City of Ruin

F ORTY

Malum's life hadn't always been as screwed up as it was now, though even as a kid he'd had it tough – his father walked out on his mother before he even really knew the man. There were a lot of young men in the Bloods in a similar position. Maybe that's why such a band of men had formed in the first place, through looking to each other for some kind of guidance. It was why he had once tried so hard to be a good father…

He'd been walking across Villiren for hours now, and he still didn't know for sure how far he'd travelled. The streets were empty at this time of day, pre-dawn, and it was only then that he realized he'd been awake all night. A sea fog blanketed the city, the lines of the streets and the few tall buildings hidden indefinitely.

He badly missed Beami – who'd have thought it? For the first time in his life he had been humbled and, like a fat blade, the experience had sliced him open. He wasn't someone who was used to brooding about his wounds.

With the impending conflict likely to wipe out the city, he had probably lost any chance of finding her again. He wanted to tell her he was sorry, to remind her that he wasn't always so malevolent – because he had to face it, that's what he was at times: a man who manufactured evil. But he'd not had an easy life, what with his upbringing and…

Here it was at last, the street he'd once lived on. Not with Beami, no – but with his first love, deep in his youth, the girl he had spent forever trying to forget.

Back before he had been bitten.

He could not bring himself to think of her name… it was so long ago anyway.

And there was the house, which had once stood on the very edge of the Wasteland district. Now it was an integral part of the city, as if symbolizing how Villiren had grown too far beyond his own life. The house he was staring at was just a crumbling, terraced cottage with pieces of marbles pressed into the masonry so that it glittered with different colours in the right kind of light. They were all like that, round here. Its door was painted a different colour now and it was inhabited by a different family.

But, once, this was home.

When someone has no future, he realized, they look in the other direction. The ghosts of his past emerged out of the fog, and he removed his mask to confront them, face to face.

*

This is where it ends.

He is as yet unbitten, a twenty-one-year-old father. Styl is there, his son of two years, laughing up at him. The little guy's got the same colour hair and eyes as himself, the same smile. Crafted from the same wood, this one, people have told him. Malum has huge hopes for him, and wants to give him a future he can be proud of. Styl says he wants to be Emperor one day, and he speaks with such a spirit that you might think that it is really a possibility.

Hope: it is one of the reasons Malum works so hard at his small trading company. In a business inherited from his uncle, he distributes wares of all kinds around the city, and even dabbles in the ore market now and then. His wife is cooking breakfast in the morning sunlight, which streams through the kitchen window. She is intensely blonde, with full lips, a chatterbox who's very sensitive to everything he says, and he loves her. Malum relieves her of the spatula, tells her she should go and relax in the warm bath. He kisses her on the collarbone, on her neck, then she heads upstairs, smiling at both of them.

Later in the day they're walking as a family towards the commercial districts, looking to buy food for an evening meal with his business partner.

A unit of Empire military is coming down from the Citadel, apparently on its way to tackle a tribal uprising beyond the city limits, somewhere in Wych-Forest. Nothing serious, just a few hundred of them wanting revenge for the Empire's confiscation of their ancestral lands. Malum crouches down next to Styl, stares at the streams of uniformed men on horseback along the rain-slick streets. Armour and weapons glint in the sunlight during this display of duty and courage.

Someone lets off a firework in celebration.

Suddenly several startled horses lurch, startled and mad, seeking escape from the commands of their riders. Some of them break free, and begin galloping towards the crowd. Malum remembers being knocked sideways, remembers his son screaming and then the sight of Styl's face being crushed by hooves.

A spreading pool of blood.

A woman crying.

Anxious faces blurred through his tears.

Once the uproar has died down, he can barely bring himself to look at the devastating aftermath, at the pitiful remains of his son, and all he and his wife can do is collapse on the cobbles and wail.

The next evening he finds his wife has bled to death in the bath. Her wrists were slashed so crudely he knows she must have taken a long, painful time to die.

That is where it began.

*

Malum flicked a stone at one of the windows of the house, and it pinged off harmlessly. Was it any wonder he hated the military? He would never fight alongside them, no matter what the argument, no matter how much the Night Guard pleaded with him.

He had never risen above that day his life was smashed, where his dearest hopes had died. Eventually, after the witch had helped him, in his new-found bitterness, he turned his young trading empire into a criminal enterprise, channelling his anger.

His cadre had built up around him. They became his family and, eventually, they shared his blood. They stood by him without question, would carve open any enemy on his behalf.

After you see your son killed in such a way, and you find your wife dead from despair, you don't care about much else other than doing whatever you can to capture whatever satisfaction you can from the world.

*

The city was beginning another day.

Traders headed to the irens rolling their carts along by hand. Citizens were moving about their routines, some in masks, bustling about, getting on with their own lives. Bitterly, he noticed a unit of Dragoons trotting past the end of the street. He looked up at the house one last time and then turned to disappear into the fog, wishing that he might be lost forever in its mass.