Heat wafted up off the broken paving stones, adding warmth to an already miserable day. The scent and heaviness of rain filled the air, making it a muggy mess to endure. Lapis, while she loved cool, soft showers, hated the build-up to a late Mid Year Storm.
Hopefully the drops waited until she was inside somewhere, since she neglected to wear her hood. Her hood indicated to the street rats she was on a stake, and she did not want to navigate the trouble it might bring if they saw her with five strangers and assumed the worst. She spent much of her time alone, and she doubted they realized she had friends outside the Eaves. Once they noticed her, their curiosity would turn into concern, if they thought her in danger.
Did people she last saw eight years ago still count as friends?
She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the rest of the group; the four Blue Council members and Brander. No one seemed talkative, and Lapis had no idea what to say, what to do. She knew Tearlach’s pain at the revealed secret, though something else bothered him. Brander realized something happened between her and the new arrivals, and she could tell curiosity ate at him. Ciaran had withdrawn into himself, and the two women absently trailed them, lost in thought.
That would change.
The crowds noticeably thinned as the stone buildings became greyer and more dilapidated. Several had half-collapsed, with open walls showing people huddled together on crumbling floors, ratty tarps hung to block prying eyes from seeing too much. The poorest of the poor in Jiy resided in the shattered neighborhoods, having nowhere else to go, no coin to leap from the Stone Streets and into a life of richer poverty in the Grey Streets.
The Stone Streets once housed the royal summer palace, grand estates, elegant temples, rich abodes, but the Dentherions destroyed them and left them to rot. They had killed the king, killed the nobles, killed the servants, sowed death and destruction, and promised more if Jilvayna did not capitulate to their whims. Terrified nobles abandoned their family homes and watched as the Dentherions smashed them, smashed antiques, smashed ancestors, smashed inheritances, smashed history, smashed everything.
Then gloated. And desecrated.
Lapis had no idea why the four wished to see the Pit. It was not a place for casual visits. It was not a place for anyone or anything with empathy or a soul.
She shuddered as the sickeningly sweet stench of berry incense floated to them on the strengthening storm wind. She suffered smelling it on the rare occasion she chased a stake too far into the Stone Streets. Some guttershanks had special hiding places near the old temple, thinking themselves smart, thinking themselves safe, because the average chaser never entered those streets. They underestimated her drive, as she underestimated their cowardice. She always fought not to puke when the scent of berries mingled with decay and rot reached her nose and turned her stomach.
During those excursions, she gratefully thanked the non-existent gods, that she did not live anywhere near the Pit.
The priests of the Fifth God lit the incense, claiming it a pious duty, a just duty. They claimed it helped those living in the Stone Streets, though Lapis could think of several other ways to aide people that did not involve tacit acceptance of the unacceptable. They made a parade of it, wearing matching black robes and carrying small, sacrificial lamps and bags of incense which they dumped into the human-sized burners that hung from nooks and crannies throughout the streets. They made certain to inundate the area with the berry scent before they circled back and slowly marched to the Gilded Lane and their large, well-kempt temple, congratulating themselves on completing a good work while doing absolutely nothing about what caused the foulness underlying it.
Some of the religiously motivated, along with a smattering of guilt-ridden commoners, attempted a shallow penance. They rescued the screaming and crying children left at the edges of the Pit by parents, extended family or wealthier religious institutions who refused to care for a desperately poor child. The kids usually ended up on the Stone or Grey Streets, fighting for their meager share, hoping to survive long enough to reach an age they could justify dreaming of a better existence.
Rin had been one of them. Rin had been four.
Tears pricked her eyes as they neared the large, ornate bridge that once led over the defunct temple and to the royal palace grounds. The stone decorations had cracked and fallen, the mosaics of archaic gods had chipped and broken, their once-bright color faded into muddy greys. It was wide enough to carry four carriages, side by side, with room to spare. Few traversed it now, unless they planned to dump a body over the edge. A convenient place to hide a murder, and no one would ever investigate.
The rebel traitor would rot there, if she had a say.
The wind picked up, driving the smell directly to them. Caitria covered her nose with her hands; Brander had already pulled his large buff over his lower face. Lapis knew from experience, attempting to blot out the smell did no good. And it lingered, on the clothing, on the skin, a horrid reminder of Dentherion cruelty. She would suggest a bath afterwards, at one of the bathhouses that asked no questions, and request everyone purchase new clothing; while the stink washed off skin, it never rinsed out of fabric. At least her normal rebel gear was typical, cheap, and easy to find, and she would not miss the ratty shoes she slipped on when she realized where the four wished to visit.
“How is everyone in the city not dead?” Tearlach asked quietly as he watched a flock of carrion birds rush by and dive to the ground below.
“The palace sprays some sort of chemical over the area,” Lapis said. “It adds to the nastiness of the water, but supposedly it keeps disease at bay. And . . . carrion eaters help.”
“The chemical doesn’t affect them?”
“It’s meant to attract them, so they ingest it,” Brander muttered. “The spray coats the bodies, and it’s supposed to make the animals want to eat them. I doubt the palace even knows what it really does. They say it prevents disease from spreading, but a scratch or bite from one of the eaters will kill you quick.” He waved a hand at their destination. “The spray and the vermin catchers keep the nastiness under control and people can live here. Even when it rains, there’s no increase in sickness and death, and it seems like there should be, since the run-off seeps into the land and gets into the water.”
“So people live here,” Caitria said, her voice trembling. “Because they can’t afford anywhere else?”
“Yeah. They don’t live long, though. Residents who spend their entire lives in the Stone Streets rarely reach fifty. Many are born with deformities or medical conditions not seen in other places in Jiy, and it makes living hard enough most just give up. It’s better to die than suffer.”
Mairin’s breath hitched as they reached the bridge and looked over the edge of the railing.
The bridge spanned a space where the cracks and cackles of carrion birds melded with the deeper, menacing growls of the earth-toned carrion lizards, large, squat animals that waddled about and ate the dead thrown to them. Smaller grungy-brown canines hustled about, avoiding the larger lizards but driving the birds from meals when able. They sometimes roamed the streets, and the city guards had a terrible time cornering them to exterminate them.
The Pit had once been a temple courtyard. Now bones covered the tiles and piled up against worn statues and the colonnade, with fresher bodies dumped on top. Gall continued his predecessors’ practice and rarely allowed city dwellers a burial; instead, he ordered the deceased thrown over the side of the bridge, where they rotted in the sun before they became food for the carrion eaters. So many bodies, over two centuries, first seeded by the nobles who fought Dentheria’s invasion, then by everyone else. So many forgotten people, so much pain and misery.
Some religious institutions snuck in a cremation or two, but the Jiy palace punished those they caught. They wanted the bodies to rot in the open while being consumed by the carrion eaters. They wanted to remind the residents that they lived and died by Dentheria’s pleasure, and unless they wished to join the corpses sooner rather than later, they would abide by that rule.
The Pit was the warning. No one forgot.
“Some of the leaders don’t think this exists,” Caitria whispered, her voice sick. “They think it’s a tale to scare the countryside into obedience, because no one wants the dead out in the open, contaminating everything. They laugh at those who insist on it. Patch told them, but they refused to believe. They say, that even Dentheria is not so evil. That’s why we’re here. As witnesses.”
“Dentheria is the definition of evil,” Lapis told her. “Two hundred and twenty-three years ago, they threw the bodies of the king and his family, the nobles, their servants, their guards, their loved ones, in first. They lit those on fire. Then they piled on the common folk. They didn’t light those. They let them rot and contaminate and attract vermin. Every so often, someone will light a match and burn the bodies. More take their place. There are no burials in the city unless you’re a rich Gall supporter. You get thrown here.”
Mairin shuddered.
“If you can afford it, you pay the underground to sneak you to a burial site out-city. A couple of syndicates supposedly discovered caverns originally used by the ancient Taangis Empire as catacombs for their government ministers, but I’ve seen no proof they actually exist. I think the shanks just take advantage of anyone with bits to burn. They probably strip the bodies of valuables and dump them here once they have their pay, because that’s a lot more lucrative than getting caught with a body and ending up executed.” =
“Do they check to make certain you’re actually dead before tossing you down there?” Caitria asked.
Brander laughed, a sharp, dark and disgusted sound. “Not necessarily. People bring the unwanted here.” He pointed to the wide, once-pristine marble staircase opposite the bridge, that flowed down into the Pit, a staircase Lapis dreaded to look at.
She peeked. It was empty.
She almost cried, that no one was there, ready for the canines or lizards to kill them.
“People leave kids, the elderly, the injured here because they don’t want to take care of them anymore,” he continued. “Gall uses that to claim Jilvayna’s too corrupt, too savage, to manage on its own. He says Dentheria will bring light to the darkness, as long as you forget she caused that darkness in the first place and does everything in her power to maintain it.”
“People leave others to die here?” Mairin asked, aghast.
“The palace posts guards to stop the abuses, but they’re pathetically easy to bribe. That’s probably on purpose. Sometimes those brought here escape or are rescued. They’ve no place to go but the Stone Streets. They usually die soon after, and end up right back in the Pit.”
“Not all of them,” Lapis said. “Some make it.”
Brander raised an eyebrow. “Really.”
“I’ll introduce you to one.” If he were in the markets when they passed through.
“What sickness of the mind, of the soul, makes Gall continue this?”
Fury and ugly hate marred Ciaran’s tone.
“Greed for power, greed for wealth, and the belief that those are only obtainable through the pain of others,” Lapis replied, unable to put emotion into her voice. “And desperate hate, towards those too common, too poor, to buy influence. This is why the city is so broken, spiritually, physically. It’s why the puppet’s palace and the noble homes are practically another city away from the Stone Streets. It’s why so few have hope. We have a constant reminder about what happens when one defies Gall and his Dentherion masters.”
“That will change,” Tearlach said, staring at the pile of blackened, rotting corpses.
Wishful thinking. The rebels had promised that for two hundred years, without success.
Almost on cue, a flying tech machine that looked like a bulky bird, consisting of an oval black body and two tanks, floated down to the temple and began to spray the area with the astringent-smelling chemical. A pile of black flesh moved and one of the lizards rose from it, bits of sharp red flashing among the muddy brown of its scales. It wagged its head back and forth and waddled towards the gaping hole that once held pristine stone doors. More piles dislodged as, one by one, the animals sought shelter from the droplets.
“I need a bath,” Lapis said abruptly, turning on her heel and hastening away.
