The Many Shameful Secrets of Amkii Longwick

There were never any Dragons in this valley. Never in the history of the proud Suoma people, but they were here now – and Amkii Longwick held a shameful secret.

He hated them.

Preening, puffed-up policemen in brightly coloured armour, the men and women who made up the Namora legion known as the Dragons were worthless in battle. They had nothing at all to do with the defeat of the Suoma, and would still be outside the walls of the city if they hadn’t secured the services of the best mercenary company in the world to win their wars for them.

As an exhibition of Namor’s growing power, however, the Dragons were unmatched. To have its own peacekeeping force, policing this newly conquered valley, the old city of Suom and the proud, fiercely independent Suoma people who lived here…a decade ago it would have been unthinkable.

Hell above, only a year ago it would have been unthinkable. As a Namora himself, Amkii should feel pride in seeing Dragons in the valley of the Suoma, but instead he felt a strange sense of shame and loss. He would greatly miss the freedom to live under the open sky, a freedom denied in all the other great cities. He knew it would not take long for it to be denied in Suom as well. Already the tunneller’s guilds from nearby cities were a heavy presence in Suom. If he concentrated, Amkii could hear faint sounds of construction on the far side of the city square, beyond the tall, cloistered walls. First the tunnels, then the homes. Carved into the rock and dirt, for the devout to live underground as the Church demanded.

This particular garrison of Namora Dragons was only 150 men for the whole city and the valley surrounding it, but Amkii knew the number was less important than the simple fact of their presence. Their bright armour, covered in patterns of twisting wyrms, announced the new world order in a way that proclamations from politicians or sermons from the Mothers of the Church could not.

And it was working.

As Amkii sat in the old city square, sipping on rakia from a small, a clay-fired cup, he noticed a group of three Suoma youths wearing colourful jackets, covered in twisting wrym designs, in imitation of the Dragons’ armour. The imitation of the fashion of their conquerors did not end there. Their heads were covered in deep blue hoods and their eyes were wrapped in blue transparent material, all the better to shield them from the curse of the Maddening Sky. Their gods told them that no Suoma should ever be afraid of the sky, but now the Suoma were defeated, so perhaps the people figured their gods were wrong.

Amkii took another sip of rakia, enjoying the heat at the back of this throat, and looked around the square. The merchants had cut their hair in the strange, circular fashion of Namora merchants, the women wore Namora dresses. Even two small children were playing with wooden models of the short, fat-bladed spears favoured by the Namora, rather than the long, slender spears thrown by Suoma warriors for centuries.

There was something…ugly about it, thought Amkii. A people vanquished so utterly that they rejected their own culture to ape every facet of that of their vanquishers. He shrugged and the finest sable that silver could buy rose and fell with his shoulders. It was not his problem. Right now, there was money to be made in Suom, and he was here to make sure his benefactor profited from it.

And in this was held another shameful secret. Amkii hated his job. As a merchant scout, Amkii was tasked with journeying all over the world, facing the dangers of bandits, wild animals, monsters and near-constant exposure to the Maddening Sky along the way. All of those things were just fine by Amkii. They were why he applied for the job in the first place (bringing great shame to his family in doing so – no son of such an influential family as the Longwicks in the powerful candlemakers guild of Namor, should ever have such a low station in life as a merchant scout, or any job that kept the person outside during the dangers of the day, for that matter).

Amkii wanted a life outside – he felt trapped underground. Here was yet another shameful secret. Somewhere inside him, in a way he couldn’t explain (without attracting the attention of the Mothers), Amkii knew people were not meant to live underground. The great catacombs of Samod, the entire suburbs carved into the cliffs of Namor, the caverns of Eanmar and even the awe-inspiring inverted spires of glorious old Elandar – none of them raised any emotion in Amkii other than a mild panic, that would not subside until he was outside again. In the open. Under the sky. It was surely a heresy to feel this way – did not the Mothers preach that nothing was more natural and holy to live in the womb of the Great Mother? But Amkii felt it, just the same. People were not meant to live buried, he often thought. But he would never say this thought aloud.

In any case, it was not the dangers of his job that made Amkii hate it. It was the dishonesty of it. In theory, he and the other scouts were travelling to distant lands purely to open up trade avenues for their benefactors, the merchants of Namor, but with every new contact or new trade opportunity a scout brought back to Namor, they also brought information. And every land now paying homage to Namor had been first visited by a merchant scout.

What was a merchant scout but a spy with better pay?

Other scouts would deny it. They would deny it until the sky turned blue, and Amkii hated them all. Hypocrites and frauds, who didn’t even have the common decency to admit they were the unseen tip of the spear. Amkii visited Suom many times, had opened up valuable trade routes even while the city was under siege for years, and every time he returned to Namor with information or silver for his benefactor, he was pressed for all the information about the city he had by the leaders of the merchant’s guild. He knew the guild then passed that information on to the military. For years he had hoped the strange old city where the people lived above ground would hold out, anyway. He hoped the trade power of Namor and the religious power of Samod would never find a foothold here – the last great city in the known lands where you could do something as simple as sit outside during the day, enjoying a drink and a meal under the sky, free from the fear that you would attract the attention of the magistrates and the Mothers by doing so.

Amkii looked up at the sky with dark eyes. It was a four-colour day, and as such no-one from the other great cities would dare be outside without hood and eye-cover. No-one would ever dare look up for more than a moment at such a sky, for fear of the madness it could bring.

Amkii looked. Purple and red swirled in circles that bulged into ovals, while yellow and orange flicked and sparked between them. Amkii looked, and in this was held his most shameful secret. He loved the sky. The constant array of colours, clashing and circling, was beautiful to him. He enjoyed not knowing what the sky would look like from day to day. He liked the feeling of space one felt when outside, above the ground.

And all of this stemmed from the secret heresy he could not help but believe – heresy that could see him jailed deep in the holds of the Church if anyone ever found out. He did not believe that the sky sent people mad. The Mad One in the sky did not exist. And if that were true – if there was no despised first son of the Great Mother Earth, howling and laughing in the sky and sending people mad, what did that mean for the existence (or otherwise) of the Great Mother Earth, the one true god of all the lands? Forget the shame of society, or even the deepest holds in the Church dungeons – such thoughts would have seen him sacrificed on top of the pyramid of Samod only a few generations ago.

‘Where hide those

Hidden verses?

Whose harps were

Broken?

Whose tongues were

Stilled?’

A handful of lyrics of the forbidden song of Esme of Samod, the last person ever publicly sacrificed to appease the mad spirit of the sky, sang unbidden through Amkii’s mind. Looking up at the sky on a four-colour day, he let his eyes track around the top of the walls of the old city square, seeing the tops of other buildings rising above them.

No pyramid, though.

The only one of the great cities where people built their homes above ground (except the ever-growing slums of Namor, where the people couldn’t afford the rates of the tunneller’s guild – but most turned a blind eye to that sad reality), was also the only one of the great cities not to have a pyramid. A strange contradiction, and another reason Amkii always enjoyed the place. No pyramid, which meant no one had ever been dragged up those blood-slick steps, high, high into the sky to be cut into pieces in the name of religion.

In any case, despite long exposure to the Maddening Sky, Amkii never noticed any of the well-documented warning signs that he was being driven insane. Not yet, anyway – although perhaps that was to be expected.

Madmen didn’t know they were mad, he supposed.

At the thought, two new arrivals in the old city square caught his eye.

It seemed he wasn’t the only foreigner here who appreciated the weird, ever-changing beauty of the open sky.

A girl, perhaps 12 or 13 years of age, was standing in the middle of the square, dark green hood thrown back, no veil over her eyes, gazing up at the four-colour day with a happy expression on her face. Perhaps she had heard stories that this sort of thing was accepted in Suom, that the Suoma were a people unafraid of the sky, that here alone in the great cities could a person admire the beauty of the ever-changing colours without fear of being labelled a worshipper of the Mad One, who in ages past poisoned the sky, in the aftermath of his defeat by the Great Mother Earth.

Only a year ago, she would have been right, Amkii thought. But now Suom was brought into the fold of the Church of the other great cities, and the Dragons were here. And they would be watching her.

She had reddish-coloured skin. From the Quellas region, then. Vast leagues of fields and villages on Selvan-side of the Dryfrost Mountains A strong lass, well-built and healthy-looking, she would look old before her time if she stayed in those little villages with her people. A lifetime of digging for potatoes, harvesting corn and hauling heavy bags of produce to the market on her back would have her bent and worry-lined well before her 30th birthday – and that’s without considering the rigours of childbirth. As she stared up so happily at the sky, Amkii couldn’t help but feel glad for her that she had seemingly gotten away from that life, far away on the other side of the Dryfrost Mountains.

The three Suoma youths wearing Namora garb did not appear so happy to see her. They approached the girl and her companion in that attempted aggressive nonchalance that teenage boys have tried and failed to pull off for as long as there have been gangs of teenage boys. Perhaps they thought the foreigner’s appreciation of the sky, unhooded and unveiled, was a form of mockery of the old, defeated customs of the Suoma. Perhaps part of each boy knew, deep down, that they should be the ones standing under the open sky, unhooded, unveiled, unafraid.

Perhaps they just wanted to show off for the Dragons.

Whatever the case, the three boys moved in, muttering angrily at the newcomer and her companion.

Amkii considered stepping in before things could get out of hand, but he was half-drunk and heart-sore and, quite frankly, didn’t feel like it. The Dragons were here, after all. Let the preening, prancing peacekeepers in their ridiculous armour keep some peace, for once. It wasn’t Amkii’s problem.

Besides that, the girl wasn’t alone. It surprised Amkii how little attention he had paid to her companion to this point – he whose whole life and livelihood as a merchant’s scout depended on his close observations.

The boy was taller than the girl, and slender. From the reddish hue of the skin on his hands, they were clearly from the same place. After that, however, the similarities ended. Where she drew attention, he fled from it. Where she stood tall and gazed up, smiling at the vast expanse of the sky on a four-colour day, he shuffled and hunched under it. Only the skin of his hands was visible, in long travelling robes with a deep hood covering his face. The hood was so deep, Amkii couldn’t see if the boy was wearing a veil wrapped over his eyes, but he would bet on it being there. Just as he would bet those eyes would be fixed down on the Holy Earth for as much time as possible whenever that boy was outdoors, under the sky.

Surely the boy would step in and at least say something to the Suoma boys in Namora garb, however timid he might be. Amkii thought that would probably be enough. True violence, right in front of the Dragons was unlikely, surely.

Amkii was wrong.

Violence erupted suddenly, and another shameful secret was added to his tally. Three youths attacked a girl in public and Amkii did nothing to stop it. He quickly noticed, however, that the girl was not unfamiliar with violence. Nor, indeed, unwelcoming of it. She attacked in a hailstorm of fists and elbows and knees, shouting a loud battle cry, taking on all three in a display of mad courage that made Amkii smile to witness.

Her companion, however, was a great disappointment. The boy ran away immediately, leaving his companion to fight alone. As such, it wasn’t long before the fight went against her. Even from across the square, Amkii could see the frustration on her face. If these boys were a year or two younger, she probably could have beaten any of them one-on-one. Amkii imagined she had had many such fights with boys her own age, back in the fields and tiny villages of the Quellas. But that year or two, at this age, was all important. The boys shoot up and fill out, putting on muscle and speed and suddenly she was left behind by lads she could have beaten easily, not so long ago. Amkii could see this infuriated her. Even three on one and getting over-powered, there was no fear on her face. Only fury.

One of the boys got behind her and pinned her arms to her sides and the other two moved in. Their hoods had been knocked back, their veils were falling down and there was murder in their eyes. Their pride had been wounded, and the small pride of a defeated people was a deadly thing to wound. A knife appeared in the hand of one of the boys, and here, at last, was evidence the Suoma culture was not entirely dead. The knife had a long, slender blade – the stiletto of Suom, known to all as a weapon of deadly effectiveness in the hands of a skilled and angry Suoma.

Before Amkii could finally intervene, the violence escalated and blood sprayed out, dark under the dark purple and red sky. The girl slammed her head back into the face of the boy pinning her arms, breaking his nose and his grip on her in one motion. At the same time, her companion finally rejoined the fight. He ran up behind the other two youths unnoticed, with his broad farmer’s knife in his hand. He slashed and stabbed wildly, and one of the Suoma boys was down, bleeding profusely, while the other spun and fought back with his stiletto.

The peasant boy’s hood was now thrown back as well, and as the first Suoma boy fell, he threw out a hand and clawed down the eye-veil of his opponent. Amkii could see there was only one expression on the Quellan boy’s face as he slashed and stabbed wildly about him.

Terror.

The third Suoma stepped lightly, stiletto circling before him, clearly more skilled than his opponent. Suoma children all trained with knife and spear and shield from the moment they could hold them. The Quellan’s earlier cowardice quickly reappeared. He backed away and dropped his knife in his panic, waving both hands out in front of him as if he thought to magic the other boy out of existence.

The Suoma did not hesitate, swooping in with sure steps and stiletto at the ready. Even without hesitation, however, the boy was too late. The girl from Quellas was behind him, her own knife held in a steady hand. She slit the throat of the Suoma boy, who dropped to the ground with a surprised expression on his face.

At long, long last, the troop of Dragons finally roused themselves into action, confirming forever in Amkii’s mind just how useless they truly were. They rushed from the cover of the cloisters into the open square and surrounded the two Quellans, as well as the one Suoma still standing, with blood streaming down from his broken nose.

A look was shared between the two Quellans, and surrender followed swiftly. The girl still looked furious, but the boy looked strangely relieved. And still another shameful secret was added to the tally of Amkii Longwick: two boys had been killed in the open square of old Suom city, right in front of him, and he had done nothing to stop it.

As all three youths were arrested and taken away by the Dragons in their bright armour and deep blue hoods, Amkii sat and drained the last of his rakia and immediately signalled for another to be poured. The last open-sky place to sit and drink in all the great cities of the known lands would not remain so for long after this. He would have to make the most of it, while he could. The Dragons would tell their Whips, the Whips would tell the Mother of the garrison and the city square of old Suom, where merchants gathered, deals were made, rakia was drunk for generations, would be closed down within days. Children murdering other children, in such a public place, within view of a troop of Namora Dragons?

Surely, the four-colour day was to blame. Surely, the poor children had fallen victim to the well-documented effects of the Maddening Sky.

Some of the remaining Dragons began to stalk ominously around the merchant stalls and drink-tables of the city square, eager to look like they had everything under control, and Amkii kept his eyes fixed firmly down on the small clay-fired cup in front of him. He began to make plans for another journey, perhaps all the way to the Selvan. Exotic goods, a long way from home. Money for his benefactor and plenty time out of the cities for himself.

He couldn’t stay in Suom. It would soon go underground, and a man was not meant to live buried.