Page 7 of Fate of the Argosi

My Berabesq isn’t too good, but when I’d brought that sapphire casket full of saint’s bones to the prince in payment for his pardon, I’d also hired a translator to accompany me to make sure the prince didn’t play any tricks on me.

‘“Thus, with this edict,’ I read aloud, ‘“by his royal hand and in God’s name, the foreign thief known as Arissa is hereby pardoned of her crimes and freed of Soul’s Grave upon the public reading of this decree.”’

Like a child giving in to a temper tantrum, I tore the lavishly illuminated vellum into strips and hurled them through the bars. Conch was bleating, struggling to stay balanced on my shoulder, but I didn’t care. ‘You hear that, Arissa?’ I cried out. ‘You’re a free woman now. I freed you. So go on now. Get off your butt and go make trouble someplace else. You can’t be here no more, you understand? You can’t be dead because I followed the Way of Water and bought you a pardon, cos that’s what an Argosi does and I’m supposed to be an Argosi now!’

I sobbed a while longer before I finally tossed the debt card into the cell to lie among the scraps of that worthless pardon. ‘Paid in full,’ I said. ‘You got a problem with that?’ I turned to leave that cursed place behind.

Hadn’t even gone two steps before the dead answered me back.

‘Now why would anyone rip up a beautiful decree like that when you could’ve just hired a forger to change the name? You could’ve sold it for a fortune to free some other prisoner in some other prison.’

You ever see a spire goat spooked so bad his body won’t even try to flee because he knows his legs are too short to outrun whatever’s after him? Funniest thing you ever saw, right up until terror and instinct make him belch right in your face.

‘Damn it,’ I swore as my limbs froze and I toppled backwards into the cold, dark and now all-too-familiar embrace of Soul’s Grave.

5

Rat Girl

If you don’t live your life righteous and proper, one day you’re going to wake up with a rock digging into the back of your skull and a spire goat’s tongue licking your face.

‘Love you, too, buddy,’ I mumbled.

I wasn’t expecting a reply, but got one anyway. ‘Aw, but aren’t you the sweetest thing? Maybe we should go steady.’

My eyes shot open, to be greeted by the sight of filthy, matted hair dangling around my face, casting jagged shadows across a smile that was all cracked lips and mischief. She was laughing at me.

Careful not to move too quick, I wiped away the slick wetness and gritty grains of sand from my face. The fact that I could move my hand explained why Conch’s belch hadn’t filled my nostrils with its usual sulphuric stench, but a sweeter, less punishing fragrance, like rotting roses. Apparently spire goats can spew gasses that just knock a predator out rather than paralysing them. Turning my head a fraction, I caught sight of Conch huddled in a corner, looking mighty sheepish for a goat.

Can’t blame you for gettin’ spooked, I thought.Not with the dead rising up from their graves.

Returning my gaze to the woman on top of me, not at all convinced that this ragged corpse was, in fact, alive, I asked tentatively, ‘Arissa?’

The grin widened, showing me teeth in worse need of cleaning than the spire goat’s. ‘Yeah, Rat Girl?’

She was the only person alive who’d ever dared call me that. In fairness, back then I had no other name, and teasing me had been her favourite pastime. Still was, apparently. ‘I have two questions,’ I said.

‘Go on.’

‘Are you alive?’

She winked, dislodging more of the sand stuck to her eyelids that had been covering them while she’d played dead in her cell. A few grains fell onto my nose and cheeks, tickling me. ‘Simple con, really. The clerics who’d ordered the guards to start executing prisoners a week ago had sweetened the deal by sending down casks of wine and smoking pipes filled with rapture weed. Nice gesture, don’t you think? Eases the spiritual discomfort of murdering convicts, one supposes.’

‘So, you figured if you pretended to already be dead . . .’

The left corner of her mouth rose higher. ‘Those idiot guards were so drunk and stoned by the third morning that they stopped bothering to keep track of who was left to kill. Every night they sat in their alcove, playing drinking games. Loser had to kill the next prisoner. By the time that big Zhuban woman with the scars got to me, I had sand over my eyes and twine around my hands. A little ash diluted in spit and rubbed on the lips looks like the mortification after being choked to death. The Zhuban figured one of her fellow guards must’ve raped me, then suffocated me to keep me quiet. She walked right by my cell without so much as a prayer for me or a curse for him.’

The casual way she brought up such heinous crimes stirred a terrible fear in me. ‘Please, Arissa, tell me no one—’

The smile disappeared. ‘Don’t ask me that, Rat Girl. Don’t ever ask me about what was done to me in this place, or the things I’ve done of my own free will.’

Durral would’ve insisted that pain has to be given voice before the body can set it aside. Enna, though, she warned that some memories are like scabs:‘Pick at them too soon, my darling, and the wound gets infected.’Enna’s usually right.

‘How did you get the sand and twine?’ I asked instead. The answer wasn’t hard to guess, but part of arta loquit is making space for others to guide the conversation towards a place they feel safest. Arissa had always loved showing off.

With a filthy, calloused fingertip, she brushed the sand off my cheek. ‘One of the few privileges accorded every prisoner is the right to have a duly-appointed cleric descend to your cell once a month to regale you with the horrors awaiting in the particular hell to which God will consign you after your death. Most convicts decline that delightful ritual.’

Now it was my turn to smile. Far from despairing at such a litany of horrific details, Arissa would’ve revelled in them.

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