The Offices, part 1

            It was too damn hot. Tartin pulled the scarf down from his mouth and took a swig from his canteen. The water was hot and tasted of metal, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. The people at Cheenra had provided them with more suitable desert clothing, along with camels and maps. Cheenra’s mayor has feasted them before they left. Tartin had traveled a great deal in his career with the Royal Rookery, but he had never been treated as well as he was by the Arizradna. The fact of the matter, as much as people at home liked to deny it, was that most people did not like the Retrons. Even those in Narcia, Retrein’s oldest ally, looked down on Tartin’s people as a nation of thieves and criminals.

            But the Arizradna has always been a bit more enlightened. It was their way. On the other hand, in a village as remote as Cheenra, they may have simply not known all the proper stereotypes. His band might have been the first Retrons – or even the first Ganleans – the people there had ever encountered.

            There were twenty of them. They had started off as twenty-three. Fenshaw got ill when they docked in Carathon and was left to recuperate. They had been stuck on Hosos for a while after the dock was closed during a Black Sails attack – nothing serious, really just a brief show of strength – but it was during this that Rogers and Kilarny got themselves killed in a bar fight. That was three months ago now, and since then they’d managed to keep thing under control.

            Crossing the Sarona Desert was something he had always wanted to do, but now, a mere two weeks in, he was beginning to think it was impossible. They had only reached the first oasis when they were down to their last twenty gallons of water. On the third day of month two, the air began to grow thick and muggy. In front of them was a storm cloud. They hastily put up shelter, but the wind was so strong that it threatened to take the tents with it.

            Tartin pulled out his map. Nascine approached him, her jacket held up to protect the electric torch she was pointing at it.

            “The nearest waystation is three tracks away,” Tartin shouted over the sound of the rain. How could the rain be so hot?

            Nascine freed one of her hands and pointed to a path drawn on the map. “This road should take us there. Why does it bend that way?” Indeed, the faint line went due east, but then suddenly turned south, making a large semicircle before returning to its original latitude.

            “I don’t know,” said Tartin. “There could be a mountain, or something.” That didn’t seem likely. Most of the mountains were marked on the map. The area with the semicircle around it was completely blank.

            “Mountains could mean a cave, or at least a cliff wall or something. It’s only a few miles away.” Nascine was staring at him, waiting for a response. One of the men cracked a joke and the other laughed, but the camels were beginning to panic.

            “Ok, let’s go take a look.” He turned around to address the crew. “We continue east. Be on the lookout for high ground.”

            The went on for another hour, and Tartin’s hot sweat mixed with the hot rain. The smell was atrocious. He began to notice that the rain stung when it landed on his bare skin. The air was filled with a disgusting stench. He raised his scarf back over his face, but where the water had soaked in, the smell was worse.

            They came to a rise in the road, and when they reached the top, that was where they saw it.

            In the distance, where the road swept down and to the right, there was a huge cluster of buildings. They were enormous, rising sixty, seventy stories into the air. Despite the darkness, there was no light coming from them. Nascine smiled.

            “Well there’s a spot of luck. Another abandoned Djinn city. Let’s see if we can make camp inside.” Tartin nodded. The crew began to press onward, leaving the road where it bent south and trudging through the sand. It was very hard-packed in these parts, but the rain was turning it into a grainy paste.

            Many of the camels were stubborn, and they were already upset about the stinging rain. With a great deal of effort, however, they were finally able to get them to leave the road.

            As they entered the city, the buildings loomed over them. They were enormous, packed next to each other. There were no real streets here. In fact, there was something troubling about the buildings that Tartin could not quite put his finger on.

            “Where are the cars?” he asked.

            Nascine looked around. “I hadn’t noticed they were missing.” She looked around, down the canyons the skyscrapers made. None of the Djinn’s strange fire-powered vehicles were anywhere to be seen. “Maybe they took them when they abandoned the city?”

            “I’ve never been to a Djinn city before,” said Tartin. “But I’ve seen the photographs. They never took the cars. Look around you. There are no street-lights. There’s no road, even. It’s just these buildings. The Djinni always covered theirs with glass, or trimmed them with shining metals.”

            They looked up. Every building was just blank, brown-grey, rectangular and filled with evenly spaced windows.

            A young scout, Franklin, ran up to Tartin. “Sir, we found a light.” Franklin led Tartin around a corner and pointed out a faint light, perhaps ten blocks away. It was getting darker. The light was at ground level. Tartin pulled out his binoculars and took a look. There was light coming out of a window. Someone had to be here.

            “Right, make for the light. Let’s get us some shelter.”

            By the time they had reached the light, the rain had gotten heavier. There was thunder in the clouds, but only the faintest hint of lightning. Tartin stood outside the building – the light was coming out through a window near the door. He knocked.

            “Hello? Is there anyone there? My name is Gilbert Tartin, with the Royal Exploratory Commission of Retrein.” No response. “We’re not here to steal anything,” Tartin said, hoping whoever was in there had a sense of humor.

            Humor or not, he did begin to hear movement inside. A latch was undone on the door, and it slowly slid open.

            The man standing there looked extremely tired. He appeared to be about sixty, wearing a white cotton shirt and brown slacks. He had white, messy hair, and not much of it. “You shouldn’t be out during the rain. Don’t you know it’s acidic?”

            A horrid smell of burned coffee came off the man like a fog. There was another smell underneath, like the black, viscous fluid the Djinni used to power their cars. It smelt of fire and death.

            The man looked out at Tartin’s exhausted crew. “You had better come in. But leave the beasts outside. Find something to put over them you don’t mind getting ruined. The rains here are hell.”

            “Is there a way into some of the other buildings? We need shelter until the rains have passed.”

            The man rubbed his temples. “You don’t want to go into the other buildings. They’ve been watching you. They probably saw you coming here from miles away.”

            “Who did? Who saw us?”

            The man shrugged. “They’re not really people.”

            Tartin had to fight the urge to physically shudder. “What do you mean?”

            The man put a hand over his face. “No faces.”

(Copyright Daniel Szolovits 2012)