulted him, his golden eyes prowling — it was something she had seen in her father’s menagerie. When the animals outgrew their enclosure, there was an order they would establish.

“It’s only a bit of fun, Tariq.”

“Did you partner with me for fun, Etch?”

“Apparently not.”

Mira’s rear leg snapped straight as she thrust the staff at him.

iv

Eventide shadowed Mira by the time she rushed to the east end. She was swept into a tide of pressed bodies: those who mourned by the outer walls of the Gilded Fasthold. They threw their cries at the painted stone and at the battlements crowned with melted gold and skewered sword hilts. She pushed past candle bearers who were heedless of the wax that melted to their skin. They lifted the flames and screamed for the first general, or howled Kaustiran anthems, campaign names and victories. They sang his name.

They could not pray—the gods were dead. They had only imperial chorus to vent their grief. Korsch was no expired dictator. He was the Czar’s right hand who had brought the Desert Army through the gates of Avarath, and bid no soldier lay a hand upon the merchants. He was the rider at the head of the ore shipments, bringing stone and metal to build more houses. Clothier of the poor and hangman for the rapist. He was one of them.

Yet even in the wailing crowd the separatists were at work. Couriers allowed themselves to be carried by the current and dispersed handbills: the ink print of a belgas who held the sun in his belly. It was propaganda of malcontents. Mira came face-to-face with one, silver scaled and hooded. The belgas looked once before pushing past and striking the side of her head. Mira stumbled, feeling warm spit on her scalp. The creature had glued a flyer to her hair.

She pushed from the crowd around the main arch, clawing belgas mucus from her braid. As if by instinct her feet found the narrow cobbles of Khaya Alley. She was in luck. A few turns would take her to another entrance on the west side. Flinging down the sticky sketching, Mira broke from the mob and into the refuge of the side street. Beyond the candles, she had only shapes to navigate by in the waning light.

Death perfumed their bodies.

At the edge of her vision they prowled, dark cowls concealing all but their white hyena masks. They called to one another with keening noises and shrill laughter. The Questor’s ghasts had claimed this place as their hunting ground. She was trespassing.

Mira kept her shoulders squared, her pace even, and her eyes ahead. Anything to not look like prey.

Her flesh ran hot as it had in the workshop, as it had when Nilofer and Vladik stared at her. There was movement on the roof ledge to her right. Another ghast. Though unlike its kin this one made no effort to conceal its hovering, but observed her through its black vulture mask.

Mira’s pulse quickened. She saw sanctuary in the lamp lit square at the alley’s end. In response the ghasts became bolder in their stalking. They drew so close Mira felt the sleek material of their cowls against her legs. Her breath hitched and Mira bit her tongue, forced her gaze ahead to the open square.

The scent of death evaporated when Mira stepped into the light. The Questor’s ghasts — the hyenas and vulture — were gone. The square was empty, and the water well in its center was unattended.

She had found her entrance.

v

A year past, the Sandstorm Yasamere tore down the coastline from the north. It was forbidden to name these weather effects, of course, but old wives and madmen still upheld the practice when not being watched. Yasamere was a warlock who tried to kill the Czar. The storm was the traitor’s ghost. Mira had laughed at the notion.

But the damage the sandstorm brought was no laughing matter. Tin roofs were stripped and flung around the city like knives. One of the Czar’s galleons capsized in the port, and an ore caravan was lost just hours from the east gate. Mira and her mother had worked quickly to erect shelters over the menagerie pits and drape the aviary cages with canvas. What little they could do before they were forced inside was enough to spare her father’s collection and provide the courtiers the novelty of watching addicus apes play in a sandpit the next day.

But there had been one fatality. Joanan, a coyote her father had captured while traveling the Thorn Coast. It was discovered the next morning in bile-soaked sand, its tongue lolling, discolored from its jaws. Mira had followed her father into the marble pit and handed him the knife to cut its belly open. Pieces of what killed the coyote still remained. Her father laid them out on his handkerchief and pieced them back together.

It was a blue toad — the poisonous amphibian of the Malentide shores.

How had it gotten into the pit? Her father was certain it had fallen from the sky, and was quick to tell the imperial stewards they had no cause to fear a plague. Such absurdities were possible when powerful sandstorms passed. They had left Joanan’s mate, Atshan, in the pit and thought no more of it.

But three nights later, when Mira found the second coyote dead, she was not prepared to dismiss it. Climbing back into the pit, she dug through the sand and found it — a crack in the marble, wet with salt water.

The storm had disturbed more than rooftops. It had altered the very motions of the delta.

Long months had followed in which Mira pulled away the marble and discovered the tunnel beyond. It was more than enough for toads to traverse, and only a little too narrow for her frame. She had skipped meals until she could fit inside.

After all, the edificor taught his pioneers that all strongholds should have two means of escape.

This would be hers.

As to who or what had built the tunnel, she had no clue. Perhaps some abandoned sewer project, or old burial trench? The fissure ran beneath the Fasthold Wall and narrowed to nothing beneath Khaya Alley.

And it was here where sunlight led her to the abandoned well which tonight she climbed down. With limbs spread the girl inched down the neglected shaft and smelled the staleness of lingering sediment. The well had spoiled years before and been abandoned by the city folk. Like the menagerie pit at the other end, Mira had been careful to cover the opening with rocks and scrap metal. It was little more than a crack near the bottom where she squeezed through into the tunnel. Her muscles burned as she twisted in the shaft, using one hand and foot to pull the coverings back across the hole.

And then, like a curious toad, she was shuffling under the walls of the Fasthold.

It was not without risk. The pit she headed for was home to Sawma, a male ungulope who was considerably more ill-tempered than his coyote predecessors. He had been housed in the pit due to his embarrassing habit of charging courtiers. But Mira knew his moods as well as her father’s. Sawma was calmer when the moon was out, and his eyesight poor due to the eye medicine her mother gave him, to battle an infection he had picked up a week before.

These two things were enough to make Mira daring. And the prospect of failing her father, and leaving the animals uncaged while he was away, was all the incentive she needed.

Reaching the end, she prized the marble away and crawled into the enclosure, keeping hold of the slab to shield herself from Sawma’s antlers. But there was no attack. More over, there was no movement. Mira straightened and placed the slab back over the fissure, before turning to squint around the small pit. Sawma was not on his grass bed. He was not anywhere. Her eyes drifted to the wall where scuff marks and snagged hair marred the marble.

Had the stupid animal climbed out? That was impossible.

Cursing, Mira bent her knees and vaulted straight up, getting hands and elbows over the side of the pit. Her abdominals flexed and she hauled herself up onto the manicured lawns of the courtyard.

There was evidence of her father’s assistants: a broom, an overturned water jug, a sack of feed — all abandoned, as if the staff had fled.

A spray of dark blood marked the flagstones, set loose by the fatal tear of fang or claw. She followed it to find Sawma by the nectarine trees, his striped body bent against the trunk. His spine had snapped when he was thrown against it, but his throat was torn out long before.

Had the mangol cat escaped?

Mira backtracked to the addicus cage and fetched a catch pole from the wall. She almost dropped it when she circled the bars. The apes had been slaughtered, their bodies half-wrenched through the spaces. She saw two without arms, another with its skull crushed flat. Their blood made strange terrain of the lawns beyond.

She crossed them though, despite the turning of her stomach, and knelt to touch the flank of Shol, her kera lizard. The dog-sized reptile had been gutted and left between the flower beds. Its tough, mud-caked hide had been torn right through. She glanced beyond to see beautiful feathers carpeting the path to the aviary. Izabis and Luli, her father’s peacocks, had been shredded.

It was a strange numbness that took over. With the catch pole gripped Mira walked between the menagerie pits, pairing each horrific sight with a kinder memory. Rubani, the aardwolf she had trained to eat from her hand. Arax and Jarn, the nuatl rabbits she had once raced with to win a bottle of black kresnik. Bailas, the coti badger who adored the taste of sugar syrup. And little Charu, the dolico horse her father had shipped across the Malentide. Each lay butchered, the pits become their graves.

She held back emotion, not knowing if it was grief for the animals or despair for her father’s tragedy. His life’s work was in ruins. The effort to stay focused spilled out in violent trembles, her body shaking as she crossed the lawn.

vi

There were sounds of agony in the aviary. Something was attacking the birds her father had spent his lifetime to procure. Perhaps the mangol cat had retreated there after frightening the staff away.

But Mira would not flee. Her father had taught her how to wrangle the cat, from the moment it was sold to them. She jogged towards the sounds of slaughter, her catch pole ready.

She turned the corner of the pavilion and tumbled to the ground. A body had tripped her. She stared in horror at the mangol cat. It had been sliced from groin to throat, its entrails spilled.

The stone floor beyond was littered with small, torn bodies.

Mira stared up at the far cages, where the bars had deformed like parting reeds. A man stood with a handful of exotic birds, which flapped and struggled in his grip. He brought them each to his mouth, tore off their heads and drank their blood.

He was naked but for the gore of an entire menagerie, caked to skin and pitch black hair. His other hand gripped a vicious shard of volcanic glass.

A ghul, mad with hunger. Mira fell back on her training. She straightened behind the killer, and readied the catch pole. It was folly to hope she could snare a ghul merely because its back was turned.

The catch pole’s noose had scarcely crowned him before the obsidian shard sliced upward through the leather. He turned half circle, baring a mouth of crescent razors. Mira faltered in her ripost as he eliminated the distance between them. With her throat in his fist, the ghul held Mira aloft. His gaze followed the jagged shard as it plunged into Mira’s belly before she could scream.

Their bodies became vapor as the world slipped away like dust.

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