by Hondo Jinx
For several hammering heartbeats, Thelia stared in horror at what she had done. But it couldn’t be helped—it couldn’t!—and the True Matriarch, the keeper and defender of destiny, pocketed the scrolls and raced from the room.
26
The Face of Civilization
Dan paused for a few seconds, pretending to hold the curtain aside for Gables, who didn’t follow.
Dan had expected to meet a hard-ass pirate hunter in a stateroom.
Instead, he entered a low-lit boudoir dominated by an oversized futon awash in silken sheets the color of fresh bruises. The futon was, in turn, dominated not by Neptune in epaulets and jackboots, as the captain’s introduction suggested, but rather by the fattest human Dan had ever seen, a giant pudding of a man resplendent in radiant pajamas of bruise-purple silk.
Manrose gestured with a small, pale hand, the stubby fingers knuckled with gold and gems. “Come forward,” he said, his voice a low, volcano rumble. “Let me see the storied Warlord of the Wildervast.”
Dan stepped forward.
And Manrose promptly appeared to pay him no attention. Instead, the Duke of Pittsburgh raised a delicate cup, sipped theatrically, and smacked his lips. His heavy jowls were rosy with makeup, and the cloying aroma of roses came off him in sickeningly sweet waves.
Without warning, Manrose emitted a high-pitched shriek. “Tippy!”
The little attendant, an orange-skinned elven boy in a short chiton, appeared at once from the shadowy corners of the cabin. “Yes, Duke-Admiral Manrose?”
“Fetch the tray.” Manrose patted the boy's posterior. Tippy feigned a smile and bowed away, hurrying from the cabin.
The massive duke turned his twinkling eyes full upon Dan. Humming softly, Manrose looked him up and down, then patted the futon. “Come, warlord. Join me.”
Dan shook his head. “I’ll stand.”
Annoyance flashed across the duke’s features, there and gone, quick as lightning. The air was thick as sap with the smell of a million roses in over-sweet death-bloom.
“Have you been to Pittsburgh?” the Duke asked.
Dan had visited Pittsburgh years ago. But that was back in the old world.
He shook his head.
“The Steel City,” Manrose said, twiddling his fingers. “A miserable place full of landlubbers. That’s what the king gave me for killing pirates: a cold and cloudy duchy a million miles from the sea. Tell me, is that a prize or a punishment?”
Dan shrugged, taking shallow breaths. The duke’s rose stench was turning his stomach. If only he could have Zamora blow the cloying sweetness from his nose.
“I took the king’s gift as a slight,” Manrose said, and a sly smile rippled across his powdered jowls. “But I accepted the land and title, because I knew something that the king didn’t know. Along the crumbling banks of the Monongahela River, a magical gate opens onto the Wildervast’s Interior Sea. My armada only set sail at half-past lunch this very day.”
So that’s how he got here, Dan thought, but he said, “About that. Why bring an armada to a meeting?”
“To show you my balls, of course,” Manrose laughed. “To show you my huge, hairy balls! 137 ships, carrying 31,921 soldiers. And I brought them with me for the same reason you brought that army of monsters with you. Strange bedfellows, you and I. A young warlord out of the wilderness, and a decorated—and, if I might be so bold, famous—nobleman who has dined with kings and queens around the globe. Though perhaps if one considers matters more thoroughly, you and I are not really such strange bedfellows after all.”
Dan was stuck on the numbers. 137 ships sounded believable enough, given the huge number of ships he’d seen. But 31,921 men? How could anyone build such a huge army?
Because he’s the Duke of fucking Pittsburgh, Dan thought. You’ve been comparing him to the Duke of Harrisburg, but Manrose is on par with the Duke of Philadelphia.
Manrose said, “My world—the civilized world, as they call it—is a smiling society paved in human cobble tamped in the dirt of time ever-passing. A landlubber toils away his retched days, finding solace in food and drink and tales of faraway; chancing, perhaps, the occasional glance at the precious lumber of his distant past, where memories of his youth, sweetened by imperfect recall, are ensconced along the dark corridors of his mind like beacons to something worth having lived for. Concerning the majority, life unfolds in predictable hue and quarter—birth into squalor, a gray life of straining and scratching, and blessed death—for most men are more anchor than wave.
“Not so for men of the sea, however,” Manrose said, shaking his head. “Nor, I suspect, for men such as yourself. Barbarians, if I may use the term without creating undue offense. And in that light, perhaps you and I have more in common than one might think. We reject the slow death of the slumbering masses and live life!”
Dan nodded. Dude talked way too much and was seriously full of shit, but if Dan could strike an alliance with him, they would wipe out the Duke of Harrisburg.
Tippy returned, bearing a tray upon which sat a tea set, a slender decanter, an even smaller vial, and a single, red rose. The young elf bowed low and extended his thin arms fully, sliding the tray onto the futon beside Manrose in the manner of a pilgrim making an offering at the feet of his god.
Manrose ran a caressing finger over the boy's cheek and shooed him to one side.
“The Yalinese rusty,” Manrose said, filling the cups with what he identified as the finest of teas, a decadent blend usually available only to heads of state. Next, he unscrewed the long, slender decanter, pulled from its narrow length a delicate pipette, and added three drops of blackish liquid to each of the teas, which darkened to a rusty hue.
“The blood of a Yalinese boy-child,” Manrose explained. “Scrumptious little devils, all smooth and orange and warm.”
“Blood?” Dan said, keeping his voice level despite the disgust and anger he felt.
“Oh yes,” Manrose said, his words collapsing into low, rumbling laughter. His pudgy fingers moved with dainty dexterity, reinserting the pipette, screwing the cap tight, and setting the decanter upon the tray. “The decanter is enchanted to match the body temperature of a sunbaked Yalinese boy. The blood must be kept warm, or it losses its vigor. Never partake of a second rate Rusty. Terrible rot, that.”
Dan boiled with rage but kept his face neutral. This was twisted bullshit. But he wasn’t here to make friends with this asshole. He was here to hammer out a treaty. And because he had let his anger ruin any hopes of hiring the cyclopes to build him a howitzer, he had to keep a muzzle on his emotions now.
Manrose uncapped the smaller bottle and added a drop of clear liquid to each drink. “Tears of the mother.”
Manrose picked up the cups and moved his hands in a small circle. “Always swirled, never stirred. One mustn’t bruise the blood or denature the tears.” He licked his lips and offered a cup to Dan.
Dan shook his head. He would parlay with this monster, but no way was he drinking that shit.
The huge man chortled. “A barbarian who fears blood?”
“I didn’t come to drink,” Dan said, his patience running thin. “I came to talk.”
“The two are not mutually exclusive, thank heavens,” Manrose said, and raised his cup in a toast. “To the finer things in life.”
The duke closed his eyes, drew out a sip, and smacked his lips. His eyes reopened slowly, looking dewy and distant, as if he was awakening from an opium-tinged dream. “Exhilarating,” he said, and gave a low, rumbling cough of amusement.
Then, all at once, Manrose looked cross, and the odor of roses sharpened, sweetening dangerously. “Do you think me a monster, warlord? Think I’ve been driven mad by decadence? Think my time plying the seas is all silk and giggles?”
“Doesn’t matter what I think,” Dan said. “We have a common enemy.”
Manrose didn’t seem to hear him. “Have you ever been to the island of Yali, warlord? No? A pirate factory, that’s what Yali is—or was, anyw
ay, when I arrived.
“The Yalinese never grow up. Too much sun. Too much smiling. Too much easy food. They're boys, all of them, not a man on the island. Everything’s leisure. A pirate comes along, the work suits them. No mucking about with order and discipline, uniforms. Oh, I know the Yalinese, and now they know me.”
Manrose’s grin was horrible. “There, upon the wall, you see Yalinese art. That is what they think of me in Yali.”
A large wooden mask, intricately carved and painted in garish hues, hung above a rattan settee. The mask was unmistakably a likeness of Manrose, yet the bulging eyes were utterly inhuman and swollen with inexpressible hunger. Jagged ranks of shark’s teeth filled the wide mouth, out of which cascaded an impossibly large tongue forked in plump and pointed halves. From the temples sprouted short, thick horns, upon the points of which were impaled the writhing forms of small Yalinese elves.
“My wrath slammed into Yali like a hurricane.” Grinning, Manrose bulged his eyes and wagged his tongue. “After what I did there, I'm a demon-god.”
“All right,” Dan said, keeping his voice level. This guy was a few coppers short of a silver piece. The faster Dan could get out of here, the better. “Like I was saying, we have a common enemy.”
“Ah, that we do. That we do. The sniveling upstart, the Duke of Harrisburg. Know how he came to power?”
Dan shook his head.
“Money, of course,” Manrose said. “He never hunted pirates or overthrew a warlord. He’s just a rich boy who outgrew his toy soldiers and bought real ones instead. Along with that title of his. Most of his army is made up of press-gang conscripts forced into service. But unfortunately, he does have a lot of money, and the rest of his troops are seasoned mercenaries, not to mention several high-level wizards. And then he has the fucking train of his and who knows what manner of enchanted weapons on board. My sources tell me that he has even bribed Prince Razah of the Jungle Kingdom to serve as his personal bodyguard. A formidable force indeed.”
Dan nodded. Fucking Razah. The Duke of Harrisburg probably promised him Tatiana on a silver platter.
“Can I smash them? Of course, I can. I have twice the troops and a thousand times the military intelligence of the Duke of Harrisburg. Nay, ten thousand times. Even with his mercenaries and sorcerers and that damned train, he won’t beat me. But most of my troops are green as seaweed, and they’ll die like lambs. Victory will cost me dearly. And no man thrives as a sea captain without a heightened sense of thrift, warlord. I am not a man who likes to overpay. That’s where you come in.”
Dan’s bullshit detector went off with that, but at least they were finally getting down to business.
“You have an army of red elves—several thousand, according to my reports—and this horde of monsters along the shore. And I have heard tales of a fire mage.”
“We have more than one fire mage,” Dan said truthfully, not explaining that other than Thelia, his fire mages were little more than 4th of July sparklers with nice tits.
“You don’t have the strength to beat the Duke of Harrisburg,” Manrose said matter-of-factly, “but you do have the strength to hurt him. And that’s what you will do. Hit him hard, all at once, without warning, with everything you’ve got. My troops will follow after, and together, we will crush our enemy.”
“So you want us to be your shock troops,” Dan said. “You want us to take your losses for you.”
The gigantic silken mound shrugged. “I won’t deny it. But you won’t fight him alone. And you won’t lose.”
“Won’t lose,” Dan said, “but many, perhaps most, of us will die—and you’ll swoop in to claim victory.”
“Yes,” Manrose said. “In using your army, I’ll save thousands of my troops, score an epic victory with very little loss, crush the Duke of Harrisburg, humiliate the Duke of Philadelphia, and inflate my already tremendous reputation.”
“I see how that works out for you,” Dan said. “But what if I just pull back to the fortress, lock down, and let you dukes fight it out.”
Manrose chuckled darkly. “A sensible plan in some respects. It would necessitate disbanding your monster army, of course. No sane man would pull them into his fortress on the eve of a siege. They might defend your walls for a day or two, but as the siege dragged on, discipline would break down, and you’d be fighting enemies within and without.”
Dan said nothing, but Manrose was right. Dan had pulled his monster horde together to crush invaders, not sit around inside a fortress.
“In the meanwhile,” Manrose said, “I would take my losses, crush the Duke of Harrisburg, and turn my attention to you and that lovely fortress of yours. Rooting you out would mean more losses for me, of course, but it would mean gains as well. The fortress, the valley, the glory.” His powdered cheeks lifted in a devilish smile. “Spelling it out, I’m almost tempted to retract my offer.”
“But if I help you, I keep the fortress?” Dan asked.
Manrose nodded. “Yes. You have my word as a gentleman.”
Great, Dan thought. I have the word of a man who drinks the blood of children and the tears of their mothers.
“And I’ll keep the valley?” he asked.
Another nod from Manrose. “I have my sights set on a larger prize than some pretty acreage in a godforsaken wilderness full of monsters, warlord. I want Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Philadelphia is everything to me. The people, the glory, the Delaware, and all of those lovely shipyards. I will have Philadelphia, and you can keep your valley. Enough, warlord. I tire of your questions. Commit to my terms now or suffer the consequences on the field.”
Before Dan could respond, however, the duke continued, his doughy cheeks darkening from pink to crimson. “Be warned, barbarian. To a big, strong brute like you, I might seem like a bloated fop, soft and harmless, but make no mistake. I am the most dangerous man on the planet. I always win. Always. Ask the pirate captains. Ask Dread. Ask Bedlam. Ask the Sea Butcher. Their heads hang down below, if you’d like to see them. Go, stand before the heads if you doubt me, and ask them who I am.”
As Manrose’s soliloquy boiled into a rant, the duke-admiral seemed to grow even larger, and the rose stench became so thick Dan could barely breathe.
“I am Poseidon’s trident!” Manrose thundered. “His wrath and his rule! I am the eater, the taker, the beater, the shore shaker! Join my ranks—or join the dead.”
27
Combustion
“Lady Holly,” Toad said, drawing Holly, her mother, and Tatiana from the Tower of Knowledge. “Come quick. Something’s wrong with Freckles.”
They followed the little half-orc girl, asking questions as they wound through the halls toward the eastern wing, where Freckles had apparently been found wandering cluelessly.
“She doesn’t even know her own name,” Toad said, sounding like she was on the verge of tears.
Holly patted the girl’s shoulder. “I’m certain everything will be okay,” she lied.
As they hurried along, Holly filled with dread. Meeting Estus and Moro in the corridor, she asked them to follow. The soldiers fell in beside them.
A moment later, they found Freckles, who was nodding as Goldfinch spoke softly. The little blond-haired girl hadn’t managed to hold in her tears.
Freckles turned toward Holly with a slack face. “Who are these people?”
Holly offered a warm smile. “We’re your friends, dear. You’ve had some sort of accident, but everything will be okay.”
“That’s good,” Freckles said, scanning the group with confused, frightened eyes.
“Yes,” Holly said. She studied the girl’s face, which showed no sign of trauma. Likewise, the half-elf’s pupils showed regular and even dilation.
“Can you help me to remember?” Freckles asked.
I hope so, Holly thought. But she smiled and gave Freckles’ hand a squeeze. “Yes, we will. Be patient, dear. For now, know that you are safe and among friends.”
So long as you stay with u
s.
“It’s like somebody stole her brain,” Toad whined.
Or wiped her mind clean, Holly thought with a shudder, and the word amnesia rose like a bad moon in her mind. “Mother, I think we should check your room.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” her mother said.
A moment later, Holly held the ruined padlock in her hands. The lock’s shackle had been broken.
No. Not broken. Melted.
She didn’t bother to point this out to her mother, who crouched beside the trunk, looking at the silver drops of melted lead.
When the Steel Scholar opened the trunk, the scrolls were missing.
Tatiana hissed softly.
Holly was not surprised. But she was frightened. Terrified, in fact.
How had Thelia known about the scrolls? And why had she acted so brazenly? Thelia clearly didn’t care if they knew she had taken the scrolls. The melted lock was practically a calling card.
What did Thelia’s recklessness imply?
Everything had changed. But how, precisely? And what would happen next?
She was filled with dread.
“Is everything all right, my lady?” Moro asked, one hand on the pommel of his sword.
Like a young Briar, that one, Holly thought. “No,” she said, keeping her voice and facial expression calm. “No, everything is not all right.”
“Shall I summon the others?” Moro asked.
Holly looked at him for a second, taking in the hand on the pommel and the eager look in his young eyes. Moro had already argued with Parus on two occasions. But Holly feared the time for arguments had passed. If Moro and Parus clashed again, they would cross swords, not words. “Thank you, Moro, but no. I would ask that you remain here with us. Estus, please fetch my father and siblings from the central keep.”
“Yes, my lady,” Estus said with a short bow. He looked both serious and composed.
Good, Holly thought. That’s what we need now. “Tell them to come at once,” she said. “They should engage with no one. No squabbling, no fighting, no friction. And tell them to avoid Parus and Lady Thelia at all costs. Go now.”