The Silenced Tale

by J. M. Frey

  For those in the center of the circle are making fire.

  And in the middle of all, Ichiro, the blue-shirted liaison, tosses something up into the air, catching it repeatedly. When it lands, he checks the item, and produces a puff of flame from his hand, burning whatever is nearby. Some of the tosses and flames are large, some are whimperingly small.

  “He’s rolling dice,” Elgar breathes, stunned by this realization. Ichiro Eiji is literally rolling for their lives.

  Flames shoot from futuristic pixilated guns, from the tips of wands, from the ends of staffs, and, in Ichiro’s case, his bare hands. As the offensive circle inches forward, the flame-wielders follow behind, spreading out so they cover not just the floor in front of them, but moving toward the sides of the hall, too, picking out whatever paper they can see and reducing it to ash. With each step, fewer and fewer monsters spring to life. The ones that have been slain dissolve into swirling, ink-splotch smears of acid-green magic as the Viceroy clearly abandons sustaining their existence, now that they are no longer any use to him.

  “They do this for you,” Kintyre says gravely. “Do not tell them their valor is for nothing. Do not make yourself worthless in their eyes.”

  Elgar wipes at his face with his abused cardigan cuffs. “I am, though.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Bevel intones. “They believe you worthy. They believe in what you Wrote—in heroes, and magic, and fairy tales that always end with laughter and the victory of good over evil. The very least you can do is respect that.”

  “I respect my fans!” Elgar hisses, indignant.

  “From one storyteller to another,” Bevel says, clapping his shoulder. “It sure doesn’t sound like it. Now, get ready to move.”

  All three men rise to their feet, crouching, watching the byplay of the monsters and the magicians.

  “Ready? Now!” Kintyre says, and sprints toward the next convenient pile of rubble and furniture to hide behind.

  “Why are we sneaking if I’m supposed to be bait?” Elgar says when they’re crouched again. His shoulders are burning, the pain radiating down his arms, squeezing at his lungs, pressing at the bottom of his skull.

  “Bait for the Viceroy,” Kintyre says, pointing at the nearest creature—something out of the black lagoon, for all Elgar knows. “Not bait for a hungry behemoth.”

  “Fair enough,” Elgar chokes.

  “Move toward the flame-wielders,” Kintyre says.

  But before they can move again, Ichiro calls out: “Natural twenty!”

  As one, the flame-wielders run toward the outer walls of the hall, and the offensive rangers duck behind pillars and tables. Only Forsyth and Lucy stand their ground, swords drawn and faces grim as they become the sole focal point for a dozen horrible beasts. Forsyth raises a hand, and though Elgar can’t hear the Words of Shielding, he can see the air waver and glimmer around the two of them, like a thin layer of ice overlaid by spring-thaw water.

  Ichiro holds out his hands, palms pointed down at the floor, and, screwing up his sweating face, screams: “I cast Fireball!”

  “Duck!” Bevel shouts, hauling Elgar back behind a jagged outcropping of concrete.

  “What’s he going to do?” Elgar gasps, eyes watering from the sudden jerk on his ruined arm.

  “Don’t know, but everyone else is ducking, too, so it must—”

  The rest of whatever it was Bevel was going to say is lost in the roaring fa-woosh of every piece of paper in the room catching fire, explosively, all at the same time. The remaining monsters squeal and screech and keen, shriveling up into charred nothingness before scattering like fireflies in the smoke.

  The papers pop and snap, yet none of the broken wood or abandoned cloth around them catches. The flames surge, dancing red, and orange, and white-hot at their very hearts. And the moment their fuel is spent, they snuff out in curling black clouds that has everyone coughing and hiding their faces in their sleeves and collars.

  Bevel and Kintyre are on their feet and halfway across the room before Elgar has even managed to get a clean breath. He trundles after them, limping, his shoulders burning.

  “Impressive!” Kintyre calls out as they jog closer to the ragtag army.

  “Oh, thanks, bro!” Ichiro pants, flexing his fists and grinning fit to burst. “But man, it’s easy if you’re a level-five Evoker. It’s a wizarding sub-class, see? And you get a special ability called ‘sculpt spell,’ which lets you blast or burn things without causing as much collateral damage. I mean, yeah, a big old Hollywood-style fireball would have been just as effective, but not if we wanted to, you know, not set fire to everything else and kill everyone horribly.”

  “I’d like to learn that,” Bevel says, approvingly. They are just a few steps away from Ichiro now, everyone feeling loose-limbed and confident that they are in the eye of the hurricane.

  “Sure, man, we can roll up a character for—hurk!”

  Something wet and hot splashes across Elgar’s face so quickly that he doesn’t get a chance to see what it is before he stumbles back, hands up. He reels, eyes screwed shut, spitting it out of his mouth. It tastes like pennies.

  “Fuck,” Elgar hears Bevel snarl, and then there are hands on his shoulders, drawing Elgar back, and away again. He’s pushed down amid a jumble of chairs and tables, with no care for bashing his limbs.

  “Ow!” Elgar says, indignant.

  “Shh!” Bevel hisses back.

  “What happened? Why are we . . . ?” he trails off when he finally gets his eyes clear. It takes a second to focus them, to really see what he’s looking at. Red-and-black splatters on a blue field resolve themselves into . . . dear god, blood on a headless torso.

  CHAPTER 14

  FORSYTH

  I have watched people die many times.

  I stood over my father as the light flickered and snuffed in his eyes. I grasped my mother’s hand as she struggled to breathe against the chest infection, and ultimately failed; when she went still and let out a rattling sigh, and I prayed for the inhale that never came. And I was there when Lanaea was struck down by the Deal-Maker Spirit, though I did not see the precise moment her Book was Shelved.

  I’ve never seen decapitation, though; never gone to the execution grounds in Kingskeep; never even watched a chicken being beheaded for dinner. It’s quicker than I thought it would be, and I will call that a blessing only because it means that Ichiro didn’t suffer.

  Pip gasps, sucking in a deep breath, immediately turning her face into my chest. Wrapping my arms around her, I watch the body crumple like paper. The head spins once in the air, and I squint against catching the expression on the face. I do not want to see. I do not want it to feature in my nightmares.

  “Holy fucking fuck!” Elgar yelps. His voice echoes in the vast hall and covers the sound of the head hitting the floor. Thank the Writer, for if I had heard it, I don’t think I would ever be able to get that out of my nightmares, either.

  “What . . . how . . . ?” Kintyre says, Foesmiter up, scanning the room for what has done this horrible thing. A puff of ash and sparks, directly behind Ichiro, is the only clue. Some monster that I had missed, that I had failed to see, had struck the young warlock from behind. And then burned.

  This is my fault. Again.

  “Fuck, is this Station Five?” Pip whimpers against my jerkin, her face pressed against the lump that is the Shadow’s Mask.

  “I thought we agreed that the Stations didn’t apply?” I ask her.

  “I didn’t think so, but now I . . . Forsyth, what do we do now?”

  “Retreat and regroup,” Bevel answers, herding Elgar back toward the ballroom.

  “No!” comes a scream.

  At first, I think it’s one of the ashen-faced, silent, horrified cosplayers around us, but then the scream happens again: “No! Let go! Let me go!”

  The voice is shrill and panicked, and it is not coming from the people around us. A grunt of physical struggle catches my ear, and Pip and I both turn to look ove
r at a pile of unremarkable, overturned tables at the same moment. We are just in time, too, for through what appears to be a tear in a veiling spell, an elbow emerges—an elbow clad in mint green. It is followed by the rest of the arm: wrist and hand, shoulder and neck; long dark hair, loosed from its braids; a violently pink scarf.

  “Ahbni!” Pip shouts, and takes a few running steps toward the young woman before Kintyre blocks her path. “What the hell, Kin? Get out of the way!”

  “Wait,” Kintyre says, and remains blocking Pip. “If she’s pulled back in, you’re not going with her.”

  “Yeah, that’s not something I need to do a third time,” Pip says, her fingernails biting into Kintyre’s arm. “But we can’t just . . . someone, help her!”

  Something has hold of Ahbni’s other arm, dragging her back, and she skids and slides on the cement and ash as she struggles to escape. Bevel leaps forward and grabs her around the waist, yanking her out of the tear in nothingness.

  When she is free, he tosses her aside, and she trips and falls hard to the ground. Bevel wasn’t rescuing her, I realize; he was getting her out of his way. Bevel aims the ray-gun into the tear and fires, but whoever was there is gone already, lost to sight once more.

  “Damn you to all seven of the hells!” Bevel snarls at the open air.

  “Gee, fucking thanks!” Ahbni says, wincing as she struggles to flip onto her hands and knees. Bevel grunts and helps her to her feet.

  “Are you hurt?” he asks, perfunctorily. Something about his abruptness niggles at me. Something about her shirt, and her phone, and the timing of her escape from the Viceroy. The fact that she is a guest liaison, and yet isn’t. Something that—

  “No,” Ahbni says, and that’s all she manages before my wife is barreling into her, wrapping her in a hug and simultaneously patting her down, looking for blood or bruises.

  “Jesus Christ, are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” Ahbni says, pushing Pip off and blushing. “Thank you, but I’m fine.”

  “Tell us what he has planned,” Kintyre says, stepping up now. “Tell us how to get at him.”

  “Give her a few minutes, Kin—” Pip starts, pushing past me, but my brother cuts her off.

  “We don’t have a few minutes. There, on the floor, lies our first casualty of this war”—he points to Ichiro’s remains with Foesmiter—“and the longer we stand around squawking, the more opportunity we give to the villain.”

  “Just give her a second to get her—”

  “She is not Alis,” Kintyre snaps. “She needs no babying. You are not her mother. Now, girl, his plans!”

  “But I didn’t—” Ahbni tries again. She cuts herself off, staring wide-eyed at the shocked crowd around us.

  “Back to the ballroom,” Bevel says, and it’s loud enough, has enough command to it, that those few people still lingering around Ichiro’s corpse start and turn away.

  I am uncertain what is more respectful. Do we leave his body, and his head, where they lay? Or do we fetch them into the room? Drag them? And who among us would take up these tasks? I cannot leave it to my brother, can I? To ask him to haul away yet another body of yet another short-term companion because that is how our Writer constructs his plots, and I am too squeamish to accomplish the necessary task?

  “Tell us what you know,” Pip entreats Ahbni, looking into her eyes, brown to brown.

  “But what if I do that, and he—?” Ahbni starts, then cuts her eyes toward the ballroom.

  Here, I speak up. “We have to believe they can protect themselves.”

  “A bunch of civilians with fancy flashbangs?” Elgar snarls. His anger is unexpected. And Bevel and Kintyre both look moderately shamed. Interesting. “Haven’t we just proven that they can’t?” He points at Ichiro’s remains, and the slowly widening pool of ichor glinting ruby in the emergency lights.

  “I don’t like our chances without all of us together,” I explain. “We need brawn, yes, but brain in this instance, as well. And Pip’s access to magic. Back into the ballroom with you,” I hiss over my shoulder to the last lingering fellow in a blue shirt. “Get them all back inside, lock and bar the doors, don’t come out. Keep everyone quiet. Do not attract attention.”

  “But—” the volunteer protests.

  “Now.” I say it in my Shadow Hand voice, and the blue-shirt obeys swiftly and silently.

  The rest of us wait until the con-goers are shut away before exchanging serious looks.

  “What we need is some more support,” Bevel says. “No more untrained . . .” His gaze strays to Ichiro. “But they’re all in Hain.”

  Elgar’s eyes glint suddenly, a grin pulling at the side of his mouth. “Does anyone have a pen?”

  “No,” I say immediately. “There are enough people in danger here—”

  “It’s not utterly unreasonable,” Pip says. “It’s practically . . . heh, practically tradition at this point. Post-Station Five, pre-Act Three opener?” She is trying to be light about it, but her posture is weary, her eyes wandering to Ichiro at every spare second. She leans gingerly against a pile of rubble.

  “You mean that damned dragon?” Kintyre pouts, and Ahbni’s eyes go large and fearful.

  “Dragon,” she chokes.

  “Wyndam, too?” Bevel muses.

  “I don’t think weakening Pip is wise at this juncture—” I begin.

  Elgar steps up into the knot of people looming over Ahbni, elbowing right into her. Ahbni grunts, and drops her eyes. They snag on something behind Elgar, presumably the splatter of Ichiro’s blood that paints his shirt in an arc like a morbid pageant-queen’s sash.

  “If we’re not Writing out the next generation of heroes, then we have to do something. This isn’t working. It isn’t going to get him to show his hand.” Elgar sneers down at Ahbni. “Now, come on, sweetheart. Stop stalling and—”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Pip interrupts Elgar. “Hey now—”

  “Sweetheart!” Ahbni hisses, eyes narrowing and venom in her voice.“You self-important douchewaffle!” She lashes out, trying to strike Elgar, but Kintyre jerks her to a stop before she can reach him.

  “Hey now!” Elgar yelps. “You brown girls are violent!”

  “No!” Ahbni corrects. “Just sick of your shit!”

  “Come on, Elgar,” Pip groans. “Don’t escalate—”

  “Chitthu Pooka!”

  “Enough!” Kintyre snarls.

  Ahbni cringes away from his voluminous anger, half-hiding behind Elgar, as if he will protect her from Kintyre’s ire when he’s so incensed himself. It is an odd choice—I would have assumed Ahbni would choose Pip as her shield.

  “Now, Kin, no need to play Lord of the Hall here,” Bevel admonishes, and Elgar protests over him, squawking indignantly over the insult.

  “Quiet, everyone!” I shout over the sudden racket of every voice trying to be heard over the others. “Please!”

  “Quiet, yourself!” my creator snarls. “I think the time for talk has passed, Forsyth! We need to—”

  What we need to do, I do not know, for Elgar chokes off mid-sentence, eyes bulging out and jaw suddenly clenching.

  “Elgar?” Pip asks, sheathing her sword and reaching for him as he tips backward on his heels, reeling, eyes rolling up in his head. “Elgar!”

  She gets her arms on his wrists and, together with Bevel, lowers him safely to the ground.

  “What happ—?” Kintyre starts, but then Ahbni starts laughing. “What have you—?”

  She is grinning with manic glee, nostrils flared and arm shaking. And in her hand, Elgar’s dagger—Kintyre’s replica dagger—is soaked with gore.

  “I am not your darling, your sweetheart, or your coffee fetcher!” Ahbni screeches. “You will treat me with the respect I deserve!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Pip breathes, and scrambles to get Elgar turned onto his stomach.

  The stab wound is bright with blood, a red flower blooming at an alarming pace across his shirt and down his back.

  Pip
presses her fingers to Elgar’s throat. “Still breathing,” she says, “but his pulse is thready. We need to . . . we need to . . . fuck, fuck! We need a first aid kit, we need to . . . pressure on the wound! Bevel!” Bevel obligingly strips off his short-robe, balls it up, and jams it against the wound.

  Pip screams for someone to find a paramedic in the crowd, for a doctor, for a paladin or healing mage. But even from here, even with her body between mine and Elgar’s, I know that it is futile.

  I know it in my bones. In my skin. In my blood. I feel the truth of it in the air.

  It freezes me in place.

  “Elgar,” I gasp, my chest heaving, lungs burning. I cannot seem to get enough air. “Pip?”

  Pip looks up at me across the expanse of her despair. She is red up to her elbows. Her chin trembles, her eyes filling with tears. She blinks, and salt water runs down her cheek, stained black by her eyeliner and mascara, like war paint, like a tattoo, literal marks of her mourning.

  I know already. I know. We are losing him. He will not live.

  “We are not stupid, vapid, screaming fangirls!” Ahbni is still screeching, near-incomprehensible through her fury. “We are not here to boggle young nerds and trick them into falling in love with us! We are not in costumes just to get your attention, and if some of us want to dress sexy, well then, we can! It makes us feel powerful, so fuck you for trying to prude- and slut-shame us all at once! Fangirls are legion. Fangirls are powerful! And screw you for telling anyone, least of all us, otherwise! How dare you take my money and then spit in my face?”

  “Jesus, Kin, get her under control!” Pip snarls at my brother, and Kintyre shakes himself out of his horrified gawping. He swings his big, meaty arms around Ahbni’s elbows and across her stomach, pinning her to his chest and lifting her off the floor.

  “I hate you!” Ahbni screams, and in her hand, the bloody dagger quivers, splattering the floor. “I hate everything about you!”

  “That’s no reason to stab him!” Pip shouts up at her.

  “Isn’t it? Violence is the only language idiots like him speak! This is me, punching up!”