Dangerous Games

by Clayton Emery

  Just as clearly, he couldn’t defeat these canny killers in uniform. His brain raced for a defense. Instinctively, he grasped what he’d seen succeed moments before, when the fop invoked privilege.

  “Captain, know that I’m a guest of Karsus.”

  One guard snorted, but the captain paused. Obviously he didn’t know who Sunbright was. He spat, “Prove it, then.”

  Gritting his teeth, Sunbright played the game. “I and another wizard named Candlemas were brought here from Castle Delia, by Karsus’s command, because we unearthed a shooting star. Karsus needs it for his experiments. We’re to give him information on finding the star. I’ve talked with one Seda, in his workshops. You can ask anyone there.”

  “I know Seda,” muttered a guard. “From the House of Zee. She does work in Karsus’s close circle.”

  Still unsure, the captain frowned. But the magical name had worked. He nodded toward the wider street beyond. “Very well, good sir. Go, and good luck to you. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

  Wary as a cornered lion, Sunbright slid along the wall until clear of their semicircle. Slipping the warhammer into its holster, he watched the guards as he picked up Harvester and backed into the main street.

  His precautions were unnecessary. The guards had already forgotten him and had fallen to other work. As the captain divvied up the bribe, two guards slipped the braided cords over the heads of the two surviving thugs. Their bleats were cut off as the garrotes snuggled tight. Bug-eyed, the unlucky street toughs strangled.

  Sunbright cursed as he sped off down the street, bloody sword in hand, after a certain foppish wretch.

  He had debts to pay.

  * * * * *

  Hurodon and his well-dressed friends whooped with delight, carolled songs, and hurled jokes as they cut through a park lined with trees and gasglobes. They aimed for a brightly-lit ale shop at the opposite corner, but were interrupted.

  A thick bush at Hurodon’s elbow split open as if from a charging lion. A girl yelped, a boy cried out.

  Sunbright Steelshanks burst from the foliage to grab Hurodon by the throat. The fop gargled as he was whipped off his feet and slammed against a rough-barked oak tree. His gang of friends dithered, drew their toy swords, yelled.

  The barbarian’s harsh cough cut them off. “Attack me, or call out, and I’ll snap his neck!” He was panting from his quick run around vast blocks to get ahead of the party. His right hand, still numb, was tucked in his belt. He only needed one hand to tame this bunch.

  Yet looking at them, he couldn’t follow through on his plan, which was to kill them all. Certainly they deserved to die for their casual cruelty. They’d killed their hired thugs as surely as the guards had. But they were young and raised wrong, like puppies let loose to become wild dogs. Perhaps they could learn.

  Hurodon hissed, “Let me go, you filthy muckraker, or I’ll have you—” A squeeze cut off his wind.

  In the lout’s face, Sunbright rasped, “You sneaking milk-sucker! You nest-robber! You cache-thief!” Sunbright’s tundra-born insults were lost on the boy, but not the berserker’s intent. “You were born wrapped in sable! You think you can buy people’s lives with your filthy coin?”

  “I’ll buy your death!” gasped the boy. “You’ll be roasted over—”

  Sunbright let go just long enough to backhand the boy, whose head snapped around so hard his ear was torn by rough bark. Then he was clamped and throttled again.

  “You’ll need to buy a new nose once I slice yours off and throw it to the dogs!” Sunbright assured him.

  Never before manhandled, and always given what he wanted immediately, the boy blundered on, “You’re a ghost, underling! My family will see you—”

  This time Sunbright smashed him in the mouth hard enough to knock out a front tooth. Choking him again, so blood and makeup ran from the boy’s mouth onto the barbarian’s wrist, Sunbright shouted, “I’ll knock out every tooth and then cut out your lying tongue!”

  Finally, the boy was scared. Before, Hurodon couldn’t imagine anyone hurting him, and now he realized that Sunbright was going to kill him then and there. But it was too late for Sunbright to kill him now, for the barbarian had decided to talk instead. Maybe he could teach this petty thug a lesson in honor. “Now, fish guts, for once in your miserable life you’ll listen!”

  Hurodon got the message. Mouth swollen and bleeding, he whimpered, “All right. But don’t hit me again.”

  Sunbright was sickened both by his own actions and this poor excuse for a human. Yet he bore down. “You—and you lot too—you get yourselves back to the Street of the Golden Willows and you stay there! You’re worse than those backstabbing blackguards you hired for your hellraising and left to die. They’ve been punished—at your behest—while you’ve gone on to more mischief. But you’re lower than they, for you betrayed them, and that’s the worse crime!”

  Hurodon wiggled, and Sunbright shook him like a rat. Some of his friends couldn’t meet Sunbright’s glare.

  The barbarian continued, “No longer. If I ever see any of you out after sunset again, I’ll slit your throats and drop you off this mountain. Understand?”

  “Yes,” some of them murmured. Hurodon dripped warm blood on Sunbright’s hand. He dropped the stripling onto the tree roots and, without another word, stalked off into the darkness.

  His words were bluster, of course. He had no intention of tracking these dung beetles. But they’d sleep uneasily for a while, and might curb their ruthless hellraising in the future.

  But not all. From far behind came Hurodon’s mushy wail. “I’ll get you! I’ll see you dead! And all your family dead! I’ll buy the finest assassins in the empire!”

  Sunbright only shook his head. “Karsus’s finest assassins and its finest youth,” he said to himself. “This empire is naught but a rotten melon infested with insects. One good kick would crush it. And will.”

  He was more angry with himself than with the spoiled brats. This city life was infecting him, making him grow soft, for he’d committed the second-worst crime a barbarian knew.

  He’d left an enemy alive.

  * * * * *

  Passing the narrow street where he’d fought, Sunbright paused a moment in curiosity.

  The city guards had been efficient, at least. They’d laid the four bodies of the thugs at the head of the street, neatly in a line, heads out, even the pulped head of the man they’d beaten to death.

  A bony mule hauling a long-sided wagon clomped to a stop near them. An old man and woman, both wearing gasglobe helmets, got out. Together they dragged the bodies and heaped them in the cart. The red lamp of the alehouse glowed as bloodily as before, and the noise from inside it was just as loud.

  “What are you doing?” Sunbright asked.

  “Eh?” The old man tilted his head. Sunbright asked again, louder. “Oh. Cleanup crew, milord. The local waste buckets are too small to swallow a body. We have ’ta take ’em to a locked room and drop ’em down there.”

  “Waste buckets? Locked room?”

  The old man peered, as if to ask: where are you from? But he minded his betters. “Yes, milord. The city guard don’t want no one stuffin’ folks down the garbage chutes. So we take ’em to a locked stoneroom and slide ’em down there. The magic eats ’em up, makes more magic. Nothing left.”

  Sunbright still didn’t understand how magic “ate one up,” but it didn’t surprise him the empire would feed on magic generated by its dead. A form of cannibalism, he reckoned it.

  “Do you do this every night?”

  “Eh? Oh, yes, milord. All night, every night. But we gotta be off the streets by sunrise or the straw bosses scream. But me and Mandisa, we’re slow, but steady. Still, we gotta be off soon …”

  “Why soon?”

  “Oh,” the man avoided his eyes, fussed with the dead men and woman in the cart. The old woman shuffled slowly, helmet lamp making a white blob bounce on the ground, and sorted through the trash on the street for anything
valuable. “Some nights the city’s more boisterous than others, is all. There’s what, nineteen cleanup crews, all told. We’re busy, but glad for the work.”

  Sunbright supposed they were. This man looked as starved as the bodies he’d loaded onto his cart. He didn’t understand what “boisterous” might mean, but a casual comment had arrested his attention. “Nineteen teams work all night, every night, just to pick up corpses?”

  “Aye, milord. ’Course, that’s just the poor ’uns, you understand. Strangers or folks no one cares to give a funeral to. Good families take care of their own, of course. Some of ’em are even buried down on the ground, I hear tell. Now look at that, ain’t that curious?” He took hold of a white object suspended around one tough’s neck and broke the thong. Peering, waggling his head lamp, he still couldn’t see, so he handed it to the barbarian. “What is that, good sir?”

  Sunbright took the thing. It was yellowed by sweat and grime, but polished from lying between the dead man’s skin and clothing. “It’s a hunk of knucklebone. Too big for a deer’s.”

  The old man waved a crooked hand. “Good luck charm. Worthless. Keep it. Ready, Mandisa?” He helped his wife climb onto the seat with creaking knees, checked that their next stop, according to the guards, was the Street of Lilacs.

  As he clucked to the old mule, Sunbright asked, “Can you point me to Castle Karsus?”

  The man squinted, nodded with the reins, indicating a yellow-lit structure high up in the distance. Sunbright nodded: he should have known. Of all the odd buildings in this city-state, it was the only one with tilted walls that met at odd angles.

  The old man said another curious thing. “You better be off the street by sunrise yourself, young master. Rumors are milling again …”

  “Rumors of what?”

  “Oh, troubles in the marketplace. Same old same old.…” The deaf man slapped the reins and rolled away.

  The barbarian found himself still clutching the knucklebone, the only artifact left of a man he’d killed for no clear reason, except that the man had tried to kill him. Somehow, it didn’t seem a good enough reason right now. He pocketed the polished bone and trudged on.

  His opinion of the empire sank lower with every new sight, if such were possible. Before the doorway of a large meeting hall, citizens had dragged a man with pointed ears by his hair, lashed him to a signpost, and doused him with strong liquor, probably brandy, for when they applied a torch, the man (or half man) ignited, to die screaming while the crowd cheered.

  Sunbright saw it all in the length of a block. His legs wanted to run that way, but he stood rooted. There were fifty or more villains, yowling men, and shrill women. He couldn’t save the victim, could only get himself killed. Wondering what had become of his pride, or common sense, he trudged until the flaming pyre was past. Farther on, he saw a man and woman sprawled in the gutter, their throats cut, their clothing looted. He saw starved horses hitched to glittering coaches, saw a row of gap-mouthed heads spiked on iron pilings around a park, some of them children’s. He saw more children pick through garbage and fight with dogs for a bone, and city guards chase both with silver-tipped clubs.

  There was no end to the corruption of the empire, he saw. It was built on the bones of the unjustly-treated dead, and the hunched backs of the dying living.

  Back in opulent Castle Karsus, Candlemas was learning the opposite. And the same.

  Chapter 6

  One second Candlemas was pinned against a wall and throttled, then Karsus waved a hand and Sunbright flickered away like a snuffed candle flame. The pudgy mage dropped, lost his footing, and plopped on his bottom.

  “There,” said the younger mage. “He’ll be a while returning. Servants are such a bother, aren’t they? I turned one into an orc last week. The soup was cold.”

  Candlemas rubbed his throat and nodded absently. Sunbright was hardly a servant, nor was he a proper apprentice or even an equal partner. That was the problem with their relationship: neither was really certain how they meshed. The barbarian was too quick to hammer things for a solution: a man of pure action. Yet Candlemas, a man of science, was too quick to ply magic as a cure-all. Between them, he reflected, they should be able to solve any problem. Instead, they only seemed to end up stalemating, sinking deeper into a morass of trouble.

  Karsus had wandered off, calling orders to attendants and lesser mages, sailing like a war galley scattering tiny ships. Massaging his throat, Candlemas trotted to catch up.

  He soon forgot his troubles, for Karsus’s workshop—which stretched over many buildings—proved a wonderland of spells and magic that Candlemas could only have dreamed of. Karsus had hundreds of experiments going on simultaneously, and kept track of each in his tousled head.

  One room sported a stone fountain and pool. A dozen mages were at work, and when Karsus swept in, they scurried to show him their latest results. Holding hands in a ring around the pool, they chanted a short command. Instantly a rainbow fountained up from the center well. Streaks of color shot upward, fanned out, and spilled into the retaining pool. Karsus clapped his hands with delight, like a child, and Candlemas joined him. But there was more. The rainbow looked and behaved like water, but maintained its stripes. So as the colored fan hit the pool, the streams separated out, and made a swirling whirlpool of color: a circular rainbow.

  A mage leaned over the pool, gesturing. “There’s more, Great Karsus. Look!” Dipping his hand into the pool, he demonstrated that the color stuck to his hand. Fingertips stayed green, his palm blue, his wrist violet. Shaking his hand, the colors spattered on the floor to make a tiny rainbow—like from a prism glass—that slowly faded.

  “I love it!” Karsus dipped his hand, painted the front of his dirty robe in stripes, painted Candlemas’s nose blue. “My invention! Heavy magic! It works for everything!”

  Karsus dipped in the pool, scooped a multicolored ball and hurled it against the wall, where it stuck. “They’ll pay scads of money for this one. Everyone will want one for his garden. You’ll all be rich, and the name of Great Karsus will be even greater!” Candlemas chuckled but shook his head. These lesser mages had accomplished something he never could have even attempted.

  Quitting the room, Karsus sailed down another corridor. Candlemas was getting used to the archwizard’s abrupt starts and stops, and scurried to catch up, but he tripped over a loose floor tile and crashed on his hands and knees.

  Karsus scurried over to help him rise. “Clumsy, clumsy. Keep up, now. We’ve much to see, much to do.” His sparkling golden eyes roamed around in their sockets. Candlemas found the effect unnerving. The man was either a genius or a lunatic, perhaps both.

  The pudgy mage looked where he’d stumbled. Floor tiles had cracked and separated as the floor shifted. One edge was four inches too high. The crack even continued across the floor to one of the tilted walls, reaching with spidery fractures all the way to the ceiling. The steward of Castle Delia (or former steward) pointed. “Shouldn’t you summon a mason to patch that? Someone could trip and spill—”

  Karsus was thirty paces away. He never seemed to walk, only jog from one task to another. “No time, no time! We don’t use masons anymore anyway. Wouldn’t know where to find one. I’ll have someone seal it magically. Brightfinger’s stonebind should work! Come on, come on!”

  With skinned hands and knees tingling, Candlemas trotted after. It occurred to him that hiring a mason would be cheaper than plying magic, but then, they had plenty of magic to spare. Yet no one seemed interested in maintaining the building, a fact he found strange. As steward of Castle Delia, he knew how quickly things deteriorated if neglected.

  Then he was witnessing other miracles and soon forgot about repairs.

  In a smaller room near the cellars stood a trio of female arcanists before a big, scarred, wooden table. In the corner, watched by a city guard, was a starved and shabby man shackled wrists to ankles. Clanking awkwardly, the man gulped down a bowl of porridge with his fingers.

  A wom
an with blonde hair and a high forehead greeted him. “Great Karsus, we’ve perfected the spell you requested!”

  “Wonderful, wonderful! Which one was it?”

  “Imprisonment, milord,” replied the apprentice patiently. “The more powerful version of Yong’s imprisonment?”

  “Oh yes, oh yes!” Turning, he said, “You’ll like this, Candlemas. The city guards asked for it. Show us, show us!”

  Candlemas nodded attentively, but he couldn’t help but wonder about the prisoner in the corner. The man was nothing but skin and bones. The planes of his forehead and cheeks were sharp enough to cut, and his eyes were sunken and vacant as he licked the wooden bowl for the last specks of porridge. What was his crime? Had the city guards been starving him for months?

  Smiling in the spotlight, the mage picked up a small globe of pale green glass. With one hand, she gestured to the city guard that he should stand aside. The nervous soldier retreated to the other corner. Lightly, the mage lobbed the globe at the prisoner. It broke on the floor with a quiet tinkle.

  A whirling mist of green spun from the fragments, rose, expanded, and, like a hunting hawk, zoomed at the prisoner. The man yelped as the magic touched him. Instantly the green mist turned to a layer of slime that spread on contact. The green raced up the man’s thin arms, spilled over his shoulders, chased down his skinny body and closed over his head like a hood. Within seconds, the man was encased in shimmering green—and was suffocating.

  Candlemas could see through the slime, see the man’s eyes bulge, see his mouth gape in surprise. But as soon as it did, the green coating flowed into his mouth. With slimy hands the man grabbed his green slick throat, clawed at his mouth, pounded his chest for air. He thrashed, beat his face against the floor, kicked and jerked, all uselessly.