Sin Eater Read online

  SIN

  EATER

  Iconoclasts – Book II

  Mike Shel

  SIN EATER

  Copyright 2019 by Mike Shel

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents are product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher/author.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Book design & typesetting by Ampersand Book Interiors:

  www.ampersandbookinteriors.com

  Cover design by Alexandre Rito:

  www.designbookcover.pt/en/

  Table of Contents

  1: The Old Man

  2: A Hanging by Law

  3: The Fire

  4: Dyrekeep

  5: Promises

  6: The God-King and the Castrato

  7: Camp of the Blessed

  8: Citadel

  9: A True and Faithful Recording

  10: The Queen of Calamities

  11: The Aerican

  12: Lady Herenea and the Swine

  13: Ute

  14: Volunteers

  15: A Knife in the Dark

  16: Conversations

  17: Arrivals

  18: Siege

  19: Rooftop

  20: Acorns

  21: Ralsea

  22: Aretha Dell

  23: Gallows

  24: River Eels

  25: A Fever in Ironwound

  26: The Convalescent

  27: Pilgrims' Progress

  28: A Ravenous Hunger

  29: Candle

  30: Ussi's Price

  31: Incense

  32: Raiment of God

  33: Throne of the Oracle

  34: Holy Sanctum

  35: Kingdom of the Toad

  36: Behold a God

  37: Saint Agnes of the Blade

  38: Godslayer

  39: Long May She Reign

  40: The Waters of the Ironbell

  Stay Connected!

  About the Author

  Also By Mike Shel

  Aching God

  For the Terrible Ten: Neither ten, nor particularly terrible.

  MAP

  Note: for color versions of all maps, visit

  www.mikeshel.com/the-world-of-hanifax.

  SIN

  EATER

  And here, shipmates, is true and faithful repentance; not clamorous for pardon, but grateful for punishment.

  – Herman Melville, Moby Dick (1851)

  1

  The Old Man

  The only landward entrance to the great imperial capital of Hanifax was a trio of arched gateways set between tall, crenelated towers. It was called the Mouth of Boudun, perhaps because the gateways looked like the incisors of some gap-toothed behemoth, happily ingesting the steady stream of merchants, migrants, entertainers, artisans, fortune-seekers, farmers, and diplomats who sought refuge or profit within. Three dozen severed heads crowded the parapets forty feet above, in varying stages of putrefaction, mounted on spikes. A few bored city guards stood alongside them, leaning casually on armored elbows. At their hips, heavy crossbows.

  An old man wrapped in lily-white robes looked up at one of those towers, scanning the faces of both watchmen and pike-mounted heads. He found little difference between them. Yes, their features and skin tones varied, the circumstances of their lives, whether they were now living or dead; but these were trifling details. The living would join the dead in short order, whether the tumbling chaos he envisioned unfolded or did not. At their passing, some here would be buried or cremated, their ashes ensconced in funerary urns or their bodies entombed in family crypts or public cemeteries, accompanied by elaborate ritual. Others would be left to rot where they lay, or used as a warning, like the decomposing heads above. The old man regarded them as one: pitiable human beings, fumbling through this world, in possession of nothing but their ephemeral hopes, minds clinging to half-true philosophies and outright falsehoods.

  Traffic into the city was heavy, but the old man waited with perfect patience, aware of the looks of fear, suspicion, even naked hatred from the crowd of humanity around him. Many things set him apart. First and foremost, his skin was a deep, rich brown in color, his white hair shaggy, his nose broad and flat, lips full and sensuous. These features marked him as a foreigner, a native of the mystery-shrouded southern continent of Aericum. Foreigners were distrusted at the best of times after all, and these were not the best of times. He also appeared immensely old, his face a web of wrinkles, the skin on his bare arms sagging. Yet he did not stoop nor use a cane to steady himself; his bearing was upright, and he walked with vigor and a dancer’s grace. Perhaps most striking were his eyes, so dark they were nearly black; penetrating, wise, ineffably ancient.

  A blond, barrel-chested man with a whip in one hand and the stink of a drover about him brushed by the old man with rough disregard, marring the unnatural whiteness of the Aerican’s fine cotton robes with the dust of the road. The drover, a bull of a man, stopped and turned to face the old man, his expression one of indignation and affronted privilege.

  “Watch yourself, stinking old wogget!” he growled, nostrils flaring like an ape making a show of dominance. “Bump into me again and I’ll beat you bloody!”

  Wogget. By the old man’s count, this was the twentieth time someone had employed that epithet since he set foot again on the Isle of Hanifax, either using it to address him directly or in whispered conversation nearby. He doubted the brutish man knew the now-derisive word’s complex etymology. He decided to enlighten him.

  “You call me ‘wogget,’ sir,” he began, with an ivory-toothed smile and melodious baritone. “It is a poor approximation of a Mendekoh term, uag-athe. It means ‘star watcher.’ You see, the ancient Mendekoh people were astronomers, long before your pale-skinned ancestors crawled from the dark of their caves. Do you mean to call me ‘star watcher,’ sir? Because that is a fine and noble thing. If not, you must mean to demonstrate your contempt for this frail old man, and perhaps for all of his proud Mendekoh forebears.”

  The drover’s furrowed brow suggested both anger and confusion. The Aerican heard the man’s grip tighten on his leather whip, watched his liver-colored lips working as though readying a venomous retort; all of it a prelude to violence. Then the old man locked eyes with the drover and the big man’s pale face went slack, his posture relaxed.

  “You thought you would bully this old, feeble foreigner, this uag-athe,” the old man continued, his smile a beatific thing. “That was an error, you are thinking now. Yes, a grave one. When walking down the road, a wise man does not kick over every stone along his path. One never knows under which lurks a nasty spider, ready to squirt poison.”

  The old man touched the drover’s chest with pinky, thumb, and forefinger, and muttered a few words in another tongue. Fat beads of sweat broke out on the big man’s forehead. His eyelids fluttered, his lips trembled, and soon he was weeping like a frightened little boy. Others nearby, already watching the encounter, shifted uncomfortably, dropping their conversations, pretending other activities, trying to watch now without being seen. The old man put a brown hand on the drover’s unshaven cheek and patted it. It was a gentle, grandfatherly gesture. “Be at peace, Calvas, son of Corvas. Pester no more people this day.” The drover, snot now running from his nose and his eyes puffy and reddened, walked dutifully over to his nearby ox cart and collaps
ed against the rough hide of the beast of burden yoked to it, crying softly, embracing the animal with his beefy arms for comfort.

  The crush of humanity waiting to enter the city of Boudun gave the old man a wider berth now, whispering to one another, several making signs against the Evil Eye. That was poorly done, he thought. You might have simply bowed in deference to that silly brute, not uttered a word. He would have walked on and soon forgotten you.

  But I’m weary.

  The truth was, compulsion magic always exhausted him, and only recently he had driven many poor, unwilling souls nearly two thousand miles: from the teeming port of Yobabis, across the Sea of Sacred Splendor, skirting the islands of the savages, and finally past the Wall of Serpents. At last traveling the Sea of Azkaya, there was the trial of soothing the nerves of those sailors, coaxing their cooperation so that they might dodge patrols of the Royal Navy. Finally, they deposited him on Hanifax’s southwestern shore. Hifada Fulani had been the ship’s name. Certain Harbor. Once free of him, Certain Harbor fled at full sail for her distant homeland. He wished them well and had placed a powerful charm on the ship to make its return journey a swift one. Yes, he was still recovering from the effort to avoid breaking those sailors. It was a simpler thing, the bending of men’s wills, if you cared not what happened to their psyches. The old man strove to do no more harm than was necessary for his purposes. But their minds were such fragile things. The nudge he had given the arrogant drover’s mind…well, the foolish man would have nightmares for weeks.

  Fragile. He looked at the back of his hand, the creased skin thin as parchment, then turned it over to stare into the palm. A softer shade of brown, a new collection of lines, like any other human, save for the scar, deep and angled like an arrow’s head. It was the only remnant of the ritual by which the original occupant of this body had relinquished it to him. How much time had passed? A great deal, at least by human reckoning. This vessel had served him well. With it he had wandered the whole of the Theocracy, the Republic of Tembao, the frontier satrapies of the wily Azkayans, even the foreboding—and aptly named—Godless Wilderness. He had gathered much wisdom, unknown in the north. It had nourished him, fortified him for the great task that lay ahead.

  He had walked nearly a hundred miles. From the southern shore where the Yobabis sloop Certain Harbor had left him, he had skirted the great port city of Falmuthe, then trekked through a rocky stretch of the Tona Hills and their long abandoned, overworked quarries. He had walked through the towns of Menkirk, Baedkirk, Zoteby, and half a dozen smaller villages. Those were insular places, whose innkeeps and merchants closed their doors to him, or provided surly, grudging service, overcharging him, accepting his gold as though it was beneath them, as though his coins were tainted with dung. Strange, but he couldn’t remember the names of those unwelcoming hamlets. His memory rarely failed him. It must be the strain of occupying this aged body past its endurance. Even with the sorcery at his disposal, flesh had its limits. His time in this vessel was nearing its end.

  At that moment, a child tugged at the hem of his robe. It was a young girl with hair that reminded him of the burnt orange of a sunrise on the Tears of Bakhu. She had a forest of freckles on her cheeks and nose, her skin fair and unblemished. Her eyes were a vibrant blue, and they projected intelligence and curiosity.

  “Why is your skin brown?” asked the girl, a sparkle of wonder in those eyes.

  The old man crouched with the ease of a far younger man so that his dark eyes met with hers. He smiled broadly. “There is a story, little Dagna of Zoteby, of how the god Bebe made the men of the south. He formed them out of clay and cooked them in fiery coals he found nestled in the bosom of the earth. But while he waited for them to bake, the god called Amalan the Trickster came to that place, taking the form of an enormous bird with wings so large they blotted out the sun. Amalan flapped his great wings so that the coals burned too hot, and the heat scorched the men who were cooking in Bebe’s fire.”

  She looked at him, wide-eyed, returning his smile. “Is that story true?” Dagna asked, so young in her skepticism.

  “No, little Dagna, it is not. The truth is, the sun strikes the world much more fiercely in the southern lands, harder than a blacksmith’s hammer strikes his anvil. So, over many, many years—more years than you can count—the skin of the people who lived there changed, so that the sun would not trouble them so. They adapted. This is what people must do if they are to survive. Were you to sail to that far land, the sun would bake you brown, too. Though not so brown as me.”

  The old man touched the tip of the young girl’s nose with a gentle finger as her mother, from whom she had wandered, yanked her away. The woman chastised the child as they walked off, sparing a worried look back at the dark-skinned foreigner who seemed to have charmed her daughter as surely as he had made the hulking drover weep.

  The old man saw that the little girl favored her mother. She had hair like a roaring fire and intense blue eyes, too. Both of them, mother and daughter alike, would return to the dust soon enough, like the rest of those standing there at the Mouth of Boudun. But the man’s playful touch had passed on to the girl a spark of fortune. She would have more than her share of happiness, and she would bring it to those touched by her life as well.

  The girl, he realized as she and her mother disappeared into the crowd, reminded him of Telsa, the widowed midwife he had come upon in the kingdom of East Marcien. But when he met Telsa, she had lost her own spark and was so weary of living that she surrendered her body to him with little persuasion. He walked in her shoes for many years. Being a woman in this world had presented its own challenges, back in the days of what they now called the Age of the Busker Kings. East Marcien had fallen to dust and ruin, just like the vessel of Telsa had, at last. Just as all those within his vision would return to the dust one day, very soon. He smiled as other memories flooded his mind. He allowed himself to luxuriate in those bright remembrances for a time, to bask in their warmth.

  Telsa. Wajid. Socono. Kella. Countless others.

  I thank you again for allowing me the use of your bodies after you yourselves had tired of them. Your souls are all gone past the Final Veil, long ago by human assessment. Thank you for the honor of your bodies, for acting as vessels necessary for my purposes. With them I have wandered the earth, waiting for the right time, the day when I finally fulfill my great mission. Let me live up to the name they once gave me, O Universal Spirit of Creation. And let me finally end my wanderings.

  “What is your business in Boudun?” asked an obese, hairy-chested man, shirtless against the heat, sitting in an overtaxed chair beside the guard tower. While the old man let himself reminisce, time had passed out here amongst the others queued to enter the great city. Now he stood at the head of that queue, facing the inquiry of this officious, sweaty man. A fat codex was opened before him, held by another man, toothless and wiry and clad only in a loincloth. The portly clerk clasped a jar of ink in one hand and a ragged feather quill in the other. “Your business?” he repeated, impatient.

  “The queen,” answered the old man. “I intend to speak with your Queen Geneviva. I come bearing a message from the very heart of god.”

  The clerk stared, mouth open. Then he let out a long, raucous laugh, exposing the Aerican to the stink of onions and sourness and teeth blackened by rot.

  “The queen?” he echoed, expelling more of his noxious breath and grinning his corrupted grin. He shook his head and began jotting down the old man’s words in the book that the fellow in the loincloth held for him. “I would summon a carriage to take you straight away to the palace, my grand wogget dignitary, but alas, the Fairy Queen of Summer and Lord Jack Nightingale arrived just before you and spirited it away. What name should I enter next to the stated purpose of your visit?”

  My name? the old man wondered. What is my name? Is it Wajid, the name of the one who gifted this body to me? Or one of those whose bodies I possessed
before? Is it my first name, the name of my birth, the one with which I was crowned when I first emerged howling from my mother’s womb? Benesh-Enoah, I once was. Ages and ages ago. Oh, that name I had nearly forgotten.

  But at last the old man settled on yet another name, one by which he hadn’t been addressed in ten thousand years. It seemed the correct moniker to use now. He would claim it once more, here at the Mouth of Boudun and beyond. To the end of his days. The true end.

  “My name,” he told the sweating clerk, “is Ush’oul.”

  2

  A Hanging by Law

  Agnes Manteo cleaned the blood from her sword with a cloth she carried for the purpose and returned the weapon to its sheath. She looked down again at the corpse of the would-be bandit. It took effort to master the trembling urge to kick him in the ribs. The highwayman’s blade, with which he had shown minimal skill, lay next to him. It was a poorly maintained thing, with rust where blade met crossguard. She picked it up and vented her fury by swinging it against a stout oak, sinking the steel deep into the wood, then putting all her weight on the hilt. The blade snapped with a metallic ting.

  She walked over to the other body, that of her Syraeic brother. He might have been sleeping, were it not for the raggedly-fletched arrow protruding from his left eye. His name was Ruben, and Agnes hadn’t known him well. But he had been an affable fellow on their journey. Better company than her other companion, Kennah, a stern swordsman who stood beneath another broad oak tree with the second brigand.

  This other highwayman was just a boy, a lad no older than fourteen. He was seated atop Agnes’s mount now, hands bound behind his back. Kennah was tying a noose with rope from his pack as he spoke to the boy.

  “The man over there,” he said in a voice alive with cold fury, tilting his head to the tree near where Ruben lay, “was closer to me than a brother. We met in the streets of Aulkirk as motherless boys, scrabbling for food and shelter from the elements. One day, we decided we would walk all the way to Boudun and present ourselves at the doors of the Citadel, to join the Syraeic League. From the day we arrived, we stood there each and every morning, presenting ourselves for review. At last, after about a month, a preceptor offered to accept him in. Just him, not me. But Ruben stared that woman in the face and said he wouldn’t join the League unless they took me in, too. We both were so keen to be Syraeics, and he refused her rather than leave me behind. I’m not sure I would have done the same for him, Vanic forgive me. But that night, the two of us slept in the novices’ dormitory. That’s just one of many things I owe him for.”