“Now I’ll live all myself. Both of you are going to disappear just like the Vakums that have been vanishing lately. Who will I play games with?” he snapped.
“Trade my clothes for something nice,” Jiro said, rolling his eyes before he tossed a dried, crumbling piece of seaweed into his mouth and laughed.
Gekko scowled and slipped into his portion of their shelter, the far corner where he often chose to sulk.
Everyone in Iskawan sulked. Or so it appeared. With only a few floating orbs and the occasional fairy light flitting by, the shadows made even someone’s sincere smile appear like a grimace.
“Rice,” Jiro said, dumping something for Rakesh into a wood bowl carved from a plank of wood they’d found abandoned by the south wall. “Our usual delicacy.”
Falling silent, Jiro seemed to inhale all of his stale rice at once, even though the taste was not to be relished. Everything in the prison-city tasted like the damp air. Like old metal and mouldering wood. Even the water, brackish and dank, had a mineral taste.
Rakesh’s rice ground beneath his teeth. The old grocer man, who distributed the food when the supply carts came, often filled the rice with small rocks to make the weights heavier and gain himself more money. No one protested; what did it matter, anyway?
Rakesh ate quickly, set his bowl aside, and stood. “Gekko, are you coming?”
A distant mumble sounded. Rakesh and Jiro waited, but Gekko made no further response.
“Asleep already,” Jiro said with a shake of his head. “We’ll go without him.”
Three fairy lights zipped into their apartment when Jiro peeled up an old floorboard, rummaged around, and extracted two gritty knives.
“Not the best quality,” he murmured, running the pad of his thumb along several nicks along the edge. “But enough to defend us.”
Rakesh thought of The Hangman’s considerable girth and gulped. Nonetheless, two minutes later, the two friends stole off into the murky city, Rakesh following Jiro through the shadows.
Passing silently through Iskawan wasn’t new to either of them, but moving with mutual planned intent was. Everything they did felt loud. Every step seemed to be the wrong one.
Rakesh kept his knife close to his side under his tunic, to keep it from glinting off a passing fairy. The Vakums weren’t aware enough to know or care what they were seeing – perhaps not even that Rakesh was a man running past them – but there were others with sharp eyes and sharper tongues that would report to The Hangman anything suspicious or possibly indicative of escape attempts. Men were willing to do anything to improve their station.
“You’re good, yes?” Jiro asked under his breath when they turned a corner, bypassing an old woman who rarely left her porch.
The woman’s eyes constantly scanned the darkness, strangely empty despite being lucid. Every now and then she’d emit a shrill cackle into the darkness.
“Fine,” Rakesh returned, his tone hushed.
Jiro grinned, his teeth gleaming under a glowing orb as they crossed a main street, leaving the heady stench of refuse behind.
“Good.”
A small market operated ahead, the calls of those attempting to barter their pathetic wares ringing through the night. The end of this cycle would come soon enough – for those still attempting to hold onto the patterns of daily life instead of giving into the vague existence of just moving through Iskawan. Jiro and Rakesh wandered through the market, pretending to be interested in the meager wares set out on crooked tables.
Someone laughed. A tinkling sound followed.
Rakesh had to slow his pace as Jiro’s eyes trailed over a table filled with rare glass beads. The owner scowled, leaning close to his treasures.
“A tunic for those?” Jiro asked, then strode away laughing at his own strange humor that no one but him seemed to understand.
Rakesh glanced over his shoulder, saw the man snarl, and hurried after his friend.
“I don’t know about this venture, Jiro,” Rakesh murmured, shuddering. “Maybe we should wait and do it another time.”
A heavy feeling seemed to exist throughout Iskawan tonight, he thought. Tonight seemed deeper and more complex than most nights, as if the darkness here could permeate his cold bones just like the seemingly eternal mists.
Jiro didn’t break stride. If anything, he moved faster.
Rakesh hurried to keep up.
“When else would you do it?” Jiro asked. His face had fallen into hard, flinty lines.
“Tomorrow?”
“You’ll lose courage. Besides, what if he moves the box? No, it must be tonight.”
A current of shame moved through Rakesh. Hadn’t this been his idea after all? He couldn’t back out now. No – he didn’t want to back out now. Not when the tantalizing promise of freedom lay ahead.
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. I, uh, lost my head for a moment in the mist. You know how it is.”
“Courage, Rakesh. This could be our great moment.”
Finally, the outside of The Hangman’s house loomed in the great darkness inside Iskawan. The glowing orbs closer to the main part of Iskawan didn’t extend this far, leaving passing fairy lights and the distant, feeble glow from the lights on the main road to illuminate the building’s exterior.
Rakesh pointed to a dilapidated shack that sat across the street from The Hangman’s place.
The friends snuck inside. Enough boards existed to hide their presence, but not to keep a person seeking refuge alive.
Yet no one would want to live this close to The Hangman.
“We wait,” Jiro murmured. “For the cycle to close.”
The subtle movement and calls from the streets slowly died down. Both Rakesh and Jiro kept their gazes glued to the outside of The Hangman’s house, as if they could will him to never return again. The lack of any movement, sound, or fairy lights surely meant he had left the premises again or was sleeping inside.
Rakesh felt a surge of hope. Perhaps this was their night, and the Sacred Triad smiled down on them.
“Now,” Rakesh said, when the overwhelming stillness of Iskawan seemed to pull him to his feet. “Now is the deepest moment of the night.”
Jiro stood, scrambling up after him.
Like wraiths, they slipped across the street, gliding into the night behind The Hangman’s house. A series of old pipes, once connected, ran across the back of The Hangman’s house. Gathering all of his courage, Rakesh grabbed the first one he countered and hauled himself up.
Jiro followed behind, surprisingly spry. No one in Iskawan held much weight on their bodies, as if the darkness had sucked all their substance from them. Still, Jiro appeared to have more strength than Rakesh expected from his skeletal frame.
Once on the rooftop, Rakesh crouched. The shoddy shingles felt gritty and cool on the bottom of his bare feet. He pointed out three holes, but only one big enough for them to slide through.
Jiro grinned his acceptance. Rakesh moved first.
The edges of the hole seemed to swallow his body, pulling him farther into the building’s top story. The edges dug into his skin, but he ignored the pain and continued through. With a quiet thud, he landed on the floor in the darkness. Jiro did the same, making the same muffled sound.
Then total silence. The silence of The Hangman’s house surrounded them.
Both paused, waiting.
Was The Hangman home? Did he hear them enter?
At first, Rakesh couldn’t hear anything but the steady thrum of his own heartbeat in his ears. Slowly it faded, pulsing into quiet. When no shadow sprang out to attack them and no gravelly voice called for their death, Rakesh relaxed.
Jiro reached over, tapping him on the arm and pointing to the other side of the room where two fairy lights buzzed, alighting amongst the rafters and shedding just enough light for the two intruders to make out the vague shape of things. They stood on the top floor.