The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [53]
“I can’t go. I can’t.”
Tastes of agony put an abrupt end to further protests. Hornblower closed his eyes and hoped he would never open them again. The pain was worse than any pain he had ever before felt. When it lingered, he put his hands up to his face, expecting to feel sap gushing from all exits, but there was none springing forth from his ears, or nose, or mouth. And, in his chest—at least so far—his heart still pounded.
Taking a chance, he glanced at the other padres.
Dead, all of them, leaking their lives out onto the branch.
He could not resist Anu. He could not do anything. Just like old times, the great power of the sky had come down from the firmament to deliver his wrath, and to assign to an unfortunate padre a divine and impossible quest.
Rubbing both palms over her eyes, and holding them there for a moment, as if she hoped reality might alter when she finally lowered them, Name of the Sun said, “I did something stupid last night.”
They sat on damp and filthy rocks on the shores of the River Crane, by New Market quay. For Name of the Sun, the ambient stench was anathema, but because her friend was a kholic, the smell of the river was a form of comfort. Name of the Sun tried her best not to show her distaste, but she had never been able to get accustomed to certain of the kholic predilections, no matter how often she associated with them.
Nowy Solum rose like ragged cliffs. A few boats struggled on the Crane, beyond where several people stood in the shallows, with nets or poles, looking for anything they could eat or sell or clean—not all out there were kholics, though several tattooed children clustered about nearby outhouses, lean bodies spattered.
“I went with Nahid.” Name of the Sun watched the children. “We did something crazy.”
Her friend, Serena, looked down at her own knees.
Around the girls squatted several cognosci. Two of the beasts gnawed bread crusts. A third, as Name of the Sun turned, lowered its paws from its muzzle, then showed teeth to her, massive and yellow.
A moment passed before Name of the Sun understood that the creature thought they were playing a game, peek-a-boo, initiated because she had been holding her hands up to her face. She tried to return the distorted smile. Cognosci were ugly by any standards, their doggish faces compressed, their skin sagging and grey. The beasts made horrible growling noises when they breathed, as if with each breath they were about to expire from a painful ailment. Yet she knew the creatures were oblivious in their ignorance, unrelenting in loyalty. “Last night,” she said, “Nahid and I did something I regret.”
Serena said, “Are you going to tell me?”
Still watching the cognosci, Name of the Sun hesitated. She recalled Nahid’s drunken list, the so-called pleasures in his life. Why had she expected more from him? Kholics were restricted by training and culture and history. Like these simple cognosci, rooting for remnants on the beach, they were damaged by the city.
The brains of these creatures, low functioning at the best of times, had been fried altogether by bleach, which had been served to them by the madam who had captured them, and knew how to permanently pacify them. Serena had found the cognosci discarded behind a whorehouse; fucking the creatures was popular among certain deviants in Nowy Solum.
How different, Name of the Sun suddenly wondered, was the fetish of fucking kholics? In the eyes of some, no different at all. She shuddered. Just to entertain these thoughts was horrible. Nahid had put doubts in her with his hurtful words.
“We used the tunnels,” she said, “to get into Jesthe.”
“From the centrum?” Now Serena seemed alert.
“I hadn’t been inside since I was seven. Nahid had never been in there.”
“Why would he? Kholics can’t go in. That place is for hemo kids.”
Name of the Sun frowned. “I told you his sister works in Jesthe? His twin sister—”
“Octavia. Sure. Everyone knows that.” Serena made an expression that was hard to