by G. Howell
It’d seemed like a good idea at the time. Like the only way. But that was before, and now there suddenly seemed like so many things could go wrong. And even if it went right, well, I didn’t want to think about that. I really didn’t. So while I furtively made my way along that wall toward the next tower I couldn’t help but worry. I stayed close to the parapet, also aware that it was only a matter of time before...
I’d cut it too close. I’d made it halfway along the wall when there was a shout from someone on the signal tower behind me. Then a yowl. Then the frantic hammering of a bell pealed out across the water.
I started to run. Cut flagstones were cold against my bare feet as I half-ran half-limped along, then staggered to a halt in shock as the door in the tower ahead of me was slammed open and Rris spilled out. Again there was shouting, guns being raised. I dodged sideways onto the semicircular rampart of one of the projecting buttress towers. A shot was fired. Chips of stone sprayed from the corner of the crenel as I ducked around. How the hell had they gotten there so quickly?!
The top of the tower was an arc about ten meters in diameter with four cannon aimed out through their ports in the wall. And of course it was a dead end. Only one way to go then and that was over the parapet. The lake was right below and it should be deep enough, that was all I could hope as I ran for the wall. I took a running jump up onto the unmoving cold metal mass of one of the old muzzle-loading cannon and ran along the top, to the meter-deep embrasure. Where I stopped dead in my tracks, holding up my arm and squinting against the rising sun shining into my eyes.
It wasn’t. The wall was a sheer drop that flared out at the bottom into rocks and water. And it wasn’t deep enough. I could see driftwood piled up along the craggy shoreline, and more rocks lurking just beneath the surface of the water. From that height there was no way it was deep enough to dive into. Not and survive.
Panting, still dripping wet, I turned to face Mediators. My black shadow was thrown across the flagstones of the tower to where a cordon of them were blocking any hope of escape that way. Pistols and long arms were raised, aiming at me up on top of the wall. Shyia was in front, leveling a pistol. I could see his green eyes, could look down the bore of the muzzle, the hammer was cocked and at that range even those weapon were unlikely to miss. I could turn and run and jump and hope…
A concussion, a wall of sound like a giant striking a huge steel drum rang across the world, rolling in across the battlements from the lake. Rris ears twitched as one, pricked up and the firing line of Mediators stared out beyond me, out to the lake where echoes of the noise were still reverberating like distant thunder. Standing on the barrel of the canon I twisted around and found myself looking at... at where the Ironheart had been.
Out in the water an expanding white column of steam and smoke spewed crookedly into the sky from the epicenter of a spreading ring of concentric ripples, marking the spot where the ship had been. All that was there now was a spall of dirty white smoke. Streamers of debris arced like dozens of spider-legs from that cloud, spattering into the water for a hundred meters around. High overhead, trailing a fading contrail of white vapor, a bulky shape climbed improbably high into the clear sky. It slowed, hung there, then almost lazily curved back down to strike and vanish into the lake with an almost anticlimactically small splash. Slowly, while smaller pieces pattered and fluttered back to stipple the water, the cloud quietly dispersed. Someone said, “Oh.” I realized it was me.
“Mikah!”a voice from behind me growled.
Slowly, carefully, I turned around again to stare down a semi-circle of dark muzzles. Guns held by Mediators were aimed at me, more than I wanted to count. More Rris - city guards – were in the background. Keeping their distance but watching. Shyia still had his pistol raised, still had his finger on the trigger, but was watching me with an expressionless mask.
“She was on that?” he rumbled.
I guessed who he meant and just nodded. The fur between on the bridge of his muzzle creased momentarily while those unblinking amber eyes studied me, then he jerked his muzzle at the parapet and said, “Come here. Now.”
I hesitated momentarily but really didn’t have much choice. There was nowhere else to go. Besides, I’d been expecting to be shot; any alternative was preferable to that. I slowly made my way back along the cannon, carefully stepped down onto the carriage, then down onto the flagstones, grimacing as my feet ached and my leg twinged.
Shyia huffed and then snapped to the others, “Secure him. Bring him.”
It was an improvement over being shot, although at the time it didn’t feel like one. The Mediators who grabbed me weren’t careful with their claws. I didn’t resist, but they still caught my arms with claws extruded and I flinched as the damn things lacerated me. And once again the irons they clamped around my wrists and ankles were too small.
They took me down the narrow, winding staircase in the tower. Down through cramped stone corridors and tiny rooms with solid timber doors that were holdovers from the days before the guns came. Always with the chains rattling and Mediators in front and behind, their toe claws tick-ticking on the rock. It didn’t take very long, but by the time we emerged from a small gateway I was limping. My leg was throbbing, my hands were shaking and there was only so much adrenaline could do. I was exhausted.
We were back on the Open Fields waterfront again. A quayside busy with fishing vessels and traders to my left side, warehouses and storerooms on the other. Mediators and Cover-My-Tail troops, their animals and their vehicles, were everywhere, with more arriving from streets along the dockside. Closest to hand, the Mediators were a loose crowd; the Rris spread out with plenty of room between individuals. City troops clustered in little knots on the periphery, looking like spectators at someone else’s game. My escort marched me through all of them with the ranks of Mediators parting before us. Until we met one Rris who didn’t move; who just stood in our path and that was enough to bring my escort to a halt.
A tall Rris, dressed in functional grey tunic and well worn leather kilt and a vest that bore scars from what might have been knife slashes. Male, I was pretty sure, with one ear notched so bad it was more like confetti. And where most Rris I knew had greyish pelts, there was a distinctly russet tinge to that one’s. That individual just favored me with a brief glance. “You brought it here?” he growled.
“Yes, Sir,” Shyia stepped forward.
The one with the shredded ear eyed him, then me again. “There were orders. It was to be disposed of.”
“Sir,” Shyia acknowledged. “There have been extenuating circumstances. There was an incident with the steam vessel, the boiler [something], I believe. The vessel was completely destroyed. Raeshon was aboard. I sent another ship to examine the wreckage, but the presence of survivors is highly doubtful.”
“You believe that changes my orders?”
“Sir, I believe it changes the situation enough that following those instructions would be premature. We would lose more than we would gain.”
“Mediator, the problem still exists so the orders stand,” the other said quietly and flexed his fingers, stretching them to express claws. “You can do it, or I can do it myself. Your response?”
“Then it would have to be tribunal, Sir.”
If that meant nothing to me, it meant something to the Mediators around us. There was a reaction. Nothing major, just a rustling as bodies took more attentive stances, but it was a reaction.
“Huhn,” I heard the other rumble and go stock-still for a few heartbeats. “You are serious?”
“Quite, Sir.”
“You have seconds who think the situation qualifies that?”
Several of the Rris around Shyia stepped forward, inclining their heads. The russet-furred Rris looked from one to another and then back to Shyia. “We will finish this at the hall. Finish your business and report there.”
“Yes, Sir,” Shyia said again and turned back to me and my guard. “Take him,” he said and then stepped up to me, leveling a finger. “And you behave yourself,” he said, and when I opened my mouth he interrupted with a snarl and told the guard, “If he causes problems, if he so much as looks like he is going to start problems, shoot him.”
“Sir,” a Mediator said and tugged my arm to get me moving again, on to the coaches. They weren’t the fancy conveyances I’d been shuttled about in as a guest of the government. These were utilitarian boxes, designed to move people around while still offering some shelter: just unadorned wood and black iron. Getting in with the leg irons on was awkward. Then I was sat down upon a hard rear-facing bench in a creaky cab that smelled of wet fur. Two armed Mediators sprang in and sat opposite with loaded firearms on their laps and then the door was slammed and locked from the outside. Wooden slats on the windows let light in but I couldn’t see anything outside.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?” I asked the Mediators opposite as the carriage lurched into motion.
There was a harsh metallic clack as one of them cocked the lock on a flintlock.
“I guess that’s ‘no’,” I sighed, grimaced and glanced at the lacerations on my arms, then looked back to the window. Those wooden slats wouldn’t be too hard to break. I could distract the guards and...
What the hell was I thinking? What was the point in that? I just closed my eyes. It was still early morning but I was exhausted. I wanted to rest, to sleep, but I was too scared, too uncertain, too keyed. The jolting of the wagon continually threw me off balance and I kept snapping back to awareness, staring into the muzzles of the Mediators’ weapons.
A half hour or so later we stopped. The door was opened. I climbed out.
There was only a second to take in my surroundings. There were high brick walls around a cobbled courtyard. Four old, gnarled oak trees pushed up through the cobblestones, forming their own shaded square where older Rris were supervising youngsters who were busy sparring with wooden blades. Clacks of wood striking wood snapped loudly over the background hum of the city. Large, multi-story buildings faced the square, some of old stone construction with ivy on the walls and copper on the roofs, others of newer and cheaper brick. White-painted windows looked down on the court and sunlight glinted from glass lurking behind ornate iron grillwork. I saw figures watching from the windows before the Mediators led me away.
It wasn’t a residential building they took me to. I knew that as soon as they stopped in the building’s entry passage and turned off into a narrow arched tunnel blocked by a solid black-iron grill. That was opened and they took me down a narrow staircase into gloom and shadows. In a guard room they cut my clothes away with knives. I stood stock-still, trying not to shiver as the lines of metal pressed against my skin as they sliced the tunic and pants away. They searched me, impassively and embarrassingly thoroughly. Even the bandage over my gashed leg was cut away and inspected. Of course, they found nothing, except that my injury was genuine and I wasn’t built quite the same as their usual prisoners.
One of them took a lantern and lit the wick from one of the lamps in the room. Then the guards told me to move. Naked, I was taken down another narrow, turning staircase. Down far enough that we had to be deep underground when we emerged into a dark, brick-lined corridor. That hall was lined with heavy iron doors on either side. A set of iron keys opened one.
I saw a black hole. No windows, not a glimmer of light, just earthen darkness and the reek of ammonia and other less definable things. “You’re kidding,” I choked.
Ears went back and weapons came up and I didn’t have any choice. I had to duck my head to enter and once I was in the door swung shut, the wedge of light from the guard’s lamp shrunk and then was gone as the iron door clunked shut and metal rasped as the bolt was thrown. Then the splinters of light from around the door faded as the Mediators left and then all the light was gone.
Groping in the darkness I could feel out dimensions of a cell that wasn’t large enough to stretch out in. A hard clay floor with a reeking hole down the back, brick walls and a low, arched ceiling. It smelt of alien piss and dankness and earth and in that stygian blackness there wasn’t a single glimmer of light. I fumbled after the clammy metal of the door and the iron felt as yielding as the walls. Once again, all I could do was hunker myself down on the cold floor and wait.
------v------
After days on the run I was exhausted. Utterly exhausted, but my mind was spinning through questions that I really wasn’t sure I wanted answered. What was going to happen next? What were they going to do with me? Were they just going to leave me there?
I don’t know if I slept or not.
In the darkness it was difficult to tell, but I think I closed my eyes. There was movement I couldn’t define in the tail of my vision; skittering and scratching noises that I wasn’t sure were in the darkness or in my head. I kept finding myself flinching wildly, staring into blackness with my heart pounding.
Waiting for a dark forever. Until metal scraped on metal as a key slid into the lock. Tumblers turned and then hinged rasped. I blinked, turning my head away from a flare of lamplight. It was just a candle, but it was the brightest thing my eyes had seen for... hour. Figures moved into the cells narrow doorway, momentarily eclipsing the light and then being backlit by it.
“You. Get out,” a voice growled.
That cell was a reeking hole, but I actually hesitated. Squinting at the silhouetted Rris figure and feeling my heart start to hammer.
“Now,” the Mediator growled.
I struggled to my feet, bending under the low overhead and grimacing as stiff and aching muscles protested. The Mediators didn’t care, and when I cautiously emerged from the cell I heard the skittering patter of claws on stone as they just moved to surround me in the dark. I was bigger than they were. Head and shoulders taller and heavier and stronger, but I was naked and manacled and wounded and exhausted and in the darkness around me there were silken hisses of sharp metal being drawn and someone growled for me to move.
My hair was still damp and clammy from my swim. It just hadn’t dried in that hole. The dankness had set me shivering and during those endless hours the chill had had time to sink in to the bone. Upstairs, just in the guard room, it was noticeably warmer, which was a welcome relief. And when they took me from there up to the entranceway I automatically raised my hands at the glare spilling into either end of the tunnel from the scorching afternoon sun. Mediators ears flinched at the rattle of chains but they didn’t overreact.
I was taken through the atrium; through a small, cloistered garden where water trickled from a fountain and blooming flowers filled the air with scent and color. A pair of corroded-green bronze doors opened into a main hall that was all pale stone and double rows of fluted black iron columns which gave it an air that wasn’t as much majestic as gothic. Then it was upstairs to the first floor where Mediators were standing sentry at the entry to one of the wings. They looked me up and down and one of my escort handed over a piece of paper that was examined closely before we were passed through the door.
Light spilled in through the hundreds of small leaded panes in the tall windows down the right hand side of the hallway, throwing caustic creases across the white plaster wall opposite. Green and yellow carpet decorated in a pattern that reminded me of paisley damped the sound of padding claws so the only noise was the clinking of my chains as I was led down the hall. It all seemed surreal, remote, all save the pounding of my own heart that increased as we approached the far end and the single door there, the surface inlaid with hundreds of sliver-thin wedges of individually-toned wood that had been sanded and polished to a liquid sheen. The Mediators halted at the door and the lead one looked me up and down before hooking a claw under the latch. When a claw jabbed me to get me moving again, two mediators followed me in, staying close behind
.
An office. A decent sized one. Scents of wood and oil and warm dust hung in the air, along with the musk smell of Rris. The walls were lined with shelves, all well-stocked with leather bound books, their spines in all varieties of shapes and sizes and colors. Scrolls stood in neat racks, and I even saw what looked like a couple of stone tablets on display stands and speckled with the traces of worn and indistinct characters. On the walls a few framed maps hung where pictures might have been. Unlit copper braziers stood near the shelves - curved metal uprights on three splayed feet polished to a gleaming mirror finish. A window consisting of a lattice of smaller diamond-shaped panes in a lead matrix filled the left wall, facing south and looking out over the cobbled court and front gate. Some of the panes had been swiveled around on their vertical axis, enough to let some air and occasional city noise in. In front of the window was a desk, a Rris seated cross-legged behind it with golden afternoon sunlight streaming over his shoulder. It was that Mediator from the docks, the russet one with the ragged ear whom Shyia had called sir. The one who had said I was to be... disposed of. The Mediator Guild Lord. Whatshisname... Richtkah, that was what I’d been told.
Other Mediators were sitting off to the side of that desk. Three of them sitting in their amour cross-legged on white leather cushions. They watched me as I came, their expressions studies of careful neutrality.
And opposite them - off on the other side of the desk – cross-legged on another cushion was another mediator. Shyia. Also watching me intently.