The Etched City
Chapter One
There were no milestones in the Copper Country. Often a traveller could only measure the progress of a journey by the time it took to get from each spoiled or broken thing to the next: a half-day’s walk from a dry well to the muzzle of a cannon poking out of a sand-slope, two hours to reach the skeletons of a man and a mule. The land was losing its battle with time. Ancient and exhausted, it visited decrepitude on everything within its bounds, as though out of spleen.
In the south of the country, arid scrubby plains alternated with stretches of desert. One road crossed this region, connecting the infrequent hamlets and oases, following the line of a derelict stone wall built long ago by a warlord. Along it, at distant intervals, were the remains of watchtowers and small forts. The greater part of the wall and its fortifications lay in complete ruin, but occasional sections stood intact enough to provide shelter.
One evening, late in the Husk Month, as the sun was getting on towards the horizon and the bite was at last starting to go out of its rays, the road brought the physician Raule to a tower with three intact walls. Raule’s dark features lifted out of the scowl they had settled into during the stifling, monotonous afternoon. She had traded tales with the Harutaim nomads whose way took them along the road, or rather beside it, for they held man-made paths in low esteem. They never camped near the wall, and cautioned Raule not to do so either. They believed the ruins were haunted by evil spirits, the ancient and acrimonious undead. But Raule preferred the stone places to the empty land outside.
Inside the tower she found the ashes of someone else’s campfire, a bottle, an empty meat can, and a wad of blood-soiled bandages. She alighted from her camel and left it to graze on some thorny plants that had taken root in the gravel around the stonework. After kicking the rubbish into a corner, she pitched her small tent against a wall, and built a fire on the remains of the litterer’s. She ate, chewing down some strips of dried goat meat she had bought from the Harutaim. With more relish, she speared some dates on the point of an old knife, and cooked them until they were hot and soft to eat. When she had eaten them all she stayed sitting in front of the fire, wrapped in a blanket and her thoughts, tired but unable to sleep, as night came on.
The temperature dropped sharply after the sun set, and a fierce wind blew up and went hooting back and forth across the sky. As Raule listened to it she thought it might be easy to imagine djinns and ghouls out in the darkness, or to fancy that you heard the camel-bells of a phantom caravan passing along the road.
When she slept at last she had dreams about the dead, but these days she always did.
The wall ended at the town of Proof Rock. The sun was a late afternoon bonfire, the earth overcooked and flyblown. Raule slouched in her saddle. Sweat glued her shirt and breeches to her skin, and her feet were baking inside her boots. She looked around without excitement.
Like most settlements in the Copper Country, Proof Rock was seemingly assembled from the detritus of other, defunct habitations. The only visible souls were a few old men and women, dozing on porches and balconies, as still as pegs of wood. Closed doors and shuttered windows completed the picture of an empty nest.
At the edge of the town there was an inn built of motley scrap metal. It had a brick porch, shaded by a tarpaulin and a mangy palm tree. A blanket slung over a wire served as the door, while sacking covered the windows, concealing the interior. Four camels were tethered to a rail in front of the porch. Raule appraised them. They were fit-looking mounts, handsomely caparisoned, but conspicuously lacking bells.
Raule dismounted, tied her camel to the palm tree, and went up to the doorway. She carried the medicine satchel that advertised her peaceable trade, while keeping her right hand near the scattergun she had made by sawing a shotgun short of most of its barrel.
She pushed the blanket back. Inside there was gloom, a sawdust floor and buzzing flies. The air was searing, almost unbreathably hot. The temperature outdoors felt pleasant in comparison. The only customers were four men sitting at cards around a table crowded with bottles, glasses and piles of banknotes. All four were clad in sombre-coloured outfits, decked out with weapons and ammunition bandoliers, and wore wide-brimmed hats that hid their features in shadow. Spectres of trouble. They all turned and looked at Raule.
One of them, a slim man, was fully muffled in a black domino, with a dustveil over his lower face. Raule smiled inwardly at such a caricature of a ne’er-do-well. Then a sword hanging at his left hip, with its point resting behind him on the floor, caught her eye. The long, slightly curved scabbard was familiar to her.
The man tugged the brim of his hat down, as though he was wary of her eyes. But then his fingers, clad in black gloves, drummed on the table in apparently idle fashion, and Raule read their movement:
Nice to see you. Wait till later.
The other three gave her looks that plainly said “later” as well, but with different intent. She was unconcerned about that; later they’d be dead drunk.
