The Fecund's Melancholy Daughter - Brent Hayward [89]
“What are you doing?” asked the woman quietly. “I wanted to see you . . .”
Nahid was fiddling with the outfit the stranger wore, peeling it away. Underneath the hood was a long gash, across the grimy scalp, and this gash leaked a thick, dark fluid; perhaps not as black as melancholy, but neither was it a deep red. From the cut rose a stench. Nahid rubbed his fingers against the fluid, brought them to his lips, closed his eyes as he licked them.
The object hissed, a static hiss.
He heard the woman make a small sound in her chest.
The flesh of the flying man’s face was stretched so taut over the angular skull that no configuration of bone or route of vein was left invisible. Because the mouth had opened, Nahid could see remnants of ruined teeth. He rubbed his finger on them. A large dread lay inert either side of the scrawny neck, like dead creatures unto themselves.
The flying man groaned.
Horrified, the woman watched. “What are you . . . ?”
Nahid knew why this hemo had sought him out. Nowy Solum created such disillusioned. In many ways, this woman was similar to Name of the Sun; she only wanted him to confirm that everything was going to be all right, that their flesh was the same. But nothing would be all right. Ever. Kholics knew this from day one. Removed from the hemo world, removed from possibilities of hemo futures. Marked, indoctrinated, conditioned. Futile to attempt breaking through the division; they were different creatures.
And, now that she had confronted Nahid, he would show this hemo how different; he tugged the suit back from a bony shoulder.
As the skin of the man became exposed, Nahid saw, even in this shallow pool of struggling light, swarms of nits and chiggers. Without looking up, he said, “Your child will have a wetnurse. He’ll sleep on garbage and become accustomed to it. He’ll know no better.” He leaned forward, bringing his face close to the man’s chest.
“I wanted to give him a name,” said the woman. “I wanted him with me, in my room.”
Nahid snorted. “Even if Erricus could let you keep him, he would be miserable. He didn’t have blood in his veins, but an agitation, like insects, under his skin, fighting to get out. He will clean your streets.”
The hemo, who was crying now, said, “From where I sit, we don’t seem any better. I’m not happy. I’m not. With red blood in my body.” Then, with no power or breath left, her stance seemed to crumple, racked by emotion. “They took my boy away.”
From a few streets over—in the direction of the centrum—there arose a sudden commotion, a series of distant screams, getting closer for a second, then fading. Shortly after, several people ran past the alley and into the night. Nahid turned to watch as a group of palatinate officers hustled by. He caught a whiff of fire.
“Leave,” he said, loudly.
“But what are you doing here? Are there such things as seraphim?”
Nahid held up the long roofing nail; the woman stepped back.
“Go home,” he said. “Go back to your life.”
When Nahid leaned forward again, he did not care if the woman remained or not. The point of the nail slid easily into the man’s skull, just above his left ear. The eyes fluttered open for a second as dim, whitish essences, the essences of life, started to leak from the hole the nail had made. With the head of the flying man pressed against his knee, Nahid pushed and twisted until tiny infestations began to escape, like small black birds, squeezing from the wound and trying to fly off, one after the other, into the dark. Nahid sucked in as many as he could before falling back against the wall, delirious.
Loose, hard objects, so common down here, covered the slope, yet hornblower was able, on all fours, to clumsily ascend. He passed through foliage, which ripped at his clothes and skin, releasing their fragrance, and in which he wished he could lay down forever. Leaves and thorns reminded him of his home and of his people. He wondered, as he contacted these