Nights of Villjamur

NINETEEN

Shrouded delicately in lantern light, Tuya rested her hands on the windowsill to gaze out through the night. The window was open slightly and, because she wore only a white silk evening robe, the stirred air raised the hairs on her arm. The moonlight from Astrid was now concealed only slightly. Pterodettes arced upwards towards the nearby cliffs as a few pedestrians stalked the frozen streets hunched up in thick clothing. Not a time to be out. Why could she never connect to Villjamur? What was it that made her think she belonged outside the city?

She thought she could even hear refugees huddled outside the gates, in the icy conditions. Maybe it was her imagination, but the thought ceaselessly saddened her. Surely there was no need for them to remain outside?

She considered what Councillor Ghuda had revealed to her that night, which perhaps other than the councillors involved, only she knew. Surely she owed it to the city, owed it to herself to divulge it.

She needed to give something back to Villjamur.

She turned back to her painting, remembered who was next.

She began to apply herself to her only escape from her tenebrous world. She lifted up a brush and began to create.

Lines of paint spread thickly. Diagonals, verticals, curves. A body began to form.

Once she had finished, she stood back, her white robe splattered. This was certainly one of her most sinister pieces. There was no theme with such creations, no references, no premeditated allusions.

She walked to a mirror, noting her hair was a mess that would need fixing.

A gust of wind abruptly blew out the lantern beside her, bathing her in darkness. Already the pigments were beginning to glow, a subtle light pulsing with the regularity of a heartbeat.

She lay on the bed, her gown parting across her angled knee, gazing towards the window as the wind stirred her curtains. The glow in the room brightened, and she stared down her body.

Councillor Boll would die tonight.

Councillor Boll stepped out of the chamber facilities, realizing how he always hated communal toilets. It never seemed right to be engaged in a conversation whilst taking a shit. Especially to Councillor Eduin, who might have only just crept out of someone else’s arse, for all Boll knew. Why did anyone expect you to conduct a conversation in those private moments? You couldn’t exactly walk away from the situation either.

Boll shuffled down the corridor towards his chamber in Balmacara. He had to prepare for an early morning meeting with Chancellor Urtica, who apparently, judging from a message he had received only an hour ago, had discovered a brilliant method to eliminate all the unwanted refugees from Villjamur, involving someone from the Ovinists drawing on their expertise with poisons. But the last thing they wanted was for thousands of people to die on the doorstep of the city. That simply wouldn’t do. They should die somewhere else, Boll reckoned, with subtlety, far enough away so that the stench of death wouldn’t drift over its gleaming spires and bridges. The citizens of Villjamur deserved better treatment than that.

Boll entered his own chamber, which was littered with a collection of gold antiques from previous ages. Like many people in this city, he had a fondness for a previous era, but didn’t know why. In his case he wanted to absorb as much as he could about the great Dawnir creations, of the legendary Pithicus race that was wiped out by the Dawnir in the War of the Gods. His shelves were accordingly crammed with texts on the Máthema civilization, about the Azimuths who followed. He also possessed an expert knowledge of the history of the Jamur Empire. That was his main strength, his knowledge of previous civilizations. He prided himself on it. He would stop people to get them to ask him questions about it – go on, anything from any era – and then he would let his words wash over them, a one-way conversation to say I know more than you do.

The lantern light was caught in a myriad places around the immense room. He stood at the window, scratched his groin, watching the lights in other houses being doused for the night, one by one. Then he lay down on his feather bed, picked up a history book entitled Mythical Azimuth Battles. He began to read, but the prose was so dry and lifeless that not one sentence registered, and he drifted off to sleep.

Boll woke in darkness. All the candles had gone out. The shrieking of pterodettes just outside made him strangely vulnerable.

‘Must be the damn wind,’ he grunted to himself. He climbed out of bed to shut the window that had blown open. Then he shivered, uncontrollably, sensing that he was not alone in the room.

He leapt onto his bed, reached up to the shelf above it, then stepped back down with a short sword in one hand. Circling with bare feet on the cold tiles, he held the blade out in front of him. His heart was beating so violently in his ears it seemed to suffocate all other sounds.

In the corner something began to glow, and eventually took on the form of a decayed corpse with luminous bones. In one, claw-like hand it held a gleaming metal axe.

‘What… what d’you want?’ Boll stammered, drawing his night robe tighter with his free hand.

There was no response, and Boll noticed the creature possessed no reflection in the adjacent mirror. He quivered with fear as it came nearer, seeing directly through the gaps in the glowing bones. The thing barely owned a face, just crudely assembled features of two sockets for its eyes, a black circle for its mouth. ‘I have money…’ Boll began pleading.

As the ethereal skeleton towered over him, Boll slashed the blade in some vague attempt at self-defence. It merely stood there regardless, the sharp metal passing through it as if slicing water.

The axe in its hand seemed real enough. As the blade descended Boll twisted to one side, but it still crunched into his shoulder generating an explosion of pain. He howled, sprawling flat on the floor, his right arm now functionless, blood pooling around him. The next blow gashed his groin, severing an artery before thudding into the floor tiles.