by D. P. Prior
Before anyone could speak, Shadrak booted Buck up the rear and sent him tumbling into the street. At the same time, an armored man in a black great helm entered. He was short—not as short as Shadrak, but about the same height as Rugbeard, who was still snoring away at the bar.
“Nameless,” Shadrak said. “About shogging time. What kept you?”
“I kept him,” the bald man said.
“Nameless?” Albert said. “What kind of a—?”
The latrine door slapped open, and Rhiannon staggered out once more. She looked green as a corpse, her eyes bloodshot and sunken. “Oh, great,” she growled. “What the shog do you want?”
The bald man looked down his nose at her. “From you, nothing more at this juncture. When you are… recovered, we should talk.”
“Nothing to say to you,” she said, propping herself on a stool next to Rugbeard and reaching for a bottle.
“I wouldn’t,” Albert said. “The stuff I gave you doesn’t mix well with alcohol.”
Rhiannon groaned and held her head in her hands.
“Thought you’d found a way to get that thing off your head,” Shadrak said to Nameless. “Got a belly full of booze and gone to sleep it off.”
“The feeding takes time,” the bald man said. “And there were other matters.”
“Such as?” Shadrak said.
“Other matters.”
“It’s all right, laddie,” Nameless said, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Just making sure I’m safe—” He rapped the side of his great helm. “—after what happened.”
“I ain’t got a shogging clue what you’re talking about,” Shadrak said, “but right now, I couldn’t give a stuff. We got problems of our own. Shader—”
“He’s not back from the senate?” the bald man said.
“Yeah, like you didn’t know,” Rhiannon said.
“I didn’t, but perhaps I should have.”
“So, what are you going to do about it?” Rhiannon said.
“Me? Nothing. There’s nothing I can do.” For an instant, the bald man looked haunted, and something fiery flashed across his eyes. He regained his composure in an instant, though. “I am… I am already overstretched, and some actions are just a little too—”
“What, you mean you can’t be bothered?” Rhiannon said. “Or is the great Aristodeus a coward as well as a creep?”
“You wouldn’t understand if I told you!” he thundered. A hush settled over the restaurant, as if lightning had just struck.
It was Nameless who finally broke the silence. “Way I see it, laddie, if you won’t or can’t do anything, you should go pour yourself a drink and let the grown-ups do the thinking.”
“Did I hear right?” Albert said. “Aristodeus, is it? Come, let me get you something to eat.” It never hurt to know a person’s gastronomic preferences. One day, the knowledge could prove invaluable.
“No.” Aristodeus waved away the offer. “But you are right,” he said to Nameless. “This is something you could do. Think of it as reparation.” The last was said with a cruel grin, but Nameless seemed to just shrug it off.
Aristodeus went to hover over Rhiannon at the bar. “Perhaps we should make use of the time, have our talk, after all.”
“If we must,” Rhiannon said. “Unless you’ve got something better to do?”
Rugbeard sputtered and shook, turned his head the other way, and resumed his snoring.
Shadrak went back to the table and sat down. Nameless and Albert followed suit.
“Look,” Shadrak said, “all we know is Shader’s in a cell somewhere on 101st Street.”
Nameless started fumbling in his pockets, but Shadrak put a restraining hand on him.
“No need for a map, mate. I’ve got it all memorized. Now, usually, I’d stake it out, see all the comings and goings, work out the locks and all that, but we don’t have the time. Way I see it, if we can’t prepare for the specifics, we prepare for everything. That’s why I need you, you devious old bastard,” he said to Albert, “and you, my friend,” he said to Nameless, “are there for if it goes tits up.”
“Stealth and hammer, laddie,” Nameless said. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
Albert was scratching his head, wondering how on earth his skills could be of any use when they knew so little about the target. If it was a matter of killing a few guards by poisoning their grub, then he was the man for the job, but when they had no idea how many or what they liked to eat… What was it Shadrak had said? Prepare for everything? What they needed was a one-fit solution, and with a flash of inspiration, he thought he knew what it was. They could always sort the wheat from the chaff afterward.
He was halfway to the door before Shadrak said, “What? What is it?”
Albert threw the door open and hollered out into the street. “Buck! Buck, you cretinous oaf!”
Buck came skulking from the alley at the side of the diner, having no doubt been eavesdropping.
“Changed you minds? Need me, after all?”
“How could we ever do without you, Buck? Now, where’s the nearest blacksmith’s?”
Buck opened his mouth to answer, but Albert carried on.
“I need a bellows and a—shit, where are we going to get some tubing?”
Someone coughed behind him, and he turned to see Nameless standing up and lifting the front of his chainmail hauberk. There was a coil of clear tubing taped to his belly, one end terminating in a blue cap, the other penetrating the skin.
“Feeding tube,” Nameless said with a nod to Aristodeus. “I’m sure old baldilocks has plenty more where this came from.” With a grunt, he yanked it out and stemmed the flow of blood with his free hand.
“Yes,” Albert said, coming back inside and taking the tube between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes, that will do nicely.”
THE GIFT
Drip, drip, drip.
Shader groaned and opened an eye a slit. It would open no further, and warm fluid seeped from the eyelid, blurring what little sight he had. Waves of nausea rolled up from his guts and swamped his waking mind. He was itching all over, as if tiny ants were crawling across every inch of his skin. He tried to move, but it felt like a mountain had fallen on him. His mouth was rank, and when he ran his tongue across his teeth and gums, it was met with the coppery taste of blood. Slowly, he crept a hand up to his face, wincing as it passed his misshapen jaw. His fingers traced his swollen eyelids and a fist-sized knot on his forehead. Biting his lip, he pushed himself upright. The surface beneath him was soft—a mattress—and what he took to be a bed-frame creaked as he shifted his weight. He coughed up bile, and a shard of ice lanced through his chest. He clutched his hand there, taking in short, sharp breaths that whistled and rattled.
Orange light wavered at the foot of the bed, and he blinked it into focus. The first gasps of dawn dimly lit a barred window. He gingerly swung his feet over the edge of the cot and rolled forward to stand. His head thumped against the frame of the bunk above, and he swore, immediately grimacing in response. Someone moaned, and then he heard it again, the sound he had awoken to: drip, drip, drip—the monotonous splatter of water on the floor beside his cot.
He was in a whitewashed room no bigger than his cell at Pardes. Besides the window and the bunk, and the dark smears across the walls and floor, the only other feature was a solid iron door. Dust motes swirled up from the crack where it met the floor.
His thoughts were a fuzzy jumble, and flashbacks of snarling faces and striking fists cut across them. He dimly recalled being dragged a fair distance. Then there was a court of some sort, where the questions had been accusations he’d been too dazed to answer. He must have blacked out there, for he remembered no more.
From outside the window, he heard coarse voices, a peal of bawdy laughter. Minding his head, he used the bed-frame to hoist himself to his feet and shuffled over to take a look. The silhouettes of half a dozen men moved about a platform across the street. They were working on a wooden frame with two vertical b
eams and something at the top between them that glinted red in the burgeoning light of the rising suns. He pressed his face up against the bars and strained with his squinted eyes. It was a blade—a broad sheet of metal between the two uprights. A pulley line ran from it down the side of one of the posts. A workman took hold of the line and gave it a sharp yank. The blade streaked down and thudded into the base block. The other workers laughed and grunted and muttered approvingly as the blade was hoisted back into place and the line was tied off.
A cloying chill seeped through Shader’s blood. He’d seen such devices during the Gallic uprising, when he’d led the Seventh Horse against the insurgents—lunatics who’d seen Gandaw’s technocracy as some sort of enlightened ideal. By the time the Elect had retaken the rebel towns, thousands of Nousians had been dragged to the guillotine.
This one was for him, without a doubt. Him and whoever else was being kept in this slaughterhouse.
A cough sounded from the bunk, drawing Shader back to see who he shared the cell with. As he reached the head of the bed, he slipped and had to catch himself on the frame. What he’d assumed was water was thicker and sticky. In the low light, it was visible only as dark splotches on the floor, but it was obvious what it was.
An arm flopped over the side of the top bunk, trailing a long rope of blood. A wrinkled face followed, staring down at him with nothing but cavities for eyes.
Shader took a step back, heart pounding fiercely, racing breaths like glass shards in his lungs.
“Peez,” the old man rasped.
The reddish glow coming through the window gave his skin a hellish hue, but that was nothing compared with the gashes that crisscrossed his monstrously swollen face. In place of crow’s feet, bloody streaks surrounded the empty eye-sockets, and dark tears tracked all the way to his lopsided chin.
“Peeez… Peesh… bee,” he said in a voice like the scuffing of leather on stone.
The old man shuddered and then rolled over the edge of the bed. Shader lunged and caught him, crying out at the angry stabs that shot through his joints. The man was a dead weight, but thankfully so emaciated Shader could cradle him against his chest. He hung there limply, mouth working at words that would not come.
Shader turned a slow circle, numb as to what he should do. Finally, he settled on lowering the man onto the bottom bunk. The mattress he’d so recently been lying on was a ripped and stained mess, crawling with dark specks. Still, it had to be better than the stone floor.
A wide gash opened across the wizened face, but then Shader realized the old man was smiling—a weak, toothless smile full of resignation.
“Peees,” he said again. “Bruvver.”
“Peace?” Shader said.
The man’s smile broadened, and he rocked his head from side to side. He slid a twisted, claw-like hand to his forehead. Shader thought he was making the Nousian sign and did the same, but then the man let his hand fall to his chest. He splayed his thumb toward his right shoulder and then dragged the fingers over to the left—just like Thumil had done.
The action seemed to give him strength. He grabbed Shader’s wrist and drew him close, moistening his cracked lips with his tongue. Shader pressed his ear close.
“Goh ees we ya.” The battered head fell to one side, and the man let out a long sigh before he tried again. “Goh…d… God ees wi… wiv you.”
“God?” Shader said, frowning even as he pronounced the word. “You mean Nous? You are Nousian?”
The smile flattened into a line, and the old man’s brow creased. He made a guttural noise in the back of his throat and broke into a coughing fit. Shader drew back until he’d finished. The man tried again, and this time the choking sound became a ‘K’.
“K,” Shader said with a nod. “Go on.”
“Kri… Kriz…” He groaned and shook his fists. He made one more attempt, and then all the tension left his body, and he lay still.
Shader pressed two fingers to his throat. He still had a pulse, but it was weak and thready.
A gnarled hand came up and brushed him off. The old man’s arthritic fingers scrabbled around at the collar of his tunic, and he pulled out a pendant on a chain. He shook it and held it out to Shader, taut against the chain.
“What is it?” Shader asked. “I can’t see clearly.”
He shook it harder.
“You want me to take it?”
A nod.
Shader reached behind the old man’s neck and unclasped the chain. He brought the pendant close to his face and squinted at it through his slitty eyes. It was pewter, or perhaps tarnished silver. On one side there was the image of a woman in a hooded shawl or mantle, her hands clasped over her heart, and on the other there was an inscription: Causa Salutis—Cause of Our Salvation.
“I don’t understand,” Shader said, rubbing the pendant between his thumb and forefinger.
The old man reached up and fumbled about until he found Shader’s hand, and then he closed Shader’s fingers around the pendant. With that, he let his arm flop back onto the bed, and the smile returned to his face.
Shader pressed his fist to his lips, letting the chain brush against his forearm. Something stirred within him, sent a tingle coursing through his veins. Unfathomable emotions churned around in his guts and surged upward, spilling from his eyes in waves of stinging tears.
“Peace,” the man on the bed whispered in perfect clarity. “Do not fear. Peace.” He let out a rattling breath and stilled.
Shader bit down on his trembling fist, wishing he could have spoken with the man, found out who he was, what he was about. He leaned over and laid his hand across where the man’s eyes should have been, uttering a prayer to Nous for the repose of his soul. The voice of his own doubt rolled about at the back of his mind. Would Nous do anything for this man, who so obviously had never heard of him? He tried to cut off the train of thought, but it had already insinuated itself into being. Would Nous do anything for anyone? Was there even a Nous at all?
The voices from outside grew louder momentarily, and Shader could have sworn he heard the clinking of glasses. He was about to go and look, when he caught the scent of something rotten. He cast about the cell, expecting to find a decomposing rat that he’d somehow failed to notice before, but then his eyes fell upon tendrils of smoke curling up from beneath the door. He took a step closer, tugging the collar of his surcoat over his mouth and nose. He swooned and stumbled, then spun away toward the window. The room lurched, like he was at sea aboard the Aura Placida once more, and then he dropped to his knees. The last thought that struck him as he pitched to the floor was, why would they go to all the trouble of building a guillotine if they were simply going to gas him to death?
LADY LUCK
The suns rose bloody, and as they climbed higher, they lit up the sickness roiling in from Gandaw’s mountain. The brightening sky was all smudges of greens, grays, and browns, like some shog-wit artist had mixed a palette with the muck that ran through the sewers beneath Sarum. Made Shadrak think of the plane ship. Made him think on what he was gonna do to that fat scut Albert if he didn’t get it back.
Shadrak settled into a crouch atop the roof of the blockish building that ran adjacent to the basilica. It was half as tall as the Ancients’ towers in Sarum but looked even older, if that were possible. Gave him the overview he wanted, though: a hundred feet above the cobbles and a bird’s-eye on the evil-looking contraption on the wooden platform. Blade on the thing looked like it could slice through stone, but it was plain enough that weren’t its purpose.
The prison Buck had made so much of looked of newish build and weren’t exactly the impregnable fortress he’d made it sound. It was a squat brick and mortar construction with just the one way in and out—an iron-bound hardwood door that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a dungeon, or one of them bankers’ strongholds back home. The soft glow of lantern light spilled over from the far side, where workmen had been hard at it since he arrived. Heavy bars lined a broad window on the wall
facing him, ten yards back from the door.
He’d checked the place out an hour earlier. On the other side, at the back, there was another barred opening, this once much smaller. He hadn’t got close enough to see inside, but it figured that had to be the cell. Whole thing weren’t much bigger’n Kadee’s shack, and that weren’t much more’n a sheepcote, if you was realistic, so there can’t have been more’n one cell. The space at the front was prob’ly the guards’ room. There hadn’t been any coming and going in the time Shadrak had been watching, but occasionally a dark shape would pass across the bars of the window. To his reckoning, there was at least three inside, and no more’n five. Then there was the geezer on the door, a gormless looking grunt in a leather kilt and cuirass, but he’d already nodded off a couple of times, leaning on his spear. Course, if there was a change of guard, they was buggered, but there weren’t much he could do about that. Dawn was well and truly here, and if Rollingfield was to be believed, that meant Shader had scant time left.
Albert was already in position, kneeling beneath the nearside window and running the tubing Nameless had yanked from his guts up through the bars. The other end was attached to the hand bellows Buck had come back with, and that was connected to the bell-jar containing the stinking gassy crap the poisoner had concocted. Stuff had killed the kitchen rat faster’n a bullet. Albert reckoned it’d knock a bloke cold in the same amount of time. Soon as the guards accused each other of cutting the cheese, the whole bunch of ’em would be sleeping like babes. Prisoners, too, if a whiff of the stuff got through to the cell. Shader might be pissed off, but he’d be alive. Only good thing about that was getting the show back on the road. Sooner Gandaw had his shogging throat slit, sooner they could all go back to what they was doing before Cadman’s madcap scheming had lit a fuse under all their asses.
Nameless staggered on past Albert under the weight of a beer keg he’d lugged all the way from Dougan’s Diner—or Queenie’s or whatever Albert had changed the name to. He had a bag full of tankards slung over his shoulder, and its clanking had told Shadrak he was approaching even before he was visible.