Deus Necros

Back at the alleyways of the Kingdom’s capital, Alex, Tull and Redd were all silent waiting for the first to speak. The city’s noise came in layers, far bells and the buried thrum of market talk, the clatter of a handcart on stone, somewhere a camel coughing like a furnace but here, between damp walls and hanging cords of laundry that brushed one’s shoulders, the sound thinned to drip and foot-scuff and the slow breathing of men measuring one another. The alley smelled of old cumin and ash, of lamp oil soaked into wood, and the faint medicinal sting of a tanner’s vat that hid a street away. Wind could not find purchase here. Smoke went up a little and then decided to sit.

The prince was not one to shy away from being a socialist was the first to start, “Redd, back at the den, you seem to have recognized us…”

“Seems to… I already mentioned that. What are you implying?” Redd asked. He stood half in shadow, a narrow strip of light cutting his cheek and catching in the red of his hair until the strands looked like wire warmed in a forge. The iron collar had left a dull impression on his neck where metal had worn skin into obedience, but the flesh beneath it was already losing that memory, as if the body meant to argue with what had held it.

“Why didn’t you expose us?”

“And ruin my ticket out of this hellhole? Nah, would be a huge waste.” He spoke without heat, as if he were naming a price scrawled plainly on a wall.

“You could have been rewarded handsomely if you handed me over to their king.” Alex said. His tone was even, but the way his eyes flicked once to the mouth of the alley, then back, betrayed the habit of counting exits even while he baited answers.

“Sir, are you sure you want to instigate him like this… he’ll have second thoughts,” Tull tried to advise, but the prince was adamant.

“Calm down Tull, he would have done so if he wanted to. But it just doesn’t sit well with me how someone like you is serving under that pig.”

“Not serving, got drugged and forced into a slave contract. To be honest, it’s still far better than what your people would have done to me.” Redd said. He rolled his shoulders, a slow test of distance in a body that remembered chains in the wrist and the ankle. His nostrils flared at some alley-stink, then settled.

The prince frowned, “What did the empire do to you to make you hate us this much?”

“What didn’t it do. After fighting alongside Ludwig and Titania back at Tulmud, instead of my efforts being rewarded, I was accused of being a dark magic user, hunted down and wanted for death. When even the Holy Maiden had me fight at her back.”

“I wasn’t privy of this…” the prince folded his arms in front of him. “I know everyone who participated in that expedition. And personally saw many of them receive rewards, but it’s true, I never saw you there…” He searched his memory for lists and faces, the tedious ceremonies of commendation, and came up empty of red hair and wolf eyes. A tightness moved along his jaw, the smallest admission that the great machinery he served did not always know its own levers.

“Not that I can prove it, but if you ask Titania, or the real Ludwig, they’ll probably tell you.”

“Well, we’ve been trying to find the real Ludwig for a while now… no luck.” Alex’s voice thinned on the last two words, not from doubt, but from the patience one uses on a lock that has refused every key.

“Why would you be looking for Ludwig here? Isn’t he back at the empire?” Redd asked.

“No, seems like what the people back there think is that Ludwig had defected to the sand kingdom.” The prince said.

Redd scoffed, “With the way you treat your people, I won’t be surprised he did. Still, that fake one there seems to at least know him.” He jerked his chin in the vague direction of the den they had fled, where smoke and the thin ringing scent of hot metal still drifted like a memory of knives.

“You were sure that it wasn’t Ludwig,” Tull said.

“Of course he isn’t, Ludwig is a monster of a man, but not a vile one at it. I’ve seen him fight, but he never had that much blood on his hands.” Redd’s eyes, which had looked dull under the shackle, sharpened at the word. In their depths, memory flickered, the shadow of a bridge, the roar of a thing dying correctly, the clean weight of a kill made to save a life rather than to count them.

“Can you recognize Ludwig if you saw him.”

“I could, why?”

“I’d like to hire your… talents.”

“That’s not something I’d like to hear from you especially.” Redd replied in a shrug. The word “hire” made the corner of his mouth lift without humor; more than coin was being put on the scale here, and he knew it.

“Hey, brat, be respectful to the prince! Or else.” Tull shouted. His hand had gone to the hilt without meaning to, a reflex as old as his training, but he stopped at the thought of steel scraping in this narrow place where sound would carry and carry back.

“Or else what?” Redd said, “What’s worse than what you guys already did? None of you protected me or my sister when we were young nor sought the person who destroyed my village. And when I came and helped you afterward I was treated like a spawn of the devil himself. Go help yourselves.” Redd turned and was about to leave. His shoulder brushed a string of drying dates and set them clicking softly together, a sound like small bones.

“Full immunity,” the prince said.

“What?” Redd turned. In the turn, the feral tension along his spine eased a fraction; he faced them fully, not like prey, but like a man at a bargaining table that had suddenly been set with a new plate.

“I’ll grant you full immunity for one thing you do back at the empire and a full pardon of any matters related to you that is.”

“So a clean slate and a sword to stick in anyone’s back…” Redd weighed the words with a thief’s thumb, feeling for the hollows where false promises hide, finding none in the prince’s face save the usual seams of caution.

“Unless they’re royals…” The prince smiled. It was a thin smile, court-polished, but there was iron under it. The condition did not sound like mercy; it sounded like the one rule that kept roofs from burning.

“Fine, never had issues with royals in the first place, its one fucker below.” The contempt in the last word was not loud, but it was pure, and it made sense of the collar-shaped bruise at his throat.

“Your high… sir, is it wise?” Tull asked. He kept his voice low. The alley could listen, and the alley had friends.

“It doesn’t matter, seems like he has a story to tell, and you know me. I’m a bit interested…” the prince looked away and back then said, “We need to move though, it’s going to get late and we can’t lose our only lead.” He tilted his head, listening to the city’s day thin into night. Soon the lamps would be lit and shadows would grow a second skin; tracking then would become a different art.

“Lead to what?” Tull asked.

“Well of course, the only way we as complete strangers can get into the palace… it’s to catch that fake Ludwig.” The plan arrived in the open like a blade drawn quietly; not a boast, not a dare, just the shape of the work to be done.

Tull looked to the side and realized the prince’s plan, he wanted to use Redd’s nose to sniff out the Skinwalker. He pictured once more the den’s ruined wall and the way the shadows had put on knives, the grin of a head that did not care for bodies, and he nodded despite the cold that went along his arms.

“I see…” Tull said after a bit of hesitation. Prudence made a small, persistent sound in his chest; duty put a palm over it and bid it wait.

“Well, if you want to do that, we should hurry, I think he’ll try to run away from the city since he got exposed.” Redd said. He lifted his chin, tasting the alley’s layered air. The feral stillness came over him again, not swagger but a kind of listening that included the soles of his feet. His pupils thinned, then widened, adjusting not to light, but to something deeper.

“You’re right, but we can’t just go in any random direction and hope for the best…”

“Not if you follow me, I already caught his scent… sister, lead the way,” Redd said. And almost immediately that sordid yet not malevolent presence seemed to wash over the prince and Tull and moved forward through the alleyway. It brushed their skin like the shiver that comes before a storm; it was not a spell’s bite, nor the damp curl of necromancy, they had felt those before. This was older and closer, a beast’s inheritance braided into man, a path opened inside the blood.

“That…”

“That’s not black magic, that’s worse…” Redd said with a grim look on him. His lips drew tight at the last word, not from shame, but from the practical knowledge that some doors, once opened, never close with the same latch again.

“I see…” the prince said, he seemed to have realized why Redd wanted that pardon so bad that he’s willing to help them now when they offered no help before. Whoever did that to his sister was probably high up in society. To turn a living being into a Skinwalker… that is indeed worse than dark magic. He did not say the thought aloud. The alley did not need to learn new names. He only adjusted the fall of his cloak and set his boots into Redd’s trail, feeling the city’s pulse change as they left the narrow seam of shadow and stepped into a lane where lamps were waking one by one, like eyes deciding to open.