by Peter David
“You have my word,” I said.
“Very well, then,” he said. “Let us all meet someplace a bit less cavernous, and we shall speak as men do.”
I didn’t like the sound of that at all. And even as his guards lowered ladders that would enable us to clamber up to the observation deck and out, I heard the snarling and howling from the creatures on the other side of the door. Considering what Reaver was capable of, I was starting to wonder if I might not have better luck taking my chances with those beasts. All they would do is rip apart my body. When dealing with Reaver, one had to worry about keeping one’s soul intact, and that was certainly the harder job.
Chapter 10
An Unholy Bargain
WILLIAM AND I WERE USHERED INTO the same study that Reaver had been using earlier when he was meeting with Droogan. Despite my having given my word that I would not try to escape or undertake any sort of offensive stance in return for safe passage out of the Pit, the guardsmen were still escorting us at gunpoint. What a world we live in that trust is practically a thing of the past.
On the other hand, Reaver was certainly something of a villain himself, and naturally that would tend to make him suspicious of others. He probably figured that the rest of the world was as unscrupulous as he was. Except the strange truth was that Reaver really did have a code of honor of sorts. Perhaps being disreputable was not quite the same as being dishonorable. Then again, considering some of the things I’ve done just in order to survive, who am I to render judgments on anyone else?
“First things first,” said Reaver as he sat behind his desk. For Droogan, he leaned on the front; for me, he was apparently more relaxed. “In the future, Mr. Finn, you should be aware of the fact that when you’re watching someone in a mirror, unless you’re very careful, the person you are viewing can catch a glimpse of you as well.”
“Dammit,” I muttered.
He waved it off as if it were of no consequence. “Nothing to concern yourself about. I assure you if I hadn’t become aware of you because of that, then something else would have alerted me. Can I safely assume that you are the reason that Herman, my doorman, was found unconscious behind a hedge?”
“That’s correct.”
“Ah. Well, you’ve certainly caused him some trauma.”
“I assume he’ll recover.”
“Yes.” Reaver had removed some papers from one of his desk drawers, and he had spread them out in front of him. “So: Your brother has been quite busy since his supposed death.”
Unable to resist my curiosity, I nodded toward the papers. “What are those?”
“His ownership papers.”
“Ownership papers?” I looked to William in confusion. He said nothing; instead, he simply sat there, staring resolutely forward.
It occurred to me at that moment that William could easily transform into his animalistic aspect, leap across the table, and kill Reaver right where he sat. After all, I had made promises, but he had not. Yet William wasn’t making so much as a move against him. For that matter, I thought back to all the cells that had been left unlocked. These creatures could have stormed Reaver at any time. What in the world was keeping them there?
“Yes, ownership papers,” said Reaver readily, and slid them across to me. Apparently, he felt he had nothing to hide. “You were under the impression that dear William was executed some time ago, I take it? Or perhaps rotting away in some jail?” When I managed a silent nod, Reaver continued, “No. He was sold into slavery. Unfortunately, he was not the most cooperative of acquisitions. You”—and he tapped the papers as he spoke to William—“were quite busy, weren’t you, William? Come, come, you can respond. I already know the answer, as do you.”
“I was busy, yes,” said William, who suddenly seemed to have taken a great deal of interest in staring at his bare feet.
“He would escape, you see,” said Reaver. He sounded quite chipper about it, as if he were sharing an amusing anecdote over a pint at the local pub. “He would always manage to slip free of his owner and go underground, oftentimes acquiring a new identity and trying to lie low for as long as possible. Doubtless, he hoped that if he could avoid drawing attention to himself for a sufficient length of time, he would be able to resurface and resume his old life. Fortunately—or unfortunately, I suppose, depending upon one’s point of view—he never had that opportunity, thanks to Taggert.”
William showed the first real sign of life since we’d been brought to the study. His face twisted into a snarl, and he spat upon the floor. “Taggert,” he said with a growl that sounded more animal than man.
I looked from one of them to the other, confused. “Who’s Taggert?” I asked.
“He’s a right bastard,” said William.
“He is, in fact, a slave hunter,” Reaver informed me. He sounded quite amused by it. “One of the best. For some reason, he took a particular interest in William’s comings and goings. Well, goings more than comings, to be accurate. Apparently, Taggert considered it a challenge to hunt William down time after time.”
“I could have had a life if it weren’t for him,” said William. “I could have started anew. But every time I even began to settle in somewhere, the next thing I knew, someone had struck me from behind, and I was waking up inside a cart, chained like an animal, with that damnable Taggert perched on the front seat and driving me back to my ‘master.’ ”
“The thing is, runaway slaves are bad business,” Reaver said. “Take it from someone who’s had to deal with more than his fair share of them. You have to pay extra for people like Taggert to drag them back, and you have to go out of your way to keep an eye on them. That’s a lot of time, investment, and energy for a slave who typically isn’t worth it. I knew that full well when I decided to embark on my little endeavor, and so sent out word that I was looking for people . . . well, like your brother here. Slaves who were more trouble than they were worth. Slaves who kept running away.”
“But why?” I said. “Why would you want such individuals ?”
“Because I could acquire them cheaply, of course,” Reaver said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, which in retrospect I suppose it should have been. “I am, first and foremost, a businessman, and a smart businessman saves money where he can.”
“I still don’t understand. What did you do to William and the others? How do you know they won’t run off? I just . . .” I shook my head. “I’m just having some difficulty wrapping my head around all this.”
William appeared as if he wanted to tell me but couldn’t bring himself to do so. So he returned to looking down at the floor.
And then, slowly, the pieces began to come together in my head. Pieces that assembled into a puzzle that rendered a horrific picture.
“That man downstairs,” I said slowly. “That man in the mask . . . the one that William didn’t want me to kill. He did this to him, didn’t he.” It was not a question. “Is he some manner of wizard?”
“More of an alchemist, actually.”
“I thought alchemists are concerned with transforming lead into gold or some such.”
“Alchemists,” said Reaver patiently, leaning back in the large chair behind his desk, “are interested in matters having to do with metamorphosis. Some are obsessed with elemental aspects such as you mention. Others, however, are more interested in seeing what manner of changes can be . . . applied . . . to the human body. The fellow you encountered falls into that category. He calls himself Baro although I tend to think that is not his real name. What care I, though, for names, when the deeds are being accomplished?”
“And in this case the deed was to transform my brother and your other ‘volunteers’ into these . . . these Half-breeds, as you call them.”
My voice was trembling with rage. That seemed to bother Reaver not at all. Obviously, he wasn’t feeling threatened by my potential wrath, and who could really blame him? If I had figured out this entire business correctly, then he had all the cards, while rage was literally
all I possessed.
“That is correct,” he said. “Baro developed a means of infusing human beings with the properties of some of the more dreadful creatures in Albion. A bit of balverine, a bit of hobbe, and some binding magic drawn directly from shadow creatures, from what I understand. And best of all, since they retain part of their humanity, they can be kept under human control.”
“That’s your key to keeping them in line,” I said. “It’s not just that they still possess inner humanity. It’s that they live in perpetual hope that you will reverse what you’ve done to them.”
“That’s part of it, yes,” said Reaver, looking rather pleased with himself. He placed his booted feet upon the desk. “As long as they remain under the kindly influence of either me or Baro, they still retain some claim upon their human aspects. But should they turn on me or try to run away, as your brother is wont to do, then . . . well, William, why don’t you tell him?”
William continued to refuse making eye contact with me. But he spoke, slowly and haltingly. It was as if he were confessing some great crime. “The animal is within us, always,” he said. “Baro put it there through his powers and concoctions. If any of us run away . . . if we are away from Baro’s enchantments for too long . . . then slowly our humanity will become lost to us. The beast within will swallow it whole, and we will be left as nothing but animals, no better than the most vicious of creatures that wander the forest. If there is any spark of humanity remaining, it will be hopelessly, helplessly trapped within. Who in his right mind would desire that?”
“No one,” I said.
“No one indeed. And so we remain,” said William, sounding like a man speaking from the bottom of his own grave. “We receive the potions from Baro that maintain our humanity for us. And we dare not turn against Reaver since Baro is in his employ. We certainly cannot turn against Baro.”
“That’s why you couldn’t let me hurt him,” I said. “Because if he died . . .”
“Then all of us would descend into animal madness.”
My eyes narrowing, I turned back to Reaver. “At which point,” I said, “there is nothing to stop them from turning on you.”
“Oh, I have fail-safes, you can count on that.” Reaver did not seem the least bit concerned over the prospect of being torn apart by animalistic creatures. “Nothing will happen to me. I have an absolute means of controlling them beyond their need for keeping a tenuous grasp on their humanity. I always land on my feet. Always.”
“Yes, so I’ve seen.” I hated to admit it, but the man was right. “Then here we are. Me with my brother under your thumb, and you with no particular reason to let him out from it.”
“So it would appear.”
There was something in the way he said those words that provided me reason for hope despite all evidence to the contrary. It certainly matched up with all that had just transpired. If he had no use for me, why bring me here to his office? Why not simply have his guardsmen perforate me? Reaver had no motivation to lord it over me. Certainly, he had better things to do with his time.
My weapons had been removed from my person before we’d been led into the study, but that didn’t mean I was incapable of doing violence all by my lonesome. I was confident that, should it come down to it, I could take Reaver in direct combat. In the back of my mind, though, there were warnings that it wouldn’t be as simple as all that. The type of fellow Reaver was, for instance, would probably have some manner of ring on his hand capable of injecting paralytic poison. I glanced at his hand and, sure enough, there was a ring with the shape of a dragon’s head etched in iron atop it. It might be nothing more than a simple ornament. It might also be an instrument of death, and there were quite a few men who had gone to their deaths underestimating just what Reaver was capable of. I had no desire to add to their number.
Yet still I maintained an aggressive posture as I said, “I want my brother released to me. I want whatever the pernicious magics you have infecting him removed from his person. I want him to walk out of here a free man.”
Reaver smiled broadly. “Is that all?”
“For the moment.”
“And you think that I’m prepared to provide you all that?”
“Yes, I do.” I tried to sound calm and not betray the way my heart was racing. “Because I think you are intelligent enough to know precisely what I was going to want. And I think you wouldn’t have me here unless you were prepared to provide it to me in exchange for . . . well, for whatever.”
“How remarkably cunning you are,” he said. “I am five steps ahead of you, of course.”
“Of course,” I allowed.
“On the other hand, I have been doing this for much, much longer than you have.”
“Indeed. How much longer would that be, exactly?”
He smiled thinly but didn’t reply. Instead, he steepled his fingers and peered over the tips as if he were giving great contemplation to my demands. I knew perfectly well that he had known what I was going to ask and doubtless already had his responses ready. Obviously, though, he liked to play his games, and since I was on his home court, I had no choice but to go along.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I will instruct Baro to undo the changes he made to your brother, and the two of you will be allowed to depart.”
William gasped in astonishment. Clearly, he had not thought things out in as much detail as I had. He was reacting as if his greatest dream were going to be handed to him on a tray as if by a serving wench at a tavern. I, on the other hand, knew that it could not possibly be as easy as all that.
“In exchange for—?” I said, and waited.
“Two things. There are two conditions.”
Here it comes, I thought.
“The first,” he said, “is that Blackholm is off-limits to you. You give me your word that you never return there. Warlord Droogan is allowed to spread his area of control over Blackholm if it suits him, and you will do nothing to interfere.” He leaned forward, his chair creaking under him as he did so, and rested his elbows on the table. “Frankly, I am doing you a service by insisting on that condition. Without your brother in his capacity as Prime to turn my Half-breeds away, you would be serving a death warrant upon yourself. You would not want to be anywhere near Blackholm, you can count on that. Is this agreed?”
I despised the notion even though I had been fairly certain that it was a condition Reaver would insist upon. The warlord was his client, after all, and had presumably paid a considerable sum for use of the Half-breeds. I was a rather resourceful individual. Should I return to Blackholm, Reaver was no doubt concerned I might come up with some other means of turning aside the attack of his creatures even without my brother’s aid.
I had done all I could to help the people of Blackholm, but they weren’t my kin. Until recently, I had thought I was alone in the world, but I was discovering that that wasn’t the case at all. When it came to making a decision between the brother I had thought long dead and the people whom I had met a relatively short time ago, there really wasn’t all that much of a choice to be made.
“All right,” I said. William began to speak up in protest, as I knew he would, but I turned to him, and said, quickly but firmly, “I’m not looking to discuss this, William. If it’s you or them, then that doesn’t even require a second of thought.”
“But there are so many more of them . . .”
“I don’t care. This isn’t about how the numbers pan out. This is about what I can live with. I’ve seen people get killed, whole towns get slaughtered. There are always going to be more people who need protecting, and I’m going to do the best I can. But I only have one brother, and that’s one more than I thought I had a week ago. Nothing else matters. You get that? Nothing.”
“Well, well,” said Reaver, his tone sly. “It appears I was mistaken after all.”
“Mistaken in what?” I had no idea what he was referring to.
“Why, in my assessment that you might be a Hero. Your choice is wholly
selfish and weighted only toward your interests rather than the interests of many people.”
“I can live with that.”
“Ah, but can the people of Blackholm?”
The bastard was enjoying this. He was trying to shove a metaphorical sword into me and twist it, just to watch me squirm. It wasn’t going to work. I knew what was important to me, and if that made me selfish, then that was just fine with me. “I really don’t give a damn what you think of me. Now if we’ve concluded our business . . .”
“Ah-ah.” Reaver raised one slender finger in a peremptory fashion. “We’re not concluded at all. My first requirement was conditional on your not doing something. In order to earn your brother’s freedom, however, you actually have to do something as well.”
“Really.”
“Yes, really, but have no fear. Since you’ve already proven yourself less than a Hero and willing to operate from selfish motivations, this honestly shouldn’t be too much of a problem for you.”
I had a suspicion that he was being less than truthful. The way he was smiling, the way he seemed to curl his tongue around every syllable of the sentence, led me to believe that what he wanted was going to be anything but not “too much of a problem.” But I was hardly about to put my uncertainties on display in front of him. “All right,” I said evenly. “What do you have in mind?”
He smiled in a way that did not touch his eyes. “I have business dealings in Bowerstone.”
“I know. Plenty of them, in fact.”
“Yes, but I have others that are brewing at the moment, and they would be far easier to attend to if a particular individual was no longer there.”
“What do you mean by ‘no longer there’?” I was asking the question even though I suspected I knew what the answer was going to be.
Turned out I was correct.
“I mean,” he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, “I require someone to be disposed of on a permanent basis.”