- City of
- FLOREY
Near the Home of Hugo Piatella
Against the violet-black night sky, the buildings swayed and reeled. Decazzi tried to follow them with his eyes, to will them to stop, but it was no use. The stars, they wouldn't stay still either, and in his haze, Decazzi couldn't keep his feet. He fell backward and caught himself in the recessed doorway of a shop. The door's glass pane was loose and it rattled loudly as Decazzi made contact with it. In the stillness of the square, the noise caused Decazzi's heart to race. If the Florey guards caught him out this late...
He pushed off from the building, rattling the glass again. A white-washer like him? They'd beat him certainly. Maybe lock him up for the night. If he were a finer gentleman, he could still be at a proper taproom, not sent home like a dog. Even if he were a merchant like the one that worked in this shop, he'd be in a better position. Even if he only worked at the counter. But he didn't. He was a man charged with brightening the dingy city of Florey. An important job if the will of Agnos were to be believed. It was his path. Decazzi wished he had a path to another bar.
No, he needed to get home. His wife wouldn't be waiting for him, but it was very late. Unfortunately, while the buildings, the stars, and the very pavement were active, Decazzi's feet were not. Kurtz had let him try something new tonight, free, after he had bought his usual supply of wing dust. It was some sort of squid juice, cold and black as this night, but it made Decazzi feel like his mind had been opened, cracked wide. At least for a few minutes. The affect on the rest of his body wasn't as freeing. He was chilled and clumsy like he was at the bottom of the sea. Ponderously, he shifted his weight from one foot to the next and managed a step.
A noise, not quite an echo of the hallow thud of the loose windowpane, issued from around the corner. It was a crash, the sort of thing that guaranteed trouble. Around the corner and into the square was directly in the path of Decazzi's way home. He didn't have the energy to contemplate a detour. He lurched around the edge of the building and, amazingly, managed to stay upright.
Decazzi expected to find thugs in the midst of breaking into a business or perhaps the guard roughing up those thugs. Whatever the case, Decazzi was determined to keep his eyes averted and move on as fast as his sorry legs could manage. He could not have expected what he found.
Orange light wavered in the windows above one of the shops. For a moment, Decazzi imagined that it was light from a reddish lamp, with the shadow of someone moving in front of it. A beautiful woman perhaps, naked, providing late night entertainment for her gentleman. Unbidden, Decazzi took a step back toward shop, only to stumble when a loud crash surprised him.
Decazzi stumbled to the center of the square and watched the light flare even brighter. He struggled to think if he'd ever seen any thing like this before. It seemed familiar to him and elicited a strange feeling of fear. But why should it? The color, a rich yellow and orange, wasn't queer or unnatural. It was, in fact, the very color of Agnos.
Decazzi knew then why the light, now beginning to rise in the other windows, made him feel sick to his stomach. It was the color of Purity. It was the color of a Cleansing.
Decazzi attended his first Cleansing when he was eight years old. At first, he'd thought his mother was taking him to a fair. It had seemed like that, with so many people gathered, and Decazzi had wondered why his mother would do such a thing. Just a few days before he had gotten in trouble for stealing during a shopping excursion. The day if that Cleansing had not ended with enjoyment, but with a lesson. As the criminal atop the spire became blackened by Agnos' light, his mother had spoken to him as she never had in the past. Her voice had been flat and serious as if she were speaking to a fellow adult.
"That's what happens to every man that strays too far from the path that Agnos has illuminated for him."
Decazzi heard more noises issue from the rooms above the shop. Another crash, a wordless noise that might have been a scream. The light of Agnos was in all the windows now, staring down accusingly at Decazzi. This wasn't the first time that a man had been Cleansed without the Ecclesians, though Decazzi hadn't really believed the other stories to be true. He made a sign in the air before him.
"Please," he whispered. "Don't take me too."
He could see Agnos' light, dancing and bright in the downstairs widows of the shop too. Thick, oily smoke seeped from cracks around the window.
"Please," Decazzi muttered again. He knew he should leave, run. The reasonable voice in his head stated that the guard would be here soon to investigate and he didn't want to be here then. The voice of panic noted that Agnos' Cleansing brightness was at the door of the shop. It would soon spill out into the square and show Decazzi how far star ash and wing dust and Kurtz' forsaken squid juice had led him astray.
From out of the skipping and shimmying light, a figure lurched and fell against the glass door. Its hand scrabbled for the door latch.
Decazzi's eyes widened. Empyreal radiance clung to what had been clothes and hair. The door would be locked, surely. Not easily opened.
Decazzi made the sign again. He willed his legs to move back, move away, but they wouldn't obey.
The door's latch gave way and the figure stumbled forward.
Decazzi let out a cry, but before the sound passed his lips, the touch of Agnos was gone from the figure, leaving behind blacked flesh. It had been a woman, the thing that lay motionless on the ground not more than three feet from Decazzi.
