SHORT STORY: "Tainted Soil" by Luana Saitta
- L. D. Whitney
- Mar 31
- 17 min read
It's rare to see the use of firearms in S&S, though I think it is becoming something more regular in the Fantasy genre at large. When I say "firearms", I'm not talking about AR-15's, Glocks, or Colt .45's. I've commented personally on this before, but I would draw the line at blackpowder muskets and pistols a la Solomon Kane. The moment it becomes easier to kill with a gun than a sword, I think whatever the story is, isn't S&S anymore. Doesn't make it bad. Just something else. Recently, the use of black powder came up in Dariel Quiogue's "Walls of Sira Yulun" alongside what I imagine to be very early firearms. This is also something that readers see in Joe Abercrombie's "Age of Maddness" trilogy. I use Mr. Abercrombie as an example because I also feel that the following story takes a lot of notes from his style of writing. The characters, world, and even the use of dialogue, feel very Abercrombie to me. This is a grimy place where sorcery, technology and industry intermingle and the results are what one would expect. I wonder if the author has an agricultural background as the premise behind the scenes is reminiescent to me of issues that face farmers back home. An intriguing thought.
Luana Saitta is a 39 year old author of Italian heritage, currently residing in Belgium. She’s been writing all her life and loves the work of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin and many more. Her work has been published in Swords & Sorcery Magazine, Wyngraf Fantasy, and Fangoria. She’s set to appear in issue #5 of New Edge Sword & Sorcery. She currently squats 85kg/188lbs in hopes that her thews become mighty enough to sustain the type of prose worthy of her idols.
"Tainted Soil" by Luana Saitta
The boy's body lay in the dirt.
Not dirt. Soil. Soil that nourished the crops that fed the city. The boy's body lay on the top soil, watered and enriched by her personally.
The grains that the farmers around the great city of Merynthia cultivated were hardly worth the name. None lived now who had known the city to exist within the limits of what the earth could provide for it. Rather than trade with its neighbors for much-needed raw materials, the Azure Circle, Merynthia's ruling council of wizards, took a protectionist bent.
The Circle set its geomancers to study the spaces between grains of earth, the adhesion between drops of water, to fortify the elemental connections of nature. From these experiments had come the pellets.
There was no doubt a more mellifluous name for them in the great tomes of sorcery in the libraries atop the towers that made up the city center, but pellets they were to the farmers that used them to enrich the barren soil, to the municipal administrators that supervised their distribution throughout the quarters, and the city guard that protected the trade. Once one of the latter, Claudia had now been retired for years, and had taken to growing millet on a little homestead well beyond the city's sight. Though, as this apocalyptic day had proven, not beyond its reach.
She cradled the boy's body in her arms. His unseeing eyes stared at the morning sky, his little mouth slightly agape. She ran her hand softly over his face, as if a bodily act of tenderness could undo the sharp shock of pain the iron ball had brought him, as if it could bring him back from the darkness. Claudia swallowed, looked from the boy to the squad of guardsmen surrounding them. They were standing in the front yard of her and Brynn's little adobe hut.
Brynn's face was dripping with tears and snot, her elfin features wrung into a rictus of terror and anger alike. One of the men was holding her back. The facades they were trying to maintain ranged from posturing to impassive. Claudia had tried counting them, see if she could take them. She kept having to restart. There was only person there she truly feared.
"What a kick these things have, huh?"
Captain Francesca Henry holstered her musket, a mostly ornamental piece few even realized she kept loaded, on the front of her belt. She hadn't changed much from their days on the Guard together. Her gorgeous blue eyes, her now-greying chestnut hair tied back in a bun, and most importantly: that hungry asymmetrical grin, indicating she was about to take something.
"I frankly don't really understand what you're doing out here in the boonies, woman of your skills. But life's fulla little mysteries, I guess." She scoffed. "And yer boy there just found out the biggest one of all."
A guffaw. She looked around, but nobody felt like laughing with her. Claudia's reputation still had currency among the Guard, and the eight (yeah, they were eight) soldiers who'd accompanied Frannie were too on edge around the legend Claudia Meziani to fully engage with their officer's bullshit. Near a dozen hungry kids out to prove themselves just saw their captain commit murder. Would they break rank... or try and prove to Frannie they're dependable?
Brynn screamed, lunged for Frannie. The guy holding her grunted and fastened his grip on her arms. Momentum made Brynn's legs go flying and land on the ground haphazardly. She was just sobbing now. The captain rolled her eyes. She walked up to Brynn and punctuated each word with a little tap on Bryn's cheek. "Ladies. Are. Talking."
A cloth appearing from Frannie's waistcoat found its way to Brynn's mouth, Frannie holding the gag tightly in place. She turned to Claudia. Their gazes met. Claudia knew Frannie's spent musket meant nothing; there were half a dozen crossbows trained on her right now. So did Frannie. Brynn went limp as her eyes rolled back. Without breaking their stare-down, the captain said: "Throw her in the back of the ox-cart."
As the soldier followed her command, Frannie popped another surprise out of her coat. Claudia knew it well enough. A pellet. Looks like Frannie had found out about one of its other myriad uses. She crushed it in one fist and sniffed it up, eyes closed in ecstasy.
"Unngh, that'll fuckin do us..."
She shook her head and looked at Claudia again. With her trademark crooked gait, she walked up to her old subordinate and squatted down.
"Three days, Sergeant Meziani. You hear me? Distribution center 1610, three days from now. And what're you gonna do there?"
Claudia kept the answer from Frannie for a little longer than was comfortable for anyone listening. She exhaled, hard.
"I'm going to ask for an extra load of pellets."
"Yup, yup. And why are you doing this?"
"Because Ador the Sun-father... has... has deemed fit to make my crops grow bountiful, and I cannot maintain the City's mandated ratio... of yield to pellets..."
"Really good! Now you're catchin' on! I don't care how good your soil is, there is a minimum amount of pellets yer supposed ta buy! Man, I wish you hadn't retired! You are a champ at following orders, you know that, Meziani? What's next?"
"I ask for security to help load it up on my cart."
"Doing so good! And security will be..."
"Probably some of these assholes."
"Exactleeeeeee-ee! We are on a ro... roll! Okay, we're almost there – where are we gonna t-take our baggies of those little b... blue friends?"
Claudia sighed. She was beyond fear at this point, but the azure flame she had spotted in her former captain's pupils causing her voice to crack made her uneasy nonetheless.
"The Lion's Head. Unload everything in the back room. Get Brynn back."
Frannie stood up and saluted.
"Atta girl. Give back a little to the community for penance. And remember, if you don't follow your orders to the letter... well, you got my sample, didn't ya?" She nodded to the boy in Claudia's arms. "Your bitch is... gnghhhyah... safe. Less you fuck it up."
Frannie scratched her neck, looked at Claudia awkwardly for a few seconds and turned around. She jumped on the ox-cart, let out an "Ooh-rah" and gave the signal for all to leave. As the city guards left, amid the creaky maneuvering of the cart and the whinny of horses, Claudia counted to thirty before she allowed herself to cry. She didn't even know the kid's name.
II.
Twenty-four hours later. The scents of strange spices and herbs filled her nostrils. Not so strange, once upon a time. Claudia and Frannie used to knock on many doors in their patrolling days, and your average great value magical shop was certainly among them. She sat in the waiting room of Madame Malleah's Emporium of Good Fortune, Romantic Requisitions, and Magical Miscellany. The charms and statuettes and seemingly endless sorcerous minutiae would have annoyed the hell out of practical Brynn. From the window she could see some of the other establishments she'd used to work over, out here in the laborers' quarter, butchers to bakers to brothels.
She had brought the boy's body to his family at the next homestead. She was ashamed about her not being entirely sure what the kid's name was, or any of his family members'. Brynn was the one who made the social calls, played with the neighbors' kids, gave them sweets whenever she had something to give. Shit, she made sure she always had. The kid's mother had taken a swing at her. She took it. The woman's son was dead because of something neither she nor the boy had anything to do with. Just Claudia's past reaching out of the shuttered recesses of whatever part of her she had tried so desperately to forget.
"Tea, sweetheart?"
Out of the bead-curtain separating the anteroom from the waiting room Claudia was sitting in, Adi appeared, smiling face and broom in hand. Adi was all the kindness that the City couldn't destroy, distilled into a person. She put the tray down on the little table in front of Claudia and started pouring without waiting for an answer. Bending over the gently steaming cup, Claudia inhaled the jasmin aroma. Adi sat down next to her, put a hand on her shoulder.
The retired guardswoman turned to the witch's maid and grabbed her hand tightly. There were no platitudes exchanged, no offers of useless help made. They simply basked in each other's presence, their mutual affection standing tall and bright in the evil stream she had to wade through until all of this was over. She'd given Adi a short version of the events that unfolded at her and Brynn's farm. Frannie showing up with her goons, making her an offer. Her saying fuck you. Frannie shooting the boy, smiling, not hesitating for a second. Frannie taking Brynn. Her quiet burial of the boy, the parents looking on.
Adi listened, Adi comforted. That girl was a witch for sure, pure and true. She always knew, from the first shakedown of Madame Malleah's that Frannie and her ever did. She remembered getting up in Adi's face in her days as a rookie officer to keep her from reaching her mistress while Frannie laid out the terms of their agreement in the back-room. Claudia remembered doing little more than posturing; even back then, Adi was equipped with a preternatural serenity that made lesser folk acutely aware of their own insecurities. There were many gods in Merynthia, and while Adi was not the proselytizing kind, Claudia was pretty sure hers were not to be trifled with.
"Still a maid, Adi?"
Shrugging, she said: "The spirits just don't have the budget for a second witch in this quarter."
The soft clinking of her bangles was interrupted by a rising murmur from the consultation room. The opening of a door, followed by a man coming through the curtains, all smiles.
"So I will give him this concoction on the seventh hour of the seventh day, and then..."
"Oh yes absolutely my dearie, he will love you sure as Ador Sun-father loves Selen Moon-maid. Go on then, lad."
The man clutched the phial he was holding as if it held the very secrets of life itself. He awkwardly nodded at Claudia and Adi as he passed them, the wizened form of Madame Malleah guiding him gently to the door. When he had exited the door, the witch turned to her maid. Her grandmotherly demeanor went the way of linen tunics come winter-time.
"Having a tea with lovely lasses are we? Instead of ushering clients outside?"
Adi shot up and started cleaning up silently. Malleah's gaze held fast upon her.
"It's little things like this, you know. Show me you're not ready every single day. You're lucky I even allow you to clean this place."
She looked around. "For all the cleaning you end up doing."
Claudia found the place, riddled with bric-a-brac as it was, plenty clean.
"You're the last one for the day, then? Come on in."
She followed Malleah into her consultation room. Round table, skulls, bookshelves, candles. Just needed some smoking beakers.
"What can I commune to the spirits with you for, my lovely olive-skinned lass? Or is it a charm ye be wanting? Tho I can't imagine a pretty thing like you needs much luck with the business of love."
"I need a warding spell." Malleah nodded. "Well then... what kind of trouble have ye gotten into?"
"Geomancer trouble."
A squint. "I don't go interferin' with the City wizards. We're far enough from the center we get left well enough alone out here. As I think you well remember... sergeant."
"I do. It's not the City wizards I have beef with. It's someone on pellets."
The witch tented her fingers and laughed. "Even if the mighty sergeant Claudia Meziani couldn't take on some pellethead... surely she could ask Captain Henry for assistance. If'n I remember correctly, many a barroom brawl was settled by the two o'yez."
Claudia looked at her feet. She let the silence take care of itself.
"Oh! Ohhhh! Are you two feudin'?"
She nodded, allowing Malleah to finish her train of thought.
"And she's on pellets... Well, can't say I'm surprised. She's got a bit of a side-business going, and nobody touches her round these parts, really. Why not, eh?"
"She took my wife. She wants me to put in a request for an extra seasonal ration, which I have to hand over to her and her goons at the Lion's Head inn."
The witch shrugged. "And?"
"And I'm not going to let her walk over me like that anymore. I'm done taking her shit. That's why I quit the guard. Why I left the City."
"Way I see it, sergeant; just do this one thing, get your lass back, probably get paid a bit for your troubles. Who knows? Maybe there's more gold in it for you in the future?"
"I'm not going to pay you for sound matronly advice, you know. I came here for a warding spell. Are you trying to not get paid here?"
"Oh, love... there's honestly not much sense in getting paid for one warding spell if it's going to interfere with one of my core business components, is there?"
Claudia sighed. The terms of Malleah's agreement had been updated since her days, it seemed. "Since when?"
"Couple months. It's not like these rubes notice that the magical component in their charms and amulets has been stepped on. D'ye know how hard it is to get belladonna or eye of newt in these times? I just want to keep an acceptable service level going for my customers. Did ya see that lad coming out before ye? He'll be in Amara's divine embrace for days to come! What's it matter that his love potion has a bit o' crunched up pellet in it?"
"But I bet you charge the same price as if you did have eye of newt, huh?"
The witch shrugged. "I've got overhead."
Claudia sighed and looked around.
Malleah continued: "Now is there anything I can do otherwise to help ya, love?"
There really wasn't. She was going to have to face a juiced up Frannie with no magical assistance.
"Adi! Show the good sergeant out, ya good-for-nothing wretch of a girl!"
Nothing at all.
III.
Forty-eight hours later.
The ox-cart made its way through the muddy streets to the Lion's Head. The distribution center guards had made no fuss whatsoever. Any farmer that could jack up their harvest meant more slop for the masses, with a bigger cut for the city, and more to skim off the top for enterprising guards.
Three large, heavy sacks lay in the cart. They were unmarked, nothing betraying their contents as originating from underground alchemy laboratories in the heart of the City. Two goons flanked her on the driver's seat. She'd recognized them both from the farm. They were awkward, not lording it over her at all.
She looked around the workers' quarter with melancholy. She'd had friends here, far as friends could be real if you were an aggressive bully wielding some amount of power, state or otherwise. She felt shame reminiscing on those days.
The inn was in a slightly more affluent part of the quarter. The spires of the center were still far off, but many-storied buildings abounded here – living quarters as well as businesses.
When the Lion's Head came into view, a guard posted at the door motioned them to go round back. They arrived at a courtyard surrounded on all sides by several stories worth of tenant rooms. A barely occupied stable, along with a bale of hay, stood adjacent to a tiny vegetable garden enclosed by little strings bound to poles. Claudia instantly noticed the fragility of unpelletted produce. The Lion's Head must have had some exclusive clientele.
The goons descended from the driver's seat around her. The sound of a creaking hatch opening.
"Gooooood morning, Merynthia!"
Frannie made her way up to the courtyard. Her smile was so wide and her eyes so flamingly blue that Claudia was pretty sure what she'd had for breakfast. One of her escorts told the captain she was clean.
Frannie put her hands in her sides. "Well! Looks like you got a little present for me!"
Claudia played it cool. Didn't even look at her.
"Show me Brynn first."
A beat. Frannie wagged her finger at Claudia.
"Ha! Hahaha! You... You've got some balls, sergeant! I remember that! That's... You know what? Okay! Sure! Lieutenant Juno, get that bitch out."
One of the goons went back down into the cellar and soon returned with Brynn in tow. She was gagged, hands bound behind her back, and with a black eye that hadn't been there before.
Claudia moved for the first time, rising in her seat. Their eyes met. It took all she had not to scream her name.
Frannie: "Relax, killer! We didn't put any hurt on her she didn't make us do!"
Claudia jumped off the cart. Slowly, she advanced towards her old commanding officer. Frannie's grin tightened. Shrunk.
All shuffling in the yard stopped. A chicken walked by, clucking.
Claudia got riiiiiight up in Frannie's face. The azure flame dancing in the back of her eyes.
"I don't think I'm gonna give you squat. I think I'm gonna walk outta here with my wife and you can't do shit about it."
Frannie scoffed.
"Oh? Oh, is that so? And how the fuck you plan on doing that? Cuz uhhhh... I got it on pretty good authority the local magic users don't really have a stake in stopping me. Or did you learn magic yourself? Huh?"
"Believe it."
Claudia snapped her fingers.
All across the yard, crossbows were lowered. Juno undid Brynn's restraints. Brynn didn't seem to understand what was going on, until lieutenant Juno motioned her to go to her wife. Brynn stumbled across the grass and fell into Claudia's arms.
"Gonna take you home, girl, don't you worry. It's all gonna be fine."
Frannie looked around in a panic.
"What the... what the... who did this? Who gave you a fucking domination spell?" Claudia helped Brynn up on the cart. "There's all kindsa magic, Frannie."
***
In the consultation room of Madame Malleah’s Emporium of Good Fortune, Romantic Requisitions, and Magical Miscellany, its owner sat in the chair from which she had served hundreds, if not thousands, of the working poor of Merynthia. The chair in which she, of late, had been selling spells and charms diluted with geomantic pellets, whose magical elements were often incongruous with the actual recipes required for said spells and charms, causing at best, a bad trip, and at worst, internal bleeding. A cup of jasmine tea lay on its side, spilling its contents all over the desk, the liquid touching Madame Malleah’s lolling tongue. Her eyelids were blinking erratically. Her cash drawer was empty.
***
"Come on, lads. Let's go inside and have a drink", Juno suggested. They all nodded and followed.
Frannie was boiling, started pacing and wildly gesticulating.
"I'll get you for this! When I'm done with this bitch, I'll have you all written up and thrown in the deepest fucking dungeons! The wizards will have you for their experiments!"
The guards ignored her, some more awkwardly than others.
Frannie pulled out another pellet, crushed it and sniffed it up. After a few seconds to process the double dose of powder, she stormed towards Claudia.
"You fucking cu--"
Claudia planted a right hook straight to Frannie's nose. The brittle cartilage shattered, turning Frannie's face into a red pulp. Claudia grabbed one of Frannie's lapels to steady her, punched her again. Again. Again. Again. She let go with the last one. Frannie went flying, landing on her back in the vegetable garden. Claudia couldn't resist: "Ooh-rah."
She made to get on the cart with Brynn. They were done here.
"Hahahaha..."
A laughter deeper than any she'd ever heard her old captain utter sounded across the courtyard. Claudia turned. Frannie’s head lolled upward from her prone body. Everything below her eyes was strips of meat with teeth sticking through, dripping with blood. She rose, seemingly with her torso pulling her up.
She made herky jerky steps towards them.
"You haffff been a fery naughty girrllll..."
She suddenly launched herself across the yard to land on Claudia's chest, pinning her to the ground. With an animal shriek she started flailing her arms onto Claudia's chest and face, drawing blood with the first strike. Claudia tried to fend her off, but her mad strength was too much.
Brynn jumped off the cart and onto Franny, both rolling off of Claudia. Dazed, Claudia pushed herself up. Blood was pouring out of her nose. The courtyard was spinning. She saw Frannie gaining the upper hand, tried to get up as best she could. When her vision had more or less stabilized, she found herself standing opposite what was left of her old mentor. Frannie was holding Brynn by the throat, her feet dangling a few inches off the ground.
"I dunnooo... waddafuck yew did... but thiff iff where it led to, bitff... I'munna choke yergirl out... and yer gonna fukken watff..."
Claudia saw Brynn struggling like a fish on dry land. Tears were rolling down both their faces now.
"Brynn, baby, I'm so sorry..." she managed as she staggered towards her old commanding officer. Brynn's face started turning blue as the flame running through Frannie's veins. The captain once again emitted that deep, hoarse, halting rasp, which was the best approximation of laughter her body could produce at this point. Claudia stumbled, the palms of her hands pathetically lifted upwards.
One of which, with a sudden speed belying its owner's wretched state, reached inside Frannie's uniform coat and pulled out her musket. Claudia put the barrel under Frannie's chin and pulled the trigger. The back of Frannie's skull blew out.
And still... the pressure of her arm on Brynn's throat only decreased slightly. Frannie's eyes were only the azure flame now.
"Claudiaaaaa... I am the goddeff of the nameleff thinf what crawl in the bowelfff of the world..."
Claudia collapsed. What else could she do? The split second of diminished pressure applied by the choking arm of the thing that was once Francesca Henry, allowed for Brynn to reach into the cavity of Frannie's exposed skull and pull at whatever she found, with whatever strength was left to her.
Barely above a whisper, Brynn uttered: "Only shit comes from bowels."
The left side of Frannie's brain came out in Brynn's clawed hand, pulsating with azure veins.
That did it.
They both collapsed into the dirt, right next to Claudia. Claudia crawled over to her wife and embraced her with the ardor of the Sun-father burning his brightest dawn. Over Brynn's shoulder she saw the remains of her captain, the blue gunk and phosphorescent azure blood out of the back of her skull tainting the cabbages.
IV.
Lieutenant Juno, in short order becoming Captain Juno, made sure nobody made a peep about what happened that day at the Lion's Head inn. A shrewder business woman than Captain Henry, she managed to cut a deal with the geomancers to sell the body of a pellethead whose substance abuse seemed to have gone so far as to have contacted some elemental force, however briefly.
In order for nobody to make said hypothetical peep, Lieutenant Juno divided the reward for this unique scientific discovery among all witnesses. Madame Malleah's Emporium of Good Fortune, Romantic Requisitions, and Magical Miscellany never reopened after an unfortunate medical emergency that befell the good Madame, in the wake of which she was never able to touch the elemental forces quite like before again. The Emporium's assets were auctioned under the supervision of her bereaved maid, who seemingly disappeared out of the city not soon after.
Claudia had made a long rocking chair for their porch. They sat on it most nights, weather permitting. Adi would read from one of the books she'd brought from the old magic shop. Sometimes they'd eat some cakes Brynn made. They had given the neighbor family (Brynn told her what they were called, and she would never forget) a substantial part of their winnings. The money wouldn't bring their son back, but Claudia didn't need it.
As she looked down on Adi's head resting on her chest, the former maid diligently reading about the impressionist period of the Manja-Shumi people (and the king who oddly tried to suppress it), and Brynn already sleeping with her head on Adi's lap, she knew for sure. She didn't need anything.
Just like her soil.
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