The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [184]
"Yes, Septon," Irshad said, and scurried away again.
Majin stood silently, his fingertips caressing the lumps in his flesh, feeling the insect twitch and jump at being disturbed. As always, thinking as a man thinks had left his mind impure. Like shoots of spring grass, thoughts and memories pressed up into the light. The face of a girl he had loved once. The song his mother had crooned when lulling him down to sleep. A shrill regret that he had become a septon rather than study law or trade. A bone-deep, wordless sense of loss. The pale, greenish flesh pushed up into him, and its roots tickled at a buried anguish and rage that constantly threatened to undo his training. Majin ate each thought, clipping it back with chitin mandibles until it died again, and he was once more pure.
As he stepped down to the street, his beatific smile was unaffected by the missing Dardarbji tool, the violence planned against his enemy, his own danger. It was the nature of the locust god that Majin should devour his enemy or be devoured by him; either outcome would be a sacrament, and the difference between the two signified less than the empty-minded roar of dry, imaginary wings.
VIEW 5
Constable Chalch and the Ten Thousand Heroes | FELIX GILMAN
THE DETECTIVE’S CLOSING IN on the Terrorist. It's only a matter of time. A battle of wits that can have only one outcome. There will be a showdown at midnight on the bat-winged echoing roof of the Battidarmala station; or maybe at noon on the cliffs in the bright mists of the waterfalls so high above the city that only the bravest heroes or the iciest villains could even breathe the air, could even dare to open their eyes. There the Detective and the Terrorist will make their speeches, but you can skip ahead, turn the pages, you know where your sympathies lie and you've read it all before. Get to the dance of fists and knives those elegant men will perform for you. The Detective will collect another sacred wound. What will the Terrorist's last words be when he falls? What will they be this time?
The magazine is called The Ten Thousand Heroes of Riarnanth. Everyone knows the Detective and his magnificent monthly adventures. Constable Chalch turns another yellow fragrant page and the cheap ink stains his fingers.
Half an hour ago Constable Enif left the constabulary station, strode off into the streets, full of pluck and zeal and clever plans.
Chuzdt favors Enif tonight! Constable Chalch, less clever than Enif, but wiser, will not go out on the night of the Festival, when the streets are a-swarm. If he sits at his desk all the sights of the city will come to him. Pickpockets, poppy-fiends, brawlers, libelers, profaners, abusers of beasts, prostitutes without license, cheaters of measure, public defecators ― Chalch will process their arrests. That's as much of the Festival as he cares to see, and more of its stinks than he cares to smell. If no one's looking he'll maybe take a bribe or two in lieu of whippings; Chalch must marry soon or his poor mother may weep her way into the madhouse, and a constable's wages are not generous.
Who'd go out on the night of the Festival? Not Chalch. The station is warm and sticky-sweet with incense, and well-warded against evil spirits. Chalch sits with his feet up on the desk and his sandals off. He opens a tin of jellied locusts and returns to his magazine.
Just now the Detective's entering a poppy bar, in the shadow of warehouses. A hush settles over the reeking crowded darkness. It always does, wherever he goes. Probably, Chalch imagines, the Detective must think the whole world's like that, silent, expectant ― the same way rich men must think the world's friendly. In the Detective's world no words are ever spoken until he begins asking questions, bending back fingers, pulling out nails, gouging out eyes with his powerful thumbs; and then there is only ever one possible answer. What a pure and simple world he must