The First Scene from ONE MAN

As a special "THANK YOU" to my Patreon patrons, here's the first scene from my new novel, ONE MAN. I hope you enjoy it. 

CHAPTER ONE

On the day after summer solstice in the year 403 of the New Calendar, Kyrionik ward-Safroy defe-Safroy admir-Safroy hold-Safroy attended his own funeral.

As a noble family, the Safroys were expected to hold two ceremonies. One would be private, reserved for family, close political allies, any members of the High Watch who thought it prudent to show respect to a member of a rival faction currently out of power, along with however many of his former friends his mother felt obligated to invite. It had almost certainly happened already. Somber guests would have arrived early in their mourning whites. Servants wearing hoods of muslin gauze would serve each a cup of bitter tea, which represented grief, followed by drams of honeyed brandy, which represented their happy memories of the loved one who had passed. After sitting in silence for a few moments, polite guests would talk about family, friends, births, schooling, children growing up, parents aging… any topic that related to the way people live their lives, and which would remind the grieving family that life goes on. Impolite people would try to talk business.

Kyrionik’s mother was a former member of the High Watch, the parsu of the Safroy family, and a rich, influential woman. She was always surrounded by impolite people. 

The private ceremony was traditionally held somewhere inside their home, possibly in a garden or courtyard. For that Safroys, that meant they’d be high enough on the slopes of Salash Hill that it would have been conducted in direct sunlight, without the tint of Suloh's bones. Perhaps they'd gather in the Eastern Hall, with its floors made from smooth white marble imported from Koh-Gilmiere. Or maybe in the southern deck, with its skywood and commanding view of the sea. Or the gardens, where he and his brothers used to—

No. Those memories were from his old self. The one who lived among the wealthy, high-born Salashi. That man was dead, and Kyrionik didn’t even use that name anymore. 

Now he was Kyrioc, child of No One, which was not just the name of a commoner, but that of an orphan. No matter who Kyrionik had been, Kyrioc had no family, no noble titles, no inheritance. 

All he had left was an obligation. 

The second, public part of hapless, ill-fated young Kyrionik’s funeral was being held in High Square, at the southernmost end of the Upgarden deck, and Kyrioc, child of No One, stood in the long, long queue of complete strangers waiting to pay their respects.

Kyrioc could not have attended the private ceremony without revealing himself and reclaiming his old name. The idea of reuniting with his family, of the joyful tears, celebrations, the calls that he explain where he’d been and what had happened…

What he’d done…

And they would embrace him. His hands, which had taken so many lives, would touch his mother’s small frame and feel her life thrumming beneath her skin.

Just the thought of it made him flinch and close down. He shut his eyes and stopped shuffling forward with the rest of the line. He could hear screaming, as fresh in his memories as if he’d heard them that morning. Then he remembered burning figures running through the jungle at night, then the darkness itself coming to life, and the sound of steel on flesh, and the smell of blood, and scorched flesh, and—

“Good sir?”

Kyrioc jumped, one hand drawn back to throw a punch, the other reaching for a weapon he no longer trusted himself to carry. 

The woman who had spoken was some sort of free cities merchant; she'd dressed in an open green linen robe with cream-colored tunic and trousers beneath. They complemented her bronze skin, setting her apart from the dark brown faces all around her. Instead of a hat, she had pinned a small block of perfumed wax atop her rather ordinary bun. It had barely begun to melt into her hair, but the sharp, flowery smell was overbearing in the still air. 

She gaped at him. Her right eye was surrounded by a web of scars, and was a dark brown color. Her left eye was hazel. If she had the money for an eye transplant, she was too successful to be standing beside the likes of him.

He lowered his fist quickly.

“You stopped,” the woman said with more kindness than he deserved. “Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry, good madam. Bad memories.”

“Ah. I thought you were grieving, and that you knew the deceased personally.”

Kyrioc wasn’t sure how to respond. “I’m afraid I would be a stranger to him.”

The queue was still shuffling forward. He mumbled another apology and hurried to catch up.

For the day, Kyrioc had worn simple black trousers with a black cotton tunic and vest. They were the funeral clothes of a poor man—a man with disfiguring scars and shaggy black hair hanging in his face—and they were supposed to help him maintain his anonymity. 

High Square, where the Safroys awaited him and every other person on queue, was nearly two blocks away. Kyrioc could not—not—let himself fall into a reverie again, not if he was going to hide himself among all these stitches.

He wished he could summon up his cloak of mirrors, but that was impossible in the midday sun.

Kyrioc looked up and down the street, checking for Safroy guards. He saw none, not this far from the Square itself. Instead he saw city constables, private shop security, and the usual flash and bustle of the main street of the Upgarden deck. 

Here at the southern end, with High Square and the terminus of the Freightway nearby, and with the gate to The Avenue just behind him, Upgarden was at its most luxurious. Not only were the streets constructed from skywood, so were many of the stores. This close to High Slope, the shops sold only the finest goods from around the Semprestian: silks from Carrig, spices from the Free Cities, furs from Katr nomads, jewels from Koh-Benjatso, Koh-Gilmiere and Koh-Kaufma. If there was a piece of finery with the poor taste to have been made right there in Koh-Salash, or along the shores of the Timmer Sea, it was sold downcity, where Suloh’s bones cast a dull orange light upon them, and where the buildings were made of ordinary wood.

The place was little changed from the time that Kyrioc had roamed here as a teenager. As a Safroy, he had been welcomed into every store, tea shop, and cafe with a broad smile. Silks had been draped over his shoulders, pastries set before him, and rings slid onto his fingers, with the bill to be delivered to his family later, naturally. 

But that boy, the one who was gone from the world forever, had not been able to see Upgarden as he did. Local merchants paid such high taxes, and they served such a precious clientele, that the city placed a pair of city soldiers—not even constables, but soldiers—at every intersection. And because the wealthy could never be reassured enough, each shop employed at least one private guard.

To Kyrionik, heir to the Safroy wards, holdings, titles, and treasury, they were friendly figures he could make sport with. To Kyrioc, child of No One, they were a threat. 

Standing beside carved decorative panels in the shop doorways, children dressed like little dolls beckoned to anyone who flaunted fine fabrics or jewelry. If the shop lacked customers at the moment—and with this long queue of commoners in the street, there were fewer buyers than usual—the owner stood behind them, their thoughts turned inward, calculating what this intrusion would cost them. 

The one thing little Kyrionik had been too pampered to recognize was the hunger in their eyes. Smiling or blank-faced, they had always looked at him the way a predator stares at prey, because no matter how many jewels they owned, or how much gold they earned, it was never going to be enough. 

From one of the shops on the far side of the line, an elderly woman walked onto the deck, followed by a long train of servants bearing packages, and declared: “What is this parade of scraps and scavengers?”

Kyrioc kept his gaze on the deck, and his own bundle of flowers crumpled when he gripped the stems too tightly. A long shuddering breath released some of the tension in his chest. Being recognized wasn’t the only danger here. Revisiting these streets and shops was like returning home, and in the coming weeks he might be compelled to haunt the planks and squares like a ghost of his former self. Then, eventually, he would be recognized, and then—

But that wouldn’t happen. As far as Kyrioc was concerned, he was dead to his old life in every way but the one that mattered the least.

Moving with the queue, he came to the end of the street and descended a few steps into High Square. His soft-soled boots were quiet against the skywood. At the far end of the square was the domed roof of the Temple of Suloh. It wasn’t even as large as the smallest of the Upgarden shops, but this was only the very top of the tower. Beside it were stairs and plankways leading down into the lower levels of the city.

Then he moved far enough into the square to see Suloh’s colossal shoulder blade jutting up through the cluster of shops and villas on the next street over, the orange crystal glowing even in midday. No part of the two gods’ skeletons stood higher, with the exception of Suloh’s skull which had been hauled to the top of Salash Hill long, long ago. 

Koh-Salash was a young city, founded just over 400 years ago. Fleeing lost Selsarim, Kyrioc’s ancestors tried to make landfall in many places around the Semprestian Sea, but they had been driven away by archers, fire, and fleets. Only here, at the Timmer Straits, in this forbidden and forbidding place, could they make new homes. But to live here, they had to build those homes within the skeletons of two dead gods. 

It was blasphemy. Every Salashi knew it. Every foreign power knew it, too. They’d desecrated the bodies of their dead gods, cutting skywood from Yth’s bones to make their decks, platforms, and city walls, and living in the light of Suloh’s glowing bones. Every Salashi knew they were breaking some unwritten sacred law. 

But doom had not come to them in the first century, nor in the centuries since. Tomorrow might see the end of everything they held dear, but the Salashi had come to this land as refugees, fleeing the destruction of a great nation. When the wrath of the gods finally fell, they would flee again. 

At the western end of High Square was a dais and a broad set of stairs leading up to it. The Safroys would be standing there, on display, like a former elder’s family should. Constables, bodyguards, friends and loyal allies would fill the stair between them and the procession, but the family would stand at the top.

Kyrioc's mother would be there. 

He did not look up.

As the parsu of a noble family with a sizable sail, his mother would stand in the highest place. And every stitch in the family sail—along with many others who hoped to join the sail—would pass by in a slow, mournful procession, leaving a flower by the marker for her fallen heir.

The Safroys would likely not even look down at the commoners passing below, and Kyrioc would not look up. 

Live, your virtue, and remember us to your mother.

He flinched at the memory.

But he had not come for her, or his younger brothers, or his father. He had not come for the circle of friends around them. He had not even come to see his own monument, which was finally right before him, a simple stone pillar with the Safroy bull and the Flower of Ice carved at the top. It was surrounded by single flowers. The traditional roses, lilies and daisies were there, of course, but so were numerous other flowers, all meant to show honor to his memory.

He had not come here for that, either. He’d come for one reason. He’d come to repay the terrible debt he owed, and because he knew no one else in his family would bother to repay it. 

Kyrioc laid his bouquet of thirty red poppies before his own monument.