Mango Chiefton's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Mango knelt by the cage bars and shook the incense box. Two chips of bone-ash rattled inside. He had counted on the smoke to seal each cut. Without it, his next runes would bleed until they drained him. He had nineteen marks. He needed dozens. The math was simple and cruel. Cut more, and he would die on the floor of this cage house. Riko crouched beside him. "How many carvings left in that box?" "Two, maybe three," Mango said. "Not enough for even one rune." Below, the wolf circled the trunk. It had finished the meat side of the strange offering and dropped the banana half in the mud. Its six eyes watched the platform. Mango's cut calf throbbed. He could not carve while the beast waited to smell fresh blood. Valentina rose from the wall. She lifted an ornate bong from a corner shelf, left by whoever built the place. Skulls curled around its glass. Runes crawled up its neck. "You breathe your violet leaf through this," she said. "But look. The bowl is bone. And the base is packed with ash." Mango took it. He tapped the base. Gray powder spilled into his palm. Not weed. Burned bone, ground fine, the same stuff that sealed his wounds. Someone had filled the bong with it long ago. "There's more in here than three carvings," he said. His hands shook. "There's a full night of smoke." He scraped the ash into his empty box. It filled to the brim. But burning it needed heat and a way to steer the smoke onto raw skin. Riko solved that. He wedged the bong upright and packed the bowl with the bone-ash. He lit it with the last coal from their fire pot. Smoke rose thick and sweet. Mango numbed his ribs with the poppy paste. Then he coated fresh lines with scented ink and pressed his side to the bars where he could reach the river below. He would not use piranhas here. He used the stencil and a sharpened bone sliver, cutting slow and deep. Blood welled. "Now," he said. Riko cupped the smoke and pushed it against each open cut. The wounds hissed and closed. No blood dripped. The wolf below lifted its snout, caught nothing, and paced off in confusion. Mango carved through the night. Ash smoke sealed every line. By dawn he had four new runes. Twenty-three in total. His hands were steady. His skin held. The drain that would have killed him never touched him. He set the bong down. The base was empty now. The bone-ash was spent, all of it, poured into this one night. "We're out," Riko said. "For good this time." Mango looked at the twenty-three marks. Dozens still uncut. He had the runes to finish and no smoke left to seal them. Somewhere in Sloughwater there had to be more bone-ash. He would have to leave the cage to find it.