Sorrow warred with fear and anger in Del’s heart. He kept his breathing shallow, the better to avoid tempting the knife’s edge. If he understood them correctly, they were admitting responsibility for at least some of the “misfortunes” that had befallen his fellow artificers.
So unlike them. For a subterranean race, many thought subterfuge was their natural state, but that was not the case. They detested trickery or spycraft. For them to kill or kidnap his fellow artificers …
It means they’ve done the math, and they know we will win unless they take drastic action. Some in the army had despaired that the Thryens must be simply rebuilding the wall within the mountain as they rotated fresh sections into place. If so, the assaults would never end. This revelation suggested otherwise.
The realization woke nausea in Del’s gut. The injustice of it cramped within him. The Thryens were the peaceful denizens of a peaceful city. But making war against them was how his family ate. Not to mention what would happen to him if he failed to uphold his duty.
“You must not allow this injustice to proceed,” the Thryen holding the knife said. “Sabotage the device beyond repair!”
Del tried to speak, and the knife eased back a bit as the apple of his throat worked. He thought he felt wetness where the blade’s edge had rested. The pressure remained, though, a warning not to speak too loudly.
“I can’t do that,” Del said. “They are already suspicious. They are watching for sabotage.”
“Then turn the device against your own!” one of the other Thryens said. “Break them. Make it seem a malfunction.”
The thought made Del dizzy with horror.
“If your people surrender,” he said, speaking with a voice that seemed not his own, “you’ll be spared the worst of the emperor’s wrath.” Disgust welled in him, threatening to choke off his speech, all the more because he couldn’t be certain he was telling the truth.
“Disappointing,” the lead Thryen hissed. “You were better when young, Del Trayvin.”
Del darted his eyes away, feeling heat in his cheeks. He almost called out the names of Thryens he could remember, but the knife’s promise remained.
“You shame us,” the lead Thryen said. “You force us to choose for you. You will ensure the device can no longer harm us before the next moonrise, or your kin will bear your shame into their graves.”
One of them bent and set something at his feet. Then, like wraiths, they were gone. After a solid minute of waiting and breathing as little as possible, Del rose to see what they’d left him, dread dragging at his joints.
He recognized the small circle of metal even by the light of only two moons. So far as he knew, his mother had never removed her wedding ring once in all the time since his father had died.
Del rose, fighting through exhaustion, hunger, and fear. He had work to do yet.
O O O
“And yet here I was to understand that you had finished your task.” Imris’s voice rang out of the thinning darkness like a death knell.
Del froze where he was, bent over the red unicorn’s attack pattern gearbox, freshly removed and lit by torch, moon, and starlight. Lie. Tell him you were mistaken, that you found something else wrong. But Del’s faculties were spent. What little remained was focused on the modifications he had to make in such haste.
“No matter how many opportunities I give you,” the inquisitor said, “you continue to disappoint.”
Belatedly, Del opened his mouth to respond that this wasn’t what it looked like. But, of course, it was exactly what it looked like. His good reasons would never satisfy the inquisitor.
Out of the darkness from which Imris’s voice emerged, Del heard the sound of rustling metal links.
“Do you know how I spent my night, Artisan Lieutenant?”
Del pinched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. His weariness with Imris’s self-infatuation was almost enough to drown out his fear.
“No, Inquisitor Imris, I don’t.”
“Your repairs were proceeding so very slowly, so I took it upon myself to visit your family homestead,” he said mildly.
A jag of fear pulsed through Del, so palpably familiar that at first his memory was confused. Then the pieces fell together.
He tried to kidnap them, but found the homestead abandoned.
But of course, Del’s family had already been kidnapped. And say what you will about the unpleasantness of your family being kidnapped, at least it could only happen once at a time.
It was almost funny. Imris threatened to do the same thing. The Thryens just beat him to the punch.
He wondered if the place had been ransacked. He imagined flatware shattered and smears of blood. No. No, the Thryens wouldn’t be violent. He swallowed around a lump in his throat. Not before their deadline. Del had no such confidence in Imris’s tender care. Perhaps the Thryens did me a favor.
“You think I evacuated my family to keep them safe from you.” Del turned and saw Imris and his pet sadist stepping into the torchlight emanating from the posts near the unicorn’s great snout. “And you’re here to arrest me. But I didn’t rescue my family. As a matter of fact, I’m here trying to do that right now.” No point in hiding it anymore.
His heart hammered so hard he wondered if they could see the vibrations in his chest wall. Imris was not stupid. The light of understanding dawned on his face.
“Ah, I see. Your childhood … neighbors, as it were, were quicker than I.” Imris laughed, a rich, rolling sound like thunder off canyon walls.
That laugh smothered Del’s last hesitation.
“You have my sympathies, Artisan Lieutenant, but of course, you see the bind this puts me in. Whereas before I merely suspected wrongdoing on your part, now you confess it.” His features drew down, as if the false sadness was a set of hooks pulling them into the ground.
“Sergeant Kedri,” Imris said, “take him into custody. But first, make certain he is unable to run.”
With one fluid movement of Kedri’s arm, the coiled whipsword spiraled into the air, glittering mirrors of torchlight chained together in a grand arc. The edges of that blade would sever both flesh and bone, while the barbed flats would merely strip skin from sinew.
Cursing, Del lunged for the unicorn’s nearest foot. The whip came down, trailing a line of fire along his leg though his rugged work leathers. Del bit back a shriek, hand outstretched toward the unicorn’s kill switch, which would purge any pooled energy still lurking within the mechanism without resulting in dangerous movement. At least, that was how the safety interlocks had been designed to function. But those interlocks were housed in the attack pattern gearbox, which now lay strewn across the dewy grass and mud.
Kedri was in no hurry. With a casual twist of one shoulder, he tugged the end of his whipsword back into the air to arc above him, letting it gather energy for its next dreadful strike.
His leg throbbing and barely able to support him, Del reached the kill switch and fell against the lever with all his weight until he felt it snap into place. Instead of harmlessly releasing magical force through concealed vents all along the unicorn’s body, the great mechanism expended the dregs of its energy, fulfilling remembered orders from its last activation.
The hraxite horn flared black, pushing out ribbons of darkness that deepened the night around it. As the whipsword sliced a hissing trajectory through the air, its tip ventured too close to one of those ribbons.
The glittering links vaporized in a blink. The trickle of energy remaining in the horn was enough to slither down the steel whip’s length and evaporate Kedri’s arm in the bargain. The maimed man yelped in shock then began to scream as Del dove free of the unicorn’s foot. He landed hard. The pain of his leg blinded his vision for a few moments.
When Del’s sight returned, he saw Imris watching the unicorn in stunned silence. The metal beast was trying to run lying on its side. Then one-armed Kedri, mad with pain and apparently unaware of what he was doing, barreled into Imris, knocking both himself
and the inquisitor to the ground.
As the men fell, the last pools of magic within the unicorn reached its open mouth. Dutifully executing the chewing motion intended to tear through stone during an attack, the unicorn’s head gouged a furrow into the earth, sweeping toward Imris and Kedri. The great jaws began to close.
Del tried not to hear the sound that came when those steel teeth met, heedless of the bodies of the men they had to travel through.
It was fortunate that all that steel was already lacquered red.
O O O
Sandy-eyed from worry and lack of sleep, Del watched his most violent friend embark on its most important attack.
As always, the army stood in ranks to watch, weapons at the ready. General Ober had mounted his warhorse at the front of the ranks. If he wondered at the absence of the inquisitor and his whipswordsman, the general said nothing to Del of it.
The earth shook. The red unicorn’s thunderous passage sent clods of soil and ruined vegetation skyward.
Del grew tenser with every step. How long would the Thryens stay their hand upon his mother and sister once they saw the unicorn headed their way?
This is the only way, Del thought. The only way that I can save everybody.
The emperor’s hunger for conquest would never be sated.
The men were silent as the unicorn shook the world on its approach, but Del heard an audible intake of breath when his new commands for the beast took hold. Despite drawing ever closer to the pristine wall, the unicorn didn’t accelerate. When its cantering legs should have sped to a gallop, they bunched instead. The gasps among the onlookers became cries and a sea of pointing fingers.
In the city too, I’ll bet. Are you watching, Mother? Aubri?
Ignoring the wall, the unicorn skidded almost to a halt, then drove upward from its hind legs and speared its hraxite horn into the peak of the rock aperture in the mountain’s outer face.
Every good artificer knew the weakness of any arch was its keystone.
Cracks formed quickly amid the thunder and spread outward like jagged, black lightning bolts, following flaws in the mountain stone. The collapse began with a sheeting wall of rock that cascaded down like a cataract onto the unicorn.
Del winced every time a sharp spear of stone pierced his friend’s steel hide. But his heart leaped with hope as well. I can’t save you from the emperor’s hunger, he thought at the city and his family, but I can make it so you can’t be reached from the outside. It was the best he could do, though he knew it meant never seeing his mother and sister again. The thought left a freely bleeding wound in him. Be kind to them, he thought at the Thryens.
The moment the red unicorn’s hraxite heart was breached was obvious. The roar vibrated through Del’s skull like the blow of a maul. Soldiers dropped their weapons to cover their ears; some men fell to the ground entirely.
Black blossoms erupted from every seam in the unicorn, and for an instant, it looked like disparate pieces of red steel floating in common orbit against the void of the night sky. Then another section of mountain gave way, and whatever remained of the red unicorn was buried beneath it without a trace.
The only way into the city was blocked, perhaps forever.
I’m sorry, my friend. Thank you. The rumbling subsided, and soldiers picked themselves off the ground in stunned silence. To Del’s shock, a ragged cheer rose up from the ranks. It was wordless, a spontaneous explosion of long-repressed emotions. The men, at least, understood the meaning of what had happened. With no siege weapon, there could be no more siege.
General Ober, his face unreadable, turned his mount and moved through the dissolving ranks, back toward the tents.
O O O
The army marched with renewed vigor. General Ober had not sent to the capital for instructions. His order had gone out at once.
The forces of the Imperium were homeward bound.
Del did not leave with them. The general had listened to his request, then simply turned and stared off in the opposite direction toward the assembling columns, giving Del his tacit permission to leave.
He knew it was foolish to do so, a last, vain hope, but Del returned to his family’s homestead. He only stayed a day before setting out again, unable to bear the emptiness.
It was a slog to catch up with the army on his injured leg, but there was nowhere else to go. The great columns had slowed to a crawl. Local refugees transformed into camp followers now clogged the army’s flanks.
As days passed, Del shed his leathers and uniform bit by bit, trading them for clothes more befitting a civilian. He found himself mending wagon wheels and tent poles in exchange for meals and safe places to bed down. He tried not to think of his family’s fate. He had vague notions of returning to find a way into the buried city. Perhaps his mother and sister would forgive him.
More than a week into the slow march, he was scanning the camp for work that needed doing when his eyes picked out two female figures from perhaps a dozen others washing and mending tent canvas. Del’s gaze latched onto them with a familiarity that went deeper than bone despite the hooded cloaks they wore.
Tunnels. The thought came unbidden. Secret tunnels from the city to the countryside …
The younger of the two women noticed Del’s scrutiny first and turned to face him. His sister had always had sharp eyes, and they widened as they met Del’s own. Aubri’s face split into the sunny smile he’d been missing for years.
About the Author
Rocket scientist by day and fantasy and science fiction author by night, Gregory D. Little’s short fiction can also be found in The Colored Lens. His debut YA fantasy novel, Unwilling Souls, will be released in 2015. He lives in Virginia with his wife and their yellow Lab.
Laura’s Magic Clock
Robert J. McCarter
The tick-tick-tick of the old clock greets me as I slowly emerge from unconsciousness, my bladder full, my head thick, wisps of dreams circling my mind. I want to go back to sleep. I need to go back to sleep, but the tick-tick-tick won’t let me submerge into the darkness I crave.
I roll over on the smooth, silk sheets and pull the pillow under my chest. I hate silk sheets, how my body slips around on them, but she had loved them, so I keep them. Just like she had been so excited when she found that damn old tick-tock clock at the flea market. The old man that sold it to us told her it was magic, that it had a gypsy spell and would “grant a great boon to its owner at their darkest hour.”
It’s an odd thing. A rearing unicorn about a foot tall made of polished redwood with a brass horn and hooves, a round clock under the creature’s belly.
“It’s hideous,” I told her, the old man giving me the stink eye.
“I love it, and I love you.” Her face lit up like an eight-year-old on Christmas morning. I bought it for her—if you had seen her smile, you would have bought it too. She smiled with her whole face, her cheeks full, her blue eyes scrunching like upside-down crescent moons. She hugged me hard, my nose filling with her delicious scent, my heart overflowing with love. I didn’t say a word when she put it in our bedroom, despite the fact that I hated the sound of it.
Tick-tick-tick. It’s the same every morning. That damn clock brings me back to the world, makes me think of her.
She’s a pronoun now. It’s always “her” or “she” these days. I don’t speak her name. I don’t think her name. Pronoun she may be, but I can’t let go of her. I can’t even move that damn clock into the living room.
The cold air on my skin wakes me up a bit more as I get out from under the covers, my bare feet taking me to that damn clock as if of their own volition—and it’s “damn clock” in my mind now. It wakes me up. It reminds me of her. Her smile, her scent, those crescent-moon eyes, come flooding back to me.
I lay one hand on the back of the unicorn, feeling the raised grain of the wood, smelling the pungent polish she had lavished it with when we got home. With my other hand I turn the cool brass fob on the back and wind up the clock, a clicki
ty-click-clack sound briefly overwhelming the tick-tick.
I can’t let it wind down either. This used to be her ritual, winding the clock first thing in the morning before doing the bladder’s or the stomach’s bidding. “Gotta wind it to keep the magic going,” she would say. But she’s not here to do it, so I do it.
It’s almost like the clock is talking to me. Tick-tick. It’s time to wake up. Tick-tick. Don’t forget to wind me. Tick-tick. She’s gone, but I can help you remember her. Tick-tick. You know you want to remember her. Tick-tick. She’s dead because of you. Tick-tick. The guilt is tearing you apart.
I wish the clock had really been magic. Maybe then she would have lived.
O O O
Out of the bedroom and away from the damn unicorn clock, my life seems almost normal. I shower, dress, grab coffee and a bagel on the way to the subway, and sit in the rhythmically bouncing car as it takes me to Wall Street.
The subway is all about smells. Dirt tracked in from the last rainstorm. Bodies and their sweat and perfume concentrated by proximity. And something else—it smells old. As if the decades have permeated the worn steel poles and drab plastic seats with its own scent. As if time itself has a smell—not a very pleasant one, I might add.
All the other senses get tuned out there. Everyone’s got headphones on, their heads down, fiddling with their phones, trying to pretend they’re not in a little metal car zipping along under the towering skyscrapers above. Everyone’s bodies are closed in tight, although you can feel the touch of your neighbor’s hip if you’re sitting, or an elbow swaying into yours if you’re standing.
But you tune all of that out. Scroll through Facebook. Tap on your laptop. Blast your ears with music. Then, all that’s left is that smell. Dirt, sweat, perfume, time, desperation.
That morning, I’m standing and wasting time on Facebook. I don’t want to waste time on Facebook, with its endless pictures of food and self-congratulatory posts from people I barely know. I should be reading a book, for God’s sake. But I don’t have the will.
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