Black House

By Elana Gomel

Leire always knew she was different. Her flaming red hair, her uncanny skill with the needle, and most or all, her curiosity, set her apart in the prison-city of Hiria, dominated by the mysterious Black House. But only when she is arrested does Leire learn just how different she is. A descendant of the cursed witchbrood that haunted the city's n

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gypsy Shadow Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2021
• ISBN: 9781619506701

Book preview

Black House

by

Elana Gomel

All rights reserved

Copyright © September 4, 2021, Elana Gomel

Cover Art Copyright © 2021, Charlotte Holley

Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

Lockhart, TX

www.gypsyshadow.com

Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing, LLC.

ISBN: 978-1-61950-670-1

Published in the United States of America

First eBook Edition: December 3, 2021

Dedication

To my son Ariel who loves cities and mysteries

Part 1 Witch-objects; Chapter 1—Leire

She woke up when the White Moon was pinking, the first faint scarlet of the Red Moon creeping over its ghostly face. She heard Nana stir in her bedroom beyond the thin partition, then get up and go to the kitchen. The water pump complained with a rusty cough as she tried to get herself a drink. Nana had been listless and moody recently. Her face, previously firm and rosy-cheeked under her crown of white hair, was shriveling like an apple left out in the sun.

Leire listened to the tenement settling in for the night: a drunken shout; a woman’s voice raised in an argument; the snick of the entryway door below as a late reveler came in. She got up and padded to the window, drawing the curtain aside.

The Red Moon was now almost full, and its scarlet light dribbled down the steep streets of Hiria, turning twisting alleyways into runnels of blood. The city fanned out from the head of the narrow mountain-cradled valley, sloping toward the lakeside. From her midlevel flat, Leire could not see the sprawling residences of the rich and the powerful along the shore of the great lake Lakua, but she knew how profligate they were with space—the one commodity the city was perpetually short of. The majority of the population were packed into the rookeries of the poor and the tenements of the middle class, as Hiria, squeezed between the impassable Mendia Mountains and the limitless expanse of the lake, clawed at the sky with its ever growing fingers of stone and wood.

A sanctuary. Or a prison.

She lifted her eyes to the scarlet orb in the sky. It was bad luck to stare at the Red Moon, especially now as the night of the Black Moon was approaching. It was bad luck to be awake in the middle of the night, restless and hot. It was bad luck to have pale skin and red hair.

Leire collected bad luck like some people hoarded broken silverware.

Seized by familiar restlessness, she scanned the slender towers of the tenements that marched toward the gleam of the Lakua, moonlight painting a ruby red path on the black water. The path dissolved into the distance, reaching toward the mythical Other Shore. Leire imagined herself running down the sloping streets toward the lakeside, her bare feet touching the water edge and then miraculously carrying her across the glassy surface, leaving behind the crash of too many bodies rubbing against each other in the twisting streets of Hiria.

Leire sighed. There was no escape. Even if such a miracle happened, she could not leave Nana behind. And the minions of the Slayer King were still out there. Or so they said.

The water pump coughed again, clearing its metal throat. Leire went into the kitchen where Nana was struggling with the squat construction, pushing at the recalcitrant handle that resisted her with the dumb malice of inanimate objects. Leire took over, and a gush of clear water flowed obediently into a tin mug.

Nana patted her hand.

Good girl, she said. But you need to sleep, Leire. Other seamstresses work late into the night because of how clumsy they are. You don’t have to; Mendiette told me needles and scissors trip over themselves to do your bidding.

Leire smiled. Mendiette, the owner of Madam Mendiette’s Ladies Fine Couture where Leire worked, was rather tight-fisted but she had already increased Leire’s pay twice.

You also need to rest, Nana, she said.

Nana wrinkled her pert nose. Recently she had asked Leire to call her by her given name, Nerea, to forestall rude remarks about babies having babies by some new neighbors in the tenement who were not used to the pair’s appearance. But Leire could not bring herself to let go of the childish nickname that had been her security blanket when the Black Moon rose over Hiria. Other children could call upon Mummy or Daddy. She only had Nana; and that was enough.

All right, Nana said. All good people sleep on the night of the Red Moon. Let us be good people, Leire. And then the curse of the Black House won’t touch us. Will it?

And she glided out of the kitchen, straight and slim in the lacy nightdress Leire had made for her. She made all of their clothes, even though now they finally could afford shopping in the Taylors’ Row. But Leire enjoyed the easy mastery of her craft, the soft touch of velvet and the cool caress of silk; the way in which her scissors unerringly cut along the lines of the patterns, while a perfect jacket, dress, or petticoat shaped itself under her fingers.

Leire poured some water for herself and returned to her own bedroom, any possibility of sleep taken away by familiar restlessness.

She went back to staring out the window. When she was a child, her imagination had been her refuge and her sanctuary. But growing up she realized that there was no room for the imagination in the narrow confines of Hiria. Generations of Zaira people were born, lived, and died in this crack in the mountains which the Founders of the city had declared to be their refuge from the Slayer King. But the Slayer King had faded into a legend. The claustrophobia was real.

The need to escape was brewing inside her like a fever. Leire traced the jagged outline of the tenements on the dusty glass. The clustered towers still twinkled with occasional lights; at least, she was not alone in her wakefulness on the night of the Red Moon. Leire touched each light with her fingertip, counting them.

Her hand paused as it encountered a square blackness, a hole of nothingness in the red-tinged cityscape.

Standing between her and the lakeshore was a squat building, taking over an entire city block, contemptuously defying the municipal regulations of height and footprint. As profligate with space as it was with reason, the Black House was watching her with its blind window-eyes, squatting on the slope below her tenement like a godlike toad. The legacy of the witchbrood.

Leire shivered, and yet she could not take her eyes off it. Her friends had taught themselves the art of selective vision. They never talked about the Black House. They never as much as glanced in its direction. When they were toddlers, their parents must have slapped them if they pointed to the enormous shape brooding in the heart of the city and asked: What is this? So they did not ask anymore.

But Leire had no mother or father to slap curiosity out of her. Nana had encouraged her questions, though with her limited education, she had provided few answers. She had grown up in the rookeries where the poor lived, but by the time Leire came along, she was already living in middle class tenements, closer to the lake than to the mountains. The geography of Hiria reflected its history: the Founders had marched up to the shore of the Lakua and if the legends were true, beyond it. Their traumatized subjects trailed after them, the artisans and craftsmen settling in the middle levels of the sloping valley, the poorest crowding in the stifling cul-de-sac where the sheer walls of the Mendia Mountains locked the valley in.

Leire was better educated than her grandmother. In addition to mandatory public schooling, Nana had sent her to a private academy run by a former governess, and Leire was taught history, civics, deportment, and rhetoric. The first subject was her favorite, and Nana encouraged her interest. Nana bought her books on the history of Hiria, which she devoured late at night. Books about the Slayer King, and the Founders who led the people of Hiria out of his cursed kingdom through the hidden passage in the Mendia Mountains, and the witchbrood who haunted the valley of refuge, harassing the survivors until they rose up and killed the monsters… Later Leire bought more books and read the same story over and over again until its events became as familiar as the lines in her own narrow palms—and as enigmatic.

The Moon was now the color of dried blood and the sky around it glowed like an inflamed wound. Suddenly Leire heard multiple footsteps in the stairwell outside. Was it Old Zabal bringing his cronies home from the tavern? But no; the feet were well-shod; their tread heavy with authority.

Zaindari?

They passed Zabal’s floor and continued climbing. The door of Leire’s flat shuddered under a barrage of blows and was torn off the hinges.

Chapter 2—Itzal

The pickings were slim today: two worn linen handkerchiefs and a bronze coin he had fished out of the gutter. They were hardly worth bringing back to Papa Garoa, but on the other hand, he had nowhere else to go. Itzal did not fancy sleeping in the entryway of a shabby rookery where he would be kicked awake by some damned early riser. More prosperous tenements had gates, and the lakeside neighborhoods, with their fancy villas and big gardens, were off limits to street urchins. The zaindari patrolled those neighborhoods between the dusk and the Red Moon, arresting anybody who did not belong. And even if he managed to escape the patrols, he did not want to be out in the open when the Red Moon rose in the night sky. There were still three days before the Black Moon, but rumors were already flying about bad things stirring in the alleyways and crawling through the narrow passages between courtyards.

Itzal pushed the handkerchiefs into his pocket and sauntered away, watching out for Mama Neka’s gang. They were hardier and more brazen than Papa’s pickpockets, handy with gutting knives, and dangerous to tangle with. Itzal looked to the Founders’ Shrine looming above the street and whispered a brief prayer for luck. The Founders had defended the Zaira people against the Slayer King and the witchbrood; surely, they could help him against knife-wielding rivals!

The daylight was bleeding away, the bony face of the White Moon peeking through the gap between two bowed rookeries and swelling with the sickly flush of the Red Moon. Gas lamps were beginning to blossom in the main thoroughfares. Itzal dived into a narrow alley—and stopped.

There was a splintered packaging box, carelessly tossed away onto a pile of rubbish. But Itzal had been a pickpocket for most of his brief life and had a sharp eye for urban treasures. Even an empty box could be sold to mudlarks and dust-mongers.

Glancing around and making sure nobody was watching him, he squatted on his haunches and poked at the box. Disappointing: the box was empty.

Or was it? There was something in the corner, indistinct like a twist of shadows. Itzal reached into the box.

It was as if he dipped his fingers into a warm liquid. But instead of yielding to his touch, the liquid gripped him like glue and flowed up in defiance of gravity. Oily darkness spread over his hand and ran up his arm, an inky blot that clung to his dirty skin, covering every inch of it.

No, not covering. It was dissolving his flesh as thoroughly as a paint thinner washing away a stain. There was no pain. The liquid darkness was curiously gentle but inexorable. Itzal could feel it eating through his muscle and consuming his bone, every inch of his arm becoming a tar simulacrum of itself. But it could not sustain its shape, and the boy watched, a scream building up in his vanishing throat, how first his hand, then his forearm, dripped onto the pavement in streamlets of viscosity. He staggered, his body lopsided now, and waved what was left of his right arm in the air, splattering the walls with heavy drops of himself. But the process would not stop. Itzal tried to run, but his legs gave way as his torso collapsed into the spreading black puddle.

His head was the last to go. As the darkness consumed his mouth, his left eye blinked furiously, telegraphing his cry for help, and a bubble rose from the tar, carrying his silent scream. But the darkness was thorough. In a moment, only a large oily puddle lapped against the rookery walls.

A drunk staggered in, looking for a place to piss, but wrinkled his nose and walked out, cursing those damned pigs.

For some time, the puddle remained quiescent, glistening oily in the mixed moonlight and gaslight. But as the Red Moon climbed higher into the sky, the puddle shuddered and heaved like a pregnant woman’s belly. The tar liquid gathered together and rose up into a sagging column. As the red light poured into the alley, it reshaped itself into a boy’s figure, complete with ragged clothes and a handkerchief poking out of the back pocket. But every inch of it was greasy, and quivering, and pitch-black.

The black Itzal steadied itself on its stocky legs—one was visibly shorter than the other—and walked out of the alley. But before doing so, he carefully returned the splintered wooden box to its prominent place on the heap of rubbish.

Chapter 3—Leire

The zaindari filled the small flat with their raucous voices, stomping boots, and tobacco smell. There were only four of them, but they seemed to multiply like reflections in a carnival House of Mirrors.

Nana came out of her bedroom and was yelling at them, clutching the edges of her shawl. Her thick curly white hair fell down to the small of her back, and she furiously swiped away stray locks. One of the zaindari unceremoniously grasped her shoulders and pushed her out of the room.

Leire exploded in indignation, What are you doing? Leave my Nana alone!

Another man—this one with a luxurious moustache that almost obscured his face—snickered.

Your Nana? How old are you, five?

The whole situation had the flavor of a nightmare, vivid and meaningless at the same time. What could they possibly want with two women? Neither she nor Nerea had ever had any run ins with the law, but the distrust of powers-that-be was thick in the streets of Hiria, growing denser the higher one went, away from the lakeside and toward the granite walls of the Mendia Mountains. While they were respectably middle class now, Leire knew Nerea had grown up in the rookeries, and had no love for law enforcement, often mocking them with off-color jokes.

We have not done anything, Leire said, trying to sound conciliatory and humble.

It is for Udalerria to decide.

Udalerria: the labyrinthine warren of bureaucracy that ran Hiria, the vast complex of offices, courts, archives, and prison cells. Everything was there: the headquarters of the zaindari, the Mayor’s official quarters, and the Founders’ Shrine—the seat of power. Leire had been inside it only once when she had registered as a citizen on her eighteenth birthday. She remembered her revulsion from the mean narrow corridors and the small dark offices, smelling of dust and brewed tea. The very walls of Udalerria seemed to be shedding invisible particles like an old man’s skin.

You can’t just arrest me! For what?

Are you Leire Ura?

That’s not a crime!

Come on! The mustachioed officer grasped her hand, but she yanked it away and pushed through the narrow gap between his body and the doorframe. Nana was outside in the hallway, her eyes darkening like wet mud.

Who gave you the order for her arrest? Nana demanded. The Mayor? Aitor?

The Mayor has more important matters to decide, the burly zaindari snarled at her. Come on, woman, don’t make it harder!

Well, Nana said with icy calmness, by tomorrow you’ll be sorry you did not become a street sweeper instead of putting on the uniform. Jailbirds don’t like former zaindari, and the jail is exactly where you’ll find yourself, while Leire will be back home with me.

The man’s thick face flushed the color of beets.

Enough of your lip! he roared. Tell her to come peacefully, or we will arrest the both of you.

Nana hugged Leire and whispered into her ear. Leire stared at her, astonished and shocked; the illogic of this fever dream was making her head spin. Nana gave her a gentle push.

One of the zaindari led her out of the flat and into the dark stairwell. Nana did not follow. She stood on the landing, looking down, as the zaindari marched Leire out of the building. Other tenants, woken by the commotion, peered fearfully through peepholes.

Let go of me! she snarled at the mustachioed zaindari whose fingers were digging painfully into her upper arm. I can walk on my own! You didn’t even let me get dressed! Shame on you!

Indeed, she was still wearing her nightgown, shivering in the cold and damp night air.

That was the order.

Whose order?

Your investigator. Benat Hartu.

What is he investigating me for?

No response.

They crossed a plaza and went down the broad stairway that led to Udalerria. The Black House loomed over them. Leire felt as insignificant as a gnat between these two hulking presences, silently staring at each other in the blood-colored darkness: the Black House and Udalerria, two giants crushing the city of Hiria in their standoff.

At least her remonstrations seemed to have some effect, as the zaindari let her walk on her own rather than trying to drag her. It did occur to Leire to run away, but where would she go?

Nana’s words circled in her brain like vultures pecking at her brittle composure. What did she mean? What did any of it mean?

Don’t let them put iron in your hands.

Chapter 4—Benat

He stood by the window, watching the Red Moon fade back into pink as the eastern horizon lit up with the pearliness of dawn. He would never confess this to his practical colleagues, but he loved this in-between hour when everything seemed new, and strange, and full of promise, and even the Red Moon shone like a rose petal, instead of staining the sky with the hues of a wound. The Lakua was a silver splash beyond the green of lakeside residences, and he looked at it for a long time.

When he was younger, Benat secretly dreamed of sailing away. That was considered outright blasphemous. The Founders who had brought the people of Zaira to safety in this narrow valley went to the mythical Other Shore of the Lakua after their mission was completed. Nobody else could follow. Even to attempt to do so risked bringing the attention of the Slayer King to the survivors. Fishing boats hugged the shore, and anybody who tried to sail farther away was stopped by a barrier of ice—or so the rumors went. The sheer walls of the Mendia Mountains fell into the turbulent water on both sides of Hiria, and reefs and underwater rocks barred the way around them. But more impenetrable than the walls was the fear that shrouded them—the fear of the Slayer King and his minions, veiled things of liquid darkness that lurked outside the sanctuary.

But then he joined the zaindari. His family wanted him to be a manufacturer or a physician, both respectable and lucrative occupations. Hiria’s industry was booming, while medicine was in high demand to cure the premature decline and lack of vital spirits that affected the working classes. But Benat was drawn to power—the power to impose order upon chaos, to make sense out of nonsense. When he officially became an investigator, he realized that there were things to be done inside the city that were more important than the vague longings for freedom outside. Without responsibility, freedom was meaningless. And while curiosity remained, now it was directed inward, into time rather than space. Into the history of Hiria.

As he had swiftly risen through the ranks, he was shown the few classified documents that had survived from the turbulent period known as the Cleansing or the Uprising when the Founders had defended their people against the witchbrood. The night spent reading those smudged fragile pages changed him. No longer an explorer, in his secret ambitions, he cast himself as a doctor. His parents, estranged now, had been right without knowing it. He became a surgeon, not of people but of the city itself. He had to heal the sore in the heart of Hiria, the putrid wound the Founders could not—or would