The Brass God

by K. M. McKinley

  “Go on my pretty, find her, find the Mohaci girl for old Sniffer.”

  The Tyn stood, and rolled the thing along the floor like a skittles ball. It was uneven, and rumbled loudly in the emptied dormitory. Filden squinted at it as it rolled around in a spiral outward from the Sniffer long after it should have stopped. From an aperture on one side, a trail of gleaming dust was laid, painting patterns on the floor.

  “Come on, come on Jerame, show the Sniffer what he needs to see.”

  The ball rolled right past Filden’s hiding place. Few things horrified Filden. He had killed and tortured. He had confronted monsters of the worst kind, human and otherwise, but the ball repulsed him.

  It was a mummified child’s head, its eyes, nose, lips and ears closed with fine Tyn stitching. A hole in its forehead let out the stream of glowing particles.

  Filden stepped back, in case the ball saw him. But it rolled by, switching direction unexpectedly, until it suddenly came to a stop, rolled over onto the crown of its head, presenting the patch of skin tucked over its severed neck, and span violently on one spot.

  “Now we know where she slept!” said the Sniffer. He swaggered over to the spot, kicked the head out of the way, and searched the spot closely with spread fingers and beady eyes.

  “Aha!” He said, holding something up between his forefinger and thumb. “A hair! A hair is there! Now we can know where she is.” He put the hair into a paper bag, and tucked it into his pocket, then whistled. “Hup, cup Jerame, back into to yer wrapper, back into the bag!”

  The Sniffer bent down and spread the rag. The head rolled noisily at it, and the Sniffer wrapped it quickly, as if he were trying to prevent its escape, then tossed it carelessly into the bag, which he then snapped shut. The green light went out. The Sniffer made a horrible gurgling in his throat, then its head whipped round.

  The Tyn looked directly at Filden, eyes glowing like torches in the dark either side of its long nose.

  Filden ducked back smoothly, trusting to long experience to avoid being seen. Quiet followed. A minute passed, then a second. Filden risked looking back.

  The Sniffer had vanished.

  A Mohaci girl, resident at the Lemio Clothing and Shoddy Company. It was not much to go on, but Filden never required more than that.

  He smiled. Next time he saw the Sniffer, he would kill him.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Last Orders at the Nelly Bold

  THE HOUR WAS so late it was early. Three bells until sunrise, and the Off Parade was a ghost town lit by glimmer lamps. A handful of people hurried home through a light mist, making sure to look purposeful lest they fall afoul of the watch.

  The doorbell on the Nelly Bold clattered as the last customer was bundled out into the night by Arto the doorman. The man shouted in the cheerful manner of drunks who were quicker to laughter than to violence. For a moment the street was noisy, until his warbling song drew away. A dray dog barked in its kennel. Someone shouted at it to shut up. The door slammed out the Off Parade’s night sounds, ringing the bell on its spring a final time.

  “That’s it Ellany!” Arto called back into the main bar. “He was the last!”

  “He was not the last. I am the last. The last one is still here,” said Eliturion, god of wine and drama, who was hard at work overseeing the first of his divine responsibilities. He sat with a pot the size of a barrel in his hand, in his giant chair in his usual booth. The booth was the largest in the place, more of a room to itself, positioned so everyone could see him when they headed to the bar, but positioned out of the draft. The Nelly Bold’s proprietors were careful to keep their greatest draw happy.

  “You don’t count, my dear,” said Ellany gently to the god. She was the latest in the Nelly Bold’s long line of landladies. She had grown up with the god. Eliturion was practically family to her. “Have you checked the privy?” she shouted to her doormen.

  “Yes, goodmaid,” Arto called back. He and his two assistants were going around the three interconnected rooms that made up the main bar, checking behind chairs and benches for overlooked drunks.

  “No one here, no one here,” they half sang. They too had been enjoying the Nelly Bold’s wares while they worked. Liquid payment kept their wages affordable.

  “You and the boys can help me sort out this keg then you can be off,” Ellany said, pointing at a large barrel.

  Arto summoned his men to his side. “You don’t need one of us to stay over?” he said.

  “Nah,” said Ellany. “The day staff are in at six bells. Besides, I don’t think I’ll be shifting his lordship out of here tonight, and he’s the best guard dog there is.”

  “It’s cold out there. There’s wine in here. The fire is warmer than the company, I’ll grant, but both are more delightful than night’s mist!” shouted the god, hoisting his massive tankard high in comic salute.

  Ellany rolled her eyes at him.

  The three doormen manhandled the large beer barrel into the cellars, then took a quick sup of brandy. They gave their farewells in good spirits. The doorbell rang them out.

  Muffled laughter came from the street, and the pub was silent.

  Ellany fetched herself a rag and began to wipe down the tables with great efficiency. If she were lucky, she’d be able to get four hours sleep before the next day began.

  It was a hard life, but she was free. Her gratitude for that exhibited itself in the thoroughness with which she did everything. There were ship’s captains who were less diligent than Ellany.

  She shivered as she moved to a table away from the fire. “It is bloody cold,” said Ellany. “Drops right off when the drinkers are out. Another chilly night, and it not yet Takcrop.” She shook her head as she polished beer stains away. “Must be the Twin, so I heard. Lots of strange things going on because of that. If this keeps up, next year promises to be something.”

  “I would not sound so excited about that if I were you,” said Eliturion. He took a long look into the depths of his tankard. “I would pray that the Twin’s closest approach passes quickly and without incident, and that the worlds complete their long dance without bringing the Earth into peril.”

  Ellany snorted. She rubbed down another table until it shone. “Who do I pray to, Eli, you?” she scoffed.

  He took her jibe good-naturedly.

  “If your protection were in my power, then you would have it, my dear. You, yours and this fine old maid of a public house,” he said, waving his hand like a conjurer. “Alas, my powers in the arena of protection were always few. If you were a vineyard or a theatre, perhaps I could have aided you. Now, such abilities as I had are non-existent. Stories are all I have.”

  She flicked the debris on her cloth into the fire, dipped it into a pail of water, and wrung it out. “You say stories are everything. You’ve been saying that to me since I was a little girl.”

  “I do. I have. We are all stories. You are a story. I am a story. Our minds are stories we tell ourselves. Our position in society is a story other people tell about us. When you are gone, if you are remembered, the story will remain, though the real you will be gone. Stories are immortality. Stories are magic,” he said, his eyes gleaming with more than the wine.

  “Then tell me a story where I’m rich, and this place lasts forever,” she said.

  “Alas, I cannot. I am of the story, I do not fashion it. I cannot shape that which I tell. My ability is to relay it in whatever manner seems fitting. What has happened, sometimes what is, nothing more than that. You have heard me expound on the matter often enough.”

  “You’re full of nonsense though, aren’t you?” she said fondly.

  “That I am!” he said with delight. “Most stories are nonsense, and so am I.” Eliturion laughed and put his fat arms onto the back of his enormous chair. It was of black wood, its carvings worn smooth with use. The chair was nearly as old as the Nelly Bold, and had been made especially for the god not long after he had started patronising the pub. “Three hundred years I have
been coming here,” he said. “Since before city houses replaced the flowers of the bog, and the bald heaths stretched as far as a man could see. There were Tyn in the brook now encased in stone beneath the street, and the pounding of the Great Tides on the cliffs could be heard on quiet nights in place of industry’s clamour.”

  Ellany smiled and looked around the room. Her tired face was content. “All that’s gone, but she’s still here. She’s a grand old girl, the best story ever told.”

  “She is that! She is!” Eliturion agreed. “I never tire of old Nelly. I was coming here before my brothers and sisters were sent away, and have been coming ever since.”

  “You’re welcome to keep coming until the end of time,” said Ellany. She moved into the next room to continue her cleaning. The maid would do it again in the morning, but she liked to make sure all was in its proper place and tidy before she retired. It was the right way to end the day.

  “Ah, my dear, if only things would last so long as to the end of time,” said Eliturion, raising his voice so that she could hear. “We are all stories in the end, and all stories have an end. Even mine. My story. It must end.” He hiccuped. “Do you understand? An end,” he said dolefully.

  “I understand it’s late,” she said, walking back into the main room with the rag draped over her shoulder. “I’m tired and you’re drunk.”

  “Not so!” he protested. “Not so,” he continued more sadly. “I am a god, the god of wine at that. I cannot become intoxicated.” He peered into the bottom of his giant tankard in a way that suggested his statement was not entirely true. “And so, seeing as I am immune, perhaps one last drink before bed?”

  Ellany laughed and wiped her hands on her apron. “Eli! We both know that is the most outrageous dracon shit. You are as drunk as the sea. You’re not having any more.”

  He gave her a pitiable expression. “You would heap such privation on me? The last of the gods! Woe, I am so lonely. Just one final drink before I must go.”

  “You’re only going down the bloody hill. You’re in the museum tomorrow,” she said.

  “I am not,” he said with a mixture of smugness and sorrow. “I am having the rest of eternity off!” he proclaimed grandly, then held out his pot. “So one more won’t be hurting anybody.”

  “No.”

  “By the way you laugh, I judge I have already won this contest,” said the god. He pushed his tankard at her over the table with his giant fingertips and stuck out his bottom lip. “Please?”

  “Oh, alright then,” groaned Ellany. She dragged up the tankard and waddled out. She was broad about the beam, Ellany, with an indomitable walk.

  Corks popped at the bar. Eliturion shouted, “Have one yourself, a final drink in the old girl.”

  “Final?” Ellany came bustling back with his tankard full to the brim. “I’ll be having plenty more drinks here, so will you.” She eased the giant pot onto the table. “I wish I’d have used the barrow. Bloody heavy thing. I’m not getting any younger. Three bottles of good Ellosantin red in that. Drink up, and don’t you dare ask for more.”

  “And where is yours?”

  “Give me a chance, you old slave driver.” She went away, and came back again with a glass that appeared as capacious as a thimble next to his, and eased herself onto the bench by the god, satisfied at another day’s work done.

  “Your good health, my dear,” said Eliturion. He very carefully knocked his enormous clay pot against her glass.

  “Same to you, you old fraud,” she said.

  They drank in companionable quiet for a few moments to the crackle of the dying fire, she sipping thoughtfully, he taking enormous, breathy gulps.

  “Are you alright, Eli?” asked Ellany. “You’ve been behaving a mite oddly these last few nights.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “All your blather’s been about the end of stories and that. Struck me as strange. You’ll not leaving us, are you?”

  Eliturion took another massive pull on his pot, and wiped a human serving’s worth of red wine from his moustaches.

  “My dear, dear Ellany, great-great granddaughter, or thereabouts, of the original Bold Nelly.”

  “Nell was my great-great-gran. Bold Nelly my four times great-gran. Get it right.”

  “Stories don’t have to be correct, only true,” he said sadly. He looked at her earnestly. “I advise you, please, to find alternative accommodation for tonight.”

  “There is something wrong,” she said. She put her glass down, suddenly afraid.

  “Yes,” he said sorrowfully.

  The glimmer lamps lining the road outside flickered and went out, plunging the street into darkness.

  Ellany got up in surprise, knocking her glass over. She peered out of the window, letting the wine drip unnoticed to the floor.

  “What’s going on? Why are the glimmer lamps out?”

  Eliturion shrugged, took another sip of his drink. “Please Ellany, leave now. I am breaking so many unwritten laws even hinting at what might happen next, but it is not good.” He was pale and his hand shook the pot.

  A ferocious hammering made the door leap in its frame. The bell jingled madly on its spring.

  “Leave,” said Eliturion. “Now.”

  Ellany’s hand went to her mouth, but she shook her head determinedly. “Go... go away!” she said, her voice gaining strength until it reached the volume her family were justly renowned for. “We’re closed! Come back in the morning!”

  “You are being brave,” said Eliturion. “It won’t help.”

  Quietly, Ellany waited, tense and frightened.

  The door burst inward, slamming back against the entrance vestibule wall. Splinters of wood sprayed across the flags. The bell bounced across the flagstones. A blackness poured through the portal. The stone and wood of the Nelly Bold warped and creaked as if the whole building winced.

  “Lost gods,” Ellany whispered.

  An immense figure pulled its way through the door, head bowed and back lowered to allow it within. First through was an enormous head. A pair of goat’s horns curled down around his temples. A long queue of hair ran down his back held together by a clasp of gold, but much of the hair had come loose from the binding. The creature’s coat was similarly dishevelled. The well-tailored velvet was dirty, scuffed and crusted with matter. His bronze skin smouldered with an inner heat, he had an animal’s expression on a man’s face, though he was neither.

  The Infernal Duke entered the Nelly Bold.

  Inside the main bar the Infernal Duke was able to stand upright. He looked down upon Ellany with a wicked smile and wild, glowing eyes. Remains of boots clung to his lower legs, the soles having burned away. The floor smoked under his hoofed feet.

  “Closed?” said the duke. “You have one god here. You will entertain a second, surely?”

  “Go! Now!” said Eliturion urgently.

  Ellany let out a shriek and ran for the door.

  “I think not.” The duke’s arm stretched like rubber, and caught her about the neck as she fled. She grabbed at his huge, taloned fingers with both her hands, but could not budge them. He ignored her struggles. “Your fondness for human creatures is a weakness, Eliturion.”

  “That’s...” Eliturion raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, “enormously hypocritical of you.”

  “It is not. I seek one special companion, you love them all for their ridiculous foibles. You are a god. They made you. They expect more of their deities. Your indulgence will not do.”

  Eliturion snorted. “The gods. Warped stories, and a pack of bastards.” He sipped his drink. “It’s why I let old Res drive you all out.”

  “He didn’t drive me out.”

  “Do you know why he did not?” asked Eliturion.

  The duke frowned. “Fate had another role in mind for me. You know about fate.”

  “A story, a fate. They are the same,” Eliturion agreed. “But that was not the reason why. Fate had nothing to do with it.”

  The duke
took a step closer. Ellany squirmed in his grasp. His eyes glowed diabolically.

  “Let her go,” said Eliturion. “What will you gain by killing her?”

  The duke licked his lips. “Enjoyment.”

  “Once, you would never have said such a thing. Once, you would never have killed. You are making yourself enjoy this. You lose yourself a little more. The character follows the plot, you should do otherwise, and drive it for yourself!”

  “We are not what we were,” said the duke, but there was a tremor of uncertainty. “We have no freedom.”

  “And what exactly is that? Are you a free spirit of the One, or a weakling hijacked by other people’s ways of seeing? It’s not her fault. Let her buy her life. Let her fetch us both a drink, then let her leave. I beg you.”

  “Eliturion begs. The great traitor!”

  “‘A man who betrays himself is a worse fiend than one who betrays his comrades,’” said Eliturion.

  “You even quote the mortals now,” sneered the duke.

  “They speak sense, a lot of the time. If you listened, you would hear it. But you only want worship. I see you have added another skull to your collection.” Eliturion pointed to the necklace of green glass beads around the duke’s neck. “Eight is a lot of times to be disappointed. I’d give up, if I were you.”

  The duke growled.

  “Drink with me, talk!” said Eliturion. “We are both of the Y Dvar. There should be no violence between us.”

  The duke lowered Ellany to the ground and released her. She clutched at the red fingermarks burned into her throat.

  “Fetch me a drink,” rumbled the duke.

  Eliturion nodded at her. “This is a good red, he will enjoy that. Get my spare pot for him.”

  The duke yanked out one of the long benches lining Eliturion’s table. It was the longest table in the Nelly Bold, so that Eliturion might entertain a large crowd, and the benches were made to match. Only Eliturion’s throne would fit a god, the rest of the furniture was sized for mortal men, and the Duke hunched over when he sat down athwart the bench. The table was too low to accept his legs beneath. He drew talons across the board, scraping up curls of wood, and both bench and table smouldered under his touch.