“The bodies need to be disposed of,” Vaste said, lifting a corpse on his own shoulder, evincing distaste between those mighty pointed teeth that stuck over his lip. “Our enemy is a necromancer, so the corpses have to go over the walls. Now. Every single body not dead needs to be disposing of the dead.” He stared at Guy for a moment. “That includes you, being not dead, and not doing anything else.”
“I'm morally opposed to touching corpses,” Guy said. “Yeah, it's a religious practice for me. Handed down from me mum, it was.”
“If you have any religious impulse other than self-regard, I'll die of old age right here,” came Curatio's voice. The healer's robes were sodden with red, and he was carrying a body across his shoulders. He brought it to a truck nearby and handed it up to a Watchman, waiting, nearly out of breath, who dragged it into the bed with so many others.
“Well, you better make your peace, then,” Guy said, barely concealing a smile. This should hold them off. He'd already participated in every other mad idea they'd had – or at least been present for them. Lifting and stacking carcasses? This was beyond him, beyond anything he had any mind to do. Nor could they make him.
“Have you ever been attacked by a revived corpse?” Vaste asked, flinging the body in his arms into the back of the truck. “Spoken to by one?” He had adopted a storyteller's tone. “It's really quite something, let me tell you. They open their mouths, and rot pours out. If they're particularly decayed, you can hear the bones rattle in the jaw as they channel the voice of Malpravus with unearthly sound. It's a bit stunning to the uninitiated. I think one fellow who was on a raid with us in the Plains of Perdamun one time actually shat himself before falling off his horse and fainting of weak heart. Stunned his head and was never quite the same after that, despite our healing spells.” He shook his head sadly as he strolled across the stones to where another corpse waited to be picked up. There was no shortage of them here, where the battle had ended. Probably no shortage of them throughout the dockyards, given how much killing had been done here.
Guy felt his mouth dry out. He was fairly certain they were putting him on. How could a body spring back to life, after all? Sure, he'd seen a little magic here and there from this lot, but there was a difference, wide, vast, between that Cyrus impersonator walking upright again after his rough landing and rougher fights, and seeing a dead body spring back to life and start gabbing your ear off. “I don't think I believe you,” Guy finally managed to get out.
“Then we're on equal footing then,” Vaste smiled as Birissa crossed behind him, heaving two corpses up onto the truck that had become the body disposal wagon. “Because if you think I swallowed that tripe about you having a moral or religious objection to touching corpses, think again. I know for a fact you're the sort who'd pretend to help an old lady who died in the street just for a chance to pick up her purse whilst you were posing.”
Guy tried to keep a flat affect upon his face. Birissa and Vaste made clear by their expression it was doing no good. “Maybe,” he finally conceded, then let sag his shoulders. “All right, fine.” He dipped his head, and started toward the nearest – smallest – corpse he could spy. “But I'm going to complain the whole time, because this indignity should not be countenanced without protest. You people are treating me like a rented mule.”
“I'd treat the mule better,” Vaste said as Guy stooped to pick up the corpse on his shoulders. He favored the troll with a hurt look that wasn't much rooted in hurt, more in the indignation of being forced to do this. “It would complain less,” Vaste explained as Guy took up the weight on his shoulders, almost falling over in the process. He kept his gripe to himself, as it turned out, though, because every time he opened his bloody mouth, the stink of death rolled in. So he ended up working quietly after all, though the grousing inside his own mind was considerable, of course.
Chapter 72
Curatio
“Where is your guildmaster?” came the sharp voice from over Curatio's shoulder as he finished directing the spout of water upon the flaming ship. He recognized it, of course – the Captain of the Yuutshee surely left an impression on all she met, even absent any connection she might have forged with the people of Sanctuary.
Curatio gave Mazirin a sly look. He was at the controls of another modern wonder – another truck with a mounted gun on the back, but this one sprayed water. Which was fortunate, because the likelihood he could have cast a water spell at present was extremely low, bordering on nonexistent. “Greetings to you as well, Captain,” Curatio said, coolly formal. She stood on the ground beneath him, looking up, hands on hips, coat lapels pulled back to reveal gun and sword, as though she had cause to use one or both depending on the answer he gave her.
“I ask again: Where is Alaric?” Mazirin's voice was firm, the product of a woman who was clearly unused to evasion or lack of frankness.
“He walked that troll warrior to the gates,” Curatio said. The water streaming from the gun was trickling down, now, the flow decreasing by the moment. He had no idea how it came out of the tank beneath him, nor how much it contained. He was merely impressed that machinery had, even in its rather limited way, usurped what once had been the domain of magic. “I know not where he is now, though I imagine he will be back this way when he is done.” Curatio suppressed a smile, barely, as he let the sly ghost of a truth spring free from his lips. “I am certain he will want to check in on you, so surely he shall be along.”
Mazirin took that almost in stride. Her already-dark eyes clouded, narrowed further, and she regarded Curatio with a suspicion that told him she might perhaps have caught the inference he'd tried to slip over her head in amusement. Her reply did not evidence this, but it was on her face nonetheless. “What were you thinking?”
“Me, personally?” Curatio hid his smile, barely. “I was thinking of the wonders of this machinery, this water spraying truck. Fine equipment, this. Cities have always been perpetual tinderboxes, and I imagine dockyards to be even more so. To craft such a thing–”
“Not what I meant, and I think you know this,” Mazirin said tightly. “Why would you fools besiege the docks?”
“In the name of stopping foolishness, of course,” Curatio said.
Mazirin blinked against the surprise of this remark. “How do you come to this reasoning?”
“Simple enough,” Curatio said, surveying the embers of the fire one last time before twisting the valve that shut the water off completely. The burnt hulk was well drenched by now, and no survivors seemed to be in evidence. The trickle suggested water was running low, as well. Better to save what was left in the event of a flare-up. “The city is starving and embargoed. Hungry men make terribly unwise decisions. Better to seize these yards now while the enemy is splitting their forces whilst trying to corral all the grain, rather than wait and let the mob spill their blood and lose their lives trying days hence.”
“You couch your foolishness in noble terms,” Mazirin said, allowing only a moment for the thought to seep in. “But it is foolishness. Some have died who might not have otherwise.” She inclined her head, just slightly, toward the burnt ship.
“Indeed,” Curatio said, hopping down from the back of the water truck. His ears were not quite back to normal, but did well enough for conversing with humans. “Tell me something – had the Machine men made their way to your cargo holds yet?”
Mazirin's lips turned up, most unpleasantly, and in a rawer display of emotion than Curatio had yet seen from the shipmaster. “No. But they were close.”
That she not fastened the appellation, “the thieves,” to her statement was of little surprise. An eminently calm person, Curatio deemed her, nearly elvish in her even-temperedness. “How might you have handled their arrival, I wonder? You and your crew?”
“Our holds were empty,” Mazirin said archly.
“I note they are not restricting themselves to merely the cargo holds,” Curatio said with a smile. “I have examined, albeit not closely, some of the plunder. It
seemed to my – admittedly inexperienced – eye that at least a portion of the takings included personal property, treasures, goods and sundries of the crews themselves.”
To this, Mazirin, again, gave little reply. “Where is Alaric?” she asked, beating that drum once more.
“I can tell you no more about his whereabouts at this moment in time than when previously you inquired,” Curatio said puckishly, for she practically demanded it.
“How goes this?” a voice called in question. Loud and strong, Curatio recognized it instantly before he even turned and saw the warrior in black approaching wide from the front of the water truck.
“Perfectly fine,” Curatio said, turning to give Cyrus the barest hint of a nod. “The fires are but embers, hopefully not to spring up again. How goes it for you, our conquering hero?”
This produced a predictable blush in the warrior's cheeks. All these years, all these victories, and still he vacillated between pride and humility. Better that, though, than untrammeled arrogance. “We took the wall fairly easily,” Cyrus said, adjusting his belt. His hand fell to touch the pistol he'd taken from his dark elven boy, the machinery now strangely open, and then-
“I see you disarmed your offspring,” Curatio said, a bit cautiously, looking upon Epalette. If he killed the lad in the battle–
“Hopefully I taught him a lesson that he missed earlier in his education,” Cyrus said, brushing against the Epalette's hilt. The warrior was stiff, a cloud settled over his usually open features. For all his faults and foibles, for his fearsomeness in battle, among friends Cyrus did little to trouble himself to hide his feelings. Apparently this tendency extended to Mazirin, for he took notice of her but did not wipe the troubles from his face. Perhaps he couldn't, Curatio reflected; children did have a peculiar tendency to make it past their parents' defenses, and that might extend even to a child a thousand years old whom the father had only just found out about.
“Captain Mazirin seeks Alaric,” Curatio said, trying to draw the warrior away from his own worries. It never did any good for Cyrus to expend too much energy in his own thoughts. “Have you seen our brave knight?”
“You would do well not to be quite so mocking,” Alaric's voice penetrated the darkness of the eve as he coalesced from smoke and fog that Curatio had not even seen approach and solidified into himself, making up the fourth point of the square between Curatio, Cyrus and Mazirin. Alaric, though, in spite of his chiding tone, seemed much less flustered that Cyrus – at least outwardly. Inwardly, though, Curatio imagined was a different story...
“I wasn't mocking,” Curatio said. “I was stating facts. Accurate descriptors, even.”
Mazirin carried that same suspicion as she shifted her attention to Alaric. “Have you a rationale for this foolishness?”
Alaric looked like he'd been properly caught out, frozen almost mid-step, as though he'd prefer to be sucked back into the ether rather than face her question. “Ah...what foolishness would that be?”
Mazirin swept her hand wide around, indicating the entirety of the docks around them, then brought her accusing eyes back to the Ghost. Her meaning was clear, her question unasked, at least by voice.
Alaric took a moment to compose his reply, eyes moving furiously in his head. While he did that, Cyrus leapt in.
“We were trying to save the city,” the warrior said, with his typical earnestness. Curatio tried to suppress his smile. Tried, but not very hard, and failure was easily accepted with a chortle that no one heard over the lot of them speaking.
“You could have killed us all,” Mazirin said.
“It seemed to us that you were likely to suffer that fate in any case,” Alaric said, making a very small show of turning to look at one of the nearby ships, which had a pile of cargo stacked up at the base of its loading ramp, where the Machine thugs had left it when they'd been caught out during the attack. “Were not the forces of the Lord Protector going ship to ship?” He seemed genuinely uncertain, though surely he knew. Again, Curatio felt a thrill of amusement at seeing Alaric's discomfiture in Mazirin's presence. Truly, this was a rare gift.
“We frequently deliver in corrupt and barbarous ports,” Mazirin said, explaining as though to a child, though with perhaps a bit more calm. “Things like this are an expected part of the bargain. Sometimes that means our ships are boarded. Things are taken. This is the cost of doing business. My people know not to bring anything they would regret losing with them.”
Alaric cleared his throat, again, theatrically. “I believe the greater concern was that they would strip you of food and leave you nowhere to get more.”
Mazirin flatly rolled her eyes here. “Termina is but a day's flight. Our company has accounts there, and we could easily replenish. None of us would starve in that time.”
“That assumes they let you go,” Cyrus said, without as much care for giving offense as Alaric. “I can tell you plainly, there are quite a few crews that did not come out of this at all. And the journey to Termina hardly seems...a day, truly?”
Mazirin's cool gaze found him. “Ask your wife, when she returns.”
Cyrus froze; Alaric found his voice first. “What do you mean by that?”
Mazirin did not display pleasure in her answer, though Curatio knew she'd doubtless pulled this nugget of information out just to distract them. “Your wife. The Lady Vara.” Mazirin stared him down. “I saw her board a ship to Termina yesterday. It was one of the last to go out before they shut down the port.”
Chapter 73
Cyrus
His mouth felt like a desert had been poured into it, coursing down his throat and sopping up every available particle of moisture. It hadn't been that way a moment ago. Indeed, he'd been happy to argue with Captain Mazirin about her presuppositions regarding their assault on the dockyards. More than happy, actually; it was nice to find a direction to push back, even lightly, now that the battle was over.
Then she'd pulled out that detail about Vara and clubbed him over the head with it, and any feelings of enjoyment he'd had in this conversation had vanished, replaced with a hot flush of worry.
“What ship was she on?” he asked, stepping toward Mazirin. “When did it leave?”
“An Amatgarosan freighter,” Mazirin said. “I saw her cross in front of me. I don't think she saw me. She paid the shipmaster, and I watched it leave moments later, with her on the deck.”
“How did you know that it was going to Termina?” Cyrus asked over that dry scratch in his throat.
Mazirin cocked an eyebrow at this. “Because I know the shipping schedules. Because I saw the departure vector. Because this is my business, and you fools have gone and stuck your ill-informed noses in it – again.” Now her ire was rising. “You think this is my first time being locked into a port? This happens all the time in this backward corner of the world. Your societies are corrupt, run by dictators and kings. This could have been settled considerably simpler if you hadn't acted rashly.”
Alaric dissolved into a choking fit. The Ghost composed himself quickly, offering a perfunctory, “Apologies.”
“A city nearing starvation requires somewhat more urgent measures,” Curatio answered, neatly stepping in at last. “I am sorry if we've caught you up in our revolution.” He nodded toward the wall. “If you'd like, now that we're in charge, we could clear you to leave.”
Alaric let loose another coughing fit. Cyrus gave him a sideways glance; what the hell was going on with him? Not that there was time to worry about it now. “Yes,” Alaric managed to get out, sounding somewhat strangled. “You may leave at your convenience. However...we do have a proposition for you ship captains.”
Mazirin, so tightly wound a moment earlier, did not subside in her seeming irritation. She did, however, ask, “What proposition?”
Curatio outlined the proposal, top to bottom, even putting the gold price on it. Cyrus let him speak, not deigning to interrupt, his own thoughts elsewhere.
Vara had gone to Termina?
&
nbsp; That made sense, he supposed. She'd wondered how Isabelle fared – if she still lived. Surely she did.
But how could she leave now?
“What say you?” Curatio asked, jarring Cyrus out of his internal reverie.
Mazirin stared at him, inscrutable for the most part. Her eyes were focused on him, but slipped to Cyrus, then Alaric. “Double it.”
Curatio smiled lightly. “That seems rather extreme.”
“Your city becomes a dangerous place,” Mazirin said. “What happens if I go to pick up a load of grain and return only to find your control of these dockyards overthrown? My cargo will be seized, my ship impounded – again–”
“That's...where you were before we 'rashly' acted just now,” Cyrus said, deadpan.
“Gratitude does not dissolve the risk to my crew from what you propose,” Mazirin said. “We could make other cargo runs. Safe cargo runs, to places that are not in danger of governmental overthrow. Why would I risk my ship and crew for little more money than I could get making those safe runs?”
Curatio looked to Alaric. “She has a point.”
Alaric cleared his throat. “Honor and decency, obviously.”
Mazirin's dark, thin eyebrows rose, the corners of her mouth curling just slightly upward. “'Honor and decency?' That will be a fine reward for my crew if we are caught and executed by your Lord Protector for supplying this insurrection.”
Alaric looked to Cyrus, a bit hastily, and Cyrus was unsure at what he was seeing in the knight's eyes. There seemed some momentary speck of panic, disorientation. A curious thing to see outside of a battle in which a man was on the run. “Perhaps,” Alaric said.
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