17 Chapter 13: A City of Lies

Tenes Drou was a port city of wealth and trade, with a bustling harbor, prosperous marketplace, and wealthy families. The grass was green with emeralds, the ground bursting with silver. It was well known that the poor were so because they refused to sell the gold inset in their teeth. It was a fabulous land where streets were paved with jewels and the people's livelihood was simply to live. Or so it was said.

But they were merely stories, after all.

Kail had known the truth since he was a boy, of the facade that fell away at night. When the streetlights burned yellow flame, the bejeweled city turned into a slum. Shopkeepers closed their doors and prostitutes opened theirs. Men indulged in their vices in underground rooms overflowing with perfume. Illicit dealers lined the roads, offering all manner of substances that clouded the mind and filled the air with fumes. Street rats and worse filled the alleys, once bright with laughter during the daylight hours but filled with sin during the dark nights. Creatures wandered below in the sewers, their flesh twisted by magic and occult spells. Bodies lined the streets—some with slit wrists, some with slit throats. Orphans chewed the bones clean and ate the vermin that joined them. It was no longer the same city at night; its true nature was shown then.

The locals called it Maris Tor. The Devil's Port.

As with every great city, it had a tale of its founding—for Tenes Drou truly was great if nothing else. It was said that Tenes Drou was destined to be a city blessed by the gods with inordinate wealth and finery. The Devil himself grew jealous of its splendor and rained upon it fifty days of terror and sin, by the end of which even the strongest of men were broken. Taking pity upon them, the gods stood by the humans against the Devil but were unable to subdue the fiend that knew man's corruptible nature. With sweet promises and honeyed words, he convinced the men to fight the gods for an end to their suffering. Outraged, the gods left the men to the Devil, treating their worthless lives as forfeit. The Devil, now content with the fallen city, cursed its people with madness when the night came.

Yet unlike most tales of creation, this one rang with truth. Madness flowed in the blood of those born in this city, surging forth at night.

It is said that during the day, the people keep the name of Tenes Drou to remind them of their former prestige and honor. Yet what was once and now is lost cannot ever be returned. At night, the facade falls away to show its true nature as the Devil's Port, a land of sin and madness, bound by an eternal curse. Two names for two cities, two spirits in the same host.

The boy knew of the evils in these streets, for he walked in them every day. Their brilliance in the day was matched only by their gluttony at night. No starker image could be drawn than the moment when the sun fell. It was the moment when the curse rose in their blood.

Murder and lust swallowed reason whole, brother turning on brother and sister alike. They became animals, simple fools that followed power and instinct. The few that kept their sanity, perhaps due to strength of mind or magic, were tainted nevertheless. Those that were smart locked themselves indoors, both to keep others out and to keep themselves inside. Those that were foolish, or perhaps unlucky, found themselves missing limbs and lives when the sun rose in the morning once more.

The boy was of those few unaffected by the curse, untouched by the corruption that it bestowed upon the city; he had not been born in this city, merely left behind upon these streets. Regardless, he had watched with purity and innocence as the night were filled with rape and murder, filled with moans and screams of every timbre. He had watched as children were thrown out on the streets, their backs broken and skulls caved in with a broken bottle.

He had been one of those orphans, a child of a thief and a whore, abandoned in the streets to die before the sun rose. He was fortunate. He had been taken in. Kail never knew the man's name, just that he was very old. Here, age meant wisdom, meant power. To have survived in Maris Tor all those years was no small feat. The man taught Kail how to live. How to walk with a knife in his pocket, and how to aim to slash the eyes. Most importantly, he taught Kail how to run. The man was his father, the one that he wanted, at least.

The man had told him stories of men of a different age, one where honor and virtue had once been held in esteem. One where women were chaste and did not have to sell their bodies to live. One where fathers stayed by the sides of mothers, and where children were wanted. Kail loved those stories, where the sun always shone bright and the sky was clear. He grew to love the day, when the men had honor and the streets were clean. He loved the day, when the people smiled and lived for a purpose.

He hated the night.

That boy grew older, but his fire still burned strong. It was not a blaze of passion that flared for an instant only to die away, rather, it smoldered inside of him. It was a quiet flame that filled him with pride and longing, hope and vigor, confidence and fervor. He knew that he was meant for something greater. He had survived the city. He would change it.

Kail lived in the west side of the city, where the fishing markets were and where the boats came to unload their stores. As he walked back from the port with what food he had managed to scrape up from gracious merchants, he could not help but overhear the men's talk of war. They told of the late king's general, and his defection to the south. It was a curious tale.

The old king of Altaros had been dying without an heir, and so he named his highest general to rule in his passing. Yet days before his death, his third wife bore him a young son, and so the law was clear. The general, unwilling to accept this loss, fled to the south with supporters to found a new nation. It was named in his honor—the red lands of Malifor. War was quick to follow over the lands to the south. Few Altarosan were willing to stake their lives for the sake of a king unable to wipe his own arse, and the nation was now conscripting nearly anyone they could find.

The battles appealed to Kail, for those were where the heroes were always born in the stories he loved. He would imagine himself on a steed with sword or lance in hand, charging forth in the vanguard to strike the first kill. Or perhaps he was a master archer, sending arrows into flesh from a thousand paces. Or even a sapper, stealing away into Malifori camps in the dead of night to burn the cords of their trebuchets. In these idle daydreams, his face changed as freely as the wind, yet the glory was always the same.

Yet he knew that they were only dreams without substance, and so he merely mulled over his thoughts as he walked back home. Perhaps the army truly was desperate enough to accept recruits without family nor proof of existence, but Kail still owed too much to a man in Tenes Drou. He could not leave before repaying it, would not leave before repaying it, even if doing so would take a lifetime. That was the honor that he had been taught. That was the honor that he believed in.

His footsteps rang out, echoing off the walls of the third alley past the boat with the checkered sail. He walked past the veiled women dancing in their windows, past the broken wooden door and steps that creaked at night. His was the door with the metal frame and white cracked paint, shoddy enough to be mistaken for another crumbling part of the dilapidated wall.

Inside was a plain room with a simple bucket for pissing and bedroom off to the side. Sir spent most of the day sleeping, and Kail woke him up twice for halfmeal and supper. Curtains that hung from the walls hid the window that he could use to escape, and a crevice to the right of the door could be used to hide and strike if someone forced their way in. It was a simple place, less house and more hovel, but it was home.

"Sir, it's time to eat," he murmured, gently shaking the old man's shoulder. The patched grey blanket that covered his chest was more holes and frayed fabric than not, and it reeked with an odor of sweat and urine. With a groan, the man swatted Kail's hand away, turning over onto his side and getting up with a grunt of effort. Kail went over and peeled the tattered sheets away from the window, letting the orange midday sun shine through room.

"Cover tha hole up, boy, ye'll drive me blind." the old man barked. Age had done little to his spirit and even less to his manners. Yet this was the man that had raised him, the man that had saved him from the slums.

"Yes, Sir." Kail replied, quickly tugging the curtains back over. He ran over to the pack he'd left of the floor, pulling out a bowl of still-warm gruel and fish. With the water that had collected from the previous night in the basin outside, he filled a cracked stone cup and passed it over to Sir.

"You get tha from Mikael?" he asked, sipping at the edge of the cup. His hands were old as the rest of him, but they were still firm and strong. Kail could see it his grip; the tremors so many other had at his age had not yet taken hold.

"Yes, Sir." he nodded as he passed the gruel over to him. Rummaging through his pack, he pulled out some crusty bread and poured some more water for himself. Taking his meal, he sat down next to Sir and began to eat, working away at the tough, burnt bread without speaking.

"What's tha matter, boy. Yer throat get cut?" he rasped as he set the water down, noticing Kail's silence. "Spit it out."

"It's nothing, Sir. Just thinking that tonight's gonna be a bad one." he mused, nervous at what he wanted to mention. He knew how Sir would react, but he still had to say it. "There's been talk on the streets that the Blood Hawks are going at war with the Black Wolves." he started as he broke off a piece of bread.

"Yes, yes. And I suppose you're gonna have something to do there." Sir replied knowingly, half exasperated.

Kail blushed, but he nodded. "This city's gonna tear itself apart. Someone needs to stop them."

And I suppose you'll be that someone then?" came the acerbic response, forthright and mocking.

"I could stop the fighting." Kail pressed, almost pleadingly. This was no fleeting passion, no idle stupidity. Kail needed to convince him. "I can do this. I know I can."

He set his down his food as he looked Sir in the eyes unflinchingly. "If I can kill either of their leaders, this fight will stop. Hundreds of lives will be saved."

Sir shook his head as he brushed greasy hair out of his face. There was tiredness there, an expression one takes when speaking to an overeager child. "Blood and bones, boy. Yer gonna learn that it's not tha easy. You won't be saving those lives, they'll just die the next day instead."

Kail frowned, eyes burning with a hot passion that showed in the spots of color in his cheeks. "I can't just sit by and watch them all get killed. I have to do something."

"Sometimes doing nothing is better than doing something. You need to learn when you can't help, when you need to stop. But ten years watching you learn to walk and learn to fall, and I know tha my words would do more on a rock."

Sighing, the old man set down his gruel, gazing at Kail with weathered eyes that were tinged with a deep sadness and resignation. "Look boy, I'm not going to be the one to wake you up from yer dream. Yer death hurts only yerself. I'm too old to baby you any longer. Just don't get any blood on the rug when they send yer corpse back to me."

It was not the approval that Kail had been hoping for, but it would be enough.

"Yes, Sir."