“Tamueji? What’s wrong?” I scanned the young woman who was now nuzzling Tamueji’s side. Glad the bead had already been removed, or she might have forgotten. But Tamueji didn’t seem focused on that.
She gestured behind herself. “We need you over here—there’s been an accident.”
My nod was mechanical, automatic. “What happened?”
I was moving, being guided through the crowd. “Here.” She indicated a slope up from the edge of the street; orange and scarlet lights spilled down the side. “He just about got his belly ripped open. Time for you to pull your trick and put him back together.”
A ring of figures lined the hill, which flatted out into an elevated sector. Silver poisoning made everything a little blurry. Winged silhouettes, staring eyes, and panther tails, bears pacing in and out of sight. The red glow of the lights seemed to thicken into actual blood, freshly scenting the air. Smelled like a good bit of it too. It took me a moment to determine the source.
Another crow-soul was holding a body—no, not a body, or at least not a dead one. A young man. Bright slashes ran up his torso, bleeding through pads of cloth that were pressed into him. He was chattering weakly, softly, about how it was numbing. All the color seemed to have drained from his skin; a chain, empty of beads, hung at his throat.
He smelled like damp, dying meat. It was like someone had doused me in cold water, the night’s fog of enchantment washing away.
A few steps away, another young man stood, eyes wide, hands over his mouth. He was shaky, drops of dark fluid spattering his raiment. I couldn’t see a weapon, but the tracks suggested he’d caused the slashes. Behind him, a tall wolf-soul wearing a sword and a gray coat gripped him by the collar. She eyed me. “Little shits have been quarreling all evening. Didn’t think they’d actually draw blood.”
Something squirmed in the shadows around us, settling into an array of humanoid shapes. “Never fear.” That voice. It pierced me through the silver haze. The voice of my earliest memories, of my barely formed nightmares. Lord Umber. The outline of wings showed his location, decorated with the glare of his crimson eyes. “Ari has come. All will be well.”
Suddenly, the whole street felt like a stage. Faceless shadows had gathered here to see me fulfill my duty. I met Umber’s hollow stare for a moment, then nodded. I knelt down by the bleeding youth. “Give him to me.”
The boy whimpered as he was slid into my lap. He kept mumbling. “Starting to get cold. I think it’s stopping. Shouldn’t have had so much to drink.”
I peeled back the cloth, winced at the raw gashes. What the hell had he been cut with? My fingers played over them, pressing the tissue. Seeing ordinary mortal wounds, wounds that didn’t heal in moments, was always a little shocking when my own body bounced back so quickly. But this was what I was here for.
My virtue. Just like the cat-souls and their cat-step, each beast had its own unique gift. The doves had the virtue of pitying, the power to heal. All I had to do was allow it to work, almost without thinking. The virtue rose up in me like full-moon light.
“I’ve got you,” I breathed. Snow-shimmer bloomed from my fingertips, gracing his torn flesh. A sigh of apparent relief swung through him. I drew the touch over the length of the wounds, wet streaks coming away lit with white. “Don’t be scared.”
In seconds, the wounds began to close.
His entire body relaxed as if melting into me. The virtue-glow hummed in the air around us, painting the ground the creamy hue of my wings. The blood dried, and soon the tears were little more than scars, irate tissue softening and lightening under my touch.
Maybe this was enough for me to keep coming. Maybe I’d done the wrong thing by keeping to myself. It was simply so hard to face this crowd and still feel so alone. But I had this role for a reason. I felt alone because I seemed to make no difference. I should have been like a village doctor, mending the ailing and improving their lives. Instead I felt like a mechanic. Patching up parts for them to senselessly get battered again, or dissipate into an insensate fog of joint amnesia. With all our yesterdays flowing away, we gradually lost the ability to feel each other mattering.
“How many beads did he have?” My own voice felt distant, weary. I caressed his ribs, feeling the moon-glow sink through him, purging out the beginnings of infection.
The wolf-soul sounded hoarse. “Four.”
Shit. And he’d given all four worth; the extra blood loss might have killed him. The infusion of my virtue would replenish him soon enough, but he’d need help. “Water. And meat.”
She didn’t ask for elaboration. In moments, hands were holding out bits of fat and poultry on sticks, bowls of partly eaten steak and rice, cups of water. I directed them to feed him, giving his body something to restore itself with. I could do the rest.
He had enough strength for several bites before sleep pulled him under. But his heart kept a steady pace, and the aroma of death had left him.
“Is he...going to live?” It was the man who’d taken the piece out of him in the first place. He all but shone with terror.
I raised my head to nod—and Umber was staring at me. He’d drawn out of the shadow, eyes distinguished from the rest of the lights. The sight silenced me, filled me with cold. Lord Umber was called “the Dread Lord Umber” by most of those who kept to the upper streets, and his appearance reminded me of why. He looked like he’d been cut from living bone. Mountainous in height, his white face long and thin, framing that cadaverous gaze. Arch features, prominent nose and brow, a sweep of icy pale hair to match his bloodless white skin, body garbed in red and black. Two blood-donors stood by him. A young man and a young woman, thin and wan, faces misty with numbness.
They had to have been memory sellers as well. Some people sold even new memories they made, being paid to constantly reset to a blank slate, feeding Umber ongoing loops of new vicarious experiences. I knew the aura that clung to them, practically all that clothed their half-nude limbs. They, like me, were drowning in the endlessness of amnesia. I hoped whatever reason they’d had for selling their pasts, it was worth it. But it was hard to imagine that anyone so blank was truly making an informed choice, and the choice not being produced from them like puppetry.
“Well done, my boy.” His grin stretched for miles, tore open the darkness and replaced it with him. Something in his manner and tone imparted the feeling that he’d been watching closely as I worked and never looked away. As well as what was unsaid: Welcome back, Ari. My angel.
Yes. Practically saintly.
The wolf-soul angled her face to him, not quite meeting his attention. “I take the blame; my caution was relaxed.” She cuffed the aggressor with the side of her hand, pulling a yelp from him.
“No.” Umber’s amusement practically fell on the ground, wound around my feet. “No, there is no need for blame. Come here, child.” His long fingers beckoned to the youth, seemed to pluck his will from him. He nodded, trembling. He looked like he was resigning himself to being eaten.