Big Trouble

by Andrew Seiple

  “Wait, gribbits are like frog men, aren’t they?” Chase said, fighting to keep her gaze from drifting back to the dead bodies. “I read about them in Jinkies’ Journey to Jugarum. Aren’t they monsters?”

  “Some people think golems are monsters.” Renny shrugged. “The gribbits in Cylvania are nice. So long as you don’t get too near their eggs.”

  “All right. So the uniformed guys went that way.” Chase pointed at the shut door. “And from what I remember of your story earlier, you all went that way.” Her finger traced past two shut doors and ended at an open third door. Through it she could see steps leading up. “And that’s where you met the monster.”

  “Yes,” Renny said, and Chase noticed that he’d put the corpses between himself and the open doorway, and was hugging his tail. His ears shook, and her heart went out to him. But they were in a dangerous place now, and she tried to stay focused. There would be time to comfort her fantastic new friend later.

  “Okay,” Chase decided, surveying the furniture scattered around the room. “Did you search this place before you went upstairs?”

  “No. Most of the desks were full of paper, and we couldn’t read any of the writing. There were some pipes on the wall that looked interesting, but we couldn’t figure out what they were meant to do.” Renny pointed over at a snaking mess of metal tubes held against the stone wall with brackets. They ended in a tangled mess, with what looked like flip-top caps sealing them off.

  “Strange...” Chase found her curiosity piqued. “Greta, look through the desks, see if there’s anything useful in there besides paper. Or if there’s any useful paper. Okay?”

  Greta grunted and started rummaging. Chase glared up at the pipes, two feet above her head and at the edge of her reach. Annoyed, she dragged a chair over and clambered onto it, ignoring the bloody streaks that the legs of the chair left. Trying to ignore them, anyway. Her stomach did another flip, and she started popping up the caps, trying to get some insight into what they might be for.

  But the caps revealed only darkness within each tube, and she closed them again, no wiser for her experiment. As she put her fingers on the second-to-last open tube, though, she heard something entirely unexpected;

  Chase heard her father’s voice.

  “...see if you can’t get up the wall again, Murgen. Figure there’s a handhold right up there, got to be something above it.”

  “Dad?” Chase blurted out. “Dad, is that you?”

  No reply came, and for a second, she thought she’d imagined it. But then, her father’s voice spoke again, and with a thrill, Chase realized that it was coming out of the tube.

  These tubes were for speaking to people somewhere else in the prison!

  INT+1

  “Chase? Chase, are you there, girl?”

  “I’m here. We’re in the room above the stairs.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “Me and Greta. And uh, a friend.”

  Distantly, she was aware of Greta moving up behind her, but she kept her head facing the tube, ears full out to catch every last word. Father’s voice was faint, and she wanted to make sure she didn’t miss anything.

  “All right. Listen, Chase. I need you to go to town and get the Camerlengo. She should be here by now. Tell her Pandora has fallen, and to get the army out here. Tell her the guards have been turned into monsters and to be ready to kill everyone if she has to. Do you understand me?”

  “What? What is any of this?” Chase said, trying to keep from shouting. “What is this place? Why is there a prison here? What happened to the guards?”

  “Chase, none of that matters now. We need you to go get help, or the village is going to be in a lot of trouble. Go, please.”

  “I... we can’t.” Chase shut her eyes. “There’s a Necromancer. At the graveyard. He’s coming to attack Bothernot. I came to get you, so you could fight him off.”

  Silence then, followed by a confused babble of voices. Some she recognized... Goody Palmer, Daven Buttonsworth, and other villagers she’d known all her life. Others were too garbled to be distinguishable, until her father’s voice rose above them, and one by one they quieted.

  “We checked the graveyard,” her father said. “It was the first place we checked.”

  “We followed your tracks out there. After talking with Mister Thomasi, I mean. He said you’d told him to stay put?”

  “Yes, he was cooperating so we took a risk and went after higher priority targets. He didn’t attack you?”

  “What, Thomasi? No. He tried to help us against the Necromancer, but he couldn’t. Sort of. I’m not sure what happened there.”

  “So the Necromancer circled around, and we missed him, then. Damnation.” her father swore, and Chase gasped to hear it. “Look. Go and let the Camerlengo know. They probably won’t get to us for another day, we’ll be fine. And if the Necromancer’s out then we’ll need the army here anyway.”

  “Won’t get to you?” Chase asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Go, girl!” And now her father’s voice had an edge to it, one she’d never heard before. It drummed home just how desperate the situation truly was, and the dread grew in her heart.

  She hated to feel it. Hated the fear. She swallowed again, and said without thinking, “No.”

  “Chase, this is no time to—”

  “No! Tell me what happened! Tell me what’s going on! We’re not leaving here until you do.”

  A long suffering sigh echoed from the tube. “Just as stubborn as your mother,” Stem Berrymore declared. “All right. To make a long story short, this prison has been here since before you were born. I don’t rightly know why they put it here, but the Baroness paid us good money to put it up. Then charged us to keep it secret on pain of death. And so we’ve done, for nearly two decades now.”

  “How?” Chase whispered. “Everyone talks. This town, there’s no keeping secrets. Nothing stays secret forever.”

  “It doesn’t need to stay secret forever. Just until its prisoners are dead. So we spread stories of the wicked cave, that no one ever returned from. It didn’t work perfectly, every now and then a traveler would get a notion to go and dare explore it. Usually some idiot human or wandering adventurer. We’d send word up to the prison when one of those fools showed up, and well... they wouldn’t come back.”

  Chase remembered Renny’s stories of the arrows that had come down when his group approached the cave. It wasn’t hard to imagine why no one ever came back, and she wondered where the bodies might be buried. Then she decided she’d rather not know.

  “It worked for a long time. We sent a good part of the food of our tax tithe up to the prison instead of to the Baroness, as directed. Some of the travelers who came through town were guards from this place, relaxing and drinking their cares away.” A long sigh. “But it all changed last night. A guard came to town while you and Greta were out gathering wood. He was wounded, and he said that prisoners had escaped. So we gathered the able, told those who remained to keep you busy, and went into the woods. We found two of the prisoners. Then we went up to the prison, to check in. But it didn’t go as we thought it would.”

  “That’s an understatement,” a muffled voice spoke.

  “Hush! They’re coming back!”

  Chase listened with dread, as distant metal clinked on stone. Her father was in danger, and there was nothing she could do. Behind her, Greta choked back a sob.

  Then a small cloth paw found her hand, and Chase looked down to Renny, who looked back up, with such a worried look on his face that Chase felt herself smile. It was that or cry, like Greta, and she couldn’t afford that right now. So she squeezed the little fox’s paw, and smiled, and waited. And when someone screamed distantly on the other end, maybe she bit her lip a bit, but she managed to stop before she drew blood.

  “Chase?” Her father spoke, perhaps two minutes later.

  “Yes?” She whispered. Then she repeated the word, louder.

  “It’s clear. We can talk again.�
��

  “What was that?”

  “The cell down the corridor from us is full of guards that haven’t been converted yet. They grabbed one and dragged him off.”

  “Converted?”

  “You don’t want to know—”

  “Tell me.” She tried to put iron into her voice.

  “Just like your mother,” her father muttered. “You won’t go get help? Nothing I can say will convince you?”

  “There is no help. There’s just us. Tell us what happens to the guards!”

  A raw tone entered her father’s voice. “I don’t know. They come back half the size they were. They don’t talk. The changed ones grab their friends and haul them off and beat them if they resist.”

  “Half the size?”

  “Humans shrink down to our size. The few halvens they’ve got are half our size. I don’t know what does this, or how it even works.”

  “They’re going to do this thing to you? You and the others?” Chase asked.

  “We think so. They ambushed us when we came up to the cave. Beckoned us up the stairs, then swarmed us when the traps caught us. They could have killed us, but they didn’t. I can’t see any reason they’d leave us alive if they didn’t want more... whatever they are, now.”

  “Tell me where they took you. Tell me where you are,” Chase urged.

  “I wouldn’t if I could. Chase, there are a lot of them. You need to go.”

  “Well we won’t. Would you rather we explored around on our own? Tell us where you are!”

  “No!”

  “Then we’re coming to find you.” Chase said and started to lower the cap on the tube.

  “No! Wait!” Her father yelled, and the sheer desperation in his voice made her hesitate. “There’s something you don’t know,” he said, speaking quickly.

  “What’s that?”

  “This prison, it was made to hold five people. Just five! And we only found two prisoners outside. You tell me you found the Necromancer, that’s three. That means there are two left. And if they’re still here, you are in danger.”

  “From two prisoners? What sort of danger?”

  “I don’t know. But Chase... we built the place. It was built to hold over a hundred guards at a time. It has traps and locks and precautions beyond your wildest dreams, and that was all to secure five people.”

  “What... what sort of people?”

  “I don’t know. The guards did. They never spoke of it, save the faintest whispers. Five people who could not be killed, but must be allowed to die. Five people who were deadlier than anyone else to walk this world.”

  A fact niggled at the back of Chase’s mind, and she gave it voice. “How did you know one of them was a Necromancer?”

  “What?”

  “You called him “The Necromancer.”

  “Oh, that. Thomasi told us he was loose. And the... other one. The dwarf woman.”

  “The one Tollen’s guarding?”

  “He’s still got her? Oh thank gods. She was a terror. We ambushed her, and still barely won the fight.”

  Chase swallowed. There were at least ten people with her Father, if the information she’d gotten from gossip was good.

  Then she put two and two together, confirming a suspicion that she would have realized sooner if she hadn’t been so stressed and busy. “Thomasi is the third prisoner, isn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t fight him?”

  “He surrendered. Said he wanted to make sure no harm came to Bothernot. I... come to think of it, we did let him off easy.”

  “Did you now...” Chase ruffled her bangs with one hand. She hadn’t exactly trusted the man when she’d first met him, but thinking back on it, both she and Greta had accepted his company without much protest, on their way to the graveyard. Was there something at work, there? How dangerous WAS Thomasi? Was he really the ally that Hoon’s reading had predicted?

  “All right,” Chase said. “So there are possibly two very dangerous people still in here. We’ll be careful.”

  “You need to go, Chase.”

  “I can’t. We can’t. Unless...” Chase turned her head to Greta, who blinked.

  “What?”

  “Greta. One of us needs to go warn the village. Warn the Camerlengo, too, if she’s here. Do you see where I’m going with this?” She closed the speaking tube with a snap.

  Greta wasn’t exactly brilliant, but she’d been a good sister for a very long time, and she’d gotten used to reading Chase’s unspoken words. The blonde halven’s brow furrowed. “You want me to go back to the village? Leave you here ALONE?”

  “I won’t be alone. I’ll have Renny along.”

  Greta stared at Chase in mute horror. Then she looked around the room, at the corpses, and the bare stone walls, and the desks of dark wood. Not even any chairs, nor carpets or drapes. This was not a halven place of comforts and quiet and peace. This was a strange world, raw and dark and meant only to punish the wicked. And it looked like it wasn’t too picky exactly who the wicked might be.

  “Go,” Chase said. “I’ll be fine.”

  It was one of Chase’s finer lies.

  Greta looked down then, and Chase sighed in relief. She had her.

  Then Greta was hugging her, and Chase hugged her back, and they stayed like that for a long moment. Finally, Greta broke away and started pulling things out of her pockets. “Here. The last of my hurler stones. You have enough food?”

  “Yes, I’ve got plenty of food. Keep the stones, I won’t need them.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “The prisoners are insanely dangerous so if we have to fight them, we’ve already lost. And the guards were able to ambush and overpower Dad, and the others, and he had a sword. I have one level of Oracle, and a proficiency at baking pies. No, there’s no way I’m fighting through this one. Even if I knew what I was doing in a fight. We’re going to have to use our heads and words to get through this one. Keep the stones.”

  Greta took them back, reluctantly. Then with one last look back at Chase, she headed to the door.

  “I’ll show you through the traps,” Renny said. “I’ll get back quickly, don’t go anywhere without me.”

  “I won’t,” Chase said. Then she turned her back and started searching the desks, picking up where Greta left off.

  Why did I do that? Chase wondered. It had been a spur of the moment thing. She hadn’t planned to send Greta away; the idea had just passed her lips before her brain could stop it. She gave that some thought as she tossed the place.

  The reason came to her, just as the stranger’s voice whispered behind her. “Girl,” a man said, and Chase jumped, dropping the pile of papers she was sorting through, scattering them like dried leaves.

  “Girl, are you still there?” So deep, that voice, and Chase turned, trembling, to see the speaking tubes...

  ...and the one that she’d left open and uncapped.

  Realization struck her. There had been someone listening through that one all along! “I’m here,” she said, picking her way around the corpses again. One of them was a young man as humans went, glassy blue eyes staring endlessly past her as she gazed down at them. He had stubble, and he looked far too young to be dead. It hurt to look at him. “It would hurt to look at Greta more, if the worst happened,” Chase whispered to herself and knew it was true. That was the reason that she had sent her sister back. They were playing for keeps now, and Greta was not good at adventures. She was too halven, really.

  “What was that?” The man asked.

  Chase put her head next to the tube. “Nothing much. Who are you? What do you want?”

  “I’m no one you know yet. I’m one of the prisoners here. They call me Il Macellaio, but that’s not my real name.”

  The Butcher, Chase translated, after a moment of thought. “Do you deserve to be imprisoned here?” She asked, finally.

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. That was a surprise. “But I’m a greedy man, so I wa
nt my freedom, anyway.”

  “And you want me to help with that, I’m guessing.”

  His laugh was warm and reminded her of grandfather’s. That wasn’t comforting in the least, not here, not in this strange and secret place. “It’s wonderful to speak with someone so sharp!” Il Macellaio said. “Listen. I’m sure you have a plan. Perhaps something with disguising yourselves as guards or something like that. That’s going to fail. But don’t take my word for it, try it anyway and see what happens.”

  “Uh...” Chase’s eye flicked over to the hanging uniforms. She had been mulling over something of the sort. Not that she’d admit it. “What are you proposing instead?”

  “Come find me when you can. We’ll discuss. Fear not, girl. I have nothing to gain from killing you, and unlike the others left in here, I’ll not feed you pretty lies.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. Follow the... the w-water. You should find me.” There was a bit of a stutter in his voice, so faint Chase wasn’t sure if she’d imagined it.

  “I might take you up on that. Thank you. I’m closing the tube now,” she said.

  Two minutes later when Renny padded through the door once more, Chase was waiting. “We might have an ally.”

  “What? How?”

  “A man spoke through one of the tubes. He invited us over for a talk. And no, before you ask, I don’t trust him. I have no reason to. But he knew what I was planning without being told or any clues.” She glanced over to the uniform, still feeling put out about that. If there was anything she’d learned from the Jinkies books, it was that disguises were really, really effective for sneaking about.

  Through all this Renny listened and waited politely for her to speak again. She glanced over, unused to going this long without constant interruptions. Living with Greta had taught her a certain rhythm, and now she had to adjust to a new one. “Ah. So... I think we should go and investigate him. He’s a prisoner. He wants to be free. We might be able to bargain for that. Don’t you think?”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Renny said. “We know the guards are converted, whatever that means. They won’t be friendly. Not that I’d expect them to be, after my team fought them. And if it turns out this prisoner’s untrustworthy, then we’d have to deal with him anyway, so it’s best to go now, and be wary and prepared to fight or flee if he tries to trap us.”