Rakesh straightened, slipping along the Iskawan perimeter again, moving quickly. When he spied another cluster of fairy-fires off a little ways off, he frowned. They rarely went to that area of the city.
It only required a few minutes for him to pick his way along the wall and get close to the cluster. Rakesh stopped right above the fairy-fires, peering down through a gap in the wall. He immediately recognized the bald head of The Hangman.
Rakesh shuddered, not daring to leave or move.
A small man crouched next to The Hangman. Behind him, an empty wagon. Their conversation meandered its way up the rocks.
“Here,” The Hangman said. “As promised.”
A small leather pouch passed between them. The small man took it in his knobby hands and hefted it up and down. “Do I need to test it for potency?” His voice sounded like nails on the dry stones.
“Don’t insult me,” The Hangman growled.
The little man reached into his baggy coat and handed The Hangman a small wooden box. “Safe travels.”
The Hangman laughed when the man growled at him and turned away to grab at the dilapidated wagon at his side, the pouch disappearing into his ample tunic.
Rakesh straightened to his knees as The Hangman walked off, turning down an ill-lit street.
The Hangman’s many bracelets jangled on his wrists as he called out a bawdy song. Most inhabitants didn’t want to confront him, and they scattered as soon as they heard his off-tune songs.
As soon as The Hangman disappeared from view, Rakesh worked his way down the inside of the crumbling wall, taking him back into Iskawan. A rock slid out from beneath his feet, tumbling ahead of him. He stopped, held his breath, and when The Hangman’s singing disappeared, kept going.
The small man that had given The Hangman the box had turned a corner, taking all but two of the fairy-fires with him. Just enough light fell through the air to let Rakesh maneuver down the crags in the wall.
When he was hovering just a few feet above the earth, his hand slipped. He plummeted down, landed on his feet and straightened, still weary from his earlier climb.
Rakesh stole down the street on which The Hangman walked, quickly catching up with the massive man’s easy – bored – gait. No one hurried in Iskawan; there was no reason to.
A few fairy-fires followed The Hangman, zipping around in strange movements and sending eerie highlights along The Hangman’s body.
The Hangman turned right on a busy street, nonchalantly finding and knocking the heads of two Vakums together. They gave no resistance, simply falling into the other and collapsing. Rakesh leaped over them just in time to see The Hangman turn a corner and disappear inside a tall, looming structure. The outside facade had a sloping roof that angled high, decorated with the twisted faces of dead spirits. Moisture dripped down its front.
Rakesh stopped on the other side of the street, hiding behind a barrel. There were no glowing orbs to light the way here, just a few fairy-fires. The Hangman pulled the box out of his pants pocket before he stepped inside and slammed the door shut behind him. Rakesh frowned.
What was in that box?
Everyone in Iskawan had secrets – and definitely the boss of the underworld. Yet The Hangman kept enough order in this gods-forsaken place that no one questioned his authority. Ever.
Rakesh shrank back when something caught his gaze. Three fairy-fires buzzed back and forth, creating strange, pulsing shadows. Some of Iskawan’s residents began to scuttle away from and off the streets.
A woman passed in front of Rakesh, shrieking under her breath as she passed.
Iskawan harbored nervous people all the time, but something felt . . . wrong.
A blur of movement toward the perimeter wall caught his eye. Rakesh looked up to see three bodies above the wall backlit by fairy-fires as they zipped away from Iskawan.
His throat tightened.
The Yojin had arrived.
The Yojin wore black tunics with sashes around the waist and dark pants underneath. One was standing, hands on his hips. When the man turned sideways, Rakesh spied a strange wooden mask covering his face. Rakesh didn’t need to be standing close to him to know that it had a grotesque expression, with twisted features as if curled in pain.
The second one disappeared, no doubt climbing down the wall just as Rakesh had done. The last dashed off, jogging along the wall as if it were an easy, smooth surface.
Within moments, the Yojin climbing down the wall dropped onto the ground below. He disappeared off in the darkness as the hair on the back of Rakesh’s neck stood up.
Could it be possible that the timing was a coincidence?
Rakesh stayed still, hardly daring to breathe from behind the barrel. All the fairy-fires and their strange halos of light had fled, leaving him concealed in the murky darkness.
The remaining Yojin strolled up, glanced at The Hangman’s shelter. Another Yojin joined him. They spoke in mere whispers before walking around the building.
Rakesh’s pounding heart banged against his chest, thudding back and forth between his ribs and spine. He waited, searching with his ears in the way that only an Iskawan resident can do, until he heard no more.
With a dash, he set off down the street, running. There were no Vakums on the stone roads, as if even they could sense the dark power of the Yojin.
Rakesh slowed in front of his shelter, panting. He bent over, sucking in long breaths. The dilapidated shelter that he shared with his two friends, Jiro and Gekko, welcomed him with flashing fairy-fires under the door. He sighed, grateful they were home, and pressed through the thin, moldering door.
The inside of the shelter was stark and plain, with three makeshift chairs, two bedrolls on the ground, and one more hung up – his – away from the strange dust that collected everywhere. Gekko and Jiro called out when he stepped inside, hands held high.
“Rakesh! You have returned.”
“We gave you up for lost.”
“Thought you’d fallen in love with a Vakum and were waiting for her to kiss you.”
They chortled, elbowing each other in the ribs. Rakesh half-smiled before he dropped onto the chair in front of them.
Like him, the skin on their faces was white, almost translucent. They had the strained, haunted appearance of everyone in Iskawan, a result of lack of light and the hopeless cycles of wake, eat, sleep. Their eyes were sunken into their faces with bluish bags underneath.
“What’s this?” Rakesh asked, motioning at what lay on the table.
Gekko leaned back, stacking his hands behind his head. “Bartering. We scrounged up a few things.”
There was a rock shaped like a heart. A piece of wood barely straight enough to be a shelf. Three pieces of thin metal that could be used as nails.
“I won a new tunic,” Jiro said as he reached back, pulling a wadded, wrinkled garment from behind him.
Rakesh schooled his reaction. That single garment alone would let him stretch at least three more feet to the bottom of the wall! He hid his eagerness, forcing a smile instead.
“Just like you,” he drawled. “It’s a woman’s.”
Jiro laughed, a deep, rolling cackle that sounded more like a cough. Sometimes it seemed like Jiro, painfully thin and pale, with wide eyes in a too-small face, would crack at any moment and become like the Vakums who wandered endlessly. But he never did.
Gekko nudged Rakesh, his eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with you? You look shaken.”
“We all look shaken,” Jiro said.
“No, this is different.”
Rakesh sighed, “There is something.”
“You tried to break out again,” Jiro said, leaning back in his chair. “They obviously didn’t catch you this time or you’d be under The Hangman’s paw.”
Rakesh cut a hand through the air. “It’s not about that. It’s about The Hangman.”
Their eyes widened. Both leaned forward, hands planted on the table.
“Did he punish someone else?”
“Did another Vakum disappear?”
Rakesh held up his hands, laughing. “Calm down. I’ll tell you, and it’s neither of those things. Thankfully.”
Jiro and Gekko fell silent as Rakesh recounted the strange exchange and the following arrival of the Yojin.