WHAT IF DEATH IS JUST ANOTHER
PAIR OF HANDCUFFS

For all the things Sterling has seen, the corn maze delights him.

He’d not ventured into the Sideralis Prairie, yet, in his time in Novus. He had admired it from the high walls of the Night Court, gazing out from time to time over the waving grasses, but the attractions of the city were too many and too new for him to care to wander elsewhere. Then summer had slipped into fall, and the prairie had turned from green to gold under the deep blue sky. This made him think of home, which made him bitter, and he had stopped looking at all.

But the first day of the harvest festival dawns clear and crisp and bright, and the streets of Denocte ring with laughter and excited talk of the activities. Adventure prickles down Sterling’s spine like a brisk autumn wind, and come afternoon he is glad to join the throng of horses making its way out into the fields.

He feels like a boy, now, nosing through the tall green stalks, the ears of corn winking like treasure from their husks. A part of him (a boring part of him, thinks the other part of him, which isn’t) supposes that he ought not stray too far, when he has work to be getting back to—but most of him has decided already to get himself totally and irresistibly lost.

It takes surprisingly few turns within the maze for the crowd to thin out, and only a few more until Sterling finds himself alone. He strolls along complacently for a while, passes a pair of unicorns necking in the thick of the cornstalks and offers an encouraging whistle; reaches a dead end and doubles back; takes the other fork, and starts to feel that old familiar eagerness, that creeping sense that he is looking for something.

The afternoon purples into twilight, and the shadows of the corn inch across the path, and Sterling feels his heart begin to skip with anticipation. He cannot shake the feeling that there is something waiting for him, up ahead—perhaps around this next turn, or just one more after that—

There’s a rustle behind him, and Sterling jumps, whirling, but it is only another horse, gleaming blue-gold in the shadows. “Sorry,” Sterling says, with an unselfconscious laugh, “I thought you were—something else...” And he trails away, tilting his head, listening. Now there is another sound, strange and heavy through the green walls of the maze, and it is not the sound of hooves, or the wind in the corn.

Sterling feels again that prickle of adrenaline, of yearning mixed with fear. He flicks a blue eye toward the stranger, and his grin is at once both anxious and hungry. “Do you hear that?”

AND MAYBE GOD IS JUST A COP
THAT WE CAN FAST TALK

August does a good job of swallowing back the sense of foreboding that threatens him when he looks down from a hilltop at the dark-tassled corn. He is helped in this by the glasses of richly golden dandelion wine he enjoyed back in the city; likely he oughtn’t be drinking at all, not with business later on, but it felt decidedly un-Denoctian not to. When he makes his way down to the entrance, where revelers are knotted together in groups small and large, neither does he turn down the cinnamon-spiced shot of bourbon he’s offered. It’s with that small fire still burning down his throat into his belly that he steps between the twin pumpkin-headed scarecrows marking the entrance, and the wide and wind-blown prairie vanishes from view.

Maybe more than anything else, it’s a sense of morbid curiosity that’s led him out here. After all, it was another Sideralis maze where Raum kidnapped Queen Isra and tore out Acton’s throat; some part of him wonders if this was the same ground watered by the man’s blood. Of course that would be the height of poor taste, but with the shadows the color of deep bruises and the corn’s long leaves scraping against one another the thought lingers like a scent.

But August’s guard doesn’t stay up for long. Lamplight spills across the path every few yards, and the sound of laughter carries better than the wind does through the rows and rows of stalks. Once, he finds a grinning old mare in one large dead-end handing out candied apples and cups of cider; a few twists down the path he is momentarily caught in a flock of weanlings wavering between terror and delight (of course, at that age they mingled well together).

Soon after he parts their company he finds himself at a crossroads. Both paths curve away into darkness; the stars are just blooming overhead. August goes left, and hopes it leads him to an exit; his buzz is quickly fading and hunger beginning to take its place. At least, he figures, if it came to it he could just eat his way out of the maze.

That’s when he comes across the stranger. When the stallion jumps, August startles back, with a laugh just as quick to follow; he sweeps his gaze across the striking young man with a grin. “I’ve been told on occasion I am something else,” he says, but adds nothing else when he notes how intently the stranger is listening. To humor him, the golden stallion twists an ear, holding his breath for the space of a couple heartbeats. “No,” he admits, and almost goes on to say that it is probably only the group of children, hot on his heels -

But then he does hear it, and it is not children, or unicorns, or anything else he’s passed. There is a thump, and a rough slither, like something heavy being dragged. His silver-eyed gaze meets one of bright blue. “Oh, that?” August’s tone belies the way his hairs prickle along his neck, the way the scrape and sigh of the leaves is suddenly enough to make him tense. He thinks again of the youths: terror and delight.

“Shall we try and find it?” he asks, all cavalier. The sound comes again, closer, and all at once it seems absurd that no matter where he turns, his back is to a shadow-thick wall of corn. His grin feels to him like it is flickering like the lanterns. “Or we could wait, and see if it does the work for us.”
  

August - -

there's a lover in the story
but the story's still the same

Sterling
in the maze

Sterling knows little and less of Denocte’s history, its recent turmoil. In the marketplace, he’s heard certain names bandied about (Isra with respect and pride, Raum with furious distaste) enough times to know that they must be important, but he has not yet been told the tale of the queen’s kidnapping. He is not aware that it happened on this very prairie, in a maze not unlike the one he wanders now.

Had he known, perhaps he might have entered with a little more caution; certainly he would have felt a darker jolt of apprehension at the unfamiliar noise that rustles toward them, once again, through the stalks of corn. As it is, Sterling feels his focus narrow to the sound: the thump and drag, the whisper of parting sheaves of corn.

Beside him, the golden stranger is grinning, his voice light, but Sterling doesn’t miss the current of disquiet hovering beneath his words. Sterling himself is almost vibrating with sudden energy, with the tantalizing promise of a thrill. He’s been a good boy, since he arrived in Novus; he’s kept his head down, and he hasn’t put one hoof out of line. But now, with the sky turning to indigo overhead, and the maze unfolding before them like a dark unanswered question…

“I’m hardly one to wait and be found,” he says, his voice pitched as casually as the stranger’s, but the curve of his lips admits equal parts eagerness and unease. He starts off down the path, throwing a quick glance over his shoulder to see if the other stallion’s joining him. “No harm in a little excitement, right?”

Sterling follows the turns and windings of the maze, one ear cocked always toward the sound, which seems to drift now nearer, now farther away through the rows of corn. What at first feels like a game (if a mildly unnerving one) starts to fill him with impatience, and he takes each corner faster than the one before it, needing to reach the end and see—

And then he spies a familiar jack-o’-lantern, carved to look like an old nag in a witch’s hat, a long pipe wedged between the gaps in her teeth. “We’ve seen that before, haven’t we?” Sterling asks his companion. He turns slowly in place, scanning the walls of corn, listening hard for the sound. Nothing—silence. It’s been some minutes, he realizes, since he heard it last.

“Maybe this was a fool’s errand,” he says finally, with a little laugh to hide his rising frustration that they’ve just been circling around. “Shall we make our way back out, and find something to eat?”

But no sooner has he taken a few steps in the direction (or what he thinks is the direction) of the exit than he pauses, staring into the gloom. There is a large, ragged opening in the wall of corn to his left, where before he is quite certain was an uninterrupted stretch of stalks. Sterling peers cautiously through the gap: all of the corn there is brown and withered, the stalks dried and broken off.

And yet there is a path. A trail of death, he thinks with a shiver, leading into the heart of the maze.

Sterling glances back at the other man, and this time, there is a real note of uncertainty in his voice. “That… wasn’t there before, was it?”

☆