“I love rabbit,” he said.
“Me too,” said Zukunft. “I used to have one. His name was Blacky. He was so friendly. He used to—”
“I bet he tasted great.”
She shot him a mock scowl. “We didn’t eat our pets.”
“Pets.” He laughed, a pained chuckle turning into a fit of coughing. When it subsided, he continued. “Only the wealthy have pets. Everyone else keeps animals for food or breeding. Either way, they have to be useful.”
“I wouldn’t say we were wealthy.”
“Only the wealthy say that. Everyone else knows they’re poor. How many bedrooms did your home have?”
He watched her counting in her head.
“A couple,” she said.
“Did you share a room? Did each of your servants have their own room?”
She didn’t answer.
“That’s what I thought.”
Zukunft turned green eyes on him. “This is where you share your terrible story of crushing poverty and how it shaped you? This is where you blame the past for everything you are today?”
Bedeckt bit down on a sharp reply. He thought back to the one room shack he shared with his parents. He remembered hiding under his blanket, watching his father beat his mother each night. He remembered the first time he tried to stop his father and the thrashing he received, his first scars. And then he grinned, remembering the day he realized he was bigger than the old man.
“That’s a scary smile,” Zukunft said.
“I’ve made my choices and here I am.”
“That’s true of all of us.”
Yes, but not everyone is willing to take responsibility for their choices. “I’m an old man with bad knees and a bad back.” He touched the bound wound at his side. It was deep. He’d seen enough gut wounds to know this wasn’t something he’d survive. “I’ve thrown away a lifetime of chances and opportunities to be a decent man. But you, you’re still young.”
“Even the young bear the scars of their crimes.”
“Ride away,” he said. “Turn your horse and go. Ride for wherever you left your family. Your sister, it was an accident. They’ll forgive you.”
“It’s not their forgiveness I need,” she said.
“She’s gone. Dead. What you see in the mirror, it’s just your imagination, your guilt. Go to your parents. They’ll forgive you and you’ll learn to forgive yourself.”
“No.”
Bedeckt growled in frustration. Why did he keep trying? He knew logic was of little use when confronting Geisteskranken.
“Why are you doing as she asks? The mirror ever lies. Every Mirrorist knows that.”
“She wants her vengeance and I’m going to give it to her. Whatever she wants me to suffer, I shall suffer.” Zukunft glanced at him, eyes damp. “And she wants you to play some part in that. I think it’s because I…”
“You what?”
Zukunft shrugged. “Men are swine.”
Having rutted more than his share of whores, Bedeckt couldn’t argue. Even now, here he was using her to get what he wanted. She—or her imagined sister—would show him how to stop Morgen, how to undo the damage done in straying from his list. Thinking about it now, he wondered why he ever thought this would work.
“You plans are shite, old man,” he whispered, thinking of Stehlen. He could almost hear her voice. She’d laugh at him. Mock his stupid list, ridicule his foolish quest for redemption. If you want to undo the damage you did to the boy, she’d say, then go kill the little bastard.
Beneath the leather straps and bar rags his gut felt hot and damp. Something leaked from under the bindings and trickled down his side. Each time he closed his eyes vertigo swept through him and he weaved drunkenly in the saddle.
“I think she wants me to understand betrayal,” said Zukunft, interrupting his thoughts.
Then your sister has chosen well.
They rode on in silence.
Ahead, Bedeckt recognized the hill and spotted the remains of the family’s ruined camp. The father, who’d been bound to a tree by his intestines, was gone, no doubt dragged away by the forest’s carrion creatures. He glanced at Zukunft. She rode, back stiff, eyes fixed forward.
“And who better to teach you of betrayal than me,” he said.
Zukunft didn’t look at him. She spoke, voice tight. “She showed me. You abandoned Wichtig when the Therianthropes attacked in Neidrig. You killed Stehlen. You left them both in the Afterdeath.”
It was all true. But why should Zukunft be disappointed in him if she knew his past? Disappointment implied expectations. Did she think he could save her, that he would?
That’s not why I’m here.
Bedeckt thought about the way she kept him off balance, one moment flirting and suggestive, the next distant and cold. What am I to her? Did she do it on purpose? Was it an attempt at manipulation, or was it unconscious, a defence of some kind?
You know what you are. You know what you look like. You’re a fat old man. You’re missing an ear and your nose is flatter than the southern grasslands. You’re a mess of scars.
The flirting, it had to be a distraction. She was young and beautiful and she knew it. She could have any man. If she was with him, it was because— It’s because she’s using you.
But what for? And what exactly did she expect?
She’s Geisteskranken, he reminded himself. She’s crazy, probably self-destructive. She’s plagued by guilt and wants punishment. She must think I will be instrumental in that punishment.
Zukunft stayed with him because she knew he’d betray her.
They rode on, Bedeckt staying in the saddle through sheer force of will.
When the sun fell toward the horizon, Bedeckt raised his head, looking about in confusion. He only closed his eyes for a moment and the day died. Zukunft rode ahead, his own horse following hers without guidance. Thankfully her clothes were dry and hung loose.
“Camp,” said Bedeckt, voice a dusty croak. “Ale.”
“We only have water,” said Zukunft, reining her horse to a stop.
“Shite,” said Bedeckt as Arsehole stopped of his own accord.
He sat watching as Zukunft slid from the saddle with unconscious grace. She stood, rubbing her arse.
“I think I’d rather walk. My backside will never be the same.” She turned as if displaying it. “Has it changed shape? Is it flat now?”
What happened to ‘men are swine?’ “A few more days in the saddle and it’ll get easier.”
“A few more days and I’ll be permanently bow-legged.” She giggled. “Though that might be useful, eh?”
Bedeckt ignored the question, looked at everything but her.
“Are you going to stay on the horse all night?” she asked.
When he slid from the saddle his knees buckled, dropping him to the hard earth. Arsehole stepped away daintily, as if disgusted by the show of weakness. Bedeckt couldn’t blame him.
“Stay there,” said Zukunft. “I’ll make the camp around you.”
One moment cold and angry, the next mothering and caring. Was this a manifestation of her insanity, or a woman thing? So many times he’d wondered whether there was a sane woman on all the earth. He remembered mentioning it to a favourite whore. She laughed, said women wondered the same about men.
Zukunft set up the camp around Bedeckt, helping him onto a blanket and joking about him copping a feel while she did. Bedeckt remained quiet, grinding his teeth against the pain in his side. He felt hot, his face flushed and sweating even though the sun was setting and the air cool.
Zukunft gathered kindling and felled branches for a fire and Bedeckt showed her how to light it with a flint and tinder. She learned quickly, taking pride in her accomplishment. For once, Bedeckt stilled the sarcastic chiding that bubbled up demanding release. It was a good skill, a useful skill. She earned her pride and shitting on it was the action of a small man.
With the fire lit, she dug a meal of dried meat and hard bread from her s
addle bags and shared it out, asking if he needed her to chew it for him first seeing as he had so few teeth. He feigned anger and she laughed, seemingly comfortable and at ease. She sat next to him, close, but not so close as to touch him. After removing her boots, she stretched her legs out and wriggled her toes at the fire, sighing at the warmth.
“Gods,” said Bedeckt. “The stench of your feet could kill a bull moose from a thousand paces.”
Zukunft swatted his shoulder. “Arse. Anyway, I’m surprised you can smell anything over your own stink. When was the last time you bathed?”
“It was before I was killed,” said Bedeckt.
“Well you smell like you’ve been dead for weeks.”
They fell quiet then, Bedeckt aware of the heat pulsing through the wound in his gut, Zukunft staring into the fire with haunted eyes.
“Your plan,” she said.
“What about it?”
“Back in the Afterdeath I told you I could show you how to…to get what you want.”
“You were lying?”
“No.” she showed her teeth to the fire in a grimace. “You’ll get it. But—”
“That’s all I ask.”
“You said the plan was for me to use my mirror to see the future so we can be one step ahead of everyone until…until she shows you.”
Close enough. There had been no mention of the sister until after they escaped the Afterdeath. “Right.”
“You haven’t asked me to look in the mirror.”
I don’t need your damned mirror. I know what’s going to happen: I’m going to die. “I no longer trust your mirror.”
“Well I do.” Zukunft dragged her saddle bag closer and retrieved her mirror. After unwrapping it, she stared into its surface, eyes darting as they followed whatever they saw. When she finally blinked tears fell, cutting tracks through the road dust caking her face.
“She used to show me so many futures,” Zukunft said. “She showed me a thousand possibilities and how to arrive at each.”
“And now?”
“I see no possibilities. I see one future, one end.”
“Throw it away,” said Bedeckt. “I’ll shatter it for you.”
“There’s a farmhouse,” she said, still staring into the mirror. “I see nothing beyond the farmhouse. It ends there.”
“It doesn’t have to. The mirror ever—”
“It does.” She wiped at her tears, smearing her cheeks. “I think I die.”
“You think?”
“She won’t show me the very end.” She shook, shivering. Fresh tears fell each time she blinked.
She’s scared. She thinks her sister will finally take her vengeance at the farmhouse. And yet he couldn’t stop her from going. If he was healthy, if he was strong, he’d throw her over a shoulder and carry her away. Now all he could do was follow along and watch. He felt pathetic, helpless. Weak. He lived his life being strong, unafraid to take risks. He was daring, if not heroic. Though he ran from any fight guaranteed to end in death and failure, he stayed for many where the outcome was in doubt. He’d always been strong.
And now?
Bedeckt spat into the fire, feeling sweat bead his face and forehead. The fire seemed dim and far away.
Zukunft stared at the mirror, entranced. “Your friends are going to be there too,” she said. “They’re in danger. Something is following them. Something cold, evil. It’s in the sky, above the clouds. Wings bigger than the sails of the biggest ship, sheets of snake skin. It vomits insanity, melts flesh from bone with its madness.”
“Geisteskranken?”
Zukunft nodded. “Teetering at the Pinnacle, about to lose control.” She laughed, a sob of fear. “Gottlos will fall before the war even starts.”
“Good,” said Bedeckt. “War is the part where all the poor people die to protect the interests of wealthy arseholes.”
“Sometimes it’s about protecting something. A way of life. Freedom.”
“The people of Gottlos aren’t free,” said Bedeckt. No one is free. “King Dieb Schmutzig is a Gefahrgeist, a self-centred bastard. The city-state is ruled by half a dozen of the wealthiest and they’re all Geisteskranken. Most are Gefahrgeist. They own the lands. They own the farms. They own the food and the people.”
“But they rarely make use of that power,” she said. “Gottlos might not be wealthy or prosperous, but by and large the peasants are left alone.”
Left alone, like that was the best they should even hope for. Bedeckt laughed. “The peasants. Spoken as someone who doesn’t count herself among them.”
Zukunft flushed with embarrassment and fidgeted. “We were wealthy. It’s not a crime. My father worked hard—”
“You owned people.”
“We owned the land. Peasants… People worked it for us.”
“Did your father have the right to punish them as he saw fit?”
“He was always a just man,” she said, defensive.
“No doubt,” said Bedeckt. “Did he ever hang criminals?”
She glared at him, seeing the trap. “Sometimes.”
“He had power of life and death over them. That’s ownership.”
Zukunft pursed her lips, tilting her head to one side to examine Bedeckt through slit eyes. “What you do with that power matters. The Geborene god will not be some distant Gefahrgeist too wrapped up in his own life to bother the peasants. He demands worship. He wants to rule over everything and won’t stop until he does. He’s mad and his delusions are more dangerous than those of some self-centred arse.”
“That’s why I’m going to stop him.” He no longer felt so sure. What could one dying old man do against a god?
“The Geborene Theocrat thinks he controls her,” said Zukunft.
“Who?”
“The flying Geisteskranken I mentioned. He’s sent her for you, but she’s going to kill thousands. Tens of thousands. She’ll lay waste to cities.” She looked at Bedeckt then, eyes hollow. “She’ll bring down several city-states before she cracks. She’ll hand that insane boy-god most of the world and destroy what little remains when the Pinnacle takes her. Unless someone stops her.”
Someone. Not me. I’ll be dead. “And she’s following Stehlen and Wichtig?”
She nodded, damp eyes never leaving his. “She’s hoping they’ll lead her to you.”
“They’ll be at the farmhouse.”
“She’ll be there, in the clouds. There are two others. Wahnists, I think. They too ride the edge of the Pinnacle.”
A Wahnist suffered false beliefs. That could mean anything from thinking they were petunias to believing they had god-like powers over life and death. Most thought they were someone more important than they were. The chances that’s what the Theocrat sent seemed pretty sticking slim.
“What are you going to do?” asked Zukunft.
“Get some sleep,” said Bedeckt, easing himself back with a groan.
She watched him for a dozen heartbeats before stretching languidly, allowing her shirt to fall open and her skirt to rise suggestively exposing her legs.
Bedeckt, in too much pain to give a shite about some cleavage and a flash of pale thigh, grunted and rolled over, turning his back to her.
“I saw you watching, old man.”
“Your feet are killing me,” he said.
Zukunft threw a chunk of bread at him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Time is a delusion. We think it’s fixed but—if you think about it even for a moment—you’ll realize it isn’t. You’ve no doubt noticed how time seems to move slower when you’re bored, right? That’s because it does! Belief defines reality. I’m moving to Grunlugen, easily the most boring of the city-states. Once there, I’ll find the most boring work I can. I’ll live forever!
—Anonymous
An old man wandered out of the Gezackt Mountains armed with nothing but a sturdy stick and the kind of bad attitude only people who have lived longer than they hoped or wanted, are capable of. Behind him, on the far side of
the mountain range lay madness. Millions of years of trapped decay—fish in a stagnating pond, feeding off the foul sludge of decay, rutting and giving birth, and changing nothing—followed in his footsteps. He’d always been a little mad. Mad enough to hunt impossible goals and dare impossible feats. Mad enough to face impossible odds, and mad enough to win each and every time.
Mad enough to be great.
Madness was a thing of the past, the armpit stain of a town he walked through on his way home.
He remembered meeting the oldest god face to face, looking into those ravenous lunatic eyes. He saw its weakness and laughed.
And then he killed it.
Or had he? He wasn’t sure. Some things don’t die.
The old man walked into an unnamed mining community several weeks north of whatever was left of Auseinander. Had that been this life? He couldn’t remember. Maybe the city was there, maybe it was gone. Maybe these Gezackt Mountains weren’t his Gezackt Mountains and everything here was different. He’d seen that before.
Spotting a tavern, little more than a lean-to with a couple of overturned boxes for a bar, the old man squared broad shoulders unbent by age and approached. With no real door to enter, he strode up to the bar and dropped his walking stick upon it. Four rough men sat about a fifth, much prettier man sporting a pair of matched swords. They waited on his words like he was an elder god returned to save humanity from the unending shite of life. A Swordsman and his coterie of witless followers. The old man knew the type.
“Ale,” he told the cripple behind the bar, ignoring the men. They noticed him but couldn’t fit him into their pecking order. His tattered clothes, shredded from his passage over the mountains and unwashed in months, said he wasn’t important. Something else said he was.
The cripple shifted in his chair and shook his head. “Kartoffel,” he said.
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