The Faceless King
an excerpt

Among the high attics and eaves of this smoky, gray city, there are few lights, fewer voices and no doors. It snows often, late in the night, and the shadowed alleys below whistle with swift breezes. In the still streets, waiting drivers doze on the benches of their noble carriages, while their shoulders turn white under a dusting of tiny snowflakes.

Music leaks through the panes of golden-glowing windows – balls full of swaying silks and perfumed secrets - and drifts on the winter air, fading to little more than a memory somewhere among the chimneys.

Somewhere, under a drab slate roof, an old woman waits, tucked into a musty corner with her head bent low in caution of the attic’s wide beams.

The spaces here are strange shapes – countless corners and nooks, shelves and struts like wooden ribs, a maze of half-floors and almost-halls – full of hiding places for spiders and ghosts.

The woman’s eyes, startlingly clear and bright, gaze through the paper-filtered light, watching the shadows of quiet children at play. They chase one another in a game of tag, all on cat-like feet, silent in their mended socks. They laugh in whispers and race by her swiftly enough to stir strands of her hair against her wrinkling cheeks. She watches as they disappear around a corner, one after the next. Their clothes are faded, mis-sized and several seasons out of style, but cut of fine cloth. Upper class hand me downs.

Her fingertips trace over glass, and she glances down, to the orb cradled in her claw-like hands. It shimmers, beckoning. Promising. Her breath feels as dusty as her corner when she sighs, and her old bones creak and groan as she moves, gently rolling the ball of glass over the worn floor-boards. It rattles and glimmers, racing off into a shadow – and disappears. She watches that single point for a long moment.

There’s a flash of refracted lamp light, and the sphere emerges again. It rolls smoothly back to her, into her waiting hands. She glances down again.

The contents have changed once more. Now, flowers – a bundle of red amaryllis – hover inside. Perfect and crimson.

The children race by again, another scampering round of silent tag. The floor beneath her shivers with the passing of their tiny, tramping feet. But she’s not watching them any more; she stares into the glass, at the blossoms. Smiling faintly, the old woman lets herself be caught in the soft upflow of another blurry memory.

~*~

A cold breeze swept down the street, snagging at the hems of coats and playfully tugging the brims of hats. The sun blazed high, tiny and bright – a fierce ball of white light that did little to warm the city below. The snow and ice from the previous night had mostly melted, leaving the sidewalks crusted with odd patterns of salt marks. Like dried froths of foam, it splashed artful patterns over the curbs and along the cracks of the pavement seams. Small, intrepid drifts of the stuff huddled in whatever tiny shadows they could find.

Character A pawed at his face, fingers scrabbling to clear away the web of long hair caught in his mouth, the hinge of his glasses. He spat and spluttered until he had finally cleared the wind tossed mess away and could see again.

He clutched a small package to his chest. Wrapped in brown paper, tied with a thick bit of string, it was deceptively thin and surprisingly heavy. He had left fingerprints here and there on it, in drying smudges of colors, tracked there by his paint stained hands.

Carriages and carts clattered noisily over the bricked street. He passed a baker’s, the air heavy with the sweet fragrance of fresh morning bread. He inhaled deeply and gazed into the window as he passed, coveting the butter-topped buns and steaming wheat rounds on display.

His stomach twisted hungrily, and he remembered the purpose of this silly outing in the first place.

With a sigh of a groan, he tore himself from the window of heavenly, bread based delights and hurried down the walk again.

He must have clutched the package a little too tightly, for it suddenly let out a small squeak of discomfort. Character A glanced down at it, his feet stumbling, and frowned. He had better hurry and get the errand over with before it started to express any further displeasure.

He had already learned, after all, that it could occasionally produce a rather noxious odor.

Ever since the damn thing had shown up on his doorstep, he had tried his hardest to be rid of it. The first time it had reappeared, he thought maybe one of his neighbors had pulled it from the garbage bin, thinking he had thrown it away by mistake. But it had repeatedly shown up ever subsequent morning, lying on his doormat and never significantly worse for the time spent among tossed out food and general refuse.

Finally, he had taken it inside – to attempt to unwrap it, discover just what was inside – but no amount of pulling could tear the paper. His sharpest knife had failed to even fray the wrapping twine. That was when he had triggered the defense mechanisms and discovered the squeaking. As well the stinking.

So, it was an enchanted package then. Which made it very, very dangerous.

Last night, he had grabbed the rattiest blanket in his cupboard, some stout cord, and wrapped it so thoroughly, even he could not untie the knots or yank loose the cloth. The whole loathsome bundle had gone into the bin, and he had made double sure to set the latch before going back up to his apartments.

Upon opening the door that morning, there it was again – the thing that wouldn’t go away. In its slightly smudged and wrinkled brown paper, the same as ever. But.

This time, a small note lay stuck to the top of the package. The paper was a bright green color, the address written in a cramped hand in thick, dark penstrokes.

Well, at least someone somewhere had figured out the blasted thing did not belong to him.

Though, why it could not have told him where it was intended to go in the first place, was beyond him. Surely it had not been meant to spend every night for the past two and a half weeks at the bottom of a shared refuse bin?

Character A wasn’t even sure who this Character B was in the first place. He’d never heard of the man, and all the address informed him of was that he lived on the complete other side of the city. Three districts and one bridge crossing away, to be exact.