The Dregs
Alya let the crutch slip and she dropped. Wizened, gnarled, human hands groped at the sand. Her emaciated body lay sprawled in a twisted heap; the light had abandoned her and left her broken.
Her pale skin blended against Svallend’s muddy road and scars netted her body like chainmail links. The necklace that held Prosthes’ crossed circle choked at her neck. The price of sin decayed the skin, gnawed at the muscles, and stripped feeling from flesh. The blindness followed by delirium. And at last, agony.
An insatiable vortex clawed at her abdomen. Her fingers itched for a bottle; her tongue for a sip. Instead, she found the warmth of another human. A man with a greying beard and hands big enough to lob boulders pulled her to her feet. He might have said something, but she couldn’t hear it for the ringing in her ears.
Too weak to resist, she let the man push her down the street and into his hovel of a house.
The man’s house faced the ocean. Sleek boat masks poked the sky from black and silver water. Svallend was a fishing village so far north that Alya shivered even in summer. Kings had waged wars, deities had scorched ruin, but Svallend persisted. It was a colourless, drab place of muddy roads and grimy huts where no flowers bloomed, for Prosthes hoarded all flowers for their holy lands.
But as far as Alya could run, Prosthes would never let Alya go.
The man set her on a rocking chair by the fire. The man had cobbled together thick pine planks in some impression of a table, knotted up bundles of ham and fruit, and left his cutlery and tableware higgledy-piggledy all around the place – stuck to hooks, in a heap by the wash basin, or cluttering the furniture. It was a paltry, miserable place compared to her quarters. Alya lost herself in the crisping flames through her one good eye.
“The nerve of you. Lying on the road like that.” It took Alya a moment to realise the man was speaking to her. The ringing made it hard to make out the words. “People here ain’t that kind. Must be crazy to put yourself in that sort of danger.”
“Thank you,” she muttered. She adjusted herself on her seat, unable to find a comfortable position. Something within her itched. “A drink, please.”
The man sighed. “One of them drunkards? Just what Svallend needs. More drunkards.”
“Drink. Please.” The ringing wouldn’t stop. She closed her eye. Ceramic dishes clanged around her, and she found a flagon in her hands. She raised it to her lips and let the liquor rush through the ravines of her cracked lips, along the desert of her tongue, and into her parched throat. The ringing quietened and her shaking hands stilled. She blinked a few times and found the man in front of her, concern detailing his brow.
“I’m Alya,” she said.
“Boris.”
“I’m from Caliphoe.” She braced herself for the worst. “Prosthes.”
Boris drew cold. He had the look of someone who knew that he had made an unforgiveable mistake.
“I don’t have no children to give you.” Boris grabbed a knife. “You’ve taken enough. Try anything and I’ll kill you.” The fear switched to anger. “We ain’t afraid of you Angels no more. Had enough. First Jennifer, then Mary. You lot nabbed Illy, too.” The rebellion left him and he sunk to his knees. “Not again. Not anyone else. I … I’ll …” He thumped the table, forced himself back to his feet, and raised the knife over Alya’s head. She shuffled back, too weak to resist. “I’ll do it myself. I’ll bash your head in. Right here. Right now.”
“Please,” Alya said. “Mercy.” She raised a hand between her and Boris. “I drank the milk of paradise. I lived virtuous. But I was weak.” She forced herself to her feet, but her legs failed to support her. She crashed to the stone by the fireplace and began to cry. “I fell. From humility and chastity and responsibility. I let the vices of man poison me.” She keeled over, head in her hands, and sobbed. “The milk made me something great. It fuelled me with the passions of righteousness. Took my left eye and replaced it with the eye of judgement. But I … I failed. I fell from virtue to hopeless drunkenness. Oh, the ecstasy of forgetting it all.”
Boris kept his distance, knife still raised.
“I am human now.” Alya continued to shake. Convulsions often wrecked her during her weakest hours. “Less than human.” Alya wiped her face dry with her sleeve. “They’ll come for me and kill me.”
“The Angels? Why?”
“I have fallen,” Alya said. “But more than that. I have stolen.”
“Stolen what?”
Alya forced herself to swallow. She cupped her missing eye and dug nails into the skin around it. A thread kept the eye shut. “I cannot say. Please, protect me, Boris. Just for a short while. Need somewhere to sleep. Eat. Survive.”
“There’s the tavern.”
“No money.” She hesitated. “Need drink.” She reached for the bottle and Boris snatched it away. Boris returned the knife to his belt and his expression lingered between disgust and pity.
“Ye want me to help you?” Boris said. “How will ye help me?”
The question stumped her. What could she do? Her arms and legs had almost given up on her. Her eyesight would soon follow.
“I can clean,” she said.
Boris gave a look around his hovel and nodded. “I think I can accept that. For now.”
#
Since drinking the milk of paradise, Alya had never cleaned a single thing except for the blood from her sword and the sweat from her brow. The mass of messy dishes that piled Boris’ sink loomed over her like a mountain. Boris worked in the brick and clay forge through the door and the constant tink of his hammer against metal sounded through the house.
She grabbed a plate, pressed the cloth full of soap suds to the grime, and cleaned. The water darkened from clear to full of dirt and she soon lost herself in the reflection of her face in the muddy water where her mind wandered.
And when her mind wandered, so did her hands. She rifled through drawers and cupboards in search of where Boris had hidden the bottle and found it tucked away in the top shelf where food had gone mouldy and spiders had made their homes.
The touch of the bottle to her cheek soothed her agitation. She contemplated the bottle. Her undoing. The beginning of all that was wrong with her. She uncorked it and downed it. Ahh, the sweet nectar of her desires. The honeydew of pleasure.
Crash.
The bottle lay in shards at her feet.
Why had she done it?
Boris would find out. The disappointment. The shame.
It was his fault. He shouldn’t have left it where she could reach it.
Why had Boris done it?
Her legs wobbled. They wanted to give in. The alcohol tasted horrendous. Why did her innards yearn for it? Why had Boris let her in?
Her hands found her necklace. The chain felt tight against her skin. The dishes loomed ever higher over her and her scars itched. Do something. She grabbed a washrag, placed the shards within, bundled it into a bag, and knotted it.
She unlatched the door and the cold of Svallend rushed in to assault her. Crutch wedged under her armpit; she listened out for Boris – tink tink tink. She limped out for the shoreline and lobbed the bag as far as she could into the sea.
Halfway back her legs surrendered. She fell flat against the garden bed. Her ears began to ring and the shakes followed. Stuck. Helpless.
“Pleasant blessings.” That voice, like venom incarnate. It sounded from Boris’ house. Joloby, the Saint of Judgement, would never let Alya slip from his grasp. She should have expected him. Should have prepared.
“What d’ya want?” Anger broiled underneath Boris’ voice like a volcano ready to burst. “Svallend already gave you our offering this year.”
“Oh, this is no such offering. May I have your name, fellow devotee.”
“We ain’t no devotees here.”
“Ah, my dear fool. All come to find grace in Prosthes in time in their own personal way. Your name, please.”
“Boris.”
“Joloby. Judgement Saint. Where the other Angels pass judgement onto the people, my duty is to pass judgement upon other angels. Even our most holy protectors fall to the clutches of earthly vices. It is my duty to right their wrongs.”
“I see.”
“I am searching for a fallen Angel by the name of Alya. If you have any information regarding her, you shall be rewarded handsomely.”
“How much?”
“A hundred Golden Blessings.”
A hundred! Enough to pack his belongs and live in paradise for the rest of his life. Alya couldn’t breathe for the tension.
“I’ll tell you if I see her.”
“Understandable. Pleasant blessings, Boris. May we see each other again.”
Alya kept silent in the ditch where she had collapsed. Through the reeds she saw the flutter of a dove white cape and the crinkle of golden jewellery as Joloby strode past for the other houses within Svallend.
She signalled for Boris once she was sure Joloby had left.
“What are ye doing down there?” he asked, grabbing her under the shoulders and lifting her free of the ditch.
“Fell. Why didn’t you sell me out?”
“I ask the questions.” He held his arm steady like a tree for her to find her footing. “That is a good question, though,” Boris said. “Why didn’t I sell ye out?” His eyes grew distant, like dots of a starless sky. “I had a son once.”
“What happened?”
“Killed himself. He was the happiest man you could’ve imagined. Had a love father, loving mother. A wife. Illy. They took her from him and fed her that blasted milk. The Angel lost her memory of him, and he feared what Illy had become. Couldn’t bear the pain. Took his life.” Boris helped Alya return to the warmth of the fire inside. She dropped into the rocking chair and wrapped a blanket over her frail body. “Why’d’you come to Svallend?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I remember nothing except a single, meaningless promise.” She touched at her eye. “It’s just foolishness. I’ve gotten you mixed up in this. I’m sorry.”
“Save your apologies.” Boris ran a thick hand through her tousled hair. “These dishes better be clean by tonight.” He returned to his forge.
Alya allowed herself a moment by the fire. Eyes roamed from shelf to drawer to cupboard. Did Boris have more bottles? She mastered herself for a moment, enough to steady herself before dropping her head into her lap. The tears followed. Why? Why risk your life for someone so hopeless?
The ringing, the thirst, the itch. Fight it. Fight it. She jammed her fist into the armrest, gritted her teeth, and reached the sink, where her hands trembled and her tongue ached for a drop.
She gave up and slept. Her necklace felt tight against her neck, as if rebelling against her wretchedness.
#
Something banged. Alya snapped awake. It came from the forge. She snatched up her crutch and limped through the door and to the furnace where an enraged Boris stood by the furnace. Face red, breathing fury. His prongs struck out from the dirt at his feet.
“Shut the door.” He growled. Alya obeyed. The man looked as shallow and sunken as a prisoner on judgement day. “Why on earth did I protect you?”
Alya had the same question.
“Drawn a target on my back. Never liked the Angels. Never liked Prosthes. How they walk about like they own the place. Hoarding flowers for themselves. Hoarding our people. As if they decide the good from the bad. That was never how I learned it. No. My mother raised me right. Told me that if I ever thumped someone, I’d better have a good reason for it. Told me that if I ever risked my neck for someone else, I’d better bloody have a good reason for it.” Boris sighed. “But I don’t have a good reason for you.”
Alya held herself as firm as her body would allow.
“Joloby’ll be back here soon, won’t he?”
Alya didn’t want to answer.
“Won’t he?”
“There’s no escaping Joloby.”
Boris cursed. “Should’ve accepted the blasted Blessings.”
Alya gave a silent nod. She would have sold out Boris for just one, single drop. Boris picked up his prongs and lost himself in the grime and dirt that had collected on it over years of work.
“You took the bottle,” he said.
“I didn’t.”
“You did!” He lobbed the prongs. It struck the brick by her feet. Alya pushed herself as far into the corner as she could. A burning shame curled around her innards and clogged her throat. She couldn’t face Boris.
Through the grime of the prongs, a sheet of silver reflected her eye. The eye disgusted her. So hopeless, so hungry – yet it could devour a feast and still be hungry.
“What is your blasted purpose?” Boris said. “To lie to me? To attract the Angel to me? Ye blundered and ye come crawling all the way here to make it my problem. Ain’t that right?”
“Boris,” Alya said. Her hands couldn’t stop shaking. “I can’t think straight. I’m weak. I’m sorry.”
“Need a drink?”
Alya swallowed. “Yes. I’ll help you with the dishes once I’ve had something to drink. I promise.”
Boris’ gaze hardened, then relaxed. “Alright. I’ll get you something to drink. You rest up.”
Borris grabbed his cloak and left the house, leaving Alya to pull herself to her feet and find that rocking chair. She found no relief from the shakes of her fingers and the tremble of her body. Boris must have hidden more somewhere.
She thought of Prosthes. Her order and her cause. But Prosthes rejected her now, and Joloby had condemned her. She had only escaped so far through luck and grit. The ringing. The shaking. It was hard to see. Blindness followed by delirium. Time ran low. Death approached.
When she fell to the call of sleep, it trapped her behind shut eyelids. Her body floated. She could feel her bones and muscles right down to the fingertips, but she couldn’t move.
Some part of her brain flared. Danger.
Her eye found its focus. The lid remained shut.
Her body didn’t work right – and her throat. Something tightened around it, squeezing tighter, clenching the air from her oesophagus.
“He … lp.” The words rolled out as a silent gasp. She heaved an arm out, twisting her body with the effort, and found nothing. Her throat tightened.
Boris … the bastard. Must have called Joloby. Something was happening. I’ll die. The realisation cleaved white terror across her scalp.
“Help!” The effort of the word threatened to rip out her throat. She searched for that old strength that had accompanied her for so long as an Angel. Oh, that temple of the mind – but that temple was broken. Her prayers reached no one.
Her fingers found the silver of her necklace. Of course … she had forgotten. The relics of virtue so often strangled their vices. She gasped as she worked and wriggled her fingers underneath, searching for relief. The chain dug into her neck and the skin of her fingertips.
Alya twisted and convulsed. Breathe. No air. Her head throbbed. Like it would explode. Sometime in her mind ticked. Joloby was close.
Breathe. The dishes towered over her. Grime dirtied the walls. Dust smothered every surface. A shard from the broken bottle lay by the sink. She lunged for it, dug it into the gap of the necklace, and pushed with all her strength.
The silver snapped. The necklace dropped.
Steps sounded outside.
Crunch, crunch, crunch.
They stopped.
A pair of feet blotted out the thin line of space beneath the foot of the door. Judgement. Her body surrendered itself; her mind continued to whirr. Just one more drop. Just one more taste. Let me be pathetic.
“Pleasant Blessings, fallen Angel Alya,” Joloby said. “Open the door.”
Alya’s eye throbbed. “Stay away!”
“The sinner fears their judgement,” Joloby said. “Surrender and spare yourself the shame. Refuse and I’ll have the entirety of Svallend killed with you.”
The last of Alya’s resistant atrophied.
“Why the silence, Alya? You’ve slaughtered towns before.”
“I didn’t want to,” Alya shouted hoarsely. “They made me.”
“You have fallen.”
“I …” The words got stuck in Alya’s throat. She readjusted the hold of the glass shard. When the high of the milk of paradise had first dulled, Alya had faced the devastation of her own actions. Joloby had never doubted himself; Alya could never forget. Only alcohol had dulled the pain of her reality.
Joloby kicked the door open. The Angel, complete in his flowing silver armour, stepped into Boris’ hut. The light filled the dim hut and seared Alya.
The Angel towered eight feet tall, with three pairs of arms, three pairs of bladed wings, and silver armour that seemed to sculpt to his body like a liquid. His left eye had three pupils within, each a different colour and each for a different purpose. Alya had looked the same before the transmogrifications of sin had made her shed her extra arms and wings and left her half-blind.
Joloby found the shattered necklace in the space between them.
“A pitiful sight,” he said. “The world itself wants to see you destroyed. Do not resist. Give yourself freely.”
Joloby lunged for Alya and she dived out of the way for the far window. Pointed Angel fingers – six to a hand – clamped around her neck and shoulders. The suddenness of it made her drop the glass shard and drop to the ground. Breath fading, fading. Fingers searched. Couldn’t breathe. Found something. The crutch. She slammed it into Joloby’s head.
The moment the crutch hit Joloby, the hold of the hands loosened. Alya dragged herself back across the floor and against the far window.
Fury gathered around Joloby like a tempest. She knew that fury well. He wore that righteous expression with every gavel smashed and sentence issued. The three pupils of his angelic eye condemned Alya.
He grabbed her cheekbones. She drove the crutch into his ribs. He wrestled free the crutch and slammed her head through the window. Glass scattered across her face and ripped into her skin. Joloby lifted her head again, poised to ram it into the glass shards that bordered the window.
“The sin peels off you like a mist.” Joloby held her in place. “You hide something.”
“I …”
“Confess.” Joloby’s pupils glinted gold and focused on the eye she had threaded shut. One by one the muscles along Joloby’s jaw unlatched, running up to Joloby’s ears and exposing rows of teeth that seemed to stretch on endlessly and lead into a bottomless abyss.
Joloby latched his teeth onto Alya’s scalp and neck and shut out all light. A small crystalline dome where the Angel’s brain should have been begun to glow, shining out columns of light and revealing three shapes that snaked out from the base of the darkness. The shapes – skulls – snaked out from the darkness below and connected to series of spinal columns. Cold sweat trekked down the weary folds of Alya’s skin.
The heads spasmed to life. The one on the left shrieked a cacophonous chant. “Sinner! Guilty! Deviant! Monster! Defiler!” the head continued to screech its insults. The head on the right kept silent, its hollowed eyes like dark chasms.
The head in the center crooned close.
“You face the podium of your guilt. Joloby is your judge and jury. An untruth is death. Do you understand?”
The race is done. Give up. Alya met the three heads. “I am content with death.”
“Shall I threaten you with agony, then?”
“I have faced it all before.” – “Deceitful! Liar! Vagabond!”
“What do you dare hide from us?”
Alya opened her mouth to speak. Instead that old, hazy vision formed once more. The same vision that had dragged her all the way to Svallend. The fuzzy image, those hushed voices, that promise.
“I won’t say.” The teeth dug deeper into Alya’s neck. The pain made her gasp. That secret was all that she had. It was the only fragment of the self she used to be.
“Tell me!”
“I won’t!” – “Snake! Scoundrel! Cheat!”
The face on the right flashed angrily and spoke for the first time with the voice of a poor child seemingly unloved by its parents.
“Why?” it said. “We can grant you mercy if you answer truthfully. It will be quick and painless. There’s no point in lying. If we kill you, we’ll know the truth. Why die over that?”
“Because some things are worth dying for.” Outside she felt around the window, searching for a fragment of glass. “Because I may be pathetic, but there are some things that I could never betray.”
“She may hide it,” the skull in the center said. “We shall discover it. Memories have been known to corrupt our most virtuous Angels.” – “Treason! Unloyalty! Befouler!” – “What do you hide?”
“I won’t say.” The teeth dug deeper. Blood dribbled from the top of her scalp. Her fingers found a shard of glass stuck to the window.
“Why not?” the one on the right begged. “Please. I don’t want to see more people die.”
“Silence, Jole. Kill her.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Rip out her tongue.”
“I don’t want to kill. Not again. Please not again.”
“Kill!”
Jole’s hollow eyes seemed to reflect apology. Had Alya not been preoccupied with the glass shards, she would have returned that look. Jole lunged for Alya’s shut eye. Alya plucked free the shard of glass and jammed the sharp end into the Angel’s neck, ripping the teeth free of her head. The light blinded as she shoved the Angel away and put her weight onto him to push him to the ground. She dug the shard deeper into Joloby’s neck.
Hands flailed, scratching the air, finding Alya’s skin and tearing at it.
They sank into a pair of twisting, desperate flesh. Alya pressed the shard deeper; Joloby wrestled the control from her. The bladed ends of his wings ripped at her and his extra limbs sought her jugular.
Clawed fingers found Alya’s face and tore chunks of flesh from it. He thrusted Alya down and climbed on top of her, claws held poised, ready to strike.
Alya shut her eyes and embraced the end.
“Help,” she said.
Something slammed into Joloby and freed Alya from his weight. Boris stood over her, smithing hammer in hand. Joloby made to rise but another strike to his head slammed him into the wall.
Boris followed with a series of strikes and Alya could only watch. She lacked all strength to help. She felt weak, defeated.
Boris pounded the hammer into Joloby’s head and caved the skull in. The Angel dropped. Dead.
“Thought about it,” Boris said after gathering his breath. He set the blood-soaked hammer up by the fireplace. “I’ll help you.” He wiggled free a brick from the wall, reached inside, and grabbed a handful of bottles of golden liquid by their neck.
He dropped them and they shattered.
#
“Take me there.” Alya pointed to the cliff that overlooked the sea. “Please.” Her body itched, but she could put up with it now. Just one day at a time.
Boris, who hadn’t said much since killing Joloby, grunted. He held out his arm and Alya took it. The arm had the firmness of a mast. He led her up that hill with the steadiness of a ship braving the storm.
“Why here?” Boris said once they had reached the top. A gravestone overlooked the dreary sea, the colorless village, and the brown roads. “That’s my son.”
Alya shook herself free of Boris’ hold and dropped to her knees. She dragged herself through the mud to the gravestone.
“I had a feeling he would be here,” Alya said. “Just a hunch.” She wiped the mud from the grimy stone. “Kavet. What a lovely name.”
“D’you know my son?” Boris said.
“I … don’t know.” Alya touched her eye. “All I know is that I had made a promise.” She felt at her eyelids where a single strand of a thread poked out. She pinched the tip and pulled it free. Seeds spilled from her empty eye socket and onto her palm. Boris took a few steps back.
“What are those – no – you can’t.”
“Flower seeds. Marigolds. He said he loved them, didn’t he?”
Boris took a moment to calm himself. “Ay. He did.”
“I stole them from Prosthes.” She laid the seeds out across the stone and placed one in the dirt. “I don’t remember Kavet, but whoever I was must have known him.”
Boris grabbed a seed to help Alya. “Nice to see you again, Illy.”