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Mike felt seasick by the time Ruki Provos finally stopped the caravan. They had traveled two full days on that damn tank-train, eating meals on the go, sleeping and driving in shifts. They had put bat-out-of-hell distance between them and Ardenspar. Now the night sky was overcast, making travel in the pitch black not worth the risk.
They made camp in the middle of a desert. It was a lot like the Dry Flats, only drier. And sandier. Ruki constantly batted at the sand on his bedroll like it offended him.
“I go from the Exquisite Promise to this,” he said, scowling and smacking at more dirt. “I’ve got half a mind to leave you all in this desert, turn tail back to Suusteren and hide in my uncle’s basement for a couple of years until this blows over.”
Everyone else ignored him. Savashbahar mended rips in her robes. Runt stirred the pot of stew hanging over the campfire. Mike leaned over the pot, smelling and waiting to eat with all the patience he had left.
“Anyone hear me above the roar of desert silence?!” Ruki asked.
The fire answered, crackling and sizzling over dry sticks.
Mike wouldn’t hold it against Ruki if he decided to up and run. Probably no one else did, either. But Ruki wouldn’t. He was compelled to live up to his word and make his delivery. Actually surviving the delivery was something he needed a security detail for.
Nothing like being back in the temporary unpaid employ of the Provos Trading Company.
Mike spoke into the quiet. “No one actually said it, but what’s so bad about this place we’re going?”
Despite having two days time to discuss it, most mention of the place was met with grimaces, scowls, or shakes of the head, followed by silence. Ruki called it The Sprawl, Runt called it The Crossbane, Savashbahar whispered the name yasak toprak—forbidden land—under her breath like it was a curse word. They all reacted to the place like fighting it out against the entire Hierophane was the better option.
The same dry crackling fire that had answered Ruki’s question now answered Mike’s. The silence was not comforting.
“One of you spill it, already,” Mike said. “I need the distraction. Ruki?” Mike asked the trader, whose back was turned away from the fire as he lay on his bedroll. “C’mon, it’s story time. Might make you feel better.”
Ruki turned to face Mike, looking cross. “You want to know? Fine. If I was you, I’d rejoice in my ignorance.”
Ruki got up and joined them at the fire. The flickering light gave his features a sinister look as he spoke.
“We all call it something different, The Sprawl, The Crossbane; aians call it House of Onus. No one knows its real name anymore. All we know is it’s there, an entire city warped and broken, in the center of the desert.
“They say it was a city of people who wielded magic technology that defies understanding today. Men used these tools as if they were gods without consequences. The stories I learned as a child say megryms began there, as did weagrs, the results of experiments by deranged mage scientists who wanted their offspring stronger or able to regenerate limbs like lizards.
“No one knows what happened to these people. They say they destroyed themselves. All that’s left of them is The Sprawl, a testament to the arrogance of the ancients.”
“I don’t get it,” Mike said, “if no one’s left, who are we delivering these crates to?”
“Lost Ones,” Runt said. He held up the stew spoon, letting Mike know dinner was served.
“Gavur,” Savashbahar said the name like another curse word.
“Dwellers, Sprawlcrawlers,” Ruki said, holding up a bowl for Runt to dump some stew in. “I’ve heard they prefer the name Tech Romancers. A whole ruined city wasn’t enough to convince these fools some things are better left in the past. They’re one part stupid, one part crazy and both of those parts are depraved. They live there, divided into a bunch of gangs, fighting over scraps of the ancient technology they forage for amidst The Sprawl.”
Mike dug into the stew Runt had ladled into his bowl. Savashbahar stopped her mending to join them fireside. It was quiet for a moment, aside from the nom-nom-nom sound of everyone chewing. Mike spoke around a mouthful.
“I dunno. We meet our contact, drop off the stuff and ride out. It sounds simple enough.”
“There’s a reason no one trades with these madmen,” Ruki said. “Traders rarely make it out of The Sprawl once they go in. One Sprawlcrawler gang is indistinguishable from another, and even if you trade with the right guys they’d just as soon kill you as pay you.”
“Which ones are we trading with?” Mike asked.
“The Sons of Kaftar,” Ruki answered. “According to Grandlevoss, they’re one of the big three along with Clockwound Warders and Exhaust.”
“Word,” Mike said with a nod.
Savashbahar laughed. “Why do you nod, little one?” she asked. “Knowing more about yasak toprak and the gavur that prowl it did not ease your mind. It is in your shimmer. Unease is all around you.”
Mike shrugged. “It takes care of my immediate future. Until I figure out how to find my brother, that’s about all I got.”
Savashbahar set down her empty bowl. “You have a destination without a path. Like you, my destination is clear to me yet my path is obscure. We need to blood whisper.”
She took out her knife. Without ceremony, she cut across her finger.
“Ho! Wait, what are you doing?” Mike asked.
“Sus,” she shushed him. “Trust.”
She grabbed Mike’s hand and cut his finger. He took in a sharp breath as the sting hit him. Savashbahar smacked his hand as he went to suck on his cut finger.
“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “You need the blood to blood whisper.”
Savashbahar held up the knife and looked around the campfire. “Anyone else seeks a path?”
“Keep your janky blood rituals away from me,” Ruki said, getting up and retreating back to his bedroll. “I already know my path; it’s away from all of you once I’m out of The Sprawl,” he said, smacking away more sand before turning his back on the camp.
She turned to face Runt.
“No need,” Runt said. “I am at peace with my path.”
She looked at Mike. “Follow my lead.”
Her finger traced a pattern in the desert sand, all jagged lines and unclosed circles. Mike followed suit, feeling like a dumbass all the while. But he didn’t have much in the way of options, so if perverse finger painting gave him a clue on how to track down Melvin, so be it. He painted.
“The ground is my witness, as it is sealed,” she said. She held her finger high. Granules of red-stained sand stuck to it. He echoed her words and actions.
“To the sky, who sends winds of change.”
She held her finger of the fire and squeezed a drop into the flames.
“Blood burns in fire. Yet it burns in my body. It burns in my heart...”
She dabbed a drop on her head.
“...to know the way.”
Mike stood there for a minute in silence, waiting for something. Pulsing lights or phantom words or the campfire to jump up with little fiery pictures of Melvin somewhere. Something. None of that came.
“That it?” he asked.
“Now we sleep. The blood will whisper,” she said, heading back to her bedroll.
No wonder Ruki and Runt wanted no parts of it. What a gyp. Mike sucked his bleeding finger and was rewarded with the grit of sand in his mouth.
Mike went to sleep. If the blood whispered, it talked about impossible things. Melvin was attacking him in the middle of the street, like he didn’t recognize Mike anymore. Then Mel turned on his own friends. It was like he was crazy, like the air was too thin for him in the mountain town they were all at.
Before it got any crazier, a hand was shaking him awake. His eyes squinted open to dawn breaking over the desert.
“Come, Mike Ballztowallz,” Runt said. “We do not want night to fall on us in The Crossbane.”
They ate on the moving caravan, a breakfast of dried fruit and jerked meat. Greenish-yellow sand and rock the same sickly green color stretched as far as the eye could see. Unlike the Dry Flats, there were no shrubs or occasional wildlife. There was nothing.
“Who the hell thought to put a city in the middle of this?” Mike asked.
“Was not always desert,” Runt said. “The city gave birth to Dead Sands.”
The engine chugged through the Dead Sands. Occasionally, jagged emerald-green and black quartz crystals jutted out from the rocks. Nothing moved out there, as least as far as Mike could see with his daytime eyes.
It was close to noon when Mike saw awkward shapes emerging from the flat backdrop of the desert. And not just in front of him. He panned his head from East to West. The beginnings of The Sprawl were everywhere, like a city that didn’t end.
It took another twenty minutes to make the outskirts. When they finally got to the city proper, Mike understood why nobody wanted to come here.
The Sprawl was a tour through the Apocalypse. An endless ocean of broken buildings stretched as far as the eye could see, nothing but broken marble, shattered glass and charred rubble. Twisted metal struts jutted up from the rubble like rotten teeth. The roads, as big as ten lane freeways, lay disjointed and disconnected, raised up in places and sinkholed in others like the broken bones of a tortured giant.
They were on one such road now. Despite its grand size, Ruki had to slow down and steer carefully to navigate between massive chunks of marble and stone debris.
Mike looked back. The Dead Sands had disappeared from view. Nothing but The Sprawl was all around them, as if the city had swallowed them up.
“How do you know where to deliver this stuff?” Mike asked.
“Grandlevoss was precise about the route through the desert,” Ruki said, keeping his eyes on the road’s many hazards. “He said it would lead to this street into The Sprawl. According to him, if I just stay on this road I’ll get to a circle where my contact will be.”
The place was library quiet. The rhythmic chug of the engine, barely noticeable in the Dead Sands, seemed deafening now. Mike could almost feel the small chunks of stone and marble the tank treads rolled over, like they were rocks in his shoes. He visualized those chunks by the sound they made as the caravan treads crushed them into dust.
Nothing stirred in the ruins. The lack of motion and noise set Mike on edge. No sound except their caravan was the equivalent of a brass parade in a deserted village. If someone wanted to find them, it wouldn’t be hard. He already felt like there were a million eyes on him.
Mike scanned the empty wastes for any sign of movement. Nothing. The Sprawl rolled past them, empty, stuck in time at its last breath.
It felt like forever, with the city seeping past them, before they got to an intersection. It was a massive circle with offshoot avenues branching off in eight directions. A broken fountain stood in the center of the circle.
Ruki stopped the caravan. The silence rushed in and dominated the air. Everyone looked around. There was no one here.
“Did they all die?” Ruki whispered to no one in particular.
“I should kill you just for saying that,” a voice said from out in The Sprawl.
Mike saw a blur of motion by the ruined fountain in front of the caravan. An aian with a ridged forehead stepped out of the blur, naked except for some black leather drawers.
Ruki smiled, all salesman. “Effective use of chameleon camouflage,” he said. “The House of Sen always amazes me, my friend.”
“We’re friends now, us?” The aian said. “Because I thought you were just trader. Which are you... friend or trader?”
“Um... a friendly trader?” Ruki answered like it was a question.
“Ego!” the aian shouted at Ruki.
“Um... what?” Ruki asked.
“Ego!”
Ruki looked at his security detail like the answer on how to proceed was going to come from one of them.
“Judgment calls, tender, all is judgment calls,” another voice said from the wasted city.
A human emerged, so well hidden in the rubble that no one had seen him. Wearing grayish-black leather, his eyes masked by blue-tinted goggles, the brown haired man strolled like he was in the park, twirling a black baton as he approached the aian at the fountain.
“Danda’s judgment was to call for I, tenders,” the man said as he patted the aian on the shoulder. The man smiled behind his goggles as he looked toward the caravan. “Ego is I.”
“Right...” Ruki started.
“Shut up, tender,” Ego said. “His judgment call for I was because your judgment call was to be both friend and trader to he.”
Ego rested the baton on his shoulder and tilted his head like he was amused by Ruki.
“Cannot be both, you. Friends offer friendship. I for you, you for I. Traders offer trade. Money all you want. Supplies all I gets.”
Ruki kept a smile but he looked nervous, the sweating-in-court kind of nervous. This wasn’t a typical transaction in most people’s customer service history. Ego seemed unbalanced to say the least. He kept going.
“What is a friendly trader? You trade friendship for I’s money? You charge I for things friends give I for free?”
Ego’s expression turned angry. “Friendly trader is like friendly leech. He a dead man to come to I’s front door and lie to I,” he said.
Just like that, the guy smiled again, like he had just heard a joke. “But forgiving is I, because you scared of I. You don’t know what you say. So I ask again. Which you, tender?”
“A friend,” Ruki said. “I’m a friend.”
“Well, friend,” Ego said, “meet I’s other friends.”
Suddenly, dozens of people emerged from behind rubble or from under it. Megryms and humans, nasrans and aians, all so well hidden that Mike could have stepped on them and not known it.
Ego pointed his baton at Ruki.
“Thing is, tender,” Ego said, “Grandlevoss, him trader. Him already took I’s money for what you bring to I now. How you and I friends after money changed hands?”
The gang of people approached from all sides of the caravan. They brandished clubs, swords and some had pistols. The pistols sported cylindrical tops and crescent shaped barrels, but Mike had no illusions as to what they were.
“Them are friends, tender,” Ego said, waving his baton at the advancing crowd. “When they bring to I, it’s not for money.” He rubbed his fingers together.
“List is short of friends who would take I’s money,” Ego said. He smiled a wicked grin. “And the list, it grows shorter all the time.”