Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  I like it here. It reminds me of home.

  Tommie stops four paces from the sun-washed mouth of the alley we’ve been following for a few minutes now. “This is as far as I can go.” He nods out toward the border, then indicates his chainmail, painted black with the silvered borders of the Knights of Cant. “The kid and me, we’re in colors. His Majesty’s running a game out there today, and we’d blunt the hook.”

  I nod my understanding. “Where is he?”

  “You can’t see him from here. You know the alley between the Working Dead and where Fader’s Whores used to be?”

  “Used to?” A twinge of nostalgia—I’ve spent some happy hours at Fader’s. “What happened to Fader?”

  “She was entertaining too many Rats,” Tommie says with a shrug. “She had a fire.”

  Life in the big city. “All right,” I say. “I’ll tell His Majesty you took good care of me.”

  “You’re straight, Baron. Thanks.” Tommie nudges his kid partner with a sharp elbow and gives him a Get with it, idiot look.

  The kid snorts blood and mumbles, “Thanks, uh, for not killing me, Cai—uh, Baron.”

  “My pleasure.”

  I leave them there and walk out into the sunlight.

  The buildings that were once in the midst of this border have burned to low-sloping mounds of rubble, leaving a wide-open area of breeze and sun. A couple of places around the plazalike clearing hold lounging Rats in their colors of shit: brown and yellow. That’s not unusual—this is their border, after all. A few of the shuffling street-people might be Rats as well, covert.

  There’s a considerable traffic through here: men with sharp prods driving roped-together strings of zombies from the Working Dead, which is the only thriving business for blocks around. I guess the owners want to be close to their source of supply. The zombies don’t bother me, with their grey-leather skin and filmed-over eyes. Our Workers are worse, really; with the zombies, you can’t see the buried spark of life—intelligence, will, whatever—that makes Workers so tragically creepy.

  No sign of any Subjects, although you can never really tell. Any of these loafers who are taking the sun, any of these winos in this alley or the sleepy-faced rith smokers on that stoop, any could be Subjects of Cant. I can’t count on recognizing them—I’ve been out of Ankhana for a while.

  The alley Tommie directed me to is full of garbage—food scraps, rotting clothes, bits of broken furniture—and rats, the four-legged kind. There’s a leper lying on a makeshift bed of rags, bloody pus draining from open sores into his ragged patches of yellowed grey beard. I squint at him.

  He says, “For fuck’s sake, Caine, get off the street, you stick out like a fucking boil on my ass.”

  “Hey, Majesty,” I say as I drift casually into the alley. “How’s business?”

  The King of Cant’s ravaged face splits open into a grin of unalloyed joy, and mine answers him. He’s just about my best friend on Overworld. On any world. “Caine, you son of a bitch! How’d you find me?”

  I dig down behind his pile of rags and settle in, my back against the wall. “Your boy Tommie sent me over. He’s a good man. Hey, those are some killer sores.”

  “You like ’em? They’re yours. Lamp oil with candle wax and bread dough, chicken blood half curdled with willow bark to keep it from clotting, and some pine gum to hold them on. Look nice, but they stink like a bastard. What brings you to Ankhana, you shit? Who are you killing?”

  I shake my head and give him a serious look. “It’s personal, this time. I’m looking for—”

  “You know there’s an Imperial warrant on you?”

  “Yeah yeah yeah, I heard. Listen, I need to find Pallas Ril.”

  He frowns. “Pallas?” he says slowly, then he suddenly brightens. “Hey, look there, the boot’s about to drop.” He waves a rag-wrapped hand toward the plaza.

  “Majesty, this is important,” I begin, but my eyes follow his gesture in time to see a loose zombie shuffle up to one of the lounging Rats on the far side of the plaza. The Rat gets up to kick the zombie away, and the zombie suddenly moves a lot faster than zombies can really move.

  It grabs the Rat and pulls him close, then steps into a shadowed alley mouth like a trick with his favorite whore; when it lets him go the Rat has a bloodstain spreading below his solar plexus. He drops to his knees and then pitches forward onto his face.

  A very professional job: if you can rip the heart good on your first stab, you don’t get the messy spray, and the gut-punch that accompanies the stab drives air out of the lungs. He’s dead before he can draw enough breath to shout. As the zombie shuffles off, another man in Rat colors steps out into the dead Rat’s place.

  “Smooth, eh?” Majesty chuckles and cups a hand to his ear. “I don’t hear any alarum. Got ’em all.”

  I nod. “What’s this about?”

  He smiles. “I got a tip that Thervin Backbiter is meeting a certain captain of the King’s Eyes in that tenement across the way.”

  “You taking him?” Thervin Backbiter is King Rat, the leader of the northwestern rival of the Kingdom of Cant. I know him. I don’t like him. “Hey, long as I’m here, maybe I could do him for you?”

  “Thanks,” Majesty says with a grin, “but not this time. I don’t want war with Rats right now—and besides, you’d have to kill the Eye captain too, and nobody needs that kind of trouble. But, y’know, I also don’t want Thervin to climb into bed with the Eyes; the Rats’ve been entirely too frisky lately as it is—if they line up some Imperial backing they’ll be out of control. So instead of killing him, I’m sending a friendly message—all three of his stooges.”

  Three dead men equals a friendly message. That’s the kind of math I understand.

  “Best part is,” Majesty goes on, “he won’t even know anything’s happened until he comes out of the meeting. That’s when my fake Rats out there’ll give him my regards. He’ll hear the word. ‘If there’s a next time,’y’know?”

  “So who gave you the tip? You got an ear in the Eyes, or in the Rats?”

  His grin turns smug. “Trade secret, buddy-o. Let’s say times are good in the Kingdom, and leave it at that.”

  Huh. If times are all that good, he wouldn’t be hanging his ass out here for on-site supervision, but I let it go. Why waste breath arguing?

  “Pallas Ril,” I remind him. “Where is she?”

  His eyes go vague on me again. “I hear she’s in town,” he offers.

  “I hear that too. That’s why I’m here talking to you. I also hear she’s running a game and some Subjects are playing.”

  “I don’t think so. I’d know about it. Pallas and me, maybe we’re not close, exactly, but she would come to me straight for that kind of help, wouldn’t she?”

  “She did.”

  He gives me a long look, and his voice cools. “You think I wouldn’t tell you?”

  I shrug.

  “Caine, I’m telling you now, all I know is she’s in town. I seem to recall some report of contact—she talked to one of the boys, or something—but nothing serious.”

  “Who’s Simon Jester?”

  “The guy who’s smuggling these poor mopes that Ma’elKoth thinks are Aktiri? How should I know?”

  “You lost at least two of your boys about this time yesterday morning, down in Dunger territory by the river. What were they doing there?”

  “How should I know?”

  “That’s twice you asked the same stupid question. They were stooging for Simon Jester, and you fucking well know it.”

  He sits up suddenly and gives me a hard look. “You’re working, aren’t you? Who’s paying? The Monasteries or the Imperials?”

  “Majesty, I swear to you, my only interest in this is finding Pallas Ril.”

  “I heard you broke up.”

  “Is that your business? Where is she?”

  “But—” He shakes his head and looks honestly confused. “—what does Pallas Ril have to do with Simon Jester? Is she working for h
im?”

  I squint at him without answering. He takes it for a long time, then lowers his face and scratches his head. “All right, shit. I’ve been supporting Simon Jester a little. Those boys, yeah, they were stooging. I mean, what’s the harm? A little jab in Ma’elKoth’s ass, that’s all. But I guess the Cats took them; I don’t think any lived.”

  “What’s the next leg on the trip out?”

  He frowns. “I don’t know.”

  “When’s the next time Simon Jester should make contact?”

  “I don’t know.” His frown deepens. “I should know this.”

  “All right, listen.” I scratch my head in furious exasperation, rub my eyes, and ask, “How’d you get into this in the first place? Did you meet, ah, Simon Jester . . . in person? Who came to you?”

  Slowly, very slowly, he shakes his head, and his frown clears into something like awe. “I don’t remember . . .”

  “This is a problem.”

  His expression instantly congeals into stony belligerence. “Don’t try and make it my problem, Caine. I’ve got too many guys on this street, you’ll never—”

  “Relax.” At least I’m starting to get a handle on how that damned spell works. Funny that it doesn’t seem to work on me. “I believe you.”

  Majesty now looks honestly disturbed, and more than a little frightened. “Are you ever gonna tell me what’s going on? I mean shit, Caine, this is creepy! Am I losing it? I should know this shit.

  It’s some kind of magick, isn’t it—somebody fucking hexed me, is what happened, I’m thinking.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “I’m hexed? That’s what you’re telling me? I’ll fucking kill them.”

  “Don’t take it personally.”

  “You say. Nobody puts magick on me, Caine. Nobody. Don’t they know I’ll kill them? Do these fumbledicks have any clue who they’re fucking, here? I’ve got Abbal Paslava the freaking Spellbinder—he’ll do these bastards till their dicks stick up their own assholes and they fuck themselves with every step!”

  I hold up a hand to cut him off. “How’s our politics with the Faces, these days?”

  “Not so good,” he says, subsiding. “Why?”

  “Hamman’s got the best connections into the palace. I have to talk to him.”

  “You’ll need a damn loud voice. He’s been dead a year.”

  “You’re kidding! Fat Hamman? I thought he was indestructible.”

  “Yeah, so did he. Nobody knows who took him, but the smart money’s on the new leader of the Faces—that elf bitch from the Exotic Love in Alientown. Kierendal.”

  “The dyke? Holy shit.”

  “Yeah, it’s bad enough to have to deal with a lapper, but a sub? Running a Warrengang? She’s bringing in all kinds of subs—elves, dwarves, sprites, the works. The Faces practically own Alientown, now. She moved all the fittings from Hamman’s old place, the Happy Miser, over into Exotic Love; it’s the top casino in the Empire, now. Calls it Alien Games. And she is no one to screw with, no pun intended. Word is, she’s got her hooks on Hamman’s spellbook, and you know what elves are like—they fucking invented magick. Hey, is she mixed in this? Is that mothersucking dyke the one who put magick on me?”

  “How’re her connections?”

  He shrugs. “Good as Hamman’s, maybe better. He only got the gamblers, mostly. She gets the gamblers, the addicts, and the perverts who like to wet their wicks in a subhole. Hey, you wouldn’t want to kill her for me, would you? I’d make it worth your trouble.”

  I shake my head. “Not today. Listen, I gotta go. I’ll be in touch.”

  “What, already? It’s been two years—you can’t catch up a little?”

  “Sorry. I’m on a deadline. And, hey, if I’m as hot as all that—you got a spare cloak, or a cowled robe or something? Something that’ll get me as far as Alientown without being tagged?”

  He points with his thumb. “Take mine. It’s behind that broken cabinet. Y’know, it’d help a lot if you’d just shave. Without that beard, you’d be a different man.”

  “That’s just it. Sometimes I need to be me.”

  He shrugs. I get the robe and shrug into it, and pull the cowl up to shade my face.

  Majesty extends his hand; I take it. He says, “You know my house is open to you. Come by after the Miracle, any night. You can stay with me.”

  “I’ll do that. See you.”

  I stroll off, whistling like a malingering Laborer until I’m out of the game field; then my face sets and I start to move with some serious speed. So this is going to be a little tougher than I’d thought; so what? Here in Ankhana, it’s impossible to be depressed.

  The soft west wind blows the smoke and stench of the Warrens off behind me as I head out of the borderlands toward the Face, and the sun warms the light cloth over the leather on my back. Whores and beggars look me over as I trot past, maybe sizing me for a lift or a strongarm, but I’m moving too fast; I’m gone before they can make up their minds. I ignore them.

  The fire-gutted rubble of a building provides a shortcut into the Face, the section of the Warrens that borders Ankhana proper and was once the home ground of Hamman and his Faces; a filthy man dressed in scorched rags snarls at me from under a tarpaulin stretched between beams that are tumbled like cornstalks after harvest. Farther back in the shadow behind him a dull-eyed woman cradles a silent infant at her sagging, empty breast. I smile and shrug an apology for intruding in their home and move on.

  I’m comfortable here, more easy in my heart than any place I’ve been since I was eight years old. Maybe after I find Pallas, I’ll have a couple of days to enjoy it.

  The warming sun raises a slight prickle of sweat. I itch all over. I smell like a goat.

  I love this town.

  I’m free.

  13

  KIERENDAL THE FIRST Face looked up briefly from her book at the coded knock on her apartment’s outer door. Tup’s tiny doll-sized hands continued to dig into the cords of her shoulders and neck. “Don’t get up,” Tup’s whistling voice fluted in her ear. “Zakke will get it.”

  “That will be Pischu,” Kierendal sighed. He’d never intrude, lacking an emergency.

  “Tell him to go away.” Tup now added lips to fingers on the nape of Kierendal’s neck and drew warm shivers up from the base of her spine.

  “Mm, stop.” Kierendal reached back over her shoulder and drew the lovely little treetopper forward; Tup rode the palm of Kierendal’s hand as though bareback on a horse. Though only twenty inches tall, Tup was a marvel of feminine perfection; perfect breasts that need never fear the pull of gravity, flawless skin, golden hair that seemed to shine with a light of its own. She might have been a beautiful human, were it not for her height, and the large translucent wings that were folded behind her, and the back-folding thumb of each foot that enabled her race to perch. And charming, too, as well as incredibly responsive; her nipples hardened as Kierendal watched. She squirmed in a deeply suggestive way and wrapped her trim and lovely ankles around Kierendal’s forearm.

  “No time to play now, sweetling. Business calls. Fly along—and get dressed. Pischu likes his women tiny, and we don’t want to put ideas in his head.”

  “Oh, you’re terrible.” Tup giggled. She spread her wings and flew into the gloom of an inner chamber, silent as an owl.

  Pischu coughed from the doorway. “Janner’s cheating again.”

  Kierendal slowly and lovingly stroked shut the manskin cover of her massive book, and only then lifted her steel-colored eyes to meet the gaze of the daytime floor boss of Alien Games. The pupils in those eyes slitted vertically: nighthunter eyes.

  Pischu coughed again and suddenly looked away; Kierendal, as was her habit when studying, reclined nude on a vast expanse of piled silken cushions. Pischu was one of only three Faces who were allowed within her chambers, but this privilege didn’t ease the man’s discomfort. Kierendal enjoyed it; that discomfort lent an attractive lemony tint to the otherwise bland earth-tones of P
ischu’s Shell. Like all of her people, the First Folk, she never needed to concentrate to summon mindview; it was simply another sense, like smell or taste.

  With heavy brocade curtains drawn closed over the wide windows, her chambers were lit only by artfully placed lamps that painted rose highlights into her spun-silver hair, and across her lead-white skin.

  She was tall even for a female of the First Folk, who commonly outgrew their males, and so lean that the articulation of her hip joint could be seen through the swell of her ass as she stretched her endless legs behind her. She lifted herself up on one elbow to expose the nipples of her nearly absent breasts; she’d painted her nipples silver this morning to match her intricately coiled hair. The money-colored flash caught Pischu’s eyes, and his face reddened while the lemon shade in his Shell deepened sharply.

  “How bad today?” she asked in a voice husky and languid enough to make Pischu wince.

  “Worse than usual. He’s gumming the dice, and he’s so damned clumsy! Two of our . . . guests . . . have already tipped, and I had to toss them to stop a fight.”

  “Anyone important?”

  “No. Both losers, but low rent. They’re no loss, but Berne just came in.”

  “Berne?” Her thin lips, the color of calf liver, drew back enough to expose her overlong and oversharp canines. If that maniac caught Janner gumming . . .

  Berne liked the dice and was a bad loser from the first roll. If he found someone to blame for it, Janner’s head would be rolling across the floor in the fraction of a second it took Berne to draw. And Janner was the proprietor of Ankhanan Muckers and Manure, one of Kierendal’s more profitable partnerships.

  “I’ll deal with it. Is Berne in the pit yet?”