Nights of Villjamur - Mark Charan Newton [9]
Four years ago it had started, four years since he realized, that he couldn’t invest all his emotions in one person, in his wife. He had caught her, Beula, in bed with her lips at work on a soldier from the Dragoons, and the image pursued him—his personal poltergeist—constantly undermining him. His sense of value in the world hung in the air like an unanswered question, and as a man he was unmade.
Sleeping with prostitutes helped his state of mind.
It was a fantasy, at first, an escape—then something more, a need for tenderness and cheap thrills with another woman. When he lost himself in the bad lines and the awkward over-stylized gestures, he managed to scramble something of an identity together. After the act, the women he paid for would watch him absentmindedly while wiping themselves down with a towel to remove any traces of him from their body. These women would not love him, and the words they spoke were not their own, but Tuya, the woman from last night, seemed almost genuinely affectionate, as if in Villjamur, a city of introverts, two introverts could find a sense of belonging—if only for a night.
Ghuda looked up as the skies cleared, red sunlight now skidding off the wet cobbles, and the streets appeared to rust. He stepped from the shelter of the doorway into the relative brightness of the morning. He needed to get to the Council Spire to start the day’s work.
Whether it was a symptom of his guilt, he didn’t know, but he felt certain he was being watched. He never requested a guard to escort him anywhere, in fact usually slipped away before one might appear.
There was much to deal with for the day ahead. Primarily he had to deal with the increasing refugee problems: the laborers from elsewhere that were flocking to Villjamur to survive the coming ice age.
People were heading to the various irens to trade and shop, overseen by soldiers from the Regiment of Foot, who patrolled along the streets in pairs. It was a trenchant policy of safety he’d personally initiated to ease the citizens’ concern in these anxious times. You didn’t want general panic to set in, even though the public fear of crime was more intense than its current levels actually warranted.
Up the winding roads and passageways, he continued.
On the way he encountered an elderly man sitting on a stool with a sign beside him that said “Scribe—Discretion Guaranteed.” With one palm resting flat on the small table to one side, he sipped a steaming drink with a contented look on his face. There were quite a few of these men around the city, writing love letters or death threats on behalf of those who couldn’t write themselves, including those whose fingers had been broken by the Inquisition. Ghuda speculated on what he might write to Tuya, the redhead he had just spent the night with. What would he say to her? That he would like to fuck her some more because she was so good at it? That was hardly the basis of an ongoing relationship.
The incline had become a strain on Ghuda’s legs, so for a while he rested on a pile of logs heaped outside one of the terraced houses. Again, he had the uneasy sensation that someone was watching him. He looked around at the quiet streets, then up at the bridges. Perhaps someone was looking down at him.
He rose to go and heard footsteps behind him, running into the distance.
A shortcut led through to an iren, a trading area located in a courtyard of stone. As he stepped through a high and narrow alleyway, seemingly endless, his heart began to beat a little faster.
He quickened his pace.
He burst out onto the busy iren …
Then he felt as if his chest had exploded and its contents were spilling onto the cobbles. Except it hadn’t, he was still in one piece, he was still alive, but he gaped down at the wound as it expanded, at his shredded robes exposing his flesh to the cold, damp air.
A truculent pain shot through him, and he screamed, trying to look behind him, but through welling eyes saw only a silhouette heading back, bizarrely upward, into the darkness. He stumbled forward, his hands clutching