Penumbra

by Nazri Noor

  “Don’t you take that tone with me.” Great. Insanity it was. Here I was, having a conversation with some kind of enchanted sword on a Meathook sidewalk, scolding it, actually, and I could sense that it was sulking back somehow. But how much more insane was this than everything else? Thea’s spheres, the Dark Room, the flaming staff, Bastion’s ridiculous magic telekinesis? I took a breath, forcing myself to settle.

  “I feel like I’m owed some kind of apology,” the sword said.

  “I could say the same for you.” I gathered the rags up over it before lifting it up to my chest again, just barely exposing the hilt with its pattern of red jewels so I could actually hear it speak – which was when I realized that the voice’s quality hadn’t changed. The sword hadn’t been muffled when it spoke to me from inside the rags. “Wait. You’re talking directly into my mind, aren’t you?”

  “Nifty trick, isn’t it? Who needs a mouth when you can just transmit thoughts like that? Straight into someone’s brain.”

  “Yeah,” I said, wondering if my feeble chuckling was sufficiently covering up how creepy I found all this. Of course, this meant that anyone I passed on the street would think I was talking to myself, and while the Meathook had no shortage of weirdoes roaming the sidewalks, I really didn’t need to be calling any attention to myself. I dug through my pockets for earphones. At least I’d look like I was on a call.

  “Listen,” I said. “Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m kind of surprised that you speak so, I don’t know, conventionally. Like any guy off the street.” I couldn’t tell you how I knew that, either, but that’s what the sword sounded like in my head: just some dude of indiscernible age and accent. “You’re a sword. Shouldn’t your speech be, I don’t know.”

  “Regal?” There was a sneering quality to the sword’s voice. I didn’t think it was possible for inanimate objects to be so spiteful, but there we were. “Archaic? Would it help if I adjusted my vernacular in accordance with the lofty expectations you’ve set of me? Shall I speak with formality, in academic tones? Is the pattern of my speech not sufficiently esoteric?”

  “Wow. Tone it down with the sarcasm. It was just a question.”

  The sword scoffed. “My previous owner – not the poor nut who stole me from him – watched a lot of television. He kept me in his living room. I suppose I picked up on a few things. And besides, who’s to say how old I really am, anyway?”

  “Your previous owner?”

  “I don’t have to tell you about that.” The sword huffed. This thing was expressive, and kind of mean, and I half-wished I’d called a car after all, just so I could drop it off at HQ and get this whole farce over with. I didn’t say anything else after that, just kept walking.

  “So you were saying something about being hungry,” the sword ventured. “Where are we going anyway?”

  I gave myself a wry smile, trying to hide it behind one hand – could the sword even see me, I wondered – and answered in a familiar, snotty tone. “I don’t have to answer that.”

  Silence, for a bit, then a grudging, “Touché.”

  “Ah. So you have a sense of humor after all?”

  “Little bit.”

  “Why does it even matter where we’re going? You make it sound like you’re going to get a bite to eat.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing like that. I pick up on things that humans do around me. It’s strange, but that’s how it works. If you enjoy something, I can feel it. I can tell you that the burger you just ate was good. I can’t tell you how it tasted, but I know it was. Gives me a sense for the world.”

  There was something wistful in the way it said that last part. “So you’re saying that you won’t be opposed to me picking up a – damn, actually a burger does sound good right about now.”

  “Not at all. I might enjoy it, even.”

  “And you won’t tell on me when I bring you back to HQ?”

  “I won’t. What are they going to do to me there, anyway? Where you’re taking me?”

  I shrugged. “The usual. Study you, put you in a glass case for safekeeping. You’ll be pampered, for sure, but there’s not a whole lot to do in the Gallery, from what I’m told.”

  The sword sniffed again. “Burger it is, then.”

  My stomach grumbled at the mere thought. I nodded in agreement, wondered again if the sword could see me nod, but there was only silence after that, so I just kept on walking.

  “The name’s Dustin, by the way. You can call me Dust.”

  “Vanitas,” the sword said after a brief pause, as if it was trying to remember. “Pleasure to meet you.”

  “Huh. I thought you’d have a cooler name somehow. Something like, I dunno – Endbringer.”

  The sword sighed. “We’re only just starting to get along. Maybe try to work with me here, be a little less of a twit.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Sorry.”

  There was a pause. “I understand you’re new at your work.”

  “Yes. Wait. You mean you’ve been listening in this whole time?”

  “From the warehouse? Yes. How do you like your new colleagues?”

  “Good people,” I said. “Prudence is super cool. Bastion’s a pain. I’m not sure why he doesn’t like me. But I still have to admit, he’s not a terrible person. Not completely.”

  The sword shifted against my chest. It could move too? Huh. Had it done that before? I recognized, instinctively, that it was nodding.

  “And your work,” Vanitas continued. “Retrieving artifacts like myself, is it? Do you enjoy what you do?”

  “So far? Yeah. I do. I’ve been kind of aimless for a long time, you know? Never was sure what I would want to do for a living. Lots of things I can do passably well, but nothing really held my interest.” I was gesticulating with my free hand, I realized. This was exciting to talk about. I really did like what I was doing. “But this? I have to think on my feet. There’s so much that’s interesting here that spreading myself across so many skill sets isn’t a disadvantage anymore. It’s like this is something I finally like doing.” After a brief pause, I rushed to finish in a single breath. “Also I get to break into places and steal stuff without getting into trouble.”

  I broke to consider everything I’d said, aware that it was all true. Was Vanitas just easy to talk to? Was an enchanted sword really acting as my therapist? Hell. Was I making a new friend? So much to process.

  Again, Vanitas just shifted against my chest. I took his silence to mean that I could keep talking.

  “You know the best thing about this? I can finally go to my father and make him proud of something, for once.” The acknowledgment that I couldn’t do exactly that just yet didn’t take the wind out of my sails. “Things are complicated right now, but I’ll get to do it soon. I just – I just feel like things are going to be better.”

  “I’m glad for you,” Vanitas said. “It sounds like you love him very much.”

  “I do. He’s all I have since my mom – well, let’s not get into that.” I hefted the sword closer to me, peering at its jewels, gleaming crimson in the lamplight. “You know, you’re really easy to talk to.”

  “Oh? Perhaps I’m a good listener.”

  “Guess you are. But what about you? I’m curious. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Well, as you know, I’m enchanted. Been around for a while now, I’ll have you know.”

  “There’s definitely something ancient about you.” I gawped for a second, then quickly followed through. “I don’t mean that as an insult. It’s just, you feel – historic, somehow.”

  I didn’t know enough about weaponry or heraldry to have placed anything about Vanitas’s origins, if I’m honest. There was something almost haphazard about his structure, how certain parts didn’t really fit aesthetically. The leather straps close to the pommel looked relatively new compared to the age of the ornate design of his hilt, which was cast, it seemed, to resemble a kind of monstrous creature. A kraken, or something similar. Even his jewels looked newer, so much shinier com
pared to the rest of him.

  “No offense taken. I’ve been passed through many hands, that’s for certain.”

  My mouth hung open in spite of myself. “Warriors? Knights? Like a whole lineage of them?”

  “Not as such. I’ve been owned by those who couldn’t wield or fight with me as well.” Something about the blinking of Vanitas’s jewels felt smug, somehow, when he spoke again. “I don’t just speak, after all.”

  “What else can you do, then?”

  “Maybe we’ll discuss that later. I suggest you deal with the men who’ve been following you first.”

  Chapter 14

  What? I turned my head slightly, my chest going cold at the sight of two certainly burlier men within the corner of my vision. Damn. Did I not hear them coming because of my earphones? They were only a few feet away, not close enough to hear me, but still near enough to follow and, if they broke into a run, pounce on me.

  “Shit. How long have they been following us?”

  “Since you dropped me on the sidewalk, I would say. Seems they’ve taken a shine to me.” Vanitas’s jewels glimmered, like he was very pleased with his little pun.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I hissed.

  Vanitas shifted in my arms again. He was shrugging. “I thought you knew,” he said.

  “Damn it. Okay. I’m gonna make a run for it. I can barely carry you, much less use you in a fight.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “I just need to duck into the right shadow and – ”

  And nothing, I thought, as two even larger men appeared out of the next alley, standing just inches from my face. One of them grinned at me with teeth that looked like they could snap my neck in a single bite. The other man was so huge he looked like he had muscles on his muscles.

  “Our friends back there called ahead to tell us you’d be coming,” Toothface said. “Little welcome for you and your valuable little treasure.”

  Muscles stepped closer and cracked his knuckles. He smelled like soured sweat. Just unpleasant overall, the air of him made even worse when he spoke in a voice so deep it made my bones rattle.

  “Look at this dumb kid. What kind of idiot walks around at night with something like that?”

  Footsteps came to a stop behind me. It was the other two. Let’s just call them Giggles. Giggles as a collective. Giggles giggled.

  “A sword. Some dumb-ass. Doesn’t even look like he can use it. Looks pricey though.”

  Toothface, by now established as the leader of the group, held his hand out. “Give us the sword.”

  Somehow, walled in by four huge slabs of street thug, I still found the wits to speak. Maybe I shouldn’t have, considering how my voice leaked out of me in a squeak.

  “Can’t,” I said. “It’s not mine. Gotta bring this back to work.”

  Giggles giggled. Muscles flexed. Toothface’s grin went, well, toothier.

  “Then we’ll have to do this the hard way.”

  “I have an idea,” Vanitas said. I was questioning his sudden silence, and was at once relieved by the sound of his voice, even though I couldn’t at all be sure what his idea entailed. The men closed in.

  “Vanitas? Any minute now.”

  “The fuck are you talking about?” Toothface said. “Who are you talking to?” His hand, which was just about the size of my entire face, came closer. “I said hand the sword ove – ”

  The rags in my arms exploded into a cloud of scraps and fibers. Sword and scabbard flew apart with that soul-scraping “shing” you hear in every action movie, only it sounded even cooler because it was happening right in front of my face. The scabbard floated behind me, whacking and pounding the living hell out of Giggles. And the sword, flying of its own volition, flashed in a clean, gorgeous arc – and sliced Toothface’s hand off at the wrist.

  How he screamed.

  “What the fuck,” Muscles yelled.

  “What the fuck,” I yelled.

  Behind me, Giggles gasped and groaned as the scabbard somehow moved quickly enough to beat the ever-loving crap out of the both of them. Vanitas hovered just in front of me, his blade stained with blood and his hilt at hand level, as if wielded by an invisible swordsman. He stayed perfectly still. Muscles eyed the sword warily even as Toothface clutched his severed hand in his intact one, bawling and screaming.

  “I think you should let us go,” I said, with hardly any strength left in my voice. I was just as confused as they were.

  “This is fucked up, man,” Muscles said. “Fucked up. Last week it was that bearded psycho with the flamethrower, now this shit. I’m out. I’m so out.”

  My attackers disappeared as quickly as they’d shown up, Muscles dragging Toothface down the way they came while Giggles hightailed it in the opposite direction. I looked around cautiously. Somehow we had managed to avoid drawing more attention to ourselves. No onlookers – yet.

  “We should get out of here.”

  Vanitas gave a disgusted grunt as he wiped himself off on the remaining piles of rags on the sidewalk. “Agreed.” With another “shing,” he slipped into his scabbard then settled against my body, going limp as I caught him in my arms.

  Fucking Meathook. I should have known better. I walked as fast as I could. “What the hell happened back there?”

  “Hey, you’d think I’d get a ‘Thank you’ out of it, but no.”

  “Thank you. But what the hell was that?”

  Vanitas shrugged. “Self-defense? You’re supposed to deliver me somewhere, and I think I’d much rather be with you than with those thugs.”

  “Um. Thanks.”

  “Nice to have a friend, for once, and not just a master.”

  My newest friend, a talking sword. Check that, a flying talking sword. Just last week I was a jobless, mostly aimless loser. How quickly things change.

  I remembered the very first thing Vanitas had said to me earlier that evening, so I echoed it. “Same.”

  And silence, again, as I hurried towards the comforting incandescent glow of the first chain coffee shop that indicated I was finally out of the Meathook. A voice spoke inside my head again, but it wasn’t Vanitas this time. And the jewel around my throat, the opal I was wearing, it was glowing. And warm.

  “Dustin.” I knew the voice instantly. It was Thea, speaking through the gem. And she wasn’t happy.

  “Get back to HQ. Now. We need to talk.”

  Chapter 15

  “Then it just flew. Whoosh! Right out of my hands, and sliced off, uh, the other guy’s hand. At least one of them.”

  Herald fixed me with one raised eyebrow, and two very skeptical eyes. For someone in his twenties he put me in mind of a man who’d seen this all enough times to question it. I was just some crazy person rambling to him, and the analytical brain sitting behind those hipster glasses was reading me for everything I was worth.

  “Honest,” I chirped out, one last attempt to get him to believe me.

  Herald pushed the glasses up his nose and blinked, rubbing his chin. “It’s definitely happened before. It’s not unprecedented. Sentient artifacts can and will form bonds with their users. But for one to fight of its own accord? And it flew, you say?” He swiped his finger across his tablet, scrolling up and down the page. “Nothing in the sword’s dossier says anything about that. We know that it’s sentient, of course.” He scratched the bridge of his nose where his glasses made their indentation, then looked over at the sword in its display case, its new home. “But it doesn’t seem to be talking now.”

  “He,” I said.

  Herald quirked an eyebrow.

  “It’s a he, I think, at least going by what I heard of his voice.”

  Herald just stared at me.

  “His name is Vanitas,” I said, twiddling my thumbs.

  “And it – he – spoke to you telepathically?”

  “That’s right.”

  Herald scrolled over his tablet again. This was his job, after all, to sort and study all the artifacts, spell books, and enc
hanted relics that the Hounds retrieved for the Lorica. Herald was one of many archivists, and it was clear that HQ needed to hire a full staff of them considering the sheer amount and variety of magical objects that needed cataloguing.

  We stood in the central hub of the Gallery, what the archivists called the immense space that contained their department. Radiating outward like the spokes of a wheel were row upon row of bookcases, most containing valuable grimoires locked and chained to the shelves, some holding smaller, precious items behind bulletproof glass.

  The central hub was meant for processing, a circular huddle of workspaces and desks designed to accommodate the archivists at their work. Artifacts arrived here before they were thoroughly studied, labeled, and shifted off to their permanent homes in the Gallery, which explained why Vanitas was still in the hub.

  “Huh. We didn’t realize the blade had given itself a name. I have a partial history of its owners here, though, and that might explain some of the weapon’s traits.” Herald squinted. “Minor nobles, and even, it looks like, a freelancer, in the original sense of the word.”

  “So a free lance. Like a mercenary. Someone who sold his sword to the highest bidder.”

  “Yes,” Herald said, his eyes lighting up, like he hadn’t expected me to know what a freelancer was. I tried not to show how pleased I was at his reaction. Like I said, I read a lot. Also I may or may not have picked up that information from a video game, but hush. “Perhaps the sword retained some of its previous owners’ personalities, or even their abilities. I’ll have to look into it.”

  “Keep me posted,” I said, which elicited another cocked eyebrow. Herald, it seemed, was taking an interest in how I was taking an interest in his work. It struck me then that few people probably did.

  “I will,” he said, the corner of his mouth curving into the tiniest smile. But the dimple in his cheek disappeared. His eyebrows crooked, and his face darkened. “What you did out there was enormously stupid, though.”