Sunspool said, “Yet someone will claim Eyetooth.”
“Great harm might result,” Gaunt said, nodding, her mind flitting over the possible uses of the key. “Think, Bone. Even sorcerers are limited by time and space, but not once they have Eyetooth. And yet... can we not fulfill the letter of the oath, then keep Eyetooth? And then destroy it?”
Sunspool shook her head. “Nothing can destroy it short of a Dawn Angel or a being of similar might.”
“Is there no one,” Gaunt said, “strong enough to guard the key, and moral enough not to use it?”
Sunspool and Moonwax shared a long look.
“Our morality may be a subjective issue...” said Moonwax.
“Aha,” said Bone.
Sunspool said, “But we have advantages because we dwell in this place, which is so hostile to magic.”
“We don’t think the key is magical as such,” Bone objected.
“But those who hunt it will use magic. We can thwart them. But we will demand payment.”
“Well, surely with Eyetooth,” Bone said, glad to be on familiar ground, “we can acquire enough gold—”
“We do not want gold,” Sunspool said.
“Then we can offer our services as doers of strange deeds,” Gaunt said.
“Not deeds,” Sunspool said. “Life. Your life, Imago Bone.”
“What?” Gaunt said.
“Not all his life,” Moonwax added. “Half of it.”
Richard Thomas rode the Mark 27 Pedalraptor out of Loomsberg with sweat chilling his face and bones shaking to the tune of every bit of raw geology. The new hickory wheels held up better than the cedar ones, and the crankshaft performed heroically. He passed the cairn marking his previous distance record, about a quarter mile past Ellen’s Inn. A quarter mile plus ten feet, O you trees! he wanted to shout. A quarter mile plus twenty—
Something ahead surprised him, a shadowy tangle of shapes like an anatomist’s dream or a calligraphist’s nightmare. Richard Thomas swung right and nearly pitched himself down a gorge. He saved himself with a combination of quick footwork and plowing into a convenient blackberry tangle. This hurt, but far less than the gorge would have.
The crankshaft was broken, and he suspected this was again the work of the world’s magic and its apparent dislike for complex machinery. He cursed all mocksprites and fiddleimps and other beings that dash human hopes. But he was also contemplating some new mechanism to temporarily clamp the wheels, controlled perhaps from the handlebars... He was so intent upon this thought he momentarily forgot about the apparition that had vanished round the bend toward Loomsberg.
“What?” Bone said.
“Half your life,” said Sunspool. “Your strangely prolonged life.”
“I don’t understand,” Bone said. “I’ve already lived that prolonged life. Now I sense I’m aging normally...”
“Yes,” said Moonwax. “You appear to be about twenty years old, but you have what most twenty-year-old humans can only dream of—ninety years’ worth of experience matched with youthful energy. That you use it all for plundering is, well, criminal.”
“You propose to change that somehow?” Gaunt asked, her fists clenched.
Sunspool said, “Bone’s remaining life promises to be extraordinary. And he will live it beside one of the great minds of the age.”
“I see,” Gaunt said, a bit wistfully.
“She means you,” Bone said, with a touch of exasperation.
“She can’t,” Gaunt said, with more than a touch of certainty.
Moonwax said, “She does. Your lives will be full of wondrous fears—”
Sunspool said, “And terrifying blessings—”
“You will travel and know seas and mountains and forests—”
“And magic carpets and enchanted paintings and the opposite of ghosts—”
“And volcanoes and maelstroms and icebergs and bottomless pits—”
“And in so many respects, know the edges of worlds, of existence—”
“And children, your children, wild, blazing, cryptic, discerning—”
(Here Gaunt and Bone stared at one another, amazed at the babble and at the meaning of the babble.)
“In your secret hearts you will be afraid they will surpass you and afraid they won’t—”
“And both these fears foolish, obtuse, unseeing—”
“For their stories and yours are like tales told at the same campfire but by different voices—”
“You will try your best, never feeling good enough nor smart enough—”
“To dare the glittering voids or the muddy battlefields—”
“Too afraid and too vain all at once—”
“Too guilty, yet you will hate yourself more for unattained dreams than for your crimes—”
“Yet you, Bone, will never abandon your duty, you who always see yourself as thief not hero—”
“Always beside your lady love until the last gray day—”
“And its blazes—”
“And its darkness—”
“Underground, underwater—”
“To the sea that is our final cradlegrave—”
“Second choices...”
“Second chances...”
The strange litany ended, until Sunspool said, “Half of that bright darkness, that cold fire, that strange mundanity. That is what we will take, in return for helping you.”
Wordlessly Gaunt rose and left the observatory. She bore that waxen stiffness that meant either overpowering emotion or death. She was not dead. Even the walking dead, Bone knew, do not move with such grim step.
“I—” Bone began, as she disappeared down the hallway.
“You must do your duty,” Moonwax said, “always.”
Bone did not know if this was advice, command, or observation. “I...” He hurried outside.
She stood beside the gorge. Opposite them, across a great expanse filled with river mist, creaked a building with four spinning wind-vanes that seemed angled as though preparing to tumble into frothy waters below. A sign upon it read YE TILTED WINDMILL. DRAUGHTS. DARTS. DISCOVERIES.
He stood beside her, wordlessly. He had learned that this was, at times, his task. To be silent. To be still. But to be there.
She did not acknowledge him, but he knew his presence was important. He knew he was not supposed to say anything. For now.
Then, “Why don’t you say something?” Gaunt demanded.
“They have it all wrong, you know,” he blurted at once. He had no idea what he meant. He was just blathering, trying to draw her out.
“How so?”
“About—you know...” A gamble, that non-answer. There had been so many cryptic statements in that observatory that he could trip over one, knock his head against another, impale himself on a third.
“I see,” she said. There was something icy in her tone. That never boded well.
Quick! he thought. Say something silly. “Yes, I think the Serendib tea would have been much better.”
She laughed a little, humorlessly. “Bone, they can’t take half your life. Absolutely not.”
“I know, it’s absurd. What are they going to do, chop me down the middle?”
That was not quite the tone of humor that was needed. She shook her head—at him, at the delven, at geological wonders, he couldn’t tell. “I’m going to get a drink,” she said, and strode off.
A less experienced Bone, of long decades ago, might have assumed this was not an invitation. A more experienced Bone, of fewer decades ago, might have assumed it was an invitation. The Bone of now (surely the wisest possible Bone) had learned that assumptions themselves were the problem. It was not just that every lover was a new reality. Every moment with every lover was a new reality. Gaunt herself might not know if he should come with her, not yet. Only if she said certain powerful words—almost enchanted syllables such as no, yes, or I‘d like the red wine—would the probability fog clear and certainty emerge.
So he followed, accepting uncertainty.
He was her paramour. And he hadn’t explicitly been told not to follow, not yet. He was in love. And he too wanted a drink.
The real fog was burning off, and more folk were footing to and fro, yet mist still curdled in nooks and fissures of the mountain spur, and it was a good hour for nabbing a purse from the throng and disappearing into the white yonder. Thus it was not Bone’s preferred working hour, as he’d a low opinion of cutpurses (and indeed groin-kicked a human one in passing as he hurried up the bridge after Gaunt, goblin thank yous ringing cacophonously in his ears.) The dark of the morning was preferred.
Master Sidewinder had once said, A truly worthy heist is all a problem of time. The hour you act. The days you plan. The months you train. And here‘s the dark-of-the-morning conundrum, Imago: what‘s it all for?
Are we still talking about stealing the Empress of Amberhorn‘s Diamond Fingernail? a much younger Bone had answered.
You asked me why the Fingernail and why we‘re here in the Palace of Sacred Sighs at three in the morning. I gave you mundane reasons like the thousands of blazons it‘s worth and the tactical advantages of this hour. But the deeper reasons to both questions are the same. When you‘re my age, boy—and if I train you right, you will be—when you‘re my age, three in the morning is when you sometimes lie in some moth-eaten or silky bed beside a gigolo or a prince—I know, I know, just translate it for your own kinks, boy—and you can’t sleep and you wonder what it‘s all for, what‘s big enough and worthy enough to make this life worthwhile.
Actually I‘m wondering how long my life‘s going to be if we keep talking right here in the Empress‘ bedroom.
See the bigger picture, boy. Sometimes you look at a treasure like this, a problem this grand, and you realize the answer‘s—
This, said a hissing voice breaking Bone’s reverie, in the here and now, in the misty and precipitous.
Where the Bridges of Bright Surprise met there was a place lit by four lamps. The northwest lamp glowed with purple-green whorls twisting in the strange currents that bend magic in Loomsberg; the northeast blazed with the red fury of a captured candlewyrm; the southeast shimmered with lit kraken oil; and the southwest was simply fire.
There was a tradition in the Loomwatch that your nature matched the lamp you liked standing watch beside. Northwest signified a mystical bent, northeast a sturdy soul, southeast an adventurous spirit, and southwest a practical mind. Marit and Subrata, in their separate ways, liked to stand roughly in the middle.
Each day they renewed a conversation that continued at the whim of the guard rotation, and after inquiring after each other’s spouses and children they resumed without preamble.
Now Marit said, “Do events move with purpose? Is there an arc to history, like a bridge’s span?”
Subrata scratched his bearded chin. “Perhaps there’s no bridge but a fallen tree that may temporarily span a gap—before rolling into abysses named barbarism, warlordism, civil war, tyranny.”
“Perhaps,” Marit said. “But perhaps, like the place we stand, history has more than one span. Perhaps these spans intersect at points where history’s destination may be chosen.”
“Would that such points were so easily spotted!” Subrata answered. “Most people flinch at such ideas, preferring that all moments be equally portentous or prosaic. In the first scenario, free will is delightfully paramount. In the second, reassuringly irrelevant.”
“It’s worse than that, friend Subrata! Even if people invest some moments with special significance, they assume these choices will arrive when they’re well rested and fed and watered, with a clear schedule ahead and no vexations. Yet a turning point might well happen when one is hungry, cranky, chasing toddlers, tabulating taxes, asleep, or chattering on a bridge.”
“Hold, Marit. Consider that lumbering shape to the west.”
Marit shrugged. “Many strange folk walk these streets. I see no harm in it.”
“Fair enough. But note that red-headed individual approaching from the east? She would seem to have fate’s turning points in mind.”
“Indeed. Earlier we directed her to the astrologers.”
“Astronomers, yes.”
“Odd.” Marit frowned. “She also reminds me of one I saw on a bounty sheet issued by Palmary’s kleptomancers.”
“Truly?” Subrata narrowed his eyes. “Now that you mention it... I saw her described in connection with pirates.”
“Yet Loomsberg is a place of second chances.”
“What of third and fourth chances?”
“Those too. Yet... if I recall correctly, those bounties were princely.”
“This may be, in some small respect, one of those turning points.”
“But behold her countenance,” Marit said. “I see a sensitive spirit of light and steel. You?”
Subrata turned his head. “I see that misshapen figure we noted earlier moving very fast—”
The shadow closed, for This was unavoidable.
Marit drew a northern long knife called a seax and Subrata a basket-hilted broadsword. Like an enemy in a dream, it was suddenly upon them. They flanked the apparition and challenged it in six tongues.
It snaked out flourishes of black expressiveness like coiled ropes and snagged each guard by an ankle. Seax and broadsword flashed. Dark cords were cut. The broken sections writhed back into the mass.
Then the red-haired wanderer arrived with daggers in her hands and strange syllables on her tongue.
The entity responded in kind. Its voice seemed a thing of dripping caves and tar pits.
“Good,” the woman sighed, pointing to herself. “Alisvisp yinwosp Gaunt. Alisvisp umwosp This,” she added, pointing at the darkness. “My name for you is This.”
“This,” responded the thing.
“Is This... yours?” Marit managed.
“You might say This is a problem I helped create,” the red-headed newcomer said.
“What does This want?” Subrata asked.
“What we all want, I’d wager,” said the redhead. “Love. Belonging. Ultimate cosmic power. Let’s see... Yynwois amssli rimyas This?”
“This!” it shouted, flowing toward her like a nest of pitch-covered snakes.
“Wrong pronunciation,” the redhead muttered, daggers raised.
Bone rushed up the bridge without conscious thought and was slapped away by a fresh tendril of darkness, a match to the one that now choked Gaunt.
“This,” came the hiss. The new tendril contrived to indicate Gaunt’s neck whilst the other shook her by it. “This,” it added, jabbing a third appendage toward the pocket where Bone carried Eyetooth.
“This seems resistant to weapons!” shouted the female guard.
“We need another way to battle This!” agreed the male guard.
“Glrg,” said Gaunt.
“You know,” Bone said, stalling while his brain rummaged every musty corner of his skull, “I was just saying to Gaunt, ‘Do you know who I really miss? This fellow, the one who was so dedicated to guarding the key. And dedicated to one word.”
“This,” said the creature.
“That’s the one! Such devotion to duty and vocabulary!”
Gaunt’s eyes were rolling back in her head... No! They were just rolling, as though she was annoyed with Bone. She was exaggerating her distress to lull This into complacency. But what could she... Ah, she was looking at the various lamps!
“The brazier!” Bone said to the guards. For Gaunt had contrived to squirm close to the great bowl of fire to the southwest. The three of them leapt to the business of toppling it onto This.
This ignited.
The male guard grabbed the lantern containing a candlewyrm, and his comrade seized the one of kraken oil. Wrenching them free, they advanced.
Bone yanked the lantern of magical flame and failed to budge it. It continued to billow as if blown toward Loom Mountain, as it had (so he realized) on previous encounters. A unworthy part of him envied the warriors for so impressively helping Gaunt.
What could he, a foolish thief, do?
Yet it seemed to him Gaunt fidgeted herself along the platform’s guard-wall as though lining her enemy up. She flicked her gaze to his, then aimed it pointedly downward, at the stone directly behind her attacker.
Ah.
As the guards swung lanterns Bone cried, “...and in conclusion... I am done... with... This!” He dove to form a low-lying obstacle for the thing, and Gaunt shoved with all her might.
The lumpy, shadowy form fell backward over Bone but also jerked upward, yanked into space like an oily rag in a gale.
Bone grabbed Gaunt. So did the guards. This let go, gyrating its way down toward Loom Mountain, gradually descending into the gorge, where it smacked against one rock face, then the other. It hit the river and rushed into shadow.
Gaunt coughed and wheezed and managed in a cracked voice to say she was all right.
“How did you know that would happen?” Bone managed.
“I am curious as well,” said the female guard.
“And I,” said her companion.
Gaunt gasped, “The secret... of Loomsberg’s lack of magic... is not a kind of inertness... but rather a current, forever dragging magic toward the great mountain... I suspect it’s a sleeping arkendrake, one unusually hungry for magic... but that’s neither here nor there...”
“It isn’t?” Bone said.
“No... ha!... what matters is that I saw in the observatory how magical effects seem to seep in one direction... toward the mountain... I gambled that shoving This toward the mountain... would produce dramatic results, given it is a creature of magic... and I was right, Bone, I was right! I am not just a pretty, petty noble. I was right!”
“You often are,” he said, impressed. “Not always, true, but—”
She gave him a Look.
“—but easily ninety-nine times out of ninety-eight! You triumphed, with a little help from these stalwart guards and less-than-stalwart me. You astonish me and are the answer to all my dark-of-the-morning questions. Let me get you that drink.”
She gave him another Look and kissed him as ferociously as she’d shoved. “Get us a room.”
“I think I haven’t the heart to collect that bounty,” the male guard said as Bone and Gaunt stumbled away.
Chris Willrich Page 5