The Crumbling Kingdom Read online

  “How do you know?” said Wish.

  Boz snorted. “I’ve spent enough time in the shelves of the Word Halls to know one of Fangmora’s first languages when I see it.”

  “Can you read it?”

  “Not really,” said Boz. “If it was in Swallow maybe... I think it says something about singing, about listening.”

  Who cares about the box, anyways? He’s not going to buy it. We should get going. I need to—

  “What about the note inside?” said Wish, looking away from his friend.

  Boz opened the latch, produced the note, and squinted. “This...” He scratched the scales on his throat. “This language I am not as familiar with.”

  Wish’s muscles unclenched. He hadn’t realized it, but he had been anticipating something in the box. A revelation. A truth. An answer. But Boz did not offer him any of those. Only disappointment. Disappointment, followed by a thread of hope.

  “It looks like some sort of sentence a botamancer would write.”

  Great. Some letter a plant-whisperer was sending to the tree they fucked. Moso placed the pouch of trogi scales on the table, but Boz barely noticed.

  “I know some people who could look at it if you’d like.” He looked up at Wish. “What’s your interest with it?”

  “Only curiosity. Boxes are meant to keep important things. Boxes hidden in ruins built in the middle of the jungle are for more important things.”

  “Or perhaps it’s just a love letter never delivered.”

  See? I told you, said Moso.

  “Either way, I’ll talk to some others and see what I can find out.”

  “Thanks, Boz.”

  The Kodo swept away his gratitude. “Consider it payment for your effort to get three eggs. A cracked egg is still just as hard to get as whole ones. Trust me, I still have the scars to show for it.” He pulled back his robe to show a row of teeth marks on his shoulder.

  What about payment for the effort taken to get its scales? Moso slid the pouch in front of the Kodo. He finally acknowledged them, undoing the pouch and peering into its contents.

  “Trogi scales? You slayed the beast?” said Boz.

  “Like I said, we ran into complications,” said Wish.

  Boz slid them away. “I don’t want them.”

  Moso pushed the scales back. Use them for their oil, make paint. Light smook on fire like everyone else. There are a hundred uses for these things. Take them.

  Moso was right. The oil gleaned from trogi scales was used in hundreds of different remedies and made into some of the most exceptional paints used by artists, so long as they weren’t planning on painting near a fire. There were disastrous stories of painters being burned alive because of a misplaced pipe or candle. It didn’t make the scales any less desirable on the market, yet Boz still didn’t want them.

  “They’re cursed,” said Boz finally.

  Cursed?

  “I didn’t ask for trogi scales. Only its eggs. You’re a man of the jungle. Don’t you know it will reprimand you if you take from it more than you need?”

  I need the money.

  “We all do.”

  Wish saw the desperation in his partner’s eyes. He was going to do something foolish. He had seen the same look before he jumped down to wake up the trogi only hours ago. Wish intervened.

  “Perhaps you could buy them from him and resell them as an intermediary. Surely you know others in your profession in the hunt for such scales.”

  “Then the money would be cursed,” said Boz.

  “Not if you spent it fast enough,” said Wish.

  Boz exhaled. For a moment, he sat staring at the bag of scales, his tongue slipping in and out of his mouth as he thought.Finally he closed the cinch of the pouch. “I’ll give you a half for the bag.”

  A half? It’s worth at least a lunar. He’s trying to steal from us again—

  Wish raised his finger, ordering Moso to stop.“Do you need the money now? Or do you want to go and haggle your way with countless other dealers for a better deal? Boz is doing us a favor.”

  Moso sneered, his missing teeth exposed like a reminder that he was unafraid of violence.

  Come on, you fool, thought Wish, willing Moso to hear him. We need this man. Don’t ruin our relationship with him.

  Finally the Chassa held out his hand.

  Boz took out his snakeskin again and forced a half coin into Moso’s hand. He reluctantly added it to his money pouch and went wandering to the back of the store, his tail signing all sorts of obscenities that Boz could not see with his back turned to him.

  “Thank you, Boz. Let us know if you need any other work.”

  “There’s always more work so long as the jungle keeps serving up its mysteries to me.” He picked up the knife next to the dead frog.Wish turned to join Moso, but Boz grabbed his hand.

  “You’re a smart, capable man, Wish. You wouldn’t have survived as long as you have in the jungle without a good fruit in your head, yet you’ve tied yourself to a vine set afire.” Boz indicated Moso with a nudge of his snout.

  His companion stood outside, leaning against Boz’s open door, his arms crossed as his tail continued to make rude, angry gestures to shout out his contempt for the unfair deal he felt he’d received. If Wish didn’t know him, he would have thought him to be a thug waiting to rob anyone who passed by. But Wish did know him. He was reckless. He was fiery. He was rude.He was careless. But he was also a man capable of kindness. Of compassion. He had saved Wish’s life on more than one occasion, and had saved his mind on countless more when they would spend long days in the jungle and there was nothing left to do but try to sort out all the clutter that had piled in both of their souls. The deaths of their mothers. The horrors they had seen in the jungle. The blood they had spilled, and the blood they had given. Moso’s addictions and debts. Wish’s father and fears. The priestess...

  It had been that way ever since they first met. Two jungle-divers sent on similar jobs:Wish sent to capture a living bombabird, Moso sent to collect miacrite, the flammable mountain rock a bomba bird made its nest from. Occasionally a bird would light the rock with a strike of its beak, burning away the outer shells of the stoneback turtles that often scurried along the streams the birds dwelled near. Their hunts took them to the same nest, a thing made in a high tangle of branches. Wish was too big to navigate the tight tangles of trees, and he would have had to cut the branches down,possibly scaring away the bird, if Moso hadn’t been there to scurry inside the hard to reach place. And Moso would have only been able to lug a handful of stones back to the city if Wish hadn’t been able to lift a bagful of them. Together they completed their jobs quicker, and made more money than either had on their own. It was their need that brought them together, the coin that bound them, but it was the company they found in each other out in the shadows of the jungle that forged the partnership they had maintained for years.

  Moso may have been a vine set on fire, but Wish would have burned a long time ago if not for him.

  He took his hand back from Boz. “I would trust that Chassa with my life.”

  Boz laughed. “And so you continue to do. I just hope he doesn’t gamble with it as freely as he does his earnings.I like you, Wish. You always produce. I’d hate to lose you. Just make sure that fruit between your ears stays fresh, eh? Sometimes you think you’ve escaped the jungle’s wrath because it didn’t swallow you whole like a jagrall, but little do you know it’s still upon you like a termite beneath a tree, slowly nibbling away. And before you know it you’ve been rotted out, eroded away.”

  Wish nodded. He’d had many exchanges with Boz, and he’d learned to listen when the ex-jungle-diver spoke.There was often wisdom in his words, even though most of the time he hoped it wasn’t true.

  Boz tapped his head in farewell. “Someone will be in touch if I find out anything about the box.”

  Wish nodded and left Boz to his experiments. The sound of Boz’s knife digging into the frog’s innards sounded like a wet w
hisper telling him goodbye.

  He met Moso outside, where he was still fuming.

  That scaleless newt, said Moso, using the slanderous term for a Kodo.Why do we do business with such a thief?

  “He pays, he’s consistent, and he’s safe,” said Wish. “More than we can say for most of our customers.”

  I’d rather deal with a murderer than a pickpocket. At least they’re more upfront about it.

  Now that they were outside again, a new line of onlookers had formed. The throngs of people who passed by stole glances at them. Whispering. Filling their mouths with more stories to tell and gossip to share.

  “We’ve got money now, eh?” said Wish, trying to ignore a group of women eyeing them from beneath a tent, where they pulled the legs off the thoraxes of still living gem spiders. Anxiety crept in him with each passerby. Every part of him wanted to run back into the jungle, but the thought of what he still needed to do kept him from going. He tossed the lunars in his right palm. “Let’s go put it in the right hands.”

  Wish started walking, hurrying to escape to the back alleys of Fangmora and avoid attention, but Moso didn’t follow.

  “What?” said Wish, once he noticed his partner lingered behind.

  Come with me to Lavender’s.

  “Why?”

  I’m a little more late than usual.

  Wish rubbed his forehead. The great fire was starting to fall from the sky. He wanted to deliver his own lunars by nightfall.Normally he would tell Moso to deal with his own debts and he would turn out fine. But Lavender’s was different—he knew from the times he had accompanied Moso there. The look in Moso’s face reminded him of that.

  “I am only staying to make sure he doesn’t tack your tail too, and then I am gone.”

  The fear in Moso’s face left. For the best anyway. You scare away the women.

  Together the two left the GoldRow and entered the alleys that ran off it, shadowy roadways where those in Fangmora went to find the darkness that infected the city.

  The Lavender Light was built beneath the shadow of the temple of Notha. Its berrybark walls glowed a soft purple hue when the great fire awoke over the Knotted Mountains and when it fell back on the other side of them. Dusk and dawn. Slivers of time before the great fire hid behind the temple’s massive frame and the blanket of darkness was once again thrown over the building. Smoke slipped out of two holes in its roof, wisps escaping into the air, lazily ascending into the skies from the hundreds of mouths that exhaled them, and the small purple fires that gave them life. On its door there was a pair of crisscrossing flowers whose petals had been made to look like daggers. In front of its door there was a Lemura sitting on the ground, her head tucked into her black paws, a pile of vomit between her legs. The walls could not contain the music or yells that grew between them.

  Wish immediately felt tense as he and Moso stared at it from the alleyway they had emerged from.

  He hated the place.

  It was nothing but a concentrated version of the streets they had just left, a nest of eyes and ears and mouths in which there was no escape, except the one door that led in and out of it. And its patrons were not as mindful of their manners to at least hide their dislike for him and his profession. They were of a rougher sort.Ones who would stare at you until you gave them a reason to fight you or insulted you until they gave you a reason to fight them.

  Moso loved the place.

  It sounds crowded. I am sure the pits are good this evening, said the Chassa. His fear had been replaced with a glint of excitement in his eyes.

  “I didn’t come here to watch you dig yourself deeper into debt again.”

  Of course. He turned serious, adjusted the daggers on his belt, and strutted towards the Lavender Light.

  He pushed aside the door and Wish followed. Immediately the barely trapped noise they had heard on the outside struck them. Voices, shouts, the thud of cups on tables, the discordant music of a two-piece band with a balafon and oud, all of it came together to form one mind-numbing din not even the jungle could rival. The scent of burning drop leaf and wood met Wish next, making his eyes sting. The two small purple fires ablaze in adjacent corners of the place wavered and flickered like culprits admitting their guilt.Beside one of them, a hunched-over Treeback worked the spigots of two barrels, filling up the cups of annoyed, waiting customers with beer as quickly as he could. There were rows of high tables built between the six pillars constructed to hold the place upright, and patrons huddled over them, leaning on their elbows as they drank and smoked standing. There were no seats unless you paid for one of the backrooms. In the other corner, crowds formed circles so tightly that Wish could barely see the pits they congregated for: the Leg Holes. The places where people would bet to see which thorn beetle would pluck out the eye of a tied-up, hanging cara cat first. Pits that Moso knew too well.

  I wonder who’s running legs today? said Moso, standing on his tail for a better view, legs being the common term for competing thorn beetles.

  “That’s not why we’re here,” said Wish, struggling to speak over the volume of the place. Already he wanted to leave. Already people were turning to take in the newcomers, before leaning over to the one next to them to whisper or tell some inaudible insult.

  Just curious, said Moso, and the Chassa began the difficult journey to the back of the Lavender, pushing and slipping through the tottering crowd. Wish did his best to follow the small route he created, but being a human and being double the size of Moso did not lend itself to such lean maneuvering. There was more than once when he bumped into an inebriated thug who stared at him until he passed, and Wish would curse under his breath. It wasn’t the threat that worried him, it was the added commotion and attention it created. All it did was generate more eyes. More whispers.

  They had just about made it to Lavender’s room when he tried to squeeze between two patrons with their backs to one another who were too drunk to notice they were no longer leaning over the tables, but falling back from them. One of them, a human with a beard so long that he wore it over his neck like a charmer would a snake, threw back his head in laughter just as Wish tried to hop through the narrow gap they created. Wish nudged him with his shoulder, causing him to spill his drink into his beard. Wish mumbled an apology and hoped that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t.

  “Hoatzin of a trit!” he heard the man shout.

  Wish kept going, but a sudden tug on his jerkin turned him around. The man had unfurled the rest of his beard and was wringing out the beer in it with two hands. Two others stood beside him, smiling smiles full of threatening humor.

  “That cup was full, you thrig smook.”

  Wish fumbled into one of his pouches and put four crescents down on the table in front of the man, probably double the price of the beer. The man swept the money away, sending it jangling onto the floor.

  “This isn’t the jungle, you green fucker,” sputtered the man, a slur for Wish’s profession. “There are rules here. You can’t spill a man’s drink and expect to just walk away.”

  “Careful, Ori,” one of his companions whispered, but the bearded man just brushed them aside.

  “Careful? I’m tired of him and his kind just trouncing around like they don’t fucking reek of the forest. You,” he said, jamming his finger into Wish’s chest, “are just another reason why these walls are crumbling.”

  Wish just stared, waiting for the man to tell him or show him how he wanted to settle the dispute if not in repayment. He could feel more heads turning, more eyes watching. The entire place would congregate around them soon.The only thing they loved more than beer and beetles was a good tussle.

  And as the man’s finger kept jabbing him, his other hand produced a dagger. Wish saw it just as the blade came for his gut. But just as it pressed into his jerkin, he snatched the man’s wrist, bent it backwards, grabbed a handful of the man’s beard, and pinned it to the table with his own blade. Ori’s friends stumbled back in surprise, but when they regai
ned their composure they too had daggers in their hands. Wish went for his machete, but before he could draw it a thunderous hoot broke through the chaos.

  The musicians stopped playing. The crowd stopped talking. The only noises that pervaded the new silence were the bearded man’s curses, the clicking of the thorn beetles, and the hisses of the cara cat dangling somewhere over the pits. All heads were turned. A pathway had opened up amongst the crowd at Wish’s back. At its end he could see Moso standing outside an opened double-door, and inside of it, standing over a long black table, was Lavender.The Gibbon’s golden fur was hackled, his black eyes wide and furious. The tattoo on his throat bubble, the same symbol on his place’s doors, withered as the deafening hoot left his lips. He pointed at Wish and ordered him forward with the curl of one of his long black fingers.

  Wish nodded, took one last look at the two thugs, who had now put away their blades, and left them there to help their friend remove his own dagger from the table. He met Moso at the doorway.

  I didn’t realize I had to hold your hand every time you come here, he said as Wish arrived.

  “I told you I didn’t want to come in the first place.”

  Lavender’s voice stopped Moso from responding. “Your man is here now, eh? Stop pacing at my doorstep like a lost husband waiting for his wife, Moso. I trust there is not too much blood on my table, Wish?”

  “None that I spilled.” Behind him the bearded man had recovered and now stared at him through the crowd.

  Lavender beckoned them into the room. On either side of him, sitting behind matching long tables that were not visible from the rest of the tavern, were four men passing papers to one another, furiously writing down numbers onto pieces of parchment with long pens made from fangs dipped in ink. Their scribbling sounded like a chorus of bugs, hissing on about some news that he couldn’t hope to understand. It was a wonder that anyone could think with such constant noise, but he found it to be a small distraction compared to the macabre decorations that hung from the walls.

  Body parts. Those Lavender had taken from the debtors that could not afford to pay back their sums.