‘One Hand Gray,’ he often smirked, looking at himself in the mirror. ‘That’s what they’ll call me. One Hand Gray, toughest bastard this side of the Old Country.’ He mimicked shooting people and reloading with the same hand, and laughed out loud. He cried, silently, head against pillow, when he could stand the sight of the ceiling no more.
Days and nights became the same. He would sleep at odd hours, and otherwise pace the room, getting used to the weight on one side. There were bouts of pain, short bursts right where the arm had been. They felt like electric shorts and hurt terribly. They would come and go, and Gray learnt to endure them. There was a great sadness still, and he would not let go of it, though sometimes his mind told him otherwise. He spent all his time in the room and no one disturbed him. Maya did not knock again, only the doctor, and the boy with his meals. Sometimes there was music, faint, in the distance.
Gray completely lost count of the days, numb to his own existence. He looked at himself in the mirror one day. A light beard had made its way around his mouth and chin. He rubbed at it and pulled at his hair. It had grown on all sides, dirty and shaggy, for Gray never bathed. He ordered the boy to get him some whisky, but the boy told him he would have to come down to the bar. Gray refused and shooed the boy away. He would not step out.
His swelling, though, was getting better with time. The wound was drying up, receiving more approving nods from the silent doctor.
‘Would you care for a prosthetic arm?’ the doctor asked him one day. ‘The swelling has come down enough to incorporate the use of one.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ Gray replied.
On his way out, the doctor, as was his custom, stopped to give Maya his report.
‘How is he?’ she asked, tired.
‘The same as before. He does not suspect I’m there to observe him more than his wound.’
‘You should talk to him more, doctor.’
‘If I do, he’ll shut me out, same as everyone else. He’s still in denial. He can’t let go of the idea of having a right arm.’ The doctor sighed. ‘I don’t blame him for his depression. It is a difficult thing, very difficult.’
‘Will he recover?’
‘Hopefully, with time. He has the strength to. Shutting everything and everyone out requires strength as well, a stubbornness which isn’t breaking, in his case. We just have to turn the focus, use the same strength to help him.’
Maya sighed as well. ‘So that’s it?’
‘For now.’
‘Thank you, doctor.’
Maya was depressed too, in a fashion. There was no sign of Fayne, no sign since the jump. She and Zabrielle had retraced their steps a couple of times during daylight. They had gone up the river to the point of the leap to look for the assassin. Nothing. Back at the Lodge, Maya did not mingle with its many inhabitants who came and went. She kept to her own devices, wandering the halls and the roof. Sometimes she would sit on the benches in the courtyard. An old man wearing a hat would often sit on an adjoining bench and play the saxophone. She would listen for a while, if it caught her fancy. Sometimes he would play quick melodies that would rise and fall and twist this way and that, bringing an invisible beat to her feet; at other times he would play long, soulful pieces that depressed her further. She admired his skill but felt no desire to talk to him.
Zabrielle lent Maya a book on Sorcerer magic, translated into English, and Maya spent hours poring over the book, mostly in her room or on the roof. Other times, she wore her gauntlets and tried things, tried to summon that which would not respond. She would also stroll atop the outside walls at times, where the guards stood. They did not stop her, and left her alone. Maya would see Revenant, scores of them, crowding the walls often, and the guards would put them down, one headshot at a time. The Shadowlands were a dreary, lonely place. From the walls, Maya would see a bleak landscape with dead trees and dunes of grey mud. The occasional mountain rose sadly in the distance, and paths of pebbles and dust charted the remnants of roads. There was no flavour to the place, nothing to distinguish it from other lands except the lack of things. There were no sights to remember, no sounds, no smells. No flowers, no greens, nothing that seemed truly alive and enduring—the revenant were undead, and occasionally she would spot crows, hovering over some unfortunate soul in the far, far distance. At night, Maya often saw shadows, away from the lights of the Lodge—lean, tall shadows that seemed to creep over the landscape. There were sounds that echoed through the night, sounds which sounded like weird, repeated coos, like the hoots of an owl, only sharper. She asked a guard once.
‘The Undying,’ he said gruffly, and crossed himself.
Maya wanted more details, but didn’t bother to ask. If she left the lodge to simply wander about, she would be back by dusk.
Weeks passed and Gray still refused to emerge from his tomb. Summer was giving way to autumn, and on her nightly stroll around the walls, Maya started seeing the Undying more and more. They scared her. She stopped leaving the lodge altogether, even by daylight. She would sit and read about magic. She finished the book and read it again. Everything else Zabrielle had was in the Old Tongue. She discovered that the lodge had a small collection of books, and she went through all of them.
Time stopped for her, though she knew it hadn’t. Days were passing every single day. The Horseman must be looking for them. Victor Sen and his assassins must be too. But no one came, no one broke their doors at night. Groups of men in coats and hoods would often stay at the lodge, but they would leave. Maya did not carry the soul gem on her person anymore. It was at the bottom of a steel trunk in her room.
Strangely enough, Zabrielle made no demands of them, no request or command that they move onward. There was no initiative, and now, finally, Maya felt like she was past initiating anything. She was done playing leader. She wasn’t special, and it was her thinking that had gotten them out of the kahuna’s cave, not some ancient, forgotten power. She remembered this each time she tried to practice with her gauntlets. The bitterness of failure did not feel like a burden to her anymore. She would simply try once, every day.
Months passed.
Maya often saw Zabrielle sending and receiving dragonflies. Ba’al, of course. She wondered what the Demon Commander was thinking of their situation. He had probably expected better. He should have chosen better then, she thought.
She saw Gray’s window open one day. She gazed at it, surprised. He was letting the sun in. She came for a walk in the courtyard again in the evening, and the window was still open. Then the old man played his saxophone, and Gray shut his window with a crash.
Maya had gained light scars on her face and across her wrists, from her injuries in the kahuna’s cave. The doctor suggested a balm to make them softer, but Maya did not want them to go away. She would feel her scars and remember the scars on Adri’s back, the Tantric who had caused her so much pain. Zabrielle would come to her at times, and ask if she wanted to talk. They would talk about nothing, the same things, and then Maya stopped talking to the Demon. Even conversations about magic were torturous.
The lodge charged them three silver pieces for each night. Zabrielle made the payments every day, then every week, then every month. Maya did not want to know the details, how much silver Ba’al had originally put in the Demon’s bag, or how much longer could they afford to stay on. She thought she saw Fayne once, but it was just another resident wearing a mask.
Autumn came, and the trees had no leaves to lose. Maya sat on a bench in the front courtyard, enjoying the hint of cold in the evening air. The old man with his musical instrument sat down next to her.
She did not move as he started playing. She looked at him briefly, at his thick white beard and the double bent nose under the brown hat. He wore the usual overcoat and scarf, and he played a gentle theme, something timeless, something with a curving, addictive refrain. The routine gunshots started adding to his music as the men on the walls suddenly went to work. The shots were stabs in his music, but the old man wo
uld not let them ruin it; he made his music meander alongside the gunshots and around them, admitting the noises into his performance, playing with incredible gusto as he did so. Maya listened on, spellbound, until she realised something.
‘Wait,’ she spoke out loud.
Her voice cut through the build-up, bringing the old man’s playing to a stop. ‘Yes?’ he asked moodily, looking at her.
‘That is an instrument of the Damned, isn’t it?’ Maya asked, pointing at the saxophone.
The man shifted in his seat, lifting the front of his hat to peer at his instrument. ‘Well, of course it is, young lady.’
Stillness, more gunshots. ‘Well, why would you play it, if you know what it is?’
‘My men will go rusty without a little target practice, miss.’
‘Your men? Do you mean—’
The man tipped his head lightly. ‘I’m the owner of this here establishment.’
‘Oh. Well, it’s a well-guarded place,’ Maya said, taken aback.
The old man kept the saxophone on his lap and withdrew a cigar case from his coat. ‘That it is. Wouldn’t want no two bit good for nothings stealing and killing.’ He cut a cigar and lit it. ‘How’d you like your stay so far, miss?’
‘It’s been a long one, that’s for sure,’ Maya muttered.
‘Indeed it has,’ the man said. ‘I normally don’t take much interest in my tenants. See, I’m the kind of person who is exceptionally good at minding my own business. But it’s not often that I’m interrupted by a lass no older than my granddaughter, lass who wears Demon mage robes and speaks of the instruments of the Damned—so if you’ll pardon my curiosity, miss, who are you and where you from?’
Maya looked at him again. Evening was coming, shadows were lengthening, including the one on his face. He was weathered, pockmarked. She was sure the beard hid scars.
‘I’d rather not tell you,’ Maya said. ‘You might be forced to repeat it—under gunpoint or otherwise.’
The old man laughed. ‘Like to see the man who can hold a gun to this forehead.’
‘Some of them aren’t men.’
‘Plot thickens,’ the man said, puffing on his cigar. He let loose a thick cloud of smoke. ‘So what do we do here?’
‘Nothing,’ Maya said. ‘I get up and I walk away. I pay your rent like I do, we never talk again.’ She started to get up.
‘Or else we can invest,’ the man said.
Maya stopped. ‘Invest?’
‘Let me tell you of investment, young lady. Curious word, far better use. Investment is an exchange of stories. One for one. Can be anything, mind you. I know you have some, and believe me, so do I.’
‘We’ll be doing the same thing,’ Maya protested. ‘You’re just giving it a name, a fancy name.’
The old man waved Maya’s comment aside, literally. ‘Young fool like you won’t know of the importance of here word. Investment has saved lives. Built trust, made strangers more comfortable. We’ve had investments in Mexican standoffs.’
‘Fine,’ Maya gave in. ‘On your own head be it. My stories can bring a whole lot of unfavourable circumstances down on anyone. Mostly us, though.’
‘You refer to your companion, with the injury.’
‘He’s . . . my brother.’
‘How did it happen?’
Slowly, summoning will, Maya narrated the events of what had happened, starting from the fall in the river and ending with the escape from the cave. She did not mention the soul gem.
The old man heard everything patiently. ‘Damn frog men,’ he said finally. ‘Deceptive little bastards. Put a bullet in every one I see. Should go down to Damrier sometime, find this Dry Boot. Old Ponchos abhors ‘em.’
Maya looked at him quizzically, and the old man pointed at one of the guards manning the wall. ‘They got his boy. No older than ten, they ate him down at Kirobo.’
Maya did not know where that was, but she shook her head.
‘Damn shame,’ the old man said. ‘That’s why they say not to trust your own shadow here in these lands. Nothing but murderers here.’
‘My brother’s locked himself up in his room,’ Maya said without realising it. She didn’t mind the old man. She hadn’t talked to someone in so long.
‘Was told as much. He’ll come around. We all come around, if we got the strength to live.’
Maya nodded. ‘What about your saxophone? Where did you get it from?’
‘Figured it’s my turn,’ the old man said, giving his short, bark like laugh.
‘Well?’ Maya pushed.
‘Ahzad,’ the old man said. ‘I was in them mountains, and I come upon this gypsy, this tinker. There he is, lying in the snow, half dead. Cold would’ve done him in. So I put up my tent, drag him in. Give him brandy, heat him the right up. He loses couple of fingers, mind you—but he survives.’ He took a long drag. ‘Turns out was bandits, them mountain crooks preying on merchants. Anyway, he’s happy and content with being alive. He gives me a gift.’
‘The saxophone.’
‘No, miss. Wouldn’t have accepted no saxophone back up there in the mountains. Would’ve been dead weight, slow me down, would’ve chucked it the moment his back was turned. No, he gives me a tooth.’
‘A tooth?’
‘Doesn’t belong to him, it doesn’t. It’s sharp, canine. Long, long as my forefinger here.’ He stuck out his finger. ‘I figure it to be some sort of voodoo. Maybe good luck, so I keep it. He tells me to go to the city of Bhopal sometime, and names a shop where I can exchange it for something special. Now Bhopal is long dead since the gas tragedy—God bless those souls—and I have myself absolutely no inclination of visiting a city where there is maybe twenty people.’
The old man grinned. ‘Turns out I have to go there, to hole up. Was being hunted, and reckon Bhopal’s a damn fine place to hide. Still wore the fang around my neck. Forgot all about the exchange. Now, I’m shopping for supplies, bread and some clobber, when the man from the bleeding shop spots the tooth. “Hey!” he says. “Hey, I got something for you.”
‘Now, that mostly means gift wrapped package of lead, and I keep my shooter ready as I follow him back to the shop. That’s when he hands me the instrument. This here instrument.’
Maya looked at the saxophone on the man’s lap, every bit as ordinary as her brother’s violin. She knew what happened when it was played.
‘How’d you learn to play so well?’
‘Practice, missy. Turns out, when you’re hiding underground with nothing to do, no candlelight for hours at a time, an instrument can be a blessing.’
‘Or a curse,’ Maya said. ‘How did you get to know?’
‘The hard way,’ the old man said. ‘Bhopal is overrun with Revenant, and I had to pick that deuced place to put up my John Coltrane act.’
‘They came for you?’
‘In the dark. Let me tell you, miss, Revenant in the dark ain’t no joke. I killed off the first wave and relocated. Took a week. No sooner had I started to play again, they would find me. I figured it out. I caught one and put it in a pit. Then I stood on a ledge above, tried my music. Understood soon enough that it would react in fixed ways to fixed notes and patterns. I memorised the patterns, wrote them down. Practice and more practice. Took me few years to master it. I control them now. Can make them eat each other, salute a flag, dance jigs.’
‘Wow,’ Maya couldn’t help but say.
The old man nodded, tipping his hat. ‘Thank you, miss, well deserved, yes, your compliment is. And that’s not all. Years later, I chance upon the owner of here instrument.’
‘The owner? Who was he?’
The old man grew thoughtful. ‘This bit is a little dicey,’ he said. ‘He’s legend, this man, nothing but a fairy tale I’ve heard as a child. Yet I see him, on this winter night. He’s come to meet me.’ The old man paused. His cigar had gone out. He lit it and inhaled deeply. ‘They call him the Pale Minstrel,’ he said slowly. Maya looked at the old man and got the impression that he wa
s trying not to shiver.
‘Courage,’ she said.
‘Yes, indeed,’ he said, taking another pull. ‘You must excuse me. Seen many a thing in this life, but this—this was one of those things, things which just seem to send you back to that day. It’s still in here’ the old man pointed at his head, ‘fresh as the day it happened.’
‘Take your time.’
‘They say the Pale Minstrel was once a man,’ the old man said suddenly. ‘They say he was once mortal. He loved music and wanted to learn and play music his entire life. He had him one snag though—he couldn’t carry a tune on no instrument. So he goes and makes himself a deal with the devil. “Teach me how to play any musical instrument,” he says, “and my soul is yours.” The devil done takes his spirit, and gives him twenty instruments from his own collection.’
‘The instruments of the Damned.’
‘Yes,’ the old man said, his voice going back years. ‘They say the minstrel loses his instruments on his travels. They say he keeps looking for them.’
‘The Pale Minstrel met you?’ Maya asked again, fascinated. ‘This Pale Minstrel?’
‘Yea, he did. Wasn’t looking for his saxophone, though, even as I offered it with trembling hands. He was looking for his teeth.’
Maya felt a sharp chill go down her spine.
‘See, the tooth I once had in my possession, it belonged to him. He bared his teeth for me—and still get nightmares, I do. About five were missing, and so he asks me where I gave the tooth that I traded for the saxophone. I tell him about Bhopal, and he smiles, pleased. When he finds the last tooth, he says, he’ll be back for his saxophone.’ The old man slowly took off his hat, revealing a mane of white, combed hair, now sweaty. ‘Haven’t seen him since. Been a good many decades.’ He crossed himself gently. ‘Grace of the Lord I didn’t have the tooth on me when he came looking.’
The old man recovered, and his gaze went to Maya’s hands. She was wearing her gauntlets.
‘My turn, I suppose?’ Maya asked, looking at her gauntlets, then at the old man’s bright, piercing eyes.
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