Spit and Song (Ustlian Tales Book 2) Read online

  SPIT

  and

  SONG

  travis m. riddle

  Copyright © 2019 by Travis M. Riddle

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover illustration by Amir Zand – amirzandartist.com

  Author photo by Jawn Rocha – jawnrocha.com

  Book Layout © 2014 BookDesignTemplates.com

  Spit and Song/Travis M. Riddle. -- 1st ed.

  ISBN: 9781699812150

  SPIT

  and

  SONG

  an Ustlian Tale

  PRAISE FOR TRAVIS M. RIDDLE

  FOR THE NARROWS

  “Riddle’s intricate worldbuilding and familiar but strong narrative arc sustain fear throughout. ... Fans of eerie tales will easily fall into this one.”

  - Publisher’s Weekly

  “Although it is, essentially, a horror story, this book also contains a lovely story of friendship ... I actually can't think of a single thing I didn't like about this book. Read it.”

  - The Story Collector

  FOR BALAM, SPRING

  “When I started reading Balam, Spring and found this beautiful, welcoming small town with quirky characters and a sense of normalcy, I was elated. (If you think I'm exaggerating, you should have seen me running around gushing about how perfect this book was to everyone). Balam, Spring is a book that you can just sit down and lose yourself in ...”

  - Forever Lost in Literature

  “I hope we get more of this. We need more of this. Fantasy isn’t just magic, battles et al. It’s about the newness of things. About the strange things you’ll never get to see, to feel. To taste and to read. But that you can discover through a medium. And that’s why this is very much worth a read.”

  - Justine Bergman, of Whispers & Wonders and Fantasy Book Critic

  For myself. Because this book was damn hard to write.

  You’ll get what you want in time

  Just sign on the dotted line

  And hold onto the coattails

  And pray that your record sells

  Until I get what I want

  I’ll be kicking

  I’ll be screaming

  We’ve waited too long

  For nothing to come

  As Tall As Lions, We’s Been Waitin’

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The New Usual

  Buy-In

  Swallowed by the Sands

  Sweet Sheri

  Pay-Out

  Warmth

  A Trade

  The Egg Heist

  Surely an Extremely Bad Idea

  A Lie Somehow

  Outside Hire

  Civilized Discussion

  In a Loop

  Juice First

  Hum

  Seeing Things

  A Plan of Sorts

  Flicks of the Wrist

  One Step Too Far

  Meetings

  Harmless

  The Flower and the Frog

  CHAPTER I

  THE NEW USUAL

  The city smelled of hot sand and steaming offal. It was a stench that Kali thought she might never grow accustomed to, no matter how many times she traveled to Yspleash.

  She slid off the side of the lumbering ayote she had ridden across the desert over the past three days. A smile crossed her face as she caressed the animal’s bumpy, banded shell. She unfastened her knapsack that hung from the tack and strapped it over her shoulder before unhitching the saddle. The animal chittered with satisfaction as she scratched its chin underneath the long, pointed snout. Its whip-like tail gleefully flapped back and forth.

  “Good boy,” she cooed, moving her hand from the ayote’s chin to scratch behind a tiny, pointed ear, which was level with her face. “You’re gonna sleep good tonight after that long ride, huh?”

  The ayote, which was named Bango, was a rental from the stables in her hometown of Seroo’s Eye. Truthfully, Kali could technically afford to outright buy an ayote of her own, but at the moment there was no way she could pay the continual costs of housing, feeding, and other general care.

  Daily rental fees could also rack up pretty quickly in her business, though, so thankfully her father was old friends with a man who owned one of the city’s stables and he allowed her to borrow a mount at no charge. So, whenever she needed to travel, she went to the stable owned by Gregori and rented Bango. She and the animal had become pals over the past few years.

  With one hand firmly placed on the ayote to guide him, Kali made her way toward the stable situated on the far outskirts of the Yspleash city wall. As she approached, the owner waved bombastically at her, practically flinging his body back and forth with each swing of the arm.

  He was a jeornish man named Lorrne and, together with his wife Zashi, he had maintained the Yspleash stables for as long as Kali had been traveling to the city.

  Must be rough, she thought as she waved back, wondering how the man and his family could stomach the incessant smell that emanated from within the city.

  The non-centript population of Yspleash was exceptionally small, as was the case in all centript hives. Someone needed to tend to the ayotes that travelers rode across the desert on, though; the animals were natural reservoirs for the mold, so there was not a centript alive that would risk handling them. Hence Lorrne and his family.

  “Hey, Lorrne,” Kali greeted him as he ambled over to meet her and Bango. “How’re things treating you?”

  “Not too bad, not too bad,” the man replied, his tan jeornish skin glistening in the overbearing sunlight. Lorrne had recently shaved his platinum-white hair nearly down to the scalp. It was now as if he wore a white, skin-tight cap.

  “I’m gonna need to buy one of those,” she said, pointing at the facemask that covered his nose and mouth, muffling his speech.

  Even on the outer rim of the city, the scent was nauseating. She dreaded stepping foot inside, and regretted forgetting to bring her own facemask. It didn’t ever completely eradicate the smell, but it at least somewhat helped. She was thankful that the stables sold them.

  She couldn’t blame the city’s primary inhabitants; centripts lacked olfactory organs, and therefore had no idea what their bodies smelled like or what ghastly scent was created by their combined masses.

  Kali, however, was a faif, and her nostrils were unfortunately working perfectly fine.

  “No problem,” Lorrne said, running a flat palm down from Bango’s forehead to the tip of his snout. The ayote closed his eyes and basked in the sensation. “How long you stayin’ for this time?” Lorrne asked.

  “I think just overnight,” said Kali. She pondered the question for another moment. “Two at most, but I don’t think that’s likely.”

  “Not a problem either way,” Lorrne said. “Plenty of room here.” He gave Bango a soft pat on the head. The ayote blinked open his eyes and gave Lorrne a sloppy lick on the face with his long, skinny tongue.

  They both laughed, and Lorrne wiped away the saliva on the back of his arm.

  Kali asked, “Where’s Zashi today? Off with Caya somewhere?” Caya was their son, a young boy that Kali had only met on a handful of occasions. He was usually roaming the streets of Yspleash with his friends, much too busy to bother mingling with his parents’
customers.

  “Nah,” Lorrne said, leaving Bango to fetch his logbook. “She’s running some errands while Caya plays. Leaving all the hard work to me!”

  “It sure is rough, having to write down a name and take some money every few hours,” Kali joked.

  Lorrne cracked a smile. “True, I am the lazy one of the bunch,” he said, flipping through pages until he found the one he was searching for. He scribbled her name into the next blank line (underneath two other names; a fuller stable than usual), then clapped the book shut again.

  She paid him for a single night, plus an extra crescent for a facemask, and gave Bango a farewell pat. “See you in a bit, bud,” she told the animal.

  After thanking Lorrne, she commenced her trek toward the entry arches several hundred feet away, slipping the mask over her face.

  First things first, she wanted some food. Her stomach grumbled at her in irritation.

  It had been over a month since her last visit to Yspleash, located on the eastern end of the Gogol Desert, the largest span of dunes in all of Herrilock. An impressive distinction, given how much of the country was covered in sand.

  Yspleash was surrounded by an imposing tan wall built of mudbricks, comprised of sand, water, and the centript residents’ own dung. Bricks were stacked atop one another, then plastered over with a sand and water mixture. The perimeter wall towered thirty feet in the air and was painted with intricate, colorful patterns along its entire length.

  Not many people milled in or out of the city, so the entryway was nearly empty as Kali approached. The only other person there was the stablemaster’s son Caya, no older than eight, who ran up and down, weaving back and forth with a ball at his feet before kicking it into the wall and attempting to catch it on the bounce back.

  Kali waved a polite hello to the boy, but he ignored her in lieu of his game. Long hair flopped over his face. It was the same platinum-white color as all jeornish.

  A surprising thwack reverberated through the air as the child’s rubber ball slapped against the adobe wall and ricocheted to the left, in Kali’s direction.

  It sputtered to a stop in the sand a few feet away from where she stood, and she let out a chuckle as Caya rushed over, spewing apologies.

  “Sorry, ma’am!” he squeaked, clearly not recognizing her. “Didn’t mean to, I promise!”

  “Not a problem,” she assured him with a laugh.

  “Just playing with my ball, is all!” he said, skidding to a stop and spraying sand out in front of him. “I’m the best kicker here, you know. I can kick it the hardest.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She couldn’t imagine many of Yspleash’s other kids were particularly adept at kicking, given centript anatomy.

  The boy reminded Kali of her sister Lissia. Both were jeornish and sported loud, boisterous attitudes.

  He beamed. “Yup! Wanna watch? I’ve even kicked it over the wall before,” he boasted, though she severely doubted the claim.

  “I can’t, sorry,” she said. “I’ve got an appointment I need to keep. Plus, I’m pretty hungry. Could you point me in the direction of the bakery?” Despite her semi-frequent visits, she never could memorize the city’s complex geography. Caya told her, and she made her way further into the city.

  As she entered the city limits, the sight would have taken her breath away if the smell hadn’t already. It never failed to amaze her.

  Centript construction was fascinating to her, provided how comparatively run-of-the-mill the architecture in Seroo’s Eye was (though it too had its share of awe-striking features). Buildings in Yspleash, as well as all centript cities, were constructed from the same material as the outer wall, though the material was simply poured and molded against the mountain range rather than divided into individual bricks. The result gave the impression of a city that was one huge, amorphous mass that virtually melted off the mountainside. Various points had been molded into more distinct buildings, but the interior walls of every building were shared with another, hence the colloquial term for a centript city being a hive. Misshapen ovals bore into the sides of buildings to act as tiny windows, and single planks of solid wood shielded entryways.

  She navigated through the twists and turns of the narrow streets according to Caya’s somewhat vague directions, and was pleasantly surprised to find herself at the entrance to Delightful Desserts.

  Kali stepped through the doorway and was greeted with a booming hello by the store’s provisioner, a stocky faif with a broad face and a wide smile. Her skin was a shimmery green mixed with bright yellow, in stark contrast to Kali’s, which was a swirl of pale blue, violet, and pink pastels. Very few faifs shared the same combination of colors or patterns on their skin, though Kali and the baker both had long, crimson hair.

  “How can I help you, dear?” asked the woman with a toothy smile. She wore no facemask; either she had long since grown accustomed to the city’s inherent scent, or the aroma of baked goods kept it at bay. She stood behind a glass-plated shelf stocked with cookies, baklayv, sugartongues, and other various sugary treats.

  Faifs generally sustained on sunlight and a minimal amount of water, but when they ate real food, it was packed with sugar. It had been over a week since Kali had last eaten, so she was craving something sweet. Kali scanned the rows of food and had to stop herself from drooling over the multitude of pastries from which there were to choose.

  Baklayv consisted of several layers of thin dough, filled with finely chopped nuts. They got their sweetness from being soaked in sugar syrup, honey, or both. Kali did love the dough’s fluffiness after biting through that initial crunch, but it sounded a little too sweet for her today.

  Despite their name, sugartongues were not as cloying as baklayv. They were made by mixing the same type of dough with finely-ground almonds, then baked off and glazed with sugar syrup. Sugartongues earned their name from the shape they were molded into: somewhat cylindrical, but coming to a distinct point on one end. Children loved the novelty of rushing into pastry shops and buying up as many tongues as they could.

  Today, a particularly scrumptious-looking knaff on the bottom row of the baker’s display caught Kali’s eye. Knaffs were a thin, noodle-like pastry shaped into a square (or whatever shape the baker pleased) and soaked in sugar syrup, then topped with a layer of cheese and sometimes nuts to offset the sweetness with some savory flavors.

  She pointed at the knaff, with a mild white cheese sprinkled on top, and said, “Just this, please.”

  The baker nodded and scooped the knaff up off the shelf, plopping it onto a ceramic plate. “Would you like anything to drink with it?” she asked. “We’ve got coffee, cactus tea, and I even got a shipment of mir tea in last week! You ever had mir tea?” Kali shook her head. “It’s delicious. Very strong and sweet.”

  It sounded tempting, but the sweetness of the knaff would abate her craving just fine. “Not today, thank you,” she said. “I would take some water, though, if you have it.”

  Kali paid, then shuffled over to a small table cramped in the corner of the bakery by the window with her knaff-topped plate and cup of water. She heaved a sigh as she looked out at the streets of Yspleash, dropping her knapsack to the floor, thinking about her upcoming appointment.

  There wasn’t much time to waste, so she slid the mask down beneath her chin and bit into the pastry. It had a satisfying crunch, a rich sweetness mingling with the salty cheese. Exactly what she needed. This baker’s food never disappointed.

  “How is it?” the woman asked from behind the counter.

  Kali gave her a thumbs-up. With her mouth still full, she said, “Perfect.”

  - -

  The drugs were probably not of the highest quality.

  Puk was aware of that.

  They never were when he bought them from his friend in Rus Rahl, a scrawny dealer who went by the nickname Pillbug and was, by all accounts, a dipshit.

  But that hardly mattered, because drugs were drugs, and Pillbug’s prices were cheap due to Puk hooking him
up with a discount at Rus Rahl’s worst-kept secret: a brothel in the theater district where Puk’s pal worked as an accountant.

  Connections. Connections were invaluable.

  That was one of the few useful lessons his pop Doro had ever imparted. His other four fathers and his mother had been much better role models in general, but unfortunately they had not left as much of an impression on him as Doro.

  Puk and a few of his fellow qarms, who together comprised an entertainment troupe known as The Rusty Halberd (not his idea), had made the journey from Rus Rahl to Seroo’s Eye as the latest stop on their tour across Herrilock. They hailed from central Atlua, but thought they might make a pretty penny by voyaging across the Loranos Gulf and making their way from city to city in Herrilock.

  Personally, Puk was not a huge fan of Herrilock. The entire country was too arid and hot for the qarmish. He constantly felt dehydrated. But he had been there a few times, mostly staying put in Rus Rahl near the coast, and in fact it had been his idea to tour there in the first place.

  Which he had already come to regret.

  But it was neither here nor there, and now he had a hefty bag of drugs to occupy himself with, so he was mostly content.

  Puk was snuggled up in bed in one of the two rooms his troupe booked at Seroo’s Eye’s dingiest inn, a room that he was sharing with Vick and Dern, though they were both out seeing the sights. There were plenty of fascinating things to see in the city, but Puk had seen them all already, and so he wanted to be cozy while he ingested his fire-spit. His recreational drug of choice back home was marshweed, but while in Herrilock he had to go for the spit.