Ruby Ruins

by J M D Reid

None helped the guards. They were seen as extensions of the Blues who’d won the war and ruled the country.

  He crossed the bridge into the Slops, another slum created when Kash spilled out of its ancient walls and sprawled up the Ustern from the bay. The stench of pig dung filled his nose, wafting from the holding pens where sounders of swine awaited slaughter in the new assembly line abattoirs.

  The lanes wound through this district, a mad meander. Children playing in the street shrieked as he rushed by. Boys waved sticks and girls clutched skirts to hide their faces. He could see the first hint of green hills. Lake Ophavin lay to the south. The pastoral areas were where many of the wealthy built homes and complained about the encroachment of the city’s slums.

  It had been a quarter of an hour since she’d been injured, and his leg muscles had transmuted into heavy lead. Halfway there. Now he raced through the Slops. Laborers stared at him with exhausted expressions, faces smeared with soot. Women gasped as they gossiped on the porches of rickety tenement buildings.

  He hardly noticed any of it. He raced through the city, passing shops and carts selling wormy turnips or day-old fish. Her spasms worsened as he neared the edge of the slum, the buildings thinning into houses with small gardens, the homes whitewashed and mostly in good repair. The women here shrieked as they hung laundry on lines or beat dusty rugs. Children peered at him through the gap between fence slats.

  When he entered the familiar lane that wrapped around Lake Ophavin and led to the south shore where Dualayn’s estate lay, he fought to hold onto her spasming form. He passed the high fences of the wealthy, walls made of river stone or high-quality brick. Cultivated vines grew up some, and all were topped by rows of spiked wrought iron, deadly obstacles for any would-be thief despite the artistry many possessed.

  Guards at the gates peered at him with suspicion before relaxing. A few cried out to Ōbhin, recognizing him. He knew most of the guards of Dualayn’s neighbors. He ignored the offers for help as he raced down the hard-packed dirt lane.

  He darted around the approaching carriage of Lord Dynith Marey who sat high in the Parliament’s House of Nobles. The groom wore a stiff coat of dark-red with a blue ascot about his throat.

  Ōbhin counted houses now. He passed the Chabrith House then the Marey Estate.

  Three to go.

  He raced past the Vinhastin Estate with its walls made of pink stone and grounds dotted with white geese that filled the air with their honking.

  Two to go.

  The estate of Lady Demett flashed by, walls covered in a thick layer of cream ivy, iron spikes poking through the foliage.

  One to go.

  He pushed through the last reserves of his stamina, sweat pouring down his brown face. It stung his eyes. He kept running as Avena’s spasms worsened. Froth beaded her lips. Fright clutched at his chest as he raced past the Tophreyn Estate. Then there was a gap filled with the blackberry hill, a small tor topped by trees and covered in the eponymous bushes. They were in full flower, a riot of pink blossoms dotting the thorny slope.

  Ōbhin focused only on the brick walls and the large main gates. Fingers lounged out front. The older guard had become Ōbhin’s second-in-command. He was smoking a blackroot cigar and staring down at his boots. The man looked up.

  Avena bucked hard in Ōbhin’s arms, almost spilling from his grip.

  Horror crossed the older guard’s bluff face and bulbous nose. The dark cigar fell burning from his lips. It struck his jerkin and spun off in a shower of sparks. He straightened up as Ōbhin closed the distance between them.

  “Elohm’s Colours, what happened to her?” Fingers asked, voice half-strangled. “Smiles, get the Black-damned gate open!”

  He rushed towards Ōbhin and then stopped a few paces away. He opened his mouth to say something then snapped it shut as he whirled around. “Smiles, I said to get this Black-damned gate open!”

  The wrought iron gates of the estate swung outward, pushed open by the thing masquerading as Smiles, a guard Ōbhin’s age. Ōbhin feared his friend was dead, his body dumped in a shallow grave. The thing pretending to be Smiles looked like him, even acted like him down to the man’s jovial manner and easy smiles.

  The creature’s grin melted away in a simulation of horror and fright so honest and real that Ōbhin almost believed it was the real Smiles.

  “Avena,” the fake-Smiles gasped, his dark eyes widening. He had a mop of light-brown hair, a tall man with a narrow nose. “Elohm’s Colours, there’s a half-cubit of steel in her head. How is she alive?”

  “She just is!” growled Ōbhin, exhaustion burning through his body. “Get Dualayn! Now!”

  Smiles bolted across the wilting grass and up the hill towards the large manor house. Ōbhin followed after, Fingers jogging at his side. On the slope to his left, Joayne stopped pushing her charge’s wheelchair. The withered Bravine, Dualayn’s long-invalid wife, slumped uncomprehending in her seat.

  Avena thrashed hard in Ōbhin’s arms. He stumbled, clutching desperately to her.

  “We’re almost there,” he said, terrified of dropping her. He didn’t understand how she could be still alive after the half-hour it had taken him to run here. He pushed himself as fast as he could, so he couldn’t lose her now. “Just hold on. Aliiva, sustain her with your Tone a little longer.”

  Smiles threw open the new doors of the manor house, replaced when Ust had battered them down. He rushed inside, his shouts echoing. Fingers muttered prayers to Elohm, the singular god revered by the Lothonians and others who dwelt on the Arngelsh Isles.

  As Ōbhin neared the doors, the manor house’s marble exterior rising above him, relief surged through him. Dualayn crossed the entrance hall from his laboratory, Smiles trailing behind him like a frightened puppy.

  The rotund, older man wore his usual dark waistcoat, this one a blue verging on midnight. He rubbed his soft hands before him, his plump face paling as Ōbhin slowed to a stop on the porch. He sucked in breaths while Dualayn pulled out his monocle to study Avena’s injury.

  “Colours, no,” he said. “That is deep in her brain.”

  “Can you . . . help her?” Ōbhin snarled through his exhaustion. A dizzy wave swept through him.

  “I will do my best,” Dualayn said. “Oh, child, what have you done to yourself?”

  He touched her forehead with a gentle caress, a father stroking his daughter. A scream echoed from upstairs. One of the maids, Smiles’s wife Jilly, raced down them while a pile of laundered linens spilled around her feet.

  “Avena!” Jilly cried and threw herself at the thing pretending to be her husband. Smiles wrapped her up in an embrace, comforting his “wife.”

  “This way,” Dualayn said. “Hurry.”

  Ōbhin followed the scholar and healer across the repaired entrance hall and around the base of the staircase to the open door to his lab. Avena jerked again, her body twisting. She let out a terrible groan of pain.

  “Why is she thrashing?” Ōbhin asked.

  “She’s bleeding in her brain,” said Dualayn. “The fluid can’t escape the skull, so it’s putting pressure on her brain which, in turn, is affecting her body. She’s lucky she was hit so high up. Lower down, near the back of the neck, is where her breathing and heartbeat are controlled.”

  “What’s up here?” asked Ōbhin as he followed Dualayn into the lab.

  “Emotions, memories, personalities. She might never recover. I have been reading the Recorder on brain regeneration—for my wife—and I’ve found out much, but there are still things I don’t understand. I have ideas, things I shall try, but . . .” Worried pain flashed across Dualayn’s face. “I want her to recover, too. I do, but you must be prepared for a suboptimal outcome.”

  “She’ll die?”

  “Perhaps. Or she might never fully recover. One half of her body might be paralyzed. Look at her face. You can see the right side is drooping with palsy.”

  Ōbhin stared in horror at how the muscles on half her face seemed to have relaxe
d, growing soft like rain-sodden clay. It pulled at her eyelid and cheek, her lower lip tugged down.

  “Her personality might never be the same. Blows to the head are never simple, but I think I can repair her. I need your help with the first stage.”

  “Anything.”

  “Set her with care on my table, then we’re going to wash our hands. Thoroughly. You’ll have to remove those gloves.”

  Ōbhin nodded. He set Avena down on the wooden table, covered with a white sheet, that dominated the center of the lab. The air smelled heavily of lye, the scent almost burning his nose. Ōbhin pulled his hands away from Avena, her left side, opposite from her brain injury, twitching more than her right. He swallowed and glanced down at his gloves. Some of her blood had stained them, gleaming bright and crimson.

  This is all my fault.

  Chapter Four

  Dualayn emerged from the vault at the end of his lab holding two of the topaz healers, each the size of a woman’s fist, and a handful of other topazes that were the size of marbles. Beyond, Ōbhin glimpsed shelves covered in all manner of gems: diamonds, emeralds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts, heliodors, and topazes. The seven wholesome jewels. Some were cut, others rough, and a few were wrapped up in wire, some sort of jewelchines.

  Panic gripping him, Ōbhin was finding his mind seizing on anything to focus upon but Avena. He stared at the healers. Each was bound in gold wire, the best of the seven metals you could use with them. The cheaper the metal, the lesser the effect. Ōbhin didn’t know what the smaller topazes were for. He was under the impression that healers required a big stone to put out enough power to do anything.

  Dualayn set the gems on a cloth beside Avena’s twitching body. He glanced at Ōbhin. “You didn’t wash your hands. Come on, we don’t have time for dawdling.”

  “Then let’s do it,” Ōbhin growled.

  “We can’t let any microbial into her,” Dualayn said, his tone cracking. “What is the point in saving her if we deliver an infection that could kill her? Wash!”

  Ōbhin had never heard the man sound so commanding. Dualayn marched towards the washbasin, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. It had an aquifer jewelchine inserted into a porcelain spigot. Dualayn tapped the top and water gushed from the sapphire. He plunged his hands in them, wetting them, and grabbed a bar of lye soap. He scrubbed; subs appeared.

  Ōbhin peeled off his gloves. He rarely took them off during the day. It wasn’t proper for a man to be seen with his hands naked. The Lothonians had strange customs. Men bare-handed and women bare-faced. He didn’t know what these “microbial” were, but he wasn’t risking Avena’s life.

  Dualayn handed over the soap. Ōbhin scrubbed his brown hands with the white suds. He worked fast, the water vanishing down the drain, his thoughts drifting through recriminations. I didn’t know she was behind me, part of him protested against the dark guilt pressing around him.

  Finished, Ōbhin turned to find Dualayn anointing the small topazes with wood alcohol. The sharp, antiseptic scent stung the Qothian’s nose. Then Dualayn picked up a scalpel, a small emerald inserted at the base wrapped in gold wire.

  “A resonance knife?” Ōbhin asked.

  “Yes. I observed the way the emerald on your tulwar is cut and wrapped by the wires.” Dualayn drew in a deep, perhaps fortifying breath. “Now, I need you to hold her head still.”

  Ōbhin gripped the sides of Avena’s head, his naked fingers sliding over her brown tresses. Dualayn grabbed the end of the backsword in tight hands and pulled. The steely grind of metal on bone clenched Ōbhin’s jaw. Avena bucked as the blade came free, coated in a smear of her blood. More oozed out, mixed with a clear liquid.

  Her spasms slowed. Stopped.

  “Okay,” Dualayn said, setting the length of blood-smeared metal down beside her and grabbing a healer. He activated it and pressed the jewelchine into her throat. “This will keep her alive for the next part.” He tied the gem in place with a linen bandage, the orange light bleeding through the cloth.

  “Next part?” Ōbhin asked, staring at the blood oozing out of the hole in her head, matting her hair.

  “We’re going to sit her up,” Dualayn explained. “You need to hold her head still by the base of her head and her jaw. No higher.”

  “Okay,” Ōbhin answered slowly. It sounded like no healing procedure he recognized. “Why?”

  Dualayn picked up the scalpel. “I’m going to remove the top of her skull.”

  “What?” roared Ōbhin. “You’ll kill her. Her brain will fall out.”

  “It’s attached to her body by the spinal cords, the retinal nerves, the auditory nerves, and a few others. The level of anatomical knowledge I have learned from the Recorder is amazing. This was something the ancients used to do. Brain surgery, they called it. They healed traumatic injuries with skills and knowledge I barely grasp. I promise you, this is her only chance. I can’t reduce the swelling without at least trepanning her. That’s drilling a hole in her skull to let the fluids drain. This will, I hope, let me repair the damage directly. Now sit her up!”

  Dualayn’s command came with the intensity of a sword instructor. Ōbhin reacted like he would to the man who’d taught him to fight with a resonance blade in service of the Satrap of Qoth. With care, he sat Avena upright. Her head leaned back, not supported by her neck. He shifted his hand to the base of her skull, cradling her.

  “I don’t have time to shave her,” Dualayn muttered. “I’m terrified this will be too late as is . . .” He sliced through her braid of hair with the scalpel. It fell to the table. Her shortened hair swayed loose about her head. He activated the scalpel’s emerald.

  It resonated.

  Ōbhin fought against his pounding heart to hold her head still as Dualayn worked. Supreme concentration tensed every muscle in the older man’s plump face. He cut the blade through her skull like it didn’t exist. He worked slowly, pushing her hair out of the way while circling her head. Blood oozed from the line he cut, soaking into her tresses.

  The muscles in Ōbhin’s arms burned from the strain of holding her in place. His chainmail armor weighed on him. It clinked, the only other sound besides the humming of the resonance knife cutting through Avena’s skull.

  This is insane, Ōbhin thought over and over. It’ll kill her. You can’t take a person’s skull off. That’s what protects their mind.

  Stray strands of her hair drifted off, severed as effortlessly by the vibrating knife as Avena’s skull. He held the blade just so, controlling the depth of his incision. Dualayn moved around the table, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ōbhin to finish. He made the last cut a straight line made with delicate care. He crossed her temple. Blood trickled down to her eyebrows. He neared where he’d begun as he passed beneath her wound.

  Finished.

  He turned off the scalpel and set it down. He grasped the top of Avena’s head and, with great care, lifted it.

  Ōbhin stared with a strange mix of horror and fascination at Avena’s brain. Two gray-lobes of white wrinkled and folded flesh joined by a small canyon. It reminded him of dried prunes sold by hawkers. Veins wound through the matter. Dualayn’s scalpel didn’t seem to have cut her brain. The only wound was the bleeding gash from the sword. Dark blood oozed out, the organ inflamed around it, swollen and bulging.

  “Avena,” Ōbhin croaked. His entire body trembled. He feared to breathe, terrified of dislodging the seat of her very being.

  “I know,” Dualayn whispered. “Okay, now lay her back down gently. Don’t worry. Her brain won’t fall out. Just go slow.”

  Like he lowered a newborn infant to the cradle, Ōbhin leaned Avena back. His hand held the back of her head, what remained of it, while Dualayn placed a small mound of clean linens for her to rest upon. Ōbhin settled her down on it and slipped his hand away.

  He shook worse than he had after any fight. He felt drained by the act of witnessing the surgery. His chainmail rustled as he took a step back. His naked hands clenched. He struggled t
o breathe, his armor weighing at him.

  His guilt.

  Dualayn picked up five of the small topazes. He placed them on the wrinkled tissues of her brain, forming a circle around the injury. Staving off his despair, Ōbhin stared with questions. Something was missing.

  “They’re not . . .” Ōbhin cleared his emotion-choked throat. “They’re not connected by wires. They’re just jewels.”

  “I had always dismissed rumors I’d heard of Bofozujimnizemvev”—Dualayn said the mouthful of syllables with ease—“the Forbidden Kingdom. You must have heard of it.”

  “South of the Shattered Islands. They don’t like outsiders much.”

  “No.” He went to a drawer and opened it. He pulled out a tuning fork. “They were said to use ‘proper harmonics’ to activate gems. I thought it nonsense, of course.” He struck the tuning fork against the edge of the metal table.

  Its pure note, a high buzzing, resonated through the room. The five topazes on her head lit up with an orange glow. Ōbhin gasped and stepped back at the miraculous sight. Dualayn set the tuning fork up right beside her, the twin tines blurring from their rapid motion.

  “Aliiva’s motherly compassion,” Ōbhin whispered.

  “The Recorder spoke of using a specific frequency of sound waves to produce an effect in gems,” said Dualayn. “I hope this is what they meant when they talked about brain regeneration.”

  Ōbhin took a step closer, reaching out a hesitant hand to Avena, then pulled back. He turned and grabbed his gloves he’d tossed onto the workbench. He pulled on the leather, covering his hands in black. Blood still stained the left, dried and crusting.

  He trembled, his eyes looking everywhere but her. He took in the laboratory, fully seeing it for the first time since entering. The room used to be a dining hall. At the far end was the vault door that held Dualayn’s collection of jewels. Besides the washbasin, cabinets lined the other walls full of all manner of items. Some were open, showing racks of jars and pots, others closed and locked. Among the visible containers, about half were sealed with wax while others were stoppered with cork. Diagrams decorated one wall, schematics for wire bending beside images of human anatomy, the outer layers of skin and muscles appearing to be flayed away to reveal the organism beneath. Another wooden worktable lay beneath the diagrams, covered in the small pliers, delicate chisels, and tiny hammers necessary to shape jewel machines.