One Man Read online

  ALSO BY HARRY CONNOLLY

  The Twenty Palaces Series:

  Twenty Palaces

  Child of Fire

  Game of Cages

  Circle of Enemies

  The Twisted Path

  The Great Way Trilogy:

  The Way into Chaos

  The Way into Magic

  The Way into Darkness

  Standalone Works:

  A Key, An Egg, An Unfortunate Remark

  Bad Little Girls Die Horrible Deaths,

  and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

  Spirit of the Century Presents: King Khan

  One Man

  A City of Fallen Gods novel

  Harry Connolly

  Copyright © 2019 Harry Connolly

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-951617-01-1

  With thanks to Dashiell Hammet

  CHAPTER ONE

  On the day after the summer solstice in the year 403 of the New Calendar, Kyrionik ward-Safroy defe-Safroy admir-Safroy hold-Safroy attended his own funeral.

  As a noble family, the Safroys were expected to hold two ceremonies. One would be private, reserved for family, close political allies, those in the High Watch who thought it prudent to show respect to a member of a rival faction currently out of power, and however many of Kyrionik’s former friends his mother felt obligated to invite.

  By tradition, it should have already happened. Somber guests would have worn their mourning whites. Servants wearing hoods of muslin gauze would offer each a cup of bitter tea, to represent grief, followed by drams of honeyed brandy, which represented happy memories of the loved one who had passed. After a few moments of silence, polite guests would talk about family, friends, newborn babes, aging parents—anything concerning the way people live their lives—to remind the grieving family that life goes on. Impolite people would try to talk business.

  Kyrionik’s mother was a former member of the High Watch, the parsu of the Safroy family, and a rich, influential woman. She was always surrounded by impolite people.

  The private ceremony was ordinarily held at home, usually in a garden or courtyard. For the Safroys, that meant everyone would be high enough on the slopes of Salash Hill that the family could mourn in direct sunlight, without the unpleasant tint of the light from Suloh’s bones. Perhaps they’d gather in the east hall, with its floors made from smooth white marble imported from Koh-Gilmiere. Or maybe on the southern deck, with its skywood and commanding view of the sea. Or the gardens, where Kyrionik and his brothers used to—

  No. Those memories were from his old self. The one who lived among the wealthy, high-born Salashi. That man was long gone. Kyrionik had a new name now.

  Now he was Kyrioc, child of No One, which marked him as lower than a commoner. He was an orphan. Unlike the high-born Kyrionik, poor Kyrioc had no family, no titles, and no inheritance.

  But he did have an obligation.

  The public funeral for hapless young Kyrionik was being held in High Square, at the southernmost end of the Upgarden deck, and Kyrioc, child of No One, stood in the long, long line of complete strangers waiting to pay their respects.

  Kyrioc could not have attended the private ceremony without revealing himself. Without reclaiming his old name. The idea of reuniting with his family, of the joyful tears, the celebrations, the calls that he explain where he’d been and what had happened…

  What he’d done…

  And they would embrace him. His hands, responsible for so much death, would touch his mother’s small frame. They would feel her warmth and movement. Her breath. Her life.

  Just the thought of it made him flinch and close down. He shut his eyes and stopped shuffling forward with the rest of the line. He could hear screaming, as fresh in his memory as if he’d heard them that morning. Then he remembered burning figures running through the jungle at night, then the darkness itself coming to life, and the sound of steel on flesh, and the smell of blood, and—

  “Good sir?”

  Kyrioc jumped, hand reaching for a weapon he no longer trusted himself to carry.

  The woman who had spoken was a Free-Cities merchant. She’d dressed in an open green linen robe over cream-colored tunic and trousers. They complemented her bronze skin, setting her apart from the dark-brown faces all around her. Instead of a hat, she had pinned a small block of perfumed wax atop her rather ordinary bun. It had barely begun to melt into her hair, but the sharp, flowery smell was overbearing in the still air.

  Her right eye was surrounded by a web of scars and was dark brown. Her left eye was hazel. If she could afford to replace her eye, she probably did not spend much time around people like him, but funerals bring together the high and the low.

  She was gaping at him. He lowered his hand.

  “You stopped walking,” the woman said with more kindness than he deserved. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m sorry, good madam. Bad memories.”

  “Ah. I thought you were grieving, and that perhaps you knew the deceased personally.”

  Kyrioc wasn’t sure how to respond. “I would have been a stranger to him.”

  The line was still shuffling forward without them. Kyrioc mumbled another apology and hurried to close the gap.

  For the day, Kyrioc had worn simple black trousers with a black cotton tunic and vest. They were the funeral clothes of a poor man—a man with disfiguring scars and shaggy black hair hanging in his face—and they were supposed to let him blend in with the crowd.

  High Square, where the Safroys awaited the long queue, was nearly two blocks away. Kyrioc could not let himself fall into a reverie again, not if he was going to hide himself in this long line of stitches.

  He wished he could summon his cloak of mirrors, but that was impossible in the midday sun.

  Kyrioc looked up and down the street, checking for Safroy guards. There were none this far from the square itself. Instead he saw city constables, private shop security, and the usual flash and bustle of the main street of the Upgarden deck.

  Here at the southern end, with High Square and the terminus of The Freightway nearby—and with the gate to The Avenue just behind him—Upgarden was at its most luxurious. Not only were the streets themselves constructed from pale, beautiful skywood, so were many of the stores. This close to High Slope, the shops sold only the finest goods from around the Semprestian: silks from Carrig, spices from the Free Cities, furs from Katr nomads, jewels from Koh-Benjatso, Koh-Gilmiere, and Koh-Kaulma. If there was a piece of finery with the poor taste to have been made right there in Koh-Salash—or anywhere along the shores of the Timmer Sea—it was sold downcity, where the shops were made of ordinary wood and people walked about in the pale orange like of Suloh’s bones.

  The deck was little changed from the days when Kyrioc roamed there as a teenager. As the Safroy heir, he had been welcomed into every store, tea shop, and cafe with a broad smile. Silks had been draped over his shoulders, pastries set before him, and rings slid onto his fingers, with the bill to be delivered to his family later, naturally.

  But that boy, the one who was gone from the world forever, had not been able to see Upgarden as the orphan Kyrioc did. Local merchants paid such high taxes, and they served such a precious clientele, that a pair of city soldiers—not even constables but soldiers—stood at every intersection. And because the wealthy could never be reassured enough, each shop employed at least one private guard.

  To Kyrionik, heir to the Safroy wards, holdings, titles, and treasury, they were friendly figures he could make sport with. To Kyrioc, child o
f No One, they were a deadly threat.

  Standing beside carved decorative panels in the shop doorways, children dressed like little dolls beckoned to anyone who flaunted fine fabrics or jewelry. If the shop lacked customers at the moment—and with this long queue of commoners in the street, business was slower than usual—the owner stood behind them, their thoughts turned inward as they calculated the cost of this intrusion.

  Kyrioc looked around. Young Kyrionik had been too pampered to recognize the hunger in their eyes. Smiling or blank-faced, they had always looked at him the way a street cat stares at an injured bird, because no matter how many jewels they wore, or how much gold they earned, it was never enough.

  An elderly woman stepped out of a perfumery, followed by a long train of servants bearing packages. She suddenly declared, “What is this parade of scraps and scavengers?”

  Kyrioc turned his gaze toward the deck. The bouquet in his hand crumpled as he gripped the stems too tightly. A long, shuddering breath released some of the tension in his chest.

  Being recognized wasn’t the only danger. Revisiting these streets and shops was almost like returning home, and in the coming weeks, he might be tempted to return. To haunt the planks and squares like a ghost of his former self. Then, inevitably, he would be recognized, and then—

  But that wouldn’t happen. As far as Kyrioc was concerned, his old self—that reckless young noble who had done so much harm—was dead in every way but the one that mattered the least.

  Moving with the queue, he came to the end of the street and descended a few steps into High Square. His soft-soled boots were quiet against the skywood. At the far end of the square was the domed roof of the Temple of Suloh. It wasn’t even as large as the smallest of the Upgarden shops, but this was only the very top of the tower. Beside it were stairs and plankways leading down into the lower decks of the city.

  Then he moved far enough into the square to see Suloh’s colossal shoulder blade jutting up through the cluster of shops and villas on the next street over, the orange crystal glowing even in midday. No part of the gods’ skeletons stood higher, except for Suloh’s skull, which had been hauled to the top of Salash Hill long, long ago.

  At the western end of High Square were a dais and a broad set of stairs leading up to it. Both had been built, extravagantly, from skywood. The Safroys would be standing up there, on display. Constables, bodyguards, friends, and loyal allies would fill the stair between them and the procession, but the family would be at the top.

  Kyrionik’s mother would be there.

  Kyrioc did not look up.

  As the parsu of a noble family with a sizable sail, his mother would stand in the highest place. And every stitch in the family sail—along with the many others who hoped to join the sail—would pass below in a slow, mournful procession, leaving a flower by the marker for her fallen heir.

  The Safroys would likely not even look down at the commoners passing below. Kyrioc would not look up.

  Live, your virtue, and remember us to your mother.

  He flinched at the memory but did not close down. Not this time.

  Kyrioc had not come for his mother, or his brothers, or his father. He had not come for the circle of friends and sycophants around them. He had not even come to see his own monument, which was finally right before him, a simple stone pillar with the Safroy bull and the flower of ice carved at the top. It was surrounded by flowers, none of which were joined in a bouquet as his were. The traditional roses, lilies, and daisies were there, of course, but so were numerous other flowers, all meant to show honor to the memory of that lost heir.

  He had not come here for that, either. He’d come for one reason. He’d come to repay the terrible debt he owed, because he knew no one else in his family would even acknowledge it.

  Kyrioc laid his bouquet of thirty red poppies before his own monument.

  * * *

  After the third hour spent standing at attention, watching the clouds float lazily above them, Culzatik ward-Safroy defe-Safroy admir-Safroy hold-Safroy’s feet felt swollen. Pain ran up his legs like a pair of stockings.

  But this was for Kyrionik. The four of them—Mother, Father, Billen, and him—would stand through the day and the night if it was required. No one would ever say they’d shirked their duty, not for this.

  They’d waited nearly eight years for this Mourning Day. The first tears had come when they realized Kyrionik would not return from his First Labor, and there had been more in the years since.

  Not here, though. No Safroy would shed a tear in High Square in full view of the common folk, no matter how deep their grief. They were not even supposed to look at the stitches as they shuffled by the monument.

  But Culzatik was so bored with looking at the clouds, he did exactly that.

  That was when he saw his big brother.

  At least, the man looked like Kyrionik, vaguely. He was walking away from the monument. His shaggy black hair was a mess and his black cotton tunic and vest were threadbare, but there was something about the way he moved…

  No, it couldn’t be.

  “You there!” Culzatik shouted, shocking everyone, including himself. “Constable! Stop that man in the black vest!”

  The shaggy-haired man glanced up, and he seemed to change in some subtle way. His features blurred and his clothes momentarily swirled with color, but the effect vanished almost immediately.

  That could only have been magic. Failed magic, but magic nonetheless.

  The man couldn’t be Kyrionik, not with that monstrous scar, but the line of his jaw on the other side…

  Instead of collaring the scarred man, the constable stationed at his brother’s marker stared up at Culzatik as though he’d been slapped awake. One of the Safroy guards strode forward to do it for him, seizing the wrist of a woman in a green robe.

  A few stitches cried out in fear and the procession of well-wishers surged away, splitting into three different streams as they fled for the stairs out of High Square. Culzatik, normally as sharp-eyed as a hawk, somehow lost track of the man in the black vest, but he’d been mixed in with the group heading for the exit to the northeast.

  A guard with a brush on his helm—one of the family lieutenants—slapped the first guard on the spaulder and he released the woman. “On me,” the lieutenant said, and took off running. Six Safroy guards followed.

  On impulse, Culzatik staggered down the stairs, aching legs balking at the sudden movement. He had no real idea what he was doing or why. He only knew that he couldn’t hang back. That shaggy-haired man with the scar wasn’t Kyrionik. It was impossible. Yet he found himself clumsily shoving through the crowd at the bottom of the stairs and running after his guards.

  Mother called his name, but he didn’t acknowledge her. If he didn’t know why he was doing this, what explanation could he make to her?

  “I want him alive!” he shouted.

  Aziatil was right beside him, running with an easy stride while he still labored to work the stiffness from his legs. There was no one he would have trusted more to capture this scarred man than the slender, fair-skinned Free Cities woman beside him, but she was his bodyguard. She didn’t open doors, carry packages, or leave his side to shackle downcity fugitives.

  Constables blew whistles, and answering whistles sounded from blocks away. Any moment now, the Undertower lifts would be halted and the ramps and stairs out of Upgarden would be blocked.

  Culzatik was not the most athletic young man—especially compared to the family guards, who could not sneak out of Father’s exercise sessions—but he wasn’t wearing steel armor, either. Eventually, he caught up to them. The lieutenant glanced back. “Your virtue,” he said.

  The fellow had distinguished himself during Culzatik’s First Labor. Tyenzo, child of Tylinus, was his name, and Culzatik felt a twinge of pride at having remembered it. Beneath Tyenzo’s steel helmet, sweat ran down his face in fat drops. The midsummer heat was awful, and they were suffering.

  But that�
�s what they were paid for.

  “I want him taken alive,” Culzatik repeated.

  “Yes, your virtue. He’ll probably be collared by the constables. If he’d run directly north, he would be going for the lifts, but the only way down from the eastern edge of the deck is The Freightway, which the constables have already shut down.”

  Tyenzo had a commoner’s idea of Upgarden, because he only passed through on his way to the Safroy compound. The people who lived and shopped there knew the south end of the deck had half a dozen ways—

  “There!” one of the guards shouted, and they all turned east.

  Culzatik followed them up the stairs at the edge of High Square and back into the streets of Upgarden. He felt a jolt when he saw the man they were running toward—shaggy hair, black vest—ducking into an alley, but in the next moment, he knew it wasn’t the fugitive.

  At their approach, the man spun around. He was too short, too thick, and had no scar on his face.

  “Don’t try to stop me! Don’t you try!”

  The far end of the alley held only open space. They’d come to the very edge of the Upgarden deck, and the man intended to jump.

  Culzatik didn’t give a damn about some commoner’s suicide. “You. Go away.”

  “Yes, your virtue,” he answered. The unscarred man could have simply stepped over the edge, but he shuffled into the street instead. Tyenzo warned him about hitting someone below. Why not go to the hospital, where his death would do some good?

  Culzatik moved toward the edge of the deck. There was no wind today, but he still gripped the side of the building.

  Koh-Salash was a young city, founded just over four hundred years earlier. Fleeing Lost Selsarim, Culzatik’s ancestors tried to make landfall in many places around the Semprestian Sea, but they had been driven away by archers, fire, and fleets. Only here, at the Timmer Straits, in this forbidden and forbidding place, could they make new homes.