by Deck Davis
The only reply was the spitting of the bonfire. Hips looked at a dozen faces, some old, some young, all who he’d considered not just his crew but his friends. Pain at realization of their plot was worse than the fear of what they’d do to achieve its goals.
“We have our cargo,” he continued, glancing briefly at the wagon parked fifty feet away and guarded by two of his men. “We got what we needed and we rode out the storm. The hardest part is behind us. You picked a bad time to swim in dark waters, you empty-skulled knuckle draggers. A cleverer bunch would have waited until we’d sold the slaves and divided the loot before hissing like snakes.”
Silence again. It seemed that holding their treachery to the light had made it melt. Or, he was forcing them into early action. Either way, they would have whispered together for days before now. They would have a plan, and they would be scared. Hips' only hope of countering a mutiny was forcing them to act before they were ready.
“Aye, a bunch of folk with anything but worm shit for brains would have waited until we get outside of the deadliest place in the queendom, and until we have actual gold in our purse. Did you stop to think about what you’d do with the cargo? Selling a person isn’t easy, you cretins. Do you think it’s easy to align contacts? That they’d merrily buy a live person from you without good old Hips being there?
No, you didn’t think. And now, you're going to have to face up to your whispers. If you’ve got plans, then reveal them. Magdalena and I will answer them, and we’ll be all the better for it; fewer people to split the loot with.”
With his challenge issued, Hips waited. A curious mix of sadness and fear welled in him. He knew that by their very nature, outlaws weren’t the most trustworthy of people. It was just that he’d really taken a chance on some of these guys and girls. He’d gone out of his way to trust them.
Marleya stood up now.
So you’re really one of them, he thought. This hurt the most, that his oldest friend would be part of, maybe even lead, insurrection.
He’d been fair to them. He’d told them the risks of Sun Toil and the rewards of the plan. He’d explained that he’d heard rumor of a caravan of people a hundred strong were heading deep in Sun Toil. For a slaver, that was a free meal too delicious to pass up.
The only snag was that for a slaver band comprising of 10 to 12 people, it would be tricky to overpower a 100. After learning that a man named Gunar Helketoil led the caravan, and after asking about him in a few places, Hips was even less sure of his success.
Yet, it was an opportunity too golden to miss. A hundred people of all ages. All of them heading to the most remote place in the queendom, where if they didn’t make it back, nobody would suspect slavers. They’d assume the desert had swallowed them. Even if they captured only ten of them, well…ten people would fetch quite a price.
So, Hips pondered how to strong-arm Gunar and his people. He thought and he drank and he thought some more and he drank some more, and inspiration hit him while he was in a brothel, bollock-naked and mid-way through half a silver’s worth of fun time.
“A weather elemental,” he said.
The strumpet he was with was understandably confused. Hips disengaged from her and dressed. He threw her another half silver. “Nothing personal,” he said. “I just had a stroke of inspiration. Some strokes have to be attended to immediately.”
It was then that he’d felt more confident of his plan, and he relayed it to the crew as an official job. He told them how he would raise money to pay a weather elemental mage to trap the trader fleet in dust storms, and then the slavers would swoop in and collect as many survivors as possible.
Hips made a few scouting trips into Toil to see what they were dealing with. He only ventured fifty or so miles at a time, barely dipping the tip of his big toe into the desert.
What he found was something that made it hard to breathe; such a mix of danger and attraction. Toil was a place that cast spells on a man. It sang to Hips when he pitched his tent in the cold, cold nights. It conjured colors in the horizon, promising water and coconut trees in a distance where he knew none could be found.
Toil wasn’t just a desert containing lots of little living things; it was a beast on its own. The winds were its breath, the cracked ground and occasional dunes were its flesh. Hips felt Toil watching him as he teased along its borders. He swore that he could speak with it in his mind and that it wanted to draw him further in and reveal more of itself to him.
This wouldn’t just be a job for the slavers. It would change them, he was sure of it. Some of them, most likely including Hips, would enter Toil as their normal selves, and they would leave with their minds expanded. The Gods knew some of them could take some time to look within themselves.
He’d never been surer nor more scared of a job before. He’d never been more certain it had to happen.
“Those of you who want to pass up on this, I’ll bear no grudge,” he’d said. “And you’re still welcome back when the Toil business is over.”
Nobody had complained. Nobody had refused the job. That being the case, why insurrection? Why now? How could Hips Maguire, leader of outlaws and the best slaver in the queendom, have been fairer to his people?
Marleya whispered to Eyan. Eyan in turn nodded, and two apprentice outlaws, who Hips had picked for the position himself, scurried away from the bonfire.
Her lack of attention was short-lived, but it was all Hips needed. He raised Magdalene and let her see firelight. With a flash of fire on steel, with the reflexes he’d practiced for years and years, Hips held Magdalene against Marleya’s throat.
That was where he stopped, with the blade pressing against her skin.
“Hips,” said Marleya, calmer than a nobleman on trial for murdering a peasant, so sure was she that nothing would happen to her. “I know what you’re thinking. Listen to me for a second. I need to say something.”
If it had been anyone else leading the insurrection, their need to say something would have been hampered after Hips cut out their tongue. But Marleya was different.
“These’ll have to be the sweetest words ever spoken to save your life.”
“I only need four,” she said.
“Go on.”
Marleya turned to the outlaws behind her, some of whom grinned as though they were loving their rebellion. A moment like this, and they were smiling. That made him think that they’d planned this for a while, but if that was the case, why didn’t they just tell him what they were unhappy about? He’d never hurt anyone in his band for voicing constructive criticism.
Well, he’d rarely hurt anyone for voicing it. Word had it that Brown Barden was still struggling to eat solids. But still.
He couldn’t believe it had come to this. What a bunch of low lives. Even for a gang of slavers, these guys were the pits. Was there no honor anymore? No decency?
“Hips,” said Marleya, drawing out the silence. “I have just four words to say to you tonight…”
He could feel the tension now. He felt it inside him, tightening like a belt over his mind, making it hard to think rationally. He could kill two, maybe three of them. One-on-one he would destroy them all, but if they attacked him together…
He faced Marleya. Her betrayal hurt most, so he would murder her first.
Now he just had to summon the nerve to kill his friend. He felt his hand tighten around his blade, as if he wasn’t controlling it.
This is it.
And then Marleya smiled.
“Happy birthday to you!” she shouted in a sing-song voice.
The outlaws cheered and hollered, their voices unnaturally loud in such a desolate place. They laughed at Hips, at his surprise and even at his readiness to use Magdalene, but it was a good-natured laughing.
As his initial anger began to die, Hips found himself enjoying the sound of them laughing, and loving it even more when they broke into a ‘happy birthday, our captain, happy birthday’ song.
Marleya slapped him on the back. “Didn’t t
hink we’d forget, did you?”
Hips smiled. “There’s a reason I don’t bring it up.”
“Yep, because you're an old bastard. Listen, we got something for you.”
“A present?” said Hips. “Really?”
“Really. See, do you remember sending Barret into town to buy rope?”
Hips shrugged. “I send lots of people to lots of places.”
“Well, he walked by a pawnbroker and saw you there. Saw you handing something over for money. And then you came back with heat salve and new blades for everyone.”
“This job is big. I wanted it done properly.”
“Well, we’re a team. I know you’re the captain and all, but there’s no reason for you to take everything on your own back. Eyan and I went into town and we visited the broker. We know what you sold to buy our elemental mage and stuff.”
She took a bundle from underneath her sleeping bag. She brought this to Hips. It was a cloth parcel wrapped in a bow.
“Happy birthday, Mr. Maguire,” she said.
Happy birthday. Nobody had said that to him in years! He held the parcel, and his hands were shaking.
He unwrapped it, and the sight brought tears to his eyes.
It was Marcus, Magdalene’s brother blade. A weapon he’d given up so he could do this job and get his people the bounty they deserved. Such loyal, lovely people.
Hips felt such a joyous union with the world. He’d never had such a wholesome moment in his life, and he doubted there was any man as content in his friendships as Hips was right now. The world was a beautiful, joyous place.
“Go check on the caravaners,” he told Marleya, while wiping a tear from his eye. “No point trying to sell them as slaves if half of them die on the route out of Toil. Make sure they’re warm enough and have water.”
CHAPTER 10
Something was prowling around in the cave. Jakub retreated fifty yards and crouched as best he could behind a rock. It didn’t cover him perfectly but his shirt had started out dark the first time he’d worn it in Sun Toil, and by now sweat and grime had worked their magic to blend it even more deeply into the night. That was something a Toil traveler learned quickly – there were no rivers in the desert for you to wash your clothes.
Certain that he was far enough away and it was dark enough that whatever was in the cave wouldn’t see him, Jakub was content to place his dagger by his feet ready for use, rather than grip it.
The wind blasted the left side of him, numbing his face and snaking down his shirt collar and icing his skin. He kept the rock to his right.
“Ben, stand here,” he said, and he pointed at the ground to his left. His loyal friend stomped over and became a wind block on that side. An instinct in Jakub made him feel pity for Ben before he reminded himself that Ben was dead, and his years upon years of necromancial training gave him the suspicion that dead things don’t feel the cold.
Now he watched the cave and tried to figure what could be in there. The way he approached it could differ wildly depending on what had taken residence in the snug that Jakub eyed for himself.
He quickly found that it wasn’t the best night for cave watching. The tail end of the dust storm sliced through the air from time to time like the trailing lashes of a whip. Nowhere near fast enough to tear through things, but enough that they threw dust in his face without warning.
Normally, the stars were so bright out here that they gave a white glow to the desert, but not tonight. Tonight, they were hiding behind the clouds, and even after adjusting to the darkness, Jakub’s vision was nowhere near what he needed.
He’d just have to weigh the possibilities and go for it. It was getting too cold now, and this was barely the start of it. The cold he felt now was just a playful doe, and the stag had yet to show.
It was the cave or nothing, but what could be in there?
He wanted to believe that another survivor had crawled out of the dust storms and dry lightning and had sought shelter. Gunar’s men were seasoned travelers. When they used to stop at night and light fires, Jakub would listen to them in their favorite past time of one-upmanship, where they’d take turns telling stories of disaster and survival, each worse than the last.
From that, Jakub had added flavoring to the knowledge he’d learned before setting out to Toil. He knew that if you were driving a wagon in the middle of a moderate dust storm, the kind that didn’t shred you to pieces, you turned your wagon with the storm, not against it.
He knew that there was a Toil weed that could heal venom bites, but there was a similar-looking weed that could cause a poisonous effect.
Above all, he’d learned that if Gunar’s people were nails and Sun Toil was a hammer, its head would break when it tried to pound them. His heart told him that one of those nails had made it to shelter and that he wasn’t alone anymore.
If only he could listen to it.
He remembered more and more of the disaster now. If it were just one dust storm powerful enough to cause the shredding effect, that would have been disaster enough.
To get caught in two was utterly impossible to survive. To then have dry lightning crash down while toil-lusks attacked…
No, Jakub was the only person to crawl out of that gangbang of death, and that was only because he’d driven a wagon just out of reach.
That meant the footsteps he’d heard in the cave belonged to one of Sun Toil’s indigenous residents. If Toil was an unforgiving place, then the creatures forced to live in it had developed survival traits to match. Everything and anything that dwelled in Toil would attack first and briefly think about questions after while it feasted on your carcass.
The simplest thing would be to leave, but he had no idea if there was another shelter around, and he couldn’t afford to look when the worst of the cold set in. If he could get through tonight, then he could explore a little. Find better shelter, find water, find food, and find out if anything remained of the caravan itself.
But he needed to survive tonight to do that. If he walked away from the cave, he was giving up.
He felt relieved to decide, even if that decision was to forcibly turn a Toil creature out of its home. No, he just needed to weigh up his approach.
There were a few creatures he could think of that would take shelter in a cave. Toil-lusks were out, since they burrowed into the ground at night. There were coyote-like animals that roamed Toil, but they lived in packs.
He would have heard more footsteps if a pack of coyotes had been in the cave. Not only that, but they would have smelled him, and they wouldn’t have been content to let a sack of warm meat skulk around their shelter.
He remembered reading about all the lizards that called Toil home. Big ones and small ones, docile ones and active ones. Some were like giant, scaly dogs that wouldn’t hurt you if you walked over to them, while there were snakes slithering across the dust tracks and canyons that would kill a man if he breathed in their direction.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it was one of the larger lizards in there. In fact, he could cuddle up to it and share body heat. The lizard would like it just as much as him.
Above all else, there was one animal that he hoped it wouldn’t be. He would have prayed that it wasn’t, if he didn’t already know that no gods presided over the seven afterlives.
If it was anything else, a snake, coyotes, anything, he was sure he could figure a way around it and claim the shelter as his own. But if it was the one thing he dreaded…
“Ben,” he said. “We need to appeal to the gods of good luck. They don’t exist, but let’s speak to them on the off chance. Quietly moo if you're with me.”
Ben let out a faint moo on command, and Jakub looked up at the skies where the clouds were beginning to thin and reveal the tapestry of glinting starlight hanging miles above.
“Gods of good luck,” he said to the sky, “I don’t ask for riches. I’ve never even asked for happiness. But tonight, this one night, I need to ask for a favor. Gods of good luck, whatever it is in
that cave…please don’t let it be a desert bear.”
CHAPTER 11
York the Hunter
“There can’t be bears in the desert, I hear you say?” asked the old hunter.
He was a lonely man who lived on his own in his cottage, where he banged around like a pebble in a bucket. It was like a palace for a man who had never wanted one. A cold, empty abode fraught with memories that he wished for all the world he could enjoy, but he just felt a loneliness whenever they caught his attention. If he had to trace this feeling back, really dig until he found the root, he’d have to say it started when he lost Maeve.
So now, on the day that his once-estranged son had come to visit him after a dozen years, York found himself entertaining his grandchildren.
His grandchildren! And he had never even known they had existed. Ever since he got Patton’s letter two weeks ago, he’d put every fiber of his being into making sure that even if relations with Patton would take a few more years to scab over and then even longer to heal, he could at least make an impression on his grandchildren.
He brought them cake from a bakery fifty-eight miles away. It had taken him two separate wagon rides to get there, having no horse of his own, but it was worth it. The icing was said to taste like it had fallen to the mortal world from the Upperlon itself.
“They don’t like sweet things,” was what Patton said when York gave them the cake.
That was okay. York had hired a nearby clown to entertain them. A little fancy for just a visit, sure, and extremely expensive for a dancing man covered in greasepaint. But York had no one else to spend his money on.
“They’re scared of clowns,” said Patton.
York was beginning to think that his son was overly protective, but that stood to reason given how the children had lost their mother. In fact, that was the only reason Patton had reached out to his father again after so long estranged.
The cake and clown were what he’d wagered his gold on, and it hadn’t worked. His grandchildren, on their first meeting with him, had sat on their chairs, backs still, faces glancing toward the door.